The nurse, when Trueman spoke to her, could confirm the telephone call. Horton knew it hadn't been Peter Bohman because he'd called him earlier, despite the late hour.
Then there was Bella Westbury. They knew what she had been doing on the island and why, although they didn't know all the facts of the case. Owen could have discovered this and been killed to silence him, ditto Jonathan Anmore. Bella had disappeared. She certainly wasn't crossed off Horton's list yet.
And Danesbrook? They knew he had been out to get money from Sir Christopher Sutton while he was alive, and that he could have killed Arina Sutton so that he could inherit through his charity. His only alibi for when Arina was killed was Bella Westbury. Yes, Danesbrook was definitely still in the frame.
Thea had visited the library to check the press cuttings of her parents' accident and to get Gordon Elms' address, which led Horton to thoughts of ghosts and Scanaford House. Gordon Elms was Sir Christopher's illegitimate son, but not his sister's killer. And neither was he Owen and Jonathan's murderer. Sir Christopher's affair didn't explain what he was doing during that missing year, only why he'd been sent away. Horton doubted if they'd ever discover where. Was that the key to all these deaths? Then there was the 'girl' Thea had mentioned…
However much he considered matters he wasn't going to get the answers. Not now. Not ever. On or around the high tide tomorrow, at one o'clock, he would sail out of the harbour and head for home, returning later to the island to collect the Harley, and be at his desk bright and early Wednesday morning.
Was Birch right? Was Thea their killer? Perhaps she hadn't planned to kill her brother. Maybe she'd just lost control. But the gun made that impossible. That stuff about being told by some psychic power where she would find her brother was rubbish. For a moment he wanted to believe that she might have killed Owen in a trance or some kind of blackout, except that Owen Carlsson had been dead for some days. How long, Dr Clayton had said was difficult to diagnose because of the weather conditions and where the body might have been kept, but there was no disputing that Carlsson had been killed some days earlier and his body taken to the Duver and deposited in the sand. And Anmore had to be her accomplice. Anmore was the person who had searched his boat, and Anmore had tried to kill Thea because Thea said she was going to tell the police what she'd done.
So it was over, he thought wearily. Birch was right. He wished he'd never come here. He told himself that his memory of her would fade over time. But he would never forget her expression as she'd spun round to face him, nor the look she'd given him before she went to the police station. Neither would he forget her stricken expression during the fire and the feel of her slender body in his arms as he'd thrown her from the window.
He closed his eyes, hoping to sleep. Eventually, when it came, he dreamt of her.
TWENTY-FOUR
Tuesday
Charlie Anmore looked tired and very old. He hadn't shaved and he was wearing a red and cream striped pyjama top under a frayed and grubby rust-brown cardigan. Horton felt sorry for troubling him but one thing had surfaced in his mind after a restless and lustful sleep and that was the fact that Bella Westbury had called on Charlie Anmore. Why? Was it just to offer her condolences as she'd claimed? He doubted it. Not with her history. And once the question had formed, Horton knew he couldn't ignore it. It nagged and gnawed at him as he went for a run early that morning. It niggled at him as he ate his breakfast, and it burrowed and chewed at him as he made his boat ready for sailing. Had Charlie been gardener to Sir Christopher Sutton at Scanaford House in 1990 when Helen might have taken a photograph there? Was that what Bella Westbury had wanted to find out? Had she been trying to establish if Charlie Anmore had made the connection between Helen Carlsson and the secret that Sir Christopher Sutton harboured? Horton had to know before heading for home.
Charlie Anmore's eyes lit up for a moment when Horton introduced himself; obviously he'd been hoping he had brought him news about his son's killer. Horton shook his head and said gently, 'I'm sorry, Mr Anmore.'
'Aye, so am I, son. I doubt you'll get who did it anyway.' He waved Horton into a seat in the small living room which smelt of sorrow and whisky.
Horton felt saddened that Charlie had so little faith in the police. He said nothing about DCI Birch believing he knew who the killer was. He began. 'When Bella Westbury came to visit you what did you talk about?'
'This and that, how the island's changed since Jonathan was a boy, that sort of thing.'
Horton felt disappointed. So it was Jonathan's childhood days in the seventies that Somerfield had meant by 'the old days'.
'She didn't ask you about 1990 when you were the gardener at Scanaford House?' probed Horton.
Charlie looked surprised. 'No. I was never a gardener there. That was Jonty's client.'
So that was it. Horton's final attempt at trying to find the reason for Owen's death had fallen flat. He'd listen politely for a while then make his way home. There was nothing more he could do and, though he felt frustrated, he saw that he had no option.
Charlie continued. 'Bella and I talked about all the building that's going on. They call it progress but it doesn't look much like it to me.'
Horton nodded sympathetically while steeling himself for a diatribe on the planning authorities. Then he wondered why Bella Westbury would want to talk about building. But of course she was on the environmental bandwagon… only she wasn't. That was all a sham. Part of her cover. So if she wanted to talk to Charlie about building, he damn well wanted to as well.
'Any building works in particular?' he asked politely.
'Just here and there, though we did chat about the site of the old mental hospital. I said I wouldn't fancy living there myself, too many ghosts.'
And there was that word again — ghosts — only this time coupled with another word that made him think of Danesbrook and his charity, and Sir Christopher Sutton and his specialism: mental hospital… neuropsychiatry. Horton felt a quickening in his pulse.
'Ghosts?' he prompted.
'Aye. Poor souls. Beautiful grounds though,' Charlie said wistfully. 'I was a gardener at the old asylum in the 1950s and 1960s.'
Horton was even more interested now. He nodded encouragement at Charlie, who didn't need much; Horton could tell his mind was back in the past in probably happier times.
'Most of the patients were harmless. You'd see some of them in the gardens with a nurse. Others were locked away in the main house. We had our own lodge in the gardens, me and Dickie Jones along with Harry Makepeace; he were the boss. We kept our tools there, and made our tea and ate our dinner. They're both dead now.'
'And you chatted about this to Bella?'
'Oh, yes. She was very interested. Probably only being polite.'
I doubt it, thought Horton. And he knew why Bella had been so interested. Calmly, though his pulse raced with excitement, he said, 'Did you know any of the doctors there?'
Charlie eyed him as if he were mad. 'Gawd, no! They wouldn't talk to the likes of us or us to them. Things were very different in those days, not like now where everyone says we're all on one level, but we aren't. Maybe it was different for Jonty.' A cloud crossed his face. 'I left Whitefields in 1969, worked for the council as a gardener for fifteen years and then started my own little business in 1984 before Jonty took it over.'
But Horton had stopped listening after Charlie had said 'Whitefields'. A dark, intimidating painting of a big house flashed before his eyes and Gordon Elms' words sprang to mind. They had a summer fete in the grounds. Whitefields it was called. They pulled it down in 1986 and built new houses on it. And Gordon Elms and his mother had visited there in 1981, the year after Sir Christopher's wife had died. Gordon had bought the painting because it reminded him of his mother being happy. And Horton would stake his last penny that Sir Christopher Sutton had worked at Whitefields at some stage in his career as a neuropsychiatric consultant. He'd need to check with Trueman, but Horton was convinced it hadn't shown up on Sutton's employment records. Of course, Sutton could have spent a short spell there, which didn't warrant recording, but Horton didn't think so. His money was on 1959.
'Was there ever any hint of anything not quite right happening at Whitefields?'
