Folly

by Stella Cameron

  Mary’s hands fluttered and she turned slightly pink. ‘Unfair. Totally unfair. He wasn’t stupid and an accident like that happens quickly and easily. But Cornelius shouldn’t have been so protective of the Derwinter name that he packed Edward off rather than risk more open talk.’

  ‘I think my dad mentioned that,’ Tony Harrison said suddenly. ‘He hadn’t been here more than a few years. He went to help.’

  ‘Who was the boy who died?’ O’Reilly asked him.

  ‘Graham, I think, was the first name.’ Harrison rubbed the space between his eyebrows. ‘He was the Cummings’ boy.’

  ‘Will and Cathy Cummings?’ New possibilities clicked over in his mind. This had never been mentioned before, but these people were as closed-mouthed as their reputations suggested.

  ‘That started more talk afterward,’ Harriet put in. ‘It wasn’t that long afterward when Will and Cathy were put in as managers of the Black Dog – although they were too young. It belonged to the Derwinters but it was some time later before they could buy it from Cornelius.’

  The need to move was too strong now. ‘Well, thank you for your time.’ Getting up, O’Reilly smiled at the women and nodded to Harrison.

  ‘It was all lies, you know,’ Mary said. She couldn’t keep her hands still now. ‘No one really blamed Edward for Graham’s death. But the whispers didn’t stop. The job at the pub was to keep the Cummings quiet, that’s what they insisted. Because Cornelius was so proud he didn’t want anyone to keep on suggesting Edward was responsible in some way.’

  Harrison made a disgusted noise. ‘That’s the kind of rubbish that comes from people not having enough to occupy their minds. Couldn’t the man have been reaching out in kindness to people who had lost so much? It was a very decent thing to do.’

  THIRTY-ONE

  ‘I’ve been expecting this,’ Doc James said when Alex led him to the small conservatory Lily had added to one side at the back of Corner Cottage. ‘But I thought the questions would come from the police.’

  A portable electric fire with glowing artificial coals kept the space warm. Several cane chairs clustered around a table painted free-hand with fanciful begonia blooms in oranges, reds and yellows. Potted plants thrived in built-in troughs on the three glassed-in walls. On this evening, snow covered the roof and hung in frozen swags where it had slid down the windows earlier, but inside was warm and cozy.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ Alex said. ‘Tony called and told me what Harriet and Mary said to O’Reilly while he was there.’ She’d been surprised but also glad to hear Tony’s voice.

  And afterward she’d been disappointed he had so little to say.

  ‘He’s on his way,’ James commented. ‘Hope that’s all right with you. I thought it would save a lot of repetition.’

  Alex’s heart gave an extra thud but she said, ‘Of course,’ and did her best to look unconcerned.

  Doc James made the rounds of her mum’s plants, making admiring sounds as he went. ‘Your mother has two green thumbs.’

  The front door knocker cut off any reply and Alex went to bring in Tony. ‘Where’s Katie?’ she said. Her throat was dry.

  ‘She wasn’t about to come out in the cold again,’ he said.

  ‘Clever girl. Bogie’s in his favorite place on my duvet. Doc James is in the conservatory.’ She led him to join his father. ‘What can I get for the pair of you?’

  ‘Nothing for me,’ Tony said without looking at Alex.

  Doc James immediately said, ‘Scotch, please.’

  ‘I’ll get it.’ Tony left quickly.

  Doc James coughed into a fist and jigged up on to his toes. He was about to speak when Tony returned and handed him a glass. Only the GP sat down. Tony and Alex stood, one on either side of the room, both facing the back garden.

  ‘You know I have to consider patient privilege?’ Doc James said. ‘I didn’t really go into that with you on the phone, Alex.’

  She glanced at Tony, who was already watching her. They both gave tight smiles.

  ‘Before we get to your interrogation, are you two going to get over whatever’s eating you?’

  Tony crossed his arms. ‘Alex and I hoped you would help us understand some things, Dad. We don’t have any standing when it comes to interrogating anyone. You’ve been through these last few days the same as we have. Don’t you get the feeling the police are running in circles and getting nowhere?’

  ‘I was talking about you,’ Doc James said. ‘What’s going on with you … and Alex?’

  ‘Let’s just deal with the serious stuff,’ Tony said.

  His choice of words annoyed Alex. ‘I thought it was pretty serious when you told me to get lost last night.’ She turned hot all over.

  ‘You exaggerate,’ he said. ‘I think I said we’d all be more comfortable if O’Reilly brought you down here. Given that he’d just more or less … scratch that. He’d just suggested I murdered my wife. Even if you’ve nerves like Margaret Thatcher, that would have to make you a tad edgy. I wanted to help everyone out.’

  ‘Damn fool,’ Doc James said, barely parting his lips. ‘I warned you to tell Alex the story before someone else did. He had nothing to do with whatever happened to Penny, Alex. If and when you two can be reasonable with each other, I hope you’ll air it all out – as far as anyone can.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad. You deserve your “told you so” moment.’

  ‘Let’s leave it, please,’ Alex said. ‘O’Reilly must have thought he could get any information he wanted out of two silly old women. Only they aren’t silly.’

  Tony breathed in deeply. ‘I don’t think he did believe they’re silly, but he may have decided they aren’t worldly enough not to trot out blithe answers to whatever he asked.’ His chuckle startled Alex. ‘You should have watched the show they put on. They really ran him around. Examples of old lace … he went to ask about the lace scrap. I didn’t interrupt and they behaved as if they hadn’t actually seen it before. They did give some name to the lace pattern. O’Reilly said they’ve got the rest of the handkerchief.’

  Tired of standing and growing more tense, Alex sat in the chair next to Doc James but Tony remained where he was.

  ‘It’s about time they did find the rest of it. We knew it had to be in the other part of the cincture where I made the cut. Did Harriet or Mary show any surprise when it was mentioned?’ Alex asked. ‘I wouldn’t blame them. The police keep everything so close to their chests.’

  ‘He might as well have told them it was cold outside. Their expressions never changed.’

  ‘Bless them,’ Alex said. She had to get to the real reason for asking to see Tony’s father. ‘Did you see the little boy who drowned, doctor? When the accident happened years ago?’

  Doc James didn’t seem surprised by the question. ‘About forty minutes afterward. I was on my rounds and they had to find me, but it would have been too late anyway. He’d been dead longer than that.’

  She took her own deep breath. ‘Could Edward – the older Derwinter boy – have done anything to save the younger child?’

  ‘I wasn’t a witness and I’m not a policeman.’

  Alex rested her elbows on her knees and rubbed her fingertips up and down on her brow.

  ‘But you’ve got opinions, Dad.’

  ‘Isn’t all this for the police?’ Doc James said.

  ‘If they’re getting anywhere, they aren’t telling us,’ Alex said. ‘Where’s the harm in trying to put the pieces together? Tony and I have had some pretty pointed questions put to us and meanwhile there’s been another death and Reverend Restrick has been spirited away with some sort of horrible injury. Why did he fall down a flight of stairs he’s been using for years? Why can’t the police move faster? This is a small place. That should make it easier.’

  ‘Let’s not get carried away,’ Doc James said. ‘If there was anything we could do to help things along, that would be one thing. But I’m not putting myself in a position to be accused of meddling.’

 
; ‘In other words your reputation comes first.’ Embarrassed, Alex shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry. That wasn’t called for. I understand your reticence.’

  Doc James took a thoughtful swallow of Scotch. ‘Some things are best left unsaid if all they’ll do is cause pain.’

  ‘How do you decide what things those are?’ Tony asked. ‘Rather than details that could help right a wrong.’

  ‘Sometimes you have to be patient, son. If it becomes obvious that you ought to speak up for the general good, you do it. Not otherwise.’

  Alex took the risk of asking, ‘Did you ever see Edward as a patient?’

  ‘A few times. Usual childhood ailments.’

  ‘What about his speech difficulties.’

  Doc James snorted. ‘A stutter made worse by his family’s ignorance. And there was nothing stupid about the boy although that was the story circulated. I never understood Cornelius’s attitude. Sending Edward away seemed cruel.’

  ‘Dad, do you think Edward was the sort of boy who might grow up and want to be a monk?’

  ‘How could I possibly know?’

  ‘You couldn’t,’ Alex said. ‘You saw the man I found in the woods. Was there anything familiar—’

  ‘I’d have to be clairvoyant, psychic, whatever, to make a connection there. But they’ve got to find out who did that. There’s someone very sick running around.’ The doctor got to his feet and put down his glass. His agitation showed. ‘That poor man couldn’t have had a chance. He didn’t even put up his hands to try to save himself.’

  ‘Tony …’ Alex turned to him. ‘The story about the coffin.’

  Looking as if he expected to be laughed at, Tony began, ‘It’s just some twaddle about Edward’s hand getting caught when his mother’s coffin was closed.’

  ‘It did.’

  They all fell silent. For the first time Alex noticed the slight hissing sound the artificial flames of the electric fire made. Still wearing his Barbour coat, Tony flexed his shoulders.

  His father said, ‘Where did that come from? How did you know about it?’

  ‘Harriet and Mary mentioned it. They said Edward supposedly had his hand in his mother’s coffin and they closed it without noticing. Broke his finger and it was never set.’

  Doc James turned his face away. ‘It was the only time I heard him speak clearly. He didn’t want the finger touched because it was special, he said. It was between him and his mother or some such thing. I told his father that setting it would take more out of the child than it was worth. It would be a bigger job, but bones are broken again to get them properly set all the time. I expected Cornelius Derwinter to fight me about it but he didn’t. Edward was a nice boy. Very deep and in a lot of emotional pain.’

  ‘Do you think that’s Edward’s body in the morgue?’ Tony asked.

  ‘If it’s Edward and he’s Leonard’s brother, DNA will prove it. That shouldn’t be much longer now. They’ll have taken a swab from Leonard, you can be sure of that. You may think nothing much is happening but I’d put money on this investigation getting a fair amount of attention from the police. They’ll be in a hurry for that DNA. They’ll also know if there’s an old break to a finger.’

  ‘Would whatever you don’t want to talk about help clear all this up?’ Alex said softly. Her eyes felt gritty and she longed to be somewhere completely quiet.

  ‘No. If that were the case I wouldn’t wait. What I do think is that the answers will turn out to be close to home. I only hope there isn’t anyone else who could be a threat to the killer. They wouldn’t be safe.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  ‘You’re going to love the latest,’ Bill Lamb said as O’Reilly buckled himself into his partner’s car outside the Black Dog.

  They pulled away rapidly and set out for the road up the hill and toward the Dimple. This morning the sky was clear enough to outline Tinley Tower on its vantage point in searing blue. ‘The tooth’ fitted its pointed, up-thrust, slightly leaning shape well, but O’Reilly wondered just why the earliest villagers had made the folly their settlement’s namesake.

  ‘You in a coma, Guv?’ Lamb asked.

  ‘I’m bloody tired, if that’s what you mean. Sleep and this case don’t go together. OK, spill the news. You’re dying to.’

  One of the good things about Lamb was that nastiness ran right off him. ‘For once we’ve got a break. It’s going to turn out to be a break, or else.’

  ‘Or else?’

  Lamb stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, lighted it and squinted ahead through acrid smoke. ‘Heads will roll,’ he intoned, managing not to grin. ‘The obit for the baby came from the announcements in some uppity small-circulation society rag. Our Kind, if you can believe that. One of our eager beaver boys went after their circulation list and got no joy. But the sheet of copy paper used for the obituary left on Alex’s kitchen table turns out to come from a batch in use by the library system. Apparently a bunch of London libraries – in appropriate areas – carry the magazine, and the Home Counties, of course. No breaks for several hours but then he hit on a branch in Gloucester where a librarian remembered someone asking for an old copy of Our Kind in the last few days.’

  O’Reilly gave the man his whole attention. ‘Go on.’

  ‘They’ve got CCTV. The Gloucester boys are going through the surveillance films and the librarian is helping. She thinks she might remember the man if she saw him.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I know.’ Lamb cut him off. ‘We’ve got to be sure he wanted to look at the same copy with the obit. But the one he wanted was the right one – according to the librarian.’

  ‘Don’t suppose he was a regular, or she got his name?’

  ‘No, but if he’s on film and identifiable, we’ve got him.’ Lamb negotiated the hill with the familiarity of one who had done so a few times before. ‘You heard they put a rush on the DNA?’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Could get it any time.’

  ‘So what’s the drill for this fishing expedition, Guv,’ Lamb said.

  They were on their way for an informal interview with Leonard Derwinter.

  ‘Just that. I can smell a break and if these people aren’t in the mix up to their necks, someone wants us to think they are. There’s the entrance. Stags on the gateposts, huh? How high would you say those were? Twenty feet?’

  ‘Conservatively.’

  Impressive was an understatement for the Derwinter estate. It had to cover hundreds of acres and the pale honey-colored stone house itself, set a mile or so back from the road, stood in Georgian splendor amid sloping lawns, and pools more properly classified as lakes, where sculptures rose out of the water and stone urns of evergreen vines interrupted low walls at intervals.

  O’Reilly had decided to have Lamb drive them there in the new gray Ford Fiesta which made Bill a happy man. The two of them worked well as an interview team and he wasn’t in the mood to soft pedal anymore. He could feel facts tightening around them. Too bad he had yet to find some strong connecting pieces between the revelations.

  ‘Will you look at this lot?’ Bill said. ‘Conspicuous consumption, or what?’

  ‘That about covers it. See the workers’ cottages in the distance. Good for a bit of pastoral color. Not close enough to mar the landscape but visible to prove how important it all is.’

  ‘A lot of it will be farmland, right?’ Lamb said. He inclined his head to numerous sheep huddled together around the trunks of great beech trees. ‘Just sheep, you think? Or other livestock?’

  ‘They’re known for their stables and there’s bound to be more. You can only see a sampling of what they’ve got from here, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘This is only a sampling?’ Lamb made a disbelieving sound and stopped the Ford at the bottom of the steps to the main doors. ‘I’d like to see what the whole thing looks like then, boss.’

  O’Reilly looked at him sideways. He’d never liked the ‘boss’ bit. ‘None of this is what it once was,’ he said. ‘If it wasn’t a
working farm they’d probably be holding tours for the public and have a theme park.’

  ‘A petting zoo,’ Lamb said and laughed. ‘Miniature train? An iced lolly and floss stand?’

  ‘Down to business,’ O’Reilly said, but he grinned. ‘I think it’ll work best if I’m Mr Sympathy.’

  ‘Be my guest. Nice Guy was never in my MO.’

  O’Reilly glanced thoughtfully at his second in command and partner. Here was one who hadn’t had it easy, but under the hard crust everything wasn’t completely without a shred of compassion.

  They climbed out of the car and started up the steps, steps brushed clear of snow and coated with grit. Before they arrived at the top, one of the double doors opened and the sexy Heather Derwinter emerged to greet them. O’Reilly had never seen her without a tight high-necked jumper – this one white – and skin-tight jodhpurs. He was grateful there was no sun or the sheen on her boots might blind him. She no longer wore a sling, but held her left arm protectively against her ribs.

  ‘Welcome,’ she said, smiling and showing off beautiful teeth. ‘We’re expecting you.’

  O’Reilly and Lamb automatically flipped out their warrant cards and introduced themselves, although they’d both met Heather Derwinter following her encounter with the dart in her horse’s rump. She still had healing scratches on her face. They entered the house and O’Reilly nodded to a servant, a man in a dark suit, who hovered nearby.

  The portraits that lined dark green silk-covered walls were of horses rather than ancestors, although the most prominent painting, large enough for small details to be more or less discernable at the top of a first flight of marble stairs, had to be of Heather Derwinter mounted on a handsome gray. Derwinter House was in the background, and the richness of rolling land.

  ‘I didn’t want Leonard to put it there,’ she said, and O’Reilly realized she knew what he was looking at. ‘He wouldn’t listen. Men. Really.’ She giggled and he didn’t think she made that particular sound often. The message he got was to treat her gently, as Leonard’s charming but uninvolved pet.