A Well Dressed Corpse

by Jo A. Hiestand

  “What I mean, sir,” Margo continued as Graham walked to the whiteboard, “is that I can’t believe she did it out of the goodness of her heart. She’d have bills to pay, if nothing else. And food to buy, clothes for Vera, council tax…” She frowned, her pen tapping on her notebook page. “How’d she pay for all that? And if Harding—or whoever hired her to care for Vera—paid her, where’d he get his money? Can a vicar earn that much money that he’d have enough not only to keep an extra household going but to also give a woman a salary?”

  We fell silent, astonished we hadn’t thought of that. Mark went to the computer. It took a good hour and several websites, but Mark came up with a printout of Harding’s financial history. Although he made an adequate salary as a vicar, we doubted he could afford to keep the second household. Mark could find no additional income from stocks, gambling or inheritance. So we were back to Margo’s question: where did Harding get the money to pay the woman to pose as the grandmother?

  Mark remained at the computer, looking up some additional information that Graham wanted. Or, as he phrased it, “Making sure we have the correct subject in our sites.” The rest of us took our seats again and Graham drew columns on the whiteboard. He headed them ‘Harding’ and ‘‘Vera.’ Below them, he wrote what we knew about each person.

  Harding Vera

  Born 1953 Born 1971

  Age now: 58 Age would have been now: 40

  Old enough to father child Young enough to be his child

  He turned from the board and said, “Reed Harper is very unlikely to be Vera’s father, as Reed is forty-five. You can do the math. Also,” he said, letting a few chuckles pass, “even if he could somehow lie about Vera’s age at the time of the baptism, I don’t think the birth certificate would be incorrect. So we’ve still got Vera’s birth certificate as our lodestar.”

  Mark walked over to the printer, gathered up the newly printed pages and handed them to Graham. As Mark sat down, Graham glanced at the sheets. I leaned toward Mark, my lips inches from his ear, and in a whisper asked what he had just given Graham.

  “I’ll tell you, Taylor,” Graham said, seemingly amused that my cheeks inflamed. “And everyone else. At my request, Salt looked up something for me, something pertaining to Harding Lyth. Anyone want to guess what he found that I think is so interesting?”

  Answers as varying as “Won the pools,” “crack dealer,” and “blackmailing Chad Styles” were offered.

  Graham smiled, shaking his head. “I commend you all for thinking outside the box, but unfortunately you’re wrong. Or, at least, as far as we now know. Salt dug into Harding’s family tree. Does that give you a better idea?”

  “Something to do with Vera,” I said, rather hesitantly.

  “Right. Keep going, Taylor.”

  “Something about their kinship…” I doubted if Vera’s name would be so blatantly obvious as Harding’s relation. I glanced at the board, then at my notes. What else had we talked about in conjunction with Vera? I said, “Vera’s birth certificate. It listed her parents.”

  “And what have they to do with Harding?” He appeared to be amused and serious at the same time, looking at me, waiting for it to connect in my brain.

  I leaned forward, my heart suddenly beating faster. “Jane and John Smith are related to Harding.”

  “Bingo.”

  Margo ran her index finger over her lips, frowning. “But, sir, that sounds like incest! If Jane and John Smith are Vera’s parents—”

  “Don’t get upset. Jane and John Smith—well, let me put this on the board. It’s easier to understand if you see it.” He quickly sketched a section of Harding’s family tree on the board.

  Floyd Lyth – Jane S. Mills Trevor John Smith – Rosemary St. John

  /

  David Lyth – Eva Moore Giles Ryder Smith – Sondra Jones

  /

  Stephen Lyth – Margaret Ryder

  I

  Harding Lyth

  When he finished, he turned back to us, the smile gone from his face. He tapped the marker on the board and said, “I believe Harding took the names Jane S. Mills and Trevor John Smith—leaving off Trevor, as it was a more unusual name and thereby more likely to induce remembrance—for the parents’ names of his illegitimate daughter. And don’t let Margaret Ryder’s name fool you. Yes, by law, she should be a Smith, but she was adopted and kept her real last name. But that makes no difference to our investigation. Who would be likely to delve back three generations to verify that Vera, supposedly a total stranger to him, carried his family names?” He laid the marker on the table and said, “I can’t prove it, but I believe Harding’s grandmother—either Eva Moore or Sondra Jones—posed as Vera’s grandmother. I believe this because I can’t find evidence that Harding could pay her or did pay her. Eighteen years of giving up your own life and looking after a child should constitute some sort of payment.”

  “What do you think Harding did, then?” Margo asked. “She wouldn’t have looked after Vera for free. Nobody does that.”

  “I think the woman consented to care for Vera until Vera reached the age of majority. If you remember, the grandmother left for—or returned to—London right before Vera turned eighteen. I think the woman consented to care for Vera because she was Harding’s grandmother, or some kin to him.” Picking up one of the sheets of paper Mark had handed him, Graham said, “Yesterday when Salt and Taylor searched for death dates of John and Jane Smith, they searched through the records that would correspond to Vera’s parents’ ages. I don’t fault them for not going back two more generations. Hell, how many people, to satisfy idle curiosity, would look for death dates of great grandparents? Pretty brilliant of Harding, I’d say.” He let the silence grow, waiting for us to consider what he had outlined.

  I said, “Do you think Harding nicked the scrapbook out of the village hall, then? If the photographs and names of volunteers go back for decades, he would have wanted to cover his and his grandmother’s trails.”

  “You can ask Harding, but I believe he did. I can’t think of another reason why the scrapbook would be taken if not for the purpose of concealing an identity—and I’m thinking of the name, here. If the name Eva Moore or Sondra Jones is in that scrap book…”

  “If the grandmother lived in the village for that length of time, wouldn’t there be other records of her name? Maybe not the council tax. If Harding paid that, his name would be down as owner.”

  Graham looked at Mark, who returned to the computer. While he searched tax records, I said, “I know the house is north of the village proper, which might be why Harding chose it, but I can’t see the grandmother living here all that time without her name being mentioned someplace. So she didn’t join the Women’s Royal Volunteer Service or the church choir. There are other sources of noted documentation.”

  This time I grinned as Graham said, “The national census.” He called to Mark, who said he’d print out that information. Shoving his hands into his pockets, Graham said, “To bring our younger colleagues up to speed, the national census began in 1801 and is conducted every ten years. I believe there’s a fine—I don’t recall the amount.“

  “One thousand pounds,” Mark said from the other table. “I’m just at that site. One thousand quid levied against anyone not completing it.”

  “With that stiff of a penalty, I doubt if the grandmother or Harding would risk ignoring it. The census fell due in 1971 and 1981. In ’71 the census date was 25 April. Before Vera was born.”

  “But they were living in the house for the following census,” I said, getting excited.

  “Yes. If Vera and the grandmother were in the village when Vera was five years old…” He wrote 1976 and 5 years old on the white board, then turned back to us. “…then the 1981 census should include the grandmother. Vera went missing in 1989. The grandmother moved the previous year, in 1988.”

  “This is our only chance to get the name, then.” My heart jumped into my throat.

  Graham said some
thing about usually pulling up the name from the employee’s national insurance number or the electoral poll, but since we hadn’t had the elder woman’s name…

  Again we fell silent, considering the growing scheme and the complications the players created. Mark made a phone call, nodded vigorously, and wrote something in his notebook. On hanging up, he went back to his computer search and stayed with that for several minutes. When Mark finished he handed Graham the sheets of paper but remained standing by the side of the table. Graham slowly read through the new information, thanked Mark, and announced that the grandmother was Eva Moore. “Harding’s paternal grandmother. Mark also crosschecked that with the village chemist and the pension office. The pension because Eva Moore was the correct age to receive benefits—more than sixty years old and having worked for more than thirty-nine years as a nurse. The village chemist because, being that Eva Moore was the correct age to receive benefits, Mark guessed she might need some type of medicine. The chemist confirmed that an Eva Moore regularly renewed a prescription for high blood pressure.” He laid the papers on top of the small stack on the table, smiling. “What do you think?”

  “I think,” Mark said, “we need to confront Harding with this.”

  Grabbing the printout of Harding’s family tree, Graham said, “Will someone bring along a cotton bud?”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “The paternity test requires a DNA sample,” Graham said.

  He, Mark and I stood in the front room of the vicarage. Harding sat on the edge of the sofa, his face as white as the paper Graham held in his fingers. Fanned out in a small half circle, we could easily grab him should he decide to bolt, but I doubted if he would. We had surprised him. Plus, in addition to believing he had outfoxed us, he probably hadn’t thought he would need a place to hide.

  Graham went over the data we had collected, recounting how we had arrived at the decision that Harding had fathered Vera.

  Harding remained seated through the recital, mute and staring ahead of him. He seemed not to hear Graham say “We can collect one now, if you have a cotton bud, or we can go to the station to do it. It’s painless—we swab the inside of your cheek. Of course,” he lowered his voice, “you have the other option of refusing to give a DNA sample since no one is bringing a paternity suit against you. I just thought you might want to end this forty year charade and take the weight from your soul.”

  There are times, like this, that Graham spoke more like the former minister instead of the current detective. I doubted it would work with the majority of police officers, but Graham’s voice retained what I called a pulpit-like quality, and Margo phrased cleric sparkle. That smooth speaking voice, steady and clear, that held a suggestion of authority or prod to the conscience to do the right thing. I had practiced many times in front of my mirror, striving to attain that manner and sound, but I never could do it. Perhaps a person was born with it; perhaps it developed from self-confidence. However it was attained, I doubted I would ever achieve it. But I was glad Graham had it—it brought many suspects into custody more easily.

  Harding finally stirred and looked at Graham. His face had lost all its hue; his eyes were dull, without sparkle. Shaking his head, he said that wouldn’t be necessary. “You’re right. I’m Vera’s father.”

  Graham seemed to relax. The muscle on the side of his jaw twitched, as it did when he was upset or anxious, and he asked Harding quite gently if he had killed Vera.

  “God, no!” Harding’s denial shot into the air. “Why would I keep her near me so that I could see her daily, see to her welfare, only to kill her, like she was some mistake I had to erase from my life?” His right palm kneaded his forehead and he sighed. “I was eighteen. Had just turned eighteen when it happened—I had an affair with a married woman.” He had spoken this in a barely audible voice, the words coming in broken phrases. Now that he had begun, the avalanche of admission poured forth. Graham made no move to question him, rather letting Harding speak as he wished. “She was estranged from her husband at the time, so she didn’t fear he’d find out about the pregnancy. However, since she was married and separated, she couldn’t keep the baby.” He glanced at Mark, exhaling in a near laugh at his predicament. “Think how that would have helped the husband if the marriage came to a divorce. Anyway, after near panic, we came up with the idea of letting my grandmother pose as Vera’s grandmother.”

  “We found death certificates for your grandmothers,” Mark reminded him.

  “A clerical error,” Harding said, looking ill. “We tried to get it corrected when we found out, but we never could. We had no way of knowing it would come in handy…years later.”

  Mark mumbled something about bureaucracy and computers before Harding continued.

  “You might think Gran couldn’t get away with it, that there’d be too great an age difference and people would think something was peculiar. But, fortunately or unfortunately, early families seem to run in my family. Grandmother Eva was sixty-five but most people thought her to be ten years younger. Gramps died a year prior to my asking Gran to rear Vera, so she gave up her London residence and moved here. I set her up with the house and she and Vera moved in when Vera was five. They’d stayed in London until then because we thought it would seem more logical if Vera was a bit older.”

  “You invented the story of Vera’s folks in Australia,” Mark said.

  “Yes. Vera’s mother gave her name as Jane Smith in the hospital, and I posed as the father. We got the names, as you suspected, from my relatives. I didn’t think they’d ever be traceable. Or that anyone would need to.”

  “Just to satisfy my curiosity…did you pay your grandmother to take care of Vera?”

  “Yes. Oh, it wasn’t much. I don’t make that much. But added to the money she got from Gramp’s insurance and the sale of the house… Well, Gran was satisfied with the arrangement. She wasn’t alone and she had a child to care for, someone to love. Someone to focus her affection on now that gramps was gone. It worked out well for everyone. Especially Vera.”

  “You say you didn’t kill Vera,” Graham said.

  “No!”

  “Did you kill Reed Harper?” He took a step forward and looked down on Harding. “Perhaps Reed learned your secret, threatened to tell everyone. You fought and killed him unintentionally. Is that what happened?”

  Harding shook his head, his eyes shining with fear. “No. I swear to you none of that happened. I took the scrapbook from the village hall because I didn’t want you to find a photo and the name of Grandma Eva, but that’s all I did. I never broke into your work area. That was someone else. I took that greeting card, though. The one left in Gran’s cottage. I-I’d forgotten about it until I you reminded me of it. I don’t know why, but I got worried about the card. I had heard from Gran that Vera was going to send it, thanking me for taking care of her.”

  “She found out you were her father?”

  “Not found out. Gran told her. She thought it was time, that Vera was old enough. Vera deserved to know. She was right. Vera and I had a long talk one afternoon and I told her everything. I’d been afraid she would be angry, but she was very loving and understanding. I think Gran helped prepare Vera for the shock of my statement, you see. Anyway, Gran told me later that Vera was sending me the card, expressing her love and hoping to make up for all the years of missed birthdays and Father’s Days. I-I took it because I didn’t know if she’d written any note in the card that would expose everything. I…well, I couldn’t take that chance of you finding out. Not after all these years and the work Gran and I did.” His gaze left Mark and settled on me. “I admit I made a terrible mistake with this whole thing—the affair, the false names on the birth certificate, passing my grandmother off as Vera’s—but I didn’t kill my daughter. And I didn’t kill Reed.”

  We left him repeating his innocence and begging God and us to forgive him.

  * * * *

  The test results had been faxed to us and were lying beside Graham’s computer when we g
ot back to the church. We had lunched quickly in the pub, putting our discussion of the case on hold in case pub customers might overhear us. The brown stains on the shirt were blood—Reed’s and a second person’s—and only waited another sample to match them to that unidentified someone. Several human hairs, not Reed’s, were found on the shirt; they were stored, pending the arrival of a DNA swab from our suspect. Several other hairs—cat, to be precise—were also found, as were two types of flower pollen. The grains were so few and tiny that we hadn’t seen them when Mark and I had looked at the shirt. We determined they were from a hosta and daylily.

  Graham informed us that PC Oglethorpe had talked to the clerk at the hardware store, showed him the latch key, but could not come up with a person who bought that style of key lately. “I even phoned around, thinking someone had the cylinder of their door lock changed. Nothing.

  “That key’s probably been in the ground for decades,” Mark said.

  I snapped my fingers. “That key wasn’t really found that close to Reed’s body, was it?”

  Graham asked what I meant.

  “I’m not sure, sir, but it was farther from the body, right? If I had killed Reed and dumped him in the wood, and my shirt was bloodied from knifing him, I wouldn’t bury the shirt next to the body.”

  “Go on, Taylor.”

  “Reed’s body seemed to be a hastily buried affair, more of a shallow depression in the earth than a proper burial. The shirt was buried fairly deeply and buried at the grandmother’s house. Mark and I only just found it because we were deliberately looking for it. The shirt, however, was buried at the grandmother’s house. And the shirt was buried there so it wouldn’t be found if the bones were found—the bones, not Reed’s body, because the bones were obviously well buried, like the shirt, to avoid detection. Also, the shirt was buried at a different location either to throw suspicion on Vera or her grandmother, or to avoid detection, as I said. Why look in the grandmother’s garden if the forest is the burial site for the bones or body?”