[Inspector Peach 10] - Witch's Sabbath

by J M Gregson

  ‘I’ve heard that name before.’ Tucker donned his mien of shrewd intelligence.

  ‘Yes, sir. Victim of violence, I believe. Henry VIII’s fifth wife. Had her head chopped off for sleeping around, for putting it about a bit, in a Tudor sort of way. Things were simpler in those days.’ He looked at the wall behind his chief and shook his head wistfully. ‘But I don’t think this Katherine’s any relation to that one; I’m not even sure she spells her name the same way.’

  ‘Sinister woman though, is she?’

  ‘Seems very normal, sir, in most respects. Widow lady. Runs her own business, since the death of her husband. Very competently, from all the accounts we’ve had. The firm supplies temporary workers for a whole variety of office situations.’

  ‘She doesn’t sound like a murderess.’

  Peach noted the disappointment in Tucker’s tone. ‘Head of the coven, she is, sir. Leader of their devotions and incantations.’

  Tucker said rather helplessly, ‘What exactly do they do?’

  ‘Bit secretive about the actual form of their incantations to the Mother Goddess, sir. But I gather this lot aren’t devotees of naturism, sir. They don’t worship naked. Apparently most covens discarded that practice thirty or forty years ago.’ He shook his head with a great sadness.

  ‘So you think this head of the coven might have killed Annie Clark?’

  ‘It’s a possibility, sir, no more than that. It’s one of those occasions when we need the dead girl’s account of things, and can’t have it. Katherine Howard admits that it was she who instructed Annie Clark in the ways of the Wiccans, that it was she who got Annie excited about the cult. She admits that they’ve lost two members of the coven in the last few months. If Annie Clark was a third and Kath’s protégée, Mrs Howard would have felt her own position seriously threatened by another defection, especially when it was a girl who seems to have been her acolyte.’

  ‘You mean that this Howard woman might have had a fierce row with her if Annie had said she wanted out – might even have killed her in a fit of rage.’ Tucker, like most unimaginative men, became excited when his atrophied creativity was given an unexpected outing.

  ‘She might not even have meant to kill her, of course. It’s a possibility we have to consider, sir – no more than that. We haven’t been able to rule Mrs Howard out. She’s an intelligent woman, and she seemed a little evasive, even guarded, when I spoke to her.’

  Tucker didn’t fancy the idea of an intelligent woman. He said sagely, ‘It will pay to keep an eye on her, if you want my view, Peach.’

  ‘Oh, we do, sir. Then there’s the warlock in the enterprise: Dermot Boyd, accountant and company secretary.’ He was curious to know what Tucker might feel about those callings.

  The chief superintendent said, ‘Professional man. Seems unlikely. But then, we can’t disregard him, if he’s a – a male witch.’

  ‘No, sir. And he does other odd things, for an accountant. He reads books, sir. Even poetry, it seems. His wife confirmed that, sir.’ He shook his head, as if this literary strain was a damning thing in a man.

  Tucker nodded sagely. ‘Good that you spotted that. He may not be as sound as he appears.’

  ‘Especially as he lied about Annie Clark, sir. Said he didn’t know her, at first. Persisted in it, until we confronted him with his lies.’

  Percy thought that Tucker was about to yell ‘Eureka!’, such was his animation. But the Head of Brunton CID controlled himself and said with suppressed excitement, ‘And why did he do that, Percy?’

  The first name was back again. Peach said rather stiffly, ‘Apparently his wife hadn’t been told that he was going off to join the coven every week.’ He relaxed and leant confidentially towards his chief. ‘Do you know, sir, he’d actually told her he was going off to the local Masonic lodge?’ He allowed himself a sudden, disturbing peal of laughter at this deception.

  ‘And he was really sneaking off to meet Annie Clark!’ Tommy Bloody Tucker had rarely shown such buoyancy.

  ‘Well, yes, sir. Along with the other Wiccans in the coven, according to his account.’

  ‘But don’t you see, he could have been conducting an affair with Annie? He might have been the father of this foetus. And when, for whatever reason, it all went wrong, he might have killed her.’

  By Jove he’s got it, thought Peach. He said, deliberately low-key to counterbalance Tucker’s excitement, ‘Boyd and his wife found the body, of course; and there seems to be some evidence that he wanted to prevent his wife from going near that derelict building where the corpse had been dumped.’

  ‘It fits, you know. By George it does!’ Tucker leaned across his desk towards his subordinate. ‘What would you say was the state of this man’s marriage, Percy?’

  ‘Lukewarm, I’d say, sir.’ Peach had the word ready, because he had given the matter considerable thought himself over the last few days. ‘They haven’t any children, and they don’t seem very close to each other – as is evidenced by the fact that Dermot Boyd felt he wanted to conceal his participation in the coven from his wife Eleanor.’

  ‘More likely wanted to conceal his relationship with Annie Clark, you mean!’ Tucker had the exhilaration of a man who has made a decisive breakthrough.

  Percy nodded slowly. ‘Another of your insights, sir. Most valuable.’

  ‘Well then, I suggest you get about your business, DCI Peach. Get about the task of—’

  Peach coughed softly, deferentially, happy to hear his surname once again ringing round the walls of authority. ‘There is one other possibility, sir. One other person in the frame, as you put it.’ He pronounced the phrase as if it were a Tucker original, rather than one of the commonest in the police argot.

  ‘Well, who is it?’

  ‘Another witch, sir. The third of the trio of Wiccans whom we have to regard as suspects.’

  Tucker put aside his excitement over the previous candidate. ‘Another woman, eh?’ The gender seemed to rekindle his interest.

  ‘Yes, sir. A lady who makes no secret of her gay background. Teacher at the same school as Dermot Boyd’s wife, as a matter of fact. Name of Josephine Barrett, sir. More usually known as Jo.’

  ‘I’ve heard that name before, you know.’ Tucker looked as if he thought he deserved a gold star.

  ‘Athlete of some renown, sir. Olympic standard eight hundred and fifteen hundred metres runner, I think. Geordie in origin, but she’s worked in our area for eight years now.’

  ‘And a lesbian! That might be more relevant to this investigation, you know.’ Tucker believed in wearing his prejudices upon his sleeve.

  ‘Yes, sir. Another interesting fact about Jo Barrett is that she taught Annie Clark years ago at school. As a matter of fact, Annie apparently had a teenage infatuation for her at that time.’

  ‘Ah! Good work, Peach, digging that out.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, sir, Ms Barrett volunteered the information herself. At our first meeting with her.’

  Tucker was cast down for a moment. Then his face brightened. ‘But that may be the cleverness of it, you see. This woman may have been shrewd enough to realize that we’d be on to her, that we’d find out about her past.’

  It’s become ‘we’ again, thought Percy with a frown. ‘The girl’s crush was dealt with by Miss Barrett and the head teacher at the time, sir. They had Annie’s mother in and discussed it with her. Apparently such passions for teachers are quite common in adolescent girls.’

  ‘Significant, though, in this case.’ Tucker nodded sagely, with the air of one acknowledging a decisive intervention. ‘You may well find that this Barrett woman had a thing going with Annie Clark at the time of her death.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Annie did have a boyfriend, though. As well as being a bit on the side for Alan Hurst.’

  Tucker’s features clouded, then lightened again; he was as changeable and uncertain as an April day, thought Percy. ‘But you said a recent boyfriend, Peach. This fellow Hogan had come on the scene and put
Ms Barrett’s nose out of joint, I expect. So your schoolteacher had a hell of a row with Annie Clark and killed her in a fit of rage.’

  Percy contemplated that theory. ‘Yes, sir. Like Alan Hurst when she wouldn’t get rid of his baby.’

  ‘What? Oh yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Or Katherine Howard, when Annie announced that she was leaving the coven.’

  ‘Well perhaps, but—’

  ‘Or Dermot Boyd when—’

  ‘Now look here, Peach; you came here to get the benefit of my expertise, not to be obstructive.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’

  ‘It’s my job to throw out ideas, yours to weigh them and implement the necessary action. I’ve given you plenty of ideas. It’s time you were off and investigating things.’

  ‘Indeed it is, sir. May I say that your overview of the case has been every bit as useful as it always is.’

  ‘You may, Peach, you may.’

  Tommy Bloody Tucker waved his hand benignly as Percy Peach backed out of his presence.

  Eighteen

  Wednesday morning, the second of February, and Judith Hurst was being stubborn. ‘I know it’s cold. It won’t hurt me. I’ve still got quite good circulation: the nurses all tell me that. And I’ll wrap up well.’ Her lips set in the determined, half-humorous little pout which had been one of the things that had attracted Alan to her when they were both twenty, in that time which seemed at once only yesterday and part of a vanished and very different era.

  He said, ‘I know the sun’s out, and it always feels quite warm through the glass in the conservatory. But it’s still below freezing in the shade.’ They were both happy because they knew he was going to lose the argument, because they understood each other so well that both of them realized how this would turn out.

  ‘The snowdrops are beginning to come out. The harbingers of spring. I’m not going to miss them!’ She stopped speaking suddenly on that, and both of them comprehended in that instant that she was wondering how many more springs she would have to savour.

  Alan Hurst said, ‘I suppose if you wrap up really thoroughly and don’t stay out long, we might get away with it. All right! I’ll get the coats and scarves. I’ll show you where the new extension will be going. We’ll need to move a rhododendron and some perennials. You can show me where you’d like them to go.’

  He wrapped her in her thickest coat and the woollen bobble-hat she had used in happier days, when they had walked on the local hills and skied in Austria. Then he wound the long scarf round her giggling face so that it concealed most of it, and with his forefinger touched the tracery of fine lines that was beginning to furrow her temples. Then they went through the window of the conservatory and out into the frozen garden.

  She leaned on him more heavily than she had ever done before, once almost losing her balance as they moved in clumsy unison down the lawn, like some old-time dance played in slow motion and imperfectly performed. It was difficult to believe that they were only forty-one. Her body was frailer than he could remember it ever being before, but its dependence on him was greater; the awkwardness of their movements stemmed partly from the fact that neither of them wanted to acknowledge either of these things.

  ‘The extension will come to just about here.’ He traced a thin line with his heel in the frost.

  ‘You’re sure we can afford it? I’ve been looking at the plans again. It seems a very grand conception. I’d be perfectly happy with something less ambitious, you know.’

  ‘We can afford it. It’s an investment, really. It will add very considerably to the value of the property. And in the meantime, it will be very useful to us for many years!’

  Both of them feared that it would not be so, and again each of them divined what the other was thinking. But they had to deal with thoughts like this at least once a day, so they were easy with each other as they waited for the shadow to pass. Judith said, ‘The business must be doing very well.’

  ‘Well enough.’ He would be making his deliveries tonight, in that other, secret activity which brought in the real funds. The travel business limped along, but he would get the money he needed for the extension from the trade he could never discuss with Judith.

  He felt a shiver run through the ailing body which leant against his side, and this time she raised no objection as he led her back into the oppressive warmth of the house. She took a final longing glance back at the borders she had planted and would now never tend again. ‘I must have a cautious temperament, you know. I can never help worrying a little bit about money.’

  Alan Hurst fell back once again on the chauvinist phrase he had used to tease her all those years ago, when the world had been such an exciting place, and they had been innocents beginning the great adventure of life together. ‘Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it, Judith Hurst!’

  ‘The dead woman’s boyfriend is always a suspect. It’s a fact of life. Regrettable, from your point of view, but there it is.’ DCI Peach seemed to find it a very satisfactory situation.

  Matt Hogan thought it a very unfair one. ‘I’ve told you all I know. Done everything I can to help you to find who killed Annie Clark. Even came into the police station at Brunton to tell you that I thought the corpse you’d found on Pendle might be her.’

  ‘Yes. You did exactly what a good citizen should. About four months too late, of course. Being an experienced detective, and thus a nasty, suspicious sod, I have to point out if I’d been the murderer, I think I’d have come in exactly as you did. Knowing that once the body was identified, the boyfriend would be the first person the local rozzers would want to see, I’d have taken the initiative and a deep breath, and come in all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and innocent to say I was terribly worried about my missing girlfriend and terribly afraid that this might just be her body – whilst hoping against hope that it wasn’t, naturally.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. I tried to explain it at the time, to that DC Pickering that I spoke to then.’

  ‘Yes. I heard all about that. Though to my mind, you never came up with a satisfactory explanation of why you hadn’t come in at the end of September when she disappeared.’ Peach shook his head in happy confirmation of that.

  Matt Hogan thought furiously, trying unsuccessfully to disguise both his dislike of this man and his gathering panic. He could hardly say that it was his habit to avoid the police, that his previous dealings with them had left him without a criminal record but with a couple of cautions. He said, ‘I can see with hindsight that I should have reported Annie missing much earlier. It doesn’t seem as clear at the time, when you’re in the midst of things. I just thought she’d abandoned me and gone off somewhere else. Perhaps with someone else.’ It didn’t sound convincing, even to him. He said rather desperately, ‘We’d only been an item for about a week at the time when she disappeared.’

  It wasn’t quite the explanation he’d offered the first time they’d seen him, when he had come into the station a week earlier. He’d said that he’d kept expecting Annie Clark to turn up.

  Lucy Blake studied him for a moment, then put her dagger in very quietly. ‘Forgive me for saying so, Matt, but you didn’t seem to be absolutely devastated by Annie Clark’s death.’

  ‘I’d had four months to get used to the idea, by then.’

  ‘Really? But you just said that you thought she’d abandoned you and gone off somewhere else, rather than been murdered.’

  ‘Well, I’d had four months to get used to the idea of being without her, then.’ Matt didn’t dare look at either of them. He was sure that the two very different faces would both be looking sceptical.

  And then the man Peach, who seemed to enjoy seeing him squirm, was at him again, leaning forward as though imparting a confidence. ‘It seems to us, Matt, that Annie’s pregnancy is likely to be at the centre of this killing. You’re quite sure you weren’t the father?’

  That again. Matt said wretchedly, ‘No. I told you last time: I didn’t even know about it
, until you told me.’

  ‘Yes. Surprised us, that did. So who do you think was the father?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He sought despairingly for something that would get him off the hook. ‘I bet it was something to do with those witches. They were leading her into all sorts of things, that lot.’ He let his revulsion come out as he said it; it surely couldn’t do him any harm.

  ‘Bit vague, though, isn’t it? – if all you can come up with is a vague accusation against a group of people you don’t understand and don’t like?’ Peach managed to give the young man the impression that he’d put himself even further into trouble by flailing about like that. ‘What about Annie’s flatmate, Heather Shields? Do you think she knew about the baby?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Girls together, like? Don’t you think Annie might have confided in her?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’ Matt was sure Heather hadn’t known. But he couldn’t tell them why. That might put both of them even deeper into the shit than he felt now.

  Peach studied him for a moment in a cold silence. There was something here, something that the sullen, childlike set of the young lips told him he wouldn’t get out of Hogan today – something that he would take up in due course with Heather Shields. The chief inspector stood up and looked round the shabby bed-sit, noting the cheap prints of a jungle scene and a spaniel on the walls, the absence of any photograph of Annie Clark. ‘Pay you to open a few windows, you know, if you’re going to go on smoking that pot. Cloying pong, you see. Better still, give it up altogether!’ He went through the door without another look at his man.

  DS Blake gave Matt Hogan her sweetest, most understanding smile as she followed. She turned suddenly when she reached the doorway, so that her face was within a foot of Hogan’s. She inspected his forehead unhurriedly. ‘I see that knife wound is healing up nicely now. Hope you’ve changed your pub!’

  PC Clyde Northcott was pretty sure that he was in trouble.

  His uniformed sergeant did nothing to mitigate his fear. He had a jaundiced view of CID, who in his view got all the glamour, took on only the most interesting cases, and left the uniformed boys and girls to do the thankless day-to-day policing work. The sergeant was, in fact, a creature of convention in such matters. And when one of his newest, toughest and most reliable recruits was constantly in demand by CID, it did not improve the sergeant’s temper. So he now said to Northcott, ‘Percy Peach wants to see you in CID: I don’t know what you’ve done wrong, but don’t come running to me to bail you out.’