Late of This Parish (8 page)

‘The new man!' she repeated, ignoring the second part of her daughter's remark. ‘You talk as if he was the last of a string. He's only the second man Laura's ever shown any interest in, to my knowledge.'

‘You know what I mean. What's he like? Not another wimp, I hope. It's time something good happened to Laura, she deserves a break.' Philly swung her legs. She was sitting on the edge of the kitchen table, biting into a crisp apple with her sharp white teeth.

‘He's certainly not a wimp, whatever that might imply. No oil-painting, I'll grant you, and frightfully intellectual. Fairly intimidating to talk to, and very abrupt. Anyone else and I'd think he was shy, but it's more likely he's just impatient with lesser mortals.' Aware by Philly's quizzical look that she was damning with faint praise, Miriam stopped. ‘If he suits Laura, what does that matter?'

‘Not a lot, I agree. But crikey, she does pick 'em, doesn't she?'

If there had previously been a shade of reserve in Miriam's acceptance of David Illingworth, it vanished as she had a momentary vision of Laura's face, seen that morning. She said decidedly, ‘He's going to be very good for her, she looks happy for the first time in ages, and she's really coming out of her shell. So smart lately you wouldn't recognize her. You should've seen the outfit she had on today.'

Philly contemplated one slim, bare brown foot. ‘Well, whatever, this one has to be an improvement on Jon Reece.' Miriam's eyebrows rose in astonishment. ‘Jon? What's poor Jon done to deserve that? There's nothing wrong with Jon that I can see. Unless,' she said severely, ‘being popular with everybody – and amusing and good-looking into the bargain, is wrong. What's more, he may be Headmaster by the end of the year – well, either him or David.'

‘Mum, you're priceless!' Philly said, in the way she had of making her mother feel as though their roles were reversed and it was she who was the child, a feat of not inconsiderable skill when dealing with Miriam. Then she added obscurely, ‘You don't see what's under your nose, do you?'

‘Must be like living in a goldfish bowl, Parson's Place,' Kite remarked. ‘Not somewhere to be having it off with the neighbour's wife.'

‘I don't know, looks to me as though most of the front windows'll overlook the valley. There's no view from this side. No garages, either, two entries and one way round the square. But somebody may've seen something.'

The house-to-house inquiry would find out if anyone had. As it looked at the moment, whoever had killed Willard must have gone in behind him and left before Oliver went in. Twenty minutes at the outside. Leaving plenty of time for a row to develop and tempers to rise. But imagine, Mayo thought, imagine walking up to the altar to get the cushion and corning back with it, with the old chap watching all the time, knowing what was going to happen and not being able to do a thing about it. No, he'd rather not imagine that, he thought, sickened.

He telephoned Howard Cherry, the Detective-Superintendent, to give him a brief rundown on what was happening. Cherry listened in his usual attentive way and then said, ‘I'll let the powers that be know and then I'll be along to have a look around myself as soon as I can, but I have to pick my daughter up from a disco first. I don't imagine you'll be finished just yet awhile.' Not yet – but no later than we can help, Mayo thought, yawning, his lack of sleep beginning to make itself felt, hoping mightily that Cherry would get a move on, tell Cinderella it was an early night for once.

Meanwhile, since Laura Willard was in no condition at present to be questioned, and Mrs Oliver was not at home, Mayo decided to take himself along for a brief look around the house where Willard had lived, taking Wainwright with him and leaving to Kite the logistics of setting the investigation in motion. Kite made it plain he'd rather have been with him than coping with all the mundane details, but hard cheese. All part of the pecking order, mate. It was Mayo's prerogative to leave him to it, just as it was Cherry's to keep
him
waiting all bloody night if necessary.

She'd a bit of a nerve, Mrs Oliver, scooting off like that, knowing she was a key witness to the time Willard had last been seen, he thought as they walked round the corner. Probably another bossy, self-possessed woman, much the same type as Mrs Thorne, to whom he had spoken a few minutes before.

He was a little intrigued by Mrs Thorne. A large woman whom he judged to be normally good-tempered and probably loquacious, in this instance she had become suddenly tight-lipped when questioned, insisting that Laura Willard should be left alone. She'd reluctantly allowed him a few minutes with Laura after warning him that she'd been given sleeping pills and would be drowsy, and had subsequently sent him packing before there was any chance of being able to conduct a proper interview, which he felt he couldn't decently insist upon in view of that young woman's evident exhaustion. While conceding that Mrs Thorne was showing concern for her charge, Mayo, who could recognize evasion at fifty yards, left her alone for the moment. Interviewing the lady would have to wait until a more convenient time presented itself.

Two roads led off Parson's Place. One was the narrow, overhung Dobbs Lane, the other St Kenelm's Walk. Things had changed since Saint Kenelm had walked there. It now began with half a dozen Georgian houses on the left-hand side and led to a path, fenced with iron railings, which overlooked the broad sweep of the valley and the river below and came eventually to the castle. On the opposite side of the road to the houses was a high brick wall which had at some more affluent and leisurely period been constructed to hide the sight of offending washing lines and privies in the backyards of the houses which fronted Main Street.

The Willard house was the third one on the Walk. As the two police officers rounded the corner an ambulance was preparing to draw away from No. 2. ‘Hello,' Wainwright said, ‘that's old Mrs Crawshaw's.' He quickened his steps and spoke to the uniformed woman driver for a moment as she closed the back doors and then watched her quickly reverse out of the street and drive off. ‘Seems she's been taken bad, poor old soul. Lives alone but she managed to get to the telephone. Dr Hameed's had a busy night.'

As the noise of the engine receded it was very quiet. Not a soul was in sight. In a town a crowd would have materialized within seconds at the sight of an ambulance. ‘Not very curious round here, are they?' Mayo remarked.

‘Oh, I wouldn't bet on that! But the young married couple that live at No. 1 are away on holiday. And Mr and Mrs Vigo at No. 4 wouldn't hear the last trump. Here's the Willards' house. Shall we go in, sir?'

Wainwright was a young family man, painfully slow to Mayo who was used to quicker reactions in his men, but eager to be helpful and endowed with plenty of common sense. He'd been the village plod for some years and was seemingly content to stay in a place where he didn't often have to work unsocial hours, the place was to his liking and he knew everyone, at least by name. The Reverend Willard, he said as they went into the house, had been known to him personally, in a manner of speaking. That is, Wainwright had called to see him officially on the occasions when Mr Willard had had cause to make complaints.

‘In the habit of making them then, was he?'

Wainwright scratched the side of his nose. ‘Well, he'd been a bit touchy, like. Couldn't abide these motorbikes some of the young lads had and he'd had this thing about garden bonfires and then, last week, there'd been that business of the badgers.'

‘Badgers?'

‘Come and see, sir. You'll better understand what I mean.' Wainwright extended a thick arm from the sitting-room towards the garden.

Threading his way between old-fashioned leather club-type chairs with sagging seats and velvet cushions, Wainwright, followed by Mayo, opened the french window and stepped out onto a wooden ramp that gave on to a stone-flagged area. This in turn led to a stretch of garden in which flowering shrubs and spring bulbs, though leached of their colour by the now bright moonlight, were making a lavish display. That part of the garden which lay beyond the lawn and the mixed borders was invisible from the house, evidently having been constructed on the steep slope descending to the valley.

‘Wonderful views from this side of Wyvering in the daytime.' Wainwright's eyes brightened with pride, as proprietorial of his patch as though he was personally responsible for its attractiveness. ‘And very particular about his garden, Mr Willard was. Had somebody in to do the rough stuff, of course, but he used to potter about in it himself, do what he could. He told me his daughter had bought him a set of those long-handled tools that he could use from his wheelchair. Proper upset he was when he saw what the badgers had done to the lawn, and can you wonder? It used to be like a bowling-green.'

It was a shambles now. If a herd of pigs had been let loose to root they could have done no worse. Holes the size of a pudding basin had been dug by powerful claws, eruptions of torn-up turf marred its flat surface.

‘You reckon
badgers
did that?'

‘And not for the first time,' Wainwright answered, enjoying Mayo's untutored townie surprise. ‘Every time he got it patched up, the dang things'd come and root it up again. Not a lot you can do about it, neither, them being a protected species.' Wainwright admitted to being a keen gardener himself and it was evident where his sympathies lay.

‘Upsetting,' Mayo agreed as they re-entered the house. ‘But what did he expect you to do about it?'

‘Oh well, the thing is, he reckoned there's folks around here who've been encouraging them, like. Putting food out. Disgraceful, he thought that, and he made no secret of it,' Wainwright explained, looking as though he thought it was pretty disgraceful himself. ‘Then last week, there was three of the animals found shot and the reverend was accused of shooting 'em.'

‘Good Lord. Could he have done?'

‘Not directly, because the RSPCA chap reckoned they must've died immediately and they was found a goodish way from here, near what they call their sett, down by the river. But the person that accused him thought he could've put somebody up to it as you might say.'

‘Who accused him?'

The question obviously embarrassed Wainwright. His country-fresh face flushed even more deeply and his giveaway ears glowed. ‘I reckon it was Mrs Oliver, the Rector's wife. That's what she
thought
had happened, at any rate.'

No wonder the Rector had been upset at being asked if Willard had had any enemies when it seemed that his own wife might have fallen into that category. ‘What do you think yourself? Is it likely?'

‘She's a lovely woman, Mrs Oliver. A real lady, quiet and nice to everybody,' Wainwright answered obliquely, his words cancelling the mental image Mayo had formed of her. ‘But she has this thing about animals. Organizes collections for them in the village and writes letters to the papers and all that sort of jazz. Can't abide cruelty to them.' He added, looking at his shoes, ‘No more can most decent people, and I'm not meaning to say she'd've gone so far as to kill the old chap for it, neither. That's just daft.'

Mayo stood with his hands in his pockets, his apparently vague gaze wandering. This was the main sitting-room, but evidently the old man had used it as his study. There were all those books, for one thing. You could hardly move for them. Spilling off the shelves on to every surface which might accommodate them, even the floor. A big desk stood in the corner and a good many rather dull pictures and photographs adorned the walls. There was a dim, overall impression of Edwardian brownness and shabby, undemanding comfort.

‘Anything else you can tell me about Mr Willard's relationships with other people?' he asked. ‘Or anything at all that might throw a bit of light on his death?'

Murder on his patch was unprecedented and had evidently shaken Wainwright, but his daily duties didn't normally call for the exercise of such imaginative insight and he couldn't easily bring it into play now. But at least he knew his fellow-villagers. ‘Everybody's pretty law-abiding round here, no trouble much to speak of. There's young Lampeter, of course,' he offered after further cogitation. ‘Danny Lampeter. He does the garden here for the Willards two or three times a week, and it was him Mrs Oliver reckoned had actually shot the badgers. But he swore he hadn't and he doesn't have a gun, neither was they shot with the same gun as Mr Willard has. His is only a Webley airgun, capable of doing a bit of damage mind, but not a twelve-bore shotgun, like the one that was used on the badgers.'

When Mayo had sorted out what the constable had said from what he actually meant to say, he asked, ‘But if Lampeter shot the badgers at Willard's instigation, presumably he was on Willard's side?'

‘That's as maybe,' Wainwright said obscurely. ‘There's no accounting for them Lampeters.'

‘What d'you mean? Has he been in trouble before?'

‘Once or twice before he went in the army. Joyriding and nicking radios from cars, that sort of thing, but nothing since ... nothing I can lay a finger on, at any rate. Mind you, hard to say what he lives on since he come out the army. He lives with his sister, Ruth. She keeps the post office – and him and all, I shouldn't wonder. Thinks the sun shines out of his backside, but he's a lazy devil. Odd jobs here and there, that's all he seems to do.' He added thoughtfully, ‘Never seems short of a bit of the ready, though.'

Having finally ascertained that the badger-shooting had been the most disruptive event to happen in Castle Wyvering for at least a year, and that nothing more sinister which could account for Willard's death had been brought to Wainwright's notice, Mayo let him go.

He wouldn't dismiss this quarrel about the badgers; passions were often aroused by much less. But he had other ideas as well, after seeing Laura Willard.