‘Not right now. I don’t think I could swallow anything at the moment.’
‘Calm down,’ he said. ‘Being angry won’t help. You need to be calm and thinking clearly when you see him later.’
‘I know,’ she replied, gritting her teeth, ‘but when I think about what he’s done to you over the past few days, it makes me so mad I could kill him.’
Eighty miles and one-and-a-half hours later, just after three o’clock, Alice and Philippe were on the A27 passing south of the town of Lewes in East Sussex, with under ten miles to go to Moor End Farm. Access to the property was via a B road that ran from the A27, through a small village, then on to a dead end track that led to the farm. A footpath also led from the edge of the village, over some fields to the back of the property. During the journey down from Northolt, Alice had told Philippe all about the place.
Just after they’d been married, she’d had the old farmhouse completely gutted and re-fitted to her exact specification. She’d had a large gravel drive laid at the front, and out the back, on the south facing side, she’d had a ranch style patio and kidney shaped swimming pool installed. The pool was heated and had underwater floodlights. When she swam at night, usually alone, it was like being in a beautifully warm, exquisite blue lagoon.
Inside the house, she’d had polished wood block flooring laid in all the ground floor rooms, which she’d complemented with brightly colored scatter rugs. The old square staircase had been ripped out and replaced with a new one featuring a sweeping curved handrail of polished oak with delicately carved spindles and newel posts. The hall at the bottom of the stairs led all the way from the front to the back of the house, where it opened onto the patio with a series of folding glass doors.
The grounds weren’t big enough to have any shooting, but Ross kept a pair or Purdey shotguns, which had belonged to his father, and was sometimes invited to neighboring farms to go after pheasant or duck. Alice had been worried about young Charles getting his hands on them, so she’d had a concealed gun safe installed behind a panel in her husband’s oak-lined study, where they were kept locked away. Although she knew the combination to the safe and sometimes kept pieces of jewelry in it, she never touched the guns. Her father had taught her to shoot at an early age, but she hadn’t enjoyed it. She didn’t like the noise and she hated the thought of killing animals for sport.
Upstairs, she’d spared no expense either. Knocking two of the original six bedrooms into one, she’d created an enormous master bedroom. The king-size bed sat on a raised, carpeted plinth with delicate oriental fabrics hanging from an iron ring fixed to the ceiling, to form a medieval style canopy. Unfortunately, it had never turned into the love nest she had intended.
By the time they reached the turn-off, Alice had decided that she couldn’t bear to wait at the farm for Ross to arrive, so suggested that they carry on down into Newhaven for a late lunch. She would have suggested Lewes, but she often shopped and ate there and was known at most of the restaurants. Newhaven, on the other hand, was safe because she very rarely went there.
They managed to find a small restaurant that served food all afternoon, ordered a meal, then settled down to wait. They reckoned that Ross would be about two hours behind them, allowing for lunch and the diversion through Windsor to Eton. That would make his arrival time at the farm about five o’clock. They decided to give him until six, just to make sure.
Chapter 11
Back in London, the telephone rang on Detective Chief Inspector Vic Hubbard’s desk. He snatched the receiver up, ‘Hubbard.’
‘Hello Vic? Simon here. We’ve got her, and I’m about to make a start if you want to sit in.’
‘Right. I’ll be around straight away. See you in a minute.’ Hubbard hung up the phone, quickly tidied his desk, locked the files he’d been working on in one of his drawers, then slipped his coat on and set off for Westminster Hospital on foot.
As soon as he’d got back to his office earlier in the day, he’d kept his promise to David Wiseman and gone straight up to see his boss, Commander Alan Mycroft. He’d briefed Mycroft on the whole Webley affair, and had been given the green light for a forensic post-mortem. He’d then made arrangements to recover the body, and requested Dr Simon Reynolds, a highly respected forensic pathologist, to do the job.
Hubbard had been present at dozens of post-mortem examinations. When he was a young copper, it was considered part of the training to be thrown in at the deep end with a PM. It had never bothered him. Nowadays though, the youngsters were treated more gently and attendance was voluntary. A standard post-mortem, carried out in order to find a cause of death, usually took about ninety minutes, but a forensic post-mortem was a far more detailed affair and could last up to five hours.
The hospital was about half a mile from New Scotland Yard, and Hubbard covered the distance in just under fifteen minutes. He went in through the main entrance in Dean Ryle Street, then made his way down into the basement, where the mortuary was located.
Before entering the post-mortem room, he knew he would have to put on a surgical gown, hat, mask and white Wellington boots. He went into the anteroom and had just removed his coat and jacket ready to get changed when Simon Reynolds came through from the PM room.
‘Ah, there you are,’ Reynolds said, pulling his surgical mask down from around his nose and mouth. ‘I was just coming out to give you another ring.’
‘What’s up?’ Hubbard asked, immediately alert.
‘I don’t know what’s going on, but the body that was delivered just now isn’t Lady Webley.’
‘What?’ Hubbard blurted angrily. ‘Don’t tell me those idiots up there have sent us the wrong one.’
‘No, it’s the right body. All the paperwork the French doctor filled in ties up: description of the body, description of the injuries, cause of death… it’s just not Alice Webley.’
‘How do you know?’ Hubbard asked incredulously.
‘Because I know Dr Charles Fawcett, the Webley family’s private doctor. He practices in Harley Street and has been looking after the Webleys for years. When you told me the name of the deceased earlier on, I gave Charles a call to find out if she had any pre-existing medical conditions. I thought it would make the PM a bit easier if I had a little medical background. Anyway, he told me that apart from an appendectomy five years ago, Lady Webley enjoyed excellent health. He’d last seen her in February for her annual check-up.’
Hubbard’s mind was already in overdrive as he said, ‘And the body in there doesn’t have an appendectomy scar, right?’
‘Come and have a look for yourself,’ Reynolds said, turning towards the door. ‘No need to change, I haven’t opened her up yet.’
Hubbard followed him through the double swing doors into the main post-mortem room, where the naked body of a woman with terrible head injuries lay on a stainless steel autopsy tray in the middle of the harshly lit room. Reynolds pointed towards the lower abdomen on the right side and said, ‘This is where I would expect to see a scar from an appendectomy.’
Hubbard looked closely, but there was clearly no scar.
‘Anyway,’ Reynolds continued, ‘after I’d made that discovery, I got back on the phone to Charles for a more detailed description of Lady Webley.’ He picked an aluminum clipboard up from the side and read, ‘Age: thirty-six. Height: five foot six. Weight: one hundred and thirty pounds. Hair: natural blond. Eyes: green.’
As he read the items from the list, Hubbard looked down at the body and mentally checked the details.
‘And this lady,’ Reynolds was saying, ‘is about the right age but is five foot nine, weighs one hundred and twenty pounds, has light brown hair and brown eyes.’