by Ann Granger
‘The thought,’ Meredith said, ‘makes my skin creep. Not the tower so much as Norman Stubbings’s amorous embrace. Well, Norman and the tower together. Just imagine, Norman creeping about the belfry like Quasimodo. I always thought that man seriously weird. You don’t think he might have had something to do with Hester’s death?’
‘He has no motive and I can’t put him in the church at the time.’ Alan chuckled. ‘He got a scare when Dave turned up, demanded the keys and threatened to charge him with withholding evidence. He handed them over as meek as a lamb. His wife, little fat woman—’
‘Evie,’ Meredith informed him.
‘Evie, then. Evie was hopping about in the background insisting Norman couldn’t have been in the church the morning Hester died because he’d been on the phone to the brewery on and off for the best part of an hour from nine onwards. Dave checked that out and it’s true. After that, apparently, Stubbings had to fix one of the pumps and didn’t leave the bar.’
‘He said something about that to me, not on the day of the murder, on the Saturday when I called by his pub after I’d seen Ruth. Just before he threw me out.’ Meredith was loath to support Norman’s story but was impelled by a sense of fair play.
‘He has a witness for the day itself. A friend of Evie’s popped in for a chat and saw him at work. It seems he was quite abusive towards the visitor who described him to Pearce as “a miserable old git.” Norman doesn’t have many friends but he does have an alibi. I’m glad we can rule the keys out of our enquiry but I was never convinced it was a lead. The footprints in the tower were old and dusty and it’s so easy to hare off on a false trail, getting too excited about things like that. Investigation into big crimes has a way of turning up a host of small sins.’
‘Pity you can’t arrest him for something,’ she said wistfully.
He chuckled. ‘Not worth the time or trouble, even if we managed to find a charge. It’s like I said. You trawl a net hoping it’ll snare a big fish. If you pull out a minnow like Norman Stubbings you just have toss him back in the river.’
‘He broke into the church tower!’ she pointed out.
‘Not technically. He had a key.’
‘He was trespassing.’
‘Not of itself a crime.’ Markby shook his head. ‘He misbehaved up there but he didn’t do any damage to the place nor did he steal anything. If the bishop wants to proceed with a civil action for trespass, that’s up to him. I’m after a killer.’
‘So you’re back at square one?’
‘Did we ever leave it?’ he asked wryly. ‘However, Dave’s a tenacious sort of copper. He’s found a witness who saw Hester in the street outside the church.’ He frowned. ‘His witness says, Hester was carrying something. Ruth had the same impression and it might be worth asking her if she’s managed to remember what it was.’
On this low-key note they arranged their return to Lower Stovey.
Chapter Fourteen
Markby pulled up outside St Barnabas church, Lower Stovey in mid-afternoon, the following day, Saturday. ‘Wind’s getting up again,’ he observed.
Meredith peered through the windscreen. The tips of the trees surrounding the churchyard bent and swayed. The inn sign of the Fitzroy Arms rocked agitatedly on unoiled hinges. It carried a faded heraldic representation, the most distinguishing feature of which was a small animal of vague species, apparently a rodent. It seemed particularly apt. Norman the landlord had been standing in his doorway, alone and palely loitering, but identifying Markby’s car, he scurried back indoors.
Meredith said, ‘Doesn’t he look like something you find when you turn over a stone?’
Markby grinned. ‘Between the police and one of the village women, the mother of his latest dalliance, Norman’s got good reason to keep his head down. I’ll drop you here and go on to the farm. Tell Ruth I shouldn’t be long.’ He glanced past her towards the church. ‘Why do you want to go in there before you see Ruth?’
‘It’s just something I feel I have to do. I have to go in there and see it’s all right now, just an empty building with no dead bodies except in stone effigy. If I don’t, the last image I’ll have of the interior of the place will include Hester slumped in the pew. I don’t want it to be that.’ She paused. ‘Ruth told me the church was built as an act of atonement for a murder so it’s as if history has come round to repeat itself. You can’t help, somehow, getting an odd feeling when you’re walking round it, outside and inside. Inside you’re under the eye of all those Fitzroys and outside you’re under the eye of the Green Man, up there on the wall. What do you think the medieval masons thought was over there in those woods?’
‘I don’t know what they believed,’ he said a little sourly. ‘But as far as I’m concerned, whatever’s been there or is there, is human.’
But even I, he thought, have had moments of doubt, if I’m to be honest. Superstition has deep roots. We all pretend we’re not affected by it. We’re all just that little bit afraid of what we don’t know.
Meredith had pushed open the door and swung her legs to the ground. As he drove away towards Stovey Woods, he could see her in the windscreen mirror, standing by the lych-gate, watching his car.
A little before the road ran out at the edge of the woods, he came upon a wooden board with the name Greenjack Farm burned on it in pokerwork, at the entry to a turning on the right-hand side. Several cattle in a field beyond the sign were lying down. Folk wisdom believed that meant rain. He glanced at the sky appraisingly as he jolted the short distance down the track to the farm gate.
Twenty-two years. Could it really be so long? What had happened in the meantime? He’d married and divorced. He’d climbed to the rank of superintendent. He’d never become a father but he was the uncle of four, thanks to the efforts of his sister and her husband. He had met Meredith, something which still filled him with wonder as a man who had unexpectedly, and undeservedly, been offered a second chance. So why, when life so manifestly went on, opening new horizons, couldn’t he let go of this old puzzle?
‘Because,’ he said softly to himself, ‘I believe that in some way I can’t yet fathom, it has to do with the death of Hester Millar. Because I feel I’m on the edge of knowing. That I do, in the back of my mind, already know.’
And that other death? That of Simon Hastings? To say nothing of the sense of failure which had dogged him for all those years. Would the former ever be explained or the latter exorcised?
He got out of the car, pushed open the gate and went through, taking care to close it behind him. A black and white border collie dog ran towards him barking but not aggressively.
Markby said, ‘Hello, old fellow!’ and the dog wagged its tail and accompanied him, making figure-of-eight movements around the visitor’s feet as he continued on his way.
There was someone in a former stable building on the right. The doors of the end loosebox had been removed and part of the stone wall knocked out to make a wider opening. It was from in there that he could hear intermittent rattling and a voice uttering sounds indicating physical effort. Curiously, he poked his head through the gap.
Inside it was dark and it took a moment to accustom his eyes to the gloom. Ancient straw was piled in the corners, a hayrack was used as a receptacle for junk, strings of cobwebs dangled from the roof. Pride of place belonged to a Victorian pony-trap, its shafts resting on the ground. It’d once been painted blue and red and although the paintwork was damaged now and dull the trap was still clean. Someone was engaged in buffing it up still more. He was an elderly man, working slowly but doggedly, a cloth gripped awkwardly in a hand with knuckles distorted by arthritis. He looked up as Markby’s shadow filled the opening into the yard and straightened with an effort and another mumbled exclamation. Markby, realising that with the yard light behind him the old man could see nothing but a sinister dark outline, was obliged to step inside and make himself properly visible.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said.
The old man stood, rag in hand,
and contemplated him.
‘I seen you before,’ he returned at last. He chuckled and shook the rag at Markby. ‘Yes, I know you. I’ve seen you before.’
‘Yes, Mr Jones, you have, but it was a long time ago. I didn’t think you’d remember me.’
Martin Jones came towards him, head tilted to one side, faded eyes scrutinizing the newcomer’s face. ‘I disremember your name, though. You’ll have to tell me.’
Markby told him and added, ‘It was twenty-two years ago I came here asking about the Potato Man.’
A long sigh escaped old Martin. ‘You still looking for him, then?’
‘Yes, and for the murderer of Miss Millar.’
Puzzlement crinkled the old man’s features. ‘I don’t know her.’
‘She lived in Lower Stovey with Mrs Aston. Mrs Aston used to be Miss Pattinson, the vicar’s daughter.’
‘I remember little Miss Pattinson. She was a pretty little thing. But she doesn’t live in Lower Stovey no more.’
‘Yes, she does, Mr Jones. Only she’s called Mrs Aston now. Miss Millar was her friend and she died, she was killed, in the church here.’
He wasn’t sure he was right in talking to Martin about the death. It was possible his son had decided not to worry the old man with the grim news. But the idea of death was less worrying to Martin than the location in which it had occurred.
‘It don’t seem right.’ Martin waved the cleaning rag back and forth as if wiping away a stain. ‘Not killing that woman in the church.’ He began to look distressed.
Markby decided on distraction and moved nearer to the pony-trap. ‘Going to take it out for a spin?’
At this Martin perked up again, the death in the church immediately wiped from his mind. ‘No. Only pony on the farm now belongs to young Becky and that’s a riding animal. Put him between the shafts and he’d likely bolt away. But it’s a good conveyance. I’m minded to sell it. You never know, someone might want it.’ He gave the nearest wheel another rub with his rag. Then turning his head so that he could see Markby, he added, ‘Becky’s my granddaughter.’
‘You’ve got a grandson, too, I believe, Gordon?’
Martin frowned. ‘I haven’t seen him in a while.’
‘He didn’t come the other day to see his mother? On his motorbike?’
‘He may have done. The days all seem one to me now.’ He squinted at Markby. ‘I remember you, see. You look much the same, you do. Some folks change. I remember the Potato Man and all kinds of things that happened back then. But I can’t seem to keep in my head things that happen nowadays.’ He frowned and as if there was a necessary time delay between absorbing a question and focusing on it, went on, ‘That’s a noisy thing, that motorbike. When I was his age I drove this trap here into Bamford. I didn’t need no motorbike. Kevin don’t like that motorbike either. He don’t like Gordon bringing it in when there’s beasts in the yard.’
‘Where is Kevin now?’ Markby asked.
A shake of the head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t recall seeing him today. He’s likely about the place.’
‘What about Mrs Jones, Linda?’
The old face brightened. ‘She’s a good woman, Linda. She’ll be over to the house.’ He turned back to the trap. ‘You don’t know someone as wants a good conveyance like this ’un, do you?’
Markby said apologetically that he didn’t. The old man nodded and returned to his polishing. It seemed the conversation was over.
‘Nice to have seen you again, Mr Jones,’ he said to him, but got no reply.
If Mrs Jones was in the house she was probably in the kitchen. Markby made his way round to the back door and sure enough, it was open and he could see the figure of a woman moving in the dim interior. He knocked on the door jamb and she looked up in surprise.
‘Superintendent Markby,’ he said quickly and held up his ID.
She came towards him wiping her hands on a tea-towel pinned round her waist and he saw that she’d been making pastry.
‘Never another one!’ she said, not crossly but in a mild amazement. ‘I had a feller here the other day.’
‘Yes, Inspector Pearce. May I come in and have a word, Mrs Jones?’
She shrugged. ‘You can come in. I don’t know what word it is you’re going to have. I’ve told all I know. I only saw poor Miss Millar as I drove past the church. I didn’t see where she was going. My mind was on other things. I do wish, though, that I’d stopped and had a word with her. You never know, it might have made a difference somehow. But then, it might not. You never know about these things, do you?’ She pointed with a floury hand at a chair. ‘Sit down, why don’t you?’
Markby sat down and she returned to the table and rolling out her pastry.
‘I’m just making a few little sausage rolls and fancy bits,’ she said. ‘Cheese straws and that sort of thing.’
‘Would that be for your son’s twenty-first party?’ he asked.
She was startled. ‘How’d you know about that? Oh, right, Gordon came when your inspector was here. Yes, for the party. Gordon was for getting it all from a shop but I don’t reckon to shop-bought sausage rolls. I’ve made the cake and all.’ She pointed proudly at the nearby dresser on which sat a large fruit cake. ‘I’ve got to decorate it yet,’ she explained. ‘I’m going to put twenty-one on it in icing in the middle and pipe “Happy Birthday, Gordon” round the edge.’
‘Very nice, too.’ Markby paused then said, ‘I saw your father-in-law in the barn. He’s cleaning up a pony-trap you’ve got in there.’
She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ‘That old trap. He’s always in there messing about with it. Still, it keeps him occupied. Did he try and sell it to you?’
‘Not really. He just asked if I knew someone who wanted a conveyance, as he called it.’
She laughed. ‘He usually tries to sell it to people. He’s not, you know—’ She tapped her forehead. ‘He’s not gaga, but not quite in working order up there, either. His mind goes along its own road, if you understand me.’
‘I understand. He remembered me, though.’
Her hands stopped working. She rested them on the flat disc of dough and her eyes searched his face in a level, thoughtful gaze.
‘You’ve been here before? I don’t remember you.’
‘It was twenty-two years ago.’
The level gaze faltered. She turned her attention back to her work, picking up a knife and cutting the rounded edges from the pastry so that she was left with a neat square. ‘Surprised he remembered you,’ she said, her voice muffled. ‘He doesn’t remember much.’
‘But he remembers what happened a long time ago better than last week,’ Markby observed. ‘He even remembered why I came here. It was when we were enquiring into the attacks on women in and around Stovey Woods. The Potato Man. Do you remember that case, Mrs Jones?’
The hand holding the knife shook. ‘Barely. Is that what you’ve come about, after all this time? Haven’t you got enough to do with the murder?’ Her voice was harsh.
‘Enough, certainly. But sometimes one thing leads to another and it can take years for everything to work itself out. You do remember the Potato Man, then?’
She put down the knife and collapsed abruptly into a chair, making it scrape noisily on the flagged floor. ‘I was only a girl, seventeen.’
‘Were you engaged to Kevin Jones then? I met Kevin at the time. I seem to remember he wasn’t married.’
‘We were courting.’ The words were almost inaudible.
‘And you got married soon after?’
She raised her gaze briefly to meet his then dropped it again.
‘I always believed,’ Markby said softly, ‘that the rapist was a local man. I’ve also always believed there were more rapes than were ever reported.’
‘Do you now?’ she said dully. She made a visible effort to pull herself together. ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’
Markby leaned forward, resting his clasped hands on the edge of the table.
‘You know, it’s a funny thing,’ he said conversationally. ‘But many a witness doesn’t come forward because he or she believes what he or she knows isn’t important. Or that he or she knows nothing. Yet when we do find these people and talk to them, it’s amazing what they start to remember.’
Linda Jones made no reply and he went on. ‘I’m not seeking to stir up old pain, Mrs Jones. I’m not seeking to make anything public. But I believe he’s still here in Lower Stovey and I mean to have him yet.’
Something in his voice, a touch of steel, had frightened her and she looked up, shying her head away from him like a nervous beast.
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he urged. ‘I told you, I don’t mean to make anything public. Just now, you said you wished you’d spoken to Hester Millar when you passed her. It might have made a difference, you said, or it might not. But you did right to tell the police about it. Because whether it makes a difference is something the investigating officers will decide. So many witnesses,’ Markby added with a pleasant smile, ‘try to second-guess us. They tell us what they think we want to know and leave out things they fancy aren’t important.’
She said very quietly, ‘If there were other women who were attacked by that man, women who haven’t come forward ever, it will be because they have spent more than twenty years burying that memory. They wouldn’t be able to tell you anything. None of them saw his face. All they heard was a footstep, a breath and then that horrible earthy-smelling sack—’ She put her hands over her face and, after a moment, took them away.
‘Mr Markby,’ she said, her voice shaking a little but still filled with resolve, ‘I can’t tell you anything. I – I wish you weren’t still looking for him and I can’t say I hope you find him. All it will do is stir up old trouble, memories no one wants recalled. Those women who didn’t come forward, they had their reasons. They were maybe going steady with a young man and were afraid that he might not want them any more, if they were dirtied in that way.’
He hadn’t meant to interrupt at this moment when she’d at last begun to speak, but he couldn’t prevent himself exclaiming, ‘It wasn’t their fault. The women themselves had done nothing wrong.’
