A Medal For Murder (43 page)

Just as the inspector was about to ask another question, we were interrupted by a loud knocking on the outside door.

I stood up. ‘I’ll go.’

It was a short, stocky plain-clothes policeman, a little out of breath. ‘Inspector Charles here? I need to speak to him, urgently.’

The inspector had heard, and came out into the hall. I left him and the constable to talk, and went back to Lucy.

‘He’s nice,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think he thinks I killed Mr Milner.’

‘No.’ I had no idea what was going on in the inspector’s mind.

‘He likes you,’ she said confidently, trying to scratch her ankle under the bandage. ‘The inspector likes you, Mrs Shackleton. I can always tell.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper as he came back into the room. ‘You like him too.’

The inspector looked suddenly grey-faced and grim. He did not sit down but gripped the back of the chair. ‘I’ve sent the constable upstairs to tell Miss Fell something, but it’s something very bad, Lucy, and you must know it first.’

Lucy ran her tongue around her lips. ‘Is it Dylan? Has he died? He was only trying to help me . . .’

‘Not Dylan. Your grandfather. There is no easy way to say this. He is dead.’

‘No. He was here, he . . .’ Her eyes widened. She clenched her fists.

‘He just came to our headquarters in the Prince of Wales. He made a confession to having killed Mr Milner . . .’

She stared at him, her mouth open, as if she suspected this might be some horrible trick.

Inspector Charles continued, ‘From what your grandfather said, the details he gave, we have every reason to believe that he did murder Mr Milner.’

Her head dropped forward. She began to shake convulsively. I feared she was about to have a fit. In movements that seemed like slow motion, I went across to her, sat on the arm of the chair and took hold of her.

After a few moments, she stopped shaking. With tears on her cheeks, she looked up. ‘But you said grandfather is dead. And now you say he is a killer.’

His look was full of compassion, his voice gentle. ‘He brought with him a revolver. When he had signed the confession, he turned the revolver on himself.’

Lucy’s voice was little more than a whisper. ‘He wouldn’t. He . . .’

‘Death was instant. He shot himself through the temple. I’m sorry, Miss Wolfendale.’

I shut my eyes, willing myself not to be sick. When I opened them, I looked at the photograph of Lucy that the captain had placed on the occasional table. There was the clearest thumb mark where he had held it while admiring my photographic skill and Lucy’s translucent beauty.

It shook me to the core to think that when I had come in here late that evening after the theatre, after sitting in the police station giving my story, the captain had blood on his hands. Coolly, he had handed me the telegram from Sykes about Mrs deVries and her address. Unblinking, he had, the next morning, sought my help in finding Lucy. All the while I had been dealing with a cold-blooded murderer.

Miss Fell came bustling in. ‘My poor Lucy.’ She rushed to Lucy and folded her in her arms. Lucy began to sob.

‘Will you be all right?’ the inspector asked me.

‘Yes.’

‘I have to get back to the Prince of Wales.’

‘Of course.’

I followed him into the hall. The front door stood open. The two men were about to leave.

‘Wait!’ They turned back to look at me. Now was not the time, but I had to know. Because something did not ring true. I remembered the expression on the old man’s face earlier, when he looked at Lucy and realised that she knew how Milner had died. ‘Did he really do it, or was this another false confession?’

The inspector looked at me in great surprise. One false confession would be unusual. Two would be extraordinary. He nodded to his subordinate. ‘We can trust Mrs Shackleton.’

The plain-clothes man cleared his throat. ‘Captain Wolfendale had all the details correct, the time, the weapon, the slashed tyres. He even said he had lost a cufflink and disposed of its match down a drain.’

That should have convinced me. My nagging doubts were based on flimsy thoughts that would sound ridiculous if I put them into words. The old man was not capable of changing a gas mantle in his own hall. Could he be so thorough as to almost get away with murder? And why confess?

The inspector was impatient to be off.

I wanted to stop him, to say that there was something wrong. ‘One more question. What was his motive?’

The plain-clothes man relaxed a little now. It made me wonder if he, too, thought the captain’s account of the murder had been too tidy.

‘He was being blackmailed by the victim. It had gone on for years. On Friday, Mr Milner had come round in the afternoon and asked him to sign over the house. That was the last straw.’

I did not believe that. Milner wanted Lucy, not a dilapidated house with a sitting tenant.

Inspector Charles asked the next question for me. ‘What was the captain being blackmailed about?’

‘Something that happened during the Boer War, sir. Apparently, the captain was decorated for his bravery. He took credit for another man’s courage, and after the war, he killed a man. Killed his own batman. It reads very convincing in his statement, sir.’

It would have been more convincing, I thought, if he had confessed to being the batman who had killed his captain. But then, Lucy would be left homeless. There would be no provision in law for this house to
be inherited by Miss Wolfendale’s nephew’s illegitimate daughter. That would be a Dickensian suite in chancery.

The three of us stood in silence for a moment. The detective constable put on his hat and left. Inspector Charles looked at me with respect and admiration. ‘You said it this morning. You said we should take a closer look at Captain Wolfendale. You were right.’

With that, he left.

I returned to the room. Lucy and the ancient Miss Fell were locked in a tragic embrace.

I barely trusted myself to speak. But there was one question I needed to ask.

‘Lucy, when Dan was in the tower with you, was he confessing to murder?’

She looked up. Tears smudged her cheeks. ‘No. Why would he?’

‘I overheard him.’

She stared at me for a moment, then a flicker of recollection came to her. ‘Oh that. No. He was saying that he wanted to kill someone he really and truly hated, and so he knew how I felt.’

‘About what? How you felt about what?’

She burst into a fresh bout of weeping. ‘About killing Mr Milner. I told him I murdered Mr Milner.’

My mouth felt so dry I could barely get the words out. My top lip stuck to my teeth. ‘And did you kill Mr Milner?’

‘No!’

‘Then why did you say you did?’

‘Oh I don’t know. I wanted Dan to help me. I wanted him to look after me, and collect the money from the hollow tree on Monday.’

Suddenly it made sense why Dan had confessed to murder. I had felt protective towards Lucy, he felt the same, and in spades. ‘So you really told him that you killed Mr Milner?’

‘Yes. I thought if Dan was on my side, everything would be all right.’

What I did next was not like me at all. I bore down on her, kicked the footstool from under her sprained ankle so that her leg dropped and she let out a cry. I grabbed her and shook her. ‘And your grandfather. Did you tell him the same thing? That you killed Milner?’

‘No!’

‘Are you sure?’ I kept on shaking her. Her head flopped back and forth like a rag doll’s. She was wailing.

‘Of course I’m sure, I swear it.’

Miss Fell pulled at my arm. ‘Stop it! Leave the child be. Don’t you see how upset she is?’

‘Did you kill him, Lucy? You had good reason to stick a knife in Milner’s heart.’

Miss Fell began to pull at my clothes, trying to drag me off. Lucy became a dead weight. I had stopped shaking her and held her by the arms, to keep her from falling. I let her drop back into the chair. She looked up at me, dislike and resentment in every feature.

‘I didn’t kill him. Granddad asked me had I done it. He said to not be afraid to say. But I didn’t. I told him, it wasn’t me. Ask Alison. She was with me the whole time. We went to the dressing room together, so that he wouldn’t get me on my own.’

She was telling the truth. She looked too exhausted to lie. I turned and left the room. Now I was the one who had begun to shake.

 
 

I shut the front door quietly and walked down the steps, not sorry to be leaving 29 St Clement’s Road behind.

In my mind’s eye, I saw what might have happened on Friday night: the captain, hailing Milner as he walked towards his motor on Cheltenham Parade. What words had he uttered as he plunged the knife into Milner’s heart? In a slow dance, had he guided Milner up the alley to the doorway and let him slide into oblivion?

My hands began to shake as I made to open the car door. I leaned slightly, supporting myself as my legs turned weak.

‘Mrs Shackleton!’ Firm hands gripped my upper arms.

I turned to see Dan Root.

He released me. ‘Sorry, saw you through my window. Thought you were going to faint.’

I shook him off. ‘I’m not the fainting type, Mr Root.’

‘All the same, won’t you come in for a moment?’

‘No. Thank you.’

‘I’ve something to tell you.’

‘You had something to tell me before. It was a pack of lies.’

‘Only the part about killing Milner was untrue.’

‘Only!’ Everything in my body screamed at him to keep his nonsense to himself. ‘I don’t want to hear any more from you.’ But that was not true. Given his habit of eavesdropping, there might be something he could tell me that would help make some sense of the captain’s confession.

‘Let me at least offer you a glass of water, and an apology. Come in and sit down, just for a moment, until you feel ready to drive.’

I did not have the energy to refuse, but told myself this was work. In his confession, the captain had given an account of what passed between him and Milner on Friday afternoon. Eavesdropper Dan would be able to confirm or deny that. If what the captain said was true, about Milner wanting the house, then perhaps the rest of his statement was also true. There was the advantage that Dan could not have heard my conversation in the hall with the two policemen.

His bench and work in progress was covered with a darned white sheet. Otherwise the room was just the same as when he had given me a demonstration on how to use an eyeglass, and as it had been when I returned to search hastily, looking for some clue to Lucy’s whereabouts, and finding his telltale South African bible.

The old speaking trumpet and pipe were connected and lying on the hearth. ‘So you have heard the news about the captain’s confession and suicide?’

He had the grace to blush. ‘Sit here.’

It was the only chair – a metal-frame contraption with large flat cushions that would extend to a narrow bed. He turned on the tap, and filled a glass with water.

‘And did you hear me just now, trying to shake the truth from Lucy?’

He handed me the glass of water. ‘No,’ he lied. ‘I’ve been seeing to my stew.’

Something was cooking in a pot.

He lowered the flame on a gas ring. ‘I bought myself this contraption. It comes with a gas canister. I go to Mr Preston, the butcher in Lowther Arcade. Neck of mutton makes a good stew, with onion, pearl barley, a carrot and a potato, salt and pepper.’

He could stick his lying head in the stew for all I cared. With a good deal of effort, I kept my voice steady. ‘I’m not interested in recipes. Why did you confess to a crime you didn’t commit?’

He picked up a ladle. ‘Will you have some stew?’

‘If I ate, I’d be sick. Just tell me. Why did you make a false confession?’

‘Can’t you guess?’ He lay down the ladle reluctantly. ‘All these months I’ve been too cowardly to act. I came here to avenge my mother. The man I wanted to kill, the real Captain Wolfendale, had been dead for two decades. You can’t imagine how that felt. Like walking into a brick wall. When I heard Milner was dead, I wished I’d killed him. And when Lucy said she’d done it . . .’