The Devil's Chair

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘We’d been drinking in the early evening.’ He scanned the room, challenging any negative response. There was none, only sympathy, even from Tracy’s mother and gum-chewing sister. Mansfield cleared his throat and continued in a low voice, not fixing his gaze on anyone in particular. ‘We’d wanted to go out but we didn’t have a babysitter for Daisy.’ Mentioning Daisy made Mansfield suddenly lose his control. He gripped the front of the witness box and screwed up his face as though tightening and contorting his features would prevent him from crying. But he recovered in the briefest of moments. He went even paler, almost a greenish white and gasped, cleared his throat and continued. ‘We, erm … we couldn’t decide what to watch on the television.’

  There was not a person in the court who did not realize that this phrase was a euphemism for we argued over the channels. Mansfield’s eyes flickered around the room, his face set. He was going to tell this tale. ‘We had a bit of a row. Daisy started crying. Tracy ran upstairs and fetched her out of her bed then she came running back down with her.’ His voice was gruff. Martha recognized the symptoms. Neil Mansfield was still finding it hard to keep control and stop himself from crying.

  She gave him a sympathetic look. ‘Take your time, Mr Mansfield,’ she said gently. ‘Would you like some water?’

  Jericho’s head shot up. This was one of his duties.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘She went off.’ Mansfield swallowed. ‘That’s all I know. Sorry.’ He seemed to be apologizing to the entire room. ‘I fell asleep. Next morning …’ He looked around him desperately. ‘Next morning I realized she wasn’t back. Then …’

  ‘All right,’ Martha said kindly. ‘That’s enough. Is there anything else that you can add that might shed a light either on the events of that night or help the police to find Daisy?’

  Mansfield shook his head and now she could see that tears were not far away. His face was twisted like an anguished child.

  Detective Inspector Alex Randall was next to take the stand, explaining the circumstances of the accident, using maps and photographs to clarify the geography of the area. Martha sat back in her seat and watched him. It was always good to observe a professional, particularly when he was tall and attractive with a clear, pleasant voice. Randall’s voice was curt, clipped, accentless. She could not have guessed where in the country he came from or what his background was. He was classless, polite. Not bland exactly but difficult to pin a label on. Even his vocabulary gave no clue to his geographical origins. She wondered when he had developed this closed aspect of his character. And why. Why did he need to be such a closed book? Had he always been like this or was it something he had developed? His face was animated as he spoke. He enjoyed giving evidence, putting across his side of the story. Luckily Randall was so engrossed in his story that he was unaware of Martha’s scrutiny. Or so she thought. Quite suddenly he stopped looking at his notes, turned away from the people watching and moved his head to the right to look directly at her, his eyes seeming to look beneath the surface as though he could guess what she was thinking. She flushed as only redheads can.

  Randall left all guesswork and supposition out. His statement was completely factual as he related the findings of the crash investigation team. ‘Tracy Walsh drove up the Burway, a narrow and precipitous road which climbs up to the Lond Mynd.’ He displayed maps and photographs to illustrate his point. ‘Forensic examination of the area suggests that near the top, for some reason, she braked sharply and then tried to reverse back down the Burway.’ He leaned forward slightly. ‘There is no evidence to illustrate why she did this. Whether it was something real such as a collision with another car as suggested by a graze of black paint found on her offside wing or perhaps an animal or even something imaginary, possibly due to a combination of her disturbed state and the high alcohol content in her blood, is a matter for conjecture. We have no evidence to point us one way or the other. We have found no hard evidence that another vehicle was involved, although …’ His natural honesty drove him to confess, ‘… it is possible that the collision with another car did not take place on that particular night. It could have happened at another time. Also, no one has come forward to say that they were on the Burway on that night at that time and there is no evidence of tyre tracks on the road apart from Tracy’s. The only evidence is the scrape of paint found on Tracy’s VW Polo and her tyre marks. There is no report of a collision on the Burway that night, so if there was an encounter the police are unaware of it. Tracy then reversed and slipped over the edge, the vehicle rolling down the side into Carding Mill Valley, a drop of over three hundred feet. The emergency services were alerted at six a.m. by a caller who has, so far, failed to come forward.’ Randall paused and scanned the room. ‘If the caller is here today or anyone has any idea who our mystery woman is I would appeal to them to speak to us. It may well be the key to finding Daisy.’ He continued with his evidence. ‘Tracy was taken to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital on Sunday morning, the seventh of April at seven thirty a.m. but regrettably died eight days later from her injuries.’ Randall paused. ‘While we believe that Tracy’s daughter, Daisy, was also in the car we have not yet found her in spite of an extensive search of the area and a high-profile press focus. No one has come forward to help us find her.’ Randall blinked and fell silent. His words had held real pathos, particularly when he held up Daisy Walsh’s photograph, the pretty, smiling four-year-old peeping around the door, her eyes, like the Mona Lisa’s, seeming to meet everyone’s in the room. They all looked at the picture and read the innocence in her eyes. A few muttered. All were mesmerized, Randall himself staying silent as the people studied the image. No one in the courtroom could have been thinking anything but where was she? What had happened to her after the car crash? Would they ever find her? Martha took a swift peek at Pat and Sofia and would have sworn that even they were moved by the picture, which needed no embellishment. The child spoke for herself by her sweet expression. Only one person in the courtroom couldn’t bear to look at it: Neil Mansfield. After one millisecond of a glance he had put his hands over his eyes and blocked out the image. An almost audible sigh was breathed around the courtroom before Randall’s clear voice broke through the whisper, as soft as a summer breeze through pale green leaves. ‘The caller was a woman who made no mention of the child, only saying that someone was hurt,’ he added.

  ‘Thank you, Detective Inspector Randall,’ Martha said. ‘Do you have anything else to add?’

  ‘Only this.’ Alex faced the courtroom, his face taut and serious. He had to keep trying. ‘If there is anyone – anyone out there – who can shed light on the whereabouts of little Daisy Walsh, who, I might remind you, is only four years old, I would be very grateful for the information.’ The room was silent now, all eyes fixed on the tall detective, but no one spoke. They were all holding their breath. Martha scanned people’s faces and read no cognition. Daisy’s whereabouts, it seemed, were to remain a mystery for now.

  For now, she wondered, or for ever? It was a terrible thought. Agonizing, it would appear, for Neil, who had dropped his face into his hands.

  After a brief pause and a nod from Martha, Alex left the stand and his place was taken by the pathologist.

  Dr Mark Sullivan looked very dapper in his dark suit and elegant tie. He took the stand with a confident, clear gaze and none of the hesitation and tremor of his earlier days. His manner was grave yet light. He deliberately spoke in words that everyone sitting in the courtroom could understand, never hiding behind jargon. When he needed to use medical expressions for precision’s sake he explained the meaning in layman’s terms. An aneurism became a ‘bulge in an artery’, contusions were ‘bruises’, a compound fracture explained as ‘a broken bone projecting through the skin’. And everyone could understand the word ‘coma’.

  Sullivan carefully explained Tracy Walsh’s injuries. ‘Three skull fractures, multiple chest injuries including rib and sternal – breastbone – fractures. She had a haemathorax plus a large pl
eural effusion, which translates as blood and fluid in her lungs. Also a fractured pelvis and compound fractures of both tibia and fibulae, the bones of the lower leg.’ He paused. ‘These injuries were so severe that in spite of the best medical attention Tracy developed major organ failure and died on the fifteenth of April, eight days after the accident.’

  Again, he paused before continuing, factually giving the milligrams of alcohol in her blood without sounding judgmental, then he stopped speaking and waited for any comments. Martha gave him an approving nod and he sat down.

  The words accidental death due to road traffic incident hovered on her lips but she did not pronounce them. There were still anomalies and inconsistencies that needed explaining before she could be absolutely certain that there had been no design, nothing planned, in the death of Tracy Walsh and the disappearance of her daughter. Also, she still hoped to know Daisy’s fate before closing the inquest. And so she waited. It was still possible that this would turn out to be a double inquest, both deaths due to the terrible careering of the VW over the side, dropping the three hundred feet into Carding Mill Valley. It was also possible that the entire backstory would still prove much more complicated than anyone here had so far suspected. Like Randall, she could not work out exactly where the clues that had been left fitted in, so they had decided to suppress the taunt which had accompanied the strange bunch of herbs and the appearance of the second slipper. It would, they hoped, in the end, fit together, but for now there were too many pieces of the jigsaw still missing.

  Finally Martha adjourned the inquest and set a date well into the future. She also released Tracy’s body for burial. They all knew how she’d died. They knew when and where and who she was. What they didn’t really know was why.

  Alex was waiting for her in the hallway. He gave her a tentative grin. ‘How did I do?’

  She couldn’t help but warm to his self-effacing humour. ‘You did all right,’ she said, knowing the light in her eyes would voice her approval more eloquently than words alone. Then she added impulsively, ‘Have you got a minute, Alex?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’ He looked and sounded surprised.

  She led him into one of the private interview rooms. ‘It was that business of the flowers,’ she said. Randall’s eyebrows lifted but he made no comment.

  And suddenly she lost confidence in what had seemed such an inspirational idea. A real help to direct his investigation. Was she simply sidetracking him from his case? Wasting time? Was this nothing more than a red herring, a strange coincidence? She was out of the picture – surely? The trouble was that for all Jericho’s digging into the past and unearthing something she couldn’t see where it fitted in. She ploughed on but dejectedly. ‘You’re going to think I’m nuts,’ she said. ‘And I don’t know how it fits in, except it does.’

  ‘Let me be the judge of that.’ He was smiling with more than a hint of indulgence.

  ‘It was the bunch of herbs. It was the—’ She was finding this much more difficult than she’d thought, doubting now the logic of her ideas. ‘It was the … Oh, I don’t know.’ She wished Alex would say something. Anything instead of watching her with that faintly puzzled look. ‘You are going to think I’ve lost the plot. I just wanted to go over it with you.’

  ‘Are you going to give me a clue so I can make a judgement?’ And his face was still warm and kind – almost tender – which gave her the confidence to continue.

  ‘All right,’ she said, the words now coming out in a tumbling rush. ‘It was the name.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Combined with the planting of the bunch of herbs. The message, the way of speaking and the idea that it was someone with a rural bent. The geographical location of the Long Mynd together with a crime committed.’

  He bent his head even nearer to hers, as though to listen more intently but now he was frowning.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I felt that there was a connection with a case I was involved with a little more than ten years ago. It was an odd one and ultimately came to a very unsatisfactory conclusion. I had to give a verdict of accidental death then but, Alex …’ She locked eyes with him, wanting to emphasize her words. ‘In spite of a dearth of evidence and nothing turning up in the police investigation I could never shake off the idea that it was a deliberate felon. All my instincts screamed to me that it was murder.’

  ‘Just go through the circumstances again. I haven’t got a handle on it.’

  ‘It was a teenage girl, fourteen years old. She made home-made mushroom soup for her father, her stepmother and her half-brother. They all died. She was very slightly ill but survived.’

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘The girl had gathered what she claimed to believe were chanterelles. She was no expert on fungi. They turned out to be the Death Cap.’

  Randall waited.

  ‘Before the inquest the girl’s aunt came forward and spoke very frankly to me, thinking I would not be connected with the police. She didn’t want to get her niece into trouble but she did want to voice her misgivings and point out how strange the entire thing was. The girl was a rebel, she told me. Disruptive and vicious. It was uncharacteristic for her to gather mushrooms in the first place. She was the sort who, if she did any food shopping, would have bought it at the local supermarket, neatly labelled and on a polystyrene tray ready to microwave. The girl was no cook. According to the aunt this girl never cooked for the family. Never, Alex,’ she emphasized. ‘Added to that she hated her stepmother and bitterly resented her parent’s divorce and the fact that her father had remarried. Her own mother was extremely bitter too and had attempted suicide on a number of occasions, which was why the girl lived with her father and his paramour. Her mother was deemed to be unstable so her father had custody. When her half-brother was born she became very, very difficult. The hostility was judged to be so great that the aunt told me that she was never allowed to be alone with her half-brother. That was how bad the situation was.’ Martha waited for a moment to allow the facts to sink in before continuing. ‘Even with all this evidence I might still have bought the “terrible accident” verdict apart from one thing: the police found a book at the property which had been borrowed from the library. The subject was on recognizing various fungi. The trouble was that it had been taken out in the stepmother’s name and the library couldn’t remember who had actually picked the book up.’

  ‘Hmm. Intriguing and very hard to prove intent.’

  ‘Very hard,’ she repeated, more slowly.

  Randall was thoughtful for a moment, then looked up. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’

  She nodded. ‘The family lived in Hope Bowdler, in an ancient thatched cottage there. The day of the funerals a small basket of Death Cap fungi was placed on the front door step.’

  ‘By the girl?’

  Martha shook her head. ‘She was still in hospital at the time. They’d kept her in for observation in case she developed symptoms later. We never knew who’d left the basket of Death Caps on the step but I’m pretty sure it was someone who shared my suspicions.’

  ‘So …’ He looked up. ‘Martha?’

  ‘It wasn’t just the unusual nature of the case,’ Martha said. ‘It was also the name of our lethal chef which was unusual enough for me to remember it. Or at least,’ she added with blunt honesty, ‘for it to ring a bell in my mind and ask Jericho to fish out the file and refresh me of the details.’

  Randall waited.

  ‘The name was Ignatio,’ Martha said. ‘Charity Ignatio.’

  Randall gaped. It was not what he had expected.

  ‘But the herb message couldn’t possibly have been put there by her,’ he said. ‘She was out of the country.’

  ‘I still think there’s a connection,’ Martha insisted. ‘I believe the person who placed the Death Caps on the step of the cottage in Hope Bowdler was the same person who placed your bunch of herbs at the point where Tracy’s car began its roll down into the valley. Note, Alex: the
point where Tracy’s car left the road.’

  His hazel eyes looked deep into hers, displaying – or was she imagining it – warmth, affection? It gave her further confidence to continue with her strange idea. ‘Under the circumstances, don’t you think it’s odd that Ms Ignatio should choose to live out there, in a backwater, when she has a job that requires her to travel the world? Why not live near an airport or at least a station that has a mainline to London rather on a rural line that means she has to change at Birmingham? And why cling to an area where it is perfectly possible that people will always connect you with a crime and a question: what did you do to your family?’

  Randall frowned. ‘So what happened to her subsequently? Was she found guilty of attempted murder?’

  ‘No,’ Martha said. ‘Nothing happened to her. Whatever my private instincts I had no hard evidence and neither did the police. I passed an open verdict.’ She felt she had to justify her decision. ‘I had no choice, Alex. It was all put down to a tragic mistake. Like the case, the book on fungi was returned to the library and put back on the shelf, as it were. In fact, young Charity came out of it rather well. The light that was put on it was a rebellious teenage girl who was trying to make amends for her previously unruly behaviour by organizing a banquet.’ She couldn’t prevent a look of disgusted cynicism passing across her face. ‘I couldn’t have handled the PR better myself. Instead of being labelled a Borgia she was pitied and indulged and always insisted it had been a terrible mistake. She was put into care, for a while, and then fostered, probably inheriting all her family’s money, including her stepmother’s whom, I believe, was quite wealthy, coming from a farming, land-owning background. And from there to the present day, who knows? Dubai’s a glamorous city – it sounds like she’s done well for herself.’