Chapter Four
FOUR
“I can’t get the hang of this chap at all,” said Tom.
“A slippery character,” suggested Ledbetter, behind the wheel again after his chauffeured jaunt to the mortuary. Having dropped PC Pickett off in Ayot Lawrence, they were on the road to London.
“Not that, exactly. At least, I don’t think so, do you, Chief?”
“Not if you take that to mean someone adept at slipping through our fingers. I have no sense of his being involved in anything shady. Rather the reverse.”
“Excessively law-abiding?” queried Tom dryly.
Alec laughed. “Hardly. Not from our point of view, anyway. But there’s something excessive about that family. A sort of almost obsessive reticence, a reluctance to do anything whatsoever that could conceivably lead to people talking about them.”
“I know what you mean, Chief. Conformity.” Tom’s vocabulary was occasionally surprising.
He worked at it. “Not standing out in any way from what they consider the norm for people of their sort. They’ll even do things that go against the grain because it’s what they feel is expected of them.
That came over very strongly from the people I talked to at the pub. ”
“Oh yes?”
“Vincent Halliday didn’t drop in of a Friday for a nice relaxing pint.
He went because he thought he ought. Never on a Saturday, when they have a piano and a sing, nor any other day of the week, come to that.
Arrived at six and left at quarter to seven on the dot, to walk home to change for dinner. Broad daylight.”
“Yes. He couldn’t have been shot right away, but Sir Bernard said there’s a big bruise on his head, easily enough to have knocked him out.
Marks on ankles and wrists suggest he was tied hand and foot, with other, lesser, and so far inexplicable bruising all over the body.
Impossible to tell with the earlier victims.”
“The footpath’s pretty isolated and goes through a wood. Wouldn’t be difficult to lie in wait, seeing how regular he was in his habits.”
“No. How did he get on with the locals at the pub?”
“Had an affable word for everyone, but he never relaxed, just didn’t seem to be enjoying himself.”
“No-bless obleedge,” said Ledbetter unexpectedly.
“Did people resent being condescended to?” Alec asked.
“Not by what I was told. There weren’t many there, mind, lunchtime on a Friday, like Pickett said.
The way they talked, they appreciated him making the effort when it didn’t come natural.
Course, the estate’s a good employer, the biggest hereabouts, and they’re not going to bite the hand that feeds them.
Besides, they knew he was missing and they knew I was a copper, so they wouldn’t want to let on he was unpopular.
All the same, it wasn’t so much what they said as what came over without them putting it into words. ”
Ledbetter snorted—softly—but Alec said, “I trust your instinct, Tom. The estate’s regarded as a good employer because they treat their employees well, or only because they employ a lot of people?”
“Fair wages, fair treatment, and they look after ’em when they’re sick or old. The latter being what most of the patrons at the Goat and Compasses were.”
“But it’s noblesse oblige, as Ledbetter says, not because they really care about their welfare.”
“Common sense, too, Chief. Treat people well, they work harder and you don’t have any trouble finding and keeping workers.”
“True. Still, it doesn’t sound as if the locals have much cause for complaint, let alone murder.”
Alec himself was not much wiser from his questioning of the family.
It wasn’t that anyone seemed secretive. In accordance with Sir Daniel’s wishes, the residents of Quigden Manor had been willing to cooperate, even the old lady and the butler.
Nothing anyone said gave the slightest hint of why Vincent Halliday’s life should have ended with a bullet in his heart and a grave in Epping Forest.
There was no hint of dissension within the family, nor between family and servants.
The staff were mostly old retainers, a number of them re-employed after their war service.
A few younger maids yearned to leave service for the bright lights of London, but that was the influence of the picture papers they read, not of animosity towards their employers.
Though London was no more than thirty miles away, the Hallidays rarely went up to town and virtually never stayed overnight. They were on visiting, but not intimate, terms with the neighbouring gentry.
“What about the girl,” Tom asked. “What did she have to say? She’s got some spunk, going against the rest of the family to report her dad missing.”
“I didn’t manage to talk to her for very long.
Floods of tears, as you can imagine. She wanted to see me alone, but I couldn’t stop her mother sitting in.
Daddy was a brick. Her grandfather wanted her to have a mouldy old governess and stay at home, but Daddy talked him into letting her go away to school.
She didn’t know how she was going to survive without him to take her side.
Naturally, Mama came down pretty sharply on that and the interview was terminated pronto. Not at all the thing.”
“The Bart was right, then, in his way.”
“Yes, going away to school has reduced her willingness to conform to the family mores. Which, incidentally, her mother appears to have adopted wholesale. Perhaps she was chosen for the position because she comes from the same sort of set-up.”
“Sounds as if the old man still has a firm grip on the reins. I mean, he let the girl go to school, but if he’d put his foot down, that would have been the end of that.”
“I presume he controls the money.”
“Expect so. A pretty fair tyrant. Now, if he’d been shot, we wouldn’t have to look beyond the family for the murderer.”
Ledbetter had been silent for some time, negotiating the increasing traffic as they reached the outskirts of the city. Now he commented, “What I don’t get is, this family, they’ve got swarms of servants all over the place, what do they do all day?”
“An interesting question,” Alec agreed, “but one which at present we need to answer only with regard to the victim. He seems to have kept himself harmlessly busy enough running the estate.”
“Well, I don’t mind admitting, Chief,” said Tom, “I’m flummoxed. What would anyone want to do in a bloke like that for?”
“It beats me. We’ll just have to hope we’ll get enough information on the other two for Ernie to spot a correlation.”
When they reached New Scotland Yard, the duty sergeant told them one of the larger rooms, with several tables and telephones, had been set aside for the investigation, and a number of officers, detectives and uniformed, had been seconded to work with Mackinnon.
Alec sent Ledbetter to inform Mackinnon of their arrival.
“We’re going to be here till midnight,” he said to Tom. “I must ring home, and so must you. I don’t want Mrs. Tring blaming me for keeping you out till all hours without notice. We’ll go up to the office first.”
Daisy wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t ring her, but he always did if he was within reasonably easy reach of a telephone.
Elsie answered the phone and went to fetch Daisy.
“Darling, you’re going to be late,” she greeted him.
“How did you guess?” Alec asked ironically.
“You know my methods, Watson. Very late?”
“Probably.”
“I hope that means you’re getting somewhere, not completely stymied. I suppose you’re not going to tell me.”
“Let’s say, we’ve got enough information to keep us busy.”
“But not enough to make it likely that you’ll be able to come to Saffron Walden.”
“Not tomorrow, certainly. And we’d have to be extraordinarily lucky for me to make it on Sunday.”
Daisy sighed. “Poor Bel. Oh well, she’s been a copper’s daughter for thirteen years now.
She’s used to it. And that’s not counting your daring days as a pilot in the RFC, when I expect she saw even less of you.
All right, darling, thanks for letting me know.
I’ll give the twins a kiss from you and I’ll see you when I see you. ”
If Belinda was used to being a copper’s daughter, Alec reflected, ringing off, Daisy had adjusted admirably to being a copper’s wife.
It was one of the prospective problems that had worried him when he first realised that, come what might, he was going to ask the daughter of a viscount to marry him.
He was fortunate that she had her own profession to occupy her.
It was not really luck, though. He might never have been attracted to her in the first place, or even have met her, but for her determination to make a career for herself.
In fact, in spite of the irregularity of his hours—and her occasional solo forays into the country in pursuit of material for her articles—they probably spent more time together than many society couples, who often seemed to go their separate ways.
Few families presented as united a face to the world as the Hallidays.
United and claustrophobic. Had Vincent Halliday somehow managed to conceal a secret life elsewhere?
Suppose he had had a mistress, another man’s wife. Was it not entirely possible that this hypothetical woman had had previous lovers? And that the cuckolded husband made a habit of bumping off his rivals? A promising scenario.
At the very least, it gave them somewhere to start thinking about the triple murder.
They went downstairs to find that Ernie Piper had a probable identification for the second victim and a couple of possibles for the first.
“Good work!” said Alec, draping his jacket over the back of his chair and loosening his tie. “All right, Mackinnon, what have we got?”