A Well Dressed Corpse

by Jo A. Hiestand

  “In which direction were they headed?” I said, ignoring the comment.

  “Oh. Downhill, toward the pond. That what you wanted to hear?”

  Not necessarily, I thought, but said, “Yes. Thanks.” I picked up the coffee mug, uncertain if I felt better or worse knowing that I hadn’t imagined the dog pursuit. But what had happened to the dog after I blacked out?

  * * * *

  The creation of the well dressing panels appeared to be going smoothly Tuesday morning, despite yesterday’s disturbance in the village hall. The heavy, water-soaked frames had been filled with clay and now rested horizontally on sturdy saw horses. Boxes, sacks and buckets of natural items cover every tabletop in the hall. The designs had been pricked onto the sheets of waxy paper and they, in turn, covered the smooth clay. Like yellow tablecloths on picnic tables, I thought, gazing at the activity from the hall’s doorway. Buckets overflowing with cut flowers stood at the front of the room. Blues, reds, yellows, oranges, purples, whites. Hydrangea, cornflower and iris, rose and phlox, coneflower and peony, marigold and coreopsis, wisteria, lilac and buddleia, daisy and anemone. A prism of color, their petals waiting to be plucked and plastered like roof shingles on the moist clay. And, like roof shingles or tiles, the entire design would be created from the bottom of the frame to the top. Rain would run down the upright decorated panels, shed like shingles and thus increase the panels’ longevity.

  I walked up the hill, wondering what Graham had lined up for today, smiling because Adam and I had overcome our difficulties.

  The booths for the various events were taking shape. A few were being erected on the green near the pond and some were going up on the grass near the church. I could hear the men assembling the stage for the main entertainment, the sounds of hammering and sawing echoing up the hill. Camera in hand, Perry Bowcock followed an apron-clad worker as she walked around to the far side of the church to dispose of a wheelbarrow full of dead leaves and spent flowers. Three people were pulling weeds from around the metal lid covering the well opening near the south side of the church. I wondered where the other village wells were; since I’d been busy with the cases I hadn’t had time to look. But from past experience, I assumed one would be at the old school and perhaps one by the market cross on the village green. Common enough places for village water supply four or five centuries ago. A panel would adorn each well, decorated in the flower petals, lambs wool, broken eggshells and other natural objects to depict the tableau that was part of the year’s theme. It was a beautiful way to give thanks for the water supply, jerking us out of our complacency so we never took fresh water for granted.

  I left the sounds of carpentry behind and walked into the incident room, but after pausing long enough to praise the gardeners on their cleanup effort.

  Mark looked up from the book of news articles and called me over to the table. After asking if I still felt all right—and being assured that I did—he pulled out a chair for me. I sat and read the caption beneath a photo he pointed to.

  “Miss Christine Stevenson, Queen of Cauldham’s 2008 Well Dressing Fete, draws a winning name from the cake booth. Assisted by Fete director Reed Harper, Stevenson will carry out the duties of Festival Queen until next year’s event. Stevenson said she is looking forward to judging the Harvest Home displays in September.”

  I looked at Mark. “What’s this about?”

  “You must have been conked on the head last night. You don’t remember about Chris Stevenson?”

  I nodded, a phrase coming back to me. “The teenager who left the village four months ago. She was pregnant.”

  “Right. She went to a bed-and-breakfast in Inverness. Her uncle, Perry Bowcock, told us about it.”

  “She had an affair with ladies’ man Reed Harper.”

  “But she got pregnant just this past year.”

  “Oh, well, that certainly makes it all right,” I said, my voice hardening.

  “No, it doesn’t. I mentioned that because the affair had started when she was sixteen—when she became the village’s well dressing queen.”

  “Probably how they met, then.” I pulled the book closer and read the other captions on the page. The photographs chronicled Chris’ year as queen. They showed her presiding over the Harvest Home vegetable judging, the lighting of the Guy Fawkes Night bonfire, the ribbon cutting of a plaque dedication. I angled the book back toward Mark. “Nothing remarkable.”

  “No. But we know how Chris came to Reed’s attention.”

  “Who’s this in this other photo?” I asked, looking over Mark’s shoulder at the book.

  “Kevin Harper.”

  “I thought he looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. What’s he doing?”

  “Handing Chris a bouquet. Her reign has ended, evidently. Some other girl’s being crowned fete queen. In fact, it’s a picture of the entire court.”

  I read the names aloud. “Clarise Millington, Queen; Ilsa Harper, Princess; Angela Lyth, Princess; Suzanne Hampton, Rose Bud.” I stared at Mark. “This is 2009.”

  “So?”

  “Three years ago Clarise Millington was nineteen. A bit old to be Queen.”

  “Ilsa wouldn’t have been old enough. She’d be fourteen. Don’t you have to be sixteen?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe villages relax the age rule when there’s no one running for the queen position.”

  Mark turned the page. “Why all the interest?”

  “Just thinking about rivalries.”

  “No one from that happy group has turned up dead, Brenna.”

  “Guess you’re right.” We drifted over to the group of chairs and sat down.

  Graham, I noted ecstatically, didn’t ask about my misadventure of last night. Perhaps no one had told him, which made my day. I didn’t want him chastising me again.

  After wishing us all good morning, Graham began our discussion of Reed’s murder by mentioning Marian’s parting remark. “I mulled that over last night as I strolled through the village in the rain.” He glanced at me, then returned to his topic. “I lost some sleep wondering if the cheating spouses comment could apply to cheating parents. After all, we have Harper Lyth fathering Vera out of wedlock. Could Harper’s daughter Angela have found out about her half sister? Did she think Reed, being quite accomplished in the affair department, helped her dad dispose of Vera? Reed and Harper met frequently, talked privately. Did Angela think they were plotting Vera’s demise? I considered it for half a second before throwing it out. It made no sense. Then I considered who else might have had reason to kill Reed.

  “Maybe Jenny Millington, since she had attempted suicide over her love for him. But that didn’t feel right either. The emotions are opposite, in my opinion. You either have remorse over the love that never blossomed, so you attempt suicide, or you’re so bitter and filled with hate that you kill that person. You don’t waffle back and forth between the two emotions. So I wondered about motive from another angle—not kill Reed over revenge for a lost love or anger over the village fete, but a personal revenge for a victim.” He leaned against the edge of the table, letting the silence build and giving us time to think through all the players. “Clayton was involved with Vera, but there is no link between Vera and Reed, so who else might have had a desire to avenge a victim?”

  The photograph flared up in my mind. A smiling, friendly teenager, so eager to make her way in the world, so desperate to achieve her goal. I said, “Chris Stevenson.”

  Graham nodded, his eyes on mine. “Why?”

  “Chris knew Reed through her volunteer work with the well dressing event. She was queen several years ago. She probably spent a good deal of her reigning year doing things with Reed, since he was the director of the fete. Newspaper interviews, together at village events like Shrove Tuesday pancake races and mummers plays, and candle auctions. Whatever the village specifically has. I’m not blaming her. Reed Harper seems to have been a charming man. It would be hard for a young girl to withstand such charm and attention…and the promis
e of career help.”

  Mark snorted, recrossing his legs. “We’ve got the well dressing association, then, with Reed’s burial.”

  Graham nodded slowly. “The clay and daisy petals plastered on his arm.” He stood up abruptly and walked around the table. “That’s a tempting sign post to Chris as the victim, but are there any others who might be associated with that? Either the flower specifically or well dressing?”

  We considered the Harpers—Marian, Kevin, Ilsa and Edmund—but none of them had the link to the well dressing. And that appeared to be the link, for why else would the murderer take precious seconds to adorn Reed’s body with that mute hint?

  Ilsa had a bit stronger candidacy as Reed’s killer, but she had been helping Uncle Kevin with the shop inventory that night.

  Angela had no motive—she already had the coveted job as master of ceremonies. Neither did any of the others we considered. Lynn Warson seemed better to fit the role of Vera’s murderer if we thought Lynn could be angry with Vera. But Clayton had married Lynn, hadn’t even betrayed her with Vera, so where was the motive? If Lynn murdered anyone, it would be Clayton for keeping Vera’s lock of hair all these years.

  Seating himself on the table, Graham again asked us to consider the motive angle. I couldn’t get past the daisy petals and clay on Reed’s skin. I said so, and Graham asked whom I associated with those items. “You may also consider the body recovery site,” he reminded me. “A site just doesn’t occur. It has to mean something to the killer.”

  “Well, we know it’s all tied together with the well dressing,” I said. “Not the recovery site…the flower and clay. It means something to the killer.”

  “But that’s at least half of the village,” Mark said.

  “Not when you take into account the victim—Reed—and the victims of his transgressions.”

  “Why link Reed with his own victims?”

  “Because that’s what the daisy and clay tell us, Mark. Reed was killed due to someone he victimized. Reed’s killer wanted revenge for Reed’s abuse of a woman.”

  “When you take all that into account,” Graham said, “there really aren’t that many.” He listed the known victims on the board. “Also, when you link these names with a person who feels strongly enough to avenge a woman who Reed’s tossed aside, you get…” He stood there, his gaze traveling across the group.

  “Perry Bowcock,” I said, the image of Reed’s body and the words of Perry swirling in my mind. “Uncle Perry.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, sir, for one thing—and it just now occurred to me because I saw him only minutes ago—he’s the village photographer.”

  Graham looked amused and asked me to explain.

  “The woman in the village hall spoke of Perry’s photographs, he himself told us he was official photographer and, as such, went about the village. He could have come upon his niece and Reed, not necessarily doing anything physical, but maybe he overhead them talking.”

  “Reed smooth talking Christine, you mean.”

  “Yes, sir. And if Perry overheard this and knew Reed’s history of telling a woman anything to get her in bed with him…” I looked at Graham, wondering if I were completely round the twist with this idea.

  “If Perry did hear Reed promising the moon, Perry might certainly have become angry. He’d want to put an end to such piffle and rescue his niece from Reed’s empty promises.”

  “Mark and I talked to Perry Saturday night. He didn’t seem at all vindictive about his niece’s death. Just a sad man calmly relating what had happened. His demeanor threw me, yes, but more than that I was misled by his words. Remember, Mark?”

  “Yeah,” Mark murmured. “He said he would have taken a great amount of pleasure in strangling Reed.”

  “Yes. That’s what fooled me. I took it for a regret and nothing more. Like we all say ‘I wish I would have known that before I accepted that lunch date,’ or something like that. We all say things like that. So I just shoved it to the back of my mind. Until I remembered that Reed was knifed.”

  I hadn’t time to consider Perry’s verbal game, if it had been deliberate to throw Mark and me off the track. Setting us up to believe in his innocence and the pain of a still-grieving man. Maybe it was as I had stated: a way we all talked, nothing more than a fanciful wish. ‘I would have.’ So many things in my life were ‘would have,’ I thought, then I got up and went with Graham, Margo and Mark to arrest Perry.

  We didn’t surprise him this time. He appeared to be ready to talk, to accept that he had been found out. Mark and I sat again in his front room, but Graham led the questioning. He was all business, his voice unemotional and hard sounding as the pounding of a judge’s gavel. Perry tried his verbal dance at the offset, but one look at Graham’s stony expression convinced him to change tactics, and he confessed quickly.

  “Ordinarily I harm no one or nothing,” Perry said, clasping and reclasping his fingers. He sat in a low, upholstered chair, facing Graham. Mark, Margo and I bracketed Perry, alert and ready should he try to bolt. He spoke slowly, emotionally, a crack or threat of tears underlying his words. I would not be tricked this time, I told myself. I would listen to each word, consider the meaning and not let myself be fooled. I found myself sitting straighter, my back ramrod stiff, my jaw clenched. Perry would not assail me with pity.

  “I live quietly and leave people to their own lives. But Reed Harper was a cancer in this village. Whatever he touched he contaminated and emotionally, if not physically, killed. He was a disease in my niece’s life. He destroyed her happiness and spirit, sucked the joy from her life. He killed her as surely as if he had actually done it himself.”

  Perry sat back, the emotion of talking about Chris threatening to consume him. He took a drink of water before continuing. “You want to know why I killed Reed Harper.”

  Graham nodded, his eyes bright in the morning sunlight.

  “Because he seduced her,” Perry replied simply. “Because he didn’t do a thing about it afterward, didn’t even offer to support the child. And Chris was pregnant—there was no mistaking that. She’d gone to a clinic where they did a pregnancy test on her. She had the written report and showed it to him. He laughed.” Perry pressed his lips together and stared out of the window, toward the Harpers’ house. “Can you believe what kind of scum would do that? He laughed. Laughed to her face. Chris ran to me, crying, scared. She didn’t know what to do.” He turned slightly, looking at me. “I’d heard snatches of what he used to tell the others. Walking around the village, taking photos…well, you do see and overhear things. Not that I did it on purpose. But I knew what Reed would promise a woman in order to get what he wanted. I’d been around enough that I knew Reed would say the same sort of thing to Christine. I told you about that Saturday night, miss, when you asked about it.”

  “Yes,” I said. It was all I could think of to say.

  “I chose the wood to dump the body in,” Perry said, looking back at Graham. Maybe it was easier to talk to Graham—another man, someone who might understand the male viewpoint. I might bring Chris too close to his mind. “I chose the wood,” Perry explained, “that section of the wood ’cause Marian and I used to walk there as children. We played there. It had been a part of our family estate, you know, stretching back to the Plantagenets.”

  “You and Marian are cousins,” I said, amazed that I had forgot.

  “Yeah. That tract of land had been sold in the 1970s, but we still felt it was ours. We’d still take nature walks through it. We felt a special tie to the place not just because it used to be in the Good family but also because it housed the caretaker cottage—the one that Vera lived in. Anyway, I got Reed into my car on the pretext of talking about an idea I had for the fete. It was so easy—he was such a megalomaniac. I could tell he was already thinking of how he could turn it around to look like he’d thought of it…and he hadn’t even heard my idea yet. Anyway, I drove him to the wood, got him out of the car on pretext of showing him my idea for a
land development. He thought he knew the area, so he walked ahead of me, as though he were in charge. When we got to the spot, I stabbed him. Stabbed him in the back so he wouldn’t see it coming, so he’d suffer like all the other women he’s cheated on and lied to and tossed aside. I hid the weapon—it was a long-bladed letter opener. I drove up to the Howden Reservoir the next day and buried it in the forest. I-I could take you there, if you need me to. I’ll never forget where it is. It’s haunted me ever since.” He took a breath, as though remembering his hike through the hilly wood. “Right before I buried him I smeared some of the well dressing clay on him and I pressed daisy petals into the clay. It was for Chris, you see,” he said, standing up as Graham moved toward him. “’cause it’s Chris’ birth month flower. April…” He took a breath as he fought back a sob. “Ironic, that, the daisy. But it symbolized Chris—Innocence, Youth, Purity. And there’s the other meaning for the daisy—goodbye.” He looked at me, his eyes brilliant with unshed tears. “I crammed one into his mouth because…well, because daisies also don’t tell.”

  Graham arrested Perry while Margo handcuffed him. They led Perry from the house, Mark and I following after. Mark ran ahead and opened the door of the police car and I locked up his house.

  Edmund Worrall, Reed’s half brother, was out walking Poe, his black lab. A lab…a large dog. A black dog. Edmund nodded at me, said something about hoping no one had complained last night about Poe getting loose and running about the village, and walked toward Cauldham Hall and the wood. I nearly ran after them, wanting to hug Poe in my great relief, but couldn’t seem to budge. I leaned against the front door, watching until the man and dog had disappeared around the bend in the road, wondering if that was anything akin to how legends began.

  But I’d keep that contemplation for my next day off. I wasn’t able to think that hard. I pocketed the house key and walked to the edge of the porch, staring at nothing, yet seeing flashes of scenes from the past days.