Episode 12 - One step at a time

Sunday cont.

Gary drove to Hilda Bone’s house in Cleo’s red car and waited until Chris and Ned turned up in their van before getting out and crossing the road to greet them.

Chris was not particularly happy to be back in Upper Grumpsfield so soon.

“Not another corpse,” said Chris. “Please, not another corpse.”

“Not that I know of. Have I missed something?” said Gary.

“It looks like it. There’s a queue. Funny goings-on again at a posh OAP home the other side of Middlethumpton. Gisela got onto it because her mother lives there.”

“Poison, I suppose. Sounds about right for an OAP home.”

“That and smothering. One of the carers decided to relieve residents of their right to live. She got at half a dozen.”

“So what did she feed them on?”

“The most popular and easiest to come by poison of all: arsenic.”

“Where’s the woman now, Chris?”

“At HQ, in an arrest cell.”

“Why wasn’t I told?”

“I only heard about it through Ned. He was on duty yesterday and quite surprised when a Mrs Burton was wheeled in, dead as a doornail and hairless. He rang me, of course, and I went in to take a look at the corpse.”

“Mike should have told me,” said Gary, “or Nigel. He’s my assistant, after all.”

“You’ve been promoted, Gary. The small fry doesn’t run to the superintendent all the time.”

“But my assistant should know better. I’ll put a stop to that sort of secrecy. I want to know everything, Chris, not be protected. Roger is a good friend and he’s going marry my mother, but he was too involved with himself and his divorce after his wife was sent down for murder. I want to be more than just a fund-raiser and signer of documents that I did not help to write.”

Ned looked a bit perplexed. As second in command at forensics, he tended to be reserved about passing anything on before consulting Chris. He had not heard the gossip that went round at HQ at the time of Mrs Stone’s killing. Roger Stone was a nice guy, and clearly innocent of the crime on his wife when the vultures all around would have preferred to see him behind bars.

Forensics was autonomous. They did a job on which the sentencing of a suspect often depended if they had provided the only reliable evidence in a case. Ned did not want to ask about any case that happened before he got to HQ, but he would look at the report on what presumably had been very distressing for Roger in the archives.

“I thought Gisela was on duty,” said Gary.

“She was - sort of. It is pure coincidence that the devilry at that home came to light. Gisela was visiting her mother, and thanks to that mother, the scandal was revealed. Gisela’s mother was apparently very distressed about the dead woman and told her daughter that she thought they were all being poisoned. She suspected the carer who also looked after her. Gisela was naturally alarmed. The dead woman, who had not been laid out though she had been found dead early that morning, was put through a hasty laying out ritual under Gisela’s supervision and then transported by ambulance to the forensic lab at HQ, where Ned formed the reception committee. Gisela had done the right thing for a change.”

“Not quite. She should have contacted me,” said Gary. “She’s supposed to be managing the traffic corps not having corpses taxied around.”

“Don’t be so hard on her, Gary,” Chris said. “Just imaging it had been your mother. She was probably frantic.”

“What did Gisela do with the suspect?”

“She called a patrol team. They arrested her on suspicion and put her in an arrest cell downstairs.”

“Until further notice, I suppose. I’m glad Gisela did not decide to bring her to HQ herself.”

“Even Gisela is not that foolhardy,” said Chris. “The patrol cops squeezed the carer into the back of their car.”

“Squeezed?”

“Nurse Daisy is not only an angel of mercy, she is also as round as a barrel, but good-natured. And that description is quoted from their report.”

“I would not describe someone who was dishing out arsenic as good-natured.”

“No, but that’s how she was described to me, too. I think one of the patrol guys was quite enamoured. He probably sat next to her on the back seat and got the full force of her sexuality…. You should have fun with her tomorrow.”

“Spare me. Gisela set the ball rolling. Let her enjoy the dubious sexuality.”

“Gisela is too close to deal with the case.”

“OK. She could get Roger onto it. He’s still part-timing,” said Gary. “He wanted to do something ordinary.”

“Don’t chicken out!” said Chris. “I told you that Gisela is distressed. She’s waiting for you to turn up tomorrow, she said. It’s you she wants.”

“How do you know that?”

 “She told me when she phoned. She’s taken her mother home, but wanted the forensic findings a.s.a.p. I’ll go round and get a blood sample of the mother when we’ve finished here. Then Gisela can get in touch with her GP. The old lady will be OK now. She wasn’t comatose or anything.”

“On reflection, I don’t suppose it matters who takes the case on, since the culprit has already been caught,” said Gary. “Daisy probably still thinks she was doing the right thing.”

“Thank Gisela’s mother for that. She connected her mother’s hair loss with arsenic and asked her the right questions,” said Chris.

“It seems that we are lucky that Gisela’s mother is still alive.”

“Three others are dead and Daisy was looking after them, too. I wonder if she had a financial motive. They often do.”

“Angels of Mercy are often thinking of their own future, so I dare say you’re right.”

“You can change your mind and have a cosy chat with her tomorrow, Gary, if you want to spare Roger...”

“I thought I was going to get a smooth start on the 3^rd floor, but it’s been an awful week, and the prospect of a hugely overweight promiscuous killer named Daisy is almost more than I can bear.”

“Let’s get this business over then, shall we?”

“You’re right. One step at a time. The Crightons are almost certainly the parents of Betjeman, the guy who enjoyed killing and admitted to it proudly,” said Gary.

“He can’t be here, can he?”

“In spirit perhaps. I’m not looking forward to hearing about him. Mothers usually gush even when their offspring is a seasoned criminal,” said Gary.

***

 Mr Crighton answered the door, indicated where Chris and Ned should go to join Mike upstairs with Mrs Crighton, who was asking questions, but first took Gary aside.

“I’ve got a problem,” he said.

Gary faintly remembered being sorry for Mr Crighton, who was clearly a victim of marital circumstances.

“Are you keeping it from your wife, Mr Crighton? Is it a woman?”

“I wish it was,” said Crighton. “I let that empty room upstairs without telling Mrs Crighton.”

“I don’t understand. If you let the room last night, why did you want a prospective lodger to look at it today?”

“I didn’t like the look of him,” said Crighton.

“But you let him stay last night,” said Gary.

“He said he would be gone before we got up.”

“He could have murdered you in your sleep,” said Gary. “Did you get his name?”

“Murphy,” he said. “I’d seen him before, next door getting on fine with Hilda Bone and he was friendly at a distance. I asked him why he didn’t get a bed at Mrs Bone’s and he told me they were away and he did not have a key.”

“So you let him stay in the vacant room upstairs.”

“Done up as an apartment for my son – I mean Mrs Crighton’s son.”

“Your son?” said Gary, remembering that the Crightons has said their son was adopted because they did not want a homicidal lunatic in the family. Had Mr Crighton found out something new about the son’s parentage?

“Mrs Crighton usually says he’s my son, but I have serious doubts.”

“We can get a DNA test, Mr Crighton. Do you want that?”

“I’m not sure I’d still have a roof over my head,” said Mr Crighton, struggling with the temptation to be in a position to reject Betjeman once and for all.

“It’s your decision, Mr Crighton. I can see that the situation is intolerable for you.”

“Better not, thank you. Things are bad enough as it is.”

Gary could see that Mr Crighton was really tempted to take up the offer. Another time of asking and he would.

“It was too late for Murphy to go anywhere else, so I let him in through the back door while Mrs Crighton was watching TV. He was very quiet, as if he did not want anyone to know he was there. I was nervous and had second thoughts, since my wife often has a funny feeling about strangers. But I had let him in. He was upstairs and I didn’t dare tell Mrs Crighton about him after the deed was done.”

***

Mr Crighton was either very in awe of his wife, or very scared of her, thought Gary, remembering that when it came to intuition, he had often enough depended on Cleo. He supposed that was why witches were all purportedly female. He couldn’t remember male witches being dunked till they drowned in the old days, but social history was admittedly not his strong point, and Cleo said those witches might be hermaphrodites or twitters or simply poor devils born in the wrong gender. There was a lot to be said for modern psychological support.

***

“Are you still listening?” said Mr Crighton, cutting into Gary’s reveries.

“Sorry, just thinking. Did you feed the man?” Gary asked.

“We had a bachelor kitchen put in and he could make coffee or tea and eat the biscuits I had put in the bread bin just in case.”

“I can’t quite understand why Mrs Crighton did not realize that he was up there,” said Gary.

“She felt vibrations through the ceiling and I told her it was the spirit of Betjeman seeing if everything was ready for him.”

“And she believed that?”

“Oh yes. She’s into spiritualism, Inspector.”

Mrs Crighton called down the stairs. You could not have described her shouting as spiritual.

“Where are you?”

“Coming, dear,” said Crighton.

His voice was filled with sweetness and light. Gary thought Mr Crighton probably did a lot of play-acting.

***

Chris set up his laptop with its brilliant fingerprint app. Ned taped prints to screenshot into the programme for comparison with tabs in the HQ databank. In a matter of minutes it would be clear if Marble had been to the house. His prints had been recorded several times elsewhere, most recently in Brighton, of course. At Gary’s behest, Ned took DNA samples from the Crightons, which Gary explained as a routine method of identifying strangers. Crighton looked at Gary somewhat fearfully as he explained the function of the DNA, but Gary did not make any mention of family relationships and the like.

Chris thought DNA testing the Crightons was superfluous, but Gary waved him down when he tried to say so. A nod and a wink did the rest.

Gary decided to ask Mrs Crighton a few routine questions. Before he could do so, however, Mrs Crighton treated him to a taste of her mysticism.

“He has been here, Inspector, I know it.”

“But your son would not have escaped through the window, Mrs Crighton. He would have come to you, surely?”

“We don’t know that, do we? Spirits have their own rules. If he just came to see the room, he may not have wanted to see us at that moment. Astral travel is like that.”

“Is that what it’s called?”

“Yes. If someone is somewhere and dreams of being somewhere else, he’s spirit takes him there when he is asleep.”

Mr Crighton looked exasperated. He was not going to be the one who told her that she was imagining things, since he himself had explained that the vibrations were spirits solely to stop her going upstairs to look. Mrs Crighton saw her son as a soulmate. Mr Crighton hoped the Inspector would keep quiet about him letting Murphy sleep there.

Eventually, Chris looked up from his laptop and said “He was here.”

“I told you he’d been here,” said Mrs Crighton.

“Spirits don’t leave fingerprints,” said Mr Crighton, regretting his earlier explanation of the presence above.

“The tabs belong to a Mr Harry Marble,” said Chris.

“Who’s that?” Mrs Crighton wanted to know.

“Will you tell her, or shall I?” said Gary to Crighton.

“He’s a man who wanted to visit Mrs Bone, but she is away so I let him stay the night here,” said Mr Crighton. “But his name is Murphy.”

“How dare you do such a thing without my permission,” Mrs Crighton snarled. “Especially Irish. You know what happened across the road.”

Mrs Crighton was referring to Paddy Kelly, whose scandalous behaviour had been the talk of Upper Grumpsfield.

“You were watching TV,” said Crighton meekly.

“That’s no excuse. What about Betjeman’s spirit? Where’s the man now? Has he paid?”

“That’s the point, Mrs Crighton. We are looking for the man and he has escaped again.”

Mrs Crighton was clearly upset that Betjeman might not have visited the house after all, but seemingly even more upset at the thought that the stranger had stayed the night free of charge.

“Escaped?” she said. “From a zoo? Only animals escape from zoos – and prisons.”

Gary decided that the next thing Mrs Crighton would do was try to arrange her son’s escape from his safe cell at the penitentiary down the road to Oxford.

“Of course not,” said Gary. “From a police car.”

“What had he done?” Mrs Crighton wanted to know.

Gary was not sure whether he should tell the Crightons what had happened, but he decided it might be a good idea, just in case the guy turned up again.

“He probably murdered Mrs Bone by setting fire to my villa with her locked inside,” said Gary, truncating the story as much as possible.

“What was he doing in your cottage?” Mrs Bone asked.

“Not the cottage, Mrs Crighton,” Gary explained. “I had bought Dr Marble’s villa from the bank.”

“So what was Hilda doing there? Noseyparkering? And now she’s dead?”

“Burnt to a frazzle,” said Chris, who wanted to make this awful woman squirm.

“What Mrs Bone was doing there is a question we are trying answer, Mrs Crighton,” said Gary.

“She was friendly with a Welsh person,” Mrs Crighton said. “A bit funny such an old woman going for a young man.”

“Come on, Mrs Crighton. That man was at least as old as Betjeman,” said Crighton.

Gary again wondered why they did not use first names.

“He called himself Brian,” said Mrs Crighton.

“Bryn,” Gary corrected. “A Welsh name.”

“Whatever, Said Crighton. “He wasn’t much of a woman’s man, I can tell you.”

“He was an old lady’s man,” said Mrs Crighton, getting into the spirit of things purely because she found the whole idea of Mrs Bone going for ‘Brian’ or anyone else distasteful.

“He wasn’t any kind of a man,” said Crighton. “Bryn Thomas was a twitter.”

“Now, now, Crighton,” said Chris. “The rights of man being those of a species with male and female components, so it applies to all human beings.”

“Whatever you think of that Mrs Bone’s gentle-something, you’d better catch the man who stayed here before he murders me,” said Mrs Crighton in a righteous voice. Presumably she did not think her husband was a candidate for Marble’s wrath, or was it more likely that she didn’t care?

Chris and Ned packed up their equipment, announced that they had gathered enough evidence to see them through, and left.

***

“What do I do now?” Mrs Crighton wanted to know.

“Keep windows and doors shut and don’t let anyone in,” said Gary.

“What about my room, Mr. Do you still want it?” said Mrs Crighton, turning to Mike.

“Under the circumstances I’ll look elsewhere,” said Mike, following Chris and Ned down the stairs.

“I want my money from that other person,” said Mrs Crighton.

“How much does the room cost per night?” Gary asked.

“Don’t listen to her,” said Crighton. “I was doing the fellow a good turn.”

“Then you can do the washing and clean up after him,” said Mrs Crighton.

“Sorry about her, Inspector.”

“So am I,” said Gary. “If the man turns up, let me know. Here’s my card.”

“You’re very important, aren’t you” said Mr Crighton. “I’m surprised you bothered yourself about such a humble home.”

“I suppose I am,” said Gary, “but it’s more important to catch Mr Marble before he can hurt anyone else.”

“And that DNA?”

“Do you want to know if Betjeman is your son?”

“Yes. It would be a way of getting away, wouldn’t it?”

“No,” said Gary. “If you were married to the mother when the baby was born, you are the legal father.”

 “But I wasn’t,” said Crighton.

“That changes everything,” said Gary.

“Then do it,” said Crighton.

***

Gary’s skill at mimicry came into full throttle as he described the scene at the Crighton house to Cleo.

“If that guy had just told the police that he was harbouring a suspicious person, you’d have him behind bars now.”

“Marble was lucky. Bertie Browne’s Gazette doesn’t come out till tomorrow.”

“Don’t say you’ve reported Marble’s escape to him,” said Cleo.

“I didn’t. But somebody else will have. He has informants everywhere.”

“He should at least ask you if it’s OK to publish.”

“He was probably rung up by an anonymous person saying he was a police insider. Mr Browne won’t check up on that. He never does.”

“He’s breaking the law, isn’t he?”

“What law?” said Gary. “The one that says thou shalt not publish searches for missing persons?”

“OK. So maybe that will be of some use.”

“We’ll have to wait and see. I’d be interested to know where Mr Marble dosses down tonight?”

“At the villa? That bedroom was not burnt. The bed is still available.”

“It’s freezing cold, Cleo. He wouldn’t do that, would he?”

“I think it’s possible. A patrol team could take a look during the night. It would keep them occupied. There isn’t much going on at two in the morning.”

“You might even be on to something,” said Gary, attempting not to sound resentful that he had not thought of it first.

“I can’t think of anywhere else he could go. He obviously did not want to break into Hilda’s house.”

“He has his scruples,” said Gary.

“Isn’t it a bit late in the day for scruples?” said Cleo.

“Joking, my love,” said Gary, who was not finding it funny to be outwitted by a common criminal.

 “Taking of joking, I’d rather you scrupulously got the veg ready for our high tea, or whatever you like to call it.”

“Who’s coming?”

“Dorothy and Linda, who will be hugely entertained by your description of the goings on at the Crightons and is going home tomorrow; your mother and Roger, who will also want to hear all about it; and us, meaning you, me and the two Charlottes. Joe’s at the hospital till tomorrow. Then they are coming home with the newcomer. Lottie is staying the night here and the girls will help with the little ones.”

“Perfectly organized as usual,” said Gary.” Except for the carrots, Sweetheart. They are awaiting your attention.”

***

An evening that had started normally, with a nice balance between comedy and crime, ended with surprises, however. Gary had answered everyone’s questions about the Marble case, which had special significance because it involved the devastation of the villa, and there had been no progress in finding out who was responsible.

Marble was still on the run, as far as Gary knew (assuming that the guys at HQ had not circumvented him again). He had ordered a patrol car to pick up Marble at the villa if he decided to go there, having burnt his boats at the Crighton house where Mrs Crighton was sure Betjeman was on the point of release, and would join them in flesh and blood body, not just with the astral one that had taken a fatal knock during the course of events.

“What’s that, Daddy?” Charlie was bound to ask.

“Would you like to get out the big encyclopaedia and read it up, Charlie? I don’t think this company will believe me.”

Throughout the meal, Linda had sat astounded at the repartee in which Dorothy was clearly revelling.

“I’m trying not to be nervous,” Dorothy said. “But have you given a thought to Jane’s house? Wouldn’t that be the ideal place to hang out?”

Gary looked at Dorothy.

“Is that a hunch?” he said, angry with himself because he had left Jane’s place completely out of the list of possible hideouts, and so had Cleo for that matter.

“He probably does not know about that house, Dorothy. He never went there,” Gary retorted in self-defence.

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t think Jane Barker was part of Marble’s life, Dorothy.”

“But Thomas or Hilda might have told him about it. They met at the villa, after all.”

“I have to admit that it is a possibility,” said Gary, “though we don’t know if they were all there at the same time.”

“But it’s the strongest possibility,” said Cleo, “and Dorothy is next door so she has a special interest in who comes and goes.”

“Doesn’t Jane have a relative to take over?”

“She was alone in the world except for that white dog after Jim died. And she gave Joe the dog quite soon after, didn’t she?” said Dorothy. “It got dirty all the time and its bark was about has fearsome as that of a Pekingese puppy.”

“So that house will be going for grabs,” said Gary.

“Too small,” said Dorothy. “It’s one of those houses that look big from the outside and have quite small rooms. I always used to think such houses must have spaces behind the walls.”

“Possibly to hide dead relatives,” said Charlie, “or astral bodies.”

“OK Sweetheart. Look in Wikipedia on your tablet and read it out.”

It did not take long for Charlie to find the relevant page.

Linda marvelled at how computer-literate she was.

“No great achievement, Linda,” said Gary. “Charlie belongs to a generation that does not know the world before the computer.”

“Shall I read all of it, Daddy?”

“Please don’t. Just the bit about astral travel that we need to know now, which is what Mrs Crighton thought the noises upstairs were.”

“Wikipedia says that an “astral body is a subtle body posited by many philosophers, intermediate between the intelligent soul and the mental body, composed of a subtle material. The concept ultimately derives from the philosophy of Plato: it is related to an astral plane, which consists of the planetary heavens of astrology.”

“Wow,” said Cleo.

“Shall I read some more?” said Charlie.

“No. It’s about time you two girls astral body yourselves to bed, don’t you think?” said Gary.

“Do you want to talk grown-up now, Daddy?”

“No, but you look tired.”

The girls went round issuing hugs and saying goodnight before they went to off to bed.

***

“Whatever is going on, I don’t want an escaped convict or even an astral body hiding out next door to my cottage,” said Dorothy, with more than a hint of haughtiness in her voice.

“I agree,” said Roger. “We’ll have to control it, won’t we?”

“You could have a séance,” said Charlie, who had been eavesdropping.

“Go to bed,” commanded Gary.

“We’ll leave the light on. Astral bodies don’t like electric light.”

“Do that if you’re scared,” said Gary.

***

“I’ll order a second patrol team to look round the villa at dead of night,” said Gary. “I just hope there aren’t too many multiple crashes to otherwise occupy the traffic guys. We only have a limited number of cars, after all.”

“We’ll do it ourselves, Gary,” said Roger. “We’ll stroll there quite innocently at around 2 a.m. and make sure no one is in the house. Do you still have a key, Dorothy?”

Dorothy took out a large ring of keys, prised Jane’s house-key off and handed it to Roger.

“I always keep keys together,” she explained.

“Brilliant,” said Roger.

It seemed as if Dorothy had decided to snub Gary.

“If that’s settled, can we move on to what I was planning to say?” said Grit.

After a consensus had been reached that put an end to the Marble case for the evening, she made her portentous announcement.

Roger is buying the cottage next door,” she announced. “We’ll renovate it and move in there. It’s small, but it’s big enough for two.”

“I didn’t even know it was for sale,” said Cleo. “I know the old guy who lived there wanted to move to the seaside, but I thought he would keep the little place in case he wanted to come back.”

“That’s what we expected,” said Roger.

“But he’s going to stay with a distant cousin he was once in love with and Roger persuaded him to sell his cottage to us,” said Grit. “Aren’t you happy about that?”

“I’m happy for you, Mother, but what are you going to do with your own cottage?” said Gary.

Cleo groaned. Ulterior motives were Gary’s strong point, but he was now missing the message.

“It isn’t my cottage, Gary. It’s a grace and favour residence that actually belongs to your wife.”

“But I didn’t buy it and are living in it,” said Cleo.

“That old lady who left it to you knew what she was doing,” said Grit. “I had an architect here on Friday while you were out. I had to let him see your kitchen, so it was not breaking and entering.”

“You know you can come and go as you please here, Grit.”

“But that does not mean I can bring Tom, Dick and Harry in without asking.”

“Get to the point, Mother,” said Gary.

“The point is that the two cottages are going to be joined up as one and your wonderful family will have enough room for all my grandchildren – assuming you and Cleo agree.”

“Wow,” said Cleo. “Will that work out – joining up the cottages, I mean?”

“They are very near one another and built as mirror images. That means the kitchens are actually next to one another. They’ll be joined up and the wall widened. When it’s all finished you won’t know that it has not always been like that.”

“I’m flabbergasted,” said Gary. “All I need to do now is finance it.”

“I have a life insurance and savings, Gary, and that is going to pay for the new cottage,” said Roger. “I’ve also sold my bachelor flat. Grit says she’s going to cash in her life insurance too and add it to the building fund.”

“You can’t spend all your life savings on us,” said Cleo. “What about Joe and his family?”

“We’ve talked to him. He’s not planning a large family and he’s quite happy with the plan.”

“And we can spend our money usefully,” said Roger. “You brought us together and we love our new life. We also love the children. It’s already been contracted, anyway,” said Roger. “I’ll get planning permission through next week. It’s useful knowing the blokes who decide. I’ve done them enough favours.”

“That smacks of corruption,” said Linda, looking horrified that arms of the law could break it at will.

“No Linda, it smacks of justice,” said Roger.

Dorothy looked daggers at Linda.

“I didn’t know you were in judgment,” she said.

“If it isn’t corruption, it’s nepotism,” said Linda.

“These are my friends, Linda, and they are less corrupt than your little finger,” said Dorothy, deciding that she was not going to let Linda into her life ever again.

“There’s no way I can thank you, Mother” said Gary.

“How about a big hug?” said Grit.

“There’s prosecco in the fridge,” said Cleo.

“I’ll get it,” said Roger.

“We’ll all get it,” said Cleo. “There’s less formality in the kitchen.”

“We’ll go home now, Linda,” said Dorothy and no one stopped them leaving since it was clear that Dorothy was extremely angry and did not want to share her best friends with Linda.

After the family had emptied the prosecco bottles, the party broke up. Gary jogged to Dorothy’s cottage to make sure they were out of harm’s way. They would be safe behind locked doors and windows, and with some lights left on all night, since it was unlikely that Marble would break into an illuminated hideaway. In fact, it was not Marble’s intention to make himself known to anyone.

Cleo made sure the children were OK, took a shower, and went to bed. Gary took his shower and found his way under the king-size duvet.

“Roger’s calling for you at two,” Cleo said. “Better get some sleep.”

Gary groaned.

“Why did I agree to that?” he said.

“Wasn’t it Roger’s idea?”

“One of Dorothy’s hair-brained hunches is getting me out of my warm bed at dead of night. I wish she’d take up tatting.”

“What’s tatting?” Cleo asked.

“Lace-making. I think that’s what the three witches in Macbeth did when they weren’t stirring their cauldron.”

“Are you going to sleep wrapped in that damp bath-towel?” Cleo asked.

“Not if you take yours off.”