A Very English Murder

by Verity Bright

  ‘That’s just it! You see, Clifford we were right about the sergeant all along.’

  Wilby looked between the two of them. ‘What exactly is it that you want?’

  Clifford rose to the occasion. ‘Want, Sergeant? We don’t want anything. We have come to help you.’

  Eleanor whispered in the sergeant’s ear, ‘To help you climb to the rank you were born to be, Sergeant Wilby.’

  Wilby cocked his head, his interest at least mildly piqued. ‘Go on.’

  ‘But…’ Eleanor pulled away and looked around. ‘We couldn’t possibly tell you here. Even in a police station the walls or… front desks have ears.’

  The three of them turned their gaze towards the lone constable.

  Feeling all eyes on him, the constable at the front desk jerked upright. ‘Sarge?’

  Wilby motioned him to be silent with a flap of his hand. ‘Tea, Brice.’ He gave the desk constable a glare. ‘In scrubbed cups, mind.’

  ‘On it, Sarge.’ Brice disappeared through the door behind him.

  ‘Three sugars, thank you,’ Eleanor called after him.

  ‘Now what is this about?’

  Eleanor looked round again. ‘Sergeant, I wonder if we should retire to a more… private place. Goodness, if what we have to tell you fell into the hands of…’ – she feigned horror – ‘… a lesser man.’

  ‘Which is not you, Sergeant Wilby,’ Clifford clarified.

  Eleanor shook her head vigorously. ‘Heavens, no! A lesser man might use the information to pull that promotion from under your very feet.’

  Wilby grimaced. ‘That would never do. There are indeed some petty-minded individuals here who are jealous of my talents and like to nab the glory for themselves. Follow me.’ He strode a few doors along the main corridor.

  Eleanor followed but Clifford stayed where he was and called after them, ‘I fear, my lady, you have left your handbag in the car. I’d best retrieve it.’

  In the cramped interview room Wilby was lost. ‘Let me get this right. If I solve this heinous crime here, I’ll be promoted?’

  Eleanor clapped her hands. ‘Absolutely, Sergeant Wilby, your promotion will be in the bag! And not before time, either. National fame, just imagine.’

  Clifford opened the door, nodded to Eleanor and stood aside as Constable Brice wobbled through with the tray.

  ‘What crime?’ Wilby was struggling to keep up.

  Eleanor clapped her hands. ‘Why, the murder of Jack Cornell, of course.’

  ‘What!’ Wilby exploded. ‘There was no murder! He committed suicide. And left a note saying so.’

  ‘Indeed, Sergeant. Were you the one who first examined the body?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I was, which is how I know it weren’t no murder.’

  ‘Then you won’t mind telling me where you were between eleven Friday night and eight Saturday morning.’

  Wilby somehow controlled his temper. ‘As it happens I went off-duty at ten, which young Lowe can tell you, then I went home to bed – alone!’

  ‘So no witnesses then?’

  Wilby exploded. ‘No, because I don’t need no witness for a crime what ain’t been committed!’

  Eleanor straightened her hat. ‘Well really, if that is how you thank us for trying to help your career, it’s no wonder you are still a sergeant. I will suggest to Mayor Kingsley that your force employs women as some of the more progressive and successful forces are doing. A female sergeant is exactly what this station needs.’ She stood. ‘Clifford.’ She indicated the door with a wave.

  ‘My lady.’ Clifford adjusted Constable Brice’s tea tray with a gloved hand as he passed to stem the flow of tea pouring over the edge. ‘Gentlemen.’ Clifford touched his hat with one finger and caught up with Eleanor at the front door, which he opened for her.

  As the Rolls pulled away, Clifford spoke. ‘If I might offer a complimentary observation, my lady, that was indeed a most convincing performance.’

  ‘Thank you, Clifford. It seems that Wilby has no alibi for the time of Cornell’s death, so we’ll have to work out where to go from there. But a hearty congratulations to you too. Tell me, on your side, was it as successful a plan as we hoped?’

  ‘Better, my lady.’

  Eleanor gasped. ‘So at least one more of our theories is correct?’

  ‘I would advance the status “theory” to “fact”.’

  ‘So Sergeant Wilby is covering up the goings on at the quarry! Please tell me all the details, I’m simply bursting to find out. Was my account of the murder mis-recorded?’

  ‘Most definitely not, my lady.’

  Eleanor was dumbfounded. ‘What? But while I was with that idiot Wilby and the other policeman was making tea, didn’t you check the recorded crimes register on the front desk? I’m confused, Clifford.’

  Clifford cleared his throat. ‘I was unable to assess the accuracy with which your account of the murderous events at the quarry were recorded because…’ He paused dramatically. ‘There was no record!’

  Eleanor gasped. ‘No record!’ She let out a low whistle. ‘Then it is worse than I feared. So that trip out to the quarry with Sergeant Wilby the following morning was all for nothing, just a sham. Probably in the hope that I would be satisfied and let the whole thing drop!’

  ‘Your theory that Sergeant Wilby is corrupt is, I feel now, irrefutable. In the register, the pages for Saturday third April, the night your report of the murder at the quarry would have been recorded, and Sunday fourth April when you took the police to the quarry, have been deliberately removed.’ He reached under the palm of his left-hand leather glove and pulled out a scrap of paper. ‘I found only this.’

  ‘Clifford! It’s a definite cover-up. But not executed deftly enough to escape your sharp eyes, well done!’

  ‘Thank you, my lady.’

  ‘Now, Clifford, to the quarry!’

  Twenty-Nine

  It was the middle of the day and a sunny one at that. And without the hindering nuisances of that idiot Wilby or Cartwright…

  ‘Oh, Clifford, we’ve forgotten about Cartwright!’ Eleanor groaned. ‘He’ll be on us like a shot again, sticking his beak in, threatening to report us for trespassing. We’ll have to evade him somehow.’

  ‘Fortunately, Mr Cartwright is a creature of habit, my lady. As you saw, it is market day in Chipstone. Mr Cartwright always stays until the end, around five or six, and then retires to the Eagle bar.’

  ‘A pie and a pint, no doubt?’

  ‘Indeed, but “market pie”. It is the Eagle’s speciality, served only on Mondays. A hand-crafted, hot water crust pastry with gammon or steak and kidney options.’

  ‘Hot water pastry? Yuk!’

  ‘You would imagine so, but they are in fact distressingly moreish.’

  ‘Well, when Cartwright has hung up his farmer’s boots for good, I suggest you take me to sample this local delicacy. Until then, I fear his scowling face would sour even the tastiest meal.’

  ‘Very good, my lady.’

  A minute later, the quarry swung into view. Clifford drove a few hundred yards past the gates until he found a gap in the overgrown hawthorn hedge. The Rolls passed through with only minor scratching to its gleaming paintwork.

  Clifford held the door open for her. Gladstone tumbled out first and started sniffing around.

  In the car a thought struck Eleanor: here she was about to break into the very quarry where she witnessed a murder with a man she had loosely pegged as a suspect. Then again, he was still the only person who seemed to believe her about the quarry murder, although if he was the murderer he would do, wouldn’t he?

  She shook her head, what choice did she have? Besides, she’d still failed to come up with any further evidence of his involvement or any conceivable motive for killing Atkins. Or for that matter, Cornell, although she hadn’t even thought about his possible involvement in that. She sighed. Having lived an adventurous life, she was used to uncertainty, but she wished now everything was black
and white. Promising herself to be on her guard she stepped out of the Rolls.

  Clifford strode forward, his eyes narrowing as he scoured the ground. Between the naturally occurring flints and gravel-filled potholes, the surface was still soft after the torrential storm, allowing Clifford to follow the faint imprint of tyre tracks.

  ‘In my unprofessional estimation, my lady, I would deduce that there were two vehicles here, one more substantial than the other.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Eleanor had taken the thirty paces to the entrance and peeped out into the road. ‘And you know, that is quite a trek from the other side of the gates along the three hundred yards or so of road to here. Especially with the dead weight of a corpse.’

  ‘Then it would appear most unlikely that the murderer would have risked the body being carried out in the open.’

  ‘And don’t forget the gates were unlocked!’ Eleanor exclaimed. ‘Gladstone and I walked right through them, didn’t we, boy?’ She turned to Clifford. ‘What a shame we can’t pick Gladstone’s memory. There might be a clue locked away in there.’

  Gladstone stopped digging and looked up with a perfect pyramid of muddy sand on his snout.

  ‘It does seem most unlikely that there would be much of use behind that grubby forehead,’ Clifford offered.

  Eleanor laughed and swished the dirt from the bulldog’s nose. ‘This is supposed to be a professional investigation, you rascal. Come on, let’s get into the quarry while it’s quiet. We can study the tracks in more detail later.’

  ‘An admirable suggestion.’ From the boot of the Rolls Clifford took out what appeared to be, with only two rungs, the world’s shortest ladder.

  ‘What on earth use is that, Clifford?’

  ‘The gates are locked, my lady, so this will help us climb over. It’s a ladder,’ he added as if to a dim-witted child. ‘This looks the best place.’ He gestured to the right where unruly hedging engulfed the fence.

  ‘I know it’s a ladder, Clifford, but it’s hardly going to help us get over a… oh!’ Eleanor watched Clifford extend the two sides revealing hidden rungs, each tucked neatly inside the other. He continued on way past what she considered a necessary height, and with a deft twist of his wrists, clicked it in half, creating a giant stepladder. ‘It belonged to your uncle, my lady. He was a most ingenious inventor.’

  Eleanor was equally impressed and confused. ‘Bravo! But why did my uncle design such an item and carry it around with him?’

  ‘To assist him in climbing fences,’ Clifford replied, again as if to a small child. With a slight struggle, he managed to place the feet of the first half of the ladder over the other side of the fence and then brought the second half to rest on their side, the apex just clearing the fence itself. He gestured up the rungs.

  ‘But what about Gladstone? Don’t tell me my uncle taught him to heave his lummocking frame up and down steps like this?’

  ‘I’m sure Master Gladstone will find a way through, he is an excellent digger.’

  ‘Here we go!’ Eleanor bent forward and held the sides. She’d scaled plenty higher and more rickety obstacles. She was soon up and over and called to Gladstone. ‘Come on, clever boy, find a hole!’

  The bulldog sniffed along the fence before disappearing into the scrub along the bottom of the hedge. Clifford paused with his hands on the ladder until Gladstone appeared on Eleanor’s side of the fence.

  ‘Well done!’ Eleanor bent down and patted Gladstone as Clifford quickly shimmied up and over with the ease of a man half his age.

  ‘Shall we?’ Clifford nodded across the scrub and haphazard piles of gravel to the dilapidated wooden workman’s hut beyond the turning area for lorries. Eleanor felt a familiar frisson of excitement. She hadn’t totally lost her appetite for adventure. She made her way through the weeds, skirting the muddier sections.

  Standing by the hut, Clifford scanned the quarry. ‘Tell me, again, my lady, exactly what you saw and heard.’

  ‘Well, I can tell you that the wind made it hard to catch the details, but I heard snatches of shouting coming from inside. And I saw a man, Atkins, I’m sure, holding his hands up like he was surrendering.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I thought there was a flash of lightning, but I soon realised it was the shot from a gun as the man fell backwards.’

  ‘How large would you say the flash was, my lady?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. It was just a flash.’

  ‘Did it leave an image? Such as when you look quickly at the sun and then away again?’

  ‘Yes, and no. I didn’t have that blinding image you describe after the gun was fired. I believe it is called “after image” by the boffins,’ she said smugly.

  ‘Indeed it is, my lady. Of course, it would depend heavily on the density of your light-sensitive receptors and neuronal density. Professor Hering, the German physiologist, wrote most eloquently on the subject.’

  They tried the door.

  ‘Locked! Dash it. Stranger and stranger, Clifford. The quarry gates that, according to Cartwright, are always locked, were open the night of the murder, as was this hut, but the morning the police arrived with me, the gates were locked, but this hut still open. And now both are locked.’

  Clifford nodded. ‘Indeed, my lady, it certainly suggests someone has been here since the morning the police looked around with you.’

  ‘The murderer?’

  ‘A distinct possibility, my lady, but why would he return? When you were here with the police you said that all evidence of the murder was already removed.’

  ‘Maybe the answer is inside?’ She circled the building looking for another way in. Peering through the dusty windows she could see little inside… except Clifford.

  She returned to the front of the hut and found the door open. ‘How? What are you doing?’

  ‘I believe the definition of breaking and entering is to enter a building or property by force so as to commit a crime of burglary. As you can see, I have not entered by force and have no intention of committing any crime, burglary or otherwise.’

  ‘I know what breaking and entering is, Clifford.’ She blushed, remembering how much it seemed Clifford and her uncle knew of her past. ‘What I meant was, how did you get in? Do you have hat pins like they always use in penny dreadful novels?’

  Clifford held up a slim set of keys. ‘Universal skeleton keys, designed by your uncle.’

  ‘Enough! Until you can tell me the whole story of your joint exploits, I fear I am forming a rather scandalous impression of you and my uncle.’

  ‘Most unfortunate, my lady.’

  Eleanor scoured the spot where she was convinced Atkins had fallen. ‘I’m sure it was just here.’ Together they peered hard, treading carefully so as not to disturb potential clues. ‘The stain was right there.’ Eleanor stared at the stubbornly stain-free sandy surface.

  Clifford scrutinised the area. There was no discernible mark. ‘The blood would have been quite easy to remove from the sand.’

  He stretched his neck from side to side. Eleanor stared at him. He seemed to be lost in deep thought.

  All this thinking and logicalising. Was that even a word? Her head hurt. She wanted to dive in, seize a solid piece of evidence and march into Chipstone Police Station and Wilby’s office brandishing the answer. Although if Wilby was the murderer, that might not be such a good idea. She looked once more at Clifford, who was now stepping sideways around the area they had pinpointed as the site of the murder itself.

  Clifford rubbed his chin. ‘Why lure the victim here? There’s our question.’

  ‘We’ve gone over this. Because it is out of the way and pretty much disused, so a perfect place for a murder.’ She wanted to add, ‘Yawn!’ to the end of that, but thought better of it.

  ‘But what did the murderer possess, or know, that enticed a man of Mr Atkins’ fastidiousness to wallow around in a murky quarry during a storm? And what did Mr Atkins possess, or know, that led to his murder in this remote place?�
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  ‘I see how you’re thinking.’ She looked around. ‘Where’s Gladstone?’

  Not wanting to shout and draw attention to their presence, Eleanor held one hand over her eyes and scoured the undergrowth. A moment later a pheasant shot skywards with an anxious squawk. ‘Ah, there he is.’ Eleanor pointed.

  Clifford pulled out a silver whistle from his waistcoat pocket and blew it once. There was no audible sound, but Gladstone appeared instantly in the hut with them.

  ‘What a highly trained hound,’ Eleanor marvelled, reaching for the bulldog’s favourite treats, which she’d started keeping in her pockets. ‘Good boy!’ she murmured, removing a trailing piece of bramble from his ear. ‘Now, Gladstone, use your doggie senses to tell us something about this dastardly murderer.’

  Clifford looked on with mild amusement. The dog rolled on his back and wriggled his legs lazily.

  ‘Hopeless!’ Eleanor chided him. ‘We’ll have to do it ourselves. Right, getting into the mind of a murderer.’

  She stood up and tried to focus. Suddenly Gladstone struggled onto his belly and heaved himself up with a grunt. He gambolled a short way behind Clifford and pawed under what looked like an old quarry engine on wood runners.

  ‘There are no squirrels here, mutt brain,’ Eleanor said.

  The bulldog took no notice and continued scraping at the stones, ineffectually flicking small amounts of sand to the side.

  ‘Probably the remains of a quarry worker’s mouldy sandwich,’ Eleanor said. ‘Gladstone, you have no discernment!’

  ‘I fear he may cut his paw on those flints, my lady. They can be extremely sharp,’ Clifford noted.

  They walked over to the dog, who was now partially lying down, scratching at the stones with both front feet.

  ‘What are you doing, you stupid lump?’ Eleanor bent down, then jumped up and spat the sand from her mouth as Gladstone showered her with his next pawful. ‘Yuk!’

  Clifford passed her a pristine handkerchief and squatted to get a clearer look at whatever it was that was so interesting to the bulldog.

  ‘Good boy. Stand down, Gladstone,’ he ordered. ‘STAND. DOWN,’ he commanded again.