‘Thank you.’ Pünd had not been offended by the girl’s hostility but it seemed to Fraser that he was looking at her rather sadly. ‘I must warn you,’ he continued, ‘that it will be necessary for me to speak with Robert.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Mary Blakiston was his mother. It is always possible that he might hold Sir Magnus to be partly responsible for her death and that alone would provide him with a motive for the murder.’
‘Revenge? I very much doubt it.’
‘At any event, he once lived at Pye Hall and there is a relationship between him and Sir Magnus which I need to explore. I tell you this because it occurs to me that you might wish to be present when we speak.’
Joy nodded. ‘Where do you want to see him? And when?’
‘Perhaps he might come to my hotel when it conveniences him? I am staying at the Queen’s Arms.’
‘I’ll bring him when he finishes work.’
‘Thank you.’
The door of Dr Redwing’s office opened and Jeff Weaver came out, holding the hand of a small boy who was wearing short trousers and a school jacket. Joy waited until they had gone, then moved to a door at the side of her office. ‘I’ll tell Dr Redwing you’re here,’ she said.
She disappeared from sight. It was exactly the opportunity that Pünd had been waiting for. He signalled to Fraser who quickly drew a sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket, leaned through the window and fed it upside-down into the typewriter. Leaning over the machine, he pressed several of the keys at random then pulled the sheet out and handed it to Pünd who examined the letters and nodded his satisfaction before handing it back.
‘Is it the same?’ Fraser asked.
‘It is.’
Joy Sanderling returned to the reception desk. ‘You can go in,’ she said. ‘Dr Redwing is free until eleven.’
‘Thank you,’ Pünd said, then added almost as an afterthought, ‘Do you alone have the use of this office, Miss Sanderling?’
‘Dr Redwing comes in from time to time, but nobody else,’ Joy replied.
‘You are quite sure of that? Nobody else would have access to this machine?’ He gestured at the typewriter.
‘Why do you want to know?’ Pünd said nothing so she continued. ‘Nobody comes in here except for Mrs Weaver. She’s the mother of the little boy who just left and she cleans the surgery twice a week. But I very much doubt that she would use the typewriter and certainly not without asking.’
‘While I am here, I would also be interested in your opinion of the new homes that Sir Magnus was intending to build. He was planning to cut down the woodland known as Dingle Dell—’
‘You think that was why he was killed? I’m afraid you don’t have much understanding of English villages, Mr Pünd. It was a stupid idea. Saxby-on-Avon doesn’t need new houses and there are plenty of better places to build them. I hate seeing trees being cut down and almost everyone in the village thinks the same. But nobody would have killed him because of that. The worst they would have done is written to the local newspaper or complained about it in the pub.’
‘Maybe the development will no longer go ahead now that he is not here to oversee it,’ Pünd suggested.
‘I suppose that’s possible.’
Pünd had proved his point. He smiled and moved towards the office door. Fraser, who had folded the sheet of paper in half and slipped it into his pocket, followed.
3
The office was small and square and so exactly what anyone would expect from a doctor’s surgery that it might almost have inspired a cartoon in one of the old Punch magazines that lay on the reception table. There was an antique desk placed centrally with two chairs facing it, a wooden filing cabinet and a shelf stacked with medical volumes. To one side, a curtain could be drawn to create a separate cubicle with another chair and a raised bed. A white coat hung on a hook. The only unexpected touch in the room was an oil painting, which showed a dark-haired boy leaning against a wall. It was clearly the work of an amateur but Fraser, who had studied art at Oxford, thought it was rather good.
Dr Redwing herself was sitting upright, making notes on a case file in front of her, a rather severe woman in her early fifties. Everything about her was angular: the straight line of her shoulders, her cheekbones, her chin. You could have drawn her portrait using a ruler. But she was polite enough as she gestured for her two guests to sit down. She finished what she was writing, screwed the top back on her pen and smiled. ‘Joy tells me you’re with the police.’
‘We are here in a private capacity,’ Pünd explained. ‘But it is true that we have worked with the police on occasion and are assisting Inspector Chubb now. My name is Atticus Pünd. This is my assistant, James Fraser.’
‘I’ve heard of you, Mr Pünd. I understand you’re very clever. I hope you can get to the bottom of this. It’s a dreadful thing to happen in a small village and coming so soon after the death of poor Mary … I really don’t know what to say.’
‘I understand that you and Mrs Blakiston were friends.’
‘I wouldn’t go as far as that – but yes, we did see quite a bit of each other. I think people underestimated her. She was a very intelligent woman. She hadn’t had an easy life, losing one child and bringing the other up on her own. But she coped very well and she was helpful to many people in the village.’
‘And it was you who found her after her accident.’
‘It was actually Brent, the groundsman at Pye Hall.’ She stopped herself. ‘But I assumed you wanted to talk to me about Sir Magnus.’
‘I am interested in both occurrences, Dr Redwing.’
‘Well, Brent called me from the stable. He had seen her through the window, lying in the hallway, and he feared the worst.’
‘He hadn’t gone in?’
‘He didn’t have a key. In the end we had to break down the back door. Mary had left her own keys in the lock on the other side. She was at the bottom of the stairs and it looked as if she had tripped over the cable of her Hoover which was at the top. Her neck was broken. I don’t think she had been dead very long. She was still warm when I found her.’
‘It must have been very distressing for you, Dr Redwing.’
‘It was. Of course, I’m used to death. I’ve seen it many times. But it’s always more difficult when it’s someone you know personally.’ She hesitated for a moment, a series of conflicting thoughts passing across her dark, serious eyes. Then she came to a decision. ‘And there was something else.’