Untimely Graves

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘What happened? Oh, well, a lot of Mrs Osborne’s furniture had been taken upstairs when it looked as though the ground floor might be flooded. After we’d finished cleaning up, Sue – she was sort of in charge – suggested we move some of it back downstairs. Tone went upstairs to have a look around and when we went up, he’d already moved this chest of drawers to the top of the stairs – but I could see it wasn’t going to be easy getting it down. They’re narrow and steep and there’s a bend in the middle. I thought it would be easier if we took the drawers out, make it lighter, and I started to pull the top one out. I know I should have asked first, but I did it without thinking. Anyhow, Mrs Osborne was there in a flash, covering up what was in it. Her daughter arrived just then and she said never mind moving the furniture down, just to leave it.’

  ‘Did you mention what you’d seen in the drawer to the other two?’

  ‘No. I didn’t think it was any of their business – mine either, come to that. I didn’t tell anybody, except Dad, later.’

  ‘You say Tony was upstairs alone, before you and the other girl went up?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I see. It’s because of Tone you’re asking me all this, aren’t you?’

  Her chin rose challengingly but he only said, mildly, ‘Maybe he opened the drawer before you came upstairs, for the same reason as you did, and saw the gun.’

  ‘If he did, he left it there, didn’t he? Otherwise I shouldn’t have seen it. But why are you suspecting him? All because of what he did two years ago? This isn’t the same thing at all! He wouldn’t go around killing anyone!’

  ‘Maybe he wouldn’t, Cleo, and if it’s of any interest to you, we’ve now let both of them go.’

  ‘Both?’

  ‘Tony and his brother, Dave. We brought Dave in, too, because he’s been going around quite recently shooting off his mouth about Wetherby. In fact, he’s never stopped making threats against him ever since Tony got himself into trouble. Which, if you know anything about it, involved both brothers.’

  ‘Yes, I do know, Dad told me. Dave was caught breaking into the safe in the Bursar’s office, and Wetherby went around saying Tony had given him the lowdown on how to get in. So in retaliation Tony took Wetherby’s car, just to cause him some hassle and – and unfortunately crashed it.’

  ‘Very unfortunately,’ Mayo said. ‘Especially for Tony.’

  ‘Well, so it was. I wouldn’t like to think I had to live with those scars for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Nor I,’ he said. Nor I, Cleo. ‘And Dave, at least, has never forgiven Wetherby. Sworn he’ll get him, one day, for that – and for landing him in prison. Logic isn’t what Dave Gilchrist and his ilk are renowned for.’

  ‘Dave may be like that, but Tone isn’t. And he would never have shot Wetherby, the one thing he wants to do is put that incident out of his life. You might as well suspect me.’

  ‘But supposing he’d mentioned to Dave that he knew where there was a gun?’

  ‘Always supposing he saw the gun at all.’

  ‘As you say, always supposing he did. It does seem unlikely, I admit, and we didn’t find any reason to keep him. Or his brother … for now, but Dave’ll be back with us sooner or later, on some other charge, or I’m a monkey’s uncle.’ He kept his tone light, not wanting to ruffle her further. ‘Right now, it’s Angela Hunnicliffe who’s interesting me, that’s principally why I came here tonight. Er – if I can change my mind, I will have that coffee you offered me, after all.’

  ‘Yes, fine, it won’t take a sec.’ She stood up. ‘But I’m afraid you’ll be wasting your time. I never even met Angela.’

  ‘I know you didn’t, but I had the thought,’ he said, for some reason not feeling foolish in admitting it, ‘that some fresh idea might come to me, that I might pick up something if I saw where she’d lived. Find some reason why she should have been out there at Kyneford, the night before she was due to return home. You haven’t by any chance come across anything at all she might have left behind? Things you mightn’t have thought important? Scribbled telephone numbers, things like that?’

  ‘There wasn’t a thing. The place was clean as a whistle, everything just as it had been left. Mum had been through the inventory with her, you know, a couple of days before, and everything was in order. Oh – hang on!’

  ‘There was something?’

  ‘Ye-es. Something I seem to have a mental block about. I keep remembering it and then forgetting it again, though I don’t suppose it’s important. Have you ever heard of Clarice Cliff?’

  It hadn’t surprised anyone when John Riach categorically denied that his car had ever been in the vicinity of Covert Farm. It was what suspects routinely did when confronted with evidence of their misdemeanours, after all.

  ‘There must be some mistake,’ he’d said dismissively.

  ‘Mr Riach, the Police National Computer doesn’t make mistakes,’ Abigail told him. Not when it had been double-checked against input from the DVLC at Swansea.

  ‘I’ll have to take your word for it. But if that’s so, this person

  – whoever it may be, the person who thinks they saw my numberplate – must have made one. Perhaps they got the combination of numbers they actually did see into the wrong order so that this computer came up with mine.’

  A blue Fiat, the same letters and numbers, referring to the vehicle of someone who was a suspect in the investigation …? That level of coincidence was too great for either Abigail or Mayo to swallow, or even for Riach, they could see, but Riach nevertheless stubbornly stuck to his story, swearing that he had never in his life been anywhere near Covert Farm or Wych Cottage. He had never heard of either of the Bysouth brothers, nor of Mrs Osborne. He could, moreover, prove that he had been pursuing his lawful employment at the school at that particular time all that week, and could produce witnesses to support it.

  ‘Let’s move on to something else, then,’ Mayo said. ‘Your alibi for the day Wetherby was killed.’

  ‘Alibi? I thought that was something only needed as a defence against an accusation.’

  ‘I’m using the word loosely. No one’s accused you yet,’ said Mayo, in a way that Abigail could see him thinking: this joker’s getting too clever for his own comfort, time we took the spring out of him. ‘Perhaps you’d prefer excuse?’

  She knew now who Riach reminded her of, when he did that offended, haughty, pinched-nostril routine: Kenneth Williams in a snit. To the life, really, but she didn’t laugh: the image reduced him to someone playing a part, covering up the real truth.

  She could never quite decide how far it was ethical to use her femininity, in any circumstances, in order to manipulate, but she had no qualms about using it now. She smiled at Riach and managed to get a faint smile back. ‘Would you mind if we went over your statement again? It would help me to get it absolutely clear in my mind.’ As if she were the token woman on the team, there for form’s sake, not her ability. Riach wasn’t going to be fooled by this sort of behaviour, as no one would with half an eye, nor by her dazzling smile, which she could always use to good effect when she wanted to, but it was disarming. In the face of it, few could keep up the sort of aggressive defensiveness Riach had been showing. He wasn’t going to collapse and give anything away, but his tight face relaxed somewhat and he allowed her to take him through his original statement with a reasonable show of good grace.

  Yes, he had gone to Wetherby’s house for the papers Wetherby had forgotten. He had told his wife to expect Riach and she’d unlocked the private gate ready for his arrival. He explained impatiently what he’d told them in the original statement: there were only two entrances into the school grounds, the main entrance, and a gate in the chain-link boundary fence at the end of the playing fields which opened on to a narrow pathway between two houses at the top of Vanson Hill. These two houses had originally been purchased for masters at the school, for the convenience of whom the gate had presumably been let into the fence. The gate was kept locked, and the Wetherbys now ha
d the only key, the neighbouring house having been sold when the master who lived in it moved to take an appointment at another school, and the school having decided that a policy of tied accommodation was retrograde and uneconomical.

  He’d arrived just after twelve, had a sandwich and a glass of wine with Mrs Wetherby, and had left just before half-past. ‘She was expecting one of the High School girls – Rosie Somethingor-other – for a costume fitting for the school play, at twelve thirty, so I made myself scarce.’

  Confident now that his next movements could be supported, he told them that it had taken but a few minutes to walk back to the school, where he had joined Geoffrey Conyngham, the school Secretary, for coffee, over which they’d discussed certain matters relating to school administration. It was about quarter to two when he returned to his own office, where the elderly, retired master who looked after the school stationery supplies was waiting to see him. They had still been talking when the news of Wetherby’s death had been brought to them. ‘So there you are,’ he said, confident now in the knowledge that what he had just told them could be supported. ‘Nothing I haven’t told you before.’

  ‘Statements always bear repeating, just in case something’s been forgotten,’ Abigail said easily. ‘You get on well with women, Mr Riach, don’t you?’

  ‘Not particularly.’ Realising how this might be interpreted, he added, flushing, ‘What I mean is, I get on well enough with them, in a civilised, normal manner. Unlike the late Mr Wetherby.’

  ‘No, of course not, but you seem very friendly with Mrs Wetherby.’ Even to the extent of playing errand boy for his hated superior, she thought. ‘Sandwiches, wine …’

  ‘She’s a nice woman. It’s the sort of thing she does.’

  ‘How did you get on with Angela Hunnicliffe?’

  ‘I scarcely knew her. Met her at school functions, when I must say I found her singularly unattractive. How Wetherby could have preferred her to Hannah totally escapes me – but I don’t think I ever exchanged more than two words with her.’

  All the same, her name had made him twitchy again. He didn’t like talking about Angela Hunnicliffe, not at all.

  ‘You’re thinking what I’m thinking,’ Mayo said after he’d let him go.

  ‘That it was certainly Riach’s car, but that doesn’t mean it was Riach who was driving it? He could have lent it to Angela.’

  ‘Or she could have taken it without him knowing. Find out where he keeps it.’

  It was true that two witnesses had thought the driver of the Fiat had been a woman, but anyone seeing Riach’s slight figure through the window might have mistaken him for a short-haired woman.

  ‘Supposing it was Angela? What was she doing there, at Kyneford? And why borrow Riach’s car? As far as we know, she still had her own.’

  ‘We don’t know that she had.’ There had been no record of it being taken back to Automart for resale. Nor of it having been disposed of elsewhere, at least legally. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Centre at Swansea had reported no change in the registered owner.

  ‘Maybe she didn’t want it recognised.’

  However it was viewed, Riach’s entry into the equation didn’t make much sense. But enquiries were still going on, reports piling up. They were still interviewing at the school, though they hadn’t yet reached the point where they needed to interview every boy; there were plenty of others who had not yet, for one reason and another, been seen.

  Thinking of that, Abigail said, ‘An interesting point’s emerged about Riach. The lads have been keeping their ears open at the school while they’ve been interviewing folk, and word’s going round that he hasn’t yet got Wetherby’s job.’

  ‘I guessed as much.’

  ‘It’s not cut and dried, anyway. It’s going to be advertised nationally and Riach will have to apply with the rest. He’s saying that’s a fair way to deal with it, but everyone who knows him believes he’s seething that he didn’t automatically come in for it. Apparently, it’s not the first time it’s happened to him – Riach was assistant to the previous Bursar and when he retired, the same thing occurred. And Wetherby pipped him at the post.’

  ‘So if killing him was a way of stepping automatically into his shoes, he made a big mistake. But I still can’t see him putting himself at risk, even for that. He’s too careful for that.’

  ‘Yes, his alibi’s watertight enough, but he left Hannah Wetherby at half-past twelve. How long did this girl, Rosie, stay with her for this fitting? Could it have taken an hour and a half? Has anybody checked that?’

  ‘Scotty.’

  They exchanged wry looks.

  ‘So I’d better send Jenny over to talk to her before we see Hannah again, hadn’t I?’

  ‘Do that – and have a word with Vernon about that candlestick, will you?’

  19

  ‘How much did you say?’

  ‘If it had been genuine, Vernon says around £3,000.’

  Mayo and his inspector stared uncomprehendingly at the garish object sitting on top of the filing cabinet, the safest place in the office, just in case Vernon had been wrong and the candlestick wasn’t a copy, after all. Marvelling that a mere piece of household pottery, even if it was the real McCoy, could be worth that much. But Vernon Walcott, a knowledgeable auctioneer and valuer with fifty years in the trade, who ran the local fortnightly auction mart, was unlikely to have made a mistake. When Abigail had showed it to him, and he’d finished laughing, he said there was no way anyone he knew could have been fooled into thinking this was authentic. He showed her a teapot that was, and invited her to make a comparison and form her own judgement, but she couldn’t for the life of her see the difference.

  ‘Three thousand? For this?’

  Vernon laughed cynically. ‘It doesn’t have to be beautiful. Just collectable. And that’s nothing. I sold a Clarice Cliff vase a few months ago for nearly ten thousand.’

  ‘Do you know Iris Osborne?’ she’d asked.

  ‘Good heavens, yes, known her for years! Everybody in antiques around here knows her – and takes cover when she enters the lists! She terrifies me,’ said Vernon, whose unruffled urbanity had never been disturbed by anyone or anything. ‘She certainly wouldn’t have made a mistake over this, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘But would she buy it – would she buy a genuine one, I mean? It doesn’t seem like something she’d bother with – the sort of stuff she likes to specialise in.’

  Vernon Walcott’s eyebrows rose cynically. ‘It’s not a case of liking, m’dear. No antique dealer worth their salt, certainly none I’ve ever met, and that includes Iris, would pass up anything if they saw the chance to make a bob or two on it. She didn’t have to keep it, it’s just a matter of finding a customer for it.’

  ‘Have you come across an American woman called Angela Hunnicliffe, who’s been collecting antiques for the last year?’

  ‘Let’s see … no, I don’t think … Just a moment – American? Tall blonde? Yes, I do know her, vaguely. She comes along to the Saturday auction every couple of weeks, and she usually buys something. Small things, easily portable, things she can take back to the US, she says.’

  ‘That’s her. Would she have known Iris?’

  ‘I don’t know that she doesn’t. Iris is often around the saleroom. The American lady could have bought one or two things from her, I suppose.’

  ‘She won’t be buying any more.’

  ‘Gone back home, has she?’

  No, Abigail told him, she had been identified as the woman who’d been shot and then found in the Kyne.

  ‘My God!’ Even Vernon’s famous coolth was shaken.

  ‘She wouldn’t have bought this candlestick here?’

  ‘Here? Try the market,’ said Vernon Walcott. ‘We deal with antiques, not junk.’

  Mayo thought about that. About the clocks and clock parts he’d picked up in junk shops and on market stalls all over the place. One man’s rubbish was indeed another man’s treasure. He wouldn
’t have given tuppence for a piece looking like that candlestick up there, and wondered who might, but fashions came and went in antiques as in anything else. And if it were, as Walcott had suggested, worth something, it might, it just might, provide the missing link between Angela Hunnicliffe and the place where her body was found – in other words, a place very near Iris Osborne’s cottage.

  ‘Mrs Osborne?’ Abigail repeated. ‘Mrs Osborne? Shooting Angela, then a week later going out and shooting Wetherby?’ For all the jokes about Iris being trigger-happy, for all her reputed hard-headedness, she couldn’t see the old lady deliberately and cold-bloodedly committing murder. ‘She must be knocking eighty!’

  Mayo gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Never known such a thing happen?’

  ‘With respect, you haven’t met her.’ But the objections were only token. It was being naive in the extreme to believe that you couldn’t tell a murderer by their age, their face, the way they spoke, or how they lived their lives. Like Mayo, she’d known frankness, innocence and charm to conceal the vilest of human deeds. And she hadn’t yet forgotten the look Iris Osborne had given her when she’d asked about a replica gun. She also remembered two pairs of small-sized gumboots, and one larger, in Mrs Osborne’s porch – and that the body hadn’t been shod when found.

  ‘Then perhaps it’s time I did meet her,’ Mayo said.

  ‘But why? I mean, why would she do such a thing?’

  ‘Emotions run high when money’s involved. Supposing Angela stumbled across some extremely valuable antique that she tried to sell to Iris – no, not that candlestick! – something really valuable. Say Iris wouldn’t offer her enough for it and they quarrelled about it, culminating in Angela being shot? And supposing Wetherby knew Angela had gone to offer this antique to Iris? When she disappeared, and a woman turned up dead in the vicinity, he would immediately have been suspicious. Perhaps Iris silenced him for that reason.’

  ‘It’s a theory.’ Abigail did not look convinced.

  ‘Actually, more of a guess. But guessing’s a step up from nothing, and isn’t that where we start from every time – what if this, what if that?’