by Ann Granger
‘Any luck?’ asked Mike. Debbie gave Sally a funny look.
‘Well.’ Sally hadn’t missed the look. ‘Actually, something really odd happened. I was just about to photograph a really atmospheric group of trees, with twisted, bare branches, you know.’
‘What sort of odd? Did you manage a good shot of it?’ Ron asked with interest.
‘No, because something interfered with my concentration and spoiled the shot I was trying for. It unsettled me, actually. There was something eerie about the woods today. I kept hearing things. In the end, I abandoned the whole idea—’
‘Never mind the subjects we didn’t find,’ interrupted Desmond impatiently. ‘What about this display of the ones we did?’
‘I ought to have—’ said Sally, her mind still on her experience that morning.
‘An artist’s life is full of missed opportunities,’ pronounced Desmond, cutting her off. He sounded sad but did not explain just what opportunity he’d missed. Debbie gave Sally a little smile that could have meant anything.
‘Trust old Dismal Des to come up with that!’ muttered Mike.
They continued to wrangle over a title for the upcoming show of their work, with the exception of Sally, who, on the outside once again, remained silent and thoughtful.
‘It was strange,’ she said quietly. ‘Perhaps I ought to have reported it to someone.’
But they had now taken up her title of ‘The Countryside about Us’ and were congratulating one another, as if they had all come up with it together. So no one was listening to her now.
Chapter 7
Phil Morton was pleased to be able to avoid the boredom of the inquest the following morning, since it would inevitably be adjourned to allow the police to complete their enquiries. Instead he had, in his opinion, a much more important job. He had to go and interview that battleaxe Tessa Briggs again. The news that Tom Palmer had seen a woman answering Harriet Kingsley’s description and driving a black Range Rover near the woods before the discovery of the body had cast a whole new light on things.
‘I knew it,’ said Morton to himself as he drove towards the Old Farmhouse. ‘I knew that lot have been messing us around. They’re in cahoots, it’s obvious! Let’s see what Mrs B has to say this morning.’
‘So, you’re back.’ Tessa Briggs greeted him. She had come out to meet him at the sound of his car. The collie stood at her side watching him with its bright eyes.
‘You must have been expecting us,’ Morton replied.
She raised her eyebrows and leaned sideways, looking past him. ‘I can see only the one of you today, so who is “us”? The royal plural?’
‘No, madam, the police, as a body.’
Unexpectedly, she gave a chuckle. ‘Body, eh? Well-chosen word.’
They were standing in what must once have been the farmyard in the days when Crooked Farm had been a working business. The house was over to the right, a substantial building that had withstood everything that weather and the passage of time could throw at it. Today it was bathed in a pale sunshine that brought out the honey tones of the stones and the mottled brown of the old roof. But of the remaining farm buildings, which must once have formed a square around the yard, only one large barn remained, its double doors standing open. Alongside it, a modern brick stable block consisted of three adjacent loose boxes. These appeared to be unoccupied at the moment, but in a large field behind the house Morton had noticed three horses grazing, all wearing waterproof coats against inclement weather. There were a couple of sets of parallel bars constructed in one corner of the field. A rusting corrugated-iron shed with slatted air vents stood in the far corner, probably also a leftover from farming days, perhaps used for sheep.
Tessa had been watching him in grim amusement as he studied the pastoral scene. Fred came over to him, sniffed at his feet and waved his frond of a tail in belated greeting.
‘You take part in gymkhanas or eventing, that sort of thing?’ Morton asked, returning Fred’s welcome by scratching the dog’s ear. ‘I mean, you’ve got those jumps over there.’
‘I don’t compete any longer, haven’t done since I was a teenager,’ she told him. ‘A couple of local young riders come over here and practise taking their ponies over the bars there.’
‘So those horses belong to them?’
‘Two of them do. One of them is mine, the grey, Misty. He’s an old fellow, but he suits me for a gentle hack round the fields. The kids stable their animals here, and I look after them. It gives me something to do.’
‘What do you keep in that big barn?’ Morton asked, pointing at it.
‘Nosy blighter, aren’t you? You can take a look if you want. I garage my car in it and there’s a workshop in there that my husband used. He tinkered with things.’
‘You’re a widow, Mrs Briggs? I’m sorry.’
‘No, you’re not, and I’m not – not a widow, I mean. I’m divorced. Don’t ask me where Hal Briggs is, because I don’t know and don’t care. Are you coming into the house, or do you want to stay out here?’
An internal wall must have been knocked out to create the ample sitting room in which Morton found himself a few minutes later. Oak beams ran across the ceiling; original, he guessed. It was still possible to see the tool marks gouged in their blackened surfaces. Logs crackled in a wide stone hearth, sending up a resinous scent, some smoke and sudden tongues of flame. They gave out a comforting heat. Very nice, thought Morton enviously. This place must be worth a fortune, almost as much as the Old Nunnery.
‘I understand the inquest was held this morning,’ Tessa said, indicating a cosy armchair. ‘I didn’t go. Guy rang through about ten minutes ago and told me it was all over in a few minutes and then adjourned so that the police could work out exactly what happened. He didn’t say any more; we didn’t have time to chat. He was on his mobile.’
‘It was a formality, at this stage,’ Morton told her. ‘To establish that it was an unlawful death.’
‘Guy said the post-mortem examination showed that fragments of Carl’s upper jaw had been forced up through the roof of his mouth into his brain. Is that right?’
‘Yes,’ Morton agreed, ‘I’ve read the examiner’s report. But for that, and some pellets that had taken the same route, he might have survived in a terribly injured state. Not very likely, though.’
She hunched her shoulders. ‘Better he didn’t, then.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘So, someone shot Carl. I can’t say I’m overly surprised. Sorry if that shocks you, Sergeant Morton, but it’s a simple fact. Carl had a knack of annoying people.’
‘It takes a bit more than annoyance to inspire someone to blast another person away,’ Morton pointed out.
‘All right, all right,’ agreed Tessa crossly. ‘But, look here, it wasn’t anyone round here who shot him.’
‘So who was it?’ Morton asked.
Tessa looked at him with exasperation. ‘Someone who followed him down from London, of course! Who knows what sort of mischief he’d got into there. You can bet your bottom dollar he was up to his ears in something dodgy. Carl always was.’
‘Mrs Briggs,’ Morton said, ‘before we go any further, I should warn you that it is an offence wilfully to mislead the police or interfere with their enquiries.’
‘Who’s done that?’ she retorted. ‘Not me. I told you I thought the body was Carl Finch, and it was.’
‘We think it’s possible that you knew, before you arrived at the scene, that you’d find Finch dead there.’
‘How do you work that out?’ she challenged, a glint in her eyes.
‘For a start, because a witness has placed Mrs Harriet Kingsley near the woods earlier that morning, driving erratically and appearing distressed. Did she contact you, Mrs Briggs? Is that why you went to the woods? To try and find out what had happened?’
‘Damn!’ muttered Tessa. She leaned forward and glared at him. ‘Harriet wouldn’t hurt a fly! Don’t try and pin this on her!’
‘We don’t pin things on people, Mrs Brig
gs,’ Morton returned patiently. ‘Just tell me whether Mrs Harriet Kingsley contacted you and told you that Finch’s body was in the woods.’
Her face set mulishly. ‘You’ll have to ask Harriet that.’
‘Oh, someone is, even as we speak.’
‘You mean that red-haired woman inspector, I suppose? I hope she’s being tactful. Harriet could break down completely, you know! She’s – she’s quite a fragile person.’
‘I don’t think you’re easily rattled, Mrs Briggs. So I’m asking you whether you knew, when you went to the woods, that you’d find a body. I’d appreciate a straight answer.’ Morton paused. ‘And I’m a simple sort of bloke. I go on asking a question until I get some sort of answer, so don’t waste both our time.’
‘Oh, fancy yourself as the Grand Inquisitor, do you? Well, I’d like to speak to Harriet first, so you’ll just have to wait,’ Tessa told him.
‘I’m good at waiting,’ Morton told her, settling back in his chair. ‘Of course, we could continue this conversation in official surroundings. It’s entirely up to you.’
Tessa Briggs’s face was a picture of thwarted fury as she surveyed her visitor: solid, implacable and very firmly wedged in that chair. Fred, sensing the increase of tension in the air, got up from where he’d been stretched out near the fire and padded over to his mistress. He pushed his long nose into her hand.
‘You see, Mrs Briggs,’ Morton went on, ‘it seemed to us that your dog knew the dead man. So did you, because, although you didn’t say so to us at the scene, you ran off straight away to inform the Kingsleys that it was Carl Finch in the woods with the lower half of his face missing.’
Tessa stroked the collie’s head. ‘You tell people too much, don’t you, old chap?’ she said to the dog. ‘You’re a real snitch, old fellow.’ She looked up. ‘All right, Fred spilled the beans. You saw how he came to greet you today, because he’d met you before. He’ll never forget you.
‘But, look here! Don’t go reading more into this than there is, right? Harriet did go down there to meet Carl. When she got there, he was already dead. She panicked – of course she did! She didn’t know what to do. She rang me. I told her to hold fast, and especially not to say anything to Guy until I’d had a chance to go down there and see for myself. I really thought it couldn’t be Carl down there, and that Harriet had got it wrong.’
She gave an exasperated sigh. ‘I just hoped no one else would have stumbled over him, if it turned out really to be Carl. Of course, whether it proved to be Carl or some other poor sod, I would still have contacted the police! I just wanted to know if it could be Carl, so that I could put Harriet’s mind at rest if it wasn’t. But when I arrived you lot were crawling all over the place. Harriet and I were not trying to mislead the police, Sergeant Morton. You’ve got to understand that. We were trying to hide from Guy Kingsley that Harriet had been going to meet Carl.’
‘He’d have objected to his wife meeting her stepbrother? Why is that?’
‘He wouldn’t have liked it at all,’ replied Tessa brusquely. ‘And he wouldn’t have wanted her to go alone. It’s an old story, and a family matter. It’s about money. That’s all you need to know.’
‘Unfortunately, we need to know everything,’ Morton told her.
‘And you don’t mind asking, do you? Outright impertinence, half of it. All right, all right, you’re doing your job. But Harriet didn’t kill him!’
At that moment, to Morton’s considerable alarm, a volley of gunshots rang out from not too far away. ‘What the hell?’ he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. Fred barked at his sudden movement but appeared unmoved by the gunfire.
A smile of satisfaction crossed Mrs Briggs’s face. ‘Don’t be alarmed, Sergeant! It happens all the time. It’s just paying customers over at the clay-pigeon shooting range. I told you about it, remember?’
On impulse, Morton asked, ‘You don’t mind living out here alone? You do live here on your own, I suppose?’
‘I do. I don’t have a secret lover hidden away. Yes, I do like living here. I was determined, when Hal and I divorced, and the land was sold, that nothing was going to shift me out of this house. I must say, Hal was very decent about that. He knew how much the house meant to me. Besides, he didn’t want to stay around. Farming wasn’t paying the way it had done and he wanted to try his hand at something else, somewhere else. Our principal business was raising animals for the beef market. That took a long time to recover from the foot-and-mouth disaster, and, in lots of ways, it never did.’
‘You bred the cattle here?’
‘Oh, no, we’d given that up. We bought in calves, fattened them up and, when they were the right size and weight, off they went.’
Morton found himself slightly shocked by her practical tone. ‘No use getting attached to any of them, the calves, I mean.’
Tessa stared at him in genuine surprise. ‘Attached? Good grief, no! Farming is a business.’
Another volley of shots rattled in the near-distance.
‘It would get on my nerves,’ said Morton crossly.
‘Farming, or those paying punters over at the clay-pigeon range?’ A rare smile touched Tessa’s mouth.
‘Ruddy guns going off all the time. Do you own a gun, Mrs Briggs?’
‘Yes, I do. It belonged to Hal and he left it here with me. I’ve got a licence for it, in my name, and I can show you both the gun and the licence.’
‘I would like to see it,’ Morton told her.
She got to her feet. ‘Come this way, Sergeant!’
She led him into a small, cluttered room that seemed to serve as an office. A computer stood on a purpose-built unit and there were a couple of old-fashioned metal filing cabinets. In one corner, bolted securely to the wall, was the gun cabinet. ‘I’ll fetch the key,’ Tessa said.
She was gone only a couple of minutes. She unlocked the cabinet and indicated a gun-shaped canvas case resting upright inside. Tessa reached in and took it out. She opened it and slid out the weapon. ‘OK?’
‘Where do you keep the key to the cabinet?’ Morton asked her.
‘Ah! My secret, Sergeant Morton!’
‘At least you have the sense not to keep it in the same room as the cabinet,’ he told her. To himself, he was thinking, but it’s very nearby, only in the next room.
Tessa returned the gun to its place and they made their way back to the large living room. There, she remained standing, so that Morton, too, had to stay on his feet. He knew this signalled that his visit was over.
‘Just one last question,’ he said. ‘You didn’t like Carl Finch. But you mentioned he made friends around here when he was younger. Are there still any of his friends living in the area?’
She shook her mop of untidy curls. ‘Doubt it. He pushed off to London in his early twenties. I don’t know of any close mates, no one who was likely to have kept in touch with him. I doubt there’s anyone living here now who knew what Carl got up to after he moved away. Hattie and Guy didn’t know, and they’re the ones who would, if anyone. There was a rift, you understand, between him and the family.
‘As for anyone else, he just played a bit of cricket locally when he was a teenager and had some drinking cronies from the team, like I told you. He had a couple of jobs in London, when he first left, neither of which lasted very long. John Hemmings used to grumble about that. Carl’s mother, Nancy, had been dead several years and John didn’t want Carl still on his hands as a grown man! In the end, I suppose Carl lived pretty well on his wits.’
Unexpectedly, she smiled in a reminiscent way. ‘You only saw him with half his face missing. But when he was a young man, believe me, he was a very handsome chap. People were attracted to him. I dare say he was good company.’
She caught Morton’s quizzical expression. ‘Not that I ever fancied him!’ she said firmly. ‘Told you: never could stand him.’
Morton drove slowly down the narrow road from the Old Farmhouse, aware that Mrs Briggs stood in the yard and watched him leave. At the
end of the farm road he turned on to the B road and began to drive towards Weston St Ambrose. The land was rising in a gentle slope and, when he crested the top of it, he saw Crooked Man Woods to his left. This was the edge of the woodland, he calculated, not far from the access road used by the workers. It was a peaceful view, timeless, he thought. Having got the better of Mrs Briggs and made her admit the plan she and Harriet had hatched, he was now feeling pleased, and in an unusually poetic frame of mind.
He wasn’t the only one to think the view special. Just ahead of him, on the side of the road, stood a lone figure staring out across the landscape towards the woods. Morton frowned and slowed.
‘Now, where did you come from?’ he muttered. He couldn’t see a parked car, or even a bicycle. The man must have walked here. He wore, Morton could now see, a thick jacket and a woollen hat. Fair enough, the wind cut across this higher part of the terrain with a knife-edge force. The watcher, as Morton was now thinking of him, took no notice of the approaching vehicle. He stood on a patch of muddy verge, off the road itself, and his interest seemed entirely taken up with the view. He was a very thin fellow, underneath that thick coat, thought Morton. Not thin in the sense of poor health, but one of those naturally slim people. Morton, who had to watch his waistline, and whose Czech wife made a point of watching it for him, felt envious. Curious, he pulled into the side of the road and got out of his car.
‘Everything all right?’ he asked sociably.
‘Yes, thank you,’ said the thin man. He turned his head briefly to glance at the questioner. He had finely drawn features, matching the rest of his build, and sharp, grey eyes. It was hard to put an age to him, especially with that knitted hat covering the top of his head. Morton guessed mid-to late fifties. The voice was educated and confident.
‘Looking at something in particular?’ prompted Morton.