The Sedleigh Hall Murder by Roy Lewis

Author:Roy Lewis [Lewis, Roy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books classic crime and mystery
Published: 2019-05-20T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

It rained heavily during the night but by morning the sun was bright again and Ward took an early breakfast, paid his bill and then walked up Castle Street, through the grounds of the castle itself and down the hillside on which it stood. Leaves glistened in the sunlight, still wet from the overnight rain, and the river was at full tide, the small weir virtually submerged, as Ward strolled along the path to talk to the old boatman who made a living hiring rowboats and ferrying across to the far bank those tourists who wished to seek out the Hermit’s Cave. He claimed to have been at work there for fifty-eight years, but he still rose early — more for the peace of the river, Ward suspected, than the possibility of hirings.

The walk in the morning sunshine did him a great deal of good. He felt refreshed and his mind was clear. The depression of yesterday was gone. It had probably been induced as much by tiredness as anything else, and the conversation with Anne Morcomb, well, he must be getting fanciful in his old age if he read into it anything other than the obvious — a brief acquaintance, an unhappy time for her, pressures of the kind that for him had resulted in another attack. But this morning things were in perspective, and a blackbird was in full song. Ward turned and followed the stream in its run towards the coast. A few minutes later he had reached the lower end of Warkworth; he paused a while on the ancient bridge watching the house martins under its arches, and then he walked back up the slope of Castle Street.

Enquiries in the shop near the church led to the information that she lived in the first house above the one for sale on the right. Armed with these directions, Ward found the house easily enough. The house beyond Sarah Boden’s seemed to be empty also — Ward suspected some of these granite-fronted houses would be used as second homes by the more affluent on Tyneside.

The door boasted a heavy brass knocker. Ward used it, and listened to the reverberations die away in the house. Surprisingly, the noise had a strangely echoing quality as though the house was empty, but he guessed its structure, or sparse furnishing, would have caused the effect. He tried again and stepped back, almost colliding with a woman walking down the hill with a shopping-bag on her arm. Then again.

There was no answer.

Eric Ward checked his watch. It was just after ninefifteen. An hour or so home to change; he’d be pushed to get to the office before midday the way things were going. He knocked again, but once more there was no reply. He wondered if she was lying in bed refusing to answer the door. Old people could get like that sometimes; stubborn, peculiar.

He hesitated. There was no sense in waiting any longer, and yet he did not want another journey out to Warkworth from the office.

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