Churchyard and Hawke (30 page)

‘Poor Enid.’ Talwyn said, emotionally, ‘She was so trusting of everyone that she would have been delighted to think someone was willing to help with one of her chores. This Peggy Woods must have been insane!’

‘Not so insane that she couldn’t seize an advantage when she saw it. Later that night when she expected everyone at Laneglos - including her own husband - to be asleep, she slipped out of the house to meet up with Clemo, who should have been on gamekeeper patrol in a different part of the estate. She also used the opportunity to take Enid’s body from the church and hide it in the rough ground at the far end of the cemetery. It was while she was on her way back from this that she happened to come across Delville talking to Alfie and Jimmy Banks. They didn’t see her and she didn’t know what they were up to, but when morning came and the burglary was discovered she put two- and-two together and came up with an answer she felt was going to secure her and Clemo for life. She tackled Delville yet again and told him what she knew, but this time she wasn’t talking about just a few pounds. She demanded that he give her enough to enable her and Clemo to buy a public house, far away from Laneglos, and live happily ever after.’

‘And we all noticed the discrepancy in the three statements about the length of time Peggy was out of the house that night but surely she was aware Delville was a spendthrift and deeply in debt. How did she expect him to raise such an amount?’

‘I think Delville pointed out that he had no money, but she told him he would have it from the proceeds of the robbery. When the stolen property was found and returned, he apparently saw her to say the situation had changed and she would need to wait longer for her money, until he inherited some from Lord Hogg. By now she was obsessed with the thought of going off with Clemo and the pair of them owning a pub and just couldn’t bear the thought of having to wait for however long it might be. That’s when the idea came to her of speeding up the Honourable Charles’s inheritance . . . or what they both thought he was going to inherit. As we all know now, although she succeeded in poisoning Lord Hogg, he had already cut Delville out of his will. He had made over a large sum to Lady Hogg, but ensured it couldn’t be touched by anyone else until she died . . . and so we come to the mysterious illness that she was suffering when Doctor Sullivan came upon the scene.’

‘But how did Peggy manage to poison Lord and Lady Hogg without anyone suspecting her?’

‘When no one realized that anyone was being poisoned it was easy for her. She was assistant cook at Laneglos and the head cook was a drunkard. In actual fact Peggy did most of the cooking and was able to take "special care" with the food she prepared for her sick employers.’

Talwyn shuddered, ‘It must be horrible to be living in a house where all that has been going on, what does Flora think about it all?’

‘I haven’t been able to speak to her about it yet,’ Tom confessed, ‘Too many things happened at Laneglos today for us to be able to say more than "hello" to each other, but we’ll be meeting up on Sunday and able to have a long talk about it then. I must confess that I’m hoping she will feel she wants to leave the house as soon as she possibly can.’

‘What will happen if she decides she wants to leave?’ Talwyn asked, although she felt she already knew what the answer would be.

‘I will ask Flora to marry me,’

It was the reply Talwyn had been anticipating.

CHAPTER 43

Before Tom’s meeting with Flora, other events occurred which would unexpectedly affect the future of the two lovers and a number of others around them.

Three days after the death of Peggy Woods, the solicitor representing the Honourable Charles Delville succeeded in obtaining bail for his client, on the surety of Lord Hogg.

That afternoon the Laneglos peer sent for Chief Constable Gilbert and when he returned to police headquarters, Gilbert sent for Amos and Tom.

When they were both present in his office, the Cornwall police chief said, ‘The information I have to tell you was originally intended only for you, Amos, but in view of all the work that Sergeant Churchyard has put into the arrest of Charles Delville, I feel he has a right to hear what I have to say.’

After telling them that he had just returned from Laneglos, he explained that he had met with both Lord Hogg and Delville’s barrister, who told him that bail had been granted to Delville. The chief constable then gave his two listeners the astonishing news that the charge of burglary against the peer’s step-brother was to be dropped.

When Amos began to protest, Gilbert held up his hand to silence him. ‘I know exactly how you feel about it, Amos, and I admit that was my own immediate reaction, but Lady Hogg has employed one of the finest barristers in the country to represent her son and he has found a loop-hole in our case against Delville that I fear we can do absolutely nothing about. You see, at the time of the burglary, the property taken from Laneglos belonged to the late Lord Hogg, Delville’s stepfather. He is now dead and therefore unable to prosecute. The present Lord Hogg had not yet come into the title, or the property at the time of the burglary, so he cannot prosecute and Lady Hogg has declared that if a prosecution is brought against her son she will go into the dock and declare that he had her permission to take whatever property from the house that he wished!’

Amos looked at the chief constable in stunned disbelief as he held up his hands in a gesture of resignation, ‘So what can I do about it?’ Then, answering his own question, he added, ‘Nothing! The fact that the property was removed in the dead of night by known criminals should be sufficient in itself to prove that this was a nefarious act, but there is no law that dictates when property can be lawfully removed from a house, or who is employed to carry out the removal. So, you see, as far as the burglary is concerned, we have no case to present to the court.’

‘Then . . . if there was no burglary, what happens to Alfie Banks? If there was no burglary, we have no case against him either!’

‘I must admit I had never even thought about Banks’s part in all this,’ admitted Gilbert. ‘Will we be able to charge him with breaking Churchyard’s wrist?’

Tom shook his head, ‘It didn’t happen here in Cornwall and I doubt if the Metropolitan Police will want to do anything about it. Even if they did it would be my word against his . . . and I have no doubt he could produce a dozen Hoxton witnesses to prove he was somewhere else at the time. No, it looks as though he’ll get away scot free. We can’t even charge him with hurting that little girl on the ship at Falmouth, because he would come straight back at us for making an illegal arrest.’

‘Well, we will think about that later,’ the chief constable said, philosophically ‘The only piece of good news I have to give you is that Lord Hogg has entered into an agreement with his step-brother that he will buy the family heirlooms back from him at a very good price on condition that Delville uses the money to go out of the country - and never return.’

‘Has he agreed?’ Amos asked the question.

‘Yes. I understand that arrangements are being made at this very moment for him to go to Canada where Lady Hogg inherited a considerable piece of land from her first husband . . . Delville’s father. He will go out there and see what he can make of it.’

‘Then I suppose there is nothing more we can do.’ Tom said, despondently, ‘After all the work we put into the case the two people who most deserve to be put away are going to get away scot free.’

‘Your hard work was certainly not wasted.’ Chief Constable Gilbert said emphatically. ‘You have solved two murders, captured a number of burglars and thwarted an attempt to carry out one of the most audacious attacks on society I have ever come across. I think you should both be very proud of yourselves.’

‘We have also got rid of a thoroughly obnoxious man in Charles Delville,’ said Amos, thoughtfully, ‘. . . and I think I might be able to rid ourselves of Alfie Banks too. He was going to Australia not only to avoid being arrested for burglary, but also because he knew he would no longer be looked upon as the top villain in Hoxton. He also said that he’d always had a yen to go to Australia . . . especially as a number of his close relatives are there . . . transported at the government’s expense. I could say that we would forget about any conspiracy charges . . . which we couldn’t make stick anyway, if he decided to carry out his original plan and go to Australia.’

‘I think that would be a very satisfactory conclusion to an extremely difficult situation, Amos . . . oh, and am I mistaken, Churchyard, or is there a possibility you might be marrying in the not-too-distant future?’

The chief constable’s question took Tom by surprise, especially as at that very moment he had been thinking how the latest developments in the cases he and Amos had been pursuing would affect his plans for him and Flora. He doubted very much whether Lady Hogg would take her on as a housekeeper if she knew her prospective husband was the policeman who had arrested her son and been partly responsible for him leaving the country never to return ... but the chief constable was awaiting his reply.

‘I hope to, sir . . . but I haven’t asked her yet.’

‘Well do so . . . and quickly,’ the chief constable said, ‘There will soon be a flat available here, in the headquarters annexe, to be occupied by an inspector responsible for training, recruitment, headquarters affairs and also, I suspect, carrying out the plain-clothes duties that Superintendent Hawke is so keen on, but which need to be carried out without the knowledge of the Police Committee. However, the flat needs to be occupied by a married man with a wife of whom I can approve, so I suggest you propose to this young lady, Churchyard, if you want to take advantage of the opportunity.’

About the author

E.V. Thompson was born in London. After spending nine years in the Royal Navy, he served as a Vice Squad policeman in Bristol, became an investigator for British Overseas Airways (during which he was seconded to the Hong Kong Police Narcotics Bureau), then headed Rhodesia’s Department of Civil Aviation Security Section. While in Rhodesia, he published over two hundred short stories before moving back to England to become a full-time award-winning writer.

His first novel, Chase the Wind, the opening book in the Retallick saga, won the Best Historical Novel Award, and since then more than thirty novels have won him thousands of admirers around the world.