02 Murder at the Mansion (8 page)

“Oh, do come on, Biscuit! Look! I’ve bought you a brand new toy! Surely you’re tempted to at least sniff it,” she said in a sing-song voice, dangling the scratchy ball in front of the ginger cat’s thousand-yard stare. “It’s even got catnip in it!”

“There’s no playing with that cat,” came Philippa’s voice, as she gathered her coat from the doorway, ready to leave, “she does everything on her own terms.”

“Come on, girl! Don’t be shy!” persisted Annabelle.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Vicar,” Philippa said, as she closed the door behind her.

“’Bye, Philippa!” Annabelle turned her attention back to the orange tabby in front of her.

“No? Perhaps if I just leave the toy in front of you,” Annabelle said, placing the ball between Biscuit’s tiny paws. “I’ll just go into the other room and leave you to investigate it.”

Annabelle stepped across the living room, left the room, and stamped her feet a few times to simulate walking away. She counted to ten, then peeked slowly around the doorway, hoping to find Biscuit joyfully pawing at her new purchase.

Instead, Biscuit turned her head toward the Vicar with an expression Annabelle interpreted as extremely condescending.

“That’s it!” she exclaimed, grabbing her hat and gloves. “You’re no entertainment at all. I’m off. I’m sure I’ll be of more use to the Inspector than I will be to you.”

She threw on her favorite red and black-checkered coat and grabbed her keys.

“Oh, and Philippa is right, you are becoming terribly fat!” she said in a huff, as she left the house, locked the door, and marched toward her car.

Annabelle drove without pleasure, her hanging questions regarding the murder intensifying. She liked things to be clear, ordered, proper – and so far nothing about the horrific death of Sir John Cartwright was as she liked it.

The stormy weather of her thoughts was so intoxicating, that as she pulled in to the long driveway of Woodlands Manor, she almost failed to notice the car heading in her direction. As it drew close enough for her to discern its driver, her mood quickly cleared.

“Hello, Inspector!” she said, as they pulled up close to each other and rolled down their windows.

“Hi, Vicar. Surprised to see you here.”

“I just thought I’d drop by to see if a visit might jog any important memories I might have forgotten in all the fuss.”

“Good idea,” the Inspector nodded, “but the house is all locked up now. We’ve been looking over the crime scene again. The SOCO team have been and gone, I’m the last to leave. I might come back tomorrow, but I don’t really see a reason to at present.”

“Have you discovered anything new?” asked Annabelle.

The Inspector sighed. “Nothing too extraordinary. Apparently the arrow that killed the dead man didn’t come from an ordinary bow.”

“Oh?”

“It came from a crossbow of some sort.”

“Oh dear. Those things are the devil,” said Annabelle.

“Yeah. It also somewhat throws off our projections regarding where the murderer shot from. Crossbows are more accurate than simple, straightforward bows, meaning that the shooter could really have been standing anywhere.”

“That’s incredibly strange,” mused Annabelle.

“How so?” the Inspector asked.

“Well, archery with a typical bow and arrow is a fairly well practiced sport in this area. It would make some amount of sense to assume that was the weapon. But I’ve yet to see a crossbow used anywhere in the locality.”

The Inspector chuckled grimly. “It seems like this case just gets harder rather than easier.”

Annabelle decided to keep her thoughts to herself and bid the Inspector farewell. He rolled his window back up and drove off, leaving Annabelle to close in on the fountain that was by now becoming rather too familiar for her own taste.

As she got out of the Mini and began making her way around the house, Annabelle mulled over the idea that she had refrained from telling the Inspector. Archery was a popular pastime in and around the village. As a predominantly male-dominated pursuit, archery skills were often passed down from father to son, a popular excuse for some male bonding between generations as much as between old friends. It was unlikely that somewhere along the line, the community of close-knit archers had suddenly embraced the crossbow – a much more brutal and ugly weapon, which required none of the finesse or skill of the traditional bow.

It was entirely possible, of course, that someone in the village had taken up the more effective, machine-like crossbow, but Annabelle had never come across it. She had visited almost all of the homes in the village, seen many a proud huntsman display his fine weapons in pride of place on a mantel or wall frame, and observed the camouflage-clad hunters rambunctiously set off for a day of hunting bearing their weapons across their backs. Not once had she seen one of them use, own, or even mention a crossbow, however. The conclusion she came to was an unnerving one; the murderer must have come from outside the village.

As she turned a corner and found herself behind the house, in the area that the murderer must have been near or nearabouts, Annabelle looked back toward the house and was struck by yet another revelation. The murderer may not have planned it! Annabelle noticed that all the windows, including the one at which Sir John was meditating when he was killed, were now closed. The windows presented an obvious obstacle to a successful murder attempt. No matter how thunderous a shot from a crossbow, the trajectory, as well as the power, would have been too unpredictable for the murderer to have shot through a closed window. That meant that the murderer
needed
the window to be openin order to carry out the killing
.

While it was possible that the murderer knew of Sir John Cartwright’s penchant for meditating in front of open windows, a slightly chilly day, or the type of brief rains England was known for would have caused him to close the window and set the murderer’s plans askew. Perhaps the murderer had visited the site day after day, in anticipation of the perfect circumstances – Sir John’s eyes-closed meditation, an open window, and no onlookers. But Annabelle found the scenario of forethought and planning unlikely, given that Sir John had only resided in Woodlands Manor for barely over a week.

It wasn’t concrete, but Annabelle felt like she was beginning to find the slimmest of threads to follow. She had been reluctant to tell the Inspector her idea for it was merely a belief. As a vicar, however, she knew how powerful belief could be. Annabelle turned her attention to the unkempt ground where the dense woods met the manicured lawns at the rear of the house. She stepped carefully forward, intently searching every peculiar stone and suspicious mound for something tangible. After searching for a whole hour and feeling the oncoming chill of evening, Annabelle turned back toward the front of the house. Despite the fruitlessness of her search, she left resolved to come back, a stirring hope that with enough effort she would find the key to this puzzle.

Over the next few days, Annabelle returned to the large manor house several times. She came equipped with a set of binoculars and a moleskin notepad in which she scribbled everything of note. Before her second “expedition,” she called Harper Jones and quizzed the talented pathologist for everything she knew. After the briefest of explanations, Harper was surprisingly forthcoming with enough details to fill an entire page of Annabelle’s notebook. They were all technical and complicated, however. Math had been a favorite subject of Annabelle’s, but even she struggled to understand more than half of the calculations and measurements Harper offered her. Despite this apparent obstacle, Annabelle prevailed. As she traipsed through the woods, armed with a flask of tea under one arm and her binoculars in the other, she tried her very best to triangulate where the murderer had fired that fatal shot from.

Though she was on the trail of a cold-blooded killer, Annabelle could not hold herself back from enjoying her surroundings. She delighted in the bird songs and stately beauty of the trees. She found herself stooping constantly to observe a patterned butterfly or a spider weaving an intricate web between two logs. She felt herself relax and focus in the presence of God’s creation. Apart from a slight scare when something rustled hurriedly in some nearby bushes, the hours she spent in the woods were good for her soul, if not her investigation. While she felt that she was getting somewhat closer to the truth, Harper’s calculations still proved too abstract for her, and she eventually left, slightly disappointed but no less determined.

The next day, Annabelle once again packed her binoculars and her notebook and took a small detour on her way to Woodlands Manor. Mr. Squires was one of the keenest archers in Upton St. Mary and one of the most trustworthy people Annabelle knew.  He was an older gentleman who always wore clothes of deep farmer’s green. He possessed a thick, grey moustache that lent him the air of an old wartime general and when he invited Annabelle into his office, she saw it was adorned with old leather-bound books and watercolor paintings of various hunting scenes. After begging his discretion, which he assuredly gave, Annabelle showed him Harper’s calculations and the dimensions of the scene of the crime.

For little over an hour, Mr. Squires regaled the intently observant Vicar on archery, crossbows, and the distance-power ratios you could expect from various weapons. He troubled to give her full explanations of all the factors involved including wind, weights, the kind of arrows used, and the skill of its user. His explanations were most comprehensive and Annabelle left Mr. Squires extremely grateful, feeling that she knew more than she ever needed or intended to know about the centuries-old pastime.

When she found herself back in the woods, Annabelle applied everything she knew, taking great care to incorporate all the information she had gathered from both Harper and Mr. Squires. After carefully cross-checking her notes multiple times and making many fine adjustments, she finally found herself standing a few dozen yards away from the edge of the woods. She was on a mild incline, surrounded by a handful of trees that hid her almost completely but also afforded a clear view – and a straight shot – into Sir John Cartwright’s window.

“This has to be it!” she exclaimed to herself as she checked her calculations once more, ensuring there were no mistakes. “It certainly
feels
like a murderer’s spot.” Something about the spot was secretive and sinister. It was an area of the woods that would be perfect if one wanted to be hidden. Annabelle felt a shiver run up her spine. “Don’t be silly, Annabelle.”

Then came a sound. It was a rustle, of the kind Annabelle had heard the day before, and which she had assumed to come from a small woodland animal. Standing there, where a few days previously one person had ended the life of another, the sound took on an ominous weight. Annabelle crouched down to the ground, as silently as possible, her ears alert. Once again, the bushes rustled. Annabelle’s blood rushed through her body, and she gripped her flask tightly with one hand, and in the other, her crucifix.

Annabelle turned around slowly, looking for the cause of the sound. As she rotated almost a complete circle, the sound came once more from directly behind her. Only this time, it didn’t stop. Annabelle spun back around so quickly that she slipped on the soft soil and tumbled backwards. She shut her eyes and screamed as the rustling grew so loud it was now mere inches away from her. “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy na –” Annabelle muttered, quickly and quietly, until she felt something press against her leg and opened her eyes in horror. “Biscuit!”

“Meow,” came the cat’s sardonic reply.

Annabelle reached out and stroked the cat’s head, as if unable to believe the source of her terror was none other than the church cat. Biscuit, in an atypically forthright gesture, pressed her head against the Vicar’s hand.

“What on earth are you doing so far from the church? We’re almost two miles away!”

Annabelle picked the cat up and cuddled it to her chest. Biscuit licked her face, causing Annabelle to double-check that it was, actually, Biscuit.

“I do believe all this drama is driving me quite mad and more than a little hungry. I’d like one of Philippa’s cupcakes so much I can already smell it,” Annabelle joked, as she placed the cat on the ground, stood up, and brushed off her slacks.

After a few moments of adjusting her clothes, picking her notebook up from the dirt and tucking it away into her pocket, Annabelle clipped her flask to her waistband and looked around at the sodden dirt of the area.

“I suppose we’ll have to look for clues together now, Biscuit,” she said, as she concentrated her eyes upon the area.

Unfortunately, the heavy rainfall of the previous night had flattened and soaked the earth, leaving only the markings and footprints Annabelle had made herself. As she carefully walked back and forth, desperately seeking something that could cast some more light onto the secret of the murderer’s identity, her heart began to sink.

“Oh, Biscuit. I’m starting to think all of my efforts have been for naught,” Annabelle sighed, deflated, “though I suppose the Inspector will be interested in knowing where the murderer was when he fired the shot. Don’t you, Biscuit?”