by Ann Granger
‘Was Nancy someone you already knew?’
‘Oh no, she was a woman he met on a train.’ Harriet looked up and pulled a wry expression. ‘I don’t mean an exotic transcontinental luxury train; and she wasn’t a mysterious beauty wrapped in furs – you know, like in an old film. It was a regular workhorse of a train, bringing Dad back from London, and it broke down. They were stuck on the line in the middle of nowhere for two hours. Sitting opposite him was an attractive, fairly young woman wearing a rather odd mix of clothes and lace-up boots. The clothes caught his interest first, he always said. She had a little boy with her. He was nine, actually, not that little.’
Harriet stopped speaking and Jess prompted gently, ‘Carl?’
Harriet blinked and stared at her with a startled expression, as if she really had forgotten she was talking to a stranger. ‘Yes, Carl. Dad and Nancy, the woman with the boots, got talking during the two hours. They found out they were both single parents. Carl’s father had been a session musician, dependent on work being offered and travelling to wherever he might find it. Nancy hadn’t seen him since Carl was two. I think she fascinated Dad. He’d never met anyone quite like her. I liked her, too, when I finally met her. So Dad got the bright idea that it would be a good thing all round if he and Nancy got together, made a new little nuclear family: Dad, Mum, two kids – national average.’
‘And it worked out well, you say?’
‘Oh, yes, while we were children it worked fine.’
‘Tell me,’ Jess asked her. ‘Did your father formally adopt Carl?’
Harriet shook her head. ‘No, and when Nancy died Carl had just turned sixteen. She’d been having really bad headaches for a while and had been treating them with herbal brews from plants she gathered herself. The cause was much too serious for that to do any good, but she didn’t consult a doctor until far too late.
‘There was no problem about Carl remaining here. He wanted to stay and there was nowhere else for him to go. Not being legally adopted didn’t worry him. Of course, later, when Dad’s will was read and almost everything, including the house and land, came to me, it was a shock to Carl. I don’t mean Dad didn’t leave him anything. He was quite generous in his bequest. But Carl . . . I realise now that Carl had persuaded himself that the estate would be divided between us, him and me, including the house. He made a bit of a fuss. I sometimes wonder if, for Carl, it was as if a second father had turned his back on him.’
‘Like the deserting musician?’
‘Yes, a bit like that.’ Harriet hesitated. ‘But that wasn’t it! Dad saw to it that Carl had a good education and, yes, behaved like a father to him. But generations of our family have lived here at the Old Nunnery. Dad wanted me to pass the house on to my children; he made that quite clear. That’s why I think that not adopting Carl, when he was a child, was deliberate on Dad’s part. Trouble is, Guy and I don’t have any children.
‘Guy was still in the army at the time of our wedding, but when his last tour in Afghanistan was over, he quit. He said it wasn’t fair to me for him to be away and, anyway, he had plans for this house – and Dad was very ill. Guy and I moved in to take care of him.’
‘And Carl moved out?’ Jess asked shrewdly.
Harriet flushed. ‘He’d already done that. He was living in London. He had a job there and seemed settled at the time. Later, he turned out to be not so good at keeping jobs. When Dad died, it turned out there wasn’t quite as much money— Well, Guy and I have been trying to make a profitable business out of the house ever since.’
‘Why do you think Carl was in the area today? Had he come down from London to see you?’
‘He must have done, I suppose.’ Harriet began to look distressed. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Any idea why he would have gone to those woods, not come here to the house?’
‘He’d stopped doing that, coming here. He and Guy, well, they don’t – didn’t – get along.’ Suddenly, Harriet swung her feet to the ground and sat up straight. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t go on with this conversation. I feel as if someone has kicked the feet from under me. So can we stop this now? I can’t go on talking about my brother as if he – he was still alive, about to walk in. Surely you understand? I can’t tell you why he was in Crooked Man Woods today. I haven’t the slightest idea.’
‘I do understand how upsetting this is for you,’ Jess said sympathetically. ‘I’ll come back another time.’
‘Oh?’ said Harriet, sinking back into the chair and staring at her in dismay. ‘Will you?’
Meanwhile, Phil Morton was having an even less productive talk with Tessa Briggs. With Fred trotting happily ahead of them, his tail waving gently, they had crossed the cultivated part of the garden. They were now descending a grassy slope. The light was fading fast and it wasn’t possible to appreciate fully the view before them but, even so, it impressed. In summer, thought Morton, it must be spectacular. The land rolled away like a carpet down to a fringe of trees and a glittering ribbon that sparkled in the evening sun like tinsel. A stream, thought Morton. To think of owning this perfect place!
The conversation had so far been monosyllabic. Now he was offering a new opening.
‘Nice place,’ he said enviously. ‘Big, too. Perhaps, if I win the lottery, I’ll buy a hideaway like this.’ He gestured at the open grassland around them. ‘They don’t plan to do anything with this?’
‘They used to keep horses,’ said Tessa briefly.
‘Who rode? Both Mrs Kingsley and her husband?’
‘Hattie had a pony when she was a kid, like we all did.’
Well, thought Morton, you might have done. It wasn’t the usual thing where I come from. The best I could hope for was a second-hand bike, and I had to wait for that until my brother outgrew it.
Tessa added, in a burst of speech, ‘Carl had a pony, too, because John Hemmings didn’t want him to feel left out, and I suppose he thought Nancy would expect it. But it was one of the many things John did out of kindness that put the wrong ideas into Carl’s head.’
‘Wrong ideas?’ Morton probed.
Tessa refused to expand and went on brusquely: ‘It was a waste of time, because Carl wasn’t interested; the wretched animal was sold after a short time. Hattie was devoted to Pip, her pony, and even after she outgrew him they kept him on to spend his retirement here, in this field.’
‘Carl wasn’t a countryman?’ suggested Morton.
‘How could he be? Until he came here he’d lived in a tower block. Fast cars, that’s what he liked, and he got himself one as soon as he was old enough to hold a licence.’
‘Pity there are no horses here now.’ Morton swept a hand across the view.
‘Well, they ran a riding stables for a bit,’ said Tessa.
‘The Kingsleys?’
Tessa turned her head to look at him. ‘Of course. Who else?’
‘I meant’ – Morton feared he was floundering – ‘had Mrs Kingsley’s family run a riding stables here? This is her family home, I understand.’
‘Yes, it’s that all right.’ Tessa nodded. ‘But John Hemmings wasn’t the sort to run a set-up like a riding stables. He was a businessman, had a finger in a lot of pies, but property development, mostly.’
‘So all this, and the house, belong to Mrs Kingsley?’
Tessa Briggs scowled at him and replied simply, ‘Yes.’
‘Nice place to inherit,’ said Morton, determined to get something out of this battleaxe of a woman.
Perhaps Tessa realised he wasn’t going to give up and that she would have to provide some information. ‘I understand,’ she added grudgingly, ‘that Hattie’s grandfather, Charlie Hemmings, started out as a builder turned developer. He married well. That’s how he got this house. His wife had inherited it following the death of an aunt. Charlie went on to buy land. In those far-off days, it was cheap. His son, John Hemmings, set about developing it. He put golf courses, or housing estates, all over the place, whatever suited the local market. Even develop
ed a few abroad – Spain, Portugal. Don’t ask me for details. I don’t know.’
‘But you sound like an old friend of the family?’
‘Hattie and I went to school together.’
‘And you farm near here, I gather? You and your husband?’
‘He’s gone,’ she retorted. ‘And it’s only a farm in name now. Most of the land was sold off. There’s just the farmhouse left, and a couple of fields.’
Her mouth snapped shut and Morton guessed he wasn’t going to get any more. But he had one last try.
‘So you knew the dead man, Carl Finch, well?’
‘Of course I knew Carl.’ Tessa stopped and faced him. ‘He lived here from when he was a kid until he left to go off to London. He was away at school, of course, in term time, as were Hattie and I. But in the holidays we were all here and hung out together – until we got a bit older and Carl made other friends.’
‘What friends?’ Morton gazed blandly at the nearest tree.
‘Oh, local lads. He played for the cricket team and drank in local pubs. Whatever young men do! Look here, I didn’t tell you it was him in the woods when we were there because I’d had a shock, and I couldn’t believe it was possible. We all thought he was in London. Afterwards, I realised it must be Carl, the silly sod. So I thought I’d better come up here and tell – tell Guy and Hattie.’
‘You didn’t like Carl Finch?’ Morton suggested gently, turning his gaze back on her.
‘Couldn’t stand him!’ replied Mrs Briggs, and for the first time the words burst out spontaneously. Seeing that Morton was waiting for some explanation, she went on, ‘There are givers and takers in this life, and Carl Finch was a taker. He could be fun, but I never felt quite at ease with him. He was a watcher. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Morton cautiously.
Tessa drew a deep breath. ‘Well, he was always sizing the situation up and looking to see if it could be made to work for him. Really, that’s all you need to know about Carl Finch.’
They turned back towards the house. ‘Those buildings over there, behind the house, they’re the stables?’ asked Morton, pointing. ‘Where the riding school was?’
‘Yes.’ Tessa’s voice suggested that, as far as she was concerned, any further conversation with Morton was superfluous.
‘They’re all in a bit of a mess now,’ observed Morton cheerfully. ‘They seem to be doing renovations.’
‘They’re being converted into holiday accommodation,’ she told him grudgingly.
‘Quite the thing now, I suppose, if you’ve got a big place like this.’ Morton nodded sagely. ‘Who does the Range Rover belong to – the black one parked over there?’
‘Guy.’
‘Mrs Kingsley got a car of her own?’
‘Look here,’ snarled Tessa. ‘Do you need to know bally everything? Hattie had a little runabout but it kept breaking down so she sold it in a part-exchange deal for a new vehicle. She’s waiting on delivery for that.’
‘I’m just interested in cars,’ said Morton.
‘It strikes me, Sergeant,’ said Mrs Briggs, ‘that you’re interested in a lot of things.’
‘Can’t be helped,’ said Morton with a sigh. ‘It’s partly my nature and partly training.’
‘Look here!’ She wheeled round and forced him to halt. ‘Out with it! Do you think Carl’s death is fishy?’
‘Why would we think that?’ he asked her.
‘Because you’ve all raced up here mob-handed to interview us all!’
‘Superintendent Carter is here to ask Captain Kingsley if he will go to identify the body, and to explain to him just what a mess his brother-in-law’s face is, so that he is prepared for it.’
‘Don’t envy him that!’ she muttered.
‘Inspector Campbell is talking to Mrs Kingsley. She’s good at talking to people who are very shocked.’
‘And you?’ Tessa fixed a gimlet eye on him.
‘Oh, me,’ said Morton mildly, ‘I’m just the driver.’
‘Piffle!’ retorted Mrs Briggs.
‘What a bloody mess,’ said Guy Kingsley softly.
The attendant had pulled out the drawer with its burden of a sheeted form and turned back the cloth covering the head. Kingsley and Carter stood by the side of it. Carter had already seen the corpse once and Kingsley must have seen similar sights during his army time, but neither of them had quite been able to control their instinctive revulsion.
‘Sorry to bring you to see it,’ Carter replied. ‘But so far we’ve only got Mrs Briggs’s word for it being Carl Finch.’
‘What? Oh, it’s Carl, all right. And don’t apologise for bringing me down here to identify the poor bloke. You couldn’t bring Harriet.’
‘The features are partly destroyed,’ Carter said. ‘Would you know if there are any identifying marks on the body? Just to confirm we have the right man.’
Kingsley nodded. ‘Yes, there should be a long scar across the palm of his left hand. He slashed it with a Stanley knife when he was a kid, making a model plane or something. He had to be rushed into A&E, get it stitched.’
Carter nodded at the attendant, who drew back the sheet from the left arm.
‘That’s it,’ Kingsley confirmed. ‘He was lucky not to lose the use of any of his fingers. It’s Carl. Oh, and I believe he broke his left arm, also when he was a kid, about twelve. That was falling out of a tree. That should show up on an X-ray.’
‘Fair enough.’ Carter nodded at the attendant. ‘You can put him away.’
Outside the building, Kingsley said, ‘I’ve seen some gruesome injuries. But out there, in Afghanistan, you expected it. You knew it could happen to you, if it was your day to step on some home-made explosive device. But this is different – and you saw how upset my wife is already. She’s probably still clinging to a faint hope that it’s not Carl, and I’m going to have to destroy that. Do you mind? I could do with a drink.’
‘There’s a pub around the corner,’ Carter told him. ‘I’m on duty, so I’ll be drinking something non-alcoholic. But I understand you wanting something stronger.’
When they were settled, Kingsley said, ‘I knew Tess Briggs wouldn’t have come haring up to the house with the news if she hadn’t been sure, but—’
‘It’s a pity she didn’t tell the officers at the scene that she recognised the deceased. She was certain enough to come immediately to tell you and your wife.’ Carter sipped his tomato juice, wondering why he’d ordered it. He didn’t care for it.
‘Don’t blame Tess. She wanted to be the one to tell Hattie, not some copper suddenly on the doorstep – no offence.’
Carter set down his tomato juice. ‘Tell me about your wife’s stepbrother. Did you look on him as a brother-in-law?’
‘Not really. We weren’t pals. He claimed I’d influenced John Hemmings, Hattie’s father, into cutting him out of a share in the property. I didn’t, by the way.’
‘And that was the reason you didn’t get on?’
Kingsley frowned at a crowd of young men who had gathered at the bar and were noisily demanding service. ‘That and the fact that I’d married Hattie and taken her attention away from him. He was a selfish blighter. It seems a rotten thing to do, speak ill of him when he’s not far from us here, cold in a mortuary drawer. But – what the hell – he was.’
Fortunately, the young men were moving away into a further room off the main bar. The pub was an old one, and rambling. The group was now completely out of sight, around a corner, and only the occasional burst of laughter indicated their presence.
‘Did you know he owned a shotgun?’
‘Carl? No, I didn’t. I can’t imagine why he needed one. He didn’t live in the country.’
‘Do you shoot?’
‘Do I have a shotgun? Yes, I do, as it happens. It’s locked in a gun cabinet, as it should be, and I have a licence. I can show you both gun and licence when we get back.’
‘I will need to see the gun, as a matter
of routine. Another thing – do you happen to know what kind of car Finch drove?’
Kingsley nodded. ‘Yes, he was driving a Renault these days, a Megane. He bought it fairly recently, I believe. There should have been no way he could have afforded a new car. He may have been paying it off monthly. But knowing Carl, it’s the sort of thing he’d do if he had a big win, say, at cards. He used to play with the high rollers, at private clubs and casinos. I know he occasionally did have a big win. But instead of using it to clear a backlog of debt, he’d go out and buy a new car, or he’d make some other big lifestyle statement, I suppose you’d call it. I’d say it was important to him to look as if he had money, not only for vanity’s sake but because if some of the people he played cards with suspected he’d never be able to honour his losses, the roof would fall in on him.’
‘So far, we’ve found no abandoned car at the woods. At least now you’ve told us we’re looking for a Renault.’
‘Tell me something,’ Kingsley said suddenly. ‘You’ve been a police officer a good few years, I imagine. You’ve made superintendent. You must have pretty well seen it all.’
‘I’ve seen a lot,’ Carter admitted cautiously, ‘but there’s always something surprising.’
‘Fair enough. What I want to ask is, do you believe that some kinds of behaviour can be passed on through the genes?’
‘Like selfishness? Or fecklessness? Is that what you mean?’
‘If you like.’
‘I can only say,’ Carter said carefully, ‘that children do pick up the behavioural patterns of those around them. I don’t think that is quite what you mean, but it’s nearest I’m prepared to go.’
Guy nodded. ‘OK, let me tell you something about Carl’s childhood. That colleague of yours – Inspector Campbell? Right, if she’s talking to Hattie about Carl, Hattie may tell her how her father met Nancy, Carl’s mother, on a train. I never knew Nancy but, from I’ve learned about her, she was a real flake. Apparently, she had hung around with rock musicians, and one of them had fathered Carl. He’d subsequently taken off, never sent any money for his child’s support, and it would have been no good chasing him for any, because he never had any. He wasn’t someone famous.