An Unsafe Pair of Hands

by Chris Dolley

“You have a reputation in the village, Mr. Marsh,” said Shand.

  “It’s Gabe, and I’m sure whatever reputation I have is well deserved. The locals shock very easily.”

  Shand fought the desire to lean over and surgically extract the smugness from Marsh’s smile with a chair leg.

  “Would it surprise you to learn that Annabel was having an affair?” he said instead.

  “Surprise – no. Offend – yes. I thought I would have had at least first refusal.”

  “You think this a joke, Gabe?” said Taylor, leaning forward in his chair. “You want us to take that Jag of yours apart so many times no one remembers where all the parts go?”

  Gabe held his hands up in mock surrender. “Sorry, officers. I apologise. But really … you’re asking the most ridiculous questions. I wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  Shand couldn’t believe it. The man was answering questions as though he was on a TV chat show. Slumped back in his chair, drink in hand, cute answers, playing to an invisible audience of sycophants.

  “Answer the question,” said Shand. “Do you think Annabel Marchant had a lover?”

  “No, chief inspector. I do not.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know really. I just couldn’t imagine it. It would get in the way of all her other pursuits.”

  “What pursuits?”

  “Her one-woman plan to overhaul the village. I think she would have had the green carpeted by next year.”

  “Gabe,” warned Taylor.

  “Sorry, but surely the others have told you about Annabel by now. She was a machine with a vision. An organisational whirlwind. Have you seen her house? She did all that. Bullied the builders for about eighteen months until they got everything just right. Kept them coming back for months. And there’s all the committees she’s on. And all the committees she’s trying to get on. And the elections. The woman didn’t have time for anything else.”

  “She had time to be murdered,” said Shand. “Someone lured her to the green midnight Friday night. Who do you think that was?”

  “No idea,” shrugged Marsh.

  “Think about it,” said Shand. “Make a list. Annabel receives a phone call at midnight, two minutes later she’s seen walking towards the green. Who would she leave her house for? You?”

  “Maybe. If I was in trouble. Or if I told her someone close to her was.”

  Shand closed his eyes. He hadn’t considered that. He felt like kicking himself. He’d been so invested in the lover theory he’d overlooked the simple threat. I’ve got your daughter, Mrs. Marchant. Do what I say and she won’t get hurt.

  Taylor filled the silence. “What do you do for a living, Gabe?”

  “Property Development mainly. Here and abroad. I was over in Spain last month. Got a lovely new development down there in the foothills of the Sierras, up the coast from Malaga. There’s a few spare units if anyone’s interested?”

  “I think I’ll pass,” said Taylor.

  “Your business is based in London, I believe,” said Shand.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Part of him wanted to ask where in London. And if he had a flat there. An address Shand could file away to check later.

  Or casually drop into a conversation with Anne.

  “Where were you Friday night?” asked Shand.

  “Let me see. Friday night…” He leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. Shand’s inner nine-year old was ready to kill him. “My social life is so full, chief inspector.”

  “Gabe!” said Taylor.

  “I was here,” said Marsh. “Definitely. I was here all night. And a very long night it was too.”

  Another wink at Shand. What was this man’s game? Did he want to be arrested? Wasting police time, possession of a stupid Christian name?

  “Can anyone corroborate that?”

  “They certainly can, chief inspector. I have the most impeccable witness. One with, shall we say, police connections.” He winked again at Shand. “Someone I think you know very well.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Shand’s world cracked and fell apart. He’d been dreading this moment, beating himself up over it, expecting it every time someone mentioned a Gabriel, or a Gabriel opened his mouth, but … never truly believing it would arrive. Not Anne.

  “Do you want to meet her?” said Marsh.

  “She’s here?”

  Shand couldn’t believe it. Had Anne lost her mind? She had to know that he was investigating a murder in Athelcott. Why come down now of all times?

  Didn’t she care any more? Or was this deliberate? A ploy to rub Shand’s nose in it. Hello, Peter, meet the new man in my life. A real man.

  Or had Marsh tricked her? Turned her head, made her complicit in his plan to discredit Shand and the case against him. My client’s sleeping with the investigating officer’s wife – this case is nothing but a crude vendetta!

  “Darling!” called Marsh. “You can stop hiding and come out now.”

  Footsteps padded along the hall floor, taking an eternity to arrive. Shand was on the edge of his seat, his body turned towards the door.

  Then he saw her.

  It wasn’t Anne.

  The woman was in her early twenties, long blonde hair, barefoot, and dressed – just – in a man’s shirt and very little else. She stood in the doorway, one hand on the doorjamb the other on her hip.

  “I’m the alibi,” she said. “Julia Draycott. You might know my father. He’s the Chief Constable.”

  ~

  Shand couldn’t leave quickly enough. He needed fresh air, and he needed his heart to stop racing. He was sure his face was a deathly white – every drop of blood having drained from it while he awaited the barefoot arrival of his wife from the chief suspect’s bed.

  “You okay?” said Taylor when they returned to the car.

  “Yes, it’s uh … stomach ache. I knew I shouldn’t have had those eggs for breakfast.” He rubbed his stomach to reinforce the lie. “And Marsh really pisses me off. It was probably listening to him that curdled them.”

  Taylor agreed. Marsh was too cool and too cocky.

  “But it does put him in the clear,” he said. “If she’s telling the truth.”

  Shand strapped himself into the passenger seat. “Is she really the Chief Constable’s daughter?” Marsh hadn’t taken the interview seriously so why should his girlfriend?

  Taylor shrugged. “I’ve never met him or his family. You going to ask him?”

  Shand grunted and settled deeper into his seat. He supposed he had to, but it wasn’t a conversation he was looking forward to. Hello, sir, about your daughter. Does she have this little tattoo…

  And it still didn’t put Marsh in the clear. He could have hired someone else to do his dirty work. He had the right car. He was a member of Gulliver’s.

  But he couldn’t have been the midnight caller. Not if the girl was telling the truth about arriving at nine and never leaving Marsh’s side until morning.

  “Where did you say this farm was?” asked Taylor as they passed the pub.

  “I’m not sure,” said Shand. “Take the Sturton road and look for a right turn. It can’t be far outside the village.”

  ~

  It took two wrong turns and a long winding lane before they found it – the farm Shand had glimpsed earlier when he’d been walking the chalk track. Shand recognised the curve of the fields, and there was the track – a white line striking down the green hillside from the woods at the top.

  The road ended at the farm, fading into a courtyard partially surrounded by old stone buildings topped with terracotta red tiles. They drove in. The house was on the left, a long two-storey building with mullioned windows and covered in climbing plants – mainly roses and honeysuckle from what Shand could see. And it looked old. Jacobean, perhaps. An old manor house or a prosperous farmstead. The outbuildings looked of a similar age. Long, low and undulating at the roof line. The more modern buildings were in a yard beyond, over to the right, he cou
ld see their grey metal roofs peeking out above the long line of red tile.

  He looked back towards the road. No gate. Two brick pillars and a low wall announced where the road ended and the yard began, but there was no sign of a gate having been hung in years. Anyone could walk in. And if the chalk track fed into the other end of the yard, there was a through route to the circle.

  A dog barked. Then another. Two dogs burst out from behind the house and charged towards the two policemen. Shand braced himself. He’d never felt comfortable around dogs. The dogs skidded to a halt a few feet away and stayed there, alternating between barking and growling.

  “All right, boys,” said Taylor, squatting on his haunches and holding his right hand out for the dogs to sniff. Neither dog took the opportunity.

  An elderly man appeared on the patio in front of the house. An elderly man in tweeds and carrying a shotgun broken over one arm.

  “Who is it, dear?” came a woman’s voice from the doorway.

  “Jehovah’s witnesses by the look of ’em,” said the man, peering in a disturbingly shortsighted fashion towards Shand. “Fetch me another box of shells, dear. I’ve only got two left.”

  He snapped the gun closed and advanced towards the two policemen. Shand was stunned. Was the man going to shoot? For the second time in less than fifteen minutes Shand’s heart contemplated stopping. He swallowed hard and fumbled for his warrant card.

  “Police!” he said, his voice far higher than he’d expected. “Detective Chief Inspector Shand and…” For a second he forgot Taylor’s name. All he could see were two snarling dogs staring at him and a deranged old man waving a gun at his face.

  “Sergeant Taylor,” the two policeman said in unison.

  The man immediately broke his gun. “Sorry,” he apologised. “We’ve been overrun with bloody journalists all weekend.”

  “You’ll have to forgive my husband, chief inspector,” said the woman now visible in the doorway. She was drying her hands on a towel. “He likes to play the fool.”

  “He does it very well,” said Taylor.

  “Years of practice and in-breeding,” said the man. “Name’s Sandy Montacute. Suppose you’ve come about the Marchant woman?”

  He called the dogs back. They immediately circled around behind him and slumped by his feet.

  “And I’m Ursula Montacute, chief inspector. I believe we spoke yesterday.”

  “Yes,” said Shand, his pulse dropping below the one forty mark. “About uh … Helena Benson’s phone call.”

  “Terrible business,” said Ursula. “I talked to her this morning. She hardly slept last night. Couldn’t put the lights out apparently. Kept bringing back memories of being trapped in the dark.”

  Shand could imagine. He dreaded the kind of dreams his tortured subconscious was going to conjure up tonight.

  “Come on, dear,” said Sandy to his wife, “I expect the chief inspector would prefer to interrogate us out of this wind. What do you say, chief inspector? A spot of tea or are you allowed something stronger these days?”

  “About your shotgun, sir,” said Taylor as they made their way inside. “I wouldn’t point it at any more journalists, if I were you.”

  “Ah, out of season, are they?”

  Taylor smiled. “Unfortunately.”

  ~

  Inside, the house was a larger and less cluttered version of the Benson’s house. Dark rooms, low ceilings, small windows and old furniture. Shand was tempted by the offer of a medicinal brandy, but declined both that and the tea. He didn’t want to have anything breakable in his hand when the Montacutes told him about their wayward younger son, Gabriel, who was wenching his way through London’s IT departments.

  He took a biscuit instead and accompanied it to a comfortable armchair in the Montacute’s sitting room.

  “Are the dogs kept loose at night?” he asked.

  “There haven’t been any complaints, have there?” asked Ursula.

  “No, I was thinking about Friday night. Could someone have taken the chalk track to the circle without the dogs hearing them?”

  “Not through our yard,” said Sandy. “Our boys would have raised the roof. Though it’s easy enough to cut across the fields and join the track farther up the hill. We’re not Fort Knox.”

  “Did either of you hear or see anything unusual on Friday night?”

  “Not a thing, chief inspector,” said Ursula. “I checked the horses at seven-thirty. Everything perfectly normal. Then we watched the film, I took the telephone call from Helena, and shortly afterwards we went to bed. Slept like the proverbial logs, then up at dawn to see to the horses. Sorry, we can’t be of more help.”

  “Does anyone else live in the house?” Shand scanned the room, gauging its size. The house must have at least five bedrooms.

  “No, Sandy and I rattle around here by ourselves. Our children fled the nest years ago.”

  “No farmhands living in?”

  Ursula laughed. “This isn’t the Ponderosa, chief inspector. We don’t have ranch hands sleeping in the barn.”

  “All the farm workers live in the village,” said Sandy. “No one was here after evening milking. Ursula was the last to lock up.”

  “Do people use the chalk track at night?” asked Shand.

  “Lisa might,” said Ursula. “It’s a short cut home for her.”

  “Lisa Budd?” asked Shand. “The girl who found the body?”

  “Did she? Poor girl. Yes, she helps with the horses now and then.”

  “Was she helping Friday night?”

  “I believe so. She left early if I remember. Long before seven.”

  “Does she walk her dog along the track?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  It was slight, but Shand was sure he’d seen it. A change in Ursula’s demeanour. As soon as he started asking about Lisa and Friday night her eyes lost that twinkling confidence and her answers became more clipped.

  “I expect you want to ask us about the Marchant woman, sergeant?” said Sandy. “God knows we had the motive.”

  “You didn’t like Mrs. Marchant?” asked Taylor.

  “One doesn’t like to speak ill of the dead, sergeant,” said Ursula.

  “But if one did?”

  “Then one would say she was petty, vindictive, and should never have moved to the country. Did you know she sued her neighbour over a cockerel?”

  “We did hear that,” said Taylor.

  “Then you know what kind of a woman she was. It simply beggars belief, where did the woman think she was moving to? This is a farming community, not suburbia.”

  Shand sat back and observed. Ursula was holding court again, the easy confidence flowing and her eyes twinkling.

  “I hear she was standing for the parish council?” said Taylor.

  “Ah, my motive, sergeant. Yes, she and I were political rivals. Fighting over the parish council. But rest assured, if I had planned to kill Annabel I wouldn’t have left her body at the circle. No, sergeant, I would have left her head on a spike outside the village pub. Pour encourager les autres.”

  “Pardon,” said Taylor.

  “It’s French, dear,” said Ursula. “To encourage the others. A sign to all the other incomers that trespass shall not be taken lightly.”

  Shand leaned forward to try and drag the interview back on track. “Was it turning into a bad-tempered election?”

  “The potential was there,” said Ursula. “I’ve certainly never experienced anything like it.”

  “It was all the Marchant woman’s doing,” said Sandy. “She was determined to win and didn’t care how she achieved it. Gutter politics. In a parish council election, I ask you!”

  “It was very disturbing, chief inspector,” said Ursula. “Candidates rarely campaign – most years there’s not even a vote – and if they do campaign, they do so by extolling their own virtues, not attacking the other candidates.”

  “Who did Annabel attack?”

  “Who didn’t she attack?�
�� said Sandy. “The woman laid into the entire village. Everything we did was wrong. The way we farmed, the way we drove, the way we kept our gardens. Our entire way of life was anathema to that woman.”

  “It created a good deal of bad feeling,” said Ursula. “And it affected the other parish councillors. Helena especially. She could never abide any form of unpleasantness. She became quite ill. I think she would have stood down if I hadn’t persuaded her to stay. George certainly didn’t help.”

  “In what way didn’t George help?” asked Shand.

  “He wanted Helena to stand down,” said Ursula, “said it wasn’t worth it.”

  “Nice enough man, but no stomach for a fight,” said Sandy.

  “And that’s what the election had become? A fight?”

  “That’s where it was heading,” said Sandy. “It was the only way the Marchant woman could win. She knew she didn’t have the votes, so she set out to badger the older candidates into standing down.”

  Shand found it hard to believe. Was Annabel so driven that she’d do anything to win a tiny village election? Was she that competitive?

  “Wouldn’t other villagers have put their names forward to thwart Annabel?” asked Shand. He couldn’t imagine Bill Acomb passing up the opportunity to get back at the Marchants.

  “Some might have,” said Sandy. “I didn’t say it was a good plan. Just the only one she had. Demographics, chief inspector. There are more of us than there are of them. In a fair election, she’d lose.”

  “Not that one didn’t suspect a more sinister motive behind the Gang of Four’s candidature,” said Ursula.

  “The Gang of Four?” asked Taylor.

  “The Marchants, Marsh and Jacintha,” said Ursula. “Though perhaps Gang of Two would be a more appropriate appellation. Annabel needed four votes to control the council so she drafted Jacintha and Gabriel in to make up the numbers. They were to be her proxies.”

  “But not Marsh?” asked Shand.

  “No,” said Ursula. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that Gabe Marsh put the idea into Annabel’s head, so that she could do all the hard work while he sat back and waited.”

  “For what?” asked Shand.

  “The man’s a property developer,” said Sandy with contempt. “What’s he doing standing for election to a body that determines planning permission?”