Murder Unexpected

by Anita Waller

  ‘Thank you, Grace.’ Tessa stood. ‘I’ll leave it all for now, but we may need to come back. It’s officially a murder case, and that usually means a couple of visits to anyone who has the slightest connection with the victim. There is one thing I’m going to do though. I’m going to pop in and see Mrs Bird’s doctor. I’m concerned that she is overdosing on her medication, and we don’t want anything bad happening to her as a result of that, do we? And I have her words recorded where she told me she doesn’t self-medicate, you see to every one of her tablets. I’ll see you soon, Grace.’

  Chapter 27

  Marsden filled Kat and Mouse in on her activities in Buxton, then left for the drive back to Chesterfield.

  Doris, returning to the shop in Mouse’s Range Rover, gave her a wave as they passed.

  ‘Anything new to report,’ she asked as she re-joined her girls, still in Mouse’s office.

  ‘Not much, although Marsden is unhappy about Grace,’ Mouse said. ‘She’s kind of put the gypsy’s warning on her, letting her know that she is aware that Pam Bird is being overdosed and that Grace is doing it.’

  ‘I told you I didn’t like her,’ Doris said. ‘There’s just something… and I have this niggling feeling that I know her. I don’t know how, or where from, but there’s something about her…’

  ‘Let’s run a check on her.’

  Kat put her hands over her ears. ‘I don’t want to hear this.’

  Mouse grinned at Doris. ‘We’d better be quick then; our Kat is having palpitations.’

  Doris smiled at Kat. ‘Kat, what we’re about to do, anybody could do. It’s perfectly legal to track somebody. If it’s available on the Internet, then you can legally find it. Sort of. The problem might come if we find anything we need to dig a bit deeper for, but we won’t mention that to you, okay?’

  Mouse chuckled. ‘Nan, I think you’ve just made it worse. Kat, Martha is stirring, I can hear her. And can you ring Keeley for me and ask where Tom’s grave is, please? If she knows, and I’m sure she will, will you ring Pam and tell her.’

  Kat frowned at the two women and went into her own office. Martha had slept for ages, and wanted feeding again. She took the bottle out of the fridge, warmed it and fed it to Martha. It was quickly emptied, and Kat thought she had better prepare slightly bigger feeds from now onwards. Already she could see a plumper Martha, and she felt blessed that her child was proving to be fairly easy to bring up.

  She rang Keeley, and felt instantly saddened when Keeley spoke with a sob in her voice. ‘I’m sorry, Kat,’ she said. ‘It’s brought everything back to me, because with Judy dying the house next door will have new tenants, and I’ll have lost Tom for ever then. New tenants will change everything. It suddenly washed over me.’

  ‘Oh, Keeley,’ Kat responded, ‘I’m so sorry. And now I’m likely to upset you even more because I have a query about Tom. His birth mother would like to visit his grave, but we don’t know where it is, or even if he has one.’

  There was silence for a moment, and Kat was starting to wonder if Keeley had gone, when she spoke. ‘It’s in Hope churchyard. He was cremated, but Judy had his ashes buried. I go a lot, but I can never take flowers. I mean… I could never take flowers. I suppose there’s nothing stopping me now.’

  ‘Thank you. If I pop down to see you tomorrow, will you be in or are you working?’

  ‘I’ve taken this week off. I’ll be in unless the police come for me again. We can walk across and I’ll show you where he is.’

  ‘That would be really helpful. Now go and give Henry a cuddle, I’m sure it will help. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.’

  The rising of the sun heralded a day that would prove to be a busy and productive one in several ways. Following a request from Enid to have a practise run at having her granddaughter for the full day, Kat dropped her off just before eight. She returned home to discuss with Mouse and Doris their actions for the next few hours, then left to go to Keeley’s home.

  Keeley opened the door with a smile. ‘I’ve bought some flowers,’ were her words as she greeted Kat. ‘For the first time I’ve bought Tom some flowers.’

  ‘Then let’s go and give them to him,’ Kat said.

  Keeley went back inside, picked up the bouquet of roses and returned to Kat, who was waiting in the tiny front garden.

  ‘I’m glad you’re nice and early,’ Keeley said. ‘There’s apparently a legal chap coming to see me at twelve, along with DI Marsden. I’m a tad concerned, but not too much. I haven’t done anything wrong, and despite what they might think, I didn’t kill Judy, and while I might have wanted her dead when Tom was alive, I certainly don’t now, I would gain nothing from that.’ The long speech showed her unease at the forthcoming interview. Inwardly, Kat smiled.

  They walked down to the main road running through the village, and stood patiently as they waited for a gap in the traffic. It was part of life for Derbyshire villagers, learning to be tolerant while visitors drove into their world.

  They reached the other side without breaking any bones, and strolled up towards the church of St Peter. Kat had made a point of learning about the beautiful churches in her area when she was studying to be a deacon, and she knew that St Peter’s was said to be the oldest recorded Christian place of worship in the northern Peak District.

  She would have loved to go inside for five minutes, just to offer up prayers for Keeley and the late Tom, but she knew it was closed during the week. She followed Keeley through the spacious churchyard until Keeley finally stopped and touched a new headstone.

  ‘He’s here,’ she said softly. ‘This is my Tom.’ She bent and placed the bouquet of flowers at the base of the headstone, touched her fingers to her lips and transferred the kiss to the headstone.

  CARPENTER

  Thomas Edward

  23-04-1976 to 05-05-2016

  Aged 40

  Dearly loved husband of Judith

  Rest in Peace

  Kat stared at the inscription – no mention of Tom’s parents. It said more about Judy than Kat could ever have imagined. A mean woman, with a bitter and twisted mind.

  She knelt down by the side of the grave and dipped her head in prayer. She felt Keeley’s hand slide into hers as she too knelt, and Kat spoke aloud the words of the Lord’s Prayer.

  They remained in place for a minute, then stood. There were tears in Keeley’s eyes as she turned to look at Kat. ‘Thank you so much,’ she whispered. ‘That was so right, wasn’t it?’

  Kat nodded. ‘It was. But in my world, Keeley, it’s always right. And in my job I use those words, because sometimes my job isn’t a nice job. If it’s helped you to come to terms with anything, then that makes me happy.’

  ‘I feel at peace finally,’ Keeley responded. ‘For so long it’s felt as though there was a spring inside me, tightly wound and ready to bounce up and split me apart. Do you understand, Kat?’

  ‘More than you could ever know,’ Kat spoke softly. ‘My husband was Leon Rowe, don’t forget. That coiled spring was, and to some extent still is, inside me.’

  They strolled back towards Keeley’s house and stopped by Kat’s car.

  ‘Thank you, Kat, I feel so much better. I can face whatever’s coming this afternoon, and I hope when Tom’s birth mother visits the grave, she feels a sense of closure. Please make sure she understands what a lovely man he was, and how much I miss him.’

  Kat nodded. ‘I will, and if you need to talk after your visit this lunchtime, give me a ring.’

  Keeley stared at her. ‘You know, don’t you? You know why they’re coming to see me.’

  ‘I do, but I can’t tell you. All I will say is don’t be worried, but you might want to talk things through.’

  She drove away, leaving Keeley still standing on the pavement watching her.

  At the same time as Kat and Keeley had been battling to cross the road, Hannah Granger had been picking up a hand-drawn map from Alice, showing the route she took every day on her run, with houses of he
r friends marked on it.

  ‘If you had come a couple of hours ago, PC Granger, you could have done the run with me,’ Alice said. It was clearly said as a joke but Hannah didn’t feel as though Alice was laughing.

  ‘No, you’re fine running it on your own,’ Hannah said, ‘I’ll be walking the route. It’s just something we have to do, Mrs Small, we have to check everybody’s alibi. I’m counting on losing a stone in weight checking yours,’ she added.

  Alice followed Hannah as she walked to her garden gate. ‘You know, my friends are all as old as me. I run this route every day without fail, and I wave at them if they’re in their windows. I don’t actually knock on doors unless I know they’re ill. There’s seven of them, and they’re not going to remember if I did the run on any given day. Strikes me as it’s a bit of a pointless exercise.’

  Hannah smiled. ‘You may well be right, Mrs Small.’ She began her walk and dropped the smile. You may well be right, but I’m going to make sure every damn one of these friends is interviewed, and until I’m convinced they’re remembering accurately, you stay on the suspect list.

  It was already hot, and Hannah began the initial steep climb towards the top of Bradwell. It seemed that it was quite a lengthy run, but Hannah had no intentions of missing any of it, albeit at walking pace.

  The first house she stopped at was simply labelled “June” on the map. A fragile elderly lady answered the door and seemed surprised to be confronted by a young woman with a warrant card held out in front of her.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said in a voice so quiet that Hannah struggled to hear it, ‘am I in trouble?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Hannah smiled. ‘I just have to check something with you.’ She took her clipboard out of her bag and went through the questions she had put together the night before. By the time she had reached the end, it seemed June had seen Alice on that morning, although she did admit to feeling a little confused about days.

  The second of Alice’s friends, even higher into the village, said pretty much what June had said, and she too seemed surprised to be confronted by a policewoman. It appeared that Alice hadn’t pre-warned them that they would be having a visit that morning.

  Hannah stopped halfway around, sat on a bench and took her bottle of water out of her bag. The water was warm but it quenched her thirst. She had interviewed four of the seven on her list, all of them elderly and all of them admitting to not going out much, which was why Alice checked on them, just in case they needed anything. Praise for Alice had been high on their list when talking about their friend, and Hannah was starting to think it was all a waste of time.

  She sat for ten minutes and checked through the notes on her clipboard. All of the four had stated that she was normally passing their house around half past eight; only one had said on that day it had been later. Alice had explained she had to wait for a parcel delivery.

  Hannah rubbed her forehead. She knew she would have to check out the parcel delivery, Marsden didn’t take kindly to things being presumed, she wanted clear-cut facts.

  She continued her walk along the route, and it was only when she hit the last house that things changed. This was a much younger woman, listed on the map as Rosie, maybe in her fifties, and not at all confused by days. She went back inside and brought out her diary. ‘I make a note of everything,’ she explained. ‘I like the physical action of writing, but I’m not clever enough to write a book. I keep a journal instead. It can be lonely living on your own, and this keeps me from constantly watching the television. I do little drawings and things in it, it keeps me amused.’

  She opened the book to the right date and read aloud. ‘Alice was late today, almost ten by the time she got here. She said she’d had to wait for a parcel delivery. I was starting to worry because she is usually here by nine at the latest, but she was okay. Her new trainers looked very smart.’

  Hannah took out her mobile phone and photographed the page Rosie held out to show her. Had the new trainers been in the parcel she had said she waited in for? Further investigation was certainly needed, Hannah decided.

  ‘Thank you, Rosie, you’ve been very helpful. We’re only tying up loose ends so there’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I worry about very little, PC Granger,’ Rosie said. ‘If you want to arrest me, please go ahead. It will put a bit of a spark into my life.’

  Hannah shook her hand, thinking what a nice visit that had turned out to be, and walked back towards Alice’s house where she had left her car.

  Mouse spent her morning hours looking into Grace Earle. Prior to her marriage, she had been Grace Dewhurst, and had lived her childhood years in Leeds before moving with her parents and siblings to Buxton. She had married, but the marriage had only lasted a year; there had been no children that Mouse could trace.

  Checking out the parents first, Mouse could find nothing to raise any red flags; both of them were dead, nothing suspicious to cause any feelings of concern, so she moved on to the siblings. There were two younger sisters, Roberta and Judith.

  Chapter 28

  Hannah called home and had a shower and change of clothing before heading back to the station. It had been something of a marathon, the route that Alice ran every day, and the heat had taken its toll.

  She popped her head around Tessa’s door, saw it was empty so headed for her own desk. She made a start on typing everything up, and loaded the picture from her phone that she had taken of Rosie’s journal entry.

  By the time Marsden returned from her visit to Keeley Roy, which had been emotional beyond belief, she felt bedraggled and exhausted. She could see Hannah at her desk, looking really refreshed, tidy, obviously typing her report from her morning’s activities, and hoped something had come from it. She couldn’t actually see Alice Small as a suspect, not at eighty years old, but this was a straw Marsden could clutch at, she reckoned, even if it was a bit of a paper straw.

  She grabbed a can of Coke from her small fridge, along with a Mars bar, and sighed as she partook of both. She needed quarter of an hour to pull herself around from the tears that had erupted as Keeley began to realise what the father of her little boy had done to ensure their futures were worry free. And also what the murderer of her neighbour had done…

  The phone rang and for a moment, Marsden didn’t want to answer it. She needed peace. She picked up the receiver.

  ‘DI Marsden.’

  ‘Hi, it’s Beth Walters. If I tell you something, I don’t want you querying how I know it or anything. I’ve not done anything illegal, just taken shortcuts.’

  Tessa sighed. ‘Beth Walters, you’ll be the death of me. Between you and Keeley Roy I am emotionally drained.’

  ‘Was it bad?’ Mouse asked sympathetically.

  ‘Horrific. She loved that man so much, and now he’s left her financially secure for the rest of her life. She had no idea he owned all those properties and had such vast amounts of money. Do you know what she said when we told her the contents of the will? She said, “Does this mean I can get Henry some Clark’s shoes?” And she wasn’t being clever, it was a genuine question. When I said yes, because I hadn’t a clue how to handle her, she broke down, and it was a downwards spiral after that. Every time we said a new fact from the will, the tears came again. But enough about that. What have you found out that you shouldn’t have?’

  ‘I did a bit of checking on Grace Earle. It was triggered by something Nan said, about thinking that she knew her, and I felt the same. I tracked her parents, and found where they all lived. Her maiden name is Dewhurst. But the most important thing is she has two younger sisters. Roberta and Judith.’

  There was silence for a moment and then the lights went on in Tessa’s head. ‘Bloody hell. Can you email me the stuff you’ve found, and I’ll pretend it’s all above board. I’m sending two officers out to bring her in. I knew there was something wrong, damn it. It was the overuse of medication, it didn’t sit right with me. I’ll stake my life on it being about money.’

  ‘It’s w
hy we thought we knew her. She has the same characteristics as Judy, and you get occasional glimpses of it when she moves. I’m betting she looks like Bobby Outram as well, although I’ve not seen her so I can’t confirm that. I’m emailing our report now, good luck with it.’

  Tessa stood and moved out of her own office and into the main room. ‘Hannah, Dave, can you get out to Mrs Bird’s place at Buxton, and bring Grace Earle in, please.’

  ‘Right boss,’ both officers said, a little absently as they were wrapped up in typing reports of interviews.

  Grace Earle? What was that all about? Hannah Granger felt puzzled; she would have bet her life that it would be Alice Small they would be bringing in next for a chat, or even Keeley Roy. For heaven’s sake, didn’t she have the most motive, if the will was anything to go by. And direct access via the loft to get into the murder house. She shrugged, picked up her bag and followed Dave Irwin out of the room and down to the car park.

  ‘You want to drive?’ Dave asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m good thanks. Wake me up when we get there. I’ve had a long bloody walk this morning.’

  Dave banged loudly on the front door of the spectacular house in Buxton he was visiting for the first time. He knew a loud bang on the door intimidated whoever was inside, putting them straight into scared mode before they opened the door.

  His first sight of Grace Earle told him he was wrong on all counts. She wasn’t scared, in fact she was quite angry.

  ‘Did you have to be so damned loud,’ she hissed. ‘Mrs Bird hasn’t been well for a few days and is currently asleep. Or was. What do you want?’

  ‘You, please, Ms Earle. You can tell Mrs Bird you’ll be out for a while, but we need you to come now.’

  ‘No. I can’t leave her, and I’m expecting an important phone call.’