Dead Weight (Three Oaks Book 11) Read online

  His mood took a tumble when I led him into the sitting room and described the recent visit, quoting the dialogue as accurately as I could. ‘There’s no doubt that they were talking about Mrs Horner’s death?’ he asked me.

  ‘None at all. They’d been asking him about dog shit in the gateway.’

  Instead of rushing out and galloping to the rescue, Bruce collapsed into a chair. ‘Well, here’s a pretty pass,’ he said.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Alistair Branch has been a client of the firm for years. In fact, it was he who suggested that I buy Broomview. And I’m Mrs Horner’s executor. As executor, can I act for someone who may be suspected of having a hand in her death?’ The question was rhetorical so I held my tongue. ‘It hasn’t come to that yet,’ he continued. ‘I’d better go and see what it’s all about. I’ll see you when I see you.’

  ‘That seems probable,’ I said.

  He went out to his car. I dragged myself back upstairs. Beth was lying on her back, one arm across her eyes but the rest of her deliciousness exposed. I kissed her on the navel. ‘Don’t say that you’re ready again?’ she said sleepily. ‘I’m flattered.’

  ‘The spirit would be willing,’ I said. ‘The flesh, unfortunately, is not. Listen, Bruce has rushed off to give aid and comfort to Alistair.’

  ‘So we still have the place to ourselves?’

  ‘We also have the dogs’ meal to ourselves.’

  Beth sat up suddenly and looked at the clock. ‘Yikes!’ she exclaimed. ‘And we’ll need something to eat as well.’

  ‘I could phone Daffy,’ I suggested.

  ‘Daffy’s busy. Let her be the last resort. Phone one of the juniors. I suggest – Francis.’

  ‘I thought you might,’ I said. It was Francis who had found the body.

  *

  Francis lived two doors beyond the pub and on the same side of the road. He answered the phone and said that he would be happy to come and help out. He sounded only too pleased to be rescued from Sabbath boredom. Sunday, he often said, was the sort of day that gave God a bad name.

  He arrived by bicycle so promptly that Beth had barely finished getting dressed. He was a tall, thin boy with fair hair and a nervous disposition but he had blue eyes, good teeth and no spots, so that I could well imagine girls showing interest in him. The ladies of the firm were inclined to mother him.

  We had no very young pups at the time, the youngest dogs being old enough to get by on two meals a day. Even so, catering for the multitude, on diets varying in quantity and content, was a complex and laborious procedure. As the business had grown we had learned to streamline our techniques, but nothing could reduce the volume which had to be measured out and transported. Our plans for a food store and servery central for the kennels had disappeared into the offices of the Planning Authority and vanished, apparently for ever.

  When the last dish was emptied and the last water bowl filled, I went to feed and reassure Mrs Horner’s cat. She was a handsome beast, a ginger – unusual for a female. She woke up for long enough to empty the dish, squatted and scratched for a few seconds. I parted the fur behind her ear until I spotted a small group of fleas. She seemed to appreciate a little human companionship but soon tired and went back to sleep again.

  Francis was in the scullery, washing the stainless steel dishes and conversing with Beth through the open door. ‘Francis’s parents are in Perth today,’ Beth told me. ‘He was going to have to make his own meal. His mother left him some cooking instructions which he can’t even understand. Really,’ Beth said irritably but with a wink to me, ‘it’s time that boys were given lessons in domestic economy or whatever they call it these days. I’ve told him that he can stay and eat with us – Bruce phoned and he’s having dinner with Alistair and Betty, so we have enough to go round.’

  I said that that was fine. I thought Beth would have found some other excuse to retain Francis for a little ladylike brain-picking on the subject of Mrs Horner had his parents not been so obligingly elsewhere.

  I fetched a sherry for Beth and a Guinness for myself. Francis accepted a shandy – my usual offering for the under-age drinker. We took our seats at the kitchen table while we waited for the potatoes. The meal was otherwise cold.

  ‘You’ll be getting your name in the papers,’ Beth said. I had to admire the obliquity of the approach. An immediate demand for information can raise the hackles or tie the tongue.

  ‘The reporters have been after me already,’ Francis said, not without a modicum of quiet pride. ‘I told them as little as possible.’

  ‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I like Mr Branch.’

  My eye met Beth’s. ‘I don’t quite follow,’ she said. ‘How does it affect Mr Branch?’

  ‘Tell us the whole story,’ I suggested. ‘We’ve only heard bits of it and we may be getting it a bit garbled.’

  Francis brightened. I thought he might be glad to have found some sympathetic ears. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’d been for a walk out by Old Ford Road and I was heading for home again.’ Francis paused and looked bashful, wondering whether we knew that the current object of his devotion lived in Old Ford Road. He hurried on. ‘I usually used to scoot past Mrs Horner’s house, because you only had to sneeze and she’d be out having a go at you for spreading germs, just about, but this time I heard her cat yowling so I stopped and took a couple of steps in through the gate, ready to run if she appeared.

  ‘There’s a bushy sort of evergreen opposite her gate, beside the garage. It hides the greenhouse and most of the garden, but as soon as I stepped inside I could see a pair of feet. They were sticking out, about a metre off the ground, not moving, and it looked kind of . . .’

  ‘Unnatural?’ I suggested.

  Francis thought about it and shook his head. ‘More than that. Impossible. I mean, it’s not the sort of thing that ever happens. So I took another couple of steps and had a better look and I could see that it looked like Mrs Horner’s bottom half and her top half was down in the water butt. The cat was walking round in circles and making a strange noise. There was a wooden box nearby and it looked as though she’d been reaching down into the water butt and slipped or got stuck. She didn’t seem to be moving at all but I thought that she might have given up the struggle for the moment, so I went closer.’

  Francis broke off. He was very white but I could see a thin film of sweat on his face which the warmth of the day did not explain. ‘I was sure that she was dead,’ he said in a hushed voice. ‘The water was almost up to the rim of the butt. I wanted to lift her, in case she wasn’t quite dead, but I was sure that she was and I had never touched a dead body, never even seen one. So I dashed home – it’s only a few yards – and told my dad. He phoned for an ambulance and then went to look for himself, but on the way he met the local policeman, Sergeant Something –’

  ‘Morrison,’ Beth said.

  ‘That’s right, Sergeant Morrison. He came with us and he more or less took over. And he came to take a statement later and he said that I’d done just the right thing. My dad said the same. But I can’t help wondering if she mightn’t have been saved if I’d pulled her out,’ Francis finished miserably, his voice breaking. He put his head in his hands.

  ‘Almost certainly not,’ I said, not caring about the facts but just trying to relieve his mind and give him a little time for recovery. ‘And if she’d already been dead for some time, the police would have been cursing you for disturbing the scene. They like the evidence left alone if the person’s dead or an immediate attempt at resuscitation if there’s any life left. How the untrained passer-by is supposed to know the difference, nobody has ever explained.’

  Francis dug out a rather grubby handkerchief and gave his face a wipe before straightening up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘May I use your bathroom?’

  ‘Carry on. You know where it is,’ I said.

  He was back in a couple of minutes, washed and looking better. I thought that the telling of the tale
again in less formal surroundings might have helped him. His parents had probably adopted the don’t-talk-about-it policy which is often very much the wrong one. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘You must think I’m soppy.’

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ Beth said stoutly. She got up and began to pour the water off the potatoes. ‘The idea of death is frightening enough, especially when you’re young and have everything to look forward to. You think that it will never come to you, so seeing it and having to face up to the fact that we’re mortal and will all end up that way some day is an awful shock. And there’s an atavistic instinct to be afraid that something dead will suddenly move. You know what atavistic means?’

  Francis nodded. I was relieved. I would not have liked to have to define it myself.

  ‘You say you had to make a statement?’ Beth asked. Francis nodded again. ‘What did you say in it?’

  ‘Pretty much what I’ve just told you.’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ Beth said. She managed to sound as though she was totally incurious and just kidding him along for his own sake. ‘There must have been more than that. What questions did they ask you?’ She seemed to speak absently while she prepared to serve the meal but I knew that she was absorbing every word.

  ‘Funny sort of questions, some of them, but they made me remember things. Like . . . I didn’t really take it in at the time but it came back to me later. While I was up close to her, I noticed something on her back. Well, sort of just above her bottom, where she was highest. There was some ash. I don’t mean like burned paper, I mean a neat little stick of ash like tobacco ash. It would have been rather big for a cigarette, probably a small cigar. It looked as if somebody had leaned over her while he was smoking and the ash had dropped onto her. When the sergeant took my statement he picked me up rather sharply about that, as if he wanted me to say I’d made it up, but I hadn’t. I think,’ Francis said sagely, ‘the trouble was that he’d moved the . . . the body and never noticed the ash and what I said made him look an idiot who’d disturbed the evidence without even seeing it. Later, when I heard what people were saying, I realized that I might have got Mr Branch into trouble because he’s the one who usually smokes those little cigars around here and I tried to withdraw my statement, but that inspector wouldn’t let me. He wanted me to say that I’d seen Mr Branch walking along the pavement with June earlier in the day, but I wouldn’t because I didn’t. And he asked me if I’d seen a dog plonk in Mrs Horner’s gateway, but by then I’d realized that Mr Branch was in trouble, or at least he could be made to look as if he was, because it’s all over the village that he had a row with Mrs Horner over a dog plonk in her gateway, and I could see what they were getting at, so I said that I hadn’t. But I had, really. It’s gone now,’ he added.

  ‘Yes, it would be,’ Beth said. ‘Don’t think about it any more. Would you like some chutney?’

  Francis shook his head. ‘I don’t think I’m very hungry after all,’ he said.

  *

  At Three Oaks, we are heavily outnumbered by dogs and so we live our lives by the timetable most suited to their nature, which means that we are usually very early to bed and early to rise. Bruce, like most lawyers, tended towards the other extreme. As a result, we did not see him on the Sunday night. We left a note and the makings of a milky drink for him on the kitchen table and went to bed.

  Next morning, some time after our day’s work had begun, he came down for his breakfast looking grim but determined. Beth had made it clear from the start that she had no intention of knocking off work to cook him breakfast at a time when her thoughts would soon be turning towards the preparation of lunch, but Beth and I were not above joining him for coffee in the kitchen while he consumed his cereal followed by the toast and marmalade which was the summit of his culinary ambition.

  When we told him that Detective Inspector Blosson seemed determined to incriminate Alistair by connecting the dog doo found on Mrs Horner’s premises with June, he took the news calmly. ‘Mr Branch found that out for himself the hard way,’ he said. ‘That eternally damned Detective Inspector said that he’s sending the dog plonk and a small cigar butt that they found in the garden for DNA testing and he asked Mr Branch what he thought of that. There’s no answer to that sort of question, of course. And then he asked whether Mr Branch had any objection to samples being taken from himself and his spaniel bitch for comparison. He could hardly say anything but yes.’

  ‘Then what’s the problem?’ Beth asked.

  ‘The problem is that DNA results can be indeterminate. Or they can be tampered with. And, anyway, it came out recently that it’s just possible for two people to show identical DNA profiles. Dammit, I must find out whether it’s permissible for me to act for him. With a modicum of luck, one of the other partners will have to take over. Meanwhile, it might be helpful if we knew what questions the police have been asking and, more importantly, what answers they’ve been given.’ He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Well, don’t look at us,’ I said. ‘We’re not PIs.’

  His eyebrows rose even further, giving his face a still more comical look. ‘I’m not looking at you as possible investigators,’ he said. ‘If you went around in this extraordinary gossip-factory of a village asking serious questions, the police would hear about it before the day was over. But you have several youngsters working for you as casual labour – quite contrary to the Children and Young Persons Act – and boys and girls are expected to go around asking irritating questions and nagging until they get the answers, and especially on matters that they’re not supposed to know anything about. Tell them to find out who told the police what. They’ll throw themselves into it, you’ll see. With a bit of luck we may be able to head the investigation away from foul play and in the direction of accident.’

  ‘Isn’t it a bit premature for that sort of knee-jerk reaction?’ I asked. ‘Alistair isn’t accused of anything yet.’

  ‘It’s never too early,’ Bruce retorted. ‘Memories fade – or become confused – particularly if somebody sets out to confuse them. The earlier we get the picture firmed in people’s minds, the better.’

  ‘You may be firming a picture that you won’t like very much,’ I pointed out.

  Bruce paused and thought about that while he finished his coffee. ‘I may not like the picture if it’s of a policeman trying to put ideas into the minds of witnesses,’ he said. ‘But I very much want to know about it.’

  He drove off towards Dundee in sombre mood, leaving us to speak to our young helpers, who had been enjoying biscuits and milk or Coke in the barn. Sam had been joined by all the other four of our regular helpers – Dennis, Steven, Audrey and Francis.

  It seemed to be up to me to set the ball rolling, little though I wanted to become any more deeply involved. I gathered the juniors together on the lawn and brought Daffy and Hannah into the discussion, just in case. I explained to the youngsters that something had happened to Mrs Horner. This did not seem to cause any surprise and I guessed that at least some of the children’s families had been commendably frank on the subject and that death had become a mere facet of life and lost its power to horrify. Mr Branch, I said, was being harassed on the assumption that he had done something to Mrs Horner. We only wanted the truth, I explained – the real truth and not what somebody wanted to be the truth. I stretched our remit from Bruce by adding that we would like to know where everybody was during Saturday morning, whether anybody had behaved in the least unusually or out of character and which of the locals had had a recent and serious quarrel with Mrs Horner. ‘And for Pete’s sake,’ I added, ‘don’t stir up any hornets’ nests with questions. Be discreet. Be casual. Or just listen.’

  It was a happy chance that each of them lived within a stone’s throw of Mrs Horner’s house (not that, in our small village, anyone could live much further away). Alistair Branch was popular, handing out sweets or coins with a liberal hand and so, quite apart from the children’s natural desire to indulge their curiosities and make bloody nuisances o
f themselves, they were immediately enthusiastic about the prospect of helping his cause.

  Sam, the youngest, was to be allowed only a limited role. (I had in the past been inveigled into helping with the investigation of crimes and, because criminals prefer their misdeeds to go undetected, my life had more than once been endangered as a consequence. I had no intention of the same thing befalling Sam.) The others would have rushed off to begin enquiries forthwith, loss of earnings notwithstanding, but I insisted on the bulk of the day’s work being finished first.

  Hannah volunteered to make one further enquiry at the shop.

  We could have treated ourselves to a quiet day until feeding time came around again. Daffy and Hannah could cope with the routine. Beth attacked the garden. Isobel was at the kitchen table, updating her paperwork and struggling with the field trials entry form for You. (The nickname You was short for Eucalyptus but, despite causing endless muddles with a now retired stud-dog named Yew and worse confusion in the field – a cry of ‘Come here, You’ might be answered by a whole pack of dogs – it had stuck.) You’s registration papers had not yet come back from the Kennel Club, but he was one of our next hopes for Field Trial Champion.

  I had planned to take him into the wood for some extra polishing but just as I was gathering up my training aids I was forestalled by the first of a series of interruptions. A young couple had come in search of a pup old enough to begin training. The man was half sold on one of our young dogs but his wife fell in love with it for all the wrong reasons and they left with the pup, a lead, collar, whistle, basket and all the toys and training aids I had ever managed to stock.

  Feeling slightly richer, I was hoping to set off again. But another visitor had arrived in the meantime and was waiting patiently in the background. Not a purchasing client this time, I thought. I recognized the man who had come into the pub on the Friday evening – Roland Bovis as I now knew him to be. He was of average height but inclined to plumpness except for slightly sunken eyes. Beneath a mop of curly, black hair, his face was jolly and even in repose had the expression of a small boy wanting to be friends. He was rather better dressed than would be usual in a country village, but I supposed that for an antique dealer an air of affluent respectability would be an essential. He had an elderly Airedale with him on a lead.