A Well Dressed Corpse

by Jo A. Hiestand

  “Anyone you talked to last night? I’m not accusing you of deliberately telling a villager something about the case, Taylor. But sometimes in idle conversation…” His gaze was steady, unblinking, quietly insisting I give him an answer.

  “No, sir. I talked to one of the workers on the well dressing panels.”

  “When was this?”

  “After we left here for the night.”

  “Meet him up here?”

  “No, sir. I had walked down the hill and he was just locking up the village hall. We just chatted about the dressing process and I asked if he lived here when Vera or the grandmother had. I also asked if they had ever helped with the work.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought he might have a photograph of them. Well, you do have that sort of thing in smaller villages. From morris dances, well dressing festivals, Christmas dances in the village hall, Harvest Home dinner. You know.”

  “Good thinking. And did he have a photograph?”

  “He suggested there might be some in the village hall. Snaps from previous years’ workers and the festival. You know.”

  He nodded without smiling. I realized he might be thinking back to his own career as a Methodist minister, to the village events he had attended. Photos of him probably adorned many scrapbook pages in the villages where he had served.

  Continuing, I said, “I didn’t say anything about our inquiry line, though, sir. I just asked about the two women and the possibility of existing photographs.”

  “If he was suspicious,” Graham said, breaking his reverie, “I’d have thought the village hall would be ransacked.“

  We stared at each other at the same instant.

  “No one’s reported anything untoward,” I said slowly.

  “It’s just gone eight o’clock.” He consulted his watch. “I doubt if anyone’s there yet. Would you mind…”

  “I’ll just go down and see, sir.” I left the church nearly before Graham had finished thanking me.

  I walked down the hill, past the youth hostel and the village pond. The house Jenny’s sister lived in was opposite the pond and next door to the village hall. I had not taken this route to check out the woman’s emotional state or to ascertain that the family liaison officers were providing comfort to Clarice; the route was the logical way to the village hall, being closer to the church than the northern path. However, I did glance at the front garden. A female constable sat with Clarice on a small bench. A goldcrest pecked at the earth beneath her birdbath, giving its high-pitched ‘see-see-see’ call. Clarice and the WPC seemed not to notice the bird, for the constable matched Clarice’s bowed posture, intent on their conversation. I walked on, feeling incredibly despondent that Clarice had no family or boyfriend to help her through her pain.

  A woman in her sixties was unlocking the door to the hall. I walked up to her. She turned, perhaps expecting to see another villager who was slated to work with her. On seeing me, she smiled hesitantly and remained with her hand on the doorknob.

  I introduced myself, showed her my warrant card, and asked if I could accompany her inside.

  Her eyes widened for a moment and she stuttered that of course I might enter. She unlocked the door, pushed it open and let me go in first. I don’t know what she was expecting from my odd request, but evidently it wasn’t what greeted us.

  The buckets, boxes and bags of materials for the panel dressing were intact and undisturbed, but the cupboard doors stood open and the cupboard contents tipped out and strewn across the floor. I stopped the woman at the door and asked her to remain outside. She appeared to be only too glad to comply, and wandered across the road to sit on the bench beneath the yew.

  I phoned Graham, told him our burglar had struck the village hall, and said I’d wait for some constables to process the scene. “I don’t think anything was taken,” I said as I stood in the doorway, viewing the open cupboards. “All the well dressing items are undisturbed—including the tables, supplies, paper designs and tools.” I looked at the tables on which the mentioned items lay. “I’ll talk to the woman who opened up, but I doubt if the thief took anything but a scrapbook or photographs. If that’s what led to all this.”

  “Ask her if they kept money in the hall,” Graham suggested. “Maybe it’s a case of someone going after the cash box.”

  “Could be,” I said, none too convinced. Especially after last night’s conversation with the villager. “I’ll find out.”

  “The lads will be down in a minute, Taylor.” He thanked me before ringing off.

  While I waited for the constables to arrive, I went to talk to the woman. She sat in a patch of sunlight, her eyes worried and watching me cross the road. As I approached her, she sat up straight and grabbed her carrier bag. I called to her, asking her to remain seated for a moment, and jogged up to her. At this nearer distance she appeared more curious than worried, and I asked what normally was kept in the cupboards.

  “Nothing of any value,” she said, clearly confused with the event.

  “Like what, exactly?”

  “Oh, just common supplies that anyone might need. The village hall is used for other things besides dressing the well panels,” she said, needlessly.

  I smiled and asked again what items were housed in the cupboards.

  “Well, things like drawing paper, scissors and paste, crayons—art supplies, you know. And some hand tools like screwdrivers, hammers, pliers, boxes of nails. A small tape player and cassette tapes—blank and recorded.”

  “Recorded? Like what, meetings or concerts?”

  “No. Professional tapes, like you’d buy in a store or off the Internet. Music for exercise classes. That sort of thing.”

  “But no one’s conversations, nothing someone might tape at a meeting.”

  “I don’t see why. Someone always took notes at meetings.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Sometimes paper plates and cups, and plastic utensils, although we tried to keep those in the kitchen. But if something big was coming up, like the fete this weekend, they’d run out of space to store that so they’d use a shelf or two in the cupboards in the main room.”

  “Anything else pertaining to the festivals?”

  “Well, there are some history books.”

  “Like notes or private recollections of the village that were typed up and bound?”

  “No. Nothing so professional. Just some 3-ring binders or scrapbooks that you can buy in hobby shops or stationer’s shops. We kept photographs of all the village festivals. You know, well dressing, Harvest Home, Christmas pageants in the church, Bonfire Night.” She broke off, sounding wistful. “Of course, in the days when children participated more in village activities, we had troops of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. The drum and bugle corps would parade through the village. That was always a treat. Also Mothering Sunday events and Armistice Day remembrances, but those have fallen by the wayside. I suppose people are too busy these days, or they don’t care.”

  “I assume someone penned commentary beneath the photographs. What, when, people involved…”

  She looked startled, as though it were the daftest suggestion she’d heard. “Certainly! Not much point in keeping up those books if we don’t know who the people were or the date or anything.”

  “Did Chad Styles stop by here yesterday? Talk to you or anyone?”

  “Not to me, dearie. I haven’t heard from anyone that he did. He’s the fete coordinator in Upper Hogsley, isn’t he? Why would he need to talk to me?”

  “I saw him in the village yesterday. He mentioned he might pop in here. Would you know if anything in those cupboards is missing? Like one of the scrapbooks, for instance? Do they have dates on them?”

  “Of course they are dated. Makes it easier to find something if you’re hunting for it, doesn’t it?”

  “When the constables are finished in the hall, would you mind having a look to see if anything has been taken?”

  She promised most solemnly that she would h
ave a look. I thanked her and joined my colleagues in the hall.

  PC Byrd took photographs, and Oglethorpe and MacMillan measured every possible to-and-from point. Two more constables dusted for fingerprints on the cupboard knobs and door edges, but I thought that a useless task. Besides the hundreds of prints left by people having a right to be there, the burglar no doubt wore gloves. Television shows and movies had ground that bit of procedure into most every viewer’s brains.

  I watched the work for a minute, looking around the room. One point more than any other bothered me: how did the burglar gain access?

  The door lock was intact—the villager had unlocked it to let me inside the hall. Walking around the room, I checked the windows and their latches. Each one was closed and locked. I went outside and walked the perimeter of the building. None of the window locks or frames showed any signs of attempted forced entry. But a few scratches near the back door lock spoke of some attempt to enter the building. I bent down, looking closely at the marks. They seemed to have been done with a crowbar or screwdriver. Even the claw end of a hammer. The edge of the lock was slightly bent but hadn’t been pried enough to break the lock. I stood up. A half-hearted attempt to get inside? Or a red herring, when the burglar had a key the whole time?

  Byrd was outside by this time and photographed the back door lock. Before summoning a constable to take prints of the door’s exterior surface, he commented that it looked like some teenager’s first attempt.

  When the hall had been photographed and measured and dusted to the constables’ desires, they drove back to the church and I asked the woman to look at the items on the floor.

  The crayons, colored pencils and paint brushes had fanned across several square yards in front of the cupboards, making it look messier than it was. The paper was easily picked up and restacked on the bottom shelves. So were the reference books of British customs and wildlife, regional history and local legends. It would take but a few seconds to shelve the bags of paper products and tins of tea bags. The only things broken—and even those weren’t many or even a tragic loss—were the handle of a battered teakettle, a small ceramic candy dish, and a wooden picture frame.

  I asked the woman if the picture had been stolen, but she assured me it was a superfluous frame and she really didn’t know why they kept it.

  As we put the scrapbooks back onto the shelves, we made note of the dates. The book for the years 1985-1995 was missing. 1989—the year Vera Howarth went missing.

  Giving one last look at the room, I thought it obvious that the burglar had been after one of the scrapbooks. He had not bothered with the tape player, computer and printer, microphone and portable speaker—items that might have brought a nice chunk of change.

  I thanked the woman, assured her we’d look into the incident, and walked back to the church.

  When I told Graham about the break-in, he said we’d keep it on the back burner. “There are no such things as coincidences, Taylor. It’s beyond my level of acceptance that the night I do some poking about in the church records the incident room and the village hall are searched. What did the burglar want? Did you determine how he gained entry into the hall, by the way?”

  “Must have been with a key, sir. No windows were broken, the locks are all intact.”

  “Seems to rule out Mr. Chad Styles, then, for I can’t believe he’d have a key to any place in this village. So why would our burglar mess about with the back door?”

  “Maybe he left it, remembered the key, went home for it, and came back. Maybe an extra key is kept hidden under a flower pot.” I shrugged. “Same with the church hall. All the windows are bolted shut, and you unlocked the door to enter this morning.”

  “A fair number of people must have keys to both places—vicar, Reed Harper…well, Marian Harper, now. Village council members. Who else?”

  “The Harpers may keep their key in a drawer or key rack, where anyone can grab it. Ilsa, for example.”

  “Same for anyone who has a key. This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  But he did ask me to visit Marian and Kevin and any of the more prominent villagers, including the publican, and ask about the keys. “I’ll have a quick word with Harding, since he let me into the church office last night. He probably has sets of keys to the village hall. He might know of others. Meet me back here when you’re finished.”

  Marian admitted they had keys to the church and the village hall. “Reed sometimes worked late on the fete and needed to get into these places.” Reed’s brother Kevin had a key to the hall but not to the church. Edmund, the half-brother, had no key to either place…or so he said. I stopped in most of the shops and found out that both sets of keys were secreted in the village hall—they were still there, for I checked—and the publican had another set, also still in the back room. I didn’t bother with the newsagent’s, grocery, chemist or other shops, for those proprietors weren’t involved with the case.

  I met Graham back in the incident room and learned that Jenny Millington had a key only to the hall—but she couldn’t be our culprit, since she was still recovering in hospital. Angela, the vicar’s daughter, had no keys but knew where her father kept his set. Clayton wouldn’t have keys to any premises in the village for precisely this reason—no police officer could then become embroiled in this sort of situation. Besides, Clayton was sitting in jail. “Anyone having these keys could have used them in the burglary and returned them when the job was over,” Graham said, sighing. “Doesn’t get us much further. Well, as I said, we’ll keep this in the back of our minds and see if it pertains to something.”

  I nodded. The burglaries looked to be little more than serving as nuisance value. Nothing had been taken from the incident room—we checked all our records and photos. The notes on the whiteboard, although not top secret, shouldn’t alarm anyone, for we hadn’t named a killer yet. Still, perhaps we had unnerved someone, made him frightened to the point that he had to know what we had found out, so he broke into the church basement. As to the missing village scrapbook…

  I hadn’t talked to that many people yesterday. And even then, I hadn’t named names or stated that we were about to make an arrest. The burglar had to be linked to my activities yesterday. Which meant looking about in Vera’s house and garden and talking to the well dressing worker. Which also meant, I realized, that to know my movements was to spy on me.

  That bit of reasoning didn’t do much for my confidence. I sank down into a chair, determined to work out how this could have happened. Vera’s house, though not in the wood proper, was situated in a lonely spot. No neighbors were near enough to see any stalking eavesdropper. The potential burglar could have seen Mark and me enter the house, sneaked up the garden path and listened at the door. I hadn’t been obsessed with keeping a low profile or looking for snoops when we left. As for that evening, I had chatted with the well dressing volunteer. I suppose someone could have been listening across the street, by the big yew. It was dark and I hadn’t been secretive about the conversation. Nor had I been considering that anyone would be skulking around in the shadows. But that certainly was possible. Were either of these two activities the incentive for our burglar to ransack the places he did?

  THIRTY-TWO

  The Hope Observer, 15 March 1989

  A spate of burglaries has Derbyshire police, as well as residents and shop owners in the Hope Valley, deeply concerned.

  Yesterday, at approximately 10:00 p.m., the residence of Vera Howarth was broken into. Howarth, 17 years old, was away from home at the time of the burglary but returned to discover a back window broken and personal items tossed about.

  “I don’t know who would do this,” Howarth said. “I’ve lived in Cauldham all my life and am friendly with all my neighbors. It’s unimaginable someone would have a grudge against me.”

  Books, knickknacks, and photographs had been swept from bookshelves and dumped onto the floor. Clothes in the bedroom littered the carpet and the bedding was pulled off the mattress. In the kit
chen, pots, pans and lids had been yanked from the base unit and left in a heap on the floor. A cupboard door was open but none of the crockery disturbed. Items in the attached garage and garden shed also were untouched, prompting police to speculate that the burglar had been interrupted by Howarth returning home.

  “I’ve never had any threats, nor argued with anyone. I can’t explain it.” The wooden frame holding a photograph of Howarth’s grandmother was broken, the sheet of glass shattered. “It’s like the intruder stepped on the photo on purpose. It’s the only frame of my gran that I have. Maybe it can be flattened out and saved. I hope so. I love Gran.” The photograph was creased and there was a large rip where the elder woman’s right eye should be.

  A police officer went over the house with Howarth, making notes on what she thought might be missing. “Though right now, with the condition the house is in, I’m not certain.”

  “Many times the homeowner will believe a particular item is stolen,” PC Brown said. “But on straightening up and putting things to right, the item is discovered. I sincerely hope it is this way with Miss Howarth.”

  “I don’t keep any money at home,” Howarth said, “so I really don’t know why the bloke was here.”

  PC Brown speculated that the intruder was after money. “So many of these dwelling house burglaries are committed by teenagers desperate for drug money. It’s a sad statement on our society right now, but that’s usually the situation when we apprehend these thieves.”

  The officer added that the Howarth burglary was one of several dozen that have occurred in the district, beginning last summer and still on the rise. Village shops have also been hit, though the criminals have had little success with large takes from the tills. “We are urging all shop owners to install alarms. That will dramatically reduce the incidents of burglaries.”

  PC Brown added that the smaller businesses and residences were usually targeted over stores because stores employed video surveillance cameras and burglar alarms as part of their security systems.