THROUGH THE GLASS DARKLY - OLD SINS CAST LONG SHADOWS

THROUGH THE GLASS DARKLY - EPISODE EIGHT

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

Adam Mabbott led us through the hallway, along a centrally heated corridor and to an office at the back of the house.

As we entered the room, Adam went and sat behind a desk that was placed squarely in front of windows that framed perfectly the superb grounds of Mabbott Manor.  Snowflakes fell soundlessly, taking their time before they reached their destined places of rest, enveloping everything in a calm, silent coldness that was comforting in its unique way.  It was a breath-taking image.

            As for the rest of the room, it seemed a typical estate office.  A pile of muddy boots lay in a heap by an old stable door that led outside.  There was a decades-old-map of Oxmarket that was covered in Post-it notes and handwritten annotations.  And all the many shelves and metal filing cabinets in the room were covered in a mess of paperwork, manuals, books, and magazines.  I got the impression that this was a busy and active place of work.

            “Is this your office?” I asked, seeing how proprietorially Adam was sitting behind the desk.

            “Good God, no,” Adam said with a laugh.  “This office belongs to Butch.”

            “And where is Butch now?”  Shaw asked.

            Adam smiled.  “There’s a lot of work involved running a place like this and when Butch is not busy working, he’s either fishing or painting, I get a pretty free run of the office.”

            “He paints, does he?”  Shaw asked.

            “Yes, oils and pastels.  Landscapes he likes doing the most.  Getting out under the big sky, he calls it.  And he is good.  He had an exhibition at the Sunset Gallery and is a member of the Oxmarket Art Group on Undercliff Road.”

            I shook my head.  The phrase the ‘Sunset Gallery’ didn’t mean anything to me, but I could see the DCI was impressed.  Very well.  Butch was a fair-to-middling painter.

            I picked up a spreadsheet of figures from the desk and looked at it.

            “So, what are you currently working on?”

            “Pretty much everything.”

            “How do you mean?”

            “Well, since I came back and lived here, I’ve been trying to put my degree in agriculture to effective use.  You know, dive into the balance sheets, try and get my head around the different variable and fixed costs, capital investment plans – that sort of thing.”

            “I see,” Shaw said.  “And your brother didn’t mind you muscling in on the running of the estate.”

            “Not at all,” Adam said, proudly.  “He welcomed the help.  He had bigger fish to fry at Westminster.”

            “Do you think you'll follow your brother into politics?"  I asked.

            “I might consider it,” he said.  “But I want to try and make this place safe for Victoria and Cleo’s future.”

            “Very noble of you,” I said.  “And can you save this place from rack and ruin?”

            “I’m fairly confident.  But it is going to take a bit of a push.  We’ve got to drag this place into the 21st century.”

            “You sound pretty committed.”

            “I am,” Adam said with a warning note in his voice.  “I might come over as a fly-by-night with the affair with Cleo, but that doesn’t mean I’m not serious about my work.  Anyhow, I don’t think you wanted to talk to me about business plans.”

            “No.  Of course not,” Shaw said.  “What we want to know is being you sure the body you identified in the mortuary yesterday was Wendy Clark?”

            “What’s that?”

            “Are you positive about the identification of Wendy Clark?”  I repeated on Shaw’s behalf.

            “Of course, I am."  He said.  "Why are you asking such a ridiculous question?"

            “Did you know that Wendy Clark was transgender?”

            “Well, of course, I knew.  Greg told me all about it."

            “Then could you tell us, how the pathologist has discovered that Wendy Clark has had a child.”?

            “Are you serious?” he blinked frantically in shock.

            “Never been more so,” Shaw pressed.

            “I don’t know what to say,” Adam said, and I could see that he was thinking less and less of the Police and me with each passing second.  Very well, I thought to myself, let him feel superior – that’s when witnesses make mistakes.

            “I know the body I identified was Wendy Clark.  Are you sure the pathologist was working on the right person?”

            “Positive,” Shaw said.

            I decided to go for a stroll around the room and let Adam sweat a bit.  Stopping at a photo on the wall, I threw a sideways glance at Adam and saw how unsettled he was by my sudden silence.  I studied the photo once more.  It showed two young boys wearing school uniform, standing in front of an ivy-clad wall.  The faded handwriting underneath the picture said that it was a photograph of Gregory and Adam Mabbott outside Oxmarket Manor House School for boys, and the cut-out paper crest that was glued to the top of the picture signified the school motto.  ‘Bene cogitate de illa’ 

            “Think well on it,” I said aloud as if it was the most natural thing to say.

            “You know Latin?”  Adam asked, confused by the sudden change in tack. 

            “Yes, I studied it at school.”

            “What school was that?”

            “Challoner,” I said.  “Private Catholic School for boys in North Finchley.”

            Shaw coughed.  “Well, it is all very nice to reminisce about your school days, but let’s get back to the job in hand?”

            “Sorry,” I said, raising my hand in apology to the DCI.  He was right of course it was time to get back to the job in hand, so I returned to Adam’s desk – but as I did so, I glanced into a metal wastepaper basket at the side of the room and noticed that there was something black and charred at the bottom of it.

            To everyone’s surprise, I got down on my hands and knees and looked inside the bin.  I could see that there were three or four black pieces of burnt paper.

            I picked up the little metal bin and took it cautiously over to Adam’s desk.

            “Mr Mabbott, have you set fire to a piece of paper in this bin?”  I asked.

            “What’s that?”

            “I’ve just noticed that someone seems to have burnt a piece of paper in this been here.  It’s fallen into a few pieces.”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            “You don’t?”

            “No.”

            I returned my attention to the piece of charred paper.  There were four separate pieces.  I handed the bin to DCI Shaw, who took his mobile out of his pocket to make a call.  We knew that if we could get the pieces of burnt paper safely to forensics there may be a chance to reveal what was written on them before they were burnt.  It wouldn’t be easy, but it was a possibility.

 “Your brother studied chemistry at Cambridge."

            “Yes, I know,” Adam said impatiently.

            “Did you also know that the hymns listed on the hymn board in the chapel are numbers using the periodic table?”

            Adam went as white as a sheet.

            “Have you got a pen and a piece of paper, please?”

            Adam gestured with his head towards a pen and some paper on the corner of his desk.

            “Thank you,” I said, deciding that I wanted to keep Adam off balance.

            “Seventy-four represents Tungsten. Tungsten's chemical symbol comes from its earlier, Germanic name, Wolfram. The name Wolfram comes from the mineral wolframite, in which it was discovered.”  I said, writing a letter down.  “Seventeen is Chlorine.”  I continued writing.  “Eighteen is Argon, and finally nineteen is Potassium, which has the chemical symbol of K.”

            I finished writing and held up the piece of paper to my captive audience of two.  “W. Clark.”

Shaw let out a slow admiring whistle.

            I was embarrassed.  Before I became a private detective, some people always thought that this was my party trick.  To impress the ladies.  But I am genuinely surprised that I can remember certain details.  I was an under-achiever at school and didn’t really reach my full potential at MI5.  And it’s not like I plucked details out of the air.  I normally justify every statement I make by rattling off the answers.

Adam placed his hands on the table, and I could see that he was trying to control his temper.  “Greg was always playing games like that.  Leaving cryptic clues everywhere, especially at Christmas.”

            “But you said yesterday that your brother couldn’t tell one crossword from another,” I said.  “Now you’re saying that he was a genius at them.  Which one is it, Mr Mabbott?”

            “Look,” Adam snapped, “what does it matter?  It’s obvious my brother killed himself.”

            “Why’s that?"  I asked.  I had been waiting for the moment when someone in this dysfunctional family would try to push us back into believing that Gregory had, in fact, committed suicide.  We had already worked out that the killer's plan had been to confuse us with the shut windows after Lord Mabbott had fallen.  So, did the fact that Adam was now mentioning this mean that he was the killer?

            “I just can’t see how it could have been murder,” Adam insisted.

            “Why’s that?”

            “Well, it’s kind of obvious.  Victoria told me how the police had to break down the door to his study, didn’t you?  And how the study was locked from the inside.  So, does not it makes more sense that Greg went into his study, locked the door, climbed onto the window-sill and then jumped?”

            “And how do you think he shut the window of the study before jumping?”

            “I’ve no idea.”

            “And why was there twine saturated in paraffin tied around the lock of the door?”  I said.  “I tell you why.  The killer pushed your brother out of the window, shut the window, and then tied the saturated twine around the key in the lock, locked the door, from the other side and then lit the twine so that it burnt and left no trace of it ever being there."

            I looked at Adam, and there was a moment of indecision, but then Adam just shrugged again, trying to make it look as though he wasn’t bothered one way or another.  Adam Mabbott was trying to pretend that he was humble and low status within the family, but there is being a strong streak of pride in the way he’d answered our questions.

            And there was no doubting – in my mind at least – that this was a murder carried out by someone who was supremely arrogant.  The killer had pushed Greg Mabbott from a room that was locked from the inside, and yet he or she had then managed to leave the locked room by the time the police arrived.  It was as if the killer was challenging me to have the wit to solve the murder – which was a textbook definition of arrogance, I thought to myself.

            Was Adam the killer?

            I turned to look out of the window and was surprised to see a figure standing about fifty feet away looking in our direction.

            It was Butch.

            But as I looked at him, Butch turned away from the window and vanished from view.

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

The house occupied by Butch, his wife and family was in a motley line of staff dwellings, still within sight of the manor but far enough away not to be too much of an eye-sore for the Mabbott family.  They were all old enough to date from a time when people did not see much point in a sea view as against the disadvantages of icy wind and occasional floods.  The cottages that lined the edge of the grounds were odd, ill-sorted, and squeezed in at a strange angle as if each had to be fitted into a space slightly too small for it.  Butch's was the oddest of all.  It was made of clapboard and looked more than anything like a square wooden boat that had been dragged on to the land, turned upside-down and been unconvincingly disguised with a grey-slate roof.

            As we approached the front door we heard a desperate scratching, whimpering, and groaning from inside.

            “Stop that, Zygon,” a female voice shouted, as she unlocked the front door.

            The door was opened only a foot or so, and a security chain dangled in front of our eyes.

            "What is it?"  By the sound of her voice, you could tell she was physically struggling to control the German shepherd.

            DCI Shaw held out his ID and introduced us to the woman.  “We would like to have a quick word with Butch.”

            “What do you want him for?”

            “We just want to ask him a few questions, about the deaths of Lord Mabbott and Wendy Clark.”

            The woman didn’t step back to let us in, but stood at the door and held it in the same position.  “Why?  What would he know about them?”

            “We could always arrest you for obstruction and ask your husband the questions down the station instead.”

            There was an uneasy silence for a few moments, while she thought about this.     

“He’s in the garage,” the voice said from behind the door.  “Would you mind going around the side entrance, it would be easier than trying to lock away the dog.”?

            She laughed without humour.  This was obviously a regular occurrence for her when her husband was at home.

            “Would you like some coffee?”  She said suddenly.

            “Yes, please," Shaw said.  “One white, one black both no sugar.  Thank you."

            I followed Shaw along the swept side path where a rusting bicycle was propped against the fence, alongside recycling bins.  The long narrow garden had a sandbox, a vegetable patch, and a small greenhouse, all covered with snow.  At the far end there was an old stable block, now a garage, which backed on to a rear lane.

            Through an open side door, we could see Butch was working on the estate snowmobile.  Shaw went in first, but I hesitated and looked at the surrounding landscape.

            Sometimes I still felt that living in Oxmarket was like living on the edge of the world.  The wintry light slanting on to the flat, brilliant white landscape; the moan of the wind, the shriek of seabirds and the melancholy boom of the foghorn far out at sea always sent a shiver through me.  I could hear the sea and the wind in the masts of the boats in the yard. 

            Butch dropped the spanner and straightened up from the snow mobile.  He rubbed his grazed knuckle.  His unshaven face was raw from the cold north-easterly that whipped over us, carrying another blizzard. With more flakes than it would ever make sense to count, each made its own daring path adding to the landscape. One flake in the sky would be madness, yet this horizon filled with them was the greatest of sanity, a winter playground growing with each new addition.

            Butch looked at us, as we stood at the entrance to the garage.  His dark eyes were watering.  His hair lay flat and damp so that we could see the shape of his skull.  He blew on his whitened fingers and tried to smile, but I could see it was an effort.

            It was DCI Shaw who spoke first.  “May we speak to you Mr . . . Er?”

            “Butch,” he said, gruffly.  “It’s Butch.”

            His wife came through the adjoining door from the estate cottage, with four mugs of coffee on a tray, and four dark chocolate digestive biscuits laid out neatly beside on a plate.  She was a tall woman, as tall as Butch, big-boned but thin.  I’m sure she could have looked attractive, but today she looked gaunt and unfinished, as she if she couldn’t be bothered to proper attention to herself.  Her hair was brown, already peppered with grey, and pulled back in a hasty bun.  Her skin was bracketed with worry lines, her nails were bitten down to the ends of her fingers.  She wore no makeup or jewellery, except for the wedding band on her finger.  Her clothes did not fit together at all.  She was wearing a strawberry-pink quilted jacket and a thin black skirt that trailed on the ground.  I worried she would trip over it.  She had the bossy abruptness of someone who was fundamentally shy and her manner when we first arrived swung between sprightly sarcasm and barely suppressed anger.

            “One white, one black, both no sugar, right?”  She looked at her husband.  “How is it going, Butch?  Got her ladyship's little toy up and running yet?"

            Butch grimaced at her in exasperation, then down on the ground on which lay parts from the snow mobile that I couldn’t name.

            A little gleam appeared in her eyes.  “You said when you came back that it would only take a couple of minutes.”

            “I know,” Butch said, wryly.

            “That was before eleven.”  She glanced ostentatiously at the watch on her wrist.  “You’ve been out here for nearly three-quarters of an hour.”

            “I know that too.”

            “These gentlemen want to ask you some important questions.”

            “I know.”

            Butch’s head disappeared beneath the bonnet of the snow-mobile again.  There was a sound of several sharp taps and a mumbled curse.  It might have seemed funny, but he was obviously not finding it funny that I bit my lip to forestall even the tiniest hint of a smile.  I pulled off my glove to pick up my coffee mug and wrapped my fingers around it, grateful for the warmth, the curl of steam licked my face.

            “Do you two know who the killer is yet?”  Linda asked, and pulled her jacket more closely round her, shivering exaggeratedly.

            I watched Butch.  He pulled a face that was a caricature of confusion, anxiety, and distress.

            “Not yet,” DCI Shaw said casually.  “But we will?”

            She started to walk back into the cottage.

            “At least you’ve solved the rattle, for madams,” she said to her husband, with a small, explosive snort.

            “What?” Butch said, with a glance at her that she pretended not to see.

            “Well, the snow-mobile won’t rattle if you can’t switch it on.”

            His face went a scary shade of crimson.  He looked at his watch.  “Haven’t you got to be somewhere, dear?”

            “Yes, yes, I’m now going.”

            Once out of sight, Butch said under his breath, “Bloody woman.”

            I raised my head and looked past Butch to outside the garage and to what lay beyond.  What I saw was all horizon.  But here in Oxmarket, it was all horizon:  the level land, the mudflats, the miles of marshes, the grey, wrinkled sea.  Now it was mid-morning and from where I stood – facing west towards the mainland – I could see only the glistening mudflats with their narrow, oozing ditches of water where waders walked with their high-stepping delicate legs and giving mournful cries as if they lost something.  It was low tide.  Little boats tethered to their unnecessary buoys tipped at a steep angle to show their blistered, slimy hulls; their halliards c*****d and chimed in the wind.  From my boathouse, which was a bit further round to the south-east, I could make out to the sea.  Sometimes, when I woke in the morning and opened my eyes on its grey, shifting expanse, I still wondered for a moment where I was, how I’d landed up there.

            It was Zoë who had wanted to come, who for the few short years of our marriage had dreamed of leaving London, of moving from her doctor’s surgery in Whetstone, North London and run one up on the Suffolk coast instead.  At first, it had just been a daydream, an if-only that I didn't really share initially, but bit by bit it had taken on the harder edge of an obsession until at last she'd found premises in Oxmarket and dragged her reluctant husband with her to begin a new life.  From my bedroom, I could hear the water lapping at the shingle shore, the foghorns booming out at sea.  Sometimes at night, when Oxmarket was wrapped in the darkness of the sky and of the rising, falling waters, I could scarcely bear the sense of solitude that engulfed me.

            Yet, I was the one who had fallen half in love with Oxmarket while Zoë had been driven mad by it.  Somewhere in the dream the illness took over, and she found herself trapped by the fantasy she'd held for so long, she no longer knew what she was or even who she was, and the cancer sadly became her only way out.

            “We are sorry to disturb you, Butch,” DCI Shaw pressed.  “But we would like to ask you a few questions.”

            Butch stood up.  He had a streak of grease on his jaw, and a rip in his overalls.  I watched as he took a large gulp of cooling coffee, then scoffed a Digestive after it.

            “Right, gentlemen,” he said.  “What was it you wanted to ask me?”

            “Where were you when Lord Mabbott fell from the window?”

            “I’ve absolutely, no idea.”  He replied, which by the expression on the Detective Chief Inspector’s had thrown him slightly.  “But I never believed he committed suicide anyway.  He just wasn’t the type.”

            “How do you mean?” Shaw pressed.

            “Lord Mabbott was a good man to work for.  You knew exactly where you stood with him.  He paid me well.  Gave me this cottage.  He didn’t have to.  But he was good to Linda and me.”

            “What is your relationship with Lady Mabbott?”  I asked.

            “Cordial.”

            “Cordial?”

            “Relaxed.”

            “What about Cleo?”

            He laughed.  “She’s just a kid.”

            “And Adam?”

            “He’s not at all like his brother.”

            “How do you mean?”

            “Well, that’s not quite true.  Since his brother died, he seems to have changed.  For the better that is.  Calmer.  Even likeable.”

            “You’re involved in running the security of Mabbott Manor?” 

            “Yes, I am.”  He said proudly.

            “And how long have you been doing that?”

            “Oh, about five years.”

            “And before that?”

            “Army.”

            “On the day in question, did you see anything suspicious within the grounds?”

            “Not that I can recall,” he said.  “You get a reporter or press photographer trying to get over the fence and by-pass the CCTV, but they don’t get far.  I’ve always got Zygon.”

            “Zygon?”  Shaw quizzed.

            “When we got him as a puppy, my son was a massive Doctor Who fan, and he named it after one of the aliens on that programme.”

            “The lady who works in the house,” I began.  “I’m not sure of her name.”

 "What Mrs Roberts?"  Butch said.  "Now, she's the one you want to speak to.  What she doesn't know isn't worth knowing."

            Butch put down his mug and reluctantly picked up the spanner once more.