Embrace Me (9 page)

Harry noticed the twinkle in James’s eye and the faint smile
on his lips. There was an atmosphere in Sefton Park of gentle, eccentric elegance that arises only from centuries of breeding and proud possession. The place was the last word in shabby chic, full of aged, knocked about family heirlooms. (The Buchanans never sold anything.) Harry felt comfortable in the library since his own rooms at Albany were in much the same style. But how would James know that? It amused him to think that the baronet probably pictured the policeman in a two up and two down in Croydon, in which Harry probably would be living on his detective’s pay if not for his uncle’s legacy.

‘Help yourself to the biscuits, Detective Chief Inspector. I understand from Marguerite that you have a liking for sweets.’

‘Are there no secrets in Sefton Under Edge? Does Marguerite tell you everything?’

‘She has done about your meeting with her yesterday. This is a most unpleasant affair. We’re all very upset about Olivia and what has happened. Concerned that she is all right wherever she is. You’ve erupted into our lives and we’re frightened of you because you’re delving into them and using us to help you catch someone we love very much.’

Harry could see that James was genuinely upset. The two men sat down round a library table littered with large leatherbound books, some open, some closed, and a very old portable Olivetti typewriter sitting in its canvas travelling case which was unzipped.

‘Why don’t we start this interview by my telling you what I already know about you, Sir James?’

‘James will do,’ he answered.

For some reason his casual manner, suggesting he be addressed on first-name terms, took Harry off guard. Did James know about September and his visitor? That relationship could not be allowed to have any bearing on his official enquiry. Harry had wanted James to be the more vulnerable of the two, it would have made his job easier. But that was never going to happen. He sensed that the other man’s strength and intelligence was at least as keen as his own. Immediately he understood that he would have to approach James, who after all was just as much a suspect as anyone, quite directly if he expected to learn anything
about what had happened to Lady Olivia after she arrived at Sefton Under Edge.

‘I believe you are Sir Belville James Charles Edward Buchanan, baronet. Is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are thirty-two years old and single, have never been married?’

‘That is correct.’

‘You have an Oxford doctorate in Lepidoptera, are an authority on butterflies and have discovered several rare species that have been named after you. You travel on expeditions to rain forests around the world while working. You also own and run this estate successfully. You are considered one of the most interesting and sought after men in England. Although you are reclusive, periodically you are drawn into society. Your door is always open to your friends. You are an excellent pilot and collect vintage aircraft. You have a private grass airstrip.

‘Now the problem I have with all this data on you is that it comes straight out of
Who’s Who
or
Debrett’s
and tells me nothing about the private man. I want to understand your relationship with Lady Olivia Cinders so that I can deduce whether you aided and abetted her escape from England by flying her across the Channel.’

James looked pained. ‘I really resent your invasion of our privacy here at Sefton Under Edge, Chief Inspector. Your presence has put everyone on edge, made us take a good look at ourselves and re-examine our passion for Olivia. This is a village where nothing untoward ever happens. Suddenly a car is abandoned, Olivia creates a scandal and vanishes, and as a result our lives are closely scrutinised by a man from New Scotland Yard. Unless you can conceal your presence here from the media we shall soon be swamped by a merciless horde and will have yet another intrusion to resent,’ said James matter-of-factly.

‘That’s why I must work quickly and I need your co-operation. James, you can’t get out of it. Wherever I turn in this investigation, Olivia’s friends have closed ranks to thwart me. Not one of you has come to terms with the fact that she is a murderess – she has taken a man’s life and run away. Not one of
you has considered yourself to be in a moral dilemma. And you are all arrogant enough to tell me that if she had come to you, you would have helped her to flee from justice. Can I not appeal, if not to your sense of justice, to your adoration of Lady Olivia? For her sake, please co-operate with me to discover the truth and let me move forward from here.’

James rose from his chair and went to stand by the window, looking across the gardens and the rolling fields beyond, seeing the ruined Tudor remnants of his ancestors’ great house. Now he was being asked to leave this haven of privilege, this enclosed world, to face real life and deal with it on someone else’s terms.

‘Everyone lives two lives simultaneously: a public and a private one. It’s in our private life that we confront our most intimate natures, our fantasies, the real truth about who and what we are. It is in our private lives, our seclusion from the outside world, that we are at our purest and live in truth. That is where we are whole and without artifice. You are an invader, Harry, and when you are done with us you will have ruined our privacy, infringed on our secret souls. Our lives will change after you have gone but we will not be able to blame you because it had already begun the moment Olivia slit the prince’s wrists. So let’s get on with this.

‘Did I have anything to do with aiding her escape? No. Would I have helped if she had asked me to? Yes, without hesitation, and never given it another thought. Did I see her that night? No. Has she been in touch with me since that night? No. Now what more than that do you want to know that is relevant to Olivia’s disappearance?’

James had virtually taken over the interview. It had been simple; he cut to the real issues, declared them then furnished the answers. Clever. A lesser detective might have been satisfied with his performance but Harry was not. What James had volunteered might or might not be true. He had been at ease until he played that volunteer question and answer game. Now he seemed sadder, upset even.

Harry jumped in. ‘Everything and anything I can find out about Lady Olivia and that night could be relevant to my investigation. And so may I continue with my interview?
I’ll
ask
the questions and
you
furnish the answers.’

‘Point taken, Detective Chief Inspector.’

‘I would appreciate candid answers, and I would like to assure you that I intend to keep all the interviews I conduct here at the Park and in Sefton Under Edge confidential.’

‘Your word as a gentleman?’ asked James.

‘If you like.’

‘Then let’s get on with it,’ was the reply.

‘What were you doing on the evening in question, the night of the murder?’

‘I gave a dinner that turned into rather a late affair where everyone drank too much and talked long into the night on the influence of Byron on Delecroix. Then sex reared its delicious head. I see no need to elaborate any further about that.’

Harry then asked who had been at the party and was disappointed to learn that all his chief suspects had been there: Marguerite Chen, the three Buchanans, a lover of Marguerite’s, and another of Angelica’s who’d arrived late in the evening with a rather famous sculptor who was swept away to September’s studio. The house party could substantiate each other’s alibis.

Harry now had to decide whether all the party guests had colluded in helping Olivia’s escape and deliberately arranged to furnish each other with rock solid alibis: a united front to conceal a common cause. Now he would have to look to the servants and the estate workers for clues with which to break his suspects’ alibis.

‘No need for any further detail at the moment,’ he confirmed, keeping control of the interview. ‘How many planes are usually kept in the hangar on the edge of the airstrip?’

‘Five.’

‘Are they all still there?’

‘So far as I know.’

‘Why don’t we walk over there and check and see?’ suggested Harry.

‘If you like,’ said James.

Harry was impressed by what he saw when they reached the hangar. James pressed a button and the huge metal doors slid open one after the other to reveal a most handsome collection of
bi-planes in perfect condition, looking rather like prehistoric butterflies. There was no reason to check whether one of them had a depleted petrol tank; too much time had passed in which it could have been refilled. One dead end seemed to follow another in all the paths Harry raced down in pursuit of the killer. He had that rare thing, for him at least, a premonition of defeat. The killer had got away. He shook it off as the two men left the hangar.

‘Could a plane have taken off from this field on the night in question, James?’ asked Harry.

‘Yes, quite easily. There are sunken runway lights. A flip of a switch in the offices at the field or the library in the house and the strip is ready for night take off or landing. But Olivia could not have taken off from here. You can see those lights for miles around. From the house clearly, from the village a bright glow. Someone would have seen or indeed heard a plane that night.’

‘That’s what I’m here to ascertain.’

Walking back across the fields towards the house, James volunteered out of the blue, ‘Olivia is a constant worry to me. You don’t know her and can’t imagine … to know her is to live at the top of one’s life, where the air is thinner, more refined. The very idea of never seeing her again makes me feel wretched, as if I have been robbed of a portion of my life. Try and understand – she is something very special, a woman brave as a man, courageous as a tiger, clever as a fox, sly and insinuating as a panther. And for all that one of the sexiest women I have ever met. She loves sex, lives in a world of eroticism that she wants to share with everyone. She is a sensual adventuress and wants all her most intimate friends to enjoy the same highs and lows of boundless sex as she does.’

‘You’re in love with her!’ exclaimed Harry.

‘Madly, passionately. For every moment of every day. She lives and loves in perfect freedom, knows how to take the real world on the tip of her finger and spin it. She makes the heart beat faster. No, that is too trite. Instead she teaches one how important it is to make the heart beat faster, let passion fly, above all to love in the grand manner.

‘That’s why September asked you to let Olivia go. Why I ask
you now, and Angelica will in her turn. Have you any idea how much it pains us that she did not come to us so we could help her? We were her lovers, her playmates, her friends, and she loved all of us and made us a part of her life.

‘Every human being has the capacity to murder if provoked. Olivia has always had that dark side to her nature. She has played with it and sometimes taken us with her. For a game. She always felt sure that she could beat the devil. Then the prince came along and she fell under his spell and then in love with him. He was able to play sexual games with her that became ever more dangerous. He was passionately in love with her, as we all have been, but it was he and his dark soul who took her over, enslaved her in their intimate life. We saw her change over the years she was with him, drift farther and farther away from us, returning only periodically to remind us how much we loved her.

‘Harry, that is the woman you so eagerly want to know about because you think that by doing so you will be able to pre-empt her movements. It will never happen. You will never be sitting under a palm tree, waiting for her to step off a yacht, or at an airport in some remote country, ready to cuff her when she descends from a plane.

‘I don’t know why she left the car here. That is just as much a mystery to me as her being able to vanish so completely and slip the world-wide net you have thrown to catch her.’

Chapter 9

When Harry and James arrived at the front entrance to Sefton Park Harry did not enter the house. Instead he told James, ‘Thank you for being so candid with me. There’s nothing more I want to ask you at this time.’

The two men shook hands and James asked him, ‘Since you are due back here to interview September later in the day, would you like to stay for lunch? Angelica will be here and I’m sure you will want to question her too.’

Why was he being so hospitable? Why, in fact, had he been so forthcoming about the intimate lives of the Buchanans and Lady Olivia? Had it all been genuine or merely a clever ploy to make Harry believe none of them had seen her on the night in question nor heard from her since. Harry tended to believe that James was telling the truth and the only reason to question September and Angelica was to corroborate his story. He felt sure they would bear out their brother’s account. But what had been James’s reason for giving, such a detailed profile of Lady Olivia, showing both the light and dark side of her nature? What exactly was James trying to say – that he knew her capable of killing the prince but that she should still be left free to salvage her own soul, mete out her own punishment? And, not least of all, had James opened his heart to draw a picture of Lady Olivia that Harry would find irresistible?

Harry declined the invitation and, much to James’s surprise, asked him to tell September that he would not be questioning her after lunch as planned, but would call her to arrange another appointment. James walked him to his car and waited until Harry was out of sight before returning to the house.

It was a relief for him to get away from Sefton Park. The interview with James had helped convince him that no one in that house had seen or helped Lady Olivia’s getaway. He contemplated that fact all the way back to The Fox. Then as he parked the car, cut the motor and pulled up the handbrake, Harry hit the steering wheel with the open palm of his hand and said aloud, ‘You were good, James, very good, but not good enough. Every suspect will be interviewed redundant or not.’

When he entered the pub his eyes immediately settled on the landlord. Jethroe Wiley had yet to satisfy Harry that he was not a suspect, and who was the man the postman had seen in the early hours of the morning, wearing Jethroe’s cap and jacket and accompanied by his gun dogs? Harry ordered a platter of assorted sandwiches and lager, three chocolate mousse puddings and coffee to follow then took the stairs to the ops room two at a time.

Joe was still out but Jenny was there. Her first words to Harry were, ‘The sooner we get out of this so-called paradise the better.’

‘Why’s that?’ he asked, sitting on the end of the table at which she was working.

‘I don’t exactly know why but there’s something so cloyingly perfect about the place, so storybook ideal, it undermines all that I am and stand for. The vicar actually told me that he considered Lady Olivia – a murderess! – more honourable and deserving than I am. That I, by contrast, had behaved deviously in order to get him to confess his very intimate feelings for her. It feels as if, wherever she is, Lady Olivia is still a powerful presence for everyone I speak to. She’s far too clever, a woman who has everything and knows how to use it without even trying. The vicar made me feel dishonest. She makes me feel insignificant, as a woman and as a detective.’

‘You’re hardly that! You’re a very promising young detective who might one day be a great one. You have no need to feel insecure. Stop measuring yourself against Lady Olivia. I’ve learned a great deal about her. She’s a natural seductress of both men and women, whether present or not. You’ll have to learn
how to handle that, not be intimidated by her. Now, what did you learn from the vicar?’

Jenny felt much better after her pep talk from Harry. She flipped through some pages of notes and reported what she had learned from the vicar. Harry was impressed. She had got Hardcastle to reveal his deepest, darkest secret. Harry went to the blackboard standing on an easel in the corner of the room. He rubbed out the vicar’s name and commented, ‘There’s something very peculiar about this case. There are almost too many suspects and no positive leads as to who helped our murderer to get away.’

He was still pondering that when the telephone rang. It was Jethroe announcing that Gerry Havelock was there, wanting to see Detective Chief Inspector Graves-Jones. Harry told the publican to tell Mr Havelock to take a table and that he would be down as soon as possible. Joe arrived at that minute followed by one of the waitresses bearing a wooden tray laden with their lunch and Jethroe with a second tray of glasses, plates, and a large bowl of crispy chips that Harry had not ordered. ‘Just out of the fryer, a little treat on the house. A working lunch! When I was in the force I can hardly remember having any other kind,’ he said as he disappeared down the stairs.

By now Harry disliked Jethroe Wiley who had all the characteristics that rubbed him up the wrong way. He was overfriendly, bombastic and frequently intrusive. He was too sure of himself by half, almost condescending towards Harry and his team. It was that condescension that caused him to shoot out of his chair and catch Jethroe when he was halfway down the stairs.

‘Did I forget something?’ he asked.

‘I hope not. I’d like to ask you a few questions this afternoon. Shall we say about half-past three in the bar?’ Then before Jethroe could give his reply, Harry had turned away and was back in the ops room.’

The fax machine was spewing out paper as he walked over to the table and picked up a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of lager. Joe tore the fax from the machine. ‘Now this is interesting, sir. Lady Olivia Cinders has been sighted on three different occasions in South Africa. Once at a private airfield on
the outskirts of Cape Town, twice on a sixteen-square-mile ranch that’s sealed off by electric fencing and patrolled by a small army of security guards. It’s private property and no one is allowed in or out without the owner’s permission. You’re going to like
this
, sir – the owner is none other than Lady Olivia Cinders herself.’

‘I want to know everything about that tract of land and I need to speak to the local police there. Not one of the people we’ve spoken to nor her solicitor has said a word about her owning such a property.’

‘Is it possible that she never revealed the information to them?’ queried Joe.

‘Anything’s possible, but I doubt it. I want to know how she got that property, and when. I want to know everything we can find out about it and to speak to the witnesses who saw her there. Get that together as soon as possible, Joe. I don’t like it. It’s too perfect in a case where nothing is going our way.’

‘You think someone’s playing cat and mouse with us, sir? But who would do that?’

‘Who indeed? Her friends, perhaps? No, I doubt that. I’ve come to know Lady Olivia Cinders through this investigation and how she behaves with her friends, the way her heart and mind works. She would never draw them into such a scandal. Maybe out of desperation she did to obtain a car, but she would never use them deliberately to sow false leads. I suspect these sightings in South Africa may have been well planned and executed by her so that I will fly there to chase her down.

‘If that should prove to be the case, she will have made her first mistake. She will have pointed up the possibility that the murder of the prince was premeditated, very well planned, even down to her escape. Only something went wrong: the prince’s brother arrived on the scene. All this, of course, is supposition. That’s why I need you to get me whatever information you can to verify this fax. Stay on it. What else have you got for me?’

‘The staff at Sefton Park were very reticent over talking about Lady Olivia and the night in question. I got the usual paeans of praise of the lady. They’re shocked by what has happened and by her running away. After I assured them she did indeed murder the prince, and in a most bizarre way, they were visibly upset.
They’re decent, simple people, long standing workers for the Buchanans. They spoke of Sir James and his sisters in glowing terms. Easy to work for, honest, a little eccentric but loyal to their workers and always fair.’

‘Did they see anything out of the ordinary on the night in question?’

‘Nothing. One of the farm-hands says he was surprised to see a light on in the hay barn at about two in the morning. He went to the barn and called out several times. There was no answer, so he switched off the light. In the morning, when he went back to the barn, he found a horse blanket. He thought no more than that someone had been playing hanky-panky in the barn, and returned the blanket to the stables.

‘The house staff and the farm- and stable-lads all knew the prince and Lady Olivia. In the last two years the pair of them spent a good deal of time there. They stabled a pair of horses at the Park because they were keen riders and enjoyed memberships of several hunts. The prince was extraordinarily generous to the house staff and the stable-lads, though intensely jealous if Lady Olivia even talked to anyone in his presence. It seems she was passionately in love with him, granted him his every wish, gave him all her attention. She seemed to change from the person she had always been, but they couldn’t tell me exactly how. When she did arrive to stay at Sefton Park without the prince she reverted to being her old self: friendly, chatting with everyone. According to Mrs Much, the cook, they all felt the foreigner, meaning the prince, seemed to cast a spell on Lady Olivia.’

‘I want that horse blanket and for you to cordon off the place where it was found. Call Chief Inspector Pike at Oxford and tell him to send forensic out here as soon as he can.’

The telephone rang and Harry answered it. ‘I’ve been waiting for more than an hour for Detective Chief Inspector Graves-Jones – how much longer am I expected to cool my heels?’ fumed an agitated Gerry Havelock.

‘I’m so sorry, Mr Havelock, I shan’t be much longer and I do apologise for keeping you,’ said Harry, putting down the phone.

Turning to his associates, he said, ‘Gerry Havelock is an
arrogant man. Possibly sharp in business and a control freak, but far from wise. He’s downstairs now because he was so defensive about being questioned about Lady Olivia before this that he walked out of the house after fifteen minutes and drove away. He called his wife and ordered her to summon their solicitor if she was asked any personal questions.’

‘Hiding something,’ commented Jenny.

‘Now how do you figure that out?’ asked Joe as he bit into a sausage and egg sandwich.

‘Defensive, rude, and seeking us out because he knows he has made a bad impression. He’ll want to win you over, sir, will try to explain his behaviour, and in order to do that he will have to tell you about that night and his relationship with Lady Olivia. He’s harbouring a secret – one he doesn’t want his wife to hear. He sounds the sort of man who’ll feel obliged to clear his name to nurse his ego.’

‘Not bad. Not bad at all, Sullivan,’ said an admiring Joe.

Harry merely smiled at Jenny which she took for praise. ‘Was Mrs Havelock at all helpful?’ she asked.

‘She’s an innocent who copes with all her personal problems by ignoring them. A kind, gentle woman with a bastard of a husband who controls her. But besides the kindness and graciousness there’s a backbone of steel. The only thing she had to say was that what had happened was a tragedy. That Lady Olivia had once been close to their family and loved by them all but that it was a long time ago. “She wouldn’t come to us for help. We’ve been estranged from her for years except to say a brief hello. I can assure you she would never have approached any of my family for help.”

‘Those were her words. And I believe she was telling me what she believes to be the truth. As for whether it is … Well, I should know that after I interview her husband. By now he must be in a rage at being kept waiting so long. Just the way I want him to be,’ said Harry as he rose from his chair and walked from the room.

About to descend the stairs, the telephone made him hesitate. ‘If that’s for me, I’ll take it,’ he announced.

It was and he returned to take the call. It was Marguerite
Chen. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Graves-Jones, will you and your associates, come to dinner this evening? Shall we say eight o’clock? Good, see you then.’

He put the telephone down and he looked at his team. ‘We’ve been summoned to dinner at Marguerite Chen’s this evening. Now I wonder what that’s all about?’

Things seemed to be turning themselves around. The suspects were now calling the investigators. There was no doubt in Harry’s mind that Lady Olivia’s disappearance from the lives of several people in Sefton Under Edge was having a shattering effect on them. In some strange way it was as if the murder of the prince had shaken the foundation of their lives. That
one of them
was capable of taking a man’s life so easily, and could vanish into oblivion from a world they knew and loved, was a sobering experience.

Harry was beginning to understand the amoral stance they had taken out of loyalty to one of their own, a woman who had taught them how to love and be free. They had been taught by Lady Olivia to love themselves so they could love each other. One followed the other. When September had asked Harry to ‘let her go’, she was saying just as much, ‘Let me go, let all of us go to be responsible for our own crimes and punishments.’ That élite inner circle must survive no matter what they had done, even at the expense of justice. But understanding their belief did not make it right. Not at least in Harry’s eyes.

His heart ached for September, his body longed to be entwined with hers, but his search for Lady Olivia and justice was equally as important. Harry was a man who knew his priorities. He reminded Joe to get on with tracking down the South African information and walked down the stairs to meet Gerry Havelock.

There were only a few people left in the pub, more sitting outside in the sun. Jethroe was talking to Gerry. Both men fell silent as soon as they saw Harry.

‘Mr Havelock, you wanted to see me?’ were his first words.

There was a thunderous expression on Havelock’s face. ‘Shall we sit over there in the far corner? We’ll not be disturbed,’ he suggested.