Design for Murder (13 page)

I hurried with the coffee, and as we were finishing it, Neil said, “Do you take the magazine
Cotswold Illustrated?”

I nodded. “As a regular advertiser, the Design Studio gets
sent a voucher copy each month.”

“Then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to glance at the June
issue.”

“But I haven’t got it here, Neil. It’s at the studio.”

“I see. Could we go over there now, do you think?”

“What, now?”

“It’s rather important,” he said. “It won’t take long.”

I glanced surreptitiously at the kitchen clock. Tim was due
in twenty minutes.

“All right, then,” I agreed grudgingly.

Outside, it was obvious that Neil expected to drive me to
the Coach House. But I didn’t want that, because then he
would have to bring me back again and there’d be the danger
that he and Tim would meet at the front gate.

“I’ll take my own car and follow you,” I said, and ad-
libbed when Neil looked at me questioningly, “I might decide to stay on at the studio and do a bit of work.”

To my relief, Neil didn’t hang about at the studio. When I’d found the copy of the magazine he wanted, he riffled through the pages quickly and handed it back to me with a
smile.

“Okay, Tracy, that’s fine. I’ll be seeing you.”

The Coroner’s Court, a small, square room in Gilchester’s municipal offices, was jam-packed. Naturally enough, the vio
lent death of a member of a prominent local family had
aroused great interest. Yet the proceedings themselves held
no surprises. After a few desultory questions put to the
witnesses, Tim and myself, the pathologist, and a police rep
resentative, the verdict was murder by person or persons un
known.

In that stuffy, overcrowded little courtroom, I sat beside
Tim and watched the faces around me. Sir Robert Medway,
looking desperately ill
...
and Lady Medway. Though
seated next to her husband, she seemed distant from him in spirit. Was it because the quarrel had been so bitter they’d still not made it up? Or were they both frozen in mutual fear
of something that threatened them equally? Did the clue lie in
Sebastian, sitting on the other side of his adoptive father,
looking thoroughly frightened? Were Sir Robert and Lady
Medway aware that the police had been questioning Sebas
tian and had reservations about his alibi? Could it be that
they knew for certain something that the police were only
guessing at?

I swivelled my eyes along the rows. Apart from the Eb
borns, the estate staff had kept away—out of deference to Sir
Robert’s feelings, no doubt. Grace and Ralph had acknowledged me coolly as we came in. I wished I could justify my
self by pointing out that Ralph was wrong in believing that
Sebastian’s explanation—whatever it was—had completely
cleared him of all suspicion. But that, I felt, would be a
breach of Neil’s confidence, so I could only hope that time
would heal the rift between us.

Near the back of the courtroom I picked out Ursula Kemp.
She sat bolt upright on the bench, tense, alert to every word
that was said. When the murder weapon was produced, she
closed her eyes and even at this distance I saw her shudder. The little joke between her and Oliver had tragically misfired.

The coroner wound up by expressing his sympathy with the bereaved family, and it was all over. There was uncertainty and much shuffling about the order of departure. When we
were outside on the steps, Tim said, “Do I see you this eve
ning, Tracy?”

“I
...
I’m not sure.”

Our outing yesterday hadn’t been a success. Quite why, I
didn’t know. But somehow the session with Neil had de
pressed me and I was left feeling uneasy. Around tea time I’d suggested calling it a day. I’d wheeled out the hoary old head
ache excuse, and Tim had pretended to believe it.

He seemed to understand that my mood was still fragile.

“I’ll ring you later on, then,” he said, “and we’ll see how you feel.”

Our attention was caught by the sound of a fiercely revving engine. A small green car was being jerkily manoeuvred from the mass of vehicles parked on the cobbled forecourt. As we watched, its offside front wing narrowly missed scraping the
paintwork of a gleaming new Rover. The driver was Ursula
Kemp.

“The woman must be crazy,” Tim muttered.

It had struck me, watching Ursula in the courtroom, that
Oliver’s friendship must have meant a great deal to her. She
didn’t seem to have many friends. I still felt convinced that Oliver had never been her lover—and that Ursula had never
wanted him to be—but that didn’t mean she mightn’t have
been deeply fond of him.

At last Ursula got her car disentangled. With an ill-judged
swerve, she turned out into the flow of traffic.

“I can’t imagine why she came here this morning,” Tim remarked, as she drove off along the main road. “It’s just
sheer bloody morbid curiosity.”

“She and Oliver were very good friends,” I remonstrated.

“For God’s sake, Medway would never have been interested in a woman her age.”

“You’re like everyone else,” I said bitterly. “You automatically assume that if Oliver was friendly with a woman, there
had to be sex between them.” I threw him a dangerous, chal
lenging look.

Tim didn’t meet my eyes. With a glance at his wristwatch, he said, “I must get back ... I’m in the middle of spraying.
Having to come here has taken a big chunk out of my day. I’ll
be in touch when you’re in a better mood.”

As I watched his lanky figure striding off I regretted my snappiness. I was of two minds whether to call him back and
apologise.

A voice behind me, sounding rather pleased, remarked, “You two had a tiff?”
I greeted him without enthusiasm.

“I’m glad I caught you before you left, Tracy. I wanted a
chat.”

“You’re always wanting a chat.”

Neil’s grin was unamused. “How about a drink? Like me, I expect you could do with one after that courtroom.”

“I’ve got to get home,” I said. “Anyway, I’m driving.”

“Just one drink. I’ve got something to tell you.”

Curiosity won, and we walked together to a nearby pub, the Coach and Horses.

The lounge bar, ceilinged with oak beams and furnished
with high-backed benches, was very crowded. Not at all the
place for a confidential conversation. So Neil and I carried
our drinks outside to the pub’s garden which backed onto the
canal. Two swans were gliding by, and across the water an
old man was fishing from some steps. We sat down on a
bench beside a buddleia bush that was alive with tortoise-shell
butterflies.

Neil took a long swig of his beer, then set the tankard down
on a sawn-off tree stump. “About that anonymous letter,
Tracy.”

“You mean you’ve discovered who sent it?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. But we
have
discovered an interesting fact. All the words and letters that were used to
make up the message had been clipped from the same maga
zine—last month’s issue of
Cotswold Illustrated”

I stared at him in bewilderment. “For pity’s sake, if you
were checking to see if my own copy had been cut up
...
that’s crazy. I’d hardly send the police an accusing letter about myself.”

“From our standpoint, that’s too simplistic a view of
human nature,” said Neil with a sigh. “People have been
known to do the strangest things. Besides, someone else might
have got hold of your copy, so we had to check. Mind you,
we don’t actually expect to find the cut-about copy. The
sender of that letter is unlikely to have left the evidence lying
around for anyone to find.”

“How do you know which particular magazine was used?”
I asked him. “And how can you be sure that all the clippings
came from the same issue?”

Neil looked a bit smug. “We observed that the clipped-out
pieces were all on art paper, the sort used for the glossy
monthlies. Furthermore, the type faces, whether large or
small, roman or italic, were confined to just two styles.”

“I suppose by ‘we,’ you really mean yourself,” I com
mented, a trifle acidly.

“It was, I admit, used rather in the royal sense. So then we got the laboratory to lift the clippings off the sheet of paper
they’d been stuck to, so as to see what printing was on the
reverse side of them. On one of the larger pieces, there was a
little silhouette logo of a man reading a book, and it struck
us. .”

“You, again?”

“It struck
me
that this is used regularly to head the book
page in
Cotswold Illustrated.
I sent out for a copy, which confirmed this. But nothing in the current issue seemed to match up with the printing on the cuttings, front
and
back. Then it further struck me that probably a back number of the
magazine had been used. A young detective-constable was
forthwith dispatched to the public library, and lo and behold
... every single clipping could be matched on both sides in last month’s issue.”

“So what did you do next—that is, apart from coming to look at my copy?”

“Next we asked the publishers of
Cotswold Illustrated,
a
firm in Gloucester, for a list
of postal subscribers and advertisers in the Steeple Haslop area—we had to dig someone out on Saturday afternoon to do that. And in addition, we asked
the village store for the names of those customers who have a regular order. As you might expect, the two lists together pro
duced a fairly up-market collection of people. We then set
about making discreet enquiries.”

“And what emerged?”

“Nothing conclusive, I’m afraid. But then, we hardly ex
pected that. Of those within the inner circle of the murder
case, so to speak, we had the following. First, Haslop Hall—
an annual postal subscription. When the magazine arrives
each month, it is placed on a table in the library and the previous issue removed. The manservant there ... what’s his name?”

“Grainger.”

“Yes, Grainger. He was a little coy about it, but eventually
admitted that he sends the magazine to his daughter in Canada each month, to keep her in touch with home.”

“So that copy is ruled out as a possible?”

“No, that’s the odd thing. Apparently the previous issue
wasn’t there when Grainger went to make the usual switch the
other day, and he didn’t like to make a point of asking the
family about it. He grumbled that he would have to fork out
his own money for another copy, when he next goes into
Gilchester, because he knows that his daughter is following a
series of articles they’re running on Cotswold villages.”

“So that means
...”
I burst out eagerly. But before I
could say another word, Neil cut across me, his tone severe.

“It means this, no more and no less ...
just possibly
the
Haslop Hall copy was the one used to compose the anony
mous letter. Beyond that, there’s nothing to go on.”

“Are you saying that all this investigating of yours hasn’t
really helped at all?”

“Tracy,” he reproached me, “you insist on expecting every
thing to be solved in one great blinding flash.”

“The jigsaw puzzle,” I muttered, reminding myself.

“Precisely.”

“So who else takes the magazine?” I asked. “Or aren’t you going to tell me?”

“Why not? There’s Tim Baxter ...”

“Oh no, you’re not still after him.”

“Baxter,” persisted Neil, “advertises regularly in
Cotswold
Illustrated,
like yourself. When he receives his voucher copy
each month, he glances at anything that interests him, cuts
out his advertisement for the file, and throws the rest away. That’s his story, anyway.”

“Don’t you believe it?” I demanded furiously.

Neil ignored that. “I thought the Ebborns worth checking
on—they were on the list. But when one of our chaps called
there yesterday, Mrs. Ebborn was able to produce last
month’s copy instantly. She knew exactly which cupboard to go to.”

“I can imagine. Grace is always very efficient.”

“Is she? Not so Mrs. Fairford, anyway. Apparently she was in a real dither and almost had to ransack the entire house be
fore she tracked down her copy. But she did, eventually, and
it was in pristine condition. I feel rather sorry for that
woman, being stuck there alone in that house with her hus
band somewhere in South America, and both her sons away
too. She’s let this whole business prey on her mind.” He
glanced at me questioningly. “I presume you know about the affair between her and Medway?”

I nodded, and said thoughtfully, “I’m quite certain that the
only reason Cynthia Fairford ever succumbed to Oliver was
because she was desperately lonely. If you want my opinion,
Neil, she was quite madly in love with Oliver.”