A Century of Great Suspense Stories

The Gentleman in the Lake Robert Barnard

“Among the writers I admire most are Christie, Allingham, Rendell and Margaret Millar,” Robert Barnard once noted. Perhaps this is why his own voice is that of a “pure” detective writer. Whatever else a given Barnard novel may offer (humor, keen social observation, place description that is genuinely poetic), his novels and stories always remain focused on the mystery. While one hates to speculate on which writers of our time will be read by future generations, Barnard, with his grace, intelligence, and enormous range of skills, is certainly a likely contender. Death of an Old Goat (1977), Bodies (1986), and A City of Strangers are among his many worthwhile novels, with his latest including Unholy Dying.

There had been violent storms that night, but the body did not come to the surface until they had died down and a watery summer sun sent ripples of lemon and silver across the still-disturbed surface of Derwent Water. It was first seen by a little girl, clutching a plastic beaker of orange juice, who had strayed down from the small car park, over the pebbles, to the edge of the lake.

“What’s that, Mummy?”

“What’s what, dear?”

Her mother was wandering round, drinking in the calm, the silence, the magisterial beauty, the more potent for the absence of other tourists. She was a businesswoman, and holidays by the Lakes made her question uncomfortably what she was doing with her life. She strolled down to where the water lapped onto the stones.

“There, Mummy. That.”

She looked towards the lake. A sort of bundle bobbed on the surface a hundred yards or so away. She screwed up her eyes. A sort of tweedy bundle. Greeny-brown, like an old-fashioned gentleman’s suit. As she watched she realised that she could make out, stretching out from the bundle, two lines... Legs. She put her hand firmly on her daughter’s shoulder.

“Oh, it’s just an old bundle of clothes, darling. Look, there’s Patch wanting to play. He has to stretch his legs too, you know.”

Patch barked obligingly, and the little girl trotted off to throw his ball for him. Without hurrying the woman made her way back to the car, picked up the car phone, and dialed 999.

It was late on in the previous summer that Marcia Catchpole had sat beside Sir James Harrington at a dinner party in St. John’s Wood. “Something immensely distinguished in Law,” her hostess Serena Fisk had told her vaguely. “Not a judge, but a rather famous defending counsel, or prosecuting counsel, or something of that sort.”

He had been rather quiet as they all sat down: urbane, courteous in a dated sort of way, but quiet. It was as if he was far away, reviewing the finer points of a case long ago.

“So nice to have soup,” said Marcia, famous for “drawing people out,” especially men. “Soup seems almost to have gone out these days.”

“Really?” said Sir James, as if they were discussing the habits of Eskimos or Trobriand Islanders. “Yes, I suppose you don’t often... get it.”

“No, it’s all melons and ham, and pâté, and seafood cocktails.”

“Is it? Is it?”

His concentration wavering, he returned to his soup, which he was consuming a good deal more expertly than Marcia, who, truth to tell, was more used to melons and suchlike.

“You don’t eat out a great deal?”

“No. Not now. Once, when I was practising... But not now. And not since my wife died.”

“Of course you’re right: People don’t like singles, do they?”

“Singles?”

“People on their own. For dinner parties. They have to find another one — like me tonight.”

“Yes... Yes,” he said, as if only half-understanding what she said.

“And it’s no fun eating in a restaurant on your own, is it?”

“No... None at all... I have a woman come in,” he added, as if trying to make a contribution of his own.

“To cook and clean for you?”

“Yes... Perfectly capable woman... It’s not the same, though.”

“No. Nothing is, is it, when you find yourself on your own?”

“No, it’s not...” He thought, as if thought was difficult. “You can’t do so many things you used to do.”

“Ah, you find that too, do you? What do you miss most?”

There was a moment’s silence, as if he had forgotten what they were talking about. Then he said: “Travel. I’d like to go to the Lakes again.”

“Oh, the Lakes! One of my favourite places. Don’t you drive?”

“No. I’ve never had any need before.”

“Do you have children?”

“Oh yes. Two sons. One in medicine, one in politics. Busy chaps with families of their own. Can’t expect them to take me places... Don’t see much of them...” His moment of animation seemed to fade; and he picked away at his entrée. “What is this fish, Molly?”

When, the next day, she phoned to thank her hostess, Marcia commented that Sir James was “such a sweetie.”

“You and he seemed to get on like a house on fire, anyway.”

“Oh, we did.”

“Other people said he was awfully vague.”

“Oh, it’s the legal mind. Wrapped in grand generalities. His wife been dead long?”

“About two years. I believe he misses her frightfully. Molly used to arrange all the practicalities for him.”

“I can believe that. I was supposed to ring him about a book I have that he wanted, but he forgot to give me his number.”

“Oh, it’s two-seven-one-eight-seven-six. A rather grand place in Chelsea.”

But Marcia had already guessed the number after going through the telephone directory. She had also guessed at the name of Sir James’s late wife.

“We can’t do much till we have the pathologist’s report,” said Superintendent Southern, fingering the still-damp material of a tweed suit. “Except perhaps about this.”

Sergeant Potter looked down at it.

“I don’t know a lot about such things,” he said, “but I’d have said that suit was dear.”

“So would I. A gentleman’s suit, made to measure and beautifully sewn. I’ve had one of the secretaries in who knows about these things. A gentleman’s suit for country wear. Made for a man who doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘casual.’ With a nametag sewn in by the tailor and crudely removed... with a razor blade probably.”

“You don’t get razor blades much these days.”

“Perhaps he’s also someone who doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘throwaway.’ A picture seems to be emerging.”

“And the removal of the nametag almost inevitably means—”

“Murder. Yes, I’d say so.”

Marcia decided against ringing Sir James up. She felt sure he would not remember who she was. Instead, she would call round with the book, which had indeed come up in conversation — because she had made sure it did. Marcia was very good at fostering acquaintanceships with men, and had had two moderately lucrative divorces to prove it.

She timed her visit for late afternoon, when she calculated that the lady who cooked and “did” for him would have gone home. When he opened the door he blinked, and his hand strayed towards his lips.

“I’m afraid I—”

“Marcia Catchpole. We met at Serena Fisk’s. I brought the book on Wordsworth we were talking about.”

She proffered Stephen Gill on Wordsworth, in paperback. She had thought as she bought it that Sir James was probably not used to paperbacks, but she decided that, as an investment, Sir James was not yet worth the price of a hardback.

“Oh, I don’t... er... Won’t you come in?”

“Lovely!”

She was taken into a rather grim sitting room, lined with legal books and Victorian first editions. Sir James began to make uncertain remarks about how he thought he could manage tea.

“Why don’t you let me make it? You’ll not be used to fending for yourself, let alone for visitors. It was different in your generation, wasn’t it? Is that the kitchen?”

And she immediately showed an uncanny instinct for finding things and doing the necessary. Sir James watched her, bemused, for a minute or two, then shuffled back to the sitting room. When she came in with a tray, with tea things on it and a plate of biscuits, he looked as if he had forgotten who she was, and how she came to be there.

“There, that’s nice, isn’t it? Do you like it strong? Not too strong, right? I think you’ll enjoy the Wordsworth book. Wordsworth really is the Lakes, don’t you agree?”

She had formed the notion, when talking to him at Serena Fisk’s dinner party, that his reading was remaining with him longer than his grip on real life. This was confirmed by the conversation on this visit. As long as the talk stayed with Wordsworth and his Lakeland circle it approached a normal chat; he would forget the names of poems, but he would sometimes quote several lines of the better-known ones verbatim. Marcia had been educated at a moderately good state school, and she managed to keep her end up.

Marcia got up to go just at the right time, when Sir James had got used to her being there and before he began wanting her to go. At the door she said: “I’m expecting to have to go to the Lakes on business in a couple of weeks. I’d be happy if you’d come along.”

“Oh. I couldn’t possibly—”

“No obligations either way: we pay for ourselves, separate rooms of course, quite independent of each other. I’ve got business in Cockermouth, and I thought of staying by Buttermere or Crummock Water.”

A glint came into his eyes.

“It would be wonderful to see them again. But I really couldn’t—”

“Of course you could. It would be my pleasure. It’s always better in congenial company, isn’t it? I’ll be in touch about the arrangements.”

Marcia was in no doubt she would have to make all the arrangements, down to doing his packing and contacting his cleaning woman. But she was confident she would bring it off.

“Killed by a blow to the head,” said Superintendent Southern, when he had skimmed through the pathologist’s report. “Some kind of accident, for example a boating accident, can’t entirely be ruled out, but there was some time between his being killed and his going into the water.”

“In which case, what happened to the boat? And why didn’t whoever was with him simply go back to base and report it, rather than heaving him in?”

“Exactly... From what remains, the pathologist suggests a smooth liver — a townee not a countryman, even of the upper crust kind.”

“I think you suspected that from the suit, didn’t you, sir?”

“I did. Where do you go for a first-rate suit for country holidays if you’re a townee?”

“Same as for business suits? Savile Row, sir?”

“If you’re a well-heeled Londoner that’s exactly where you go. We’ll start there.”

Marcia went round to Sir James’s two days before she had decided to set off North. Sir James remembered little or nothing about the proposed trip, still less whether he had agreed to go. Marcia got them a cup of tea, put maps on his lap, then began his packing for him. Before she went she cooked him his light supper (wondering how he had ever managed to cook it for himself) and got out of him the name of his daily. Later on she rang her and told her she was taking Sir James to the Lakes, and he’d be away for at most a week. The woman sounded sceptical but uncertain whether it was her place to say anything. Marcia, in any case, didn’t give her the opportunity.

She also rang Serena Fisk to tell her. She had an ulterior motive for doing so. In the course of the conversation she casually asked: “How did he get to your dinner party?”

“Oh, I drove him. Homecooks were doing the food, so there was no problem. Those sons of his wouldn’t lift a finger to help him. Then Bill drove him home later. Said he couldn’t get a coherent word out of him.”

“I expect he was tired: If you talk to him about literature you can see there’s still a mind there.”

“Literature was never my strong point, Marcia.”

“Anyway, I’m taking him to the Lakes for a week on Friday.”

“Really? Well, you are getting on well with him. Rather you than me.”

“Oh, all he needs is a bit of stimulus,” said Marcia. She felt confident now that she had little to fear from old friends or sons.

This first visit to the Lakes went off extremely well from Marcia’s point of view. When she collected him, the idea that he was going somewhere seemed actually to have got through to him. She finished the packing with last-minute things, got him and his cases into the car, and in no time they were on the Ml. During a pub lunch he called her “Molly” again, and when they at last reached the Lakes she saw that glint in his eyes, heard little grunts of pleasure.

She had booked them into Crummock Lodge, an unpretentious but spacious hotel which seemed to her just the sort of place Sir James would have been used to on his holidays in the Lakes. They had separate rooms, as she had promised. “He’s an old friend who’s been very ill,” she told the manager. They ate well, went on drives and gentle walks. If anyone stopped and talked, Sir James managed a sort of distant benignity which carried them through. As before, he was best if he talked about literature. Once, after Marcia had had a conversation with a farmer over a dry stone wall, he said:

“Wordsworth always believed in the wisdom of simple country people.”

It sounded like something a schoolmaster had once drummed into him. Marcia would have liked to say, “But when his brother married a servant he said it was an outrage.” But she herself had risen by marriage, or marriages, and the point seemed to strike too close to home.

On the afternoon when she had her private business in Cockermouth she walked Sir James hard in the morning and left him tucked up in bed after lunch. Then she visited a friend who had retired to a small cottage on the outskirts of the town. He had been a private detective, and had been useful to her in her first divorce. The dicey method he had used to get dirt on her husband had convinced her that in his case private detection was very close to crime itself, and she had maintained the connection. She told him the outline of what she had in mind, and told him she might need him in the future.

When, after a week, they returned to London, Marcia was completely satisfied. She now had a secure place in Sir James’s life. He no longer looked bewildered when she came round, even looked pleased, and often called her “Molly.” She went to the Chelsea house often in the evenings, cooked his meal for him, and together they watched television like an old couple.

It would soon be time to make arrangements at a Registry Office.

In the process of walking from establishment to establishment in Savile Row, Southern came to feel he had had as much as he could stand of stiffness, professional discretion, and awed hush. They were only high-class tailors, he thought to himself, not the Church of bloody England. Still, when they heard that one of their clients could have ended up as an anonymous corpse in Derwent Water, they were willing to cooperate. The three establishments which offered that particular tweed handed him silently a list of those customers who had had suits made from it in the last ten years.

“Would you know if any of these are dead?” he asked one shop manager.

“Of course, sir. We make a note in our records when their obituary appears in the Times.”

The man took the paper back and put a little crucifix sign against two of the four names. The two remaining were a well-known television newsreader and Sir James Harrington.

“Is Sir James still alive?”

“Oh certainly. There’s been no obituary for him. But he’s very old: We have had no order from him for some time.”

It was Sir James that Southern decided to start with Scotland Yard knew all about him, and provided a picture, a review of the major trials in which he had featured, and his address. When Southern failed to get an answer from phone calls to the house, he went round to try the personal touch. There was a For Sale notice on it that looked to have been there for some time.

The arrangements for the Registry Office wedding went without a hitch. A month after their trip, Marcia went to book it in a suburb where neither Sir James nor she was known. Then she began foreshadowing it to Sir James, to accustom him to the idea.

“Best make it legal,” she said, in her slightly vulgar way.

“Legal?” he enquired, from a great distance.

“You and me. But we’ll just go on as we are.”

She thought about witnesses, foresaw various dangers, and decided to pay for her detective friend to come down. He was the one person who knew of her intentions, and he could study Sir James’s manner.

“Got a lady friend you could bring with you?” she asked when she rang him.

“ ’Course I have. Though nobody as desirable as you, Marcia love.”

“Keep your desires to yourself Ben Brackett. This is business.”

Sir James went through the ceremony with that generalized dignity which had characterised him in all his dealings with Marcia. He behaved to Ben Brackett and his lady friend as if they were somewhat dodgy witnesses who happened to be on his side in this particular trial. He spoke his words clearly, and almost seemed to mean them. Marcia told herself that in marrying her he was doing what he actually wanted to do. She didn’t risk any celebration after the ceremony. She paid off Ben Brackett, drove Sir James home to change and pack again, then set off for the Lake District.

This time she had rented a cottage, as being more private. It was just outside Grange — a two bedroom stone cottage, very comfortable and rather expensive. She had taken it for six weeks in the name of Sir James and Lady Harrington. Once there and settled in, Sir James seemed, in his way, vaguely happy; he would potter off on his own down to the lakeside, or up the narrow abutting fields. He would raise his hat to villagers and tourists, and swap remarks about the weather.

He also signed, in a wavering hand, anything put in front of him.

Marcia wrote first to his sons, similar but not identical letters, telling them of his marriage and of his happiness with his dear wife. The letters also touched on business matters: “I wonder if you would object if I put the house on the market? After living up here I cannot imagine living in London again. Of course the money would come to you after my wife’s death.” At the foot of Marcia’s typed script Sir James wrote at her direction: “Your loving Dad.”

The letters brought two furious responses, as Marcia had known they would. Both were addressed to her, and both threatened legal action. Both said they knew their father was mentally incapable of deciding to marry again, and accused her of taking advantage of his senility.

“My dear boys,” typed Marcia gleefully. “I am surprised that you apparently consider me senile, and wonder how you could have allowed me to live alone without proper care if you believed that to be the case.”

Back and forth the letters flew. Gradually Marcia discerned a subtle difference between the two sets of letters. Those from the MP were slightly less shrill, slightly more accommodating. He fears a scandal, she thought. Nothing worse than a messy court case for an MP’s reputation. It was to Sir Evelyn Harrington, MP for Flinchingford, that she made her proposal.

Southern found the estate agents quite obliging. Their dealings, they said, had been with Sir James himself. He had signed all the letters from Cumbria. They showed Southern the file; and he noted the shaky signature. Once they had spoken to Lady Harrington, they said. A low offer had been received, which demanded a quick decision. They had not recommended acceptance, since, though the property market was more dead than alive, a good house in Chelsea was bound to make a very handsome sum once it picked up. Lady Harrington had said that Sir James had a slight cold, but that he agreed with them that the offer was derisory and should be refused.

Southern’s brow creased: Wasn’t Lady Harrington dead?

There was clearly enough of interest about Sir James Harrington to stay with him for a bit. Southern consulted the file at Scotland Yard and set up a meeting with the man’s son at the House of Commons.

Sir Evelyn was a man in his late forties, tall and well set up. He had been knighted, Southern had discovered, in the last mass knighting of Tory backbenchers who had always voted at their party’s call. The impression Sir Evelyn made was not of a stupid man, but of an unoriginal one.

“My father? Oh yes, he’s alive. Living up in the Lake District somewhere.”

“You’re sure of this?”

“Sure as one can be when there’s no contact.” Southern left a silence, so the man was forced to elaborate. “Never was much. He’s a remote bugger... a remote sort of chap, my father. Stiff, always working, never had the sort of common touch you need with children. Too keen on being the world’s greatest prosecuting counsel... He sent us away to school when we were seven.”

Suddenly there was anger, pain, and real humanity in the voice.

“You resented that?”

“Yes. My brother had gone the year before and told me what that prep school was like. I pleaded with him. But he sent me just the same.”

“Did your mother want you to go?”

“My mother did as she was told. Or else.”

“That’s not the present Lady Harrington?”

“Oh no. The present Lady Harrington is, I like to think, what my father deserves... We’d been warned he was failing by his daily. Dinner burst in the oven, forgetting to change his clothes, that kind of thing. We didn’t take too much notice. The difficulties of getting a stiff-necked old... man into residential care seemed insuperable. Then the next we heard he’s married again and gone to live in the Lake District.”

“Didn’t you protest?”

“Of course we did. It was obvious she was after his money. And the letters he wrote, or she wrote for him, were all wrong. He would never have signed himself ‘Dad,’ let alone ‘Your loving Dad.’ But the kind of action that would have been necessary to annul the marriage can look ugly — for both sides of the case. So when she proposed an independent examination by a local doctor and psychiatrist, I persuaded my brother to agree.”

“And what did they say?”

“Said he was vague, a little forgetful, but perfectly capable of understanding what he’d done when he married her, and apparently very happy. That was the end of the matter for us. The end of him.”

Marcia had decided from the beginning that in the early months of her life as Lady Harrington she and Sir James would have to move round a lot. As long as he was merely an elderly gentleman pottering around the Lakes and exchanging meteorological banalities with the locals there was little to fear. But as they became used to him there was a danger that they would try to engage him in conversation of more substance. If that happened, his mental state might very quickly become apparent.

As negotiations with the two sons developed, Marcia began to see her way clear. Their six weeks at Grange were nearing an end, so she arranged to rent a cottage between Crummock Water and Cockermouth. When the sons agreed to an independent assessment of their father’s mental condition and nominated a doctor and a psychiatrist from Keswick to undertake it, Marcia phoned them and arranged their visit for one of their first days in the new cottage. Then she booked Sir James and herself into Crummock Lodge for the relevant days. “I’ll be busy getting the cottage ready,” she told the manager. She felt distinctly pleased with herself. No danger of the independent team talking to locals.

“I don’t see why we have to move,” complained Sir James when she told him. “I like it here.”

“Oh, we need to see a few places before we decide where we really want to settle,” said Marcia soothingly. “I’ve booked us into Crummock Lodge, so I’ll be able to get the new cottage looking nice before we move in.”

“This is nice. I want to stay here.”

There was no problem with money. On a drive to Cockermouth Marcia had arranged to have Sir James’s bank account transferred there. He had signed the form without a qualm, together with one making the account a joint one. Everything in the London house was put into store, and the estate agents forwarded Sir James’s mail, including his dividend cheques and his pension, regularly. There was no hurry about selling the house, but when it did finally go Marcia foresaw herself in clover. With Sir James, of course, and he was a bit of a bore. But very much worth putting up with.

As Marcia began discreetly packing for the move Sir James’s agitation grew, his complaints became more insistent.

“I don’t want to move. Why should we move, Molly? We’re happy here. If we can’t have this cottage we can buy a place. There are houses for sale.”

To take his mind off it, Marcia borrowed their neighbour’s rowing boat and took him for a little trip on the lake. It didn’t take his mind off it. “This is lovely,” he kept saying. “Derwent Water has always been my favourite. Why should we move on? I’m not moving, Molly.”

He was beginning to get on her nerves. She had to tell herself that a few frazzled nerves were a small price to pay.

The night before they were due to move, the packing had to be done openly. Marcia brought all the suitcases into the living room and began methodically distributing to each one the belongings they had brought with them. Sir James had been dozing when she began, as he often did in the evening. She was halfway through her task when she realised he was awake and struggling to his feet.

“You haven’t been listening to what I’ve been saying, have you, Molly? Well, have you, woman? I’m not moving!”

Marcia got to her feet.

“I know it’s upsetting, dear—”

“It’s not upsetting because we’re staying here.”

“Perhaps it will only be for a time. I’ve got it all organised, and you’ll be quite comfy—”

“Don’t treat me like a child, Molly!” Suddenly she realised with a shock that he had raised his arm. “Don’t treat me like a child!” His hand came down with a feeble slap across her cheek. “Listen to what I say, woman!” Slap again. “I am not moving!” This time he punched her, and it hurt. “You’ll do what I say, or it’ll be the worse for you!” And he punched her again.

Marcia exploded with rage.

“You bloody old bully!” she screamed. “You brute! That’s how you treated your wife, is it? Well, it’s not how you’re treating me!”

She brought up her stronger hands and gave him an almighty shove away from her even as he raised his fist for another punch. He lurched back, tried to regain his balance, then fell against the fireplace, hitting his head hard against the corner of the mantelpiece. Then he crumpled to the floor and lay still.

For a moment Marcia did nothing. Then she sat down and sobbed. She wasn’t a sobbing woman, but she felt she had had a sudden revelation of what this man’s — this old monster’s — relations had been with his dead wife. She had never for a moment suspected it. She no longer felt pity for him, if she ever had. She felt contempt.

She dragged herself wearily to her feet. She’d put him to bed, and by morning he’d have forgotten. She bent down over him. Then, panic-stricken, she put her hand to his mouth, felt his chest, felt for his heart. It didn’t take long to tell that he was dead. She sat down on the sofa and contemplated the wreck of her plans.

Southern and Potter found the woman in the general-storecum-newsagent’s at Grange chatty and informative.

“Oh, Sir James. Yes, they were here for several weeks. Nice enough couple, though I think he’d married beneath him.”

“Was he in full possession of his faculties, do you think?”

The woman hesitated.

“Well, you’d have thought so. Always said, ‘Nice day,’ or ‘Hope the rain keeps off,’ if he came in for a tin of tobacco or a bottle of wine. But no more than that. Then one day I said, ‘Shame about the Waleses, isn’t it?’ — you know, at the time of the split-up. He seemed bewildered, so I said, ‘The Prince and Princess of Wales separating.’ Even then it was obvious he didn’t understand. It was embarrassing. I turned away and served somebody else. But there’s others had the same experience.”

After some minutes Marcia found it intolerable to be in the same room as the body. Trying to look the other way, she dragged it through to the dining room. Even as she did so she realised that she had made a decision: She was not going to the police, and her plans were not at an end.

Because after all, she had her “Sir James” all lined up. In the operation planned for the next few days, the existence of the real one was anyway something of an embarrassment. Now that stumbling block had been removed. She rang Ben Brackett and told him there had been a slight change of plan, but it needn’t affect his part in it. She rang Crummock Lodge and told them that Sir James had changed his mind and wanted to settle straight into the new cottage. While there was still some dim light, she went into the garden and out into the lonely land behind, collecting as many large stones as she could find. Then she slipped down and put them into the rowing boat she had borrowed from her neighbour the day before.

She had no illusions about the size — or more specifically the weight — of the problem she had in disposing of the body. She gave herself a stiff brandy, but no more than one. She found a razor blade and, shaking, removed the name from Sir James’s suit. Then she finished her packing, so that everything was ready for departure. The farming people of the area were early to bed as a rule, but there were too many tourists staying there, she calculated, for it to be really safe before the early hours. At precisely one o’clock she began the long haul down to the shore. Sir James had been nearly six foot, so though his form was wasted, he was both heavy and difficult to lift. Marcia found, though, that carrying was easier than dragging, and quieter too. In three arduous stages she got him to the boat, then into it. The worst was over. She rowed out to the dark centre of the lake — the crescent moon was blessedly obscured by clouds — filled his pockets with stones, then carefully, gradually, eased the body out of the boat and into the water. She watched it sink, then made for the shore. Two large brandies later, she piled the cases into the car, locked up the cottage, and drove off in the direction of Cockermouth.

After the horror and difficulty of the night before, everything went beautifully. Marcia had barely settled into the new cottage when Ben Brackett arrived. He already had some of Sir James’s characteristics off pat: his distant, condescending affability, for example. Marcia coached him in others, and they tried to marry them to qualities the real Sir James had no longer had: lucidity and purpose.

When the team of two arrived, the fake Sir James was working in the garden. “Got to get it in some sort of order,” he explained, in his upper-class voice. “Haven’t the strength I once had, though.” When they were all inside, and over a splendid afternoon tea, he paid eloquent tribute to his new wife.

“She’s made a new man of me,” he explained. “I was letting myself go after Molly died. Marcia pulled me up in my tracks and brought me round. Oh, I know the boys are angry. I don’t blame them. In fact, I blame myself. I was never a good father to them — too busy to be one. Got my priorities wrong. But it won’t hurt them to wait a few years for the money.”

The team was clearly impressed. They steered the talk round to politics, the international situation, changes in the law. “Sir James” kept his end up, all in that rather grand voice and distant manner. When the two men left, Marcia knew that her problems were over. She and Ben Brackett waited for the sound of the car leaving to go back to Keswick, then she poured very large whiskies for them. Over their third she told him what had happened to the real Sir James.

“You did superbly,” said Ben Brackett when she had finished.

“It was bloody difficult.”

“I bet it was. But it was worth it. Look how it went today. A piece of cake. We had them in the palms of our hands. We won, Marcia! Let’s have another drink on that. We won!”

Even as she poured, Marcia registered disquiet at that “we.”

Sitting in his poky office in Kendal, Southern, with Potter, surveyed the reports and other pieces of evidence they had set out on the desk.

“It’s becoming quite clear,” said Southern thoughtfully. “In Grange we have an old man who hardly seems to know who the Prince and Princess of Wales are. In the cottage near Cockermouth we have an old man who can talk confidently about politics and the law. In Grange we have a feeble man, and a corpse which is that of a soft liver. In the other cottage we have a man who gardens — perhaps to justify the fact that his hands are not those of a soft-living lawyer. At some time between taking her husband on the lake — was that a rehearsal, I wonder? — and the departure in the night, she killed him. She must already have had someone lined up to take his place for the visit of the medical team.”

“And they’re there still,” said Potter, pointing to the letter from the estate agents in London. “That’s where all communications still go.”

“And that’s where we’re going to go,” said Southern, getting up.

They had got good information on the cottage from the Cockermouth police. They left their car in the car park of a roadside pub, and took the lane through fields and down towards the northern shore of Crummock Water. They soon saw the cottage, overlooking the lake, lonely...

But the cottage was not as quiet as its surroundings. As they walked towards the place they heard shouting. A minute or two later they heard two thick voices arguing. When they could distinguish words, it was in a voice far from upper-crust:

“Will you get that drink, you cow?... How can I when I can hardly stand?... Get me that drink or it’ll be the worse for you tomorrow... You’d better remember who stands between you and a long jail sentence, Marcia. You’d do well to think about that all the time... Now get me that scotch or you’ll feel my fist!”

When Southern banged on the door there was silence. The woman who opened the door was haggard-looking, with bleary eyes and a bruise on the side of her face. In the room behind her, slumped back in a chair, they saw a man whose expensive clothes were in disarray, whose face was red and puffy, and who most resembled a music hall comic’s version of a gentleman.

“Lady Harrington? I’m Superintendent Southern and this is Sergeant Potter. I wonder if we could come in? We have to talk to you.”

He raised his ID towards her clouded eyes. She looked down at it slowly. When she looked up again, Southern could have sworn that the expression on her face was one of relief.