by Carrie Marsh
I am so lucky I found Harry, she sighed. I wish Janet could have been as happy in her choice of partners. It was not the girl's fault she had been so desperately sad in her marriage, and in so much of her early life
Harry squeezed her hand. “We should visit Richard tomorrow,” he said gently.
“Yes,” Marcie agreed. “I should talk to Mrs. Byrne about having the spare room made up..” she trailed off and reached for her handbag, writing a comment on her “to do” list.
She gave a covert glance at Murgatroyd, whose private hatred of the the housekeeper was a source of gentle amusement to them both.
“Yes,” Harry agreed. He looked at the clock and yawned. It was only nine o' clock in the evening, but he was feeling surprisingly tired. “We should try and be ready by tomorrow. I don't know when the funeral will be...” he trailed off.
Marcie nodded. “Well, I'll tell her before then,” she agreed. “And I should make a list. If Tamsyn is going to be here, then I'll want to bake some tarts and things...” she frowned, clearly running through a shopping list in her mind.
Harry smiled and she grinned back.
“I know,” she replied. “I'm being broody. I can't help it, you know.”
Harry sighed. He wished Marcie had children – she would have been a wonderful mother, a perfect grandma. That was clearly not for them, though. Instead, they were left free to care for a broad range of people, the whole village in fact.
He looked at the clock again and stretched. “We should have dinner,” he observed. “It's late.”
Marcie nodded. “Apparently Mrs. Byrne had put something in to roast when she left around six. We shall have to go and see what it is.” She smiled at Harry and headed for the kitchen.
The scent of roast potatoes, baking and golden, hit her as she opened the door. Something, at least, was as it should be.
“Harry,” she asked, as she plated up the deliciously savory smelling casserole, “do you think we could have Gilding here for a visit?”
Harry nodded. “Of course, dear. I'll ask when I see him tomorrow.”
“Good.” If anyone could tell her what she needed to know, it would be him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A DISCOVERY
A DISCOVERY
The morning crept across Stowe village on feet of fog, wreathing the ancient stone buildings in mist. Soft as a blanket, gray and hazy, it made everything somehow eerie.
Dennis, the village mechanic, shivered and pulled his raincoat up around his ears.
“Gives me the creeps, this place does,” he said under his breath.
He was out early, walking his dog on Lytchwood Common, and the mist and cold were robbing him of the last of his nerve.
Since the discovery of Janet's body, here on the common, the place had taken on a sinister nature, and Dennis narrowed his eyes, half expecting to see ghosts of unquiet souls move across the eerie mist-filled field. He shook himself. Get a grip, Dennis! He thought. You know there's no such things.
Even so, he felt uneasy here.
“Fudge?” he called. Fudge, his retriever, was sniffing the ground about ten feet away – he could just see his tail, a pale flag beating at the mist. “Come on,” he called lightly.
The wind teased its way down Dennis' collar and he shivered. If it wasn't for the friendly dog's insistence on a walk, he would have been at home in bed right now. As it was, the morning was cold and gloomy. The fact that the place he was had just been a crime scene the day before just served to make matters worse.
They only moved the car yesterday. Ralph, the local tow truck operator, who operated from out of the bigger town of Croxton, had removed the car of the deceased the day before. The police should, in Dennis' opinion, have taken more note of how it had landed, rather than unceremoniously letting him pull the car across its own tracks and back up the hill again, obscuring any clues as to how it got there.
He shook his head. “What do I know anyway?” he asked himself wryly, “I'm not Sherlock Holmes!” he gave a low chuckle.
He thought he saw something move in the mist and tensed.
“Fudge?” he called. “Come on! Let's go! It's too cold.” He stamped his feet and clenched his fists to circulate blood to his fingers. It was too cold for early autumn, that he could say. The crops would be doing worse for it...He shook his head at his wandering thoughts. He should get home and get dressed for work.
Fudge was barking.
There was something about the bark he could not ignore, even if he wanted to. Insistent, tense. How he barked if he saw an intruder in their garden at home.
“Fudge?” he called, feeling nervous.
The dog fell silent and then started barking again, more urgently.
He felt the hair on his neck rise.
“Fudge?”
More barking.
“Oh, ok,” Dennis sighed. “I'll come and find you.” Taking a deep breath, he walked slowly into the mist.
The white tendrils clung to him, his breath wreathing plumes in the chill air. He walked forward, shivering with something more than the cold. He tried to ignore his mounting sense of unease. He knew Fudge, and he had never barked like that, not since Ben, the boy from next door, had tried to climb in over the fence sometimes. If he was barking so insistently, it meant something was up.
“Fudge?” he called. “Come on, you daft...”
His voice trailed off. He was standing beside Fudge, who was quivering with attentiveness, looking through the mist, barking at something that emerged as the breeze parted its swathes.
It was a person. Lying on his back. Lying very still.
Dennis crouched down. He turned the still form over.
He gasped.
Blank eyes stared up at him, sightless. The blank, staring eyes of a dead man.
Staring, Dennis realized he knew him. Grant Hiddingh.
Crying out in horror, Dennis loosened his grip and let the man turn back over.
He and Fudge looked down at the still, lifeless form, seeming as shocked as each other. Dennis staggered back and sat down on the grass, thoughts reeling.
There it was. Body number two. The second person found on this common in as many days.
Feeling as if he was about to vomit, Dennis walked briskly away until the lifeless man was swallowed by the mist. He pulled his phone out and dialed the police station.
“Hello? Detective Gilding? I'm at Lytchwood Common. There's a body.”
He waited impatiently while the detective asked questions and did his best to answer them. Then he hung up. He stood still for a moment, swaying and sweating. Then he vomited soundlessly into the grass.
Silently, he and Fudge headed up the embankment to wait.
Someone had to stay until the police arrived, even though Dennis Harlowe, village mechanic, wished deeply that it was not him.
CHAPTER NINE
A DARK DAWN
A DARK DAWN
It was still dark at the tiny Stowe police station when the phone rang, the dawn just creeping through the mist, leaving most of the building in the darkness of the overhanging trees.
Randall Gilding ran a hand down his lean, long face and sighed.
“Not another one,” he said under his breath.
He himself had been sound asleep when Hannah, the officer on duty at that time, had called him. He had driven in, still half asleep, heading across from his small cottage to reach the police station ten minutes ago. She had not said exactly what the matter was when she telephoned, and he had hoped that this time it was not a death.
But it was.
Now, sitting in the semi-darkness of his office, Gilding glanced outside to where Ginsberg had parked the car. He had been arriving to take over from Hannah when she received the call, and had headed directly to the scene.
The police car blinked lazy, indifferent blue light over the scene outside, and, for the second time in three days, the ambulance was behind it, bearing a body to the morgue. Gilding looked out of the windo
w a moment – he felt drained and wished sincerely that he could just stay where he was at his desk and let someone else face it. He sighed. He knew he couldn't.
“I'd better get out there and join the party.”
Walking lightly over the wooden boards, he headed to the front door. “Ginsberg?” he called. It was cold and misty out there, figures loomed like shadows in the gloom.
“Yes, sir?” his sergeant asked, walking crisply over the short, frost-stiff grass. Shorter than Gilding, with an innocent face, Ginsberg looked surprisingly calm for someone who had just been out to collect a body.
“What do we have this time?” Wlding asked. His voice was detached, almost disinterested, his way of dealing with the trauma of death.
“It's Hiddingh, sir. You know, the...”
“Yes, I know Hiddingh,” Gilding cut off his explanation tiredly. Grant Hiddingh, hippie and activist, had been a minor nightmare for the local police for the last year and a half – no, ever since he moved in, in fact. Staging protests, busking, or simply being a nuisance, Hiddingh had broken most of the village rules and bent the rest, becoming a plague for Gilding and the other law-enforcers at Stowe
“He's bought it as well?” Gilding asked. That thought made him strangely sad. Hiddingh had been so full of life. It was impossible to imagine him being dead.
“Yes, sir,” Ginsberg confirmed. “It's funny, though, sir...” he began, licking his lips uncertainly.
“What is?” Gilding asked briskly. A definite character himself, Gilding was known for two things – his unnerving intelligence and his extremely low patience during a crisis. Ginsberg cleared his throat.
“The victim died in a car crash. Just like Mrs. Fleet.”Gilding ran his hands over his face. A bad morning had just got worse. “You have the car?”
“It's coming in now, sir,” Ginsberg confirmed.
“And you took photos? Recorded the pattern of the crash?”
“Yes, sir,” he agreed.
“Very well, then,” Gilding said, sounding tired. “Let's get him in and onto the table for our local medical expert, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” Ginsberg agreed. He headed off to the ambulance, where the team was just opening the back.
“Is Hargreave here?”
“We called him earlier. He said he'd be in after about half an hour. So he should be here in a few minutes now.” Ginsberg said.
“That's good.”Gilding stayed where he was, just to check that procedure was being carried out, and then, finding nothing to alter, headed back to his office.
Once in the warmer, coffee-scented sanctuary of his office, he sat down heavily. He began blowing warm breath onto his fingers to try and revive them from the aching cold. He leaned back in his chair, feeling a headache already building behind his eyes.
“What is happening in this place?” he sighed.
Since Gilding first began working in Stowe five years ago, nothing had happened. It was the reason why he had requested transfer here from the busy station in Norwich. Then he had wanted peace. Now that peace he had grown to cherish was shattered, too.Gilding breathed slowly, allowing his mind to relax.
“There's no way this is an accident, is it?”
There were, as far as he saw it, two possibilities. Firstly, that the bodies were the result of a genuine accident. In which case, this was an issue for the traffic police, not him. The other choice – the one that seemed much more likely – was that the deaths were deliberate.
“In which case,” Gilding said under his breath, “I should go and talk to the good doctor.”
He headed down the short vinyl-tiled corridor to the morgue, sure Hargreave would have arrived by now. The man was so punctual that Gilding had actually set his watch by him as a joke between them. He smiled mirthlessly, thinking it: such an innocent joke seemed foreign to this moment. His headache worsened as he went, and it was not just the cold weather.
He paused outside the morgue. The light was on. He did not want to disturb his colleague, so he noiselessly turned the handle, holding his breath as he did so against the rush of resins and surgical spirit scenting the air. The smell always made him nauseous, layered as it was over the cold scent of death.
Tensing his shoulders, he rested a hand on the cold brass door knob and entered.
He found himself looking at a white coat. Broad and tall, reassuringly present, Dr. Hargreave filled the space, even with his back toward the door.
“Good morning, Inspector Gilding,” a mild voice said. The doctor still had his back toward him and Gilding wondered how he knew it was him.
“Yes, it's me,” he replied wearily.
“I saw you reflected in the tiles,” Eustace Hargreaves said by way of explanation. His voice was the same broad Cambridge drawl as ever, the product of his expensive education. He turned round to face Gilding, one snowy-white brow raised in question.
“Very clever,” Gilding sighed. “Now, before you follow that with any more witticisms, let's get down to business.”
The doctor laughed. “You're in a bad mood, aren't you? What's wrong with a rainy Monday morning at seven a.m.?”
“You actually have to ask?” Gilding said tiredly. “If you don't know, I'm not going to try and explain.”
Hargreaves chuckled easily. “Just teasing, old boy. I also hate being pulled out of bed at this time. Which is why I prefer my patients dead...less likely to have emergencies that way.”Gilding suppressed a laugh. “I see your point, doctor. How's our latest case looking?” he asked dryly.
The doctor looked down at the body. He frowned, lost in though, then looked back up again, gray eyes tranquil.
“Well, for a start, he's very dead, ” he said mildly. “Fractured skull, broken neck. Some damage to the ribs. It was the neck that killed him, or so I would guess. Went straight through the window. Impact broke three of the poor man's ribs – difficult to tell right now which injury was fatal. He didn't know too much about it, no matter which it was I'd say,” he added. “Not the worst way to go. Not the best, either,” he added, reaching for a notebook with a cold shudder.
“Any idea when he died?” Gilding asked.
“Well, I would estimate sometime last night. Round midnight, maybe a little later. Difficult to say, since it's so cold and rainy out.” He sighed.
Gilding nodded. He looked down briefly at the body and then looked up. The cold and vacant eyes and the stillness of death drew at his soul, taking its warmth. He walked over to the window, leaving the doctor to his work.
“You heard from Denton if he has the photos of the site?” he asked, choosing to focus on his thoughts rather than on whatever Hargreaves was doing with the body. The sight of death still unnerved him, despite over a decade in the force.
“Yup,” Doctor Hargreaves said tranquilly. “They're on my desk at the corner right now. The ones from the first case, that is. And one or two from the second as well.”
“A car accident,” Gilding began slowly. “Another car accident? In two days?”
“You are referring to our deceased grocer's wife? Or, should I say, the deceased wife of our currently living grocer? I don't want to tempt fate through an accident of phrase,” he said, bending down to draw a blood sample.
“Yes,” Gilding said, feeling irritated. “I was.”
“Well,” Doctor Hargreaves straightened, “the manner of death is similar, though the pattern of the accident is entirely different, I would say...” He turned toward the window, holding a syringe in one hand which he delicately emptied into a small plastic vessel.
“Different? How?”
“Well, if you look at the photographs our friendly sergeant left for me on the desk, you will note that the damage to the car is completely different,” Doctor Hargreaves observed, reaching for a camera to record the pattern of bruising on the man's forehead.
Gilding walked briskly to the desk and examined the pictures which lay there. He drew his breath in through his teeth. The pictures showed an aging VW Beetle, the fr
ont and side completely shattered by the impact, a horror of buckled metal.
“You mean, in this case the impact is from the side?” he asked.
“Exactly,” the doctor agreed mildly. He came to stand beside Gilding, and the two of them inspected the photographs together.
“And in the first case, you reckon the impact was from behind?”
“Your observations are astute as ever,” the doctor said softly. Gilding glared at him.
“You can stop teasing me as well,” he said gruffly. “I have a headache as it is. You have pictures of the vehicle?”
“Indeed I do,” Doctor Hargreaves said and reached for a paper envelope on his desk. It had “Case 1” scribbled on the front of it in a hasty hand. “If you peruse these,” he said, passing them to the detective, who opened the envelope quickly, “then you will note that the impact is certainly from the back. You will also observe, if you judge the way that the the vehicle is angled away from the embankment, that the vehicle rolled down the embankment as a result of some force from the back.”
“In other words,” Gilding asked, looking closely at the pictures, “she was pushed. Off the road. From behind, as we agreed a day ago. Yes?” He himself had seen the pictures and made the same conclusions: this was nothing new.
“Exactly, detective,” the doctor said quietly. “Whereas, in our young friend's case, I would say he was connected from the front and slightly to the side, and the car slid off the road. He saw the car coming and slammed on brakes, and the impact was head on, throwing him through the windshield. That tallies with the fact that the body was found on the common near the road, while the car was half-on the yellow lines.” He lifted the loose photograph from the surface of the desk, indicating the points he discussed as he did so.
“We have photos of the road? The skid marks?” the inspector asked.
“I believe so. I haven't seen them myself...right now I am occupied with determining the cause of death, not reconstructing road accidents.” he sniffed dully.
