Who Goes Home? Read online

  WHO GOES HOME?

  Pollard & Toye Investigations

  Book Sixteen

  Elizabeth Lemarchand

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  ALSO IN THE POLLARD & TOYE INVESTIGATIONS SERIES

  Chapter 1

  ‘Here, hold everything a sec.’ Detective Chief Superintendent Tom Pollard came to a halt and subsided on to a grassy bank at the side of the track. He began to rummage in his rucksack. ‘We’d better have a look at the map at this point. Olivia said it was easy to overshoot the top of the combe which leads down.’

  Jane Pollard sank on to the bank beside her husband and they studied a 1:50,000 sheet of the Ordnance Survey.

  ‘We must be just here,’ she said, jabbing at the map with a finger and turning to glance over her shoulder at a pile of Cyclopean boulders behind them. ‘Grouch Tor, it’s called. Perfect name, don’t you think? It looks exactly like a huge disgruntled animal.’

  ‘One of your artistic reactions, love,’ Tom Pollard replied. ‘My guess is that “Grouch” is a mangled version for some Saxon word for a heap of ruddy old stones... Look,’ he went on, reverting to the map, ‘this must be the combe; roughly halfway down there’s the house Olivia was talking about — Anstey’s Farm, it’s called.’

  ‘About another couple of miles,’ Jane estimated. She glanced at her watch. ‘We’ve got time in hand. Let’s have a short break. This is a good spot.’

  They sprawled contentedly on grass and heather.

  A week’s leave at the end of one of Pollard’s cases had led to an invitation from Olivia Strode, an old friend who lived in the village of Affacombe below the eastern edge of Crownmoor. Olivia’s son David and daughter-in-law, Wimbledon friends and near neighbours of Tom and Jane, had offered to take in the Pollard’s twin son and daughter, contemporaries of their own two children, a scheme greeted with enthusiasm by the quartet. From conversations over the telephone it was clear that a good time was being had by all in perfect June weather.

  On this Friday, the last day of their holiday, Olivia Strode had driven Pollard and Jane to a point twelve miles to the north of Affacombe. There she had dropped them with picnic lunches to walk back to the village along the crest of Sinneldon, the eastern bastion of Crownmoor.

  ‘About three miles short of the village there’s a combe running down to the Sinnel,’ she had told them, ‘and a rather pleasant path all the way back along the river bank if you feel like a different landscape at that stage.’

  Presently Jane looked at her watch. ‘I suppose we ought to press on,’ she said reluctantly.

  Pollard gave a resigned assenting grunt and they got to their feet. Ahead of them the grassy track rose and fell gently, snaking its way through young green bracken and dark dead gorse. Tiny white saxifrage flowered in the crevices of granite outcrops. There was an occasional vivid splash of early bell heather and at intervals a prolific scatter of tiny golden rock roses. The Pollards were good walkers and swung along easily in their shorts and open necked shirts. At intervals they stopped to gaze at the spectacular panorama to the south. Here the lower land beyond the Sinnel had been farmed down the centuries. It was an immense patchwork quilt of fields of an endless variety of shapes and colours: golden yellow, strong red and dusty pink, greens of subtly different shades. Here and there dark patches of woodland introduced emphatic notes, and on the far horizon was the shimmer of the sea.

  Eventually a few stunted hawthorns took shape in the distance, and along the track were the traces of long abandoned fields. Five minutes later the Pollards stood looking down into a steep combe followed by a tumbling stream and a stony path. They picked their way with some care in the unaccustomed gloom of close-packed dwarf birch, rowans and hawthorns. Blinking as they emerged into the light they looked down at the combe opening out ahead of them with a sudden reduction of its gradient. Some distance ahead a footbridge crossed the stream, and on the far side on a natural terrace well above flood level was a low rectangular granite house with green shuttered windows.

  A few yards further on Pollard stopped dead. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Somebody coming up from the road.’

  Impelled by a sudden unspoken impulse they dropped down in the lee of some bushes and watched the approaching figure.

  ‘It’s a male,’ Jane said. ‘You can always tell by the walk. Men somehow push themselves forward with their shoulders. More conventionally dressed than us.’

  As they watched, the figure became clearly identifiable as a youngish man in a light suit who stopped short of the house and subjected it to prolonged scrutiny. He then went up to the front door and appeared to knock. There was no response and he tried again with the same result. He then made an apparently unsuccessful attempt to peer through the shuttered windows, and finally went round to the back of the house and disappeared from view.

  ‘So what?’ Jane queried when a couple of minutes had passed. ‘If only we were a bit higher up we could see over the roof.’

  As she spoke the caller became visible again, apparently investigating the outbuildings in the rear of the house.

  ‘Perhaps we should make our presence felt,’ Pollard said thoughtfully.

  ‘No way!’ Jane retorted. ‘We’re on holiday, and if you tell me police are always on duty I’ll leave you... Look, he’s giving up...’

  As she spoke the young man reappeared. After a final look at the front of the house he went off down the combe towards the main road. The Pollards sat listening. After a few minutes there came a distant sound of a car engine being started up. Pollard got to his feet.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and have a snoop ourselves.’

  They followed the path down to the footbridge, crossed the stream and stood contemplating the building.

  ‘Interesting,’ he commented. ‘It’s an original Crownmoor long-house. That slightly different bit at the end would have been the shippon, and I expect there’s a cross-passage behind the front door. The first floor’s a later addition.’

  ‘Decidedly remote and primitive,’ Jane said. ‘No electricity cables or telephone line. How do you suppose they manage for water and drains?’

  On further investigation they found the farmhouse very securely locked and shuttered. In the open space behind it was a well with a padlocked cover and signs of a pipe having been laid to a pump outside the back door of the house. Nearer the stream was a septic tank. Pollard sniffed at the door of a shed and diagnosed a paraffin store. Tyre tracks led to and from another shed which was apparently used as a garage.

  ‘Well, they’ve got the basics,’ he said, ‘but it must be pretty grim in the winter.’

  Jane asked how there could ever have been a viable farm in the combe.

  ‘It must have been pretty marginal farming. Summer grazing up on the moor, and winter fodder grown in those abandoned fields we saw and fed to the stock in the shippon. A tough life: no EEC handouts in those days.’

  A rutted and partly grass-grown track wide enough to take a car led down the combe. It crossed the Sinnel by a primitive low bridge to join the road which linked Affacombe to the other villages along the river. The Pollards kept to the path on the left bank recommended by Olivia Strode, enjoying the cool of early evening and the quietly running water. Eventually they arrived at Poldens, a little stiff and footsore but announcing that they had had an absolutely super day.

  Later, bathed and changed, they relaxed over pr
e-supper drinks in Olivia’s sitting room-cum-study. Glancing around, Pollard was briefly transported back to the day, not far short of sixteen years earlier, when he had seen the room for the first time in the course of his Affacombe murder investigation. There were even more books now that Olivia had become a recognised local historian. The photographs included her son David’s wedding group and a chronological record of Rupert and Ursula, their children. The fine old picture-map of the county which had featured so oddly in one of his waking dreams still hung over the mantelpiece... It had been a winter afternoon with a bright fire on the hearth. He could remember exactly where he had been sitting when Olivia unconsciously let fall that vital clue to the murderer’s identity...

  He surfaced to hear Jane asking about Anstey’s Farm.

  ‘Do people actually live there?’

  ‘It belongs to a man called Paul Anstey who comes down for a few days from time to time. He’s a London businessman and owns a travel agency, I’ve heard,’ Olivia replied.

  ‘Originally a Crownmoor long-house, I take it?’ Pollard enquired.

  ‘Yes. The original structure’s quite recognisable, isn’t it, in spite of all the later additions? According to hearsay the Anstey family came from up-country somewhere and bought the house from its emigrating owners. Long before our time, of course. In the middle of the last century, I’ve been told. They partly rebuilt it and settled there, doing a bit of farming at first. When my John bought this cottage in 1937, an old John Anstey was living at the farm. He was more or less a recluse and said to have lost most of his money. Paul Anstey’s his son. He’s about sixty, I should say. He was pointed out to me once, but I’ve never met him socially. You see, he’s Dollaford-based for what local contacts he has. It’s nearer the farm than Affacombe, and has a much more with-it pub. A new man called Hooper bought it about five years ago and seems to be turning it into an “in” place — sorry, no pun intended — for Polharbour people to drive out to for dinner. Have another drink, both of you.’

  ‘There was a caller at Anstey’s Farm this afternoon,’ Pollard remarked, sitting down again after refilling their glasses. ‘A youngish man, who left his car down on the road and walked up to the house. He knocked twice, and when it was obvious the place was shut up he tried to peer through the shutters, and then went round to have a good look at the back premises. We were watching from higher up on the opposite side of the valley. In the end he called it a day and went off again.’

  ‘Perhaps a London friend dropping in on chance,’ Olivia said. ‘I expect he brings friends down on some of his visits. Come along to the kitchen and bring your drinks: you must be starving after that walk. I’ve only got to get a casserole out of the oven.’

  The next morning the Pollards left early by car for Wimbledon. Olivia Strode waved them off from the step of Poldens.

  Pollard glanced back and gave her a parting salute.

  ‘Wearing amazingly well, isn’t she?’ he remarked to Jane. ‘Grey now, of course, but still the same nice little round-about figure and brisk walk, and that shrewd sensible face.’

  ‘It think she’s terrific for seventy-four,’ Jane replied. ‘Definitely the top of your list of case friendships.’

  Chapter 2

  The young man in the light suit whose abortive call at Anstey’s Farm had interested the Pollards was Martin Anstey, the only child of Hugh, old John Anstey’s younger son. After serving in the army during the 1939-1945 war Hugh had emigrated to Southern Rhodesia. He had made money as a tobacco grower and married the daughter of British immigrants. Martin, born in 1954, had above-average ability and won a major scholarship to a South African university which he took up on completing his compulsory national service.

  Hugh Anstey had always intended to return to England on reaching retiring age, and with this in view had transferred money to his bank in London as long as this was feasible. On his advice Martin stayed on in South Africa after graduating, and joined the staff of the Cape Town branch of Randall’s, a well-known London publishing house. Then suddenly, in 1982, Hugh and his wife were both killed in an air crash. This tragedy decided Martin, who was becoming progressively more disenchanted with life in South Africa, to return to England on his own account. His employers in Cape Town regretfully fixed up a year’s trial for him with the firm’s head office in London where he duly presented himself in the spring of 1984.

  After settling into his new job which he liked from the start and finding a suitable small flat, he took stock. The future appeared quite promising. Now just on thirty, he was tall with rather untidy dark hair, intelligent eyes surveying the world through large horn-rimmed spectacles of a geometrical design, and strong features. His new colleagues liked him and he had no difficulty in making friends. These were predominantly male. Apart from a few fleeting affairs in South Africa he had so far taken only a limited interest in women. Thanks to his father’s foresight he found himself with a useful private income as well as a good salary. With his immediate preoccupations resolved he debated the question of whether or not to attempt to contact his only known relative in England, his uncle Paul Anstey, to discuss the provisions of John Anstey’s Will. Finally he decided to make an approach, and wrote to say that he would call in at Anstey’s Farm during the afternoon of Friday, 15 June.

  The situation was likely to be sticky. Hugh had kept in touch with his father after emigrating, and had received a notification of his death in 1960 from a Highcastle solicitor, followed in due course by a copy of his Will. The farmhouse and what little land remained had been left to Paul for his lifetime in trust for his eldest surviving son. If he died without legitimate issue it was to revert to Hugh, and ultimately to his eldest surviving son.

  Hugh reacted angrily, having built up over the years an agreeable picture of spending his old age in his childhood home duly reconditioned and modernised. After Paul’s treatment of his father it seemed hardly believable that he was to inherit a life interest in the farm. John Anstey had lost the greater part of his invested capital in the financial upheavals of the 1920s and early ’30s following on the First World War. Paul had been removed from Marlchester at the age of sixteen, and instead of going on to Cambridge as planned to read modern languages had been found a post in a London insurance office. His reaction had been to break off all contact with his father. The rupture was so complete and final that the solicitor who dealt with John’s affairs had considerable difficulty in tracing him after his father’s death in 1960. There had been no question of Marlchester for Hugh who was educated at Polharbour Grammar School, leaving at sixteen to work on a local farm. He joined the army in 1939, served throughout the war and emigrated to Southern Rhodesia in 1948, seeing little prospect of a promising future for himself in England, but always maintaining contact with his father and giving him financial help from time to time. His indignation over John Anstey’s Will was understandable. He wrote curtly to Paul, stating that he had received a copy and would hold him responsible for the maintenance of the property. His letter was unanswered.

  So too was Martin’s, in which he had proposed a visit to Anstey’s Farm on Friday, 15 June. Not particularly surprised, he decided to make the trip all the same. After the vast open spaces of southern Africa the tiny scale and endless variety of the English landscape fascinated him, and the prospect of seeing the surroundings of his father’s early days had a particular appeal.

  He left London by car early on the Friday morning, broke his journey at Highcastle and finally arrived at the turning up to Anstey’s Farm in mid-afternoon. He parked at the roadside and set off up the track. As he came round a curve he experienced a mental jolt. Half-unconsciously he had carried in his mind from boyhood a picture of Anstey’s Farm and its setting built up from some faded snapshots and his father’s reminiscences. From the latter he had visualised a carefree life in almost unlimited space diversified by precipitous slopes, stretches of dense woodland, a rushing torrent and a great mountain barrier at the head of the combe. All these features
formed a backcloth for the large impressive house that was the family home. Now, confronted with reality, he had a claustrophobic feeling. The valley was narrow and shut in, the rushing torrent a small shallow stream and the mountain barrier merely the shoulder of Sinneldon. The house of his imagination had shrunk to a featureless rectangular building in a poor state of repair. Martin stood and stared and then grinned at his shattered illusions based on his father’s idealised recollections.

  The house was shuttered, and it was evident that no one was in residence, but he went through the formality of knocking and listening to the sound reverberating through the emptiness within. Either his uncle had not been down recently, and his own letter suggesting a visit was lying on the mat inside, or the proposed contact was not on. An attempt to peer through the slats of the shutters was unsuccessful. Going round to the back of the house Martin noted the limited amenities and the need for extensive repairs. Finally, after a last look at the front he began to retrace his steps, deep in thought. It had struck him that sooner or later he would be in for a problem. Possibly sooner. Paul was in his sixties, and on his demise he, Martin, would have this set-up round his neck. Living in it would be out of the question, of course. It was far too remote and needed a packet spending on it. Hardly saleable, unless some tycoon suddenly fell for the idea of the sort of simple life that only the really wealthy can afford... But if the place was unsaleable, could one just leave it to fall down? What would the legal position be if somebody broke in and the roof collapsed on him?

  As he arrived back at his car Martin was suddenly struck by another idea. Why not refuse the bequest? Surely there must be some legal way of doing this?

  Obviously the thing to do was to get hold of a good solicitor. Somebody in the department at Randall’s would be able to put him on to one. Having decided on this course of action he looked at his watch. It was a quarter to five. Over an hour to opening time, but he would go on to Dollaford, the nearest village to Anstey’s Farm which his father had often talked about. As a kid he’d bought whacking great sweets called gobstoppers at the shop there for a ha’penny a time, and had said the place had a pretty decent pub. After a drink there perhaps the best thing would be to go back to Highcastle and put up somewhere for the night. Or possibly to go on to Polharbour. Still feeling a faint sense of disillusionment at the outcome of his trip up to date, Martin started up the Austin Maestro and eased it off the grass verge on to the road.