Off the Record (5 page)

‘His medical history?’ asked Ragnall.

‘He’s always been unstable,’ said Carrington flatly. ‘It was my mother’s death that finally pushed him over the edge. He had a complete nervous breakdown. He had to give up his post at Cambridge and eventually there was nothing for it but for him to be admitted as a patient in a mental asylum. He was released a couple of years ago.’

‘A mental hospital?’ repeated Ragnall slowly. He shot a look at Lewis. ‘Maybe I’m wrong.’

Lewis sucked his cheeks in. ‘It’s difficult, isn’t it?’ He hesitated. ‘Look, Gerry, I know things look black for your father, but there could be another explanation.’ He glanced at Ragnall. ‘That’s what we’ve been discussing.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘You tell him, Ragnall. It’s all to do with the firm’s pension fund.’

Gerry Carrington listened in growing bewilderment and with many interjections. ‘But that doesn’t make any sense either,’ he said when Ragnall had finished. ‘Even if Mr Otterbourne had been dipping into the pension fund, surely that’s not such a big deal? It’s his firm, after all.’

‘It’s a very big deal,’ said Ragnall. ‘Mr Otterbourne might have thought of it as the firm’s money but it’s theft. The pension fund is made up of both voluntary savings and compulsory contributions from the workers. That money was invested safely, mainly in gilt-edged stock. Those stocks have been sold out and the capital has vanished.’

‘Do you see now, Gerry?’ asked Steve. ‘I tell you, he wouldn’t want to face the music. His reputation would be ruined and, for a man like him, that would be impossible to live with.’

‘I still don’t see it,’ said Gerry. ‘From what you’ve told me, Mr Otterbourne didn’t know you’d tumbled to it. Besides that, he wouldn’t discuss the firm’s affairs with my father. For one thing, the guv’nor wouldn’t have a clue what he was talking about.’

‘That’s true enough, Mr Carrington,’ said Ragnall, ‘but, as I understand it, your father stated he left the room. Mr Otterbourne could have easily have picked up the accounts and realized exactly what I’d found.’

‘I knew him well,’ said Steve Lewis quietly. ‘He wouldn’t want to be remembered as a suicide. He could have realized the game was up and, knowing Professor Carrington would more or less be bound to be blamed, shot himself in order to incriminate him.’

Gerard Carrington started to his feet. ‘No,’ he breathed. ‘No, he couldn’t. No one could.’ His voice quavered. ‘Could they?’

Lewis shrugged. ‘I tell you, I knew the man. He lived for his reputation. It meant everything to him.’

‘But this could let my father off the hook,’ muttered Carrington. ‘I thought he’d lost his temper and perhaps didn’t know what he was doing, but he could have been telling the truth all along. Is there any way of proving it? If we could show that Mr Otterbourne did know he’d been found out, it might make all the difference.’

Ragnall and Lewis swapped glances. ‘We could look in the study,’ suggested Ragnall. ‘I know where I left the accounts. If they’ve been disturbed, then that would surely tell us that Mr Otterbourne had looked at them.’

‘Come on,’ said Lewis. ‘The body was taken away this afternoon but I don’t think anything else has been touched.’

The three men walked into the study. There, on the floor, was the manila folder. Ragnall stooped down and picked them up. ‘These are the accounts,’ he said breathlessly. He opened the folder, flicking through the papers. ‘He must have looked at them.’

‘Come on!’ said Carrington urgently. ‘We have to tell the police.’

They drove to the police station in Lewis’s car. As they drew up outside the station, Carrington noticed a black Rolls-Royce parked nearby. ‘It looks as if Sir David Hargreaves has arrived,’ he said. ‘It’s just as well. Even if Dad’s not guilty, he’s still in a pretty bad way.’

Sir David was standing by the desk in the police station, talking to Inspector Gibson. Three other policemen were in the room. They all looked very solemn. Sir David looked up as Carrington, Lewis and Ragnall came in.

‘Sir David,’ said Gerry Carrington. ‘It’s good of you to come, sir.’ He stopped, chilled by the sudden silence in the room and the grave faces of Sir David and the policemen.

Sir David glanced at Inspector Gibson, then came forward and, looking at Gerard Carrington compassionately, put his hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry to have to break the news, Mr Carrington, but your father is past my help. The Inspector found him in his cell.’ He paused. ‘I’m afraid your father is dead. He took his own life.’

F
or the first couple of weeks or so after her father had died, Molly found it hard to work out exactly what was happening and why. She had loved her father and he had betrayed her. She was grief-stricken, hurt, but, most of all, angry. A chilled, hard anger that ripped into her emotions like ice ripping away the top layer of unshielded skin.

She’d refused to believe it at first. Dad
couldn’t
be a thief. Everything he’d stood for, every rule he handed down, every hoop he’d made her jump through was undermined by that one stark fact. Her father was a crook.

Ever since her mother died she had protected Dad from the world, shielding him from unkind remarks and cynical appraisal. Why? Because she believed he believed in his ideal of an ideal life for ideal workers.

It was so quixotic, so unattainable and so worthwhile that she loved him for it. She had enough worldly knowledge to see how some regarded him as nothing more than a self-serving, unctuous, pompous hypocrite. The knowledge had hurt. And now the cynics were proved right. Her father
was
a self-serving, unctuous, pompous hypocrite. All her past happiness had been poisoned and she’d been trampled by those feet of clay.

To make it worse, at the one time in her life when she wanted to hide like an injured animal, she was forced to parade her scarred emotions for public enjoyment in the press. Not that she could feel any emotion any longer. She was numb. The tidal wave of publicity that had engulfed her drowned everything, so that the inquest, the funeral, the horrible, endless questions about her father, seemed like little islands of events in a featureless sea.

One thing she had been sure about, and that was she didn’t want to stay in Stoke Horam. Every room in the house, every cottage and building in the village, reminded her of Dad.

Steve proposed a move to London and found a ground floor flat in Mottram Place, off Sackville Street. The domestic distractions of moving house were a welcome relief. There were practical decisions to be taken, such as furniture and food and where everyone would sleep. Steve solved that tricky problem by cutting the domestic staff down to a cook and two maids and suggesting Hugo Ragnall should live out. She found the new arrangements unexpectedly agreeable and she was glad to escape to the anonymous bustle of London.

She should, she knew, be grateful to Steve. He seemed to have inexhaustible energy as he flung himself into work, defying the speculators who hovered round, waiting for the crash. ‘Every penny,’ he vowed to a fascinated public, ‘will be repaid. Not one of Otterbourne’s employees will come off worse.’ Which, if it wasn’t quite true, was true enough to satisfy the press. He plunged his own money into the firm, cut the unprofitable lines, sold off some of the cottages and land and re-opened negotiations with Dunbar. He tried to comfort her and she should have been grateful, but she seemed incapable of feeling anything; she was completely numb.

It was a fortnight after her father died that Steve came into her dressing room. Molly was in front of the mirror, brushing her hair. They had been invited to dinner with Mrs Soames-Pensford, a neighbour in Mottram Place. Mrs Soames-Pensford was, Molly dully knew, a kind-hearted, gossipy soul with three chattering daughters. Steve wanted to accept the invitation and she went along with as little enthusiasm as a puppet on wires.

He leaned forward and gently took the hairbrush from her hand.

‘Shouldn’t you be dressing for dinner?’ she snapped, irritated by his presence.

He flicked his finger along the bristles, then leaned forward and ran the brush through her hair. ‘We’ve plenty of time.’

‘Steve . . .’ she began wearily.

‘You used to like me doing this,’ he said softly. His fingers caressed the back of her neck and she moved involuntarily. The light from her dressing table lamp caught the faint golden stubble on his chin. She had liked him stroking her hair. He hadn’t done it for a long time. ‘You’ve got beautiful hair,’ he said, looping a dark-brown lock round his finger. ‘It’s the first thing I noticed about you. It’s such a rich chestnut, with deep red lights. That, and your smile.’

He smiled, that wickedly engaging smile, and she knew he wanted her to smile back. When she didn’t, he dropped his hand. ‘Come on, Molly. We used to have fun, remember?’ He picked up her lipstick and idly twisted it in and out of the tube. ‘I used to be able to make you laugh. You used to like me clowning around.’ He leaned forward and, looking in the mirror, blobbed a smudge of red lipstick on his nose. ‘You remember?’

‘Steve, don’t be a idiot,’ she said, amused despite herself. ‘You can’t turn up for dinner wearing lipstick on your nose.’

‘It comes off, doesn’t it?’ he said worriedly scrubbing at the mark. ‘Oh, Lord, it’s gone everywhere. Molly, how the dickens do I get this stuff off ? I don’t mind being Koko the Clown for you but the Soames-Pensfords will think I’m off my chump.’

‘You need some cold cream,’ she said laughing. She picked up the tub. ‘Here, bend down and let me wipe it off for you.’

He stood obediently still while she rubbed his nose. ‘That’s it, I think.’

He caught her hands and kissed them. ‘That’s better. I haven’t seen you smile for ages.’ She couldn’t help but smile as she felt the warm strength of his hands. ‘My word, I’m tired,’ he added inconsequentially and, for the first time, she noticed the shadows under his eyes. ‘I wish I hadn’t said we’d go out tonight, but we can’t ignore the neighbours. You need to make some new friends, Molly. You’ve spent too long brooding.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘You’ve seemed very distant, these past few weeks.’

She said nothing, but relaxed her head against his chest, enjoying the sensation of his hand on her cheek.

‘I’ve invited Gerry round for dinner tomorrow,’ he said after a while.

She broke away. She couldn’t help it. ‘Gerry?’

‘Yes.’ He drew her back to him. ‘Molly, what on earth’s the matter? Don’t you like Gerry? I’ve noticed you stiffen up before when I’ve mentioned his name.’

‘It’s silly, really, Steve.’ She swallowed and plunged on. ‘I can’t think of Gerry without thinking of that dreadful day.’ That was partly the truth; true enough that she had clung to it as an explanation to herself. But – and she hardly wanted to acknowledge it – the other reason she winced at the thought of Gerry was guilt. Steve’s hand stroked her neck gently. For some reason that made the guilt worse. She liked Gerry; liked him a great deal and, what’s more, was well aware that he liked her. Their only time alone had been that shared coffee in the conservatory but those few minutes blazed in her memory.

‘So that’s it,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I had wondered if . . .’

She looked up in sharp, startled wariness. ‘What?’

He kissed her again. ‘I was being stupid, I suppose,’ he said with a rueful smile. ‘Imagining things. I have imagined them, haven’t I?’ he asked with sudden anxiety. ‘It’d . . . Well, it’d hurt like the dickens if things went wrong between us, Molly.’ His hands trembled on her skin. He was very strong and very sturdy and very good-looking in a solid, Anglo-Saxon way, but he seemed so suddenly vulnerable that she felt tears prick the back of her eyes.

‘Oh, Steve,’ said quietly, getting to her feet.

‘Molly! Don’t cry.’ He reached out a finger and wiped a tear from her cheek. ‘I couldn’t manage without you, you know. You’re my wife,’ he said with a surge of feeling. ‘Mine. I love you. You . . . you do love me, don’t you?’

With her head on his chest, hearing his quick breathing and the rapid beat of his heart, his arms encircled her. He kissed her once more, very tenderly, then with growing passion. ‘Shall we,’ he murmured, ‘be late for dinner?’

At six o’clock on a glorious evening in early July, eight weeks after what the newspapers called the
Double Tragedy at Stoke Horam
, Jack Haldean sat in the smoking-room of the Young Services Club watching Hector Ferguson pick out a tune with one finger on the piano.

This was not how Jack had planned to spend the evening. After being stuck in the office of
On The Town
all day, he had dived into the club for something to eat and was heading for the park, with warm and affectionate thoughts of a pint of bitter on the way, when he was buttonholed in the lobby by Ferguson.

‘Haldean! The very man!’ Ferguson dropped his voice. ‘Can you spare me a few minutes?’ He lowered his voice further. ‘It’s confidential, you understand? I’ve been worrying away for weeks now. I couldn’t think what to do or who to ask, and then I saw you.’

Although he didn’t know Ferguson well, Jack liked the earnest, red-headed young Scot. Ferguson had a passion and a talent for jazz, both as a composer and a pianist. Jack had hardly ever heard him mention the shipping office where he worked but he could talk enthusiastically for hours about jazz.

At the moment, however, Ferguson wasn’t talking at all. He stood by the smoking-room piano, picking out notes in an embarrassed way. ‘I’m sorry, Haldean,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to do for the best. When I saw you in the lobby, you seemed like the obvious person to talk to but I’m not sure how to start.’

‘Close your eyes and take a stab at it, old thing,’ suggested Jack, covertly glancing at his watch. Honestly, if Ferguson didn’t get a move on, the pubs would be closed.

Ferguson turned back to the piano. ‘This thing needs tuning,’ he muttered irrelevantly.

‘Ferguson,’ said Jack warningly. ‘You didn’t lug me in here to agitate yourself about the piano.’