Dead Weight (Three Oaks Book 11)

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Don’t be sexist,’ I told her. Sometimes this nonsense about political correctness comes in useful.

  *

  Saturday had come round again. It was a week since Mrs Horner had died. To those who were not concerned about the manner of her going, the memory of her was already becoming something to be filed away and forgotten as quickly as possible. But among Alistair’s friends and supporters, concern was growing and it was as if the woman’s eternally inimical presence still brooded over us, awaiting the chance for more mischief.

  Daffy was still absent and could be presumed to be enjoying the attentions of her husband. Our junior helpers had been carried off on various family ploys. Henry had decided that, if he had to drive to Kirkcaldy, he might just as well go the rest of the way, enjoy the fleshpots of Newton Lauder for an extra day and make an early start to whatever problems the young heiress had set him. He had driven off, first handing me a note from Mrs Hebden but refraining from making supposedly funny remarks about secret correspondence. Isobel had run out of her favourite homebrewed insecticide and confined herself in her little surgery while she mixed strange and dangerous potions. Bruce had eaten his usual late breakfast and was ready to leave for Mrs Horner’s house, taking with him a sandwich for his lunch. I said that I’d have lunch at home and then, reluctantly, join him.

  ‘Before you go,’ I said, ‘take a look at this.’ I spread Mr Carmichael’s photographs out on the kitchen table and singled out a shot of trees casting shadows over colourful dead bracken, against a background of the Moss. The only flaw in the composition was the presence of a car tucked away off the road and under one of the trees. ‘These photographs were all taken on the morning Mrs Horner died. I know the place where this was taken. Walk out along Old Ford Road, bypass the sand-pit and follow the path and you come out here. I’m wondering why a car would be parked here, half hidden.’

  Bruce peered at the scene. ‘It might just have been left in the shade,’ he suggested. ‘You know how a car heats up on a day like that.’

  ‘And,’ I retorted, ‘it might have been left by somebody who didn’t want to be seen in the village and who therefore left it here and walked along by the burn below Old Ford Road to Mrs Horner’s house. The registration number’s legible. Isn’t it worth a phone call to the DVLA at Swansea to find out?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  I had no intention of wasting more time and running up my phone bill. ‘The call would come better from you, as a solicitor,’ I said. ‘You could make it from Mrs Horner’s house.’

  He agreed and hurried away, promising help at some unspecified time in the future.

  Beth, Hannah and I were very short-handed for the morning’s work, but with spasmodic assistance from Sam we managed to scramble through the cleaning and exercising and the morning feeds of the younger stock.

  I had been awaiting my chance to get on with some serious dog-training, but first I had to deal with a minor rush of business. This brought a couple who thought that we ran an animal sanctuary and would be looking for a ‘good home’ for unwanted pups; and a young man who wanted a trained dog, couldn’t afford it and settled for ordering a pup from our next litter.

  He was followed by a former client in need of advice – free advice, I hardly need say. His spaniel seemed to be deficient in memory and a lesson learned one week would be forgotten by the next. Would I take the dog back for a crash course? I watched them work for a few minutes on the lawn and then explained gently that it would be a shame to take his money, which would be better spent if I were to take him for training. There was nothing wrong with the dog’s memory. ‘But,’ I said, ‘if dogs had two fingers, that’s what he’d be giving you.’ I told him again what I’d explained when he bought the dog, about the need to remain the leader of the pack, every minute of every day. He went away contrite and, he said, determined.

  Before I could go and collect any of my trainees from the kennels, there was a ring at the doorbell. The others were busy, so I went to the door. I found a tall, sturdily built lady waiting impatiently. Her iron-grey hair was rigidly disciplined. She wore a linen suit in pale grey and ‘sensible’ shoes.

  ‘About Mrs Horner’s cat,’ she said, without preamble.

  I dislike talking business on the doorstep although sometimes there is no alternative. The table and chairs under the silver birch had been functioning almost as an outdoor office during the hot weather but the day had brought a cooler breeze off the North Sea. Moreover, something about the lady suggested that she would not fit comfortably into an informal setting. ‘Come in,’ I said. I led her into the sitting room and showed her a chair.

  ‘You have the cat here?’ she asked as soon as we were seated.

  I find a terse and telegraphic mode of speech very infectious. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  She blinked at me but went on. ‘I was a friend of Jasmine Horner. I don’t suppose that her nephew will take Hecuba on and I wouldn’t want the old thing to be put down. I can offer her a good home.’

  On the whole I rather approved of the suggestion. I hate to see an animal destroyed just because nobody has room or patience for it. But, little though I like the concept, animals are subject to ownership. This dislike may seem contradictory in one who regularly buys and sells them, but in my mind I can distinguish between my commercial activities and the dogs’ subsequent existence as hunting partners. ‘You’ll have to speak to Mrs Horner’s nephew,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t expect any difficulty, but it’s not for me to say.’

  Her expression led me to believe that she would sooner converse with any passing rapist. ‘I would rather see the executor,’ she said. ‘I understand that he is living here. Is he available?’

  Bruce would not welcome the interruption. Besides, I was sure that I knew the identity of this visitor and wanted to confirm my guess. She seemed to fulfil most of the criteria. ‘I can have him phone you,’ I suggested. ‘I take it that you’re Mrs Bullerton?’

  She raised a formidable Roman nose and looked at me through eyes which, I noticed, seemed to be habitually slitted. ‘Do I know you?’ she asked.

  ‘Not so far as I’m aware,’ I said. ‘But your name came up recently as having been a friend of Mrs Horner.’ While I spoke, my mind had been working. I had seen Seagrove Cottages on the map. The former workmen’s cottages, which I heard had been thrown together into a single more commodious residence, were at the further side of the Moss. They were approached from a byroad but there was a path across the far end of the Moss that led to the sand-pit and thence to Old Ford Road. ‘And I think that you were seen walking towards your home and away from Mrs Horner’s house at about the time that she died.’

  Her nostrils flared. ‘I hope that you’re not suggesting—’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ I said. ‘As far as I’m aware, you never quarrelled with her.’

  ‘That’s true. I certainly had no call to do her a mischief. Unlike yourself.’

  I stared at her but there was no mischievous twinkle in her eye. Quite the reverse. ‘Me?’ I said. ‘I argued with her about dogs once or twice. Apart from that, I hardly knew the woman.’

  She frowned. ‘Even after Jasmine Horner told the police that your bride had lied about her age?’

  I shrugged. The matter had been so long ago that it was too late for anger. ‘I never knew who was responsible for that piece of idiocy,’ I said. ‘In fact, the mistake was understandable. Beth always did look much less than her real age. When we married, Beth was twenty-four but she looked about fourteen. The local Bobby came up asking questions and Beth showed him her birth certificate and produced proof of her identity. That was more or less an end to it. In any case, I’d hardly have waited about ten years before taking revenge. Tell me, have the police taken a statement from you about your visit to Mrs Horner on the morning of her death?’

  There was silence in the room. I waited. I was interested to see whether she would deny the visit, admit it, claim that she had already made a statemen
t to the police or tell me to go to hell. Just when I was sure that an explosion was imminent, she suddenly sat back and relaxed. ‘Why are you interested?’ she asked.

  ‘Some of us don’t believe that Alistair Branch is guilty,’ I told her.

  ‘Nor do I,’ she surprised me by saying. She had settled down for a cosy chat, apparently now accepting me as an equal. ‘He seems a mild little man. I don’t know what Jasmine had against him. But then, she had something against almost everybody. It was her absolute malevolence that kept me amused, and the fact that she could be relied on to dig up the dirt about practically anyone. But for that, I wouldn’t have tolerated her for a minute. No, the police haven’t spoken to me. I’ve been expecting a visit at any moment. If they don’t come soon, I must go to them.’

  ‘You know something that they don’t?’ I asked her.

  ‘I don’t know that I can offer them a better suspect than Alistair Branch,’ she said, ‘but yes. I do know something they don’t.’ She leaned forward and suddenly I recognized again the glint of malicious mischief that I had seen in Mr Pelmann and I knew what she and Mrs Horner had had in common. She was about to reveal a murky secret and she was loving it. ‘I did visit Jasmine that morning,’ she said. ‘We had quite a chat. She was still very angry with her nephew for running away with Roland Bovis’s wife. And that little faux pas had come on top of an earlier ruction about some silver that he’d sold for her. She had made up her mind at last. She was going to change her will.’

  As far as I was aware that could only direct suspicion in one direction. ‘Mr Shute and Mrs Bovis were away sailing in the Adriatic,’ I pointed out.

  She shrugged that off immediately. ‘There are such things as aeroplanes,’ she said. ‘And they don’t even stamp your passport any more if you’re coming from an EC country. Hire a car and walk the last mile or two. Child’s play. He could have left the yacht and his mistress in some quiet harbour and have been back in two days. Who would know or care?’

  ‘But he didn’t know that she was going to change her will,’ I said.

  ‘There are also telephones,’ she said impatiently. ‘Think about it. He phones his aunt to ask if she’s well and how the weather is at home and to tell her again that the lady’s change of partners was by mutual agreement of the gentlemen involved. But his aunt is still angry. She says that she’s going to change her will. The rest follows.’

  What she was saying made a great deal of sense. What was more, it brought back into my mind the car in the photograph. I went to fetch it and put it into her hand. ‘This was taken that morning. It must have been somewhere near your house,’ I said.

  ‘Just around the next corner.’

  ‘Do you happen to know whose car that is?’

  ‘It’s certainly not mine. I had a central heating engineer at the house that day, but he came in a shabby old van.’ She hesitated. ‘His boss came along to check up on him,’ she said reluctantly, ‘and that could be his car. I just don’t know.’

  ‘That’s very interesting,’ I said slowly. ‘You could be right. One person was seen, from a distance, who was almost certainly Mrs Horner’s assailant. There’s no suggestion that that person resembled Mr Shute, but I’m told that it could well have been Mrs Bovis.’

  She shook her head impatiently. ‘Emily Bovis was in the Adriatic on that Saturday.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Positive. She phoned me from Venice.’

  ‘She could have said that she was in Venice?’

  Again Mrs Bullerton gave an impatient shake of her head. ‘When I got back from my visit to Jasmine, there was a message on my answering machine. I called her back. It was a Venice number.’

  ‘But why did she call you?’ I asked. I nearly added of all people.

  ‘She is my daughter,’ Mrs Bullerton said simply. ‘So I know where she was. But her paramour is another matter. I asked Emily to call him to the phone. I wished to ask him once again to give up this ill-judged liaison. But she said that he was out for a walk. If there is one place in the world not conducive to walking, unless one has the gift of walking on water, it is Venice. I suggest that my daughter was establishing her presence in Venice but that her lover was here, ensuring that his aunt did not have the chance to change her will.’

  On consideration, I saw that it was possible. Not likely, but possible. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ll make sure that the police have a word with you.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to that,’ she said and I could see that she meant it.

  *

  Free at last, I sought out Isobel and found her, peering into her microscope, in the converted annexe which had become a small but efficient surgery. Before I could reopen a running argument as to whether Sid needed more steadiness training on dummies simulating rocketing pheasants, she looked round and asked me, ‘Did the unfortunate Horace have fleas?’

  ‘Strange question. I never saw him complete and alive,’ I pointed out. ‘The empty skin wasn’t doing any scratching. Why?

  ‘You said that Mrs Horner’s cat was doing enough scratching for both of them. She’s old and I’m told that she never went outside the garden. It looks like rabbit fleas again. Were there wild rabbits in the garden?’

  ‘Not inside the wall. And little sign of rabbit damage. The walled garden looks pretty rabbit- and cat-proof, but of course gates have to be opened now and again. The police lab could determine whether Horace had fleas. Does it matter?’

  Isobel shrugged. ‘Not particularly. I thought you were collecting all the trivial pieces of evidence the police had missed. If Horace had passed fleas on to Mrs Horner’s cat it would have been cast-iron evidence of something or other. Henry phoned, by the way. I thought you’d just left with Bruce, so he’s going to phone you at Mrs Horner’s house after he’s seen the gun dealer. He said the gun’s in beautiful nick and it’s been proved for nitro powder.’

  ‘In that case, I’ve got some money coming,’ I said.

  Isobel regarded me benignly. Sometimes she is like a sister to me, sometimes she takes on the role of a mother and just occasionally there are signs of something quite different. ‘Well, don’t go ploughing it all back into the business again this time. Take Beth for a cruise or buy yourself something you really want.’

  *

  Sam, for once, lunched at home. He and I were first at the kitchen table. As we helped ourselves to sliced ham and salad I said, ‘Sam, you know the Saturday that it happened to Mrs Horner? Last week?’

  He nodded solemnly. He was slim rather than skinny but in other respects he looked so much like me that sometimes it took my breath away. ‘The day we were asking questions about.’

  ‘That’s right. Do you happen to know what Mr Branch was wearing that morning?’

  He munched thoughtfully before swallowing. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘But I’m going to see Audrey after lunch. She notices that sort of thing. I’ll ask her.’

  ‘I’ll walk along with you,’ I said. ‘Or were you going to take your bike?’

  ‘I’m walking. When I take my bike, Audrey rides it and then she falls off and blames me.’

  ‘That’s women for you,’ I told him. ‘Whatever goes wrong, it’s always your fault. Be warned!’

  We set off after lunch by my favourite path. It felt strange and unfamiliar to have my son with me instead of one or more dogs. Sam prattled along the way. He had grown too big for his bicycle, he would like a Dundee United strip for Christmas and could he come beating the next time I went picking-up? I made vague but possibly affirmative replies, secure in the knowledge that he would soon have forgotten his more expensive desires or, if not, that I would be able to afford them out of my share of the Macnaughten shotgun. Again I could hear echoes of my own boyhood. Where had it gone, for God’s sake? Where were the dreams now? I had been going to become prime minister, marry a film star, save the world. I gave myself a mental shake. I had had one career, I now had another which I loved and a family which I loved more. Did I really
want to revert to the uncertainties, the agonies of youth? No, I decided. Middle age would suit me and damn the aches and pains.

  Audrey’s home was two houses short of the pub. She met us in the back garden. Her recollection of what everybody was wearing on the fatal Saturday was almost photographic although she could not remember seeing anyone wearing khaki shorts. I was left in little doubt that the first figure seen in the back lane by Mrs Guidman was Alistair and that those seen by her husband at the front of the houses could have been Mr and Mrs Jordan followed soon afterwards by Mr Dalton.

  I left Sam with Audrey and bypassed the house to cross the road.

  Bruce let me into Mrs Horner’s house and I sat down with him for a discussion. ‘No words from the Detective Superintendent,’ Bruce said. ‘Damn his eyes! Conscientious I may be but I don’t make a habit of working at weekends. As I’m stuck here I may as well go on wading through this detritus.’ He gestured at the partially sorted piles of paper split between the desk and any other flat surface. Receipts, letters, forms and photographs seemed to be mingled. ‘Did I say that her filing system was modelled on the municipal tip?’ Bruce asked me.

  ‘You did. More than once!’

  ‘I was unduly flattering, it isn’t as orderly as that. I expect that she could put her hand on any scrap of paper at a moment’s notice, but to the stranger it’s a baffling confusion which all has to be sifted. You never know what may turn up in this sort of guddle.’ Bruce frowned and bit his lip before deciding to go on. ‘Between ourselves, I found a list of charities and a few words of draft which suggest that she may have been going to change her will and cut out Ian Shute, her nephew. I gathered that she was furious when his partner’s wife transferred her affections to the nephew.’

  ‘As it happens, I can confirm that,’ I said. ‘The exchange seems to have been amicably managed between the parties, but Mrs Horner must have favoured the wronged husband.’ I told him about Mrs Bullerton’s revelations and her theory about the murder.