Hand in Glove (2 page)

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building castles on Camber Sands, falling asleep to the strange and comforting mew the wind made in the chimneys of Jackdaw Cottage.

All so long, so very long ago. Of late—especially since her mother’s death—she had seen little of Beatrix, which now, of course, she could do no more than bitterly regret.

Why, she wondered, had she taken to avoiding the old lady? Because Beatrix would not have hesitated to tell her she was wasting her life? Because she would have said guilt and grief should never be indulged lest they take too strong a hold? Perhaps. Perhaps because she did not wish to confront herself, and knew Beatrix Abberley had the discomforting knack of obliging one to do precisely that.

When Charlotte arrived, the day-trippers and souvenir-hunters had left and Rye was settling into a drained and drowsy Sunday evening.

She drove up the winding cobbled streets to St Mary’s Church, where a few worshippers were still wandering away after Evensong. Then, as she turned towards Watchbell Street, she was confronted by a trio of police cars, one with light flashing, a cordon of striped tape round the frontage of Jackdaw Cottage and a huddle of idle onlookers.

She parked in Church Square and walked slowly towards the cottage, remembering all the hundreds of times she must have come this way knowing she would find Beatrix waiting—tall, thin, keen-eyed and intent. But not this time. Not this time nor ever again.

The constable who was on duty directed her inside. There she found, seemingly in every doorway, plastic-gloved men in boiler suits, armed with powder and tiny brushes. In the drawing room stood one man distinct from the rest, grey-suited and frowning, picking his way through the tea cups and sugar bowls displayed in one of Beatrix’s glass-fronted cabinets. He glanced up at Charlotte’s approach.

“Can I help you, Miss?”

“I’m a relative. Charlotte Ladram. Miss Abberley’s—”

“Ah, you’d be the niece. The housekeeper mentioned you.”

“Not a niece, exactly. But never mind.”

“No. Right.” He nodded wearily and made a visible effort to summon a greater degree of attentiveness. “Sorry about this. Must be a dreadful shock.”

“Yes. Is . . . Is Miss Abberley . . .”

“The body’s been removed. Actually . . . Look, why don’t you sit down? Why don’t we both sit down?” He shooed a stooping figure

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away from the fireplace and led Charlotte towards one of the armchairs on either side, then sat down in the other one. It was Beatrix’s, as Charlotte could easily tell by the jumble of cushions and the crooked pile of books on the floor beside it, where the old lady’s questing left arm could easily reach. “Sorry about all these people. It’s . . .

necessary.”

“I quite understand.”

“My name’s Hyslop. Chief Inspector Hyslop, Sussex Police.” He looked about forty, with thinning hair combed forward in a style Charlotte disliked, but there was a winning edge of confusion to his features and a schoolboyish clumsiness about his dress that made her feel it should be her putting him at his ease, not the other way about at all. “How did you hear about this?”

“Maurice—Maurice Abberley, that is, my half-brother—telephoned me. I gather Mrs Mentiply found . . . what had happened.”

“Yes. We’ve just sent her home. She was a bit upset.”

“She’d worked for Miss Abberley a long time.”

“Understandable, then.”

“Can you tell me . . . what you’ve learned?”

“Looks like a thief broke in last night and was disturbed while helping himself to the contents of ”—he pointed across the room—

“that cabinet.”

Turning, Charlotte saw for the first time that the glass-fronted cabinet in the corner was empty and that its doors were standing open, one of them sagging on its hinges.

“Full of wooden trinkets, according to Mrs Mentiply.”

“Tunbridge Ware, actually.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s a special form of mosaic woodwork. The craft has long since died out. Beatrix—Miss Abberley—was an avid collector.”

“Valuable?”

“I should say so. She had some pieces by Russell. He was just about the foremost exponent of . . . Ah, the work-table is still here.

That’s something, I suppose.”

In the opposite corner, beside a bookcase, stood Beatrix’s prize example of Tunbridge Ware: an elegantly turned satinwood work-table complete with drawers, hinged flaps either side of the leather-covered top and a silk work-bag beneath. All the wooden surfaces, including the legs, were decorated with a distinctive cube-patterned mosaic. Though it was not this but the array of mother-of-pearl 10

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sewing requisites kept in the pink silk-lined drawers that Charlotte remembered being fascinated by in her childhood.

“The effect is produced by applying a veneer of several different kinds of wood,” she said absently. “Highly labour-intensive, of course, especially on the smaller pieces. I suppose that’s why it died out.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” said Hyslop. “But we have an officer who specializes in this kind of thing. It’ll mean more to him. Mrs Mentiply said the cabinet contained tea-caddies, snuff boxes, paper-knives and so forth. Is that your recollection?”

“Yes.”

“She agreed to draw up a list. Perhaps you could go over it with her. Make sure she leaves nothing out.”

“Certainly.”

“You say this stuff is worth a bit?”

“Several thousand pounds at least, I should think. Possibly a lot more. I’m not sure. Prices have been shooting up lately.”

“Well, we can assume our man knew that.”

“You think he came specifically for the Tunbridge Ware?”

“Looks like it. Nothing else has been touched. Of course, the fact he was disturbed may account for that. It would explain why he left the work-table behind. If he was in a panic to be away, he’d only have taken what was light and portable. And he would have been in a panic—after what happened.”

Charlotte gazed around the room. Aside from the empty cabinet, all else seemed intact, preserved in perfect accordance with her memory of so many tea-time conversations. Even the clock on the mantelpiece ticked to the same recollected note, last wound—she supposed—by Beatrix. “Where did it . . .” she began. Then, as her glance moved along the mantelpiece, one other change leapt out to seize her attention.

“There’s a candlestick missing,” she said.

“Not missing, I’m afraid,” said Hyslop. “It was the murder weapon.”

“Oh, God. He . . . hit her with it?”

“Yes. About the head. If it’s any consolation, the pathologist thinks it must have been a quick exit.”

“Did it happen here—in this room?”

“No. On the landing upstairs. She’d got out of bed, presumably because she’d heard him down here. He seems to have climbed in through one of these windows. None of them would have given a professional burglar much trouble and that one there”—he pointed to

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the left-hand side of the bay—“was unfastened when we arrived, with signs of gouging round the frame, probably by a jemmy. Anyway, we can assume he heard her moving about upstairs, armed himself with the candlestick and went up to meet her. He probably didn’t intend to kill her at that point. She had a torch. We found it lying on the landing floor. Perhaps he panicked when she shone it at him. Perhaps he’s just the ruthless sort. There are a lot of them about these days, I’m afraid.”

“This was last night?”

“Yes. We don’t know the exact time of death yet, of course, but we reckon it was in the early hours. Miss Abberley was in her night-dress.

The curtains in her bedroom, in the bathroom and down here were all closed. They stayed that way until Mrs Mentiply arrived at half past four this afternoon.”

“What made her call? She doesn’t usually come in on Sundays.”

“Your—half-brother did you say?—Mr Maurice Abberley. He’d telephoned his aunt several times and become concerned because there was no answer. She’d told him she’d be in, apparently. He lives quite some way away, I believe.”

“Bourne End. Buckinghamshire.”

“That’s it. Well, to put his mind at rest, he telephoned Mrs Mentiply and asked her to look round. I’ll need to confirm her account with him when he arrives, of course. You live somewhat nearer yourself ?”

“Tunbridge Wells.”

“Really?” Hyslop raised his eyebrows in sudden interest.

“Yes. I suppose that’s why I know so much about Tunbridge Ware.

It’s a local speciality. There’s a very good collection in the—”

“Does the name Fairfax-Vane mean anything to you, Miss Ladram?”

“No. Should it?”

“Take a look at this.” He opened his pocket-book, slid out a small plastic bag enclosing a card and passed it to her. Set out boldly across the card in Gothic script was the heading THE TREASURE TROVE and beneath it, in smaller type: COLIN FAIRFAX-VANE, ANTIQUE DEALER & VALUER, IA CHAPEL PLACE, TUNBRIDGE WELLS, KENT TNI IYQ, TEL. (0892) 662773. “Recognize the name now?”

“I know the shop, I think. Hold on. Yes, I do know the name. How did you come by this, Chief Inspector?”

“We found it in the drawer of the telephone table in the hall. Mrs 12

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Mentiply remembered the name as that of an antique dealer who called here about a month ago, claiming to have been asked by Miss Abberley to value some items. But Miss Abberley hadn’t asked him, it seems. She turned him away, though not before Mrs Mentiply—who was here at the time—had shown him into this room, giving him the chance to run his eye over the Tunbridge Ware. Now, how do you know him, Miss Ladram?”

“Through my mother. She sold some furniture to this man about eighteen months ago. As a matter of fact, Maurice and I both felt she’d been swindled.” And had bullied her remorselessly on account of it, Charlotte guiltily recalled.

“So, Fairfax-Vane is something of a smart operator, is he?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met the man. But certainly my mother . . . Well, she was easily influenced. Gullible, I suppose you’d say.”

“Unlike Miss Abberley?”

“Yes. Unlike Beatrix.”

“You don’t suppose your mother could have told Fairfax-Vane about Miss Abberley’s collection?”

“Possibly. She knew of it, as we all did. But it’s too late to ask her now. My mother died last autumn.”

“My condolences, Miss Ladram. Your family’s been hard hit of late, it appears.”

“Yes. It has. But— You surely don’t suppose Fairfax-Vane did this just to lay his hands on some Tunbridge Ware?”

“I suppose nothing at this stage. It’s simply the most obvious line of enquiry to follow.” Hyslop made a cautious attempt at a smile. “To expedite matters, however, we need a definitive list of the missing items with as full a description as possible. I wonder if I could ask you to find out what progress Mrs Mentiply has made.”

“I’ll go and see her straightaway, Chief Inspector. I’m sure we can let you have what you need later this evening.”

“That would be excellent.”

“I’ll be off then.” With that—and the chilling thought that she was glad of an excuse not to go upstairs—Charlotte rose and headed for the hall. She turned back at the front door to find Hyslop close behind her.

“Your assistance is much appreciated, Miss Ladram.”

“It’s the least I can do, Chief Inspector. Beatrix was my godmother—and also somebody I admired a great deal. That this should happen to her is . . . quite awful.”

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“Sister of the poet Tristram Abberley, I understand.”

“That’s right. Do you know his work?”

Hyslop grimaced. “Had to study it at school. Not my cup of tea, to be honest. Too obscure for my taste.”

“And for many people’s.”

“I was surprised to find he had a sister still living. Surely he died before the war.”

“Yes. But he died young. In Spain. He was a volunteer in the Republican army during the Civil War.”

“That’s right. Of course he was. A hero’s end.”

“So I believe. And yet a more peaceful one than his sister’s. Isn’t that strange?”

C

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THREE

The employment of Avril Mentiply had represented Beatrix’s principal concession to old age. It was, as she had often explained to Charlotte, a substantial concession, since Mrs Mentiply’s standards of cleanliness were less exacting than her own.

Nevertheless, the relationship had endured, far longer than initial reprimands and threats of resignation had suggested it might. Indeed, it had eventually blossomed into something not far short of friendship. Consequently, upon arrival at Mrs Mentiply’s house that evening, Charlotte had not been surprised to find her strained and tearful, with the promised list of missing Tunbridge Ware far from complete.

She lived with her taciturn husband in a strangely sunless pebble-dash bungalow on the Folkestone road—one of the few parts of Rye to which tourists never strayed. It was not a setting in which Charlotte would have wished to linger. Yet linger she had, as Mrs Mentiply offered her cup after cup of stewed tea and poured out her distress at Beatrix’s death.

“I know she was old, my dear, and frailer than she’d care to admit, but she always had an . . . indomitable look . . . that made you think she 14

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was indestructible. But she wasn’t, was she? No more indestructible than any of us would be if we were attacked in our own home like she was. What’s the world coming to, I should like to know, when that kind of thing can happen to a respectable old lady?”

“Could have been worse,” put in Mr Mentiply, whom Charlotte had hoped might take one of several hints and leave the room but who had instead remained slumped in his chair by the flame-effect gas fire. “At least it wasn’t one of those sex maniacs. Just a straightforward burglar.”

“Have some respect for the dead, Arnold,” retorted Mrs Mentiply.

“Miss Ladram doesn’t want to hear talk like that.”

“Only facing facts.”

“Well, facts are that if he’d been a
straightforward burglar
he wouldn’t have murdered Miss Abberley, would he?”

“She should have stayed in bed. Left him to it. Then she’d have come to no harm.”

“How do you know?”

“Stands to reason, doesn’t it? He was only after her knick-knacks.

You said so yourself.”

Seeing that Mrs Mentiply was once more close to tears, Charlotte decided to intervene. “It’s certainly the Tunbridge Ware the police want to know about. Let’s just read through this list and make sure we’ve left nothing off, shall we?”

“Very well, my dear.”

“A tea-caddy with a view of Bodiam Castle on the lid. Two cake baskets. A cube-patterned tray. Two other marquetry trays. A ther-mometer stand. A solitaire set. Three paper—”

At the first ring of the telephone in the hall, Mrs Mentiply was out of her chair and bustling from the room. Charlotte took a deep breath and set the list aside. Then Mrs Mentiply reappeared. “It’s your brother, Miss Ladram. He wants to speak to you.”

Charlotte smiled and made her way to the telephone. “Hello, Maurice?”

“I’m at Jackdaw Cottage, Charlie. Chief Inspector Hyslop’s been putting me in the picture. And a depressing one it is.”

“I know. I’m drawing up a list of the missing items now with Mrs Mentiply.”

“So I understand. The Chief Inspector wants me to go with him to the mortuary. To identify Beatrix.”