The inquest on Karen Boland took place on Tuesday morning, a brief, formal affair, the proceedings opened and adjourned, the body released for burial. After it was over Chief Inspector Kelsey caught up with the Wilmots as they were leaving the courthouse. He had looked in at Jubilee Cottage on Sunday morning to pass on the results of the postmortem. He had found Ian working strenuously outdoors. Christine was upstairs in bed on doctor’s orders, in a heavily sedated sleep.
Today Ian still looked shaken and shocked but Christine appeared reasonably calm and controlled–probably, the Chief guessed, still under the influence of tranquillizers.
He apologized for troubling them again but he must ask if they could tell him anything of a relationship between Karen and a mature student at the college, an Overmead resident named Desmond Hallam. He added that his inquiries at the college had indicated a slight, casual acquaintance between the two, scarcely warranting the term friendship. Did the Wilmots know of anything more?
No, they didn’t. Karen had never so much as mentioned Hallam’s name, they had no idea that he had sometimes given her a lift home. They did know who he was, and where he lived. They occasionally saw him or his aunt about the village; they had never exchanged more than a passing greeting with either of them. They had no idea where the aunt might have been living before she came to Hawthorn Lodge.
Kelsey continued on his way to the car park where Sergeant Lambert waited by the car. They set off at once for Okeshot where the Chief had arranged an appointment with Spedding, James Boland’s solicitor.
Spedding’s offices were housed in Victorian premises in a tree-lined avenue a short distance from the centre of Okeshot. As the two policemen walked into the spacious reception hall the girl at the desk was talking to a man–clearly a member of staff–who stood holding a bundle of papers. He turned his head at their entrance and gave them a swift, raking glance from bright, restless eyes. A skinny, sharp-faced, youngish man, late thirties, perhaps. He stepped back a couple of paces as the Chief approached the desk. Kelsey told the girl that he had an appointment with Mr Spedding.
‘Oh yes, Chief Inspector,’ she said. ‘Mr Spedding’s expecting you. I’m sure Mr Trewin here will take you along to his office.’
Trewin sprang forward. ‘Certainly. If you’d like to follow me.’ He led them briskly along carpeted corridors, showed them into Spedding’s office and took himself off.
Spedding stood up to greet them. An affable, urbane man in his sixties. Forty years of professional life had armoured him against shock and surprise, anything the vagaries of human nature might spring on him.
‘This is a dreadful business,’ he said as they all seated themselves. ‘If there’s anything at all I can do to help . . .’ The Chief asked what he could tell him about Karen’s background and history. In particular he would like details of the trust fund set up for her by her father.
‘I knew James Boland for many years,’ Spedding told him. ‘Since we were both young men.’ He had been not only his solicitor but also his friend.
James Boland was born and bred in Okeshot, in a very run-down quarter of the town. It was a poverty-stricken, deprived background, his father a building labourer, a morose, hard-drinking man, his mother meek and downtrodden, taking refuge in piety, in hopes of a less miserable life to come.
There were two children of the marriage: James, and his brother Maurice, several years older. Maurice was very much his father’s son, drifting into the same way of life, marrying a young woman as shiftless as himself, with a similar taste for public houses and betting shops.
James Boland, by sharp contrast, grew up ambitious, hardworking and thrifty, fanatically teetotal, strictly religious. He served his apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker, saved every penny he could lay his hands on, setting up in business on his own, in a very modest way, when he was in his thirties. He married a girl from the local church, quiet and industrious, unassuming and undemanding, in every way supportive of her husband. She helped in the office side of the business, a small furniture manufactory. Nothing fancy or overpriced; sound, honest, everyday furniture, well designed, well made, long-lasting.
Boland bought a little house in Okeshot, never wanted to move to anything grander when the business prospered, never went in for formal entertaining, never developed extravagant tastes, a liking for ostentation. All the profits were ploughed back into the business.
James had one child, Karen, born after a long period of childlessness, much wanted and loved. At the time of the birth Mrs Boland was already forty, Boland forty-four.
When Karen was five Boland took his little family away for one of their rare seaside holidays. On the first day of the holiday Mrs Boland bought herself a straw beach hat. As they were going back into the seafront boarding-house at lunchtime, Mrs Boland following her husband who was holding Karen’s hand, a sudden gust of breeze whisked off Mrs Boland’s hat. She turned and plunged after it, into the path of a car. Karen and Boland, half way up the flight of steps, heard the squeal of brakes, the shouts and screams, looked back and saw her lying in the road. She died two days later in the local hospital.
‘It was a tremendous shock for both of them,’ Spedding told the Chief. ‘It threw the pair of them very close together.’ Boland sank himself into his business, working harder than ever. He engaged a middle-aged woman, a respectable local widow who had brought up children of her own, a member of his own church congregation, to come in as a daily housekeeper. He never contemplated marrying again; he lived for Karen and the business.
A few years later he suffered a heart attack. He insisted on being given the truth and was told there was a good deal more wrong with his health than the state of his heart, there was no question of any useful surgery. He had a few months to live, a year at most.
He took the news without fuss or self-pity, his one thought was for Karen. He thought things over thoroughly, then he sent for Spedding.
‘He told me he thought of marrying his secretary,’ Spedding said. ‘He asked what I thought of the plan.’ The secretary–now Mrs Enid Lorimer–was a spinster fifteen years Boland’s junior; she had worked for him since leaving school. A quiet, efficient woman, loyal and conscientious, attending the same church. She had lived with her parents in a council house, had looked after them until their deaths, was now on her own in a little rented flat. Never a pretty woman–but Boland wasn’t considering her for her looks–though always well groomed, always neat and presentable. She had never had any romantic attachment. Boland felt he could trust her absolutely, he would be leaving Karen in safe hands.
‘We discussed the matter from every conceivable angle,’ Spedding continued. ‘I could see no objection and many advantages. So Boland went ahead and set the unadorned facts before his secretary. She took very little time to think it over, she was happy to agree. She sat in on the discussions about the setting up of a trust fund, the making of a new will. Her opinions were taken fully into account.’ The trustees of the fund were to be Spedding, and Boland’s bank.
In the short time left to him Boland did his best to prepare Karen for the approaching marriage. Enid visited the house frequently, tried to gain the child’s confidence. The ceremony was a very quiet one, in the local church; Spedding acted as best man. Boland died six months later.
‘He never made a vast fortune in his business,’ Spedding explained. ‘It was always on a relatively modest scale.’ But Boland had always managed his finances well and in the last few years, when he had applied himself rigorously to work after the loss of his wife, he had begun to make real money. He had been approached more than once by larger concerns interested in a takeover, and there was no difficulty after his death in finding a buyer for the business at a very satisfactory price. The money released by the sale provided the basis of the trust.
Spedding summarized for the Chief the main conditions of the trust. Enid had the right to remain in the house as long as she lived. She was assured of an income for the rest of her life, sufficient to allow her the same standard of living as she had enjoyed during the time she was married to Boland.
Karen’s general expenses, maintenance, education and so forth, were to be paid for from income generated by the fund. The greater part of the trust capital was to be divided into four unequal portions, the smallest to be released unconditionally to Karen at the age of eighteen, and the other three successively at twenty-one, twenty-five, and thirty.
‘What happens now to the trust fund? And to the house?’ Kelsey asked.
‘The house passes to Enid. The trust is wound up and the capital split down the middle. One half goes to Enid, the other half to Boland’s niece, Christine Wilmot.’