Wychwood--Hallowdene

by George Mann

  Now, he was standing outside on the driveway, waiting for the ambulance crew to remove the body. The fourth this week. Fourth! He worked his jaw, trying to remain calm and professional, all the while suppressing the urge to scream in frustration. Could he really have missed it? Could a twenty-something girl have pulled the wool so convincingly over his eyes? He’d even visited her house, admired her art. The painting of his own girlfriend!

  It was at times such as this that he wished he smoked. At least it would have given him something to do.

  Inside he could still hear Petra wailing, every inch the distraught stepmother. Hugh Walsey was taking it all surprisingly calmly, but Peter recognised the signs of shock, and knew that the cool, collected exterior wouldn’t last. In the meantime, Patel and Griffiths were with him in the drawing room, taking a full statement.

  Daisy, meanwhile, had been bundled into the back of a squad car and ferried immediately back to the station, where a couple of SOCOs could document every inch of her clothes, take her fingerprints, and then clean her up and deliver her for questioning when he and Griffiths arrived.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket, glanced at the screen. It was 6.30 am. He couldn’t put it off any longer. He made the call.

  “Peter?” Elspeth sounded sleepy on the other end of the line.

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “It’s a bit early, isn’t it? I’ve only been in bed for a couple of hours. Is everything all right?”

  “No. I’m sorry, Ellie. There’s been another murder.”

  “Peter, what’s happened?” Her voice was suddenly full of trepidation.

  “Lucy Walsey’s been killed, up at the manor house. And Daisy was found crouched over the body, dripping in blood.”

  For a moment she didn’t say anything. And then: “Shit!”

  “Ellie, I really am sorry.”

  “I should have stayed with her. Peter, it’s my fault. I could have stopped her. If I hadn’t been so tired, so keen to get home…”

  “Ellie, stop. This is not your fault. There was nothing you could have done. Christ, I’m just pleased you were well out of the way before it happened. If it had been you…” He trailed off. He didn’t even want to think about it.

  “Peter, we’ve got to talk. The things she said last night… I think there’s more to it than you might imagine. Even if she did it, I don’t think she was in her right mind.”

  Peter sighed. “I don’t think anyone who’s done what she’s done could be in her right mind,” he said.

  “Look, can we meet?” she said. “How much longer are you going to be tied up there?”

  “Not long,” said Peter, “but I’ve got to question Daisy with Griffiths. I’m going to be a while. And besides, you’re going to have to come into the station too. You were with her last night, and they’ll want to ask you some questions. It’ll help us put a timeline of the evening together.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Griffiths, probably. I’d do it myself, but since we’re… well, you know.”

  “I know,” she said. “But we do need to talk. You and me. Alone.”

  “What is it, Ellie? You sound spooked.”

  “It’s about Agnes Levett,” she said. “I’ve got a horrible feeling Lee Stroud was right, and Jenny Wren really did disturb something she shouldn’t have when she lifted that stone.” She sounded perfectly serious.

  “Ellie, you’re talking about a 350-year-old spirit rising from the dead,” said Peter, keeping his voice low as a uniformed constable walked past.

  “I know. I know. It sounds mad. But remember what I said about an open mind. If there’s one thing the Carrion King case taught us…”

  “Okay,” said Peter. “Open mind. I promise.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Giving her statement proved to be a fairly perfunctory matter. She’d sat with DS Patel in a small interview room at the station, outlining everything that had occurred the previous evening: from her night in with Peter – skipping over the part where she’d helped him sort through potential evidence – to the phone call and her hurried drive over to Daisy’s house.

  She explained what she’d found when she arrived – Daisy in a dishevelled, emotional state – and how the woman had seemed when Elspeth had left her a short while later. She felt obliged, given the circumstances, to tell the police about the content of her conversation with Daisy, too, although she couldn’t help but feel as if she were betraying the young woman’s trust in doing so. She focused on what Daisy had told her about the dizziness and blackouts that had led to her wandering alone in the woods in recent nights. She’d allow the police to draw their own conclusions from that.

  She also related Daisy’s account that she’d been in a relationship with Lucy Walsey, and that it had remained a secret to protect Lucy, who’d feared how her stepmother might react to the news of her sexuality. Elspeth realised now that Lucy was the young woman she’d half-recognised from the painting in Daisy’s studio, reading her book and looking coyly at the viewer. Patel had rather pointedly asked Elspeth to describe the nature of her own relationship with Daisy, and she’d been clear and brief: they were becoming friends, and Daisy had given no indication that she was prone to violent or disturbing behaviour.

  She still found it hard to believe that Daisy could be responsible for Lucy’s death. It seemed so wrong, so unlike the woman she had come to know. The only possible explanations she could fathom were that Daisy was seriously unwell and therefore not in sound mind, or was innocent and had been wrongly accused, or else had been acting under the supernatural influence of Agnes’s spirit. Given what she’d learned that evening, Elspeth was tending towards the third explanation, no matter how incredible it seemed.

  This, of course, she kept to herself. She’d discuss that with Peter as soon as the opportunity arose.

  He’d been unable to get away after she’d finished her interview, and so Elspeth had paid a visit to Meredith at the offices of the Heighton Observer, where she’d logged in and updated the ongoing story of what the media were now calling the ‘Hallowdene Murders’. She didn’t mention Daisy in her account of Lucy’s death; the police hadn’t formally released that information, and she saw no reason to give the other news outlets an early reason to begin their character assassination of her friend.

  Following her brief stint in the office, she returned home and slept fitfully on the sofa until finally being woken by a call from Peter, just before 4.30 pm. He’d managed to finish up at the station – at least for a short while – and suggested they meet at Lenny’s for coffee. She countered by suggesting the Old Dun Cow and so now she was standing at the bar, ordering a pint of bitter and a gin and tonic while Peter found them a quiet table at the back.

  She paid the barman – a wiry little man with a bushy beard that seemed to have the effect of elongating his head – and carried the drinks over to where Peter was sitting in a little nook beside the fireplace. The fire itself was out, although the stink of sooty residue and ash still lingered beneath the smell of stale beer. In the background, a fruit machine chimed endlessly, and a few early starters had begun to gather, chatting away merrily over their first round of drinks.

  “I’m sorry about earlier,” said Peter. “Griffiths was on the warpath, and these sorts of things generate a ton of paperwork…”

  “I understand. Don’t worry about it.” She took a sip of her drink, and puckered her lips. The barman had obviously been feeling generous – the glass contained considerably more gin than tonic. “How’s Daisy?”

  “Better than you might think,” said Peter. He drained almost half of his beer in a single gulp. He really had had a difficult day. “Although it does mean my main lead has evaporated,” he added.

  Elspeth frowned. “You mean you don’t think she did it?”

  “I did,” said Peter. “I was convinced of it. Anyone would have been. You should have seen her at the scene, Ellie. It was harrowing. She was covered in all this blood…” He
trailed off, taking another pull on his beer. “But the evidence doesn’t stack up, no matter how we look at it. You’ve corroborated Daisy’s movements until 4 am, and I know that’s correct because of the call log on my phone. Judging by the estimated time of death, Lucy was killed before Daisy could have realistically made it to the manor house. The blood had already started to congeal.”

  “So Daisy found her like that?” said Elspeth. “The poor woman.”

  “It looks that way. There were none of Daisy’s prints on the murder weapon, and the call logs show that she was telling the truth about Lucy’s panicked phone calls – there were six missed calls on her phone. Lucy must have been terrified, and instead of calling us, she called Daisy, who was in no fit state to help her.” He looked angry, not so much at Lucy, but at his inability to do anything about it. “Daisy thinks she was scared to call her parents because they’d want to know why she’d been sneaking out. They’d warned her about it just the other day, and they clearly didn’t know – or hadn’t accepted – that she was gay.”

  “And she and Daisy were a couple?”

  Peter nodded. “A quick look at their phones confirmed they were in a relationship, despite what Hugh and Petra Walsey say. They were meeting regularly. The texts even show that the reason Daisy had been wandering about the village so late at night was because she’d been meeting Lucy. There’s nothing about their relationship that suggests Daisy had a motive to kill her.”

  Elspeth felt a flood of relief. “What about the other murders? Is she still a suspect?”

  “Everyone’s a suspect until I can prove otherwise,” said Peter, “but there’s no forensic evidence to place her at the scene of either Nicholas Abbott’s or Lee Stroud’s murders, and the forensic report on Steve Marley suggests that he was killed only half an hour or so before I got to him. She couldn’t have been responsible for that, either.”

  Elspeth took another swig of her drink, feeling somewhat vindicated. “I’m so relieved. Where is she now?”

  “We’ve sent her home, with a warning not to leave the area.”

  “She must have been terrified. Imagine finding the person you love with a knife in their back. Imagine not being able to help them.”

  Their eyes met. Peter swallowed.

  “I presume she told you about the blackouts?” said Elspeth.

  He nodded. “Yeah. We had a doctor look her over, but there’s no obvious medical explanation. At least without further tests.”

  “But there is another explanation,” said Elspeth.

  “Ellie…”

  “Hear me out. What if Lee Stroud was right? What if Agnes’s spirit was responsible for those deaths in the 1640s, and what if she’s doing the same again now? Think about it. There’s no obvious link between the victims. Agnes is working to create chaos amongst the villagers, generating a climate of fear.”

  Peter looked pained. He was having a hard time going along with this, she could tell. “So you’re saying a ghost strangled Nicholas Abbott, or bludgeoned Lee Stroud, or stabbed Lucy Walsey in the back? Come on, Ellie. I know that stuff with the Carrion King was hard to explain—”

  “Impossible to explain,” said Elspeth, cutting him off. “You know that. And I’m not saying that a ghost did it. I’m saying that a malign force might have influenced a living person to do it. A trace memory of what had lived before, now whispering into people’s ears, pushing them to do something they’d never otherwise consider. Just think about it for a minute. It makes sense when you consider what’s been happening to Daisy.” She outlined everything that Daisy had told her the previous evening regarding Agnes, waking up in the ruins of her house, her ‘memory’ of the ritual and the role that Cuthbert Abbott had played in his wife’s death.

  “She might simply be disturbed, Ellie. If she’d told us all of that, we might have been able to get her some help.” Peter was frowning.

  Elspeth could hardly blame Daisy for not revealing everything to the police. She knew it sounded unbelievable. But then most people hadn’t seen the things Ellie and Peter had seen, or had to come to terms with real evidence of the supernatural. “Look, I know how it sounds, but think about what happened with the Carrion King. The things we saw… the mirror. You know that there are things in this world that defy rational explanation. You’ve seen it with your own eyes.”

  “All right. Say for a moment that it’s true, and that Agnes, or whatever ‘trace memory’ is left of her, has been causing these blackouts, working through Daisy as a means of seeking vengeance for being wrongly accused. Why pick on Daisy? Why not someone else from the village?”

  Elspeth mulled this over for a moment. “Perhaps it’s the familial link you found yesterday: the connection between the Levetts and the Heddles. Could that be it? Agnes working through the remnants of her family to exact her revenge?”

  “I suppose it makes sense,” said Peter, “if you allow for the notion that the witch’s spirit could even still exist. But there’s one other thing you’re forgetting. We’ve just more or less ruled out Daisy as a suspect. So even if this were true, and Daisy was being influenced in the way you describe, she couldn’t be working alone.”

  “Yes, but there’s another familial link, isn’t there?” said Elspeth. “One we haven’t talked about yet.”

  “The Jamesons,” said Peter.

  “We know that Sally was in the village hall when Steve Marley was killed, too,” said Elspeth.

  “But Christian wasn’t there,” said Peter. “Plus, if Stroud’s charts are correct and Christian knew the truth, he certainly had a reason to be at odds with Nicholas Abbott. It’s just conjecture, but there could be something in it. I was planning to go over there this morning, but what with everything that happened…”

  “Let’s go now,” said Elspeth.

  “Now?”

  She pushed her drink across the table. She’d hardly touched it. “Come on. I’ll drive. The parade will be starting soon. If nothing else, it’ll be a good spectacle.”

  Peter downed the last of his pint. “Okay,” he said. “But if anyone asks, I’m off duty.”

  Elspeth grinned. “I’m not sure you’re ever off duty,” she said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Hallowdene village was awash with people, many of them dressed in colourful costumes, in animal masks made from papier mâché and fake fur. Children danced around their parents’ legs, dribbling ice cream or munching on candyfloss clouds.

  A row of classic cars had been lined up on show along one verge; a fire-eater was working a crowd on another. The pub had thrown open its doors and people were wandering through the streets with plastic pint glasses filled with lager and local cider. At the far end of the village, over by the edge of Raisonby Wood, a large crowd had gathered, presumably to stake out a good spot for the start of the main parade. A number of enterprising villagers had set up bric-a-brac stalls outside their houses, arranged with piles of unwanted toys, DVDs and books. Others were handing out free plastic cups of water to passers-by or sitting out on the pavement on folding chairs, drinking beer from mismatched glasses. The atmosphere nevertheless seemed somewhat subdued, as if people were forging ahead regardless, wilfully attempting to affect an air of nonchalance, but unable to shake their unease at the horrors that had occurred amongst them in the course of the last week. The roads through the village had been closed, and Ellie had been forced to circle around for ten minutes until finally locating a man in a yellow coat, who’d ushered them into a farmer’s field. She’d parked the Mini in the oozing mud, alongside a white Mazda that had been definitively spattered up both sides.

  They hurried through the crowds towards Richmond’s, fighting against the flow of people making their way down towards the village green. Elspeth didn’t really expect to find either Sally or Christian at the tearooms, given Sally’s prominent role in the festivities, so she was surprised to see that she was just in the process of locking up as they arrived. Peter moved quickly to intercept her.

&nb
sp; “Ms Jameson,” he said. “I’m pleased to catch you.”

  “I’m in a bit of a rush,” she said, a little brusquely. “I’m needed down in the village for the end of the parade. I only came back to fetch some more change for the float.” She waved a bag of coins as if to underline her point.

  “I understand,” said Peter. “I just need a few minutes of your time.”

  The woman sighed. She glanced at Elspeth. “Thank you for what you did for Daisy,” she said. “The poor girl’s in pieces–” she turned her glower on Peter for a moment, before looking back at Elspeth and softening again “–but we appreciate your kindness.”

  “I didn’t really do anything,” said Elspeth, feeling her cheeks reddening.

  “You were there for her when she needed someone.”

  Elspeth nodded. “Where is she?”

  “At home,” said Sally. “Catching up on sleep.”

  “I need to ask you a couple of questions,” said Peter.

  “What, now?”

  “It’ll only take a moment. I have to ask you about Nicholas Abbott.”

  Sally looked flustered. “Look, I’ve already told you everything I know.”

  Peter looked sceptical. “Not everything, Ms Jameson. Is it true, for instance, that Abbott was Christian’s father?”

  All of the colour seemed to drain out of Sally’s face. She stammered for a moment, and then took a deep breath. “I’m not sure what you’ve heard, but—”

  “Is it true?” said Peter, firmly.

  She nodded meekly. “But it’s not how you think. It wasn’t some big affair behind Sarah’s back, or anything like that. It was a terrible mistake. A fumble down the back lane one night. It’s all very sordid and embarrassing.”