by Ann Granger
‘No,’ Meredith said. ‘And Hester wasn’t having trouble of that sort if she was kneeling in the pew, you’re right.’ She wondered whether it had yet struck Ruth that the murderer might have been known to Hester. It appeared not.
She put the question she’d told Alan was bothering her. ‘Did Hester usually say a prayer when she went in the church?’
Ruth raised her eyebrows and shrugged. ‘Not when we went in together to clean. She might have done when she was alone in there. I don’t know.’
‘Was she what you’d call religious?’
‘She was a practising Anglican, if that’s what you mean.’ Ruth went on, ‘The officer kept asking me about Hester’s plans for the morning. I could only tell her Hester went out to run a couple of errands including opening the church. However,’ here Ruth took a deep breath, ‘so far, it seems, no one else has come forward to say they saw her. No one saw her open the church door. No one saw her anywhere else in the village. I’m beginning to wonder if the police suspect me.’
‘Of course they don’t!’ Meredith exclaimed in horror. ‘They don’t suspect anyone yet. It’s early days and in any case, why should they suspect you?’
‘Because I was apparently the last person to see her alive. Because I’m the only one able to give any account of her movements that morning and I’ve no one to back me up. Because poor Hester wasn’t connected in any way with any one else in Lower Stovey.’
Alan’s words, that danger came from our nearest and dearest and not from strangers, echoed uncomfortably in Meredith’s head.
‘One of the things the police will be doing,’ Meredith said, ‘is investigating Hester’s past. This could have to do with something which happened years ago, before she came to live here.’
The result of her words was startling. All colour drained from Ruth’s face. ‘They won’t go back that far, surely?’ she whispered.
‘Far enough, I suppose.’ Meredith added as gently as possible, ‘Ruth, is there something in Hester’s past?’
‘No, not a thing!’ Ruth’s voice became sturdily decided. ‘Hester didn’t have a past. She taught for years until she retired and came here.’
‘She had no family, either, I gather, except you,’ Meredith probed.
‘I told your friend, Mr Markby, and I told that woman officer Friday morning. Hester didn’t have anyone.’
Conversation was interrupted by a rat-tat at the door.
‘It’ll be that girl!’ whispered Ruth. ‘Ignore it.’
The rat-tat sounded again.
‘Let me get rid of her,’ Meredith offered. She got up and went to the door, opening it the barest crack.
The young woman she’d seen earlier knocking on doors was on the step, smiling brightly despite the rain which made her long fair hair cling damply round her face.
‘Mrs Aston?’
‘No, I’m a friend. Mrs Aston is indisposed. You’ll understand, I’m sure, she doesn’t want to talk to the press.’
‘How about you?’ the girl persisted. ‘How is Mrs Aston taking it? Do you have any theory? Can I have your name?’
‘No, you can’t.’ If this eager-beaver ever found out Meredith had discovered the body, all hope of peace would be gone. ‘No one has anything to say to you. Please, go away.’
Meredith shut the door.
‘She’ll be back,’ she warned Ruth as she returned to the fireside where Ruth huddled in the corner of her sofa. ‘She or one of her mates. Shall I make the tea?’
When she came back with the tea, Ruth was kneeling in front of the hearth, putting another log on the embers. Without looking up, she said, ‘I’m going to sell this place, you know.’
‘Honestly, Ruth, I meant what I said just now. Don’t rush into any decision,’ Meredith urged.
‘I never wanted to live here, for goodness sake! It was my late husband’s idea. If it hadn’t been for Hester, I wouldn’t have stayed after he died. Hester liked this house. I’d even left it to her in my will—’ Ruth’s voice quavered briefly. ‘Now I want to shake the dust of Lower Stovey off my boots for ever.’ She looked up now, over her shoulder. ‘So, if you and your friend do want a place here, The Old Forge will be on the market.’
Something in Meredith’s face must have betrayed her feelings.
Ruth gave a smile with was half commiserating and half triumphant. ‘You see, you don’t want to live in Lower Stovey either. And I don’t flipping well blame you.’
There was no sign of either of the young reporters and the front door of the Fitzroy Arms was firmly shut when Meredith left Ruth’s house. On an impulse, she turned her car into the pub’s small car park and got out. It had stopped raining now and she picked her way through the puddles to the rear of the building where, as she’d hoped, there was a sign of life. The back door stood ajar and from within came voices. Meredith knocked and before anyone could reply, pushed the door open and stepped inside.
She was in a large kitchen. Norman and his wife were seated at the kitchen table. Between them lay some unwashed dishes and all the signs were they’d been having a vigorous discussion about something, if not an outright argument. Even Norman’s pale visage was flushed and animated. When Meredith appeared, both of them stopped talking and sat, openmouthed, staring at her.
Norman’s wife rallied first. ‘Hello, dear,’ she said. Her round face split in a meaningless grin and her small eyes shone with fright.
His wife’s voice acted as a spur to Norman who scrambled to his feet. ‘Evie, you go and check the bar. We’ll be opening in an hour.’
Evie obediently trotted away and Norman faced Meredith.
‘We’re closed,’ he said. ‘Thought you’d have seen that.’
‘I don’t want a drink,’ she replied. ‘I just wanted a few words.’
His expression was tight and angry. ‘The whole world and his wife wants a few words with me, it seems. First the coppers, then the press. Now you. What do you want to talk about, then, as if I didn’t know?’
‘You know I found the body,’ Meredith said.
‘’Course I bloody know it. Everyone knows it. What were you doing, poking your nose into the church? Trying to get in there again earlier, weren’t you? I saw you. You can’t leave well alone, can you? You’re the sort that always causes trouble.’
Meredith realised that she’d been quite right. He did blame her for what had happened.
She ignored his direct question and asked instead one of her own. ‘Did you see me go into the church on Thursday morning, when Miss Millar died?’
If he’d been expecting a question, it hadn’t been that one. It threw him. ‘No,’ he said after a perceptible pause. ‘How should I?’
‘The pub is pretty well opposite. You saw me today when you were standing on your doorstep. You were in your barroom on Thursday morning. I came in here for coffee. It would be natural if you looked through the window after I left.’
‘Why should I do that?’
‘To see where I went,’ she said calmly.
Norman put his head on one side. ‘I didn’t give a tinker’s cuss where you were going. And I didn’t see you.’
‘Nor anyone else? Your Uncle Billy, for example?’
‘You leave Uncle Billy out of this.’ Norman took a step towards her. ‘He’s eighty and got trouble with his hip and the angina. The last thing he needs is people bothering him. He’s already had one copper round there asking him a lot of damnfool questions.’
‘But did you see him?’ Meredith insisted. ‘Because I thought I did, in the far corner of the churchyard.’
She’d opened an escape route for Norman. ‘Ah, then!’ he said triumphantly. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to see him from here, then, would I? I can see the church, yes, but I can’t see round corners. I’m not Superman, am I? I can’t see the churchyard except just the little bit by the road.’
Meredith realised she’d mishandled that one. She changed the question. ‘Did you see Miss Millar enter the church?’
‘Did you see her at all that morning, see her walk by, perhaps?’
‘Why’re you asking me?’ he demanded.
‘Because you were in your bar!’ Meredith snapped back.
‘And what was I doing there? I’ll tell you, my girl. I was working. One of the pumps had been playing up and I had to fix it. Then I cleaned up the mess and had just finished when you waltzed in wanting cups of coffee. If you run a pub, you don’t have time to look out of windows or stand talking with interfering outsiders who come here and cause trouble.’
‘I didn’t cause trouble!’ Meredith argued. ‘That’s unfair.’
‘Of course you caused it. Everything was all right until you came, finding bodies.’
‘Someone would’ve found her, sooner or later.’
‘It didn’t have to be you, did it? Ruddy outsider. If one of us—’ Norman broke off, his face scarlet and eyes bulging.
‘Go on,’ she invited him. ‘If one of you had found it, what would you have done?’
‘Called the police!’ he retorted. He drew a deep breath. ‘And now,’ he said. ‘You can just clear off.’
Meredith cleared off.
‘I went to see Ruth,’ Meredith said that evening, peering dubiously into a pot of boiling pasta. ‘She’s bearing up well, all things considered. She thought your Sergeant Holding was nice, but she couldn’t answer any of the questions she was asked.’
‘It’s early days,’ Markby said absent-mindedly. ‘Perhaps Ruth will start remembering things in a day or two, when the shock subsides.’
‘It doesn’t look as if there’s anything to remember. Neither of them had enemies, according to Ruth, and it’s hard to see how they could have done. They don’t appear to have much to do with anyone. Neither of them has any family.’ She hooked a piece of pasta from the pot with a fork and held it towards him. ‘Try this and tell me if you think it’s al dente.’
‘It’s hot!’ Markby juggled the piece round his mouth. ‘It’s about right, I think. Here, I’ll drain that.’
He carried the saucepan to the sink. Meredith waited until the boiling water had splashed away down the plughole.
‘Alan?’
‘Mmn?’
‘You don’t think Ruth killed Hester, do you?’
He turned in surprise, the colander full of pasta dripping on to the kitchen floor. ‘We don’t have a suspect. Why should I think Ruth killed her friend?’
‘I don’t know. But Ruth seems to think she’s your number one suspect – because she was the last person we know saw Hester alive.’
‘So far. Someone else may yet come forward who saw Hester later. Ruth’s not our number one suspect. We don’t have such a person.’
‘But she’s on your list of possibles?’
Alan had set the colander on the draining board and was mopping up the spillages. She could only see the top of his head and a mop of fair hair. From beneath it came his voice, ‘Everyone’s on my list of possibles.’ He straightened up. ‘Put it this way. You found her. I might suspect you. Don’t look at me like that! She’d been dead about an hour and a half when you walked into that church, or so Fuller reckons.’
Meredith stared at him. ‘She was all that time in the church, dead, and no one else had found her?’
‘Ah,’ said Markby. ‘Isn’t that the sixty-four thousand dollar question!’
‘It does bring us back to Old Billy Twelvetrees, doesn’t it? I saw him, Alan. I’d swear it was him.’
‘He denies it and he’s sticking to it. But I believe,’ Markby scowled at the colander of pasta as if it might put up some argument, ‘that Old Billy is an untruthful person. I mean, his distinction between what’s correct and what isn’t is formed entirely by what suits him. He wouldn’t call it lying, that’s the awkward thing about dealing with such people.’
‘But you and I would call it lying?’
‘Upright citizens that we are, we probably would. I have no doubt he’s lying, but what about? About not being in the church? Or about something else altogether?’ He sighed. ‘The trouble with such people is that often, they simply can’t tell you the facts. They lie for no reason. So, has the old man got a reason? Or is he being plain bloody-minded?’
PART TWO
Chapter Nine
The investigation into the murder of Hester Millar was now taking up much of the available manpower resources. That was probably why, on Monday morning, the switchboard decided to route the call from the laboratory through to Markby’s office, or so he first thought until he was connected.
‘Superintendent Markby?’ The voice was female and somehow familiar though he couldn’t place it for the moment. He confirmed his identity and it went on, ‘It’s Ursula Gretton. Do you remember me?’
‘Of course I do!’ he exclaimed. An image of her leapt into his head, a tall young woman in muddy jeans standing by a ramshackle trailer on the site of an archaeological dig. ‘This is a surprise!’
‘It’s about your bones.’ She giggled. ‘You know what I mean. The bones we received from the police.’
‘From which I deduce, being a detective, that you don’t work for the Ellsworth Foundation any longer.’
‘No.’ Her voice was suddenly sober. ‘Not for a while now, not since that business – you know.’
He did, indeed. Murder. A woman’s body lying in the sun amid piles of household rubbish. A death which, for Ursula, had struck very close to home.
‘I needed to take a new path in my career. Sometimes one does.’
‘I understand. Good to hear your voice, Ursula.’
‘How’s Meredith?’ she asked.
Markby told her Meredith was fine and hoped she hadn’t noticed any doubt in his voice. ‘House-hunting,’ he added, in case she had.
‘Rather you than me,’ said Ursula. ‘No luck, I take it?’
‘Not yet. Right now it seems ill-fated to tell you the truth. No doubt,’ he added with forced heartiness, ‘we’ll find just the thing any day now.’
‘Of course you will. I’ve got my report all printed out nicely for you, but I thought you’d might like to know the bare facts right away. An excuse to touch base, anyway.’ He heard the rustle of paper and her voice continued, ‘I understand they were discovered in woodland, which makes sense. I estimate they’d been lying there about twenty years.’
Markby heard himself exclaim, ‘Ah …’ on a long breath.
She had heard it. ‘Was that what you were hoping?’
‘They may be connected with an old, unresolved case,’ he admitted. ‘Male or female?’
‘Oh, I think this is a male in his late thirties. You’ve noticed, of course, that he’d had some distinctive dental work?’
‘I had. Absolutely no sign, I suppose, of what might have caused his death?’
‘No, sorry. No sign of disease or injury. A lot of teeth marks, they’ve been well chewed by animals, but no saw or knife marks, nothing to suggest deliberate dismemberment. Soil, leafmould, traces of microscopic insect life. There aren’t enough remains, I’m afraid, to tell you much more. But that jaw, I’m sure, is a male jaw. I’ll pack them up and send them back to you.’
On impulse, Markby said, ‘No, I’ll come over to Oxford and pick them up.’
Ursula’s department lurked behind the respectable red-brick façade of a North Oxford Victorian villa. Her office was at the rear of the building, overlooking what had once been a garden but was now a tarmacked area, partly taken up with prefabricated huts and cluttered with stacks of boxes. A bicycle rack sheltered by a corrugated roof managed to be a particular eyesore among the rest. Markby wondered briefly how the garden had looked in its heyday when it had been a family home and there had been lawn and flowerbeds out there, and ladies in long skirts and
large hats taking tea.
The bones were in a box on Ursula’s desk. She came from behind it to greet him, hands thrust into the pockets of her unbuttoned white lab coat. Her long dark hair was brushed back and secured with what Markby understood from his young niece to be called a scrunchie. He hadn’t forgotten how striking were her cornflower blue eyes but even so, the effect of them was considerable. He found it hard to imagine there wasn’t a man in her life. Even a broken heart usually mends sufficiently for its pain to be contained, even if it isn’t forgotten.
‘Long time, no see,’ she said. She took her right hand from her pocket and extended it.
He admitted it ruefully, clasping her proffered fingers. ‘Meredith and I have both been busy and so, I see, have you.’
‘Time flies when you’re having fun,’ she returned drily.
‘Doesn’t it just?’ He was unable to prevent himself replying a trifle sourly.
She pulled a comic face. ‘Oops! Have I put my foot in it? I thought you sounded a bit depressed on the phone.’
Markby pulled himself together. ‘Everything’s fine, really.’
‘Well, there are your bones. And the report is in the folder. There’s little to add to what I told you on the phone.’
‘You were very helpful.’ He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘It’s nearly one. Let me take you to lunch?’
‘That’d be lovely. Thanks. I don’t normally get much in the way of lunch, just an apple and a bag of crisps. There’s a pub not far from here which does bar snacks.’
The pub was a fairly typical Oxford hostelry with much dark oak, a cramped interior, and numbered a good many tourists amongst its clientele. They settled for scampi and chips each, a white wine for Ursula and a tomato juice with a dash of Lea and Perrins for Markby, who had to drive back to Regional HQ.
‘Everything is all right between you and Meredith, I hope,’ Ursula said, sipping her wine. ‘I’m not being nosy. It’s just that I’ve always envied you two. You seem so well suited and happy.’