Murder in the Cotswolds (22 page)

“I don’t see how.” Richard took the programme and studied it, frowning. Then he turned a page. “No, look, here’s a picture of her, captioned with the same name, Axfield.”

Kate looked at the montage of photos of leading members of the cast. The one of Alison, a half profile, showed her long, high-cheekboned face to dramatic effect.

“I guess it must be the name she uses for the stage. I know she used to be a professional. But Axfield ... it rings a bell. Something to do with this locality?”

“Means nothing to me. But then I’m still a bit of a new boy in this neck of the woods.”

Kate nodded absently, still musing. Then the name clicked, and suddenly it was as if all the whirling bananas and pineapples and oranges in the fruit machine of her brain were locked in a jackpot combination.

She finished her drink in one swallow and stood up. “I can’t sit here chin-wagging all day.”

“You haven’t even warmed the chair yet.”

“Things to do.” Kate flapped the programme at him. “Can I take this with me?”

“Be my guest, there’re more.” His expression sharpened. “Do I scent news?”

“Not so much as a whiff. What I said just now was off the record. Got that? You breathe one word, and I’ll—”

“Favours earn favours.” He came to the door with her. “Kate, I’m still asking for that dinner date.”

“I’m far too busy, Richard.”

“But soon?”

“We’ll see.”

“Not good enough.”

“Then tough luck, chum, because it’s the best you’re going to get.”

Kate was in her office at DHQ, talking on the telephone, when Boulter arrived back. From a few sugar grains on his upper lip she guessed he’d dropped in at the baker’s along the street for a doughnut or three.

“Dead waste of a morning,” he grumbled as she put down the phone, “but at least we know now what McLeod and his brother-in-law were trying to cover up about that night. They were at Seaton’s home, true enough, but they had a couple of skirts there with them.” He began to tell Kate all about it, but she cut him off.

“Save the sordid details for your report, Tim, there’s no time now.”

Boulter was instantly alert. “Something new?”

“Think so. Does the name Axfield ring a bell?”

Boulter started to shake his head. Then, “Hang about, wasn’t that the name of the widow who sold her farm to Belle Latimer’s father way back?”

“On the nail! Now add to that the fact that Alison Knight’s stage name is Alison Axfield.”

“You mean they’re related?”

“Mother and daughter, is my guess. I checked the phone book and there’s nothing under Axfield listed for this area, so it’s an uncommon name. I was just phoning Inspector Massey, and he’ll have the answer by the time we get back to the Incident Room. I told him that, failing anyone else, old Sam Wilkes would know the answer.” Kate stood up. “Let’s move, Tim.”

In her car a minute later, Boulter asked, “What put you on to this, guv?”

“I spotted the name Alison Axfield in the cast list of the Troubadours’ next production.” Kate skipped saying
where
she’d seen it. “The way I logicked it, Alison Knight is sticking to the stage name she used when she was a professional. And since she started her career before she was married, that name is likely to have been her real name at the time. Her maiden name.”

“I’ll buy that. But where does it get us?”

This is the moment you start praying, Kate, praying you’re not about to make an all-time wally of yourself!
But if her hunch was right, she’d be trailing clouds of glory. She had the space of the car journey to Chipping Bassett in which to put each step of her theory to the test.

“Tim, why have we been assuming all along that our killer is a man and not a woman?”

“Why? Well, it was a man that Fred Winter and his brother-in-law saw phoning from the call-box opposite his cottage.”

“A vague identification in semi-darkness. A figure dressed in a mac and a deerstalker. A
short
figure!”

“But it was a man who phoned Gower. That mysterious caller who kept him waiting at home on the evening of the murder.”

“What about a woman with a deep voice? A woman skilled in voice control, as a professional singer would be? I doubt if Alison Knight would have much difficulty in making herself sound like a man over the phone.”

“It’s guesswork,” he said doubtfully.

Kate accelerated past the derestriction sign as they left the town.

“Then let’s do some more guesswork and see where it leads us. Let’s have a stab at finding what’s eluded us all along so far— a motive for murder.”

“Jealousy? No sign of that. Money? Revenge? Envy? Okay, everyone’s envious of the filthy rich, but we don’t all go around knocking them off. Money? How the hell could Alison Knight benefit financially from Mrs. Latimer’s death? And why revenge? What had the Stedhams ever done to her, except to pay her mother more for her farm than they paid old Sam Wilkes for his?”

“Remember what you said about that, Tim? I know I bawled you out at the time, but maybe you were on to something after all.”

He screwed his face up. “You mean, when I tossed in the thought that an attractive widow might have more to sell than just the farm?”

“Right. And Mrs. Axfield was a very attractive woman. I saw her photograph. Moreover,” she added on a sudden recollection, “her husband looked a rather feeble sort of character.”

“So enter the lecherous squire? But would Alison Knight be likely to know about her mother’s little frolics? And even if she did, why should it make her hate Sir Peter Stedham’s daughter?”

The next stage of Kate’s reasoning was a major leap of supposition. “Alison would hate her all right if
she
was his daughter, too. His illegitimate and unacknowledged daughter.”

“Hey, hold on, guv. If that’s true, it’d mean Alison’s mother had been Stedham’s mistress years back. When her husband was still alive.”

“Don’t sound so shocked, Tim, it happens.” Kate was pulling the sergeant along reluctantly. He was still fighting over every inch of ground, and that was the way she wanted him to be. In this situation, a yes-man would be worse than useless.

“So what you’re suggesting,” Boulter said slowly, “is that Alison Knight hated Belle Latimer for years, and finally got around to killing her.”

“Not necessarily for years. Maybe Alison only found out quite recently that she was Belle’s half-sister. I remember something she said to me once which didn’t mean anything in particular at the time. We were discussing Belle Latimer being a difficult person to work for, and Alison said, ‘Just because she had the luck to inherit a huge estate, she seemed to think it gave her the right to queen it over lesser mortals.’ Or words to that effect.”

“That’s something anyone might say. Me, for instance.”

“But she said it with real venom in her voice. It was more than common or garden envy, I’m sure.”

Boulter was still not particularly impressed. “It isn’t much of a motive, guv. Even if she was as envious as hell over the Stedham inheritance, well, it wouldn’t help her any to dispose of Belle. She wouldn’t get a penny herself.”

Next big leap. “She must have reckoned Belle’s husband would inherit. That’s a natural assumption, isn’t it? It’s what Matthew Latimer himself reckoned, too.”

“They hatched the plot together, you mean?”

“Why not? We’ve never excluded the possibility that Latimer was involved in his wife’s murder.”

Kate sensed the change in Boulter. He was warming to her theory.

“So Latimer dreamt up this plan to get his hands on Belle’s money, somehow found out that Alison Knight was Stedham’s illegitimate daughter, and wheeled her in on the promise of a big pay-off?”

Here we go again, Kate.
“Maybe they had a closer relationship than just collusion in a plot to kill his wife.”

Boulter’s head shot round. “You think Alison Knight is the mystery woman? The one seen with Latimer in the pub?”

“Yes, Tim, that’s what I think. And, my God, if we’re on the right track, what a superb case of poetic justice.”

“Poetic justice, guv?”

“It was the two of them being spotted together, and Belle hearing about it through Sylvia Carstairs, that caused Belle to disinherit her husband.”

“Hey, that’s right. But ... how does Prescott fit in with all this?”

“His death is connected somehow, that’s for sure. And Alison Knight had a better chance than almost anyone to slip poison into his drink. What’s more, one of the firms she does the books for is Radleys of Great Bedham. They’re pest-control people, aren’t they? And cyanide is often used as a fumigant. Maybe Prescott somehow found out about her affair with Latimer ... maybe he suspected they’d connived to kill Belle, and started to blackmail them. But one step at a time. If we can get Belle Latimer’s death sorted, I think that will lead us to the answer about Prescott.”

“So where do we go from here?”

“That depends on what Frank Massey has to say when we get back.” Kate didn’t add that she was sweating on the office manager’s answer to her query.

The blue copy of the Action report on the name Axfield was waiting on Kate’s desk. Yes, yes, yes. Alison Knight was Mrs. Kathleen Axfield’s daughter.

Frank Massey had done a superb job in the limited time available. Asked by Kate for anything and everything concerning the Axfield family, he’d come up with quite a lot. The mother, shortly after being widowed, had sold Bramble Farm to Sir Peter Stedham and bought the freehold of Old Toll-House Cottage, where she’d lived comfortably on the proceeds of an annuity she’d purchased at the same time. The daughter, Alison, had left home several years before this to pursue a stage career, was married and divorced, then returned to Chipping Bassett when her mother died and took up residence at the cottage. Frank had also dug out the interesting snippet that, while at school, Alison had worked part time as stable girl at Hambledon Grange, looking after the three ponies belonging to the slightly-older-than-herself Belle Stedham.

“Tim, we’re in business,” Kate said exultantly.

“We sure are, guv.”

“But putting together a case that will stick isn’t going to be easy.”

“What’s first on the agenda, then?”

First on the agenda was a phone call, but she didn’t want Boulter listening in.

“It’s going to be a busy day,” she said, “so hadn’t you better feed the inner sergeant? Those doughnuts aren’t going to sustain you for much longer.”

He grinned sheepishly. “How did you know?”

“Elementary, my dear Boulter,” she said, but left him guessing.

As soon as she was alone, Kate dialled the number of the
Gazette
and spoke to Richard.

“Couple of questions for you,” she said without preamble. “Straight answers, please, not questions tossed back at me.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“That phone call you had, the one that started it all. You said it was a man. Are you totally certain of that?”

“You mean, could it have been a woman?”

“A woman who, let’s say, was skilled at changing her voice.”

“Who d’you mean?” Then, immediately, “I know, that woman in the Troubadours. What were the names ... Alison Knight, Alison Axfield. I knew you were on to something, Kate.”

“I told you to forget about that. Just answer my question.”

She waited while Richard considered. “Just possible, I suppose. The caller sounded a bit furtive, which in the circumstances didn’t surprise me. It was a whispering voice, a bit muffled.” He thought some more. “Yes, I guess it
could
have been a woman.”

“Question number two. That day you lunched with Belle Latimer. You
drove
to the Grange, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“Now, think. Think hard. Is it possible that you left your keys in the car while you were in the house?”

“Highly unlikely. I’m pretty careful, with the spate of car thefts there’ve been around here lately.”

“Take your mind back. Try and picture exactly what happened when you drove up to the house.”

“Let’s see ... I arrived very much on time, and ... yes, Belle Latimer must’ve heard the car coming up the drive, because she was standing on the front steps to greet me. Nice touch that, I always think.”

“And?”

“I’m not a chap to keep a lady waiting. I nipped out of the car pretty sharpish.”

“But pausing long enough to take the keys from the ignition and lock the door?”

Silence for three seconds. “Now you throw it at me, Kate, I’m none too sure. I just see myself leaping out and walking across to her.”

“Did you notice anyone else around at the time?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Okay, thanks. That’s all I wanted to know.”

“Don’t I get a reward for coming up with the answers you wanted?”

“Now, just you listen to me. It’s not a matter of getting the answers I
want.
It’s getting at the truth that—” Kate stopped. He was laughing at her. Damn him!

“Why the hell am I wasting my time talking to a journalist about
truth?”
She crashed the phone down on his comeback just as Tim Boulter returned, carrying a small tray.

“I brought you a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee, guv,” he said, sliding it onto her desk. “You ought to get something inside you.”

“Oh, Tim, how thoughtful!” Food was the last thing on Kate’s mind, but she made an effort to eat just to prove she wasn’t on a high of excitement. In between bites she related to Tim the gist of her conversation with Gower. “The day he went to lunch was a Friday, and that was one of the mornings Alison Knight worked at the Hambledon estate office. My guess is that from the office window she’d get a slantwise view of the front of the house, and could easily have seen Gower’s hurried arrival. So, if Alison had been planning to kill Belle and was on the lookout for a suitable car to use for the hit-and-run, this must have seemed like a heaven-sent chance. She’d have known that Gower would be in the house for some time lunching with Belle. It was made so easy for her. A quick ‘borrowing’ of the bunch of keys he’d left in the ignition as she was on her way out, and a duplicate of the car key cut somewhere in town ... with luck we’ll track down the actual shop. Then she drives back to Hambledon Grange, ready with the excuse that she’d left something in the office if anyone noticed her return, and the keys are safely replaced in Gower’s car before it could be noticed they were ever missing.”