‘What we’re looking for,’ advised Mark, ‘is a parcel dated 1916 and marked either “Murders” or “Crime Reports” or “Unsolved Crimes”. It might even be marked with some other title, but if it’s here, I want it. I could have asked a constable to search, but I want to be sure, I want to do it myself, then I know it’s been done properly.’
‘I’m going to be covered in dust when I get out of here!’ she grumbled. ‘My hair will be awful…’
‘Then we’ll have to arrange a shower for you,’ he grinned. ‘And for me! So, Lorraine, isn’t this a lovely way of spending your day off?’
‘I could think of better ones,’ and she sneezed violently.
Chapter Five
Lorraine found the parcel. Clearly marked ‘Crimes, Rainesbury Division, 1916’, it was about two feet high, and the length and width of foolscap paper. Smothered in the dust of three-quarters of a century, it was wrapped in thick brown paper and tied with strong twine. Gingerly, she untied the knots to reveal the contents — scores of foolscap files in brown covers. Sitting on the top was a tattered buff file jacket marked ‘Murder of James Reuben Hartley’. In red ink, it bore the word ‘Unsolved’ across the front and was held together with thin string. The Hartley file comprised a very thick sheaf of papers and was accompanied by several bulky brown envelopes. These had holes in the corners and they were fastened to the string which had been around the main file.
‘I could kiss you,’ beamed Mark Pemberton and so he did, planting his wet and sloppy appreciation on her dusty cheek.
‘Sir, somebody might see us…’
‘Who cares?’ he smiled. ‘So, you owe me dinner tonight!’
‘I think you knew it would be here…’
‘I didn’t know that this particular file had survived, but, well, there was a fair chance it would be among the other stuff. So I’ll buy the dinner because you found it. No arguments. Now, let’s see if everything’s here.’
He made a quick but thorough examination of the murder file, which was itself some six inches thick, and found it contained all the necessary reports — the examination of the scene, statements from witnesses and detectives, doctor’s report, pathologist’s report, coroner’s report, details of the police action, results of house-to-house enquiries and an additional file of continuation sheets from the investigating officers. They were Detective Inspector Dawson and Detective Sergeant Ripley. Those sheets spanned almost a year, but it was clear, even from a casual glance, that no arrest had been made. No suspect had been named, consequently no one had been prosecuted or convicted of this murder.
The accompanying envelopes, of differing sizes, contained various exhibits including a selection of photographs. Although unprofessional by modern standards, the photographs did show the body at the scene, the service rifle and items of James’s uniform such as his kitbag and back-pack. There were also pictures of the road leading into Rosenthorpe; the body had been found close to that road. There were pictures of a pony and trap taken from several angles and a sketch map of the scene of the crime. This showed the position of the body in relation to the road which passed by and in relation to two oak trees and a large boulder. Pemberton turned his attention to a thick envelope containing a small object and found it contained a used bullet. A note said it had been taken from the skull of James Reuben Hartley and was the cause of death.
‘It’s all here.’ He smiled with happiness. ‘What more can a fellow want? We’ll take it with us, and our teams at Thirklewood Hall can start to program this data into HOLMES instead of the Muriel Brown case. It’ll be interesting to see what a modern computer makes of a 1916 unsolved murder, won’t it?’
‘I didn’t bargain for this when I left this morning, Mark,’ she smiled, remembering to call him Mark.
‘Me neither, but that’s the way it goes. It means I’ve got something to keep me busy while I’m sitting around at Thirklewood Hall. And I’ll have a go at linking our deceased JR Hartley with Vice-President Hartley. Having seen that Hartley chap in the churchyard and the Vice-President’s photo, I’m convinced there is a family link.’
‘But what good will it do, Mark, digging up all this old material? You might rake up some skeletons that have long since been laid to rest.’ Her unease had not been appeased.
‘That’s precisely the point of a murder investigation!’ he said. ‘It might all lead to nothing, though, so let’s see what develops, shall we? Then we’ll decide what action to take.’
He refastened the string around the unwanted files, wrote upon the wrapping in ballpoint that he had taken the Hartley murder file, then dated and signed the note. Downstairs, he told PC Mason what he’d done and asked him to inform Chief Superintendent Ramsden.
Placing the file on the rear seat of his car, he said, ‘Well, Lorraine, off we go again.’
‘Where to this time, sir…er …Mark?’
‘Where is the very first place a good detective goes when investigating a crime?’ he asked.
‘To the scene?’ she replied.
‘Exactly. So it is to the scene we shall go.’
The moorland village of Rosenthorpe was set in the steep-sided valley of the River Bluewath. Once an iron-ore mining community, it was now a tourist centre with a steam railway, a folk museum, cafés and shops. Busy with trippers from Easter until September, it bore few signs of its fairly recent industrial heritage. The railway, however, was still operating, albeit in two distinct sections. One was a British Rail track running from Rainesbury to Thornborough; this carried commuters and schoolchildren from the villages into either Rainesbury or Thornborough.
The second line was the Rosenthorpe Historic Steam Railway, Rosenthorpe station being the terminus. The line ran across the moors to the market town of Drakenedge. Rosenthorpe therefore hosted two railways: one a British Rail service hauled by diesel engines, the other a tourist attraction with steam trains. It was to this station that James Hartley had come shortly before his death, and at that time, both lines were operating with steam engines.
Prior to nationalisation, both lines were owned and run by the North-Eastern Railway. The village’s iron-ore industry, which had led to the building of those railway routes in 1836, had ended around the turn of the century, but a thriving brick manufacturing works had appeared in its place. Its complex of ugly buildings had been constructed on the northern side of the railway station with rail links leading into the works. Mark was aware of this — when he was a child, those brickworks were still functioning, although they had now closed. Some derelict buildings remained while part of the old site now contained a modern housing development.
A range of stone-built cottages and fine houses adorned the hillsides while isolated houses and farms were spread along the bottom of the dale. Some tiny miners’ cottages had been converted into larger homes and there was a fine Anglican church, a Methodist chapel, two pubs, a Co-op store, a butcher’s shop and a garage. To the south of the village, there was a half-mile long tunnel which took steam trains away from the village.
‘It’s an interesting place,’ said Mark. ‘But if we park here, we can walk to the murder scene.’
He pulled into the car-park of the cricket ground where nets had been erected for both tennis and cricket practice.
A low dry-stone wall ran around the boundary to separate the ground from the undulating road. Opposite the cricket field, on the other side of the road, was some common land.
This was now thick with hawthorn trees.
Not long ago, this land had bordered the buildings, roads and railway lines of the brickworks and had been waste ground. Now it was a happy hunting ground for dogs going walkies, kids going exploring, lovers going courting and wild creatures going hunting.
‘Hartley was found somewhere in there,’ Pemberton pointed to a gap in the hawthorn hedge. ‘Come along, let’s look.’
He took the file of papers from his car and walked across the road into the common land, which covered several acres.
‘W
e’re looking for a boulder and some oak trees which were in one of the photographs,’ he told Lorraine as he turned to the photograph in question. ‘Even if the trees have gone, the boulder should still be there. It’s quite distinctive — it reminds me of a frog’s head. The trees and the boulder are shown in both the photograph of the scene and the sketch; they do pinpoint the precise location of the body.’
They refreshed their memories from several photographs and sketches, then began their search. It was far from easy — old paths had gone, and new ones had been formed; trees had grown where none had existed at the time of the murder and the disappearance of the brickworks and their waste products had surely led to some changes to the surrounding landscape. He and Lorraine wandered around for the best part of half an hour and he was about to call it off when he noticed the rock.
It was standing on the very edge of the modern road, almost completely hidden by the hawthorn hedge, but there was no sign of any oak trees.
‘It’s smaller than I thought.’ Mark examined it. ‘But it’s definitely the one in that old photograph, there’s a very distinctive mark or indentation there, to the right.’
One brown and slightly faded photograph showed the boulder in the left foreground, which made its size difficult to judge; the body of James Hartley lay behind it, his shoulders partially obscured by the bulk of that rock. The bottom of his legs, clad in puttees and army boots, protruded towards the right of the photograph and he lay on his back with his feet slightly apart and his arms outstretched. The background contained the two oak trees and they appeared to be growing out of a hedge. They were to the right of the photograph. The hedge contained other smaller trees and the ground upon which the corpse lay appeared to be covered with short grass.
Mark studied the photograph, puzzled momentarily by what it depicted, and then stood at the point from where he believed the picture had been taken.
‘Got it!’ he said. ‘The corpse is lying right in the middle of what is now the road. Those trees must have been felled to make way for this modern and wider tarmac road; the earlier road, much narrower than this modern one, must have been behind that hedge. That places it roughly along what is now the edge of the cricket field.’
Lorraine looked at the area in question and tended to agree.
Mark continued. ‘Now, in this photo, the old road must have run behind those oaks and therefore behind the hedge which grows under them. For us, looking at this photo, that old hedge obscures our view of the road, Lorraine. If that is true, it means the body was lying very close to the old road; in other words, it was hidden just behind the hedge. That hedge would bear thick foliage in September, so it would make an effective barrier. Passers-by would never catch sight of a body lying there. Now, are there any more useful pictures? There must have been some form of entrance to this land, a gate in the hedge, or just a gap. See the way the body lies? He was not shot there, I’ll bet. I’ll bet he was shot somewhere else and carried to where he was found, perhaps being rolled off a cart, which explains why he’s lying on his back with his arms and legs apart. And see the rifle and kitbag? They’ve been placed beside the body, the rifle’s close to his right hand. Was it put there to suggest suicide, perhaps? If so, it was a clumsy attempt — it’s most difficult to shoot oneself in the temple with a rifle. We don’t know what time the body was found, do we? The newspaper report didn’t say. I’m curious to know whether anyone could commit this crime and dump the body in broad daylight.’
‘There wouldn’t be so many people around, no cars or tourists in those days,’ Lorraine added.
‘But people did go for walks and they did exercise dogs. Anyway, let’s have a look at some more pictures.’
Lorraine searched the file to produce more photographs; there was one depicting the entrance to the common land. In this, the two oaks were on the right of the picture. To their left was a gap in the hedge without even a gate or fence; the lane, unsurfaced at that time, could be seen running directly past. The picture had been taken from the far side of the lane.
‘It must have been so easy for a cart to fetch the body in here, eh? Or even drive it in here with him alive and on board, shoot him and dump the body over the side, making sure everything happened out of sight behind the hedge, and then drive off,’ mused Mark.
‘So you think somebody was lying in wait, even hiding here, to catch him as he walked past?’ asked Lorraine. ‘We do have a picture of a pony and trap in the file somewhere. It’s obviously significant — was he shot in that trap and thrown out here? Luke, his brother, went to meet him in a pony and trap, didn’t he? According to the newspaper, that was.’
‘I reckon that’s what those early investigators thought,’ said Mark. ‘Imagine the jealous suitor that you suggested — James wasn’t a bad-looking chap, if that photograph of him is anything to go by, and perhaps he had upset a few of the local lads by stealing their girls? A handsome lad in uniform can always get the girls — or he could in those days.’
‘I’m not as old as that!’ chuckled Lorraine.
‘Sometimes I feel as though I am,’ he smiled. ‘But look, suppose one of those jealous rivals didn’t want James back in the area, even for a short time? He could have shot him. It would make sense — he’d know when James was returning, the whole district would know. In these tiny villages, everyone knew everyone else’s business and a conscripted soldier coming home on leave would make local news. It would be easy to lie in wait and clobber him, then dump the body here.’
‘Will his love life have been examined by those old detectives?’ asked Lorraine.
‘I sincerely hope so. That’s the first thing we look into nowadays when we get a murder — the sex life of the victim is of paramount importance. I reckon they’d do likewise. We’ll see what those old statements tell us. Now, is there anything else we need to inspect while we’re here?’
‘I doubt it, it’s changed so much.’
‘The road goes up and down like a roller-coaster!’ Mark strode along it for a short distance. ‘We used to call this kind of road switchbacks, they’re lovely for cycling along. You free-wheeled down one hill and tried to get up the other side without pedalling.’
‘It’s only small peaks and troughs, though,’ Lorraine said.
‘They were mountains to a small lad on his dad’s heavy bike,’ laughed Mark. ‘Come along, time to go. We can always come back if we need to. Now, what time is it?’
‘Half-past four,’ she said.
‘Knocking-off time, I reckon. Well, by the time we get back to Thirklewood Hall, washed and changed, it’ll be knocking-off time. Then I’m going to buy you that meal.’
Mark slept well and alone in his uncomfortable room and next morning, Thursday, he called together his staff for a conference in the Potting Shed. He told them about his discoveries and suggested they abandon their reinvestigation of Muriel Brown’s death in favour of the topicality of the unsolved Hartley murder.
‘At this stage, I know of no proven connection with the Vice-President,’ he stressed. ‘And I want neither our American colleagues or the Scotland Yard officers to be aware of this enquiry. Not yet, anyway. It’s confidential to us — highly confidential, in fact, and no one other than our own team must know about it. It must not take priority over our security duties, however, but I do regard it as very important even if, at this stage, it is nothing more than an unsolved murder of some vintage. But if the victim and the Vice-President are related, then it must be considered very important! So if the Americans come asking how HOLMES works, we can show them the Muriel Brown case.’
Mark then asked Barbara to arrange for several photocopies of the old file to be made so that DC Duncan Young could begin to program the salient facts into HOLMES and the others could be allocated their ‘actions’. She’d need help with that work; it was a very bulky pile of paper. Detective Inspector Larkin would be in charge, as he would have been on a modern murder enquiry, and the men could operate in teams of two to alleviate the b
oredom of their current work.
Larkin smiled. ‘TIE, sir,’ he said. ‘We can’t follow that procedure very well, can we?’
‘Trace, Interrogate and Eliminate, Paul? I reckon we might be able to trace and eliminate a lot of suspects after reading the file, and, who knows, maybe there are people still alive who remember the case. They can be interrogated — a chap in his eighties would have been around ten years old when the murder happened and might recall something vital.’
‘It would be great if we could find some living witness!’
‘We might well do that by tracing, interrogating and eliminating,’ smiled Pemberton. ‘And some memories must survive, surely? Village people would talk about the crime and it would become part of the local folklore. There must be some memories or suspicions lurking around the village.’
‘Point taken, sir — I’ll allocate actions as if it was a living enquiry — but I’ll bet we don’t arrest a suspect!’
‘Perhaps not, but we might discover the guilty party, Paul, and that would please the Vice-President, eh? Perhaps the police of the time knew the killer but lacked the evidence to convict him? Think of that — a roots-type relative of Vice-President Hartley was murdered all those years ago and we find the killer to coincide with his visit. How about that for a public relations exercise?’
‘Very good for Anglo-American relations, I’m sure, sir — that’s if the two men are related. OK, we’ll do what we can.’
And so the investigation into the murder of Private James Reuben Hartley was given a new lease of life. It took a long time for Barbara and her helpers to produce sufficient photocopies of the old file for all the teams. Upon receipt of his copy, Mark kept it in his office and, during quieter moments of that day, began to study it in detail.
Family Ties (The Mark Pemberton Cases Book 1) Page 5