The Red Chairs Mystery

by L. D. Culliford

  Holly gazed at the grey-haired woman across the table, taking note of the wispy hair, light eye make-up, face powder and slightly smudged lipstick that failed adequately to camouflage the heavily wrinkled, blotched face of a lifelong outdoor addict and cigarette smoker. She noted too the slicked-down, darkly oiled head hair and luxuriant accompanying growth on the upper lip of the man sitting beside her, dressed in a faded tweed jacket with a similarly faded brown choker at his neck. Although the pair looked elderly, and decidedly ‘gone-to-seed’, something about them strangely lifted her spirits. The couple seemed to give off a natural and genuine warmth of feeling that made you like and trust them immediately.

  ‘Don’t embarrass the girl, Marge!’ Dick Willis immediately cut in. ‘I’m sorry!’ He started to apologize.

  ‘No… Really’, replied Holly. ‘It’s alright.’

  ‘I was thinking of that gruesome case a few years ago’, Mrs Willis persisted, ‘When that little girl’s body was found in woodland near Pulborough. It must have been awful to be involved in that one… Such a heartbreaker!’

  ‘You mean Sarah Payne’, Holly said. ‘That was twelve years ago. I was still a probationer then, not a detective. Like you, I only heard about it from the news. She was eight years old, much younger than the woman we found here, by the way, and she was abducted by a known paedophile. He’s still in prison, and likely to stay there for a long time to come.’

  ‘So you can definitely rule him out!’ Mrs Willis replied. ‘It makes you wonder how anyone could do such a dreadful, dreadful thing. It’s so wonderful that people like you want to catch evildoers like that.’

  Holly was about to thank her, but Dick Willis was up on his feet. ‘Come on, Marge,’ he said. ‘That’s enough bothering the detective. Drink up! The morning games are over. If we go home now and get some tucker, we can watch the afternoon matches there.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ said Holly, who had barely glanced at the television since entering the room. ‘How are things going in the Ryder Cup?’

  ‘Thank goodness for Poulter and Rose’, said Mark, relieved to be back in the conversation. ‘We… Europe that is… Were two-one down until that pair managed a fine win over Woods and Stricker… so, it’s two-all at the halfway stage today. The afternoon fourball matches have already begun though, and unfortunately we’re already a couple of holes down in the first match… Of course, there’s plenty of time…’

  His voice trailed off. After the Willis’s left, Kyle made his excuses as well. Unable to think how else to keep Holly entertained, but keen that she should stay, Mark started to tell her about Dick Willis. ‘He’s a remarkable man’, he said. ‘With that great walrus moustache, he looks just like the famous James Braid. Braid was a champion golfer and later a wonderful golf course designer. Between 1901 and 1910, he managed to win The Open five times. Originally from Scotland, he eventually settled down as the club professional at Walton Heath in Surrey. If you go into the main lounge in the clubhouse there, you will see a near life-size, full-length portrait of Braid in pride of place; and the thing is… He’s the spitting image of Dick. I couldn’t believe it when I first saw it.’

  Mark looked up, glad to see that Holly was at least faintly amused by the astonishing resemblance he was describing. ‘Anyway’, he continued, ‘Dick’s eighty-six now and still walks round the course, playing a few holes at least twice a week, carrying his little set of six clubs in a lightweight bag on his back. He still manages a pretty good game, being particularly wizard with the putter. And we know his age precisely because a week or two back he went out for a game with a new member who, impressed by Dick’s wondrous skills, asked how old he was. This fellow is in his early forties and, when Dick told him the answer, he replied, “I don’t think I’d like to live to be eighty-six”. Quick as a flash Dick’s answer was classic… “I’ll bet you would if you were eighty-five!” Isn’t that something?’.

  Holly laughed. ‘That’s wonderful’, she said. ‘But I must be going now, Mark.’ She had finished her drink and was beginning to realise that she was very tired and very hungry. She wanted to go home. It was tempting, momentarily, to accept Mark’s immediate offer to buy her dinner, but she knew she had to decline. ‘I don’t think that would be appropriate’, she said, pointing out that she was still involved in the early stages of a murder investigation that might have something to do with one, some, or all of the members of the club, including Mark himself. ‘Besides’, she said conclusively, ‘I’m sure you don’t want to miss out on the rest of the golf.’

  Unable to think of a suitably witty reply, Mark just shrugged and made a sad clown’s face. As he hoped, once again, Holly laughed.

  The 9th

  Chapter

  When she awoke the following morning, Holly was still caught up in a dream. Lying on her side, she experienced the clear sensation of someone, a man, enfolding her from behind in a warm loving embrace. Without moving or opening her eyes, she basked, lingering in the glow of the moment. She was surprised but pleased, and her thoughts turned immediately to Mark; to his whisper in her ear the evening before, and to the time he enveloped her gently to demonstrate the golf swing by the pond out on the course. ‘Why not?’ She thought. ‘I’ve not been close to anyone for a long time.’ But then, abruptly throwing back the bedclothes, experience prevailed and she told herself to grow up. She wasn’t a romantic juvenile any longer.

  On returning home the night before, she had put a supermarket fish pie in the oven to heat up, then turned on her computer to review the Payne case. Satisfied that there was no likely link to the present situation, she then looked up the murder of Maryanne Fisher, who had been strangled in Worthing in 2002. Her body had been kept for several weeks by her murderer, who later dumped it, partially burned, in woodland on the edge of the Downs. Thinking that this crime had more in common with the golf club case, Holly discovered that here, too, the perpetrator was locked securely away in a High Security Prison for a very long time. It could not be the same man.

  Hearing the ‘ping’ of the timer in the kitchen, Holly broke off from her deliberations to put frozen peas in the micro-wave. When the food was ready, she poured a glass of Picpoul de Pinet, a new wine she was trying out, recommended by her father, and sat in her favourite comfortable chair. She always recorded the six o’clock news and the local news on television, and thought about watching these programmes, but instead started flicking through the sports channels until she came to the golf.

  ‘Why do I care about this?’ She thought, watching a crowd of fans cheering on one of the American players who, hands in the air, was egging them on. ‘I’m not really interested.’ But she was losing the argument with herself and continued to watch. Unfortunately, the European Team were struggling. Late in the day at Medinah, of the four Ryder Cup pairs, one had already lost their match. Two more were close to losing. The final game of the afternoon was even. That result could go either way.

  After twenty minutes, a new thought struck Holly and, distracted by it, she switched off the set, returning to her computer. She wanted to check whether or not it was a crime simply to conceal somebody’s death, just in case Jane X had died of natural causes after all. She found herself reading on the internet about two types of situation. Firstly, there were stories of young single mothers, ashamed of their pregnancies, delivering their babies frightened and alone. When the baby dies, at or soon after the birth, some of the unfortunate women hide or dispose of the little corpses without telling anyone.

  In other instances, it is elderly folk, grief-stricken men and women who, from denial, confusion and a kind of terror of loneliness, hang onto the corpses of their deceased spouses for days or even much longer. One woman in her eighties was reported as having gone to bed each night and slept beside her dead husband for more than two weeks, until the smell of decay forced her to make up a bed downstairs and sleep there. It was a month or so later that a neighbour called on some pretext, concer
ned for the couple. By this time the smelly tentacles of putrefaction had spread all the way throughout the house, reaching the front door. Her fears confirmed, the neighbour called the police.

  Only rarely did the bereaved person deliberately and fraudulently conceal the death of their partner, usually with the intention of continuing to receive their pension for as long as possible. Accordingly, very few elderly folk were prosecuted; the police and Director of Public Prosecutions taking a lenient view in most cases. Where a trial was held and someone found guilty, a brief suspended sentence or a few months probation was the usual outcome. Holly hoped that some form of grief counselling was also on offer.

  This case was obviously different from those she was reading about. Holly’s researches confirmed that there is a common duty upon all citizens to give information that will inform a Coroner of circumstances requiring an inquest; in other words, if somebody dies. It is therefore a common law offence to obstruct a Coroner by disposing of a body before a Coroner can openly inquire into the circumstances of a death. The offence would have to be tried on indictment, and carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and/or a fine. A lesser, but similar offence called ‘preventing the burial of a body’, is also possible. This does not involve proving any attempt to obstruct a Coroner. Holly was still not sure which, if either, might apply. The body of Jane X had not been concealed. Quite the reverse! It had been deliberately left in plain sight.

  ***

  Back at SRGC, one or two members had stayed to watch the end of play, at which stage the US Team led the Europeans by five points to three. It was not a disaster, but the Americans had all along seemed to be the more convincing side, very much in control.

  ‘We’ll be needing the luck of the Irish tomorrow, then, Mr Patcham!’ Frankie called out to one of the departing members, as he set about closing the bar.

  ‘I don’t think it’s working’, replied the member concerned, impressed that Frank had remembered his name. ‘McIlroy and McDowell went down badly to Mickelson and Bradley this afternoon. That’s two Irish together.’

  ‘That Bradley must have Irish blood in his veins then, to be sure! That’s your explanation’, Frank called out. He had made it up, but took pleasure in having the last word anyway.

  ***

  In the morning that Saturday, drinking tea and eating toast, fully recovered from her nocturnal dream-state, Holly was watching the local news she had recorded the evening before. A brave reporter at the site of the proposed fracking plant was asking rhetorical questions of those protesting, like whether they drove a car or had central heating in their houses. They did, of course, so he would ask where they thought the fuel would come from in future? Were they prepared to pay the much higher prices that petrol would probably cost? Things like that. Complaining about bully-boy tactics and ‘the rape of the countryside’, most of the people he spoke to gave him short shrift, but one white-haired gentleman did admit there was a dilemma. ‘You can have one thing or the other thing’, he agreed, ‘But you can’t have both.’ ‘In this case’, he added, ‘We need more information about the possible destructive effects of fracking. My protest is against the rush to go ahead without a more careful analysis of the probable outcome, including risks as well as benefits.’

  The eager reporter continued holding the microphone in front of him expectantly. ‘Everyone seems to be in such a hurry these days’, the older man concluded, with a shrug and a wry smile. ‘I think we all need to slow down.’

  As if to prove the point, the next news item concerned a woman cyclist knocked down by a van driver travelling too fast in a built up area near Eastbourne, while he was at the same time trying to text his girlfriend on his mobile phone. He had wanted to tell her he was going to be late home. Fortunately, the cyclist’s helmet seems to have saved her from joining that month’s road death statistics.

  Finally, Holly watched as DCI Holroyd and DI Garbutt faced the spotlights and reported the discovery of a body in West Sussex, asking for members of the public to come forward and contact the police with any possible information that might prove useful, particularly in identifying the deceased person. A photo-fit image, an artist’s impression of what she might have looked like when alive and relatively healthy was displayed. It was based on computer manipulation of photographs taken in the forensic suite in Chichester, and Holly found it barely recognizable. They had given Jane X a lot of extra weight. The piece was accompanied by a clip of a reporter standing in front of SRGC, followed by a brief telephone interview with Peter Harding saying that staff, officers and members of the club were co-operating fully with the police, but that no connection between the dead person and the club had been established. Quite deliberately, by prior agreement Holly suspected, no-one mentioned either the red chairs or the message one of them held. It was too early to give out the idea that this could have been a murder, much less that there might still be ‘Murderers’ about.

  ***

  Holly was slightly ahead of time for her appointment. Approaching the impressive black and gold wrought iron gateway of Rose Cottage just before ten o’clock, she noticed something shining brightly back at her. This was the bright sun, reflected back from the steel grille of the intercom, into which she had to speak to gain access. Soon after, the electric gates slid quietly open, and Holly could see the beech-lined driveway curving uphill, concealing any view of the house from the main road.

  Making her way up the long S-bend of the approach, cresting the avenue’s gentle rise, she soon saw that the building was less of a cottage and rather more of a mansion. The large forecourt was paved, rather than gravel, oval in shape with an ornate central fountain from which water bubbled rather than spouted. Behind it, the foursquare Georgian house rose up splendidly before her. The yellow painted front door had a ramp leading up to it, she noticed, as well as a stone staircase. Either side, carefully colour-matched yellow Mountbatten roses climbed high on the walls between the two tall sets of ground-floor windows. There was an additional window above the front door, making five on the second storey. The yellow-grey stonework was offset by the angled red-tiled roof, interrupted halfway up by one dormer window on either side. Brick chimneys rose above the whole, completing a pleasingly symmetrical vision.

  To her left, Holly noticed a red-brick stable-block; and, on the right, a more modern, low-rise garage, sizeable enough for three or four cars. Large, well-established trees could be seen towering to the side and behind the house. Having parked up and got out of her car, there was no time to take it all in before the front door opened silently. A tall, severe-looking grey-haired woman with black spectacles, wearing a navy-blue blouse beneath a black jacket and long skirt, stood patiently in the entrance.

  ‘Mrs Royle?’ said Holly, as she climbed the few stairs.

  ‘Is inside’, said the apparition, in the same metallic voice that she had used to answer the driveway intercom. ‘I’ll take you to see her, Detective.’

  Glancing round the wood-panelled hallway, Holly became briefly aware of the curving carpeted stairway, the portraits on the wall, the elegant grandfather clock now ringing the last of its ten chimes, and the enormous flower vases on tall pedestals filled with fragrant blooms, before being whisked forward into another room, which held not one surprise for her but two.

  The panelled entranceway led into a normal dining-room, entirely at one with the architectural period of the house, containing a large oak sideboard, wall cabinets, old master landscape paintings on the walls and, placed crosswise, an elongated, twelve-place dining table complete with high-backed chairs bearing two solid silver candelabra. Originally, this room would have felt rather dark and sombre, except that now the opposing north wall had been entirely removed, so that where oak panelling ended, steel and glass supervened. There was also a slight downward incline for two or three paces at that point, then a drop of three or four feet to a large, open, contemporary-style living space. The whole effect, of sudden
light and expansion, was breath-taking.

  Holly stood still and blinked. Only when she moved forward, towards a ramp leading from the higher to the lower level against the side wall, did she notice that the space below was occupied. This was the second surprise. Georgina Royle was in a wheelchair. No-one had thought to tell Holly that she was disabled.

  The grey-haired spectre was still silently ushering her forward from behind, urging her to descend the short staircase to the right. The woman in the wheelchair, alerted by the sound of her tread on the steps, swivelled round and looked up.

  ‘Welcome, Detective’, she said. ‘Please do come and sit down.’

  The dark-clad humanoid apparition melted silently away as Holly reached the bottom of the stairs, taking the chair indicated. Her hostess, she noticed, was an Englishwoman of about sixty, who looked both healthy and alert. Her beautifully kempt dark hair framed a still attractive face into which were set deep blue, almost violet eyes, flanked by the kind of creases you get if you smile a lot. There was a single string of pearls at her neck, and she was wearing a bright vermilion cashmere cardigan over a cream-coloured blouse. A soft grey rug lay over her lap, concealing her legs.

  Jamie Royle’s wife, aware that Holly was studying her, remained silent and passive for a few seconds, then – as if to convey the message, ‘I have nothing to hide’ – whisked aside the rug, revealing her withered, trouser-clad limbs underneath. Restoring the camouflage moments later, smoothing the rug with both hands, she began speaking in a clear, steady tone of voice without any need to be prompted.