“The shirt’s been there for much longer than the body,” Graham said. “We commented that it looked as though it had been there for decades.”
“Yes, sir. The shirt belongs to the person who killed Vera and disposed of her body. Her killer didn’t have to worry about the grandmother witnessing the burying of the shirt because—”
“The grandmother had moved to London a year earlier,” Mark finished, his voice barely audible.
“Yes.” I sank back in my chair, aware of my racing heart and the cold metal of the chair frame. It all seemed logical but I couldn’t prove it.
Graham drew our attention back to the columns written on the whiteboard. “We have Vera killed and buried. She lies there for twenty-two years, undiscovered. Who had motive twenty-two years ago to kill her? Consider any motive that could be connected with Vera and the people living here in 1989. Harding was here. Angela wasn’t born yet. Reed and Marian were about to get married in June, I looked it up.” He allowed himself a quick grin before adding, “But his affairs hadn’t stopped with the wedding ceremony, might have been going on before the wedding.” He rolled the marker between his palms, eager for someone’s theory.
The columns of Suspect/Motive/Opportunity stared at me from the whiteboard. I glanced at the two lists comparing Harding and Vera, then at the photographs of Reed’s body and Vera’s bones. Pointing to the ‘motive’ column, I said, “I think it does boil down to the motive of affairs, but not Harding’s.”
“Whose, then, Taylor?”
“Reed’s. His wife admits he’s been having extramarital affairs throughout their marriage. Even before they were married. Marian probably should get the gold star for Patience—or Stupidity, depending on your outlook. She doesn’t even know how many women he’s slept with.”
Margo agreed. “Her patience may have finally ran out and she killed him. Maybe not intentionally, but during an argument, perhaps.”
“The proverbial straw.”
“Yes, sir. Every person has her breaking point, and whatever Reed finally did, maybe even with whom, became too much for Marian to bear. They may have discussed it before this; she may have given him an ultimatum or got him to agree to go to a counselor.”
I said rather slowly, thinking it through, “I don’t know about that. I can’t imagine how any wife would stand the years of affairs Reed evidently had.”
“Would a stream of valuable jewelry or lavish vacations or expensive cars have been enough to keep her married to him?”
I shrugged. “Up to the individual, I would think. It wouldn’t me.” I felt my cheeks grow warm, so I hurriedly added, “If he did heap on the incentives it may have worked for a while, but I still believe it comes down to how seriously you take your weddings vows.”
“Even if you didn’t take them all that seriously,” Margo said, “I think after twenty-two years of marriage, with your husband fooling around constantly, you’d reach your limit.”
“We could probably make a case for most anyone in Cauldham,” I said. “But it doesn’t make sense to wait so long, Margo. If she was jealous or angry with Reed, she wouldn’t wait nearly a quarter of a century to top him.”
“Who else do you want?”
“I don’t want more suspects, Margo. But I did just think of something.”
Graham leaned against the edge of the table, crossed his long legs, and asked what it was.
“Well, sir, Mark and I spoke to Marian the first day of the investigation.”
“Yeah,” Mark said. “She was the first person on our list.”
“Recall what she said?”
“If you want something specific.” He began leafing through his notebook but I cut him off.
“Thanks, but I remember. Which is why I think it’s significant. She told us that when Reed first went missing, she went to church every day.”
“Right.” Mark snapped his fingers and angled in his chair to face me. “She was trying not to cry when she said it, but her eyes were moist. She said she lit candles and prayed to every saint she could think of for help in finding Reed.”
“Yes. She said she was a regular churchgoer, and I inferred from another statement that she was bewildered when God didn’t help her.”
“You’re suggesting…what?” Graham asked.
“If she’s that religious, has that much faith in God, she must take her wedding vows seriously.”
“And in so doing, she had had it with Reed’s continual affairs.”
“Yes, sir. It’s conjecture, of course.” I settled back in my chair, unhappy that we couldn’t prove Marian had killed Reed.
Graham pushed away from the table edge and came over to me. He picked up a vacant chair, turned it so the back faced me and sat down, his arms resting across the top of the chair back. “I think you’re just one step away from solving it, Taylor. Look at it from the opposite angle.”
I looked at him, trying to understand how I could be so close to solving it when it seemed like a dead end. We couldn’t put anyone in the forest with Reed’s body or Vera’s bones. Graham, for all his calm demeanor, was trying to close the case and lift the pressure off the divisional commander. “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t—”
“You mentioned it yourself, Brenna, but I think you got sidetracked. What did you begin talking about?”
“Affairs.”
“Reed, of course, springs to mind. But what if Marian, being the preserver of their marriage, didn’t kill Reed over an affair?“
He grinned as I whispered, “What if she killed Vera to protect her marriage?”
“I believe she did. It was early into their marriage. 1989.”
“The year Vera went missing.” A chill grabbed me and I trembled. Mark threw his arm around my shoulders but I kept thinking out loud. “She and Reed were months away from getting married. Marian knew of Reed’s amorous past; maybe Reed tried flirting with Vera. Whatever happened, Marian got jealous, maybe even frightened, believing Reed was about to have an affair with Vera or had already commenced one. So she kills Vera, thinking she’s just put a halt to his transgressions.”
“But killing Vera didn’t stop Reed’s affairs,” Margo said. “It’s twenty-two years later and he’s still sleeping around.”
“You’re looking at this from the viewpoint of our present knowledge,” Graham reminded her. “How was Marian to know Reed would continue having affairs? For all she knew, and hoped, their marriage would be the stabling influence he needed to settle down.”
The room grew silent as each of us reasoned through the new information. A flock of rooks landed on the ground outside the window, cawing noisily to each other.
Mark, his attention still on the birds, asked, “Where does that take us?”
“I can’t answer that. I’m all in a muddle.”
“We need Marian’s DNA if we want to run a test to the blood found on that shirt.” Mark shifted his attention back to us.
“That’s fine.” Margo grabbed a ginger snap. “How? Where are you going to get it? She’s not going to give it to you, Mark, even with all your pretty ways.”
Mark scratched the rim of his ear and said that was a slight problem.
“So we’re back where we started from. No proof.”
“We’re a bit further along than supposition.” Mark scowled. “We’ve all done our share, Margo. Every person on this team. Brenna and I have done a hell of a lot of computer work. Oglethorpe found the shirt and key, and Mr. Graham—”
Graham tossed the capped marker onto the table, watching it roll a foot or so before bumping into a stack of papers. “Mr. Graham,” he said, getting up, “needs to see a man about a cat.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Graham walked into the pub several hours later, smiling like the Cheshire Cat. He abandoned his usual practice of letting us decompress alone after our day, and joined us at our table. Ordinarily this would put a strain on us, for we couldn’t vent or talk freely, but tonight it felt quite relaxing to me—firmly establishin
g us as a team.
We had finished with our meal and had changed clothes, needing to shed even the impression of still being on the clock. Margo and I opted for jeans and cotton blouses; Mark wore the same tan trousers from this weekend but had changed into a polo shirt. We sat at a corner table, where it was less noisy, and had been talking about the case and our lives when Graham came up to us.
He obviously had something say; what other reason would produce the grin and the unusual chat over beers? Clearly agitated, Mark eyed Graham with all the disquiet of a prisoner awaiting his sentence. Margo sipped her wine, relaxed in her chair, and tolerantly waited. I pushed my glass of shandy around on the beer mat, curious nearly beyond patience.
When Graham had taken several swallows of beer, he deliberately set the glass down, leaned back in his chair and eyed each of us in turn. Then, leaning forward again, he said in a low, quiet voice, “Ever hear of cat DNA testing?”
Mark blinked, Margo coughed on her sip of wine, and I muttered ‘Pardon?’ Slapping Margo on the back, I asked what it was.
“Fairly new technology,” Graham said after Margo’s face had subsided to its normal hue. “Giving you just the basics, cat fur found on a person or at a crime scene can be compared to any cat. A victim or suspect—or innocent person—can be linked to the scene or crime using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA testing. Cat’s hair is as individual as a person’s and therefore is as valuable and reliable a resource for identifying a specific person.”
I had stopping playing with the glass and now merely stared at Graham. “You’re talking about those white bits of fur on that bloodied shirt Mark and I found in the grandmother’s garden.”
Graham nodded, still smiling. “Mitochondrial DNA testing tends to be the most used because, due to its high mutation rate, it can be identified more readily between different individual cats. The genes also are quite plentiful.
“Nuclear DNA exists on fur that has root bulbs intact. When a cat grooms itself, sometimes particles of its skin adheres to the oil of its fur. Another source of DNA samples and another source of evidence in a criminal trial.”
“You’re not joking, sir.” Mark looked like he wanted to stand up and cheer, but he wasn’t quite certain if the cat hair scenario was real.
“Cross my heart, Salt,” Graham said. “Hand on the bible. It’s been used in cases around the world, probably the first in Canada when Douglas Beamish was convicted of murder.”
“You’re not joking,” Mark repeated, staring at Graham.
“Do I need a bible?” He pretended to look around the room before saying that the conviction had been attained due to cat fur found on the suspect’s jacket pocket. “Genetically connecting the victim’s cat to Beamish. Sweet, isn’t it?” He took another swallow of beer.
“You want to compare the cat fur on the shirt to Marian Harper’s cat, don’t you, sir?” I asked, hardly daring to hope that we were about to nab Vera’s murderer. Marian was the only person who had a longhaired white cat.
“She’ll scream, of course, but we’ve got probable cause to bring her in. We’ve built a case and we’ll find DNA through her skin cells, hair and sweat on that bloodied shirt. I’ve no doubt hers is the other type of blood on the shirt, along with Reed’s. That, along with the cat fur…” He raised his beer and saluted us.
It seemed like we had our killer. If the blood and skin cells on the shirt were Marian’s, she couldn’t plead that someone had worn the shirt to kill Reed and planted it at the scene. The third person’s DNA would then be on the shirt. Graham was still talking about the cat fur DNA when I snapped back to the conversation.
“It’s brilliant work, this cat hair DNA. Any person in a room automatically attracts cat hair to themselves. It’s a natural occurrence. The oil in fur combines with static electricity and clings to people, clothing, footwear, furniture…anything. The mass volume of the hair also dictates that no one and nothing escapes the hair.”
Mark nodded, glancing at me before replying, “I know. Every time I leave Brenna’s house I’ve got cat hair sticking to my clothes. And I’m never there that long.”
“Not only might a suspect transport a victim’s cat hairs from the scene, but it also works the other way.”
“Hairs from the suspect’s cat could be shed at the crime scene.”
“As I said,” Graham smiled. “Brilliant.”
Mark muttered something like “What won’t they think of next” and slumped against the back of his chair. He set down his glass before wriggling against the wooden slats. Evidently uncomfortable, he finally stood up, reached into his back trouser pocket, and withdrew a folded piece of paper. Sitting down, he flattened the paper on the tabletop.
“What’s that?” I asked, staring at the paper.
“Oh. That brochure I picked up in the tourist center Saturday when we stopped to talk to Lynn Warson.”
“Right. I didn’t know you’d taken one.”
“I didn’t think I did, but I guess it was a reflex. You know,” he said, skimming the small article inside the brochure. “Surprised when she came up to us and I just jammed it into my pocket.” He read for several seconds more, than said, “Listen to this.” He angled the paper so I could also see it. The article seemed to nail the lid on our case.
Cauldham is a quiet village now, but its history winds back centuries and is intertwined to the battles for royal thrones and mere survival. Situated in the heart of the Peak District, the village has seen demographic and physical change throughout its existence. The section of wood encompassing many of the mines and Cauldham Hall once belonged to the Good family, an ancient lineage stretching back to Plantagenet times. But, as many others have done before and since, the family steadily and gradually sold parcels of land as financially hard times gripped them. During the 1970s the family sold that section of wood to the Hall and the mining concerns. A sad commentary on family fortunes but a blessing to the village in general. The land is now…
I looked at Graham as Mark finished reading the piece. “Good is Marian’s maiden name. I remember her speaking of her family the first day Mark and I interviewed her. She was proud of the fact that her family was so old and had such a long history.” I pulled in the corners of my mouth, almost afraid to say the next thing. Taking a deep breath, I crossed my fingers and said, “You said something early on in the case about the scene where the body and bones were discovered. Something about the killer felt comfortable there, that there’s a reason a certain site is chosen.”
“I remember.”
“Either the site is someplace where the killer worked or played. Or once lived,” I added, feeling my breathing quicken. “Marian loved her family estate. Despite her tearful discourse of Reed’s disappearance, she smiled when she mentioned the vast tract of land they had owned.” I paused, trying to form the rushing thoughts into words. “Would someone who had grown up with tales of the ancestral estate and the expanse of once-owned land relinquish all that so easily if it had been sold only years before she was born?”
“The section of the wood was sold in the 1970s,” Mark said, referring to the passage he had just read aloud.
“Marian was born in 1967.”
“Which made her a teenager in the 1980s,” Graham added.
“She could have grown up hearing about the wood. Maybe she played in that section as a child or teenager. Maybe she continued to walk through that area later.”
“And needing a place to dispose of Vera’s body…” Graham’s eyebrow rose. “Vera’s house is also in that patch of former-family forest.”
I stared at him, my excitement suddenly turning to fear at my envisioned scene.
“There is daylily and hosta pollen on her shirt,” Graham added. “I recall pushing aside a daylily when I looked at the key that Oglethorpe found.”
“Hostas also grow in the front garden of the grandmother’s house,” Mark reminded us. “It didn’t register with me Sunday when we were there for the search, but why would hostas and
daylilies be growing in a wood unless the land had once been cultivated?”
“Part of the Good family estate,” Margo said.
“The plants have also run riot at the grandmother’s place, too. And I got some of that lily pollen on my trousers. I can’t get it off.”
Graham thudded back into his chair, his eyes dark. “Just about puts the handcuffs on her wrists, I’d say.”
* * * *
We pointed all that out to Marian when we reassembled in her front room. She tried bluffing her way out of the charge, even ignored Graham’s statement of caution. But at the mention of the cat hair and the fact that we would have a comparison test run on the hairs from her cat and the hairs found on the shirt in the wood, she paled and grew quiet.
As a WPC led her from her house, Marian turned to Graham. Her eyes, so full of anger moments before, now brimmed with tears. Her voice quivered as she said, “I thought Reed and Vera Howarth were lovers. It was a natural assumption on my part—that’s all Reed ever did. It was his hobby. Collecting women instead of collecting stamps or rare books. It was easy to kill her, you know. Vera knew me. We’d never had words about Reed, so she wasn’t suspicious when I asked her to drive with me.”
“Where did you take her?” Graham’s voice had turned cold and hard as the stones in the forest. I knew the case bothered him. From both sides. He hated the fact that Vera, a young woman, had been killed. He hated—perhaps more—that the murderer was a woman. He was old fashioned enough to want them to remain innocent and to need protection. Because the case involved women as suspect and victim, he felt the pain more intensely.
Marian spoke in a monotone, her gazed fixed in the direction of the wood. “To the forest. To the area where I killed her and buried her. I drove to her cottage. It was getting late, just going on to ten. In April, when I killed her, it’s quite dark by then.”
“What did you tell her to get her to ride with you?”
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