Clare remembered that her mother had always been restrained in her affections, but her father had compensated. But in the Woodcock household, it was equal love from both of the parents. Clare hoped that Barry and Gwen Woodcock were not guilty of any crimes, but as Tremayne had told her on many occasions, it’s not whether they are good or bad people, it’s whether they are innocent or guilty. Their job as police officers is to get to the truth, charge the guilty, ensure a conviction, and don’t stuff up in the meantime.
Clare knew what he had meant, agreed with him totally, but sometimes she wished it wasn’t that way.
‘If, as you say, you and your wife are innocent, then why your chainsaw? It would be easy enough to make a case against you, though circumstantial mainly,’ Tremayne said.
‘My Barry wouldn’t harm anyone,’ Gwen Woodcock said on her return from calming her child in its room.
‘As you’ve said,’ Clare said. She had to sympathise with the woman, but Tremayne had been attempting to break through the typical country folks' reticence, of which Gwen Woodcock showed plenty. Barry Woodcock’s emotional outburst, his reddening face, were not indicative of his usual demeanour. It had been Baxter, the publican, who had said that even after his brother, James, had died that eventful night after Gloria Wiggins’ venomous accusations, Barry’s reaction had been to stifle any emotional outbreak, although he had cried at the funeral, had even carried the coffin, and spoken one of James’s favourite passages from the Bible.
But not once, Baxter had been adamant on that fact, had Barry Woodcock confronted Gloria Wiggins, nor Bert Blatchford and his wife.
‘It’s not an open and shut case,’ Tremayne said, ‘but I could make it stick. What do you say about that? Do you want me to pursue a warrant for your arrest, slam you both in the cells at Bemerton Road Police Station, put your children in care?’
‘We can’t tell you more,’ Gwen Woodcock said. ‘Barry’s innocent, and so am I. The lock not being on the chest is suspicious, I’ll agree, but neither of us had been in that shed recently, and the door was locked at the front. Maybe around the back you’ll find a way in, but it wasn’t us, and we didn’t give the chainsaw to anyone.’
‘DI Tremayne is throwing you a lifeline,’ Clare said. She was sitting down on an old wooden chair, the sort that looks as though it belongs to a house in the country, the sort that was uncomfortable. She stood up and moved closer to the heat from the fire. She turned her back to it and enjoyed the relief from the biting cold that was creeping under the back door.
‘There’s no more we can say,’ Barry Woodcock said. He had his arm around his wife. The investigation had changed from accusatory to consultative. Tremayne and Clare needed something to move the investigation forward. There were other police inspectors, Clare knew, who would have seized on the possibility of an arrest, taken the easy way out, but that wasn’t Tremayne’s style.
‘Tell us about the others,’ Clare said.
‘Which others?’
‘Margaret Wilmot, Eustace and Gladys Upminster, Hamish and Desdemona Foster.’
‘Margaret, you know. A decent woman when she was younger, but now difficult.’
‘Capable of murder?’
‘It’s hard to say with that woman. She doesn’t give you much to go with, and what she’s thinking, you’d never know. I don’t think she liked any of those who are dead, certain she doesn’t like anyone or anything, other than the mangy cat that she calls her pet.’
‘Why mangy?’ Clare said.
‘I was up there not so long ago,’ Gwen said. ‘The cat must be sixteen years old, yet it sits there looking you up and down. It’s almost as if it knows what you’re thinking.’
‘Does it?’
‘Who knows? Not that I’d give any credence to the cat, black it is, but you know.’
‘I don’t think we do,’ Clare said.
‘There are some who believe this story about her death some years back, somehow attribute something unnatural to it.’
‘Do you?’
‘Not me. As far as I’m concerned, the cat is black, and it was modern medical practices that brought her back, nothing more.’
‘So, you’re up there,’ Tremayne said. ‘You don’t like the woman, yet you go and socialise with her. It makes no sense.’
‘This farm belongs to her. You’d not know it looking at the woman, but Margaret Wilmot is the richest person in this village by far. She lives in a sixteenth-century manor house. It should be a historic property, but it’s falling down around her ears. One day soon they won’t have to wonder whether she’s dead or alive. The roof will cave in, and she’ll be underneath it when it falls. Not that we’ll complain or express any sympathy.’
Clare had to admire that frankness of the Woodcocks, but they were not helping their case. Circumstantial evidence instead of concrete facts could be damning, and at the end of the day, there were three murders, all in need of a murderer. And two people were talking themselves into that position.
‘That’s how I was brought up,’ Gwen continued. ‘My parents, good people, called a spade a spade. They wouldn’t have held with this modern idea of political correctness where you have to watch what you say and do. They’re dead now, worked themselves into an early grave, and that Wilmot woman didn’t help, so don’t ask me to pretend to care when I don’t.’
‘And if Margaret Wilmot dies?’ Tremayne asked.
‘You’ll check, no doubt,’ Barry Woodcock said.
‘We will.’
‘The Wilmots have had influence in this village since the seventeenth century. Back then we were the peasants, but not now. We have the same rights as them, and legislation over the centuries has given us a claim on this farm. It’s to do with the Wilmots not adhering to what was passed into law in the last hundred years. We’ve got a solicitor looking into it, and our claim, including the fact that the Wilmots overcharged us in the past, makes a strong case for us to take this land from the woman’s estate on her death. We may have to pay some money, but it’ll be a nominal amount.’
‘Yet again, you’d benefit if another person dies.’
‘We would, but it doesn’t make us murderers.’
‘We’ve no other obvious suspects. Rupert Baxter had a reason to want them dead, but his alibi, at least for one of the murders, is strong, whereas yours aren’t. Eustace and Gladys Upminster, what can you tell us about them?’
‘Eustace is a good man. He’s got no axe to grind, and they own their farm. Gladys changed after the death of her son. She was always headstrong, but it unhinged her. She found solace with Gloria, and then Sheila.’
‘Eustace seems to be a strong-willed man,’ Clare said.
‘That’s what you see. We suspect that Gladys controls him. She came from money, he didn’t. It was her father who staked the money for their farm, although now it’s been paid back. We’ve no idea of the terms that were agreed, or whether the farm’s in Gladys’s name, or in both.’
‘Hamish and Desdemona Foster?’
‘Desdemona’s easily led. Hamish is devoted to her. There’s not much more to say about either of them. I can’t see either of them as being capable of murder.’
‘We need the truth about you and James Baxter,’ Tremayne said.
‘The relationship between myself and James had been strong, but it was not physical, although James may have preferred it to be. However, I wasn’t interested, and James was a man of great restraint.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘What do you think it means? The man was gay, no reason for him to be ashamed of the fact, but he answered to superiors, more than likely the bishop in Salisbury, and he would not have approved. James was, after all, a man devoted to this community, always helping those in trouble, always being available to the sick and elderly. He wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardise his calling.’
‘Then why did Gloria Wiggins say that she had seen you and him?’
‘Margaret said it first, and then Gloria la
tched on to the story and ran with it. A malicious woman, the same as Margaret. A pity in many respects, as when she was younger she was much more agreeable.’
‘We’ve met her husband,’ Clare said. ‘Did you ever?’
‘As far as anyone was concerned it was just a tale put out by Gloria, indignant at being called an old maid.’
‘He was real enough, even admitted that he had loved her deeply once.’
‘And her?’
‘Her love for him, we’re not sure if it was real or feigned. Regardless, after three months of marriage, she took off and claimed more than her fair share of his assets.’
‘She never loved anyone in this village, although there were a few men when she was younger. An emotionless woman apart from her prejudices. Never had a cat or a dog, and she used to complain if a dog barked. There is one family who is certain she poisoned theirs, a spaniel, noisy as all hell, but that’s what you get in the country. Although not as bad as the noise from the Blatchfords with that old tractor of his.’
‘Did she complain about it?’
‘Gloria was at one end of the village, the Blatchfords down the other, but we could hear it clear enough.’
‘Did you complain?’
‘Not us, and besides, it didn’t bother us much.’
One of the children wandered into the room. Tremayne and Clare left the house in a state of disrupted equilibrium. They did not expect their next visit, the manor house of Margaret Wilmot, to be any more pleasant.
Chapter 12
Rupert Baxter was in fine fettle, criticising Sheila Blatchford, when Tremayne and Clare entered his pub. Clare had to admit surprise as the woman had been his half-sister.
‘One of your lunches,’ Tremayne said as he sat on a stool at the bar. It was early afternoon, a time when the pub would normally have been three-quarters empty, but it was a full contingent that had greeted the two police officers.
Baxter was behind the bar, the Upminsters were sitting with Margaret Wilmot, as were the Fosters, the reason that Tremayne and Clare had not found her at her house. Woodcock's description of the condition of the building was an understatement. If, as Baxter had indicated, Hamish Foster was devoted to his wife, Tremayne thought the man would have better served her interests by removing her from the influence of malignant negativity.
‘Fish pie, or a steak?’ Baxter said.
‘A steak for me, the pie for Yarwood.’
‘Rough time at the Woodcocks’?’ Baxter said.
‘I thought it was confidential.’
‘News travels fast.’
‘Not from us, it doesn’t.’
‘Barry was on the phone to me, and Gwen had forewarned Margaret that you were on the way.’
‘Why would she do that? There was no love lost between the two women.’
‘There isn’t, but Margaret is influential in this village. Some would say that she’s too influential, but money speaks, and money commands respect, and she’s got plenty of it. Anyone who gets on the wrong side of her soon feels her wrath.’
‘Legal action?’
‘That’s about it. The Woodcocks are decent people, but they’re not the sort of people to rock the boat. Gwen sucks up to Margaret, no option really, and Barry does what he’s told. He could have made something of himself, but that’s not him. Still, each to their own, that’s what I say. In here, it’s a no-man’s land. It’s where everyone chooses to not upset the others. Only with you and your sergeant here, tempers are starting to fray. Margaret even got upset with Eustace Upminster earlier, accused him of sitting on the fence.’
‘Where she lives is not in good condition,’ Clare said. Over in the corner, the woman in question was sipping her drink. She was casting dagger eyes at the two police officers.
‘It must have been magnificent once, but now it’s beyond repair,’ Baxter said.
‘Is it?’
‘Margaret may tell you different, but it’s old, rising damp, and it would need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Excessively expensive, and I doubt that Margaret could afford it. The National Trust were after it, an excellent example of a sixteenth-century manor house, but they shied away. One day, it’ll collapse, and Margaret will be inside.’
‘She may not be there.’
‘It’ll wait for her.’
‘Haunted?’
‘Supposedly,’ Baxter said. ‘There’s one in the pub, an old man caught cheating at cards. They took him outside and beat him so bad he never recovered, but that was a few centuries ago.’
‘You’ve seen him?’ Clare asked. She was holding a glass of wine, drinking slowly as usual. Tremayne had a pint of beer, and slowly and beer didn’t go together in the same sentence.
‘Not me, although there are others who say they have. Anyway, he’s benevolent, causes no trouble, not like some others in the village.’
‘You were being vocal about Sheila Blatchford when we came in,’ Tremayne said.
‘Probably more than I should have been. A mouthy woman, even if we shared some parental DNA. I don’t remember my father saying a bad word about anyone.’
‘But you do, and Sheila did.’
‘Mine’s just sounding off. Sheila would take it to the next level, make it personal.’
‘Barry and Gwen Woodcock have motives for the murders,’ Clare said.
‘Maybe they do, but I don’t see it,’ Baxter said. Two meals came through the hatch. Baxter placed them on the bar with some cutlery, as well as the salt and pepper.
‘Why not?’ Tremayne said. On his fork, a piece of meat.
‘Sure, Barry’s got the strength, and both have enough reason to hate Gloria and then Sheila and those remaining, but they’ve always gone with the flow. I saw Barry get upset once after a car had sped through the village, hit one of his cows, but apart from that, he’ll not lose his temper. And as for Gwen, placid, earthy woman. Devoted to her children and Barry, even after what they said about him and James.’
‘One question no one answers.’
‘The one question no one knows the full truth about. James told me it was scurrilous what was said, an attempt to remove him from the pulpit, to bring in someone more to their liking.’
‘The Reverend Tichborne?’
‘He was put in the church by the bishop in Salisbury, no doubt to spite those that were trying to hijack the local church for their own purposes. Tichborne’s not a bad man. He’s more placid than James was, but even he is not going to take a hard-line ecclesiastical view of how the church services should be conducted, nor what they should do with sinners.’
‘Such as?’
‘Not burning in the village square or in hell. Gloria wanted those who did not profess piety to be ostracised from village life, me, for instance.’
‘How did she intend that to happen?’
‘It doesn’t matter how she intended it. She wasn’t going to achieve it, but she could certainly talk about it enough.’
‘Bert and Sheila Blatchford?’
‘Simple souls. Bert wasn’t too bright, and Sheila probably didn’t deserve what happened to her. Believe me, Margaret’s next. Not because she’s the natural successor, but because of the misery she exudes, the hold she has over people.’
‘The same people who killed the other three?’
‘Who knows? The quiet village, a haven of tranquillity and love. That’s what they always try to convince you of, but the reality is the opposite.’
‘Yours is not the first village we’ve investigated murders in,’ Tremayne said.
***
Clare left Tremayne and Baxter and walked over to where Margaret Wilmot held court. The woman looked up, nodded for her to take a seat. Regardless, Clare had intended to anyway.
‘Come to gloat over Sheila, have you?’ Margaret said. Clare looked at the woman’s face. She could see a hardness that had not been there before.
‘I’ve come to solve three murders,’ Clare said. She judged that a rebuke to the woman’s previous comment w
ould have amounted to nothing. Margaret Wilmot was clearly a person who formed her own opinions of people and events to the exclusion of facts.
‘I’m next, you know,’ Margaret said matter-of-factly, as if it did not concern her.
‘Does this mean your group here are all threatened?’
‘No. Desdemona’s weak, and Hamish is not convinced of what we stand for. He’d rather have a pint of beer and his wife at home slaving for him, but she’s here with us. And Eustace will look after Gladys, even if he’s not too keen on her.’
‘We’ve been with the Woodcocks.’
‘Don’t go thinking that they are going to get their farm when I die. I’ve seen to that.’
‘You’re a hard woman,’ Clare said. ‘We went up to your house. It’s not in good condition, is it?’
‘It will be.’
‘When?’
‘Once I’ve sold off some of my holdings in the village. Although I might not live long enough. Do you believe that Barry and Gwen Woodcock are innocent?’
‘We’re police officers. We deal in facts.’
The Upminsters sat still. Desdemona Foster had her head in her hands. Clare could see a weak woman who somehow controlled a strong man. Hamish Foster had pulled back from the group. According to all the information so far received, Hamish was a decent man who had no disputes with anyone in the village, and was regarded as congenial and down-to-earth.
‘Barry Woodcock has sinned. He is beneath contempt,’ Margaret Wilmot said.
‘Regardless of what happened in the past, in this country a person is innocent until proven guilty. The Woodcocks are worried that you’ll take their farm at some time.’
‘My farm, I’ve given them six months to vacate or I’ll have them evicted. Did they tell you that?’
‘No. Should they have?’
The DI Tremayne Thriller Box Set Page 123