Apportionment of Blame (10 page)

“When Alan died, Annie's husband, he wasn't very old, and Annie was bereft. You can imagine how she felt. Although Scotland was home for her, it was now so filled with bad memories, she wanted to get away. Anyway, as she said, she had no one left up there, and we were here, so she decided to move south.

“My parents helped me find a house for her in Ipswich and she seemed to settle in quite quickly. In fact in the last few months of her life she seemed to get younger, if you can understand what I mean.”

She looked across at me at that point. My expression must have shown my puzzlement.

“It was as if she had found a new lease of life. She was always fit and healthy and she made friends easily. We put it down to the effect of new interests, new friends perhaps. She used to visit us here and sometimes she would visit my parents.

“We spoke on the phone most days. She seemed very happy and settled. But then she had a fall and broke her hip. That was the start really. She never got over it and went downhill quite quickly.

“By the time she died all the flesh had fallen from her bones. She told me she was ready to go, and she died, late one night.”

I could see how much Annie was missed. She was spoken about with considerable love and affection.

“Had she spoken to you about her will?”

“When she first came down, Oliver gave her lots of advice. You have to understand, she had a lot of money after selling her estates, even after buying her new house. Oliver advised her on how to invest it, how to make it work is the expression he used.

“We knew she had made a will, but she never discussed it with me. I suppose we always assumed that Helen, as her only descendant...oh dear.”

Her voice trailed away and tears began to appear.

“I'm sorry.” She dabbed at her eyes.

“Take your time,” I said. “And if it's too hard to talk about it, we can discuss it again another time.”

“No. We might as well do it now.”

I waited while she collected her thoughts again.

“The reading of the will was going to be a formality. Annie had used her family's solicitors, and we went up to London to see them. When he said there was a sole beneficiary, I remember squeezing Oliver's hand.

“He had been so upset at losing his job, and Helen had planned to start a new business with him, with the money she was left. Then the solicitor said the name - Ilse Chambers. We just stared at him, and I remember, we all said ‘Who?' together. And he said he was not at liberty to say any more.

“We asked him to check there was no mistake - to see if Helen had not been left at least something. But he said ‘No'. We were devastated.”

What a strange thing to happen, I thought. Now if Helen had inherited instead of someone else, I could envisage a possible motive for murder. But not the other way round. It didn't make any sense. Perhaps, once again, it wasn't relevant. Just strange.

It was at that moment that Joyce's father returned. He looked unhappy and a little harassed.

“Any joy, my darling?” his wife asked him.

“No. The same old story. Too old.”

He came across to kiss his wife and noticed me.

“Oh, hello Greg. We haven't seen you for a long time. Pam told me you might be coming.”

“We were just talking about the will.”

“Oh that! What a shocker. Who the hell is that person, for God's sake?”

“You still don't know?”

“No idea,” he said. “Look - does anyone fancy a drink? I'm dying for a cup of tea.”

He looked around.

“Not for me, thanks. I must be going in a minute.”

“I will, please,” his wife said.

Joyce's father bustled off into the kitchen and her mother turned back to me.

“I was just going to ask you about a loan Helen took out a few months ago,” I said.

“That was for her car. She was thrilled with her Golf. And now it's just sitting in the garage.”

“Ah, that's that, then. I'll leave you in peace now.”

I rose and tried to smile.

“Oh, one more thing. Do you have a recent picture of Helen I could have? You never know, it might come in useful.”

“Yes. I'll get you one.”

She went upstairs and returned after a minute or two, tears running down her cheeks.

“I'm sorry to have caused you to remember things,” I said, taking the photograph she offered.

“It's not your fault, Greg. The memory of her is so raw, I can't stop thinking about her.”

I was lost for words. Nothing would have been adequate. Best to keep quiet.

“You've been very helpful,” I said. “I'm sorry you're having such a bad time of it at present.” The words sounded totally inadequate, but were the best I could do.

She didn't reply, but moved along the hall to see me off.

“Say goodbye to your husband for me,” I said, as she opened the front door. “And I will do all I can to find out what happened.”

“I know you will,” she said with about as little confidence as I had at that moment.

Chapter 6

I
found
Joyce already at the pub. She was sitting on a stool at the bar and I took the one next to her.
    Her time at the gym had left her looking flushed, but there were still worry lines where I had seen them before.

“How did you find Mum?”

“Not as I remembered her,” I said.

I ordered a pint for me and another fizzy mixer for Joyce.

“She's had a rough time,” Joyce said. “We all have.”

“Let's go and find a table,” I suggested. “Then we can talk.”

We found a relatively quiet corner, but the pub was busy and there was a lot of competing conversation.

“I went to see Stuart last night,” I told her.

“Yes, there was some mention of it at The Goose. I thought you might have come to join us.”

“I decided against it, having just spoken to him. It would have looked rather odd if I'd followed him there.”

Joyce nodded and sipped at her drink.

“Do you think he's involved?”

“He's very convincing when he says he would never have hurt Helen.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Well, I am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt for the present. But I don't know if that's just because I don't want to think of any of your friends being involved.”

“I hope it's not Stuart.”

“That's what I mean. It would be even more distressing if it was him.”

As I drank my pint, I pondered the difficulty of being entirely objective in this job. How to set aside friendships when guilt becomes obvious.

All I could do was leave Stuart as a possible, while following up other lines of enquiry.

“I also went up to Colbox to talk to people there.”

“How did you get on?”

“The boss seems amenable and willing to help, and I felt the same about someone called Sarah who deals with enquiries as you go in.”

“I see.”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said, and smiled.

I looked at her, mystified. Must be a girl thing, I thought.

“Anyway,” I went on, “there are only two people working there whose names begin with G.”

“Really?”

“Yes. There's a Gemma and a Grant. Grant says he knew Helen hardly at all, and what he said rang true. He works in a different part of the building. He's not the sort of person I would expect Helen to have associated with, and he seemed genuine when he spoke to me.”

“That's what you said about Stuart.”

“I know. Are you beginning to doubt my judgement?”

“Of course not. It's difficult knowing who you can believe. What about Gemma?”

“Now she's interesting. She worked in the same department as Helen for a while, and then Helen was promoted to PA virtually over Gemma's head.”

“So she might have been jealous.”

“She might have been, although she said not.”

‘She would, wouldn't she?”

“And there was something else about her whole demeanour while I was talking to her.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was far from relaxed - much more wary, I would say, as if she was being careful what she said.”

“So you think she was hiding something?”

“It's possible that she was, yes.”

Joyce took another sip of her drink and I began to think again, particularly about the question of judging people from what they say and how they look when they say it.

“Let's leave Stuart and Colbox on the back burner for a moment,” I said. “The other thing I'm trying to do is put together a picture of your family and its background. I have no idea if any of it means anything, but some interesting points came up with your mum this morning.”

She looked up at me over the menu she had been studying.

“Like what?”

“Well, your grandmother's will, for a start. What's that all about?”

“Oh, that.”

She put down the menu.

“Granny owned a lot of land, and when her husband died she decided she couldn't cope with it any more. She had farm managers and people running everything, but she felt very cut off and lonely.”

“She had lost her son as well.”

“She lost both sons at once,” she corrected me.

“What?”

“They were both on the motorbike when it crashed.”

“God, that must have devastated her.”

“I think it nearly killed them both. Grandad had worked hard keeping the estates going. Apparently he used to talk a lot about how long they had been in the family, and the importance of continuing the line.”

“And they lost the next generation.”

“Exactly.”

We fell silent for a while and returned to studying the menus. There was something niggling at the back of my mind, but I couldn't quite reach it, so I went up to the bar to order our food.

When I returned to the table, Joyce looked up at me with rather a blank expression.

“We're not getting anywhere with this, are we?”

She sounded despondent. I tried to sort my thoughts into some kind of order.

“Your granny must have been worth a fair amount after she sold her land. Was it an estate, did you say?”

“Two estates, yes. One came from her family, and one from his. She felt quite guilty about letting them go, I think. She used to say the land was no use to her. That she had done nothing to earn it - that it was something of a burden really.”

I recalled what Joyce's mother had told me.

“And if both her sons died, you would have expected Helen to inherit?”

“Of course. She was the only direct descendent, her granddaughter.”

“But everything went to somebody else.”

“Yes, and nobody knows who she is and why she inherited.”

Our food arrived and we began to eat rather thoughtfully.

“Obviously your granny had given no indication of what was in the will.”

“No. But we all assumed it would be straightforward. It was going to be something of a relief actually.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well Dad lost his job. He had some ideas of things he could do, but they all required capital, and all Mum and Dad had was locked up in the house. And that was already mortgaged.”

“So the inheritance would have been useful, for setting something up.”

“Yes. I think there was some plan about Helen going to work with Dad. Investing in the new business. I don't know any details.”

“And someone else got the money.”

“Mum and Dad were furious. There was a bit of a scene when granny's will was read out.”

“Were you there?”

“Yes. We all were.”

“When you say ‘all'?”

“I mean, all four of us.”

“No one else?”

“Certainly not the person who inherited, if that's what you mean.”

“So what happened?”

“We went to the solicitor's office in London. He opened the will and read it out and Dad hit the roof. He said there must be some mistake and asked who the person was who was stealing all our money.”

“And the solicitor wouldn't say?”

“He said it was granny's strict instruction that no details should be given.”