‘You mean it was some sort of provocation?’ Chubb asked.
‘Sir Magnus was proud of his Roman silver. It was part of his legacy. It could have been taken simply to spite him. That thought did occur to me, Detective Inspector.’
Pünd leant forward.
‘There was one other aspect of the case that I found very difficult to understand,’ he said. ‘And that was the attitude of Mary Blakiston.’
‘I never understood her either,’ Robert muttered.
‘Let us examine her relationship with you. She loses one son in a tragic accident and this makes her watchful, domineering, over-possessive. You know that I met with your father?’
Robert stared. ‘When?’
‘Yesterday. My colleague, Fraser, drove me to his home in Cardiff. And he told me a great deal that was of interest. After the death of your brother, Tom, your mother closed in on you. Even he was not to be allowed to come near you. She could not bear having you out of her sight and so, for example, she was angry when you chose to go to Bristol. It was the only time that she argued with Sir Magnus who had, all the time, concerned himself with your well-being. All of this makes sense. A woman who has lost one child will quite naturally become obsessive about the other. I can also understand how that relationship can become uncomfortable and even poisonous. The arguments between you were natural. It is very sad but inevitable.
‘But this is what I do not understand. Why was she so opposed to the marriage? It makes no sense. Her son has found, if I may say so, a charming companion in Miss Sanderling. Here is a local girl from a good family. Her father is a fireman. She works in a doctor’s surgery. She does not intend to take Robert away from the village. It is a perfect match and yet from the very start, Mary Blakiston responds only with hostility. Why?’
Joy blushed. ‘I have no idea, Mr Pünd.’
‘Well, we can help you there, Miss Sanderling,’ Chubb cut in. ‘You have a brother with Down’s syndrome.’
‘Paul? What’s he got to do with it?’
‘Mrs Blakiston set down her thoughts in a diary that we found. She had some idea that the condition would be passed on to any grandchildren you might have. That was her problem.’
Pünd shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Detective Inspector,’ he said. ‘But I do not agree.’
‘She made it clear enough from where I’m standing, Mr Pünd. “… this awful sickness infecting her family …” Horrible words. But that’s exactly what she wrote.’
‘They are words that you may have misinterpreted.’
Pünd sighed. ‘In order to understand Mary Blakiston, it is necessary to go back in time, the defining moment in her life.’ He glanced at Robert. ‘I hope it will not distress you, Mr Blakiston. I am referring to the death of your brother.’
‘I’ve lived with it most of my life,’ Robert said. ‘There’s nothing you can say that will upset me now.’
‘There are several aspects of the accident that I find puzzling. Let me begin, for a moment, with your mother’s reaction to what happened. I cannot understand a woman who continues to live at the very scene where it took place, where she lost her child. Every day she walks past that lake and I have to ask myself: is she punishing herself for something she has done? Or for something that she knows? Could it be that she has been driven by a sense of guilt ever since that dreadful day?
‘I visited the Lodge and tried to imagine what it might be like for her, and indeed for you, living together in that grim place, surrounded by trees, permanently in shadow. The house did not yield many secrets but there was one mystery, a room on the second floor that your mother kept locked. Why? What had been the purpose of that room and why did she never go in there? There was little that remained in the room: a bed and a table and inside the table, the collar of a dog that had had also died.’
‘That was Bella,’ Robert said.
‘Yes. Bella had been a gift from your father to your brother and Sir Magnus did not like having it on his land. When I spoke to your father yesterday, he suggested that Sir Magnus had killed the dog in the cruelest possible way. I could not be sure of the truth of that, but I will tell you what I thought. Your brother drowns. Your mother falls down the stairs. Sir Magnus is brutally killed. And now we have Bella, a cross-breed, who is poisoned. It is another violent death to add to the veritable catalogue of violent deaths that we find at Pye Hall.
‘Why was the collar of the dog kept here? There was something else about the room that I noticed immediately. It was the only one in the house that had a view of the lake. That, in itself, I thought most significant. Next, I asked myself, for what purpose was the room used when Mary Blakiston lived at the Lodge? I had assumed, incorrectly, that it was the bedroom used either by yourself or by your brother.’
‘It was my mother’s sewing room,’ Robert said. ‘I’d have told you that if you’d asked me.’
‘I did not need to ask you. You mentioned to me that you and your brother had a game in which you knocked on the walls of your bedrooms, sending each other codes. You must therefore have had adjoining rooms and so it followed that the room across the corridor must have had another purpose. Your mother did a lot of sewing and it seemed very likely to me that this was where she liked to work.’
‘That’s all very well, Mr Pünd,’ Chubb said. ‘But I don’t see where it gets us.’
‘We are almost there, Detective Inspector. But first let me examine the accident as it happened for, as I have already stated, that too presents certain problems.
‘According to the testimony of both Robert and his father, Tom was searching for a piece of gold which was in fact in the bulrushes beside the water because that is where Sir Magnus had hidden it. Now, let us remember, he was not a small child. He was eleven years old. He was intelligent. I have to ask you, would he have entered the cold and muddy water in the belief that the gold was there? From what I understand, the games that the two boys played were very formal. They were organised by Sir Magnus who concealed the treasure and provided specific clues. If Tom was beside the lake, he might well have worked out where the gold was to be found. But there was no need to walk right past it into the lake. That makes no sense at all.
‘And there is another detail, also, that troubles me. Brent, the groundsman, discovered the body—’
‘He was always skulking around,’ Robert cut in. ‘Tom and I were afraid of him.’
‘I am willing to believe it. But there is now a question that I wish to put to you. Brent was very precise in his description. He pulled your brother out of the water and laid him on the ground. You arrived moments later – and what reason could there be for you to plunge into the water yourself?’
‘I wanted to help.’
‘Of course. But your brother was already out of the water. Your father said he was lying on dry land. Why would you want to make yourself cold and wet?’
Robert frowned. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Mr Pound. I was thirteen years old. I don’t even remember what happened, really. I was only thinking about Tom, getting him out of the water. There was nothing else in my mind.’
‘No, Robert. I think there was. I think you wanted to disguise the fact that you were already wet yourself.’
The entire room seemed to come to a halt, as if it were a piece of film caught in a projector. Even outside, in the street, nothing moved.
‘Why would he want to do that?’ Joy asked. There was a slight tremor in her voice.
‘Because he had been fighting with his brother beside the lake a few moments before. He had killed his brother by drowning him.’
‘That’s not true!’ Robert’s eyes blazed. For a moment, Fraser thought he was going to leap out of his chair and he readied himself to go to Pünd’s rescue if need be.
‘So much of what I say is based upon conjecture,’ Pünd said. ‘And trust me when I say I do not hold you entirely
responsible for a crime that you committed as a child. But let us look at the evidence. A dog is given to your brother, not to you. It dies in terrible circumstances. You and your brother search for a piece of gold. He finds it, not you. And this time it is he who is punished. Your father told me that you and Tom fought often. He worried about you because of your moods, the way you would take yourself off for solitary walks, even at so young an age. He did not see what your mother had seen – that from the time of your birth – a difficult birth – there was something wrong with you, that you were prepared to kill.’
‘No, Mr Pünd!’ This time it was Joy who protested. ‘You’re not talking about Robert. Robert’s nothing like that.’
‘Robert is very much like that, Miss Sanderling. You yourself told me what a difficult time he had at school. He did not make friends easily. The other children mistrusted him. Perhaps they were aware that there was something not quite right. And on the one occasion when he had left home, when he was working in Bristol, he became involved in a violent altercation which led to his arrest and a night in jail.’
‘He broke the other chap’s jaw and three of his ribs,’ Chubb added. He had evidently been checking the files.
‘It is my belief that Mary Blakiston knew very well the nature of her older son,’ Pünd went on. ‘And the simple truth is that she was not protecting him from the outside world. She was protecting the world from him. She had known, or suspected, what had happened to the dog, Bella. Why else had she kept the collar? She had seen what had happened at the lake. Yes. Sitting at her table in the sewing room, she had watched as Robert killed Tom, angry that it was his little brother who had found the gold and not he. And from that day on she built a wall around him. Matthew Blakiston told us that she pulled up the drawbridge. She would not allow him to come close to Robert. But he did not understand why. She did not want him to learn the truth.
‘And now we can understand, Miss Sanderling, the reason why she was so hostile to the idea of your marriage. Once again, it was not your suitability as a wife that concerned her. She knew her son for what he was and she was determined that he would not become a husband. As for your brother, who is afflicted with Down’s syndrome, you completely understood what she meant. She made a significant entry in her diary. ‘All the time I was thinking about this awful sickness infecting her family.’ I fear both James Fraser and Inspector Chubb misconstrued what she had written. The sickness that she referred to was the madness of her son. And she feared that it might one day in the future, infect Miss Sanderling’s family should the marriage be allowed to go ahead.’
‘I’m leaving!’ Robert Blakiston got to his feet. ‘I don’t have to listen to any more of this nonsense.’
‘You’re staying right where you are,’ Chubb told him. ‘There are two men on the other side of that door and you’re not going anywhere until Mr Pünd has finished.’
Robert looked around him wildly. ‘So what other theories do you have, Mr Pound? Are you going to say I killed my mother to stop her talking? Is that what you think?’
‘No, Mr Blakiston. I know perfectly well that you did not kill your mother. If you will sit down, I will tell you exactly what occurred.’
Robert Blakiston hesitated, then retook his seat. Fraser couldn’t help noticing that Joy Sanderling had twisted away from him. She looked utterly miserable and was avoiding his eye.
‘Let us put ourselves inside the mind of your mother,’ Pünd continued. ‘Again, much of this must be conjecture but it is the only way that the events which have presented themselves to us will make any sense. She is living with a son whom she knows to be dangerously disturbed. In her own way, she is trying to protect him. She watches his every move. She never lets him out of her sight. But as their relationship becomes more fractious and unpleasant, as the scenes between them become more violent, she gets worried. What if, in his madness, her son turns on her?
‘She has one confidante. She looks up to Sir Magnus Pye as a man of wealth and good breeding. He is far above her, an aristocrat no less. He has on many occasions helped with family matters. He has employed her. He has invented games for her children, keeping them amused while their father is away. He stood by her after the break-up of her marriage and later he has twice found work for her surviving son. He has even used his influence to extricate Robert from jail.
‘She cannot tell him about the murder. He would be horrified and might abandon them both. But she has an idea. She gives him a sealed envelope, which contains a letter setting out the truth: the murder of her younger son, the killing of the dog, perhaps other incidents about which we will never know. She describes Robert Blakiston as he really is – but here is the trick of it. The letter is to be opened only in the event of her death. And after it has been delivered, after it has been locked away, she tells Robert exactly what she has done. The letter will act as a safety net. Sir Magnus will be true to his word. He will not open it. He will merely keep it safely. But should anything ever happen to her, should she die in strange or suspicious circumstances, then he will read it and he will know who is responsible. It is a perfect arrangement. Robert dare not attack her. He can do her no harm. Thanks to the letter, he has been neutralised.’
‘You don’t know this,’ Robert said. ‘You can’t know it.’
‘I know everything!’ Pünd paused. ‘Let us now return to the death of Mary Blakiston and see how events unfold.’
‘Who did kill her?’ Chubb demanded.
‘Nobody!’ Pünd smiled. ‘That is what is so extraordinary and unfortunate about this whole affair. She really did die as a result of an accident. Nothing more!’
‘Wait a minute!’ Fraser spoke from the corner of the room. ‘You told me that Matthew Blakiston killed her.’
‘He did. But not intentionally and he was not even aware that he was responsible. You will remember, James, that he had a strange premonition that his wife was in danger and telephoned her that morning. You will also recall that the telephones in the top part of the house were not working. Lady Pye told us as much when we were with her. So what happened was very simple. Mary Blakiston was cleaning with the Hoover at the top of the stairs. The telephone rang – and she had to run all the way downstairs to answer it. Her foot caught in the wire and she fell, dragging the Hoover with her and wedging it into the top of the bannisters.
‘It seemed obvious to me that an accident was the only sensible explanation. Mary Blakiston was alone in the house. Her keys were in the back door, which was locked, and Brent was working at the front. He would have seen anyone if they had come out. And to push somebody down the stairs … it is not a sensible way to attempt murder. How can you be sure that they will do no more than themselves a serious injury?
‘The inhabitants of Saxby-on-Avon thought otherwise. They spoke only of murder. And to make matters worse, Mary Blakiston and her son had argued only a few days before. “I wish you would die. I wish you would give me some peace.” It may not have occurred to Robert immediately, but the exact conditions of his mother’s letter, at least in so far as we can imagine it, had been met. She had died violently. He was the prime suspect.
‘It was all brought home to him a week later at the funeral. The vicar has kindly lent me his sermon and I have read his exact words. “Although we are here today to mourn her departure, we should remember what she left behind.” He told me that Robert was startled and covered his eyes when he heard that – and with good reason. It was not because he was upset. It was because he remembered what his mother had left behind.
‘Fortunately, Sir Magnus and Lady Pye were not in the village. They were on holiday in the south of France. Robert had a little time and he acted immediately. That same night he broke into Pye Hall, using the same door that Brent had damaged when the body was found. His task was simple. He must find and destroy the letter before Sir Magnus returns.’ Pünd looked again at Robert. ‘You must have been furious at the unfairness
of it all. You had done nothing! It was not your fault. But if the letter was read, the secrets of your childhood would be known and the marriage would be stopped.’ Now he turned to Joy who had been listening to all this with a look of complete dismay. ‘I know that this cannot be easy for you, Miss Sanderling. And if gives me no pleasure to destroy your hopes. But if there is a consolation it is that the man sitting beside you does truly love you and did what he did in the hope that he could still be with you.’
Joy Sanderling said nothing. Pünd went on.
‘Robert searched the house but he found nothing. Sir Magnus had placed the letter in a safe in his study, along with his other private papers. The safe was concealed behind a painting and required a lengthy combination – which Robert could not possibly know. He was forced to leave empty-handed.
‘But now he had another problem: how to explain the break-in. If nothing had been taken, Sir Magnus – and the police – might suspect another motivation and, when the letter came to light, that might lead them to him. The solution was simple. He opened the display case and removed the Roman silver that had once been found in Dingle Dell. He also took some of Lady Pye’s jewellery. It now looked like a straightforward burglary. Of course, he had no interest in any of these items. He would not take the risk of selling them. So what did he do? He threw them into the lake where they would have remained undiscovered but for one piece of bad luck. He dropped a silver belt buckle as he hurried across the lawn and the next day Brent found it and sold it to Johnny Whitehead. That led to the discovery, by police divers, of the rest of the hoard, and so to the true reason for the break-in.
‘The letter remained in the safe. Sir Magnus returned from France. For the next few days he must have had other matters to occupy him and it cannot have been easy for you, Robert, waiting for the call that you knew must come. What would Sir Magnus do? Would he go straight to the police or would he give you a chance to explain yourself? In the end, on the Thursday when his wife went to London, he summoned you to Pye Hall. And so, at last, we arrive at the scene of the crime.