The Nursery Rhyme Murders

by Anthony Litton

  Robert Parry, as soon as he’d heard the news had called the police, Sir Ian and “The Plovers”. The agent had then stayed with the elderly gardener who’d found the body until the police could secure the scene. Seeing Desmond, he hurried over. Though very pale and with an obvious shake in his own hands, he was otherwise holding himself together As the two men shook hands, Desmond saw his cousin standing near the tape closing off the scene, and, he shuddered at the thought, maybe the body of his friend. On seeing Desmond, Ian glared and hurried over, even less pleased than usual as he saw the friendliness between the two men.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked irritably, in his high-pitched, strangulated voice. A voice that always faintly reminded his cousin of the sound a friend had once made when that friend had been held by the neck by one hand whilst having his testicles squeezed with the other. Now, his thin, pale featured face with its usual dyspeptic expression enhanced by his cousin’s presence, Ian waited for Desmond’s answer. An answer Desmond didn’t bother to give, instead he asked his own question. ‘Is it confirmed if it’s Alan Rutherford, yet?’ he enquired quietly.

  ‘I don’t know, I think so. From what I could see of the body, it looks it by the clothes. It may not be him, but the police won’t tell me a thing!’ he bleated indignantly. ‘Whoever it is, it serves them right if they did fall off the wall. Bloody trespassers!’

  The two men gaped at him. His callousness shocked them, even used as they were to his ill-nature. Ever since he’d inherited the estate from his father, Eleanor’s brother, a dozen or so years previously, he’d fought a losing battle to exclude everyone but his immediate family from the manor and its grounds. To his fury, the villagers, although respecting his and his family’s privacy in the landscaped gardens immediately surrounding the manor house itself, had happily continued to use the extensive parklands for walking and other pursuits, as had always been taken for granted under both his father and grandfather.

  ‘Oh piss off, Ian. That’s disgusting even for you!’ snapped Desmond, his shock at the morning’s events reducing even more his always limited patience with his narrow-minded cousin. ‘I’d advise you, for your own well-being, if not continued survival, that you’d do well not to repeat that view if it does turn out to be Doc Rutherford,’ he added tartly. It wasn’t an entirely idle warning. If the ill-tempered baronet did sound off along similar lines to others, Desmond knew that, squire or no squire, he stood an excellent chance of being thumped by a number of villagers.

  ‘What the hell was the old foo… – man – doing out here anyway?’ muttered Ian, sensibly not crossing swords with his cousin.

  ‘Bird-watching,’ replied Robert immediately, receiving a nod of agreement from Desmond and a blank stare from his employer.

  ‘He was a keen “twitcher” I think the word is. He’d spend hours crouched behind some bush or other just to get a sight of a bird he’d not come across before,’ explained the agent.

  Ian nodded very briefly, not terribly interested and also feeling increasingly peeved at seeing his employee with his cousin. He’d wished for years that he could sack the man but, wisely for once, he’d realised his own knowledge of and, to be frank, interest in, the estate and how to run it, weren’t up to the task. Even so, he’d always made it clear to Robert that he resented the close ties between the agent and Desmond and Eleanor, and it galled him now to see he and his cousin chatting in so obviously friendly a manner. The baronet suspected, rightly, that it was the agent who’d told Desmond of the old man’s death. Sensing they both wished to talk, he stubbornly held his ground, so the three were reduced to awkward common-places as they stood looking out onto the scene of the tragedy.

  For tragedy it is, thought Desmond, a great wave of sadness sweeping over him, if indeed it was the retired doctor. Approaching his eighties he’d moved to the village as a very young GP and never left. During his long working life he’d endeared himself to everyone by his gentle, caring manner and his determination that his patients would get only the best of care. This extended to the local hospital too, and there was more than one consultant who bore the scars from when the GP felt they’d fallen short in their treatment of one of those patients. He’d retired only a few years previously under the pressures both of increasing ill-health and an exasperated, though loving, son, who’d taken over the practise. Secretly delighted at being, as he put it, ‘booted out,’ he had happily spent most days during the last four years in his passion of bird-watching.

  Ian, getting bored and seeing one of the policeman, already garbed in protective clothing, unwisely stepping out from behind the sheltering canvas of the tent, hurried over to him.

  ‘Where’s Teddy?’ Desmond asked suddenly, realising the old man’s son hadn’t arrived. ‘I’d have thought he’d be here already.’

  ‘He’s on his way. He was out over at Little Markle and there was a major problem of some sort, so he couldn’t leave his patient,’ Robert responded.

  Hell! Desmond knew that having to deal with someone else’s problems when he’d just heard of his father’s death would strain even Teddy Rutherford’s professionalism, which was every bit as strong as his father’s had been.

  ‘Where, exactly, did John find him? At the foot of the wall?’ he asked.

  Robert nodded. ‘Yes or rather a few feet away, but it’s clear he fell from the wall itself,’ he added.

  ‘A bit risky being up there at his age,’ mused Desmond looking up at the remains of the old wall, varying in height from a few feet, to almost twenty at the spot where the fall had happened. The ruined wall, and a part of one tower, the latter a favourite with the local rooks, were all that remained of the original castle. In which, Desmond’s ancestors had held off Cromwell’s troops long enough to annoy them enough to ensure the destruction of their home. Taking the small rise it stood on, which had raised it above the original moat surrounding it, the total distance was over thirty feet. ‘A long fall,’ he remarked. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it was high enough to do so much damage as to make him unrecognisable, though,’ he added.

  ‘That’s what I think. But if it wasn’t the fall that smashed his head in so much - what was it?’ asked Robert grimly.

  Desmond looked at his long-time friend in shock. ‘Bloody hell! So you do think it was deliberate? That he was murdered?’

  ‘I think it’s almost certain,’ replied the other man, flatly. ‘You see, that he was face down and his head badly smashed in, were only two of the reasons we aren’t entirely sure it is the Doc.’

  ‘Go on,’ Desmond urged, as the other man stopped, obviously struggling for words. Robert nodded, took a deep breath then said. ‘He had some sort of mask over his face, hiding it almost entirely!’

  ‘Mask! What kind of mask?’

  ‘We don’t know. John, once it was clear that whoever it is was dead, sensibly touched nothing and neither did I, but you could see part of it, and also the elastic at the back of his head that was holding it in place.’

  Desmond was about to say something when he saw the familiar figure of Colin Bulmer emerge from behind the tenting. On seeing Robert, the Detective Sergeant came over, obviously wanting to talk to him. Desmond, not wanting to appear the voyeur, shook hands, said a brief hello to the chubby officer, who he knew from a previous case, and left them to it. He was not looking forward to telling his mother what little information he had. That her old friend was dead, was bad enough; that he was probably murdered was appalling; that that murder had been particularly savagely and painfully done, made the whole thing so much harder to bear and his skin began to crawl with premonitory horror.

  *

  Both the detectives were hardened to the foul, the shocking, the gruesome, even the horrifying. Despite this, both felt a chill later in the morning. When all photographs, videos and measurements having been taken of the body in situ and the immediate area had been meticulously searched, the Crime Scene Manager finally gave the go ahead for the body to be turned face-up.

&nb
sp; Knowing that the body was wearing a mask of some sort was an entirely different matter to actually seeing it.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ muttered the photographer, a lady known for her dislike of swearing, as they all looked at the happily smiling face on the cardboard covering the old man’s face. Although they’d all half-expected what it was, they still caught their breaths as it became fully visible – and they saw it was indeed a child’s mask.

  What got their attention most of all, though, and caused that breath to actually stick in their throats, was the picture on the mask’s cardboard face. It was of Humpty Dumpty and a Humpty Dumpty who, despite his head, like that of the elderly victim, being smashed from his own fall, was wearing a huge, silly and totally inappropriate smile. In the context of the violent death of its wearer, it was doubly grotesque and unsettling.

  Chapter 3

  ‘When do you think it happened, Simon?’ Robert Calderwood, the DI in charge of the investigation, had asked earlier, as the police doctor stooped to further examine the body, now face-up on the ground.

  ‘An initial view?’ the veteran medic asked, looking down at the corpse. ‘A very, very short while ago, is my first impression. Rigor has scarcely started to lock the body,’ he added, raising and dropping a still limp lower arm to underline his point. ‘When was it found?’

  ‘At a bit before 8am.’

  The doctor nodded, looking at his watch. ‘Just under three hours ago. Allowing the usual two or so hours it usually takes for Rigor to be noticeable, means he’s been dead less than three or so hours. The skin is also returning to its original colour, as you can see,’ he added. Calderwood nodded. He could see that the discolouration of the elderly man’s skin was disappearing now that the corpse had been turned over. The discolouration, or lividity, was caused by the blood settling at the lowest points of the body. Now that it had been turned back face-up, the blood was settling back into the rest of the body. He knew that once lividity had occurred, however, it could only recede for up to six hours after death occurred; after that it was permanent. It was another pointer to the killing having been fairly recent. ‘I’ll need to do more tests back at the lab, to be sure, but I’ll go with the earlier time. I doubt I’ll be out by much,’ the doctor added.

  Calderwood nodded; for now, an approximation was good enough for them to be working with.

  ‘If your tests confirm that timetable, it means that he may possibly have been killed within minutes, at most, of being found by the gardener,’ mused Calderwood. Now the body was turned face-up, he reached down carefully and, putting his gloved hand gently inside the jacket, found a wallet. Flicking it open he saw credit cards with the name Alan Rutherford, confirming what they’d already suspected.

  ‘So, he was murdered in broad daylight, and, apparently only minutes at most before the gardener passed on his way to work.’ He shook his head, later, in disbelief. ‘The killer was taking one hell of a chance, even though it’s a secluded spot,’ he murmured.

  ‘Yes,’ added Bulmer, ‘and it appears not just the gardener, but a few of the other staff at the big house use this route as a short-cut coming and going to work any time from 7am onwards.’

  ‘A huge chance of being seen, then. In one way, it would seem to point to an outsider; someone who thought it was so out of the way that they’d be undetected.’

  ‘Alternatively, a local who was demented enough not to care? Let’s face it that mask doesn’t fit anyone sane!’ Bulmer said, still feeling the sour taste that had risen in his mouth when the grotesque piece of cardboard was first fully exposed to their gaze.

  ‘Possibly. One thing’s certain though, it wasn’t some random, opportunistic killing. The presence of the mask points to a lot of pre-planning. It also shows the mind behind it has an agenda – and until we find out what that is, we’re pretty clueless,’ Calderwood responded quietly.

  ‘Forensics may turn up something,’ said Bulmer hopefully.

  ‘Possibly, but I very much doubt it,’ replied his superior. ‘Whoever did this strikes me as someone very driven, and I get a feeling that we’re not going to be given such an easy own-goal. I doubt there’ll be anything left that’s likely to be of the remotest use to us.’

  *

  The body removed for further analysis, the two detectives stood watching the SOCO, or Scene of Crime, teams as they continued to go over the entire glade inch by painstaking inch searching for forensic evidence. So far, they’d found nothing of obvious interest, though everything, from cigarette ends to used condoms, was being carefully collected for further inspection later.

  Calderwood and Bulmer had just come down from the curtain wall, where the team had found clear signs of recent activity on its crumbling top. Their initial question as to how an elderly man in not particularly good health could climb it, was answered once they walked round to the rear of the ancient grey stone wall and saw that the remains of some of the original steps, though precariously worn and steep sided, were still in place and gave access to the battlements,

  Scuff marks, some very recent, were clearly visible on the crumbling surface where lichen had been bruised and broken by, it was obvious, at least two sets of feet. Casts had been taken, though the imprints were so faint and incomplete that no one expected much from the exercise. The same went for the considerable number of other, separate, marks on the ruined battlements themselves.

  Looking at the various markings on the ancient walls, however, both men were struck immediately by the same observation.

  ‘There’s no sign of a struggle, none at all,’ murmured Bulmer, after a few moments.

  Calderwood nodded in agreement. ‘Which tells us that he was either taken unawares by a complete stranger – unlikely, at this height! – or that he knew his attacker.’

  Bulmer nodded his own agreement. ‘The agent and the gardener both say he was a keen bird-watcher and that’s why he’d be here. It’s a good vantage point, I suppose,’ he said rubbing his wrists from the nettle stings he’d encountered as they rounded the ruined wall. ‘Whoever did kill him, they had to be pretty fit and agile to get up here at all and be strong enough to be sure of then being able to push him off the wall,’ he mused.

  Calderwood agreed as he looked out over the glade and its deep edging of ancient trees; all broad-leaf he noted approvingly, none of the intrusive pine he still bemoaned encroaching on the woodland of his own native county. The clearing was secluded on three sides by ancient oak, ash and beech and away to his left he could just make out the roof of the manor house itself. It was high summer and there were many flowers starring both the banks and the sunlit spots between the old trees. A beautiful place, too beautiful to be scarred by such a hideous death, he thought; though when his time came he’d certainly like to die in such a place. Then again, he mused, smiling wryly, the sheltered dip, now so beautiful, had seen violence and death before when men had fought and died to keep, or to take, the castle itself.

  Having seen all they needed to see, they carefully made their way back down the crumbling steps just as the ambulance arrived to take away the body. The pair discarded their protective clothing and ensured it was bagged for later analysis itself, on the outside chance that any relevant evidence had adhered to it. They’d then watched impassively as the broken body of the old man was carefully lifted onto a stretcher and placed in the ambulance.

  Chapter 4

  ‘Well, that’s the last of the obvious one’s done,’ remarked Bulmer tiredly later that day, as they drove off, leaving the crotchety figure of Dennis Hickwell standing in his doorway and glaring at their departing backs. ‘I swear I was within an inch of smacking the old fool round the head,’ he added, only half-jokingly.

  ‘And if he’d muttered that line about “police harassment” once more, I think I’d have had a slap or two myself after you were finished,’ Calderwood smiled. Because his cottage, although a couple of hundred yards away, was one of the nearest to the isolated spot, they’d interviewed the old villager to ascert
ain if he’d seen or heard anything around the estimated time of the murder. Still nursing a grudge after his run-in with them during a previous investigation, he was somewhat less than co-operative; “a surly old bugger” was one of the politer terms Bulmer used to himself.

  According to the old man, he’d been with his pigs in his orchard and seen nothing, heard nothing, and therefore knew nothing. In the half an hour it took to get this out of the old curmudgeon, it became clear to both men that even if he did know something, it would take a crowbar to prise it out of him.

  In truth the detectives would, if asked, be hard-put as to which of the day’s interviews they’d least like to do again. They’d both agree, however, that it would be between the old villager and those of the Squire and his lady.

  ‘If you must, but you can scarcely think that I or my wife had anything to do with the old man’s death,’ were Ian’s dismissive first words.

  ‘At this stage, Sir Ian, we’re interviewing everyone who may have the slightest bit of information which may shed some light on what’s happened. Interviewing someone isn’t an indication of whether we think they were actually involved, or not,’ replied Calderwood politely.

  ‘I see. Alright then, but I hope it won’t take long, I have some important guests coming for luncheon – including the Chief Constable,’ he added, with deliberate emphasis.

  Oh well, a slight variation on the “The Chief Constable is a friend of mine” line thought Bulmer, gritting his teeth, while managing to keep his round, usually good humoured, face inscrutable. It was a feat which earned him the amused respect of his superior, who was fully aware of his subordinate’s left-wing leanings. Calderwood himself also loathed such puffed-up conceit, though was better able to take it in his stride. He did, however, feel sorry for the two villages of the estate, being at the whim of someone so obviously unfitted for the role of being their squire.