Folly

by Stella Cameron

  ‘Why aren’t those darts kept locked away?’ O’Reilly continued, ignoring her comments and repeating his earlier remark while the detective sergeant made notes. ‘Or are they normally?’

  ‘Never,’ Alex told him. ‘The cupboard is high on the wall and children don’t come in the bar alone anyway. With the scoreboard over it, most people wouldn’t know there was a cupboard.’ Chalked-up scores remained on the blackboard from a recent match. ‘The darts we keep here are for anyone who wants a casual game. Serious players bring their own sets. Do you know if it was one of our darts—?’

  O’Reilly cut her off. ‘The Black Dog has a darts team, does it?’

  ‘Runner-up league champions,’ Alex said. ‘We’re proud of them.’

  ‘We’ll have a list of their names later, right?’ O’Reilly said. His Irish accent was pleasing in a low, quite soft voice. He had dark, thoughtful eyes and the hands he rested on the table were long-fingered and expressive. Alex realized he was the kind of man who inspired trust.

  ‘Would you go through the details of what happened this morning, please?’ This was the detective sergeant. ‘Would you start with leaving home?’

  ‘I didn’t find him till I’d already walked through the woods and turned back again.’

  ‘Sometimes it helps to start at the beginning and see if everything is exactly as you think you remember it. Little details can pop up. You live where?’ He sounded unthreatening.

  ‘Lime Tree Lodge. In the Dimple. That’s what we’ve always called it around here. Right on the other side of the big hill, like a shallow oval valley. I do have a room here, of course. Just in case.’

  Alex heard her voice chattering about stuff no one wanted to know and cleared her throat. Composing herself, she rubbed the space between her eyebrows.

  Lamb wrote as if he were taking lecture notes and falling behind. ‘Why did you decide to walk this morning?’ he asked without looking at her. The top of his head showed off straight, thick sandy hair that was short enough to stand up all over – but tidily. ‘Miss Bailey-Jones?’ he prompted.

  ‘Ms,’ she corrected him automatically. ‘I walk as many mornings as I can – most mornings.’

  ‘Even in the snow?’ Blue eyes, oddly innocent, suggested she couldn’t expect him to believe her.

  Flustered, Alex said, ‘The snow had almost stopped. I wished it hadn’t. I love walking in a snowfall. Let me get you both something to drink.’

  ‘We’re on duty,’ Lamb said promptly.

  ‘I meant coffee,’ Alex said, and felt a bit smug.

  Both men shook their heads, no, and muttered thanks.

  ‘You own this place?’ O’Reilly asked. He dug a crumpled white paper bag from his jacket pocket. It was obviously lumpy with the sweets inside.

  ‘I’ve already said I do.’

  The man smiled slightly. A good face, lived-in in a nice way with laugh lines among signs of a lot of frowning. A crooked scar on his jaw didn’t look very old. He offered the bag to Alex and the sergeant. When they both refused he fumbled inside, dislodged a sticky, yellow sherbet lemon and held it between his fingers.

  ‘So you left Lime Tree Lodge at what time?’ he asked.

  ‘Just before seven. We usually open at ten but people were waiting outside today so we let them in early. Will and Cathy Cummings manage the place well – they live in – but there’s a lot to do before we open and I like to be here. It’s not that they need me, but I’m hands-on. I don’t stay late.’

  Both men stared at her until she began to think she’d said more than necessary again.

  ‘Is there a Mr Bailey-Jones?’ Lamb asked.

  Thinking about Mike still brought back the sadness. ‘We’re divorced.’

  ‘I see,’ Lamb said. ‘Do you always go through the woods? Seems a pretty lonely part of the route.’

  ‘The whole route is lonely. Quiet is a better word. This isn’t a bustling kind of place.’

  O’Reilly sucked the sherbet powder from the middle of his sweet and Alex’s mouth watered just imagining the tartness.

  ‘The Cummings live here?’ Lamb said.

  Alex hoped they wouldn’t want the same information twice on every topic. ‘They do.’

  Lamb made another note and underlined it twice.

  ‘You said you went back into the woods because you heard a dog howl.’

  ‘Yes.’ That had to be three or four times.

  ‘Not very cautious, are you?’ O’Reilly tucked what was left of the sherbet lemon into a cheek. He tended to stare rather than look at you, and the sensation unsettled Alex. ‘All alone up there with an animal who could have been dangerous and you trotted back to do … what?’

  A vague sickness started in the pit of her stomach. ‘I wanted to see if an animal was hurt and needed help.’

  ‘You said you saw the dog running around.’ Lamb and his boss traded off questions.

  ‘I said I thought I saw an animal move. But at first I wondered if it was a bird, even.’

  Lamb’s guileless eyes settled on her face. ‘But you talked about a dog howling. Why would you think it was a bird?’

  ‘I said,’ she told him slowly and clearly, ‘that I thought I saw something move and didn’t know what it was for sure. I carried on walking, heard a howl that sounded like a dog, started thinking about traps, and went back.’

  ‘Traps?’ Lamb appeared bemused.

  ‘In case there was another animal caught in a trap and the one I saw move was howling for help.’ And she was sinking into the weeds. ‘They’ll do that if they run together. Like packs – they look out for each other. Or for all I knew it could have been the one I saw that was caught … Oh, I don’t know. I did what I did. Some of us are more interested in animals than people on occasion. I love animals.’ She looked at her hands, then back at O’Reilly.

  He gave her a nice enough smile. ‘We’ll come back to that.’

  A third man came into the bar with a brown envelope in hand. ‘They’ve done the best they can with these,’ he said. ‘Better be a bit careful how you show them, though.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Thanks.’ O’Reilly took the envelope and slid out several photographs. He held them up so that she couldn’t see them and Lamb got up to look over his shoulder.

  ‘There’s a woman out there,’ the third man tilted his head, indicating the door leading into the pub. ‘She saw the envelope and asked if I had photos of the victim. I didn’t say one way or the other but she just about lost her wool, throwing her arms about and saying she needs to see whoever’s in charge – and the victim. That’s what she said – she wants to see the victim.’

  O’Reilly frowned. ‘We’ll have to ask you to wait in another room, Ms Bailey-Jones. Please don’t leave. Send the other one in, Madden.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Alex asked, unable to stop herself.

  Lamb muttered, ‘Doesn’t matter if she knows.’

  ‘Right you are,’ the man, Madden, said. ‘She says she’s one of the managers here. Cathy Cummings.’

  FOUR

  By six, with Cathy Cummings in bed and sedated by Dr James Harrison, Alex was more than grateful to see the evening staff arrive, and she sent Will off to be with his wife.

  She had no idea what had transpired between Cathy and O’Reilly but the result had left the woman sobbing in her husband’s arms.

  Lamb and O’Reilly spent a couple more hours questioning Alex then left, letting her know they’d be back when they needed to talk again.

  Once she could, Alex left the bar, still wishing she could ask why Cathy had wanted to see the dead man. So far she hadn’t worked out any way to get more information, but she would.

  ‘Are you staying with Lily tonight?’

  Alex jumped and turned sharply to see Tony Harrison, Bogie in his arms again, sitting on a wooden settle in the pub vestibule. She blinked, too tired and confused to say anything, but still glad to see a friendly face.

  Tony got up and smiled. He hadn’t changed a lot over the
years. His dark blond hair was still curly and a bit too long because he wasn’t the type to fuss, but perhaps the lines beside his mouth were deeper. She realized how much she needed familiar faces and old friends around her today.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not staying with Mum. Why would I?’

  He looked at his toes. ‘No reason. I heard you had some unexpected drama when the police were here. I’d have come earlier to see if I could do anything but my day’s been busy.’

  A couple from Underhill, Frank and Gladys Lymer, stomped into the foyer, both flapping their arms across their bodies. ‘All right, then?’ Frank said to Alex. ‘Cold enough to freeze a … damn cold,’ he finished.

  Gladys, bundled in a gray, fake fur coat, rolled her eyes and hustled her husband into the pub.

  ‘It’s nice of you to be concerned,’ Alex said to Tony, noticing for the first time that his own dog, a blonde border terrier called Katie, had squeezed herself under the settle and looked up at her boss with doleful brown eyes. Alex grinned. ‘Is Katie pouting? She’s not used to sharing you.’

  ‘Just tired like the rest of us,’ he said. ‘And a bit wary, too. That’s natural. When are you going home? You don’t have your Rover.’

  ‘No. I wasn’t thinking when …’ Funny, he must have checked the yard for her vehicle. ‘I’ll get a lift back from my mum.’

  ‘That’s why I came in. I can go anytime you’re ready. No need to put your mother out.’

  She started to refuse but stopped herself. Why sound silly and ungrateful with someone she’d known since she was a kid? Besides, he must have heard about Cathy’s meltdown from someone, likely his dad, who would probably know something about the reason.

  And it felt good to feel someone had actually thought about how she was doing.

  ‘Thank you. That’s so nice of you.’ And if she were a better person she’d be ashamed of planning to winkle information out of him. ‘I’ll get my things.’

  Tony had parked his own Land Rover in front and they walked out side by side with Katie between them.

  Katie climbed happily into one of the kennels in the back but Bogie started to whine pitiably when Tony went to put him into another one.

  ‘Let me hold him,’ Alex said. ‘He’ll probably like that better.’

  Tony opened the passenger door for her to get in and put Bogie on her lap. The dog huddled so close she had difficulty buckling her seatbelt.

  ‘I’m surprised he isn’t fighting to get away from us,’ Alex said when Tony sat beside her and started the engine. She rubbed the dog’s short, wiry curls and got a tentative lick on the back of her hand.

  ‘Animals aren’t so different from people. You never know how they’ll react to shock.’

  She looked at him and thought about Cathy Cummings.

  A new idea struck her. ‘Why didn’t the police want to examine Bogie? He might have had blood …’

  ‘He did. I saw to the examination myself – and took samples.’

  ‘But …’ But what? But wasn’t that weird when, for all the police knew, Tony Harrison could be a suspect? Instantly, her skin felt too small for her scalp.

  ‘But, what?’ He had driven on to the narrow road between cottages and the green and headed for the track that wound up into the hills. ‘I’ve done the same sort of thing before.’

  It was dark enough that although she could see the glitter of what snow was left on the green, the pond in the center was invisible. ‘What a nasty day this has been.’

  Tony grunted. ‘I don’t get the feeling the police are any further forward, do you?’ He looked at her. His face was angular and looked grim in the dashboard light.

  ‘No.’ In fact, she had no idea what they might have found out. ‘I don’t suppose they would tell us if they were.’ She was with an old friend. Why couldn’t she relax with him?

  ‘The dead man didn’t have a wallet or any identification on him.’

  ‘They told you that?’

  ‘No.’ He smiled at her and looked completely different, warmer, more like the boy she’d known. ‘I was there when they were checking.’

  ‘They asked if I knew him,’ Alex said, jolted as they turned uphill. ‘I didn’t get a good look at him really.’

  The dog trembled and she felt his wet nose on her neck. Automatically she rubbed her cheek on the top of his head.

  Tony seemed lost in thought.

  ‘Did they … was he turned over while you were there? Did you see his face?’

  ‘I saw a lot of blood, but yes. Whoever did the number with the dart wanted to be sure the victim didn’t rise up and walk again.’ Tony shook his head. ‘Stabbed the thing in and tore at the artery, I should think.’

  Alex shuddered. ‘I don’t think I want to know about that.’ She rubbed her fingers tightly together. ‘Could he have taken his own life?’

  ‘I said I didn’t know him but there’s something that keeps prodding at me.’ He registered what Alex had asked and puffed up his cheeks. ‘Damned if I know about suicide. Seems an extreme way to pull it off. But almost anything’s possible.’

  Tony slipped into a lower gear. The ground was icy and from the starless sky Alex thought they might have more snow before the night was out.

  She waited for him to continue.

  When he didn’t, she said, ‘What kind of something keeps prodding at you?’

  Again he fell silent and when she glanced at him, his eyes were narrowed, his features set in grim lines once more.

  ‘What, Tony?’ she pressed.

  ‘Nothing. I keep expecting to hear the police already know who he was.’

  But there had been something else, something significant, or he wouldn’t have mentioned it.

  ‘Stop.’ Alex said it sharply and without thinking. ‘Pull over and let’s talk this through.’

  ‘It’s slippery. Best to keep going.’

  ‘So you don’t know how to slow down and stop … no, don’t stop, keep going. I’m not myself and I’m jumpy. Sorry. We’re almost at my place.’

  Tony had slowed down but he drove on and they didn’t speak until they had climbed the hill, passed on the far side of the woods and dropped into the Dimple.

  Stone gateposts, each with an unlikely griffon on top, guarded an open iron gate in front of Lime Tree Lodge. The gateposts were probably the most distinctive feature about the property. Two stories of pale yellow stone, a solid but unimaginative box of a house, had sold itself to Alex because she knew how much she could do with the inside, and the small grounds were pretty.

  Tony idled outside the gate. ‘Hope I haven’t offended you somehow.’

  ‘Is there someone waiting for you at home?’

  He turned his head slowly toward her and cleared his throat at the same time. ‘Not unless squatters arrived during the day. Why?’

  Fortunately, realizing how funny the question sounded, she laughed before she could blush. ‘I was going to invite you and the dogs in for a drink. Didn’t want to impose if you’ve got something on, is all.’

  His conflicted thoughts were almost audible as he steered carefully down her driveway. ‘That would be great if you’re sure you’re OK with the dogs coming in.’

  ‘Hah. You’d have to choose between the dogs or me, hmm? And the dogs would win.’

  This time he was the one who laughed.

  Motion sensors turned on lights at the front of the house. Tony got out of the Land Rover and Katie erupted from her kennel the moment she was freed. When Alex opened the front door the dog bustled inside, her big nose sniffing overtime. Alex continued to carry Bogie, who struggled to stay close to her whenever she tried to set him down.

  ‘Come into the sitting room,’ Alex told Tony. ‘Put that coat somewhere. You’ll need it to warm you up when you go back outside.’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  ‘I’m nobody’s mother.’ She sounded like a shrew. Damn, lighten up. ‘But thanks for the compliment. It’s the take care bit in me; it pops out very occasion
ally.’

  She didn’t miss the very direct look he gave her before taking one of her sleeves to help her from her own coat and waiting for her to get a fresh grip on Bogie before pulling it all the way off and laying it over a chair.

  His own coat followed.

  ‘Coffee or something stronger?’ she asked, drawing heavy draperies over the windows.

  ‘Stronger.’ He tilted his head toward a brass tray with two cut glass decanters and some glasses. They were meant more for decoration than use.

  ‘Left is Scotch, right is sherry,’ Alex told him, sitting on an overstuffed couch covered in a rough fabric of stylistic roses and leaves. ‘I’ll have Scotch,’ she added, seeing him reach for the sherry.

  Tony smiled to himself and poured equal measures in two glasses.

  ‘This place was falling down before you bought it,’ he said, tucking a glass into the hand she freed from Bogie. ‘It might be a good idea to let him sit on your lap for just a couple more minutes, then put him down.’

  ‘He’s frightened.’

  ‘I know.’

  Alex took hold of two shaky front legs, pried them free and settled the dog on her lap. ‘There’s no need for him to get down altogether,’ she said. ‘Sit down, please.’

  ‘The house is warm,’ he said, and sat across from her in a green tapestry chair.

  ‘I had heating put in. It cost so much to do it, I won’t be able to afford to run it if the business goes pear shaped on me. But I shouldn’t complain. I think some people were actually glad to see me come home and start pulling the Black Dog back to where it was. It always used to be a destination pub and it’s getting there again. It brings money into the village.

  ‘Will and Cathy Cummings have helped a lot. And it doesn’t hurt that Will could help so much with the electrical stuff and some of the plumbing, or that every contractor around is a friend of his and gave me deals.’

  ‘Your business will be a complete success,’ Tony said, in a way that brooked no argument.

  Alex hoped he was right.

  They fell into a silence that grew long enough to be uncomfortable. Bogie sighed every few moments but started to fall asleep.