‘Well, it happens, doesn’t it?’ said Cooley. ‘Kids are tough.’
‘What did you want to ask me?’ she said.
‘Did you know a Mrs Dorothea Wyatt? Of the Manor House?’ asked Cooley.
‘Yes, I know her. Not well. She’s nice – we all had tea there a bit ago. She saw us walking in the field and asked us in,’ said Valerie. ‘Why do you want to know? Has something happened to her?’ She went suddenly pale. ‘You said, did I know her . . . not do I—?’
‘You hadn’t heard?’
Valerie shook her head.
‘That man . . . has he—?’
‘It wasn’t quite the same,’ said Cooley. He’d better be blunt – get on with it. ‘I’m afraid she’s dead.’
‘Oh no! Oh, how dreadful! Why—how?’
‘She was attacked some time on Friday evening, in her house. She wasn’t raped. She was hit on the head with a table lamp,’ said Cooley.
Valerie simply stared at him, her face ashen.
‘We’ve been making inquiries round the village to get a picture of her movements that night. Someone came to see you yesterday, but you were out. So I came today,’ said Cooley.
‘But that’s . . .’ Valerie did not know what to say. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she whispered. ‘Not dead.’
‘Had you seen her lately?’ Cooley asked.
‘I can’t remember when I did,’ said Valerie. ‘I saw her car in the High Street – when? – Thursday, it would have been, when I was coming back after meeting the children at school. I didn’t actually see Mrs Wyatt. Just her car. I know it, it’s a Saab. She brought us back here in it, when we went to tea that day.’
‘I see,’ said Cooley.
‘Oh, poor Mrs Wyatt!’ said Valerie. ‘Was it a burglar?’
‘We don’t think so,’ said Cooley. ‘Nothing was taken.’
‘Could it have been that man . . . you know?’ Valerie shivered. ‘The one who came here? You think that was the man who killed the woman in Fletcham, don’t you?’
‘There’s no evidence for it,’ said Cooley. ‘It’s only a hunch I’ve got, because of the knife threat to you, and she was stabbed. Mrs Wyatt wasn’t stabbed.’
‘When was she found?’ asked Valerie.
‘Yesterday morning,’ said Cooley. ‘By a neighbour – a Mr George Fortescue. He went round to see why she wasn’t answering her telephone. Or so he says. Found the door unlocked and walked in.’
‘Oh, poor Mr Fortescue, after all that other trouble,’ said Valerie. ‘What a shock for him. It’s been the talk of the village. Of course, you don’t want to believe all you hear in a place like this, but the woman who cleans for him said he’d been taken in for questioning. Anyway, he was let go.’
‘Yes, but that was for lack of evidence,’ said Cooley. There’d been plenty of time for another killing.
‘Well, if it was the same man who came here – the one who did that murder – it wasn’t Mr Fortescue,’ said Valerie firmly.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘That was what I wanted to tell you,’ said Valerie. ‘I suddenly remembered something. It was his hand.’ She shuddered, thinking of it. ‘I’d looked at the floor – at the sander – somehow I couldn’t look at it. The hand, I mean. But then I suddenly saw it in my mind’s eye, holding the knife. It was horrid – short and stubby, with little ginger hairs on the back. Not thin.’ She looked at Cooley’s hands, which were on the table; he was playing with a spoon, digging with it in the sugar bowl. If Timmy did that, she’d make him stop. ‘Not like yours,’ she said. Cooley’s hands were large and smooth – quite like George Fortescue’s, but bigger. ‘Sort of plump,’ she added. ‘Mr Fortescue’s aren’t like that at all. I noticed at the butcher’s, yesterday.’
‘That’s important,’ Cooley said.
‘But you can’t think he killed Mrs Wyatt,’ said Valerie. ‘Why should he? They were friends. Besides, he’s a nice man. He wouldn’t do a thing like that.’
‘He was there. He was mixed up in the Fletcham business and there’s no lead to anyone else. He has to be eliminated,’ Cooley said.
‘But the real murderer will be miles away,’ said Valerie. ‘You’ll let him get away with it.’
‘I hope not,’ Cooley said. ‘If Fortescue’s innocent, we’ll find out. But it all takes time.’
After he’d gone, Valerie wished she’d told him of her plans to move to Middletown. Still, why should he be interested? He’d only come today for information.
Well, he’d got some.
For want of evidence, and because of assurances from his solicitor that he would not disappear, George Fortescue was allowed to go home on Sunday evening. Clothes removed from his house the day before showed no obvious sign of bloodstains; they had been sent to the laboratory to be examined. There had been no recent bonfire in the grounds of Orchard House, nor in any fireplace in the building, where incriminating items could have been destroyed.
He’d soon have nothing to wear, he told Bill Kyle, with wry, unlikely humour.
‘There will be more letters. More obscene telephone calls,’ he said wearily.
‘Burn the letters and leave the telephone off the hook, as you did before,’ said Bill.
‘Some people are accident prone. I seem to be murder prone,’ said George, making in the space of minutes only the second attempt at a witticism Bill had ever heard from him.
‘It’ll all blow over,’ he said soothingly. ‘It takes time to prove things either way.’
Bill was certain that George was not involved with the Fletcham case, but this time he wasn’t so sure. Being questioned about the other business might have tipped him over in some way, for he had been under a lot of strain since his wife went off. Dorothea might have provoked him. Bill had seen her behaving with some abandon when she’d had a drink or two and there were men around. There was no harm in her if you knew her and took it lightly, but George might have called her bluff. If he was charged, on what was likely to be slim evidence, he might get away with manslaughter, Bill calculated gloomily.
George insisted that he must return to the office the next day. He’d go mad otherwise, he told Bill, with nothing to do but brood about what might happen next. Because the police still had his Rover, they arranged that Bill would take him to the station the next morning.
Daniel and Vivian had returned uneasily to Fletcham, ready to come back instantly if they were needed. Susan and Leo had gone back to London, and Susan’s brother Mark had returned home, though he would have to attend the inquest, arranged for Tuesday. No funeral plans could yet be made. It was a dreadful business, thought Bill, as he drove away from Orchard House at last, sighing over the conflicting obligations of friendship and professional duty.
22
The Trimms spent a quiet Sunday.
News of the Crowbury murder was prominent on the front pages of the Sunday papers.
‘In Crowbury!’ said Nancy. ‘Just fancy! No one’s safe. Burglars, I expect. You said she had some lovely pieces, dear.’
‘Yes,’ said Ronald. ‘I sold her a jug only on Thursday. That black basalt one you mended so nicely, dear. She was very taken with it.’
‘It made her last hours happy, I expect,’ said Nancy, threading a needle with maroon wool. She was making a tapestry cushion cover.
Ronald gave the van a good clean after breakfast, taking the vacuum to the floor of it, and polishing the bodywork. His soiled trousers were safely stowed under the driver’s seat. In the afternoon, he and Nancy went for a walk, through the park and beside the river. It was cold and raw, but the days were drawing out. Spring would not be long.
Ron looked about for Lynn when they reached home, but he did not see her, though her father was in the garden, doing some digging. They talked for a while across the fence. Keith Norton was disturbed by the news from Crowbury. There had been no mention in the papers of the alleged rape in the Tellingford area some weeks before, but Keith felt there could be a connection and was worried
about Lynn.
‘I’m sorry she’s being so foolish about the job,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem right to expect you to give her a lift in the mornings when she’s behaved so badly.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Ronald. ‘Young people are hard to understand. I expect she’ll change her mind quite soon and want to come back.’
‘I hope so,’ said Keith. ‘I’d be glad to feel she was having a lift in the mornings, just until this business is cleared up.’
‘Of course. As long as she doesn’t keep me waiting,’ Ronald said, and went into the house, humming.
But the next morning, when Ron got the van out, Lynn was not to be seen, and her mother came running down the drive when Ronald blew his horn impatiently.
‘I’m so sorry, Ronald,’ she said in a worried voice. ‘I don’t know what’s got into Lynn. Peter came and they went off together ten minutes ago.’
Ronald drove off, scowling. He was still scowling as he stopped at the cleaners with his trousers.
Mondays were always quiet at the shop. He rearranged the window, putting to the front some Delft ware and a glass case containing some medals he’d bought recently. Old Colonel Villiers might be interested in them. It gave him a chance to look out at the village street but, though there were still cars about that belonged to the press, and an occasional police car went by, no one came in to ask him more questions. He went across to buy the Sun and the Daily Mirror but neither had any theory about the crime. They mentioned that the body had been found by a neighbour, Mr Fortescue, who had made a statement at the police station and had refused to comment when he left.
Ronald smiled when he read that.
Detective Chief Superintendent Brownley was the officer in charge of the CID for the area that included C division and Fletcham, and D division, covering Tellingford.
On Monday morning he faced the unpleasant fact that there were two unsolved murders in his area. Neither was your run-of-the-mill attack on a prostitute or battering of a wife by her husband in a domestic brawl; each was the death of a woman of good character, middle-aged or older, from a respectable, even prosperous, background. They did not seem to be connected.
Routine investigations were proceeding in both cases but with no good result so far. In the first case, a man named George Fortescue had been held for questioning but had been released. It was this same man who had found the body of the second woman.
It must be more than mere coincidence.
Brownley called a conference in Middletown for Monday afternoon. Detective Chief Inspector Hemmings from Tellingford and Detective Inspector Maude from Fletcham were bidden there to meet him.
Nancy got through her work in good time on Monday. She finished a repair to a large, rather ornate Victorian teapot that had taken some time because she had had to make a mould for the handle. It looked good; she was proud of it.
In the afternoon she did the ironing, the washing having whirled itself automatically round during the hour after breakfast while she cleaned the house.
When the ironing was done, she looked through Ronald’s clothes. There might be a button to stitch on more firmly, something to wash that she’d overlooked. Sometimes, when he put his sweaters away, he didn’t fold them as neatly as she would like, and the things he wore for gardening needed attention from time to time. She knew exactly what he owned.
She could not find the black polo-necked sweater he often wore at weekends, nor a pair of trousers he’d been wearing to the shop for the last week. He’d had a different pair on today, the dark brown ones that looked so good with his corduroy jacket. She hunted in the wardrobe in case the hanger had somehow got wedged between others, but the trousers were not there. His knitted balaclava helmet, the one she had made for him, which he wore in the garden on very cold days to protect his ears, was missing too, and a scarf. That was odd. She must ask him about them when he came in. Perhaps he had torn the trousers, or spilled something on them, and didn’t want her to know. How silly! As if she’d be angry with him! She’d just scold him gently for carelessness. It was funny about the other things, though; he wore the helmet only for gardening. Perhaps it was in the shed. He might be wearing the scarf today, as it was cold, but she hadn’t noticed it when he went off and she always looked him over before he departed, making sure he was neat. You couldn’t trust men, she thought fondly, tucking a sock foot inside the leg so that it was folded ready to put on.
George felt so tired. He had had a dreadful forty-eight hours. His colleagues at the office commented on his pallor; some had seen in the newspapers that he had discovered the dead body of his murdered neighbour. His secretary, who had a kindly nature and had been with him a long time, suggested he should go home early on Monday. He had had a shocking experience, she said, and it would take time for him to recover.
George wanly smiled at her. What would she think if she knew the police suspected he had killed Dorothea Wyatt, who had been his friend?
He took her advice and caught the four-forty train, where he sat with a book about maritime adventures in the time of Nelson open on his knee, not taking in a word.
At Tellingford, as he crossed the footbridge over the line, he could see a police car parked in the station yard. Blind panic hit him.
He saw it all. An officer had been sent to arrest him at work, had learned he had left early, and they were intercepting him. Two officers, very likely, one to clip on the handcuffs which so far he’d been spared. They’d be waiting by the ticket-collector’s sentry-box. They’d have found some new way of connecting him with poor Dorothea’s death.
Something inside him snapped. He turned back the way he had come, across the bridge to the down-line platform. There must be a way through the fence somewhere along the line. He hurried, hoping to make his escape while the train still blocked the vision of those on the other platform. Passengers crossing the bridge looked surprised as he mumbled something about leaving his glasses on the train, hurrying past.
He ran down the platform as the train moved forward. There was a wooden fence at its side, extending beyond it, and mesh wire after that, but George ran on, fleet of foot from his months of jogging, until the wire gave way to more fencing at the ends of gardens, and at last there was a broken piece, visible in the light from the railway. He scrambled through, into the garden beyond.
There was no sound of pursuit.
George made his way towards the house, a black mass at the end of the short garden with cracks of light showing between drawn curtains. He caught his leg against a cold frame and hurt his ankle. He hobbled on. There must be a way round the house and into the road. He moved quietly, and found a gate at the side of the garage. He unlatched it and went through, and met a line of washing which flapped in his face. A cat ran between his legs and yowled loudly. George, in alarm, almost yowled too, but he bit back his yelp, beat his way out of the washing and ran on, down the front path and into the road.
A door opened behind him and he heard voices. There was a shout. He’d been seen.
He ran on blindly, fast, not knowing where the road led and without a plan.
The police officer driving the car which he had seen at the station was not waiting for George. He was meeting a colleague who had been in London to give evidence in a case being heard up there.
Ronald, too, cut short his working day, closing the shop early. He had three missions.
First, he went to the cleaner’s in Tellingford to collect his trousers. He put them, on a wire hanger in their cellophane bag, into the back of the van. Next, he bought Nancy some flowers, a bunch of bronze chrysanthemums; she’d like those. He placed them, wrapped in the florist’s green and yellow printed paper, beside his trousers.
Then he drove to the school gates.
He might be too late. Most of the pupils went home before this; he had seen some of them walking through the town as he did his errands. But Lynn sometimes stayed on for a music lesson, or a play rehearsal. He’d wait an hour. If she didn’t
come, he’d try tomorrow. In the end, he’d get her.
No one else should have her. Afterwards, he’d have to kill her. It was a pity – she was so fresh and sweet – but it would be necessary. She would be a sacrifice, and by that he would be purged. She was small and slender and would be light to carry; he could leave her in a ditch. Then he would be safe – safe from discovery and safe from torment.
It began to rain as he sat there in the van, watching the school entrance. A few girls came out together, none of them Lynn, then a group of boys on bicycles. After that a car drove out of the gates. Then there were two boys and three girls, in a laughing group.
A girl was coming out alone. It was Lynn!
If she tried to refuse his offer of a lift, he’d point out that her father would think it odd of her, when he’d particularly wanted her to avoid being out alone in the dark. Ronald would tell her father, he would say.
But Lynn didn’t refuse.
In a way, she felt quite pleased when she saw Uncle Ron’s van in the road and he called her through the window. It was never nice going home in the rain; she’d get wet, waiting for the bus. And she did feel bad about him. She’d tried to stop thinking about those magazines, and the clothes. People did dress up, act kinky; she knew that. She had a lot of theoretical knowledge. She hadn’t told Peter about the things she’d seen in the desk; somehow she couldn’t. She’d just asked him to meet her on the way to school that morning, so that there would be no problem about going in the van, but she’d felt several guilty pangs since at going off without a word.
She climbed in without protest, smiling and uttering thanks.
Uncle Ronald had not got out of the car to open the door for her; he did not touch her as she settled herself beside him. They’d soon be home.
Hand of Death Page 20
