The Reckoning by Rennie Airth

Author:Rennie Airth [Airth, Rennie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-05-31T23:00:00+00:00

19

‘ TWO? ’ Madden scowled. ‘That can’t be.’

‘I know what you’re thinking, John.’ Chubb raised a hand.

‘I had the same reaction. But facts are facts.’

‘It’s hard enough trying to imagine one person engaged in

a vendetta of this kind. But two! It beggars belief.’ He looked at Billy, who was sitting beside him. ‘Are you sure this woman isn’t the daughter – Alma

Ballard?’

‘As sure as we can be.’ Billy shrugged. ‘We haven’t actually made contact with her yet, but she’s in Canada all right.

It’s been confirmed.’

Madden shook his head. It was late on Friday. About to

set off from St John’s Wood for Waterloo station to return

home for the weekend, he had been diverted by a call from

Billy and had stopped off at the Yard to lend whatever

support he could to his old colleagues, faced as they were

now by a fresh set of challenges.

‘We did wonder if we’d been given some wrong information,’ Billy went on. ‘About her emigrating, I mean. But when

we checked we found that she’d taken passage on a Cunard

liner to Halifax at the end of July. I also rang the Canadian

High Commission here in London, and they confirmed

she’d gone through the necessary immigration formalities.

She didn’t ask for an assisted passage, but we know she’s got

money of her own. She was her mother’s only heir.’ ‘What if she came back, though?’ Madden was uncon

vinced.

‘I thought of that, sir.’ Billy grimaced. ‘I rang that solicitor I told you about – Royston’s his name – and he confirmed

that the last letter he’d had from Alma before she set off by

train for Vancouver was sent from Toronto on 18 September,

which was just two days before Wallace Drummond was shot

in Ballater. I haven’t had a chance to tell you this yet, but

we’ve good reason to believe that the woman who visited

Mrs Singleton in Oxford also called on Drummond at his

rooms a day or so before he was killed. It can’t have been

Alma Ballard. She couldn’t have been in two places at once.’ Chubb stirred in his seat.

‘I know how you feel, John. We thought it had to be Alma

– it was the only answer that made sense. But like it or not,

we have to face the fact we’re looking for two people: a man

and a woman. It looks like he’s doing the killing and she’s his

accomplice.’

‘But who could they possibly be?’ Madden was lost for

words.

‘I can’t answer that.’ The chief super scowled. ‘Not yet.

But what I can tell you is that we’re looking into James

Ballard’s family background. There may be something there.

You know he was born out of wedlock?’

Madden nodded.

‘Well, at first that looked like a dead end. But then Styles

phoned Eve Selby again – that woman in St Ives who knew

them – and she told us a little more about him.’

He gestured to Billy.

‘Go ahead.’

Billy cleared his throat. ‘According to Selby, James wanted

to find out who his father was. He knew from his adoptive

parents that his mother had died in childbirth, but he was able to learn from her relatives that his real father lived in Exeter and had a family of his own.

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