“We hope that if more shop owners and homeowners employ these alarms as part of their overall protection plan, we’ll see a decrease in crime.”
Howarth agrees. “I should have done this before, but I’ll get an alarm tomorrow. There won’t be a ‘next time’ for me.”
THIRTY-THREE
I discussed the idea with Mark that someone had spied on our house visit, or had heard my chat by the village hall. Dressed in brown trousers and a turquoise-and-blue striped shirt, he looked up from the computer, mildly distracted, and nodded as I sat down.
“There’s no other explanation,” I said as Mark turned slightly to face me. “Whom else did we talk to besides Clayton? No one,” I answered, leaving Mark with his mouth open. “Someone had to have listened to us.”
“But even then, what did we do to prompt the two break-ins?”
I scratched my head. “I don’t remember what we talked about.”
“You wanted to see if Vera left in a hurry or there were signs of someone abducting her. There weren’t. All was tidy. Except the garden,” he added, his mouth curling in frustration. “I’m still picking that white stuff off my trousers. Who’d have thought it would cling like this?”
“We found that card,” I reminded him.
“The greeting card signed with the V? I forgot.”
“Do you think the burglar assumed we found it and took it with us?”
“Could do, which would explain this place being searched. But why the village hall? You didn’t go into it last night, did you?”
“No. I just talked to that man as we walked to the pub.”
“Then it doesn’t make sense.”
Sighing, I nodded and glanced at the wall clock. Mid-morning and nothing to show for my hours on the job.
“Did you talk to anyone else?”
“I don’t know, Mark. It’s all so routine. You don’t really make a note of people you talk to. Outside of you and Margo and Graham…” I trailed off, suddenly recalling my moonlit stroll. “I talked to Graham.”
“When?”
“After hours. After we all went to bed.” I related my short ramble and meeting Graham outside the church.
“I don’t suppose,” Mark suggested thoughtfully, his eyes on the computer screen, “your mysterious spy might have thought he saw you give something to Graham or the well worker. You know, if you fumbled for Graham’s arm if you tripped, or handed the worker something as innocent as your business card—”
I grabbed Mark’s arm, squeezing it in my excitement. “I did! I gave the man one of my business cards. I told him to phone if he remembered Vera or her grandmother working on the well panels.”
“So, if someone were watching you from the shadows, he might have thought you handed the man that V-signed greeting card.”
“But why? We didn’t take the card with us. All the watcher had to do, Mark, was go back to Vera’s house and get it.”
Mark stared at me, a slow smile consuming his face. His right eyebrow crept upward and he said, “Want to go now or later?”
* * * *
This time I was aware of my surroundings. Unless someone had sat in the wood all night, wore a papier-mâché tree trunk or lay on the roof behind the chimney, I don’t see how we could have been overheard.
The front path looked the same as I remembered it. No secondary path led from ours, indicating an intruder had walked around the house to gain entry elsewhere. Although I couldn’t swear to it, the house interior seemed as we had left it. No wild searches through cupboards or bookcases, no carpets yanked up, no desk drawers open. More importantly, the greeting card was gone.
“What do you think?” I asked Mark on the walk back to the church. The sun was nearly overhead, casting thick, black shadows that hugged the base of every object. A slight breeze played with the longer strands of Mark’s hair, lifting them from his collar.
“I think,” he said, his voice strained with frustration and anxiety, “someone’s just remembered that card and it’s a hell of a clue to something. I think someone was in the right place at the right time and saw us enter the house, and that person searched the church and village halls in a muck sweat, trying to find that card because he assumed we took it. When he didn’t find it, he went back to the house to get it. I think we’re all being watched—maybe you in particular because you’ve been talking to more people—and our mystery burglar is trying his damnedest to keep us from finding out some vital piece of this whole thing.” He stopped mid-stride and pulled me around to face him. We were opposite the lych gate and a shaft of sunlight slid through a tangle of juniper branches to fall on the steeply pitched roof.
“I just remembered something, Mark.”
“What?”
“I told that well worker my room number at the pub.”
“You what?” Mark’s anxiety exploded into a string of curse words and didn’t lessen as I said, “I forgot until just now. I thought the man might feel more comfortable in a non-police atmosphere. You know many people do.”
“You gave him your mobile number. Wasn’t that enough?”
“I wasn’t thinking of anyone being out to get me.”
“No. You never do. There’s a killer loose in the village, Brenna. Or have you forgotten that’s why we’re here and not on the Riviera?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make a problem. He’s just a bloke in his fifties, just an ordinary looking guy. He lives here in the village, Mark. He’s not going to whack me on the head some night and drag me—”
Mark’s fingers dug into my upper arms and his voice was low and sharp in his urgency. “I suppose Norman Thorne looked like an ordinary bloke, but 1925’s a bit before your time. He murdered his fiancée, who should have every reason to think he was an ordinary bloke. How about Dennis Nilsen, who dismembered fifteen men in London? He looked normal, whatever that is. Or John Duffy, the Railway Rapist, convicted of twenty-four cases of sexual assault and murder.“
“All right, all right. You’ve made your point. I was stupid.”
“You were a flaming berk.” He held me at arm’s length, his fingers still tightly clenched around my arms. “You’re sleeping in my room tonight.”
I probably didn’t have my mouth open for more than a minute.
“I’m sleeping there, too. Oh, don’t worry,” he said quickly. “You’ll be safe enough,” he added, his voice laced with reluctance. “I’ll take the couch. Or the floor. Unless you are feeling magnanimous and agree to sharing the bed— No, I guess not. We tried that before and you never succumbed to my charms.”
“Mark…”
“My room, then. I won’t hear anything more on the subject. Until we wrap up this segment of the case, I don’t want you on your own after dark. Even if your well worker is as innocent as a daisy, anyone could have heard you talking last night. I don’t want to find you in that alley. Now. No more arguing. Subject closed. Back to work.”
He remained silent as we entered the incident room and grabbed two cups of tea. We had just brought the computer screen to life when Margo came over.
“You had a phone call while you were out.” She handed me a handwritten message.
“A man?” I said.
“No. Some woman. She said you two talked this morning at the village hall.”
“Oh, right. She find something else missing?” I tried scanning the note but Margo interrupted my reading.
“I wouldn’t know. She said only that she wants you to call her. ASAP,” she added, smiling as she turned.
“You can’t take care of it?”
“That’s the price of popularity, Bren. She wants to talk to you.”
I punched the phone number into my mobile and moments later listened to the well panel worker. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” the woman said, “but you did say to ring if anything occurred.”
“Quite right. Did you find something missing?”
“No. Just the opposite.”
“Pardon?”
“
I discovered a scrapbook of newspaper articles.”
“Newspaper articles.”
“I don’t know if they’d be anything of interest for your investigation,” she said, sounding vaguely flustered, “for I forgot they existed, to tell you the truth. I just leafed through the scrapbook before I rang you up, to make certain what I thought I remembered was true. About the types of articles, I mean. I haven’t looked at them in years, haven’t remembered they existed, but I thought you should know about them, now that I found them.”
“What type of articles?” I crossed my fingers, hoping they would give more information on the grandmother.
“Oh, just clippings from several newspapers. Local ones. Articles pertaining to our villagers or our local Peak legends. That sort of thing. When I was putting away the other, I saw it. Haven’t had the scrapbook out in years.” She paused for breath and I could hear the quiet hum of conversation behind her as the volunteers began work on the panel decorating. “I doubt if the clippings would be helpful, and I’m rather embarrassed now that I rang you up, but if they do mention something that you need to know, well, I’d feel awful if I didn’t say.”
I thanked her and told her I’d be right down to get the scrapbook.
* * * *
Mark insisted on getting the book, telling me I should research further into Vera’s birth certificate. I knew it was busy work he handed me, but I couldn’t get too angry with him; he was fearful about my welfare. I went back to my notes, refreshed my memory on birth date and parents’ names, and then looked up the baptismal record in the church office.
Forty minutes later, he returned, a large book tucked under his arm and a smile on his face. I wondered if some of the older articles had photos of old cars, but I quickly saw what made him so happy. Our helpful volunteer had given us a treasure trove of information on the village history—crimes, missing persons and ghost stories. Mark plopped the book onto the table, grabbed a cup of coffee, and sat down. Opening the front cover, he said, “Whether or not this proves useful.” He grinned, so I knew he had stopped to flip through it at the village hall. He liked to be certain of things.
We had barely got into reading the articles when Graham called us together for a short meeting. Mark closed the scrapbook and scooted our chairs over to the whiteboard. I knew he was loath to abandon our study, but we’d get back to it.
“Sorry to drag you all away from your jobs of work,” Graham said, “but I thought we needed to discuss where we are with the case.”
Mark relayed the information about finding the greeting card at Vera’s house and our suspicions that it could be behind the two burglaries this morning.
I indicated the scrapbook and said we’d just begun scanning the articles. “They may mean nothing, but if something goes back twenty-two years and seems linked with Vera’s disappearance and death—”
“Right,” Graham said. “Someone’s nose is out of joint, or that card wouldn’t have gone missing. Well, what else do we have…or can we construe?” He stood by the whiteboard, ready to write down our brilliance. When no one spoke, he said, “We’ve got a greeting card, presumably from Vera Howarth to Harding Lyth, the vicar. Taylor and Salt found it yesterday in Vera’s house and now it’s gone. It’s obviously important to someone. Who might that be? I’ll give you a hint: Vera’s not around, so you can count her out. And her grandmother isn’t here, either. Who might look upon that card as having some significance?”
“Harding Lyth.” Mark wrestled to find a comfortable position in the chair. “Despite his protestations of ignorance.”
“Then why didn’t he get it before now? He’s had years to grab it. Why risk rousing the collective suspicion of the investigating officers and steal it now?”
“Because he saw Brenna and me go into Vera’s house. When we asked him point blank about the card, he stole it.”
“Wasn’t he calling attention to himself by doing that? Why not just wait? The investigating team from twenty-two years ago saw no value to the card when they went over her house. They left it. You and Taylor also left it. Why would Harding point to its worth by stealing it? And, what’s even more obvious, he steals it after he burgles two places to find it. He’s got the keys to both places, on top of that.”
I suggested it wasn’t Harding who stole the card.
Graham cocked his head slightly to one side and asked whom I favored.
“Well, sir, I’m not certain, but I think it depends on who killed Vera.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, when Mark and I were searching for Vera’s birth certificate, we discovered her parents were listed as Jane and John Smith. While I was waiting for Mark this morning, I went into the little alcove where the books are kept. I found her baptism listed in the book of baptismal records. Besides the person baptized, it listed their age, gender, parents’ names, place of birth, and the officiating clergy. It also listed witnesses. The only person mentioned in attendance was the grandmother. The year is 1971, the same as the birth year. According to Vera and the grandmother, the parents were killed in Australia five years later. Doesn’t that seem rather odd?”
“Did you follow that up?”
“Yes, sir. I couldn’t find any record of any Smiths’ death in the intervening years. I can draw only one conclusion.”
“She’s illegitimate.”
I nodded. “Harding Lyth is listed as the participating vicar.” I let Graham and the team come to their own conclusions.
Margo said, “Harding is the father.”
Graham asked if we knew Harding’s age.
Mark went over to the computer and returned a few minutes later, announcing “He’s fifty-seven.”
“In 1971 he was eighteen.”
Graham walked over to the edge of the table. “Not that it cancels out extramarital affairs, but when was he married?”
Mark again went to the computer and after summoning up several websites and jotting down some information, walked over to Graham and showed him the note he’d made. “Married when he was twenty-one.”
“His daughter, Angela, is nineteen.”
“Yes, sir.” Mark took his seat. “Neither Brenna nor I could find anything, in any records, about Vera’s parents. No driving license, no home ownership, no taxes paid.”
I shivered, visions of March’s case whispering in my mind. I said softly, “No one leaves a paperless trail.”
“Unless they don’t exist,” Graham said. He sat down on the table, his left leg swinging. “I do believe we have a case of Ghosts. Someone conveniently creates two people for a birth certificate, then hands the child to a caretaker. But he doesn’t quite abandon his daughter; he sets her up in the same village in which he lives, so he can watch her grow up and look after her morals. He can’t acknowledge her because there’s the little problem of his vocation. Yet, he does what he can, probably hiring the woman to play the part of the grandmother. He invents a plausible story, brings the child in to live with the grandmother when the child is five years old. That seems perfectly legitimate to the villagers, especially since the story gets around that the poor child’s parents are killed in Australia. Who’s going to track them down? Why would anyone care? The little girl’s living happily ever after with her grandmother in a quaint cottage.”
“How does Clayton Warson figure into this?” Margo asked.
“Oh, I think Vera and Clayton fell in love. There’s nothing phony about that.”
“But someone got rid of Vera. Not just drove her off, but murdered her.”
“We can eliminate the fake Smiths. Harding probably invented the name of Vera Howarth to throw anyone off the track, should someone start snooping around.” He clasped his hands and rested them on his thighs. “What do you think? Will it hold water?”
“If Harding kept Vera’s birth and past a secret,” I said, “do you think someone from Vera’s past killed Reed Harper?”
“Why?”
“Well, sir, with Reed’s history of extramarital
affairs, someone could easily assume he fathered Vera. Maybe the killer got rid of Reed in a sort of revenge.”
“That would mean the killer knew of Vera’s past and parentage—if I’m correct about Harding setting her up with this phony grandmother.”
“Marian seems a likely candidate to kill Reed.”
“But we’re up against the same old problem of moving the body,” Graham said. “Marian is very petite. Can you really see her stabbing Reed and carting him into the wood?”
I shook my head at the improbable scenario. “Did she have help, like maybe Edmund?”
“Because he wanted her to leave Reed?”
I muttered I didn’t know. “It’s all tangled together. Vera, the grandmother, Harding, Reed. Too many affairs and children—if Vera was the product of an affair.” I slumped against my chair, trying to think through the relationships.
Graham eased off the table. “There’s a way to prove paternity, you know.” He smiled as I said, “Nuclear DNA.”
“The most common DNA used in forensic examinations. Yes.”
Graham reminded us that DNA profiling had been developed in 1984. “But most people probably didn’t give it much thought at the time. Who would have dreamt in 1989, when Vera went missing, that we could use nuclear DNA to pinpoint paternity?”
Silently, I agreed. A nuclear DNA test determines the biological paternity of a child. Since we inherit our DNA on conception, the test can compare the child’s DNA pattern to the alleged father’s. It is the most authoritative verification of a birth relationship.
Graham said, “Not meaning to insult anyone’s intelligence, but you may be a bit rusty on your DNA facts. As you recall, the nuclear DNA test produces a simple positive or negative result: the male is or is not the biological father. There is no shade of gray. Tests are 99.99% accurate on this and, as I said, are most commonly used in forensic cases.”
Margo said, “If this woman played the part of the grandmother, surely she took it on as a job.”
Graham smiled. “I should hope so. How many years did she play that role?”
A Well Dressed Corpse Page 24
