by McNeir, Leo
“I’m just a key-holder in case of emergency.”
“And you didn’t need it when the recent vandalism took place?”
“Vandalism? What vandalism? We don’t have vandalism in Knightly St John, sergeant.” Mr Stubbs gave a mocking smile, but Sergeant Marriner held his gaze.
“You’ve had a murder in Knightly St John, sir,” he said quietly. “The recent case of vandalism in the church is what I mean.”
“In the church? What are you talking about? I can assure you there’s been no vandalism in our church.” Mr Stubbs began to sound indignant.
Marriner flicked back through his note book and found the notes he had made of Marnie Walker’s testimony. “In the church yard to be precise, sir. Damage to a gravestone.”
“No. That can’t be right. You must be mistaken. There’s been no such vandalism. I supervise the maintenance of the churchyard. In fact, I pay a man from the village to mow it regularly and keep the paths and graves tidy. I would be the first person to know if anything of that sort had taken place.”
“We have a witness to the act, sir, or at least to the result of the act. Someone who was informed of it by the vicar.”
Mr Stubbs frowned. “When was this vandalism supposed to have happened?”
“Within the last two weeks.”
“No. Impossible. That can’t be true.” He got up suddenly and walked briskly to the house. Marriner, unaccustomed to being abandoned in the middle of his questioning, trailed after him. He arrived at the back door to find Mr Stubbs in the kitchen, pressing buttons on the phone attached to the wall.
“Henry? It’s Mr Stubbs. Do you know anything about vandalism in the churchyard? … Yes, recently, last week or two … a gravestone, apparently … Yes, I know you would. I just wanted to make sure … Of course you would. Listen. The police will want to ask you about it. Sergeant Marriner. I’ll give him your name and address. All right? … That’s right, yes … I don’t know. Up to them … Yes. Thanks Henry.” He turned to Marriner waiting in the doorway. “As I told you, sergeant. Definitely no vandalism in the churchyard, not in the last two weeks or any other time. That’s final and you have a witness to prove it.”
The two men sat down for tea in the conservatory, Marriner still puzzled by this new development. Why should Marnie Walker invent a story like that? She must realise it would be easy to disprove. There would be evidence, the actual damage, possibly witnesses.
“You have a lot to do with the church, sir.”
“I’m a churchwarden, member of the PCC and a benefactor. The family has been in this village for generations. Farmers and butchers, that’s us. This place has been good to us and we’ve tried to be good for the village.”
“Are you still in business here, sir?”
“I have business interests all around here. And, yes, I still keep a small butchery, though it’s really only to serve the immediate community.”
“Could I see it?”
“Certainly.” He led Marriner to the annexe at the other end of the house, explaining the skull and crossbones over the door. Marriner stepped inside and found himself confronted by the well-scrubbed butcher’s block with its undulating top, the tiled walls and floor and the counter over which hung a rack holding a collection of knives, cleavers and choppers. Everything was shining and immaculate, especially the knives that Marriner inspected closely. They were honed to the peak of sharpness.
*
“You don’t have an appointment, do you?” Valerie Paxton looked up in confusion at the two police officers and checked the desk diary. Beside it stood a small vase of white roses.
“No. We don’t usually make appointments. We tend to think murder enquiries take priority over everyday matters.” Cathy Lamb watched her senior officer in action from the back of the office and saw the effect he had on people. She wondered if Bartlett deliberately behaved like that to put them off balance or if he just liked throwing his weight around.
“The head has some parents with her at the moment. I don’t think I can interrupt them just like that. If I’d known you were coming I could have altered the time of their meeting.”
“Then perhaps we’ll talk to you while we wait.” He looked at his notebook. “It’s Mrs Paxton, isn’t it?”
On hearing her name, Valerie gave a start. “Yes, it is. Why do you want to talk to me?”
“Just routine, as they say.” He smiled reassuringly, but Valerie did not look re-assured. “Did you know the vicar?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a regular churchgoer?”
“Yes.”
“Are you on any of the church committees, the PCC, anything like that?”
“I’m on the PCC.”
“And do you have any other role in the church?” Valerie hesitated.
“Do you help with the flowers, perhaps?” It was Cathy Lamb who spoke in a quiet voice and Bartlett was momentarily taken by surprise.
“I do sometimes. My husband’s a keen gardener. Chrysanthemums. I helped with the harvest festival.” Cathy nodded encouragement. Bartlett waited. “That’s all, really. Oh, and I have a key to the church.”
“How long have you had it?” said Bartlett.
“For a year or two. It was the vicar’s idea. In case we wanted to go in the church for any reason.”
“Where do you keep the key?”
“Here in my desk.”
“Has anybody used it recently? Borrowed it?”
“No. No-one.”
“When was the last time it was used?”
“I don’t remember.” Valerie was becoming agitated, frowning and biting her lip.
“Can you show us where you keep it, please.” She pulled open the top drawer and took out the key. It was strangely antique, heavy and ornate, in contrast to the modern office fitments.
“We’ll need to borrow this for a while. Will that cause any problems?” Valerie shook her head and went to close the drawer. “Just a minute,” said Bartlett. He walked round the desk. “Is that your knife?”
“Yes.”
“What do you keep it for?”
“Only as a paperknife for opening letters. It was my father’s, a souvenir from the war.”
“I’d like to borrow that, too, please.”
“Why?” She stared up at Bartlett, and Cathy Lamb thought for a second that she was going to shut the drawer.
“Just to help our enquiries, Mrs Paxton.” He reached in with both hands and picked up the knife, an SS dagger, in its scabbard with a finger at each end. Cathy produced a transparent envelope and Bartlett dropped it in.
Valerie watched this with her mouth half open. “What do you want it for?” She stood up.
“Tell me,” said Bartlett. “How did you feel about the vicar?” His voice was quieter now.
“How did I feel?” Valerie took in a deep breath and as she breathed out it almost became a sob. She began breathing quickly as if her throat was constricted, her eyes widening, her head jerking from side to side. With both fists clenched she pressed down on the blotter on her desk and leaned forward like a circus artiste on a trapeze. “How did I feel? How would you understand what I felt? The vicar was misunderstood by everybody except me.” Her voice rose to screaming pitch. “Everybody but me! I was the only one, the only one!” She was swaying backwards and forwards, wild-eyed, almost spitting out the words in fury. Bartlett, shocked by the outburst, stepped back, pushing Cathy Lamb off-balance so that she stumbled and dropped the envelope containing the knife. Valerie was still screaming, incoherent with emotion, as the words spilled out. “He only wanted the good of the parish, for the people. Everything was for the people.”
At that moment, the door to the head’s office flew open and Margaret Giles rushed in.
“What on earth is going on?” She took in the scene before her at a glance and rushed towards Valerie Paxton. Bartlett, regaining his self-control, raised a hand in warning, but Mrs Giles put an arm round her secretary and made her sit down. “Valerie,
Valerie, calm down. It’s all right, it’s me. It’s all right.” Valerie slumped forward across the desk, breathing heavily, sobbing.
“I loved him!” she cried. “Don’t you understand? I loved him! There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep him in the village … nothing, nothing, nothing!” Her voice faded away, leaving her sobbing and shaking, great tear drops splashing the blotting paper on the desk. Margaret Giles, her arm still round Valerie’s shoulders, looked down at her in amazement. Bartlett frowned and Cathy Lamb squatted to pick up the knife in its envelope. Margaret Giles looked at it and her eyes widened. From the doorway the two parents stared out with shocked white faces.
“I’m going to take Valerie home,” said Mrs Giles. “In the circumstances, I think it would be better if you continued your … conversation some other time. Valerie is obviously upset. The whole village is feeling the strain after what happened.”
“She said ‘him’.” Bartlett muttered. “When she spoke about the vicar she said ‘him’. I don’t understand.”
“Women have no right to be vicars,” said Valerie in a muffled, weary voice, without looking up from the desk. “They should keep out where they’re not wanted. They have no place interfering in the work of the church.”
“That will do, Valerie,” said the head. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
*
Sergeant Marriner turned into the drive of Rooks Farm, a quarter-mile strip of concrete, bordered on one side for its entire length by mature trees standing knee-deep in cow parsley. In the surrounding fields flocks of sheep were grazing. It was a prosperous, neat and ordered landscape and Marriner was not at all surprised to find the handsome stone farmhouse and its outbuildings all exhibiting the same high standard of care. He rang the doorbell. Turning to look around him, he discovered a border collie, a large black and white sheep dog, evidently now in retirement, that had loped across from its kennel to stand in amiable silence, tail gently wagging, beside the stranger at the door.
“Did you want eggs?” A man’s voice called out from one of the barns. “My wife’s probably in the garden with the kiddie.” Marriner walked over. He found a tall, lean man of about forty holding a spanner. Behind him in the barn stood a tractor with parts of its engine laid out on a plastic sheet on the floor.
“Good afternoon, sir. I’m looking for Mr Fletcher.”
“Which one? I’m Leonard and there’s my father, whose Christian name is Albert.”
“It would be Mr Albert Fletcher. I’m Detective Sergeant Marriner from the county CID.” He showed his warrant card.
“In connection with the death of the vicar,” said the farmer. It was a statement, not a question, and Marriner noticed that the son seemed not to be surprised at his arrival.
“Quite so. Can you tell me where I can find him, sir?”
“He’s here somewhere, but I haven’t seen him for a while, not since lunch-time in fact.”
“Have you no idea?” said Marriner.
The farmer indicated the tractor with a toss of his head. “I’ve been sorting out the fuel pump for the last half hour or more. This is a big place, sergeant. We farm six hundred and fifty acres. My guess is you’ll probably find him in the old stone barn. That one over there with the door half open. He’s often in there. If not, he might be in the forty-acre field behind the house, checking the fences.”
“Thank you very much, sir. If you don’t mind, I’ll look round till I find him.”
“That’s fine by me. You just go ahead.”
Marriner wondered what an old man might get up to in a barn. He stopped at the open door and peered in. At first it was difficult to see anything, as there were no windows, only thin slits that grudgingly let in pale shafts of daylight.
“Hallo! Mr Fletcher?” Silence. Marriner pulled open the door and stepped forward. Standing in the middle of the barn, beside the old tractor, he waited a few seconds while his eyes adjusted to the conditions. He turned to scan the interior until his gaze came to rest on the end wall.
“Christ!” he muttered under his breath.
*
They had agreed to meet back at the incident room at four-thirty. Incident room was a rather grand description of what, in normal circumstances, was the old church room, a small brick building tacked onto the church in the middle of the last century to serve as schoolroom before it was superseded by the present school in the 1890s. Now it was only used for the Sunday school, a meeting room for the cubs and brownies and as a convenient scullery where tea and refreshments could be prepared. It was here that Pauline Fairbrother obtained water for the flower arrangements and rinsed the vases in the sink. The police had rigged up a temporary phone line and brought in two desks, there being no room for more. Bartlett perched on the corner of one of these, while Marriner stood and Cathy Lamb sat in one of the two chairs. Bartlett was giving a summary of their findings.
“One of them has to be lying,” he said. “Or mistaken, I suppose.”
“It’s difficult to be mistaken about vandalism, I would’ve thought,” said Marriner. “I had a look round the churchyard and I couldn’t see any damage. And Stubbs would surely have known. He was really put out when I mentioned it. He was more concerned that he might not have been told first than about the actual vandalism itself.”
“He has a point,” said Bartlett. “He ought to have known. He pays the groundsman and does a lot for the church.”
“Thinks he owns the place, I reckon. I got the impression he resented the vicar interfering in it.”
“Ted, I want you and Cathy to check out this gardener, Henry Tutt. Get his story. If he backs up what Stubbs told you, we’ll confront Walker with it and see what she has to say for herself.”
“That seems clear enough, then,” said Marriner.
Bartlett frowned. “Clear enough?” he said.
“Well, if there is no vandalism, Stubbs must be right. It stands to reason.”
“Yes, but why invent something so easy to disprove?” said Bartlett. “There’s no sense in that.”
“So you believe Walker?” said Marriner.
“On the face of it, no. But she’s not stupid. Why make up a story she can’t prove? It’s not logical.”
“No. I see what you mean. I’ll go round straight away and see this Tutt character.”
“You could have another go at finding old Fletcher as well.”
“Now there’s a queer business,” said Marriner. The phone rang as he was speaking and Cathy Lamb picked it up. “The whole wall of the barn was covered in farm implements, all of them very old, like museum pieces, all of them kept like new. Some of them had blades – sickles, scythes and the like – and every one was shining like they’d been polished. All of them were absolutely razor-sharp.” In the background Cathy spoke quietly into the receiver, taking notes on a pad.
“Did his son think it strange he couldn’t be found?”
“Not a bit,” said Marriner. “Apparently the old boy often goes off on his own. In the last few weeks he’s been known to be out for most of the day, just coming home for supper. The son said he goes for long walks. His time’s his own. He can do what he likes. I couldn’t get any more out of him, but I’m sure he’s not telling us all he knows, or thinks.”
Cathy hung up. “That was forensic, sir. They’ve been over every inch of the tower. It’s clean. No prints. The surfaces are too rough. No trace of a struggle. Nothing.”
“There must be something,” said Bartlett, exasperated. “A woman was murdered there, for Chrissake! Killing someone isn’t like shaking hands.”
Cathy looked down at her notes. “… bloodstains indicate the murder took place by the landing halfway up the tower …”
“We know that.” He looked in desperation at Marriner. “You’d think they’d have found something.”
“They don’t seem to have, sir,” said Cathy re-reading her notes. It was her first murder case since transferring to CID at the start of the year and she had soon learnt about the extra
sense of urgency, the increased pressure felt by all the officers involved.
“Cathy, a murderer doesn’t come to the scene of the crime in a sterile envelope. They bring things with them and leave things behind them, things a microscope can see. We’re looking for a footprint, a scuff mark …”
“A trace of cat’s fur,” added Marriner.
“Yes, something like that,” said Bartlett. “The surfaces are too rough for a fingerprint. Right. We knew that. So we’re looking for a thread of cloth, something that might rub off. Let me see your notes.”
“They’re in shorthand, sir.”
“That’s OK. I can read it … usually.” He studied the notes. “Was this everything they said? What’s this here?”
Cathy deciphered her hieroglyphs. “Just some notes about the tower itself, sir. The stone walls are in good condition, steps worn, some quite badly.”
“What’s this bit mean?”
“Oh er, wobbly. The top step on the landing was wobbly.”
“I don’t remember that,” said Bartlett.
“I do, sir,” said Cathy. “I stood on it and it did wobble slightly.”
“Is that it, then?”
“That’s all they said, sir.”
“Well we know she didn’t die by slipping off a wobbly step. Have you got your notes about the murder weapon there?” Cathy flicked back through her pad and read hesitantly.
“… weapon was broad-bladed with one edge only sharpened … sharp point … thickness of approximately three millimetres on unsharpened edge … one blow only entering between fourth and fifth rib to a depth of approx. eleven centimetres piercing the …” She paused, trying to decipher the medical term.
“Eleven centimetres,” muttered Bartlett. Marriner joined him in the calculation of what that was in real measurements. Although they had grown accustomed to working in metric, both men were of an age that only felt comfortable in feet and inches. “That’s about four inches, isn’t it, Ted?”
“’Bout that.”
“That’s a hard blow, going that deep.”
“Or a lucky one,” said Marriner. “Going between the ribs like that.”
