D&P23 - The Price of Butcher's Meat aka A Cure for all Diseases

by Reginald Hill

  “Now just ’cos you’re after the fat bugger’s job don’t mean you’ve got to sound like him,” reproved Ruddlesdin. “Any road, word locally is you’ve just got to spin a coin between the two most likely suspects.

  Smart money’s on the heir apparent, Sir Edward Denham, but there’s a lot reckon her brother-in-law by her first marriage, Hen Hollis, is worth a look, particularly if what they’re saying about the way she died is true. Is it, Pete?”

  “Depends what they’re saying.”

  “Roasted alive on her own barbecue.”

  “Thought that might be it. No, it’s not true. Yes, that’s where she was found, but she was dead before that.”

  “How?”

  “Strangled, probably, but that’s to be confirmed,” said Pascoe.

  You had to give to get, and in any case the sooner they stopped rumor from making what was bad enough sound grotesque, the better. “Why should roasting her appeal to this chap Hen Hollis?”

  “Hated her guts, evidently. Always ready in his cups to fantasize about her dying. And seems it were him as built the hog roast equipment for his brother. Also, here’s the clincher: By his brother’s will, when she died the family farm would revert to Hen.”

  “The family farm? You mean Sandytown Hall?” said Pascoe, surprised.

  “No! Does this look like a sodding farm? Place called Millstone.

  Her Ladyship let it go to rack and ruin, by all accounts, but like the song says, there’s no place like home.”

  They were now approaching the stable block. Wield must have been watching, for now he emerged and came to meet them.

  “Sammy, I told you not to hang about,” he said.

  “And I heard you. That’s why I’ve been wandering around town picking up some nice titbits for your boss,” retorted the reporter.

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  “For which I’m duly grateful,” said Pascoe. “Now perhaps it’s time to get back to your wanderings . . .”

  “Aye, I’ll go and polish up that headline. Remember, Pete, with the press behind you, the sky’s the limit!”

  “Titbits?” said Wield as they watched the journalist move off.

  Pascoe passed on what Ruddlesdin had said and also what he’d learned from the CSI. In return the sergeant handed him a fairly bulky plastic fi le.

  “Just to keep you up to date with everything we’ve got so far,” said the sergeant.

  “Right, fine,” said Pascoe. “This Ollie Hollis guy, the CSIs would like to see him ASAP for prints and DNA. I’m quite keen to talk to him too. Any word?”

  “Jug Whitby just called in. Hollis lives by himself at Lowbridge, a hamlet a couple of miles along the coast. He’s not there, neighbors haven’t seen him since this morning. Whitby’s tried the local. No sign. So now he’s casting around the other pubs in the area before heading back to Sandytown. This business must have shook Hollis up a bit, so not surprising if he’s gone in search of a drink. And company, maybe.”

  “Maybe,” said Pascoe. “Let’s get someone sitting on Hollis’s house while Whitby’s pub-crawling, okay?”

  “It’s taken care of. You’ll find a note in the fi le.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I got one of the lads to feed everyone on the guest list into the computer. It’s all in the fi le.”

  “Just give me a digest, Wieldy.”

  “The usual stuff came up, mainly road traffic offenses. And of course Roote, but we knew about him already. Only other person with a record was the victim.”

  “Lady Denham?” said Pascoe. “Make my day, tell me she’s got connections with the Russian mafi a!”

  “Not unless the Countryside Alliance is run from Moscow. Thirty T H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 2 0 1

  years back, assault on a hunt protester, bound over to keep the peace.”

  “And that’s it? Great work, Wieldy,” said Pascoe, old acquaintance permitting him to be ungracious to Wield in a way he stopped short of with Leach. “I think I’ll pop across to the hall to see this companion. You said you got a statement from her?”

  “In the file,” said Wield with the relentless certainty of Mephis-topheles talking to Faustus.

  “What about the niece and nephew? Let me guess, in the fi le too?

  They still around?”

  “I’d bet on it. Scared someone’s going to take off with the spoons as soon as their backs are turned,” said Wield. “You’ll be going up the Avalon to see the head quack and his nurse then, will you, Pete?”

  “I haven’t forgotten. And yes, before you ask, I’ll call in and say hello to Andy too. Sammy Ruddlesdin doesn’t seem to know he’s in the vicinity, thank heaven. Roote neither. I dread to think what he’ll make of it when he fi nds out.”

  What can he make of it? And who gives a toss? thought Wield.

  He said, “Talking of Roote, thought I’d head off now and get him out of the way. Oh, and the chief rang.”

  “Checking up on me, is he?” said Pascoe moodily.

  “No. Just wanted a progress report. I gather Lady Denham was well connected. I told him you were working too hard to talk just now, but everything was under control and you’d ring back later.”

  “To tell him supersleuth has solved the case in record time. I wish,” said Pascoe. “See you later, Wieldy.”

  The sergeant watched him go with some concern. This case is making him nervous and irritable, he thought. Can’t blame him with Roote rising from the grave, the chief constable getting anxious, and the Fat Man lurking in the woodshed!

  He went to his motorbike and punched the address he had for Roote into his new sat-nav. Specially designed for motorbikes, it was a present from his partner, Edwin. He’d tried it locally, and though 2 0 2

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  the upper-class female voice giving the directions was a bit of a pain, it had seemed pretty effective. Getting close to Franny Roote via the notoriously deceptive back roads of Yorkshire would be its fi rst serious test.

  For Pascoe too, he suspected.

  6

  There was a uniformed constable standing guard at the front door of Sandytown Hall. The grounds might be undefendable, but Wield was making sure nobody got into the building without authority.

  Pascoe didn’t recognize the young PC, but a smart salute confirmed his own recognition. He gave a friendly smile in return and went up the shallow flight of steps to the entrance porch.

  The front door was ajar but still he rang the bell. No need to start walking over people till it was necessary.

  A tall, slender, palely beautiful young woman in her early twenties appeared. Pascoe said, “Hello. Miss Denham, is it?”

  “No,” said the woman, slightly irritated. “I’m Clara Brereton.

  Who’re you?”

  Pascoe introduced himself, concealing (he hoped) his surprise.

  Unlike Hat Bowler, who was young enough to have enjoyed the kind of modern English education that didn’t clutter the mind with stuff like history and literature, Pascoe had allowed the name Clara and the term companion to create a picture of a desiccated spinster who got her kicks out of needlework. Wield could have put him right, he thought. It was probably in the bloody fi le!

  He followed Clara Brereton through a subbaronial entrance hall and down a wainscoted corridor into a small room furnished with an old sofa, a filing cabinet, and a computer station. She sat on the operator’s swivel chair and he took the sofa, which meant he was looking up at her.

  Her pallor, he judged, was as much her natural skin tone—a kind of pearly glow—as the result of shock. What ever, it certainly became 2 0 4

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  her. In fact, he concluded, taking in the disheveled hair and the red-ringed eyes, she was one of those fortunate people whom grief suited.

  Or unfortunate, depending on how you looked at it.

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you feel up to it,” he said.<
br />
  “Doing things stops me from just remembering,” she said. “I’ve been writing a full account of everything I can recall about Aunt Daphne’s . . . party.”

  Couldn’t bring herself to say hog roast, thought Pascoe, noticing that her eyes had filled with tears at the mention of the dead woman, making them shine even brighter.

  “So Lady Denham was your aunt?” he said. Wield had said cousin.

  A slip?

  “No, actually,” said Clara. “I think my grandfather was her fi rst cousin, so that makes me . . . well, aunt seemed a lot simpler.”

  She smiled faintly as she spoke, sunshine through broken cloud, an April sky.

  Pascoe found himself wanting to drive away even more cloud.

  Whoops! he thought. Remember the words of the master—fi rst bugger on the scene of a crime is chief suspect till you fi nd someone better.

  He said, “I’ll read your account later, of course, but I know how hard it is to do those things. Sometimes talking about events with someone brings back details you might forget in a written account. I expect with an event like this, you were into it more or less from the moment you got up?”

  “Oh yes. There’s a lot to do. Not that I mean I was doing much of it personally, but it was down to me to make sure that everyone else, like the caterers and so on, were here on time and knew what they were doing.”

  “So you supervised, and Lady Denham just left you to it, did she?”

  “More or less. Usually she’s very hands-on, but she seemed a bit T H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 2 0 5

  distracted this morning. She had a meeting with Sidney Parker, it didn’t seem to go too well. Sidney is . . . was . . . usually better than anybody at calming Auntie down if she got in a tizz, but today, it didn’t seem to work.”

  “This Sidney Parker . . .” Pascoe looked at the notes Wield had given him. “That’s Tom Parker’s brother?”

  “Yes. He works in the City, and he’s a sort of fi nancial con sultant to the consortium, and to Aunt Daphne too—privately, I mean.”

  “So this was probably a fi nancial meeting?”

  “I expect so.”

  “What time was this?”

  “About twelve thirty.”

  “And the party was due to start at two, right?”

  “Yes. The caterers had just arrived. They were setting up their tables. Alan Hollis—he’s the landlord at the Hope and Anchor—had just turned up to sort out the drink. Teddy Denham was out there, directing things . . .”

  “I thought that was your job?”

  She shrugged and said, “Teddy likes to help. He’s family, you know that? Him and his sister, Esther. Teddy inherited the title when his uncle, Sir Henry, died, and took over Denham Park and the estate, not that there was much left of it. Aunt Daphne still kept her title, of course, she was very proud of it . . . sorry, I’m wittering, aren’t I?”

  “You are doing exactly what I asked you to do,” said Pascoe. “So carry on wittering. You were saying Sidney Parker’s conversation with Lady Denham didn’t seem to leave her in a very happy frame of mind.

  Was that observation, or did she say something to you?”

  “No. It was just that Sid came out to the lawn where the tables were being erected and spoke to Teddy. Then from the house, through an open window, Aunt Daphne shouted, ‘Teddy, come in here if you please.’ And Teddy said, ‘I’m just making sure that they get these tables in the right position, Aunt,’ and she said, ‘I don’t know why you 2 0 6

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  should imagine that the organi zation of my party is any concern of yours. Inside! Now!!’ ”

  “Wow! Did she always speak to him like he was a pet dog?”

  He got the April glory again, more sun this time than shower.

  “That was how Aunt Daphne spoke to everyone some of the time and some of them all of the time,” she said. “But she seemed particularly out of sorts with Teddy today. In fact, it started the day before yesterday. I thought at first she was irritated because she hadn’t been invited to the Avalon meeting—”

  “Whoa! I’m an off-comer, remember?”

  “Sorry. There was a meeting at the Avalon Clinic. Something to do with putting the final touches to preparations for the Festival of Health launch next Saturday. That’s Tom Parker’s pet project; he’s very much into alternative therapies. In fact, the whole idea of health and healing is central to his vision of how things should develop here in Sandytown. Aunt Daphne is . . . was a little more commercially minded.”

  “But they are partners in this development thing?”

  “The consortium. Yes.”

  “How did that work, then, if they didn’t agree on policy? Did they quarrel?”

  She shook her head vigorously.

  “Oh no. Nothing like that, nothing that would have led to . . . I mean, Tom Parker’s the gentlest of men. . . . Anyone who’s suggested that he would be capable of violence is really out of order!”

  Pascoe put on his gently puzzled look and said, “No one’s suggested that, Miss Brereton, and I certainly wasn’t implying any such thing. I just want to understand how things stood between Lady Denham and her immediate circle of friends.”

  “Well, as far as the consortium went, it was very much a matter of give-and-take, I think. As in most relationships. Today’s party, for instance. To start with it was going to be a small reception up at the hotel to show appreciation to the main people involved in getting the T H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 2 0 7

  development plan moving—local investors, the council’s planning committee, that sort of thing. But I suspect that, because Aunt Daphne wasn’t hugely enthusiastic about the Festival of Health idea, Tom Parker went out of his way to make sure she took the leading role here. So it ended with her having the party at the hall, reviving her first husband’s traditional hog roast . . .”

  She got the phrase out with only a slight shudder. Pascoe nodded encouragingly.

  “. . . and generally acting as Lady Bountiful to everyone that mattered, and a few in her eyes who didn’t!”

  “Very generous of her,” said Pascoe.

  “Oh no. That was the beauty of it. She got all the credit, but the consortium picked up the bill.”

  “I see. But despite this, she was annoyed to find she hadn’t been asked to this meeting at the clinic?”

  “If it had just been a committee meeting, I don’t think she’d have minded. But Dr. Feldenhammer had laid on drinks and nibbles afterward, and various people not directly concerned with the festival organi zation were invited to that.”

  “So what did she do when she found out?”

  “She turned up, of course. And she made Teddy and Esther and me go with her. She liked a retinue.”

  “But you feel that she was irritated with her nephew on some other matter?”

  “I think so. Summoning him from Denham Park and making him go with her to the clinic was in part her way of cracking the whip.”

  “And did you feel the whip was cracked over you too?” said Pascoe, smiling.

  He got a glimmer in return as she said, “Oh no. A companion’s job is to accompany unless commanded not to. But she did seem very out of sorts yesterday. She went off first thing in the morning, I’m not sure where. And when she came back, she seemed very preoccupied.

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  Then she tried to get hold of Sidney, but he wasn’t available, and that didn’t please her.”

  “I see. You say she was still cracking the whip over Teddy today?”

  he said.

  “Yes. When she called him in, I must admit I was glad to see the back of him. He makes a lot of noise, giving directions, but really he’s pretty disorganized. Alan Hollis is quite different. He gets things done quietly and efficiently and we were just about finished by the time Teddy reappeared. Not that he showed any interest in resuming control.”

  “No? How did he seem then
?”

  “He looked ready to explode. If I had to guess—sorry, you don’t want to hear about my guesses, do you? Just what I saw, that’s what Sergeant Wield said.”

  “Sergeants aren’t allowed to go beyond facts,” Pascoe said gravely.

  “Chief inspectors are permitted to hear a maximum of three guesses a day.”

  That earned him another sunbeam.

  “He looked to me as if him and Aunt Daphne had just had a big row about something—”

  Suddenly she stopped and stared at him accusingly.

  “Look, this is stupid. I’m not saying . . . I mean, they were always having rows, all of us did. That’s the way Aunt Daphne worked. I think she thought of it as keeping people on their toes. You got used to being her favorite for a bit, then you took your turn in the dog-house. It didn’t mean anything!”

  “No one’s saying it did,” said Pascoe. “So just tell me what you saw.

  What did Ted do when he reappeared?”

  “He just went and stood with Sid Parker and they talked together, or rather Teddy seemed to be doing all the talking . . . Then Aunt Daphne came out to check that everything was in order, which it was.”

  “How did she seem?”

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  “Still a bit uptight, I felt. She gave Teddy and Sid a glower and they moved off out of range. Then she checked everything was ready and she actually said she was pleased with the way things were looking. Then she asked Alan Hollis if he had a moment to go over the paperwork relating to the bar with her and they went back to the house together. I finished off outside, then went back to my room to get cleaned up and changed into my party gear. And I got back downstairs a few minutes before the guests started arriving.”

  “Tell me about that. Who was fi rst?”

  “Miss Sheldon, the chief nurse at the clinic, showed up just a couple of minutes after two, a bit worried in case she was too early.

  Then very shortly after, Miss Lee, the acupuncturist, then Dr. Feldenhammer, he’s in charge at the Avalon, and after that they came thick and fast. I’ve been trying to work out the exact order, like Sergeant Wield asked, but it’s not easy. In the end we just let new arrivals fi nd their own way round to the garden because we were too busy making sure everyone got drinks and so on.”