He was interrupted by the sound of three knocks on wood followed by a cough.
He turned. It was the outside search team leader standing in the open doorway.
‘Sorry to interrupt, sir. Just to say that we’ve finished, and we haven’t found anything. There was only old farm junk and garden tools in there . . . didn’t look as if it had been disturbed for years. We’ve put everything back as it was and closed all the doors.’
‘Right, lad,’ Angel said. ‘Did you break or damage anything?’
He grinned. ‘No, sir. Nothing of any value there to break.’
‘Right, lad. Thank you very much. Pack up here then, return to the station and report back to Inspector Asquith.’
‘Yes, sir,’ he said. He saluted and went out.
As he left, the inside team leader arrived. His eyebrows were raised. ‘We might have found something of interest, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure.’
Angel looked up. His eyes brightened. Was this what he had been waiting for? ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘I’ll take a look. Lead the way.’
The man went out of the study, along the hall to the room at the back of the house next to the kitchen. Angel followed trying to contain his excitement.
‘Well, sir, there’s a sort of big scullery tacked onto the building at the back. You would have to go through it to come in by the back door.’
‘Yes,’ Angel said. ‘I know. What about it?’
‘In a cupboard in there, there are a lot of pills and medication and stuff. Amongst it, we’ve come across a big bottle of ethanol and a paper bag containing saltpetre. Now there was a burglary report in recently about those two items.’
‘There was, lad.’
‘The scullery has a big old table in the middle and working surfaces all round,’ the officer said, as they made their way into the room. ‘And under them are cupboards. Most of the cupboards contain old pans and cooking utensils, but one cupboard is full of what looks like surgical instruments, long needles to give injections, packs of cotton wool, lint and other similar things . . . the sort of kit they use in hospitals. Then there are also packets and bottles of various drugs and stuff I’ve never heard of.’
The scullery had big windows on three sides, which made it light and airy, and as Angel looked at the scrubbed down table in the middle of the room, it reminded him of pictures he had seen of hospital operating theatres of years ago.
On the table was a large, brown-glass bottle with the handwritten word ‘Ethanol’ on a plain white label stuck on it. Next to that was a paper bag similarly labelled but with the word ‘Saltpetre’.
Angel didn’t touch the items, but he looked at them closely. He noticed that the bottle was about half-full and that the paper bag had been opened and resealed with sticky tape.
He nodded then reached into his pocket and took out his mobile. He opened it and tapped in a number. It was to DS Taylor.
‘Hello, Don. I’m at Ephemore Sharpe’s farm at the end of Ashfield Road. Drop everything and bring yourself here.’
Taylor instantly sensed Angel’s excitement. ‘On my way, sir.’
He closed the phone, pushed it into his pocket and turned back to the officer. ‘Now, lad, where did you find them?’ he said.
‘They were in there, sir,’ the man said, pointing to a cupboard beneath a worktop area.
The doors were wide open and Angel squatted down and looked inside. He could see packets of drugs and bottles of medicines and chemicals, as well as kidney dishes, glass flasks, glass piping and rubber paraphernalia.
He stood up, turned to the man and said, ‘Right, lad. Well done. Leave these two items here. Put everything else back as it was. Thank your team for me, then pack up and report back to Inspector Asquith.’
‘Right, sir,’ he said.
The constable threw up a salute, closed the cupboard doors and went out. ‘Right, lads, pack up, let’s go,’ he called as he went out.
Angel looked out of the scullery windows across the garden to the field beyond and the stream near where the two dead bodies had been found. He rubbed his chin and wrinkled his nose. He wasn’t pleased. The search may have exposed a thief but he was looking for something far more crucial. Where did Ephemore Sharpe keep the wild cat? The question went over and over in his mind.
Then he heard men’s boots down the hall, the sound of voices, then the front door was opened and closed several times, then eventually, silence.
There were just the two constables in the garden with the heat-seeking detector. They had not yet reported to him. He went out of the house through the scullery door and down a path along the side of the house to the garden. The two policemen were not immediately visible. He looked round for them. They were among some bushes at the bottom of the garden. One of the men was raking over a patch of earth. The other was standing by with a spade. On the ground, to one side, he could see the silver-coloured handle of the detector. His immediate reaction was that they must have found something. He took in a lungful of air and felt his heart kick into top gear. He ran up the garden. When they heard him kicking through the dry, fallen leaves, they looked up.
‘We were just about to call you, sir,’ the older man said. He pointed to the area at his feet about two metres long. ‘I’ve had a strong signal for this area here. I was coming in to report it.’
Angel felt his pulse banging away. ‘All right, lads,’ he said. ‘Dig away.’
He intended staying with the dig until the search was completed, but he heard a motor vehicle arrive followed by a door slamming. He wondered if it was Taylor.
‘I’ll see who this is,’ he said. ‘Back in a minute.’
He went down the garden and followed the path to the front door. It was Don Taylor and he was carrying a big black bag. Angel was pleased to see him. He took him through to the scullery and showed him the ethanol and the saltpetre.
‘I want a result on them sharpish,’ Angel said.
‘I’ll do what I can, sir,’ Taylor said. ‘But it will depend on St Magdalene’s. I may need fingerprints from them for elimination.’
‘I know. I know. Do what you can. See yourself out. Must go.’
He went back up to the top of the garden. The two men had marked out the suspect area between the bushes, with pegs an area two metres long by about sixty centimetres wide, and had started carefully to remove a few centimetres of earth.
‘It’s easy to work, sir. The ground seems to have been freshly dug over.’
‘Crack on with it. I’m not going anywhere.’
Angel stood there, watching every move.
The men worked quickly, removing a minuscule amount of soil at a time until they were working at about a depth of twelve centimetres. Then they began to reveal something black and shiny.
Angel crouched down and leaned over the find. His heart was pounding as solid as a hammer on Dartmoor rock.
It was a plastic bag, the sort commonly used for household refuse. The men used purpose-made brushes with long, soft bristles to remove the soil from the top of it. Then next to it was revealed another black bag, the same. They cut big inspection flaps in the bags making long incisions with a Stanley knife. The openings released the most abominable smell, indescribably strong and foul. Peeling back the flaps showed that each bag contained the remains of a dead cat.
Angel peered over the trench and had a close look at the cats’ remains. His jaw muscles tightened. He stood up and turned away. He observed that the bodies seemed to be in good condition and had plainly not been buried long. They looked as if they were asleep except that they were both baring their teeth. He knew that there was nothing illegal about killing cats, or putting them down humanely, if that’s what had happened. He couldn’t see that the find had any bearing on the case he was pursuing.
‘What do you want us to do, sir?’ one of the men said.
Angel shrugged, shook his head then wrinkled his nose.
‘There’s nothing there I can use as evidence,’ he said. ‘Y
ou’d better close up the bags, cover them with earth and put the ground back to how it was.’
‘Right, sir.’
Angel then turned and walked towards the house. He was not a happy bunny. He had expected to find evidence that would help him to make a case against Ephemore Sharpe, but she was too clever for him, or she was totally innocent of the murders.
Then he suddenly had a thought. He stopped, turned round and went back up to the site.
The two policemen looked across at him.
‘Will you humour me, lads?’ he said. ‘Seal up the bags as best you can, put them to one side, then run the machine over the same area and see if anything has been buried underneath.’
The two men looked at each other and smiled wryly. They had heard what a shrewd old fox Angel was.
They fastened up the bags roughly with sticky tape and put them over to one side, then took hold of the detector, put on the headphones and ran the detector slowly over the area.
Angel watched the constable wearing the headphones. He knew that an unusual movement of his eyes would be the tell-tale sign that he had detected something.
The heat-seeking detector team passed the machine over the area and beyond very slowly three times and eventually — regretfully — declared the ground was absolutely clear.
‘Right, lads, thank you,’ Angel said, through gritted teeth. ‘Put the ground back to how it was and make your own way back to the station.’
‘Yes, sir,’ they said.
Angel then turned away and walked slowly down through the garden. He had to consider what he was going to say to Ephemore Sharpe. He reached the house and made his way to the sitting room. The door was wide open. He stood looking into the room. Ephemore Sharpe was still in the rocking chair, no longer rocking wildly. On the table was a bottle of sherry. She was holding a glass tumbler and looking down into it. The glass was half-full. Two bright pink spots as big as the end of a truncheon glowed on her otherwise pasty white cheeks. She suddenly became aware that she was being observed. She turned and looked across at the doorway. When she saw it was Angel, her face changed. If she could have killed him with a look, he would have been dead.
‘Miss Sharpe,’ he said. ‘We’ve finished our search.’
After a few seconds she took a deep breath then said, ‘And did you find what you were looking for?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very clever.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Angel’s face changed. His eyelids lowered. The corners of his mouth were turned down. His voice dropped an octave. ‘Where do you keep it?’ he said.
‘Keep what?’
‘The cougar. The wild cat. Where do you keep it?’
She laughed. It was the forced laugh of a woman who never laughed and had had a little more to drink than she should have.
‘Huh! I thought you were that brilliant detective I’ve read about,’ she said. ‘The wonderful Inspector Angel. Always in the papers. Always gets his man. Like in the Mounties. Except in this case. It’s not a man. It’s a woman. Ha!’
He thought she might be right. He also thought that this could be the case that shattered his record.
‘You don’t deny it then,’ he said. ‘You have a wild cat hidden away?’
‘You stupid man,’ she said. ‘I have no wild cat hidden away anywhere. It would be a lovely idea, but impractical and expensive. And, by the way,’ she added, ‘do you realize that you are addressing a history teacher of over thirty-five years’ experience, and a highly respected pillar of this community? I have lived in this town all my life and so have my father and his forbears. My family have a history of serving the townsfolk in one way or another for over two hundred years without at any time being in trouble with the police. That must count for something.’
Angel didn’t believe it counted for anything. ‘Some ethanol was found in the scullery cupboard,’ he said. ‘What do you use that for?’
‘That’s my business. It has nothing to do with you.’
‘It could be used as an antiseptic, I suppose. Ethanol is pure alcohol. I suppose it could be taken for recreational purposes.’
She gasped for breath. Her red eyes stood out like those of a cartoon cat. ‘Outrageous,’ she said.
‘There’s also saltpetre. What do you use that for?’
It took her a few seconds to regain her equilibrium.
‘They are both perfectly innocent substances,’ she said. ‘It is not illegal to own either of them, is it? Mind your own business.’
‘I can only imagine that you use the saltpetre to keep fresh meat that you buy for the big cat.’
‘There you go again with this ridiculous notion that I have a wild cat hidden away somewhere.’
‘Do you have some other properties somewhere you haven’t told me about?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Where did you get these two substances?’
‘I don’t remember. They’ve been there years. Now if there’s nothing else, I have a lot to see to. You have held me up long enough. You must go.’
‘A five-litre bottle of ethanol, and a twenty-kilo paper sack of saltpetre were stolen a few days ago.’
‘This is ridiculous. I am not a thief. I don’t know anything about it.’
‘Where were you last Sunday night?’
‘Oh really. What a remarkably stupid question. Where else would I be, but in my bed?’
‘Can you prove it?’
‘I don’t have to prove it. Who do you think you’re talking to?’
‘You may have to prove it.
‘I am a spinster, Inspector, and I live here on my own; of course I can’t prove it.’
Angel was seething with anger. He searched his mind as he stood there. He wanted to ask her more questions, but there weren’t any. He wanted to charge her with something and lock her up, but there wasn’t any evidence. Up to now, it had been the waste of a morning.
‘In the absence of satisfactory replies from you, Miss Sharpe,’ he said, ‘I am impounding a bottle labelled ethanol and a brown paper bag labelled saltpetre. If they prove to be part of a consignment stolen from St Magdalene’s Hospital on the 24th/25th October last, you will be charged with breaking and entering, and burglary. Have you anything to say?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Go to hell.’
14
Angel was relieved to arrive back in the office. He picked up the phone, summoned Ahmed, then took off his coat, put it on the hook stuck onto the side of the stationery cupboard and sat down in the swivel chair.
Ahmed knocked on the door and came in. ‘You wanted me, sir?’ he said.
‘I want you to find out what properties Miss Ephemore Sharpe owns or rents besides Ashfield Lodge Farm. You can find that out from the Town Hall, Community Charge office. If you don’t get any joy there, check with the Inland Revenue and Customs. If she owns it, she’ll be paying the community charge, and if she is renting a property from somebody she’ll be paying them for it.’
‘Right, sir,’ Ahmed said and made for the door.
‘There’s something else, lad. This is also urgent. I want you to draw up a notice for the canteen notice board. It mustn’t go up in reception or anywhere where the general public can see it. I want it to say that I would be grateful if any members of the force who attended Bromersley Grammar School and were taught by Miss E. Sharpe, particularly in the years 1993 to 2003, would contact me urgently in person to assist with inquiries. Word it nicely, lad, and be polite.’
‘Right, sir,’ Ahmed said and rushed out.
A few seconds later, there was a knock at the door. It was DS Crisp.
‘Have you a minute, sir?’
Angel blinked. ‘You’ve come without me sending for you. Yes, come in. Sit down. Have you finished your inquiries into Julius Hobbs’s ex-wife?’
‘I have, sir. She’s a nice lady. Dorothea Webber. She still lives in Bromersley.’
‘She’s nice is she? You think
all women are nice.’
Crisp grinned. ‘Well, sir, she looks pretty. Nice figure and everything. She doesn’t think much of her ex.’
‘Well she wouldn’t, would she? Anyway, get on with it. Has she got an alibi for Sunday p.m. and night?’
‘She went with her father and mother to her brother’s wedding which was on Saturday afternoon in a little village church between Peterhead and Aberdeen. On Sunday morning, they went to church and then, with her father and mother they travelled down to Edinburgh by car and stayed Sunday night at the MacStewart Hotel there. Then on Monday they arrived back in Bromersley.’
‘Were you able to corroborate it?’
‘Yes, sir. I spoke with the minister of the kirk and with the manager of the MacStewart Hotel where they stayed on the Sunday night. The hotel manager gave me a physical description of her over the phone. And it was a perfect fit. Do you want me to take it any further, sir?’
‘No. That’ll do for now, Trevor. That seems to rule her out.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
Angel rubbed his chin. There was a lot to think about.
‘There’s something else, sir,’ Crisp said. ‘I was in reception, and there was a little Irish nun from St Magdalene’s Hospital —’
Angel frowned. ‘Sister Mary Clare?’
‘That’s her, sir. She’s just reported that a large bottle of iodine is missing, believed stolen, from the hospital pharmacy. She particularly asked for you, sir. I was told you were out.’
‘Iodine? The brown antiseptic stuff you put on scratches and spots?’
THE CHESHIRE CAT MURDERS an enthralling crime mystery full of twists (Yorkshire Murder Mysteries Book 18) Page 14