Hand of Death Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright & Information

  About the Author

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  'Dr. Patrick Grant' Titles

  Other Margaret Yorke Novels

  Synopses of Titles

  Copyright & Information

  The Hand Of Death

  First published in 1981

  © Margaret Yorke; House of Stratus 1981-2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Margaret Yorke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  0755130588 9780755130580 Print

  0755134710 9780755134717 Kindle

  0755134826 9780755134823 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Born in Surrey, England, to John and Alison Larminie in 1924, Margaret Yorke (Margaret Beda Nicholson) grew up in Dublin before moving back to England in 1937, where the family settled in Hampshire, although she then lived in a small village in Buckinghamshire.

  During World War II she saw service in the Women's Royal Naval Service as a driver. In 1945, she married, but it was only to last some ten years, although there were two children; a son and daughter. Her childhood interest in literature was re-enforced by five years living close to Stratford-upon-Avon and she also worked variously as a bookseller and as a librarian in two Oxford Colleges, being the first woman ever to work in that of Christ Church.

  She was widely travelled and had a particular interest in both Greece and Russia.

  Margaret Yorke's first novel was published in 1957, but it was not until 1970 that she turned her hand to crime writing. There followed a series of five novels featuring Dr. Patrick Grant, an Oxford don and amateur sleuth, who shared her own love of Shakespeare. More crime and mystery was to follow, and she wrote some forty three books in all, but the Grant novels were limited to five as, in her own words, 'authors using a series detective are trapped by their series. It stops some of them from expanding as writers'.

  She was proud of the fact that many of her novels are essentially about ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations which may threatening, or simply horrific. It is this facet of her writing that ensures a loyal following amongst readers who inevitably identify with some of the characters and recognise conflicts that may occur in everyday life. Indeed, she stated that characters are far more important to her than intricate plots and that when writing 'I don't manipulate the characters, they manipulate me'.

  Critics have noted that Margaret Yorke has a 'marvellous use of language' and she was frequently cited as an equal to P.D. James and Ruth Rendell. She was a past chairman of the Crime Writers' Association and in 1999 was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger, having already been honoured with the Martin Beck Award from the Swedish Academy of Detection.

  Margaret Yorke died in 2012.

  Dedication

  To my friends in the police,

  with admiration and respect for the job they do.

  1

  He closed the magazine and put it under the pile of newspapers. Then he shut the drawer and locked it, placing the small brass key in a chipped china mug which stood on the desk. He stacked a number of ballpoint and felt-tipped pens and some pencils in the mug on top of the key; such a simple hiding place. For a while he sat with his eyes closed, allowing his imagination to range over what he had been looking at; at last he rose, and climbed the cellar steps.

  He washed at the small sink in the scullery at the back of the shop where the electric kettle and tea things were kept. In the mirror he checked his reflection; his face was a trifle flushed but that would soon fade. He took a comb from the pocket of his fawn corduroy jacket and slicked down his thick, greying hair. He straightened his brown silk tie. Then he switched off the last remaining light and let himself out by the back door, which he locked with a key from a ring he kept in his pocket.

  A fine drizzle was falling as he walked quickly down the alley behind the shop to Church Lane, where his van was parked. It was an elderly Morris Minor, maroon, with Nanron Antiques painted in neat white letters on the door. He never parked outside the shop, except to load or unload.

  He paused on the corner. To the right lay Tellingford, and home; to the left, the High Street and the Plough Inn. Occasionally, after a Friday evening’s work on the books, he would go into the Plough. It was a small gesture of independence which Nancy accepted with no more reproach than a resigned smile and some words about the meal having dried up in the oven. But whatever the hour, the food was always perfect. Nancy was an excellent home maker.

  He still felt excited. Those spread limbs, that mane of tangled hair and the wide inviting mouth that he had been staring at in the magazine remained in his mind. It would be prudent to delay his return, allowing his pulse to slow and his thoughts to settle. He always made out that his weekly book-keeping took longer than it did, to win time he need not account for.

  He turned left towards the Plough. As he opened the door, a warm wave of smoky air and a buzz of noisy talk surged to greet him. The inn, on the road between Tellingford and Middletown, was a tempting stop for commuters on their way home from Tellingford station, and local businessmen.

  Ronald Trimm, dealer in furniture, clocks, china and bric-a-brac, squared his fawn corduroy shoulders, put on a cheery smile, and walked briskly up to the bar.

  George Fortescue sat wedged, thigh to thigh, between two other men in the railway compartment. There was no space to spread a newspaper between the elbows of his neighbours; in George’s hand was a paperback book, a tale of high adventure on the seas. For the length of his journey to Tellingford station, George was not a man beset by domestic problems, nor aware of the hot, airless train, but aboard a man-o’-war seeking the Spaniards with a cutlass in his belt. At stops along the line people got off the train, brushing past his knees, knocking into him with their briefcases, stepping on his toes. Through it all he remained detached, navigating the Atlantic.

  He had developed a routine, always getting into the same compartment which delivered him by the footbridge over the line at Tellingford, so that on wet nights he need not trudge along the platform. Often there were familiar faces on the train, but no one from his office caught the same one and even if there was a breakdown or the train was otherwise delayed, conversation was not encouraged by the regular commuters. Sometimes a pair of younger men, euphoric after concluding a successful deal, would talk in excited tones throughout t
he trip, but the older ones shut themselves off with book or crossword, or in slumber, recouping themselves for their next round of human contact when they reached their families.

  On just such a damp, cold night as this, three months ago, George had learned that Angela had left him, after twenty-two years of marriage. He had reached home to find a note on the mantelpiece and a stew in the oven for his dinner. He had not been able to understand her action then, and he understood it no better now. She had said she was wasting her life.

  ‘She had everything she wanted,’ George had said to his son Daniel, who was reading mathematics at Fletcham University. When Angela had not returned after two days, George had driven to Fletcham, forty miles away, to see if Daniel could explain.

  ‘Tough luck, Dad,’ said the embarrassed Daniel. ‘She just wants to be her own person, I expect.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ George asked, no wiser.

  ‘Well . . . not your wife . . . not my mother. Just herself,’ said Daniel.

  ‘She told you, then?’

  ‘Just that she was going away. She didn’t say much,’ said Daniel, and then added, awkwardly, ‘There’s no one else. At least I don’t think so.’ He turned the idea round in his mind. Surely there wasn’t?

  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘Staying with Jean,’ said Daniel promptly, glad to produce a fact. ‘She’s going to find a place of her own later.’

  What’s she planning to live on? Will she expect me to keep her? Who’s going to look after me? What about clean socks and shirts? My meals? Questions milled round in George’s head. And what would everyone say?

  ‘She reckons I’m off your hands now, Dad,’ said Daniel, in his mercy not adding that she might otherwise have departed sooner.

  His father looked as if he had had a punch in the guts. His rather sallow face was pale; there were large bags beneath his eyes. The whole thing was embarrassing to Daniel.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said George.

  ‘She thought we took her a bit too much for granted – meals, the washing – all that – making it easy for us to follow our own interests and not bothering about her having any,’ Daniel said. He felt an impatient pity for his father.

  ‘She had all day to herself,’ said George. ‘And evenings too, quite often.’ For George himself was a great committee man, a member of the Lions, on the parish council with aspirations to the county when retirement loomed, and secretary of the Liberal Association. He was frequently at meetings, and he played golf most Sundays.

  That friend of Angela’s, Jean, was to blame, George decided, driving home from Fletcham after his talk with Daniel. Jean had a job in public relations and a flat in Wandsworth which George had never seen; she went alone on holidays abroad and for years had been having an affair with a married man. George had never approved of her, and now she’d talked Angela into this mad adventure.

  She’d soon come back, sheepishly apologetic, he reasoned, rallying after the first shock; after a time he’d agree to forgive her.

  But she hadn’t. She’d found a flat of her own and a job in a big store over Christmas, in the toy department. Now she was working in a travel agency, so Daniel said. He admitted the flat was more of a bedsitter but said she seemed well and happy.

  George and Daniel had eaten Christmas dinner with Bill and Eileen Kyle; Bill Kyle was George’s solicitor and a golfing partner. On Boxing Day Daniel had left to stay with his girlfriend, Vivian, and meet her parents for the first time. George was alone for the rest of the holiday. The empty house still felt strange, and so did the empty bed.

  He found a village woman, Mrs Pearson, to clean the house until Angela came to her senses, which must happen in the end. Meanwhile he filled what spare time he had with activity.

  So now, when he reached home from the office, he adopted a strict routine. Soon after Angela left, he had noticed an increase in weight; he’d taken to having a good lunch at midday, since he had to prepare his own evening meal and depend on Mrs Pearson for the shopping. He ate mainly from the freezer at night, popping boil-in-the-bag dishes into pans of hot water. To combat the weight problem, George had taken up jogging. He’d begun by going out early in the morning, before breakfast, but had given that up after a few days; it was too cold and bleak at half-past six, when he must set out if he was to catch his usual train. Now he ran in the evening, in a dark tracksuit and, on very cold nights, with a woollen cap he wore for golf on his bald head. He did not run every evening, because of his committees and other meetings; he had added more interests to his life, the preservation of rural England and of Crowbury in particular being the latest. But most evenings, now, he would enter the house and, instead of automatically pouring the large whisky he’d drunk straight off in the first days after Angela’s departure, following it with a second, he would go upstairs and put on his jogging outfit. In fifteen minutes’ time he would be loping round the village roads. He was already fitter, and ran further and faster each week. After his run he would have a shower and change into sweater and slacks, eat braised kidneys or whatever the evening’s dish might be. He’d watch television till eleven or a little later; then he would go to bed. George always slept well.

  Ronald Trimm didn’t enjoy beer all that much, unless he was very thirsty, but drinking it aided, he felt, the masculine image he sought to project. Tonight, he ordered half a pint of bitter – a pint was too much volume – and looked around the bar. He recognised a number of people. There was the manager of one of the Tellingford banks, and the senior partner of a firm of estate agents; they were sitting in a corner talking intently. Ronald knew neither of them personally but had been at furniture sales where the estate agent conducted the auction. There were some young, smartly turned out couples, the women perched on stools by the counter or standing by the hearth, their well-tended bodies displaying an unconscious confidence, the men often with an air of arrogance about them. Ronald looked at a dark-haired girl in black velvet pants and a red shirt; he imagined her spread in a revealing pose as illustrated in one of his magazines. What must it be like to be married to her? Exciting, he thought, but frightening too. He hovered on the fringe of a group, wanting to join their brisk, bright talk, but not bold enough. He noticed none of its brittleness, nor the falseness in the repartees. The landlord, to whom he sometimes talked, was too busy taking orders for much conversation. Ronald sipped his beer and gazed about, trying to seem at ease, a man of poise.

  Then Dorothea Wyatt came up to the bar and ordered a double gin and tonic. Ronald had never got used to seeing women buy their own drinks, although why not, if they earned good money and claimed other types of equality with men? He was surprised, now, to see Mrs Wyatt, who collected china jugs and sometimes bought from him, apparently here alone.

  Noticing him, she said, ‘Why, hullo, Mr Trimm,’ and swayed a little, waiting for her glass. She was a small woman, somewhat on the plump side, wearing an off-white wool skirt and matching polo sweater, with black beads round her neck. She wore long black boots, and her reddish hair was, Ronald knew, too dark to be natural at her age; he noticed the small vertical lines around her mouth and the thin skin on her hands.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Wyatt,’ he said. ‘Damp, isn’t it?’

  ‘Damp?’ Dorothea Wyatt giggled, spilling her new drink. ‘What – the gin? I hope so.’ She drank some of it, then set the glass down and fumbled in her large handbag for her purse. She thrust a five-pound note across the counter.

  ‘I meant the weather,’ Ronald said. ‘It was raining just now. Well, drizzling.’

  ‘Oh yes – an awful night,’ said Dorothea. She took her change from the landlord and stuffed it into her purse. ‘Cheers,’ she said, and spilled more of her drink, this time on her sweater. ‘I’m sitting over there,’ she added, gesturing towards the window, and ignoring the drips she set off across the bar towards a banquette seat.

  Was she suggesting he should join her? Ronald took a step to follow her, watching her off-white wo
ol back as she wove a course past the fireplace, stumbling over the toes of some of the younger customers and being set upon her way with a firm hand on her elbow by one young man. Reaching the bank manager and the estate agent, she stopped. Ronald saw her put her drink down on the table and pull out a spare chair.

  ‘Well, what are you two wicked men plotting?’ she inquired, and almost fell into the seat between them.

  The estate agent paused in mid-sentence. The bank manager drew himself upright, leaning away from her. Dorothea smiled from one to the other and leaned across the table towards the bank manager, who answered stiffly.

  ‘We were having a business talk,’ he said.

  ‘Pooh – business,’ said Dorothea, waving a hand on which she wore a large sapphire and diamond ring. ‘This isn’t the time for dull business, is it, Mr Trimm?’ and she looked at Ronald, who was watching her in amazement. He’d always thought her so dignified; she wasn’t, now. ‘Join us, Mr Trimm,’ she cried gaily. ‘We’re all friends here.’

  She moved her chair closer to the bank manager, and Ronald saw her ringed hand disappear under the table. A horrified expression came over the bank manager’s face and he shrank away from her, moving his chair. Incredible though it seemed, Dorothea Wyatt, widow of the managing director of a small engineering business and owner of the Manor House, Crowbury, was very drunk and was making unseemly overtures to a respectable citizen in a public place.

  She had to be stopped from disgracing herself.

  ‘You’ll be more comfortable over here, Mrs Wyatt,’ Ronald said in a firm voice, indicating the window seat. ‘I’ll take your glass across.’

  ‘Oh – isn’t this more cosy?’ Dorothea protested, but seeing her glass departing, she took her hand away from its dangerous position, stood up unsteadily, and saying, ‘Too bad, darling,’ to the bank manager, wavered away with Ronald.