Embroidering Shrouds

by Priscilla Masters

  Joanna sighed and pushed her heavy hair away from her face. ‘I hate cases like this when you know the real villains are out there, laughing their socks off and deciding when to go hunting again. It’s so difficult.’ She glanced down at the desk, strewn with piles of papers. ‘And just look at all this paperwork. All the man-hours wasted so far. And half the time the felons are hauled in by chance, by some other force for a motoring offence and they find the Stanley knife or something. Police work can be so frustrating.’

  Now it was Korpanski’s turn to grin. ‘Patience, Jo.’

  She sighed. ‘Not my strongest point, Mike.’

  ‘I know.’

  They clocked off at one, retiring to a local pub for lunch of an oatcake filled with Buxton Blue cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. The cheese was more of a local dish than the tomatoes, which needed a rare commodity to ripen them. It had been the wettest summer in the moorlands since Joanna had taken up post here more than eight years ago. The sun had stayed, sulkily, behind clouds for all the months without an ‘r’ in them. And the rain had not let up during the autumn. Nearby Endon had been cursed by flooding. Farmers had been reluctant to let their cattle roam the fields and turn the grass into a soggy mulch. Everyone, it seemed, was fed up with the rain. It was just starting up again as they left the pub, giving the town a generally depressing atmosphere. They walked quickly, heads down, threading their way through umbrellas and people in mackintoshes.

  By two they were back at the station, dealing with a call that had come in during their lunch break reporting someone loitering around a garden shed. The uniformed officers had sped round, lights flashing, in the hope of showing up the CID boys. They would be the ones to catch the villains terrorizing the old ladies. They’d found nothing and had driven back slowly, blue lights extinguished, their tails between their legs.

  Joanna and Mike exchanged resigned glances. ‘We may as well go and talk to her,’ said Jo.

  They spent a fruitless half-hour taking a statement from a querulous septuagenarian.

  ‘Someone was there. I know it.’

  ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘Not clearly.’ Rose Turnbull wrinkled her forehead. ‘I heard him though,’ she insisted. It was as though she knew her words would be doubted. ‘I did hear him.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Near the garden shed.’

  For form’s sake the pair of detectives trooped out into the garden: a tiny lawn smothered with fallen leaves, a gravel path, stringy, dying plants, plenty of deadheads. At the bottom stood a wooden garden shed. The door was swinging open.

  Mrs Turnbull was distraught. ‘I know I locked it. It has a padlock. It’s quite secure. How else would it have come open?’

  ‘Is there anything ...?’

  ‘One lawnmower. It was new in the spring.’

  Patiently they took security numbers, details, filled out forms, took the vaguest of descriptions that would have fitted every male in the town between the ages of fourteen and sixty.

  But as they drove back to the station Joanna voiced the thought that had occupied both their minds. ‘It isn’t our boys. These are simple shed-breakers, kids or drug addicts, not our villains.’

  Mike agreed. ‘Her lawnmower’ll turn up in the car boot fair next week.’

  Joanna nodded. ‘And in the meantime we wait.’

  Chapter Three

  8.47 a.m. Tuesday, October 27th

  Just to prove how capricious the weather could be, the morning was once again bright with autumn sunshine as Joanna biked into Leek. White clouds drifted in a Wedgwood blue sky, inviting optimism that spilled over into her work. Maybe the gang would be caught and the elderly of Leek would once again feel safe. Joanna squinted up at the sun and wished she could believe that, but behind the warmth there was a nip in the air. A few more weeks and she would have to stop cycling. The weather would become cold, the journey hazardous in the dark. Cyclists were never as visible as cars and the moorland roads were remote and unlit. She loved yet hated this time of year, the dying time, when Christmas beckoned with scarlet and tinsel fingers. This year the festive season would be a particularly tricky time for her, a time when she would wrestle against Matthew’s sense of duty towards his daughter. It would be their first Christmas under the same roof since they had bought the cottage in Waterfall and already she was dreading it. What would happen about Eloise? Would Matthew go to York, leaving Joanna alone? Or would Eloise expect to stay at Waterfall? Joanna’s face changed as she pictured the sullen, blonde fourteen-year-old with little of her father in her features. Joanna bent low over her handlebars, turning her aggression against Matthew’s first wife into speed, and she tried to imagine a different Christmas. Maybe she could invite Caro and Tom up, cook a turkey for them. ‘Roll on next spring,’ she muttered and pedalled furiously until she reached the station.

  The exertion served its purpose, absorbing all her concentration. Eloise was forgotten – for the moment.

  Bill Tylman stared for a long time at yesterday’s pint of milk still standing on the step. No empties. Something was wrong. In all the years Bill had known Nan Lawrence she had never broken her rigid habits: she had never ever left her pint of milk out for the day or forgotten to replant the empties. This was out of character.

  And Bill Tylman wasn’t exactly sure what to do about it. He stood for a moment, glancing nervously around him, scratching his head and pondering. That was when he realized the curtains were still closed.

  Joanna used the locker room to change out of her cycling gear into some black trousers and a loose white silk shirt. Mike was in her office when she walked in. She greeted him warily. ‘How are things?’

  He made a face. ‘Fran had this almighty row with her last night. The old boot’s been feeling sorry for herself, quiet since then, acting the martyr.’

  Joanna flopped down in the chair behind her desk and made a token effort of leafing through the pile of papers. ‘No mention of her going, I don’t suppose?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He grinned, looking a little more like the Mike of old. ‘We all live in hope.’

  The milk float lumbered along the main road, trying to push the vehicle over its top speed of twenty-five miles an hour. Cars raced past him. Tylman’s face was white. He had looked in through the tiny crack in the curtain. Now he wished he hadn’t because he knew he would never forget. It would stick in his mind. Every time he closed his eyes he would see it. Her. He gulped back a deep, nauseated breath. Once he had seen her he had raced back to his milk float with one blind thought. The police. He had to get to the police. Panicked he drove past telephones and houses, people and parked cars, ignoring the chance of summoning the police to him.

  He had to reach the police station.

  Joanna was drinking her second coffee of the day when the call came through from the desk officer, a stolid local lad named Police Constable Robert Cumberbatch, who had spent the last five minutes trying to make sense of the agitated story.

  ‘Got a milkman here, ma’am.’

  She suppressed any instinct to order one pint or two. ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Called at an old lady’s house this morning. Her milk was still on the step from yesterday.’ Cumberbatch’s tone was flat.

  ‘Social services, Cumberbatch,’ she suggested gently.

  ‘Says he looked in through the window.’ Cumberbatch looked again at the shaken milkman. ‘Curtains was drawn but they didn’t quite meet. He could make her out; says she’s lying near the window. And he says there’s a lot of blood around, he thinks …’

  Joanna stood up, still holding the phone, trying to still the sudden snatch of fear that it had happened. ‘Have you dispatched a car round?’

  A pause. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And an ambulance?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where does this old lady live?’ Joanna asked sharply.

  ‘Macclesfield Road.’

  ‘The number?’

  There was a brief, embarrassed silence.

 
; ‘The number, Cumberbatch? The Macclesfield Road goes all the way from Leek ...’

  ‘To Macclesfield. I know that, ma’am. Well, it doesn’t really have a number. It’s Nan Lawrence’s place. It’s in the grounds of... The locals call it Spite Hall.’

  ‘Spite Hall?’

  ‘On account of –’

  Joanna interrupted; she had no time for local legend. ‘How far out of Leek is it?’

  ‘Two – three miles, on the right-hand side, just beyond the trout farm and the turning for Rudyard.’

  ‘OK, Cumberbatch,’ she said sharply, ‘get a statement from the milkman and let him finish his round. Alert Sergeant Barraclough and the rest of the SOCO team, just tell them they might be needed.’ Already she was sliding her jacket from the back of the chair.

  Later she might reflect that while PC Cumberbatch had had no difficulty telling her about the finding of a woman’s body he had found it hard to repeat a vernacular house name.

  Mike said nothing as they walked across the station car park but as she glanced at his square profile she could see his jaw had tightened. She could read his mind. They had expected this, anticipated it, yet they had been unable to prevent it.

  They used a squad car, left the blue light off. The town was quiet and traffic free compared with Wednesday’s market day. Three minutes and they were on the northern outskirts, speeding past the Courtaulds factory on the right and Rock House on the left. Another couple of minutes and they were at the trout farm.

  Mike pointed out a narrow track on the right, almost concealed by an elderly oak, its trunk disfigured with cancerous looking burrs. The track itself seemed little used with turf sprouting up its centre. She turned the car in. The lane bent around to the left and two houses came simultaneously into view: a grey concrete, single-storeyed building, flat-roofed with 1940s metal window frames, and behind it, its ground floor completely hidden by the other, was a beautiful eighteenth-century, symmetrical, bow-windowed Georgian manor house, red brick and elegant. The best of the eighteenth century and rammed up against it the very worst of the 1940s – little more than a troop hut. Long and thin, the smaller building spanned the entire length of the Georgian facade. It was criminal.

  Mike made a face. ‘Now you know why it’s called Spite Hall.’

  Her eyes returned to the red brick. ‘And the other building? What do they call that?’

  ‘Brushton Grange. Nice, isn’t it?’

  There was no answer. It was more than nice. It was beautiful. And that made the contrast between the two buildings even more tragic. Only real beauty can be so completely marred.

  ‘How can they have allowed this to happen?’

  Mike shrugged. ‘Post war.’

  ‘But to leave it standing.’

  ‘The owners are brother and sister,’ he said as though that explained everything.

  She climbed out of the car. Signs were already waiting to be read, the milk bottle still standing on the doorstep, ridges in the gravelled drive where someone, presumably the milkman, had struggled to escape the scene, another squad car, its blue light still flashing.

  Mike hammered on the door and met six and a half feet of Police Constable Will Farthing walking back around the side. ‘There’s no answer, Mike,’ he said, ‘and there’s someone in there. I was just going to break in.’

  They stood outside the front door, solid wood, closed and undamaged, set in the narrow width of the building with two small windows either side. ‘I’ve tried it, ma’am,’ Farthing said. ‘It’s locked; I looked through.’ He led them around the right-hand side of the building to a large metal window.

  It didn’t take them long to see what the milkman had seen: through a frustratingly narrow gap in the curtains they saw what looked like a heap of bloodstained rags lying on the floor near the window. In the darkened room they could just make out white hair, caked in a dark, dried pool of blood. Joanna peered through silently for a moment before speaking to Will Farthing. ‘Did you notice any sign of forced entry?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Then we’d better break a door down.’

  Will Farthing led them round to the back. The door was partially glazed with panels of reeded glass and coated in dull green peeling paint. Joanna wrapped a tissue around her hand and tried the handle. It was locked. ‘Let’s get in there,’ she said.

  Mike gave the glass a sharp blow with his elbow, slipped his hand through the hole, turned the key and shot back the bolts. ‘No-one got in this way’, he commented, ‘or out.’

  They put on overshoes and stepped into an old-fashioned kitchen, small, dark and narrow, running the rear width of the house. It contained a tall green and cream cabinet, an ancient grey gas cooker, a red Formica table and two chairs neatly pushed back. They moved through to a long, dark, hall and headed for the room on their left.

  Seconds later Joanna was bending over the crumpled body of an old woman. ‘You can cancel the ambulance,’ she said.

  Chapter Four

  Joanna stood in the doorway and looked around her, inhaling the fusty atmosphere. This was not the first body she had seen but it still had the capacity to make her retch. She forced herself not to think but to observe.

  It was a narrow, dingy room, the same basic shape as the house. To her right was a small window which overlooked the front door, its curtain tightly shut. She slipped a glove on and pulled it open. Now a little light was let in she could see the room and its contents clearer. The old woman in a dark skirt and black cardigan lay sprawled with her head towards the window, an upholstered armchair tipped over behind her. At her side a small occasional table had also fallen to the floor together with an electric table lamp, its bulb smashed into tiny shards. Already Joanna was starting to anticipate the minds of the scene-of-crime officers. Such sharp fragments easily worked their way into soft-soled shoes. Joanna moved her head slightly. From the position of Nan Lawrence’s body it seemed she had been sitting facing the window when she had been struck from behind. Her feet, in brown woollen slippers, were still almost touching the stretcher rail. Joanna’s eyes avoided the bloodied pulp which had been her head, instead she continued her silent study of the room. It was shabbily furnished, an oblong of faded green carpet covered the centre, while the border was of dark wooden parquet. An upright piano stood at the end farthest from the door, a cheap, old-fashioned instrument of dark wood with brass candlesticks on its front. An elderly, brown leather-covered sofa curved around a green-tiled fireplace, a crude print above of a vase of cornflowers the only picture in the room. In the corner, next to the piano, stood the sole piece of quality, an antique, long-case clock with a brass face. Everything else was mass produced and tasteless, dating from the 1940s. Korpanski touched her arm and motioned towards something on the hearthrug, a walking stick, varnished blackthorn, splintered and stained along its length.

  She nodded. ‘It could be the murder weapon,’ she said, still searching the room. ‘We’ll have to see what Matthew says. What’s that?’ Careful to avoid the glass splinters she crossed the room towards the armchair.

  The reason the old woman had sat in the window, by a lamp, instead of nearer the fire, was a tapestry frame, also knocked over but unbroken. Nan Lawrence must have used the daylight to see, and in the evening she had worked beneath the lamp. Joanna bent down to peer at the work, neatly done, evenly stitched in bright silk, and now spattered with blood. She read out the title: ‘Massacre of the Innocent’.

  Behind her Korpanski shifted uncomfortably. ‘You could call it that.’

  ‘Bit ironic,’ Farthing commented and Joanna was forced to agree. She took a good look at it. Prettily bordered with scarlet poppies and a bright blue chalice, the content matched its title, a bloodthirsty, classical religious subject. She’d seen paintings like it in art museums the world over – a baby, its mother, soldiers – the depiction of Herod’s attempt to slay Christ. A common enough choice for an artist funded by the church but a very strange selection for an old woman to choose t
o sew late into the nights, even an old woman who lived in a house commonly known as Spite Hall.

  Mike’s gaze was on the spots of red. ‘I suppose it’s her blood.’

  She simply nodded.

  Their attention was diverted by Sergeant Barraclough arriving noisily with his team of SOCOs. He took a swift look around and gave a long whistle. ‘Nasty,’ he said. ‘Very nasty. No time to waste.’ He unpacked his scene-of-crime bag and started work straightaway, unfazed that he had arrived before the pathologist. ‘Plenty for me to be getting on with here’, he said cheerfully, ‘before he starts his poking and prodding.’

  He began by directing the police photographer to record the entire scene. ‘Barra’ was experienced enough at dealing with crimes to already start to tie his evidence to a sequence of events. His observant eyes picked out a box of embroidery silks scattered near the window – pinks, blues, browns. Some of them were blood-spattered too.

  Joanna waited as the SOCO team erected lights before speaking to Sergeant Barraclough. ‘What happened, do you think?’

  Barra gave her a straight look. ‘Well, we’ll know a bit more when your boyfriend gets here,’ he said, but it looks to me like the old lady left the door unlocked.

  She was sitting here.’ He indicated the chair. ‘I guess she was deaf, didn’t hear someone come creeping up behind her. He grabs the walking stick and crash. Over she goes.’

  She knew the hint of flippancy hid a revulsion for the crime as deep as her own. ‘So our killer simply walks in through the front door?’

  ‘Well, the back door was bolted and there’s no damage to the front door. It wasn’t forced. It’s an old-fashioned mortise and tenon lock, rather than a Yale, which he could have forced easily. Look, she would have had to turn the key to be safe.’

  He led her from the murder scene along the dingy corridor, brown-painted walls, more parquet flooring. ‘There isn’t a single bloodstain along this entire corridor,’ he said. ‘I’ve already had a quick look. She was attacked in her own sitting room as she sat down with her back to the door. As far as I can tell – so far – that’s the theory the evidence supports.’