A Dreadful Murder (5 page)
Authors: Minette Walters
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective, #Historical, #Thrillers, #Suspense
The Inspector had had no better luck trying to unearth whether the Major-General had purchased a revolver or dealt with a killer. ‘I can’t be certain that neither of those things happened,’ he went on, ‘but none of the Major-General’s staff believes he wanted his wife dead. One of the maids, Jane Pugmore, told me she never heard a cross word between them in the six years she’s worked at their house.’
‘What about these rumours that Caroline was unhappy?’
‘It depends who you listen to. According to Jane, Mrs Luard shed tears whenever she was reminded of her son. He died abroad and she never had a chance to comfort him.’
‘What do other people say?’
‘That her husband was having an affair with a woman in the village.’ Hamble shrugged at the other man’s frown. ‘No one’s been able to name her . . . It’s just gossip from the grapevine. I’m beginning to feel quite sorry for the Major-General. They all want to see him hanged.’
‘But why do they hate him so much?’ Warde asked, staring gloomily at his hands. ‘Has anyone given a reason for it?’
Hamble shook his head. ‘Not really. It seems to be driven by those at the bottom. They say Mrs Luard passed the time of day with them but the Major-General doesn’t bother.’
Taylor had focused on the motive for the murder. If he could find out why Caroline Luard had been killed, he might also find the culprit. But after several days of talking to people who had known her, he had come up with nothing. If Caroline had had any secrets in her life, none of her friends or servants knew them.
She got on well with her husband, and he with her. She enjoyed her life, enjoyed her home, and her only tragedy was the untimely death of her younger son.
Without a motive, Taylor turned instead to the details of the murder. He was interested in the time it had taken Caroline Luard to walk from the wicket gate to the summer house. At a very slow stroll, the journey took forty-five minutes. At the sort of pace a woman of fifty-eight might have set, it took just short of thirty.
‘And why is that important?’ Warde asked him.
‘It means there are fifteen minutes of this woman’s life that we can’t account for,’ Taylor said. ‘If she reached La Casa at three o’clock – but wasn’t killed until 3.15 – what happened in the meantime?’
‘Go on.’
‘There are several options. She met someone there by chance, had a brief chat with him, and was clubbed and shot when she turned to leave.’
‘But you don’t like that?’
Taylor shook his head. ‘Her body was facing the wrong way. For the same reason, I don’t like the idea that she met someone there by prior agreement either. If the missing minutes were taken up in chat, why was she lying face down with her head pointing towards the summer house door?’
‘Perhaps her killer left first.’
‘She’d have turned to watch him go and you’d have found her on her back with a punch to the face and a bullet between the eyes.’
‘So what are the other options?’ Warde asked.
Taylor ticked them off on his fingers. ‘One – she met someone on the path, decided he was harmless, and offered to show him the summer house. He stood back to let her climb the steps ahead of him and knocked her out before she reached the door. Two – she was followed from the road but didn’t realise it. For reasons of her own, she decided to inspect the summer house and was rushed from behind as soon as she stepped onto the veranda.’
‘And with either of those, she would have lain unconscious during the missing minutes?’
Taylor nodded.
‘It wouldn’t have taken quarter of an hour to remove her glove and steal her rings.’
‘No,’ Taylor agreed. ‘But an argument about what to do with her might.’
‘Explain.’
‘I think there was more than one person involved in this crime.’
* * *
Extract from a report written by Superintendent
Albert Taylor of Scotland Yard:
. . . In conclusion, I believe events took place as follows:
Two or more villains were casing La Casa with a view to breaking into it. Had Mrs Luard arrived thirty minutes later, she would have found the door forced open and the interior ransacked. The aim may have been simple vandalism – to destroy something prized and owned by ‘rich people’.
It was Mrs Luard’s misfortune to reach the clearing in front of the summer house whilst one of the culprits was on the veranda. He may have tried to dodge out of sight around the corner of the building but I believe she saw him well enough to recognise him.
She had no reason to fear him otherwise she wouldn’t have mounted the steps. This makes me think he was local. He may also have been young. A stranger, or an adult man, would have made her think twice about confronting him.
If the culprit was a local youth then Kent police will have had dealings with him. He may have a father dead or in prison, and a mother who struggles to keep her children fed. It is often the case that a son, lacking the stern guidance of a father, rejects the control of his mother and turns to crime.
Such a family would have been known to Mrs Luard through her charity work. Her friends describe her as a confident and clever person with a genuine concern for the plight of widows and deserted wives. She went to their houses and watched their children grow up.
If she knew the trespasser, there’s a good chance she took him to task. What was he up to? Why wasn’t he at work? Did he think his mother wanted him to spend his days in idleness and crime?
Even if she guessed that he had a friend or friends in tow, she wasn’t expecting one of them to come up behind her. She saw the trespasser as a layabout and a petty thief, not as a killer. Her mistake may have been to say that she was going to report him to the police.
The threat would have been taken seriously by anyone who knew that Mrs Luard was the wife of a Justice of the Peace and a friend to the Chief Constable of Kent. To a stranger, she was just a woman walking through Frankfield Park. To a local good-for-nothing, she was a woman of status and influence.
I see this as a crime of stupidity and panic rather than a pre-set plan to murder Mrs Luard. Whether through hot-headedness or a desire to shut her up, the person behind her used the revolver as a club. It may be that both culprits were intoxicated and acted under the madness of alcohol.
Once the blow was struck, it could not be taken back. Simple trespass had become violent assault and Mrs Luard would be able to name at least one of her attackers. It is my belief that most of the missing fifteen minutes were taken up in an argument about what to do next. Leave her alive or kill her?
From the outset of this inquiry, police have been confused by the way Mrs Luard died. Was she murdered by a stranger or by someone she knew? Was her death the result of a bungled robbery? Or were her rings stolen to make it seem that way? Why was she shot twice when one bullet would have done?
I believe the answers to these questions are simple. She was killed by people she knew. They took her rings and purse to make it look as if the motive was robbery. If they were local, they would have known she wore rings on her left hand – which was the only glove that was removed.
The murder was planned in so far as a choice was made to kill her rather than leave her alive. Neither culprit was safe if she was able to name one of them. And neither culprit was prepared to go to prison for assaulting the wife of Major-General Luard.
To protect themselves, they took it in turns to fire into her brain. As long as they both played a part in her murder, they could rely on each other to keep quiet about what they had done.
If the killer or killers are local, there is a good chance the weapon is still in their possession. There is a good chance too that it was acquired during an earlier house burglary in the Ightham area.
I propose that Kent Police go back through their records of the last five years. If they find a description of a stolen .32 revolver, they will have reason to go house-to-house looking for it . . .
* * *
Henry Warde folded his hands over Taylor’s report, which lay on the desk between them. ‘I’ll be lynched if I give an order to search every house,’ he said. ‘The people of Ightham will say I’d rather cast suspicion on them than admit my friend shot his wife.’
‘It’s a better line of inquiry than anything else we have.’
‘Assuming you’re right,’ said Warde. ‘But you’re opening a can of worms with what you’ve written. You’re asking me to come down hard on the poor for a crime that everyone thinks a rich man committed.’
‘It’s the only avenue we haven’t explored,’ Taylor pointed out. ‘We’ve ignored Mrs Luard’s neighbours – rich
and
poor – to focus on passing vagrants and hired killers.’
‘They’ll accuse me of framing an innocent person to get Charles off.’
‘Maybe so, but our job is to find Mrs Luard’s killer . . . not to treat the locals with kid gloves because we’re afraid of what they might say.’
‘They want him to hang. That’s all they talk about in Ightham.’
Taylor pulled a crooked smile. ‘I know. I’ve heard them. I keep wondering why it might be in someone’s interests to blacken the Major-General. Who was the first to accuse him?’
Warde opened a drawer and took out three envelopes. ‘These arrived for Charles yesterday,’ he said, pushing them across the desk. ‘I was in the house when they came, otherwise he’d have burnt them. He tells me he’s had dozens . . . many with local postmarks.’
I know what you are.
I know what you like to do to women.
Make them cry. Make them squeal.
Twisted old man. Dirty old man.
Rot in Hell.
YOU THINK YOU’RE ABOVE
THE REST OF US.
YOU THINK YOU HAVE THE
RIGHT TO JUDGE US.
THIS IS THE SENTENCE WE GIVE YOU.
KILL YOURSELF BEFORE THE
HANGMAN GETS YOU.
You want people to think tramps
and gypos shot your wife.
We know different.
It was you.
You may have friends in high places
but God will be your judge.
Friday, 4 September 1908 –
Ightham, morning
A shroud of misery hung over Ightham Knoll when Taylor rang the doorbell on Friday morning. The maid who let him in was in tears, and the sound of weeping was coming from the kitchen.
He was shown into the drawing-room, where the Major-General was standing in front of his wife’s portrait, head bowed and fingers pressed to his eyes. It was several seconds before he spoke. ‘I’ve given the staff notice,’ he said. ‘They’re very upset about it.’
‘It’s a difficult time for all of you,’ Taylor answered tactfully. He’d been told by Henry Warde that Luard had made up his mind to leave Ightham and rent a house somewhere else.
‘I’ve ordered everything to be sold – the house, the contents . . .
everything
.’ The old man’s voice shook with emotion as he lowered himself into a chair. ‘It’s all too painful. I can’t bear to be reminded of her.’
Sergeant, the fox terrier, dropped to the floor at his master’s feet, and Taylor wondered if the dog, too, was up for sale. He thought the Major-General’s decision a bad one. It smacked too much of flight and a ruthless desire to kill every memory of Caroline.
‘What about your son?’ he asked, taking a seat himself. ‘Will he feel the same?’
Luard looked towards a photograph of a young man in uniform. ‘He’s with the Army in South Africa. Soldiers travel light.’
‘But I’m told he’s on a steamer coming home . . . due to arrive in two weeks. Shouldn’t you wait until he gets here?’
With a groan of despair, the Major-General dropped his head into his hands. ‘What for? Do you think I want him to hear what’s being said about me or read the poison that pours through my letter box every day? It would break his spirit the way it’s broken mine.’
Taylor leaned forward. ‘I wish you’d told us about the letters when they first started coming,’ he said gently. ‘We would have advised you not to open them.’
‘Then I wouldn’t have opened the kind ones either. Not everyone is cruel.’
Taylor allowed a short silence to develop while he worked out how to ask his next question. ‘People often write the way they speak,’ he said. ‘Did any of the phrases in the cruel letters give you a sense of who might have written them?’
Luard shook his head. ‘They all say the same thing. That I killed my wife to be with another woman.’ He raised tired eyes to Taylor’s. ‘I’m nearly seventy years old and I enjoyed being with Caroline. Why would I have wanted anyone else?’
‘A poison pen letter doesn’t speak the truth, sir. The only aim of the writer is to hurt. When did the first one arrive?’
The old man thought for a moment. ‘The evening of the first inquest.’
‘Do you remember the postmark?’
‘I believe it was Ightham. I recall being shocked that someone nearby could have written something so unkind.’
‘Then the sender may have been in this room when the evidence was given,’ Taylor told him. He recalled the crowd of locals who had thronged into the Luards’ house that day. ‘Do you think your maids would be able to put together a list of the people who were here?’
Luard gave a weary shake of his head. ‘Why bother? It’s of no interest to me. I shan’t be here much longer. Henry Warde’s brother has offered me a bed so the letters won’t reach me.’
Somehow Taylor doubted that. The Chief Constable’s brother was the local MP, and the gossips would find out all too fast that yet another member of the Kent ruling class was stepping in to help the Major-General. But, as Henry Warde had said, where else could the poor fellow go? The only family Charles had left was a son on a ship coming home from South Africa.