‘The dead man you discovered when you went in search of Emma Bestwick. His name was William Inchmore.’
‘William? How can you be sure?’
‘Because I’ve read about his murder.’
‘Read about it? You’re having a laugh, aren’t you?’
‘He was stabbed to death with a bread knife, wasn’t he?’
A sharp intake of breath, then a long pause as she absorbed his news. She hadn’t mentioned to him how the man had been killed. Even though she confided in him more than she should, there were limits. And the information hadn’t been released to the media. When she spoke again, her tone was wry.
‘Tell you what, Daniel. You must have inherited the detective gene. So what exactly is this you’ve been reading?’
‘The murderer’s account of the crime.’
‘If you tell me you bought it in Marc’s shop, I’ll scream.’
‘No need, the story is in a private journal purchased by Jeremy Erskine’s historical society. Not that Jeremy has ever read it. I’m the first.’
‘And who is the author? Not Alban Clough, surely?’
‘No, although he knew exactly what had happened. His mother was the mistress of William Inchmore. William used the Arsenic Labyrinth as a trysting place, that’s where he made love to Betty Clough.’
‘Are you saying that Betty murdered him?’
‘No, that was Edith Inchmore, William’s wife. When she learned about the affair, she lured him to the Labyrinth and went up there herself with a knife. What she didn’t know was that Alban was hiding out up there. He witnessed her crime, but he didn’t move a muscle to stop her. He kept quiet as he watched Edith kill his mother’s lover.’
They arranged to meet at a new Bavarian coffee bar in the heart of Kendal. Daniel parked in the multi-storey at Westmorland Shopping Centre and fished a tote bag out of the boot. None of the passers-by in Stricklandgate gave him a second glance, nobody guessed that the bag held a confession to murder.
He’d pieced together the Inchmores’ story from Edith’s journal. After George wrecked the family business, his son set about ruining their name. What William lacked in wealth, he more than made up for in swaggering self-confidence and raffish good looks. He spent his early adult years sleeping around and squandering what was left of the family fortune at the racecourse, while drifting from job to job. With Inchmore Hall sold to the Cloughs and his parents dead, he had little to keep him in Coniston and during a spell selling silk stockings in Yorkshire, he met and married Edith Sharpe. A plain spinster whose acid tongue belied a dread of being left on the shelf, she was quick to fall under his spell. Above all, she had the inestimable advantage of a father who had made a packet from a leather business in Bradford. William didn’t see marriage as an impediment to philandering and gambling, but rather as a means of funding his favourite activities. He faked a heart condition to escape military service and spent the war years selling cosmetics and petrol on the black market. A fortnight before VE Day, he was arrested, and although he managed to talk his way out of a prison sentence, old man Sharpe cut off his daughter’s allowance and made Yorkshire County Cricket Club the main beneficiary of his estate. Edith stood by her husband and never spoke to Daddy again but, after failing to make a go of various improbable business ventures, William was forced to return to Coniston and go cap in hand to Armstrong Clough and ask for work.
What prompted Armstrong Clough, a businessman with a nose as hard as Helvellyn, to offer a job to a slacker who hadn’t even made a success out of petty crime? Armstrong was the sort of Englishman who, during the Thirties, argued that Oswald Mosley talked a lot of sense and that Hitler was the sort of leader any nation worth its salt required. War might have changed his tune, but he remained, if Edith’s journal was any guide, an old-fashioned bully contemptuous of altruism.
Only one explanation occurred. It must have amused Armstrong to have an Inchmore at his beck and call. Long ago, Albert Clough had to jump when Sir Clifford Inchmore said jump. Now the Cloughs owned the hall and the Inchmores depended upon their goodwill. Armstrong might be a miserable old bugger with a gammy leg, while William was a dashing ladies’ man, but it was Armstrong who possessed the money, the mansion and the gorgeous bride, while William had to make do with a cottage in a back street and poor, unlovely Edith. A very satisfactory arrangement. The only snag was that William’s roving eye soon fell on Betty. A naive and neglected woman whose son was growing up and whose husband was often away from home was easy prey for an accomplished Lothario.
It was bound to end in tears. William was reckless and left a handful of letters from Betty imperfectly concealed at the bottom of his sock drawer, where Edith chanced upon them. The correspondence made it clear that Betty’s conscience tormented her and that she wanted to end the affair, but that William was determined to have her leave Armstrong and extract a hefty sum from him as the price of hushing up the scandal, so that the two of them could run away together. A ludicrous and desperate plan, but Edith knew her husband well enough to realise that he was capable of trying to carry it out, with disastrous consequences for them all. She’d grown accustomed to his infidelities, but this was one betrayal too many. The prospect of being abandoned to penury and forced through shame to leave a village she had come to love was intolerable. She had to act.
She schooled herself in the art of imitating Betty’s girlish handwriting and penned a note asking William to come to Mispickel Scar the following afternoon. The letters revealed that the loneliness of the site of the old arsenic works made it a favourite venue for the lovers’ couplings. The prospect of William meeting his death in the same spot appealed to Edith’s uncompromising sense of justice. She had discovered that Betty arranged for her notes to William to be left in his desk by a young messenger called Vinny who worked at the company’s office in Yewdale Road.
Vinny was a simple-minded lad from Liverpool, one of scores of kids who had come as evacuees to Coniston at the start of the Second World War. He’d been billeted at the hall and, after his parents were killed during the Blitz, he was left without a family and any reason to return home when the hostilities came to an end. Vinny had a dog-like devotion to Betty Clough, and she persuaded her husband to employ him out of charity. She was popular in the village for her generous spirit and good works, although Edith confided to her diary her suspicion that so far as Vinny was concerned, Betty had an ulterior motive. Yet Edith harboured no more than a superficial resentment of her husband’s lover. She understood how easy it was to succumb to William’s charm.
What Edith didn’t realise was that someone else knew about Betty’s affair. Young Alban Clough detested his father, who regarded him as a good-for-nothing dreamer with no head for business, but he didn’t care to think of his mother sleeping with an Inchmore. At his father’s insistence, Alban lent a hand in the office. He soon learned that Vinny was acting as go-between. He persuaded Vinny to let him read some of the letters Betty entrusted to him and seized every opportunity, while William was out gallivanting, to snoop round his room. That was how he’d found the letter Edith had placed in her husband’s desk. Much more familiar with his mother’s hand than William, he recognised it at once as a forgery. Curiosity piqued, he’d trekked up to Mispickel Scar and found a hiding place, overlooking the remains of the labyrinth, an hour before the time stipulated in Edith’s message. Waiting to watch what would happen.
Hannah was slipping on her raincoat when the phone summoned her back from the door. Tempted to ignore it, she hesitated and was lost. Fern Larter greeted her, in cheery mood. Her mouth was full, it sounded as if she was munching her way through a packet of her favourite prawn cocktail flavoured crisps.
‘Progress update. We’ve found a couple of teenagers who saw someone behaving suspiciously at Monk Coniston at about the right time. The kids were going for a romantic walk in the drizzle. Young love, eh? They heard someone in the vicinity of the pier and then caught sight of a figure hurrying off through the trees. Wearing a hooded anorak and Wellingtons.’