It was unfair of Walter to be so furious with the detective. As the man had said, he was only doing his job.
Frost listened with grave courtesy to Sylvia’s account of their night-time arrangements. “And did you make this public at the police station?” he asked.
“No. Lucy and I discussed it with the solicitor, but we decided I’d come home and speak to you about it. Your sergeant told us you’d come up here.”
Walter was leaning against the stove, arms folded, too hot really on this warm June day, but close enough to renew Sylvia’s tea whenever she needed it. She was a bit bedraggled round the edges—it was a long drive from London. She’d come straight through without stopping, leaving at the crack of dawn after the bare minimum of sleep. She’d received his message when she came back to her friend’s house last night after the lecture. Then she’d been at the police station in Taunton.
He renewed Frost’s tea as well because it would be rude not to and that would upset Sylvia. But he made sure to put all his resentment of the man into every drop he poured into the bone-china teacup. It didn’t make him feel any better. Particularly as the man seemed to be sympathetic to the ladies’ situation.
Walter had suspected there was something there…it wasn’t all on his side, this surprising little tug of attraction. And the statement Frost had made upstairs about understanding the situation…that wasn’t something he’d have said if he hadn’t recognised Walter’s response to him. It wouldn’t have been safe. He’d taken a risk regardless—what if he’d been wrong about Walter?
Walter sighed and turned to put the kettle on again. It was all so complicated. He’d thought he was done with complications and hiding once he’d come out of the army, found himself a comfortable, safe niche with friends and an actual home. It was turning out to be more twisted up than that though, with murder and magic and…kind police detectives who appeared to be about to cover up the fact that Sylvia and Lucy shared a bed…He tuned back to the conversation abruptly.
“What?” he said. “Why would you do that?”
“Do what?” Frost said, eyeing him.
“Encourage them to lie under oath!”
Frost swallowed and Sylvia sat up straighter.
“I…” Frost said. “Er. It’s technically a lie, yes. But it achieves the same ends and it doesn’t harm anyone,” he said eventually. “If Dr Marks tells the truth then…” He paused. “Well, you know.”
Walter nodded. He knew.
“But if Dr Marks says she was insomniac after the disturbance of the evening and having a cup of tea in the early hours in the kitchen…and saw Miss Hall-Bridges come out of her room for a glass of water as she was going back to bed…then that achieves the same ends.”
Sylvia rubbed her palms over her exhausted face. “I need to sleep, gentlemen. I’m so sorry. I can’t think any more until I’ve had a few hours nap.” She looked at Frost. “Is this a trap?” she asked as she pushed herself to her feet. “I don’t mind about my own reputation. But Lucy…she agreed that we should tell you. And the solicitor thought it was the best thing to do under the circumstances. This approach means we’re lying under oath. And you are too. And the solicitor is turning a blind eye to it all. If he will. That’s a lot of people who know.”
Frost shook his head, courteously rising as she did. “I’m happy with my own conscience,” he said. “This means I can get on with trying to find the person who really killed her. Who was pretending to be Miss Hall-Bridges, or who Mrs Leamington mistook for her as she was eavesdropping?”
Walter gave a discreet snort at that. The ladies staying at Lilac Villa were nasty pieces of work from all accounts. He’d been to the pub last night to see what gossip was saying in the village. Gossip was mostly saying they were vindictive liars down from London and should go back there; and that Miss Lucy wouldn’t hurt a fly and anyone who struck her…well. No-one had actually said the poor woman deserved to end up dead in the duck pond. In the duck pond whilst still alive though…there’d been a definite unspoken undercurrent of thought wafting about that would have welcomed that.
“You’ll bring a typed statement back for me to sign later on today?” Sylvia was saying to Frost as she made her way to the door.
“Yes,” he replied. “And I’ll have her released when I get back down to the station. Her solicitor is still with her?”
“Yes. Oh, damn. I’d better ring her Mama before I collapse. Her parents were threatening to come down last night when we spoke. I only just convinced them to send the solicitor instead.” She swayed.
“Go on, then,” Walter said from his place by the stove. “Get some sleep. You’re going green.”
“I do feel a bit green,” she said, putting a hand on the doorjamb to steady herself. “I haven’t pulled a night like that for a while.”
Since France, hung between them in the silence.
She departed and Walter heard her in the hallway, putting through the brief call to Lucy’s parents. That would put the cat among the pigeons, regardless.
“There’ll be all sorts of questions,” he said to Frost. “About why you took her in in the first place.”
Frost shook his head. “No, there won’t. The statements from Mrs Leamington and Miss Royce led me to here, where I took Miss Hall-Bridges into custody. She didn’t remember getting up in the night to get a drink from the bathroom because she was so exhausted from the evening’s melodrama. When Dr Marks realised an alibi was needed, she had of course met Miss Hall-Bridges in the night, and drove back from town to straighten things out.” He bit his lip. “Maybe I’ll get a bit of flack for pulling her in so quickly, nice girl like that. But unless she makes a fuss, I’ll be fine. And no-one’s going to make a fuss, are they?”
“Those other ladies might,” Walter said. “They sound like pieces of work, from what Sylv said. And I went to the pub last night. The sooner they go back to London the better was the general feeling.”
Frost snorted. “Justice is blind,” he said. “And often based on eavesdropping. But yes, I can see how local people would feel that.”
He looked curiously at Walter, as if debating what to do next. Walter heard Sylvia going up the stairs in the hallway. Finally, Frost sat down again and said, “Now.” He produced the old, brown-bound book from his pocket and placed it on the table in front of him. “What can you tell me about this?”
Shit.
“It’s just an old book,” Walter said finally after an awkward pause.
“I don’t think it is,” Frost said carefully. “You really didn’t want me to see it, upstairs. What am I going to find when I look inside?”
Walter sighed. “On your own head be it,” he said.
Frost nodded. “Most things are,” he said.
“It’s a diary,” Walter told him. “As best we can make out. From a hundred and more years ago.”
Frost opened it carefully. The pages were in good condition, for its age.
“Some bloke travelling in India,” Walter went on. “Seems to have believed in magic.” In for a penny, in for a pound. “We had a bit of bother, over the spring. With that sort of thing. Someone lent us the book to see if it would help.”
Frost’s eyebrows shot up. “A bit of bother with magic?” His tone was, understandably, incredulous.
“Told you so,” Walter said. “It’s cracked. Really cracked.”
Frost’s face was a picture. Disbelief, calculation, understanding, disbelief again, all cycling round in quick succession.
“This ties in with the séance somehow, doesn’t it?” he said, after a moment, leafing through the old pages carefully.
He was a quick bloke.
“Yes,” Walter said. “She…Lucy…she thought they were calling up something that was dangerous. Not that airy-fairy-talking-to-the-beloved-dead bollocks those stupid women were trying to do. So she stopped it. And they didn’t like it.”
“They?”
“The other women. Mrs Fortescue and her friends. She didn’t tell them why she’d stopped it. So they thought she was just scaremongering.”
Frost was watching him carefully. He didn’t seem as thrown by the revelation of magic as Walter had thought he might be.
“You believe this, do you?” the man asked quietly.
Walter nodded. “Some peculiar things happened in the spring,” he said. “I believe there’s something to it. There were some odd comings and goings. Couldn’t explain them away any other way.” He wetted his lips and noticed Frost watching him do it. “It’s cracked, like I say,” he said. He swallowed. “I don’t hold with any of that talking to the dead rubbish. The dead are gone. And if they still exist in some form…well. It’s not right to call them back to talk to them. Better let them go on to whatever’s next.” He blinked, surprised at the strength of his own feelings about it. The idea that Chris was out there, hanging round, waiting to chat…and Walter hadn’t been listening for him…was horrendous.
He pulled himself together and went on. “The morning we pulled her out of the pond, we talked about whether something peculiar had happened after our ladies came home from Lilac Villa. Whether the others went back to the séance and tried to talk to whatever it was that Miss Lucy thought was there. And whether whatever happened, killed her.”
Frost stared at him. Then he closed the book, stood up, and put it back in his pocket.
Walter shot to his feet too and began to protest, but Frost put out a hand and said, “I’ll bring it back.”
There was a strange sort of pause.
“I have to go. I need to go and tell them to release Miss Hall-Bridges,” Frost said, finally.
“Yes,” Walter said. “Go and do that.” He swallowed nervously. “Don’t show the book around, all right?” he said. “It’s not…it’s not a good thing. You’ll see, if you read it.”
Frost just looked at him.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Walter said.
“I don’t know,” Frost replied. “I’ll read it and let you know.”
He turned and limped out of the kitchen, collecting his hat from the hall table as he passed and jamming it on to his head as he made his way out through the open front door without pause.
“Are you going to be all right to drive back down?” Walter asked, following him.
“Perfectly, thank you,” the other man said with finality.
“You should get Dr Marks to look at your leg,” Walter said to his back, in some mad, inappropriate foray into the personal. “She’s good with wounds.”
“I’ll bear it in mind,” Frost said, cranking the starting handle and getting into the car. “Goodbye, Mr Kennett,” he said as he slammed the door.
Walter stood on the step and watched the big Crossley make its stately way down the drive.
He’d done it now, for better or worse. One cat had gone back into the bag. And the bigger, more dangerous, magical cat was firmly out there.