An Unhallowed Grave (3 page)

"And this one?" Heffernan bent over the body, studying the woman's face. Wesley stood behind, trying to put a vision of the woman's struggling, agonising death out of his mind.

"Oh, she choked. You can see the face and neck are dark red. That's caused by ..."

"Put it in your report, Colin. My stomach's not up to it this time of night. What makes you think it's suspicious?"

"Dr. Palmer, the police surgeon, was called first and he noticed something. Here." He pointed at the side of the neck.

"What?" Heffernan could see nothing he thought unusual. The neck was a mess of red and bruising where the rope had dug into the flesh.

"Can't you see, Gerry? The shape of the marks. When somebody's strangled in the course of a suicide by hanging the rope marks form a classic V shape because the rope's been forced upwards behind the ears by the weight of the body." He illustrated with his fingers. "But when someone is strangled the marks are straight around the neck."

Wesley bent over to look. "I can see some other marks ... just there. Looks like finger marks."

"Precisely. It's my guess that she was strangled manually until she was unconscious then strung up and the hanging finished the job. That's just a guess, you understand," he added, covering himself. "I won't know for certain until I've done the postmortem, but

"But you'd put money on it?" asked Gerry Heffernan, impatient with all this professional caution.

Colin Bowman smiled and nodded. "If I was a gambling man, yes. I would."

"Time of death?"

"She's been dead a couple of hours. Ten thirty or thereabouts. Do you know who she is yet?"

"Apparently her name's Pauline Brent," said Wesley, who had picked up this precious nugget of information during his brief discussion with the assembled locals. "She was the local doctor's receptionist and she lives ... sorry, lived ... in Worthy Lane, wherever that is. She lived alone, no family, but apparently she was on good terms with her next-door neighbour... a Mrs. Green. We could ask her to identify the body and see what she's got to say."

Heffernan looked at his watch. "It's one o'clock in the morning. I don't see much point in frightening this poor woman to death by hammering on her door at this hour. Keep this area cordoned off and get it examined at first light. We'll have to tell the vicar the bad news about his churchyard first thing tomorrow and get this

Mrs. Green to do the identification. What's the earliest you can do the postmortem, Colin?"

"Half ten suit you?"

"Perfect." Heffernan looked down at what was left of Pauline Brent, then spoke softly to his sergeant. "Wonder what the poor woman did to make someone choke the life out of her like that."

"Or what drove her to climb up a tree and hang herself. Perhaps we'll find it's suicide after all."

Heffernan shook his head. "No, Wcs. It's murder. I can feel it in my water ... and my water's never been wrong yet."

Wesley Peterson yawned. He had felt wide awake first thing, but now, sitting at his desk on the first floor of Tradmouth police station, he was beginning to feel the effects of his disturbed night.

He stared at the file open in front of him and flicked through the pile of reports. Why were so many local vicars reporting small articles of value pictures or carvings missing from their churches then, a week or so later, phoning apologetically to say that the prodigal was back, safe and sound? It had happened five times in all, and Wesley's first thought was that a forgery had been exchanged for the genuine article. But each time the vicar swore that the original had returned and who was he to argue with a man of the cloth?

Wesley had been assigned to the case because he had once served with the Met's art and antique squad. But now the file lay there before him, challenging, mocking. He was staring out of the window seeking inspiration, watching the masts of the yachts as they swayed on the glinting river, when the phone rang, jolting him awake and back to the realities of police work.

It was the inspector. Mrs. Green, Pauline Brent's neighbour, had identified the body. Could Wesley go to Stokeworthy and ask her a few pertinent questions? Then could he and DC Rachel Tracey have a look through the dead woman's things? Wesley closed the file on the truant works of art. Murder took priority.

He took his jacket from the back of his chair and slung it over his shoulder. The day was warm enough for shirtsleeves.

Crossing the station foyer, he heard his name being called. He turned and saw a large desk sergeant grinning at him benignly. "We're a man short next Sunday, Wesley," Bob Naseby began. "You can't get that wife of yours to let you out, can you? You'd be batting fifth. I'd have put you further up the order, but..."

"Sorry, Bob. There's been a murder over at Stokeworthy ... looks like we'll be pretty busy."

Bob Naseby, his body behind the desk of Tradmouth police station but his mind permanently out on the cricket field, nodded sagely. "That's a shame. We must get you a game this season. With your family history." He leaned forward confidentially. "I looked that great-uncle of yours up in Wisden. Top batsman he was in the days when the West Indies were unbeatable."

Ever since he had revealed the family cricket connection in the course of polite conversation, Wesley had regretted it. He wondered how long he could keep making excuses: how long it would be before he would reveal his mediocrity out on the wicket. But the death of Pauline Brent bought him some time ... for now. He looked at his watch ostentatiously to signal he was in a hurry, and Sergeant Naseby released him from custody with a friendly wave of his bowling arm.

Wesley ran down the station steps, climbed into his blue police-issue Ford and drove to Stokeworthy, finding the journey much easier in daylight.

He had arranged to meet Rachel Tracey at Mrs. Green's cottage. He found Worthy Lane easily and Rachel who, half an hour before, had taken Mrs. Green's arm gently and had led her out of the room where Pauline Brent had lain, neatly and inoffensively arranged, beneath a crisp white sheet answered the door.

Rachel was relieved to see him. "She identified the body. It's Pauline Brent."

"How is she?"

"Remarkably calm in the circumstances." She gave Wesley a smile and led the way to the living room. Rachel, cool, blonde and efficient, was a good person to have around in a crisis.

Once Rachel had introduced him, Wesley began to ask the inevitable routine questions. Susan Green, he discovered, had last seen her neighbour at around five o'clock on the night she died. This was quite normal, she said: they didn't live in each other's pockets. She had heard no unusual noise from Pauline's house. She hadn't heard her go out of her front door but then she had had her television on and had been engrossed in the BBC's excellent adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. There had been nothing unusual about Pauline's recent behaviour, but she had seemed a little preoccupied, as though she had something on her mind.

Rachel caught his eye and nodded. Wesley knew and respected her talent for putting people, especially the not so young, at their ease so that they talked freely. So, well trained by his GP mother and later his wife, he went into the spotless cottage kitchen and made three cups of tea while Rachel did her stuff.

"Tell me about Pauline," Rachel began gently.

Susan Green's hair was short and jet black and her unmade-up face was covered in freckles and small moles. Rachel guessed she was in her mid-forties, but she could have been a well-preserved fifty something it was hard to tell. She was a tall woman with a taste for long ethnic clothing, and her voice was soft, with a slight American accent.

"She was a good neighbour. Very reliable." Rachel looked up from her notebook. Reliable was a strange word to use about a friend: it made her sound like an employee ... or a domestic appliance. She let Susan continue. "When I moved here five years back she was one of the few people in this village who made an effort to make me feel welcome. I'd just been widowed and wanted to start a new life for myself."

"Where did you live before?"

"Birmingham. My husband was a professor at the university there ... I met him when he came over to the States as visiting lecturer. That was thirty years back." She smiled at the memory. "I worked as a social worker," she continued. "Then I had to nurse my husband through cancer. When he died I felt I had to get away ... change my life. So I gave up my work and came here. I intended to paint but ..." She shrugged and smiled. "I guess I never got around to it."

Rachel looked round the low-beamed room. Susan Green's late husband had left her well provided for: a social worker's salary alone couldn't pay for the kind of expensive good taste that graced this particular rural retreat. The only note of incongruity was struck by an arrangement of framed Beatles album covers surrounding a signed photograph of the group which hung in pride of place above the fireplace.

"Pauline was very kind," Susan continued. "She introduced me around the village; made sure I was included in all the activities.

You know the sort of thing: helping out at the summer fete; coffee mornings for the NSPCC

"So she was involved in village life?"

"Yeah, I guess she was. And she knew a lot of folk around here through her job at the surgery." She paused, thinking. "She used to say she was still regarded as a newcomer but I guess she just said that to make me feel better."

Rachel, a farmer's daughter who knew all about the politics of village life, suspected that Pauline had been speaking the truth. In certain villages, though not all, it would take longer than a mere fifteen years to be accepted as a local.

Tell me about her job."

"She worked at the surgery in the village as a receptionist."

"Did she have any problems at work that you knew of?" Susan shook her head. "Was she well liked?"

"Oh, sure," said Susan, almost indignantly. "I told you, she was involved in all kinds of local activities."

From Rachel's experience the two things didn't necessarily follow. The most active villager could be the most hated busybody. "So she had lots of friends?"

Susan nodded.

"What about her family?"

"She said she had no family."

"Any enemies? Anyone she didn't get on with?"

At this point Wesley came in with a tray. He put it down on the polished pine coffee table and sat by Rachel, looking at Susan expectantly.

Susan hesitated. "Weller there was someone. Not someone from the village, you understand. A weekender." She pursed her lips in disgust. "Did you notice that place opposite? Worthy Court? It's a development of weekend and holiday cottages."

Wesley had noticed. He had thought them rather tasteful: a small development around a central courtyard, cunningly disguised as a group of pastel-washed Devon thatched cottages. Very expensive.

"It was built a year ago," Susan continued. There's an indoor swimming pool, a gym, a sauna, all sorts. The developers assured us it would be very select, and most of the people are very quiet, but..." She left the sentence unfinished and gave the two police officers a significant look. They understood. "There's one man in particular and his wife ... girlfriend, whatever. They arrive in this big Mercedes every Friday evening then they play loud music till all hours. Sometimes they bring friends with them and have parties," she said disapprovingly. "There was an unpleasant incident a couple of weeks back. The family from the end cottage have got two young kids. The little one was playing on his tricycle and this D'estry came speeding along in his Merc and almost hit him. Pauline saw it and told him he should drive more carefully when there were kids around. She was usually such a quiet person, but I guess ..."

"If this sort of thing is a problem, Mrs. Green, you can always call the police, you know," Rachel suggested helpfully.

"What would be the use? People like that just don't care."

"So what happened?"

"Pauline went over and spoke with him, as I said, but he gave her a mouthful of foul language." Susan Green looked agitated; angry at the injustice of life. "This used to be a peaceful village but I guess it's going to get worse. They're building another bigger development in the manor grounds. But local historians think it's a site of historical importance so the council have insisted on the site being dug up by archaeologists before the building goes ahead. The developers kicked up a fuss, of course, but they didn't have a choice," she said with a satisfied smirk. "I've heard that there are environmental protesters up there too 'cause they're going to destroy some ancient woodland."

Rachel had a sudden vision of Mrs. Green perched up a tree with a pair of unhygienic eco-warriors. Wesley sat forward. "So they're doing a rescue dig? Where did you say it was?"

"On the main road on the left just before you get to the church. Don't you want to hear what that awful man said to Pauline? It might be why she killed herself. She'd been a bit quiet over the past few days ... like there was something on her mind. People brood, don't they, bottle things up." For the first time Susan Green was showing signs of grief for her dead neighbour. Her eyes became glassy with unshed tears. "If only she'd said something ... talked to me," she added, her voice cracking with emotion.

Rachel looked at Wesley and raised her eyebrows. As neither of them had uttered the word 'murder', it was hardly surprising that Susan should assume it was a case of suicide.

"What did this man say to upset her, Susan?" Rachel prompted gently.

"He said she was a ..." She hesitated. "An interfering old bitch who should keep her nose out of other people's business, and he said..."

"Go on." Wesley put his teacup down, listening intently.

Susan looked up, her eyes filled with anger. "He said she'd better watch herself. He said he knew where to find her ... and he knew how to deal with people like her."

"And what did you take that to mean?"

"That he'd kill her, I guess." At this point the tears began to flow in earnest.