A Shot at Nothing Read online

  A Shot at Nothing

  Roger Ormerod

  Copyright © Roger Ormerod 1993

  The right of Roger Ormerod to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in the UK in 1993 by Constable

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  Extract from A Death to Remember by Roger Ormerod

  1

  Oliver and I were standing beside my car in the town of Asherton’s only car park, looking through what we had and rejecting the obvious non-starters. The estate agent had been over-generous with her hand-outs, as she hadn’t seemed to understand the kind of property in which I was interested. She had even seemed confused.

  ‘We’re getting nowhere, Phillie,’ said Oliver wearily. ‘You’re always looking for the impossible.’

  ‘I don’t see why it should be impossible. I can produce the money, so why can’t anybody find me a house?’

  ‘You’re too particular.’

  ‘I am not. And what’s that you’re throwing away? Let me see. You haven’t even given me a chance to glance at it.’

  ‘It’s not for you, Phil.’

  ‘I wish you’d let me make up my own mind.’

  We were being short-tempered with each other, both of us limp with the continuing heatwave, and because we had been scouring the county for a suitable property for nearly three weeks. And Oliver hadn’t been at all encouraging. He didn’t approve. Oh no.

  ‘Let me see it.’ I held out my hand.

  Reluctantly, he unfolded the crushed ball he’d turned it into, made a poor job of smoothing the creases, and handed it over. ‘I’m sure you’ll hate it,’ he said morosely.

  Hate it! I was looking at a colour photograph of a sprawling and magnificent house, and eagerly reading the prospectus. Four beds, three baths, commodious kitchen with modern fittings. Four receps. Garage: four cars. Two stables…it went on and on, and in a mixture of excitement and a despair that I would never be able to afford such a place, I turned it over to discover the asking price. It was just a little less than my capital would allow.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ I whispered.

  ‘But it’s not for you, Phil.’

  ‘What the devil do you mean, Oliver?’ But now I was happily ribbing him, willing to forget his strange attitude. ‘It’s just what I’ve been looking for.’

  ‘It’s too big for you.’

  ‘We could convert it into a country hotel, Oliver. Wouldn’t that be splendid? We’d make it pay its way, you the maître d’hôtel, me the manageress…’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense, Philipa. Let’s look elsewhere—if you insist on going on with it.’ And he turned away, having reverted to my full Christian name in a most chilling manner.

  It was unlike him. We could argue, we could shout at each other…then laugh together. Normally, he would have developed on my fantasy hotel theme. Never before had he been so curtly dismissive.

  ‘Whatever you say, I want to see it,’ I told him firmly. ‘You’ll know how to find the place, I’m sure. I assume we’re still in your district?’

  ‘Yes.’ He kicked a tyre. He had worked that area, from constable to inspector.

  ‘So you could guide us there?’

  ‘If you insist.’

  ‘I do insist. Let’s go back and ask about the keys.’

  ‘We could look without going in.’

  ‘Peering through windows, like burglars casing the joint, if that’s the phrase? No, thank you!’

  ‘All right then…’ Oliver drew back his shoulders, expressing disapproval.

  Turning, I headed diagonally across the road, not checking whether he followed, but he was there at my shoulder when I asked if I could have the keys.

  The young woman was hesitant. No doubt it would normally have been necessary for her to accompany us, but she seemed to be alone in that small branch office. Then she almost thrust the keys at me, and with a strange smile I couldn’t understand. She flicked an entirely different smile at Oliver.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ I said to her.

  She pouted her lower lip at me and nodded. ‘I know.’

  Once outside I simply said, ‘There. You see.’ Then, when we reached my car, I asked, ‘What did she mean…I know?’

  ‘She’d seen she could trust you, Phil. With the keys.’

  I shook my head. It hadn’t been like that. Had the young woman been too anxious to let me have the keys? That her and Oliver’s attitudes conflicted was not surprising, she eager for a sale and Oliver strangely reluctant. Then why had I seen that tiny smile, almost conspiratorial, pass between them? I dismissed the thought. Oliver’s reluctance alone would have encouraged me. He ought to have known that I respond adversely to discouragement.

  Nevertheless, I asked him what he had against it.

  ‘You’ll see.’ He didn’t enlarge on that.

  He was acting very strangely, but nevertheless he directed me faithfully, if coolly, until we found ourselves in a minor lane that was weaving itself gradually downwards.

  ‘Is it down here?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s supposed to be a fine view across the valley. In its own grounds, it said.’

  ‘I know.’ He was silent, staring ahead and seeing, I reckoned, nothing of the road. ‘Wasn’t I there?’

  I assumed he meant: there, beside me, chatting to the young lady behind the desk.

  ‘Of course you were,’ I agreed.

  ‘There’s no of course about it.’

  While I was considering the obscurity of that observation we rounded a bend, and the view under discussion abruptly revealed itself. An open prospect across the valley, had been the description. That was completely inadequate—it was breath-taking. We had not run through a village, so I had begun to wonder whether ‘in its own grounds’ really meant ‘isolated’. But clearly this was it: Collington House. A FOR SALE board peered discreetly at us over the hedge, and there was, after all, a village. It was clustered together, from our position, as no more than a few grey and red roofs just beyond a belt of trees, and lower down to the right.

  I swung into the partial set-back in front of a five-barred gate, and parked the BMW. We got out to have a look, Oliver taking his time about it, but I had very little attention to spare for him. I leaned on the top bar of the gate, and was captivated by the view.

  I had no idea what an acre of ground looked like, out in the open and placidly soaking up the sunlight. I had seen a mention in the prospectus of nearly five of them. It sloped upwards to my left, disappearing over the horizon, whilst in front of me and to the right it swept down in a saucer, with a glimpse of water, possibly a lake, and hedges marching away…away…to be lost beyond another rise. Flowing, heaving vastnesses of grass faced me.

  ‘That’d take a bit of mowing,’ Oliver said morosely, at my shoulder.

  ‘And this is four-point-eight acres?’

  ‘You misread it, my sweet. It’s forty-eight acres.’

  ‘You and your blasted crumpling.’ But I could put no force into it—the prospect seemed to calm me. This wasn’t a ‘property’. It was an estate.

  ‘There’re horses over there,’ he said, pointing, and indeed there were, three of them, two chestnuts and a grey. ‘Somebody’s obviously renting the grazing.’

  Three horses, though, wouldn’t be able to control
that quantity of grass. But Oliver reassured me.

  ‘You’d be able to rent it to cattle farmers, even sheep farmers. Sheep crop it shorter, I believe. Or you could breed cattle yourself. Aberdeen Angus, or something. The bullocks are a bit skittish, mind you, and don’t know their own strength. You’d have enough ground to employ your own vet. Or what about a racing stable…’

  ‘You’re being facetious,’ I accused him. ‘You’re doing your best to put me off.’

  ‘No, no.’

  I turned and stared him in the eye. He tried a weak smile. ‘It’s what I’ve dreamed of, Oliver, and you know it.’

  ‘It’s not. It’s what you’ve dreamed up, with all your low cunning. I can see right through you, Philipa Lowe. You’re crafty.’ He grinned at me, evilly I thought, and added, ‘You haven’t even seen the house yet. It’s over there, to your left.’

  I looked where he gestured, refusing to rise to his bait regarding my cunning plans, because he was quite correct on that point.

  In effect, we had driven past it, the house being to our left as we stood facing the thorn hedge and higher up the rise, with a clump or plantation of trees beyond it. Presumably the front of the house and its drive faced away from us, yet I’d noticed no entrance along the road.

  ‘The surrounding hedges would all be yours too,’ Oliver pointed out. ‘Probably a mile of them, and you’d have to keep them trimmed.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. I’m a conservationist. I’d let them grow as they wished, and attract all the wildlife.’

  ‘The local hunt wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘To hell with the local hunt. They’re not going to hunt over my territory.’

  ‘Yours, Phillie? It’s not yours, yet. You haven’t even looked over the house.’

  But there’s nothing like opposition for strengthening the resolve, and I was getting my full share. ‘I’ve already decided. Let’s go and look at it—if we can find the way in, that is.’

  He took my elbow companionably, I thought with some authority, and turned me back to the car. ‘It’s just round the next bend.’

  ‘You know the district very well,’ I observed.

  ‘Well, yes. On motor patrol you get to know every byway. Come on, the house is worth looking at, anyway—even if the whole damned place is too big.’

  I sensed a slight change in his attitude. He had tried his putting-off tactics, and realised they weren’t working. Now he was verging on encouragement, which had to mean he had something in reserve. Abruptly my interest in Collington House put on a vigorous surge. I couldn’t wait, now, to put my foot inside it. It was true that the price was high for me, and would poach a large amount of my invested capital, but that was what it was all about, after all, and Oliver appeared to have realised it. His present stance was not influenced by any problem involving size. I would have considered a much smaller and less attractive property, but Oliver’s attitude would have been exactly the same.

  When we came to it, the drive entrance was no more than a gap in the hedge. Perhaps decorative gates had once hung there, but if so their stone buttresses were now no more than desolate piles. I would have to allow for replacements.

  At first the drive, gravelled and amazingly weed-free, ran downhill and apparently away from the house, but having given the impression it had no intention of reaching the house, it made a wide sweep to the left and continued in a mounting ‘S’, which clearly would take us beyond a sweep of glorious beeches and startlingly high spruces, eventually to the front of the house. The original owner had possibly possessed a whimsical streak, as the drive performed this manoeuvre simply in order to plunge us into a tunnel through the trees, and out again to a sudden and startling vision of the house frontage. Gravel still predominated, but it now swept around an island apparently consisting of one solid box hedge, seven or so feet high, but uniformly shaped in a precise circle twenty yards across.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked, parking in front of it.

  ‘It’s the Collington maze. Famous, that is. It’s one of the few circular mazes ever constructed, but in fact it never reaches a centre. The original idea was that visitors had to find a way through it in order to get to the front door. It discouraged unwanted callers.’

  ‘It certainly would. Was he crazy, this man who built it?’

  ‘Oh yes. Completely. Mad Harry Collings, they called him. The family name. Collings. But it was a cheeky, happy madness, in no way violent. For instance, you can walk round the maze to the front door—drive round it if you like—or if you wanted to use the maze there’s a straight path through. Well…nearly straight. Only the ones who didn’t know ever ventured into the side paths. Mad Harry used to say he welcomed straightforward callers, not the devious ones.’

  ‘A philosopher.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Oliver seemed in a sunnier mood now. He sounded quite proprietorial, as though Mad Harry could have been his own invention.

  ‘You know a lot about him.’

  ‘He’s a local legend. But why don’t you stand back and look at the place, before we go inside.’

  I stood back. Oliver joined me. Except for the porch and the main entrance, hiding behind the maze, the whole frontage was spread facing us. It was a wide and quite squat row of mullioned windows, above which was a balcony that seemed to run all round the roof, protected by stone balusters and a run of stone coping. The roof had a very shallow pitch, apart from three peaks of roofing, one at each end and one over the door, each of which had one window in the gable facing us. And there were seven tall, twisted chimneys.

  ‘Seven chimneys,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. He loved chimneys. Only two fireplaces, though. Five are fakes. In effect, it’s a bungalow. There’re bedrooms beneath the three roof peaks, but not lately used, and lots of rooms downstairs, stuck around all over the place. Built long before bungalows became popular.’

  I glanced at him. ‘You know it well?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ He kicked at a large pebble.

  ‘Let’s go inside, then.’

  It had been something of a surprise to me that the estate agent had handed over the keys without question. I had imagined that we would be accompanied, if only to see that we didn’t lift anything, though I’d assumed it would be stripped of furniture and fittings. But she had clearly recognised Oliver as a former police officer in the district, prior to his altercation with a shotgun. In any event, I could now dangle the keys from one finger as we walked round the maze, feeling headily like the owner, returning from watching my horse come in third at Ascot.

  As Oliver had said, we could have driven round the maze, as there was a clear ten-foot-wide stretch of gravel in front of the portico. And here again the humorist had left his mark. The porch steps were at least thirty feet wide, a little crumbly now, and there were four fluted columns. But most of this width was occupied by a run of six windows in stained glass. The door itself was tucked in at the right-hand corner, hiding coyly behind one of the columns.

  ‘Allow me,’ said Oliver, taking the keys from my fingers.

  I looked at him with surprise. He flicked an eyebrow at me.

  ‘If I hadn’t been with you, Evelyn wouldn’t have trusted you with the keys,’ he explained.

  ‘You know her?’ I was a little jealous of any other woman who had known Oliver.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said casually. ‘In an official capacity, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The point is,’ he explained, ‘that the place is like a fortress. The father of the present owner, Clare Steadman, had it laced with alarms, and connected to the nearest police station. This grey box, here, is the monitor.’

  The grey box was fixed to the side wall of the porch, and had on its surface one peculiar cylindrical keyhole. On the ring was a tubular key with little spikes. He inserted this and turned it once. A small green light flicked at us as a small red one went out.

  ‘It’s still connected,’ he said. ‘I guessed it would be. Now the alarm’s turned off, and
we can open the door.’ This he did. It opened with a quiet and stately grace. He gestured me inside.

  I walked into the hallway. This was a square box-shape with a high ceiling and panelled walls of dark mahogany, up to chest height. From it led long halls, sideways in both directions. There was a beautiful hallstand against the facing wall, almost black now from years of dust polished into its carvings, companion to a tall, stately cupboard on the facing wall. There was another of those alarm boxes just inside the door, but this one had two buttons, green and red, marked ‘off’ and ‘on’.

  ‘But…it’s furnished!’ I cried.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There was no mention—’

  ‘In the brochure…something about: and contents. You read it yourself, Phil.’

  ‘But…but…’ I was now completely confounded. One sight of the grounds, one glimpse of the house itself, had convinced me that it was worth well above the asking price. But…furnished, too! And I’d seen nothing yet of the rest of it.

  ‘This is ridiculous, Oliver. Why is it so cheap?’

  ‘Cheap! It’d just about ruin you, Phil, and you know it. Even though the market’s depressed.’

  ‘Cheap for what it is,’ I persisted. ‘This is the seventh place we’ve seen, in my financial bracket, and not one of them has been anywhere near as grand as this. What’s the snag? That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘Upkeep…’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  He shrugged, but his eyes were steadily on me. Then, presumably so that I shouldn’t turn away from him, he put both hands on my shoulders and smiled sadly at me. His injured right arm was improving all the while, and there was considerable, though encouraging, strength in the fingers digging into my left shoulder.

  ‘I know what you’re up to, Phillie my love,’ he said quietly. ‘And it’s not going to work.’

  ‘If you’re so clever…’

  ‘I don’t need to be clever. Oh Phillie, you know I love you. It’s just that I don’t see why we need to get married.’

  Perhaps I’d been too adamant about it. Perhaps we were too much alike, and he persisted in his attitude only because I did in mine. We’d touched on it so often…and now here it was again.