Echoes of Silence Page 14

  Richmond swore. ‘A phone call would have helped,’ he said, unfairly attributing sympathy with police problems to the overworked hospital authorities. ‘But what was all the secrecy for? Why did she lie about going on holiday?’

  Sally said slowly, ‘Embarrassment – over female stuff like that? Men especially – sorry, but it’s true! – don’t want to hear about it. Or scared stiff? Talk about something like that, you make it happen. Pretend you’re going to do something else, right to the last minute, you don’t get the collywobbles about it.’

  ‘We-ell … If you say so. But I don’t think she was the sort to know what embarrassment meant. Nor easily scared, either.’

  Did the feminine mind really work like that, did anybody’s? He hadn’t liked this woman when they’d met, liked her even less now, knowing more about the way she’d screwed up other people’s lives … but he could almost find it in himself to feel sorry for her.

  Manning was about to demolish a theory put forward by his superior. He’d have to employ tact, which wasn’t his strong point. ‘As far as the murderer being among Austwick’s former clients, sir – I think we’d better forget it,’ he began cautiously.

  He’d now finished interviewing the rest of those whose names were on the spines of the books on Wyn Austwick’s shelf, he told the DCI, had managed to speak to all but one of them, an eighty-two-year-old, retired mountain climber known as ‘Birdie’ Wren, who’d achieved a certain amount of national fame. But since he was now in a wheelchair and reported to be far gone with Alzheimer’s, any blackmail attempts subsequent to the writing of his memoirs three years ago seemed unlikely. The rest of Austwick’s customers, as far as Manning could ascertain, had led such apparently blameless lives as to have given no cause for pressure to be put on them. Either that, or they’d been more careful than either Margaret Whitfield or Harrison Priestley when allowing their collaborator access to personal information. Priestley, after vigorously denying making any payments to her other than the lump sum for the book, had finally come round to believing it was wiser to make a clean breast, especially as he would now be better off by several hundred a month, and in addition had a cast-iron alibi for the time of the murder, which no one could fault: like Margaret Whitfield herself he had, for the whole of Friday evening, unquestionably been present at the pre-Christmas Fayre at the Girls’ High School where his granddaughter was a pupil and he was a governor.

  ‘They seem to be the only two she was squeezing,’ Manning said.

  ‘Two’s not a bad score, considering what she was getting from them. Sideline them for the moment.’ Richmond wasn’t at all put out, since in Wyn Austwick’s case he’d never completely taken on board the idea of an overpressed blackmailee turned killer.

  He wouldn’t discount anybody yet, though, not at this stage, however unlikely, but the more he thought about it, the more certain he was that this murder went straight back to that meeting of his with Wyn Austwick at the Woolpack. And everything that stemmed from that thought put the murder squarely back to Low Rigg. For one thing, that concert flyer with the scribbles on the back which she had flashed about that night was still missing. There’d been no trace of it among the Denshaw files. He thought it inconceivable that she would have destroyed it – though her murderer might well have done so.

  And Eddie Nagle, owner of a short-haired greyhound, also had connections with Low Rigg.

  It wasn’t until after the sort of supper Ginny considered impromptu – loads of delicious things bought in from the delicatessen, washed down with a bottle of chilled white wine, and another to follow – when the children were at last tucked up in bed and safely asleep, that they began to talk. Or rather, Polly did. Her feelings were fermenting inside her like a shaken bottle of fizzy pop which might go off any minute if she didn’t let the cork out.

  ‘I still say we should have told him everything. Tom Richmond, I mean. Apart from being a policeman, he has a right to know. Anyway, I don’t think we fooled him for a minute. He guessed we were keeping something back.’

  Leon lounged in the big, squashy velvet armchair, his legs stretched out, his shoeless feet resting on the matching pouffe. Having discarded Leon-the-lawyer by stepping out of his formal clothes into slacks and sweater, he now wore his Leon-the-husband-and-family-man look. And with it an entirely different, less starchy, more relaxed persona, making him seem ten years younger. ‘Come on, love, I explained all that,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Well, explain it again,’ said Polly, ‘because I still don’t see how you, of all people, could recommend lying to the police.’

  ‘Lying?’ Leon repeated, picking up his glass of golden wine and squinting through it appreciatively. ‘Lachryma Christi,’ he murmured, picking up the bottle and reverently reading from the label. ‘What an utterly appropriate name.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said when he’d translated. Drinking Christ’s tears seemed to her to be profane, to say the least. She thought perhaps Leon had drunk more than enough of it.

  ‘Every word we told him was the truth,’ he said.

  ‘Haven’t you ever heard of lying by omission? And you a lawyer?’

  ‘But we know it was Freya who was lying, don’t we? All that guff about Beth that she gave you before she died was sheer nonsense, wasn’t it?’

  Polly stared at him, eyes dark and sombre. ‘What exactly are you saying?’

  ‘Come on, think about it,’ he said, more gently. ‘Is it really feasible?’

  That had been the problem for her all along, ever since Freya had chosen, at last, to break the barrier of silence. No, admit it, feasible it was not.

  ‘I suppose it could have happened that way,’ Ginny said. But, knowing her husband, it was a question more than a statement.

  ‘No, love, it couldn’t, and the police already know it couldn’t,’ said Leon, suddenly very serious, and proceeded to tell them why.

  ‘Which poses the simple question,’ Ginny said into the silence which followed, ‘why on earth did she say it, then?’

  ‘I think we could all hazard a guess.’

  Polly turned cold inside, not needing to guess. She’d been sure of it ever since hearing what Freya had to say. ‘She was protecting Peter? After all? Oh God.’

  When was all this going to end? Horror that had started with an innocent child’s murder and repeated itself with the murder of one neither innocent nor young. But not deserving to die, for whatever reason she’d been killed. How long they sat there, the three of them, Polly didn’t know, but whether it was true courage or only the Lachryma Christi talking, she began to feel a surge of the same sort of rebellion she’d felt only once in her life before. And that had ultimately resulted in a permanent break with Tony. This is no sort of life, she’d thought then, for me or for Harriet, so why put up with it? Admitting at last that there was no changing Tony. But this was different, surely they could somehow get out of this bind now, put an end to the secrecy and silence that had for too long run like a dark stream beneath the surface of life at Low Rigg Hall? There had been enough lies and evasions in this family.

  She rummaged in her bag for the photograph which had been lying in the bottom, reproachful as an unanswered letter, ever since she’d found it, waiting for her to do something about it. She glanced at it, felt again the same tremor of something half submerged as she handed it over to Ginny. ‘Remember this? I don’t.’

  Ginny made a wry expression when she saw what it was, then laughed. ‘Vignette of the Denshaw family! Truth embodied in the camera! Lord, I haven’t seen this for years, but I remember Filey. Not the most successful holiday. This must have been taken on the one warm day, it was freezing most of the time. The sea was arctic.’

  ‘Who took it?’ Polly asked.

  ‘Philip set it up on a time switch. Look at Peter, sulking! He wanted to take it so’s he wouldn’t have to be in the picture. All hell broke loose a minute later, when she knocked your sandcastle down,’ she said, pointing to Elf, furiou
s-faced, wielding her tiny, threatening spade.

  It suddenly occurred to Polly that the answer to a good many questions might lie with Elf – or even with Ginny. But an unaccustomed caution kept her silent. If Ginny had said nothing, she’d have her reasons.

  ‘More wine?’ Leon poured what was left of the bottle into his own glass when the others refused.

  ‘She was a right little horror sometimes,’ Ginny said, still looking at the photo.

  ‘What do you mean, was?’ asked Leon, only half joking.

  ‘Is, then. No, that’s not fair. It’s just an act she’s put on for so long she can’t give it up, now. She used to be a lot of fun, as well.’

  ‘We weren’t always very nice to her,’ Polly said, ‘at least I wasn’t.’

  ‘Children aren’t nice. That’s a myth created by those who haven’t any,’ said Leon, every bit as much a doting parent as Ginny.

  ‘Maybe I was jealous,’ Polly said. ‘I’d always been the baby until then, I suppose, had my nose pushed out of joint. But my memory doesn’t go that far back.’

  ‘Mine does, though. I remember the day she arrived, poor little soul. Everybody being very sorry for her because of what had happened to her parents. And Dot – even Dot – spoiling her like mad.’

  They exchanged significant looks. ‘Hard to think of Dot in those terms! But yes – I think I do remember something about it. I wondered why everyone was cooing over her when she looked just like a little monkey to me.’

  ‘If you two are going on a trip down Memory Lane, I’ll leave you to it.’ Leon drained his glass, stretched his long legs and stood up. ‘I’ve some reading to do for tomorrow, anyway. Give me a shout when you’re ready to go up, Ginny. ‘Night, Poll.’ He pressed a light kiss on her forehead, ruffled her hair and said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ He picked up the empty wine bottle and went out.

  Efforts to trace Trevor Austwick had so far proved fruitless, but even if he was found, Richmond couldn’t see him being so stupid as to have murdered his wife in order to inherit what money she’d left. Regular habitués of Her Majesty’s prisons, like Trevor, learned a lot to help them in their future careers outside. He could probably have graduated with honours in criminal law by now. At any rate, he couldn’t fail to be aware that no one could ever be allowed to benefit from his crime. But if he was innocent, and his wife had left no will, as her next of kin, he would automatically inherit a not inconsiderable amount of money. Of course, knowing she’d applied for divorce, he could conceivably have supposed she might at any time make a will which excluded him, and have murdered her before she could do so, but Richmond thought even Trevor, with his abysmal record of violence and lack of success in getting away with it, might have appreciated this was a less than brilliant idea. Even allowing for the fact that he was prepared to pay the price of the ludicrously few years in jail such a crime would have earned him. On the other hand, what about the threatening tone of that note he’d written her, warning her that he intended making her a visit? And why had he disappeared?

  ‘If he’s gone to ground,’ said Manning, ‘could be a long time before we find him.’

  ‘We haven’t got that long,’ Jacks had growled. ‘He can’t have vanished into thin air. If he’s innocent, why hasn’t he surfaced before now? With the prospect of all that money coming to him?’

  Richmond arrived at the solicitors’ offices for his appointment the next day to find confusion reigning. Behind the desk in the reception office, a little blonde girl was distractedly sorting through a snowstorm of paper. Short, spiky yellow hair, big eyes brimming with tears, she resembled nothing so much as a drowned baby duckling. Richmond coughed to attract her attention. She turned and looked at him, blinded with tears.

  ‘Sorry. It’s just that I’ve lost a conveyance. I had it earlier. I’ve been looking everywhere and I daren’t face Mr Trimble if I – ’

  ‘Sophie! Ask the gentleman what he wants, he’s not interested in your muddles,’ instructed a bossy voice he recognised from the previous day’s telephone conversation, issuing from a smart, dark-haired woman in horn-rimmed glasses. She was tapping on a word processor at the back of the office and spoke without glancing round or breaking step.

  Richmond smiled at Sophie and identified himself.

  ‘Oh!’ His name and rank having placed him, the Queen Bee at last looked up. ‘She’s expecting you, Chief Inspector Richmond. Ring through, Sophie.’

  Sophie looked even more distracted as she searched for and at last found the intercom beneath the blanket of papers, swallowing hiccups as she spoke into it. Switching off the machine, she said, ‘She’ll be out right away. Oh God, I know it was here half an hour ago, wasn’t it, Mrs Blackburn?’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘Forget about it and it’ll turn up, always does,’ Richmond advised, by no means sure he was right, but remembering the despairs of youth. Eve Marshall’s office door opened and he moved forward quickly, hiding the chaos from her.

  He remembered her well: clever and smart, small, dark, blue-eyed, and still a beauty in her late fifties. The intervening ten years had brought more grey hairs, but her eyes had lost none of their sparkle and her personality none of its energy and forthrightness. She came straight to the point and handed Richmond an envelope, across which was written, ‘Only to be opened in the event of my death.’

  ‘It was posted to me on Monday, addressed to me personally, with a covering letter. I only heard of Freya Denshaw’s death when I returned yesterday.’

  So here it was: the letter Mrs Denshaw had gone out to post after she returned from her drive with Nagle. It was quite short. A signed confession from Freya Denshaw to the murder of his daughter, Beth.

  ‘I had told the child she was not to play the piano with oil paint all over her hands, she must go to the kitchen and ask Dot Nagle for something to clean it off. I left her alone in the room and when I came back, there she was, still practising her scales, without having made any attempt to clean herself up. I was very angry with her, I raised my stick and she must have thought I was going to strike her. She backed away, tripped over the rug and fell. She banged her head against the piano and lay quite still. I shook her and she didn’t move and I realised she was dead. I am very sorry for what I did, I was entirely to blame, and no one else was involved.’

  The room was very quiet. Richmond handed the letter back without speaking.

  ‘It’s a fairly astonishing document, don’t you think?’ Eve Marshall said.

  ‘In more ways than one.’ She raised her eyebrows, and he went on: ‘For one thing, the post-mortem showed the child’s skull had been fractured, not by a fall, but by several blows. And even if she was lying about that and did actually hit Beth, someone else was involved – unless we choose to believe Freya Denshaw drove her down to East Park through the snow and concealed her under the bandstand herself.’

  ‘I don’t think that would have been possible, even ten years ago she was too crippled by arthritis. I’m not even sure she ever did drive, come to that, she’s always had that man of theirs to chauffeur her around.’

  ‘Then this confession was pointless. It raises more questions than it answers.’

  Mrs Marshall offered more of her excellent coffee, refilled her own cup when he declined the offer and thought for a while. ‘I remember the circumstances of this case well.’ She hesitated, then said gently, her blue eyes full of sympathy, ‘You were the DC Richmond who worked here years ago, weren’t you, and Beth was your daughter? I’m so very sorry. This must have brought it all back again.’

  Of course she remembered his own connection with the case. There were not many people in Steynton who wouldn’t, given a jog to their memory.

  ‘Thank you.’ He swallowed, the last of the digestive biscuit he’d nibbled like sawdust in his throat. ‘I will have some more coffee after all, if I may.’ She pushed his replenished cup across the desk and he added two generous spoonfuls of sugar, stirring it and letting her take her time to pick
up the conversation.

  ‘If I’m being unprofessional and uncharitable in what I’m going to say … well, I’ll risk that, in view of the circumstances,’ she began eventually. ‘Mrs Denshaw, as you know, was a successful professional model before she was married. It’s a mistake we fall into with women like her to think that because they’re so beautiful, they’re not – well, let’s say not well endowed in the brains department. But in Freya’s case, I’m sorry, but it happened to be true. She was shrewd enough, where her own interests were concerned, but I don’t think I’d be maligning her by saying she wasn’t, I’m afraid, all that clever. There’s a difference.’

  ‘Indeed there is. You’re saying -’

  ‘I’m saying this letter’s typical. We – the firm, that is – have acted for the Denshaws for decades, and I’ve known Freya Denshaw personally for nearly thirty years. I think she acted on impulse in writing it, as she invariably did. She never thought beyond the moment, just made quick decisions in order to put the problem out of her mind. That’s not as unusual as you might believe, either,’ she said wryly. ‘Added to which, she’d grown a little confused lately. She was over seventy and maybe the drugs she was taking for her arthritis … but there I’m only guessing, I wouldn’t know about that. I used to try to persuade her to take her time, think things through, but she was a very stubborn woman.’

  He had an idea that this last was referring to something specific, but if so, she was not proposing to tell him what it was, probably not considering it relevant to this particular occasion. Not for the first time, he took a dim view of the caution of lawyers and bankers when it came to the affairs of their clients, living or dead.

  He requested a copy of the letter, which Mrs Marshall had handy, having anticipated the request, though in his view it changed very little. As a confession it held about as much substance as Isobel’s had done. Both were designed to clear someone – the same person, he was in no doubt, in both cases: Peter Denshaw.