by Ann Granger
‘I don’t think Hattie knows the reason Nancy was on that train, with her child. I can tell you, because my father-in-law told me the tale, one Christmas Eve when we were sitting up late in his den having a nightcap. That’s the room you were in earlier, with the log fire, only he called it a study. We turned it into a drawing room. He’d started reminiscing; you know how it is. Carl hadn’t joined us for Christmas, ostensibly because he’d gone skiing. The real reason was because I would be there and he couldn’t stand me. The feeling was mutual.
‘Anyhow, the way things went, it seems Nancy had been on her way to visit some old auntie who had a few pounds put by. She was hoping the old lady would take a shine to young Carl and help out with a generous donation. She confessed that freely to John Hemmings. As I said, John, with a few whiskies inside him, had got sentimental about Nancy that Christmas Eve. “She was always open and truthful, never hid anything,” he told me. I thought, though didn’t say, If you believe that, old chap, you’ll believe anything.
‘I suspected that Nancy had summed up John very quickly. Old auntie had a few quid, but this lonely man on a train had a lot more. But John was getting maudlin, so I listened to it all without comment, then chivvied him off up to bed.’
Kingsley picked up his empty glass and contemplated it thoughtfully, as if it might turn into a crystal ball. ‘Talk about a fateful encounter!’
He put the glass down. ‘You know, John Hemmings did leave Carl a respectable sum. He got through it in no time. Lived well beyond his means. Liked hanging out with free-spending City traders, liked going to the races, casinos, any place where wads of cash changed hands. He couldn’t keep up, of course, and was always looking for a handout. He used to turn up at the Old Nunnery with tales of financial woe. He could talk Hattie into subbing him, but not me. It was getting to be a habit, so I took him aside eventually and told him to stay away. I made it clear I would enforce that physically, if necessary – chuck him out.’
‘And you think that’s why he’d come down from London this time, to borrow money from your wife?’
Kingsley glowered at the glass. ‘Sure of it.’
‘So,’ Carter said carefully, ‘do you think that he had arranged to meet your wife in Crooked Man Woods?’
Kingsley looked up with a fierce expression on his face. ‘Hattie had nothing to do with his death!’
‘I’m not suggesting that. But you had forbidden him to come to the house. He may have been desperate to borrow some money—’
‘I don’t want Hattie badgered about this!’ Kingsley snapped.
‘It’s called police enquiries, Captain Kingsley,’ Carter reminded him, ‘being made into a suspicious death.’
‘I know, I know!’ Kingsley drew a deep breath. ‘Look, just let me ask her, OK? I will, as soon as it’s – a suitable moment. That’s not today, or tomorrow, but soon.’
Carter shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I understand you want to protect your wife. But you can’t set the schedule of our enquiries, you know. Inspector Campbell will probably call and see Mrs Kingsley again tomorrow morning.’
Kingsley said softly, ‘Damn!’
‘Well, there it is,’ Carter told him. He abandoned the unfinished tomato juice, pushing the glass away from him. It looked like blood. ‘Finch must have had a reason for being in the area.’
Kingsley said nothing. Out of their sight, the group of young men were toasting someone noisily. Perhaps it was a birthday.
Looking at his companion, Ian Carter thought: You and I are thinking the same thing, aren’t we? Mrs Briggs and your wife have been less than frank.
Chapter 6
‘I brought takeaway,’ announced Jess as Tom let her into the flat that evening. She held up a bulging carrier bag. ‘Indian – you can probably smell it. Maurice Melton is going to do the post mortem this evening. He’s coming in specially because you’re on sick leave. Even if you do spend it looking for bodies. Also because, as you found the body, you’re a witness.’
‘Old Maurice is welcome to the job,’ retorted Tom. ‘I didn’t go looking for that poor devil, you know, I just came across him, sitting there with his legs stuck out and half his face gone. Anyone walking down that path could’ve found him. That woman with the dog would’ve done so if I hadn’t. She was next along. And I don’t particularly want to see him again. Thanks for bringing the curry. What is it?’
Jess was unpacking the foil boxes in Tom’s kitchenette. ‘I brought chicken madras and lamb rogan josh. I thought the spices might clear out your cold. Then there are onion bhajis and vegetable pakoras, pilau rice . . . and I picked up a couple of cans of beer. I forgot the naan bread, but we can probably manage without it.’
‘I’ll settle up with you later for my half,’ said Tom gratefully.
‘Don’t worry. You can buy me a curry some time and we’ll be quits. I said I’d call in and see how you were this evening, anyway.’
‘I feel a bit better. I knew a walk in the fresh air would do it.’
‘Glad to hear you’re feeling cheerier, but you still sound pretty nasal. And your walk in the fresh air didn’t turn out to be much fun, did it?’
As they settled down with their meal Tom asked, ‘How did Superintendent Carter take the glad tidings of a new murder?’
‘Officially, as you well know, we don’t know if it’s a new murder until we get Dr Melton’s report and the coroner’s ruling. But there’s been plenty happening. Tom, are you sure you didn’t see or hear anything at all? Other than a bike whose owner had ridden off by the time we got there.’
‘Nothing that suggested anyone was nearby. I just heard the usual rustling and so on in the undergrowth: birds, rabbits, small rodents – I don’t know. I wasn’t paying that much attention. If I was thinking of anything, it was Madison.’
‘Oh, Tom,’ said Jess, putting down her fork. ‘I thought you were over that.’
‘I am – was! But she’s coming back to the UK. I got a cheery text message. I suspect she thinks we’re going to pick up where we left off.’
‘And how do you feel about that?’ Jess asked cautiously.
Tom considered his answer. ‘Not keen on the idea, frankly. I admit I was a bit upset when she took off like that. She hadn’t let me know the Australia thing was even in the offing. She just presented me with a whatsit – a fait accompli. I found it a bit too casual – rather an insult, actually. In just the same way, she now tells me she’s coming back.’
‘Try not to brood about it. Until she gets here, you won’t know exactly what she intends to do.’
‘She intends?’ snapped Tom. ‘What about me?’
Jess took a deep breath. ‘Wait till she gets here anyway. Wandering the countryside brooding on it won’t help.’
‘I wasn’t,’ said Tom with dignity, ‘walking in the woods, dwelling on my lost love, like some clinically depressed Romantic poet. There were other things, too. I had quite a lot on my mind, in fact. For example, I was thinking about that crazy woman.’
‘Mrs Briggs? She’d pretty comprehensively churned up the scene before we got her and her dog away. Phil Morton is fuming about it.’
Tom shook his head and swallowed. ‘No, not her. She hadn’t got there yet, had she? I mean the other woman, earlier.’
There was a pause. Then Jess asked with ominous calm, putting down her fork, ‘Other woman?’
‘Yep,’ said Tom indistinctly, swallowing. ‘She wasn’t in the woods. I’d met her earlier. She was driving a Range Rover like she had a pack of wolves on her tail. She came belting towards me just before I got to the woods and nearly forced me into a stone wall. The road is pretty narrow there, and she must have seen me.’
‘A Range Rover? What colour? What did the driver look like?’
‘The vehicle was black – and before you ask me about the licence plate, I didn’t notice it. It was all very quick. She appeared, I swerved, and whoosh! She was gone.’
‘But you noticed the driver was a woman?’ Jess asked ea
gerly.
‘Yes, and she had long, light-coloured hair and a grim expression. That’s all the description I can give you. I think her hair was tied back with a scarf. What’s up? You look thunderstruck.’
‘I am.’ Jess sat back. ‘I suspect I know who that was and, if I’m right, it really puts the cat among the pigeons. Ian Carter has been suspicious from the beginning about the whole set-up. I do wish, Tom, you’d mentioned this before. We’d have taken a totally different approach when we went to the house.’
‘Well, nobody asked . . .’ Tom said defensively.
‘But when you found the body and suspected it had been moved, you must have realised anything could be important! Tom, for goodness’ sake, during the whole conversation I had with Harriet Kingsley today, she was pulling the wool over my eyes. She claimed to have been nowhere near the woods! Both her husband and her close friend, Tessa Briggs, back her up. But Phil Morton saw a black Range Rover parked behind the house. He found out that both Guy and Harriet Kingsley are driving it at the moment, because Harriet is waiting for a new car to be delivered. Phil reckons that woman Briggs is very defensive and that she’s hiding something. But don’t you see? Perhaps they all are!’
Jess fell back in her chair and groaned. ‘When I tell Ian that, quite possibly, Harriet Kingsley was travelling along the road past the woods much earlier, driving badly and apparently upset – and you saw her – he’ll hit the roof,’ she hissed. ‘Phil is right to mistrust the whole bunch of them up at the Old Nunnery.’ She pushed away her unfinished food. ‘Oh, damn,’ she said.
‘Well,’ said Tom. ‘I apologise, of course, if you would have liked to know about that woman in the Range Rover. Put it down to my distress at finding a body sitting on the ground with only half a face. Anyway, I’ve told you now – and I did tell you about the bicycle in the car park.’
‘We won’t find that possible witness unless the cyclist comes forward,’ Jess said gloomily. ‘I don’t know whether to wait until tomorrow to call Ian Carter about the driver who might well have been Harriet, or call him tonight.’
‘What’s he going to do tonight if you do tell him? Don’t look so devastated. You can bounce in bright-eyed tomorrow morning and tell the man you have discovered a new lead! That should start the day off well. Finish your curry.’
‘Don’t you understand?’ Jess demanded. ‘This has turned everything we were told today upside down. You seem to think that doesn’t matter. Well, it does!’
‘Sorry, and all that,’ returned Tom sturdily. ‘But you and Carter and that sergeant, Morton, will work it out, with help from old Maurice’s report.’ He leaned back and pushed away his empty plate. ‘I am off sick,’ he said. ‘I am out of the loop.’
‘No, you’re not! You found him. You’re a witness. You saw the bicycle, and a woman driving a Range Rover. And if that woman was Harriet Kingsley, she’s got some explaining to do. And you, Dr Palmer, can’t just shrug it all off.’
‘Sure I can. I’ve told you about it: now it’s your problem.’ Tom smiled serenely at her. ‘I’m taking a week’s leave, remember?’
‘I just think,’ said Sally Grove obstinately, ‘that we ought not to call our exhibition “Palette and Brush”. It sounds like a rather twee sort of pub.’
She’d often wished she were taller. Being short put you automatically at a disadvantage when arguing with men. She and Debbie were the only female members of their group, and Debbie always backed Mike, her husband. The men tended to band together in a dispute and so Sally was frequently left fighting her corner alone. But she wasn’t going to let this one go unchallenged. ‘Palette and Brush’, indeed!
Support came from an unexpected quarter.
‘I agree!’ pronounced Gordon Ferris. ‘Why can we not call it “Countryside Artists”, because that’s who we are.’ He stroked his bushy beard in a self-conscious sort of way. ‘I, for one, am proud of our little society.’
Sally had seen old family photos with Gordon in them. Last Christmas, Gordon had invited them all to his bungalow for ‘festive drinks’ in the form of red or white plonk from the village’s one and only supermarket. His living-room walls, where not bedecked with Gordon’s art, were plastered with photos of the man himself from infancy onwards. ‘Mother put them up there!’ he’d muttered with a touch of embarrassment, seeing Sally scrutinising them. He’d inherited the bungalow from his late parents. The photos had attracted Sally’s attention mainly because, when young, Gordon had had a remarkable shock of thick red curls. Now he was as bald as the proverbial coot. Sally supposed he had grown the beard in compensation. That wasn’t red. It was silvery grey, with a pinkish glow to it.
‘Silly old duffer is striking attitudes again,’ Mike Wilson muttered to his wife.
‘Shh!’ Debbie returned. More loudly, she added, ‘I wouldn’t go so far as to claim to be an artist, not a proper one! We are only hobbyists, after all, aren’t we?’
Gordon’s beard bristled.
‘But I – Mike and I both – take great care to produce the best work we can. To find a subject for his wildlife paintings, Mike spent ages lying in wet bracken. I haven’t got Mike’s dedication when it comes to staking out badgers and foxes. I stick to flowers, and some of my studies haven’t been too bad, even if I say so myself.’
There was a polite mutter of support from everyone.
‘Some of Mike’s wildlife studies have been brilliant,’ she added hastily.
Another general mumble of support.
Debbie was a slightly built, pale woman with thin brown hair, yet she was pretty in a wispy sort of way and had a trick of staring at you – well, staring at men – with wide-open eyes. Sally suspected that, behind that mousy exterior and her vociferous support of everything Mike said or did, there lurked in Debbie a will of iron. As for Debbie’s floral studies, well, to Sally’s mind, Debbie had a good eye for detail, but the flowers she depicted so painstakingly lacked life. She didn’t see her subject as Sally saw trees, as living things with infinite variety.
‘We’re all experienced. Debbie is right, we can’t claim to be professionals,’ Mike chimed in. Debbie smiled fondly at him. ‘But we’ve all produced some very good work,’ he went on. ‘We mean to put only the best of what we’ve done on display. More to the point, that is how our exhibition is being advertised in the library, as work by local artists.’
Gordon, who had overheard Mike’s original comment, looked mollified. They all looked at the person who had suggested the title ‘Palette and Brush’.
‘Oh, all right,’ said Ron Purcell, with a lift of the eyebrows that might have meant anything. ‘Just trying to think up something catchy as a name for the exhibition. Something to intrigue the public.’
Ron was losing his hair, too, thought Sally. He was going thin on top, and he was conscious of it, constantly putting up a hand to smooth flat what was left. She hoped Ron didn’t grow a beard. He was one of those naturally thin people full of suppressed energy, suggesting one of those hurrying matchstick figures in a Lowry painting. A beard wouldn’t suit him one bit. Gordon’s beard at least looked right on him. She thought she’d understood the twitch of the eyebrows that had accompanied Ron’s last words. There was an unspoken rivalry between him and Gordon.
‘What public?’ grumbled a new voice. ‘It’s a selection of our work stuck up on a wall in the local library. And it’s run by volunteers now, and only open four days a week. How many people do you imagine will see it?’
They all chimed together in protest. ‘Lots of people use the library, Desmond! You’d be surprised.’ (From Ron.) ‘Mike and I are in there all the time.’ (From Debbie.) ‘I use the library, too!’ (From Sally.)
Desmond Mitchell gave way before the united onslaught. ‘Oh, all right,’ he said sulkily.
Ron got back to the title. ‘So, then, what are we going to call it?’ There was a note of challenge in the question. He’d not taken kindly to his suggestion being rejected. Sally wished she’d phrased her own comment mor
e tactfully. She sensed a vulnerability in Ron that he hid well, and he was always nice to her. Born and bred in Weston St Ambrose, he had left in his twenties to work in various West Country banks, finishing as a bank manager. He chose that moment to take early retirement; and his wife chose the same moment to announce she was leaving him. The comfortable house in Cheltenham was sold and Ron found himself back in his native Weston, living in a cottage purchased from the estate of an elderly aunt. Having, as it were, come full circle, Ron was given to moments of moody introspection.
They were at the Wilsons’ home, gathered before a selection of their work, which was propped up for the purpose of picking the best for the proposed display. It was a cluttered room, full of bric-a-brac, mostly in the form of china horses. It was difficult to move without knocking against something, and that always made the china animal atop wobble. Sally dreaded that one day she would be responsible for a breakage.
‘“Winter in our Countryside”,’ suggested Mike, gesturing widely at the show of work. ‘It is nearly all winter subjects.’
‘The subjects I’ve put forward for selection are all autumnal!’ snapped Ron, fighting back. ‘And we need a title with more pulling power. Now, “Palette and Brush” . . .’
Sally was encouraged by finding herself on the winning side for once. But, since she anticipated that Ron’s nose had been put out of joint by the rejection of his title, she threw out an olive branch.
‘We need something to tempt people in, as Ron correctly says. “The Countryside about Us” – how about that? That’s positive, and a bit intriguing. It indicates our subjects are local and that visitors to our show might recognise them.’
There was a confused murmur. But even Ron was nodding. Sally pressed on, success going to her head. ‘After all, being local is a strong point, as, um, Gordon and Desmond say. We ought to stress it. People will recognise many of our subjects. For instance, I bike over to Crooked Man Woods quite often and my subjects were found in the woods. I was there this morning, as it happens.’