Magpie Murders (27 page)

‘It got worse and worse over time, Mr Pünd. I began to loathe that man. He always had a way of making me feel small, reminding me that I was living in his house, on his land … as if I’d ever wanted to be there in the first place. And it was his fault, what happened. I swear to you. He killed my son as if he did it with his own hands and at that same moment he ruined me. Tom was the light of my life and when he went there was nothing left for me.’ He fell silent and wiped his eye with the back of his hand. ‘Look at me! Look a this place! I often ask myself what I did to deserve it. I never hurt anyone and I end up here. I sometimes think I’ve been punished for something I didn’t do.’

‘I am sure you are blameless.’

‘I
am
blameless. I did nothing wrong. What happened had nothing to do with me.’ He stopped, fixing his eyes on Pünd and Fraser, daring them to disagree. ‘It was Magnus Pye. Bloody Magnus Pye.’

He took a breath, then went on.

‘The war had started and I’d been sent off to Boscombe Down, working mainly on Hawker Hurricanes. I was away from home and I didn’t really know what was going on and when I came back occasional weekends, it was like I was a stranger. Mary had changed so much. She was never pleased to see me. She was secretive … like she was hiding something. It was hard to believe she was the same girl I’d met and married and been with at Sheppard’s Farm. Robert didn’t want to have too much to do with me either. He was his mother’s child. If it hadn’t been for Tom, it would hardly have been worth showing up.

‘Anyway, Sir Magnus was there in my place. I told you about games. There was this game he played with the boys – with
my
boys. They were obsessed with buried treasure. Well, all boys like that sort of thing but I’m sure you know the Pyes had dug up a whole load of stuff – Roman coins and the rest of it in Dingle Dell. He had them on display in his house. And so it was easy for him to turn the two of them into treasure hunters. He’d take chocolate bars wrapped in foil or, sometimes, sixpenny pieces or half crowns and he’d hide them all over the estate. Then he’d give them clues and set them off. They might spend the whole day doing that and you couldn’t really complain because it got them out in the open air. It was good for them, wasn’t it? It was fun.

‘But he wasn’t their father. He didn’t know what he was doing and one day he took it too far. He had a piece of gold. Not real gold. Iron pyrite – what they call fool’s gold. He had a big lump of it and he decided to make that the prize. Of course Tom and Robert didn’t know the difference. They thought it was the real thing and they were desperate to get their hands on it. And do you know where he put it, the bloody fool? He hid it in a clump of bulrushes, right on the edge of the lake. He led them to the water’s edge. Fourteen years old and twelve years old. He led them there as surely as if he’d put up a sign.

‘This is what happened. The two boys had separated. Robert was in Dingle Dell, searching in the trees. Tom went down to the water. Maybe he saw the gold glinting in the sun or maybe he’d worked out one of the clues. He didn’t even need to get his feet wet but he was so excited, he decided to wade in. And what then? Maybe he stumbled. There are a lot of weeds and they could have wrapped themselves around his legs. Here’s what I know. Just after three o’clock in the afternoon, Brent comes along with the lawnmower and he sees my boy lying face down in the water.’ Matthew Blakiston’s voice cracked. ‘Tom had drowned.

‘Brent did what he could. Tom was only a few feet out from the shore and Brent dragged him back to dry land. Then Robert came out of the wood and saw what was happening. He plunged into the water. He was screaming. He waded over to them and shouted at Brent to get help. Brent didn’t know what to do but Robert had learned basic first aid at school and tried to save his brother with mouth-to-mouth. It was too late. Tom was dead. I only heard about all this later, from the police. They’d talked to everyone involved: Sir Magnus, Brent, Mary and Robert. Can you imagine how I felt, Mr Pünd? I was their father. But I hadn’t been there.’

Matthew Blakiston bowed his head. His fist, with the cigarette, was clenched against his head and smoke curled upwards as he sat there, silent. At that moment, Fraser was utterly aware of the smallness of the room, the hopelessness of a life broken. It occurred to him that Blakiston was an outcast. He was in exile from himself.

‘Do you want some more tea?’ Blakiston asked suddenly.

‘I’ll do it,’ Fraser said.

Nobody wanted tea but they needed time, a pause before he could go on. Fraser went over to the kettle. He was glad to break away.

‘I went back to Boscombe Down,’ he began again, once the fresh cups had been brought. ‘And the next time I came home, I knew exactly which way the wind was blowing. Mary and Robert had pulled up the drawbridge. She never let go of him after that, not for a minute, and it was like they didn’t want to know me. I would have done my bit for my family, Mr Pünd, I swear I would have. But they never let me. Robert always said that I walked out on them but that isn’t true. I came home but there was nobody there.’

‘When was the last time you saw your son, Mr Blakiston?’

‘Saturday, 23 July. At his mother’s funeral.’

‘Did he see you?’

‘No.’ Blakiston took a deep breath. He had finished his cigarette and stubbed it out. ‘They say that when you lose a child, it brings you closer together or tears you apart. What most hurt me about Mary was that after Tom went, she never let me get close to Robert. She was protecting him from me! Can you believe that? It wasn’t enough that I had lost one son. I ended up losing two.

‘And part of me never stopped loving her. That’s the pathetic thing. I told you, I used to write to her on her birthday, at Christmas. I talked to her on the phone sometimes. At least she’d let me do that. But she didn’t want me anywhere near. She made that clear enough.’

‘Did you speak to her recently?’

‘The last time I spoke to her was a couple of months ago – but here’s something you won’t believe. I actually called her the day she died. It was the weirdest thing. I was woken up that morning by a bird in a tree and it was making this horrible noise, this cawing. It was a magpie. “One for sorrow.” Do you know that old song? Well, I looked at it on the other side of the bedroom window, black and white, an evil little thing with its glinting eye and suddenly I felt sick to the stomach. It was like I’d had a premonition. I knew something bad was going to happen. I went to the shop but I couldn’t work and no one came in anyway. I was thinking about Mary. I was convinced something was going to happen to her and, in the end, I couldn’t stop myself. I rang her. I tried her at the Lodge and then at the main house – but she didn’t answer because I was too late. She was already dead.’

He was playing with the cellophane from the cigarette packet, pulling it apart between his fingers.

‘I heard about her death a few days later. There was a piece in the newspaper … Would you believe it? Nobody even bothered to ring me. You’d have thought Robert might have got in touch, but he didn’t care. Anyway, I knew I had to go to the funeral. It didn’t matter what had happened. There’d been a time when the two of us were young and we’d been together. I wasn’t going to let her go without saying goodbye. I’ll admit, I was nervous about showing my face. I didn’t want to make a big thing of it with everyone crowding around me so I arrived late and I wore a hat pulled down over my face. I’m a lot thinner than I used to be and I’m nearly sixty years old. I thought if I kept well clear of Robert I’d be all right and that was how it turned out.

‘I did see him there. He was standing with a girl and I was glad to see that. It’s just what he needs. He was always very solitary when he was a boy and she looked a pretty little thing. I hear they’re going to get married and maybe if they have children, they’ll let me visit them. People change in time, don’t they? He says I wasn’t there for him but maybe, if you see him, you’ll tell him the truth.

‘It was so strange to be there, back in the village. I’m not even sure I like the place any more. And seeing them all again – Dr Redwing and Clarissa and Brent and all the others. It gave me a shiver, I can tell you. I noticed Sir Magnus and Lady Pye didn’t show up and that made me smile. I’m sure Mary would have been disappointed! I always did tell her he was no good. But perhaps it was just as well that he wasn’t there. I’m not sure what I’d have done if I’d seen him that day. I blame him for what happened, Mr Pünd. Mary fell down the stairs while she was skivvying for him so that makes two of them. Mary and Tom. They’d both be alive if it weren’t for him.’

‘Is that why you went to his house five days later?’

Blakiston bowed his head. ‘How did you know I was there?’

‘Your car was seen.’

‘Well, I’m not going to deny it. Yes. It was stupid of me but at the end of the week I went back. The thing is, I couldn’t get it out of my head. First Tom, then Mary, both of them at Pye Hall. Listening to me now, you probably think I’m owning up to it, that I went back to kill him. But it wasn’t like that. I just wanted to talk to him, to ask him about Mary. Everyone else who’d gone to that funeral, they’d had someone to talk to – but not me. No one even recognised me – at my own wife’s funeral! Was it so unreasonable to want to see him just for five minutes, just to ask him about Mary?’

He thought for a moment, then came to a decision.

‘There was something else. You’ll think the worse of me for it but I was thinking about money. Not for me. For my son. When someone dies in the workplace, it’s your responsibility. Mary had been working for Sir Magnus for more than twenty years and he owed her a duty of care. I thought he might have come to some arrangement with her – you know, a pension. I knew Robert would never accept any financial help from me, even if I could have afforded it, but if he was about to get married, didn’t he deserve some sort of start in life? Sir Magnus had always had a soft spot for him. I had this idea that I could ask him for help on Robert’s behalf.’ He stopped and looked away.

‘Please, go on.’

‘It took me a couple of hours to drive back to Saxby-on-Avon. I’d been busy at the shop. I remember that it was exactly half past seven when I arrived. I looked at my watch. But the thing is, Mr Pünd, once I’d got there, I had second thoughts. I wasn’t sure I did want to see him after all. I didn’t want to be humiliated. I sat in the car for about an hour before I decided that since I’d come all this way I might as well give it a try. It must have been about half past eight when I drove to the house. I parked in my usual spot behind the Lodge – I suppose that was force of habit. Someone else had had the same idea. There was a bicycle leaning against the door. I remembered that later. Maybe I should have read more into it at the time.

‘Anyway, I walked up the drive. It was all coming back to me, being there again. The lake was on my left and I couldn’t bring myself to look at it. The moon was out that night and everything in the garden was crystal clear, like in a photograph. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around. I didn’t try to hide myself or anything like that. I just walked straight up to the front door and rang the bell. I could see lights on behind the windows on the ground floor so I guessed Sir Magnus must be in and sure enough, a minute or two later, he opened the door.

‘I’ll never forget the sight of him, Mr Pünd. The last time I’d seen him had been over ten years ago, when I moved out of the Lodge. He was bigger than I remembered, fatter certainly. He seemed to fill the doorway. He was wearing a suit and a tie … bright colours. He was holding a cigar.

‘It took him a moment or two to recognise me but then he smiled. “You!” That’s all he said. He spat the word at me. He wasn’t exactly hostile. But he was surprised, and there was something else. He still had that strange smile on his face, like he was amused. “What do you want?”

‘“I’d like to talk to you, if I may, Sir Magnus,” I said. “It’s about Mary …”

‘He looked back over his shoulder and that was when I realised he wasn’t alone.

‘“I can’t see you now,” he said.

‘“I just need a few minutes of your time.”

‘“It’s out of the question. Not now. You should have called before you came here. What time of the night do you think this is?”

‘“Please—”

‘“No! Come back tomorrow.”

‘He was about to close the door on me. I could see that. But then, at the last minute, he stopped and he asked me one last question. I’ll never forget it.

‘“Do you really think I killed your bloody dog?” he asked.’

‘The dog?’ Pünd looked puzzled.

‘I should have told you. When we first moved to Pye Hall, we had a dog.’

‘Its name was Bella.’

‘Yes. That’s right. It was a cross-breed: half Labrador half collie. I got her for Tom, for his tenth birthday, and Sir Magnus was against her from the day she arrived. He didn’t want her out of control on his lawn, scaring the chickens. He didn’t want her digging up the flower beds. Actually, I’ll tell you what he didn’t want. He didn’t want me buying a present for my own son. It’s like what I was saying. He wanted to have complete control over me and my family and because the dog was connected to me, the one thing I’d bought that Tom really loved, he had to get rid of it.’

‘He killed it?’ Fraser asked. He remembered the sad little collar that Pünd had found in the room at the Lodge House.

‘I was never able to prove it was him. Maybe he got Brent to do it for him. I wouldn’t put it past that snivelling little bastard. But one day the dog was there and the next day it had vanished – and it wasn’t until a week later that we found it in Dingle Dell with its throat cut. Tom was devastated. It was the first thing he’d ever had in his life that was really his. Who could do that to a little boy?’

‘It seems very strange,’ Pünd muttered. ‘Sir Magnus has not seen you for many years. You turn up, unexpectedly, at his house, late in the night. Why do you think he chooses this moment to ask you about the dog?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘What did you say to him?’

‘I didn’t know what to say. But it didn’t matter anyway, because right then he closed the door. He shut it right in my face – a man who’d lost his wife not two weeks before. He wasn’t prepared even to invite me over the threshold. That was the sort of person he was.’