Goosey Goosey Gander

by Frank Edwards

  Sheldrake (Handsome, WWT Martin Mere)

  “Mr Reed?”

  “Oh, him! I wouldn’t waste your time worrying about him. He’s out of the picture. Never stood a chance, especially once Svetlana and I got the backing of the Hungarian Embassy. The promise of funding and practical support gave us the opening we needed.”

  “You said that you wished you had gone to see him at work that morning. You didn’t. Where were you?”

  “On the way to London. With Svetlana. To the Embassy. I should have made that clear. That’s why I didn’t hear of Alan’s death until later. Mobile phones are something between a blessing and a curse, aren’t they.”

  Hole realised that he was not going to get much further. So did Davis. Maitland took up the last line of their planned approach.

  “You’ve told us of your partnership arrangement with your brother,” he began. Ms Garland looked as though she was about to veto the topic. She leant forward, her gold-topped pen vibrating with concern at what next to note. Maitland moved carefully on.

  “It is not our business to query its standing in law”, he said, to the partial easement of the solicitor, “but can I, once again please, clarify when this agreement between you was made. Before or after what you now tell us was the guarantee of support from the, I take it, Hungarian Government?”

  “After. I’m not ashamed of that. I told Alan. It was a way, as he could see, to ensuring the underpinning of his scheme. Family ties apart, Hungarians have quite a few ducks themselves, you know, and provide a number of our annual bird migrants in addition to the human ones.”

  This last sally eased the tension somewhat even if, Hole had to acknowledge inwardly, it rather closed off any further progress. For now. Something, some vital piece of evidence directly linking Galina – or, he now had to admit, someone else – with the killings was missing. But what? He couldn’t see where anything new, anything strikingly additional, was going to come from. With reluctance, he worked his way, mainly by platitudes, eked out by courtesies and appreciation for both their times, to an end. He was not looking forward to the debriefing session with Davis that would now have to follow. This was not because he feared the man’s criticism, even though he felt that he might have conducted the interview to better effect, but that despite their efforts it seemed they were no more than back at square one. Galina was convincing in her way. She had not been at the site of the first killing; she had never had or even seen the murder weapon; she had been unobservant at the second site; and, she claimed, not only had she made a verbal financial agreement with her brother Alan, but had also agreed with him to allow room in the grounds for a Hungarian cultural centre. If Jeremy had no sympathy with the land of his forefathers it would appear that Alan had. And had stood to benefit from it. Oh dear! Who would envy the lot of the investigating policeman?

  When, after more semi-grovelling and profuse thanks for the time and help given, the two dominant ladies had left, Davis went direct to the core of the matter as he then saw it.

  “Where now? I saw her as something of a sitting duck, I suppose. Didn’t we all? Now what? Alibis to be checked, for sure, but not much give, was there?”

  “Maitland will be on to that alibi for the morning of Alan’s killing without delay, sir. Easy enough to confirm if Mrs Foxley and Mrs Lakatos did arrive at the Hungarian embassy, and at what time. But by which train? There’s a chance we might find a witness to their journey. Shared the same train. Same coach? Who knows. Even a great London taxi driver from Paddington might leap to our aid. Yet I have my doubts. After Galina’s performance here, I doubt also if there will be much slack in her story. However, needs must. Set to first thing, young Douglas! Dig around all you can.”

  “Yes, Maitland. Leave no stone, and all that. There must be more to it than all this convenient amnesia and lack of knowledge. You, Digger, had better get back onto your wife’s story and that of Mr Enderby. Between them, with this yarn in mind, you might now dredge up something they have overlooked. The trail will only get colder the longer we wait. I think that will have to do for now. I’ll leave it to you. Good, traditional, old-fashioned, police footwork is what we are going to need if we are to bring this affair to a conclusion. And I am increasingly convinced, after this session, that that is exactly what we must now do. Set to, my hearties!”

  The two not-so-jolly sailor boys set forth upon the next stage of their voyages of discovery.

  While Maitland headed off railway station-wards, Hole, with the more comfortable option, went home. There, a note awaited. The equivalent of ‘Gone Fishing’. The directive, for such it was to the experienced married eye, summoned the detective to the wetlands centre. As one of his two to-be-renewed witnesses was there, Hole had neither choice nor objection. He almost turned around and set off without delay. Then, recalling the setting, and the summons to help, in some unspecified way, with the registering of the mallards, he went inside, and changed into older clothes. Throwing his gumboots on to the back seat, he set out to drive down Goose Lane.

  “You’ll know Miss Mabel Heath, of course.” As if by telepathy, Annie was in the small office when he arrived. The little old lady with her, suitably making tea but practically dressed for more arduous endeavours around the reserve, smiled and held out her hand.

  “Oh yes. I have seen the Inspector about his business many times. And we have met once or twice in Mrs Carmichael’s.”

  “And in church, of course.”

  “Of course. We are a happy band of brothers. Your detective skills are clearly on form today, Mr Hole. Tea? Freshly made, as you can see.”

  “He hasn’t earned it yet,” said Annie.

  “Oh I have! I have! Believe me.”

  “Of course we do, Mr Hole. My grandfather was a policeman, you know. I do understand something of the pressures. But that was some time ago.”

  Hole had no doubt it was. Miss Heath was well into her eighties. The age his father would have been rather than his grandfather. She was obviously of durable stuff. Small – were all vigorous old dears small in height, he wondered? Was it some genetic thing?

  “Thank you,” and turning to Annie, “You can see I’ve come dressed for the occasion. To do something. Whatever it is.”

  “I’m surprised Davis let you go,” was the somewhat tart reply. Hole let it pass. He accepted the mug of tea, and began talking with them about what it was that was going on.

  “Nearly feeding time,” added Miss Heath. “I do so love to be here then. Much more exciting in the winter, of course, with so many extra birds, but thanks to dear Alan, we’ve got quite enough residents to make it worthwhile. It always surprises me how quickly – what? A year? Not much more – he got the birds to respond to that call of his. Down they come. Four o’clock on the dot. I love it when the swans fly in to the main lake. That feet-first approach. Like the old flying boats, you know. My youngest brother flew in them during the war.”

  Hole was not quite sure whether a landing Sunderland looked much like a foot-down swan, but got the message that although he was welcome to his tea, he had better get on with the drinking of it. There was work afoot for the volunteers. He would have to wait until they got home to cross-examine his witness.

  “Off we go!” and little Miss Heath strode forth in a manner that brooked no holding back by the others. “The food store is this way. So good of Mrs Foxley to keep up the supply. Without any customers we would have been very pushed. Mrs White has said that she will do all she can to speed the re-opening.”

  “Once the legal niceties are sorted out, I am sure the business can soon reopen its gates. Mrs Foxley had a verbal agreement with her brother but sadly, because of the timing of his killing, no written one. Hence the hold up. But I’m here to help in the work now. Lead on!” And the two women continued to do just that.

  Hole found the feeding of the birds a calming experience. As he watched his two female companions – they shared shifts with the other helpers – he looked across to the bank where Farmer s
aid he was on the morning Alan Tewkes was killed. Gazing over the reed beds that Alan Tewkes loved so much and had put so much of his later life into, he began to sense, creeping into his mind, a new insight into how that murder death had come about. A sort of pattern of certainty began to wrap itself around him at the sight of the birds, diving and ducking as they sought the seeds thrown in with gusto by Miss Heath and Annie. Newcomers or residents, neither showed fear or hesitation. Once one started, they all splashed in. When Mabel Heath went right down to the waterside with feed in her hand, the bolder came and took it. She stooped low to their level without apparent problem, as the geese came to her.

  “Well, she’s already so near the ground,” Annie said, with a smile, when they had got back home, “and she sees all she does as a well deserved tribute to the pioneer’s work.”

  “I didn’t know the old lady was so keen.”

  “Oh yes. From the start really. She was always willing to help. Pull that barge, lift that bale. That sort of thing, but didn’t need asking. Cheerfully willing to volunteer. To be honest, I think Alan found her a bit of an encumbrance at times. Always around. At his elbow. Getting in the way, if the truth be told, on occasions, but with a heart of gold and an untiring energy. Just the sort of backing he needed in starting off the whole project. She wouldn’t hear a word against it or against him. Sang his praises loud and clear to all and sundry. It was largely through her that the RSPB got involved. She is an active member of theirs. As she’s of the church.”

  “Does she do flowers?” asked Hole, as he saw a way to lead into what must be his required re-examination of his wife’s recollections of the day of the Bracegirt death.

  Chapter Thirty

  ry as he might, and try as she did, nothing further of any significance came out of Annie’s memory searching.

  “She was just normal, Gerald. Calm and efficient as usual. I can’t see her dashing out, shooting Den, chucking the gun into a passing train, and strolling back in to talk to me about the placing of the final bits of greenery. I just can’t. If that’s what your Chief Davis is thinking, he’s barking up the wrong tree. The wrong rose tree,” she added with a grin.

  Enderby was no more help. He went over his thesis of the gambolling school kids, but he had seen nothing.

  “Indeed, Inspector, until I got right up to the graveside and looked in, I didn’t know for sure that anyone was actually there, working on it.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Den’s coat, his jacket, lying around on top, maybe? A thermos flask, perhaps? Something that would have given you a clue that someone was down the hole.”

  “I’m sorry. Inspector. I really am. But, no. There was nothing. Nothing to see. Just that sound, which I took to come from the bank side, if not from a fallen gravestone.” He suddenly brightened. “Ah! Here’s a thought. Could it have been his shovel hitting a rock that I heard?”

  “Not if he was already dead.”

  “No. I suppose not. Nothing then, sorry, to tell that he was down there.”

  Hole could bring forth nothing new. He anticipated a difficult meeting with Davis. With any luck, Maitland would have turned something up. He certainly hoped so.

  Lying in bed that night he found his mind going over the same ground again and again but, this time, with an increasingly unexpected backdrop, a sort of subliminal commentary to the mainstream script that he was for ever rehearsing. In this scenario, he kept seeing Miss Heath, down on her haunches feeding the bolder of the birds. And the lake, calm except where the feeding birds disturbed it, stretching across to Farmer’s fields. He wanted to wake Annie and ask her about it, although to what end he couldn’t envisage. So he didn’t. Just kept seeing the little figure and that far bank. Pointless speculation! He forced himself to let go for fear of arriving yawning at the Chief Super’s office in the morning. Gave himself, instead, to the blissful thought that all had been solved, he had been praised and allowed to retire on full pension, and he was now about to take over as the manager of the Tewkes Memorial Wetland Reserve. He hoped the volunteers would be there to help him get the venture going once more, as they had been at the start for Alan.

  Hole woke early. Scarcely daylight. Annie slept on. It was no good. His brain would not rest content in a dream of a riparian future. He eased his way out of the bed and, wrapped in his ‘little boy’ dressing gown, the braided waist cord tied firmly against the still cool hour, he sat himself down in the kitchen and, with no attempt at refreshment, began to codify his dreamy imaginings onto paper. To clarify what was forming ever more positively in his mind. By the time Annie came down, he was surrounded by stray sheets of notes. She, knowing him, said nothing, but got on with the job of providing their usual breakfast of fruit juice, tea and toast. These Digger accepted with thanks, but distracted thanks. His thoughts were concentrated on his homework. She took the opportunity to match him, and finish off marking the few workbooks of Year Six left over from the previous day. By the time she came to leave for school, her husband was onto the consolidation phase. Tidying up his more random scrawlings into a coherent pattern.

  “I’ve got an hour yet before Maitland calls,” he told her. “See you about the usual time I expect.”

  Annie made no comment, collected her books, and headed off, via Mrs Carmichael’s, to pick up the paper and milk. She knew that Detective Inspector Gerald Hole was unlikely to remember where the shop was leave alone any item required when he was in one of his ‘fact-marshalling’ moods. None the less, she had every hope that Davis would find all this preparation of value. Great value.

  On arrival, the two detectives went straight up to the Chief Super’s office. They were on time. He gave the impression that he wished they had been early. That he had been waiting for them with some impatience. He wanted to know what they had found to add to the body of evidence that had so far built up. He found little to please him in what, at first, Hole had to tell him.

  “Annie can’t add anything, sir. She could only reinforce the picture of a well-composed woman carrying out a floral decoration scheme calmly and regularly. Nothing untoward at all. Nor did Enderby help. Except in one minor matter which I shall have to check with Mrs Foxley.”

  “And I hope that won’t be long! I want to see her again. May take on the interview lead myself. No criticism, Digger! Just that a fresh approach may break her story.” Hole did not reply to that, but went on:

  “The only discrepancy, and I’ll admit it’s a flimsy one, is that Enderby insists that he saw no one. More. He saw no sign of anyone working at the grave. He claims that it was not until he looked down into the excavation that he realised Bracegirt was there. Now, and it is flimsy as I say, but I’m pretty sure that Galina Foxley said that when she cut the branches from the Guelder Rose she knew Den was there because she saw his coat hanging up. Why should a coat disappear?”

  Davis did not seem inclined to give a great deal of thought to that conundrum. Certainly not at that moment. He turned to Maitland for his rail report.

  “Could have done it, sirs,” he began. “Plenty of trains from Gloucester to London in the morning. There is no doubt that the two women arrived at the Hungarian Embassy in proper time for an eleven o’clock appointment. Now, allowing the time to get from the wetlands to Gloucester station after the killing” – Davis nodded his appreciation of this positive thinking – “then they could have caught the seven thirty-five to Paddington. Gets them in nicely at nine thirty.”

  “Are you sure of that?” asked Hole. “Tightish, surely?”

  “So so. The one before is the half past six. Now that would have been tight this end, taking it that Mrs Foxley, if not the other, had to come from the scene of the shooting. The one after, the quarter past eight, doesn’t get to London, assuming it’s on time, until just before half past ten. That would be too late to plan to be at Eaton Place for eleven o’clock. Assuming they got a taxi right away at Paddington, and that’s a big ‘if’ in my experience
, they could never be sure of getting through the traffic. They might have managed it, but I really don’t believe they would dare plan on it. And they were in comfortable time at the Embassy. The Under Secretary was firm on that.”

  “Were they seen at Gloucester station?” asked the Chief Super. “Anyone recognise them?”

  Maitland’s confident manner faded.

  “Not as yet. Nobody’s come forward. We’re not giving up. Early days. There’s plenty of time to ask. Uniform are concentrating on the regular users of the seven thirty-five. Those two women would have been fairly distinctive, but, again, it’s a busy service. That doesn’t mean we’ll overlook the other trains, but that’s the one that best fits. At both ends.”

  The three considered this story for a while. So far as it went it did no more than confirm Galina’s story. She and her companion were about their cultural business in London on the day her brother had been shot. Most helpful!

  Davis sent for coffee. It came as they chatted. None of them seemed either able to move things on or bring the session to a close. The Detective Inspector ran the train times jigsaw around in his head, and checked more than once with his Sergeant the implications of his report. Had he timed it from the wetlands to Gloucester station? Were enquiries being made at Paddington as well as at Gloucester? Of course there were many more passengers going through London! but in these days of terror alerts, station staff and taxi drivers there were being more observant than of yore. Or so he had been led to believe. But what to believe now? He decided to take a lead.

  Hole cleared his throat in a deliberately dramatic manner. Amateur dramatics, maybe, but all the more effective in putting him centre stage.

  “If I may, sir, I would like to present a review that I think will show us just how these two murders were carried out.” The statement had its effect. Davis drank the last of his coffee, leaned back in his chair, and said: