Forgotten Voices

by Jane A. Adams

  One truth was unassailable: less than two weeks after that incident, Ellen was dead.

  Kendall had dropped Mac back at Frantham and then gone off to speak to Ellen Tailor’s bank manager again. Mac walked back along the promenade. Not so many tourists this late in the season but those there were strolled slowly, enjoying the unexpected warmth in the September sunshine.

  Andy Nevins looked up from the book he was reading as Mac came into reception.

  ‘Afternoon, boss. Thought I’d make a start on those boxes you brought in. I’ve inventoried one and just started on the next.’

  ‘Quiet morning then?’

  ‘Boring. One lost purse, one person wanting directions to the de Barr Hotel.’

  ‘Sorry, Andy, but someone has to hold the fort.’

  Andy Nevins grimaced and then showed Mac what he was reading. ‘This woman seems to have itemized every single thing she did for every single day of 1940. And I mean itemized. Look.’

  Mac took the book. It was set out as a diary, but read more like a list of timed bullet points. ‘Seven forty-five, changed the sheets and aired the beds. Eight fifteen fed the chickens.’ Mac laughed. ‘She was either very bored or she had OCD.’

  ‘Did people have OCD back then?’

  ‘What, back in the depths of pre-history. Well, pre-Andy, anyway. Does she say why her day has to be itemized?’

  ‘Not that I’ve noticed, but I’m only flicking through, to be fair. There’s some interesting stuff in those boxes, though. Letters and photos and another couple of journals. It’s really moving, some of it.’

  ‘I’ll take a look,’ Mac said. ‘Meantime, how about you go and patrol the promenade for a bit, get us both some coffee and get yourself a few minutes break?’

  Andy grinned and departed with alacrity. For himself, Mac would have welcomed a bit of quiet and a little less drama, but since he’d arrived and Andy had been part of his team, first for his probationary year and then as a fully fledged PC, Andy had been involved in the investigation of more serious crime than officers with many times his experience might have encountered and he was finding life as a ‘normal’ community policeman just a tad tedious – a feeling exacerbated by his relative lack of inclusion in this current murder enquiry.

  Mac picked up the inventory list that Andy had compiled and glanced through it, then went to fetch the second box, planning to continue Andy’s task and hoping that something routine and unpressured would free up his mind and help him to focus on the Ellen Tailor murder. On the whys and wherefores and the possible solutions.

  He had a bad feeling about this one. A feeling that this case would be one of those that swiftly becalmed and stagnated. The only lead they had so far was the anomalous payments into the other bank account. It was possible that someone might recall who had paid those amounts into the account. Did five hundred or a thousand pounds paid in cash into an account constitute a memorable event? Mac thought he would probably recall such a thing, but, thinking about it, if a branch was used to receiving, say, takings at the end of a day or whatever, would that really stand out as strange? Had Ellen paid that money in herself? And why hadn’t she mentioned it to her sister? That was, of course, if Diane was telling the truth about having just discovered the payments. Was that likely? How often would she have received a statement? Mac added that to his list of questions – he figured someone would have asked already and must have received some kind of satisfactory response as Kendall hadn’t raised concerns but no harm in asking again – preferably when Diane was away from the influence of Daphne Tailor. Even though he’d not yet met the woman he was doubtful that anyone would say anything in front of her of which she did not approve.

  He supposed he ought to meet Daphne Tailor too. Make a proper, personal assessment of the woman instead of relying on all of these conflicting statements of the kind of woman she was – to say nothing of the conflicting reports of her relationship with her daughter-in-law.

  Sighing, Mac began to sort through the second box of documents and photographs that Ellen Tailor had taken to the airfield. It soon became obvious that Ellen might have delivered this stuff but that most of it had nothing to do with her husband’s family. She had collected and collated, slipping related objects into clear, flimsy plastic wallets – the sort that were usually clipped into ring binders – and the name and address of the original donor had been stapled to the outside of each wallet.

  Mac glanced at the list that Andy had compiled and realized that he had recorded this in his inventory. Listing by the name of the donor and then the contents. It was obvious that Lydia de Freitas hadn’t got around to looking properly at these contributions yet, and had assumed that they all had something to do with the Tailors.

  Mac picked out one of the wallets and added the name to Andy’s list, flicking through quickly to see what it contained and recording the photographs, ration books and petrol coupons inside.

  ‘This is stupid,’ he told himself. ‘There’s going to be nothing here.’

  Figuring that he’d leave the rest to Andy, he had a final check to see if anything in the box did, in fact, relate to Ellen’s family and extracted three of the plastic wallets. One had a note attached, directed to Lydia, telling her that William Trent had another couple of items. A pack of letters and a diary. That Lydia should ask him for it directly.

  ‘Looks like you’ll be getting another visit, Mr Trent,’ Mac said. Hearing footsteps, he looked up to see Frank Baker coming up the steps.

  ‘I saw Andy on the way in,’ Frank said. ‘He’s getting coffee and I’ve brought some fresh bacon cobs from the corner shop.’

  Mac suddenly realized that he was hungry. He’d had nothing since breakfast.

  That it was after three and he couldn’t think of anything useful that had been achieved.

  ‘Kendall suggests we phone in before making the trek to the late briefing,’ he told Frank. ‘He’s gone back to talk to the bank manager but if nothing new comes up, there’s not much point us being there.’

  Frank handed him his bacon bap and Mac wolfed it hungrily, looking out at the quiet promenade. It was one of those still, becalmed, autumnal days when the world seemed to stop. When nothing could be bothered to move. Or maybe he was just projecting what he was feeling about the case. This was a murder. Surely he should be rushing about somewhere, finding clues? He thought about all the bodies Kendall had out doing just that, all the activity that was actually taking place. Door-to-door enquiries, fingertip searches of the surrounding fields and the Tailor farmhouse, officers dispatched to the various banks where money had been paid in to Ellen Tailor’s other account and he felt oddly excluded from it all and very put out by that, even though he knew that he and his little team were doing all they could to contribute. It was a simple matter of allocation of resources but right now Mac felt decidedly under-allocated.

  Frank was poking around in the boxes Mac had been looking through. ‘Anything?’ he said.

  ‘Not that I can see. I’ve picked out the stuff that came from Ellen’s in-laws and there’s a note attached that says she’s lent some stuff to William Trent.’

  ‘Right,’ Frank said, nodding. Andy arrived at that moment with coffee. As he deposited it on the desk the phone began to ring. He reached over the counter and picked it up. ‘Frantham police station. PC Nevins speaking. Oh, yes, he’s just come in. Right. Frank, it’s for you.’

  Mac picked up his coffee and moved out of the way so that Frank could get to the phone. He went over to the door and stood in the sunshine. Andy joined him.

  ‘Find anything useful?’

  ‘I sorted out the bits that actually belonged to the Tailors but, no. The only anomalous thing that’s turned up so far is those payments into that bank account.’

  ‘Follow the money, as they say.’

  ‘Usually good advice,’ Mac agreed. ‘But we don’t even know if Ellen paid the money in herself. Where it might have come from. If there’s even anything to be suspicious of. No one
seems to say she had more than her usual money worries and she doesn’t seem to have done anything to raise extra – at least not openly.’

  A young woman in the uniform of a Community Support Officer sauntered towards them up the promenade. ‘What’s this,’ she said, ‘a gathering of the clans? I expected only Andy to be here.’

  She grinned at the young man and he blushed furiously. His cheeks suddenly matching his hair. Mac raised an eyebrow at Frank, but it seemed he had other things on his mind.

  ‘That was Hilly Richards,’ he said. ‘She reckons there was something she should have told us the other night. Something that happened a couple of weeks back. So I’m off over there.’

  ‘Take Andy with you,’ Mac said. ‘I’m going to take another look at the farmhouse. Stella,’ he said to the CSO, ‘you’re OK doing the lock up?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘And I’ve got a bit of a job for you, while you’re here.’

  Andy and Frank left and Mac talked Stella through the little archive they had begun to process.

  Then he collected his car from the rear of the police station and set off for the Tailor farm.

  THIRTEEN

  Frank and Andy were hustled into the living room and offered tea. Frank, recognizing a displacement activity when he encountered one, declined.

  ‘Sit, down, Hilly. Tell me what you didn’t before.’

  He saw the anxious look she cast in Andy Nevin’s direction and shook his head. ‘Hilly, Andy here’s a serving officer and a good one too. He’ll have heard worse, young as he is, I can assure you of that.’

  Hilly still looked doubtful. Toby coughed, clearing his throat. ‘It’s probably nothing,’ he said. ‘We’ve probably dragged you all the way out here for nothing.’

  ‘We won’t know unless you tell us, will we?’ Frank said gently. ‘Come on, lad, our kids grew up together, went to the same school. How long have I known you? I’ve never known you make a fuss where none was needed.’

  Toby nodded. ‘It was just over two weeks ago,’ he said. ‘We were in bed when we heard this almighty banging on the door. Hilly looked out of the window and saw Ellen standing there in her nightie and dressing gown. She’d shoved a pair of trainers on her feet and come racing across the fields to our place. White as a sheet she was, reckoned there was someone up at the house.’

  ‘The kids were away,’ Hilly said, picking up the story. ‘Staying with their nan for the weekend. It was the first time they’d been away for a full weekend since … since their dad passed away. So she’d been on her own in that big house. We thought—’

  ‘We thought she’d scared herself. Maybe had a bad dream or something.’

  ‘When people have a bad dream, they usually just get up and make themselves a cup of tea and put the telly on,’ Frank observed. ‘They don’t normally run half a mile across ploughed fields in their nightclothes.’

  Hilly bit her lip and Toby coloured up at the criticism. ‘Well, that was what we thought at the time,’ he growled.

  Frank nodded. ‘OK, so she turned up on your doorstep. What time was that and what exact date, can you remember?’

  ‘It was the Saturday,’ Hilly said. ‘Today is Monday, so … I could look it up if—’ she half rose, pointing towards the kitchen where the calendar hung on the wall.’

  ‘Sit yourself down, Hilly. Andy’ll work it out on his phone. What time?’

  ‘One thirty, maybe closer to two.’

  ‘And what did she say when you let her in?’

  ‘That she thought there was someone in the house,’ Toby confessed.

  ‘And you didn’t call the police? You didn’t think of summoning help?’

  ‘First thing I said, wasn’t it, Toby? But she said no. She just asked if she could sleep on the sofa, said she’d be gone by the time we woke up. We got … well we got the impression she was already a bit embarrassed about making a fuss. That she’d thought it through and realized she’d just been jumping at shadows. Maybe at the strange noises all old houses make, you know.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she recognize the sounds the house made?’ Andy asked. ‘She’d lived there for a while, hadn’t she?’

  ‘But she’d not been alone there before.’ Hilly sounded offended that the young officer had dared to question her.

  Andy looked away and began to fiddle with his phone, working out the date the incident had taken place.

  ‘Hilly, no one is saying you did wrong, but that’s twice now you’ve had someone from the Tailor family come to you for help and you’ve not called the police. When the kids came knocking at your door—’

  ‘We called you, didn’t we?’ Toby retorted.

  ‘As a friend, not as a police officer. You didn’t think the kiddies understood what they were seeing.’

  ‘They came here, telling us their mum was dead and someone had used a shotgun on her. What kind of a tale is that? Who’d believe that?’

  ‘Did they say that exactly?’ Andy was curious. ‘They recognized what had caused her injuries?’

  Toby shrugged. ‘They know what a gun can do. Anyway, we called you, didn’t we, Frank. You went out there and sorted it. No point in calling up the hue and cry if it’s not necessary.’

  ‘But it was necessary, wasn’t it?’ Frank insisted gently. ‘So maybe if you’d taken Ellen a little more seriously—’

  ‘You’re saying we’re responsible!’ Hilly was outraged. ‘Frank Baker, you’d better take yourself away now if that’s what you’re saying.’

  ‘Mrs Richards, the person responsible is whoever pulled the triggers on the shotgun,’ Andy said. ‘Unless that was you, then that’s not what Frank is saying.’

  Hilly cast a scowling glance in Frank’s direction and turned for the first time to the younger officer. ‘Ellen was scared,’ she said. ‘But she settled down quick enough and seemed prepared to laugh it off. She insisted we didn’t call anyone. Said she didn’t want to look like a fool. She said she’d called the police once before and they’d found nothing and she’d felt like a right idiot.’

  ‘She’d called us out before?’ Frank asked. ‘When was that, then?’

  ‘About six months back, I think. The police decided the intruders were probably ramblers trespassing. Come down off the path, trying to find a road. They didn’t seem to take it seriously, Ellen said, so she didn’t want to look like a fool again.’

  ‘This sounds like a more serious incident, though,’ Frank said, earning himself another scowl.

  ‘What exactly did she say had scared her?’ Andy asked.

  Hilly shrugged. ‘She said she’d had a lot of silent calls that week, but we all get those, don’t we. Bloody marketing companies cold calling and insurance and pensions and PPI and what have you. She said she’d had a load of them that night, which was a Saturday, so that seemed a bit odd. So she’d unplugged the phone and later she’d gone to bed. She said she heard someone knocking on the front door, soft like, just enough to wake her and when she looked out there was no one there. Then she reckoned they were tapping on the windows and then throwing stones. Broke her bedroom window, she said. But she could see no one. Then she said she heard someone in the house, in the kitchen, she thought. So she got really scared then. She couldn’t call the police because the phone is in the kitchen, so she got herself down the stairs and went out the living room window and ran across to us.’

  ‘And when did she go back home?’

  ‘Early next morning.’

  ‘She went back alone?’

  Hilly and Toby exchanged a glance, then Toby nodded. ‘Hilly drove her back in the car, took her to the end of the lane and dropped her off.’

  ‘You didn’t go up to the house?’

  Hilly would not meet Frank’s eyes. She looked away and shook her head.

  ‘By that time we’d all decided it was a fuss over nothing,’ Toby said. ‘She phoned me once she’d got into the house and said there was no sign of anyone there.’

  ‘And the broken bedroom
window?’

  ‘I don’t know. I forgot to ask and she didn’t say.’

  ‘What are your impressions?’ Frank asked Andy as they drove away.

  ‘That they knew something was very wrong,’ Andy said. ‘But that they didn’t want to know. It’s like they couldn’t cope with knowing, if that makes sense.’

  ‘It makes a kind of sense,’ Frank said. ‘They’ve been through a lot these past few years. There’s Toby’s accident, and they lost a daughter too, a couple or three years ago.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She went off with friends one night, had too much to drink and three of them decided to go swimming. One of them managed to get back to shore and raise the alarm. Carol and her friend were washed up down the coast a few days after. One of those stupid, meaningless accidents, you know?’

  ‘How old was she?’

  ‘Eighteen, nineteen, maybe. My Gracie was at school with her elder sister, Poppy. She’s the same age as Gracie and she moved off to London with her job last year. I don’t think she comes back much.’

  ‘So more trouble coming to their door would be met with a bit of resistance.’

  ‘It would seem so. Let’s go and take another look at the farmhouse. A fresh pair of eyes wouldn’t hurt. And I’ll look into the complaint Ellen Tailor made six months ago.’