Beside a Narrow Stream

by Faith Martin

  Hillary nodded. She’d just bet he was. ‘And you became friends?’

  ‘Well, of course,’ Stella Berdowne laughed falsely, and her nails went up to her hair, patting the curls, fluffing, smoothing. ‘He was a friendly young man. Interested, and so supportive of my work. Throwing pots isn’t all that easy, and the market for original works isn’t all that great.’

  ‘You make a living at it, Mrs Berdowne?’

  ‘Oh, well, not really. My husband is a market research analyst for a major pharmaceutical company.’

  Hillary nodded, her face perfectly straight. ‘We’re looking for anyone who saw Mr Sutton on the thirtieth of April, the day before May Day. Did you see him that day?’

  Stella was already shaking her head before she’d finished speaking. ‘The last time I saw Wayne was for my regular Friday afternoon lesson.’

  ‘He came to your studio, you said?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Do you happen to know how many other students he had, Mrs Berdowne? Or their names? Did he visit all of them at their own homes, or did some of them go to his place?’

  As she expected, the question made the other woman very uncomfortable, and the restless fingernails went into overdrive.

  ‘Oh, well, I’m not sure. I mean, I didn’t like to pry. I know he saw several other students, that’s all. Some, to be honest, didn’t sound very exceptional. One woman in particular he was rather annoyed with.’

  ‘Oh?’ Hillary asked sharply. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure. Wayne didn’t talk about his other students very much – it wouldn’t have been nice, would it? But I got the impression that this woman wasn’t very talented. From what he let drop, I got the feeling she was jealous, you know the type. A bit of a drinker, maybe, clinging. I mean, a man like Wayne, he was very good-looking, and charming, and had a warm heart. He didn’t have it in him to turn anyone away.’

  ‘But you don’t know her name?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t.’

  ‘Or where she lived?’

  ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘And can you tell me where you were on the evening of the thirtieth, Mrs Berdowne? And please, don’t take offence, it’s a question we’re asking absolutely everybody,’ Hillary assured her, seeing her start to protest.

  Stella Berdowne ran a peach-painted nail across her lower lip and then shrugged graphically. ‘I was throwing a little dinner party for Duncan. My husband. He had some Danish party over – his company’s got contacts over there. Or were they Swedes? Anyway, I did a nice little salmon and dill mousse for starters, duck of course, then tiny little wild-strawberry tartlets with home-made elder flower ice-cream afterwards. I spent a year taking cookery lessons when I got married. I think it’s so important to be able to help your husband in his career, don’t you?’

  Hillary thought briefly of her corrupt, womanizing, late and totally unlamented husband, and smiled widely. ‘Of course, Mrs Berdowne.’

  *

  Back upstairs, Hillary wondered how much Mrs Berdowne paid their victim for her ‘lessons’ and supposed that however much it was, her husband had been well able to afford it.

  Then she made a note to assign Frank to check out the Berdowne woman’s alibi, sighed, and returned to her stack of witness statements.

  Keith Barrington jotted down the last of the list of names that Gemma had just rattled off over the phone, and said, ‘Got it. How do you want to split them up?’

  Still sitting in her car outside the technical college, Gemma Fordham scanned a report signed by DCI Philip Mallow. ‘I’ll take the 1st page,’ she said distractedly into the mouthpiece of her mobile. ‘You take all those on the 2nd.’

  Barrington assented amiably and hung up. He checked the list, then radioed into dispatch for a current address on a Mr Marcus Lyman.

  Hillary Greene tossed aside the last statement from the house-to-house inquiries, glanced at her watch, and decided it was time to get out of the office. She grabbed her bag and checked her papers, deciding to interview the owner of their victim’s cottage, a Mrs Margaret Eaverson.

  Driving back to Deddington, she turned the radio station to a golden oldie channel, smiling as The Move began to sing all about a ‘Night of Fear’. Outside, the sun baked the tarmac, causing a shimmer of heat-haze to dance before the car. On the pavements, pedestrians dressed in shorts and skimpy tops looked cheerful and oblivious. She wondered what Claire and Davey Sutton were doing right now, and doubted that the bright sunshine would be making any difference to their world.

  As always with a murder case, she could feel the heavy weight of responsibility sitting on her shoulders, and when she parked outside a large, detached house in the older part of Deddington village, she scanned it carefully. According to Monica Freeman’s father, the woman who rented Wayne Sutton his cottage was another donator to the Wayne Sutton fan club and benevolent society.

  Which made her definitely suspect.

  The gardens were large and well-kept, with late-blooming cherry trees, flowering, pruned bushes, and manicured lawn. A tiny fountain tinkled merrily away by a large and shady porch, making Hillary feel instantly cooler. She rang the bell and the door was answered almost at once, as if the occupant had been expecting her, and had been lurking closely nearby.

  ‘Yes?’ the woman who held open the door was short and dumpy, with a red sweating face and white hair that clung to her forehead and cheeks.

  ‘Mrs Eaverson?’ Hillary asked, uncertainly.

  ‘She’ll be out by the pool, luv. Come on in,’ the cleaning lady stepped back and closed the door behind her. ‘Straight on down the tiled corridor, luv, and on into the conservatory. The pool’s tacked on, off to the right. Gotta get on with these banisters.’ So saying, she retrieved a tin of furniture polish and her orange cleaning rag and set to on the wooden staircase.

  Hillary followed the directions easily, pausing only to admire a grandmother clock ticking away melodiously in a small recess. The conservatory was full of overpoweringly fragrant mock orange blossom, and the instant, sticky heat made Hillary gasp. She was glad to step through to a slightly less warm, half-glass, half wooden construction that housed a large, aquamarine pool.

  The water itself was undisturbed, and Hillary quickly spotted a woman lying on a sun lounger at the far end. Beside her was a long glass filled with ice, a pale lemon liquid and fruit, with one of those jaunty little paper umbrellas to cap it off. She was reading a paperback novel, but glanced across curiously at Hillary as she moved around the pool to join her.

  ‘Hello, did that gormless charwoman of mine let you in? I keep telling her to escort visitors herself, but I might as well talk to the wall. If you’re selling something I’m not interested. You’re not a burglar are you?’

  Hillary grinned and held out her ID card. ‘No, I’m with the other lot, Mrs Eaverson.’

  ‘Madge, please. Everyone calls me Madge. Oh my, the coppers no less.’

  She made no move to get up. She was one of those women with short honey-coloured hair, heavily tanned faces and laughter-lines around the eyes, who could be any age between thirty and sixty. She was wearing an apricot-coloured swim suit with a matching beach jacket, and still had the figure – just about – to carry it off. A pair of sunglasses loitered on the table next to the drink, which smelt faintly of rum, pineapple and coconut.

  It’s all right for some, Hillary thought, with just a pang of envy.

  ‘You’re here to talk about Wayne, of course,’ Madge Eaverson said, her light and bantering tone suddenly gone. ‘It was a bloody tragedy what happened to him. He always managed to cheer me up. My old man is a bit of a grumpy bugger, but Wayne was always good for a laugh. And he was talented too. I asked him to paint that mural for me,’ she added, pointing to the wall opposite. Because it was on the same side as the door through which she’d entered, Hillary had had her back to it during her brief walk to the lounger, and now she turned and looked back.

  And blinked.
>
  The wall was covered with flowers, but flowers that were actually comprised of individual cars. The petals consisted of Cortina’s and Rovers, racy old Morgans and sleek elongated E-type Jaguars. Leaves were petrol station pumps, stems were hose pipes. Stamens were exhaust pipes and the blue sky had painted over it, very lightly, what looked like a map from a road atlas.

  ‘Clever, isn’t it?’ Madge Eaverson said admiringly. ‘It’s an ecological statement as well as a stunning, visual work of art. Cars and petrol, our obsession with travelling in comfort, is actually poisoning the air. Plants breath in carbon monoxide, and give out oxygen as a waste product? Did you know that? I didn’t, until Wayne told me.’

  Hillary, who had known that, blinked again. The whole effect managed to be somehow both hideous and eye-catching at the same time. She didn’t like it, but she could tell that some art critics might rave over it, whilst others vilified it.

  ‘I understand you’re the owner of 18 Westside Court, Mrs Eaverson?’ she said, turning her back firmly on the mural.

  ‘What? Oh, Weeping Willow Cottage. Yes. I used to live there, before I got married. Then I had it done up and rented it out. But it got a bit down-at-heel after fifteen years of tenants, and when the last lot left, I was going to sell it. Then I met Wayne, who was living in a caravan outside his parents’ house, for Pete’s sake, and so I let him have it instead.’

  Hillary, forced to stand simply because there was only the one lounger, scribbled somewhat awkwardly into her notebook. ‘You say you “let him have it”. Do you mean he paid no rent?’

  Madge laughed. ‘Oh, peppercorn only. Wayne, like most real artists, was always short of cash.’

  Hillary somehow rather doubted that. She’d read Keith Barrington’s report, and when he’d visited Wayne’s home, he’d found expensive stereo equipment, the latest wide-screened digital television, and a wardrobe full of designer gear. Even the bathroom cabinet was full of the most expensive toiletries.

  ‘How long had he been living there, Mrs … Madge?’

  ‘Oh, who knows. Time has a way of getting away from you, have you ever noticed that? Must be, what, two years by now. Maybe even more.’

  ‘And can you tell me what you were doing two nights ago? Say between six and midnight?’

  Madge Eaverson rose one, artfully plucked eyebrow and smiled. ‘Am I really a suspect?’

  ‘We’re asking anyone who knew the victim the same, standard questions, Mrs Eaverson.’

  ‘Madge, dear, please. I insist. It makes me nervous to have a copper keep calling me Mrs Eaverson. Especially since I don’t have an alibi. I was alone here all evening, I’m afraid.’

  ‘So your husband wasn’t home?’

  ‘Good grief no,’ Madge snorted. ‘He practically lives at the office. Don’t know why, when he doesn’t exactly get paid overtime. Still, he’s a manager, as he keeps on telling me, and has to set an example for the junior execs who want to rise to the same giddy heights.’ She shrugged as if to say, ‘what-can-you-do?’

  ‘And your husband works where?’

  ‘Collings. Out by Cropredy. Largest agricultural supply company in five counties.’ She rolled her eyes, ‘As I’ve been told, every day for the last fifteen years of marriage to the man. What I don’t know about tractors and combine harvesters isn’t worth knowing. Can I get you a drink?’ She reached for her own glass and gave it a shake, making the little paper umbrella dance.

  ‘No, thank you. Did you have any callers that night, or speak on the phone with anyone?’

  ‘Don’t think so. Look, seriously, why on earth would I want to kill Wayne?’ Madge Eaverson said, sucking on the straw in her drink and leaning back on her lounger. ‘He was a sweetie pie.’

  Keith Barrington, after six months in Oxfordshire, was beginning to know his way around the county, and being told that Marcus Lyman lived in a small village called Souldern worried him not at all.

  Now, parking under a magnificent red-flowering hawthorn, he paused to smell the air and could even identify the predominant scent as belonging to wallflowers, growing, not surprisingly, beside a nearby wall.

  He’d first come to the countryside from the bright lights of the city in the depths of winter and, at first, the grey overcast days, and the monochrome scenery had depressed him. But with the spring had come a rejuvenation, and now he wasn’t so unnerved by mile upon mile of green fields, or the surprises that Mother Nature threw at you, all of which were so much more apparent out here than in the capital. And when a hovering kestrel in the field nearby suddenly plummeted to earth, he didn’t even wince as he imagined some small rodent being dispatched.

  Marcus Lyman lived in a compact, neat and modern little house, with a spick-and-span, unimaginative garden. Keith instantly put him down as a more ‘Ale’ than ‘Arty’ member of the club. So when Mr Lyman answered the summons to his door a few moments later, Keith wasn’t surprised by the rather broken-veined red nose or large beer belly.

  ‘Mr Lyman? DC Barrington. I’d like to talk to you about the Ale and Arty Club? You may have heard in the local press that one of its members, Mr Wayne Sutton, has been murdered?’

  ‘Oh ah, right you are. Yes. Come on in.’ Marcus Lyman was a grey-haired man, pear-shaped, and moved in a rolling walk. He led Keith to a small, neat front room, that was musty and obviously little used. He instantly opened a window, then sat down in an armchair, indicating to Keith to do the same.

  ‘Wayne Sutton. He’s the good-looking one, always going on about honesty in art whilst ogling the ladies, yes?’

  Keith Barrington nodded. ‘Probably, sir.’ He showed him a photograph of the victim, and when the witness nodded in recognition, carried on smoothly, ‘So, what can you tell me about him?’

  ‘Not a lot, really. I didn’t like him much, truth to tell. But then, I wasn’t in his gang.’

  ‘His gang?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lyman said, then frowned. ‘How to explain it? The club’s a bit of a mish-mash really. I do calligraphy,’ he paused, to see if Keith knew what that was, and when the red-haired youngster nodded his head, carried on brightly, ‘and there are others in the group who throw pots, some who do creative knitting, one chap who does metal sculptures for garden centres, that sort of thing. More arts and crafts, you might say. Then there’s the paint crowd. They see themselves as the real “artists” as it were. Anyway, we all have a love of good booze to create a sort of bond between us, and we all take it in turns to “find” a good pub, and every two weeks we all troop to this pub for a booze up and talk art.’

  Keith nodded, to show he understood the set up.

  ‘But, like I said, somehow the painters have formed a sort of splinter group, within a group. As if painting canvases is the only one true art, and the rest of us are just artisans. And that Sutton was the worst of the lot. Bit of an artistic snob if you ask me. Not that he ever bothered to bend my ear much. I was the wrong sex. Wayne was only interested in something if it wore a skirt.’

  Keith nodded. That certainly sounded like their victim all right. ‘And can you tell me the names of any of the “skirts” he was particularly interested in, sir?’

  Hillary smiled at Tommy Eaverson’s secretary, and waited whilst she slipped through a door to the boss’s inner sanctum to give him the bad news. She doubted that the woman had ever had to tell the MD of Collings International that a police officer wanted to talk to him before. Unless, of course, it was about security arrangements, or pranged cars or lost wallets.

  ‘You can go right through,’ the secretary, a twenty-something with dyed red hair and an eye-catching diamond ring on her engagement finger, said brightly. Hillary murmured a thanks and slipped past her, into a fairly modest-sized office with a large window overlooking a carefully landscaped cluster of yellow-bricked buildings.

  ‘Mr Eaverson?’

  ‘Yes. Please, sit down. What can I do for you, Detective Inspector?’

  ‘I’m heading the Wayne Sutton murder inquiry, Mr Eaverson,’ Hilla
ry said, sitting down, but never taking her eyes from his face. He was a thickset man, wearing a well-cut grey suit. His hair was silver, rather than white, and his somewhat small grey eyes were almost the exact colour of his suit. She saw him wince slightly at the mention of Sutton’s name, then he shrugged.

  ‘Then you should be talking to my wife. He’s her friend, rather than mine.’

  ‘I’ve just come from your home, Mr Eaverson,’ Hillary replied, not missing the antagonism implicit in his choice of words. ‘I need to confirm where you were on the night of the thirtieth. That’s not last evening, but the evening before.’

  ‘Oh?’ Eaverson said flatly.

  ‘It’s purely routine sir. Your wife tells me she was home, alone. Is that true?’

  ‘I expect so. I was here,’ Tommy Eaverson said, a shade reluctantly. ‘There’s always a lot of work to be done, this time of year. Winter can be a bit slow. Then, just when it’s needed the most, farmers discover that their machinery has broken down, or they need new seed drills or whatever, and suddenly there’s a massive rush.’

  ‘Did your secretary work late too?’

  ‘Of course not. She keeps regular office hours.’

  ‘So you were here alone?’

  ‘More or less. Young Greenstock was here for a time. I think he left about seven, seven-thirty. Look, I can assure you I didn’t kill the man, Inspector.’

  ‘Your wife tells me he paid only a peppercorn rent on Weeping Willow Cottage.’

  Tommy Eaverson flushed. ‘Nothing to do with me. That’s Madge’s property. Always was. Now, if there’s nothing else, as I said, I really am busy.’