The Measby Murder Enquiry (22 page)

 

DEIRDRE WAS ON her way back from Measby. It was lunchtime, but she was not hungry, and headed for Springfields, where she could get handover details of the blackmailer from Alwen Jones. The silly woman had been cagey about this, reluctant even, but Deirdre was certain she had details, and probably knew more than she had told the others. For a start, why hadn’t
she
gone to the police?

But Deirdre was not concerned with that now. She had already arranged for the ransom money to be available, and, if all else failed, had decided without a qualm to pay for the release of Augustus Halfhide.

A tiny rabbit ran in front of her car, and she braked hard, coming to a standstill while it leapt into the verge. At that moment, her mobile chimed. Her heart raced as she put it to her ear.

“Deirdre? Gus here. Don’t say anything. Just listen. Do not pay the ransom, not on any account. And for God’s sake don’t go to the police. It won’t help, and could mean danger for us all. I shall be—” The phone was disconnected, but not until Deidre heard raised voices and the sound of distant traffic.

She was shaking violently but immediately dialled for the number of the latest incoming call. An infuriating woman’s voice said, “The caller withheld their number,” and Deirdre slammed her mobile down on the seat beside her, and drove slowly forward. Gus must have had a few minutes’ freedom and found a telephone. That wretched automatic message was just bad luck.

So she must not hand over money. It wouldn’t help, he had said. What else was he going to say, before his kidnappers had caught up with him? And what would they have done to him now as a result?

So, first to Springfields, and then back home to think.

 

 

“WHAT THE BLOODY hell did you think you were doing?” Max said to Margaret as they sat in a waiting room at Liverpool Street station. They had no wish to be recognised, and it was an often-proved strategy with them that there was nowhere safer to hide than amongst an ever-moving crowd.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else I can say. I felt sorry for him—I know, I know!—and I must have forgotten to do all the locks while I went to get him something to eat. Only bread and water, Max, only bread and water.”

“I suppose you realise we’d have been in deep ordure with the boss if our friendly hotel receptionist had not tipped us the wink?”

“Gus had hardly finished dialling,” she lied. “In any case, the hotel had one of those ‘number withheld’ messages, so Bernie said. I snatched the phone from Gus, and we grabbed him. No problem about holding on to him. Bernie’s not lost his bouncer’s skill. So Gus is safely back in his own little room again.”

“I’ll strangle him with my bare hands if he doesn’t talk soon,” Max said angrily. He looked at his watch. “Time for a last call to the old folks’ home. So let’s hope we’re about to find out what needle-sharp Enquire Within are up to, and make a bob or two in the process. But for God’s sake, don’t feel sorry for him again, else you’ll foul up everything, and then I can’t answer for the consequences.”

He took up his mobile and dialled a now familiar number.

“SIT DOWN, DEIRDRE, do! You’re all of a do-dah,” Ivy said firmly. “I’ll get some coffee sent up.”

“Not just for a minute, thanks, Ivy,” Deirdre said, slumping down heavily. After several false starts, she gave as cool an account as she could manage of Gus’s call.

“He’s alive, then,” said Ivy matter-of-factly. “And we’re not to pay the ransom money. Mind you, Deirdre, I had no idea that you were even thinking of doing that. Was it wise?”

“Yes, Ivy, it was. Because we can’t get the police onto it or else Gus’s life, and maybe one of ours, will be in danger. So how could I ever forgive myself, knowing that I had money in the bank, and if we never saw Gus again, and . . . and . . .”

“. . . and he was murdered?”

Deirdre nodded miserably. “Oh, Ivy, what are we going to do?”

“First of all, we find Roy and Alwen . . . well, maybe not Alwen . . . and you can tell us exactly what you found out at Measby. That was where you went, wasn’t it?”

When Roy was sitting comfortably in his chair, and Deirdre had perched on the edge of Ivy’s bed, the Measby story was told in a much more leisurely fashion, and at the end of her report, Deirdre took out the gambling book and put it on Ivy’s bedside table.

“There we are,” she said. “Bedtime reading for you, Ivy.”

“Where on earth did you get that? And what is it, anyway?” Ivy said.

Roy picked it up. “Gambling Handbook,” he read, and began to leaf through it. “Great Scott! This is hot stuff, Ivy. Better not read this, girls, else I shall have no chance at the pontoon table!”

“I have no intention of reading it,” Ivy said, handing it back to Deirdre. “But it might be important. Well done, Deirdre. It might help us to make sense of some odd things we already know. An old man died in that cottage, possibly with blackmail involved. Full stop. Then there’s Alwen. I don’t believe she got that twenty thousand back, and nor do you, Roy.”

“If she ever lost it,” said Roy quietly.

At that moment, there was a tap at the door and Alwen Jones poked her head round, asking in a trembling voice if she could come in.

Ivy sighed. “This is one of them days,” she said wearily. “Come in and tell us what you want. There’s nowhere to sit, but you can perch next to Deirdre if you like. It’s only my bed, and fortunately I sleep the sleep of the just, rumpled or not.”

Alwen perched. Then, as the others were all waiting expectantly, she said that she had had another anonymous call. Same man, same hoarse voice. He warned that the deadline was very soon, and then gave her an address where he said she must take the money. If not, he had said, Gus Halfhide would be extinguished. Never heard of again, he said. And no good telling the police, he repeated several times. He would know, and nobody would be at the address. But Gus would be no more.”

She looked anxiously at the others, and Deirdre put her arm around Alwen’s shoulders, comforting her with an edited version of her conversation with Gus.

“Pull yourself together, Alwen,” Ivy said, quite kindly. “We have to come to a decision now. Does one of us go to the collection address, or do we call the police right away?”

“Not the police, Ivy! No, I think we do as Gus said,” Deirdre said slowly. “That is, do nothing, and wait to see what happens?”

The silence seemed to go on for hours. Then Alwen rose to her feet and seemed quite agile now. She took a deep breath. “I suggest we do nothing,” she said. “That is,
you
do nothing, and I go to get some advice from my daughter, right now. I can order a taxi.”

“How will that help?” said Deirdre, still undecided whether to do nothing or pay up, whatever the others said. She had noticed Alwen Jones’s quick recovery from collapse, and began to wonder if she was maybe a really good actress?

“I can’t tell you that,” answered Alwen. “I can only ask you to trust that what I am going to do will be for the best.”

“The best for who?” said Ivy suspiciously.

“All of us,” Alwen said. “But chiefly for Gus. It is his best chance.”

“Go on then,” Ivy said. “But come straight back and tell us what’s happening. And don’t look like that, Deirdre,” she added. “There’ll still be plenty of time to meet the deadline, if necessary.”

THE TAXI ARRIVED half an hour later, and Alwen Jones left word with Miss Pinkney that she would be out for an hour or two but would get back in time for supper. She had decided not to warn Bronwen that she would be arriving to see her, as almost certainly her daughter would invent a reason why she would unfortunately not be at home.

As the taxi drew up outside their house, Alwen could see two cars in the drive and knew that both Bronwen and Trevor were at home. Good, she thought, and hoped it was a good omen for the rest of her mission.

The front door opened, and Bronwen stood there, looking alarmed.

“Mother! How lovely to see you! But is everything all right?”

“Ye Gods,” muttered Trevor behind her. “Don’t say she’s coming to live with us! Has she got any luggage? Why did I come home for those papers?”

Alwen limped up to the door and said briskly that she had come to see them about an important matter, and could she please come in. And she could do with a cup of tea, she added.

“Now then,” she began, tea on a side table and Bronwen and Trevor facing her. “This is an urgent request, and if you can help me, as I know you can, I shall show my gratitude in due course by giving you—Bronwen, that is—the financial support I know you need until things look up for you both.” She looked Trevor in the eye, and said, “I’m no fool, Trevor Evans, and it will be in your interests to make sure your marriage survives.”

Bronwen and Trevor glanced quickly at each other, and then Bronwen said that if she could help her mother in any way, of course she would be delighted to do so.

“I thought you might,” said Alwen drily. “Right. Trevor, you can go now, out of earshot, please. And Bronwen, listen closely to what I have to say, and don’t interrupt. This is an important matter for us and for several other people I care about.”

 

 

DEIRDRE HAD REMAINED in an uncertain frame of mind. Now it seemed they were all trusting Alwen Jones to work a miracle. This was nonsense, of course. That cagey old woman would do exactly what suited her, and Deirdre had no faith in her ability to save Gus, nor did she think Alwen cared a fig what happened to him.

She had noticed that if neither Roy nor Ivy were in the lounge, Alwen always sat alone, not talking to any of the other residents. Too superior by half! Then why had she come to Springfields in the first place? Of course, it didn’t take much to see that neither of her daughters visited more than duty required. And Enquire Within should not forget that the mysterious brewer William had left her to bring up their two children, never to return. Alwen had been a schoolteacher, Deirdre recalled, and they were renowned for treating their own families like wayward children. A difficult woman to live with, then? And possibly rather a chilly mother, coping on her own.

And what was the miracle that a mere conversation with daughter Bronwen—she presumed it was Bronwen—could work?

THE HOURS DRAGGED by, and Deirdre had not been able to settle to anything. In the end, she decided to return to Springfields and wait out the time with Ivy and Roy. For once, she didn’t care whether her jacket matched her skirt, and she grabbed the nearest on her way to the front door.

She found Roy and Ivy watching television in Ivy’s room, and they turned in surprise as she came in. Ivy took one look at her face and said kindly, “Sit down, Deirdre.” They watched the end of the programme and then switched off. Before they needed to find some topic of conversation that wasn’t the incarcerated Gus, there was a feeble knock at the door and in came Alwen Jones, stern-faced and with such a weary limp that Roy struggled to his feet to help her, forgetting that he needed a helping hand himself. In the end, it was Ivy who found the strength to take Alwen’s arm and settle her next to Deirdre, who was looking anxiously at her watch.