Ann Granger by That Way Murder Lies Read Free Book Online Page B

that.’
    There was another awkward silence. The old Labrador which had been lying at Alison’s feet looked up anxiously at her mistress.
    ‘Drop of brandy!’ said her husband firmly. He got up and fetched it. ‘Here you are, darling, knock it back! Anyone else want one?’ He held up the bottle.
    They all shook their heads, even Toby after a momentary hesitation.
    The brandy seemed to do the trick. Alison began again briskly. ‘The police turned up on my doorstep at seven the following morning, I was up and about getting ready for my usual working day. It was just one policeman, a young constable, very sympathetic. He was sorry he had bad news for me. Miss Kemp had been found dead in her garden. It appeared to be an accident but he had no details. Early as it was, I rang my aunt’s doctor in Cornwall. He hadn’t heard about it. He was not the doctor called in by the police to certify death. He promised to ring me back as soon as he knew something. He kept his promise. He rang me at lunchtime to say my aunt had been found by her housekeeper at around nine that morning. She was in the garden and had apparently fallen into the fishpond and drowned. It was only a
small pond and if you put your whole arm straight down in it, the water would have come up to about your elbow. But my aunt had fallen forwards with her face in the water and it had been enough. She’d lain there overnight. The accident probably happened midafternoon on Sunday. There would have to be a post-mortem, the doctor said. But he wouldn’t be the one performing it. That was for the local pathologist. I could tell the doctor was upset, not only because he’d lost a patient in those circumstances, but because he was being cut out of the loop.
    ‘I was more than upset. I took the rest of the day off. In fact I took the week off because I was executor of my aunt’s estate and I needed to go and see her solicitor. He was a London man. I already knew what was in the will. She had left everything to me except for five hundred pounds to Mrs Travis. The cottage was mine, everything. I had the keys already. I went down there so that I could see the local vicar about the funeral, that sort of thing. I was there when the police came on the Thursday. The post-mortem had discovered a wound on my aunt’s head but there were no stones round the pond on which she could have hit her head by accident. Worse, there was no sign of pond water in her lungs. She’d been dead when she went in the water. Mrs Travis had been busy spreading poison. She told them how I had an expensive London lifestyle. She said I was always coming to see my aunt and I had hopes of inheriting. I had been there that very weekend. My aunt was wealthy. I had borrowed money from her.’
    ‘Was that true?’ Markby asked her.
    ‘As it happened, yes. I had a good income but London is expensive. I wanted to put down a deposit on a flat. I told Aunt Freda about it and she said straight away that she didn’t want me borrowing money from strangers, as she put it. She advanced me the deposit. It was always understood I’d pay it back, but there was nothing in writing. “When you can,” she’d said to me. “But it’s yours, anyway.” She was referring to her will. We left it at that.’

    ‘It was a family arrangement!’ broke in her husband loudly. ‘It’s normal. One lends money to youngsters. They always need something.’
    Fiona put a hand to her long hair and smoothed it. She then turned her attention to her polished nails. For a second a faint frisson ran through the air.
    ‘Well, to cut a long story short,’ said Alison, ‘the police decided it was murder. The investigating officer was a Chief Inspector Barnes-Wakefield and I’ll never forget him! Everything about him was narrow, his head and body, his hands. His hair was straight and oiled with some preparation or other and brushed back from his forehead. He looked as if he’d been squashed flat between two hard surfaces, like a