A Very Private Murder

by Stuart Pawson

  ‘Blame the fingerprint boys,’ I told her. ‘They brush everywhere with aluminium powder. They’ve probably identified some prints as being yours, from, say, your dressing table, but they may come back and ask you to do what they call a tenprint form, just to verify they are yours. They’ll have taken DNA samples, too, probably from your hairbrush. I’m afraid it’s all rather intrusive, but necessary if we’re to find your husband’s killer. Will you stay here, have you decided, or will you move away?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I suppose moving to somewhere smaller would make sense. Do you know when we’ll be able to have a funeral, Inspector?’

  ‘I can’t see a problem. I’ll have a word with the coroner’s office. I have to say, Janet, you’re bearing up remarkably well.’ She was smartly dressed in skirt and crisp blouse, and looked as if she’d visited her hairdresser again.

  ‘And I haven’t touched a drop,’ she said, with a triumphant smile.

  I asked her if it was difficult and she told me that the alcoholism was largely an act to annoy her husband. She could take it or leave it, but he hated people who couldn’t handle their liquor, probably due to his family background. I wasn’t sure if I believed her, but she looked just dandy on this particular morning. I thought about confessing that I’d hit the bottle rather hard when my marriage broke up, just to go for the empathy vote, but decided not to.

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?’ I asked. ‘You’re under no obligation to answer and not under caution or anything. In fact, if I were a solicitor I’d advise you to keep silent, but I only want to clarify a few things. Does that make sense?’ It didn’t to me, but she nodded her consent.

  ‘When did you first learn that your husband was having an affair?’

  ‘Oh, it would be some time last summer. May or June. It was a hot day, I remember, and we didn’t have too many of them.’

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘ I had my suspicions. Leaving the birthday card in his golf bag more or less proved it. There were other things. I made a few phone calls and it all made sense.’

  ‘How did you discover it was with Carol McArdle?’

  ‘I found a phone number, rang it a few times and it all fell into place.’

  I didn’t say anything; left her room to volunteer. She picked up her cup and saucer and took a long, delicate sip. I picked up my cup and downed half its contents.

  ‘There’s this boy …’ she went on. ‘Arthur said he was the son of one of his employees. He wanted music lessons and Arthur suggested I become his teacher. One of Arthur’s more considered ideas, I thought. I hadn’t taught for years and I enjoyed it. Turned out that he was her son. They shared a phone number.’ A hint of a smile flickered across her face, as if the memory amused her.

  ‘That would be young Oscar,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right. Oscar Sidebottom, which was why I didn’t realise sooner. He said his mother had gone off with her boyfriend, meaning Arthur. Naive must be my middle name.’

  ‘I’d say that was to your credit. We, on the other hand, are trained to be suspicious of everyone.’ I remembered Jeff’s and Dave’s comment and said: ‘Would that be music lessons in inverted commas?’

  ‘You’re very astute, Inspector.’ I didn’t reply, just waited for her to tell me whatever she wanted me to know, in her own time. She looked into her coffee cup, then replaced it on the low table. ‘I was heartbroken,’ she began, ‘and felt a fool. Revenge was uppermost in my mind. I decided I’d leave Arthur, then realised that I’d only be making it easy for them and I wanted to hurt them both. Humiliate them. I wanted retribution. I had a good cry, thought my world had ended, until I remembered that Oscar was coming for a lesson that afternoon. Two can play at your game, I thought. What’s sauce for the goose will do for the gander. And besides, Arthur had been neglecting me and he was a good-looking boy …’

  She stood up and walked over to the window. With her back to me she said: ‘It was a warm day. I had a shower, used a little make-up and dressed to suit the weather: T-shirt and shorts. I put on the expensive perfume Arthur bought me for my birthday. Oscar was similarly dressed. I’d made some lemonade and set the table outside. I put a generous measure of gin in my drink to give me courage, and a smaller measure in Oscar’s. When we went into the music room it was quite cool in there. It’s at the back of the house. I told Oscar to play Hoagy Carmichael’s “Heart and Soul”, to warm up his fingers. Do you know it?’

  I shook my head. ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a simple piece, a bit like “Chopsticks”.’

  ‘I know “Chopsticks”.’

  ‘Everybody knows “Chopsticks”. After he’d played it I sat alongside him and told him to play the right hand while I played the left. We raced through it a few times, had a laugh. It was fun. I put my right arm round him to stop myself falling off the stool and told him to try the same with Beethoven’s “Bagatelle in A minor”, more commonly known as “Für Elise”. I was shivering so he put his arm around me. It’s a slow, romantic piece and we played it right through. As it finished I … I turned to him. I thought he’d be shy and inexperienced, but I was wrong. After I’d – how shall I put it? – given him permission, he took control of things. He led me upstairs. We made love on my bed, with the curtains open and the sun streaming in. After that we stepped up the lessons, but his piano playing didn’t improve. I decided not to say anything to Arthur and … her.’

  She turned to face me again. ‘I didn’t find that easy,’ she said.

  ‘I know you didn’t.’ I wasn’t sure if she was making fun of me, letting me know what I’d turned down, but I gave her the benefit of the doubt. ‘When was this?’ I asked.

  ‘A few weeks later, after I’d learnt about Arthur and her. Probably in July. It will be in my diary …’

  ‘That’s OK, Janet. Did you terminate the lessons?’

  She stood silently for a while, one arm hanging loose, the other across her chest, clasping it, thinking. Outside, a supermarket delivery van turned round and drove away. A horse plodded by, ridden by a girl in jeans and a T-shirt, not wearing a hard hat. Janet’s back was to the window now, and the sun had found a way between the clouds again. Because of the brightness behind her I couldn’t read the expression on her face.

  She said: ‘This is the point, Inspector, where I’ll take the advice of my imaginary solicitor and decide not to answer any more questions.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very frank.’ I rose to my feet and picked up my cup and saucer, but Janet took it from me.

  I had half a plan to hit her with a sidewinder as I was leaving by telling her that we’d found the bloodstained jogging suit and were awaiting DNA comparison results from the lab, but the sun was shining, the bees were fumbling the flowers and her little cul-de-sac was a haven of peace in a world of turmoil. It would all come crashing down soon enough, without any prompting from me. I said: ‘Thank you for the coffee,’ and left it at that.

  The best way to deal with trouble is to meet it head-on. There was a game on at Heckley Cricket Club and a couple of the lads were in the team, so I parked up and found myself a seat. We were eighty-seven for three, which didn’t sound very good to me. I pulled out my mobile, dialled HQ and asked for Superintendent Kent. Her voicemail told me that she wasn’t available. She’s probably at home, I thought, reconfiguring her undies drawer. ‘It’s DI Priest,’ I said, ‘returning your call. I’ll catch you tomorrow or Monday. Have a nice weekend.’ I switched the phone off just as a ripple of applause ran round the ground. ‘Thank you,’ I said, because I deserved it. ‘Thank you, thank you.’

  Mad Maggie Madison rang me at home, to say that Oscar had vanished. He wasn’t at his flat or at his mother’s apartment.

  ‘He has girlfriends,’ I told her. ‘He’s probably shacked up with one of them.’ I hoped he hadn’t been hiding upstairs at Janet’s, but didn’t voice my fears. Sometime in the next few days the results from the lab would land on my desk and
they might change everything. Meanwhile, we wouldn’t sit on our heels and wait, but a certain amount of urgency was removed from our enquiries. We could afford to ease up a little, back off with the routine stuff that came with every murder enquiry, providing Lady Kent kept her distance. ‘Leave it until Monday, Maggie,’ I said. ‘Then we’ll spin his premises. Get some warrants, please, for his flat, his room at his mother’s, his locker at work, if he has one, his car, wherever it is, and anywhere else you can think of. Make everyone aware that he might have a gun, but one that only holds a single bullet.’

  ‘That’s all it takes, Chas.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Serena did a simple chart showing who might own the gun. It wasn’t very helpful. Jonty Hargrave had passed it on to Threadneedle, he said, but we hadn’t found it when we searched Threadneedle’s house. It could have been stolen; borrowed and not returned; sold to someone else in the animal-killing business or simply lost. I decided to have a drive east for a word with Jonty.

  He was in the Alice, clutching a hand of dominoes, opposite Jackdaw, his eternal rival, like the chess players in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. He’d enjoyed two years in the South of France, imbibing the local flavours, but given it up to spend the remainder of his days beating a candidate for the title of Village Idiot at a game of chance. I imagined a snapshot of him sitting in the sunshine on a tiled patio, still in his hacking jacket and cravat. A buxom gypsy lady leant over his shoulder to replenish his glass and the bougainvillea was in full blossom.

  ‘The gun,’ I said, twisting a chair round from the adjacent table and sitting down. ‘I need to know where it went.’

  He downed the remainder of his pint with much smacking of the lips and plonked the empty glass on the table with a show of approval. I ignored the invitation to buy him another. ‘Are you sure it went to Threadneedle, with the house?’ I asked.

  ‘’Appen it did.’

  ‘That’s not good enough. Either it did or it didn’t.’

  ‘Right. As far as I can remember, it did. I remember showing him it, telling him about it.’

  ‘Had you bought it new?’

  ‘No. I inherited it.’

  ‘Was it in a box?’

  ‘Aye. A proper one, designed for it, with a lock and a carrying handle. Made of mahogany, I’d say.’

  ‘What about bullets?’

  ‘There were some slots for them inside the box and they were held in place when the lid was closed.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘You’ve got me there. About four. Six, maybe. Call it five originally but two had been used, so there’d be three left.’

  ‘You don’t sound certain.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  I turned to his domino opponent, Jackdaw, and asked him if he remembered the fire. He did and I invited him to tell me what he knew.

  ‘Not much,’ he replied. ‘Old Motty looked out his window as he went to bed and saw flames and reek coming from t’stables. He phoned the brigade, I reckon, and phoned the boss. Then he went to let the horses out. ’Cept one of ’em had brocken its leg, hadn’t it? He had to shoot that one.’

  Hargrave listened, his expression impassive, though I was sure he disapproved of Jackdaw’s cooperation.

  ‘Who do you mean by “the boss”?’ I asked.

  ‘Threadneedle,’ I was told.

  I turned back to Hargrave. ‘You said two bullets had been used. Who used them? Was it you?’

  ‘We’d used it once to kill a horse, that’s what. Broke its leg when it stepped in a rabbit hole.’

  ‘And the other one?’

  ‘I’d had a practice, that’s all, when we acquired the gun. Didn’t want to look an amateur if I ever had to use it.’

  ‘Was it easy to do? Did you need some help?’

  ‘It was lying down, so it was no problem.’

  *

  I couldn’t get the car out onto the road because a string of horses were picking their way back to their stables. Six of them, steaming and glowing; some walking purposefully, a couple skittering sideways, jumping at shadows to invite a slap from the rider’s whip. They were giants, towering over my car, their jockeys dwarfed by charges that were barely under control. I remembered reading somewhere that these days the stable boys were just as likely to be female, and from Eastern bloc countries. They didn’t mind shovelling shit at five in the morning for minimum wage. The string turned right onto a bridle path and the impatient convoy of cars that had built up behind them accelerated away on the clear road. I fell in behind.

  It wasn’t Motty’s day for fleecing the old ladies at whist or bingo, so he answered my knock after a while and invited me in. He’d been outdoors all his life and hated being cooped up, so when I suggested we sit outside he readily agreed.

  We exchanged pleasantries about the weather and he called me Charlie and appeared genuinely pleased to be with someone who made an effort to communicate with him. It was hard work, though, and I took short cuts, jumped to conclusions that I paid for later. I suggested he let me take him to the Alice for a snifter, but he was content to sit in the sunshine. I studied him and noted that he was below average height, about five foot three at a guess, even before the curvature of his spine became permanent.

  ‘I’ve been talking to Jonty in the Alice,’ I said, ‘about the fire. He says it was a bad business. He was living in France at the time, but his dominoes pal knew about it. He told me that you phoned the fire brigade.’

  ‘Aye. Phoned brig … brig … brigadeer.’

  ‘Brigade,’ I told him. ‘The fire brigade.’

  ‘Aye. Them.’

  ‘And the boss?’ I suggested.

  ‘Aye. Phone boss.’

  ‘Did the boss come quickly?’

  ‘No, not quick. Long time … long time coming. After brig … brig …’

  ‘The fire brigade. He came after the fire brigade? I was told that you let all the horses out except Peccadillo, which had broken its leg. Is that right, Motty?’

  ‘Aye. Pecc’dillo. Leg bad.’ He rubbed his own shin to illustrate the point.

  ‘Did the boss come before Peccadillo was shot?’

  ‘No. Not before.’

  ‘So you had the humane killer?’

  ‘Aye. Kept in house. Motty kept it.’

  ‘Who took it away?’

  ‘Not sure. Boss. Think boss.’

  ‘You think the boss took it away. Mr Threadneedle. You think Mr Threadneedle took the gun away.’

  ‘Aye. Him.’

  ‘But you shot the horse?’

  I thought I’d lost him again as he remembered a bad time that he believed was forgotten but which could come back to overwhelm all the good times he’d experienced. He shook himself back into the present and said: ‘Aye. Motty,’ making a gun barrel with his forefinger and firing an imaginary bullet into the lawn.

  ‘Just you.’

  ‘Aye. Just Motty.’

  Twenty minutes later I was sitting in the waiting room of Martin Chadwick’s veterinary practice, wondering what was wrong with the evil-looking Persian cat that the lady opposite me was coo-cooing to through the bars of its carrying box. Ten minutes later she came out of the surgery carrying the box, which was now empty. Chadwick said goodbye to her and ushered me in to his inner sanctum.

  ‘What was wrong with the cat?’ I asked, assuming that the rules on medical confidentiality didn’t include cats, even if they were aristocratic.

  ‘She’s through there,’ he replied, ‘having her nails clipped,’ and a feline shriek of disapproval confirmed what he’d said.

  ‘Oh. I assumed she’d had her put down.’

  ‘Her husband, possibly, but Fatima, never. What can I do for you, Inspector?’

  I told him about my talk with Motty, about how he’d said he was the person who’d pulled the trigger. I confessed that I didn’t know much about horses but that I’d noticed, in the last few days, that they were big – very big – and ba
d-tempered. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘could you determine from the way Peccadillo had fallen whether it had been standing or lying down when it was shot?’

  ‘It had been standing; no doubt about it. Its legs were folded under it.’

  ‘Where exactly would you put the gun if you were killing a horse?’

  Chadwick unhooked a calendar advertising foodstuffs from the wall and turned the months over until he reached October. The picture showed a horse in full gallop towards the camera, the jockey perfectly balanced as he urged his mount onward, his extended whip arm capturing the tension of the moment. ‘There,’ he said, indicating with the tip of his ballpoint. ‘Draw two diagonals between its eyes and its ears and place the muzzle of the gun about five centimetres higher than where they cross. Lift the back of the gun until it’s pointing in line with the horse’s neck, come back another five centimetres or so and pull the trigger. Bingo! One dead horse.’

  He made it sound simple. An actual killing would be different. The horse would be in agony and scared; tension and tempers would be high. Where was the humane killer? Who was licensed to use it? Had anybody done it before? Was it the right thing to do? What would the owner think? How much was the horse worth?

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t help noticing that Mr Dermot is not very tall. He says he killed Peccadillo before anybody else came. Could he have done it by himself, even if he’d stood on a box?’

  ‘Good question. On one side, Motty can handle horses. If anybody was capable of doing it, it would be Motty. On the other side, Peccadillo was a thoroughbred, which, roughly translated, means neurotic. He was also only a two-year-old. Most thoroughbreds of that age are as mad as snakes. And if that wasn’t enough, the stables were burning down around them. In other words, Inspector, my opinion now, in the light of what you’ve told me, is that he couldn’t have done it by himself, box or no box.’

  ‘So who is he protecting, and why?’

  ‘Loyalty, Inspector. Motty is a simple man with old-fashioned virtues. Perhaps he’s saying he killed the horse because he was licensed to do the job, as per the Welfare of Animals, Slaughter or Killing Regulations. Maybe somebody who wasn’t licensed helped him do the deed then left the scene.’