Three

Rex fortified himself with more tea. “And your housekeeper?” he pursued, accepting another scone. “Was she also home the night your father passed away?”

“Wednesday is her night off,” Phoebe replied, setting down her teacup. “She went to the cinema with a friend from her Presbyterian church and stayed over at the woman’s house. I checked in on Dad before going to bed. He usually turned in by nine with his mug of Horlicks.”

“He was awake?”

“Sound asleep, and so I switched off his reading lamp. The coroner estimated his death as occurring in the early hours of the morning. He hadn’t seen his own doctor in over two weeks. That was for angina, and the nitroglycerine medication seemed to be working. I’m sure his condition was what led the coroner to conclude he had a heart attack.”

“You say a stamp album went missing. Anything else?” Rex looked about him. The drawing room was full of portable antiques and valuables, ripe for the picking.

“Dad’s watch,” Phoebe replied. “I mean, I can’t be sure since he was always misplacing things, but I haven’t been able to find it. I turned the house upside down again before you arrived. It should have been on his bedside table. It was the last thing he removed after his spectacles. Dad was obsessed with time.”

Rex recalled what a stickler for punctuality the judge had been in his courtroom. “What sort of watch was it?”

“A gold-plated wristwatch. A good Swiss make, but nothing fancy. The face was scratched, and I kept meaning to get it replaced. It had large numbers he could read.”

Rex stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. “Tell me aboot the stamp collection.”

“Well,” Phoebe began slowly. “He kept it on his desk. He was still working on it. He had a filled album in one of the drawers. The lock wasn’t forced and that album wasn’t taken.”

“Was the one you think was stolen worth anything?”

Phoebe shrugged. “I know next to nothing about stamps. But it’s not as though he had a Penny Black, or anything like that. He would have told me if he had. The main attraction for him, I think, were the exotic places of origin and the appealing designs. A lot of them, though, looked very ordinary. He visited a local dealer from time to time before he became housebound.”

“Perhaps I could take a look at the completed album later, not that stamps are my thing either. And perhaps you could give me the name of the dealer to follow up on. Now, what aboot a will? Any incentive for murder there?”

“Dad left everything to me. There was no one else. And my late husband was well-off. Titled, you know. An old Welsh family. Anyway, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all that money. Not to sound ungrateful.” Phoebe Wells made a rueful face. “It’s just that I never had any children, nor even nieces or nephews. So I’ve been looking into charities.”

Rex decided he had mined Phoebe for sufficient information for the time being. He needed to get another perspective on the business of the judge’s alleged murder. “I’ll take the tea tray to the kitchen and save Annie a trip,” he said, pushing himself out of the armchair.

“How thoughtful of you. She is getting on a bit.” Phoebe stacked the crockery on the tray. “The kitchen is in the basement.”

“Your housekeeper knows nothing of your suspicions?”

“Lord no. Not until I can be certain. I don’t want to frighten the poor woman off.”

“What is Annie’s surname?”

“McBride.” Phoebe rose to open the double doors leading into the hall, and Rex carried the tray through them and down the stairs.

At the bottom he found a large kitchen housing a blue Aga with a backsplash of antique Dutch tiles. Annie stood at the porcelain sink, hands immersed in sudsy water washing a pile of cooking utensils, even though there was what appeared to be a perfectly serviceable dishwasher under the counter.

Startled by his presence, she glanced over her shoulder. Rex deduced she must be a bit deaf not to have heard him enter with a tray of rattling crockery. He wasn’t the most adept waiter in the world.

“Just leave it there,” she replied, nodding towards the counter, and thanked him for bringing it down.

“There are a great many stairs in this house,” he sympathized. “It must involve a lot of work.”

“It’s hard on the legs.” The black stockings failed to conceal the housekeeper’s prominent varicose veins. “But it’s a grand auld hoose, and Mrs. Wells doesna entertain much, so it’s no that taxing, especially since her father left us.”

“How was he to work for?”

“Didna have much to say for hisself. Did for hisself mostly, but he took breakfast and lunch in his room. It was too tiring for him to be going up and doon the stairs, so I helped wi’ the fetching and carrying.”

Rex wondered if she would stay on now. “You live in, I take it?”

“Aye, there’s a suite doon here for my use.”

Rex noticed a small seating area off the kitchen and a portable television on a shelf, switched on to the news. An anchor woman was reporting the disappearance of a fourteen-year-old girl in Kent, last seen walking home from school on Thursday. The landmark white cliffs of Dover loomed into view, not all that imposing in reality, as Rex recalled from a trip across the Channel to Calais. A photo of a smiling young face framed with long, light brown hair followed on the screen. The Port of Dover Police had launched an extensive search after a suspicious-looking transit van had been seen near the girl’s school.

“Mrs. Wells tells me you have family in Essex,” Rex said conversationally, turning back to the housekeeper. He really wanted to ask her about the mugging of the old man, but could not see how to broach the subject without appearing macabre.

“Aye, I plan on moving in wi’ my daughter and her three girls upon retirement, which is coming up.”

Rex leaned against the counter while Annie busied herself with scrubbing a colander. Her profile beneath the wiry grey hair presented a low forehead sloping to a button nose and a pursed mouth that all but disappeared in a pucker of wrinkles. A loose chin hung to her throat.

“You’ll be sorely missed,” he said. “Mrs. Wells speaks very highly of you.”

“I’m pleased to hear that,” Annie said without looking up from the sink.

He felt he would not get much else out of the housekeeper, who probably wondered what business any of this was of his. After all, she didn’t know he was supposed to be investigating a murder. He left her to her chores and re-joined Phoebe in the drawing room just as she was ending a phone call.

“That was Andrew Doyle, a former clerk of court in Edinburgh, calling to see how I was. Such a sweet old dear.”

“The name rings a bell. He must be retired now. Talking of retirement, Annie says she’ll be leaving you soon.”

Phoebe sighed in mild frustration. “I’ll have to find someone else or sell this place. It’s really far too big for me.” She put her hand to her temple. “I think I’ll lie down, if you don’t mind. Will you be all right? Let me show you to your room first so you can settle in. Just come and go as you please and make yourself at home.”

“Thank you. I’ll see if I can talk to the stamp dealer. May I take the finished album to show him?”

“Of course. I’d be curious to see if it’s worth anything.” Phoebe led Rex upstairs, explaining on the way that her father had slept at the opposite end of the house from her front-facing bedroom, and consequently she had not heard anything the night of his death. “However,” she added, “I am a light sleeper, so the intruder must have been very quiet. I suppose that’s why they’re called cat burglars.”

Rex paused on the landing. “Going back to the old man who was mugged … ”

Phoebe turned to face him. “Mr. Rogers. Yes?”

“You don’t see a connection with your father’s death?”

“Not really. They’re so different. I mean, Dad’s murderer had to have been a professional to get in and out without being noticed, don’t you think?”

Rex pondered Phoebe’s reasoning. Perhaps her murderer had just been lucky. Or perhaps he didn’t exist at all, except in her own mind.