Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

‘I refer to the spoils they have or will shortly receive from you, Lord Luckens.’

‘What the devil do you mean?’ he shouted, red in the face with anger.

‘I looked at this case the wrong way up. It took an egg timer to understand that I needed to stand it on its head and let the sand trickle through. When I did so it was quite obvious that neither of these gentlemen could be your missing heir. That in any case was always a possibility, but the egg timer caused me to realise that it was you who had planned the whole thing, hired their services, forged the so-called evidence and falsely claimed to them and probably your solicitor that Pinkertons had checked out the birth certificates in the States.’

‘Think I’m out of my mind, do you? I’d have to adopt one of them to keep Jonathan out of it. Why the devil should I adopt a stranger?’

‘Because you hated your brother and then his son so much.’

‘Enough to adopt an out-of-work actor and a smooth-talking rogue? That’s who they are and that I can prove. How could I have known one of them was going to shoot the fellow to make sure of his inheritance?’

‘You couldn’t. You hated your nephew so much, you’d prefer the Queen to have the estate. With Jonathan dead you would later find proof that neither Red nor William is your missing heir. There is in fact no missing heir. It was a plot to rid yourself of Jonathan by murder. You shot him, Lord Luckens, in the expectation one of them would be blamed.’

To Auguste’s surprise, Lord Luckens did not treat him to an outburst of abuse. Instead, he gave a bark of laughter.

‘You’re clever for a Frenchie, Didier. Not clever enough, though. If I were a murderer, I’d be unmasked the minute those two rabbits blabbed to the police. No, I’ll tell you what really happened. I hired them all right. The mistake I made was to make it a gamble for them. Whichever you unmasked as the impostor would get nothing but his expenses; the one you decided was my grandson would get £5,000. Tidy sum, eh? Worth killing for. Hadn’t foreseen that. Whichever Jonathan picked on as the impostor had good reason to stop him talking. With two such prime suspects, the police aren’t going to suspect me just because I didn’t like the fellow, no matter what beans they spilled about my hiring them.’

‘Would the police not believe it a little strange that you were willing to pay so much money merely for the pleasure of seeing your nephew’s ambitions temporarily thwarted? You could hardly explain that you knew in advance of hiring Red and William that Jonathan would no longer be alive when you disclosed the truth about them.’

Lord Luckens gave a gargoyle grin of pure evil. ‘They’ll understand why I hired them, Didier. I’m a poor old man of eighty, and can’t hang around for ever. Devoted to Lady Luckens, tears in her eyes, not too bright in the head, loving husband wants to make her happy. What better than that her beloved grandson’s returned to her? Worth any price, that. Might even adopt one of them – which do you fancy, Didier? Money no object to make her ladyship happy. They’ll believe me, not a blasted chef.’

‘They will when they hear what I have to say.’

His lordship snorted. ‘You stick to cooking, Didier. Blasted sugared lettuce stalks.’

With some effort Auguste ignored the insult to his suckets. ‘I asked myself why Jonathan should have armed himself with a pistol to defend himself and then left it in a drawer when a night-time visitor arrived. If he were expecting Red or William, or if the visit were unannounced, the pistol would be within easy reach; if he knew the caller was you, however, he would hardly have felt fear for his life. I believe that you told him you were coming, giving the excuse that at such a time and in such a place you could not be overheard if Jonathan were to tell you whom he suspected of being the impostor. Or perhaps he suspected them both. You, Lord Luckens, were the only person who need not fear the gunshot being overheard. What’s more natural than that the host, who sleeps nearby and who has placed his guests’ bedrooms far away from the Queen’s Chamber, should be first on the scene to find the cause of the alarm?’

‘Poppycock,’ Lord Luckens snorted, with less conviction.

‘I think not. Had you hired only one impostor, you might well have succeeded. Your mistake, Lord Luckens, was to over-egg the pudding by hiring two, to try to make your story more convincing.’

Through the window Auguste could see the police arriving.

‘You were the bad egg,’ he continued. ‘Your mistake was that you asked me, a master chef, to cook it.’

The man enjoyed the work. He always did. Just he and his dog and a summer’s morning. It was ‘their time’ – his feet crumbling the loose gravel on the towpath as the last of the haze rose from the canal and his dog twisting and turning, now ahead of him, now beside him, now behind him, now ahead of him, now beside him, now behind him, now ahead of him again. They rounded the bend of the canal and entered the phase of the walk that the man loved most of all, where thick vegetation grew at either side of the canal and reached out over the water, so that in summer especially, when the foliage was at its most lush, this part of the canal resembled a walk in a tunnel. It was in this section of the York canal that the man saw the greatest incidence of wildlife, the moorhens, kingfishers, stoats, and water rats. The latter he minded not, for like all creatures, they had a place in the scheme of things. Here they were wild, not scavengers living off the debris of humankind, and he chose to accept them as beasts in their own place. And he also saw insects, dragonflies, butterflies, spiders. At the end of the ‘tunnel’ ahead of him, he could see the black-and-white gates of the ‘Larkfield Three-Rise’, a tier of three locks which lifted the canal up a full thirty feet to its next section, which took it across the Wold towards Hull and the seaport there. Or lowered it for the final stretch into York, depending upon which way the barge, now a pleasure craft rather than a working boat, was travelling. The man walked slowly, savouring the walk, just he and his best friend. An onlooker would see a man in his sixties, plus fours, stout shoes, a tweed jacket, and a white Norfolk hat, and with him, a confident chocolate-brown Labrador. The man left the shade of the ‘tunnel’ and put himself at the inclined path which ran alongside the three-rise until he stood at the top. These days he was finding the incline difficult…even a short incline such as this he found hard. He could, he felt, walk forever upon the flat, but inclines were proving difficult. He paused at the top of the incline and pondered the next section of the walk, another six hundred yards of canal towpath and then he’d turn into the wood and begin the sweep back towards home. He expected to be home by nine-thirty…in time for Morning Service on the BBC. It was a good walk, about three hours long, and he and his friend did it together twice a week, in all but the most extreme weather conditions.

Then he saw a shiny black object in the canal, and tutted at folk who thought nothing of throwing their refuse into the water. With a jolt, he realised that he wasn’t looking at a black bin liner containing domestic rubbish, he was looking at oily water shimmering on a leather jacket which encased a human body, floating face down in the water.

The body was that of a female. The first police officer to attend waded into the canal and was eventually forced to swim the last few feet, the water being just too deep for a tall man to wade. He reached the body, gasping at the chill of the water despite it being high summer, and rolled it face up, just in case there was still time, but the pale and bloated, macerated skin said that all hope had gone. He swam sideways, dragging the body with him back to the towpath, where he and his colleague together hauled the body out of the water. Closer examination showed her to be a woman of middle years and possibly, probably, of privileged living. The leather jacket was not inexpensive, neither was the watch, nor the jewellery, nor the skirt, nor the shoes, which had remained on her feet, held firmly as the body expanded.