Goosey Goosey Gander

by Frank Edwards

  “Digger, my boy, the floor is yours. See a pattern, do you? Don’t rush it. I’ve cleared my decks for the morning, and that means yours as well.” He smiled an encouraging smile. Maitland’s face took on a touch of awe. Such a bold claim! He hoped Digger wasn’t going to over-stretch himself. Make a bit of a fool of himself, possibly. Hole indeed had the audience’s attention. He brought out the papers on which he had written his ideas that early morning.

  “I’ve tried to sort out my thinking in these notes. I hope you don’t mind my referring to them. What we are dealing with here is obsession. An obsession that, like so many of its kind, can easily turn to hatred and fear. Irrational hatred; not necessarily mistaken fear. Just as in religion and nationalism, an obsession of any kind can lead to self-justifying action of an extreme nature. You might recall, sir, that case a few years back of the train spotter who tried to push a rival collector under an engine so that he wouldn’t get the number in his book. Incredible, so it seemed. Beyond human sense. Of course, such behaviour is usually classed as psychologically unstable, and the outcome of any court case is medical treatment, but it doesn’t stop it happening. An obsession can drive extremism, and however bloody the outcome, make it right and unavoidable in the eyes of the perpetrator. It’s just such a case that we have here.”

  Davis and Maitland were intrigued. Davis went to ask a question, but checked himself. He thought it better to give his junior officer his head. Hole went on.

  “I said from the start that the motive was to do with either land or money. Or a combination of both. I am sure of it now. Look at our cast of possible suspects. Allow me summarise. Very briefly. I won’t weary you with a full review of the ground we have been over together a number of times now.”

  “That’s a fair one, Digger. You will have to present the detail to the CPS, however, if we come to press charges.”

  “Of course, sir. But for now, let’s start with DeLacey Thornley. Obsessed with guns, or near enough. Likes to talk about them. Loves to display them. Has for many years taken great pleasure in using them. Would much like to see the land that became Alan Tewkes’, by the seemingly unexpected content of his father’s Will, available once more for the sport. Sport Thornley feels cheated of. Lying, as it does, contiguous with his own land and that he rents to Farmer, the Wickton acres make a fine shooting estate. One that would re-assert his status among the princes of wildfowlers in the County. His status has been much reduced by the wetlands project. More. Not only was that land lost, but the very fact that it was a wildfowl reserve that was being set up greatly hampered what the County wildfowlers are able to do along other parts of the estuary. Ken Gaskell, his solicitor, made him face up to quite a few legal limits to what he considered his manorial rights.”

  “I can see that, Digger. But would a man of his standing in the community be driven to kill in order to regain access to Alan’s land? And, I would have to ask, how would he expect to achieve that aim? Get into cahoots with Jeremy Tewkes, or marry the widow Foxley?”

  “Neither is out of the question. Without being sure of the inheritance, though, he would be too canny to act. And he couldn’t have been sure. As for contact with Mrs Foxley, he might have made a move behind the scenes. Backing her partnership scheme perhaps, adding know-how to her money. Ground for further investigation there I grant you. But if I’m right, if there was any such scheming between them, it can stay hidden for ever. I don’t think it’s germane to the killings. Obsessed as he was, is, with the sport, I think his active days are over. If for no other reason, age alone has slowed him to the point where he is happier having something to complain about and to regret among his reducing band of cronies than, any more, getting on his wellies and striding forth among the dew on a cold, crisp morn.”

  “Not Thornley then, sir.”

  “I think not, Doug. Upset but not that unbalanced. Nor, in that context, do I go any further along the Farmer route. There is no sign that he was acting as an agent, a hired gun, for Thornley. I’m willing, at this stage, to allow his story as, quite naturally but seemingly unfeigned, supported by his wife. He was a chance observer. Unfortunately for us, he didn’t observe much.”

  “And next?”

  “Next, sir, I had to consider the Jeremy Tewkeses. Linked to Thornley or not, Jeremy had opportunity on both mornings. On neither occasion does he have an unbreakable alibi. He certainly had delusions of social grandeur that, to quite an extent, embodied being the provider of grounds to shoot over. In any association with Thornley, with Alan’s lands in his hands, he had the key to local prominence. And his wife wanted the social entrée that such a standing would have brought. She wanted to be the grande dame. What she lacked was the money. I think she would kill for that. As it wouldn’t be beyond her to keep any riff raff out of sight of her ancestral, ducal home. Hungarian or otherwise. But she’s not the one running around with a Harrier twelve bore. A greedy pair, in their different ways, and greed, I grant you, is a great stimulant to action. Yet Jeremy? Too weak by nature if not, to be fair, too much the brother to kill Alan. He planned to get that land, and the money for his wife, by other means.”

  “Hence the role of Mr Reed.”

  “Exactly. Mr Moneybags. But that’s all, I feel sure. He got in deeper than he intended. He wanted that land, but only as the best option he had found for his next chicken factory. Business considerations alone drove him plus, maybe, as an amorous rival to Thornley for the financial and social backing of Galina Foxley! But, when things got uncomfortable, he cut his losses and headed off to the next suitable site for development. We could get him back to cross-check his contribution to Jeremy’s actions and alibis, come to that, but, again, I cross him off my list of killers. He would happily drive a rival to bankruptcy, and hence to suicide, but all within the law.”

  Davis was engrossed. He had, in his own opinion, a set of circumstances that would make a pattern to solve this nice mystery. So far, he was on track alongside Hole. He, too, saw no profit in pressing on with looking at Thornley, Reed or the owners of Wickton as the killers they sought. The snag was, the list was getting smaller! Surely, his own first choice was coming back, solo, into the frame? His DI must have something more to offer on Galina Foxley than his earlier report indicated. Davis’ eyes gleamed as Hole approached what was to be, surely, his denouement?

  “So, it’s Galina! What have you been holding back, you sly fox!”

  Chapter Thirty One

  ore coffee had come, and Detective Chief Superintendent Davis sipped his as though a celebratory champagne.

  “You’ve something up your sleeve. What is it? Something extra? Something your good lady wife divulged unto you this very morn that, as yet, you have failed to vouchsafe to your willing and eager senior officer? No more games! Get on with it. What was the clincher?”

  Hole was hesitant to upset the Super’s bonhomie. Maitland was quiet, busy trying to translate the antiquated jargon. Digger took a time-slowing mouthful of his own drink before making a cautious beginning to explaining the outcome of his breakfast-studied thoughts.

  “We can’t connect Galina Foxley to the gun, sir,” he began, with no ‘as yets’ or ‘to dates’ or ‘up-to-nows’. “She might have hung on to her late husband’s gun, but there’s not a shred of evidence that she did. She had the motive. In spades. If you overlook any filial feelings for her younger brother. Whether for cash for herself, to buy glory and possibly buy honours from Hungary, as a means of buying influence through Thornley, or to spite Jeremy, she had desire and drive enough. She certainly schemed, legally she says, to get a claim on that land which, so far as we can judge, she seems to think should have come to her at her father’s death. She had the physical ability to do it. By that I mean she knew how to shoot, and she could have made the opportunity. She was at the second site, and could have fitted in the first before departing for London, though not so easy and somewhat dependant on making Svetlana Lakatos an accessory. We have been round and round this one. I am now, for
the sake of this session between ourselves, going to stick my neck out and say, ‘No’. Galina Foxley did not kill either her brother or Den Bracegirt. I accept entirely that the two killings are directly connected. Bracegirt saw Alan’s killer that morning. It was someone who he least expected to see. And as a result he died. But he didn’t sense that danger. He saw no risk in his later loose talk. I will go further. If I hadn’t blundered in, he might never have died. I don’t think he was blackmailing anyone in the usual sense. I don’t think he was expecting money. I don’t think he was in some way trying to gain influence over anyone. He was doing no more than consolidate the dominance he already had. Binding someone to him, as a slave. Girting, if that’s a verb, someone from The Hall in as tight a manner as he had been girted to the disgraced Ms Brace. The person he saw not just at the scene but actually shooting Alan Tewkes was the last person in the world he expected to see. Ma Olive.”

  His bombshell dropped, Digger Hole took time out to marshal his arguments before the counter bombardment began. He did not have long to wait. Davis didn’t waste time on ranging shots. He went direct at the target.

  “He saw an eighty something old crone, in the early hours of the morning, carrying a rifle across country, setting it up with some fine fieldcraft, and calmly waiting until her target drifted into view – to be dispatched by one superbly directed shot! Digger, my boy, you would have been better occupied, and this investigation better served, had you got yourself a good night’s sleep rather than dreaming up this unlikely fantasy.”

  Maitland didn’t know which officer to look at. He remained quiet. He fancied Davis would be right; he hoped his governor would pull the rabbit from the hat. Either way, it was turning out to be a more interesting morning than he had imagined when he presented his findings on train times, what now seemed days away, not under an hour ago.

  “Bear with me, sir.”

  “Oh, I’ll do you the courtesy of that, Digger. So long, that is, you tell me that you are deadly serious.”

  “As deadly as the killer. Ma Olive.”

  “Go ahead, then! Don’t keep us in suspense any longer.”

  “It came to me as I visited the wetlands after going home yesterday. I had to go down to join Annie, at her request, and there I met a Miss Heath. In her eighties. Full of vigour. Dedicated to the cause of saving the wildfowl project. She’ll do anything. Pull a barge or lift a bale if asked, as Annie put it. And I realised something, something obvious. It is highly stupid to overlook, to underestimate, what old folk can do. It is too easy to write them off as ‘sweet old dears’. Some might be, but the picture postcard white-haired old granny contentedly knitting garments for her daughter’s or granddaughter’s bottom drawer, blue for a little boy and pink for a girl, has vanished if it ever did exist outside the purveyors of cosy afternoon fiction.” He paused for breath. There was no firing at him this time. He was allowed to reorganise himself, and restart.

  “Never ignore or underestimate the old,” he repeated.

  “All right, Digger. We’ll take that as read. I’ve seen enough of the effort the retired generation puts into good works in my home area to get your gist. I certainly won’t overlook the old. They can kill as easily as a child of eight can batter the life out of a baby. But Ma Olive? In this setting? That’ll take some supporting.”

  “Very well, sir. Then consider this. I said at the start that we were dealing with a case of obsession. Ma was obsessed. Obsessed with the late Duke, the man she served from leaving school until he died. The man she near worshipped, and for whom she would do anything. As he aged and his estate shrank, it was she who laboured to maintain, as she would have it, the old standards. By the end, she was his all-embracing agent. She cleaned his guns, as she went on doing for the poacher she had, as it were, inherited.” And he explained the story of Den’s birth, his access to the Duke’s life, and Ma Olive’s feeling of loyalty when the grace and favour cottages were demolished.

  “She didn’t take on Den for love. She did it as a duty. I believe we will find that Galina and Thornley were right. James Foxley’s gun was lodged at The Hall and, not belonging to the Duke, was removed from the sale by Ma when the end came. I don’t know why. Purely sentimental, perhaps. A symbol of past glories. Jeremy Tewkes has similar feelings for an old gun of his father’s. It wouldn’t present a problem. She had her railway carriage well set up by then, so she had no difficulty in keeping it safe and out of sight. She had learned more than just how to clean the guns and provide the refreshments for the shooting parties. Over the years she had almost become one of them. She, I’ve little doubt we’ll find when we ask (Mrs Farmer might well be able to tell us) Ma, had learned to shoot in her own right. I wouldn’t put it past the old Duke, in his near dotage, taking pleasure in passing on his sporting skills to the one loyal, unquestioning companion that his childless years had produced. She was younger than him, don’t forget.”

  Davis pressed his DI. “How would she know where Tewkes was? And when? And why shoot him anyway?”

  “The motive I’m sure, sir, lies in the festering of that obsession. Alan Tewkes was desecrating the land of her beloved master. The holy grounds of duck shooting that had meant so much to the Duke and had become a central part of her own life in his service, were being abused and misused by this upstart. Maybe Den had heard, or guessed, from Farmer or at The Bell that Thornley was hoping, planning, to regain control of the land and restore it to its former hunting glory. Had told her. ‘If only they can get rid of Tewkes’ he may have said. ‘Then they would be able to go ahead.’ Mistaken or not, it was fairly common chatter. Ma may tell us.” Seeing the other’s looks he repeated, “Ma may well tell us. Obsessives often speak openly once exposed. I’m sure that we will find that she developed an increasingly festering hatred for Alan Tewkes. In her eyes, she saw him running down the revered acres of the Duke. Turning them into no more than a tourist trap. That obsession overcame her. She knew every step of the way, every yard of every track, across those fields. She had spent fifty years walking them. She went out, on her own, quietly, morning after morning, until she built up a picture. No doubt she took Foxley’s Harrier – it was a gun that Thornley described as being a suitable first one for a boy, so it would be manageable for an old lady methinks – with her on those occasions, waiting for a good opportunity to bag her prey.”

  “Light weapon or not, there would be rebound. She isn’t as young or as strong, whatever you say, as she was when you suppose the Duke taught her the game.”

  “True. But she could have used a steady eddie.” He reminded them of that aid to shooters, and how it could fold away.

  “She would have been seen, surely?”

  “By a passer by? It was a risk. But a small one. And she had the perfect vehicle. Her long, old-fashioned shopping bag. She was well known for it. Trundled it most days from the carriage to the village shop. That’s a test of stamina for you if you want any further proof. The same shopping trolley that Galina saw at the Warburtons’ graveside with what she took to be Den’s coat hanging on it, and which had disappeared by the time Enderby came on the scene. If sweet old Ma Olive was to be seen walking near the church pulling her trolley after her, then who, who knew her, would be in the least surprised?”

  “Tewkes would have seen her.”

  “Maybe. He would have been engrossed, everyone argues, in his work. He was near the bank and stationary. If he did look up and see the old lady, he might have been surprised. But there was nothing to alarm him. He may even have sat up in his boat to greet her. Such a picture helps explain the success of the one shot. Close range. No movement. An element of luck, perhaps, but Ma would have had time to fire again. If she had been seen by Alan, she would have wanted to make sure he was dead.”

  “But she was seen. By Den.” Maitland had to get in on the exposition. “Surely she wouldn’t have gone there and risked him, of all people, spotting her?”

  “I’ve worried about that myself, Doug. All I can say is what she sa
id to me. Don’t forget, there was no love between them. No family tie, if you accept the Brace version of his birth. She claimed that he never told her where he was going. I can believe that. No poacher would. Especially to an old woman who went almost every day to that centre of gossip and local intelligence, the emporium of the good Mrs Carmichael. No. I think it was no more than, from Ma’s point of view, extremely bad luck.”

  “And bad luck for Den, also.” Davis seemed to be buying in to the scenario being unfolded in front of his eyes.

  “Yes. Very. And unnecessary. Despite his silly boastings. They were always unspecific. Had he done no more than that he would be alive today, most probably. I fancy that Ma did not know she had been seen. When Den began to gloat about it to her, to try and show his power over her, I don’t think she would have worried too much. She could largely ignore it. He depended on her more than she on him. Certainly she wouldn’t have considered killing him. It would be letting the Duke down, after all. Why else had she taken him in the first place? So, although she may have been angered by his sniping, and just a little worried at his drunken boasting – although, again, who would believe that rogue even if, in his cups, he had let the story out? – what sealed Den’s fate, I fear, was my visit. I could have saved him. I wasted a vital hour.”

  “In what way, sir.”

  “Simply because I told her that I intended to talk to Den that day, Doug. The carriage folk’s fears of police interference was the trigger, as it were, to the gun. She feared what he might let slip under my third-degree questioning. What she didn’t know was when I would go to the churchyard. I might have, I should have I fear, have gone there at once. But there seemed no especial rush, and for all I knew he wouldn’t be there that early. Ma took a chance, packed her Harrier into her shopping bag and, with the firm and surprisingly sprightly stride that she demonstrated every day, set out for the church to silence him.”