Magpie Murders (17 page)

2

‘Actually, I took it down myself. I did it this morning. I don’t regret putting it there. I made the decision when I saw you in London. I had to do something. But after what happened here – I mean, with Sir Magnus and the police asking questions and everything – it just didn’t seem appropriate. Anyway, it had done the job. As soon as one person had read it, the whole village would know. That’s how it is around here. People have been giving me a few strange looks, I can tell you, and I don’t think the vicar was too pleased. But I don’t care. Robert and I are going to be married. What we do is our business and I’m not going to put up with people telling lies about him or about me.

Joy Sanderling was sitting on her own in the modern, single-storey surgery that stood in upper Saxby-on-Avon, surrounded by houses and bungalows that had all gone up at about the same time. It was an unattractive building, cheaply constructed and utilitarian in design. Dr Redwing’s father had compared it to a public toilet at the time it was built, although he, of course, had practiced from his own home. Dr Redwing herself thought it no bad thing that she was able to separate her work from her private life. There were many more people living in the village than there had been in Edgar Rennard’s time.

Patients entered through a glazed door that opened directly into a waiting area with a few faux-leather sofas, a coffee table and a scattering of magazines: old copies of
Punch
and
Country Life
. There were some toys for children, donated by Lady Pye, although that had been a long time ago and they really needed to be replaced. Joy sat in an adjoining office – the dispensary – with a window that slid across so that she could speak to the patients directly. She had an appointments book in front of her, a telephone and a typewriter to one side. Behind her, there were shelves and a cupboard filled with medical supplies, filing cabinets containing patient records and a small refrigerator, which occasionally housed drugs or the various samples that needed to be sent on to the hospital. There were two doors: one each side. The one on her left led into the reception area, the one on her right to Dr Redwing’s office. A light bulb, next to the telephone, would flash on when the doctor was ready to see her next patient.

Jeff Weaver, the gravedigger, was in there now, accompanying his grandson for a final check-up. Nine-year-old Billy Weaver had made a complete recovery from his whooping cough and had come bouncing into the surgery with a determination to be out of there as soon as possible. There were no other patients on the waiting list and Joy had been surprised when the door had opened and Atticus Pünd had walked in with his fair-haired assistant. She had heard they were in the village but had not expected to see them here.

‘Have your parents been made aware of what you wrote?’ Pünd asked.

‘Not yet,’ Joy said. ‘Although I’m sure someone will tell them soon enough.’ She shrugged. ‘If they find out, what does it matter? I’ll move in with Robert. That’s what I want anyway.’

It seemed to Fraser that she had changed in the brief time since they had met in London. He had liked her then and had been quietly disappointed when Pünd had refused to help her. The young woman on the other side of the window was still very appealing, exactly the sort of person you’d want to talk to if you weren’t feeling well. But there was a harder edge to her too. He noticed that she hadn’t come round to greet them, preferring to stay in the other room.

‘I didn’t expect to see you, Mr Pünd,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

‘You may feel that I was unfair to you when you came to see me in London, Miss Sanderling, and perhaps I should apologise. I was merely honest with you. At the time, I did not think I could help you with the situation in which you found yourself. However, when I read of the death of Sir Magnus Pye, I felt I had no choice but to investigate the matter.’

‘You think it has something to do with what I told you?’

‘That may well be the case.’

‘Well, I don’t see how I can help you. Unless you think I did it.’

‘Would you have a reason to wish him dead?’

‘No. I hardly even knew him. I saw him occasionally but I had nothing to do with him.’

‘And what of your fiancé, Robert Blakiston?’

‘You don’t suspect
him
, do you?’ Something flared in her eyes. ‘Sir Magnus was never anything but kind to him. He helped Robert get his job. They never quarrelled. They hardly ever saw each other. Is that why you’re here? Because you want to turn me against him?’

‘Nothing could be further from the truth.’

‘Then what do you want?’

‘As a matter of fact, I am here to see Dr Redwing.’

‘She’s with a patient at the moment but I expect she’ll be finished quite soon.’

‘Thank you.’ Pünd had not been offended by the girl’s hostility but it seemed to Fraser that he was looking at her rather sadly. ‘I must warn you,’ he continued, ‘that it will be necessary for me to speak with Robert.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Mary Blakiston was his mother. It is always possible that he might hold Sir Magnus to be partly responsible for her death and that alone would provide him with a motive for the murder.’

‘Revenge? I very much doubt it.’

‘At any event, he once lived at Pye Hall and there is a relationship between him and Sir Magnus which I need to explore. I tell you this because it occurs to me that you might wish to be present when we speak.’

Joy nodded. ‘Where do you want to see him? And when?’

‘Perhaps he might come to my hotel when it conveniences him? I am staying at the Queen’s Arms.’

‘I’ll bring him when he finishes work.’

‘Thank you.’

The door of Dr Redwing’s office opened and Jeff Weaver came out, holding the hand of a small boy who was wearing short trousers and a school jacket. Joy waited until they had gone, then moved to a door at the side of her office. ‘I’ll tell Dr Redwing you’re here,’ she said.

She disappeared from sight. It was exactly the opportunity that Pünd had been waiting for. He signalled to Fraser who quickly drew a sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket, leaned through the window and fed it upside-down into the typewriter. Leaning over the machine, he pressed several of the keys at random then pulled the sheet out and handed it to Pünd who examined the letters and nodded his satisfaction before handing it back.

‘Is it the same?’ Fraser asked.

‘It is.’

Joy Sanderling returned to the reception desk. ‘You can go in,’ she said. ‘Dr Redwing is free until eleven.’

‘Thank you,’ Pünd said, then added almost as an afterthought, ‘Do you alone have the use of this office, Miss Sanderling?’

‘Dr Redwing comes in from time to time, but nobody else,’ Joy replied.

‘You are quite sure of that? Nobody else would have access to this machine?’ He gestured at the typewriter.

‘Why do you want to know?’ Pünd said nothing so she continued. ‘Nobody comes in here except for Mrs Weaver. She’s the mother of the little boy who just left and she cleans the surgery twice a week. But I very much doubt that she would use the typewriter and certainly not without asking.’

‘While I am here, I would also be interested in your opinion of the new homes that Sir Magnus was intending to build. He was planning to cut down the woodland known as Dingle Dell—’

‘You think that was why he was killed? I’m afraid you don’t have much understanding of English villages, Mr Pünd. It was a stupid idea. Saxby-on-Avon doesn’t need new houses and there are plenty of better places to build them. I hate seeing trees being cut down and almost everyone in the village thinks the same. But nobody would have killed him because of that. The worst they would have done is written to the local newspaper or complained about it in the pub.’

‘Maybe the development will no longer go ahead now that he is not here to oversee it,’ Pünd suggested.

‘I suppose that’s possible.’

Pünd had proved his point. He smiled and moved towards the office door. Fraser, who had folded the sheet of paper in half and slipped it into his pocket, followed.

3

The office was small and square and so exactly what anyone would expect from a doctor’s surgery that it might almost have inspired a cartoon in one of the old
Punch
magazines that lay on the reception table. There was an antique desk placed centrally with two chairs facing it, a wooden filing cabinet and a shelf stacked with medical volumes. To one side, a curtain could be drawn to create a separate cubicle with another chair and a raised bed. A white coat hung on a hook. The only unexpected touch in the room was an oil painting, which showed a dark-haired boy leaning against a wall. It was clearly the work of an amateur but Fraser, who had studied art at Oxford, thought it was rather good.

Dr Redwing herself was sitting upright, making notes on a case file in front of her, a rather severe woman in her early fifties. Everything about her was angular: the straight line of her shoulders, her cheekbones, her chin. You could have drawn her portrait using a ruler. But she was polite enough as she gestured for her two guests to sit down. She finished what she was writing, screwed the top back on her pen and smiled. ‘Joy tells me you’re with the police.’

‘We are here in a private capacity,’ Pünd explained. ‘But it is true that we have worked with the police on occasion and are assisting Inspector Chubb now. My name is Atticus Pünd. This is my assistant, James Fraser.’

‘I’ve heard of you, Mr Pünd. I understand you’re very clever. I hope you can get to the bottom of this. It’s a dreadful thing to happen in a small village and coming so soon after the death of poor Mary … I really don’t know what to say.’

‘I understand that you and Mrs Blakiston were friends.’

‘I wouldn’t go as far as that – but yes, we did see quite a bit of each other. I think people underestimated her. She was a very intelligent woman. She hadn’t had an easy life, losing one child and bringing the other up on her own. But she coped very well and she was helpful to many people in the village.’

‘And it was you who found her after her accident.’

‘It was actually Brent, the groundsman at Pye Hall.’ She stopped herself. ‘But I assumed you wanted to talk to me about Sir Magnus.’

‘I am interested in both occurrences, Dr Redwing.’

‘Well, Brent called me from the stable. He had seen her through the window, lying in the hallway, and he feared the worst.’

‘He hadn’t gone in?’

‘He didn’t have a key. In the end we had to break down the back door. Mary had left her own keys in the lock on the other side. She was at the bottom of the stairs and it looked as if she had tripped over the cable of her Hoover which was at the top. Her neck was broken. I don’t think she had been dead very long. She was still warm when I found her.’

‘It must have been very distressing for you, Dr Redwing.’

‘It was. Of course, I’m used to death. I’ve seen it many times. But it’s always more difficult when it’s someone you know personally.’ She hesitated for a moment, a series of conflicting thoughts passing across her dark, serious eyes. Then she came to a decision. ‘And there was something else.’

‘Yes?’

‘I did think about mentioning this to the police at the time and maybe I should have done so. And maybe I’m wrong to be telling you now. The thing is, I’d persuaded myself that it wasn’t relevant. After all, nobody was suggesting that Mary’s death was anything but a tragic accident. However, given what’s happened and since you’re here …’

‘Please, go on.’

‘Well, just a few days before Mary died, we had an incident here at the surgery. We were quite busy that day – we had three patients in a row – and Joy had to pop out a couple of times. I asked her to buy me some lunch from the village store. She’s a good girl and she doesn’t mind doing that sort of thing. I’d also left some papers at my house and she went out and got them for me. Anyway, at the end of the day, when we were tidying up, we noticed that a bottle had gone missing from the dispensary. As you can imagine, we keep a close eye on all our medicines, especially the more dangerous ones, and I was particularly concerned by its disappearance.’

‘What was the drug?’

‘Physostigmine. It’s actually a cure for belladonna poisoning and I’d had to get some in for Henrietta Osborne, the vicar’s wife. She’d managed to step on a clump of deadly nightshade in Dingle Dell and as I’m sure you’ll know, Mr Pünd, atropine is an active ingredient in that particular plant. Physostigmine is effective in small doses but a larger amount can quite easily kill you.’

‘And you say it was taken.’

‘I didn’t say that. If I had any reason to believe that, I would have gone straight to the police. No. It could have been misplaced. We have a lot of medicines here and although we’re very careful, it has happened before. Or it could be that Mrs Weaver, who cleans here, had dropped and broken it. She’s not a dishonest woman but it would be just like her to clean up the mess and say nothing about it.’ Dr Redwing frowned. ‘I mentioned it to Mary Blakiston though. If someone in the village had made off with it for some reason, she’d have certainly been able to find out. She was a bit like you, in a way. A detective. She had a way of rooting things out of people. And in fact she did tell me she had one or two ideas.’

‘And a few days after this incident, she was dead.’

‘Two days, Mr Pünd. Exactly two days.’ There was a sudden silence as the significance – unspoken – hung in the air. Dr Redwing was looking increasingly uncomfortable. ‘I’m sure her death had nothing to do with it,’ she continued. ‘It was an accident. And it’s not as if Sir Magnus was poisoned. He was struck down with a sword!’

‘On the day that the physostigmine was removed, can you recall who came to the surgery?’ Pünd asked.

‘Yes. I went back to the appointment book to check. As I just said, three people came in that morning. Mrs Osborne I’ve already mentioned. Johnny Whitehead has an antique shop in the village square. He had quite a nasty cut on his hand, which had gone septic. And Clarissa Pye – she’s Sir Magnus’s sister – looked in with a stomach upset. There was nothing very much the matter with her to be honest with you. She lives on her own and she’s a bit of a hypochondriac. Really she just likes to have a chat. I don’t think this missing bottle had anything to do with what happened but it’s been on my conscience and I suppose it’s best if you’re aware of all the facts.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Is there anything else?’ she asked. ‘I don’t mean to be rude but I have to be on my rounds.’