Fatal Legacy (15 page)

Parks returned to the group, notebook in hand.

‘A few questions, just to establish the basics.’ He thought of the body taken down from the tree, the footprints all over the site, and the marks of the scuffle between Jenny and his colleague. He would be in serious trouble.

‘Who actually found the body?’

‘My daughter, Lucy,’ Colin explained. ‘She’s up at the house with my wife.’

‘Was she on her own?’

‘No, Ryan was with her, he’s her boyfriend. They came back to the house and we organised ourselves into a search party.’

‘Rather than wait for the police?’ Parks couldn’t stop thinking of the mess they’d made of the scene – why couldn’t they have just waited for the professionals to arrive?

‘We thought he might still have been alive.’

‘So Lucy and Ryan were unsure, were they?’

‘No,’ said Alexander. ‘They were clear, but we – well, Sally in particular – thought he might just’ve been drunk or
something
.’

‘I see. And Sally is?’

‘My wife, Constable Parks, Mrs Wainwright-Smith, but you can’t talk to her now. As you can see, she’s terribly upset. I need to get her back to the house, and Jenny too. They’re both in shock and it’s cold out here.’

‘Very well, sir. If I could just have all your names, and I’d
ask that none of your party leaves the house. We’ll need statements.’

‘Statements? But why? This is a suicide. You don’t need to trouble this family any more, surely?’ Kemp sounded every bit the family solicitor.

‘All we have at the moment, sir, is a sudden death that is obviously not by natural causes. The detective in charge is bound to want statements.’

It was a silent party that huddled around the low remains of the fire in the drawing room, awaiting the arrival of the detectives who would soon assume control of their lives. Alexander had calmed the cooks and butler and bribed them into waiting, even though they protested that they had seen nothing and would be of no help to the police. Lucy was fast asleep upstairs. Ryan had phoned his mother to explain that he would be late, and was engaged in a silent challenge on his Game Boy.

There was the sound of tyres on gravel, car doors opening and closing and then a low murmur of voices from the entrance hall. The butler showed a tall, dark man and a woman in uniform into the room. Alexander recognised the man at once.

‘Chief Inspector Fenwick. How good of you to come. We didn’t expect you for such a …’ he struggled to find the right words, ‘domestic matter.’

‘Mr Wainwright-Smith. My sergeant was on call and he decided I should know. I chose to come. This is WPC Shah. I know it’s late,’ the grandfather clock in the hall obediently chimed two as he spoke, ‘but I shall need statements from you all individually. Is there a room we could use?’

‘Of course, the sitting room next to this, or there’s the library on the other side of the great hall, although it might be rather cold.’

Julia stood up.

‘My daughter Lucy’s fast asleep. She’s only seventeen; do you have to take a statement from her tonight?’

‘It was Lucy who discovered the body, wasn’t it?’ Julia nodded. ‘In which case I’m afraid I would prefer to speak to her as soon as possible, unless she’s been given a sedative.’

Julia nodded reluctantly and went to wake her daughter. There was a sudden explosion of weeping from the sofa closest to the fire.

‘Oh, it’s all too terrible! I can’t bear it. Oh God!’ Sally dropped her head into her hands and rocked back and forth, tears streaming between her fingers and spattering her evening trousers. Jeremy and Colin rushed over to her, then stood back somewhat reluctantly to let her husband reach her side. He tried to comfort her but she was almost hysterical.

‘This is no good, Chief Inspector. I’ll have to take her up to bed.’

‘You should get a doctor to see her.’ Colin glanced at Alexander accusingly.

‘I’ve got some Valium in my bag. Would that help?’ Muriel Kemp stole a nervous glance at her husband as she rummaged in a large paisley handbag.

‘She needs a proper prescription, Muriel, not your comfort drops. I agree with Colin, we need her doctor here.’

Alexander helped Sally to her feet.

‘It’s OK. She has her own prescription. Thank you, Muriel, it was a kind thought, but she had best take her own tablets. She does need to rest now, though.’ He turned to Fenwick. ‘Chief Inspector, would you mind? She’s in no state to help you as she is.’

Fenwick paused and studied Mrs Wainwright-Smith. Odd, this violent grief in one otherwise so controlled. Had they been that close, then, she and Graham Wainwright; more than cousins-in-law? Her crying irritated him. It was theatrical and off-putting. He decided that questioning her could wait until morning and said so to her husband. As the pair of them disappeared up the grand wooden staircase, Lucy and her mother came down it. Lucy stared at Sally, obviously upset by her loud distress. Fenwick could see her mother tutting and shaking her head at such a display from a grown woman who wasn’t even a relative. Interesting: all the men wanted to protect Sally, but the women saw something entirely different. He wondered what it was.

‘Lucy.’ He smiled his best father-figure smile at the blonde beauty who stared at him with tear-magnified eyes from above
the upturned collar of a candlewick nightgown two sizes too big for her. ‘I’m Andrew Fenwick. I’m a policeman and I’m here because your Cousin Graham has died. Do you
understand
?’

‘Of course. It’s all right, I mean, I’m OK, not like her.’ She turned to look back up the stairs.

Ryan put his Game Boy to one side and came to take her hand.

‘You OK, Luce?’

‘Yeah, fine. You?’

‘Uh-huh, sort of.’

They stood shyly in front of the others, too old to behave naturally and just hug each other; not old enough to have the confidence to do it anyway.

‘This way, please, Lucy. Would you like one of your parents to be with you?’ Lucy shook her head, and Fenwick and WPC Shah escorted her across the grand hall and into the library. The air was chilly but they none of them appeared to mind. Lucy cuddled the candlewick to her, then pulled her feet out of overlarge flip-flops and tucked them up into the folds of warm material beneath her thighs. Fenwick started without preamble.

‘You found the body, with Ryan.’ It was a statement.

‘Uh-huh. We sort of went for a walk and it – he – was there, under the tree.’ She swallowed hard but seemed to be reasonably in control. He decided to continue in the same matter-of-fact way.

‘I want you to tell us everything you remember. Everything.’

‘Well, it was very dark and misty. We’d got lost but I could hear the river and I knew that once we’d found it I could get us home. The tree just appeared in front of us, you know?’

Fenwick nodded.

She hugged her knees up tight to her chest, eyes glazed as she concentrated on some distant memory, then she refocused on the policeman and grimaced.

‘Sorry. The tree. When we found it, my first thought was one of relief. We weren’t lost any more. The mist was really thick by then and we were soaked. The next bit’s the horrible bit,’ she said, in a small voice that reminded Fenwick of his own sevenyear- old daughter.

Without thinking, he got up and went to sit beside her, lifting one stiff hand away from her knee and into his own comforting grasp. He saw WPC Shah raise her eyebrows and he gave a slight shake of his head. It might not be politically correct, but he knew that it was the right thing to do.

‘Go on. We’re not in a hurry, take your time.’

‘It’s all right, it’s just that …’ She squeezed his fingers and he saw the policewoman relax. ‘Oh, I don’t know. No matter how I try to think about it, it’s so horrible.’

‘Finding a body is horrible, but you need to help us by telling us exactly what you saw.’

‘OK.’ She took a deep breath and looked away again. ‘Somehow we circled around the tree, and then I could see this figure moving in the mist. I realised that there was something odd about its shape. Instead of coming any closer it just stayed there, swinging from side to side, almost like it was dancing. It was spooky.

‘Ryan thought it was a peeping Tom and got really angry. He went striding up to it and said, “Oi, what do you think you’re looking at.” But of course there was no answer, so I went too and as soon as I got there and I could see the face I knew it was Graham. The hair, how he wears it, nobody else has it like that these days. And I thought, how unlike him to be prowling. But he had no clothes on, only this leather thong-type thing, with his, with his …’ again a pause and then a whisper, ‘you know, his thing poking out over the top. Then I looked at his eyes.’ She stopped speaking and swallowed hard.

‘Go on.’

‘They were wide open and staring. All red in the light of Ryan’s torch. I knew he was dead. He had to be. Graham was weird but there’s no way he was a pervert. I screamed. Ryan yelled and grabbed my hand, and we both started running. The fog was all around us and we seemed to run for ever. Then Alexander was there, and he was so calm and he brought us home and I went up to bed and, well, that’s it. That’s all.’

‘Well done,’ he said, and patted her hand. ‘That’s incredibly helpful. I just need to check a few things. When you and Ryan were on your walk, did you hear anything?’

‘No, nothing. An old dog fox howling and an owl that made Ryan jump, but nothing else.’

‘You didn’t get the sense that there could have been anybody else out there?’

She shuddered, but shook her head.

‘No. Not until we saw the body. It was absolutely quiet and the mist seemed to make any noises louder.’

‘Let’s go back to the body. You said it was swinging from side to side?’

‘Yes, he was hanging, didn’t you know?’ Lucy looked surprised. ‘He had a thick rope around his neck. I know we should’ve tried to get him down, but I never even thought about it at the time, and he
was
dead, there was no mistaking that.’

‘You did the right thing to leave him where he was. With a sudden death the police always have to be involved, and it’s best to leave the scene undisturbed.’

‘Oh good. I’d been feeling guilty about that.’ She looked relieved and yawned suddenly.

‘Anything else about the scene that you can remember – the colour of the rope, how it was tied? Where his clothes were, for example?’

She thought hard. ‘No, nothing. Except that, well, there was litter on the ground around the tree. I noticed it before I saw the body.’

There was nothing more Lucy could tell him about finding the body, and Fenwick moved on to her return to the house. Her memory of this wasn’t as good. She’d obviously slipped further into shock by the time she had run into Alexander. She described her cousin’s concern clearly enough, their return to the house and the disbelief they found there that Graham could be dead. Her only detailed recollection, though, was of Sally saying sharply, ‘dead drunk, not dead,’ and how bitchy it had sounded. But Jenny had believed them. She’d been so worried about Graham all evening, and she was sure something had happened to him.

He thanked Lucy and asked WPC Shah to take her back to her parents and bring in Ryan, without letting them talk to each other.

Ryan was also seventeen, and Fenwick again offered to wait
until his parents could be with them in the interview, but the lad just laughed briefly and told him to get on with it. He confirmed Lucy’s story and added a few points of detail of his own. He’d noticed more about the rope around Graham’s neck. It looked like a hangman’s noose, properly knotted, and the long length of it had gone down under a thick exposed root to the
right-hand
side. The ‘litter’ on the ground had been a few pornographic magazines, but he couldn’t tell him what type they were. Fenwick thanked him and arranged for a police car to take him home, annoyed on the lad’s behalf that neither of his parents had bothered to come and be with him.

Who next? he thought. What was the best order going to be? He decided it would be ladies first. Jenny he had to see quickly, and he was curious to find out what people thought of Alexander and Sally before he interviewed them.

Jenny came in, leaning heavily on Shah’s arm, and the WPC sat next to her on the settee. Jenny slumped back into the cushions and closed her eyes. In the hall, the clock chimed quarter past three. Before they could start the interview, there was a gentle tap on the door and Muriel Kemp came in carrying a tray of tea and biscuits.

‘I thought you could do with these.’ She smiled hesitantly and placed them carefully on a low table in front of the empty grate. Fenwick thanked her and poured them all a large mug of hot tea, putting sugar into Jenny’s, despite her mild protest.

She was obviously deeply shocked, and it had spun over her a web of exhaustion and disbelief that was so thick it restricted her movements to those of a sleep-walker. She had sunk deep into lethargy. Fenwick couldn’t recall her saying anything since he’d arrived, and now he needed her statement, perhaps above all others, to help determine whether this sudden death might be accident, suicide or murder.

He studied her closely as she sipped her tea mechanically, grimacing occasionally at its sweetness. She was a pretty woman: lots of blonde hair; a winter tan on smooth arms and long skinny legs; and big blue eyes that he knew were the type that could captivate a man’s heart, although not his. But the bone structure beneath the youthful bloom was not exceptional, and he thought her looks would fade gently over time in a way
that would surprise the wrong type of husband who’d thought of her as a trophy wife.

The tea seemed to revive her. She suddenly shook herself and looked at Fenwick for the first time.

‘You’re being awfully patient, but I suspect you’re keen to get on and question me. I’m OK now. Go ahead.’

Her whole attitude was in such contrast to Sally Wainwright-Smith’s that it made Fenwick wonder again whether there had been anything between Sally and her cousin-in-law. He
questioned
Jenny gently but steadily, working through from the time she had last seen Graham, over two days before.

‘He left Scotland early on Wednesday, driving his Jag. We were going to meet here tonight.

‘By Thursday morning I was worried. Graham always calls me in the evenings, and he hadn’t rung the night before. I didn’t know which hotel he’d booked so I couldn’t check that he had arrived safely.’

‘Why were you worried?’

‘He had been so preoccupied lately, but secretive too, which was right out of character. He refused to talk to me about what might be worrying him. He said it was better that I didn’t know.’

‘Do you have any idea what it was that so concerned him?’

‘I think it must have been something to do with either Sally or the business; those seemed to be his biggest hangups. He’d had this private detective digging into Sally’s past for weeks.’

‘And he told you nothing about what he had discovered about Sally?’

‘No.’

‘What about the business?’

‘I don’t know what was bugging him, but it definitely concerned Wainwright’s. Graham,’ her voice caught again on his name, as if saying it had brought back a reality she’d forgotten during their conversation, ‘Graham had no interest in the business before his father died. But then George Ward started pestering him at the Memorial Service about how his father’s death couldn’t have been a suicide. And others kept commenting on how unbelievable it was that Sally and Alexander had inherited half the estate. So he called the Assistant Chief
Constable, and you came round. That’s when he hired the private detective too.

‘He told the detective that he thought Sally had somehow persuaded his father to change his will, so the man concentrated all his attention on her and her private life. But then, something happened – I don’t know what – but it made Graham’s attention turn to the company itself. He was worried by something he or the private detective had found out, and I think he was going to come here to confront somebody about it. In fact, I’m sure of it now – why else would he have come alone, without me? When he heard that Arthur Fish had died he was really worried, and so was I. I told him to come to you, the police.’