Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder (22 page)

On a desk near the window was a computer keyboard and visual display unit. Eleanor had called it ‘Richard’s toy’. He used it to keep a check on bookings, to make up the accounts and to send confirmation to prospective customers. For a moment George was excited. Surely a computer would be useful in matching requests for falcons with information of known sites. Only Richard Mead knew how to use the computer. No one else had access to it. It would be an ideal way of keeping the Falconry Centre secret. George looked at the machine warily. He had no idea how to make it work. There would surely be some codework to release the information on the agency but he dared not touch the computer. Then he realized that the idea of Richard Mead as head of an aggressive illegal business was ridiculous. Meek, mild-mannered Mead would not know where to begin. George was still confident enough in his own judgement to see that.

The other desk was Eleanor’s. He could remember it in the room when it had been Masefield’s study. George looked quickly through the drawers. The contents were jumbled and untidy as if someone had been looking there before him in a hurry. The police would have looked, but they would have been more orderly in their search. There was nothing of interest in the drawer except a copy of Eleanor’s will, which left Gorse Hill and everything else she owned to Veronica. That was as expected. He supposed the police would have been in touch with Eleanor’s solicitor already and would have seen the original.

He was about to close the drawer when he found a crumpled black and white photograph, stuck between the drawer and the back of the desk. It was of Eleanor in an evening dress. It had been taken, he guessed, just before the war. She was very young. He imagined again the grand parties there might have been at Gorse Hill, thought of women’s laughter on the frosty air, music and voices. I was in love with a dream, he thought, with a young man’s idea of glamour. He turned the photograph over. On the back was written: ‘To Stuart with all my love. Eleanor’. He took one last look at the picture of the girl then replaced it in the desk. She was beautiful, he thought. I was right, at least, about that.

He had found what he wanted and was ready to leave the room and return to bed, but he was drawn to the books. Stuart had a strange collection, he thought. All the expected works were there – Leslie Brown’s
British Birds of Prey
and Radcliffe’s book on the peregrine – but a complete set of the
New Naturalist
series stood next to a row of
Beano
annuals. The books seemed to be arranged according to size and visual appearance rather than subject matter. On the bottom shelf was a series of heavy, thick books, too big to fit elsewhere. There was a family bible, the memoirs of a Victorian egg collector with illustrations and diagrams and a glossy coffee-table book on heraldry and coats of arms. Next to it was a book with a similar binding to the bible, but with no title on the spine. George carefully pulled it out. As he lifted it off the shelf and on to the desk there was surprisingly little dust. He opened the pages and found that it was not a printed book at all, but an old-fashioned ledger, with a wide margin and fine, narrow lines. Stuart Masefield had used it as a diary.

The entries began in the late fifties and at first they were sketchy, with perhaps just one or two dates listed in a year. They were concerned with his search for raptors’ nest sites. The language Masefield used in the diary was exaggerated and dated and he seemed eager to portray himself as a naturalist in the Victorian tradition, but despite the falsely archaic phrasing his triumph and passion came through. He had found a golden eagle nest in the Cairngorms which was easily accessible. At the end of the summer he had walked into the eyrie and smoked a pipe there. His excitement had a feverish, childlike quality.

From the later entries in the diary it became clear that his friends in the falconry world began to prey on his vanity, and suggested that he prove his skill at nest-finding by providing them with eggs and young. George thought that the device of seeing the theft as a test or challenge of his competence could not have deceived Stuart Masefield. He was obviously unbalanced, but not a fool. He had enjoyed plundering the nests. It had given him a sense of power over the natural world, and soon it became obvious that he saw the financial potential of his actions. In the early 1970s he sold two young peregrine falcons to ‘an arab buyer’ for £500 plus expenses. In the years before his death his activities appeared to become more organized and there was the first record of his having employed an assistant. He was stealing a clutch of eggs from a goshawk nest and wrote: ‘Sent Frank Oliver up the tree. I’m not sufficiently agile for that sort of thing now’. Soon after there was a reference to Theo Williams: ‘ Theo has become indispensable. His ability to find breeding birds is astounding. I wonder now how I ever managed without him’.

George had expected the diary to end with Masefield’s death, but it was continued almost immediately in a different handwriting, in a handwriting which George recognized, because he had seen it that morning on the back of a photograph. The realization that Eleanor Masefield was running the agency was less shocking than it would have been before he had begun to read the diary. She and Stuart were close, allies and partners. It seemed only natural that she should succeed him. After her husband’s death it seemed she had been determined to continue his unofficial business and to bring to it her own ruthlessness and organizational skill. It was quite clear from the records in the diary that she was in charge of the enterprise. All the accounts were kept in the book and George was astonished by the scale of the operation and the sums of money she made each year. She imported illegal birds as well as exporting them. It was no wonder, he thought, that she had afforded an expensive car and could keep Gorse Hill so well. While Stuart had made a little extra pocket money from his adventures, Eleanor Masefield’s income was considerably boosted by the agency.

In her elegant, sloping handwriting Eleanor went on to record how Kerry Fenn had been recruited as a glorified secretary and to liaise with the foreign customers. She went abroad for her father and could always find an excuse for an extra visit. She did all the agency’s typing at home, but seemed to have little responsibility. It had been relatively easy, Eleanor wrote, to persuade Kerry to join the team. Lydia Fenn had been a wealthy woman and after her accident Murdoch Fenn had built Puddleworth with her money. But that had all gone and the running costs of the Centre had nearly outstripped income. The money Kerry made by working for Eleanor at least contributed to the expenses of Murdoch’s beloved Falconry Centre. Eleanor had exploited Kerry’s affection for her father and his dependence on the place for his happiness.

Later, some months before her murder, Eleanor had considered the question of the Sarne peregrines.

‘While I’m reluctant to disturb the Sarne falcons – after all they were Stuart’s favourites,’ she had written, ‘I feel it would be foolish to turn down such a lucrative offer’. There followed details of the financial terms offered by a German businessman. The moral deliberations were soon over and she had concluded: ‘So long as no suspicion falls on Gorse Hill I can see nothing against it.’

Then she had made every effort to present herself as a champion of the peregrines, insisting that the birds should be protected, knowing all the time that none of the conservation groups would agree to her demands. The town must be persuaded, when the birds were taken, that she had been right all the time.

A week before her death there was an indication that someone was close to discovering her secret. ‘Impossible to stop Sarne operation now,’ she wrote. ‘Must take every step to throw suspicion elsewhere’.

And then there had been frantic efforts to persuade the family that a blue van was haunting the lane and that the birds were in danger. When the peregrines disappeared everyone would then believe that the mysterious man in the blue van had taken them. Even if, by some extreme misfortune, Oliver was arrested, he would receive a minimal fine which she would pay and there would be nothing to connect him with her. The business would thrive, and the Sarne birds could be taken the following year. The important thing was to protect herself.

So George had been summoned. George, who was blinded by his infatuation and would take her part against the world. Of course she had refused to give him details of her concern. She wanted him there, to prove to whoever in Sarne had become suspicious about her activities that she wanted to protect the Gorse Hill birds in memory of Stuart. She did not want him to question her about the birds. So she had put him off, pretending to be too busy with the Open Day.

She used me, he thought, as she used everyone else. Molly was right and I was too arrogant to see it. He found it impossible to feel anger towards Eleanor. Her beauty had given him pleasure and had moved him just as the peregrines on the hill had given him pleasure. The fault was all his. He had deluded himself that she could find him attractive. She was ruthless and greedy and he had only cared what she thought about himself.

Then who killed her? he thought. Why would anyone want to see her dead? Because he had been so wrong about Eleanor he felt suddenly insecure about everything. His confidence deserted him. There were footsteps on the stairs outside the study door and he felt himself shaking. He thought he had never been so frightened. He did not know who had murdered Eleanor and he imagined each of the household, in turn, transformed into a grotesque killer. He held his breath, expecting the door to be opened, so that he would be confronted by the murderer, but the footsteps passed. When he had struggled to regain control, he felt a mixture of relief and shame, and then began to laugh, a little hysterically at his foolishness.

Fanny woke unusually early too. A day of boredom stretched ahead of her. It was unfair, she thought. Surely her grandmother’s death should have brought some excitement – there should have been television cameras, handsome detectives, newspaper reporters. Instead she was trapped at Gorse Hill, sheltered by her parents from all the fuss. There had been policemen of course, but they had been boring, predominantly middle-aged, and had talked to her as if she were a child.

She turned over and settled under the duvet, but sleep was impossible. She had done so little, the day before, that she was not tired. At last, out of desperation, she got up.

I could do exercises, she thought, remembering her pledge to lose some weight. I could go for a run. The motivation and enthusiasm carried her through dressing and a skimpy wash, and saw her down the stairs. But by the time she got into the garden she had decided that after all, a gentle walk would suit her mood better. She remembered quite vividly the comical picture of Nan Oliver in oversized wellingtons, bent with the weight of basket and carrier bags. She would follow Mrs Oliver’s trail down the garden. She would discover her secret.

She had no idea what she would find. The excitement was in being up early before the rest of the family, in the possibility of catching Nan Oliver at something of which her parents might disapprove, something which might make her appear ludicrous. She was still young enough to remember stories of witches – as a child it had been easy to imagine Nan Oliver as a witch – but she had no premonition of danger as she followed the path past the kitchen garden.

Although it had not rained during the night the grass was still damp and her footprints left marks on the path. I should have followed her yesterday, she thought. I’ll never find out where she went now. Then she decided that the bags and the basket must be somewhere and it should be possible to find them. The path led between the red-brick wall of the kitchen garden and the flat grass lawn surrounded by sloping terraces where the folk singers had performed at the Open Day. Soon it would be mown and marked and turned into a tennis court for the guests. I’ll have to take up tennis, she thought. That will keep my weight down. The sun was beginning to come up over the town and shone through the trees on to the red-brick wall and reflected on the greenhouse built against it.

It had been a long time since she had followed the path beyond the walled garden. When she and Helen were young it had been a treat to come to Gorse Hill on Sunday afternoon to explore the grounds. But it had been years since she had taken pleasure in that kind of activity. Beyond the tennis courts there was a strip of rhododendron thicket which had spread to surround a field, reached from the path by a five-barred gate. Eleanor usually let the field to a local farmer for his daughters’ ponies – neither Helen nor Fanny had shown any interest in riding – but it had been empty all winter and the grass was long and mixed with cow parsley.

Beyond the field, in a small wood, there was a rookery and the black birds cawed and flapped above the tall trees. In one corner of the field was the old pigsty where Helen and Fanny had played so often. It had been Helen’s secret place and Fanny only gained admission by learning special rites. She remembered that climbing to the top of the cedar tree had been one of the tasks to be achieved before entry became automatic. What a bossy cow Helen had been, she thought. No wonder she was such a favourite of Eleanor’s.

At the gate she stopped. The game had lost its magic and she wondered at her madness at getting up so early and at her want of sophistication. What would the girls at school say if they could see her now? The long grass in the field would be very wet and she was ready for breakfast. But as she looked into the field she saw that the long grass had been trampled into a path between the gate and the pigsty. Someone had been there recently. Awkwardly she climbed the gate and walked along the new path towards the wood and the corrugated iron hut in the corner of the field. The grass on each side of her was nearly waist high. Still without any fear for her own safety, an innocent Goldilocks alone in the woods, she lifted the latch of the door and went inside.

‘Did you guess that Eleanor was running the falconry agency?’ George asked. He was standing by the bedroom window. The room was at the front of the house and had no view of the kitchen garden or the rhododendron thicket.