Saul Catchpole slunk away from the table, making beckoning motions with his head to Flo Atkins, but she pretended not to see them, and sat where she was. There was a chance of another free drink here, to calm down Margaret, and she for one was going nowhere until it had materialised.
V
All this was, of course, audible in the family room, where Adrian and Pippa Snoddy sipped a half of bitter each, and their son Milo sat crunching the contents of a packet of crisps, his head cocked to one side, while his excellent five-year-old ears acknowledge the argument just through the doorway from them.
‘I’m glad that nasty old lady is dead,’ he said suddenly, making their heads whip round in his direction, and then added, with no discernible break in his thoughts, ‘and I need another orange juice. Can I have one Mum, Dad, please? We only ever get one of anything, and I want everything to be the way it used to be when I was little.’
Both parents spoke at the same time. ‘What’s wrong with the way we live now?’ his mother asked, sensitive to anything that criticised her decision to let them experience a bit of real life for a change, even if they were going back to reality in the not-too-distant future.
‘Why didn’t you like her, Milo? What did she do that you didn’t like?’ Adrian was more concerned with what had produced this unexpected animosity in his son. Although they had already decided that they were getting out of that ghastly caravan at the end of the academic year, they had failed to communicate this to their son with all the to-do about the murder.
It had been a joint decision not to sit around and see Milo or themselves subjected to deprivation and discomfort. He didn’t like the way they lived, Pippa didn’t either, it had transpired, and now they knew that Milo felt exactly the same. He didn’t like being different either, being marked out from the other children as someone abnormal; someone who didn’t live in a house.
‘Sh-sh-she was always on at me, Daddy,’ with a slight stutter that made them think of Hartley Bywaters-Flemyng down at Paddock View.
‘He does that a lot now,’ interjected Pippa, referring to the stammer.
‘She always n-n-nags me the way you don’t like it when M-m-mummy does it to you.’ Out of the mouths of babes!
‘What does she get on to you about?’ asked Adrian, ignoring his son’s reference to Pippa’s frequently restless tongue.
‘She says I’ve got nits; that I need a haircut; that I need proper shoes; that my uniform is dirty, or too small or too big; that my fingernails are dirty; that I eat too fast at school dinners, but I’m really hungry, Daddy – really, really hungry, because Mummy doesn’t really do breakfast, does she? Cornflakes are no good when I’ve got footie in games, are they?’
‘Did you know anything about this?’ asked Adrian, turning towards his wife, whose face was bright red.
‘A bit,’ she admitted, and then, when Adrian continued to stare at her, ‘Well, yes, but there wasn’t a lot I could do with our lifestyle. I just wished she’d give a little more thought to what we were trying to do, and cut me a bit of slack, the vindictive old bitch. I’m so glad she’s gone. That Findlater woman is a lot more sympathetic and understanding.’
‘Hang on a minute. Don’t try to change the subject, Pippa,’ Adrian commanded, raising his voice slightly, and realising that their quiet couple of hours out, was in danger of turning into a major row. ‘You’re responsible for our way of life at the moment. I told you some time ago that I’d had enough of it. That means that you’re responsible for the cleanliness of our son and his clothes, his general appearance, and the way he’s fed.’
‘Does that mean he’s not your son, too?’
‘Of course it doesn’t, but you’ve had me here, there, and everywhere, doing odd jobs so that we can make ends meet. On day-to-day care, it’s your territory.’
‘That’s not fair!’ Pippa fairly screamed at her husband.
‘Nothing’s ever fair in your eyes, is it? It wasn’t fair that we had a very comfortable life before, so you had to make us go off and live like travellers. It’s not fair that the caravan is so cold and small, so you nag at me day and night, and the innocent victim in all this – our child, our own flesh and blood – is the one suffering the most, and with no power whatsoever to change things. Well, we’ve all had enough now!
‘And after what I’ve just heard, there’s no way our son’s going to see out the academic year at that school, and do another term in that clapped-out old caravan. We’re leaving here next week, and if you’ve had a change of heart, and don’t like it, or don’t think it’s fair, then I’ll leave that filthy old mobile slum for you and you can stay there as long as you like, and rot, for all I care.
‘We made a deal, and I expect you to stick to that, even if I have changed the timing a bit. We can stay with my parents until we get a house sorted out, if necessary,’ Adrian declared in his most manly, head-of-the-family voice, but his wife was lost in another world.
‘He was never hungry … Well, never that hungry.’ Pippa had been really stung by the revelations from her son, and was trying to imagine how it must have felt for him, trying to live her stupid dream, and never saying anything about how he was treated at school.
‘And he never told me when he’d got mud or paint on his uniform until the next morning when it was too late. I hated that woman. She never gave Milo a chance, or cut him any slack. It was all so personal. I knew she disapproved of the way we lived, but it wasn’t fair to get at me by criticising a little boy.’
‘Well, it won’t be happening again,’ Adrian stated, ‘because we’re leaving Shepford Stacey and going back to a life we understand and enjoy.’
‘It won’t be happening again,’ added Pippa, with a faint expression of triumph on her face, ‘because the old hag is dead.’
‘Pippa!’ Adrian stared at her as if he didn’t know her, as he heard a quiet voice tentatively ask,
‘Can I have my orange juice now? And are we really leaving? Can we live in a house again like we used to? And can I go back to my old school? I miss my friends, Daddy.’
‘Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I know, son. I miss mine too!’
VI
Harriet Findlater was glad to see the back of her parents. Over the years they’d become very hard, with barely any fellow feeling for what she had to go through, term after term, at that school. The children’s behaviour was just getting worse and worse as the years passed, and she was finding it more and more difficult to cope with a full-time classroom role.
She had spoken to Audrey, who was due to retire, about Audrey maybe recommending her for the soon-to-be-vacant position of head teacher, but she had, to her surprise, been rebuffed. She had thought that her many years at the school would count in her favour, and the change of position would give her a little more time out of the classroom and away from the children, doing the administrative work which she had grown to love.
But Audrey had quashed her request, stating that she thought maybe Harriet ought to take early retirement, so that they could go at the same time, and leave the school free for a completely new broom. She considered, correctly as it happened, that Harriet had lost her passion, and had little or no ability to discipline children of any age, and that, effectively, her career was over.
Audrey knew her colleague would get a good pension, even if retiring early, and it would free her and her parents to live wherever they wished, as it was only Harriet’s job which had tied them to Shepford Stacey for so long, and had been surprised when Harriet had launched into a tirade about traitors and turncoats, and hidden enemies within the gates, which she was barely able to understand.,
By the time it had been explained to her, they had had a full-blown row about Harriet’s teaching abilities – both perceived and actual – and Harriet had put a full-stop to the whole situation by bursting into tears and running out the school and home, leaving her colleague of many years angry, but more puzzled as to where she had gone so badly wrong with her suggestion. The woman was livin
g on a knife-edge, in her opinion, and if she didn’t retire soon, she’d have to go on health grounds, another basket case created by society’s little darlings.
Had Miss Findlater but known it, her parents would have been absolutely horrified to find that Mrs Finch-Matthews saw the three of them walking off into the sunset together holding hands. Mr and Mrs Findlater had very different ideas on the subject, and were, right now, gathering information about apartments in the Algarve – one-bedroomed apartments – and were sneakily going about planning a retirement for two, far away from cosy English village life.
If Harriet didn’t like it, she would have to lump it. And if she needed someone to live with, she could go to her Gran’s. Her grandmother might be ninety-eight, but she still had all her marbles, and would probably welcome a bit more company than that provided by the district nurse and the home help. They’d done the crime and done the time, and now it was time for some parole for them. Harriet definitely needed a hard shove in the back to get her off the nest, or she would never fly, never give them any peace.
Oblivious of all this robust and abundant sub-text to her life, Harriet was sitting in the dining room at the rear of the house, working on next term’s final version of the school timetable, which she assumed was now her sole responsibility, when she thought she heard a rustle of the just-budding shrub branches outside the window, and a tentative rattle at the back door handle.
Jumping to her feet, she looked towards the window, the curtains of which were not yet drawn, and thought she caught sight of a face, although it was in fact more an impression of a face: a blurred white oval which her brain interpreted as human.
Such was her mood that she forgot to be timid, and rushed out through the hall and into the kitchen to investigate, throwing the back door wide open, before her natural character took over and, not even closing the door behind her, she ran out of the back gate, down the pathway that edged the paddock and straight to the Ring o’ Bells, towards the safety of her parents.
So precipitate and unexpected was her arrival on their ‘night off’ that Bill and Edith had insufficient time to fix on their usual smiles of welcome, and both greeted her with grimaces of dismay, hurriedly curving their mouths upwards and crinkling their eyes before she had a chance to say anything. Fortunately Harriet, in her panic, did not notice.
VII
That, of course, was the end of the senior Findlaters’ night of freedom, but it didn’t really matter too much tonight, after that nasty business with Saul and Margaret and, to be honest, they’d be glad to get out of the atmosphere that that had created, which was an uneasy one, to say the least.
Of course, there was no one in the garden at Forsythia Cottage, and no one in the house, although, as Mrs Findlater declared after they’d made a thorough search, that was all down to sheer luck, as Harriet had left the back door open wide, and anyone could have come in and helped themselves to just about anything they wanted.
‘I’m sorry, Mummy, I was scared, so I just ran to get you two,’ her daughter explained, tears forming at the inner corners of her eyes, a pathetic figure of a woman approaching retirement age and acting like a schoolchild.
‘Well there’s no one to be seen, you silly girl. You’re going to have to be a darn sight braver for the next few days. Remember we’re off to see Gran, and we’re staying over the Bank Holiday weekend. You’re going to have to fend for yourself then, whether you like it or not.’
‘Couldn’t I come with you?’ Harriet asked, with a note of pleading in her voice.
‘No, you certainly can not. This is our little trip, and we’ve been looking forward to it now for weeks.’
‘But I’d like to see Granny, too. I might not get another chance, with her being so old.’
‘Then you’ll just have to go up sometime next week, if the good Lord spares her, while there’s still no school. And look at it this way: instead of getting us all at once, your gran can look forward to another visitor when we’ve gone.’
‘But I don’t like long drives.’
‘Then take the train.’
‘But the train goes from Market Darley.’
‘We’ll give you a lift.’
‘But I won’t get back till late at night.’
‘We’ll pick you up as well. You’re in your fifties, Harriet. For God’s sake take charge of just a tiny bit of your life and stop relying on us for every little thing.’ Harsh words, thought Mrs Findlater, but necessary in this case.
Put like that, Harriet could hardly argue, and gave in with a bad grace, pouting like a five-year-old and stomping off to bed.
‘No wonder she can’t control the new intake at the school. She acts like one of them herself sometimes,’ commented her mother, going into the kitchen to put the kettle on. ‘When they said children were for life, I didn’t think they really meant it!’
[1] See Inkier than the Sword
Chapter Five
Saturday 2nd April
I
In what passed for his office these days, Harry Falconer was scanning, with a wry smile, the report that informed him that there had been no fingerprints on the skewer (surprise, surprise!), and that it was the metric equivalent of six inches in length, and quite old; more than half a century old, in fact, and had a lazy barley sugar twist to the metal that was instant nostalgia for those of a certain age.
He knew the style well, because his mother had several such relics from her own mother’s kitchen, which would be no good today to a modern housewife, who thought that skewers were for making kebabs, and had no idea whatsoever of the conductivity of metal, and its uses in the cooking of lumps of meat. In fact, not many modern housewives would know what to do with the lump of meat either.
No clues there, then, was his conclusion as the door opened to admit DS Carmichael, who had washed the rest of the blue food dye out of his forelock, but not with one hundred per cent success, leaving one clump a shade of pale green dangling down his forehead. This gave the impression of a sand dune with a small clump of grass growing out of it, but it wasn’t that that grabbed the inspector’s attention.
Carmichael removed a perfectly respectable mackintosh to blind Falconer with trousers that were a cross between luminous yellow and lime green. Above this, his shirt was in a pattern of broad vertical stripes of light blue, dark blue, red, and white. To add insult to visual injury, his tie was grey with an orange blobby pattern on it. (Author’s note: I have actually seen somebody in this garb, but unfortunately, I didn’t manage to keep it to myself, and let slip to Carmichael about it, so it’s all my fault!)
‘What in the name of God do you think you look like, Sergeant? I can live with dress down Friday, but today is Saturday, if you hadn’t noticed, and I didn’t think to bring my sunglasses in from the car. Come on: what’s your excuse, or are you just reverting to the norm?’
‘I’d have thought you could have worked it out for yourself, sir. Yesterday was my birthday, and it was a Friday, but it was also Good Friday and I didn’t think it would be respectful, given what the day stands for. My mum was very particular about that sort of thing. Wasn’t yours?’
‘I can’t say that I really remember,’ replied Falconer, slightly stunned by his sergeant’s Christian sensitivity, but silently saluting it as part of the man’s general goodness of character.
The two detectives sat in silence for a few minutes, while Falconer gathered his thoughts about the coming day. ‘We’ve got to get back to the village and start snooping around. I’ve requested that PC Green and PC Starr do a house-to-house, asking that they take a look in kitchen drawers, and show a photograph of the murder weapon, but rather them than me. It’s got to be done, but I don’t hold out much hope of a result.
‘We’ve got a few key residents to interview. I want to speak to the vicar, the people in the post office and the local shop, and I want a long chat with that other teacher. We also need a word with that Borrowdale chap, and the couple at the Ring o’ Bells. Between that lot, w
e ought to be able to uncover something useful. If something happened that drove someone to murder, someone must remember something about it. I just don’t believe that this is the work of a wandering madman. There would have been other incidents.
‘A mind that damaged, killing at random, would have committed other acts of mindless violence in the area. This is personal. And I think it’s something from her past. It’s just a gut feeling, but we need to dig back, and see who she’s crossed: and it’s probably something from her professional life. From what the other members of staff have said, it wouldn’t appear that she had any absorbing hobbies. The school seems to have been her whole life.’
‘Are we going now, sir?’
‘Can’t think of a better time. Oh, and Carmichael …’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Put your coat on. We don’t want you scaring the horses, do we?’
‘Really, sir!’
II
They took Carmichael’s motorised wheelie-bin, as Falconer’s Boxster was (metaphorically speaking, at least) at the vet’s, being de-loused and deep-cleaned after their little misadventure the day before. The inspector had taken care to wear clothes he was not too financially worried about, or sentimentally attached to.
‘We’ll start with the vicar. A man of the cloth – or his wife – is always a hot-bed of parish gossip, and then we’ll see what takes our fancy.’
The vicar was at home, and, fortunately for them, free to see them, and he conducted them through to the sitting room, the double doors now firmly shut on the dining half of the long through-room.
As it happened, Septimus Lockwood had only been the present incumbent for about five years, and the only incident of note that had happened during his time in Shepford Stacey was the one involving the ‘terrible twins’, and this, he didn’t consider, warranted murder as revenge. He had met them at a Christmas Eve nativity service, and the little horrors had stolen the baby Jesus (displayed early for the benefit of the little ones), and stashed him behind a pile of mouldering out-of-date service books.
Pascal Passion (The Falconer Files Book 4) Page 8
