Remains to be Seen

by J M Gregson

  Peach looked at him impatiently, then divined what he was hinting at. ‘You mean he learnt to be a carpenter in prison, don’t you?’

  Holloway was for the first time discomforted. He hadn’t expected this sharp-eyed policeman to guess what he meant without further questioning. ‘That is so, yes. I don’t know what degree of skill Mr Cartwright possessed before he—’

  ‘So have all your colleagues on the staff been in trouble with the law before they were appointed here? You preside over a gang of jailbirds, do you?’ Peach was enjoying disturbing the waters through which this stately ship of state had been sailing so serenely.

  Holloway said with distaste, ‘Not all of them are “jailbirds”, Chief Inspector Peach. You have been kind enough to point out that I endured a spell of incarceration myself, many years ago. And it is true that the majority of our staff here have either undergone prison sentences or suffered fines or cautions, at some time in their pasts.’

  ‘All of ’em, I should think.’ Peach nodded his satisfaction in the discovery.

  Holloway looked at him with distaste and said unctuously, ‘Mr Crouch was of a philanthropic disposition.’

  ‘I’ll bet he was.’

  ‘He liked to give people who had gone wrong in their lives a second chance.’

  ‘Come off it, Mr Holloway! Tell it like it is. Crouch employed people like that so that he could have a hold over them. So that they wouldn’t ask any awkward questions about what he was up to and what went on here. So that they wouldn’t talk to inquisitive policemen if they came enquiring.’

  ‘Mr Crouch gave me a second chance and I took it with both hands. I’m grateful to him. And I haven’t let him down.’

  Peach looked at him balefully. He knew that even though he disliked this man, he was probably both shrewd and intelligent. He sensed also that he wasn’t going to get much help from him in this investigation. ‘I believe that you haven’t broken the law again yourself. Unless we count turning a blind eye to what you must have suspected was going on here. What about the people you supervise?’

  Neville Holloway took his time, picking his words as carefully as the lawyer he often felt he might have been. ‘As far as I know, everyone here is going straight. They’d be foolish if they weren’t. They’ve been offered gainful employment, at wages which are in most cases a little above the going rate. They’re sensible people, or we wouldn’t have taken them on. They aren’t going to step out of line again.’

  Peach weighed these words as carefully as the man had selected them, nodding a little at the logic of the argument. Then he said, ‘And yet one of them may be a murderer.’

  ‘You’ve no proof of that.’

  ‘No. Not as yet, I haven’t. But the probability is that Neil Cartwright was killed by someone who knew him well. Someone who worked with him, perhaps. Maybe even someone who directed his working life here.’

  DCI Peach knew he should be dispassionate, but he quite enjoyed delivering that thought.

  Michelle Naylor was not looking at her best. She was surprised how pale her face looked when she glanced in the mirror in the small hall of the cottage. Her usually animated features looked small, still, almost doll-like, beneath the tight curls of her black hair.

  But then no one would expect her to look at her best, after what had happened during the week. She had initially been quite excited by the police raid, with all the shouts and all the vehicles racing about the place. When you did not feel threatened yourself, it was quite thrilling to be on the fringe of the drama, almost involved in it and yet quite safe. It had felt almost as if the big house was being attacked by an army.

  Michelle was only thirty, and her experience of armies and armaments was confined to television reports from Iraq and Israel, though she did know a little about uniformed police.

  The fire had been a different matter altogether. Losing your home, even when you didn’t own it, even when there was time for you to rescue all your precious individual items before the flames took over, was a disturbing thing. This was her first, and she now hoped her last, experience of a destructive fire. Even though she had never been in physical danger, she was amazed how terrifying she had found the intense heat, and the great orange flames leaping out of control towards the night sky, and the noise of wood and masonry crashing amid smoke and red-hot cinders.

  And then to learn the next day of the body, and how it had been so horribly burned, with no one even knowing it was there. No one had known about it until Thursday, when the firemen had brought the blaze under control and dared to venture into the stables – they all still called it that, though it was a long time since there had been horses there.

  And last of all the news, running round the residents like wildfire this morning, that this charred, half-vanished black thing had been the body of Neil Cartwright. No wonder she had been shocked when she glanced at the mirror: you could only expect to look like a wild, half-mad thing, when you had been through what she had been through this week.

  At least it was Saturday. No one would ask her where she was going, or question why she wasn’t busily engaged upon some household task. She’d seen Neville Holloway take a man and a woman into his office earlier on: the couple had looked like plainclothes police to her. But you couldn’t be sure; all kinds of people had been in and out of the mansion in the last few months.

  There didn’t seem to be anyone about as Michelle started her car, which was still parked behind the main house, in front of the damaged stable block. One of the disadvantages of living at Marton Towers was that there was only one way out of the place for vehicles. You had to drive down the long, straight ribbon of tarmac to the gatehouse and the exit. You felt as you did so that everyone in the place was aware of your movements, wondering where you were going and what you were about.

  She had never had that feeling so strongly as on this quiet Saturday morning, when neither the owner nor any of his visitors were occupying those bedrooms which overlooked the drive. Her apprehension must be because of what she was about, the secret mission which she had determined upon during a sleepless night.

  Michelle felt the blood pounding in her temples as she drove those three hundred yards to the gatehouse, felt panic threatening her; she knew she would not be able to frame coherent words if anyone stopped her.

  But no one did. She snatched a glance at the deserted gatehouse as she passed it, confirming that it was still locked up and unoccupied. Then she was on the lane outside, moving swiftly towards the bend, where the familiar clump of trees shaded the road and would provide concealment. She made her hands and arms relax on the steering wheel, pressed herself back against her seat in an attempt to dismiss her tension, forced a small, private smile. It had been easy really, hadn’t it? She had got the difficulties and the dangers wildly out of proportion.

  Very probably no one had seen her.

  Michelle knew what she was going to do. Hell, she’d been over it enough times, during the long hours when she had waited for the dawn. She had no idea whether the refuse collectors worked on a Saturday, and there would be too many people around the council disposal dump for her to go there; she didn’t want to risk meeting anyone who knew her. If necessary, she’d go into the centre of the town, slip down the alley behind the shops and restaurants, where she knew there were huge, cylindrical refuse bins. Surely what she had in the boot of the little black Ford Fiesta could disappear into one of these without the fear of discovery?

  All the same, she would rather not run that risk. She drove through areas of Brunton where she couldn’t remember ever going before, old, narrow streets where the terraced houses were crammed close together. Asian faces looked out from the doorways at her. The brown eyes of men who stood talking at the street corners looked curiously at the slim young woman with the white face in the small black car. But none of them interfered with her erratic progress; no one stopped her to ask where she wanted to go or to offer her help with the local geography.

  Then, just when her h
ead was beginning to ache anew with the strain, and she was deciding she would have to settle for those waste bins in the town centre, Michelle Naylor found what she was searching for.

  She saw the pile of black plastic bags on the corner of the road first. Then, as she turned the little Ford into a gently curving road where the houses had long front gardens, she caught sight of the yellow lorry. The big, ugly vehicle was a hundred and fifty yards away; she could see the big circle of its grinder mechanism turning, long before she heard the sound of those powerful blades.

  She stopped the Fiesta for a moment, watched as two of the workers flung a score of the plastic bags accurately into the lorry’s destructive jaws. Then they moved away, and the vehicle crawled forward a hundred yards to its next stopping point. All its attendants disappeared to collect individual bags from the gateways of the houses and gather them together at spots agreed for their assembly and despatch into the refuse lorry.

  For the moment, the rear of the big wagon, with its grinding mechanism still steadily turning, was deserted. Michelle eased her car forward, its engine note unheard beneath the harsh noise from the big vehicle in front of her. When she stopped, she found her limbs suddenly petrified, and she had a moment of panic when she thought she would not be able to get out of the car and do this after all.

  It lasted for no more than two seconds at most. Then she was through the door, burrowing into the Fiesta’s boot, producing her own mouthful of food for the voracious monster in front of her. She paused for a moment, assessing her aim, then tossed her own plastic bag into the exact middle of the dark hole at the centre of those powerfully destructive blades.

  She knew she should turn and depart immediately, but she found she had to watch the final disappearance of her guilt into that obliterating machine.

  In seconds, it had disappeared for ever, soundlessly dispatched into oblivion with the kitchen waste of hundreds of houses. She had a sudden moment of searing pain at the finality of what she had done, at the irrevocability of this closure. She had not been prepared for the feeling, and her eyes filled with tears as she turned away from the raucous grating of the machinery.

  A slim young black man with a collection of plastic sacks over his shoulder appeared suddenly round the side of the vehicle. She had thought he would be curious about her presence there, but he called a cheerful greeting and gave her a smile which said he was near the end of his shift.

  Five minutes later, Michelle Naylor was back in her car and driving out of the town, with her mission accomplished. She should have felt an immense relief. Perhaps that would come later.

  At the moment, she felt numbed and curiously empty.

  You could not possibly have any idea what the wife of a murder victim should look like. At thirty-eight, with fifteen years’ CID work behind him, Percy Peach had years of experience of meeting such women, and they had come in all shapes, sizes and ages.

  And yet this one was a surprise. Sally Cartwright looked a little older than her forty-one years. She was not unattractive, but she had the blonde hair and fair-skinned, blue-eyed face which usually seem to age a little more quickly than darker beauty. She was moving towards a comfortable plumpness, carrying a few extra pounds round her waist and thighs, but was certainly not obese, that favourite contemporary word.

  In the wedding photograph on top of the television which was set in the corner of the room, she looked quite stunning, a willowy, smiling young woman at the peak of her beauty, whose curves the long white wedding dress noticeably failed to conceal. She was smiling happily at the camera; people always said the bride looked radiant, but on this occasion the epithet had certainly been justified.

  Police officers are trained to observe, and both of them took in the detail of the room as well as that of the woman at the centre of it. It was comfortably as well as tastefully furnished. The dark-red sofas sat well on the near-white carpet, which like the walls seemed to have just a hint of red in it. The pictures were Victorian or Edwardian watercolours, and the heavy frame of the mirror over the fireplace was surely from a similar period. There was a single light on a low table, as if its occupant acknowledged that, in the middle of a cloudy March day, this low-ceilinged, north-facing room needed a little extra illumination.

  She said, ‘It’s a little late for coffee, but I don’t suppose Mr Holloway thought of offering it to you. Would you like some now? I have it ready, if you would.’

  That was what was unusual about this widow, Percy decided. Her composure, in the hour of her bereavement, in the face of this awful and shocking death. Without looking at Lucy Blake, he said, ‘That would be very welcome. Thank you.’

  Within sixty seconds, Sally Cartwright brought in a tray with a cafetière, china cups and saucers and a plate of what looked like home-made biscuits. If she was conscious of their scrutiny, as she surely must have been, she gave no sign of it. She poured coffee with a supremely steady hand, set a small table beside each of them, then proffered small plates and biscuits.

  Then, as if to show them without resentment that she was aware of their taking in of these things, she nodded at the plates and the cups and said, ‘They’re Royal Doulton. Not mine, unfortunately. They came over from the main house, where there is a surfeit of fine things.’

  ‘You’re the housekeeper there?’

  She smiled at DCI Peach. Just as coolly as he had assessed her, she took in the suppressed energy of his squat frame, the keenness of his black-eyed scrutiny, the precision of his small moustache and the neatly trimmed fringe of black hair beneath his bald dome, the neatness of his light grey suit and shining black shoes. Then the full lips broke into a small smile as she said, ‘We don’t deal much in formal job titles at Marton Towers; Mr Holloway once took pains to explain to me that it might stop us operating outside the boundaries of our job descriptions.’

  ‘You don’t agree with that view?’

  A shrug of the shoulders. ‘He’s the boss. He’s much older than anyone else here, and he has set ideas about how the house should be run. But it works well enough. Everyone seems to do whatever is asked of them, without making too many complaints.’

  ‘You like working here?’

  She took a sip of her own coffee, offered the plate of biscuits around again. ‘Is it relevant whether those of us who work at Marton Towers are happy or not?’

  He was ready for that, even welcomed it, as a lead-in to more important questions. ‘Indeed it is, Mrs Cartwright. If we are to find out who killed your husband, we need to begin by getting as clear a picture as possible of the life he lived here.’

  She nodded coolly. The first mention of her husband and the reason why they were here had not unsettled her. Peach would not conclude yet that she was not grieving over his death, for he had seen grief take many forms. Shock has strange physical effects: it can destroy all forms of control, or it can atrophy normal reactions for a time, so that people move through the period after the death of someone close to them almost as if in a trance.

  Peach said, ‘Would you say that “housekeeper” was an accurate description of what you do here?’

  ‘I would. So long as you don’t consider me another Mrs Danvers.’ She allowed herself a small, sardonic smile at the absurdity of that image. ‘Mr Holloway is definitely the one in charge of things, both inside and outside the mansion. But after coming here as a general domestic worker, I have taken on more and more responsibility for the smooth running of the house over the last three or four years, and he has looked to me to do so. He’s wrong about us being afraid to cross job-delineation lines, of course. We were all glad to be employed here. The work isn’t generally over-taxing, and the conditions of service are good.’

  Peach asked the question she had almost invited. ‘Why do you say that most of you were glad of the work in the first place?’

  ‘We have what you might charitably call chequered pasts. Most of us would have had difficulty in being appointed to the sort of posts we have here, if we had sought them elsewhere.�
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  ‘Thank you for being so frank about that.’

  ‘You’re police officers. You could find out about these things, if you chose to.’

  ‘Most of them, yes. But where there are no convictions, they do not always show up on police computers.’ He wouldn’t volunteer to her how patchy some of the earlier computer files were, in a service that had been tardy and amateur in recognizing the value of electronics. ‘What is your own skeleton in the cupboard?’

  Sally had known it would come out, eventually. But now, when she was invited to produce it herself for this polite, insistent man, she had to conquer a moment of diffidence. ‘Nothing too dramatic. I was dismissed from a secretarial post, for stealing office supplies. I had broken off an association with one of the partners, and he was looking for something to hit me with. The police were involved, but eventually the charges were dropped and it never came to court. As I say, the man was looking for something to hit me with, and the police recognized that. But I left without a reference, and it made it difficult to get work, for quite a long time. I had never done domestic work, until I came here. Now I like it, and enjoy the responsibilities I have.’

  She told it as calmly as she had delivered everything else so far; only when she had mentioned the aborted affair had there been a touch of acid in her tone. Peach said, ‘All the other people who work here have something similar in their backgrounds, haven’t they?’

  She looked at him evenly, weighing him as an opponent, wondering exactly how much he knew. ‘I expect so. We don’t enquire too much into each other’s backgrounds. When you’ve been in trouble, you know when to leave things alone.’

  Peach grinned. ‘Unlike policemen, who pry into anything which takes their fancy and claim they’re only doing their duty.’

  She gave him a wan smile. ‘And who have a very large machinery behind them to ensure we tell them the truth.’

  DS Blake had so far been quite content to study the reactions of the newly bereaved woman under Peach’s polite but insistent interrogation. Now she said quietly, ‘Have you any children, Mrs Cartwright?’