Classic in the Barn Read online

  EIGHT

  So far so good. Next: the word had been going round, partly thanks to me, about this car. Andy Wells’ interest had been keen enough, and even heart-throb Dan’s. But if either of them had wanted to buy it, why hadn’t she just delivered the same message to them? Push off, not for sale. Could Andy have had some hold over her where the Lagonda was concerned? I began to speculate. Suppose he’d had a contract to buy all Mike’s classic cars and had only just found out he had been baulked of this Lagonda. That was a possibility. Or Dan? Or, it occurred to me, even Harry Prince. Had he become interested enough to follow up on the Lagonda himself?

  I knew it was pointless to try to go further on these lines. I’d only had a couple of days to reconnoitre this problem, and I could well be seeing it from a completely lopsided angle. However, I did agree with my nose that I should see that Lagonda again. There did not seem much rhyme or reason to this, but I became fixed on the idea. After all, painters gaze at their models for inspiration. Perhaps the Lagonda would do the same for me, and Peter Winter might be persuaded to talk about this. Back to his missing Merc for openers.

  The Mercedes S500 was just the sort of car I would have envisaged him driving: expensive but not too expensive; showy but not overdone, fast but not too fast. It was an affable car, just right for an affable sort of chap like Peter, who was clearly making his pile. I gathered from Dave that he ran some antiques-brokering business near West Malling – successfully judging by the Merc and his pride and joy, the Lagonda he’d brought to the Wheatsheaf. Unfortunately for him, the Merc S500 can be attractive to the less scrupulous members of society, hence Peter’s car disappearing to order – which was probably what had happened, and the chances, as Dave said, looked slim of his ever seeing it again.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ he told me plaintively when I arrived at his home, spot on the time he had designated on Saturday morning. He showed me the empty garage – well, empty of the Merc. There was an Audi convertible in there – his wife’s, he explained – and the Lagonda. Together with a luxury Range Rover parked in the forecourt, it suggested he wouldn’t be waiting for the daily bus to take him to work. He lived some way out of the village, in a red-brick Georgian house that, like Peter, was gracious and pleasant, rather than boastful of its heritage.

  ‘No, it’s not fair,’ I agreed. I didn’t weep too much for him though, even though he told me the Range Rover was the Merc’s temporary replacement, thanks to the insurance company. Dave had given me the background on the phone so there wasn’t much for me to ask him about the Merc, except whether there were any special details to help identify it. He shook his head, and I was free to go ahead on what I most wanted to talk about: Polly. I was a bit surprised that Dave had even asked me to do a follow-up, as the Merc was such an open and shut case. I suppose he had to go the extra mile though, and I was the one to hoof along it.

  I was just about to subtly switch to the Davises when he saved me the trouble. ‘You found poor Polly’s body, didn’t you, Jack?’

  ‘Yes. Right by the Lagonda. Remember we talked about it at the Wheatsheaf?’

  He nodded. ‘That seems to be coincidence, though. I heard they’d arrested some Polish farmhand.’

  ‘A bad time for you. The Davises were friends of yours, you said.’

  ‘Good friends.’ He hesitated. ‘I hadn’t seen much of Polly since Mike’s death though. Busy lady, that.’

  I took the plunge. ‘And a lively one. I heard a few rumours . . .’ This was a risky ploy, as Peter was hardly likely to open up on Polly’s sex life, and it could well rebound on my head, with him telling me to go to hell.

  Luckily, he took it in his stride. ‘There always are, especially with someone of Polly’s character and background. Don’t believe them. She was a very attractive woman and had had a high-profile TV career. Rumours attach themselves automatically in such cases, just like leeches. Mike knew that. She knew it.’

  ‘Sorry, just the car crime detective in me,’ I said. ‘If I hear something, I feel bound to follow it up. Could there be any unfinished business left over from Mike’s death that could have led to Polly’s? That’s if it wasn’t this Polish chap. He sounds as if he could be a bad ’un.’

  He considered this carefully. ‘Perhaps. Mike sailed near the wind on occasion. He used to tease me about being an old fuddy-duddy where business was concerned.’

  ‘By “sailing near the wind” you’re implying some of his classics weren’t exactly legit?’

  ‘There were rumours, especially when he died. But nothing came of them. There was even a rumour that Polly didn’t seem to have inherited quite as much as Mike would have left, if you see what I mean.’

  I did. ‘Illegit cash?’

  ‘Quite. For months there were stories that he had it stashed away somewhere.’

  ‘Swiss bank account?’

  ‘Possibly, but knowing Mike I think it would have been more tangible than that.’

  ‘Polly didn’t seem to me to have an extravagant lifestyle. Indeed, the very fact she needed to start a picture framing business seemed odd to me.’

  A pause, and I could see something weighing on his mind. ‘Now about my Merc, Jack . . .’

  At that point his wife made her appearance and was introduced as Jill. From the Audi convertible, I’d set her down as perhaps a trophy second or maybe third wife, but no such thing. Whether wife number one, two or three, she was about the same age as Peter and had gardener written all over her – literally, as she was wearing one of those huge aprons doled out in the Christmas-present catalogues, emblazoned with ‘Gardener at Work’.

  All talk of Polly and Mike Davis stopped as we returned to the subject of the Merc. As I drove away, however, I kept coming back to the Lagonda. These rumours of Mike’s money – could it be stashed inside some secret pocket? It was possible, I supposed, but unlikely. All the same, the niggle remained, and I became more and more determined to take another look at it.

  At that point fate played into my hands. Once back at Frogs Hill, I had a call from Zoe as soon as I walked in the door of the farmhouse. ‘I’ve had Bea on the phone,’ she said almost accusingly. ‘I came home yesterday because she said she could cope, but she’s heard the bad news about Tomas being out on bail and wants me to go back for a few days. I’m going over there now to see how things are.’

  ‘Sure. Can I come?’

  She considered this rather too long for politeness. ‘Don’t see why not. She wants you as her private eye, after all. I’ll get my stuff and see you there.’ She rang off, and I thought I should give Bea a ring to ensure my welcome.

  There was no doubt of that, however. Her first words on the phone were: ‘You’ve heard the news then. I still can’t believe he’s guilty, but I can’t stand the idea of his being out, wandering around.’

  ‘Do you know what the evidence is against him?’

  ‘They won’t tell me, but they seem to think he was at the barn sometime that morning.’

  Footprints? I wondered. It had been dry, so that was unlikely. DNA? Too early for results on that, I’d have thought. Witnesses? Email evidence? No, why should he be on email terms with Polly?

  ‘I’m not sure I can take this,’ she added flatly. ‘His row with Mum really turned me off him.’

  ‘Was it that bad?’

  ‘Yes it was. It was on the Sunday afternoon after the art show opening. I was staying here, not in my Canterbury flat. I thought Mum was out all day, but she came home early. She found Tomas here –’ a slight hesitation – ‘well, in bed with me, actually. She raised the roof, and I couldn’t blame her. She didn’t like him, and this is her house. Was,’ she corrected herself dolefully. ‘They had a real set to, with him cursing and effing. He was saying – oh, awful things about her, which turned me off. He said he’d be back. And there was something else.’

  A long pause now.

  ‘He said,’ she began again, ‘he’d make sure the Lagonda was done for too. I’d only just heard about it, of
course, and I don’t know why he should have picked on that. I should have told the police about it, shouldn’t I, Jack?’

  ‘Yes. Any idea why he thought that was relevant?’

  Bea had no answer to that, and I hung up, after saying I’d be right over and would see her in fifteen minutes or so.

  Zoe’s and my arrivals at the farm coincided, and we stepped gracefully out of our respective cars at the same moment. I’d had time to ponder Tomas’s interest in the Lagonda, but had come to no conclusion, save that it could fit in with the spotter theory. On the other hand, it could also have been because he had heard about my interest in the car, and Polly’s love of it, and had decided to attack her in a weak spot.

  Yet that did not satisfy me. In fact, nothing did about Tomas. The motive of wanting to marry Bea just didn’t add up to me as cause enough for murder. If he had taken a gun with him to the barn, it could hardly have been an unpremeditated crime on his part – or anyone else’s. Or could it be that Polly herself had taken a gun, and her murderer had torn it away from her, killed her and then buried it to avoid the risk of trace evidence? No, that was nonsense. Polly was too calm to think of a gun as the way out of her problems.

  Bea was at the door waiting for us and actually managed a giggle at our dramatic joint entrance. ‘I feel better now you’re both here,’ she told us. ‘It’s daft, but I keep feeling I’m being watched. It’s creepy and all the worse now I know Tomas has got bail. I’m afraid if I go out for a minute or two he’ll nip in and burn the house down.’

  ‘Not while I’m here,’ Zoe promised her.

  I didn’t like the sound of this. There was no chance of a police guard without a specific threat once the crime scene was finished with, and the idea of Tomas creeping around either the farmhouse or the Lagonda barn was not a pleasant one for me, let alone for Bea.

  ‘I’ll stay over too,’ I told her, and Bea looked pleased. So did Zoe, in fact, but I doubted whether Rob would be. ‘What about the Lagonda, if he was making threats about it?’

  ‘The crime scene’s lifted now, so I should check. I waited for you,’ Bea said diffidently, which made me realize just how bad she was feeling despite the stiff upper lip. ‘I expect Tomas was only throwing out idle threats about it, though. He thinks there’s a mystery over it because I told him Mum had never mentioned it to me.’

  ‘Let’s go see,’ I said, trying not to sound too eager.

  ‘It’s a kind of test for me,’ Bea admitted. ‘I haven’t been down to the barn since it happened. So it would be good if we could go now.’

  ‘Fine with me,’ I said graciously. Aware of Zoe’s cynical eye on me, I was hardly able to believe my luck in getting to see it right away.

  And so for the third time I walked down to the barn, only on this occasion we took the orthodox route, through the farmhouse, garden and fields, not over the fence. I could see Bea was having trouble as we drew nearer, and without a word Zoe and I positioned ourselves on either side of her. Physically, it provided little protection, but emotionally I hope she felt we were shoulder to shoulder with her.

  We walked through two meadows, which I guessed were still attached to Polly’s farm, then through a kissing gate by the bridle path, which also had broad padlocked gates for farm traffic, and then the apple orchards, which judging by the number of birds around were being sized up for their harvesting potential in the autumn.

  ‘The barn is officially on the land that Guy rents,’ Bea told us, ‘but I doubt if he’ll turn us off.’

  I wasn’t so sure and was glad Bea was with us. As Tomas had been given bail, he could well be back there at any time he liked, and I didn’t fancy the idea of that. As the barn hove into sight, we all became quiet, as though Polly’s death had marked the place for ever. As indeed it had for Bea and myself. I had to school myself not to run to it, to make sure that it held no corpse now – and that it did hold a Lagonda. The former crime scene was much trampled, with plenty of signs of former activity. It had a desolate look to it, with chalk marks still visible.

  Bea stopped short. ‘I can’t do it, Jack. You go across and see the old banger’s all right.’ Zoe stayed with her (nobly in the circumstances) and, carefully skirting the area where I remembered Polly’s body had lain, I unlocked the padlock – to which Bea had given me the key – and pulled open the door.

  There she was, still beautiful even in her uncared for state, and so innocent looking that it was hard to pull myself together enough to contemplate how she could possibly have had a role in Polly’s death.

  ‘OK inside?’ Bea called.

  I pulled the door wide open so that she could glimpse the car from where she was standing.

  She sighed. ‘I can’t think why this was so important to Mum.’

  ‘Because of her family connections,’ I said. ‘It was your grandfather’s, after all, and she and your father had a lot of good times in it. It seems very natural it meant a lot to her.’

  Bea didn’t look convinced. ‘If I’m to keep it,’ she announced, ‘I’ll do the thing properly and have it fixed up.’

  A week ago I’d have been right there with my sales pitch for selling it on commission, but not now. ‘Keep it, Bea; for the moment, at any rate.’

  ‘Would you restore it for me, or whatever you do to old cars? Would it start? Are the keys there?’

  I went into it, feeling like a trespasser, and ferreted deeper into the glove compartment than I had on my first ill-starred visit. I felt like an intruder into Polly’s past life.

  ‘No, but that’s a problem we can deal with easily. I don’t know if it would start – or even if that would be a good idea. We’ve got a low-loader if you don’t mind it trundling through the farm.’

  ‘So you’ll do it?’

  ‘Love to,’ I said promptly.

  ‘As soon as you like then.’

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ I forced myself to say, thinking of all she had on her mind and plate.

  ‘There is,’ Bea contradicted, to my relief. ‘I need to feel I can advance something. Actually get something accomplished, not something like paperwork and probate and whatever that goes on for ever. Look, I’ve had enough of this place,’ she added abruptly. ‘I’m going back to the house. Do you want another look, Jack?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ I accepted gratefully and said I’d be along in five minutes. She and Zoe (who clearly had a tug of loyalties here) turned round to walk back to the farm, and I went back into the barn to see if I could recaptured the fleeting thought I’d had that something was strange about this Lagonda – apart from the headlights.

  I went to where the princess lay still and quiet, waiting to be awoken from her long sleep. Unlike Polly, who would never wake. A sharp jab of physical pain hit me at the thought. I gave her an overall look, but nothing came to me. Another one, with the same lack of result. All seemed as it should for a classic ’38 drophead. We could ask Brian Woollerton about those headlights. Not only did he run that useful team of informants, but he was a chum of long standing, long memory and a long storehouse full of every spare classic part imaginable. Oh the pleasure and joy at the thought of what Len, Zoe and I could achieve with the Lagonda’s restoration job. It felt as though I would be doing at least something for Polly.

  I bent over the rear seat.

  I remember doing that but no more. It all happened so quickly. A feeling of something wrong, a shape behind me, a presence, a sense of danger – and then nothing. Blackness and falling into infinity . . .

  NINE

  Polly was bending anxiously over me in some place I could not define . . . I blanked out again, and when I next came to I was in little doubt where I was. There was no Polly and never would be. Instead I was in hospital, with a Formula 1 race going on inside my head and two old ladies, in beds on either side of me, regarding me with great interest. What came next? I wondered. In all the best films a ministering angel would appear out of nowhere, exclaiming with relief that I was conscious again. I clearly wasn’t in a
best film, unfortunately, because no such apparition did. One of the old ladies asked me what I’d ordered for lunch, but nothing came to mind. The other one asked me if I was Bing Crosby, but that didn’t seem relevant either.

  When my ministering angel did at last amble up, she was not clad in pristine white, but in jeans and T-shirt and was smelling of hand gel. It was Zoe, whose orange spikes of hair were the object of rapt disapproval from one of the old ladies.

  ‘Grapes?’ I croaked. ‘Chocs? Flowers?’

  ‘Good. You’re alive. We thought you were a goner yesterday.’

  As greetings go, I felt Zoe was below form, but she did look genuinely worried. ‘I’m ace,’ I assured her. ‘What happened?’ There seemed a bit of a blank somewhere. I could remember the Lagonda, and I had a hazy idea that I’d been on my own.

  ‘You tell us. When you didn’t turn up, Bea and I eventually wandered down to the Lagonda again to prise you away from it and found you on the floor out for the count. Not what Bea needed. She thought you were dead like Polly.’

  There was reproach in her voice, and I scrabbled desperately to think what had happened. My fault? I was penitent over the shock to Bea, but still at sea. Then my memory obliged. ‘Someone coshed me.’ This came out so loudly that half the ward looked at Zoe in pity at the maniac she was presumably responsible for.

  ‘You slipped and hit your head on the concrete,’ Zoe corrected me. ‘Not a wise move.’

  The Formula 1 race stepped up speed, but I was right at the wheel now. ‘I was coshed.’