Just Not Cricket

by Joyce Cato

  ‘Yes. We might just have started thinking like this,’ Graham Lane said.

  ‘We’d have got there eventually too,’ Causon said sharply, glowering at his sergeant, who dragged his admiring gaze away from the attractive cook, and flushed slightly.

  ‘Of course we would, sir,’ Lane said stoutly.

  Jenny shivered. ‘Erica probably approached James with some excuse or other – maybe that she wanted to hear for herself how he had found her stepson. Maybe she told him that she needed to ask his advice about something. Either way, James would have felt no reason to fear her. Even when she led him to that quiet spot under the trees, he wouldn’t be prepared for such an attack …’ She shuddered to a halt.

  No, she just didn’t want to think about such things.

  Instead, she forced her mind onto something else, and as it always did when asked to come up with an alternative, pleasant solution, found herself conjuring up images of food.

  And that led her on to remember why she was here in the first place, and she began to think about the barbecue instead. If she could just persuade Causon that it should go ahead, she could make some proper coleslaw. She could easily whisk up some of her quick-fire mayonnaise, and she had onions and carrots and some cabbage left over from …

  ‘Miss Starling!’ She heard her name being bellowed, and jumped a little guiltily. She did, she knew, have a tendency to zone out when she was contemplating menus.

  ‘Yes? Sorry, what?’ She looked at Causon who was staring at her.

  ‘I said,’ he said between gritted teeth, obviously repeating himself (and not for the first time), ‘that we understand now why she had to kill James. But we still don’t see how she could possibly have managed to do it. She couldn’t have anticipated having to kill someone else, so she wouldn’t have brought a change of clothes with her. Besides, I myself noticed that she’s still wearing the same outfit now that she had on when I first saw her. And no doubt my sergeant,’ and here he shot a fulminating look at the innocent-faced Graham Lane, ‘who should be an editor for Vogue in his spare time, can confirm that. And yet we’ve already established that the killer of James Cluley must have got blood spattered all over their body and clothing. The medical examiner was clear about that.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Jenny Starling agreed amiably. ‘Erica must have got considerably blood-stained.’

  Causon gaped at her easy-going admission, his eyes bulging a little as he did so. It made Jenny wish that he really wouldn’t do that. He did so remind her of a startled bullfrog when he did that.

  ‘Well then… . We’ve just seen her and her husband not ten minutes ago. And she didn’t have a speck of blood on her,’ Causon huffed and puffed the sentence out, going a little red-faced as he did so.

  Clearly he was holding on to his temper by the skin of his teeth.

  ‘Oh no, she wouldn’t have,’ Jenny agreed placidly. ‘Not now, anyway.’

  ‘But she couldn’t have washed it all off in the toilets, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Graham Lane pointed out, wondering if this marvellous cook was going to let them down at the final hurdle. ‘Once we found Lorcan Greeves in there trying to do the same, the toilets were off limits.’

  ‘Oh no, Erica wouldn’t have dared to risk trying to get into the ladies’ loo,’ Jenny said at once. ‘For that, she’d have had to come in through the changing room, and neither Caroline nor Ettie could have failed to notice if she’d been covered in blood. Even if she’d somehow managed to clean her hands and face with a wet-wipe or something from her handbag, they’d still have noticed the state of her clothes. I know Erica is wearing dark trousers and a multi-coloured blouse, but they’re mostly in shades of blues and greens with splashes of white. Red or a rust-colour would have been unmistakable, seen up close. Oh no,’ Jenny shook her head emphatically. ‘Erica couldn’t have chanced anyone getting up close to her after killing James.’

  Causon looked at Lane, who looked blankly back at him and gave a shrug.

  ‘Then just where and how in hell did she clean herself up?’ Causon almost shouted in frustration.

  Jenny blinked at him. ‘Well, in the river of course. Where else?’ she said.

  To her it was perfectly obvious. The only other source of water anywhere close was the river that ran behind the field.

  ‘But … how …’ Causon began to splutter, and Jenny suddenly smacked her forehead with her palm.

  ‘Oh, sorry. Of course, I haven’t mentioned it yet, have I?’

  Causon began to growl ominously, and Jenny held up a hand.

  ‘Sorry, it really just slipped my mind. And I only talked to the old man just before we came back in here, after seeing the Rawleys, so this is literally the first opportunity I’ve had to pass it along.’

  ‘What old man?’ Causon asked suspiciously.

  ‘Well, when I realized that the only place the killer could have cleaned themselves up was in the river, I found a local, and asked him if there was any other access from the field to the river that we didn’t know about. And of course there was. Well, there had to be really, knowing how lazy human nature is,’ Jenny said pleasantly. ‘Apparently, the fishermen of the village made the short cut, so that they didn’t have to go the long way around. Don’t worry,’ she said, mistaking Causon’s blank-eyed gaze as one of scepticism. ‘He gave me clear directions to it. Apparently it’s not far down from the stand of horse chestnut trees, just where some elder bushes take over from the hawthorn, for a few yards. And it makes sense that they’d choose to go through the gap in the fence there, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It does?’ Causon echoed.

  ‘Yes. Well, they wouldn’t make a gap in the fence where there are hawthorns, would they?’ Jenny Starling pointed out sweetly. ‘It’s too prickly. They’d get scratched and their clothes would get snagged.’

  Graham Lane stepped in before his chief could blow his top quite spectacularly, which experience told him was likely to happen at any moment now. ‘You’re saying that there’s a way for someone to get through from here to the river, without going through any of the normal gates or exits?’ he clarified gently.

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny said, looking from one of them to the other with a slightly puzzled frown. Wasn’t she being clear? ‘According to the old-timer I asked, you simply pull one section of the chain-link fence along, a bit like a sliding door, and slip through. But everyone remembers to put it back again, in case the farmer has sheep in the field – it wouldn’t do to have them stray onto the sports ground. Then all you have to do is just squeeze through the elder bushes, which is quite easy apparently, and you’re in the next field, right by the river.’

  ‘That must be why our men searching for hidden clothing didn’t find it, sir,’ Lane said hastily. ‘If the chain-link fence panel was still in place, they’d have no reason to suspect that it could be moved.’

  ‘And if there was room for a person to squeeze past the elders, there must be a fairly wide space there, and one quick look through the fence would confirm that nothing had been tossed over and hidden in there,’ Jenny put in quickly. ‘So you see, your men weren’t being incompetent. You told them to look for bundled up, bloodied clothing – not a bit of a pathway through some bushes on the other side of the fence.’

  ‘Yes, yes, fine,’ Causon snapped. ‘So you’re maintaining that Erica Jones lured James Cluley to the stand of trees, killed him, used this secret short cut and cleaned up in the river? That’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why?’ Jenny asked bluntly. ‘As a villager of some years standing, she would have known all about the short cut.’

  ‘I’m not questioning that,’ Causon said wearily.

  ‘But if she’d washed up in the river, surely we’d have been able to tell.’ It was Sergeant Lane, the fashion aficionado, who made the objection. ‘I mean, she’d still have been damp for one thing.’

  ‘Would she? Really? In this heat?’ Jenny asked sceptically. ‘I don’t think so. It’s been hot enough to fry an egg on
the pavement all day. And don’t forget, the trousers Erica’s wearing are made of a very thin material – they’d dry as quick as winking. As is the top she’s got on. And as for the long, floating blouse over that, I don’t think she was even wearing that when she killed James. But even if she had been, in this heat, every stitch she had on would have dried in twenty minutes easily. Half an hour max.’

  Lane slowly nodded, realizing she was right.

  ‘Why don’t you think she was wearing her blouse?’ Causon asked, a bit distracted.

  Jenny sighed. ‘Now, I was a bit slow there,’ she admitted, looking abashed.

  ‘Before we went to talk to the Rawleys, I noticed Erica walking past the kitchen window, and that she had taken her long-sleeved blouse off, and draped it over one arm. I remembered thinking at the time that she obviously couldn’t be that worried about getting sunburned anymore. But I didn’t follow the thought through to its logical conclusion until later. She’s red-haired and fair skinned. Of course she’d have got sunburned. Now, of course, I realize what she must have been doing.’

  ‘Which was?’ Causon asked.

  ‘Going to meet James Cluley – with the sharpened cricket stump hidden by her hanging blouse,’ Jenny said flatly. ‘If you think about it, it’s decidedly odd that nobody noticed somebody walking around with a bizarre object like a broken cricket stump in their hand, isn’t it? It’s not as if it’s the sort of thing that you can shove into a pocket or fit into your handbag.’

  ‘I suppose you could stick it down your trousers,’ Lane said. Then promptly wished he hadn’t, when both of them looked at him in amusement.

  ‘Er, yes, maybe,’ Jenny said, trying to spare his blushes. ‘But I think holding it along your forearm, and hiding it with a piece of clothing would be easier.’

  ‘She truly thought of everything, didn’t she?’ Causon mused bitterly. ‘Considering that she had to make it up as she went along. I presume you think that she had planned to kill Tris long beforehand?’ He shot the question suddenly at Jenny.

  The cook shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. She might have had the idea in the back of her mind for some time.’ This was as far as she was willing to go, when it came to guessing whether or not Tris’s murder had been premeditated. After all, Erica could just as easily have thought it up on the spur of the moment. She was clearly good at improvising.

  ‘Anyway – to get back to James’s murder. I think that when she got to the stand of trees, she’d have been careful to leave the blouse to one side,’ Jenny said. ‘That way, after she’d … done what she had to do, she’d have been able to slip the blouse back on over her bloodied top and at least hide some of the bloodstains from view, if she’d been unlucky enough to meet anyone else roaming around up there. But nearly everyone was congregated down here, where all the action was, and wouldn’t have had any reason to be up the top end of the field. Whatever, she was just lucky that, in the event, no one seems to have noticed her. And don’t forget, she knew that the short cut through the fence wasn’t that far away from the trees, which is another good reason for luring James in there.’

  Graham Lane frowned. ‘But why, if she’d made her way out of the grounds undetected, didn’t she just go home and wash up there?’

  ‘Because she couldn’t risk walking through the village in her bloodstained clothes in case she was seen,’ Jenny said. ‘There was no guarantee that the village would be deserted. Not everyone loves cricket, and people walk their dogs or go out in their cars. And if she’d been seen going past by anyone who happened to be out in their garden or something, you’d have found out about it when you did your house-to-house interviews later.’

  ‘Yes, and she didn’t have a lot of time, either,’ Causon ruminated. ‘She’d want to get herself and her clothes clean as quickly as possible, and get back in sight of witnesses here in the playing field as soon as possible.’

  ‘OK, that makes sense,’ Lane agreed. ‘So the river it had to be. She kills James Cluley, runs down to the river, washes her clothes, hangs them out to dry on the bushes, bathes herself and then returns back here as bold as brass.’

  ‘Yes. And of course, she tried to minimize the risk of anybody figuring out what she’d done, by dousing herself in perfume,’ Jenny added.

  ‘Perfume?’ Causon repeated.

  Jenny nodded. ‘Yes. When we came back from interviewing the Rawleys, she was just getting back from the river herself. And I noticed that when she came back into the pavilion, she used far too much perfume. A lady only needs to use a few dabs, anything more is a bit … well … naff.’ Jenny struggled to explain this bit of feminine etiquette to the big and burly policeman. ‘It struck me as odd, and not something that someone with Erica’s finesse would ever do. Even Caroline and Ettie noticed it. But of course, what she was trying to do was disguise any lingering odour of river-water that she might have had coming from her skin or clothes.’

  ‘Ah.’ Causon nodded. ‘Yes. The rivers around here are relatively clean, but even so …’

  ‘Yes. Washing yourself and your clothes in it isn’t something you’d do by choice. Especially in a field where the farmer keeps sheep.’ Jenny grimaced fastidiously. ‘But, looking on the bright side, at least that’ll help prove that she did it,’ she pointed out. ‘I mean, don’t rivers have bits of weed, and diatoms and whatnot, as well as their own unique individual chemical make-up or whatever? It shouldn’t be a hard task for your forensics lab to confirm that her clothes had been washed in it, right?’

  She looked at Graham Lane and smiled.

  ‘And she’s going to have a very hard time explaining why she dunked her thousand pound outfit in river water, isn’t she?’

  Causon began to grin.

  ‘And Erica’s shoes aren’t leather, but those fabric-type ballet pumps, so they’ll probably have traces of river water and mud on them as well, no matter how clean they might look to the naked eye,’ Jenny pointed out brightly. ‘Then there’s her nails to consider.’

  Causon heaved another portentous sigh. ‘Nails? As in fingernails?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny said. ‘You might have noticed that she’s had a manicure very recently, and her nails painted bright red. But when I came in here just now, she was sitting in her deckchair, rather vigorously filing one of her nails. Now, no woman would do that unless they absolutely had to, because it would ruin the look and symmetry of them,’ Jenny explained, and Graham Lane was already nodding in perfect understanding.

  No doubt his wife had taught him all about the importance of maintaining lovely nails.

  ‘So she must have broken a nail during her attack on James,’ Lane confirmed her reasoning. ‘Or when she was preparing the broken cricket stump to be used as a weapon.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny said grimly. ‘Murder can be … well, murder on your manicure, it seems.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Causon butted in. ‘I’m not so sure that a broken nail is going to add much to the evidence against her – but as for the rest. Yes, you’ve convinced me we’ve got enough to take it to the CPS. Sergeant, get on the phone and arrange for an arrest warrant for our Lady Jones. If her Ladyship thinks she’s got away with murder, she’s going to have to think again.’

  Ten minutes later, Jenny was standing outside the pavilion, watching a violently cursing Erica Jones being helped into a police car. Her husband, white-faced and ominously silent, watched the proceedings stoically.

  As expected, the Lady of the Manor had vigorously denied all the charges put to her, and had instantly demanded the services of a first-class solicitor. No one was in any doubt that she’d get one. She was just the sort of woman who would know high-flying QCs and had probably been the hostess at her husband’s business parties where top-notch legal people abounded.

  But Sergeant Lane, sitting beside her in the back of the police car, doubted that even the best legal brains in the country would do her much good. Now that they knew where to look, he was confident that the forensics evidence alone would nail her s
uperior and snooty hide to the wall.

  Causon was standing at the entrance to the car park, watching the police car depart, a beneficent smile for once wreathing his face. And Jenny, now that all that other business had been attended to, realized that she had something very important to ask him. And since he was obviously in such a good mood, now was the perfect time to do it.

  She approached him with a wide smile.

  The crates of beer that Caroline’s husband had bought were still nestling in the shade under the pavilion, and the barbecues wouldn’t take long to set up. It would be light for another hour or so yet, but the sports fields had flood-lighting anyway, so that hardly mattered.

  She could almost hear the sizzle of meat and the scent of her best-recipe barbecue sauce floated like a tantalizing culinary phantasm somewhere out in the ether.

  ‘You know, Inspector,’ she began wheedling gently, ‘you’ve all been working so hard, you must be starving. And I’ve got all this food for the barbecue supper just waiting to be used—’

  Causon shot her a quick, scandalized look. ‘No,’ he interrupted her flatly. ‘This is still an active crime scene. I can’t have you cooking up a barbecue for Pete’s sake. I’m already in hot water with the powers that be.’

  ‘Oh I know, but I’ve had a word with someone on the committee, and they have no objection to using the food to feed you and your men. And since you’re still doing a lot of interviewing, some of the spectators will be getting hungry, too and don’t you have some sort of obligation to see that witnesses are fed?’