‘We don’t know that. At the moment, the only connection between the dummy and the murder is the postcard about Cutty Dyer.’
‘But why would Jessie write more of those? Was she planning another dummy?’
Dean grunted. ‘I would say she just enjoyed making mischief, judging by some of the stuff we found in that cottage of hers.’
That much was true. Stealing Chloe’s messages to the milkman had been a simple way of making mischief, posting poisonous notes through people’s letter boxes was another.
‘She was definitely a weird one,’ Dean went on. ‘She had owl ornaments everywhere in that cottage, hundreds of ’em.’ I could hear him shudder at the end of the line. ‘Gives me the creeps, all those eyes staring at you.’
‘Perhaps she and the murderer made that dummy together,’ I went on, trying to figure things out. ‘Jessie wasn’t very bright. Perhaps, for her, it was just a joke or the murderer convinced her that it was.’
‘What? And then the two of them fell out and he killed her?’
‘Unless she was his intended victim all along,’ I suggested.
‘He got Jessie to collude in her own murder?’
‘Unknowingly,’ I said. ‘That would have been a real joke, wouldn’t it?’
Next day was Sunday, which meant there was no Tribe to walk and no shop, so naturally what I wanted to do was to go up to the abandoned Owl House, have a poke around and see if I could discover what Jessie had been doing there. But as I drove up to the front gate in White Van there was already a police car parked in the drive. I thought perhaps my presence might not be welcome, so I tootled on past, nonchalantly.
I decided to activate plan B. I’d seen a clearance sale advertised in a house near Dartington, so I drove there to see if I could pick up any stock for the shop. I’d made up my mind I would spend half of Brian’s birthday money on paying the shop’s bills and half on increasing my rather sparse hoard of stock.
The sale was in a Victorian house recently inherited by a young couple and full of furniture and family belongings they didn’t want. They were planning to rip out all of the panelling, they told me proudly, the original fireplaces, oak staircase and the kitchen range, replace the mullioned windows with bi-folds and commit other acts of vandalism too barbarous to mention in their quest for the fashionable, bare, minimalist look. Apart from lamenting the fact that the house wasn’t listed, I wondered how it is that people like them get to inherit such places. It just isn’t fair.
On the positive side, they had no idea what anything was worth. This didn’t stop them trying to be greedy, though. Their advertisement had attracted dealers from all around, several of my fellow traders from Ashburton, and I could soon see there was no point in my competing for any of the furniture or larger items when I lost a bidding war for a pretty davenport. So I concentrated on smaller things, things the owners couldn’t believe anyone would want: odd brass weights for kitchen scales, a chipped enamel coffee pot, stone ginger beer bottles, tiny medicine bottles in blue ridged glass, walking sticks, a biscuit barrel, glass stoppers minus their decanters, a tin full of spoons − silver jam spoons unnoticed − and a Victorian brass beehive-shaped pot for containing balls of string, with a hole in the top for the string to come out and − best of all − still with original scissors still attached.
I came away, well pleased with my swag, especially as I’d also managed to negotiate a good price for a broken nursery chair. Children’s chairs are always popular. I’d have to pay for the cane seating to be repaired, but there would still be a profit in it. The van bumped along the drive, and before I turned out of the gate, I noticed a scattering of snowdrops across the lawn, mingled with pale mauve crocuses. Spring was happening in this garden, at least this year. Next year, if things went according to plan, it would be lost under decking.
On the way back home, I stopped at Staverton where the medieval bridge spans the water in four solid but graceful stone arches. Next to the bridge is a tiny station for the steam train that in the summer, laden with visitors, chugs the line between Totnes and Buckfastleigh. The station was deserted now, the little engine parked for the winter behind the gates of the level crossing.
Built as a crossing place for wagons, the bridge is barely wide enough to take a car. But I parked up so that I could walk across. I paused in one of the tiny jutting refuges along its length, spaces just big enough for a person to stand in and not be mown down by a horse and cart as it crossed the bridge. I sat my bum down on the stone parapet and gazed down at the water.
This was not the little River Ashburn which flowed through Ashburton but an arm of the mighty Dart, a very different kettle of river indeed. There’s a legend that every year the Dart claims a heart. But it was peaceful now, the water almost still beneath the winter sky, bare trees mirrored in its surface. In summer, when they were in full leaf, the lights on the water would have been dappled in green and gold. Now in winter they were platinum and silver. There was good swimming here, a long stretch of water deep even in summer because of the weir further down. A dark head, sleek as a seal, suddenly broke the glassy surface, shattering its ripples into fragments. I watched in surprise the fluid, sinuous turns of the body, the long graceful strokes of the arms. It was rare to see a swimmer here in January. A few moments later an arm came up out of the water and waved at me.
‘Juno!’ a voice called. It was Meredith Swann. ‘Come on in!’ She laughed. ‘The water’s lovely!’
No, thanks. For a start, she was wearing a wetsuit. ‘I’ll meet you on the bank,’ I called back.
There was no way to reach the river from the bridge. I’d have to walk along the footpath to get to the water’s edge. Meredith signalled me with a thumbs up and turned to swim in that direction.
The water was clear, right down to the bottom, every pebble on its stony bed sharply visible, but it was brown as ale, nourished by the peat bogs that it had passed through on its journey from the moor. I reached the place on the bank where it was easy for a swimmer to haul out and found Meredith waiting for me, sitting on a rock, one leg swinging in the foamy water that rippled round it. Her wet hair was drawn back into a knot and her face glowed from the exercise of swimming. She looked energetic and healthy, only very slightly breathless.
‘Juno!’ she greeted me with a smile. ‘I knew it could only be you, with all that glorious hair!’
I ignored the compliment. ‘You swim a lot?’ I asked, taking a seat on the bank.
She nodded, laughing. ‘Every day, if I can.’
‘You must be careful. The Dart can be treacherous. The currents are stronger than people realise. Swimming alone—’
‘I’m a very strong swimmer,’ she interrupted, a touch sharply, ‘and I’m not alone.’ As if on cue a long arm broke the surface as someone made lazy backstrokes upstream. Of course I didn’t need to guess who it was. I suppose he had swum down as far as the weir and was now making his way back. He must have spied me on the bank because he suddenly called out, ‘Miss Browne! With an “e”!’ and began to swim towards us. Why did the very sight of the man annoy me so much? Why couldn’t he call me Juno like everyone else? I would cheerfully have left then, but felt obliged to sit and make conversation.
‘Are you going to join us?’ he asked, when he reached the rock where Meredith sat like a Lorelei, and hauled himself out.
I gestured at his wetsuit. ‘Not equipped, I’m afraid. To be honest, I’m not that fond of swimming.’ As I’ve said before, I like my feet on dry land. ‘I might take a dip in Ashburton lido occasionally.’
‘That’s a shame,’ Meredith sighed, ‘when there are so many wonderful places around here for wild swimming.’ She looked across at her adoring swain perched on the rock beneath her.
‘My favourite spot is near Pennsland.’ She described it to me. I knew the place well, had often walked there, although I’d never swum in the river there myself. ‘It’s a pity we didn’t have time to get there today,’ she told me. ‘We’re meeting friends for dinner.’
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‘Where’s Lottie?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘Snoring in her armchair, I imagine.’
‘She’d have wanted to come in the water with us,’ Mr Thorncroft added, ‘and it’s a bit cold for her today.’
‘Well.’ I stood up, ready to make my escape. ‘I have things to do. You’ll have to excuse me.’ I nodded at the water. ‘Have fun.’
As I turned away I heard the gentle splash as they slid back into the water and Meredith’s low, sexy laugh. I didn’t need to turn around to know that wetsuits were entwining. As I walked back across the bridge to the van I couldn’t help wondering where they were going for dinner. The Sea Trout Inn, perhaps. That was nearby.
I didn’t think about them for long. I had stock to rub my hands over when I got home, to sit like Fagin and contemplate small profits, and I still had half a birthday cake in the fridge.
The police car had gone I saw as I pulled up outside of Owl House. There was no police tape sealing off the drive. Obviously it was not considered part of any crime scene so there was no reason why I shouldn’t take a snoop around. Now was as good a time as any. I couldn’t see the house from the gate. It was hidden by a bend in the driveway and the overgrown tangle of its garden.
It wouldn’t be dark for a while, but the late afternoon light was failing. I fished my torch from the glove compartment, locked the van and walked up the path, watched by the stone owls that glared from either gatepost. It was very quiet. A magpie chattered an alarm as I crunched up a driveway where a tangle of weedy grasses grew tall, save where they’d been flattened in two straight lines by the wheels of the police car.
As the house came into view, I felt a surge of disappointment. The name ‘Owl House’ had conjured up the romantic vision of an old building: gothic, creepy, mysterious – possibly haunted, a pale face glimpsed through the shattered pane of an upstairs window, unexplained footsteps on the stairs, a banging shutter, a creaking weathervane − not a hideous between-the-wars bungalow with a big sign on the door declaring it was condemned because of concrete cancer. I realised as I trudged my way around the building that I would not be going inside. All the windows and doors had been boarded up, and judging by their weathered appearance and the ivy encroaching over their surfaces, they had not been disturbed for years, certainly not recently, by Jessie or the police.
I puffed out my cheeks in a sigh and turned to look around the garden. Bindweed, brambles and ivy had strangled whatever had once grown in the flower beds, and apart from a monstrous pampas grass squatting in the middle of an overgrown lawn looking as if it was waiting to mug someone, there was nothing to see except for a few brave little crocuses, and owls − statues in stone and plaster dotted the low walls and the rockery everywhere I looked. An owl fetishist had lived here, obviously.
I realised then what Jessie might have been doing in the garden. Dean had mentioned her house was full of owl ornaments. Perhaps she’d been owl-rustling.
So what had sent her running off like that? Something must have scared her – a stray dog, a tramp, teenagers doing drugs? I don’t suppose I’d ever know now.
I put myself and the torch back in the van and headed back down into town, where the remainder of my birthday cake was still waiting.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I had a very indignant phone call from Chloe Berkeley-Smythe when I got home.
She wasn’t indignant with me but with Digby Jerkin and Amanda Waft. ‘They were in church!’ She couldn’t have sounded more scandalised if they had been a pair of practising Satanists. ‘I spotted them a few pews in front of me. They didn’t see me, and I sneaked out at the end of the service. I thought I’d got away with it, but just as I was about to get into my taxi I heard them call my name. Well, I couldn’t be rude! Now, I’ve had to invite them around for a cup of tea. It really is too exhausting,’ she sighed. ‘I don’t suppose you could be an angel in the morning and pop along to the deli or that lovely artisan baker in West Street and buy me some goodies? I’m bound to offer them something.’
‘I don’t think you need to worry about Amanda,’ I told her frankly. ‘I don’t think she eats.’
‘Hmm, maybe not,’ Chloe responded, unconvinced, ‘but that Digby’s jerkin looks pretty well stuffed, so I’d better provide some eats. You don’t want to join us, I suppose?’ she added hopefully.
‘Sorry,’ I lied without looking in my diary, ‘I’m definitely working tomorrow afternoon. But I should be able to get your things in the morning,’ I went on as she gave a martyred sigh, ‘and pop them round to you before lunchtime.’ We then had a discussion about exactly what she wanted me to buy and how much I should spend, and decided to leave all the choices to me. She’d pay me when she saw me. She signed off with an air of deep long-suffering.
Next morning, I was in town, actually carrying the aforementioned bag of goodies from the bakery, when who should I bump into but Digby Jerkin himself, and not just Digby, but Morris. Amanda, it transpired, was in the hairdresser’s. Ricky was home in bed.
‘You know how every little cough and cold goes down on his chest,’ Morris tutted. He was carrying a loaded bag from the chemist.
Digby shook his head sadly. ‘He wants to give up the old coffin nails.’
‘I’ve spent a lifetime trying to get him to do that,’ Morris told him primly. ‘Last year we tried the nicotine patches.’ He shuddered. ‘Talk about a bear with a sore head!’
‘How’s the house-hunting going?’ I asked Digby before Morris could get too emotional.
‘Slowly,’ he admitted.
‘Was it really because of Mrs Berkeley-Smythe that you decided to come to Ashburton?’
‘Well, we’ve always loved Devon, and she showed us such wonderful photographs. Of course, I’m not sure precisely where we’ll end up,’ he confessed. ‘Morris and I are going for a coffee, fancy joining us?’
Why is it that people think I have nothing to do all day except sit about drinking tea and coffee? I explained I was busy, and after hugging Morris and promising to visit the invalid sometime in the week, I took my leave.
I popped into Old Nick’s, said hello to Sophie, laid Chloe’s goodies carefully on a shelf in the fridge upstairs for safekeeping, and dashed out to spend two hours cleaning at the Brownlows’. Then I was off to see Tom Carter. He was still sitting at his table, tying flies, as if he hadn’t moved since the last time I’d visited him. I put the kettle on. ‘Do you ever swim in the River Dart, Tom?’ I asked.
‘Sometimes accidentally,’ he admitted, ‘if I’ve been struggling to land a big fish.’
I told him about seeing Meredith swimming at Staverton and he shook his head. ‘It’s foolishness at this time of year,’ he said gravely. ‘I’ve seen what the river can do, seen what it can bring down off the moor after heavy rain. I wouldn’t do it.’
Neither would I, I agreed silently.
I went back into town for his shopping, which I delivered before driving up to Simon the accountant’s house, where I let myself in and spent an hour climbing the north face of the pile of ironing he’d left me. I wrote him a brief note, informing him that I didn’t consider underpants or tea towels worth ironing, before I rescued Chloe’s goodies from Nick’s fridge and delivered them to her just as she was beginning to panic.
‘Are you sure you won’t stay?’ she asked, gazing at me wretchedly.
‘Chloe, they are only coming to tea! They probably won’t stay an hour …’
‘An hour!’ she groaned faintly. ‘I must lie down.’
‘That’s right,’ I recommended cheerfully. ‘Get your strength up!’
I almost wished I could have stayed for tea. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall.
I grabbed a sandwich from the deli by way of lunch. As I was heading back to Old Nick’s to devour it, I passed No. 14, a rather lovely wine bar in North Street. Seated at a table in the window, deep in conversation, were Meredith Swann and Verbena Clarke. Their heads were almost touching, one sleek, shiny and d
ark, the other a cloud of angelic fair curls. Now, there’s a match made in heaven, I thought. Verbena, my erstwhile employer, was a designer by profession, and the fashionably expensive artefacts in Meredith’s gallery were right up her street. They ought to be in business together. They’d be tearing one another’s eyes out within the month.
After my hastily crammed sandwich I went to the post office to pay some bills, stopping to gaze in the window of Keepsakes. It is the kind of antique shop I would like Old Nick’s to be: absolutely crammed with interesting things. There is not a table that is not loaded with piles of plates, saucers and odd bits of dinner service; not a shelf, crammed with glasses, vases and figurines, from which rows of jugs and teacups do not hang on hooks. Dolls and old teddy bears take up every seat and a dangerous assortment of glass fishing floats, model boats, old diving helmets, coal scuttles and chamber pots hang from the ceiling, which, as it’s low and dips perilously in the middle, means I have to watch my head. The glass counter, lined with dusty velvet, is a treasure chest glittering with jewellery, medals and small pieces of silver, and a trip up the winding stairs, walls lined with paintings, leads to two more rooms just as crammed as the one downstairs, although here the emphasis is more on the dusty and long-forgotten. A stuffed grizzly bear, moth-eaten and sad, has taken up permanent residence and helpfully holds a mirror, which allows customers to try on top hats and pith helmets and gives Ron and Sheila, the owners, a sneaky peek at who’s gone upstairs.
As I stood there, staring in the window, it began to rain again, large sploshes darkening the pavement and falling on my head. It rapidly turned into a downpour. I took refuge inside, grabbing an armful of paintings that had been left on display outside, propped against the wall, on my way in.
‘Thank you, Juno!’ Ron called, dodging past me onto the pavement to rescue a box of bric-a-brac and an old rug from getting wet.
From Devon With Death Page 10