Souvenirs of Murder (33 page)

Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone fleeing through the door. I tore after him, jumped on his back, one arm around his throat, tightly, the other over his eyes. Off balance, he ran straight into the back of the van with me still on board, hitting one of the rear doors hard enough with his forehead not only to dent it, we discovered afterwards, but send it rolling across the coach house to crash into the opposite wall. My mount collapsed sideways and I hit the floor hard. I found my feet, grabbed another piece of rope and tied his ankles tightly together.

Back in the inner room the war was over; Carrick breathing deeply, rubbing his knuckles, Patrick leaning on some boxes as though absolutely done in. He was.

But very happy.

‘And, not only is your neighbour at the Grange a fence,' Carrick told us joyfully the following afternoon, ‘It would follow that he's involved with a gang that specializes in stealing antiques, possibly the boss man. Crosby's probably nothing to do with the gang – he's still not talking – but my guess is that he went round to the Grange wearing his good citizen hat doing a charity collection and was told of the impending departure for South Africa. Only time will prove me right or not.'

‘What are the Huggins mob saying about all this?' Patrick wanted to know, the haul having comprised three brothers, one cousin and a son of Carlton, busy with his magic down in the village.

‘They're all singing like canaries. According to them – although, as you might imagine, there are varying accounts, mostly completely exonerating the person actually speaking, of course – Crosby was the brains behind it. Whether the man was invited in next door and saw a few rather nice pieces of furniture, and so forth, and decided to have a snoop around when the place was unoccupied we don't yet know but the Huggins' accounts all tally on one point, Crosby already knew the stuff was there. It's worth a fortune. The Arts and Antiques Squad have hardly started looking at what's stored in the coach house but we know already that there are even items stolen from National Trust properties.'

‘And our new neighbours?' Patrick asked him with a wry smile.

‘They'll be arrested as soon as their feet touch the ground at Heathrow.'

‘Blanche must have found out,' I commented. ‘But how?'

Carrick said, ‘He may well have only found out about the people behind the black magic sessions. His note to Barbara only spoke of “rotten practices” if you remember, which is bad enough but doesn't suggest stealing antiques. If he said something like “I know what you're up to” to either of the Crosbys they could have thought he knew everything.'

‘And lured him to the church that morning on some pretext and killed him,' Patrick mused. ‘Have you arrested the wife?'

‘Too right. I can't believe she didn't know what was going on, at the very least. The business of going round to ask Ingrid for the key so she could check the flowers, in effect that Blanche's body would be found, was merely to divert any suspicion. Oh, and the eldest son of Carlton Huggins, Riley – the one you tackled, Ingrid – has admitted that he and his younger brother, Ricky, were the two who roughed up the rector. Riley seemed to think we were going to make him pull his pants down to show where he still had the bruises where John walloped him if he didn't own up.'

‘And of course you wouldn't have suggested he did anything so demeaning,' Patrick said with a laugh.

‘Of course not,' Carrick replied, looking shocked.

There had been a very strange end to the ‘party' by the bonfire that had put an abrupt stop to it, hopefully for always. Suddenly – those taking part well drunk, including a few younger ones definitely under age including Matthew's classmate Clem, his father Carlton Huggins in all his finery invoking the Devil – there had been a flash and a loud bang. Then another, centred on the bonfire. Then when they were all running, a much bigger explosion that had rattled local windows and blown the fire to pieces, sending blazing bits of wood raining down on the fleeing ‘worshippers' and setting light to Huggins' robe. He had last been seen jumping into the nearby river.

‘Thunder flashes are one thing but a
hand grenade
,' I reproached. ‘Please don't tell me you're keeping things like that at home.'

Patrick gave me a Mona Lisa smile. ‘Never. Rest assured any emergency items like that are kept in a very, very secure place.'

I did not enquire further. No one has yet been convicted of killing Jethro Hulton and I haven't asked Patrick about that either.