The Devil's Chair

by Priscilla Masters

  She thought this was possibly a waste of time and didn’t quite see how Lucy Stanstead could possibly further their enquiries into Daisy’s disappearance but hey, this was a major investigation. Sometimes you prodded around in a dark hole and found something surprising.

  She just hoped that Lucy would provide something.

  But it was their bad luck that the woman Neil Mansfield was suspected of having an affair with was not alone. However much he was away her burly Royal Navy captain husband was very much at home now. All six foot four of him. And he was not in a good mood.

  He snatched the door open with a bad tempered scowl which only slightly meliorated when he registered the fact that they were in uniform.

  ‘What?’ he snapped.

  Lara Tinsley gave him her nicest smile. ‘I’m so sorry to bother you,’ she said, oozing out all the charm she possessed, ‘but we’re investigating the accident that happened on the Burway and the disappearance of a little girl, Daisy Walsh.’

  His fury was as intense as an Australian bush fire. ‘What the hell do you think it’s got to do with us?’

  This was a tricky one. At her side Lara saw Sean Dart’s mouth drop open as he waited for her to squirm out of this.

  ‘The child’s stepfather is currently doing some decorating here,’ she tried, knowing it was as an excuse as weak as water.

  Captain Stanstead scowled. ‘That’s a nice way of putting it,’ he sneered.

  Lara’s shoulders dropped and she sneaked a glance at her colleague, with a mute appeal. Help me out here, Sean?

  He did not respond but stared woodenly ahead.

  Thanks. Thanks a lot.

  Behind the captain they caught a movement. A petite woman in her thirties, eyes wide with fright, met their eyes, gave a very slight shake of her head and then there was another mute appeal. Please.

  ‘Look,’ the captain said, directing a very threatening-looking index finger at them. ‘You get that bastard to finish his bit of decorating and then he can get out of our lives for ever.’

  ‘We-ell, he’s having a difficult time at the moment,’ Tinsley tried. ‘He’s been spending a lot of time at the hospital with his partner and now, of course …’ She dropped her eyes then sneaked an upwards glance. Lucy Stanstead was holding her breath while her husband had not lost any of his anger. ‘She died, then,’ he snapped.

  ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

  Stanstead gave a cynical snort. ‘She’s better out of it,’ he said.

  ‘Can we talk to your wife?’

  Stanstead’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘How do you think she can help you?’

  Tinsley bounced his suspicion back with a bland smile. ‘We don’t know,’ she said, ‘but we do need some help.’

  Ideally they would like to have spoken to Mrs Stanstead on her own, but the captain was patently not going to allow them this.

  Lara Tinsley and PC Dart followed the couple into a large sitting room at the back of the house. There was still a strong smell of paint, even though Neil couldn’t have been here for more than two weeks now. He’d been largely staying at home in case Daisy ‘turned up’. It was a very optimistic point of view but no one had had the heart to disillusion him.

  The room was light and bright, a conservatory leading off into a garden which was spring bright and full of flowering bulbs. Someone was a good gardener. Tinsley had never got her garden to look anything near as lovely as this. She glanced out of the French windows in admiration then turned back into the room.

  ‘So?’ the captain demanded.

  Tinsley directed her questions at Lucy. ‘Tell me about Neil Mansfield.’

  Lucy licked her lips. ‘What do you want to know?’ Her voice was faint with a slight tremor. Lucy Stanstead was very nervous.

  ‘How did you find him?’ Lara Tinsley asked conversationally.

  ‘He … he’d … he’d done some work for Mrs Price – the lady who lives opposite.’

  Tinsley wondered exactly what nature of work Mansfield had done for Mrs Price. More of the same?

  Lucy was gaining confidence. ‘She said he was neat and clean, did a good job and didn’t charge extortionate prices.’ She was patently on safer ground here.

  ‘So I rang him.’

  ‘What was your impression of him?’

  ‘He seemed polite. He listened to what I wanted doing and turned up on time.’

  Her eyes were still begging for them to keep her secret.

  ‘Did he ever mention his partner, Tracy?’

  Lucy had a swift look at her husband, whose eyes were fixed on her, a tautness to his mouth that Lara didn’t like. She’d seen enough cases of domestic violence to recognize the tension that existed between Captain and Mrs Stanstead.

  Lucy gave her husband a nervous look that reminded Tinsley of bushbuck or fawns – always wary – then bravely answered the officer’s question.

  ‘I got the impression they weren’t very happy,’ she said.

  Her husband gave her a warning sign, clearing of his throat.

  But his wife was past caring now. ‘I think he planned to leave her.’

  ‘Really?’

  Lucy Stanstead tucked her thin, pale hair behind her ears and nodded.

  ‘And Daisy, the little girl?’

  ‘I think that was what had stopped him leaving before. You see, he hadn’t legally adopted her and he wasn’t her father so he would have no right to see her and he didn’t …’ Another swift glance at her husband. ‘He didn’t,’ she repeated, ‘think that Tracy was a very good mother. What he said was that if he left Daisy would have no one who cared about her.’

  Something struck Tinsley. She looked at Sean Dart and wondered if the same thought had entered his brain – if he had one. She wasn’t convinced. Yet.

  ‘Did you ever meet Daisy?’

  Now Lucy Stanstead did look anxious. She gave a tiny nod without vocalizing, as though she thought her husband might miss the affirmative movement. ‘He brought her here once or twice when Tracy was working.’

  When Tracy was working. The phrase seemed important to Lara Tinsley. She would bring it up at the next briefing. Apart from an initial superficial interview with her employer they had largely ignored Tracy’s place of work. What if there was something or someone there that had some bearing on the events of 6 and 7 April?

  ‘Do you have any children of your own?’ She’d deliberately addressed the question to them both. Captain Stanstead merely tightened his lips while his wife shook her head – with a tinge of sadness, her mouth drooping in unhappiness. Lara Tinsley decided not to pursue the reason why they had no children, instead turning the focus of her questions back to Neil Stanstead.

  ‘Is the job nearly finished?’

  Lucy nodded. ‘I think one more day will do it,’ she said, her eyes dropping to the floor.

  ‘Have you heard from him since the accident?’

  A shake of the head this time.

  ‘And have you rung him?’

  Another shake of the head, then, ‘I thought I’d wait until after Tracy’s funeral.’

  Tinsley glanced at her colleague. Have you got any questions? she mouthed.

  He took the cue. ‘Neil Mansfield has the reputation of being a ladies’ man.’

  Tinsley almost groaned. Oh, no, I didn’t mean that.

  It didn’t throw Lucy. ‘Not with me,’ she said. ‘With me he was the perfect gentleman.’ The words were accompanied by a defiant look aimed directly at her husband, as powerful and focused as a laser.

  ‘Thank you,’ WPC Lara Tinsley said, and they both stood up.

  The Stansteads both saw them to the door, the captain patently not wanting his wife to be alone with the police.

  They stopped at the car. ‘While we’re out here we may as well just check on Mrs Price before we head back to the station,’ Lara said. She wondered if Mansfield’s other customer might give them a little more insight into the man.

  Mrs Price proved to be in her middle forties, a s
lim woman with very sharp, all-seeing eyes. She was plain in a business-like way, no make-up, hair scraped back from her face, wearing a shapeless black dress and cardigan and flat black leather ballet slippers. She blinked as she registered who they were.

  ‘Ye-es?’

  Quickly WPC Tinsley flashed her card and explained why they were in the vicinity.

  ‘We understand that Neil Mansfield did some work for you?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘And you recommended him to your neighbour?’

  ‘That also is correct.’ She spoke in a clipped, precise voice, reminding WPC Tinsley of her old English schoolmistress.

  ‘His work was good,’ she continued. ‘He never left a mess and he was pleasant. Also, his prices were not out of the way. Lucy wanted to have some of the upstairs decorated while her husband was at sea. I knew Neil was reliable, would turn up on time and the job would be finished before Captain Stanstead was back on leave.’ She said disapprovingly, ‘He runs a tight ship,’ without cracking her face at the appropriateness of the analogy. ‘He wouldn’t tolerate the house being decorated while he was there. And the work would have been finished had events not intervened.’

  Then, oddly enough, it was at that point that she smiled. No more than a tight rictus but unmistakable for all that. ‘I got the feeling,’ she chortled, ‘that Lucy was planning to pretend that it was she who had done the decorating. The captain can be a little mean with his money and might well have objected to the cost of paying someone to do something he would consider his wife should do.’

  Lara Tinsley met Sean’s dark eyes. He made a strange, resigned sort of face accompanied by a shrug, still leaving the questioning to her.

  ‘Is there anything else you can add that might throw some light on the fate of little Daisy Walsh?’ She’d asked the question more in desperation than believing it would lead to anything concrete.

  ‘I saw them once,’ Mrs Price said reflectively, ‘the three of them.’

  For a moment both the officers thought she was talking about Mansfield, Daisy and Tracy. But when she continued they realized how wrong they had been.

  ‘Neil, Lucy and Daisy,’ she said, her head on one side. ‘They just looked like a happy family.’

  The phrase startled them both. Food for thought.

  Lara Tinsley waited until they were outside before turning on her colleague. ‘Well, you were a fat lot of good in there!’ she exploded.

  PC Sean Dart grinned at her. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I just thought you were making such a good job of it there was no point my distracting you.’ His accent was stolid, Yorkshire, slow, but friendly and for the first time she caught a hint of a sense of humour.

  ‘So,’ she ventured, ‘what did you make of that?’

  ‘Puts a different light on it, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You bet it does. Happy family? Neil, Daisy and Lucy? Interesting, don’t you think?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I wonder what the captain would have made of that.’

  Sean simply grinned at her.

  And WPC Tinsley caught the first hint that she and PC ‘Dark Horse’ might become buddies. One day.

  SIXTEEN

  Randall hadn’t held out much hope for the letter that had accompanied the bouquet of herbs. He had submitted it to forensics for DNA and fingerprints but he knew their perpetrator was too smart to have left such obvious clues. He’d even taken a photocopy and submitted it to a handwriting expert who came back with the observation that children who had been to school in the sixties had been taught lovely handwriting – just like this.

  ‘Village schools,’ he’d said, with the pride of a magician pulling off a difficult and seemingly inexplicable trick, ‘were taught copper plate writing. It was considered important,’ he finished loftily.

  Randall felt frustrated. Oh, yes, it all fitted all right but it still hadn’t found them their mystery woman. Or the child.

  The slipper had proved to be the partner of the one found in Carding Mills stream and it hadn’t been there during their initial search of the cottage. Gethin Roberts had searched the tiny attic. ‘Not a chance, sir,’ he’d said when questioned. ‘It was put there some time later.’

  And Randall believed him.

  Wednesday, 24 April, midday.

  Martha scanned her court. She had anticipated, if Daisy’s body had been found, to have had a joint inquest for mother and daughter. But she couldn’t put off at least opening the inquest on Tracy Walsh any longer, while she waited to find out the fate of her daughter. She gave a slight smile and a nod in DI Alex Randall’s direction and another one towards Mark Sullivan, the pathologist who had performed the post-mortem on Tracy Walsh. He returned the gesture with a reflected friendly nod.

  She sat back in her chair, thinking. Dr Mark Sullivan was a brilliant pathologist. Of all the doctors she had worked with in her time as coroner, Sullivan was the one she trusted most. He was not one to fudge the evidence, to skimp on the initial post-mortem, and above all he never ever tried to extrapolate too much from the evidence. So many pathologists thought they were police, judge, jury and executioner as well as coroner, trying to push the verdict into her mouth and sensational headlines into the papers.

  But Sullivan? She met his clear blue eyes and smiled again. At one time, she had worried about him. He had had a drink problem which had been solved by divorcing his wife. These days he looked a happy and confident man, particularly in the rather snazzy navy suit he was wearing with a varsity tie of maroon and pale blue. At least she hoped it was a varsity tie and not the colours of Aston Villa. She smothered a smile. She wouldn’t put it past Sullivan to turn up to an inquest in a tie bearing the colours of his favourite football team.

  She continued looking around the room, happy to observe everyone before she opened the inquest. Alex Randall was also smart in a grey ‘court’ suit. Policemen always dressed up for an inquest, unless they wore uniform. She felt DI Randall’s gaze on her and gave him a shallow smile.

  A grin would be out of place.

  Her glance drifted across to Pat Walsh in tight jeans and her customary sour expression and Sofia at her side, unable to supress the excitement she was obviously experiencing at being the focus of attention. Martha had seen her being interviewed by a reporter before she’d entered the court, and it had looked business-like: Sofia, hand on plump hips, had been frowning and shaking her head, while the reporter had appeared persistent. In anticipation of the inquest and her role as victim’s sister Sofia had had her hair professionally streaked and her long, red fingernails sparkled with crystals, indicating the attentions of a professional manicurist. Martha stifled a cynical smile. To Tracy’s mother and sister this was simply a day out with maybe a cash bonus at the end. There was no hint of either grief for Tracy’s untimely death or concern for the fate of the little girl, their niece and granddaughter. As she met the younger woman’s eyes Sofia gave a cud-like chew of her gum and a bovine smile.

  Observing Tracy’s relatives, Martha wondered what the dead girl had really been like. This was the trouble with her job: she never met the people whose fates she became bound up with. She heard about them, sometimes from people choked with love, at other times their opinions skewed by jealousy, simple dislike or even guilt, but to her the subjects of her inquests always remained shadowy strangers; people never met, only peeped at through a gauze curtain which shifted in the wind, depending on who was speaking. So she could only ever speculate as to their true character. She never, ever caught the flavour of the real person however many eloquent eulogies were made. Before opening the inquest she trawled through what she knew about the dead woman. From the descriptions and photographs Tracy had been slimmer and prettier than her sister. But had she been cast out of the same miserable mould as her mother and sister? She would never know, and so she turned her gaze back on Sofia, who gave her another long, slow, insolent chew before turning to speak to her mother. Pat scrutinized Martha from across the room, displaying s
tained teeth and the fidgety fingers of a smoker who is planning her next cigarette.

  In the front row a portly young man in an ill-fitting suit was frowning and nibbling his nails. He was hyperventilating with great scoops of breaths and he looked pale and uneasy. Uneasy, Martha wondered, or was there an element of guilt? She recognized Neil Mansfield, whom she had only spoken to on the telephone, from his picture in the newspaper. He was clearly avoiding meeting the glances of Tracy’s relatives.

  Martha cleared her throat.

  Time to open the inquest.

  She gave her customary speech about the formalities to be observed, made a passing reference to the child who was still missing, using the platform to appeal for anyone who thought they might be able to help to speak to the police. Then she outlined the procedure and function of the inquest – to ascertain who had died, when they had died, where they had died and how they had met their death. She described the circumstances of the crash without dwelling on the alcohol-fuelled row which had provoked the evening’s events and began with Neil Mansfield, who took the witness stand nervously, by asking him to describe the events of the night of Saturday, 6 and early morning Sunday, 7 April. After a lot of clearing his throat Mansfield made a good witness, surprisingly unemotional now, having conquered his nervousness, but Martha noticed he continued to avoid meeting Tracy’s mother or sister’s glances. It was obvious there was no love lost between them. His face was very pale but he appeared resolute. Now he was factual, growing in confidence, giving his evidence in a firm, clear voice and responding to her request that he run through the events of that night in chronological order, answering the questions she put to him with impressive clarity considering what must at best have been a rather fuzzy memory.