Dead on Dartmoor

by Stephanie Austin

  ‘Westershall of course, it was his land he was on.’

  ‘You mean Jamie?’

  He nodded grimly.

  I had gone over the circumstances of Gavin’s death again and again, but I had never considered Jamie as a killer. Despite the warmth from the fire, I felt cold.

  ‘But, let’s just suppose that Jamie – or, anyway, one of the Westershalls − was responsible for Ben’s death, why not drop his body down a mineshaft where no one would ever find him? Or leave him at the foot of Haytor? They could have dumped him anywhere on the moor. Why leave his body on their own doorstep?’ I frowned. ‘Who found him, anyway?’

  ‘Jamie Westershall.’

  ‘Now I’m confused.’

  Alec leant forward intently. ‘Listen, a lot of people knew what Ben was up to. He was a blogger, and in contact with Bat Conservation groups all around the country. He had family and friends, a girlfriend. He would soon have been reported missing and the police would have been given a pretty good idea of where to start looking. Now, whatever the Westershalls are up to, the last thing they would want is police searching all over their estate. Much better if Jamie Westershall contacts them, tells them there’s been a tragic accident, he’s found a body, and takes them straight to it.’

  ‘It’s still taking a risk.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think Mr Westershall is averse to a risk.’ Alec leant back in his chair. ‘And another thing, he’s been denying people access to his land, saying it’s dangerous − you read what he said at the inquest. Well, there was quite a lot of protest at the time, but finding Ben’s body proved his point for him. No one was going to raise any objections after that. He can do what he likes—’

  There was the sound of someone coming in, a footstep at the front door, a woman’s voice calling out, and children scrambling, yelling, to greet her. Alec’s daughter had come home. It was time I left. ‘Well, thanks for seeing me, Alec. I’m sorry if talking about Ben’s death upset you.’

  As I rose to go, he stood and gripped my hand. ‘You be careful,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Whatever’s going on in that place, they’ve killed twice to keep it a secret. You be careful.’

  I placed my hand over his. ‘I will,’ I promised him. And I left, not knowing what to think.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  In Newton Abbot I bought two pairs of jeans, a silver caddy spoon I found in a box of old cutlery, an oak tea trolley with barley-twist legs, various pretty plates and a Moorcroft saucer; but when I went back to the framers where I had deposited Sophie an hour and a half before, she was still making up her mind about frame mouldings, so I dumped my haul in the van and went hunting again. This time my trawl of the charity shops brought me a willow pattern meat dish with a hairline crack in it and some decent paperback books, which would fill up another few inches on Gavin’s empty shelves. Not as big a haul as I had been hoping for but at least it was something. And the caddy spoon and the Moorcroft were good finds.

  At least Sophie had finished when I went back to the shop a second time. The framer promised to have the job done the day before Sandy’s party.

  Of course, she wanted to know what had happened to White Van. I filled her in on some, but not all, of the details. I didn’t tell her anything about Olly’s domestic situation, but I told her the rest.

  ‘You should have called the police!’

  I knew she’d say that. ‘What’s the point? I can’t prove anything. Even if I could prove that Moss and Pike’s lorry went into the back of me, I can’t prove they did it deliberately.’

  ‘You could have been killed.’

  ‘Jamie knows about it,’ I went on. ‘He knew my van had been involved in Emma’s accident when he came into the shop yesterday.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Like me, she didn’t want to believe that the brave and handsome saviour of EB, the charming rescuer of damsels in distress, could be up to anything dodgy. ‘Why didn’t you ask him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I had replayed that conversation over and over in my mind. Why hadn’t I asked him what the hell his sister was up to, what was going on at Applecote Farm? Why hadn’t he asked me why I was flying a drone over his property? Instead, we’d just stared at each other, like poker players trying to avoid a show of hands.

  Sophie slanted me a dark look. ‘This party’s going to be interesting. Are you sure you still want to go?’

  ‘Of course I want to go. I want to find out what’s bloody going on!’

  Perhaps, I realised, when I was thinking about it later, Jamie didn’t say anything because, like me, like a poker player, he was considering his next move.

  The following morning I saw the mystery lady again. I was up early, walking the dogs. The woods had turned to marmalade gold, sunlight pouring through translucent leaves like stained glass in a church window. The dogs raced through crunchy piles, paws scattering the leaves and sending them flying. I found her car parked by Cuddyford Cross, empty, tucked in by a farm gate. I peered in the back, at a folded sleeping bag, pillows, a shopping bag full of sachets of cat food. But no sign of the lady herself, or her cat.

  I followed the lane down to Great Bridge and peered over the old stone wall. The River Ashburn, from which Ashburton takes its name, rises on Rippon Tor and flows down the valley, right through the centre of the town before it joins the Dart at Buckfastleigh. From the bridge I could look down onto the rushing water, fallen leaves like tiny boats swept along on the flood.

  Then I took the dogs up steps to the Terrace Walk. It’s a strange name for what is basically an earthen path traversing a sloping field. But the view from there is one of the most beautiful around Ashburton, across the wooded valley to the foothills of the moor. In summer the distant woods are just masses of green. But in autumn they become a tapestry of russet and brown. I could pick out the rusty gold of horse chestnuts, the lime glow of poplars and the bright firecracker red of maple against the deep, dark green of holly and spruce.

  The view from this muddy path is so beautiful that over the years benches have been put there to allow people to sit and drink it in. Many of these have fallen into disrepair, their wooden seats entangled with bindweed and brambles, or rotted away. But there are one or two benches that are still useable, and seated alone on one of these, gazing across the valley, her cat sitting upright on her lap, was my mystery lady. Mist had filled the depths of the valley, and it lay in a milky layer so that the trees seemed to float above it. She was rapt in a view that was magical, quiet, until my tumbling, rushing dogs broke the spell by barking.

  Schnitzel and EB made a beeline for her bench. They wanted to be friendly, to say hello.

  I managed to grab Sally the Labrador by the collar before she could follow. As the dogs approached, her cat rose up on its legs, back arched, and became a spitting puffball of angry fur. Mystery Lady grabbed it and stood up, holding it clear of EB and Schnitzel, who were bouncing excitedly around her feet, trying to jump up.

  ‘I’m so sorry!’ I cried out to her, shouting at the two yapping hooligans to come back to me. She didn’t turn around but began walking away up the path. ‘Do you need help?’ I called at her departing back, as I started fastening leads on collars. She walked on, ignoring me. ‘You’re sleeping in your car.’

  That stopped her. She turned to look at me, stared hard. ‘Am I?’ she asked, arching her slim brows.

  ‘Are you in some kind of trouble?’ I asked. ‘Can I do anything to help?’

  ‘You can learn to mind your own business,’ she responded in a controlled voice, turned and marched swiftly away down the field.

  I didn’t attempt to follow. ‘We know when we’re not wanted, don’t we?’ I said to my canine companions.

  The last part of the Terrace Walk goes through a small wooded area until the path emerges at the top of Roborough Lane, which in turn leads back into town. As I walked the muddy path under the trees, I could tell I was approaching so-called civilisation by the number of nasty little doggie doo-doo bags littering the groun
d. It’s as if people who have picked up their pet’s poo can’t bear to carry it as far as the nearest receptacle. But that’s not the only kind of refuse lying there. Drink cans, broken bottles, chip papers and various other kinds of nasties littered the ground. I kept the dogs on short leads, didn’t want one of them cutting a pad on something sharp.

  After I’d taken the dogs back, I popped into Chloe Berkeley-Smythe’s place, cleared a pile of junk mail from behind her front door and watered her house plants. The cross on her kitchen calendar showed she wouldn’t be returning from her cruise for a few more weeks, so the pre-arrival clean of her house could wait. Chloe paid me a retainer to keep an eye on her place whilst she was away. As she spent most of her life cruising, this suited me very well.

  She only stayed at her home in Ashburton for a few weeks, usually just enough time to unpack her cases, launder her clothes, and repack before she was off on her next adventure. She was the most indolent and pleasure-loving person I had ever met and great fun to be with.

  Maisie, on the other hand, hardly ever left home, but she got her pleasure in other ways. As I let myself into her cottage, she was happily engaged in her favourite blood sport. ‘But how can you tell there’s something wrong with my computer,’ she was asking someone on the phone, ‘when I haven’t got a computer?’ There was a pause, a protest from the other end of the line. ‘Well, you never asked me!’ She slammed the receiver down with an evil chuckle.

  ‘How long did you keep that one going, Maisie?’ I asked, fending off an imminent attack from Jacko with my boot.

  ‘Ooh, a few minutes,’ she responded happily. ‘Few minutes they couldn’t be pestering someone else. That’ll teach ’em to ring me up, telling lies.’

  She was slacking. I’d known Maisie torment call-centre employees for twenty minutes or more before they finally realised what the dear little old lady on the end of the line was up to.

  She was resplendent in her black, beaver lamb coat with the fur collar, circa 1953, and a slightly dusty black velvet beret. These were her going-out clothes. I had rung her earlier and told her to be ready. I reckoned she could do with a change of scene and was taking her out for a little drive.

  ‘Where would you like to go?’ I asked, although I knew the answer already.

  The parish church of St Pancras in Widecombe is often referred to as the Cathedral of the Moor, not just because of its perpendicular windows and tall tower, but because of the way it sits in the landscape, amongst a patchwork of fields that seem to be there just to show it off, to act as a green backcloth to its loveliness; and despite the Devil’s attempts to smite it with a bolt of lightning, it has stood firm for five hundred years.

  Widecombe Fair had been held earlier in the month, but the fame of Uncle Tom Cobley and his grey mare meant that the tiny village of Widecombe-in-the-Moor was full of visitors whatever the time of year. And it was one of Maisie’s favourite places. After a little totter around the churchyard and the village green, Maisie’s hand clinging tightly to my arm, and a wander around the National Trust shop, set in the old sexton’s cottage, where she could draw in her breath in disgust at the price of the tea towels, we settled down for tea in the little cafe overlooking the green.

  ‘We were talking about you the other day,’ she informed me cheerfully as we sipped our tea, ‘at my church coffee morning. There was a new woman there, turned out she’s a neighbour of old Dolly Knollys’. Remember, we were talking about her? Up Daison Cottages?’

  I was all ears, my attention dragged from our picturesque surroundings. I couldn’t remember the woman’s name, just her face peering through the diamond-shaped hole in her trellis. ‘What did she have to say?’

  ‘Oh, just that poor old Dolly was all alone except for that great-grandson of hers, and he was at school all day, and how worried she was,’ Maisie rattled on. ‘And then she said she’d met this great big tall girl with a mass of curly ginger hair, who’d come to call on her—’

  Excuse me. Ginger?

  ‘And Nelly Mole said that could only be Juno Browne cos there wasn’t anyone else fitted that description round Ashburton … and we all said, yes, that’s right. And then old Tom Hopkins said that you wasn’t a great ginger girl, you was a flame-haired goddess, and Nelly Mole said to him, “You should be ashamed of yourself, Tom Hopkins, talking about goddesses, and you a Christian and a bell-ringer too.” Well, poor old Tom, he blushed beetroot—’

  ‘Maisie, can we just forget Tom for a moment, what did she actually say?’

  ‘Who?’ she asked blankly.

  ‘Dolly Knollys’ neighbour.’

  ‘Oh, ’er! Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Well, only that you was calling in from time to time, but that she didn’t think it was enough.’

  Olly’s neighbour had already stopped me on one of my visits, hailing me over the garden fence, asking how things were. I think the poor woman was only trying to be neighbourly; she offered to pop in on Dolly herself, keep the old dear company, and I had quite a job persuading her that this was not a good idea. She sleeps a lot, I’d said, and she gets very confused and distressed when she meets strangers. Best left alone. But I could tell she wasn’t convinced. As I took Maisie back to the car, I made a mental note to try to call in at Daison Cottages more often.

  We drove back through Holne Chase and Buckland, and stopped on the brow of the hill where we could get a clear view of Buckland’s church tower and its clock, another of Maisie’s favourites. The clock face has no numerals; in place of them, letters spell out the words ‘My Dear Mother’. I have no idea why. You have to start at nine o’clock and read clockwise for ‘My Dear’, and then go back to nine and read anticlockwise for ‘Mother’. I’ve no idea about that either.

  ‘It’s A past E,’ Maisie chuckled, and we had to sit and wait until R past E so that we could hear the clock chime ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ on the quarter hour. We drove on down the hill, slowing down to gaze lustfully at the huddle of picture-perfect thatched cottages set in a little glade.

  Maisie pointed out bare trees, the dark clumps of abandoned rooks’ nests set high up amongst the mesh of branches.

  ‘Rabbits’ nests – that’s what I used to tell our Janet when she was a little girl,’ she said. ‘I told her they were rabbits’ nests.’

  And I laughed, although she’d told me a hundred times before.

  Next morning, I did her shopping in Ashburton and walked along the lane behind St Andrew’s church, Jacko trotting jauntily on the lead, so that I could visit the garage and fix a date with Dave for the repair of White Van.

  In the garage yard I nearly changed my mind at the sight of a massive flatbed truck, piled with black silage bales, ‘Moss and Pike’ written clearly on its tailgate, ‘clean me’ etched beneath it in the dust. I crept up the side of the vehicle and peeped cautiously around. Sure enough, Green Bastard Hat was standing talking to Dave. It was the first time I’d seen him outside of his cab and been treated to the sight of the considerable paunch bulging over the belt of the jeans he was struggling to keep hitched up.

  I slipped back along the side of the truck and began to write on the dusty tailgate with one finger. I got so absorbed in what I was doing that I didn’t spot him coming until it was almost too late. ‘Here!’ he shouted. ‘What are you up to?’

  I didn’t know if he would recognise me as the driver of White Van. He hadn’t got a good view of me, as Emma had, but he took a step towards me. Jacko gave a warning growl, his lip writhing back to show his teeth.

  To give Green Bastard Hat credit, he wasn’t a man to underestimate the crunching power of a terrier’s jaws, even when the terrier in question is barely above ankle height. He hesitated, and in that moment Dave himself came around the truck, wiping his hands on an oily rag.

  ‘Everything OK?’ he asked, glancing from me to GBH.

  ‘Hi, Dave!’ I said brightly. ‘Can I talk to you about my van?’

  ‘Yes, let’s book you i
n. Step inside the office.’ He waved his hand in the direction of his workshop and I walked past Green Bastard Hat, Jacko still growling and muttering curses in his direction. GBH gave an impatient snort, got up into his cab and drove off with an angry grinding of gears and hissing of brakes. Through the grimy window of the office I watched him depart. He hadn’t read what I had written on the back of his truck, wouldn’t see it now until he reached the end of his journey. Then he could read two names: ‘Gavin Hall’ and ‘Ben Luscombe’, and a very large question mark, inscribed in the dust.

  ‘You’ve got a customer,’ Pat whispered excitedly as soon as I got in the shop door. She jerked her head in the direction of the storeroom. ‘Back there,’ she added, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Well, who is it?’ I asked, puzzled by the dramatics. ‘Someone we know?’

  She stifled a giggle with her hand. ‘Go and see!’ She tried pushing me in the direction of the storeroom.

  ‘All right, I’m going!’ I squeezed past Mavis in her witch’s hat and down the corridor, peering around the door frame a bit cautiously. There, admiring her reflection in the full-length mirror stood Detective Constable Cruella DeVille, wearing the white fake-fur jacket with the black spots. I stopped in the doorway, watching her as she turned the collar up, then flipped it back down, turning her head from side to side. She saw my reflection and a faint flush coloured her pale cheeks.

  ‘It really does look good on you,’ I told her honestly.

  ‘Yes, it does,’ she agreed, with a slight note of defiance, ‘even though you and your friends were laughing at my expense the other day.’

  ‘You mustn’t mind Ricky,’ I told her.

  ‘Oh, I’m used to it,’ she sighed, taking the jacket off and looking at the price tag.

  ‘What is your name?’ I ventured. ‘Your first name?’

  ‘Christine,’ she told me flatly. ‘And that doesn’t help, having to sign myself C. DeVille.’