Enter Pale Death Read online

  Joe tried out a possible brief for his most senior and most trusted man, Ralph Cottingham: “Introduce yourself to the county force, Ralph, and tell them you’ve been sent to pick up and take over a case of theirs which is officially closed. A ‘death by misadventure’ three months back that no one has questioned. Until the Assistant Commissioner received an anonymous letter last week suggesting that closer scrutiny by a more alert force is required. While you’re at it, you’d like to rake up a twenty-five-year-old possible theft for which no complaint was ever made and, for good measure, a further and unassociated pre-war suicide. If they will be so good as to make the usual formal application for assistance, the Metropolitan Police will be pleased to offer their expertise in re-opening the cases.”

  No. It wouldn’t do. It couldn’t be attempted by anyone but a complete idiot who was maniacally sure of his ground. Joe recognised himself and silently volunteered. He recognised also the impossibility of ever getting the Commissioner’s blessing in the matter. He wouldn’t even seek it.

  Provincial constabularies were not so reluctant to ask for help from the city as the public seemed to think and were often relieved to shunt their more complex cases on to a force with more extensive forensic enquiry resources and manpower. Not least important—a force providing a wider selection of scapegoats to carry the blame if all went arse over tip. MET CALLED IN TO SOLVE SLAYING was a headline that brought excitement and a certain perverse status, not shame, in these days of banner headlines. But three closed cases having this in common—they all had taken place on Truelove’s family estate—amounted to a non-starter. No one would think of harassing a man of Truelove’s position by digging up the tidily buried past. Writs for disinterment, actual or figurative, would not be contemplated, particularly those requested by an Assistant Commissioner who was acquiring a reputation of being something of a trouble-maker. A reputation wilfully exaggerated by the men of high status and low principles who’d crossed his path. Joe was without authority and on his own.

  Perhaps not quite alone. He looked at his desk calendar. Today was Wednesday. Two days before he was expected down in Surrey. Time enough. He took a card from his pocket and picked up his phone.

  “Hunnyton? Back in harness already? Good man! I’m ringing to tell you I got the portraits which, as we speak, are crossing London in the new owner’s briefcase.”

  He listened to the chortles and congratulations and found himself being drawn into a richly embroidered account of the sale-room dramas. Tentatively, he put forward his own plans for the coming two days, adding quietly, “I thought—while I’m over in Suffolk—I might pay a visit to the grave of Phoebe Pilgrim. It’s the twenty-fifth anniversary of her death this summer—1908, wasn’t it? She was sixteen years old when she drowned herself in the moat. I wondered if you’d like to come with me. After all, she was known to you. Went to the same village school. Worked for the same master.”

  There was a very long silence over the line and then: “You’ll be needing somewhere to stay. Can you get aboard the five-thirty train from King’s Cross? Get a taxi at Cambridge station—don’t think of walking—it’s too far from the centre. I’ll book you a room in the Garden House—it’s a hotel down by the river. Quiet at this time of year. I’ll see you in the bar at nine o’clock.”

  Joe was only surprised he hadn’t added, “What took you so long?”

  Ralph Cottingham was the next to hear from Joe. The Super agreed readily—seemed even keen—to deputise for him for a couple of days. And why not? Joe would have been the first to proclaim that Ralph would have made a much more careful and committed Assistant Commissioner than himself. “One more thing, Ralph. If you wouldn’t mind … I’d like you to put the screws on this firm of solicitors.” Joe read out a fashionable London address and gave precise instructions for information he wanted Ralph to relay. “I’ll get in touch with you—I can’t be quite sure where on earth I’ll be this weekend. I’ll try to avoid annoying Julia.”

  He grabbed from his cupboard a suitcase he kept to hand at all times, packed and ready for a weekend. After a moment’s hesitation, he picked up what his men called his “murder bag” with his other hand and made for the door. If he took a staff car he’d just make it to King’s Cross.

  He was on board the train before he remembered he hadn’t contacted Dorcas.

  REMEMBERED? NOT THE right word. It wasn’t that she’d slipped from his mind. She was there at the forefront, she was there in the background. Dorcas was the mainspring of this whole enquiry, though the word flattered the muddle he was stirring about in. He’d temporarily suppressed her name; wiped it from his consciousness. He wondered what psychological jargon she would have used to describe his shock and anger when he’d come across, in the Cambridge bundle, a list of guests present at Melsett Hall on that April night. The night of the death by misadventure.

  Miss Dorcas Joliffe had been peacefully asleep in the Old Nursery under Lavinia Truelove’s roof at the moment when a dangerous young stallion had torn and pounded her ladyship to death in the stables. Joe prayed that Dorcas had indeed been asleep, alone, and in her own bed.

  CHAPTER 7

  Joe was at the bar and halfway through his first scotch when the superintendent arrived. His offer of a similar was readily accepted but, seeing no need for time-wasting, Hunnyton suggested at once that they take their drinks out into the garden.

  “I always feel easier where I know I’m not overheard,” he explained. “My bailiwick, this. More people know me than I know people. Not that there’s much danger of running into someone tonight. The place is half full of respectable couples up from the country to watch their offspring getting themselves photographed in gowns and mortarboards. Followed by a lift home in Daddy’s Bentley.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly a garden,” Joe said as they stepped outside into the summer evening, “but there’s a very pretty bit of greenery out here. Do you know this place? It’s quite extraordinary! A river-side country house surrounded by meadows full of hairy brown cows up to their udders in buttercups. Just a stone’s throw from the city centre. Let’s stroll along the bank of lawn that goes down to the river. The landlord’s put out some tables and lit up some lanterns along the towpath. Listen! You can hear people out there on the water, laughing and singing. Very romantic! Shame I find myself sharing a whisky with a hulking great copper instead of a champagne cocktail with my sweetheart.”

  “And there’s plenty of light in the sky,” Hunnyton nodded. “It’s Midsummer, after all. Longest day of the year on Saturday. You can still catch a few flannelled fools on the water punting their girls about. Heading back to the college boathouse, I should hope. Most of the razzamataz passed off last week—the degree awards, the May balls, punting down to Grantchester for breakfast … all that stuff. But you always get the odd ones left behind, finishing off research, unable to cut the strings.”

  “Lingering over a romance? Trying it on with the local lovelies?” Joe wondered.

  “That too. The local lads as well sometimes come out, nip down Laundress Lane and hire a canoe from the Anchor boatyard, bent on reclaiming the river once the straw boaters and college scarves have cleared off.” The policeman in him added, “There’s always a nasty couple of days when they clash. Dunkings and de-baggings and other low-grade mayhem. Town and Gown have never been easy neighbours and we always put our strongest swimmers and liveliest lads on beat duty down here in June.”

  They watched as a punt drifted by, both men enviously amused to see the lithe young scholar poised at his punting-pole entertaining with his chatter three girls in white dresses who lounged like decorative sofa dolls along the cushions in the centre of the flat boat, fluting and chirrupping and sipping from champagne glasses.

  The girls caught sight of the two men watching them in silent admiration and, from the safety of their mid-river station, raised their glasses and shouted saucy invitations to come aboard and even up their numbers. Joe chortled, returned the salute and called bac
k his acceptance. Would they pull over and pick up or should he swim out? He handed his glass to Hunnyton, strode to the edge and began to take off his jacket, miming eager intent. With shrieks of tipsy laughter from its cargo, the punt gave an elegant swish of its tail and swept off downstream.

  Joe stared after it, sighing in mock disappointment.

  Hunnyton handed him back his glass, commenting starchily, “You look like Mr. Toad when he caught sight of his first motorcar. Sitting dazed in the middle of the road murmuring ‘Poop, poop!’ as it disappeared in a puff of smoke. I must say, I can never see the attraction of a punt.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s hard not to look heroic, playing captain and crew at the same time. Towering over your girls, poised on the stern, chin raised, teeth to the wind, muscles cracking.”

  “River water running down into your armpit.” Hunnyton grinned. “You may manage to look like Odysseus resisting the call of the Sirens but you can never leave go of that bloody nine-foot-high pole! Nowhere to park it. You’re lumbered. Both hands fully occupied for the duration of the whole chilly uncomfortable event. All you can do to impress from back there on the platform is look noble and spout Homer. If you really want to make some serious progress with your girl, you’d get further in the one and ninepenny double-seaters on the back row at the Alhambra. The city lads all know that much. For them, a punt is some old fenland boat you ferry the cows across the river in.”

  “Don’t spoil it! I was just considering bringing my girl up here to stage a romantic moment,” Joe said.

  “She’s not a stranger to East Anglia, then?” Hunnyton suggested tentatively.

  “I had thought so, but you, I’m willing to wager, know better,” Joe said drily. “Shall we stop pussyfooting about and put the few cards we have between us on the table?”

  Hunnyton laughed, shrugged and plunged in. “Miss Dorcas Joliffe I understand to be known to you in some way or other. Mind telling me in what capacity exactly?”

  “I’d love to tell you exactly but there’s no exactitude about our situation at all. Wish there were.” Joe gave him the few unadorned facts about his relationship with Dorcas. It occurred to him, in his dry account, that he’d never once discussed the matter with a male friend or relation. It came surprisingly easily when face to face with this bluff, unquestioning, apparently all-knowing fellow copper.

  “So, after a seven-year absence, so to speak, this girl comes back into your life and lays claim to you? She’d sort of marked you down as a subject of interest when she was still a whippersnapper?”

  “Dorcas was never that. She’s what some would call, fancifully, an Old Soul. Experienced beyond her years, uncertain in some things, over-confident in others … But you’ve got it just about right. She attached herself to me when she was fourteen—looking about ten at the time so I didn’t see the dangers. Terrible family background. Mother absconded when she was a baby. Father never bothered to marry any one of the succession of mistresses who flowed through his life. His children, of whom Dorcas is the eldest, ran wild, occasionally whipped into some sort of order by their fearsome grandmother, who disowned the whole brood.”

  “Lord! How’d you get involved with that mob? Couldn’t you have cut and run?”

  “Hardly. I was firmly in the middle of a murder enquiry to which Miss Dorcas held the key. A pest, a burden at times, but never less than entertaining, is what she was for me.” Not much liking the incredulity blended with pity on the superintendent’s face, he tried to explain further: “Look, Hunnyton, some people find themselves claimed by stray cats and before they know it their lives are taken over.”

  At last Hunnyton grunted his understanding. “Can’t abide cats but I’ve got a dog. I rescued it from a gang of tormenting kids when I was on the beat. It loves me and I can’t persuade it otherwise. Funny thing—I never picked him but I’d go through hell and high water for Tommy and he knows it, curse him!”

  “Tommy?”

  “He reminded me of us lads in the trenches. Us Tommies. Mongrel. No value to him but he was fighting for his life. Giving as good as he got and going down snarling.”

  Joe laughed. “Well, imagine the potency of Tommy’s desperate situation and engaging characteristics wrapped in the allure of a very pretty girl and you appreciate my situation. No!” He caught himself in an easy throw-away response and applied a correction. “I’m being ungracious and unfair. In a strange way, Dorcas anchored me. I’ve been pretty footloose ever since the war and never been the sort who sent home postcards. Until she declared herself as the one person in my life who expected to have them. She was right. She’s always been the first one I think of when I fetch up in a strange place. Would Dorcas like it here, is what I ask myself. I shall send her a card tomorrow morning. Who do you send the first postcard to, Hunnyton, when you’re away?” he asked lightly.

  Joe looked with curiosity at the clear blue Saxon eyes squinting at him over the rim of his glass. Eyes that missed nothing but gave little away. So—the man had a dog called Tommy. Joe realised that he knew very little else of Hunnyton’s circumstances. “How are you fixed?” he persisted. “Have you a wife? A fiancée? Sweetheart?”

  “None of those. I have a landlady.”

  “Oh, dear. I’m sorry.”

  “Why? You shouldn’t be. She’s the best cook in Cambridge. But you’ve sussed me out! I’m totally unqualified to offer marital advice. Though that’s not going to stop me. I think you’d do best to take it slowly. Make a new beginning. Probably you don’t need to hear this, especially from a stranger. But from where I stand, I’d say—treat it as though she’s just a few weeks ago come drifting into your life as a fresh possibility. Assume you know nothing about her yet.”

  The old-fashioned look the superintendent gave Joe told him that this was a politely veiled warning. Joe had no doubt that areas of Dorcas’s life were unknown territory for him and it was perfectly possible that this man had greater knowledge of some of them through his investigations. An uncomfortable situation. Joe had never been content to stick a plaster over a festering wound. He decided to hand Hunnyton a scalpel and brace himself for the ensuing unpleasantness.

  He took a breath and asked, “Are you able to tell me what the girl I love was doing on the guest list at Melsett the night Lady Truelove died? The list I’m sure you’ve noted in the file you sent down?”

  “It’s a puzzle. Where she fitted in … A lady turning up by herself like that—it’s always a bit of a bother for the servants. It unsettles them. It was an evenly balanced party, you’ll have noticed.”

  “Yes. A dozen sat down to dinner in all. Small house party. Not down for the shooting I take it?”

  “No. Game bird shooting season well over by then. But there was some shooting planned. They were hoping to take a few deer—more of a cull than for sport I’d say—and there’s always a few hare and rabbits. The men like to tramp about the place with a gun over their arm. It pleases them to think the meat on their plate for dinner is their contribution. The dogs enjoy the stirabout, too. But this was rather more one of those political power groups, I’d have thought. The ones that seem to convene when their host is up for promotion of some sort.”

  Joe caught the bitterness in the tone and wondered whether Hunnyton was showing his hand at last.

  “At least six—three married couples—could be judged to have political interests, the men being MPs of differing persuasions, in fact,” Joe recalled. “That’s one thing that impresses me about James Truelove—he’s open-minded, with friends and influence with all parties. That’s not easy to achieve. Then there was the inevitable newspaper magnate and his wife. And Sir James and Lady Truelove …” Joe hesitated.

  “Leaving the last two—whom I won’t describe as a couple. They were put to sit next to each other I understand from the butler—Miss Dorcas Joliffe, Sir James’s protégée and student researcher, and, by her side, his young brother, Alexander.”

  “How young?”

  “Not tha
t young. Mid-twenties. Alex was an afterthought and no one was more surprised than his mother when he made his appearance on the family tree after James and two daughters. Still, a spare is always a useful addition to the heir.”

  “I blush to air such an obvious matter but I suppose I should ask: What are his chances of succeeding his brother to the baronetcy?”

  “He’ll have to outlive him and count on James’s not producing a legitimate son. So—the chances are not good when the incumbent’s youthful and vigorous as James is. Still, James had been married to Lavinia for some years and produced no children …”

  Once again, Joe felt himself prodded into drawing a conclusion: “The smart thing, if Alex had some scheme in mind to inherit, would have been to encourage an infertile situation to run its course.”

  “Right. With Lavinia dead, Sir James is on the loose again and could well remarry. Time enough to produce an heir to dislodge Master Alex.”

  “What is Alexander currently up to?”

  “He’s living at the Hall at the moment, taking a year off after his banking job in the City before he goes out to Africa or some other spot unprepared as yet for his attentions.”

  “He gave up a banking career?”

  “Ah. Good question. He’ll tell you himself—he got out minutes before he was booted out. Brags about it. Gift of the gab, like all the Trueloves.”

  “Seating him alongside Dorcas—was that an attempt at matchmaking by any chance?” Joe managed to keep his voice steady.

  Hunnyton fought back a guffaw. “No chance! You’d hesitate to match anyone you liked or respected with Alex,” Hunnyton said gloomily. “They probably let him down to dinner to make up the numbers and the two misfits found themselves next to each other. No—Dorcas Joliffe was there at the specific, though last-minute, invitation of her ladyship.”

  “Eh? What? Lavinia Truelove?” Joe was astonished. “The silliest woman in the Shires? She didn’t even know Dorcas. And Dorcas wouldn’t have bothered to exchange more than a dozen words with her. Asking for trouble to put them at the same table.” He bit his lip.