Superstitious Death

by Nicholas Rhea

  ‘A triangle, sir?’ she frowned.

  ‘A three-cornered square, Miss Helston. A triangle with Burholme at one point, the deceased Miriam at another and the third point carrying the mystery which links them both and which Burholme apparently wishes to conceal. But the fact that she was found buried at Harman’s Farm does prove she did arrive there.’

  ‘It doesn’t prove she met him, though, does it? Or is there some other mystery, sir? Something in addition to her probably being his daughter?’

  ‘Let us not be too hasty in assuming that she is his daughter. We have been speculating, Detective Constable Helston, no more than that. We have no proof of his paternity. But if this young woman died accidentally on his farm, why would Eric Burholme take such drastic steps to conceal her presence? That is the question we must answer.’

  ‘It’s more than not wishing to admit to that paternity, sir?’

  ‘It’s much more complicated than that, Detective Constable Helston. There is an argument that he has already admitted paternity by giving money to the convent who raised Miriam, alias Bega. He did so throughout her life, and yet there is no sign of his love for her. I find that odd.’

  ‘Then blackmail, sir? Did Bega discover his true role and decide to leave the convent for a new life, raising money by blackmail? Recognising that business and farm as her rightful inheritance perhaps? Even exploring the possibility of going to live there with her real father?’

  ‘They’re feasible theories, but I did not get the impression that Bega was unsettled, or unhappy in the convent, or that she was the sort of woman who would resort to blackmail. I very much doubt if she would have abandoned her chosen life to live with a man she did not know, whatever the relationship. No, I think she turned up unexpectedly on his doorstep and died soon afterwards in some kind of freak accident, whereupon he decided to bury her in the odd way she was found. But I cannot be sure why he would want to do that – and, remember, at this point we do not know whether he realised she might be his daughter. It’s feasible he might have had no idea of the relationship, if indeed there is one.’

  ‘But you have some idea, sir? About his other secret?’

  ‘I have a very vague notion which I shall not reveal just yet – simply because I might be totally wrong. But time will tell.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to ask him, sir?’

  ‘Yes, I will, won’t I?’ and he settled down in his seat to enjoy the rest of the drive back to Crickledale as darkness enveloped the landscape. Suddenly, however, after some fifteen minutes, he jerked into action and sat bolt upright in his seat, clutching at the dashboard of the speeding police car.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he gasped. ‘I have done a dreadful thing!’

  ‘What is it, sir?’ The shock had caused Paula to wobble the steering wheel, an unintentional act which created a small weaving motion of the vehicle, and which resulted in someone blasting a car horn behind. But Pluke never noticed the near mishap as Paula asked, ‘It’s obviously very important.’

  ‘Very!’ he said. ‘I forgot to warn Millicent that I would be late home this evening. She will have prepared my dinner, it will be as dry as a horse trough in a drought.’

  ‘Oh, I thought your reaction was connected to our enquiry!’

  He looked at his watch. ‘I think, under the circumstances, I should return home directly, without going into the incident room – it will be closed anyway. And you may do likewise. We shall meet tomorrow morning when I shall deliver my summary and my thoughts to the conference of detectives.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ sighed Detective Constable Helston, wondering what sort of an ogre lurked within Mrs Pluke.

  *

  During Montague’s absence that day, Millicent had shown photographs of the deceased girl to her friends and social acquaintances, but none had recognised her. At the mention of Eric Burholme, however, Mrs Plunket-Greystone did relate a curious incident. Mr Burholme had kindly given her a lift home to Greystone Manor following a demonstration of a new piece of machinery in the Yorkshire Dales. As they drove down the dale in his BMW, an oncoming car had caused Mr Burholme to take evasive action and he’d finished his journey in the ditch.

  The offending car had departed. Burholme had managed to reverse his own vehicle from the ditch where it had not suffered any damage, other than acquiring an adornment of pieces of hedgerow and clumps of grass. Before leaving the scene, Burholme had meticulously removed every piece of grass and twig from the bodywork of his car, and had then raked over the tyre marks in the verge with a piece of wood. By the time he departed from the scene, there was not a trace of the accident. Upon leaving, he’d said to his passenger, ‘No one will ever know I was there, Mrs Plunket-Greystone.’ And he had driven home without further explanation. Millicent felt she ought to tell Montague about that. Montague would know he’d been there, she smiled to herself.

  *

  The following morning, Wednesday, after checking with Sergeant Cockfield pronounced Cofield in the control room, opening his post and providing Mrs Plumpton with sufficient work to keep her busy, Pluke went into the incident room. Already, his detectives were gathering but it was Wayne Wain who first hailed him.

  ‘Sir,’ he said as he followed Pluke into his office, ‘I came here last night and waited and waited and waited…’

  ‘I had to travel to Newcastle, Wayne, on a matter of great importance.’

  ‘Yes, sir, Mr Horsley told me. I tried to contact you by radio but you were out of range. I had some important information for you, vital in fact, and apart from that, you promised to explain things to me, your beliefs, your suspicions.’

  ‘There is no time now, Wayne. I shall present my views to the conference and you can listen in. Now, I had a very fruitful visit to Newcastle yesterday evening.’

  ‘To the ferry company, you mean?’

  ‘No, to a convent…’

  Wayne wondered if horse troughs were the reason for such a visit to a convent, and decided he must immediately acquaint Pluke with the result of his enquiries. ‘Sir, I must tell you this. I had a very successful visit to Quenby and established that our victim was seen – positively seen – on Saturday morning at Harman’s Farm! That’s our first sighting on the Saturday, sir, and I have two witnesses. It means she must have been there overnight on Friday, and even staying there on Saturday.’

  ‘That is excellent news, Wayne, brilliant news in fact…’

  ‘And I discovered Burholme had a penchant for good-looking blondes, sir, although he appears not to have been a womaniser. He had women working for him, sir, according to my witness, when his wife was incapacitated. Domestics, sir, doing the cooking, washing and cleaning while he cared for his wife. I bet they had to be first class, he seems to have been a purist, never liking to leave things lying about,’ and he told Pluke of Burholme’s clearing of the table at the agricultural show.

  ‘Excellent news, Wayne, absolutely wonderful! Mrs Pluke told me a similar tale about him clearing up after a near-miss with a motor car. Now, I need to know where the late Mrs Burholme is buried, and I would also like to know whether any of our emergency services were called to Harman’s Farm on Saturday. Can you do those tasks for me, before I convene the detectives’ conference?’

  ‘Well, yes, sir. But what happened in Newcastle? Did you find a rare horse trough? You seem buoyed up, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  ‘I completely forgot to examine the grounds of that convent for horse troughs, Wayne, but I have learned that our deceased is not a Swedish girl who came here by ferry. Her name is Miriam Ripley and she is a nun from a hilltop convent near Newcastle. Her religious name is Sister Bega. We shall soon have a positive identification – and, Wayne, we have established a very positive link between her, the convent, Harman’s Farm and our man Burholme.’

  ‘That’s great, sir! But a nun? She wasn’t dressed like one, although I suppose that explains the virginity. But why on earth would a nun visit an agricultural machinery hire business?’


  ‘That is the question we have yet to resolve, Wayne. Now, if you could see to those two small enquiries, I shall prepare for my conference of detectives, and for the subsequent news conference.’

  ‘Very good, sir. By the way, how did you get to Newcastle?’

  ‘I was driven, Wayne, in an official car, by Detective Constable Helston. Now there’s an intelligent young woman, Wayne. As I said earlier, I must consider her as a potential member of my team…’

  ‘Really, sir? Does that mean I have competition as your deputy? I think I’d better get those enquiries sorted, then.’

  ‘I think you had, Wayne,’ smiled Pluke.

  Seated before his desk in the full realisation that he had not attended the closing conference following yesterday’s enquiries, Pluke was pleased to see that Detective Inspector Horsley had provided him with a brief summary of the outcome of Tuesday’s investigations. The main result was that enquiries from the Swedish ferry lines sailing in and out of Newcastle had produced a blank.

  In the light of the identification of the nun, of course, that was to be expected – certainly, six girls broadly matching Bega’s appearance had arrived from Sweden but all could be accounted for; the enquiry had thus produced a nil return. Now, of course, Pluke welcomed that!

  Another result concerned the wheelbarrow recovered from Burholme’s garden shed – fibres had been found on the rim of the barrow. These had been compared with fibres taken from the victim’s blouse and jeans, and a match had been made. Furthermore, particles of soil in the tread of the wheel of the wheelbarrow proved it had recently been pushed over soil which surrounded the grave – samples taken at the time of the discovery of the body proved that. So Pluke knew the barrow had been used to convey the body – but who had used it? No discernible fingerprints had been found on the rubber handles or any other part of the barrow; certainly, there were none which might be compared with those of Eric Burholme.

  All undertakers, grave-diggers and graveyard attendants within a five-mile radius of Crickledale had been interviewed but none could help. None had lost any of their grave-digging tools and none of the stone masons visited reported the loss of any of their tools. All could be eliminated from the enquiry.

  The remains of all the camp fires in the quarry had been sifted by the Scenes of Crime officers and analysed in the hope they would reveal traces of some of the victim’s belongings, such as a burnt haversack, anorak, sleeping bag, map, spare clothing, or comb. A burnt passport could no longer be considered because the girl had not travelled from overseas. So far as other evidence was concerned, none of her belongings had turned up anywhere else and neither had the spade which was reported missing from Burholme’s garden shed. The search for those items would be continued today with Task Force officers checking every inch of the hedgerows and fields in both directions from Harman’s Farm entrance.

  Continuing checks on the owners of crossbows had not revealed any in the Crickledale district and the local sports shops claimed that no one in recent years had ordered replacement bolts or spare parts from them. Pluke therefore felt that a locally owned crossbow could be eliminated as the cause of Bega’s death, and the pathologist had already ruled out a humane killer.

  Michael Wardle, the man who had found Bega’s body, had been interviewed following a long wait at his house by detectives. He had not been avoiding them, his absence being due to nothing more than a visit to his married sister who lived in Redcar. He had been quizzed in depth about his background and particularly about his movements on Friday, but there was nothing which could link him to the body, other than his misfortune in discovering it. The detectives who interviewed him thanked him for his patience, saying that his ordeal was an unfortunate part of every murder investigation. He said he hoped he found no more human bodies during his excursions. If he did, he would think carefully before reporting it. Perhaps an anonymous telephone call via the 999 system?

  Among the other enquiries which had been completed, a study of the types of motor vehicle seen at night on the Barughdale to Crickledale road revealed nothing of consequence. Checks had been made between midnight and six the following morning. One vehicle, a Volkswagen car, had been logged by police night patrols on Friday/Saturday at 3 a.m. Saturday – its owner had been traced and eliminated. It was a vet returning from treating a sick cow. Similarly, Saturday/Sunday night’s check revealed a few more vehicles – five in total, and all moving around 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. – but all could be eliminated. Each belonged to a young man seeking solitude with a girlfriend aboard.

  Photographs of the pink-framed mirror had been displayed around shops and hairdressers in the town in the hope someone might remember selling such an item, but none did. It was a cheap mirror, they felt, more like a tourist’s souvenir or child’s plaything than a mirror bought by a discerning young woman. In fact, Pluke now knew it belonged to the victim.

  It was while Pluke was studying all these notes that Wayne Wain entered his office having completed his brief enquiries by telephone.

  ‘First,’ he said, ‘the emergency services. I’ve checked them all, sir. None of the local hospitals or the ambulance service received a call to a casualty at Harman’s Farm or the quarry on Saturday evening or night, or in the early hours of Sunday. Or at all, in fact. I asked for those times in particular, but they checked on a wider scale. I’ve done a telephone call of doctors’ receptionists too, sir. There are only two surgeries, but I got the same answer. No call out.’

  ‘If the girl did have an accident, then, it seems she was dead when she was found, would you think, Wayne? Beyond human help, in other words.’

  ‘That’s feasible, sir, yes. Now, the burial of his wife. I rang the vicar, sir; the Crickledale parish does include Barughdale and here’s an odd thing. She died in hospital, sir, Crickledale General to be precise, from a heart attack. She’d been ill a long time and died the day after being admitted. There is no suggestion of foul play, sir, none at all. Anyway, she was buried at Harman’s Farm, sir, in a private plot.’

  ‘That’s it… I remember the fuss now! And where is this plot, do we know?’

  ‘The vicar did not know, sir, because he took no part in the burial service. Apparently, Burholme is not a Christian, sir. Years ago, he got planning permission to bury his wife among some trees on the edge of the moor, on his own land. He will be buried there too, when the time comes.’

  ‘So who actually carried out the burial, do we know that, Wayne?’

  ‘Yes, sir, Crumble and Smirch the Crickledale Undertakers, Embalmers, Funeral Carriage Masters and Ornamental Stone Masons. I had words with Mr Smirch, sir, he remembers the funeral. There were no mourners, he told me, other than Eric Burholme. The body was lowered into the grave, in a cardboard coffin, and Burholme read some words over the body as it was committed to the ground. Mr Smirch couldn’t understand what he was saying, sir, he thought it might be Latin.’

  ‘Swedish, I would guess, Wayne. Now, was anything buried with the corpse? Did you think to ask that?’

  ‘Swedish, sir? But there was nothing, sir, except her wedding ring, although the lady’s hair was braided, sir, so Mr Smirch said.’

  ‘That’s an old Swedish custom for married women, Wayne. There is a lot of Swedish influence on that farm. Well, thank you for that. Now, is there anything else before I call the teams together for the conference?’

  ‘There is a note asking you to ring Detective Superintendent Hart, sir. Control passed it to me just now. He rang last night, apparently, when you were out.’

  ‘Then I shall do so immediately. Sit down, Wayne, you need to be fully informed of events, and Mr Hart might have some news for us.’

  Pluke rang his boss’s number at Headquarters and when a deep voice said, ‘Hart, Headquarters,’ Pluke responded with ‘Pluke, Crickledale, sir.’

  ‘Ah, Pluke. Good of you to ring back. How’s it going?’

  Montague updated his boss on the more important aspects of the enquiry, particularly the identifi
cation of the girl, albeit yet to be confirmed by an inspection of the body by one of the nuns, and Hart expressed his pleasure.

  ‘Now, Pluke, as I said, I have been doing a little digging into the background of your Eric Burholme. I have not bottomed this enquiry, though, not by a long way, because your man is the subject of some highly secret files which are not kept at our Headquarters and not even in Scotland Yard. They’re held by the Security Services and not even I have been allowed access to them. But one thing is certain – his former name is Erik Bjurholm, he is Swedish, he is eighty as he states. He came to this country, as an alien, in 1947 and later applied for naturalisation. He Anglicised his name at that stage. He was not married, by the way, and lived where he is now, at Harman’s Farm; he worked as a conventional farmer with grain and livestock, but later developed his machinery business. His application for naturalisation was approved and later he married an Englishwoman called Elsie Butcher. He has no criminal record and to all accounts is a citizen of exemplary conduct.’

  ‘But I must not accuse him of murder?’

  ‘If your enquiries suggest he is guilty, contact me in confidence, Pluke. But the mystery remains… I cannot delve any further without someone in high places getting worried about my motives. Sorry and all that. But don’t rock the boat, Pluke. Softly, softly is the word on this one.’

  ‘And if I prove he did not commit murder?’

  ‘Then no more need be said, need it?’

  And Hart replaced the phone.

  Pluke did likewise, sighed and said to Wain, ‘Right, Wayne. Get the teams assembled for our conference, and afterwards I shall embark upon my interrogation of Eric Burholme.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  While the detectives were assembling in the Plukedom for their Wednesday morning conference, Pluke asked Horsley to contact the convent in Northumberland and Meredith, the pathologist, to arrange for a nun, Sister Agnes preferably, to come to Crickledale to make the formal identification of the dead girl. A police vehicle would convey her to the mortuary if necessary; the sooner she arrived the better, Pluke exhorted Horsley. Pluke also briefed Inspector Russell, the press officer, about the theme of this morning’s news conference – once more it would concentrate upon trying to secure sightings of the victim in and around Crickledale, although the name, occupation and home address of the dead girl could not yet be released because she had not been formally identified. There should also be a renewed appeal to trace the missing spade and personal belongings of the dead girl.