David Webb 8 - Symbols at Your Door

by Anthea Fraser

  Barlow was silent, but his wife said hesitantly, “I applied for that job, before they came. I thought if me and Joe could move out, there’d be more room here for the others.”

  The last piece of the jigsaw. Webb leant against the Welsh dresser, his arms folded. “You say there was no harm done, and I agree that to most of them the scribbles were simply a nuisance; as, I imagine, you intended them to be. But Mrs. Dexter was really frightened by it. And she died a few days later.”

  The silence in the room was total.

  “The most terrible thing about her death,” Webb went on deliberately, “was that it was almost certainly unnecessary...”

  “How d’you mean?” Hazel whispered.

  “We think what happened was an accident. For some reason she fell—she was pushed, hit, something like that. She cracked her head on an urn—we found blood on it—and was knocked unconscious. We think the person she was with tried to rouse her, and when he couldn’t, he thought she was dead. So he panicked, and in an attempt to conceal her body, threw her in the pond. But in fact it wasn’t the bang on the head that killed her; she drowned.”

  Hazel was staring at him in horror. “Oh no!”

  Joe Barlow made a low, anguished sound in his throat. Then he swung round to the sink, gripping it with both hands, his body arched over it as though he were about to vomit.

  “Joe!” His wife flew to him, gripping his arm. “What is it? Are you ill?” She turned her wild face to Webb. “Get help—quickly!”

  “It’s not medical help he needs, Mrs. Barlow.”

  She hadn’t heard him, still focused entirely on her husband. “What is it, love? Are you in pain? Come and sit down and we’ll get the doctor.”

  His great shoulders were heaving, but no sound came from him. Webb, hating every minute, bided his time. Then very slowly, Joe turned. His face was a sickly yellow and the eyes which stared from it raw with agony.

  Webb said gently, “Your wife’s right, Mr. Barlow, you should sit down.”

  “Is that true, what you just said?” The words seemed torn out of him. “She drowned? You’re not just trying to trick me?”

  “Joe!” Hazel, now as white as her husband, clutched at him again. “You don’t know what you’re saying! Hush now!” He shook her off, waiting for Webb’s reply.

  “She drowned,” he confirmed.

  Joe jerked his head distractedly, as though plagued by a swarm of wasps. But he allowed his wife to lead him to the table, where he collapsed into a chair and leant forward, his head buried in his arms.

  Hazel hurried to the dresser for a glass and filled it at the sink. “You mustn’t listen to him,” she told Webb urgently, as she tried to offer the water to Joe. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

  “I think he does, Mrs. Barlow, and I think we must let him say it. But first I have to caution him.” Joe raised his haggard face. “You understand what that means?”

  He nodded. “All right, then, go on.”

  Barlow moistened his lips, but he did not speak. In the brief silence Webb heard the soft swish of wheels in the passage, and knew that, just out of sight, the old man was sitting listening. So be it. Everyone would know soon enough.

  “Come along, Mr. Barlow,” he prompted, “let’s get it over. When we spoke before, you made it very clear you didn’t like Mrs. Dexter, though you didn’t say she was living in your old home.”

  “That wasn’t her fault!” Hazel interrupted. “Joe didn’t blame her personally. He even helped out in the garden.”

  “And changed fuses for her,” Webb said, his eyes on the man at the table.

  “You caught on to that, then,” Barlow said dully. Hazel looked from one to the other in bewilderment. “What’s so special about fuses?”

  “He was alone upstairs for a while, and later Mr. Dexter couldn’t find his watch.”

  She said furiously, “I hope you’re not suggesting Joe took it?”

  “No, I am suggesting he was accused of taking it. It was quite simply the last straw, wasn’t it?”

  Joe slowly let his breath out, his large body slumping. “Suppose you tell us what happened?”

  “Since you know so much,” the man said dully, “you might as well hear the rest.” He reached for the glass and drained its contents in one draught. His wife had lowered herself into the chair next to him, silent and afraid.

  “Our family’d lived at Coppins for generations,” he began, speaking slowly and stopping every now and then to search for the right words. “We thought we’d always be there. But then Dad had his accident, I wasn’t old enough to run the farm, and we had to get out. The day we left was, right up till last week, the most terrible of my life.”

  Hazel said softly, “You never said.”

  “Well, there was no sense in going on about it. Fretting wouldn’t put things right. But that day, with the cart standing loaded with all our belongings, I made a solemn vow. One day we’d go back.”

  There was a brief pause and his audience, including the unseen listener in the passage, waited for him to continue.

  “I’d expected to get a job with George Powell, who took over Coppins. I wasn’t afraid of work and I knew the land. But he’d three sons of his own, and there was no work for me. I tried the other farms roundabout but they’d nothing either, so, as we needed the money, I went to the dairy. But I missed the land and I talked the head gardener up at the House into letting me help out part-time. And I went on hoping and planning. It kept me going when things were hard.”

  Hazel fished in her apron pocket for a handkerchief and blew her nose. “I never realized,” she whispered.

  “I was a fool, I see that now. We’ve had a good life together and there are plenty worse off. But I was always hankering after Coppins, for Dad’s sake as well as mine, and the waiting was eating away at me. Then old man Powell died and his sons left the farm to work in machinery. It was the chance I’d been waiting for. I went straight to his Grace and asked to go back. I couldn’t see there’d be any objection; we were former tenants and he knew our standards.”

  He paused, remembering. “But he told me he’d decided to sell off Coppins and its land to developers. It was—well—a bombshell. I just couldn’t believe it. He was embarrassed, I could see that, and quite apologetic, but nothing I could say would change his mind. Anyway”—he moved impatiently—“to cut a long story short, the builders moved in, the stables were converted and other houses went up in the fields we used to plough. But still, pig-headed as I was, I wouldn’t accept I’d never get back there. Not till Mrs. Dexter asked me to fix her plug.

  “You see, she showed me all over the house. To be fair, she didn’t know I’d been in it before—and I might as well not have been, because there was hardly a part of it I recognized. Everything I remembered had gone, and it was just like something in the glossy magazines.

  “I didn’t say a word and she must have thought I was impressed, because she said, ‘The previous owners wouldn’t recognize it, would they?’ As though it was something to be proud of. Then she said, ‘I don’t know how long we’ll stay, but the price will have doubled by the time we sell.’ Can you believe it? After destroying the place, they didn’t even intend to settle there! It was just a means of making money.

  “The room where the fuse had blown was the one we’d all been born in, me and Dad and Grandad, and who knows how many before him. Not a few of them died there, too. And you should see it now—all gold and white like a wedding cake, with mirrors and frilly curtains.”

  He lapsed into silence, staring down at the worn surface of the table. Eventually Webb prompted him.

  “What happened on Easter Monday?”

  Barlow drew a deep breath, but his voice had steadied now. “When I got back from work Darren and his pals were here, playing loud music and drinking. I asked him to turn it down, but he gave me lip.”

  He spread his hands helplessly. “All I wanted was to change into my slippers and sit down with the paper, but t
here was nowhere to go. Hazel and Mavis were at the House serving teas, so I thought I might as well go and do some gardening, in the hope it would calm me down. I was in a fair old state by then, because the row with Darren was part of the same old worry about lack of space and Mavis and the baby and all, and I just didn’t see how we could cope. I remembered reading somewhere that rats which are kept in a confined space turn killer. And that was when I really hit rock bottom and faced the fact that I’d nothing to strive for any more. After all these years there was no point in trying to go back to Coppins, because the place I’d known no longer existed. That stupid woman and her family had destroyed it.

  “Well, I went to get my tools, hoping some hard digging would get it all out of my system. But as luck would have it she was there. She caught sight of me and came hurrying after.”

  That had been a flaw in his reasoning, Webb thought; he’d assumed Carol’s killer had tracked her down. In fact, it was she who’d followed him.

  “She was quite the last person I wanted to see just then,” Joe was continuing. “And she started on about her husband’s watch, and how it had been on the tallboy in the bedroom and now they couldn’t find it. And it suddenly dawned on me she was hinting I might have taken it. Me, who’d never touched a penny that wasn’t mine.”

  The kitchen clock ticked, but for several long minutes there was no other sound. Then Joe said dully, “As God’s my witness I didn’t mean to hurt her. But something just—exploded inside and I lashed out—against fate as much as her—and caught her on the side of her face. She staggered backwards, lost her footing, and went crashing to the ground.”

  He stared down at the table while his audience waited, scarcely breathing. “Well, I was horrified at what I’d done and hurried to help her up. But she just lay there, not moving. I knelt beside her and lifted her head, and then I saw the blood—a lot of it—and the great gash in her head. I was certain I’d killed her.”

  Hazel started to cry quietly. The old man, unnoticed, had silently wheeled himself forward until he sat in full view in the open doorway. He looked stunned, an unhappy old ghost.

  “I panicked, like you said. I pulled off her watch and took the money from her bag to make it look like a mugging. Then I realized I couldn’t just leave her there, so I—well, you know what I did. But I’ve got the watch and money safe; I was trying to think of a way of getting them to her husband.”

  No one spoke. Joe raised his head and looked at all of them in turn, ending with Webb. “And now,” he concluded flatly, “you tell me she wasn’t dead at all, and if I’d gone and got help she’d have recovered.”

  Suddenly the old man propelled himself forward. “But he never meant nothing!” he cried. “It wasn’t murder!”

  Webb said quietly, “Nevertheless, sir, that’s what he’ll be charged with. But I’m sure a good case will be made for reducing it to manslaughter.”

  Leaving the room, he walked quickly back up the passage, opened the front door and looked outside. A couple of uniformed men were passing the gate.

  “Get back to the incident room at the double, will you. Tell Sergeant Jackson to come straight down here with the car. ,’

  “Yes, sir.” Startled, the two men began to run up the hill, and Webb, bracing himself to face the three stricken people in the kitchen, went back to wait for Jackson.

  ***

  “So there you have it,” Webb said to Hannah a couple of evenings later, “end of both cases. And it’s thanks to you that we tracked Mayfield down so quickly.”

  “You don’t sound very happy about it,” Hannah remarked astutely, passing him some steak pie.

  “No. Why can’t villains be thoroughly nasty blokes it’d be a pleasure to collar? Ninety percent are pretty ordinary, but it’s a long time since I’ve had as much sympathy as I have for these two. They were just mild, decent men who had both, in their separate ways, been driven beyond endurance.”

  “What put you on to Barlow?” Hannah asked curiously.

  “A lot of little things just came together. He was the slow, quiet type who bottles things up till they suddenly boil over. That struck me when I was sketching him; it’s a type I’ve come across before in murder cases. And I knew he’d been under strain: cramped living conditions, worry about his son, who couldn’t get a job locally and had got into bad company.

  “I also knew he hadn’t liked Carol Dexter, but I only found out later he used to live at Coppins himself. Then there was the quarrel about the watch. Carol had been upset, knowing her husband was still angry about it. Suppose she’d suddenly caught sight of Barlow—who’d said quite openly he was in the grounds that day—and decided to have it out with him, hoping, perhaps, to get the watch back without any more trouble?”

  He sipped his wine. “And having got that far, his upset after her death assumed significance. The doctor wrote it off as a virus, but it was more likely delayed shock. Then he over-reacted to Carey’s death—afraid, I imagine, that his action had somehow triggered off another killing.

  “But it was the Green Man that clinched it. Of the principal people in the case, only Joe Barlow had lived there long enough to remember the original appearance of the pub sign. And though we hadn’t appreciated it, he had a deep-rooted grudge against the wealthy newcomers. In fact, the retired couple had actually bought the bungalow his daughter was after before the developers got their hands on it. But one good thing’s come out of all this; I heard today that the Duke has offered the young couple a cottage on the estate.”

  “A pity he didn’t do it sooner. OK, so you sussed Barlow for the graffiti, but they’d no connection with the murders, had they?”

  “Certainly not with Carey’s. Come to that, the drawing on the Dexters’ door wasn’t meant as a threat either—just a reaction to seeing over the house the previous day. Probably Carol’s general unhappiness exaggerated her fears. Yet I felt all along it was linked with her death, and there’s no denying the hand which drew that face on her door was the hand that killed her.”

  Hannah shuddered. “What’ll happen to him?”

  “It’s my bet they’ll go for diminished responsibility, which undoubtedly it was. The charge will almost certainly be manslaughter, but I shouldn’t be surprised, when all the facts are known, if he’s found Not Guilty.”

  “Let’s hope so. And Mayfield?”

  “A different kettle of fish, I’m afraid. Whatever the provocation, that murder was premeditated. Only a plea of insanity could save him, and I doubt if they’ll go for that. Still, he’s created his own prison over the last two years, and I doubt if an outer one will make much difference. He’ll cope.

  “It’s odd, you know: both men were driven to their limits by the attitudes prevailing today. Carey’s sexual ‘grab what you can’ creed pushed Mayfield over the edge, and the Duke’s eye for the main chance did for old Barlow.”

  He grinned. “Sorry, love. You know I often wax philosophical at this stage. All the same, it strikes me that in both these cases the murderers were victims too. The real culprit was greed.”

  “In which case,” said Hannah, straight-faced, “I’d better not offer you another piece of pie.”

  If you enjoyed reading Symbols at Your Door, you might be interested in The Ten Commandments by Anthea Fraser, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from The Ten Commandments by Anthea Fraser

  Chapter One

  The body lay sprawled face down between a Cortina and an Astra at the far end of the pub car park. In the warm darkness of the July evening, it was visible only if one glanced directly into the space between the vehicles.

  ‘Who found him?’ Detective Chief Inspector Webb asked the local police constable, who was preserving the scene.

  ‘Driver of the Cortina, sir. Nearly fell over him, he said. Thought at first he’d just had one too many, till he looked closer.’

  Webb grunted. He, too, had looked closer, noting the deep gash on the back of the head, the dark blood already clottin
g in the thick hair.

  ‘Where is he?’

  The constable jerked his head at the lighted pub behind them. ‘In there, with the rest of them. The landlord had the sense to lock the doors as soon as the body was discovered.’

  ‘I suppose that’s something. We’ll need to know if our friend here had been inside earlier, who he was with, etcetera. As soon as we can move him, we’ll at least have a description to go on.’

  He glanced irritably up at the new moon swinging in the sky. It afforded only the sketchiest illumination, and even that was masked by the bulk of the two cars.

  ‘Where the hell are SOCO? Can’t see a damn thing until we get some lights.’

  Sergeant Jackson came up in time to hear his last comment. ‘They’ve just arrived, Guv.’

  Webb turned, to see the SOCO team making its way towards him between the rows of cars. He peered at his watch. It was just after eleven.

  ‘Evening, Dave,’ Dick Hodges greeted him. ‘What have we got here?’

  ‘You tell me, Dick. I can’t see a bloody thing.’

  ‘Stapleton been?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ll get out of your way—it’s pretty cramped in there, and in any case, it’s time I made a start on the statements.’

  Hodges stood looking down at the body in its confined space. ‘Ever had a sense of déjà vu?’

  ‘It struck me, too. Five or six years ago, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right—a country pub, like this one. Bloke lying between two cars with his head bashed in. Far as I remember, the case was never cleared.’

  ‘Thanks, Dick,’ Webb said drily. ‘Most encouraging.’

  Hodges grinned and turned his attention to setting up the arc lights while Webb and Jackson walked across the car park to the pub entrance, guarded now by another uniformed constable.

  ‘Nice-looking place,’ Jackson said approvingly. ‘Don’t know it, do you, Guv?’

  ‘I used to,’ Webb replied, glancing up at the building as they approached. ‘Matter of fact, I did my courting here. Looks as though it’s changed a bit, though.’