The Oxmarket Aspal Murder Mystery (12 page)

              Had I been wise or foolish to display those photographs?  Had that gesture also been the result of alcohol?  I wasn’t sure.

              Half way along the road, I murmured an excuse to the others and turned back.

              I pushed open the gate and walked up to the house.  Through the open window on my left I heard the murmur of two voices.  They were the voices of Oliver Terret and Julie Lawes.  Very little of Julie and a good deal of Oliver.

              I pushed open the door and went through the right-hand door into the room I had left a few moments before.  Lorraine Terret was sitting before the fire.  There was a rather grim look on her face. She had been so deep in thought that my entry startled her.

              At the sound of the apologetic little cough I gave, she looked up sharply with a start.

              “Oh,” she said.  “It’s you.  You made me jump.”

              “Sorry.  Did you think it was someone else?  Who did you think it was?”

              She did not answer that, she just merely said, “Have you left something behind?”

              “What I feared I had left behind was danger.”

              “Danger?”

              “Because you recognised one of those photographs?”

              “All old photographs look exactly the same.”

              “I believe, Faith Roberts recognised one of those photographs.  And she is now dead.  So, if you know anything at all.  Tell me now.  It could save your life.”

              “It’s not as simple as that,” she said, sharply.  “I’m not sure at all that I recognise anything.  Not definitely.”

              “But there is something!”  I persisted.

              “I need to think it through.”  She replied.  “And only when I am one hundred per cent certain will I tell you.”

              “If you won’t talk to me what about Detective Inspector Paul Silver of the Suffolk Constabulary. He is based in Oxmarket.”

              “Not the police. Not at this stage.”

              “I have warned you, Lorraine,” I said, shrugging my shoulders before leaving Clarendon Cottage once more. 

As I walked back to the Bellagamba Guest House, I was convinced that Lorraine Terret knew damned well exactly where and when she had seen the photograph of Jo Pedder.

14

              Keldine Hogg came to visit me the next morning.

              I was already on my way down to the village green when she bumped into me walking in the opposite direction.

              “Why are you here in Oxmarket Aspal, Mr Handful?”

              I was puzzled by the question because I never thought that she was stupid.

              “I told you. I’m investigating the death of Faith Roberts.”

              “I thought that is what you would say,” she said sharply.  “But it’s ridiculous.”

              “Is it?”  I raised my eyebrows.

              “Of course it is.  Nobody believes it.”

              “And yet I promise you, it is the truth.”

              “You won’t tell me.”  Her pale blue eyes blinked and she looked away.

              “Tell you what?”

              She changed the subject abruptly again, it seemed.

              “I wanted to ask you – about anonymous letters.”

              “Yes,” I said encouragingly as she stopped.

              “They’re really always lies, aren’t they?”

              “They are lies some of the time,” I said cautiously.

              “Some of the time?”  She persisted.

              “Yes.”

              “I think they’re cowardly,” she said vehemently.

              “They are,” I agreed.

              “Would you every believe them?”

              “That is a very difficult question,” I said gravely.  “Especially when they’re normally sent in text form nowadays.”

              “I don’t believe them,” she said vehemently.  “And I know why you’re down here and I tell you it isn’t true.”

              She turned sharply and walked away and left me standing there totally confused.

              Keldine Hogg professed to believe that I was staying in Oxmarket Aspal for a reason other than that of inquiring into Faith Roberts’ dearth.  She had suggested that it was only a pretext.  Did she really believe that?

              What have anonymous letters got to do with anything?

              Was Keldine Hogg the original of the photograph that Lorraine Terret had said she had ‘seen recently?’

              In other words, was Keldine Hogg Jo Pedder?  Had Dr Hogg met and married his wife in total ignorance of her history?

              I shook my head and sighed.  It was all perfectly possible but I had to be sure.  A chilly wind sprang up suddenly and the sun went in.  I shivered and retraced my steps to the Guest              House.

              Yes, I had to be sure.  If I could find the actual weapon of the murder –

              And at that moment, with a strange feeling of certainty – I saw it.

On the littered top of the bookcase near the window.  And I stood there wondering whether, subconsciously, I had seen and noted it much earlier.  It had stood there, presumably, ever since I had come to the Bellagamba Guest House.

Why I didn’t ever notice it before
, I thought
I will never know
.

I picked it up and weighed it in my hands.  Examined it, balanced it and raised it to strike –

Karen came through the door with her usual rush, two dogs accompanying her.

“Hello, are you playing with my tenderiser?”

“Is that what it is?  A meat tenderiser?”

I turned the implement carefully in my hands.  Made of steel, it was shaped like a large square mallet with one studded side for the tenderising of the meat.

“Great for killing someone isn’t it?”  She said conversationally.  “I told Eric what’s coming to him if I get fed up with it.”

She laughed and put the tenderiser down and turned towards the door. “I’ve forgotten what I come in here for now.”

“Where did you get this from?” My voice stopped her before she got to the door.

“At the Christmas Car Boot at the Vicarage,” she replied.  “I bought it off Lord and Lady Osborne’s stall.”

She went out and the door banged.  I picked up the tenderiser and held it under the light in the centre of ceiling.

On the studded side there was a faint, very faint, discolouration.

I placed it in my pocket and immediately left the Guest House, knowing that nobody would notice it missing as it wasn’t a very tidy household.

Clouds had gathered and the day was now oppressive with a threat of rain.  I walked through the dense shrubberies to the front door of Norbert House and decided that I would not like to live in this hollow valley at the foot of the hill.  The house itself was closed in by trees and its walls suffocated by ivy. 
It needed
, I thought,
a bit of a sort out
.

I rang the bell and after getting no response, I rang it again.  It was Chloe Bird who opened the door to me and she seemed surprised.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s you.”

“May I come and speak to you?”

“I – well, yes.  I suppose so.”

She led me into the small dark sitting-room where I had waited before. 

“I’m afraid,” Chloe said in an apologetic tone, “that you’ve called at an inopportune moment.  Agata has handed in her notice today.  She only took the job to get a work permit and so that she could get married.  Now they’ve fixed the date and she’s leaving today.”

“Bit short notice,” I commented.

“It is, isn’t it? My stepfather is fuming.  But I don’t think we can do anything about it. We wouldn’t have known anything about it if I hadn’t caught her packing up her things.”

“It’s the way of the world, I’m afraid.”

She rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand.  “You’re probably right.”

“Anyway, I won’t keep you for long,” I said, “I just wanted to ask you about a stainless steel meat tenderiser.”

“A meat tenderiser?”  Her face was blank, uncomprehending.

I described it carefully in an enunciated manner, before adding. “I believe it came from this house?”

“Yes.  I remember we had a clear out before the car boot Harvest Festival.”

“Harvest Festival?”  I said.  “I heard it was at the Christmas Car boot sale.”

“No, it was the definitely the Harvest Festival one.”  She insisted.

It suddenly became very quiet in the little room.  I looked at Chloe Bird and she looked back at me.  Her face was mild, expressionless, uninterested.  Behind the blank wall of her apathy, I tried to guess what was going on.  Nothing, perhaps.

“Are you really sure it was the Harvest Festival car boot and not the Christmas one?”  I asked, quietly, urgently.

“Quite sure.”  Her eyes were steady, unblinking.

I waited and continued to wait, but what I was waiting for did not come.

“I won’t keep you any longer,” I said formally and Chloe Bird went with me to the front door and presently I was walking down the drive again pondering over two divergent statements – statements that could not possibly be reconciled.

Who was right?  Karen Bellagamba or Chloe Bird?

If the meat tenderiser had been used as I believed it had been used, the point was vital.  The Harvest Festival would have been at the end of September, beginning of October.  Between then and Christmas, on November 1
st
, Faith Roberts had been killed.  Whose property had the meat tenderiser been at the time?

I went to the post office.  Lynn Beverley was always helpful and did her best. She’d been to both car boot sales, she said.  She always went.  You picked up many a nice bit there.  She helped too, to arrange things beforehand, collecting the fees.

A stainless steel meat tenderiser, rather like a square hammer?  No, she couldn’t rightly remember.  There was such a lot of things, and so much confusion and some things snatched up at once.

I bought a large jiffy bag from her, went to the corner of the shop and wrote the name and address of the local pathologist Dr Kira Reed who had worked with me many times before, and discreetly put the tenderiser inside it, sealing it before walking back to the post office counter.

Lynn Beverley accepted my parcel.

“Registered?”

“Yes, please.”

She copied down the address and I noticed a sharp flicker of interest in her keen black eyes as he handed me the receipt.

I wandered back up the hill going over the case repeatedly in my head.

Of the two, Karen Bellagamba, scatter-brained, cheerful, inaccurate, was the most likely to be wrong.  Harvest or Christmas, it would be all one to her.

Chloe Bird, slow, awkward, was far more likely to be accurate in her identification of times and dates.

Yet there remained that irking question.

Why, after all my questions, hadn’t she asked me
why I wanted to know
?  Surely a natural, an almost inevitable, question?

But Chloe Bird hadn’t asked it.

15

            
 
“You’ve had a phone call,” Karen Bellagamba called from the kitchen as I entered the Guest House.

              “Really?  Who was that?”

              I was slightly surprised.

              “Don’t know. It was a young woman.  I jotted her mobile number down for you on my note-pad.”

              “Thank you.”

              I went into the dining room and over to the desk.  Amongst the litter of papers I found the note-pad lying near the mainline telephone and the numbers 07902930455.

              Removing my mobile from my pocket, I dialled the number.

              Immediately a woman’s voice said:  “Hello?”

              “This is John Handful.”

              “This Is Joann Burton.”  She said.  “I wanted to know if there is anything I can do to help?”

              “How about handing in your notice?”  I said.

              “Excuse me?”  She said after a little hesitation.

              “I need you to take up a vacancy.”

              “Doing what?”

              “Can you cook?”

              “Of course.”  A faint amusement tinged her voice.

              “I will meet you in the same small restaurant between Oxmarket and Oxmarket Aspal where we met before.”

              “Okay, fine.”