The Crow Trap (28 page)

“So you didn’t know Robert had a brother?”

“I think I might have heard that there was a brother, working abroad.” “Who told you that?”

“God, I really can’t remember, Jeremy probably. Does it matter?

Presumably, if he’s such a black sheep it was a story the family put about.”

“But you hadn’t heard anything about the wife’s suicide or an abandoned child?”

“No, but it’s not something they’d be proud of, so they’d hardly spread it about.”

“How are they playing that part of the story now?” Vera asked.

“What do you mean?” “As you said, it doesn’t show the family in a good light. I mean, allowing Edmund’s child to be fostered rather than caring for her themselves. What sort of a spin are they putting on it?” She seemed rather proud of the political jargon.

“I don’t know. I’ve been here, haven’t I, except for one day out at Kimmerston. I haven’t had much of a chance to listen to gossip.

Besides, I’m not a member of the ladies’ darts team myself.”

All these questions convinced Rachael that Vera’s apparent indiscretion in passing on information about Grace’s background, information which would probably soon appear in the tabloids anyway, was a tactic. It was her way of taking the investigation forward. So she came to regard Vera’s visits with suspicion. Each session was some sort of test and Vera was trying to catch them out.

The next day Vera came in when they were eating lunch. Anne and Rachael had been on the hill surveying one of Rachael’s squares. It had been a good day. Outside Anne lost her pose of cynic and entertainer and Rachael found her company restful. They’d stood on the moor together and watched a goshawk fly out of the forest to swoop onto a young grouse. On the way back to Baikie’s they’d passed the crow trap. Inside a different bird was hopping and flapping and pecking at the corn, but neither of them mentioned it.

It wasn’t much of a lunch. As Rachael had suspected, Edie hadn’t really taken to the domestic life. She had begun with enthusiasm but become bored very quickly. She had brought with her a pile of novels and seemed set on making her way through them. A great opportunity to catch up on some reading,” she told Rachael. Cooking got in the way.

And then she took a great interest in the young police officers who were now conducting a fingertip search of the marshy land close to the burn. She knew all their names and occasionally Rachael heard her give advice about girlfriend troubles, sympathizing about the stress of the job.

This time Vera had come to tell them that Edmund Fulwell had disappeared. Edie offered her a bowl of reconstituted minestrone soup, which she accepted and she sat with them at the table, eating it with great noise and relish between questions.

“Does he know that Grace is dead?” Rachael asked.

“Oh yes. We traced him quite quickly from the information your boss brought that first night. He lives and works out on the coast. He’s got a job as chef in a flash restaurant there and lives in a flat over his work. At least he did. God knows where he is now.”

“What happened?”

“Of course we went to tell him Grace was dead as soon as we found out where he was. I sent young Ashworth. He’s good at the compassionate bit. If we’d known more of his history at that point perhaps we’d have been more circumspect. At least we could have arranged for someone to keep an eye on him.”

“What did Joe Ashworth make of Grace’s father?” Edie asked.

“Well, he had no idea he was going to do a runner. Edmund was shocked of course, angry, guilty, but that was only what you’d expect.”

Edie nodded. “The classic symptoms of bereavement.”

“Oh, Mother!” Rachael muttered under her breath. “Do shut up.”

Vera continued, “He even carried on going into work. His boss is a friend, Rod Owen. I think they were at school together. Somewhere in the south where you sign up at birth. Mr. Owen told him to take off as much time as he needed, but he said he preferred to be working. It gave him something else to think about, company I suppose. And he said while he was creating in the kitchen he couldn’t be drinking. Ironic really, considering what must have happened later.” “I thought you didn’t know where he is now?” Rachael said.

“We can guess,” Vera said crossly. “Knowing his past. I’ve seen his medical records.”

“Bouts of alcoholism, you said,” Edie probed delicately.

“Mother!” Rachael shouted. “You can’t expect Inspector Stanhope to tell us what’s in the man’s medical records. They’re confidential.”

“Not the details of course.” Edie was unabashed.

“I think,” Vera said, ‘ the years his drinking has been a symptom of his illness, not a cause.” Then, quickly, looking at Rachael, “That’s my own interpretation. I couldn’t possibly divulge … “

“No,” Edie agreed. “Of course not.”

“I went to see Mr. Owen yesterday. We had a long talk. He was kind enough to give me lunch. He said it wasn’t up to Edmund’s standard of cuisine but it was certainly acceptable to me … “

Anne had been wiping the last of her soup with a piece of bread, apparently taking no notice of the conversation. Now she interrupted suddenly. “What’s the name of the restaurant where Grace’s dad works?”

Vera was put out to be stopped in mid flow. “The Harbour Lights.

Why?”

“Nothing. I’ve eaten there a few times. The owner introduced me to the chef. Grace’s father. I can’t even remember what he looked like now. A coincidence, that’s all.”

They all stared at her but she seemed not to notice and lapsed back into a brooding silence.

“What did Mr. Owen tell you?” Edie asked the inspector.

“Well … ” Vera gathered herself up for a juicy revelation. Rachael was embarrassed by the conversation. Vera and her mother could have been two old ladies huddled for a gossip at the back of a bus. She wished she had the strength to walk out and leave them to it, but she was curious too. “Apparently he’s had bouts of depression for years, even before his wife killed herself. That’s why Owen wasn’t too surprised when Edmund disappeared this time. It’s his standard response to stress to walk out and drink himself into oblivion. Of course we’re looking for him in case he does something stupid. In the past he’s threatened suicide. He ended up in St. Nick’s for a couple of months when Grace was at school.” “Oh,” Edie said. “I wonder … ” Then thought better of it and broke off.

“What?” demanded Vera.

“Nothing,” Edie replied. “Nothing, I just … ” She stopped and seemed to change tack completely. “When we were out the other day Rachael and I went to see Alicia Davison.”

Rachael glared at her furiously. They hadn’t discussed telling Vera about the trip.

“Who’s she when she’s at home?” Vera asked.

“She was Bella’s head teacher “Ah.” There was a pause. “So you know about the court case.” She turned to Rachael. “I couldn’t tell you, could I? Not my place if Bella hadn’t.”

“What was your involvement?”

“I was in uniform, new to the job, taken along as the statutory WPC in case Bella Noble broke down in tears and the blokes didn’t know what to do.”

“Did she break down?”

“No.”

“Why did you go to her funeral? It must have been one case out of thousands.”

“I always felt for her. We were about the same age, in similar circumstances. I lived with my father. He wasn’t ill and he probably wasn’t as much of a bully as Alderman Noble but there were certainly times when I felt like hitting him on the head with a brass statue.”

“Did you keep in touch with her?”

“No, but I saw the notice of her funeral in the paper and thought I’d go along to pay my last respects.”

“But you must have known she was married,” Edie said. “How else would you have recognized her name in the Gazette?”

“She sent me an invitation to her wedding. Out of the blue, to the station. I don’t know why. Perhaps she had no one else to ask.” She shrugged. “And you get close to people in times of high drama. Perhaps that was it.”

“Did you go?”

“Yeah. I spent a quarter of an hour at the register office, signed my name and wished her luck.”

“Who was the other witness?”

“A dark young man. The husband’s son by a previous marriage.”

“Neville Furness,” Edie said.

The inspector grinned. “Did you ever think about taking up police work, Mrs. Lambert? You’d have made a bloody good interviewer.” “Miss.,” Edie said automatically. “It’s Miss. Lambert.”

Vera grinned again. “Like that, is it?”

“Did you know that Bella spent time in St. Nicholas’ hospital in preparation for release?” “No,” Vera said. “I wouldn’t have known that.”

“It would be interesting to find out if she was there at the same time as Edmund Fulwell.”

“Unlikely I’d have thought.”

“But if she was … “

“If she was, so what?” Vera was brutal. “Bella killed herself. Grace Fulwell was strangled. Another coincidence.”

Chapter Thirty-Five.

The coincidences were too much for Anne. She dug away at them, sifted them like the soil in her quadrat. Godfrey had been a regular at the Harbour Lights restaurant where Edmund Fulwell cooked. They were, she knew, more than passing acquaintances. At one of their illicit meetings Godfrey had admitted to a hangover. This was unusual for him.

“So how did you come by that?” she’d asked, amused.

He’d told her he’d arranged to meet a business contact at the restaurant. The client hadn’t arrived and he, Rod and Edmund had ended up having a bit of a session. At this session hadn’t Edmund mentioned a daughter? Godfrey hadn’t said. But he had stormed out of Baikie’s chasing Grace up the hill. And she had died.

Anne was sitting in the garden at Baikie’s as she was thinking this, sheltered by the cottage from a cool easterly breeze. Now the trees were in full leaf and the view down to the Skirl was obscured. The survey was almost over and they had time to relax. Rachael had final visits to make to two of her sites and Anne had one quadrat to check in detail the one nearest to the mine working. She was saving that as a treat.

Once their own work was finished Rachael wanted them to complete Grace’s report on the otters. She thought it wouldn’t take long but Anne thought it was more complicated. She’d never trusted Grace’s results.

Squinting her eyes against the sun Anne could see above the trees to the hill. The team who’d been searching there had gone but Vera and Joe were still camped out in Black Law with a small team of detectives.

They’d made themselves at home there. Joe Ashworth had stuck photographs of his son all over the kitchen wall.

This afternoon Rachael and Edie were in the farm too, talking to Vera Stanhope, bending her ear about something. Bella probably. Rachael had an obsession about Bella, seemed to think the two deaths were connected. And Edie egged her on. Anne thought Edie was a hoot. She couldn’t understand why Rachael complained about her. She wished her mother had been half as sympathetic.

Anne was sitting in a canvas striped deck chair The bar was wedged in the lowest notch so she was lying almost horizontal and dozing when she heard footsteps on the path which led from the yard where they parked their cars, round the house to the front garden. She struggled to sit upright, felt suddenly nervous, vulnerable. All around her empty landscape stretched to the horizon. She hadn’t heard a car but perhaps she’d been more deeply asleep than she’d realized. There was no one within shouting distance despite all Vera’s claimed precautions. Edie and Rachael wouldn’t be back from Black Law yet. In the brief moment of scrambling to her feet she wondered if it might be Godfrey. Perhaps he’d decided to tell the police, after all, that he’d been here on the day Grace died. Perhaps he’d come to see her.

But it wasn’t Godfrey. Once she was standing she could tell that from the footsteps which were light and hurrying. It was Lily Fulwell, trying for some reason to be friendly.

“This really is the dinkiest little house.” She backed onto the lawn, looking the house up and down. “I’ve seen it from a distance during shoots but I’ve never actually been here. Robert has, of course.

Connie held house parties and occasionally he was invited for dinner.

Perhaps she hoped to convert him. She hated shooting. He was very young, hardly more than a boy, but I think he was in love with Connie.

She was such a character.”

“Was Edmund invited too?”

“I don’t know.” She gave a nervous laugh. “Before my time. You’d have to ask Robert. Probably not. Edmund was several years younger.” She paused. “I expect you’re wondering what I’m doing here.”

They were both standing awkwardly. Anne nodded to the deck chair “Why don’t you sit down?”

So Lily was sprawled, at a disadvantage. Anne sat on the grass beside her.

“Perhaps you’d like some tea.”

But Lily had her speech ready prepared. She shifted her position of gravity so she was leaning forward towards Anne, her bum poking back through the canvas.

“I just wanted to say how shocked we were. About the murder. And to say if there’s anything we can do. I mean anything.” “It’s a bit late,” Anne said, ‘ Grace.” Immediately she thought that at one time she’d have been chuffed to bits just to have her here.