The Wychford Murders

by Paula Gosling

  ‘You didn’t like her.’ It wasn’t a question. Hannah Putnam regarded him steadily for a moment.

  ‘I expect you will find all this out in due course, and I see no reason for hiding it. No, I didn’t like her. I loved her. It was a love she did not return. She had the cruelty that occasionally accompanies great beauty. She gave herself to many men, for they were always after her, and it pleased her to see them crawl. She hated men, but that didn’t mean she loved women. Only herself.’ The older woman spoke with great dignity. Luke felt sorry for her, and impressed by her forthrightness. She made no excuses, had no pretences. Despite her age, she herself had an undeniable beauty. Her spare figure was dressed simply in a black sweater and trousers, and she looked him straight in the eye. After a moment, Annabel Leigh put her hand over Hannah’s, and spoke with careful emphasis.

  ‘Win Frenholm was a bitch, and you’re going to find a lot of suspects out here, I’m afraid. I wish you luck, Inspector. In the year we’ve been here, she made a play for my husband, and for Mary’s. I could cheerfully have killed her myself. But I didn’t. We had a party here, last night. Most of us attended it. Win did, too. A sort of end-of-season let-your-hair-down. She circulated disappeared, returned, circulated, disappeared again, returned again, then went for good. It was a pattern she had. Perhaps the last man she seduced could tell you what you want to know. We can’t.’

  ‘I see,’ Luke said. ‘Well, I thank you for your frankness.’ He stood up. ‘If you’d be kind enough to tell Sergeant Smith here all the details you can remember about last night, I’ll go have a chat with Mr Moss.’

  He left Paddy getting out his notebook, and emerged again into the damp shadows of the cloisters. He followed the stone walk around to the tunnel and came out in front of the Granary Press. The big double door was open, and he went in to the sharp smell of acid, chemicals, ink, and hot machinery. He supposed it was all part of the lithographic process. At first the long, cavernous room seemed empty, but he spotted a broad back hunched over a workbench at the far end. ‘Mr Moss?’

  The figure jerked upright and turned. In the harsh overhead light, Ray Moss resembled a bad-tempered bear roused from an incomplete hibernation. Thick straight hair hung over his bearded face, and black eyes burned through the fringe as he glared at the intruder. ‘Well?’

  Luke showed his warrant card. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Abbott. I’m investigating the death of Win Frenholm. I understand you knew her, and I was wondering if you could tell me anything about her?’

  Moss snorted. ‘I could tell you where every mole on her body was, if that’s what you mean. She was a scrawny bitch, but what meat she had was prime.’

  ‘That isn’t exactly what I meant.’ Luke was surprised to find himself annoyed by the rawness of Moss’s reply. He was hardly a protected species himself, but the brute smell and attitude of the man was somehow shocking. He seemed to have no spiritual dimension at all, but simply to exist as an animal exists, for and of the flesh. And yet, and yet . . . as Luke went forward, he saw examples on the walls of what was presumably this same man’s work, and found it equally unsettling. Instead of explicit pornography or bold colour graphics, they were the most delicate of flower studies, still-lifes of hedgerows, bracken, tiny animals, stream beds, birds. ‘I mean what kind of person she was, and whether you spoke to her last night at all. I believe there was a party here?’

  ‘I didn’t go to the goddamn party. I was working. I’m working now,’ he added, pointedly.

  Luke glanced down at the workbench and saw about a dozen sketches in the same delicate hand that had done those on the wall. It was not difficult to recognise the likeness of the dead woman he’d seen a few hours before. ‘I see. You’re matting those for sale, are you?’

  ‘What if I am?’ Moss’s voice was threatening.

  Abbott shrugged. ‘I’d have thought you might like to keep them. As a remembrance, perhaps?’

  ‘If I wanted to remember I might. I haven’t got an alibi, if that’s what you’re after. I was here alone until after midnight, and then I went upstairs to bed.’ He indicated a rough ladder-like staircase leading up to a hole in the wooden ceiling. ‘I keep a bed here, in the loft. Not supposed to, but nobody says anything. Cheaper than renting some other place to sleep. All I want is my work, so what use is some goddamned flat or house to me?’

  ‘No use at all, I don’t suppose,’ Luke said, calmly. The man’s simple physical presence was a kind of threat, and he was not surprised Moss rarely sold any of his work himself. Customers would have been terrified of him. ‘I understand she came and went several times during the party. Did she come to visit you during one of those absences?’

  Moss had a sharp Stanley knife in one of his huge hands, and he was cutting conté board to matt the sketches. The knife stopped moving, lifted momentarily from the cardboard, and then, very delicately, returned to its task. ‘No,’ Moss said.

  ‘Are you cer—’

  ‘—I said no.’

  And you’re lying, Luke thought to himself. He looked at some of the sketches that were already matted and covered in a thin clear protective film. ‘How much are you asking for that one?’ he asked, indicating a chaste nude study of Win Frenholm. She was three-quarters turned away, sitting with her knees clasped to her chest, the fine curve of her spine and the smooth shadows of her back taking the light. Her head was turned towards the viewer, and while there was no sexuality in the pose, there was a kind of challenge in the face to which few men would fail to respond. Her long hair was caught up high on her head, but strands had escaped and drifted over the nape of her neck and her shoulders. It was exquisite.

  ‘Fifty quid,’ Moss said, brusquely.

  ‘Would you take a personal cheque?’

  Moss turned and regarded him with some curiosity. ‘You want that?’

  ‘It’s very beautiful,’ Luke said, truthfully. ‘I have a good place for it in my flat, where the afternoon light would strike it at exactly the right angle. Yes, I would like it.’

  Moss seemed disconcerted, and looked away. ‘Why?’

  ‘I think it might remind me of the reason I became a police officer in the first place,’ Luke said, simply. ‘She was alive – now she’s dead. Her life was stolen from her. Whoever she was, whatever she was, that’s wrong. That should be punished.’

  Moss considered this. ‘What about at night? Where would the light come from at night?’

  ‘I have a Chinese lamp, rather low and to the left.’ Luke waited.

  ‘A cheque would be fine.’ Moss walked away, as if he didn’t want to see it being written. ‘Just put it on the shelf above.’

  ‘She did come here, didn’t she?’ Luke said, as he wrote. Moss made a kind of noise, half sob, half snarl. He kept his back turned.

  ‘She came. I had her. She went. She was like that. She . . . let me, when she felt like it. When she was bored. Sometimes she laughed at me, said I smelled, said I was revolting. I didn’t care what she said, as long as she let me touch her. She was . . . perfect. Every inch of her. Perfect as a flower.’

  Luke tore out the cheque and put it carefully on the shelf above the workbench. He picked up the sketch. ‘What time did she come? What time did she leave?’

  ‘She came about seven, left before eight. Went back to the party, I guess. I could hear the noise.’

  ‘And you didn’t go yourself?’

  ‘I wouldn’t waste my time on most of them, bunch of arty-farty amateurs. Maybe three real artists here, that’s all. People who care about their work, people who don’t just turn out what’s trendy, what’s saleable.’

  ‘Artists have to survive, too.’

  ‘Only to work,’ was the angry reply. Moss still had his back turned. ‘Anything else you got to ask?’

  ‘Not at this moment, no. I may be back.’

  ‘Oh, feel free to drop in any time.’ Moss’s t
one, a parody of politeness, returned to its former growl. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  Abbott met Paddy Smith halfway back down the tunnel. ‘Well?’ Paddy asked.

  Abbott felt subdued by his encounter with Moss. ‘She was with him from seven to eight.’ He held out the picture, tilted it so the grey light from the rainy afternoon was not reflected by the pliofilm cover. ‘He’s twice my size, has no gift for words, is heavily furred, and growls like a bear. She laughed at him, insulted him, consorted with him – playing her version of the princess and the monster. However, that’s how he felt about her.’ He turned the sketch for Paddy to see.

  Paddy whistled, softly. ‘Poor bastard.’

  Luke nodded. ‘Time to see the grieving cousin, I think.’

  Chapter Ten

  Insistent hammering on the door of The Three Wheelers eventually produced Gordon Sinclair from the rear of the shop. Scowling, he opened the door and spoke through the gap. ‘We’re closed today.’

  Abbott produced his warrant card. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid it’s necessary.’

  ‘Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow?’ Sinclair wanted to know.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ Luke smiled and looked expectant.

  ‘Bloody bolshevik,’ Sinclair muttered, but he unchained the door and let them pass within, rechaining it behind them. For good measure he pulled down a blind and hooked it at the bottom, and turned to face them. ‘Come in the back. We’re working.’

  His freshly spattered smock had already told them that. They followed him between the display cabinets. Paddy’s eye chanced to fall on a price tag, and he nearly stumbled. One hundred and fifteen pounds for a lamp base? A lime-green and purple lamp base? With . . . things stuck on it? Or had they possibly grown there, like fungi? They certainly resembled fungi. Poisonous fungi, at that.

  He knew something about art, was rarely certain what he liked, but knew what he didn’t like, and that definitely was it.

  Through the curtains at the back, they found a large workroom with (true to the name of the shop) three potter’s wheels. Drying racks filled a lot of the space, and a huge kiln took up most of the rear wall. Sinks and workbenches completed the picture of an active, if limited, pottery.

  A small bedraggled figure was seated behind one of the humming wheels, poking dejectedly at a pot which was obviously going to be a big hit as it was lopsided and had a tear down one side. Paddy sighed, and felt very non-U.

  ‘Police, dear,’ Gordon Sinclair said, going over to Barry Treat and placing an encouraging hand on his shoulder. ‘Buck up.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Barry said, and swept the pot off his wheel with a dramatic gesture. ‘Oh, GOD!’

  Paddy, leaning against a workbench, sighed heavily, and agreed with J. Alfred Prufrock. He should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of ancient seas, instead of an overworked cop having to talk to a couple of raving queers about a murder. An interview with Mr Treat was not going to be one.

  Luke ignored the melodrama, as if it were a natural part of existence. He smiled at the two men. Treat brightened slightly. Sinclair glowered, clarifying the relationship instantly. Luke therefore concentrated on Mr Treat.

  ‘I’m sorry to intrude at a time like this, but I’m sure you’re as anxious as we are to catch the murderer of your cousin, Mr Treat.’

  Of course he is,’ Sinclair said, impatiently.

  ‘And although it will be difficult, I’d be very grateful if you’d go over the events of last night and this morning with me.’

  ‘Is that really necessary?’ Sinclair interrupted. ‘He’s given a statement to the police already, surely that’s enough for you to be going on with?’

  Luke kept smiling. ‘Ah yes, but that was just the local police who, though admirable, are not exactly experienced in the investigation of a murder.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘I am. A macabre occupation, but mine own.’

  Paddy turned away so they would not see him smile. Luke was getting into the role now – playing up to them without mocking them. It was an art at which Paddy himself had never excelled. Straight in and straight on was his way. Luke was the chameleon. Luke was the dancer.

  ‘Very well,’ sniffed Barry Treat. ‘No, Gordon, don’t fuss, I’m all right. If it will help, I’m prepared to do what I can. After all, she was my . . . dearest cousin.’ He produced a deep sigh and visibly braced himself. ‘What do you wish to know?’

  Luke pulled out a stool and settled himself elegantly, flipping open his notebook with an efficient flourish. Sinclair, upstaged, retreated sulkily to a workbench where he began slamming clay down again and again, making a non-verbal contribution with every thud.

  ‘First of all, I believe Miss Frenholm lived with you?’

  ‘We shared a house, yes, It was really like two flats, the way we did it up, although not really – if you know what I mean. Gordon and I had the rooms upstairs and Win the downstairs, sharing the kitchen and so on. It worked very well.’

  ‘It worked,’ muttered Sinclair. ‘Just.’

  Treat gave him a look and then turned back to Luke. ‘Gordon was just that wee bit jealous of the friendship I had with Win,’ he confided. ‘But, after all, she was my only relative. Her parents took me in when my parents died, and then she went on looking after me when they were taken. We went to art school together, worked in the same ghastly china factory when we graduated, and so on. Then I met Gordon and we had the chance to come here. Naturally, Win came along.’

  ‘Naturally,’ grunted Sinclair.

  ‘Gordon, you never said you minded,’ Barry Treat protested. No reply, but a further series of thuds. ‘Anyway, we came here. Win was charming and a great asset when it came to selling our work.’

  Sinclair snorted and slammed down the clay with a great crash. ‘She was a promiscuous bitch, Barry, and you know it. If he’s going to tell you fairy tales, Inspector, you’ll be wasting your time. I’ll tell you what you want to know. We lived in the same house all right, but she was rarely there because she slept around so much. We can’t tell you who her playmates were, I’m afraid. Last night was one of the rare occasions when she came back with us – I presume she was tired out after playing around with Moss and Graham and whoever else was interested. Her contribution to community feeling, presumably.’ The venom in Sinclair’s voice practically dripped.

  ‘Graham?’ Luke asked. ‘Would that be Graham Moyle, the glassmaker?’

  ‘Yes, he was one of her regulars. And there might have been a borrowed husband or six. When Win got tight she got insatiable. My God, she even made a pass at me, once.’

  ‘What?!?’ shrieked Barry Treat.

  ‘Oh, don’t get upset,’ Sinclair said, with a momentary tenderness in his voice. ‘I just laughed her off. Well, it was ridiculous, she was . . . not normal. She was just an over-sexed bitch who liked to play games with men. She went around searching for the Big O, as they say. But whatever kicks she got at the party can’t have been enough, because she was on the phone within a few minutes of getting back to the house. I heard the ting as she put down the receiver. About ten minutes later she went out.’

  ‘What time would that have been?’

  Sinclair considered. ‘About midnight or so.’

  ‘Not a very late party, then?’

  ‘It might have been, but we left around eleven thirty. We’re not late birds,’ Sinclair said. ‘I was surprised when Win left with us, as a matter of fact. She was behaving a little oddly – odd for her, that is. Oh, there were the in and outs with men during the party, yes, but there was something more to it. There was a kind of frantic quality about her, you know? I saw her using the phone a couple of times, too, during the evening. I guess she finally reached who she wanted when she got home. Maybe it was her killer. Maybe she knew she was going to die, and that’s why she’d gone so hot and heavy all night.
Sort of a last fling?’ He made a face. ‘I guess that was a bit over the top, even for me. But she was not the same as usual. It wasn’t for laughs.’

  ‘She was pregnant,’ Luke said. ‘Did she tell either of you?’

  ‘Pregnant? Win? She never even . . . ’ Sinclair began, in some surprise, but Barry Treat gasped.

  ‘You mean there was a baby? That a baby died, too? A tiny life within her . . . oh, God, how cruel. We might have had a little family, Gordon, a little baby to love . . . ’

  This was too much, even for Luke. ‘She apparently planned to have an abortion,’ he said, brusquely. ‘We think she intended to meet the father last night to discuss his paying for it. Any idea who he might have been?’

  ‘None,’ Gordon said, glancing at Barry who was now trembling with a new emotion – frustrated motherhood. ‘Look, is there much more?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Luke said. ‘I understand Mr Treat found the body this morning?’

  ‘Oh, GOD!’ shrieked Barry. ‘I want to forget that.’

  ‘You were going along the path to town . . . ’ Luke persisted. Gordon gave him a dirty look and went over to put an arm around Barry. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘To . . . get some milk,’ Barry hiccuped. ‘We’d forgotten to put out the thing for the milkman, and we were out of milk. There’s a little shop by the bridge as you come up from the towpath. I ran because Gordon wasn’t awake yet and I wanted to . . . make his tea . . . and I saw her boot . . . and . . . then her leg. At first I thought she was in there with someone – you know, in the bushes. But her foot didn’t move. I went a little closer, and saw the blood . . . and then I ran. I didn’t look any more, I just ran to the little shop and the man called the police and they came and I had to go back, and it was Win . . . I told them I thought it was Win and it was Win. It was Win . . . and she was . . . ’ He gave a kind of gurgle and went pasty white. Sinclair supported him as he swayed.