Inkier Than the Sword (The Falconer Files Book 3)

by Andrea Frazer

  I

  Harry Falconer had anticipated Sunday as being a quiet day, empty, for him to fill with a whole lot of doing nothing. All the interviews in Steynham St Michael had been carried out, and the forensics department was unlikely to have anything for them on a Sunday (heaven forbid!).

  He was, therefore, surprised to receive a call from a very excited Carmichael, just before lunch. ‘You’ve got to come over, sir,’ he bellowed with no preamble whatsoever. ‘You’ve just got to see this. It’s unbelievable. It’s absolutely fantastic, and I want you to come and see it for yourself, ’cos I could never, ever describe it to you as good as it is. Please come over, sir. Kerry and the boys want you to, too.’

  ‘Come over and see what, Carmichael? Whatever could be that marvellous or that important that I have to see it immediately?’ Really, Carmichael’s inner child must have escaped again, Falconer thought, with a superior grin.

  ‘It’s dogs, sir, dogs! You know I said, on that case in Stoney Cross where there were all them dogs, that I’d like to get one and …’ Here, his voice trailed off as he realised what that particular case had meant to Falconer.

  After a couple of seconds given over to a loud inhalation of breath to get his enthusiasm re-inflated, Carmichael continued. ‘We decided in the end, me and Kerry, that is, to get two dogs – puppies; one each for the boys to look after. They can feed them, and change their water, and walk them twice a day, and start to understand what it is to be responsible for another life. What do you think, sir?’

  ‘I think it’s risky, Carmichael. You know the poor record kids have for looking after pets when the novelty wears off. They just abandon them to their parents’ care, and move on to the next enthusiasm of childhood. Have you thought about that?’

  ‘I’ve done a bit of bribery, sir, and promised them they can take their pets to obedience classes, once they’ve settled in. And I’ve promised that, if they look after them well, and keep them bathed, washed, and looking nice, that they can enter them in the pet shows at the village fetes, in the summer.’

  ‘Actually, that’s quite a clever ploy,’ Falconer had to admit. Carmichael wasn’t just an intimidating presence. There was ‘summat to ’im,’ as someone’s old granny must have said at some time or other. ‘So why, exactly do you want me to come over right now?’

  ‘Because I’ve picked them up this morning, and they’re just so good with the boys, and I wanted to share it with you, because I’m so excited, and because you haven’t got anything like this in your own life …’ Again Carmichael trailed off. He’d said too much; spoken his mind, instead of obscuring his motives with polite waffle. He just couldn’t help telling the truth. It was one of the traits that his new wife loved so much about him.

  Again, Falconer decided to ignore his sergeant’s faux pas. If Carmichael were a puppy – admittedly a huge one – at the moment, he’d have widdled all over the floor in his excitement. ‘OK, I’ll be right over,’ he promised, not wishing to give his sergeant even more imaginary rope with which, metaphorically, to hang himself. ‘Just let me get changed first.’

  Falconer had a picture forming in his mind of a pair of Labradors, bouncing all over the place and just waiting to have a good old wrestle with the ankles of his trousers. And knowing Carmichael, the ‘puppies’ would probably have been the last of a litter, and be just about full-grown. His old jeans would suit his purpose for this visit, he decided, heading upstairs to his bedroom.

  II

  This was Falconer’s first visit to Castle Farthing since Carmichael had moved into the marital home, although his sergeant’s new wife Kerry had lived there for some years. In fact, it was in response to a murder in said village of Castle Farthing that Carmichael had first been assigned as Falconer’s partner, albeit as an acting detective sergeant. [1]

  They had worked together on that unfortunate business at Stoney Cross as well, [2] with Carmichael still an acting DS, and Falconer would never forget the day that his partner had been informed that he had passed his sergeant’s exams and was being transferred to CID, to work permanently in partnership with the inspector.

  The first he had known that there was something on the cards, had been when Carmichael was summoned to ‘Jelly’ Chivers’ office – upstairs, in more than one way. A small smile of nostalgia, of which he was totally unaware, appeared on his face, as he remembered that polite knock on the door, twenty minutes or so later.

  Answering the summons, he had discovered a red-faced Carmichael standing there, with an expression that threatened that his head might explode, if something wasn’t done fairly rapidly. ‘Would you mind opening the door very wide, sir, and standing well back?’ he had asked, with a curious little splutter in his voice.

  Falconer had done as he was asked without question, taking a mere peek round the door, to see if he could figure out what the young man was up to. Carmichael had retreated down the long corridor, at the end of which Falconer’s office lay and, with a little bounce on the balls of his feet, commenced to cartwheel towards the office door like a giant runaway wagon wheel.

  Falconer’s head had retreated in self-defence, and he held tight to the door, lest it try to close on what was approaching, at what he considered was a reckless speed. Carmichael knew what he was about, though, and completed his last tumble, just short of the window, regaining an upright position with a huge grin on his face and looking as if he had won the lottery.

  And, in his opinion, he was a winner in life’s lottery. In just a few short months he had investigated his first case of murder, met the girl of his dreams, got engaged to be married, gained two stepsons-to-be, passed his sergeant’s exams, and now been promoted to full sergeant and transferred to plain clothes. What more could he possibly want? The newly appointed Detective Sergeant Carmichael wasn’t much of a one for money, but he always counted his blessings, and he seemed to have so very many more of them these days that, today, he was fit-to-burst-happy.

  His mood had been highly infectious, and Falconer had found himself grinning inanely back at him, and pumping his hand as if he expected water to spurt from his mouth. And all the time there had been a faint voice at the back of his mind, screaming, ‘He’ll be with you on every case now. There’s no escape! There’s no way back! You’ll be together for ever!’

  He was beginning to learn, however, that Carmichael may be as weird as he appeared to be at first glance, but he wasn’t so green (or orange, or purple, or yellow, or blue …) as he was cabbage-looking. He knew his onions, even if he’d learnt them in a very odd way. Superintendent ‘Jelly’ Chivers had spotted it, and Falconer was coming to realise that he was right. Carmichael would more than do, even if he was sometimes (often!) a bit weird – or unexpected.

  At this point in his musings, he had arrived at the village green in Castle Farthing, beside which Carmichael et famille lived in two cottages knocked into one, though still retaining the outward appearance of two dwellings, due to local planning regulations. They had been allowed to join the two back gardens, however, to give the boys (and now presumably the puppies as well) plenty of room to run around, and expend all that abundant energy that youth held in its gift.

  Locking his beloved car, more by habit than necessity in this quiet backwater, he knocked at the first front door he came to, expecting his knock to be answered with the deep baying of two no doubt enormous dogs. Instead, the other door opened, revealing his sergeant with a couple of balls of fluff in his arms.

  Falconer, wrong-footed yet again, approached the other door, staring at what Carmichael held dubiously. What on earth were they? And then one of them yapped, which started the other ball of fluff off, and they went inside with Carmichael’s delighted laughter mingling with the high-pitched yap of two minute scraps of dog.

  ‘Whatever have you got there, Carmichael?’ Falconer asked him, still trying to work out exactly what his sergeant was carrying.

  ‘May I introduce you to Fang,’ Carmichael said with a perfectly straight face, hol
ding out a Chihuahua puppy in the palm of one hand, ‘and this little scrap here is going to learn to answer to the name of Mr Knuckles,’ he concluded, offering up a tiny Yorkshire terrier in his other spade-like hand, and before Falconer could get a word in, he added, ‘The boys were allowed to choose their names, and I think they’ve done a very good job, don’t you, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Falconer flatly, with a bland expression, catching sight of two little faces standing behind their new stepfather almost bursting with pride. ‘They’re, um, lovely. I’m sure you’ll all have a lot of fun together,’ he added, while hoping that Carmichael didn’t sit or step on one, and unwillingly become responsible for a family tragedy.

  Anything that small, with Carmichael around, ought to have a fluorescent collar and a proximity sensor if it wanted to grow to adulthood, and even then, they wouldn’t be much bigger, would they? They were hardly breeds that would be useful as guard dogs, unless they could yap an intruder to death. Playing rough-and-tumble between the two boys the furry participants, being very young, fell asleep side-by-side sharing the same cushion, looking more like a couple of over-large dust bunnies than anything canine. Identifying this as an opportunity, and not wishing to seem rude by leaving so soon after he had arrived, Falconer asked them if, as it was Sunday, they would like to join him at The Fisherman’s Flies for a spot of Sunday lunch? It would be his treat.

  There were no noticeable smells of cooking in the house, so he assumed that he would not be upsetting any already in-progress plans for food. He was proved right in his assumption by the whole-hearted agreement of all four of them, and they donned coats, hats, and scarves, hands being stuffed in pockets, for their short trip across the village green, for the temperature was still bitter, and could prove very uncomfortable even on very short trips outdoors.

  George and Paula Covington, the couple that ran the pub, greeted Falconer like an old friend, and settled all five of them at a table, close to a very welcoming roaring log fire, informing them that the choice of roasts today was between pork and beef, and requesting their orders for drinks.

  When all was in hand, George skewered Falconer with a gimlet eye and said, ‘We’re all very proud of this young man here, not just for that charity stunt he pulled for the wedding, but also for what he’s done in his job. I hope you’re treating him right, for if you’re not, and I get to hear about it, there’ll be trouble.’

  It was said in a jovial way and accompanied by a sly wink, and Falconer took it in good part, assuring George that he was nurturing Carmichael as he would a son of his own, glad that his sergeant was appreciated in his community, and attributing a small part of this to the fact that his first case had been here, in Castle Farthing itself.

  As they ate, Kerry brought their host up to date with the latest news from the village. They had no vicar, at present, to replace Rev. Swainton-Smythe, and Castle Farthing was in the same position as Steynham St Michael in that it was just on a rota now for a peripatetic vicar who only held services on one Sunday in the month.

  Her godparents, the Warren-Brownes, had retired from their duties at the post office only the month before – at Christmas, to be precise – and were busy settling in at The Beehive, a property that they had snapped up as soon as it had come on the housing market. It was a lovely place, with plenty of garden, and the added bonus of what had been a studio for the previous owner, and which would soon be a super-duper playroom for Dean and Kyle, Kerry’s two sons. And it hadn’t been the only property to be put up for sale, either, as the little cottage in Sheepwash Lane was still looking for a new owner.

  Not much seemed to happen in a village, and then, there was a cataclysmic event, and the effect moved out through everyone’s lives, like the ripples on a pond where a stone has been thrown in the water. The changes in this case, though, sounded as if they were for the better. A young couple had taken on the post office, and the garage had re-opened after a closure of only a couple of months, so the Castle Farthing motorists no longer had to make the trip to Steynham St Michael for their petrol supplies.

  The very convivial lunch was followed by coffee back at the Carmichaels’ and, of course, another session of admiring the miniature mutts, who cavorted around the sofa as if it were a continent. It wasn’t until half-past five that Falconer made a move to leave, refusing all offers to stay on for his ‘tea’. He left them with a very contented feeling – you might say that he was ‘heart-warmed’ by his visit, and he drove home with a rare smile on his usually serious face. Carmichael was, indeed, a very lucky young man, and Falconer hoped he realised how blessed he really was.

  [1] See Death of an Old Git.

  [2] See Choked Off

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Final Trick

  Monday 11th January

  I

  Monday morning brought with it three pieces of news relating to the murder of Hermione Grayling. The first was from the forensics department, to inform Falconer that the only thing they could detect on the bill-hook was a very expensive brand of bleach called ‘Blanche-issimo’. There had, of course, been no evidence of fingerprints, and the only other things found on it had been blood, hair, both real and of the wigged variety, and brain matter, which wasn’t exactly a surprise result.

  The typewriter keys, strangely enough, had also shown no sign of fingerprints, not even of Hermione’s, which was very odd considering that it was Hermione’s typewriter, that she had been found dead in front of it, and that it had had a half-typed letter on its roller.

  The cut-out letters, from which the letters had been constructed, were identified as coming from the Daily Telegraph and old copies of The Lady. It seemed fairly obvious to Falconer that these were likely to have originated from Hermione Grayling herself, in keeping with all the other evidence, but they would have to check with the general store, which functioned also as a newsagents, and which provided the Steynham St Michael residents with their daily dose of news, and their weekly or monthly copies of a variety of periodicals.

  Falconer also received a phone call just after nine o’clock, only fifteen minutes after he had sat down at his desk, from Noah and Patience Buttery, who had returned the night before to Pear Tree Cottage. They explained that they had gone away for a few days after Gabriel Pryor, their cousin, had hanged himself, because they had been so shocked and upset. They had been brought up to consider suicide to be a sin, as had Gabriel, and the news had knocked them sideways.

  They realised, though, that they could not just leave the library in the lurch like that, and had come home, only to learn of Hermione’s death from Dimity, their next door neighbour, and to a poison pen letter waiting for them on their hall floor.

  Falconer said that he would be there as soon as he could, and he would be grateful if one of them could remain at the cottage, so that they could speak privately. Speaking in a slightly louder voice than was usual for the telephone, he fixed Carmichael with a ‘death-ray’ stare, and found his sergeant not only on his feet when he hung up the telephone but already in his coat and hat.

  ‘Oh, Carmichael! What’s with the hat again?’ he asked in despair.

  ‘It’s still January, sir, and it’s still cold. Until it warms up again, you’d better get used to Mr Hat, because he’s not going anywhere without me. Sir,’ he added, in case Falconer misinterpreted the tone of what he had just said, but of course he hadn’t.

  ‘Good grief!’ he thought. ‘Carmichael has just made a joke!’

  II

  ‘What’s going down, sir?’ the sergeant asked as they drove out of the police station car park.

  ‘Well, I’ve just had a call from Noah and Patience Buttery, to say they’re back in the fold of village life, and it would seem that they had a poison pen letter waiting for them when they arrived home yesterday evening. They didn’t even know about the murder, so I think they were pretty shocked at the news. They may not have been in Miss Grayling’s cards club, but they knew her well enough to be horrified at her murde
r, and the manner in which it was carried out.

  ‘In fact, that’s a bit odd, when you come to think of it, isn’t it, Sergeant? Everyone else who has received a letter has been in this blasted club, to the point where we’ve only concentrated on its members. And now the Butterys have got a letter. I mean, is it random, or does it mean something? Me, I haven’t the faintest idea at the moment.

  ‘And we’ve got to check everyone’s home for signs of some fancy-pants bleach called Blanche-issimo, and check with the newsagent what deliveries everyone had in the way of newspapers and periodicals. What do you think of that for a morning’s work, Carmichael?’

  ‘What was that, sir?’

  ‘Oh, never mind. I’m certainly not going to repeat it all. Just follow my lead, and you won’t go far wrong.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ was Carmichael’s last comment, as they once more pulled into the car park shared by the Co-op and the village’s re-cycling bins.

  Carmichael had been right about Mr Hat, thought Falconer as he locked the car doors and felt his ears already beginning to tingle with cold. He’d have to find out if Mr Hat had a brother, or perhaps a slightly less exotic cousin, before he himself became a martyr to frost bite, and his ears fell off.

  III

  It was Patience Buttery who answered the door to them, an expression of anxiety and distaste on her face. Noah was waiting for them in the sitting room, staring at the letter which was on the dining table.

  Falconer dealt with the introductions, then asked, as tactfully as he could, if they might see the letter. Other recipients had been reluctant to let him read or even look at their letters in case he learnt something about them that they did not want made public, and he could perfectly understand their reticence. Why, if he received a letter threatening to expose his ‘guilty secret,’ of enjoying baked beans on toast with lashings of brown sauce, he wouldn’t want to bandy the letter around either.