No Place of Safety (20 page)

‘I'll keep a low profile,' said Charlie, as they drove out to the Mallabys of Belstone Manor next morning.

‘Oh? Why?'

‘I have an idea they'll be old-fashioned Tory types who won't be easy with the idea of a black policeman.'

‘Maybe. That wasn't quite how Mrs Ingram saw them, was it? Anyway, keep an open mind. When Mrs Ingram and her recognition of Marchant comes up, you'll have to take over anyway. You're the one who talked to her.'

They were taking the scenic route from Leeds to Otley, and, having driven through Cookridge, were now passing rolling farmland as they approached the Chevin.

‘People around here must have a bob or two,' commented Charlie.

‘A bob or two, a million or two,' said Oddie, shrugging. ‘Farmers aren't quite on the gravy train they used to be on, but Mallaby isn't a farmer, as I understand it, or only as a sideline. He's a businessman.' He thought. ‘Rather Victorian that: retreating from your place of business to play at being landed gentry in the lush countryside.'

When they finally arrived at Belstone Manor, the Victorian comparison was reinforced by cast-iron gates and the gatehouse beside them. However, the latter looked empty, and you gained admittance by ringing and stating your business into a speaking device. The voice which asked it sounded landed – no butler, presumably. When Oddie said, ‘West Yorkshire police', the gates swung open and Charlie drove them through.

‘Jane Austen meets James Bond,' he commented.

The house was early nineteenth-century and heavily gracious – rather like Alicia Ingram. The front door was opened by Sir George himself, and he shook hands heartily.

‘Only got some new Filipinos,' he explained, as if they were a breed of watchdog. ‘Awfully sweet and wonderful about the house, but no good with the telephone or callers. So I prefer to do it myself. If you'll come through to the drawing room.'

He led the way down the high hall to a sunny room in which the French windows, a recent innovation apparently, looked out on to the garden. Sir George was hearty, friendly (Charlie had detected no reaction to his colour) and moustached in the style of a country gentleman rather than a serviceman. He was a little too small to be the ideal bluff countryman, but he worked to make up for the deficiency.

‘You said you'd like to speak to my wife, too, didn't you?' He went to the windows, opened them and bellowed: ‘Susan!' He turned and gestured them to large, square armchairs, new or newly covered in a traditional style. The men saved effort by waiting until his wife arrived before they sat down, and Sir George filled in time. ‘No help to be got for the garden these days. Can't fly in Filipinos for that. We have a man two afternoons a week, and Susan does the rest.'

Susan, it turned out, was more effortlessly the picture of the country gentlewoman of a certain age. Her hair was drawn back into a bun, but quite a lot of it had escaped and now hung around her wide forehead. She wore a capacious, smock-like dress, thick dark stockings and heavy shoes. She left a fork and trowel on a window-ledge and came breezing in.

‘Hello. I'm filthy, so I won't shake hands. This time of year it's never ending out there. Now, you're the policemen and it's about Ben, isn't it? When we heard the name on the news we wondered if you'd be wanting to talk to us. Awful thing – horrible! How is he, poor old chap?'

‘Holding his own,' said Oddie. ‘But it's still touch and go.'

‘He didn't deserve that,' she said, sitting down in a billow of flowery cotton, and letting them get a glimpse of sturdy
calf. Charlie, sitting, opened his book. For the moment he was the note-taker. ‘After all the good he was trying to do,' said Lady Mallaby, resuming the subject of Ben. ‘Do you think it was one of his street people? A lot of them are sad creatures, but there are some out-and-out weirdos as well.'

‘We're keeping an open mind,' said Oddie, with a finality that said he'd ask the questions. ‘Now, Ben Marchant was your estate manager, I believe. How long did he work for you?'

Sir George took over the answering.

‘Five years. I've looked him up in the farm file since you rang. He came in the spring of ‘91.'

‘I believe he'd worked in Derbyshire somewhere. Did he come to you from there?'

‘That's right. Somewhere near Matlock. I think he'd been there since finishing Agricultural College.'

‘And he came with good references?'

‘Excellent. And deserved them. If he'd needed references when he left I'd have given him glowing ones.'

‘I see. Farming is a sort of – ' Oddie nearly said hobby, but thought that sounded insulting – ‘sideline with you, sir, isn't it? You're actually an industrialist.'

There was no hesitancy in Sir George's nod.

‘That's right. In so far as the country has any industry left. Sabre Industries plc. Ben had nothing to do with that. But if you're implying that I don't know what I'm doing in the farming line, then you're wrong. I was brought up in farming countryside in North Yorkshire. I know the business – and it is a business these days – inside out. And you can believe me when I tell you that Ben was a damned good farm and estate manager.'

‘I'm sure he was,' said Oddie placatingly. ‘I was just trying to gauge the amount of responsibility he had. I take it he was basically in charge of the whole farming operation.'

‘Yes – the smallish farm that we run ourselves, and then the financial and organizational supervision of the tenant farmers of the rest of the estate. I never had a moment's worry the whole time he was here: he knew what he was doing, and he was honest.'

‘What about his private life?'

Sir George shot him a glance.

‘We're not running a monastery here. His private life was his own affair.'

‘Of course it was. Less so now he's been stabbed, though. I'm not asking you to make judgements. I just want information.'

‘Oh tell him, George,' said Susan Mallaby impatiently. ‘There was Hattie Jenkins, wife of one of the tenant farmers, Mrs Gregson who runs a hat shop in Otley, and Sally Wormold who has the village shop and post office. There may be more, of course, but those are the ones there were rumours about.'

‘Children?'

Lady Mallaby smiled knowingly.

‘Hardly. They were all married women, some of them with older children or grown-up ones, and well able to take care of that kind of thing. Mrs Gregson would have been past the age, I'd guess. No, there was little danger of that.'

‘I ask because there had been children in the past.'

‘Out of wedlock? Oh dear, I betray my age. Nobody uses that term now, do they? I suppose Ben was just ahead of his time. Wasn't there something at one time, George, about a letter from the Child Support Agency?'

‘That's right,' said her husband. ‘Got it in my mail. Get a great big bundle every day here. His address was The Lodge, Belstone Manor. Easy mistake for the postman to make. Anyway, I just opened it without looking.' His face took on a roguish expression. ‘A bit of a shock, at my age.'

‘A bit of a miracle, more like,' said his wife.

‘Anyway, I just sealed it down with Sellotape and put “opened in error” on it and put it in his door on my way out.'

‘He never commented on it?'

‘Never.'

‘And you didn't see any of the details? The name of the child or its mother?'

‘If I did it's gone now. And it can't have meant anything to me, so it won't have been local.'

‘No natural curiosity, men,' commented Lady Mallaby tartly.

Oddie shot a covert glance at Charlie, who sat forward in his chair.

‘This may seem like a change of subject, but it's not,' he said, looking at Lady Mallaby. ‘I believe you know a Mrs Ingram.'

‘Do I? Doesn't ring a bell. What's her Christian name?'

‘Alicia.'

‘Is she one of the people on the Leeds Piano Competition Committee, George?'

‘Haven't the foggiest, m'dear. “Chopsticks” with two fingers is about my limit.'

‘You don't have to
play
, George.' She thought hard. ‘I have a feeling she is. Is she a frightfully condescending type – “I am trying desperately hard to bring myself down to your level” when she talks to you?'

‘Er . . . people might react like that to her manner,' said Charlie.

‘Active in Conservative Party circles?'

‘Yes, certainly.'

‘I've got her. Yes, she's been here. Muscled her way on to the committee without any particular qualifications.'

‘When would this have been, when she came here?'

‘Oh, a while ago. Let me see: maybe two years. We only met here because the original venue became unavailable at the last minute and I suggested there was room here.'

‘I ask because I believe when the meeting broke up, you all came out to the entrance hall, and Sir George and Ben Marchant were talking there.'

Lady Mallaby shot him a piercing glance.

‘Good Lord! You seem to know more about our activities than we remember ourselves. Have you had surveillance cameras out here for the last two years? It's positively spooky!'

‘Actually there's no mystery about it,' said Charlie hurriedly. ‘I got the information from Mrs Ingram herself. What I wondered was whether you remember the incident and
whether you noticed her reaction to the sight of Ben Marchant.'

‘I think I may be of help to you there,' said Sir George. ‘I remember the occasion because I noticed a woman reacting to him.' He became slightly roguish again. ‘Tell you the truth, I often did notice Ben's effect on women. Those women that Susan mentioned, the women around here, if ever they and Ben came in contact you could
tell
, if you were sharp. And other women who fancied him – well, I'm sure I don't have to spell it out.'

‘Sex quite frequently rears its ugly head in our job, Sir George,' said Charlie urbanely.

‘All the time, I should think. Anyway, I remember the committee coming out into the hall, and I recall this woman – I had no idea who she was, still haven't – catching sight of Ben, and her jaw dropping just for a moment. Quite dramatic, like a stage play. Then she covered it up – very practised, good at putting on an act, that one. I'm assuming that will have been Mrs Ingram.'

‘Did you guess what was the cause of the reaction?'

Sir George stroked his jaw.

‘I suppose I put it down to her being a former lady friend of Ben's. No evidence, none at all. I suppose it's just the obvious thing to think in the circumstances.'

‘Obvious generally, or obvious because the man was Ben Marchant?'

‘Because it was Ben.'

‘Were you surprised when Marchant won the lottery?'

It was Oddie, taking over the questioning from Charlie. Sir George turned to him.

‘Surprised? I suppose one is always surprised when someone one knows gets a big win.'

‘Would you have said he was the lottery type?'

Sir George frowned.

‘I knew he bought tickets. He often mentioned it, and I remember him being quite jealous when one of the estate workers won twenty-five pounds. And I once saw him coming out of the newsagents down in the village and scratching one of those damned cards. I do think they are
beyond the pale, don't you? Whole thing's a bit iffy, if you ask me.'

‘So he was the type.'

‘Optimistic, a bit short-term – yes, I'd say so.'

‘Always waiting for something to turn up?'

Sir George balked a little at that.

‘That would be a bit unfair, because Micawber was a hopeless case. Ben was like a lot of people, hoping something would turn up, while going very competently about his daily business.'

Oddie nodded his acceptance of this analysis.

‘So tell me what happened when he got his big win.'

‘Let me see . . .' Sir George looked at his wife. ‘It was you he told first, wasn't it, dear?'

‘Yes. I was driving out to the village one Sunday morning to get the papers – no delivery here – and he waved me down and crowed that he'd got a big win in the lottery draw the night before. I was pleased for him, and I said, “Come up and have a drink before lunch”. Which he did.'

‘Did he say how much it was?'

‘I'm not sure that you know at once, do you? Anyway, he didn't say, either then or later, did he, George?'

‘Not to me. Just used words like “substantial”, “considerable”, and suchlike. I never heard anyone name a sum, not one that they'd actually heard from him.'

‘Did you guess a sum?'

‘Well, I suppose he bought those two houses – they'd be in the thirty thousand range. So I thought it must be over a hundred thousand, remembering he was feeding these people, and so on. I suspected it would be double that, or a quarter of a million. But this was only guesswork. It could be many millions for all I know, except that Ben never said it was a top prize. But then nobody sensible
would
tell people if it was that sort of sum they'd won, would they?'

‘I suppose not,' agreed Oddie. ‘When did he announce his plans to set up this refuge?'

‘Almost from the first.' He looked at his wife. ‘I say “almost” because I can't remember whether he told us when he came up for that Sunday drink. I know he said he'd be
chucking in his job here, because that's when I realized it was a real win, not just glorified small change.'

‘I think it was a few days later that he told you,' said Lady Mallaby. ‘I seem to remember we discussed it over dinner.'

‘How did you react to the idea?'

‘Me? It wasn't my business. It was his money and his to do what he wanted with. Nobody can walk through the streets of Leeds or London and not wonder a bit about what has happened to the country. I suppose what we thought was that it was a wonderful idea and very generous, but that the money wouldn't last for ever. That was pretty much our reaction, wasn't it, George?'