by Joyce Cato
Max was still keeping his voice much lower, for his reply was still inaudible to everyone who was now unashamedly straining to hear what he was saying. Once again, though, it didn’t seem to matter much, since Erica’s replies were given at full volume.
‘Well, there you are then! What does that dozy old man know? It’s not as if he’s a doctor or anything! So what if Tris is sprawled out around the back here? Good grief, Max, you know what he’s like,’ she carried on, sounding more exasperated now, then concerned. ‘He’s probably just passed out – he’s had too much to drink, and went around the back to sleep it off, I imagine,’ she added scornfully. ‘That would be just like him, and typical of the inconsiderate little shit! Or maybe he tripped and fell and has just knocked himself out,’ she added, sounding a little less sure of herself now. ‘I hope someone’s called a doctor,’ she finally snapped, somewhat belatedly aware that she was hardly coming across as a concerned parent. One ballet-shoed foot tapped impatiently on the ground as she crossed her arms defensively around her chest, as if sensing the censure wafting her way from the silent, but restive crowd.
Max murmured something else.
‘Police?’ Erica’s voice again rose to a scandalized squeak, and her arms uncrossed and went straight down by her sides. ‘What on earth do we want the police for?’ By now, you could have heard the proverbial pin drop, and Caroline Majors shot her friend Ettie a speaking look. Jenny put aside her plate, abruptly losing her appetite.
The travelling cook was not liking the sound of this. Not one little bit.
Both Caroline and Ettie began to approach the pair cautiously, shuffling tiny steps at a time, as if sensing that the Lord of the Manor’s wife might, like her stricken husband outside, soon be in need of succour and support. But since Erica was not popular, and neither woman was quite certain how she’d respond to their offers of kindness, neither one could quite pluck up the courage to make the first overture. The result of which meant that they simply hovered close by, looking helpless. Or, if you were of an unkind disposition, quite useless.
Jenny, after a moment’s thought, quietly left her chair and went through to the kitchen, where she hesitated for a moment, before walking cautiously over to the French windows. Once there, she replayed the past hour or so in her mind, going over what she could remember of the sequence of events so far, and then gave a mental nod. Taking a deep breath, she then reached out for the handles on the iron-framed doors, and pressed firmly down.
They were still, as she’d been hoping and praying they were, firmly locked, and she felt the tension, which she hadn’t until then been aware of, seep quickly out of her shoulders. But without a doubt, the fact that the French doors were still firmly locked would be very good for her, once the police came making their inquiries. It meant that she wouldn’t have been able to sneak out the back at any time or for any reason.
She couldn’t help but feel slightly heartless, to be thinking about her own safety first and foremost, but she knew, from some considerable experience, just how the police thought. And being a viable suspect in what might well turn out to be a murder inquiry would be no picnic. And one she would far rather avoid, thank you very much.
And so, being only human, she breathed a sigh of relief, and then stared at the French doors thoughtfully. Of course, she had been pretty sure that the doors must still be locked, and only James Cluley had the key to them anyway. Or so he’d said.
And since she’d been in and out of this room all the time, it was highly unlikely that anybody could have sneaked past her to get out and around to the back of the pavilion this way. Even if they had managed to obtain a spare set of the keys somehow.
So that settled that.
Now there was something else that had to be done. Something that she was not looking forward to one little bit. Jenny nodded, closed her eyes briefly, took a deep, reluctant breath, girded her impressive loins, and then stepped as close to the windows as she could get. Once there, she looked to the right, where she could see nothing but the chain-link fence and inside of it, a narrow stretch of recently mown grass.
She took another deep breath and looked as far to the left as her neck would stretch.
And instantly saw him.
Dressed in his cricket whites, Tristan Jones was lying face down, his limbs sprawled around him in a slightly clumsy and graceless fashion. And before she could stop it, the thought came unbidden to her mind that, in life, he’d never have allowed himself to look so inelegant.
Beside him on the ground lay what looked like an old cricket bat.
A little further past him, where the building ended, Jenny noticed movement, and saw that James Cluley was standing in the gap, apparently blocking anyone from going back there.
Jenny nodded in silent approval at this forethought. The police would be pleased with that. It would preserve any forensic evidence, and limit any contamination of the crime scene. She only hoped that the groundsman had had the common sense to position someone at the other end too.
The last thing anyone needed was for ghoulish sight-seers to come along, leaving trace evidence behind.
She drew back, and set about making herself a cup of tea, with hands that were not quite entirely steady. She added a spoonful or two more sugars than she would normally have done. She was feeling chilled and a little shaky, and hoped that the age-old remedy of hot sweet tea would stave off the effects of shock.
For although she hadn’t really known the man well, and the little she’d seen of him had left her with the distinct impression that he was rather too fond of himself, conceit hardly seemed to merit a death sentence. And if selfishness and a lack of sexual discernment was to be judged a good enough reason to murder someone, then the death rate would surely quickly sky-rocket.
Besides, Jenny Starling didn’t approve of murder, full stop. And it mattered not a whit whether the victim was a near saint who was beloved by all, or someone who would scarcely be mourned, and had been without a friend in the world.
And now she knew all too well what was going to happen next. The police would come, and the questions would start. And then they’d all be under suspicion.
Even worse, she wouldn’t be allowed to continue her cooking for the buffet supper!
CHAPTER FIVE
Detective Inspector Laurence Causon sighed as his sergeant pulled up behind a stationary ambulance in the small car park. He looked around carefully, but there was no sign of any medical personnel in sight, and in fact, the whole scene looked quiet and deserted. One patrol car, likewise unmanned, was parked discreetly by a tall hedge a few yards away. The only sound was the sound of birdsong, and the tick, tick, ticking of the car’s engine as it started to cool.
‘Doesn’t look like there’s any sense of urgency about the proceedings, does it, sir?’ Sergeant Graham Lane said thoughtfully. And such was their combined experience, that he didn’t need to add anything. Because they both knew that if the victim had still been alive, there’d be a lot more frenzied activity going on than this.
He sighed somewhat wearily, but also felt an undeniable little frisson of excitement. The call they’d received to Much Rousham had been rather vague as to what exactly it was that they might expect when they arrived. Contrary to the general public’s belief, almost any unexpected death had to be classified or treated as ‘suspicious’ until proved otherwise. This included suicides, accidents, and what might eventually be ruled as death due to natural causes. And although the sergeant wasn’t feeling particularly sanguine that his afternoon was going to prove to be particularly exciting, nevertheless, the chance was there. Although he was not a heartless man, the sergeant was only human, and he’d been involved in only two other murder investigations so far in his career. So he could, perhaps, be forgiven for hoping that things might become interesting.
But in this heat, he mused, more prosaically, it would probably turn out to be a case of some poor old soul dying of heat exhaustion.
He reached out and retrieved
a pair of sunglasses from the dashboard, then withdrew the ignition keys and pocketed them. The sunglasses he slipped into the top pocket of his jacket, knowing that his superior officer wasn’t a fan of them, and wondering, with a slight twist of his lips, if he’d work up the courage to actually put them on.
Graham Lane was a slightly built man of thirty or so, with thinning, sandy-coloured hair and eyebrows, and who had just managed to squeeze into the police force when the height regulations had been lowered. Now he climbed lithely out of the car, and glanced around with appreciation.
Having been born and bred in a large city in the Midlands, he’d quickly come to appreciate the more bucolic delights that the Thames Valley had to offer. And on a day like today, with the sun blazing down, it was good to get out of the office. Even so, he felt the heat of the day hit him like a hammer blow, and wished that he could ditch his jacket. Surreptitiously, he loosened his tie and glanced hopefully across at his boss. Perhaps the old man would loosen up and allow them to strip down to shirtsleeves?
Inspector Causon, in contrast to his lithe and fit junior officer, heaved his considerable bulk out of the car without any outward signs of contentment, and instantly began to sweat. Not a sun-worshipper by nature, he inwardly cursed the heatwave that they were enduring and briefly thought back nostalgically to the days when good old British summers could be relied upon to be both wet and miserable. He sneered at some perfectly inoffensive moon daisies that were going about their business, innocuously blooming on the roadside verge opposite him, and set off heavily towards the open field clearly visible through a wide set of pale grey iron gates.
The call out had stated only that a member of the public at the sports grounds had reported finding a dead body, and like his sergeant, he didn’t have any high expectations that he’d be faced with anything too taxing. And the moment that he stepped onto the field, and saw that all the action was centred around an attractive, wooden pavilion, he sighed wearily. He might have known. A bloody cricket match.
‘What are the odds that some poor sod has had his head bashed in by a cricket ball?’ he said grumpily to his sergeant, who merely shrugged, but didn’t comment.
Graham Lane was wise to keep silent, since he knew that the inspector loathed sport of all kinds. And was perfectly capable of letting his feelings be known, in no uncertain terms, whenever the mood took him.
As they approached the main area of activity, a man dressed in expensive leisurewear, with silvering hair and an imperious manner, strode out aggressively to greet them. He was white-faced and clearly anxious, and his lips were held so stiffly tight, that he could only be holding back some pretty primordial emotions. Grief maybe. Anger certainly. And with a connoisseur’s appreciation of human nature, Inspector Causon watched him closely, wondering what his opening gambit would be.
Beside him he felt his sergeant quiver with the alert attention of a whippet spotting a rabbit.
The inspector, who’d worked with the sergeant for several years now, still couldn’t quite bring himself to approve of the younger man’s obvious enthusiasm. But since Graham Lane was about to become a father for the first time, DI Causon rather cynically (if accurately) suspected that he wouldn’t have to put up with such vim and vigour for too much longer. After a few months of interrupted sleep and changing nappies, even Lane’s seemingly limitless energy must surely fizzle out.
The thought cheered him up immensely.
‘Are you the man in charge?’ The man approaching them addressed the inspector abruptly.
The gaze he swept over the elder police officer seemed distinctly less than impressed. Apart from his bulk, Laurence Causon displayed a very thinning head of mouse-coloured hair, a jaw that looked as if it could perpetually do with another shave, and a pair of flat, curiously colourless eyes. Wrapped in a wrinkled and baggy grey suit that had clearly seen much better days, and a pair of scuffed Oxfords on unashamedly size twelve feet, it was perhaps not altogether surprising, since he hardly seemed to represent the modern police force at all its go-getting best.
‘Yes, sir. I’m Detective Inspector Causon,’ the inspector replied pleasantly enough, if a little heavily. ‘And you are?’ His voice had the gravelly undertones of an ex-smoker, but no discernible accent. And for some reason that he later wouldn’t have been able to adequately explain, Sir Robert Jones felt some of his anger and dismay slowly evaporate. His first impression of the man might not have been promising, and yet, overlaying that, the agitated stockbroker sensed competence here – and an uncompromising competence, at that.
‘I’m Sir Robert Jones,’ he introduced himself distractedly, using his full title without even realizing it. ‘It’s my son who’s … who’s …’ Sir Robert took a deep breath, but still clearly couldn’t bring himself to say the actual words, so he said instead, and somewhat inconsequentially, ‘They won’t even let me see him.’
He looked more bewildered than anything else now, and although his words could have been mistaken for petty whining, the inspector didn’t think that that was the actual case. For all his title and bluster, the man was clearly feeling off balance and brittle.
‘Take a deep breath, sir,’ he advised neutrally, reminding himself grimly, and with an increasingly heavy heart that, whatever the merits of the situation, it was clearly a tragedy for someone.
Then he saw that, of the two uniformed officers who must have got here before him, one of them was now rapidly approaching them.
To the victim’s father, who was quite clearly in the first stages of shock, he said quietly, ‘Perhaps if you’d go and sit down, sir, I’ll be able to speak to you in a moment.’ He spoke not without sympathy, but with a firmness that brooked no further argument.
Sir Robert looked at him and opened his mouth abruptly, clearly intent on blasting him for his impertinence, and stating that he was not a child to be mollycoddled, or fobbed off with platitudes. But once again, on meeting the inspector’s unwavering gaze, he found it impossible to maintain his anger and bluster and slowly subsided. Instead, he gave a vague and defeated kind of grunt, before turning away, his shoulders slumping.
‘Sir,’ the constable said smartly to Causon, and once the civilian was out of earshot, began to fill him in on the basic details of the situation, whilst at the same time, leading them towards the back of the pavilion.
‘The groundsman here, a Mr James Cluley, was standing guard at this end of the building when we arrived, and one of the other players was at the other end,’ the constable concluded his preliminary report, whilst still consulting his notebook. ‘He says that they were in place within a minute or so of the body being found, so hopefully they managed to prevent too much contamination of the crime scene,’ he finished, with some satisfaction.
Causon nodded. Surprisingly, he made no attempt to step into the narrow space, and thus get closer to the body, but squatted down instead where he was, a slightly awkward manoeuvre, given his girth. He looked thoughtfully along the neatly-mown grass towards Tristan Jones, whose body was lying about eight feet or so away.
To one side of him, was the painted green wooden length of the back end of the pavilion, and the policeman noted that the expanse of green-painted planks was broken only by a single set of windows – which were closed. From here it was hard to be sure, but they looked dusty and neglected. He doubted that, unlike the windows that faced the front, they were often opened or used. On the other side of the sprawled body, was a chain link fence, about nine or ten feet tall, he estimated. On the far side of this, hawthorn hedges had also grown haphazardly against the wire, creating a double barrier. Clearly nobody would have been able to climb over these two barriers from the field on the other side – not without a ladder, and even then, they would have been likely to be scratched and lacerated by the thick, thorny hedge. So whoever had met the deceased in this enclosed and private little space, the inspector reasoned, must have come around here from the sports field side. And hopefully, with all the spectators about, they would have
been spotted.
Which all seemed clear enough, and boded well.
‘And the medics are sure that he’s dead, and not just unconscious?’ he asked the constable, more for something to say whilst he gathered his thoughts than anything else.
‘Oh yes, sir. That is, the ambulance attendants who were called out declared him dead,’ the PC clarified carefully. He knew Inspector Causon by sight, and like the rest of the station house, knew that he had something of a reputation for being a stickler for accuracy and for not allowing slipshod methods to pass muster in anybody that he worked with. So he was careful to be precise in what he said. ‘No police surgeon or doctor has arrived on the scene yet to give an official notification of death. But we can take it that he is dead, sir. I mean, the ambulance people should know, shouldn’t they?’ he added, a little uncertainly now.
Causon hid a smile and nodded solemnly. ‘One would hope so, Constable,’ he agreed dryly. ‘That a cricket bat beside the body?’
‘Yes, sir. I made sure that none of the medics touched it, but I did have a quick look at it when I first arrived, sir, and it looked to me like it was an old bat. I mean, not one that they would have likely to have been using to play with in their match today, sir,’ he clarified. Like Lane, he also knew that Causon was known to abhor all sport, although he himself had played both football and tennis at school, and even a little cricket, so he was careful to explain his reasoning. ‘The wood of the bat hadn’t been oiled recently with any linseed, so it was too dry, and it had a very faded strapping around the handle, not to mention a bit of a crack in the bat itself. But I suppose the crack might have only just occurred, when it was used in the attack, sir. It would be hard to say without examining it more closely, but that will have to wait for the forensic people.’ He paused and then admitted, ‘I haven’t had a chance yet to account for all the individual cricketers, to see if anyone is missing a bat. But the one lying beside the deceased had just a very little dark red tissue and what looked like a few dark hairs on the business end of it, sir,’ he concluded briskly. ‘I think the blow or blows may have broken the skin of the scalp, sir, but that was all, I’d say.’
