THE COUNTRY INN MYSTERY an absolutely gripping whodunit full of twists

by Faith Martin

  ‘What do you mean?’ he demanded. ‘Why can’t it have been Dryfuss?’

  But instead of explaining herself, Lucy fumbled with her mobile phone, tapped at it for a bit, and then handed it over to the inspector. ‘I downloaded all the images taken that day by members of the public. And see this one here . . . it’s really clear . . .’

  Franklyn looked at the tiny screen on the phone, and watched as Ion Dryfuss leapt into the pond and waded out towards Rachel’s body. Where he took her by one arm and then pulled her floating form towards him. He then turned her over onto her back, and with one arm under her, and the other arm in full view as he used it to help him propel towards the shore, towed her after him.

  ‘You can see for yourself, sir,’ Lucy said helplessly. ‘He never put a hand anywhere near her face, let alone over her nose and mouth.’

  ‘But then . . .’ Franklyn gaped at Lucy, feeling totally at a loss, ‘how the hell did he manage to smother her?’

  ‘He didn’t,’ Jenny Starling said flatly. ‘But if you’ll sit down for a minute, I’ll tell you who I think did.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  For a second the two police officers simply stared at Jenny, then they shot a quick, questioning glance at each other. Franklyn looked rueful and gave a brief sigh. He’d been warned about moments like this from other coppers who’d had the questionable pleasure of working with this woman. Now it looked like it was his turn to be amazed, so he reached out and pulled up a chair at her table. Lucy O’Connor quickly followed suit.

  Jenny cast a quick glance around, but the bar was still totally deserted, save for Old Walter who was busily and happily completing a crossword puzzle in the local newspaper.

  ‘OK. Where do you want to start?’ Jenny asked quietly.

  ‘How,’ Inspector Franklyn said at once. ‘I just can’t get my head around how she was killed. She was smothered, for Pete’s sake, and the only person who was in a position to do it — Dryfuss — quite clearly didn’t do it.’

  ‘Well, that’s the easiest part,’ Jenny said with a sigh. ‘And when you think about it logically, it’s rather obvious.’ Luckily she didn’t see the flash of annoyance that crossed Franklyn’s resentful face as she said this, since she was frowning down thoughtfully at a beer mat in front of her on the table. ‘If Rachel Norman couldn’t possibly have been smothered after she walked into the pond, then it follows that she must have been smothered before she did so. Right?’

  Lucy O’Connor blinked. ‘Huh?’

  Jenny raised her head and smiled grimly. ‘Rachel Norman didn’t die at the pond, Sergeant. She quite literally couldn’t have. No, I think she must have died right here, at the inn,’ she said quietly. ‘Upstairs in the changing room, I imagine.’

  Now Franklyn and his sergeant swapped wary glances. Clearly, both were wondering if the fabled cook had finally flipped her lid.

  ‘But you saw her come down and do her act,’ Lucy objected. ‘You followed her to the pond, as did all the others, and watched her go into the water.’

  ‘No we didn’t,’ Jenny said flatly. ‘We watched someone come downstairs, dressed in full costume with a thick veil over her face, give a performance, walk down to the pond, and wade out into the middle. It just wasn’t Rachel Norman. She was already dead by then.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Franklyn breathed. ‘That would work! In fact, that would make sense of the pathologist’s report. So . . . it must have been a woman who killed her? And took her place?’

  ‘Wait a minute though,’ Lucy again objected. ‘Didn’t you hear her speak? The actress I mean? All along I’ve been hearing how she had this magnificent sexy voice. The killer must have been one hell of a mimic to act out that whole scene in a fake voice! And I just don’t know that I can swallow that.’

  ‘Nor should you,’ Jenny agreed, making Lucy’s mouth drop open in surprise. ‘I doubt that even the best professional impersonator or television star could have copied Rachel’s voice so accurately and for so long. No, it was Rachel’s voice we heard all right — there was no mistaking it, believe me. But it wasn’t her “live” voice that we were hearing, but a recording. Do you remember, I told you about Rachel recording her rehearsal performances on a state-of-the-art digital recorder thing?’

  Franklyn snapped his fingers. ‘Of course! The killer must have found that final scene of Rachel’s all rehearsed and recorded and simply used that.’

  ‘Exactly. All she needed to do was turn it on at the right moment and then just slip the gizmo inside her reticule — the little fancy bag,’ Jenny clarified at the inspector’s puzzled look, ‘which she wore on her arm. It was recovered from the edge of the pond later. You must have it in your evidence bags somewhere,’ Jenny said.

  ‘At the time, I remember seeing the bag by the edge of the pond, and noticed that it had a hole in it,’ she swept on. ‘At the time I assumed that it must have been damaged when it was dropped into the pond but even then I thought the slit in it looked rather neat and clean for a random tear. Now of course, it makes sense.’

  ‘The killer needed to make a hole in it, so that the recorded voice wouldn’t sound muffled,’ Franklyn put in excitedly, catching on instantly.

  ‘Exactly,’ Jenny said. ‘It was very clever since the voice came out clear as a bell, and because it was so distinctive, none of us watching ever questioned that it was Rachel. In that the killer was probably helped because, well, frankly, Rachel wasn’t really the best actress you’d ever seen. Apart from her voice, which was wonderful. So any awkwardness or lack of professionalism in the performance . . . well, let’s just say that we wouldn’t have wondered about it. Unfortunately for the killer though,’ Jenny swept on, ‘later on, that same digital recorder became something of a liability, because when the impostor stepped into the pond she almost slipped and the reticule fell off her arm, dumping the evidence — the recorder — into the water. Of course, the original plan was to keep it and destroy it as soon as possible.’

  ‘That’s why it had to be recovered later,’ Lucy jumped in eagerly. ‘That’s what Ion and those ghost-hunter blokes saw and interrupted last night. Someone trying to recover the recorder before we did.’

  ‘Because they knew the divers were due to come the next day — this morning — and search the pond,’ Franklyn put in, glancing at his watch. ‘They should be there now in fact. They’d better bloody find it,’ he added darkly.

  Jenny nodded reassuringly. ‘I’m sure they will. The gadget would have been small but heavy and would have sunk straight to the bottom — and it was right by where she went in. You might like to ask them to concentrate on that area first, by the bull rushes.’

  She waited whilst Franklyn made the call, and as he did so, she could see Lucy O’Connor’s mind was racing.

  The moment he hung up, Lucy asked her next question. ‘But how did the killer arrange for the distraction with Min and the spider when she was already in the pond?’

  ‘She didn’t,’ Jenny said flatly. ‘She couldn’t, could she? No, it was her accomplice who did that.’

  ‘There were two of them,’ Franklyn said, sounding faintly surprised. Murders with more than one perpetrator were quite rare, in his experience.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Jenny sighed. ‘When you think of it, it would have to take two. One to kill Rachel, and then transport her body in the back of a car or van to the far side of the pond and place her in the water, in the only spot where you could hide a body. Hidden under that little jetty,’ she added quickly, as both police officers frowned over that. ‘He’d only have had to secure her loosely to the wooden timbers so that she didn’t float free, and be ready for later on. Don’t forget, at the back of the pond there’s that line of weeping willow trees, with the fronds reaching right down to the water, providing him with the perfect cover, if any villager should have been out and about and walking past. All he then had to do was get out and change into his dry costume and mingle with the crowds, wait for his accomplice to arrive, and at the right moment,
put the spider, probably kept in a matchbox or something, on Min’s shoulder. Again, he’d be — to all intents and purposes — in disguise, like a lot of people there. So even if anybody did notice him close to Min, they’d be looking more at his outfit than at his face. Therefore if he was spotted actually putting the spider on her shoulder, he had a good chance of not being recognised. And, as we already know, if the spider trick didn’t work, he had the rifle as a backup plan to make everyone turn away for those precious few minutes.’

  ‘And in those few minutes,’ Franklyn eagerly picked up the narrative, ‘the woman stopped doing her dead man’s float, quickly waded the short distance to the jetty, released Rachel’s body and floated it out into the pond, then quickly scrambled out under the cover of the weeping willow trees.’

  ‘And by the time the drama with Min was over, and everyone turned back to the pond . . . it was really Rachel Norman’s body floating there. And the two killers could just slip away free and clear,’ Lucy O’Connor concluded, looking with some admiration at the cook. ‘Wow, that was really clever! And even more clever of you to figure it out, Miss Starling,’ she felt compelled to add.

  But Jenny merely shook her head and smiled fleetingly. ‘Oh, I should have cottoned on to it much sooner, really. After all, I saw both the boots and the corset. Both of those should have been enough to worry me and point to the truth, if only I hadn’t been so dim and slow off the mark,’ she said, sounding disgusted with herself.

  ‘Corset?’ Franklyn said.

  ‘Boots?’ Lucy said at the same time.

  Jenny nodded and sighed. ‘I did tell you about it,’ she said, ‘but none of us really gave it the thought we should have. When “Rachel”’ — and here Jenny made air quotes — ‘went into the pond and almost slipped, her long skirt rode up and I saw that she was wearing modern high-heeled boots. At the time I just thought it was a bit of a gaffe and not very authentic to be wearing modern footwear.’ Jenny shook her head over her own stupidity. ‘What I really should have been wondering is why the heels were so high, and yet “Rachel” still looked to be the same height!’

  ‘The woman was shorter than her!’ Lucy crowed. ‘By a few inches?’

  ‘Right — two at least. Maybe even three,’ Jenny confirmed. ‘And the day before, I’d previously noticed a tight-lacing corset that had been left here on this window seat,’ Jenny patted the padded seat beside her, ‘and mistakenly supposed that it belonged to Min. I thought she was worried by Rachel’s flirting with her husband, and was going to wear the corset to make her lovely rounded figure look thinner.’

  ‘But it belonged to the woman who was going to impersonate Rachel,’ Lucy put in. ‘I take it our victim was slender? It was hard to tell under all that wet costume.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny said. ‘Rachel was thinner than the woman who helped to kill her, certainly.’

  ‘So. Let’s recap,’ Franklyn said. ‘We know we’re dealing with a pair of killers, presumably a tight-knit couple, if they’re prepared to kill together. That’s one hell of a risk to take, so you have to be sure of your partner. And we know that the female half of the pair is slightly smaller and slightly plumper than Rachel Norman was. We know it wasn’t Min and Silas. Ion Dryfuss, as far as we know, came alone and has no significant other — although that will need to be thoroughly checked. But Dr Gilchrist was seen talking to an angry woman, who I now know was his ex-wife, but that could all be a bluff. They might be pretending to be on the skids, but in reality could have been working closely together.’

  ‘Sir?’ Lucy said blankly. Jenny too, looked at him thoughtfully.

  It took the older man a moment to realise where the confusion lay, and then he waved a hand apologetically in the air. ‘Oh, sorry, I haven’t told you yet what our Oxford don had to say for himself, have I?’ Franklyn apologised to both women. ‘According to Rory Gilchrist, he and his wife divorced last year. Vince Braine acted for Rory in the matter. But apparently, the former Mrs Gilchrist started kicking up rough, claiming that Rory had hidden his assets from her during the divorce, and she was determined to hound him into giving her more alimony. And she was getting so persistent that she was starting to make his life intolerable in Oxford, which is partly why he booked this weekend — to get away for some peace and quiet, and also because he wanted to consult again with his solicitor.’

  Jenny nodded. ‘Yes, that makes sense. I got the feeling from one or two things I overheard between them that Vince Braine wasn’t altogether convinced that Dr Gilchrist had been totally honest with him.’

  Franklyn smiled. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised either. When I talked to him, he definitely looked a bit shifty when he had to mention the assets his ex was convinced he’d hidden away.’

  ‘Sounds like they hate each other’s guts, sir,’ Lucy said. ‘I can’t see how they’d come together again and trust one another enough to collude in a murder. And why would they? They had no reason to want Rachel Norman dead. Did they?’ she asked, turning once more to Jenny for clarification.

  ‘Oh no,’ Jenny agreed at once. ‘It wasn’t the Gilchrists who killed Rachel.’

  ‘So that only leaves us with one other couple who could fit the bill,’ Franklyn said heavily. ‘By a process of elimination, it has to be Matthew Greenslade and his ex-fiancée. If she really is his ex, that is,’ he grunted sceptically.

  ‘We know Rachel came between them,’ Lucy agreed. ‘And as a member of the am-dram society, Matthew would have access to the inn and the changing room and would know all about Rachel’s schedule . . . But don’t they both have alibis?’ she added, frowning.

  ‘Only those provided by family members,’ Franklyn put in quickly. ‘And you know how much they can be worth,’ he added scornfully.

  ‘But why would they want to kill her?’ It was Jenny who asked the question, and for a second it lay flatly in the sudden silence.

  ‘Because she broke them up,’ Lucy said, then frowned. ‘Except . . . no. Because if I had a fellah and he had an affair with another woman, I might want to kill him,’ she grinned wolfishly, ‘but I wouldn’t help him kill her. Why would I? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t, does it?’ Jenny mused. ‘And why would Matthew want her dead anyway? OK, so she wrecked his engagement,’ she conceded, ‘but if every man who went astray ended up killing “the other woman,” despite maybe having feelings for her, well . . .’ She shrugged graphically.

  ‘Unless he was a nutter,’ Franklyn muttered darkly. ‘I’ve known men who turn possessive and bitter and jealous and end up striking out.’

  ‘Yes, but this was a carefully thought out crime,’ Jenny said. ‘It took planning and timing. It wasn’t a murder committed in the heat of the moment and in passion or rage.’

  ‘And besides, it took two of them,’ Lucy said. ‘And Felicity Thornton had nothing to gain by helping him kill Rachel. Unless she was a nutter too.’

  Franklyn sighed and agreed that the likelihood of two nutters getting together to carefully plan and pull off a killing, for which they had no real motive, was unlikely.

  ‘Well in that case, who the hell did kill her?’ he asked, and he was sure he could feel his frustration making his blood pressure rise. ‘And why?’

  ‘Oh, the why, I think, is fairly clear,’ Jenny said. Then paused and modified that somewhat. ‘At least, in general it is. Inspector, I recommend that you get a warrant or subpoena or whatever it is you need, and search the firm where Rachel Norman worked and see if you can track down which lorry drivers working there have a criminal record. I think you’ll find that at least one of them must have done time. And if you ask around, I think you’ll find that Rachel will have had him wrapped around her little finger. That won’t be hard to find out,’ she predicted. ‘Office gossip and intrigue will ensure that everyone will know who you’re talking about. And when you find him and question him, I think you’ll also discover that Rachel had found something that he’d told her very interesting indeed.’

  Fran
klyn slowly leaned back in his chair. ‘OK, now that sounds rather convoluted,’ he complained. ‘And don’t hint! If you know something, just spit it out.’

  Jenny Starling looked slightly hurt at this. ‘But I don’t know anything specific,’ she shot back. ‘How could I? I’ve never set foot in Rachel Norman’s place of work! I only know from what I’ve surmised that there must be evidence to be found there. And that’s your job,’ she added.

  Franklyn took a deep, calming breath. Beside him, he saw Lucy O’Connor suppress a grin. ‘OK. One step at a time,’ he forced himself to say patiently. ‘You said the reason Rachel Norman had to die was fairly obvious. So, what was it?’

  ‘Well, the one thing that always struck me about Rachel — and you’ve probably got the same impression from all the witnesses you’ve been questioning who knew her — was how ambitious she was, and how much she liked money.’

  Lucy nodded. ‘That’s a fair comment,’ she said, giving her boss a wary look. ‘You’ve maybe not had time to check out the reports, sir, but everyone we’ve spoken to from the am-dram people down to her friends have said that Rachel really wanted to make it big. As an actress I mean.’

  ‘Right,’ Jenny said. ‘Even from the short time I knew her, I heard Rachel say that she was having expensive photographs taken of her by an up-and-coming photographer with a reputation, in order to boost her portfolio and help her get television parts. I heard she’s also been having expensive acting lessons too, maybe even paying for a private coach. Anything, in fact, to help her climb the ladder and get parts. And that can’t have been cheap.’

  ‘And she was always well-dressed,’ Lucy put in. ‘I remember reading somewhere one of her friends saying that Rachel liked her bling.’

  ‘She did,’ Jenny put in. ‘Expensive watch, jewellery, designer clothes. For a girl who worked as a secretary at a haulage company, she dressed like someone from one of those reality shows about rich people living in Chelsea or Belgravia or whatever.’