The Red Chairs Mystery

by L. D. Culliford

  ‘Oh, yes… I should have mentioned it,’ Rich replied. ‘There’s a big one near the entrance, also very faded and obviously out of date... It says, “Ponyrest Place… Cremations with dignity for your beloved pet”. There’s a phone number, but I’ve tried ringing and it’s no longer operational, must have been disconnected.’

  ‘Okay… Thanks Rich’, Holly answered. ‘Let’s look into it together in the morning. Well done!’ Then she went to find a computer.

  ***

  After his radiotherapy, Daniel had gone straight home, feeling weak. He managed to heat up and drink a can of soup, eating some dry bread with it, then went to lie down. An hour or two after that, while mercifully asleep, he had what was later diagnosed as a stroke. He was unconscious the following morning, but still breathing, when Holly and Rich arrived and found him at Ponyrest Place.

  They had met up earlier at Greenings, where several people were already packing up at their desks, having received re-assignment emails from DI Garbutt, acting independently. Despite assurances, she had not discussed anything with her subordinate. Those remaining gathered round as Holly related what she had discovered from her computer search the evening before.

  ‘Ponyrest Place was being run for about twenty years from the mid-1980’s by someone called Anderson… First name Sybil’, she began. ‘Like Halstead and Makepeace, and the others we have looked into so far, this was an operation offering special collection, storage and cremation services for farm animals, licensed by the LMSSA until 2004, when it presumably closed for business. It was a small concern which, as the name implies, seems to have focused especially on disposing of children’s pet ponies.’

  ‘How sweet!’ someone said at the back of the room, clearly impressed.

  ‘You had a pony, then, Sally, did you?’ Holly smiled.

  ‘I didn’t have my own exactly’, Sally Blackshaw responded, ‘But I did ride them, yes. I loved it.’

  ‘Okay’, Holly was brusque now. ‘We’re off to have another look at it… Come on Rich! We’ll take your car again, shall we?’

  It was lighter when they got there than it had been the evening before, and they could see more through the ground-floor windows. Holly was on the phone for the Fire Service and an ambulance straightaway. They had spotted Pennycuik’s body, looking lifeless on the couch.

  The men from the Fire Brigade soon forced the main gate open, and then the door into the house. Once inside, the ambulance team took control, ascertained that, although unrousable, the patient was alive, transferred him to a stretcher, put an oxygen mask over his face and put up a saline drip.

  Holly, meanwhile, was looking around in the next room, which seemed to be some kind of office. There was, she noticed, a faded calendar from 2004 on the wall above the desk, which was strewn with documents, letters – some opened, others not – an old phone book, tattered farming magazines and various other forms of literature. Some of the correspondence was addressed, she saw, to Mrs Anderson, but the name on the rest was D Pennycuik. For some reason, the name seemed slightly familiar.

  Meanwhile, Rich was searching the yard and other buildings. A rusting old brown Subaru estate occupied the former, the keys still in the ignition. Peering inside, he could see with satisfaction a plastic bucket wedged in the passenger foot-well behind the driver’s seat. It still contained the brush and petrol can that he felt sure he had seen on CCTV at the golf club a day earlier. Then, in the barn opposite, he found a full-sized horse transport vehicle, also ancient but still, apparently, roadworthy. He made a note of both number plates and put in a request to headquarters for an immediate check to be made.

  ‘It doesn’t look safe… You should have borrowed one of our hard hats to go in there’, one of the firemen teased Rich, when he finally emerged from the dusty and dilapidated barn after inspecting the horsebox, but the young detective shrugged and ignored him, having other things on his mind. A text message from headquarters had revealed that the horse box was still registered to Sybil Anderson. The Subaru belonged to Daniel Pennycuik.

  Holly was following the stretcher into the yard as it was being wheeled towards the ambulance when Rich caught up with her and told her what he had found.

  ‘It must be the vehicle we’re looking for’, he said. ‘In the back it’s all clean, spotless. The floor is sealed, like the ones the knackers people use, so it can be hosed down; but the real point of interest is the hoist. It’s a very ingenious contraption; although I’m not sure how it works.’

  Holly and Rich confirmed with each other the name of their suspect, now even more definite after the ambulance people had taken a wallet from his trouser pocket. Holly had also found and fished out his patient identity card from the Sussex Cancer Centre. As a result, the ambulance folk had called through to let the staff there know what had happened, and to get some more information about their patient. It was agreed that, although Chichester was nearer, he should be taken to Worthing Hospital. The stroke unit there was less busy, and he would be closer to Brighton for when the radiotherapy could start again.

  The fire engine had left, making its way further up the farm lane on a long detour, as it had been impossible in the confined space to turn it around. The ambulance was set to go, too, when Holly remembered to ask about getting a DNA sample. The crew said it would be easier at the hospital, so Holly called Sally Blackshaw, sending her to Worthing to make sure the necessary evidence was collected.

  ‘And liaise with Worthing Police, will you?’ she added. ‘I want someone in uniform beside this Pennycuik round the clock, just in case he wakens and tries to wander off. They can arrest him, if necessary…’

  ‘On what grounds?’ Sally replied.

  ‘Suspicion of murder, I reckon’, replied Holly. ‘I’m sure we’ll pick up the evidence.’

  After this, both detectives went to look around some more. In a smaller storage area, next to the big barn, Rich came across a good-sized horizontal freezer unit, and a larger refrigerated storage space. ‘Do you think this is where he kept the body?’ he said to Holly, who was already returning to tell him in turn about the small industrial furnace she had found in a brick building round the back.

  ‘Could be’, she answered cautiously. ‘The furnace looks as if it hasn’t been fired up in years, by the way. The chimney’s either been destroyed deliberately or it’s just fallen down with age. That’s why we couldn’t see it from out front.’

  Later, with the help of a police mechanic, they were able to start the horsebox, drive it into the yard and inspect the hoist in operation. There were three sets of runners riveted along the ceiling inside holding strong steel rods. The two on either side came out first when the mechanism was activated, ideal for covering the spot where any stricken horse may have fallen. Each of these rods came in two parts, the second part – which needed to be attached and fastened – cleverly hinged to hang down, angled outwards. Broad steel feet, which they found in the cab, could then be clipped securely into place at the lower ends, before positioning them firmly on the ground, the whole structure thereby made stable. A cross-piece ran between these two outer rods, to which a third, reinforcing leg could be attached in the centre.

  The mechanic showed Rich and Holly how this worked, then turned his attention to the central runner, which was similar to the outer rods, but had no second part for hinging to it. Instead, it could also be secured into the centre of the cross-piece, on the opposite side from the downward-facing middle leg. Hanging from it was a hook device, with a pulley mechanism running back through the rod to the winch, by which the hook could easily be raised and lowered. The entire, ungainly but functional-looking thing was additionally braced by the very sturdy outer frame of the horsebox and a concrete counter-weight sitting on the chassis near the front.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life’, said Holly, looking on in fascination.

  ‘I have’, said the wizened old mecha
nic. ‘I’ve seen this one.’

  ‘Really… Where?’ Holly asked.

  ‘It was at Brighton racetrack, maybe twenty years ago’, he said. ‘A horse had fallen badly at one of the fences and was going to be put down, but the owner wouldn’t agree. It was his young daughter’s favourite animal… Its pelvis was smashed, I think, so it couldn’t even hobble on three legs… I heard later that he offered the vet a large amount of money to save the horse, even if it couldn’t run again. There was a very long delay. Nothing seemed to be happening, and the punters were getting restless. Then this thing trundled up with some woman at the wheel and a young bloke to help her. After positioning it on the track over the poor creature, they had it working in no time. I saw them sling broad webbing straps underneath the horse, fix them to the hook and winch the poor creature upright. Then, after raising it off the ground, they worked the machine to pull the hook slowly back into the vehicle, and the animal with it, sedated by now, using the webbing like a cradle. I imagine they kept it upright like that all the way back to its stables.’

  ‘I never did hear what the outcome was… Whether it survived or not’, he added ruefully.

  ***

  The next day, on her way to Worthing, Holly heard news on the radio of the previous day’s Metropolitan Police announcement concerning an investigation into new and historical allegations of sexual abuse, mainly against children, by men, some well-known, others not, but including particularly a celebrity television presenter and charity fundraiser. Jimmy Savile, the well-known eccentric cigar-smoker had died, aged eighty-five, almost a year earlier. The news caught her by surprise as she remembered watching some of his programmes, when she was much younger.

  Her experience as a policewoman told her that lots more people would soon be coming out of the woodwork with accusations. However, she was not expecting to hear one herself that Friday. Sally Blackshaw had called the previous evening to report that Pennycuik had regained consciousness, but that the hospital consultant was not letting anyone interview him before the morning. A police guard had been posted, so Holly was not surprised to see a WPC sitting outside the side-room on the third-floor medical ward as she approached at around midday, having checked with the doctor that it would now be okay to make her visit.

  ‘He’s been lucky, in a way’, the physician had said. ‘It was a mild cerebral event caused by an embolism to the right side of the brain. He has a left hemiplegia, but he can still speak.’

  ‘You mean, he’s lucky to survive the stroke so now he can die of lung cancer’, Holly thought of protesting, but managed to restrain herself. ‘What‘s the prognosis?’ is what she actually said.

  ‘We’ll know presently, in a few days’, she was told by the friendly, but rather old-school type of doctor, ‘He could recover completely from this episode. However, bronchial carcinomas are known to increase a person’s risk of haemostasis, so it could easily happen again.’

  Fortunately, Holly could translate most medical-speak. She quickly realised this meant, ‘lung cancer sometimes causes blood clots’. Entering the side-room, taking in the big picture-window and the view over the car-park towards the sea, approaching the rather pathetic, pallid-looking figure propped up on a stack of pillows, she decided a sympathetic approach would be best.

  Quietly taking a seat on his right side, she reached out to touch the good hand of the dozing invalid, who reacted sleepily, only after several seconds lazily opening his eyes one at a time. Holly showed him her official badge and told him her name. She then mentioned that it had been she and a colleague who found him and called an ambulance. There was no reply, and no immediate change in the sick man’s expression, so she continued, telling him they had been investigating what had happened to a woman, presumably his sister.

  ‘Fran’, he said simply, by way of confirmation.

  ‘Fran… Yes… Was that her name?’ Holly asked.

  ‘Francesca.’ Holly shivered, hearing that soft husky voice at close quarters for the first time. ‘We called her Fran,’ it said.

  ‘What can you tell me about her, Daniel?’ Holly continued.

  ‘Dan, please… I don’t like Daniel’, he said. ‘And thanks’, he added, ‘For the ambulance.’

  Holly stayed with him for almost an hour, recording on her device – with his knowledge and permission – what he had to say, beginning at the same place and recounting much the same story he had told Linda Bingham, the lady at the Cancer Centre, two days earlier. This time, though, after speaking about the death of his seafaring father, and his mother’s need to take a job as a housekeeper, he mentioned the Judge’s son by name. As Holly expected, this was Jamie Royle.

  ‘What did he do to you?’ She asked.

  ‘He called us names to start with’, Dan said. ‘He used to call us “Penny-slow” instead of Pennycuik, or just “Slow”; and I was always “Spaniel”, not Daniel. It was appropriate, I suppose, as he treated me like a dog… And he used to pinch. He used to give me a pinch on the arms or the legs whenever he saw me. He made us play games too, like hide-and-seek, then he would pounce on us, one at a time. He used to tickle Fran without mercy, always pretending she liked it when truthfully she hated it. She’d start giggling and he wouldn’t stop until she was unable to catch her breath, usually crying tears of frustration… There were other things too… He used to hide our things, our toys and sometimes our schoolwork, so we’d get into trouble. It was always such a relief when he went off to that posh college every term.’

  ‘There’s more, though, isn’t there?’ Holly asked.

  ‘Yes’, replied Dan. ‘When he got older, he started bossing my mother around, treating her as if she was his private skivvy. It used to upset her, but she wouldn’t complain about it to the Judge. She always worried that she would lose the job and not be able to find another like it.’

  He was getting a little breathless, and his mouth seemed very dry, so Holly suggested a pause, handing him a half-filled plastic beaker from on top of the bedside cabinet for Dan to take a sip of water. Handing it back, he shut his eyes briefly, then continued.

  ‘Eventually, Royle went away to the university, visiting home less often’, he said. ‘He spent a lot of his vacation time with his new friends from Oxford after that… But the following year his father became ill. It was something to do with his kidneys and his blood pressure, so he had to have dialysis and spent quite a bit of time in the hospital. This was the summer Fran turned fifteen. I was ten.

  There was a pause. When Holly looked up, she saw he was weeping silently, looking just like a small boy. ‘It’s alright, Dan’, she said softly, putting her hand on his arm for a second time. ‘You don’t have to go on with this now… I can come back.’ Taking some tissues from a box nearby, she handed them to him.

  ‘No’, he said eventually. ‘I want to go on. I want people to know what they did…’

  ‘They?’ Holly enquired.

  ‘Yes… Him and his friend Gryllock.’ There was poison now in Dan’s gruff voice, slowly recounting events that had taken place over forty years earlier, pausing now and again to catch his breath or dab his eyes with the tissues. What had happened seemed vividly fresh in his mind.

  ‘I suppose because the Judge wasn’t there, Royle knew he could enjoy himself at Fotheringay House, and get up to all his nasty little tricks without anyone interfering. What’s more, he obviously had that measly coward Gryllock wrapped around his little finger to do his bidding. They visited the house together, lording it over mother and the rest of the staff, throwing degenerate parties, terrorizing the locals when they got the chance… Royle always carried a shotgun wherever he went, and was not afraid of firing it off and endangering the public just to get a reaction… And he still used to pinch me or give me a Chinese burn on the forearm. I tried kicking him back for it once, but it didn’t do any good. He just turned round and punched me very hard in the face. It gave me a terrible black eye.
’

  ‘But what happened to your sister?’ said Holly, feeling slightly impatient. ‘What happened to Fran?’

  ‘That’s what I’m coming to’, said Dan. ‘That’s what all this is about…’

  For the next ten minutes, Holly sat back in silence, outraged at what she was hearing, trying hard to maintain a degree of professional detachment. One morning that summer, Dan told her, his mother took him to the shops in Guildford for new shoes. He was of an age when his feet were growing fast. They left Fran reading quietly in the kitchen where it was cool; but on their return after a couple of hours, there was no sign of her in the rooms downstairs, and no response when they called out her name.

  It was Dan who eventually discovered his sister, in bed, under the covers, in the bedroom they were still sharing at the top of the house. The curtains were closed. Fran was shivering and sobbing. She wouldn’t answer when he asked what was wrong. Fetching his mother, he stood by and watched as she gently peeled back the bedclothes, revealing his sibling’s lilywhite legs. They were uncovered, but she was still wearing her little summer socks; also her knickers, which – to his horror – had been stained bright red with blood.

  Only years later, not long before she died, did Fran ever tell him about the terrible ordeal that had befallen her that day. Royle and Gryllock, out late carousing the night before, had slept in. When they finally came down, still in their night attire, finding Fran in the kitchen, they ordered her to make them breakfast. Then, while she was making coffee and toast, scrambling eggs and so on, they started taunting her, humiliating her about being a young woman now, inviting her to tell them about her periods, and to show them her developing breasts. After putting food down in front of them, she tried to leave, but they wouldn’t let her escape.

  ‘Before this’, Dan told Holly, ‘Although I never did, Fran had actually begun to like Jamie Royle. He was tall, handsome and rich. I suppose it’s natural that she began to daydream about him. He used to tease her when she was younger, but in a nice way. She loved chocolate, and he always brought her Twirls and things like that. Twirls were her favourite… I suppose all along, though, he was just grooming her. That morning, he was ready to spring the trap.’