by Ann Purser
“Fine,” said Hazel. She pulled her short jersey down to cover a bare midriff. A handsome girl, thought Lois, but seems years older than her age. She had a dark, gypsy look about her, and reminded Lois strongly of the young Bridie.
“No, it was about your cleaning business, Mrs Meade,” continued Hazel. “I know Mum’s working for you, and I had this idea that you might give me a job too? I’m good at housework and that, and can work fast. You learn that in a pub, when everybody’s shouting at you at once. It’s good experience for all kinds of things. Even Prue Betts can do it now, and she was hopeless at first.”
“Prue Betts?” said Lois, remembering the name from one of Derek’s jobs in Waltonby. “Isn’t her father the schoolmaster?”
Hazel nodded. “He don’t much like her working at the pub. Bit of a scene the other night, when that old Major Todd-Nelson took her home.”
Lois had heard of him, too. Bit of an old fraud, Derek had said. What was he doing with young girls like Prue? “Was he a nuisance?” she said.
“No, Prue says there weren’t nothing in it.” Hazel was dismissive. “He tried it on with me once or twice, but I soon put a stop to that. He’s not a bad bloke. It’s just one of the hazards of bein’ behind the bar!”
“So what happened about Prue?” Lois was curious. It would not be so many years before Josie would be wanting to serve and flirt from behind the safety of a pub bar, and Lois wanted to be ready for her.
“Her dad bawled out the major, and Prue, but it didn’t come to nothing more. My dad hates the major…says he should be told to leave the village and that. But he don’t do no harm, I reckon. My dad always goes over the top… ‘Give the bugger a good thrashin’ – you know the way he goes on.”
Lois did indeed know, and reflected that one of these days Richard Reading’s good thrashings would bring him well-deserved retribution. “Well, Hazel, I must get on.”
She picked up her tools, but Hazel stood blocking the doorway. “What d’you think about the cleaning, then? Give me a try?”
Lois hesitated. Bridie had said nothing about this, and it occurred to Lois that she probably had not been told. Anyway, now was not the time or place, and she said as much to Hazel. “I’ll come round this evening, about seven. I need to see your mother, and we can talk about it then. Now,” she repeated firmly, “I must get on, so I’ll say cheerio.” She picked up her cleaning things, walked out past an irritated Hazel, and made for the bedroom at the end of the corridor, where two wedding guests had left it looking as though a hurricane had blown through. Her mind was still on Prue Betts, the major, and the thought that Hazel Reading seemed to know a great deal about many things. She might well be as good as she said, and just the sort of employee Lois was after. Especially bearing in mind the shadowy presence of Detective Inspector Hunter Cowgill, who had been so interested in Lois’s plans.
♦
Lois left the hall, and realized she was too early for her appointment with potential cleaner Sheila Stratford. She slowed down and looked across at the lake. She could park the car and go for a wander to look at the ducks. Or not, she thought, looking down at her thin shoes, which were fine for housework but useless for walking through wet grass and mud. There was the church. Maybe, if it was open, she could have a peek inside. She’d often wondered what it was like, so small and stuck in the middle of nowhere. There were services there on some Sundays; she’d seen that on notices pinned up in the hall reception. It’d probably be locked, but worth a look. She drove as far as she could get by car, then parked and walked up the last hundred yards of weedy path. A small bridge, only three or four metres long and bounded by iron railings, spanned the mock moat, and Lois came to the low, arched door, bleached by time and weather. She lifted a worn iron latch, and the door swung open heavily. A musty smell repelled her for a second or two, and then she walked forward, nearly falling headlong down a couple of steps that led down into the damp, dark interior.
Lois regained her balance, and waited until her eyes adjusted to the sombre light. It was very quiet. The first thing she noticed was the absence of chairs or pews in the main body of the church. Then, at the back, in what she supposed were the servants quarters, she saw three rows of age-blackened oak pews. So that’s where the menials sat. In the centre of the church and all round its sides were Dalling family memorials, large, highly decorated and oddly forbidding. Some were in white or black marble, some painted in amazingly bright colours for their age. Some were plain stone, on which the lettering had almost disappeared, as the stone crumbled with age and damp.
“Sacred to the memory of Lady Eliza Dalling,” she read from a chalky white tablet on the wall. “Died in infancy, aged two years, in the year of Our Lord, 1689.” Poor little soul. Then another, worse, named what must have been an entire clutch of children, all dying under twelve years old, and in the same year. Probably of some disease that would have been cured by antibiotics in a week, thought Lois, saddened at the list. Each had been a little child, lovingly welcomed into the Dalling family, laughing and running about the same rooms that Lois had just cleaned, skipping over the park through which she had driven. Then all died, little bodies lying still, with weeping parents kneeling in sorrow. Lois felt her eyes fill, and shook herself. For goodness sake, it was hundreds of years ago! But this was a place of death, and it had that terrible chill that had nothing to do with the absence of central heating.
It was also very quiet, but not a comfortable, peaceful quiet. It was as if the whole place was holding its breath.
Then she heard it. She whipped round, and there it was again. A faint sigh, a stirring of the air. Her immediate instinct was to run, but she checked it. She listened again. It seemed to come from the high, painted tomb at the other side of the church, where, in almost darkness, a recumbent stone figure lay waiting for the Day of Judgement. As she approached, she shivered at the thought of the old knight in his dull grey armour, and imagined his warrior face with drooping moustache. She was touched to see down at his feet the figure of a little terrier dog, head tucked between paws.
She looked around fearfully, but there were no more sighs, no scuttling mice or swooping bats. She peered again at the tomb. It must have been a nice little dog, keeping guard by his master for five centuries. Lois put out a hand to give it a friendly stroke, and recoiled. It was warm beneath her hand. “Oh my God!” she screamed, her body rigid. And then, as she stared, rooted to the spot in terror, the little dog lifted its head and turned a bleary eye to look at her.
∨ Terror on Tuesday ∧
Eight
Derek had come home early after finishing a job with a couple of hours to spare. It wasn’t worth starting something new, so he’d come back to Long Farnden and planned some time in the garden. He was just changing his shoes when the telephone rang, and he was surprised to hear Lois’s voice. He didn’t recognize it at first, she sounded so strange.
“What, duck? What did you say?” She was on her mobile, and the reception wasn’t good. “Come where? Oh, yes, oh, all right, then. Dalling Park. The church, you said? What on earth are you doing in the church? Lois? Lois?” But the line had gone dead, and he frowned, worried at the obvious panic in Lois’s voice.
It didn’t take him long to drive to Dalling, his foot down hard on the accelerator. Why hadn’t she called his mobile, he wondered. Then he remembered he’d left it in the van when he got home. She’d probably tried it first, and when he hadn’t answered got into a worse panic about whatever it was. He came to the grassy drive leading to the church and skidded on the turn, reducing his speed. He banged the car door shut and ran at the double to the church, flinging open the door and leaping down the steps into the silent interior. “Lois! Lois! Where are you?”
He saw her then, sitting pale-faced in one of the black oak pews, staring at him, and mechanically stroking a dozy-looking, dun-coloured terrier curled up on her lap.
“Derek,” she said, “what kept you?” She smiled uncertainly, and he breathed a
sigh of relief. She got up from the pew, and walked towards him. “Something very dodgy has been goin’ on,” she said in a muffled voice, as he put his arms round her and the dog and held them tight.
“Hold on, gel,” he said. “Give it a minute, then you can tell me.” If any bugger’s done anything to my Lois, I’ll kill ‘em, he said angrily to himself.
“This dog,” she said, finally pushing back from him. “I think it’s been drugged. I found it over there, on the end of that tomb. It was just lying there, like a stone dog.” She stopped, took a deep breath, and continued, her voice more normal now. “But there’s more, Derek. Come over and see.” They walked over to the tomb, Lois still cradling the little dog, which seemed to have gone back to sleep. “Look,” she said. “Look inside the knight’s helmet. It’s…well, just have a look.”
Derek leaned over and peered at the head of the figure. “Can’t see much in this gloom,” he said.
“Look closer,” said Lois, “look at his face.”
At that moment a shaft of sunlight shone through a diamond-paned window, high up in the side aisle of the church, a celestial spotlight, helpfully illuminating the knight’s tomb.
“Face?” said Derek. And then: “Christ Almighty! He’s alive!”
“I don’t think so,” said Lois quietly. “But it is a real man.”
“Bloody hell…You’re right,” choked Derek. “And I know who it is.” He looked again, and then shook his head in disbelief.
“Who is it, then?” said Lois, though she was fairly sure she knew.
“It’s the major,” said Derek. “And you’re right. He’s dead as a doornail.”
“Better ring the police, then,” said Lois flatly. “And while we’re waiting, we can have a good look around. Here, dog,” she said, “no good waiting for your master. We’d better put you in the van, though I expect the police will want to question you as an expert witness.” She gave Derek a wintry smile. “Who would want to kill the major, Derek?” she said.
“Quite a few,” he said, “from what I heard in the pub. Though none of it amounted to much, if you ask me. Still, better ring the cops, gel. Get on with it. Sooner the better.” And then he added, unable to keep a sour note from his voice, “It’ll probably be your pal Cowgill, the demon detective. No doubt you know the number.”
Lois ignored this, and looked at her watch. “You’d better get back, Derek,” she said. “The kids’ll be home from school shortly, and one of us must be there. I’ll wait…”
Derek frowned. Lois’s face was still pale. “Are you sure, me duck?” he said. “I can just as well stay here for the cops, and you go on home, make yourself a cup of tea.”
Lois shook her head. “No, I found him, so it’ll be me they want to talk to. I’ll be OK.” She took out her mobile, dialled a number and waited.
♦
“Afternoon, Lois,” said Hunter Cowgill, stepping down into the chill.
After twenty minutes or so of being alone, Lois was relieved that the church was no longer empty, that somehow the presence of the law at the scene of the crime had warmed the place up. She knew some people believed the spirit hung around for a while before a dead person truly departed, and there was undoubtedly something still present in the silence of the church. After five minutes of absolutely nothing happening, Lois had started to hum a tune to keep the shadows from advancing. It was an old tune, one her grandmother used to sing around the house. Halfway through, she’d forgotten how it went, and stopped. Her shivers returned.
It had been perhaps half an hour before the panoply of the law moved in, and, last of all, now a welcome sight amongst all those strangers, Lois had seen Hunter Cowgill striding swiftly towards her, a half smile on his face. Well, it was all right for him: dead bodies were his stock in trade. But this was the first – no, second – that Lois had seen. And her dad didn’t really count, because she had sat with him during those final hours, until he had slipped away in morphine-assisted sleep. There had been no sudden end, no point at which she could have said, now he’s dead, my dad, gone. But coming across the major like this, in the middle of a day when she’d had an hour or so to spare and decided to satisfy idle curiosity, this took a bit of getting used to.
“I won’t say I told you so,” said Cowgill, sitting down in the pew next to Lois.
“What?” she said sharply.
“On the phone, you said there was nothing for you to do, and I said there was always crime. And here it is, and you right in the middle of it.”
Lois stared at him. “You don’t think I did it?” she said, and was rapidly Lois Meade again. “But then, of course I did,” she added, sitting up straighter. “I knifed the old bugger, dressed him up in a suit of armour I happened to have handy in the kitchen cupboard, loaded him into the car boot, drove him here and hoisted him up on to that tomb thing…oh yes, and drugged this dog so he looked like stone.” She stared at Cowgill, and said angrily, “Have I left anything out? Or will you arrest me now?”
“How do you know he was knifed?” said Cowgill. “No, no, don’t answer that,” he added hastily. “Just tell me all about it, from the beginning. And don’t look at me like that, Lois. I am making no assumptions at this stage.”
After that, he suggested she went outside and waited on the bench by the moat. “Best leave the dog with the policewoman over there. You look frozen, and the sun’s out now.” This was true, but he really wanted her out of the way when they got to work on removing the body of the major. It was not going to be easy, in that armour. And there were numerous tests to be done, photographs to be taken, notes to be made. “I’ll be with you in a couple of minutes,” he said, “and when you’ve given me the bare bones of it” – Lois grimaced – “you can go home, and I’ll come and see you later.”
“What about the dog?” she said.
“We’ll look after it,” Cowgill assured her, standing aside to let her out of the pew.
“But afterwards?” she persisted. “What will happen to it?”
“Dog’s home, something like that,” he said absently. The dog was not uppermost in his mind.
“Well, we’ll have it, give it a home,” said Lois firmly, “if nobody else will.”
“All in good time, Lois,” he said now. “Other things to do first. Now off you go, there’s a good girl, and I’ll be with you shortly.” He should have known better.
“Sod that,” said Lois. “I’ve got a family to see to. No difference between a bench outside and my own house, as far as I can see. I’ll be there. Not that there’s much to tell,” she added.
This was not entirely true. Before the police arrived, she had walked around the church, especially the tomb, noticing a number of things but touching nothing, of course. One thing was immediately obvious: there must have been more than one person. No one person, however strong, could have lifted the major in his full suit of armour up on to the high tomb. Two people, then? And when? Two men carrying a knight in battle rig was not a common sight in Dalling Park in broad daylight. There must have been a van, too. No, it would have been at night. That would have been easy enough, when the park was completely deserted. The key for the church? Kept by the verger, and easy enough to borrow and copy, if you had the means.
As she drove the car back to Long Farnden, Lois pondered on what she knew. It was pretty clear that it had been a well-planned job, needing time and manpower. But why such an elaborate plan? Anyone could have broken into the major’s house in the middle of the night, killed him quietly, and got away before anyone noticed. Well, for a while, anyway. No, this was a nasty, bizarre murder, and the motive would no doubt turn out to be as twisted as the execution. Lois shivered again.
She parked the car in the garage and walked rapidly into the house, suddenly wanting normality, the kids and Derek. The school bus hadn’t arrived yet, and Derek was alone. He stood at the cooker, Lois’s apron tied round his waist, and a wonderful smell of frying greeted her. She looked at the table already laid for tea, and smiled.
“Thanks, Derek,” she said.
“No problem, me duck,” he said. “And before I forget, one of your cleaning women rang – Sheila Stratford? – wondering where you were.”
“Oh God! I promised to call on her…went right out of my head. I’ll ring her now.”
“Fine,” said Derek, and added coolly, “and how was our old buddy, Sherlock Cowgill?”
∨ Terror on Tuesday ∧
Nine
Lois arranged to call on Sheila Stratford next morning, and then Hazel and Bridie Reading after that. “Don’t be too late,” Hazel had said cheerfully, “I’m on duty at the pub at twelve. And hey, Lois, what about you and the major?”
As this was so soon after Lois had found the body, she wondered how Hazel knew about it so quickly. Then she remembered that the girl also worked in the bar at the hall, and word would have got back there from the church pretty quickly. “The major is nothing to do with me,” she replied sharply, and added, “and don’t forget to tell your mother I’m coming.”
But first there was Sheila Stratford, who lived in Waltonby just down from the pub. Her references were good, one from the local vicar, and the other from her husband Sam’s employer, a farmer in the village. Middle-aged, from a local family, with her own daughter and grandchildren living close by, Sheila Stratford sounded the kind of reliable, solid countrywoman that Lois had first envisaged for her team.
It is definitely the morning after for me, thought Lois, as she drove into Waltonby slowly, looking for the Stratfords’ house. I could certainly do with a bit of sparkle from somewhere. Hunter Cowgill had called at the house after tea, and Derek had not been welcoming. In fact, he’d retreated to the garage, banging doors as he went.