Design for Murder (2 page)

Sir Robert halted so abruptly that I almost bumped into
him.

“I’ve always dreaded something like this,” he muttered, but I knew he was speaking more to himself than to me. “I’ve always feared that Oliver would come to a bad end.”

“It was scarcely Oliver’s fault if he surprised a thief ...”
These were meant as soothing words, spoken without
thought. I didn’t believe in any thief. I just wanted, if I could, to lessen Sir Robert’s pain.

The police hadn’t wasted any time getting here. One of
their cars was drawn up in the courtyard, and a uniformed
constable was leaning through the open door talking on the
radio. As we approached, another car drove in and I recognised the driver.

Neil Grant was hardly more than an acquaintance nowa
days, but at one time we’d belonged to the same crowd of
young people and I’d known him fairly well. At thirty, he was
already something of a high flyer in the police force.

Seeing Neil, the uniformed constable broke off his radio
conversation, and said, “Through that door, sir, and up the
stairs. You’ll find P.C
.
Bailey there.”

“Right, Bill.” Neil flickered me a glance of acknowl
edgment but spoke first to Sir Robert. “I’m Detective Inspec
tor Grant, sir, stationed at Gilchester. Er ... this is a dread
ful business. Have you just arrived on the scene yourself, sir?”

“That’s right. Miss, er ...” Sir Robert stared at me, my
name momentarily escaping him.

“Miss Yorke,” Neil prompted.

“Yes, Miss Yorke. She came to the Hall to tell me what
had happened. I came straight over, of course.”

Neil nodded. “Perhaps we’d better go inside.”

He led the way up the narrow staircase. Another constable was standing beside Oliver’s body writing in his notebook. Tim was near the window, his hands thrust into the pockets
of his denim jacket.

“The doctor’s on his way, sir,” the constable said.

“Good.” Neil acknowledged Tim with a brief nod, then
turned to me. “It was you who discovered the body, I under
stand?”

“That’s right.” The sickening memory of that first awful
moment caught me in the throat.

“Not the two of you together?”

“No,” said Tim. “I arrived a minute or two after Tracy.”

“And what tune was this exactly?”

“I’m not sure of the exact time,” I said. “But it was just a minute or so before we phoned for you.”

“Right. The call came through at twelve twenty-seven precisely, so you made the discovery between twelve-twenty and twelve-twenty-five. Would that be a correct estimate?”

“I should think so.”

With a brisk nod, Neil turned his attention to the body on the floor. He crouched down to study the wound in the back
of Oliver’s head. Not wanting to look myself, I watched Sir
Robert instead. He had put his hands to his face and was
rocking backwards and forwards. I was afraid that he might faint, and I stepped a little closer, ready to support him.

“I think you should sit down, sir,” said Neil, noticing. “In
another room, perhaps?” He glanced in my direction. “I ex
pect you know your way around here. Could you find some
where comfortable for Sir Robert to wait? And you”—his gesture included Tim—“must hang around, too. I’ll need to
talk to each of you in a few minutes.”

Tim went towards the inner door that led into the flat,
holding it open while I persuaded Sir Robert to come with
me. I led him along the corridor, where new windows over
looking the courtyard had been cut in the old stone walls of the Coach House, and into Oliver’s big lounge, where I sat
him down on the sofa. Then I went to the drinks cupboard
and poured him a measure of brandy, glancing enquiringly at
Tim.

“Not for me,” he said, shaking his head.

It was quiet in here, and deeply luxurious. Oliver had always been boldly imaginative with colour, and his most dar
ing combinations invariably seemed to work. Here he had
used peach walls, a burnt-orange shag-pile carpet, and the up
holstery and window drapes were in swirling designs of violet
and green. There were bright cushions scattered around,
small glass-topped tables, and a number of modern paintings.
The wide windows gave a view across the grounds of Haslop
Hall towards the trout stream that meandered through the
valley bottom. Beyond the perimeter wall, the wooded Cots
wold landscape undulated into the misty distance.

Tim was pacing restlessly, surveying the room with a con
tempt he didn’t trouble to conceal. Very faintly, we could
hear a murmur of voices coming from the studio. The police
doctor would have arrived, I guessed, and a photographer
and all the other specialists needed at the scene of a murder. I had heard at least five more cars arriving in the courtyard.

Though I encouraged Sir Robert to drink the brandy, it did
nothing to restore his colour. He seemed on the verge of col
lapse, and I was scared that he might suffer another heart at
tack at any moment. I wished it were possible to make this
less of an ordeal for him, but what could I say? What could I do? I sat beside him on the sofa and waited helplessly. Tim continued to prowl about, sometimes stopping to stare out of
the window. Water draining off the roof was gurgling round a
bend in the guttering, and every now and then a gust of wind spattered droplets against the glass panes.

Presently there came sounds of activity in the corridor out
side. Probably they were searching the flat for signs of an intruder. Sir Robert seemed not to have heard, but Tim and I
glanced expectantly at the heavy mahogany door, whose
panels were carved in a riotous tumble of cupids. Oliver had acquired this door in payment of some obscure debt when a house built as a love-nest by a rich Victorian roué was being
demolished. I watched the gilt handle dip slowly, and the
door opened to reveal P.C. Bailey.

“Er, excuse me, Miss Yorke, but Detective Inspector Grant would be
obliged if you’d step along to see him. He’s in the dining
room.”

As I rose to my feet I glanced anxiously at the crumpled
figure of Sir Robert. I heard Tim say gruffly in answer to the
unspoken doubt in my mind, “I’ll be here with him, Tracy. Don’t worry.”

Neil Grant was alone in the dining room. He had established
himself in the carver’s chair at the head of the oval mahogany
table, a large notepad set out in front of him. He rose as I was shown in, and motioned me to the chair opposite him where I
faced the light from the window.

“How is Sir Robert taking it?” he enquired.

“As you would expect for someone with a bad heart. It’s
been a terrible shock.”

“I’ll try not to keep him too long,” Neil said, as he sat
down again and took out a pen, “but I wanted to talk to you
first. I imagine you were as close to Oliver Medway as anybody.”

There was a suggestion in his tone that I didn’t like, and I
reacted sharply. “Just what do you mean by that?”

Neil regarded me blandly, his sandy eyebrows raised. “You
were his assistant, weren’t you? Working alongside him day
after day, you must have come to know the man pretty well.”

“I suppose that’s true,” I acknowledged, only partly
mollified.

“Right. Well now, there is no obvious sign that a search
was made—either of the body itself or of the premises. So can we, for the moment, rule out theft as a motive for the killing?
You haven’t noticed anything missing?”

“No, nothing is missing as far as I can see. At least, not in the studio. I can’t really say about here in the flat.” I glanced
around me quickly. “It doesn’t look as if anything’s been
stolen, and the lounge seemed the same as usual when I was
in there just now.”

“You’re familiar with the flat, are you?” he said, making a
few rapid notes in shorthand.

“Well, yes. Oliver never tried to keep the studio entirely
separate from his flat, so I’ve been in here quite often. Most
days, though, I only came through to make coffee in the
kitchen, and to use the bathroom.”

“I see.” Neil nodded. “Can you think of anything that has occurred recently, anything at all, that might help throw light on Oliver Medway’s death?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Was he behaving in any way out of character? Did he ap
pear to be worried or anxious lately? Had he been involved in
any quarrels or disputes?”

I didn’t quite know what to say. Oliver had carried a chip
on his shoulder for being denied what he regarded as his
birthright. He thought that by now his father should have al
lowed him a major share in managing the estate, and he bit
terly resented the fact that Sir Robert, despite his ill health,
still insisted on absolute autonomy. But a reasonably satis
factory
modus vivendi
seemed to have been found. At least
their relationship wasn’t actively hostile.

There were Oliver’s complicated involvements with women,
of course. Mrs. Cynthia Fairford was the latest, but as far as I
knew they were still at the stage of sweetness and light. The
commission we’d recently landed for redoing the drawing
room of her home was largely an excuse for Oliver to make frequent and protracted calls at the Old Rectory. When I’d
pointed this out to him, he’d grinned back unashamedly.
“Nice for me, good for business.” There was a lot about Oliver
that I disapproved of, but he never gave his clients short
change. Although he’d had no formal training in interior
design, he’d had a flare for it. And in the fifteen months I’d
been working with
him
I’d learnt an enormous amount.

I answered Neil’s question decisively. “No, I can’t think of anything significant. Oliver has been acting much the same as
always. He was in a perfectly cheerful mood when I last saw
him.”

“Which was when?”

“Yesterday evening, about six-thirty. I was staying a bit late—working on an estimate—but Oliver had a date and he
went through to the flat to get ready.”

“Do you know who his date was with?”

“No, he didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask. Oliver went out al
most every evening.”

Neil’s grey eyes flickered. “With you, sometimes?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” I said, letting
him
see how much
I resented his tone. “Once in a while Oliver would take me
out to dinner.”

“How often is once in a while?”

I shrugged. “Maybe every couple of months.”

“You didn’t go out with him more often?”

“No. Well, not in the evenings.”

“When else, then?” he persisted.

“We often went to see clients together, of course,” I said irritably. “Apart from that, I used to ride with Oliver.”

“Ride with him?”

“Horses. Sir Robert still keeps a few in the stables here,
and they have to be exercised. So Oliver and I often used to
go out for an hour or so when we’d finished work for the
day.”

“And afterwards?”

“Afterwards,” I said coldly, “I would go home, and Oliver
would go out wherever it was he was going that evening.”

For several moments Neil remained silent while he brought his shorthand notes up to date. When he next spoke it was on a new tack, and his tone was so chillingly formal that it shook
me.

“Now, Miss Yorke, I want you to tell me exactly what happened this morning. How you came to discover Oliver
Medway’s body.”

Miss Yorke? Okay, so Neil Grant and I had never been re
ally close friends, but in the days before I’d gone off to art
school in London to study design I’d often met up with him at
discos, in coffee bars, at the Gilchester Lido in the summer,
and cosy pubs on a winter evening.

“I spent most of the morning in Cheltenham,” I began,
controlling my annoyance. “On business. I went there straight
from home.”

“You still live at your aunt’s place in the village?” he
asked.

“That’s right, Honeysuckle Cottage in Millpond Lane. Aunt Verity left it to me when she died eighteen months
ago.”

Neil nodded.

“I had arranged to join Oliver at the studio at about eleven-
thirty. But I was behind schedule and didn’t arrive until a
quarter past twelve.”

“What delayed you?”

“I don’t really know. I mean, I had several things to do and the time just slipped by. When I did get here I found Oliver
exactly as you’ve seen.”

“So what did you do then?”

“Well, as we explained to you in the studio, Tim Baxter turned up a minute or two later. He dialled 999 while I went over to the Hall to tell Sir Robert.”

“You say that Baxter ‘turned up.’ Were you expecting him?”

“No.”

“Why had he come, then?”

“He didn’t get around to telling me. I suggest that you ask
Tim yourself.”

“Oh, I will. Does he often drop in at your studio?”

“No,” I said, and added, “not often.”