Murderer in Shadow

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  Dawn touched Meadowlands as Ravyn drove up. Gold rays made it no less an architectural eyesore than it had seemed his first visit. He frowned when he saw an ambulance at the entrance. A common sight at such places, he knew, but it filled him with dread.

  He pulled into the car park. Walking up, he saw Highchurch’s attendant, the supposed Evelyn Dovecoate, leaning against a pillar, hands in pockets, head down, a cigarette drooped from her lips. She stubbed out the fag as he approached.

  “I thought you’d be here sooner.”

  “The message was delayed. What’s happened?”

  “Morris…Mr Highchurch is dead.”

  “The cause of death?”

  She shrugged. “Dr Amberth said ‘natural causes’.”

  “Have the police been notified?”

  “No. Why would they?”

  He asked to see the attending physician.

  “Why are you here?” Dr Hugo Amberth, a large man with too many chins and a head shaped like the business end of a missile, glared at Evelyn Dovecoate. “Mr Highchurch died of natural causes. He had had multiple strokes, his heart was dickey and he had high blood pressure. It was only a matter of time.”

  “You’re certain of the cause, Doctor?”

  “I’m prepared to issue a death certificate.”

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, not just yet.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “The county pathologist will conduct a post mortem.”

  “You…you can’t do that!”

  Ravyn called Dr Penworthy and made arrangements.

  “I shall complain to your superior.”

  “Superintendent Heln will probably welcome your complaint,” Ravyn said. “But you should wait until Dr Penworthy completes her post mortem. It’s up to you, but I would. If nothing else, waiting till she confirms your findings will make it all the worse for me.”

  Amberth still fumed as Ravyn walked away, but his wrath was now mixed with a measure of confliction. He was absolutely sure of what killed the old man, but what would it hurt to wait? He was sure the delay would only serve to hoist this annoying policeman higher on his own petard.

  “Did Mr Highchurch say why he wanted to see me?” Ravyn asked when he and Dovecoate were alone.

  She shook her head. “He awoke from a terrible dream, it must have been quite frightening, and called the duty nurse. The old gent was a terror to everyone else, so she called me. I took him down to the day room and he forced me to call you. He did not say why. Your station routed me to that inn over in Knight’s Crossing.” She paused. “It’s about those bones, isn’t it? That old case?”

  “Mr Highchurch was the original investigator.”

  “Then it must have been something about that.”

  “What time was this?”

  “They roused me about one; I called about half-one.”

  Ravyn silently cursed that idiot Peter Vogt for the delay.

  “He wouldn’t return to his room, was fearful of going back, so I left him in the day room,” she said. “I was up and about, so I caught up on some backlog. You hadn’t shown by five, I was surprised by that, so I checked on him. He was dead.”

  “May I see the day room?”

  She nodded. The large room was devoid of inhabitants, dead or alive. Dovecoate conducted him to a gaudy wingchair in the corner.

  “This is where I left him,” she said. “It’s where I found him. I thought he had drifted off, but…” She bit her lips. “He was gone.”

  Ravyn looked around. “Was this window open when you left him here?”

  “No, it wasn’t.” She moved to close it.

  “Leave it.” His tone froze her.

  As he called Angus Powell-Mavins and asked for a SOCO team, she said: “It’s our policy not to have any open windows. The entire facility is climate-controlled, our nod to the Twenty-first Century. It was closed, but I can’t imagine Mr Highchurch opening it.”

  The window was open a half-inch or so. No reason to raise it on a too-cold morning, but someone might have done so from outside. Ravyn texted Penworthy to run full toxicology panels and compare them with anything discovered in Stark’s blood work.

  Ravyn set an orderly on guard, then asked to see Highchurch’s room. Hands less steady now than previously, Dovecoate fumbled the key in the lock. Ravyn gently took the key and opened the door.

  “Oh my! This is terrible!”

  “Please wait outside.”

  The small room was in shambles. It contained little more than a bed, a writing desk and a three-shelf bookcase, but the furniture was overturned, the mattress cut open and every book torn apart. Ravyn pulled a pair of nitrile gloves and began searching the room, careful not to disturb any of the chaos.

  “Is there anything I can do, Mr Ravyn?”

  “A Scene of Crime team will be arriving soon,” he said. “I’ve already told Mr Powell-Mavins what I want done in the day room. When he arrives, please bring him here.”

  “How will I…”

  “The blustery man with the unlit pipe and angry ginger hair.”

  She nodded, started down the stairs, then turned. “It’s not as Dr Amberth said, is it? It wasn’t natural causes.”

  “No, Miss Dovecoate. I don’t think so.”

  “He was a crabby old man.” She sniffed back a tear and tried to keep from breaking up. “He was my friend.”

  Ravyn returned to searching the room. He did not want to hold forever the image of her sadness. He heard her fading sobs, then silence as the professional nurse overtook the human being.

  Highchurch had been retired almost as long as Ravyn had been a policeman, but some things never change. Some professions put an indelible mark on a man’s soul. The accountant will always count every penny and each step he takes down the High Street. The fireman will always wake from the deepest sleep to the faintest wail of a siren. And a detective will ever view the mass of humanity as villains or victims, and always hide valuables from sneak-thieves, of which a place like Meadowlands probably housed a few.

  By the time Powell-Mavins and his forensic minions appeared, Ravyn had found a Rolex, the gold cufflinks Highchurch had been given by the then Chief Constable upon his retirement, and a single sheet of paper which he inserted into an evidence sleeve.

  “Body gone?”

  “House doctor released it.”

  “Silly sod.”

  “Dr Penworthy will transfer the body for the post mortem.”

  “Be the devil to pay when it’s found the doctor botched it.”

  “Be the devil to pay if it’s found he didn’t.”

  “He’ll complain to the wee man?”

  “He’s holding off till he sees which way the flag blows.”

  “Still a silly sod.” He looked around the room. “Someone put a lot of effort into it, but not much thought.”

  “The day room?” Ravyn said.

  “I put Shirley outside, Albert inside,” Powell-Mavins said. “No dabs on the sill, gloves most likely, but footprints in the hydrangeas. As I said, not a lot of thought. Find the feet, prove the man.”

  Ravyn gave him the Rolex and the cufflinks. “Into evidence till claimed by next of kin.”

  “If the poor bugger had any. Dreary old mausoleum, this. Lord save us from penny-pinching children.” He gestured at the plastic-protected paper Ravyn retained. “What’s that? Smoking gun or red herring?”

  “Maybe neither,” Ravyn said. “Perhaps both.”

  Chapter 13

  ”I Do Not Believe”

  “That was Mr Ravyn, was it?” Aeronwy said. “I don’t know why he has to ring us so early in the morning. Not even light yet. I’ll get your breakfast while you shave and dress.”

  “No,” Stark said, gently pushing her back. “No, luv, you stay in bed and rest. Have a nice lie-in, at least until the sun shows up. No sense us both being unsettled.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Back to Knight’s Crossing.”

 
“Meeting that WPC?”

  “One of the villagers has gone missing.” Stark went into the adjoining bathroom and shaved. “Bloke named Winsell. He’s the one I told you about, the nutter who’s afraid of open spaces.”

  “Oh, that one.” She rearranged the pillows to support her back and sat up. “He had to do with that boy who was found. What’s he got to do with the old murder case?”

  “Nothing, far as I know.” He returned and pulled clothes out of the closet. “The old bones are found and he vanishes. If nothing else, it’s interesting timing.”

  She crossed her arms and watched him dress. “You need some new clothes, Leo. It looks like you fell naked into a charity shop bin and climbed out dressed.”

  “I’m hard to fit,” he said. “Have to take what I can find, make it last as long as I can.”

  “Really, Leo, sometimes I feel like walking on the other side of the road, it’s so embarrassing.”

  Stark jerked his coat on so hard he nearly popped a seam.

  “I’m sure some of the other wives must wonder what kind of a wife you have, letting you go out looking as you do.”

  “I’ve been dressing myself a long time now.”

  “And doing a rubbish job of it.”

  “I’ll try to be home as early as I can.”

  “If Mr Ravyn doesn’t find something else for you to do.”

  He sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. “I know this is a hard time for you, Aeronwy, but we’re under a lot of pressure too.”

  “Pressure? On the Great Detective? It’s child’s play for Ravyn the Magnificent, or so I hear.”

  “You can’t believe what some people say,” Stark said.

  “Superintendent Heln strikes me as very knowledgeable.”

  “Aeronwy, why not go back to sleep,” he suggested. “Get a bit more rest, then have a couple of your friends over for tea. It will be a nice change for you.”

  She started to speak, then heaved a great sigh. “I’m sorry, Leo. I don’t now why I’m so witchy this morning.”

  “It’s the pregnancy, luv,” he said. “With all the changes going on inside, hormones and stuff, you’re all turvy-topsy.”

  She laughed, then cried. He held her close to him till after the sobs wracking her subsided. He kissed away her tears, then held her gently by the shoulders.

  “Better?”

  She nodded. “Better. But I still wish you weren’t going back to that damned village.” Her eyes narrowed. “And that girl.”

  He kissed her. “You know you’re the only girl for me.”

  “What if she slips you a love potion?”

  “What?”

  “Or puts a passion-hex on you?”

  He gave her a lopsided grin. “No more tabloids for you.”

  “It could happen,” she insisted. “I’ve read how everyone there is into magic and witchcraft.”

  “Just magic, not witchcraft, according to Ravyn.” Stark shook his head. “The guv’nor says there’s a difference, but I’m afraid to ask him what it is.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’m afraid he might tell me, and then there goes the day.”

  She laughed. “He didn’t seem a show-off the times I met him. If anything, he seemed the quiet type, almost brooding, maybe even melancholy. Sad, you know. A bit of a stick, but a modest man.”

  Stark looked at his wife oddly.

  “Oh, I know I say critical things,” she said. “I rag you a bit, but that’s only because I resent the way he takes you away from me.” She silenced him with her raised palm when he started to speak. “A good cause, enforcement of the Queen’s Peace and preservation of civilisation as we know it, but I can still resent it, can’t I?”

  Stark smiled. “Of course you can.”

  “But I’ll never forget the way he didn’t make trouble for you when I…” Her words caught in her throat. “Well, the rough patch I went through when you were first sent here and I was missing our life in London so much. He could have ruined you, couldn’t he?”

  “Yes, with a poor evaluation and a few well-chosen words.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “He even wrote me.”

  Stark’s eyebrows shot up. “He did? When was that?”

  “Shortly after I started therapy.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Bring me my jewellery box, will you?”

  Stark retrieved the small wooden box from the dressing table. It was very old, carved in an antique Welsh style and had been handed down mother to daughter in Aeronwy’s family for generations. She took if from him, started to open it, then paused.

  “You won’t tell him I showed you this, will you?”

  “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then I won’t.”

  She took a card-sized envelope from the bottom of the box and handed it to him. It had been sent through the mail about six months earlier. Stark opened the card and read it.

  “I don’t think he meant for anyone but me to read it.”

  As Stark read words of kindness and encouragement, written in Ravyn’s neat, almost mechanical hand, he knew why Ravyn might want to keep it confidential. Anyone reading this might think the chief inspector almost human.

  Stark passed it back. “Very kind. Considerate.”

  “It’s been an encouragement to me.” She returned it to its place of concealment. “Over the past several months, I’ve had moments when I’ve the urge to take a drink.” Seeing the look on his face, she quickly added: “I wouldn’t because of the baby, but when I was low I took out this note, read it and felt stronger because of it. I think it’s maybe done me more good than therapy.”

  “You should have told me,” he said. “I knew there were times when you… Well, you should have told me.”

  “And add to your problems?” She shook her head. “I may be a selfish slip of a Welsh farm girl sometimes, but I don’t want to be more than a burden than I am already.”

  “You’re not a burden.”

  “Liar.”

  “I’ve got to go, luv,” Stark said. “Got a job to do.”

  “Be careful, Leo,” she said. “And I wasn’t joking about that girl casting magic spells over you.”

  He laughed and shook his head.

  “Laugh all you want, Leo Stark, but I know what I’m saying.” Her tone was sharp as steel. “Back home, a gwiddon, a witch, lived in the forest east of Dad’s farm; lived there forever, ancient even when Dad was a boy. She made potions and poultices for ills of all kinds, but the village girls bought love hexes. No boy could resist a girl once a spell, a geas as it’s called in Wales, was put on him. Dad often said that was how Mum finally snared him.”

  “I think it had more to do with your mum’s cooking, judging from the looks of him.”

  “I’m not kidding, Leo,” she said. “You watch your step.”

  “I have the perfect defence against magic.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I do not believe.”

  * * *

  WWRD? What would Ravyn do? Stark had listened to Ware tell of finding Venture Cottage empty, her hasty search and the discovery of the magic brick (it was all Stark could do, not to laugh in her all-too-serious face) protecting the cottage from hobgoblins and bogies. One thing Ravyn would do, he knew, was treat the villagers’ beliefs in magic seriously, no matter how ridiculous it was.

  Fortunately, Stark thought, he was not DCI Arthur Ravyn.

  “He seemed a nutter, all that rubbish about the sky falling on him, but I wouldn’t have taken him for being completely mental.”

  Ware bit her lip to hold back a sharp retort, but she could not keep her face from looking as she had bit down on a lemon.

  “Easy, Constable,” Stark said. “Even you have to admit it’s like something out of a Hammer film or a Dennis Wheatley novel.”

  “I know how it sounds to an outsider.”

 
; “You mean a strapper.”

  Ware did not reply. The term was not exactly offensive, but it was hardly laudatory.

  “Maybe I should change my name to DS Strapper, just to make it easier for everyone.”

  Ware smiled. “It’s the way we live, Sarge, the way we’ve been raised by parents, who were brought up exactly the same way. The power of the past is always strong in Hammershire, but especially in a place like Knight’s Crossing.”

  “Still…” He sighed. He was not going to get anywhere arguing with Ware. “How did it go with looking for the car?”

  “Not well. Are you sure it was green?”

  “Not entirely, but mostly.”

  “I found less than a half-dozen green, but there was no damage to any of them,” she said. “I also looked at dark cars in general, but no joy there either.”

  “You might have missed it,” he said. “Gone before you started looking. Out early to work.”

  “A few maybe, but none green or dark.”

  “You sure?”

  “This isn’t Stafford or even Denby Marsh.”

  “Well, it may be that the car wasn’t from here at all.”

  “DCI Ravyn is convinced it was.”

  “What about Winsell?” Stark asked. “When you were poking your nose in garages and up driveways, did you come across anyone who had seen him?”

  “Not Winsell, but something odd from Mrs Oldham,” she said. “A widow, pensioner she is, lives down the way from Mr Winsell, in Thistle Cottage.”

  “I don’t think an old woman forced me off the road.”

  “No, Mrs Oldham doesn’t have a car.”

  “Then…”

  “She spends a lot of time looking out her window.”

  Stark smiled. Thank God for nosey wrinklies who had nothing better to do than watch the world go by, counting all the sinners one by one. Many a careful villain had been done for by a watchful old biddy behind a fluttering chintz curtain.

  “Mrs Oldham didn’t see Winsell – the oddest of odd ducks, she calls him – but she did see a car pass by thrice about half-three.”

  “Just drive up and down the road?”

  “Each time, it paused down the road from her, could have been in the vicinity of Winsell’s cottage,” Ware said. “The last time, it stayed stopped for a good five minutes. Then it took off.”