Magpie Murders (18 page)

‘You have been most helpful, Dr Redwing.’ Pünd got to his feet and seemed to notice the oil painting for the first time. ‘Who is the boy?’ he asked.

‘Actually, it’s my son – Sebastian. That was painted just a few days before his fifteenth birthday. He’s in London now. We don’t see a great deal of him.’

‘It’s very good,’ Fraser said with real enthusiasm.

The doctor was pleased. ‘My husband, Arthur, painted it. I think he’s a quite exceptional artist and it’s one of my greatest regrets that his talent hasn’t been recognised. He’s painted me a couple of times and he did a quite lovely portrait of Lady Pye—’ She broke off. Fraser was surprised how agitated she had suddenly become. ‘You haven’t asked me anything about Sir Magnus Pye,’ she said.

‘Is there something you wish to tell me?’

‘Yes.’ She paused as if challenging herself to continue. When she spoke again, her voice was cold and controlled. ‘Sir Magnus Pye was a selfish, uncaring and egotistical man. Those new houses of his would have ruined a perfectly attractive corner of the village but that’s not the end of it. He never did anything kind for anyone. Did you notice the toys in the waiting room? Lady Pye gave them to us, but as a result of it she’d expect us to bow and touch our forelock every time she came near. Inherited wealth will be the ruin of this country. Mr Pünd. That’s the truth of it. They were an unpleasant couple and if you ask me, you’re going to have your work cut out.’ She took one last look at the portrait. ‘The fact is, that half the village will have been glad to see him dead and if you’re looking for suspects, well, they might as well form a line.’

4

Everyone knew Brent, the groundsman at Pye Hall, but at the same time no one knew him at all. When he walked through the village or took his usual seat at the Ferryman, people might say ‘There’s old Brent’, but they had no idea how old he was and even his name was something of a mystery. Was it his first name or his last name? There were a few who might remember his father. He had been ‘Brent’ too and had done the same job – in fact the two of them had worked together for a while, old Brent and young Brent, pushing out the wheelbarrow and digging the soil. His parents had died. Nobody was quite sure how or when but it had happened in another part of the country – in Devonshire, some people said. A car accident. So young Brent had become old Brent and now lived in the pocket-sized cottage where he had been born, on Daphne Road. It was part of a terrace but his neighbours had never been invited in. The curtains were always drawn.

Somewhere in the church, it might have been possible to find a record of a birth, in May 1917, of one Neville John Brent. There must have been a time when he was Neville: at school or as a Local Defence Volunteer (his status as a farm worker had excluded him from fighting in the war). But he was a man without a shadow – or perhaps a shadow without a man. He was both as prominent and as unremarkable as the weather vane on the steeple of St Botolph’s. The only reason anyone would have noticed it would have been if they had woken up one day to find out it wasn’t there.

Atticus Pünd and James Fraser had tracked him down in the grounds of Pye Hall where he was carrying on his work, weeding and deadheading, as if nothing unusual had occurred. Pünd had prevailed upon him to stop for half an hour and the three of them were sitting together in the rose garden, surrounded by a thousand blooms. Brent had rolled a cigarette with hands so grubby that the whole thing would surely taste of dirt once he lit it. He came across as a boy-man, sullen and uncomfortable, shifting awkwardly in clothes that were too large for him, his curly hair flopping over his forehead. Fraser felt uncomfortable sitting next to him. Brent had a strange, slightly unsavoury quality; a sense of some secret that he was refusing to share.

‘How well did you know Mary Blakiston?’ Pünd had begun with the first death although it occurred to Fraser that the groundsman had been a principal witness at both events. Indeed, he might have been the last person to see both the housekeeper and her employer alive.

‘I didn’t know her. She didn’t want to know me.’ Brent seemed offended by the question. ‘She used to boss me about. Do this, do that. Even had me up in her place moving the furniture, fixing the damp. Not that she had any right. I worked for Sir Magnus, not her. That’s what I used to tell her. I’m not surprised someone pushed her down those stairs, the way she carried on. Always meddling. I’m sure she got up quite a few peoples’ noses.’ He sniffed loudly. ‘I won’t speak ill of the dead but she was a right busybody and no mistake.’

‘You assume she was pushed? The police are of the opinion that it was an accident, that she fell.’

‘That’s not for me to say, sir. Accident? Someone done her in? I wouldn’t be surprised either way.’

‘It was you who saw her, lying in the hall.’

Brent nodded. ‘I was doing the borders next to the front door. I looked in the window and there she was, lying at the bottom of the stairs.’

‘You heard nothing?’

‘There was nothing to hear. She was dead.’

‘And there was nobody else in the house.’

‘I didn’t see anyone. There could have been, I suppose. But I was there a few hours and I didn’t see anyone come out.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I tapped on the window to see if she’d wake up but she wasn’t moving so in the end I went to the stable and used the outside phone to call Dr Redwing. She made me break the glass in the back door. Sir Magnus wasn’t happy about that. In fact, he blamed me for the break-in that happened later on. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want to break anything. I just did what I was told.’

‘You argued with Sir Magnus?’

‘No, sir. I wouldn’t do that. But he wasn’t pleased and when he wasn’t pleased you’d better keep clear, I can tell you.’

‘You were here the evening that Sir Magnus died.’

‘I’m here every evening. At this time of the year, I never get away much before eight o’clock and it was about eight fifteen that night – not that I get paid any extra.’ It was strange but the more Brent spoke, the more eloquent he became. ‘He and Lady Pye weren’t keen to put their hands in their pockets. He was on his own that night. She was up in London. I saw him working late. There was a light on in the study and he must have been expecting someone because there was a visitor who arrived just as I left.’

Brent had already mentioned this to Detective Inspector Chubb. Unfortunately, he had been unable to provide a description of the mysterious arrival. ‘I understand you did not manage to see his face,’ Pünd said.

‘I didn’t see him. I didn’t recognise him. But later on, when I thought about it, I knew who he was.’ The announcement came as a surprise to Pünd who waited for the groundsman to continue. ‘He was at the funeral. When they buried Mrs Blakiston, he was there. I knew I’d seen him before. I noticed him standing at the back of the crowd – but at the same time I hardly noticed him, if you know what I mean. He kept himself to himself, like he didn’t want to be noticed, and I never saw his face. But I know it was the same man. I’m sure it was the same man – on account of the hat.’

‘He was wearing a hat?’

‘That’s right. It was one of those old-fashioned hats, like they had ten years ago, pulled down low over his face. The man who came to Pye Hall at eight fifteen, he was the same man. I’m sure of it.’

‘Can you tell me anything more about him? His age? His height?’

‘He wore a hat. That’s all I can tell you. He was here. He didn’t talk to anyone. And then he left.’

‘What happened when he came to the house?’

‘I didn’t wait to see. I went down to the Ferryman for a pie and a pint. I had a bit of money in my pocket, what Mr Whitehead gave me, and I couldn’t wait to be on my way.’

‘Mr Whitehead. He owns the antique shop—’

‘What about him?’ Brent’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.

‘He paid you some money.’

‘I never said that!’ Brent realised he had spoken too freely and searched for a way out. ‘He’d paid me the fiver that he owed me. That’s all. So I went for a pint.’

Pünd let the matter drop. It would be all too easy to offend a man like Brent and, once offended, he wouldn’t utter another word. ‘So you left Pye Hall at around a quarter past eight,’ he said. ‘That might have been only a matter of minutes before Sir Magnus was killed. I wonder if you can explain to us a handprint that we discovered in the flower bed beside the front door?’

‘That police chap asked me about that and I already told him. It wasn’t my handprint. What would I be doing sticking my hand in the soil?’ He gave a queer sort of smile.

Pünd tried another tack. ‘Did you see anyone else?’

‘As a matter of fact, I did.’ Brent glanced slyly at the detective and his assistant. All this time he had been holding the cigarette he had rolled but now he stuck it between his lips and lit it. ‘I went down the Ferryman like I told you. And I was on my way when I run into Mrs Osborne, the vicar’s wife. God knows what she’s doing out in the middle of the night – and looking like nobody’s business too. Anyway, she asked if I’d seen her husband. She was upset about something. Maybe even afraid. You should have seen the look on her face! Well, I told her it might have been him I’d seen at Pye Hall and the fact is he might have been there and all …’

Pünd frowned. ‘The person you saw at the hall, the man in the hat, you said just now that he was at the funeral.’

‘I know I said that, sir. But they were both there, him and the vicar. You see, I was having my pint and I saw the vicar go past on his bicycle. That was a while later.’

‘How much later?’

‘Thirty minutes. Maybe an hour. I heard it go past. You can hear that bicycle from one end of the village to the other with its clacking and its grinding and it definitely went past the pub while I was in there. And where could he have come from except from the hall? He certainly hadn’t cycled from Bath.’ Brent eyed the detective over his cigarette, daring him to disagree.

‘You have been very helpful,’ Pünd said. ‘I have just one more question. It relates to the Lodge where Mrs Blakiston lived. You mentioned to me that you occasionally did work for her there and I wonder if you might have a key?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because I would like to go in.’

‘I’m not sure about that,’ the groundsman muttered. He screwed the cigarette round between his lips. ‘You want to go in, you’d best talk to Lady Pye.’

‘This is a police investigation,’ Fraser cut in. ‘We can go where we like and it might mean trouble for you if you don’t co-operate.’

Brent looked doubtful but he wasn’t prepared to argue. ‘I can take you up there now.’ He nodded his head at the roses. ‘But then I’ve got to get back to these.’

Pünd and Fraser followed Brent back to the stable from where he retrieved a key attached to a large piece of wood, then walked with him down the drive to the Lodge House that stood at the end, two storeys high with sloping roofs, a massive chimney, Georgian windows and a solid front door. This was where Mary Blakiston had lived while she was working as Sir Magnus Pye’s housekeeper. To begin with there had been a husband and two boys but one by one the family had left her until she was finally alone. Perhaps it was the position of the sun or the oaks and elms that surrounded the place but it seemed to be cast in permanent shadow. It was obviously empty. It looked and felt deserted.

Brent opened the front door with the key he had retrieved. ‘Do you want me to come in?’ he asked.

‘It would be helpful if you could remain a little longer,’ Pünd replied. ‘We will not take up too much more of your time.’

The three of them went into a small hallway with two doors, a corridor and a flight of stairs leading up. The wallpaper was old-fashioned, floral. The pictures were images of English birds and owls. There was an antique table, a coat stand and a full-length mirror. Everything looked as if it had been there for a long time.

‘What is it you want to see?’ Brent asked.

‘That, I cannot tell you,’ Pünd replied. ‘Not yet.’

The downstairs rooms had little to offer. The kitchen was basic, the living room dowdy, dominated by an old-fashioned grandfather clock. Fraser remembered how Joy Sanderling had described it, ticking away as she tried to make an impression on Robert’s mother. Everything was very clean, as if Mary’s ghost had just been in. Or perhaps it had never left. Someone had picked up the mail and piled it on the kitchen table but there was very little of it and nothing of interest.

They went upstairs. Mary’s bedroom was at the end of the corridor with a bathroom next door. She had slept in the same bed that she must have once shared with her husband: it was so heavy and cumbersome that it was hard to imagine anyone bringing it here after he had left. The bedroom looked out over the road. In fact none of the main rooms had a view back to Pye Hall as if the house had been purposefully designed so that the servant would never glance in the direction of her employers. Pünd passed two doors that opened into bedrooms. Nobody had slept in them for some time. The beds were stripped, the mattresses already showing signs of mould. A third door, opposite them, had been broken, the lock forced.

‘The police did that,’ Brent explained. He sounded unhappy about it. ‘They wanted to go in but they couldn’t find the key.’

‘Mrs Blakiston kept it locked?’

‘She never went in.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I already told you. I come here lots of times. I fixed the damp and laid the carpets downstairs and she was always calling me in. But not this room. She wouldn’t open the door. I’m not even sure she had the key. That’s why the police broke it down.’

They went inside. The room was disappointing: like the rest of the house, it was utterly stripped of life with a single bed, an empty wardrobe and a window cut into the eaves with a work table below. Pünd went over to it and looked out. There was a view through the trees and he could just glimpse the edge of the lake with the threatened woodland, Dingle Dell, beyond. He noticed a single drawer in the middle of the table and opened it. Inside, Fraser saw a strip of black leather forming a circle with a small disc attached. It was a dog collar. He reached forward and took it out.