Death in the English Countryside

by Sara Rosett

  “How do you know all this? You weren’t there, were you?”

  “God, no. That was way before my time, but I’ve heard the rumors. Kevin still has his original business records in those dented filing cabinets behind his door. I did a little digging to make sure I wasn’t passing along gossip, and it was all in there. The original incorporation papers as well as the ones where Frank Revel had his name removed from the company.”

  “Wow. Okay, I think you should send those to the inspector investigating the case.”

  “I’ve contacted the police here and found out the UK police have already been in touch with L.A.’s finest. A police officer is on the way to pick up the files. I guess they’ll send the files on once they have a look at them.”

  After agreeing to check in with each other later in the day, we hung up, and I recapped the conversation for Alex as we resumed walking.

  “So maybe Quimby is working all the aspects of the case,” Alex said.

  “Yes, that is a good sign, but he hasn’t talked to Becca.”

  Alex said, “I’m surprised Kevin went back without me. I had the impression that he and Mr. O’Leery were extremely happy with the locations. They’d finalized the list only a day before. How could he have had second thoughts?”

  “Kevin always had second thoughts. And third and fourth thoughts, too. He constantly scanned the horizon, looking for better options. Did you mention…what was her name—Eva?—to him?”

  “Eve. Eve Wallings.” Alex’s pace slowed fractionally. “Yes, I think I did say something about Coventry House—only a passing reference.”

  “That would be enough for Kevin.” I sighed. “He always loved a challenge. I can totally see him going out on his own, giving everything one last look and then making an attempt to get another, better location.”

  We reached the inn, and I hustled inside. The front desk was empty, but Doug was coming down the stairs, carrying a stack of linens. I asked if the inspector was still around.

  “No, he left after talking to you.”

  “Thank you,” I said and turned to Alex. “Looks like I’ll have to call him.”

  Alex reached for his phone. “I’ll do it. After all, I know Becca Ford. I don’t know if she’ll actually follow through and talk to the police on her own.” Alex lowered his voice as he patted his pockets. “Becca tends to have selective memory issues. I know I put the inspector’s card away somewhere.”

  “Becca? I thought she was Mrs. Ford to you,” I said, unable to keep the teasing tone out of my voice.

  “Formality is my first line of defense. And with her, I need as many lines of defense as possible.”

  “Oh, I think she will go to the police.”

  “Why?”

  “The investigating officer is a male.”

  “Hmm, I should have emphasized that,” Alex murmured. “Where is that business card?”

  “I left the one Quimby gave me in my room. Come on, I’ll get it for you.”

  “Is that a good idea?” Alex asked.

  “What?” I stopped, my foot poised on the first step. “Oh. Quimby’s insinuations.” I ran my hand over the carved pineapple that topped the newel post, weighing if I wanted to answer more questions from Quimby, but then a burst of anger hit me. Alex and I hadn’t done anything wrong. I couldn’t second-guess my every move, wondering how it looked. “Oh, forget all that. I need you upstairs.”

  Alex followed me up the stairs. “There are so many replies to that statement. Too bad I’m a gentleman.”

  “All of them in bad taste, I’m sure. Better that you keep them to yourself. What I should have said was that I need to show you something upstairs in my room.”

  “Better and better,” Alex murmured.

  I rolled my eyes as I opened the door to my room. I slid Quimby’s card off the table and handed it to Alex. He dialed, then came to look over my shoulder as I picked up my laptop. The screensaver was up, rotating quotes. Alex, the phone tilted away from his mouth, read one aloud as he waited for Quimby to answer. “I am excessively diverted.”

  “It’s a quote from—”

  “Pride and Prejudice. Yes, I recognize it. I like the line about poetry driving away love.” He pulled the phone closer. “Inspector, Alex Norcutt here.” He recapped our conversation with Becca Ford, paused, and finally said, “Very good, I’ll wait for his call.”

  “Quimby will have Detective Sergeant Olney call me back to get Becca’s contact info.” Alex pocketed his phone. “Kevin’s photos? That’s what you wanted to show me?”

  “Yes. I want you to look at the rest of them. Kevin usually had his camera with him, and he was continually snapping photos—not always potential locations. Sometimes he’d take pictures of people, like the candid photos of Beatrice. Other times, he’d take photos of the signs along the way to a location, or the restaurant where we had lunch, or the clouds.”

  “So you think he unintentionally documented his movements on Friday?”

  “Yes, that’s why I need you here. So you can tell me where the photos were taken.”

  “Don’t you think this is something for Quimby?”

  I had been paging through the photos, but I stopped. “If there’s something here, then yes,” I said reluctantly. I didn’t want to have to explain how I had a copy of the photos from Kevin’s camera. “First things first. Is there anything here that Quimby would be interested in?”

  I returned to the thumbnails and skimmed down to the photos of Beatrice then slowed as I came to the next photos.

  “Those do look like new photos of Grove Cottage.” Alex sunk into the bed beside me, his warm thigh pressing against mine. I shifted the laptop so he could see the screen and inched to the side without allowing myself to think about why. “The light is different from when I took him there,” he said. “The light is stronger than when I showed Grove Cottage to him and Mr. O’Leery.”

  I enlarged the photos and we looked at each one, but they were only exterior shots of the house, and then some of the thick line of trees that enclosed the back of the property.

  One photo captured a bit of crumbled stone wall. I looked at Alex, and he shrugged.

  “No idea. There are thousands of places that could have been taken around here—lots of dry stone walls.”

  I moved to the next photo.

  “But I do know where that one is,” Alex said. “That’s Coventry House. And that photo was taken inside the gates.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “It is a gorgeous location,” I said, studying the three-storied, gabled home with ivy climbing up the gray stone exterior to mullioned windows. A garden with graveled paths, evergreen shrubs, and low boxwoods ran along each side of the main entrance framing a circle drive. Farther away from the house, hardwood trees lined the edge of the property, their branches shading the stone wall and gates.

  “How did he get inside those gates?” Alex murmured to himself as he paged through to the last photo. “No more photos after the ones of Coventry House, by the way.”

  “He probably asked,” I said.

  “Eve wouldn’t have let him in. Not unless she didn’t know he was a location scout…” Alex’s voice trailed off questioningly.

  I shook my head. “Kevin was always up front. He never tried to put something over on people. He always said that if you started out lying to people, it never ended well.”

  “That’s true, but I don’t see how he got in there. I suppose his high moral standards extended to sneaking in as well?”

  “Of course he wouldn’t do that. What good would that do? It would only make the owner angrier.”

  “Yes, you’re right.” He rubbed his hand across his mouth, still staring at the laptop. “I can’t see how he could have skirted Eve.”

  “I think we should ask.”

  “Go to Coventry House?”

  “Why not? Besides figuring out Kevin’s movements on Friday, these photos could be the ‘new stuff’ that Mr. O’Leery is waiting for. I need to find o
ut if Kevin talked with the Wallings.”

  “Eve Wallings didn’t mention it yesterday when we saw her at breakfast,” Alex said.

  “No, but she didn’t seem interested in talking at all…to you.”

  One corner of Alex’s mouth turned up. “Very true. She’s impervious to my charms.”

  “If Kevin talked to the Wallings, that affects the production. If the production is affected, I need to know about it. It’s a long shot that Premier Locations will still be the location scout and manager, but if it works out, I need to be up to speed on what Kevin did.”

  “Excellent point.” Alex handed me the laptop. “I’ll drive.”

  “What about informing Quimby? A moment ago you were all for dropping these photos in his lap and walking away.”

  He had his hand on the doorknob, his car keys already in his hand. “Turn about is fair play, is that what you’re thinking?” He stepped away from the door. “Okay, yes, I admit it. I have an interest in seeing how Kevin got around Eve, and that makes me less anxious to coordinate our moves with the police.” He looked around, spotted Quimby’s business card, and swiped it off the table in a smooth movement, extending it to me. “You get to call this time.”

  I plucked the card from his hand. “Okay, you called my bluff. The last thing I want to do is tell Quimby where I got these photos, but I suppose I must.” I squared my shoulders and dialed. After three rings, it went to voicemail. Relieved, I left Quimby a message, telling him we’d found photos that Kevin had taken Friday afternoon at Coventry House. “I’ll be happy to give the details to your sergeant when he calls Alex back.”

  “You look so innocent, but you’re actually quite devious,” Alex said after I hung up.

  “What do you mean?” I shrugged into my coat. One of my sleeves was inside out.

  Alex moved to hold the coat as I worked my arm into the sleeve, then he settled it on my shoulders, his hands brushing over my arms. “You thought I wouldn’t notice that you glossed over where you found the photos?”

  “You’re too observant by half.” I flicked my hair over the collar and headed for the door.

  ***

  “You’re quiet,” Alex said, his hands on the wheel as he negotiated the turns in the road.

  “Sorry, just thinking.”

  Even though the sun was out, it was much cooler than yesterday, and Alex hadn’t even asked about putting the top down on the convertible. There had been a fresh scatter of papers on the passenger seat and a few new sticky notes on the dash. Alex had swept them all up and dumped them in the growing pile in the trunk.

  “The quiet doesn’t bother me,” he said. “Not when it’s a comfortable quiet.”

  It was true that there was a relaxed, amiable atmosphere in the car. I twisted toward him. “I was thinking about Frank Revel and Kevin."

  He nodded, and we covered a few more miles in silence before I said, “It doesn’t make sense. Even if there had been a rift between Frank and Kevin, why would Frank go after Kevin now…years later?”

  “Some people hold grudges. You know that saying about revenge.”

  “A dish best served cold, yes. But it seems so extreme…to go after Kevin fifteen years later. Clearly, Kevin didn’t end up with the woman—whoever she was—because he wasn’t in a relationship with anyone now. And, if Frank Revel did go after Kevin, it’s so sloppy. He was one of the last people seen with Kevin. Surely if he was going to exact some sort of revenge, it would make more sense to wait and not do it after a very public argument.”

  “Crime of passion?” Alex asked. “Revel was quite emotional when you asked him about Kevin. Perhaps it was unplanned.”

  “I suppose it could have happened that way.” I shifted in my seat. “You know, we still don’t know what really happened. How did Kevin end up in the water, but out of his submerged car? Maybe I should talk to Henry’s friend at the garage.”

  “Jeremy?”

  “Henry said Jeremy was there when they…found Kevin.”

  “Jeremy’s a good kid. He might have noticed something.”

  “Is it far?”

  “Nothing is very far in Nether Woodsmoor.” Alex made a few turns that took us down the narrow streets of a residential area with modest two-story duplex homes. Mixed in with the aged stone houses were a few modern stucco homes. We cruised down the street, flying by gardens enclosed by stone walls until we came to a stone building set back from the road behind two gas pumps. Alex parked off to the side of the gas pumps, and we both climbed out of the car. I headed for the half of the building with a glass door that led to a waiting area, but Alex tilted his head to the double wooden doors, one of which had been folded back into the shop area. “They’ll be in here.”

  I changed course and joined him at the doorway. In the dim garage area, two men were leaning over the open hood of a car while a third dug through a toolbox. He spotted us, picked up a rag, and moved in our direction while wiping his hands. He was young, probably barely out of his teens, and moved with the lanky grace of an athlete. He wore a dark vest over a blue coverall with a few streaks of grease on it. “Having trouble with the MG again, Mr. Norcutt?”

  Alex looked at me. “Can you tell I am a familiar sight around here? Jeremy and his dad have resurrected the old MG more times than I can count. But for once, I’m not here about my car. This is Kate Sharp. She’s staying at the inn. Henry thought she should talk to you. She worked with Mr. Dunn.”

  His easy smile faded at the mention of the name. He’d been rubbing the rag quickly across his hands, but now he stopped and crossed his arms. “That was a sad business to be sure. I’ve seen a few smash-ups, but nothing like that.”

  “Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions about it?” I didn’t want to press him, if it would upset him. “The police haven’t told me anything. I just want to find out what happened, but only if you want to talk about it.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind talking about it, but I don’t think they were sure what happened either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jeremy leaned against the stone wall of the building. “We pulled the car out, and we expected him to be in it, right?” He glanced at me, studying my face. I suppose to see if his words upset me, but I nodded at him to continue. “So when he wasn’t there, they started the search. By the time they’d found him, we had the car secured. My dad sent me down to get the clearance to leave, but they’d found…the body and were focused on getting him out of the water. They didn’t have time to talk to me, so I had to wait. I saw the whole thing.”

  “What did you see?” I asked, bracing myself.

  “He was stuck under a thick tree root near the river bank, half in and half out of the water. It took them a while to get him out and when they did, I stayed back, out of their way. He didn’t look very human—all swollen up and—”

  Alex moved, and Jeremy broke off, but I said, “No, go ahead.” I swallowed. “It’s not easy to hear, but I want to know. Do you think that means he was in the water…a while?”

  “Yes. I heard the emergency lads say so. They didn’t know how long exactly, just that it wasn’t recent. Sounded like more than a few hours. Anyway, the medical bloke, the coroner I believe, was there, too. He looked him over, and said there had been a blow to the back of the head and that he had a broken leg as well. Things calmed down after that, and I got clearance to leave.”

  I frowned, trying to make sense of it all. How did Kevin get a broken leg and a head injury? Was he in some sort of fight?

  I realized Alex was talking and tuned back into the conversation. “…notice anything about the car? Did he have some sort of car trouble, do you think?”

  “Yes, Henry mentioned something about a spare tire?” I asked.

  “Hard to tell, with it being in the water and all, if he had car trouble. We didn’t look it over or anything, but the back passenger tire had been changed. Maybe that was why he stopped.”

  He couldn’t think of anything else to add, so I than
ked him for talking to me. Once we were back in Alex’s car, I stared out the window. In only a few minutes we left the residential neighborhood and were zipping through the rolling countryside with stone fences, hedges, and an occasional sheep flicking by, but I wasn’t really looking at the scenery. “From what Jeremy said, it almost sounds as if Kevin was in a fight.”

  “Are you thinking of Frank Revel?” Alex asked.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Frank was angry with us when he spoke to us, but would he go after Kevin—hit him in the back of the head? Frank seemed more like an in-your-face guy. A confrontational type.”

  “That was the vibe I got, too.”

  “If Kevin was attacked, maybe he jumped into the water to get away. No, wait. That wouldn’t make sense with a broken leg. Unless he broke his leg jumping in the water? But that doesn’t sound like Kevin either. I have more questions now than ever. Let’s go back to the pictures. At least those are concrete and can definitely tell us something.”

  Alex downshifted and turned onto a lane that led to closed iron gates. “Here’s Coventry House.”

  The pillars on each side of the gate looked a little tottery—as if a stone might tumble out at any moment, but the gates themselves had a glossy coat of black paint and a modern intercom box perched on a pole a few feet back from the gate.

  “Here goes nothing.” Alex wound down his window and pressed the button.

  We waited then he pressed the button again.

  “No one home?” I ventured.

  “Eve goes out, but Tom Wallings hardly ever leaves.”

  The line crackled, and we both jumped. “Alex Norcutt to see Eve Wallings, please,” Alex said in an upbeat tone. I never would have guessed he expected anything but to be admitted.

  After a long moment, a buzz sounded, and the gates swung open. Alex rolled up his window. “Well, I’ll be damned. Never thought I would see the day those gates opened for me,” he shot me a quick smile, put the car in gear, and accelerated up the drive to the gravel circle in front of the house, but instead of stopping, he took a lane that branched off to the right. He followed it around to the back of the house, where he turned the car, backing in so that the nose of the car faced the drive. “In case we need a quick get away.”