by Ann Granger
‘In Marrakesh,’ returned Fuller.
‘On holiday?’
‘Not a holiday, a conference. Don’t ask me why they chose Marrakesh.’ Fuller turned his discontented stare on the hapless Hester Millar. ‘This lady has considerably upset my plans. I shall have to leave Miriam in London and return on an early train to carry out this examination.’
Markby didn’t know whether to be amused or cross. He’d known Fuller for years. Fuller’s obsession with music and his family were famous. Nevertheless, the man was meticulous as regarded his profession. Markby knew he’d get the post mortem results through within a couple of days. Fuller was just letting off steam.
‘Now you’ve seen her,’ Fuller was saying, indicating the body. ‘Perhaps we could take her away? The chaps are waiting outside.’
‘I saw them,’ Markby murmured. ‘Unless Inspector Pearce has other ideas, let them take the body by all means.’
The undertaker’s men arrived with their temporary coffin. They lifted the inert mass which had been Hester Millar gently from the pew. As they did something glinted on the ground by her feet.
Markby stepped forward and using a biro, hooked up a ring of keys.
Hester’s body was zipped into a black body bag and deposited neatly in the coffin. Markby and Dr Fuller followed it from the church. The crowd fell silent as it appeared, was loaded into the van and driven away. Markby turned to the watchers.
‘Right, you might as well all go home now. We’ll be busy here for a long time but there will be nothing for you to see.’
They shuffled about but then began to go their various ways, several of the men disappearing into the Fitzroy Arms. Fuller had driven away.
‘Thank goodness for that!’ muttered a voice at his elbow and Markby turned to see Pearce. He beckoned the inspector back inside the church and held up the keyring.
‘These were hidden by the body. She’d used them to open up. Then she walked over to that pew, put the keys down on the little ledge here and when she fell forward, stabbed, they were knocked to the ground.’
He held the biro with the dangling keyring towards Pearce who searched in his pocket, produced a small plastic bag, and slipped it over the keys.
‘And,’ Markby went on, producing Ruth’s keyring from his own pocket, ‘Mrs Aston has lent me her set. Have you checked the vestry, Dave?’
‘We’ve been in there,’ Pearce said. ‘It’s behind that curtain. There is a small area at the rear behind a screen, locked off. I was hoping to get some keys from Mrs Aston. I didn’t fancy breaking it down, being a church. The tower’s locked, too.’
‘Then we’d better put Ruth Aston’s set to good use.’
The two of them made their way to the vestry. It was empty of furniture except for an old wooden table scored with the initials of choirboys long dead. Rows of pegs along the wall were bare of the robes which might once have hung there. The screen to which Pearce referred was of blackened oak and rose nearly to the ceiling. The gap above had been filled in with what looked like chicken wire.
Markby inserted the key labelled ‘Vestry’ in the lock. It turned easily. ‘Someone comes in here,’ he observed. ‘Oiled.’
But there was nothing in the tiny office behind the door but a box of candles, two tall wooden candle-holders, once gilded but now scratched and faded, and a tin of polish. A sepia photograph hanging crookedly on the wall depicted a nineteenth-century clergyman with muttonchop whiskers and a look of confidence which provided ironic contrast to the stripped surroundings.
‘Perhaps they use it when someone takes a service here,’ Pearce suggested, poking around in the candle box. ‘Nothing here.’
Markby slammed the door of an empty cupboard. ‘All the church records must’ve been moved out when the building fell out of regular use.’ He pointed at a paler patch on the dusty floor. ‘There must have been a safe there once.’
They relocked the vestry and went back to the nave. By common consent they made for the tower door. Here entry also proved easy. Markby peered at the lock.
‘This has been oiled, too. That’s odd. Ruth Aston told me they never climbed the tower.’
The door clicked open and swung silently inwards. Markby ran his finger over the hinges and showed Pearce the resultant smear of oil. A spiral of stone steps ran upwards, thickly coated with dust but showing clearly the imprint of footwear.
Markby pointed at the prints. ‘Two people. Trainer soles, from the pattern. One set larger than the other. A couple of youngsters, one older? Or a man and a youngish woman, casually dressed?’
‘Perhaps whoever it is chews gum,’ Pearce said excitedly. ‘We found a piece over there, stuck on an effigy on a tomb. But it was all dried out, been there a week or more. Still, perhaps they were up here when Miss Millar came into the church—’
‘Then why not just wait until she left again?’ Markby pointed at the line of footprints. ‘Anyway, the prints have had time to gather their own dust, lighter than the surrounding grime, so they aren’t so very recent. I’d say made at least ten to fifteen days ago. Your theory won’t work, Dave, I’m afraid. It’s been a week or more since anyone came up here, too, for whatever purpose. Time enough for fresh dust to settle. Hester Millar’s killer wasn’t hiding up here.’
Pearce, a promising line of investigation abruptly terminated, mumbled, ‘Pity.’
The two of them climbed the narrow twisting stairs, taking care to keep to one side, clear of the trainer imprints. Pearce, treading in Markby’s footsteps, thought ruefully he was like the page who followed that king who went out in the snow, in the Christmas carol. At intervals they passed window slits through which they could see across the surrounding churchyard and village street. At the top, they came out into a small room smelling strongly of age, damp mortar and bat urine. The bells hung above their heads, the ropes disappearing down through a square hole in the floor. Markby touched Pearce’s arm to indicate caution.
But Pearce was looking at something in the corner. ‘See there! Someone’s been camping out in here.’
A candle stub in a pottery holder stood on the floor beside an old sleeping bag which had been unzipped and opened out flat. Markby stooped and picked up a small empty packet. He held it up so Pearce could see it.
‘Here’s your explanation. Condoms. Either the youth of the village have found this spot or someone was making a illicit tryst. Whoever it is must have found a key which would turn the tower lock downstairs. As soon as one of the churchwardens has opened up the church of a morning, whoever it is contacts his or her partner and they rendezvous up here.’
They retreated to the floor of the church and locked up the tower again.
Markby handed the keys to Pearce. ‘You’d better keep these. I’ve told Mrs Aston we’ll return them in due course.’ He frowned. ‘We’ll have to find out who holds that other tower key, though just how I don’t know. Our mystery lovers are hardly likely to come forward and admit to desecrating the church. They may just have an odd key which turns the lock. These old-fashioned mortice locks can sometimes be opened like that. My mother used to keep a whole boxful of odd keys for emergency use if one went missing. If that’s the case, we don’t have to worry. On the other hand, they may hold the entire set for the church, entrances and vestry, which would really put the cat among the pigeons. Yet Ruth says only she, Hester and James Holland have keys. I’ll have to check that one out with James. The idea of a spare set of keys hanging around really muddies the water.’
Pearce grunted and pushed the keys into his pocket. ‘How did you get on at the house, sir? With Mrs Aston and that other batty old dear with the striped sweater?’
Markby summed up the rest of his conversation with Ruth Aston and added Meredith’s account of seeing someone leaving the churchyard at the far end as she’d approached the church.
‘It seems likely that she saw this old fellow, Twelvetrees. He’s the local gossip but he doesn’t seem to have put in an appearance here. At least, I couldn
’t see anyone in the crowd who answered the description Meredith gave me. I thought I’d go along to his cottage and see what’s going on there.’
‘They’re a funny lot,’ observed Pearce of the villagers in general. ‘What with shenanigans in the belfry and all the rest of it. Good luck.’
Markby was well aware that his short progress from the church to Billy Twelvetrees’ cottage was being observed. It couldn’t be helped. There was no way any investigations in this village could be carried out with any kind of privacy, much less discretion. The atmosphere of excitement all around him was palpable. It could only get worse when the commuting population of incomers returned that evening and made for the Fitzroy Arms to soak up details of the day’s events. Mixed with the excitement was a kind of decent horror and even a sense of being offended that this could happen here in their quiet community.
Or am I, Markby asked himself, looking back to that last enquiry I conducted here and translating what I felt then to what I feel now? It was a curious feeling, he supposed one could call it déjà vu, to be knocking on doors in Lower Stovey again after a gap of more than twenty years. The physical appearance of the village had changed in the intervening time, as he’d noticed on his visit to the Old Vicarage with Meredith yet, despite the loss of shop and school, it looked prosperous. Nearly all the cottages in the main street had been painted up and garnished with carriage lamps and the like. He guessed at second homes.
In this line of gleaming prosperity, the Twelvetrees’ dwelling stood out like a rotten tooth in an array of perfect gnashers. It hadn’t been painted for years. Its thatched roof was dark brown and disintegrating, held together by a hairnet of chicken wire through which could be seen patches of moss and sprouting weeds. The wooden frames of the windows were crumbling but the panes were well polished as was the fox-head doorknocker. He lifted it and rapped on the door. He hadn’t seen inside yet, but he could guess what he’d find.
No one came for a few minutes during which he heard a rattle above his head and knew someone was looking from the tiny window under the mouldering thatch to see who the visitor was. Eventually the door shuddered and was pulled open.
He found himself looking at a middle-aged woman in a pink overall, the colour oddly matched by her salmon-pink tightly-curled hair. Her face was round and snub-nosed. Her lower lip was fuller than her upper lip and overlapped it, suggesting what dentists call an ‘overbite’ when the lower jaw protrudes further than the upper one. Her expression was truculent and he was forcibly reminded of a surly bulldog. He held up his identification.
‘We’ve got nothing to do with it!’ snapped the woman.
He ignored this. ‘Could I speak to Mr Twelvetrees? This is his house?’
‘Dad’s not in. He didn’t have anything to do with it, either. How could he at his age and in his state of health?’
‘Where is he?’ asked Markby bluntly.
‘I dunno. Gone out for a walk, like he does.’
‘Where does he walk normally?’
She uttered a sort of hiss which issued from the sides of her mouth. ‘Just round and about. He can’t go far, not with his hip.’
‘Oh?’ Markby smiled innocently at her. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Does he have a stick?’
‘He’s got one of them.’ She nodded her head and Markby was reminded of all the tinned salmon sandwiches he’d been obliged to eat as a child. ‘But what he needs is one of them new hips. Doctor says so. Only he’s obstinate, is Dad. He won’t go in no hospital.’
She glared at Markby and in the ensuing silence came a diversion. From the far end of the narrow hall, behind a door, another door slammed. They could hear someone wheezing and a sound like a stick tapping on flagstones. There must be a back entrance, an alley or such running behind these cottages.
Markby smiled at the woman again, something which seemed to alarm her. ‘It sounds as if your father’s come home. Why don’t you go and see?’
He moved forward as he spoke and she retreated, allowing him to squeeze into the hall. As he did, the door at the far end opened and the sturdy outline of an elderly man appeared, filling the aperture. He raised his stick and jabbed it aggressively at the stranger.
‘Who’s this feller, then?’ he asked.
‘Policeman, Dad,’ said his daughter. ‘Don’t know what he wants. Well, he says he wants to talk to you. Can’t think why.’ This was accompanied by a sidelong contemptuous glance at Markby. ‘I suppose they’ve got to look as if they’re doing something. There’s been a bit of bother, someone’s died. I told him, you’ve got nothing to do with it.’
‘Murder,’ declared the old man with some satisfaction. ‘I met someone on my way home as told me about it. Well, Mr Policeman. You’d better come into my parlour, as the spider said to the fly.’ And disconcerting Markby considerably, he burst into a cackle of laughter.
His daughter shot forward and bundled him back into the kitchen. ‘You got to take them dirty boots off, Dad!’ she said loudly. Over her shoulder to Markby, she added, ‘You go on and wait for him. He’ll be with you direct.’
Markby obediently went into the parlour. The room in which he found himself spoke of poverty, not a recent lack of income but a generations-long want. Poor people begetting poor people, trapped in a narrow existence not only by lack of cash but by lack of education and a deep mistrust and fear of the outside world. He wasn’t surprised Billy Twelvetrees didn’t want to go to hospital. He suspected the very idea was terrifying to the old man. He’d lived here for his entire life and he had no wish to be surrounded by strangers at this late stage.
He knew he had a few minutes to examine his surroundings. Billy and his daughter would be exchanging information and arguing what was the best thing to do with the visitor. Billy’s curiosity might make him eager to chat. His daughter’s instinct would be to tell him to button his lip and get rid of that copper, that it was nothing to do with them. The woman was a not unfamiliar type. It would be a mistake to think that because of her appearance and manner she didn’t have a sharp brain. She also had the instincts of her type, which were to round up and protect her young at any hint of danger from an intruder by physically placing herself between the threat and her charges. Her elderly parent had become, due to age and infirmity, her child. It was that curious and sad reversal of roles so often observed when the carer becomes the cared-for.
The room was cramped and full of furniture, all of it rickety. By the fire was an armchair with faded loose covers and the look of having been much sat in. Billy’s chair, he guessed. Above the mantelshelf hung a sepia portrait of a man in First World War uniform. Beneath it, along the shelf, stood further photographs. There was one, also sepia, of two children, a boy and a girl, dressed in their best and staring miserably at the camera. Next to it, in complete contrast, was a recent picture of a plump woman, bearing some resemblance to the one who’d opened the door to him, but better dressed in a floral skirt and white top and beaming happily at the lens. The building behind her looked unreal, an extravaganza of turrets. Markby was peering at it in an attempt to identify it, when the door opened. He turned guiltily.
Billy Twelvetrees stomped in, banging his stick down on the worn carpet. Behind him hovered his daughter but he soon dismissed her with ‘You go and bring us some tea, Dilys.’
Dilys went and Billy sat down in his armchair. If there’d been an argument in the kitchen, Billy had won it. Markby, guessing he wouldn’t be invited to sit, sat down anyway on a straight-backed Edwardian dining chair which didn’t feel too safe under him.
‘You were looking at our pictures,’ said Billy with a certain pride. He raised his stick again and used it to point in the manner of an old-fashioned schoolmaster. ‘That big ‘un, that’s my father. That one there is me and my sister, Lilian. Her son, Norman, he runs the pub here now. Done well for himself, Norman. That one is my elder daughter Sandra taken in Floree-da, at Disneyland. That one on the end is my wife and my kids, took when my boy was just starting school. W
e had a school in them days. It’s houses now.’
Markby looked at the photo which showed a plump sullen woman holding a baby on her lap. To either side of her stood two other children, a boy about five and a girl a little younger. The baby must be Dilys.
‘Your daughter, the one I’ve met, she lives with you, Mr Twelvetrees?’
‘Lived with me for years. I gave her a home. Her husband, Ernie Pullen, done a bunk. He was gone six months after their wedding day, run off with the barmaid at the Fitzroy Arms. Never saw hide nor hair of either of them again. I don’t know why he married our Dilys in the first place. She was never no oil-painting.’
The door opened as he spoke and Dilys entered with the tea. Her red face indicated she’d overheard his disparaging remarks. She put the tin tray down with unnecessary force on a small table and withdrew silently.
Billy chuckled. He picked up a mug and sipped from it though the amount of steam rising from it suggested it was very hot. Markby touched his mug tentatively and withdrew his hand.
‘Hester Millar, as I hear,’ said Billy, abruptly introducing the reason for Markby’s call. ‘Dead murdered.’
‘That’s correct. You would know her, of course.’
The old man nodded, slurping more hot tea. ‘Her and Mrs Aston, they look after the church. Mrs Aston is the old vicar’s daughter.’
‘You like to go in the church and talk to them, I hear.’
‘Did you?’ Billy glared at him. ‘And where did you hear that, I wonder?’
Markby only gave a bland smile.
‘I might do,’ Billy agreed grudgingly.
‘When did you last talk to one of them in the church?’
‘That’s a bit of a daft question, ain’t it? I don’t know. Maybe yesterday, maybe the day before. One day’s much like another to me. You’ll find that out when you get to my age.’
‘But not today?’
‘No,’ Billy’s small malevolent eyes met Markby’s without flinching. ‘I wasn’t in there today.’
‘Did you see Miss Millar outside the church, say walking towards it?’
