This Way Out (24 page)

All right, so she had looked towards the gates when she heard a passing car slow almost to a stop. Well she would, wouldn't she? Quite naturally, she would think that someone had come to call. But the owners of properties as attractive as Winter Paddocks must grow used to having their houses stared at by inquisitive passers-by, and when the car drove off again she would almost certainly have thought nothing more of it.
Of course
she wouldn't have abandoned her father's wheelchair in order to run to the gate to try to identify a passing vehicle!

Panic over.

Or at least, that particular panic was over. Derek's moment of relief evaporated as he remembered that he still had to face Sunday's ordeal. Sneaking up on a defenceless old man in order to swap a mug of orange juice for a deadly overdose of insulin might be a less distasteful way of committing murder than some, but it was still murder, and the thought of it gripped him with fear.

Supposing the old man saw him? Packer had said that his father-in-law always had a sleep after lunch, but what if the telephone were to wake him? True, since the old man couldn't speak intelligibly he wouldn't be able to give the intruder away; but that wasn't the point. Derek was horrified by the thought that, in the act of swapping mugs, he might look up to see Sidney's eloquent single eye fixed accusingly on him.

Would he have the callousness to go through with the swap while his victim watched? Would he have the nerve?

If he didn't, Packer would kill him. But if he did, could he live with what he had done? Or would Sidney Brown's stricken face begin to alternate with Enid's in his already intolerable dreams?

Derek drove on. Too agitated to endure the snarl-up of race-day traffic in Newmarket, he circled back into the countryside. He felt thirsty, dehydrated by last night's intake of alcohol, but although it was after mid-day and the pubs were open they held no attraction for him.

What he really needed was a haven such as he and Christine had once enjoyed at the Brickyard. He longed for peace of mind. He ached for the touch of love.

But the Brickyard days were over, and he had nowhere else to go. With the recent past a nightmare, and nothing in prospect but fear, he hustled through the maze of country roads in a desperate, instinctive search for some way out of his problems.

When he realized that he was back again on the road that led to Winter Paddocks he felt a genuine shock of surprise. He had formed no conscious intention of returning. But now he came to think of it … Now he came to think of it, this might be where he could find his solution.

He slowed as he approached the entrance, but this time there was no sight of Belinda and her father. His earlier worries about being noticed had gone, and so he pulled in immediately outside the closed gates and switched off his engine.

He knew now, for sure, that he wasn't going to kill Packer's father-in-law. He couldn't possibly bring himself to commit murder; he wasn't that kind of man. And what had just occurred to him was that if Belinda were to see and identify him while he was looking round this afternoon, then the operation would have to be called off. It would be far too risky to go ahead, knowing that Belinda would probably mention his name to the police at the subsequent investigation.

Packer would be furious, of course. Derek would have to ring him on Saturday night to tell him of the ‘accidental'encounter, and no doubt the man would give him an earful of invective. But that wouldn't matter. However much Packer might rage about his incompetence, he couldn't accuse him of lack of zeal. As long as Derek hadn't finally refused to take part in the operation, Packer would have no reason to kill him.

Besides, it had begun to seem most unlikely that the man would ever carry out that particular threat.

Having seen Winter Paddocks, Derek felt certain that Packer wasn't trying to get rid of his father-in-law just because the old man was a burden both to himself and to his daughter. What Packer really wanted, without doubt, was access to Sidney's considerable wealth. And in those circumstances, why would he waste his time and ingenuity on killing Derek? Packer's sole concern would surely be to find another way of disposing of his wealthy father-in-law without himself coming under suspicion – and that, reflected Derek with some satisfaction, should take the bastard a long, long time.

The wheelchair had come into view again. Belinda was pushing her father through a distant part of the gardens. With a lightened heart Derek opened the gate and hurried towards them along the sun-warmed gravel paths, past the copper-pink beech, past the blueing racemes of wisteria that covered the side wall of the house, past the sun-room, the tulip-bordered terrace, the lily pond, the lawns. Then, as he drew near the father and daughter, his pace slowed.

He had been seen. The wheelchair was stationary, turned towards him, and the old man was staring at him with a penetrating single eye. But his own gaze was on the tall, fair young woman who stood waiting for him, her heavy-lidded eyes shyly averted but her back straight, her throat splendidly curved, her figure full and strong and whole.

God, she was magnificent
–

Now he knew why he had come.

At Wyveling, the police were swarming over the Brickyard again. This time they were searching for evidence to support the detectives' theory that Derek Cartwright knew why his house had been targeted for a break-in.

Sergeant Lloyd had of course given Mrs Cartwright a more tactful reason for wanting to borrow the keys of her home. They would like to take a second look round, she had said simply, and Christine had expressed neither surprise nor objection. She herself would need to go back to the Brickyard later in the week, she told the sergeant, to pack what she wanted to take to Derbyshire, but she dreaded going into the house; the police were welcome to borrow the keys again, if that would help them find her mother's murderer.

Christine might have been more concerned had she known exactly what the police intended to do. This time, instead of concentrating on the scene of the crime, they went through the building systematically from the attics to the cellars: investigating every cupboard, moving every article of furniture, emptying bookcases, rolling back carpets, prizing up floorboards, sniffing the contents of containers. When they had finished with the house they turned their attention to the outbuildings, the front yard, the garden and the dustbins.

But nothing came to light that could be regarded in any way as suspicious. In terms of criminality (though not perhaps of housekeeping; Hilary Lloyd, who would have liked her own flat to be immaculate but resented spending her free time on housework, was always heartened to find how much grubbiness lurked in the corners of even the best-kept homes), the Brickyard was clean as a whistle.

There was no evidence that Derek Cartwright had been engaged in any kind of activity that he might want to conceal from the police. Nor was there any sign of the items that Cartwright had listed as having been stolen. Quantrill's theory that he might have hidden them on his property, as a cover for the theft of something incriminating, proved to be completely unfounded.

Sergeant Lloyd was still reluctant to believe that a burglar who had committed murder on the job would have hindered his getaway by taking the goods with him, but she solved her problem by instigating a search of the areas bordering the field path between the back gate of the Brickyard and the car-park of the Five Bells. On Wednesday morning, one of the missing items – an old briefcase in which Derek Cartwright had told them he kept his spare chequebooks and credit cards – was discovered in the spinney at the back of the pub, dumped in a bed of stinging nettles just off the path.

All the other items on Cartwright's list were found inside the briefcase. Presumably, the detectives decided, the villain had filled it and left it ready to take away when he had finished burgling. After being disturbed, and murdering the old lady, he must have snatched up the briefcase as he left the house. Then, on his way back to his car, he must have thought better of taking anything so identifiable with him.

‘That answers your query about the missing items,' said Quantrill, ‘but it still doesn't explain Cartwright's behaviour. Dumping his dog, and then leaving the pantry window unlocked, just a few hours before the break-in sounds more like collusion than coincidence. But what about his cut hand?'

‘Perhaps he staged his own accident, so as to leave the way clear for the break-in,' said Hilary.

‘Yes – but in fact he didn't leave the way clear, did he?' Quantrill objected. ‘The house wasn't left empty, unfortunately, otherwise we wouldn't be investigating the old lady's murder. But I'm still not convinced that this was an ordinary burglary-gone-wrong. We've been all through the house and we know for sure that there's nothing of special value or interest in it. At the same time, we know that a man answering to the description of the murderer was seen sussing the place out the day before. So what could have brought him here?'

‘I suppose it's still possible that he got away with what he wanted,' said Hilary. ‘If there'd been any collusion, Cartwright would naturally be reluctant to tell us. Even so, I really would have thought that the murder of his mother-in-law would have shaken him into talking.'

‘I'm not so sure about that. P'raps he was only too glad to get rid of her,' suggested the chief inspector with feeling. Life in the Quantrill household was a good deal less harmonious than usual. Bad enough to have had his wife supervising his consumption at every meal; now her mother had commandeered the job, and was doing it with relish. ‘P'raps he feels grateful to the man.'

‘Do stop being snide about mothers-in-law, Douglas,' protested his sergeant. ‘I don't suppose yours likes living with you any more than you like having her there. The least you can do is try to be nice to her – after all, time's on your side.'

‘Just as well something is,' muttered Quantrill, rather ashamed of his suggestion. A detective, of all people, understanding the appalling reality of murder and its effect on the bereaved, should know better than to talk about it lightly. But if you didn't, sometimes, the horror of the job would be unbearable.

‘What we need,' he went on firmly, ‘is some good hard evidence. We both suspect that Cartwright could tell us a lot more, but we're handicapped by not being able to prove that he knew the reason for the break-in. If we can't find some evidence to link him with the man who did it, we'll have to forget about him and start looking for a completely new lead.'

‘Do you want me to talk to his wife?'

‘No – we'll go to Cambridge and see if we can find out anything about him there. Then we'll pick him up, and start to put on the pressure about what he was
really
doing on Saturday afternoon. You've got the address of his office, Hilary? And the name of the hotel? Right, m'dear, let's get going.'

Derek Cartwright's junior colleagues in the Anchor Life Assurance office had assumed that the regional marketing manager was at home on account of the sudden death of his wife's mother. When the detectives told them that she had in fact been murdered, while her son-in-law was at Yarchester Hospital late on Saturday evening having a cut hand stitched, they were astounded. Derek had come back to the office for an hour or so on Monday afternoon, and had made no mention of the murder!

But then again, they agreed when they'd finished exclaiming, you could understand why: he was probably too shocked to want to talk about it. And now they realized why he'd looked so wretched on Monday – though at the time of course they'd put it down to his injured hand.

Derek Cartwright was well respected. A good boss, said his up-and-coming assistant, demanding maximum effort from the sales force but giving them a hundred per cent encouragement and support. Everyone liked Derek, though he wasn't one for socializing. On the occasions when he spent a day at the office, he wouldn't go to the pub for lunch, but to the Post House health club for a swim. And after work, he always headed straight for home.

His assistant was at a loss to know why Derek should be staying in Cambridge this week. He hadn't mentioned, when he came in on Monday that he intended to do so. Certainly he'd said he was glad to get away from home for a bit, after the upheaval of the old lady's death, and that was understandable. But heaven knew why he was staying on. He hadn't been in touch with the office since Monday, and he'd cancelled all his appointments for the rest of the week.

Talking of cancelled appointments, though, his assistant remembered, Derek had done something very odd on Friday afternoon. He'd kept an appointment with the manager of Lloyd's Bank in Saintsbury in the morning, but he'd failed to keep his afternoon appointment with the personnel director of a brewery, one of the town's major employers. Hadn't cancelled it, though – they'd had a blistering telephone call from the personnel director to say that he just hadn't turned up. ‘Str'ordinary. Derek had been trying to sell a new company pension scheme to the brewery for months, and it was unthinkable that he should have forgotten. He'd sack any of the consultants who missed an appointment, no excuses accepted! But then, he'd seemed very edgy for the past couple of weeks. Uptight. Brooding about something. No, his assistant had no idea about what.

Derek Cartwright's pretty secretary agreed about his recent edginess. No, she couldn't imagine what he was doing in Cambridge – she simply couldn't understand why he wasn't at home with his wife at a time like this.

No, she was quite sure that Derek wasn't spending the time with a girlfriend! He was a devoted family man. There were photographs of his wife and the little girl who'd had Downs Syndrome on his desk, and he'd told her all about his family: what the older children were doing, Laurie's sudden death, his wife's fight against cancer. He'd had more than his share of domestic problems. But even so, he wasn't the sort to run after other women. He was a thoroughly
nice
man, who'd never breathed an unkind word against his mother-in-law, which was more than she could say for some of the men in the office. He obviously liked the old lady, so no wonder he was upset over her murder. And as for his earlier edginess, well, she'd put that down to his wife's health.