Martin Edwards - The Arsenic Labyrinth

In her mind, Hannah heard Alban’s sonorous complaints about the pettifoggery of the bureaucrats. No need for m’learned friends to bother now. The fire had done their work for them.

‘Alban Clough’s a law unto himself.’

‘They reckon Inchmore Hall is a deathtrap. This was a disaster waiting to happen.’

‘We need to …’

‘My God! My God!’

A woman had burst through the cordon and was clattering up the driveway. Alex Clough, in a suede coat and high heels. Thank God she had not been roasted to a cinder inside her blazing home. She wasn’t dressed for sprinting and as she drew level with Hannah and Maggie, she stumbled and sank to the ground.

‘Is your father inside?’ Hannah bellowed.

‘I don’t know! He was at home this evening. Unless he managed to get out …’

She looked up and saw the look on the two women’s faces. Breathing hard, she hauled herself back on to her feet.

‘I must try to save him!’

Hannah rushed to her side and grasped her hand. In part to comfort, in part to restrain. ‘You can’t go in there.’

Alex began to sob. ‘My father, my father, my father …’

She repeated the words time after time, even as Hannah and Maggie put their arms around her so that they could lead her to a safer place. Somewhere to wait and watch while the only home she’d ever known burned to ashes.

Hannah wasn’t answering her mobile, so Daniel sent her a text asking her to contact him urgently. I know name of 2nd body. If that didn’t prompt a call, nothing would. After what he had read, he couldn’t sleep, so he stayed up all night in his favourite chair, smoothing out the tangles in his mind. When Miranda came downstairs in the blue-striped rugby shirt she wore to bed, she told him he looked knackered. He mumbled something unintelligible, his thoughts far away. They exchanged desultory small talk over toast and coffee in their gleaming new kitchen. He wasn’t in the mood to explain what he had discovered. Hannah, he wanted to save it for Hannah.

She called back five minutes after Miranda departed on a shopping trip to Kendal. It was not long after nine, but he heard her stifling a yawn even as she said hello. She sounded as tired as he felt

‘Sorry, long night. Inchmore Hall went up in a ball of flame.’

He swore. ‘What happened?’

‘Remember Manderley ablaze in the final reel of Rebecca ?’ She’d told him once that in her teens this was a favourite film, she’d even had a brief crush on Olivier. ‘I could have sworn I saw Mrs Danvers’ crazy face at the window. But this time there wasn’t a happy ending. Alban Clough was inside. He didn’t stand a chance.’

He pictured the old man as he’d last seen him. Smiling slyly, enjoying the thrill of private knowledge, protesting ignorance of the second body buried below the Arsenic Labyrinth. Of course, he was lying, but that was nothing new. He’d lived a lie for fifty years, hugged his secret close, to the very end.

‘Are you still there?’

‘Sorry. I was thinking …’

‘This text you sent me. What have you found out?’

‘The dead man you discovered when you went in search of Emma Bestwick. His name was William Inchmore.’

‘William? How can you be sure?’

‘Because I’ve read about his murder.’

‘Read about it? You’re having a laugh, aren’t you?’

‘He was stabbed to death with a bread knife, wasn’t he?’

A sharp intake of breath, then a long pause as she absorbed his news. She hadn’t mentioned to him how the man had been killed. Even though she confided in him more than she should, there were limits. And the information hadn’t been released to the media. When she spoke again, her tone was wry.

‘Tell you what, Daniel. You must have inherited the detective gene. So what exactly is this you’ve been reading?’

‘The murderer’s account of the crime.’

‘If you tell me you bought it in Marc’s shop, I’ll scream.’

‘No need, the story is in a private journal purchased by Jeremy Erskine’s historical society. Not that Jeremy has ever read it. I’m the first.’

‘And who is the author? Not Alban Clough, surely?’

‘No, although he knew exactly what had happened. His mother was the mistress of William Inchmore. William used the Arsenic Labyrinth as a trysting place, that’s where he made love to Betty Clough.’

‘Are you saying that Betty murdered him?’

‘No, that was Edith Inchmore, William’s wife. When she learned about the affair, she lured him to the Labyrinth and went up there herself with a knife. What she didn’t know was that Alban was hiding out up there. He witnessed her crime, but he didn’t move a muscle to stop her. He kept quiet as he watched Edith kill his mother’s lover.’

They arranged to meet at a new Bavarian coffee bar in the heart of Kendal. Daniel parked in the multi-storey at Westmorland Shopping Centre and fished a tote bag out of the boot. None of the passers-by in Stricklandgate gave him a second glance, nobody guessed that the bag held a confession to murder.

He’d pieced together the Inchmores’ story from Edith’s journal. After George wrecked the family business, his son set about ruining their name. What William lacked in wealth, he more than made up for in swaggering self-confidence and raffish good looks. He spent his early adult years sleeping around and squandering what was left of the family fortune at the racecourse, while drifting from job to job. With Inchmore Hall sold to the Cloughs and his parents dead, he had little to keep him in Coniston and during a spell selling silk stockings in Yorkshire, he met and married Edith Sharpe. A plain spinster whose acid tongue belied a dread of being left on the shelf, she was quick to fall under his spell. Above all, she had the inestimable advantage of a father who had made a packet from a leather business in Bradford. William didn’t see marriage as an impediment to philandering and gambling, but rather as a means of funding his favourite activities. He faked a heart condition to escape military service and spent the war years selling cosmetics and petrol on the black market. A fortnight before VE Day, he was arrested, and although he managed to talk his way out of a prison sentence, old man Sharpe cut off his daughter’s allowance and made Yorkshire County Cricket Club the main beneficiary of his estate. Edith stood by her husband and never spoke to Daddy again but, after failing to make a go of various improbable business ventures, William was forced to return to Coniston and go cap in hand to Armstrong Clough and ask for work.

What prompted Armstrong Clough, a businessman with a nose as hard as Helvellyn, to offer a job to a slacker who hadn’t even made a success out of petty crime? Armstrong was the sort of Englishman who, during the Thirties, argued that Oswald Mosley talked a lot of sense and that Hitler was the sort of leader any nation worth its salt required. War might have changed his tune, but he remained, if Edith’s journal was any guide, an old-fashioned bully contemptuous of altruism.

Only one explanation occurred. It must have amused Armstrong to have an Inchmore at his beck and call. Long ago, Albert Clough had to jump when Sir Clifford Inchmore said jump. Now the Cloughs owned the hall and the Inchmores depended upon their goodwill. Armstrong might be a miserable old bugger with a gammy leg, while William was a dashing ladies’ man, but it was Armstrong who possessed the money, the mansion and the gorgeous bride, while William had to make do with a cottage in a back street and poor, unlovely Edith. A very satisfactory arrangement. The only snag was that William’s roving eye soon fell on Betty. A naive and neglected woman whose son was growing up and whose husband was often away from home was easy prey for an accomplished Lothario.