Murder in Hell's Corner Read online

  ‘If the murder was after the reunion, they must have been questioned, so—’

  ‘We have a way in, of a sort,’ Peter finished for her.

  ‘But what about the murder’s alleged connection with the hotel?’

  ‘Sorry, I forgot to tell you. Patrick Fairfax owned it together with Matthew Jones and a third partner.’

  Her stomach seemed to be churning, and it wasn’t the sandwiches’ fault. She and Peter were getting perilously close to the point of no return from it becoming a Marsh & Daughter case, and still all her hackles were warning her to run like hell. ‘His name didn’t come up at the reunion last weekend.’

  ‘How would we know? We weren’t with them all the time.’

  ‘You’d think with someone so famous in their ranks they would have done some name-dropping,’ she continued obstinately. ‘Especially since they were happy to tell us Matt Jones was the other owner.’

  ‘You’re making too much of it,’ Peter said – reasonably, she admitted. ‘Besides, the hotel wasn’t Fairfax’s sole concern, apparently. His obituary said he also ran something called the Wormshill Aviation Club, and that was his main love. The hotel only received a passing mention, so perhaps he was a sleeping partner. Maybe he put up the money and let Matthew Jones run it.’

  ‘You’re hooked, aren’t you?’ she asked in trepidation.

  ‘I must admit I find it tempting. Such a high-profile case, unsolved – and that dell.’

  ‘If that was where he was killed.’

  He grinned at her. ‘Let’s find out.’

  ‘I’m surprised you haven’t done so already.’

  ‘I would have done if some people –’ He raised his voice meaningfully as they heard Margaret’s footsteps in the passageway on her way home – ‘hadn’t insisted on interrupting me.’ The bang of the front door was the culprit’s only response.

  *

  Georgia scribbled her signature on the courier’s clipboard, a procedure she’d carried out several times since last Wednesday, and took the parcel in to Peter. He seized on it eagerly, tearing at the sticky tape and paper like a child with a birthday present. Oh well, she’d probably do the same, Georgia conceded. It was merely the knowledge that this must be to do with Patrick Fairfax that still made her want to ignore it.

  ‘Excellent,’ Peter proclaimed, gazing with admiration at a scruffy second-hand jacketless book. She leaned over his shoulder to look at the title page. Dancing the Skies: The Life of Wing Commander Patrick Fairfax, DSO, DFC by Jack Hardcastle. Did that, she immediately wondered, explain the reading of the Magee poem at the reunion they had gatecrashed? It might well do. A code between the survivors to read the poem in Fairfax’s honour rather than just toast the name. Although that, Georgia told herself firmly, is hypothesis ahead of the facts.

  ‘Does it cover his death?’ she asked.

  ‘Probably. It was published in 1977. It’s his life that might be more interesting, however, considering his murder remains unsolved. I had the devil’s own job to get this. It’s the only biography of him. This Life, This Death, because of the time it was first published with wartime restrictions, is short on hard fact. I read it yesterday.’

  ‘Didn’t he write a full biography later? I thought that was usual for pilots.’

  ‘Not all. Some preferred to forget all about the war, rather than dredge up old memories.’

  ‘Even if there’s a distinguished career involved?’ Georgia had been doing some internet research of her own, and Patrick Fairfax had had an interesting career after the Battle of Britain. An injury had called a temporary halt to operational flying, leading to a short spell of instructing – maybe that’s when he wrote This Life, This Death. Then he took command of 348 Squadron at Tangmere; he was shot down over France while on a delightfully named Rhubarb sortie, evaded discovery successfully and returned to England from Gibraltar having crossed the Pyrenees. He became a wing commander up north, then joined the Air Ministry for D-Day planning. Post-war he ran the Wormshill Aviation Club on the North Downs near Sittingbourne, which provided not only social weekend flying, but attracted aerobatic displays and also mounted air shows.

  ‘Success had its cost in the war. Writing about it afterwards might not have been easy,’ Peter replied.

  ‘Then why did he attend squadron reunions to chew it all over?’

  Peter frowned while he thought this through. ‘Reunions with shared memories can be just for that reason only. No need to speak. They all knew what happened. Anyway, for whatever reason, Fairfax didn’t write another book.’

  ‘So who is, or was, Jack Hardcastle?’

  ‘He’s an aviation historian. He wrote the squadron history Silvered Wings – yet another Magee quote, you see. That was published in the 1980s, and he’s a string of other books to his name now. No more about 362 though. Still, these should keep us busy for a while for background material.’

  ‘Us?’ She felt a deep foreboding.

  ‘Yes.’ He eyed her keenly. ‘You don’t agree?’

  ‘I didn’t like that dell,’ she stalled. ‘I admit it’s getting easier now that we know about Fairfax, but we still,’ she reminded him, ‘don’t know for certain that the dell has anything to do with Fairfax’s murder. All we know is that the body was found “in the grounds”.’

  ‘Ah. Did I tell you that Mike is looking in this afternoon?’

  Mike was Peter’s former sergeant during his time at Kent Police’s Stour Area, and was now a highly rated DCI. He’d had a spell away with what had been the National Crime Squad, now the Serious Organised Crime Agency, and so they hadn’t seen him for a while.

  ‘Social visit?’ Of course it wasn’t. Peter was after what he described as co-operation and Mike called arm-twisting.

  ‘Mike was in Downs Area before he came to Stour. Could be helpful.’

  Mike always was, thank goodness, despite his protests at Peter’s flagrant disregard of what was, and what was not, possible under protocol and police regulations. If he and Margaret united in protest, they could form an effective trade union in Peter’s life.

  Mike was almost as laidback as Luke. He had one of those poker faces that rarely moved without thought behind it. On the rare occasions she saw him with his wife Helen and young family he still seemed unbending, though far from unreceptive. The poker face was useful nowadays because he could bounce Peter’s more outrageous requests back as implacably as a squash ball by the wall.

  Mike duly arrived halfway through the afternoon, and drank his tea while Peter talked. ‘I remember,’ he said at last.

  ‘You can’t have been there in 1975, Mike,’ Georgia said incredulously. ‘You’d only have been a child.’

  ‘Right, but the case was still around. It wasn’t finally closed until around the time I joined in the Eighties, as a raw PC.’

  Peter pounced. ‘How was it still around?’

  Mike considered. ‘Frustration that they had to close the file unsolved.’

  ‘Is that because they knew who did it but couldn’t get evidence?’

  ‘Can’t say. Too long ago. All I know is it set me reading up on the war stuff. I used to go up to the Malling airfield and imagine it as it was in the Battle of Britain. The scrambles, the Luftwaffe raids on the airfields, the politics going on at high level and the pilots like Fairfax at the sharp end of them. Fascinating stuff. It seemed too bad for Fairfax – even to me coming in at the tail end of the case – to have survived all the Luftwaffe threw at him only to meet his death by a sneaky murder years later. It made our failure to solve the case seem even worse.’

  ‘You don’t recall who the chief suspect was?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Peter snorted in disgust. ‘You can do better than that, Mike.’

  ‘No, I can’t.’ He paused. ‘But I know a chap who can.’

  ‘And he is?’ Peter’s eyes gleamed. This was, Georgia knew, what he had expected all along, and Mike knew it full well. No gratitude would be expressed, although to be fair i
t was understood between them.

  ‘The investigating officer was DI Wilson. Died in harness in the nineties. His sergeant on the case was Chris Manners. Retired now, living down in Sussex somewhere. I can find out for you.’

  Peter beamed. ‘And the case files . . .?’

  ‘You’ll be lucky,’ Mike said sourly. ‘You’ll need the usual channels for those and to have plenty of reason for asking me.’

  They had none, of course. Not yet. Georgia caught herself. Not yet? To her horror, she realized that she had just acknowledged that this case was in their sights.

  *

  ‘Are you coming, Georgia?’ Peter asked when Mike reported back with Manners’ contact details and he had duly called him.

  Georgia considered this. The fewer people at an interview the better, which is why she and Peter usually did them singly. In this case, however, she was undecided. As an ex-policeman himself, Peter might be better alone with him, and yet instinct told her she wanted to be there – if only to face her own reluctance over this case.

  Christopher Manners lived in Burwash, near the Sussex/Kent border. The village’s chief claim to fame, she remembered, was that Rudyard Kipling had lived just outside it at Bateman’s, now a National Trust property. Having visited Bateman’s, she knew the village and liked its wide main street lined with cottages. Picture postcard it might look, but this was a working village, not a dormitory. They found Christopher Manners’ cottage in a side street, and she was slightly surprised, when he ushered them into his study, to see a bookcase full of Kipling’s works. He hadn’t seemed the Empire and Raj type when he greeted them. This was stupid of her, she realized. How could one tell a type? One only had stereotypes – in this case of a tall, upright, moustachioed, fierce-eyed throwback. Christopher Manners wasn’t. He was mild-mannered, grey-haired, of medium height, distinctly tubby and completely unthreatening – as many a villain must have thought to his cost in the past. His eye was remarkably keen as he summed them up.

  ‘Interesting man, Kipling,’ Christopher commented, seeing Georgia’s eyes straying to the bookcase. ‘You think you’ve got him pigeon-holed as a stuffy old gent, and then you discover he loved fast cars and had to flee the US because of domestic trouble with his in-laws. Agatha Christie, please step forward.’

  ‘Did you pigeon-hole Patrick Fairfax?’ she asked, amused that he did his own stereotyping. What had he placed her as? A merry widow? Single-minded spinster? Dedicated divorcée?

  ‘Had to. He was dead when I saw him. He more or less pigeon-holed himself anyway.’

  ‘How?’ Peter asked.

  ‘There were so many people breathing over our shoulders because of his chums in high places that we had the impression he was heading up to St Peter for sainthood.’

  ‘And was he? You must have talked to a lot of his colleagues and friends.’

  ‘Universal verdict favourable. No stones left unturned. A few grubs crawled out, but nothing survived scrutiny.’

  ‘No serious suspects?’ Georgia asked. ‘Or was it more a suggestion of a random death by stranger, for theft or drunken brawl or whatever?’

  ‘What’s your interest in it?’ Christopher asked bluntly. ‘It’s for one of your books, I suppose. Well, good luck to you. I mean that. You should know well enough, Peter, that if the Kent Police couldn’t track the villain down, there’s not much hope you can do so now. I wish you could. I’d like a hand in nailing the bastard.’

  ‘Ah. Any particular bastard?’ Peter enquired.

  Christopher grinned at being caught out. ‘There was only one motive suggested, and only one person attached to it. Matthew Jones, co-owner of the hotel. We hauled him in and grilled him like a dodgy sardine. Got nowhere.’

  ‘Was it a personal motive?’ Georgia asked.

  ‘Money. That can be personal enough. So far as I remember, the hotel had Fairfax’s flair invested in it, but Jones’ money, with some input from another investor. Fairfax was a nice chap, no doubt about that. Well liked, even by Jones. But he didn’t handle cash too well. He was pouring his own money into his aviation club and lavishing free hospitality for its members at the hotel. Both businesses were going down the drain and Matt with it, from what we could gather. Fairfax more or less treated the hotel as a social centre for the club – free drinks, free meals, free beds. That tended to drive away regular custom and bingo – no trade left. The debts had mounted to the point where the receiver was about to be brought in, and Jones wanted Fairfax out of it, as his only chance of running things his way. He was the anxious type – with reason.’

  ‘Do anxious types see murder as a way out of their problems?’ Peter asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so in this case, but there was some other evidence so far as I can recall. Wishy-washy alibi, trace evidence, all explainable but it mounted up. In the end we had to let him go. For all his being the anxious type, he was a pretty determined sort of fellow, and we still had our doubts. After all, he was the only one of them left at the hotel. The others had gone.’

  Gone? Georgia’s hopes began to rise. ‘The others being those at the squadron reunion?’ she asked.

  ‘Right. The place had been crawling with pilots earlier, plus one or two of Fairfax’s aviation club cronies, but they all left in the late afternoon, a couple of hours before Fairfax was shot.’

  ‘Were you first on the scene?’ Peter asked.

  ‘I was. Came with a PC, and when we saw what we had, we summoned the whole caboodle.’

  ‘Can you show me where the body was? I’ve made a plan of the garden.’ Peter handed that and a biro to him.

  ‘No problem.’ Christopher glanced at it, and made a mark. Georgia was once more stiff with tension; she could guess all too well where it was. ‘A sort of valley garden. A rockery of sorts. It was covered in bluebells – and blood by the time the body had joined it. Fairfax had a bullet in his chest.’

  ‘Gun?’

  ‘None found by the body. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since you rang, and I’m pretty sure it was a Webley. It seemed to have been Fairfax’s own. A lot of them never got handed in after the war. He kept it in the hotel along with his uniform, medals and other bits and bobs from the other pilots. He made a sort of Battle of Britain corner down in the basement bar.’

  So that was that. The bluebell valley and the Hell’s Bells Club, both leading straight back to the death of Patrick Fairfax. No wonder that dell was crying out so loudly to them.

  ‘Fairfax was genuinely popular,’ Christopher continued. ‘It wasn’t just lip service paid to him after his death. We talked to everyone we could root out, and that was the unanimous verdict.’

  ‘Who found the body?’ Georgia forced herself to ask. Even though most of the pilots at least seemed to be ruled out, their phantom presence was still lurking in her mind.

  ‘One of the waiters, I think, out for an illicit fag or shag – sorry, can’t remember which.’

  ‘I presume the other pilots at the reunion were among those you interviewed?’ Peter said.

  ‘Every man jack of them.’

  ‘How many was that?’

  ‘Half a dozen or so. Maybe more. We didn’t dig out much.’

  ‘Any woman trouble?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Fairfax seemed happily married with grown-up kids. If there was a floozy we never rooted her out, even though he had a reputation for being a ladies’ man.’

  ‘If the film about him was based on fact, there was a previous serious girlfriend in the war,’ Georgia pointed out.

  ‘Then she waited a hell of a long time to get her revenge if he dumped her.’

  She laughed. ‘Were the wives there?’ She remembered Peter’s comment.

  ‘Strictly stag.’ Christopher hesitated. ‘Actually, having said that there was no whisper of a floozy, I have a vague memory of a suggestion he had a thing going with one of the other pilots’ wives. There’d been some kind of a spat at the reunion, and it might have been over that. Sorry, can’t remember.’<
br />
  Something to check into anyway. She made a note.

  ‘What about the shots?’ Peter asked. ‘Were they heard in the hotel?’

  ‘It was a Saturday evening. There was pop music blaring out for the younger punters.’

  ‘And no one wandering round the gardens?’

  ‘Not that I recall. It was a chilly night. I remember shivering while we waited for the doc and photographers. I do recall thinking a remote rockery garden was an odd place to come except with one’s nearest and dearest. You wouldn’t walk into that place with an enemy. It was almost dark when the body was found, and it was reckoned Fairfax had been dead an hour or two, but even so the light wouldn’t have been too good for a bracing pre-dinner walk.’

  ‘Any chance of a peek at the case files?’ Peter asked hopefully.

  ‘They’re probably still around, since it was a high-profile case.’ Christopher grinned, obviously reading their thoughts exactly. ‘They’ll need new info first.’

  *

  ‘Georgia?’ Luke looked up in surprise as she walked into his general office in South Malling. She had come straight from Burwash, and unsurprisingly found Luke in conference with Sally Hobhurst, his invaluable assistant.

  ‘Sorry. I know you don’t need authors poking their noses in.’

  ‘Not if you want to know your sales figures.’

  There were piles of books everywhere, in boxes straight from the printers, on shelves, on chairs. Luke’s list consisted not just of Marsh & Daughter’s true crime series, but of two others: one military, the other local history and guide books. Seeing the ordered disorder of Frost Books renewed her doubts about the practicalities of his moving further towards them in Haden Shaw as he had planned to do. Luke not only had his own comfortable home here, but ran his business complete with his staff of three, two women and a young man, each of whom seemed irreplaceable to her. Each had an area of responsibility but they could all pick up each other’s jobs when needed. How could she encourage Luke to upset this skilful arrangement to move lock, stock and many barrels to be nearer to her and Peter?

  ‘Does the name Jack Hardcastle mean anything to you?’ she asked after he’d ushered her into his tiny snuggery of a private office.