A Sprig of Sea Lavender Read online

  ‘I don’t know what I should have done if I had missed this train.’ That was what she had said to the young solicitor who had helped her to board the train at Sudbury. Why the urgency? Sally’s view was that all at once everything had become too much for her. She was deeply in love with Rupert Lexington and prepared to misuse her art to help him, but she hated doing so, and she was not prepared to compete with Trudi as a rival. This was borne out to some extent by Lexington himself. Sandra had told him she was going back to London, he said, and he thought this was the best way of getting her out of Trudi’s reach. Trudi’s blackmailing power was that she could inform on him at any moment –and his recapture would almost certainly have meant a search of the mill, and probably the arrest of Malcolm Winterer, with more suffering for Shirley and Aunt Emily. Short of killing Trudi, there seemed nothing he could do but encourage Sandra to go.

  To Sandra, this must have seemed like victory for Trudi, and added to her despair. Had she herself decided to go to the police, taking the pictures with her as evidence? Probably not, Piet thought, but she did not intend to allow those particular pictures to be sold as genuine. To Malcolm Winterer a distraught Sandra, knowing what she did about the mill, was too dangerous to live. He intended her to die on the train, but neither he, nor Trish, nor Trudi knew that the pictures she was taking to London were the fakes and not her own.

  *

  One of the keys found on Winterer fitted the lock on the door of Sandra’s studio at Finsbury Park. It must have come from Sandra’s handbag, and, added to the lethal pills found on his boat, it was firm evidence against him. Piet thought he could now understand the apparent robbery at Finsbury Park and the clumsy attempt to break into the Lost Property office at Liverpool Street. Neither was a serious attempt to recover Sandra’s pictures – both were desperately serious efforts to concentrate police attention on London. The art frauds were secondary to the prime purpose of the mill in providing an apparently safe place to keep the hoard of stolen bullion, and perhaps the proceeds of further robberies.

  Winterer, Piet concluded, knew more about the potential value of the pictures in the mill than Rupert Lexington had realised. Here, again, there appeared to be two cases – Lexington’s plan, with Sandra’s help, to use the pictures to break away from Winterer, and a cold-blooded plan of Winterer’s own to have the pictures found on Moat Cottage property. That served two purposes – it diverted attention from the mill by giving the pictures a provenance that was nothing to do with Poplar’s Fen, and it overcame the slight legal difficulty that in fact the pictures belonged to Mrs Marshall. The lethal pills were a further insurance against any complications from her, and perhaps intended also for Shirley if she rebelled against the scheme. On her death the Moat Cottage property would go to Winterer as her husband – the pills, indeed, may have been an integral part of the scheme from the start.

  *

  Winterer and Trish were charged jointly with the murder of the Lowestoft policeman, Winterer for his part in the original bullion robbery, and Trish with being an accessory after it. They were also charged separately with being concerned in Sandra’s murder, but in the end, to Piet’s infinite relief, for it meant that neither Sally nor Shirley Vincent had to give evidence, that charge was not proceeded with. After the Crown’s case concerning the shooting of the policeman was concluded, counsel for Winterer and Trish called no evidence for the defence – there was really none to call. Counsel for Trish, making a plea in mitigation, said that Trish admitted having given a possibly harmful substance to Sandra, and asked that this admission should be taken into consideration in her sentence. Winterer, knowing that he would be sentenced to life imprisonment for the policeman’s murder, said arrogantly that he did not care – the court could take into consideration anything it liked. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment, the judge recommending that Winterer should serve a minimum of thirty years and Trish a minimum of twenty. Justice? There seemed little to choose between Trudi, Trish and Winterer. Trudi was dead. Trish’s admission, which did serve to reduce her sentence, probably owed more to the skill of her counsel than to any feeling of remorse on her part. It did, however, save a certain amount of pain for other people, and removed the slur of possible suicide from Sandra’s memory. But nothing could bring back to life the young policeman, nor Sandra. All that could be felt was that some very evil people had been put away.

  *

  Something like eight hundred thousand pounds-worth of gold was recovered from the wreck. Piet had another long interview with Rupert Lexington in prison. ‘If you suspected me of being a policeman from that first night, why did you wait?’ he said.

  ‘Well, a police radio is one thing, a policeman is another. We couldn’t be absolutely sure. I told Winterer, of course. I didn’t know that he was already engaged in trying to dispose of faked pictures in the scheme involving Shirley. You see, I didn’t know that Sandra was dead – I thought that once away from Trudi she’d pick up and be all right. Trish told me that she’d decided to go off to Normandy. I believed it – at least I wanted to believe it. Knowing what I do now I can see that everything Winterer did was to protect the mill. If there were to be police inquiries, he wanted them at Lavenham and in London. And there was the gold – he didn’t want to leave any of that. Otherwise he could have sailed away from Yarmouth. He gambled either on your not being a policeman at all, or not having time to act before he could get away with the gold. I didn’t know what he was doing by then. I decided to get out the night Sally came back alone, but Trudi wouldn’t go without as much gold as we could take. It took a devil of a time to load even what we did take. I’d have got away earlier, but for that.’

  Piet shivered slightly. Then he said, ‘I think you’ve summed up your own character fairly well. You’ve done a lot of harm, some of it not altogether your fault. But you’ve also done some good. You’ll have to serve a few years, but the authorities take a favourable view of your action in saving Constable Macleod, and also of your telling us about the gold left in the wreck. If you behave yourself, it’s quite on the cards that you’ll get parole. Try to keep in touch with Shirley Vincent. If anyone can keep you straight, she can.’

  *

  Mr Constantine was delighted to handle the sketches and unfinished paintings found in the mill – they had a credible provenance and a reputable legal owner in Mrs Marshall. The fakes, with her agreement, were burned. The painting touched up by Trudi had lost a good deal of its value by her insensitive treatment, but some of it was certainly genuine, and Mr Constantine thought that it might be possible for her additions to be identified and removed. With one exception, all the other works were sold. They realised a considerable sum for Mrs Marshall, most of which she insisted on giving to Shirley.

  The exception was the part-Constable painting in Sandra’s portfolio. It could not be regarded as genuine because it was known that she must have added to it, but her work was so sympathetic, so beautifully done and so perfectly in keeping with the mood of reflective sadness in the later Constable that the completed painting was a lovely thing in its own right. Mrs Marshall and Mrs Vincent between them decided to give it to Sally in memory of her friend.

  *

  Piet and Sally were married before the trial, but Piet’s work was so imperative in tidying up all the complex ramifications of the case that there was no time for a honeymoon. As soon as he could after the trial Piet demanded leave. Sally had never been to Holland, so for their first holiday together Piet took her for a visit to his beloved ancestral countryside. He wanted her to arrive by sea, so they made the traditional passage from Harwich to the Hook. The train for Harwich left from Liverpool Street. For this important private journey Piet decided to travel first class, and they had a compartment to themselves. In the last few minutes before the train pulled out Sally put her arms round her husband and burst into tears. ‘Oh Piet, Piet,’ she sobbed, ‘It seems so dreadful that I should be so happy when . . . when . . .’

  ‘Is it wrong to be ha
ppy?’ Piet asked.

  ‘Not exactly, But . . .’

  ‘The “buts” make life, my darling. There is much sadness in the world, and much evil, but even on battlefields flowers grow.’

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  J.R.L. Anderson was an author of fourteen mystery stories and numerous works of non-fiction. He was a journalist at the Guardian for many years, before retiring to pursue his career as an author. He had a life-long interest in sailing and adventure, which results in many of his novels (as his original author biography from the 1970s puts it) ending ‘with an exciting sea chase in a small boat’.

  If you enjoyed A Sprig of Sea Lavender, why not continue reading The Piet Deventer Investigations . . .

  Festival

  Chief Constable Piet Deventer, recently married and now a father, is thrown into turmoil by twin tragedies – a young woman is murdered at a music festival, only hours after Piet’s own baby daughter is abducted.

  Forced to put aside his personal woes and focus on the murder, Piet finds himself in a seedy world of drugs and rock’n’roll. He meets Harriet, the dead woman’s sister, who has a shocking confession – might the two crimes be connected after all.

  Racing against the clock, Piet must untangle the web that connects the dead woman, the festival and his daughter, before it’s too late.

  Corruption runs deep in the second fast-paced mystery featuring Piet Deventer, from master of 1970s crime, J.R.L. Anderson.

  Late Delivery

  When an eighteen-year-old boy is accused of murder, the jury unanimously believe he is guilty. Chief Constable Piet Deventer does not.

  Drawn towards an ongoing case involving an arsonist setting fire to letter boxes, and startled by the appearance of a local charity chairman swearing that the boy is innocent, Piet quickly realises that the murder at the post office is not as straightforward as it appears.

  In private pursuit of the true culprit, the Chief Constable is drawn into a twisted web of arson, forgery and betrayal – will Piet Deventer be able to solve the case one last time?

  Late Delivery is J.R.L. Anderson’s final investigation starring Piet Deventer, and is an unmissable end to a remarkable series.

  First published in Great Britain in 1978 by Victor Gollancz Ltd

  This ebook edition published in 2015 by

  Zaffre Publishing

  80-81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE

  www.zaffrebooks.co.uk

  Copyright © J.R.L. Anderson, 1978

  The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-7857-6007-5

  This ebook was produced by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd

  Zaffre Publishing is an imprint of Bonnier Publishing Fiction, a Bonnier Publishing company

  www.bonnierpublishingfiction.co.uk

  www.bonnierpublishing.co.uk