Landscape with Dead Figures
by
James Leigh
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Copyright © 2010 James Leigh
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Landscape With Dead Figures
Woodcock took an immediate fancy to the woman facing him across the cafeteria table. A condition of happiness, according to a proverb he once read, was a woman from one's own place, and from the moment she opened her mouth, he thought he probably knew this woman better than her current lover did, for behind her neutral, well-bred drawl was a lilt as familiar to him as his mother's. A dialect expert he once met claimed he could pin down anyone to their town of origin, even village in some cases, just by listening to them speak, and for all her quietly modulated chic, Dawn Blanchard's accent proclaimed her unmistakably a woman from his own place. She smiled easily back, and he knew she recognised the kinship as well.
'Where are you from then? Thrinton?'
She shook her head. 'Sutton-le-Vale.'
Her head, like his, turned to the window as a kingfisher flashed its sudden electric blue signal down the little Paton Beck to where, in the broader, bolshier River Torret a few fields beyond, brown trout would be rising. She too was intrigued. She had never met a high-ranking police detective before and had not expected one like the big, wiry farmers she saw and sometimes sketched at livestock auction marts. He had the same high colour, fair hair and intense blue eyes. His coat hanging from the back of his chair had the same bellows pockets (bulging in the farmers' case with penknives and baling string). His breeks were even buttoned rather than velcroed below the knees, and she half expected to see a stick with a carved ram's horn handle leaning against the cafeteria's melamine-topped table. On the other hand she could not help noticing that his suit was very well cut from some expensive cloth and that his big hands, unencumbered even by a watch, were unmarked by Stockholm Tar. Yes, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Grenville Woodcock, she decided, was a fetching oddity.
'Only a couple of fields out,' she conceded.
'Plus Jubilee Wood and Thrinton Beck.'
He turned back, smiling. Once he had once known every dry-stone wall and blade of grass around the places she mentioned, but of course things would have changed since he last saw them.
'Have you always lived there?'
'No. My father was a schoolmaster, so we lived wherever he taught and used the family house in Sutton-le-Vale just for holidays. I went back to live there after he died though.'
'Which house would that be?'
'The one next to the old school. There have been Blanchards in Sutton-le-Vale ever since Sigurd the Viking, or whoever it was, founded our dynasty. Blanchard tombstones are as thick as thieves in St. Wilfred's churchyard. How about you?'
'I've got antecedents rather than forebears, Ms Blanchard. My mother and I moved to Fox Covert Cottages in Thrinton when I was about ten. If my grandparents kept any record of where they came from, they didn't tell us.'
Now she remembered. Fox Covert Cottages, the row of little council houses in Sutton-le-Vale's twin on the other side of the beck, all long since sold to telecottagers and commuting townies but where once there had once been tearaway children she was sternly warned not to mix with. Now, too, she distinctly remembered the one with the head on his shoulders who went away to the university and eventually left the village altogether. What was the story Sam told? About how his springer spaniel fell through pond ice one hard winter's day and could not be got out, how the boy took the keeper's gun, shot it and refused ever to beat that drive again. She even remembered asking why in that case he had been kept on the syndicate's books - and Sam's reply, which was that she did not know him. Well, she was beginning to know him now. Yes, she was definitely intrigued.
'How's your Quiche Lorraine?'
She considered. 'So long as the girl who made it is called Lorraine, it's not in actual breach of the Trades Descriptions Act. Lorraine hasn't a light touch with pastry though.'
He nodded. 'Sutton-le-Vale, at the end of a three-mile cul-de-sac, on a road to nowhere except its own rather self-regarding self. Even Sutton-le-Valians never seemed certain where they stood in relation to the rest of the universe. Perhaps it's changed.'
She chuckled. 'No way. Concealed mystery was always part of our charm. Or so we tell ourselves. The lane is still our only physical link with the outside world.'
'What about the lane to Thrinton?'
She shook her head. 'That's changed, I'm afraid. Yard-high grass grows down the middle of it these days. There's even a weight restriction on the bridge so that only pedestrians can cross.'
He grimaced. 'I used to fish under that bridge when I was a boy. I used a little eight-and-a-half-foot rod so as not to clout the stonework when I cast.'
'Legally?'
'No, I went straight later. No legally caught fish ever tasted so sweet. Or was it just that small boys are always hungry? I used to light a fire under the bridge, lay flat river pebbles on top and grill my fish on those.' He changed the subject abruptly. 'An unspoilt charm characterised by quaint rural simplicity.' He was quoting by memory from the official village guide that all policemen were encouraged to study and quote from. 'I wonder who dreams up that stuff?' He got up, went to the counter and came back with two cups of coffee. 'I take it you don't want the Mississippi Mud Pie or apple tart?'
'Lordie, no thanks.'
He went through the mental gears again, and Dawn Blanchard, sensitive to moods, spotted the shift. It was one of the reasons why she might one day make a good rather than merely competent film director.
'It was kind of you to drop by today - and brave.'
Dawn had been the early-morning walker who heard the shot and found Cocky Cottrell's body in a stretch of country where a killer could easily still have been lurking in whins nearby. She, too, turned serious as the scene came back to her. She saw The Ashes ahead of her and, to the left beside the path she was on, the railway-sleeper footbridge across Thrinton Beck that connected them. She saw Cottrell's blue tractor and trailer beside the bridge, a scattering of plastic fencing supports like yellow exclamation marks around his body in the lush grass.
Of course she had kept calm. Dawn Blanchard always kept calm. Pausing only to make sure the man was beyond help, she had used her mobile phone and waited, willing herself not to look over her shoulder every few seconds - resisting, too, the urge to sketch. By sheer luck, Tommy Reid had been on the track on the far side of The Ashes and so been able to use the main ride to get to her quickly. He had listened to her story while noting in his little book that Miss Blanchard, whom he had known all their lives, had a temperament that would make a yeti seem hot-blooded. Constable Reid was famous for such asides. Woodcock, who spent a lot of his professional time reading stumblebum official prose, appreciated them as artless, seldom over-the- top - and often perceptive comments. He had read the report several times, seeing every detail of the scene in his mind's eye like a tapestry that might or might not have an explanatory caption to it one day, noting the emerald green of the new spring grass by the beck, the saffron kingcups on the water, the shower of gold needle-furze purses along the banks. He even saw the crimson arterial blood covering a lot of the ground, for Cottrell had died messily.
'You were lucky Tommy was on hand.'
'Too right. He didn't question me much because he knew I had business to get to in London. Anyway, he said you would want to interview me yourself.'
She sipped her coffee and grimaced.
While having no great reverence for rules himself, Woodcock expected his subordinates to stick to them. Reid was always a wild card, but feeling charitable, he decided the man had only let this girl get on with her day in order to give her time to recover her poise. True, she seemed the type that would make a cucumber look sweaty, but appearances could be deceptive.
'I expect you were shaken up.'
'Not really.'
He shifted gears again. 'Well, anyway, Tommy was right. I do like to hear people explain things for themselves. Perhaps you might start by telling me how you came to be down by The Ashes so early in the day.'
She raised an eyebrow at the fractionally more hostile tone. An interrogator's trick, she supposed, to get interrogatees off-balance.
'I went out to do some sketching.'
'You are a painter as well as film director?'
'Yes, it's probably why Renoir is my favourite mentor. I do it for pleasure and relaxation and because it's more ladylike than yoga. I took the footpath that runs behind my house from Sutton Green to Thrinton Beck - you probably know it - and turned up at Jubilee Wood towards the sleeper bridge.'
'I know that too.'
The longest walk on his boyhood shooting days had been through The Ashes, tapping pheasants out at a point near enough to the bridge to move them up through the whins without spooking them, then following them up the hedgerows and through rough grazing into thicker woodland beyond from where they could be driven back later over the guns lined out along Thrinton Beck. The bridge the girl mentioned, half a dozen railway sleepers laid side by side, had been laid mainly for beaters and birds.
'The tractor and trailer were by the bridge where Cocky had stopped to put up sheep-netting,' she added.
'Do you know that for a fact?'
Her eyebrow lifted fractionally again. She was well if unspectacularly dressed, her figure tasty, Miss Ice-Maiden Blanchard from the top-drawer side of the green. Woodcock supposed he must have come across her when he was young, even though he could not remember. Perhaps she had braces on her teeth in those days. His mind was not really wandering. Like a stalker spotting game on a far hillside, he had the knack of being able to focus to one side of, rather than directly on, what interested him.
'No, but the trailer was full of netting and energisers - the usual fencing stuff.'
He accepted the statement. As a village girl she would know about farm routines and equipment, and Sutton-le-Vale was still an agricultural village, just.
'Was everything still inside?'
'Some of the supports had been taken out and scattered around.'
'How many?'
'Between ten and twenty.' Now she was faintly irritated. She had a first-class visual memory and was more used to hearing it complimented than having its arm twisted. 'They were the bright yellow plastic kind with T-shaped cross-sections and metal spikes at one end.'
'The ones on the ground - you say they were scattered about?'
'Yes. Excuse the question, but is their disposition relevant?'
'Yes, Miss Blanchard.'
'Dawn.'
'Dawn. When a workman has to load his gear in a trailer perhaps every day, he learns economy of movement. When fencing a long stretch, he drops materials off at intervals first rather than spend all day running up and down the line for more. Also, he leaves stuff in neat piles so that he doesn't have to scrabble about or lose things.'
By now his mind had wandered back from the triangle of grass kingcups and whins by the little footbridge to occupy its proper space behind his eyes again.
'And you heard and saw nothing until Tommy found you?'
'Nothing at all.'
She guessed what was in his mind. On the edge of woodland at that hour, a jay ought to have chattered, pheasants chortled, hares or deer bolted when disturbed by a fleeing killer - something. The present silence though was relaxed as he stared out of the window again. She told herself it was a sign of affinity when strangers were at ease without words in each other's company. In spite of his pointed questions, she was still quite taken by him.
'There'll be an inquest that you'll have to attend I'm afraid, but it won't be much of an ordeal.' He noticed her expression. 'Any problems?'
'I expect to have to have to go abroad soon - filming.'
'The inquest is likely to be called within a day or so and last only minutes before being adjourned. For reasons I won't bother you with, local officialdom doesn't want its pending trays filled with unfinished business just now.' Again he changed gears. 'The Mucky Duck.'
'Now it all comes back to you, does it? Don't tell me - it was the first pub you ever got legless in.'
'How did you guess?' The Austrian Eagle, to give it its proper name, had featured a lot in his life once. 'What's the grub like there these days?'
She smiled indulgently. 'You young blades think of nothing but your stomachs. Plentiful but plain. For posher nosh, one of our leading concitoyennes has opened an award-winning b&b in what used to be the old primary school - next door to me in fact. His daughter Melissa does the cheffing. There's no a la carte menu, just a choice of two, sometimes three, dishes in each category. Why? Were you thinking of checking us out?'
'Yes. The Entertainment should be on soon.'
The Sutton-le-Vale Entertainment was a local charity concert that had taken place every year for as long as anyone could remember.
'It's tomorrow, actually.'
'And does everyone in the village still have to join in?'
'You bet. No exemptions permitted, no absences tolerated.'
'Won't Cocky Cottrell's demise put a damper on proceedings?'
'I shouldn't think so. I don't want to make us sound callous, but I doubt whether he'll delay anything other than the estate's fencing programme. He hadn't been among us very long, he kept himself to himself, and he certainly didn't make a very favourable impression.'
Woodcock thought of asking why but changed his mind and got up. It was too soon in the enquiry to be looking at anything other than basic facts. Besides, he wanted something to talk about next time. Which reminded him to arrange the next time.
'Right, you've had a big day, Dawn, so I won't hold you up.' He was still feeling pleased at being called a young blade by this attractive girl. 'You wouldn't happen to know Melissa's courses tomorrow, I suppose? I was thinking of inviting you to dinner before the show.'
'What a very good idea,' she beamed back. 'I am minded to accept. Her bill of fare depends on whim and availability, but as it happens, I can answer your question because, with the Entertainment on, I've been told to drum up business for her any. Main course choices will be farmhouse poulet à l'estragon, pan-fried pigeon breasts in a sauce of wine and blueberries, or spiced cured salmon in a mustard sauce. The poetry of it all seduces the gastric juices, does it not?'
'No Yorkshire puddings with a choice of fillings?'
'Certainly not.'
'I was joking.'
'I assumed so. The wines will be good too, which is as well because I suffer from first-night nerves and will need serious lushing up. Melissa's Dad deals in wines.'
'I see. And what's your turn to be?'
'You'll find out. I'll buy your ticket. I'm not on until the second half, so you'll have plenty of time to feed me beforehand. I don't know whether your tummy has ever rumbled when appearing in front of a village audience ....'
'Fine. I'll pick you up at your house. Will seven-thirty for eight do? '
'Fine.' She beamed again. 'And now I'll confess that I'll be singing for my supper.'
Woodcock's regard for this beautiful, poised girl was suddenly a shade qualified. In his experience, vocalists at events like the Sutton-le-Vale Entertainment either belted out Cole Porter show-stoppers or fluted Gretchen am Spinnrade to an accompaniment more like heavy machinery. He noticed that she was shaking gently.
'Is there something wrong?'
'Your face. Giving that information to people, having first sold them a ticket - and in your case wangled an invitation to dinner - has become the high point of my summer.'
'I'm sure you sing beautifully. If you don't, I can always pelt you with baked alaskas. Does Melissa do baked alaskas?'
oooOooo
Chief Superintendent Charlie Blazer usually assigned particularly serious or ticklish investigations to DCI Woodcock, and although Cottrell's death did not look like fitting either bill, his most senior detective had little else on just then and there were reasons why a safe pair of hands was needed anyway. So Woodcock got it. He also got Detective Constable Abigail Cauldwell, there being method in his matching, for lowly as her rank was, Cauldwell was the apple of his professional eye, a constable destined without shadow of doubt in his view to park her shapely behind in a chief constable's chair one day. She still lacked experience in the seamier side of her trade, though, for which she could have no better guide and mentor than Alan Woodcock.
For his part, as everyone in the force's headquarters building (which also housed the local station) knew, Alan Woodcock would never break through the ceiling to rank so long as the present chief constable, who did not like him, was in charge. As a result he was likely to resign before long, either to found or join some private detective firm like Foxglove - and very nice too, given the current boom in agricultural theft - or step sideways into a bizarre rural occupation like gun-dog training. The man was unmarried and seemed to spend all his spare time shooting or fishing, both of which pastimes baffled Charlie Blazer, whose own only outdoor occupations were golf (described by Woodcock as an open-air hybrid of squash and shove-halfpenny) and a little light gardening. Still, he was reluctant to see all that talent and experience go to waste, so he harnessed them now whenever he could to Abigail Cauldwell, even though it struck some (like DC Cauldwell) as like teaming a JCB with a Porsche to pull a field harrow.
Blazer himself, a jowly man with shiny smooth skin and a little boy's bright yellow hair cut in pudding basin style, sat bolt upright behind his desk, fingers linked. Woodcock as always stood by the window staring out at God knew what, while Abigail Cauldwell, also as always, was perched on a hard-backed chair near the door.
'So what have we so far?' The question was rhetorical. 'Cocky Cottrell was a Scot, a bachelor and a farm labourer employed by Mr Fraser on the Sutton-le-Vale estate. He had been in the area a few months, kept himself to himself, and nothing seems to be known about him despite Sutton-le-Vale's reputation as the nosiest village in Christendom. Early yesterday morning, he was found shot to death, the probable weapon being found nearby. I say probable because, of course, there is no cast-iron ballistics or other evidence. He was alone, had recently left jail and so may have been disorientated, depressed and lost.' He looked up. 'We could, then, be looking at a case of anything, from gang warfare to suicide. The gun lay at a short distance from the body, but there is no evidence of any other person's involvement, while if someone else did pull the trigger, it's not obvious how they could have got away undetected since the witness who found the body was just behind him on the track while Constable Reid was at the other end of the ride. All contributions, then, gratefully received.'
Abigail Cauldwell glanced at Woodcock, who had still not made up his mind about her. A city girl, she disclaimed any particular rapport with the countryside and saw no unique challenge in it. Theft, in her view, was just theft, whether of a BMW or a John Deere tractor. Assault was assault, whether on a farm labourer or lord lieutenant of a county. For Abigail Cauldwell, Woodcock country just happened to comprise fields, farms and villages with the occasional unmemorable market town thrown in.
Woodcock would not necessarily have disagreed with her. The countryside was getting more like the inner city every day, more and more of those living in it being ex-townies with mainly urban ways and attitudes. Besides, policemen had to be up to any job these days.
He would have been tickled to know, though, that her opinion of him was as ambivalent as his of her. No uncritical fan of the force's highest-profile detective, Abigail Cauldwell suspected that his reputation was a mite inflated. There were even times when she suspected he was intellectually disorganised. Very possibly he had enjoyed more than his fair share of luck.
'As you say, Sir, the gun that probably killed him was lying on the ground - a Spanish 12-bore by the makers Aguirre y Aranzabal.'
'Ay-Ya,' grunted Woodcock from the window.
'I'm sorry, Sir?'
'The Basque gunmakers' initials whose monikers just tripped so featly off your tongue are pronounced that way in these parts, Abi. I mention the fact because no certificate-holder within twenty miles is going to know what you are talking about if you address them in Spanish.'
'Carry on, Cauldwell,' Charlie Blazer invited her patiently.
'Yes, Sir. A used cartridge, a black one with the name Chertsey Armourers on it, was still up the spout, as I believe the Ay-Yah owning classes describe it.'
'Just the one?' Woodcock asked.
'Just the one.' She waited for further questions, but none came. 'Examination of the body showed that most of the shot, along with all of the plastic wadding, was in the dead man's stomach cavity. The weapon itself lay some seven or eight feet away.'
Charlie Blazer glanced at Woodcock who only shrugged.
'Topping yourself with a shotgun and throwing it away afterwards? Awkward but not impossible, Sir.'
The chief superintendent sighed. 'Anything else, Cauldwell?'
'He came from the Strathclyde area, Sir, and is a recently-released con.'
'Ah.'
'A paedophile out of Barlinnie last September, following which he moved here.'
'To escape revengeful relatives who traced him anyway?' mused Charlie Blazer. 'One of his victims grown to revengeful man's estate?'
'Constable Reid reports no strangers seen in the area recently, Sir.'
'Been out detecting again, has he?'
'Yes, Sir.'
Although there were no real village constables any more, everyone knew that Tommy Reid regarded Sutton-le-Vale as his personal beat and manor.
'Given that Cottrell didn't mix with the village and seems to have had no contacts outside it, he could have been on the run. Perhaps someone traced him, or he got careless and entrusted some old pal with his new address. Any views, Alan?'
Woodcock had been wool-gathering about Dawn Blanchard and the old school house at Sutton-le-Vale, now an award-winning bed-and-breakfast where he had once been taught by a Miss Smart and suffered punishment for offences he could no longer remember but was sure he must have committed since there had been no injustices in his childhood. Bar the one. He improvised quickly.
'Vengeful relatives would bring their own artillery rather than rely on finding something to hand when they arrived, Sir?'
'Except, of course, that they may not have known he was here until they arrived.'
Woodcock turned to Cauldwell. 'Did the gun actually belong to him?'
'We don't know yet, Sir. Firearms records are temporarily inaccessible because their computer is down. I'll try them again now.'
'Someone killing out of malice would probably deliberately choose a messy end,' Woodcock remarked maliciously to Charlie Blazer who was notoriously squeamish, while Cauldwell made a call. 'Now if Miss Blanchard had stumbled on a Scottish nonce gelded by a broken whisky bottle and hanging upside-down with a placard reading 'death to all paedophiles,' or possibly 'paediatricians, hanging round his ....'
''Who else might have known about his form in the northern kingdom?'' Blazer interrupted hastily.
'Strathclyde advised us when he moved down here,' Cauldwell broke in while she waited for a connection. 'In accordance with the chief constable's guidelines of April last year, we duly notified various interested parties, including the head teacher of Sutton-le-Vale Church of England primary school.'
'Who probably told everyone else in the village?'
'Possibly, Sir.'
Charlie Blazer blew out his lips and cheeks as though expelling a ping-pong ball. It was one of his minor eccentricities.
'Not that his form was likely to stay a secret for long anyway,' Woodcock continued, back at the window and staring out. 'Sutton-le-Vale is the sort of place where everyone knows everything sooner or later. Unless it has changed in the years since I knew it, there is a pair of binoculars on every front window ledge waiting to zoom in on anything remotely scandalous. If a kid lights up a spliff in a bus shelter, the bus company gets anonymous letters about it next day and the vicar has his sermon on the evil thereof dusted off and ready for delivery the following Sunday.'
'You know the place well?'
'I spent part of my childhood in Thrinton, a hamlet nearby. I attended school in Sutton-le-Vale.'
'Where you had your unfortunate experience with the weed?'
'It was a plant.'
'Very droll.'
'No, the shotgun wasn't Cottrell's,' Cauldwell interrupted, sliding her phone back in its holster. 'It turns out it was registered to a local businessman called I'Anson who lives in Sutton-le-Vale Old Rectory.'
'Ah.' Charlie Blazer joined Woodcock at the window. He could never resist for long trying to see whatever it was that his subordinate saw out in the wide open spaces behind police headquarters. As usual, there was nothing at all out of place or unusual, and he teetered back on his heels in disbelief. 'Does this I'Anson have any kids?'
'No, Sir,' said Cauldwell.
'Pity.'
'Shotguns make poor assassination weapons out in the open,' Woodcock remarked suddenly, 'because lead shot loses its killing power fast over even short distances. In this case the charge blew a man's guts apart, but if he had stopped the same load of number six shot at, say, a hundred yards, the most he would have had to put up with would have been a painful half an hour in the company of a nurse, a bottle of brandy and a pair of tweezers. Mind, it would be interesting to know the weight of the gun's trigger-pull.'
Charlie Blazer nodded. 'A light one would make an accident more feasible. Look into it, would you, Cauldwell? So what next?'
'I'd like to get down to Sutton-le-Vale to talk to this I'Anson about a missing gun that he hasn't reported missing.'
'Right. Do that. Take Cauldwell with you - and wrap the business up as soon as you can, Alan. As you will no doubt have heard whispered on the grapevine, Sutton-le-Vale Hall is due to receive some eminent visitors soon. The chief constable, Lord Lieutenant of the County, Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and ruddy all will be dancing attendance on them, so I want a nice clean, quiet and safe little parish dance floor for them to met on. Keep me posted.'
oooOooo
Sutton-le-Vale was a picture postcard village that no-one touring the area could possibly be expected to separate in memory from any of half a dozen similar villages, all as picturesque. Woodcock parked on a knoll under an ash tree that had been old when he first knew it in front of The Mucky Duck. He and Cauldwell then set out to stroll round its green and examine the scene of a fatal shooting that might or might not have been accidental.
Walking clockwise, they saw buildings on the green's east side all of a style and age, early Eighteenth Century. The green itself was half meadow, half cricket pitch, the division between them marked by a pair of giant walnut trees shading the cricket club's heavy roller. Between them and The Mucky Duck was the pitch itself, while in the direction of Sutton-le-Vale Hall, all was tall, lush hay meadow whitened with buttercups and Queen Anne's Lace. At the far end of the green, across the green's perimeter road, stone-pillars marked the entrance to Sutton-le-Vale Hall, while some way short of it an alleyway gave access to a dozen or so cottages grouped round a space called simply The Yard where staff and estate workers had lived in more labour-intensive days. Woodcock recalled it being full of beaters on sharp winter mornings, all puffing on fags while they waited for the trailer that would take them and their dogs and sticks from drive to drive, finally to return them after the last drive with the day's bag to the game-room where it would be hung it up and they would collect their day's pay. Now, though, the deferential stretch of paddock that once separated The Yard from the Hall drive was lined with ranch-style houses, from the rear of one of which there drifted the fragrance of barbecuing steak. Some prisoner liked a hearty breakfast, Woodcock thought.
The other side of the green was farm buildings, a row of smaller houses completing the circuit, and soon they were crossing in front of The Mucky Duck again towards a building with a tiny belfry on a corner of the road they had arrived by. Once the primary school Woodcock had attended, it was now, according to the board in front of it, The Old School House Licensed Restaurant with Accommodation. To one side of that was the Blanchards' house, to the other the rectory which, he noticed, now had two drive entrances instead of one. Beyond those was still just the church and then open farmland though.
As they walked down the rectory drive, Woodcock wondered how many pairs of binoculars were trained on them right now, even though they seemed to be alone in the landscape apart from a brewer's lorry unloading barrels in front of the pub. In Cauldwell's pocket, he knew, was a photocopy of a shotgun licence granted three months before to one Anthony I'Anson. The beautiful old house itself was now, of course, a private house like most of its kind and faced them at an angle across a oval gravel sweep with a fountain in the middle and lined on its far side with shrubbery and a huge copper beech. From the porch a man watched them.
In the doorway, Anthony I'Anson stared at Woodcock's identification, his combed-over white hair sparse, his scalp gleaming pinkly and healthily between strands. The porch was big, with iron rings set in the walls on either side for visitors to tie their horses to. There was even a mounting block to help them climb back on when they had finished paying their tithes. Or got tired of waiting for their identification to be inspected.
'Mrs I'Anson isn't in,' the man said eventually, handing Woodcock his wallet back. 'She won't be for another hour or so.'
They followed him into a large stone-flagged hallway where there was a big fireplace, a few old pieces of good furniture and a number of age-darkened portraits around the walls, all, according to the gilt boards screwed into their frames, past rectors of the parish. Next to the door hung the last of his line, Dr Fergal Bullimore. Woodcock remembered him, just: a big, florid, overbearing man. Various doors led off, and they were shown into a light, airy parlour with bow windows on two sides, their window seats polished by generations of sacerdotal backsides.
'It was you we came to see, Mr. I'Anson.'
Woodcock tried not to sink without trace into one of a pair of deep armchairs covered with rough oatmeal-coloured cloth..
The man looked surprised. 'Well, that makes a change. Mrs I'Anson is the always in demand village stalwart. You know the type - built to last, wearing scratchy tweed smelling of cats in fine weather and foul. Her family has lived here since the Conquest and is still mopping up pockets of resistance.' He glanced at his watch. 'So what I have been up to, parking on a pedestrian crossing?'
'You own a shotgun, Mr I'Anson, a 12-bore Spanish boxlock.'
The man considered and nodded. 'An AYA,' he conceded. 'Or Aguirre y Aranzabal to give it its full name, which I doubt anyone around here knows apart from me.'
'May we see it, please?' Cauldwell spoke for the first time.
'I haven't got it any more. I only ever owned it in the technical sense.'
'There is only the technical sense.'
The man stared at her before turning to Woodcock.
'Chief Inspector, I bought and licensed a gun to deal with garden pests. It may sound romantic having a lawn, cedars, flower-beds and all that, but believe me, when pigeons start causing civil commotion at four in the morning and their offspring nest in your Aga chimney, you soon shed your illusions. Doves do not, by the way, moan in immemorial elms as Tennyson claimed. They bloody well bellow. Anyone who tells you that life in rural England is a sylvan idyll is either deaf or a bloody liar.'
'Our records say that you own the firearm,' Cauldwell pursued doggedly. 'Are you saying it has technically disappeared?'
The man shrugged, still turned toward Woodcock. 'After it had served my turn, I sold it to Colin Fraser, our local landed gentry up at the Hall. He was going to bring his certificate round so that we could complete and register the sale, but he never did. We fell out, and I haven't seen it or him since. He being a JP, I could hardly complain, could I?'
'Any transfer of ownership not reported to the police is illegal.' Cauldwell's voice began to rise.
Woodcock could have told the man he made a big mistake, first in talking about his wife the way he had in front of Abigail Cauldwell, second in then ignoring her. The girl's chair was low and deep like his own, but it went without saying that she kept her knees effortlessly and becomingly together. Woodcock admired them, noting the way her skin whitened over rounded condyles of femur and tibia glowing smoother and silkier even than Antony I'Anson's pate.
Still the man refused to turn to her.
'We are, I suppose, talking about the gun that killed Cocky Cottrell? If so, I hope no-one is implying that the man's death was my fault?'
'I might,' interrupted Cauldwell, start 'implying all sorts of things if I don't see you certificate very soon, Mr I'Anson.'
'Go and get it,' Woodcock advised him.
The other stared blankly for a moment, then seemed to collect himself.
'Would anyone care for tea?'
'Your certificate, Sir.'
He was gone only a minute, and Cauldwell's hand was outstretched and waiting when he returned. She took it from its sleeve and compared it with the copy she had brought with her.
I'Anson looked aggrieved rather than nervous. Woodcock now noticed that his neck was scrawny, with twin folds of shiny pink skin around a prominent Adam's apple. His nose looked sore too.
'I bought the damned thing to do a specific job,' he repeated, 'not to own it in perpetuity. Fraser said he needed a gun for the use of an estate worker he had just taken on - the one who died yesterday as a matter of fact - and didn't want to waste money on a new one for what might prove only a short engagement. So we agreed a price for my AYA, and that's the last I saw of it.'
'And the last time you saw Cottrell?' Woodcock watched Cauldwell pocket the licence.
'A few days ago. He came here to consult with me about something. I never knew him personally, socially as it were.'
'So you mean you put your gun in the hands of a virtual stranger?'
'Christ, is everyone deaf? I sold it to Colin Fraser at the Hall who didn't pay me and didn't return it. It's hardly my fault I couldn't register the transaction.'
'Where were you yesterday morning, Sir?' Woodcock asked.
'Here at home.'
'Was anyone with you?'
'No.'
'Not even Mrs I'Anson?'
'I work in the annex attached to the house which she never enters.'
'You run a business from there?'
'Yes, a consultancy designing and installing integrated IT systems for fast-growing companies.'
He sounded like a corporate brochure.
'For how long have you had it?'
'In England? A couple of years.'
'And elsewhere?'
'Is this at all relevant?'
Woodcock did not react.
'I managed a similar business in America but returned to London five years ago when Mrs I'Anson and I met and married. This house is hers, as she never tires of reminding everyone, and she refused to have it associated with vulgar commerce. So I built the annex. May I ask what all this has to do with Fraser's hanging on to my gun?'
Woodcock had noticed the annex as the man called it as they came up the drive and wondered how he ever got planning permission to vandalise a classic English rectory by tacking onto it a brick tower faintly reminiscent of a Loire chateau on one corner.
'Can anyone at all confirm that you were here all yesterday morning? A staff member perhaps?'
The other shook his head. 'I've no employees. I manage all aspects of my business myself.' Sorry, Chief Inspector. You'll just have to take my word for it.
The day was fine, the windows wide open, and now they all heard the 'take-two-coos-Taffy' drawl of a pigeon in some immemorial nearby elm. The man had clearly not wiped them all out.
'Had you ever met, seen or heard of Ronald Cottrell before he came to Sutton-le-Vale?'
Cauldwell now returned to the attack, and Woodcock was pleased by the continuing hostility in her tone. It was a mistake in his opinion for policemen to think they either could or should be emotionally uninvolved in and by whatever they were investigating. In his book the opposite was more true - so long as emotion spurred the mind without clouding it.
'No, and will you please all get it into your heads that I had dealings with him only in the minor matter I told you about? I sold my gun to Fraser, whom I assumed to be trustworthy and honourable. That is all I know.'
Woodcock wondered if Cottrell had perhaps taken the gun out in the course of an ordinary day's work, surprised a gang of poachers or lurcher-men and been killed with it. One of the many reports on his desk, he remembered, dealt with an upsurge in illegal hare-coursing. He got up with some difficulty.
'We probably haven't finished with you, Mr I'Anson,' he warned.'
'I'll keep your certificate, Sir, since you almost certainly won't be needing it or another any more,' Cauldwell drawled icily. 'It will probably not be returned to you. You may also,' she added, 'face prosecution.'
'What in bloody hell's name for?'
'Should you ever apply for a licence again, I advise you to study the paragraph on the form stating that any sale must be registered with the police immediately and that an unnotified loan may be made for no more than seventy-two hours at a time. We take a very dim view of any infringement of firearms regulations.'
She was almost cheerful again by the time she and Woodcock were back on the green. By then it was mid-morning, a wind had got up and her hair was being blown across her face.
oooOooo
Deciding against a slog down to the beck and the whins where Cocky Cottrell's body had been found - and where a few scene-of-crime people might still be working - Woodcock set out along the east, or smarter, side of the green. The path there was raised above the road, fringed with hedges of box, privet and painted fencing. If any curtains twitched as they passed, he did not see them. In fact Sutton-le-Vale looked completely deserted now, even the men delivering beer to the pub having finished and driven off. The only sign of life, high overhead, was the whine of a single-engined plane doing solitary stunts.
'Well, what did you make of him?' he asked as they passed his old classroom where, he suddenly remembered, there had once hung an engraving of Millais' The Boyhood of Raleigh.
Abigail Cauldwell walked quickly and decisively, clearly glad to be out of The Old Rectory.
'I'd be surprised if he were a murderer, Sir.'
'Why?'
'He struck me as the sort of man who is too arrogant to imagine that he could ever need to resort to force. Mind, he would enjoy inflicting pain on people he disliked and who disliked him, and there must be plenty of those.'
'Anything else?'
'Yes, he is up to something, though not necessarily to do with Cottrell. I had the impression that we were a worrying interruption to something more important on his mind.'
Woodcock was pleased. That had been his impression too. By now they were in the drive to Sutton-le-Vale Hall which was artfully curved so as to reveal just the right views from the right angles at the right time, and here at least there were signs of life again. To their left, fenced pasture stretched away behind the houses facing the green. To their right, in more parkland, a group of riders walked, trotted and cantered under the eye of a woman who even at that range radiated a remarkable sexy elegance.
The Hall's imposing entrance touched no chord in his memory though, probably because his business in the old days had always been on the staff side of the building. Let in by some cleaning woman or housekeeper, he and Cauldwell were led through long corridors to a large kitchen where Colin Fraser sat peeling an orange and reading a copy of Farmer's Weekly propped up on the long deal table against a shoe-cleaning box whose lid had Floreat Etona painted on one side, Stet Fortuna Domus on the other. Dressed like a farmer and smelling like an ostler, the man introduced himself.
'You'll be wanting to talk about Cottrell.' He removed his magazine. 'Do sit down. I've been expecting you.'
'He worked for you, I believe?' The table had benches on either side, and Woodcock sat himself facing the other.
'Only for a couple of months. I should have liked to have him around for longer. He was a good worker, competent and reasonably conscientious, qualities you have to insist on in a man who spends most of his time working on his own at your expense.'
'He came with references?'
'If he did, I never saw them. Labourers don't roam the countryside asking to plough and sow and reap and mow these days, Chief Inspector. They apply at job-centres and study ads in the local papers and magazines like everyone else - as I was doing when you arrived, in fact, looking for his replacement.'
'And you did not ask for any?'
'Sorry. To be quite candid, when a man knocks at your door and offers his labour at less than the going rate, you assume he is either an immigrant or on the run. Either way, you soon learn whether he is worthy of his hire, and you don't ask him more questions than the law requires. I didn't pay him much but made his wages up with free accommodation, firewood and use of the estate van so long as he didn't push his luck, which he generally didn't. I expect he took a few rabbits or birds for the pot, but that's to be expected and, in the case of rabbits, welcome. Don't look so disapproving, Constable.' He grinned amiably at the expression on Cauldwell's face. 'He was happy with the deal, and a fast-moving pool of skilled casual labour is what the rural economy needs right now. Coffee anyone?'
There was a catering machine full of it keeping warm on the Esse range and, next to it, a tin of shortcake biscuits, so first Woodcock and then, after a brief hesitation, Cauldwell, joined him for mid-morning refreshment. Like I'Anson, the man spoke mostly to Woodcock since he was the senior but unlike I'Anson, did not make the mistake of ignoring Caldwell.
'Did the chap in fact top himself?'
A fat old labrador with bad breath joined them from somewhere, probably in hope of biscuits.
'I've no idea.' Woodcock answered.
'Oh, come on, Chief Inspector. Don't faff about. The chap obviously had troubles, and suicide is the usual exit strategy down on the farm. I gather we sons of the soil are second only to doctors in the self-destroyers league, both professions having convenient access to means.'
'Can you tell me anything about his troubles?'
Fraser handed them their mugs and pushed milk and sugar across the table.
'No. He looked and acted pretty careworn, but frankly I wasn't even slightly interested why. He turned up at a time when I needed a hand and we did a deal. That's all there was to it. I put him on general duties as soon it was obvious he could drive a tractor and knew his way round a farm. He seemed to enjoy the work, and there wasn't much he couldn't turn his hand to.'
Sutton-le-Vale's leading citizen was a shade over medium height, with strong, slightly blurred and clumsy features below dirty blonde curls, hazel eyes and a little clipped moustache. Woodcock had met the type often enough: tough, stoical, not the sharpest knife in the drawer but expensively educated and uninhibitedly aggressive. It made good cavalrymen, officered the old county regiments and was a tribute to the British public school system, but for which many of its members would have been dangerous as well as useless. Bravo, Etona. Well done, Harrovia.
'Where did he live?'
'Up at The Cottages - a tumbledown terrace in the middle of the estate. His was the only habitable one left. I didn't rent it to him since it didn't meet anywhere near minimum requirements, but there again, he seemed happy. For me, of course, the arrangement had the added advantage of having someone permanently in the middle of things with views all round.'
'Did he have many visitors?'
'I don't recall any at all. Anyone driving up to The Cottages would have to pass the Hall. There is usually somebody about down here, and the approach is cctv'd, of course.'
'The Cottages would be those up by Nesham Whinns?'
'You know them?'
'I used to know this estate better that you did, Mr Fraser. I was a beater for Brigadier Turton's shoot while you were still at school. Do you mind if I stroll around and take a look again some time?'
'Well, blow me down. Of course you can, Chief Inspector. Tommy Reid's up at the Cottages right now, but you can tell him from me he won't find much by sifting through Cottrell's dustbin because the man could only have had two classes of rubbish in it. So far as I could make out, he lived on an unrelieved diet of pizzas and Irn Bru.'
Woodcock gritted his teeth and made a mental note to have words with the self-appointed village bobby about tramping over sites of possible interest in a possibly criminal investigation.
'Did he go out much at all?'
'Only to the pub at weekends, and then only for an hour or so.'
'The Mucky Duck?'
'No, the Green Man in Thrinton. He didn't fraternize with the locals.'
'Any reason you know of?'
Fraser shook his head. 'No, but Harry Mottram might. He's The Mucky Duck's landlord these days and an ex-copper, as you probably know.'
'Did he ever give you cause for concern of any kind?'
'By stealing my hens or trying to rape my sister, you mean? No, but then I'm told most paedophiles are timid creatures.'
There was a pause.
'What makes you think Cottrell was a paedophile, Sir?' Cauldwell asked neutrally.
'Oops, spoken out of turn, have I? De mortuis nil nisi bonum and all that? Someone mentioned it at dinner here one night a few weeks back.'
'Some who knew what he was talking about?'
'Someone high up in the police as a matter of fact.'
Fraser carried his double-lidded shoe-cleaning kit box back to a cupboard in the passage outside the kitchen. 'I expect he shouldn't have,' he called over a shoulder, 'but he knew I'd hired the man and probably thought he was doing me a favour. It was neighbourly of him anyway. Not that I could have given a damn where Cottrell stuck his todger.'
Woodcock decided to change the subject. 'Was that your sister we saw giving riding lessons in the park, Sir?'
'Yes, although she wouldn't care much for your description of her occupation. She instructs in the art of dressage. Luckily for us, she is very good at it, and it's amazing how many wealthy parents are willing to lash out to have their sprogs coached by her these days. We offer full livery for their horses, of course, which is another string to our financial bow. She has a covered arena on the Thrinton side of the estate but in good weather prefers to teach alfresco around the Hall.'
Cauldwell nodded sympathetically. 'It must cost a fortune to run places like this,' she cooed
'You can say that again, Constable. There are few rich idlers around the countryside these days. Generally speaking, I farm while Georgie teaches. From each according to his ability. Luckily, neither of us is married.'
Woodcock glanced through the kitchen window towards the visible corner of the grounds where there was an immense copper beech that had taken a battering in some recent gale and been reduced to a single near-horizontal spar on a massive trunk. Beyond it, a group of riders still walked and trotted in unseen patterns.
'The gun found near Cottrell's body is registered to a Mr Anthony I'Anson,' he said over his shoulder. 'He says he sold it to you.'
'Then he's a liar. Cottrell needed a gun for his job, so I'Anson offered me the use of his at a time when we were still on reasonable terms and he was keen to ingratiate himself with me. Later, when we fell out, he never asked for it back. In answer to your next question, no, I don't know if Cottrell had a licence, but then as my employee carrying it on my land, he didn't need one.'
'Do you mind telling me what you fell out over?'
'Not at all, Chief Inspector. Part of Olivia I'Anson's glebe abuts my land and I'Anson let knapweed grow on his side of the fence with unfortunate results.'
'And he needed the gun for ...?' Cauldwell pursued.
'Vermin control, Constable: squirrels, stoats, crows, feral cats, that sort of thing. Shooting is another major slice of our estate income, so it has to be done. Cottrell was competent with a gun and only used it in my presence of course.'
'Of course, Sir. Would he have had it with him yesterday?'
'Yes. We are about to release several thousand poults, and I don't want to lose too many.'
'Did you generally give him orders for the day or leave him to decide for himself?' Woodcock asked.
'He had his orders every evening. I didn't know him that well.'
'And did those for yesterday include fencing down by the Ashes?'
'Yes.'
'Who else might have known that?'
'No-one unless Cottrell told anyone.'
The master of Sutton-le-Vale Hall jumped up and parked his backside on the Esse's plate-warmer. Now he looked even more like an amiably overgrown public schoolboy rather than the rural tyrant Woodcock knew him to be.
'One last question, Sir - did the man buy his own cartridges?'
'Certainly not. If I'd let him do that, he would have bought rubbish and charged me Eley. No, I get them at bulk discount price and issued him with whatever he needed when he needed it. This year's are Italian, stamped with the name of some vermouth company, Garzanti I think. There's a bucketful of them by the back door. Bring your gun, grab a handful when you walk round, Chief Inspector, and hammer anything that needs hammering.
oooOooo
The wind had dropped, it was still a fine day, and at last, as they set off back to The Mucky Duck, there were signs of life in the village. Head down, leaning forward, a man in track suit bottoms and a Hawaiian shirt rolled the cricket square while from somewhere nearby came the yammer of a mower to compete with the whine of the light aircraft still ducking and weaving just over the three thousand feet limit. Ahead of them, a woman turned a holly-green Volvo into the drive of The Old Rectory.
'Mrs I'Anson,' ventured Abigail Cauldwell.
The woman waited in the porch as her husband had, key in hand, watching them walk up the drive. She reminded Woodcock of an old farmyard hen crouching when approached, wings and tail feathers spread out. There was no sign of Antony I'Anson.
'Mrs I'Anson? We were here earlier to speak to your husband about death of Mr Cottrell yesterday. We would like to ask you a few questions as well.'
The woman considered, nodded, turned, opened the door and went inside, leaving it ajar. Inside, she took off her coat and head-scarf, still in silence, laying them across a high-backed hard chair before turning to face them. She was a big woman with a strong, plain, oddly attractive face. Her hair was long and lustrous, almost certainly naturally ash-blonde. She seemed preoccupied.
'I never actually met him myself,' she said, her voice a deep, rich contralto. 'Mr Cottrell, that is. What an awful thing to happen though, and in Sutton-le-Vale of all places. He didn't join in our communal life, you know. In fact he rarely appeared in the village at all.'
'A gun found beside his body belonged to your husband who says he sold it to Mr Fraser at the Hall,' Cauldwell put in
'You will have to talk to my husband about that if he is in,' she answered briskly, as though the man were her butler or bank manager. 'He seems not to be in though. At least, the annex lights are not on and his car is not in the garage. He used to keep his shotgun in the umbrella stand.'
She pointed to the front door, to one side of which, under the portrait of Dr Fergal Bullimore, was a rack with a zinc tray base and a shelf with drawers with a mirror above. Shotguns were supposed to be kept in locked cabinets, of course, and seeing Cauldwell's pretty lips tighten a shade more, Woodcock guessed that Antony I'Anson's chances of ever getting another licence, should he need one, had just slipped a little further.
'He was really quite astonishingly paranoid about pigeons at one time and wanted to be ever-ready to dash out and blast away at them. It was the frontiersman in him, I suppose.'
Woodcock was puzzled. I'Anson had struck him as very urban and European.
'Frontiersman?'
'He lived and worked in Texas for some years and never tires of comparing this country unfavourably to the Lone Star State. Surely he mentioned it to you? He generally gets a plug into the first sentence or so of any conversation.'
'Did his bird-scaring work?'
'Of course not. There are more pigeons now than ever.'
It was clear that the couple's dislike was intense and mutual, a fact which must depress, embarrass and annoy whatever friends in common they might have, Woodcock thought.
'What a beautiful house,' he said suddenly and eagerly, to Cauldwell's surprise. 'Does it date from the same period as the Hall?'
'Yes, they are exactly coeval, along with most of the dwellings on this side of the green.' Now she was alert, alive and interested. 'Queen Anne rather then Georgian though or, rather, spanning the two reigns. It has been our family's since we built it, the living having always been held by Bullimores. My late father and last rector of the living, Dr Fergal Bullimore, finally bought it when the church commissioners were selling large rectories and erecting brick rabbit hutches like that one at the end of the garden in their place.'
Her family, her father, her rectory, Woodcock noted.
'And your husband runs a business from the annex?'
'I am afraid so. In a weak moment I let him build on the side of the house.'
'He spends his working hours there?'
'He spends all his time there. We lead virtually separate lives, Chief Inspector.'
'Does he receive clients in it?'
'His business is done by computer, post and telephone. I can't tell you much about it.'
'He told us he was in all yesterday morning,' Cauldwell put in, 'but wasn't sure whether you could confirm the fact.'
Her reaction surprised them. She stared, her mouth open in melodramatic horror, then sat down suddenly abruptly.
'Oh dear, he's in trouble, isn't he?'