‘Well,’ said Adelaide, finger on chin as she thought it through. ‘I don’t recall such a gentleman – though it does sound as though I should. He’s around my age.’
‘A neighbour? A boyfriend perhaps? With all due respect to your deceased other half, I’m sure you’re not wanting for male company.’
She simpered as girlishly as she could get away with. ‘You naughty man.’
‘Anyone at all?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I’m sorry. I don’t recall anyone like that.’
Honey harboured wicked thoughts in her mind about Adelaide Cox. Number one, she wanted her to know that a woman could live an interesting life without a man in it. Number two, that it was her who occupied the other half of Doherty’s bed and there was no room for three.
However, she was here for a purpose and that purpose was paramount. First and last she herself had already racked her brain, trying to recall if she’d ever seen the blond jogger with his clothes on – casual trousers, respectable shirt – working in or owning a hotel or some other catering outlet. Casper had also racked his brain and came up with a big fat zero, and if Casper couldn’t recall such a dramatic-looking man in the hospitality trade, then he didn’t exist. The chairman of the Hotels Association prided himself on recalling every member past and present. The only conclusion Honey came to was that the jogger had to be something to do with the individuals who had been upset by Wright, especially those who had lost their business or partner because of the effect of his scathing reviews.
Doherty nodded thoughtfully as he reached for his teacup.
‘He sounds like a fit man,’ said Adelaide Cox. ‘Do you think he’s single?’
‘I wish I knew,’ said Doherty, setting his teacup down on the table with obvious finality. He got to his feet. ‘We were hoping he might be related to somebody. Is there anyone else connected with you or your husband that looks remotely like that?’
‘No. And such a shame,’ she said, shaking her head and pursing her bright pink lips. ‘I would remember somebody who looked like that, but there’s nobody, nobody at all that I can recall. I only wish I could help you further.’
‘Never mind,’ said Doherty getting to his feet. ‘Let me know if you do recall anyone who matches that description.’
Adelaide caught his arm as she also rose to her feet.
‘Do drop in again if you’re passing. There’s always a cup of tea and a piece of cake waiting for you, and who knows, I may recall something that might help you with your enquiries.’
Saying goodbye and thank you took Doherty longer than it did her, so Honey was outside the front gate before she was. Seeing as she was having a fit of the giggles and only just managing to keep it under control, this was just as well.
Doherty opened the driver’s side door and saw her expression.
‘Wipe that grin off your face.’
Honey spluttered. ‘There’s more than a slice of Victoria sponge on offer if you ask me.’
Doherty looked at her reprovingly. ‘I’m not keen on Victoria sponge. Too light and fluffy. A piece of rich fruit cake turns me on every time.’
‘She wanted you to herself and you loved it.’
Doherty glanced behind him before pointing the car towards their next stop.
‘You could have stepped in and warned her off.’
She smiled. ‘And split up a blossoming friendship?’
They took the road back to Bath that wound around the town of Warminster, just a few miles from Longleat where lions and all the creatures of the wild strolled through the magnificent park behind high wire fences.
Beatrice Dixon lived on the outskirts of the town in a modern semi-detached house built when the Bay City Rollers were still topping the charts, just a few years before Margaret Thatcher had become Prime Minister.
The house had big windows designed to let in the light, but for some reason the occupant had blotted it out. Vertical blinds afforded total privacy in the case of 36 Marlborough Row. The garden was plainly planted, the borders straight and emblazoned with marigolds of uniform height.
‘Doesn’t this house strike you as a little regimented?’ Honey asked Doherty.
Doherty gave it the once-over. ‘You mean straight up and down?’
‘Stiff and unbending. Not a curve in sight.’
‘Yes there is.’
Honey looked at him. ‘Where? I don’t see any.’
He grinned at her. ‘I see you.’
‘Cheeky!’
Beatrice Dixon was as straight and unbending as her house. She was dressed plainly, without the addition of a brooch or necklace. Her sweater and matching cardigan were grey and her skirt was of grey wool criss-crossed with thin brown checks.
Her face was plain and bare of make-up, though her skin looked peachy soft and she had natural pink spots on her cheekbones. Short hair clipped close to the scalp clung to her head like a tight-fitting swimming cap. Her nose was long, her mouth was wide, and her eyes were too close together.
It was a silly thought and probably an old wives’ tale, but Honey recalled that you could never fully trust a person whose eyes were too close together.
She looked straight at them, saying only an abrupt ‘Yes?’ Then she stood there, waiting for them to speak, to make the first move.
Doherty explained why they were there and asked if they could come in.
‘You may recall I came here before,’ Doherty reminded her.
Beatrice Dixon took a few seconds to think about it. Meanwhile she regarded them with undisguised hostility, her piercing eyes looking them up and down as though searching for hidden weapons.
‘I told you all I know,’ she snapped, and for a moment it didn’t seem as though she was likely to allow them over the threshold.
Doherty did conciliatory rather well.
‘There’s just something else you may be able to help us with. There’s another person we want to ask you about.’ Doherty looked over his shoulder as though nervous that other eyes were watching from behind a number of curtains. ‘It’s a bit public out here. Are there many neighbours home at present?’
A pair of deep-set iron grey eyes scoured the street at his back, immediately alert to the slightest movement, immediately hostile. Honey construed that neighbourliness did not come high on Mrs Dixon’s agenda.
Opening the door a little wider, she stepped back into the dark confines of a narrow hallway.
‘You’d better come in.’
The interior was as plain as its owner, the walls of the living room a bland beige, the furniture dated but serviceable. A flower-patterned rug lay before a copper-hooded gas fire. The curtains were only a shade darker than the walls and family photographs lined the mantelpiece. A painting of a young girl hung on the fireplace wall. It looked as though it were a copy of a photograph in a frame just beneath it. The girl was pretty, smiling from both the painting and the photograph.
They were not offered a seat.
Standing in the middle of the room Beatrice Dixon folded her skinny arms across her less-than-expansive chest. When it came to talking about figures, Beatrice Dixon was definitely a number one; straight down. No curves and a fried-egg bosom.
Doherty questioned her about the blond-haired runner.
Her response was terse. ‘I don’t know him.’ She began to make towards the door. Their welcome hadn’t been good and their stay was destined to be short.
‘You don’t recall any hotelier who looked like him? No family member? Your husband’s family perhaps …?’ Doherty offered.
‘I’m not married.’ The response was as terse as before.
‘My apologies. I didn’t know that.’
‘Why should you?’
‘You hated C.A. Wright?’
‘Yes. Me and a hundred others.’
Doherty played the conciliatory card again. ‘His reviews and his manner were pretty nasty, so I hear.’
‘Very.’
Honey was hearing all this at the same time
as studying the painting. It sometimes helped to bring a personal thread into an investigation. Being female she might get further with this than Doherty. She jerked her chin at the painting. ‘She’s very pretty. Is she a relative of yours?’
The full force of Ms Dixon’s chill grey eyes were brought to bear.
‘That’s none of your business. It’s just someone I know. Now. If there is nothing else?’
They were sitting in the car when Honey stated the obvious. ‘You won’t be getting any Victoria sponge from her!’
Doherty grinned. ‘Win some, lose some.’
Honey sat back, her brows knitted. Something about the painting niggled her. Why have a photograph made into a painting of ‘just someone you know’. Mothers had photos of their babies turned into paintings. She repeated her thoughts to Doherty.
‘So what are you saying here?’
Honey chewed it over before spitting it out. ‘Their bone structure was the same. I bet you Ms Dixon was a looker when she was younger. I bet she looked a lot like that girl in the painting.’
‘You’re saying they’re related?’
‘I’m saying they’re mother and daughter. By the way, what was in that jar in the bathroom?’
‘Haemorrhoid cream.’
Chapter Eighteen
It was bin day. The local council were collecting household waste which the good citizens of Bath had divided into plastics, glass, textiles, and ordinary stuff for the landfill site.
The gulls that usually roosted close to the river or floated on it were sweeping low and screaming for lunch. The air was a mix of the stench of rotten vegetables and pizza toppings.
One or two gulls were too brave for their own good, swooping down on the men collecting the garbage. The men shouted and waved their arms to beat them off.
Honey and Doherty stood watching. Doherty was watching the gulls. Honey was endeavouring to gulp as much fresh air as she could muster.
She took a deep breath. The beat of the tom-toms was gradually fading away.
‘So. What next?’
Doherty pursed his lips. His eyes were narrowed and fixed on the screaming gulls – almost as though he had it in mind to shoot them down with a crossbow. Well they did make a lot of noise. And they were a menace.
But that wasn’t why his eyes were narrowed. ‘I’m thinking. Number one, does your jogging friend have anything to do with this murder? Number two, where is Colin Wright’s overnight bag. Number three …’ He paused. His stomach rumbled. ‘Where shall we go for lunch?’
‘Well …’
Before she had time to put forward her suggestion, Doherty’s phone sang a snatch of the ‘The Dawn Patrol’ from The Jungle Book. He’d taken to downloading various ringtones of late.
‘Variety is the spice of life,’ he’d said to her when she’d questioned his motive. ‘It gets me through the day.’
She listened to what he was saying. ‘You’ve found it?’ Basing her judgement on the way he was looking at her, she guessed that Wright’s overnight bag had been located.
‘Follow me.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘We’re retracing old ground. Wright’s bag has been found in a slurry pit.’
‘Yuk.’
‘The farmer was clearing it out. Normally he wouldn’t do it for years, but he’s sold his cattle and is going in for organic planting – if that makes any sense. Luckily for us he’s already swilled it off. He’s also opened and handled it. Normally that would be a big no-no, but any forensic evidence is likely to have been obliterated by the slurry anyway.’
On the way there they chewed over the details. Whoever had killed Colin Wright needed to hide the bag. From what Doherty had been told the slurry pit was a mile or so away from where the body was found. The perpetrator, not privy to the farmer’s plans to go organic, wasn’t to know that the slurry was about to be sucked out and thrown around the field prior to ploughing and planting. Throwing it in would have worked if the farmer hadn’t implemented his plans so soon after the bag was thrown in. It hadn’t had time to sink to the bottom but was sucked out and in the process blocked the intake.
‘Going through his bag may not tell us much. I think we need to take a close look through Wright’s things. I think I would also like to take a look around his pad in London. His sister Cynthia has the key. I’ll contact her and see what I can find. She’s also the one who brought my attention to the letters. She only brought in three, but she specifically told me there were more. So why only three? Why didn’t she bring in the whole lot?’
‘Because she was protecting one of the others?’
Doherty made a humphing sound. It made sense. ‘If I’m correct I have to ask who was she protecting and why?’
‘Perhaps my blond man?’
He shrugged and pulled a so-so face. ‘Who knows? Have you remembered anything else about him?’
‘The short shorts predominate.’
‘OK, I know you’re kind of stuck on that, but did he look as though he were hiding something?’
Honey made a guffawing sound. ‘Are you kidding? Look, that outfit he was wearing didn’t hide anything – and I mean anything. It was skimpy and made me blush.’
Doherty raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Now that must have been skimpy!’
Honey was dismissive. The blond man had been most insistent about a letter, but what letter?
‘I could be barking up the wrong tree.’
Doherty shook his head. ‘No. Only dogs do that and yours is gone.’
‘Precisely. Perhaps he was talking about a different letter – something to do with dogs perhaps.’
‘So you were walking in the park when the pooch got pinched. I take it you were unarmed.’
‘Except for my pooper-scooper and doggy doo-doo bag.’
‘He obviously thought the dog was yours.’
‘I would think so. I keep wondering about that. We certainly could be barking up the wrong tree.’
‘Or he could have been barking mad.’
‘Was he talking about something else, in which case we are – in fact he could be leading us down the wrong path? The tail could be wagging the dog instead of the other way round.’
He looked blank. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘It’s easily done as you get older.’ She grinned as she said it. Doherty tossed his head.
‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘as he didn’t mention the contents of the letter, we have to assume that it had something to do with C.A. Wright. Right?’
‘Superfluous thought patterns – and dialogue.’
‘He didn’t say it was anything about Wright. Even if it was, perhaps it was one that didn’t get delivered. Things get lost in the mail every day.’
‘That’s true.’
‘And even if it was one sent to your lot, the police, being an earnest bunch, read their mail every day and take notice of everything that comes in.’
Her last remark was greeted with silence.
‘I take it that’s a no,’ she said.
‘Not quite. It might be a case of keeping it on file in case something turns up.’
‘But there’s no guarantee.’
‘No comment.’
‘I could suggest that it had been delivered only recently.’
Doherty sighed and did a brow-swatting action with one hand whilst the other stayed on the steering wheel. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many letters we’ve had from well-meaning members of the public just recently.’
She made a hissing sound – as though it hurt. ‘You learn something new every day.’
‘This jogger has to be well known – if he looks as lurid as you describe him.’
‘Tight pants. Slim frame. He’s noticeable.’
‘The uniformed boys must know him. I’ll ask about. I’ll drop you home.’
The farm used to raise cattle but, as the farmer Paul Patch explained, his wife had turned vegetarian and was finding the raising of brown-eyed bovines a little distaste
ful. Bottle-feeding some of the calves hadn’t helped. ‘She gave them names,’ Paul Patch explained. ‘That’s the worst thing you can do. Even tagging their ears with numbers and referring to number two-four-two as being a pretty little calf is fatal. Giving them names like Poppy, Gavin, and Sookie is even worse,’ he explained. ‘One step on and you’re giving them human characteristics.’ He shook his head. ‘Not good. So that’s it. We’re going green, as in growing things only. We’ve also gone vegetarian. The wife’s idea,’ he added with a grimace.
He told them what time he’d found the bag and that he hadn’t seen anyone around.
Doherty thanked him for his help. Honey came away with three dozen free-range eggs.
‘It won’t last,’ said Honey once the eggs were stowed away in the small luggage space behind the passenger seats of Doherty’s car. ‘That man has all the marks of a secret meat-eater. He’ll pretend he’s off to walk the dog or something and he’ll head for McDonald’s.’
A call came through telling them that the holdall – which had been picked up by the uniformed division – didn’t contain anything of great interest beyond a leather thong that with adaptation could be used as a slingshot. At present nobody could regard it as anything except what it was: definitely not an offensive weapon.
Doherty’s stomach rumbled.
‘I didn’t have any breakfast.’
‘Not a good way to start the day.’ Honey had served breakfast as well as eaten some. There was always the odd piece of bacon left over plus a slice or two of toast.
‘Fancy a bacon baguette?’
‘Hmm. Sounds good to me.’
They stopped at the Poacher for lunch. Honey admitted to liking the place.
Doherty dawdled at the glass-cased noticeboard within which were menu and room details.
‘They’ve got a four-poster room.’
‘So does the Green River.’
Doherty’s eyes sparkled as he reminded her of the raffle he’d won: a night of luxury at St Margaret’s Court Hotel.
‘I get it,’ she said nodding as she eyed the lunchtime crowd. ‘It’s better playing away than on home ground.’
They had a simple lunch of thickly sliced ham with salad on a warm baguette. As they ate and talked Honey’s mind went back to their luxury night away. The thought of it was so powerful that she didn’t hear everything he was saying, not until he got to his feet and stated that he needed to use the bathroom.
Wicked Words: A Honey Driver Murder Mystery (Honey Driver Mysteries) Page 18