The Ellie Hardwick Mysteries (12 page)

He wasn't listening. ‘Tell me what this stuff is,' he said, shining the torch onto the carpet. ‘These bits of loose vegetable matter.'

‘Um. Oh, that'll be dried hops.'

‘Hops? What are you on about?'

‘This was once the house of a Suffolk brewing family. I found bits of equipment about the place, even traces of hops they used as ingredients in the beer making stashed away in the rafters. Alicia thought it was very romantic. She had some fresh hop garlands sent from Hereford and draped them all over the beams in there. She thought it made the place smell herby. She was right, actually. But I see what you're getting at,' I said, lowering my voice. ‘Someone's been in here. Let's go away.'

But he had already thrown the door open. I peered over his outstretched arm as he stood, shocked and silent, taking in the scene. ‘Oh my God!' he breathed. ‘Oh, how could we have
got
it so wrong?'

* * *

I wriggled under his arm and stood, wide-eyed and staring.

As I had feared, the room was occupied.

A figure, apparently asleep, was draped elegantly over the day-bed. Alicia was unnaturally still. Her silk dress flowed along, outlining her slender limbs; one high-heeled diamanté sandal hung negligently from her toe, the other lay discarded by the bed. Her black hair snaked across the pillow outlining her pallid features. Around her neck was knotted with crazy insouciance a man's black bow tie. On a small table at her elbow were two glasses of pink champagne still fizzing energetically with life, an obscene note in what I was quite certain was a place of death.

Jennings sprang into action, pushing me into a corner and performing the automatic gestures to check for signs of life. He shook his head. ‘She's dead,' he said. ‘And only minutes ago, I'd say.' He took his cell phone from his pocket and made two crisp calls, unintelligible to me.

‘But why is she dead?' I squeaked. ‘What happened? Heart attack? There's no blood.'

Jennings delicately eased the bow tie away from the throat with his fingers. ‘Mustn't ruin the scene for SOCO,' he commented.
‘Shouldn't
be doing this but I have to know . . . Ah, now there's a touch Dior never thought of. She's been throttled with this and then some joker re-tied it in the approved manner. Some cool nerve! Takes me forever to knot my own and here's someone meticulously tying it around the neck of a woman he's just squeezed the life out of. The killer leaving his calling card?'

I began to shake with horror as the enormity of the scene hit me. ‘That's mad! It's sick! It's . . . it's . . . so calculated . . . passionless! Who would . . .?'

‘Ally! Alicia! You up here? The Tennisons are just leaving and would like to say goodbye. I say—Ally!'

Heavy feet thumped along the corridor and doors banged open and shut. Jennings stepped into the corridor. ‘In here Redmayne!' he said.

* * *

In the end, I had to admit Ron had behaved rather well. Demands for instant police assistance had been cut short by the quick flash of a warrant card, a short explanation, one or two more phone calls. Jennings was in charge and wheels unnoticed by anyone were in motion. With a second shock that evening, I realised that my invitation had been attractive to the inspector not so much for the pleasure of my company as for the innocent entrée it
had
provided for the county's top brass into a scene the police wished to observe more closely.

Ron was pointing to the tie at his wife's neck. ‘Well there you are, Mr. Plod,' he said to Jennings. ‘Even I could solve this one. Line the male guests up against the stable wall, target the one without a necktie and shoot 'im. Easy peasy. And anyway,' he said with the trace of a smug leer, ‘I recognise this one. Huh! Silk with silver stripes! It's a bit fancy and wouldn't it be! I can lead you straight to its fancy owner. The Cambridge Casanova!' He stared for a moment at the pair of champagne glasses. ‘Cheating cow!' was his epitaph on his dead wife.

The uniformed support was already in place below and again I wondered at the speed of deployment. Female guests were being ushered into the drawing room of the house but I managed to stay close to Jennings, pretending to assist. The men were herded into the marquee. One or two were being sent back, grumbling, from the car park.

It could have been laughable. I had to swallow back giggles of hysteria as I surveyed the line up of fifty puzzled and outraged guests. Forty-nine were still more or less correctly attired. Only one sported a shirt open at the neck. Tall and good-looking with a boyish shock of yellow hair and merry blue eyes, he was familiar to me. ‘Marcus de
Staines,'
I whispered to Jennings. ‘The chinless and now apparently tie-less wonder. Heartthrob of day-time tv. Medieval historian of repute.'

‘Well, let's see what this will do for his reputation,' said Jennings. With a cold gesture he attempted to calm Ron who was twitching with vindictive glee and pointing the righteous finger of an outraged husband at the young man.

‘That's him! That's the bastard who's murdered Alicia!' Ron broke out. ‘No tie! Look—no tie! That's the . . .' he dredged his vocabulary for a suitably medieval epithet, ‘. . . cuckolding killer! He should be stocked, pilloried, hung, drawn and quartered!'

Jennings set about rescuing the astonished and red-faced don from the hideous scene which seemed about to break out. With the relief of men who suddenly find the cloud of suspicion has lifted from them, they were responding in varying degrees of outrage, turning, predictably, on the guilty party. ‘I say! Good Lord! What an arsehole! Can't believe it!' Fists were clenched. The Lord High Sheriff of Essex called for order. A retired Lieutenant-Colonel reached for a phantom sabre at his side. Warrant card flashing, Jennings moved through them, confident and calming.

‘Just step this way with me, sir,' he said mildly, cutting de Staines out of the crowd. ‘A
few
things to clear up if you wouldn't mind.'

I found I'd been left behind with Ron. A minute later we'd retreated to the kitchen and I was going through the familiar ritual of making him a cup of tea. Earl Grey, two lumps. To my alarm, as the shock and tension cleared he grabbed me and sobbed noisily into my shoulder. ‘I'm such a fool, Ellie! How can I not have seen what was going on? Had you any idea?' He looked up at me with a sudden shaft of suspicion. ‘The pair of you were pretty thick, I always thought . . . Did she never . . .? No?' He sniffed and gulped and I offered him a sheet of kitchen paper. ‘All those working historical weekends away! And they were at it under my roof! In my own Priest's Hole!'

He recovered sufficiently to take a comforting sip of tea. ‘Tell your boyfriend thank you from me, will you Ellie? For being here. Taking control. Piece of luck a policeman being right there on the spot! And a smart one at that. I mean—what are the chances of a Cambridge criminologist tripping over the body? That would really have appealed to Alicia.' He sighed with respect for the artistic sensitivity of his dead wife then, quickly changing emotional gear, his eyes narrowed in sudden thought and he confided: ‘Sorry to say such a thing at such a time . . . probably very inappropriate but . . . this could do his career no harm, you know. Your young man, I mean. Had you thought of that?'

‘No,
Ron,' I said through gritted teeth. ‘But I'm sure
he
has.'

* * *

I finally caught up with my escort in the car park. It had been transformed into a crime scene. Blue and white plastic ribbons fluttered, outlining the field, arc lamps illuminated with a ghastly glow the guests, silent now and shell-shocked, who were being ushered back into the real world by the two valets, now openly wearing their police id's.

A police car eased up and I watched as Marcus de Staines was handed into the back seat and driven off. A second car drove over to Jennings and he opened the rear door. He gestured to a group of officers and they came forward leading a figure I recognised from the party. Now in plastic handcuffs and—oddly—without his shoes—he trod gingerly in his socks through the rutted stubble to the car and with a brief sneer for Jennings, slid inside.

Two minutes later the same procedure was repeated as Ron emerged from the house, being hustled along between two officers.

‘
Three
suspects, Richard? Marcus, Ron and Sun-Tan-Man? That's quite a haul for one night. Are there any more? Would you mind telling me what's going on?' I said.

‘Sorry. Not the time. Not the place,' he said. ‘But I'll tell you what is. Ten minutes from
now.
Your cottage. I can leave all this to the scene of crime officers now and my sergeant. Shall we make a run for it?'

I realised that he was on the point of exhaustion and gently prised his car keys from his hand.

* * *

‘Blue Mountain be all right?' I called from the kitchen.

‘Rather have cocoa,' came the sleepy reply.

I settled with my drink on a cushion at his feet as he slumped on her sofa. ‘Poor young man! Poor silly Marcus!' I said. ‘Why do you suppose he did it? I expect she'd refused to run away with him. Led him on and then decided at the last minute to stick with her husband.'

‘Not at all,' he said. ‘She was well up for it. They were going away together. Tickets booked for Istanbul next Tuesday.'

‘Oh, no! And Ron found out, followed them upstairs, found them in flagrante delicto and killed her?'

‘First saying: Would you mind removing your tie, old man, just the thing I need to strangle this strumpet? Come on, Ellie! I'll give you a clue—neither Marcus nor Ron went near that room before she died.'

I thought for a minute. ‘The hops? That bloke you were marching through the car park in his socks?'

‘Yes.
The leathery mystery man from Spain. I had his shoes bagged. He'd got traces of hops on the soles. He was up there all right.'

‘Wow! Was
he
Alicia's lover too?'

‘No. Her killer. A hired killer. It's what he does.'

‘But he didn't look like a . . . what would you call him? A hit man!' I protested, trying and failing to recollect his features.

‘What would you expect? A pony tail, tattoos and dirty finger-nails? Nah! They blend in. He was just a man in an evening suit like all the others. Ex-army officer gone wrong. Well-educated, man of the world. But with a taste for killing and cash. I thought I was watching him pretty closely but I must have stared a second too long into your eyes and there he was—or rather—wasn't.'

‘And I hardly need to ask whose signature was on his pay cheque?'

‘Ron's! We got it so wrong Ellie! We've been keeping an eye on Ron and his shady dealings for some time and when another of our familiar faces cut loose from his sunny retreat and embarked on a jaunt to deepest Suffolk we assumed Ron himself was the target. Plenty of people would have been grateful for that! But there I was, all prepared to defend our host against evil-doers. When I noticed Sun Tan Man had gone missing from the party I rang my lads in the car park and told them to hang on to him if he fetched up
there.
Just in case. As they were holding his keys—no problem. I dashed through the house expecting to find our host bludgeoned to death in the billiard room . . . garrotted in the garage . . . but no—it was our newly ennobled lord himself who was doing the hiring.'

‘Because Alicia had been disporting herself with a don? Hardly makes sense, Richard. I mean, I know—knew—them as a couple—he'd have smacked her across the chops and threatened to horsewhip the guy. She'd have responded by beating him to a pulp and walking out. At the very worst he'd have sold his story to a red-top news-sheet. He wouldn't even have bothered to divorce her—not with alimony being what it is these days.'

‘Exactly! You're getting there! Follow the money! He was about to lose a fortune whichever way you look at it. Her own wealth would no longer be available to him and he might well find himself caught in the steel jaws of alimony payments. And then there's the not-negligible sum she'd settled on him in insurance. They had reciprocal policies. A lot at risk, Ellie.'

‘So, enter the killer. But what was all that business with the tie, Richard?'

‘The killing was staged-managed by Ron but only to an extent, I think. He knew of his wife's assignation: the killer moved off straight after her when she went upstairs, beating her lover to it. I interviewed the luckless don
and
he told me he was buttonholed by Ron and a couple of his mates who held him in conversation. It rather put him off his stroke and he didn't dare shoot straight off upstairs. Ron knew that you can't just have the body of your wife discovered in your house without raising suspicions and bringing a nuisance of a police officer or two onto the scene. He was watching out for someone who could witness the discovery of the body. Any of the guests cornered and given the tour of the house would have filled the bill.'

‘And we, respectable souls that we are, fitted nicely.'

‘That's right. Then, distraught with grief—well as near as Ron could manage—he was able to identify the neck tie and direct attention to the poor sap he'd set up to take the blame. The tie was a nice touch. It could have been a credit card, a cell phone, a sheet of runic script, anything of de Staines's to put him at the scene. Taking revenge on the man who'd deceived him into the bargain. Neat.'

‘De Staines told me he'd taken his tie off along with his jacket in the gents to wash his face and cool off when he got back from piggling about in the roof—and freshening himself up for his tryst with Alicia no doubt. When he'd got the soap out of his eyes and looked up the tie had disappeared. Several blokes had gone into the gents at the same time and left in a bunch. He couldn't say who'd
taken
it. A silly prank, he thought or a genuine mistake. That little touch would have been the killer's own. Opportunistic. No way he could have planned it. They like to improvise at the scene—use what's to hand.'