Murder at the Mill

by M. B. Shaw

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t comment on that.’ Cant blew out his cheeks pompously.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ said Iris, feeling herself getting cross. ‘It’s all over the papers. Ever since you invited that lot to set up camp here, putting us all under siege.’ She gestured in the vague direction of Mill Lane and the assembled media.

  ‘“That lot” don’t need an invitation, Ms Grey,’ Cant responded, matching Iris’s tetchy tone. ‘As for releasing a statement to the press, it gives us a chance to manage the flow of information. If we’re lucky, we may get some helpful leads.’

  Iris raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘You know about the chloroform in Ariadne’s sculpting shed, I assume?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Cant, somewhat defensively, as his forensics team had not even had time to arrive yet. ‘Is that common knowledge?’

  Iris took a sip of tea. ‘Well, it’s not a secret. Everybody at the Mill knows about it, and I daresay a number of Ariadne’s friends and clients. I suppose Billy told you, did he?’

  Cant’s eyes narrowed. How on earth would Iris Grey know that?

  ‘As a matter of fact, he did, yes. Not that we take that young man’s evidence at face value, mind you.’ He made no attempt to hide his dislike of Billy, which struck Iris as odd. Weren’t policemen supposed to be impartial?

  Leaning back in her chair, she asked boldly, ‘Is Billy a suspect?’

  ‘I can’t answer that,’ mumbled Cant.

  ‘I think you just did!’ Iris laughed. Because the laziness was laughable. Day one and already the police were zeroing in on Billy, just because he had a record and wasn’t likable. Of course, Jenna had done the same. But then it wasn’t Jenna’s job to look at all the evidence in a balanced and thoughtful manner, or to see past Billy’s vicious, prickly exterior to the wounded and much more complicated boy within. It wasn’t Iris’s job either, for that matter. But somebody had to do it.

  ‘I can save you some time there, Detective Inspector,’ she announced, admittedly a little smugly, refilling Cant’s mug of tea. ‘Billy couldn’t have done it.’

  She told him about Billy’s story of being picked up drunk and taken to A&E on Christmas Day and how she’d verified it by calling the hospital pretending to be his parole officer. ‘There’s no realistic way a profoundly drunk, disoriented man could have got back to Hazelford from Winchester in an hour, and then pulled off the sort of elaborate murder you’re talking about. Even if you were starting from the premise that Billy wanted to murder Dom. And truthfully, there’s scant evidence for that.’

  Cant sat and listened to this monologue in stunned silence. He was so angry it took him a moment to regain his composure. When he finally spoke, his voice positively quivered with indignation.

  ‘Let me get this straight, Ms Grey. You took it upon yourself to pose as a parole officer illegally in order to obtain a set of medical records?’

  Iris flushed. When he put it like that, it did sound bad. Less resourceful, more … fraudulent.

  ‘Not his records,’ she countered defensively. ‘Just his admission times.’

  ‘Why?’ Cant demanded furiously.

  ‘Why?’ Iris echoed, deciding that in this instance the best form of defence was probably attack. ‘To check out his alibi, obviously. Because the police weren’t doing anything. You hadn’t even worked out it wasn’t suicide, for God’s sake. No one had even bothered to investigate.’

  Cant felt a small muscle in his jaw begin to twitch. The arrogance of the woman!

  ‘Let me make myself very clear, Ms Grey.’ His voice was ominously quiet. ‘If I hear so much of a whisper about you playing Miss Marple again, if you do anything to compromise or jeopardise my murder inquiry, whether that meddling is downright illegal or not, I will have you charged with perverting the course of justice, wasting police time, interfering with a witness, unlawfully obtaining personal data and anything else I can think of. This isn’t a game of bloody Clue!’ he added, losing his cool. ‘Professor Plum didn’t do it in the library with a sodding candlestick.’

  ‘I’m surprised you’re old enough to have heard of Clue, Detective Inspector,’ Iris retorted cheekily. In fairness, he had a point, but she wasn’t about to be talked down to by a man she suspected was younger than some of the unidentifiable lumps of cheese in the back of her fridge.

  ‘I’m serious, Ms Grey. Next time there’ll be consequences. Do you understand?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ said Iris.

  Cant stood up and walked to the door.

  ‘But it is a free country, Detective Inspector,’ Iris called after him, her chin jutting forward defiantly, despite her shaking hands. ‘Last time I checked. I’m entitled to ask questions. To approach people. Especially if I believe the police are doing a sloppy, half-hearted job.’

  No one was more surprised than Iris by this sudden burst of feistiness on her part. As a general rule, Iris hated confrontation, loathed it, and had spent most of her adult life trying to avoid it. And yet here she was, picking a fight with a man who could no doubt quite easily have her thrown in jail. She wondered where on earth this newfound confidence was coming from.

  ‘If you really want to help find Dom Wetherby’s killer, Ms Grey, and to have that person brought to justice, back off,’ Cant responded sharply. ‘Go back to your paintings. You’re out of your depth.’

  He was right. Iris was out of her depth.

  But surely the only thing to do when out of one’s depth was to keep swimming?

  She couldn’t turn back now.

  * * *

  ‘He actually called you “Miss Marple”?’

  Graham Feeney had ‘dropped in’ at Mill Cottage for a cup of tea, which turned into drinks, which turned into supper. Now he and Iris were on the sofa, replete with a Tesco Finest mushroom risotto and a slightly ropey bottle of Argentine red, eating Lindt chocolate and dissecting the day’s events.

  ‘He did,’ Iris confirmed. ‘Which I thought was a bit rich coming from a James Corden lookalike with all the razor-sharp investigative acumen of a mollusc.’

  Graham laughed loudly. Not many people became more articulate the drunker they got, but Iris Grey seemed to be one of them. She was a riot of contradictions: quiet but pushy, reserved but passionate, observant yet refreshingly slow to judge. (Except perhaps in DI Cant’s case.) It frightened Graham how much he enjoyed being around her.

  ‘Anyway, I’m not that old.’ Iris frowned at her distorted reflection in the empty wine bottle.

  ‘You’re not old at all,’ said Graham. ‘More importantly, Miss Marple never had a sidekick, did she? I prefer to think of you as Holmes. Then I can be Watson.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s much more of a compliment,’ said Iris, snapping off a third piece of chocolate and dispatching it with relish. She, too, was having far more fun than she ought to be, given that poor Dom Wetherby was dead, murdered, and her own divorce proceedings were continuing apace. If ever there were a time to be at home, sobbing into her soup, this was surely it. But instead she seemed to be spending her time pissing off senior police officers, coming within a whisker of being arrested and now happily flirting with a rich, handsome, single man. Dom Wetherby would definitely have approved.

  ‘So Cant thinks it was Billy too?’ Graham clarified, relieving Iris of the chocolate.

  ‘Yup. He’s everybody’s favourite suspect,’ said Iris. ‘Cant’s clearly going to waste weeks trying to pin it on Billy.’

  ‘But we’re ruling him out?’

  Iris nodded. ‘I think so, yes. It’s just too unlikely.’

  ‘Good,’ said Graham. ‘Agreed. So what’s our next line of inquiry?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Iris sipped her wine contemplatively. ‘I’d like to know more about Rachel Truebridge. She was here the night before and might have stayed in the area. It was clear at the drinks party that she and Dom weren’t the best of friends.’

  ‘Yes, I’d like to know more about her, too. Although she wouldn’t be number one on m
y hit list.’

  ‘Oh?’ Iris cocked her head curiously. It was so adorable it took all of Graham’s willpower not to lean in and kiss her then and there.

  ‘What about our friend from the other night?’ he said. ‘Harry Masters.’

  ‘The piano teacher?’ Iris looked sceptical. ‘Really?’

  ‘Why not? We know he had a long-standing grudge against Dom. Something to do with village politics.’

  ‘The chairmanship of the parish council, yes,’ said Iris. ‘Dom stole it from him, apparently. But that’s hardly a motive for murder.’

  ‘I disagree,’ said Graham. ‘Small resentments, carefully nursed and cherished, can grow into obsessional loathing. I’ve seen it in court, more times than you can imagine. One minute you’re bickering over a hedge and the next somebody’s plunged a pair of clippers into your sternum.’

  Iris frowned again. It was hard to see sweet old Harry as the type.

  ‘What if he’s having an affair with Ariadne?’ Graham went on. ‘That’s motive.’

  Again Iris’s instinct was to reject the idea. Harry was too old, too sexless. On the other hand, even before the party she’d heard the bitterness and resentment with which Harry spoke about Dom and the admiration, bordering on adoration, he seemed to feel for his enemy’s wife. And Harry and Ariadne had looked close the other night. Yes, they’d been arguing, but from a distance at least their encounter had looked a lot more like a lovers’ tiff than a dispute between two acquaintances.

  ‘As a local with intimate knowledge of Mill House and its grounds, Harry would have had ample opportunity, both to plan and to execute.’ Graham looked at Iris and, without thinking, placed a hand on her knee. ‘He’d make my suspect list.’

  Mine too, thought Iris. Although shamefully her mind had already begun to wander away from Harry Masters and into an intense consideration of how good (and how terrible) it would be for Graham’s hand to start moving upwards.

  She swallowed, and found her throat was horribly dry all of a sudden.

  ‘OK,’ she croaked. ‘I’ll talk to Harry tomorrow.’

  There was a moment – or perhaps she’d imagined it? – when the closeness between her and Graham felt so intense it was almost palpable. When he took back his hand, Iris half expected to see its imprint permanently branded on her skin. I’ve grown unused to intimacy, she thought sadly. I can’t read the signs anymore.

  ‘I’d better go.’ Graham stood up and Iris felt a wave of loss and regret wash over her. ‘I’m leaving for Edinburgh in the morning.’

  ‘In the morning? I thought you were staying longer?’ Iris hated the disappointment in her voice.

  ‘I was, but my trial date got moved up,’ said Graham. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be back down here soon to check in with the family. And to hear how your sleuthing’s getting on.’ He smiled, and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘The police might have solved it by then,’ said Iris, forcing herself to sound cheerful.

  ‘Somehow I doubt it,’ said Graham. ‘Stay in touch, Iris.’

  She closed the door behind him, leaning back on it heavily as soon as he’d gone.

  ‘I will,’ she murmured to herself. I shouldn’t. But I will.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Harry Masters closed his eyes and pulled the pillow over his head to block out the noise of the church bells.

  Five peals. Five o’clock in the morning.

  Harry had lived at Church Cottage for more than twenty years now and had long since learned to tune out the bells during the night. But recently his sleep had been so fitful and fractured, he’d begun waking on the hour and then struggled to fall back off again. Perhaps, unconsciously, he was resisting sleep, afraid of returning to the nightmares that had haunted him ever since Christmas Day. The ghoulish image of Dom Wetherby’s drowned face, his cruel, taunting eyes rolled up to just the whites. Harry himself, trapped in a glass box in which the water was rising, unable to escape, scrabbling frantically at the smooth closed lid. Ariadne beyond the glass, coolly passive, watching him drown. When he awoke from these dreams, Harry wasn’t sweating, like people did in films. Instead, it was as if every ounce of moisture had been sucked out of him. His mouth and throat felt painfully dry, his skin burned, and his eyes stung, devoid of tears, yet still full of the horrors of the night.

  He rolled over, daring sleep to reclaim him, but as the first thin rays of dawn started streaking the sky, he realised the attempt was futile. Night was over. He may as well get up.

  After his usual breakfast of two crumpets with marmalade and a large mug of very sweet tea, followed by a couple of peaceful hours pottering about in the garden – in Harry’s youth, the Hampshire soil had been frozen solid in January, but these days the winters were so mild there was no excuse not to get out and dig – he felt revived enough to wander up the hill and buy a paper. He saw at once that the Mail was back on the Wetherby murder story in its usual tasteless way and was running an interview with some raddled old slapper claiming to be a former mistress of Dom’s. Curious, but too angry to buy it (Harry Masters wasn’t about to put another penny in the pocket of these greedy, shameless journalists, trying to make entertainment out of tragedy), he opted for the Guardian instead, hurrying back home before the heavens opened.

  Iris Grey, Ariadne’s artist tenant, was coming to see him this morning at nine, to talk about starting piano lessons. Harry had explained over the phone that he was retired now and rarely, if ever, took new pupils. But she’d offered to do a free sketch for him in return – a portrait, if he wanted it, or a picture of his beloved garden – and Jim Agnew, Harry’s friend from the bowling club, had convinced him to accept.

  ‘She’s had exhibitions in famous London galleries, you know, Harry. And this portrait she’s doing of Dom is bound to be big news, especially since the murder. She’s up and coming, Iris Grey. This sketch might be worth a fortune in five years’ time.’

  Harry Masters wasn’t really interested in fortunes. But he had other reasons for making an exception in Iris’s case. Living at Mill Cottage, she must see Ariadne every day. He could resist indulging in the latest gossip from the Daily Mail, but Harry needed to know what was really going on up at Mill House.

  Luckily, almost as soon as she arrived, Iris seemed happy to talk about it. In fact, she barely mentioned the piano at all.

  ‘It’s nice to get out of the house for a bit,’ she told Harry, removing a thick, fluffy duffel-coat-cum-cardigan that swamped her tiny figure and hanging it on the back of Harry’s front door. Underneath it, she wore black trousers tucked into boots and a black sweater that made her look like a diminutive cat burglar. ‘The telly crews all left yesterday morning and we thought – hoped – they’d gone for good. But they’re all back today, worse luck. Like some awful rash you can never quite get rid of.’

  Harry shook his head angrily. ‘It’s because of the Daily Mail interview.’ He told Iris about this morning’s piece by ‘one of Dom Wetherby’s tarts. This one was from decades ago.’ He made it sound as if there were hundreds of other women rattling around in Dom’s past. Perhaps there were, but Iris found it odd that someone like Harry Masters would be privy to that sort of information.

  ‘As if her opinion’s remotely relevant to the case, or to anything,’ Harry added bitterly. ‘I think it’s shameful the way these people harass poor Ariadne in her own home. The police should do something about it. They should move them on.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Iris, who’d been wondering how, exactly, she was going to steer the conversation with Harry around to the Wetherbys when he helpfully did it for her. ‘Although I’m afraid I’ve rather lost my faith in the police since all this happened. They’ve been useless.’

  ‘Really?’ Harry threw another log into the woodburner, which was already crackling away merrily. His cottage struck Iris as cosy and charming up to a point, although it could have used a woman’s touch. Weeks’ worth of newspapers remained in piles on the table and windowsills, still not jettisoned
, and the fake plastic flowers gathering dust in a vase on the bookcase spoke of a life with more than its fair share of loneliness. Church Cottage was also very much a modest home, containing nothing of any real value as far as Iris could see. Being here, in Harry Masters’ private space, she could imagine how profoundly his feelings must have been hurt when a rich, famous, glamorous man like Dom Wetherby swept into town and ‘robbed’ him of his parish council position. Dom, who had everything, had casually stolen something precious from Harry, who had nothing. I’d hate him too, Iris thought.

  ‘In what way?’ Harry asked, still talking about the Hampshire Constabulary and its failings.

  ‘Well, apart from the press siege at the Mill, which is miserable to live with, as far as I can tell they’re not doing much actually to solve Dom’s murder,’ said Iris.

  ‘I’m surprised,’ said Harry cynically. ‘It seems to me people are as obsessed with Dominic Wetherby in death as they were in life. Haven’t the police devoted many resources to the investigation?’

  ‘Oh, there are tech teams there and forensics and God knows what.’ Iris told Harry briefly about the focus on Ariadne’s sculpting shed as the likely source of the chloroform used to drug Dom. She scanned his face for a reaction, but there was none. ‘They put on a good show for the media,’ Iris went on. ‘But Cant, the fellow in charge, seems convinced that Billy Wetherby did it. He’s determined to cobble together enough evidence to charge him.’

  This time, the change in Masters was clear. His face went from ruddy to ashen, and Iris was fairly sure that she saw his hands start to shake, although it became harder to tell once he started wringing them together.

  ‘Poor Ariadne! Poor, poor Ariadne,’ he muttered, pacing the room and shaking his head with evident distress. ‘She lives for those boys. Loves them unconditionally. Even Billy, who treats her terribly badly. If any of her sons were to be charged with Dom’s murder, I don’t think she’d survive it. Truly I don’t.’

  ‘Do you think one of the boys might have done it, though?’ Iris asked, casting a line out across the water.