Embrace Me (5 page)

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The telephone rang for a very long time before Caroline Wasborough answered it. ‘May I speak to Mr or Mrs Wasborough?’ asked Harry.

‘Mrs Wasborough speaking,’ she replied.

‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Graves-Jones, Mrs Wasborough. I believe you have had an automobile stolen? I would be grateful if you could give me a time today that is convenient to you so that I might come and discuss the theft with you.’

‘Three o’clock, will that do?’

‘Thank you, that will do nicely.’

Harry put down the telephone and looked up at Jenny Sullivan and Sixsmith. ‘Mrs Wasborough wasn’t rude, quite the opposite in fact, and sounded not at all the snotty bitch Chief Inspector Pike said she was. I’ve made an appointment with her for three this afternoon. I want you both with me and the file on the stolen vehicle which is being faxed to us from Oxford. As soon as it arrives make three photocopies. Bring one to me. I want both of you to study it, have it down pat in your mind. Before our meeting I want to hear anything you have to say about it that might be relevant to our case.’

Harry swivelled his chair around and looked out of the window. He thought about Caroline Wasborough. Instinct told him that she had been waiting for a call from New Scotland Yard. It was the softness in her voice, a sense of resignation and something akin to relief that the call had at last arrived.

Harry and his assistants arrived at the Wasboroughs’ mews house several minutes after three o’clock. The door was opened by a white-jacketed houseman. They stepped into an atrium with a fountain and massively tall papyrus growing under a glass roof. It was then that Harry realised the Wasboroughs’ London residence was not just a mews house but four mews houses made into one.

The three of them were led through the atrium and into a large, elegant, comfortable-looking drawing-room where they met Mr and Mrs Wasborough and their solicitor, Sir Alfred Menard.

Caroline Wasborough was dressed in a pair of cream wide-legged trousers and a silk blouse with graceful dropped
shoulders and balloon sleeves. She had not the beauty or the youth of Olivia but could still be classed as an attractive woman. When she rose from a deep lounge chair four King Charles spaniels, tails wagging and floppy ears dancing, whirled around her ankles and one leaped into her unsuspecting arms. She caught it and laughingly introduced herself and the others in the room, including the dogs.

Sixsmith and Sullivan looked flummoxed. This was clearly not what they’d been expecting. They’d assumed that Mrs Wasborough was going to be defensive and nervous. She was, after all, obviously guilty of aiding and abetting a murderess. Or so they’d assumed by putting the Oxford facts together. It was almost as if Caroline Wasborough understood their disappointment because, after introductions were made, she suggested, ‘I think tea would be in order. How would that go down with you, Detective Constable Sullivan.’

Jenny very nearly said, ‘Fine, I’ll go and make it,’ but caught herself in time.

‘That would be very kind,’ Harry answered for her.

Once tea was ordered and they were all seated, he took over. ‘I would like to tell you what I know about your car, Mrs Wasborough. It was found in the early hours of the morning on a private road that runs between the village of Sefton Under Edge and Sefton Park. The doors were open, headlamps still on, the keys still in the ignition, and it was parked across the road. There were blood-stained fingerprints, a thumb and forefinger, on one of the windows in the driver’s door. The fingerprints match those of Lady Olivia Cinders. The blood on the window is type O, Lady Olivia’s blood group.’

Harry hesitated, taking the time to study the Wasboroughs’ and Sir Alfred Menard’s facial and body language. They barely moved. He rose from his chair and walked to the fireplace, leaning against it. Finally he spoke, addressing Caroline Wasborough. ‘You are a friend of Lady Olivia’s, I believe?’

‘Yes, for many years,’ she replied, voice steady and emotionless.

‘I would very much appreciate it if you would tell me precisely what happened on the night your car vanished from this street.’

Sixsmith and Sullivan were filled with admiration for the way Harry was handling the interview. The care he took in phrasing his questions, laying on the line what he knew about her car but carefully not attacking Mrs Wasborough for withholding evidence. Sixsmith would have been more aggressive with Caroline Wasborough, and would have told her nothing of what he knew. He would have accused her of aiding and abetting a criminal and lying to Chief Inspector Pike about not even knowing the car had been stolen off the street.

‘Yes, I imagine you would,’ she told Harry coolly.

At that moment her houseman arrived with a massive silver tray, on it a full silver tea service and fine bone china cups and saucers.

‘Do you mind if we have a cup of tea before I begin?’ Caroline asked with a pleasant smile.

While she poured the tea and passed it around to everyone in the room, her husband spoke for the first time. ‘I would like your word, Detective Chief Inspector, that what is said here today will not appear in the press?’

‘I can promise you nothing until I’ve heard what you have to say. Only then will I know if that’s possible,’ said Harry, taking note that Mr Wasborough looked to his solicitor for approval.

‘Giles, it has to be told, and exactly as it happened. You must take your chances that the Detective Chief Inspector will understand your request and comply,’ advised Sir Alfred.

‘Mrs Wasborough?’ said Harry.

Caroline Wasborough knew from the tone of the Chief Inspector’s voice that he would wait no longer to hear what she had to say. She took a sip of tea then placed her cup and saucer on the table in front of her.

‘I’ll begin at the beginning. It was around eleven o’clock in the evening. My husband and I were in bed reading but Giles had fallen asleep. I heard the front door bell and then someone knocking at the door. There was nothing unusual about that. Friends often drop by on their way to Annabelle’s or The Claremont round the corner in Berkeley Square. It was rare for us to be in bed so early and all our friends knew that.

‘I had given Rivers the night off so it was up to me to answer
the door. I did so from the upstairs hall through the intercom. It was Olivia. She sounded odd, quite agitated. She said, “Caroline, thank the Lord you’re in! I need a tremendous favour – can you lend me your car?” “Come in,” I told her. Then she seemed to panic. I buzzed her in but she refused, saying, “I can’t come in. Something dreadful has happened and I don’t want to involve you in it. I hesitate even to ask for your car but I must get out of London.”

‘My first thought was that she had had one of her terrible rows with Prince Ali. I knew if Olivia was on the run from him then she’d be terrified what he might do if he caught her. And so was I. He did give her the most dreadful time, but she was caught in his web and seemed unable to give him up. It was much the same with him.’

‘You’re digressing, darling,’ said her husband.

Harry gave him a nasty look. Caroline Wasborough was giving him more information than he had so far had from any of Olivia’s other friends.

‘Please go on, Mrs Wasborough,’ he said.

‘There isn’t really much more to tell. “When will you return it?” I asked. She said, “I won’t. Someone will call and tell you where it is. Just pretend it was stolen and you didn’t even know it.” I asked her when I would see her and she replied, “This is the long goodbye. Forgive me, Caroline.”

‘My heart went out to her. She sounded so desperate. I told her to wait there, I would throw the car keys out of the window. I found the keys then realised that she might need some money so I went to the upstairs window and asked her if that was the case. She said, “Oh, I hadn’t thought about that. Yes, as much as you can spare.”

‘It was then that I realised that Olivia was more than desperate, she was in real danger of losing her life. I ran back to the bedroom and was about to wake Giles when I realised I was wasting time so I opened the wall safe in the bedroom and removed two bundles of bank notes. I put them in a shoe bag along with the keys to my car. I ran to the window and tossed them down to Olivia. I don’t know why I said it but my last words to her were, “Go to the police, they’ll protect you.”

‘She laughed through her tears and replied, “Oh, darling, for the rest of my life they’re my enemies. Bless you for being here for me when I needed a friend. If anyone asks, you haven’t seen me, didn’t even know your car was missing. Someone will call and let you know where it is. Contact my solicitor, Sir Jonathan Cowett, about the money. He’ll return it to you.” She threw me a kiss and was gone.

‘I couldn’t get to sleep for worrying about her. It had all happened so fast. A matter of what – five, ten minutes? Hardly enough time to work out just what danger she was in or indeed if she was in any real danger at all. She was just a friend in desperate need, I automatically came to her aid.

‘When Giles woke in the morning, I told him exactly what had happened. He was very upset for Olivia and like myself believed she had been running away from Prince Ali. We both felt rather relieved that she had made the move at last and believed she was in fear of her life. He agreed the best way to stay out of the affair was to do as Olivia had asked. We knew her to be an amusing, charming girl but never frivolous. Olivia had always been a good and generous person, an honourable lady, an enchantress liked if not loved by everyone.’

For the first time Harry interrupted Caroline to ask, ‘And when did you learn that she was suspected of murdering her lover, Prince Ali?’

‘When Giles took the dogs out for a stroll round Berkeley Square. He picked up the morning papers and returned home to make us breakfast, something he does every morning. We were horrified to learn from the press what had happened. It became more understandable why Olivia was so determined not to enter the house and speak to us. She didn’t want us to be dragged into the scandal. And, of course, hadn’t the time to spare to explain her side of things.’

‘We never told our friends that she had appeared here the night she ran away, and certainly had no intention of revealing it to the police. We made a deliberate decision to say nothing. We regret nothing. Eventually we took advice from Sir Alfred who said that if the police were to get around to questioning us, we must tell the whole truth. And so now you have it,’ said Giles.

‘You do know that we can charge you for withholding evidence, aiding and abetting a criminal?’ put in a seriously angry Joe Sixsmith. Harry gave him a withering look.

‘Will you charge my clients, Detective Chief Inspector?’ queried Sir Alfred.

‘Just a few more questions, Mrs Wasborough,’ Harry said, addressing Caroline and ignoring Sir Alfred.

Caroline looked at her solicitor. He nodded, indicating that she should answer the Detective Chief Inspector. ‘You have nothing to hide, my dear.’

‘If we had not found you, you would not have come forward. Is that not so, Mrs Wasborough?’

‘That is true,’ she answered.

‘Because you, like your friends, made the decision to close ranks, to give Olivia time to get away.’

‘Yes. It’s what you do when a friend needs your support and time to do what she must to get out of a terrible situation. One hopes Olivia will one day return of her own volition and fight to clear her name.’

‘How much money was in the shoe bag, Mrs Wasborough?’

‘Ten thousand pounds,’ answered Giles.

‘She won’t get far on that. We have all her assets frozen. Unless, of course, she has other friends like you to help her on her way. We will find her and justice will be done,’ said Harry.

No one in the room could possibly have missed the fear and shock in the faces of Olivia’s friends brought on by the words: ‘We will find her and justice will be done.’ Sixsmith imagined what they were saying to themselves, ‘No, that will never happen, you bastards.’

Harry turned to Sir Alfred and told him, ‘I will not bring a case against your clients. I see no purpose in it since I believe Mrs Wasborough came to the aid of her friend without any knowledge of Lady Olivia’s involvement in the murder of her lover.’

He rose from his chair and shook hands with the Wasboroughs and Sir Alfred. ‘And the press?’ asked Caroline.

‘They’ll hear nothing from us, you have my word.’

Everyone else shook hands and Giles Wasborough and Sir
Alfred insisted on seeing them out. As Giles opened the door to the street, he turned to Harry and asked, ‘There’s been no sign of her?’

‘No. She has vanished without a trace,’ answered Harry.

‘One does rather fear that she may do the honourable thing after killing Ali,’ murmured Giles.

‘And what would that be, Mr Wasborough, if not to turn herself in to the police?’

‘Why, fall on her sword, so to speak. If indeed she has not already done so,’ Giles Wasborough declared.

Chapter 5

Chief Inspector Fred Pike had got to know the landlord of The Fox when he and his men had been crawling over the village, Sefton Park and the woods, looking for clues as to who had abandoned the car there. Jethroe felt that Fred had done a fine job with little upheaval and that was good enough for him. It seemed a thing of the past and tame stuff compared to the frenzied headlines in the newspapers about Olivia. Now they were saying that there was more than enough proof she had done the murder. But the abandoned car seemed to be one case and Olivia’s disappearance quite another.

Fred Pike had not revealed to him that he had found a link between the abandoned car and the missing woman. Ex-police officer, one of the fraternity and all that, meant little to Fred. He’d seen Jethroe close up like everyone else in the village when asked about the car. He, like the others in Sefton Under Edge and the Park, had given not one iota of real help to the Oxford Chief Inspector and could expect none in return.

Now Fred leaned back in his chair. He had tricked Jethroe and had no idea why he’d enjoyed that so much, though enjoy it he certainly had. He tapped the telephone with his finger and smiled. Their conversation had been simple and to the point because Fred knew that if he had told him he wanted to rent the three bedrooms above the pub for an indefinite length of time for officers from New Scotland Yard, Jethroe would have said they were fully booked. People in the village were not the type to welcome in the outside world if it was going to disrupt their peaceful existence.

And there was something else. The postman had reported to
the Chief Inspector that on the morning he found the car there was a stranger with Jethroe’s dogs, and that the pub owner never ordinarily let anyone near them.

Fred had gone down to London to see Harry Graves-Jones who had taken him around and introduced him to a large and impressive investigative team who congratulated him on making the connection between the car and the disappearance of Lady Olivia. Fred had been impressed, had had no idea it was such a huge man-hunt. Now it seemed that if they were ever going to pick up their suspect’s trail it would be in Sefton Under Edge.

He had thought that Harry, Joe Sixsmith and Jenny Sullivan would work out of Oxford and had been disappointed when Harry insisted he wanted to set up in the village. Which had, of course, meant the pub. After greeting Jethroe on the telephone, Fred said, ‘How’s business? Your rooms all booked up?’

‘No, but we’re really busy in the pub.’

‘Well, that’s great. So you’ve got three bedrooms, mate, haven’t you?’

‘Yeah, and an upstairs sitting-room.’

‘Perfect. I’d like to book them from tonight for an indefinite period of time. Name of Graves-Jones. Friends from London. I’ll be seeing you. Gotta go.’

Jethroe put the receiver down and drank the remainder of some strong coffee laced with Scotch. It had to be New Scotland Yard men, and it had to be about Olivia. They were bound to find out that Sefton Under Edge had been her hideaway from London life. While on the one hand he resented being tricked by Fred Pike, on the other it made his adrenaline run faster to think of having New Scotland Yard in the village and watching them work at close quarters. Once a policeman not necessarily always a policeman, especially when it came to his pub, his village and the people in it for whom he cared. Jethroe laughed aloud. Yes, he would befriend the London men. But he would see to it that they learned nothing useful from him or the other inhabitants of the village.

He dialled several local numbers as he always did to summon extra help when the bedrooms were let. In the kitchen he told Selina Mayberry, the pub cook, and her assistant, Chippy
Cosby, that the rooms had been let. There were no sighs but rather smiles. The staff were always happier when Jethroe had rented the rooms. The publican rarely had less than interesting guests and in their company seemed to rise to becoming the perfect landlord.

In general, Jethroe was admired by the village, for the pub was as much a centre of its daily life as anywhere else. Not everyone agreed with Jethroe’s lifestyle but no one disliked him either. He was generous, protective of the village and his neighbours, a friendly outgoing man. In a community as small as Sefton Under Edge the residents knew everything that went on in the village and lived comfortably with one another, a kindly extended family, yet kept themselves to themselves once their front doors were closed. The community was always close and yet not indissolubly so; polite, charming, careful never to offend. There was not a soul in the village who did not appreciate Jethroe’s determination to run his pub very nearly like a private country club, and never to commercialise it to the point of offending the village.

It was mostly men who reserved his rooms, fishermen to whom he rented a rod, or guns joining the Buchanan shoot. The odd famous writer had been nourished by his beer and his excellent food in between tapping the keys. There was no doubt about it: Jethroe, a sometime detective, with a passion for the flute, Shakespeare and the pursuits of a country gentleman, was an asset to his community, and he had not the least intention of allowing the New Scotland Yard men to ride roughshod over his village or upset anyone.

As it happened he need not have worried about the intrusion of the detectives. They were more keen than the publican that they should make themselves evident but at the same time keep a low profile.

It was a glorious Oxfordshire morning when Joe Sixsmith drove over the little stone hump-backed bridge on the way into the village of Sefton Under Edge. The woods to either side of the narrow road were enchanting, the whole place anything but what he’d expected. He felt like an intruder into a privileged rural idyll that seemed a million light years away from sex,
murder, and a woman on the run.

Sixsmith had mixed emotions about setting up a temporary office here. He already missed his London colleagues, the constant faxes, blinking computers, cacophony of telephones, even the endless paperwork and display boards listing sightings of Lady Olivia. It was a huge investigation and he’d wound up in this pretty but undeniably quiet backwater. It was hard to believe they’d make any breakthrough here.

The team arrived in two cars. The second, a four-seater cream-coloured Borgward Izabella with navy blue leather seats, usually driven by Detective Chief Inspector Harry Graves-Jones, pulled up behind Sixsmith. He watched Jenny and the chief step out of it and he had to smile. There was no doubt about it: his boss had real style. The subtlety of that vintage car, its smooth curved lines. No, there was nothing flashy about Harry Graves-Jones. Sixsmith often drove the Borgward Izabella for him, had been a bit miffed that Harry had allowed Jenny to drive it to Oxfordshire this time, but then you couldn’t stay out of sorts with the chief for long. Often Sixsmith had wondered what made the Chief Inspector tick. It was an enigma he knew he would never crack. Not long after Jenny had joined their team, Sixsmith had told her: ‘Don’t try and work him out, he’s just one of those special human beings you measure yourself by. I’ll tell you one thing, though: every day you’ll learn to raise yourself a little higher.’

‘You check us in, Jenny, and book a table for lunch at one o’clock. Select your rooms and set us up. We want our computers, fax and the direct line to the Yard up and running as soon as possible, with no fuss. Keep a low profile. I’m off for a walk. Any problems or if you need anything, call Fred Pike. But I don’t want him roaring round here. In fact, I don’t want him here at all until we need extra man power. You need anything, like electrics or a telephone engineer, ask the publican. Keep our presence more cosy than official.’

Jethroe liked Joe Sixsmith from the moment he entered the pub, sighting him at once as one of the New Scotland Yard people. About thirty and dressed pretty dapper for a copper. Was he a nancy boy? But then he saw the way Sixsmith looked at
Hannah the barmaid, polishing glasses at the bar, and knew he was not for sure. Sixsmith came up to him and introduced himself then Jenny to the publican. They all shook hands.

There was no one in the pub as yet other than the staff and Jethroe. Sixsmith told it like it was, ‘We’re setting up here in your pub,’ and took out his ID to flash it under Jethroe’s eyes.

‘Who’re you investigating?’ he asked, although he knew very well it had to be Olivia.

‘Look, Mr Wiley, we want to be as discreet as possible about what we’re doing here. My boss is out strolling around the village now. I think you’d better ask him on his return. But in the meantime we have a hell of a lot of equipment to get up and running. Can you give us a hand?’

That was all it took. Jethroe was intrigued. Liked the idea of being once more on the fringes, a voyeur policeman, part of the detective’s game. He very nearly forgot he had no intention of allowing Olivia to be captured, any more than anyone else in the village did. Not that any of them had come out and said as much. They hadn’t needed to.

Jethroe’s perverse nature was amused. He saw himself as a double agent, so to speak, playing the law at its own game to make sure Olivia was safe. Then for a few minutes he forgot about playing games and felt cut to the heart, the very soul, because he knew instinctively he would never see or hear from her again.

Harry Graves-Jones greeted several people on his tour of the village. They rightly assumed he was one of The Fox’s guests. There was something more romantic than chocolate box English countryside about the place. Its situation was certainly beautiful but far from a stereotype. Life here seemed to be idyllic but lived in slow motion. Harry passed the school house and was impressed to see it was still in use though closed for the summer holiday.

In a back street he came upon a butcher’s shop and smiled at the sight of the butcher with his straw boater. Two cars arrived one after the other and he watched a pair of elderly couples enter the shop. The greengrocer’s was across the narrow cobbled
street and Harry saw that the stock was all organically grown by local market gardens.

Back in the centre of the village, he saw several people with shopping baskets over their arms, a few toddlers who should have seemed out of place but didn’t. A tall, slender woman with jet black hair tied back in a chiffon scarf caught his eye. A floppy bow at her ear sprang up and down with her every stride. She was dressed in a thin white linen dress and the sun behind her outlined a slender yet sensuous body. Life, passion, an awareness of self, seemed to be pumping through her veins like blood. Now
she
was more like a reason for Olivia to seek help here than anything he had seen so far.

The woman wore no make-up save for her dramatically accentuated almond-shaped eyes. She seemed to emanate power and intelligence and there was about her a sexiness that spoke of freedom and joy. It made Harry smile.

He had been sitting close to the edge of the pond on an old weather-worn bench, enjoying the sun and thinking of Olivia. Who had come to her aid in this village? Instinct told him someone or some group of people had spirited her away from this place. Who would be so devoted to her that they would risk a criminal conviction for aiding and abetting a murderer?

Harry rose from the bench and started walking towards the eastern beauty striding into the village from the direction in which the abandoned car had been found. Their eyes met and Harry recognised the woman as being a famous feminist writer and academic who had forged herself a huge career as writer and media pundit with a brand of casuistry that periodically turned male theories upside down. A rebel with a perennial cause. That made his smile even wider.

Would that he could remember her name. He had, on the few times he had heard her on those intellectual chat shows aired at midnight, found her fifty per cent charlatan and one hundred per cent intelligent. She was one of the new breed of women who had inherited their rights from the seventies activists and now that they had them didn’t quite know what to do with them. He liked and admired her and now, seeing her without an audience to impress, just strolling in the sunshine, he thought she
might be fun to interview as well as a very plausible suspect who just might have whisked Lady Olivia away to a safe haven.

Harry stopped her with a, ‘Good morning.’

‘Hello,’ said Marguerite with a broad smile.

‘Will you have coffee with me at Miss Marble’s tea room?’ he asked.

‘Well, I am rather fond of her drop scones. I usually have them around eleven every morning that I come into the village, but only after I feed the ducks in the pond. I might agree if I knew who you are,’ she told him as she walked away towards the water. Harry followed.

From the basket of stale bread and cake she was carrying, Marguerite tossed pieces on to the water. He reached into her basket and took a handful too. ‘Do you mind?’ he asked before tossing it on the water. ‘My name is Harry Graves-Jones and I’m staying at the pub for a few days.’

‘Cambridge,’ she guessed.

‘That’s very good. How did you know?’

‘Linguistic analysis – and your college tie,’ she told him, laughing.

‘Not mine, my dead uncle’s, but I
did
go to Cambridge.’

‘So did I. That’s good enough for me to accept an invitation to coffee. My name is Marguerite Chen.’

There was something immensely attractive about this stranger, she thought, not only physically but in the way he carried himself. He was wearing a blue shirt, the college tie, and a waistcoat of Harris tweed over grey flannel trousers with turnups. There was an ease about him that was madly attractive and she felt instantly that he was something special, that one in a hundred thousand you actually wanted to meet.

By now the ducks had come up to her and Marguerite squatted down and fed them by hand. Harry joined her and before long they were laughing together and feeding the endearing creatures who were madly quacking and fluttering their wings. They teased and tantalised Marguerite, one even pulling at the chiffon bow over her ear and running off with a banner of purple streaming behind him.

‘The little bastard got me! I call him Wolfgang. He’s the really
feisty one who’s always trying to snatch something from me. My guard must have been down today. He never succeeds usually.’