A Spider in the Cup (Joe Sandilands Investigation) (29 page)

“The point,” Joe explained kindly, “is not that we were passing off a scarecrow as the senator—too obvious for words, I agree—but that the
senator
was impersonating a
scarecrow
. We managed in the short time we had to kit them both out in more or less the same outfits down to the feet—only slippers available in two matching pairs, I’m afraid. Uncle Oswald it is who always leaves a pair behind. You have four—did you know? All in Stuart tartan. And then Cornelius stretched himself out under the tree looking like the contents of a laundry basket on a Monday morning. Finally, on a signal, he revealed himself to be who they hoped he
was. Clearly and identifiably their target. Just somewhat eccentrically dressed. But this is the weekend and this is the English countryside …”

“It’s an old conjuring technique,” Marcus said. “Misdirection. Trick someone into believing he’s seeing something he isn’t. They thought they had Cornelius in their sights—and why wouldn’t they because they
had
—they would have absolutely no reason to think he might have been replaced by his sawdust double in the seconds they were out of sight behind the rhododendrons.”

“Weren’t you taking a risk? They could easily have shot him from a distance. From the path above,” Lydia objected.

“Yes, they certainly could. In fact, that’s what we expected—feared—they would do. They didn’t know Marcus’s three best men had rifles trained on them throughout. And I’d kept ahead of them nipping down the lakeside path. I’d taken the low road and sent them on the high. The moment they took a bead on the senator, they would have been dropped in their tracks. Not what we wanted. Court cases and suchlike best avoided. But they would have died right there in the wood. Nasty shooting accident?” Joe shuddered. “Glad we avoided that scenario! This isn’t France! Questions would have been asked.”

“Well, Marcus would have been asking them and you’d have been answering. Not such a problem, Joe.”

Joe sighed and hoped she was teasing. You never knew with Lydia.

“That was fun! Let’s do it again!” Kingstone grinned. “But—any idea where they sprang from, Sandilands? I’d really like to know who sent them. On account of—he’s still out there. Auditioning for some more effective help, maybe?”

“I’ll go over to the jail and question them,” Joe said. “It’s my guess that the one in charge—Onslow—won’t talk to us and the other will have too much to say. Most of it rubbish. I doubt if he’ll have much idea of the organisation several levels above his head.”

“What will you charge them with?” Lydia asked. “Scarecrow-slaughter? ‘I swear they shot Mister Tattie Bogal, Your Honour.’ You’ll look very silly!”

“We’ll start with trespass and impersonation of a police officer and go on with possession and use of an unauthorised firearm … intent to commit homicide … Enough to keep them on ice as long as we need. Perhaps we can get them for car theft? That big black beast must belong to someone. Did they pick it up on the street? That’ll be their story. May well
be
the story,” he finished dully. “Here we were, suspecting some shadowy German underground of being mixed up in this skulduggery and it could be quite simply that someone left it out in the street with the keys in. Come to think of it …” He jangled a bunch of keys. “I have the entry to the Maybach. Now I’ve got my breath back, I’ll slip out and see if I can find something incriminating in there. At the very least, the ownership documents.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Kingstone.

“Lunch in half an hour, drinks in ten minutes!” Lydia shouted after them.

A
S THE TWO
men passed through the front door and onto the gravel sweep, Joe paused and turned to Kingstone. “Anything you’d like me to be aware of before we delve any deeper, Senator?”

Kingstone, whose face had lost the flush of triumph and taken on a tense expression, managed to look him in the eye and reply, “Wish there were, Joe. I have imaginings. Thoughts I try to suppress. You’d despise me for wrapping them in words. I despise myself for thinking them. Let’s do this together, huh?”

“So long as you let me keep control of the keys,” Joe said lightly. “I don’t want to see Mister Toad taking off into the blue yonder shouting, ‘Beep, beep!’ ”

They turned again to look at the car. Joe grabbed Kingstone by the arm. “Look there. What’s that? Something white lying on
the gravel by the near-side door. And the door’s open. It wasn’t open when I set out with the London men earlier.”

They ran over to the cedar tree. Joe chased after and picked up the object that had caught his attention as a gust of wind caught it and bowled it along the path. “Panama hat,” he said unnecessarily. He turned it over in his hand “A very good one. Pink and purple band. Club colours? Not quite Leander …” In sudden alarm, Joe drew his Browning from his belt and stepped in front of Kingstone. “Watch it! They may have had a third man with them. Directing operations?”

Joe flung the rear door open and they both peered inside.

Joe put his arm around Kingstone’s shoulder and tried to pull him away from the shocking sight on the back seat. “Step aside, Cornelius. Leave this to me.”

“The hell I will! I said we’d do this together. It’s her, Joe! It’s Natalia. The swines! They’ve dumped her body.” He stared and exclaimed under his breath. Joe stared with him, a supporting arm under his, lost for words.

Finally, Kingstone turned to him and muttered indistinctly. Joe thought he heard, “I have drunk and now I’ve seen the goddamn spider.”

Abruptly, the senator shook himself free and headed off towards an accommodating old rose bush, where he was violently sick.

He came back two minutes later, pale but calmer, stuffing a hanky into his pocket. “I knew she’d end up dead. I was prepared for it. But I hadn’t imagined it quite this way. Right—I’ve ‘cracked my gorge’ in the approved way. I’m ready to help you with this. And, before you ask—no, I’m not okay. No need to keep asking. Just take it that I’m shocked to my core, devastated and sad. But I’ll go till I drop to get to the bottom of this filthy business. Let’s do it.”

Again Joe acknowledged that Rippon had been right.
Knowing the worst had freed the man to square up to the truth and, Joe would have said, to launch himself on the war path. He nodded and went straight to business.

“Cabriolet, isn’t it? Do you know how to lower the roof on this thing?” Joe asked. “We’ll break our backs reaching about in there otherwise. It’s a big car but they’ve not left much leg room in the back.”

In a few seconds Kingstone had pulled on levers and struts and lowered the roof.

“I did wonder why those louts were so unwilling to give me the keys and let me park it. I also wondered why they had the roof up on a day like today. Not a spaniel they had in the back but … a corpse or their … prisoner?” he finished awkwardly.

It would have been kinder to leave her in the deeper shadows, Joe thought, but at least now he could get his elbows out and go through the motions of feeling for her pulse and heartbeat. Both men knew it was a vain flourish but Joe was determined to do things by the book. He turned to Kingstone. “Can you identify this lady?”

“It’s Natalia Kirilovna. I can supply you with an address, her age and names of relatives when we’re done here.”

Joe looked and grieved. Even sprawled in death she was perfectly lovely. He was struck at once by her resemblance to that other dancer they’d pulled from the mud. He now appreciated just how shaken Kingstone must have been—as maliciously intended—when those features had been revealed to him on the pathologist’s slab. Her face was framed by the thick waving dark hair he had admired in the photograph in Kingstone’s room. Her eyes were closed. One arm was extended towards the door.

After a few moments checking and prodding Joe looked up, his face ashen. “Look, if I’m not mistaken, she’s not been dead long. An hour or two? Difficult to estimate in the temperature. We’ll need an expert to tell us. When did they get here? Nine
fifteen or thereabouts … She died, from all appearances, from a bullet through the head. Right between the eyes.” They looked at the small neat black hole. “There isn’t much damage. A small pistol. Twenty-two caliber perhaps? Judging by the stains on the upholstery.” He pointed them out. “I’d say she was killed right here where she sat, in the middle of the back seat. She lolled over as she died and that hat—could it have been hers?—rolled off the seat and fell out through the door. She was most probably shot at by someone approaching the car from that side—by the tree. Perhaps she saw him approaching, coming out from behind the trunk—that’s a pretty wide one—and she reacted by opening this other door preparing to escape …”

“Rules out Onslow and Cummings then. They didn’t have that sort of gun on them and they were with you at that time coming out to the lake. The only shot they fired between them was into the scarecrow—you checked. All the other gun-users were with us in the woods.”

“In fact, it rules out the whole household,” Joe said. “Unless Lydia popped out with a gun she doesn’t have, to kill a girl she’s never met, for no reason at all.” He sighed. “Did the killer journey down from London with her? Making polite conversation together on the back seat? Shot her out here in the middle of nowhere and then disappeared into the shrubbery on foot and miles from a bus stop? Why didn’t he just make off in the Maybach? Equally unlikely—it was an intruder. It so rarely is, I hesitate to use the word,” Joe said uncertainly. “Whoever it was, it wasn’t someone who reacted violently on the spur of the moment. That bullet has been placed neatly, to the millimetre.”

Joe picked up her hands and examined her wrists. “No sign of ligatures, or anything of the sort.” He checked her ankles, pushing up the legs of her smart navy linen walking suit. “Nothing here either. It looks as though she was not coerced into coming here, not held under restraint in the days before as we’d feared.
No sign of any violence until this last definitive piece. Suitcase? Was she expecting to stay somewhere or go straight back to London?”

“Hang on, I’ll look in the trunk. Hand me those keys, will you?”

Kingstone busied about at the rear of the car and stood up again shaking his head. “Cleaned out. Apart from one overnight bag with the Sandilands label on it. Gives this address and confirms how they tracked us down. But they failed to deliver it. Nothing else. What would you bet the glove locker’s in the same state?” A moment later: “Same story here. Not even an ownership document.”

They bent solemnly over the body again, perplexed, consulting the sleeping face as though, if they asked the right questions, it could answer them.

“Handbag?” Joe asked. “Wouldn’t she have had a handbag?”

“Of course she would, you twerp!”

They hadn’t heard Lydia approach. They had no idea how long she’d been standing behind them, a glass of champagne fizzing in each hand.

“I gather these will be inappropriate in the circumstances,” she said. “A libation to the dead? Is that what we should be offering?” In distress Lydia hurled the glasses into the trees, one after the other. “May I see her?”

Joe knew better than to refuse.

“If she had a handbag, the lady whose hat you are holding, Joe, would have had it by her feet. Have you looked in the foot-well? They sometimes slip into the gap under the front seat.”

“Natalia,” Kingstone told her. “It’s Natalia. She’s been shot.”

Lydia went straight to the body and stared in astonishment. Recovering from her surprise, she elbowed Joe out of the way and went to work, expert fingers producing confirmation of his pronouncements.

“Not dead all that long. You’d agree?” Joe prompted. “I think we can be more precise than that. She died at nine thirty-two.”

“What was that? But how …?”

“Oh, that’s not a medical conclusion—not entirely. I heard the shot, Joe. After you disappeared off into the woods I was in the hall ringing the Chief Constable as you told me to do. Just as I put the phone down I looked at my watch and turned to go back to the kitchens. I heard a single shot. I thought something had gone wrong and peeked through the window. Nobody about. I knew the place was bristling with guns of one sort or another and assumed some clot had been clumsy and shot one off by mistake.”

“Well, you were told to keep your head down,” Joe reminded her. He drew in a tight breath in his anxiety. “Just as well you didn’t go out to investigate. God knows who you might have run into.”

Lydia looked sharply at her brother. “Not sure about God but I think
you
know, Joe, who was out here. A professional killer. Not someone using his gun at random, not in a rush of emotion and not at a distance. Small wound, the least possible damage done. It seems a cold killing but … oddly intimate.” She grimaced at her own choice of word. “He could have spoken her name … held her still by the shoulder … And, had you noticed? The eyes? Someone’s closed the lids. I shouldn’t imagine you’d close your eyes yourself, the moment someone puts a gun to your face. You’d stare and stare, wouldn’t you? You’d be hypnotised by the weapon or the man holding it. Pleading, hoping to the end … You wouldn’t be able to open your eyes wide enough! Isn’t that what happens?”

Joe and Kingstone both nodded.

“So whoever shot her, closed her eyes. It’s a very ancient gesture. A burial rite. It signifies respect … honour … regret … A last farewell.”

She turned to the senator standing dejected by the car. “Oh, Cornelius! I’m so sorry!” She ran out of words and held out her arms instead. He came forward hesitantly and, managing somehow to accommodate his bear-like frame to her slender shape, he accepted his comforting hug with the natural grace of a small child.

Joe found the crocodile skin bag where Lydia had said it would be. He looked about him hopelessly, picturing the cascade of makeup and personal items that might spill out. “Can’t deal with this out here. I’ll take it inside to examine it. And ring up the Chief Constable again. Hope he’s not on the golf course by now.”

“No. He said he’d stand by,” Lydia said. “Not sure he’ll like having this thrown into his lap though. Armed intrusion successfully defused is one thing, murder accomplished is another.”