Design for Murder (3 page)

Neil seized on my slight hesitation. “Has he in fact ever
come before?”

“Oh yes.” He had done once, I remembered. Not to see
Oliver or me, though, but because someone in the estate office
had told him that he’d find the agent, Ralph Ebborn, with us.

“How did Baxter and Medway get on with each other?”
asked Neil. “Were they friends?”

“Not exactly friends,” I hedged.

“What would you call them, then?”

“Well, acquaintances, I guess. I suppose you know that
Tim runs a small vineyard here on the estate?”

“So I’d heard.” Neil made a few more notes, then sat back
in his chair. “That’s all you can tell me, then? There’s noth
ing you’d like to add at this stage?”

“How do you mean?”

His frown contradicted his patient tone. “Did you happen
to touch anything in the studio this morning? The body, per
haps?”

I shivered slightly. “I did just touch Oliver’s cheek.”

“Why did you do that?”

“To see if he was still alive, I suppose. I hardly know what
I thought, when I found him like that. It was such a shock.
The light wasn’t very good, and I hadn’t properly seen the
...
the terrible wound at the back of his head.”

That all went down in the notepad.

“It rather looks,” he said, “as if Mr. Medway was killed
only minutes before you arrived. Yet you saw or heard nothing that might help us?”

I flushed as I suddenly remembered what I’d intended to report at once. “As a matter of fact, just as I was getting out of my car, I did hear something
...”

“Describe the sound. Where did it come from, which direction?”

“I didn’t really think about it at the time, but it was like
someone hurrying down the other staircase.”

“The one that goes directly down from this flat?”

“Yes.”

“But that staircase leads into the courtyard, too,” he observed. “So wouldn’t you have seen whoever it was as they emerged from the door?”

“I would already have been inside by then, coming up the stairs to the studio.”

Neil raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t feel there was any
need to investigate?”

“No, why should I have? I just thought that it was someone
who’d been to see Oliver.”

“A man or a woman, would you say from the footsteps?”

I thought for a moment. “Honestly, I’ve no idea.”

“That’s a pity. Now, I’d like you to tell me about the
bronze statuette. I assume it belonged to the victim?”

“Yes. Oliver used to keep it on top of those bookshelves by the drawing table.”

“A rather bizarre object to have on open view, isn’t it?”

Actually, I agreed. Oliver had bought the thing a couple of months ago from the bric-a-brac and souvenir shop in the village, and he’d chosen to display it in the most prominent position he could find. I’d told him it was childish to get such perverse pleasure out of shocking people. But Oliver had only
laughed, and asked how anybody could object to such a
splendid example of primitive art.

“It was a bit of harmless amusement, that’s all.”

This time Neil raised just one eyebrow, otherwise his
squarish face remained maddeningly impassive.

“Did you touch the statuette at all?”

That jolted me, and I parried, “Whatever makes you think
I might have done?”

“We’ve checked it for fingerprints and there aren’t any. It’s been wiped clean.”

I remembered Tim’s comment, and said, “Wouldn’t the
murderer have been careful to wipe it?”

“That’s what I’m trying to establish. The position of the bloodstains it left on the carpet indicates that it was picked up from the floor more than once.”

“Oh.”

“So why not tell me?” he suggested in a suddenly gentle
voice.

“As a matter of fact I did pick it up,” I admitted uneasily. “I don’t know why ... just instinct, I suppose. But I realised I shouldn’t have done so the moment it was in my hand, and dropped it again. Then I thought that my fingerprints would
only confuse the issue, so I wiped them off.”

“What with?”

I stared at him. “Er
...
my handkerchief.”

“Show it to me, please.”

Reluctantly, I opened my shoulderbag. The only hanky in
there was still smooth and folded as I’d taken it from the
drawer this morning, and I tried to crumple it a bit as I drew
it out.

Neil didn’t even bother to take it from me. He merely
remarked dryly, “Try again, Miss Yorke.”

“It
...
it must have been something else, I suppose.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t someone else? Someone else who
did the wiping?”

I was too confused to answer, and after a moment Neil
urged me, “Don’t make it worse than you’ve already done. It
was Baxter, wasn’t it? He’s the only person who could have
wiped the statuette
after
you picked it up, if it wasn’t you
yourself.”

I shrugged. “Why ask me then, if you already know the an
swer?”

“Did you see Baxter do it?”

“Of course.”

“You didn’t try to stop him?”

“He’d done it before I properly realised. Look,” I rushed
on, “Tim wasn’t thinking, that’s all. He didn’t mean any harm,
he was just trying to protect me from any misunderstanding
on the part of the police.”

Neil’s grey eyes challenged me. “What is your relationship
with Baxter?”

“There isn’t a relationship,” I said in a stony voice. “I know
Tim about as well—or as little—as I know you.”

“Hasn’t the possibility occurred to you,” Neil enquired imperturbably, “that it might have been someone else’s prints he
was trying to remove from the weapon? His own, for in
stance?”

I felt the cold hand of fear press down on me and I found
myself blustering in Tim’s defence.

“Look, it’s Tim Baxter we’re talking about. You’ve known
him most of your life. You went to school together, re
member? And now you’re making these foul sugges
tions ...”

“I’m only asking questions.”

“Loaded questions.”

“It seems they need to be, to get you to admit the truth,” he
said, still unruffled. “Now there’s one other thing, Miss
Yorke. I want you to give me a run-down of your movements
in Cheltenham this morning. What time did you leave
home?”

Struggling to keep my patience, I said, “It must have been just after nine. It was nine-fifteen when I parked in my usual spot behind the Queen’s Hotel.”

“And then where? In detail, please.”

 
“The first thing I did was to call in at an antique dealer’s, Morrison and Fletcher, to look at a Bohemian crystal chandelier that Mr. Fletcher thought might interest us for a room Oliver and I are replanning—
were
replanning,” I amended.
“Anyway, the instant I saw the chandelier I knew it wasn’t right. But I stopped and chatted a bit with Mr. Fletcher, and
he offered me a cup of coffee. I suppose I left him soon after
ten.”

Writing, Neil gestured for me to continue. It all seemed
rather pointless to me. If I was a suspect, surely the only relevant factor was the time at which I left my last port of
call.

“I had an appointment at ten-thirty with an importer of
Italian silk brocades,” I went on, “and ...”

“Where was that?” he cut in.

I gave the address, and Neil made a calculating face.

“It wouldn’t have taken you nearly half an hour to get
there from Morrison and Fletcher’s, even on foot.”

“On the way I called in at the jeweller’s to leave my watch for repair,” I explained. “Havillands.”

“I see. Go on.”

“Well, I suppose I spent half an hour or so looking at the
selection of brocades, and picking out a few samples to show the client.”

“That brings you to about eleven o’clock.”

“I spent a little while window shopping along the Promenade.”

“So what time did you finally leave Cheltenham?”

“I don’t really know. But it must have been about a
quarter-to-twelve, because it was twelve-fifteen when I turned
in at the main gates here.”

“How do you know that so precisely, without your watch?”

“I heard a time check on the radio.”

“What else did you hear? What was the programme?”

I had to think before I remembered. “Oh yes, there was a report from America about the heat wave.”

Neil took it all down. Then he got to his feet.

“That’s all for the moment, Miss Yorke. Please wait in the
other room. I may want to see you again after I’ve talked to
the others.”

Holding the door for me, he told the constable to fetch Mr.
Baxter. I had no time to do more than give Tim a warning
glance as he was called out of the lounge and I went back in
...
a warning he probably couldn’t interpret. I felt guilty, as
if I’d somehow betrayed him by admitting that he’d wiped the
statuette. And yet
...
I was hopelessly confused about Tim Baxter.

Lady Medway had joined her husband. She’d been riding
in the rain, and was less than her usual immaculate self. I
later discovered that she had seen the police cars when returning her horse to the stables, and had learned about Oliver
then. More than twenty years younger than her husband,
Diana Medway was nearly forty, but this was the first time I’d
seen her look anything like her age. There was a haunted ex
pression in her violet-blue eyes, and her creamy complexion looked sallow now.

“What did the police inspector want to know?” she asked brusquely as the door closed behind Tim.

I said with a shrug, “Oh, just preliminary questions—about how I found Oliver and so on.”

She shuddered. “They brought me in through the flat so that I shouldn’t need to see the body.”

Sir Robert glanced up and muttered something incoherent. It seemed to me that his wife was being curiously insensitive
to his feelings. Surely there was some kind of comfort that
Lady Medway could offer her husband? But they sat far apart on the sofa, two separate individuals.  There almost seemed a
hostility between them.

“Have the police formed any theories yet?” she continued. “About who can have done it?”

I thrust aside Neil’s obvious suspicions—and my own—
about Tim, and shook my head. “It’s too soon for that, I
imagine. They’ll keep an open mind until they’ve finished
questioning everyone who’s even remotely connected with
Oliver.”

Diana Medway glanced swiftly at her husband and I saw a
look flash between them. But it was gone too quickly for me
to read its meaning. Then she turned to me again.

“They won’t want to question
me,
surely,” she protested in an offended voice. “It’s so degrading. What do they think I
could possibly tell them?”

“The police are always very thorough in a murder case,
Lady Medway, they have to be. I think you should be pre
pared to be questioned.”

She looked away, staring with unfocussed eyes at the
polished-copper fire canopy, while her slender fingers nerv
ously pinched up the damp fabric of her riding breeches into
tiny creases. The three of us lapsed into an uneasy silence,
like patients in a doctor’s waiting room.

Tim didn’t return to the lounge. We only knew that he had
left when Neil himself opened the door and asked if Sir Rob
ert would give him a few minutes. He then glanced at me.

“I don’t think we need keep you here any longer, Miss
Yorke. You’ll want to have some lunch, no doubt. So if you’ll
let P.C. Bailey take your fingerprints, you’re free to go. I’ll
be in touch with you again later.”

I hesitated for a moment when the two men had gone out,
unsure whether I ought to leave Lady Medway on her own.
But I doubted that she had any desire for my company. We’d never liked each other. Although she’d only been a minor ac
tress before she became Sir Robert’s third wife, that didn’t
stop her from treating me as an insignificant person.

On the way out I gave them my fingerprints—a messy
business—then left the Coach House by the staircase from
the flat. By now the courtyard was filled with police vehicles.
I had to manoeuvre my Fiesta back and forth to extricate it
from the tangle.

I felt at a bit of a loss. I still couldn’t quite grasp the fact
that Oliver, who’d always lived life right up to the hilt, was
dead.

The prospect of going home to an empty cottage and being alone with my thoughts was decidedly unappealing. I consid
ered going to the Trout Inn for a ploughman’s lunch, or the
cafe on the Gilchester Road for a hot snack. But news of the murder would have got around by now, and I was afraid that
I’d be the centre of morbid curiosity. Anyway, I wasn’t really
hungry and I badly wanted to know the outcome of Tim’s in
terview with Neil. The way Tim had beetled off straight away suggested that he wasn’t any too pleased with me.

So instead of leaving the Haslop Hall grounds by the main
gates, I swung round and headed for the exit by the Home
Farm. Turning left, I took the lane which skirted the rounded
hillock known locally as the Pudding Basin.