Death at Hazel House

by Betty Rowlands

  Sukey slowed the van to a crawl and wound down the window. From behind a dense evergreen hedge came the sound of a motor mower; the sharp fragrance of cut grass drifted on the still air. When they were first married, she and Paul had a dream that one day they would live in just such a place. Paul had realised that dream… but he was sharing it with someone else. Not for the first time, she experienced a stab of bitterness, then reminded herself that she had a job to do and this was no time for self-pity.

  The normal indicators that something unusual had occurred – knots of people standing around looking puzzled or uneasy and scrutinising every passing vehicle – were nowhere to be seen, but she sensed that more than one pair of eyes were keeping watch from behind their curtains. She drove slowly along the main street, looking out for the turning to the Chants’ house. There was no one about who might have directed her, but she found it at last on the far side of the green, tucked away behind the church. A small painted board read, ‘Access to The Hill only’. It occurred to Sukey as she swung the wheel and crawled along the narrow track in second gear that the inhabitants of Marsdean went to considerable lengths to guard their privacy.

  There were just three houses in the secluded enclave, all set well back from the gravelled approach, which was shaped like a shepherd’s crook. The Chants’ property was screened from the road by tall hedges and several mature hazel trees. The residents would need to be very dedicated neighbourhood watchers indeed to keep a check on each other’s comings and goings. It would be interesting, thought Sukey as she parked alongside an ambulance, two police cars and a dog-handler’s van already standing in front of Hazel House, to learn if house-to-house enquiries revealed anything of substance.

  Detective Inspector Jim Castle met her at the front door. His manner was brisk and impersonal. ‘You took your time,’ he said, glancing at his watch.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t hang about, I just happen to live on the wrong side of town,’ she apologised, reflecting as she spoke that it was true in more ways than one.

  ‘Looks as if entry was effected through a ground-floor window at the rear,’ he went on. ‘The body’s upstairs. The ambulance was already here when we arrived but there was nothing the paramedics could do and we’re waiting for a doctor. There’s been some disturbance downstairs – you could be dealing with that until he gets here.’

  ‘Right. I’ll start outside so that the dog handler can get to work.’

  ‘Do that. You’ll find him in the back garden.’

  The handler was Constable Ronnie Morris, whose German Shepherd seemed anxious to leap through a half-open window.

  ‘This is where our man got in,’ said Ronnie. ‘Panther’s picked up a trail from here to the forecourt and we reckon that’s where the getaway vehicle was parked. You’ll find a patch of oil on the gravel. There’s another trail from there to the front door, so matey must have left that way.’

  ‘I hope Panther hasn’t disturbed any evidence out here,’ said Sukey as she took her camera from its case.

  ‘Course not, he knows better than that,’ said Ronnie with a grin, and the dog, sitting on its haunches at his side, turned intelligent eyes up to him as if to endorse the remark.

  ‘Oh yes?’ Sukey was taking shots of the window, noting a smudge of white powder on the bottom of the frame. She zoomed in closer and spotted a wisp of dark green thread clinging to a broken shoot on one of the rose bushes just below the sill. ‘Something there for forensics to play with,’ she remarked as she took her samples. She peered through the window into what looked like a small breakfast room and saw more white traces on the carpet. ‘Matey wasn’t too careful about what he trod in,’ she remarked over her shoulder. ‘Those prints might tell us something.’

  ‘Give me a shout as soon as you’re through,’ said Ronnie.

  ‘Sure.’ She went to the place he had indicated to get her shot of the patch of oil. Then she went indoors.

  It was a scene she had seen scores of times, always with a sense of disgust at the wanton destructiveness with which the average burglar goes about his business. The sitting room was in a sorry state: cupboards and drawers emptied and their contents scattered in heaps on the floor, display cabinets smashed open and stripped of their contents, some shards of china and glass where the intruder must have fumbled and dropped them in his haste. Or perhaps, she thought as she moved carefully among the debris, taking her pictures, he had smashed them deliberately in a spasm of rage on realising that he had wasted his time grabbing something comparatively worthless. That they might have a sentimental value to their owner would mean nothing to him.

  When she had finished in the sitting room she went upstairs, scrutinising the carpet as she went for further traces of shoeprints but found none. The sound of voices led her to what was evidently the main bedroom. Like the rest of the house, it showed every sign of having been furnished on a generous budget; there were elaborate drapes at the windows and plenty of white furniture picked out in gold. On the king-sized bed, like a dark stain against the peach-coloured satin headboard and coverlet, lay the fully-clothed body of a young woman. A grey-haired man in a sports jacket was bending over her. As Sukey entered he straightened up, turned to DI Castle who was standing beside him and said quietly, ‘She’s dead all right. There’s some quite severe bruising to the face, but the cause of death was almost certainly manual strangulation.’

  ‘Can you give an approximate time?’

  ‘Hard to say. It’s a mild evening… rigor’s begun and she’s still warm… anything between three and eight hours ago. It’ll need a postmortem to set the time more precisely.’

  ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘By sight, that’s all.’

  ‘How long have the Chants lived here?’

  The doctor pursed his lips, considering. ‘A couple of years, perhaps.’

  ‘But you never got to know them?’

  ‘Hardly at all. They never socialised with anyone in the village, so far as I know.’

  ‘Well, thank you for stepping into the breach, Doctor.’

  ‘Not at all.’ The doctor took a last look at the dead woman, shaking his head. ‘Very sad,’ he observed. ‘Pretty woman… plenty of money, by the looks of all this.’ He took a final peer round the room, picked up his bag and left. Sukey stood aside to let him pass, which he did without looking at her.

  ‘The police surgeon’s out on another call,’ said Castle in response to her questioning glance. ‘That’s Doctor Handley, retired, lives in the village.’ He turned back to the bed. ‘Make sure you get a good shot of those marks on the throat. There’s an en suite bathroom – it doesn’t appear to have been disturbed, but I want the dog to have a sniff round, just in case.’

  ‘What about the other upstairs rooms?’

  ‘All the doors were closed and there’s no sign of disturbance in any of them. I reckon he came straight in here.’

  ‘OK. I’ll let you know when I’ve done.’

  ‘Do that. I’ll be downstairs.’

  Sukey nodded mechanically, focusing her camera. It was not her first contact with murder and she had seen bodies that were considerably messier than this one, but she never failed to experience a contraction of the stomach and a tightening of the throat at the sight of death. The sensation passed in a moment as she gave herself up to the job in hand.

  Lorraine Chant lay face upwards, arms outflung, hands clenched, eyes staring blindly at the ceiling. What could be seen of her skin was blue – the classic sign of asphyxia – and her throat showed signs of bruising where brutal hands had choked the life out of her. There was a further livid mark on one cheek, as if she had been struck before being throttled. She did not seem to have put up much of a struggle; there was no sign of disorder in the room and her clothing – a dark navy-blue coat and skirt and a white silk blouse, all very chic and expensive-looking – was hardly disarranged.

  One of her shoes had fallen off and lay on the thick peach carpet. It appeared that her attacker had no time
to ransack the room before – presumably – she came in and disturbed him. And once he had killed her, he hadn’t bothered to search further, but had left with whatever he had picked up downstairs. Sukey had no formal training in detection, but she had seen her CID colleagues at work and her mind was clicking away as methodically as her camera.

  The en suite bathroom would not have disgraced a movie mogul’s penthouse, with its huge sunken tub, gold fittings and a profusion of bottles and jars of expensive toiletries on a shelf above the vanity unit. Everything was immaculate; as she dusted each item for fingerprints, Sukey found herself thinking how the dead woman would have hated this soiling by a stranger’s hands of her intimate possessions.

  She finished her task and went downstairs. Ronnie was waiting by the front door with Panther. ‘OK to go up now?’ he asked.

  ‘I guess so. Where’s Inspector Castle?’

  ‘In there, interviewing the husband.’ Ronnie nodded at a door leading out of the hall, which was about the size of Sukey’s sitting room. He gave an appreciative glance round. ‘Not short of a bob or two, are they?’ he commented, and headed upstairs, with Panther eagerly nosing the floor as they went.

  Sukey tapped on the door he had indicated; after a moment, it opened and the Inspector came out, closing it behind him. ‘Finished?’ he asked.

  ‘I guess so. Anything else you want me to do?’

  For a moment, the official mask slipped. ‘Any chance you could rustle up some strong coffee? He’ – Castle jerked his head towards the door – ‘seems pretty shaken up. He’s already been at the bottle by the looks of him – can’t get any sense out of him so far.’

  ‘Typical,’ muttered Sukey under her breath as she went in search of the kitchen. ‘If you want some menial task performed, pick on the only woman in the team.’ Still, she thought, remembering her interrupted supper as she filled a kettle and hunted in cupboards for what she needed, coffee wasn’t a bad idea. She could do with a cup herself.

  She was returning with the tray when Ronnie came downstairs with Panther and headed for the room where the bereaved husband was being interviewed. He tapped on the door, popped his head round it and said, ‘Can I have a word, Guv?’

  The Inspector emerged a second time, saw the coffee and gestured to Sukey to take it in before following the dog handler upstairs. ‘Be down in a minute,’ he said in a low voice. ‘See if you can persuade him to say something – anything. He hasn’t uttered a word since we got here.’

  Arthur Chant was in the dining room, which was as lavishly furnished as the rest of the house. He was slumped in a chair, his face hidden in his hands, with his elbows propped on the table in the centre of which stood an elaborate silver epergne piled with highly coloured artificial fruit. When Sukey entered he half raised his head and stared at her. He was, she judged, considerably older than his late wife. Not exactly handsome either – ‘homely’ was the word that came into her mind. His eyes, beneath thick eyebrows and a jutting forehead, were dull and lifeless. A plain-clothes detective, Sergeant Radcliffe, was seated at his side with an open notebook in front of him. An empty chair opposite, where the Inspector had evidently been sitting before being called away, was pushed back from the table, its padded cushion lying on the floor. Sukey guessed that it had fallen as the occupant stood up. Jim Castle was, she knew from experience, given to sudden, impatient movements which often resulted in things being overturned or displaced. She put the tray carefully on the table, picked up the cushion and replaced it.

  ‘Are there any mats?’ she asked. Chant stared silently at her, his gaze blank. ‘I don’t want to mark this lovely table,’ she explained.

  He made a vague gesture at the mahogany sideboard. Sukey began searching in cupboards and eventually found a box of silver coasters. She put three on the table. ‘Do you take milk and sugar in your coffee?’ she asked. He shook his head. ‘Black, then?’ He nodded.

  She poured coffee into a bone china mug and set it in front of him. She filled two more, gave one to Radcliffe and put the third by the empty chair. Then she sat down and put a hand on the arm of the stricken man. ‘Mr Chant, I’m… that is, we’re all so very sorry about what has happened,’ she said gently. For the first time, he looked straight at her. His eyes lost their dullness and became bright with tears. He swallowed, his mouth crimping in an effort to contain his distress. For the first time, he spoke. ‘I loved her so much,’ he whispered.

  ‘Then you want us to find the man who killed her, don’t you?’ she said.

  He made a weary gesture, almost knocking over the untouched mug of coffee. ‘What’s the use? Nothing can bring her back,’ he muttered.

  ‘No, but if he isn’t caught he might do it again, to someone else’s wife.’

  ‘You think so?’ A slight lift of his shoulders implied, So what is that to me?

  ‘It’s been known,’ she said. She pushed the mug a little closer to him. ‘Drink that, it’ll do you good.’ After a moment’s hesitation he picked it up and took a mouthful. ‘There’s a very dangerous person out there and we have to think of other potential victims,’ she went on. ‘You can take your time, but it’s important that you tell the officers everything you can think of that might help.’

  He gave a half nod and continued drinking the coffee. When he had finished, he set it down and flexed his hands, staring down at them and rubbing them softly together. They were large and well kept, the skin smooth, the nails manicured. They were the hands of a wealthy man who had never known manual labour. His jacket was hand-tailored, his shirt and tie were silk. He wore a Cartier watch and a heavy gold signet ring set with a diamond on his wedding finger. Everything – the house and its contents, the landscaped grounds, the owner himself – reeked of money. The place was an obvious target for thieves, but murder was something else. It was hardly surprising, Sukey thought with compassion, that the man was in shock.

  He was sitting more upright now and she realised he was a bigger man than she had supposed when she first saw him, slumped forward and bowed with grief. He was beginning to lose his air of detachment, a look of concentration replacing the blankness in his eyes.

  Across the table, Radcliffe gave Sukey an approving nod as if to say, Well done, you’ve got through to him, and held his pen hopefully at the ready. He leaned forward and said coaxingly, ‘Mr Chant, if you could begin by telling us what time you arrived home.’

  ‘It was just after six o’clock. The news was just starting.’

  ‘Would that have been on your car radio?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Much as she would have liked to hear the story first hand, Sukey knew she had no business to stay in the room. She got up quietly and went out, just as DI Castle was coming back downstairs.

  ‘Your coffee’s in there,’ she told him. ‘I hope it hasn’t gone cold.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He paused with his hand on the doorknob. ‘Any progress?’

  ‘He’s started to give a statement.’

  ‘Fine. I want you to go back upstairs and check the study. There’s no apparent disturbance, but the dog seems pretty sure our man was in there.’

  ‘Right.’ Sukey returned the tray to the kitchen, swallowed the coffee – now nearly cold – that she had poured for herself before serving the others, and went in search of Ronnie Morris. She wondered if Jim Castle had forgotten that they were supposed to have a date for lunch the following day.

  Four

  While Inspector Castle and his team were attempting to piece together the events of Lorraine Chant’s last hours, Barbie Bayliss was at her dressing table in the master bedroom of her luxury home in the Charlton Kings area of Cheltenham. She was getting ready to go out to dinner with her husband and she was not looking forward to the evening. She hated most of Hugo’s friends. In fact, apart from the material comforts and the apparently unlimited amounts of money that his business brought in, she hated a lot of things about their present life. She hated having to call herself Barbie, for a start, and she thou
ght Hugo a cissy sort of name, but he’d insisted that when they moved into what he called a ‘posh noo meelioo’ they ought to have posh-sounding names. It had taken her a while to get used to it and once she’d slipped up and addressed him as Charlie in front of some business associate he’d brought home. He’d laughed it off at the time, but he’d roughed her up afterwards and she’d had to wear dark glasses for a week and pretend she’d bumped into a door. He’d threatened her with worse if she made that mistake again, but she never had.

  Barbie longed for the old days when she was surrounded by people of her own type and Auntie Gwen was living just round the corner. Auntie Gwen had been like a second mum to Barbie – Brenda as she was then – after her own parents had died, and she missed not being able to see her regularly. She wasn’t supposed to see her at all; Hugo had forbidden her to contact anyone from the old days, or let them know where they were living. If he knew she sneaked up to London now and again to visit Auntie Gwen, he’d knock hell out of her, but she’d managed to keep it a secret so far.

  She was sitting in front of the mirror in her dressing gown, putting the finishing touches to her make-up and wondering which of the three dresses she’d taken out of her wardrobe she should wear to this bloody dinner party. She wondered who else would be there. Probably not Steven Lovett, Hugo’s office manager. Single men and widowers never seemed to get invited to dinner parties. Stand-up drinks parties, yes. She and Steven had enjoyed quite a few chats at that sort of informal function. There had also been other occasions, during Hugo’s all too seldom absences on business trips, when they’d enjoyed something more than conversation. Barbie’s favourite daydream was that Steven suddenly came into unlimited wealth – won the lottery, for example – and arrived like a knight on a charger to take her away from Hugo forever. As it was, the odd stolen couple of hours was all they could manage and there were times when she wondered whether even that was worth the risk. If Hugo found out, he’d half kill her. The fact that he’d had almost as many affairs as she’d had good dinners didn’t mean he’d make any allowances for his wife’s occasional fling.