Murder on the Old Road Read Online Free Page B

Simon know why?’
    â€˜I didn’t ask. Of course, he wasn’t in Chillingham in 1967.’
    â€˜Nor was the vicar, the Reverend Fanshawe.’
    â€˜Oh yes, she was.’ Peter looked smug at pulling this new rabbit out of his hat. ‘Her name was then Anne Riding, daughter of the village historian and teacher Bill Riding. She was ten years old and played the role of Geoffrey in Becket , the small son of Fair Rosamund, the king’s mistress.’
    Again, Georgia was taken aback. She was sure Anne had made no mention of that, only that she had been back in Kent seven years. Perhaps there had been no intention to mislead her, and yet every antenna Georgia possessed was waving as furiously as a hazel twig in the hands of a water-diviner. Was there a conspiracy of silence in Chillingham? Or had life simply moved on after a tragic episode? But if the latter, surely some people must still feel the wounds.
    â€˜Go ahead. Tell me,’ she said.
    She could see Peter was itching to spill out the whole story, and she wanted to hear it. Hugh Wayncroft had been murdered over forty years previously, but the family was still at odds with itself, and perhaps Chillingham itself was too. In a small village unrest could spread from the centre out.
    At the back of her mind she registered that Janie would be fuming if she and Peter stayed talking much longer, but consoled herself that, far from being annoyed, it was possible Janie might be grateful. This puzzle, virtually on his own doorstep, might distract Peter from his other preoccupations, which she suspected were also driving Janie crazy.
    Peter needed no urging. ‘Let’s start with Hugh Wayncroft’s murder. He was forty-five, married, with a small child, Julian. His body was found in woods close by the Old Road – or, if you, prefer Pilgrims’ Way – which at that point is now the North Downs Way. He was still clad in his Becket costume, but the pilgrimage was nearing its end. The company had walked the whole length of the Old Road from Winchester to Canterbury, so far as was possible, because by 1967 parts of it had long disappeared. Tennyson’s play had been performed in Canterbury, and on Sunday, the ninth of July, the happy pilgrims had walked the last few miles back from their triumph to an intended celebratory welcome in the Three Peacocks.’
    â€˜I wonder who sparked off the notion that repeating it would be a good idea. And what happened to the final celebration? Was it still held?’
    â€˜As to the first question: no idea. As for the second, yes, in a way. With the largish cast, and all the production staff and so, over forty people were involved. Only some time after they had reached the Three Peacocks, where the publican Fred Miller had arranged for the welcome home, was it realized that Hugh Wayncroft was no longer with them. When it was discovered he hadn’t returned to Chillingham Place either, a search party set out and found his body. He’d been strangled, and there the matter rests.’
    â€˜What do you mean, rests ? There must have been a police investigation. Motives? Passing tramps? MI5 plot . . .?’
    â€˜I haven’t had time to consult Mike yet—’
    â€˜But you will,’ Georgia said resignedly. Mike Gilroy had been Peter’s sergeant for some years before Peter’s enforced retirement, and Peter was under the happy impression that Mike liked nothing better than to break off from the pressure of being Detective Superintendent Gilroy and throw himself into the archives of his and other Kentish police areas in order to ‘help Peter with his enquiries’.
    â€˜Possibly.’ Peter’s turn to be indignant. ‘Neither the local papers nor The Times carried the story after the initial furore. That suggests to me that there was plenty of gossip, but it was wrapped up in the small local community of Chillingham and didn’t wing its way beyond its