Hutchinson was out of his office, and his secretary refused to divulge where he was due to client confidentiality. Jack had no time to play legal games with her. ‘May, if he’s with Terence Jenkins, say nothing. If he’s verified the authenticity of Avril Jenkins’ new will, say nothing. You see, May,’ Jack was using his best smoky tone, reserved for his more susceptible interviewees, ‘Arnold has already told me everything he knew as of earlier today. What I don’t yet know are the names of the witnesses. Now, he will tell me when I ask, but it’d make my life a lot easier if I didn’t have to wait for him to return. Asking his permission would be nothing more than a formality, as I’m sure you already know. He’s been sharing information at every stage to avoid the need for issuing warrants to obtain it. He’d hate for that to happen simply because he’s out of the office.’
May hesitated and then said quietly, ‘I only know one of the names. Mrs Hester Mancroft.’
Jack left the office and walked to the train station to catch the 3.15 p.m. from London Victoria to Hove. He knew he would get the most from Hester Mancroft by talking to her face to face, and for the sake of a one-hour train ride, Jack was more than happy to travel down to the coast to see her in person.
Hester took an age to walk the length of the hallway. In fact, Jack was sure that she was being slower than the last time he visited. Eventually, he heard bolts slide back. Hester’s face seemed anguished, and her tired, reddened eyes took a moment to focus. The sight of Jack brought a smile, but her brow remained creased from the pain she was clearly in. Jack held up a bottle of gin... and her brow relaxed, ever so slightly.
In the kitchen, Hester sat herself at the table whilst Jack found two glasses, which he rinsed and dried before joining her. Hester watched him pour one large gin, with an equal measure of tonic, and one glass of just tonic. As she sipped on her generous G&T, Jack got straight to the point.
‘I need to ask you, Hester, about the will you witnessed for Avril Jenkins.’ Initially Hester looked blank, but then she recalled that Avril had handed her the back sheet of something and asked her to sign it, which she’d done without asking what it was. Hester said that was about six months ago when she’d gone to London to collect... Her sentence trailed off and she gulped a large mouthful of gin and tonic, which was now nicely numbing the pain from her arthritis. Jack topped up her glass, adding ice and a slice for her this time. She smiled coyly, claiming it was a tad early for her to drink, but that it would be rude not to be sociable after he’d come all this way and brought her such a lovely gift.
‘Hester, the last time I was here, we spoke about the possibility that Avril was already married before meeting Frederick Jenkins.’
‘Oh, yes, well, she could have been. I think if the right man asked her, she’d have just up and done it. Then regretted it, or not, later. Oh! Do you think she was married before Frederick and never divorced? Nothing would surprise me, DS Warr. She rarely did things in the right order. But, as I think I said last time, from what I know of Freddie, he was more concerned with whether or not Avril had a child. Because he was protective about his money, you see. He didn’t want an heir popping up uninvited.’
Hester had not mentioned this the last time at all, but Jack wasn’t going to pick her up on it. She was doing her best to recall events, some of which were long ago. Hester lifted her gin glass halfway to her lips and then laughed, slamming it down onto the table again.
‘She called him a tight-fisted old bastard! Which I thought was deeply unfair considering how quickly she could go through his money. She only had to ask. Range Rovers, jewellery, furs.’ Hester shook her head. ‘Avril never appreciated what she had. Things came too easily, you see. Spoilt. Which is not something often said about a person from the arse end of Leeds.’
Hester dragged the lemon wedge up the inside of her empty glass with her finger and pushed the glass towards Jack. He refilled it for her and topped up his own tonic at the same time. Then he returned to his seat and set Hester off on a new topic. ‘She had a younger brother, David — did you ever get to meet him?’
‘Well, I knew him when we were in Leeds. He was a bit — to use Avril’s words — mentally challenged. He was never at school, was a lot of trouble, I think, and Avril once told me he had been in prison, and was an embarrassment, so she never mentioned him to me again. She could be quite cruel, you know, and I think after she married and had money, she was very protective of her new image so would probably not even acknowledge her brother if she passed him in the street.’
Jack nodded, knowing Avril had never acknowledged Adam as her son. ‘Tell me about the first time Adam Border came to your B&B in Chelsea.’
As Ridley headed upstairs to Raeburn’s office, he expected he’d been summoned to give her an update on his health. It was about that time. Every week, she had to make certain that he was fit enough to be on active duty. Raeburn was the only person who knew the details of Ridley’s illness — that he’d been diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer and was receiving radiotherapy as an outpatient. She also knew that his prognosis was good, although the ever-present fear during the early stages was that they’d discover it had spread, most likely to his lymphatic system or bones. Neither had happened yet and, as the weeks passed, metastasis became less and less likely.
When Ridley opened Raeburn’s office door, he was surprised to see Steve Lewis standing in the corner casually stirring sugar into his freshly brewed cup of tea.
‘Describing it as a B&B is underselling the establishment,’ Hester snapped. ‘I had to call it that because there are boxes to be ticked to qualify as a hotel and, well, I can’t recall what they were now but... what did you ask me?’ Jack patiently repeated his question, this time without saying ‘B&B’.
‘I expect Adam read my advertisement in the Evening Standard. He was very impressed with what I’d done to the place. He said I had a stylish eye for detail, which I thought was lovely coming from an art student.’ Hester became tearful as she reminisced. ‘I’d used my entire divorce settlement to purchase and convert that house. And Adam was right, it was beautiful. I chose every single piece of furniture, every picture frame, every rug. And I must have single-handedly kept that emporium at the end of the road going for a good few years. I spent so much of my money there. Oh, I loved my time in that house, DS Warr. I imagine it would be triple the value now if I’d been able to maintain it.’ Mentioning the emporium suddenly brought back a memory. ‘That’s where I bumped into Avril again. We had a little catch-up over shopping. My news was that I’d just taken my shit of a husband for everything I could in a divorce, and her news was that she’d just escaped a drunken Irishman. They lived in Dublin together for a while, as I recall. It wasn’t long after that Adam came to stay with me.’
That was the last useful thing she said. Jack’s decision to ply Hester with gin to get her to talk more freely about Avril was now backfiring. All she wanted to do was chat about décor and how she could have studied art if she hadn’t been tied to her bastard husband through her most adventurous years. She became morose and tearful as she recalled having to sell up all her treasures as she got herself into debt, and was forced to lose her lovely house.
Jack made his excuses, thanked her for talking to him, and left her to finish off the bottle of gin by herself.