Murder at the Old Vicarage

by Jill McGown

‘Not really. I don’t know what to make of them.’

  ‘Freddie?’ Lloyd said, preparing him for the silly question. ‘Is there any doubt about the murder weapon?’

  He heard Freddie draw in a slow breath. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But if you were to bring me something else that general size and shape, I’d certainly consider it.’

  ‘Like another poker?’ Lloyd said. ‘The one from the kitchen?’ He held his breath.

  ‘The one we’ve got gives every indication of having been used,’ said Freddie.

  ‘Could it have been used just for the two extra blows?’

  There was a long silence. ‘It’s improbable, but just possible,’ Freddie said at last. ‘You bring me the other poker, and the chances are I’ll know if it was used.’

  ‘Good,’ said Lloyd. ‘Because it’s on its way here now, with any luck.’ He had dispatched Bob Sandwell and one of the uniformed lads to the vicarage an hour ago.

  Freddie laughed. ‘What’s your theory this time, Lloyd?’ he asked.

  Lloyd didn’t know what sort of reception it would get. ‘Marian Wheeler had been using the poker in Elstow’s room,’ he said. ‘When she made up the fire earlier that day. Someone could have killed him with one poker, cleaned it, put it back – then bopped him a couple of times with the one that already had Marian Wheeler’s fingerprints on it.’

  ‘What about the fingerprints on the landing?’ Freddie said.

  ‘Coincidence. It’s a polished floor. Chances are, her prints are all over it. From polishing.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Freddie, unconvinced. ‘I’d have thought that polishing was supposed to have the opposite effect. And are you saying she’s just going along with all of this?’

  He sounded just like Judy. Lloyd didn’t answer, because he hadn’t worked out that part of his theory.

  ‘And what about the dress?’

  ‘Someone else could have burned the dress, too,’ Lloyd said, beginning to feel cornered.

  ‘She was wearing it, Lloyd,’ he said. ‘But it’s an interesting point about the poker. Send it to me anyway.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Lloyd, irritated. ‘I will.’

  He put down the phone, and there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Sir?’ Bob Sandwell came in. ‘We’ve brought them both,’ he said, handing him two pokers, in separate bags. ‘Mrs Elstow told us about this one.’ He held it up. ‘It’s from the back bedroom,’ he said. ‘She says her mother got a fire going in there on Christmas Eve, so her prints might still be on it. I checked the other rooms, but they’ve all got gas or electric fires. No other pokers, sir.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lloyd. ‘Give them to Sergeant Woodford, will you? Tell him I want them taken to the lab first thing in the morning.’

  Sandwell departed, ducking under the door, though he wasn’t quite that tall. Lloyd sat forward. He was still lost in thought when Judy came in.

  ‘I’ve tried my theory out on Freddie,’ he said.

  ‘Your frame-up theory?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Plus my poker theory.’ He gave her a brief résumé. ‘And all that Freddie could find to fault it was that she was wearing the dress,’ he said. ‘But she may not have been wearing it. She changed into it when she thought she was going to the pub –but she ended up doing a whole load of housework instead, didn’t she? She did a washing, and made a bed up for Joanna – she even got a fire going in the back bedroom. Heaving coal about? In a brand new dress that she wanted to wear to the midnight service?’ He sat back. ‘Perhaps she wasn’t wearing the dress at all,’ he said. ‘Perhaps she laid it on the bed, ready to change into when she got back from visiting.’

  ‘Except that she was wearing it,’ Judy said again. ‘When she went visiting.’

  Lloyd smiled. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I suppose you can prove it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Judy.

  ‘Oh, well,’ Lloyd said resignedly. ‘Another theory gone west.’

  Judy shook her head. ‘No it hasn’t,’ she said.

  Lloyd smiled. He loved it when Judy got on to something. She looked just like a gun-dog.

  ‘The dress,’ she said. ‘When we saw Marian Wheeler on Christmas morning, she was wearing a trouser-suit. There wasn’t a dress in the washing, and there wasn’t one with coffee stains on it anywhere else; But according to Mrs Anthony, she spilled some coffee on her dress. I’ve been back to Mrs Anthony,’ she said, ‘I got a good description. Peach, full skirt . . .’

  Lloyd frowned, as he realised what that meant. ‘But if she was wearing it at half past eight,’ he said, ‘she couldn’t very well have thrown it on the fire some time previously.’

  ‘No,’ said Judy. ‘She couldn’t.’

  ‘She spilled coffee,’ said Lloyd slowly. ‘And went home to change yet again. Are you saying that someone burned the dress after that?’

  ‘Not after,’ said Judy, sitting forward. ‘Lloyd – if someone frames you for murder, I imagine you don’t usually just go along with it, do you?’

  ‘Well, I normally protest my innocence, I must agree,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘Make fun of my grammar if you like,’ she said. ‘But there is one circumstance in which you wouldn’t protest your innocence.’

  ‘Is there?’ Lloyd thought hard. ‘You mean I’d want to be framed?’ he asked. ‘I’d have to have framed myself.’ He hit his head when he finally saw the point. ‘Let’s talk to the lady,’ he said. His eye caught Mrs Langton’s statement as he stood up. ‘You’d better take that,’ he said to Judy.

  Judy picked up Mrs Wheeler’s statements too, and read all three while they waited in the interview room.

  When she was brought in, Marian Wheeler looked as calm and composed as she had when they had arrested her, but the slightly far-away look had been replaced by watchfulness.

  ‘Some more questions, Mrs Wheeler,’ said Judy. ‘You understand that you don’t have to answer them, and you can have your solicitor present if you choose?’

  ‘I understand.’

  Judy laid Mrs Wheeler’s two statements down in front of her. ‘Do you want to make a third?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you everything.’

  ‘Except the truth.’

  Mrs Wheeler didn’t speak.

  ‘Right,’ said Judy. ‘Where were you at five past eight on Christmas Eve?’

  ‘I’ve told you in my statement,’ she said.

  ‘Where were you at five past eight on Christmas Eve?’ Judy asked.

  Lloyd watched Marian Wheeler. He’d never been able to perfect Judy’s trick of asking the same question over again, just as though it was the first time. It was dreadfully irritating, and almost always produced a response.

  ‘I’ve just told you.’

  ‘You were in your daughter’s bedroom?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Laying into her husband with a poker?’

  Marian Wheeler raised her eyebrows. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If you want to put it like that, I suppose that is what I was doing.’

  ‘And then you burned the dress, and went to see Mrs Anthony?’

  Mrs Wheeler didn’t reply, but the watchfulness became wariness, and she sat a little further back in her chair.

  ‘Where were you at five past eight on Christmas Eve?’ asked Judy, pleasantly.

  ‘I – I was at home.’

  ‘Battering your son-in-law to death?’ enquired Judy.

  Marian Wheeler looked shocked. ‘Sergeant, I don’t think there’s any need to—’

  ‘There isn’t a gentle way to say it,’ said Judy. ‘Someone battered him to death.’

  ‘I did,’ said Mrs Wheeler. ‘I’ve told you.’ She picked up the statement.

  ‘And then you burned your dress?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No,’ said Judy. ‘You were wearing the dress when you saw Mrs Anthony.’

  ‘No! No – Mrs Anthony’s a very old lady—’

  ‘We made that mistake,’ Lloyd said, chiming in. ‘She�
��s old, but she’s sharp. Right, Sergeant?’

  ‘She’s described it to me, Mrs Wheeler,’ said Judy. ‘Peach, full skirt, deep cuffs . . .’ She paused. ‘You spilled coffee on it. You went home to change.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Wheeler. ‘That’s when I did it – I got confused, that’s all.’

  ‘You didn’t leave Mrs Anthony’s house until ten past nine. Graham Elstow was already dead.’

  Mrs Wheeler’s eyes had lost their wariness, their defiance, and Lloyd knew that Judy had won.

  ‘Where were you at five past eight on Christmas Eve, Mrs Wheeler?’ asked Judy, in the same interested, polite tones.

  ‘At the castle,’ she said, her voice flat. ‘I went to see a girl called Eleanor Langton. She’s working there. A sort of archivist or something.’

  Lloyd sat down. ‘And then you went to see Mrs Anthony.’

  She nodded. ‘But while I was there I spilled some coffee on my dress. Well,’ she said, ‘she told you that, didn’t she? I was still shaking. What if we hadn’t come back, Mr Lloyd? What would have happened to Joanna if he hadn’t stopped?’

  ‘And yet despite how you felt – and despite the weather – you went all the way to the castle first?’ said Lloyd. ‘To confirm an invitation? I almost didn’t believe Mrs Langton when she told me.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t,’ she sighed. ‘Yes – that’s what I told her. But I just wanted to . . .’ She gave a short laugh. ‘See what I was up against,’ she said. ‘She’s been taking up rather a lot of my husband’s time lately.’

  ‘I see,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘I wonder if you do,’ said Mrs Wheeler. ‘Anyway, I did want to confirm the invitation. I wanted to be sure she knew that it was from both of us, if you see what I mean. I went there first to get it over with.’

  ‘And then you went to Mrs Anthony’s, and from there you went home to change,’ said Lloyd. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I went upstairs,’ she said. ‘And I looked along the landing. Joanna’s bedroom door was open. I thought Graham had left. I went in, and . . . and found him,’ she said. ‘He was dead. I didn’t know what to do. I thought—’

  Lloyd stood up, and walked slowly round the room. ‘You thought your daughter had killed him,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He deserved it!’ she shouted. ‘He deserved it – he put her in hospital – did you know that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lloyd. ‘So what did you do then, Mrs Wheeler?’

  ‘I didn’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘I knew Joanna must have done it. That was why she wouldn’t let her father go up to him.’

  She looked up at Lloyd. ‘I wasn’t going to let her suffer for him any more,’ she said. ‘So I . . . I made it look as if I’d done it.’

  Lloyd sat down, feeling tired and old. ‘What did you do?’ he asked.

  ‘I cleaned the handle of the poker,’ she said. ‘And I held it. But then I thought – they can tell, can’t they? They can tell how you’ve held something. I’ve read it in books. So I hit him, to make sure I was holding it right. I hit him twice.’

  Someone walked along the corridor outside. Lloyd leant on the table, his chin resting on his clasped hands. She hadn’t switched pokers, he thought. Other than that, his theory was pretty good. ‘And the dress?’ he said.

  ‘I burned it,’ she said. ‘I got blood on the sleeve, and I realised that if I burned it, you’d find it.’ She looked at Lloyd. ‘What difference does it make?’ she said. ‘You’ve got me – why don’t you charge me? I’d have done it – if I’d seen him hitting Jo, I’d have done it!’

  Lloyd was beginning to lose what little patience he’d had left. He counted off on his fingers. ‘One, you have wasted police time. Two, you have tampered with evidence. Three, you have made false statements. And if I can think of any more, I will, Mrs Wheeler. You can be prosecuted for these offences – perhaps that will feed your desire for martyrdom.’

  She looked at him with vague surprise. ‘I wasn’t being a martyr, Mr Lloyd. I was just—’ She obviously decided that he would never understand, and gave up with a shrug.

  Then, Lloyd realised what she had done. What she had really done, and he was assailed by something worse, much worse, than mere irritation. ‘When you left the house in the first place,’ Lloyd said, ‘you left it unlocked, as usual?’

  Marian Wheeler looked haunted for a second. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Lloyd closed his eyes. Between ten to eight and ten past nine, the doors were unlocked. And someone went in. How the hell were they supposed to find out who? Marian Wheeler was out visiting, Wheeler and his daughter were at the pub . . . Well, they could make more vigorous enquiries about all of that. But the other possibility loomed before him.

  ‘Someone could have got in,’ he said slowly, angrily. ‘Just like you said.’

  Marian Wheeler’s mouth opened, but she closed it again.

  ‘And you destroyed any evidence that there might have been,’ he went on. ‘You misdirected us, you obliterated possible fingerprints, you tampered with the scene of the crime. You have given him time to get away, to destroy his clothing – in short, Mrs Wheeler, you have made our job practically impossible.’

  He walked out of the room, resisting the temptation to slam the door. Bloody woman. Bloody stupid interfering woman. Who the hell could have got in and murdered the man? Why? Someone he knew? It had to be. Someone he didn’t know? Lloyd’s heart sank. Someone who might do it again. There had to be a coat, something, that the murderer had jettisoned. He’d get men looking tomorrow. Thank God they had taken the intruder suggestion seriously enough to issue a warning. But now an intruder wasn’t just a desperate explanation thought up by the Wheelers. It was a real possibility. And they would have to start looking into Elstow’s background.

  He met someone in the pub. He’d ignored that. Now, he’d have to talk to the villagers, find out if they had seen a stranger hanging round. Oh, God, this should have been done days ago!

  But some of it had, he reminded himself. Elstow had been alone in the pub, according to the barmaid. He had come in alone, and remained alone. And they only had his wife’s word for it that he had ever mentioned meeting anyone. He calmed himself down, and walked back to the office. Joanna Elstow still seemed the likeliest candidate, even to her mother. Lloyd sighed. He’d taken her word for it that her row with her husband started at five. He was going to have to rub out anything that that damn family had told him, and start again.

  Judy came in. ‘I’m driving Mrs Wheeler home,’ she said, then closed the door. ‘Should I come back?’ she asked him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘There isn’t much we can do tonight.’ He looked up from the desk. ‘Is there?’ he asked, and he sounded bitter.

  ‘I thought perhaps there might be,’ she said quietly.

  ‘No.’

  Her direct brown gaze held his for a moment. ‘Don’t do this to me,’ she said, almost under her breath.

  ‘I’m not the one who’s doing it,’ he replied.

  He watched as she slipped on the dark grey leather coat that Michael had given her for Christmas. He’d like to have given her something like that. As it was, they had to be content with the sort of thing that wouldn’t be remarked on. Suddenly, he understood why long-standing mistresses would deliberately get pregnant. It wasn’t vindictiveness. It was desperation of a sort.

  He watched out of the window as she drove off with the would-be martyr, and darkly formulated the charges against Mrs Wheeler. Because he would prosecute, and Judy would tell him he was being uncharitable.

  But maybe not, he thought, sitting down again. Not if she was busy being a DI in Barton, and he’d made it clear that she wasn’t welcome. Damn it, she was more than welcome, she was necessary. He needed her, and his bloody pride would have to take a back seat. Sharing her might not be ideal, but it was better than feeling like this. He just hoped he hadn’t blown his last chance.

  He picked up Eleanor Langton’s statement. He’d better apologise – b
e really had been a bit high-handed with her. Perhaps he should go now, he thought, glancing at his watch. Why not? It would keep him out of the flat for another hour or two. And apologising to her might rid him of this nagging notion that he ought to be apologising to someone.

  He was getting heartily sick of the journey into Byford, rendered utterly monotonous by the snow. In spring, the fields would shade from pale yellow to dark green, relieved here and there by the dark brown of a ploughed acre. Crows would rise noisily from the treetops, flapping across the road, and rabbits would dart from the fields, bobbing along the verges, occasionally coming to grief. But the snow deadened everything; no colour, no sound.

  Up Castle Road, reluctantly past the pub, and on to the top, where he turned into the castle gates, the car bumping over the cattle grids. In the unlit castle grounds, he drove cautiously, only knowing he was on a road by the regular 5 m.p.h. speed-limit signs. On his left, suddenly looming into the night sky, was the castle, a dark, forbidding fortress. A reminder that there had once been worse things to worry about than muggers and vandals. Or even the odd murderer. He’d brought the kids here once or twice, when they were younger.

  It had never made him shiver before.

  Through the huge gatehouse, into the protected heart of the castle, lit by the odd wall-light where there once had been flaming torches. Turn left as you come out of the gatehouse, and left again at the end of the gatehouse walls, he’d been told.

  He turned left, into a large, moonlit courtyard. Stables, whatever their function now, ran along the whole of one side, and Lloyd could practically hear the horses’ hooves on the frosted cobbles, now broken up here and there by flower-beds. He pulled up beside two other cars and got out, walking past the shop which sold books and bric-à-brac, looking for Eleanor Langton’s door. Beside the souvenir shop, the ever-knowledgeable Constable Sandwell had told him, and beside the souvenir shop it was.

  A black door, with a brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head. Through the window at the side, a light showed faintly from the rear. He knocked.

  Mrs Langton let him in with a courtesy that he felt he didn’t deserve. He followed her down the hallway to find an older woman sitting at the table in the small dining room.