The Ellie Hardwick Mysteries Read online

  ‘You’re pretty good. That’s right. Except I know she favours Dior. Not sure I’d know the difference. Second wife, ambitious, wealthy in her own right. Family money—that’s what gives her the independence you’ve noticed. You know—I’ve actually heard some women say—squirming with gratitude: ‘‘He’s offered to give me a new kitchen!’’ I pass those jobs straight on to Charles. Now, Alicia tells Ron what he’s going to get! And she has the sense to listen to the experts she’s paying. But all this is rather alarming. Lord knows what pigeon-hole you’ve put me into.’

  His face softened. ‘Can’t categorise you. A one off. Nearest I can get is arty-chic. In that floating greenery-yellery thing you’ve got on, you’d better watch out. Wander off into the orchard in the gloaming and the Spirits of the Place will claim you for their own. I don’t want to have to explain you’ve been carried off by a hairy-legged woodland faun to the sound of pan-pipes. So stay close to me.’

  I shivered and decided that would be no problem.

  * * *

  We ate supper at a table with people I knew in the rose-draped marquee. We danced and chatted, but I waited in vain for Richard to suggest a stroll through the orchard or the herb garden. Annoyingly, he seemed happy to stay in the candle-lit orbit of the other guests, drinking sparingly, eyes watchful.

  After darkness had fallen he suddenly checked the time, excused himself and set off in the direction of the cloakrooms. He returned quickly and smiling said: ‘Ellie, before it gets too late, why don’t you do as our host invited and show me round your handiwork? The house seems to be open—there are people wandering in and out.’

  Puzzled, I accompanied him as he walked quickly from room to room on the ground floor even poking his nose into the outside log store and the gardener’s lavatory.

  ‘Not thinking of making an offer for it, are you, Richard?’

  ‘I only wish! Upstairs? Did you have a hand in that?’

  ‘Not really. I just oversaw the refurbishment and reconstruction of the original fittings. Cosmetic mostly. Still it’s pretty glamorous up there. Alicia’s had the good taste to leave well alone and let the bones of the house show through. You can get a real feel for medieval living. Of course, it’s a wonderful foil for her with her belle dame sans merci looks. You know—all that lily on the brow, and on thy cheeks a fading rose . . .’

  ‘I think that was her love-lorne knight-at-arms?’ he corrected. ‘The lady herself was:

  ‘Full beautiful—a faery’s child,’ he murmured, trotting upstairs ahead of me.

  Her hair was long, her foot was light,

  And her eyes were wild.’

  ‘Mmm . . . yes . . . I can just see the Lady Alicia sighing and moaning in these surroundings. Not so sure about old Ron,’ he said shining a slim torch onto ancient timbers, tapestries, copper bowls of pot-pourri and coarse rush carpets underfoot. A swift inspection of the rooms revealed draped four-poster beds, two of them suspiciously a-tremble.

  Finally, ‘Is there any room we haven’t looked into?’ he asked.

  ‘Only the space Ron mentioned—the Priest’s Hole. This was a Roman Catholic house in a sea of Parliamentary supporters. They had to have somewhere to hide the visiting clergy from Cromwell’s squaddies.’

  ‘Show me.’

  The narrow space was cleverly contrived between two rooms in such a way that the regular march of the windows was not interrupted. I showed him the exact spot to press on the panelling which sprang back an inch, allowing me to put my fingers behind it and slide it back sideways, revealing a closed door.

  As I clicked on the external light, I had sudden misgivings. ‘I don’t feel comfortable doing this,’ I said. ‘Well you never know what we might disturb . . . There’s a sort of day bed in there . . . Champagne flowing for hours . . . Some people might think it the perfect spot for a bit of . . .’

  He wasn’t listening. ‘Tell me what this stuff is,’ he said, shining the torch onto the carpet. ‘These bits of loose vegetable matter.’

  ‘Um. Oh, that’ll be dried hops.’

  ‘Hops? What are you on about?’

  ‘This was once the house of a Suffolk brewing family. I found bits of equipment about the place, even traces of hops they used as ingredients in the beer making stashed away in the rafters. Alicia thought it was very romantic. She had some fresh hop garlands sent from Hereford and draped them all over the beams in there. She thought it made the place smell herby. She was right, actually. But I see what you’re getting at,’ I said, lowering my voice. ‘Someone’s been in here. Let’s go away.’

  But he had already thrown the door open. I peered over his outstretched arm as he stood, shocked and silent, taking in the scene. ‘Oh my God!’ he breathed. ‘Oh, how could we have got it so wrong?’

  * * *

  I wriggled under his arm and stood, wide-eyed and staring.

  As I had feared, the room was occupied.

  A figure, apparently asleep, was draped elegantly over the day-bed. Alicia was unnaturally still. Her silk dress flowed along, outlining her slender limbs; one high-heeled diamanté sandal hung negligently from her toe, the other lay discarded by the bed. Her black hair snaked across the pillow outlining her pallid features. Around her neck was knotted with crazy insouciance a man’s black bow tie. On a small table at her elbow were two glasses of pink champagne still fizzing energetically with life, an obscene note in what I was quite certain was a place of death.

  Jennings sprang into action, pushing me into a corner and performing the automatic gestures to check for signs of life. He shook his head. ‘She’s dead,’ he said. ‘And only minutes ago, I’d say.’ He took his cell phone from his pocket and made two crisp calls, unintelligible to me.

  ‘But why is she dead?’ I squeaked. ‘What happened? Heart attack? There’s no blood.’

  Jennings delicately eased the bow tie away from the throat with his fingers. ‘Mustn’t ruin the scene for SOCO,’ he commented. ‘Shouldn’t be doing this but I have to know . . . Ah, now there’s a touch Dior never thought of. She’s been throttled with this and then some joker re-tied it in the approved manner. Some cool nerve! Takes me forever to knot my own and here’s someone meticulously tying it around the neck of a woman he’s just squeezed the life out of. The killer leaving his calling card?’

  I began to shake with horror as the enormity of the scene hit me. ‘That’s mad! It’s sick! It’s . . . it’s . . . so calculated . . . passionless! Who would . . .?’

  ‘Ally! Alicia! You up here? The Tennisons are just leaving and would like to say goodbye. I say—Ally!’

  Heavy feet thumped along the corridor and doors banged open and shut. Jennings stepped into the corridor. ‘In here Redmayne!’ he said.

  * * *

  In the end, I had to admit Ron had behaved rather well. Demands for instant police assistance had been cut short by the quick flash of a warrant card, a short explanation, one or two more phone calls. Jennings was in charge and wheels unnoticed by anyone were in motion. With a second shock that evening, I realised that my invitation had been attractive to the inspector not so much for the pleasure of my company as for the innocent entrée it had provided for the county’s top brass into a scene the police wished to observe more closely.

  Ron was pointing to the tie at his wife’s neck. ‘Well there you are, Mr. Plod,’ he said to Jennings. ‘Even I could solve this one. Line the male guests up against the stable wall, target the one without a necktie and shoot ’im. Easy peasy. And anyway,’ he said with the trace of a smug leer, ‘I recognise this one. Huh! Silk with silver stripes! It’s a bit fancy and wouldn’t it be! I can lead you straight to its fancy owner. The Cambridge Casanova!’ He stared for a moment at the pair of champagne glasses. ‘Cheating cow!’ was his epitaph on his dead wife.

  The uniformed support was already in place below and again I wondered at the speed of deployment. Female guests were being ushered into the drawing room of the house but I managed to stay close to Jennings, pretending to ass
ist. The men were herded into the marquee. One or two were being sent back, grumbling, from the car park.

  It could have been laughable. I had to swallow back giggles of hysteria as I surveyed the line up of fifty puzzled and outraged guests. Forty-nine were still more or less correctly attired. Only one sported a shirt open at the neck. Tall and good-looking with a boyish shock of yellow hair and merry blue eyes, he was familiar to me. ‘Marcus de Staines,’ I whispered to Jennings. ‘The chinless and now apparently tie-less wonder. Heartthrob of day-time tv. Medieval historian of repute.’

  ‘Well, let’s see what this will do for his reputation,’ said Jennings. With a cold gesture he attempted to calm Ron who was twitching with vindictive glee and pointing the righteous finger of an outraged husband at the young man.

  ‘That’s him! That’s the bastard who’s murdered Alicia!’ Ron broke out. ‘No tie! Look—no tie! That’s the . . .’ he dredged his vocabulary for a suitably medieval epithet, ‘. . . cuckolding killer! He should be stocked, pilloried, hung, drawn and quartered!’

  Jennings set about rescuing the astonished and red-faced don from the hideous scene which seemed about to break out. With the relief of men who suddenly find the cloud of suspicion has lifted from them, they were responding in varying degrees of outrage, turning, predictably, on the guilty party. ‘I say! Good Lord! What an arsehole! Can’t believe it!’ Fists were clenched. The Lord High Sheriff of Essex called for order. A retired Lieutenant-Colonel reached for a phantom sabre at his side. Warrant card flashing, Jennings moved through them, confident and calming.

  ‘Just step this way with me, sir,’ he said mildly, cutting de Staines out of the crowd. ‘A few things to clear up if you wouldn’t mind.’

  I found I’d been left behind with Ron. A minute later we’d retreated to the kitchen and I was going through the familiar ritual of making him a cup of tea. Earl Grey, two lumps. To my alarm, as the shock and tension cleared he grabbed me and sobbed noisily into my shoulder. ‘I’m such a fool, Ellie! How can I not have seen what was going on? Had you any idea?’ He looked up at me with a sudden shaft of suspicion. ‘The pair of you were pretty thick, I always thought . . . Did she never . . .? No?’ He sniffed and gulped and I offered him a sheet of kitchen paper. ‘All those working historical weekends away! And they were at it under my roof! In my own Priest’s Hole!’

  He recovered sufficiently to take a comforting sip of tea. ‘Tell your boyfriend thank you from me, will you Ellie? For being here. Taking control. Piece of luck a policeman being right there on the spot! And a smart one at that. I mean—what are the chances of a Cambridge criminologist tripping over the body? That would really have appealed to Alicia.’ He sighed with respect for the artistic sensitivity of his dead wife then, quickly changing emotional gear, his eyes narrowed in sudden thought and he confided: ‘Sorry to say such a thing at such a time . . . probably very inappropriate but . . . this could do his career no harm, you know. Your young man, I mean. Had you thought of that?’

  ‘No, Ron,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘But I’m sure he has.’

  * * *

  I finally caught up with my escort in the car park. It had been transformed into a crime scene. Blue and white plastic ribbons fluttered, outlining the field, arc lamps illuminated with a ghastly glow the guests, silent now and shell-shocked, who were being ushered back into the real world by the two valets, now openly wearing their police id’s.

  A police car eased up and I watched as Marcus de Staines was handed into the back seat and driven off. A second car drove over to Jennings and he opened the rear door. He gestured to a group of officers and they came forward leading a figure I recognised from the party. Now in plastic handcuffs and—oddly—without his shoes—he trod gingerly in his socks through the rutted stubble to the car and with a brief sneer for Jennings, slid inside.

  Two minutes later the same procedure was repeated as Ron emerged from the house, being hustled along between two officers.

  ‘Three suspects, Richard? Marcus, Ron and Sun-Tan-Man? That’s quite a haul for one night. Are there any more? Would you mind telling me what’s going on?’ I said.

  ‘Sorry. Not the time. Not the place,’ he said. ‘But I’ll tell you what is. Ten minutes from now. Your cottage. I can leave all this to the scene of crime officers now and my sergeant. Shall we make a run for it?’

  I realised that he was on the point of exhaustion and gently prised his car keys from his hand.

  * * *

  ‘Blue Mountain be all right?’ I called from the kitchen.

  ‘Rather have cocoa,’ came the sleepy reply.

  I settled with my drink on a cushion at his feet as he slumped on her sofa. ‘Poor young man! Poor silly Marcus!’ I said. ‘Why do you suppose he did it? I expect she’d refused to run away with him. Led him on and then decided at the last minute to stick with her husband.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘She was well up for it. They were going away together. Tickets booked for Istanbul next Tuesday.’

  ‘Oh, no! And Ron found out, followed them upstairs, found them in flagrante delicto and killed her?’

  ‘First saying: Would you mind removing your tie, old man, just the thing I need to strangle this strumpet? Come on, Ellie! I’ll give you a clue—neither Marcus nor Ron went near that room before she died.’

  I thought for a minute. ‘The hops? That bloke you were marching through the car park in his socks?’

  ‘Yes. The leathery mystery man from Spain. I had his shoes bagged. He’d got traces of hops on the soles. He was up there all right.’

  ‘Wow! Was he Alicia’s lover too?’

  ‘No. Her killer. A hired killer. It’s what he does.’

  ‘But he didn’t look like a . . . what would you call him? A hit man!’ I protested, trying and failing to recollect his features.

  ‘What would you expect? A pony tail, tattoos and dirty finger-nails? Nah! They blend in. He was just a man in an evening suit like all the others. Ex-army officer gone wrong. Well-educated, man of the world. But with a taste for killing and cash. I thought I was watching him pretty closely but I must have stared a second too long into your eyes and there he was—or rather—wasn’t.’

  ‘And I hardly need to ask whose signature was on his pay cheque?’

  ‘Ron’s! We got it so wrong Ellie! We’ve been keeping an eye on Ron and his shady dealings for some time and when another of our familiar faces cut loose from his sunny retreat and embarked on a jaunt to deepest Suffolk we assumed Ron himself was the target. Plenty of people would have been grateful for that! But there I was, all prepared to defend our host against evil-doers. When I noticed Sun Tan Man had gone missing from the party I rang my lads in the car park and told them to hang on to him if he fetched up there. Just in case. As they were holding his keys—no problem. I dashed through the house expecting to find our host bludgeoned to death in the billiard room . . . garrotted in the garage . . . but no—it was our newly ennobled lord himself who was doing the hiring.’

  ‘Because Alicia had been disporting herself with a don? Hardly makes sense, Richard. I mean, I know—knew—them as a couple—he’d have smacked her across the chops and threatened to horsewhip the guy. She’d have responded by beating him to a pulp and walking out. At the very worst he’d have sold his story to a red-top news-sheet. He wouldn’t even have bothered to divorce her—not with alimony being what it is these days.’

  ‘Exactly! You’re getting there! Follow the money! He was about to lose a fortune whichever way you look at it. Her own wealth would no longer be available to him and he might well find himself caught in the steel jaws of alimony payments. And then there’s the not-negligible sum she’d settled on him in insurance. They had reciprocal policies. A lot at risk, Ellie.’

  ‘So, enter the killer. But what was all that business with the tie, Richard?’

  ‘The killing was staged-managed by Ron but only to an extent, I think. He knew of his wife’s assignation: the killer moved off straight after
her when she went upstairs, beating her lover to it. I interviewed the luckless don and he told me he was buttonholed by Ron and a couple of his mates who held him in conversation. It rather put him off his stroke and he didn’t dare shoot straight off upstairs. Ron knew that you can’t just have the body of your wife discovered in your house without raising suspicions and bringing a nuisance of a police officer or two onto the scene. He was watching out for someone who could witness the discovery of the body. Any of the guests cornered and given the tour of the house would have filled the bill.’

  ‘And we, respectable souls that we are, fitted nicely.’

  ‘That’s right. Then, distraught with grief—well as near as Ron could manage—he was able to identify the neck tie and direct attention to the poor sap he’d set up to take the blame. The tie was a nice touch. It could have been a credit card, a cell phone, a sheet of runic script, anything of de Staines’s to put him at the scene. Taking revenge on the man who’d deceived him into the bargain. Neat.’

  ‘De Staines told me he’d taken his tie off along with his jacket in the gents to wash his face and cool off when he got back from piggling about in the roof—and freshening himself up for his tryst with Alicia no doubt. When he’d got the soap out of his eyes and looked up the tie had disappeared. Several blokes had gone into the gents at the same time and left in a bunch. He couldn’t say who’d taken it. A silly prank, he thought or a genuine mistake. That little touch would have been the killer’s own. Opportunistic. No way he could have planned it. They like to improvise at the scene—use what’s to hand.’

  ‘But why re-tie it so perfectly?’

  ‘Our man goes in for the whimsical touch. It’s his signature. Gets him a rep in the right quarters—the artist of assassination.’

  ‘Ghastly, murdering old Ron! To think I made him a cup of tea! Let him slobber all over my Missoni frock! What’ll happen to him now?’

  The inspector grinned with satisfaction. ‘At this moment, Ron’s in an office at HQ in front of a flickering screen commenting on his financial affairs to an interested team of specialists. No telling how high his dubious connections go, but it’s high! We’ve been longing to make our way through to that.’