Denial of Murder

by Peter Turnbull

‘You’ve managed to contact them?’ Swannell asked.

  ‘Yes. They were not happy, no they weren’t, but I told them it couldn’t be helped. I told them that the police have made the cottage a crime scene, yes I did, and that any old soul arriving will be turned away. So they’re contacting the next guests. They can do that these days wherever they are because everyone has one of those handheld phones … annoying things they are. Who on earth wants to hear one side of someone else’s conversation? I certainly don’t.’

  ‘Do you have the keys to the cottage?’ Swannell asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, I’ll get them for you, yes I will. Just a tick.’ Again the woman turned and stepped nimbly into the darkened interior of her home, and then returned shortly afterwards with a single, large mortis key which she pressed into Swannell’s palm. ‘Don’t lose it,’ she said, ‘it’s the only one there is, yes it is … the lock is about two hundred years old.’

  ‘Just the lock?’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman smiled, ‘the cottage was rebuilt in the thirties but they kept the original lock on the main door … and that …’ she handed Swannell a smaller mortis key, ‘is for the lock on the porch door.’

  ‘We’ll take good care of them.’ Swannell smiled reassuringly. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘When,’ Brunnie asked, ‘was the cottage last rented?’

  ‘Last weekend,’ the woman replied. ‘They stayed later than normal and didn’t drop the keys back until late on Monday evening, well after dark. Usually guests leave about midday or later on the Sunday if it’s a weekend rental so as to get back home in good time to sleep before work on the Monday morning, yes they do. So it was a bit strange to have the keys handed back at eleven o’clock on Monday evening.’

  ‘Quite late indeed,’ Brunnie agreed. ‘That is quite late.’

  ‘Yes. I was thinking that they had driven off with them – that’s happened before, causes all sorts of bother, oh my …’

  ‘Did you get the name of the people or person who rented it?’ Brunnie asked.

  ‘No.’ The woman shook her head apologetically. ‘I am so sorry. Fairley and Fairley phoned me and told me that the cottage was being let out. The people came as expected a few days later and I handed the keys over, yes I did.’

  ‘When did they collect the keys?’

  ‘On Friday,’ the woman replied, ‘they arrived at about seven o’clock in the evening, they did.’

  ‘Can you describe them?’ Brunnie inquired.

  ‘Only the woman,’ the caretaker replied. ‘She was young and thin and she had a cold-hearted attitude. They weren’t no birdwatchers, no they weren’t. No birdwatchers at all … no ramblers either. They had rented the cottage for the weekend, probably for a bit of the old how’s-your-father if you ask me, mind you that’s their business. She was all dolled up in city clothes. Usually the guests come in green jackets and corduroy trousers and walking boots, but not her … no, no … not her. She was all tarted up like she was going to dine at a posh restaurant, all platinum-blonde hair and jewellery and an expensive-looking watch … and her two boyfriends … they were all dandified as well, yes they were.’

  ‘She had two men with her?’ Swannell asked. ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Yes, I saw their legs, yes I did … office trousers and city shoes … two men and her in the cottage for a weekend. Well, why not? She was young, she was making the most of her youth. I wish I had done that. I did some old walking in the woods when I was young but not as much as I should have done … or could have done.’ She added with a smile, ‘I should have made more of my youth.’

  ‘What sort of car was it?’ Swannell asked. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ the woman replied confidently, ‘it was a van with sliding passenger doors, which is why I saw the legs of the two men friends she had. It was about the same size as the vans the Royal Mail use to collect the post from the letter boxes.’

  ‘A fifteen hundred weight,’ Brunnie mumbled.

  ‘It was blue,’ the woman added, ‘yes, it was … blue … light blue.’

  A blue fifteen hundred weight, Swannell said to himself. Then he asked, ‘Did you see anything of them during the weekend?’

  ‘No … no I didn’t,’ the caretaker once again replied confidently, ‘and I didn’t see them around the village either. They didn’t come in to shop at the village stores, and no one mentioned seeing them in the pub on Saturday night. They stayed at the cottage, helping the girl make the most of her youth, I imagine. Well, why not? I wish I had done that.’

  ‘Would you recognize her again?’ Swannell asked.

  ‘I might. She was short, taller than me, but still short, yes she was, on the short side … platinum-blonde hair … quite thin … hard face … cold eyes … hard edge to her voice. I can’t imagine that she smiled very much, not easily anyway. Or possibly only a massive amount of money would make her smile, but not a good joke and she wouldn’t be the sort to smile at someone else’s good fortune, no she wouldn’t. She seemed that sort of character; she’d smile at a million pounds but not at anything humorous … all that jewellery, that cloud of perfume and layers of make-up. No, I tell you she wasn’t down here to go creeping about the woods in a green jacket and a pair of binoculars round her neck, looking at rare birds in old Micheldever Woods, no she wasn’t. Mind you, they had been here before though, I can tell you that for nothing, yes I can.’

  ‘You had seen her before?’ Brunnie asked. ‘Is that what you mean?’

  ‘No, never seen her before at all, not ever, but it was the way they came straight here, like they knew which door to knock on to ask for the keys rather than walking up and down the lane looking at the house numbers. I heard them arrive, yes I did. The van stops, and madam gets out with her high heels … click, click, click … straight up to my door, collects the keys, says “thanks”, and then turns and walks back to the van. First-time guests have to search for my door and first-time guests always want directions to the cottage, so at least one of them, her or one of the two men, had been here before, yes they had. The cottage is signposted from Duke Street,’ the woman added, ‘but you’ll be surprised how many people miss the sign. I dare say that they’re too busy looking at the birds up in the tree branches.’

  Brunnie and Swannell laughed softly and they then thanked the elderly caretaker for the keys and for her information. They turned and walked back to their car, drove back to Scythe Brook Cottage and viewed it again, set back from the road, standing upon a modest eminence.

  Victor Swannell unlocked the doors of the cottage whilst Frankie Brunnie snapped on a pair of latex gloves. Swannell pushed the doors open and he too then put on a similar pair of gloves. The two officers, Swannell in the lead, then entered the building. Inside they found it to be cool but musty. Brunnie quickly shut the door behind him so as to preserve the stale air. ‘Thank goodness they haven’t cleaned the cottage or left a window open,’ he commented.

  ‘They will have cleaned it before they left, we can be sure of that,’ Swannell said. ‘I mean, it looks clean. Just look about you, all the surfaces have been wiped down, but you’re right, the mustiness will have helped to preserve anything they might have missed.’ He paused. ‘You know, we have to hope that Cherry Quoshie left us another present somewhere in the building. She had the presence of mind to leave us the gas bill, knowing we’d find it if we found her body, but it still doesn’t put her or Gordon Cogan in the cottage.’

  ‘It doesn’t, does it?’ Brunnie growled. ‘There’s still a gap in the chain of evidence.’

  ‘It leads us to the cottage but doesn’t put either of them in it – only a fingerprint or two will do that or their saliva with their DNA, or a nail pairing,’ Swannell pondered, ‘something like that. We must hope that Cherry Quoshie left her fingerprints or something with her DNA on it in an obscure place, a surface which might not have been wiped down.’

  The cottage was, the officers found, small and cramped, with an ‘L’-shaped floor plan. A seating
area of old and much-used armchairs, a settee and a chest of drawers gave way to a small dining-area-cum-kitchen. Upstairs the cottage had two bedrooms and a bathroom. All, Brunnie and Swannell found, had been left in a dismayingly clean and very neat manner. There were, they discovered, four bunk beds in each room, thus allowing the cottage to accommodate eight persons, though with eight people the building would, Swannell pondered, become horribly overcrowded.

  ‘Just bunk beds.’ Brunnie smiled. ‘Difficult to see anyone making the most of their youth with these sleeping facilities. I wonder what the lady caretaker actually had in mind?’

  ‘I wonder,’ Swannell replied with a grin. ‘I wonder indeed.’

  The two officers returned downstairs and went out into the garden, shutting the doors behind them.

  ‘We’d better get a SOCO team here.’ Brunnie fished his mobile from his jacket pocket. ‘It’s too damn neat; it’s been sanitized but, as you say, Cherry Quoshie might have managed to put a paw print or something similar in an obscure place and if she managed to persuade Gordon Cogan to do the same, then … then that will be very useful. Very useful indeed.’

  ‘We’ll tell them that …’ Swannell looked about him and allowed himself to enjoy the rural tranquillity, the foliage, the blue sky, ‘we’ll ask them to go over the scene with a particularly fine-tooth comb.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll also ask Harry if he wants to come down as well; he might want to see this.’ Swannell pressed a number.

  ‘Good idea.’ Brunnie fell silent as Victor Swannell spoke into his mobile phone. Like Swannell, he found it deeply pleasant to be out of the city and he found himself pondering the joy of being a constable in the Hampshire Constabulary and working in an environment such as this: the fields, the woodlands, nature’s bounty, the wide, blue sky.

  Swannell stopped talking and put his phone in his pocket. ‘They reckon it will take them two to two and a half hours to get here, as getting out of London will take a lot of time … and Harry wants to come. So, do you want to wait or do you want to walk?’

  ‘I’ll wait,’ Brunnie replied without hesitation.

  ‘Thank you.’ Swannell smiled his reply. ‘I rather thought you’d say that. I’ll take the car, though; those houses might be further than they look.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’ll make sure the cottage doesn’t go anywhere.’

  ‘It’s a hard job you’ve talked yourself into,’ Swannell grinned as he turned away and walked towards the car. ‘Try not to let the pressure get you down.’

  Swannell drove the car slowly and carefully away from Scythe Brook Cottage down the track towards the row of houses which could be seen in the distance. He halted the car upon approaching the houses and got out of the vehicle, leaving the driver’s-side window wound down so as to enable the car to ‘breathe’ in his absence. He walked towards the line of houses, six in all, which stood in a terrace; each, he noticed, had a small plot of land in the front and a larger, much larger parcel of land in the rear. They were built of red brick with roof tiles in a darker shade of red. The date 1887 was set in stone above the door of the first cottage in the terrace. Swannell walked up to the door and politely and reverentially knocked on it using the metal knocker provided. It was opened by an elderly man who blinked curiously at Swannell.

  ‘Good day, sir.’ Swannell held eye contact with the man. ‘Police.’ He showed the elderly homeowner his warrant card. ‘It’s nothing to be worried about – I’m just making inquiries.’

  The man remained silent. He made no response at all.

  ‘The cottage … back there,’ Swannell pointed from where he had come, ‘Scythe Brook Cottage. Can you tell me if you saw or heard anything unusual there in the last few days, particularly over the last weekend?’

  Still the man did not reply. He merely stood there in old, crumpled clothing, blinking absentmindedly at Victor Swannell.

  ‘Anything at all?’ Swannell pressed. He brushed a persistent fly from his face.

  Again, no response.

  ‘Any unusual sounds or movements that you might have noticed, especially over the last weekend?’

  The elderly man continued to blink and look vacantly at Swannell for a few moments and then shut the door.

  ‘Well, thank you anyway, sir,’ Swannell said to the door, ‘your public spirited cooperation is deeply appreciated.’ He walked to the next house in the terrace, knocked upon the door but could not raise any response from within. At the third house, upon his knocking, the door was opened by a man who seemed to Swannell to be in his early middle years. He was dressed in white, summer lightweight trousers and a green T-shirt. He had a neatly trimmed beard and light framed spectacles.

  ‘Don’t mind Eric,’ the man said affably.

  ‘Eric?’ Swannell replied.

  ‘The old boy in the first house.’ The man examined Swannell’s identity card. ‘Metropolitan police,’ he remarked, ‘how interesting. Yes, Eric, he’s lost it,’ the man tapped the side of his head, ‘up here. Poor old soul. It’s all gone … all of it … but he’s very placid.’

  ‘Yes, I got that impression.’ Swannell put his ID back inside his pocket.

  ‘Yes, the old boy, lovely old soul he is. We keep an eye on him and the welfare people call and he gets meals on wheels delivered … all that sort of thing … you know, the care-in-the-community package or whatever it’s called. So how can I help the Met?’

  ‘It is in connection with Scythe Brook Cottage … half a mile or so behind me.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know it; in fact, you can’t get to these houses without driving past it. If you glance at the map you’ll see that the stream which runs at the side of the cottage seems to form the shape of a scythe, a straight handle and then a wide curve for the blade. The cottage is next to the “handle” of the scythe.’

  ‘I did wonder at the source of the name,’ Swannell replied. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s been rebuilt, but the original cottage pre-dates these houses by a hundred years or more … and these cottages are all that remain of a country estate. The “big house” was a fine old Victorian mansion which was demolished and the land sold off to neighbouring farmers. These houses were built to home the estate workers and were sold at auction when the big house was pulled down. The “big house” was a lovely old building, but the owner didn’t maintain it properly … or he couldn’t afford to … in the end it was so full of rot that it had to be pulled down before it fell apart … so it was demolished and the land sold off. It was the only thing he, the last owner, could do.’

  ‘I see … but the cottage,’ Swannell pressed, ‘did you see or hear anything unusual at the cottage over the last few days, particularly over this last weekend?’

  ‘It was rented out,’ the man replied, ‘I can tell you that. It’s not unusual, especially during this time of the year. They stayed after the weekend, stayed until Monday … that’s not usual … but not really very unusual either. It seems most renters want the cottage for a weekend. The last lot of renters had a coal fire on Monday evening.’

  ‘Monday?’ Swannell confirmed. ‘Are you sure it was on the Monday?’

  ‘Yes, definitely the Monday evening. I do recall that – coal smoke has a very distinctive smell, you know. I only got a whiff of it by the time it got here, but it was coal,’ the home owner said. ‘I manage a toy shop, by the way, and this is my day off.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Swannell replied. He was taken by surprise at the man’s sudden disclosure.

  ‘Just in case you were wondering what I do for a living and why I am at home during office hours in the middle of the week,’ the man explained, ‘I manage a toy shop and this is my day off. Harris is the name.’

  ‘I see,’ Swannell smiled, ‘thank you, Mr Harris, but I really am only interested in the goings on at Scythe Brook Cottage over the last few days.’

  ‘All right … A bit naughty of them,’ Harris continued, ‘it was a bit naughty.’

  ‘Naughty?’ Swannell queried. ‘What do you
mean?’

  ‘To burn coal,’ the man explained, ‘this being a smokeless zone. Coal has a distinctive smell.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Swannell replied, ‘I know what coal smoke smells like.’

  ‘Nobody was going to report them, not all the way out here in the country,’ Harris continued. ‘I just stood on my doorstep … just here, and enjoyed the smell.’

  ‘You enjoyed it?’ Swannell queried.

  ‘I think it smells lovely. Coal smoke smells divine.’ Harris spoke with clear fondness. ‘I always think it smells very homely … but they must have brought it with them; there is nowhere round these parts that any old soul can buy coal.’

  ‘I see,’ Swannell replied. ‘And that was on Monday, you say?’

  ‘Yes,’ Harris nodded. ‘On Monday. The night before last.’

  ‘What time of day was that?’

  ‘Late … dark had fallen. So it would be sometime after ten in the evening. We are near the solstice now, so very light nights, but strangely, I thought, there was no laughter or music.’

  ‘Laughter or music,’ Swannell queried, ‘is that usual?’

  ‘Yes, you see renters occasionally eat out, have a barbeque, and when they do there’s laughter and music but not last Monday, just silence and the smell of coal smoke.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Swannell commented.

  ‘I thought they had gone on the Sunday,’ Harris added. ‘I drove past the cottage on Sunday afternoon and the blue van had gone but then I noticed that it had returned on the Monday when I got back from work.’

  ‘That’s also interesting,’ Swannell said. ‘Helps us to pin down their movements.’

  ‘I assumed then that they had stayed on for an extra day,’ Harris added.

  ‘Did you see any of the renters?’ Swannell asked hopefully.

  ‘No,’ Harris replied firmly, ‘I didn’t. Usually I do, but not this time. They kept themselves well out of sight during the day anyway. Came out for a bonfire on Monday night, though, didn’t they?’ he added with a smile.

  ‘Do you think that your neighbours might have seen or heard anything?’ Swannell glanced along the row of terraced houses.