A Fatal Affair Page 6

  ‘In my experience,’ Clement slipped in as Trudy paused to take a much needed breath, ‘young lovers killing themselves from broken hearts are more likely to be found in poetry, fiction or bad cinema films than in real life.’

  Trudy couldn’t help but smile wryly. ‘That’s a rather cynical way to look at it.’

  Clement shrugged. ‘I’ve knocked around the world a lot longer than you have,’ he said, giving her a narrow smile. ‘But carry on; my apologies for interrupting you.’

  Trudy shook her head. ‘I don’t mind when you interrupt.’ And indeed, she didn’t. Unlike when DI Jennings or the Sarge interrupted her at work, Dr Ryder usually had something useful or encouraging to say. Which was not always the case with her superior officers! ‘Anyway, er, where was I …? Yes, if David didn’t kill Iris, and didn’t kill himself either, then the only thing we’re left with is that somebody else killed them both, obviously. And presumably they’d only kill David because he had, like his father said, been asking around and doing some private investigating of his own, and had found out something that alarmed Iris’s killer.’

  ‘Thus making it necessary to get rid of David too,’ Clement nodded.

  ‘So no matter how we look at it, Iris Carmody’s death is going to prove a major factor in our considerations. But DI Jennings will have my guts for garters if I trespass onto his territory,’ she wailed.

  ‘Well – we can only do our best,’ Clement said briskly. Clearly he thought nothing of crossing swords with Harry Jennings. But then, Jennings had no power over him, so he could afford to be cavalier, Trudy thought a shade resentfully.

  Seemingly catching her mood, Clement suddenly grinned at her. ‘Cheer up – and don’t forget – it’s possible that we might find something to help Jennings solve his own murder investigation, in which case, he’ll be all smiles and will forgive all.’

  Trudy blinked, trying to imagine a cheerful Inspector Jennings. She shuddered slightly then sighed. ‘Well, I suppose the best place to start is at the beginning,’ she offered prosaically. ‘And that has to be with the scene of the crime, and the barn on Mr Dewberry’s farm. Have you been there yet?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘No,’ Clement admitted. Before being asked to take a closer in-depth look at things, it hadn’t really been necessary for him to inspect it in person. ‘But from the reports I read, it’s about a quarter of mile from the farmhouse itself, out of sight and up a hill, in the middle of his wheat fields. Used to house equipment and store some over-spill grain after the harvest, and some straw for winter fodder.’

  ‘At least the weather’s nice and dry,’ Trudy said, glancing out of the window to make sure a sudden shower wasn’t in the offing. ‘So we won’t need wellingtons.’

  ‘In any other circumstances, it’d be a nice day for a walk,’ Clement agreed.

  Chapter 7

  Because the coroner had begun giving Trudy driving lessons, he drove his ‘Aunty Rover’ out of the town, and then pulled over on a country lane so that they could swap seats. This meant that she could continue the seven miles or so to the village of Middle Fenton without too much difficulty or danger to other traffic whilst she was still such a novice. She was doing well, he noted with pride – very rarely now scraping the gears, and only stalling once, at a deserted country crossroads.

  She carefully parked his Rover P4 in a shady part of the Dewberry farm’s cobbled forecourt, which was deserted. Not even a sheepdog barked a warning, and Clement supposed that both of the Dewberrys, father and son, were out working the land.

  The farmhouse was typical of the vernacular, made of local stone, a sturdy, no-nonsense square building with a vast slate roof. It had probably stood in this spot for nearly two hundred years or so.

  ‘At some point we need to have a long talk with Ronnie Dewberry,’ Trudy said as she climbed out of the car and carefully locked it, before handing the keys back to her colleague. ‘They grew up together and they were best friends all through primary and the local grammar school. And David either chose to come here to die or his killer decided it was a safe spot to kill him. Not that that’s necessarily significant – all the locals know about the barn, and anybody out taking a country walk could have stumbled on it too. But if anybody knew what was going on in David’s head, it’s probably his best friend.’

  Clement nodded, although he didn’t feel quite so confident as his companion. He knew that the boy’s close friendship of childhood probably wouldn’t have lasted long into adulthood even had they both survived, especially with David Finch attending university in London, and Ronnie settling into life at the farm. All too soon, they’d have lost touch, with David increasingly staying away from the village as he made his life and home elsewhere. Childhood friendships could be intense, but they rarely stayed that way into adulthood. In fact, he wouldn’t have been surprised if that process hadn’t already started. ‘Remind me again what the dead boy was hoping to do for a career?’

  ‘Civil engineering,’ Trudy said promptly.

  Yes, Clement now remembered reading that in the notes. Once, he wouldn’t have had to ask Trudy for the reminder. Since he’d confirmed his self-diagnosed illness, he’d taken to doing mental exercises every day, to both stimulate his brain activity, and to monitor any rates of serious decline in his mental faculties. So far, the progression of his illness was very slow, leaving him more and more confident that he might have a few good years left, if he was lucky. And if he could keep his condition a secret for that long.

  ‘The barn’s presumably that way?’ Trudy said, yanking him back from the precipice of his darkening thoughts and pointing to a grass-and-stone track that led up the hill away to the left. Years of tractor usage had sunk the track several inches into the ground, leaving ruts that made it look a bit tricky to walk on.

  Clement shrugged and set off after her – but not before casually retrieving a walking stick from the boot of his car. It was a knotted length of hazel that he’d cut out of a hedgerow himself and whittled into shape a few weeks ago. It now looked suitably rustic and offhand. Not at all the sort of hospital-produced, medical affair that would suggest he had any difficulty walking.

  Not that he did, as such. Well, not so that you’d notice, but he had become aware lately that he was getting into the habit of dragging his feet without realising it, and if he wasn’t careful, that might one day lead him taking the odd tumble.

  He glanced around at the greening barley fields with their silvery-looking feathered ears, and took a large lungful of fresh air. Above, a skylark, startled by their presence, rocketed up into the sky, singing perpetually as he rose into the clouds – a challenge that was promptly answered by a rival in the next field.

  Some corn buntings, sitting at the very tops of the tallest bushes in the hedgerows – usually elders – also watched their passage with a nervous twittering. Lining the hedgerows, cow parsley frothed creamy white, a magnet for orange-tip butterflies, and Clement looked around with real pleasure. There was nothing quite like England in the springtime!

  The gradient of the hill was one of those deceptive ones, so gradual it didn’t pull on the knees, but so long that it gave you a surprise when you reached the top, and you looked down from quite a high panorama. Unfortunately, the hill was the wrong side of the fields to overlook the village, which meant the police had probably had zero luck by way of locating any potential witnesses. If anybody from the village had seen the lad set out on his last journey, none of them would have been able to track his progress here.

  As he looked around he couldn’t see a single point of habitation – only rolling arable fields, hedgerows, the shimmering line of the river in the distance, and some pigs in a field so far away they looked like tiny pink cushions.

  Off to their right, however, stood the stark, black iron and wooden carcass of the barn. It sported a large set of wooden doors that had been made out of what appeared to be spare bits of timber, nailed together with more gusto than accuracy. The whole edifice had a de
serted, forlorn air, as if it felt ashamed of what had happened inside its dim interior.

  Of course, the police had cordoned it off once the body had been discovered, rendering it unusable anyway. Now the sight of it, looking almost accusing and lonely, made Trudy feel suddenly depressed. Although she didn’t believe in the supernatural, exactly, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine that the ghost of David Finch was standing right there, unseen beside them, wondering at these two disparate people who had been tasked with uncovering the mystery of his death.

  Would he feel confident, Trudy wondered sadly, or would he be scornful?

  She shrugged off such silly fantasies, and glanced around at the empty fields instead. ‘No wonder nobody saw anything,’ Trudy said glumly, unknowingly echoing her companion’s previous thoughts. ‘Unless somebody was walking their dog here or something, who would have seen David coming up here?’

  Clement nodded agreement. ‘The remoteness begs an obvious question though, doesn’t it? If he didn’t come here specifically to kill himself, why did he come here?’

  ‘To think?’ Trudy proffered tentatively. ‘Or to get some peace and quiet maybe? He and Ronnie would have played here as kids. Maybe he was seeking out somewhere where he’d once felt safe and happy. He must have known everyone in the village was wondering if he was a killer or not. That can’t have been easy for him.’

  ‘Possibly. Or maybe he arranged to meet someone here?’ Clement said, far more prosaically.

  Trudy, in spite of the May sunshine, felt herself shiver with cold. ‘His killer, you mean?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Clement said, as always willing to play devil’s advocate. ‘He could have arranged to meet someone, but then they left, and someone else showed up. Somebody who was, maybe, keeping an eye on him, followed him at a distance, and then took the opportunity of the loneliness here to get rid of him.’

  Trudy thought about that for a moment or two, then wrinkled her nose. ‘A bit far-fetched, isn’t it?’

  Clement smiled. ‘Yes. But you shouldn’t shut off any avenue completely, no matter how far-fetched. Best to just keep it in mind, rather than get fixated on any one idea. Thinking you know what happened, when you really don’t, can get you into all sorts of trouble. As of right now, for instance, it seems to me more likely than not that the boy was murdered. But if I become too convinced of that, I might miss clues or dismiss witness testimonies that point towards suicide simply because I’ve become biased without realising it.’

  ‘OK, I’ll remember that,’ Trudy promised – and meant it. Working with Dr Ryder meant she was learning more than she ever had, even during her police training. ‘Well, we’d better go inside then,’ she added, a shade reluctantly. Although she was delighted to be working with her mentor again, and taking a break from taking burglary reports and passing lists of stolen goods around the pawn shops, she had to admit to feeling unhappy about the barn.

  It was so quiet here. Even the skylarks had stopped singing now.

  Clement, perhaps sensing her unease, hid a smile and brandished his raffish hazel stick. ‘After you!’

  Trudy set off determinedly to the barn doors, which were standing slightly ajar. She thought the officer who’d cordoned off the area probably hadn’t been able to keep the doors shut. They looked warped and uncooperative. As she approached them, she glanced at the dried-mud entrance, and saw the arches cut into the ground. ‘The barn was regularly in use,’ she nodded at the tell-tale scrapings in the earth. ‘You can see where the doors opening and shutting cut a mark into the mud.’

  ‘It’s a working farm and a working barn,’ Clement agreed. ‘Doesn’t really help us much, does it?’

  Trudy, running out of even the tiniest excuse to put off the inevitable, walked forward. Pulling one large door a little further open, she made enough room for them both to be able to slip inside, and took her first, long look at where David Finch had died.

  The first thing that struck her was the musty scent and the delightful dancing motion of the dust-motes lingering in the air. Here, dried straw and the more sweet-smelling scent of dried hay competed with an even heavier musk. She knew the farm was a mixture of arable and animal, and she wondered if, at some point, potatoes had been stored here.

  Right now, the back half of the barn was piled with the remnants of straw bales. A couple of threshing machines had been deposited along one long corrugated iron wall. Bags of what she presumed were fertiliser or weed killer were stacked like colourful large bricks just inside the entrance. Running along under the arched roofline were a series of rough-hewn wooden rafters. The main one, running more or less centrally, still had a length of rope left dangling from it.

  ‘After they cut him loose, they left most of the rope in situ I see,’ Clement said, going to stand under it and peering up. ‘From the police report I read, there was a lot of old rope lying around, and they’re pretty sure he – or someone – simply helped themselves to it. It wasn’t new or bought specifically for the purpose or anything like that.’

  So that was one possible lead up the spout, Trudy thought wryly. After one quick look at the ominously dangling rope, she turned around to explore further. There were odd-looking implements leaning drunkenly here and there, probably now defunct hay-rakes, or seed drills and the like. Not that she was an expert on antiquated farm implements. There was also, surprisingly, a large tin bathtub with a hole in the bottom, and some pots and pans with burnt-out bottoms. Clearly, the Dewberrys didn’t believe in disposing of anything metal. Perhaps they intended to sell them to the rag-and-bone man one day?

  A tallish, wooden stepladder, the only one in the barn that she could see, caught her eye, and she walked towards it, gamely ignoring the way her heartbeat started to pick up.

  It still bore the telltale dark smudges of fingerprint dust, where someone had tested it at the time, but she could tell at a glance that the wood was too rough and splintered to have been of any use. No fingerprints would have been available to confirm – or otherwise – that the dead boy had handled it.

  But presumably he had, for this was the ladder that David Finch had climbed, with a length of rope fashioned into a noose, just before his death. What on earth had been going through his mind when he’d found the ladder and opened it out into its triangular structure and placed it so carefully beneath the beam? Surely he must have wondered about the afterlife – if God would forgive him for what he was about to do?

  She paused, wondering why she was suddenly taking it for granted that David had killed himself.

  Perhaps …

  Although it was dim inside the barn, with most of the sunlight filtering in through the ill-fitting gaps in the wood and from the partly open door, Trudy’s keen eyesight had her quickly bending down in front of the ladder, checking the fourth rung from the bottom. Her heartbeat was now kicking into overdrive, but due to excitement now, rather than trepidation.

  Yes, she was right! She’d thought she recognised the telltale signs!

  ‘Dr Clement quickly!’ she called over her shoulder excitedly. ‘Come and look at this! Is that what I think it is?’

  ‘Woodworm,’ Clement said, some moments later. ‘Definitely woodworm.’ They were both looking at the tiny pinprick holes that peppered the wooden frame. He’d taken the ladder to the doorway, to better see what he was looking at, but he had no doubt.

  ‘But it’s especially bad just here … see, it’s all along this rung.’ She reached out tentatively to touch it, and gave it some gentle pressure. ‘It feels spongy! Dr, do you think this would have taken David’s weight?’

  Clement eyed the rung thoughtfully. ‘I’m not sure,’ he admitted. ‘Some tests will need to be made.’

  ‘I’d better let DI Jennings know right away. He can send someone to collect it,’ she said. She only hoped he’d send PC Rodney Broadstairs to do it. Rodney liked to lord it over her. Big, blond and good-looking, he thought he was the station’s golden boy. And annoyingly, he probably was. Certainly the Sarge and th
e Inspector gave him far more interesting work than ever came her way. She wouldn’t be human if she didn’t resent him a bit, and it would serve him right to be used as nothing more than an errand boy for once!

  ‘If they find out it is too rotten to have taken David’s weight, Superintendent Finch will be pleased,’ Clement agreed. ‘It would make it less likely that his son killed himself.’

  ‘Unless he used something else to climb up,’ Trudy said. ‘Although there doesn’t seem to be anything else he could have used,’ she immediately contradicted herself.

  Clement, who’d seen the crime scene photographs, agreed. Although there had been bales aplenty with which the dead boy could have made a stack, none of them had been found anywhere near the hanging body. Only the overturned ladder.

  ‘If he didn’t use the ladder … if nobody used the ladder,’ Trudy said slowly, looking from the ladder to the rope hanging from the rafters, ‘then that must mean …’

  ‘Somebody probably put the rope around his neck and hauled him up. Then tied the other end off around the base of the plough after he was dead.’

  Trudy shuddered. ‘So it would have to be someone strong? To take his dead weight, I mean?’

  Clement frowned thoughtfully. ‘Not necessarily. If someone did it that way, they could use all their own weight to haul him up. A fit and strong woman – or a heavy woman – could have done it, I think.’

  Chapter 8

  They left the scene of David Finch’s demise in a quiet, sombre mood. Back at the farmhouse there was now some sign of movement, but only courtesy of a few red hens, who were scratching about near an outhouse and clucking desultorily.

  Trudy knocked on the door, but as she suspected, the sound only echoed eerily inside, and nobody answered the summons.

  She turned and shrugged at Clement, who was standing by the car, and as she watched, he slipped behind the wheel. Climbing into the passenger seat beside him, she said, ‘Into the village?’