It was a mistake.
When no arrest happened, the gossips busied themselves on why the Chief Constable of Kent had wanted to silence the Coroner yet again. Suspicion deepened when it became public knowledge that Major-General Luard was leaving Ightham for good on 16 September.
Was he fleeing Kent to avoid a murder charge? Had the Chief Constable realised that he couldn’t protect his friend for ever?
* * *
Taylor looked up in surprise when Henry Warde was shown into his office on the afternoon of 17 September. He had spoken to the man by telephone only the day before and Warde had made no mention of a trip to the city.
He stood up to shake the Chief Constable’s hand. ‘There’s nothing to add to what I told you yesterday,’ Taylor said with regret. ‘London’s a big place. If Blaine and Farrell are here, no one’s seen them.’
Warde lowered himself into a chair. He looked tired and depressed. ‘That’s not why I came.’ He took a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket and handed it to the Superintendent. ‘Charles Luard killed himself this morning. He left me this letter.’
Taylor stared at him in shock. ‘Killed himself?’ he echoed. ‘How? Why? I thought he was staying with your brother.’
‘He was. He wrote some letters during the night then left early this morning to throw himself under a train.’ He gestured towards the folded paper. ‘He explains it in there.’
My dear Henry,
I am sorry to return your kindness and long friendship in this way, but I feel it is best to join Caroline in the second life at once. I am tired and I do not want to live any longer.
I thought I was strong enough to bear up against the terrible letters that arrive every day. But I find I am not. The dreadful murder of my wife has robbed me of all my happiness.
The sympathy of so many friends kept me going for a while but in this last day something seems to have snapped. The strength has left me and I care for nothing except to be with her again.
So goodbye, dear friend,
Charles
Taylor rested his forehead in his hands. ‘We let him down. We should have realised he was as much a victim of the murder as his wife was.’
‘He told my brother he’d lost hope of anyone being convicted.’
With a sigh, Taylor opened his bottom drawer and took out a bottle of brandy and a couple of glasses. ‘What about the Luards’ son?’ He filled the glasses and pushed one across the desk. ‘Didn’t you tell me his ship was due to dock in Southampton this afternoon?’
Warde nodded. ‘Poor fellow. He’s barely had time to come to terms with his mother’s death, and now he has to learn of his father’s.’ He reached for his glass and downed the contents in a single gulp. ‘If Charles had waited, the lad might have persuaded him out of it.’
Taylor lifted his own glass and warmed the liquid between his hands. ‘It’s kinder this way. If your friend had killed himself anyway, his son would have had to bear the guilt.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Was one of the letters addressed to him?’
Warde nodded. ‘The others are to Caroline’s family in Cumberland and the staff at their home at Ightham Knoll. There was also one for my brother.’ Warde nodded to the page in front of Taylor. ‘It said similar things to mine.’
A picture of the Major-General, writing letters by gaslight, sprang into Taylor’s mind. It was a sad and lonely image. An old man quietly doing a last duty by his son and friends before he killed himself.
‘You have to make this public,’ Scotland Yard’s Taylor urged, pushing the page across the desk. ‘If you don’t, his enemies will claim he killed himself out of guilt. Or worse, that he left a confession which you and your brother have suppressed.’
Warde reached for the brandy bottle. ‘They’ll claim it anyway,’ he said bitterly. ‘Publishing what he wrote won’t convince them he was innocent. The only way to do that is to prove someone else was guilty.’
But, as both men now feared, that would never happen.
Epilogue
The final inquest into Caroline Luard’s death ruled that she’d been murdered by ‘person or persons unknown’. The verdict on her husband’s death was that he had committed suicide while ‘temporarily insane’.
The Coroner said that the Major-General had been driven to kill himself by the hate mail he received. Those who believed him innocent were shocked at how much cruelty had been shown by his neighbours. Those who believed him guilty thought he’d received his just deserts.
The letters he wrote in the hours before his death were read out at his inquest and published later in the local newspapers. Some found them moving and sincere, others thought they were a final, dishonest attempt by Major-General Luard to ‘clear’ his name.
No woman was ever named as Charles Luard’s mistress.
No man was ever named as Caroline Luard’s lover.
Charles and Caroline’s surviving son, Captain Elmhurst Luard, was killed in France in September 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I.
Author’s Note
Most of the characters in this story existed and are real. A few – the Blaines, the Farrells, Sarah Anderson and Amy Pegg – are my own invention.
1908 was a time of change in Britain. Herbert Asquith, the leader of the Liberal Party, was Prime Minister. Mrs Pankhurst was fighting for votes for women. And Europe was in the run-up to the most shocking and awful war the world had ever seen.
With the help of his Chancellor, David Lloyd George, Asquith laid the way for the Welfare State. The workhouses were closed, the poor were given access to education, and the Old Age Pension was introduced.
Such measures meant that wealthy women like Caroline Luard – who spent their days working on behalf of the poor – would no longer be needed. In future the State would decide how much benefit a person could receive, and these moves were already under way at the time of Caroline’s death.
In view of the hate campaign against Charles afterwards, I think it probable that Caroline, too, was disliked by many of her neighbours. Few people enjoy taking charity, particularly if they have to beg for it. And if Caroline put conditions on the money she handed out, she would have made enemies.
I don’t know if young men like Michael Blaine and Will Farrell lived in and around Ightham in 1908. But I find it easier to believe that Caroline was murdered by someone she knew rather than by a stranger.
Clearly many people thought the same at the time otherwise they wouldn’t have focused the blame on her husband. But, apart from the Major-General, little attention was given to anyone else in the area. Police effort was put into searching for vagrants and finding witnesses to Charles Luard’s alibi.
For myself, I have never believed that the Major-General shot his wife or hired someone else to do it for him. His alibi depended entirely on chance. He could not have known that Thomas Durrand would be outside Hall Farm when he passed by, nor that a labourer would see him ten minutes later.
Had he been guilty, he would have stayed at the Golf Club as long as he could – acting normally, talking to friends, buying drinks – until the tragic news came through that someone else had found Caroline’s body.
Instead, he collected his golf bag, spoke to no one, accepted a lift home from the vicar and put himself in the dangerous position of being the last person to see Caroline alive and the first to find her dead.
I believe Charles loved Caroline. And I believe what he wrote in his last letter to his friend.
‘The dreadful murder of my wife has robbed me of all my happiness.’
For those interested in further research,
a factual retelling of the murder can
be found on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Mary_Luard
Endnotes
1. Pronounced Item
2. Pronounced Item Noll
3. In 1908 a Coroner could name a suspect in a murder case if he felt the evidence was strong enough. But such verd
icts, made under pressure from the public, were often wrong. Today, it is the job of the police to decide if and when to release the names of suspects.
Praise for Minette Walters
THE ICE HOUSE
‘Terrific first novel with a high
Rendellesque frisson count’
The Times
THE SCULPTRESS
‘A devastatingly effective novel’
Observer
THE SCOLD’S BRIDLE
‘A gothic puzzle of great intricacy
and psychological power’
Sunday Times
THE DARK ROOM
‘A marvellous, dramatically intelligent
novel. It shimmers with suspense, ambiguity
and a deep unholy joy’
Daily Mail
THE ECHO
‘It grips like steel . . . Passion, compassion,
intelligence and romance are what Walters
offers, with no quarter for squeamish cowards’
Mail on Sunday
THE BREAKER
‘Stands head and shoulders above the
vast majority of crime novels . . . Existing
fans will love The Breaker; new readers
will be instant converts’
Daily Express
THE SHAPE OF SNAKES
‘Breaking all the rules of popular fiction,
Minette Walters asks as much of her readers
as many literary novelists, and yet she offers
them a book as gripping as any thriller’
Times Literary Supplement
ACID ROW
‘Humane intelligence enables Walters
to twist and turn her plot . . . Acid Row
is a breathtaking achievement’
Daily Telegraph
FOX EVIL
‘Fox Evil is the work of a writer
at the peak of her confidence and
supreme ability’
The Times
DISORDERED MINDS
‘A powerful, acute and vivid work from
a staggeringly talented writer’
Observer
THE TINDER BOX
‘If there wasn’t a recognised school
of crime writing called Home Counties
noir before, there is now. Minette Walters
invented it and remains the
undisputed Head Girl’
Birmingham Post
THE DEVIL’S FEATHER
‘One of the most powerful yet nuanced
practitioners of the psychological thriller
. . . always keeps the narrative momentum
cracked up to a fierce degree’
Daily Express
CHICKENFEED (A QUICK READ)
‘A marvellous little story, thoroughly
intimate with human nastiness’
Evening Standard
THE CHAMELEON’S SHADOW
‘No wonder Minette Walters is the
country’s bestselling female crime writer.
But even this label does not exactly do
justice to the scope and breadth of
her gripping, terrifying novels . . . The
Chameleon’s Shadow is another classic’
Daily Mirror
A Dreadful Murder
Minette Walters is a bestselling crime writer. She has written 12 novels and has won the CWA John Creasey Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award and two CWA Gold Daggers for Fiction. A Dreadful Murder is her second Quick Read, following Chickenfeed, which was voted the 2006 Quick Reads Readers’ Favourite. Minette Walters lives in Dorset with her husband.
Also by Minette Walters
The Ice House
The Sculptress
The Scold’s Bridle
The Dark Room
The Echo
The Breaker
The Shape of Snakes
Acid Row
Disordered Minds
The Tinder Box
The Devil’s Feather
Chickenfeed
(a Quick Read)
The Chameleon’s Shadow
First published 2013 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2013 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-1-24601-2741-0 EPUB
Copyright © Minette Walters 2013
The right of Minette Walters to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Table of Contents
Title page
Dedication page
Contents
Foreword
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Author biography
Copyright page