by Faith Martin
All three policemen took a step closer to her, whether by accident or design, surrounding her on all sides, as if they were expecting her to make a bolt for it — although where she could possibly bolt to in this weather, and in this remote area, she wasn’t sure.
‘And what can you tell me of this incident please?’ the inspector asked, his eyes never leaving her face.
Frank Moulton didn’t show it, but he was a worried man. Frank never showed anything of his feelings, which was probably the main reason he’d climbed as high as he had. Had his superiors the faintest idea of the extent of his own feelings of inferiority, he’d still be directing traffic. And probably feeling a lot happier than he did now.
Born and raised in a small village not two miles from Kidlington, where the Thames Valley Police Force had their headquarters, Frank was a countryman at heart. He had a simple soul, was basically honest and uninspired, and totally unsuited to his chosen profession. He’d walked a beat for years, quite happily nabbing poachers, the odd petty thief, and one or two of the more persistent housebreakers. He’d become sergeant simply because he’d had enough academic competence to pass the exam, and had become inspector ten years later, via his seniority.
He had never worked a murder case on his own before. No doubt the brass thought that someone with Frank’s rural knowledge would be the most competent officer to handle a murder on a farm, so the phone call this morning concerning the murder of a farmer had come as a distinct and somewhat nasty shock to his system — and had been tinged with just a little understandable excitement and curiosity. Nevertheless, the thought of being the senior investigating officer on a real live (so to speak) murder case, was giving him a severe case of the jitters.
On the journey over, he’d half hoped to find some hysterical female who’d simply misread a nasty farming accident. But now, as he looked at the woman standing so patiently before him, he felt his hopes in that direction fading. And they evaporated altogether when she began to speak.
‘I’m working as a cook, over the Christmas holidays, for a Mr Stanley Kelton and his family.’ She quickly ran through all the family members and the sequence of events that morning, leaving nothing out. ‘When I left to go to the chicken house for the eggs, Sidney was making the tea. When I came back, he was sitting at the kitchen table with a large knife embedded in his chest,’ she finished bluntly and succinctly, but her voice took on just the faintest hint of tremor on the final words.
Sergeant Ford, who’d been taking quick and precise notes throughout, lifted his head and narrowed those laser-like eyes in her direction. She certainly sounded calm enough. Looked it, too. His eyes ran over her impressively shaped bulk, her level, quite extraordinarily beautiful blue eyes, and noted her pallor. Yes, she was upset, but hiding it very well.
Competence was written all over her. They couldn’t, he thought happily, have asked for a better witness.
‘And where is this farm exactly?’ Inspector Moulton asked, his voice betraying none of his dismay.
‘Back up this way.’ She pointed in the direction they had just come from. ‘The track to the farm hasn’t been cleared, I’m afraid, so you won’t be able to drive up there. Well, not unless you have access to a 4x4, or can get one of the other farmers to take you in his tractor. Or order the council snow-plough to come out here.’
She did, however, get into the car with them (the constable in the back having to squish up in the far corner,) in order to direct them to the turnoff. Once parked, they all got out and observed the two separate tracks in the snow.
Jenny quickly told them about the tracks, her theory about the postman’s boots, and what she had done about covering up two sets of prints with her scarf. As she did so, she noticed the sergeant give a very quick smile. She’d obviously done the right thing, and it made her feel a lot better. She’d half expected to be given a rocketing about tampering with evidence.
She was, however, getting distinctly bad vibes from the inspector. She hoped, very much, that Inspector Moulton was hiding his light under a bushel. But if, as she was beginning to suspect, he didn’t actually have a light to hide, she was in deep trouble.
Deep trouble.
* * *
Inspector Moulton told the constable to stay with the car to prevent anyone else calling at the farm and with orders to send for SOCO (scene of crime officers), forensics and the police doctor. Now it seemed they really did have a murder on their hands, Moulton wanted as many other officials around as possible. That way, if mistakes were made, he had someone else to blame them on.
The three of them then walked up the snow-clogged lane, stepping in the cook’s second set of footprints to the point where she had left the scarf. Moulton stared at the incongruously bright blue and red scarf lying against the snow for some while, but said nothing. He was not, in spite of his inferiority complex, actually a foolish man. He just knew from experience that the less he said, the less likely he was to dig a hole for himself that he’d need to climb out of later.
They continued on until they reached the crest of the hill, at which point they paused and looked down on Kelton Farm. It looked exactly as she had remembered it from her first sight of it yesterday, Jenny realized. Which was eerie. And was it only yesterday she had first come here? It felt like years now.
But the farm shouldn’t look the same, she thought resentfully. It should look different. A man had been killed there, brutally murdered. A nice old man who wouldn’t hurt a fly. It had no business looking its usual, squat, square, sturdy self. It should look dark. Sad. Evil.
She shook her head and sighed deeply, telling herself not to be such a drama queen, causing Sergeant Ford to give her a quick, anxious look. But apart from the sigh she made no comment, and together they walked down to the farm, Inspector Moulton making a great show of looking around the courtyard, although to what purpose, it was hard to tell. Almost everyone from the farm, and the postman to boot, had trampled around there. Not to mention the geese and the dog.
Jenny led the way into the hall, and removed her boots. Guiltily, both Inspector Moulton and Sergeant Ford quickly did the same, and the cook gave a brief nod of satisfaction. At least their mothers or wives had trained them well.
‘This way,’ she said, with obvious reluctance, and they followed her across the hall to the large heavy door that opened into the kitchen. Jenny took three steps inside, and stopped dead.
A sea of Kelton faces turned her way: Bert looked haggard, and was standing the nearest to her, leaning heavily against the dresser; Bill was standing by the far door, pale and tense; Delia was sobbing quietly by the sink and Jeremy was standing by her, awkwardly patting her back. They all turned and stared at her, but it was Stan Kelton, standing just a little way from his brother’s body, who reacted first.
‘There she is!’ he bellowed, and took several steps towards her, his meaty hands clenching and unclenching, as if in anticipation of closing around her throat. He stopped abruptly as first Moulton, then Ford, emerged on either side of her, and stood surveying the scene.
Without a word, and with not a hint of his reluctance or anxiety showing, Moulton walked forward and moved slowly around the chair to face Sid Kelton head on. His grey eyes fell to the handle of the knife sticking out of the dead man’s chest, and he slowly took a carefully silent, but deep breath.
He hadn’t expected the man to be so old, or look so ill and pitiful.
‘Who are you lot, then?’ Stan asked, but from the tone of his voice he obviously already knew.
‘Sergeant Ford.’ The sergeant pulled out some form of identification, which Stan barely glanced at, and then nodded in his superior’s direction. ‘Inspector Moulton. And you are?’
‘Stan Kelton,’ Stan replied, his voice at last falling to something approaching a normal decibel. But it was only temporary. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ he quickly added, his voice becoming aggrieved and downright threatening once more.
‘I was hoping you could tell us that,
sir,’ Inspector Moulton said, taking the opportunity to get out of Sid Kelton’s painful presence and turn his attention to the blustering younger brother.
The cook had described the family well, for he had no problems picking out the family members. Nevertheless, he went through the motions of having each of them formally identify themselves. It passed the time well, and gave him time to think. Although what he was going to do next, he had only the most general of ideas.
When Delia, the last to give her full name, age and — ridiculously — address, had finished, there was a long, cold, frightening silence. Everyone looked at everyone else. Finally, predictably, it was Stan Kelton who spoke first. ‘Well? Aren’t you going to arrest her?’ he roared, chin thrust forward, fierce brown eyes blazing.
Moulton felt a rush of hope, but his voice was totally neutral, as he said casually, ‘Arrest who, sir?’
‘Well, her of course,’ Stan said, pointing an imperious finger in Jenny’s direction.
Ford looked at her quickly at this, and saw a look of exasperated contempt cross the cook’s otherwise completely composed face.
‘We come back here,’ Stan Kelton continued, picking up a really good head of steam now, ‘and find Sid . . . poor Sid . . .’ his impressive voice choked a little, ‘sitting there . . . like that . . .’
At this point, Sergeant Ford sidled around to get his first good view of the deceased, and paled slightly. As it had struck his superior a few moments before, he felt an acute wave of pity for the old man wash over him. His eyes were open, and Ford hadn’t expected that. They seemed . . . not accusing, as you might expect, but more . . . Ford didn’t know. He had never had to investigate a murder before.
He turned quickly away.
Jenny noticed the policeman’s unease, and felt her heart sink. As time wore on, she was becoming more and more glumly certain that it was going to be left up to her, yet again, to sort out the whole sorry mess and unearth the identity of the killer.
Stan Kelton roused himself. ‘As I said, we found poor Sid like that, and she was the only one missing!’ he exclaimed impressively. ‘And the knife’s from the kitchen. And she’s the only stranger here. It’s obvious she did it.’ He finished on a flourish, but his eyes, Jenny noticed, were hot and troubled, the first genuine emotion she had ever seen in him besides anger.
And in that moment, she felt genuinely sorry for Stan Kelton. It must have been a shock, even for him, finding poor Sid like that. Sid, who was his brother, his own flesh and blood, after all. Her pity quickly fled, however, when she found herself the object of all eyes.
Exasperated, she glanced at Moulton. ‘Well, of course I was gone. I had to go to the village to phone you lot. The farm doesn’t have a landline of its own and there’s no signal around here for a mobile phone; well, not on mine anyway. What else was I supposed to do, finding poor Sid like that? Wait around here and see who might be next?’ She left unsaid the fact that, with a killer on the loose, she might have been forgiven for fearing for her own skin as well.
Moulton looked back to Stan.
Stan stared at her. ‘Well, none of us did it,’ he challenged belligerently. ‘That only leaves you.’
Moulton looked back at the cook.
‘And why would I do it?’ she shot back, just as bluntly. ‘I’ve only been here one day, and I’d never met any of you before then. What reason would I have to kill any of you?’
Moulton looked back at Stan. He reminded Jenny, who was beginning to feel distinctly irritated with him, like a spectator at a tennis match.
‘But you were the only one here,’ Stan was all but shouting now.
Moulton looked back at the cook.
‘You were only in the stables,’ Jenny reminded him flatly. Moulton looked back at Stan.
Ford coughed discreetly. Stan, Moulton and Jenny all looked at him, surprised by the interruption.
‘Perhaps,’ Sergeant Ford said reasonably, ‘it might be helpful if we establish a timeframe for this, er, incident. Miss Starling, you told us you saw Mr Kelton alive when you went to fetch some eggs. What time was that, would you say?’
Jenny, relieved that someone was making some sense at last, paused. ‘I’d done the baked spuds for lunch, and they were half done. We’d had elevenses . . . I’d say it was between half eleven and twelve. You’ll have a record of my phone call, though, so we can help trace it back from that,’ she reminded him, and Moulton glanced at her quickly.
Now how did a simple country cook come to know so much about police procedure, he wondered.
No, Frank Moulton was not a foolish man. Just a man who knew that he was in over his head. He let the moment pass without challenging her. Time for all that later.
Ford, scribbling industriously, merely nodded, having missed completely what his superior had so quickly picked up. ‘And how long did it take you to fetch the eggs? A minute?’
‘Oh no, much longer than that,’ Jenny said, and ignored Stan Kelton’s sour grunt of disbelief. ‘The path to the chicken shed hadn’t been cleared of snow, so I had to walk through it to get to it. Then I had to clear a big batch of snow from in front of the door with my feet before I could open it up. Then I was very careful selecting the eggs when I was there, weighing them, you know, to make sure none of them were addled,’ she added, seeing Ford’s puzzled glance lifting up from the notebook. ‘There’s nothing worse than the smell of rotten eggs. I had to make sure none of the eggs were light, and therefore off, before I brought them back to the kitchen,’ she continued the culinary lesson determinedly.
Opposite her, Stan Kelton shifted restlessly.
‘Then I fed the chickens, so that Delia wouldn’t have to bother, then I had to re-shut the lean-to door, come back, take off my boots and coat and come back in here. I would say I was gone at least, at the very least, five minutes. Much closer to ten, I would have thought.’
Sergeant Ford, whose legs were still aching after tramping through the snow to get there, thought her assessment was probably a very accurate one. It would take some time to clear three foot of snow from in front of a door. ‘I see. So, what we need to know now is, where was everyone between eleven thirty and twelve thirty?’ He looked up and around generally, his eyes alighting on no one in particular.
‘I was with Sissy,’ Delia said at once, and flushed when everyone turned to face her. ‘Sissy Bray, my friend. I was at her house,’ she added, suddenly aware that in her haste to clear herself she had come across as rather callous and selfish, even if it had been a perfectly natural impulse to do so. She was young and in shock, after all.
Unless she was a much cleverer actress than any of them credited.
‘And at what time did you return here?’ Ford asked, not giving his superior so much as a glance, apparently unaware that he was subtly usurping the inspector’s authority. Moulton, though, was glad to let him get on with it and simply watch and listen.
‘About, oh, I don’t know. Quarter to one?’ She turned about the room until she found her brother, Bill.
Bill moved from his position by the back door and nodded. ‘That’s right. I was here then.’
Ford turned to him. ‘And what time did you get back here, sir?’
Bill shrugged. ‘I can’t say. I didn’t think to look at the time. The first thing I saw when I walked through the door was . . .’ he trailed off, unable to say the words, but he pointed a shaky finger in his uncle’s direction.
‘I see,’ Ford said, not without sympathy. ‘And where had you been all morning?’
‘In the lower pasture, making sure there were no more trapped sheep.’
‘Alone?’
‘Aye, we split up to cover more ground,’ Bert answered, picking up the thread of conversation with surprising authority. Without being asked, he gave his own whereabouts, about half a mile from that of his brother. ‘I found a ewe, but she was a goner,’ he added, almost to himself. ‘I got back here . . . I dunno . . .’
‘Not long after me,’ Bill confirmed th
oughtfully. ‘If you remember, you asked me what I was standing around for like a spare scarecrow,’ he reminded his brother.
Bert nodded. ‘That’s right. And then I saw Uncle Sid as well. Now I think about it, I saw you going in just as I was coming down the footpath.’ Bert added quickly, ‘You couldn’t have been here more than a minute or two before me. I left the ewe on the side of the footpath about quarter of an hour after I heard the church clock strike twelve. It must have taken me another fifteen minutes to get here.’
‘About twelve thirty then?’ Sergeant Ford probed carefully. ‘For both of you?’
‘Aye,’ Bert nodded.
‘What happened then? After you arrived?’
‘I went to fetch Dad,’ Bill said. ‘I knew he was working in the tack room; we’re going to need the horses soon. A thaw’s on the way,’ he added, apropos of nothing.
Nobody asked why the horses would be needed, or how he knew that there was a thaw on the way. Country folk knew about weather, and nobody in the room was interested in horses just then.
‘I came in through this door,’ Stan picked up the story at this point, and nodded to the side door that was still standing open to the dark corridor beyond, ‘just as Delia came in through the back door. I wasn’t in time to stop her seeing . . .’
Delia began to cry again. In the warm, quiet room, her sobs echoed eerily. It was an ancient sound, reminding the cook of just how many women, through the ages, had cried for their menfolk, who’d been killed without reason.
‘Do you want to go upstairs, Dee-Dee?’ Jeremy murmured, half taking her arm in an effort to prise her away.
‘And you, sir?’ Sergeant Ford said quickly, realizing that Jeremy was the only one yet to give an account of himself.
‘Jeremy was the last of all of us to get back here,’ Bert quickly leapt to his son’s defence. Perhaps too quickly, Jenny thought curiously. Bert had also been anxious to point out that his brother had arrived only moments before he had. Why did he feel the need to protect so many, unless he believed they needed it?