Too Clever by Half

by Will North

  “I’ve made tea,” the woman at the door said as the two detectives showed her their warrant cards. “Will you have some?”

  “That would be grand,” Bates said before Davies could decline. Morgan looked at her and smiled. No keeping this one back…

  As Johns poured, they sat at a scrubbed oak table in a vast kitchen facing an inglenook fireplace as wide as a cave entrance, complete with inset bread oven. Once, long ago, different fires in the wide hearth would have been arranged for cooking several things at once, but now it held only a squat cast iron coal stove, the exhaust pipe of which disappeared up into the maw of the old stone chimney. The stove looked like a small fish in the mouth of a whale.

  “So,” Davies began, “…is it not Mrs. Hansen?”

  The woman smiled. “It’s Charlotte Johns. I have kept my name. I believe that is acceptable these days.”

  Seated away at a slight angle, Bates took notes in a pocket-sized black notebook.

  “Of course it is, Ms. Johns.” Davies watched her for a moment and wondered about the formality of the woman’s speech.

  “You reported Mr. Hansen missing, last night I gather,” Davies continued. “He’d gone off fishing, you told police. With a friend called Charlie. In the Channel. That was when?”

  “Thursday sometime. He sent me a text message. I’m new to this texting business; he made me get a mobile. Anyway, I said this in my report.”

  Davies smiled. “I know you did, Ms. Johns, I’m just making sure we’ve got it right. What made you think something had gone amiss?”

  “When Friday noon he’d not returned, I figured maybe he’d spent the night with his friend, but later I drove down to the little cove at Flushing where he anchors his boat, Saga, and it wasn’t there.”

  ‘But his boat would have been gone, wouldn’t it? If he’d gone out fishing?”

  “No.”

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s a fourteen-foot, open fiberglass fishing skiff with an outboard petrol engine, detective; it’s not meant for overnight trips. When I’d still not heard from him by late Friday afternoon, I rang the police in Falmouth. He’s a farmer, not a fisherman. It just wasn’t like him to be away. Have there been radio reports? Have you sent helicopters out to search yet?”

  “Was Mr. Hansen in the habit of popping off on these fishing trips, Ms. Johns?”

  “Not often. Fishing is a sort of hobby, a break from the farming routine. It relaxes him.” She smiled for a moment: “And sometimes it’s supper, too, if he catches something. But mostly I think he just loves being out on the water for a change.”

  “So you did not find this outing unusual…?”

  The woman adjusted her position in her rush-seated chair. “Infrequent, yes. Unusual, no. What with the late spring this year, it is a quiet time in the fields.” She looked away for a moment and added: “Beyond that, I must confess that he does not often confide his plans to me. Often he does not even leave me a note.”

  DC Bates rose from her seat. “I’m sorry, Ms. Johns, but could you point me to the nearest loo?”

  “The house is ancient and we’re a bit short on toilets, constable. You’ll find one in the upstairs hall, not very posh, to the right of the landing.”

  “Bates?”

  “Sorry, ma’am, call of nature.”

  Davies watched her partner disappear down the hall and wanted to throttle her. She returned her attention to the woman before her and leaned across the table: “Please pardon me for asking, Ms. Johns,” she said, her voice gentle, as if inviting a confidence, “but what exactly is the nature of your relationship with Mr. Hansen, if he does not confide in you?”

  Davies watched her decide how to respond. The answer, when it came, was oblique.

  “We are Druids, Archie and I. There are many in Cornwall, as elsewhere of course. It’s an ancient Celtic pagan practice which lives still. We worship the cycle of the seasons in the natural world, of which we are but a part. We met through Druidry, Archie and I did. We became lovers. That was five years ago, nearly. Archie now leads a small grove of Druids based here in Manaccan. He is their priest. I am the priestess. We have several regular members. In the last year, however, Archie has become something of a student of the occult. He’s read many books and has delved into what some might call the dark arts. He is very secretive about it. I think it all harmless and frankly rather silly, but there are some in our grove who are frightened by it, by his attempts to cast spells. There are people who want him driven out.”

  “What kind of spells, Ms. Johns?” Davies noted that Johns had not answered her question.

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He scatters powders during our rites. Sometimes he focuses intently on one or another of our members. Beyond that, I know nothing.”

  “And these members are intimidated?”

  “I believe some are.”

  “And you believe so, because?”

  “They tell me it makes them uncomfortable. It’s not what Druidry is supposed to be about.”

  “Are you suggesting, Ms. Johns, that these same people might have wanted to do Mr. Hansen harm?”

  “I don’t know what I’m suggesting, detective. Like you, I am trying to make sense of his disappearance.”

  “But unlike me, Ms. Johns, you know him and his followers.”

  “Members, not followers.”

  “I appreciate your sharing this with me, but you’ve not answered my question: If you are married, why does he not confide to you?”

  Johns stared at the surface of the table for a moment. “It is just not his nature,” she said.

  Davies was losing patience. “Ms. Johns, I should like you to make a detailed written statement of what you know about Mr. Hansen’s disappearance: when you saw him last and where, time of his text message, and your own movements during this two day period. And please include the names of the others in your—what was it…grove?—if you suspect them.”

  Charlotte nodded. She fetched a pad of lined paper from Archie’s office, took her seat again, and began writing.

  Upstairs not long after, the toilet flushed and Bates eventually rejoined them. Davies leaned against the back of her chair, crossed her arms beneath the shelf of her breasts, and glared at Bates when she re-entered the kitchen.

  “Tell us about Charlie, Ms. Johns,” Bates said, interrupting the woman’s writing.

  “I can’t,” she said. She did not look up.

  “Pardon?”

  “He’s never mentioned him. Could be another farmer, a school chum, a business associate. No idea.”

  Davies uncurled for a moment: “You have been together for some years and you don’t know his friends, Ms. Johns?”

  “As I have said, Archie keeps himself to himself. But I do know that none of the men at his local is called Charlie.”

  “And his local is?” Davies pressed.

  “The New Inn at Manaccan. Just down the hill.”

  As they waited, Johns finished writing her statement and then rose and turned to Davies.

  “Are we done here now, detective?”

  “I’m afraid we’re not, Ms. Johns. Please sit down again. I have something to tell you.”

  AT THE MORTUARY behind the Royal Cornwall Hospital at Treliske, just up the hill from Truro, Davies nodded to an attendant, and a curtain opened upon a body wrapped in gold-braided blue velvet. Only the man’s face was visible. The woman beside her stared for a moment, then turned away.

  “Is that him, Ms. Johns? Is that Archie Hansen?”

  The woman took a deep breath and straightened her spine.

  “It is.” Her voice was barely audible.

  Davies nodded and the attendant closed the curtain. It struck her that Charlotte Johns had gone about as pale as any human being could who still had a pulse.

  “I am very sorry for your loss.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “That hasn’t yet been determined.”<
br />
  “IN FUTURE, DETECTIVE constable, when we are interviewing a person of interest in a murder investigation, you will not leave for a “call of nature” or anything else. Your job is to take notes, be a second set of ears, and ask questions. Are we clear?!”

  Davies and Bates stood in the car park behind the mortuary, having sent Johns home in a patrol car with a female Family Liaison Officer charged with making sure the bereaved woman would be all right.

  Bates smiled. It was not the reaction Davies expected.

  “Did you look around that kitchen?” Bates asked. Her voice had a hint of mischief in it.

  “Yeah, a mess it was. So what?!”

  “A man mess, Morgan, is what I thought. So I decided to snoop around.”

  “Without a warrant?”

  “Needed the loo, didn’t I?”

  Davies cocked her head to one side and waited.

  “No woman lives there,” Bates said, finally. “Not a feminine touch anywhere. Except in the main bedroom, where there’s an interesting collection of costumes in one wardrobe.”

  “Costumes?”

  “Sex costumes, I’m guessing. Lots of sexed up stuff.”

  “This is so out of order, Bates.”

  “I’ve had a good teacher...but the point is that no woman lives there full time. They’re not married; I’d bet my warrant card on it. She’s nothing but Hansen’s playmate. Funny she didn’t say so.”

  “We are not amused,” Davies snapped as she climbed into her car.

  Twelve

  ALMOST EXACTLY A month earlier, thirteenth April, Charlotte arrived at Archie’s house as she did most Fridays. She was unloading groceries from her car when she heard the kitchen phone trill. She ran to answer.

  “Higher Pennare,” she panted into the wall-mounted receiver.

  “Oh, hello! I was hoping to reach Archie Hansen,” the voice said.

  This was odd. Archie seldom received calls on the land line at the house; everyone he knew used his mobile. If you wanted to reach him, he’d most likely be out on his tractor.

  “May I help?”

  “This Mrs. Hansen, then?”

  Charlotte was immediately suspicious. “Is this a commercial call?”

  The man at the other end of the line hesitated and then said, “I suppose it is, in a sense. See, I met your husband a couple of weeks ago at an antiquities and coin show in Bristol. We discussed the artifacts he’s found on your farm.”

  Charlotte blinked: artifacts?

  She fought for a response and found one: “Oh, yes, of course. He mentioned you, Mr.…

  “Townsend. Richard Townsend.”

  “Yes, yes, of course: Mr. Townsend. It all comes back to me now. I am so sorry to have seemed abrupt. I was outside when the phone rang.”

  “Not at all, ma’am; is Mr. Hansen available?”

  “I’m afraid he’s not. Out in the fields, he is, but he told me about your meeting and said to expect your call.” She was making it up as she went, as fast as she could.

  “Well, good. Excellent. What I was hoping was to arrange a meeting with you folk to do an evaluation of these items he’s found.”

  “Yes of course; let me just get his calendar, shall I?”

  Charlotte made banging and shifting noises while she gathered her wits: Archie’s found something. On the farm. Artifacts of some kind. The kind a dealer would be interested in. Was he involved in some new illegal scam?

  She picked up the receiver again.

  “Hello, Mr. Townsend?”

  “I’m here.”

  “You’re coming from where?”

  “Bristol.”

  “Ah well, that’s not so bad. End of the world we are down here on the Lizard. But not so long from Bristol: you just bang right down the M5 and the A30 and, in a couple of hours, here you are! When did you have in mind, Mr. Townsend?”

  “I was hoping the next few days.”

  “Right. Now, let me see… Ah! How about this coming Monday, the sixteenth, at one? That will give you plenty of time to drive down, do your evaluation, and return home to Bristol at a reasonable hour.”

  “Excellent. And thank you, Mrs. Hansen. Archie will be there?”

  “He’ll just be finishing his lunch,” she lied. “Did you need directions?”

  “Got an Ordnance Survey map of the Lizard. Higher Pennare is marked very clearly.”

  “That should do you. See you Monday, then?”

  “You will.”

  “Good. South of Manaccan, we are, just above the valley.”

  She sat at the kitchen table and stared out the window after the call. It took a while, but finally the penny dropped…

  CHARLOTTE PROWLED AROUND Archie’s thick-walled tractor shed looking for something that didn’t belong there and was infuriated because, since she’d never been permitted in there before, she had no way of telling what was out of place. Archie lately had been spending an inordinate amount of time in the shed after returning from the fields. Maintenance, he’d explained. Charlotte was not inherently suspicious, but she was ever watchful. She’d learned to be so as a girl, looking after her father and her siblings. Vigilance was a trait established deep in the most primitive “fight or flight” part of her brain. And it had served her well over the years. It had warned her something was amiss before her husband had left her, and it spoke to her now. It was almost an electric vibration within her.

  As she picked her way across the concrete floor of the old stone shed, she found, as she might have predicted, that Archie’s farming gear, while aging, was clean and laid out in an orderly manner. The floor contained nothing but machinery, some of which looked unused for years: a hay turner, a rusting front end loader, an antique tractor with one wheel missing, a shiny new fertilizer spreader lined up next to two older ones, and another tractor older than the one he was currently using but still looking functional.

  On one wall, a pair of metal shelf units held labeled boxes of chains, nuts and bolts of various sizes, grease guns, hydraulic hoses, wrenches, and other bits and bobs which looked to have been salvaged from one or another of the relic machinery on the floor. Maybe that was why the disused equipment was still there: for parts.

  In the back of the building a steep and worn wooden stair, barely more than a ladder, led to a loft space, and there she found bags of fertilizer and soil additives, each stacked in neat piles. She stood for a moment on the landing, and then realized that from this level, Archie could simply dump the bags into the hopper of a spreader below instead of hauling them down the stairs and lifting them into the hopper from the ground. Smart, that was.

  She stepped around the stacks and, in a far corner, noticed a group of loosely-woven burlap bags labeled to contain daffodil bulbs. The blossom season was over. The remnant foliage in the fields was left to soak in the sun to strengthen to bulbs beneath, which were the real cash crop. Cornish daff bulbs were in high demand. The bags, therefore, were empty, sagging limply against the loft floor. Except for one, tucked beneath the others.

  She poked the bag with her toe and was surprised to hear a dull metallic clunk. She was about to pull it out, but caught herself just in time: there was a length of thin, clear monofilament fishing line, virtually invisible, laid along the folds of the burlap bags.

  She smiled. Oh, you clever clogs; you’ve left a tell-tale, haven’t you…

  Careful not to disturb the lay of the line, she knelt and eased a hand beneath the pile, searching for the bottom bag’s mouth without shifting its position. Presently, she found its lip, slipped her hand inside, felt something cool and hard, and withdrew an object so bright that, even in the dim light of the loft, it seemed to flame: a curved solid gold artifact shaped like a necklace. She recognized it immediately as a torc. Charlotte was a volunteer with CASPN, the Cornish Ancient Sites Protection Network, whose members, many of them fellow pagans, patrolled the prehistoric monuments that were thick upon the ground throughout southwest Cornwall: stone circles, standing stones, sacred
wells, Iron Age forts and villages, Stone Age burial quoits, and underground fogous. They checked for vandalism and cleared trash left by tourists. She’d attended CASPN sponsored talks, led by curators at the Royal Cornwall Museum and the Cornwall County Council’s chief archaeologist, about objects that had been looted from some of these sites centuries before. It was thought there was nothing left to discover. Archie seemed to have proved them wrong.

  She returned the torc to the bag, ascertained there was more within, and left the pile and the filament undisturbed. Then, using her palms, she shifted the dirt and dust on the loft floor to eliminate any footprints that would signal she’d been there. As she walked across the concrete yard from the shed to the house, she heard again Archie’s dismissive voice after the party at the New Inn celebrating Bobby and Joey’s new son: What I do with my money is none of your business. I’ve got it, and more to come.

  And now the “more” made sense. But where did he find these things? And what did it mean that he had told her nothing about them?

  THAT NIGHT, WHEN Archie’d finally come home, been fed, and had several pints, she led him upstairs for one of his favorite games: the one where she did a slow strip for him until he broke into a sweat. Then she climbed up onto the old oak bed and knelt above him, watching his eyes.

  “Was there something my Thor required?” she purred. As always, she controlled and then satisfied his needs.

  REG CONNOR WALKED through the manicured parkland of the Badminton estate near his house, following the public footpath. He stopped frequently to lean on his walking stick. He was often short of breath these days: congestive heart failure, the NHS doctor had explained. The doctor prescribed a change in diet, blood thinners, and regular walks. Connor ignored the dietary and medical advice, but did walk. Sometimes the walks felt like torture, but he kept at it. It was not like Reg Connor to yield to anything or anyone. He was as driven as a border collie herding sheep.