Fate Worse Than Death (25 page)

‘No, Mister.' The old man's response was stern and proud. ‘We manage for ourselves, me an'the boy. We live as it suits us. My late wife's cousin Beryl was all for coming over once a week to clean for us, but I wouldn't have it. She's a terror for cleaning. She'd turn everything upside down, throw things away, make us uncomfortable. She wouldn't let us keep the ol'dog indoors, nor yet the hen …' His trembling hands clutched the white Leghorn so hard that it woke with a squawk of protest. ‘No, Mister. We want no women here!'

Quantrill verbally smoothed their ruffled feathers, and pointed out that Sandra Websdell had been kept under cover somewhere in the vicinity of Fodderstone. The Thorolds had a number of outbuildings on their property, which someone might have used without their knowledge; might he and Sergeant Lloyd take a look round?

Albert Thorold seemed exhausted after his outburst. He sat back in his chair, nursing the hen which was still chuntering with black-eyed, wattle-quivering indignation. ‘There's no need for you to do that, Mister,' he said tremulously. ‘If anybody had been here, I'd ha'known. But you may look an'welcome.' His eyes closed, then flicked open again. ‘Will you be wanting any eggs afore you go?'

Most of the buildings scattered about the clearing were hen-houses, their size and shape dictated by whatever construction material had been to hand. Although the Thorolds were woodmen, they were clearly not carpenters; without exception the sheds were too ramshackle to have contained a strong young woman for three weeks. Even so, the detectives made a point of looking into all the larger buildings.

The ensuing commotion from the resident hens brought Christopher Thorold hurrying from the woodyard. The Chief Inspector listened to his stammered protests, and explained that they had his father's permission to look round. Christopher shifted his boots uneasily, but he said, ‘That's all right, then.'

Quantrill asked to see where the corn was kept. Christopher hesitated for a few moments, then plodded off towards the rear of the cottage. Quantrill followed him. Hilary stopped to wipe her shoes on a tussock of grass and then went after them, observing as she did so that there were no sheds of any kind behind the main building. There had once, perhaps, been a flower garden, but like the rest of the clearing – apart from the wired-off vegetable patch – it had been scratched and pecked to a dusty waste.

The back wall of the cottage was built not of grey brick but of rough flints; it looked as though it had once belonged to a much older building. It contained no windows, but a stable door, the upper half of which was open.

Christopher came to a halt some yards from the door. ‘That's the barn,' he said. ‘That's where we keep the corn for the hens, an'the straw for their nests. An'suchlike.'

‘And you come here every day? No one else could use this barn without your knowledge?'

‘Why, yes – no –' Confused, Christopher hung his head. Then he took one long pace forward, and shuffled his feet. ‘I – I feed the hens twice a day,' he volunteered. ‘They lay well. W-would you like some eggs?'

Hilary gave him a half-smile and shook her head. Quantrill ignored the question and opened the lower half of the stable door.

Although it was housed under the cottage roof, the barn's only entrance was from the outside. A narrow, gloomy place, the width of the cottage and the height of the rafters, it contained – as far as they could see – exactly what Christopher Thorold had said: corn in sacks and in a large zinc bin, straw in bales and scattered loose on the floor.

‘This looks a possibility,' muttered Quantrill to Hilary, taking advantage of the fact that Christopher Thorold made no attempt to follow them inside. ‘It's even more isolated than Charley Horrocks's woodshed.'

‘Yes – but the cottage isn't unvisited. People come here for eggs. If Christopher had tried to keep Sandra in this barn, surely she'd have heard the callers and cried out. He couldn't have risked it.'

‘I doubt if she would have heard, shut in round the back here.'

‘I don't see Christopher abducting her, though. Or his father being a party to it. I don't think they're the kind of men who'd do that.'

‘You're not being sentimental about them, are you?' Quantrill asked.

‘Possibly,' she admitted. ‘But where's their motive? They're obviously very contented with the life they live here.'

‘That's true. But Christopher's afraid of bullies, isn't he? He might well have acted under pressure from the Flintknappers Arms mob. I'd certainly like to have this barn thoroughly searched, as well as Horrocks's woodshed. I reckon –'

He was interrupted by a call, in a vigorous masculine Suffolk voice, coming from someone approaching from the front of the cottage. ‘Chris! Where are you, boy? Your Pa says the police are here upsetting you!'

‘G-good-day, Stan …' they heard Christopher Thorold say. It was not an enthusiastic greeting.

‘What are the coppers doing to upset you?' demanded the newcomer.

‘No upset, Stan. They're jus' looking round. Pa told'em they could.'

‘So he said. Looking round's one thing, though – poking about's another. They've got no right to poke about on your property, Chris, and you're a fool to let'em. You tell'em to clear off.'

Quantrill stepped out of the barn door. Christopher Thorold stood exactly where they had left him, his head hanging. His visitor, bald and belligerent, stood with his hands on his hips, his greying chest hair thrusting through the sweat-damp lattice of his vest.

‘Stanley Bolderow?' enquired the Chief Inspector. ‘I was going to come to talk to you, so you've saved my time.' He glanced towards the man with the flourishing sidewhiskers who was sidling up behind Bolderow. ‘And are you Reginald Osler?'

‘That's us,' said Stan Bolderow. ‘An'we've come here to talk to
you
. They told us at the police caravan that this is where we'd find you. Me and Reg –'

‘What it is, Chief Inspector and Miss,' intervened Reg soapily, ‘is that when the police officer came round yesterday to ask us what we were doing on Tuesday evening, we told him that we'd spent the whole of opening time at the Flintknappers Arms. We forgot to tell him that we went somewhere else first. We didn't remember until we were talking about it not an hour ago, and we knew we ought to put the record straight right away. Else you might ha'thought we'd been lying.'

‘Very probably,' said the Chief Inspector. He swatted some flies away from his face, and then folded his arms. ‘All right, I'm listening. Where were you, between six and seven-thirty on Tuesday evening?'

‘Why, here!' said Stan Bolderow. He clapped Christopher Thorold on the shoulder. ‘Here along o'young Chris – eh, boy? Me an' Reg were just setting off for the Knappers at six, when my missus said she wanted some eggs. She likes to get'em fresh from Chris's Pa, but it's a long walk for her. So we got in my truck, the three of us –'

‘His missus came too,' explained Reg, ‘on account of her own Dad was an old pal o'Chris's Pa –'

‘– an'we came here. Bought the eggs, had a mardle with the old boy in the house, came out to the woodyard to see young Chris – eh, boy? – and then drove the missus and her eggs back home. It must ha'been after half-past seven afore we got to the Knappers, and that's where we were for the rest o'the evening. An'that's the truth.'

‘Definitely,' said Reg. ‘Chris's Pa remembers us being here early Tuesday evening, an'I bet Chris does too. You do, don't you, Chris boy?'

Christopher swung his head like a frightened bullock. The combination of nervous tension and humid air had brought a rash of sweat out on his forehead, and now the drops began to trickle down and soak his fair-grey eyebrows. ‘W-why yes. That's right …'

‘An' you can ask my missus to prove it,' Stan concluded triumphantly, announcing her name and their address. ‘She'll tell you we were here. She'll show you the very eggs!'

Quantrill didn't doubt it. Whatever had gone on in or near the village on Tuesday evening was evidently regarded as a private local matter. From where he stood, watching Stan Bolderow and Reg Osler move up on either side of the hapless Christopher Thorold, Fodderstone's closed ranks looked solid.

On the morning of Friday 11 August, Annabel Yardley disappeared.

As she was staying by herself at Beech House, and spending much of her time dashing about the countryside visiting friends and arranging flowers, her absence might not have been noticed for some days. It was her horse that gave an immediate alarm by clattering, saddled but riderless, through Fodderstone village soon after 8.30 a.m.

The sweating black gelding was caught outside the mobile incident room by two policemen. Several villagers identified it as belonging to Mrs Seymour of Beech House, and knew that it had been ridden latterly by the woman who was staying there. Police visited the house and found no one at home. Mrs Yardley was not in the stable yard nor in the grounds.

The natural presumption was that she had been thrown from her horse. Possibly she was lying injured somewhere. The Sandra Websdell enquiry was temporarily shelved, and all available police officers were sent out to search the lanes and bridleways.

Local people also helped. A farmer's wife who sometimes rode with Annabel Yardley toured their favourite forest tracks in a Land Rover, with friends as look-outs; with no result. But there was of course the possibility that the horse had taken fright and bolted among the trees, throwing its rider some distance from the bridleway. In that event, she might be lying anywhere.

‘Looks as though we'll have to put out a public appeal for volunteers and mount a general search,' said Chief Inspector Quantrill towards the end of the morning. ‘She must be out there somewhere. Unless …'

He and Sergeant Lloyd looked at each other, half-reluctant to voice the thought that had occurred to both of them.

‘Do you think it's likely?' asked Hilary.

‘It's possible, isn't it? We suspect that more than one man was involved in Sandra's abduction, but we still don't know what they wanted her
for
. Her death seems to have been unpremeditated, so it must have left them with their business unfinished. If one of them came across another woman this morning, on her own in the forest after having been thrown from her horse, he might have seen her as a replacement for Sandra.'

‘But the Flintknappers Arms lot know that we're on to them. Surely they wouldn't take that risk?'

‘They might, if they're using some other building. Somewhere we haven't yet found. But we'll start with their own premises – I want a quick swoop made on Thorold's barn, Horrocks's woodshed, and Braithwaite's boathouse, just to make sure that Mrs Yardley isn't there. We'd better have simultaneous visits made on Bolderow and Osler as well.'

‘I'm going to see Lois Goodwin today,' said Hilary. ‘I'll persuade her to give me a tour of the Flintknappers Arms while I'm there. But even if this does turn out to be an abduction, mightn't it be personal to Mrs Yardley? Perhaps someone completely unconnected with Fodderstone had a motive for abducting her. I can imagine that her private life is a bit complicated.'

‘Hmm. Well, yes, that's another angle to be considered.' Quantrill scratched his chin and thought about it. ‘And as it happens, we know someone who's involved with her, don't we? What's more – not that I'm suggesting he'd abduct her – we know that he went to see her last night.'

Though the weather was still hot and humid, visibility had improved sufficiently for Martin Tait to go flying. When he landed, he found the Chief Inspector waiting for him outside the hangar.

‘I've had a devil of a job tracking you down,' complained Quantrill. ‘What's this bull you gave your aunt about being recalled by the regional crime squad?'

Tait was in an icy mood. He hadn't been able to enjoy his flight, conscious all the time of the hideous cost of private flying: aircraft fuel, hangar space, engineering, insurance, airworthiness certification, club membership.

‘What I told my aunt is no concern of anyone else,' he snapped.

‘I thought you were going to stay with her all week. Anything wrong between you?'

‘Of course not. Aunt Con's not well, that's all. I thought I was imposing on her, so I made an excuse to leave. Though what it's got to do with you –'

‘All right – sorry I asked. I've come to see you about Mrs Yardley.'

They were walking together across the hot concrete apron towards the flying-club premises. Quantrill had hoped to be offered a beer at the bar, but it began to seem unlikely. Tait had stopped in mid-stride and was staring at him with suspicion, even hostility.

‘What about Mrs Yardley?'

‘You visited her yesterday evening, didn't you? You rang the incident room afterwards to say she knew nothing about the Websdells'garden gnome.'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, she's now missing.' Quantrill explained the circumstances, and the possibility that Mrs Yardley's disappearance might be linked with Sandra's. ‘On the other hand, the answer may be in her private life. And I thought you were the man to talk to about that.'

‘Me? Good God, you don't mean to say you suspect –?'

‘Stop jumping down my throat, will you? I'm simply asking for information about the woman. You're obviously on intimate terms with her, so I thought you'd know.'

‘That's not true. I am not on intimate terms with her.'

‘No? Didn't you spend the night with her on Wednesday? It certainly looked as though that was what you'd planned. And then last night –'

Tait controlled his temper with an obvious effort. ‘For your information,' he said, stiff-jawed, cold-eyed, ‘I have never had any kind of sexual relationship with the woman. I haven't even touched her. And I know nothing about her private life. My visit last night was official, at your request. I wasn't with her more than five minutes. And on Wednesday evening I didn't stay with her for more than a quarter of an hour after you'd gone.'