by Gwen Moffat
‘She was friendly,’ Dorcas said, so close to her son that she was touching him.
‘A looker.’ He swallowed. ‘She couldn’t help that,’ he added weakly.
‘It’s a small place,’ Rosie agreed. ‘A pretty girl: there would be gossip. Nothing to it of course. The men would discuss her among themselves, they always do. I work with fellows, I know how they talk about any new colleague, even when she isn’t a looker. You can’t tell me anything about a men’s locker room.’
‘No one gossiped about her,’ Dorcas said with finality. ‘There was nowt to gossip about.’
Rosie left her car at the pub and, a light Pentax round her neck, trying to present the image of a mildly interested tourist, she turned left towards the houses. On her right was the Rutting Beck and a wooden footbridge which held no interest for her and, on her side of the road, a track with a footpath sign: ‘Sleylands. Closewater 3m.’
The road forked, the left lane climbing, eventually to double back on itself, as she knew, and return as the right fork. She turned left, despite her mission finding a sensuous pleasure in this slow and deceptively aimless amble where before she had passed relatively quickly, incarcerated in a metal box. True, the car windows had been open and there had been scents and birdsong but now there was time to distinguish between different smells and to stare. ‘Time to stand and stare’, she recalled from her schooldays, stopping at a shabby gate under an arch dripping with the blue racemes of wisteria. A flagged path, rather weedy but cushioned with rock plants, led to a solid porch and a façade in need of whitewash.
Desirable property in need of renovation, she thought, carried away by yet another persona: prospective house hunter. As she leaned on the gate, it opened unexpectedly and at the same moment a lithe young fellow emerged from the porch carrying a haversack. He checked at sight of her and then advanced: no more than twenty, she concluded, and immature. His appreciation was quick and obvious but then she’d dressed carefully; the cut of the slacks emphasizing her long legs, the wide leather belt cinching her waist, the shirt with one too many buttons undone. The wraparound shades added glamour while shielding her eyes.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘And what can I do for you?’ The tone was a caress, his eyes were saying he knew exactly what he could do. Her smile was an acknowledgement of it.
Aloud she said, ‘Nothing really, your gate came open as I was leaning on it admiring your cottage. Actually I’m looking to rent one later in the year.’
‘Is that so?’ She could hear wheels turning in his brain. ‘You wouldn’t want this place. Alone, are you?’ So casual it was ludicrous.
‘It depends,’ Rosie said. ‘Why wouldn’t this place do? It’s sweet. Are you on holiday too?’ Hardly, in those filthy jeans, but the inanity of the question went over his head.
‘I live here. I’m Dwayne. I were born here. My folk moved into town and I inherited the old place. It needs doing up. I’m going to get stuck in at back-end when I’ve finished another house … Tell you what, why don’t you come and look at that? The owner’s after a tenant. Great big kitchen, lounge like a barn, two bathrooms, three bedrooms – the big one’s out of this world: parky floor, one wall all glass, balcony to drink your wine on. Suit you down to the ground.’
‘You’re working there?’
‘Well, yeah. I work for meself like. I’m going along there now, it’s only just down the road.’ He was trying to look boyish and smooth but he couldn’t keep still and he was too close to her.
‘You show people over it? I mean, you act as an agent or what?’
‘No.’ He paused, grinned and plunged. ‘I just take girls there.’ His eyes were sparkling. It was a joke.
‘On their own?’ She didn’t believe this; no one could be so obvious.
‘Right.’ He exuded confidence. She moved away, trying to avoid stepping on some carmine saxifrage that was invading the path.
She turned and looked him in the eye. ‘I wouldn’t be the first girl you’ve taken there.’
He didn’t like that and once he stopped smiling he was menacing. ‘Who’ve you been talking to? You been listening to gossip. Were you –’ He glanced down the lane. ‘You was in t’Lamb! That bastard! Ask him what he gets up to when he’s away to the Cash-and-Carry. Takes him all day to pick up a few groceries. And to look at un you wouldn’t think un could make it with nowt except a sheep.’
‘What was your name again?’
‘Who’s asking?’
‘Dwayne what?’ She wasn’t going to ask him where he was when the police came calling door-to-door, she wasn’t going to ask him if he’d heard Isa leave on Wednesday night, had seen her go, had been with her. But she was going to risk a gamble. ‘Were you at that house on Wednesday?’
‘’Course I were.’ But the answer had come slowly.
‘Wednesday night?’
‘No.’
She wished this garden were overlooked by a neighbour but it wasn’t and she’d gone too far to pull back. ‘So where were you?’
‘Who wants to know?’
‘What have you got to hide?’
He was quiet and tense, like a cat hearing a rustle in long grass, or was it he who had rustled and now he was immobile, watching the cat?
He turned and went up the path but instead of going to the house he veered to the right to disappear behind some shrubs. A latch clicked. She retreated to the gate. After a few moments a Land Rover emerged from a gap, himself at the wheel. He ignored her, trying to look casual, succeeding only in looking – frightened, she thought. She was left wondering if she’d discovered anything important. A randy young bugger certainly, and one who’d avoided the police until now, but neither need make him a murderer, even if something she’d said had scared him badly.
‘That’s Dwayne Paxton,’ Eleanor said, shunting a batch of loaves on to a wire tray. ‘No doubt he propositioned you.’
‘Good Lord, how did you guess?’
‘I’ve known him since he was a small boy, which wasn’t that long ago. He’s not firing on all his cylinders, but you’ll have discovered that for yourself.’
‘Two coffees and cakes!’ Sherrel announced, bustling in from the front. She stared at the stranger suspiciously.
‘Have you met Sergeant Winder?’ Eleanor asked, but Sherrel hadn’t, and shook her head blankly. Rosie asked her if she lived in the village and she said she did, with her family. The atmosphere was electric; Eleanor would have liked to suggest that the visitor go out to the tearoom but dared not say so. On duty or day off, if the police walked in your kitchen, it wasn’t a good idea to tell them to leave it.
Sherrel started to assemble a tray clumsily, aware of Rosie’s eyes on her. Rosie was considering whether the girl would repay investigation and deciding against it; best results would be obtained from the people she knew already.
Eleanor spooned tea into a pot. ‘You don’t use tea bags,’ Rosie said in wonder.
‘This is an up-market establishment,’ Eleanor said and then, surprisingly, she winced.
‘A problem?’ Rosie asked, thinking rheumatism.
‘Not any longer.’
‘There never was!’ Sherrel cried heatedly, glad to distract attention from herself. ‘That were a trick, Miss Salkeld, and a nasty mean one too.’
‘It’s over, Sherrel. Folk are coming back.’
‘And small thanks to her, whoever.’
‘What’s this about?’ Rosie asked.
‘You never heard? I thought the whole county knew. Someone started a rumour that we had salmonella poisoning here. It was a hoax of course, but it wasn’t pleasant to know that someone could hate you to that extent.’
Rosie gaped. The Honeymans, she thought, they’re the competition. ‘I’m surprised you should be the target,’ she said. ‘The Lamb is much more vulnerable: serving hamburgers on a hot day like this. And presumably microwaved.’
Eleanor giggled. ‘Actually they’re delicious hamburgers. I have one occasionally although I agree: they�
��re not hot-weather food.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘Although when you think of it, there’s probably more bacteria about than we ever imagine. We must have built up an immunity to it.’
Rosie’s lip twitched as she recalled the cat on the window sill. He had to pass the sink or the draining board to get there – and when he came in: paws all gluey from garden soil.
Miss Pink entered from the front carrying a small bundle which she unfurled to reveal a striped apron. ‘Day off?’ she asked genially, tying the strings.
‘House hunting.’ Rosie was brazen. ‘Just for a short break. I’ve been offered two already.’
‘Which two?’ Eleanor was arrested in the act of spooning strawberry jam into a crystal bowl.
‘Dwayne Paxton’s: his own and the one he’s working on.’
Eleanor snorted. ‘You can forget both. His must be the last home in Borascal with an outside lavatory – pretty view but – an earth closet? And Blind Keld, at the other extreme, isn’t for rent. He’s rebuilding the garden wall there, and if he’s pretending an interest in it he’s suffering from delusions of grandeur.’
‘I got the impression the delusion was sexual. He tried to lure me there with a hard sell on the master bedroom.’
‘He actually tried to – That boy’s impossible! However, if he’s courting other girls’ – Eleanor was addressing Miss Pink – ‘let’s hope family problems prompted Gemma to give him the push.’
Miss Pink was shaking her head in warning but Rosie’s peripheral vision was excellent and even if it hadn’t been, Eleanor’s sudden tension was significant. ‘Did that big party come in?’ she cried. ‘I’m going to need another kettle if we go on like this. I never asked’ – she looked at Rosie wildly – ‘I suppose you can’t say how Walter is?’
‘I haven’t been in since.’ Rosie was ambiguous. ‘They must be tied up with this murder in Bailrigg.’ They stared at her. ‘You haven’t heard?’ She told them as much as would be released to the media but they were only superficially impressed. They had their own murder in Borascal.
‘Was Isa promiscuous?’ she asked, dropping it like a bomb out of a blue sky.
The quiet in the kitchen was accentuated by low voices in the tearoom, the gentle clatter of crockery, the scrape of a chair. There was no gasp of shock, no hasty denial. Miss Pink seemed relaxed but attentive; Eleanor was more than relaxed, she looked resigned.
‘It crossed my mind,’ she admitted at length and then, pulling herself up: ‘Oh no, not promiscuous. But …’ – and then, as if she’d completed an utterance, she busied herself measuring flour into a bowl.
‘Her mother says she wasn’t promiscuous but …’ Rosie contributed.
Eleanor nodded sadly. ‘Probably.’ She sighed and tried to retract: ‘Possibly.’
‘But of course,’ Rosie said, trying to keep the irony out of her tone, ‘no one has any idea of his identity.’
Eleanor looked at her blankly. ‘Would they say if they knew?’
She dawdled along the top lane, pausing to snap a dazzling white house with crow-stepped gables, working round to include its barn with a sagging slate canopy over its great door, cursing a red BMW which spoiled the effect, then remembering that she wasn’t a photographer, only acting the part. No one came out of this house to chat, or chat her up. She strolled on, came to where the lane doubled back at an acute angle and paused to study Phoebe Metcalf’s closed house, a magnolia dropping waxy petals on uncut grass, the cat Cooper watching her from a bower of columbines. She took his picture for good measure and then one of Miss Pink’s place: a gleam of white walls through silver birch trunks and drifts of bluebells.
Elfhow’s gate was closed but she wasn’t interested in the Blamires, her attention was focused on Borrans, although she thought it unlikely that a girl of fifteen would be on her own when her brother was with the police. Did Gemma think he was only helping them with their inquiries? If she hadn’t left the village she couldn’t be far away – unless she’d taken a leaf out of her sister-in-law’s book and was driving without a licence – and under age at that.
Gemma was, in fact, polishing her brother’s car. Cracks between the stone flags of the drive were still damp and a vacuum cleaner lay on the grass verge along with several attachments. The girl was expressionless as Rosie approached but she hadn’t recognized the sergeant in shades and plain clothes. When she did she was hostile. ‘Where is he?’ she demanded, peering past Rosie.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘My brother!’ She spat it out. ‘What’ve you done with him?’
‘It’s my day off.’ Rosie simulated surprise. ‘I was just helping out this morning because they had to have a woman along. Sewell’s only talking to Walter, you know; he wants to know about Isa’s friends and family.’
‘Why didn’t he question Wally here?’
‘He wanted to spare you.’
‘Spare me from what?’
‘Embarrassment. About Isa’s friends.’ Gemma should have asked in what way Isa’s friends could be embarrassing but she didn’t; she stared at Rosie’s dark glasses and waited tensely for the next question.
‘I’ve been talking to Dwayne Paxton,’ Rosie said.
The girl’s eyes wandered and her lips worked. ‘So?’ It was too loud.
‘Does he come on to all the girls?’
‘How the hell would I know?’
‘You mean now you’ve finished with him you don’t care if he plays around.’
‘Who said I’d finished with him? When did I ever start?’
‘He’s scared, Gemma.’
She started to nod and then changed it to a violent shake of the head. ‘I don’t see why. What’s he got to be scared of?’
‘The police poking around of course.’ Rosie moved and peered into the interior of the car. ‘Police walk into a village and they’re concerned with just one aspect, but they turn over stones, uncover things, find secrets they didn’t know were there.’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh, you know: folk smoking a bit of grass at parties, after-hours drinking in the pub, burying a cow because it shows signs of BSE, driving without a licence, cheating on husbands.’ There was a long pause. ‘Under-age sex,’ Rosie murmured.
After a moment Gemma said shakily, ‘It’s not a crime to cheat on your husband. A sin maybe, not a crime.’
A cuckoo called, threatening to destroy the carefully contrived mood with ridicule. Fortunately Gemma was too young to appreciate the timing.
‘And Dwayne wouldn’t be bothered about a court case,’ Rosie suggested.
‘How does a court – oh, you mean like a divorce. No, why should he’?’
‘Costs?’ Rosie was vague. ‘I suppose they met at Blind Keld?’
‘I guess.’ Gemma accepted it as a question, which she was meant to do.
‘How serious were they?’
The hesitation was a fraction too long and then Gemma shook her head. ‘Never. She wouldn’t want to lose all this.’ She gestured to the house.
‘Needs a lick of paint,’ Rosie said, then turned to stare at the car, P-registered, although coming up bravely under its polishing.
‘Borrans is a mansion compared with what she came from,’ Gemma said without a trace of contempt, and then, ‘Yes, I know what you’re thinking: that she’d throw it all away for Dwayne Paxton, but you see, Walter knew and it didn’t make any difference at all, no more than it did with me. She had the morals of a cat.’
Rosie blinked. ‘You’re saying there were more boyfriends?’
Gemma was taken aback. ‘I’m not saying that, just that she was a slag.’
‘You didn’t mind living in the same house with a slag?’
‘Why should I? She didn’t bother me.’ Gemma thought about it. ‘Matter of fact I was thinking about giving her the push; you know: tell her to go back where she came from.’ She glanced at Rosie hopefully. Rosie thought that the girl was getting tired.
‘How would you have gone about it?’
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br /> ‘Blackmail.’
‘Oh yes. And what crime had she committed that you could blackmail her with?’
Gemma’s eyes were shifty and Rosie’s mind switched to the other question that needed answering: Walter’s whereabouts on Wednesday night.
‘Slander,’ Gemma said suddenly. ‘She started a rumour that there was salmonella at Jollybeard. That’s a crime. You don’t believe me? She hated Eleanor. Eleanor said she was out for all she could get.’
‘I have to go,’ Rosie said. ‘Shall I put Walter’s car back in the garage for you?’
‘No, that’s OK, I can do it.’
For the life of her Rosie could think of no way of broaching the subject of Walter. ‘How could I?’ she protested to Sewell on her mobile. ‘I got everything else, but no way was I going to ask her if he was in bed all Wednesday night. She’d have lied and turned hostile again and I’d established some kind of rapport which could come in useful. Anyway, you wanted a lover and you’ve got one – and Walter knew about him. She let that slip.’
‘You can come back,’ Sewell said. ‘You done a good job.’
‘Square one again,’ he told Holgate when she’d signed off. ‘We’ve got a name for the boyfriend, Dwayne Paxton, but Walter knew about him.’
‘If he’d known all along, what triggered him last Wednesday?’
‘Not quite square one,’ Sewell mused, ignoring him. ‘We’ve got another suspect – identified – and others unnamed? Honeyman’s no saint, I wouldn’t trust him near my daughter, and there are other men in Borascal, not to speak of further afield.’
‘And women.’
‘What?’
‘If it was a sex murder it could just as well have been a woman.’ Holgate spread his fingers. ‘Need strong hands though, but these farm women are strong.’
‘A lesbian relationship?’
‘That hadn’t occurred to me. I was thinking of a jealous wife, partner, whatever.’
Or sister, Sewell thought.
In the late evening Miss Pink, fortified by Eleanor’s poached salmon but having declined wine, was following a sheep trod along the top of the escarpment where Isa had plunged to the river. Gouges in the far bank marked where the MG had been winched out of the water. Furnished with a large-scale map she had found a gate which gave access to the water meadows and, working her way south, had come to the start of the crag. Here sheep had made a narrow path which she followed, climbing to a long grassy ledge between the wall and the scarp.
