by Adam Croft
WHITEHOUSE
When and where born: Twentieth May 1957, 3h 30m p.m. Bradstow.
Forename(s), if any: Oscar Bertrand Kingsley
Sex: Boy
Name and surname of father: Bertrand Whitehouse
Name, surname and maiden name of mother: Annie Elizabeth Whitehouse, formerly Kingsley
Occupation of father: Agricultural labourer
‘Thank you,’ Hardwick said, still perusing the document. ‘Tell me, are there any other birth certificates issued to the same parents on the same day?’
‘No,’ the registrar replied instantly. ‘If there were, I’d have found it in the same section as this one.’
‘So Oscar Whitehouse was the only child born to these parents on this day?’
The registrar disappeared for another moment to double-check her computer records.
‘Absolutely,’ she said on her return.
‘Were any other children born to the same parents? Or, with the same surname and around the same time?’
‘Extra certificates will incur an additional fee, sir,’ the registrar said.
‘That’s fine.’
The registrar delivered another few cursory taps to the computer keyboard. ‘Nope. Nothing. No babies with the surname Whitehouse were born within nine years in this district, and even afterwards any babies with the same surname were born to completely different parents.’
‘Can you take a closer look at the parents? Did they have any other children?’
A few more taps were delivered to the keyboard.
‘None at all. His parents, Annie and Bertrand — neither had any other children, together or apart.’
‘So Oscar Whitehouse was, without doubt, an only child?’
The registrar sighed and looked down her glasses at Hardwick as she began to lose her patience. ‘Yes, sir. Without any shadow of a doubt.’
‘And tell me, when and how did Oscar Whitehouse’s parents die?’
Turning back to her computer to bring up the death certificates for both Annie and Bertrand Whitehouse, the registrar raised an eyebrow as she read the details on both documents.
‘They have the same date of death. They both died in a car accident, it seems.’
Hardwick thanked the registrar as he scribbled the last of his notes in his leather-bound notebook and paid his now-extortionate bill.
Hardwick mulled the case over in his mind later that day as he sauntered back up Tollinghill High Street from the train station, mentally running through the different possibilities of the events which led to the murder of Oscar Whitehouse. He was roused from his daydream by the voice of Harry Greenlaw, who was shouting at him from across to the street.
Turning to look, Hardwick watched the verger jog across the road, laden with shopping bags in both hands, as he caught him up.
‘Stroke of luck finding you here. How’s the investigation going?’
‘Slowly, but we’ll get there,’ Hardwick said, as the pair continued to walk.
‘I hope so. I’ve just been in the shop, there, getting some groceries together. The oddest thing – then again, nothing is ever unusual for Tollinghill – but, I overheard Dolores Mickelwhite talking to a few of the locals.’
‘Oh yes?’ Hardwick asked, his interest suddenly aroused.
‘Yeah, something about having seen Oscar Whitehouse in the churchyard a few days after he died. She seems to think his ghost came back to kill the reverend!’
‘Honestly, that woman –’
‘I mean,’ the verger interrupted. ‘I’m a spiritual man, as you know, but coming back from the dead? To commit murder? That’s all a little far-fetched, don’t you think?’
‘Indeed it is. I would take no notice of her, if I were you. The woman’s more than a little mad.’
‘Oh yes, everybody around here knows that. She comes out with some outrageous gossip at times. I think she’s actually quite lonely. If you ask me, that kind of scurrilous tittle-tattle will only ever land you in a lot of trouble. But anyway, I thought you might like to know, seeing as it’s connected with your investigation and all.’
‘Thank you, Mr Greenlaw. Much appreciated.’
26
Hardwick sat in his armchair, one finger curled in front of his lips, his foot tapping rhythmically on the hardwood floor as Ellis Flint slowly lost his patience.
‘Kempston, you’re doing it again,’ Ellis Flint remarked.
‘Mmmmm?’ came the response as Hardwick’s brow furrowed further and the tapping increased both in frequency and volume.
‘Kempston!’ yelled Flint, as he jumped up from his own chair and slammed his hand down onto Hardwick’s thigh. ‘Will you stop it!’
‘For Christ’s… You only need to ask!’ Hardwick snapped out of his trance and rubbed his sore leg.
‘I did. Five times! You’re doing that thing where you zone out and completely ignore what’s going on around you. Usually means there’s something on your mind. Care to share?’
‘There’s nothing to share, Ellis.’
‘There must be something. Something’s on your mind, clearly.’
‘Well, yes. Something is on my mind – nothing.’
‘I haven’t got time for riddles, Kempston. Just tell me.’
‘No, you don’t understand. That’s the problem, Ellis. The problem is that there’s nothing. I went to the General Records Office in Bradstow this morning. I thought that one explanation for Dolores Mickelwhite seeing Oscar Whitehouse days after he died was that perhaps he had a twin.’
‘And he didn’t?’ Ellis asked hopefully.
‘No. Not a single sibling of any sort, twin or otherwise.’
‘So does that mean you’re starting to believe that it really was the ghost of Oscar Whitehouse that she saw?’ Ellis asked after a few moments’ considered silence.
‘No, Ellis. That’s simply not an option.’
‘But why not? I’ve been doing quite a lot of research, actually. I think you’d be surprised how often things like this happen.’
‘Oh dear…’ Hardwick sighed, resigned to his fate.
‘No, seriously. I’ve spent this morning reading up on things and it’s absolutely incredible, some of the stuff that goes on; disappearances, spiritual images, premonitions, all sorts of things. It’s actually really interesting once you open your mind and start to look into it. Have you ever heard of the Greenbrier Ghost, Kempston?’
‘No, Ellis, I haven’t…’ Hardwick exhaled, with his forehead resting on his palm.
‘I was reading about it earlier today,’ Ellis replied, thumbing through a selection of printed papers to find the details. ‘Here we are. In 1897, a young woman called Elva Zona Heaster was murdered in West Virginia in the United States. After her death, she appeared in her mother’s dreams to tell her about the man who killed her. Her ghost said that her killer had broken her neck. When the police exhumed her body, they found her neck had been broken and that she had been choked – just like Oscar Whitehouse!’
‘Oscar Whitehouse’s neck wasn’t broken, Ellis.’
‘No, but he was choked! Don’t you see the connection?’
‘Ellis, thousands of people are choked to death every year. One incident from 1897 is hardly–’
‘That’s not all, Kempston. The dream actually led the police to catch her killer and the testimony of Elva’s ghost was used at the murderer’s trial.’
‘Well, the Americans are very strange people, Ellis. Nothing ever surprises me about them.’
‘Open your mind, Kempston! What about Hammersmith?’
‘What about it?’
‘Are the people from there strange as well?’ Ellis asked, retrieving another sheet of paper from his stack.
‘No stranger than most Londoners.’
‘Good. Because there’s another incident known as the Hammersmith Ghost murder case. In 1803, a number of people in the Hammersmith area had reported being attacked by a ghost. One woman was attacked just before Christmas in a grav
eyard near her house. She survived the ordeal for long enough to describe a white spectre that had risen from a grave and strangled her until she fainted. She then died a few days later.’
‘Ellis, people are incredibly strange. Rather than accepting that nothing happened at all, they will come up with the most remarkable deductions involving ghosts, aliens and spirits in order to try and explain what is actually incredibly mundane.’
‘So what you’re trying to say is that Dolores Mickelwhite didn’t see anything at all? That she just imagined the whole thing? That she’s mad? Lying? Blind?’
‘Who knows? She may well have thought she saw something. How often do we swear blind that we caught some sort of movement out of the corner of our eye? Or have that feeling that we’re being watched? We all experience these things, but most are sensible enough to put them down to tricks of the mind. The mind is a remarkable thing, Ellis. I’ve also done a lot of reading on the subject in my time, although I must add, my research has been somewhat less biased. The human brain is a huge network of minute and precise electrical signals. When precision fails in the brain, odd things can seem to happen. But that’s exactly where it stays — in the mind. We need to be careful not to confuse our mind’s thoughts with outside factors. Not everything is down to external stimuli. Some people, on the other hand, will deliberately invent things for attention.’
‘Do you think she’s one of those?’
‘It’s entirely possible. What do you know about Dolores Mickelwhite, Ellis?’
Ellis thought for a moment. ‘Not a whole lot, if I’m honest. I mean, I see her in the village most days and we talk a lot, but I don’t really know anything about her. Most of the time she’s asking questions or talking about local gossip. She always seems to know everything about everyone else, but never reveals a thing about herself, now I come to think about it.’
‘The dark horse, some might say?’
‘I guess so. Probably more of an attention seeker if you ask me. But do you think that makes her a killer?’
‘It’s a possibility, Ellis. Everybody’s a suspect. Unfortunately some make themselves far more suspicious than others. I think it’s time we paid Ms Mickelwhite another visit, don’t you?’
27
The wisteria tickled Hardwick’s hair as he rang Dolores Mickelwhite’s doorbell. Brushing the errant plant away, he waited for a few moments before he resorted to using the heavy knocker, which adorned the front of the large wooden door. The face of the iron gremlin stared back at him, as he removed his hand from it.
‘It’s a pagan thing,’ Ellis said, to be met with an inquisitive look from Hardwick. ‘The gremlin-style door knocker. It’s meant to protect the house from evil spirits.’
‘Yes, well it’s remarkably ugly, whatever its purpose.’
Another few moments passed. Kneeling, Hardwick peered through the letterbox into the hallway of the cottage. Towards the back of the hall he could just about make out the doorway into the kitchen, its brown wooden cupboard doors and white tiled floor. A coat appeared to be hanging on the wall in the hallway and the light of the telephone answering machine blinked in the darkened room.
‘Hello? Ms Mickelwhite? It’s Kempston Hardwick and Ellis Flint. Can we have a word?’
The letterbox snapped shut and Hardwick rose to his feet.
‘Maybe she’s out,’ Ellis said.
‘Do you leave the living room lights and television on when you go out, Ellis?’ Hardwick asked, gesturing to the living room window.
‘Sometimes, if I forget.’
‘Does Dolores Mickelwhite strike you as the sort of woman who forgets? Oh no, she’s far sharper than any of us, Ellis. That’s the worrying thing. You stay here; I’m going to take a look round the back.’
The open-plan exterior of the cottage made it easy for Hardwick to make his way round to the back of the building, sat, as it was, in the middle of its own continuous garden. The thatch looked recent and the walls seemed to be free of rising damp or any sort of defects. This was clearly a very well-looked-after cottage. It struck Hardwick as perhaps a little too well looked after, for a high-maintenance cottage lived in by a single woman of advancing years.
As he walked around the right-hand side of the cottage and reached the back of the building, the first and second windows showed him a view of the traditional kitchen. The aga looked to have been recently used and the sink, full of washing-up, contained fresh bubbles. Moving along the back of the cottage, the next window showed a remarkably neat utility room and bathroom. He barely had time to register the contents of the room when his attention was stolen by the sound of Ellis Flint shouting his name from the front of the cottage.
Rushing towards the sound of Ellis’s voice, Hardwick found him peering in through the living-room window to the left-hand side of the front door. Previously obscured by the wisteria, Ellis had battled his way through the triffids to take a look through the window. As Hardwick now did the same, he saw the white-stockinged feet protruding from behind the sofa.
‘Help me get this door open, Ellis,’ Hardwick barked.
‘With what?’
‘Use your head, man!’
Flint paused for a few moments, mulling this over.
‘I didn’t mean… Oh, for… Just get it open, Ellis!’
Shaping up to deliver his killer blow, Flint jiggled his shoulders and ran at the door, lifting his right boot at the vital moment to send a sharp shock – not through the solid wooden door, but through his own leg.
As Flint winced in pain and hobbled about on the cobbles, Hardwick depressed the iron thumb-latch and the door opened with a click.
‘What?’ Ellis cried with incredulity. ‘Why the hell did you tell me to kick it in if it was open the whole time?’
‘I didn’t tell you to kick it in, Ellis. I told you to get it open. Why must you always insist on doing things the hard way?’
Darting into the living room, Hardwick rounded the door and was met by the full, unobstructed view of the dead body of Dolores Mickelwhite.
28
‘Well that’s that theory blown out of the water, then,’ Ellis remarked as the medical staff removed Dolores Mickelwhite’s lifeless body.
‘Which theory?’ Hardwick asked, his eyes glued to the events going on around him.
‘Your theory about her being the killer.’
‘I had no theory, Ellis. Only aspects for elimination. And yes, that one now seems to be a little less likely.’
‘A little?’ Ellis asked, seemingly offended at Hardwick’s remarks.
‘Her being dead doesn’t automatically mean she didn’t kill Oscar Whitehouse or the vicar, Ellis. You don’t receive immunity from suspicion just because you’ve subsequently died.’
The familiar figure of Detective Inspector Rob Warner approached the pair and removed his notebook and pen from his inside jacket pocket.
‘So run me through what happened, exactly. You two just happened to turn up here and find Dolores Mickelwhite dead?’
‘Essentially, yes,’ Hardwick said, matter-of-factly. ‘We came to speak to her about what she thought she saw on the night that the vicar died.’
‘Which was?’
Hardwick sighed. ‘She thought she saw Oscar Whitehouse entering the churchyard and heading for the vicarage’
‘Oscar Whitehouse?’ the detective asked. ‘But he’d been dead for days at that point.’
‘Yes, exactly. So she was clearly either imagining things, or had been making it up all along. Personally, the possibility of the latter struck me as more than a little suspicious.’
‘Well yes, it is. So you thought you’d not bother to tell the police. Instead, you came round here on your own and trampled all over a crime scene?’
‘We didn’t know it was a crime scene at the time, DI Warner. It was only when we got here that we found Ms Mickelwhite dead. Fortunately, it seems it had only happened shortly before we arrived, so you should probably thank us for preserving the fresh evide
nce. Had we not turned up, I doubt if many people would have rushed round to check on her over the next few days.’
‘Thank you?’ DI Warner asked, with a touch of shock at Hardwick’s temerity. ‘Listen, Hardwick. We asked for your input on how Oscar Whitehouse could have died, but to be honest, now I’m starting to regret it. You’ve no right to continue stepping on our toes. We’ve now got three bodies on our hands and people are going to start asking questions. Do you see what I mean?’
‘Perfectly, DI Warner.’
‘Because, as I see it, the closer you get to a potential suspect or witness, the next thing we know is they’ve wound up dead. In fact, I’m feeling a little nervous just standing here talking to you now, and will probably sleep with a baseball bat under my pillow tonight.’
‘All I want is to see the killer caught, Detective Inspector.’
‘You and me both, Hardwick. You and me both. But at the moment, your gallivanting seems to be causing more trouble than it’s worth. We’ve clearly got a killer who will stop at nothing to make sure that we never discover the truth about what happened to Oscar Whitehouse. The closer you get, the more people die. Will you at least try and keep some semblance of distance?’
Hardwick simply smiled, and left.
29
The noise in the Freemason’s Arms that evening grew steadily louder as the number of patrons increased. Hardwick and Flint sat in the far corner, away from the bar, in the regency-style armchairs. If there was one thing that could tempt Hardwick away from the hustle and bustle of the bar, it was a regency-style armchair.
‘They’ve all got to be connected somehow, Kempston. I mean, think about it. Oscar Whitehouse dies and the vicar tells us he knows a big secret, which he can’t divulge. Next thing we know, he’s dead. Lo and behold, Dolores Mickelwhite swears blind she saw the dead Oscar Whitehouse present at the time the vicar was killed. Not only is that physically impossible, but Dolores Mickelwhite herself is killed shortly after. I don’t know about you, Kempston, but it looks as though someone is desperate to cover something up here.’