Whisper the Dead

by Stella Cameron

  ‘Glad you’re happy, Alex.’ Gladys smiled tightly and worked on without looking up. ‘I’d like to add porridge to the menu for tomorrow. If you agree, I’ll have sign-ups for it so I can soak enough oats overnight – best that way – and we’ll have to make sure Phil won’t mind if I store a pot or two in his kitchens.’

  Tony stepped in. ‘I am a slave to good porridge, Gladys. Let’s insist Alex agrees.’

  Gladys gave him a shy smile but Alex quickly agreed. ‘No problem setting the pots aside. Tell me what you want on the sign-up sheets and I’ll put one on each table for you.’

  For the first time that morning, Gladys looked genuinely pleased. ‘Just have them put their names and a check mark if they want it. Then they can let me know if they like sultanas or currants, or stewed apple. Brown sugar and cream or milk will be automatic. They can suggest variations if they like but I’m not guaranteeing that or they’ll want chocolate covered ants or something disgusting.’

  Alex laughed. ‘Or fried grasshoppers,’ she added. Two large boxes from George’s stood on the counter nearest the bar. Alex removed three crumpets while trying not to look too hard at all the other goodies lined up there.

  ‘Have you eaten, Gladys,’ she said. ‘You could manage a crumpet while you’re working.’

  ‘I’ll have something later.’ Gladys said, sliding heaped plates onto the center work island in time for Liz to come and sweep them away.

  Drinking coffee, munching on crumpets – with a Bakewell tart apiece mixed in for variety – Tony and Alex stood in a corner of the kitchen, watching and waiting for activity to eventually slow down.

  Alex took sign-up sheets around the tables asking for any interest in porridge. The result was overwhelmingly positive and she visualized stock pots lined up in the kitchen come morning. Gladys was quietly thrilled.

  Dishes were piled high waiting to be loaded into the dishwashers but Alex knew better than to offend Gladys by starting on that task. Gladys would take the efforts as a suggestion she couldn’t manage. But Alex made a note to find someone else to help work the shift by tomorrow and there were plenty of mums in the village looking for a few hours of part-time work.

  ‘Still no sign of Mum,’ Alex murmured as the pace relaxed. ‘Not that she has to be here until lunch time.’

  Tony leaned on the counter, coffee mug in hand, and said, ‘But you’re about at the end of your rope with wanting to talk to her. I don’t blame you. When you can, call her and tell her so.’

  She looked at the floor. ‘I suppose I’d better.’

  The dishwashers hummed. Liz went to take a break and have her own breakfast before going about the final cleanup and Gladys started mopping the kitchen floor.

  ‘Take a cup of coffee and talk to Liz,’ Alex said, ‘if you’ve got time. See what ideas she’s got. I’ll help Gladys.’ A meaningful glance passed between the two of them.

  When they were alone, Alex poured coffee for Gladys and set it on the island. ‘Take a few minutes off,’ she said. ‘You’re working too hard and I don’t want you worn out. We could have rioting hoards at the door if you don’t show up.’ She held her breath for an instant after that unfortunate comment.

  Gladys drank the coffee. Her bleached curls looked damp and bedraggled but her satisfaction in the morning’s results showed.

  Alex took in a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry Frank was so worried yesterday. If I’d known he misunderstood what you were doing, I’d have talked to him. He was sitting in the corner of the bar and I didn’t really take any notice of him being there.’

  ‘We’re pretty easy to miss,’ Gladys said. There was no hint of pleasure in her now.

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’ A fine start, Alex thought. ‘The weather was so horrible. If I’d known you intended to go back and forth in that, I’d have made sure we took you both ways.’

  Gladys’s demeanor had sunk to anxious but glum. ‘Not necessary. But thank you. Frank likes to do it.’

  That was the first Alex had heard of it. Frank Lymer was famous for his lifelong history of sporadic employment and everyone knew Gladys was the glue that held hearth and home together.

  ‘So you rode your bike home yesterday, then,’ Alex said. She didn’t feel good about pressing the woman but if there was a problem it needed to be dealt with.

  ‘Yes.’

  One of the things Frank had mentioned the previous night was that he hadn’t seen the bike. Gladys must have put it in the hut behind their cottage.

  ‘I’d be afraid of sliding,’ Alex said. ‘But you’re more experienced than I am.’

  ‘Some of us learn to make do,’ Gladys said.

  Alex tamped down irritation at the unnecessary unpleasantness.

  ‘I know all about making do,’ she said. ‘I lived just about next door to you and Frank when I was growing up, remember. My mother cycled to work over here – at this same pub where you’re working now. I understand.’

  ‘Sorry for saying that,’ Gladys said. ‘You don’t deserve it and neither does Lily.’

  ‘Forget it. I thought maybe you got a lift back. It would have been much better.’

  ‘But it’s none of your business,’ Gladys said sharply. ‘I told you I rode my bike.’

  Alex tingled with embarrassment. ‘Now I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Frank was so worried about you. He said he’d been at home waiting for you to let him know how you were doing but you didn’t call. He didn’t want to interrupt you, so he came and waited in the pub. A considerate man you’ve got there. He must have been waiting for you in the pub when you got home. I expect you had errands to run on your way home.’

  Gladys stood up straight, pushed her hair back from her suddenly red face. ‘Frank told you we’re people who keep to ourselves. It’s been just the two of us for a long time. We’ve no one else to count on. It happens I was tired and went up to rest. He didn’t know I’d come in. I fell asleep and he eventually came here because he thought I must still be working. There. Now you know the whole story. Not much to it, is there?’

  Alex rubbed a hand over her eyes. In fact she thought there could be a great deal more to this than Gladys was saying, but until and unless some other fact came to light and it had some importance, she had to let it go.

  ‘I’m glad you’re safe, Gladys. Please understand how worried and angry Frank was last night. He seemed to blame me. He said I lured you away from the Strouds and we both know that isn’t true. So forgive me, OK? I’m so pleased with the breakfast trade and I don’t think anyone else could do it nearly as well. Can we be friends again?’

  Gladys smiled, back to her shy persona. ‘I’d like that. Thank you. I’ll call Frank to come and get me unless you still need me.’

  ‘Go home,’ Alex said. ‘Give my best to Frank.’

  Tony’s pager had summoned him to a farm in the rolling flat land to the north of Folly and Alex left the Black Dog in Hugh’s capable hands. He and Juste Vidal would prepare for the lunch-time influx. Alex had finally found the courage to call Lily and they had agreed to meet at Lily’s Corner Cottage in the hour.

  Alex made a call to the Gloucester Constabulary to report that her potentially missing person wasn’t missing. The disinterested reception dealt with any embarrassment she might have felt.

  Leaving the dogs by the fire, she went out of the kitchen door into the parking lot and screwed up her eyes against a new fall of snow, this one soft, the flakes fat and in a hurry to pile up on the crusted remains of the last major snowstorm and the two or three inches added in the night. She trudged over to the Range Rover to get her anorak.

  Carefully, grateful for her Hunter wellies, Alex walked around the rear of the vehicle and jutted her face forward to squint at a heap beside one of a row of storage sheds. Her tummy rolled. She’d like to just walk away but she couldn’t do that. Best get Hugh.

  Grow up, Alex.

  She went purposefully to look down on whatever was hidden by at least two layers of snow rapidly being added to by toda
y’s plump flakes.

  Now was not the time to get sick. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d come upon a frozen body. Alex closed her eyes at the memory.

  She scraped back some of the soft snow at one end of the pile, then gradually delved deeper, brushing carefully as she grew closer to the shape underneath. Alex pulled on her leather gloves and used the flats of her fingers and palms, moving faster, but cautious in case there was something … There was something beneath the snow but it didn’t have to be a body.

  Abruptly, she stopped. She felt tears on her face. Memories rushed back of the sadness, the futile reality of what people could do to other people. Good people in the wrong place at the wrong time. But here, outside her pub?

  She yelled, ‘Hugh!’ but didn’t expect him to hear. Turning back to her task she first revealed rusted black metal, then what was obviously a tire.

  ‘What is it?’ Hugh reached her and caught her around the shoulders, almost lifting her away. ‘I saw you from upstairs. Alex, what’s the matter?’ He looked down then.

  Together they revealed Gladys Lymer’s old bike.

  Alex’s heart beat so hard it hurt her throat. She crossed her arms over her chest.

  The rumble of Hugh’s deep laugh confused her. ‘It’s Gladys Lymer’s,’ she said.

  ‘Is it? I didn’t know. And we thought it was a body. Or I did.’

  ‘So did I. Hugh, please don’t tell anyone about it – finding the bike, I mean.’

  ‘OK. But why does it matter? She and Frank must have decided to leave it here until the weather clears up. Shouldn’t we stand it up. Here, I’ll do that.’

  ‘Please don’t. If it becomes an issue, they’ll want to know why it was left like this. If Gladys had known it was here, she’d have dealt with it.’

  ‘You haven’t said why it’s a big deal,’ Hugh said, rubbing his hands together against the cold.

  ‘Because Gladys lied to me about it. Obviously, she didn’t ride her bike home yesterday. Or if she did, something did happen to her along the way. I think it was bad and it’s important. No one else may see this the way I do, but I’m going to find out what it means.’

  But first she and her mother were to meet at Corner Cottage for a talk. Alex hoped their discussion could finally be open, but she still had a sick feeling Lily might cut it off at any instant.

  SEVENTEEN

  Dan paced his office, talking on the phone. Through the window into the squad room he could see team members leaving with equipment. ‘Yes,’ he said, trying not to sound as unenthusiastic as he felt. He frowned. ‘Bourton-on-the-Water? You’ve got it. See you there.’

  He rang off and dropped his mobile into a coat pocket. ‘We almost got away clean,’ he told Bill who was still pulling files from Dan’s cabinets to fill cardboard boxes with case information. ‘I thought by coming in early enough we’d avoid diversions.’

  ‘What now?’ Bill said. He’d changed personalities since last night when they’d booked to stay at the Black Dog in Folly. ‘Why not tell me in the car?’

  ‘Because you don’t want to wait another second to hot foot it back to the vicinity of your lady love?’

  ‘Because I want to get on with this stinking case and it’s going to be easier from Folly than here in Gloucester. You keep pushing it when it comes to Radhika and me, but it’s wearing a bit thin and pretty soon you’re going to need a different diversion from reality.

  ‘You saw the papers. We’ve run out of cover from our very few friends in the press. Maybe we should concentrate on that. Anytime now—probably right now—we are going to be plastered all over every rag. We’ll be those amateurs who haven’t got a lead to our names. Not that it’s true, but since we can’t share any leads while we try to break this thing, they’ll keep on goading us into giving something away.’

  ‘Which we won’t do,’ Dan said shortly. ‘We’ll come up with a couple of leads to feed to the press, and a better one for someone we can trust to use it well. Now, stand where you are and listen.

  ‘Alex Duggins called in with a wishy-washy report. A Mrs Gladys Lymer who works at the Black Dog may have gone missing. She left the pub for home around one in the afternoon yesterday and Alex doesn’t know for certain if she’s been seen since.’

  The box Bill was holding started to tip and he smacked it down on the nearest surface. ‘So, what does that mean? Missing person or no missing person?’

  ‘Damned if I know. We’ll go after it when we get to Folly. For some reason that eludes me, our friends at the Dog don’t seem to know either – and Mrs Lymer’s husband isn’t talking.

  ‘Let’s go. I’ll drive. You let the team know we’ll be scrambling the minute we hit that sumptuous parish hall in Folly. We can’t afford to have a double homicide drag on without any breaks for much longer.’

  ‘Balls Harding has everything set in Folly,’ Bill said hefting two boxes into his arms. ‘Coffee, tea and snacks arranged from the Black Dog – apparently he thinks his priorities are straight. Spare desks and chairs transported. Computer and communication equipment in place.’

  Dan switched over his phone to the front desk. ‘I thought that since our resident upstart has made detective sergeant, we’d drop the “Balls” to avoid questions we don’t want to answer.’

  ‘Yes, boss, but it slips out. After all, he is about the most ballsy upstart I ever encountered. But I’ll try. Detective Sergeant Harding is very efficient, I’ll give him that. And I haven’t noticed him developing an attitude since he passed his exam.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ Dan said. ‘We’ve an appointment with Molly Lewis. That was her on the phone. The post-mortems are complete – apart from some long-range lab work that probably won’t make a lot of difference either way to us. Not if we get some irrefutable explanations ahead of that. The exotic tests are almost always about stuff that only interests the boffins anyway. We’re meeting Molly now.’

  ‘Shit,’ Bill said, with feeling.

  The Hill’s plot, Knighton House on the far side of a wide gentle hill, from Winchcombe, impressed LeJuan Harding – just when he thought he’d become blasé about these excessive country piles.

  Knighton was old, very old, just how old LeJuan wasn’t sure but he imagined there were more than a couple of hundred years of English privilege cosseted by miles of stone walls backed with yew hedges and dense woods. The house was invisible from any of the surrounding roads, particularly at this time on a snow-cloaked morning. The estate could only be seen from behind and above where the hill rose just enough to give a cloud-darkened view over the trees.

  It had been Bill Lamb’s idea that LeJuan and Barry set up in Folly before dawn was even breaking and carry on to Knighton before – they hoped – there was enough activity to catch them poking around without an invitation.

  Barry Trafford drove the Jeep they’d been fortunate to purloin from the motor pool that morning and from his silence, Barry was enjoying their ride too much to bother himself with minutia.

  ‘What did you think?’ LeJuan asked. ‘Like it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t mind having one of these myself,’ Barry said. ‘Beats the hell out of my old Nissan.’

  ‘I meant the Hill’s place – the estate?’ LeJuan smiled to himself. They had dropped down to the level of the estate again and taken what was little more than a track around Knighton. ‘Stop here while we figure out how we’ll get to the carriage house without being seen. The Hills made it clear we aren’t invited to wander around their territory, so asking at the main entrance is out of the question.’

  Obediently, Barry pulled the dark blue Jeep onto a verge and up close to the dry-stone wall. ‘I know that. Sergeant Lamb looked thrilled to have us leaping from our beds in the middle of the night. But I thought we’d have been told how to approach; instructions about it, I mean,’ Barry said. He was not much of a self-starter but he was a sterling bloke and LeJuan liked him. When the chips were down you could trust Barry to be there for you, whereas a lot of more ag
gressive officers were always looking for a way to get up a ladder – leaving anyone else behind if it suited their purpose.

  ‘We did get this from Lamb.’ LeJuan opened a chart across his knees. ‘It tells us more than a long-distance view over the chimneys. This is the house,’ he said, pointing out a large building shaped like an E without a central stroke. The chart showed that the two end bays no longer existed in their original form. There looked to be a flight of steps running the length of the remaining wing with a front door in the middle and rows of matching windows on either side. A porte-cochère broke up the long expanse and in front of that was a large pool. Vehicles would drive in a circular pattern.

  ‘That was probably where the carriages went in times of yore,’ LeJuan said and laughed.

  Barry, his blond head bent over the chart, nodded and said, ‘I’d have liked to see that.’

  LeJuan’s black heritage didn’t quite stretch his imagination to enjoying the sight of carriages and fine ladies and gentlemen arriving at Knighton, but he appreciated the history.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘You’re the whizz at this sort of thing. Where do you think this is? Or should I say, where are we now?’ He pointed to squares that depicted small buildings a distance from the back of the house.

  Barry looked up. ‘That’s north. Which means the house faces this way.’ He pointed on the chart. ‘South. And these buildings are north-east and, if the key is right, about half a mile from the back of the house. These are the kitchens, right? And the kitchen gardens if they still keep them up. There’s another wall between the gardens and the out buildings. This says stables. Do you know if they’re used?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be surprised,’ LeJuan said.

  ‘Then we may be lucky.’ Barry bent lower over the chart. ‘It seems as if they don’t overlook the out-buildings. Who would live in those?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have thought anyone did now, but this one.’ He set a fingernail on one. ‘This is the carriage house where our Lance Pullinger had digs when he chose. Apparently, he didn’t choose very often but at one point he had it set up so he could go there when he wanted to.’