Dead on Dartmoor

by Stephanie Austin

  ‘Bishop of Llandaff,’ she repeated, dabbing crumbs from her plate with a wet forefinger.

  ‘It’s a variety of dahlia,’ I cried, catching on. ‘The Bishop of Llandaff is a variety of dahlia. That’s right isn’t it, Dolly?’

  ‘Would you like to come and see the dahlias in my garden, Mrs Knollys,’ April offered politely, ‘before the frost gets them?’

  Judith-Marianne paused, crumbs on fingers, and scowled at her. ‘No! Shut up!’ Her moods, it seemed, changed as suddenly as the weather. April’s smile had taken on a rigid quality, like the grin on a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  ‘I think it might be time for that tune now, Olly,’ I said hastily.

  ‘Oh, right!’ He opened the case and assembled the instrument from its various compartments. April and I watched him, fascinated. Judith-Marianne took no notice at all and helped herself to more cake.

  The bassoon is a very long instrument and the player wears a shoulder strap to help support the weight. Even with this help, Olly had to sit down to play, the end of the bassoon balanced on his shoe. He licked his lips nervously, tried a few experimental notes, fussed with the reed in the mouthpiece, and then played a simple tune.

  It was lovely. I didn’t recognise it, but Judith-Marianne did. She began to la-la softly in time.

  After a few moments, April rashly tried to join in too.

  ‘No! No!’ Judith-Marianne threw her plate to the floor, scattering crumbs and icing sugar. ‘Not you! Not you!’

  ‘Dolly!’ I cried. ‘That’s not very nice!’

  She burst into tears.

  ‘That’s quite all right.’ April hastily bent to pick up the plate from the carpet. Olly stopped playing, disengaged himself from the bassoon and slightly nervously went to comfort his nan, patting her on the shoulder. April handed the plate back to me. ‘Perhaps I should go now,’ she whispered. ‘It was very nice to meet you, Mrs Knollys.’

  ‘I’ll show you out.’ I led her down the hall towards the front door. ‘I do apologise for Dolly,’ I said softly. ‘You can see how difficult she is.’

  ‘Oh, I understand,’ April assured me, nodding wisely.

  ‘The way she reacts to visitors sometimes … well, it just makes life more difficult for Olly.’

  She was nodding furiously now, like a toy dog in a car’s rear window. ‘I think that boy’s a marvel!’

  ‘Oh, he is!’

  She was hopping from foot to foot, desperate to get away, so I kept her talking another ten minutes. I wanted to be sure she wouldn’t come back in a hurry. Every minute or so, Olly appeared in the living room doorway. He seemed to be trying to signal something to me, but I ignored him. ‘I apologise again for Dolly.’

  ‘Don’t you think,’ April suggested tentatively, ‘that Oakdene is where she really belongs?’

  ‘Oh, you are so right, April!’ I agreed. ‘And don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll be there before much longer.’

  We said our goodbyes and I finally closed the door on her. I leant against it, letting out a groan of relief.

  ‘Has she gone?’ Olly appeared in the living room doorway.

  ‘She has.’ I looked at my watch. ‘It’s time I got Judith-Marianne back to Oakdene. Is she all right? She’s gone very quiet.’

  ‘Of course she has,’ Olly answered. It was only then I noticed how pale he was looking, his blue eyes huge with shock. ‘She’s dead.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘What happened?’ I was desperately feeling Judith-Marianne’s veined wrist for a pulse. Finding none, I touched her neck.

  ‘I’ve done all that,’ Olly told me, watching my efforts. ‘She’d quietened down a bit, so I got the dustpan and brush. I was brushing up the icing sugar,’ he pointed to the carpet where she’d thrown the cake, ‘and I looked up, and she was sort of slumped over, like she is now. I thought she’d just nodded off. I got a bit worried after a few minutes, and you were still talking … so I tried to wake her up.’ He watched me as I tried to find her heartbeat.

  ‘She’s gone, isn’t she?’

  ‘I’m afraid she is.’ I sat back on my heels and studied her, eyes closed, her head drooping towards her chest. She looked entirely peaceful. ‘Poor old soul.’

  ‘Can’t we use her?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Can’t we pretend she’s really my nan, get the doctor to come, sign a death certificate—’

  ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. A doctor can only sign a death certificate for a patient he knows, someone he’s been treating, otherwise there has to be an autopsy. We couldn’t risk it. We don’t know who her real doctor is. What if we phoned the surgery and her real doctor turned up and knows she isn’t the person we’re pretending she is?’

  ‘Well, what are we going to do then?’ he demanded, trembling voice rising high in excitement. ‘I’m not putting her in with my nan!’

  ‘No, no, I wasn’t going to suggest that,’ I assured him. ‘I’ve got to get her back to where she belongs … Listen, go outside, sneak down the front path and see if April’s closed her front curtains.’ I hoped she might have done, it was already dark outside. But Olly came back to report the curtains were wide open. He could see April in the light of her television, her gaze fixed upon the screen.

  ‘Well, we’ll have to risk it.’

  We sneaked down the front path, Judith-Marianne loaded gently into the wheelbarrow. ‘It would have helped if you’d got this bloody wheel oiled,’ I hissed as it squeaked unrelentingly at every turn. Olly kept looking over his shoulder, making sure April was still transfixed by her television programme. We made it as far as the gate, bumped the wheelbarrow into the road behind the van and round to the passenger door where, with a great deal of difficulty, we loaded our burden carefully into the front seat. I buckled her in.

  ‘Do you want me to come?’ Olly asked, obviously praying that I’d say no.

  ‘You stay here. Wash up the tea things and get on with your homework. You know nothing about this, understand? Absolutely nothing!’

  ‘What if you get caught?’

  ‘I won’t,’ I promised, with a lot more certainty than I felt. ‘Now, did you get that phone number?’

  He passed me a scrap of paper. ‘I looked up their website on the laptop.’

  ‘Good boy.’ I took the paper from him. ‘And don’t worry about April.’ I watched her, illuminated by the flickering glow. ‘She won’t be back in a hurry.’ I promised to phone him as soon as I could and buckled myself in the driver’s seat. ‘Right then, Judith-Marianne,’ I said to the silent figure by my side. ‘Here we go.’

  I drove very slowly and carefully. It was stupid, looking back on it: it didn’t matter to poor Judith-Marianne how I drove, but I was trying, in some idiotic way, to drive with reverence. She had done Olly and me a good turn, saved our bacon, and I was determined to treat her with respect. I kept glancing her way, her head nodding gently as we drove along, her eyes closed peacefully, still hoping that she might suddenly stir into wakefulness, into life, even though I knew her poor old heart had given up and she’d never wake again. I slowed the van to a halt on the brow of the hill and pulled out my mobile phone. I dialled the number Olly had found for me and waited for someone to pick up, my eyes still fixed on Judith-Marianne.

  ‘Oakdene,’ a crisp voice answered, and I asked if I could speak to Barbara or Camille.

  It was dark by the time I drove through the gates. The windows of the care home were lit up and I could see the evening meal taking place in the dining room, residents gathered around the tables. I drove quietly by, around to the tradesman’s entrance. As I rounded the corner, I saw Camille hovering nervously by the path, her big forehead pale in the gloom, her hands clutching the handles of a wheelchair. I stopped beside her and wound the window down.

  ‘Pull up by kitchen door,’ she instructed softly. ‘Is safe. Boss is serving dinner with residents.’

  ‘Where’s Barbara?’

  ‘She help boss. But she knows.’

  I parke
d the van as directed and Camille wheeled the chair to the passenger door. Carefully, gently, we loaded Judith-Marianne into it.

  ‘Where you find her?’ Camille asked. ‘In road again?’

  ‘Yes.’ Well, at least that part of it wasn’t a lie. ‘I was bringing her back and she suddenly passed out. When I realised she was dead I thought I’d better phone and speak to you. I don’t want you girls to get in trouble because of her running off again.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Camille said devoutly. ‘If she found dead in road it would be very bad. We might lose job.’

  We wheeled Judith-Marianne into the garden, to a little wooden bench under a cherry tree. ‘This her favourite place,’ Camille told me as we lifted her onto the seat. ‘She often sit here.’

  ‘You won’t leave her out here long?’ It was dark and getting cold. I didn’t like the thought of leaving her there. I wanted to wrap a blanket around her shoulders.

  ‘Soon as you’re gone, I run in, tell boss I find her room empty. We will all search. Soon we find her here.’

  ‘You’re sure you’ll be all right?’

  ‘Yes. Best you go. Quickly.’

  I took a last look at the little figure sitting on the seat. I reached out and touched her soft, silver hair. ‘Did you know that she could sing?’ I asked Camille. ‘And play the piano?’

  ‘No,’ she answered sadly. ‘I never knew that.’

  ‘Thank you, Judith-Marianne,’ I whispered and kissed her on her forehead. I hurried back to the van and drove slowly down the path and out through the iron gates.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  No news is good news. At least that was the way I was looking at it. All night I was expecting some feverish call from Barbara or Camille telling me that something had gone wrong, that the doctor had been suspicious about Judith-Marianne’s death, that he wanted a post-mortem. But when Barbara finally phoned, late the next morning, it was to tell me that everything had gone according to plan, and the doctor was happy that she had died of natural causes. No post-mortem, no inquest. All was well. I’d relay the good news to Olly later on.

  I drove up onto Holne Moor. It was a beautiful day, calm, clear and still, a complete contrast with the wild night when I had last driven up there. I stopped where I had stopped then, searching around for whatever it was that might have hit my wheel, but there was no evidence of any collision with wildlife, no furry corpse, no carrion-pecked offal lying in a heap by the roadside. It remained a mystery.

  A bigger mystery was what the hell had happened to Nathan Parr. I was still sore about him standing me up, hoping that it hadn’t been part of some plot of Jamie’s, that there was some genuine reason why he’d failed to show at the pub and that, sometime, he would get in touch.

  I decided not to turn around but to carry on up the road for a few miles. I had an hour free, and the thought of going straight back to the shop was depressing. I would follow the road as it looped around Venford Reservoir and take a look at the water. On my way back, I might grab a quick sandwich in the little cafe in Holne.

  A mile further on I slowed to a stop. To the left of the road a ribbon of blue and white police tape was stretched between the gorse bushes, marking off a section of ground that fell away steeply, the short grass scattered with boulders. A metal sign had been set up at the verge, an appeal for witnesses to a fatal road accident that had occurred at this spot on Tuesday evening. A car had come off the road and crashed. It seemed no other vehicles had been involved. Police were appealing for anyone who had been driving this road on Tuesday evening to get in touch.

  I got out of the van and a man walking his dog hailed me with a wave. I bent to pat the black and white sheepdog snuffling around my boots. ‘Do you know what happened here?’

  He pointed to a distant house, just visible through a screen of bare trees. ‘I live up there.’

  It must feel isolated. No wonder he liked to chat to strangers. ‘Someone must have reported it early. I was out walking the dog yesterday morning and the police were already here. They were just taking the car away.’

  ‘And the driver was killed?’

  He nodded. ‘You can see the tyre tracks. He must have been driving at one hell of a speed to come off the road there. Mind, it was a filthy night. Police think he must have been drunk. He hit those smaller rocks,’ he said, pointing, ‘the car must have flipped over and slammed into that great lump of granite. He wouldn’t have had a chance. The front of that car was mangled—’

  A sickening sense of dread was settling inside me. ‘Could they identify him?’ I asked.

  ‘Not from the body. That had already been taken away when I got here. They were just loading the car onto a lorry. It was a nice little Jag, too. Complete write-off, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ I repeated dumbly.

  ‘Personalised number plate,’ he went on. ‘It’s funny the things that stick in your mind. I suppose it’s because I’m a golfer—’

  I frowned at him. ‘What?’

  ‘The number plate − N12 PAR,’ he responded brightly. I must have just stared at him because he felt it necessary to explain. ‘Golf, you see? Par?’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ I said. ‘I get it.’

  I got it. I understood why Nathan hadn’t turned up for our meeting at the pub, and that he wouldn’t be getting in touch. I understood Jamie’s barely concealed laughter when I had told him Nathan had stood me up. He was laughing because he knew that Nathan was already dead; and because he had murdered him.

  My first thought was to contact Inspector Ford, tell him everything, beginning with Moss and Pike trying to ram my van with their lorry. For that was what had happened to Nathan, I was sure. They must have lain in wait for him, in that monstrous truck, run him off the road, caused him to crash. And when I’d seen them on Tuesday evening, when I was crouching in the ditch behind the gorse bushes, they were returning from the scene of his murder. But how could I tell the inspector about what had happened without involving Olly? He was the only one who could verify what I said. They might want to speak to him, to his parent or guardian.

  Instead, I phoned the police number advertised on the sign at the site of the accident. I explained that I had been driving on the road that night, that I had seen a vehicle coming from that direction, a Moss and Pike lorry being driven very fast and, in my opinion, recklessly. I had been forced to swerve to get out of its way and nearly ended in a ditch. No, I didn’t get its registration number. Was it definitely a Moss and Pike lorry? Yes, it was. The officer thanked me very much. They would certainly investigate.

  I was late getting back to the shop, and by the time I arrived, Pat was getting fretful.

  I apologised and she shot me a sideways glance over her clicking knitting needles. ‘Everything all right?’ she asked.

  ‘Fine.’ I felt spaced out, numbed by Nathan’s death. I didn’t want company. ‘You go on home, Pat.’

  ‘You look awful.’ She rolled up her knitting and stabbed her needles into her ball of wool. ‘You sure you can cope?’

  ‘I think I just need an early night.’

  She didn’t look convinced but had to get back to the animals and so left. I was glad she’d gone. I didn’t feel like talking, didn’t want to answer questions. I spent all afternoon messing about with my stock. By the time I turned the sign on the shop door to ‘Closed’ and locked up behind me, the weather had turned dank and dismal. It just about matched my mood. A low mist skulked over the rooftops and the slick cobbles shone with wetness, with drops of moisture too fine to see except where they danced in the haloes of lighted street lamps. I turned up my collar. I needed some cash. I’d have to walk to Ashburton’s only cash machine.

  Most of the shops were locked and in darkness, their sensible owners having already called it a day. Just one or two antiques dealers, ever hopeful, were bringing in the stock they displayed outside their shops on the pavement. We exchanged goodnights as I went by.

  I crossed the road into St Lawrence Lane. T
he whole town seemed deserted. Perhaps everyone else knew something I didn’t. By habit I cast a glance over my shoulder as I fed my card into the cash machine. I caught a flicker of movement at the corner of my vision, a pale shape that was there one moment and not the next. When I swung around for a proper look, the street was empty. But all the time I typed in my pin and waited for my cash I felt a tickle of unease at the back of my neck, a sense of being watched. I stuffed the card and notes straight into my pocket, not bothering to fiddle with the zip of my purse and bag and carried on down St Lawrence Lane.

  Someone fell into step behind me. I walked on, past the tower of St Lawrence’s Chapel, and then dropped down on one knee, pretending to tie a lace on my trainers. A burly figure yards behind suddenly stopped and peered into the window of a shop. The shop was in blackness, he wouldn’t have been able to see much. But I could see him, lamplight shining down on his overhanging belly, his fat face, his green woolly hat. My heart throbbed in panic.

  I pretended not to have seen him, stood up and carried on. I quickened my pace and so did he, his heavy footsteps pounding the pavement. As I reached The Silent Whistle I peered in through the lighted windows. This early in the evening no one was inside, no chance of losing him in a packed bar. Instead I crossed the road and walked on past a terrace of houses. At the end of the terrace I had a choice. If I could lose GBH now, just for a few seconds, when he reached the corner, he wouldn’t know which direction I had taken. I ran.

  I heard a muffled curse behind me. Footsteps broke into a shambling jog. Green Bastard Hat was heavy, but he wasn’t fit. He was no runner. I knew I could outrun him. I could veer right, but then I’d have no choice but to fling myself into the traffic of the dual carriageway that bypassed the edge of town. My best chance of losing him lay straight in front of me. I sprinted across the road and headed for Love Lane.

  But sometimes, what seems to be the best choice turns out to be the worst. Love Lane is long and straight with just one dog-leg turn towards the end, and so narrow it’s possible to touch the stone walls rising on either side without stretching. Like a running track, Love Lane was a place where I could build up speed, leave GBH puffing along behind. Except that a single wet leaf on the ground betrayed me. I skidded, my feet slid from under me and I landed flat on my back, winded, my breath shocked out.