The Key to the Case Read online

  The Key to the Case

  Roger Ormerod

  © Roger Ormerod 1992

  Roger Ormerod has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1992 by Constable.

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Extract from A Death to Remember by Roger Ormerod

  CHAPTER ONE

  It is well known throughout Shropshire that I do not like parties. ‘No point in asking Richard Patton,’ is the word. I don’t like the noise and the crowding, which is always there however large the accommodation, nor the drinks, nor the inanities. I prefer intimate conversation over a pint of draught bitter. So I was not consulted. They crept in on me when my guard was down, by approaching my wife.

  ‘But I promised, Richard!’ said Amelia positively. She knows what weight I put on promises.

  I grunted and stared at the television, bored with that but preferring it to the set expression on her face.

  ‘You’re unsociable, that’s your trouble,’ she went on, nodding for agreement from Mary. But Mary had her head down over a tapestry she was working, and wisely kept out of it. ‘You ought to get out more, Richard, and meet more people. You’re becoming stodgy and boring.’

  ‘Am I?’ I raised my eyebrows, at last looking directly at her. She was frowning, and in fact her eyes indicated concern.

  ‘What I can never understand is why policemen retire so early,’ she went on, switching her attack.

  ‘It’s not compulsory.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘I wished to apply myself completely to you, my love. A policeman’s wife, they say, is not a happy one.’

  Mary lifted her head, smiled at me, and nodded her approval.

  ‘Your trouble,’ Amelia decided, as though this was a sudden inspiration, ‘is that you’re easily bored. You have to have something to occupy your mind.’ She nodded in emphasis.

  I said nothing, recognizing a lead-in. We were getting to the point.

  ‘And I’m sure you’ll like Poppy Newcombe,’ she decided.

  ‘I’m sure I would.’

  ‘It’s tomorrow evening. Their place is between Bridgnorth and Ludlow. Ambleside Manor. I’ll press your dinner jacket—’

  ‘It’s not black tie!’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ She laughed. ‘You’ll look splendid, and you know it. You’ll be absolutely surrounded by women. I promise not to be jealous.’

  Surrounded by Poppies! Horses and gun dogs and high, whinnying laughter, and the effect of the money market on their unearned income. Oh...I’d love it.

  Mary said, ‘I’ve already pressed his evening suit, but I can’t see it fitting his waist.’ She smiled down at the rose she was bringing into bloom.

  It was another hint that I was getting lazy and out of condition.

  ‘And there’s somebody who wants to meet you,’ Amelia declared, putting the cap on it.

  ‘A woman?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘A man.’

  I grunted again. We might be able to slip out to the nearest pub, always supposing he turned out to be sufficiently amiable. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’

  I did not ask how Amelia had met Poppy Newcombe. She’s apt to chat to anybody she encounters. But I did wonder who had approached whom. The trouble was that the recent affair of the clocks had received far too much local media coverage, and Amelia had been intimately involved in that. The general impression now was that Richard Patton was available for sorting out personal problems in which any suggestion of a crime arose. I had already been approached about boundary disputes and lost dogs.

  And thinking about dogs...‘I wonder if Sheba would like to go for a walk,’ I said, and our boxer flicked her ears.

  It’s raining,’ Amelia pointed out.

  ‘She doesn’t mind the rain.’

  It was an excuse to get out of the house and straighten out my approach to the forthcoming social event. I had to persuade myself into the correct mental attitude required for the production of a placid smile that at least seemed sincere. Sheba had no such problems. She didn’t have to face a man who had said he wished to meet me. Which meant he wanted something. I had to hope I could send him away satisfied. I would have to do my best, I decided reluctantly.

  We were well into December, so I supposed one might call the party a seasonable one. It was six o’clock when I went out with Sheba, heavily dark and raining steadily. We had no streetlights out there in the country; no streets, only lanes. I took a torch, but didn’t risk our garden terraces down to the Severn. In the other direction I could walk the lanes, making my way downhill to where the cluster of small houses gathered at what had been a ford at one time. So Sheba had her sniff at the river. She was disappointed if she didn’t visit the river at least once a day, though her otter friends hadn’t been on show for a couple of months. I walked briskly. Fit? Of course I was fit. I drew in my stomach, taking deep breaths. Stodgy? Boring? Not me. It wasn’t until we turned back and tackled the slope that I realized there might be something in it. I was panting when I reached the entrance to The Beeches, the torchlight drooping at my feet.

  I felt Sheba hesitate and stiffen. The gentle growl was deep in her throat. There was a rustle in the hedgerow beside the gateway, and I flicked up the torch. Shoes, trousers, an anorak, then a face. ‘Easy,’ I murmured to Sheba. She continued to rumble, but I felt her tension relax. I advanced, and now I had the light centred on the face beneath the hood.

  ‘Ronnie? It’s Ronnie Cope! What the hell’re you doing here?’

  ‘Hello, Mr Patton.’ He was nervous, uneasy, but not abashed. ‘Have you got that animal safe?’

  A burglar’s biggest enemy is a dog, as it can ruin a carefully planned break-in. I didn’t encourage any optimism.

  ‘If you’ve got your greedy eyes on this place, Ronnie, I can tell you...’ I paused at a thought. ‘What the devil are you doing out of your own territory?’ The nearest boundary of my former patch as a detective inspector was twelve miles away.

  ‘Come to have a word with you, Mr Patton.’

  ‘Well, now you’ve seen me. I hope it makes you happy. Now scat! Off, before I phone the local force.’

  ‘All right! All right!’

  My torchlight still carved his face into angles and shadows. Ronnie looked a weedy and insignificant object, harmless and inoffensive. He was not more than five-eight, and slim with it, but I knew there was a certain amount of reserve power in that body. Though now well into his late thirties, he still seemed fit and poised, but at the moment there was no sign of anything but a tentative friendliness. He was just another person who wanted to see me, for advice. To hell with publicity!

  ‘I’m impatient to get in out of the rain,’ I told him. ‘Now say what you came to say, and then clear off.’

  He grimaced. Even when I’d had him in for interrogation I’d managed to use a softer voice. But I hated the thought of Ronnie anywhere near our property.

  ‘It’s just...’ He waved his hand, fluttering his long and flexible lock-picker’s fingers in the borders of the torchlight. ‘Just thought you’d care to do me a favour, Mr Patton. Seeing as you’re retired, like.�
�

  ‘You? Hah!’

  ‘No need to be like that. Truth is...I need some help. I need an alibi, you see. I’m out on bail, and they think they’ve got me to rights. But I didn’t do it, Mr Patton. Honest.’

  He was rushing it now, trying to get it out in one burst. I interrupted. ‘Do what?’

  ‘They call it aggravated burglary, whatever that means.’

  It means burglary aggravated by assault. I kept the torch aimed at his face, so that he could read nothing of my own expression. The fact that he sounded grievously offended meant nothing, but I might have allowed myself to express surprise. Ronnie, whatever his faults, had treated his chosen profession with a delicate pride. He would have run a mile to avoid violence.

  ‘And I suppose you were elsewhere at the time?’

  ‘I sure was.’

  ‘Then all you’ve got to do is tell the police where, and they’ll check it. You know all this, Ronnie.’

  ‘They checked. They say it don’t hang together. That Chief Inspector Latchett, he’s turning into a right bastard. You could do it for me, Mr Patton, I know you could. You wasn’t all that bad, in your time.’

  But still, a tough bastard? I smiled to myself. I’d worked with Ken Latchett for years, and such a description could in no way be applied to him.

  ‘If he says it’s no good, then it’s no good, Ronnie. I’m having nothing to do with it. Now get away from here. Where’s your car?’

  ‘Parked out on the main road. I had to do a bit of searchin’ around, like.’

  ‘I bet. So get moving. And keep away from this property. Understand?’

  ‘Sure, Mr Patton. Sure.’ He grimaced and turned to walk away, hesitated, then tossed over his shoulder, ‘And I thought I could trust you.’ It was the voice of a disillusioned man.

  After carefully locking up, and the struggle with Sheba to towel her down—which she considers to be a challenge—I went through to the living-room. They were chatting quietly, my wife and Mary. They looked up.

  ‘The walk’s done you good,’ said Amelia. ‘Don’t you think so, Mary?’

  There could well have been a new light in my eyes, a little more spring in my step. As Amelia said, I needed exercise for my mind, and there it had been, waiting for me at the gate. I could have sworn Ronnie would not have committed an aggravated burglary. I could equally have sworn that Ken Latchett would have had any alibi of Ronnie’s rigorously investigated. So here was an apparent contradiction, a minor problem worthy of at least a phone call to Ken, maybe even a trip over.

  ‘And you never know what interest you might come across at Poppy Newcombe’s,’ Amelia was saying.

  ‘True, true,’ I conceded, beaming around. ‘Did you iron the dress shirt, too, Mary?’

  It’s done. Don’t breathe in too deeply, though, or you’ll have half the buttons off.’

  Even such insults I could now take with a smile. Even a laugh.

  But the following evening I found it to be only too true. There was a certain tension across the stomach, the bow tie felt strange at my neck, and I had to slip the trouser zip down a couple of inches when I came to sit behind the wheel of Amelia’s Granada.

  We were using her car instead of my Triumph Stag, as she felt it to be more dignified. Normally, she would have driven it herself, but perhaps she thought it would look better to arrive chauffeur-driven. I couldn’t be certain whether this was a touch of mischief on her behalf. It was possible that she was not treating Poppy Newcombe with the seriousness our hostess would assume to be her due. I was rapidly cheering up at the prospect ahead. Treat it as an entertaining evening, and I might find light relief in what developed.

  We did not need to cross the river, but I knew it would be high under the bridge. This evening it wasn’t raining, but the road surfaces were still slicked with water. We headed out into countryside, into narrow, winding lanes with overhanging trees plopping heavy drips on the windscreen.

  ‘I assume you know where the place is,’ I said.

  ‘She spoke of a hump-backed bridge just past a pub, and we fork right. The Woodsman, I think it was.’

  We found the pub, the bridge, the right-hand fork. The banks here were high each side. There would not be much clearance if we met anything coming the other way.

  ‘There’ll be a sign nailed to a tree,’ said Amelia with placid confidence.

  Our headlights fell on it, also on a five-barred gate to our left and a sign, hand-painted: Newcombe Kennels. Pedigree Boxers.

  There couldn’t be much wrong with a Poppy Newcombe who bred boxers, I thought. Amelia had been keeping it from me; she delights in surprises. And now it all became clear. That must have been where they’d met, Amelia with Sheba in the car with her, parking next to Poppy, and they would have become intimately involved in ten seconds.

  The track up to the left was bumpy and knobbly, pounded out of virgin earth by countless farm tractors. For it was soon clear that, although the property might well have been a manor house at one time, it had later become a farm, and was now a kennels. But surely the breeding of dogs would contribute very little to the upkeep. The parking space in front was cobbled, but as the light swept across the front of the house I could see that it was a splendidly maintained place with a deep entrance and mullioned windows, and somewhere up in the edge of the headlights there were fancy twisted chimneys. The hall was a blaze of light, with the front door welcomingly open, but all the front windows were dark. A gaggle of Jaguars and BMWs was already there. I parked beside a Porsche, wishing I’d brought the Stag to make him jealous.

  Poppy and her husband were there in the hall in welcome. She was not as I’d expected, but a plumpish woman in her fifties with a lot of teeth involved in her smile and a skittish toss of her head that set her dark hair bobbing. She and Amelia linked both hands as they kissed cheeks, and her husband came forward to take my hand. He was tall and slim, with a serious and even morose face, but his eyes were twinkling. I learned later that he was a solicitor in Bridgnorth. His serious expression was no doubt an asset, deliberately acquired and not now easily discarded.

  ‘I’ve heard about you,’ he said, and my heart slumped a little. ‘Nothing perhaps to your credit,’ he added solemnly, and I knew I had met somebody I could get along with.

  They took us through to the rear. Most of the others were already there in the living-room, and it was too crowded for my liking before we added to it. But I was in a good mood, accepted a very dry sherry, watched my wife being whisked off, shortly to become the centre of a small group of men, and my host was still at my elbow. His name was Hilary. Hilary Newcombe. A good name for a lawyer. He took me over to the wide sweep of french windows, where the curtains had not been drawn. Outside, there was nothing but black night.

  ‘You can’t see much now,’ he said. ‘Some time you must come in daylight. There’s a splendid view across the valley, with the river at the foot of our meadow. I love to stand here, just stand and look. I’m really a very lazy man,’ he told me modestly.

  And like a whiplash in court, I would guess. ‘The kennels,’ I asked, ‘they’d be your wife’s concern?’

  ‘And mine,’ he said quickly. ‘If it wasn’t for our guests, the room would be full of dogs.’ He sounded wistful. Then he added, in a calm, flat voice, ‘I don’t know how he found out you were coming, but he seems to have invited himself.’

  ‘The man who...’ I left that unfinished. His remark had conflicted somewhat with what Amelia had told me.

  ‘Who wishes to see you.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘I’ll leave him to tell you.’ He nodded to himself. ‘The room would be full of dogs,’ he repeated.

  This room would be the focus of their existence, spacious and with a high, carved ceiling, but now my attention was drawn to it there was an impression of worn furniture, of a room much lived-in, of a certain casual untidiness that suggested comfort and relaxation. There had, I decided, been a certain amount of organization to bring the two of us
together, this mystery man and myself. It must obviously be of some importance to him.

  ‘We have a boxer,’ I said, ‘but we didn’t bring her with us.’

  ‘I know. Poppy told me. You must see the collection before you leave.’

  ‘I’d like that. We’d like that,’ I amended.

  He smiled thinly. ‘So I gather.’ He touched my elbow. ‘If you’ll excuse me...I really must circulate.’

  So I was left alone and isolated for the whole of two minutes. Then Amelia caught my eye and I was forced into joining the gathering at the far end, which was engaged in a half humorous, half angry discussion on the latest plans for another by-pass and bridge over the river. I smiled and nodded, and did my best to look intelligent.

  And still I had not been approached. Allowing my eyes to wander, I assessed the male potential in the room; fourteen of them, but none seemed at all interested in discussing a personal problem with me. I wandered around, offering the chance, but nothing happened. Then Amelia moved to my shoulder, Poppy beside her.

  ‘Richard, your zip’s slipping down.’

  So it was. I adjusted it, and Poppy said, ‘Now you’re fixed, perhaps you’d like to see the dogs?’

  I said I would. No doubt they’d be just as noisy as this room, but I wouldn’t need to pretend to an interest in them.

  So the three of us went out through the kitchen and across the cobbled yard. Three of the old stables were dimly lit, their lower half-doors topped by reinforced mesh. As you slipped inside one of these, it was necessary to stop any animal from getting out into the night.

  ‘We give them a comfortable bed,’ Poppy explained, ‘but they’d still rather spend a night on the loose.’

  ‘Lose many?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh no. They know where their food comes from.’

  One stable was for the bitches that were about to produce Poppy’s source of pin-money, one for the mothers with suckling pups, and one for the rest. She took them in that order. The last was the most difficult to enter. It was like being welcomed by a tornado.