The Donaldson Case (10 page)

“Um, good
afternoon?”
 
William Chalmers’s
words sounded like a question rather than a welcome.

Janet sneezed
several times in a row.
 
Joan handed
her a tissue when she finished.

“Sorry about
this,” Janet said to William.
 
“We
were trying to find a shortcut back to our car and ended up in the lane behind
the shops.
 
Something or someone
made a loud noise and startled us both so we just ducked in here.”

“It was
probably the guy on the end,” William said.
 
“He’s always throwing things around back
there.”

Joan was
studying a few of the pictures on the easels that were spread around the small
storage room.

“These are
very good,” she said.

Janet looked at
the nearest picture, happy that her sister had changed the subject.
 
She was surprised to find that she
agreed with Joan.
 
“I know just
where this is,” she exclaimed.
 
“Joan and I went walking the other day and we were right there.”

“I love
painting the dales,” William said, his face bright red with embarrassment.
 
“I take photos of scenery I like and
then paint them back here.
 
I don’t
try to paint outside.”

“You’re very
talented,” Joan told him.
 
“Do you
have anything that’s finished?”

William shook
his head.
 
“I never seem to, that
is, well, finishing is the hard part,” he told her.
 
“I get them nearly done and then, for
some reason, I can’t bring myself to do those last few touches.
 
I keep starting new paintings rather
than finish the old ones.”

“Well, if you
finish these two,” Joan said, gesturing, “I’ll buy them from you, assuming we
can agree on a fair price.”

William
flushed.
 
“Oh, you could have them,”
he told her.
 
“I don’t, that is, I’m
not really ready to start charging for my work.”

“They’re quite
good,” Janet said.
 
“You said you
know a lot of artists.
 
Have you
ever shown them anything you’ve done?”

“That’s just
it,” William told her.
 
“I’ve never
finished anything to show anyone.
 
I
think it’s my way of avoiding having to find out what others think of my work.
 
I’m generally very confident and
self-assured, but when it comes to my art, well, I never think it’s good
enough.”

“Finish these
two,” Joan said.
 
Janet
recognised
her elder sister’s “stern teacher” voice.
 
“I’ll be back at the end of the month to
collect them.
 
We can discuss prices
then.”

William looked
as if he wanted to argue, but Joan didn’t give him a chance.
 
“I think we probably should be going,”
she said to Janet.

Janet
nodded.
 
“Our guests might be back
by now and it’s definitely time for some lunch.”

“And I want to
ring Robert and have a word,” Joan said as they walked through the shop to the
front door.

Chapter Ten

Joan was quiet
on the drive back to
Doveby
House.
 
Janet was curious to know what her
sister wanted to talk to the police constable about, but she didn’t want to
ask.
 
It had been a strange day,
with Joan acting all out of character.
 
Janet drove silently, wondering what her sister was thinking.

There was no
one at the house when they arrived home.
 
Joan fixed a quick lunch and then rang the police station.
 
Janet could only hear Joan’s end of the
conversation, which was short.

“Hello, Susan,
how are you?” Joan began.

“Yes, well I’d
be ever so grateful if you’d ask Robert to ring or stop by
Doveby
House when he has a minute.”

“Yes, thank
you.”

When she
disconnected, she smiled at Janet.
 
“She’s going to ask him stop by,” she told her.
 
“He’s out with the investigator from
Derby now.”

“He isn’t
going to bring the investigator here, is he?” Janet demanded.

“She didn’t
say,” Joan said.

Joan seemed
unconcerned, but Janet wasn’t sure the investigator from Derby would appreciate
their interfering in the case.

As it
happened, it was only Robert who turned up a short time later.
 

“Good
afternoon,” he said.
 
“What can I do
for you ladies today?”

Joan insisted
on fixing him a cup of tea.
 
She’d
piled dozens of biscuits on a plate before he’d arrived and now she urged him
to take several.
 
Once he was
settled in with his snack, Joan began.

“I want you to
make sure you take a very close look at Matthew Rogers,” she told the young
constable.
 
“I think he’s behind
whatever’s gone wrong at the chemist shop.”

Robert nearly
choked on his biscuit.
 
“Well,
that’s very, um, interesting,” he said.
 
“I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with me.”

Janet didn’t
think he appreciated it at all, but she didn’t say anything.

“I’m quite
worried about Michael, you see,” Joan went on in a confiding tone.
 
“But I’m certain he hasn’t done anything
wrong.
 
That Matthew Rogers, though,
he isn’t an honest person.”

“His company
thinks very highly of him,” Robert told her.
 
“They sent him here because there were
issues with the store.
 
I can’t
quite see how he could be behind the problems as he’d only just arrived when they
were discovered.”

Joan
shrugged.
 
“I’ll leave the detective
work to you,” she said.
 
“I’m just
telling you where to look.”

Robert
swallowed a sip of tea and then nodded.
 
“And do you share your sister’s opinion?” he asked Janet.

Janet nodded
slowly, trying to think of how to word her reply.
 
“He seems like a very nice man when you
meet him,” she said after a moment.
 
“But he’s not nearly as nice as he appears.
 
I wouldn’t be surprised if he was doing
something criminal.
 
Besides, the
other suspects are all such lovely men.”

“They are very
nice and I hate having to investigate them,” Robert admitted.
 
“But that’s my job.
 
I must say
,
they’ve all been very cooperative.”

“What about
Matthew?
 
Has he been cooperative?”
Joan demanded.

“Very,” Robert
replied.

Joan
frowned.
 
“Well, I do think if you
dig a little bit beneath the surface, you’ll find all sorts of nastiness
there,” she said.

“Thank you for
sharing your thoughts,” Robert said again.
 
“I’ll definitely take a closer look at the man.”

Janet showed
Robert out while Joan tidied in the kitchen.
 
When she rejoined her sister, Joan was
humming quietly.
 

“You seem to
be in a better mood,” Janet remarked.

“That’s
because it won’t be long now before the whole unpleasant business is wrapped up
and Michael’s name is cleared,” Joan replied.
 
“In the meantime, we have guests to keep
us busy.”

The guests
didn’t keep them all that busy, but Janet did tidy and vacuum their room every
day.
 
Joan kept trying to find
things they might enjoy for breakfast, but they never ate more than dry toast,
no matter what she offered.
 

The pair
usually went out each morning and
were
back at the
house by seven or eight.
 
They’d
watch a bit of
telly
and then head to bed just as
Janet and Joan were getting tired.
 
By the time they left, Janet had decided that if all guests were like Fred
and Molly, she and Joan should welcome guests more often.

Joan was back
to her normal
self,
cooking and baking nearly perfect
meals and treats every day.
 
Michael
visited often and seemed to share Joan’s conviction that the police would have
the matter sorted very soon.
 
Janet
found herself eager to investigate further, but with no clear idea of what to
do.
 

A week after
their visit with Robert Parsons, the day after their guests had checked out,
Janet found him on their doorstep again.

“Come in,” she
invited the man.

She shouted
for Joan, who quickly invited the man to have a
cuppa
.

“I can’t stay
long,” he told them.
 
“But maybe
just a quick one.”

Janet fixed a
plate of biscuits while Joan arranged the tea things.
 
Within minutes, they were all sitting
together at the kitchen table.

“What can we
do for you?” Joan asked the young man.

“I just came
to tell you that you were right,” he told her.

“About Matthew
Rogers, you mean?” Joan asked.
 

“Yes, he’s
been arrested, and the charges will be significant,” Robert replied.

Joan
nodded.
 
“I knew he couldn’t be
trusted.”

“But how did
he manage it, if he’d only just arrived?” Janet asked.

“Ah, it was all
tricked up on the computer,” Robert said.
 
“From what we can tell, he had access to the store’s computer records
and he started making changes in them many months ago, about the same time that
Owen told the head office that he was going to need several months of sick
leave.”

“He really
planned ahead, then,” Janet remarked.

“He did,”
Robert agreed.
 
“He changed orders,
created phantom returns and did a lot of other things to make it look as if
there were problems in the store.
 
Then he persuaded his manager that he should come up here and sort
everything out.”

“Clever,” Joan
murmured.

“He was a bit
too clever,” Robert said.
 
“He made
so many changes to the drugs records that even he didn’t know what the store
had.
 
He was stealing from their
inventory before it was shipped and then altering the records so that the store
here didn’t notice, but as I understand it, he started getting overconfident
and ended up making a few mistakes.
 
When he arrived here, the first thing he did was an inventory which
showed what a mess he’d made of it.”

“But why ring
the police?” Janet asked.
 
“Why not
just fix the records?”

“I gather his
boss ordered him to do the inventory before he did anything else and there were
so many mistakes in it that he knew he didn’t have time to fix it.
 
I’m not totally clear on how it all
works, but he said something about not having access to the company’s main
computers here, so he couldn’t change things on that end.
 
Anyway, apparently he decided to ring
the police, thinking that he couldn’t be blamed as he wasn’t even here when the
drugs went missing.”

“But you were
able to find evidence,” Joan said happily.

“Well, no,”
Robert replied.
 
“After I talked
with you, I started watching him more closely.”
 
The young man flushed.
 
“The investigator from Derby was
convinced that someone else was guilty and he was concentrating on that angle,
so I just kept my mouth shut and watched Matthew Rogers.
 
After a few days I started to notice a
few things about how he was running the shop.
 
Let’s just say it didn’t take long for
me to catch him doing something illegal.
 
After that, his story began to fall apart.”

“Well, that’s
one mystery solved,” Joan said briskly.
 
“Michael will be pleased that he isn’t a suspect any more.”

“He was never
a suspect in my eyes,” Robert told her.

“Yes, well, I
suppose Owen and George will feel better as well,” Joan said.

“And that just
leaves us with this mysterious key,” Janet said, pulling it out of her
pocket.
 
She’d taken to carrying it
around with her just in case she happened to find herself at a different bank
where she could ask about their deposit boxes.
 
So far, that hadn’t happened.

“Mysterious
key?” Robert said.
 
“Why is it
mysterious?”

Janet handed
him the key.
 
“We found it inside a
piggy bank in a hidden compartment in the library,” she explained.
 
“But we don’t know what it’s for.”

Robert turned
the key over his hands.
 
“I haven’t
seen one of these in a few years,” he told the sisters.
 
“See the stamp on this side?
 
It says ‘DDBS’ in very faint letters.”

Janet took the
key back and studied it.
 
She
thought she’d inspected the key in great detail, but she hadn’t been able to
make out the very small and lightly etched letters.

“What does it
mean?” she asked Robert.

“It’s a key
for the safe deposit boxes at the
Doveby
Dale
Building Society,” he told her.

“But where is
that?” Janet asked excitedly.

“They tore it
down about five years ago,” Robert replied.

Janet sat back
in her chair, feeling crushed.
 
“So
it’s a key for nothing?” she asked.

“The place was
old and in bad repair,” Robert told her.
 
“By the time they tore it down, everyone was happy to see it go.
 
If Maggie Appleton had anything stored
there, she moved it elsewhere before the demolition.”

“At least now
we know,” Joan said.
 
“Thank you.”

Janet muttered
something similar, but she wasn’t feeling grateful.
 
She’d had such high hopes of finding a
great treasure when they discovered what the key was for, and instead it turned
out to be worthless.

Joan showed
Robert out while Janet tidied up.
 
She popped an extra biscuit into her mouth in an effort to improve her
mood.
 
It didn’t help much.