Magpie Murders (55 page)

I take my leave of you, old friend, with respectful good wishes. I thank you for your loyalty and companionship and hope that you will consider returning to acting and that you will enjoy a long and prosperous career.’

He signed the letter and slid it into an envelope that he sealed and marked: PRIVATE – TO MR JAMES FRASER.

He would not need it for a while, but he was glad that it was done. Finally, he drank his tea and went out to the waiting car.

3

There were five of them in the office in Bath, framed by two double-height windows, the atmosphere strangely silent and still. Life continued on the other side of the glass but in here it seemed to be trapped in a moment which had always been inescapable and which had finally arrived. Detective Inspector Raymond Chubb had taken his place behind the desk, even though he had little to say. He was barely more than a witness. But this was his office, his desk, his authority and he hoped he had made that clear. Atticus Pünd was next to him, one hand stretched out on the polished surface as if it somehow afforded him the right to be here, his rosewood cane resting diagonally against the arm of his chair. James Fraser was tucked away in the corner.

Joy Sanderling, who had come to London and who had drawn Pünd into this in the first place, sat opposite them in a chair which had been carefully positioned, as if she had been called here for a job interview. Robert Blakiston, pale and nervous, sat next to her. They had spoken little since they had arrived. It was Pünd who was the focus of attention and who now began.

‘Miss Sanderling,’ he said. ‘I have invited you here today because you are in many respects my client – which is to say, I first heard of Sir Magnus Pye and his affairs through you. You came to me not so much because you wanted me to solve a crime – indeed, we could not be sure that any crime had been committed – but to ask for my assistance in the matter of your marriage to Robert Blakiston which you felt to be under threat. It was perhaps wrong of me to refuse to do what you asked but I hope you will understand that I had personal matters to consider at the time and my attention was elsewhere. The day after your visit, I read of the death of Sir Magnus and it was this that changed my mind. Even so, from the moment that I arrived at Saxby-on-Avon, I felt myself to be working not only on your behalf but also for your fiancé, and that is why it is only right that you should both be invited to hear the fruits of my deliberations. I would like you also to know that I was very saddened that you felt the need to take matters into your own hands and to advertise your private life to the entire village. That cannot have been pleasant for you and it was my responsibility. I must ask you to forgive me.’

‘If you’ve solved the murders and Robert and I can get married, I’ll forgive anything,’ Joy said.

‘Ah yes.’ He turned briefly to Chubb. ‘We have two young people who are evidently very much in love. It has been clear to me how much this marriage means to both of them.’

‘And good luck to them,’ Chubb muttered.

‘If you know who did it, why don’t you tell us?’ Robert Blakiston had spoken for the first time and there was a quiet venom in his voice. ‘Then Joy and I can leave. I’ve already decided. We’re not going to stay in Saxby-on-Avon. I can’t stand the place. We’re going to find somewhere far away and start again.’

‘We’ll be all right if we’re together.’ Joy reached out and touched his hand.

‘Then I will begin,’ Pünd said. He drew his hand away from the desk and rested it on the arm of his chair. ‘Even before I arrived in Saxby-on-Avon, when I read of the murder of Sir Magnus in
The
Times
newspaper, I was aware that I was dealing with a strange coincidence. A housekeeper falls to her death in what appears to be a straightforward domestic accident and then, not two weeks later, the man who employed her also dies and this time it is unmistakably a murder of the most gruesome sort. I say that it is a coincidence but what I mean is in fact quite the opposite. There must be a reason why these two events have collided, so to speak, but what is it? Could there be a single motive for the death of both Sir Magnus Pye and his housekeeper? What end could be achieved if they were both put out of the way?’ Briefly, Pünd’s eyes burned into the two young people sitting in front of him. ‘It did occur to me that the marriage of which you spoke and which you both desired so fervently might provide a motive. We know that, for reasons that may be distasteful, Mary Blakiston was opposed to the union. But I have dismissed this line of thought. First, she had no power to prevent the marriage, at least so far as we know. So there was no reason to kill her. Also, there is no evidence to suggest that Sir Magnus was concerned one way or another. Indeed, he had always been amicably disposed towards Mary Blakiston’s son and would surely wish to see it go ahead.’

‘He knew about the marriage,’ Robert said. ‘He didn’t have any objections at all. Why would he have? Joy is a wonderful girl and, you’re right, he was always kind to me. He wanted me to be happy.’

‘I agree. But if we cannot find a single reason for the two deaths, what are the alternatives? Could there have been two murderers in Saxby-on-Avon, acting independently of each other with two quite different sets of motivation? That sounds a little unlikely, to say the least. Or could it be that one death was in some way the cause of the other? We now know that Mary Blakiston collected many secrets about the lives of the villagers. Did she know something about somebody that put her in danger – and had she perhaps told Sir Magnus? Let us not forget that he was her closest confidante.

‘And while I was turning these matters over in my mind, there was a third crime that presented itself to me. For on the evening of Mary Blakiston’s funeral, somebody broke into Pye Hall. It seemed to be an ordinary burglary but in a month in which two people die, nothing is ordinary any more. This was soon proven to be case, for although one silver buckle was sold in London, the rest of the proceeds were merely thrown in the lake. Why was that? Was the burglar disturbed or did he have some other aim? Could it be that he simply wished to remove the silver rather than to profit from it?’

‘You mean it was some sort of provocation?’ Chubb asked.

‘Sir Magnus was proud of his Roman silver. It was part of his legacy. It could have been taken simply to spite him. That thought did occur to me, Detective Inspector.’

Pünd leant forward.

‘There was one other aspect of the case that I found very difficult to understand,’ he said. ‘And that was the attitude of Mary Blakiston.’

‘I never understood her either,’ Robert muttered.

‘Let us examine her relationship with you. She loses one son in a tragic accident and this makes her watchful, domineering, over-possessive. You know that I met with your father?’

Robert stared. ‘When?’

‘Yesterday. My colleague, Fraser, drove me to his home in Cardiff. And he told me a great deal that was of interest. After the death of your brother, Tom, your mother closed in on you. Even he was not to be allowed to come near you. She could not bear having you out of her sight and so, for example, she was angry when you chose to go to Bristol. It was the only time that she argued with Sir Magnus who had, all the time, concerned himself with your well-being. All of this makes sense. A woman who has lost one child will quite naturally become obsessive about the other. I can also understand how that relationship can become uncomfortable and even poisonous. The arguments between you were natural. It is very sad but inevitable.

‘But this is what I do not understand. Why was she so opposed to the marriage? It makes no sense. Her son has found, if I may say so, a charming companion in Miss Sanderling. Here is a local girl from a good family. Her father is a fireman. She works in a doctor’s surgery. She does not intend to take Robert away from the village. It is a perfect match and yet from the very start, Mary Blakiston responds only with hostility. Why?’

Joy blushed. ‘I have no idea, Mr Pünd.’

‘Well, we can help you there, Miss Sanderling,’ Chubb cut in. ‘You have a brother with Down’s syndrome.’

‘Paul? What’s he got to do with it?’

‘Mrs Blakiston set down her thoughts in a diary that we found. She had some idea that the condition would be passed on to any grandchildren you might have. That was her problem.’

Pünd shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Detective Inspector,’ he said. ‘But I do not agree.’

‘She made it clear enough from where I’m standing, Mr Pünd. “… this awful sickness infecting her family …” Horrible words. But that’s exactly what she wrote.’

‘They are words that you may have misinterpreted.’

Pünd sighed. ‘In order to understand Mary Blakiston, it is necessary to go back in time, the defining moment in her life.’ He glanced at Robert. ‘I hope it will not distress you, Mr Blakiston. I am referring to the death of your brother.’

‘I’ve lived with it most of my life,’ Robert said. ‘There’s nothing you can say that will upset me now.’

‘There are several aspects of the accident that I find puzzling. Let me begin, for a moment, with your mother’s reaction to what happened. I cannot understand a woman who continues to live at the very scene where it took place, where she lost her child. Every day she walks past that lake and I have to ask myself: is she punishing herself for something she has done? Or for something that she knows? Could it be that she has been driven by a sense of guilt ever since that dreadful day?

‘I visited the Lodge and tried to imagine what it might be like for her, and indeed for you, living together in that grim place, surrounded by trees, permanently in shadow. The house did not yield many secrets but there was one mystery, a room on the second floor that your mother kept locked. Why? What had been the purpose of that room and why did she never go in there? There was little that remained in the room: a bed and a table and inside the table, the collar of a dog that had had also died.’

‘That was Bella,’ Robert said.

‘Yes. Bella had been a gift from your father to your brother and Sir Magnus did not like having it on his land. When I spoke to your father yesterday, he suggested that Sir Magnus had killed the dog in the cruelest possible way. I could not be sure of the truth of that, but I will tell you what I thought. Your brother drowns. Your mother falls down the stairs. Sir Magnus is brutally killed. And now we have Bella, a cross-breed, who is poisoned. It is another violent death to add to the veritable catalogue of violent deaths that we find at Pye Hall.

‘Why was the collar of the dog kept here? There was something else about the room that I noticed immediately. It was the only one in the house that had a view of the lake. That, in itself, I thought most significant. Next, I asked myself, for what purpose was the room used when Mary Blakiston lived at the Lodge? I had assumed, incorrectly, that it was the bedroom used either by yourself or by your brother.’

‘It was my mother’s sewing room,’ Robert said. ‘I’d have told you that if you’d asked me.’

‘I did not need to ask you. You mentioned to me that you and your brother had a game in which you knocked on the walls of your bedrooms, sending each other codes. You must therefore have had adjoining rooms and so it followed that the room across the corridor must have had another purpose. Your mother did a lot of sewing and it seemed very likely to me that this was where she liked to work.’

‘That’s all very well, Mr Pünd,’ Chubb said. ‘But I don’t see where it gets us.’

‘We are almost there, Detective Inspector. But first let me examine the accident as it happened for, as I have already stated, that too presents certain problems.

‘According to the testimony of both Robert and his father, Tom was searching for a piece of gold which was in fact in the bulrushes beside the water because that is where Sir Magnus had hidden it. Now, let us remember, he was not a small child. He was eleven years old. He was intelligent. I have to ask you, would he have entered the cold and muddy water in the belief that the gold was there? From what I understand, the games that the two boys played were very formal. They were organised by Sir Magnus who concealed the treasure and provided specific clues. If Tom was beside the lake, he might well have worked out where the gold was to be found. But there was no need to walk right past it
into
the lake. That makes no sense at all.

‘And there is another detail, also, that troubles me. Brent, the groundsman, discovered the body—’

‘He was always skulking around,’ Robert cut in. ‘Tom and I were afraid of him.’

‘I am willing to believe it. But there is now a question that I wish to put to you. Brent was very precise in his description. He pulled your brother out of the water and laid him on the ground. You arrived moments later – and what reason could there be for you to plunge into the water yourself?’

‘I wanted to help.’

‘Of course. But your brother was already out of the water. Your father said he was lying on dry land. Why would you want to make yourself cold and wet?’

Robert frowned. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Mr Pound. I was thirteen years old. I don’t even remember what happened, really. I was only thinking about Tom, getting him out of the water. There was nothing else in my mind.’

‘No, Robert. I think there was. I think you wanted to disguise the fact that you were already wet yourself.’

The entire room seemed to come to a halt, as if it were a piece of film caught in a projector. Even outside, in the street, nothing moved.

‘Why would he want to do that?’ Joy asked. There was a slight tremor in her voice.

‘Because he had been fighting with his brother beside the lake a few moments before. He had killed his brother by drowning him.’

‘That’s not true!’ Robert’s eyes blazed. For a moment, Fraser thought he was going to leap out of his chair and he readied himself to go to Pünd’s rescue if need be.

‘So much of what I say is based upon conjecture,’ Pünd said. ‘And trust me when I say I do not hold you entirely responsible for a crime that you committed as a child. But let us look at the evidence. A dog is given to your brother, not to you. It dies in terrible circumstances. You and your brother search for a piece of gold. He finds it, not you. And this time it is he who is punished. Your father told me that you and Tom fought often. He worried about you because of your moods, the way you would take yourself off for solitary walks, even at so young an age. He did not see what your mother had seen – that from the time of your birth – a difficult birth – there was something wrong with you, that you were prepared to kill.’