THE POSTBOX MURDERS
Edmund Glasby
© Edmund Glasby 2015
Edmund Glasby has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 2016 by Linford Mystery.
This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 1
At eighty-seven, Betty Horfield was the oldest resident of the rural, South Oxfordshire village of Long Gallop, and yet, despite her age, she was one of the most active. Most mornings, come rain or shine, she managed to get in at least twenty minutes of gardening and with the size of her front lawn and the wide array of flower beds, not to mention the numerous hanging baskets which adorned her picturesque cottage, it was a task which kept her busy. In the colder months she occasionally hired Pinky Whelps – the handyman, gardener and refuse collector who lived in a caravan on the other side of the river – to help out, but on this fine Spring morning she was more than happy to do the work herself.
“Good morning, Betty,” greeted Elsie Paterson, leaning over the garden wall. Four years younger than Betty, she was the second oldest in the village.
Betty looked up at her lifelong friend. She was on her kneeling pad, trowel held tightly, a bucket filled with freshly pulled-up weeds nearby. “Ah, good morning. Lovely day again,” she commented, wiping the dirt from her hands with an old rag.
Resting a knobbly hand on the garden gate, Elsie paused for a moment, admiring her friend’s garden. It truly was spectacular; a blaze of colour and the scent from the roses was most pleasing. “Yes. The forecast is good for the rest of the day. I plan on getting the bus into town and I was just wondering if there was anything you wanted me to get.”
“Why, that’s very kind of you. Let’s have a think.” Betty thought for a moment. “I’m short of tea bags. You know the kind I like; the sort you can’t get at the shop … and a small brown loaf.”
“Tea bags and a small brown loaf.”
“Yes, that should do me until I get my big shop in on Saturday.” Arthritically and with the aid of her walking stick, Betty got to her feet, her joints creaking audibly. It was not so much the getting down as the getting up that hurt, although on bad days both were equally painful. “If you hang on a moment I’ll accompany you to the post office. I’ve a few letters I want to send.”
“My bus isn’t due for another twenty minutes so as long as you don’t take too long.”
“I won’t.” Betty entered her house and came back a short time later holding a handful of letters. “April’s always a busy month when it comes to birthdays,” she told her friend. “I’ve got three cards for Wiltshire, two for Wales, one for Scotland and one for America.”
“Are these all relatives?” Elsie asked, holding the garden gate open.
“Mostly. The one to America is for a good friend of mine, Harry Quimby. You remember him, don’t you?”
“Oh, of course. How is Harry?”
“Suffering a bit with his lumbago but well otherwise. It’ll be his ninetieth soon.”
“Good Lord! I wouldn’t have thought him a day over eighty!” With a helping hand, Elsie steered her friend on to the pavement. “I imagine sending a letter there’s quite expensive.”
“Very. It’s a good job I only do it twice a year – birthday and Christmas. I couldn’t afford it otherwise.” This was a blatant lie for it was well known in the village that Betty was comfortably well-off. She had no living siblings and had never married, consequently she had no dependents, and the money she had inherited from her parents could have bought a street in a much less well-to-do area.
Together the two old ladies set off down the quiet road heading for the post office.
In addition to having a reasonable bus service, Long Gallop was fortunate enough to have not only a post office, but a small doctor’s surgery, a church, a primary school and two public houses – The Red Lion and The Fox and Hounds – one on either side of the bridge.
“I hear that there are plans afoot to turn The Red Lion into one of those new wine bars,” commented Elsie as they neared the thatch-roofed inn. “Such a shame that would be.”
“I wouldn’t go believing all that you hear,” replied Betty. “They’ve been saying for years that it’s going to change hands, but it never has.” A devout teetotaller, she had never once set foot inside, despite her long years in the village. “And as to it becoming a wine bar, well, they’ll be quite a few in the village who’ll say ‘no’ to that. Myself, for one.”
“Did you know that old Andy Westbrooks has left the village?”
Betty was stunned. This was indeed news. “Andy? Left?”
“Apparently. Nancy Bothwell told me yesterday that he’s moved to Yorkshire to live closer to his grandchildren. He wasn’t in the best of health, you know. According to Mrs. Johnson at the surgery he was having trouble with his insides. He’d been to the hospital for a lot of tests.”
“Too much drink I suspect,” commented Betty. “He always was one for the bottle. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him since he got drunk on Ted Humphries’ homemade cider at the Queen’s Silver Jubilee celebrations last year.”
“That was a lovely day, wasn’t it?” Elsie said enthusiastically. Like most of her generation she was an ardent royalist.
Their progress was slow and doddery but they were now nearing the post office.
It had just gone eight o’clock and it suddenly dawned on Betty that she would not be able to post her letter to America until the post office counter opened at nine. The shop which it was annexed to had been open for several hours; selling papers, sweets, snacks and other bits and pieces.
“I’m going to catch my bus,” said Elsie. “Have a nice morning and I’ll try and pop round for a chat later in the afternoon.” She turned and headed for the bus stop about hundred yards on the other side of the road.
“Don’t forget my tea bags…and the bread.”
Elsie turned. “Don’t worry. I won’t forget.”
Betty watched her friend hobble down the road. She then headed for the post office, her letters grasped tightly in her hand. Her intention was to post the ones to the UK mainland and return later on in the morning to mail the card to America. She checked that all had first-class stamps on them and the proper addresses, then prepared to slip them through the slot of the black-based, red pillar box.
The first envelope met with some resistance and bent slightly before disappearing inside.
Betty paused for a moment. She had never known the pillar box to become so full – not even at Christmas time when the sheer volume of mail sent went up tenfold. She inserted her second envelope and once again had to push harder than expected to get the letter in.
It was then that a foul stink hit her nostrils. At first she thought it was due to the fertiliser that had been sprayed on the surrounding fields or perhaps even the landfill site two miles away. God alone knew how bad that could be when the wind blew in the wrong direction. This stink however seemed to be coming from somewhere much closer at hand and for a moment her mind entertained the idea that some prankster – perhaps one of the teenage Bentley twins – had put something unpleasant, such as dog excrement, inside the pillar box. It would be the kind of thing those two rascals would get up to.
Suddenly the post office door opened and Gary Thompson, the postmaster, stepped out. He saw Betty and waved. “Morning, Miss Horfield. Another fine day.” He was about to make another comment wh
en he too detected the unappealing reek.
“I think there’s something in your postbox.” Nose wrinkling in disgust, Betty stepped away, her five un-posted letters in her hand.
Thompson cursed under his breath. Moving forward, he noticed that the hatch appeared to have been wrenched open and then hastily closed. He bent down to investigate, opening the metal door.
Along with several blood-spattered letters, a naked, severed arm tumbled out and landed on the pavement.
Thompson leapt back in horrified surprise.
Betty screamed.
Regaining some level of composure, Thompson stared down at the bloody arm and then unwillingly raised his eyes, dreading what he might see.
A largely dismembered corpse had been crammed inside the pillar box.
Both legs had been lopped off and were now wedged tightly inside the metal container, one on either side of the mutilated torso. Mercifully, the head was turned so that he could not discern its features but from the jet black mop of unruly hair he had a fair suspicion as to who the unfortunate was – Pinky Whelps.
*
Less than an hour later, Detective Chief Inspector James Holbrooke watched and waited as two of his forensic team extricated the grisly body parts from the pillar box and put them in a black body bag. Dozens of photographs had been taken and everything in the vicinity that looked important had been dusted for fingerprints.
A tape barrier and a screen had been erected to ensure that the crowd of interested villagers were kept away and that they did not see the proceedings. News had spread like wildfire throughout Long Gallop and whilst the details were as yet known to but a handful there were many keen to see what was going on. Nothing like this had ever happened here, at least not in living memory. That this was serious everyone could tell for there were three police cars and an ambulance parked nearby.
Hugh Caldwell, the village’s richest man and lead gossip, had come up with the idea that there had been a bungled raid on the post office and that Gary Thompson had shot dead the burglars. Even Father Frank Jericho from the village church was on the scene, trying his best to reassure people.
Stan Orton, the lead forensic scientist, walked over to where Holbrooke stood, his face grim.
“Well this is a new one,” said Holbrooke. “Gives a completely new meaning to the phrase ‘it’s in the post’.”
Orton contained a wry chuckle. After fifteen years serving together he was used to the other’s macabre sense of humour.
“So apart from the obvious, anything you can tell me?”
“Well it would appear that the victim was this Mr. Whelps that Mr. Thompson named. The limbs have been severed somewhat brutally; heavy blows from a cleaver or some other bladed weapon. There’s also an impact trauma to the back of the head which I would guess was the primary wound. Probably caused by a hammer.”
“So you think he was knocked out first?”
Orton nodded. “It would appear so. Obviously a full post-mortem will tell me more but at this initial stage I’d say he was cracked over the back of the head; knocked out, taken elsewhere, stripped, dismembered and placed in here.”
“A very strange place to hide a body, wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t think ‘hide’ is the right word. After all, whoever did this must’ve known that the postman would collect the mail in the morning.”
“And I don’t suppose he had the right postage either.” It was a disrespectful thing to say but having seen so much death over the years Holbrooke had become inured to it. His making light of a situation others would have undoubtedly considered truly ghastly was his coping strategy; his means of dealing with things like this which he encountered on a regular basis. Only the day before yesterday he had been called out to an incident which had involved a man committing suicide by blowing his brains out with a shotgun. How he had eaten his spaghetti bolognaise for supper that evening was anyone’s guess.
“There are no stamps on the body if that’s what you mean,” answered Orton, dryly. “From the few blood spatters on the pavement I think it’s fair to assume that the body was transferred in a sheet of some kind.”
“I imagine the body was placed here sometime during the night.” Holbrooke took in his surroundings. The place was hardly a thriving hub of activity but surely no one in their right mind would contemplate something as outrageous during daylight hours. The again, surely no one in their right mind would consider doing such a heinous act in the first place. It seemed clear to him that this had to be the act of a psychopath; a severely deranged individual – surely only someone truly unhinged would ever dream of something as bizarre as this.
“I would guess so,” answered Orton.
“I notice that the wire cage has been removed.”
“What?”
“There should be a mesh cage behind the door to keep the letters in. It’s gone. No doubt it was removed in order to get the body in. Whatever sick bastard committed this did so in order to achieve maximum shock value unless it was someone with a severe grudge against the postal service.” Holbrooke could see that things were coming to a close in regard to the retrieval of the victim.
To his dismay, he noticed that one or two of the local reporters had now turned up on the scene and were in persistent conversation with some of the villagers and one of his constables. There was no disputing the fact that it was going to be extremely difficult to keep something like this under wraps.
The remains of Pinky Whelps were bagged and transported to the waiting ambulance.
Holbrooke’s Inspector – a fat, balding man named Tyrone Jackson – came out of the post office where he had been taking down details from the two who had discovered the dismembered corpse. Whilst carrying out his duties he had found time to buy a sausage roll and took a huge bite out of it. Brushing the pastry crumbs from his suit, he strode over to his boss. “Sir, there’s not much to go on but Mr. Thompson does think that he heard a vehicle outside some time during the night. He’s not entirely sure but would guess this to be around three o’clock.” He finished the last of his snack.
“And what of Mr. Phelps’ last movements?” Holbrooke asked.
“I’ve got two officers over at the caravan park at this moment. Apparently he was a bit of a drifter. Did a bit of odd-jobbing throughout the area.”
“Any known enemies?”
“No. Seems he was quite well-liked. From all accounts he kept himself to himself. We’ve had no success in tracking down any next of kin.”
“Hmm.” Holbrooke nodded. “Well, I don’t think there’s much more to do here. Try and get as many statements as you can but be sure not to give too much away in terms of the details. I think we’d better hold off making this public for as long as we can although I’ve no doubt that the press will get wind of it very soon. Right, I’m going back to the station.”
*
By eleven o’clock news of the gruesome murder was the main article on all the local radio stations and by midday it was featured on the national television. Over a dozen news reporters converged on Long Gallop. In the hourly broadcasts which followed, the reporters were filmed interviewing many of villagers; each of whom had their own take on the murder. Inspector Tyrone Jackson was there in his official capacity; fielding questions and doing his best to reassure the public that they were treating this as an isolated and exceptionally rare incident.
It was the four o’clock news bulletin that caught the attention of forty-three year old horologist and independent crime investigator, Richard Montrose.
Long Gallop was less than a ten minute drive from where he lived and as he went to his television and turned up the volume, he saw pictures of the rural village he had driven through on more than a few occasions. He watched, intrigued, as the pretty female news reporter covered the terrible murder, listening attentively to her every word. Once it was over, he got up, went over to his cluttered desk and jotted down the salient points on a pad.
For him, investigating unusual murde
rs had become an obsession. It was an unhealthy and at times ghoulish hobby that went way beyond the morbid curiosity of the general public.
He was only too well aware that people who murdered came in every size and shape; from every walk of life, from every age and culture, and the insights they offered into human nature fascinated him; knowing that no one, certainly not the criminal psychologists whom he had come to loathe, could ever truly explain just why killers carried out the terrible things that they did.
There had been nothing like this for a long time. A dismembered body found in a pillar box. As far as he was concerned, it was like a dream come true for therein lay a mystery to be sure. He would start his investigations by making some inquiries in the village. He had plenty of fake, yet genuine-looking, badges and methods of identification that would enable him to ‘sniff around’ without drawing too much attention.
*
It had just gone six o’clock when Montrose parked his vehicle in the car park of The Fox and Hounds public house. He had seen with his own eyes the infamous pillar box and was now planning on questioning some of the locals. In his mind, he had gone over the numerous possible approaches open to him – well aware that to draw too much attention could well be viewed as highly suspicious amongst Long Gallop’s inhabitants. He got out and locked up. Now that dusk was approaching, the temperature had dropped considerably and although it was a fine evening there was a certain coldness in the air, prompting him to put on his coat.
Upon entering, he was somewhat surprised as to just how busy it was. There were a dozen or so around the bar area whilst others were seated at tables partaking of their evening meals. It appeared that, despite the dreadful discovery of this morning, life went on regardless in Long Gallop.
Montrose waited to be served at the bar; ordering a pint of beer which he took over to a table near the door. Briefly he consulted the menu, contemplating whether to have supper here or not. The food on offer looked tempting and after a minute’s deliberation, he went back to the bar, pint in hand, and ordered himself a beef pie with mash and peas.
The Postbox Murders Page 1
