BLIND SPOT - AND TWO OTHERS

THE OXMARKET ASPAL MURDER MYSTERY - EPISODE FOUR

8

  “A letter?”  Sarah Young shook her head.  “No, I didn’t get a letter from Aunt Faith.  What would she write to me about?”

  “There might have been something she wanted to tell you in private.” I suggested.  “She even bought a new print cartridge for the task.”

  “She never used that computer.”  She said.  “We gave it to her. It was our old one.”

  “I see.”  I said.  “Maybe she was responding to a letter she had received?”

  Sarah Young looked doubtful.

  “Who would write to her, apart from the utility companies?”

  “Maybe she had forgotten to pay a bill?”

  “Never.”

  “Were there any letters among her personal possessions?”

  “I don’t remember. But then the police took over first.  It was quite a while before they let me pack her things and take them away.”

  “What happened to those things?”

  “The rest we sold on eBay.”

  “I meant her personal things,” I added:  “Such things as brushes and combs, photographs, toiletries, clothes . . .”

  “Oh, them.  Well, tell you the truth, I packed them in a suitcase, and it’s still upstairs.  Didn’t rightly know what to do with them.”

  “May I see them?”

  “Of course.  Though I don’t think you’ll find anything.  Police went through it all.”

  “I might look at things with a different perspective,” I smiled.

  Sarah Young led me briskly into a minute back bedroom and pulled out a suitcase from under the bed.

  “There you are,” she said.  “Now, if you wouldn’t mind excusing me, I must get dinner ready.”

  I thanked her and heard her thumping downstairs again.  I drew the suitcase towards me and opened it.

  A musty smell initially came out as with a feeling of pity, I lifted out the contents, so eloquent in their revelation of a dead woman.  A long black coat.  Two cashmere jumpers.  No underwear (presumably Sarah Young had thrown them away).  Two pairs of high-heeled shoes, wrapped up in newspaper.  A brush and a comb, used but clean.  An old dented silver-back mirror, which must have been a hand-me-down.  A photograph in a silver frame of a wedding couple dressed in the style of twenty years ago – a picture of Faith Roberts and her husband presumably. Two picture postcards of Sheringham in Norfolk. A china dog.  A recipe torn out of a magazine for making a chocolate Christmas cake.  With that, there was also a Bible and a Prayer Book.

  I unwrapped one of the pairs of shoes.  They were expensive and hardly ever worn.

  It was the Oxmarket Sunday Echo and the date was October 29th.

  Faith Roberts had been killed on November 1st.

  This then was the paper she had bought on the Sunday preceding her death.it had been lying in her room and Sarah Young had used it in due course to wrap up her aunt’s things.

  Sunday, October 29th.  And on Monday Faith Roberts had gone into the post office to buy a printer cartridge . . .

  Could that be because of something she had seen in the Sunday newspaper?

  I unwrapped the other pair of shoes.  They were in the Independent On Sunday of the same date.

  I smoothed out both papers and took them over to a chair where I sat down and read them.  And at once I made a discovery.  On one page of the Oxmarket Sunday Echo, something had been cut out.  The space was too big for any of the clippings I had found. 

  I looked through both newspapers, but could find nothing else of interest.  I wrapped them round the shoes again and repacked the suitcase tidily.

  Then I went downstairs.

  Sarah Young was busy in the kitchen.

  “Don’t suppose you found anything?” She asked.

  “Afraid not,” I replied, before adding in a casual voice:  “Do you remember seeing a cutting from Oxmarket Sunday Echo among your aunt’s other personal effects?”

  “I don’t think so.  Perhaps the police took it.”

  I knew that the police had not taken it from DI Silver’s notes.  The contents of all her personal effects had been listed and no newspaper cutting was among them.

  I left Sarah Young to continue preparing her dinner and drove through the rain to the local library, where I signed in to a computer and checked the archive pages of the Oxmarket Sunday Echo for Sunday, October 29th.

  Almost immediately I stumbled on an article which said:

WOMEN VICTIMS OF BYGONE TRAGEDIES

WHERE ARE THESE WOMEN NOW?

  Below the caption were four very blurred reproductions of photographs taken many years ago.

  The subjects of them did not look tragic.  They looked actually, rather ridiculous, since nearly all of them were dressed in the style of the day and nothing is more ridiculous than the fashions of yesterday – though in another thirty years or so their charms may reappear, but I doubted it.

  Under each photograph was a name.

  Kirsten Braun, the ‘other woman’ in the famous Michael Porter case.

  Melissa Smith, the ‘tragic wife’ whose husband was a fiend in human form.

  Little Jo Pedder tragic child.

  Sienna Rose, unsuspecting wife of a killer.

  And then came the question in bold type again:

WHERE ARE THESE WOMEN NOW?

  I blinked and set myself to read meticulously the somewhat romantic prose which gave the life stories of these dim and blurry heroines.

  The name of Kirsten Braun I remembered, for the Michael Porter case had been a very celebrated one.  Michael Porter had been the Mayor of Oxmarket, a conscientious, rather nondescript little man and pleasant in his behaviour.  He’d had the misfortune to marry a tiresome and temperamental wife.  Kirsten Braun was the children’s nanny.  She was nineteen and beautiful.  She fell desperately in love with Michael Porter, and he reciprocated her love.  Then one day the neighbours heard that Mrs Porter had been ‘ordered abroad’ for her health.  That had been Porter’s story.  He took her to the airport and saw her off to recuperate in Switzerland.  Then he returned to Oxmarket and at intervals mentioned how his wife’s health was no better according to her emails, texts and phone calls.  Kirsten Braun remained behind to tend to the young twin girls and soon tongues started wagging. Finally, Porter received news of his wife’s premature death abroad.  He went away and returned a week later with an account of the funeral.

  The children were packed off to their grandparents but Porter’s biggest mistake was mentioning where his wife had died, a moderately well-known village near the Alps.  It only remained for a relative to fly out to the village and question the locals about what he had said for them to find out that there had been no death or funeral of anyone of that name and on that relative’s return to communicate his finding to the police.

  Subsequent events were briefly summarized.

  Mrs Porter had not left for the Swiss Alps. She had been cut into neat pieces and buried in the Porter’s cellar.  And the autopsy of the remains showed poisoning.

  Porter was arrested and sent for trial.  Kirsten Braun was originally charged as an accessory, but the charge was dropped, since it appeared clear that she had throughout been completely ignorant of what had occurred. Michael Porter in the end made a full confession and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

  Kirsten Braun, who was by now pregnant, left Oxmarket and in the words of the Oxmarket Sunday Echo:  Kindly relatives offered her a home. Changing her name, the local well-loved nanny, seduced by a cold-blooded killer, moved away to begin a brand-new life and concealed from her daughter the name of her child.

  “My daughter shall grow up happy and innocent.  Her life shall not be tainted by the cruel past.  That I have sworn. My tragic memories shall remain mine alone.”

  Poor young Kirsten Braun.  To learn, so young.  Where is she now?  It is there, in some part of the United Kingdom, an elderly woman, quiet and respected by her neighbours, who has, perhaps, sad eyes . . . And does a young woman, happy and cheerful with her children, come and see ‘Grandma’ telling her of all the little strife and stresses of daily life – with no idea of what past sufferings her mother has endured?

  “f*****g hell,” I exclaimed quietly under my breath, before passing on to the next tragic victim.

  Kay Kempster, the ‘tragic wife’, had certainly been unfortunate in her choice of husband. His peculiar practices, referred to in such a guarded way as to rouse instant curiosity, had been suffered by her for eight years.  Eight years of martyrdom, the Oxmarket Sunday Echo said firmly.  Then Kay met a friend, an idealistic and an unworldly young man who, horrified by an argument between husband and wife, had intervened and assaulted the husband with such intensity and violence that the latter had crushed in his skull on a sharp-edged marble fire surround.  The jury had found that provocation had been the reason behind the attack and the young man had had no intention of killing him and a sentence of five years for manslaughter was given.

  The suffering Kay Kempster, horrified by all the publicity the case had brought her, moved abroad ‘to forget’.

  Has she forgotten? The Oxmarket Sunday Echo asked.  We hope so. Somewhere, perhaps, is a happy wife and mother to whom those years of nightmare suffering endured, seem now only like a dream . . .

  I cursed under my breath once more and passed on to Jo Pedder.

  She had it seemed, been removed from her overcrowded home and placed in the care of an elderly aunt.  One particular day, Jo had wanted to go to the cinema and her aunt refused to let her go. In a blind rage, Jo reacted by picking up a hammer that was lying conveniently on the table and aimed at her aunt with it.  The aunt being small and frail, died from the blow.  Jo was well-developed for a twelve-year-old, and she was sent to an approved school and disappeared from the public eye.

  By now she is a woman, free again to take her place in society.  Her conduct, during the years of confinement and probation, is said to have been exemplary.  Does not this show that it is not the child, but the system, that we must blame.  Brought up in ignorance and below the poverty line, little Jo was the victim of her upbringing.

  Now, having atoned for her tragic lapse, she lives somewhere, happily, we hope, a good citizen and a good wife and mother.

  I shook my head.  A girl of twelve who took a swing at her aunt with a hammer and hit her hard enough to kill her was not, in my opinion, a nice child.  My sympathies were, in this case, with the aunt.

  I moved on to Sandra Cavendish.

  She was one of those women with whom everything goes wrong.  She had first taken up with a boyfriend who turned out to be a violent criminal wanted by the police for the murder of a security guard at a bank.  She then married a tradesman who turned out to be a receiver of stolen goods.  Her two children had likewise, attracted the attention of the police by being caught shoplifting in one of the major department stores in Cambridge.  Finally, though, she met a new man who offered Sandra a home in Tuscany where she and her children moved too.

  At last, after long years of repeated blows from fate, Sandra’s troubles were over.

  I leant back and studied the four photographs.  Kirsten Braun with tousled curly hair. Kay Kempster short fat and dumpy.  Jo Pedder was a plain child with an adenoidal appearance of open mouth, hard breathing and thick spectacles.  Sandra Cavendish looked as if the whole world were on her shoulders.

  For some reason Faith Roberts had torn out this feature, photographs and all.  Why?  Just to keep because the article interested her?  I doubted that.  Faith Roberts had kept very few things in her life and I knew that from the police reports of her belongings.

  She had torn this out on the Sunday and on the Monday she had bought a new printer cartridge and wanted to use her computer and possibly print off a letter when the inference was she never wrote letters and hardly ever used her computer.

  I scanned the photographs once again.

  Where, the Oxmarket Sunday Echo asked, are these women now?

  One of them, I thought, might have been in Oxmarket Aspal last November.

9

  It was not until the following day that I managed to get round to meet the journalist who had written the articles in the Oxmarket Sunday Echo.

  Debbie Baldwin couldn’t give me long because she had to rush away to London, she explained.

  She was tall and elegant with curly blonde hair, dressed in a wide striped jumper, black leggings and black knee-high boots.  She didn’t need to wear heels, but the boots brought her to eye level with me, and I’m six foot two.

  “You’ll have to be quick,” she said impatiently.  “I’ve got to be going.”

  “It’s about the article you wrote concerning ‘Tragic Women.’”

  Debbie Baldwin grinned.  “I had many emails, texts and tweets on that article.”

  “What about letters?”

  “Yes, I had a few.”  She replied.

  “Did you get one from a Faith Roberts from Oxmarket Aspal?”

  She shrugged her shoulder exasperatingly.  “Do you realize how much correspondence I receive in a week?”

  “I thought you might remember,” I said, “because a few days later Faith Roberts was murdered.”

  “Of course,” she said, no longer impatient to get to London.  “I remember now.” 

  “Can you remember the contents of the letter?”

  “Something about a photograph.  She knew there was a photograph like in the paper – and would we pay her anything for it and how much?”

  “And you answered?”

  “Only with a standard letter.  A polite thanks but no, thanks.”

  Into my mind there came back a comment that Karen Bellagamba had made, “She liked to snoop around a bit, but she was harmless.”

  Faith Roberts had snooped. She was honest but she liked to know things. And people kept things – foolish, meaningless things from the past.  Kept them for sentimental reasons, or just overlooked them and didn’t remember they were there.

  Faith Roberts had seen an old photograph and later she had recognized it reproduced in the Oxmarket Sunday Echo.   And she had wondered if there was money in it. . . .

  I moved towards the door of her office.  “Thank you, Miss Baldwin.  Pardon me for asking, but the notes on the cases that you wrote, were they accurate?  I notice, for instance, that the year of the Porter trial is given wrongly – actually a year later than you say.  And in the Kempster case, the husband’s name was Anthony not Andrew.  Also, Jo Pedder’s aunt lived in Norfolk, not Suffolk.”

  Debbie Baldwin waved a dismissive hand.

  “I admit I was expansive with the truth.”

  “So, those women are the saints that you painted them to be?”

  Debbie Baldwin laughed at me, which I found a little offensive.

  “Of course they weren’t,” she said.  “And now – I really must fly.”

  Later in my car, I rang DI Silver on my hands-free mobile.

  “How are you getting on?”

  “I have started making inquiries.”

  “And?”

  “And the result is that Oxmarket Aspal is full of very nice people.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just consider this.”  I said, as I turned in through the gates of the Oxmarket Aspal Doctors’ surgery. “Very nice people have across the length and breadth of time committed murder.”

  “Where are you now?”

  I glanced at the brass plate that announced I was visiting Dr Hogg, M.D.

  “Let me know how you get on,” DI Silver said, after I had told him.

  Dr Hogg was a large cheerful man of about forty who greeted me with definite admiration.

  “Our quiet little village is honoured,” he said, “by your presence.”

  “You know me?”

  “Of course,” he exclaimed.  “The way you solved the death of that financier was just absolutely brilliant.”

  I smiled gratefully at the recollection.  Local banker Martin Brett, was found dead in his flat, gun in his hand with bullet wound to his right temple.  The initial assumption was that he had taken his life.

  DI Silver had called me in because he had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right.  After an extensive look round, I came to the conclusion that Martin Brett couldn’t possibly have killed himself.

  The coffee table was to the left of the settee with the coffee mug on the table pointed to the left.  Left-hand power sockets were habitually used and a notepad was positioned to the left of the land-line telephone.  In the kitchen a butter-knife had butter on the right-hand side of the blade and from this I established that Martin Brett was left-handed and that left-handed people do not shoot themselves on the right side of their head.

  Finally, forensics confirmed my findings when they discovered that the bullet in the head did not match his gun.  After this revelation the wife confessed once I had also questioned her extensively about her jewellery that I had found on the dressing table in the bedroom.

  All the jewellery except for her wedding ring which was dirty on the outside but polished on the inside was clean.  They had been married for about ten years.  From the condition of the ring, I had concluded that they had been unhappily married for most of that time, and she had frequently had affairs.  She took pride in her jewellery, but couldn’t bring herself to clean the wedding band because it meant so little to her.  Frequent removal had ensured it stayed shiny on the inside.          

  “You came just at the right time,” Dr Hogg said heartily, shaking me from my reverie.  “I was just about to go out and do some home visits.”

  “I won’t keep you long.”  I said and then asked, “What can you tell me about Faith Roberts?” 

  “I thought that was all done and dusted?”  He asked me sharply.

  “Fresh evidence has arisen,” I told him.

  “Really?”

  “I am not free to say any more at the moment,” I said.  “I understand she worked here.”

  “Oh yes, yes – she was – What about a drink?  Tea?  Coffee? Something stronger?”

  “No, I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Yes, she worked here and excellent she was too.”

  “Was she honest?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Was she honest?”

  Dr Hogg raised a quizzical eyebrow.  “What a strange question.”  He said.  “As far as I was aware, I would say the answer was a resounding yes.”

  “So she wouldn’t spread malicious rumours about people without being sure of the facts?”

  Dr Hogg looked faintly disturbed.  “What had she been saying?”

 “Nothing to concern yourself with,” I said.

  “What about Marcus Dye?”

  “Bit of a hypochondriac,” he replied.  “Probably mollycoddled by his mother.  I see that quite often round here.”

   “Really?”

  “Yes, Lorraine Terret.  Fusses over her son Oliver, like a mother hen.  He’s a clever man but not quite as clever as he thinks he is.  Budding author he is.”

  “Have they lived in the village for long?”

  “About three or four years.  Nobody has been in Oxmarket Aspal for very long.  The original village was only a handful of cottages grouped around the meadow.  You’re staying here, so I’ve heard through the village grapevine.”

  “Yes, I am,” I replied without expanding on it.

  Dr Hogg appeared amused.   “What Karen Bellagamba knows about running a Guest House is just nothing at all.”

  “It’s reasonably comfortable,” I insisted.

  Dr Hogg looked at is watch.

  “I hope I’m not keeping you,” I said.

  “I’ve got a few more minutes.  Besides, I’d like you to meet my wife.  I can’t think where she is.  She was really interested to hear that you were in the village.  We both love reading about crime.”

  “Fact or fiction?”  I asked.

  “Both.”

  “Do you ever read the Oxmarket Sunday Echo?”

  Dr Hogg laughed.  “What would Sunday be without it?”

  “They had some interesting articles about five months ago.  One in particular about women who had been involved in murder cases and the tragedy of their lives.”

  “Yes, I remember the one you mean.  All a load of rubbish if you ask me.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Well of course the Michael Porter case I only know from reading about it, but one of the others the Kempster case.  I can tell you that woman was no saint.  She was a real b***h.  I know because my partner attended the husband.  He was no Robert Redford, but his wife was no oil painting either.  She seduced that young man and egged him on to commit murder.  He went to prison for manslaughter, and she became a rich widow, and married someone else.”

  “The Oxmarket Sunday Echo didn’t mention that,” I said.  “Do you remember who she married?”

  Dr Hogg shook his head.  “Don’t think I ever heard the name, but someone told me that she did pretty well for herself.”

  “I did wonder after reading the article what became of those four women,” I mused.

  “I know.  They could be in Oxmarket Aspal without anyone knowing.  You’d certainly never recognize any of them by the photographs.  My God, they were a grim looking lot.”

  The clock chimed, and I rose to my feet.  “I must get going.  I’ve a great deal to do.  You have been very helpful.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”  He said, with false modesty.  “But please wait and meet my wife. She’ll never forgive me.”

  He proceeded into the hallway and called out loudly:  “Keldine! Keldine!”

  A faint answer came from upstairs.

  “Come down here. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  A thin fair-haired pale woman ran lightly down the stairs.

  “This is John Handful, the private detective.”

  “Oh,” Mrs Hogg appeared to be startled out of speaking. Her very pale blue eyes stared at me apprehensively.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said, shaking her proffered hand.

  “We heard that you were staying in Oxmarket Aspal,” she said.  “But we didn’t know-” She broke off.  Her light eyes went quickly to her husband’s face.

  I uttered a few phrases and left with the impression of a genial Dr Hogg and his tongue-tied, apprehensive wife.

  So much for the Hoggs, where Faith Roberts had gone to work on Tuesday mornings.