Vogel read the letter carefully. Joyce sat in silence whilst he did so. When he’d finished he stood up and turned to Dawn Saslow.
‘Please stay with Mrs Mildmay, PC Saslow,’ he said. ‘I need to make an urgent phone call.’
He left the room, and once outside used his mobile to call his senior officer, DCI Hemmings.
‘There’s been a development, guv,’ he said. ‘I don’t reckon this is a kidnap. More likely somebody in this family knows darned well what’s happened to Fred Mildmay. I’ll explain later. I’m calling now because I need back-up soonest. If we put some pressure on this lot I reckon we could get an early result. And I could well be bringing at least two of ’em in for formal questioning.’
Hemmings agreed to do what he could as soon as he could. Vogel returned to the sitting room. He again sat down opposite Joyce Mildmay, and next to Dawn Saslow.
Joyce Mildmay looked absolutely drained. Vogel didn’t care. He had far from finished with her.
‘Who else knows about this?’ he demanded, holding up the letter in one hand.
‘Well, Charlie left it with Stephen Hardcastle to be delivered to me only after his death, and Janet must have known about it too,’ Joyce replied. ‘But Stephen claimed neither he nor anyone else knew the contents. The letter came in a sealed envelope. And I certainly haven’t told anyone what it said.’
She explained how Charlie’s letter hadn’t arrived until two days previously, more than six months after her husband had died, something explained away by Stephen as a clerical error.
‘Do you accept that explanation?’ asked Vogel.
‘I don’t know, I suppose so,’ muttered Joyce. ‘It was only, well, when Stephen came round and I confronted him about it I had this feeling he was hiding something. He didn’t seem quite himself. He’s such a po-faced bloke. It’s hard to know what he’s really feeling or what’s going on inside his head . . .’
Joyce looked down at her hands. Vogel wondered what she was thinking about. She had just told him that she felt Stephen Hardcastle was hiding something. He felt pretty sure she was also still hiding something.
‘But this time, well, he seemed uncomfortable, and didn’t seem able to hide it,’ Joyce continued. ‘The whole thing didn’t feel right somehow. He was definitely on edge.’
‘So you thought Stephen had read the letter, that he knew what it said, did you?’ asked Vogel.
‘I wasn’t sure,’ Joyce replied again. ‘But I did have the feeling that he might have done.’
‘Do you have the envelope?’
‘There were two, the one with Charlie’s handwriting on it containing his letter, and then the bigger Tanner-Max envelope that Janet had put it in when she sent the letter on to me.’
Joyce delved into her pocket again and handed the detective the two envelopes. He examined the one carrying Charlie’s handwriting, reading the inscription on the front first: For my darling Joyce, to be opened only in the event of my death. Then he held the envelope up to the light so that he could study its seal.
The envelope had clearly been ripped open. Vogel glanced enquiringly at Joyce. She appeared to understand at once what he meant.
‘I was so shocked I just tore at it,’ she said.
Vogel nodded. It was more or less impossible for him to ascertain whether or not the envelope had been opened before its delivery to Joyce. But he was pretty sure forensics would be able to tell him.
‘Have you any idea what your husband meant by any of this?’ he asked.
Joyce shook her head.
‘No, I haven’t.’
She explained how neither her father nor her husband ever talked about their work, and were both inclined to be secretive about their lives away from the family.
‘Or protective, Dad would say, if pressed,’ she said.
She also told Vogel how her father had always been such a good grandfather, and had been a good father both to her and her dead brother.
‘So was there never anything . . .’ Vogel paused, searching for the right words. ‘Never anything inappropriate concerning your father when you were growing up?’
Joyce uttered a mirthless laugh.
‘You mean, did he grope us? Is he a closet paedophile?’
Vogel inclined his head. He supposed that was exactly what he did mean. He didn’t speak, waiting for Joyce to continue, which she eventually did.
‘No, Mr Vogel. I will admit it did cross my mind that was what Charlie meant in the letter. Particularly when he said I should protect Fred, but Dad wouldn’t be interested in Molly. Then I thought about it, remembering my own childhood. That was one thing I would have had to have known about Dad, surely, if there was any truth in it. I thought about Dad’s behaviour with William. They always appeared to have a pretty wonderful relationship, and Dad was devastated when William died. They were extremely close, but I can’t believe there was ever anything creepy about it. I would have noticed, wouldn’t I?’
‘And yet your husband specifically warned you that you needed to protect Fred. And now your son is missing.’
Joyce stared at him blankly.
‘Mrs Mildmay, I do wish you had told us about this letter earlier,’ Vogel continued. ‘It does throw a rather different light on things and could be hugely significant. May I ask you why you didn’t show it at once to the officers who answered your 999 call this morning?’
Joyce took several seconds to answer.
‘I think there may be a culture of secrecy in this family,’ she said eventually, an answer that took Vogel by surprise. ‘I’ve been brought up that way. I knew the letter could have all sorts of unpleasant implications. I thought about giving it to the officers, but then, I didn’t. I somehow couldn’t . . .’
‘Mrs Mildmay, you had just discovered that your son was missing. You’d called the emergency services. Isn’t it surprising, and reprehensible, that you didn’t do and say everything in your power to help the officers who responded to that call?’
Vogel knew he was probably being overly tough on the woman. It was deliberate. He wanted to make sure she wasn’t concealing any more vital evidence, keeping any more secrets.
‘I suppose it is, yes,’ admitted Joyce, stifling a sob. ‘But you have to understand I was still thinking Fred might turn up at any moment. Making myself believe that. Hoping it, anyway. A part of me couldn’t accept that something serious was happening. And I didn’t let myself link it with the letter. Not at first. It was when we found the phone, well Molly found it, she kept going round and round the house looking for anything that might help, it was then that I started to get really frantic. And now, well half a day has passed and nobody has any idea where Fred is. Please find him, Mr Vogel. Please find my son.’
Vogel blinked at her through those thick spectacles as she broke down in floods of tears. He was never comfortable with displays of emotion. For him that was one of the most difficult aspects of cases like this. There was nothing he could do or say that would comfort the woman – and the more he learned about the machinations of this family, the less inclined he felt to offer them comfort. His priority was the welfare of young Fred, the innocent victim in all this.
‘I will do everything in my power to find your son, Mrs Mildmay,’ he said. ‘But if I am to do that I will need to confront both Stephen Hardcastle and your father with the contents of this letter. You have already told me that you suspect Stephen of having read the letter. Do you think your father may have read it too?’
Joyce wiped away her tears. Vogel detected an edge of bitterness in her voice as she told him, ‘If Stephen read the letter then he would definitely have shown it to Dad. Nobody around here does anything without consulting my father.’
‘And you believe that they deliberately withheld the letter from you, is that so?’
‘Well, yes. My father wouldn’t have wanted me to see the things Charlie said about him and the business. I mean, I know it doesn’t make sense – why keep it from me for six months and then send it? I’d have expected them to destroy it. I had no idea it existed, so I’d have been none the wiser.’
‘That’s a question I also would like the answer to, Mrs Mildmay,’ said Vogel. ‘Now, I must ask you again: are you sure you didn’t tell anyone about the letter, even if you didn’t reveal the contents?’
‘No, I was too shocked by it,’ Joyce replied. ‘I decided I would try to find out what lay behind it in a subtle way. That was the idea, anyway. I began by asking Mum. I tried to be casual, but I failed dismally. Mum cottoned on at once that I had an ulterior motive. I denied it. But she knew I wasn’t being straight with her. She kept telling me that she knew something must have happened and demanding I tell her what it was.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘No. Half an hour later I had Dad on the phone; Mum had told him as soon as he got home from work.’
‘And yet you didn’t challenge your father about the letter, not even after Fred’s disappearance. Why is that, Mrs Mildmay?’
‘I don’t know. I was in shock, I suppose. And denial – I kept telling myself that there had to be some simple explanation and clinging to the hope that Fred would walk through the door any minute. That’s how it is in this family: we don’t do confrontation, not with Dad. I just couldn’t. Not then . . .’
In truth, Vogel did not begin to see. But then a thought occurred to him. If he hadn’t been so caught up with the implications of Charlie Mildmay’s message from the dead, he would have thought of it earlier.
‘Mrs Mildmay, was there an accompanying letter from Stephen Hardcastle, along with the one left for you by your husband?’
Joyce nodded. She glanced at the crumpled handful of papers Vogel was holding.
‘Isn’t it there?’ she asked.
Vogel shook his head.
Joyce delved again in her pocket and came up with a folded sheet of A4 paper, which she held out to him.
Printed on Tanner-Max headed stationery, it read:
Dear Mrs Mildmay,
We would like to apologize for failing to forward the enclosed letter from Mr Mildmay until now, due to an error in filing. If there is anything else we can do to assist you, please do not hesitate to contact this office.
It ended in the way solicitors and other businesses frequently sign off their correspondence, without reference to a specific individual: Yours sincerely, Tanner-Max.
Vogel was puzzled.
‘Bit formal, isn’t it, considering that it came from a man who is one of your oldest friends?’ he enquired.
‘Is it?’ responded Joyce. ‘I barely looked at it. I saw Charlie’s handwriting on the enclosed envelope and that was all I was interested in.’
There was a scratchy signature after the typed sign-off, or was it initials? Vogel couldn’t make it out. He passed the letter back to Joyce.
‘Is that Stephen Hardcastle’s signature?’ he asked.
Joyce glanced down. ‘Oh. No. I don’t think it is. I didn’t notice. It’s Janet’s.’
‘Janet, the PA?’
‘Yes.’
‘I can see you’re surprised,’ Vogel commented. ‘I find that surprising too.’
‘Well, not exactly,’ responded Joyce. ‘More surprised that I hadn’t noticed. Janet does sometimes address the family as Mr and Mrs. She’s quite formal in written correspondence. And she often signs letters on behalf of Stephen, my father, and Charlie too, when he was alive.’
‘Routine correspondence, yes, but surely not something as sensitive as this?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe Stephen was embarrassed about the delay. Maybe that’s why he asked Janet to send the letter on. How do I know what his reasons were? Is it important?’
‘It could be, Mrs Mildmay, it could be very important,’ replied Vogel thoughtfully. ‘I will certainly be taking it up with Stephen Hardcastle and with your father. In the meantime, you can go back to the kitchen and join the others, but I must ask you not to mention anything that we have discussed, particularly the letter. Do you understand?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Joyce. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
Vogel was just emerging from the kitchen, having escorted Joyce back to her family and discreetly instructed PC Saslow to make sure no details of the interview were shared with the family, when the doorbell rang. It was PCs Yardley and Bolton, returning from conducting house-to-house enquiries.
Vogel rapidly brought them up to date on the latest developments:
‘We need information fast, so provided they cooperate I’m hoping it won’t be necessary to caution and formally interview everyone in the house. But there are two people I may need you to transport to the video suite at Lockleaze so that their interviews can be recorded. First let’s see how the preliminary interviews go, then we can take it from there.’
He led the two constables to the kitchen, where PC Saslow was standing by the door like a sentry. Under the circumstances, Vogel rather approved of that.
Joyce Mildmay had returned to the same chair at the kitchen table where she’d been sitting when Vogel had arrived.
‘PC Bolton, please accompany Mr Tanner and Mr Hardcastle into the sitting room, and I’ll join you in a moment,’ the DI instructed.
Vogel wanted them separated from the rest – even though he had PC Saslow on sentry duty and intended to keep her there.
Stephen Hardcastle made his way to the door without demur, but Henry Tanner looked as if he was about to protest. Then he thought better of it and fell in behind Hardcastle as Bolton ushered them both from the room.
Vogel wanted to let them stew for a bit while he gleaned what he could from the others, particularly the PA, Janet. But even though she was the most promising subject, he intended to delay talking to her. He had a feeling he might learn something from the others which would prove useful in persuading her to cooperate.
‘I need to talk to each of you individually,’ Vogel announced. He glanced towards Joyce. ‘Is there another downstairs room I could use?’
She nodded listlessly. ‘The dining room,’ she said.
He thanked her, then asked Monika to join him.
‘You too, Yardley,’ he instructed, leading the way out of the kitchen.
In addition to the kitchen and the sitting room there were two other doors leading off the hallway. Vogel glanced enquiringly at Monika, who gestured to the one which was nearest.
Vogel pushed the door open to reveal a room furnished with a big Georgian dining table, chairs and sideboard – all of it, like the Adam fireplace in the sitting room, reproduction.
He pulled two of the chairs away from the table and gestured for Monika to sit. Yardley was still standing. Vogel invited him to sit too. He wanted these preliminary interviews to be as informal as possible.
The young woman confirmed that she had arrived at the house at eight that morning.
‘During term time I help with the children’s breakfast and getting them ready for school, then when they go I load the dishwasher with the breakfast things, I tidy the kitchen, and I help Mrs Mildmay clear up after them,’ explained Monika.
Vogel, as ever, had done his homework. He knew that she was twenty-four years old and came from Kosovo, Albania. Her English was good, if a tad stilted, with only the occasional grammatical error. Her pronunciation was excellent.
‘They are lovely children, but perhaps not the most tidy,’ said Monika with a half smile.
She was a pretty girl, tall and slim with cropped dark brown hair and pale skin. But Vogel noticed that the smile did not reach her eyes. There remained an emptiness in them.
‘When did you come to the UK, Monika?’ he asked, opening with an easy, unthreatening question to put her at ease.
‘In 1999,’ she replied. ‘At the end of the war. My father, he fight in the Kosovo Liberation Army. We do not know what happened to him . . .’
Her voice tailed off. She glanced down at her hands, lying on the table before her.
Vogel was aware that the Serbian military had decimated the KLA, amidst widespread allegations of atrocities. So Monika had arrived in the UK as a nine-year-old refugee. The poignant emptiness in her eyes was disturbing; it made Vogel wonder what horrors Monika and her family had experienced.
‘I see,’ said Vogel inadequately. ‘I’m sorry. I interrupted you. You were taking me through your morning here.’
‘Yes. Usually I stay until midday. I clean all the house. I have a routine. A rota. This morning I was to clean bedrooms . . .’
Monika paused, frowning. Remembering what had happened, Vogel thought.
‘Go on, Monika,’ he prompted.
‘But soon after I arrive today, Mrs Mildmay went upstairs to hurry up Fred and discovered he was not in his room,’ she said, corroborating the account Vogel had been given by Joyce Mildmay.
‘At once we began to look everywhere for him, the three of us: Molly, Mrs Mildmay and I. We couldn’t find him. Not anywhere. Mrs Mildmay called her mother. We all kept looking, and Molly began phoning people. Then Mrs Mildmay called the police. I do not believe this has happened. I just do not believe it. The family, they are like my own family, already they are . . .’
Now that she’d started, Monika couldn’t seem to stop talking. Maybe it was a kind of nervous reaction, Vogel thought. He let her ramble on for a while, but eventually he ended the interview, thanked Monika, and asked PC Yardley to escort her back to the kitchen.
Next to be interviewed was Dr Grant. The GP confirmed that he had been called by Henry Tanner some hours after Fred’s disappearance, and had not seen the boy, his mother or his siblings for at least a month previously. Jim Grant seemed to have no information that might assist the investigation, so Vogel quickly moved on to his next subject: Mark Mildmay, whom Vogel felt to be far more likely to be of interest. The DI already knew that Fred’s older brother worked with his grandfather in the family business, and the letter had implied that he was already embroiled in whatever it was Charlie Mildmay had tried to warn his wife about. Vogel did not propose to question him in that regard, yet. For the time being, he did not wish to reveal the existence of Charlie’s letter, let alone its contents, to anyone who was not already aware of it. Instead he set about trying to ascertain the kind of man Mark was, and to study his reactions to the disturbing events of the day.
Mark Mildmay’s whole body seemed to be trembling when Yardley led him into the dining room and indicated that he should sit down at the table opposite Vogel. His face was ashen beneath his shock of dark-blond hair. He was a thin young man, but his distress made him look even thinner, emphasizing the hollows beneath his cheekbones.
He also looked frightened. Could it be that Mark Mildmay was afraid of something beyond the prospect of losing his younger brother?
Mark relaxed a little as Vogel began to take him step by step through his movements that morning. He had left his flat above the garage at his grandparents’ well before eight, driving off not long after his grandfather, he said. They were both in the habit of starting work early.
‘Grandma called about ten past nine on Granddad’s mobile,’ he said. ‘We share an office. I knew straight away that something was wrong. Granddad went white. He told Grandma we’d be straight over, then he put the phone down, looked across at me and said: “Fred’s gone.” I couldn’t believe it.
‘We were both shocked, naturally, but at the time . . . well, I suppose we thought Fred would soon turn up. He’s been very upset since Dad died. Not hysterical or anything like that, just that he wasn’t always himself. He did funny things. We were hoping it was another one of those funny things, I suppose.’
Vogel studied the young man carefully. Everything he said had a ring of truth, but there was something behind his eyes that Vogel couldn’t quite make out. Just as there had been something about Joyce that hadn’t felt right. And in her case it had turned out that, for reasons she’d failed to explain to Vogel’s satisfaction, she had been hiding something important. Was it possible that Mark Mildmay was also hiding something?
‘So you drove over here straight away, did you?’ Vogel asked, studying every flicker in Mark’s eyes, every facial twitch, every bit of his uneasy body language.
The young man nodded.
‘Yes. And Granddad came with me in my car. Geoff had taken the Bentley in for a service.’
‘What about Stephen Hardcastle? Doesn’t he work in the same building? Wasn’t he there? Didn’t he come with you?’
Mark nodded.
‘He’d arrived at the office a few minutes before Mum called, and he came to the house straight away – he’s like family, Steve. But he drove here in his own car. Mine’s a twoseater.’
Vogel had noticed the metallic grey Porsche parked outside and had taken an educated guess that it would be Mark Mildmay’s two-seater. This family had money and clearly liked their trophy homes and their toys for grown-ups. There was something about these people that Vogel didn’t quite approve of. And it went beyond the suspicions aroused in him by those unfinished police enquiries into Tanner-Max which he had learned about that morning, or even Charlie Mildmay’s letter alluding to questionable goings on. For Vogel was a bit of a Puritan at heart. He wasn’t comfortable with excess. And everything about Tarrant Park and the Tanner–Mildmay clan seemed excessive to Vogel.
He was, however, an old hand at not letting his innermost thoughts and suspicions show.
Vogel ended the interview and thanked the young man, informing him that though he had no further questions for the time being, he would be in touch should anything arise. Mark looked even shakier after the interview than he had before, which Vogel considered to be a perfectly satisfactory result.
Felicity Tanner was ushered in next. At first glance she seemed composed, but Vogel could see that she was struggling to control her emotions.
‘Mrs Tanner, perhaps you could confirm for me what time you came to the house this morning?’ he began.
Felicity nodded. ‘Yes. I got here about twenty to nine, I think. Joyce called me as soon as she and Molly were certain Fred wasn’t in the house. We were still hoping he was somewhere close by. Silly, I know, but we kept on looking and looking.’ She paused, screwing up her face in pain. ‘We haven’t stopped all day – we can’t help it. Everyone’s been checking the same places over and over again.’
Vogel felt for her. Felicity Tanner was a good-looking woman for her age, which Vogel assumed to be mid sixties. Her grey bobbed hair was streaked with blonde, probably by a hairdresser rather than nature, Vogel thought, but it looked natural and suited her skin tone. Beneath the grief and the pain, Felicity had intelligent eyes. There was also an air of vulnerability about her.
Felicity went on to substantiate the arrival times of her husband and of Stephen Hardcastle, and everything that Joyce had told Vogel concerning the sequence of events that morning.
Vogel then asked to see Molly. He rose as Yardley brought the teenager into the dining room, then sat down next to her at the table, not opposite as he had so far positioned himself with the adults.
‘I’m sorry I have to speak to you now, sweetheart,’ he said quietly. ‘But I know you want to help find your brother, don’t you?’
Molly was sitting with her head down, fighting back the tears. She glanced up at him and nodded.
It was obvious she had been weeping. Her pretty face was streaked with tears. Her eyes were badly swollen. Surely this was one family member even he could not suspect of any wrongdoing. Everything about Molly radiated her honest distress. Unlike the rest of the family, she seemed quite transparent and unguarded.
Molly scrubbed her eyes with both hands and gulped a couple of times.
‘I need all the help I can get if we’re going to find Fred quickly,’ Vogel continued.
Molly nodded again, biting her lip.
‘So will you please take me through exactly what happened this morning?’ Vogel asked. ‘Perhaps you could start by telling me when you and your mother first realized Fred was missing, and so on.’
Molly’s story was the same as her mother’s, barely differing in even the slightest detail. If people are not telling the truth, there are almost always discrepancies, unless they have concocted a story, in which case it would often be repeated word for word, the phrasing suspiciously similar. Neither seemed to be the case in this instance. Molly told her story in her own words and in her own way.
‘Good, now perhaps you could tell me about the last time you saw your bother,’ Vogel encouraged. ‘Can you tell me when that was?’
‘Yes, last night,’ answered Molly.
‘And do you remember the time?’
‘It was eight thirty. That is, it should have been eight thirty because that’s Fred’s bedtime on school nights. But I think it was a bit later. We’d been playing around . . . fighting a bit . . . it was only fun, but . . .’
Molly’s face clouded over again. Vogel feared her tears had not departed for long.
‘But what, Molly?’ he enquired gently.
‘It’s only that, well, he was being the little horror that he can be. He was teasing me rotten. So I said, “I’m going to kill you, you monster.”’ Molly stared at Vogel, her eyes wide open, her lips trembling. ‘That’s what I said, Mr Vogel. I told my little brother I was going to kill him. That was the last thing I said to him before he went to bed. And this morning he wasn’t there, he was gone. He’s still gone. And that was the last thing I said to him . . .’
Her words were overtaken by sobs.
‘But you didn’t mean that, did you, Molly?’ Vogel’s question was rhetorical, and he murmured it softly.
Molly shook her head.
‘No. And your brother knew that, didn’t he?’
Molly nodded again, more of a half nod this time. ‘I suppose so,’ she managed.
Vogel leaned towards Molly, careful not to touch her or to do anything that might intimidate her, but leaning so that his face was quite close to hers.
‘You love your little brother very much, don’t you, Molly?’ he said.
She nodded weakly.
‘And you know that he knows that, too, don’t you?’
She nodded again.
Vogel dropped his voice even lower.
‘So don’t you worry,’ he said. ‘I’m going to bring him back for you, darling, I promise you.’
Molly looked at him with hope in her eyes.
‘Th-thank you,’ she said.
Then she started to cry again. It could have been Vogel’s kindness that had sparked her off once more, or it could have been that she simply couldn’t stop. He straightened up, mentally kicking himself. He knew better than to make promises like that, didn’t he? Particularly to a child, because children took promises at face value. As a rule, they didn’t understand about saying things just to make someone feel better. As a rule, children were more honest than adults. Sometimes brutally so.
But Vogel hadn’t been able to help himself. He had a daughter at home who was only a little younger than Molly. Rosamund Vogel was a sensitive, caring girl. She didn’t have a brother to worry about, but if she had and she feared that anything might have happened to him, she would be distraught. She could never be what Molly Mildmay was. Rosamund Vogel had her own problems, but like Molly, she was still at that stage where she loved her family unconditionally.
Vogel found it difficult to watch Molly’s distress. Whenever possible he tried to keep his questioning methodical and nonconfrontational in style, cool, controlled, dealing with facts not emotions. He had tried so hard not to add to her misery, to try to come up with some words of encouragement to lift her spirits.
Vogel sighed inwardly. Would he never learn? He only hoped he could keep his promise in this instance and bring Molly Mildmay’s little brother home.
At least they were still within the golden twenty-four hours, he reminded himself. He just had to get on with things. As ever.
‘Yardley, take Molly back to her mother will you, and bring Janet Porter in,’ he commanded.
The PA had short wavy hair dyed an unnatural dark brown and cut in a severe bob. She was wearing a striped business suit and at a glance looked every inch the competent, dedicated aide. In sharp contrast to young Molly and Joyce Mildmay, she had not been crying. But then, she was no relation to the missing boy, Vogel reminded himself. Her surprisingly bright blue eyes did, however, betray a hint of alarm.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ Vogel said briskly. ‘I only need a moment of your time, Miss Porter.’
Janet said nothing. She clasped her hands together and placed them on the table. Vogel couldn’t help wondering why everyone seemed to do that during police interviews. Most people, innocent or guilty, were nervous when interviewed by the police, particularly as part of an investigation into something as serious as the possible abduction of a child.
Janet told Vogel that she had arrived at the house at around 10 a.m., not long after Mark Mildmay, Henry Tanner and Stephen Hardcastle. They had all left the office as quickly as they could when Joyce had called them with the shocking news. Janet had remained a little longer than the men in order to lock the place up.
She seemed to have nothing more to offer concerning the immediate circumstances of Fred Mildmay’s disappearance, but there remained the matter of the delayed letter.
Vogel cut to the chase.
‘Miss Porter, something has come to my attention which I hope you may be able to throw some light on,’ he began. ‘I don’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily at this stage, nor cause further distress to Mrs Mildmay, so I would appreciate it if you would not discuss with anyone else the matter I now wish to ask you about. Is that clear?’
Janet cleared her throat and looked even more nervous.
‘Uh, yes, of course,’ she said.
‘Good,’ said Vogel. ‘I understand that Mr Charles Mildmay left a letter to be given to his wife and read only in the event of his death. And I think you know about that letter, is that correct?’
‘Well, yes . . .’ began Janet hesitantly.
‘I also understand that it was you who forwarded the letter to Mrs Mildmay, along with an accompanying letter which I believe bears your signature,’ Vogel continued. ‘Can you confirm that?’
‘Yes,’ said Janet.
‘And when did you post it to Mrs Mildmay?’
‘On Monday. I’m certain of that, because Mr Tanner and Stephen were away from the office.’
‘This letter, bearing a clear instruction that it be passed to Mr Mildmay’s wife in the event of his death, had presumably been in your office since before he died. Given that he lost his life last November, can you explain why the letter was not sent then?’
Janet hesitated.
‘Well, I sort of can. It had been wrongly filed. It wasn’t in Charlie’s file, you see, along with his will and other papers.’
‘So how did it finally materialize? And who instructed you to send it on to Mrs Mildmay?’
‘Nobody did,’ Joyce replied quickly.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Vogel.
‘Nobody told me to send it on. I found the letter myself, misfiled. Stephen had asked me to deal with something concerning his own affairs – he’s trying to buy a new property and the mortgage company wanted to know about his life insurance – and when I went to his file to look for the policy I found Charlie’s letter there. I realized it must have got in the wrong place.’
Janet paused as if an unwelcome thought had occurred to her.
‘It wasn’t my mistake, Mr Vogel, I can assure you of that,’ she continued, suddenly going off at a tangent. ‘I had never even seen the letter before. I don’t know how it came to be in the wrong place, but I certainly didn’t put it there.’
‘I’m sure you didn’t, Miss Porter,’ murmured Vogel, stifling a smile.
Janet Porter clearly had considerable professional pride, and was not prepared to allow her competence to be questioned.
‘Please go on, Miss Porter,’ said Vogel.
‘When I saw what was written on the envelope – that it should be given to Joyce Mildmay in the event of Charlie’s death – well, I was horrified to think that it had been sitting there in our office all that time,’ Janet continued. ‘I thought it should be sent to Mrs Mildmay straight away.’
‘So you posted it on yourself, without checking with Mr Hardcastle, or Mr Tanner?’
‘Well, not exactly. As I told you, Stephen and Mr Tanner were out of the office. They were in London that day, you see. They had an important business meeting in the morning, then lunch at Mr Tanner’s club. It was about lunchtime when I found the letter. I called and left a message on Stephen’s voicemail telling him about it and asking if he wanted me to pop it in the post with a covering note, but he never got back to me, not all afternoon. I wasn’t surprised. Mr Tanner’s club lunches are legendary. Anyway, both Stephen and Mr Tanner trust me to use my own initiative – indeed, they encourage me to. So when it came to five o’clock I phoned Stephen again and left a message saying I would put the letter in the post unless I heard from him to the contrary. I didn’t hear from him, so on my way home I dropped it in the post box opposite the office. It seemed the right thing to do. And I was afraid that if Mr Tanner found out about the letter being in Stephen’s file, he might be angry with Stephen. He has rather a temper on him, you see. Also, I didn’t want to keep the letter from Joyce any longer . . .’ She looked at him quizzically.
‘Shouldn’t I have done that, Mr Vogel?’
‘You were doing what you thought was the right thing, Miss Porter,’ said Vogel, his tone noncommittal. ‘Did you not get any response whatsoever to your phone messages?’
‘Oh yes, eventually,’ replied Janet. ‘Stephen called me at home a bit later on. His voice was a little slurred – those London lunches are inclined to be rather liquid. Mr Tanner never gets the worse for wear, but his guests always do.’
‘What did Mr Hardcastle say when he called you?’
‘He asked if I’d already posted the letter. I told him I had.’
‘And what did he say to that?’
‘He didn’t say anything much that I remember. Just “right”, or “OK”, or something. Then he said he’d see me in the morning. And goodnight, I suppose. Nothing much. Why?’
Vogel ignored the question.
‘Did you not think it strange that he called you at home to ask if you had posted the letter?’
Janet looked surprised.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I assumed he was making sure that I had. After all, it was embarrassing that we’d kept it all that time, in the wrong file, without anyone knowing it was there.’
Without you knowing it was there, thought Vogel.
Aloud he asked: ‘Were you aware of the contents of the letter, Miss Porter?’
Not for the first time during the interview, Janet looked shocked.
‘Of course not! It was a sealed letter from a dead man to his widow. How on earth would I know what was in it?’
‘Indeed,’ murmured Vogel ambiguously. ‘What about Mr Tanner and Mr Hardcastle? Do you think they knew anything of the contents of the letter?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Janet, but Vogel could almost see the wheels turning as she considered this. Then her expression hardened.
‘If you are suggesting that either of them would have opened a letter of that nature and then resealed it, I can assure you that you are totally wrong, Detective Inspector. Neither Mr Tanner nor Stephen would ever do such a thing. In any case, I’m not sure Mr Tanner knew of the existence of the letter. Stephen was Charlie’s personal solicitor as well as representing the company. Presumably Charlie gave the letter to him. And Stephen always does things by the book. He would regard that as confidential, I’m sure.’
‘No doubt you are right,’ replied Vogel, who thought just the opposite.
So that was it then. The letter had been sent on to Joyce without the prior knowledge of either Tanner or Hardcastle. And Vogel was pretty sure that both men were aware not only of the existence of the letter but of its contents, and that they had deliberately refrained from sending it on to Joyce. But why had they kept it, albeit filed in a place they thought was safe? Why hadn’t they destroyed it? And if they had destroyed it, would young Fred Mildmay still be safe at home?
He thanked Janet Porter, reminding her that she should not discuss the letter or anything pertaining to it with anyone else, then told her she could go back and join the others, or was free to leave the house if she wished.
As Janet headed back to the kitchen, Vogel made his way to the sitting room, where he found Tanner and Hardcastle sitting at either end of one of the two big settees. PC Bolton was standing by the door, and Vogel hoped that this uniformed presence might have given the two men cause to feel a little less self-assured than they had been earlier.
Tanner and Hardcastle stood up almost in unison as soon as Vogel entered, and looked at him expectantly. The DI kept his expression stern and tried to sound as officious as he hoped he looked.
‘Gentlemen, I am afraid I need to interview you both on record,’ he announced. ‘I must ask you to accompany me now to Lockleaze police station.’
Tanner’s face was expressionless. This was a big-game player, thought Vogel. No doubt about that.
Hardcastle, the lawyer, was the first to speak: ‘Mr Vogel, are you arresting us?’ he asked.
‘No, sir, merely asking for your cooperation. I am sure you are both as eager as I am to find young Fred, and as I believe you have information which could be extremely helpful, I feel it would be beneficial to all concerned to conduct our interviews in a more formal situation where everything that you tell us will be digitally recorded and can therefore be properly assimilated.’
Vogel was replying to Stephen Hardcastle’s question. But he stared straight at Tanner. The older man returned the stare without so much as a flicker.
Hardcastle began to speak again. ‘Well, I’m not sure about that, Detective Inspector,’ he said. ‘As I told you, I am the family solicitor, as well as an old friend, and as such I feel I should advise my client that neither of us are under any legal obligation at this stage to—’
Tanner held up one hand, effectively silencing Hardcastle. ‘It’s OK, Stephen,’ he said, still staring unblinkingly at Vogel. ‘You are absolutely right, Detective Inspector. I am more than willing, indeed I am eager, to cooperate in any way that might bring about the speedy return of my grandson. And I am sure that Stephen, whilst correct as my lawyer to point out our rights, feels the same way. So if you believe that it would help to interview us at a police station, then I am happy to accompany you there. As Stephen will be.’
The last sentence was not even an instruction, more a statement of fact.
Stephen Hardcastle merely nodded his agreement.
‘Thank you,’ said Vogel. Then he turned to Bolton: ‘I want you to drive us, Constable Bolton,’ he said. ‘PC Saslow has been appointed FLO, so she will stay here and continue with her duties. PC Yardley, I’d like you to stay here with her, please.’
Turning his back on Hardcastle and Tanner, he leaned towards Yardley and added in a whisper, ‘You’re both on a watching brief, OK?’
Yardley nodded.
Vogel led the way out of the house, with Hardcastle and Tanner immediately behind him and PC Bolton bringing up the rear, and all four men climbed into the squad car parked outside.
No one spoke during the journey. There was considerable tension within the small Ford. And that suited Vogel perfectly. The more unnerved these two men were, the better his chances of getting answers.