by Granger, Ann
‘Eli just locked the place up, after the original investigations had finished, and left,’ said Jess wonderingly. ‘He simply walked out leaving it all exactly as it was. It’s like Miss Havisham’s house in Great Expectations.’
Carter looked at her curiously. ‘Have you read the book? Or just seen the film?’
‘Both,’ said Jess, nettled. ‘I’ve got an English degree.’
‘I’ve only ever seen the film,’ said Carter, unperturbed. ‘But I was a botantist.’
A botanist! For a moment Jess almost fell into the trap of asking what on earth had drawn a man with an interest in field studies into police work. But, as she knew herself, men and women joined the police force for all kinds of reasons. She’d had hers. Carter had had his. What would have been the alternative for him? Schoolmastering? Still, she wondered that he hadn’t gone into forensics.
Carter was searching about on the floor and peering at the surface of the pine table. ‘Is this where it happened? Here? Did one of the brothers blast his parents into oblivion in this room?’
‘Nathan was sitting in the kitchen,’ Jess told him, ‘when Eli came back from the market. The shotgun was on the table here. The parents were dead but I’m not sure if he shot them in here. Perhaps it was out in the yard. Let me take a look at the report Phil Morton printed out for me.’ She pulled it out of the bag and took it to the cobwebby window for the little light admitted to fall on the printed page. ‘Mr Smith senior was killed in the – oh, in here!’ She looked up and met Carter’s eyes. Then she looked down at the pine table he’d been studying.
Beneath the dust, were those spots of dried blood?
Jess took a deep breath. ‘The mother was killed through there in the washhouse. The bodies hadn’t been moved, just lay where they fell.’
‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ Carter asked unexpectedly and accompanied his question with a slight smile, as if to indicate he wasn’t serious.
But if Superintendent Carter asked you a question, Jess had already decided, it was because he wanted to know your thoughts.
‘If I were to start believing,’ she replied, ‘it might be in this kitchen. It’s not hard to imagine Nathan sitting here.’ She tapped the back of a chair. ‘And Eli over there by the door. Only Eli’s not dead, of course.’
But he is, she thought suddenly. In his own way Eli died the day he came home and found Nathan sitting here covered in their parents’ blood. This empty house was Eli’s tomb. Oh, his physical body walked around out there. His spirit had been left here, trapped, mummified with all the other mouldering dusty remains.
Carter smiled again but only nodded.
They climbed the creaking staircase to the first floor. Up here there was only the light seeping through the gaps between the boards across the windows; and an occasional brighter patch where a board had loosened and dropped off altogether. An unpleasant acrid odour pervaded the air. Carter took a small torch from his pocket and the beam danced around them. It illuminated a double bed decked with mouldering sheets and rotting satin eiderdown; a dressing table thick with dust but still bearing a glass tray and matching cut-glass pots; a dressing gown hanging on the back of a door, its tasselled belt trailing on the floor. Nearby lay a long-dead and desiccated mouse.
Jess uttered a small exclamation and pointed at the wall. Carter swung the beam of the torch back to the spot and it showed up the paler oblong on the darkened wallpaper.
‘Have you noticed, sir?’ she asked. ‘There are no family photos anywhere. Eli left those two lithographs downstairs and the calendar in the kitchen. Everything else was left just as it was. I bet we’d find clothes in that wardrobe. But it looks as though he took away the family portraits before he locked the place up for the last time. I wonder if he still has them. Or whether he destroyed them.’
They made the final ascent up a narrow rickety stair to a door into the attic space. As Carter opened it, the acrid odour they’d already noticed increased and swept unpleasantly over them. From the darkness came an angry rustling and the beat of wings. Something swooped by and touched Jess’s hair. Her heart leaped up into her mouth even as she identified it.
‘Bats,’ she gasped.
‘Protected species,’ observed Carter. ‘That will give Smith a headache if he wants to move back in here some day.’
They descended the stairs to the entrance hall.
‘There’s no evidence,’ said Carter now, ‘of anyone having broken in and camped out in here, not recently or ever. You’d think an empty house would attract tramps or hippies. There are no empty cans or syringes. No signs of a disturbance.’
‘You mean, Eli might have disturbed an intruder and lost his temper?’ Jess asked.
‘He might have done. But there would be some sign of a more recent presence than twenty-seven years ago. Until the police came in on Friday, this place stood untouched, exactly as when Eli locked the door and boarded it up. Just as you said, like Miss Havisham’s.’
They moved back into the yard and Jess turned to lock the front door, feeling a distinct lightening of her mood. It was a horrible house and she hoped she’d never have to go into it again.
Carter, ever one for the unexpected question she decided, now asked, ‘You were on Alan Markby’s team over at Cheriton?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What made you move here?’
‘Finding somewhere to live mostly,’ Jess confessed. ‘I couldn’t find anywhere in Bamford or in the surrounding villages. I’d hoped to buy Meredith’s house. That’s Meredith Mitchell who was then engaged to Mr Markby and is married to him now. But she took her house off the market because, as I understood it, he sold his and the house they were buying together wasn’t ready. They needed Meredith’s place to live in. That left me in a grotty rented flat. Then I heard that someone of the rank of inspector was needed here so I put in for a transfer.’
‘And have you managed to find somewhere to live here?’
‘Yes, sir. I’ve got a flat in Cheltenham. It’s the first floor of an old house that’s been converted into flats.’
‘Good,’ said Carter.
Jess gave way to curiosity. ‘You know Mr Markby, then, sir?’
‘What? Oh, yes. I’ve met him on and off over the years.’
With that Carter walked off towards the gate on to the road.
Doesn’t mind asking personal questions, thought Jess, but doesn’t like answering them. Fair enough. It’s a privilege of rank.
But she was still curious.
Chapter 7
The evening sun bathed her office and, along with lending life to dead wood, showed up where the cleaner had missed the corners. Jess sat with the file on the double murder at Cricket Farm open on her desk before her. It was the end of a long day and, truth to tell, she could go home. She could take that longed-for shower and put on fresh clothes. Around her, others were on their way to do just that; the building was emptying. Footsteps sounded in the corridors and the occasional voice called ‘Goodnight!’, echoing off the walls and ceiling. She could hear cars leaving the car park and one or two arriving. The night shift was coming on.
‘Go home, too, Jessica!’ she whispered to herself. But the file drew her to it. Its sad, dreadful story now rolled out in her mind’s eye against the backdrop of that abandoned house. Its mouldering curtains and dusty furniture and, above all, its rank smell filling her nostrils, took her back there. She tried to imagine the scene as it had been that fateful day as she opened the file. She was telling herself it was necessary to the present inquiry, as indeed it was. Eli Smith had found this new body. But she knew morbid fascination was what drove her.
Here were the witness statements; this one from Mrs Doreen Warble. ‘I’d cycled over to Cricket Farm on Thursday afternoon, to get the eggs. I always buy my eggs from Millie Smith. If you buy them from the farm you know they’re fresh. I never buy eggs in a shop. Anyway, I’ve known Millie for years, since we were children. She doesn’t – didn’t – get many visi
tors. Cricket was never a welcoming place, couldn’t be, with Albert, her husband, there. But it was another reason for going there for the eggs. Millie liked to see me and she always made a bit of cake when I was coming. I’d sit with her for an hour and tell her what little bit of news I had. Albert didn’t like it. He thought our cup of tea and women’s gossip was time-wasting!
‘I have to remember to use the past tense, now she’s gone. It’s hard to believe she’s not there, nor Albert. It’s like the Prayer Book says: in the midst of life we are in death. You never know, do you, when you’ll be taken? I just hope I die in my own bed and not like poor Millie did.
‘I’ll miss our weekly chat. I don’t know where I’ll go for my eggs now. Whoever takes on the farm, if it’s Eli or someone else, I’ll never be able to go there again. I’ll always see it like it was Thursday.
‘It was quiet in the yard but that wasn’t unusual when I got there. It was getting on towards five o’clock. The chickens were pecking about like they always do. The cows weren’t in yet for milking. They’d bring them in shortly so I wanted to be away before that. They make such a mess on the road and I have to ride through it on my bike. In fact, I was a bit later than I’d intended. I shall always wonder, now, if I’d arrived half an hour earlier whether things might be different. Millie might be alive – or I might be dead, too, if I’d walked in when Nathan was blasting off that shotgun.
‘I didn’t look round particularly. I’d no reason to and I was in a hurry, being a bit on the late side. I propped my bike against the side of the house and walked round to the back door. That’s what I usually did.
‘Just as I reached the door, it opened and Eli walked out. He stood in front of me so that I couldn’t go nearer. He looked really strange, his face very white and his eyes staring. He said nothing. So I asked him, was he all right? I had to ask him twice, the second time almost shouting at him to get his attention because he seemed to be looking right through me.
‘His gaze sort of cleared then and fixed on me then. He said, “Mum and Dad are dead.” My blood ran cold, it really did. But at the same time I didn’t believe him. How could I? Both of them? Like, if one of them had been taken suddenly, with a heart attack or had a bad accident, that would make sense but not both! Accidents on farms happen. So I told him straight off, “Don’t talk nonsense, Eli!”
‘“You can go in and see for yourself, if you want to,” says he. “But it’s no pretty sight.”
‘I began to think then that something terrible really had happened and I was frightened. I asked him where Nathan was. He told me “in the house” and sort of jerked his head backwards towards the door. I asked if Nathan was all right. He said that Nathan was “as right as could be”, given that he’d gone out of his head.
‘I can tell you, I was terrified by then. I couldn’t run away because my legs wouldn’t work. I was rooted to the spot. I don’t know how I stayed upright. I was just frozen with fear, that’s the truth.
‘But then I thought to myself, I had to find out what had happened for Millie’s sake. “Come on, Doreen!” I told myself. “You can give way later but not now!” The fact is, I think I’m – I was – the only friend poor Millie had. I never did care for her husband. He’s – he was – a real old misery. I know they say, don’t speak ill of the dead. But there’s nothing much good you can say about Albert Smith. He hardly ever spoke, wouldn’t give you the time of day. He’d just sort of grunt if you said hello. Never did see him smile. When Millie was a young girl she was really pretty and lively. But after she married him, she just went down. He killed off her spirit, long before this happened.
‘So I told Eli that I must go into the kitchen and asked, was his brother in there? Because I didn’t fancy meeting Nathan if he was roaming round out of his head. You see, I didn’t understand then that Nathan had killed his parents. I thought perhaps Eli meant that finding them both dead had sent Nathan barmy. I still didn’t quite believe they were both dead, to tell you the truth. I didn’t know then about the gun.
‘Eli said he thought Nathan had gone up to the bathroom to wash. That did sound a bit odd, but so did everything else. All I wanted to know was that Nathan wasn’t in the kitchen. So in I went into the house, and Eli didn’t try and stop me.
‘I hope, as God is my witness, I never see another sight like that. It looked as if there’d been a battle in there, blood all over the place. One of the chairs was lying on its side and beyond, sprawled out on the floor, on his back, was Albert, although most of his head was blown off, so it could have been someone else. I knew it was Albert from his watch chain. He always wore his own father’s gold watch and chain across his waistcoat. Summer or winter I never saw him without his waistcoat and the gold chain across it.
‘I couldn’t see Millie and I called out her name a couple of times. Eli came in behind me then; and said his mother was in the washhouse.
‘I edged round Albert, making sure I didn’t touch him, and into the washhouse. I was sort of prepared this time, if anyone can be prepared for a sight as horrible as that. Poor Millie was sitting on the floor with her back against the copper. He – Nathan – must have pointed the shotgun at her and just blasted her away.
‘I realised then what had happened. I knew that Nathan was in that house somewhere and he probably had the gun still with him. So I turned and ran through the kitchen and outside where it was safer.
‘Eli had gone out again and was standing there. He said to me, “I told you so.” I asked him, where was the gun? Did Nathan have it? He said, no, it was on the kitchen table. I suppose it must have been there, but to be honest, I didn’t notice it. It was dark in that kitchen even in the middle of the day and my eyes had gone straight to Albert. Then I’d gone into the washhouse, so I just didn’t look to see what was on the table.
‘I told Eli we must fetch the police. But he didn’t seem capable of it. So there was nothing for it, I had to get on my old bike, and ride down to the Hart, the nearest pub, and tell the landlord what had happened and get him to phone you.’ [Witness means the police.] ‘I didn’t phone from the house because I didn’t know where Nathan was, only that he was wandering around in there somewhere out of his wits. I didn’t know where the gun was, if Nat had it or not. Eli said it was on the table but I didn’t notice it. Perhaps Nathan had come back downstairs after Eli went outside and picked it up again. Anyway, even if Nathan hadn’t been there, I couldn’t have brought myself to go back in again and step over Albert in the kitchen, knowing poor Millie was sitting out there in the washhouse with a hole in her chest. Besides, I had it in my head we mustn’t touch anything. Perhaps that’s only in detective stories.
‘The police told the landlord to make me stay with him at the Hart until they got there. Well, I didn’t need persuading, did I? I wasn’t going back up to that farm! The landlord gave me a brandy. My hands were shaking so much I could hardly hold the glass. I shall never know how I rode my bike there without falling off it. I couldn’t have ridden it all the way home. My son came later with his car, put my bike in the boot, and drove me home. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.’
Poor Doreen Warble. How brave she’d been. Jess sighed and turned to the next statement, that of Eli Smith.
‘I’d been to market. We were selling a couple of cows. I got a fair price for them. Dad would say it wasn’t enough but he always said that. He was grumbling about prices that morning, before I left. It was all just as usual: Dad moaning, Mum getting ready to do a load of laundry, Nathan slicking his hair down in front of the mirror with some stuff he’d bought in town. Dad said it made him smell like a tart’s boudoir and grumbled about that, too.
‘When I got back, usual time, around half past four, I walked into the house through the back door. We always go that way. We hardly ever go in and out the front door. I could smell the blood. I knew something had been slaughtered and I wondered if someone had killed a chicken or two. Then I saw Nathan sitting at the table with a silly sort of smile on h
is face and the gun lying in front of him. His shirtfront was speckled all over with spots and splashes of blood. I asked him, “What have you done, Nat?”
‘He said he’d shot both Mum and Dad. He pointed at Dad who was lying on the floor. I asked where Mum was and he said she was in the washhouse. I went to look and sure enough, there she was. I walked back into the kitchen and asked him why he’d done it. He said, “It was time,” just like that. It was time. He wouldn’t say any more. He got up and looked down at himself, all spattered with blood, and said, “Best go up and wash, then.” He went out and I heard him going upstairs to the bathroom, running the taps.
‘I went outside and lit a cigarette. I must have smoked two or three, just standing there, not knowing what to do. I was shaking all over, my insides too. Then Doreen Warble came for her eggs. I told her what had happened and she sort of took charge. She’s a good woman, Doreen. Mum thought a lot of her.’
Jess closed the file. Had it been a quarrel over something as trivial as the scented hair oil Nathan was using? Had his father uttered one insult too many? It was time . . . The straw that broke the camel’s back had been added to the burden of years. Nathan had put an end to the grumbling forever.
She went home to bed.
In other circumstances, Lucas would have been feeling happy on Monday morning. He had made a good job of the scratch on the wing mirror, if he said so himself. The activity took him back to his youth, when he’d worked minor miracles on all kinds of old bangers, patching them up.
‘Ah, happy days . . .’ murmured Lucas. Then he thought, No, they weren’t! They were bloody miserable. All the same, he’d always loved working on the old cars.
At least, back then, he hadn’t needed to worry about corpses littering the place. He gave the wing mirror a final polish and stood back to admire his handiwork. But his self-congratulatory glow faded as he heard a tap on the closed up-and-over door of his garage.