Read Online Stealth by Margaret Duffy - Free Book Online Page A

nanny to give one of the presents – perfume – to, baby Mark to cuddle, not to mention checking that George, Patrick’s horse and Fudge, Katie’s pony, kept at livery, were well. The two kittens: Pirate, called after her predecessor, and Patch, her brother, had put themselves right at the head of the queue by having to be lifted down from the lower branch of a tree growing over the drive where they had been precariously teetering.
    Finally, and of course reluctantly, we started work shortly after breakfast the following day. Patrick hates sitting reading files and I knew he would much rather be parked somewhere in the vicinity of Clement Hamlyn’s house, watching him, but that was not an option until we had more information.
    We started with the letters to SOCA from Miss Smythe. The first dated back almost a year. At first, she related in her neat hand, there had been events that although in her opinion were serious they were not the kind of thing with which she would normally bother a national crime organization. Her neighbours’ visitors had been firing an air pistol in their garden, supposedly at a target but also at birds and someone’s cat which had been hit and seriously injured.
    Everything had taken a more serious turn one summer’s evening when she had been reading in her tree house, which she admitted was the only way
anyone
could see into the neighbouring garden as it was otherwise very secluded. She had happened to lift her eyes from her book to glance across to the house next door. Several men were on the patio just outside the French doors and, although her view was partly obscured by foliage, she could see that they were unpacking what looked like rifles and handguns from a wooden case. There were also small boxes that she guessed contained ammunition. One man had paraded across the lawn, playing soldiers with one of the weapons over his shoulder. That was not the only time she had witnessed men handling guns on her neighbour’s property, the second occasion being that with which I was already familiar, occurring in Hereward Trent’s study.
    The rest of the information was slightly repetitive, especially concerning nocturnal comings and goings and more than one visit by Clement Hamlyn, whose girlfriend, Claudia Barton-Jones, had once gestured to Miss Smythe with two fingers when the two women had happened to see one another at the front of the two houses. Barton-Jones had been with Hamlyn, who had roared with laughter. After this, I could not help but feel that the elderly lady had become obsessed about these people and could hardly blame her, especially after she had been hurt when the tree house collapsed. It was after this, when she had recovered, that she had taken to watching them through binoculars, venturing into their back garden.
    Highly relevant I felt was Rosemary Smythe being convinced one night – before the tree house collapsed – that someone was in her own garden and being deeply afraid that they were out to silence her. This was in the third letter from the last. The very last was a résumé of all that had happened so far, ending with her regret that nothing seemed to have been done about it and that she hoped to be able to provide more proof.
    â€˜But surely there would have been official replies,’ I said. ‘These wouldn’t just have been ignored.’
    â€˜Just acknowledgements, I expect,’ Patrick said quietly. ‘The usual “Thank you, your comments have been noted”, kind of crap.’
    â€˜Patrick, I really get the impression that, towards the end, after she thought someone was lurking outside just before the tree house collapsed, this woman became terrified. She doesn’t actually say so but, somehow, it’s there.’
    â€˜OK, I suggest you write a précis, buff up on the police case notes and this pathologist’s report when I’ve finished with it. I’ll read the letters and