Murder in Langley Woods

by Betty Rowlands

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘I’ve got this workshop rigged up in a shed in the back garden. It gets very hot so I need something to cool it down. I’ve got an old desk fan, but the motor’s kaput, so—’

  ‘But surely … oh, I see!’ she exclaimed. ‘These people break all sorts of electrical stuff down for scrap, don’t they? You think the police will be searching the camp, you want to be in at the kill and you need an excuse for just happening to turn up at the same time.’

  ‘Got it in one.’

  ‘But why are you so keen for me to come along?’

  ‘I thought it would be a good idea to have someone with me to confirm my story,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You do agree, don’t you, that my shed gets stifling in the summer?’

  ‘You are preposterous!’ Melissa exploded. She turned to glare at him, but at the sight of his disarming, schoolboy grin could only laugh.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll find it an interesting experience,’ he assured her. ‘These people lead a very colourful lifestyle.’

  They had turned off the main road and left the housing estates of Abbeydale behind them. A couple of miles along a country lane Bruce turned in through an open gate and followed a track that skirted some woodland. After a couple of hundred yards he pulled on to the verge and took a rough sketch map from his pocket. ‘They’re a bit further along,’ he said after studying it for a moment. ‘We’ll walk the rest of the way.’

  ‘I don’t see any sign of the police.’

  ‘Great. That means we’re ahead of them.’ He locked the car and they followed the track until a point where it divided. A few yards ahead it was closed by a gate and, after once again consulting his map, Bruce indicated the right fork, which led into the wood. A couple of minutes later they found themselves in a clearing where half a dozen painted wooden caravans were parked. Several horses, tethered to stakes, were quietly grazing and some brown-limbed children were squatting in a circle on the ground, playing with pebbles. A dog, tied to the wheel of one of the caravans, barked at their approach and a dark-haired woman seated on a chair with a low table in front of her, her hands deftly manipulating bobbins on a black cushion, looked up and gave them a bold, questioning look.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve made a booboo,’ whispered Melissa. ‘These are real gipsies … Romanys … not scrap-metal dealers.’

  ‘Shit!’ Bruce muttered under his breath. ‘No wonder there’s no sign of the Bill. Might as well go back.’

  ‘No, wait.’ Melissa took a step forward. ‘Good morning,’ she said with a friendly smile.

  The woman eyed her warily, but returned the greeting. She had proud, aquiline features and dark skin, and her hair lay in two raven-black braids over her breasts. Gold hoops dangled from her ears and she wore several gold bracelets on her wrists. Her long dress was black and her brown feet on the dusty soil were bare. She fixed the newcomers with a fierce stare from eyes the colour of ripe chestnuts, waiting for one of them to speak.

  ‘May I see your lace?’ Melissa asked politely.

  The woman laid down the bobbins and invited her, with a gesture, to approach. The half-finished piece was spread out on the cushion like a spider’s web of extraordinary intricacy and delicacy. Melissa admired it in silence for a few moments, marvelling at the skill that lay in the strong brown fingers. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said at last. ‘Do you have any for sale?’

  The woman’s manner underwent a subtle change and became almost friendly. ‘Not here,’ she said, ‘My sisters are out on the road with all our stock. If you live nearby, one of us will call on you tomorrow.’ The brown eyes were scrutinising Melissa as she spoke. ‘You’re a story-teller,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘That’s an ancient art.’

  ‘How did you know?’ Melissa asked in amazement.

  ‘It’s written in your face. And you have a good man … but not that one,’ she added with a movement of her eyes in Bruce’s direction. ‘Cleave to the one who truly loves you.’ She paused for a moment as if giving time for her advice to be digested, then said, ‘Tell me where to find you.’

  ‘I live in Upper Benbury, in the Cotswolds.’

  The woman nodded. ‘I know it.’

  ‘My cottage is outside the village – it’s not easy to find, but I could draw you a map.’ Melissa took a pen and notebook from her handbag and gestured towards the van. ‘Perhaps …’

  The woman had read her thoughts and stood up. ‘Come inside. There’s a table you can use.’ She climbed the wooden steps into the caravan and beckoned Melissa to follow. At the top she turned and said something to the children in a strange tongue. They left their game and clustered round Bruce, jumping up and down with small hands outstretched, clamouring for pennies. He cast a look of dismay at Melissa, who gave him a cheery wave in return.

  The interior of the van was cool and dim after the bright sunlight outside and it took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust and enable her to appreciate the beautifully made, highly polished fittings, the lace curtains at the windows and the tiny kitchen at the far end with the stove chimney leading through the roof. Everything was spotlessly clean and designed to make the best use of every inch of space. The woman indicated a box seat and unfolded a table attached to one wall. She watched while Melissa, uncertain whether she could read and not liking to enquire, drew a plan with pictures of the church and the village green with its war memorial, and a series of arrows leading to Hawthorn Cottage, which she marked with a large cross.

  The woman studied the drawing briefly before putting it into her pocket. ‘I’ll come tomorrow afternoon,’ she said with a smile that softened the severe lines of her face and made it beautiful.

  ‘I’ll look forward to it. My name’s Melissa, by the way. What’s yours?’

  ‘Rachel.’

  ‘It’s been lovely talking to you, Rachel. I’ll go now and let you get on with your work.’

  As she was leaving, Melissa noticed a fixture made like an old-fashioned mahogany chest of drawers at right angles to the door. On its gleaming surface, covered with a runner of exquisite lace, was arranged a collection of ornaments flanked by two photographs in silver frames. One was a formal portrait of a family group showing what were evidently several generations, the men in dark suits standing stiffly erect behind a row of seated women in plain dresses relieved by lace collars, their children on their laps or sitting cross-legged at their feet. The second was a snapshot of a strikingly lovely young woman making lace. Her eyes were on the bobbins she held between her fingers, but her lips were curved in a faint, secretive smile, as if her mind was filled with pleasant thoughts far removed from her work.

  ‘What a beautiful girl!’ Melissa exclaimed.

  ‘My husband’s niece,’ said Rachel. There was a new, harsh note in her voice that made Melissa glance at her. With a shock, she realised that the huge brown eyes were swimming in tears. Embarrassed, she turned back to the picture and saw something she had not at first noticed; threaded into the filigree work of the frame was a length of black ribbon.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,’ she said gently. ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Ask the gadgy who took the picture … and then took her away.’

  ‘She isn’t dead, then?’

  ‘Might as well be.’ Without further explanation, Rachel descended the steps and Melissa, her bare arms prickling with gooseflesh as if a breath of cold air had passed through the caravan, was glad to follow her into the sunlight.

  ‘Well, goodbye until tomorrow,’ she said, but Rachel had already returned to her lace-making and made no reply.

  Outside, the children were laughing and playing knucklebones with pennies. Bruce had moved away and was waiting for her at the point where the track divided. ‘I see you managed to buy them off,’ she remarked as she rejoined him.

  ‘They were milling round me like a swarm of gadflies,’ he complained with a rueful smile. ‘Thank goodness I had plenty of change and a packet of toffees in my pocket. Any idea
what that woman said to them, by the way?’

  ‘She was probably telling them to make sure you didn’t nick anything while we were inside the van.’

  ‘Thank you very much. What kept you so long?’

  ‘I was showing her how to get to my cottage … I might buy some of her lace as a wedding present for Iris and Jack. And then I was looking at some photographs.’ On the short walk back to the car, Melissa repeated the sad story of the young woman who had left her tribe for an outsider and was now thought of by the family as dead. She stopped short as an awful possibility occurred to her. ‘Bruce, you don’t suppose she could be the girl in the freezer? That black ribbon – Romanys are supposed to have second sight, aren’t they? Maybe they already know in their hearts that she’s dead. Supposing this gadgy Rachel was talking about abducted her and then murdered her …’

  ‘… looked for somewhere to dump her body, found the abandoned freezer and hid it in there,’ Bruce continued excitedly. ‘Mel, you could be on to something.’

  ‘Let’s not get too carried away,’ said Melissa. ‘It could be no more than a coincidence.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he admitted, reluctant to abandon a possible headline-grabbing story.

  ‘Just the same,’ she went on, ‘it might be worth mentioning it to the police. It’s unlikely that girl’s family reported her disappearance to the authorities and I don’t suppose they read the papers, so they probably don’t even know about the freezer murder.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Bruce unlocked the car and they got in. ‘We’ll call in at the nick on the way home.’

  Five

  ‘What in Heaven’s name possessed you?’ demanded Harris. His anger and agitation fairly thundered along the wire and Melissa moved the receiver a couple of inches from her ear, contorting her features and baring her teeth in a scowl as if the two of them were face to face.

  ‘There’s no need to get so worked up,’ she retorted. ‘Anyone would think I’d wandered into a den of wild animals to hear you go on.’

  ‘If the dead girl is the runaway niece, those people might know more than they care to admit.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! They were heartbroken when she ran away from them … Rachel was in tears.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean a thing. They might have decided to punish her to redeem the honour of the tribe.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that it was her family who murdered her?’

  ‘How can you be certain they didn’t? You don’t know anything about those people or how their minds work. The way they see things, that girl brought shame on them by going off with some outsider.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were such an authority on Romany culture.’ She tried to keep her tone light, but she was fast running out of patience.

  ‘Don’t be sarcastic,’ he snapped back. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that woman might have thought you were from the police?’

  ‘Why should she? Anyway, considering there was only her and half a dozen kids there at the time, I wasn’t exactly threatened. Do be reasonable, Ken. All I did was ask to see some lace – it was pure chance that I heard about the runaway niece. I don’t think the family even knew about the murder and I certainly wasn’t going to alarm Rachel unnecessarily by referring to it. I’m beginning to wish I’d never mentioned it to you.’

  ‘It would have been better if you’d kept your nose out of it altogether.’

  ‘I find that very offensive,’ she said coldly. ‘It so happens that I may have stumbled on an important lead in a murder hunt. I imagine one of the relatives will be invited to try and identify the dead girl, won’t they?’

  ‘Sure to,’ he said curtly.

  ‘And if they do, it’ll take the police a step nearer finding her killer, won’t it?’

  It was late on Monday afternoon, some hours after her visit to the Romany camp with Bruce Ingram. While the two of them were waiting in reception at police headquarters to report their theory as to the possible identity of the freezer victim, Detective Sergeant Matt Waters had passed through with a colleague and given them a nod of recognition. In the more or less certain knowledge that her presence would in due course be mentioned to Ken Harris, she had decided to get in with her version first and called him at his office. A ticking-off and – almost certainly – another dig at her tendency to ‘go poking her nose in’ were to be expected, but not such a furious outburst as this.

  ‘Well, won’t it?’ she repeated as he remained silent.

  ‘Sure to,’ he repeated grudgingly, ‘but that still doesn’t excuse your action.’

  ‘Oh, stop sounding so pompous.’

  ‘I suppose that cub reporter put you up to it?’ he went on, ignoring the jibe.

  ‘If you mean Bruce Ingram, he’s hardly a cub reporter … and he didn’t put me up to anything. He told me what he was planning to do and asked if I’d like to go along. If I’d realised it was the Romanys he was interested in, I’d have told him he was barking up the wrong tree, but I assumed it was the other lot – the scrap-metal merchants – he was talking about. I was curious, so—’

  ‘So you admit that it wasn’t lace-buying you were interested in at all.’

  This was intolerable. He was challenging everything she said as if she was a recalcitrant suspect and he still a policeman. ‘I never said that was my prime motive in going—’ she began, but he interrupted with a sardonic bark of laughter.

  ‘No, we know what really motivated you, don’t we – your insatiable curiosity. Well, curiosity killed the cat, remember? So in future, please don’t go doing anything like that without consulting me first.’

  The use of the word ‘please’ could not conceal the fact that this was a command, not a request. Melissa’s hackles all but scraped the ceiling. ‘If the best you can do is quote some tired old proverb at me, there’s not much point in continuing this conversation,’ she snapped. ‘And if you think you have the right to approve in advance anything I propose to do, you can think again.’

  ‘There’s no need to take that attitude.’

  ‘I don’t care for your attitude either, and from now on I’ll think twice before I tell you anything.’ Without giving him a chance to get in another word, she slammed down the telephone.

  To her chagrin, she realised she was trembling. This was the first serious row they had had for a long time, and all her righteous indignation could not conceal the fact that it had upset her. Her first thought was to seek out Iris and pour her woes into a sympathetic ear. She was halfway to the front door of Elder Cottage before she noticed Jack Hammond’s car parked a short distance away.

  ‘Damn!’ she exclaimed aloud and retreated, slamming her own door behind her. Not that she had anything against Jack except that he was a man, had somewhat old-fashioned ideas about relationships between men and women and would undoubtedly side with Ken. Still seething, she marched into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of sherry, took it into the sitting-room and switched on the television. The early evening news had just started but she paid scant attention, moodily sipping her sherry and reflecting on the shortcomings of men in general and of Kenneth Harris in particular. The bulletin was drawing to a close when the final announcement made her sit up with a start.

  ‘Here is an item that has just come in,’ the newscaster was saying. ‘We understand that the body of a woman discovered three days ago in an abandoned freezer some five miles from Cirencester has been identified as that of Hannah Rose, a member of a family of Romany gipsies presently encamped on land near Gloucester. And that’s all for now. Our next bulletin will be …’

  Mechanically, Melissa picked up the remote control and switched off the set. Hannah Rose. The girl who had gone missing from her job at the Crossed Keys called herself Hilda Rice. The similarity was too much of a coincidence – they had to be one and the same. She wondered which of Hannah’s relatives had identified her and how much they had told the police. It might be very little … they probably mistrusted the police anyway and … at the nex
t thought, Melissa’s brain, prompted by something Ken Harris had said, went into overdrive. An image of Rachel, standing beside her as she admired Hannah’s photograph, flashed on to her retina like a film projected on a screen. She saw once more the proud Romany features contorted by grief … and then heard the rasp of anger in the woman’s voice when speaking of the gadgy, the outsider, who had taken her husband’s niece away and whom her family probably now held responsible for her death. And she felt an uneasy premonition that, rather than leave the hunt for the girl’s killer in the hands of the police, they might keep their own counsel and set about tracking down the man themselves, with the object of meting out their own brand of punishment.

  She glanced at the clock. It was almost seven; over an hour had passed since the quarrel with Ken. Her anger and resentment had subsided, swept aside for the time being by the latest development in the ‘Body in the Freezer’ mystery and by the notion that the bereaved relatives might be bent on taking the law into their own hands. She could imagine them, tight-lipped in the face of the inevitable police questioning. ‘She left us to work in a town,’ they might say. ‘We don’t know where she went or who she went with. We haven’t seen her from that day to this.’

  And where had Hannah met the man who took the photograph … and then, if Rachel was speaking the truth, made off with his subject? Was it an abduction, or had the girl gone willingly? Recalling the dreamy expression on her face, the lips parted in a half-smile, Melissa guessed that she had already fallen in love with him. What tales had he told her, what promises had he made in order to entice her away?

  Rachel had said very little, but she might now regret having revealed even that much to a gadgy, however sympathetic. Supposing she were to tell her menfolk about the visit? The thought that there was someone who could pass the information to the police, thereby frustrating their plans for vengeance, would not please them. They might ask themselves if there was a way of preventing it going any further. And Melissa had given Rachel her address …