Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘It was self-defence.’

  Pritchard made a few attempts at tactful explanation then at last he shouted: ‘Mr Mead killed Eleanor Masefield,’ to protect himself against the women.

  The wind was tearing at their shirts and their hair, turning them into pale, thin-faced monsters. They turned together to face Richard Mead.

  ‘Is it true?’ Helen demanded and there was something of her grandmother’s arrogance in her posture and her certainty that she would be answered. Veronica, for the first time, was silent.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Veronica flinched as if she had been hit but did not cry or crumple. She stood straight-backed, beside her daughter, facing the wind. In the trees behind the pigsty the birds cawed contentedly and fluttered back to their nests.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ Helen said.

  ‘She would have destroyed you,’ Richard Mead said. ‘She would have destroyed us all.’

  Into this confusion Nan Oliver and Laurie arrived, one fat and one thin, like a comic turn. Molly never found out quite how they came to be there. When she heard that Richard Mead had been arrested Mrs Oliver laughed. She had a loud raucous cackle like the call of the rooks. Then it seemed that the field was full of noise. There was the siren of an ambulance and the shouted obscenities of the injured man, Mrs Oliver’s laughter and the straining engine of the police car which had tried to drive up the grass track to the field and got stuck in the mud.

  Molly wrapped Fanny in her own coat, put her arm around her and walked her away from the folly of it all. Laurie walked gently towards Helen in an attempt to comfort her, but she turned away. To be pitied by him would be the final indignity.

  Now Alan Pritchard, George and Molly sat in the Hop Pole, attended with great ceremony by Mary and Gertrude Cadwallader. It was late and Gertrude obviously saw great benefit in allowing Superintendent Pritchard to drink after hours. The curtains had been drawn so no one in the street could tell that business was still taking place. Gertrude had indicated her approval of the gathering by allowing a fire to be lit and by making them sandwiches without asking for payment.

  ‘So it was Richard Mead all the time,’ Pritchard said. He held a glass of beer. He was coherent, but even more cheerful, more inclined to enjoy himself than when he was perfectly sober. ‘… And I always thought he was such a pleasant kind of chap.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Oliver?’ George asked.

  ‘I got a statement this afternoon,’ Pritchard said. ‘It would have saved a lot of trouble if he’d come forward at the beginning, of course, but he was scared stiff. He realized his van was used to move the body.’

  ‘Why did Mead have to move her?’ Molly asked.

  ‘He was disturbed. The two old ladies Stephen Oliver saw on the hill walked up the lane. Mead had to do something quickly or they would have seen the body. The van was there with the keys inside. He couldn’t go too far – he wanted to return the van before it was missed – so he drove to the back of Gorse Hill. Fenn was in his Range-Rover fast asleep. There was no one in the field and it was hidden from the rest of the proceedings of the Open Day so he was able to tip the body into the weathering ground without being seen.’

  ‘Perhaps he got some satisfaction from that,’ Molly said. ‘Putting her body near to the birds of prey.’

  Pritchard ignored the interruption and continued his story.

  ‘No one missed Richard Mead,’ he said. ‘He was shut in the office for most of the afternoon. If anyone did go in and find the room empty, they would have assumed he was out in the garden helping.’

  ‘So Oliver didn’t suspect anything?’ Molly said.

  ‘Not until he got to Shrewsbury and met Kerry Fenn,’ said George. ‘Her father had phoned her by then and told her that Eleanor was dead. He probably told her too that Oliver was wanted for questioning. Oliver wanted to call off his son’s trip to Europe but Kerry persuaded him that it should go ahead. She was ambitious. She thought she could carry on the business. But of course the European contact heard about Eleanor’s murder too and was too scared to turn up.’

  ‘Oliver said he thought if he stayed in hiding for long enough we would eventually find some detail which would prove he was innocent,’ Pritchard said. ‘ Of course he’s not very bright. He went to Theo Williams to ask for shelter and then when we were waiting for him at Farthing Ridge, he stole a shotgun from Williams’ car.’ He lifted himself out of his chair and went to the bar to order another round of drinks.

  ‘It’s hardly surprizing that Richard seemed so devastated the day after Eleanor’s murder,’ Molly said when the policeman had returned. ‘I thought he was just worried about Veronica and the girls. Veronica had realized that there was some tension between Richard and Eleanor. That’s why she was so hysterical when Eleanor died – she suspected then that her husband was involved – so she was very relieved when I told her that Frank Oliver was the suspect.’

  ‘I don’t understand why he killed the old lady,’ Pritchard said easily. ‘ He never seemed the violent type to me.’

  ‘He wasn’t,’ Molly said. ‘Not usually. But he’s weak and he could find no other way to fight Eleanor Masefield’s influence. Did George tell you that she was organizing the falconry agency?’

  Pritchard nodded and they had to wait for him to empty his glass before the conversation could continue.

  ‘Stuart Masefield began it all,’ George said, ‘but it was a game to him. He liked birds of prey, he liked handling them and photographing them. He enjoyed feeling he had power over them. So he took them from the wild. He was a little mad, I think. He didn’t make a lot of money out of the thefts but made enough to allow him to be more selective about the sort of research he chose to do. Veronica told Molly that she wondered sometimes how the family survived financially. I think Stuart Masefield would take a clutch of peregrine eggs whenever a hefty bill arrived. The Puddleworth connection began with him too. He knew Murdoch Fenn very well and he went shooting with Theo Williams’ father and his employer. Williams mounted some of the specimens which were in Stuart’s study when we first visited, though Eleanor was sufficiently discreet to give all those away.

  ‘Eleanor must have known about Masefield’s hobby but she probably indulged him in it. She treated everyone around her as if they were children. Perhaps that’s why she’s not still alive. She was fond of her husband in her own way. She probably understood his fascination with the natural world. She too was of a class and a generation which saw all forms of wildlife as a means of amusing, diverting or feeding man.

  ‘Then Stuart died and she decided to turn Gorse Hill into a hotel. She persuaded Veronica and Richard to come to live with her, not I think because she believed Veronica would be happier there, as she led us all to suppose, but to provide a cheap form of labour. The business was never fairly organized, Eleanor remained in control and the Meads were dependent on her for everything as if they were paid staff.’

  ‘So Mead murdered her for money,’ Pritchard interrupted. That was a motive he could understand. It was better than birds and family neuroses. Money was a motive which a court would understand. ‘He should have had more patience. She was quite an old lady. She wouldn’t have gone on for ever. The business would have come to Veronica Mead eventually.’

  ‘I really don’t think he murdered her for money,’ Molly said, ‘though it must have been an exciting prospect to be in charge of his own company again. He was doing most of the work after all and Eleanor gave him little credit for his contribution to the hotel.’

  ‘Then why did he kill her?’ Pritchard demanded. ‘ Most men hate their mothers-in-law. Mine is a real dragon and she costs me a fortune in phone bills. But I wouldn’t kill her.’

  ‘It was because of the falconry agency,’ George said. ‘When Stuart died Eleanor didn’t have a lot of money. Stuart was feckless, irresponsible as she had enouraged him to be. He had made no provision for her future. She hoped the hotel would make a profit eventually, but at the beginning it m
ust have been hard to make ends meet. As I’ve said she knew that Stuart was selling birds, though I don’t think she realized how much money it was possible to make. We’ll never know when she decided to turn the thing into an organized business. Perhaps she found Stuart’s diary as I did and was stimulated by that or perhaps one of Stuart’s foreign customers contacted Gorse Hill to ask for birds, not realizing he was dead.’

  ‘This is all very interesting,’ Pritchard said, now sounding quite aggressively and impatiently drunk, ‘ but will someone tell me exactly why Richard Mead killed Eleanor Masefield.’

  ‘George told you,’ Molly said, becoming impatient herself because he seemed so deliberately obtuse. ‘It was because of the falconry agency. Once I knew Eleanor was in charge of it the thing became obvious.’

  ‘Well it’s not obvious to me,’ Pritchard said sulkily. ‘But I’m only a detective superintendent…’

  ‘He loves his wife and children,’ Molly said. ‘That was clear from the start. He had no security himself as a boy – his father went bankrupt – and he was determined to look after them. It had become a kind of obsession with him. He had given up his independence and his own career to make Veronica happy and he wanted the best for the girls. He found out what Eleanor was doing and he saw it as a threat to everything he had worked for. I think she may have been careless about leaving files and accounts in her office and he must have realized that the business had substantial alternative sources of income. George thought someone had been through the drawers of her desk. Richard confronted her with it but she refused to stop stealing birds and eggs from the wild. He might have found it possible to live with that, but then it became obvious that she would try to involve Helen in the agency. That, I think, was the real motive for the murder. You must understand that Richard and Veronica thought Eleanor had unlimited influence. Because she dominated them they thought she would dominate the girls. Richard Mead must have had terrible visions of his daughters being led into crime by Eleanor and there being nothing he could do to stop it.’

  ‘He could have told the police.’

  ‘Then there would have been the court case with all the resulting publicity. He had a horror of that. He had been through a similar experience with his father’s bankruptcy. And he didn’t want Veronica to know. She’s always been easily depressed and he was afraid of making her ill. Besides, if Eleanor were found guilty and received substantial fines for all the birds taken, the money would have come out of the business and the family would lose in the end.’

  Back to money, Pritchard thought with satisfaction. Back to a real motive. But the beer had made him charitable and after all the old lady had speeded up the investigation through her own brand of psychology, so he did not mention the point. He remembered the quiet, formal interview he had had with Mead that afternoon.

  ‘He arranged to meet Mrs Masefield on the hill,’ Pritchard said, ‘to make one last attempt to stop her and to persuade her to leave his daughter alone. She laughed at him. He told me that this afternoon. She laughed at him and said that someone had to provide for his family and give them a future. He was no good to them. She said he wouldn’t have the nerve to tell the police what she was doing. Helen was the only one in the family with any guts. Mead said he never went to the hill intending to kill her. There was a loose boulder, part of the drystone wall. He picked it up and hit her head with it. Perhaps he’ll get away with manslaughter. He’ll come over well in the witness box.’ And then, speaking almost to himself, he added: ‘I don’t suppose it matters why he killed her. He’s confessed. We don’t need any more than that.’

  The investigation was over. It was a time for celebration. He lifted his glass to them.

  George and Molly left Gorse Hill early the next morning but the three women were up to see them off. Molly had been astonished by their realism and their strength. They would wait for Richard and support each other until he came home. If they needed to sell Gorse Hill to survive they would do that too. As George and Molly packed their bags into the car the Meads stood in a line on the steps, upright and undefeated, like women portrayed in Soviet propaganda art looking forward to a hard but honourable future. Perhaps when they were alone they cried, but there was no sign of that now. They did not speak.

  George thought that perhaps he would come back and stay at Gorse Hill, but it would never be the same. Gorse Hill had represented all the joy and colour in his childhood. Nowhere else at Sarne meant so much to him. The remembered dream of taking a young Eleanor into his arms and dancing with her over the frosty grass had lost all its significance. The magic had gone, and with it the attraction of coming home.

  Molly started the engine and began to drive slowly away from the house. When George turned to wave goodbye to the Meads they had gone, quite suddenly, and the steps were empty. Halfway down the hill towards the town Molly braked sharply and pulled into the side of the road. Above the hill the female peregrine was circling on the warm air. Suddenly it made a fast and ferocious stoop for its prey, so that George held his breath in wonder, as if he too were diving at that speed, with the air rushing past his face. Then the bird was gone and Molly drove on. He looked at her with gratitude because she had seen the bird and had stopped for him to enjoy it too. The image of exhilaration, wildness and beauty remained with him, as an image of his home, and he knew he would return there and remember it with pleasure.

  Copyright

  First published in 1989 by Century

  This edition published 2013 by Bello

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-5313-6 EPUB

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  Copyright © Ann Cleeves, 1989

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