Death at Coombe Farm

by Phillip Strang

  Neither of them liked the man, and his unusual relationship with his wife, the social climber Fiona, was hard to understand.

  Yarwood and Clare followed Dowling through the agency to his office at the back, past the receptionist, the one that Dowling’s wife had accused him of an affair with once before.

  ‘We need to establish a motive as to why someone was firing pellets at Claude Selwood and his horse,’ Tremayne said.

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘We’ve been told about a plan to build some low-cost housing in the village of Coombe.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  ‘And then we are told that it’s to be more extensive and it will no longer be low-cost, more likely upmarket residential.’

  ‘Both are correct.’

  ‘We’ve since been told that there is a plan to build three hundred houses on Coombe farm.’

  ‘They’re all true,’ Dowling said. The man sat smugly, his arms folded in front of him. Clare knew why they did not like him, the fact that he could pretend to be the great man when it was his wife who was the driving force. As long as he could put on the big front, the man was content, even willing to accept his wife’s affairs.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Tremayne said.

  ‘Planning permission is difficult these days. Either the building is listed, or there’s a committee opposing progress. Sometimes, it’s environmental or whatever. It’s a quagmire.’

  ‘You’ve not explained what you mean.’

  ‘Okay. You apply for all three or one at a time depending on the circumstances, knowing full well there are bound to be objections. As one of the objections fall away, then you bring back or submit another planning application. It’s a game. A game I’m more than capable of winning, although it’s costly and time-consuming.’

  ‘What are your chances of success?’

  ‘With Claude Selwood at Coombe Farm, it was possible. Now, I don’t know.’

  ‘Does it concern you?’

  ‘His death or the deals?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Selwood wasn’t an easy man, and as for the deals, I’m not willing to let them go, but they’re not the only ones. Maybe in time I’ll come back to Coombe.’

  ‘Which deal did you prefer, or is that obvious?’ Clare said.

  ‘The three hundred houses.’

  ‘Whereabouts in Coombe?’

  ‘Where he died.’

  ‘And you’d met him there?’

  ‘On a few occasions. It was always best to avoid the eagle-eyes of the locals, and his wife was none too friendly.’

  ‘Did anyone else know?’

  ‘We never announced it officially. The plan was to deal with the smaller developments, break through the red tape, the restrictions, set the precedence, and then put forward what we wanted at the last moment, knowing that legally they’d not be able to refuse.’

  ‘Devious,’ Tremayne said.

  ‘I’ll dispute you on that,’ Dowling said. ‘It’s good business practice. We’re probing the weak spots, waiting for the chance to go in for the big kill. If it had gone through, Selwood would have made a fortune.’

  ‘How’s your wife?’ Clare asked. They needed the man disarmed, on the backfoot. They needed him to think about something else.

  ‘We’re fine. Fiona’s out with her friends, I’m in here running the business.’

  ‘Are you still involved with the woman outside in the front office?’

  ‘I thought you were here to discuss Selwood.’

  Tremayne ignored Dowling’s rebuke. ‘Who else in the village would have known about your ultimate plan?’

  ‘The application for the low-cost housing is with the council for approval. Apart from that, we’ve not submitted the others, although the plans are drawn up.’

  ‘Who drew up the plans?’

  ‘A firm we use in Salisbury.’

  ‘So the proposal for the three hundred houses is not totally secret.’

  ‘Selwood’s wife knew, although she wasn’t pleased with it. As far as she was concerned, the Selwoods are the custodians of the land, and it was sacrosanct.’

  ‘The low-cost housing?’

  ‘She didn’t like it, but she was willing to go along with it. It was in the village, and not on her land. According to Selwood, the farm was struggling to stay afloat.’

  ‘That’s not what we’ve been told,’ Tremayne said.

  ‘I’m not saying they couldn’t pay the bills, but farming is fickle, one good year, and then a succession of bad. Claude Selwood was more than willing to diversify, and the land up at the top of the hill was ideal for what we wanted. We had plans to expand it later on.’

  ‘Would knowledge of this have been enough to raise the anger of the people in the community?’

  ‘You’ve been there. What do you think?’

  ‘I’d say yes, but killing someone is excessive.’

  ‘Selwood wasn’t murdered, it was an accident. I read that in the local paper.’

  ‘His death was accidental, and we have someone in custody for taking shots at Selwood.’

  ‘The local vicar, Walston. What a fool,’ Dowling said.

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Selwood felt that the vicar should be told. I don’t know why, as the men did not appear to like each other.’

  ‘If the vicar knew, then so did some of the locals. Walston was a talker, no doubt he would have informed others.’

  ‘Regardless, we meet, all three of us. I make a speech, so does Selwood.’

  ‘What did the Reverend Walston do?’

  ‘He sat there and listened to us.’

  ‘When you’d finished?’

  ‘Walston was upset, more than you’d think.’

  ‘Walston would have told the church committee.’

  ‘Molly Dempsey, the local busybody.’

  ‘She’s hardly likely to be a murderer,’ Tremayne said. ‘It’s Old Ted that concerns us. What else are you not telling us, Mr Dowling?’

  ‘Not a lot. There are always further development plans. Land rezoned for housing is at a premium in the area, and we could have kept the price reasonable. There would have been no difficulties in selling the plots of land, and then, there’s the deal with the building companies. Some people have lived in Coombe for generations, and change comes slowly to them.’

  ***

  Marge Selwood, still embittered by her eldest son’s treatment, took all that her two youngest sons had collected, along with her DNA samples, and that of Nicholas and placed them in the bag supplied by the laboratory. She then got William to falsify his name on Gordon’s samples. Once done, she closed the bag and posted it. There was a degree of illegality with what she was doing, the reason she posted it to an address overseas.

  If the result came back in the affirmative in that Gordon wasn’t Claude’s son, then she would apply for a court order to force Gordon to allow another check to be conducted with an English laboratory.

  Marge wasn’t sure of the outcome, only hopeful. It was unfortunate that both Nicholas and William were barely talking to her, but, in time, they would understand; she knew they would.

  Life was not about regrets, only opportunities. She had made mistakes when she had been younger, so had Cathy. No doubt Nicholas and William would.

  Chapter 17

  ‘It’s the best motive we’ve got,’ Clare said, as she and Tremayne sat in the office at Bemerton Road. Outside the weather had taken a turn for the worse, torrential rain instead of the usual drizzle, and Tremayne was standing near to a heater.

  ‘What do you reckon, Yarwood?’

  ‘There are the developments in the village and up at the farm. That opens the possible murderer up to being anyone in the village, even the wider community. If the development at the top of the track is as big as Dowling says, then it would need some big investors.’

  ‘Failing any additional information, let’s focus on who we know.’

  ‘Financially, whoever ow
ns Coombe farm would benefit from the larger development. It’s hard to see a reason to kill people just to lose money.’

  ‘Villagers?’

  ‘They may well be opposed, but those we’ve met don’t seem to be capable of murder. It’s one thing to sound off in the village, even to make a representation at a council meeting, but killing requires a different mindset, and both deaths had been premeditated.’

  ‘Old Ted’s would have been, as someone would have had to go up the track well in advance.’ Tremayne said. ‘I can’t see Dowling as the murderer. We know this man from before. His wife was having an affair, and he did nothing. He sounds tough, but he’s ineffectual. Discount him for the moment.’

  ‘Agreed. If it were his wife, she’d be capable.’

  ‘The lovely Fiona. You’re right, she could do it, and if Old Ted had seen her husband and Selwood up the top of the hill, knew something, she’d do anything to prevent the deal being scuppered.’

  ‘The other farmhand that I went horse riding with. He knew about the men meeting.’

  ‘Which makes him a possible victim.’

  ‘Or a possible murderer.’

  ‘What about the Selwoods? Who in that family would not want the deal to go forward?’

  ‘Marge probably.’

  ‘We need to talk to your farmhand,’ Tremayne said. ‘I hope you’ve got an umbrella.’

  ***

  Molly Dempsey held court in her cottage on the outskirts of the village. She was a small woman, not up to the shoulder of most of the people in the living room. In front of the six assembled, a spread of sandwiches, cake, and tea – a knitting circle it was not.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve not handled the police as well as I should have,’ Molly said.

  ‘Why?’ another of the group asked.

  ‘They’ve been here, asking all sorts of questions. We should not have defended the vicar the way we did.’

  ‘But he was only doing good. Freeing us from the enslaver.’

  ‘Claude Selwood was an evil man. He deserved to die. We couldn’t let him destroy our village.’

  ‘It was only meant to scare the man.’

  ‘How were we to know that the horse would kill the man.’

  ‘I prayed for it.’

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘The vicar, he’s not mentioned our part in this.’

  ‘He’s a good man. A man to be trusted,’ Molly said.

  The Coombe Action Committee was in session. The item for discussion: the Selwood family and their attempts to destroy the tranquillity, the harmony, the peace of the village. The death of Claude Selwood, accidental as it had been, had been opportune. The languishing in jail of the Reverend Walston was unfortunate.

  ‘But why Old Ted?’ a man in his late-seventies said. He was the only male in the room, a situation that did not concern him.

  ‘It wasn’t us,’ Molly said.

  It was a group of people who should be retired, enjoying their time without the demands of a nine to five job, not a group of people discussing anarchy, breaking the law if needed to protect the life they had always known. Molly Dempsey had been born in the village, remembered a time before television, the internet. She even remembered the first time a telephone, black and plastic, had come into her home. It had seemed like fun then, the ability to phone her friends, even though they were no more than a bike ride away. Back then, she would ride into Salisbury at the weekend, but now the road to Salisbury was full of trucks and cars moving at speeds unknown before. Her father had had an old Austin Seven. The family had loved the car, even though it could barely make it up a steep hill.

  Now everyone had a powerful car, and she had seen Gordon Selwood with his Jaguar in the village. Molly remembered the young Gordon, slim and attractive, but now he was verging on fat and slovenly. He had been a polite young man, and his mother, a decent woman, even if she could be overbearing. As for the father, Claude; he rarely deemed it appropriate to talk to the proletariat. ‘Up himself, that one,’ Molly’s father had said, although she had not understood at the time, other than to know it was derogatory.

  She had married in the local church, given birth to two children, one, a son, the other, a daughter, but they were both married and elsewhere.

  The Action Committee had come about when Claude Selwood and Len Dowling had started buying up old properties in the village. The initial rejection of their planning application had caused the two of them to make a presentation in the church hall, outlining the benefits to the community, downplaying the negatives.

  There had been some who had been swayed by the elegance of the two men’s arguments, especially that of the young Dowling. She remembered that he had a smooth tongue, but he preached progress and change and new people into the community. And one thing Molly Dempsey did not want was change. The Action Committee had formed that night; a collection of locals who agreed with her.

  Every time another of Selwood and Dowling’s applications for Coombe was up for discussion with the Salisbury City Council, the committee would make representations opposing it. Not that it had achieved much, Molly knew that. The development in the village had been approved, but Claude Selwood was dead, although Len Dowling was not.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Molly said to her committee.

  ‘We wait and see. If Dowling approaches Gordon Selwood, then we will reconsider.’

  Molly Dempsey knew she would be prepared.

  ***

  After Cathy Selwood’s funeral, there was a lull in the village of Coombe. It was as if everyone was taking a breather for the main event. Clare thought that Tremayne was cynical in his belief that something was stirring; not that it stopped her taking the first Sunday off in weeks. It was a chance to catch up on some reading, some sleep, and to clean her cottage. Her mother was coming down, and she was always critical. Not that she didn’t love her mother, but sometimes they did not see eye-to-eye. The last visit to the cottage had resulted in her mother leaving in a hurry. Clare did not want a repeat.

  Tremayne had Jean, his former wife, down for the weekend; his wife regretting the years apart, but Tremayne knew that back then she had wanted him at home more often, and he had wanted her to be more understanding. It was easy to reflect back when they had both mellowed, but Jean had had a tendency to go off on a tangent occasionally; he had a tendency to slam the door on his way out. ‘I’m never coming back,’ he would say. But now, they were just happy to sit together and watch the television or even go down the pub. Jean even attempted to be interested in his attempts to pick the winning horse, although it irked Tremayne that she’d pick the prettiest, not the racing history of the assembled horses.

  It irked him more when she won more races than he did. They were a good pair, he knew that, and although she had married another, and had since been widowed, he had not found anyone else to equal her.

  The next get-together with Jean, he was going to stay with her eldest son and his family. He had met them already, got on well. He knew it would be fine. He and Jean had discussed remarrying, and the idea appealed. They thought in the next couple of months when the weather was better, a honeymoon in Cornwall, maybe the hotel they went to after their first wedding.

  In another part of Salisbury, Len Dowling was giving Gordon Selwood an update on his plans for Coombe. ‘Your father, he was all for it. We build some houses down in the village, good quality, make us plenty of money. After that, we’d use those as the precedence for the other development on your land.’

  ‘My father kept quiet about it.’

  ‘Your mother knew.’

  ‘She keeps a lot to herself. Have you taken her into your confidence?’

  ‘Your father said to be careful. It was your mother who was the stronger. Are you?’

  ‘I can be,’ Gordon said.

  Len Dowling looked across at the man. He did not see the strength that he had seen in the father, and nowhere as near that of the mother’s. ‘Great. Then we go ahead with the one development, demol
ish the first building in one week’s time.’

  ‘How long to complete?’

  ‘You’ve seen the plans. I’m pushing for the first building to be erected within four months. We’ll make that an exhibition home. After that, we can sell the other as a house and land package.’

  ‘And the villagers?’

  ‘What do we care about them. We’ve got planning permission. It’s up to us.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll sign the documents.’

  Len Dowling pushed the papers across the table that would transfer the name from Claude to Gordon. Dowling sat back, knowing that Claude’s death had only been a minor encumbrance.

  The two men concluded the arrangement with a bottle of champagne.

  ‘Dowling, you’re a rogue, I know that.’

  ‘Maybe, but fortune favours the brave, and tonight, you’ve been brave.’

  ‘I hope so. My father probably died because of this, Old Ted as well. Did you kill my father?’

  ‘Your father’s death was an accident.’

  ‘An accident because Walston was trying to scare him from dealing with you.’

  ‘That’s possible.’

  ‘And Old Ted, he knew what was going on, didn’t he?’

  ‘He had overheard us once.’

  ‘Did my father know?’

  ‘He did. Old Ted didn’t say much, but he was still smart enough to know what we were up to.’

  ‘What are we up to, really? Are we doing this for the benefit of Coombe?’

  ‘Don’t be naïve. It’s all to do with money, lots of it. Doesn’t that excite you, Selwood? The chance to make your mark, out of the shadow of your father, away from your mother’s apron strings.’

  ‘You’ve a foul mouth, Dowling.’

  ‘That’s why we’ll make a good team. I know you for what you are, the spoilt son of a wealthy family. Me, the son of a nobody.’

  Chapter 18

  The first time a bulldozer started the demolition work at Len Dowling and Gordon Selwood’s development project in Coombe, there was a sit-down demonstration by the Coombe Action Committee.