The Valentine Murder

by Evelyn James

  “You didn’t inspect his work?” Tommy said.

  Spinner looked surprised by the question.

  “I trusted him. He was an honest man.”

  “Of course,” Tommy quickly retracted the comment.

  “Did you know that Mr Beech was working the day he died?” Clara asked.

  “No,” Alastair said firmly, and maybe a little too swiftly. “Bill would have come and seen me at the end of the day. As far as I knew, he could have been at home in his bed. He had had a bad winter. A touch of pneumonia and his back was causing him trouble. I knew it would take him a long time to finish the hedging, but it wasn’t an urgent job, so I wasn’t worried.”

  They came to a stile in the hedge and Clara briefly paused to judge how near they were to Three Pigs Farm and the copse. She could see the trees in the distance, running diagonally to them. She noticed Tommy was looking too and a frown was crossing his face.

  “How long has Mr Beech being working for you?” Clara asked to distract her brother from thoughts of how close Annie was to the murder site.

  “I moved to the farm about five years ago,” Alastair said. “Bill came to me a month after, offered to do little jobs. Said he did the same for all the farms hereabouts. Naturally, I gave him the work. You have to look out for the older folks.”

  Clara thought about this statement but did not comment.

  “So, the evening before last, the first you knew that Bill had been working on your land was when his daughter Hanna called on you?”

  “Exactly,” Alastair said firmly. “Hanna knocked on my door. She was with Matthew Yates, who is neighbour to her and Bill. She said her father had failed to come home and she was worried he might have been taken ill while working. He could be lying in a field anywhere. At first, I was not sure why she had come to me, until she explained that her father had told her he was going to be getting on with the hedging that morning. There was nothing else for it but to come down to the field and look for him. I knew the area he was working in and could show them.”

  They had crossed into another field, this one low-lying and sodden with rain. Mr Spinner pointed his finger towards a distant hedge.

  “I led them right to that spot. I thought I saw someone on the ground as we neared and I said to Matthew, ‘keep Hanna back’. I had this feeling, you see, that something was not right. The police seem to think that is suspicious, but it was just instinct,” Alastair sniffed. “Besides, even if it were just a heart attack or something, it was best I take a look before Hanna saw him. I thought he might have collapsed and died, you see.”

  He brought them to a halt before the hedge. There was not much to see, other than a deep, dark brown patch on the grass, lots of torn earth and muddy footprints, and some broken branches in the hedge itself.

  “Bill was lying on his back. I shone my torch on him and the first thing I saw was that terrible look on his face,” Mr Spinner shivered with revulsion at the memory. “Next I see that pitchfork piercing him and I realised his throat had been slashed. Right then I did not know what to think or say, but I knew Hanna could not see him like that. I told Matthew he had to fetch a police constable and then I took charge of Hanna. I said to her it looked like her father had suffered an accident. That was the best I could think to say.”

  “How long did it take for Mr Yates to fetch a constable?” Clara asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Spinner shrugged. “It seemed forever. I remember I had this shiver creeping up and down my spine and I could not shake it. When the constable finally came, he took a look at the body. First off he thought it might have been a suicide, what with it appearing to have been old Bill’s own hedging tool that slashed his throat, but then he noticed the pitchfork and it was plain the old boy could not have stuck himself with that. He sent Matthew off for the village doctor.

  “I took Hanna up to the farmhouse. She knew things were bad, she seemed stunned by it all. I left her with my wife. Said Bill had suffered a misfortune and the police were taking a look. Well, it was obvious to them it was not just some simple a hedging mishap since the police had to come, but they were keeping up my charade. My wife took in Hanna without a word and I came back here.”

  Alastair stared grimly at the stained earth.

  “The doctor came. Declared Bill dead, as if that was necessary,” Alastair huffed. “Nearest police inspector is at Brighton, so someone had to go find a telephone and get in touch with them. I was so dazed and exhausted by it all, I clean forgot to tell the constable there was a telephone at my house, so he sent Matthew off once again to the Post Office in the village.

  “It seemed to take ages. When Matthew returned, he said the Brighton station had taken the call and were going to summon the inspector. We had been out there near enough all night. I was frozen to the core and I don’t mind saying the shock was having an effect. I asked the constable if I could go home and he said that was all right.”

  Clara edged carefully around the crime scene, taking a good look at the shape of the stain, of the many footprints and how near the field was to a lane that ran perpendicular to it. There was a fair chance of no one seeing any crime being committed in the field. Clara noticed how one section of hedge had been cut and the partially lopped branches woven into the rest to strengthen the barrier. The work noticeably stopped just at the point where the body was found.

  “Mr Beech was disturbed while working,” she said.

  “Yes, the police noticed that,” Alastair nodded. “They asked me how far he had gotten along with the work since he was last here. I said he had not done much, could not have been working more than an hour or so when he was stopped.”

  Mr Spinner touched one of the broken branches, toying with the exposed raw wood.

  “And you had no knowledge of him being here?” Tommy asked for clarification.

  “No!” Mr Spinner bellowed at him. “Didn’t I say that already?”

  “It just seems peculiar,” Tommy replied in a placid voice, “that the police suspect you when you had no idea that Mr Beech was even here.”

  “That’s what I am saying!” Mr Spinner snapped the end of the branch from the hedge in his frustration. “The police don’t have a clue! They are just looking to make an easy arrest!”

  What Clara was seeing of Alastair Spinner was that he was a man full of bluster, with a short fuse to his temper. That did not make him a killer, of course.

  “Well, are you going to prove me innocent?” Alastair asked this directly of Clara. It seemed Tommy’s repetition of an earlier question had lowered him in the man’s opinion and now he only wanted to talk to Clara. “I know you will charge the earth for it, of course. I am willing to pay.”

  Clara ignored the slight, she was used to working for people who were not at their best and had lost all sense of their manners in the grip of their anxiety. Whether Mr Spinner was any different when he was in a better mood, she could not say.

  “We shall take your case,” she promised him. “All we need do, Mr Spinner, is create a picture of your movements the day Mr Beech perished and demonstrate you were nowhere near this area when he died.”

  Mr Spinner visibly relaxed.

  “That sounds easy enough,” he conceded. “Probably could have done that myself.”

  Clara waited to see if he was going to turn around and tell them were not needed, that their lengthy journey out here had been a waste of time. He seemed to consider it, then perhaps realised he would need their help if he was to save his neck.

  “All right, what do we do first?” He said.

  “We shall make a list of all the things you did that day and where you were, with the times as best you can remember them,” Clara explained. “Best done somewhere quiet and warm, wouldn’t you say?”

  It was a hint that she was cold and standing out by the spot where a man had been brutally slain was not terribly pleasurable. Spinner took the hint.

  “We’ll go to my study,” he nodded leading the way back up the hill. “It won’
t take me long to prove my innocence to that stuck-up inspector. I’ll rub his nose in it!”

  Clara decided that if that was Spinner’s intention, she would prefer to be as far away as possible when he did it.

  Chapter Eight

  The study was a compact room at the front of the house, fitted out with a table for a desk, several bookcases and a tall wooden filing cabinet. The scattered nature of papers across Spinner’s table did not suggest a man of great organisational skill. It took him several minutes to whip up a spare pair of chairs to accommodate Clara and Tommy. It took him even longer to locate a sheet of fresh paper they could use for writing up a list of times and places he had been the day of the murder.

  “This is quite an operation,” Tommy said, observing the stacks of binders and books on the shelves. “This is a big farm?”

  “We have close to 1,000 acres, but not all here. We have other farms scattered across the county. A mixture of cattle and arable,” Mr Spinner said without looking up.

  “That is an impressive achievement,” Tommy added. “For a man of your age.”

  Mr Spinner gave a grunt, then reluctantly added.

  “My father started this all. The war helped, naturally. He gave over the running of the place to me when he decided to take a greater interest in the hotel he owns,” he produced a sheet of paper with a look of triumph.

  He did not notice the glance Tommy gave his sister and which she returned with a half-smile. They had both wondered how a man like Spinner could have successfully built up an impressive system of farms when he did not strike them as either exceptionally bright or good with people. It made sense that this was his father’s work and he had given the farms to his son once they were nearly self-sustaining.

  “Right, where do we begin?” Spinner had settled in his own chair on the opposite side of the table.

  “Since we cannot be certain when Mr Beech was killed, I suggest we start with when you awoke and finish with the discovery of his body, that way we can exclude the possibility of missing anything that could prove important later,” Clara said.

  Mr Spinner nodded and then had to spend several more minutes locating a fountain pen.

  “Well,” he said, pen poised over the paper. “I woke at five, as I always do and me and Kate came downstairs for a cup of tea.”

  Clara told him to write down ‘5am’ then to list what he did and who was a witness to his activities.

  “Half five I went to Top Field to look on the bullocks, that is the opposite direction to where Bill was working.”

  “Did anyone see you?” Clara asked.

  “No, no one was about.”

  “How long were you there?”

  Mr Spinner tapped his pen against his fingers and caused a fine splatter of ink dots to mar the paper.

  “I don’t exactly keep track of time. I was there a while. The sun was coming up before I headed back to the house. One of the bullocks had stumbled into a ditch and had died. I was working out how to get him out,” Spinner shrugged his shoulders. “Probably was a couple of hours by the time I had fed the herd and messed around seeing if I could extract the bullock myself.”

  “That would make sense, by half seven the sun is rising,” Clara agreed. “Then you came back to the house?”

  “Yes, and I telephoned to Mr Plainer who has a farm nearby. He has a tractor and I asked him if he could bring it over to pull out the bullock.”

  “Note that on your list,” Clara prompted. “I shall speak to Mr Plainer to confirm the time.”

  Spinner diligently wrote it down.

  “Thing is, Bill won’t have got to the farm by then. He was never out the house before eight,” Spinner’s earlier cooperation was returning to surly stubbornness.

  “We have to plan for the possibility he was killed earlier,” Clara explained to him. “The more thorough we are, the better for you.”

  Spinner muttered under his breath, something along the lines that he thought this was what detectives did and it seemed to him he was doing all their work for him. Clara would to have liked to ask him if he thought she was a mind reader and capable of knowing all his movements the day before without asking. However, she maintained her calm.

  “After the telephone call,” she nudged.

  Spinner paused and thought for a while.

  “I went into the village to talk to Mr Steadman who deals with the selling of my crops. He hadn’t got a very good price for them this last sale and I wanted to know why.”

  Clara mentally amended that statement to Spinner wanting to go give him a piece of his mind and bellyache about the poor price.

  “Timings?” Clara asked.

  “Well, I arrived in the village around nine, I saw the church clock, and I found Mr Steadman shortly after. Not sure how long we talked, but eventually we went to The King’s Arms for a pint.”

  “The pubs don’t open around here until eleven,” Tommy pointed out. “It can’t have been before then.”

  “As you say,” Spinner mumbled.

  “That potentially gives you a sound alibi for the time Mr Beech was killed,” Clara said.

  “What’s an Ali Baba?” Spinner snorted.

  “It means, you can prove you were somewhere else when the crime occurred, with this Mr Steadman,” Clara explained.

  Spinner’s sour face lightened, and he even managed a very slight smile. Then he remembered something she had said.

  “Why only potentially?” He demanded.

  “Because the police will have their experts determine when Mr Beech died, and until we know when that is, we cannot be certain where you were at the time. It might be they discover Mr Beech was killed before nine or much later.”

  “Then what is the point of this?” Spinner said crossly, slapping the back of his fingers against the paper.

  “Because we are building a picture, as I told you before,” Clara said patiently. “Now, when did you leave Mr Steadman?”

  Spinner was muttering under his breath again, annoyed by the work he was having to do which seemed, to his mind, needless. He did not much like writing at the best of times.

  “Must have been about one when I headed back towards my house,” he said.

  “Alone?” Clara asked.

  “I didn’t need Steadman to walk me home,” Spinner snorted.

  Tommy interjected.

  “You don’t have a map, do you?” He said.

  Alastair glared at him.

  “Why?”

  “By my reckoning, the route you would have taken to the village and back, assuming you went cross country, would have taken you close to the spot Mr Beech died.”

  Spinner’s face reddened at once, even the tips of his ears went scarlet.

  “What are you saying? That I could have done it?”

  “I am looking at things from the perspective of the police,” Tommy persisted. “They will ask these questions and we need to know the answers to be prepared for that.”

  Spinner did not look satisfied.

  “We can only help you by looking at things objectively,” Clara added. “If you walked past the crime scene, then we must know.”

  Alastair huffed and puffed to himself, then he came to a decision.

  “I would have walked across the field next to where Bill was working,” he said. “But at quite a distance.”

  “Both going to the village and coming back?” Tommy insisted.

  Spinner growled.

  “Yes!”

  “You appreciate the complication of this detail?” Clara asked him, hoping to appease him a little if they could get him to see the answer before they had to state it.

  Alastair Spinner played with the paper on his table, flicking the corner with his fingernail.

  “I suppose, what you are saying, is that I should have seen Bill at some point. But I didn’t. I never even looked that way. Why would I?”

  Clara did not add that he had walked past the murder scene twice, placing himself in a position to have been able
to slay William Beech. Of course, considering the goriness of the crime, it was unlikely he had killed the man and then walked into the village. Unless he had somehow managed to limit the blood splattered on his clothes. And, truth be told, who would comment on a farmer who dealt with livestock having blood on himself? Farmers and labourers were always performing grisly chores that could result in stains to their clothes. They did not change after each one, what was the point when new clothes would also become dirty? Who was to say if the splatter of blood on a man’s trousers was that of a bullock or a man?

  “You returned home?” Clara continued.

  “Yes. Kate saw me arrive about half one. I read the paper for a moment, then Mr Plainer telephoned and said he could bring over the tractor if I liked.”

  Clara once again had to remind him to note this on his paper.

  “Then Mr Plainer came?”

  “Probably it was about quarter to three by the time he got here, what with him having to take the lanes and the tractor not being so fast. We hitched up the bullock as the sun was fading and dragged it out of the ditch and Mr Plainer loaded it on a wagon trailer and took it away for me.”

  “What time did you finish?” Clara asked.

  Spinner ran through his mental calculations once again.

  “Suppose it was getting towards five by then, maybe a little after. It was full dark. I went home for my dinner. Kate can tell you that,” he made a rather testy note on the paper concerning his wife being his witness.

  Clara saw no need to push his patience further. William Beech had likely been long dead by five, it was long past the time he normally worked until and the limited amount of hedge he had trimmed indicated it had been early in his working day when he had been attacked.

  “That brings us to the arrival of Hanna Beech,” Clara said.

  “It does,” Spinner snapped, thrusting the finished paper at her.

  “I shall go to all these people and speak to them, have them confirm your whereabouts and the times,” Clara explained to him. “If you can give us addresses for them it would be most helpful.”