Nicholls cast his eyes over the sacks of soil, the dusty tools that lay haphazardly on the table, and the extensive range of other equipment piled up along the shed’s walls. Dust motes floated in the slivers of light that pierced the gloom, the air filled with an aroma that could only be called “eau de gardening.”
“Looks like we hit the jackpot,” he muttered, in a tone unmistakably sarcastic.
“We certainly might have,” Annabelle responded, as she brushed past the Inspector to the far end of the shed.
After pulling aside some brooms and a worn-looking stool, she looked over her shoulder at the Inspector.
“It’s a cabinet?” he asked, frowning. “So what?”
Annabelle found the handles, and in a slow, steady gesture, pulled open the doors.
“Gosh!”
“Jesus Christ!”
Hanging in front of them, inside the cabinet among the dirty, old tools and gardening paraphernalia, was an elegant and striking wedding dress. The delicate white fabric seemed to glow in the murkiness and the intricate embroidery made everything in the shed seem even older and dirtier than it was.
They were both shocked to find this alien object in the most unlikely of places but the Inspector was the first one to come to his senses. He stepped toward the cabinet and pulled at a large suitcase which rested at its foot. After fiddling with the clasps he yanked it open.
“This is ever so strange,” Annabelle muttered, as the Inspector foraged among clothes and toiletries that were obviously rather dated.
Something drew Annabelle’s eye to the side of the cabinet. She carefully reached in to pull it out. It was a shoebox, but when she picked it up the weight seemed rather light for a pair of shoes. The Inspector stood beside her as she slowly lifted the lid. It was packed with yellowed tissue paper and she rustled around to pick out what was packed inside.
“Jewelry,” muttered the Inspector.
“Wedding bands, and a necklace to be precise,” replied Annabelle.
“Junk, to be even more precise,” the Inspector retorted, “but incriminating junk, nonetheless.”
Annabelle frowned as she dropped the solitaire diamond necklace back into the box.
“Inspector! Please don’t allow your personal issues to cloud this!”
The Inspector looked back at Annabelle with almost angry disdain.
“My personal issues? What do you know of my personal issues!?”
“I know that they’ve become incredibly disruptive! As does anyone who has had the displeasure of being in your presence recently!”
The Inspector’s hands went to his hips and he glowered at the Reverend.
“My personal issues are just that, Reverend – personal! Don’t mistake me for a member of your flock, Vicar. I’m not looking for advice or guidance.”
“Well, I should think not, Inspector,” Annabelle said haughtily, taking a stance just as adamant. “You shouldn’t need me to tell you that what you are doing is wrong!”
The Inspector’s face seemed to redden even further.
“Wrong? How can… Who are… I am… I am not wrong! She belongs with me!”
“Harper is married, Inspector! She belongs with her husband!”
“What are y—”
“To think a grown man of your age, an Inspector in the police force, no less, would be chasing a married woman in such an impertinent, insolent manner is frankly shameful, Inspector!”
“Rever—”
“And it’s no surprise to me, that regarding the circumstances of this case, you are struggling to see reason. You are acting quite disgracefully!”
“Are you quite finished, Reverend?”
Annabelle raised her chin and snorted dismissively.
“Let me put you clearly in the picture, Vicar. You have got the wrong end of the proverbial stick. I am not, as you so enthusiastically put it, ‘chasing a married woman.’ Least of all, Harper.”
“The evidence—”
“The ‘evidence’,” interrupted the Inspector, crossly, “that you have gathered is clearly faulty, because the only ‘female’ I’ve been fighting over recently is a prize bitch.”
Annabelle dropped the box of jewelry and gasped in horror. Her hand flew to her mouth.
“My Labrador by the name of ‘Lulu,’ to be precise. A former Crufts winner I took ownership of thirteen years ago and who has been my best friend ever since. My ex-wife is currently claiming that the dog belongs to her and has reopened our divorce settlement, despite it being two years old. She wants to gain custody of her.”
Annabelle dropped her hand and began blushing so furiously that the Inspector wondered if her cheeks would explode. She looked at the ground and placed her hands on her hot face as if to cool it.
“I’m terribly sorry, Inspector. I heard you on the phone and I thought… I… I’ve made an utter and complete fool of myself.”
“Hmph,” the Inspector stared at her, his arms folded across his chest.
They stood there for a moment in the dark, the wedding dress hanging behind them, the jewelry at their feet, before the Inspector sighed dejectedly.
“It’s okay. So long as you don’t mention it outside this shed, I won’t either. You’re allowed a mistake after finding this,” he said, gesturing to the uncommon haul they’d discovered in the shed.
Annabelle nodded shamefacedly, brushing her cheeks to soothe her embarrassment. She was mortified.
“What is this?!” came a shrieking voice from beyond the shed door.
Annabelle and the Inspector spun around to see the beige figure of Louisa, her carpet bag dropped to the ground, clutching her face in horror.
“We had reason to believe that you were hiding evidence, Miss Montgomery,” said the Inspector, stepping toward her with the search warrant in hand. “Do you mind explaining what all this is?”
“This,” Louisa spat, her voice filled with spiteful anger, “is Lucy’s. I’ve been keeping it since she disappeared, and you have no right to go through it!”
She pushed past the Inspector into the shed and began rearranging the items within the suitcase. Annabelle glanced from Louisa, to the wedding dress, then back to the Inspector, who raised his eyebrows and gestured for the Reverend to join him outside, leaving the appalled teacher in peace.
When they had walked a few steps away, out of earshot, Annabelle clasped the Inspector’s arm.
“What do you make of this, Inspector?”
“Well, Lucy was obviously ready for a wedding, and a quick one too, judging by the suitcase. Now, that leaves me with two lines of inquiry. Either she was planning to get married to Daniel or somebody else. Either way, he should have known something about it. The fact that he didn’t mention anything about that to you is a pretty clear indicator that he’s hiding something.”
“Hiding what?”
“My guess is that he’s the murderer,” the Inspector said, marching off toward the car. Annabelle took one last look at the forlorn figure of Louisa, delicately rearranging the jewelry in the shoebox under the ominous gaze of that magnificent wedding dress, and turned around to run after him.
CHAPTER 8
ONCE AGAIN, ANNABELLE clung to the passenger-side door handle and hummed her disapproval at the speed and level of aggression with which the Inspector drove. He was even more erratic than before as he zoomed through the narrow streets of Upton St. Mary toward the police station.
“Inspector, are you sure this isn’t incredibly rash?” Annabelle managed to blurt out in between the sound of screeching tires.
“We’ll give him a chance to explain himself,” the Inspector replied, “but he’s going to need a hell of a good story to get out of these knots.”
Annabelle almost screamed as the Inspector brought the car to a stop inches away from Annabelle’s Mini, so sure was she that he would drive straight into it. He leaped out and sprinted up the steps and through the entrance of the station.
“Raven! Colback! Get another car, we’re going
to arrest Daniel Green.”
“The butcher, sir?” Raven asked, confusedly.
“Yes.”
Raven and Colback exchanged brief looks before slapping on their hats and running outside.
Annabelle was standing on the pavement as the three officers jumped into their vehicles. Suddenly, sirens were blaring and flashing blue lights were blinding her. Before she could call out to one of the officers, the two cars – one containing Raven and Colback, the other the Inspector – had swarmed into the street and off into the distance. She hurried over to her Mini, miffed at the ease with which the police officers had left her behind and drove off to follow them.
Though she felt very much a part of this operation and was caught up in the noisy thrill and excitement of the racing police cars, Annabelle refused to break the speed limit. She quickly found herself left far behind. By the time she reached Daniel Green’s butcher shop, he was already exiting it, accompanied by the constables on either side.
The Inspector followed closely behind. A small crowd of shoppers and Daniel’s colleagues gathered at the door of the shop to observe the unexpected turn of events. Nobody, however, seemed more taken aback than Daniel, who had obviously been hard at work when the officers had found him. He was wearing his full butcher’s garb, bloodied and messy, and was staring about him at the flashing sirens and officious constables as if struggling to make sense of it all.
Annabelle watched from behind the wheel as they put Daniel into the back of the Inspector’s car and swerved briskly away again, back toward the police station. Bystanders quickly turned to one another to chatter and speculate on what it was all about as they watched the police cars race into the distance as quickly as they had arrived.
Seeing Daniel had given Annabelle an idea, though she wasn’t quite sure what it was. Her instincts told her that there was something terribly wrong with the arrest. Without having the time she needed to formulate her thoughts, she spun the Mini around and once again began her pursuit of the police vehicles returning to the station.
As she drove along, again minding the speed limit, her thoughts raced much faster than her car. The sight of the butcher in his blood-spattered butcher’s clothing was stirring some memory at the back of her mind, but what was it? She couldn’t quite catch it.
She reached the police station and locked her car carefully before running inside. Just as she was about to rush past the desk through to the back where the interview rooms and offices were, Constable Colback stepped in front of her.
“I’m sorry, Reverend. The Inspector is about to interview someone, I’m afraid you’ll have to—”
“Let her through, Colback!” came the Inspector’s distinctive, irritated voice from the back. “Lord knows I’d rather have her with me in the interview room than you!”
Annabelle shot the Constable an apologetic look, but he was too embarrassed to catch her eye and simply slunk off to the side. She stepped toward the hallway that led off in the direction of the interview rooms, where the Inspector was waiting impatiently.
“He’s waiting for us,” the Inspector said, triumphantly, “all we have to do now is get the confession. Shouldn’t be too hard considering how much we know.”
“I’m not too sure that—”
“Come on, Reverend,” the Inspector said, briskly, as he opened the door and gestured her inside.
“You!” Daniel said, as he saw the Vicar enter, followed by the Inspector.
Annabelle met his eyes and nodded a somewhat indecisive greeting. Daniel was sitting behind a table, his hands and clothes still bloody. At this close distance Annabelle could smell the freshly cut beef, pork and lamb emanating from him.
“What’s… What’s all this about?” Daniel pleaded, his eyes darting between the two visitors.
The Inspector glared silently at him as he pulled out a chair for Annabelle and then sat down himself. Daniel’s eyes bore the look of being found out that the Inspector knew only too well, his tense body language demonstrating signs that he was hiding something. The Inspector was suddenly very sure he had made the right choice.
“This is about the truth, Daniel Green. The truth behind what happened that day in the woods between you and Lucy.”
Daniel mouthed some words incomprehensibly, and his face turned from expression of fear into one of sheer incredulity.
“What?”
“Lucy’s murder. Your ex-girlfriend.”
“That was twenty years ago!”
“Justice doesn’t come with an expiration date.”
“This is crazy!”
“Why didn’t you tell us that you were planning to marry Lucy?” the Inspector said, calmly.
Daniel shook his head in a gesture of utter befuddlement.
“Marriage? I was nineteen! I never intended to marry her!” Daniel looked down at his hands, still shaking his head at the absurdity.
“Well, she seemed to be very much of the impression somebody was about to marry her. She was about to turn sixteen. Had herself a nice little wedding dress and a suitcase already packed.”
Daniel looked up at the Inspector.
“I don’t understand.”
“We just found them, over on the allotments. Her sister’s been keeping them all this time.”
“What… That… That doesn’t make sense…”
The Inspector looked at Annabelle, but her face was fixed upon Daniel’s in a look of pity. He waited for Daniel to add something meaningful to his confused mumblings, but the butcher only clasped his hands and glanced around him looking deeply perplexed.
“Okay. Let’s say for a second that you weren’t planning to marry Lucy. Who else could have been?”
Daniel shook his head once again, breathing deeply under the weight of the question’s implications.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“You said that already.”
“No, Detective. I mean, it really doesn’t. You see, Lucy wasn’t the marrying type at all. She had so many things that she wanted to do. To be a singer, an actress. To travel the world. To meet new people. She never wanted to be tied down. She joked about marriage sometimes, but I think really she just thought it was very boring. She wanted to be young and free forever.”
The Inspector sighed deeply.
“Maybe you didn’t know her as well as you think you did.”
Daniel hung his head.
“I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t know what to tell you, Detective.”
Suddenly, the Inspector slammed his palm upon the table loudly.
“Enough! We’ve got all the evidence we need to put you away, Daniel Green! This act won’t get you anything but a longer sentence! If you’ve got half as much brains in your head as you’ve got smeared over your apron there, then you’ll talk!”
“But I don’t know anything! I don’t know how she died!”
The Inspector leaped from his seat and grabbed at Daniel’s bloodied butcher’s clothes from across the table, pulling the man’s face up to his.
“You butchered her just like you butchered one of your animals! This time, though, it’s me who will be eating you for breakfast!”
“Inspector!” shouted Annabelle, as she stood up and pulled his arms away from Daniel. “Please!”
The Inspector looked at her for a moment and then, like he were an uncooperative child, Annabelle gently but firmly ushered him out of the interview room, though he kept his stern glare fixed upon the frightened butcher all the way. She pushed the detective outside with a gentle shove and closed the door, leaving Daniel alone in the room behind them.
“This guy knows we don’t have much to go on,” said the Inspector, pacing up and down while rubbing his brow in frustration, “but he’s hiding something. Of that I’m sure.”
“Perhaps, Inspector, but you’ll not get anywhere if you frighten him half to death!”
“I don’t see how else we’re ever going to put this case to bed.”
Annabelle sighed as she
watched the Inspector pace himself into a modicum of calmness. Suddenly a thought flashed across her mind like a bolt of lightning. She realized that the peculiarly familiar feeling she had had when seeing Daniel emerge from the butcher’s shop mid-arrest could provide the answer to another question that had been plaguing her for a while. She clicked her fingers, and with a tone of sudden enthusiasm said:
“I have a strong suspicion that I know what our butcher may be hiding.”
The Inspector stopped dead in his tracks and looked at Annabelle.
“But it may not actually help us in this case,” she added.
“Right now I don’t think anything will. But if it explains that man’s behavior in any way, then it’s worth a shot.”
Annabelle nodded as she reopened the door to the interview room.
“Daniel,” she said, calmly, as she sat opposite him. The Inspector decided to stand in the corner, hands in pockets, and subject Daniel to nothing but his focused glare. “Did you do anything.... um, peculiar, one night about a week ago?”
The change in Daniel’s expression was impossible not to notice. His teeth clenched and his eyes fixed unblinkingly on the Reverend’s face.
“I… Don’t know… No. I didn’t.”
“You weren’t outside? After midnight?”
“No… I…” he gulped, “What night was this? I’m sorry. I would have to check.”
Annabelle looked over toward the Inspector, who was now wearing a look of intense anticipation, not unlike the one Biscuit wore when she was about to pounce.
“I think you may remember this. You were over by Hughes House, where Philippa lives. I believe you know her.”
Daniel’s eyes widened, and the shortness of his breath was visible in the rapid rising and falling of his chest.
“You were wearing your butcher’s clothes,” Annabelle continued, “and they were as bloodied and messy as they are now. Philippa saw you.”
Body in the Woods (A Reverend Annabelle Dixon Cozy Mystery Book 3) Page 11