Design for Murder (21 page)

I threw a sour look at Neil’s back as he continued prowl
ing.

“I’m beginning to learn something about your kid gloves. You use them on everyone, don’t you? Get them talking, let
drop a few trivial scraps of information to make them feel
that you’re taking them into your confidence
...
as I sup
pose you planned to do with Ursula. And I’m perfectly well
aware that it’s what you’re doing with me.”

He turned on me reproachfully. “With you I’ve done one
hell of a lot more than let drop a few trivial scraps of informa
tion.”

“But you still haven’t told me a single word more than you intended me to know, have you?”

“Would you expect me to? I’m a policeman, remember.”

“Yes, a policeman first, last, and all the time.”

He came nearer and gave me a long, steady look.

“Not
all
the time, Tracy,” he said softly. “And to prove my
point, let’s go out to lunch and find something else to talk
about.”

“Such as what?” I demanded suspiciously.

“Use your imagination. If we try very hard, I’ll bet we can think of something.”

We went to the Trout Inn again. Today, sitting opposite
one another at a table on the trellised patio, we tried their
Cotswold lamb cutlets with glazed carrots and fresh green
peas. Neil flirted with me the entire time ... lightly,
brightly, and wittily.

* * * *

When Neil drove me back to the studio I was expecting
him to continue on to Haslop Hall to interview Sebastian. But
as I settled to work, I realised that I hadn’t heard his car start
up. So I went through to the flat where I could look down
into the courtyard. Neil was still there, talking to Billy Moon.
Coming at it pretty heavy, too, judging from the way the old
chap’s shoulders were hunched.

What was he intent on finding out now? The comings and
goings up to the Coach House flat? Billy kept all sorts of odd
hours, preferring the company of his horses to going to the
pub or watching television in his cottage. Sometimes he’d be in the stable area quite late in the evening, pottering around,
or just sitting smoking his pipe. He had been known to spend the whole night there when a horse seemed a bit sickly.

Might he have spotted Lady Medway slipping in for a secret assignation with Oliver? If so, I wondered if anything
would ever persuade him to disclose the fact. Billy mistrusted
people. He talked to his horses, I suspected, far more than he had ever talked to a fellow human being.

Neil appeared to be delivering a lecture to Billy, one finger raised for emphasis. Then, as I watched, he strode to his car, got in and drove swiftly away.

Poor Billy looked so crushed that I felt an urge to try and cheer him up. I remembered that I hadn’t kept my promise to him. Returning to the studio, I unearthed the June issue of
Cotswold Illustrated
from beneath some sample boards I’d
been looking at earlier. I tore off the cover and trimmed the
photograph with scissors as Billy had done.

I found the old man in the tack room, sitting perched at his
high desk staring morosely into space.

“Billy, I almost forgot. Here’s the picture I promised you as a replacement.”

I laid it down in front of him on the sloping desktop, and he glanced at it without interest.

“Aye, miss.”

“Aren’t you feeling well?” I ventured. “You don’t look too
good.”

“I’m all right.” Then after a moment, he burst out, “Them coppers, they’re s’posed to be catching criminals. They ought
to leave honest folk to theirselves.”

“But if a serious crime has been committed,” I pointed out
gently, “the only way the police can ever arrive at the truth is
to piece together lots of bits of information from different
people. And to do that they have to ask lots of questions.”

“Well, they can’t get nothing from me,” he growled,
“‘cause I don’t know nothing. Like I keeps telling ‘em.”

“But you see,” I said patiently, “you might know something important without even realising it yourself. I mean, something you saw or heard that you hardly took any notice of at
the time.”

“Aye,” he said, “and before you knows where you are
they’d have you standing up in court as a witness or some
thing. No good never came of that sort of thing.”

“But it’s your
duty
to tell the police anything you know,” I said earnestly, feeling like a preacher. “Your public duty.”

Billy shook his head stubbornly. “I keeps meself to meself, miss
...
I always have and I always will. Besides,” he mum
bled, “I don’t know nothing, so there.”

But he did know something; I suddenly felt convinced of it.

“Think about it, Billy,” I begged him. “The awful thing
about murder is that the killer often strikes again if he’s not caught. You might be the one and only person who can solve
this case. I’m sure you wouldn’t want it on your conscience if somebody else was murdered, too.”

The phone began to ring as I walked back to the studio, and I
ran upstairs thinking—hoping—that it would be Tim. In
stead, it was a case of panic stations. At Myddleton Manor,
the contractor was having a problem with the kitchen
fitments. Somewhere in my drawings there was a discrepancy
of ten millimetres, and according to him it was throwing ev
erything off.

I drove over there at once, and quickly discovered the
source of the error. The plasterer had rendered the walls pre
cisely to my scale, not allowing for the thickness of the glazed
tiles that were fixed afterwards. With the conversion already running behind schedule, and the owners due back from their holiday in less than a week, I had to make some rapid adjust
ments.

By the time I was through, I had half a mind to pack it in
for the day and go straight home. What was the point of
pushing ahead with work when everything might easily col
lapse around my ears? The way things were developing,
Sir Robert’s grace and favour might prove to be worth less than nothing to me.

But a defeatist attitude, I told myself sternly, was no way to
run a successful business enterprise. Better to keep plodding on. Besides—and the thought made me speed a little faster
back to the studio—I had told Tim that I’d be working late
this evening. If he did ring or call around and found me not
there, I’d be caught out in a flat lie. I’d hate that to happen.

I longed for Tim to call so I could say I was sorry. But why
I was sorry, there was no way I could explain to him. How
could I possibly admit to Tim that I’d imagined him capable
of murder? And the fact that I no longer suspected him was
without logic, merely because Neil was off on a new line of
enquiry. But Neil had all along had various possibilities in mind—including myself in the role of Oliver’s murderer.
Nothing had really changed.

I sat down and started writing letters to architects and
builders in the county who might be in a position to put work
my way, explaining that I was continuing the Design Studio
on my own. The job was boringly repetitive, but at least it
had the merit of not calling for much mental effort. It began
to grow dark and I put the lights on, still plugging away at
the typewriter. I would just finish this one, I promised myself,
then I’d call a halt.

The sound of a car turning in through the archway made me pause and listen. My heartbeat quickened. It was Tim’s
car, surely? I had locked the outer door, and I ran downstairs to open it.

“Hallo, Tracy. Still slogging away?”

“I was just finishing, actually.”

He smiled his lopsided smile. “I timed it just right, didn’t I?
Let’s go and eat somewhere.”

“Oh ... yes, if you like.” Though I’d been longing for Tim to get in touch with me, now that he was here I felt
oddly shy. I injected a little more enthusiasm into my voice.
“That would be super.”

Warily, as if half-expecting a brush-off, he came forward
and slid his arms around me.

“You’re a strange girl, Tracy. I know that some women
turn on and off to keep a chap guessing, but...”

“I’m not playing games, Tim.”

“No,” he said gravely, “that’s exactly what I mean. With
you there’s more to it. So why not tell me?”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

For a moment he just held me, and there was a puzzled,
pained look in his eyes. Then swiftly he bent his head and
found my lips. I clung to him, melting against his lean body.

As he let me go, he said, “But you really must come clean.
There’s something that’s badly bothering you, and I expect to
be told what it is.”

It was like an icy blast on a summer’s day. I shivered, and drew back from him. Then I said in an even tone, “Why does
it surprise you that I’m knocked a bit sideways just now? It
was a terrific shock, finding Oliver dead like that. I daresay that it’ll be quite some time before I really get over it.”

“Is that honestly all that’s been making you so tense?”

“Isn’t it enough? And then there’s Ursula, too.”

“Ursula?” he questioned, with a quick frown. “Oliver I can understand—just about—but Ursula Kemp was no more than an acquaintance. Lots of people get killed in road accidents. You’ve no more reason to be upset over her than anyone else, have you?”

“I suppose not, but...”

“But nothing.” There was a bite in his voice as he went on,
“I’m trying to help you snap out of this mood, Tracy. Whatever it is you’ve got on your mind, you’d better tell me about it.”

“There isn’t anything,” I said desperately. “I’m just feeling a bit low, that’s all.”

Tim started to object again, but the phone rang.

“Who would that be?” he asked, annoyed at the interruption.

“I’ve no idea.” I scooped up the phone and gave my num
ber.

“Tracy.” It was Neil’s voice. “What a relief to have caught
you. I tried to reach you at home, and when I couldn’t I was a bit anxious.”

“Anxious, Neil?”

“Damned worried, in fact. I take it that you’re alone at the
moment?”

“Er ... yes,” I said, without quite understanding why.
“What’s the problem?”

“Look, I know this will seem strange to you, but I want
you to promise me something. If Tim Baxter gets in touch with you in the next half hour or so and wants you to meet him—don’t. And don’t let him in if he calls round.”

I stole a glance at Tim. He looked puzzled, but clearly
hadn’t heard Neil’s actual words. Pressing the phone closer to my ear, I said, “What’s this all about, Neil?”

“I’ll explain later.”

“No, now,” I insisted. “I want to know.”

He gave an exasperated sigh. “All right, but I haven’t much
time. So don’t ask questions, and don’t argue. I’ve just had
that old chap Billy Moon down at the station ...”

“Billy Moon? But what’s he got to do with ...?”

“I decided that Billy knew more than he was telling and that I’d have to squeeze it out of him. And then, when I got him here, he started talking without any trouble at all
...
said he’d already decided that he should. Apparently it was
you who made him see sense.”

“What did he tell you?” I asked nervously.

“Something very interesting—that Tim Baxter had visited the studio on the morning Oliver Medway was killed. Earlier,
that is, than when he burst in on you. To be precise, at
eleven-thirty. It seems that Baxter arrived in the courtyard on
foot, which was odd in itself, and Billy happened to spot him through the window of the tack room. He didn’t think anything of it, though. But a few minutes later he was passing the
studio stairs carrying a bucket and he heard raised voices
coming from above. He couldn’t make out what it was all
about, but he said that Medway and Baxter were really shouting at each other.”

I was too shocked to speak. Each pulse seemed to thud in
my ears like the beat of a drum.

“Are you still there, Tracy?”

“Yes,” I whispered hoarsely. “I’m here.”

Glancing up, I met Tim’s eyes and looked away quickly. How much had he deciphered of this? Had he guessed what
was being said ... from the tone of Neil’s voice, from my own curious responses? But there was no hint of under
standing in his expression, only puzzlement. I clamped the
phone even closer to my ear as Neil went on speaking.

“It looks very black for Baxter,” he was saying. “I’ve al
ways been suspicious of the reason he gave me for visiting the
studio that morning, and that business about wiping your
prints off the statuette took a lot of swallowing, too. Besides
he was seen coming away from Ursula Kemp’s place on Sun
day, after dark.”

“You ... you didn’t tell me that,” I stammered.

“I didn’t tell you everything, Tracy—especially about
Baxter, knowing that you were seeing so much of him. A
police car is on its way to the vineyard to pick Baxter up right
now. So if he happens to phone you, for God’s sake watch what you say. He mustn’t get the slightest hint that we’re on to him. Okay?”