The Ellie Hardwick Mysteries (7 page)

My three companions all jumped to their feet looking at each other with total dismay.

Rupert was the first to move. ‘Grandpa!' he yelled. ‘That's from Grandpa's room!'

He started to the door. Edward and the inspector ran after him. I lingered behind just long enough to cast an eye over the inspector's belongings abandoned on the table. There was something I had to find out without anyone noticing. Shifty but determined, I picked up his mobile and, one eye on the door, began to scroll through his phone book. I told myself what I was doing was in the interests of
justice—and
self-preservation.

I scrambled after the others, hurrying up the staircase and along a corridor. Rupert burst into the room at the end and we all gathered behind him, keeping to the doorway. Peering over Jennings' shoulder I could just make out the body of an old man wearing a camouflage-patterned sweater and dark cord trousers slumped across his desk under the window. A service revolver lay on the floor by his right hand. The wall to his left was spattered with blood. Edward put an arm around his son and hugged him, both men's faces white with shock.

Jennings went into action. ‘Stay back,' he said unnecessarily. No one was trying to get close. He went to the desk and went through the automatic and superfluous gestures of checking the body for vital signs then abandoned this ritual and noticed the arrangement on the desk top. A large iron key was acting as paperweight for a single sheet of hand-written paper. He looked at it and waved to Edward. ‘Come and have a look at this,' he said quietly. ‘Looks like a suicide note and it's addressed to you. Edward.'

Edward went forward and began to read aloud. He needn't have done this and I wondered why he was involving us all in this way. More showmanship? I thought so.

‘My dearest Eddie, forgive me. I killed that friend of Rupert's. Woman was a strumpet
and
did not deserve the honour he was about to bestow on her. I came down for a night-cap late last night and heard her planning—with that appalling photographer chap who's been infesting the place—to defile the family tomb. Couldn't have that. Made my preparations. I got to the church before them and let myself in through the vestry door on the north side using this old key. No one saw me. I hid and when the chap left the church to fetch something from his car I stabbed the girl with the dagger I'd taken from the display in the drawing room. I waited with the intention of terminating his miserable existence as well—I meant to snap his rabbit neck—but he was off like a flash. I couldn't have caught him. I'm a bit decrepit these days but not as bad as I've been making out. In fact, I was faking my condition. I took to my room to avoid meeting this dreadful pair of limpets. In any case—it occurred to me that he was more useful to us alive—he'd make a jolly useful suspect, damn his hide! I trust Rupert will learn from this fiasco and one day he'll be able to find a decent girl. God bless you both. Who dies? Eh?'

As he read I looked around the room, anywhere but at the poor, shattered body. I took in the military neatness of his arrangements, the bed already made, the books lined up on his bedside table. The only untidy item in the room was a pair of
pyjamas
lying in a crumpled heap on the bed. A discordant note in this precisely organised room. Fearful of what I might find, unnoticed by the others, I edged nearer, put out a hand and touched them. I looked at the carafe of water and the bottle of pills on the bedside table and I moved around until I could see the label and the contents.

What I saw confirmed all my fears.

* * *

Hours later after a sketchy lunch in which no one was interested and a tea tray in the library which seemed to have become the operations room, the police had finally left. Statements had been taken, frantic phone calls made, ambulances, police vehicles, pathologist and undertaker had gone about their business and, somewhere in the Islington nick I hoped that someone had thought to release Theo Tindall.

* * *

It had been a long, weary and sickening day but finally a weight seemed to have lifted from Edward Hartest. He poured me a glass of sherry, having, on one pretext or another, prevented my leaving for the last two hours. ‘Nonsense! Not in the way at all! I can never apologise enough for dragging you into such a grisly family scene but we've both been glad
you
were here. Kept us in touch with sanity in an increasingly mad scenario, you might say. And you were right, you see, Ellie, about the motive. Purity of the line. It meant a lot to my father.' He fell silent, plunging into painful thought. Recovering himself he said, more brightly, ‘Ellie? Now that's short for Eleanor isn't it? And funnily enough, that's the modern spelling of Aliénore. Did you know that? Your surname's Hardwick? One of the Norfolk Hardwicks are you? Then your family are apple growers? You must know a good deal about apples?'

Suspicious and disturbed by his change of tone, I admitted that I did.

‘Look, before you go, you must take a stroll in the orchard with me. The blossom's wonderful at the moment. We've got some very special old strains that might interest an expert.'

The thought of wandering under the trees in the scented twilight with the handsome dark lord was making my knees quiver. I tried to fix an interested smile and appear relaxed but all my senses were screaming a warning.

For two men who'd just suffered a double bereavement, Rupert and Edward were charming hosts. But it was more than noblesse obliging them to put on a good show—they were hanging on to me because my presence was a necessary buffer between them. When I had gone they would be left alone with each
other,
with recriminations perhaps and with much sorrow. For the moment I presented them with the need to behave normally. I got to my feet, picking up my bag. I had to take my leave carefully, raising no suspicion that I knew a huge injustice had been done and that one of these charming men was a killer, a killer with the deaths of a young girl, her unborn child and an innocent old man on his conscience.

Neither man had an alibi for the time of the murder. Rupert was thought to have been in bed and had made a rather stagey appearance in his bathrobe at ten thirty. Edward had told the police in his straightforward way that, as usual, he'd been working by himself in the fields since six o'clock. If the Inspector cared to ask, any one of what he called his chaps might be able to state that they'd spotted him out in the pightle, mending the tractor. Somehow I thought his chaps might be queuing up, tugging their forelocks, to do just that.

The killer was probably trying to calculate how much I had worked out for myself, assessing from my behaviour how urgently I was trying to get away to raise the alarm, perhaps even working on a scheme to ensure my discretion—or my silence.

Rupert scrambled to his feet and firmly took my bag. ‘No, it's all right, Dad! The last thing Ellie wants is to go wandering round a
damp
orchard at this time of night. We're not all apple freaks you know! I'll walk you to your car, Ellie . . . No, I insist! It's a bit dark down the lane now,' he said. ‘You left it in front of the church, didn't you?'

And we set off together to walk down the tree-lined driveway to the church. He took my hand and held it tightly with what might have been interpreted as friendly concern.

Distantly, the reassuring sound of the blue and white plastic ribbons outlining the crime scene flapping in the evening breeze was reaching my ears. We crunched on in silence down the gravel. Not much further to go. My hand curled round my car keys in the right hand pocket of my jeans. Fifty yards.

At the bottom of the drive, Rupert abruptly put down my bag, pulled me into the deep shadow of a lime tree, turned to face me and put two hands on my shoulders. ‘You know don't you?' he said.

I shivered under his hands. ‘Yes, I do,' I said defiantly.

‘And I want to know what you're proposing to do about it.'

Keeping my voice level and unconcerned I said, ‘Nothing. That's what I'm proposing to do. Who would listen to me in the face of so much evidence pointing so convincingly in a different direction? You've said it, Rupert—or was it your father?—It's a family thing. You can sort it out between you.'

‘How
did you guess?'

‘It was no guess! Sharp observation and intelligent deduction!' I couldn't let him intimidate me. I looked anxiously down the lane, trying to make out the outline of my old Golf. Could I outrun him if he got angry? Probably not.

‘It was the pills that gave it away.' I spoke with confidence. I think I even managed a flourish. No one ever attacked Miss Marple in the middle of one of her explanations. And somehow this felt like a dénouement.

‘Pills, Ellie? What do you mean?'

‘In your grandfather's room. All that stuff about his bad heart and being room bound—no one considered he could have done the killing but then, in his confession, he tells the world that it was all a bluff and, stiffening his old sinews, he does a commando-style exercise in the church for the sake of the family honour. Well, the police are happy they've worked out the bluff but they didn't think as far as a double bluff! The pill bottle by his bed, Rupert—it was half empty. He'd been taking whatever it was in there all right. And what was in there—I looked at the label—was a heavy duty heart disease prescription. My aunt had the same thing. So, your grandfather hadn't pretended—he was genuinely a heart attack victim and there's no way he could have done what he confessed to! He was owning up to a crime he didn't commit because he knew
who
had done it and was taking the blame for someone very dear to him. Paying the bill. For the family. Making sure that Hartest lives if you like.' I added softly, ‘Ensuring your future, Rupert.'

‘I don't know what to say. What can I do?' He seemed suddenly helpless and disarmingly childlike. ‘I thought you'd worked it all out. Could be a bit of a problem . . .'

He thought for a moment and went on: ‘You know he's mad, don't you?' he said. ‘You'd have to be a bit mad, wouldn't you to kill like that and be prepared to let an innocent man—two innocent men—take the blame?'

I considered this. ‘No, I don't think so. Just very focused and pitiless. You and I couldn't do it Rupert—we're the arty type remember. But your father could—and did. Who dies? Well, Theo Tindall for a start was a sacrificial victim. He was thrown to the wolves. But, just in case the wolves weren't having any—and that bright Jennings was beginning to make dissatisfied noises—even his own father . . . Yes, I think so . . . He told his father exactly what he'd done and, using this knowledge, the old chap cobbled together a convincing confession. He didn't have much time. He wanted to fire the shot while Jennings was in the house, I'd guess—a police witness right there on the spot. He hurried to write the confession and then thought of a corroborative detail—he got out of his pyjamas, leaving
them
in a heap, and dressed himself up in camouflage gear to make it look credible. But his pyjamas were still warm. He'd taken them off only a few minutes before he shot himself.'

I paused for a moment, mind racing. ‘Would we be really mean, Rupert, if the thought crossed our minds that this was just what Edward calculated would happen? You know your father best—would he consider it no more than right and just that the old should sacrifice themselves for the young? I think that was in his philosophy and your grandfather's. They saw you couldn't find the strength to extricate yourself from what they considered an impossible situation and they acted. I can't say they were doing it for you because in their thinking the individual is only a link in a chain. They were making sure a six hundred year old chain wasn't broken.

‘So that's what I come down to?' said Rupert unhappily. ‘The weak link in the family chain! Thanks!'

Lightening my tone I went on, ‘As for what you do now . . . well, you go out and find yourself a respectable girl with a good name, marry her, have several male offspring and you'll find he need never kill again.'

I spoke flippantly but his reaction was unexpected.

Rupert smiled a devastating smile, reached out a forefinger and gently stroked my cheek. ‘Eleanor's a good name,' he murmured,
leaning
closer.

I managed to fight down a shudder of fear and even retained my slight dismissive smile. The two Hartest men might have different methods of ensuring my silence—murder or matrimony—and on the whole, Rupert's method was to be preferred, but in the end they shared the same compelling family motto and the next victim they had in their sights was me. ‘Who dies?' It wasn't going to be me. I'd decided some hours ago to adopt a motto of my own.
Semper vigilans
wouldn't be bad, I'd thought . . . always on the alert.

‘And I think you're very attractive,' Rupert was whispering, his eyes gleaming like a spaniel's in the moonlight. ‘It didn't take me long to work out that you were a strong girl, dependable, discreet . . .'

I swallowed and in what I imagined to be a light and friendly tone I agreed with him. ‘Oh, yes. All that. And clever too. It didn't take
me
long to work out that the name Eleanor in conjunction with the name Hartest is not a lucky combination! It gets carved on tombstones. Prematurely. Goodbye, Rupert. I'll keep an interested eye on the announcements column in the
Times
! I may even turn up at your wedding!'

Truce? Stand off? Too soft for Sandhurst? He wasn't the ruthless tactician his father was. He let me get away.

* * *

Back in the safety of my Golf, I turned the key with shaking hand and said a quick prayer when the engine started. Two miles away on the busy, brightly-lit forecourt of a filling station I stopped and took out my phone.