by Granger, Ann
‘Where is he now?’ Tom asked, struggling into the suit. ‘The old bloke, I mean.’
‘He’s left with a relative who has taken him to stay with her.’ Jess hesitated. ‘They were in that blue Mazda that passed you in the lane.’
Tom grunted. ‘The woman driver glared at me through the windscreen as if I was trying to push her into the ditch.’
‘It was a bit irregular, I know,’ Jess said awkwardly, ‘but I asked her (she’s a Mrs Harwell) if she’d take a look at the corpse.’
Tom raised an eyebrow. ‘How many people have been trampling over this scene?’
Jess pulled a wry expression. ‘Probably far too many. But I wanted to make sure the dead man really was a stranger to the house owner. I thought perhaps the relative might recognise him, even if Mr Bickerstaffe says he doesn’t know him from Adam.’
‘Mr Bickerstaffe being the owner?’ Tom asked and when she nodded, he added, ‘If he’s elderly he might be confused.’
‘Oh, I don’t think he’s confused, Tom,’ Jess assured him. ‘But Mrs Harwell said he might have decided to be contrary. She didn’t recognise the dead man either, though.’
‘OK,’ Tom said resignedly, ‘Point me in the direction of this mystery stiff.’
As he spoke, an unmarked van came rattling along the lane and joined the now-sizeable queue of vehicles outside the gates.
‘Here are the forensic boys,’ said Tom, watching the occupants of the van come out and begin to unload their equipment. ‘I’d better go and say hello to them first.’
For the moment, things were largely out of her hands. Jess went back to her car and got in. She sat watching the activity outside, until all the newly arrived experts had disappeared inside and then, a little hesitantly, rang her boss, Superintendent Ian Carter.
‘How’s it going?’ Carter’s voice asked in her ear.
‘Everyone is in there, sir.’ She paused. Morton had emerged from the shrubbery with one of the constables and they were coming her way. ‘That includes Tom Palmer. He might be able to confirm whether or not it’s as suspicious as it looks. But there are several odd things. Nothing indicates how the deceased got here. He’s carrying no identifying documents. Mr Bickerstaffe still insists he doesn’t know him and Mrs Harwell, his niece – or near relative, I can’t quite sort it out – has also confirmed the man is unknown. There are some other puzzles, too.’
‘Who exactly is Bickerstaffe?’ came Carter’s voice. ‘How reliable do you judge him?’
‘He’s very elderly recluse, sir. Certainly eccentric but he’s quite clear about what happened, as far as he’s concerned. His first name is Monty - I imagine that’s really Montague. He’s lived in this house, Balaclava House, all his life. There must have been money once, but I’d guess it’s all gone. The building outside and inside is in a terrible state.’
‘Definitely sounds a suspicious death. Keep me informed,’ said Ian Carter and rang off.
Morton was bending down by the car and Jess let down the window. ‘Was that the super?’
‘It was, Phil, and he’s quite happy to treat this as suspicious.’
Morton looked relieved.
A crunch of footsteps on gravel heralded the return of Tom Palmer.
‘Well?’ Morton and Jess chimed together.
Palmer scratched his mop of hair. ‘I can’t tell you more until I’ve got him on the slab. He hasn’t been dead long, a matter of hours. Don’t ask me to be more exact. Don’t ask me what killed him, either, but outer signs indicate a possible poisoning.’
‘Poisoning?’ Morton exclaimed.
‘I’ll let you know later.’ Tom looked uncertain. ‘There is something about him that struck me . . .’
They waited eagerly to know what this might be. But Tom had changed his mind.
‘Let me get a proper look at him. No point in me letting my imagination take over.’
They watched him go back to his car and begin to divest himself of his protective clothing.
‘What was all that about?’ asked Morton.
But Jess could only shake her head. ‘No idea, just Tom being cautious, I suppose.’ But cautious about what, exactly? Rather crossly, Jess added, ‘What’s Tom noticed that I’ve missed?’
Chapter 4
‘Well, Ian,’ said Monica Farrell, ‘here’s a turn-up for the books. None of us has seen anything of you for a very long time!’
The words were reproachful, but they were uttered in a comfortable tone that took the sting out of them. To underline they were meant as a welcome, she patted his arm.
‘Come into the parlour, as the spider said to the fly. I’ve put out the sherry bottle ready.’
There was nothing spidery about his ex-wife’s Aunt Monica, thought Superintendent Ian Carter ruefully, as he followed her into her cottage. She was built on solid, generous lines, broad in the beam, and dressed in a baggy skirt, old cardigan and sensible shoes. Her long grey hair was pinned on top of her head in a knot, insecurely held by a large tortoiseshell pin. To his eye, the pin looked Victorian.
He quelled his feelings of guilt. Now that he had moved from the other end of the country to this new area to take up his present post some months ago, he had been within easy visiting distance of Aunt Monica. There was no excuse for not having called before at her home in Weston St Ambrose, except for a certain natural diffidence about visiting one’s former wife’s relations. He couldn’t be blamed for feeling that. Not that he and Sophie had broken up in a mass of recriminations, causing a division along family lines. Instead it had been a slow drift towards the inevitable. She had been unhappy and he had not known what to do about it. They’d bickered, rather than quarrelled. His job meant he often kept unsocial hours. Hers, for an international company, meant she travelled abroad a lot. In the end, they’d seemed to be always passing one another in the hall, one on the way out and the other on the way in. Then a new man had come into her life and Sophie had asked for a divorce. She’d taken their daughter Millie with her. He had raised a mild protest about that. But, as Sophie had pointed out in her usual way – reasonable with an underlying touch of exasperation – Millie was perhaps only ten at the time, but would soon be a teenager. Surely he didn’t see himself bringing up a teenage girl? He’d capitulated.
Seeing Monica brought all this back with painful bitterness. If that didn’t make the situation difficult enough, a further uncomfortable truth was that he’d underlying motives for seeking Monica out this mild evening. He wanted something from her, if she were able to provide it.
He passed a black cat sitting on a lichen-encrusted paving stone in the last of the evening warmth, and paused, before ducking his head beneath the low lintel of the front door, to look round the garden. It was bathed in a mellow rosy glow that would disappear within a few minutes as the setting sun finally sank below the horizon. He could hear busy twittering from nearby trees as the starlings settled for their nightly roost. The cat yawned, curling a bright pink tongue to meet sharp white teeth. It then looked studiously away from him.
Inside the cottage, it was just as he remembered it from the last time he’d been here with Sophie – and Millie. Millie had been jumping around full of excitement. The memory caused a sharp ache in his chest. The living room was still cluttered, untidy and cosy. He watched as Monica removed another cat, a surly-looking ginger one, from a chair and gestured to Ian to take the seat. The cat gave him a look that spoke volumes. He tried to make amends by bending to stroke it. It hissed at him and stalked away.
‘He doesn’t know you,’ explained its owner. ‘If you came more often, you’d soon be his friend.’
‘I’m sorry, Monica,’ Ian apologised. ‘I know I should have come before, or even just telephoned. It’s just—’
He broke off.
‘Oh, I understand, we all understand,’ Monica said. ‘But we were all of us very fond of you, Ian. I was hoping very much that you’d look me out. Of course you mustn’t come just because you feel obliged to.’
‘It’s not obligation,’ he said frankly. ‘Partly it’s that I don’t want Sophie thinking I’m hanging around like some sort of stray animal hoping to be taken into the family circle – again.’
‘You and Sophie have a child,’ Monica said firmly. ‘And whatever your differences, Millie has a right to some sort of continuity in her family life.’
‘Millie writes to me once a fortnight, more or less,’ he told her. ‘But she hardly ever mentions her mother. She’s well aware that something is broken and can’t be repaired. It’s hard for her. She is only ten.’
‘She’ll have to come to terms with it.’ Monica smiled. ‘Children do. They’re very resilient.’
‘But hard as I try – and I know that Sophie tries hard too – Millie is paying the price for something she didn’t bring about.’
Her wise gaze rested on his face. ‘There’s always a price to pay, Ian, for everything, in the end. Even happiness can have a price on it.’
‘I just don’t want Millie to resent what we did – break up, I mean.’ He didn’t intend to sound wretched and suspected he did. That would never do.
‘If she does, then that’s something you and Sophie will have to accept and make the best of. It’s no use agonising over it, Ian. You just have to get on, all of you, and make a good job of a new set of circumstances.’
She poured out two generous glasses from the sherry bottle waiting on an unpolished silver tray on a coffee table. Monica Farrell wasn’t a person who kept antiques in a display cupboard. She used them. ‘However, listening to you, it rather makes me wonder why you did telephone out of the blue and ask if you could drop round at short notice!’ She handed him a sherry schooner.
‘I was hoping to persuade you to let me buy you dinner somewhere,’ he said sheepishly.
‘I never eat after six o’clock,’ was the firm reply. ‘You should remember that. It plays hell with my digestion. Cheers!’
Presumably the sherry didn’t trouble her stomach. He watched her sip hers with appreciation.
‘I’m driving,’ he protested weakly.
‘How many have you had today?’
‘Alcoholic drinks? None.’
‘Then one small sherry won’t hurt.’
He sipped politely; his eyes straying round the room to see if there was any flowerpot or similar receptacle into which he could pour some of the sherry when she wasn’t looking.
‘Ian!’ said Monica loudly, ‘You look like a little boy caught with his hand in the sweet jar.’
Her disconcertingly direct gaze was fixed on him. It was always well to be honest to the point of bluntness with Monica, Carter reflected ruefully. He set down the sherry.
‘I do have another reason for contacting you,’ he admitted, ‘apart from wanting to see you and apologise for not coming sooner. I’ve been settling in to a new house . . .’ he heard himself add lamely and cursed himself. ‘I recognise that’s no excuse.’
‘Do you think you’ll like it in this part of the world, now you’ve made the move?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘So, I’m all the more curious . . .’
‘We’re investigating an incident that occurred earlier today.’
‘When you coppers say “incident”,’ she remarked, ‘you can mean almost anything. Go on, Ian, I won’t interrupt again.’
‘Right, OK, it’s a suspicious death. It occurred at the house of someone I thought you might know. You’ve lived here most of your life. Sophie always said you knew everybody—’ He broke off.
‘Sophie probably said I knew everybody’s business.’ Monica’s promise not to interrupt couldn’t resist his embarrassment. ‘Well, once upon a time I did, though far less so nowadays because I don’t get out and about so much. But in the old days, well, in a village news gets around. Besides, don’t forget I taught at the primary school here for over twenty years. The village schoolmistress does learn every family’s secrets!’ Her voice took on a grim tone. ‘The old school is now a private residence; tarted up beyond recognition and lived in by a bally awful couple of townies who can’t control their dogs! The man is a property developer and I suppose the poor old schoolhouse is an example of what he can do.’
‘Have you registered a complaint about the dogs? If you have, then failure to control them—’ the policeman in Carter responded automatically.
‘They chase cats!’ interrupted Monica fiercely.
‘Ah . . .’ Carter met the scornful gaze of the ginger cat. He could understand any self-respecting dog being annoyed.
‘Of course I’ve complained. Not to the police. We don’t have a police house here any longer, just as we don’t now have a school or a post office. Instead I’ve complained to Hemmings, the owner, and his bottle-blonde wife. They say I should keep my cats in. But you can’t control a cat!’ She took a good swig of sherry to calm her nerves.
‘True,’ Carter agreed. ‘A cat is a natural wanderer and there isn’t the same legal requirement to keep it under control as there is on dog owners.’
‘Exactly! I told the wretched Hemmings that. We had a row about it.’
Arguments between neighbours could take a nasty turn, especially in small communities, and even more so when one party to the dispute was an old resident and the other party a newcomer. Carter made a mental note to keep track of this story.
‘But you didn’t come to ask me about Hemmings, I suppose,’ Monica said regretfully. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me, mind you, to see the cops turn up on his doorstep. He’s got a very shifty look about him. His wife is no better, nor his friends. However, who is on your mind, Ian?’
‘I wondered if you ever knew a family called Bickerstaffe?’
She gave a great hoot of laughter. ‘Bickerstaffe! I should say I do – or did. There’s only one of them left living locally – at least, I suppose old Monty is still alive. I hadn’t heard he’d died.’ She frowned. ‘Suspicious death? You don’t mean Monty’s dead, do you?’
He shook his head. ‘No, although the body was found on his premises.’
‘Balaclava House?’
‘That’s the one. Mr Montague Bickerstaffe found the deceased, by his own account, on his return from a trip into town. He claims not to know the dead man’s identity.’
‘Old Monty found a stiff, eh?’ She drained her sherry glass. ‘Well, well. He was half potty when I last saw him, quite a while ago. This must have sent him right over the edge.’
‘Actually he seems to be coping rather well. He’s gone to stay with a sort of niece, Bridget Harwell, while we’re conducting enquiries.’
‘Is that her name now?’ Monica asked. ‘I heard she’d married again.’
‘And divorced again, I gather. I believe she’s about to get married for the fourth time.’
‘Humph! She was a pretty girl, Bridget Bickerstaffe. You’re right, she’s not a proper niece. Her father, Harry Bickerstaffe, and Monty would have been cousins. But Harry’s side of the family didn’t ever live at Balaclava House, although they visited often up to the time Penny Bickerstaffe packed her bags and moved out. So you want to know about the Bickerstaffes, do you? You’ve never come across Bickerstaffe’s boiled fruit cake?’
The look on his face gave her an answer,
‘No. Well, you’re too young. You were spared one of the horrors of my childhood. My mother always bought one for Sunday teatime. I can see it now, a great dark brown lump of stodge, packed with dried fruit that got stuck in your teeth. It tasted more bitter than sweet and sat in your stomach like a lump of lead. But the history of that cake is pretty well the history of the family. By the way, I ought to tell you I knew Penny, Monty’s wife, better than I ever knew Monty. He was always an awkward blighter. I don’t know how Penny put up with him for so long. Eventually she decided that, having squandered the best years of her life on the old sod, she might as well spend her declining years in comfort and peace. She bought a little flat in Cheltenham and left him to stew on his own in that
gloomy mansion.’
‘She’s still alive?’ he asked eagerly.
Monica shook her head. ‘No, I’m afraid. Died, oh, four years ago. She didn’t have much time to enjoy her freedom. Sad, that. I managed to get to her funeral. Do you know, that wretch Monty didn’t have the good manners to turn up? The other members of the clan did. It was the last time I saw Bridget. What was her name then . . . ?’
Monica frowned. ‘Let’s see, she wasn’t married to little Tansy’s father. Peterson, that was his name. He was her first husband, ages ago. She’d already divorced him and divorced the chap she’d tied the knot with after Peterson. I’m blowed if I can remember the second one’s name, not that it matters because that marriage didn’t last long. Yes, of course, she was still married to Freddie Harwell, husband number three. He was definitely there; and half cut, breathing alcohol over everyone. As a matter of fact, even Peterson flew in from Jersey where he lurks, I understand, in tax-haven splendour. It was very odd, seeing Bridget perched in a pew between two spouses. Tansy, Peterson’s daughter, was there too. She was only a kid at the time, oh, fourteen or fifteen years old. She’ll be a young woman now, getting on for twenty. Peterson probably turned up to see her, rather than say goodbye to Penny. At any rate, pretty well everyone was there but Monty.’