Design for Murder (4 page)

A rustic sign swinging on a chain marked the entrance to Tim’s vineyard, Cotswold Vintage. This was a thirty-acre site
of south-sloping land which he had claimed (and he seemed to be proving himself correct) would be absolutely ideal for
the cultivation of wine grapes.

I turned in and followed a rising, muddy track, on either
side of which was row after dead-straight row of vines, all neatly trained on support wires. Bearing to the left, I drove
past some new winery buildings and in a moment reached the
comfortable, ranch-style bungalow. Fortunately for Tim, the
bungalow had become vacant just about the time he was
granted use of the vineyard land by Sir Robert. It had been
occupied by Ralph Ebborn and his wife. They had decided
that the bungalow which went with his job as agent was too isolated, and instead had bought a Queen Anne house in the
village.

It was raining too hard by now for anyone to be working
outside, and there was no sign of Tim or his two assistants.
But when I rang the bell, Tim came to the door.

“Oh, it’s you,” he greeted me ungraciously.

“Why did you shoot off like that without so much as a
word?” I demanded. “I was wondering how things went for
you with Neil Grant.”

“As if you didn’t know.” But at least he stood aside to let me in out of the rain.

“Look,” I said, “if you’re thinking that I told Neil about
you wiping off my fingerprints, you’re dead wrong. What I
told him was that I’d done it myself. But he somehow guessed
that it wasn’t me and insisted on seeing my handkerchief. So
then he figured out that it must have been you. I’m sorry, but
there it is.”

Tim’s expression softened marginally, and he turned and led the way to the kitchen. There was a heavenly aroma of beef
casserole, and it was clear that I’d caught him just as he was
serving up his belated lunch. A table in the window was
spread with a checked cloth and all was laid ready.

“Don’t worry, I won’t stay a moment,” I said apolo
getically, and added, “You certainly do yourself well.”

He grinned wryly. “If it was left to me, I’d have bread and
cheese. This is Mavis Price’s doing ... you know, I expect, that her husband, George, works here at the vineyard? So Mavis comes in and does for me each morning, and to her mind that includes providing a good hot nourishing midday
meal for the poor helpless bachelor.”

“Very cosy.”

“You’d better have some too,” Tim said, taking off the cas
serole lid and prodding the contents with a spoon. “There’s
plenty. She always makes enough for a troop of Boy Scouts.”

I shook my head. “No thanks.”

“You’ve eaten already?”

“No, but I’m not hungry.” That wasn’t true anymore,
though. The tantalising aroma had restored my appetite. For
tunately, Tim brushed my refusal aside.

“Don’t be silly, Tracy, you’ve got to eat,” he said, and im
mediately started to lay up a second place.

So I sat down, murmuring thanks. Tim poured out another
large glass of his own product—the dry, tangy white wine
that was beginning to make a name for itself. I’d tasted it
once or twice before, and found it very good.

“Well, what did Neil Grant have to say to you?” I asked, as
we both dug into our food.

“He grilled me as though he was the F.B.I, and I was sus
pect number one.”

With very good reason, I thought unhappily. But I didn’t
believe it,
couldn’t
believe it. Would I be sitting here with
Tim, calmly sharing his lunch, if I seriously considered it possible that he was a murderer? This might have been a ridicu
lous, backwards kind of logic, but I wanted to trust my in
stincts about Tim.

“Neil made
me
feel like that, too,” I said, with an attempt
at a smile. “Perhaps it’s his usual technique. Perhaps it’ll be
the same for everyone else he interviews.”

“Think so?” Tim moodily toyed with his glass, swishing the
pale wine around. “He won’t be short of suspects, I’m sure.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Wouldn’t you agree that Oliver Medway was the sort of
man who made enemies?”

“Oh, I don’t know. With most people he was charming.”

“With women, you mean. But he could be a good deal less than charming when it came to men. He had a vicious way of
putting people down, with that bloody superior manner of
his.”

I couldn’t honestly refute that. On a couple of occasions
recently I’d felt embarrassed by Oliver’s behaviour. Once,
when an order of silk-flock wallpaper had been delivered a
roll short and he’d phoned the supplier to complain, and then
at a client’s house, when an electrician had misread his wiring
instructions. Each time Oliver was witheringly sarcastic, not
content with an apology and a promise to put the matter right
forthwith. Trivial errors, but he’d reacted out of all propor
tion. And only last week he had roasted Billy Moon, the sta
ble-hand, simply because the old man had for once forgotten
to get the horses saddled up for our ride.

Tim was continuing, “And don’t forget, Tracy, that
charmers have a way of leaving a trail of wreckage in their wake. How many women around these parts must have come to hate Oliver Medway? Not to mention all the husbands and jealous boyfriends. How many of them must have felt like having a go at him?”

“But surely not to the extent of killing him?”

“It doesn’t have to have been premeditated murder,” Tim
argued. “Can’t you imagine it
...
a man goes to the Coach
House intending to warn Medway off, but gets provoked by that sneering air of superiority he put on. My God, it would
be the easiest thing in the world to snatch up the nearest
heavy object and bash him with it.”

“If you’re right,” I said, “the police won’t be long in finding
out who did it.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked quickly.

“Well, if it was a sudden fit of rage, the killer probably
won’t have covered his tracks any too well. In fact,” I
couldn’t help adding, “by now they might already have dis
covered who it was, if you hadn’t wiped off those finger
prints.”

The angry look on Tim’s face made me wish I hadn’t been so blunt, but then he shrugged and said, “I suppose it was a damn fool thing to do. It seemed like a good idea at the time,
though.”

“Why?” I demanded, but not too aggressively.

Tim looked down at his plate, pushing the food around
with his fork.

“It’s hard to say now. I suppose I thought of all the probing
questions you’d have to face about your relationship with Medway. It seemed simpler all round just to get rid of your fingerprints.”

Damn him, Tim seemed to take it for granted that I’d been sleeping with Oliver, just as Neil Grant had—and probably everyone else in the entire neighbourhood. Would he ever be
lieve me if I told him the truth, that the “relationship” had
been purely platonic?

“Supposing it really was me who killed Oliver?” I said,
flinging it out as a challenge.

His glance shot up to meet mine questioningly. Then he
said slowly, “But it wasn’t, Tracy.”

“How can you be so positive?” There was only one answer to that. Tim could only know for certain that I was innocent
if he himself had killed Oliver.

Perhaps Tim had seen that, too. He said—evasively, it
seemed to me “I just don’t believe that you’d be capable of doing a thing like that, Tracy.”

“I wish the police shared your touching faith in me.”

We continued eating in silence for a bit. Then Tim asked
abruptly, “Will you keep the Design Studio going?”

“I don’t see how I can,” I said. “I couldn’t expect Sir Rob
ert to let me have the Coach House premises virtually rent
free, as he did for Oliver. Besides, what would I do for
money? You have to be prepared to allow very long credit in this sort of business. Clients expect it.

“And I’m not really sure that I’ve got the necessary experience yet. It was different for Oliver. He was untrained, but his imagination sometimes used to leave me gasping with admiration.”

“So what exactly was your role in the set-up?”

“Well, it was up to me to translate Oliver’s brilliant but nebulous ideas into reality. The reason I got this job was Sir Robert’s insistence, before he agreed to finance the enterprise, that Oliver engage an assistant level-headed enough to keep his feet in contact with the ground.”

“And you,” Tim enquired, “are level-headed?”

“I like to think so.”

“Was it level-headed to pick up that statuette?”

I put my fork down. “I thought we’d finished with that subject.”

“I’m sorry,” he said mildly. “Have some more wine.”

“No, I’d better be going. Thanks for the meal.”

“Won’t you at least have some coffee?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I said, and stood up.

Tim followed me to the door. “I’ll see you, Tracy?”

“Yes, I’ll be around ... for a while, at least.”

The rain clouds had cleared away in the night and the sunny morning seemed to mock my mood. I couldn’t banish the
feeling of unreality I’d woken with after a night of bad
dreams, the peculiar feeling of numbness. Even now, a part
of me still couldn’t accept the fact that Oliver was dead.

In a way, I had been closer to Oliver since Aunt Verity
died than I’d been to anybody. At least, he’d played a bigger part in my life than anyone else. So it was no wonder that his
death left me feeling bereft. He had the kind of personality
that was intoxicating. Every job we undertook he charged at head-on (though his enthusiasm never lasted for very long),
and somehow he managed to make every working day seem
exciting.

To add to my grief, I had to face the fact that I was now
without a job.

While I was having breakfast the phone rang several times,
as it had done all last evening. Friends of my schooldays
whom I’d picked up with again after coming back to Steeple
Haslop were calling to express their sympathy. And naturally
—I didn’t really blame them—they wanted to discuss the details of the murder. It was the biggest thing to have happened
in this sleepy corner of the world for an age. There were also two or three calls from newspaper reporters, but to these I gave
short shrift.

After I’d cleared the dishes I retreated to the walled back garden, and began in a desultory way to nip off a few dead
heads of marigolds and sweet williams. Then I sat on the
swing that hung from a bough of the old pear tree.

Wandering on again, I found myself at the door of Aunt Verity’s workshop, a spacious, stone-walled building she had
designed herself. Light flooded in through big windows set
high in the walls on three sides, and there was a skylight over
head. There were no eye-level windows, because she said they
would be distracting. But on fine summer days she cheated by
unbolting the bottom of the double doors and leaving them
both open to the garden.

As always, the moment I stepped inside I felt a sense of
closeness with my aunt. Everything was as she had left it
when she became too ill to sculpt any longer. I wasn’t preserving it as a sort of shrine, it was just that I kept postponing the task of clearing it out. Somehow that seemed such a final
step.

Like my aunt herself, the place was thoroughly work
manlike, without any frills. A massive bench was set about
three feet from the rear wall, with racks of tools behind it
... mallets and chisels, rasps, and an electric polishing ma
chine. Small sculptures and a number of models of her bigger
pieces were ranged around on shelving, and in the centre of
the floor was a great block of pink Cotswold alabaster
mounted on a wooden plinth, with a platform to enable Aunt
Verity to reach the top. This piece was to be the figure of
Hebe, the goddess of youth, planned to stand in the entrance
foyer of Gilchester’s grand new youth centre. But it had
scarcely been more than roughed out, the only detailed work
done being on the head.

A great bronze gong stood in one corner, a trophy my aunt
had brought back from a Far East trip. I tapped the ham
mered surface with my fingertips and listened to the faint
shiver of sound.

It occurred to me suddenly that maybe I could set up on
my own account in the interior-design business, using the workshop as my studio. But tempting though this was, I knew
that as a practical possibility it just wouldn’t work. I hadn’t
got the finances to carry me through the first few years while I built a reputation. No, I’d have to find myself a job—and that
meant selling up and moving away from Steeple Haslop.

I heard a voice calling from the garden, and it was Mrs. Sparrow. Ten-thirty already. Elsie Sparrow was an inheritance from my aunt and came in for a couple of hours two
mornings a week. She needed the money, and although I
didn’t really need her (and couldn’t really afford her) I
hadn’t the heart to tell her to stop coming.