Quick off the Mark

by Moody, Susan

  ‘So no enemies?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head violently from side to side. ‘No! There were muttering in the ranks sometimes, when he got a bit uppity. High-handed. But it was never serious.’

  ‘Any names you’d care to pass on?’

  ‘Well – gosh, I feel like a Judas – I know Ricky and he had a major row about something – don’t ask me what. And Bill Marshall – the guy who always plays the aristocratic uncle or gentlemanly father – they had a real knock-down drag-out earlier this year. I’d never seen Bill so upset. Or so bloody crude, for that matter.’

  ‘Any idea what the row was about?’

  ‘Something to do with Milo coming on to Bill’s wife, I believe. Actually, if it turned out to be Bill Marshall who killed him, I wouldn’t start back in horrified surprise.’

  ‘So you think he’s capable of murdering Milo?’

  ‘I’m not saying that at all, Alex. Not at all.’

  When she’d gone I sat for a while considering the dynamics of the group. I had enlisted in their number too recently to be able to assess most of the members for potentially murderous inclinations. I also wondered whether Mrs William Marshall had responded to Milo’s overtures. I’d questioned earlier, when Tristan was murdered, whether the killer could have been a cuckolded husband. The death by a thousand cuts aspect had put me on to Triads and the like. Perhaps I’d allowed myself to be overly side-tracked. Sam certainly thought so. In any case, I was really only concerned with Tristan’s death, and then only because he was an old friend.

  Call me irresponsible, but I had had enough. I was moving on. I know I’d said it before, but this time I meant it. From now on, it was up to the police, not to me.

  TWENTY-ONE

  A car I didn’t recognize was parked in front of Edred and Mary’s house. I rang the doorbell, rapped the brass lion’s head knocker – as always, verdigrised and in dire need of a polish – and let myself in.

  ‘Yoo-hoo,’ I called, just to let them know their youngest child had come to visit. I found them sitting in their favourite places, round the kitchen table. Behind them, a kettle was madly dancing on the Aga.

  ‘Hello,’ Mary said. She’d gone so far as to put out some mugs, a jug of milk and a bowl full of sugar lumps, along with a pair of tarnished silver sugar tongs. But neither they nor their visitor were drinking tea. There was a one-quarter full bottle of wine on the table, and three smeary glasses, each with a low level of wine in them.

  The visitor was Dorcas Huber-Drayton. Grey hair, grey face, grey cardigan pulled tightly across her chest.

  ‘Lovely to see you, darling,’ my father said. He held up the depleted bottle. ‘Want some?’

  ‘No thanks. I’m driving.’ I plonked a lump of good Cheshire cheese from Hanscombes (‘Hanscombes on the High Street, est. 1923’) on the table, together with some of the shop’s superior oatcakes.

  ‘Oooh, lovely,’ said Edred. He reached some plates down from the china-crammed pine dresser which took up one wall of the room and fished some knives out of the cutlery drawer.

  ‘How are you doing, Dorcas?’ I asked.

  ‘Guess,’ she snapped.

  ‘Has there been any further news?’

  ‘None at all. It’s disgraceful. I don’t know what your lot are playing at. Why isn’t anyone in custody yet?’

  ‘Alex hasn’t been on the police force for several years now, Dorcas,’ Mary said, ‘so you can’t really blame her for the lack of progress.’

  ‘I can and I do. Pshaw! The whole lot of you are tarred with the same brush.’ She turned the blowtorch of her gaze on me. ‘But in any case, weren’t you supposed to be looking into the matter of my son’s murder on behalf of his sister?’

  ‘I said I would do my best.’ I was determined not to let the bloody woman rile me. I reminded myself of her agonising bereavement. ‘Whoever’s responsible has done a darned good job of keeping an extremely low profile. My contact on the local CID unit seems to have no more information than I do.’

  ‘How is the dear girl?’ my mother said.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Felicity, of course. You must bring her round – it’s ages since we last saw her.’

  ‘I’ll ask her when she’s likely to be free.’

  ‘While you three are busy arranging your social calendar,’ barked Dorcas, her voice like acid, ‘I’m more interested in bringing a killer to justice. And I want to know why nothing seems to have been done.’

  ‘You’ll have to take that up with the local CID,’ I said. ‘Meanwhile, do any of you know someone called Tamasin Stanton? Lives in the village?’

  My parents looked at one another. ‘It’s that actress woman. On Pensfield Avenue,’ Mary said. ‘We saw her in that television series, Edred. Remember?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A French queen. Mother of Richard the Lionheart.’

  ‘And Bad King John,’ Dorcas added sourly.

  ‘Eleanor of Aquitaine,’ I supplied.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ my parents chorused.

  ‘Or was it Isabella of Angoulême?’ said Edred. His gold-rimmed spectacles fell off his nose and hit his wine glass which by now was fortunately empty. ‘I can’t remember which.’

  ‘Eleanor,’ said my mother.

  ‘No, Isabella,’ said my father firmly.

  ‘And she’s often on other programmes.’

  ‘I read about her being in something at the Almeida or the Royal Court, can’t remember which.’

  ‘Nonsense, woman, how could she be? She died four centuries ago.’

  ‘Not Eleanor, you silly old goof. I’m talking about that woman in the village – Tamasin Stanton.’

  Dorcas gave vent to a windily exasperated sigh. ‘For God’s sake, does it matter?’

  ‘Thing is, whether it’s the Royal Court or Almeida, the poor woman’s husband …’ I glanced sideways at Dorcas. Her fingers trembled on the stem of her glass. There was a nervous tic winking under the skin below her left eye. ‘While I’m here I thought I’d pop in and see her. Make myself known. I’m in her husband’s amateur dramatics group at the university.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ Edred exclaimed. He rattled his newspaper to capture our attention. ‘Listen to this! Seems that Arthur Dibdin is dead.’

  ‘Dibdin … I’ve always liked that name,’ Mary said. ‘So … salty.’

  ‘Who’s Arthur Dibdin?’ I asked, spooning Edred’s home-made marmalade on to my toast.

  ‘One of our local taxi-drivers. Bad-tempered old bugger, very disobliging man. We didn’t use him if we could avoid it, did we, Mary?’

  ‘Who’s he insulted now?’ my mother said.

  ‘I just told you … he’s died.’

  ‘We’ve all got to go some time,’ said Mary.

  ‘Yes, but not the same way as poor old Dibdin, I hope. Seems he was run over by his own taxi.’ Edred stared into the middle-distance. ‘I wonder how he managed that.’

  ‘Some disgruntled passenger fed up with his rudeness probably set it up, I shouldn’t be surprised,’ said Mary callously. She looked over at me. ‘Dibdin spent his time ferrying children to and from school, and after school hours took bookings from people going out to dinner or parties or whatever. Picking people up after office or university functions. He may have been a grumpy old sod but he’ll be a loss to the local community.’

  ‘Oh, and look, Mary,’ Edred went on. ‘There’s a performance of The Creation at the Longbury Assembly Rooms on September twentieth.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Should we get tickets?’

  ‘We’re both singing in it, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Of course we are.’ My father opened his mouth and burst into song. ‘The heavens are telling the glo-ory of God,’ he sang. ‘The-e wonder of his work—’

  ‘Stop it, Edred!’ shrieked Dorcas. She had a voice that could zap angry hornets at twenty paces. She used it now, as she banged a meaty fist on the table. ‘All this chit-chat about concerts and taxi-drive
rs is not going any way towards solving the death of my son.’ She stared accusingly at me. ‘Why are the police dragging their heels?’

  ‘I don’t think they are,’ I said. ‘It’s just that they have so little to go on.’

  ‘It’s been days now,’ she said. ‘Weeks.’

  ‘I know. But the person responsible has been very, very careful. As far as I can gather from my friend on the force, they haven’t got much to go on. But I know for certain,’ I added hastily, as she opened her mouth, ‘that enquiries are being energetically pursued.’

  ‘Not energetically enough, if you want my opinion.’

  Which I didn’t.

  ‘Will you come back for supper?’ asked my father, as I prepared to leave. ‘Now you’re here you could even stay the night. Your room’s always ready.’

  ‘And I’ve made a casserole,’ Mary added.

  Cripes … my mother’s casseroles were things to avoid if humanly possible. Any old rubbish she’d found at the back of the fridge, stuff in the freezer well past its sell-by date, once even, I swear, roadkill. A rabbit found by the roadside and inexpertly skinned by Edred. God only knew how long it had been lying there. ‘Thank you both,’ I said. ‘I’ll play it by ear, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Play it by ear.’ My mother settled her elbows on the table. ‘A curious phrase for not committing yourself.’

  ‘I’ll wing it, then,’ I said.

  ‘Even more curious.’

  I left them to it.

  I knocked at the door of 1 Pensfield Avenue, a leafy suburban street on the edge of the village, completely separate from the mediaeval alleys and twittens which made Dovebridge such a charming place to live.

  ‘Could you tell me which is Mrs Stanton’s house?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t look like a stalker. Or an assassin,’ the very old boy who opened the door told me, clacking his dentures around.

  ‘That’s because I’m neither.’

  ‘She’s at number 27. The woman’s a bit of a celebrity round here. She was in that telly programme about Eleanor of Aquitaine. Or was it Isabella of Angoulême? I get confused, sometimes. Whichever it was, I thought she was pretty good and historically the programme was very accurate.’

  ‘I haven’t seen it,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You shouldn’t miss it. You can get a boxed set, you know.’

  ‘I might just do that. Thank you.’

  Number 27, when I got there, didn’t appear to be inhabited, though there was a pink tricycle lying on its side under a bush in the front garden, and a doll’s pram in the porch. Property of the little Milo orphans, obviously. I rang the doorbell several times, but there was no response from inside the house.

  ‘She’s gorn away,’ a well-spoken voice behind me said.

  I turned to find a woman in a battered felt hat and a grubby fawn raincoat, who had stopped on the pavement in front of the house. She looked like she was understudying Maggie Smith in The Lady in the Van. She had a Welsh corgi on a lead.

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  ‘Just lost her husband, poor lass. Not that he was much cop, spouse-wise.’

  I walked down the path to join her, while she hoisted one hip to rest it on the low brick wall which separated the house from the road.

  ‘Not much cop?’

  ‘Never here, was he? Poor Tammy had to raise those girls more or less on her own, as well as be the family breadwinner. Luckily her mother lived with them, did most of the childcare, took the children to school and so forth.’

  ‘They’ll miss him,’ I said.

  The woman grimaced. ‘I don’t want to sound callous, but what’s to miss, quite honestly? Good riddance really, not that one would want the man dead, of course, but I expect it’s something of a relief all round, when you come right down to it.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ she said. The corgi moaned. Or possibly groaned. It was hard to tell which. She got down from the wall. ‘I’d better be on my way. Llewellyn’s desperate for a pee.’ She yanked at the dog and set off towards the park at the end of the road.

  Driving back to my parents’ house, I realized I knew no more about Milo Stanton now than when I arrived. Certainly nothing that might lead to his being murdered. I would have to contact Char Plimpton again … she’d been too upset when we met earlier for me to start asking probing questions about the row between William Marshall and Milo. Or the one involving Ricky Hadfield. Not that I supposed either of them to have any hand in Milo’s death. But they might widen the field of suspects, or point the enquiry in other directions.

  Meanwhile, there was my mother’s casserole to be endured.

  The following morning, after discovering, against all the odds, that I hadn’t gone down with food poisoning or the plague, I joined my parents for breakfast before setting off home. As always, the two of them were deeply immersed in the papers, both local and national. I poured myself a mug of tea, stuck a couple of slices of bread into the toaster, and wondered, as so many times before, how two such educated and discerning people could allow themselves to eat sliced bread. It wasn’t just the diminished taste, it was also the chemicals added to preserve it on the shelves, plus the fact that once opened, it went mouldy before you were halfway through the loaf. I concede that it’s useful if you have to get kids breakfasted and off to school, or packed lunches to prepare, but practicality is not a constituent of flavour.

  Driving back to my flat, I accepted that Milo could not possibly have been embroiled in some Triad organization. That was far too big a stretch.

  So, I had to assume that all this time, as Sam had pointed out with varying degrees of acerbity, I had been way off the mark, and Triads were not after all involved. I felt stupid. And embarrassed. Like my friend Clarissa Ridgeway’s mediaeval jongleur protagonist, Rondel, I was baffled. Sam was right (darn it!), there had to be some other link between the three/four of them. The only thing they seemed to possess was a connection to the university. Tristan was only peripherally involved, through the Junior Common Room redecoration scheme, but the other three were definitely part of the uni system. Kevin, because he was working towards his PhD, Ned Swift as a student, and Milo because of the theatre group. And I had no idea where Mr Dibdin fitted in, if indeed he had anything to do with the other victims.

  Was it worth my while talking to someone there? Frankly, I thought not. Leave it to the force. Especially considering that even if someone came up with a solid twenty-four-carat gold motive, along with means and opportunity, to murder one of the dead, it was highly unlikely to be applicable to the others. Improbable though it seemed, any one of them might have been a stand-alone murder.

  I telephoned DCI Fairlight. ‘How’s Garside’s investigation going?’ I asked.

  ‘Stalled for the moment, as far as I know. As always, Alan’s playing his cards pretty close to his chest. I’m fairly sure he suspects that you and I are exchanging information. He certainly doesn’t seem to want to give anything away. Even in the team’s daily briefings.’ She dropped her voice. ‘On the other hand, Quick, I understand from DS Griffiths that he’s close to bringing someone in for questioning.’

  ‘Who, for gosh sakes?’

  ‘I don’t know. Griffiths was being very circumspect.’

  ‘Tell me, Fliss, is he linking all four murders?’

  ‘He’d have to be. Or three of them, anyway. He’s far from stupid, and he can’t possibly imagine that they’re all separate incidents, with four different perps.’

  ‘Has he taken on board the possibility of the organized crime element I was talking about when Tristan Huber was found?’

  ‘It’s up on the wall of the Incident Room.’

  I coughed. ‘I think I may have been a little wide of the mark with that theory.’

  ‘A little?’ She laughed. ‘You’re not the only one who thought so, darlin’.’

  ‘It had legs,’ I said defensively.

  ‘On crutches, Quick. And f
or your information, Alan did take it seriously enough to contact the Met, and they’ve been checking round their contacts in the Chinese communities, who were naturally outraged at the very notion that one of their lot might have gone round killing innocent British citizens.’

  ‘Has someone been to interview the Landises?’

  ‘Yup. And those people at Rollins Park. Garside may be a misogynistic old prick, but he’s an extremely competent officer.’

  ‘You’ve mentioned the Paramores before … I suggest that you urgently set up a further enquiry into them. Like you told me earlier, I think they’re heavily into people-smuggling, trafficking, thefts of expensive cars, whatever.’ I outlined why I thought so.

  ‘That’s a lot of skulduggery,’ Fliss said.

  ‘Oh, and add in missing horses.’

  ‘How do you mean, horses?’

  ‘You know, Fliss. Four-legged creatures, capable of amazing turns of speed.’

  ‘Thank you, so helpful. But come to think of it … yeah, I have a feeling … just a mo …’ I heard her riffling through some documents, then tapping her computer keys. ‘Yes, there’ve been several recent reports of horses going missing in the area. Why, what do you know?’

  ‘Only what I just told you. And it might not be all the things I mentioned. But you should definitely get involved. Or at least call the locals, who’ll have to include you.’

  Conversation ended, I mulled over the facts as I knew them. Four murders, four crime scenes … how many killers? Very slowly, my head began to spin. Too many facts, too much supposition, too little solid ground.

  I wanted to get back to my own work.

  I spent some time at my computer, then walked to the High Street. Went into the florists shop, bought a single pink rose, asked them to tie a matching ribbon round it. Then I carried it further along the street and round the corner to Dimsie’s studio.

  ‘This is for you, my dear,’ I said kindly, handing the rose to the girl behind the desk, who’d jumped like a frog when I came in. There wasn’t a lot she could say after that. She kind of smiled. Rictussed would be nearer the mark, if there is such a word. Silently, she pointed towards the floor above.