Blood at the Bookies

Thirty-Seven

There was no difficulty the next morning in making an appointment with Ewan Urquhart. Though it was a Saturday, business in the offices of Urquhart & Pease remained slack. “Won’t really pick up again till the spring, when the sun comes out,” he had told Jude when she rang through. He sounded, as ever, urbane, the Old Carthusian to the last polished vowel.

If he thought it strange that Jude arrived with a friend to discuss the valuation of Woodside Cottage, he was too well bred to articulate his feelings. He and Hamish were both in the outer office when the women arrived. The younger man sat at a desk, looking blank. Despite the potential seriousness of the situation, Jude couldn’t help being reminded of the old joke:

Why don’t estate agents look out of the window in the morning?

Because it gives them nothing to do in the afternoon.

There appeared to be no other staff on duty that morning. Maybe ‘in the spring, when the sun comes out’, there would be more. Ewan Urquhart offered them coffee, but Carole and Jude said they’d just had some. He then invited them to join him in his back office. “You hold the fort out here, Hamish. Fight off the hordes of eager purchasers, eh?”

His office gave the impression of the library of a gentlemen’s club. There were shelves showing the leather spines of unopened books, and the intervening areas of wall were dark green, with a couple of framed sporting prints. In pride of place was an etching of the neo-Gothic splendour of Charterhouse school. The desk was reproduction mahogany, the chairs were reproduction leather. And Ewan Urquhart’s vowels were reproduction upper-class.

He gestured them to chairs and said, “Now do tell me what I can do for you, ladies? I didn’t gather, Mrs Seddon, do you actually live at Woodside Cottage with, er…Jude?”

“Good heavens, no.” She didn’t know whether he actually was making a suggestion of lesbianism, but it was a notion she wanted to dispel as quickly as possible. “I live next door. High Tor.”

“I know it well. Part of my business to know the names of all the houses in the immediate vicinity. Never know when one might come up for sale, and one likes to keep a step ahead of the opposition. A highly competitive business, ours, you know.”

“I’m sure it is.” There was a silence. Having built themselves up to the confrontation, neither of the women was sure how next to proceed. They should have planned what to say.

“So, Mrs Seddon, am I to gather that you are also thinking of putting High Tor on the market? I would be more than happy to arrange a valuation for you too if – ”

“No, no. I’m quite settled there at the moment, thank you.”

“Good.” As another silence extended itself, Ewan Urquhart pushed his fingers through the greying hair of his temples. “So, please tell me. What can I do for you?”

Jude had had enough of prevarication.

“We’ve come to talk to you about Tadeusz Jankowski.” He looked surprised. “Don’t pretend you don’t know the name.”

“I am making no such pretence. I read the newspapers and watch television. I know that Tadeusz Jankowski was the name of the young man stabbed here in Fethering a couple of weeks ago. But I don’t know what he has to do with me.”

“He has to do with you the fact that he was in love with your daughter Sophia.”

Ewan Urquhart chuckled lightly. “My dear Jude, I’m sure there are a lot of young men who have been in love with my daughter. She is an exceptionally beautiful and talented young woman. It is inevitable that she attracts the interest of the opposite sex. Whether she would give any encouragement to a Polish immigrant, though, is another matter.”

“Your daughter met Tadeusz Jankowski at a music festival in Leipzig last summer,” Carole announced. “While she was InterRailing in Europe.”

He did look shaken by this revelation, but they couldn’t tell why. It could have been new information to him, or he could have been surprised by how much detail they knew of his daughter’s life.

“They had an affair out in Germany,” Carole went on, “and then Tadeusz Jankowski came over to England to look for her.”

For the first time Ewan Urquhart began to lose his cool. “My daughter would not have a relationship with a foreigner!”

“What you mean, Ewan,” said Jude, “is that you wouldn’t like your daughter to have a relationship with a foreigner. I don’t have children, but I’ve seen often enough that they do not always turn out as their parents Want them to.”

“Sophia is an intelligent girl. She wouldn’t mix with people who’re unworthy of her.”

“And what makes you think Tadeusz Jankowski was unworthy of her?”

“His nationality, apart from anything else. All right, I know we have reason to thank some Polish airmen for the help they gave us against Hitler, but as a race they’re not to be trusted. Sophia has been brought up to keep foreigners at a healthy distance.”

“Didn’t it occur to you,” asked Carole, “that if she went InterRailing round Europe, she might meet some foreigners?”

“Yes. I wasn’t keen on the whole idea of a gap year, but Sophia managed to persuade me. She went against my better judgement. But I can assure you you’ve got the wrong end of the stick if you think she’s been having affairs with foreigners. When Sophia does get to the point of having affairs, I’m sure she will be very selective in her choice of men.”

“‘When she gets to the point of having affairs’?” Jude echoed. “How old is your daughter, Ewan?”

“Nineteen, nearly twenty.”

“Well, surely you know from the media that these days most young women of nearly twenty have been sexually active for some years.”

“Most young women, maybe,” he snapped. “Not Sophia!”

For the first time they realized the depth of his obsession with his daughter, and his obsession with her purity. In her father’s eyes, no man would ever be good enough for Sophia Urquhart. He had built up an image of her as untouchable, and what he might do to anyone who threatened that image was terrifying.

“If you claim not to know about her affair with Tadeusz Jankowski, then presumably the same goes for her relationship with Andy Constant.”

“Andy Constant?”

“You know the name?”

“Of course. I’ve met the man. He’s Sophia’s Drama tutor at the university.” He was now very angry. “Look, what is this? What are you two up to? I don’t have to listen to malicious slander of my daughter from smalltown gossips.”

“It is not malicious slander. It is the truth. Andy Constant was, until recently, your daughter’s lover.”

“No! He couldn’t…Sophia wouldn’t…Not with a man of that age…She’s not like her mother. Her mother was little better than a tart, who’d open her legs for any man who offered her a smile and a kind word.” Gifts of which, both women imagined, she hadn’t received many at home. “Sophia’s not like that. She wouldn’t…She hasn’t been brought up like that!” Now he was really losing control. His face was growing red and congested. “God, if I thought a man like that Andy Constant had touched my daughter, I’d kill him!”

He seemed then to realize what he’d said, and opened and closed his mouth, as if trying to take the words back.

“Which,” said Carole calmly, “is what you failed to do last night.”

“What?”

“You stabbed Andy Constant,” said Jude, “but you didn’t kill him.”

“I’m sorry? Where is this supposed to have happened?”

“In the Drama Studio at Clincham College. You waited for Andy Constant in the lighting box. When he came in, you stabbed him. You would have stabbed him more than once, but you heard someone arriving. It was me, actually. You passed me in the lobby, I think, when you made your escape.”

“You’re saying I stabbed Andy Constant?” His eyes were wild now, darting about from one of the women to the other.

“Yes. For some reason – maybe to disguise yourself – you wore your daughter’s Barbour when you committed the crime. You couldn’t stand the thought of anyone touching Sophia, so you tried to kill Andy Constant – just as you had killed Tadeusz Jankowski.”

He shook his head wordlessly, a pathetic figure now. His urbanity had deserted him, leaving a shell of a man, a husk wearing an Old Carthusian tie.

“Maybe you stabbed the young man here in this office,” said Carole. “It was somewhere near the betting shop, somewhere along this parade probably. Or maybe the attack took place in your car. You’d managed to get him into it on some pretext.”

“I can’t stand this,” Ewan Urquhart moaned feebly. “What on earth is going on?”

“Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll deal with it.”

They hadn’t heard the door from the outer office open. Carole and Jude both looked round at the same time to the source of the new voice.

And saw Hamish Urquhart standing in the doorway. With a long kitchen knife in his hand.