Folly

by Stella Cameron

  SIX

  Alex usually turned the central heating down at night. She didn’t really need to be parsimonious but old habits stuck around.

  Tonight she decided a really warm house would be comforting. Anyway, Bogie needed to be coddled a bit …

  She was nervous and that frosted her. No, it wouldn’t be stupid for anyone to be edgy given what had happened so close to this house, but being nervous could warp your judgement. That wouldn’t help a thing.

  A monk with a ring – possibly a valuable ring.

  Weren’t they into poverty, simplicity, all those Spartan habits that divested them of worldly things, the luxuries that could distract from their concentration on God?

  He probably hadn’t been wearing a ring at all. It was just a guess. She didn’t want to, but she thought about the finger that had jutted, obviously either broken or dislocated.

  The hand was covered with dried blood. There could have been less blood on the finger but she wasn’t sure. Taking of a ring would automatically wipe away some blood.

  When the phone rang it jolted Alex to her toes.

  She saw it was Will Cummings. ‘Alex,’ she said into the mouthpiece.

  ‘Will here. Just want you not to worry about Cathy. She’ll be all right. Don’t forget the dart match tomorrow evenin’. They like you to give ’em a bit of a cheer on even if you don’t stay for the whole thing. What they’d really go for is having you play. They froth at the mouth having the best dart player in the county in residence when she won’t play.’

  ‘Come on, Will. I don’t play often enough to be in practice.’ She’d started throwing darts as a kid while she waited for Lily to close up in the afternoon, and she had been very good.

  ‘Maybe you should start practicing again,’ Will said. ‘You don’t have enough hobbies.’

  ‘Right.’ She sensed there were things about Cathy that he was skirting. ‘What made Cathy think she could identify that man?’

  Will didn’t answer immediately. He coughed and said, ‘It’s sketchy. She thinks some man came by late wanting a drink. Last night, that was. We were closed and she was cleaning up in the bar. She likes to take a last look when everyone’s gone.’

  ‘We don’t serve after closing,’ Alex said, puzzled.

  ‘Oh, don’t you fret. She didn’t serve him but he was a stranger and when she heard about the murder her imagination got carried away.’

  ‘You mean Cathy thought the person who came to the pub might have been the dead man?’

  ‘That’s about right.’

  ‘So she got a good look at him?’

  Will gave a little laugh that sounded forced. ‘You’re startin’ to sound like the police, Alex. She was busy trying to finish up. I don’t see her taking that much notice of him.’

  It was her turn to laugh, awkwardly. ‘I’m too tied up in all this. Can’t quite get over it.’

  ‘That O’Reilly chap made her describe the fella that came. She said he and the other one shook their heads like it didn’t sound like the corpse. But she’s that upset I don’t know if she just imagined it.’

  ‘You said she was fine,’ Alex said, and wished she hadn’t.

  ‘She is. I meant she was that upset. Anyway, I’d best be getting back to ’er. It’s snowing again. No need to get here early as usual. Wait for help putting on the chains.’

  She wished him goodnight and went to look out of the window. The outside lights were off but there was no missing the fat flakes of snow that splattered the windows. At least they were fairly wet. If it didn’t get much colder it wouldn’t accumulate much.

  Tired, but not sleepy, she put the dog down and went to the kitchen. So far she hadn’t settled on what, if anything, to do with it. Glass-fronted cabinets, off-white, and solid black and white tiled counters had an old-fashioned family feel. Alex liked that. She had replaced the cracked floor tiles with stone flags.

  Pretending not to watch Bogie, she boiled chicken breasts, cooked rice and added some leftover vegetables. When she’d chopped the chicken and stirred everything together, she let it cool while she found a bowl and put water down.

  The dog didn’t move from his spot by the kitchen door. Starting with a small amount of the food, Alex took the dish to Bogie and wafted it under his nose. With only the slightest hesitation, his bottom came off the floor and he trotted after her to eat everything down in a few bites. He ate another small bowl but she didn’t give him more in case it was too much, too soon.

  She had eaten little of Tony’s sandwich but she wasn’t hungry.

  Her mother wouldn’t call because she made it a rule not to intrude, so Alex made a phone call to Corner Cottage and reassured Lily, who didn’t do a perfect job of pretending to be relaxed.

  By ten Alex gave up on the evening. She couldn’t concentrate on reading. Going to the room upstairs and at the back of the house which she still regarded as her temporary studio didn’t appeal. If she couldn’t lose herself in her painting she knew she was seriously rattled.

  She turned off all the downstairs lights except for the lamp on a table in the hall, and started upstairs, still trying not to watch Bogie too closely. He had gone to the door when he wanted to go out and she’d allowed him, standing outside, arms tightly crossed in the wet snow, and hoped he wouldn’t run away. When he came back and ran inside she felt ridiculously satisfied.

  He’d lost his owner. A religious man walking through the woods with no way to defend himself and apparently having made no attempt to do so. She could scarcely swallow thinking about the stark sadness of it. Who would do such a thing – who around here? Or had it been someone passing through who’d been shocked by the man and lashed out?

  Or had the victim made the gash in his own throat? Was it possible to do that?

  A nagging thought echoed back that if a person was desolate enough, and beyond hope of any human comfort – or even his God’s comfort – he could do it.

  When they had started up the stairs, cold hit Alex’s spine in what she thought of as the start of a premonition. The prickling of a thousand pins started climbing until they covered her back and sprayed over her scalp.

  She turned around slowly, slowly.

  Glass panels flanked the heavy front door with a fanlight above. All the panes in the fanlight were green – not what she would have chosen – and she intended to replace some of them with other colors to warm the light when it came through.

  Her scalp contracted even more. Her face felt tight.

  The dog had stopped beside her and he, too, stared toward the front of the house. His hackles had risen and his lips were pulled back from his teeth, but he didn’t make a sound.

  The motion sensors came on and a green glow washed over the hall floor.

  She couldn’t move, or breathe.

  Call the police.

  They won’t get here in time.

  In time for what?

  The lights went out. Air rushed from her lungs. There was a wind with the snow. It could easily have blown a fallen limb across a beam and triggered the lights.

  ‘C’mon,’ she said, bobbing down to pat the dog. ‘We’re a jumpy pair.’

  The sensors came on again. And off again. And on again, and off.

  Alex felt sick.

  Bogie growled but when she continued up the stairs, running now, he followed her and went with her into her bedroom where she locked the door and struggled to push a chest of drawers in front of it.

  Call someone.

  If you do there’ll be nothing to find and you’ll end up looking like a jumpy fool. It’ll be all right.

  With the phone pulled close and a flashlight beside it, she eventually got into bed. The sound of wind whipping around the corners of the old walls was something she’d come to love. Tonight she hated it.

  But the lights stayed off.

  Bogie jumped on to the bed and made himself comfortable.

  In time Alex drifted, bedeviled by the half-sleeping jolts that sometimes put her into an
imaginary free fall that woke her up.

  The dog barking, standing on the bed and howling toward the windows, woke her completely. The clock showed it was three in the morning. She had slept after all.

  After a few seconds of trying to calm Bogie, she stared at the closed drapes. Closed and illuminated.

  This time the motion sensor lights stayed on.

  SEVEN

  The emergency operator kept her on the phone, kept talking. Stopped making sense.

  She should stay where she was. Not go outside under any circumstances. A unit was on the way. Was she sure this wasn’t a medical emergency? What was she hearing now? Had the lights gone off yet?

  The questions went around and around in her head.

  ‘Have the lights gone off, ma’am?’

  ‘You ask the same things over and over,’ Alex said, hearing her words slur together. ‘The police always ask questions like that – the same questions. The lights are still on. They must be right outside.’

  ‘Are there sensors at the back of the house?’ the operator asked.

  ‘Why? I mean, yes.’

  ‘Are those on, too? Are they on the same circuit?’

  Alex rubbed at her stinging eyes. The dog jumped up and down and barked. He flew up at the windowsill, then threw himself against the wall, howling.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Alex said. ‘I’m making a mess of this—’

  ‘It’s OK. It won’t be long.’

  ‘I can’t see the back of the house from here but those lights are on the same circuit, yes.’

  Barely at first, then steadily louder came the urgent warning from police sirens.

  ‘They’re coming!’ Alex tried to straighten her knees, to stand without shaking.

  The lights went out.

  Alex closed her eyes. ‘Bogie,’ she whispered. ‘Come here, boy.’

  In an instant the dog’s front paws landed on her thighs and Alex dropped to her knees to hold on tight to the warm, wiry body.

  When more lights flashed across her closed eyelids she knew the police car had turned down the driveway. And another vehicle came. Doors slammed and pounding came from the front door.

  ‘They’re here,’ she said into the phone and dropped it to shove the chest of drawers blocking her bedroom door. She’d only moved it a foot before she unlocked and opened the door enough to squeeze through on to the landing.

  Clinging to the banisters, she ran downstairs but stopped by the front door. ‘Who is it?’ she cried, and her voice broke.

  ‘Police, Ms Bailey-Jones. It’s Dan O’Reilly.’

  The detective inspector? She let him in, stood there on bare feet wearing her flannel pajamas.

  What felt like hours later, Dan O’Reilly came through the back door, passed through the little mud room and met Alex where she paced in the kitchen.

  At least the inspector didn’t look either annoyed or disbelieving, but she knew before a word was said that the men who had been searching her gardens hadn’t found anything to put her mind at rest.

  ‘Coffee smells good,’ O’Reilly said. He picked up a mug, raised it and waited for her invitation before filling it from the percolator. He drank, looking from her to the kitchen over the rim of the mug.

  ‘So, nothing?’ she said. ‘It’s weird to hope there’s a maniac found in your garden while you also hope there’s no one at all out there. I feel like a fool.’

  He shook his head slightly. There were strands of gray in his wind-ruffled dark hair.

  Alex looked away. She’d already drunk too much coffee. At least she’d been able to pull on clothes, jeans and a sweater that felt comfortable.

  ‘I don’t understand how you were the first to get here,’ she said.

  ‘I was at Constable and Mrs Frye’s. They were good enough to insist I stay when I said I wasn’t comfortable getting too far away at this point.’

  Alex’s mix of relief and self-consciousness evaporated. His simple statement creeped her out.

  Snow had turned the shoulders of his tan raincoat dark and wet. ‘It’s not unusual to block reality when you’re faced with death. Particularly sudden and violent death.’

  Without looking, Alex found the back of a chair and scraped the legs away from the table. She sat down and propped her elbows.

  ‘We’re glad you called,’ the officer said. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted you to do anything else.’

  ‘But there wasn’t really a reason to be scared,’ she told him. ‘Now I almost wish you’d found him out there. This would all be over then.’

  ‘Are you sure you saw the lights go on?’

  Anger flashed at her, stiffening her body and making blood rush to her face. ‘You think I imagined it? I didn’t imagine it. It was like being played with, like someone trying to frighten me. And the dog barked, too.’

  O’Reilly had already expressed his surprise at finding Bogie there. ‘Dogs are sensitive to human moods, or some of them are. He could have felt your anxiety.’

  Staying in her seat was an effort. ‘OK, I made it all up because I wanted to feel like a fool. Sorry I bothered everyone.’ She sounded childish in her own ears.

  ‘No,’ he said quietly, and his dark eyes held hers steadily. ‘You’re in the middle of an unsolved murder case. I don’t say that to worry you even more but you have to be careful, very careful.’

  ‘The next thing you’ll say is that I should move out of my house. I’m not going to. If someone wants to find me badly enough, they will. Wherever I go, I’ll be vigilant. OK?’

  He smiled and sat opposite her at the table. ‘We’ll all be more comfortable if you’re down in the village. You included.’

  Bogie sidled up beside her and rested his head on her thigh. If she didn’t believe dogs got sad, she’d tell herself she was making it up. He was sad and lost and she was the only thin thread he had to safety. She considered what O’Reilly was suggesting. It was time to stop proving how independent she was. Staying here tonight would be stupid.

  Alex scratched the dog’s head. ‘OK, I can go to the Black Dog.’ She would feel better with people around.

  ‘Looks as if you’ve found a friend,’ O’Reilly said.

  ‘He’s my kind of fellow,’ Alex responded. ‘What are you trying to find from the crime scene?’

  The blank look she got was completely convincing but she wasn’t one to give up so easily.

  ‘You were looking for something in the woods where the man died. I watched your men. And you asked me if I’d found anything.’

  Mentioning the ring theory didn’t feel right. Let him tell her.

  He smiled at her and drank more coffee.

  There were digestive biscuits in a tin on the counter. Alex got up, thought about putting some on a plate but opened the lid and set the tin in front of him instead. O’Reilly promptly took out two biscuits and demolished the first in three bites.

  ‘You’re stalling,’ she said while his mouth was full. ‘I bet you’ve had people searching for something all through daylight hours. What?’

  He finished the second biscuit with more coffee.

  ‘Had enough time to think of an excuse not to answer?’ Alex said.

  O’Reilly laughed. ‘You almost think like a detective. We may make one of you yet.’ He held up a hand. ‘Forget I said that. The question was routine.’

  ‘You didn’t have anything specific in mind?’ She wouldn’t mention she knew Tony had been asked the same question.

  ‘We would be interested in anything that caught your attention.’

  How to deny the truth without telling a lie?

  She’d leave it for now. ‘Do you know who the man is yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No wallet or anything?’ Tony had said there wasn’t, but …

  O’Reilly let out a long breath. ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘Can anyone tell what order he was from?’

  ‘Not so far.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have someone go through descriptions of the habits diff
erent orders wear?’ She leaned toward him.

  ‘Thanks for the tip.’

  There was laughter in O’Reilly’s voice. He thought she was playing amateur detective, but she didn’t regret the question. She would see if there was a way to find out the details of that habit. If she could find out something useful, where was the harm?

  A rap at the back door preceded the entrance of a uniformed policeman. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘Could you come and have a look at this, please?’

  On his feet immediately, O’Reilly said, ‘Stay here.’

  Ignoring the order, Alex followed as closely as she could without running into his back.

  Several officers stood at the back of her Land Rover, parked beside a dry stone wall that ran from the front of the property to disappear behind the garage.

  ‘I asked you to stay put,’ O’Reilly said, still striding purposefully toward the vehicle.

  Alex didn’t answer, just kept on following.

  Flashlights illuminated the Land Rover and she saw one policeman kneeling to train his light on a wheel. ‘There,’ he said, pointing.

  Then she saw the way the whole vehicle canted to one side. The right, rear tire was flat.

  ‘He was out here,’ Alex exclaimed. A deep slash from some sort of sharp knife or tool must have done the job, but another dart with a yellow flight had been embedded in the tire.

  ‘Shit,’ said O’Reilly. ‘Window dressing. He’s into games.’

  EIGHT

  The Burke sisters’ tea room and book shop, called Leaves of Comfort (to the overt disgust of Harriet Burke), took up two terraced cottages on Pond Street, just around the corner from the Black Dog and butted up against the churchyard of St Aldwyn’s plain little Victorian church.

  Shortly after eleven in the morning, Alex knocked tentatively on the dark blue front door at the rightmost cottage. Although the entire lower floors of both cottages were used for the business, when the shop was closed this side was where the sisters came and went to their upstairs living quarters. Customers used the left door, although both accessed the same space.

  From a window over Alex’s head, a voice called, ‘Come on in, Alex. Unless you’d prefer not to catch whatever Mary says is wrong with her.’ Harriet smiled down at her. ‘It’s not locked.’