Magpie Murders (12 page)

‘Here’s Chubb,’ Fraser muttered.

The familiar face of the detective inspector appeared at the front door. Fraser had telephoned him before they left and Chubb had evidently been awaiting their arrival. Plump and cheerful, with his Oliver Hardy moustache, he was dressed in an ill-fitting suit with one of his wife’s latest knitting creations below, this one a particularly unfortunate mauve cardigan. He had put on weight. That was the impression he always gave. Pünd had once remarked that he had the look of a man who has just finished a particularly good meal. He came bounding down the front steps, evidently pleased to see them.

‘Herr Pünd!’ he exclaimed. It was always ‘herr’ and somehow Chubb implied that that there was some failing in Pünd’s character being born in Germany. After all, he might have been saying, let’s not forget who won the war. ‘I was very surprised to hear from you. Don’t tell me you’ve had dealings with the late Sir Magnus.’

‘Not at all, Detective Inspector,’ Pünd replied. ‘I had never met him and only knew of his death from the newspapers this morning.’

‘So what brings you here?’ His eyes travelled over to James Fraser and seemed to notice him for the first time.

‘It is a strange coincidence.’ In fact, Fraser had often heard the detective remark that there was no such thing as a coincidence. There was a chapter in
The Landscape of Criminal Investigation
where he had expressed the belief that everything in life had a pattern and that a coincidence was simply the moment when that pattern became briefly visible. ‘A young lady from this village came to see me yesterday. She told me of a death that had taken place in this very house two weeks ago—’

‘Would that be the housekeeper, Mary Blakiston?’

‘Yes. She was concerned that certain people were making false accusations about what had occurred.’

‘You mean, they thought the old girl had been deliberately killed?’ Chubb took out a packet of Players, the same brand he always smoked, and lit one. The index and third fingers of his right hand were permanently stained – like old piano keys. ‘Well, I can put your mind at rest on that one, Herr Pünd. I looked into it myself and I can tell you it was an accident pure and simple. She was doing the hoovering at the top of the stairs. She got tangled up in the wire and tumbled down the full length. Solid flagstone at the bottom, unlucky for her! Nobody had any reason to kill her and anyway she was locked in the house, on her own.’

‘And what of the death of Sir Magnus?’

‘Well, that’s quite a different kettle of fish. You can come in and take a butcher’s if you like – and that’s the right word for it. I’m going to finish this first, if you don’t mind. It’s pretty nasty in there.’ He deliberately screwed the cigarette into his lips and inhaled. ‘At the moment, we’re treating it as a burglary that went wrong. That seems the most obvious conclusion.’

‘The most obvious conclusions are the ones I try to avoid.’

‘Well, you have your own methods, Herr Pünd, and I won’t say they haven’t been helpful in the past. What we’ve got here is a local land owner, been in the village all his life. It’s early days but I can’t see that anyone would have a grudge against him. Now, someone came up here around half past eight last night. He was actually spotted by Brent, the groundsman, as he was finishing work. He hasn’t been able to give us a description but his first impression was that it wasn’t anyone from the village.’

‘How could he know that?’ Fraser asked. He had been ignored up until this moment and felt a need to remind the others he was still there.

‘Well, you know how it is. It’s easier to recognise someone if you’ve seen them before. Even if you can’t see their face, there’s something about the shape of their body or the way they walk. Brent was fairly sure this was a stranger. And anyway, there was something about the way this man went up to the house. It was as if he didn’t want to be seen.’

‘You believe this man was a burglar,’ Pünd said.

‘The house had already been burgled once just a few days before.’ Chubb sighed as if it irritated him having to explain it all again. ‘After the death of the housekeeper, they had to smash a back window to get in. They should have got it reglazed but they didn’t and a few days after that someone broke in. They got away with a nice little haul of antique coins and jewellery – Roman, would you believe it. Maybe they had a look around while they were there. There’s a safe in Sir Magnus’s study which they might have been unable to open but now they knew it was there, they could come back and have a second crack at it. They thought the house was still empty. Sir Magnus surprised them – and there you have it.’

‘You say he was killed violently.’

‘That’s an understatement.’ Chubb needed to fortify himself with another lungful of smoke. ‘There’s a suit of armour in the main hall. You’ll see it in a minute. Complete with sword.’ He swallowed. ‘That’s what they used. They took his head clean off.’

Pünd considered this for a moment. ‘Who found him?’

‘His wife. She’d been on a shopping trip to London and she got home at around nine fifteen.’

‘The shops closed late.’ Pünd half-smiled.

‘Well, maybe she had dinner too. Anyway, as she arrived, she saw a car driving off. She’s not sure of the make but it was green and she saw a couple of letters off the registration plate. FP. As luck would have it, they’re her own initials. She came in and found him lying at the foot of the stairs almost exactly where the body of his housekeeper had been the week before. But not all of him. His head had rolled across the floor and landed next to the fireplace. I’m not sure you’ll be able to talk to her for a while. She’s in hospital in Bath, still under sedation. She’s the one who called the police and I’ve heard a recording of the conversation. Poor woman, she can hardly get the words out, screaming and sobbing. If this was a murder, you can certainly strike her off the list of suspects unless she’s the world’s greatest actress.’

‘The body, I take it, has gone.’

‘Yes. We removed it last night. Needed a strong stomach, I can tell you.’

‘Was anything removed from this house on this second occasion, Detective Inspector?’

‘It’s hard to be sure. We’ll need to interview Lady Pye when she’s up to it. But on first appearance, it doesn’t seem so. You can come in, if you like, Herr Pünd. You’re not here in any official capacity, of course, and maybe I should have a quick word with the Assistant Commissioner, but I’m sure no harm can come of it. And if anything does spring to mind, I can rely on you to let me know.’

‘Of course, Detective Inspector,’ Pünd said although Fraser knew that he would do no such thing. He had accompanied Pünd on five separate enquiries and knew that the detective had a maddening habit of keeping everything under his hat until it suited him to reveal the truth.

They climbed three steps but Pünd stopped before he entered the front door. He crouched down. ‘Now that is strange,’ he said.

Chubb gazed at him in disbelief. ‘Are you going to tell me that I’ve missed something?’ he demanded. ‘And we haven’t even gone inside!’

‘It may have no relevance at all, Detective Inspector,’ he replied, soothingly. ‘But you see the flower bed beside the door …’

Fraser glanced down. There were flower beds running all the way along the front of the house, divided by the steps that led up from the driveway.

‘Petunias, if I’m not mistaken,’ Chubb remarked.

‘Of that I am unsure. But do you not see the handprint?’

Both Chubb and Fraser looked more closely. It was true. Somebody had stuck their hand in the soft earth just to the left of the door. From the size of it, Fraser would have said that it belonged to a man. The fingers were outstretched. It was very odd, Fraser thought. A footprint would have been more conventional.

‘It probably belongs to the gardener,’ Chubb said. ‘I can’t think of any other explanation.’

‘And you are probably right.’ Pünd sprang back to his feet and continued forward.

The door led directly into a large, rectangular room with a staircase in front of them and two more doors, left and right. Fraser saw at once where the body of Sir Magnus had lain and he felt the usual stirring in the pit of his stomach. There was a Persian rug, gleaming darkly, still soaked with blood. The blood had spread onto the flagstones, stretching towards the fireplace, encircling the legs of one of the leather chairs that stood there. The whole room stank of it. A sword lay diagonally, with its hilt close to the stairs, its blade pointing towards the head of a deer that looked down with glass eyes, perhaps the only witness to what had occurred. The rest of the armour, an empty knight, stood beside one of the doors with a living room beyond. Fraser had been to many crime scenes with his employer. Often he had seen the bodies lying there – stabbed, shot, drowned, whatever. But it struck him that there was something particularly macabre about this one, almost Jacobean with the dark wooden panelling and the minstrel gallery.

‘Sir Magnus knew the person who killed him,’ Pünd muttered.

‘How can you possibly know?’ Fraser asked.

‘The position of the suit of armour and the layout of the room.’ Pünd gestured. ‘See for yourself, James. The entrance is behind us. The armour and the sword are further inside the room. If the killer had come to the front door and wished to attack Sir Magnus, it would have been necessary to go round him to reach the weapon and at that moment, if the door was open, Sir Magnus could have made good his escape. However, it seems more likely that Sir Magnus was showing someone out. They come in from the living room. Sir Magnus is first. His killer is behind him. As he opens the front door, he does not see that his guest has drawn out the sword. He turns, sees the guest moving towards him, perhaps pleads with him. The killer strikes. And all is as we see it.’

‘It still might have been a stranger.’

‘You would invite a stranger into the house, late in the evening? I do not think so.’ Pünd looked around him. ‘There is a painting missing,’ he remarked.

Fraser followed his eyes and saw that it was true. There was a bare hook on the wall next to the door and a section of the woodwork had faded slightly, a telltale rectangle that clearly delineated the missing work of art.

‘Do you think it could be relevant?’ Fraser asked.

‘Everything is relevant,’ Pünd replied. He took one last look around him. ‘There is nothing more for me to see here. It would be interesting to learn exactly how the housekeeper was discovered when she died two weeks ago but we will come to that in due course. Can we proceed into the living room?’

‘Of course,’ Chubb said. ‘The door leads into the living room and Sir Magnus had his study on the other side. There’s a letter we found there that may interest you.’

The living room had a much more feminine feel than the entrance hall with an oyster pink carpet, plush curtains with a floral pattern, comfortable sofas and occasional tables. There were photographs everywhere. Fraser picked one up and examined the three people standing together in front of the house. A round-faced man with a beard, wearing an old-fashioned suit. Next to him, a few inches taller than him, a woman staring into the camera lens with a look of impatience. And a boy, in school uniform, scowling. It was obviously a family photograph if not a particularly happy one: Sir Magnus, Lady Pye, and their son.

A uniformed policeman stood, guarding the door on the far side. They went straight through into a room dominated by an antique desk set square between two bookshelves with windows opposite giving views across the front lawn and down to the lake. The floor was polished, wooden boards partly covered by another rug. Two armchairs faced into the room with an antique globe between them. The far wall was dominated by a fireplace, and it was evident from the ashes and charred wood that someone had recently lit a fire. Everything smelled faintly of cigar smoke. Fraser noticed a humidor and a heavy glass ashtray on a side table. The wooden panelling from the entrance hall was picked up again with several more oil paintings which might have hung here as long as the house itself. Pünd went over to one of them – a picture of a horse in front of a stable, very much in the style of Stubbs. He had noticed it because it was slightly perpendicular to the wall, like a half-open door.

‘It was like that when we came in,’ Chubb remarked.

Pünd took a pen out of his pocket and used it to hook the painting, pulling it towards him. It was hinged along one side and concealed a very solid-looking safe set in the wall.

‘We don’t know the combination,’ Chubb continued. ‘I’m sure Lady Pye will tell us when she’s up to it.’

Pünd nodded and transferred his attention to the desk. It was quite likely that Sir Magnus had been sitting here in the hours before he died and that, therefore, the papers strewn across the surface might have something to say about what had actually happened.

‘There’s a gun in the top drawer,’ Chubb said. ‘An old service revolver. It hasn’t been fired – but it’s loaded. According to Lady Pye, he usually kept it in the safe. He might have brought it out because of the burglary.’

‘Or it could be that Sir Magnus had reason to be nervous.’ Pünd opened the drawer and glanced at the gun. It was indeed a .38 Webley Revolver. And Chubb was right. It had not been used.

He closed the drawer and turned his attention to the surface of the desk, beginning with a series of drawings, architectural blueprints from a company called Larkin Gadwall based in Bath. They showed a cluster of houses, twelve in total, stretching out in two lines of six. A number of letters were piled up next to it, correspondence with the local council, a paper trail that must ultimately lead to the granting of planning permission. And here was the proof of it, a smart brochure with the heading: Dingle Drive, Saxby-on-Avon. All of these occupied one corner of the desk. A telephone stood at the other, with a notepad next to it. Someone, presumably Sir Magnus, had written in pencil – the pencil itself lay nearby.

ASHTON H
Mw
A GIRL

The words were written neatly at the top of the page but after that, Sir Magnus must have become agitated. There were several lines crossing each other, an angry scrawl. Pünd handed the page to Fraser.