‘Victoria?’ he suggested. He grinned shyly. ‘I could murder a pint of Jail Ale.’
I laughed and got in the van.
The Victoria Inn is an old pub at the far end of North Street, and used to be known as ‘The First and Last’ back in the nineteenth century, when there were more than thirty inns and taverns packed into the little streets of Ashburton, a fact that made John Wesley, travelling Methodist minister and all-time party-pooper, declare it the most sinful town in England. It’s a place that often buzzes with live bands during the evenings, but would be quieter during the daytime. Perhaps that’s why Luke had chosen it, because he preferred a quiet spot. How many people in Ashburton knew him, I wondered, knew his story? And if they did, did he care?
I followed his van down the hill and along North Street and swung around into Mill Meadow to park my van next to his. From here we were looking at the back of the pub across the stream of the Ashburn which slides around its walls on its way into town and separated it from its little beer garden. Our way to the back door of the pub lay across a narrow metal bridge. For a moment I stood on it, watching the water race along beneath me. As I glanced downstream I could see the end of a concrete access ramp that led from the bank down to the water a few yards away. Most of it was obscured by riverside greenery, but from where I stood I could make out a long trickle of red staining the sloping concrete, a hand lying palm upward and a tangle of dark wet hair.
‘Look,’ I breathed. ‘There, on the ramp … there’s someone … there … lying …’
Luke pushed me aside, and I hurried after him, back across the bridge. I was only a second behind him. When I reached him, he was standing at the top of the ramp, frozen, staring at the body lying there: her blue coat, her ankle socks, the bow in her tangled, wet hair. Jessie Mole was dead, a scarlet gash across her pale throat, a thin trail of her blood staining the concrete ramp. There was something pinned to her coat, a postcard inside a clear plastic envelope, a message scrawled on it in bold, red letters. I felt sick and gripped Luke’s arm as he mouthed the words slowly: Cutty Dyer Dun This.
I wanted someone sane to talk to. When I got home, I phoned Elizabeth and she promised to be round within the hour. Meantime I ran myself a deep bath. I felt soiled by what I had seen, by the smell of death still lingering in my nostrils.
For what seemed like hours I had faced questions, first from a uniformed police officer, then from Detective Constable DeVille – beg pardon, Detective Sergeant DeVille − she has recently passed her exams, apparently. Whatever her rank, Cruella’s icy violet stare and disapproving little mouth was not what I wanted to be faced with, but Inspector Ford was busy in the next room with Detective Constable Dean Collins, interviewing Luke.
They’d let him go by the time Cruella had finished with me. After all, he’d only seen what I’d seen – poor Jessie lying dead on the ramp by the water with her throat cut. Whereas, unfortunately for me, I had not only been one of the two people who found her body, I had also found the wretched dummy, which had suddenly assumed significance. Dean must have been getting brownie points for rescuing the thing from the river and for preserving it and, more importantly, for preserving the postcard. Forensic examination of both messages would be taking place, I’d been told rather primly by Cruella, to determine whether they’d been written by the same hand. Unfortunately, any useful DNA evidence was unlikely to be found on the dummy as it had been in the water too long.
I stayed in the bathwater too long and had only just hauled out and towelled myself off when I heard the doorbell announcing Elizabeth’s arrival. I wrapped my dressing gown around me and trudged downstairs.
As I opened the door, she held up a carrier bag. ‘I thought you could use a brandy, but I don’t have any, so I come bearing gin.’
Excellent woman. We hugged.
‘It must have been ghastly for you.’ She sat on my sofa while I hunted for glasses.
We didn’t bother with tonic, ice or lemon.
‘It was,’ I breathed, shuddering at the memory of the terrible scarlet split across Jessie’s white throat. ‘It seems I may be the last person to have seen her alive.’ I told Elizabeth how I’d seen her loitering in the lane the night before, peeping in the window of the cottage before posting something through the letter box.
‘Do you know who lives there?’ she asked.
‘I haven’t a clue. But the police are going to interview the owner, to talk to everyone who lives on the lane in case anyone else spotted her.’ I stared down at the clear glass of gin I was cradling and sighed. ‘Do you know what really bothers me? I wonder if I hadn’t reported finding that damned dummy, if that story had never appeared in the paper, perhaps Jessie wouldn’t have been murdered.’
‘Of course she would,’ Elizabeth cut in firmly. ‘It may amuse the twisted imagination of the person who killed her to make a reference to Cutty Dyer, perhaps prompted by the story in the paper, but no one is going to cut a woman’s throat for a joke.’
‘I’m not so sure. You hear about psychopaths all the time. And Ashburton’s not immune from loonies.’
‘If there’s a psychopathic killer abroad in Ashburton,’ she responded calmly, ‘then he would have killed anyway. He either had a motive for picking her as his victim, or poor Jessie was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way, the story in the newspaper is irrelevant. And presumably I don’t need to point out that if the latter is true, the victim might just as easily been you.’
I considered this and puffed out my cheeks in a sigh. ‘I was home again in half an hour. We don’t know what time Jessie was killed. For all we know, she was roaming about all night. She was always wandering around the town, snooping.’
‘And we don’t know how long she’d been lying on that ramp?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘No. It was just chance that Luke and I were the first people to go to the back door of the pub this morning and go out onto the bridge. Anyone parking in Mill Meadow might have seen her on that ramp. It must have been a quiet morning.’
My phone suddenly began ringing. ‘Oh God,’ I muttered. ‘News is getting around.’
Elizabeth told me to ignore it, but I shook my head. Before I could answer it, she reached out and picked up the receiver. ‘Hello? Yes, this is her number,’ she answered in a quietly authoritative voice. ‘Who’s speaking?’ She listened a moment then covered the mouthpiece with her hand. ‘It’s Luke,’ she said softly. ‘He wants to see you.’
‘Tell him to come over.’
Elizabeth raised her brows. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes. It’s OK.’
When she put the phone down she gave me one of her quizzical looks. ‘Do you want me to stay?’
‘No, thanks. It’s all right. He had just as big a shock as I did. I’m sure he wants to talk things over.’
She waited until Luke rang the doorbell while I dressed hastily.
‘Thanks for coming,’ I said.
‘My pleasure. Call me again if you need me.’ She indicated the bottle on the coffee table with a nod of her head. ‘I’ll leave you the gin.’
I heard her exchange a word with Luke when she opened the front door and tell him to come up. He arrived a few moments later. I thought he had looked pale when I had first met him that morning. Now he looked ill. ‘Vulnerable’ was the word that came into my mind. I felt like giving him a hug but feared I might embarrass him.
‘We never did get as far as that drink,’ he said, after an awkward moment looking round him.
‘Gin?’ I offered.
He shook his head. ‘I’d settle for a cup of tea.’
He followed me into the kitchen and I put the kettle on. ‘I wanted to thank you, for putting in a word for me, for getting me the job.’
‘It was nothing.’
‘No, I’m grateful.’ He smiled. ‘Looks like it might keep me busy for a week or two.’
‘Several weeks, I should think.’
Mugs in hand we returned to the living room. ‘Tha
t’s why I wanted to buy you a drink this morning,’ he went on, ‘to say thank you, only … well, the other thing got in the way.’
‘It did rather,’ I agreed weakly. We were silent, remembering the moment when we found Jessie’s body.
‘Did you know her?’ he asked eventually.
‘Not really. I mean, everyone in town knew Jessie. She made a nuisance of herself.’
His hands cupped around his mug as if he was drawing warmth from it, one knee jigging up and down restlessly. ‘I know Pat told you about me, being in prison …’ He stole a glance at me. ‘It was just one punch. This bloke was being an arsehole, mouthing off in the pub and I took a swing at him. But he hit his head on the corner of a table on the way down and …’ He shrugged.
‘And the court didn’t accept that it was an accident?’
‘I pleaded guilty. I didn’t mean to kill him, but I couldn’t say I didn’t mean to hit him. The judge said I had to learn that actions have consequences. He gave me three years. I only served eighteen months. I’m still on licence for good behaviour.’
‘Well, thanks for telling me, Luke, but you really didn’t need to.’
‘I like to be straight with people. I told Ricky and Morris before I started. They were fine about it.’ He flashed a nervous smile, then began looking around him, as if now he’d said what he came to say, he was searching for a way to escape. Just at that moment Bill leapt on the arm of the sofa and chirruped a greeting. Luke began stroking his head and he responded with a deep, rumbling purr. ‘What happened to him?’ he asked. ‘He’s only got one eye.’
‘Fight with a chicken,’ I told him. I watched his face as he stroked the cat. Despite the brutal haircut his features were gentle, almost aesthetic; his pale skin, high cheekbones and delicate brows would have suited a young monk, or a medieval saint in a stained-glass window. Bill slid neatly onto his lap with every intention of settling down. That cat is a complete tart.
Conscious of my scrutiny, Luke looked up. ‘Did the police ask you a lot of questions?’
I told him about my interview and the fact I’d seen Jessie hanging about in the lane the night before. ‘The police didn’t give you a hard time, did they?’
‘What, cos of me being in prison?’ He shook his head. ‘No. They were all right.’ He put down his mug. ‘I’d better be off. I’ve got to get up early. I want to get a good day’s work in and I still haven’t got that chainsaw seen to.’
We said our goodbyes. Luke submitted, diffidently, to a brief hug.
As soon as he left, the phone started ringing. I picked up.
‘Sandy Thomas here,’ a Welsh voice breathed excitedly, ‘Dartmoor Gazette.’
‘Eff off!’ I advised her and slammed down the receiver.
CHAPTER TEN
Detective Constable Dean Collins sounded unconvinced on the phone. I was still feeling the after effects of consuming half a bottle of gin the night before, a mug of tea clutched in one hand, the phone in the other as I tried to prevent Bill, who was sitting on the kitchen table, from licking the butter from my breakfast toast.
‘You’re certain, are you, Juno, about the number of the cottage?’
‘I don’t know the number of the cottage,’ I admitted grumpily, ‘but it was the second one from the end. It’s got a green front door and reddish curtains.’ I remembered the pink glow the light had cast as I had walked past the window, a few moments after Jessie Mole had skulked off around the corner. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because we sent some uniforms down to interview the owners …’ He paused briefly, I could imagine him consulting his notes ‘… a Mr and Mrs Williams live there with two teenage children … and they say nothing came through the letter box during the evening. I wondered if perhaps you’d got the wrong house.’
I knew I had the right cottage, just as I remembered very clearly the white envelope in Jessie’s hand as she posted it through the letter box. ‘They’re lying,’ I told him, ‘about nothing coming through the letter box.’
‘Why would they?’ he asked.
‘It could be a motive for murder, couldn’t it, whatever was in that envelope?’
He laughed. ‘You think Mr and Mrs Williams killed Jessie? You think one of them is Cutty Dyer?’
‘Well, anything’s possible.’ I put my tea down, successfully elbowed Bill off the table and rescued my toast. ‘You should get a search warrant.’
Dean laughed. ‘Don’t get carried away! You thinking you saw Jessie put a note through their door isn’t sufficient cause—’
‘I don’t think I saw anything,’ I responded indignantly. ‘Anyway,’ I added after a moment’s thoughtful chewing, ‘they’ve probably destroyed that note by now, if it’s incriminating.’
I heard Dean give the sort of weary sigh that I usually associate with Inspector Ford.
‘What about the postcard on Jessie’s coat?’ I went on. ‘Was it written by the same person who put one on the dummy?’
‘I can’t tell you that!’ He sounded shocked. ‘You want to know that sort of thing you’d better join the force.’
‘No, thanks,’ I responded, a little tartly. Saving his life only a short while ago had obviously not entitled me to any favours in the information department.
‘Anyway, forensics is still working on it,’ he admitted.
‘Is anyone going up to Owl House?’ I asked.
‘We’ll take a look around, see if we can find out what she was doing up there. I don’t suppose we’re likely to find anything … I will tell you one thing, though, if you can stop crunching down the phone for a minute.’
I swallowed. ‘What?’
‘You’ll have to keep this to yourself, mind.’
‘What?’ I whispered, all attention.
‘This Cutty Dyer thing, it doesn’t … Oh sorry, Sarge!’ The voice I could hear slicing through the air in the background could only have belonged to Cruella, who was now, it had to be remembered, Dean’s superior officer. ‘I’ll come right away!’ And he put the phone down on me.
‘Bugger!’ I muttered.
Despite my conviction, Dean had sown a seed of uncertainty in my brain and on my way to the shop I detoured down the lane to check that the cottage I had told the police about was the right one.
It was. I knew it was. So, what if the envelope had been missed? If it had been shoved under the door then it might have slipped under the doormat, but it was difficult to see how that could have happened when it was dropped through the letter box. But if the message it contained had been innocent, why wouldn’t the Williamses admit to receiving it?
But maybe, of the four people living in that house, three of them genuinely knew nothing about it. I imagined the family gathered in their living room, curtains drawn, watching television, one of them getting up to make a cup of tea or use the bathroom, and spotting the envelope on the mat, picking it up and hiding it in a pocket, tearing it open and reading it later, alone, reading in appalled silence something so sordid and incriminating that they couldn’t tell anyone about it. In which case, Jessie could be involved in blackmail and I wondered which one of the four of them the note had been addressed to.
It was bedlam in the shop all day. In the few minutes of quiet I got, first thing after I’d opened up and put the lights on, I managed to polish the filthy glass on the Millais print and hang it on the wall. It looked so much better cleaned, the details of the flowers floating on the water glowing like little jewels. Then Pat came in to see that I was all right after discovering Jessie’s body, followed by Sophie, to see that I was all right, followed by Ricky and Morris, who came in with more vintage clothes and to see that I was all right, and finally Elizabeth, who knew I was all right but decided to come in anyway.
The story of poor Jessie’s murder was all over town by now, the ramp by the river where we had found her hidden by a little tent, the whole area taped off, police everywhere, making house-to-house enquiries, trying to track her movements on the night she was killed. Ashburto
n was in shock, horrified by the callous brutality of her murder, but also agog for gruesome details. We had a string of so-called ‘customers’, most of whom claimed to be ‘just browsing’ but I’m sure had come in to gawp at me. Ricky suggested standing me in the window. The talk was all of Jessie, and of Cutty Dyer and whether Ashburton now had a lunatic on the loose, some crazed killer who’d assumed Cutty’s identity, and whether he would be cutting the throat of some other poor unfortunate soon. Women in Ashburton were no longer safe and should not be venturing out alone after dark, it was decided. When a young man sidled up to me and said casually, ‘So, Juno, you found another body?’ we threw him out. He might as well have had Dartmoor Gazette stamped on his forehead.
Ricky and Morris hung around quite a while, refreshing their stock and re-dressing Mavis the mannequin, whose 1960s hippy outfit had begun to look a little tired. They replaced it with a full-skirted dress, circa 1950, in green taffeta, changing her long black wig for a short blonde one. So they were there when two completely unexpected visitors wandered in. At least, Morris was upstairs in the kitchen making everyone a cup of tea and cutting up the cake he’d made while Ricky was sorting through things on the clothes rail. At the sight of the couple who appeared in the back room, he concealed himself behind the dressing screen.
‘Oh! Vintage clothes! How lovely!’ Amanda Waft pronounced as she meandered across the floor to the clothes rail, each foot placed down very precisely, like a lioness stalking its prey. At close quarters she was older than I had thought. I could see that she had once been beautiful, a finely boned thoroughbred. But she was too thin, all knees, wrists and elbows, and had no boobs at all. I wondered if she was ill, but Ricky informed me later that she had always been as flat as Norfolk. With one long arm she pulled out a feather boa and wound it around her tanned but wrinkled neck. She turned to the man who had followed her into the room. ‘What do you think, Digby?’
From Devon With Death Page 8