The Marriage Hearse (2 page)

‘Was she renting this place or …?’

Heffernan shook his head. ‘No. They’d bought it, her and her fiancé.’

‘Did he live here with her?’

‘No. He lives with his parents at Garbenford – halfway between Neston and Tradmouth. She’d been staying at the cottage while
they had some building work done. Kitchen extension apparently. They’ve had the place rewired, a new bathroom and they’ve
decorated from top to bottom.’

Wesley raised his eyebrows. ‘Pity she didn’t live to enjoy it. You’d think she’d have wanted to get married from her mother’s
house.’

Heffernan shrugged. No doubt she had her reasons.

‘Know anything about the fiancé?’

‘Not a thing. But no doubt we’ll find out.’

‘I wonder where he was between eleven and when he turned up at the church.’

Gerry Heffernan scratched his head. ‘I wonder.’

Maritia Peterson, Wesley’s only sister, was the house guest from heaven rather than the other place. She entertained the kids,
helped to clear up their mess and cooked the occasional meal. And she spent a great deal of time out of the house, redecorating
the old vicarage in the village of Belsham where her fiancé, Mark – Belsham’s new vicar – was already living under rather
chaotic conditions. She was hardly a young woman who got in the way. But this didn’t stop her sister-in-law, Pam, finding
the presence of another adult in the house a strain after a hard day’s teaching.

When Wesley had received the phone call early on a Saturday afternoon summoning him to deal with someone who’d been
thoughtless enough to die in suspicious circumstances, she had experienced a pang of resentment. And when Maritia had returned
from the vicarage to get changed, Pam had left her to entertain the children. She felt restless, discontented with her lot
but she wasn’t sure why. She had told Maritia that she had to go out, not saying where to, and left her holding the babies.

Pam had been brought up in a household quite unlike that of the churchgoing Petersons from Trinidad. She had been raised by
a feckless mother who taught sociology at a local college – a woman with an eclectic taste in men, alcohol and the occasional
illegal substance – and she wasn’t altogether comfortable with the Petersons’ brand of Christian virtue. Usually she tried
hard, for Wesley’s sake, but today she felt the strain. She had to get out of the house. And the first person she thought
of was Neil Watson.

As she drove towards Neston, she gripped the steering wheel, concentrating on the slow-moving traffic stuck behind a parade
of caravans and coaches. It was Saturday at the start of the holiday season. Wesley should be home on a sunny Saturday. Home
with her and the children. But he was at work again. Sometimes she imagined that he arranged with a network of tame criminals
for their offences to take place outside normal office hours just to spite her.

Neil was working at Tradington Hall and she knew that the fact it was the weekend meant nothing to him. In his own way, she
supposed, Neil was as work-obsessed as Wesley. But archaeologists, unlike police officers, are rarely called out after midnight
to view some stinking corpse. If Wesley had stuck to his original choice of career, she might not have had to put up with
the ruined meals and the worry. And the constant, tiny voice in the very back of her mind telling her that somehow the job
was more important to him than she was.

She turned the car into the drive of Tradington Hall and took her foot off the accelerator. She had been there many times
before. When she had studied English at university she had attended a creative writing course there. And she had seen many
plays, good, bad and indifferent, in its intimate theatre. The hall itself was a substantial stone house, arranged around
three sides of a large
rectangular courtyard. If dated from the late fourteenth century and the guidebooks boasted that it was one of the most important
examples of medieval domestic architecture in the south-west, if not the entire country. To Pam it had always looked pretty
impressive.

In the 1950s Tradington Hall had become a centre for the arts, internationally renowned. And over the years the demands on
its delicate medieval fabric were such that more space was needed. New art studios were to be built near the old stables and,
as was normal at such an historically sensitive site, Neil’s team had been asked to conduct an excavation before the construction
began.

She left the car in the public car park and walked up the drive until she reached the stables which now served as recording
studios. At the side of the stables she could see a tall wire fence, erected to prevent members of the public from stumbling
into deep trenches, breaking limbs and suing the trust that owned the hall for obscene sums of money. Pam stood behind the
fence watching as three figures – two women, one young, one middle aged, and a long-haired man – knelt in the deepest trench,
absorbed in their task of scraping at the red earth.

She called out, ‘Neil,’ and the man looked up.

He grinned. ‘What brings you here?’ He straightened himself up, put his trowel down carefully beside a bucket full of soil
and climbed out of the trench. When he reached Pam he kissed her cheek. Then he took a step back and looked at her. ‘What’s
the matter?’

‘Nothing. Why should anything be the matter? How’s it going?’

‘We’ve got a bit of medieval pottery and some building debris from when a section of the hall’s west wing was demolished in
the eighteenth century. A couple of very nice clay pipes – quite early. And an Anglo-Saxon brooch – not sure how that got
there. Is this a social call or …’

‘Wesley’s working. There’s been another murder.’ She was aware of the mounting anger in her voice. She’d told herself time
and time again that it wasn’t his fault if he had to follow the dictates of his work. But then he didn’t have to field Michael’s
constant questions about the whereabouts of Daddy.

‘That’s police work for you,’ said Neil. ‘When I come across
human remains at least nobody expects me to find the culprit.’ He smiled and put a comforting hand on her arm. ‘Fancy a cup
of tea? The café in the hall’s open.’

‘That’s just what I need. How are you, anyway?’

‘Fine.’ He hesitated for a second. ‘But I had a call from Hannah last night. She can’t come over next weekend. Her father’s
been taken ill.’

Pam made the appropriate noises of regret, suppressing a vague feeling of relief. It was really none of her business if Neil
embarked on a relationship with some woman he’d met a few months back when he was on a dig over on the other side of the Atlantic
in Virginia.

When they reached the main house Neil stopped to study the huge notice board in the entrance hall. A section was dedicated
to advertising the various courses the centre offered. But the lion’s share of the available space advertised the forthcoming
Neston Arts Festival.

Pam scanned the notice board and one thing in particular caught her eye. A poster the colour of fresh blood advertising a
new play.
The Fair Wife of Padua
. Well, not a new play exactly. She had read about it in the local paper. It was an Elizabethan play, written by one of Shakespeare’s
contemporaries and lost for centuries until a copy turned up in some dusty archive. Quite a story. Perhaps she should make
the effort to buy tickets.

If Wesley didn’t prefer the company of the wicked or the dead.

An incident room had been set up at Tradmouth Police Station. A large bright room on the first floor next to the main CID
office. Two pictures of Kirsten Harbourn were already pinned to the notice board – one showing her alive and smiling, standing
on the quay-side at Tradmouth against the background of tall yachts’ masts, the other showing her lying dead, her pretty features
contorted. It was an image Wesley Peterson found offensive. But this was a murder investigation and squeamishness wasn’t going
to help them catch her killer.

When Wesley reached the station he longed to sit down and collect his thoughts, but Gerry Heffernan had called a meeting of
the investigation team. Once it was over and tasks had been assigned, he summoned Wesley to his office. Wesley could guess
why. Heffernan was a man who liked to throw ideas around.

When Wesley opened the office door the chief inspector was sitting with his feet up on the desk. His shoes needed heeling
but then that was probably the last thing on his mind.

‘So what have we got, Wes?’ he said as Wesley took a seat.

‘So far? Not much. Deceased is a twenty-three-year-old woman called Kirsten Harbourn who was due to marry a …’ He looked down
at a sheet of paper in his hand. ‘Peter Creston at one o’clock today at Stoke Raphael church. She went to the hairdresser’s
with her mother and her bridesmaid first thing this morning, then the bridesmaid left to visit her father in hospital and
her mother went off to see to some last-minute arrangements at the hotel. The dead woman was left alone in the cottage at
eleven when her mum dropped her off and she was due to be picked up by her dad in the wedding car at twelve thirty.’

‘That’s unusual, isn’t it? A bride getting ready on her own. Usually you get all the female relatives buzzing round like wasps
at a picnic.’

‘It seems she insisted. She told her mother to go to the hotel to check that everything was just so for the reception. It
sounds as if she was a perfectionist – or perhaps it was just a manifestation of pre-wedding nerves.’

‘The door was unlocked. No sign of forced entry. Opportunist attacker, do you think?’

Wesley shrugged. ‘Too early to say. But it’s possible. In all the excitement she might have been a bit careless with her security.
Or she might have known her attacker. Perhaps she was expecting him or her. Maybe that’s why she got her mum out of the way.’

‘It’s possible. But I reckon some passing sex maniac saw her through the window in her posh wedding underwear and her blue
garter. He tries the door and finds his luck’s in. Strangles her with the flex from the bedside lamp.’

‘Was she raped?’

‘It looks likely. Colin’ll be able to tell us for certain at the postmortem.’

‘Which is when?

‘Tomorrow morning. First thing.’

‘No Sunday morning lie in then.’

Heffernan’s chubby face turned bright red. ‘Well I …’

‘Something the matter?’

The chief inspector shook his head. ‘I’m just going out tonight, that’s all.’

Wesley watched his face. He was keeping something back. Which, for a man who was normally so transparent, was unusual. Perhaps
it was a woman, Wesley thought. Maybe Gerry Heffernan had got himself a date. He hoped his guess was right. His boss was a
widower who had been without the love of a good woman – or any kind of woman come to that – for much too long. And Gerry wasn’t
one of nature’s bachelors.

Heffernan’s phone rang and he picked it up. From his martyred expression, Wesley guessed that it was Chief Superintendent
Nutter on the other end of the line, wanting to be apprised of the latest developments, such as they were. Wesley tiptoed
out of the door into the main CID office, where he spotted DS Rachel Tracey.

Rachel had just picked up her shoulderbag. She looked up, flicked her fair hair off her face and gave Wesley a shy smile.
‘I’m going to see the dead girl’s mother. I’m taking Trish with me.’

‘I take it her husband’ll be there too.’

‘Apparently not. They’re divorced. He’s at home being consoled by his new wife. I’ll pay him a call after I’ve seen the mother.
She’s gone to the hotel where the reception was to be held, would you believe.’

Wesley raised his eyebrows. ‘Really?’

Rachel shrugged. ‘It was going to be a big wedding by all accounts. I suppose there’s a lot to see to. Perhaps she wants to
keep busy to take her mind off things. They say it sometimes helps.’

Wesley looked down at her desk. Beside a pile of witness reports was something that looked like a playscript. ‘Taken up acting
again?’ He couldn’t resist asking.

Her cheeks turned an attractive shade of pink. ‘It’s only a small part. A maidservant. My mum’s been helping with the costumes
for the Neston Festival and she persuaded me. I used to be in the divisional amateur dramatic society and …’

‘What’s the play?’

‘An Elizabethan tragedy. Someone found the manuscript in a library somewhere. Never been performed before – well not for a
few hundred years. It’s called
The Fair Wife of Padua
. We’re doing it in modern dress.’

‘Any good?’

She pulled a face. ‘Not really my cup of tea. Reminds me too much of work.’

Wesley waited for her to explain but DC Trish Walton had returned from the ladies and was standing in the office doorway,
watching Rachel expectantly.

‘I’d better go,’ Rachel said. ‘You and the boss are going to talk to the bridegroom, is that right?’

Wesley nodded.

‘Good luck.’

He watched her leave the room with Trish and felt a fresh pang of guilt that he wasn’t at home with Pam.

Joyce Barnes was glad to get out of the office. In the warmer months, Saturday was always a busy day for weddings and it took
a great effort of will on her part not to let it feel like a conveyor belt. She looked at her watch. The next happy couple
were booked for three thirty so she just had time to go to Huntings and buy some milk.

She wanted to get home early that evening. Soak in the bath and choose something appropriate to wear. Something not too revealing.
Something that made her look younger than her years. She wished she could lose weight but, however hard she fought, the biscuits
and chocolates were always victorious. She blamed her ex-husband, of course. In fact she blamed him for most of the things
that were wrong in her life – it was always handy to have a ready-made scapegoat. If he hadn’t left her for a girl twenty
years his junior, she wouldn’t have sought comfort in food. She would still be as sylph-like as the day she had married him.
And then there was her mother, of course. She had to be looked after. Life used to be so simple.