“And how’d you see me?” Byron said, cocking his head forward as if to catch every word.
“By the light from the front door,” Lyle said simply, evenly. “When I opened it, the light fell across the yard. I saw you just entering the door to your suite here.” He stood there, suddenly quiet, aware of his identification, aware that he was helping the police identify Byron as a murderer.
“So,” Byron said. His eyes darted from Lyle, who was looking very uncomfortable, to Graham, who was looking decidedly comfortable. He nearly bit off his words in his anger. “As inane as the first piece of fiction! So you saw me enter the Manor. Doesn’t prove a thing. I enter it each day. Most people do enter their homes. That doesn’t make me a killer.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Graham said slowly. “However…” He waited for what seemed minutes. In the quiet I could hear Byron’s labored breathing, the call of a cat outside and the tap of Graham’s fingers on the tabletop. I knew it was a waiting game to test Byron’s nerves, but it was tensing my already taut emotions. As I was about to motion to Graham he said, “By your own admission, Mr. MacKinnon, you have stated before Sergeant Taylor and me that you were home all night. We have this witness, however, who will place you at the crime scene at the exact time. We have another witness who saw you arrive home. And before you can flip us off, we also have something else that will prove definitely that you murdered Pedersen.”
He stepped back slightly, as though giving me the floor. I watched him walk over to the clothes dryer. Folding his arms, he leaned against it. Byron, I noticed, was interested in Graham’s movement. When I cleared my throat, Byron jerked his head back to me. His eyes were wide and wild looking, like a trapped rabbit. “This year of all years,” I said, “you raised the Guy at the bonfire. This year of all years, Ramona had a sprained wrist and couldn’t do it. You conveniently stumbled into her in the pub, injuring her so she couldn’t do her usual job. It would have been awkward if anyone but you hoisted the Guy, for then they would have felt the weight of a real person instead of the straw effigy. Anyone else would have been surprised and called out. But you didn’t because you knew it was a person.”
The room turned deathly quiet. The teakettle, shiny and squatting on the counter, had hushed. On the desk, the electric clock whirred noisily in preparation for the hour, then sank back into anonymity. Outside, the tomcat had relinquished his serenade, seeking more fruitful pastures elsewhere. The wind, underscoring Byron’s anger only minutes before, now merely sighed, as if exhausted or surrendering to the futility of denial.
I looked at the group. Lyle was fidgeting with his collar, running a finger along the inside of the fabric, as though the subject was too vivid or recent for his comfort. Tom eyed the posters, his artistic eye perhaps evaluating the placement of graphics and text. Byron sponged his fore-head with his hand, then blotted it on his jeans. Graham, I was inwardly amused to see, leaned against the clothes dryer. His long legs were crossed at the ankles, his arms folded across his chest, as though he had all the time in the world. He looked at Byron, silently urging him to speak.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” Byron said with sudden resignation, his eyes on me. He sighed, knowing his own cleverness had trapped him. When he spoke again, it was nearly sotto voce and with a gentleness strangely in contrast to his earlier violent outbursts. “It was an accident. I was damned angry with him, which I admit. Mocking our national symbol. But I only mean to push him. I swear that’s all! He came back later, checking the lanterns and torch for firecrackers.”
“Must have been when I was walking around and was stopped by that French couple to answer questions,” I muttered, my stomach tightening. If I had returned minutes earlier, perhaps… But Graham, I saw, was not reproachful when he glanced at me. What had he said earlier, about understanding that I had had to walk about? He did not hold me responsible, even now as Byron was relating the fight time table.
“He got into it with me then, and I got angry. I pushed him. He pushed back, then threw a punch. Something snapped in both of us. He started swinging his fists like all hell had broken loose. I couldn’t get away from him and so I pushed him again, but he came back at me. I picked up a large, heavy limb and…” He lowered his head, wiping his eyes. When he raised his head he said, “I ought to have left him there. I know that now. I’d walked away after the fight but I kept thinking of him, so I went back a bit later. No one had found him. He was still sprawled on the ground, his arms and legs all at different angles. I dragged him into the woods and clothed him as the Guy. I heard a couple of kids run around the fire circle so I squatted in the woods till they’d gone, then dragged him out and strung him up. No one’d seen me. I was mad as hell at the time, but now…” He looked directly at me, pleading with his eyes for me to understand. I shook my head very slowly, envisioning the scene. Tom must have had a war flashback, if he fought Byron so savagely. As if understanding I wanted proof, Byron rolled up his sleeve and showed me the bruises. Not that it proved Pedersen had done it, but I believed him.
“I killed Ramona, too. That was planned. I admit that, and I’m sorry I did it. But I had to. You see, I was afraid she’d tell about the car accident, about how I took money from Derek to pay off my earlier business debt. I owed them and didn’t want to see them suffer bankruptcy due to my own failure. I loved Kris—still do. But I had to give her up. What are two people’s happiness when compared to all my friends’ financial future?”
“And after you paid back your friends,” I said, “you let Derek keep his dole money.”
Byron lowered his head. A great shudder claimed his body and he grabbed Lyle’s hand as though any contact with God would steady him. “I don’t say it was a gallant gesture in taking the dole money and abandoning Kris, but I had to choose between that and my friends. Derek’s turned out to be the best friend I ever had.”
“But why kill Ramona? Even if you were nervous, as you say, it has been twenty-five years since this all happened. Why would you fear she’d talk now?”
“She had told her husband. You didn’t know him, of course. He died years ago. And she told her mum. She lives in Denmark, I know, but when someone’s that talkative, and there are police all about asking questions…Well, I couldn’t take the chance, could I? I couldn’t risk she wouldn’t talk. Her tongue is such an undisciplined thing.”
I could understand his anger and fear. There’s a desperation that claims those who kill, an imagination that hears footsteps and gossip. The surest way to silence both is to eliminate both sources. I heard Byron’s voice and wondered what I had missed.
“I hadn’t planned to kill Ramona until Tuesday evening. I’m sorry about that murder. But I was scared she’d say something about the accident in 1973.” He didn’t elaborate, assuming we knew all about it. “I’d waited outside for a long time. Nearly an hour and a half. Arthur had been there for dinner, and the bastard didn’t leave until eleven. I waited for a few minutes, making certain he wouldn’t return to reclaim some forgotten item, then banged on her door. I had the turpentine all ready for her, you see. Poured a bit onto a cloth when I saw the light go on. She was surprised to see me. I grabbed her arm, pulled her outside, and—” He hesitated.
“I carried her to the middle of the back garden. I turned off the light when I went inside her house. I was afraid someone would see me. Then I had an idea about making it look like burglary, so I turned on the lights again. But when I realized the police always see through that I quickly changed my mind.” He glanced at Graham, silently acknowledging the Force’s talent. “I came back later. Not for the turpentine jar. I figured I was safe there. I’d worn gloves, so there were no fingerprints to connect me with a common glass jar. She might’ve dropped it there, for all anyone would know. But I did come back much later—I don’t know what time. When I first returned here, after killing her, it was beginning to rain.”
“That was when Lyle saw you,” Graham said.
Byron nodded. “I didn’t know anyone s
aw me. I was thinking about— Well, anyway, it was then that I got the idea of implicating Talbot with a fragment of rope. Everyone knew he’d done that job of work for Ramona. He made no secret that he always had rope. I thought it rather a brilliant idea. But I waited for an hour or so before returning to her place. It took a lot longer than I thought, setting up that fiber bit. Several times while I was sawing away at that damned rope I’d hear a dog bark or a noise in the woods. I kept glancing back at her, half expecting her to get up. I thought I’d never get out of there. Ever trying cutting a thick rope with a dull knife blade in the dark?”
“You got the knife from the Halfords, thinking to implicate them?” I asked.
“Yes, from Kris and Derek,” he said, “but I didn’t think they’d be suspects. The knife was awfully old.”
“And awfully common,” Graham said.
I tried to envision the strange scene—a corpse lying on the cold ground, a stormy sky with occasional bursts of ominous thunder and lightning, a desperate man cutting a rope in near pitch blackness, his hands encased in clumsy gloves, looking over his shoulder, perhaps, for the damning witness. And all the time that damning witness was out there in the dark, waiting to catch a flash of lightning, never realizing he was going to help catch a murderer.
“I knew you’d find the rope.” Byron went on, automatically, hurriedly, as though he was afraid of running out of time. “I didn’t realize you could tell she’d been moved, though. That was a mistake. I see that now. But I had to kill her.” His voice slipped into a sort of whine, pleading for understanding. “I had to stop her menace. She was like that, you know. Teasing. She said she wouldn’t tell, but you know how things get out.”
I nodded, my eyes fixed as if by hypnosis on Byron. I remembered Ramona’s laugh at the pub, the way she had teased Derek.
“I understand your action,” Graham said, his voice low and strained, “even if I don’t condone it. Now, Mr. MacKinnon…” Slowly, almost as though he was offended by everything that had been revealed, Graham laid his hand on Byron’s shoulder.
Before Graham could take him outside, I took a breath and said, “It was you, Mr. MacKinnon, who rigged those atrocities in my room, wasn’t it?”
Graham looked at me in surprise, having no idea what I was talking about. I said quickly, “You wanted to scare me into leaving the case because I had heard the episode with Pedersen Sunday at the bonfire. You were afraid I would remember your anger and deduce you killed Pedersen.”
Byron nodded, turning toward me.
“Arthur mentioned Sunday evening that you take group photos of the guests here.” I nodded toward the camera on the counter, next to the sketches. “I also saw it when Mr. Graham and I questioned you the day you were talking to Talbot. Expensive model. You go in for all the gadgets, including telephone lens.”
“I was afraid to get too close to you, afraid it would give me away if you saw me.”
“Actually, sir, your career gave you away.”
“Being secretary to Arthur?”
“No, Sir. Bookkeeper. You also keep Evan’s books. You work in his office. Mr. Graham mentioned it Wednesday morning.”
Graham was about to say something but I cut him off, not wanting his praise in public. I wanted to finish with Byron. “You have access in that office to all the pub’s keys, Mr. MacKinnon. They’re probably conveniently labeled and hanging on hooks. I do admit,” I said, my excitement ebbing somewhat and needing to take a breath, “I originally thought of two other people as possible perpetrators.” I mentally made a note to be nice to Mark, now that I had cleared him of my suspicions. And Talbot, running a close second, had no room keys. While emptying waste cans in the pub, he had had to knock on people’s doors, passing up the rooms that didn’t answer. I smiled. “I was confused for quite a while before I eventually heard that you were in the pub’s office. But, as Chief Inspector Graham keeps reminding me, a good police team always tells each other absolutely everything.”
ABOUT AUTHOR JO A. HIESTAND
A true Anglophile, Jo wanted to create a mystery series that featured British customs as the backbone of each book’s plot, while combining the information of an English police procedural and the intimacy of a cozy. The result is the Taylor & Graham mysteries, featuring a CID team of the Derbyshire Constabulary.
Jo’s insistence for accuracy—from police methods and location layout to the general ‘feel’ of the area—has driven her innumerable times to Derbyshire, England. These explorations and conferences with police friends provide the detail used for the series.
In 1999 Jo returned to Webster University to major in English with an Emphasis in Writing as a Profession. She graduated in 2001 with a BA degree and departmental honors.
She has combined her love of writing, board games and music by co-inventing P.I.R.A.T.E.S., the mystery-solving game that uses maps, graphics, song lyrics, and other clues to lead the players to the lost treasure.
Jo founded the Greater St. Louis Chapter of Sisters in Crime, serving as its first president. She is also a member of Mystery Writers of America. When not writing, she likes to listen to early and bluegrass music, play guitar, take nature photographs, read, change ring and watch her backyard wildlife.
Her three cats—Chaucer, Dickens and Tennyson—share her St. Louis home.
For more information about Jo, please visit her on the web at www.johiestand.com
MORE GREAT BOOKS BY JO A. HIESTAND
DEATH OF AN ORDINARY GUY
The village square is bathed in torchlight. Spectators huddle against the cold this Guy Fawkes Night. Shadows grip the edge of the square, but all eyes focus on the straw effigy of Guy Fawkes, the symbol of the governmental coup-gone-wrong. The flaming torch extends to light the strawand the villagers recoil in horror. Twisting at the end of the rope is the corpse of an American tourist. But that’s only the beginning to the horror. As DS Brenna Taylor works the case she becomes the target of frightening pranks: a dead bird in her sink, an effigy hanging from her bedroom ceiling. Are these the pranks of her harassing male colleague or a deadly warning to leave the case?
SAINTED MURDER
December bullies its way into the village in a swirl of snow and biting wind, threatening to cancel the annual St. Nicholas festival. But winter’s slap pales when a body is discovered in the candlelit church, and a series of arsons threatens the very village itself. Someone is not living up to the seasonal wish of ‘peace on earth, good will towards man.’ DS Brenna Taylor must also live with emotions she didn’t know she had when DS Mark Salt, her harassing macho cohort, makes overtures of friendship. Now Brenna must examine her love for her boss, DCI Geoffrey Graham, and consider the likelihood of its ever being returnedwhile trying to catch a killer.
ON THE TWELFTH NIGHT OF CHRISTMAS
DS Brenna Taylor and DCI Geoffrey Graham are summoned to investigate a drowning in a wintry pond during a family 12th night party. As bizarre as the case seems, it quickly becomes personal for the CID team, for one of their own detectives becomes the prime suspect of the murder. Brenna finds herself caught between police investigation and her belief in DS Mark Salt’s innocence. But even her faith is strained when Mark’s parody of “The 12 Days of Christmas” hints that he was having an affair with his murdered sister-in-law. Now that Brenna is finally viewing Mark as a human being, will he be brought up for murder?
PEARLS BEFORE SWINE
What woman wouldn’t want a pearl necklace for a Valentine’s Day gift? Geneva, Lady Swinbrook, when it’s offered on the chest of her dead husband. That’s just one peculiarity in the case that confronts the CID team from the Derbyshire Constabulary. There’s the retired couple who hate Lord Swinbrook’s bell ringing; the husband of Lord S’s maid who hates the peerage and their wealth; Lord S’s younger brother who has a penchant for needing vast sums of money. Even DS Brenna Taylor is up against a peculiarity of her own when she becomes obsessed with discovering the identity of DCI Graham’s Valentine’s Day date. But this sud
denly seems inconsequential when her life is in jeopardy.
HORNS OF A DILEMMA
Things seem comfortably routine that Ash Wednesday evening in the English village of Hollingthorpe. The regulars have come together to turn the Devil’s Stone, the age-old custom of shifting a one-ton boulder in the churchyard. An odd, back-breaking custom that defies logicexcept that to dispense with it always brings misfortune on the villagers during that year. Yet within minutes of shifting the great boulder that evening misfortuneor someone does strike. One of the participants lies beside the stone, very dead and very bloody. Days later a teenager is missing from home and a police constable is attacked near the Devil’s Stone site, causing panic in the village and concern among the police personnel. But in a midnight, rain-lashed forest, a heart-wrenching episode with Graham threatens to destroy Brenna emotionally. And through it all, the killer silently slips into and out of their lives, thumbing his nose at her and the entire CID team, ready to strike again.
THE COFFIN WATCHERS
The CID Team find themselves in a spirited case that begins with the stabbing death of a woman. The investigation quickly turns bizarre when they discover she was a psychic. Perhaps not a very good one, or she would have forecast her own death. Or known her clients weren’t always elated with her readings. On top of that, her spirit wasn’t the one seen during the church porch watch, an odd custom in which the spirits of the residents of the parish would be seen entering the church. Those whose spirits did not reappear were destined to die within the year. The villager whose coffin-carrying ghost was seen seems quite unconcerned about her future, despite her friend’s demise. Is it because she killed the psychicor knows who did? Perhaps of greater concern to the CID Team: is the killer blood, flesh and bone or an astral apparition?
Death of an Ordinary Guy Page 25