Chapter 22

Max

Max Hillingdon lived in a small village in Herefordshire which boasted its own primary school, combined post office and store, a plumbing and heating engineer, a chap who would mend and clean your Aga when things got too much for you, and a pub. As he told them, “Who could need more?”

His home sat back from the main road. A two-storey medium-sized cottage, six ancient stone steps led beyond the level of a cellar workshop to the Georgian pediment and pilasters sheltering the cornflower blue nine panelled front door flanked by two modern double glazed bay windows. Black wrought iron railings either side of the steps ensured safe passage to the brass door knocker and letterbox.

Inside the hallway, the wood-stained floor was complimented by an occasional runner and tasteful décor. Thurstan immediately felt it was somewhere he’d like to spend Christmas. The living room didn’t disappoint.

There was the predictable offer of refreshments and inevitable acceptance. “I have some particularly nice light fruit cake my niece made for me. I’ll bring you some because I’m sure you’ll like it,” Max added.

Placing a large tray on the coffee table, he poured tea into cups and pointed to the milk jug and sugar bowl. “Help yourselves, and there’s some butter there with a knife in case you’d like some on your fruit cake. Don’t be shy.”

Max sat down with his buttered cake and cup of tea.  They chatted for a while, agreed first names were fine, admired the view from the windows and Thurstan complimented him on his book collection before saying, “As we discussed on the phone, we’re investigating a murder which happened many years ago. It’s what we call a cold case, in other words no one was brought to any form of justice, even though there was an identified suspect. It’s clear to us there was police corruption involved in that and for it to occur, there had to be someone with considerable influence pulling the strings. I know it’s not as if we’re going to achieve any real justice after all this time, all the witnesses and suspects are dead, but we’d like to close this finally, with something meaningful and supportable, something that makes sense.”

Max grinned, affably. “I don’t really see how I can help you as I have a pretty good alibi. I hadn’t been born.”

Thurstan smiled back, politely, and explained why he and his colleague believed Max’s relatives in St Helens were responsible for both the death of the victim and the cover up.

When he eventually finished, Max exclaimed. “Good grief! Aunt Evelyn was right!”

The two detectives looked confused. Gandalph had stopped buttering his second slice of cake. Max thought he would explain, as succinctly as he could.

“Chaps, this information, although somewhat of a surprise now, is not really a complete shock because my Aunt Evelyn ... She wasn’t actually my aunt, really a first cousin once removed but the difference in our ages made her my aunt, as far as I was concerned. Well, when I was a child, she told me she’d overheard the adults in the family discussing something. They sent her and her cousin Beatrice out of the room at a family gathering and told them to play upstairs.

“Always inquisitive and a keen fan of the servant gossip she’d hear below stairs, Evelyn thought it could be something worth knowing so she and Beatrice listened at the closed door. She told me she heard them saying her Uncle Montague had done something “very wicked” and “if it hadn’t been for his father he would have gone to jail or much worse”. She didn’t get to hear more because a maid caught them and sent them away.” He bent forward and picked up the teapot. “More tea?”

Holding his cup out, Thurstan said, “Out of interest, Max, when would that have been, overhearing the conversation, what year?”

“Hm, let’s think now. Ah, yes. It would have been sometime in 1917. She said Beatrice died two years later and I know, from my own research into the family tree, poor Beatrice caught the Spanish Flu. She went to stay with some family friends in the north for the summer, Northumberland, if I recall correctly. She was supposed to stay with Evelyn and her mother Charlotte, but I gather there was some chap courting the mother and they changed plans at his insistence. A tragedy really.”

He took another bite of cake and reminisced, “I liked Aunt Evelyn. She was a good old girl, always had some sweets or chocolate for me in her handbag when she came to stay. She’d take me to the fair and the pictures. Along the way, she’d impart all manner of titbits about her neighbours, a lot of which I couldn’t really understand why it interested her so much until much later in life. She always enjoyed a bit of scandal.”

Gandalph interrupted, “You say you’ve researched the family? Everybody?”

Max chuckled. “Good grief, no. I started tracing my own line - father and mother - but it somehow led me on to the rest of them. I’m researching the great-great-grandfathers at present.”

Gandalph looked at Thurstan and encouraged by his nod, said, “Is there any chance we could get a copy of what you’ve done already? It would save us a lot of time. We haven’t managed to trace all Cedric Hillingdon’s descendants yet.”

“Certainly. I’ll send it to you by email. It’s all in a Word document so there’s quite a bit to read through, but what am I saying, you’ll be used to that. Can I ask why you’d want it?”

Thurstan, having finished his tea, placed his cup on the table and replied, “Well. This is the bit where we need to come clean. It would be nice to have the work you’ve already done because we would like to take a DNA sample from you, but if you’d rather not then we’re going to have to trace any male descendants from Cedric’s line. If there are any, we’ll have to approach them.” He paused. “To set your mind at ease, Max, the taking of the DNA sample is what we call non-invasive. All we do is swab the inside of your mouth and that’s as bad as it gets.”

Max leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped. “And what are you going to do with this sample? Why is it so important?”

The two officers exchanged a quick glance. Why was it so important? Well, what they had wasn’t all evidence in the very strictest meaning of the term. Some of it was more like rumour and speculation, supposition mixed with possible coincidence, probable cause and lines of enquiry to people who were long dead, but they didn’t want to tell Max that. It might dampen his resolve to be helpful.

“It’s important because...” Thurstan hesitated. “Look, we need to make a connection. We have firm evidence young Montague was seen to leave the scene of the crime within minutes of the recorded time of death by a young girl playing behind the murder scene who, incidentally, later identified him to a police officer after a second chance meeting. We have evidence of the murder victim paying rent to the Hillingdons but we haven’t actually got anything that definitely connects her to the family. We need a motive. Granted, she was a prostitute. Maybe, young Montague was using her services but why kill her just for that? There’s no evidence of bondage play gone wrong. She was simply beaten and strangled. There’s no records left of a post-mortem, and we only know what the inquest said from newspaper reports of the time.” Max nodded, he was following the conversation.

“Our enquiries give us good cause to believe Sir Montague fathered a child with one of his maids around 1882. We believe that maid was our murder victim and we’ve traced the descendants of this child, and we’d like to compare the two samples. At present we haven’t approached the other party. Now, I think you’re probably going to say it’s not going to prove young Montague murdered the victim, and you’d be right, but if we can prove she was, in fact, the mother of Sir Montague’s illegitimate son it does provide us with an unequivocal connection to the St Helens Hillingdons and give us a motive for her murder. We believe it’s more than possible, in fact very probable, our victim was blackmailing the Hillingdons or trying to do so. I know this is supposition, but it makes more sense than someone enters and leaves, unseen, and kills for no motive other than they could, which is basically what the original investigation concluded.”

Max sat back and slowly stroked his chin before he answered, “OK, I understand and I’ve no objections to giving you a sample. It’s not as if there’s a family fortune at stake. My first cousin twice removed put paid to that with his inept dealings on Wall Street many, many years ago, and anyway, I’d like a family mystery to be finally resolved.”