The Dead Girl's Shoes

by Arney, Angela

  *

  At 5.00 that morning, Spud Murphy made himself a flask of good strong tea, packed it in his haversack with his box of brown damsel flies, and set off. This time of the morning, the early rising trout liked the brown damsels. He felt lucky this morning. A perfect day like today, with the light just glancing across the mirror smooth surface of the river, the trout would be rising to catch those flies unwary enough to dance along the surface of the water.

  He took the path along the river, which led away from his cottage towards the eel trap. There was a deep pool there where the trout liked to linger in the shadows, and where Spud concealed himself behind clumps of reeds. There he could see the dark shadows as the trout cruised between the waving riverweed, but they couldn’t see him. A game of catch, and Spud was hoping he’d have a fat brown trout for his breakfast. Crouching down behind the reeds he let his line slip silently into the water, no wading or flinging the line out this morning, all softly, softly catchee monkey he thought, flicking the line a little so that the brown damsel fly on the end of his hook hovered just above the surface of the water. There was a trout rising to get it. He tensed. He could see it. He was ready.

  Suddenly a loud explosion shattered the peace. The trout darted away with a splash of its tail sending droplets of water skittering across the surface. Spud cursed and stood up. Who was out shooting at this time of the morning? Not a poacher surely? The sound echoed along the river, bouncing off the tall poplar trees that grew on either side. Spud stood still for a moment, then got his bearings. The sound had come from the direction of the eel trap. It was a gunshot. He was certain of that, and it needed investigating.

  He began to stow his rod safely in the angled branches of a coppiced hazel bush when he heard voices, and the sound of people trampling through the undergrowth. They were going in the direction of the eel trap.

  He called out. ‘Oi, what are you up to? You’ve no business here. It’s the river keeper here.’

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Maguire here,’ came back the reply.

  Within a few minutes, a small group gathered together on the bank of the river. Maguire, Grayson, Kevin Harrison and Lizzie Browne. ‘What are you doing?’ Maguire asked.

  ‘Might ask you to same,’ came Spud’s reply. ‘You’ve got no right here at this time of the morning, or any time come to that. It’s private property.’

  ‘We’re looking for Harold Villiers,’ interrupted Lizzie. ‘He’s very ill and wandering about out here somewhere in his pyjamas.’

  ‘And who’s out here shooting at this time of the morning?’ asked Maguire.

  ‘That’s what I’d like to know.’ Spud started walking. ‘I thought the sound came from the direction of the eel trap.’ He didn’t wait for a reply but strode ahead, Adam Maguire and Lizzie close on his heels.

  They’d only gone a few yards, and were in sight of the thatched building, which perched on the riverbank at the side of the eel trap, when the rough-hewn wooden door opened and Janet Hastings emerged.

  She was carrying a shotgun and her clothes were covered in blood. ‘I’ve killed him,’ she screamed. ‘I’ve killed Harold.’

  Chapter 14

  Spud was first in through the doorway, a split second behind him were Lizzie and Maguire. ‘Bloody Hell,’ Spud shouted, then collapsed on the nearest chair, his head in his hands. ‘Bloody Hell,’ he repeated. ‘Poor, poor old sod.’

  Harold was half sitting on a wickerwork chair, the rest of him was slumped forward across the small table, which was in the centre of the room. His head had turned to one side and his eyes were wide open. Blood covered most of his face, and the front of his pyjamas, and was splattered across the whitewashed walls of the hut. A large, dark red glistening globule was trickling slowly down from the side of his head on to his neck and, stepping forward, Lizzie steeled herself before reaching out to feel for any sign of a pulse. There was none.

  ‘He is definitely dead,’ she told Adam. ‘But only seconds ago. He’s still bleeding.’

  ‘I can see that he’s dead, for God’s sake. I don’t need you to tell me that.’

  Maguire was feeling nauseated, he hated blood and guts. It didn’t matter how many times he was confronted with it, he always hated it. But this time his feelings were mixed with anger. Not only had his prime suspect disappeared, but now when he reappeared, he was dead. All the lines of enquiry he’d planned to follow with Harold were defunct. A dead man can’t answer questions. Now, a woman who had not even been considered as a suspect for anything was announcing that she had killed him.

  At this point, Steve Grayson and Kevin Harrison staggered in through the door, half carrying a distraught Janet Hastings.

  ‘Why did you shoot him?’ Spud suddenly erupted into life, and leapt towards Janet Hastings. He looked wild-eyed. ‘We was best mates when we was lads,’ he shouted, sounding tearful. ‘You shouldn’t have shot Harold.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to,’ Janet whimpered. Grayson deposited Janet on the chair vacated by Spud. She was very pale and looked as if she was going to pass out any moment.

  Adam Maguire took charge. He fished out his phone and sent for Phineas Merryweather and the forensic team. Phineas, of course, wanted to know if his new customer was actually dead, and how did Maguire know. Irritably Adam confirmed that Lizzie had established the victim was well and truly dead.

  ‘A shooting by the river,’ said Phineas, sounding interested. ‘I haven’t had a shooting since your cases last year. I wonder if this one will turn out to be as convoluted and interesting as that.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Maguire, walking outside and keeping his voice low. ‘The perpetrator is a woman who is actually here, and has confessed. Although the why might be interesting. But my trouble is it fouls up my other enquiry, as the victim, Harold Villiers, was my main suspect for the murder of Jemima Villiers.’

  ‘Oh, it’s Harold Villiers, eh,’ said Phineas. ‘That will hit the headlines.’

  Maguire groaned. ‘Don’t rub it in. And why don’t you sound more upset? I thought he was your friend.’

  ‘Acquaintance really,’ said Phineas. ‘And anyway, in my line of work I can’t afford to get too upset. I’m on my way.’

  *

  Steve Grayson and Kevin Harrison busied themselves securing the hut beside the eel trap with yards of blue and white plastic tape. Lizzie watched them, marvelling at the never-ending supply of tape they always seemed to find in their pockets. Were all police officers as well prepared, she wondered?

  While they were waiting for forensics and Phineas to arrive, Maguire took Janet Hastings outside and sat her down. Lizzie found a kettle and a primus stove in the hut and tea-making apparatus, and started making tea. It was a little unnerving making tea beside the lifeless body of Harold Villiers, but she averted her eyes. Spud Murphy obviously felt the same way, for he went outside and then returned with a large sheet of faded green tarpaulin. It was tattered and torn but at least it provided some sort of shroud for Harold’s lifeless body. Lizzie made the tea and persuaded Janet to drink some. Maguire, Kevin and Steve also had a cup each. She noticed that none of them were too eager to be in the hut beside Harold’s corpse. Spud preferred his own tea, uncapping his flask and pouring out the dark brown mixture, drinking it back noisily.

  ‘Thought I’d be drinking this in peace at the side of the river, with a bag full of dead fish,’ he said mournfully. ‘Not beside a bag covering the dead body of my friend.’

  There’s no answer to that, thought Lizzie, and remained silent, sipping her own tea.

  *

  Phineas arrived, puffing as usual. ‘I don’t usually get up this early,’ he told Lizzie, mopping his brow with a large white handkerchief. ‘It makes me breathless.’

  ‘You know very well your breathlessness has nothing to do with the hour of your rising,’ said Lizzie severely. ‘It’s because you are overweight and don’t do enough exercise. You don’t take enough care of yourself.’

  Phineas didn’t reply;
he busied himself struggling into the white paper suit he always wore on the site of such events. Adam Maguire walked back into the hut, bringing back his now empty teacup, and glanced across at Phineas. ‘Do you think you’ll be long?’ he asked.

  ‘My God, man, you are impatient,’ grunted Phineas. ‘It’s not even nine o’clock in the morning yet. I should be having my second piece of toast and a cup of coffee.’ He looked up at Lizzie. ‘There isn’t any coffee I suppose.’

  She shook her head. ‘I can make you a tea.’

  ‘Or you can have some of mine,’ said Spud, who was standing beside the table. As if he were standing guard over the body, thought Lizzie. He thrust his cup across to Phineas for inspection. ‘I’ve got plenty more in my flask.’

  Phineas inspected it. ‘What is it? Mud?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s good strong tea,’ said Spud.

  ‘I think maybe I’ll have some of Lizzie’s brew,’ said Phineas, pulling on his latex gloves.

  Silence reigned for about five minutes, while Phineas bent over the corpse, examining the head closely. He slowly turned the head to one side, and Maguire looked away. Lizzie boiled the kettle again and made the tea for Phineas. There was a small side table against the wall and Lizzie carefully placed the cup for Phineas on it. ‘Tea’s ready,’ she said.

  Phineas stood up slowly, groaned, and put a hand in the small of his back. ‘My back aches,’ he said. ‘I’m getting too old for this job. Time to move this fellow to the morgue I think. I can concentrate there.’

  Adam stepped forward. ‘Well, Phineas,’ he said. ‘Any conclusions yet?’

  Lizzie put the used cups in the sink ready to be washed up, waiting for Phineas’s inevitable grumble about Adam being impatient. But it didn’t come. Instead there was a long silence while he drank his tea. Then he put down his empty cup and said, ‘you’re not going to like this, Adam. But our man Harold Villiers was not shot.’

  ‘What do you mean? She, Janet Hastings,’ Adam jerked his head towards Janet, still sitting on the chair outside the cottage. ‘She’s confessed to shooting him for God’s sake, there’s blood everywhere, and she has the gun. What more do we need?’

  ‘He was not shot dead,’ said Phineas firmly. ‘True he was shot, but it didn’t kill him. The bullet grazed the side of his head, there’s a big gash there, but it didn’t kill him. Plenty of blood I grant you. But he didn’t die because of that.’

  ‘What did he die of then?’ Steve Grayson had caught some of the conversation from his position outside, and now entered the hut, leaving Kevin with Janet Hastings.

  ‘Damned if I know,’ replied Phineas, struggling out of his white overalls.

  Lizzie stepped forward to help him. ‘Have you any idea?’

  ‘Hmm, I’ve got an idea, plenty of ideas come to that. Anyone can tell by the look of him that he wasn’t a particularly healthy specimen, and you said, Lizzie, he was in AF and had high blood pressure, and was in bed being monitored. Which is, of course, where he should have stayed. He should never have come out to roam about by the side of the river.’

  Lizzie bridled. ‘It’s no one’s fault that he took himself off walkabouts. You can dictate whatever you like to your patients; they’re all dead and can’t answer back. However, mine have wills of their own, and sometimes don’t do as they’re told.’

  Steve and Maguire looked at each other. Lizzie was angry, that much was plain to see.

  ‘Let’s deal with the situation as it is,’ said Maguire hastily, not wanting an argument to start. ‘We need to find out the cause of death, and in order to do that Phineas needs to move the body. So, let’s get on with it. Phineas, you make the necessary arrangements with your team. I’m leaving now, and taking Janet Hastings with me back to the station where she can give me a full account of what happened.’

  ‘What she thinks happened,’ muttered Phineas. He walked out of the hut and stared at the path beside the river. ‘They’ll never get the van up along here,’ he said grumpily. ‘They’ll have to carry him, and I know there’s that new girl on duty at the mortuary. God knows how she’ll cope.’

  ‘Women are just as good as men,’ said Lizzie, still feeling slightly truculent.

  ‘Not when it comes to manual labour they are not,’ Phineas retorted.

  *

  It was a bad tempered group, which left the hut beside the eel trap. It was sealed off with blue and white tape and a junior officer, brought over from Stibbington, was stationed beside it, much to Spud Murphy’s annoyance. ‘How am I goin’ to get at my stuff?’ he demanded of Maguire. ‘I’ve got rods in there. I hire them out.’

  ‘You’ll have to wait until forensics have finished in there,’ said Maguire. ‘And no one can fish this stretch of the river until I say so.’

  Spud muttered something mutinously beneath his breath, but collected up his bag and flask and left the hut.

  Maguire sent Steve Grayson and Kevin Harrison back to the station with Janet Hastings in tow. She was still weeping, although less noisily now.

  ‘She’s still very upset,’ said Lizzie, looking after the trio as they made their way along the riverbank.

  ‘And so she should be. She’s just shot someone,’ said Adam. He felt weary and it wasn’t even midday. All my theories have disappeared almost literally in a puff of smoke, he thought, moodily. Even if it wasn’t back to square one, and Harold Villiers was the killer of Jemima, he would not be able to get a confession from a dead man. And that was what he’d been counting on.

  It seemed that Lizzie was reading his thoughts. ‘Do you still think that Harold Villiers murdered Jemima?’ she asked. ‘Even though he’s been murdered himself.’

  ‘We don’t know that he’s been murdered,’ replied Maguire quickly. ‘Not now that Phineas says he wasn’t killed by gunshot.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Lizzie slowly. ‘Maybe he died of natural causes, brought on by the fact that he was shot. Shock can kill, and Janet did shoot him. But I still feel sorry for her. I don’t think she meant to do it.’

  ‘Spare me your theories,’ snapped Adam. ‘I have to come up with the truth, somehow.’ He started down the path following the others, his mind already engaging gear and going into overdrive. The car. The red car that Lizzie had seen that night. Maybe the burnt out that wreck would yield some positive clues.

  Lizzie watched him go. The truth. What was that? Everything seemed to be getting more complicated by the moment.

  *

  At Avon Hall, Fiona Welby and Nick Tanner were waiting anxiously. They, of course, Lizzie realized when she got there, didn’t know their patient was dead. She told them the bare facts, but decided not to tell them about the shooting and Janet Hastings’ part in it. They’d find that out soon enough, but for the moment all they needed to know was that Harold Villiers was dead.

  The news shocked them both. ‘Oh, My God,’ whispered Fiona. ‘Will we be charged? And what with? We didn’t actually kill him.’

  ‘And you didn’t actually keep him alive either,’ replied Lizzie sharply. ‘If you two had stayed awake, he might very well be still living and breathing and lying in bed at this moment. I shall have to write a report on you both, and I’m afraid that I shall have to put dereliction of duty. There were two of you on duty; you didn’t both need to go to sleep.’

  ‘I’d been on duty the night before,’ said Nick. ‘We had an emergency at the hospital needing open heart surgery. It took all night, and then I was in ICU all day, so I was tired.’

  Fiona started to speak but Lizzie stopped her. ‘Write up your reports for last night, both of you,’ she said. ‘Then give them to me. After that pack up everything and leave. I’ll tell your company you’ll be back with the van and the equipment this morning. We’ll take it on from there later. At the moment there are more important things I have to do.’

  She left the pair glumly packing their equipment back into the URGENT CARE van, and went downstairs to the office of Avon Hall. There was no one about, apart from a y
oung girl from the village who was flicking a duster about in a desultory manner. She was wearing a bright green apron with AVON HALL blazoned across it in purple, and her name was Jade, so she informed Lizzie. She came in every day and Janet Hastings told her what to do. ‘But I haven’t had me orders for today,’ she said plaintively.

  ‘What do you usually do?’ asked Lizzie.

  ‘Well, I make sure all the flowers are fresh, and then I dust the office and the sitting room, and vacuum the rugs down here to get the dogs’ hairs off. Then I goes upstairs and makes the beds. Sometimes I helps in the kitchen, but cook’s not in as the house isn’t open to the public, and there’s no volunteers in either. Everyone is away because the house is closed.’ The girl sounded quite panicky.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Lizzie, trying to reassure her.. ‘Why don’t you get on and do your jobs, and then when Mrs Villiers arrives she can tell you if she wants anything else done. I’ll leave a note for her, here in the office.’

  Amy looked even more worried. ‘I only take my orders from Janet.’ she said. ‘Mrs Villiers never speaks to me. Where is Janet?’

  ‘She’s not here and I don’t know when she’ll be back. So I suggest you get on with…’

  ‘I’m not stopping here. Not in this house on my own.’

  ‘Mrs Villiers is certain to be here soon.’ Lizzie was not sure of this fact, but in the event, it didn’t matter.

  Amy was ripping off her yellow rubber gloves, and untying the AVON HALL apron. ‘I’m not stopping,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m getting on my bike and going. I never liked it here anyway, and they only pay me the minimum wage.’

  She went, leaving Lizzie surprised at her sudden turn of speed, which disturbed the dogs who had been lolling on the kitchen floor.

  Now they stretched and stood up, then both turned towards Lizzie, and stood by their empty bowls. Lizzie looked at them and realized that they were probably expecting someone to feed them. That hadn’t been one of the jobs listed by Amy as her responsibility so Lizzie assumed it was probably Janet’s and hadn’t been done as she’d been taken off to the police station.