by Bill Kitson
Alison’s candid account explained a lot. I admired Robert for the way he had come through the nightmares that had beset him, but reflected on how lucky he’d been to have such a wise and understanding mentor.
Having done justice to the splendid breakfast Mary provided, Eve and I set off for Barton-le-Dale and our appointment with DS Holmes. On the way we discussed what we’d learned, and I was pleased that Eve’s judgement coincided with mine.
The detective appeared subdued, I thought, as he greeted us and led the way to the cubbyhole he used as an office.
‘How did you get on with your bosses?’ I asked. I’d have been a great success in the Diplomatic Service.
Holmes winced at the memory. ‘Hardy was OK, but the chief superintendent was all for bringing someone with more experience in from another force.’
‘Did you manage to persuade him not to?’
‘Not really, because he’d already made enquiries and there was nobody else available, so he admitted he’s stuck with me, like it or not.’
‘Did he actually use those words?’ Eve asked. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so bad a diplomat after all.
‘He did, and a lot more besides. Luckily, the governor intervened. He told the super about your visit, and that you had offered to help. That didn’t go down too well either, but when he offered to ring the chief constable, who apparently knows you, things changed. Between them, they cooked up an idea. Obviously you can’t be seen to be involved in any sort of official capacity, but given the exceptional circumstances, I’m to be allowed to consult you, as long as I report progress on a daily basis. I hope that’s OK with you?’
‘I think it’s more than fair, and as much as anyone could ask for,’ Eve told him.
‘When do we start?’ I asked. ‘Do we have to be sworn in and wear badges?’
Holmes smiled, and I realised it was almost the first time I’d seen him relaxed enough to do so. ‘I think that’s only in America.’
‘So I don’t even get to wear a Stetson?’
Holmes shook his head. ‘The governor warned me about you.’
‘We’ll we have a couple of bits of information that might help,’ I told him. ‘Shall we start with the burglary at Barton Manor? Go on, Evie, tell him what you suspect.’
‘I don’t think that theft was the motive,’ Eve began, ‘or at least, if it was, then the burglar was only after something specific. If the intruder was only there for profit, he would have gone into the rooms where more valuable items were kept. I looked at the mess he created, and it seemed to me that part of it was due to him searching for something in particular.’
‘Have you any idea what that might be, or is that too much to hope for?’
‘It is at this stage, but there is one other point that disturbs me. The damage in the study suggests a deep level of hatred and a potential for extreme violence. I haven’t discussed this with Adam, but I believe that the intruder is highly likely to have been the same person who murdered Stephen Pengelly, and in my opinion he is deeply deranged.’
‘Do you think finding out what the intruder broke in to steal will help identify the killer?’
‘Yes, I certainly do.’
‘There is one other point regarding the intrusion,’ I stated. Both Holmes and Eve looked at me questioningly. ‘Technically speaking, it wasn’t a break-in. Not in the strict sense of the word.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Holmes admitted, and I could see that Eve was also puzzled.
‘I mean that the intruder didn’t smash the glass in the study window to get into the house.’
My claim left them, if anything, looking yet more baffled. ‘I think you’re going to have to explain that, Adam,’ Eve told me.
‘I believe the window pane was smashed purely to lead us to think that the burglar entered that way, whereas in fact they simply unlocked the front door and walked in.’
‘What on earth gives you that idea?’ Holmes asked.
‘When Robert Pengelly and I were helping Frank Jolly with the boarding-up, I shone the torch on the path and flower bed under the window. There was broken glass there.’
Eve caught my meaning immediately. ‘If the glass was on the ground outside, not on the carpet, it suggests the window was broken by somebody inside the study.’
‘That’s right.’
‘What you’re saying is that the intruder had keys to the house, is that it?’ Holmes had caught on at last. ‘But surely that would have triggered the alarm?’
‘There isn’t one. Daft as it sounds, Stephen Pengelly never had one fitted. I believe Robert is planning on rectifying that, and having the locks changed and deadbolts fitted.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything about this last night?’ Eve asked.
‘I didn’t want to scare everyone. It was bad enough me having a sleepless night listening for the noise of an intruder, without wishing that on the rest of the household.’
‘So, whoever got in had keys to the house,’ Holmes said. ‘That would mean there can’t be many suspects.’
‘Very few,’ I agreed. ‘And I took the opportunity to check that with Frank Jolly. He only knows of four sets, and three of those have been checked. I think I can even tell you who the missing set were given to.’
‘Go on then,’ they demanded in chorus.
‘Stephen Pengelly’s set was in his dressing room. Frank and Mary have their own, which means that the only ones unaccounted for are those Stephen ordered Frank to have cut about six months ago.’
‘So who has them?’ Holmes was getting quite agitated.
‘The only person who visited Barton Manor often enough to warrant having a key was Stephen’s mistress, a woman by the name of Kathy King. She lives here in Barton-le-Dale, but Mary said she spent more time at the manor than she did at her own place. She was the woman we wanted to tell you about a couple of days ago, before you got all officious with us.’
Holmes gave me a slightly shamefaced smile, but asked, ‘How did you find out about her?’
We gave him chapter and verse of our conversation at the King’s Head, repeating all that Frank and Mary had told us. Holmes listened, and when we’d finished said, ‘I need to speak to this woman as a matter of urgency, but I have a problem. Given the serious nature of the crime I ought to take backup before conducting any interviews, and just at the moment there’s nobody spare, not even a uniformed man. In fact there ought to be a WPC present too, but that’s definitely out of the question. What I certainly can’t do is take you along in place of an officer,’ he added, forestalling my suggestion.
We were still mulling over the problem when we were treated to one of the fastest examples of wish-fulfilment I have ever encountered. There was a knock on the door, and the desk sergeant entered. ‘There’s a Constable Pickersgill here to see you. He says the chief constable has sent him to help out.’
‘Johnny Pickersgill? That’s great news,’ I exclaimed. ‘Johnny is our local bobby, and he’s been involved in a couple of problems we’ve had to deal with, so he understands how we work.’ I leaned forward and added, ‘He’s also the chief constable’s cousin, so the fact that he’s been sent here shows your bosses are trying their best to help you.’
‘In that case you’d better show him in. Help is what we’re most in need of, and it’s in desperately short supply.’
Sure enough, when Johnny Pickersgill appeared, he confirmed what we suspected: the chief constable had been keen to lend what support he could. Johnny masked this by telling Holmes, ‘He told me I’d to take care of these two,’ he indicated Eve and me, ‘because they’re forever getting themselves in trouble. They attract danger like magnets. See these grey hairs?’ – he pointed to his head – ‘Most of them are down to this pair. I’ve been temporarily assigned to Barton-le-Dale as acting detective constable, but I guess my chief role will be to watch over them. The other thing I should tell you is they tend to collect corpses like some people collect stamps.’
‘Great to see yo
u too, Johnny.’ I turned to Holmes and added, ‘There is one drawback to the arrangement. This is going to cost you a fortune in teabags and milk. Unless you have a huge stock, I’d send out for urgent supplies right now. You might also want to warn local hostelries to buy in a few extra barrels of beer.’
‘I feel sure we’ll be able to cope,’ Holmes smiled. That was twice he’d done that within a few minutes. He was getting to be rather good at it. ‘Speaking of tea, I think we should have one while we bring our new recruit up to speed and plan our next move.’
Pickersgill eyed him with approval. ‘I think we’re going to get along really well.’
Now that tacit official approval for our involvement had been given, Eve and I followed DS Holmes and John Pickersgill on the short drive to the address Frank Jolly had supplied for Kathy King.
‘After everything we’ve heard about Stephen Pengelly’s love life, I’m more than a bit curious to see what this woman’s like,’ Eve told me.
‘In the interests of accuracy, I think the correct phrase should be sex life rather than love life. The impression I got was that love certainly didn’t enter the equation where he was concerned.’
‘You have a point.’
The street Frank had directed us to comprised a long terrace of three-storey Victorian houses on one side and a park on the other. Within the open space I spotted a bowling green and three tennis courts, plus a playground complete with swings, roundabouts, and a climbing frame. The remaining space was wide open, with a couple of tarmac footpaths bisecting the grass. At the farthest corner a pair of goalposts, plus the churned-up surface indicated that a local football team also used the area.
Frustratingly, there was only provision for parking in front of the houses, the opposite side of the road bearing double yellow lines. I managed to secure the last available space, which by a series of careful manoeuvres I was eventually able to squeeze the car into. ‘Gosh, that was fun,’ I muttered.
We had over fifty yards to walk before we reached the right house. ‘Strictly speaking,’ Pickersgill greeted us, ‘you two shouldn’t be here, so we think it would be better if you wait outside and follow us in a few minutes.’
I smiled sweetly at him. ‘Has any crime been committed here?’
Pickersgill blinked. ‘Not that I’m aware of, why?’
‘Apart from your wish to interview Kathy King you have no other reason to be here. No warrant to execute or anything of that nature.’
‘No, I guess not. What’s your point, Adam?’
‘There is nothing to prevent law-abiding citizens from visiting any of the inhabitants of this property, even without prior invitation, so long as they don’t break in or do anything illegal.’
‘No, I guess not.’
‘It would make far more sense for Eve and me to go talk to Kathy King first. That would help us break the news of her lover’s murder, and you could follow later. Bear in mind she is likely to be very upset by the news, and it would be better if a woman was present when she hears it.’
Pickersgill looked as if he was about to argue the point, but to my surprise Holmes backed my suggestion. ‘That sounds like a good idea. I was worried that we didn’t have a WPC available.’
We inspected the plates alongside the door. There were six in number, each bearing a different name. To their right were matching buttons to summon the occupant. Eve pressed the one marked King and we heard the faint sound of a bell ringing in the distance. We waited, but after several minutes with no response, even following Eve’s second attempt, I reached forward and tried the door handle. It turned easily. Obviously, it wasn’t considered risky to leave the building unlocked during the daytime.
We went inside, where we could just make out the doors to two flats on either side of the hallway, and a flight of stairs leading to the upper floors. The hall was poorly illuminated, with only the light from a grimy fanlight to allay the gloom. There was the persistent odour of over-cooked cabbage, added to by another, faintly unpleasant smell.
Holmes, who along with Pickersgill had followed us inside, flicked a switch and the hall became marginally brighter. At the foot of the stairs was a button, one which would activate a light controlled by a timer. Eve pressed this and I followed her upstairs. We reached the first floor just before the light went out. She pressed a second light button, which gave us chance to identify flat number four, the one occupied by Kathy King.
As we approached I noticed that the cabbage smell was far less noticeable upstairs, being overpowered by the other aroma, a sickly, nauseous odour. I began to feel uneasy. Something, I felt certain, wasn’t right. I reached the door ahead of Eve and knocked on it. When I got no response I tried a second time, with no better result.
‘Try the handle,’ Eve suggested. ‘I don’t like that smell.’
It obviously wasn’t just me who was imagining something bad. Once again, the handle turned easily, and I thrust the door open. The stench hit us with a force that was almost physical. ‘Get the others up here, Evie,’ I gasped.
I covered my nose and mouth with a handkerchief before entering the flat, moving with extreme caution. The short corridor ran past a kitchen on one side and a bathroom on the other, opening out to a living room beyond. I stopped dead at the end of the corridor, staring down at the body of a woman I assumed to be Kathy King. Stephen Pengelly’s mistress wouldn’t be telling us anything about his death – or anything else for that matter.
She had died violently, that much was certain. To this day I can’t recall what clothes she was wearing, let alone what colour they were supposed to have been. The blood that had gushed from the wound to her ribcage had turned the clothing, the carpet, and the nearby settee to what I guessed had been a uniform red, but was now a dirty russet brown.
In the short space of time before Holmes and Pickersgill pushed past me, I had just sufficient time to glance at the room, before checking out the woman’s appearance, concentrating particularly on a brief inspection of the wound that had killed her.
I suppose Kathy King must have been attractive enough, if you went for blondes with large breasts and hourglass figures. However, it was difficult to gauge her looks, as these were marred by the grimace that even the passing of rigor mortis had not eased. It was a measure of the agony she had suffered in her final moments that her features still bore the stamp of her suffering.
I peered closely at the area where she had been stabbed, or shot, or whatever had been done to her. The entry point was about an inch in diameter, and perfectly cylindrical. From the position of her body, lying on her side, I could see that the murder weapon had passed through her body, exiting in the middle of her back. I’d heard police officers in America refer to a ‘through and through’ where a bullet enters and exits a body, but in such cases, the path is distorted by the obstacles in the body, and the exit wound is always far larger than the hole made on entry.
In Kathy King’s case, however, both entry and exit wounds appeared to be the same size and the path taken by the object that had ended her life was perfectly straight. No bullet I knew of could do this, no gun I had ever heard of could deliver such a wound. Indeed, although I had witnessed almost every weapon of violence known to man during my career as a war correspondent, I had never encountered anything that could deliver such a horrific wound.
I remembered the phone call from Jeremy Powell and his statement about the murder of Stephen Pengelly. Like Stephen, Kathy King had been cored.
I was still staring in horror at the corpse when Johnny Pickersgill approached me. He took me by the elbow, gently turning me away from the gruesome sight. ‘Adam, take Eve away from here. Take her downstairs. In fact, go sit in your car. I’ll come and talk to you when we’ve sorted out what to do about this.’ He gestured behind him.
I did as I was told. Eve went along, but there was no conversation. The appalling sight seemed to have robbed me of both the power of speech and the desire to speak. I was just grateful that Eve hadn’t followed me in
to the flat. After we’d been sitting in the car for a few minutes I saw Holmes and Pickersgill emerge from the building. Holmes stood on the doorstep for a moment, and I saw him take a deep breath, as if trying to free himself from the macabre vision within, before heading off towards his car.
Pickersgill walked over to us, and I wound the window down. ‘DS Holmes is contacting the forensics people, plus his bosses and the pathologist, so he’ll be a while. We think it would be better if you weren’t seen around here. We don’t want word of your involvement to get out. Holmes suggested you return to Barton Manor and we’ll contact you when we’ve finished with this. Mind you, that might well be tomorrow.’
We agreed. The last thing Holmes needed was the media attention that news of our involvement in the case would provoke. Keeping the gory details from the press would be hard enough. News of two murders close together in a rural location was sure to be latched onto by any editor or reporter worth their salt. Giving them as little as possible to fan the flames of their curiosity was going to prove a challenging task in itself.
There was little conversation as we drove back to the manor. At one point I said, ‘We ought to warn everyone to be on their guard for the possibility of the press descending on the manor.’
‘I suppose that’s inevitable in the circumstances.’
‘Given time, yes, but if Holmes and his senior officers can muzzle their men it will delay things.’
Chapter Five
As we walked across the gravel to the front door, I noticed that the glaziers were already at work repairing the broken study window. Obviously, Robert had wasted no time rectifying the damage. Inside, we headed instinctively for the kitchen, where we found Robert and Alison seated at the table. Mrs Jolly appeared from the adjacent utility room as we entered.
‘How did the meeting with Holmes go?’ Robert asked. ‘Has he agreed …’
He stopped in mid-sentence. Clearly, our expressions told him something was wrong. ‘What’s happened?’
