The Oxmarket Aspal Murder Mystery

by Andrew Hixson

  “Good grief,” Oliver Terret exclaimed and Julie Lawes was totally speechless.

  “Now on that note,” I said finally, “would anyone want another drink?”

  Oliver Terret immediately glanced at his watch.

  “No, I’d better be going. I don’t like to leave Mum on her own for too long.” He finished his drink. “You could always come back to mine for another and then I could have a drink.”

  “Good idea,” Julie Lawes said.

  We piled back into Oliver’s car and within ten minutes he pulled up at the gate of Clarendon Cottage.

  “You go in,” he said to us. “I’ll put the car away. The key is under the mat.”

  We walked up the path and I found the key, unlocked the door and pushed it open and followed Julie Lawes inside.

  There were no lights on and there was a smell of scent in the hall, something rather exotic and expensive. For a moment I wondered if was in the right house, then I found the light switch and pressed it down.

  The light sprang up in the low oak-beamed square hall. The door into the sitting-room was ajar and I caught sight of a foot and a leg. Lorraine Terret, had not gone to bed as I had first assumed. She must have fallen asleep in her chair and since no lights were on, she must have been asleep a long time.

  Julie Lawes went to the door and switched on the lights in the sitting room.

  “We’re back -” She began and then stopped.

  Her hand went to her throat and I looked past her to see that Lorraine Terret had been murdered.

  17

  “Quite a neat bit of work,” I said. I was angry and I looked across at DI Silver to where he sat gravely listening. “Neat and ugly. She was strangled with one of her own silk scarves. Passed round the neck and the ends crossed and pulled. Neat, quick and efficient. The victim struggles or cries out. Pressure on the carotid artery.”

  “Special knowledge?”

  “Could be. I’ve seen this sort of thing before but if you were thinking of doing it, you can look it up on the internet. There’s no practical difficulty. Especially with the victim unsuspicious and she was unsuspicious.”

  “Someone she knew?” He asked me.

  “Yes. They had coffee together. A cup opposite her and one opposite the guest. Prints have been wiped off the guest’s cup, very carefully, but lipstick is more difficult and there are still faint traces of lipstick.”

  “A woman then?”

  “I expected a woman, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Lorraine Terret recognised one of those photographs, the photograph of Jo Pedder.”

  “So, this ties up with the Faith Roberts murder?”

  “She took an opportunity that seemed good to her. We all went down the pub and she rang up the person concerned and asked that person to come and see her. She kept her knowledge to herself, but she wanted to find out more. She didn’t in the least realise what she was doing could be dangerous.” I sighed. “I tried to warn her. It’s not a game. I told her so. But she would not listen.”

  “We are trying to trace the call that she made. But as of yet we’ve had no luck.”

  Sergeant Higgins put his head round the door.

  “There’s a young lady to see you, sir,” he said. “Say’s there’s something perhaps you ought to know. About last night.”

  “About last night?” DI Silver said. “Send her in.”

  Chloe Bird came in. She looked pale and strained and, as usual, rather awkward.

  “”I thought perhaps I’d better come,” she said. “If I’m not interrupting you or anything,” she added apologetically.

  “Not at all, Miss Bird.”

  DI Silver rose and pushed forward a chair. She sat down on it squarely in an ungainly school-girlish sort of way.

  “Something about last night?” DI Silver said encouragingly. “About Lorraine Terret, you mean?”

  “Yes, it’s true, isn’t it, that she was murdered? I mean Brettles the postman told me. My mother said it couldn’t be true . . .” She stopped.

  “I’m afraid your mother isn’t quite right there. It’s true enough. Now, you wanted to make a – to tell us something?”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding. “You see, I was there.”

  A difference crept into DI Silver’s manner, it was, perhaps, even more gentle, but an official hardness underlaid it.

  “You were there,” he said. “At Clarendon Cottage. At what time?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Chloe said. “Between half-past eight and nine, I suppose. Probably nearly nine. After dinner, anyway. You see, she rang me.”

  “Lorraine Terret rang you?” I asked.

  “Yes. She said that you Oliver and the author Julie Lawes were going to the pub and that she would be all alone and would I come round for a coffee with her.”

  “And you went?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you had a coffee with her?”

  Chloe shook her head.

  “No, I got there and I knocked. But there wasn’t any answer. So, I opened the door, using the key under the mat and went into the hall. It was quite dark and I’d seen from outside that here was no light on in the hallway or the sitting-room. I was puzzled. I called out her name but there was no answer. I thought that she must have made a mistake.”

  “What mistake did you think she could have made?” I quizzed.

  “I thought perhaps she had changed her mind and gone down with you and the others.”

  “Without letting you know?”

  “That did seem rather odd.”

  “You couldn’t think of anything else?” DI Silver asked.

  “It was Agata who took the original message and I thought she does get things mixed up from time to time. I thought maybe she was so excited about leaving that she just got things wrong.”

  “What did you do then, Chloe?” I asked.

  “I just left the cottage,” she replied. “Put the key under the mat and then went home.”

  DI Silver was silent for a moment or two, looking at her. He was looking, I noticed, at her mouth.

  Presently he roused himself and said briskly: “Well, thank you, Miss Bird. You were quite right to come and tell us this. We’re much obliged to you.”

  He got up and shook hands with her.

  “I thought I ought to,” Chloe said. “My Mum didn’t want me to.”

  “Didn’t she now?”

  “But I thought I’d better.”

  “Quite right.”

  He showed her out and came back.

  He sat down, drummed on the table and looked at me.

  “No lipstick,” he said. “Or is that only this morning?”

  “No, it is not only this morning. She never uses it.”

  “That’s odd, nowadays, isn’t it?”

  “She is an odd kind of girl –underdeveloped.”

  “And no scent, either, as far as I noticed. Julie Lawes says there was a distinct smell of scent – expensive scent she said – in the house last night. Oliver Terret confirmed that. It wasn’t any scent his mother used either.”

  “The girl would not use scent,” I said.

  “I shouldn’t think so either,” DI Silver. “She looks like the village forty year old virgin.”

  “She probably is.”

  “There’s something wrong,” DI Silver said frowning. “No lipstick, no scent. And since she’s got a perfectly good mother, and Jo Pedder’s mother died when she was nine years old. I don’t see how she can be Jo Pedder. But – Lorraine Terret telephoned her to come there last night – you can’t get away from that.” He rubbed his nose. “It isn’t straightforward is it?”

  “What about the medical evidence?”

  “Not much help there. All Dr Reed will say at the moment is that the time of death was between nine and ten.”

  “So she may have been dead when Chloe Bird came to Clarendon Cottage?”

  “Probably was if the girl’s speaking the truth. Either she i
s speaking the truth or else she’s someone with multiple personalities. Puzzling why her mother didn’t want her to come and see us. Is there anything in that do you think?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said after consideration. “Probably just trying to defend her daughter.”

  “So we’ve either got Chloe Bird as our prime suspect,” DI Silver sighed. “Or someone who came here before Chloe Bird wearing lipstick and an expensive scent.”

  “You will inquire?” I murmured.

  “I am inquiring!” DI Silver broke in. “But I don’t want to alarm anyone at the moment. What was Helena Brooks-Nunn doing last night? What was Keldine Hogg doing last night? Ten to one they were just sitting at home. Brooks-Nunn, I know, had a political meeting.”

  “Helena Brooks-Nunn could afford expensive scent,” I said, pursuing my own train of thought.”

  “I want to get more of her background,” DI Silver sighed. “It’s convenient being a widow. Even nowadays, you can turn up anywhere looking pathetic and mourning your dearly departed. Nobody presses too much.”

  “Did Dr Reed get the meat tenderiser by the way?”

  “Not yet,” the Detective Inspector replied. “Is it significant?”

  “I believe it’s the murder weapon.” I said firmly. “It’s been cleaned of course, but I think on further examination it will show up enough to match Faith Roberts’ DNA.”

  “But that will tie up with the Osborne’s and Chloe Bird, won’t it?”

  “Chloe Bird was quite definite that the meat tenderiser went to the Harvest Festival Car Boot sale.”

  “And Mrs Bellagamba was equally positive it was the Christmas one?”

  “Karen Bellagamba is never positive about anything,” I said gloomily. “She is a lovely woman, but she has no order or method in her composition. But I will tell you this. I have stayed at the Guest House and it is an open house. Doors and windows are always open and anyone at all could come and take something away and put it back without either of the Bellagamba’s noticing. In that house they just grab the first thing that is available. There is no rhyme or reason to anything.”

  “Well, there is one good thing about all this.” DI Silver revealed. “Marcus Dye could be released pending a retrial.”

  “I think I would like to see him,” I said. “Now that I know a little bit more.”

  18

  There was little change in Marcus Dye. He was perhaps, rather thinner, his hands more restless – otherwise he was the same quiet, hopeless creature.

  I spoke carefully. There had been some fresh evidence. The police were re-opening the case. There was, therefore, hope . . .

  But Marcus Dye was not attracted by hope.

  “You’re wasting your time,” he said. “What more can you find out?”

  “Your friends,” I said. “Are working hard for you.”

  “I haven’t any fucking friends,” he said sharply.

  “Well, I can name two.”

  “Who?” His tone expressed no wish for the information, merely a weary disbelief.

  “Detective Inspector Paul Silver.”

  “Don’t make me fucking laugh,” he said. “He’s the bastard who put me away.”

  “DI Silver is a very shrewd and conscientious police officer and is never too proud to admit that he might have made a mistake.”

  Marcus Dye shrugged his shoulders. “And who is my other saviour of my soul?”

  “Joanne Burton.”

  “Who?”

  “She worked in the office at Anglia Meats.”

  “Oh. Her.”

  There were moments when I found the personality of Marcus Dye so irritating that I really wished that he was guilty of killing Faith Roberts. Unfortunately the more he annoyed me the more I came round to DI Silver’s way of thinking. I found it more difficult to envisage Dye murdering anybody. Marcus Dye’s attitude to murder would have been, I felt sure, that he wouldn’t be much good at it anyway. If arrogance was a characteristic of murderers, Marcus Dye was certainly no murderer.

  “Joanne Burton believes you to be innocent.”

  “How would she know?”

  “She knows you.”

  Marcus Dye blinked.

  “I suppose she does in a way,” he said, grudgingly. “But not very well.”

  “You went out a couple of time didn’t you?”

  “It was nothing serious,” he said. “We just had a nice time. She’s well out of my league.”

  “Don’t run yourself down,” I exploded. “She likes you. I’d almost go as far to say that she fancies you.”

  “I don’t think so,” he responded. “She was good company but she didn’t really understand me. Her mother died when she was little.”

  “And then you lost your job,” I went on. “You couldn’t get another but Joanne met you in Oxmarket Aspal, I believe?”

  Marcus Dye looked distressed.

  “Only once. She sent me a text.”

  “And you met her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you take her anywhere?”

  “Nowhere special,” he snapped. “I didn’t have much money at the time.”

  “Of course,” I exclaimed. “And this was a few days before Faith Roberts was murdered?”

  Marcus Dye nodded.

  “Yes. It was on the Monday.” He said unexpectedly. “Faith was killed on the Wednesday.”

  “Did you know that Faith Roberts read the Oxmarket Sunday Echo?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Did you ever read it?”

  “She offered it to me sometimes but I don’t like reading that particular newspaper.”

  “Why is that?”

  “My mother didn’t like it,” he replied. “She preferred The Times.”

  “And Faith never spoke to you about what was in the Oxmarket Sunday Echo?”

  “Once she did,” he responded surprisingly.

  “Can you remember what it was about?”

  “I think it was to do with some old murder case. Porter, I think it was – no, perhaps it wasn’t Porter. I can’t really remember the name. Anyway, she said somebody connected with the case was living in Oxmarket Aspal now. Full of it, she was. I couldn’t see why she would be so interested.”

  “Did she say who it was in Oxmarket Aspal?”

  “I think,” Marcus said vaguely, “the women whose son writes plays.”

  “Did she mention her by name?”

  “No – I really it’s so long ago.”

  “You must try and remember,” I implored. “You want to be free again don’t you?”

  “Free?” Marcus Dye sounded surprised.

  “Yes, free.”

  “Yes. I – suppose I do.”

  “Then think. Try and remember.”

  “It was something like – ‘so pleased with herself that she had recognised someone and that you’d never have thought it was the same woman to look at in the photograph.’ But of course it had been taken years ago.”

  “But what made you sure that it was Lorraine Terret she was talking about?”

  “I really don’t know . . . I just formed the impression that she had been speaking of Lorraine Terret – and then I lost interest and didn’t listen, and afterwards – well, now I come to think of it, I don’t really know who she was speaking about. She talked a lot, you know.”

  “I don’t think it was Lorraine Terret she was talking about. I think it was somebody else. It is preposterous to reflect that if you serve life imprisonment it will be because you did not pay proper attention to the people who talk to you . . . Did Faith speak much to you of the houses where she worked, or the ladies of those houses?”

  “Yes, in a way – it’s no good asking me. You don’t seem to realise, Mr Handful, that I had other things on my mind at the time.”

  “Did Faith ever speak of Helena Brooks-Nunn – Helena Woodhouse as she was then - or of Keldine Hogg?”

  “The Brooks-Nunn’s have that new house at the top of the hill. Faith didn�
��t go a bundle on Helena Brooks-Nunn. I don’t know why. ‘Jumped up’ she used to say. I don’t know what she meant by it.”

  “And the Hoggs?”

  “He’s the doctor, isn’t he? I don’t remember her saying anything in particular about them.”

  “What about Lord and Lady Osborne?”

  “I do remember what she said about them. ‘No patience with her strange ways,’ that’s what Faith said. And about him, ‘Never a word, good or bad, out of him.’ He paused. “She said – it was an unhappy house.”

  I looked up. For a second Marcus Dye’s voice had held something that I had not heard before. He was not repeating obediently what he could recall. His mind, for a very brief space, had moved out of its apathy. Marcus Dye was thinking of Norbert House, of the life went that went on in there, of whether or not it was an unhappy home. Marcus Dye was thinking objectively.

  “You know them?” I said softly. “The mother? The father? The daughter?”

  “Not really? It was the dog. A Springer Spaniel. Got caught up in a rabbit’s snare. She couldn’t get him out. I helped her.”

  There was again something new in Marcus Dye’s tone. “I helped her,” he had said, and in those words there was a faint echo of pride.

  “You talked together?” I asked gently.

  “Yes. She – her mother suffered a lot, she told me. She was very fond of her mother.”

  “And you told her about yours?”

  “Yes,” Marcus Dye said simply.

  I said nothing and waited.

  “Life is very cruel,” Marcus Dye said. “Very unfair. Some people never seem to get any happiness.”

  “It is possible,” I said.

  “I don’t think she’d had much, Chloe Osborne.”

  “Chloe Bird, don’t you mean?”

  “Oh yes. She told me she had a stepfather.”

  “Chloe. A pretty name but not what I would call a pretty girl.”

  Marcus Dye flushed with annoyance.

  “I thought,” he said, “she was rather good-looking . . .”

  19

  I returned to Detective Inspector Paul Silver’s office in Oxmarket. I leant back in a chair pondering, with my eyes half open and the tips of my fingers just touching each other in front of me.