R Raichev - Assassins at Ospreys

‘Oh, I can’t get Len on his mobile… I could do with some company.’ Beatrice shot Payne a sidelong glance, but Antonia no longer minded. Earlier on Beatrice had been saying how absolutely thrilling she found that young man’s South African accent. She meant Greg. It wasn’t at all ‘common’, nothing like the way Australians, say, spoke – it sounded warm and unusual and well, sexy. She had given a laugh and made a funny face – her ‘duck face’, she informed them.

At one point she and Greg had started talking about tattoos and she had confided in him that she too had one. She would have shown it to him, she said coyly, if only she didn’t have to remove her stocking. They had stood in the kitchen at Ospreys, drinking brandy. Greg had opened one of Ralph Renshawe’s bottles of Armagnac. They had all needed a drink. Father Lillie-Lysander’s body had been taken away. The police had gone.

Well, Beatrice couldn’t help herself. She was that sort of woman. Still, they needed to talk to her seriously before long. What would be the best way to break the news to her? Beatrice wouldn’t have hysterics, would she? Antonia couldn’t bear the thought of a scene. They would probably end up staying the night at Millbrook House. (Where was Ingrid’s body? What had he done with the body?)

‘Heaven knows where Len has gone… He seems to have had a bonfire earlier on, can you smell it?’ Beatrice had opened her door but seemed reluctant to leave the car. ‘Such a pleasant, Christmassy kind of smell… I am sure that’s our back garden… Why are you so quiet? You look as though you know something I don’t. Don’t tell me I am imagining things. I saw you whispering, just before we left Ospreys… What is it? Why are you looking at me like that? You are frightening me!’

Antonia pretended she hadn’t heard. Keeping Beatrice in the dark afforded her an unworthy frisson of sadistic pleasure. ‘It’s getting colder,’ she said. ‘ The weather’s turning, have you noticed?’

‘All right.’ Major Payne cleared his throat. ‘Beatrice, there’s something you should know -’

Beatrice interrupted. ‘Oh my God, look – look. The light’s on in Ingrid’s room!’ She pointed. ‘Ingrid seems to be back… Now you simply must come in… You can’t possibly leave me alone with her. We may have to call the police and you can do that so much better than me.’

The Taj Mahal Necklace

Four weeks later it was Christmas and they had Major Payne’s aunt staying with them. Lady Grylls had recovered from her cataract operation, but she still wore a piratical patch across her right eye – because she fancied herself in it rather than out of any real necessity, Antonia suspected – and was eager for entertainment. Lady Grylls loved stories of mystery, mayhem and murder, so, with the Christmas pudding and the black coffee, they told her this one. The whole lamentable affair in which greed, revenge, despair and madness all played a part.

‘Colville gave every appearance of a man who stands on his feet, representing solidity and permanence, but he became a double murderer,’ Major Payne said. ‘Well, he wasn’t a particularly effectual landlord. His business had been going to the dogs. He needed money badly and, having this magnificent windfall come to his wife, he wasn’t going to allow it to be snatched away, just like that. What was hers was going to be his. They had a joint bank account. We are talking about a fabulous fortune here. Big money.’

‘How big?’ Lady Grylls asked. She liked details in a story.

‘Very big. Thirty-five million pounds. Well, money is a great catalyst. He decided to follow Ingrid moments after he’d seen her through the window and snapped her with his Polaroid. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. He saw her make for the bus stop. He had no doubt she’d get on the number 19 bus, which would take her to Ospreys. Maybe he saw her get on the bus. His one and only concern was that Ralph Renshawe should be alive at eleven o’clock and sign the will which made Beatrice his sole beneficiary.’

‘I love reconstructions like that.’ Lady Grylls helped her-self to more cream. ‘It’s almost as though you were there. You are terribly clever.’

‘Not at all. Much of this is pure speculation, darling, so we may be well off the mark about an awful lot of things… I wouldn’t presume to know exactly what went on in Colville’s mind, but it is doubtful whether he had a plan as such, not when he set out. His idea was to stop Ingrid inflicting any harm on Ralph Renshawe. Intervene, if necessary. So he ran out of the house, got into his car and drove to Ospreys.’

Lady Grylls frowned. ‘Why didn’t he alert the nurse over the blower if he was so concerned? He could have phoned Ospreys and saved himself the trouble. Or rung the front doorbell when he got there – and explained to her what was happening?’

‘He could have, but he didn’t. Good point, darling,’ said Major Payne. ‘My only explanation is that Colville was in some peculiar mental state that day, that he wasn’t thinking straight – worried silly about money, his tenants, the forthcoming court case and heaven knows what else. He had been under a lot of pressure.’

‘The front doorbell was out of order – Colville might have tried ringing it,’ Antonia put in.

Payne stroked his jaw. ‘He might have feared it would delay things if he started explaining the situation to the nurse. On the other hand, he might have been looking for an excuse to deal with Ingrid in his own terms – he seemed to have hated her as much as she hated him. Too fanciful? He phoned a policeman friend of his and told him how concerned he was about Ingrid, but that was after he had put her in his car boot. Anyhow, he got to the house and walked round to the back. He knew Renshawe occupied a room on the ground floor that looked out on the back gar-den and the wishing well -’

‘How did he know that? And why didn’t the nurse hear his car?’

‘The nurse was in the kitchen, which is in a different part of the house. I don’t imagine you can hear much from there. Colville had a rough drawing of Renshawe’s part of the house in his pocket. The police believe it was done by Ingrid – they found her fingerprints on it – and Colville chanced upon it somehow.’ Major Payne took a sip of coffee. ‘Colville saw the french windows were open. It was a very warm day, remember. He went closer and looked in. Well, it was Ingrid he had come to protect Ralph against, but what he saw was Ralph’s father confessor holding a pillow over Ralph’s face, pressing it down, clearly smothering him -’

‘I can’t quite imagine a C. of E. clergyman doing that kind of thing, can you?’ Lady Grylls said.

Antonia took up the tale. ‘Colville ran into the room and pulled Father Lillie-Lysander away. He probably resisted and Colville wrestled him down – against the knitting needle, as it happened. Colville was much bigger and stronger. The knitting needle had been on Ralph’s bedside table and Ralph had managed to get hold of it and was holding it aloft, but of course he was too feeble to put it to any effective use.’

‘So the padre got skewered?’

‘So the padre, as you so picturesquely put it, darling, got skewered,’ Major Payne said. ‘I don’t believe Colville intended it to happen that way, but there it was. Colville started dragging the priest’s body through the french windows, across the terrace in the direction of the well. It was at that point Ingrid appeared on the scene.’

‘It is almost as though you were there,’ Lady Grylls said again.

‘I imagine she taunted him – threatened to tell the police…’

‘Ingrid’s face was badly bruised, so were Colville’s knuckles,’ Antonia said thoughtfully. ‘Which suggests that Colville dealt her several blows with his fist. She fell to the ground, hit her head – passed out. Which allowed him to drag the priest’s body to the well. He also managed to cover the blood trail with dead leaves… Then he got Ingrid round the house to his car. He bound and gagged her -’