Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder (14 page)

‘You don’t mind me asking her?’ Helen said.

‘No, of course not. Why should I?’

‘I don’t suppose she’ll be a lot of help.’

‘Look,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ve got to go back to be with Mum. All this has been terrible for her. I shouldn’t have left her on her own.’

‘Shall I come with you?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘ Better not.’

‘I’ll come to see you’ she said. ‘At home tomorrow. I won’t go to school.’

He nodded agreement. She held him tight and turned her face to kiss him. He brushed his lips against hers then walked off, his head bent, his eyes on the pavement.

The Hop Pole was squashed into a side street off the high street. It had not been painted for years. The whitewash was stained and green and the windows so dirty that artificial light was needed inside all day. The sign had fallen down in a gale and no one had been employed to replace it. The pub was run by two elderly spinster sisters, the Cadwalladers, and had previously been owned by their father. It had been George’s local when he was a young man – he could remember the Cadwalladers as stylish young ladies. Now he said it typified the town and would not stay in Sarne without visiting it.

The younger sister, Mary, was in her late sixties and was known to her regulars by her Christian name. She was pleasing, eccentric and not very clever. The elder, Gertrude, was Miss Cadwallader to all her customers, even her contemporaries. Miss Cadwallader was mean, efficient and ruthless. She was the sole figure of authority in the Hop Pole and was intimidated neither by unruly customers nor the licensing laws. The pub stayed open for as long as she was still making money. She had tremendous stamina, and could drink most of the men in the place under the table. She liked what she called ‘a certain class of gentleman’ in the Hop Pole and counted among her regulars a doctor who had been convicted of drunk driving and retired early, several teachers and the clerk to the parish council. All her regulars drank in the public bar. The lounge was cold and dusty. It was reserved for strangers to the town and for the under-age drinkers of whom she disapproved, but whose money she had not the heart to turn away. If some newcomer, unknowing, wandered into the public bar and took one of the best seats near to the fire she would tap sharply on the bar.

‘Excuse me young man,’ she would say, irrespective of the intruder’s age. ‘That’s Mr Gregory’s chair. He’ll be in shortly. I think you might be more comfortable here.’

She would direct him to a stool near to the bar and question him about his status, his family, his occupation. If he turned out to be a sales representative she would suggest that in the future he might prefer to use the lounge which was usually quieter.

The question of what Miss Cadwallader did with all her money was a matter of great speculation in the Hop Pole. Occasionally she allowed Mary to buy herself a new dress or to go on a coach trip to see the Dutch bulb fields or the Austrian Alps, but she spent nothing on herself.

When Molly went into the pub it was half past two. A group of old men were playing dominoes in a corner and Mary was alone behind the bar. She looked, Molly thought, uncannily like the Queen Mother. She had wispy hair, flowery clothes and a permanent, bemused smile.

‘Molly!’ she said. ‘ Is it really you? What a lovely surprise. I must call Gertrude.’

‘Don’t disturb Miss Cadwallader yet,’ Molly said. Mary was a better gossip than her sister. She chattered without realizing the implication of what she was saying. Gertrude was too discreet. She saw herself in a privileged position, like a doctor or a priest, and might be unwilling to pass on any information gained behind the bar. ‘Have a drink with me first.’

Delighted by this attention Mary said she would have a sweet sherry. She poured a glass of beer for Molly.

‘How’s George?’ Mary asked. ‘ It’s so long since he’s been here. We do miss him.’

‘He’s busy,’ Molly said, then lowered her voice melodramatically. Mary loved excitement. ‘ We’ve been staying at Gorse Hill. He’s helping the police!’

That sent Mary into a nervous fluster of pleasure. ‘How terrible!’ she said. Poor dear Mrs Masefield. How she would be missed. ‘Is it true,’ she whispered, ‘that the police are looking for Nan Oliver’s husband?’

‘I think they are,’ Molly said. ‘And her son Stephen. The police haven’t been here to talk to you then?’

‘No,’ Mary said. ‘Why should they do that?’ She leant across the bar, her eyes gleaming with curiosity.

‘I understand,’ Molly said, ‘that Frank Oliver met Stephen in here one evening last week.’

‘No,’ Mary said. ‘Really? Do you know which evening that was?’

‘Last Thursday,’ Molly said. ‘Do you remember seeing them?’

‘It was very quiet in here on Thursday,’ Mary said. ‘They would have been in the lounge of course. I usually serve in the lounge in the evening. I wonder what they were like.’

She was desperate to remember. She wanted the importance of being a witness.

‘I know!’ she said in triumph. ‘They came in quite early in the evening and the bar was empty. Now I think of it the boy did have something of Nan Oliver about the eyes. The man was very dark, quite short. Would that be him?’

Molly nodded. ‘I don’t suppose,’ she said, ‘that you heard what they were saying.’

Mary began to polish glasses in a frenzy of concentration.

‘I couldn’t hear from the bar,’ she said. ‘They were talking very quietly. I wasn’t curious about them, you see. I didn’t recognize Stephen Oliver. But I did go over there to put some coal on the fire.’

She put down the cloth.

‘They were talking about passports,’ she said suddenly. ‘The older man asked the boy if he had a passport. The boy said. “No of course not. I’ve never been anywhere.” Then the older man said it didn’t matter. He could get a British Visitor’s passport at the post office. “I haven’t got any money,” the boy said. The man said not to worry about money. He would pay. He would get all his expenses back. I thought they were discussing a business trip abroad.’ She looked pleased with herself and sipped the sherry. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Do you think I should tell the police?’

Gertrude Cadwallader appeared suddenly behind her sister, seemed to tower over her. She was more solid than Mary, tall and broad with a heavy jaw and a big bust. Hop Pole legend had it that there had been many suitors for Mary but none for Gertrude and that Gertrude had frightened them all away through jealousy.

‘Isn’t it exciting,’ Mary said nervously. ‘Molly’s been telling me about dear Eleanor Masefield’s murder. The police are looking for Frank Oliver and he was here, last week, making plans.’

‘It’s never been my policy,’ Miss Cadwallader said, ‘to give any information to the police. We have our livelihood to consider. You must do as you think best, of course.’

She began to make polite regal conversation to Molly and ignored Mary’s obvious disappointment. There was no doubt that Mary would do as her sister wished.

‘Well perhaps it would be best to give the information to George,’ Mary said brightly, interrupting them as if she had changed her mind of her own accord. ‘I don’t suppose we want policemen in the bar. You will tell him, Molly?’

‘Of course,’ Molly said. What a shame it was! she thought. Mary would have liked being collected in a police car and being taken to the station to make a statement to a handsome young policeman.

‘Then perhaps George will want to come to see me,’ Mary continued, consoling herself, ‘to ask me some questions.’

‘I’m sure he will,’ Molly said and went out into the street where the wind had increased and dark rainclouds had covered the sun.’

Although she had half expected George to have returned when she arrived at Gorse Hill it was deserted. She supposed that Richard had taken Veronica away from the oppressive memories of the house. She wondered if she should tell the local police about the conversation overheard in the Hop Pole, but it seemed unnecessary. George and Pritchard would surely be back from Puddleworth soon.

As Molly entered the house the telephone was ringing. She hesitated, thinking it might stop or that someone else might come to answer it, but the noise continued. The office door was open and she went in and picked up the receiver.

‘Hello,’ said a man’s precise voice. He spoke clearly but had a slight foreign accent. ‘ Is that Gorse Hill? Kerry Fenn suggested that I contact you. It’s a business matter.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Molly said. ‘This is Gorse Hill but I’m only a guest. None of the family is here. Perhaps I could take a message.’

But the man had already rung off.

Molly went into the lounge. As she sat reading, big raindrops began to splatter against the window pane. Helen must have gone back to school for the afternoon because she and Fanny arrived home together, running up the drive, trying to avoid the worst of the rain. They burst into the hall, noisy and breathless, shedding books and coats and satchels, then went upstairs and the house was quiet again.

George phoned late that afternoon. He would not be home, he said, for another day. They had discovered a useful lead at Oliver’s home and Pritchard needed his help. He was apologetic but did not expect Molly to object. She said that was all right. She would find plenty to occupy her at Gorse Hill. It seemed to her still that this obsession with leads and chasing round the country was male dramatic nonsense. The answer to Eleanor’s death lay in Sarne and she would find it before he did. Then she told him about the overheard conversation in the Hop Pole and she could tell he was impressed. That will teach him, she thought again, to take me for granted. She did not tell him about the phone call from the foreigner. It seemed to have no importance.

George and Pritchard arrived at Farthing Ridge at dusk. It was the highest hill in Shropshire, a long thin rib across the countryside. They had decided that the theft of the merlin eggs might take place at dawn the following day, so to be sure of catching the man Oliver had called TW they would have to stay there all night. The merlin had nested in a hawthorn tree close to an education authority field centre, high up in the hills. There was a track to the field centre and they could have driven there but the car would have given them away. They were worried too that TW might already be on the hill, keeping a watch on the track. So they had left the car at Farthingford, a hamlet with a line of farmworkers’ grey cottages, an impressive grey chapel and a tiny school to serve the outlying farms. It was a longer walk than they had expected through bog and wet sheep-cropped grass. Pritchard soon lost his schoolboy enthusiasm for the chase and thought of Bethan and their large soft bed.

The wind had increased all day and in the evening had blown a band of cloud in from the Welsh mountains, so that when they arrived it was too dark to see more than the square shape of the field centre and the line of the hill beyond. Pritchard had been given permission to use the field centre, and a key, but it had not been equipped again for summer use and they knew it would be empty. The RSPB’s roving warden was already there. He had not had access to the building and sat on the grass, leaning against one wall, sheltered from the wind. He was asleep.

George had contacted the RSPB although at first Pritchard had wanted no one to know that they wanted to go to the Farthing Ridge site.

‘We’ll have to tell them,’ George had said. ‘They might even have a warden there or volunteers keeping an eye on the site. If two strangers turn up they’ll call out the local police and we’d look rather foolish then. They’re used to keeping secrets.’

So he had telephoned an old friend who was Regional Officer for the society in the West Midlands.

‘Do merlins breed on Farthing Ridge?’ he asked. He gave the Ordnance Survey grid reference number found in Oliver’s house.

The Regional Officer was astonished, suspicious, a little angry.

‘How do you know that?’ he asked. ‘It’s miles from anywhere. We hadn’t any records of merlin in that area until a couple of our contract workers doing an uplands survey found the nest earlier in the spring.’

George ignored the question.

‘Is it wardened?’ he asked.

The man hesitated. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We didn’t think it was necessary.’

‘I’ve information that someone wants to take the eggs,’ George said. ‘Tomorrow. The circumstances are a bit unusual. The suspected thief is wanted by the police on another, more serious matter. The police will be waiting at the site to get him. I thought I’d better let you know.’

‘We ought to be involved,’ the man said.

‘I don’t think the police will agree to that.’

‘All the same. We need all the prosecutions we can get. Besides you might not find the nest by yourselves. It’s not that easy, not in poor light. I’ll send a lad to help you. He’s been there several times during the season to see what’s going on.‘

Pritchard could hardly object to that, George thought, and said they would meet the roving warden there. The Regional Officer was about to hang up when George asked: ‘Do the initials TW mean anything to you? I suppose they might belong to a falconer, but I can’t think of anyone.’

‘Theo Williams,’ the man said. ‘He’s not a falconer. He’s a taxidermist. He owns a very swanky business on the green at Puddleworth and seems quite respectable. He works for some of the best museums. He specializes in preparing birds of prey for wealthy overseas falconers but he’ll tackle anything from an elephant to a budgie if he’s paid enough.’

‘Is he legitimate?’

‘No,’ the man said. ‘He’s bent as hell, but he’s too clever for us ever to have caught him. He’s considered a great local naturalist in the area – he has a regular spot on the local radio – and he takes the opportunity to criticize the RSPB whenever he can. He seems to be running a personal vendetta against the society. He pretends to be a great supporter of birds for the people and encourages people to make nest sites of rare birds public. He says the RSPB is an elitist group, saving information for its own use. I think he’s got his own motives for wanting information on rare breeding birds. Time and again birds disappear from nests where he’s been seen. We just haven’t been clever enough to catch him.’