by Ann Granger
‘No, I can go on,’ she said. ‘I just want to tell it all now. He fell back into the car. I ran up to him . . . his face – his face was dreadful. The lower half of it was a red mash. Above that his eyes were open, and he looked so surprised. But I knew he was dead. If he’d still been alive and badly injured, I’d have called an ambulance, I really would! But he was dead and I was standing there with a corpse.
‘I tried to think what I should do. I know I should have called the police immediately, or Guy, but I had an insane idea I could cover up what had happened. People shoot themselves, don’t they? I mean, if they’re desperate or something? Surely I could make it look as if Carl had shot himself?
‘I had driving gloves in my car so I went back and got them, put them on. Then I went back to his Renault. I pushed his legs into the car and shut the driver’s door. Then I went round to the passenger side and opened that door. I leaned in and somehow managed to drag him across – not completely, but enough to allow me to go back to the driver’s side and squeeze into that seat. I drove, with him slumped against me, down one of the tracks into the woods. I pulled him out. It was unbelievably difficult. I can’t tell you how hard it was. He was so heavy and unwieldy. I thought I’d pull my arms out of the sockets trying to haul him out. But sheer panic and desperation gave me the strength, I suppose. I propped him against the trunk of a tree that had been felled. I wiped my fingerprints off the gun and tried to put his on them. That didn’t work, did it?’ she asked suddenly of Carter.
‘No, Carter said. ‘It didn’t. It’s a difficult thing to do.’
Harriet sighed. ‘I behaved stupidly in every way. I knew he was going to be found, but if I could delay any link with me or the Old Nunnery, that would give me time to – well, think out what I was going to do. I looked in the inside pocket of his jacket. I took out his smartphone because it might have information, or photos, on it, and I looked in his wallet. There were snapshots in there, of Carl and me, when we were children, larking about and looking so happy. I didn’t want anyone to see those, because they were so private – to Carl and to me – so I took them.’
‘What about the keys to his flat in London? Were they in his pocket?’
Harriet nodded. ‘Yes, and I took those, too. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them. Perhaps I had a crazy notion of going up to London, to his flat, and looking around in there for anything private to him and to me. But I didn’t get the chance. People have been hovering around me ever since that day.’
‘And where are they, all the items you took?’
‘In the stream at the bottom of the meadow, to the rear of the house. I threw everything in there. The photos floated away. The heavier things – the phone and the keys – I pushed under a large rock in the water. I hoped the current would work them deep into the gravel at the bottom.’
‘Was that before or after you and Mrs Briggs concocted that yarn about her finding the body?’ Carter asked.
‘Oh, not until the next morning. I had no chance before, what with Tessa and Guy fussing round me, and then the police coming.’
Harriet rubbed her hands over her face. ‘Can we stop for a bit, please? I’m very tired, and my brain’s almost aching.’
‘Certainly,’ said Carter. ‘Interview is suspended at . . .’ He added the time.
‘Send someone down there to retrieve those items she pushed under the stone in the stream,’ Carter ordered when he, Jess and Morton were alone.
‘I remember that stream,’ said Morton. ‘It’s at the bottom of a grassy slope. I’ll go now.’
When they resumed later, Carter began, ‘Perhaps, Harriet, we could talk about Sally Grove.’
Harriet looked puzzled for a moment, then said, ‘Oh, yes, the girl on the bike. Is she going to be all right?’
‘Yes. Did you cause her accident?’
Harriet was infused with another of those spurts of animation Jess had noted in her before. She wondered whether these odd bursts of energy, as sudden to fade as they were to erupt, had always been part of Harriet’s make-up. Had such a moment led her to press the trigger?
‘I didn’t know anything about that girl, Sally, at all!’ Harriet told them. ‘I didn’t know she existed. I didn’t know anyone was in the woods, so near to where I’d dragged Carl. I certainly didn’t know she was taking photos! I never would have known, if Tessa hadn’t insisted I come out with her to lunch in Weston St Ambrose, at the Royal Oak. I didn’t fancy going, because I had no appetite. But Tessa said I shouldn’t mope. As if anything could take my mind off what had happened!
‘As I would be going to the village, anyway, I decided to stop at the churchyard and check on my parents’ grave. My father bought a double plot when my mother was killed, because he wanted to join her there. So, that’s where he was buried.’
Jess asked, not really intending to interrupt, ‘What about Nancy, your stepmother? Where’s she buried?’
‘She was cremated,’ said Harriet briefly. There was a moment’s silence, during which she seemed to be lost in thought. Then she said, reminiscently, ‘We all had to go down to Stonehenge with her ashes in a box and scatter them without anyone seeing us. She’d asked Dad to do that, so he did.’
She gave herself a little shake and carried on more briskly. ‘I parked up by the church and went to the grave. I still had a few minutes in hand before the time I’d agreed to meet Tessa, so I strolled along the main street to the Royal Oak. Lunch was as grim as I’d expected. I didn’t want to eat anything. Tessa kept fussing and urging me, like a demented nanny. So I forced something down. I can’t even remember what it was. When we left, I felt quite sick and couldn’t get out of the restaurant fast enough. I parted from Tessa in the hotel car park, and she drove off. I set off to walk back to the church, where I’d left my car.
‘I still felt nauseous. I didn’t feel like driving home. I walked past the old library. It is still the library, but it’s staffed by volunteers now. Anyhow, there was a poster outside advertising an exhibition of paintings by local artists. I could see in through the door and there were people arranging the display and arguing among themselves about it. There was a bald-headed man with a big, bushy beard bossing them all about, or trying to. A small girl was kicking up a fuss, and another, younger man with dark hair was standing by them, looking at the paintings and generally listening in. I wanted something to distract me so I went in.
‘Nobody took any notice of me. Then I heard the man with the dark hair ask the girl about her painting. It was of trees, and he said he recognised Crooked Man Woods. She said that was where she’d taken the photos on which she had based the painting. They began talking about the dead man in the woods. They’d both been in the woods that morning. He – the dark-haired man – had found Carl and called the police! I’d thought there wouldn’t be anyone there that morning but Carl and me. But there were at least those two others. It’s a miracle we didn’t all fall over one another!
‘Anyway, as soon as they began to talk about the woods I slipped behind a bookcase so they couldn’t see me but I could hear them. Then their voices faded, so they must have moved. I peeped out from behind the bookcase and saw they had gone into a kind of large recess, a sort of big cupboard with no door. I took a book off the shelf and moved to stand by the wall near the gap, pretending to read. I could hear them. I was horrified. He was telling her to contact the police. She’d been taking photos all morning in those woods! I had no idea what she might have snapped. I knew I had to get hold of that phone.’
‘So you waited for her . . .’ Jess prompted, when Harriet fell silent.
‘I had to wait ages . . .’ Harriet told her crossly. ‘She went with some other people to that dingy pub, the Black Horse. It was getting dark when she left, but that suited me. Also, she left on her own and on a bicycle, so I thought it would be easy. She set off, and I followed.’
‘And you knocked her off her bike, in the lane,’ Carter said.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt her, jus
t – just knock her into the ditch and get the phone. I nearly did it. She did fall in the ditch and I started to search her for the phone.’
‘Was she conscious? You can’t just knock someone off a bike and trust to luck they won’t be badly hurt!’ Jess exclaimed.
‘Well, she wasn’t badly hurt, was she?’ Harriet retaliated, with another flash of that energy that seemed to send an electric impulse through her. ‘And then that wretched farmer came along on his tractor. I had to leave her and run for it. I got into my car and drove off. My car is black. It was pretty dark. There’s no street lighting along there and it was cloudy. I thought there was a good chance the tractor driver wouldn’t be able to identify me or the car.’
‘And did you try again later to get your hands on the phone?’
‘Oh, at the hospital,’ admitted Harriet, sinking back into her more usual lethargy. ‘But I had no luck there either, and someone chased me down the corridors. I got out and hid in the car park until he’d gone.’ She looked up at them. ‘Things kept going wrong,’ she said. ‘It all just spun out of control.’
Chapter 17
‘Tell me, Tessa,’ Jess asked, ‘when did you realise that Harriet had killed Carl? Was it when you found his car? Is that why you drove it away? Or had you known or suspected it from the first?’
Predictably, Tessa’s reaction to this blunt question was to snap back, ‘If you think I’ll ever believe that Hattie deliberately set out to kill Carl, I can tell you now: not in a million years! Whatever happened, it was an accident, a horrible bit of bad luck!’
‘So then, when did you start to think this “bit of bad luck”, as you put it, had happened?’
Tessa subsided and ran her fingers thoughtfully through her mop of greying hair. ‘To start with the car, I told you exactly what happened. I drove it away on instinct, because I wasn’t thinking straight, just like I told you, and because it sat there, door open, keys dangling, just like I said.’
She paused and heaved a sigh. ‘But I’d had a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach about how Carl had died ever since I drove over to the house to tell Guy that Carl was dead as part of that little plan I’d hatched with Hattie. Guy expected her to be distressed, so it was easy to pull the wool over his eyes.’
Tessa hunched her shoulders. ‘Well, for a very short time only, you know. Guy’s not a fool. But at that point I didn’t doubt she’d told me the truth and that she had found him sitting there dead, just like she said.
‘Anyway, I put her to bed. It seemed the best thing. She was on the point of collapse. I helped her undress. She just sat on the edge of the bed like a child and let me. There was blood on her clothes, but I thought, well, she’d found him, she must have bent over him. Bloodstains were to be expected. Then, when I went downstairs, I picked up her jacket from the floor of the hall. There was an awful lot more blood on that. That was when I began to wonder if she’d left something out of her account. It would be quite understandable if she had done, the state she was in. Anyone would be incoherent and anyone would omit details!’
‘So what did you think she might have omitted from her account?’ asked Jess.
‘Frankly, I did just start to suspect that there had been some awful accident.’ Tessa glared at Jess. ‘For heaven’s sake, I didn’t think she’d shot the wretched man! I thought perhaps she’d wrestled with him to get the gun off him and it went off. Because I believed the gun must have belonged to Carl, you understand, and he’d brought it with him to the meeting. How should I think anything else? I didn’t know Hattie had access to any gun. The gun found with Carl wasn’t Guy’s. So it followed it must be Carl’s own weapon, and that confirmed that he must have shot himself.
‘That her grandfather’s old weapon was still in the house – well, we none of us knew that! I don’t suppose Carl knew. If he had, he’d have pinched it and sold it, along with the books he filched and anything else he took and turned into ready cash.’
Tessa added grimly, ‘It’s a racing certainty that he’d been through those attics with a fine-toothed comb over the years, unbeknown to Hattie and Guy. Lord knows what he’d sold. The out-of-favour odds and ends of generations were up there. Or must have been up there once. We’ll never know, given Carl’s depredations. No wonder, when Guy and Hattie wanted to start up an antiques centre, there was nothing of any value left!’
She looked down at her folded hands, resting on the table between them. ‘When I went back to the old feed store to clean the car of my prints and Fred’s hair, I found smears of blood inside it. I knew then that Carl had died in the car, there where I found it, on the service road. It was like being hit by a thunderbolt. He was in the car when he was shot. There hadn’t been any wrestling match for possession of the gun, as I’d imagined. Someone had blown him away and subsequently moved him. After that, I honestly didn’t know what to think. It was the gun, you see,’ Tessa finished miserably, ‘I didn’t know she had her grandfather’s gun.’
‘You’ll be charged, Tessa, probably with perverting the cause of justice,’ Jess told her. ‘But the actual charge will be decided by the Crown Prosecution Service.’
Tessa said quietly, ‘I couldn’t take your Sergeant Morton to the car. I couldn’t do that to Hattie.’
‘It’s been decided,’ said Carter, ‘that now Ms Adam has been given a severe warning about getting in the way of police investigations, there will be no further action taken against her. She’s been told to stay away from newspaper reporters. I have a horrible feeling she won’t, not once Harriet’s trial is over and the matter no longer sub judice. Her story has everything a press hound could want in a human-interest story.’
‘And Natalie really is Carl’s sister?’ Jess asked. ‘She’s not the sort of person to claim she was, if she wasn’t, but even so . . .’
‘Oh, yes, she’s his sister, all right. It’s all been checked out. She originally set out to find her natural mother, as many adopted children do. Discovering a former neighbour of Nancy’s was the vital link that set her on the right track. The neighbour remembered Nancy giving birth to a baby, father unknown, and surrendering the infant for adoption. But then she revealed the astonishing news – to Natalie – that Nancy’s reason for giving up the new baby had been that she already had a little boy to look after and very little money to support herself and her son. Carl had been five at the time of Natalie’s birth. The neighbour had looked after him while Nancy was in the maternity ward. So Natalie set out to track down her brother. It took her years, and it was a remarkable piece of detection. But she’s a thorough sort of woman. When she first found Carl, she insisted they have private DNA tests done to confirm the relationship.’
They both sat in silence for a while, sitting over the remains of a pub Sunday lunch. Around them, people, many of them in family groups, chattered noisily as they cleared plates of roast meat and potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and assorted winter vegetables. A chalked notice on the wall invited them to finish their meal with sticky toffee pudding or apple tart and custard.
‘I wonder,’ said Jess, her gaze taking in this scene of normality, ‘how Carl really felt about Natalie turning up in his life. Pleased, in a way, I suppose, because he must have felt he’d lost one sister – the stepsister – to Guy Kingsley. Now he discovered he had a real flesh-and-blood sister to replace her. But Natalie’s a successful career woman and – well – it must have underlined for Carl what a precarious existence he led. By the way, when my brother, Simon, gets home, I’d like to put in for some leave so that I can spend some proper time with him.’
‘Of course.’
‘Can I get you a dessert?’ asked a fresh-faced young waiter brightly.
Probably a student earning a bit of money, thought Jess. They declined his offer, settling for coffee.
When the lad had gone, Carter mused, ‘Guy Kingsley always believed Nancy had secrets she hadn’t told John Hemmings. John had believed her completely open and frank. Let’s face it, not many people are that. I don’t
mean we all have a guilty or embarrassing secret. But, well, there are always little things – trivial, perhaps, but we’d rather other people didn’t know them . . .’
He looked at Jess and announced firmly, ‘But I’m not in confessional mood, so don’t expect to hear tales of my younger disasters!’
‘Fair enough,’ agreed Jess. ‘Don’t look forward to hearing about any of my embarrassing moments, either!’
They sat in silence for some minutes. Then Carter said, ‘First thing in the morning, I’m going to get on to the cleaners. I don’t know what they’ve put on the surface of the corridor outside my office, but there must be some way of removing it. I’m not putting up with that squeaking for weeks until it wears off!’
‘It’s very kind of you to give me a lift home from the hospital, Tom,’ said Sally. ‘They tell me my bike is a mess. I won’t be able to get it fixed. I’ll have to look out for a second-hand one to replace it.’
They were driving towards Weston St Ambrose. It was one of those pleasant, mild days that pepper the dull early-year climate and lead people to hope, usually in vain, that spring might not be far away.
‘It’s up to you,’ said Tom, ‘but, possibly, you’d do better to stay clear of bikes for a while, until you’re totally recovered.’
‘I am recovered, thanks!’
‘Yes, yes,’ agreed Tom hastily. Sally had that militant sparkle in her eyes. ‘But you don’t need to take another tumble and bash your head again, do you?’
‘I don’t normally fall off my bike, you know! I only came off that time because that screwy woman knocked me off deliberately.’
Seeking to make the peace, Tom said, ‘The Kingsley female nearly forced me into a stone wall on the day of the murder. She was driving like a bat out of hell then.’ After a tactful pause, he went on, ‘I thought, you know, since you’ve been existing on hospital food, you might like to stop for lunch somewhere.’
‘Oh,’ said Sally. ‘Well, thank you, Tom, that would be very nice.’