I was no longer in command of the situation. It was getting
away from me.
‘How long have you known? Don’t tell me you picked it up in your crystal ball?’
She laughed. ‘I’ve always known. I’ve known since I first set eyes on him. Half the village knows.’
David made an inarticulate noise. Ellen gave him a smile. ‘ Well, all the old-timers that is. Not that I’m one of them, but I’m a good guesser. Ask the real villagers who’ve lived here all their lives. They know a Cremorne when they see one. Or when they don’t.’ Her smile was broad and toothy like the smile of small crocodiles.
‘You haven’t lived here all your life,’ I said, remembering what I had been told.
‘Not lived here, not as an adult,’ said Ellen, switching the smile my way. ‘But I stayed here with Auntie as a kid. I played with the boy that was David and this wasn’t him. Knowing is knowing, you don’t forget. There’s a feel about people and nothing changes that.’
‘Why did no one say anything?’
‘Why should we? Not our business if he wanted to pretend to be a boy that was dead.’
‘You knew that too?’
‘Course I knew.’
‘You know too much.’
‘So I suppose you are now accusing him of murdering Chloe Devon because she knew about it too?’
I looked at her thoughtfully. ‘ You know, you can be really annoying.’
‘It’s just because you don’t like the truth.’
‘Is it the truth?’
‘Yes, without doubt.’
‘Now don’t go on about the varieties of truth there are,’ I said irritably.
‘You are in a paddy.’
Crick broke in. ‘Of course, Bea knew who we were and who we were not. She just laughed.’
‘What’s your real name?’ I asked the other one … what else to call him. ‘ Not David too?’
‘Nicholas,’ he said reluctantly. ‘But David was my second name, I have a right to use it.’
May even have given the two of them the idea of impersonation, I thought. ‘You didn’t take it too seriously, did you?’ Ellen asked me. ‘ Not get it out of proportion?’
‘She did,’ said Crick.
Ellen grinned. ‘ I can’t give them an alibi or anything like that, but I can give them a character reference. I’ll stand up in court and say what good boys they are.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
I said it reluctantly. Cut off from my usual professional support, I made a fool of myself and I didn’t like that much.
‘You’re not convinced, are you?’ said Crick.
‘I don’t know. I’m still thinking.’
Ellen Bean made her contribution, still with a grin. ‘ Cheer up. Good comes out of making mistakes. And you’re honest. Once you look at things straight, you’ll see. You’ll see the truth.’
She wasn’t patronizing me, just one professional talking to another.
I have had my come-uppance meted out to me once or twice in my career, some occasions being more hurtful than others. This was one of the worst.
The truth, I thought. ‘ Do you know it?’
‘Of course not. I’d tell you if I knew. I do tell you what I know.’
David and Crick were both watching me with observing eyes and I saw that beneath their surface good manners and geniality, they were tough, resolute men. It wouldn’t do to underrate them. I thought they could take in me and Ellen Bean with no trouble.
Just as Ellen herself seemed able to manipulate me.
I looked at the bags in the hall. ‘Are you still thinking of going
away?’
David looked at Crick, then answered for them both. ‘ Maybe.’
‘Stay around,’ I said. ‘That’s my advice.’
I walked out of the house, back to my own. I looked longingly towards the Incident Room set up in a long trailer outside the church, realizing once again how much I missed my colleagues and their support. But I had bowed out of that for this case for the time being and could not go back on it. I was used to working as part of a team, but now I was on my own.
There remained Clive Barney, but he had not been in touch again. Probably he was not as interested in me as I was in him.
Another jolt to my self-esteem. It was a pleasure to get back to my own house to meet the uncritical eyes of my cat and dog.
No messages on the newly installed answerphone, no post. Not even a newspaper.
I was the forgotten woman.
I had not realized before how much I depended on my professional life to bolster up my private persona. I had been one single person once, now I was splitting into two parts. No wonder people feared retirement: half of what they were disappeared.
I fed both animals, considered eating myself but decided that I was not hungry enough to bother. I sat there, longing for the telephone to ring or someone to bang on the door. No one did. Even the animals disappeared to their own corners once they had eaten.
It was obvious that as well as being a non-person, it was going to be a non-day. Irritatingly my ankle began to throb.
I could clean the house, I could do some cooking, I could iron a dress and shirt I had washed yesterday. I could drive into Windsor or Reading. Or even Oxford. I had friends in all three towns who would be glad to see me. I did none of these things.
I didn’t want to go out into the village. The encounter with Crick and David had destroyed my pleasure in it, tearing away the superficial layer of pleasantness to reveal a smirking dislike underneath. I didn’t even like my house so much now.
Avery unappealing side of myself was appearing. Self-pity can only go so far and then you should give it a kick. Come back, Charmian Daniels.
Without thinking about it, I was on my feet and making my way outside to the cellar steps. Since I had last taken a look down here, and I looked at it more often than I admitted, some official hand had replaced the old seal on the door with a new one. I was annoyed, not liking what felt an invasion of my house.
I tore off the seal, to hell with it, and went in. The cellar smelt sour as if the oxygen in the air had been sucked out and replaced by something rancid.
Dried stale blood and body perhaps. I felt sickish, which is something murder scenes do not usually do to me as I have seen a fair number, most with the body still in situ.
But that had been my business, I could put a skin between my feelings and what I saw. Now I could not, this was part of my life. I had never known Chloe Devon, I had never known Bea Armitage, but I had known Thomas Dryden and been with him when he died.
I walked in to look around. It had been tidied up. Nothing had been taken away but the cast-off kitchen objects had been lined up neatly against a wall. There were the old kettle, the griddle with a hole in it, the rusty fire extinguishers, there were two, real vintage stuff, and a box of empty bottles, they were all there.
I am sensitive to places, although this is not something that I have boasted about in the past to my male colleagues.
I stood in the middle of the cellar, trying to pick an idea, a sensation, out of the air. The foetid air made me gag. I made myself take three deep breaths. The smell seemed less bad.
An idea did come. Or rather, a question: Why had my cellar been used?
I wondered what answers Clive Barney’s team were coming up with, because there ought to be one, even if it was only that the killer had whims. I could ask him, it was something we hadn’t discussed. Probably we hadn’t discussed anything as much as we could have done. The underground conversation between us had been going on too strongly.
I jerked round, I could hear someone outside.
A light baritone voice hailed me. ‘Hello? Can I come down?’
I recognized the voice, it was Tim Abbey, the vet. ‘I’m coming up.’
He was standing there in the weak sunlight, the rain having stopped, looking comfortably normal and down to earth. Contact with animals must bring out the best in you, I
thought. I felt relief at seeing him. Welcome back to the normal world, Charmian Daniels.
‘Saw you go down and thought I’d have a word with you.’ He saw my surprised look. ‘No, that’s not true, I wanted to see you. How’s the dog?’
‘He’s fine now.’ I closed the cellar door behind me. I pocketed what was left of the seal.
‘Oh, good.’ He considered, then went on: ‘I met Ellen Bean and she told me she’d wormed him, and I was a bit worried. I don’t trust Ellen’s remedies. I always wonder what she puts in them.’
‘He seems all right. I couldn’t say about the worms.’
‘She likes to boast to me how much better her remedies are. She’ll kill someone one day.’
‘Would she do that?’
He seemed to realize what he had said and stopped. ‘ I didn’t mean that. By accident perhaps. Not on purpose, she wouldn’t.’
I wanted him to go away now, so that I could think about what he had said. Could Ellen have killed Bea Armitage?
And did it have to be by accident? Ellen was a strong woman physically; I could see her doing all the murders and letting the ferrets help, but there was something about her, a resonance I got back from her character like the ring from a piece of fine china: she was a good person.
But good people do kill, when they feel justified …
Ellen Bean had been close to Bea Armitage, by her own account. If it was going to be Ellen Bean as the killer it was never going to be an easy murder to comprehend or solve. She could have gone on to kill Chloe and Thomas Dryden to hide what she had done.
It seemed fantastic but murder is never humdrum, it always has its own surprises.
‘People do kill for the best of reasons, as well as the worst,’ I said aloud.
Tim looked surprised.
‘You put animals down for their own good.’
‘That’s different,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how I got into this conversation. Want me to come to take a look at the dog?’
‘I think he’s fine.’
‘Right. I’ll be off then. Just don’t let Ellen Bean give you any potions. She’s very heavy handed with her natural drugs. Thinks just because they come from vegetation they aren’t dangerous.’
‘I’ll stick to Dr Harlow.’
‘She’s had many a brush with him for doctoring his patients.’
‘She has?’
‘But then everyone has a brush with him at times, he’s that sort.’
‘I’ll remember.’
I waved him off in his jaunty white van, then returned to the sitting room. I stroked Benjy’s head, who stirred in his sleep to wag his tail. He wasn’t dying.
I thought again about Ellen Bean as a killer. I could conceive of her killing Bea Armitage by accident. But Bea’s death from unnatural causes was at this moment pure conjecture, based on Thomas Dryden’s words.
Ellen might have killed Bea out of love. Euthanasia is the euphemism commonly employed here.
Or she might have killed Bea because she owed money.
All guessing, but it was interesting, now I thought about it, that neither Crick nor David nor Ellen herself had indignantly rejected the idea that Bea had not died naturally.
It was as if they knew something or suspected it. Secret, unacknowledged, possibly unconscious.
Perhaps the whole village knew. It almost certainly knew more than I did, more than it was saying.
Ellen might kill for love, but not for money. I couldn’t make a picture of her killing. Not even by accident.
I stood up and spoke to the room.
‘I reject you as a killer, Ellen Bean. Not because I like you, I’m not sure I do, but you don’t ring true as a murderess.’
I walked towards the window, ‘I trust you, Ellen, I offer you my trust, freely and willingly. Because you speak, even if sometimes maddeningly, with an honest voice.’
I felt better after I had said that aloud. I felt even better when I saw Clive Barney getting out of his car.
‘I didn’t expect you. In fact, I was just thinking of phoning you.’
Today was an untidy day. He had made an effort yesterday at the Dryden house.
‘I knew where you were.’
‘I had a question.’
‘So what were you going to ask me?’
I went over to where I kept a few bottles. ‘ Let me give you a drink first. Whisky?’
‘Thank you.’
I handed over a glass of malt whisky. I took some white wine and soda water. ‘I think it’s rather that I’m going to tell you something.’ I don’t think he wore his tie crooked on purpose, it just happened to move sideways every day with a life of its own. ‘I am coming to believe that this whole business started much earlier off than we thought.’
‘Oh? How much earlier?’
‘I believe Bea Armitage was the first victim.’
He sipped the whisky for a few minutes. ‘Good stuff,’ he said absently. ‘And why do you think so?’
I told him: what Thomas Dryden had said, the missing money as a motive. How Chloe and Thomas Dryden might both have had some knowledge dangerous to the killer.
He frowned. ‘It’s guesswork.’
‘Of course it is. But all the best answers start with a good guess.’
‘I agree with that.’ He sounded as if he did not agree with much else. ‘And any suspects?’
‘It could be Crick and David Cremorne … He isn’t, by the way. Not a Cremorne. Bea Armitage certainly knew about their little act but they claim she thought it was a joke. They may have had money off her, though. They say not but who knows?’
‘Anyone else?’
‘Ellen Bean, she could have killed Bea but not for money. If she did it then it was for love.’
‘You must tell me about that sometime,’ he said.
I gave him a look that stopped him; he wouldn’t joke like that again.
‘There’s no evidence that Mrs Armitage was murdered.’
‘But if she was, and Chloe Devon and Thomas Dryden knew something about it, then that is a motive for their killing. And so far there is no other motive. Do you know of a better one?’
‘I still hanker for Damiani for Devon,’ he said. ‘ That’s my good idea.’
‘He’s not my favourite man either, but he may not have killed anyone.’
‘Reluctantly, I agree. Largely because I can’t get anything on him … If Mrs Armitage was killed, then it was in such a way that it looked natural.’
‘We shall have to find out, won’t we? Mary Erskine is her next of kin. I think she would back an exhumation.’
‘I don’t know, it needs thinking about.’
‘I would do it.’
‘Yes, you would. But it’s up to me.’
I was out of it, he was telling me silently, the responsibility was his. I had, in any case, fought my way to a freer and more powerful position than he now had. I was older in experience and years … I hoped he wasn’t telling me that too.
‘You’ve gone out of your depth in your time too.’ I was thinking about the episode which had brought about the enquiry I had bowed out of. It showed a certain free spirit, I thought.
‘Yes. I know what you mean. By the way. Theo Kayser is taking your place. He’s a decent sort, he’s been in touch. I think it may all settle itself.’
‘Is that why you came here today?’
‘I had some bits of news to pass on.’ Then he said, awkwardly but with some determination: ‘I would have come anyway.’
The ‘ I can’t keep away’ syndrome? Surely not.
‘I wanted to talk things over with you. You have a wonderful knack of clearing my mind,’ he said, clarifying that point. Oh fine, I was an intellectual stimulus then. Why did it not please me more?
‘So?’
‘Mostly negative, I’m afraid, but a couple of small items of interest.
‘Dryden died, as we knew, from the blow to the head, but he’d been damaged about either after the blow or before. Under
neath the cuts were bite marks. From a small animal. Can’t be identified. Neither the cuts nor the bites were mortal.
‘He bled a bit, but we can’t trace his path to the churchyard back beyond the bushes and trees just beyond the church. He came that way and probably stumbled and fell about but one of the roads to Reading flanks that area. He must have come that way but we can’t find any signs. Unlucky that no one saw him. So we are having a job finding out where he could have come from. No one claims any knowledge in the village, of course. Although he was well liked and I think they would help if they could.’ He added thoughtfully, ‘ I think so. We’ve asked house to house.’
‘He could have been dumped from a car.’
‘Possible. Nothing on his clothes to indicate where he’d been but they are still working on them in the lab and something may yet turn up … Usual things in his pocket. He hadn’t been robbed.’
‘That never seemed a likely motive.’
‘No, but we had to think about it.’
He added: ‘The same forensic team have been handling Dryden that worked on Chloe Devon. Makes things easier for comparisons and so on. Pathologist has had a look at the bites on Dryden, they seem similar to those on Devon.’
‘Be strange if they weren’t.’
‘Yes, we took some specimens from Dryden’s face.’
I winced at the images evoked.
‘She – a young woman, very good at her job – found traces of disinfectant on the bites … a common or garden sort, based on a concentrated form of iodine.’
So that was what Rewley had been talking about. He always got on to things before anyone else. Contacts like his were worth having.
‘I don’t know what to make of it. You don’t seem surprised.’
‘I am,’ I said quietly. ‘ I’m thinking about it … That’s one item, so what is the other?’
‘It’s the knife cuts … very free and easy, so the path man says, couldn’t do better himself. Good brush-work.’
‘Does he mean a professional?’
‘Not necessarily, but someone adept with their hands … Someone with strong wrists, a good eye, and a certain nerve.’
‘Any suspects?’
‘We’re running over the inhabitants of Brideswell with a comb,’ he said. ‘ Doctors, vets, butchers, artists and craftsmen.’
Whoever Has the Heart Page 18
