Design for Murder (25 page)

“You came back to the studio to collect your keys, didn’t you? I’d worked that much out, but I got the rest wrong.”

“I can’t blame you,” Tim said ruefully. “It was my own
fault. How did you guess, though, darling?”

“It came to me this evening, when you were dangling your
bunch of keys on your finger. I suddenly recalled where it was
that I’d seen that silver medallion of yours before
...
on
Oliver’s desk that morning. You covered up those keys with a sheet of paper, didn’t you, and then you pocketed them when
I went to fetch Sir Robert? And Neil told me on the phone
that you’d been seen coming out of Ursula Kemp’s place on
Sunday evening.”

Tim laughed dryly. “Next tune I think of giving someone a thank-you present, I’d better make sure they aren’t going to
be murdered the following day.”

“A thank-you present?”

“Well, a couple of weeks ago Ursula Kemp sent along some
customers of hers—a wealthy Canadian couple. She’d told
them about the vineyard, and they asked if they could see it. I
gave them a guided tour, at least an hour of my valuable
time, and they finished up ordering one miserable case of
wine. Still, Ursula meant well, and I’d had it on my mind ever
since that I ought to present her with a bottle as a goodwill gesture. I finally got around to it last Sunday night. After you and I packed it in early, I felt at loose ends and went along to
the Trout for a drink. On the way home I saw Ursula’s lights on, and I remembered that I’d got a bottle in the car left over from our picnic. So I dropped it in there and then.”

“I never for a moment thought of anything like that,” I said slowly. “When Neil told me that you’d called on Ursula, after
dark
...
it was all getting so complicated, I just jumped to
the worst conclusion. And then that business of your wiping my fingerprints off the statuette
...
I’d never been entirely
able to dismiss the idea that you were wiping off your own prints, Tim.” I turned to look at him. “Why
did
you wipe the statuette?”

He touched my cheek with his fingertip. “Do I need to an
swer that question?”

“But you didn’t feel this way about me then,” I persisted.

“Well, I’d recently been noticing you afresh, you might say,
and deciding that I very much liked what I saw. It was an impulse, I grant you, and I didn’t give a thought to the possible
consequences. I just knew that I didn’t want you dragged
through the mire because you were suspected of having killed that bastard, Oliver Medway.”

“You haven’t yet explained what it was that you and Oliver quarrelled about,” I reminded him.

Neil’s voice from the doorway said, “
I’ll
tell you that,
Tracy.” He came in and took his favorite sort of perch on
my Pembroke table.

“This was the story I was asked to believe,” he went on,
“when Tim came to HQ this evening and—very belatedly—
offered me a ‘true’ account of his movements on the morning
of Oliver Medway’s death. It didn’t help him much, I can tell
you, and he was still in one hell of a predicament. According
to Tim, while he was having a small job done on his car at the garage in the village, he found himself with an hour to
kill. So he decided to stroll across to the Coach House and
have a word with Medway about a matter he’d had in mind
for some time—sounding him out about his attitude towards
a long-term scheme for financing the vineyard.”

I glanced at Tim. “D’you mean, the sort of thing you were telling me about the other day?”

“Right—getting a long-term contract to tide me over if we
get a run of bad-weather years. I wanted to ensure that I’d have Oliver Medway’s backing, in view of the fact that he
was likely to inherit the Haslop Hall estate in the not too dis
tant future.”

“And how did Oliver react?” I asked.

Tim pulled a long face. “I’d chosen the worst possible moment, because he was in a thoroughly bloody mood. He must have got out of bed on the wrong side.”

Cynthia Fairford’s bed, as Neil knew. I could have ex
plained to Tim that Oliver and Cynthia had quarrelled before parting that morning, but this was something Neil hadn’t dis
covered, and I preferred to keep it that way.

“Medway saw at once how much it meant to me,” Tim
went on, “and it gave him a kick to play me like a fish on the end of a line. He said that I’d damn well have to wait and see until the time came, and that even if I negotiated a long-term agreement with his father, he’d rip it up if he were so inclined.
I’m afraid I lost my temper completely, and the two of us
ended up in a real shouting match. And then I walked out—
overlooking the fact that I’d put my car keys down on his
desk while we were talking.”

“The question I had to ask myself,” Neil said, “was
whether Tim had omitted the little detail of having first
bashed Medway over the head. If we were to accept his story,
then we also had to accept the fact that in the short space of time between his departing and your arriving, Tracy, someone else appeared on the scene and committed the murder.
Which took a bit of believing.”

“All the same,” I said, “that was exactly what
did
happen.
Ralph Ebborn killed Oliver because Oliver was blackmailing him.”

Neil scratched his eyebrow. “You have to remember,
Tracy, that we didn’t have a black mark against Ebborn at
that stage—or rather, we just had a single grey smudge on ac
count of his having covered up for Sebastian Medway. But
nothing against Ebborn on his own account.”

“Why, then,” I asked, “were you so ready to accept that it
was Ralph? What made you come charging out here with him
to find me?”

“Because of some further information that came through while Tim was in my office. It was from the people we’d had
checking up on Ursula Kemp’s past.”

“They had discovered that Ursula was really Ralph Eb
born’s wife, you mean?”

“So he told you about that, did he? I realised at once that
somehow or other he had to be behind these murders. It
would have been stretching improbability altogether too far,
if not. Besides which,” he added with a grin, “I was preju
diced in Tim’s favour and wanted to believe his implausible
story.”

Tim gave a short, incredulous laugh. “You could have
fooled me. I got a distinct impression that you’d like nothing better than to have me behind bars.”

“I admit,” said Neil, with a glance at me, “that I was
tempted to put you out of harm’s way. But I allowed my bet
ter nature to prevail. Come to think of it, though, I could
probably still dream up a minor charge or two that would get
you locked up for a spell. It’s not a bad idea.”

“Don’t you dare,” I said.

Neil sighed. “He’s had it too bloody easy, that man, him
and his showy Rugby tackle. At school, I remember, the girls on the sidelines used to swoon. My poor effort tonight didn’t
stand a chance...”

“I’m terribly grateful, Neil, truly.”

Neil made a most un-policemanlike remark about the value
he placed upon my gratitude. Then he became brisk.

“And now for pity’s sake, Tim Baxter, stop clutching the
girl’s hand as if you’re never going to let go, and allow me to
put some questions to her. I need a complete run-through of
everything Ralph Ebborn told you, Tracy. Every last detail.”

“And then,” I suggested sweetly, “you’ll send Detective Sergeant Willis round here to see if he can catch me out in a discrepancy?”

“Detective Sergeant Willis is already here,” retorted Neil
with a grin. “He can come in now and save me the trouble of doing my own paperwork.” He went to the door, and called,
“Dave, bring your notebook, will you? Now then, Tracy,
begin.”

* * * *

Afterwards, Neil faced the task of breaking the news to
Grace, and he was going to send for a female police officer to
accompany him. But when I said that he could leave the
whole job to me if he wished, he was grateful. Tim came with
me, and I was glad to have his support.

At The Larches, we found that Grace had just arrived back
from her excursion to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.
She answered the door blithely, thinking it must be Ralph
who’d gone to the pub without his latchkey.

The next few minutes were almost worse than the terrifying
ordeal I’d been through this evening. Not only did I have to
inform her that Ralph was dead. I also had to find words to
relate the horrific deeds of this man, who—she further needed
to be told—was never her lawful husband.

Up until this time, though fond of Grace, I had always
been rather tickled by her overdone gentility. Now I could
only admire her fortitude. She was stricken, of course, but I
felt confident that Grace would survive and come through.
She was a Murchison, and pride obliged her to hold her head
high.

Tim stayed a while, until I signalled for him to leave.

“I’ll persuade Grace to try and get some sleep now,” I whis
pered to him in the narrow hall, as I showed him out. “I’ll
ring you in the morning sometime. Okay?” He touched my
cheek with his lips, and was gone.

Grace did sleep, fitfully, and in the morning she faced a
visit from a woman police sergeant with the same admirable
fortitude. I took the chance to phone Tim, and told him that I’d be staying on at The Larches, as I felt that Grace needed
me.

Neil turned up in the afternoon. He spoke to Grace with
great kindness, and when she insisted on going to make a pot of tea, he murmured admiringly, “Now there’s a courageous woman, Tracy.”

Grace brought in the tea and some of her home-made shortbread, then tactfully left us alone. Guessing that there
were things for Neil to tell me, she said that she was going to lie down for a while.

“I’ve had a long session up at the Hall this morning,” he
began, as the door closed behind her. “I consider that you’re entitled to a few explanations, Tracy.”

“How did Sir Robert and Lady Medway take the news?” I
asked.

He gave me a humourless smile. “Don’t misunderstand me if I say—with relief. Those two people have been living in
hell. You see, each of them believed that the other one had
killed Oliver. You and I were on the right track, you know,
where the Medways were concerned. We couldn’t have
guessed, though, what it was that sparked off their quarrel
that morning.”

“What was it?”

“A phone conversation that Sir Robert overheard. Lady
Medway, I gathered, had carelessly left the door of her bou
doir slightly ajar while she talked on the phone to Oliver, and
she was ranting at him for standing her up the previous
night.”

“So she and Oliver really
were
... ?”

Neil nodded. “That information didn’t come easily, Tracy.
I couldn’t insist on Sir Robert dotting every last ‘i,’ so I’ve
had to make a few intelligent guesses to fill the gaps. Ap
parently Lady Medway has always been in the habit of walk
ing in the grounds or going for a drive at night, when she sup
posedly couldn’t sleep. Poor old devil, you can’t help feeling
sorry for him.”

Neil passed a hand across his face in a weary gesture.
“Anyway, after this flaming row with his wife, Sir Robert
goes stalking off round the estate, while she sets out riding.
Next thing, you turn up with the news that Oliver has been
murdered. To Lady Medway the explanation was crystal
clear. In order to protect her husband, she tried to cloud the
issue by sending us that anonymous letter about you.”

“So it was Diana Medway,” I said, not without a certain
degree of satisfaction. She must have dropped it in at the
Gilchester police station on one of those night drives of hers.

“It’s a pity about that,” remarked Neil. “It makes the situation rather messy. From our point of view, it’s the only ac
tionable thing that either of the Medways has done. The
woman must have been half demented, of course, seeing her
entire world crashing down around her.”

“And all the time Sir Robert was thinking that
she
had
killed Oliver?”

“That’s right—out of jealousy. From what he’d overheard
of the phone conversation, he surmised that Oliver had stood
her up the previous night in favour of another woman—the
woman being, as you and I know, Mrs. Cynthia Fairford.
From all I’ve learnt about Oliver Medway, I can imagine that
he greatly enjoyed playing his women off one against the
other.”

I too had learnt a lot about Oliver during the past week
since his death. That bastard Medway, Tim had called him,
and he’d been right, no question. Like a horde of other
women, I’d been taken in by Oliver’s devastating charm. And
in my case there had been a kind of hero-worship. I’d considered him a near-genius when it came to interior design. Deep down, though, perhaps I’d always recognised Oliver Medway for what he really was. Otherwise, wouldn’t I have succumbed
like all those other women?