by Granger, Ann
In the event, the inquest, when it took place the next day, consisted of little else but the identification of the dead man and the circumstances of the discovery of the body. Few people attended, although Mr Hopkins had found his way there. He sat in the front row of seats, arms folded, staring belligerently at the coroner. In the back row sat a man in a well-worn anorak, holding a notebook. Probably the local press had sent along a representative, in case there was a story, although if there were it wouldn’t come out now, at the preliminary hearing. The reporter might be freelance, taking a chance. The Hemmingses provided a more striking sight. Billy was crammed into a suit. Terri was dressed entirely in black: an eclectic outfit of short fake fur jacket, brief skirt, sheer tights and very high fashion heels.
Monty had been persuaded to come to the court and describe his experience. He did this in few words.
‘I walked in and there the bally fellow was. I didn’t know him from Adam. Now you’ve told me his name, I still don’t.’
‘A very nasty shock for you, Mr Bickerstaffe,’ said the coroner sympathetically.
‘It was very inconvenient!’ Monty replied loudly. ‘And it still is. When can I go home?’
The coroner said it was largely a matter for the police to decide. The house was still a crime scene. He then adjourned proceedings until a later date, to allow the police to complete their enquiries. The man in the anorak got up and left. He hadn’t written much in his notebook.
The Hemmingses were not called upon to give evidence. Billy sat with his arms folded throughout and seemed pleased that he was not required to make any official statements. Terri looked disappointed. She approached Jess after they had all left the court.
‘You’d have thought,’ she said crossly, ‘considering how many of those celebrities Jay knew and all, that at least the local paper would have sent along a photographer.’
Jess decided it was probably best not to mention the man in the anorak, with the notebook. Terri would be even more upset to know any kind of pressman had been there, but not interviewed her and Billy.
‘The press would know this is a preliminary inquest, only a formality,’ she explained. ‘The inquest proper will be later. But I wouldn’t count on a crowd of paparazzi even then.’
‘We were only in there a few minutes,’ moaned Terri. ‘If I’d known it’d be so quick, I wouldn’t have bothered.’
‘Are you coming or what?’ demanded her husband, surfacing at her side.
Terri teetered away on her spike heels, still complaining. They drove off immediately.
‘Was she supposed to be in mourning or something?’ asked Morton in some awe.
‘Something, Phil,’ retorted Jess.
Monty had now come out of the building accompanied by Bridget. He gave them a dispirited wave of greeting, at the same time shaking his head. He didn’t want to talk to them. They respected his wish and watched him being driven away by Bridget, who had acknowledged their presence with a brief nod.
Hopkins scurried by, calling over his shoulder as he did, ‘You’ve got until the end of the month. Then I’m going to advertise the flat. It’ll go at once. You’d better get a move on!’
‘So,’ Jess said later to Carter, when she and Morton had returned from the inquest and reported back to the superintendent. ‘Now what do we do?’
‘We get to know our man,’ Carter told her.
‘We’ve tried that,’ she reminded him. ‘We’ve been through all his papers; Dave Nugent has searched his computer. We spoke to his landlord. Stubbs spoke to Miss Jeffrey and came away with a religious pamphlet. She pushed one under Taylor’s door once, apparently, and he took it very badly. He and Miss Jeffrey had a stand-up row about it and she never spoke to him again. We’ve interviewed his publishers, the subjects of his books and his one surviving relative. I still don’t feel I know him.’
She knew her frustration sounded in her voice. But the clock was running and they had hit a dead end. To hear the coroner speak of the police being given ‘time to complete their enquiries’ had echoed hollowly. Some chance . . . had been Jess’s private reaction.
‘We keep trying; because somewhere, at some time in his life, he made himself a candidate for murder,’ Carter said patiently. ‘Look at it this way: do we have so little sense of the inner man because he went to great pains to conceal it? If so, what is missing? What is there about Mr Taylor that he didn’t want anyone to know?’
Jess looked unconvinced. ‘Perhaps the reason we can’t find anything else is just because there is nothing else? He was active professionally and socially but had put down no roots, owned no property, was in no relationship, depended on getting new writing commissions, hadn’t got anything permanent in his life, really.’ She warmed to her theme. ‘If you think about it, he trod a fine line between success and failure. His publishers told you he was professional and painstaking in his work. He should have made enough from his writing to give him a comfortable lifestyle, in theory, anyway, and keep him in designer suits. He was a single man without dependants.’
‘From what Miss Bryant told you about his father, Lionel, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lionel didn’t describe himself as ‘single without dependants’ to the next woman he met after abandoning Deirdre and her baby,’ said Carter. ‘Lionel Taylor sounds to me to have all the earmarks of a bigamist. However, that’s all long ago and not our concern. His son, Gerald, known as Jay, is our problem. We’re very little further on in solving it.’
‘Well,’ Jess picked up her exposition cautiously. ‘We know he had expensive tastes, inspired by the exotic lifestyles of the more successful and highly paid of the celebrities he wrote about, perhaps? These could, literally, have cost him dearly. He was making enough money to live well within reason, and to manage to stay in the black financially, but not to compete with the mega-earners.’
Carter was nodding slowly. ‘Yes, those tastes rub off on someone who observes them from a less favoured background. They probably did on Taylor. You’re right. He admired and respected their success and he wanted to live like them. Did that turn out to be a fatal weakness? When he was in funds, he splashed money around – as when he took the Hemmings duo out to dinner after his win at Cheltenham. What do you expect? If you hobnob with wealthy people, you have to keep up, look the part, spend your share. Someone like Billy Hemmings would be quick to spot a freeloader and ditch him.’
Jess felt uneasy. Did all this indicate that Taylor, secretly, had been a desperate man? Was that what they were missing? He had just turned forty at the time of his death. Had Miss Bryant put her finger on the moving force behind all this, when she said that her nephew had made no provision for his future? Had his recent birthday, perhaps, brought this home to Jay? Middle age was on the horizon, and he didn’t even own his own home. Money had been frittered away. He possessed nothing of any substance to cling to if, for any reason, he couldn’t write. Had he perhaps hoped that, among all the information so painstakingly amassed in that cluttered flat, he would find something that would prove a real winner? Something to earn him enough money to put his finances on an even keel, not just for a few months until the next writing job came in, but for ever, regardless of whether he wrote another book? It was hard to imagine what it could be. Why he should be found dead in Balaclava House seemed destined to remain as much of a mystery as ever.
‘I’d like to talk to your friend, Monica Farrell,’ she said to Carter, who raised his eyebrows enquiringly. ‘I want to know more about Taylor’s visits to Weston St Ambrose and his friendship with the Hemmingses. Did he go there to see them often? If he did, perhaps Mrs Farrell will recognise his photograph. I know it’s grasping at straws,’ she went on hurriedly. ‘But right now, straws are all we have apart from a burned-out car and a dead body where it should never have been. Besides, Mrs Farrell knows Monty. I’d like to talk to her about him. Perhaps I could just drive over and chat to her for an hour, say, early this evening?’
It seemed to her that Carter hesitated b
ut then nodded.
‘I’ll phone ahead and tell Monica to expect you. She’ll be glad of a visitor.’
Jess understood the hesitation in his manner. Carter, she had realised, was a private man. In visiting his ex-wife’s aunt, Jess was stepping on to sensitive territory.
It was drizzling with fine rain, badly needed by the dry soil, as she negotiated the winding minor roads to Weston St Ambrose. The windscreen wipers swished back and forth revealing an arc of newly damp landscape and little other sign of human habitation apart from the occasional signpost to a farm. The village itself first let the approaching traveller know of its existence by its church spire, piercing the leaves of surrounding chestnut trees. The church looked as if it ought to be disused, but it must have a congregation of sorts because a recently painted signboard outside informed passers-by that it was in urgent need of a new roof, and a fund had been set up. It even had a website. Help us save this ancient church, the noticeboard pleaded.
Jess drove past the Hemmingses’ schoolhouse home – no sign of life there either, today, not even the dogs – and found Monica’s cottage, described to her by Ian Carter in some detail.
‘So you’re Inspector Campbell!’ a plump, grey-haired woman greeted her cheerfully. ‘Come inside, you’ll get wet standing out there. Not a nice day, unfortunately.’
The interior of the cottage was blessedly warm and cosy. Jess was ushered into the main living room and found herself settled in a comfortable chair and being plied with tea and rock cakes. A black cat was curled up on the windowsill, but after lifting its head to give the newcomer a cursory state, it tucked itself into a ball again and went back to sleep.
‘He’s been out all night,’ said Monica Farrell, indicating the cat. ‘He goes mousing over in the churchyard. Sometimes he brings his trophies home, not always dead. I have to catch them and release them back where they came from.’
‘I see your church has an appeal going, for a new roof,’ Jess said.
Monica pulled a face. ‘It’s such a lot of money. I doubt they can raise it. The diocese will help a bit and we’ve tried all the various historic building trusts. But the shortfall is massive. The congregation can’t do it. There are only a dozen of us on the best of Sundays.’
‘Do you have your own vicar?’
‘Goodness, no!’ Monica chuckled. ‘We have whoever is willing to come and tend our souls. It’s a pity because it’s an interesting old church. We keep it locked most of the time but I have a key. I’m a churchwarden. If you’re interested, we can walk over there and take a look at it.’
‘I’d like that,’ said Jess. It was time to tackle the business that had brought her. ‘You know that we’re investigating a murder and that the victim was found at Balaclava House?’
‘Oh, Ian told me all about that,’ said Monica. ‘He told me you were in charge of it and he’s got every confidence in your being able to ferret out the truth, nail the guilty party!’
‘He said that?’ Jess asked, startled.
‘More or less, words to that effect, anyway. More tea?’
‘Not just at the moment, thanks. You were able to tell Superintendent Carter quite a bit about Monty Bickerstaffe, who lives at Balaclava House.’
‘Yes, poor old Monty, I have to feel sorry for him, although truth to tell, he was always an awkward blighter. He brought nearly all his troubles on himself. It was a great pity, you know, that some big company bought out the family biscuit business. It gave them enough money to live on, at the time, and it hindered Monty having to make a real effort to have a proper career. If only he’d had to earn enough to look after his mother and, eventually, his wife. It would have been much better if Bickerstaffe’s had just gone bust; and Monty had had to buckle down to real life and a nine-to-five existence. I always felt,’ Monica concluded, ‘that Monty had problems with reality. His mind always seemed to be somewhere else. I knew his late wife quite well. I don’t know how she stuck him for so long. I wouldn’t have done so!’
She surveyed Jess. ‘It’s an odd thing, but you do look a lot like Penny, when she was a younger woman.’
‘So people keep telling me,’ Jess confessed. ‘Tell me, would you say that Monty was a devious person?’
‘He was good at hiding his bottles of booze from Penny,’ said Monica. ‘He used to sneak out and bury them around the garden. She kept digging them up.’
‘I suppose,’ Jess explained, ‘what I really mean is, how is he with facts? You said he always had trouble with reality? He insists, you see, that he’d never seen the dead man before that day. Could he have forgotten? Or could he just not be bothered to tell us? It would help if we knew.’
‘Monty wouldn’t lie!’ Monica Farrell said firmly. ‘Certainly not intentionally. If he says he doesn’t know him, hasn’t ever seen him, hasn’t got a clue about him, I’d says he’s telling you what he believes to be the truth. How good his memory is, now, that’s another matter. I suppose he could have forgotten him. But, on the whole, I’d say it was unlikely. Not many people have bothered with Monty over the last few years. A stranger would be remembered.’
‘That’s something, anyway,’ said Jess. ‘It’s quite a relief to hear, actually. I have wondered if Monty was just keeping his head down – not wanting us to bother him – and was holding something back.’
‘Well, just remember those buried whisky bottles,’ Monica warned her. ‘I don’t say he couldn’t be artful. But I don’t think he’d mislead the police.’ She paused and surveyed Jess again in that slightly unsettling way. ‘And he wouldn’t lie to you. You look like Penny. He wouldn’t lie to you, any more than he’d have lied to her.’
‘No, but he did hide evidence of his drinking from her,’ Jess said.
‘Exactly. There’s a difference. I think you understand it. If you want to know something from Monty, just ask him a direct question. That’s the best.’
‘Right, I’ll remember that!’ Jess grinned. ‘If we could move on to another subject, the Hemmingses, who live at the schoolhouse—’
‘Are they involved?’ interrupted Monica, brightening. ‘Do say they are. I’d love to see them carted away in chains.’
‘No, not involved exactly, but they did know the dead man. He was expected at their house for a dinner party the day he died. When Superintendent Carter stopped outside their house, Mrs Hemmings thought at first it was Jay Taylor, the dead man, because he also drove a Lexus.’
Jess fished in her pocket and took out the snapshot Hemmings had given her. ‘I wonder if you recognise the man in this photograph – if you’ve seen him around Weston St Ambrose.’
Monica reached across the tea things to take the photo and study it. ‘This is he, I take it, your corpse? Only in life, as it were, and what life, eh? At the races, are they? Good Lord, look at the hat the Hemmings woman is wearing. She looks like a standard lamp.’
Jess tried not to laugh and urged, ‘The man?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Monica pursed her lips. ‘Can’t be sure. But, yes, I did see him once – I think. It was a few weeks ago. He and Hemmings strolled past here together, going to our one and only surviving pub, probably. I remember thinking they looked birds of a feather. If it wasn’t this fellow, it was someone who looked very like this.’
‘Were they talking, when you saw them go past the cottage?’
‘What? Oh, yes, well, one of them was. Not Hemmings, the other one, this one in the photo – if it is the same one. He was holding forth about something and seemed very pleased with himself.’
‘He may just have had another good win at the races,’ Jess said, taking back the photo. ‘But it does help to know about it.’
Were they were up to something, Hemmings and Taylor? she wondered. If they were, how am I going to find out about it?
She thanked her hostess for the information and her time, and for the tea and cakes. Monica asked again if she wanted to view the interior of the church. It seemed rude not to accept the offer, so Monica fetched a key. Then she put
on a voluminous plastic raincoat and led Jess out of the cottage. They tramped across the road and through the leaf-strewn churchyard with its tombstones mostly at an angle, their lichen-encrusted inscriptions now illegible, and into the porch sheltering the north door.
The key was enormous and must have been nearly as old as the heavy oak door it opened. They descended a short flight of steps on to the flagged floor. The exterior of St Ambrose might be dilapidated but the inside had obviously been lovingly dusted and polished by a band of loyal workers. There were war memorials on its walls to the sons of families that no longer had any members in the village. An elaborate pair of sculpted figures topped a fine early seventeenth-century tomb. Husband and wife, finely dressed and painted in now-faded colours, lay side by side in death, accompanied by a tiny infant wrapped in black, but smiling cheerfully.
‘She died in childbirth, you see,’ said Monica, pointing to the inscription on the side of the tomb. ‘So many women did. The baby died too. He must have had the monument built for her and their child and then lived out the rest of his life, waiting to join her in it. He lived another fifty years after her, as you can see.’ She patted the black-shrouded baby. ‘Whenever Millie has visited me, she’s always insisted we come over here and see the baby. Children are funny.’