Aftermath (3 page)

‘Very well,' Hennessey brushed another fly away from his face. ‘Is he still here?'

‘Yes, sir, he is the owner of the red Vauxhall parked in front of the house.'

‘Yes, I noticed it. I'll go and talk to him. If you would carry on here, please?'

‘Yes, sir.'

George Hennessey walked slowly from the kitchen garden to the front of the house where the motor vehicles were parked and where, as the day had matured, some element of shade was by then afforded. He identified the red Vauxhall and approached it calmly, smiling gently at the composed looking man who sat in the driver's seat. ‘Mr Seers?'

‘Yes, that's me,' Seers opened the car door and stepped out of the vehicle, ‘John Seers of Seers, Seers and Noble.'

‘A solicitor?'

‘Yes, for my sins,' Seers shrugged, ‘but it pays the bills.'

‘I haven't heard of your firm, I regret to say.'

‘We hardly do any criminal work which probably explains it . . . not a great deal of money to be made defending murderers. Our firm is principally concerned with commercial law and property . . . if the property is large and valuable enough.'

Hennessey indicated Bromyards, ‘This sort of large and valuable?'

‘Yes, this sort of large and valuable. This particular case is quite rare and I pulled rank to get it . . . I am a senior partner . . . it's a job that we could give to a junior but I really wanted it, seemed it was going to get me out of our office for a few weeks.'

‘I can understand that,' Hennessey agreed, ‘I too dislike being desk-bound. So what exactly were you . . . your firm . . . engaged to do in respect of this property?'

‘To make an inventory of the contents.' Seers was tall, clean-shaven, a thin but balanced face. He spoke with received pronunciation so George Hennessey noticed and heard. ‘We act for the deceased and the family of the deceased, being one Nicholas Housecarl by name. He was a long-time client of our firm and he left a will in which he directed that his entire estate be liquidated . . . everything, Bromyards and its contents, his portfolio of stocks and shares . . . everything to be turned into cash and then said cash to be distributed in set percentages of the whole to surviving relatives and designated charities.'

‘I see,' Hennessey paused. ‘Is Bromyards the full name of the property, not House, Hall, Court, Manor . . . or any such name?'

‘No other or second name. The house is called simply “Bromyards”.'

‘I see.'

‘So the first step and the one which would have got me out of our office for quite a few weeks was to make an inventory of the contents.'

‘No small task.'

‘No small task at all, especially when one considers that the items within the house have been accumulating since 1719.'

‘Which is when the house was built?'

‘Which is when the house was built, at the beginning of the reign of George I and in the era of Handel and Bach, and . . . I glanced at my son's history books before I began the inventory . . . just to make it even more interesting,' Seers explained with a brief smile. ‘I really don't carry that sort of historical knowledge in my head.'

‘Impressed, nonetheless.'

‘Well, I have to detail everything inside the house . . . and I mean everything . . . from the recently purchased twenty-first century tea mugs in the living area to the dust-sheet covered paintings, which may be old masters lost to the world for centuries and may be worth more than the house itself . . . all has to be catalogued. A very, very interesting job.'

‘Sounds so, and I can understand why you pulled rank to get it.'

‘Indeed . . . then we have to take the contents into storage by a firm of reputable auctioneers and valued. We use Myles and Innche.'

‘Miles and Inch,' Hennessey grinned.

‘Yes, it is an unusual name . . . both units of linear measurement . . . but not spelled the same.' Seers told Hennessey how the auctioneers was correctly spelled.

‘All right . . . so the owner . . . the last owner died recently?'

‘Very recently . . . a matter of days ago. Poor old gentleman, you see, he had all this to live in . . . all this garden and the grounds beyond the garden . . . all of it was his and yet his final days were spent in a little room where he cooked, ate and slept, and he used a bathroom across the corridor for his ablutions. He lived in something akin to a dole collector's miserable accommodation . . . and just look at the state of the gardens. Mr Housecarl was a career soldier and his last action in life was a systematic retreat, first from the garden and then from the house, little by little, until he had just one room and a bathroom upstairs on the first floor, and there he made his last stand, fortunately for me, covering the contents of each room with dust sheets before closing the door of said room behind him for the final time.'

‘Eventually fetching up in a box room on the first floor?'

‘So it would seem.'

‘He would normally be our number one suspect, but it seems that he might have known nothing of what was going on outside his house.'

‘Yes . . . as I pointed out to the other officers . . . the doors, you see . . . apart from the door of his box room and the bathroom he used, apart from those two doors, all the hinges on all the doors had stiffened with long-term non-use.'

‘Hasn't been opened in years, you mean?'

‘If you like, yes, had not been opened in years. That is also apart from the back door and the door of the porch which enclosed it. He had a service from the Meals on Wheels people or rather a privately owned catering company. Meals on Wheels proper provides a service only to those folk who live below a certain income level.'

‘Yes . . . yes.'

‘And I understand that a district nurse called once or twice a week, so he was probably visited about four days out of seven.'

‘I see . . . that is useful to know, thanks.'

‘So, just four doors opened with ease.'

‘Back porch, back door, his bedroom door and his bathroom door?'

‘Yes. All the others were stiff, seized with, as you say, not being opened in years but . . . but . . . the door to the kitchen garden had been lubricated. It just did not open easily, it opened almost silently.'

‘Almost silently?'

‘Yes, as though it was overdue for lubrication. I knew then that something was amiss . . . but I didn't think . . . wow . . .' Seers shook his head slowly, ‘three skeletons . . . all in a row.'

Hennessey kept his own counsel in respect of the discovery of two further skeletons. ‘How long had the deceased, your client, been housebound?'

‘I don't know, but from my examination of the house I think it could have been a very long time . . . twenty, twenty-five years.'

‘As long as that?'

‘Well, he was ninety-seven when he expired, so probably in his seventies when he became housebound. The meals delivery people and the medical people will be able to help you there.'

‘Yes, we'll be talking to them.'

‘The kitchen garden could have been abandoned thirty plus years ago . . . the outbuildings . . . it was like going back in time, a car from the 1930s, a lawnmower of similar age, really robust looking garden tools, the sort of kit that would last a gardener all his working life.' Seers paused. ‘Sorry, this is your area of expertise, not mine, but some years ago, long time ago now, when my wife and I were newly married and in our first house . . . our next door neighbour was an elderly lady . . . lovely old soul and we noticed how she was often, and I mean very frequently, visited by youths and children, even as young as twelve years, girls as well as boys. She used to call them her “young visitors”. Said young visitors always carried bags which appeared to be laden when they arrived and empty when they left just a few moments later, so they were not stealing from her house and because of that we delayed calling the police . . . you gentlemen . . . but we did eventually phone the police.'

‘They were depositing stolen goods in her house to collect later.'

‘Yes,' Seers nodded, ‘that was it exactly.'

‘I was ahead of you . . . that does happen from time to time, sadly so,' Hennessey growled, ‘makes you angry.'

‘Yes,' Seers glanced at the sky and mopped his brow, ‘it made us very angry . . . all the people in the area, not just my wife and I. Lovely old lady and they were exploiting her like that. I mention that incident because the same thing probably happened here . . . someone . . . some felons chanced upon Bromyards and realized that it provided an excellent place to deposit illegal matter. Not stolen goods, as in the case of the elderly lady's house all those years ago . . . but bodies. I mean, three skeletons all in a row . . . even I know that that has to be murder.'

‘Indeed . . .' Hennessey replied and at that moment his attention was drawn to a red and white Riley circa 1947, which was driven slowly and was carefully parked beside a police patrol car. As he watched the car Hennessey felt a rush of warmth within him and his chest seemed to expand.

‘Lovely old car,' Seers commented. ‘It looks quite at home here.'

‘Yes, it belongs to our pathologist. I'll have to go and talk to her . . . but thank you, Mr Seers, it's been very useful. One of my colleagues will have to call on you and take a written statement in the next few days.'

‘Of course,' Seers smiled. ‘I quite expect that.'

‘But thank you again.'

Strange things had happened to the man during his life, strange other-worldly supernatural experiences, such as the elderly relative who appeared to him at what transpired to be the precise moment of her death and who looked at him with warning and admonition and disapproval in her eyes. He had also once walked into an alley in a northern city and sensed that ‘something happened' in the alley, and later found out that a violent murder had once occurred there. The ghosts he had seen, three all told, in his life, when other people in his company saw nothing of them. He also knew that things had happened before any news was broken or any report made. He was sitting in the front room of his home reading the
Yorkshire Post
when he put the paper down and stood and walked into the kitchen, where his slender wife was preparing their lunch, and said, ‘They've been found.'

His wife turned and nodded solemnly, and replied, ‘I know,' she sliced potatoes and dropped them into the steamer, ‘this morning.'

‘You said nothing?'

‘I was waiting to see if you felt it. If you hadn't said anything I would have told you after lunch.'

‘I see. When did it come to you?'

‘About fifteen minutes ago.'

‘They will be finding them just now in that case.'

‘Yes,' his wife replied calmly. ‘So now we have to wait; now we will find out if we were as careful as we thought we were.'

‘We took all the top clothes to charity shops in different towns and nothing less than one hour's drive from York.'

‘Burnt all the underclothing, soaked them with petrol . . . and a long way from the old house.'

‘I'm glad we did it,' the man said, ‘very glad. I enjoyed doing it.'

‘I know you did . . . I could tell.'

‘They had it easy,' the man sat at the varnished dining table, ‘they would have died in the night . . . freezing to death.'

‘Yes, we said so at the time . . . we told them so . . . don't worry, the pain of the cold will pass, then it will be like going to sleep . . . I still have a hunger for it.'

‘So do I,' the man took a piece of bread and broke it and ate it, ‘so do I.'

Hennessey followed Dr D'Acre as she knelt first by one skeleton, then moved reverentially and knelt by the next and the next and the next, as the scene of crime officers and the grim-faced constables stepped respectfully out of her way. Dr D'Acre remained silent as she inspected the chain round the ankle of one of the victims, examining the manner by which it was attached to the heavier chain that ran the length of the kitchen garden. She then examined the rope which had been used to gag each victim. ‘Nylon,' she commented as she stood.

‘The rope?' Hennessey replied. ‘Yes.'

‘Five?'

‘Yes, ma'am,' he paused and then added, ‘so far.'

‘So far?' Louise D'Acre raised her eyebrows. She was, Hennessey once again observed, a woman who wore no make-up at all save for a trace of pale, very pale, lipstick and who wore her hair very short, and yet who, in Hennessey's eye, was very feminine in appearance and mannerism. He also once again noticed how supple and strong she was as she knelt and rose and knelt and rose, which he knew from conversations they shared over time and from photographs on her office wall had been developed because of her passion for horse riding.

‘Yes, ma'am, so far. All are confined to this area, this walled garden.'

‘Kitchen garden.' Dr D'Acre allowed herself rare and brief eye contact with Hennessey. ‘This type of walled garden close to the main house is called the kitchen garden. It's where the vegetables would have been grown in the heyday of this estate.'

‘I see . . . well, we still have to clear the garden then use dogs to cover the remainder of the grounds, but we have indication that if any more bodies are here they will be in this area . . . the kitchen garden.'

‘What indications, may I ask?'

‘The doorway to the kitchen garden was found to be freed up with residual traces of lubricant, pretty well all other locks in the house and the outbuildings were found to be in a seized or at least semi-seized condition.'

‘Fair enough. So regular access needed without making undue noise?'

‘That's our thinking, but very early days yet.'