by Caron Allan
Hardy nodded, appreciative of the common-sense approach of the construction.
‘They have boating parties and music evenings, and all sorts in the summer. I’ve heard they has little orchestras coming along the lake in boats lit up with lanterns for all the nice ladies and gentlemen to ooh and ahh at.’
‘Very nice,’ Hardy said with a grin.
‘Of course, us ordinary people don’t get invited.’
‘Not until there’s a murder...’ Hardy replied grimly. He stood and looked in every direction again, until he felt he knew the layout thoroughly. After a while, he said, ‘Nice work for a young woman, bringing a dead body down here on her own, in the dead of a frosty winter night, up this side and down the other, and getting it into the water, leaving no trace at all, then getting herself back to the house again, all without leaving so much as a single footprint.’
He sent a straight look at the sergeant who had the grace to look away and look down at his shuffling feet. But then Palmer seemed to have a brainwave. ‘I bet there’s a wheelbarrow in the potting shed, I think, sir. If so, the guilty person might have used that.’
‘Do we know if Miss Manderson knows of either the existence of this possible wheelbarrow or the location of the possible shed?’
‘No sir, we don’t. But a place of this size, you could lay a pretty safe bet on there being a wheelbarrow somewhere.’
‘True.’ Hardy turned to walk back down to the side of the lake. He walked along the perimeter, checking the edges of the water. He halted after a minute and crouched down to look at the mud that ran from the treeline right into the water and beyond. There were deep footmarks in the mud, some going towards the water, and into it and some going away from it, up into the trees. The water was clear enough just to see the holes, indistinct and large, beneath the surface.
‘Can’t tell anything from those,’ the sergeant commented. ‘Although they look so big they could even be a man’s.’
‘Exactly,’ Hardy said.
‘Does Miss Manderson have unusually large feet, sir?’ Palmer asked with a grin. His accompanying wink seemed to suggest that Hardy knew her very intimately indeed.
From anyone else, this would have been disrespectful at the very least, and Hardy would have been angered by it, but working together closely, Palmer had grown on him. Hardy couldn’t help returning the grin.
With perfect honesty he said, ‘I have to admit, I’ve never paid much attention to her feet.’
The sergeant gave a snort of laughter. He shook his head in mock maidenly disapproval. ‘You young fellows are all the same, only interested in one thing. Or I should say, two things.’
Hardy smiled again, then went back to his perusal of the footprints. He crouched down to look at them again, measuring the marks roughly with his hands. At least a size ten, if not eleven or even twelve. Far too big to be a woman’s. He straightened up. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘And I’m sure you’ll think it’s just because a friend of mine is accused of murder. But really, Palmer, can you picture her doing it?’
‘Nervous type, is she? I can’t imagine any young woman coming out here at night and sloshing about in the mud and ice like we’ve been having lately. My sister would probably scream the place down if she heard a fox or an owl or anything. Town girl.’
‘I wouldn’t say Miss Manderson was of a nervous disposition especially. And she is an intelligent woman. But my thought is, there are easier ways to kill someone, especially if you wanted to make it look like an accident or even a suicide.’
‘You’d need gloves and a wheelbarrow, some good strong muscles, sturdy boots, a warm coat and nerves of steel to carry out a crime in this way.’
‘These grooves here and here could be made by a wheel, for example the kind of wheel you might find on a wheelbarrow. What do you think, Sergeant?’
‘I think that’s exactly what they look like, sir.’ Palmer put his fingers into the mud. About two inches or so wide, and this must be a foot long. The ground’s harder there and there’s no trace. Might be worth tracking all the way back up the hill. We might be able to find more wheel marks.’ The sergeant paused to think, then added, ‘Inspector Hardy, sir, I asked this question before of my own inspector, but he was determined it was her what done it, and said there was no point in trying to mess up the case, as that was the defence’s job. But I’m asking again, do you think we should be looking for a man?’
‘Anything’s possible. A man would certainly find the whole thing a lot easier to accomplish. Also men, if they are interested in outdoor pursuits such as fishing or hiking, can far more easily explain mud or water on their boots or clothing.’ Hardy wiped his hands on his handkerchief. ‘To be honest, I don’t much care who did it, so long as I can prove it and get Miss Manderson out of that prison cell.’
Palmer clapped him on the shoulder in a companionable manner. ‘I heard she was affianced to some big-wig up North.’
Hardy sighed. ‘Yes, I’m afraid she is. Or as good as.’
‘He hasn’t exactly raced down here to be by her side, has he? Sir,’ Palmer added as a hasty after-thought.
‘No, Palmer, he hasn’t. I’d say it’s a classic example of keeping his professional hands lily-white.’
‘Then he don’t deserve her, sir.’
‘Hmm. Unfortunately that’s not for me to say.’ Hardy had no intention of continuing that line of thought. ‘Right let’s go back to the house. I want to talk to the staff again. Then I want to time how long it would take someone to get from the house to here with a body, with or without a wheelbarrow. But first, let’s see if you’re right, and there is a potting shed.’
The potting shed was tucked away behind a jutting wall in a sheltered corner of the garden just beyond the rose garden. They followed the wheel marks practically to the shed door. Hardy was satisfied they were tracing, backwards, the route taken by the killer. The weight of the body in the wheelbarrow had formed a nice deep trail on the soft ground.
The gardener produced the key from his pocket, picking it out from a mess of grimy, bristly string, several toffees, a book of matches, a battered pouch of tobacco, and a walnut in its shell. He stooped to retrieve two pennies and a sixpence from the ground.
‘Is that the only key?’
The gardener thought long and hard. Eventually he admitted it was not.
‘Where is the other key kept?’ Sergeant Palmer asked. ‘Or keys? How many others are there?’
With great reluctance, as if betraying a strict confidence, the gardener told them there was definitely only another one key, he would stake his life on it, and that he thought it might hang on a nail just inside the back door by the kitchen.
Hardy and Palmer exchanged a grin at this. The gardener pushed the key into the lock and turned it easily. The door swung outwards, revealing a neat, orderly array of tools and gardening paraphernalia. It was probably the neatest shed Hardy had ever seen. There in the centre of the floor with its handles towards them, was a large wheelbarrow.
‘Thanks very much, we’ll take it from here,’ Palmer said and almost thrust the gardener out of the doorway.
Palmer and Hardy squeezed inside the shed and shut the door, only to discover it wouldn’t stay closed without being locked.
Hardy said, ‘Well that’s that.’
Palmer couldn’t deny the truth of that, adding, ‘If you’d just used it and brought it back, you’d put it in nose first, just like this, with the handles facing the door.’
‘Exactly, And look—that mark could be blood. We’ll need to get someone out to take a proper look. Just move it out a bit, would you? Don’t touch the handles.’
That was a tall order, Palmer thought, given the lack of space, but after a bit of puffing and cursing, he managed to back the wheelbarrow out onto the path without using the handles.
Sure enough, there was the dark damp patch Hardy had noticed, all down the inside, quite near to the top. A tentative dab at it came away brown and sticky. Hardy snif
fed it. Even after the passage of several days, there was still the tang of blood.
‘So we can be more or less certain that this was used to transport the body.’
‘There’s mud and grass on the wheel and on the rests at the back,’ Palmer said. They both looked the barrow over carefully, then turned their attention to the shed itself. A little mud had fallen onto the floor. This Palmer carefully trapped in his handkerchief and dropped into an envelope. He labelled it neatly and stored it in his pocket.
There were a couple of sturdy looking trowels. But to their disappointment, they were perfectly clean. If either of them had been used to deliver the deadly blow, they showed no sign.
‘Palmer, tell our chaps to be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. You never know. We need to find the weapon if we possibly can.’
‘He might have thrown it into the lake, sir.’
Hardy sighed. ‘I’m afraid that’s all too likely. And if he did, I’m not convinced we’ll ever find it.’
A few more minutes and Hardy decided there was nothing else of interest. He left Palmer to wait for the expert to come out from Horshurst, and went back to the house to make the phone call.
Next, he intended to have that word with the staff.
Chapter Nineteen
‘Thank you all for sparing me some more of your time. I wanted to tell you that I am now certain that Mrs Cowdrey died in the late hours of the evening before she was discovered by Miss Manderson.’
His words were greeted with silence. He wasn’t entirely surprised. He looked at them. Mr and Mrs Manderson, side by side, composed, alert, giving him their full attention. Imogen, her hands restlessly fiddling with something in her lap, her face pale, her large eyes fixed on him. Lewis, as pale as his daughter, but keeping all emotion, all movement locked away, his arms folded and rigid across his chest, his eyes staring at some part of the floor. Guy, looking uncomfortable, and as if he was working through what Hardy had just said, puzzling it over in his mind, glancing from one to another of the people around him. Leo, an expression of bullishness on his face, one knee crossed over the other, his arms stretching along the back of the sofa as if claiming the whole seat for himself, though his wife perched beside him. It was Leo who spoke.
‘I don’t know why you’re accusing us of making this up, sergeant. All we said was that we thought Dottie had killed our mother. It’s up to you to investigate and find out if that was what happened. We can only tell you what we saw.’
Inspector Hardy knew Leo had called him sergeant deliberately. It didn’t matter. Let the man flex his muscles if it made him feel better. Hardy said:
‘Of course, sir. Which is why I came here to let you know that Mrs Cowdrey died the previous evening from a blow to the head.’
‘From what, exactly?’ Leo Cowdrey demanded. His lip curled in a sneer.
‘I don’t know as yet.’
‘Well I suggest you get on with it, sergeant, and stop wasting our time. My wife and I are going home now, we’ve had quite enough or one day.’
‘Very well, sir. I’d just like to add that Miss Manderson will be released from prison either this evening or tomorrow morning.’
No one said anything. Not that there was much they could say, Hardy thought, with Dottie’s parents sitting right there. Lewis Cowdrey gave a nod and got to his feet. It was clear he was showing Hardy out. At least he made the effort to be civil.
‘Well thank you, Inspector. Please let us know if you discover anything more.’
Hardy nodded, smiled briefly at the Mandersons, and left the room. He didn’t go far. Just along the hall to the study.
But only an hour later, Hardy and Lewis Cowdrey faced one another again, this time across the desk. Hardy felt they were making little progress. Lewis Cowdrey was undeniably hostile, and although Hardy knew that people grieved in different ways, it seemed to him that Cowdrey was not so much grieving for the loss of his wife, than annoyed with her for causing him inconvenience and unwelcome attention.
With a change of tack, Hardy said, ‘I understand there have been a number of petty thefts of late?’
Cowdrey was surprised. But he answered easily enough. ‘Yes, but I’m sure it’s nothing. How is this relevant to my wife’s death?’
Hardy shifted in his seat. ‘I’m not certain that it is. I just want to have all the facts. Any odd occurrence within the household recently may be relevant in a manner we don’t yet understand. I’d be grateful if you could add a little more.’
‘Well, there have been I suppose three or four petty thefts. Small, unimportant things have been taken, nothing particularly valuable. To be honest, I gave it little thought at first. I assumed that my daughter had simply been careless with her brooch and put it down somewhere then forgotten where she put it. I gave little attention to the matter.’
As with most things that concerned his daughter, Hardy imagined. Hardy said, ‘Excuse me interrupting, Mr Cowdrey, but when was this?’
Cowdrey frowned as he tried to recall. He leaned back in his seat, fiddling with a pencil. His posture had relaxed, and he was no longer hostile or defensive. Perhaps Hardy might get something out of him after all.
‘About a month ago, I suppose. She last had the brooch at the dinner for my son Leo’s birthday. That would have been on 28th November.’
Hardy nodded and made a brief note in his book. ‘I see. Thank you, do go on.’
‘As I say, I gave the matter little thought. But then, about a week or so later, I couldn’t find my cigar case. I knew I’d put it on the table in my dressing room when I undressed before bed. There were a number of items: a handkerchief, my signet ring, a pocket watch.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I think there could have been a small book of matches. I don’t know what else, that’s all that comes to mind right now. Anyhow, the next morning, Drysdale asked me if I had left the cigar case on the table as usual, because he couldn’t find it.’
‘He didn’t help you the night before?’
Cowdrey looked sheepish. ‘Er no. Must admit, we’d had a few jars, Guy and I, and stayed up rather late after everyone else had gone to bed, setting the world to rights and so forth, as you do. Didn’t think it right to keep old Drysdale waiting, so about one in the morning, I told him he could go, that I wouldn’t need him anymore that night.’
Hardy managed not to smile. It surprised him that Drysdale still remained in Mr Cowdrey’s service if he was the kind of employer who thought it perfectly all right to keep his manservant waiting until one in the morning to see if he was needed. Clearly Cowdrey paid well.
‘Anyway, I went up with him to check, but the cigar case wasn’t there. Everything else was still where I left it but not the cigar case. I have to admit, knowing that I was a bit under the weather the night before, I merely assumed I’d dropped it somewhere, under a chair or something, and that it would reappear. But it still hasn’t turned up. I’ve had to order another. The staff told me they’ve looked everywhere they could think of, and I told them they’d better damn well look again. Which they did, but...’ He raised his hands and let them fall in a ‘what can you do’ manner.
‘Did you search the terrace?’ Hardy asked, mainly to keep the conversation trickling along.
‘Oh yes. My wife is not keen on gentlemen smoking in the drawing room, which was where we ended up, so we had to haul ourselves out to the terrace during the evening whenever we wanted to smoke.’ He gave Hardy a matey grin. ‘Not that we bothered once she’d gone up, you understand, though we left the door slightly ajar to disperse the smoke.’
‘Even in winter?’
Cowdrey shot him a look. For a moment Hardy thought he’d annoyed the man, but Lewis Cowdrey just smiled and said, ‘Ah well, it was so mild that last week of December. In fact, right up until the night my wife died, it could have been early autumn rather than midwinter. Very pleasant that evening. Besides,’ he added, ‘it’s easier to do that than to risk an argument with my...’ His own words trapped him, and he stop
ped mid-sentence. His face fell, and he fumbled in his pocket for a packet of cigarettes and a match-book. He drew one out with trembling fingers, put it between his lips and lit it. He took a couple of long drags, then said, ‘At least, it was easier than risking an argument with my wife.’
There was a silence, then after a few moments he said, ‘Of course, if we’d been dining with friends, usually the ladies would leave us, and we chaps could have a chat and a laugh, we’d have port or brandy, and it was always perfectly easy to just pop out onto the terrace for a few minutes’ breath of air along with a cigar. It was never really a nuisance, I just used to make a fuss sometimes, no idea why.’
‘I understand,’ Hardy said, ‘And were there any other incidents?’
‘Well, about a week or so ago, I think it was either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day—they were here for both—there was June’s bracelet. Don’t ask me to describe it because I didn’t take any notice of it at the time. But what she said was, she took it off to wash her hands, then came out of the cloakroom and left it behind on the side of the basin. She rang up for it the next morning, and Drysdale went to check, but it wasn’t there. June made quite a fuss, as a matter of fact. As far as I recall, she said it was a family heirloom. I promised to speak to the staff about it.’
‘And did you?’
‘Not right away, no.’ Cowdrey looked sheepish again. ‘No, I must admit I thought the woman had left it at home all the time, or something like that. She is very stupid, even for a woman. And there was a snuff-box or some such taken from the morning room.’ He sighed, thought for a minute, then: ‘Oh yes and Imogen lost a pearl necklace last week. She made a fearful fuss about that.’
‘Anything else?’