Blood From a Stone Read online

  ‘You’d have said it was suicide, eh, Sutton?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Sutton with reluctant honesty. ‘Faced with that locked door, most would. Of course,’ he added to the doctor, ‘you were at an advantage, knowing the lady as you did.’

  The chief constable took an arrest warrant from his briefcase and signed it. ‘Here you are, inspector. You’d better make a statement to the Press. We could do with any publicity we can get to find Terence Napier. The sooner that gentleman is behind bars, the better for everyone.’

  THREE

  Some two months after the events in Topfordham,

  Mrs Isabelle Stanton, fresh from a fortnight spent with her parents, weaved her way through the crowds to the end of the platform at Market Albury station.

  A pile of boxes, parcels and suitcases, five bicycles and four baskets of clucking hens, basking in the August sun, marked the pile of goods to be loaded into the Guard’s van destined for London and stops en route. Behind Isabelle, the porter, delayed by his laden trolley, followed in her footsteps.

  ‘This’ll do, Miss,’ said the porter, as he brought his trolley to a halt. As a matter of courtesy, all ladies were ‘Misses’ to him. ‘I’ll see the luggage onto the train.’ He pushed his cap back and wiped his forehead as she tipped him the expected shilling. ‘Thank you very much, Miss. You’ve got about quarter of an hour before the London train gets in.’

  Isabelle retreated to the welcome shade outside the Ladies’ Waiting Room. The bench was occupied by a stout woman who was evidently feeling the heat, holding the handle of a black umbrella in a deathly grip. She was darting dubious glances at a well-dressed, foreign-looking woman who was, not very effectively, attempting to control her two small boys with bursts of idiomatic French.

  Beside the foreign-looking woman sat a little girl, very prettily dressed, who was, to Isabelle’s eyes, consciously being good. The two small boys skittered in and out of the crowd of waiting passengers, calling to each other in shrill French voices. Beyond the station, the gold of the cornfields rose up the tree-crowned hills, hazy in the hot August air.

  Market Albury, thought Isabelle idly. She wasn’t very far from Celia’s house, Breagan Grange in Madlow Regis.

  She hadn’t seen Celia for ages. Did she know anything about the murder in Topfordham?

  Isabelle wouldn’t have known there was any connection between Mrs Paxton’s murder and her old friend, if her father hadn’t said as much the other day.

  ‘I see they still haven’t found Terence Napier,’ he said, tapping the newspaper. ‘Shocking business. Rackety bunch, the Leighs. Napier’s a cousin of theirs, of course.’

  ‘It’s a little hard to dismiss the entire Leigh family as rackety, Philip,’ said her mother in mild reproof. ‘I know old Matthew Leigh was a real rip, but Francis Leigh is very well thought of and Celia is a very nice girl.’

  ‘Terence Napier is Celia Leigh’s cousin?’ asked Isabelle in astonishment. ‘What, you mean the man who murdered his aunt?’

  ‘Terence Napier is Francis Leigh’s first cousin, therefore he is first cousin once removed to Francis Leigh’s daughter,’ croaked Great-Aunt Clarissa from the winged chair in the corner.

  Isabelle’s parents were enduring Great-Aunt Clarissa’s annual visit. Aunt Clarissa was, in fact, the reason why Isabelle had temporarily abandoned her husband to spend a fortnight at home. Her mother felt she needed the support. Arthur had said Isabelle was welcome to go. If he’d to face Aunt Clarissa, he’d need all the support he could get too. It was just too bad, he added with a mournful expression that didn’t fool her for a moment, that he couldn’t spare the time to come as well.

  The various ramifications of County families were one of Great-Aunt Clarissa’s abiding passions. ‘Napier lost his parents as a boy and was brought up by Matthew Leigh. A very unfortunate influence, in my opinion. He became,’ she added with a sniff, ‘an artist. Most unsatisfactory.’

  It was, thought Isabelle, difficult to say if Great-Aunt Clarissa disapproved of Terence Napier because he was an artist or because he’d bumped off his aunt. Both, by the sound of it.

  ‘Celia’s never mentioned him,’ said Isabelle, looking over her father’s shoulder at the newspaper. ‘I say! I wonder if that means the Leighs have got the old lady’s sapphires? They’re worth a fortune.’

  ‘They could certainly do with the money,’ said her mother. ‘Francis Leigh was left very badly off by old Matthew.’

  A clank and a whoosh from the opposite platform recalled Isabelle to the present as a little local train puffed into the station and rumbled to a halt.

  ‘Market Albury,’ shouted a stentorian voice over the slam of doors. ‘Change here for London.’

  Eight minutes to go. She was glad to be on her way. She grinned as she remembered Great-Aunt Clarissa’s horror at

  the notion she would be travelling up to London by herself. Once she had bowed to the inevitable, Aunt Clarissa had been unstinting with advice.

  ‘Now do remember, dear, you have to change trains and it is inadvisable to be too familiar with your fellow passengers, however ladylike or gentlemanly they may seem.’

  Aunt Clarissa was of a generation who believed unspecified danger lurked for any unaccompanied female traveller. Aunt Clarissa was surrounded by so many unspecified dangers, thought Isabelle, she must have quite an exciting life.

  She would certainly feel a frisson at the sight of the man in a blue suit and trilby hat, for instance, walking down the steps from the bridge to the opposite platform as if he owned the place.

  He was dressed in sturdy, inexpensive clothes but he radiated a sort of self-assured raffishness that gave him an air of importance. He was in his forties at a guess. He must have been quite good looking once, a big man with fair hair, tanned skin and blue eyes, thought Isabelle, idly. He’d let himself go, though, and run to fat. He wasn’t, thought Isabelle, someone to trust. He seemed to become aware of her gaze and smiled in a satisfied way. Isabelle turned away quickly, rather embarrassed.

  The two little French boys wormed their way through the waiting passengers, loudly pointing out the train on the opposite platform to each other. Although Aunt Clarissa would have classed mothers with children as being of undoubted respectability, foreign mothers with children would have merited a sharp intake of breath. (‘No discipline, dear!’)

  Isabelle watched with idle amusement as the mother in question launched a torrent of rapid French at the two bright-eyed boys. They reluctantly came away from the platform edge and started a game of hide-and-seek between the crowd and round the stack of milk churns. The little girl tugged at Maman’s hand, wanting, as far as Isabelle could make out, to look at the wicker baskets of clucking hens piled at the end of the platform. Temporarily distracted, Maman raised her head just in time to see one of the boys dodge away from his brother and run slap into the blue-suited man.

  Isabelle instinctively started forward as the little boy fell over with a wail but she was brought up sharp by the expression of fury on the man’s face. Aunt Clarissa, thought Isabelle, with a sharp stab of apprehension, would have been quite right to be careful of him.

  Then, almost as quickly, the expression was gone as Maman hurried over, full of apologies. The man shrank back from the crying child and waved away the Frenchwoman’s protestations. ‘It’s all right,’ he said gruffly, spreading his hands wide. The Frenchwoman continued to apologise, while alternatively scolding and comforting her son. ‘Forget it.’ He dug deep and added, in soldier’s French, ‘San fairy ann, eh? Napoo. Napoo, savez?’

  The Frenchwoman looked bewildered and Isabelle, conquering her embarrassment and marshalling her command of French, stepped into the fray.

  ‘He means it’s all right,’ she said, smiling at the woman. ‘Ca ne fait rien,’ she said, translating. ‘Il n’a pas d’importance.’

  The woman turned to Isabelle with a relieved smile. ‘Ah, Madame! Merci, trés merci! Please,’ she added, picking out the words carefully,
‘I am sorry, yes? Je suis désolé, vous comprenez?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said the man, picking up the sense, if not the words, of what the woman had said. He smiled at Isabelle in a knowing sort of way. ‘Foreigners, eh? I bet you know all about them, Miss.’ He grinned at her with undisguised pleasure. ‘Are you going to London?’

  ‘My husband will be meeting me from the train,’ said Isabelle stiffly. Aunt Clarissa, she thought with an agonised stab of insight, couldn’t have been more repressively Victorian.

  The man shrugged in a suit-yourself manner. ‘Only asking.’ He reached out and ruffled one of the boy’s heads with an air of great indulgence. ‘Kids, eh?’ adding, with a rusty sort of laugh, ‘Boys will be boys, eh?’

  Despite his laugh, there was an angry gleam in his eyes that Isabelle didn’t care for. With more apologies, she ushered mother and children up the platform. By the time she’d sacrificed a handkerchief to minister to petit Michel’s grazed knee, distracted the small but insistent Agathe with the baskets of hens and agreed with young Jules that Michel had been very careless (‘négligent’) she knew that Mme. Clouet and her family were travelling to meet M. Clouet, a man who, as Mme. Clouet put it, was of many affairs in Londres, and had more or less resigned herself to travelling with them.

  The train pulled in, the blue-suited man strode down the platform and Isabelle, together with her newly adopted family, squashed in to a first-class compartment with an elderly lady wearing depressing amounts of jet and a comfortable-looking woman who liked children. Isabelle cheerfully relaxed into a corner as the comfortable woman entertained the junior Clouets with the contents of a bag of sweets. After forty minutes or thereabouts and a few stations later, little Agathe, Michel and Jules had, much to the jet-encrusted lady’s disapproval, become distinctly travel-stained.

  ‘I’ll take Agathe to have a wash, shall I?’ suggested Isabelle sometime after West Hassock. Her French had improved dramatically in the last half hour or so. She stood up and stretched out her hand to the little girl. ‘Er ... faire sa toilette?’

  As she spoke, the train gave a terrific jolt, sending Isabelle staggering into the comfortable woman and hurling the contents of her bag of sweets around the compartment. With loud exclamations, Michel and Jules dived after the sweets like a pair of circus seals chasing fish. Grubbing round on the floor added nothing to their appearance.

  ‘You take them all?’ asked Mme. Clouet hopefully, regarding her sticky-faced sons, now liberally coated with sooty dust.

  Isabelle looked at the two boys and drew the line with a shudder. One at a time perhaps, but all together? Not a chance.

  Isabelle, with Agathe clinging to her hand, stepped out of the compartment into the corridor. The lavatory in their coach was occupied, so, much to little Agathe’s evident enjoyment, Isabelle pressed on to the third-class coach at the rear of the train.

  A thin, tall man in a shabby trench coat blocked the way. He was leaning out of the open window of the door, his hands braced on the window-frame, gulping in air.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Isabelle politely.

  The man turned slowly and looked at her. His face was ghastly. He looked as if he was going to be sick. He swallowed and made a great effort to speak. ‘No,’ he said, barring the way to the coach. ‘No, you mustn’t go along there.’ His eyes slid to Agathe. ‘Not with a child.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  The man swallowed again. ‘There’s a man. There’s been an accident, I think.’

  ‘An accident?’ repeated Isabelle.

  The man nodded dumbly. He was older than she had assumed at first glance. He must be in his mid thirties at least and his voice, she thought, with a little stab of surprise, didn’t match

  his clothes. It was precise and well bred, and made them, in an oddly indefinable way, equals.

  A horrible possibility came into her mind. ‘Is he ... Is he ...’ she said slowly.

  ‘He’s got a string of jewels,’ said the man unexpectedly. He nearly laughed. ‘There’s jewels at his feet.’

  The door between the coaches opened and the ticket inspector came through. ‘Tickets, please,’ he said in a Sussex burr. He nodded affably at Isabelle. ‘I’ve seen your ticket, Miss, I know. However,’ he added, in mild reproof, ‘you really shouldn’t block the corridor like this.’

  The man in the shabby coat turned to him eagerly. ‘You’ll know what to do! There’s a man. A ... A ... Well, a man. He’s had an accident.’

  The ticket inspector pushed his cap back and scratched his head thoughtfully. ‘An accident, sir? You’d better show me what’s what. Where is he?’

  ‘In the second compartment.’ The shabby-coated man swallowed again. ‘The blinds are down. I thought it was unfair that someone should try and bag a compartment all to themselves, so I looked in and ... and ...’ He broke off. ‘I couldn’t think what to do.’ He put a trembling hand to his mouth. ‘He’s got jewels. At his feet. Jewels.’

  ‘Jewels?’ The inspector raised his eyebrows meaningfully. ‘Just as you say, sir.’ He glanced at Isabelle and, in an unostentatious but significant gesture, tapped the side of his head. ‘We’ll soon see what the problem seems to be,’ said the inspector easily. ‘Lead the way, sir.’ He looked meaningfully at Isabelle who was barring his way. ‘After you, Mum.’

  The shabby man looked at Agathe. ‘It’s not suitable,’ he muttered, but Agathe pulled at Isabelle’s hand.

  ‘Moi,’ she said insistently. ‘Moi aussi.’

  ‘Come on, sir,’ said the ticket inspector insistently.

  The shabby man swallowed, shrugged and walked the few steps along the rumbling corridor where he stood outside a compartment.

  What Isabelle should do, she knew, was take Agathe back to her mother but, not only would it be difficult to squeeze past the burly inspector who was clearly waiting for her to move, she very much wanted to know what had happened. Jewels?

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ said the inspector reassuringly in a low voice to Isabelle. ‘I know his sort. Nervy. It’ll be something and nothing, I’ll be bound. Someone took bad, you mark my words. Let’s just have a look, shall we? Come on, Miss.’

  Isabelle let herself be shepherded along the corridor towards the shabby man. As he said, the blinds were down. The inspector opened the door.

  For a fraction of a second, Isabelle couldn’t see anyone in the compartment, then she realised the window was wide open and a man in a blue suit was leaning out. Very far out, she thought. He’d bent double, leaning right over the edge of the window. He could hurt himself like that ...

  Her mind seemed to have slowed to a crawl, reality coming in little, jerky images. The hot little hand of Agathe’s, holding hers, the way the man’s hand knocked against the outside of the door as his arm swung carelessly, moved by the rattle of

  the train, the sturdy blue cloth of his trousers, the flash of something very bright on the floor, his thick-soled brown shoes, the gasp the ticket inspector gave, the stuff that seemed to be splashed on the outside of the window.

  ‘What’s he done?’ said the inspector stupidly, his red face growing blotchy as the colour drained out of it. ‘He mustn’t lean out of the window like that.’ He shook himself as if denying what he saw and walked forward a couple of paces. He put his hand on the man’s bent back. ‘Up you come!’

  ‘No!’ yelled Isabelle. She couldn’t see the man’s head. It was hidden by his body. She very much didn’t want to see the man’s head.

  There was stuff splashed on the outside of the window. I’m looking at it! she thought in horror.

  The inspector still didn’t seem to catch on but he paused with his hand on the man’s back. ‘Come on,’ he said again, his voice wavering. He forced himself – Isabelle could see what an effort it cost him – to lean forward.

  Then he understood. ‘No. No,’ he repeated. ‘No.’ He staggered away from the body by the window, his face mottled with grey patches. ‘No.’ He turned to Isabelle. ‘He’s dead,’ h
e said wonderingly. ‘His head’s swiped clean off. Clean off, I tell you.’

  The fact he’d actually said it seemed to make it real. ‘Oh my God, he’s dead!’

  He lunged forward and making a wild grab, tugged at the communication cord. ‘Get that kid out of here!’ he called, raising his voice above the whoosh of air from the brakes. ‘Get her out of it!’ he shouted as the train rumbled to a halt.

  But Agathe, excited by the noise, pulled away from Isabelle’s hand and darted into the compartment. The ticket inspector vainly tried to stop her.

  The train jerked to a halt with a series of sharp metallic clanks as the wheels jarred along the rails. All along the train came shouts as windows were pulled down and passengers leaned out, loudly demanding to know what was happening. Isabelle made a grab for Agathe who was crouched behind the inspector on the floor between the seats.

  ‘Agathe!’ she shouted, her voice shrill with anxiety. ‘Agathe, come here!’

  Agathe scrambled to her feet and peered round the inspector’s legs. She had something in her hand. It was a string of beads, which, as she held them out to Isabelle, caught the light in a breathtaking flash of deep midnight blue. ‘Joli!’ she squeaked excitedly. ‘Joli, joli, joli!’

  ‘What’s she say?’ asked the inspector, bewildered, looking round and down. ‘How does she mean, jolly?’

  ‘She means pretty,’ translated Isabelle mechanically. ‘Agathe, come here!’

  She made another grab for the little girl and this time succeeded in pulling her into the corridor, shutting the door on that nightmare compartment.

  The shabby man followed them. ‘He’s dead.’ His voice was high and nervous. ‘He had to be dead, leaning out of the window like that.’ He gave a little broken laugh. ‘I was worried about the kid, but she’s all right, isn’t she?’

  Isabelle stooped down to where Agathe was holding the string of beads, her face rapt with wonder. She held them out to Isabelle for inspection. ‘Joli,’ she murmured reverently. ‘Joli.’