The Dead Girl's Shoes

by Arney, Angela

  ‘Oh, I found that the next morning. It was lying on the ground beside the flints. It was lucky for me, as I needed a left shoe. My trainers are old, and the left one has a big hole in the bottom, which lets in the water and stones. The shoe fitted, so I took it. I didn’t do anything wrong, did I? Nobody else would want one shoe would they?’

  ‘No,’ said Maguire. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’ He folded his notebook and put it in his pocket, then stood up. ‘You say it was women arguing, or fighting.’

  ‘I think so, but I can’t say for sure though, and I didn’t see anything.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Maguire. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

  Lizzie followed Adam from the room. Nellie closed her eyes again and didn’t open them as they said goodbye and left. Once outside, Lizzie turned to Adam. ‘What now?’

  ‘We need to find that heap of flint stones at the side of Badgers Lane,’ said Maguire. ‘Forensics might find something useful there.’ He looked at Lizzie enquiringly. ‘Are you free to come now or have you to go back to the Health Centre?’

  ‘I’m free at the moment,’ said Lizzie quickly. She didn’t want to miss out on anything if she could help it. ‘I’ll come with you now if that’s where you are going. I can catch up with what I have to do on the computer later. It’s only stuff for Social Services, and the solicitor Mr Randall, regarding Nellie Barnaby.’

  *

  There was only one pile of flints at the side of Badger Lane and it was easy to find. The flints, most of them very large, were piled high, with couch grass and other weeds growing in-between the stones. Maguire stopped the car some yards away and he and Lizzie climbed out. It was easy to see where Nellie’s camp had been. Behind the stones the undergrowth was flattened, and there was an empty ham-roll packet plus, an empty scrumpy bottle both pushed beneath the roots of a hawthorn bush. Lizzie began to walk around to the back but Maguire stopped her.

  ‘This is possibly a crime scene,’ he said. ‘This may well be the place where Jemima was murdered.’

  Lizzie stepped back hastily. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ Looking down she could see faint tyre prints in the mossy ground beside the road, so she stepped aside even further. ‘Looks similar to those prints you told me about, the ones you found further along the road by the footpath into the Avon Estate.’

  Adam came over and leaning down took a close up photo of the marks with his phone. ‘I’m getting Dave Harvey and his team out here asap,’ he said. ‘So keep well back.’

  *

  It didn’t take long for the forensic team to arrive. Lizzie stood and watched while the team first encircled the whole area with their blue and white plastic tape. It flapped in the breeze, and suddenly the pleasant little lane took on a sinister air. Something horrible happened here, thought Lizzie with a shiver.

  Suddenly one of Dave’s men gave a shout. ‘Here, Gov,’ he called. ‘I think I’ve got what you want.’ He held up a large jagged flint stone, which he’d picked up from the back of the pile. Holding it carefully in his plastic gloves, he clambered around the rest of the flints and made his way to Maguire and Dave Harvey. Lizzie joined them.

  It was a particularly large stone, some of its sharp edges were paper thin, and one edge ran almost halfway around the stone. It was this edge which was covered in a blackish globular matter.

  ‘Blood,’ said Dave Harvey, pointing to it. ‘No doubt about it. This could be the actual murder weapon, but we won’t stop looking. We’ll go through all these flints on the top, I don’t doubt we’ll find more blood spots. Then we’ll do a microscopic ground search, we’re bound to find some clothing fibres and other stuff.’

  Maguire permitted himself a small smile of satisfaction as he looked at Lizzie. ‘Nellie’s testimony has proved very useful after all,’ he said. ‘I’m going back to the station now. Those lads can start interviewing some of the London students on the phone if they have gathered enough information.’

  ‘Are you now thinking it was one of the students?’ Lizzie was puzzled.

  Maguire looked determined. ‘I need to know who was, and who was not on that bus back to Salisbury. Someone is lying to me, and I want to know who it is.’

  Chapter 21

  Lizzie went back to Honeywell Health Centre to finish the notes she needed to make for Social Services. The forms had all been emailed through to her, and after downloading them, she set about answering them for Nellie as far as she was able. She’d already phoned Freddie Randall and told him she’d drop the forms in for him to complete the financial questions the next day. Mr Freddie did not believe in emails, and had an ancient secretary who also did not believe in them and did everything on her ancient Remington typewriter in duplicate (she still used carbon paper) but sometimes reluctantly used the photocopier if really necessary. Freddie was the last in a long line of Randalls who’d been solicitors in Stibbington for over a hundred years, and when he retired there’d be no more.

  Lizzie was struggling to answer the numerous unnecessary - in her opinion -questions posed by the State, when the door to her consulting room opened and Phineas Merryweather popped his head around the door. Glad of an excuse to stop for a moment, she waved him in.

  He came in and peered at the sheaf of papers on her desk. ‘Hah!’ he said, ‘rather you than me. I hate official forms.’

  ‘But you have to do them all the time,’ said Lizzie.

  Phineas laughed. ‘Ah yes, but I’m very rarely asked to justify my results and most of the questions make sense, to me at any rate. People believe me because I deal with dead bodies. Dealing with Social Services is a different matter.’ He looked through some of the forms Lizzie had already completed. ‘I take it you have by now spoken to Nellie,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, and she’s already directed the team to the place where almost certainly the murder took place.’

  Interested, Phineas perched on the corner of Lizzie’s desk. ‘And where is that?’ he asked.

  Before Lizzie could reply Dick Jamieson came in. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked Phineas. ‘I thought we were going out to the golf club for dinner tonight.’

  ‘We are. But I wanted to touch base with Lizzie as I can’t get hold of Maguire.’ Phineas stood and moved towards the door. ‘What I really wanted to ask was whether he’d found any bloodstained clothing yet. He hasn’t contacted me about it. The murderer must have been covered in blood. That blow to the head Jemima suffered would have caused a huge amount of bleeding. The skull is very bloody you know, and I think Maguire should be paying more attention to finding some clothing, but he hasn’t mentioned it much at all.’ He turned towards Lizzie. ‘So where is the place Nellie directed you to?’

  ‘Look, Lizzie is not a police officer,’ interrupted Dick. ‘She doesn’t know everything.’

  ‘Ah, but I do know that,’ said Lizzie. ‘Because I was with Adam when he spoke with Nellie and I went with him to the spot she described and we found it. It’s about halfway along Badger Lane, by a big pile of flints. The forensic team are there now. They’ve already found the large flint which probably killed her. And if there is anything else there, they will find it. ‘Oh good,’ said Phineas with glee. ‘I might be able to scrape up a miniscule speck of flesh from the surface of the flint, and then perhaps we might get some answers. Plus Maguire might find…’

  ‘Never mind all that,’ said Dick. ‘Come on, I’m hungry, so forget about work for now. Let’s go to the golf club.’

  Lizzie watched the two rather portly gentlemen squeeze through the doorway. ‘You two should have a game of golf first,’ she called after them. ‘You both need the exercise.’

  She smiled as they disappeared without answering her. They wouldn’t of course. They were both good at dishing out advice to everyone else, advice they should sometimes heed themselves, but were never likely to.

  When she finished the form filling, and made the necessary copies, she carefully put them in a large manila brown envelope ready to deliver to Freddie Randall
the next day.

  The drive back to Silver Cottage made her feel restless. It was such a beautiful evening, but she had nothing to do. There was brilliant sunshine now and not a cloud in the sky; a balmy evening, perfect for eating out at one of the New Forest pubs. However, she was alone and had no one to eat with, and didn’t feel like sitting at a table by herself, surrounded by holidaymakers. Maguire, she knew, would be tied up with the ongoing case, and anyway it went against her nature to always rely on him for company. She wished Louise lived a little nearer, but wishing didn’t make her daughter materialize. Besides, even if she did live near, Lizzie knew that Louise would have her own friends, and she’d always been careful not to make her daughter feel tied to her. It wouldn’t be fair. Being divorced had its advantages; she was free to make her own decisions, but it had disadvantages too, because she didn’t even have a husband to argue with.

  To stop herself thinking of what might have been if she and Mike hadn’t divorced, she started to think about Phineas’s remark about the bloodstained clothing. Of course, it would be a vital clue. No, not vital, a definitive clue. So why hadn’t Adam Maguire mentioned it more? Of course, she reasoned, he probably had talked to his team about it, but not to her. She was not, as Dick had pointed out, part of the police team. There was no reason for Maguire to tell her anything. But there was also no reason why she shouldn’t puzzle about it.

  On arrival at Silver Cottage, she made herself a coffee. The first decent cup of the day, she thought, sitting in the sunshine sipping it on the little terrace at the back of the cottage. The scent of the yellow Evening Primroses was strong, and the garden was peaceful, but Lizzie was restless.

  She began to think the murder through. Logic! That was what was needed. Somewhere along the line of investigation, something had been missed. She was pretty sure Maguire had ruled out the inhabitants of Avon House for one reason or another, except Harold, and then he had inconveniently died. Yet the most logical conclusion was that it must be one of the Villiers family. How about Fergus? He had admitted being at Avon Hall whenever he had the chance. But Nellie had said that she thought the voices she heard arguing were women’s voices, although she wasn’t certain. There were only three women in the frame, Janet Hastings, Amelia Villiers and Ruth Villiers, and Lizzie couldn’t imagine the murderer was any of them.

  She tried to put herself in the shoes of the perpetrator. The pile of flints as indicated by Nellie was quite near to the footpath through the woods into the Avon Estate, although too far to walk carrying a body. But there were tyre prints of a car in both places. The body must have been moved by car to the second spot near the footpath, and then taken along the path into the garden where the icehouse was. This route was definite, because Maguire’s dog had found the other shoe at the side of that path. It would have been difficult, no impossible, she thought, for one person to carry a body that far. So there were two people involved. On the other hand though, one person could have used a barrow, or something of that nature. Even a slight woman could possibly have managed to push a barrow containing a body along the path, as it was quite smooth and even. However, the murderer or murderers would have been exhausted, and panicky, by the time they’d reached the icehouse. And why go to the icehouse? How many people apart from the family and Bert Grayson plus his grandson even knew of its existence?

  Lizzie thought slowly. There were two important items missing from the enquiry. The vehicle for moving the body after it had been taken from the car, and the bloody clothes. Perhaps both had been hidden somewhere near the icehouse? But not immediately. If I had a dead body on my hands, thought Lizzie, the first thing I’d do would be to hide it. We know that the icehouse was the chosen place, and of course, if the body had been completely hidden and the wooden door nailed shut, it could have been weeks, or months, before the body would have been discovered. But on the night of the murder, time would have been ticking inexorably. Time was of the essence as other people would be returning from the evening function to Avon House. The murderer was probably panicky as opening the entrance to the icehouse couldn’t have been easy. It needed strength to pull apart the planks covering the entrance, so it was someone who was strong, or again, maybe there was more than one person.

  The last of the evening sun was hot, and while she was thinking, Lizzie slipped off her sandals and stretched herself out in the deckchair, hitching up her skirt to help get her legs brown. I know it’s silly still being vain, she thought, wiggling her toes in the warmth, but I like the look of brown legs!

  It was then she noticed she still had the plaster over the cut on her leg, and reaching down she peeled it off. The scar beneath had healed perfectly. I must tell Simon his potion worked very well, she thought. He ought to market it if he can get it approved.

  Thinking of Simon reminded her of the wheelbarrow and how she’d cut her leg in the first place. Wheelbarrow! Of course, something like that must have carried the body. Why hadn’t Maguire and his team thought of that? Although, to give them their due, they probably had, but hadn’t found it. Now she thought of it, why was that wheelbarrow tucked away out of sight, beneath a tarpaulin at the back of a greenhouse full of seedlings? Why hadn’t Bert Grayer put it in the stable buildings along with all the other tools and machines? Was it to keep it out of the way of the forensic team? Lizzie knew they had searched the stable buildings for anything linked to the murder, but found nothing. Perhaps that was because what they were looking for was in one of the greenhouses, at the far end of the garden, far away from the crime scene.

  Lizzie began to feel excited. The time was only 7.30 pm, the sun was still shining; there was plenty of daylight left before nightfall. Plenty of time to have a look round the gardens of Avon House on her own. The family would probably be having dinner in the house, and if she did meet anyone she could say that she’d come up to check on Amelia Villiers because she was worried about her. Her conscience gave a slight twinge, but she ignored it, and changed into a pair of practical jeans and a tee shirt, put a strong torch in her pocket and set out ready for some exploring. With luck, no one would be about.

  *

  The fates were on her side. On arrival at Avon Hall Lizzie found the main gates open. There was no light on in the lodge house and the gravel car park at the side of the house was empty. The lodge keeper was evidently out somewhere, probably eating out at a restaurant in the forest, as were the family, thought Lizzie. Janet Hastings was away and not on hand to organize staff for the kitchen. She knew the regular cook hadn’t been in since the murder. Hilda Thorne had told her that, and she’d also told her that she wasn’t going to slave her fingers to the bone in the kitchen for the Villiers. Hopefully they’d not be back for some time. Parking her car at the back of the old stable building, Lizzie first made her way to the greenhouse where she’d fallen and grazed her leg. The boxes of seedlings were still there, a mass of sprouting green leaves now, but the wheelbarrow had gone.

  Of course, she was foolish to think that, if indeed it were linked to the murder, it would have still been there where someone could easily find it. So where could it be? A further inspection inside the stable building yielded nothing to start with. It was many years since it had stabled horses, and now the walls were hung with various gardening implements, and at the far end stood three motor mowers of various sizes. Shelves along one side opposite the old stalls held pots of paints, and jars of brushes; only one appeared to have been in use recently. It was a large 2lb jam jar filled with turpentine and with a heavy-duty brush stuck in it. At least, Lizzie’s nose told her it was turpentine. Who had been using it? And what for? Then Lizzie thought she’d found the answer to that at the far end of the shelves in the darkest spot where there were two large metal wheelbarrows. They both smelled strongly of turpentine. She decided they needed investigating.

  Remembering police procedure, Lizzie retrieved the plastic bags from her pockets and put on the pair of plastic gloves she now always carried with her, then dragged the wheelbarrows out i
nto the centre. Louise always teased her about the gloves and called her Miss Marple, and said that Adam Maguire had had a bad influence on her mother because now she was fascinated by crime! But Louise didn’t care, and anyway, it was true, she had become fascinated with the methods used in crime detection. And now, at this moment, she thought excitedly, there was the chance of adding something to Adam’s increasing store of knowledge concerning the murder of Jemima Villiers.

  She set about methodically collecting scrapings from both wheelbarrows; from the handles, and from the actual barrows themselves, taking care to keep the two lots of samples separate. There was nothing much to see with the naked eye, merely rusty scrapping of various colours. Lizzie knew, however, the forensic team only needed a very small sample to detect blood, or DNA, or clothing fibres.

  When she’d finished, she carefully replaced the wheelbarrows back into their original positions, and as everything was still quiet outside she decided to have another look at the icehouse. Of course, it was bound to have been securely fastened again now, but she reckoned a look around the area wouldn’t do any harm.

  However, on arrival at the icehouse she was surprised to see that the wooden doors were jammed wide open. Looking down into the darkness of the opening, she called out. ‘Hi, it’s Lizzie Browne here. Is anyone about?’

  There was no answer. No sound at all. She waited, standing quite still and holding her breath. Nothing, except the sleepy chirruping of the last of the birds in the overhanging branches of the fig tree as they settled down for the night. It was beginning to get dark now, and Lizzie switched on her torch and shone it down into the entrance. She could see the steep steps leading down into the interior. The steps were made of red brick and quite a few were crumbling, and the brick shelving all around the circular walls was crumbling as well. A couple of hundred years or more of being packed with chunks of ice brought into Stibbington harbour from Scandinavia had worn and cracked them. Now it was empty, although still very damp and slippery. Flashing the torch around she took one step down so that the beam of the torch could reach the bottom of the pit. It was then that she saw that something was there.