Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder

by Ann Cleeves

  So George had been summoned. George, who was blinded by his infatuation and would take her part against the world. Of course she had refused to give him details of her concern. She wanted him there, to prove to whoever in Sarne had become suspicious about her activities that she wanted to protect the Gorse Hill birds in memory of Stuart. She did not want him to question her about the birds. So she had put him off, pretending to be too busy with the Open Day.

  She used me, he thought, as she used everyone else. Molly was right and I was too arrogant to see it. He found it impossible to feel anger towards Eleanor. Her beauty had given him pleasure and had moved him just as the peregrines on the hill had given him pleasure. The fault was all his. He had deluded himself that she could find him attractive. She was ruthless and greedy and he had only cared what she thought about himself.

  Then who killed her? he thought. Why would anyone want to see her dead? Because he had been so wrong about Eleanor he felt suddenly insecure about everything. His confidence deserted him. There were footsteps on the stairs outside the study door and he felt himself shaking. He thought he had never been so frightened. He did not know who had murdered Eleanor and he imagined each of the household, in turn, transformed into a grotesque killer. He held his breath, expecting the door to be opened, so that he would be confronted by the murderer, but the footsteps passed. When he had struggled to regain control, he felt a mixture of relief and shame, and then began to laugh, a little hysterically at his foolishness.

  Fanny woke unusually early too. A day of boredom stretched ahead of her. It was unfair, she thought. Surely her grandmother’s death should have brought some excitement – there should have been television cameras, handsome detectives, newspaper reporters. Instead she was trapped at Gorse Hill, sheltered by her parents from all the fuss. There had been policemen of course, but they had been boring, predominantly middle-aged, and had talked to her as if she were a child.

  She turned over and settled under the duvet, but sleep was impossible. She had done so little, the day before, that she was not tired. At last, out of desperation, she got up.

  I could do exercises, she thought, remembering her pledge to lose some weight. I could go for a run. The motivation and enthusiasm carried her through dressing and a skimpy wash, and saw her down the stairs. But by the time she got into the garden she had decided that after all, a gentle walk would suit her mood better. She remembered quite vividly the comical picture of Nan Oliver in oversized wellingtons, bent with the weight of basket and carrier bags. She would follow Mrs Oliver’s trail down the garden. She would discover her secret.

  She had no idea what she would find. The excitement was in being up early before the rest of the family, in the possibility of catching Nan Oliver at something of which her parents might disapprove, something which might make her appear ludicrous. She was still young enough to remember stories of witches – as a child it had been easy to imagine Nan Oliver as a witch – but she had no premonition of danger as she followed the path past the kitchen garden.

  Although it had not rained during the night the grass was still damp and her footprints left marks on the path. I should have followed her yesterday, she thought. I’ll never find out where she went now. Then she decided that the bags and the basket must be somewhere and it should be possible to find them. The path led between the red-brick wall of the kitchen garden and the flat grass lawn surrounded by sloping terraces where the folk singers had performed at the Open Day. Soon it would be mown and marked and turned into a tennis court for the guests. I’ll have to take up tennis, she thought. That will keep my weight down. The sun was beginning to come up over the town and shone through the trees on to the red-brick wall and reflected on the greenhouse built against it.

  It had been a long time since she had followed the path beyond the walled garden. When she and Helen were young it had been a treat to come to Gorse Hill on Sunday afternoon to explore the grounds. But it had been years since she had taken pleasure in that kind of activity. Beyond the tennis courts there was a strip of rhododendron thicket which had spread to surround a field, reached from the path by a five-barred gate. Eleanor usually let the field to a local farmer for his daughters’ ponies – neither Helen nor Fanny had shown any interest in riding – but it had been empty all winter and the grass was long and mixed with cow parsley.

  Beyond the field, in a small wood, there was a rookery and the black birds cawed and flapped above the tall trees. In one corner of the field was the old pigsty where Helen and Fanny had played so often. It had been Helen’s secret place and Fanny only gained admission by learning special rites. She remembered that climbing to the top of the cedar tree had been one of the tasks to be achieved before entry became automatic. What a bossy cow Helen had been, she thought. No wonder she was such a favourite of Eleanor’s.

  At the gate she stopped. The game had lost its magic and she wondered at her madness at getting up so early and at her want of sophistication. What would the girls at school say if they could see her now? The long grass in the field would be very wet and she was ready for breakfast. But as she looked into the field she saw that the long grass had been trampled into a path between the gate and the pigsty. Someone had been there recently. Awkwardly she climbed the gate and walked along the new path towards the wood and the corrugated iron hut in the corner of the field. The grass on each side of her was nearly waist high. Still without any fear for her own safety, an innocent Goldilocks alone in the woods, she lifted the latch of the door and went inside.

  ‘Did you guess that Eleanor was running the falconry agency?’ George asked. He was standing by the bedroom window. The room was at the front of the house and had no view of the kitchen garden or the rhododendron thicket.

  ‘No,’ Molly said. ‘ I never guessed that.’ She was sitting up in bed drinking tea which Helen had brought for them. Her hair was as tousled as a small boy’s. ‘But of course it makes sense.’

  ‘Do you know who killed her?’ he asked. He wanted to tell her how frightened he had been in the study, but she answered with certainty before he had the opportunity.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Now I know.’ She told George who had murdered Eleanor Masefield, and why she was killed.

  She could not tell how he reacted. His face was turned away from her as he stared out of the window. ‘What should I do?’ he said.

  ‘Tell Pritchard to make an arrest before anyone else gets hurt.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘ I’ll phone him now and ask him to come this morning.’ He was quiet for a few moments then added: ‘I suppose in a way that we were both right about the case.’

  ‘I suppose we were,’ she said. She got up and dressed and they walked arm in arm down the stairs for breakfast.

  ‘I’ll have to stay,’ she said, ‘for a couple of days. We can’t just run away.’

  He agreed with her though he wanted to run away more than anything else.

  No one was surprised when Fanny failed to turn up for breakfast. She was lazy. She always overslept.

  ‘Poor thing,’ Veronica said. ‘This business has upset her more than we’ve realized. Let her have a lie in. We can take her breakfast up on a tray later.’

  But when Veronica carried the meal up to her younger daughter’s bedroom and found it empty there was immediate concern. If she were awake it was out of character for Fanny to miss a meal. It was surprizing enough that she had got up before the rest of them, but she would certainly have been back for breakfast. Something must have happened to her. Veronica was frantic. She hurried to find Richard who wanted to telephone the police immediately. It was Molly, eventually, who persuaded them that it might be best to search for Fanny themselves first. She thought she knew why Fanny might be upset. She imagined her hidden, brooding and upset, and wanted to speak to her before the police arrived.

  George asked Helen to go with him to search the hill. Richard and Veronica said they would look in the house and then in the front garden. Molly was left to do the kitchen ga
rden, the tennis court and the paddock. She made it clear she preferred to be alone.

  Molly followed the path the girl had taken earlier that morning, but she was thinking now not about Fanny but about George. She took no pleasure in having been the first to discover who had killed Eleanor Masefield. She had expected to feel triumphant because her way, the woman’s way, of listening and understanding had succeeded when his had failed, but now she felt guilty because she had hurt his pride and destroyed his dream of the perfect woman. Why should I feel guilty? she thought. I’ve tolerated his superiority for years. We understand each other better now.

  She had passed the walled garden and reached the rhododendron wood. There was no vegetation under the bushes. It was dark there and very quiet. She came out into the sunshine by the five-bar gate. She stopped and noticed, as Fanny had done, the path trampled through the grass. She saw the pigsty, surrounded by cow parsley and young nettles.

  ‘Fanny!’ she called. ‘ I want to talk to you. Fanny! Come out so I can explain what’s going to happen.’

  There was no reply. She climbed the gate, more nimbly than the girl had done, and began to cross the field.

  ‘Fanny,’ she said. ‘I know you’re there. I’m going to come in so we can talk about what happened.’

  But Fanny did not appear. Instead there was the sound of a gunshot as Frank Oliver fired over Molly’s head from the pigsty window.

  ‘I’ve got the girl as hostage,’ he shouted. Molly could not see his face. It was hidden by the shadow of the hut. ‘If anyone comes any closer she’s dead. I’m coming out and I’m bringing her with me.’

  When Fanny had lifted the latch and stepped into the pigsty she had seen at first, caught in the sunlight shining like a spot light through the glassless window, two carrier bags, empty and folded, and on top of them a brown wicker basket. The tea towel had been removed from the basket and she could see half a loaf of bread, a pot of jam, cold meat, a couple of pieces of cooked chicken, cheese wrapped in cellophane and a banana. Mrs Oliver’s gone loopy, she thought. Why should she want a picnic all by herself out here? Then she saw the wellingtons, standing by the wicker basket. In a dark corner something moved and a man swore and demanded to know who was there.

  Frank Oliver was still lying in his sleeping bag, dressed only in shirt and underpants. She must have woken him. As her eyes became accustomed to the shadow she saw he was dirty and unshaven. She backed away from him and opened the door to run away.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ he said. He was the wolf of every fairy story and infant nightmare. ‘I’ve got a gun. Now come in and sit on the floor where I can see you.’

  She did as she was told and even in her terror she thought that nothing like this had ever happened to the other girls in her class and that they would have to listen to her now. The man got out of his sleeping bag and rested the shotgun on his knee while he dressed with one hand. Then he came out of the shadow and into the sunlight, so she could see his face clearly for the first time, and only then did she realize who he was, because he looked so like Laurie.

  ‘You’re Mrs Oliver’s husband,’ she said. ‘The police say you killed my grandmother.’ And there was no pleasure in her fear now. She was mindlessly, desperately frightened.

  ‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘ I want to think. Then you’re going to help me get out of here.’

  She was not wearing a watch and had no idea of time, but it seemed hours later when she heard Mrs Palmer-Jones calling her name. The man had been eating, still with one hand, still watching her like a hawk as he stuffed bread and meat into his mouth. She was too frightened to consider running away, too frightened even to feel hunger.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he demanded as they heard Molly calling, looked through the window and saw her climb the gate.

  ‘She was a guest at the hotel when my grandmother died,’ Fanny said, ‘and stayed on. Her husband was a friend of Eleanor’s.’

  She wondered if he would want to know that George Palmer-Jones was a private detective, but he motioned her to be quiet. He moved her roughly into the corner furthest away from the window, did something she did not see to the gun and fired it out of the window. She tried to scream but no sound came from her throat. She opened her mouth but the muscles at the back of her throat strained uselessly and there was still silence. She heard the man shouting out of the window. He can’t have killed her, she thought. He wouldn’t have been talking to her if he had killed her.

  The man moved quickly away from the window and began to pack his sleeping bag, some clothes and the food into a small rucksack. He pulled on the big, black wellingtons.

  ‘Stand up,’ he shouted to her. ‘You’re going out first. Don’t try to run away or I’ll kill you. I’ve nothing to lose now.’ He was talking to himself not to her, but she was almost hysterical and did not realize his desperation. ‘Stand up,’ he repeated. ‘Walk out slowly into the field.’ She could not realize that he was frightened too.

  She scrambled to her feet and he pushed her out through the door. She was crying, but still made no noise. As he shoved her back she stumbled and he swore at her.

  ‘Go on,’ he shouted. ‘ Walk towards the gate.’

  She went out into the bright sunlight. Molly was at the other end of the field, watching what was going on. Fanny knew the man was walking behind her, several yards away, the rucksack over his shoulder, holding the shotgun ready to fire. She longed to run towards the elderly lady, who was like a real grandmother, as kind and accepting as she had always imagined a grandmother to be.

  ‘I’ll want a car,’ the man shouted to Molly. ‘A fast car, full of petrol. I’ll be taking the girl with me.’

  ‘Let her go,’ Molly said. ‘The police know you didn’t kill Eleanor Masefield.’

  ‘You don’t think I believe you,’ he sneered. ‘ I’ll be done for murder and one more body won’t make any difference to what I get.’

  ‘No,’ Molly screamed. ‘Don’t be a fool.’

  Then it seemed to Fanny that the woman was shouting not at Frank Oliver but beyond him. There was another sound of a gunshot behind her and she waited breathlessly for pain or death. The rooks, frightened again, rose in a cloud like bats.

  ‘Fanny,’ came the gentle, reassuring tone of her father’s voice. ‘It’s all right now. It’s all over.’

  She turned and saw that Frank Oliver was lying on the field. His face was hidden by the long grass and nettles. He was still moving, still alive, holding his leg and groaning. She turned away from him again and ran into her father’s arms. Still she found it impossible to speak.

  She was confused by what happened next and the pain and confusion lasted for weeks. The kind old lady’s husband appeared with the policeman. They walked through the grass up to her father. The old woman took Fanny gently into her arms. Then the policeman arrested her father and led him away.

  Chapter Twelve

  Pritchard insisted on buying George and Molly drinks that night, because the investigation was over and he wanted to celebrate. Now in the peace of the Hop Pole they discussed the events which had led to Mead’s arrest and tried to make sense of them. The dim firelight and the pints of beer seemed to turn the facts of the case into a story, a television play they had watched together. They might have been discussing some scandal of the town which had happened years before. Yet the climax of the investigation had been reached that morning and was still vivid in all their minds.

  The day had been fraught and chaotic and descended at times into farce. The first gunshots had brought them all running together towards the field, like children converging on an ice cream van. Richard Mead had arrived first, then George and Pritchard, because George had given up his idea of searching for Fanny on the hill when he had met Pritchard in the drive. He had wanted to bring the policeman up to date with his discoveries and share Molly’s theory that Mead was the murderer. They reached the field in time to see Fanny walking from the pigsty, followed by Oliver; they heard Molly’s cry and saw her w
aving her arms, stiffly, like a wind-crazed scarecrow. They heard the report of the shotgun, saw Oliver fall and the child run towards her father who emerged from the thicket of rhododendron to hold her to him. Only Molly had seen Richard Mead shoot Frank Oliver.

  Mead had been in the house when he heard the first shot. He took Stuart Masefield’s shotgun from the office and ran into the garden. Hidden by the bushes which circled the field he had watched Oliver and his daughter leave the pigsty. He had made his way through the rhododendrons until he was very close to Oliver. Molly saw him lift the gun and point it, then waver and aim not for the head but the leg. If Oliver had died it would be hard to prove Mead to be the murderer. Because the man was only injured Mead had ensured his own conviction. Molly had thought Fanny had run away because she guessed her father was the murderer and could not face up to the pain of it. Now her father had saved her and was an even greater hero to the girl.

  When Oliver was shot George had hesitated. He thought the arrest could wait. Mead would not escape and there were more important things to do. The child had received enough of a shock already. But Pritchard wanted the thing over. Perhaps he thought it would be less painful now, while the girl was still hysterical and hardly knew what was happening. So the child had been prised from her father and Mead stood with quiet dignity while Pritchard formally charged him.

  Then Veronica and Helen appeared, vengeful and angry, quite misinterpreting the situation. They thought Mead had been arrested because he had shot at Oliver and their indignation knew no bounds. They railed at Pritchard, attacking again and again like birds pecking at a carcass:

  ‘You can’t arrest my husband!’

  ‘The man might have shot my sister!’

  ‘He only did it to protect Fanny.’