Bricks and Mortality: Campbell & Carter 3 (2 page)

Now the wrecked house seemed of a piece with the withered nature around it. Jess entertained a moment’s fancy in which the whole thing disappeared in a riot of tentacles and thorns, like Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Her reverie was broken by the voice of the doctor, standing beside her.

‘Druggies,’ he opined laconically. His name was Layton and he was a tall, stooped, middle-aged man, perhaps not far off retirement. His greenish tweed suit was well cut and made, but old fashioned in style and hung on his frame in a way that suggested he’d once had a more burly figure. As he spoke he was attempting, with little success, to brush a powdering of soot from his sleeve. Finding that he’d created a black smear in its place, he gave a grunt of annoyance. ‘You wouldn’t believe the number of times they render themselves unconscious and then something like this happens. Oh, well, perhaps
you
would, Inspector! You’ll have seen this sort of thing before, I dare say.’

Layton gave her an apologetic nod. His grey hair, worn a little long, became more disarrayed.

For all the loneliness of this minor road, they were not the only spectators. It never ceased to puzzle Jess how people turned up to watch a disaster or its aftermath, even in such a spot. The audience was admittedly few in number. There was a tall, lean elderly man in a waxed jacket, a fringe of grey hair standing up around his balding pate like a halo. Where on earth had he come from? Further away were a pair of younger men of weather-tanned complexion and slightly furtive attitude who were surveying the scene from a discreet distance. Jess put them down as travellers, probably speculating whether it would be worth returning later when all had left the scene, to see if there was anything to scavenge in the metal line.

Nearest to Jess stood a bespectacled elderly woman clad in a woolly hat pulled down over her ears and a bright yellow canvas coat and trousers designed to make her visible on this footpath-less road as she walked her dog. The dog in question looked disgruntled. Its walk had been interrupted. It had no interest in the fire. It was of pug type, stocky in build with bandy front legs, but larger than the breed usually is, hinting at an intruder from another breed in its ancestry. But it had inherited the standard squashed features. Jess speculated that its pop eyes probably always had that resentful expression. Or perhaps it was just an example of people looking like their pets. Certainly the pug’s owner looked on fiercely, as if the blaze had been a personal affront.

Layton was speaking again. ‘You’ll find the fellow who was dossing in there shot up some vile substance, passed out and a candle fell over and started the fire, or something like that. Electricity to the house was disconnected, I know that much. Gas sealed off, too. It’s been empty since Sebastian Crown died. His son probably still owns it but he never comes near the place. Shame, really, because it was an attractive old building. There will be needles lying about in the ashes. You’ll have to watch out!’ he called suddenly, turning away from Jess.

His advice was addressed to the fire inspection officers who stood nearby and those smoke-and soot-stained firefighters who were still at the scene, damping down. They would be coming back for several days on the same task. A fire may appear to be out; but it can spring to life without warning in some hot spot, Jess knew.

‘Go right through your boots, those bloody needles,’ called the nearest fireman. Everyone nodded.

The charred body still nestled unmolested in its bed of cinders and ash, huddled in a foetal position, face twisted towards the floor. The fallen beams had formed a kind of tent over it and it was uncrushed. The arms were raised and crooked in the attitude typical of bodies found at the scenes of fire, fists clenched in a grotesque parody of boxing stance, as if taunting the crackling flames with, ‘Come on, then!’ A figure dressed in a protective suit was making a filmed record of the scene from a prudent distance.

‘No doubt about that,’ Layton summed up. ‘He’s dead, all right. No need to mess about examining him now, even if it were possible to get close enough. Besides, the remains are probably brittle, likely to snap apart like a biscuit. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that before the body is autopsied.’

He had been anxious not to make himself even filthier, rolling a blackened corpse over and prodding it, burning his hands in the task. Besides, he might encounter one of the discarded needles he’d warned of. Jess sympathised. Layton was not a regular police surgeon called in for such tasks. He was in private practice, but had been the nearest available at the time and they’d turned to him occasionally before. Give the man his due, he had come without demur and had done his job, certifying death.

Perhaps because this was a little outside his usual medical experience, he could not resist speculating a little. ‘It’ll be up to your pathologist, of course, to decide the exact cause of death and whether he’d been taking drugs. The contraction of the muscles suggests to me he was alive when the fire broke out. But he was probably too deeply unconscious to help himself. There will also be smoke deposit in the lungs, if he was alive. But he wouldn’t have known anything about it. He’d have been unaware, mark my words, and the smoke probably killed him, not the fire.’ Layton grew brisk. ‘I should be on my round. I’ve got housebound patients to visit.’ He put a hand to his untidy grey locks and smoothed them back.

She accompanied him to his car and asked, ‘You say you know the family who owns the place?’

The question seemed to surprise him and he stared at her for a moment as if she’d made some social gaffe. Then, perhaps recollecting she was a police officer and this was the beginning of an investigation into a fatal incident, he began a cautious reply.

‘I knew Sebastian – the previous owner – as a private patient. Oh, years ago. He’s been dead a good while. He was one of my first patients when I came here to practise, that’s why I remember him. There are still people who prefer alternatives to the NHS. I was his doctor for twenty years. I can hardly say I knew Gervase, his son. Not as an adult, that is. I knew
of
him. He was away at school much of the time and giving his father the usual headaches. Perhaps the school’s doctor treated him for any illness. I never did when he was a teenager as I recall, and certainly never saw him professionally when he was adult. His mother brought him to see me a few times when he was an infant, usual preventive jabs and baby problems. After that, don’t ask me what he did for medical advice. He may have registered as an NHS patient with another practice. I don’t think I saw Gervase once in my surgery. His father used to grouse about him as people do about their teenage kids.’

Jess studied the smouldering remains of the house again. ‘So presumably Sebastian Crown was a rich man.’

‘Pretty well off, I’d say. We have a few wealthy residents hereabouts. I understand he made his money out of shampoo for dogs.’

‘What?’ Jess was startled.

‘Not just shampoo, canine beauty products and treatments,’ Layton qualified his statement. ‘People spend a lot of money on their pets. Believe me, as a doctor, I’ve known cases where people lavish more care on a dog or cat than on a child.’

‘Did Sebastian Crown lavish care on his child?’ Jess asked as casually as she could.

Layton paused and began again in a circumspect manner, ‘I’m speaking generally now, not about the Crown family specifically, you understand. But everyone accepts that there are problems bringing up a family if you’re poor. Fewer people realise how many problems there are bringing up a family if you’re rich. No money shortage, of course. But a son, particularly, may feel he’s living in the shadow of a very successful father. If the father is a self-made man, then he may, perhaps unintentionally, keep reminding the son that his hard work has provided the lavish lifestyle the family now enjoys. He may be surprisingly stingy when it comes to handing out money because he wants his son to realise that it needs to be earned. I’m not saying this was the case with Sebastian and Gervase.’

‘No, of course not,’ Jess assured him.

‘It’s natural for there to be an element of rivalry in the relationship between a maturing young male and his father. In animal terms, you’d call it a challenge to the established leader of the herd or pack, that sort of thing. You probably watch some of the nature programmes on television. The younger man feels he has to prove himself. Sometimes he relishes the challenge and, well, sometimes he resents it. You know, just drops out and refuses to try, a sort of proving himself in a different way – by
not
doing what’s expected of him. After he left school Gervase disappeared for about a year, backpacking as they do. I understand he got as far as Australia and discovered surfing. When he reappeared round here, well, he’d got used to doing as he pleased, I suppose. He started getting into trouble, but it’s not my business to tell you about that. It wasn’t a good situation. Sebastian stopped mentioning him.’ Layton frowned.

‘What about Mrs Crown?’ Jess prompted, anxious this unexpected source of information should not dry up.

‘Mrs Crown? Oh, you mean Sebastian’s wife. She left them – husband and child – when the boy was very young, about ten or eleven years old. Ran off with another fellow, some people said.’ Perhaps to change the subject he added, ‘I’ll be retiring next year. Times flies.’

Jess thought this over. ‘How old would Gervase Crown be now?’

The doctor considered. ‘Mid-thirties? He lives abroad somewhere. I don’t know why he didn’t just sell this place if he didn’t want to live in it. Open invitation to dropouts of all kinds to move in.’

‘Was it furnished? It’s hard to tell at the moment.’ Jess smiled encouragingly.

Layton was fidgeting again. The general drift of the conversation worried him. He hadn’t meant to linger and chat, certainly not about even an ex-patient, Sebastian Crown. He’d been keen to stress that Gervase Crown had not been a patient, but he was treading very near the thin divide between professional discretion and ‘helping the police’. There was a dead body in the wreckage, that couldn’t be overlooked. How it got there would be the subject of an extensive inquiry. He’d come here to certify death, nothing more. He was being drawn in more deeply than suited him.

‘Oh, no idea! Shouldn’t have thought so. If any furniture were left in it, someone would have stolen it by now! I believe young Gervase moved the furniture out or sold it. He probably sold the antiques at auction. I dimly remember some kind of sale taking place. But I’ve never heard that he sold the family home as well. I think I’d have found out if he ever had. That sort of thing soon gets round. It matters hereabouts if you’re going to have new neighbours.’

He’d opened the car door in a purposeful manner. Her source of information had been stemmed. Jess thanked him for coming.

‘All part of the job,’ the doctor said, cheerful now that he was getting away. ‘Pity it’s not a murder, I could increase my fee.’

Jess watched him drive off. Like Layton, she wouldn’t normally be at the scene, not at this stage and not in the absence, so far, of foul play. But the uniformed officers first to arrive had been called away to a traffic incident on the main road. When the call came in about a body being found, she had been free and she had jumped in her car and come. Now she turned to the spectators. Anticipating her actions, the two travellers had already melted away and she was left with the tall man and the woman with the pug.

She approached the tall man first because he seemed to be expecting it, and introduced herself. He treated her to careful assessment before he informed her that his name was Roger Trenton. He lived a little under half a mile away at Ivy Lodge. He had seen the red glow in the night sky from his bedroom window at around midnight. ‘Lit up the room, like a candle.’ He had known straight away it would be Key House.

‘Why?’ asked Jess.

Trenton grew indignant at her question. ‘Because the place has been left to go to rack and ruin and it was only a matter of time before squatters moved in. That, or some yobbo bent on mischief. I have written myself, numerous times, to the council and twice to the owner, Gervase Crown.’

‘You have an address for Mr Crown?’ Jess asked hopefully.

‘No. I’ve got an address for his solicitors, and I can give you that. I wrote to Crown care of them. I supposed they sent the letter on. I got no reply. I asked Crown what he intended to do and when. That was an excellent property in good order when he inherited it. He lived in it less than six months, then sold off the contents in a house sale – half the county turned up for that! Crown pocketed the cash and took off into the blue, leaving the place abandoned. Man’s a lunatic.’

‘You spoke of squatters,’ Jess said. ‘Had you seen anyone around recently?’

‘No,’ Trenton told her reluctantly. ‘I don’t see it my job to look after the property if Crown can’t – or won’t.’

This statement was at odds with his earlier claim to have written twice to the owner about the state of Key House and to have bombarded the council with his grievance.

‘Don’t think …’ added Trenton, drawing himself up to his full height. ‘Don’t take it into your head that I’m here because I’m some sort of ghoulish sightseer! I always take a good brisk walk every morning. Often come this way.’

At this the woman with the dog turned and directed what could only be described as a sneer at the speaker.

‘Someone will come to speak to you later, Mr Trenton, if that’s all right,’ said Jess. ‘Ivy Lodge, you say?’

‘Straight on that way.’ Trenton pointed down the road away from the scene. ‘Can’t miss it. It’s got a splendid old oak tree just behind it.’

Trenton departed and Jess turned to the dog walker.

‘Gasbag!’ said the dog walker pithily, watching as Trenton’s figure disappeared at a quick march.

‘You are?’

‘Muriel Pickering – and I
do
walk by here every day, with Hamlet.’ She pointed at the pug, which turned a baleful stare on Jess.

‘You live nearby, then, or have you driven out here?’

‘I walk!’ repeated Ms Pickering. ‘I’ve just told you so. I’m not afraid to use my legs. I live at Mullions, that’s the name of my house. It’s down that lane there.’ She pointed at a narrow turning just visible some yards behind them. She then directed another scowl towards the vanished Mr Trenton. ‘I
never
see Roger Trenton walking this way. Load of rubbish. The only place Trenton does any walking is on a golf course. He was out here rubbernecking. And no, I didn’t see any suspicious person or persons, creeping about the place. Yes, there have been tramps using the place occasionally in the past. Not recently. It probably wasn’t difficult to get in. I dare say, if you were to take the trouble to go round the back of the house, you’d find a window smashed or a catch broken. Only,’ added Ms Pickering, ‘no use you trying to check that
now
. Everything will be broken now.’