Magpie Murders (21 page)

But at what price?

7

That afternoon, there was another death.

Dr Redwing had driven back to Ashton House and this time her husband had accompanied her. The call from the matron had come that afternoon and although she had said nothing specific, there could be no mistaking the tone of her voice. ‘It might be best if you were here. I do think you should come.’ Dr Redwing had made similar calls herself. Old Edgar Rennard had not, after all, recovered from the slight fall he had taken the week before. On the contrary, it seemed to have jolted or broken something and since then he had begun a rapid slide. He had barely been awake since his daughter’s last visit. He had eaten nothing, taken only a few sips of water. The life was visibly draining out of him.

Arthur and Emilia were sitting on the uncomfortable furniture in the overly bright room, watching the rise and fall of the old man’s chest beneath the blankets. They both knew what the other was thinking but didn’t like to put it into words. How long would they have to sit here? At what time would it be reasonable to call it a day and go back home? Would they blame themselves if they weren’t there at the end? In the end, would it make any difference?

‘You can go if you like,’ Emilia said, eventually.

‘No. I’ll stay with you.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Of course.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Would you like a coffee?’

‘That would be nice.’

It was impossible to have any sort of conversation in a room with a dying man. Arthur Redwing got to his feet and shuffled off to the kitchenette at the end of the corridor. Emilia was left on her own.

And that was when Edgar Rennard opened his eyes, quite unexpectedly, as if he had merely nodded off in front of the television. He saw her at once and showed not the least surprise. Perhaps, in his mind, she had never gone away for he returned almost at once to the subject he had raised the last time they were together. ‘Did you tell him?’ he asked.

‘Did I tell who, Papa?’ She wondered whether she ought to call Arthur back. But she was afraid of raising her voice or doing anything that might disturb the dying man.

‘It’s not fair. I have to tell them. They have to know.’

‘Papa, do you want me to call the nurse?’

‘No!’ He was suddenly angry, as if he knew that there were only minutes left, that there was no time for delay. At the same moment, a sort of clarity came into his eyes. Later on, Dr Redwing would say that he had been given this one last gift at the end of his life. The dementia had finally retreated, leaving him in control. ‘I was there when the children were born,’ he said. His voice was younger, stronger. ‘I delivered them at Pye Hall. Lady Cynthia Pye. A beautiful woman, daughter of an earl – but she wasn’t strong, not built to give birth to twins. I was afraid I might lose her. In the end it all went well. Two children, born twelve minutes apart, a boy and a girl, both healthy.

‘But afterwards, before anyone knew what had happened, Sir Merrill Pye came to me. Sir Merrill. He wasn’t a good man. Everyone was afraid of him. And he wasn’t happy. Because, you see,
the girl had come first
. The estate was entailed on the firstborn child … it was unusual but that’s how it was. Not the eldest male child. But he wanted it to be the boy. He’d got the house from his father who’d got it from his father before him – it had always been boys. Do you understand? He hated the idea of the whole estate passing to a girl and so he made me … he told me … the boy came first.’

Emilia looked at her father with his head resting on the pillow, his white hair forming a halo around him, his eyes bright with the effort of explaining. ‘Papa, what did you do?’ she asked.

‘What do you think I did? I told a lie. He was a bit of a bully, Sir Merrill. He could have made my life a misery. And at the time, I told myself, what did it matter? After all, they were just two babies. They didn’t know anything. And they would both grow up in the house together. It wasn’t as if I was hurting anyone. That was what I thought.’ A tear trickled out of the corner of his eye and made its way down the side of his face. ‘So I filled in the form the way he wanted it. 3.48 a.m. – a boy and 4.00 a.m. – a girl. That’s what I wrote.’

‘Oh Papa!’

‘It was wrong of me. I see that now. Magnus got everything and Clarissa got nothing and I often thought that I should tell her, tell both of them the truth. But what good would it do? Nobody would believe me. Sir Merrill is long gone. And Lady Cynthia. They’re all forgotten! But it’s haunted me. It’s always haunted me. What I wrote was a lie. A boy! I said it was a boy!’

By the time Arthur Redwing returned with the coffees, Dr Rennard had breathed his last. He found his wife sitting in shock and assumed, obviously, that it was due to the loss. He stayed with her while the matron was called and the necessary arrangements made. Dr Rennard had taken out funeral insurance with the well-known company of Lanner & Crane and they would be informed first thing in the morning – it was too late now. In the meantime, he would be transferred to a small chapel within Ashton House that was reserved for such occasions. He was going to be buried in the cemetery at King’s Abbott, close to the house where he had lived. He had made that decision when he retired.

It was only as they were driving home that Emilia Redwing repeated what her father had told her. Arthur, behind the wheel, was shocked. ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you sure he knew what he was saying?’

‘It was extraordinary. He was completely lucid – just for the five minutes you were gone.’

‘I’m sorry, dear. You should have called me.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I just wish you’d been there to hear it.’

‘I could have been a witness.’

Dr Redwing hadn’t considered that – but now she nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘What are you going to do?’

Dr Redwing didn’t answer. She watched the Bath Valley slipping by, cows dotted here and there, grazing on the other side of the railway line. The summer sun hadn’t set but the light was soft, the shadows folding themselves into the sides of the hills. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, at length. ‘In a way, I wish he hadn’t told me. It was his guilty secret and now it’s mine.’ She sighed. ‘I suppose I’m going to have to tell someone. I’m not sure it’ll make any difference. Even if you had been there, there isn’t any proof.’

‘Maybe you should tell that detective.’

‘Mr Pünd?’ She was annoyed with herself. It had never occurred to her that there might be a connection, but of course she had to pass on what she knew. Sir Magnus Pye, the beneficiary of a huge estate, had been violently murdered and now it turned out that the estate had never been his in the first place. Could that be the reason why he had been killed? ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose I had better let him know.’

They drove on in silence. Then her husband said, ‘And what about Clarissa Pye? Will you tell her?’

‘Do you think I should?’

‘I don’t know. I really don’t.’

They reached the village. And as they drove past the fire station and then the Queen’s Arms with the church just behind it, they were unaware that they were both having the same thought.

What if Clarissa had already known?

8

At exactly that moment, inside the Queen’s Arms, James Fraser was carrying a tray with five drinks to a quiet table in the far corner. There were three pints of beer – for himself, for Robert Blakiston and for Inspector Chubb, a Dubonnet and bitter lemon for Joy Sanderling, and a small sherry for Atticus Pünd. He would have liked to have added a couple of bags of crisps but something told him that they would be inappropriate. As he sat down, he examined the man who had brought them there. Robert Blakiston, who had lost both a mother and a mentor in the space of two weeks, had come straight from work. He had changed out of his overalls and put on a jacket but his hands were still covered with grease and oil. Fraser wondered if it would ever come off. He was a strange-looking young man, not unattractive but almost like a bad drawing of himself with his badly cut hair, his over-pronounced cheekbones, his pale skin. He was sitting next to Joy, quite possibly holding her hand under the table. His eyes were haunted. It was obvious that he would have preferred to be anywhere but here.

‘You don’t need to worry, Rob,’ Joy was saying. ‘Mr Pünd only wants to help.’

‘Like he helped you when you went to London?’ Robert was having none of it. ‘This village won’t let us alone. First they said it was me who killed my own mother, not that I would ever have laid a finger on her. You know that. And as if that wasn’t enough for them, then they start their whispering about Sir Magnus.’ He turned to Atticus. ‘Is that why you’re here, Mr Pound? Is it because you suspect me?’

‘Did you have a reason to wish Sir Magnus harm?’ Pünd asked.

‘No. He wasn’t an easy man, I’ll give you that. But he was always very good to me. I wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for him.’

‘I must ask you many things about your life, Robert,’ Pünd went on. ‘It is not because you are under suspicion any more than anyone else in this village. But both deaths occurred at Pye Hall and it is true to say that you have a close association with that place.’

‘I didn’t choose it that way.’

‘Of course not. But you can perhaps tell us a great deal about its history and about the people who lived there.’

Robert’s one visible hand curled round his beer. He looked up at Pünd defiantly. ‘You’re not a policeman,’ he said. ‘Why should I have to tell you anything?’

‘
I’m
a policeman,’ Chubb cut in. He had been about to light a cigarette and stopped with the match inches away from his face. ‘And Mr Pünd is working with me. You should mind your manners, young man. If you don’t want to co-operate, we’ll see what a night behind bars will do to change your mind. It won’t be the first time you’ve seen the inside of a jail, I understand.’ He lit the cigarette and blew out the match.

Joy put a hand on her fiancé’s arm. ‘Please, Robert …’

He shrugged her off. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide. You can ask me what you want.’

‘Then let us begin at the very beginning,’ Pünd suggested. ‘If it does not distress you, perhaps you can describe for us your childhood at Pye Hall.’

‘It doesn’t distress me, although I was never very happy there,’ Robert answered. ‘It’s not very nice when your mother cares more about her employer than your own father – but that’s how it was almost from the day we moved into the Lodge House. Sir Magnus this, Sir Magnus that! She was all over him, even though she was never more than his skivvy. My dad wasn’t happy about it either. It was never easy for him, living in someone else’s house in someone else’s grounds. But they stuck with it for a time. My dad wasn’t getting much work before the war. It was somewhere to live, a regular income. So he put up with it.

‘I was twelve years old when we moved in. We’d been living up at Sheppard’s Farm, which was my granddad’s place. It was pretty rundown but we liked it there, left to our own devices. Me and Tom had been born in Saxby-on-Avon, and we always lived here. As far as I was concerned there was nowhere else in the world. Sir Magnus needed someone to look after the place when the old housekeeper left and my mum was already doing jobs around the village, so it was an obvious choice, really.

‘The first year or so was OK. The Lodge House wasn’t such a bad place and we had plenty of room after Sheppard’s Farm. We all had our own rooms, which was nice – Mum and Dad at the end of the corridor. I used to boast about it at school, having such a grand address, although the other kids just teased me about it.’

‘How well did you and your brother get on?’

‘We had fights, like all little boys. But we were also very close. We used to chase each other all over the estate. We were pirates, treasure hunters, soldiers, spies. Tom used to make up all the games. He was younger than me but he was a lot smarter too. He used to tap out this code on the wall to me at night. He’d made it up himself. I didn’t understand a word of it but I’d hear him tapping it out when we were meant to be asleep.’ He half-smiled at the memory and just for a moment some of the tension went out of his face.

‘You had a dog, I believe. Its name was Bella.’

At once the frown was back. Fraser remembered the collar that they had found in the bedroom at the Lodge House but he wondered what relevance it could have.

‘Bella was Tom’s dog,’ Robert said. ‘My dad got it for him around the time we left Sheppard’s Farm.’ He glanced at Joy as if unsure whether to continue. ‘But after we moved it – it didn’t end well.’

‘What happened?’

‘We never really found out but I’ll tell you this. Sir Magnus didn’t want him on his land. That much was clear. He said that Bella chased the sheep. He said right away he wanted us to get rid of it but Tom really loved that dog so Dad said no. Anyway, one day it disappeared. We looked everywhere for it but it was just gone. And then, about two weeks later, we found it in Dingle Dell.’ He paused and looked down. ‘Someone had cut it’s throat. Tom always said it was Brent. But if it was, he was only acting on Sir Magnus’s orders.’

There was a long silence. When Pünd spoke again, his voice was low. ‘I must ask you now about another death,’ he said. ‘I am sure it will be painful to you. But you understand …’

‘You’re talking about Tom.’

‘Yes.’

Robert nodded. ‘When the war began, my dad went over to Boscombe Down where he worked on the planes and he’d often stay there the whole week so we only saw him now and then. Maybe if he’d been there, maybe if he’d looked out for us more it would never have happened. That’s what my mum always said. She blamed him for not being there.’

‘Can you tell me what occurred?’

‘I’ll never forget it, Mr Pound. Not as long as I live. At the time, I thought it was my fault. That was what a lot of people said and maybe it was what my dad believed. He never talked to me about it. He hardly ever spoke to me again and I haven’t see him now in years. Well, maybe he’s got a point. Tom was two years younger than me and I was meant to be looking after him. But I left him on his own and the next thing I know, they’re pulling him out of the lake and he’s drowned. He was only twelve years old.’