Magpie Murders Read online

  He saw a figure, walking up the pathway from the main gate. It was a man, on his own. Brent had good eyesight and the moon was out but he couldn’t be sure if it was anyone from the village. It was hard to tell as the visitor was wearing a hat that concealed most of his face. There was something about the way he was walking that was a little odd. He was half-stooping, keeping to the shadows, almost as if he didn’t want to be seen. It was a late hour to be visiting Sir Magnus. Brent considered turning back. There’d been that burglary, the same day as the funeral, and everyone was on the alert. It wouldn’t take him a minute to go back across the lawn and check that everything was all right.

  He decided against it. After all, it wasn’t any business of his who visited Pye Hall and following the discussion he’d had with Sir Magnus that same afternoon, after what Sir Magnus had said to him, he certainly felt no loyalty towards his employer, or his wife. It wasn’t as if they’d ever looked after him. They’d taken him for granted. Brent had been working from eight in the morning until the middle of the night for years now with never a word of thanks and at a salary that was frankly laughable. He wouldn’t normally go drinking in the middle of the week but as it happened, he had ten bob in his pocket which he was going to spend on fish and chips and a couple of pints. The Ferryman stood at the bottom end of the village. It was a shabby, ramshackle place, much less genteel than the Queen’s Arms. They knew him there. He always sat at the same seat near the window. Over the next couple of hours he might exchange half a dozen words with the barman but for Brent that amounted to a conversation. He put the visitor out of his mind and continued on his way.

  He had another strange encounter before he reached the pub twenty-five minutes later. As he emerged from the woods, he came upon a single, slightly dishevelled woman walking towards him and recognised Henrietta Osborne, the vicar’s wife. She must have come from her house, which was just up the road, and she had left in a hurry. She had thrown on a pale blue parka, a man’s, presumably her husband’s. Her hair was untidy. She looked distracted.

  She saw him. ‘Oh, good evening, Brent,’ she said. ‘You’re out late.’

  ‘I’m going to the pub.’

  ‘Are you? I was just wondering … I was looking for the vicar. I don’t suppose you’ve seen him?’

  ‘No.’ Brent shook his head, wondering why the vicar would be out at this time of the night. Had the two of them had a row? Then he remembered. ‘There was someone up at Pye Hall, Mrs Osborne. I suppose it might have been him.’

  ‘Pye Hall?’

  ‘They were just going in.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why he’d want to go up there.’ She sounded nervous.

  ‘I don’t know who it was.’ Brent shrugged.

  ‘Well, good night.’ Henrietta turned and went back the way she had come, heading towards her home.

  An hour later, Brent was sitting with his fish and chips, sipping his second pint. The room was thick with cigarette smoke. Music had been playing loudly on the jukebox but there was a pause between discs and he heard the bicycle as it went past, heading up towards the crossroads. He glanced out and saw it as it went past. The sound it made was unmistakeable. So he had been right. The vicar had been down at Pye Hall and now he was on his way home. He had been there for quite a while. Brent thought briefly about his meeting with Henrietta Osborne. She’d been worried about something. What was going on? Well, it was nothing to do with him. He turned away and put it all out of his head.

  But he would be reminded of it soon enough.

  10

  Atticus Pünd read the story in The Times the following morning.

  BARONET MURDERED

  Police were called to the Wiltshire village of Saxby-on-Avon following the death of Sir Magnus Pye, a wealthy local landowner. Detective Inspector Raymond Chubb, speaking on behalf of the Bath constabulary, confirmed that the death is being treated as murder. Sir Magnus is survived by his wife, Frances, Lady Pye, and his son, Frederick.

  He was in the sitting room at Tanner Court, smoking a cigarette. James Fraser had brought him the newspaper and a cup of tea. Now he returned, carrying an ashtray.

  ‘Have you seen the front page?’ Pünd asked.

  ‘Absolutely! It’s terrible. Poor Lady Mountbatten …’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Her car was stolen! And in the middle of Hyde Park!’

  Pünd smiled, a little sadly. ‘That was not the story to which I referred.’ He turned it round to show to his assistant.

  Fraser read the paragraphs. ‘Pye!’ he exclaimed. ‘Wasn’t that—’

  ‘It was indeed. Yes. He was the employer of Mary Blakiston. His name was mentioned in this room just a few days ago.’

  ‘Quite a coincidence!’

  ‘It is possible, yes. Coincidences do occur. But in this instance, I am not so sure. We are talking here of death, of two unexpected deaths in the same house. Do you not find that intriguing?’

  ‘You’re not going to go down, are you?’

  Atticus Pünd considered.

  It had certainly not been in his mind to take on any more work. The time remaining to him simply would not allow it. According to Dr Benson, he had at best three months of reasonable health, which might not even be enough to catch a killer. Anyway, he had already made certain decisions. He intended to use that time to put his affairs in order. There was the question of his will, the disbursement of his home and property. He had left Germany with almost nothing of his own but there was the collection of eighteenth-century Meissen figurines which had belonged to his father and which had, miraculously, survived the war. He would like to see them in a museum and had already written to the Victoria and Albert in Kensington. It would comfort him to know that the musician, the preacher, the soldier, the seamstress and all the other members of his little family would still be together after he had gone. They were, after all, the only family that he had.

  He would make a bequest for James Fraser who had been with him during his last five cases and whose loyalty and good humour had never failed him, even if he had never helped very much when it came to the investigation of crime. There were various charities that he wished to benefit, in particular the Metropolitan and City Police Orphans Fund. Above all, there were the papers relating to his masterwork, The Landscape of Criminal Investigation. It would have taken him another year to finish it. There was no possibility of presenting it to a publisher in its present state. But he had thought that he might be able to collate all his notes, along with the newspaper clippings, letters and police reports, so that some student of criminology might be able to assemble the whole thing at a future date. It would be sad to have done so much work for nothing.

  These had been his plans. But if there was one thing that life had taught him, it was the futility of making plans. Life had its own agenda.

  Now he turned to Fraser. ‘I told Miss Sanderling that I was unable to help her because I had no official reason to present myself at Pye Hall,’ he said. ‘But now a reason has presented itself and I see that our old friend Detective Inspector Chubb is involved.’ Pünd smiled. The old light had come into his eyes. ‘Pack the bags, James, and bring round the car. We are leaving at once.’

  THREE

  A Girl

  1

  Atticus Pünd had never learned to drive. He was not wilfully old-fashioned. He kept himself informed of all the latest scientific developments and would not hesitate to use them – in the treatment of his illness, for example. But there was something about the pace of change that concerned him, the sudden onrush of machines in every shape and size. As televisions, typewriters, fridges and washing machines became more ubiquitous, as even the fields became crowded with electric pylons, he sometimes wondered if there might not be hidden costs for a humanity that had already been sorely tested in his lifetime. Nazism, after all, had been a machine in itself. He was in no rush
to join the new technological age.

  And so, when he had bowed to the inevitable and agreed that he needed a private car, he had left the whole business to James Fraser who had gone out and returned with a Vauxhall Velox four-door saloon, a good choice Pünd had to admit; sturdy and reliable with plenty of space. Fraser of course was boyishly excited. It had a six-cylinder engine. It would go from zero to sixty in just twenty-two seconds. The heater could be set to de-ice the windscreen in the winter. Pünd was just happy that it would get him where he wanted to go and – a sober, unremarkable grey – it would not scream out that he had arrived.

  The Vauxhall, with James Fraser at the wheel, pulled in outside Pye Hall after the three-hour drive from London, which they had taken without stopping. There were two police cars parked on the gravel. Pünd got out and stretched his legs, grateful to be released from the confined space. His eyes travelled across the front of the building, taking in its grandeur, its elegance, its very Englishness. He could tell at once that it had belonged to the same family for many generations. It had an unchanging quality, a sense of permanence.

  ‘Here’s Chubb,’ Fraser muttered.

  The familiar face of the detective inspector appeared at the front door. Fraser had telephoned him before they left and Chubb had evidently been awaiting their arrival. Plump and cheerful, with his Oliver Hardy moustache, he was dressed in an ill-fitting suit with one of his wife’s latest knitting creations below, this one a particularly unfortunate mauve cardigan. He had put on weight. That was the impression he always gave. Pünd had once remarked that he had the look of a man who has just finished a particularly good meal. He came bounding down the front steps, evidently pleased to see them.

  ‘Herr Pünd!’ he exclaimed. It was always ‘herr’ and somehow Chubb implied that that there was some failing in Pünd’s character being born in Germany. After all, he might have been saying, let’s not forget who won the war. ‘I was very surprised to hear from you. Don’t tell me you’ve had dealings with the late Sir Magnus.’

  ‘Not at all, Detective Inspector,’ Pünd replied. ‘I had never met him and only knew of his death from the newspapers this morning.’

  ‘So what brings you here?’ His eyes travelled over to James Fraser and seemed to notice him for the first time.

  ‘It is a strange coincidence.’ In fact, Fraser had often heard the detective remark that there was no such thing as a coincidence. There was a chapter in The Landscape of Criminal Investigation where he had expressed the belief that everything in life had a pattern and that a coincidence was simply the moment when that pattern became briefly visible. ‘A young lady from this village came to see me yesterday. She told me of a death that had taken place in this very house two weeks ago—’

  ‘Would that be the housekeeper, Mary Blakiston?’

  ‘Yes. She was concerned that certain people were making false accusations about what had occurred.’

  ‘You mean, they thought the old girl had been deliberately killed?’ Chubb took out a packet of Players, the same brand he always smoked, and lit one. The index and third fingers of his right hand were permanently stained – like old piano keys. ‘Well, I can put your mind at rest on that one, Herr Pünd. I looked into it myself and I can tell you it was an accident pure and simple. She was doing the hoovering at the top of the stairs. She got tangled up in the wire and tumbled down the full length. Solid flagstone at the bottom, unlucky for her! Nobody had any reason to kill her and anyway she was locked in the house, on her own.’

  ‘And what of the death of Sir Magnus?’

  ‘Well, that’s quite a different kettle of fish. You can come in and take a butcher’s if you like – and that’s the right word for it. I’m going to finish this first, if you don’t mind. It’s pretty nasty in there.’ He deliberately screwed the cigarette into his lips and inhaled. ‘At the moment, we’re treating it as a burglary that went wrong. That seems the most obvious conclusion.’

  ‘The most obvious conclusions are the ones I try to avoid.’

  ‘Well, you have your own methods, Herr Pünd, and I won’t say they haven’t been helpful in the past. What we’ve got here is a local land owner, been in the village all his life. It’s early days but I can’t see that anyone would have a grudge against him. Now, someone came up here around half past eight last night. He was actually spotted by Brent, the groundsman, as he was finishing work. He hasn’t been able to give us a description but his first impression was that it wasn’t anyone from the village.’

  ‘How could he know that?’ Fraser asked. He had been ignored up until this moment and felt a need to remind the others he was still there.

  ‘Well, you know how it is. It’s easier to recognise someone if you’ve seen them before. Even if you can’t see their face, there’s something about the shape of their body or the way they walk. Brent was fairly sure this was a stranger. And anyway, there was something about the way this man went up to the house. It was as if he didn’t want to be seen.’

  ‘You believe this man was a burglar,’ Pünd said.

  ‘The house had already been burgled once just a few days before.’ Chubb sighed as if it irritated him having to explain it all again. ‘After the death of the housekeeper, they had to smash a back window to get in. They should have got it reglazed but they didn’t and a few days after that someone broke in. They got away with a nice little haul of antique coins and jewellery – Roman, would you believe it. Maybe they had a look around while they were there. There’s a safe in Sir Magnus’s study which they might have been unable to open but now they knew it was there, they could come back and have a second crack at it. They thought the house was still empty. Sir Magnus surprised them – and there you have it.’

  ‘You say he was killed violently.’

  ‘That’s an understatement.’ Chubb needed to fortify himself with another lungful of smoke. ‘There’s a suit of armour in the main hall. You’ll see it in a minute. Complete with sword.’ He swallowed. ‘That’s what they used. They took his head clean off.’

  Pünd considered this for a moment. ‘Who found him?’

  ‘His wife. She’d been on a shopping trip to London and she got home at around nine fifteen.’

  ‘The shops closed late.’ Pünd half-smiled.

  ‘Well, maybe she had dinner too. Anyway, as she arrived, she saw a car driving off. She’s not sure of the make but it was green and she saw a couple of letters off the registration plate. FP. As luck would have it, they’re her own initials. She came in and found him lying at the foot of the stairs almost exactly where the body of his housekeeper had been the week before. But not all of him. His head had rolled across the floor and landed next to the fireplace. I’m not sure you’ll be able to talk to her for a while. She’s in hospital in Bath, still under sedation. She’s the one who called the police and I’ve heard a recording of the conversation. Poor woman, she can hardly get the words out, screaming and sobbing. If this was a murder, you can certainly strike her off the list of suspects unless she’s the world’s greatest actress.’

  ‘The body, I take it, has gone.’

  ‘Yes. We removed it last night. Needed a strong stomach, I can tell you.’

  ‘Was anything removed from this house on this second occasion, Detective Inspector?’

  ‘It’s hard to be sure. We’ll need to interview Lady Pye when she’s up to it. But on first appearance, it doesn’t seem so. You can come in, if you like, Herr Pünd. You’re not here in any official capacity, of course, and maybe I should have a quick word with the Assistant Commissioner, but I’m sure no harm can come of it. And if anything does spring to mind, I can rely on you to let me know.’

  ‘Of course, Detective Inspector,’ Pünd said although Fraser knew that he would do no such thing. He had accompanied Pünd on five separate enquiries and knew that the detective had a maddening habit of keeping everything under his hat until it suited him to rev
eal the truth.

  They climbed three steps but Pünd stopped before he entered the front door. He crouched down. ‘Now that is strange,’ he said.

  Chubb gazed at him in disbelief. ‘Are you going to tell me that I’ve missed something?’ he demanded. ‘And we haven’t even gone inside!’

  ‘It may have no relevance at all, Detective Inspector,’ he replied, soothingly. ‘But you see the flower bed beside the door …’

  Fraser glanced down. There were flower beds running all the way along the front of the house, divided by the steps that led up from the driveway.

  ‘Petunias, if I’m not mistaken,’ Chubb remarked.

  ‘Of that I am unsure. But do you not see the handprint?’

  Both Chubb and Fraser looked more closely. It was true. Somebody had stuck their hand in the soft earth just to the left of the door. From the size of it, Fraser would have said that it belonged to a man. The fingers were outstretched. It was very odd, Fraser thought. A footprint would have been more conventional.

  ‘It probably belongs to the gardener,’ Chubb said. ‘I can’t think of any other explanation.’

  ‘And you are probably right.’ Pünd sprang back to his feet and continued forward.

  The door led directly into a large, rectangular room with a staircase in front of them and two more doors, left and right. Fraser saw at once where the body of Sir Magnus had lain and he felt the usual stirring in the pit of his stomach. There was a Persian rug, gleaming darkly, still soaked with blood. The blood had spread onto the flagstones, stretching towards the fireplace, encircling the legs of one of the leather chairs that stood there. The whole room stank of it. A sword lay diagonally, with its hilt close to the stairs, its blade pointing towards the head of a deer that looked down with glass eyes, perhaps the only witness to what had occurred. The rest of the armour, an empty knight, stood beside one of the doors with a living room beyond. Fraser had been to many crime scenes with his employer. Often he had seen the bodies lying there – stabbed, shot, drowned, whatever. But it struck him that there was something particularly macabre about this one, almost Jacobean with the dark wooden panelling and the minstrel gallery.