Twenty-Two

  Church Piece was a cul-de-sac with a turning space at the end. Reversing the car was a tricky manoeuvre, but Sukey managed it without mishap and made her way back to the junction with the main road. The dim lamp burning behind the counter of the shop and the occasional glow from a curtained window were the only points of light along the way; once she was clear of the village, the darkness was complete. Disoriented by the driving rain that reduced visibility to a few yards, she crawled along in second gear with her headlights on full beam, peering through the flooded windscreen and mentally cursing the lack of road markings that made a potential hazard of every twist and turn in the narrow lane.

  A car approaching from the opposite direction forced her to pull over on to the verge. It swept past without slowing down, throwing up a shower of mud and spray and leaving her muttering insults under her breath as she watched its rear lights disappearing. She found herself shaking; there had been no real danger, but the violent outcome of the evening’s visit had affected her more than she realised. ‘Come on, girl, pull yourself together,’ she said aloud as she gritted her teeth, engaged first gear and let in the clutch, and then exclaimed, ‘Oh no!’ as madly spinning wheels told her that she was hopelessly stuck on the slippery, muddy grass. She was stranded, several miles from home in pitch darkness and a howling rainstorm.

  After several fruitless attempts to get the car back on the road, she gave up, cut the engine and reached for her mobile phone. At least she could rely on Jim to come to her rescue. She was halfway through tapping out his number when she realised that her call was not registering; the battery was flat. Now she really had a problem. There was no public telephone in the village – but the police would still be at Leonie’s cottage. They would certainly help her; the prospect of trekking all that way was daunting, but it seemed to be the only solution to her predicament. Then she had an inspiration. The offices of Dearley Manor Estates were only a short distance ahead. Ezra Hampton lived next door and would surely allow her to use his telephone to summon help. He might not be at home, of course, but it was worth a try. She took her torch from the glove compartment and struggled out of the car.

  The rain had slackened a little but she had to fight to close the door in the teeth of the wind that roared with the noise of an express train through the trees lining the road and seemed to buffet her from all directions as she set off. The farm buildings were further ahead than she expected, but at last she spotted the external security lights flickering through the flailing branches as if they were tossing up and down on a stormy sea. It was with a huge sense of relief that she saw Ezra’s Land Rover standing outside his house and lights in the downstairs windows. She crossed the road and made for the front gate; an extra strong gust of wind threw her off balance and she slipped on the wet path, grabbing the gatepost to avoid falling. At that moment, above the noise of the storm, she heard a wild, almost unearthly howl that made her shiver. Somewhere an animal, a deer perhaps, must have been attacked by a predator or caught in a trap. The cry was repeated; this time it was clearly human – and it came from inside the house.

  A man’s voice was raised in anger; plainly, he and a woman were engaged in a furious quarrel. She was screeching hysterically and he was shouting back at her, but the words were unintelligible. A dog’s frantic barking added to the din. Sukey stood transfixed by the gate, lashed by wind and rain, reluctant to abandon her quest for help yet uncertain whether to approach at such an inopportune moment. While she was debating what to do the front door flew open to reveal two struggling figures. As she had already assumed, the man was Ezra, but for the moment all she could see of the woman was her back. Now she could make out what they were saying. The woman was screaming, ‘You bastard, you treacherous bastard!’ while he held her by the shoulders and shook her, shouting at her to be quiet. Then, with a sudden effort, she wrenched herself free, staggered and lost her balance.

  Ezra uttered a hoarse, anguished cry of ‘Annie!’ as he made a desperate, futile attempt to prevent her from falling. Sukey dashed forward, but she had no chance of getting there in time. With another wild shriek the woman toppled down the short flight of steps, landed on her back on the stone path and lay still. The light from the doorway shone on the upturned face and closed eyes of the housekeeper from Dearley Manor, Mrs Little.

  Ezra fell to his knees beside her and grasped both her hands, calling in a grief-stricken, broken voice, ‘Annie, my love, forgive me, I didn’t mean it – oh my God, what shall I do?’ There was no response from the unconscious woman and he slid an arm beneath her shoulders as if about to lift her up.

  ‘Don’t try to move her!’

  At the sound of Sukey’s voice, Ezra started and turned round. He showed no surprise at her presence, nor any sign of recognition, only relief that he was not alone. ‘What shall I do?’ he repeated helplessly. ‘I can’t leave her lying here in the rain.’

  Seeing that he had for the moment gone to pieces, Sukey took charge. ‘We need an ambulance – where’s your phone?’

  ‘In the hall.’ He nodded vaguely towards the house.

  She started up the steps, then stopped abruptly as she came face to face with the black-and-white border collie. It had ceased barking, but its bared teeth and menacing growl told her it had no intention of letting her pass. ‘Will you call your dog off, please?’ she shouted back to Ezra, but there was no response. He was still crouched over Annie Little as if trying to protect her from the rain with his own body, sobbing ‘Forgive me!’ over and over again. Precious seconds ticked past before Sukey managed to get him to call the dog to his side.

  When she came out to report that the ambulance was on its way he merely nodded without looking at her. ‘Where can I find something to put over her?’ she asked. ‘We should keep her as warm and dry as possible until the paramedics get here.’

  ‘There’s a rug on the couch in the front room,’ he said, still without turning his head.

  ‘Can I get you a coat? You’re getting soaked yourself.’

  ‘Never mind me.’

  She returned to the house, found the rug and was about to take it outside when something white protruding from beneath the cushions on the couch caught her eye. She moved one of them aside and stared down, petrified with horror at the sight of a folded heap of white plastic smeared with fresh, wet blood. For a moment, her brain ceased to function; then the truth dawned on her with a suddenness that was like a physical blow. Her wild, intuitive guess that DCI Lord had turned aside so lightly had been right: what Leonie had been struggling to tell PC Riley was that Annie Little, not Dear little Paul, had stabbed her and the reason could only be that the housekeeper was desperate to prevent her revealing whatever it was that she had discovered in Myrna’s office. Sukey’s hunch about the ‘faulty’ overall that was supposed to have been returned to the supplier – the hunch that she had completely overlooked in her own urgent need of assistance – had been right as well. Annie Little had been wearing it to protect her clothing from bloodstains as she carried out the savage attack on Myrna Maxford. That would account for the fact that the blood had been confined to the bedroom; the murderess must have stayed by the bedside of her victim while she removed it before fleeing the house. She had been seen by Pussy Willow who mistook her for a ghost – ‘a silent figure, bearing a shroud’ – as she made her way home. And there was always a chance that, under careful questioning, Pussy might have recalled sufficient detail to enable the ‘ghost’ to be identified as Annie, so she had to be silenced. Was it Annie who had subsequently beaten the widow to death with a chopper – or was it Ezra Hampton? He was Annie’s lover and he had to be in it too, because she had come straight to him after attacking Leonie… and Sukey was at that moment alone in Ezra’s house with the man himself only a few feet away…

  ‘Couldn’t you find it?’ She swung round to find herself confronting him. Her mind flashed back to her first impression of him as he stood beside the smouldering remains of the barn fire: sturdy, straight-backed and ruddy-complexioned, a man in authority, now almost unrecognisable in the stricken individual with sagging shoulders and ravaged features standing before her. His eyes slewed from her face to the tell-tale overall and back again; he took a step towards her and she edged away, bracing herself for a murderous attack. The attack never came. Instead, he snatched the rug from her grasp and rushed from the room like a man possessed by a demon. It took her a second or two to register the fact that his sole concern at the moment was for the injured woman.

  Then she dashed after him, slammed and bolted the front door behind him and grabbed the telephone.

  When she had made her calls, she went back to the front room and peered through the curtains. Annie Little was still lying unconscious on the ground, covered with the rug. Ezra Hampton, with his dog shivering and whining at his side, was kneeling on the ground in the rain, chafing her hands and weeping as he waited for the ambulance to arrive.

  Twenty-Three

  The ambulance arrived within ten minutes, but to Sukey, peering fearfully through the window of Ezra’s front room, the wait seemed never-ending. When at last it came and Annie Little had been lifted onto a stretcher and placed inside, a short altercation followed. Ezra had scrambled in after her, followed by the dog; an attempt on the part of one of the attendants to eject the animal resulted in a show of teeth and threatening snarls which eventually led to the pair of them being ordered out. As the ambulance sped away leaving them standing in the rain, Sukey had a moment of panic at the thought that Ezra might try to re-enter his house with the intention of silencing her and destroying the damning evidence of the bloodstained overall. Her heart was racing as she checked the bolts on the front door before dashing from room to room until she found the kitchen and made sure the back door was secure as well. At the sound of an engine starting up she flew to the front window in time to see the Land Rover heading for the gate. Her relief as it turned into the lane and disappeared almost reduced her to tears and when, a few minutes later, DCI Lord’s car appeared on to the drive, she was shaking so violently that it was all she could do to open the door.

  ‘Where are they?’ he demanded.

  ‘The ambulance… took Mrs Little,’ she gasped. ‘Ezra… Mr Hampton… tried to go with her… they wouldn’t let him… because of the dog… so he went off in his Land Rover—’

  ‘Which way did he go?’

  ‘Towards Cirencester.’ She took a deep breath in an effort to steady her voice. ‘He must be following her to the hospital. He was half frantic – all he cared about was being with her, even after he saw what I’d found.’

  ‘Yes, you said you’d found evidence. Where is it?’

  ‘In there.’ She pointed to the open door and a wave of nausea hit her. ‘Excuse me!’ she muttered and rushed back to the kitchen. As she leaned over the sink, heaving and retching, she was vaguely aware of another car arriving, an engine being cut, a door slamming. She rinsed out her mouth, washed her face and hands and dried them on some sheets torn from a roll of kitchen paper. Returning to the hall, she found herself face to face with Jim Castle. At the sight of him, her self-control shattered and she clung to him, trembling.

  ‘Oh, Jim, thank God you’re here! I’ve been so frightened.’ Her voice cracked and he held her close, stroking her head until she could speak again. ‘I thought he was going to kill me—’

  She felt his body stiffen and he held her away from him, bending his head to look at her face. ‘Kill you – who? What’s been going on, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Ezra Hampton.’

  ‘I don’t understand – you said your car was stuck and would I come and get you out. I thought you sounded strange but you rang off—’

  ‘I didn’t have time to explain everything… I had to reach DCI Lord and tell him –’

  ‘Tell him what?’

  ‘That it looks as if Annie Little and Ezra Hampton between them are responsible for the murders of Myrna Maxford and Emily Willow and the attempted murder of Leonie Filbury,’ said Lord, emerging from the room where Sukey had discovered the tell-tale overall. ‘Mind you, it didn’t come across quite so coherently as that when she called me. OK now, Sukey? Yes, I’m sure you are,’ he added, with a sly glance at Jim, who still had a protective arm round her shoulders.

  ‘Annie Little? The housekeeper?’ Jim looked from one to the other in bafflement. ‘But why – where’s the motive, and where does Hampton come in?’

  ‘That’s what we don’t know yet,’ said Lord.

  ‘And why the attack on Leonie?’

  ‘We don’t know that either, but it’s likely she knows something they don’t want her to talk about.’

  ‘Is she going to be all right?’

  ‘We haven’t heard. Radcliffe went with her to the hospital—’

  Sukey put a hand to her mouth. ‘Annie’s been taken there too… and if Ezra was following the ambulance-—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Ezra and Annie… if Leonie’s still alive—’

  ‘Quick thinking!’ Lord gave a nod of approval. ‘I’ll get on to Radcliffe and put him in the picture.’ He went back into the sitting room and they heard him talking on his radio. When he returned he said, ‘Right, as soon as reinforcements arrive here I’ll get over to the hospital and make an arrest or two. Jim, you take Sukey home – she looks all in.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, but there’s the matter of her car. It’s stuck in the mud somewhere along the lane. That’s why I’m here – I’ve brought a tow-rope to pull her out.’

  ‘Some of the lads will see to that. She’s in no fit state to drive. Just get her home and give her some strong coffee – or whatever other restorative you think will help.’ His lips twitched beneath the bushy moustache.

  ‘I told you Mr Hampton fancied Mrs Little, didn’t I?’ said Fergus smugly as he carried a tray of coffee into the sitting room where his mother sat on the couch with Jim beside her, his arm round her shoulders. Anita, Fergus’s seventeen-year-old girlfriend, followed with a tin of biscuits which she shyly offered while he handed round mugs of coffee. ‘I suppose Myrna found out they were planning to get married or something and decided to put a stop to it—’

  ‘How could she stop them?’ Anita interrupted. ‘I mean, if people are in love?’ The look she gave Fergus made it clear that she believed it was not only faith that could move mountains. He gave her a fond smile, settled in an armchair and drew her onto his lap. She was a rosy-cheeked girl with cornflower-blue eyes and smooth straight hair that glistened like honey under the lamplight. For a moment, emotion took Sukey by the throat at the sight of young love in all its freshness and optimism. She felt Jim’s encircling arm tighten for a second and knew that he understood.

  ‘I reckon one of them had a guilty secret that Myrna knew about,’ said Sukey. ‘And Leonie somehow found out, and that’s what she was going to tell me and—’ she broke off, her brow furrowed as she spotted the flaw in her line of reasoning. ‘How could Annie and Ezra have known? She was hardly likely to tell them.’

  ‘Mum, maybe Ezra did overhear Leonie inviting you to her house and got the wind up?’ suggested Fergus.

  ‘Not while I was there, he didn’t,’ Sukey declared. ‘Of course, she might have mentioned it after I’d left, but… no, it doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘You said something on the way back from Ezra’s place about how she might have got into Myrna’s private computer,’ said Jim. ‘But when I asked you what gave you that idea, you changed the subject.’ He put down his empty mug and with his free hand turned her face towards him. ‘I think there’s something you haven’t told me – what exactly have you been up to?’

  ‘Nothing really… I mean, when we went over to Dearley to fetch the stuff Gus left behind—’

  ‘Oh, come on, Mum, you might as well come clean!’ Fergus broke in.

  ‘So, you’re in the conspiracy as well!’ Jim’s voice was stern but Sukey, giving him a sidelong glance, caught him suppressing a smile.

  Fergus, completely unfazed, told of his abortive effort to hack into Myrna’s computer, of the compromising call from Doug Brown of Glevum Investigations and Leonie’s arrival and subsequent disillusionment. ‘She said she didn’t know how to get into Myrna’s computer, but I’ll bet she did, or managed to hit on the password. That’s it!’ His face grew pink with excitement as he developed his theory. ‘After we left, she must have gone and hacked into it and found some dirt about Ezra. I’ll bet he’s got a guilty secret and Myrna was blackmailing him, threatening to expose him if he married her housekeeper and took her away!’

  He looked round for approval and was rewarded by an adoring smile from Anita, but was brought back to earth by Jim, who said quietly, ‘If she found something compromising about Ezra, the office is the last place she’d have chosen to arrange to talk to your mother about it.’ The lad’s face fell, then brightened again as Jim went on, ‘But I think you may well be on the right track about the computer—’

  ‘Dear little Paul!’ Sukey exclaimed. ‘I was right!’

  ‘What?’ Jim gave her a sharp look and made to withdraw his arm, but she grabbed his hand and held it.

  ‘That’s what PC Riley said Leonie was mumbling when he found her and I could see that DCI Lord thought she was trying to tell him it was Paul who had attacked her. But “Dear little Paul” didn’t make sense to me – she hated him because she believed he’d killed Myrna. Then it occurred to me that “little” might refer to Mrs Little, who lives in one of the cottages in the main village street. PC Riley confirmed that their gardens back on to the footpath between them and the ones in Church Piece—’

  ‘—so it would be easy for Mrs L to nip across in the dark, kill Leonie and dodge back again,’ Fergus interrupted triumphantly. ‘Mum, that was brilliant!’

 

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