The Oxmarket Aspal Murder Mystery (9 page)

              “Thank you,” Julie Lawes said uncomfortably.  “By the way this is John Handful.”

              “How do you, Mr Handful.  Oliver?”

              “Yes, Mum?”

              “Pour everyone a drink, would you dear?”

              “Yes, Mum.”

              She then turned her attention back to me. “Are you a writer, too, Mr Handful?”

              “Oh no,” Julie Lawes answered on my behalf.  “He’s a private detective.  He’s here to solve a case.”

              There was a faint tinkle of broken glass. 

              “Be careful, Oliver!”  Lorraine said sharply. 

              “Sorry, Mum!”

              She then said to me, “That’s very interesting, Mr Handful.”

              “So, Karen Bellagamba was right,” Oliver Terret exclaimed, as he returned into the room with a tray full of glasses filled with red wine.  “She told me some long winded tale about having a detective staying at the guest house.  What case are you working on?”

              “I’ve been asked to reinvestigate the Faith Roberts murder.”

              “Oh!”  Oliver Terret sounded disappointed.  “I thought that was all done and dusted.”

              “I think they may have convicted the wrong man,” I told him.

              Oliver Terret apportioned the drinks.

              “Here you go, Mum.”

              “Thank you, my dear boy.”

              I frowned slightly.  Oliver handed a glass of red wine to Julie Lawes and then to me.

              “Well,” he said, raising his glass. “Here’s to crime.”

              He drank.

              “She used to work here,” Oliver Terret said.

              “Faith Roberts?”  Julie Lawes asked.

              “Yes.  Didn’t she, Mum?”

              “Only one day a week, Oliver.”

              “And the odd afternoon, sometimes.”

              “What was she like?” I asked.

              “Obsessively compulsive about tidying,” Oliver said.  “You could never find anything once she had tidied things up.”

              “If somebody didn’t tidy things away at least one day a week, you soon wouldn’t be able to move around in this small house.”

              “I know that, Mum. But unless things are left where I leave them, I can’t work at all. My notes get all muddled up.”

              “It’s so annoying being wheelchair bound,” Lorraine Terret said.  “We have struggled since Faith Roberts died. A local girl calls once a week but she is not very good.”

              “What is it?”  Julie Lawes asked.  “Arthritis.”

              “Some form of it.  I have a regular carer call now.  I hate losing my independence.”

              “Come on, Mum,” Oliver said.  “Don’t upset yourself.”

              He patted her arm and she smiled with sudden tenderness.

              “Oliver is so good to me,” she told the rest of us.  “He does everything and thinks of everything.  No one could be more considerate.”

              They smiled at each other and I stood up.

              “I’m sorry to say that I have to be on my way. I have another call to make and then I need to catch a train to Oxupland.  I thank you for your time Mrs Terret and Oliver I wish you all the best with your play.”

              “And good luck with your investigation,” Julie Lawes said to me. 

              I smiled and left and walked up the hill and through the gates and up a well-kept drive to a modern house of frosted concrete with a square roof and many windows.  This was the house of Mr and Mrs Brooks-Nunn.  Richard Brooks-Nunn was a partner in the big Brooks-Nunn Logistics Company – a very rich man who had recently taken to politics. He and his fourth wife had only been married a short time.

              The Brooks-Nunns’ front door was opened by imperturbable manservant who was loathed to allow me access.  In his view I was the kind of caller who should be left outside.  He clearly suspected that I had come to sell him something until he allowed me to give him my business card.

              “Mr and Mrs Brooks-Nunn are not at home.”

              “Could I wait?”

              “I don’t know when they’ll be back.”  He said before closing the door.

              I didn’t go down the drive. Instead I walked round the corner of the house and almost collided with a tall beautiful young woman.

              “What do you think you are doing?”  She shouted angrily. “This is private property!”

              “I was hoping that I could have a chat with Mr and Mrs Brooks-Nunn.”

              “I’m Mrs Brooks-Nunn.”  She spoke ungraciously, but there was a faint suggestion of appeasement behind her manner.

              “My name is John Handful.”

              Nothing registered.

              “Yes?”

              “I’m a private detective.”

              “And?”

              “I would like to talk to you about Faith Roberts.”

              “You’d better come this way.”

              She led the way through the hall and into a good-sized room looking on to a carefully tended garden.  It was a very new-looking room with a large sofa and two
Sherlock
armchairs, a coffee table and a writing desk which was the home for the most up-to-date computer. No expense had been spared and there was absolutely no sign of individual taste.

              I looked at her appraisingly as she turned.  A good-looking woman who was probably quite high maintenance with platinum blonde hair, carefully applied make-up and something more – wide cornflower blue eyes that held me with a wide frozen stare.

              “Do sit down,” she said graciously, but concealing boredom.

              I did as I was told.

              “How can I help you?”

              “I am investigating the circumstances behind Faith Roberts’ death and I believe she worked for you.”

              She jumped up, and made her way, blunderingly, towards the opened French windows. So uncertainly did she go that she actually collided with the window frame.  I was reminded of a beautiful big moth, fluttering blindly against a lamp shade.

              “Richard – Richard!”

              “Helena?” A man’s voice a little way away answered.

              “Come here quickly!”

              A tall man of about thirty-five came into sight.  He quickened his pace and came across the terrace of the window.  Helena Brooks-Nunn said vehemently:  “There’s a man here, a private detective by the name of John Handful. He’s asking me all sorts of questions about that horrible murder last year.”

              Richard Brooks-Nunn frowned and came into the drawing-room through the window.  He had a long face like a horse, he was pale and looked rather supercilious. His manner was pompous and arrogant.

              “Who the fuck are you?”  He demanded.  “If you’ve upset my wife I’ll kick your fucking head in!”

              I spread out my hands.

              “The last thing I would want to do is to upset your wife,” I said calmly.  “I am investigating the circumstances behind your former employee’s death.  Also, I do not take kindly to threats and you would regret trying to kick my head in.”

              His eyes narrowed as he deliberated over what I had just said.

              “But – why are you reopening the investigation?”

              “That’s right darling,” Helena urged.  “Ask him that.”

              “I have reason to believe that Marcus Dye is innocent.”

              “But he has been tried and convicted.”

              “Wrongly,” I reiterated firmly.

              A gleam of caution came into Richard Brooks-Nunn’s eyes.  He was suddenly anxious not to antagonise me.  He said, more amicably.  “My wife is very sensitive, Mr Handful about the whole affair. We hardly knew Faith Roberts.  She only worked for us one day a week.”

              “I told him that,” she said vehemently before adding, “and she was a frightful liar as well!”

              “Really?”  I looked from one to the other.  “She told lies did she? That may prove to be useful in my investigation.”

              “How?”  Helena asked. 

              “The establishment of motive.”  I informed her.

              “She was robbed of her savings,” Richard Brooks-Nunn said sharply.  “Surely that is enough motive.”

              “But was it?” I asked softly, rising slowly from the
Sherlock
chair.  “I’m sorry if I have caused you distress but these situations are always unpleasant.”

              “Faith Roberts’s death was extremely upsetting,” Richard Brooks-Nunn said quickly.  “Helena just didn’t like being reminded about it that was all. I’m sorry we haven’t been much help.”

              “But you have.”

              “How?”

              “Faith Roberts told lies,” I said.  “You said so yourself.  But what lies did she tell?”

              I waited politely for Helena Brooks-Nunn to speak.

              “It was nothing in particular,” she said at last.

              “Anything might help,” I pressed.

              “It was gossip that was all.”

              “What sort of gossip?”

              “Just rubbish. I never paid it any attention.”

              “Thank you,” I said, making a gesture of farewell.

              Richard Brooks-Nunn accompanied me out into the hall and made sure in a polite and discreet way that I left. 

              Outside the gate, I looked back at the house and wondered.

12

              Detective Inspector Paul Silver sat opposite me and sighed.

              “I’m not saying you haven’t got anything, John,” he said slowly.  “Personally, I think you have.  But it’s not much.  Not much at all.”

              “By itself it is not much,” I agreed.  “There must be more.”

              “Sergeant Higgins and I ought to have spotted that newspaper.”

              “It’s not your fault.  The crime was so obvious.  Robbery with violence. The room all pulled about, the money missing.  Why should there any significance to you in a torn newspaper amongst all the other confusion.”

              “I should have got that.”  DI Silver repeated obstinately.  “And that bloody printer cartridge.”

              “I heard about that purely by accident.  It was a lucky break that was all.”

              “Yet it meant something to you. Why?”

              “Only because of that comment about her hardly ever using her computer.  You and I, use a computer as a matter of course.  Faith Roberts didn’t.”

              DI Silver sighed heavily.  Then he laid out on the table four photographs.

              “These are the photos you asked me to get.  The original photos that the
Oxmarket Sunday Echo
used. At any rate they’re a little clearer than the reproductions.  But they’re not much to go on.”

              “Do you agree with me that we can discard Sandra Cavendish?”

              “I would have thought so,” DI Silver said.  “If Sandra Cavendish was in Oxmarket Aspal, everyone would know.  Retelling her sad personal story seems to have been her speciality.”

              “What can you tell me about the others?”

              “I’ve found out what I could.  Kristen Braun took the name Hope Newman and the police opinion of her doesn’t quite match up with the article.”

              I smiled and then asked, “What the police think is not evidence but is usually a very sound guide.”

              “Exactly.  I was quite a young chap at the time and I remember hearing it being discussed by my old boss, Assistant Commissioner William Frederick Patterson.  He believed that the idea of killing Mrs Porter was all Kristen Braun’s idea and that she not only thought of it, but she did it.  Michael Porter came home one day and found that his young mistress had taken a short cut.  She thought it would all pass off as natural causes, but Porter knew better.  He started to shit himself and disposed of the body in the cellar and elaborated the plan of having his wife die in Switzerland. Then, when the whole thing came out, he was insistent that he’d done it alone, that Kristen Braun knew nothing about it.  Well,” DI Silver shrugged his shoulders, “nobody could prove anything else.  Forensics, SOCOs, all drew a blank.  Kristen Braun was all innocence and horror. Assistant Commissioner Patterson had his doubts, but there was nothing to go on.  It’s not evidence, though John.”

              “What about Kay Kempster?”