by Granger, Ann
Jess studied the smouldering remains of the house again. ‘So presumably Sebastian Crown was a rich man.’
‘Pretty well off, I’d say. We have a few wealthy residents hereabouts. I understand he made his money out of shampoo for dogs.’
‘What?’ Jess was startled.
‘Not just shampoo, canine beauty products and treatments,’ Layton qualified his statement. ‘People spend a lot of money on their pets. Believe me, as a doctor, I’ve known cases where people lavish more care on a dog or cat than on a child.’
‘Did Sebastian Crown lavish care on his child?’ Jess asked as casually as she could.
Layton paused and began again in a circumspect manner, ‘I’m speaking generally now, not about the Crown family specifically, you understand. But everyone accepts that there are problems bringing up a family if you’re poor. Fewer people realise how many problems there are bringing up a family if you’re rich. No money shortage, of course. But a son, particularly, may feel he’s living in the shadow of a very successful father. If the father is a self-made man, then he may, perhaps unintentionally, keep reminding the son that his hard work has provided the lavish lifestyle the family now enjoys. He may be surprisingly stingy when it comes to handing out money because he wants his son to realise that it needs to be earned. I’m not saying this was the case with Sebastian and Gervase.’
‘No, of course not,’ Jess assured him.
‘It’s natural for there to be an element of rivalry in the relationship between a maturing young male and his father. In animal terms, you’d call it a challenge to the established leader of the herd or pack, that sort of thing. You probably watch some of the nature programmes on television. The younger man feels he has to prove himself. Sometimes he relishes the challenge and, well, sometimes he resents it. You know, just drops out and refuses to try, a sort of proving himself in a different way – by not doing what’s expected of him. After he left school Gervase disappeared for about a year, backpacking as they do. I understand he got as far as Australia and discovered surfing. When he reappeared round here, well, he’d got used to doing as he pleased, I suppose. He started getting into trouble, but it’s not my business to tell you about that. It wasn’t a good situation. Sebastian stopped mentioning him.’ Layton frowned.
‘What about Mrs Crown?’ Jess prompted, anxious this unexpected source of information should not dry up.
‘Mrs Crown? Oh, you mean Sebastian’s wife. She left them – husband and child – when the boy was very young, about ten or eleven years old. Ran off with another fellow, some people said.’ Perhaps to change the subject he added, ‘I’ll be retiring next year. Times flies.’
Jess thought this over. ‘How old would Gervase Crown be now?’
The doctor considered. ‘Mid-thirties? He lives abroad somewhere. I don’t know why he didn’t just sell this place if he didn’t want to live in it. Open invitation to dropouts of all kinds to move in.’
‘Was it furnished? It’s hard to tell at the moment.’ Jess smiled encouragingly.
Layton was fidgeting again. The general drift of the conversation worried him. He hadn’t meant to linger and chat, certainly not about even an ex-patient, Sebastian Crown. He’d been keen to stress that Gervase Crown had not been a patient, but he was treading very near the thin divide between professional discretion and ‘helping the police’. There was a dead body in the wreckage, that couldn’t be overlooked. How it got there would be the subject of an extensive inquiry. He’d come here to certify death, nothing more. He was being drawn in more deeply than suited him.
‘Oh, no idea! Shouldn’t have thought so. If any furniture were left in it, someone would have stolen it by now! I believe young Gervase moved the furniture out or sold it. He probably sold the antiques at auction. I dimly remember some kind of sale taking place. But I’ve never heard that he sold the family home as well. I think I’d have found out if he ever had. That sort of thing soon gets round. It matters hereabouts if you’re going to have new neighbours.’
He’d opened the car door in a purposeful manner. Her source of information had been stemmed. Jess thanked him for coming.
‘All part of the job,’ the doctor said, cheerful now that he was getting away. ‘Pity it’s not a murder, I could increase my fee.’
Jess watched him drive off. Like Layton, she wouldn’t normally be at the scene, not at this stage and not in the absence, so far, of foul play. But the uniformed officers first to arrive had been called away to a traffic incident on the main road. When the call came in about a body being found, she had been free and she had jumped in her car and come. Now she turned to the spectators. Anticipating her actions, the two travellers had already melted away and she was left with the tall man and the woman with the pug.
She approached the tall man first because he seemed to be expecting it, and introduced herself. He treated her to careful assessment before he informed her that his name was Roger Trenton. He lived a little under half a mile away at Ivy Lodge. He had seen the red glow in the night sky from his bedroom window at around midnight. ‘Lit up the room, like a candle.’ He had known straight away it would be Key House.
‘Why?’ asked Jess.
Trenton grew indignant at her question. ‘Because the place has been left to go to rack and ruin and it was only a matter of time before squatters moved in. That, or some yobbo bent on mischief. I have written myself, numerous times, to the council and twice to the owner, Gervase Crown.’
‘You have an address for Mr Crown?’ Jess asked hopefully.
‘No. I’ve got an address for his solicitors, and I can give you that. I wrote to Crown care of them. I supposed they sent the letter on. I got no reply. I asked Crown what he intended to do and when. That was an excellent property in good order when he inherited it. He lived in it less than six months, then sold off the contents in a house sale – half the county turned up for that! Crown pocketed the cash and took off into the blue, leaving the place abandoned. Man’s a lunatic.’
‘You spoke of squatters,’ Jess said. ‘Had you seen anyone around recently?’
‘No,’ Trenton told her reluctantly. ‘I don’t see it my job to look after the property if Crown can’t – or won’t.’
This statement was at odds with his earlier claim to have written twice to the owner about the state of Key House and to have bombarded the council with his grievance.
‘Don’t think …’ added Trenton, drawing himself up to his full height. ‘Don’t take it into your head that I’m here because I’m some sort of ghoulish sightseer! I always take a good brisk walk every morning. Often come this way.’
At this the woman with the dog turned and directed what could only be described as a sneer at the speaker.
‘Someone will come to speak to you later, Mr Trenton, if that’s all right,’ said Jess. ‘Ivy Lodge, you say?’
‘Straight on that way.’ Trenton pointed down the road away from the scene. ‘Can’t miss it. It’s got a splendid old oak tree just behind it.’
Trenton departed and Jess turned to the dog walker.
‘Gasbag!’ said the dog walker pithily, watching as Trenton’s figure disappeared at a quick march.
‘You are?’
‘Muriel Pickering – and I do walk by here every day, with Hamlet.’ She pointed at the pug, which turned a baleful stare on Jess.
‘You live nearby, then, or have you driven out here?’
‘I walk!’ repeated Ms Pickering. ‘I’ve just told you so. I’m not afraid to use my legs. I live at Mullions, that’s the name of my house. It’s down that lane there.’ She pointed at a narrow turning just visible some yards behind them. She then directed another scowl towards the vanished Mr Trenton. ‘I never see Roger Trenton walking this way. Load of rubbish. The only place Trenton does any walking is on a golf course. He was out here rubbernecking. And no, I didn’t see any suspicious person or persons, creeping about the place. Yes, there have been tramps using the place occasionally in the past. Not recently. I
t probably wasn’t difficult to get in. I dare say, if you were to take the trouble to go round the back of the house, you’d find a window smashed or a catch broken. Only,’ added Ms Pickering, ‘no use you trying to check that now. Everything will be broken now.’
This was true. Jess made a note of her address and said, as she had told Trenton, someone would be round to speak to her.
As for the travellers, wherever they were camped, it was unlikely they had been responsible for the blaze. They’d have left the area immediately if so. Having sighted Jess, they were probably packing up and leaving even now. If tracked down and questioned they would have seen and heard nothing.
There were people who wanted to talk to the police but didn’t know anything. Roger Trenton would probably prove one of those. There were those who, if they did know anything, wouldn’t tell you out of sheer contrariness and Muriel Pickering might well fall into that category. Then there were the people such as the travellers who didn’t want to talk to the police, whether they knew anything or not. Occasionally, one pearl in a whole bed of oysters, there was someone who actually knew something and was prepared to come forward. Jess crossed her fingers and hoped they found such a witness soon.
One other person had been present, but unnoticed, and had left shortly before Jess’s arrival on the scene. Alfie Darrow had set out at first light to check his snares. Alfie was not a countryman, although he’d lived most of his life in Weston St Ambrose. But his grandfather had been skilled in country ways and it was he who had shown his grandson how to make a simple snare. Alfie’s grandfather had been the male presence in the family when Alfie was a child. His father had run off when Alfie was in the cradle. There was an ancient rabbit warren extending over a large area in a field on the edge of a copse of tangled native woodland, which formed a border between the single-track lane called Long Lane and the ‘rabbit field’ as Alfie knew it. Over the years the rabbits had made little paths all over the copse and through the undergrowth, each one leading back to their warren. They were creatures of habit. As they scurried back along these narrow tracks to their burrows, they had to pass under a wire fence half buried in nettles, thistles and dock, and it was to this fence Alfie fixed his most successful snares, just where the rabbits emerged.
Today, when he’d set out, he’d soon become aware of the activity around Key House. The smell of burning hung in the air. From time to time a flame would shoot upward into the lightening sky as some still-remaining beam or upper floorboards of the house fell victim to the remorseless progress of the fire. Alfie concealed himself behind the untidy hedgerow by the road and watched it all, spending the most entertaining and exciting couple of hours he could remember. The fire crew were the real-life action heroes of the computer games that were Alfie’s favoured amusement. Uniformed and helmeted, they bellowed instructions and warnings to one another as they played the hoses over the fire, and sent great jets of water into the air. When the burning remains of the upper floor crashed down into the interior, filling the air with a meteor shower of golden sparks, Alfie had to press both hands to his mouth to stop himself whooping aloud with joy. The water fell on to the crackling timbers below and they cracked and spat like cornered wild beasts. It struck the hot stones of the building with a great hiss, and sent up clouds of steam to mingle with the smoke. Alfie’s mouth now hung open in wonder. Burning embers flew across the road like rockets. It smelled like Bonfire Night. Alfie continued to watch it all entranced, heedless of his cramped hiding place and the awkward way his limbs were bent to squeeze into it.
Then the first police car had arrived, with two uniformed officers, and put an end to the fun. With the arrival of the law on the scene, Alfie decided it was time for him to go. He was not unknown to the local police and he thought he recognised one of the coppers. The plod would recognise him, if he spotted him, and the next thing Alfie knew, he’d be accused of starting the fire. The police were like that, in Alfie’s view, they grabbed the first familiar face and pinned whatever they could on its owner. He could come back the next day to check the snares. He crept out of his den, stretched his stiffened limbs, and set off over the field home. What a story he had to tell. If he’d waited a little longer until the body had been discovered, he’d have had an even more dramatic tale.
Chapter 2
The best laid plans of mice and men seldom work out. Had they been contemporaries, Ian Carter thought, the Scottish bard who penned the words might have had him in mind.
Sitting in his one and only armchair with a mug of instant coffee in his hand, he felt a moment of reflection creep over him. It was very early, only just light enough to see without electricity, and the house was quiet. It was that hour when, for a brief interlude, events weren’t rushing by while he laboured to keep up. He had time to think.
He sipped his coffee, which managed to be hot, bitter and tasteless all at once, and considered his life. To start at the top, a really big plan to have gone astray had been that in which he’d envisaged Sophie and himself growing old together, peacefully. Arm in arm, they’d have watched their daughter mature into a poised, graceful and charming young woman. The sort of young woman Sophie had appeared to him, when all was going well at the beginning of their relationship.
That plan had gone out of the window when Sophie met Rodney Marsham. Rodney! I ask you! Not for the first time, Carter asked himself how his then wife could have been swept off her feet by someone so pale, podgy and thoroughly dull; a man whose permanent air of bonhomie Carter found intensely irritating. A man, moreover, whose business interests, undeniably profitable, appeared to Carter elusive, if not dodgy.
‘That’s the copper in you, Ian,’ Sophie had retorted when he’d made this last objection to her, at the time of their break-up. ‘You suspect everyone!’
To be fair, she’d accused him of that many times during their marriage and not just at the end of it. He supposed she was probably right. He had not been the husband for Sophie. Things had been going wrong between them long before Rodney appeared on the scene, smiling and looking satisfied with life. Who wouldn’t give up a cantankerous policeman who spent his working days contemplating all that made man vile, and came home at night tired and disinclined to party? Why not change him for a cheery, sociable fellow with a golden touch in business matters? Rodney and Sophie were probably made for each other. He should not begrudge them their contentedness. But Millie, that was another matter altogether.
There was a faint clatter and then the sound of small footsteps padding towards the living-room door. It creaked open and Millie’s face peered through the crack. Seeing her father sitting there with his coffee, she pushed open the door and came in, hopping across the floor in bare feet and nestling into the beanbag opposite him. She’d put on her dressing gown over her pyjamas, even if she’d forgotten her slippers, and clutched MacTavish to her.
MacTavish was a disconcertingly humanoid bear, acquired on a visit to Scotland in their days as a family. He wore a tartan beret sewn between his ears and a tartan shawl slung rakishly across his furry tummy. He had originally had a plastic buckler and claymore, but Sophie, in one of her anti-war phases, had detached his weapons and disposed of them. It was typical of Sophie, thought Carter, that her contribution to world peace consisted largely of symbolic gestures of that sort. On the other hand, she would organise the occasional coffee morning to raise funds for a charity to help those whose lives were disrupted by conflicts; and he had to admit that probably did more good than waving home-made placards and hanging effigies of politicians. In any case, MacTavish’s smile, embroidered on his plush countenance, was hardly warlike. He had a smirk that reminded Carter of Rodney Marsham’s.
His daughter had fixed him with a direct accusing stare that reminded him of Sophie. What had happened to the daydream of graceful, charming …
‘Why have you got up so early?’ demanded Millie.
‘I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ Carter apologised. ‘I tried to be quiet.’
‘I
heard the tap running in the kitchen. It sort of groans when you switch it off. You ought to get it mended.’
Yes, that was Sophie’s voice all right.
‘I’ll get round to it,’ he said defensively. He had the horrible feeling he’d had this conversation many times in the past with her mother.
‘MacTavish heard it too.’
He opened his mouth to argue that MacTavish had, literally, cloth ears. But there was something about her relationship with the toy that both touched him and made him feel guilty. MacTavish had never let her down.
‘Sorry, MacTavish,’ he said. ‘Did you sleep all right, both of you, before I made a racket in the kitchen?’
‘Mmn …’ murmured Millie, her gaze travelling critically around the room. ‘Mummy and Rodney are calling in an interior designer.’ She spoke the last words with respect. ‘An interior designer,’ she explained kindly, ‘picks out your furniture for you.’
Stung, Carter retorted, ‘I can pick out my own furniture.’
‘Why did you pick this?’ asked Millie with that innocent candidness that renders any question unanswerable.
‘I was in a rush. I just needed some furniture. By the next time you come, I hope I’ll have got the place fixed up.’
Her visit had not been planned. Sophie had rung up and told him that it was an emergency.