Stone Dead

by Frank Smith

  Ormside shook his head. ‘Dead weight,’ he said. ‘No pun intended. You might do it,’ he told Tregalles. ‘You’re in good shape, but I reckon you’d be huffing and puffing by the time you got up that hill with eight stone on your back. I can’t see Foster managing it. He damn near falls over himself when he lifts one of those stones out there. And why would he go all the way up the hill when it would be easier to go down to the river? Softer ground down there, and it’s screened from view. Or he could have just put weights on her and dropped her in. It runs deep in that bend.’

  Paget and Tregalles looked at each other. ‘Eric?’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Eric,’ said Paget. ‘My first thought when I saw the flowers. The first time I saw him he was collecting them from the rhododendrons along Foster’s drive. The question is: did Eric find her out there and carry her up the hill on his own? Or did he do it under instruction from Foster?’

  ‘Or,’ said Ormside softly, ‘did young Eric do the shooting?’

  Paget nodded gravely. ‘It’s certainly a possibility,’ he agreed. ‘By all accounts, he was very fond of Lisa, and he had a habit of walking into the house unannounced. He carries that shotgun around with him, and the cartridges he uses are identical to those used by Foster. Who knows what his reaction might have been if he’d found Lisa in bed with Gray? He’s a child in many ways. Would he be jealous? Would he think she was being attacked? More to the point is how do we find out what really happened? The only way we can talk to Eric is through his father, and his father can tell us anything he likes, and we’d never be any the wiser.’

  * * *

  FOSTER LOOKED EXHAUSTED when he finally answered the door. His clothes were rumpled, his eyes were bloodshot, and he hadn’t shaved. He shaded his eyes and squinted at them as if unsure about who they were, silhouetted as they were against the sun.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said listlessly. ‘Sorry. I must have fallen asleep. I was up all night.’ He turned and wandered into the living-room, and the two men followed him inside. Foster stood there as if in a daze, then abruptly sat down and put his head in his hands.

  ‘I told Sergeant Ormside everything I know about the fire,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell you any more.’

  ‘We brought the statement for you to sign,’ Paget told him. He held out the papers to Foster. ‘Please read it over, then sign on every page where it’s marked.’

  Foster took the papers and glanced at them, then looked around vaguely. ‘Do you have a pen?’ he asked Paget.

  ‘You should read it carefully,’ Paget cautioned him. ‘If you don’t feel up to it now, I’ll leave the statement with you and have someone come over later and witness your signature.’

  Foster sighed as if a great weight had been taken from him. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and tossed the statement aside. It fell on the floor and he left it there. Tregalles picked it up and put it on the table.

  ‘We have found Lisa,’ Paget said quietly.

  Foster didn’t seem to hear him for a moment, then suddenly his head jerked up. ‘What was that you said?’ he whispered. ‘You found Lisa?’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid she’s dead.’

  Foster continued to stare at him, then slowly nodded. ‘I knew she must be,’ he sighed, ‘but I kept hoping…’ Tears began to trickle down his face. ‘Where…? How…?’ He looked from one to the other. ‘You mean … Up on the hill?’

  ‘Now why do you say that, sir?’ Tregalles asked.

  Foster looked confused. ‘I—I don’t know. I just thought … That’s where you’ve been, isn’t it? Up there at the barn?’

  ‘But why would you think that Miss Remington might be up there?’ Tregalles asked. ‘I mean, we’ve had a nationwide search going on for days, now.’

  Foster buried his face in his hands once more. ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. ‘I just thought…’ His shoulders heaved and he stifled a sob.

  ‘We believe she was probably dead when someone carried her up the hill from here,’ Paget said. ‘What can you tell us about that?’

  Foster raised his head and stared at Paget. ‘Go to hell!’ he said. ‘I’ve told you over and over again everything I know. I’m not saying another word.’

  ‘Have you had anything to eat, recently?’ Paget asked him.

  Foster blinked as if he didn’t understand the question, then shook his head.

  ‘See if you can find Mr Foster something to eat,’ he told Tregalles. ‘And a cup of tea or coffee. Which do you prefer, Mr Foster?’

  Foster jumped to his feet. ‘Get out of my house,’ he screamed. ‘Bugger off. Just leave me alone.’ He pushed them toward the door.

  Tregalles flashed a questioning glance at Paget, but the chief inspector shook his head. ‘I’ll have someone come over later for your statement,’ he said quietly as they reached the door and stepped outside, but Foster made no answer. Instead, he slammed the door in Paget’s face, and they could hear him sobbing on the other side.

  * * *

  ‘WHY DON’T YOU COME IN and have a cup of tea, love? You look like you could do with one and it’s just made.’

  Molly Forsythe glanced at the list in her hand and thought about the number of houses in the avenue still left to check. The backs of her legs ached—she should never have worn these shoes with the higher heels today, but she’d just felt like a change. She’d already decided to nip home at lunch-time and change them, but there was almost another hour to go before she could do that.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Arkwright, I’d like that,’ she told the owner of Number 38 Sidbourne Avenue.

  The woman smiled and stood to one side. ‘Elsie,’ she said. ‘Call me Elsie. Come along in, then. What’s your name, love?’

  ‘Molly. Molly Forsythe.’

  ‘Molly. I had a friend called Molly, once,’ the woman said. ‘That was years ago when we were at school.’ She laughed. ‘That was a long time ago.’

  Elsie Arkwright led the way down the narrow hallway to a bright and cheerful kitchen. ‘Sit yourself down, then,’ she said as she busied herself with the tea. ‘Would you like a scone? They’re fresh baked this morning.’

  ‘I’d love one,’ Molly said. The smell of fresh baking was partly why she had accepted the woman’s offer of a cup of tea.

  ‘They haven’t caught him yet, then?’ said Elsie as she poured the tea. ‘No, of course not or you wouldn’t be here, would you?’ she went on, answering her own question. ‘Scary, isn’t it, knowing someone like that’s out there. People like that ought to be castrated. That’s what my Albert used to say. That’d give ’em something else to think about, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘You live alone, now, do you, Elsie?’

  ‘Yes. Help yourself, love. You like butter or marg? Here, have a bit of butter; it won’t hurt you. It’s not as if you’re fat, is it? Yes, Albert’s been gone, oh, it must be going on six years, now.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be, love.’ Elsie Arkwright laughed. ‘He isn’t dead. Oh, no. He went off with a woman from across the road. They live just two streets over. I see him every now and again down at the supermarket. He works there, you know.’

  ‘Oh.’ Molly could think of nothing else to say.

  ‘Oh, it was all quite friendly,’ Elsie went on. ‘Except I don’t know what he sees in her. But I’d sooner be on my own. I mean, marriage is all right when you’re young and foolish, but it wears a bit thin after a while, doesn’t it? He liked the sex, but I wasn’t all that keen. I mean, it wears you out, doesn’t it? Especially with Albert. Every night, regular as clockwork. Tell you the truth, love, I was glad to see the back of him.’

  Elsie broke off into peals of laughter. ‘Glad to see the back of him,’ she chortled. ‘I was and all. I’d seen more than I wanted of the front of him. You married, love?’

  Molly laughed. ‘No, and I’m not sure I want to be after hearing your experience.’ She took out her notebook. ‘Do you know if anyone such as I described has moved into the street recently?’ she a
sked.

  The woman shook her head. ‘No. Can’t think of anyone,’ she said slowly. ‘Well, except for my lodger, Mr Trent. He moved here from somewhere near Newcastle, I think he said. Came here to be closer to his daughter. Doesn’t have anyone else, you see, not since his wife died. But you won’t mean him. Ever such a quiet gentleman, he is. No trouble at all. I hardly know he’s there.’

  ‘How old a man would he be?’

  ‘Sixty, perhaps sixty-five,’ the woman hazarded. ‘He’s retired, now. Used to be a butcher.’

  Molly felt the hairs on the back of her neck actually move. Coincidence? Or had the fates led her to the very house in which the man was lodging? She suppressed the excitement she felt within her. She didn’t want to alarm her new-found friend.

  ‘I saw someone like that in the street earlier,’ she said casually. ‘What’s he look like?’

  ‘Oh, no, love. I don’t think that would be him,’ said Elsie Arkwright. ‘He went out in the car this morning. Went off to see his daughter again. What’s he like?’ The woman thought about that. ‘Well, he’s a bit taller than me; a nice face; kind, you know. He’s got grey hair, of course, cut nice and short. Keeps himself very nice, too.’ She shrugged and made a face. ‘I don’t know what else I can tell you, love. He hasn’t got any, what is it you call them? Distinguishing marks; that’s it.’ Elsie giggled. ‘Least not on any of the parts I’ve seen, but you never know, do you?’

  Molly smiled. ‘Do you know where his daughter lives?’

  Elsie pursed her lips. ‘I believe he did say when he first came,’ she said, ‘but I’ll be dashed if I remember. But you can’t think that Mr Trent … Oh, no, love, I wouldn’t have anybody like that under my roof.’

  ‘He lives upstairs, does he?’

  The friendliness in Elsie’s eyes was fading. ‘Yes,’ she said cautiously, ‘but you can’t think…’

  ‘Would it be possible to see his room, do you think?’

  Elsie bristled. ‘I couldn’t do that, love,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be right.’

  Molly nodded. ‘I know how you must feel,’ she said, ‘but I’m thinking of your safety as well as that of children. Sometimes the most innocuous-looking men can be, shall we say, disturbed. If I could just take a look, perhaps I could set both our minds at rest.’

  Elsie Arkwright was plainly troubled. ‘I wish you hadn’t said that, love,’ she said plaintively. ‘You’ve put a doubt in my mind, and I shall always be wondering.’

  ‘Then, perhaps the quickest way to set that doubt at rest is to take a look,’ said Molly. She stood up. ‘Shall we go up and see?’

  NINETEEN

  APART FROM A TORN EAR, which now had eight stitches in it, Eric Tyson had managed to protect his head. But the rest of his upper body and his arms had taken a vicious beating.

  No bones were broken, his doctor said, but it would be some time before Eric would be able to move without pain. As for the psychological damage … The doctor merely shrugged and shook his head.

  They found Tom Tyson in the patients’ lounge. He was sitting on a couch, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, staring at the floor. He looked up as they came in, and Tregalles was shocked by the change in the man. His broad face seemed to have shrunk, and he looked old. Old and very tired.

  ‘I reckoned you’d come,’ was his only greeting.

  ‘I’m very sorry about your wife,’ Paget said gently. Tyson nodded but remained silent. ‘Have you seen Eric since they brought him down?’

  ‘Aye. They tell me he’ll be all right, but you should see him. My God! she made a mess of him. He’s black and blue all over his back and arms, his head is cut, and his ear…’ He stopped, unable to go on.

  They waited.

  Tyson straightened up and looked Paget in the eye. ‘You’d best get your notebook out,’ he told him. ‘I should have told you before, but I didn’t.’ He sighed deeply. ‘I got the boy almost killed because I couldn’t bring myself to do what needed doing. It wasn’t her fault, you know, it were mine.’

  Paget and Tregalles pulled up chairs and sat down. ‘What was it you couldn’t bring yourself to do, Mr Tyson?’ Paget asked.

  Tyson shook his head slowly. ‘Have her put away,’ he said so quietly that Paget barely heard him. ‘Dr Bradley—he’s the one Emily’s had ever since, well, ever since Eric was born—he’s been trying to get me to do it for a year or more. But I said no; she was my responsibility and I’d look after her.’

  He looked down at his hands, examining them closely, and it seemed to the two men that he was asking himself why he’d failed. ‘It got so I couldn’t leave the boy alone with her,’ he went on softly. ‘She had it in her mind that he was the cause of all her pain; all her suffering. And she has suffered, Mr Paget. She has indeed. It’s no wonder her mind went as it did; day in, day out, dragging herself around on those two sticks.

  ‘She was a good woman,’ he went on earnestly, glancing up to make sure they understood. ‘Very religious. Read the bible every day, and it seemed to help her earlier on when Eric was little. He was late, you see. She were nearly forty when she had him, and something went wrong inside. And then something happened to her bones. It was a sort of arthritis, the doctor said.’ He searched for the right word.

  ‘Osteoarthritis?’ Paget put in, and Tyson’s face cleared.

  ‘Aye, that was it,’ he said. ‘And it was painful, Mr Paget. Some days she was off her head with pain, and the tablets didn’t seem to help her. She prayed, Mr Paget. She believed that God would heal her if only she could pray hard enough. But then, as time went on and she got worse, something happened to her.’

  Tyson buried his head in his hands once again. ‘It was as if she were twisted, somehow. She got it into her head that she was cursed. She even had the vicar over and pleaded with him to do one of them things they do to get rid of evil spirits, but he said he couldn’t do that. He tried to tell her it wasn’t evil spirits at all, but she wouldn’t have it and told him to get out. She said he was one of them.

  ‘That’s when she started blaming Eric for everything, and it’s been getting worse ever since. The doctor told me a long time ago that I should put her in a place where she could be treated, but I couldn’t do that, Mr Paget. She was my wife. I couldn’t do it.’

  Tyson sighed heavily. ‘But she started lashing out at Eric whenever he came near, and when she started talking about killing him to get rid of the curse, I knew I had to do something. Dr Bradley made an appointment for her to see this psychiatrist weeks ago, but she refused to go. Screamed at me; called me everything she could lay her tongue to. So I waited for her to calm down and suggested that she at least have Dr Bradley in to explain things to her, but that just set her off again.

  ‘Yesterday, I went to see him again, and he gave me these tablets. He said to put two in her cocoa at bedtime, then put two more in her tea next morning. He said it would make her go all drowsy like the stuff they give you in hospital before an operation. Then he said I was to take her straight over to Collington mental home, and they’d do an assessment of her there. He said he expected they would be keeping her there.’

  Tyson shrugged apologetically. ‘But I couldn’t do it,’ he said simply. ‘I had the tablets in my hand, but I couldn’t put them in her cocoa. And now she’s dead. I don’t know; perhaps it’s for the best. She would have hated it in there. But in a fire…’ He shuddered and turned his face away.

  ‘Tell me how Lisa Remington died,’ said Paget.

  For a moment, it seemed as if Tyson hadn’t heard, but then he slowly nodded. ‘I thought you’d be asking about that,’ he said. ‘But she was dead, you know. I mean, when Eric found her there by the wall.’

  ‘You mean the wall between your field and Bracken Cottage?’ Tregalles said.

  ‘That’s right. I made him show me where he’d found her. The wall is very low there, so maybe she climbed over.’ Tyson looked up at them. ‘I can’t always get it right, you see,’ he went on. ‘Not with Eric. He
does his best, but it’s not easy to understand everything he says.’

  ‘When did this take place?’ asked Paget.

  Tyson thought back. ‘It would be the Wednesday. Eric found her early morning; must have been before seven, but it was close to ten when I first saw her. See, Eric thought she was hurt, so he carried her up to the barn and made a bed for her in the straw. He does that with animals and birds he finds, and I suppose he thought it was the same. When he realized she was dead, he did what he thought right. He put flowers round her like he’d seen us do when his Granny Tyson died. Then he came and took me up there to show me what he’d done. I couldn’t stop him bringing flowers even after she was buried, and I was afraid someone would catch on if they saw him.’ He looked from one to the other and saw doubt there on their faces.

  ‘If anyone’s at fault, it’s me,’ he said. ‘I’m the one who buried her.’

  ‘How do you think Lisa died?’ Paget asked. ‘You saw the body; what do you think killed her?’

  Tyson grimaced. ‘She’d taken some shot in her left eye,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t much on her face, and not much blood, but that left eye was gone. I reckon the shot must have gone up into her brain.’

  ‘Was the body stiff or flaccid when you first saw it?’

  ‘Her arms and face were stiff,’ Tyson told him. ‘But her legs weren’t when I rolled her into the sheet.’

  ‘What time would that be?’

  ‘Between ten and eleven that morning. Eric had been pestering me since about eight, but I had things to do, so I didn’t go up till later.’

  ‘And when did you bury her?’

  ‘Not till dark. Should have done it earlier because she was as stiff as a board by then.’

  Paget did a quick calculation. He’d have to talk to Starkie, but his own guess was that Lisa had probably died sometime between midnight and three o’clock Wednesday morning.

  Tyson was speaking again. ‘I know I should have reported it,’ he said tonelessly, ‘but I was afraid. Afraid they’d take Eric away. The lad only did what he thought was right. I didn’t want him put away like some animal in a cage. He’s a good lad, is Eric.’