Murder in Abbot's Folly (23 page)

‘I fear not. If you cannot accompany me in my own car, then I have to deny you the proof you say you wish, although of course Miss Marsh may come with me.'

‘The police will no doubt need to know too.'

‘Not without proof that proof exists. Dear me, what a puzzle of logic. I am still willing to take you, Miss Marsh. I should mention, however, that if you
should
decide to follow me, Mr Marsh, I shall merely take you on a circular and pleasant drive through the Kentish lanes. Unfortunately, this inn closes shortly, but there is a pleasant summer house where you may await our return. We shall not be long.'

Peter had hated giving in, but Georgia had signalled to him that he should do so. There was a chance that Douglas Watts meant what he said, and that could be valuable. She comforted herself that she could hardly be at physical risk, as she was fully trained in self-defence. Unless, of course, he had a gun – the gun perhaps that had already killed two people. She firmly put that thought behind her. It was not, she guessed, his style.

She lost count of the narrow single-track lanes that Douglas Watts chose to follow – with unusual care, she noticed. She began to suspect that the route was chosen not only to avoid recognizable villages but any signposts at all.

He eventually drew up outside a house so unattractive that she could not believe it belonged to an antiquarian. On second thoughts, to this particular antiquarian perhaps it could. It was certainly anonymous although unusual in design. It was sturdy, it was functional, not old, not new, once painted white and crying out for similar treatment, and it stood in a row of smaller red-brick houses.

‘Welcome to Osborne Castle,' he said. The nameplate at the gate read ‘Number 3'. That added up, she thought – it looked suitably anonymous.

Slightly to her surprise he rang the bell at the front door, which was opened by a harassed-looking youngish mother with two small children clinging to her. ‘Morning, Mr Osborne.'

‘And to you, Mrs Smith.'

This was clearly a well-worn routine, because with the formalities over he simply led Georgia past her, up the stairs, along a narrow corridor and entered a room on the right at the rear of the house.

‘I trust this will convince you that my story is fact not illusion,' he said as he threw open the door. ‘My den,' he announced.

A den? It looked more like a research laboratory, save for the bookshelves lining the far wall. All were full, with both antiquarian leather-bound books and more modern volumes on art and artists. There was a small sink with running water under the window, with work tops, more shelves with paint, varnishes, sulphuric acid, and paraffin, and behind her was what looked like a state-of-the-art X-ray machine and an ultraviolet light. A large modern table held computers, cameras, a scanning electron microscope and what looked like a magnifier – maybe the jeweller's loupe to which he had referred. There were canvases and frames stored against the wall behind the door, and on the worktops were countless boxes and pots whose contents she could not see save for those with paintbrushes, chalks and pencils in them. Two functional chairs completed the array.

‘Are you convinced, Miss Marsh?' Douglas asked politely.

She was determined to remain cool, faced with this overwhelming display. ‘Sufficiently, though I'd need more expertise to be sure enough for a court of law.'

‘I'm relieved to hear you say so. You will doubtless therefore be informing the police, who will discuss the allegation with whomever they think fit.'

‘We shall,' she said evenly, and he merely smiled. She walked over to the shelves to look at the books more closely.

‘You referred earlier to
one
of your alter egos,' she said. ‘Are there more collections such as the one at Stourdens?'

He smiled. ‘Time will tell, Miss Marsh. I hope well after I discover that death is no illusion.'

THIRTEEN

‘
T
his,' Peter remarked as they drove back to Haden Shaw, ‘is what one might call a humdinger. The sort of tornado that lands us in the merry old Land of Oz.'

Georgia tried to rally her wits, which seemed to have gone missing ever since Douglas Watts had driven her back to the pub to pick up Peter, who was impatiently awaiting them. He had grown tired of the summer house and was back in their own car with his laptop. Douglas had then politely paid his farewells and left. She had to admit that he had behaved impeccably – if there were an etiquette for a situation such as this. He had not sounded smug, he had not gloried in his hoax, he had not shown a remorse that he clearly did not feel.

‘
If
we believe him,' she replied.

‘Don't you? Rather an elaborate joke, wouldn't you say?'

‘He seems to specialize in them.'

‘Even so,' Peter ruminated as they pulled off the Ashford Road into Shaw Lane, ‘I'm inclined to believe him. Which means—'

‘We have to report it to the lovely Diane.' A prospect to which she would not look forward.

‘Who may or may not thank us.'

‘That's irrelevant. It puts him, as he must be aware, in the front line as a suspect for Laura's murder. She has to know.'

‘No contest. If Laura told her loving family – with a query over Jennifer – on the morning of the Gala that the collection was fake, it's a remarkable coincidence that she died before the day was out and moreover that no one has mentioned the question of fakes during the investigation. Not merely did Laura not want to commercialize Stourdens but she had very good reason not to do so.'

‘There's another point,' Georgia said. ‘Did the interested parties believe Laura when she said she'd changed her mind? Did she tell them it was fake, even if she didn't give Douglas's name? It seems fairly certain that Laura had been convinced by Douglas's story. If the family did know it was fake, though, they've kept unbelievably quiet about it. If they didn't, then they still had reason to want Laura dead, if she was flatly refusing to go ahead with the plans for Stourdens.'

‘Perhaps they decided to go ahead anyway. All in all, a puzzle maze,' Peter remarked. ‘Fortunately, it's Diane Newton who has to find a way out of it, not us.'

At Mike's request, Georgia drove to Charing Police HQ the next morning, but once again her reception was hardly warm. She had expected detachment – which was the nature of Diane's job – and she had expected her story to be probed. Instead she was presented with a gruelling session with DI Newton which was building up her resistance.

Diane was patently disbelieving. ‘Let's get this straight. You can't say exactly where the house is, except that somewhere you remember passing a windmill and a road sign to Ramsgate. Nor do you know who owns the house, but it isn't lived in either by Douglas Watts or by Alfred Wheeler or by Howard Osborne.'

‘I believe it's owned by him.'

‘Not under either of those three names in the Thanet area.'

Georgia could have kicked herself. Of course it wouldn't be. Watts would be too careful for that. ‘The house was in that general direction,' she said steadily. ‘There was a small village nearby which I didn't recognize; the house was outside it in a terrace of six red-brick houses and the one I was taken to was Number Three. It was near a crossroads of two lanes. Here –' she pushed a sheet of paper across the table to Diane, for which she received no thanks – ‘this is a rough layout of what it was like, not that it can tell you much more than I have.'

‘You don't think that this man might have been hoodwinking you?'

‘Of course that's possible,' Georgia agreed, ‘but why should he bother?'

‘He sounds like a joker to me. Jokers get their kicks from taking the mickey out of others. You must admit, Georgia, that your investigation into Robert Luckhurst's death must sound ripe for mockery – to some,' she added.

‘You're too kind,' Georgia said drily.

DI Newton must have decided to let her off lightly. ‘We'll look into it when we've a moment.'

‘Cheer up,' Peter said, when she reported back during the afternoon in gloomy mood. ‘We didn't expect much else. She's in the hot seat though, because if Watts is speaking the truth, it's undoubtedly relevant to her case and to the Met's. In fact we're in the more interesting position, because the Luckhurst murder is the basic one if all three of them are connected. If Watts was not kidding us, then Bob Luckhurst knew on one level at least that the collection was fake, and so did Amelia and Tanner. Tanner had built up his hopes of exploiting it for the advancement of Edgar Arms, and Amelia for Stourdens. Midnight struck when Bob Luckhurst refused to budge and their dreams turned into pumpkins.'

‘That's hardly taking us forward,' Georgia said crossly. ‘It merely makes them, as well as Douglas, the obvious suspects for Luckhurst's murder, which we knew already. There were plenty of other people around who might have wanted him dead, though, and in twenty-five years the real culprit could well have died.'

‘Tom Miller is still going strong,' Peter pointed out.

‘Here we go again. There's no evidence that he had any opportunity to kill Luckhurst.'

‘Let's consider again what we know, or think we know about him, and see where it takes us,' Peter said calmly. ‘He comes into the folly with his followers as far as the door of the study where Bob Luckhurst was later shot. Tanner is in there with Bob and comes out to see what's happening. Then Bob comes out to challenge Miller. Miller decides to leave – whether peaceably, as he says, or with menaces. He doesn't see Tanner again, telling us that as he goes out, Tanner must have nipped back in. But Miller leaves the folly at the rear of his group, who would not have been travelling in a neat crocodile formation, but spreading out. If Tanner
is
amongst that group, perhaps on one side where he wouldn't be noticed by too many people, Miller could have decided to make the most of his opportunity. He'd come prepared with the gun, been foiled by finding Tanner present, and now the opportunity reoccurs. Alternatively, Tanner knew about the tunnel and could have returned that way to avoid having to join the protest group with which he's just fallen out.'

‘Fine,' Georgia agreed, ‘but where does Amelia fit in?'

‘Only one person said there was a woman there, and he was a chum of Tom Miller's.'

‘We haven't asked everyone on the march,' she pointed out. ‘Anyway, it can't have been Barbara's voice, so if there was a woman present it was probably Amelia's.'

‘Was Barbara interviewed, I wonder?' Peter mused. ‘Perhaps not. She could hardly have been top of the list of suspects.'

‘Fancy her for a Lady Macbeth?'

‘You'll attract bad luck.'

‘I think it's here.'

‘You could be right.' Peter paused. ‘I'm not looking forward to Thursday.'

‘Nor me,' Georgia admitted. The nightmare of meeting Lucien Marques was growing. She glanced through the window as a car drew up outside and her heart sank. ‘Bad luck
is
here. Tim Wilson's arrived.'

‘Alone?'

‘No. Philip Faring's with him.' This did not look good, especially as Jennifer was absent. It was blindingly clear why they had come.

Peter seemed unconcerned, however, even when a tight-lipped, furious Tim launched straight into battle. ‘You two have made a monumental cock-up.'

‘Have we?' Peter replied. ‘Over what?'

‘According to the police, who kindly paid me a visit at lunchtime, you have twisted whatever you thought Douglas had told you and come up with a cock and bull story about the Jane Austen collection being faked by him.'

‘The police told you it was a cock and bull story?' Peter enquired politely.

‘No, but it is, as you must be perfectly well aware,' Philip said angrily. ‘Have you given a moment's thought to the implications for Stourdens and for my book if this false rumour gets around?'

‘Yes,' Peter said soberly. ‘We have. However, as Douglas himself informed us he had faked the collection, we were duty bound to pass the information on to the police.'

‘It's bloody nonsense,' Tim said, beside himself with rage. ‘I've spoken to Douglas. He told me you suggested a lunch meeting to discuss Bob Luckhurst's death, and that was all he discussed with you. I know you'll have a book to sell, but defaming Stourdens' reputation is not going to be part of it.'

Georgia tried to take in this new blow, and even Peter looked nonplussed. ‘He
denies
it? He can't, and therefore we can't omit it. Bob Luckhurst lived at Stourdens, and the collection originated with him; Amelia was his wife, and she has now been murdered. I can't believe Douglas denies telling us anything about the collection.'

‘I assure you he does,' Philip said. She could see him shaking. ‘And that's because there is nothing to tell. Good grief, I've written a whole book about Jane Austen and Harker. Don't you think I'd have noticed if there was something bogus about the story? Don't you think I've checked it all out? I do have a reputation to consider. Do you really think I would risk that on the basis of something that might have been faked?'

‘It's happened before,' Georgia said. ‘The best of scholars is sometimes deceived. Think of the Hitler diaries.'

‘I greatly resent this,' Philip snapped. ‘I take it you aren't accusing me of
knowing
about this fictitious fake?'

‘Assuming Douglas was not lying to us, he said Laura knew about the fakes. Did she tell you on the morning of the Gala?'