BLIND SPOT - AND TWO OTHERS

DEATH IS FOR THE DYING - EPISODE FOUR

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

After breakfast, I walked Kira back to her car and continued on to the churchyard.

  On the way, I stopped at the local village stores and brought a bunch of roses and carnations.

  The shop had been built on to the last house in the terrace and was hardly bigger than a suburban garage.  There were shelves all-round the walls for self-service and a refrigerated counter with a lump of cheddar and a couple of pounds of vacuum-packed streaky bacon.  In one corner, the post office: a rack of official forms and some scales for weighing parcels.

  The flowers were in separate buckets outside and after making my selection I carried them to the young woman behind the counter.  I recognized her as Keri Windsor.  Her mother Mary had her name over the shop door and lived in the house attached.  She was a quiet, withdrawn woman with a good head for business who preferred it when the shop was empty, so that she could sit on a high stool next to the post office and read murder mystery novels set in the past.

  Keri lived in the house set in the middle of the terrace on her own, wasn’t married or attached to anyone, which was surprising because she was quite a beautiful woman.

  I realized that I must have looked very odd, just standing there, deep in thought, holding flowers. I roused myself.  I landed up at the counter and took my wallet out of my back pocket.

  “Hello, John.  How are you?”

  “Not, too bad.  You?”

  “But shocked about the news about Archie,” she admitted.

  “Yes, I am certain.”

  “I understand from Sergeant Higgins when he interviewed me that Archie was only in the shop a little before he died.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Are you involved in the investigation?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Must be a bit difficult for you, though,” she said taking my money.

  “Why is that?” I pressed.

  “With him dating Kimberley and all that,” she said.

  “I’m over that,” I said taking my change.  “See you later.”

  I left the shop and walked up the hill towards the church.  In the old days before the roads were built they’d carried the corpses for burial by boat.  That was why in Oxmarket the graveyard was close to the water.  I thought I would quite like my body to be carried to its grave in my boat, if I owned one, but I supposed there’d be some reason why it couldn’t happen like that now.

  I was adjacent to the shore, the birds on the cliff beyond the beach got louder. I didn’t care much for heights, but I liked to see the cliffs from the bottom, especially at this time of year when the birds had young, the busyness of them all jostling for a place on the ledges.  The tide was full now and the water had almost reached the boats pulled up on the beach.

  When I finally got to the lichgate the sky was starting to gain some colour.  The place was deserted.  No other cars.  No people.  No sound.  It wasn’t too far from the A12, but it was supernaturally quiet, as if the dead had taken the sound down with them.

  I passed through to where Zoë was buried.  Tall trees surrounded the place on all sides and dividing walls had been built within it, with four or five headstones in each section.  As I got to the grave, I saw the flowers I’d put down the month before.  They were dead.  Dried petals clung to the gravestone, and the stems had turned to mush.  I knelt down and brushed the old flowers away.  Then I placed the new ones beneath the grave, the thorns from the stems catching in the folds of my palm.

  “Sorry I didn’t come yesterday,” I said quietly.  The wind picked up for a moment, and carried my words away.  “I do still think about you a lot, though.”

  Some leaves fell from the sky, on to the grave.  When I looked up, a bird was hopping along a branch on one of the trees.  The branch swayed gently, bobbing under its weight, and then – seconds later – the bird was gone, swooping downwards and ranging up left; up into the freedom beyond.

  I turned back to the gravestone and resumed my conversation with Zoë.  I had already told her about my split with Kimberley, but now I was telling her about Kira.  I know Zoë would have liked Kira, especially with her medical background, and I felt comfortable telling my deceased wife.

  “Hello, John.”  A voice near me said.

  “Hello, Reverend Harkett,” I said without looking.

  “How are things?”  He pressed.

  “Busy as ever,” I said, eventually standing up.

  “Still too busy to visit the church on a Sunday?”

  “God and I have had a bit of a falling out,” I said sharply.

  “I understand,” he held up his hands in mock surrender.  “Not to worry – it’s what people do that matters, not where they’re seen to be.  If all my worshippers were as involved in the welfare of the parish as you are, then I’d be a happier man.”

  “Thank you, Reverend,” I said sincerely.

  “Terrible business about Archie, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.  It was terrible.”

  “He’s from Oxmarket, you know?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes,” he said with a sad face.  “He went to Sunday school and I performed the ceremony at his wedding.”

  “To Linda?”

  “No, to his first wife.”  He replied.  “Linda was his second wife.  He was only eighteen, and I think she was about seventeen.”

  “Do you remember her name?”  I quizzed.

  “No, I don’t,” he replied.  “But it is bound to be in the Births, Deaths and Marriages records in the rectory.”

  “Can I have a look?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said.  “Follow me.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

As we walked towards the rectory, Reverend Harkett turned to me and said, “Before I forget, I’ve got you down for the churchyard grass-cutting later this month, on my rota.”

  “No problem,” I said.

  We joined the narrow path that went past the front of the church.  The rectory known as ‘Cove Cottage’ was set back from this.  We could hear the sea as we approached, and I knew that there was indeed a cove behind the house.

  It was a postcard Elizabethan cottage; half-timbered, with a black thatched roof hanging low over the small upstairs windows.  A rose scrambled up the side of the door frame and across the lintel.

  Reverend Harkett stood to one side to let me in and then went to the door under the steep, narrow wooden staircase.  On previous visits I had dismissed it as a cupboard, but when the Reverend lifted the latch and pulled it open, I saw that it gave on to a flight of stone steps that led downwards.  There was noise as well, a faint humming sound and something else – a regular beat.

  As we started down the stairs, the noise grew louder.  “It sounds like an engine,” I realized.

  “It’s my generator,” he told me.  “I’m virtually self-sufficient with electricity.”  He reached up and pointed to the bare light that was hanging above our heads from the sloping ceiling.  It was so ordinary and expected that I hadn’t even noticed.  There was also light showing from the cellar.

  Sure enough, there was a small generator chugging away in the corner when we reached the bottom of the stairs.  The cellar was large – as large, I estimated, as the footprint of the house.  Like another floor set into the ground.  It was open, a single huge room.  There were wooden wine racks along one wall, decked with cobwebs.  The other walls were whitewashed brickwork.  In the middle of the floor there was a large trestle table.  Besides, it was another smaller table with what looked like a metal tool box on it.  Along the wall behind several filing cabinets and cupboards.  A few books stood lonely and haphazardly on a set of shelves.

  “Here we are,” Reverend Harkett said, as he walked over to the filing cabinets.

  “I would have thought nowadays all this sort of information would be stored on a computer.”  I commented.

  “The newer stuff is,” he explained.  “But anything over five years old is stored down here I’m afraid.  It would be a momentous undertaking.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.  “I’m sure it would.”

  Each drawer was marked alphabetically, and he pulled opened the top drawer. As he flicked through the documents he whispered to himself, “Andrews, Andrews, Andrews.”

  He stopped and turned towards me with a big satisfied grin on his face.

  “Here it is,” he waved a piece of paper in my direction before handing it to me.

  I looked at it.  He was right Archie Andrews had married Pauline Russell when he was eighteen, and she was seventeen.  He was a sales manager, and she was a trainee cosmetic scientist.

  “Do you remember her?”  I asked showing him the name on the certificate.

  “Vaguely,” he admitted.  “Now I’ve seen the name again.  Mischievous eyes if I remember.”

  “Do you know what happened to her?”

  “I think I recall her winning a scholarship to a university in France.”  He said taking the marriage certificate back off me.  “After that, it was the beginning of the end.  Archie stayed behind to pursue his career.  His visits to Paris became fewer and fewer and separation and divorce were inevitable.  I think Hogbin, Moruzzi and Marshall handled it all.  Mediated the settlement.”

  “Was she from around here?”

  “No,” he said, glancing at the certificate.  “It says here that she was from Harlow.”

  “Children?”

  “Not as far as I am aware.”

  “Thank you, Reverend,” I said. “You have been a great help.”

  “Have I?”  He said gratefully.  “Oh, I am pleased.”

  I left the Reverend down in the cellar and walked into the centre of Oxmarket.

  It didn’t take me long to reach the main street that went through the town.  Half-way along was the Waggoners Rest, its sign swinging in the sea breeze.  At the far end of the street was the primary school.

  There were terraced houses on the left and a front door to one of them opened.  Standing in the doorway was an old woman.  She was small, almost shrivelled.  I could effortlessly believe that she had been waiting behind the door, peering out from behind the net curtains in the front window of the small house, timing her exit to coincide with my arrival.

  “You’re that private detective, fellow,” she said.  Her voice was high-pitched and cracked with age.  She nodded her grey head with something approaching vigour.

  “Indeed, I am.”  I agreed with false enthusiasm.  “And you are Mrs Harmer.”

  “You know me?”  She cracked a dry laugh in return.

  “Of course,” I gripped her hand and to her, evident delight raised the back of it to my lips and brushed a kiss against it.

  I wasn’t lying.  Everyone knew Mrs Harmer.  The town gossip. What she didn’t know, wasn’t worth knowing.

  We stood in silence for a few moments.  I was still holding the withered hand and the old lady gazing fondly at me as I smiled.

  “And I’m John Handful.”  I shook her hand now, and then at last let go of it.

  “You’re helping the police,” she said.  She made it sound like an accusation.  “With young Archie’s death.”

  “Yes,” I admitted, “a sad affair.”

  “Tragic,” the old lady agreed with something akin to glee in her voice.

  “How well did you know him?”  I quizzed.

  “I remember,” she began, her voice cracked like an old record, “when his poor mother first come to Oxmarket.  Married Big John up at that church.  Lovely it was.  She wore white.”  Her tone suggested that this was not something she had approved of or thought appropriate.

  “Archie got married there as well, didn’t he?”  I prompted.

  “His mother didn’t approve,” she confided.  “He was always headstrong, even as a child.  I remember his poor mother was quite beside herself with his tantrums when he was a toddler.  Lie there on the floor, he would, kicking and screaming.”

  “What about his father?”  I put in.  “Did he approve?”

  “He liked, Pauline,” she nodded.  “I would say he was almost besotted.  She was a vivacious flirt, and he wanted more heirs for the family business.  I think he thought she would be breeding stock.  He couldn’t have been more wrong.  Once she got that diploma, she couldn’t leave quick enough.  She was only out for what she could get.”

  “You didn’t like her then?”

  She snorted.  A thin reedy sound.  “No, I didn’t,” she rasped.  “So you can imagine my surprise when I saw her the other day.”

  “Excuse me?”  I was shocked.

  “I saw her the other day.”  She nodded towards the bottom of the street, where the masts of the fishing boats at the quay were just visible distantly, poking up behind the harbour wall.  Seagulls were wheeling and crying in the air above them, hopeful of easy pickings.  “It was down there by the harbour.  As bold as brass she was.  Pauline Russell.  I’d recognize that face anywhere.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Kira had taken the next day off work, and I was delighted and because she wasn’t in a rush to get off to work she stayed the night at my house.

  Even though we had only just started dating, I felt quickly peaceful Kira.  Comfortable even.  I felt this relationship could run and run.  Kimberley had been soft and gentle, but I hadn’t had it in me to be the husband she was looking for.  I’d always been too easily caught up in other people’s problems.  “I always come at the bottom of the pile,” she’d said.  “After work and sorting out the neighbour’s delinquent child or walking Charlie, you’re drained.  You don’t find time for me.  You’ve nothing left to give.”  At the time I’d thought she was talking that way because she’d just been through a miscarriage.  Now I could see there was some truth in her words.  I couldn’t keep my nose out of other people’s business.  I told myself it was about being a good detective, but I’d have been curious even if work wasn’t involved.  Kimberley had always been needy.  Kira, I thought, didn’t need me at all.

  We had made love on the living room carpet the night before.  It was quite different from the last time.  Then we had both acted like irresponsible teenagers.  The sheepskins I threw on to the floor from the sofa and the back of the rocking chair weren’t as soft as they looked.  The bed would have certainly been more comfortable.  Yet afterwards she had told me that it was as good as she had known.

  And now she was making the coffee I liked, spooning the grounds into the Cafetière and poured in the water from the kettle slowly and carefully. 

  Looking at her standing with her back to me, reaching into the cupboard to fetch down her mug, I thought I would like her to take her back to bed with me right now.  Her hair was still pinned up from her shower, so her neck was bare.  She wore jeans which fitted tightly round her backside.  I liked her in jeans so much better than her work clothes.  Her body was so firm.

  I went up to her and stroked her neck with my fingers.  She turned round and smiled at me, knowing just what I was thinking.

  “Not now,” she said.  “You’ll have to wait.”

  And of course, I would have to wait because in these things women always get their way.  You couldn’t force them and that is how it should be.

  At the table I watched her toast.  Wholemeal.  I’d bought the bread from a local bakery in Oxmarket.  She’d put a lot of butter on it, and it had melted.  Some had dripped on to her fingers and she licked them.  At first, she had been quite unselfconscious, then she saw me watching her.  She smiled again and licked the fingers on her other hand very slowly.  A game.  Now I was required to wait until later, before I could take her to bed.  She would probably try and play the game for me all day and the anticipation would be better than getting what I wanted straight away.  The thought of that made me feel a little faint, and I didn’t catch immediately what she was saying.

  “How is the investigation going?”  She repeated.

  “Okay,” I shrugged non-committally.  “Did you know that Archie Andrews had been married twice?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes,” I continued, “to a Pauline Russell when he was eighteen.”

  “Good grief,” she said, “he was a bit of a randy so-and-so, wasn’t he?”

  I laughed.

  “Why don’t we walk down to the Harbour Café?”  I said.  “Have one of their posh coffees.  They’ll be open now.”

  “I can’t go looking like this,” she said, but I could see she was pleased by the suggestion.

  “Why not? You look lovely.”

  “What are you after?”  She flirted.

  “I want to call in at the solicitors Hogbin, Moruzzi and Marshall, and visit the Oxmarket Mercury, while we are down there.  Look at some archive photographs.”

  “My God,” she joked.  “You know how to show a girl a good time, don’t you?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What about?”

  “Work.  I’m sorry it has to intrude.”

  “It always will, won’t it?”  She said.

  “Perhaps.  Kimberley could never cope with it.”

  “I bet she could cope with it now.”

  “Yes, you’re probably right.”

  “But I don’t think it’ll be a problem,” she said.

  “What won’t?”

  “I could never understand someone who wasn’t passionate about their work.”

  “Am I passionate?”

  “Oh yes,” she said.  “I can testify to that.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

We walked together, and I suddenly felt that I was having a day off too.

  We passed the Oxmarket Museum.  It is housed in one of the most-important timber-framed Tudor public buildings in the country.  It dates back to the mid-16th century and originally contained six small shops on the ground floor and a spacious meeting hall on the first floor.  The building is situated on the site of the old marketplace.  There was a Market Cross, which had since been swept into the sea.

  When not in use as the Town’s council chamber, the hall offered an attractive display for the Museum?  The display contains items of local interest such as photographs and artefacts depicting life in Oxmarket, Anglo-Saxon finds and a ship burial excavation.

  The Harbour Café let in all the light whatever time of day it was. Extra windows had been built into the wall facing the water.

  There were more people than you’d usually get on a weekday morning, and I recognized some of them.  A couple of elderly ladies from Oxmarket Magna who’d taken a trip out in case there was anything to see.  They turned out for any reported accident or disaster.  A journalist from the Oxmarket Mercury.  It occurred to me that reporters from the national press would soon be converging on this quiet part of Suffolk.

  The owner, Marilyn Chambers, came out from the kitchen to take our order.  She had a light, almost dancing, way of walking that made me think of a racehorse just before it went into the stalls.  I nodded at the other customers.  “At least having an unexplained death in Oxmarket is good for business.

  Marilyn grinned.  “Yes.  I’ll not be sorry when the case is solved.  Are you helping the police?”

  “Yes, I am,” I replied.  “But that’s all I can say at the moment.  The investigation is still ongoing.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I asked for a latte for Kira and a black coffee for myself.  Because it had started to seem like a day off, I added a couple of slices of home-made Victoria Sponge to the order and Marilyn danced away.

  We’d almost finished when DI Silver made an entrance.  He stood at the doors and turned.  Everyone recognized him and there was a brief amount of silence before the conversation continued.  He didn’t find a table and wait for Marilyn to take his order, but walked towards the kitchen, leaned on the door frame and shouted in.

  “Double espresso.  Strong as you like.”  There were other people at the tables to order, but nobody seemed to mind him jumping the queue.  He then tilted his body from the door frame and sauntered towards us.

  “Hello, you two,” he said cheerfully.  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve got a day off,” Kira said quickly, “And John suggested that we had coffee together.”

  Thankfully, he hadn’t noticed how nervous she had become.  She hadn’t lied about us being there, but she hadn’t expanded on it either.

  “Fantastic view from here,” he said, obliviously.  “It always surprises me.  Do you mind if I join you?”

  “Of course,” I said and the detective inspector sat down.  Outside now there was strong sunshine.  A sailing boat was on the water halfway to the horizon.

  DI Silver leaned across the table.  “Found anything out then, John?”

  “Archie Andrews has been married twice.”

  “Yes, I just found out.”

  Marilyn carried across his coffee.  The Detective Inspector nodded his thanks, but continued to look at me, and waited till Marilyn had moved away before continuing the conversation.

  “How?”

  “I did the background check on Archie Andrews,” he responded, pulling his note pad out of his pocket for reference.  “His finances were a mess, to put it mildly.  He’s nearly maxed out on all his credit cards.  His personal and business overdrafts are at their limits.  He’s missed a couple of mortgage payments and reneged on a couple of divorce settlement payments to his ex-wives.”  He closed his note pad and said with a satisfied smile, “That’s how I know.”

  I allowed myself to be distracted a moment by the smell of the espresso.  If it tasted as good as it smelled, then I could be converted too.

  “I spoke to Reverend Harkett,” I explained.  “He carried out the wedding service.  Pauline Russell was her name.  Mrs Harmer said that she thought she saw her the other day.”

  “Did she?”  He exclaimed surprised.  “Do you think she was right?”

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged.  “She seemed pretty convinced.”

  “Do you think this ex had something to do with Archie’s death?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.  “But I intend to find out.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I’m going to pay a visit to Hogbin, Moruzzi and Marshall, who deal with all the local divorce cases, and then I thought I’d pay a visit to the offices of the Mercury.”

  “Why?”

  “To see if there are any wedding photos of Archie Andrews and Pauline Russell in their archives.”

  “Great idea,” he smiled.  I could tell by the intensity of the smile that he approved.

  “What you??”

  “I’ll go and see Mrs Harmer,” he said chirpily.  “Have a word with her.  Make it more official.”

  I nodded my approval in return.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  We walked out on to the open hill to the sound of skylark and curlew and into the raw sunlight.  It was nearly midday because the huge ball of the sun was directly above us.

   We soon arrived at the offices of Hogbin, Moruzzi and Marshall and waited in the small antiquated reception area to see one of the partners.

  Francesca Hogbin, was a cool fifty-something with a cutting tongue and a designer wardrobe, which seemed completely improper in Oxmarket.  Rumour had it that she took the train to London every month to visit her hairdresser.  I never believed local gossip, but I could almost believe the blonde hair was natural and the way it was cut took ten years off her age.  Her passion was sailing.  She’d come to Oxmarket on a yacht from Kent and fallen in love with the Suffolk coastline.  In an unguarded moment at the unveiling of the war memorial in the centre of the town, she’d told me that from the sea the Oxmarket coastline looked like paradise.  I’d wanted to ask what she thought it seemed like from the land, but by then she’d been swept away to meet more distinguished guests.  She lived alone in an old schoolhouse near the marina, and managed to keep her past and her present entirely private.  All that anyone knew about her was that she owned a catamaran, the biggest and most expensive sailing-vessel in Suffolk.

   She got up from her desk when we came into the room, and we sat in easy chairs across a small table.  A moment later her secretary brought in coffee.

  “I understand you are here to discuss an old divorce settlement.”  She poured the coffee and turned her flawless face to us.

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  “I know your methods can be a bit odd at a time, Mr. Handful, but why have you brought a home office pathologist with you?”

  I sensed Kira shift uncomfortably in her seat next to me.

  “We are both assisting the local police with the investigation of the death of Archie Andrews,” I said.  “And we are following a different line of enquiry to the local constabulary.”

  “I see,” she gave a frown, not of impatience exactly, more of surprise.  “You do realize I am bound by client confidentiality.”

  There was a moment of silence.  I could hear the tapping of a computer keyboard in an outer office.  A phone rang.

  “I know that you have a duty to keep your clients affairs confidential but these are exceptional circumstances, so I believe you may be able to override those obligations.”

  “Go on?”

  “I would like to discuss the divorce settlement between Archie Andrews and his first wife.”

  “Good grief,” she laughed.  “How strange!”

  “What is?” I quizzed.

  “You’re the second person in a few days to ask me about that.”

  “Really?”  I sat forward.  “And who was that?”

  “Pauline Russell,” she replied. “She wanted to know whether her ex-husband had changed his will.”

  Kira and I exchanged glances.

  “And had he?”

  “No,” she smiled, shaking her head.  “She is still the only beneficiary.”