‘Well, never mind about times for the moment, love,’ said WPC Knowles kindly, moderating her normally hearty tone to one suitable for soothing a small child. She turned a page of her notebook. ‘Now, you’ve told me what happened up to the time when you found the – when you found her. Can you remember exactly what you did after that?’
Alison picked at a loose thread in the quilting of her dressing-gown. ‘I don’t know … I was too shocked … I was terrified. It was – awful. Awful. Oh God—’ She put her hands to her face, trying to shut out the persistent images of blood and dark hair and white splintered bone, of green glass and bruised, splayed limbs. Her mother murmured with sympathetic incomprehension, putting out a shy hand as if to touch the girl and then retracting it quickly.
‘I know, love, I can imagine,’ comforted the policewoman, glad – from what she’d heard at division – that she couldn’t. ‘Don’t think about what you saw, just tell me what you did. I mean, did you try to telephone for help?’
‘No.’ Alison let her hands slide down her face and fall helplessly into her lap. She shook her head slowly. ‘I never thought about telephoning – I couldn’t think straight at all. I told you, I was terrified …’
Beth Knowles looked up from her notebook, round-eyed, and asked a question of her own. ‘Did you think that the murderer was still somewhere about?’
Molly stiffened, put her fingertips to her mouth and gasped.
‘Oh no.’ Alison managed to focus her eyes on the policewoman. She sounded surprised. ‘No, as a matter of fact that didn’t occur to me … I was just terrified of – of her – of how she looked. Too terrified to stay in the house. I panicked and ran away, out into the garden. I screamed, I can remember that, once I got outside. I don’t know what I was screaming, but I know that I hoped Gil would come.’
‘Gil?’
‘Jasmine’s friend, Gilbert Smith. He lives above the garage, and does the garden for her. He’s nice. I knew that he’d take care of things for me, if I could find him.’
‘And did you find him?’
‘Not at first. I couldn’t run straight, any more than I could think straight. I tried everywhere, the greenhouses and the outbuildings and the orchard, but I could hardly see where I was going and I kept bumping into things and falling down and crying. I went up to his flat but there was no answer the first time. Then I found that his motor bike was still in the garage so I knew he must be somewhere about. After that I just hammered on his door until he answered. He’d been asleep, so he hadn’t heard me the first time.’
The policewoman raised her eyebrows, which were several shades less golden than her hair. ‘Asleep, at that time in the morning?’
‘Yes. Well, he was a friend more than a gardener. Jasmine didn’t mind what hours he kept. Anyway, I told him what had happened – what I’d found. He was very shocked and upset, of course. But then he said that he’d do what was necessary.’
‘You mean, telephone the police?’
‘Well, he couldn’t do that right away. There’s no telephone in his flat. He wasn’t properly awake at first, and I don’t suppose he could think straight either, but he put his head under the tap and then he hurried up the drive to the house.’
‘What time would that be?’
‘I’ve no idea …’
‘Did you go up to the house with him?’
‘No. No. I couldn’t face it. I left it all to Gil.’
‘And did you see anyone else? Any tradesmen, or passers-by on the road?’
‘No. No-one except Gil.’
‘About how long was he in the house, would you say?’
‘I don’t know … I just wandered away into the garden. I was too upset to know where I was or what was happening. I didn’t see Gil any more, after he went down the stairs from his flat and up the drive. I think I heard his motor bike starting up, a bit later, so he must have gone to fetch help. Soon after that the police cars began to arrive, and then Dad came to find me.’ The girl drew a long, shuddering breath. ‘And that’s all I know.’
WPC Knowles was disappointed. The Chief Inspector wasn’t going to like this. He had most particularly wanted her to establish the timing of Alison’s movements, and those of anyone she had spoken to. But there were limits to the amount of pushing you could do to a girl who had gone through such an ordeal.
‘That’s fine, love,’ she said briskly sympathetic. ‘Now there are three more things I have to ask, and then I’ll leave you in peace. First, did Jasmine Woods say anything to you, when you last saw her, about what she intended to do yesterday?’
Alison shook her head. ‘She didn’t mention the weekend at all. She must have worked most of the time, because there were some tapes waiting for me to transcribe this morning.’
‘I see. Second thing, then – can you recall anything about the house or the sitting-room that seemed unusual this morning? Anything that could possibly give us a lead to the murderer?’
‘I’ve told you … I’ve told you as much as I can …’
‘All right, love. Last question: have you any idea why anyone would want to kill your employer?’
‘Want to kill her? How could anyone want to kill Jasmine? It must have been done by someone who was trying to steal from her.’
‘Um,’ commented WPC Knowles. ‘You don’t know of anyone who hated her?’
‘No! No, of course not. That’s absurd, no one could possibly have hated Jasmine. Some people disliked her books, and some envied her money, but no one actually hated her. How could they? She’s – she was—’
‘I know. I understand.’ Beth Knowles put away her notebook and stood up, longingly anticipating the taste of cigarette smoke. ‘Sorry I had to bother you – you’ve been a great help. And you’ll probably remember a few more details later, when you’ve had time to get over the shock.’
Alison shuddered, and hid her face in her hands again. Her mother gave her knee an uncertain pat.
‘There, there …’ Molly cast about for a more positive way of expressing her concern, and remembered the tea tray. She had brought it up as soon as the policewoman had called downstairs to tell her that Alison was awake, but the girl had left her cup untasted and the milk had formed a skin on the surface of the liquid. Molly lifted the knitted tea-cosy and touched the lukewarm pot with an expert hand.
‘I’ll go and make some fresh tea,’ she said, glad to return to her proper element. ‘And this time, dear, you must try to drink it while it’s hot.’
Chapter Fourteen
‘The man’s certainly got green fingers,’ pronounced Chief Inspector Quantrill. ‘If he can get tomato plants to grow anywhere near the size of his cannabis plants, he must produce quite a crop.’
The two detectives were in Gilbert Smith’s bathroom, looking at the cannabis that grew in pots on the window sill. The plants were luxuriant, flourishing like nettles on an old garbage dump, four or five feet tall; their feathery tips brushed the ceiling.
‘We haven’t found any other cannabis plants in the grounds, or anywhere on the property,’ said Tait, ‘so I very much doubt that Smith was growing enough to supply anyone else. He’s a user himself, of course – we could all smell that as soon as we came in. And I found this in one of the cupboards.’
He showed the Chief Inspector a wooden box that contained an ordinary tobacco pipe. For the purpose of smoking cannabis resin, the bowl had been made much smaller by an insert of foil which would also serve to prevent the wood from burning. There were traces in the bowl of a brown powdery substance. In a plastic bag was the source of the powder: a thumbnail-sized piece of cannabis resin, a brittle brownish-black substance that smelled strongly of sage. Also in the box were some cigarette papers, a rolled cardboard filter and a handful of what looked like greenish hay, which both men recognised as marijuana, the dried flowering top of the cannabis plant. Some of it had been chopped up, and it looked and smelled like herbal tobacco.
Quantrill looked at the contents of the box with distast
e. ‘What we’re concerned with at the moment is murder; the fact that he smokes this muck doesn’t automatically put him at the top of our list of suspects. Any news of him yet?’
‘None at all. But I’ve heard that WPC Knowles has got Alison’s statement.’
‘Good. Where’s she taking it to, the station?’ asked Quantrill. His stomach was rumbling a reminder that it had had nothing to occupy itself with since breakfast, and he had been vouchsafed a sudden and unusually alluring vision of the Breckham Market police canteen.
‘No, she’s bringing it to the incident-room.’ But Tait had heard the rumbles. ‘I’ve got the mobile canteen there, too,’ he added.
It was one of the occasions when Quantrill regarded his sergeant with almost unqualified approval.
In the incident-room, the Chief Inspector passed his daughter’s statement to Sergeant Tait. ‘You can’t blame her for running away,’ he said defensively. ‘I know that she ought to have reported the murder immediately, but it’s understandable that she panicked, poor girl.’ He bit into a crusty bread roll from which protruded an edge of corned beef supported by a pale green ruff of lettuce.
Tait agreed, and not merely as a matter of diplomacy. Horrifying enough for Alison to have found a body at all, let alone that of someone she knew and liked, let alone in that condition. ‘She’s made a very helpful statement, anyway,’ he added. ‘Now we know that Smith didn’t leave until this morning. And the fingerprints that were on the telephone in Jasmine’s office matched the prints in his flat, so presumably he made the 999 call before he went off.’
‘Were any of his prints in her sitting-room?’
‘Yes,’ said Tait. Quantrill paused in mid-chew. ‘In the kitchen as well,’ Tait went on. ‘After all, he was a friend of Jasmine, so he was probably in and out of her house a good deal. But the murderer must have worn gloves to do the job, or else he gave the cabinet and the bottles he used a quick wipe. Apparently their surfaces are too blurred to provide any usable prints.’
‘Sounds as though we can rule Smith out, then,’ said Quantrill. ‘As the murderer, anyway, otherwise he’d have taken off last night. I’ve been wondering what made him make the 999 call this morning anonymously, and then bolt, but I think I can see a possible reason. He may grow his own marijuana, but he can’t produce cannabis resin in this climate. He needs money to buy that. So let’s assume that he got quietly stoned on cannabis last night, and was sleeping it off this morning when Alison roused him. He hurried up to the house, saw the body, and also saw that the cabinet had been broken open and that some of the valuables were scattered on the floor. The temptation to steal them and sell them was too much for him, so he picked them up – that’s when he got the blood on his clothes. After that, he’d have to bolt. And, naturally, he wouldn’t want to give his name to the police.’
‘Why bother to telephone at all?’ said Tait sceptically.
‘For Alison’s sake?’ Quantrill suggested. He washed down the last crumbs of his roll with a swig of dark brown tea. ‘All right,’ he said irritably, ‘what’s your theory? There had to be some good reason for the man to take off.’
‘Yes. From what I saw at the party, Smith’s not an obvious murder suspect. Like most druggies, he’s self-absorbed. Drugs do alter the personality, of course, but the effect of cannabis is to make its users inward-looking and passive and imaginative. It’s the hard stuff, hallucinogens like LSD, that can trigger off latent psychoses.’
Chief Inspector Quantrill twitched his eyebrows and embarked on the consumption of a Lyons individual raspberry and redcurrant pie: ‘So?’
‘So I can see two possibilities. One is that Smith had moved on from cannabis to another drug, like LSD, that he needed a lot more money to keep buying it, and that he was capable, under the influence, of murdering Jasmine Woods when she tried to stop him stealing her collection. I agree that we’ve found no evidence so far of any other drugs, but Jasmine told me that Smith had Yarchester friends who were on the drug scene, and he could have bought acid from them.’
‘And what about his clothes? We agreed that the blood on the jeans we found this morning didn’t indicate that Smith was the murderer.’
‘True. But if any of his other clothes were saturated with blood, he’d have tried to get rid of them this morning before he left. He might have dug them into the compost heap. The other possibility, of course, is that the murderer wasn’t Smith himself, but one of his junkie friends. No doubt he babbled about Jasmine’s collection, and gave them ideas. And a junkie in need of a fix doesn’t care what he does to get hold of money to buy dope.’
‘So you’re suggesting,’ said Quantrill heavily, ‘that after Smith – or one of his friends – did the murder, he calmly stayed here in his flat overnight?’
‘It’s possible. He might have been too stoned to believe what had happened, until Alison told him.’
‘But not too stoned to wipe the fingerprints from the bottles and the cabinet?’
‘That was what he would have rushed up to the house to do this morning, before he left. As you suggested, that would probably be when he got the blood on the clothes that we found.’
‘I see … And before he took off, he telephoned for the police?’
‘Why not? It would be a good way of covering his guilt, because he’d think we would assume – as you assumed just now, sir – that he wouldn’t dare to telephone unless he was innocent of the murder.’
It was one of the occasions when Chief Inspector Quantrill thought his sergeant too clever by half.
‘All right, then,’ he conceded irritably. ‘We know we need Smith – what are you doing about catching him?’
Tait was clearly glad he had been asked that question. His answer was prompt. ‘My guess is that he would have headed for Yarchester to join his friends. He probably went to ground before we had time to put out the alert for his motor bike. So I had a photofit picture made up, and I’ve sent it to the Yarchester division in the hope that they can ferret him out. The drug squad boys know the likely areas of the city. I’ve also asked for a watch to be put on the railway station, the bus station and the airport, in case he decides to move on.’
Quantrill concurred; impossible not to approve of his sergeant’s efficiency. ‘But the fact is,’ he pointed out, ‘that Smith was still here this morning, and the murder was committed yesterday, so it’s yesterday we need to concentrate on. Paul Pardoe, the brother-in-law, admits to having been near here, so I’m getting his story checked. Did you find a will at Yeoman’s, by the way?’
‘Yes. Jasmine was a practical woman, and kept her affairs in order. She made several bequests to charity, and left £10,000 to her aunt, Mrs Agnes Gifford, in gratitude for her kindness to herself and Heather when they were children. If the aunt predeceased her, that money was to go to her sister, Heather Pardoe. In any event, the bulk of the estate was to go to her sister.’
‘So the Pardoes will do pretty well out of her death. Her house alone will fetch sixty or seventy thousand. Paul wasn’t sure that they’d get anything from Jasmine’s estate, but he had hopes, obviously … And ten thousand to Mrs Gifford, eh? That certainly gives Rodney Gifford a motive for making sure that Jasmine Woods didn’t outlive his mother.’
‘If he knew about it,’ said Tait. ‘It’s sensible for a woman of Jasmine’s age to make a will, if she has a lot to leave, but I doubt if she’d talk about it.’
‘You may be right. Anyway,’ said Quantrill regretfully, ‘I’ve had to rule Rodney Gifford out. Pity … Well, what about yesterday? Were your men able to get any useful information from the neighbours about Jasmine Woods’s movements?’
‘Very little, except that she was alive and well at about 1.30, when her drinks party finished. But neighbours is a relative term, after all – there’s no one living within a quarter of a mile of the house on either side.’
‘There’s a lot of time unaccounted for, then,’ said Quantrill. ‘When I saw Heather Pardoe this afternoon, she told me that
she tried to telephone her sister at about 8.30 yesterday evening, and got no reply. Until the time of death is established, we don’t know whether Jasmine was out at 8.30, or whether she was already dead. So let’s go back to the drinks party, and start interviewing the people who were there. Who were they?’
‘As I guessed,’ said Tait, ‘Jonathan and Roz Elliott. They live in the Old Rectory, on the outskirts of the village. Jonathan acted as Jasmine’s verbal sparring partner, and I suspect that there was frustrated lust in it on his side. All right if I come with you, sir? It should be an interesting interview.’
And even if it weren’t, Quantrill thought, Martin Tait could be relied upon to liven it up.
East Anglia has a great many medieval churches, and too few twentieth-century parsons to go round. As a consequence the ecclesiastical parish of Thirling, like many others in rural areas, no longer had a resident incumbent. Instead, it had been grouped with six neighbouring parishes and put in the care of two parsons of the new generation: busy, enthusiastic young men who whizzed round their modest empire on motor scooters, wore jeans and sweaters, liked to be known as Tim and Barry and had the temerity to address God, in church, as ‘you’.
The inhabitants of Thirling – and especially those who never went near the church except for weddings and christenings and funerals, and so were unable to recognize Tim and Barry when they saw them – were affronted. They liked a parson to be a parson, they said to each other, convinced that parsons had no business to be as other men.
It was not that anyone had ever had much time for the last rector of Thirling, old Mr Jennings, when he was alive. He wasn’t reckoned by the older inhabitants to be a patch on his revered predecessor, Canon Phillips; but at least the stooped, dog-collared figure had been immediately identifiable. Mr Jennings always knew the names of his parishioners, whether they went to church or not, and greeted everyone he met as he perambulated the village.
The Chief Inspector's Daughter Page 9
