A Death to Record

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Mother,’ said Gordon dully.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s been a fatality,’ Den told her. ‘Sean O’Farrell died some time this afternoon.’

  ‘But … what happened to him?’ The woman darted wide-eyed looks from one face to another.

  ‘We believe he was attacked,’ said Den carefully, wanting to pre-empt any suggestion of suicide. ‘Could I ask you both where you were between two and four this afternoon?’

  ‘We were at work,’ said Mary promptly. ‘We came home together, arriving just after five-thirty.’

  ‘Do you work at the same place?’

  Mary shook her head. ‘I teach in Okehampton and my mother’s a counsellor in North Devon. Barnstaple, to be exact.’

  Den frowned. ‘So how come you share a car?’

  ‘She comes home via Okehampton and collects me. It saves petrol.’

  Den wrote it all down in his notebook. It gave him some satisfaction to inform them, ‘Mr Hillcock will be coming with us now, to assist us with our enquiries. My colleague and I have been speaking with Mrs O’Farrell. She did ask whether Mary might be able to go and sit with her this evening. She’s all alone and apparently she isn’t well …’

  ‘You’re arresting Gordon?’ the older woman interrupted, incredulity bursting from every pore.

  ‘No, no,’ said Den. ‘He isn’t under arrest. But—’

  ‘I hope you can get him back in time for the morning milking,’ said the mother grimly. ‘It’ll be chaos otherwise.’

  Den wondered why one of these women couldn’t stand in. He was reminded of Lilah’s mother, who could no more have milked a herd of cows than masterminded a military campaign. Maybe his former girlfriend had found Dunsworthy more of a home from home than he’d imagined.

  ‘We’ll ask Lilah,’ said Gordon, flatly, unnervingly. ‘I’ll have to phone her anyway. That’s assuming I won’t be allowed home again tonight?’ He directed an unfocused gaze at Den. His words came slowly, as if fighting to the surface through layers of tightly-packed emotion. Den noticed the man’s hands were shaking, despite the clenched fists, bunched against his legs. Hearing Lilah’s name issuing from Hillcock’s lips gave Den a deeply painful moment; the casual proprietary tone was scarcely bearable.

  ‘Gordon,’ his mother began, making a small movement towards him, which was quickly arrested. ‘I can phone Lilah for you – ask her to come and do the milking tomorrow. And what else can we do?’ She pulled at her hair, dislodging a clasp that held it tidily at the back of her head. It was an oddly disturbing gesture. Den watched the tresses slowly tumble down her neck and shoulder, making her look girlish and vulnerable. It seemed quite impossible that she could be old enough to have produced Gordon. At the moment, she looked ten years younger than him.

  Hillcock sighed raggedly. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘It must have been an accident,’ Mary put in decisively, as if the words could make it true.

  Nobody responded. Den felt a sudden desire to let her hold on to her delusion for a little while. The facts were blatant enough to survive a little blurring on this first evening.

  But there were things to be done. ‘Mike.’ Den nudged the constable and tilted his chin at the stairs, running up from the far end of the hallway. Gordon sighed again. ‘They want me to change out of these things,’ he explained, in reply to his mother’s questioning look.

  ‘You haven’t had your tea,’ Mary said. ‘We kept it warm for you. You’ll be hungry.’

  ‘I don’t want it,’ said her brother, and headed for the stairs.

  Den squared his shoulders. ‘Constable Smithson will go with you and collect up everything you were wearing this afternoon. We’ll need it for forensic analysis.’ Gordon shrugged as Young Mike followed him upstairs.

  Gordon’s mother was not what Den had expected at all. A long, straight back, slender neck and skin that managed to suggest a recent afternoon in summer sunshine, rather than early January pallor. Her hair was a natural-looking light brown, and the only lines were those you’d expect in a woman just over forty, though she had to be in her middle or late fifties. A pair of reading glasses hung on a chain round her neck, and she wore a richly patterned woolly jumper over a pair of winter-weight trousers. The house, he had noticed, was not particularly well heated. She struck him as possessing great strength. A subtle confidence; an expectation of being listened to. But perhaps he’d only got that impression from the information that she was a counsellor – a position that sounded authoritative, even though he didn’t know precisely what it meant – nor how to spell it. Was she a dignitary on the Council with a ‘c’, or a purveyor of counsel, with an ‘s’? She didn’t look like a widow, although Den knew that Gordon’s father had died some years earlier. She betrayed none of that slight air of cautious hesitancy, that unspoken loss of trust in a world that could remove the husband once depended upon. As one of Den’s aunts had memorably remarked, on the day of her husband’s funeral, ‘Even if you never liked him much, you’re bound to miss him.’ Feeling effectively widowed himself these days, Den thought he could understand loss as well as anybody now.

  ‘Are you the only two people who live here, apart from Mr Hillcock?’ he asked, as the silence threatened to become uncomfortable.

  ‘There’s Granny as well,’ Mary told him. ‘She’s virtually bedridden. She has a room upstairs.’

  He asked for their full names and details of where they could be contacted, filling a few lines of his notebook with the answers. Mary gave her name as Mary Cecilia Fordyce. Den raised an eyebrow. She grasped his meaning instantly. ‘I’m divorced,’ she said. ‘The marriage only lasted a year and then I came back to live here.’

  ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘Ten years,’ she said tiredly. ‘But I suppose Fordyce is still technically my name. I never bothered to change it back to Hillcock, though most people seem to use it when they refer to me.’

  ‘And are you the owner of this property?’ Den asked Claudia.

  ‘No, my husband left it all to Gordon. Mary was married at the time of his death, and he – wrongly, as it turned out – assumed she wouldn’t be interested in a share. But since her divorce she’s been treated as an equal here. We’ve made sure she doesn’t feel excluded – haven’t we, darling?’ Den watched for Mary’s reaction, which came in the form of a smile that looked to him more like resentment than gratitude.

  ‘You two were out this afternoon, but the old lady was here, I presume?’ he asked. ‘Could I have a quick word with her, do you think?’

  Claudia and her daughter exchanged a glance which looked to Den like shocked amusement. ‘I hardly think …’ Claudia began.

  ‘She isn’t … I mean … she’s fit to be questioned, is she?’ What he wanted to ask was: Has she got all her marbles?

  ‘She’ll talk to you all right,’ Claudia smiled. ‘She’ll be only too pleased, I’m sure. I was just wondering how long you’ve got.’

  Mary joined in with a smile of her own and Den felt he was somehow being teased. Was the poor old girl really so lonely and neglected that she’d keep a policeman chatting all night?

  ‘How old is she?’ he asked.

  ‘A hundred and one,’ said Mary, with obvious satisfaction. He frowned, not certain he could believe her.

  ‘She’s my husband’s mother,’ Claudia explained. ‘Lived here all her life.’

  ‘Bright as a button,’ Mary supplied. ‘But you have to let her tell you things in her own time. Quite honestly, I’d recommend you come back tomorrow. She isn’t going anywhere.’

  Except maybe to her Maker, thought Den. Every morning’s awakening must seem like a minor miracle at that age. He wondered whether he could delegate the questioning of Gordon Hillcock’s granny to Mike, or one of the others. Maybe one of the female officers would make a better job of it. This was threatening to turn into a serious case involving the whole team, unless there was a quick confession from Hillcock. ‘Yes, I think we can leave her for the time
being,’ he agreed coolly.

  Claudia began to talk more freely, in an apparent effort to sound forthcoming and helpful. Den had met this behaviour before – women in particular, unnerved by the presence of the police, could babble on unceasingly. ‘I’m sure you’re aware of how very bad times are for farmers at the moment,’ she said, her face pushed forward earnestly, the loose hank of hair swinging untidily. ‘The milk price has dropped shockingly and there’s nothing we can do with the bull calves except shoot them. Sheep and pigs are just as hopeless. We’re surviving on Mary’s salary at the moment, with a bit of help from me. Not that I earn very much. The farm’s rather a part-time commitment for both of us, I’m afraid. I suppose Sean was shot?’ she concluded abruptly, looking Den right in the eye.

  He found himself wanting to keep her on his side. ‘We can’t say anything about the cause of death until after the post-mortem,’ he explained. ‘Our men are searching the premises for evidence at the moment.’

  ‘Poor things. It’s freezing out there.’ Her voice was warmer than her expression, with the usual hint of Devon accent overlaid with Grammar School diction. She clearly wasn’t stupid, even though she had apparently married and had her first child while still significantly short of twenty. What did she think of Lilah? he wondered. How on earth was a third woman – fourth, if you counted the granny – going to fit into this household? His resentment against Gordon stirred again. What was he playing at, surrounding himself with all these women like some sort of feudal lord?

  It was as if Claudia Hillcock had heard his thoughts and decided to cut through any further prevarication. ‘Do I know you?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Are you local?’

  ‘I’ve lived near Okehampton all my life,’ he told her. ‘You might have seen me a few times.’

  ‘I have,’ she remembered. ‘With Lilah, last year. You’re the policeman she used to go out with.’

  It felt like an accusation. The stab of guilt was ridiculous, but he felt it just the same. He grinned weakly and nodded. ‘Small world,’ he mumbled.

  ‘What?’ Mary put in thoughtfully. ‘I knew I’d seen you somewhere. It must have been at some village thing with Lilah. But surely … won’t that affect your judgement? I mean, I shouldn’t think you’re very fond of Gordon, after what happened. If you’re going to be investigating this … incident, how can we be sure you’ll be fair about it?’ Two pairs of female eyes scrutinised him boldly. Then Mary put a hand over her mouth, as if astonished at her own temerity. Claudia fiddled nervously with an earlobe.

  Den paused, unsure how to reply. Police training nudged him towards a stiff adherence to protocol and a brief deflection of their anxieties. But compassion for their situation forced him to take a more human line. ‘I’ll tell my superior the whole story,’ he assured them. ‘It’ll be up to him whether I’m kept on the case or not. Whatever my involvement might be, we’ll make a full and fair investigation.’ He watched their faces as he spoke, seeing denial, anger, fear – but not the violent indignation that might have been expected if the idea of Gordon as a murderer had been truly unacceptable to them. They knew the man, and already Den believed they knew him to be capable of murder.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It began to feel as if he was never going to get away. Den’s need to acquire early reactions and essential facts, as well as taking care of the pastoral aspects, was inevitably time-consuming. He’d been a fool to think he could manage it alone, without Mike to assist. The close avoidance of an error of judgement made him uneasy – what else might he be overlooking or dodging?

  ‘Now what are we going to do about Mrs O’Farrell?’ He tried for a friendly smile at Mary. ‘Can I leave it that you’ll see she’s all right?’

  Mary’s nostrils flared in a quickly-suppressed distaste, but she nodded cooperatively.

  ‘And … would you mind explaining just what it is that’s wrong with her? She seems to be some sort of invalid.’

  ‘Invalid?’ Mary repeated, with a glance at her mother. ‘Yes, I suppose you could say that. She’s got ME – or chronic fatigue syndrome as they want us to call it. It’s the most bizarre illness. Absolutely nothing to see physically; doctors can’t find anything wrong. But she says she hurts all over, and every time she does more than walk from one room to another, she gets terribly weak. It’s been like that for six years now. She almost never leaves the house any more.’

  ‘I see,’ was all Den had time to say, before Young Mike and Gordon Hillcock made an entrance into the living room. Mike carried a second sealed bag, bulging with what Den assumed to be Hillcock’s newly-removed clothes. Both men looked awkward and Den wondered whether Mike had insisted on staying in the room while Gordon changed. ‘We’ll need your boots as well,’ he said.

  ‘They’re in the porch,’ said the farmer. ‘The big green ones.’ Mike went to fetch them, fishing in his pocket for yet another sealable bag as he went.

  Den followed him out. ‘Did you find any guns?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Just the one,’ Mike nodded. ‘It was stone cold. Forensics have bagged it, but I don’t really see the point. Any fool could see the bloke wasn’t shot.’

  ‘At least it means nobody can use it from here on,’ Den said. ‘We’d better check the cottages as well. There’s still the people next door to the O’Farrells. They need to be questioned.’ He rubbed his head, thinking he should have called for the DI ages ago.

  They went back into the house. ‘We’ll drive you down to Mrs O’Farrell’s,’ Den offered Mary. ‘It’s very dark out there – and cold.’

  Mary seemed startled, but then resigned herself to the inevitable. ‘Let me get my coat,’ she said.

  At the last moment, mother and son became visibly aware of the significance of what was happening. Gordon stopped dead as Claudia made a small sound, part moan, part gasp. He turned back to her, his eyes wide. ‘Say goodnight to Granny for me,’ he said urgently. ‘But don’t tell her …’

  His mother twitched her head sideways, as if to dodge this unwelcome message. ‘Darling—’ she choked. ‘You will be all right, won’t you? I don’t think …’

  Gordon’s eyelids came down slowly, as the urgency died out of his face. ‘Don’t worry, Ma. You won’t have to visit me; they can’t keep me there very long. It won’t be like last time.’

  Den’s incautious sniff of amazement made them both smile. ‘We don’t mean he’s been in prison before,’ Claudia explained. ‘Last time it was hospital. He was ill. And it was a very long time ago.’

  In the car, which Mike was driving, Den asked briefly about the occupants of the second cottage, writing awkwardly on his knee while balancing the torch to shine on the paper, as Mary filled him in. Mike drove slowly, but it was barely two minutes before they pulled up outside the cottages. ‘Ted Speedwell, tractor driver,’ Mary told him. ‘He lives there with his wife, Jilly. They’ll be wondering what’s going on.’

  Den forced himself to look at Hillcock, twisting to peer into the shadows of the back seat. The engine was still running. ‘I’d better have a quick word with them,’ he decided, again acutely aware that he had embarked on a far larger investigation than he was capable of without more senior involvement. Here was a third man living on the estate; a man who also had access to all the billhooks and pitchforks and slicing, stabbing tools that lay to hand around a farm.

  ‘You needn’t worry about Ted,’ Mary said, before she got out of the car. ‘Much as I would like to throw suspicion onto somebody other than Gordon, even I would have to admit that Ted Speedwell would not hurt a fly.’

  ‘Turn the engine off,’ Den told Mike. ‘I might be a while.’

  First he went into the O’Farrell cottage with Mary and asked the lethargic Heather whether Sean had kept a gun. She pointed out a shotgun in a locked case in the hallway. ‘The key’s in that drawer,’ she told him.

  He extracted the weapon and returned to the car with it. ‘This one’s cold as well,’ he reported back to Mike.

  Then he hea
ded for the further cottage. ‘Don’t be long – it’s freezing out here,’ Mike called after him.

  The door was answered by a woman who threw it open with no sign of wariness. ‘Mrs Speedwell?’ Den asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said in a rich Devon voice.

  ‘Could I come in a minute? I’m Detective Sergeant Cooper. There’s been some trouble here. You’ve probably been wondering what’s going on.’

  ‘I told Ted. I said, something’s happened up in the yard, you better go and see what’s to do, I said. But he had his boots off, and said ’twas too cold to be going out again for a bit of nosy-parkering. Mr Hillcock’d call if us were needed.’ She burbled on as Den wiped his feet and ducked through the doorway, to follow her into the snug sitting room off the tiny hall.

  ‘Here he be!’ she announced, as if she’d produced her husband by some magic trick. Ted Speedwell was sitting in a deep, old armchair, a fluffy grey cat on his lap and a rheumy black labrador at his feet. ‘Ted – ’tis the police come to tell us what’s been goin’ on.’

  The man looked up at Den, squinting slightly, one hand on the arm of the chair, beginning to push down as he sought to lever himself out of it.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s been a fatality,’ Den said quickly. ‘That is, your neighbour, Mr O’Farrell, has died. We have reason to believe that his death was as a result of … violence against him.’ Den cursed the clumsiness of his own words, kicking against the necessity not to say more than was strictly demonstrable as fact.

  ‘You’re telling us someone’s killed Sean?’ Mrs Speedwell demanded. ‘Well, whoever would believe such a thing?’ She seemed part angry, part thrilled by the news; her eyes bulged and she clasped her hands together under her chin. ‘Ted! Did you hear that?’

  ‘I heard,’ the man confirmed, and slumped back again into the depths of his chair. Den examined him. A small man, wiry perhaps, but with little suggestion of any real strength. His head seemed over-large for his body, the grey hair thinning. He seemed to be nearing sixty, his wife a few years younger.