‘That question you asked her, Guv – on the phone in my motor – that seemed to make your mind up about something.’
Skelgill considers his response.
‘Let’s say that was about her and Dr Peter Pettigrew – and leave it at that.’ However, he immediately contradicts himself by revealing more. ‘You can imagine them crossing paths when she was in charge of hospitals in Manchester – he was consulting in the district. So by the time she applies for the post at Haresfell they’re well acquainted. Too well. He’s on the appointments board – she gets her job. Next thing, he’s promoted – quid pro quo. And probably everything’s hunky-dory until Dr Agnetha Walker comes onto the scene at Meredith Bale’s assessment panel. She sees off the competition, but the competition doesn’t know who it is that’s seen her off.’ Now Skelgill sighs. He is speaking in such a way that requires his deputies to read between the lines. ‘What I learned, Leyton – it explained a few things – about Briony Boss, aye – but more importantly about Dr Peter Pettigrew.’
DS Leyton nods, his countenance rather grim. He must suspect that his superior is protecting Haresfell’s Director – and that it may not matter. That she seemed prepared to allow the death of Frank Wamphray to be put down to natural causes – albeit in ignorance of the truth, on the advice of Dr Peter Pettigrew – might be regarded as unprofessional. But the unfortunate patient was something of a loose cannon and not shy of iterating problems she would rather were swept under the carpet. As a former nurse with medical knowledge she could even have been considered in the frame for the murder. And yet it was she who called in the detectives to investigate a series of petty thefts that ordinarily would not have merited such attention – and risked the lid being lifted on a troubled regime that could only have shown her in a poor light: out of her depth and at the mercy of her own excesses, and consequently vulnerable to manipulation and mutiny from below decks. Perhaps it was a cry for help? By good fortune, in Skelgill she struck upon someone who is not such a distant relation in the soulmate stakes.
DS Jones has fallen silent during this long exchange. As a spectator for much of the investigation, obliged to follow its progress at a distance, and piecemeal, she has been unable to grasp fully the implications of the findings she has contributed. However – though she may have tended towards the wrong conclusion (that the conspiring doctors were targeted by Bale and Krille acting as a latter-day Bonnie and Clyde) – it is clear that her input has been vital in leading Skelgill to recognise the clandestine relationship that has been the beating heart of the case. Whether Skelgill will give her the credit for such is a moot point – and not one she shall lose sleep over – and indeed already her alert mind is turning in a new direction. Now, a little apprehensively, she takes the floor.
‘What do you think, Guv – about the idea that –’
‘Aye?’
Skelgill senses she is about to say something of significance. DS Leyton, too, detects the signs and watches her with interest. She clears her throat and continues.
‘About Meredith Bale’s claim that she didn’t kill all those patients.’
Skelgill’s immediate reaction seems to be one of resistance – that this is a step too far, the lifting of the lid of a Pandora’s box from which they may quite justifiably retreat, having already succeeded beyond the call of duty. But his features reveal a little battle is taking place in his mind. It is his internal gatekeeper, his inherent sense of justice as a man of the fells, that for all his maverick ways guides him in times of need. It wins the argument. Slowly he nods.
‘She reckons she’s got a hidden dossier that will clear her name.’
DS Jones’s eyes light up.
‘When you think about it, Guv – it would be an overwhelming motive to eliminate her.’
Now DS Leyton interjects; there is a note of excitement in his voice.
‘So, what are you saying – that Dr Agnetha Walker committed the hospital murders – and Meredith Bale knows about it?’
His colleagues each turn their solemn gaze upon him. After a moment’s uneasy silence, Skelgill steps towards his sergeant and delivers a friendly left jab to his shoulder.
‘One for the Greater Manchester boys, eh? They’ll regret the day they got us country bumpkins to do their legwork at Haresfell.’ He grins broadly. (Of course, he employs a somewhat coarser expression than “country bumpkins”, one that might unfairly pertain to Herdwicks and their owners.) ‘Come on Leyton, get that boot open – you’ve got my jacket in there.’
The tension released, DS Leyton grins and shrugs, and then he checks his watch. He might even get home in time for some leftover dinner and a bath-time soaking. He ambles to his car to do as he is bid. Skelgill, however, lifts the tailgate of his own vehicle, and begins to rummage noisily amongst the extensive jumble of fishing tackle and outdoor gear that covers the flatbed. DS Leyton calls out to him.
‘Staying for a spot of fishing, Guv?’
Skelgill is shaking his head – although he has produced a small rod with a spinning reel attached, rigged with a silver Toby and ready for instant action. He walks over to DS Leyton’s car. He holds up the rod – it is perhaps only five feet in length.
‘I’m just going to pop down the river – there’s a family staying at a cottage – this is for the little lad – to return a favour.’
DS Jones has drifted to join them, and now she looks inquiringly at Skelgill. There is something plainly self-conscious in his manner. DS Leyton glances from one to the other.
‘Emma – I can give you a ride back up to Penrith – to get your motor from HQ.’
She smiles graciously at her colleague, and glances again at Skelgill, and then away across the water. But Skelgill suddenly leans into the trunk of DS Leyton’s car and snatches up the holdall that she has brought back from Manchester. He thrusts the rod into her hands.
‘Come on, Jones – keep me out of mischief, will you?’
***
Next in the series...
THE MISTS OF TIME
One week after the death of his 93-year-old twin brother, the reclusive Declan Thomas O’More is found murdered in his study at the ancestral family estate, rambling and isolated Crummock Hall.
Suspicion immediately falls upon his five great nieces and nephews, who between them stand to inherit the considerable proceeds of their grandfather’s will – along with a valuable library of antiquarian books, a collection that is Declan’s lifetime work.
And yet each member of this generation – which includes a famous actor and a successful author – is apparently wealthy in their own right. Why would any of them murder their great uncle?
DI Skelgill and his team must unravel a mystery that not only harks back to the tragic drowning of the children’s parents in Crummock Water in the 1980s, but may also have its roots in the despicable Triangular Trade that enriched so many British and Irish merchant families in the eighteenth century.
‘Murder at the Wake’ by Bruce Beckham is available from Amazon
Bruce Beckham
__________
Murder at the Wake
Detective Inspector Skelgill
Investigates
Book 7
LUCiUS
Text copyright 2016 Bruce Beckham
All rights reserved. Bruce Beckham asserts his right always to be identified as the author of this work. No part may be copied or transmitted without written permission from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events and locales is entirely coincidental.
Kindle edition first published by Lucius 2016
Paperback edition first published by Lucius 2016
For more details and Rights enquiries contact:
[email protected]
Cover design by Moira Kay Nicol
EDITOR’S NOTE
Murder at th
e Wake is a stand-alone crime mystery, the seventh in the series ‘Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates’. It is set largely in the English Lake District, a National Park of 885 square miles that lies in the rugged northern county of Cumbria, and in particular in the north western area of the Vale of Lorton, home to the deceptively tranquil twin ribbon lakes of Buttermere and Crummock Water, and source of the winding River Cocker.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Murder in Adland
Murder in School
Murder on the Edge
Murder on the Lake
Murder by Magic
Murder in the Mind
Murder at the Wake
Murder in the Woods
Murder at the Flood
Murder at Dead Crags
Murder Mystery Weekend
Murder on the Run
Murder at Shake Holes
Murder at the Meet
Murder on the Moor
Murder Unseen
(Above: Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates)
Murder, Mystery Collection
The Dune
The Sexopaths
1. GRASMOOR
Sunday 2.50pm
‘Guv – we’ve got a problem.’
‘Leyton – hold your horses – I can’t hear you.’
Skelgill jams his mobile phone inside his fur-lined trapper hat and presses the flap against his ear.
‘Come again, Leyton?’
Skelgill is shouting over substantial background noise – wind and engine combined – and the sergeant now raises his voice accordingly.
‘Cor blimey, Guv – that’s some racket!’
‘I’m in the chopper – distress call from a hillwalker.’
DS Leyton hesitates – if his superior is in the midst of a live mountain rescue the last thing he needs is the news that he bears.
‘Spit it out, Leyton.’
‘What it is, Guv – you’ve heard of Crummock Hall?’
‘Aye – just flown over it.’
‘We’ve had a report of a suspicious death.’
Now Skelgill pauses.
‘How suspicious?’
‘Blow to the back of the head, Guv – sounds like it could be deliberate.’
‘Sounds like, Leyton?’
‘Guv – we can’t get anyone within three miles – the lanes are completely blocked by the snow. There’s eight-foot drifts in places.’
There is a silence – at least as far as conversation goes. Skelgill, eyes narrowed, teeth bared against the gale, grimaces at the landscape that drifts a thousand feet below, the lower slopes of Grasmoor, a pure white blanket besmirched only by the odd yellowing stain where sheep have gathered to feed at a hay bale, and creased by the occasional snow-capped dry stone wall. His mute deliberation prompts his sergeant to speak.
‘What do you reckon, Guv?’
‘Leave it with me, Leyton.’
*
Crummock Hall. Only two days before, and somewhat under duress, Skelgill had attended the funeral of its erstwhile proprietor, Sir Sean Willoughby O’More KBE. As a longstanding Lakeland landowner – a manor comprising some four thousand acres east of Crummock Water – his was a name that Skelgill had revered since boyhood. The gnarled gamekeeper in his employ was notoriously trigger-happy; a trait that extended beyond his loose definition of vermin to include pesky local urchins caught scavenging within his ambit. Thus it was with mixed feelings that Skelgill had obeyed his superior’s whip to represent the Cumbria constabulary. However, if pushed, he would confess to being less troubled by the prospect of confronting repressed traumas of peppering by buckshot, and rather more irked by the inconvenience of having to relieve one of his two presentable neckties of its duty suspending fishing rods in his garage.
The ceremony had taken place on what was a bitterly cold December Friday morning, at the little stone chapel of St James above Buttermere, a site of worship that dates back to 1507. The location was an additional, if incidental reason that Skelgill might have received the assignment, for this was his old stamping ground. Close by, his mother, a cantankerous septuagenarian still resides in the modest family cottage, whence she cycles daily over the Honister Pass to char in Borrowdale. Before the service Skelgill had kicked his heels in the cramped churchyard, debating the weather with a coterie of tenant farmers and outdoorsmen, glowering shepherds scanning the ominous skies. He was well known to them in his various capacities – police officer, mountain rescue team member, fell-runner (of note in his youth), fisherman and, not least, one of their own. Advantaged by a detailed forecast fed through his emergency services connections, Skelgill had pontificated – and they had listened grim faced.
Not that Skelgill’s gloomy prognosis was one difficult to reach. Northern Britain had been in the grip of a prolonged cold spell, a Soviet anticyclone that had extended its chill fingers across Western Europe. The ground was solid and the lakes had begun to ice over at their fringes. Such uncomfortable conditions, however, were manageable in their constancy. Lanes, once gritted, were untroubled by run-off that becomes treacherous black ice; hill flocks were easily reached by a surefooted combination of quad and dog. Country folk could get about their business. But storm Arabella was coming. Shaking her broad hips to the calypso beat, barrelling across the Atlantic, she was all set to breach the cold iron curtain that for a fortnight had cloaked Cumbria. And when moist Caribbean air meets a frozen mountainous seaboard there is only one outcome: snow. Big snow. Inadequately clad in their unfamiliar funeral wear, it was the first such flurries that finally obliged Skelgill and his cronies to seek sanctuary.
As a consequence, even within the thick walls the weather remained the pre-eminent subject of conversation, albeit in more reverent tones and with the vernacular substantially edited. In due course something of a resigned hush had descended, rather as if the flakes that fell past the long windows had a palliative effect upon the uneasy congregation. And the serenity of the surroundings surely contributed; indeed, as William Wordsworth wrote, “A man must be very unsensible who would not be touched at the sight of the chapel of Buttermere.”
Skelgill, for his part, had stared pensively through an adjacent window, where a stone tablet in the sill commemorates Alfred Wainwright, and the outlook is of Haystacks, site of dispersal of the legendary Lakeland biographer’s ashes. This unlikely literary conjunction – Wordsworth and Wainwright – happens to reveal something of Skelgill’s true colours as regards matters spiritual. For the latter authority has many times led him to spectacular places, whereupon occasionally he has uttered in awe words penned by the former. That said, during the service he was observed to sing along respectfully if tunelessly with The Lord is My Shepherd and bow his head and state Amen at the required junctures.
The family party were late to enter the church. They had earlier swept by in a small fleet of glossy black limousines, preferring to bide their time in a private room at the local inn, where stiffeners were surely imbibed. Upon their entrance to take the front pew, there was an expectant ripple as the congregation strove surreptitiously to get a better view. And no wonder – for here was a cortege that might have graced Ascot’s Royal Enclosure. Fine bespoke outfits, regal bearing, they filed in as if accustomed to the red carpet. Skelgill had experienced a small frisson: a sudden recalibration of his own place in society; for these were people he once knew. These were the Regulus-O’Mores.
Educated without regard to cost at boarding schools in the south of England, ascending thence to Oxbridge or whatever Parisian finishing schools were deemed most apt, they had spent their childhood vacations at Crummock Hall. Of an age with Skelgill, for a few years their gilt-edged path had crossed with that of the gauche and gawky country boy who illicitly shared their ancestral domain. Come their teens, however, and visits to Cumbria gradually dwindled. But likewise had Skelgill’s own interest in trespassing diminished – or at least it became transferred to the fairer sex among his contemporaries. It was over twenty years since he had
set eyes upon any of this well-heeled family.
But he was also reminded of something else: for these thirty-something adults were the five grandchildren of Sir Sean Willoughby O’More. Catastrophe had caused the dynasty to skip a generation. Their parents were dead, drowned in Crummock Water, a boating accident when the eldest child was no more than ten.
Their mother, Shauna O’More, had become a stage actress of some renown, her husband, Edward Regulus, a merchant banker in a long-established family firm. Such untimely deaths had sent shockwaves through both the City of London and its neighbouring West End. The tragic couple’s metropolitan funeral had been an altogether grander affair, the venue being St Paul’s Cathedral, no less.
In St James’s, Buttermere, however, the little procession had included someone of a former generation. Supported on the left by the arm of an elderly retainer and on the right by a walking stick rather too short to be effective, the congregation was afforded a sight as unusual as it was a contrast to the magnificent young family: the venerable personage of Declan Thomas O’More. Here was a rare public appearance of the reclusive twin of the late Sir Sean. According to local hearsay, this younger brother had spent his entire ninety-three years within the confines of the estate of Crummock Hall, give or take the odd such visit to church, or hospital. A tall, though now crooked figure, he wore an ill-fitting double-breasted suit – in pre-war style, with broad angular lapels – and shuffled unsteadily to take a seat, his lined countenance pallid, his watery eyes lacking expression.
There had been one other notable member of the funeral party, a small, dapper man in his mid-fifties whom Skelgill did not recognise. It was he alone of the group that appeared more outwardly focused, exchanging words with the Vicar, and acknowledging in a general way with a series of polite nods the inquiring gaze of those persons seated most close by. The remainder of the incoming contingent, half a dozen surly domestic and estate workers, mostly elderly and again unknown to Skelgill, had followed him. The household ‘lived in’, and did not much mingle with the local community.
Detective Inspector Skelgill Boxset 2 Page 52
