The Wychford Murders

by Paula Gosling

  ‘No. I gather they usually call Larrabee now – his son is a police constable. All he does is certify death – nothing else. If it’s a suspicious death, they send for the scene of crime people from one of the regional forensic laboratories and a CID team from the Regional Crime Squad, as well.’

  ‘Now how the devil do you know all that?’ Kay demanded.

  Jennifer sipped her coffee and smiled over the top of the cup. She would have dearly loved to say through reading all those mysteries of Aunt Clodie’s, but it was much more fun to appear omnipotent. ‘Good heavens,’ she murmured, mischievously. ‘Do I know something local that you don’t?’

  ‘Fine thing if you do,’ Kay said, with a pretence at outrage. ‘I’m supposed to do the gossiping around here, not you. Are you trying to do me out of a job or something?’

  ‘God forbid,’ Jennifer said. Kay Hall had been her uncle’s secretary/receptionist for the last ten years. She was endlessly energetic, intelligent, funny and knowledgeable about the people and ways of Wychford and the surrounding countryside. A tall, angular woman in her forties, with a mass of blonde hair, Kay was possessed of a quick tongue, and a warm heart. She had trained as a nurse, but married soon after and had never gone back. Running the Mayberry (now Gregson and Eames) surgery suited her down to the ground, for she could fit it in with her family life.

  ‘Shame you won’t get in on it.’ Kay spoke with the objective regret of a true news-gatherer.

  ‘I’ve got quite enough on my little plate, thanks very much,’ Jennifer said, finishing her coffee.

  ‘Not if we go on losing patients like this,’ Kay said, taking up the cup. Jennifer got the impression that Ms Frenholm wouldn’t be missed. Kay was not one for hypocrisy. ‘Won’t catch me out after dark ‘til he’s caught, nor Debbie neither, unless her father or brother’s with her.’ She gave Jennifer a hard look. ‘And what about night calls, that’s what I want to know? What about you traipsing all over with your little bag and nothing else but a great big smile? You want to stop that, straight off. Could be a drug addict, you know, something like that. Addicts usually want money to buy their junk – but sometimes they go after the stuff itself. Lots of doctors get mugged for dope, you know. Why . . . ’

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ Jennifer promised. ‘I’m not exactly eager to get my throat cut.’

  ‘Could have fooled me,’ Kay muttered to herself, meaning to be overheard. ‘The way you talk to Dr Gregson sometimes.’

  ‘Hey!’ Jennifer called out – but Kay had made a quick exit, knowing her arrow had gone home. She was uneasy because of the tension between the two doctors, and wanted them to get along better. Jennifer was sorry about this, but she couldn’t see any way around the problem at the moment.

  She pressed the buzzer for the next patient to be sent in, and resolutely cleared her mind for receiving symptoms and complaints. But when the door opened, it wasn’t a patient who entered. David Gregson came in and closed the door behind him, then stood looking at her.

  She looked back, noting the grey in his thick light-brown hair, and the piercing green eyes that transfixed men and enthralled women. All women except Jennifer and his estranged wife, that is. Jennifer thought him cold and unsympathetic, although she had to admit, grudgingly, that he was a good physician, particularly in diagnosis. Furthermore, his patients were fiercely loyal to him, which told her that the warmth she couldn’t detect had to be there, somewhere.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked him, finally.

  He left the door and came a few steps towards her desk. ‘This murder,’ he announced.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of it. Two women now, apparently. I’d rather you weren’t the third. I’ll take all night calls until the man is caught.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Jennifer said, briskly.

  ‘It’s not nonsense, it’s common sense,’ Gregson snapped. ‘If you weren’t such a damned feminist . . . ’

  ‘I’m not a feminist, and I’m not an idiot. I’ll be cautious. You don’t let me take many calls as it is. Night-time is the only time I see anything interesting. Otherwise you leave me all the boils, bunions, and . . . and . . . ’

  ‘Bruises?’ he suggested, with a half-smile. ‘I’m sorry it seems like that, but the truth is, those are mostly the kind of things I see, as well. That’s general practice. Working in the hospital, you only saw the referrals, the sharp end of medicine. It’s more basic out here. Think of us as the lymphatic system of medicine – we filter out the boring bits. It isn’t often we get something spectacular . . . ’

  ‘Such as Mr Crittendon?’

  ‘I called you in on that,’ he reminded her, gently. Mr Crittendon was a local man who had come in with raging malaria, caught on a selling trip to the Far East. Malaria was hardly endemic to the Cotswolds – and Mr Crittendon had been a textbook case.

  Jennifer relented. ‘Yes, you did. I’m sorry, David, I don’t mean to sound resentful, but . . . ’

  ‘But you feel it? Fair enough. So do I. After all, most partners in a practice would have some say on who came in when another partner retired, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Uncle Wally hasn’t exactly retired . . . ’

  He looked at her in pity. ‘You know as well as I do that he must stop now. All this talk of coming back and taking up the reins is so much self-indulgent nonsense. Even if he could stand the pace physically, his mind couldn’t take the strain, nor his spirit the pressure. He’s finished, Jennifer, and we both know it. Obviously he will be invaluable on a consultative basis, but . . . ’

  ‘How nice of you to admit that much,’ Jennifer said, stung by his brusque stating of a fact she knew to be true. ‘I thought you were going to go on pretending for ever.’

  Gregson ignored that. ‘He was a brilliant physician in his time, but he’s tired, Jennifer. Very tired, now.’

  ‘In which case, you’ll be senior partner and will want to find someone more to your taste to replace him, no doubt,’ she said, acidly. ‘A little awkward, don’t you think, seeing as you are living in his house as well as working in his offices?’ It was unfair and she knew it, but he always rubbed her the wrong way.

  ‘There is another alternative,’ he said. ‘I could be the one to leave, letting you take over instead. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Everything to yourself?’

  ‘No,’ she said, evenly. ‘I wouldn’t. I am not capable of carrying a practice this size on my own, but I am capable of carrying half of it. If I were allowed to, that is.’ She let go of that argument and tried another. ‘Anyway, Uncle Wally needs a man around to talk with.’

  ‘And you?’

  Something in his eyes compelled her, so that she couldn’t look away. ‘I enjoy having a colleague to discuss things with, yes,’ she admitted. ‘It was something we always had, at the hospital. I find general practice kind of . . . scary, sometimes . . . to tell you the truth.’ When he looked at her like that she found it impossible to do anything else. ‘I mean, making a diagnosis in a bedroom on your own, with only your eyes and ears and touch to rely on – it’s awful. Frankly, sometimes, it scares me to death!’

  ‘So you admit it?’ Something in his eyes softened. ‘Maybe you’ll make a better GP than I thought. We’re all scared, Jennifer – alone in those bedrooms, with some anxious parent, husband or wife watching you, thinking you’re a god when you’re just a man – or woman – trying hard as hell to remember the twenty-three alternative conditions all those damned symptoms add up to. Or worse, trying to find a way to tell them that it adds up to something really nasty. When I came here Wally told me being a GP was the toughest specialisation of all. He’s right.’

  Jennifer smiled. ‘He used to tell me that when I was a kid trailing around after him on his rounds.’ She looked at him again, not quite sure if he were being sarcastic or not. ‘Are you really scared, sometimes?’

  ‘Yes.’


  ‘Thanks for telling me, then. I’d begun to think you were the original iron man.’

  He shrugged, as if he were suddenly embarrassed by having admitted so much to her. Or even by spending more than two minutes here in her office. ‘I haven’t got time to discuss this fascinating conflict of character and interests with you. We both have patients waiting. I will take the night calls. You can have most of the day calls. You won’t believe how many boils there are on how many backsides, this time of year.’

  He was gone before she could protest.

  Two sore throats, four feeling poorly’s, one sprained wrist, one impending breakdown, a measles, a frozen shoulder, an insomnia and a confirmed pregnancy later, she was ‘free’. Free to write up her notes, fill in and sign repeat prescriptions, and pick up her list of house calls, that is. She was about to leave when the phone rang.

  ‘It’s the police,’ Kay said, with her hand over the receiver. ‘Apparently, Barry Treat had to go over to identify Ms Frenholm’s body, and he’s collapsed in a heap. They wanted to send for an ambulance, but he’s asking for you. Care to dance?’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Jennifer said.

  ‘Ghoul,’ Kay said, grinning, and relayed the information.

  ‘Let us pray it doesn’t reach the national papers, that’s all I can say,’ Mabel Peacock Taubman said, turning away from the window where she had been watching the activities of the police on the far bank of the river. ‘I told you bringing all those hippie types right on to our very doorstep was asking for trouble, didn’t I?’

  ‘What does it have to do with the artisans at the centre?’ Mark spoke so sharply that he startled her.

  ‘Why, she was one of them,’ his mother said, rallying. ‘The milkman told me she was one of those pot-making people. You know her, too, if I’m not mistaken,’ she added, acidly. ‘No better than she should be, of course. She worked with two men – that should tell people something.’

  ‘Tell them what?’ Basil asked, lazily. After an initial glance, he’d taken no interest in the busy scene across the way. ‘She may have worked with them, my dear, but she didn’t necessarily sleep with them. If you mean the two I think you mean, I believe they’re both gay, anyway.’

  ‘Gay?’ Mabel snorted. ‘I don’t see what’s gay about homosexuality – sordid and disgusting is what it is.’

  The two men glanced at one another. Mark raised his eyes to the ceiling, as if asking for deliverance, and Basil shrugged. ‘Times change, my dear. These things are perfectly acceptable now.’

  ‘Not to me,’ Mabel said, firmly. ‘The bizarre sexual combinations and re-combinations of that group over at the centre are enough to fill a hundred revolting novels of the type that sell so well today. You know that’s true, Basil. I don’t know what possessed me to agree to the thing in the first place, right on our doorstep.’

  That phrase was a particular favourite of Mabel’s – ‘right on our doorstep’. The fact that they had no neighbours within half a mile in any direction was beside the point. Whatever happened in Wychford happened to her, and was almost always an affront. Not for the first time, Mark glanced at his mother and his stepfather and wondered what, if any, passion passed between them. Basil was ten years younger than his wife, and even to a son’s kind eye, Mabel could not be said to be a ravishing beauty. She had kept her figure with assiduous attention to diet and exercise, wore excellent clothes, was cleverly made up (her complexion was a source of great gratification to her), and had her hair dressed in the height of matronly fashion, but there was really no disguising the fact that the years had passed. They made an attractive ‘mature’ couple, it’s true, and they seemed devoted to one another. But he couldn’t imagine them in bed together, or doing more than brushing cheeks. Nor did he want to imagine it. Especially not while he was eating breakfast.

  ‘Well, I’m sure they’ll catch whoever did it quickly,’ Mark said. ‘There was another murder like it in Woodbury a couple of days ago.’

  ‘Good lord,’ his mother said, taken aback. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Oh yes you did, my dear,’ Basil said, around his fourth piece of toast and marmalade. ‘I showed you the editorial about it in the evening paper yesterday.’

  ‘Another woman?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Were they . . . ’ she paused, delicately. ‘Were they – interfered with?’

  ‘The paper didn’t say. I suppose so – although I think there was some mention of handbags being missing.’

  ‘So you can’t really call it just a local murder, can you?’ Mark said, cheerfully. ‘It seems to be a travelling phenomenon.’

  His mother fixed him with a basilisk eye. ‘I don’t consider this to be a matter for humour, Mark. Why, this second girl was murdered just across the river from us. A matter of a few hundred yards—’

  ‘Plus another hundred yards’ width of water.’

  ‘Well, I shan’t take a step out that door until this madman is caught. No woman is safe, with such a monster about.’

  Mark opened his mouth, but resisted the obvious jibe. He glanced over at his stepfather. ‘You’ll miss your train, chum, if you don’t get a move on. Want a lift to the station?’

  Basil looked up from his newspaper, and his eyes went to the longcase clock on the wall behind Mark. ‘Good lord, I had no idea. So much for my morning stroll.’ He moved his eyes to the window. ‘Not that the weather looks all that friendly. Thank you, Mark, I’ll take you up on that.’

  ‘Where are you going, Mark? You don’t open the shop on Thursdays. I thought you were going to drive me into Milchester this morning,’ his mother said, fretfully. ‘You know I need a new gown for the Carslake wedding.’

  ‘Yes, I do know that, Mother,’ Mark said, standing up and dropping his napkin beside his plate. ‘I also know that I will have to arrange to sell something I love to pay for it.’

  She looked at him in surprise, then made a dismissive sound, rather like a small detonation behind the teeth. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Actually, I have to go into town, but I’ll be back within the hour, so your trip to Milchester is still on, don’t worry.’

  ‘And what am I supposed to do while you’re off in town?’

  Mark was following Basil out of the door. ‘Meditate on the meaning of life. It will do you a world of good.’

  When Basil came back, hatted and coated, to give her a goodbye kiss, she spoke angrily. ‘You must speak firmly to Mark, Basil. He’s getting absolutely impossible lately.’

  ‘My love, he’ll hardly listen to me,’ Basil said. He was a tall, slender, distinguished-looking man of fifty. His looks had been a very valuable asset on the London social circuit. An early and short-lived marriage had established his heterosexual credibility, so his continuing bachelordom had been put down to either a ‘broken heart’ or reluctance to repeat this early mistake. His easy manner and charm had meant he was much in demand, and it was with some dismay as well as astonishment that ‘society’ and Nigel Dempster greeted his sudden marriage to the ‘unknown’ Mabel Peacock, widow of uncertain years but apparently the possessor of certain means. One less around the right tables, they said, and they were correct. Despite expectations to the contrary, Basil had remained faithful to his wife and his duties, retaining his modest position in the City and behaving himself impeccably. ‘Mark thinks me a shallow idiot, you know,’ Basil said to his wife, with rueful amusement. ‘He’s simply impatient to get this scheme of his off the ground, my dear, and resentful of your standing in his way. Perhaps you ought to give in to him, after all.’

  She looked at him reproachfully. ‘I never thought I’d hear you say that.’

  Basil sighed. ‘And I never thought working in the City could be so exhausting and unrewarding.’

  Her sympathy was instantly aroused. ‘Is it so terrible, then?’

  ‘Not terrible, my dear. Ju
st damned dreary, that’s all. And the journey back and forth . . . ’ He shrugged. ‘Ah well, small price to pay, I suppose. Still, Mark’s scheme would mean I could stay here with you all the time. Such a lovely prospect ought to be worth a bit of sacrifice, don’t you think?’

  ‘Sacrifice, indeed,’ Mabel snapped, then relented as she looked at his reproachful expression. ‘I am thinking about it, Basil, actually. Really, I am.’

  He brightened. ‘That’s the way. Think it through. That’s all the boy asks.’

  ‘The boy’ appeared in the dining-room doorway. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Coming,’ Basil said. He bent to kiss his wife again. ‘See you on Saturday, my dear. I’ll catch a morning train.’

  ‘You’re not staying in town again?’ Mabel asked, in sudden dismay.

  ‘Needs must, my sweet. Dinner with the directors tonight, big conference first thing Friday morning. Must be fresh and bright,’ Basil said. ‘It might go on to all hours, and will probably end with another dinner out. I don’t particularly relish the milk train. I’ll stay at my club, as usual. Tell you what, I’ll bring you a pressy to make up, all right? ’Bye, darling.’

  Mabel stared at the doorway resentfully, and heard the front door slam on their low-voiced conversation. She looked around the empty dining room, and found no joy in the satinwood panelling or the silver on the sideboard. She stared at the cold toast on her plate. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said.

  Chapter Seven

  The Burwood ‘cop shop’ could easily have been mistaken for a small college or public school building by some passing stranger. Built along Georgian lines, it stood at the top of the sloping High Street, under the benign protection of several huge chestnut trees.

  Inside, however, it could have been mistaken for nothing else. Gutted and redecorated in the middle seventies, it featured worn dark green linoleum, cracked tan plastic upholstery, ribbed glass and chrome. A gesture towards public relations had been made in the reception area with the addition of two large ‘Swiss cheese’ plants, but their growth had been so uninhibited that they reminded one unpleasantly of the tangled webs woven by deception. It was, however, as clean as tired ladies could make it each night, and did not smell of disinfectant.