Almost Love Page 5

  Alex took his hand and held it for a few seconds.

  “I think I understand,” she said, “but do try to look on the bright side. From what I’ve heard, she’s only missing: there’s no evidence to suggest that she’s dead or that someone’s holding her against her will. I wish I hadn’t told you about it, in a way; it might have saved you some worry, if by the time you turn on the radio they’re announcing that she’s back where she belongs and that the whole episode was a false alarm.”

  Oliver in turn squeezed her hand and let go of it gently.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Comforting as ever, Alex. But somehow, this time, I doubt that you’re right.”

  Chapter Five

  It was 12 noon. The clock over the old stable block was cranking its way through twelve strokes, each one accompanied by background whirring noises, as if this might be its last effort before giving up the ghost.

  Detective Inspector Tim Yates had already negotiated at some speed the long winding lane that led from the main road to the hotel courtyard, and was now parking his ancient BMW more sedately on the cobbles that fronted the central façade of the building.

  The geography of the hotel was confusing. Tim walked around the courtyard once, trying various doors, including one that yielded when he turned the handle but which led only to banked tiers of trestle tables folded flat and towers of chairs stacked six or eight high. Emerging from the courtyard itself, he followed a gravel path which eventually led him to a temporary signpost – it was an aluminium stand of the kind used by musicians – on which someone had wedged a sheet of cardboard with conference > reception printed on it in capital letters. Following the sign, he reached an insignificant wooden door which, when he passed through it, brought him immediately into a vast mock-mediaeval hall. A staircase and various passageways led out of it.

  Set squarely in the middle of the flagged stone floor, dwarfed by its surroundings, was one of the hotel’s evidently ubiquitous trestle tables. A banner bearing the words Spalding Archaeological Society had been unfurled behind it. On the table itself were arranged the few name badges left for latecomers to the conference. The many gaps between them indicated that most of the delegates had already registered.

  An epicene little man was seated behind the table. He rose when he saw Tim, scrutinised the policeman’s face and frowned.

  “Can I help you? I’m not sure that we’ve met.”

  “I’m quite certain that we haven’t. I’m Detective Inspector Yates, South Lincolnshire Police.”

  The little man’s freckled face broke into a smile.

  “Oh! That’s a relief. I was wondering if I’d left someone out. When I was making the name badges, I mean. One does check the list very carefully, of course, but these things happen and I’m positive that I’m acquainted with all the delegates who have yet to arrive. Wing-Commander Francis Codd,” he added, extending his hand. “Retired now, of course. I like to help out on these occasions.”

  Tim took the proffered hand and shook it briefly.

  “But, dear me,” said the Wing-Commander, frowning again, “Police, you say? I do hope that nothing is wrong.” He gestured at the remaining name badges. “There hasn’t been an accident, has there? No-one delayed because they’ve been hurt?”

  “Not as far as I know,” said Tim. “I’ve come at the request of one of the delegates, Oliver Sparham. Do you know him?”

  “Yes, of course I do. He has kindly agreed to act as our Chairman today. And he is always a very active member of the society. Most generous with his time.”

  “Could I speak to Mr Sparham? I’d ask you to take me to him, but it would probably be less disruptive if we could talk here.”

  “What? Yes. But no: the final session before lunch is in full swing, and Oliver is chairing it, as I said. Would you mind terribly if I asked you to wait for a few minutes? I can hardly drag the poor man off the stage.”

  Tim was still debating with himself about how he should respond to this when the heavy swing doors to the right of the Wing-Commander opened and a slender, dark-haired woman emerged from the passageway beyond.

  “Oh, Mrs Tarrant, how opportune! This is a policeman who wants to speak to Oliver. I’ve explained that he is busy at the moment. Do you know when he might be available?”

  The slight woman moved rapidly over the stone flagstones towards Tim, her high heels clicking in a businesslike way. She, too, held out her hand, which Tim noticed was very small, and adorned with a narrow wedding-band on which sat another, broader, ring in which was set a single, pale, square-cut blue stone: an aquamarine, perhaps.

  “Inspector Yates? I’m Alexandra Tarrant, the secretary of the Archaeological Society. Oliver is expecting you; he’s told me why he asked you to come. He has just introduced the final speaker of the morning, so his formal duties are over until after lunch. I’ll fetch him. We placed his chair as near to the edge of the stage as possible, so that he would be able to slip away quite discreetly. Fortunately, Dr Pfleger is showing some slides at the moment, so the room is in semi-darkness.”

  Tim nodded.

  “Thank you. It is very considerate of you.”

  She had clear grey eyes set in an oval face, with a slightly turned-up nose and small but determined chin. She looked a little weary, he thought, but she was very pretty.

  “Not at all,” she said. “I don’t know Claudia McRae myself, but many of our delegates do. Naturally, they are shocked by what they’ve heard on the news and, if any of them can help you, they will certainly want to do so. Oliver was an assistant of hers when he was a young man. He thought that you’d like to know that he saw her yesterday.”

  “He’s right about that, of course. He may have been the last person to see her before she disappeared.”

  There was a small silence, after which she laughed nervously.

  “That’s what Oliver himself said. I’ll fetch him now.”

  “Thank you.”

  As her clicking heels retreated, Tim turned his attention towards the Wing-Commander again. Since the latter had clearly not been warned in advance of his visit and therefore was also not aware of its purpose, he expected the old man to be agog with curiosity. Not so. Francis Codd was now bent forward, tranquilly engaged in arranging the remaining name badges in a neat row with no gaps, and in the process displaying the mass of overlapping freckles that topped his round, bald head. He had either been unable to hear the interchange between Tim and Alex Tarrant or had discreetly refrained from listening to it.

  Alex Tarrant returned quickly. A tall man loped in her wake. He had thick, greying hair and the slightly stooped posture that is common in the very tall. He wore round, gold-rimmed spectacles, from behind which twinkled intelligent, even humorous, light-brown eyes. He, too, extended his hand. Tim took it.

  “Oliver Sparham.”

  “Mr Sparham,” Tim said. “Thank you for calling me.”

  An observant man, thought Tim, and not a killer. He had wondered: the old policeman’s adage, that the last person to have admitted to seeing a victim alive was probably also their killer, was not so much a cliché as a truism. There was a certain type of killer who could not resist involving himself in the subsequent police investigation, no matter how dangerous to himself this might be. Oliver Sparham was not such a person; Tim would stake his life on it, even though he had only just met the man. He caught his breath inwardly, even so, for he had just admitted two things to himself: firstly, that he believed that Claudia McRae was dead and secondly that she had been murdered.

  “Should we sit down?”

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Alex Tarrant said with a smile, “I really need to get back.”

  Tim indicated a cluster of rather ugly, 1960s-style square leather chairs that had been arranged around a huge inglenook fireplace. It was the most comfortable-looking area in the massive room, and had the added advantage of being ou
t of earshot of Francis Codd.

  As if he could read his mind, Oliver Sparham said:

  “You don’t need to worry about old Frank. He lives in a world of his own most of the time. He likes a life of complete order. If he finds it hard to cope with the idea of a policeman disrupting the serenity of the conference, he’ll just edit it out; pretend it’s not happening. He certainly won’t want to confront the idea of Claudia’s disappearance.”

  Tim smiled. He was rather warming to Oliver Sparham.

  “Did – does – he know her?”

  “I expect so. He’s been interested in archaeology all of his life, so she must have crossed his path at some point, even though she has not had dealings with our society for many years.”

  Tim nodded. He made a mental note to return later to that: throwaway comment or useful clue?

  “It was very good of you to contact us about your visit to Miss McRae. It could make a great deal of difference to whether she is found safe and well or not. People often don’t realise the significance of something they have heard or seen in relation to a missing person or a crime, or they only think about it weeks after the event, when the police have found out for themselves – or not, of course. In either case, it is often too late.”

  Oliver shrugged.

  “I take that as a compliment. Thank you.”

  “What is your job, Mr Sparham?”

  “I’m terribly sorry, didn’t I say? If I’d been calling you from work, I should have introduced myself straight away. I’m the County Archaeologist for Lincolnshire. Not every county has one: just those with outstanding monuments, or where there have been significant archaeological digs. Lincolnshire has always been of pivotal strategic importance, because of its long coast line and, from the Middle Ages, the sheep farming. Lincoln was a very important city six hundred years ago; and a little after that, incredible though it may seem now, the port of Boston was one of the four wealthiest in the country. My office has supervised some exciting digs in recent years that demonstrate the county’s importance before it even existed as such. We have excavated a Roman villa near Fishtoft and a mediaeval merchant’s house in Kirton. Then there are the gravel pits near Maxey, which have yielded up the remains of woolly mammoths and some quite interesting flint implements. But the real reason that my post continues to exist, especially in this time of local authority spending cuts, is because of the power and prestige of the Spalding Archaeological Society. It was founded in the seventeenth century by some eminent clergymen scholars and supported financially by a number of rich gentleman dilettantes. Among them was one of my ancestors, as a matter of fact. Perhaps because of its age, and certainly because of its long association with some of the country’s most brilliant scientists and historians – Isaac Newton was a member – as an organisation it still carries a lot of clout in archaeological circles.”

  “That’s the society whose conference this is?”

  “Yes. I’m not one of its employees – in fact it only has one paid employee, Mrs Tarrant, whom you’ve just met – but I’m expected to work closely with it. There are others employed by the local authority who interact with it as well as me. One of them is a colleague whom I’ve known since we were both students. His name is Edmund Baker. He works in the architect’s department. He’s the Heritage Officer; it covers a broader remit than just archaeological sites. Part of his job is to slap preservation orders on buildings of historical or architectural interest, to make sure that people don’t tear them down or stick plastic conservatories on them, that sort of thing. He’s currently President of the Society – each president assumes the role for a three-year period, though they can be invited to serve for a second term. Edmund is quite new in the post, as a matter of fact. The role is quasi-executive – more than honorary, but it carries no fee. ”

  “Interesting. And is Dame Claudia a member of the Archaeological Society?”

  “As a woman, she can’t be a full member. I think that she must have been an honorary member in the past, but, quite frankly, Claudia and organised groups of any kind just don’t mix. She can pick a fight with a paper bag; or could, perhaps I should say.”

  “We have no proof that she is . . .”

  “Oh, good God, I didn’t mean that. Heaven forbid. It’s just that when I saw Claudia yesterday, some of the fight seemed to have gone out of her. Of course, she is very old now.”

  “Tell me about your visit yesterday.”

  “Yes; that is why you’ve come, isn’t it? I’m sorry; I seem to have side-tracked you with a lot of other stuff.”

  “On the contrary, it is I who have been asking the questions. It’s always useful to get a feel for the background of a victim, or someone who’s disappeared for no apparent reason. As you yourself have realised, what you have to tell me about yesterday might be important; there may be some detail that you can recall which will lead us straight to her, or at least explain why she has gone.”

  Oliver frowned.

  “It’s hard to believe that, much as I would like to. It was such a banal sort of meeting. I just dropped in for tea and a chat, you know. But I’ll try to remember the minutiae, if you think that will help.”

  “Did she know that you were coming? Was she expecting you?”

  “Yes and no. I phoned her only an hour or so before I got there; just before I left the office, actually. I worked until lunchtime yesterday. To be honest, I’d been in two minds about going to see her at all; I didn’t know if she knew about the conference and I thought that if I were the one to tell her about it she might be upset that she hadn’t been invited as a guest speaker or something. But the opportunity to call in on her was too good to miss. I was close to her at one time, a sort of pupil of hers, and I’m quite aware that even Claudia can’t go on forever. She must be into her nineties now.”

  “Ninety-three, I believe. So, although it was a last-minute decision, you didn’t decide to surprise her?”

  “No. Old people don’t like surprises, do they? And I thought that she might have been working on something, old though she is. She still publishes the odd paper. I like to respect people’s working time. I get very annoyed myself when I am disturbed if it scuppers my plans to get something done.”

  “How did she sound on the phone?”

  “Just the same as usual: Booming, mannish voice; a little combative, but her fierceness was directed not at me but at a kind of confusion that was frustrating her. Pleased to hear from me, I think; she made no attempt to discourage me, which she certainly would have done if I’d been unwelcome. She warned me that she’d been on her own for a few days and that the place was in a bit of a mess. She said that she couldn’t cope with housework in the way that she used to. I thought that she probably meant this as a joke. Claudia has never been the slightest bit interested in things domestic, aside from her immediate creature comforts and, as far as I can recollect, she always used to live in a tip. Even on digs she was messier and more chaotic than most people.”

  “And when you arrived?”

  “The state of the house wasn’t too bad at all. I’d been prepared for some real squalor, but there was only surface untidiness. I put that down to the companion’s influence. Jane something.”

  “Jane Halliwell. Do you know her?”

  “No. Claudia said that she was some sort of academic, though not, I think, an archaeologist. I forget her subject: current affairs or something like it. Anyway, she doesn’t do it any more. She’s given it up to look after Claudia. If you didn’t know Claudia, you might think the woman was on the make.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, Claudia’s not short of a bob or two, you know. Aside from what she’s made from her lectures and writing, her father left her quite a lot of money. He was a barrister, I think. However, I’d say that Claudia’s much too astute to be taken in by a confidence trickster; but what I mainly meant was that no-one woul
d take Claudia on unless they really cared for her. The task would be too daunting!”

  Tim grinned.

  “So – tell me what happened when you first arrived. Did you ring the doorbell?”

  “I didn’t need to. It was a sunny day and the door was wide open. ­Actually, Claudia had told me that it would be; I forgot that until just now. It didn’t surprise me; I think she’s a little claustrophobic. Years of living outside. And she’s probably not as steady on her pins as she was, so not having to answer the door would have been easier for her, and possibly less embarrassing. She’s very proud. She’d told me to go straight in, so I did. I just knocked once on her sitting-room door, for form’s sake, and went in.”

  “Had you been to the cottage before?”

  “No. Claudia’s been living there for only a few years. The last time I saw her she still had the town house in Stamford.”

  “How did you know which was the door to the sitting-room?”

  Oliver shrugged.

  “There were only three doors leading out of the hall. I just chose the one on the left. If it had been the wrong one, I would have tried the others.”

  “So you went straight into the room and she was already there? Did you notice anything unusual about the hall, on your way in?”

  “Yes, I went straight in, and no, I didn’t. Did I miss something? I’m usually quite observant.”

  “Not as far as I know. I was just checking – since the door had been left open.” The police had not included information about the spray of blood on the hall wall in the news bulletins that they had issued. Tim debated confiding in Oliver Sparham and immediately rejected the idea. The fewer people who knew about it the better, at least until they had established whose blood it was. Besides, there was no point in distressing him unnecessarily.