Kate nodded, turning to lead the way back to the house. She sat on the garden bench.
‘So you were here in the garden all morning. But no one could see you.’
‘They’d have heard me. They’d have heard me, Sergeant. All that – you don’t do it quietly.’ He held her gaze. ‘I have a feeling you’re trying to tell me bad news.’
‘Someone’s died, I’m afraid.’
He shook his head impatiently. ‘You don’t send two police officers to tell an old man someone’s died. You don’t ask for an alibi because someone’s died.’
‘You do if they’ve been killed, Mr Cornfield,’ Jane said.
He jumped as if he’d forgotten she was there. He spoke to Kate. ‘Who’s been killed?’
‘Mrs Barr’s daughter,’ she replied quietly.
He turned to her eyes wide with disbelief. ‘An alibi … Killing … Why on earth would I want to kill Maeve Duncton?’
Chapter Sixteen
‘Thank goodness for DNA and all the rest of the SOCOs’ tricks,’ Dave Allen said, breathing pickled onion at them over his half of mild. ‘It’s just a matter of time before they come up with the answers. Meanwhile, you’re convinced that this Cornfield guy was surprised by the news.’
‘Surprised. Shocked. Disconcerted.’
‘OK, Power, spare us the thesaurus. I get the picture. Jane?’
‘Yeah, gobsmacked, Gaffer. Plus of course, he must have some sort of alibi, assuming he’s telling the truth. He must have made such a racket with his deforestation that someone would have heard him, even if they didn’t actually see him. A day like yesterday, there must have been loads of people wandering round their gardens. That old biddy that lives next door, for instance.’
‘Mrs Hamilton. Yes, I’ll pop round again on my way home,’ Kate said. ‘Plus people in the offices and consulting rooms along the street. And I bet the council logged half a dozen complaints the moment the fire was lit.’
‘No takers,’ Dave laughed. ‘Another half, ladies? No, I suppose you shouldn’t, not really.’ He gathered the glasses and toddled off to the bar.
Kate shifted in her seat. ‘A bit laid back, all this,’ she said quietly, ‘considering we’re in the middle of a murder inquiry.’
‘You mean you’d rather be dashing round like a blue-arsed fly getting stomach ulcers?’
‘Yes, frankly.’
‘Well, I’ll go to the bottom of our stairs! They told us you lot from the Met were workaholic masochists. No, this is how this team works, Kate. You’ll just have to stick a geranium in your hat and get on with it. Each day he’ll take a couple of us down the boozer and hear what we’ve been up to. That way he gets to know us and makes sure we have a break. Mind you, he’ll phone at the weirdest times and expect a sensible answer. That’s his way. Oh, and he’s dead keen on pork scratchings.’
Kate wasn’t about to argue about the weird hours phone calls. And she didn’t think she’d argue about the team-building, either.
‘Do you reckon this Cornfield knew that Mrs Duncton had snitched on him about the will?’ Allen asked, plonking himself down again and slinging crisps on to the table.
‘Thanks, Gaffer. He might have guessed, but neither of us enlightened him,’ Jane said. ‘Not a very big field, I suppose. Her or her brother.’
‘He might think it’s to do with the courts, on the other hand – you know, random checks on handwritten wills: that sort of thing.’ Allen drank deeply. ‘Ah, good drop of mild, this. Banks’s. Have this down south, do they, Kate?’
‘What,’ she asked, laughing, ‘do you think keeps me up here? The mild, of course! That,’ she added more seriously, ‘and the Ruskin pottery, of course. That vase that’s missing – it could be worth about three thousand.’
‘You’re joking! All that for a bit of a pot! But it doesn’t seem valuable enough to crack someone over the head for.’ He raised his glass. ‘Good quick work, though, Kate.’
She’d never known how to accept compliments. ‘That’s what they teach you up here in Brum.’
‘Jesus! Brum! That’s a foreign country,’ Jane said. ‘We’m both from the Black Country, our kid, and don’t you forget it!’
The chirrup of Allen’s mobile phone cut short their laughter. Eyebrows down – eyebrows up once more. And back down. Mouth compressed and relaxed by turns. Oh, yes, there was news, wasn’t there?
‘Right,’ Allen said, stowing the phone. ‘They’ve found summat I’d like you to see, me wench.’
The accent he’d dropped into wasn’t quite Jane’s Dudley but it wasn’t Brum, either. One of these days she’d have to sort out this Black Country business.
‘What sort of summat?’ she asked, as he drained his glass in one swig and got to his feet.
‘Wait and see,’ he said. ‘Jane – see you back at the incident room – right?’
He slung Kate his car keys. ‘Don’t like driving when I need to think,’ he said. ‘Don’t like talking overmuch, either, so don’t be offended, my wench.’
Allen led Kate straight to the bottom of the garden, where the smell from the compost heap was riper than ever. How the SOCOs stomached it, she’d no idea, but they were systematically turning it over and riddling it. She squatted beside a pile of shards. It was all too clear what they’d found.
Almost immediately she was joined by another figure, altogether too tall and lithe to be Allen.
‘It must have been beautiful,’ Rod said almost reverently. ‘Look at those colours.’
‘It was,’ she said. She outlined the original shape with her hands. ‘Simply lovely.’
‘Hang on, you two,’ Allen said, sounding outraged. ‘That could be our murder weapon. It smashed a woman’s head in. You sound sorrier for the bloody vase than for the woman.’
They straightened, simultaneously.
Rod nodded. ‘Any sign of bloodstains? Other … matter?’
So Rod was in his never-apologise-never-explain mode, was he? Fair enough. She’d take her lead from him. And, incidentally, remain silent till spoken to.
One of the SOCOs broke off what she was doing and pointed with a gloved finger. ‘There – and there. There’s more than enough for the lab. And they might like a look at this poker too.’
‘Poker? In these days of central heating?’ Dave asked.
‘She had one of those gas fires that look like coal fires. And – yes – wrought iron fire-irons,’ Kate said.
The three police officers turned back towards the house.
‘So it wasn’t robbery,’ Allen observed heavily. ‘Well,’ he added, brightening, ‘at least we’re back to a narrower field. Maybe my holiday’s looking safer.’
‘So whom do you see in the frame?’ Rod asked.
‘The brother, who stands to pick up an extra six million quid or so and, according to Power, here, was ready to do a quick flit. Sorry, this is Kate Power, on loan from Fraud. And you’ll have gathered, Kate, that this is our Big Cheese – Superintendent Neville.’
Rod smiled easily. ‘Oh, we’ve worked together before. So, the brother or …?’
‘Again according to Kate, the husband’s lying in a hospital bed staring at nothing crying his eyes out.’
‘Out of his mind with guilt? A simple domestic, then?’
‘Could be out of his mind with grief, of course. Or – and we’re trying to access his medical records – just plain and simple out of his mind. What do you think, Kate?’
She awarded Allen more brownie points for being a good boss. ‘I have this comic-grotesque scenario, sir. She’s a very house-proud woman; you can see that. And she’s got this pottery she thinks the world of. And a husband she doesn’t acknowledge in conversation.’
‘Or in bed, apparently,’ Allen interjected. ‘Two very separate bedrooms. Even two separate bathrooms, would you believe? OK, carry on.’
‘Now,’ she said slowly, ‘say she’s just cleaned her kitchen floor and she’s done what my great-aunt used to do if she was in a real hurry; she�
��s put down newspaper to protect it—’
‘Which is what we found. Covered in blood,’ Allen confirmed.
‘And say he wanders in from the garden and makes a mess somewhere—’
‘SOCO will have lifted any prints from the carpets,’ Rod observed. ‘OK. I’m with you so far. She tells him off and he grabs what she values and whacks her with it. And then tries to revive her.’
‘He says,’ Allen corrected him. ‘But if he was cunning enough to hide that pot-thing and the poker, he might have been cunning enough to think of that as an explanation. Forgetting, of course, splatter marks. Kate, get the lab to speed things up.’
Rod would just have to do without her for the conducted tour of the house. She’d gone four or five yards when he called her back. ‘Kate, could you spare me five minutes before you dash off? There’s a problem back at Lloyd House,’ he told Allen. ‘I’ve an idea Fraud want her back.’
‘Tell them to take a running jump,’ Allen said. ‘We need her here. I’ve got my anniversary to worry about, and their pieces of paper’ll wait. In the meantime, I’ll get on to the lab while you two chafe the fat.’
A sudden gust of wind enveloped them in compost smells.
‘Maybe we could talk somewhere else?’ Rod asked. ‘The house, maybe? Dave, you may want to be in on this.’
‘You know my views. And Power can show you the crime scene and such as well as I can. Don’t forget Duncton’s medical file, though, Kate. Or Cornfield’s neighbours.’
‘Gaffer!’ She sketched a half-salute, which he waved away, scuttling to his car, tapping his phone as he went.
‘Enjoying yourself?’ Rod asked, with a quizzical, amused smile.
‘A bit chastened when Dave said that stuff about valuing the vase more than Mrs D. Thing is, Rod, it’s true. She was a greedy, ungrateful woman, and the world may well be a better place without her. The vase was perfect and unique and I’m missing it already!’
‘What’s the other stuff like?’
‘It’s in here, in the living room.’
He walked straight over to the display shelves, snorting. ‘Why on earth didn’t he choose that dreadful orange thing to clock her with?’
Kate joined him, running her eyes across the collection. ‘It’s a funny mixture, isn’t it? Half ugly, the rest stunning.’
‘Exactly what I said last time I was at the Brohan Museum, you know, in Berlin. Half the jugendstil and art deco I can barely live without, the other half I certainly couldn’t live with. I wonder who that little beauty will end up with.’ He pointed to a delicate turquoise bowl. ‘Look, you can almost see through it! And the shape!’
‘The rich brother, I suppose. Unless he done it. I don’t think he’ll like it – not his period.’ She explained about the majolica. ‘And if he did, there’s always the missing sister, Edna.’
‘Do I know about her?’
‘She left home over thirty years ago and no one’s seen hide or hair of her since. Dave reckons we shouldn’t break into a sweat finding her until we’re sure the husband didn’t do it.’
‘How do you feel about that?’
‘Makes sense. I don’t know what the house-to-house had thrown up yet, of course. If a mysterious woman’s been prowling round here it would certainly make life more interesting.’
‘Shall we look at the rest of the place while we’re here? After you.’ They peered into the dining room, big but almost dwarfed by heavy oak furniture. ‘What they’re doing now, the dealers,’ he said, ‘is stripping off this stain, so it looks like wood again, and then waxing it.’
‘What does it look like?’
‘To my mind, heavy oak furniture stripped down and waxed! No, I’m sure we all have our favourite periods, and I’m afraid twentieth century Scottish baronial isn’t mine. OK, shall we head upstairs?’
There might originally have been four bedrooms, plus a boxroom. But it looked as if the boxroom had been converted into a bathroom some time in the sixties. Cramped and full of avocado fittings, it was almost certainly the one Mr Duncton used. Mrs Duncton’s was newly fitted so not a pipe showed, the cupboards full of skin preparations.
‘All very expensive,’ Kate said. ‘Nice thick towels, too – better quality than those in his. Oh, what a sad relationship. Surely everything points to his having done it.’ She caught his eye and grinned. ‘Though I’ll not close my mind to a mysterious woman who learns – somehow – about the loot her siblings may inherit and decides to claim her share. But it’s all a bit iffy and dodgy and presupposes she knows the will’s being contested.’
‘Was Mrs Duncton the sort of woman to phone her up – always assuming she knew where she was – to gloat?’
‘Would you? Wouldn’t you just keep quiet and hope she never got wind of it? And the money was by no means in Mrs D’s hands. We’re still waiting a reply from one of the witnesses, by the way. I’ll check into Lloyd House before I come out here tomorrow, provided it’s OK with Dave. It might have got there by now.’
They started down the stairs.
‘How’s Lizzie?’ she ventured.
‘Who can tell? I heard her in full throat myself this morning administering a rare trimming to some hapless soul. Ben, I think.’
‘Whose name is Derek.’
‘So why does she call him Ben?’
‘A joke. Derives, I gather, from when there was another guy called Bill in the team. But seems to be joke no more, not as far as Derek’s concerned.’
‘Hmm. I take it someone has pointed this out?’
‘Yes. Me. Rod, this is just gossip, and I don’t like gossip. Having been the subject of it.’
‘You and Graham, you mean. These things—’
‘Me and you, actually,’ she said flatly. ‘So it was a bit hard to deny categorically. Anyway, being tête-à-tête like this won’t help our cause.’
‘But we’re friends!’ he objected. Well, even detective superintendents could no doubt be naïve over some things.
‘So you’re going to put a notice in the Police Gazette: Rod and Kate are just good friends?’
He turned to her with an intensity that took her breath away. ‘If ever you let us be more than that, nothing would give me more pleasure than to put an ad in the bloody Times.’ He stopped, listening to voices in the hall below. ‘Now, was there anything interesting in the third bedroom?’ he asked, raising his voice to a more public level. ‘I’m beginning to feel like Bluebeard.’ He pushed open the last door.
Kate peered with him. ‘I suppose you’d call it the guest room, but it’s not exactly inviting, is it? All this blue paint … Plenty of bed-time reading though.’ She wandered over to the shelves that covered one wall. ‘And,’ she added, ‘books to look at, too. Rod! Look at this!’
Rod drove her and her find back to the incident room, staying to join the team in a coffee, though up to his standard it definitely was not.
‘So there we are, ladies and gentlemen – photographs of the whole Barr tribe, plus this character here who may be a suspect too,’ he announced with a flourish.
Dave Allen donned reading glasses and peered closely. ‘So that’s Maeve – or rather, Mavis. So that must be …?’ He turned to Kate.
‘That’s Michael, the one we intercepted in mid-flit. And that must be Edna.’
‘Look at those eyes,’ Rod put in. ‘A bit of a goer, I’d have thought. Or … I’m not sure. She looks … knowing. But vulnerable.’
Kate said, ‘She may be both – according to her brother, she’s a nymphomaniac who was shown the door. This young man here—’
‘The drop-dead gorgeous one?’ Jane asked. ‘God, that’s never Max Cornfield, is it? Hey, it is, too. And is this Mr Duncton? Poor ferrety-faced little git. Which leaves this couple here.’
‘I suppose they must be Mrs Barr and her late unlamented husband.’
Rod had taken another album and was turning the pages slowly. ‘There are quite a lot of gaps in this, as if some have been removed. See? And someone�
��s been cut off this one. Black sheep syndrome, I suppose. You know,’ he added, laughing, ‘I could almost wish that none of our existing suspects could possibly have done it. It’d be interesting to see what’s happened to Edna of the come-to-bed eyes.’
Kate parked outside the Dunctons’ GP’s surgery, wondering if she dared leave the car windows open enough to maintain at least a minimal current of air. After all, it was an extremely couth neighbourhood. But there was car theft in even the most couth areas, so she resigned herself to getting back into an oven. Or what about the sun-roof? Yes, she could leave that open a crack.
She started with a receptionist: could she see either the practice manager or Mr and Mrs Duncton’s GP? The receptionist, for whom the adjective stereotypical might have been coined, responded with an implacable wall of non-cooperation. But Kate had dealt with receptionists before: a very public display of her ID generally worked wonders.
As it – oh, so coincidentally – happened, Dr Smallwood, the Dunctons’ doctor, just happened to have a cancellation, and Kate was ushered in. Not used to GPs who didn’t look up, let alone get up, when she entered the room, she was immediately prejudiced against him. And against whichever medical school had let him loose on the world without teaching him manners: weren’t they supposed to be high on the curriculum, these days?
‘Good afternoon,’ she said crisply, laying the ID ostentatiously between them. I wish to talk to you about Mr and Mrs Duncton.’
She was rewarded with a minimalist glance. ‘Who are you – their daughter or something?’ His gaze returned to the file he was perusing.
What was this rumour about people with Scots accents sounding more intelligent than the rest of the UK?
‘I’m not aware that they have a daughter. Didn’t your receptionist tell you that I’m a detective sergeant from West Midlands Police? I’m one of a team investigating Mrs Duncton’s death.’
This time he looked up properly. Indeed, furtively. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Only inasmuch as someone appears to have killed her. Now, what I would like to do is ask if I might have access to Mr Duncton’s medical record – you’ll be aware that he’s in the psychiatric unit of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital?’
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