The Marsh & Daughter Casebook Read online

‘Where is he?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘Margaret’s put him to bed, but he’s not happy.’

  Right on cue she heard Peter’s howl from his bedroom on the ground floor at the rear of the cottage. ‘Georgia!’

  She hurried to the ground-floor bedroom, somewhat cheered by the strength of the protest. Her father was sitting up in bed, glaring towards her, but he looked a frail old man, not the lion she worked with.

  ‘What is it, Dad?’ she asked gently, sitting down at his side. ‘The usual one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  So it hadn’t been the shooting incident that had brought this attack on. It was Rick, her younger brother by three years, and the cause of the other shadow over her life. Rick had disappeared in France on a walking holiday ten years ago, and ever since, even before Peter was shot and paralysed a year later, in a drugs set-up with a Customs & Excise team, which had gone badly wrong, he had periodically suffered these terrible nightmares. They began during the night but their effects usually lasted throughout the day, leaving him shaking, white and perspiring, a man in the grip of a mental fever. There’d been no trace of Rick. He’d simply vanished. He’d gone alone; he didn’t come back. I’ll send you a postcard, he said, but it never came, and nor did he.

  ‘That bloody denehole caused it,’ Peter muttered. ‘Suppose Rick—’

  ‘No, Dad,’ Georgia said firmly. ‘We’ve been there.’ They had, and her mother too. It had been the nightmares followed by the shooting a year later that had led to her mother leaving – her own way of coping, Georgia acknowledged when she was being charitable. Together, she and her father had climbed back, attempting through Marsh & Daughter to bring closure to the unfinished business of others, since they could not achieve it for themselves. Onwards, not back, but the abyss remained below, waiting for the weak moment. For Georgia, it clutched at her unexpectedly. The very word ‘missing’ might set it off. Anything. She regained sure ground quickly – until the next time. With her father it was worse, for it was the terror that struck by night. It came less often now, but when it did it was terrifying, both for him and for her.

  ‘I saw him in that hole, trying to climb up. A hand, a face—’

  ‘No, Dad,’ she cut in firmly. ‘This denehole has an answer. And we’ll find it.’

  Peter managed to shrug, as though he never doubted it. Seeing Luke in the doorway helped. ‘After your contract, are you?’ he roared.

  ‘No. You are,’ Luke replied calmly. ‘We publishers are callous folk. You know that. We’re slavedrivers, counting out our pennies while you minions build our pyramids for us.’

  Georgia was grateful for Luke’s comforting, sturdy presence. He’d been here and she hadn’t, even though it was through no fault of hers.

  ‘That bloody woman won’t even let me have a drink,’ Peter complained. ‘Carers, they call them. What a word for a control freak.’

  ‘Of course you can have a drink, Dad,’ Georgia replied, seeing signs of approaching normality, or at least a step towards it. ‘Cocoa?’

  A snort reassured her. ‘Whisky.’

  ‘A glass of red wine,’ she compromised.

  ‘Done. Damn you, daughter.’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Luke volunteered. ‘One for you, Georgia?’

  ‘Mug of tea for me, please.’

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ Peter said immediately, as Luke tactfully vanished into the kitchen. Luke was always tactful. And undemanding into the bargain. Georgia was uneasily aware that half the time she took him for granted, forty-five per cent of the time she relished every moment she was with him. Four per cent of the time, however, she fluctuated between irritation that anyone could be so good to her and a maniacal desire to seize him in holy matrimony on the spot. And the last one per cent was Zac.

  ‘I’m going back tomorrow, Dad. I just wanted to report in.’

  ‘Good. Glad you remembered who’s boss.’

  She ignored this. ‘Mary Elgin is still alive.’

  ‘Ha!’ He leaned back against the pillows, with great satisfaction. ‘So the unfinished business could be there.’

  ‘Not proven yet, but I do sense you’re right. There are unanswered questions, at any rate, such as why her father refused to back up her story that Davy was with her at the time of the crime. Was he the upright citizen telling the truth of the matter or betraying his daughter deliberately because there was a feud between the two families?’

  ‘A feud, eh? You have done well,’ Peter gloated.

  ‘There’s an interesting lack of agreement as to what Ada was like, but the consensus seems to be that she was a sex-starved or nympho spinster who enticed Davy Todd out to the field. When he got carried away with the rough stuff she panicked, and he strangled her to keep her quiet.’

  ‘Proof?’

  ‘None, save what we know from the press reports. I’m going to see Mary Elgin tomorrow, unannounced in the hope that no one has forewarned her that I’ve been asking questions. That way she won’t have time to think up a good story if she has any need to. She’s in her nineties, though, so I’ll have to take care the way I do it.’

  ‘You do that kind of thing well. What’s your opinion so far?’

  At that moment Luke came back with the drinks. ‘Anything in this Ada Proctor case?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Could be.’ So Peter had wasted no time in preparing the ground with Luke. Great. Georgia was not amused. Luke the publisher was a bloodhound, bearing little resemblance to Luke the lover. Now she’d be under pressure to produce the goods, and would have to take care not to see hobgoblins where only shadows of Time existed.

  ‘Because of the unlikelihood of the doctor’s daughter creeping out at ten at night to meet the gardener in a field?’ Luke enquired.

  ‘No. Because of the tea place. Dad –’ Georgia turned to Peter – ‘you remember we walked into the front parlour, which was full of tables, but decided to go into her back garden, which was full of flowers, plus the odd bench. Then the cakes were stale.’

  He frowned in concentration. ‘I don’t remember the cakes. I remember the old woman though. She took a fancy to you.’

  ‘What?’ This startled her, since, apart from the crabbiness, she remembered nothing about the old lady.

  ‘Maybe not a fancy, but she kept staring at you, and I wondered why. Odd how things come back.’

  ‘Well, that old woman was Mary Elgin, or Mary Beaumont by then. That’s what must have sparked you off about Wickenham.’

  Peter sighed with satisfaction. There was already some colour coming back into his face. ‘I knew I was right. “Scarborough Fair”, skeletons, Mary Elgin. Remember, Georgia?’

  She did. Half-recalled incidents, snatches of music in the air, faces without a name. This was how it worked at first, by impressions. Then the jumble had to be turned into hard fact, so that it would pass Luke’s eagle eye. Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Scarborough Fair’ had been Rick’s favourite song as a child, an odd choice when ‘Nellie the Elephant’ was still a more accessible alternative. Now they never played the song, and if its haunting strains floated over from the radio it was switched off. It rang in their heads, so there was no need of reminders. Peter was using their private shorthand to tell her not to forget those first elusive fingerprints. Tomorrow she would return to Wickenham to learn more about Mary Elgin’s lost love, Davy Todd.

  ‘What about the denehole?’ Peter’s voice floated querulously after her as she and Luke prepared to leave, once he had grudgingly admitted he might like some supper later. Margaret always left a dinner that he could reheat in the microwave, a system he vastly preferred to being dependent on his daughter. How, he asked when they had originally fixed their guidelines for operating as Marsh & Daughter, could he yell abuse in working hours at someone to whom he was beholden for survival outside of them? The flaw in this argument was that he had no compunction in yelling at Margaret either, but that, he informed Georgia, was between him and his carer.

  ‘Nothing. Mild curiosity
in the village, that’s all. There doesn’t seem to be any speculation as to whose it might have been. None of your “Ah, now, me proud beauty, I allus said the squire’s dead body would turn up one day.” Most people assume it was a vagrant from hop-picking days.’

  ‘You didn’t do a damn thing about it, did you?’ Peter accused her. ‘So set on your precious Ada.’

  ‘I did,’ she said defensively.

  ‘The denehole, girl. Please,’ he added belatedly. ‘Ever occur to you they might be connected?’

  ‘No,’ she whipped back. ‘Because there’s not a shred of evidence apart from the fact that the skeleton was probably there within a range of a hundred years or so.’

  ‘Oh, yes there is. I had a phone call from Mike yesterday evening. He believes in keeping an open mind,’ Peter added innocently. ‘From the tree roots growing above, and soil analysis, it looks as if the body was in there before the chamber collapsed, and though they didn’t know when that was, they’ve managed to date the skeleton to within fifteen years with the additional help of one or two objects lying near it.’ A pause for effect. ‘1919 to 34. There are the usual disclaimers and provisos of course that you can never be a hundred per cent certain in such cases, especially since it’s theoretically possible the body was deliberately placed there together with misleading artefacts after the chamber collapsed. Nevertheless, it’s a good hypothetical range to start on, don’t you think?’

  ‘So hypothetically he probably murdered Ada and jumped in the denehole in remorse,’ Georgia shot back at him.

  ‘Any better theory?’ Peter glared at her. ‘It might interest you to know I attacked the Internet after you left yesterday evening.’

  ‘So that’s what brought this on.’ She should have guessed it. ‘You’ve been deneholing on the Web.’

  ‘Someone had to do it.’

  ‘Okay. What did you find out?’

  ‘According to the website of an enthusiast, one Jonas Ticklememore—’

  ‘I don’t believe that for a start—’

  ‘—the Wickenham denehole shaft was about three feet in diameter and fifteen feet deep down to the original chamber, and it had foot-treads all the way down. So if it was an accident our chap was unlucky not to have been able to break his fall one way or another, and if it was suicide it seems an uncertain method to choose. Furthermore –’ he paused impressively – ‘the chamber was still known to be intact in 1925.’

  ‘So what does that tell us?’

  ‘Assuming our upper limit of 1934 is roughly correct, our fifteen-year period is down to nine.’ Peter beamed, and colour began to creep back into his face. ‘I rest my case. The skeleton is the trail to follow, probably connecting with the Ada Proctor murder. I’ll ring Mike again.’

  ‘Not tonight you won’t,’ Georgia said gently. ‘Rest. Okay? A little light television, supper and dreamless sleep is the plan for you.’ She kissed him and he sighed.

  ‘I suppose I’m lucky to have you.’

  ‘You’re a grudging old curmudgeon,’ she informed him affectionately.

  Luke put an arm round her as she closed the door to her father’s bedroom, relieved that he was back in fighting mode. ‘Trembly?’ he asked, as they walked back to her house.

  ‘A bit. I’m sorry I wasn’t here. How long . . .?’

  ‘Margaret rang me since you were away and she had to get home. I came over immediately. Before dinner,’ Luke added pointedly.

  ‘Funny thing. I haven’t eaten either. Pub or freezer?’

  ‘Freezer.’

  ‘I can’t be seduced tonight, Luke. I’m off early tomorrow.’

  ‘Nobody asked you, my fair maid.’

  She laughed. ‘Still freezer?’

  ‘Certainly.’ He followed her with alacrity into the kitchen of number 4, and peered over her shoulder as she extracted some home-made bolognese sauce and fresh (if frozen) pasta. To these she added some early salad leaves from the garden, and together with cheese and the scrag end of a bunch of grapes they sufficed for a reasonable dinner.

  ‘You, Georgia,’ Luke remarked later, ‘are a remarkable woman – in fact, incomparable.’

  ‘Thank you, kind sir. Not even comparable to a summer’s day?’

  ‘Not summer. Infinitely more beautiful. To me, you are spring, the sharp edge of hope.’

  Georgia was ridiculously pleased. ‘Is this the claret talking?’ was all she could find to say.

  ‘Since I’m being sent home shortly, it’s only whispering. But as you are not in the mood for love, let us return to business. What do you reckon about Wickenham? Is there going to be a book in it? It sounds flimsy to me.’

  ‘And probably so did a book about Timothy Evans’ innocence when Ludovic Kennedy proposed writing Ten Rillington Place about serial killer Christie.’

  ‘You’re hooked, aren’t you?’

  ‘On the way, but not far enough along to mind if it all leads to nothing. It could just make an interesting article, but nothing more substantial.’

  ‘But you don’t really think so. A tale of injustice, avenging a lost sweetheart. It’s a good theme, if there’s enough for a book, but it’s not usually the kind you go for. Look at The Penstow Triangle or The Forest Gate Murder. This one seems too simple.’

  Georgia reflected on this. The Penstow Triangle had concerned a small village tucked away on the Cornish Moors, where the aftermath of a family secret dug out by persevering family researchers led to murder. She could still remember the powerful brooding sense of disgrace and shame that the family had retained, over what was now a small matter of a child born out of wedlock. And still it had lingered. A simple seed had sown the crime, and, oh, how the complications had multiplied as the years had passed.

  ‘You know the annoying thing about you, Luke?’

  ‘Is that there isn’t one.’

  ‘Is that you’re often right.’ This was poor compensation for his calm acceptance of her lack of response to his overture, but it was all she could offer. ‘I think the Wickenham story just might be more complicated than it seems.’ She grinned at him. ‘My usual madness, I expect.’

  ‘Not madness at all. Just Georgian enthusiasm.’

  She kissed him lightly. ‘You’re very understanding.’

  ‘Do that again, and I’ll marry you. How about that?’

  Back on an even keel. ‘Some day. Some day.’ And some day perhaps she would, shadows notwithstanding.

  ‘Georgia, you’ll be careful, won’t you?’

  ‘Of what? Mary Elgin’s feelings?’

  ‘No. What you might stir up.’

  ‘Mud. That’s all,’ she reassured him.

  *

  Marsh & Daughter had stirred up plenty of mud in its seven years of existence. It had been Luke in fact who had inadvertently sparked this off. She had been working part-time in a bookshop, which dealt both in new books, particularly of local interest, and in second-hand books. Luke had called in with his list one day when she was deep in discussion with the owner about the latest hoard of books she had acquired from an elderly collector in Sussex. One of them was a mid-nineteenth-century account of the Savage case, the murder of a middle-aged woman in the Kentish Weald, and Luke had immediately seized on it. That, he had said, was something he’d like to get into – the human side of history, both its tragedies and its entertainments, not just the books on the towns and villages he was publishing at present.

  When she had reached home that night, which for a time after her divorce and then her mother’s departure had been her father’s house, she found him worse than usual, dull-eyed and turned in upon himself in despair. No job, no son, no wife. But he did have a daughter. Determined to arouse a spark of interest, Georgia began to tell him about the Savage case. He tried to cut her off impatiently – of course he knew all about it. It had never been solved, she pointed out, hoping he would be roused enough to begin speculating on what had happened.

  ‘It should have been solved,’ was all he had muttered.

&
nbsp; ‘Your kind of case,’ she had ventured. ‘Mike Gilroy was always saying that some case or other had your fingerprints stuck all over it before you even got there.’

  He had shot a look at her. ‘And yours,’ he had pointed out. ‘Don’t forget that beach your mother and I took you to once when you were about eight, and you began to cry, saying you didn’t like it? It was the beach where Maisie Wilson had been found murdered, but of course I never told you that.’

  ‘Fingerprints on Time,’ Georgia had said, and suddenly they had been in the middle of a discussion that went on half the night, a discussion that sprang from Luke Frost’s desire to publish a new line of books, and then led to Marsh & Daughter. The business was born, she had moved to the house next door to allow room for Peter’s office (and her own foreseen need for personal space), and now they had published five such studies, each taking a different case. The last one, on London mysteries, differed in that it covered several cases. On the publication day of the third book four years ago, she and Luke had, to their slight mutual surprise, become lovers. She’d been so used to thinking of Luke as a friendly regular fixture in her working life that she had been completely overwhelmed when he peeled off the professional face and became Luke the passionate, not entirely predictable lover. Did she too wear such a mask? Possibly, though she wasn’t aware of doing so.

  *

  Georgia thought about those working masks, and about stirring up mud while wearing them, as she drove to Wickenham the next day. It was raining and all too easy to think in those terms. She always pooh-poohed the idea of danger to Luke, for the living fingerprints theory was between herself and her father, and did not intrude into the written word. In the cases Marsh & Daughter had undertaken so far, the danger potential had not been put to the test, but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist. There had been no evidence of strong emotions so far in Wickenham, merely mild interest, but the big test might now be coming – not least because she was aware that the quest for the truth about Ada Proctor already contained a personal element over and above Marsh & Daughter’s basic driving force.

  She was later than she had intended because she had decided to wait to check that her father was okay before leaving. Once this clearance had been obtained from Margaret she set off. ‘The Fleet of Two’ was what her father called their cars, since she, as well as he, had a modern Alfa Romeo 147, not because she had any desire to create a business style, but because she liked the car. His was the two-door hatchback model, modified to his needs. Before the shooting, Peter had had two classic cars. They had gone now of course but his interest hadn’t, and piles of car magazines littered the house. Show me the car, and I’ll show you the man, he would declare grandly on occasion.