Swan Song

by Jo A. Hiestand

  “Me? You think I killed that bloke?”

  “Just asking, Booth. Someone did. You obviously hated the man. You just said so.”

  “That don’t mean I topped him.”

  “So, where were you that night?”

  The shift in his eyes was so quick that McLaren might have missed it…and the significance…if he hadn’t been staring at Booth.

  Booth said, somewhat nervously, “Well, I was waitin’ for Lorene, if you must know.”

  “Why? Where was this?”

  “At the castle.”

  “Tutbury?”

  “Yeah. At that olden days fair. Lorene wanted to go to it but I didn’t fancy her bein’ all that way from home at that hour of night, so I drove her.”

  “I assume you left together. When was that?”

  “Don’t know exactly.”

  “Give me an idea.”

  “After her teacher finished singin’ his last set. We walked around a bit after that. We got somethin’ to eat from one of them vendors and I bought Lorene a necklace. Then we left.”

  “You drive her straight home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you…did you go straight home after dropping her off?”

  “Yeah.” Despite McLaren’s fingertips still digging into Booth’s shoulder, his answer came out more of a bark than he had intended. He felt the increased pressure on his muscles and added, more civilly, “Yes. Straight up the A515 to my digs here in Buxton. I don’t know when I got in. Didn’t know I’d need a witness, did I?”

  “So you saw no one who can substantiate your claim.”

  “My claim! Listen, this is the truth! I didn’t kill that teacher and I came right home.”

  “And where is home, Booth?”

  He gave an address on Holker Road. Appropriate, McLaren thought. Practically adjacent to the police station on Silverlands.

  “You have a roommate, Booth?”

  “Not who I’d like. Ow!” He winced as McLaren yanked Booth’s head sharply to the right.

  “Is that code for ‘no, I don’t’?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. I’m just nervous. You know…you talkin’ about me and her bein’ there right before Harrison gets clobbered and all. I don’t want her a part of that life if that’s what happens to them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Performers. Competition. Back bitin’, fights for the spotlight.”

  “Not literally, surely.”

  “Don’t know. I ain’t one of them. And I don’t want Lorene to be one of them, either. I’m glad she’s dropped that mob. Through spendin’ her time with Pennell and his projects, too. Once was enough with that bloke. Another git.”

  McLaren released Booth abruptly, smiled, and patted his check. His whistle echoed against the brickwork as he passed through the alley archway.

  * * * *

  McLaren sat in his car, the windows down, and debated about whom to see. Booth’s information—and McLaren took it as information and not as time passing gossip or bragging—brought up startling questions. The more McLaren considered the conversation, the more the questions nagged at him. Why did Booth resent people in his and Lorene’s lives? Being in love had nothing to do with it; the reason went deeper. The boy portrayed the qualities of a loner. And a loner who had been profoundly hurt sometime early in life. Still, that did nothing to explain his animosity and suspicion of everyone around him. Why begrudge Lorene some time with Fay Larkin, if they were friends? And why keep Lorene’s family at arm’s length? Unless it was the other way round: Lorene’s family had distanced themselves from Booth and Lorene, had dropped them for some reason. McLaren turned the key in the Peugeot’s ignition; time to kill two birds with a stone.

  * * * *

  Despite Booth’s comment that Lorene had not liked the Kent Harrison fan club enough to remain a member, McLaren wanted to get it from a more reliable source. A source whose point of view wasn’t tinted with antagonism, anger and jealousy. So, he prayed to the gods who had already blessed his day, consulted Adrian Galloway’s scrawled note, and drove across town to Brown Edge Road to get one fan’s slant on things.

  The girl remembered Lorene and had been surprised when she’d stopped coming. “After a few months, too. Not even a year. I was that sorry when it was plain she wasn’t coming back. Odd, because she looked like she was having a good time. She’d join the discussions about Kent and his music, but she had so much more to contribute to the group. She was a walking encyclopedia of the medieval period. But maybe that was ’cause she was one of Kent’s pupils. I guess she was just naturally interested in all of it.”

  Yes, she and the other club member had ridden with Adrian to and from the Minstrels Court. Picked up and dropped off at their respective doorsteps.

  The times matched what Adrian had told McLaren.

  The second fan lived in Leek, Staffordshire, a market town a little over ten miles southwest of Buxton. His drive through traffic and along winding, mountainous roads turned into a blur of green, gray, brown and blue as he thought through the last few hours. An innuendo about Kent Harrison’s devotion to Fay, Dena found, his own suspected involvement in her abduction… Just because the police let up on their interrogation and released his car didn’t mean he was home free. They could just be giving him a long lead to implicate himself. He could be the mastermind behind the whole thing—for a reason as yet undetermined.

  He caught up with the other fan Adrian Galloway had dropped off, as she was about to leave her house to attend a meeting. Clearly in a rush, she answered his questions with little more conviviality than Booth had done. Yet she confirmed the time that Adrian had given McLaren, and added that Adrian had got into a slang-match with Lorene’s boyfriend.

  “You know the boyfriend’s name?” McLaren asked as he strode down the front path with her.

  “Booth. Don’t know his last name. Don’t know if I ever heard it. He’d come to the club meetings with her—occasionally, thank God. I don’t know what his problem is, but he sure is possessive. I felt sorry for Lorene, having to deal with that, but…” She shrugged, as if to say it was Lorene’s life.

  “Was the argument ugly? Did it last long? Did it become physical?”

  Opening her car door, she shrugged. “I suspect it did, thought I didn’t see it.”

  “Why do you think it came to blows?”

  “The side of Adrian’s face was red somewhat later. I saw it as we walked to his car. You know…under the outdoor lights. I thought at first it was just a shadow, but I could tell he was getting a black eye. His cheek looked bruised, too. I asked him what happened but he laughed it off. You know…made a joke about his clumsiness. I guess they continued the fight elsewhere after the part that I saw ended. It was just shouting when I was there. Booth got the rocket and stomped away. He probably found Lorene some place. I didn’t see. I wasn’t that interested. Anyway, I’m sorry I saw it all. It was ugly and frightening and uncalled for. Whatever their problem, they should have been able to talk about it in a civilized manner. Sorry, I have to go.”

  Interesting Booth happened to forget that, McLaren thought as he returned to his car. But, then, if I were suspected of murder, would I tell anyone—especially an ex-copper—that I had a temper that lent itself well to violence? He smiled as he drove to Holker Road to check out Booth’s alibi.

  * * * *

  No one who McLaren talked to could remember Booth being home or away from home the night of Kent’s death. McLaren got the impression no one really cared about Booth Wragg, and most of them stated that the neighborhood would improve dramatically if Booth ever moved out. So much for being our blue-eyed boy.

  A phone call to Adrian Galloway achieved nothing more than a confirmation that he ended up with a black eye and bruised cheek some time after that night. He denied Booth had done it; wouldn’t specify how he got the marks, laughing and deriding his usual clumsiness. McLaren rang off, tossing his mobile onto the car seat. Was it far fetched to link Booth to Adria
n’s battle scars? Farther fetched, still, to extend the link to Kent if Booth’s anger hadn’t been quelled, if he thought Adrian and Kent were monopolizing Lorene? McLaren rubbed his forehead, the questions and players dancing about inside his skull. He grabbed his mobile again, tapped in Jamie’s home phone number but flipped the phone closed before it had rung twice. Dena needed her sleep right now; she didn’t need to talk to him. Sighing, he dropped the phone back on the seat, started the car’s engine, and made for the school.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  During the drive to Grange Hall College McLaren reviewed the new information in his mind. People at the school might know of Lorene’s penchant for Kent and might be able to confirm or deny Dave Morley’s suspicions. While he was there he would ask Hart Pennell another question or two—without fear that he would erupt in anger over Dena.

  Hart admitted he had been jealous of Kent’s scholarship success, had needed money nearly to the point of desperation, that his wife had cancer and the outlook for recovery was bleak, but he swore he hadn’t killed Kent. He confessed all this as the two men stood in the corridor outside Hart’s schoolroom. Hart begrudgingly excused himself from his students to give McLaren five minutes, but had made it clear he would not tolerate another interruption of his class. So he talked quickly, answering McLaren’s questions without hedging or hesitation, needing to get back to work.

  “Where were you that Sunday night right after the Minstrels Court finished up?”

  “You’re accusing me of murder.” Hart’s eyes hardened, in preparation for defending himself.

  “I just want to know where you were. It gives me an idea.”

  “I’ll tell you the idea you have. You have the idea of pinning me with Kent’s murder. Well, it won’t stick, McLaren, because I’ve got an alibi.”

  “Home with your wife?”

  “I was meeting with Ellen Fairfield.” He practically smirked, folding his arms across his chest and rocking back and forward on his feet.

  “The curator of Rawlton Hall?”

  “Yes.”

  “At eleven o’clock at night?”

  “It was a long meeting. We’d begun at eight o’clock and finished up at midnight.”

  “Must have been important.”

  “It was. I was helping Ellen plan an event like the Minstrels Court, except hers would emphasize Arthurian legends. It had to be different or she wouldn’t draw the crowds to the Hall.”

  Nothing like starting your own festival if you couldn’t wheedle your way into an existing one. The man must be desperate, but for fame or money? “So, who did kill Kent? Do you know?” McLaren asked, seeing Hart’s fidgeting. “Cyanogenetic glycoside was in his system. A poison found in hydrangea. A plant. Your wife is a passionate herbalist, Mr. Pennell. She admits Kent was a client of hers, that he bought various dried flowers and spices. Did she slip some dried hydrangea into his mint or marjoram or rosemary, for instance, slowly poisoning him so there would be one less competitor for the school scholarship funding, so that you would win?” He waited, hearing the conversations from the classroom, muted from the closed door. The second hand of the large clock in the hallway marked off Hart’s hesitation. A film or television program started in the room across the hall, its music vaguely familiar to McLaren, before Hart finally answered.

  “You know that’s not true,” Hart said, anger coloring his tone.

  “How do I? I don’t know your wife. I don’t know her motives.”

  “She has none. She didn’t kill Kent, or slip anything into his purchases. You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “Then straighten me out. That’s why I’m here.”

  “My wife had been helping Aaron Unsworth with his natural foods cookbook. She taught him about herbs and spices. If you think someone slipped some poisonous plant into Kent’s food or drink, don’t overlook Aaron. He knows which plants are safe and which aren’t. He’s a chef. Or didn’t you know? Talk to him before you make up your mind that my wife had something to do with Kent’s death.” Without giving McLaren time to respond, Hart yanked open the classroom door and strode inside, letting the door close with an underscoring bang.

  Several students were outside, seated on benches or the grass, chatting and doing homework during their free period. McLaren asked if he could talk to them for a moment about Lorene, and quickly caught up on Lorene’s past and general school gossip. Every student there agreed that Kent had been an outstanding teacher, giving of himself beyond the scope of his job. Though that berk Fraser Unsworth was even beyond Mr. Harrison’s powers, as one student phrased it. “But I mean, honestly, Fraser had no hope of ever being cool even if Mr. Harrison could give him private lessons for a decade. A born loser.” Others in the group may have agreed with the girl’s assessment, but no one spoke to underscore the opinion. And as for Lorene… Well, she had missed the last few months before summer break—common knowledge among students and faculty. Around the time Kent was killed. A few girls had given Lorene a hard time, teasing her about sailing through Kent’s class now that he and she were seeing each other, but Lorene had repeatedly denied it, saying Booth was her boyfriend, so why would she want an old man? But the rumor persisted even now, even to the winks and looks exchanged during McLaren’s session with them. The last place anyone saw Lorene was at the castle, talking to Kent. One eager girl echoed Dave Morley’s testimony of seeing Lorene get into Kent’s car. Two statements, two different witnesses, given independently. Had they spent more time together than a teacher-student relationship should warrant?

  And that also blew Booth’s alibi out of the water.

  He drove back to Buxton, hoping he could find someone now who could pinpoint Booth’s arrival home. As he parked outside Booth’s residence, a middle-aged man turned into the front garden and headed for the front door. McLaren got out of his car and jogged up to the man, calling him to please wait a moment. The man nodded when McLaren introduced himself and explained the reason for his question. Yes, he recalled that specific night due to Kent Harrison’s murder.

  “Well, you would, wouldn’t you?” he countered even-toned. “Even though it happened in Kirkfield instead of Buxton, it stays in your mind. I know the area so I suppose that’s why I remember it so well.”

  As to whether he remembered Booth Wragg being home or not… Yes, he was. The man was insistent because the residence was a two up/two down. He and his wife had converted the building a few years ago and Booth was their first and only tenant. He was always aware of when Booth was home or away.

  And on the night of the murder?

  Definitely home. Later in the evening, from nine o’clock until he shut the music off around midnight. Yes, he knew personally Booth was there instead of leaving the music on and slipping out. He had knocked on Booth’s door to ask him first if he wanted some leftover pizza—it never kept well for the following day, did it?. That was around half past nine. Then, around half past ten a mate of Booth’s came over and stayed for about quarter of an hour. He remembered the door opening and closing. Besides, Booth had knocked on their door to ask if they had some paper towels he could borrow. A blare of music startled the man and his wife just as the evening television news had finished. It quickly subsided. “Probably just tuned the radio to a different station.” And they heard him walking around until the music and his pacing stopped near midnight. Yes, he’d swear to it in court, if he had to.

  So why lie about being at the castle with Lorene if he was home by nine? Nothing more than a frightened attempt to provide himself with an alibi, McLaren thought as he returned to his car. Or make himself appear the ladies’ man. The blow to his ego had suffered enough if Lorene had deserted him and left with Kent. Booth didn’t need to add to his mortification by admitting it to McLaren, who had physically humiliated him in the alley.

  Certain that Booth had been nowhere near the murder scene in Kirkfield, McLaren once more drove south.

  * * * *

  McLaren asked Fay if she had ever seen Lorene and Ken
t together that Sunday night. He stood again at her desk in the medical building, aware of the office of patients, aware of the time he took from her work. But her answer could affect his case.

  “I didn’t see them that night,” Fay said, her gaze alternately on McLaren and the sign-in sheet on her desk. “I know Kent gave Lorene some time outside class, but that didn’t mean anything. Not in the way you want it to mean.”

  “Miss Larkin, I don’t want it to mean anything other than what it truly is. I’m trying to solve your fiancé’s murder.”

  She called the name of a patient and saw him into an examination room before settling back at her desk again. “I know what the loose tongues at Grange Hall College said. Kent was a handsome man and he often spent time with students—female and male. But nothing of a sexual nature went on between any of them. Least of all not Lorene Guard.”

  “You know this to be true? Or do you just want to believe it?”

  “I know it’s true. I know Kent. He wouldn’t have anything to do with a child.”

  “But as to that Sunday night.”

  “I wasn’t at the Minstrels Court that day. I waited at his house. We were to have a late supper and then talk. I—” She broke off, averting her eyes from McLaren, and fussed with the items on her desk. Straightening the photo of her baby, she said, “He never came home. I heard a car stop.”

  “What time? Do you remember?”

  “The police asked me so often that I do remember. I probably won’t ever forget. Around eleven o’clock.”

  “And Kent’s last set ended at ten?”

  “Half past nine, actually. I believe it came out during the trial that he left the castle close on to ten.”

  Which shifts the spotlight off gobby Booth Wragg; he was home with his mate in his flat and his landlords downstairs… No, someone else killed Kent. It wouldn’t have taken Kent an hour to drive from Tutbury Castle to his home in Somerley. Had he and Lorene stopped somewhere for a tryst? Had he dropped her some place before returning home? If so, Booth did have reason to be jealous.