The Woodcarver [Peter Turnbull] (fb2) читать постранично, страница - 3

modernisation, he'd really try it on with them. Tell them it was worth only up to half what it was really worth and if they still agreed to let him act for them, he'd phone them within twenty-four hours telling them he'd got a cash offer for their house and recommended them to accept it. Most of them did, because they were so pleased to have a rapid sale. The market is depressed at the moment, some houses can take two years to sell, so a sale within twenty-four hours is like ..."

"Manna from Heaven," offered the second woman.

"But in fact, the cash buyer was always the same, it was always a woman called Sophie Arbuthnot, whose address was in Wales, Arbuthnot being Mrs. Crybacce's maiden name. She retained an account in her maiden name when she married and the address in Wales was their holiday home."

"I see."

"So he then had a property at a knockdown price which he'd tidy up a bit, or modernise, and then put on the market for a greedy price. An easy way to make money and totally reprehensible."

"It happened recently, about six months ago. Poor guy, sort of wide-eyed and naive, very biddable, no hard edge to him at all, artist type, casually dressed. He waltzed in and asked us to market his house and I knew, I just knew, what was going to happen.... I was screaming at him in my head, 'Get out, get out' . . . but Ciy-bacce saw him, recognised the type, and homed in on him, a fly on dead meat. 'It's all right, Jane,' he said, 'I'll handle this,' and escorted the fellow into his office. They left a minute or two later to view the property and Crybacce came back an hour later with that self-satisfied look he always has when he has snared a mug. He really was an evil little man. The original poisoned dwarf. I'm surprised he wasn't murdered a long time ago. Anyway, it all went to plan. The property was a terraced house, overlooking allotments, so there'd be no building opposite it, and it looked out over the river which was beyond the allotments. Lovely house for an artist and completely original, downstairs bath and toilet, for example. Crybacce sold it to Sophie Arbuthnot of Wales for the guy and then gutted it, new bathroom upstairs, new kitchen, paint job, and then sold it two months later for twice the price he'd purchased it for. When it was advertised, he put it smack in the middle of the window and I saw the previous owner walk past and glance at the display. I thought he was going to faint. I knew what was going on in his mind. He knew he'd been cheated, and he knew that it was Crybacce who'd cheated him. But that was four months ago. If he was going to murder Crybacce, he'd surely have done it before now, you'd think."

"Possibly." Hennessey opened his notepad. "But I think that I'd like to talk to him anyway. Do you have his name and address, perchance?"

The woman whose name clearly was Jane reached forward and tapped the keyboard of her computer. "Just type in Arbuthnot . . . that'll find the file," she said. "... Yes, here we are. Naylor. Ralph Naylor. I remember him now, he liked his Christian name to be pronounced 'Rafe,' which he said was the correct pronunciation anyway. He gave an address in Holgate."

"Holgate? Bit of a comedown for the man."

Hennessey drove to the address in Holgate that had been provided by the staff at Crybacce's. It was part of the City of York, well known to the police and not at all by the ancient tribe of camera, waist-bag, guide book, and sunglasses. It was an area of terraced houses, blackened with nineteenth-century pollution, just behind the railway station. Hennessey turned into St. Elfred's Walk and slowed his car to a halt. A small crowd had gathered outside one of the houses. A marked police vehicle and Yellich's fawn Escort were in attendance. Hennessey approached the scene and parked his car behind the police car. He left his vehicle and gently but firmly elbowed his way through the crowd and entered the house. Yellich stood in the narrow hallway and his shock at Hennessey's arrival amused Hennessey.

"I'll explain later, Yellich. What's happened?"

"A murder, sir."

Two in one day. That's good going for this fair town."

"It's probably not coincidence, sir. The victim has multiple stab wounds, caused by a narrow blade which is concave in cross-section."

"Linked to Crybacce's murder?"

"Has to be, sir."

"Show me."

Yellich led Hennessey to the back room of the small house, to the murder victim, a young woman, blue T-shirt and jeans, the same stab wounds to the chest as had been sustained by Crybacce, the same bruising to the throat, the same few stab wounds to the face.

"Any sign of forced entry?"

"No, sir. It seems she knew her attacker."

"Have you looked over the house?"

"Not in detail, but there's some cash in the kitchen which would have been taken if it had been a burglary. ... I would have thought, anyway."

"What are the sleeping arrangements?"

"Well ..." Yellich was puzzled by the question but answered it anyway. "Two bedrooms, but one is given over to use as a studio, an artist's studio, paints and brushes and canvas everywhere. The other room is a bedroom, double bed. But I think she lived alone, no sign of male clothing in the house."

"Name?"

"Jennifer Tyrie, according to the gas bill and other mail on the hall table."

"That's enough to be working on for the time being. Who found her?"

"A neighbour . . . noticed the front door lying open, no sound or movement from within. I mean, this is Holgate ... so she went in, calling as she did so. Then she called the police. I arrived just before you did."

"I was following the trail of a fellow called Ralph Naylor pronounced 'Rafe.'"

"I've seen that name, it's on the table in the hall, a letter addressed to him." The two officers returned to the hall, and Yellich picked up a letter from the table. He handed it to Hennessey.

Hennessey read the envelope, noting how a neat female hand had crossed out the address and written a forwarding address beside it. "St. Jude's Terrace. Where's that?"

"Next street, sir."

"Right, I'll take a stroll round there, see what I see. You carry on

here, you know the form, S.O.C.O. and the pathologist."

"Very good, sir."

Hennessey walked the few hundred feet to St. Jude's Terrace, to number 134, being the forwarding address as written on the envelope found in the hallway of Jennifer Tyrie's home. He knocked on the door. It was opened quickly by a bespectacled man in his forties.

"Mr. Naylor?" Hennessey asked.

"No ... he's not in at the moment. You are?"

"Police." Hennessey showed his ID. "And you are?"

"Curbishley. Andrew Curbishley. This is my home. Ralph has a room here, he moved in recently, just until he gets himself back on his feet. Things have not been too good for him of late."

"No?"

"No. I dare say an astrologer would say that a heavy planet is passing through his aspect."

"Tell me about him."

"Why? Is he in trouble?"

"Let's just say we'd like a chat with him. When did you last see him?"

"Last night, but I heard him leave the house very early, before dawn. Unusual for him; he usually spends the day in his bed. If he hasn't anything to get up for, he won't get up."

"It would help your friend if you told me what you know about him."

"You'd better come in."

Hennessey followed Curbishley into his house. It was cosy, he thought, comfortably furnished with what appeared to be secondhand furniture from charity shops. The walls were lined with bookshelves, each one crammed with books.

"You're not employed, Mr. Curbishley?" Hennessey remarked as he sat, invited, in a vintage armchair of interwar period, he thought, the sort that people would have sat in to listen to Mr. Churchill speak to the nation on the wireless.

"I gave it up to devote my life to writing science fiction. I actually manage to scratch a living. I dare say it's fairly low-grade stuff, spaceships that run out of fuel,