Chapter 15

Strathe House was tucked into the hillside above the river. Built originally in the 1920s as a small but exclusive hotel, it had fallen on hard times during the ‘thirties, and had somehow missed the recovery enjoyed by others after the war. Now, its clientele consisted mainly of commercial and other itinerant travellers seeking relatively cheap lodgings for a night or two. Occasionally, an overseas visitor would turn up, lured by carefully worded advertisements, but they seldom stayed there long.

Viewed from the outside, the building still retained some of its old-world charm, but inside was another story. The carpets were frayed and threadbare; the floors squeaked abominably; the paintwork was cracked and chipped; the lighting was poor; and the plumbing was, to say the least, unreliable. But there was no money to put it right, nor was there likely to be in the foreseeable future.

As Jack Rudge saw it, it was a classic case of Catch 22. To make the place over in order to attract more people, he needed money, but in order to get the money, he needed more people. He’d cut costs to the bone as it was, using part-time workers and youngsters such as Amy, and doing as much as possible himself. There was Tony, of course, but he was next to useless. Always skiving off if he got half the chance. And Rudge was almost certain that it was Tony who was pinching cigarettes.

Jack Rudge was in this gloomy frame of mind when a car pulled up outside and a man got out. Two-piece suit; good quality; air of authority; no luggage. He groaned. Not another bloody inspector! He hadn’t seen this one before, but he was quite certain that the man would not be asking for a room.

He put on a smile as the man entered and came to the reception desk. ‘Good afternoon, sir. Lovely day after that bit of rain. What can we do for you?’

The man acknowledged the greeting with a nod and produced a card. ‘Chief Inspector Paget, Westvale Police,’ he said. ‘Are you Mr Rudge?’

The smile faded. ‘That’s right,’ he said cautiously.

‘I’d like a word with your son, Tony, if he’s about,’ said Paget.

Rudge’s expression became grim. ‘What’s he done now?’ he demanded. ‘Whatever it is, I didn’t know about it. I’ve tried my best with that lad, but I haven’t got eyes in the back of my head.’

‘I’d just like to talk to him,’ said Paget.

‘What about?’

Paget remained silent.

Rudge sighed heavily. ‘All right, don’t tell me, then,’ he said sullenly. ‘I’m only his father!’ He jerked his thumb in the direction of a narrow opening. ‘He’s out the back doing the flower beds – that is if he hasn’t skived off by now.’

‘Thanks,’ said Paget as he moved toward the passageway.

Tony Rudge scrambled to his feet as he heard the sound of the back door opening. He dropped his cigarette and ground it beneath his heel, snatched up a spade and thrust it into the ground.

‘Tony Rudge?’

Tony turned as if surprised. He didn’t know the man coming toward him, but he suddenly felt uneasy. ‘Who wants to know?’ he asked.

The man approached and held out a card. ‘I do,’ he said quietly. Tony peered closely at the card, but he didn’t need to read it to know that this man was a policeman.

He felt the prickle of sweat beneath his collar. He wanted to run. What had gone wrong? How could anybody know? Unless …

Unless they’d caught the killer. He shivered but covered the movement by picking up his jacket and slipping it on.

‘Cool when you stop digging,’ he remarked in what he hoped was a steady voice. He lit a cigarette.

Paget eyed him thoughtfully. ‘We found a set of your fingerprints in a most unusual place,’ he told the boy, ‘so I thought I’d come round to see if you could offer an explanation.’

They couldn’t have! He’d been careful. He’d used gloves; there wasn’t any way he could have left prints on the paper or the envelope. He’d even used gloves when he’d shoved it through the letter-box.

‘Don’t know what you mean,’ he said, frowning.

‘I think you do. Where were you Monday night?’

‘Monday?’ Tony almost fainted with relief. He scratched his head. ‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Think harder,’ Paget told him. ‘And think about who was with you.’

Oh, shit! Amy. She’d told someone. But she couldn’t prove it. He’d say she was lying. He’d say she had a crush on him and he’d told her to get lost, and this was her way of getting back at him.

Tony pretended to think. ‘I was around here as far as I can remember,’ he insisted. ‘Why? What’s all this about fingerprints? I haven’t done anything.’

Paget sighed. ‘You left your prints all over the belfry and the doors in St Justin’s church the other night,’ he said. ‘Now don’t mess me about, Tony. I want to know who you were with and what you were doing there.’

*   *   *

Frances Duncan was the owner of Creations, a small but exclusive art gallery in Bridge Street. She had a mannish, skeletal face whose outlines were made even sharper by the way her hair was pulled back and tied behind her head. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, and her neck seemed to be extraordinarily long. She wore a simple black dress with three-quarter length sleeves, and both wrists were adorned with several heavy bracelets. She would be about fifty, Tregalles judged.

They sat close together, knees almost touching in a tiny office at the back of the gallery. Ms Duncan, as she preferred to be called, sat sideways behind her desk in her tilted swivel chair, while Tregalles perched on a folding metal chair facing her.

Ms Duncan lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply and blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. ‘Harry Beecham,’ she said ruminatively. ‘I haven’t seen him for ages. Not that I ever knew him well. I knew Helen, of course. Helen Best, she was when I first met her. Such a pity. So much talent. What’s this all about, Sergeant? Is Harry in some sort of trouble?’

Tregalles dismissed the suggestion with a wave of his hand. ‘It’s more of a background check, really. A woman who works at the same bank was killed the other night, and we have to do a routine check on everyone who knew her.’ He went on quickly before Ms Duncan had a chance to speak. ‘But you say you know Helen Beecham better than Harry?’

‘Knew, Sergeant. Knew. I haven’t seen her in years. But what prompted you to come to me for information?’

‘I couldn’t find anyone who knows much about the Beechams,’ he told her. ‘They don’t seem to have any friends or relatives, and as far as I can tell, they have absolutely no social life at all. In fact, I can’t find anyone who has seen more than a glimpse of Mrs Beecham in years. But someone did say they remembered that she used to exhibit paintings here.’

Frances Duncan nodded slowly. ‘Yes, she did, and I wish I had some of her stuff now. She was just beginning to become known. She had a marvellous talent; fresh and clean and exciting. She was self-taught, you know. Never had the money to go to art school. Orphaned when she was just a child – two or three, I believe – and brought up by an aunt. Then the aunt died when Helen was still quite young. Left her nothing to speak of. Helen was working in a draper’s shop at the time; pitiful wages, so she didn’t have any money of her own.’

Ms Duncan fell silent. The cigarette smouldered between her fingers, and Tregalles’s eyes began to water.

‘I didn’t know her then, of course,’ the woman continued. ‘I found out most of it later when she began bringing some of her sketches to me. Funny little thing. Timid, almost apologetic for troubling me. Quite frankly, I didn’t believe the work she brought in could be hers, but it was. She had a marvellous eye for line.’ Ms Duncan grimaced wryly. ‘We could have made a lot of money between us if she’d carried on.’

‘What happened?’

Frances Duncan shrugged. ‘She just stopped coming in. To be honest, I thought she had decided to take her business elsewhere after that write-up in Arts World, and I was furious. But then I heard that she was ill, and I thought that once she was better she would come back again.

‘But she didn’t. The illness dragged on, and she began having these fits of depression, and as far as I know she’s never touched a pen or brush since.’

Tregalles frowned. ‘You say she was ill,’ he said. ‘Ill in what way? I mean did she go to hospital or what? Did you see her? Talk to her at that time?’

‘I really don’t know how it started. I spoke to her on the telephone several times. I had people asking for her work, but she seemed quite distant, indifferent. She sounded listless; as if even talking was too much trouble. So different from the way she was at the wedding. I felt sorry for Harry. Such a nice man. He was devastated. And so soon after they were married. He used to pop in from time to time to let me know how things were, but he stopped coming after a while.’

‘When exactly did this happen?’

‘Five years ago. I remember the wedding was in March. The fifteenth, as a matter of fact. I remember because we made a bit of a joke about it being unlucky. You know, the “Ides of March” and all that. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a very bad joke.’

‘Five years ago,’ Tregalles mused. ‘How old is Helen Beecham?’

‘She must be about thirty-six or seven by now. I know she was over thirty when she married Harry.’

‘They married late.’

Ms Duncan nodded. ‘This was Harry’s second marriage. His first wife died a couple of years before he met Helen. It was her first, of course, and I was so happy for her. She was such a mouse before, but she seemed to blossom when she met Harry. And her work improved. It had been good before, but she seemed to catch fire then, and there was no stopping her.’

Frances Duncan lit another cigarette. Smoke trickled from her nostrils. ‘It’s a damned shame,’ she said fiercely. ‘She could have gone straight to the top.’

*   *   *

‘I can’t find anyone who has a bad word for Harry Beecham,’ Tregalles said. ‘The neighbours say you can set your watch by him each morning as he leaves for work – at least you could before Tuesday, but one woman did say she’d noticed that he’d been coming home later in the evening these past few months. He appears to be devoted to his wife; even does the shopping because she has this thing about not wanting to leave the house.’

‘Doesn’t Mrs Beecham ever go out?’ Len Ormside asked. He, Tregalles, and Paget were seated around his desk in the incident room.

‘The neighbours say she will only talk through the letter-box if anyone comes to the door, and she never asks anyone in. One or two say they have seen her in the garden in the summer, but they say she disappears if anyone speaks to her across the fence. It’s almost as if she panics and runs for cover as soon as anyone comes near.’

‘That certainly fits with what Beecham told me the other day,’ said Paget, ‘and I must say the man seems harmless enough. It’s just that I have trouble believing that he would go right past the church without going in, especially when Mrs Turvey said he seemed so hell-bent on talking to Beth Smallwood. He said he didn’t go because he thought there would be others at the church as well, but I have trouble with that.’

He turned to Ormside. ‘Have someone make the rounds to see if we can find out where Beecham went after he left the bank that day,’ he said. ‘I suspect he spent a good part of the day drinking, so try the pubs. Someone should remember him. Find out if he talked to anyone, and what his mood was like.’

Ormside made a note.

‘Right. Well now, Tony Rudge.’ Paget hesitated. ‘The boy admitted to having been in the belfry – not that he had much choice with his prints all over the place – but claimed they were there from the time when he and Lenny Smallwood used the place to store stolen goods. When I mentioned the condoms, he suddenly “remembered” that he’d taken a girl up there some weeks ago, but he claimed he met her in a pub and didn’t know anything about her except she called herself Pat. He said that any other prints we’d found up there must be hers.

‘He’s lying, of course. Forensic says that at least two of the condoms were used as recently as Monday evening, which puts Rudge and his girlfriend in the belfry at or close to the time when Beth Smallwood was murdered.’

‘And we know he had good reason to hate Beth Smallwood,’ said Tregalles. ‘What did he have to say about that?’

Paget shrugged. ‘What could he say? He denied it; said that was all in the past, and continued to swear that he hadn’t been near the church for weeks.’

‘So what happens now?’ asked Ormside.

‘We find out who Rudge’s girlfriend is, then bring them both in for questioning.’ Paget glanced at the time and rose to his feet. He still had a report to prepare for Alcott before he went home.

Ormside and Tregalles exchanged glances. ‘This girl called Pat,’ Tregalles ventured. ‘Did Rudge give you the name of the pub where he is supposed to have met her?’

‘He claimed he couldn’t remember. But don’t waste your time on that. I’m quite sure Rudge made that up.’

‘Then, who are we looking for, exactly?’

‘His real girlfriend, of course,’ said Paget as he made his way to the door. ‘The one he was with on Monday night.’