A Dreadful Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

because the doctor and detectives were on the right track – or a flicker of relief because they weren’t.
    ‘You talk as if this man was sane,’ Charles said, raising his hands in futile protest. ‘But no sane person would have done this.’
    ‘I wish I could agree with you. Sadly, in my job, you learn very quickly that sane men can be far more brutal than lunatics.’
    The old man’s eyes welled with tears. ‘My wife wouldn’t have refused him money, you know. She was a very Christian person. All he had to do was ask.’
    ‘What if she knew he didn’t deserve her help? The world is full of husbands who take every penny their wives receive to spend on drink. If he was a local man she might have come across him through her charity work. How would Mrs Luard have reacted if someone like that had asked her for money?’
    For the first time, Taylor understood why Luard had risen to Major-General in the Army and why he was a Justice of the Peace. It was the not knowing that had left him bereft. Faced with a possible answer, his faded eyes came back to life.
    ‘She’d have told him to go home and sober up,’ he barked. ‘She had no time for drunks who left their children to starve. Is that the kind of person you’re looking for?’
    ‘It’s a possibility,’ Taylor told him. ‘Can you give us any names? Families your wife worked with?’
    Luard shook his head. ‘You’ll have to ask her friends. They’ll be able to give you a better list than I can. Caroline sits on a number of committees.’ He realised he’d used the wrong tense. ‘I can’t believe she’s dead,’ he said sadly.
    * * *
    Mary Stewart lived in one of the half-timbered houses overlooking the village green in Ightham. She seemed to think that having three policemen in her house was a cause for alarm, and gave way to near faints every time Taylor asked her a question. He found her empty-headed and silly, and had trouble keeping his patience with her.
    Most of what she told them related to her long wait in the drawing-room at Ightham Knoll before Charles arrived. Overnight, she had ‘remembered’ feelings of doom. ‘I knew something terrible had happened,’ she gasped, tapping her chest. ‘I felt it here.’
    ‘Then I’m surprised you helped the Major-General look for his wife,’ Taylor said. ‘Weren’t you frightened of what you’d find?’
    ‘
Dreadfully
frightened. I told him I couldn’t go any further.’
    ‘I thought you went home to meet some guests, Mrs Stewart?’
    She fanned her face with her hand. ‘I’d have gone anyway. Charles was being very strange.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘He kept slowing his pace so that I wouldn’t lag behind. I think he wanted me there when he found her.’
    ‘Meaning what? That he knew she was dead?’
    The woman wriggled her shoulders. ‘It was just very odd, that’s all. I don’t know Charles well enough to walk
any
distance with him.’
    ‘Particularly if you had such strong feelings of doom,’ Taylor murmured drily.
    It wasn’t just Taylor who thought her silly. Henry Warde’s scornful clearing of his throat was so pointed that it set the woman blushing to the roots of her hair. It meant she took a dislike to him, and had fewer concerns later about joining in the gossip that the Chief Constable of Kent would do anything to protect his friend.
    * * *
    ‘Idiotic creature,’ Henry Warde, the Chief Constable, said as he led the way back to his Daimler. ‘She’ll be saying she saw a gun in Charles’s golf bag next.’
    Taylor leaned on the roof of the car. ‘Did you search it last night?’
    ‘Matter of fact, I did. First thing I thought of after Hamble said the murder looked planned. I checked his rifles as well but none of them had been fired recently.’
    ‘What about handguns?’
    ‘Three revolvers. All clean. He said he couldn’t remember if he had any bullets for them . . . or where they might be.’ Warde glared up at the Stewarts’ house. ‘It won’t stop that silly