Fate Worse Than Death (19 page)

‘In an isolated community like this,' the Chief Inspector went on, ‘the local people often close ranks. They're pointing at Flood not necessarily because they think he was responsible for the girl's death – they may know that he wasn't – but because he's an outsider.'

‘And therefore expendable?' said Hilary.

‘Exactly. They want us to arrest him and then go away and leave them alone. So if Flood's alibi holds, we'll have to be very devious and patient to get the truth out of any of them.'

The Chief Inspector had at first thought of following Flood's alleged trail himself; but as he very much disliked London – an overcrowded, foreign place at the best of times, and no doubt stifling in this weather – he had sent DC Wigby straight there from Saintsbury.

Wigby had reported by telephone from London the previous evening. As instructed, he had gone to Camden and found the address of Flood's ex-wife. There was no one at home, as the man had said; but on the other hand, none of the neighbours had noticed a man of Flood's description entering the house on Tuesday evening or leaving it on Wednesday morning.

The Detective Constable had asked for time to make further enquiries, but Quantrill had spiked his plans for a night on the town by recalling him. A better line, the Chief Inspector decided, would be to try to establish whether Flood had been seen on the journeys he alleged he had taken. Wigby had already questioned the coach drivers, without success. Some of the passengers, though, might have noticed Flood; and some of them might be regular travellers. Without waiting for Wigby to return from London, Quantrill had asked Saintsbury CID to undertake the routine of checking Desmond Flood's alibi.

For his part, the Chief Inspector had been looking forward to following the line of enquiry that Mrs Yardley had suggested to Sergeant Lloyd. In particular, he had wanted to interview the man she had tried to eliminate, Charley Horrocks. An outsider herself, Annabel Yardley had no reason to protect any of the villagers; but she was related to Horrocks. It was impossible to know, at this stage, whether she was trying to protect him because he was family, or to draw the attention of the police to him because he was a potential nuisance. Either way, the Chief Inspector had been interested in him. But according to Horrocks's statement, he had spent the whole of Tuesday evening from approximately 6.05 p.m. in the Flintknappers Arms. He had named other customers who were there at the same time, and Quantrill's interest had receded.

There had been no luck so far in any of the searches: for the key to the cottage, for Sandra Websdell's car, or for the place where she had been held captive. All empty buildings in the village had now been searched, and Quantrill had directed the searchers to spread out.

The forensic science laboratory had reported that the smudges of dirt on the dead girl's face had been caused by a mingling of sweat with the sandy soil typical of the forest area. The seeds and grasses on her clothing did not, however, include pine needles, and a small quantity of sawdust that had been found in the folds of her dress was hardwood, not softwood. A fragment of twig found in her hair, though yet to be positively identified, was definitely not from a conifer.

‘It's a waste of time to search the Forestry Commission plantations for the place where she was hidden, then,' advised Martin Tait, unasked. ‘Better to go straight to the place I spotted from the air, Stoneyhill wood.'

The Chief Inspector ignored the advice. Stoneyhill wood was more than a mile from Fodderstone, and he intended to do things his own way, systematically.

‘I see that Mrs Websdell's garden gnome has reappeared,' said Hilary. She was reading a report from DC Bedford, whose enquiry patch the previous day had included the Flintknappers Arms. ‘It was found on Tuesday, damaged, in a ditch along the Horkey road.'

‘Was it,' said Quantrill. He took no interest in gnomes. Molly had been keen on having one when they first moved into their semi-detached house in Breckham Market, but he had refused to give it garden space. In his opinion, gnomes were a stupid waste of money. They were also, in residential areas, an open invitation to practical jokers, and he was damned if he would ever make himself a laughing-stock at divisional HQ by having to report that a gnome of his own had gone missing.

But Sergeant Lloyd persisted. ‘I'm beginning to wonder whether the Websdells'gnome is significant,' she said. ‘I didn't think so, when it disappeared – but at the time we all believed that Sandra had gone off of her own accord. Now, though, it seems odd. Apparently the gnome had stood in the Websdells'garden for the whole of their married life. No one had larked about with it in twenty-three years – understandably, in a quiet place like Fodderstone Green. So surely it can't be a coincidence that it went missing just after Sandra did, and then turned up again, damaged, on the morning of the day she died?'

Quantrill put down the report he was reading, and scratched his jaw. ‘Hmm. There was the usual silly ransom note, wasn't there? I'd better have a look at it.'

Hilary went to the file. Martin Tait couldn't resist offering some further advice. ‘I wouldn't pin any hope on anything to do with a garden gnome,' he said. ‘Stealing gnomes is the kind of thing Hooray Henries do, and I think Mrs Yardley has been entertaining some of them at weekends.'

‘Hooray who?' said Quantrill.

‘Henries. Well-bred twits who've never grown up,' explained Tait with contempt. He'd gone off the upper classes. ‘You know, the ones who get drunk and behave like hooligans, and then try to charm their way out of court by pleading youthful high spirits.'

‘Oh,
them
,' said Quantrill.

‘It's certainly a literate note. Isn't it?' said Hilary, offering it in its plastic evidence bag to the Chief Inspector. ‘Greek e's and all.'

‘I wouldn't know about that.' Quantrill was growing increasingly irritated. He was a senior police officer who'd come up the hard way. His own village-school education had finished when he was fourteen, and he didn't care to be reminded of the fact that a new generation of better-educated, more sophisticated detectives was about to overtake him. ‘What I
do
know is that people who fool about with gnomes in Breckham Market are usually the Young Farmers'Club type – they enjoy a prank, but they're responsible enough not to damage other people's property, or to throw it away. They usually just swap gnomes round. But if they left a ransom note I'd expect them to return the gnome later, whether the sweets were put out for them or not. So this doesn't look like a standard practical joke.'

‘That's how the Hooray Henries would see it, though,' said Tait. ‘They're mindlessly arrogant when it comes to other people's property. That's why I suggested Mrs Yardley's friends. They probably took the gnome for a laugh, drove it about until they got tired of it, and then pitched it out of the car window.'

‘Yes …' agreed Hilary. ‘But there's something you don't know, Martin. The ransom note didn't appear until two days after the gnome went missing. The gnome disappeared during the night of Friday 20th July, and the note was found stuck conspicuously on a rose bush by the Websdells'garden gate on the morning of Sunday 22nd. How do you account for that?'

‘He's not required to account for it.' Chief Inspector Quantrill slapped crossly at some midges that were scudding over his face on their maddeningly tickly microfeet. ‘You'd better send the gnome and the note to the lab, Hilary. As for you, Martin – all right, you've offered a suggestion that needs following up. You're on visiting terms with Mrs Yardley, so you might as well make yourself useful by asking her whether any of her guests ever mentioned the gnome.'

Tait hesitated. Alison's father knew nothing about the subject of his conversation with Hilary Lloyd the previous evening, then. Good for Hilary; he'd always thought well of her, and he felt a momentary embarrassment for having sworn at her, a twinge of guilt because he hadn't since apologized. Fortunately she was behaving today as though nothing had happened.

The fact that she hadn't blabbed to the old man did create a problem, though. It was going to be impossible, Tait realized, for him to get out of going to see Annabel Yardley again. The DCI had been very decent in offering him this chance to stay with the investigation, and he could see no way of turning down the invitation to question Annabel without telling Alison's father more than he wanted him to know.

‘Of course,' said Tait confidently. ‘I'll be glad to help.'

Quantrill simmered down. ‘Mrs Yardley's already suggested that we might take a look at the regulars of the Flintknappers Arms,' he said. ‘Do you use the pub at all, Martin?'

‘I was there on Tuesday evening. Twice. It was where I met Annabel Yardley, as it happens. I know the men she means, by sight anyway. They were all in the bar when I went there the second time – they're a noisy, unsavoury-looking bunch.' Tait paused, thinking. ‘Now that's interesting. Tuesday evening … That was when Sandra Websdell died. The pathologist says that her death would have occurred somewhere between six and eight o'clock. I was at the Flintknappers on my first visit from – oh, about six-forty to seven-thirty. And in all that time there wasn't a soul in the pub apart from myself and Mrs Yardley and the landlady behind the bar. Not a regular in sight.'

‘There wasn't?' Quantrill brightened visibly. ‘We could be on to something, then. Did you hear that, Chips?' he asked the perspiring collator. ‘How many alibis does that demolish?'

PC Carpenter extracted a list from one of his files. ‘Four, sir. According to their statements, four men spent the whole of Tuesday evening in the Flintknappers Arms: Howard Braithwaite, Charles Horrocks, Stanley Bolderow and Reginald Osler.'

‘Five men,' said Quantrill. ‘The landlord as well.'

‘Oh, right – Philip Goodwin. He said that he opened the pub at the usual time, six o'clock. The other four said that they all arrived between six and six-fifteen. Each one of them said that the others were there, and that they all stayed in the bar until closing time.'

‘
Five
men, sir?' protested Hilary. ‘Surely you're not suggesting that they were all involved in Sandra's death?'

‘Possibly not,' said Quantrill. ‘But they wouldn't have lied to us if they weren't up to something at the time she died, and I intend to find out what it was.'

‘No, Martin. Sorry, but that's definite. You've been extremely helpful, and I'm obliged to you, but I'm not going to have this case taken over unofficially by the regional crime squad. Yes, I'll be glad if you'll still have a word about the gnome with Mrs Yardley – you're certainly the best man for that job. But apart from that, all the investigating will be done by members of Breckham CID. To which you no longer belong. Damn it, man, you're on leave – go away and fly your aeroplane.'

Tait pointed out that visibility was too hazy for flying.

‘Then go and entertain your aged aunt. Take her out to lunch – no,
not
at the Flintknappers Arms. Treat her to a day out, right away from Fodderstone. Alison told me how fond of the old lady you are, but I've seen precious little evidence of it.'

‘I've already offered to take my aunt out, but she doesn't want to go,' said Tait. ‘She doesn't feel like coming for a flight, either – she's not at all well, I'm afraid. And Alison's quite right, I
am
fond of Aunt Con. I may not mention her very often, but I think about her a great deal.'

‘Excuse me, Mr Quantrill,' interrupted the heavily moustached sergeant in charge of the caravan. He had just received a radio message from the crew of the police Land Rover that had been searching for Sandra Websdell's car. ‘The girl's Fiesta's been found in the forest, about a couple of miles north-east of Fodderstone Green. It looks as though the car's been there for some time – probably ever since she was abducted.'

The sergeant went to the map displayed on the wall and pointed out the approximate location, in a Forestry Commission plantation that lay to the north of, and parallel with, the Horkey road. Whoever had abducted the girl could have driven her car into the forest along an unmetalled track that led across the fields from the road, not far from the cottage for which she had set out on the morning she disappeared.

The fact that the car had been abandoned so comparatively close to the village suggested that Sandra might have been held captive somewhere in the same area. The map showed that there was another track leading to – and from – the plantation where the car had been hidden. This track ran west from the plantation, going by a roundabout route to Fodderstone Green. And the roundabout route went past Stoneyhill wood, which Tait had already advised the Chief Inspector to search.

‘Looks as though I might as well take the rest of the week as leave,' grumbled Quantrill to Sergeant Lloyd, ‘and hand this whole case over to the Flying Detective …'

‘Ready when you are, sir,' said Inspector Tait.

Thursday lunch at the Flintknappers Arms was cold meat and salad again.

Lois Goodwin was too worried about her husband to bother with cooking, or with the customers. Yesterday she had heard Phil deliberately lying to the police about where he had been on the evening of Sandra Websdell's death. Surely he hadn't –?
Surely
he couldn't have –?

No. Definitely not. For all his faults, not Phil.

But why had he lied? Where had he really been on Tuesday? She hadn't seen him from 11 a. m., when he'd rushed off saying that he had an appointment in Breckham Market, until just before eight in the evening when he'd rushed back, noisy with excuses. She hadn't believed his complicated story about being kept waiting between business appointments because she'd heard similar stories from him before; she knew that shifty-eyed look behind those tinted spectacles. She minded about his attempted deception, but she'd comforted herself with the thought that the affair he must be having wouldn't last. They never did.