‘Yes. In the driving seat. I saw his shoulders and the back of his head. He was wearing a hat.’
‘You saw the car leave,’ Pünd said. ‘How would you say it was being driven?’
‘The driver was in a hurry. He skidded as he turned into the main road.’
‘He was driving to Bath?’
‘No. The other way.’
‘You then proceeded to the front door. The lights were on.’
‘Yes. I let myself in.’ She shuddered. ‘I saw my husband at once and I called the police.’
There was a long silence. Lady Pye seemed genuinely exhausted. When Pünd spoke again, his voice was gentle. ‘Do you by any chance know the combination of your husband’s safe?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I do. I keep some of my more expensive jewellery there. It hasn’t been opened, has it?’
‘No, not at all, Lady Pye,’ Pünd assured her. ‘Although it is possible that it had been opened some time recently as the picture behind which it was concealed was not quite flush with the wall.’
‘That might have been Magnus. He kept money in there. And private papers.’
‘And the combination?’ Chubb asked.
She shrugged. ‘Left to seventeen, right to nine, left to fifty-seven, then turn the dial twice.’
‘Thank you.’ Pünd smiled sympathetically. ‘I am sure you are tired, Lady Pye, and we will not keep you much longer. There are just two more questions I wish to ask you. The first concerns a note which we also found on your husband’s desk and which seems to have been written in his hand.’
Chubb had brought the notepad, now encased in a plastic evidence bag. He passed it to Lady Pye who quickly scanned the three lines written in pencil:
ASHTON H
Mw
A GIRL
‘This is Magnus’s handwriting,’ she said. ‘And there’s nothing very mysterious about it. He had a habit of making notes when he took a telephone call. He was always forgetting things. I don’t know who or what Ashton H is. MW? I suppose that could be somebody’s initials.’
‘The M is large but the w is small,’ Pünd pointed out.
‘Then it might be a word. He did that too. If you asked him to buy the newspaper when he went out, he’d jot down Np.’
‘Could it be that this Mw angered him in some way? He takes no further notes but there are several lines. You can see that he has almost torn the sheet of paper with the pencil.’
‘I have no idea.’
‘And what about this girl?’ Chubb cut in. ‘Who might that be?’
‘I can’t tell you that either. Obviously, we needed a new housekeeper. I suppose someone could have recommended a girl.’
‘Your former housekeeper, Mary Blakiston—’ Pünd began.
‘Yes. It has been a horrible time – just horrible. We were away when it happened, in the south of France. Mary had been with us for ever. Magnus was very close to her. She worshipped him! From the moment she moved into the Lodge, she was beholden to him, as if he were some sort of monarch and she’d been asked to join the royal guard. Personally, I found her rather tiresome although I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. What else do you want to know?’
‘I noticed that there is a painting missing from the wall in the great hall where your husband was discovered. It hung next to the door.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Every detail is of interest to me, Lady Pye.’
‘It was a portrait of me.’ Frances Pye seemed reluctant to answer. ‘Magnus didn’t like it so he threw it out.’
‘Recently?’
‘Yes. It can’t have been more than a week ago, actually. I don’t remember exactly when.’ Frances Pye sank back into her pillows, signalling that she had spoken enough. Pünd nodded and, following his cue, Fraser and Chubb stood up and the three of them left.
‘What did you make of that?’ Chubb asked as they left the room.
‘She was definitely lying about London,’ Fraser said. ‘If you ask me, she and that Dartford chap spent the afternoon together – and they certainly weren’t shopping!’
‘It is evident that Lady Pye and her husband no longer shared a bed,’ Pünd agreed.
‘How do you know?’
‘It was obvious from the décor of the bedroom, the embroidered pillows. It was a room without any trace of a man.’
‘So there are two people with a good reason to kill him,’ Chubb muttered. ‘The oldest motive in the book. Kill the husband and run off together with the loot.’
‘You may be right, Detective Inspector. Perhaps we will find a copy of Sir Magnus Pye’s will in his safe. But his family has been in this house for many years and it is likely, I would think, that it will pass directly to his only son and heir.’
‘And a nasty piece of work he was too,’ Chubb remarked.
The safe in fact contained little of interest. There were several pieces of jewellery, about five hundred pounds in different currencies and various documents: some recent, some dating back as much as twenty years. Chubb took them with him.
He and Pünd parted company at the door, Chubb returning to his home in Hamswell where his wife, Harriet, would be waiting for him. He would know her mood instantly. As he had once confided in Pünd, she communicated it by the speed of her knitting needles.
Pünd and Fraser shook hands with him, then returned to the questionable comforts of the Queen’s Arms.
7
More people had gathered around the bus shelter on the far side of the village square, clearly exercised by something they had seen. Fraser had noticed a crowd of them that morning when they checked into the pub and clearly they had spread the word. Something had happened. The entire village needed to know.
‘What do you think that’s all about?’ he asked as he parked the car.
‘Perhaps we should find out,’ Pünd replied.
They got out and walked across the square. Whitehead’s Antiques and the General Electrics Store was already closed and in the still of the evening, with no traffic passing through, it was easy to hear what the small crowd was saying.
‘Got a right nerve!’
‘She should be ashamed.’
‘Flaunting herself like that!’
The villagers did not notice Pünd and Fraser until it was too late, then parted to allow the two men access to whatever it was they had been discussing. They saw it at once. There was a glass display case mounted next to the bus shelter with various notices pinned inside: minutes of the last council meeting, church services, forthcoming events. Among these, a single sheet of paper had been added with a typewritten message.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
There have been many rumours about Robert Blakiston circulating in the village. Some people have suggested that he may have had something to do with the tragic death of his mother, Mary Blakiston, on Friday morning at 9.00 a.m. These stories are hurtful and ill-informed and wrong. I was with Robert at that time in his flat above the garage and had been with him all night. If necessary, I will swear to this in a court of law. Robert and I are engaged to be married. Please show us a little kindness and stop spreading these malicious rumours.