A Well Dressed Corpse

by Jo A. Hiestand

  “The corpse has been identified as Reed Harper, the person reported missing two days ago,” Graham said, moving to the whiteboard behind the table. He wrote quickly, placing Reed’s name at the top of the left hand column. Scribbling several question marks at the head of the other column, he turned back to us and said, “But let me talk about the bones, first. The bones are an unknown person. Female. The pathologist’s report estimates her age between thirteen to twenty years old. DNA extracted from the bone marrow determined gender, much more accurately than can be determined by the pelvis size.”

  He tacked up color photos of the site where the bones were discovered. They were the first graphic job aids posted on the whiteboard and, as such, instantly brought the case to the reality of a murder investigation. Graham’s gaze fell on me as he said, “To bring those who weren’t there up to speed, the bones were recovered over a several-foot wide area. Weathering and animal foraging uncovered the bones. The small bones—hands, feet, vertebra—were the most widely scattered. Some were missing, either carried away and gnawed on, deteriorated, or washed downhill. The Crime Scene Investigator lads found some ribs, the skull, humerus, pelvis and a femur. The pathology report states that the bones are discolored from their contact with the soil and the elements, and sport a good deal of mold. Dr. Nielsen states also that there is a nick on one of the ribs, which points to a knife thrust. It passed just beneath that rib and probably killed her.

  “Hair was found, but again, it is very sparse. No skin or sinew could be recovered, though bits of clothing adhered to a few of the bones and were located in the immediate area.” He tapped on one of the photos that showed a close-up of a piece of blue print fabric. “She was probably wearing heavy, cotton trousers—this fabric was stuck to the recovered femur—and a woolen zip-up jumper. The zipper looks nearly as pristine as the day it was made. The clothing may help us identify her, for, to date, we have no one to ask for a DNA sample in order to positively name her.

  “Both the bones and the body were discovered, as many of you know, well within the wood on the northwestern edge of the village. Miners Road cuts through a section of the wood but is well away from the area in which the body recovery sites lay. It’s a steep, rugged area, strewn with boulders, knee-high ferns and sporadic open areas of heather. The site lies about a half mile north of Cauldham Hall, backs up to the Hall’s north wing, actually. St Paul’s Church is about a half mile south of the Hall. The Harper house is one quarter mile south of the church.”

  “Which makes the site where he was found slightly more than a mile from his house.”

  “Yes. The closest neighbors to him and to the body recovery site are two single people, plus a constable and his wife.

  “As to the body…” He tacked another set of photos to the other side of the board. “The body is Reed Harper. Bits of mud and flower petals clung to his forehead and back of his right hand.”

  Startled, I looked up from my note taking to look at the photo. A close-up snap showed the flower petals stuck into the muddy clumps. Odd, I thought, for those were the only places on the body that held those traces. What had Reed Harper been doing prior to his death?

  Graham pointed to the photo. “The mud is not necessarily odd, but the petals are. Some white flower—perhaps a daisy, chamomile or eyebright. Another of the same white flower was crammed into his mouth. This constituted part of the stem, leaves, and flower. The stem had been cut, not broken, which signifies that it was carefully planned. No wildflowers grow in that vicinity, so perhaps the body collected the petals and mud if it was dragged to the location. The lab will identify the flower and let us know—that will help us determine where the flower might be found. Postmortem examination reveals he died from exsanguination, having been stabbed in the heart but by way of the back.”

  “Which indicates a fairly long knife blade.”

  “Yes. The weapon was not recovered, but we’ll put more personnel on that job of work. Dr. Nielsen says it is a straightedge knife, as compared to a serrated blade, approximately eight inches long. The body was discovered twenty yards from the bones.”

  “Coincidence or deliberate?” Mark asked, leaning forward in his chair.

  “When we know that, we may have a better clue to his killer’s identity.”

  “And he was found in a shallow grave, right?”

  “Yes. A hastily-done affair, from the look of the soil, leaves and brush piled on top of the depression.”

  “So, what revealed the body, if it was buried?”

  “A light-reflecting strip incorporated into the design of the trainers he was wearing. This particular shoe model had the reflective material on the heel and side of the shoes. The edge of his left shoe was exposed—probably rain washed away some of the soil. Luckily the rain from earlier that morning had quit and PC Byrd saw the glint from the shoe. Like any good copper, he investigated.” Graham uncapped the dry marker and stood beside the board. “As long as we’re talking about investigation, the lads on fingertip search came up with something that may or may not be interesting.”

  Again I paused, my gaze fastened on Graham’s face. We’d all done our hours of fingertip searches as constables—pulling up plants, turning over rocks and tree twigs, bagging everything on the ground in case the beer can or cigarette or crumpled piece of paper should prove to be a clue later on in the case.

  “While searching a bit farther from where Reed Harper’s body was found, Constable Oglethorpe located a latch key.” He waited while we twisted around in our chairs to look at Oglethorpe, then went on. “It has been exposed to the elements for quite a while. It’s quite rusted. Perhaps lost years before Reed’s murder.” He tacked the photos of the key on the board. The tip of someone’s pen holding back a leaf and flower head of a daylily was barely discernible in the first photo. The round, upper part of the key could just be seen among the leaves and branches littering the forest floor. “Dean photographed the site and Oglethorpe then bagged the key. It may be nothing, of course. Still, you never know. Further poking and prodding in the vicinity produced no other suspicious objects.

  “Oglethorpe, I’d like you to look into the matter of tracing the key. You started us on that path so you may as well get all the glory of the Big Discovery. May not be an easy task,” Graham told him, “but it looks like someone’s latch key. If so, that person may have had to get a replacement made. Ask about in the village—try the hardware store first. They may have a record. Yes, I know it’s a long shot, but we might only be talking several weeks. It’s not like the clerk has to look through a year’s worth of sales receipts. We’ll at least get a lead that way, if we’re lucky.”

  Oglethorpe nodded, took the key and wandered off.

  “If the murderer did drop his latch key,” Graham said, “he wouldn’t have risked searching for it in the dark. A torch flashing about in the wood in the dead of night might attract attention, and that’s one thing the killer doesn’t want. So he’d curse his clumsiness and leave the key, hoping the police won’t find it.” He grinned, slapping his hands together. “We just may be on to something. At least we’re not looking at more bodies. Not there, at any rate.”

  I hoped we had got a break. It would be a refreshing change to begin a murder investigation with a solid lead.

  Graham leaned against the whiteboard. “So, what else do we know besides someone losing some type of key sometime?”

  “He went missing three days ago, on Tuesday, nineteenth of June.” Mark settled back into his chair. “He attended a meeting in the church hall. That lasted from seven to half past nine. The meeting, not the hall,” he said, glancing at me.

  “Thank you for being so precise,” Graham said. “What else?”

  “He apparently disappeared right then.” Graham wrote the points on the board. “His wife didn’t see or hear from him. None of his neighbors did, either. The last people were those who were at the meeting with him. He just seems to have walked into oblivion.”

  “Until Byrd foun
d him yesterday.”

  “No one knew where he was, then, for the days he was missing.” Margo looked up from her note taking, her pen still touching the paper.

  “No. The usual appeals had been put out through the media, his mobile phone and credit card accounts monitored but there had been no use. His wife and family got no demands for ransom, so kidnapping seems to be ruled out.”

  “He was a candidate for that? I mean,” Margo said when Mark and I stared at her, “he had the wealth that someone might target?”

  “Yes. Old money, they call it. Besides having inherited a substantial sum, his wife brought her own money into their marriage.”

  “But neither she nor his relatives ever got a ransom demand,” Margo suggested.

  “No.”

  “At least no one admitted it if he had,” I suggested. “Any other possible motive? We know he didn’t kill himself and pull the leaves over himself.”

  “We may need another whiteboard to list that, Taylor.”

  FOUR

  Diary Entry, 26 April 1981

  Today is my tenth birthday! Gran made me a cream trifle and sausage rolls and pickled beets for my tea. It was ever so smashing and she set out her best china ’cause she said I was now a young lady and know how to behave and birthdays are for celebrating. Gran had out the silver candelabra and her cut glass trifle bowl and she put a vase of daisies and roses on the table. Daisies ’cause they’re my birth month flower and roses ’cause she says they’re the flower of love and she loves me.

  Oh, it was all so lovely with the lace tablecloth on, too. My class had a party for me in school and everyone gave me candy or flowers or a card or little toy. I got a bracelet from my boyfriend. He gave it to me on the walk home. Didn’t want to give it to me with everyone looking. It’s silver colored and has a heart dangling from the chain. I love it and won’t ever take it off, no matter if Gran says the bath water will ruin it.

  After tea Gran showed me the photo album of our family. Gran was so beautiful when she was younger. She is beautiful now but she looks different so she is beautiful in a different way. I love her old-fashioned clothes and her house. I wonder how it was growing up as Gran in that long ago time but I never can think that way. I guess she liked it. She’s never said otherwise. She seems happy in the snaps and she seems happy now living with me. There’s a torn photo of Gramps but I don’t remember him at all. He looks happy, too. He’s hugging Gran and laughing. His hair looks white but Gran said it’s just the bad color of the photo ’cause it was really light blond.

  And there are a lot of snaps of mum and dad but none of anyone else. I made Gran tell me about them, how they were both only children and how they met and fell in love. I love hearing that story. I feel so close to Mum and Dad when I hear it. I can see them as Gran talks, but I can’t see anyone else ’cause Gran said the other album of my great aunts and great uncles and Gran’s parents are back at her other home. One day I’ll get to see it. When we can go to that house.

  I love seeing my mum and dad, how pretty she is and how handsome he is. Gran said the snap was taken right before they left on holiday. They are smiling and look excited. I wonder if they liked Australia. Gran says it took a day to get there! After the pages of snaps of mum and dad there was a half page of photos of me as a baby. There’s another blank page after that. Gran says she’ll fill it with more photos of me when she gets the time. We looked through the snaps she keeps in an old cardboard box. I remember some of them and remember when they were snapped. But I don’t remember all of them. Gran looked on the backs to read where they were taken. There are a bunch taken at Castleton and Dove Dale, but I don’t remember that. I like the tiny train and pools at Buxton. Gran said she’ll take me back some time. Maybe I’ll be too old. Maybe I’ll be the right size for the boats at Matlock Bath. Maybe I’ll be old enough to row this time! Aren’t birthdays grand things?

  FIVE

  We adjourned after Graham created teams and handed out assignments. He reminded us, “It’s easy to assume the bones are the remains of Vera Howarth. But don’t assume anything. That’s perhaps the most fatal mistake an investigating officer can make.” And, after all, we didn’t have anything to which we could match Vera’s DNA, she being a single lady with no known living relatives. Even items from her residence were non-existent. Hardly anyone had been that far sighted twenty-two years ago to collect samples that could be used for DNA testing now.

  Mark and I grabbed a quick cuppa before striking out to discover possible motives for Reed’s disappearance and subsequent murder. He grabbed two chairs sitting in a patch of sunlight and I listened to the clank of his metal spoon hitting the side of his ceramic coffee mug while I studied his face. He didn’t notice my perusal, for he was intent on reading his case notes. Rather than saddling society’s slap of Age on Mark, the streaks of gray in his brown hair gave him a mature, wise look—completely opposite from the brash, conceited officer I’d known in police college. The gray hued strands did not lie, for Mark, now in his mid-thirties, had indeed mellowed and matured; he was an extremely competent detective and our acquaintance had mellowed into a firm friendship.

  He scanned his notes, set his mug down with a thump, and stood up, asking if I were ready. Nodding, I abandoned my half-consumed drink and glanced out of the window as I grabbed my shoulder bag. The village of Cauldham was not particularly large, but Reed could have friends and relatives in other parts of the country, so we could be in for a very long task.

  “So, who does Graham want us to talk to first?” Mark held the door of the church open so that I could precede him outside.

  On first glance, the birds seemed to be the only things awake in the village, for rooks, sparrows and magpies sang into the morning stillness. A few rooks took flight as the door banged shut behind us, flapping across a smear of white clouds before banking and settling into the boughs of an oak. Starlings, screeching their squabbles, strutted and pecked at interesting-looking bits in the front lawn of the church. Frightened, they rose in a mass of black, vocalizing their alarm and annoyance.

  Mark paused under the lych gate roof, eyeing the road as though mentally rolling dice to decide where to begin.

  The village lay along a circular road, created by two roads converging and curving in opposite directions. Climbing the hill on the western portion of the circle, Old Church Lane did, indeed, hold the church. It also held the vicarage, Cauldham Hall, and the old C of E grammar school, now converted into a youth hostel, tourist information center and crafts shop. At the summit of this steep hill Miners Road bent to the north and east. Along its sides was the village proper with shops, pond and pub. Most of the more modest residences nestled among the trees on the northern and southern portions of this circular road, although some houses dribbled down Old Church Lane before the forest reclaimed the land.

  Disused lead mines dotted the land north of the village, remnants of the mining glory days from centuries before. Sinkholes, too, pockmarked the region, and ramblers were warned to stay on the designated path through the wood that blanketed the region.

  I glanced at my notes, seeing which of the pertinent people lived where. “Reed’s widow.”

  “Marian Harper.” Mark nodded and staring to our right. “Nice and convenient. Their house is down the road a bit, on the opposite side from the church.”

  “That’s not why he suggested it,” I said, wondering if Mark was joking. “Spouses are always questioned first.”

  “She was, Bren. This past Tuesday, down at the police station. I led the interview. You weren’t part of that because—”

  “I know why,” I said, still slightly miffed that Graham had kept me here that first day, questioning the Harpers’ daughter.

  “So I don’t know why we have to talk to Marian again. My interview went well. Graham even said so. What more can she tell us in two days’ time?”

  “I guess we’re about to find out.”

  “I still say it’s a waste of time. I talked to the
woman already. Graham ought to have told us to question the vicar.” He sounded hurt, as though his pride were wounded.

  I glanced toward our left. The vicarage hugged the edge of the lane, perhaps built closer and more accessible to the villagers, mutely offering round-the-clock advice and a cuppa, should they be needed. The church, though approachable, huddled against the western face of the hill, protected by clumps of yew, spruce and pine. Though farther in distance from the lane, its steeple seemed to pull the building and surrounding churchyard nearer to heaven, the golden-hued spire nearly reaching the treetops and scraping the clouds.

  “The vicar.”

  “Harding Lyth,” Mark muttered, scowling as he eyed the vicarage. “Probably still home, seeing what an ungodly early hour it is.”

  I glanced at him, again unsure if it was a deliberate pun. Mark grinned down at me from his six-foot-two stature, the sparkle and hint of mischievousness glinting from his gray eyes. For an instant, the teasing look suggested the Mark of old, the Mark who had christened me The Cop during our schooling, belittling not only my resolve to be the best detective in the Derbyshire Constabulary but also hoping I’d quit the otherwise all-male class. Graham had taken the derogatory tag and turned it into TC, a nickname that now signified the esteem and friendship he held for me. But the sparkle in Mark’s eyes vanished as he watched the house-to-house team set off down the road. He was ready to get to work.

  “Come on, Mark,” I said, somewhat emphatically, and turned right as I stepped onto the lane.

  “Right. Marian Harper.” Mark jogged up to me and settled in for the short stroll to the large, stone house. “Always question the spouse first. Why do so many marriages end in divorce, Brenna?”

  “You’ll have to ask a marriage counselor. Or a divorce lawyer. I haven’t the faintest.”

  “You’re sure about Adam, are you? I mean,” he said as I stopped abruptly to stare at him. “You have no doubts that marrying him is right for you?”