James Benn - The Rest Is Silence

“You claimed to know what has happened, Captain Boyle,” Edgar said. “I suggest you proceed with facts and leave the baseless insinuations out. You were recently a guest here, remember.”

“If you insist,” I said, giving in to the pain in my calves and taking a seat. “Here’s what I do know. On the night he was killed, Peter Wiley made the mistake of speaking to someone about what Sir Rupert had said to him: that Peter was Rupert’s illegitimate son, and that he stood to inherit the estate. My guess is it was done out of genuine, innocent enthusiasm. Peter had lost his parents in America, Ted Wiley quite early in his life. He must have been overcome with joy to find he was part of this family and this house, which he’d heard so much about all his life. That may have prevented him from thinking through the implications for Sir Rupert’s daughters. I’d guess he blurted it out, unable to contain himself. But it was too much to bear, wasn’t it, Helen?”

“No!” she shrieked, burying her head in David’s shoulder.

“No, it wasn’t too much to bear?” I asked.

“Captain Boyle,” Meredith said, her teeth clenched. “Stop bullying dear Helen. It’s true that none of us liked the idea of Father’s unfaithfulness staring us in the face, but that does not add up to murder.”

“Even when Peter would inherit?” I said. “After all, your mother had promised you Ashcroft House. It was rightfully yours, but she died before she could put you in the will ahead of her husband. That must have rankled, after what you’d witnessed. Your father and Julia Greenshaw embracing in the garden. Or was it even more than a kiss and embrace that you saw?”

“Captain Boyle! Remember your manners,” Lady Pemberton said. There were no manners in an interrogation, but I thought it best not to lecture her on police procedures.

“Of course I hated Father for what he did,” Meredith said, too eager to defend herself to listen to anyone else. “He pushed my mother to an early grave and would have begged that terrible Greenshaw woman to return to Ashcroft if I hadn’t kept the letter from him.”

“Only that one?” I asked.

“It was the only one she sent, as far as I know,” Meredith said. “He even offered to get Edgar a position again, if only I’d give it over. I declined.”

“What!” Edgar said, roused. “How could you?”

“Easily,” Meredith said. “Why bother? You’d only ruin things again. Now you have your leisure to write your silly book. Even you couldn’t ruin that.”

“It’s true, then,” Edgar said. “Crawford. I confronted him about it a few nights ago, but he denied it. I’ve had my suspicions.”

“Our private affairs are of no concern to these policemen,” Meredith said, her eyes drilling into Edgar’s.

“Why did you accuse Helen?” David said, after an uncomfortable silence had filled the room.

“I think it happened on the stairs,” I said, not answering directly. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was the only reason his wife could look him in the face, that she sought solace in him out of guilt, not love. “And probably not on purpose. Perhaps near the painting of Helen. You can see a bit of Peter in that, I think. A push, a shove, a desperate need to get away from the words being spoken by this interloper, this man who might take everything away. Who might toss you all out of Ashcroft House.”

“Preposterous,” David said, looking to Kaz for vindication. Kaz stood rigidly silent.

“I know you didn’t mean to kill him, Helen,” I said. “But you couldn’t help yourself. It must have been a terrible shock. How could you live with no home and a badly scarred husband?”

“It was an accident, I tell you!” Helen exclaimed, blinking back tears as she sat up straight. “I didn’t mean for any of it to happen.”

“So you called for Meredith,” I said. “She and Crawford were together, and they took over. Peter Wiley wasn’t dead yet, and he might have been saved. But they decided he was worth more dead than alive. He was worth Ashcroft House.”

“I had nothing to do with that,” Helen said. David moved away, his eyes narrowing as he watched her face.

“It was all Crawford,” Meredith said, jumping in before Helen could say any more. “Yes, I admit it. I had an affair with him. I’m so ashamed, but everything was going wrong, and I made a terrible mistake. It was foolish, I know. After all, he was a criminal, as you said.” She spoke with the desperation of a woman willing to bear all to evade responsibility.

“What happened next?” I said.

“Crawford said it would be better if Peter died,” Meredith said. “We both tried to stop him, didn’t we, Helen?” On cue, Helen nodded. “But then he sat on his chest and put his hands over his mouth and nose. He suffocated him. He threatened to do the same to us if we said anything.” That fit with what the doctor had said about Peter being burked.

“Why did he do all this?” I asked, eyeing the staff lined up against the wall. Alice’s mouth was wide open at the shocking revelations.

“He was worried about being thrown out. He didn’t like Americans at all, you know that. He said he’d take care of things. I never thought he’d be so stupid as to keep the ring.”

“He didn’t get rid of the motorbike either,” I said. “He rode it into the restricted area.”

“What a brutal, stupid man,” Meredith said. “Edgar, I know you can hardly be expected to believe me, but I am terribly sorry. I never intended for things to get so out of hand. He threatened to kill you if I didn’t go along with his awful plan. He was kind at first, but that was only a ruse. He turned into a violent beast.” Edgar looked away, his eyes flickering over the bookshelves, perhaps thinking how much better life was on the printed page.

“Then Crawford hid the body in the barn, until we came along and gave him the perfect plan for getting rid of it,” I said.

“Yes,” Meredith admitted, her voice low and demure. “The tides.”

“We first came here telling you all about the body on the beach at Slapton Sands, and how the tides and currents carried it in and out, along the coast. As soon as Crawford heard of a transport going down, he took Peter’s body and put a life jacket on it. Then he took him out far enough to slip him overboard and let the tide take him out. I figured that much out when we saw how easy it was to pick up a US Navy life jacket down at the harbor in Dartmouth. Then I remembered Crawford said he’d been turned back when he went out to help recover survivors. But the navy wasn’t turning anyone away. We saw a fishing boat in the Channel ourselves.”

“We didn’t know anything about that,” Meredith said. I wasn’t so sure. Crawford might have come up with the idea to let Peter drift out on the tide all by himself. Or, it could have been Meredith who suggested it.

“I can’t believe this,” David said, shaking his head as if trying to wake from a dream.

“David,” Helen said, taking his hand in hers.

“You killed your own brother,” he said, unable to look her in the face. Talk about a twist of fate.

“It was Crawford,” Meredith said. “We would have called for a doctor. It was only an accident, after all. But he hated Americans so, he was glad to see Peter die. He threatened us. We were both so frightened of him, we didn’t know what to do. He became so ugly I was worried for my own life, and Helen’s.”

I looked to the door and gave Constable Carraher a nod. Seconds later, they brought in Roger Crawford in cuffs, a thick bandage around his scalp, but fit enough to have heard it all.

“Is that how it happened?” I asked.

“You bloody bitch!” Crawford said, straining to get closer to Meredith. If Carraher and the other constable hadn’t had a tight hold on him, he’d have gone for Meredith for certain.