Blood From a Stone (6 page)

Dr Mountford shook his head, reaching out his hand for the will. ‘I've never heard of her, but it sounds as if she might be a bereaved mother or a war widow,' he ventured. ‘Mrs Paxton lived in a succession of boarding houses before she came into her money. She might be a friend from those days. It's witnessed by the Pollucks,' he added with a fleeting smile. ‘I remember the Pollucks. They had the bakers-and-confectioners' shop on Shaw Street.'

‘Hello!' said General Flint, taking the third will from its envelope. ‘Listen to this!
Last
Will and Testament of Constance Agnes Paxton, Twenty-third of June 1925.
'

‘That's only a couple of weeks ago!' said the doctor, startled.

General Flint read the will through and turned to Dr Mountford with a curious expression. ‘The bank's the executor again, but would you like to guess at who is named as the chief beneficiary? In fact,' he added, ‘the only beneficiary?'

‘I haven't a clue. Mrs Paxton never consulted me about her will.'

‘Would it surprise you to learn she leaves everything to Terence Napier?'

‘It most certainly would!' exclaimed Dr Mountford.

He took the will from General Flint's outstretched hand and read it through quickly. ‘That's extraordinary. She was convinced her son was alive. I'm not surprised she drew up a new will, but surely she'd leave everything to him.'

Inspector Sutton coughed. ‘I wouldn't be at all surprised, sir, if that will turned out to be a forgery.'

‘It
looks
all right,' began Dr Mountford doubtfully, then stopped. ‘Dash it, no it's not! Look who's witnessed it.
Albert Polluck, baker, and Jessie Polluck, married woman,
exactly the same as the previous will. Dammit, that's impossible!'

Inspector Sutton looked gratified at this support but as puzzled as Major-General Flint.

‘Would you care to explain yourself, Mountford?' asked the general.

‘I most certainly would. Albert Polluck's been dead these last three years and Jessie died last March! I should know. Both of them were my patients.'

general Flint snatched back the two wills and examined them closely. ‘By George, I think you're right,' he muttered after a few moments' intense study. ‘These signatures aren't bad likenesses of the originals, but they're too carefully done, if you know what I mean. I think they've been traced.' He looked up triumphantly. ‘I'd say these signatures are definitely forgeries.'

As the witnesses had been dead before they apparently signed the will, it didn't need much reflection to conclude they were false, thought Dr Mountford, but he let Major-General Flint have his moment of self-congratulation.

The general put the will down on the desk and rubbed his hands together. ‘There we are. Motive, suspect and, if your suspicions about the brandy decanter prove to be correct, doctor, the method as well.'

At the end of a very busy day, Major-General Flint put down the telephone in the tiny front room of Constable Upton's house that was Topfordham's police station.

Constable Upton, evicted by his superiors – not only Inspector Sutton from Lewes but the chief constable himself – was in the kitchen, feeling disgruntled and, at the same time, relieved, that the only major crime ever to have occurred in the living memory of Topfordham had been so imperiously taken out of his hands.

The chief constable turned to Dr Mountford with a satisfied expression. ‘That telephone call was the result of the analysis. You were right. There was sulphonal in the brandy decanter.'

Dr Mountford couldn't help but breath a sigh of relief. ‘So it was murder, then?'

‘No doubt about it,' said the chief constable decisively. ‘Granted that Napier quarrelled with his aunt on their return from Paris, he had to act quickly. The only problem, as I see it, was that the bedroom door was locked and the key inside the room.'

Sutton shook his head. ‘I reckon Napier waited outside the house, then sneaked back in, locked the door and pushed the key under the door.'

‘To come back in the house seems quite a risk.'

Sutton shrugged. ‘Not really, sir, and it did make it look like suicide. If Napier had been seen, it would have been awkward but he could have explained it easily enough. He could have left something, say, and wanted to get it back without disturbing the house – that sort of thing. He was at a big advantage from knowing the household routine. The outdoor man sleeps over the old stables, the housemaid was off out and Mrs Welbeck was in the housekeeper's room, listening to the radio. Who's going to stop him? After all,' he added, with a grudging acknowledgement of credit where it was due, ‘it was only because Dr Mountford felt so certain Mrs Paxton wasn't the type to kill herself he went looking for another explanation.'

‘You'd have said it was suicide, eh, Sutton?'

‘Yes, sir,' agreed Sutton with reluctant honesty. ‘Faced with that locked door, most would. Of course,' he added to the doctor, ‘you were at an advantage, knowing the lady as you did.'

The chief constable took an arrest warrant from his briefcase and signed it. ‘Here you are, inspector. You'd better make a statement to the Press. We could do with any publicity we can get to find Terence Napier. The sooner that gentleman is behind bars, the better for everyone.'

S
ome two months after the events in Topfordham,
Mrs Isabelle Stanton, fresh from a fortnight spent with her parents, weaved her way through the crowds to the end of the platform at Market Albury station.

A pile of boxes, parcels and suitcases, five bicycles and four baskets of clucking hens, basking in the August sun, marked the pile of goods to be loaded into the Guard's van destined for London and stops en route. Behind Isabelle, the porter, delayed by his laden trolley, followed in her footsteps.

‘This'll do, Miss,' said the porter, as he brought his trolley to a halt. As a matter of courtesy, all ladies were ‘Misses' to him. ‘I'll see the luggage onto the train.' He pushed his cap back and wiped his forehead as she tipped him the expected shilling. ‘Thank you very much, Miss. You've got about quarter of an hour before the London train gets in.'

Isabelle retreated to the welcome shade outside the Ladies' Waiting Room. The bench was occupied by a stout woman who was evidently feeling the heat, holding the handle of a black umbrella in a deathly grip. She was darting dubious glances at a well-dressed, foreign-looking woman who was, not very effectively, attempting to control her two small boys with bursts of idiomatic French.

Beside the foreign-looking woman sat a little girl, very prettily dressed, who was, to Isabelle's eyes, consciously being good. The two small boys skittered in and out of the crowd of waiting passengers, calling to each other in shrill French voices. Beyond the station, the gold of the cornfields rose up the tree-crowned hills, hazy in the hot August air.

Market Albury, thought Isabelle idly. She wasn't very far from Celia's house, Breagan Grange in Madlow Regis.

She hadn't seen Celia for ages. Did she know anything about the murder in Topfordham?

Isabelle wouldn't have known there was any connection between Mrs Paxton's murder and her old friend, if her father hadn't said as much the other day.

‘I see they still haven't found Terence Napier,' he said, tapping the newspaper. ‘Shocking business. Rackety bunch, the Leighs. Napier's a cousin of theirs, of course.'

‘It's a little hard to dismiss the entire Leigh family as rackety, Philip,' said her mother in mild reproof. ‘I know old Matthew Leigh was a real rip, but Francis Leigh is very well thought of and Celia is a very nice girl.'

‘Terence Napier is Celia Leigh's cousin?' asked Isabelle in astonishment. ‘What, you mean the man who murdered his aunt?'

‘Terence Napier is Francis Leigh's first cousin, therefore he is first cousin once removed to Francis Leigh's daughter,' croaked Great-Aunt Clarissa from the winged chair in the corner.

Isabelle's parents were enduring Great-Aunt Clarissa's annual visit. Aunt Clarissa was, in fact, the reason why Isabelle had temporarily abandoned her husband to spend a fortnight at home. Her mother felt she needed the support. Arthur had said Isabelle was welcome to go. If he'd to face Aunt Clarissa, he'd need all the support he could get too. It was just too bad, he added with a mournful expression that didn't fool her for a moment, that he couldn't spare the time to come as well.

The various ramifications of County families were one of Great-Aunt Clarissa's abiding passions. ‘Napier lost his parents as a boy and was brought up by Matthew Leigh. A very unfortunate influence, in my opinion. He became,' she added with a sniff, ‘an artist.
Most
unsatisfactory.'

It was, thought Isabelle, difficult to say if Great-Aunt Clarissa disapproved of Terence Napier because he was an artist or because he'd bumped off his aunt. Both, by the sound of it.

‘Celia's never mentioned him,' said Isabelle, looking over her father's shoulder at the newspaper. ‘I say! I wonder if that means the Leighs have got the old lady's sapphires? They're worth a fortune.'

‘They could certainly do with the money,' said her mother. ‘Francis Leigh was left very badly off by old Matthew.'

A clank and a whoosh from the opposite platform recalled Isabelle to the present as a little local train puffed into the station and rumbled to a halt.

‘Market Albury,' shouted a stentorian voice over the slam of doors. ‘Change here for London.'

Eight minutes to go. She was glad to be on her way. She grinned as she remembered Great-Aunt Clarissa's horror at
the notion she would be travelling up to London by herself. Once she had bowed to the inevitable, Aunt Clarissa had been unstinting with advice.

‘Now do remember, dear, you have to change trains and it is inadvisable to be too familiar with your fellow passengers, however ladylike or gentlemanly they may seem.'

Aunt Clarissa was of a generation who believed unspecified danger lurked for any unaccompanied female traveller. Aunt Clarissa was surrounded by so many unspecified dangers, thought Isabelle, she must have quite an exciting life.

She would certainly feel a frisson at the sight of the man in a blue suit and trilby hat, for instance, walking down the steps from the bridge to the opposite platform as if he owned the place.

He was dressed in sturdy, inexpensive clothes but he radiated a sort of self-assured raffishness that gave him an air of importance. He was in his forties at a guess. He must have been quite good looking once, a big man with fair hair, tanned skin and blue eyes, thought Isabelle, idly. He'd let himself go, though, and run to fat. He wasn't, thought Isabelle, someone to trust. He seemed to become aware of her gaze and smiled in a satisfied way. Isabelle turned away quickly, rather embarrassed.

The two little French boys wormed their way through the waiting passengers, loudly pointing out the train on the opposite platform to each other. Although Aunt Clarissa would have classed mothers with children as being of undoubted respectability, foreign mothers with children would have merited a sharp intake of breath.
(‘No discipline, dear!')

Isabelle watched with idle amusement as the mother in question launched a torrent of rapid French at the two bright-eyed boys. They reluctantly came away from the platform edge and started a game of hide-and-seek between the crowd and round the stack of milk churns. The little girl tugged at
Maman's
hand, wanting, as far as Isabelle could make out, to look at the wicker baskets of clucking hens piled at the end of the platform. Temporarily distracted,
Maman
raised her head just in time to see one of the boys dodge away from his brother and run slap into the blue-suited man.

Isabelle instinctively started forward as the little boy fell over with a wail but she was brought up sharp by the expression of fury on the man's face. Aunt Clarissa, thought Isabelle, with a sharp stab of apprehension, would have been quite right to be careful of him.

Then, almost as quickly, the expression was gone as
Maman
hurried over, full of apologies. The man shrank back from the crying child and waved away the Frenchwoman's protestations. ‘It's all right,' he said gruffly, spreading his hands wide. The Frenchwoman continued to apologise, while alternatively scolding and comforting her son. ‘Forget it.' He dug deep and added, in soldier's French, ‘San fairy ann, eh? Napoo. Napoo, savez?'

The Frenchwoman looked bewildered and Isabelle, conquering her embarrassment and marshalling her command of French, stepped into the fray.

‘He means it's all right,' she said, smiling at the woman. ‘
Ca ne fait rien
,' she said, translating. ‘
Il n'a pas d'importance.'

The woman turned to Isabelle with a relieved smile. ‘Ah, Madame!
Merci, trés merci!
Please,' she added, picking out the words carefully, ‘I am sorry, yes?
Je suis désolé, vous comprenez?'

‘It's all right,' said the man, picking up the sense, if not the words, of what the woman had said. He smiled at Isabelle in a knowing sort of way. ‘Foreigners, eh? I bet you know all about them, Miss.' He grinned at her with undisguised pleasure. ‘Are you going to London?'

‘My husband will be meeting me from the train,' said Isabelle stiffly. Aunt Clarissa, she thought with an agonised stab of insight, couldn't have been more repressively Victorian.

The man shrugged in a suit-yourself manner. ‘Only asking.' He reached out and ruffled one of the boy's heads with an air of great indulgence. ‘Kids, eh?' adding, with a rusty sort of laugh, ‘Boys will be boys, eh?'

Despite his laugh, there was an angry gleam in his eyes that Isabelle didn't care for. With more apologies, she ushered mother and children up the platform. By the time she'd sacrificed a handkerchief to minister to
petit
Michel's grazed knee, distracted the small but insistent Agathe with the baskets of hens and agreed with young Jules that Michel had been very careless (‘
négligent
') she knew that Mme. Clouet and her family were travelling to meet M. Clouet, a man who, as Mme. Clouet put it, was of many affairs in
Londres,
and had more or less resigned herself to travelling with them.