DEADLY DECEPTIONS

by Bill WENHAM

  They kept it there awaiting the follow up from the senior policeman from Cambridge, who had arrived, with an assistant, and accompanied by Constable Fordham, at the duck pond at a few minutes past noon. He was Detective Inspector Paul Middleton, a bluff and cheerful looking dark haired man in his mid fifties, who had the most kind and innocent looking baby blue eyes. Eyes that suggested that he would believe just about anything he was told by anyone. It was also those eyes that had fooled many a criminal into making a serious judgmental error in a case, followed by years in prison.

  Middleton stood at about six feet and was broad shouldered. He was an inch or so taller than his assistant, a Detective Sergeant Sally Bristow. Bristow was about twenty five, with dark blonde hair. She was attractive, very trim and unmarried.

  Middleton took one look at the body, checked with Doc Brewer, read the brief statements of the two boys that Fordham handed to him and beckoned the convent’s van driver over. Barnett had already explained the convent’s role in the area to him.

  Middleton asked the driver to transport the body temporarily to the convent. It would be picked up by ambulance later in the day and transported over to Cambridge, about fifteen miles away, where an autopsy would be performed as soon as possible, to determine the cause of the poor woman’s horrendous wounds. It was obvious that the wounds had been almost immediately fatal but the autopsy could perhaps determine what had caused them.

  Middleton turned to Barnett and said, “Do you know who she is yet?”

  Barnett nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s Amy Warren, one of our school teachers. A very nice young woman and for the life of me, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do a thing like that to her?”

  “Was she involved with anyone locally that you are aware of?” Middleton asked.

  Barnett shook his head.

  “None that I know of,” he said.

  She hadn’t been reported missing for a very obvious reason. Today was Saturday and there was no school. That’s why the boys had been fishing. She also lived alone in one of the smaller cottages in Cox’s Lane on the outskirts of Great Carrington.

  Amy rode her bike to the school and back every day, rain or shine, and directed the kids in the Christmas Nativity play each year for the Harrimans. As Sergeant Barnett had said, as far as anyone knew, and everyone knew everything in such a small community, Amy had not been seeing anyone in either of the villages.

  She had been just a nice, friendly, pretty and unassuming young woman who wouldn’t even hurt a fly – or would she?

  Doc Brewer said that in his opinion, she had only been in the water for less than twelve hours, and had most probably been dropped into the pond in the early hours of the morning. He added that he guessed that she hadn’t drowned in the pond since she was probably already dead when she had entered the water.

  It would appear that her body had possibly been weighted down with something quite heavy that was now resting in the mud at the bottom of the pond. Normally, the body would float.

  It would have been attached to her waist by a length of red ribbon. The ribbon had possibly been loosened by the boy pulling on his line, releasing the weight, what ever it was. It had probably even been attached hastily as an afterthought. The ribbon itself had remained tied around her waist.

  Doc Brewer and the sergeant speculated that the body had drifted in amongst the rushes when it had been snagged by the boy’s fish hook. Middleton agreed and left with Det. Sgt. Bristow for Cambridge. He said he would attend the autopsy and return the following day to investigate what was quite obviously a vicious and gruesome murder. He added that he would have a diver sent over from Cambridge to search the pond bottom for a weight and perhaps the murder weapon.

  Barnett had told Middleton that he would make arrangements for a temporary situation room to be set up in one of the back rooms of the village hall. He also had pointed out that their own tiny police station just didn’t have the space to lay out a murder investigation properly.

  He also told Middleton that he would advise, Sir Alfred Allenby, the local magistrate and Lord of the Manor, that a murder had just been committed in the Carrington parish. He would also be advised who the victim was.

  When Barnett called, Sir Alfred asked to be kept advised of the progress of the investigation but not the details of it. After he had hung up the phone, he sat at his desk looking thoughtful and then said aloud, although there was no one with him to hear it, “Now that’s really going to set the cat amongst the pigeons, isn’t it?”

  Then he lit his pipe and sat for several more minutes wondering what exactly he should do now? Nothing like this had ever happened before in all the years he had been Lord of the Manor.

  By the time Middleton and Bristow arrived back on the following day, the situation room had already been set up in the village hall. Barnett was already there and introduced them to Joe Turner, the Hall’s volunteer caretaker and Friday night Bingo caller.

  Turner was a short, bald, pleasant looking, but heavy set and meddlesome old man in his mid seventies. He had set up the room for them and obviously expected to stay and help with the investigation. Middleton thanked him and when Joe didn’t seem inclined to leave, Sally Bristow took him firmly by the elbow and eased him out of the room. Then she closed and locked the door.

  Joe heard the key turn in the lock and glared angrily at the closed door.

  “Of all the bloody cheek,” he muttered. “You’d think they owned the bleeding place. Bloody coppers!”

  He turned and stomped out of the hall and across to the Inn. Joe was unaware that Barnett had already advised Middleton of the fact that old Joe was the main source of most of the juicy gossip in the two villages and the surrounding area.

  Middleton smiled at the locked door and at Bristow.

  Later he would apologize to Turner. For now the old man would have to keep his distance and the room would remain locked. He would take the key to the room with him when he left. He also realized that the old caretaker would probably be his best source of local information, apart from Sgt. Barnett, of course.

  Barnett had already advised him of the upheaval caused by the arrival in the village of the blonde beauty, Ella Thomas. He thought that it probably had no bearing on the case but he told Middleton that she had unknowingly, or perhaps deliberately, caused a hell of a lot of anger and animosity already within the community.

  Middleton raised his eyebrows.

  “She sounds quite intriguing, Sergeant. I look forward to meeting her,” he said, smiling, and with a far away look in those guileless blue eyes of his. Sally Bristow was neither fooled by his smile nor his innocent looking blue eyes. She had seen Middleton at work too many times before for that. She already knew what others had yet to learn. She had also been present at the autopsy.

  Barnett had been amazed at the identity of the murder victim when Doc Brewer had turned the body over. In fact, as they had pulled the body from the water and he had realized it was a woman, he had immediately assumed that it would be Ella Thomas.

  He had been astounded to find himself looking down at the dead body of Amy Warren, the schoolteacher, of all people, instead. Had she perhaps done or seen something she shouldn’t have?

  But dead men - or women, tell no tales, do they?

  A figure stood in the shadows just beyond an upstairs bedroom window in one of the cottages. This person was focusing a pair of powerful military binoculars on the door of Little Carrington’s village hall.

  As the binoculars image focused and sharpened, the watcher gave a self satisfied smile. Sergeant Barnett and the two members of the investigating Cambridge police were just exiting through the open door. They closed and locked it.

  If the authorities had the entire British Isles to search for a site as a threat to National Security, where would be the very last place they would ever think of looking? Quiet, picturesque Little Carrington would have to be that place, the very last place that anyone would ever be suspicious of
.

  In fact, one local teenager, whilst on a trip to London with a group, was asked where they were from. Without a moment’s hesitation, the teenager said, “We come from the junction of where the world ends and the beginning of nowhere starts. It’s an absolutely useless place where nothing at all ever happens. People live and die there without ever experiencing anything. That’s why I’m here in London!”

  It was a pretty fair and apt description of Little Carrington at the time, but the teenager was an adult now. Local events were about to prove the kid had been very wrong about Little Carrington and its lack of activity. Now grown up, the teenager had a very different view of Little Carrington’s activities nowadays and was part of the change.

  To add fuel to the flames of what was now going on in the village, old Joe Turner, had, in his self appointed role of gossipmonger, told everyone within earshot, of what was going on in the back room of the village hall.

  Not surprisingly then, two days later, the lock on the front door of the village hall was forced and the police ‘situation room’ was broken into as well.

  The watcher with the binoculars was very gratified with what had been learned from the police notes taped to the wall of the village hall’s back room. The investigation was going exactly as planned by the watcher.

  When the body of Amy Warren was discovered, it was obvious that the police would attempt to uncover the murder weapon and also try to establish a motive. The weapon would be easily found, if they looked thoroughly and in the right place, but when it was, it would send the police investigators off on a completely wild goose chase, just as it was intended to do.

  And as for their attempt to establish a motive? That would extremely difficult for them to discover as well – because there wasn’t one! Amy Warren was merely the sacrificial lamb, a distraction to prevent the Cambridge police from discovering what was really going on in the community.

  So, why Amy? And why now?

  Amy’s demise was a classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was observed listening to a conversation by someone who realized that she could not be allowed to repeat it.

  She had pleaded desperately for her life when she was confronted, saying that she would never tell a soul what it was that she’d heard – and that was perfectly true, because she couldn’t, not now anyway.

  As was expected and intended, on the second day of his underwater search, the police diver found the murder weapon. It was sticking up for half its length out of the mud of the pond bottom.

  The diver brought up an old fashioned cast iron boot scraper, the kind used by farmers to remove the bulk of the muck from their boots before entering their homes. It was found to match the injuries to Amy Warren’s head.

  Since such a variety of junk, like old bikes, car tires and even bed springs tended to be dumped surreptitiously into the pond, and also since the weapon had been found, any further search of the pond was abandoned. The police had the body, the time and place of death and now the murder weapon. What more did they need from the pond? There was no point looking for anything else in it, they thought.

  Usually, the Fishing Club dragged the pond annually and thoroughly to remove such items that could possibly snag their hooks, but they always waited until after the fish spawning and duck nesting was over. The Club still wasn’t fishing it yet anyway and at this time of year it was a lot too early for their cleanup.

  The murderer was very pleased to know that as well!

  Upon graduation as a physician and surgeon, Doc brewer’s parents had proudly presented their new doctor son with a black medical bag containing a complete set of the more commonly used surgical instruments, stethoscope and scalpels and so on. Each of them was engraved with Doc Brewer’s initials – A.B.

  He had come to Carrington parish at the suggestion of Elaine Tye, a long time friend who was the parish’s dentist. She lived alone in a cottage in Great Carrington but had her office in one of the larger Victorian buildings. Up until now, she had shared the downstairs floor with Dr. Westall, who also had his surgery there and had rented the upstairs floor as an apartment where he had lived.

  Elaine had been left the building by an old uncle who had been the previous dentist in the community and it was the reason that she had come to Carrington in the first place. Now, with Dr. Westall gone, she had an empty surgery and an apartment to rent. She immediately thought of Doc Brewer.

  He came up to take a look at it and, even though Little Carrington wasn’t exactly the place he had envisioned to have his practice, to be one of a kind certainly had its advantages. He was young and he could always move on to bigger and better things later.

  They were good friends but were not romantically involved since each of them had their own partners elsewhere and neither of them was in Carrington parish.

  Allen Brewer gladly accepted Elaine’s offer and had been a resident of the parish for five years now. The community still lacked a veterinary surgeon, with the closest one over in Steeple Morden.

  Because he lived alone and above his surgery, Doc Brewer tried hard to emulate the old time doctors, those who made house calls. He would also handle minor medical emergencies after his normal surgery hours.

  Such was the case when his surgery doorbell rang late one evening and his visitor stood on the front step holding a small face towel around his left hand. It was soaked with blood.

  “Oh, boy, what have you done to yourself? Come on in and let me take a look at it.” Doc Brewer said and led the way into his surgery.

  “I slipped and cut it on a piece of broken bottle. It’s rather deep and I hoped you could stitch it up for me,” the man said.

  Doc Brewer sat him down and placed his hand on a small swivel stainless steel examination table. Then he removed the bloodied towel from the wound and examined it.

  “I’m going to give you a shot of anesthetic because I have to be sure there is no glass left in there before I stitch it,” the doctor said. “I may have to dig around a bit.” He busied himself with the procedure as his patient gazed around the surgery. It was the first time he’d had cause to be in it.

  After a few minutes, Doc said, “Well, there you go. Almost like new again. Come back in ten days and I’ll remove the stitches for you.”

  Then, as he was about to stand up, Doc looked at his patient curiously.

  “Aren’t you Mr….” he started to say but his patient interrupted him with, “Yes, I am, and I thank you very much for looking after this for me.”

  “You fell, you said?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Well, sir, I think I’d better check you over a bit more then. A hard fall at your age could have very serious consequences for you, you know.”

  His patient shrugged.

  The doctor frowned as he began to check him over and the man quickly noticed it.

  “Something wrong, doctor?” he asked.

  “No, no, not at all - quite the opposite, in fact. You seem to be remarkably healthy. A slight heart murmur, perhaps, but that’s all. The trouble is, I’ve seen you around the village and I’m puzzled as to why you would always walk with an unnecessary stoop and a limp?”

  The man thought quickly.

  “Some days are just better than others,” he said. “This is one of my better ones.”

  “Even after such a heavy fall and a badly cut hand, sir? That really surprises me. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that you were up to something rather nefarious,” Doc Brewer said and turned away to remove his surgical gloves.

  As soon as he heard those words, the man decided right there and then that the good doctor should join his other victim.

  During his gazing around the surgery, the man had noticed a scalpel that the doctor had also placed on the table. He picked it up now in his right hand and stood up behind the doctor. The patient was a good three inches taller than him.

  The man reached up over the doctor’s head with now his bandaged left hand, grasped the hair over his foreh
ead and slashed the scalpel over the doctor’s throat. Doc Brewer made a gurgling sound and crashed to the floor, spurting blood from his carotid artery.

  The man stepped back, took a deep breath and considered what to do next. First, he had to remove all traces of him having been there. He pulled a plastic waste bag from a container and gathered up all of the evidence of his minor operation, including the bloodied towel, swabs, the stitching needle and the syringe used to inject the anesthetic. He also put the scalpel into the same bag. There must be no traces of his DNA left anywhere. The man had to be careful where he stepped as well because the doctor’s blood was now pooling on the floor tiles around his head.

  In the light from the overhead fluorescent lights, he noticed several large spots of the doctor’s blood on the front of his own jacket. When he got back to his home he would burn everything he’d worn tonight in the kitchen woodstove.

  As far as fingerprints were concerned, he realized that, even after extensive cleaning, other patient’s prints would remain here and he wasn’t even on the doctor’s books as one of them. When he was satisfied that he had done all he could to remove any traces of his being there, he pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and left the surgery. As he exited the front door and closed it, he deliberately rubbed his gloved finger over the surgery bell push to smear his initial forefinger print when he’d first arrived.

  The next morning, Doc Brewer’s body was found, in a pool of congealed blood on the floor of his surgery when Elaine showed up to start her day.

  Middleton was now faced with yet another dilemma. Why would anyone kill Dr. Brewer? None of it was making any sense. There was apparently no connection at all between the two victims. But had Brewer seen or heard something he shouldn’t have? There was no way of knowing. Whatever the victims had possibly seen or heard had died with them. Or perhaps the cause of their deaths could be something else entirely.

  That was what he had to find out.