Folly

by Stella Cameron

  She led the way beneath lofty ceilings and through towering gilded doors into some sort of receiving room. The place was huge, furnished with elegant-looking antiques, although O’Reilly was no expert on that subject, and smelled heavily of the large floral arrangements on tables, desks and mantel.

  Leonard rose from a straight-backed chair in an alcove where he had been reading – or holding a book open – and showed none of his wife’s cheery countenance. ‘Detectives,’ he said, shaking hands with each of them. ‘You must have news for me. I admit I’ve been edgy – more than edgy, waiting to find out what you know.’

  ‘I’ll ring for coffee,’ Heather said. ‘Elliot’s nose is out of joint because I took over his duties at the door. Serving coffee will mend his ego.’

  Mrs Derwinter had definite ideas about what assuaged the egos of the served and those who served, O’Reilly noted. ‘We just had coffee,’ he said, avoiding catching Lamb’s eye. Bill would drink coffee whenever he could get it, which was most of the time. O’Reilly didn’t want the interference of niceties.

  Leonard didn’t sit. He remembered the book he held and tossed it on a sofa with spindly legs that reflected in polished wood floors. ‘So?’ His raised eyebrows underscored the question.

  ‘We’d like to talk more, Mr Derwinter,’ O’Reilly said as if he didn’t know the man was asking for DNA results. ‘There have been some developments. Informal would be acceptable to us but you might prefer to have your solicitor. If that’s—’

  ‘Hell, no,’ Leonard shot back. ‘You’re not accusing me of anything. Why would I need my solicitor? What did the test show?’

  ‘Anxious about that, aren’t you?’ Lamb said, producing a notebook. ‘What difference will it make one way or the other? The man’s dead.’

  Leonard stared, swallowed hard enough to make his throat jerk, and a flush spread over his olive skin.

  ‘That’s really not very nice, Detective,’ Heather said behind them. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know if a man who was found dead was your brother or not?’

  ‘Given that Mr Derwinter supposedly thought his brother had been dead for years he must be used to the idea.’

  Time for the sympathy. ‘Those results aren’t back yet,’ O’Reilly said pleasantly. ‘Could we sit down and go over a few things?’

  Leonard closed his eyes for an instant and let his hands fall to his sides. ‘Of course.’ He waved them to a pair of red velvet chairs and sat at one end of a facing loveseat.

  This was just one of half-a-dozen potential conversation groupings in the room, which seemed like a lot of redundancy to O’Reilly.

  Heather joined her husband on the couch and the girlish ingénue had left. The woman glared steadily at Lamb, who could always find a smile in such moments.

  ‘Your brother, Edward, was older than you,’ O’Reilly began. ‘That would have made him your father’s heir.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Hypothetically, why would your father invent the death of a son?’

  ‘He didn’t,’ Heather said reflexively. ‘That couldn’t have been Edward’s body.’

  Without turning to her, Leonard found his wife’s hand and said, ‘Shh, darling. I … I don’t think that’s what Father did but we’ll have to wait for those results, won’t we?’

  O’Reilly switched his attention to Heather. ‘I’m glad to see you’re getting better, Mrs Derwinter. Would you hazard a guess about the reason why someone would want you to take a fall like that?’

  She looked startled. ‘No, how could I?’

  ‘It ties you to the case. Since your husband’s family is already heavily implicated – or potentially so – surely you have some thoughts about why you were singled out like that.’

  She blushed. Heather Derwinter wasn’t a blusher but he’d clearly caught her off guard. With a finger and thumbnails on her right hand, she traced the seams in her jodhpurs.

  He saw inspiration clear her expression. ‘Someone wants you to think we’re involved,’ she said, falling over her words. ‘Why didn’t I think about this before? They did it as a … what do you call it? A smokescreen. You know, they took a chance. Whoever stuck that dart in poor Shiny Boy had to do it while I was taking that hedge. If anything had gone just a little bit wrong, I’d have seen them – only I was too busy flying over Shiny Boy’s head. Wretched nuisance.’

  Unfortunately she might make perfect sense. He didn’t respond.

  ‘I bet the horse wasn’t thinking it was a nuisance,’ Lamb said. ‘Poor devil.’

  Bill was very good at setting people’s teeth on edge.

  ‘Could we go back to the death of Graham Cummings?’ O’Reilly asked. He could still enjoy watching shock tactics work and Leonard fell against the back of his chair, his eyes haunted. ‘You were very young at the time, Mr Derwinter.’

  ‘And he wasn’t there,’ Heather put in. ‘He couldn’t have been more than six. Six-year-olds don’t remember that sort of thing.’

  A glance from Lamb reflected O’Reilly’s own thought that Heather might need closer investigation herself.

  ‘I remember,’ Leonard said quietly. ‘Afterward, anyway. Edward was in a terrible state. He didn’t say anything, just muttered and stuttered while father raved.’

  ‘But he was just a boy, too,’ O’Reilly said. ‘Eight or nine.’

  Leonard nodded. ‘Yes, and Doc James said it was an accident. Graham was playing in the shallows. He slipped and hit his head on a rock just under the water. How was Edward supposed to fix that?’ He frowned and started to speak again, but closed his mouth.

  ‘Yes, Mr Derwinter?’ Lamb said. ‘What else?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Heather said. ‘Stop pushing him. Can’t you see how painful this is?’

  ‘We’re dealing with a murder investigation,’ O’Reilly said evenly. ‘We have to pursue every angle.’

  ‘Well, it can’t have anything to do with a kid who drowned because he was fooling about in the water,’ Heather said.

  ‘Don’t,’ Leonard told her. ‘My father thought it best for Edward to go where he could get a lot of peace and care, so that’s what he did. Father was still grieving for my mother and he wasn’t equipped to bring up two young boys on his own.’

  O’Reilly pivoted again. ‘Have you found your father’s signet ring?’

  Leonard put his face in his hands and shook his head, no.

  ‘No, well, I’m sorry for all your troubles but would you look at this again.’ He took the evidence bag containing the ring found on the hill from his pocket. It had been thoroughly examined for trace evidence and he slid it into his palm. ‘Take a close look, sir.’

  Reluctantly, Leonard picked up the ring and turned it this way and that, then he looked on the inside of the shank and grew quite still.

  ‘What do you think?’ O’Reilly said.

  ‘Was this taken off the dead man’s hand?’

  ‘Possibly.’ He didn’t admit the ring might have been dropped by someone who did pull it from the corpse, and subsequently found in a patch of gorse and stones.

  ‘It was my father’s.’ Leonard’s lips were colorless.

  ‘But they didn’t find it on the body,’ Heather said, all urgency. ‘They’ve just admitted that. For all they know, your father lost it on the hill years ago. He loved to ramble all over the place. He used to turn the ring around and around because it was uncomfortable. What if he did that when he was out walking, lost the thing, and never did anything about it.’

  ‘You’ve a neat train of thought, madam,’ Lamb said with a slight smirk. ‘Orderly thinking, as it were.’

  She scowled at him. ‘You’re on a fishing expedition.’

  O’Reilly almost laughed.

  ‘Who was there when the Cummings boy died?’ He liked to keep the subject off balance. ‘Your father?’

  ‘I … I can’t think why he would have been.’

  ‘But Edward was there. Why was that?’

  ‘Edward liked the river. Father took him into Bour
ton-on-the-Water with him sometimes so he could be by the Windrush.’

  ‘So your father was there when the other boy died.’

  ‘Perhaps he was. I don’t know. I wasn’t there, was I?’

  ‘So you say.’ He didn’t want Leonard to get his feet under him. ‘How did the Cummings boy come to be there with Edward?’

  ‘Will Cummings was there, too,’ Leonard said and turned his face away. ‘He’d have had to be. Graham was too small to be on his own.’

  ‘But you don’t know if your father was there or if he just left a young son to wander by the river on his own?’

  ‘Will could have been watching both of them if Father was seeing someone about business. But Father was there after Graham had the accident. I remember that. He was distraught … angry. Damn it, what does this have to do with a dead man on that hill – or another man dying at the rectory – only days ago? Graham Cummings was nothing to us – the child of an employee – and he’s been dead for years.’

  ‘Leonard!’ Heather looked over her shoulder. She stood and took several steps away from the couch. ‘Cathy, how lovely to see you. I was going to call you when I could ride again.’

  Cathy Cummings hovered on the threshold of the room, a bunch of paper-wrapped flowers in her hands. She seemed unable to move and her face was stretched into stricken agony. ‘I brought you these,’ she said finally, her voice breaking. She looked at the flowers. ‘Because you had an accident.’

  Elliot hovered behind her, all but wringing his hands at having let her arrive on the scene without warning. She turned and thrust the bouquet at him, already running from the room.

  Lamb’s mobile rang and he answered. He said, ‘Yes,’ twice and clicked off. ‘Results are in,’ he told O’Reilly.

  ‘And …’

  ‘Mr Derwinter here and the dead man were related.’

  Leonard choked. He bent over to rest his face on his knees. He didn’t make a sound but his back heaved.

  THIRTY-THREE

  He didn’t have to be with Alex to see her face. All he had to do was think about her. Tony went into the inn entrance at the Black Dog and walked through to the public bar. He stopped to watch her sliding the stems of clean glasses into racks above the counter.

  His life was a bloody mess. Oh, on the surface he had it all together, but there was major unfinished business and he couldn’t do one thing to tie it up.

  Did that have anything to do with what had become a complicated connection with Alex?

  She had to stand on tiptoe to seat those glasses but she didn’t have the look of a lot of small women who managed the impression that a good wind would blow them away. Alex was compact. When she forgot herself she could be vivacious and he’d seen that come peeking through. And he liked her looks, those tilted-up eyes the kids called ‘witchy’ back when they were all running the fields and getting into trouble. Like scrumping apples and making it away, pockets bulging, arms flying, laughing madly, and with yelling voices behind them.

  It was a long time since they had been children.

  ‘Good morning, Alex,’ he said, and smiled when she saw him. ‘It’s quiet in here.’

  ‘Probably a good thing. I’m on my own. Cathy and Will both asked for the day off – or Cathy did, then Will got in a mood and said he needed to get away.’

  ‘I can help if you tell me what to do.’ He knew how unlikely that sounded. ‘Katie thinks she’s a pub dog anyway.’ Katie was already beside Bogie in front of the fire.

  ‘That’s sweet of you,’ Alex said. ‘I’ve got extra staff coming in shortly and Mum’s in the kitchen if I need her. But right now it’s just you – my one and only customer. What can I get you, Dr Harrison?’ She grinned and that vivacious girl came out to play again.

  ‘Coffee, me darlin’,’ he said and stood with his forearms crossed on the bar and a boot braced on the brass foot rail. ‘And I wouldn’t say no to a nice Tesco’s digestive biscuit.’

  She poured a mug of coffee, paused, and poured a second mug. That was all it took to make him feel warmer. Alex coming to join him and drink coffee. He didn’t mention that she’d forgotten the biscuits.

  ‘Have you seen O’Reilly today?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I assume he left very early. I feel as if there’s a huge shoe hovering just out of sight, waiting to give all of us one big kick in the posterior.’

  Tony snorted into a fist. ‘Posterior? Now there’s a word I don’t often hear.’

  She frowned, set her mouth in a line and suddenly said, ‘Arse. Is that better?’

  They both sniggered into their coffee and Alex held up a finger before grabbing a package of digestive biscuits from a shelf. Coffee, biscuits and sporadic sniggering had the expected result, and they both caught sprays of crumbs in napkins.

  She sobered first. ‘I think I’m getting hysterical. If some sort of religious person – the official kind – walked through the door, I’d faint. Early this morning I was on the internet searching for anything I could find about gyrovagi. Nothing very complimentary was said about them, at least not a century ago, or even ten. They were persecuted. I don’t think Percy or Edward were wandering charlatans likely to whip out the odd potion for getting rid of evil spirits, or wooden dolls for warding off whatever. They just didn’t have a need for a group. They didn’t need to belong. And they liked being free.’

  ‘So you’re sure it was Edward?’

  She looked thoughtful. ‘I called him that, didn’t I? Don’t you think that’s who it was?’

  ‘Probably. But the idea of some anti-religious zealot knocking off men of the cloth doesn’t cut it for me. I believe there’s a history to all this and the Derwinters are tied in somehow.’

  ‘They have to be,’ Alex agreed. ‘But not, you know …’

  ‘No, of course not,’ he filled in for her. Neither of them wanted to even mention murder in the same breath with Leonard and Heather.

  A phone rang and Alex went to answer.

  Liz Hadley walked in behind the bar, glancing around the empty room with a frown on her face.

  ‘Business will pick up,’ Tony told her.

  ‘It better,’ she said. ‘I closed the shop early when I heard Alex needed help – not that I had any customers either. I think all this trouble is starting to keep people home.’

  She might be right but he didn’t want to say so. ‘It’s been cold a long time. We all get tired of braving it eventually. How’s the shop doing?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ Liz said. ‘It’s always a bit quiet in Bourton at this time of year but Christmas was really good and it’s light now, but not dead.’ She raised her shoulders slightly and grimaced at him.

  Death had become an avoided topic.

  Four people who looked like businessmen came in, talking and chuckling their way to a table. One of them came to the bar to order drinks and food. Liz went busily about her own business and looked more cheerful immediately.

  The coffee was good. Getting a little cool but still good.

  With the phone still to her ear, Alex pivoted slowly toward him. Her eyes downcast, a deep furrow between her brows, she spoke quietly. When she glanced up their eyes met. He knew real concern when he saw it.

  She put down the phone and went directly to Liz, then almost ran through to the kitchen. Lily came back with her, wearing a similarly worried expression.

  Tony’s gut clenched. He took a deep breath, watched Alex, and waited.

  Finally she hurried to him and leaned close. ‘I’m not supposed to say anything in case someone else gets the idea to follow me.’

  ‘Follow you where?’ He realized he’d all but shouted and lowered his voice. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘That was a nurse at St Mary’s Hospital in London.’ She spoke so close to his ear; her cheek brushed against his. ‘Reverend Restrick is there and he’s asking to see me. She said Charlotte asked them to call me.’

  ‘His wife?’ He caught her by the shoulders. ‘Does that make sense? That he
’d ask to see you? Why didn’t Charlotte Restrick call you herself?’

  ‘I don’t know but she probably couldn’t leave him for long enough.’ Alex closed her eyes. ‘I’ve got to go. Now. If anyone asks, make an excuse for me. I’ve picked up a bug – anything. I haven’t told anyone but you about the call. All Mum knows is that I have to leave.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head emphatically. ‘I think he’s going to tell me more about what happened to Brother Percy.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’ He could tell she wasn’t really listening to him.

  ‘Why else would he ask to see me in particular? I trust you not to tell anyone, Tony. Back me up with this, will you? I’ll go straight there and call you after I’ve seen him. If we went together and O’Reilly heard about it, he might suspect we were meddling – which is what he thinks we’re up to anyway.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go on your own.’ He cast about for something to back up his case. ‘The roads are bad.’

  ‘And I’m a damn good driver. I’ll call you on the way.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Alex warmed up the Land Rover thoroughly, hovered at the exit from the yard behind the pub until she could be sure of getting out without being seen, and gunned the engine.

  She hoped no one looked through a window to see her slide, half sideways, on to the road.

  Tony’s opinion of this trip had been obvious – he didn’t want her to go. Her mother had looked anxious when all she’d been told was that Alex would probably be gone the rest of the day and possibly night. But Lily made a habit of not asking for information that wasn’t offered, so didn’t know where Alex was going.

  Mixed rain and snow in the early morning had reverted to steady, light snow a couple of hours ago. The roads were covered with a layer thin enough to allow the heavy vehicle to sink straight through to the crunchy, frozen remains of the last fall that had frozen there.

  Her route was the same old B4068 until she could cut off toward Bourton-on-the-Water and the A429. Then she hadn’t far to go before she passed within a couple of miles of Upper and Lower Slaughter toward the A road.