Borrowed Time (3 page)

C  H  A  P  T  E  R
TWO

M
y mother wasn’t in the habit of throwing newspapers away; she had too many uses for them. When I scrabbled through the stack she kept in the scullery, I found a more or less complete set for the past week. Complete enough, at all events, to tell me as much as anybody else had been told of the Kington killings.

“I didn’t know you’d be so interested, dear,” she said, as I spread them out on the kitchen table and tried to assemble a clear account of what had happened. “There are people being murdered every day. Why don’t you come into the sitting-room and have your tea?”

“You go ahead, Mother. I won’t be long.” I wasn’t ready to reveal my connection with the case. I couldn’t help thinking it would be easier if I were a friend or relative of Louise Paxton. Then I’d have some genuine reaction to cling to. Instead, I was gripped by a sort of dislocated horror. She was a stranger to me. No more, no less, than she was to the two hikers I’d passed on my way up onto the ridge. They probably hadn’t even noticed her. But I had. Or rather
she
had noticed
me
. Logically, it shouldn’t have mattered. She could have died in a car crash that same night and I’d never have known. But she hadn’t. And now I knew what had really happened to her, I was never going to be able to forget.

The murders had taken place at a house called Whistler’s Cot. It stood at the far end of Butterbur Lane, a turning off Hergest Road, which led out of Kington on the southern side of Hergest Ridge. Comparison of my Ordnance Survey map of the area with a town plan I’d picked up at the tourist information office in Kington enabled me to locate the spot precisely. It was scarcely a mile from where I’d met Louise Paxton, though getting there by car would have involved her driving back into Kington and out again. Butterbur Lane was narrow and winding, climbing steeply across the south-eastern flank of Hergest Ridge until it petered out in the woods and pastures of Haywood Common. The last residence in the lane was Whistler’s Cot.

Its owner was a well-known artist I’d never heard of called Oscar Kentigern Bantock, aged sixty according to the police and fifty-eight according to his
Daily Telegraph
obituarist. Bantock had bought the place about ten years before and had a studio built onto the rear of what would otherwise have been a two-up-two-down cottage. He’d also added a garage for his notoriously noisy Triumph sports car. Despite his London roots and artistic temperament, Bantock was popular with his neighbours and the regulars of several Kington pubs. They knew little of his tattered reputation as a hero of English Expressionism. The obituarist referred to a brief vogue for his work in the sixties. Since then, by implication, his career had been anti-climactic. But a trickle of commissions and exhibitions, along with some sort of inheritance from an aunt, had kept him going. Until violent death called by to make him suddenly collectable.

At about half past ten on the morning of Wednesday 18 July, Derek Jones, a local postman, stopped his van outside Whistler’s Cot. He normally pulled into the parking bay in front of Bantock’s garage, but that was occupied by a car he didn’t recognize: a white Mercedes two-seater. Jones got out, carrying a few letters, and made his way to the rear of the house. He was in the habit of cadging a mug of tea off the old boy at the end of his round and usually found him in his studio. He’d tap on the window and go into the kitchen, where they’d talk about motor racing—a shared enthusiasm. But as soon as he reached the studio window, Jones realized something was dreadfully wrong.

The room was in chaos, pictures and easels up-ended, paints and brushes littering the floor. And he could see the lower half of Bantock’s body, protruding from under a bench. Jones rushed in through the kitchen, finding the door, as usual, closed but not locked. As soon as he saw Bantock’s face, he knew he was dead. He’d been strangled. More accurately, as the police later discovered, he’d been garrotted with a short length of picture-hanging wire left embedded in his neck.

Jones tried the telephone in the kitchen, but it wasn’t working. The lead had been ripped out of the socket. He then ran down to the next cottage in the lane and raised the alarm, waiting there until the police arrived. It was just one policeman at first, PC George Allen from the station in Kington. He questioned Jones, then entered Whistler’s Cot, confirmed Bantock was dead and searched the rest of the house before summoning help.

Upstairs, in one of the two bedrooms, Allen found the second victim: a middle-aged woman, naked, face-down on a bed and strangled in identical fashion to Bantock. Subsequent examination showed she’d been sexually assaulted. This was Louise Paxton. And the time of her death was later put at between nine and ten o’clock the previous night, no more than two hours, in other words, after our meeting on Hergest Ridge.

A full-scale murder inquiry now swung into operation under Detective Chief Superintendent Walter Gough of West Mercia C.I.D. Whistler’s Cot was sealed off. Scene-of-crime officers set to work combing the house and garden for evidence. A Home Office pathologist, Dr. Brian Robinson of Birmingham University, arrived by helicopter to inspect the bodies. The other residents of Butterbur Lane were questioned. A press conference was fixed for the afternoon. And frantic efforts to contact friends or relatives of the dead woman commenced.

The contents of a handbag in the house and computer records of the registration of the white Mercedes suggested she was Louise Jane Paxton of Holland Park, London. But her next of kin proved elusive and it was Friday morning before she was named in the press. It transpired that her husband, Sir Keith Paxton, was abroad and, of their two children, one, Sarah, was on a touring holiday in Scotland, while the other, Rowena, was at the family’s country residence in Gloucestershire. Rowena had identified her mother’s body on Wednesday night, but problems in contacting Sir Keith and the other daughter delayed an announcement.

Louise Paxton’s identification heightened media interest in the case, elevating it to the front page. Sir Keith was a consultant gynaecologist who’d officiated in his time at several royal births, been given a knighthood as his reward and now dispensed advice to the infertile rich from brass-plaqued premises in Harley Street. It was explained on his behalf that his wife was a connoisseuse of Expressionist art. She owned several Bantock originals, had been trying to persuade Bantock to sell her another and had travelled to Kington on July 17 in response to a message from the artist indicating he was now prepared to accept her offer for the ominously named work
Black Widow
. There’d been hurtful gossip in Kington since the murders based on the time of death and Bantock’s goatish reputation, but the police were as anxious as the Paxton family to quash it. There was a margin of error in Dr. Robinson’s estimate of the time of death, they pointed out. The pathologist also thought Bantock could have died up to an hour before Lady Paxton. Chief Superintendent Gough’s theory was that she’d called at the house for the reason supplied by her husband, had surprised Bantock’s killer, been forced by him to strip, then been raped and eventually strangled. The circumstances were horrific enough, even to a seasoned officer such as himself, without adding malicious tittle-tattle to the family’s burden of grief.

Quite so. But I’d seen her ringless finger. I’d heard the tone of her voice. Whatever she’d been thinking about on Hergest Ridge, it wasn’t the purchase of an oil painting. Not that her motives were relevant, of course. Only the motives of her killer mattered now.

And the police seemed at a loss. There were no signs of forcible entry at the house. But Jones—and several neighbours—confirmed that Bantock often left doors unlocked and windows open when he went out. And more than one of those neighbours thought they’d heard his Triumph driving down the lane in the early afternoon of July 17, then back up the lane some time between seven and eight o’clock that evening. He could easily have come upon an opportunist burglar and been strangled for his pains. Only for Lady Paxton to arrive before the murderer could beat a retreat. The timing—as I knew better than most—certainly made sense.

But something else didn’t. What burglar turned so easily to rape and murder? Why not just leg it across the fields when he heard Bantock’s car? And had he actually stolen anything? The police seemed coy on the point, suggesting that, since Bantock lived alone and in some disorder, it was hard to tell. They admitted, however, that Lady Paxton’s credit cards and cheque book had been found in her handbag, along with more than a hundred pounds in cash. It seemed a strange oversight for a burglar.

Then there was the question of how he’d arrived and left. On foot, presumably, since nobody had heard a car leaving at the appropriate time. The police reckoned a car in such a narrow lane would have been too risky anyway. What they didn’t rule out was that he’d driven up to spy out the land earlier in the day; perhaps spotted Whistler’s Cot as a soft touch then. Several residents of Butterbur Lane mentioned strange cars coming and going, but they were different colours and makes at different times. Besides, dog-walkers and the like heading for the common always did come and go. Such sightings meant nothing.

And nothing was what the police seemed to have to go on. Until the bald announcement of an arrest in London. Till then, they’d been saying the culprit was probably local. Well, perhaps he’d fled to London after the event. Perhaps his flight was what aroused suspicion. There was no way for me to know.

But, arrest or no arrest, I couldn’t ignore their appeals for information. They’d been trying to trace the last movements of the deceased with remarkably little success. Somebody thought they’d seen Bantock in Ludlow, twenty miles north-east of Kington, at about four o’clock on the afternoon of July 17. Somebody else thought he’d staged a reckless piece of overtaking on the Hereford to Abergavenny road, twenty miles
south
of Kington, around the same time. They might both be wrong, but they couldn’t both be right. As for Lady Paxton, she’d had lunch with her daughter Rowena at their Cotswold home and set off for Kington at about three o’clock that afternoon. She’d declared her intention of taking
Black Widow
, if she bought it, to show off to an old schoolfriend in Shropshire who shared her taste. In that event, she wasn’t to be expected back until sometime the next day. The daughter had assumed that’s exactly what she’d done.

So, from at least mid-afternoon onwards, both the deceased had vanished from sight. At least as far as the police were concerned. But I knew better. I knew precisely where one of them had been within two hours of their estimated time of death. As that fact emerged more and more clearly, so what I knew became not just important but disturbing. At first, I felt excited, intoxicated by the uniqueness of the information I possessed. Then it began to worry me. Would I be believed? Would I, perish the thought, be
suspected
? Somewhere, at the back of my mind, dwelt an old adage that the last person known to have seen a murder victim alive is the first person the police suspect of being the murderer. Then I dismissed the idea as paranoid nonsense. They already had their murderer. And I had an alibi. The landlord of the Royal Oak, Gladestry, wouldn’t have forgotten me. Would he? Well, he might be vague enough about my time of arrival to be inconclusive, it was true. And for all I knew the man they’d arrested in London might by now have been eliminated from their inquiries. But, then again, there’d be fingerprints, wouldn’t there? More than fingerprints if rape was involved. DNA analysis of sperm and blood meant they couldn’t really get the wrong man these days. Could they?

I walked out into the garden and gazed up at the thickly wooded hills above Greenhayes, sun and shadow revealing the switchback succession of crest and combe beneath the trees, the bone of white chalk beneath the flesh of green leaves. I remembered Hergest Ridge and the world spread out in golden promise at our feet. Two strangers. One fleeting moment. It didn’t mean anything. They had their man. Why confuse the issue? Why involve myself? Because there was nobody else, of course. Nobody else who knew where she’d been and what she’d said that evening.

Ah yes.
What she’d said
. Was I really going to reveal that? Every word? Every hint of a double meaning? Was I going to break her confidence? She’d trusted me as a stranger. Perhaps that’s what I ought to remain. No, no. That was special pleading. That was the false logic part of me wanted to cling to. The other part dwelt on the horror of her death. Stripped. Raped. Strangled. What, as a matter of simple fact, could actually be worse? I shook my head, sickened by my inability—my unwillingness—to imagine. And sickened also by a memory. A single recollected pang of lust. Mine. With her as its object. It wasn’t to be compared with what
he
had done to her. Of course it wasn’t. But it was how it began. For him as well as me. A long way, a world, apart. Yes. But linked, like two distant dots on a graph. Connected, however faintly, by some tiny strand of sympathy.

I walked slowly back into the house and looked down at the pile of newspapers spread out on the kitchen table. The television was on in the sitting-room, the signature tune of an Australian soap fading vapidly away. My mother would be wondering what I was up to. And her curiosity, once aroused, was indefatigable. Only a vigorous display of normality was likely to hold it at bay. So, summoning a grin, I went in to join her.

“Where
have
you been, Robin?” she asked, glaring round at Brillo’s warning yelp.

“Sorry. I was . . .” A phrase came unbidden to my mind. “Lost in thought.”

“Didn’t you do all the thinking you needed to on your walk? I was hoping you’d have made up your mind by now.”

“Don’t worry. I have.”

“So you
will
be joining the company?”

“The company?” My frown must have puzzled her. For the moment, Timariot & Small, with or without me, seemed too trivial a subject to discuss. “Well . . .” I hesitated, struggling to remember just what I
had
decided. “Yes.”