Hang the Consequences - Lennox Kemp 03 by M.R.D. Meek

Author:M.R.D. Meek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Nearly a week passed before Tony Egerton called and it was lost time for Kemp, a hiatus barren of productive enterprise despite thoughts that seethed in the void. He’d been warned off Frances Jessica, Leopold Pearson had tidily vanished, there was no excuse yet to revisit Leatown; the sense of restless frustration left Kemp waspish and out of humour so that at last even McCready’s long, pinched nose was welcome.

‘I’ve seen Comfrey,’ he told Kemp, ‘and that investigation when the body was found was thorough enough. The dead woman was certainly Lucille Pearson. As to the verdict, well, some of the local police weren’t too happy with it. There were a lot of unanswered questions but once the identification had been made there weren’t any reasons to get answers. They had the evidence of the girl’s brother, and her doctor. You know how it is, some families take a poor view of a finding of suicide—casts aspersions on the dead and reflects badly on the living, that kind of thing. But in this case there was the strong medical evidence not only from the local GP but a report Pearson himself produced from her analyst in the States, she’d tried suicide once before … The police, on the other hand, didn’t have a scrap of evidence that there’d been foul play. Remember, that body had been in the pond at least two months according to the pathologist—decomposition was well advanced. It was difficult for him to come to any other conclusion than that death was due to asphyxia caused by total immersion in water—that is, she drowned and nobody could prove she didn’t.’

Kemp looked glum.

‘She could have been held down in that pool. She could have been strangled first—that’s also asphyxia.’

‘Don’t try and teach me, laddie,’ said McCready, bristling, ‘I’ve done my share of forensic medicine. What you’re suggesting may be possible but you’d never prove it … However, let’s get back to those inquiries the local branch made. You’ve been out to that place Green Acres—it’s pretty isolated—there aren’t any close neighbours but Lucille Pearson kept a pony. She rode about in the Forest, sometimes wildly, on her own. But there had been vague talk about a man. The horse had been seen tethered and she wandering off as if meeting someone. But nothing came of these questions, it was all put down to local gossip—which it might well have been.’

‘Or she might have been sneaking off and meeting Malcolm Moss. What about servants?’

‘There were none living in, apparently. Mr Pearson was away a lot, travelling on business, he said. The maid who came in to clean, a youngster called Angela Foster—local girl—had been given notice that week in May because Miss Pearson was going back to America. Apart from her, no one knew anything about the Pearsons, and the Foster girl’s pretty dim and didn’t know much.’

‘What about this Dr Seft?’

‘Very open and straightforward evidence. She’d been on his books as a private patient only a short time.

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