Christmas Mourning (The Falconer Files Book 8)

by Andrea Frazer

  As they trudged off to their next call, the light almost gone, Carmichael gasped so loudly that Falconer stopped to ask him what the matter was. ‘What if he touched my kids, too?’ he asked, his face ashen. Although this had been touched on before, it was evident that Carmichael had only just intellectualised the possibility.

  ‘There’s no point in worrying about that now, Carmichael. Wait till we get back, and maybe you can have a discreet word with them, to see if they’ve been upset by him. Just try to put it out of your mind until we get back. I’ll tell you what; we’ll give the Warren-Brownes a miss today, make them more of a social call tomorrow, and just call in on Mr Pistorius now in The Old School House. That way you’ll be back sooner to have a word with the boys and put your mind at rest.’

  ‘We can’t do that, sir. There’s no way out of going there. I promised Kerry we’d call in to see how Auntie Marian was. I should have said something before, when you said we could give it a miss, but she’s dead worried about her, so I can’t not go, can I? I’ll just have to wait a little longer to have a word with the boys.’

  ‘We’ll go there last, then, as it’s more of a social call,’ agreed Falconer, more depressed than he would have thought at the sudden urgency of a visit he thought he could avoid, at the end of what was proving to be a long day.

  Henry Pistorius had bought The Old School House from the late Martha Cadogan’s estate: an elderly lady who had made sure that her house still contained an open fireplace and had cooked with bottled gas. These facts alone made the detectives anxious to reach the property, for they were assured at least of a warm house and a hot drink, things that had been sorely missed on their trudge round the houses, although they had noticed the sound of dripping, and that the ice that had made walking outside such a hazard was slowly turning into slush. Maybe a thaw was on the way.

  Henry Pistorius answered his door, looking the perfect country gent relaxing at home. He wore a cream-coloured Guernsey sweater over a checked shirt and brown cord trousers. The only incongruous area of his person was his feet, which were shoved into what are usually referred to as ‘granddad’ slippers with a zip up the front and a pom-pom at the top of the zip, and these gave him a friendly approachable air. They added a slightly zany note to his appearance, as he could seem a formidable man even in his later years, being almost as tall and as broad as Carmichael.

  ‘Do come in,’ he bade them. ‘I’ll just slip off and make some tea. You must be frozen. Away with you and get yourselves warm.’

  The inside of the house, although much changed since Martha Cadogan’s tenure, was furnished in the perfect country cottage style, any ornaments and paintings being of high quality and in good taste, and Falconer immediately felt at home.

  ‘What a lovely home you’ve made here,’ he commented, looking around him with appreciation as Pistorius came in from the kitchen with a tray laden with tea things and a plate of what looked very much like home-made Christmas cake. ‘And may I compliment you on your taste in interior design.’ This last remark wasn’t at all professional, and he didn’t realise he was going to say it until it was out of his mouth.

  Henry Pistorius took full advantage of his air of embarrassment and said, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘I didn’t realise I was expecting a call from Country House magazine. Would you like me to show you around?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, it just slipped out. I didn’t mean to sound as if I was valuing the place.’

  ‘Don’t think anything of it. I’m just glad someone else likes it as much as I do. It’s the perfect little retirement home for me, now I’m on my own,’ Henry replied with a disarming smile, and ushered them to chairs before the blazing grate. ‘Now, how else can I help you?’

  He answered their questions thoughtfully. ‘You know, I spend so much time on my own that when something out of the normal run of events occurs, sometimes I don’t know whether it’s real or I dreamt it, but I can assure you that I haven’t set foot outside my own door since I got back here after Christmas lunch at the pub.

  ‘I know that farmer chappie came round and ploughed the roads, but I didn’t want to take a second risk of falling and breaking something at my age, and I have everything I need in the house. It was just Christmas lunch that I couldn’t provide for, and I didn’t want to miss out and have to eat cold food on such a day,’ he explained.

  ‘I can quite understand your apprehension at risking an accident a second time,’ Falconer agreed. ‘Just to summarise, then, and I’m sorry to sound like a looped tape, but we do have to go over things again and again to get at the truth: Mr Digby Jeffries, a friend of yours, I believe, was murdered in the early hours of Christmas morning in the church, and Rev. Searle, who was staying at The Fisherman’s Flies, was found dead in his room on Christmas Day, and that is the reason I’m here now: to see if you may have heard or seen anything which will help us with those enquiries. Maybe you’ve remembered something that hadn’t come back to you when we last spoke.’

  ‘I don’t think so, but I must say this all seems more like a bad dream, considering I saw old Digby at Midnight Mass – and the vicar, too. It doesn’t seem possible that they can both be gone, even though I know it without a shadow of a doubt. And why kill a vicar? He wasn’t even the incumbent of St Cuthbert’s, I understood; only standing in as locum so that Castle Farthing could have some Christmas services for a change. There haven’t been any since I’ve moved here.’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’

  ‘Two symbols of Christmas murdered: both pagan and Christian. Doesn’t that strike you as just a little bit odd?’ he asked. ‘Have you looked into the idea that it may be someone – maybe someone of a different faith – that’s trying to strike a blow against Christian festivals?’

  ‘I can’t say we have, sir,’ replied Falconer; and he hadn’t even thought of this view of events, let alone considered it.

  ‘Well, I should look into it if I were you. There’re all sorts of violent acts of intolerance in the world today, and this could be one of them.’

  ‘I’ll give it some thought,’ replied Falconer, without the least intention of doing so, and glared at Carmichael who was looking puzzled, and appeared to be about to speak. Best to quell him before he plunged them into even deeper waters.

  ‘So, let’s get back to the late Mr Jeffries and his relations with other residents of the village, and also to try to track everyone’s movements after Midnight Mass. I wonder if we could start with how you got on with him? I’m sorry to have to take you all through it again, sir.’

  ‘No problem. What else would I be doing in such ghastly weather conditions, and I’m just grateful for some company. Right, Jeffries: fairly objectionable fellow, but mostly harmless. He never spared a thought for other people’s feelings, and let his mouth run away with him without putting his brain into gear first. He was a terrible egotist, thinking himself superior to everyone else, and frequently voicing this opinion without a thought to how what he said would affect others.’

  ‘You didn’t get on with him, then?’

  ‘I got on with him as well as I could, for the sake of peace. I quite like Alice Diggory and Cedric Malting, and can even put up with the snide and sarcastic comments of Robin De’ath, so I just ignored Digby in the main, for the sake of my friendship with the others.’

  ‘Was he insulting to you, as well?’ Falconer had no doubt that the man’s answer would be in the affirmative.

  ‘Of course he was. I was his main rival, having worked for the BBC myself, so he had to judge me inferior because I had worked for the radio branch of the corporation. Never mind that I wrote and produced my own programmes.

  ‘To listen to him you’d have thought he’d run the corporation, and then we all found out he was only a floor manager. It’s probably just as well that someone did away with him, for I don’t think he could have lived with the embarrassment of his actual position coming out and being public knowledge.’

  ‘So he didn’
t get under your skin at all?’

  ‘Oh, sometimes he did, but I just used to think nice thoughts and ignore him. He really wasn’t worth losing any sleep over; just a little man dealing with an inferiority complex the best way he knew how.’

  ‘That’s very candid of you, sir,’ replied Falconer, thinking that it could also be a very cunning bluff, but he’d have to ascertain from the other members of the little gang whether Jeffries did manage to make him rise to the bait. ‘Can you tell me now about Christmas Eve? You did go to the pub after the late service, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did. Both my children live abroad, so I try to acquire company as and when I can over the Christmas season. A little drink after church seemed like a good idea, as I wasn’t likely to see anyone for the next few days, even without all this snow we’ve had, so I jumped at the opportunity.

  ‘We’d already exchanged our little gifts earlier in the day, and I had my torch and stick with me, but I decided that if there was any more snow I shouldn’t risk going out with it being so treacherous underfoot until after the thaw. And that can’t come too soon for me, especially with the power and the phones being out as well.

  ‘I want to get out and change my library books, and weather like this will keep the mobile service away. They’re due round in a couple of days, so I’m hoping for a change in the wind direction, and for life to return to normal as soon as possible.’

  ‘Quite. And what little gift did you give to Digby Jeffries? Was it by any chance a hip flask?’ Falconer felt quite cunning, slipping that question in so innocently.

  ‘No! He wasn’t worth anything like that. I gave him a neck-tie. I got it myself last Christmas and didn’t like it: it was too garish for me, so I passed it on to him. He wasn’t worth spending real money on. On the other hand, he didn’t deserve to die in such a bizarre and public way. Nobody does.’ Henry was still shocked at the manner of his old sparring partner’s demise.

  Falconer added some details about the locum vicar’s death which had not been bandied about the day before. ‘The vicar was given a number of small wrapped gifts at Midnight Mass, and it would seem that one of these was a hip flask containing what the label attached to it identified as Amaretto di Saronno, but which had in fact been laced with poison. He was found dead in his room at The Fisherman’s Flies, as you no doubt remember, by the landlady on Christmas Day afternoon, as I mentioned before.’

  ‘Yes, by gad! What evil is nurtured in people’s hearts we could never imagine. That makes me even more positive that it was a hate crime against either the Christian church, or Christmas. You’re going to need the services of a psychiatrist for this one, Inspector. Take my word for it; that’s what it’ll take to solve this.’

  ‘Changing the subject slightly, did you ever notice anything about the way Jeffries behaved around young children?’ It was just as well to distract the old man, or they’d be here all day, although Falconer couldn’t raise any objection to the opinion of a psychiatrist being sought. It would undoubtedly give him the opportunity to see Dr Honey Dubois again, and that was very much to his taste. In fact, he decided on the spot to make this one of his New Year’s resolutions: to see Honey again and ask her out for a meal.

  Henry’s reply was par for the course. ‘God, he was a terrible groper, wasn’t he? I thought on more than one occasion that if he didn’t watch himself somebody would report him to the authorities, and where would that have left him? But there was no point in even mentioning it to him. In his opinion he could do no wrong. Far too touchy-feely for comfort, though, to my mind.’

  ‘That’s very honest of you, sir, and now we’ll leave you in peace. Thank you for your time.’

  ‘Finish your tea before you go. It’s brass monkeys out there. Do you know the story about why we use the expression ‘cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey’?

  ‘I always thought it was something rude,’ said Carmichael through a mouthful of cake.

  ‘No, not at all, young man. It comes from the days of cannon balls, when they needed to be stacked into a sort of pyramid. But, being round, they wouldn’t stack easily, so they made this kind of brass frame which they put between the layers of balls to keep them from slipping. In very cold weather, the brass used to shrink, and the balls would all fall off, and the contrivance they had invented was called a monkey: hence, in very cold weather, it froze the balls – cannon balls: off a brass monkey – a thing made to keep them in place.’

  ‘That’s a very interesting story, Mr Pistorius,’ said Falconer, charmed by the little tale.

  ‘So, it’s not at all rude then,’ commented Carmichael. How differently the minds of men work, one from the other.

  They took their leave of Henry shortly after that, leaving the cosy interior of his home reluctantly to face dark and the snow for the penultimate time that day.

  Their final call was just next door at The Beehive. A promise to Carmichael’s wife wasn’t to be broken lightly. Tall and broad as he was, Kerry could wrap Carmichael round her little finger when she wanted to, and he was unlikely to want to arrive back home without having checked on the Warren-Brownes.

  Alan Warren-Browne answered the door with his finger to his lips so that they wouldn’t speak too loudly. ‘Marian’s asleep,’ he informed them, ‘and I think it would be better for her if she got all the rest she can, the way she’s feeling at the moment.’

  ‘That bad, is she?’ asked Falconer.

  ‘Well, you know how ill she can be when she gets one of her attacks,’ he explained, but he said no more on the subject, and showed them into the sitting room. ‘Can I get you a brandy or something, to chase away the cold?’ asked Warren-Browne, and Falconer saw that their host had a nearly empty spirit glass beside his armchair.

  ‘Maybe just this once,’ he replied. ‘What about you, Carmichael?’

  ‘Not for me. I’ve already got acid from that sherry we had earlier,’ came the reply, and Alan Warren-Browne immediately seized on this comment, to add, ‘Aha! Drinking on duty, are we? That won’t go down well with your superintendent, will it?’

  ‘He’d have to prove it first.’ Falconer refused to take a threat like that sitting down.

  Carmichael asked if he could have a glass of milk, and Alan went off to get a brandy for Falconer and a glass of cow juice for his sergeant. When he got back with a tray he gave a huge sigh as he sunk back into his chair, his own glass refreshed as well: in fact more than refreshed; what was in it must have been drowned in fresh spirit, as the brandy glass was nearly half full.

  ‘Having a bad time?’ asked Falconer, eyeing the huge measure the man had poured for himself.

  ‘Not so good. I’ve never known Marian this bad, before,’ he answered, but he didn’t look the inspector in the eye as he said it. ‘Anyway, update me on how your investigations are going. There hasn’t been so much happening in Castle Farthing since that old git Reg Morley was done away with, and the weather’s certainly kept any sniff of it getting to the media.’

  ‘That’s certainly true,’ agreed Falconer, now thoroughly distracted by the change of subject, and told the man what they had learnt so far. After all, Kerry’s godparents were hardly likely to be responsible for two such bizarre murders in this little community. They had lived a very quiet life since they retired, keeping themselves to themselves, mainly due to the fact that they were fairly self-sufficient, but also because of Marian’s frequent and severe migraines. Or maybe they were just sick and tired of other people, having spent so many years attending to their needs running the village post office.

  When the conversation had petered out, Falconer asked if he could use their lavatory, as the cold outside would turn the slight reminder that he hadn’t ‘been’, since they’d left Carmichael’s house after lunch into an urgency that he didn’t want to have to address out in the open. Carmichael also confirmed that he needed to ‘go’ too, so Falconer volunteered to go upstairs as what he now also needed to do was something of which he wouldn’t like to
leave lingering evidence in the downstairs cloakroom.

  At the top of the stairs he became aware of a shadowy figure in the gloom at the other end of the landing, and realised that Marian was awake and out of bed.

  ‘What are you doing up here, wandering in the corridor? I don’t know you. You’re not staying here,’ she said in a husky voice, startling Falconer into a state of speechlessness. Whatever was she talking about? ‘There’s a man downstairs,’ she continued, ‘in the residents’ lounge, who keeps coming into my room. I don’t know how he gets hold of a key.’

  And suddenly it clicked in the inspector’s mind. Marian was so confused that she thought she was in an hotel, and didn’t even recognise her own husband. This was much more serious than he had thought, but Alan must realise how bad she was, and he had told them he would seek help as soon as the atrocious weather abated.

  ‘I’ve just booked in,’ he told her, hoping that going along with her illusion would reassure her.

  ‘Well, you just watch out that that man doesn’t start walking into your room without an invitation,’ she warned him, and floated off back into her bedroom, a sad little ghost who didn’t even recognise the place she was haunting. This was a terrible situation, and Alan must be worried sick. No wonder he’d had so much brandy in his glass.

  Just before they left, Falconer advised him to get a doctor to see Marian, as her condition seemed to be worsening, and the man agreed with him, stating that he would phone her doctor as soon as the snow had thawed.

  ‘I don’t think that’ll be very long, either,’ prophesied Falconer. ‘It doesn’t feel quite so cold out here now.’

  Once more out in the dark, their torches lighting their precarious way back to Jasmine Cottage, Carmichael’s mind returned to the unpleasant task that lay ahead of him: that of questioning his children about whether they had been the victims of any inappropriate behaviour at the hands – literally the hands, and wandering hands, at that – of Digby Jeffries.