Death in Disguise Read online

  She placed the tape recorder on the bedside table.

  ‘When did you first learn that your client’s real name wasn’t Mary Edwards, Mr Tyndale?’ she asked.

  ‘When did you learn it?’ he countered.

  He was trying to save a little of his pride by taking control of the interview, Paniatowski thought. Well, that was all right – for the present.

  ‘I learned yesterday that she was, in fact, Melissa Evans,’ she said, ‘but it wasn’t until an hour or so ago, when the New York Police Department contacted me, that I found out her original name was Entwistle.’

  ‘I knew right from the start,’ Tyndale said, with a strange and totally unjustified pride. ‘She told me.’

  They have just signed the documents which will allow Tyndale to draw on a bank account in New York whenever Mary needs money.

  ‘You will notice that the signature I have used on the permission forms is not the same as the name I gave you when I walked in here,’ she says. ‘Mary Edwards is an alias, and the name I have signed is my real one.’

  ‘Melissa Evans,’ he reads.

  ‘Yes. Does it bother you that I am using two different names?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he admits. ‘There is nothing illegal about using two different names per se, but there may be concerns about the nature of the activities which require the use of those two names.’

  ‘I am doing nothing wrong,’ she assures him. ‘I’m a writer, and I’m in Whitebridge to research the murder of Wilfred Hardcastle, which occurred over half a century ago. I don’t want to use my real name, because if people realise that a best-selling author is asking the questions, they won’t respond to them in the same way as they would if the question was put by an ordinary person.’

  I was at that trial, Tyndale thinks. I was not even born at that point, and yet I was there on the front row.

  And then, fight it as he might, another thought comes into his mind – he’d had a womb with a view!

  He giggles. He can’t help himself.

  ‘Is something wrong, Mr Tyndale?’ Melissa Evans asks.

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘I’m sorry, that was very unprofessional of me, but I was thinking of something else entirely.’

  She has suddenly grown very serious. It is almost as if his levity has driven her in the opposite direction.

  ‘I have a secret,’ she says. ‘I thought I could keep it to myself, but I know now that if I do, I’ll explode. Can I trust you with that secret, Mr Tyndale?’

  ‘Of course,’ Tyndale says. ‘I’m your solicitor. You can trust me with anything.’

  ‘I was born in America, but my father was not,’ she says. ‘He was from Whitebridge. His name was John Entwistle, and he is the man who was tried for killing Wilfred Hardcastle.’

  ‘How did you feel when you realised who she was?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘Did you hate her?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Tyndale said, pressing on the morphine button again. ‘In fact, I felt rather sorry for her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Which of the two questions would you like me to answer? Why didn’t I hate her? Or why I felt sorry for her?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘I had no reason to hate her. Nearly two decades had passed between her father killing my grandfather and her entry into the world. She could not be held responsible for anything he had done.’

  ‘And why did you feel sorry for her?’

  ‘It was clear to me that she had been indoctrinated from an early age into the belief that her father was innocent. It would have become one of the central pillars of her being, and she had come to Whitebridge to shore up that pillar by proving that her father didn’t kill my grandfather. Imagine how she would have felt, then, when she finally accepted the truth. The poor girl would have been absolutely devastated.’

  ‘She never said all that crap about being afraid of a New York hitman tracking her down in Whitebridge, did she?’

  ‘No, she didn’t, but after my conversation with her, I did a little research of my own and discovered that she was fabulously wealthy, that she had offended a great many important people with her writings, and that she had a bodyguard. It seemed to me, after her death, that to tell you the story I did tell you would be a perfect smokescreen.’

  ‘That’s why you told Mike Traynor that her name wasn’t really Melissa Evans, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t tell him her real name – that would have led you straight to me – but I thought that even knowing she wasn’t really Melissa would be enough to confuse you for a while.’

  ‘It did confuse me initially,’ Paniatowski admitted, ‘but in the end, it did more to help me, because once I knew that Mary’s solicitor was also Wilfred Hardcastle’s grandson, it was pretty obvious who the source of the information was.’

  ‘Ah yes, it might have been wiser for me not to pull that particular trick,’ Tyndale admitted.

  Paniatowski remembered something Dr Shastri had said about Mary’s injuries.

  ‘There is this pattern of damage which is diagonal, and runs from near the top of the right-hand side of the frontal lobe to near the bottom of the left-hand side.’

  ‘Tell me when it was that you lashed out at Mary with your walking stick,’ she said.

  ‘All in good time,’ Tyndale replied. ‘Before we get to the actual act, I’d like to put things in context,’ he smiled, ‘if you don’t mind, that is.’

  He had so very little power left, she thought, but he did have the power to keep her waiting, and he was relishing it.

  Well, let him!

  ‘By all means put things in context,’ she said, indifferently.

  ‘The morning Mary died, I paid a visit to the specialist who had been treating me for cancer,’ Tyndale said.

  The specialist, Henry Stewart, is an old friend of Tyndale’s, and there is genuine sadness in his eyes as he greets him at the door.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Arthur, but I’ve got some rather bad news,’ he says.

  ‘I’m already dying of cancer, so how bad can it be?’ Tyndale asks.

  ‘It’s about the treatment I was going to put you on,’ Stewart says. ‘The hospital’s turned it down.’

  ‘But you said it would help me.’

  ‘And so it would. It’s impossible to say anything with any degree of accuracy in cases like yours, but I believe the drugs would have prolonged your life by between twelve and eighteen months.’

  ‘Would have prolonged,’ Tyndale exclaims. ‘There’s no “would have” about it. Tell the petty bureaucrats who run this hospital that I simply have to have those drugs.’

  ‘It wouldn’t do any good, Arthur. They won’t budge, and though it upsets me personally, if I look at the matter from a professional perspective, I can quite see their point.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The hospital only has limited resources, and the drugs are very, very expensive.’

  ‘I’ll pay for them myself,’ Tyndale says.

  The specialist shakes his head. ‘Unless you’re very much richer than I take you to be, you can’t possibly afford them,’ he says.

  ‘So how much will they cost?’ Tyndale asks.

  The specialist tells him.

  ‘But you’d have to be a millionaire to afford that,’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ the specialist agrees, ‘you would.’

  And this is when Tyndale gets his idea.

  ‘You went to see Mary,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘I went to see Mary,’ Tyndale agreed.

  He makes no attempt at subterfuge as he enters the hotel. Why should he? He has not done anything wrong, nor is he planning to do anything wrong, but a great many of the staff are deployed in the restaurant at that time, and there is some kind of crisis being dealt with at the reception desk, so he reaches the lift to the Prince Alfred suite without being noticed.

  Mary is surprised to see him, but quickly recovers and invites him in. He notices how opulent the suite is, and that only in
creases his resolve.

  ‘I have come both to confess something to you, and to make a request,’ he says.

  She looks at him quizzically. ‘Please go ahead.’

  ‘I am the grandson of Wilfred Hardcastle. I realise that I should have told you that when you told me who you were, but I held back because I didn’t want you to hate me.’

  ‘Why should I hate you? Do you hate me?’

  ‘Of course not. I rather like you.’

  ‘And I like you. There is no reason why what happened in the past should in any way affect the way we react to each other now.’

  ‘No, there isn’t,’ he agrees.

  ‘You said something about a request.’

  ‘I am not a well man, Mary. You must surely have noticed that.’

  ‘Yes, I had. I just assumed, because you were still at work, that it was not as serious as it seemed.’

  ‘It’s very serious. I’m dying.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she says.

  ‘With the right drugs, I can live a little longer,’ he tells her, ‘but these drugs are very expensive.’

  This is the point at which she should say, But you must have them, and since I am a millionairess, I will gladly pay for them.

  She doesn’t. Instead, she looks very sad – sad for him, sad for herself, sad for the whole situation that they find themselves in.

  He forces himself to say, ‘I was wondering, Mary – Maggie – if you’d give me the money.’

  She shakes her head regretfully.

  ‘I can’t do it. If I gave you what you wanted, how could I – in all conscience – turn down the next person who asked me, and the one after that, and the one after that? It would simply never stop.’

  ‘But my situation’s desperate,’ he protests.

  ‘There are millions – perhaps billions – of people in the world whose situation is desperate,’ Mary says. ‘There are children who are slowly starving to death. There are young men who are going blind for want of a simple operation. Is their need any less than yours?’

  ‘No, but you don’t help them, either.’

  ‘I don’t help all of them – you’re quite right about that – but I do help some. I have a foundation into which I put a percentage of my earnings. I don’t administer that foundation myself, but I could write to the trustees, and ask them if they’ll consider you.’

  ‘And would you recommend me?’

  ‘If I could, I would. But the deeds of covenant prohibit me from recommending anyone.’

  ‘You owe me!’ he screams.

  She is startled by this, but quickly recovers herself.

  ‘What do you mean – I owe you?’ she asks. ‘I’ve only known you for a little over a week. How can I possibly owe you anything?’

  ‘If your father hadn’t murdered my grandfather, the mill wouldn’t have gone bust,’ he says. ‘If your father hadn’t cold-bloodedly murdered my grandfather, I’d have plenty of money, and I wouldn’t need to humiliate myself by coming to you, cap in hand.’

  ‘My father didn’t murder your grandfather,’ she tells him, and now she is angry, too. ‘I’ve got some evidence which presents quite a different scenario. Would you like to know who I think killed him – and why he had to die?’

  ‘No,’ he says.

  ‘Well, I’m going to tell you anyway, because it really is time you faced the truth.’

  He swings his stick almost before he realises it. It catches her across the forehead, and she collapses into the chair.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to do that. But it’s partly your fault, too. You should never …’

  He realises he’s wasting his time talking, because she can’t hear him. But she’s not dead – her chest rises and falls as her unconscious body takes in, and expels, air.

  He wonders what will happen when she wakes up.

  Will she want him arrested?

  Of course she will.

  What a stupid question to ask himself.

  So it all boils down to this – if she lives, he will go to prison, and if she dies, he won’t.

  She has to die.

  He searches around for a weapon, and finds the poker.

  Perhaps, after all, this is only natural justice, he tells himself – an Entwistle has killed a Hardcastle, why then shouldn’t one of the Hardcastle clan kill an Entwistle?

  He is amazed by the force with which he is able to wield the poker, but when the skull splits open, it still comes as a surprise.

  If the police know who she really is, and what she is doing in Whitebridge, it will not be long before the trail leads back to him, he realises. He picks up her smart leather briefcase, which already contains her passport, and puts into it all the notes he can find. As an afterthought, he adds the poker.

  He uses the back stairs to leave. The effort nearly kills him, but at least he meets no one who will remember him later. By the time he reaches the street, he has already come up with the red herring of American hitmen.

  ‘I only hit her to stop her talking,’ Tyndale told Paniatowski. ‘I didn’t mean her any harm. If she’d just have shut up when I asked her to, she’d still be alive today.’

  ‘What did you do with her notes?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘I burned them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I should have thought that was obvious – because they would have connected me directly to her death.’

  ‘To her murder,’ Paniatowski corrected him. ‘They would have connected you directly to her murder. Did you read them before you burned them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because there wasn’t time.’

  ‘There was plenty of time,’ Paniatowski said scornfully. ‘How long would it have taken to skim them. Ten minutes? Fifteen minutes?’

  ‘Fifteen minutes max,’ Crane said.

  ‘All right then, I didn’t read them because I had no wish to enter her fantasy world,’ Tyndale said.

  ‘Interview ends at 3.10 p.m.,’ Paniatowski said, switching off the tape recorder.

  ‘Is that it, boss?’ Crane asked.

  ‘No, it’s not it,’ Paniatowski said, and suddenly there was real anger in her voice. ‘You didn’t read her notes, Mr Tyndale, for the same reason that you lashed out at Mary when she was about to tell you what was in them – for the same reason you’ve never read the transcript of the trial. Your whole life had been built on an injustice done to your family in 1924. But what if there was no injustice? What if John Entwistle was innocent?’

  ‘I … don’t know what you mean,’ Tyndale gasped. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ Paniatowski said contemptuously. ‘Your whole life – everything you’ve ever been and everything you’ve ever done – is just a bad joke. And deep inside yourself, you know that as well as I do.’

  ‘Why … why are you doing this?’ Tyndale asked, amazed by the ferocity of the attack.

  ‘I’m doing it because you took another human life, and it doesn’t really bother you at all,’ Paniatowski said. ‘I’m doing it because the last thing I want is for you to die at peace with yourself.’

  It was eight o’clock in the evening. Paniatowski had been home and spent a few hours with the twins – both of whom were well on the way to recovery – then entrusted them to the tender care of Louisa and Elena, and slipped down to the Drum for a celebratory drink with her team.

  Crane was the last one to arrive.

  ‘Arthur Tyndale died at half-past six,’ he said. ‘I think our interview with him may have pushed him over the edge.’

  ‘I feel sorry for his wife, but he’s no loss to anyone else,’ Paniatowski said. She took a sip of her vodka. ‘So that’s one murder out of the way, now let’s turn our attention to the other one. Who did it, Jack?’

  ‘My best guess is Tom Clegg,’ Crane said.

  ‘Why him?’

  ‘Because it’s clearly an inside job – somebody sabota
ged the looms and somebody took the fifty pounds from the office – and Clegg’s the only one left when you’ve ruled out John Entwistle and Oswald Hardcastle.’

  ‘And why would you rule them out?’ Paniatowski wondered.

  ‘I’d rule Entwistle out because any man who’s bright enough to go across to America and build a new life up from nothing would not be stupid enough to hide the money he’d stolen under his own mattress.’

  ‘And Oswald?’

  ‘It’s like that old copper in the retirement home said – he was sitting pretty, getting the money without doing the work. And his brother’s murder did seem to devastate him, because within three years, he’d drunk himself to death.’

  ‘And so we’re left with Tom,’ Meadows said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Crane agreed. ‘We know that Wilfred worked him very hard – keeping him there till all hours of the night – and maybe he finally snapped. He kills Wilfred in a rage, and when the red mist has cleared, he realises that if he’s not going to hang for it, he has to blame someone else. He chooses John Entwistle, who is known to be a bit of an awkward bugger. But when he gives his first day of evidence at Preston Crown Court, one of two things happens – he either gets scared at the thought of the defence counsel questioning him, or he starts to feel guilty that he’s landed John in it. Whichever it is, it’s enough to make him hang himself.’

  ‘So when he left his suicide note, why didn’t he say that he’d killed Wilfred?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘Ah, that’s the weakness in my theory,’ Crane admitted. ‘Maybe he was too ashamed to admit to what he’d done, even though he knew he’d be dead before anyone read the note.’

  ‘And your “red mist” theory doesn’t work. The murder was premeditated, and we know this because the looms were sabotaged earlier in the day, which means that the killer had planned to frame Entwistle hours before he killed Hardcastle,’ Beresford pointed out.

  ‘OK, I give up,’ Crane said, holding up his hands. ‘Chances are, we’ll never know now.’

  The conversation drifted, as it always inevitably did on these occasions, into reminiscences of old investigations, but Paniatowski noticed that while Beresford and Meadows were enjoying reliving the past, Crane seemed to be withdrawing more and more into himself.