Planning on murder, p.1
Planning on Murder, page 1
David Williams
PLANNING ON
MURDER
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
This one for
Nicholas Campbell Williams
Chapter One
‘Stopping people from using land is like … like cutting off a man’s hand,’ said Lord Delgard gruffly. His visible right eye blinked twice—though it might have been winking. With the left eye concealed beneath a black patch it was difficult ever to be certain. ‘Cutting it off at the wrist,’ he embellished, in an increasingly crusty tone. On the whole, this seemed to qualify blinks not winks.
‘Except this isn’t common land, Tug. It’s ours,’ his wife replied softly. Petite and gentle, she had neither winced at the simile, nor shifted her attention from her tapestry frame. It was quite a large frame, and the design was nearly complete. It showed yellow roses in a cream and pink vase on a deckled mauve background. Artistically it was fairly inert—although perhaps a credit to the weaver’s industry.
‘Part of our heritage, yes,’ the eleventh Viscount agreed, but absently, because he was already thinking of something else.
Since Lord Delgard had been christened Timothy Urquhart Grantly, it followed that he would come to be called Tug, a sobriquet that happened to match his appearance as well as his initials. He was a short, square, thickset figure. His bald, bullet head rested tightly on a hardly discernible neck above a chest that butted forward like an eminently seaworthy prow. He shifted his feet, widening the gap between legs clad in tweed knickerbockers and thick woollen stockings, and tightened the grip of his fists that were clasped behind his belted Norfolk jacket. ‘Oliphant should be here by now,’ he complained, nodding at the mullioned bay window in front of him as if holding it responsible for Oliphant’s non-appearance. ‘I need a full report on what he did in London yesterday. And this morning.’
‘It’s two golf courses and an hotel they’ll be building, of course,’ said Lady Delgard as if she were disseminating these facts for the first time. It was her way of moving things on from severed hands, a practised way, learned through forty-seven years of marriage to a one-eyed, battle-scarred, ex-regular soldier with a penchant for sanguine allusions.
‘Cutting off hands is what the Muslims do to thieves,’ offered the Honourable Bea Delgard, the Viscount’s spinster sister, who lacked Lady Delgard’s sensitivity. She was seventy-seven years of age, and two years junior to her brother. Except for his lordship’s total absence of hair the two might have been twins. Bea (short for Beatrice) temporarily abandoned the racing section of The Times, scratched one elbow vigorously, and searched the large pockets of her openknit cardigan for her cigarettes. She was only half expecting her brother to respond to her comment.
‘You could call what’s planned here theft,’ he said, brushing his moustache with the end of a straight forefinger. He turned from staring out southward across the windswept open courtyard, and the park beyond, flexed his gammy left leg, and limped across the corner of the room. Then he stared eastward through the window that gave on to the just as windswept upper terrace. It was mid-October and unseasonably bleak, even for East Anglia.
Gunner, Lord Delgard’s bulldog, remained seated, slumped in the side-saddle, full frontal manner of his breed, and next to where his master had been standing earlier. His long tongue wiped the whole of his nose for the third time since he had started following Delgard’s movements with sad inquisitive eyes.
‘Major Oliphant will he here directly,’ said Lady Delgard. ‘He was asked for four and he’s always punctual. Of course the London train could be late. Why don’t you sit down, dear?’ she suggested from her upright chair.
The three were in the ground floor small parlour in the west wing of Vormer House, a stately edifice—towering, symmetrical, deservedly conspicuous, and justifiably haughty. It was built of honey-coloured Ancaster limestone, and modelled in the shape of a squashed letter H. The house’s architect is unknown, but the huge areas of glittering glass to all aspects, the touches of Renaissance detail, the elegant columned chimneys, and the curving Flemish gables testify that the originator was a man of education, taste and fashion, with strong artistic inclinations.
Vormer is opened to the public on two days a week, from April to September, but the west wing, which includes the family’s private apartments, is not part of the tour. Lord Delgard regarded it nearly as an obligation to share his ancestral home with the populace at large (in return, of course, for a reasonable price of admission), but he was not moved to do this more often than on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, and he drew the line at letting the peasantry tramp through his living quarters—particularly his bathroom (something regularly requested), whatever the extra sense of intimacy such an experience might be expected to provide.
The rooms in the off-limits west wing are no less elegant than those in the rest of the house, but on the whole their fitments are more reflective of modern living. For instance, the small parlour contains some handsome furniture and paintings—but also a television receiver and a CD player, items that visitors to an Elizabethan house might in any case find incongruous, or even disillusioning.
‘It can’t be theft. You’re getting money for the land,’ Bea insisted, with discomforting frankness. She was seated on the sofa facing the big stone fireplace where burning logs were spitting and crackling. She inhaled deeply on a Capstan Full Strength cigarette, making it do much the same as the logs.
‘There’ll be crumpets,’ said Lady Delgard with apparent inconsequence, but the satisfied air of a benefactress whose bounty knew no end.
‘That’s beside the point,’ her husband said, pausing in his stride, looking at his wife, but replying to his sister. He was referring to the irrelevancy of money, not crumpets.
These three elderly co-habitants let subjects float like balloons whose buoyancy was perilously maintained by occasional and, sometimes, seemingly inapposite verbal taps.
‘I’ve already said, it’s stealing from the local people who use the park,’ Delgard continued, and who hadn’t said exactly that, but no matter. He settled himself into a winged armchair to one side of the fireplace. Unlike the house, the nine-hundred-acre park was open to the public daily throughout the year, and there was no charge. ‘That’s the point the MP chap, what’s his name again—?’
‘Charles Finton, dear.’
‘Yes, the point he was making the other night. Said his bush telegraph reports were strong on depriving the locals.’
‘Major Oliphant was catching the one-forty from King’s Cross,’ supplied Lady Delgard, looking up reflectively while rearranging a curl of soft hair over her right ear, a shell-like feature: she had been a great beauty in her day. ‘He told me as much yesterday. Or was it the day before? I suppose it must have been the day before. Yes. Today’s Tuesday,’ she went on, pausing briefly it seemed from the effort of accurate recall. ‘There’s no buffet on that train. He’ll not have had a proper lunch. A sandwich, I expect. The crumpets will be welcome.’
‘But they’ll be able to play golf instead of whatever else they’ve been doing in the park.’ Bea was responding to her brother.
‘Balls,’ he said, half under his breath.
‘And bowls perhaps?’ Lady Delgard’s sense of hearing was still particularly acute. ‘Ah!’ She cocked her head slightly. ‘That’ll be the Major now. I’ve told Alice to bring the tea in with him.’ Neither of the last intelligences seemed to register with her husband.
‘You’ll have to join the club to play golf. Or stay in the hotel. Whole thing’s thoroughly elitist, of course,’ Delgard observed with the confidence of an enlightened aristocrat: even so, he and his elite forebears had enjoyed exclusive privileges in the area since shortly after the Norman Conquest. ‘’Afternoon, Oliphant,’ he went on, eyeing the middle height, slightly stooped and stocky individual who was now marching through the impressive double doorway, arms swinging with unnecessary energy for one who wasn’t engaged on a parade ground. ‘Brought the tea with you, have you?’ Delgard completed, showing that one of his wife’s comments had registered at least.
Oliphant stopped dead, glancing rapidly from side to side as if some kind of an attack on his person was imminent. ‘I can get it, if you want, General,’ he volunteered uncertainly. His left cheek gave a violent and sinister twitch. He had continued to address his employer as General since their army days.
‘Come and sit down, Major. Alice is bringing the tea in directly,’ said Lady Delgard, moving her tapestry frame to one side.
Small, ample Alice Sting was housekeeper and cook-general at Vormer. She appeared now on cue behind the Major and pushing a large trolley with outsize wheels and laden with tea-things. ‘There’s enough mushrooms for dinner after all, mi’lady,’ she confided, while arranging the trolley in front of Lady Delgard. ‘Want me to hand round, do you?’ She was wearing a light blue woollen dress with a cotton pinafore over the front.
‘No. We’ll help ourselves, thank you,’ said Lady Delgard, lifting the top from a silver dish. She nodded approvingly at the hot crumpets revealed beneath the cover. Gunner the bulldog did the same from his new position close to the trolley.
‘Who did you see after you left Henfold’s yesterday, Oliphant? Since we spoke on the phone? Did you see Gradson then?’ Delgard demanded before the other man had quite finished greeting the ladies. Henfold Developments was a property company. Gradson was the Delgard’s London lawyer.
‘No one. There was no time left. Not yesterday, I’m afraid,’ Oliphant replied. ‘I saw Gradson first thing this morning. Gave him your instructions. He’d heard again from the Tudor Heritage Trust. The Trust is definitely supporting the planning application to the Thatchford District Council.’ He rose again from where he had just seated himself, on the sofa next to the Hon. Bea, and moved to fetch tea for both of them. Alice Sting had already left the room.
‘I should think they would support us, too,’ said Delgard forcefully, also standing to help himself to a buttery crumpet which he started to consume while waiting for his wife to pour his tea. ‘Since they’re getting the house, the park, the pictures, and everything except our immortal souls. And three million pounds on top of that.’ He wiped some butter from his chin and fed a bit of crumpet to the dog. ‘I’ve been having second thoughts, Oliphant, I can tell you. Strong misgivings. Am I really doing the right thing allowing the park to be carved up?’
The Major’s square and flattish face took on a solemn expression. His dark, very sunken eyes under bushy eyebrows darted sidelong looks at the two ladies as he tried to gauge the seriousness of Delgard’s statement.
Right or wrong, Oliphant had been praying fervently that there would be no turning back now. As manager of an estate that had precious little left in it to be managed, his future depended on his becoming secretary of the golf club planned to occupy three hundred acres of the park. More to the point, it was the only way he was going to raise the money to pay off his debts, which were pressing. At fifty-two his prospects of other sorts of gainful employment were virtually non-existent if his present job ended—as he feared it was bound to do soon, whatever happened. Dan Sting (Alice’s husband), the estate foreman under Oliphant, was already well able to manage Vormer park and gardens with a permanent work force of only two, and extra seasonal labour when needed.
Oliphant was really superfluous, and he knew it. It had been different when there had been tenant farms and village houses to supervise. Except for his debts, his own future requirements were quite modest. His wife had left him five years before this. Since then he had lived alone but comfortably enough in one of the remaining estate cottages, an arrangement he hoped could continue if things worked out as planned. He had put out strong feelers about the golf club job to the Henfold executives in charge of the development. They had been encouraging, though there had been no specific promise as there had been about the discreet payment they were making him for encouraging Lord Delgard to accept the plan. The payment was to be made on completion of the deal, but by the sound of it, even that could now be in jeopardy.
‘People are free to walk on a golf course if they wish, General,’ he said, his cheek twitching uncontrollably. ‘So long as they don’t interrupt play. And the courses will only take up a third of the park in any case. I’m quite sure more people will use the park for walking and so on than do at the moment. Especially when the hotel is built.’
‘Hotel visitors will use it, you mean? Not locals?’ asked Bea.
‘Both, I should think.’
‘What d’you mean by “for walking and so on”?’ Delgard inquired sharply as he moved back towards his chair, balancing his teacup and a piece of chocolate cake in the saucer.
‘Well, the Tudor Heritage Trust will keep the Easter horse show going. And the gymkhana in the summer.’
‘Of course they will. Those things are institutions. But no nonsense like motorbike rallies, or pop music festivals, eh? No tomfoolery of that kind?’
‘Certainly not, General. Apart from anything else, the Trust accepts that events like that wouldn’t suit the members of the golf club.’
‘Oh wouldn’t they?’ countered Delgard, fixing the other man with the steeliest of one-eyed stares. ‘Well, they wouldn’t suit me either, though I suppose we’ll be taking a back seat in future.’ He sighed noisily. ‘And I still wonder if it wouldn’t be better to keep the place for my lifetime. Both our lifetimes.’ He looked across at his wife. ‘Hand it over when we’re dead and gone. When we can’t be driven mad by other people’s behaviour. Insensitive behaviour.’
Oliphant shifted in his seat. ‘Henfold and the Trust would both prefer you to make the gift now, as originally intended.’
‘Why? Because if we live too long the Trust will want more than three million for an endowment on the house, and Henfold won’t want to pay more for the three hundred acres?’
‘That’s part of it, yes. I mean, not in those precise terms, but—’
‘But near enough,’ Delgard interrupted.
‘It’s also because this way there can’t be misunderstandings about intentions. Complications over the entail. Not while you’re … you’re …’
‘Not while we’re still around to sort them out?’
‘Also in the matter of the planning permission for the golf club and the hotel, General. From Thatchford Council. Henfold believe it’s more likely to be given if you’re here to support it.’
‘Hmm. Except I’m not sure I want to support it any more.’
‘Yes you are, Tug,’ put in Lady Delgard indulgently. ‘There’s really no alternative. Not if you want Vormer to stay as it is.’
‘And if everything’s left till after your death, there’s the risk that Henfold may not be interested in honouring the same plan. Or any plan at all,’ Oliphant cautioned.
‘Isn’t it less complicated too? To do it all now?’ asked Bea. ‘Over inheritance tax, I mean.’
‘There needn’t be any inheritance tax. Not either way,’ said her brother, wiping chocolate icing from his saucer with an extended forefinger. ‘Not if Gradson gets the legal part right. We’d just have to be sure the endowment money was guaranteed. If it wasn’t, the Trust wouldn’t take on the house.’
‘And, of course, we mustn’t forget the Trust is arranging that we can go on living here for as long as we choose. All three of us,’ Lady Delgard added. ‘Isn’t that so, Major?’
‘Well, not all three of you. Not exactly. Not in this house,’ said Oliphant, embarrassed by the question because it meant confirming something negative. He bent over his cup, vigorously stirring his tea, like a witch with an undersized cauldron.
‘But we’ve settled all that,’ said Bea, pulling down the front of her cardigan. ‘We can stay here so long as one of you two is still kicking. But if I’m the last survivor they’ll move me into a horse-box.’
‘Actually, into the Dower House,’ Oliphant supplied, and looking up gratefully under protruding eyebrows. ‘The Dower House will be repaired so that you all have the option of going there if you choose. That’s been confirmed again by Gradson. It was one of the things he talked to the Trust about on the telephone while I was with him.’
‘I shan’t be moving to the Dower House, but you and Bea might after I’m gone,’ said Delgard to his wife, then after sucking some of the chocolate from his finger he went on, ‘Well, I might, I suppose. If I get tired of the invading hordes here. Did Gradson get anywhere with the Trust on that one, Oliphant?’
The other man shook his head. ‘He says they still intend to open the house all day for six days a week, through the season.’
Delgard absently allowed Gunner to lick the rest of the chocolate from his hand. ‘Well, they’ll have to get extra staff to do that,’ he said, while patting the animal’s head. Gunner responded with an appreciative belch as his master continued, ‘I suppose they’ll want to have a tea-room and gift shop too?’
‘I gather so, General.’
‘And larger lavatories?’
‘Probably.’
Lord Delgard stared threateningly at the fire while metaphorically consigning tea-rooms, gift shops and larger lavatories to the flames. ‘So where do Henfold stand now on the whole shooting match?’ he demanded gruffly.
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