by Anita Waller
‘You’ve tracked the delivery?’ Mouse held her breath.
‘We have. It was delivered the day before Judy was killed, but you probably knew that.’ She looked at Mouse, daring her to deny it. Mouse simply shrugged, but relief washed over her.
Kat jumped in, saving Mouse from having to respond. ‘So Alice has no alibi for that morning?’
‘Not unless she can come up with someone who can place her in Bradwell for that entire three-hour period. Let’s not forget that by car she’s only five minutes away from the Carpenter house, and she’s an accomplished runner, so could probably head across the fields in pretty much the same time. As it stands, she started her daily run around ten. Judy was dead by then, she died sometime between Keeley hearing her shout around seven, and you finding the body around ten.’
Kat felt sick. She found it impossible to see Alice Small as a murderer, and although she was around five feet eight inches despite her surname, Kat wasn’t convinced Alice would have the strength to stun Judy with a blow to the head, and then proceed to butcher her.
‘Do you think Alice murdered her?’ Doris asked the question knowing it would come from the girls if she didn’t.
There was a long thoughtful silence, then Tessa spoke. ‘Honestly? I have no idea. The evidence says yes; she has no alibi and she lied about the parcel delivery, but is that slip up attributable to her age? She’s over eighty, and memory lapses are common in older people, no matter how fit they are.’
Mouse grinned at the woman who was morphing into a friend. ‘So you’ve gone off the idea of a murderous Grace Earle?’
‘Huh. Not likely. The more I interview her, the more I dislike her. She’s obnoxious.’
‘You’ve never once said it could be a man,’ Kat said thoughtfully. ‘Is there a reason for that? There are men in that row of houses, all of whom could have gone through that loft space and down into Judy’s house. The two signatories were men. The chap who’s in Bournemouth – does he have an alibi that will bear scrutiny? Surely stabbing is more a male method for murder?’
‘Not really. I bet it’s fifty–fifty. It’s nearly always planned in advance though. The thought has to be there, so that the knife can be in the murderer’s possession, and I’m pretty sure Judy’s was planned. We haven’t found either the knife or whatever was used to hit her on the head. And we also don’t know how the killer got into the house.’
Mouse responded quickly. ‘The back door was open when we arrived.’
‘With the loft access, the back door could just be a diversion to make it look as though the approach was through the back garden. This open-plan attic is what’s made this investigation so convoluted. Why would you leave six houses with shared loft space? It doesn’t make sense. And I’m pretty sure it’s a fire hazard. That untenanted one, the one that’s going to be rented to the chap from Bournemouth, hasn’t even got a fitted loft access. Whoever lived there would have used a ladder to store stuff up there. It’s the only one we haven’t checked out inside, partly because there’s nobody in it, and partly because we haven’t got a key for it yet. We’re meeting the estate agent there tomorrow morning. I don’t expect to get anything from going inside, but it’s something else ticked off the to-do list.’
Mouse responded with a laugh. ‘Think these houses are pretty old. They didn’t have building regs and suchlike.’
The bell above the shop door pinged, and Doris stood to see who had arrived. ‘Hannah! You here for your boss?’
‘Yep. I’m going with her to take Mrs Small to the station. One of the lads has just dropped me off. It did occur to me that we spend more time investigating cases in your neck of the woods than we do in Chesterfield, so it would be a good idea to move our station here.’
Tessa walked out of Mouse’s office, having heard Hannah’s chatter, and five minutes later they had headed for Bradwell to collect Alice.
Kat felt sick. Could Alice possibly be the cold-blooded killer Tessa was leading them to believe? She moved to the large shop window and separated the blind slats, watching as Tessa’s car disappeared up the hill heading in the general direction of the pretty village where Alice lived. Kat felt so tempted to ring Alice and warn her, but knew they would lose Tessa’s trust immediately.
‘This can’t be right,’ she murmured under her breath.
Doris stepped up behind her and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘Keep the faith, Kat. If Alice is innocent, it will be proved.’ There was a moment of hesitation. ‘If she’s innocent.’
Kat walked out of the registry office with a huge smile on her face and a birth certificate for Martha in her hand. She had taken her marriage certificate and Leon’s death certificate, and in the end there had been no problem in registering the baby as Martha Rowe, whose daddy was Leon Rowe.
She walked back to the car, hugged her daughter as if she never wanted to let her go, and drove home to Eyam. The text sent to her mother had informed that Martha was now officially a legal member of the family, and she had sent a photo of the birth certificate.
Arriving home, she was surprised to see her dad’s car on the drive, squeezed in the middle of Mouse’s Range Rover, and Doris’s much smaller Golf.
She opened the front door, and was greeted by cheers and clapping. Enid took Martha from her and removed her jacket. She handed a large box to Kat.
‘This is your christening gown, Kat. We’d be honoured if you used it, but don’t feel you have to if you’ve seen something else.’
Kat opened the box and gasped. Inside was a long lacy creation, with tiny matching shoes. ‘It’s perfect,’ she whispered, and felt tears prickle her eyes. ‘Perfect.’
Mouse received a text just before seven, and she too felt she could smile again.
Alice back home.
She breathed a sigh of relief, and passed the news on to Doris and Kat.‘Should I ring Tessa? I think she felt it was cut and dried, but if Alice is back home…’
‘Leave it for tonight. It’s been a long day, not only for us but also for her. She’s probably gone home to her microwave meal,’ Doris added.
Alice felt angry. She felt dirty. They had kept her in that pokey little room for hours, to no avail. They asked her for an alibi, she once again provided one, and they said the parcel had been delivered the day before.
She denied it, eventually admitting that her brain wasn’t as active as it had once been, and she might have got the wrong day. If that was the case, then she was sorry for misleading them. When every day was the same, it was easy to make mistakes, and if that meant she didn’t have an alibi, then so be it. She wasn’t a murderer, her trust was in the Lord, and she could do no more to help them.
The result was a return to her home, but with instructions to not leave the area. They would probably want to speak with her again. Hannah went in with her, concerned that the ordeal had been considerable for someone of her age. She didn’t want the elderly lady collapsing or something… She was quite surprised when Alice dismissed her immediately, saying she wanted to get the sounds and the smell of the station out of her system and she was going in the shower.
Alice stepped into the cascading stream of hot water and scrubbed at her skin until it felt raw. She dried herself, then wrapped her slender ageing body in the fluffy white towel. Running a comb through her thinning grey hair, she stared at the face reflected in the mirror. Lined, but still a healthy colour helped by her daily run in all weathers, she gave a small smile. ‘Thank you, Lord,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you.’
And Kat received a text.
Three more sleeps x
She didn’t respond, merely smiled. Happily.
Chapter 34
Wednesday morning brought rain. The trees looked miserable, the army of visitors who descended on Eyam every day looked miserable, tables outside tearooms and cafés were unoccupied, and the whole village had an air of grumpiness.
Kat had disappeared to church to book in Martha’s christening and to take a prayer meeting; she felt happ
y to be easing back into the role she had cherished and relished for so many years. Her prayer for Leon brought tears; she knew tears would have been shed in Canada too, and Martha’s other grandparents got a special mention. She lit a candle for her husband, and one for his parents. One day she would tell them how much she had loved him.
An hour later she was back in Connection, ringing her mother to check that Martha was okay.
‘Of course she is. Your dad is teaching her to count.’
‘She’s maybe a bit young.’
‘Not according to your dad. Now get back to work and stop worrying. Just book Martha in on an accountancy course in case your dad gets one to ten wrong.’
Kat disconnected, a smile on her face. She was so lucky to have such amazing back-up for her daughter while she pursued her church and Connection careers.
Rain or no rain, life was good.
Hope didn’t miss out on the rain either. Marsden and Hannah sat in the car, waiting for the estate agent to show up with a key. He arrived on a bike. Dripping water everywhere, he unlocked the front door and ushered them in.
‘Maybe I should have brought the car this morning,’ he said.
‘Maybe you should.’ Marsden smiled. She bent down and picked up the four letters lying on the floor. All appeared to be junk. Three were addressed to Mr John Cannon, all wanting him to buy insurance policies, and one was addressed to Mrs A Small. That one wanted Alice to have a credit card.
‘Mr John Cannon?’ Tessa asked the estate agent.
‘The last tenant. He left about three months ago.’
‘Mrs Small?’
‘She was sort of the tenant before Mr Cannon. Peppercorn tenant. The owner was her nephew. She left a couple of years ago, bought a house in Bradwell, I believe. Oh…’ his brain clicked into gear, ‘but you’ll probably know that, won’t you, in view of what’s gone on here.’
Marsden simply shook her head. Why hadn’t she known this? She asked Hannah to check everywhere downstairs, told the red-faced man to wait in the hall, and she headed upstairs.
She stood below the loft hatch and carefully inspected it. Nothing looked… off. The smaller bedroom was empty, and the bigger double bedroom was almost empty; it did have a ladder in the large built-in wardrobe.
She took out her phone. ‘Send a SOCO team. I need a ladder, a loft hatch and anything else necessary checking for fingerprints and blood traces.’
She headed downstairs. The estate agent was sitting on the bottom tread, waiting for them.
‘We’re going to be a while,’ Marsden said, ‘and I have to ask you now to go outside.’
‘It’s raining. How long will you be?’
‘Depends how long it takes them to get a team together, then they have to get here from Chesterfield, then do the job…’
‘I’ll head back to the office,’ he said. ‘But we will need that key back for when Mr Ashton moves in.’
‘I’ll personally guarantee you will get it back.’ Marsden smiled. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
She watched as he mounted his bike and rode off, turning right onto the main road leading into Castleton. She just hoped he didn’t have to ride up Winnat’s Pass to get to wherever he was going next.
Hannah joined her in the hallway. ‘Shall we get out of the way and wait in the car, boss? There’s nowhere to sit.’
‘Good idea. And we can sit and think about why we didn’t know Alice Small used to live here, and possibly still has a key to get in. She’s proper giving us the run-around, isn’t she?’
They left the door unlocked and made a dash for the car.
‘Crap weather,’ Hannah grumbled. ‘I thought this was summer.’
‘Have patience,’ her boss said, ‘the sun will come out again. It may take a couple of weeks…’
‘So, you reckon that ladder is how access was gained to Judy Carpenter’s place?’
‘I do. I’m not convinced we’re going to find Alice Small’s fingerprints on it though. I think the ladder is part and parcel of the fixtures in this house, because there’s no other access to the loft. And whatever else I think about Alice Small, I definitely don’t think she’s stupid enough to handle it without gloves. No, there’ll be no fingerprints, but there may be a spot or two of blood. I don’t think she would have risked going out the back door, which is what we were meant to think happened, I think she’ll have gone back up into the attics, and out via here. I suspect she got changed in the bedroom after she killed Judy, transported the bloodied clothes in some sort of bag and disposed of them when she got home. Hence the new trainers. It’s a bit pie in the sky, I know, but I’m crossing my fingers that a bit of the blood found its way onto those ladders.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why did she kill her?’
Marsden sighed. ‘I don’t know. I know she loved her nephew, but he’d been dead over a year when Judy was killed. It could be connected with Keeley Roy, and Henry of course.’
‘So there’s no motive?’
‘Hannah, stop being so logical. My brain’s hurting enough,’ Tessa grumbled. ‘Somewhere there is a motive.’
‘Maybe, but I’m still leaning away from Alice, and towards Grace Earle. What if she decided she didn’t want to share the money with Judy? Because I reckon they were in the fraud together, and I reckon it was initially set up by Grace, but then Judy realised Pam Bird, Tom’s birth mother, was the woman her sister was fleecing of lots of money. We’ve seen just how greedy Grace is.’
Marsden leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. Her mind was going around and around in circles. Throw Keeley Roy into the mix, and there were simply too many suspects. Maybe they’d done a Julius Caesar on Judy, and all had a stab or two.
Would Judy be able to supply the answer? What was so wrong about the woman that anybody would want to murder her?
Suddenly Marsden couldn’t wait to get back to the station, go through every minute detail about Judy Carpenter.
That was the point Tessa Marsden knew she desperately didn’t want Alice Small to be the killer.
Marsden pushed everything to one side, all the paperwork, the file folders, the half-eaten Mars bar, and stared at her screen.
‘Judy Carpenter, what am I not seeing?’ she murmured.
Her phone rang and she got the information from SOCO that she had half expected. No blood, fingerprints clearly available on the ladder from two people on file, and one other person not on file.
‘Who are the people on file?’
‘John Cannon and Keeley Roy.’
‘Thank you, that’s really helpful.’
She replaced the receiver and typed John Cannon into her search box. He had, apparently, fenced some televisions in his youth, and received community service. Nothing since. Nothing that said he might have leanings towards murder. And his fingerprints would have been on the ladder anyway.
But Keeley Roy? Why on earth would her fingerprints be on the ladder, unless…
Time to find out.
Marsden and Hannah walked up Keeley’s small front path and knocked on the door. She opened the door carefully, and then smiled when she saw who was standing there.
‘Sorry, I’m still a bit paranoid. Suppose I will be until you catch Judy’s killer.’
‘You’re quite right to be careful, Keeley,’ Marsden countered. ‘The most unlikely people can become murderers.’
She held the door open further. ‘Come in. You need me for something?’
They followed her into the kitchen. Henry was home from school and sitting reading at the kitchen table. Keeley asked him to go into the lounge for a minute, and he disappeared, sneaking an apple out with him.
‘Would you like a drink?’
‘No, we’re fine, thank you, Keeley. Something has come to light that I wanted to follow up with you. Did you notice we were here yesterday? At number four?’
‘John’s place? Yes, I saw the crime scene van, but I didn’t see you.�
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‘We asked them to check for fingerprints and possibly blood contamination on a stepladder that was upstairs.’
‘The one in the wardrobe? He put it in there out of the way, once he’d packed all his clothes.’
‘You knew about it then?’
‘Knew about it? I went up and down it at least half a dozen times back in January or February. Can’t remember the exact date. It was a couple of days before he left.’
‘Why?’ Tessa gave a slight frown.
‘It was me being a good Samaritan. John had a pretty bad fall on ice, and had a cast on his leg and ankle and his right arm in a sling. Something he’d damaged in his shoulder. He couldn’t manage to get up and down the ladder and carry stuff, but he’d got the moving van booked and a new job to start, so he asked if he could go up via my loft ladder, which as you know is really like a set of stairs, work his way across to his and drop his boxes down through his loft hatch. Can you imagine the result of that?’
Tessa smiled. ‘I can. So you went back with him, and got the boxes down the ladder for him?’
Keeley nodded. ‘I did. There was only one heavy one and we kind of slid that one down the ladder, me holding it at the top, and him steering it down with his left hand. The rest I managed on my own, and then I got them downstairs and into the hall for him. I put the ladder back in the wardrobe because he said that’s where it was when he moved in. That was really the first time I’d spoken at length to him, he always seemed to be at work. We’d say hello if we bumped into each other, but that was it. He left a couple of days after my removal job.’
Marsden felt peculiarly relieved. And sad. That effectively took Keeley out of the picture but it put Alice back in it. Marsden had no doubt that when she contacted John Cannon later, he would confirm everything Keeley had said.
She thanked Keeley for her cooperation, and they drove away.
Keeley watched them go, unease settling over her like a huge grey cloud. Damn Judy Carpenter to hell and back.