The Moth Catcher (2 page)

She nodded as if she understood how these things worked. ‘A bit odd then – you not knowing the man. If he was local.’

‘He doesn’t live in the valley.’ Percy was sure about that. ‘He’s a visitor maybe.’ He paused. ‘Susan would probably know.’

‘Susan?’

‘My daughter. Lives with me.’

There was the sound of another vehicle. This time a police car with a couple of uniformed officers inside. Vera Stanhope climbed back to the lane. ‘The cavalry,’ she said. ‘Just in time. I’m gasping for a cup of tea, and you’ll be starving. Why don’t you make your way home and I’ll follow you when I’ve chatted to the workers. Your Susan can tell me what she knows about the lad in the ditch.’

She turned up half an hour later. Percy and Susan were still at the table, but the cottage pie had been eaten and they were onto tea and home-made cake. His Susan had always been a lovely baker. There was no sweetness in her nature these days and Percy had the sudden notion that it all went into her cakes and puddings. The detective knocked at the kitchen door, but didn’t wait for anyone to answer. Just inside, she pulled off her shoes. Percy thought that was a smart move. Susan couldn’t abide anyone bringing dirt into the house.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’ And with that, the detective was at the table, and Susan had already fetched another cup and saucer. Tea was poured and a slice of cake had been cut. The bright conker eyes were looking at them.

‘Percy here told me you’d know all about the lad he found in the ditch. We’ve got a name for him now, at least. There was a wallet in his jacket with a credit and debit card. And a driver’s licence. Patrick Randle. Does that mean anything to you?’ She bit into the cake.

Susan was enjoying every minute of this. Since Brian had left and the kids had gone away – Karen to university and Lee to the army – gossip was what brought her to life. Malicious gossip suited her best, and she’d upset most of the women in the village. It pained him that she had so few friends. ‘Patrick,’ Susan said, ‘that’s the name of the house-sitter at the Hall.’

Vera looked at her without interrupting, and Susan continued.

‘When the major and his wife go away to stay with their son in Australia, they bring someone in to look after the house. Well, it’s more to look after the dogs really, but they feel happier knowing there’s someone onsite at night. When they’re away I still go in a couple of times a week – it’s a good chance to give the place a good clean – but I wouldn’t want to stay there or walk those great slobbering Labradors.’

‘Is it always Patrick who stays, when they’re on holiday?’ Vera had finished her slice of cake. Without asking, Susan cut her another.

‘No, it’s usually a woman, middle-aged. Name of Louise. This time she was unavailable and the agency sent them the young man. I wasn’t sorry. Louise acted as if she was lady of the manor, all airs and graces. She was the hired help, same as me.’ That bitterness showing itself again.

‘How long has Patrick been here?’ Vera reached out for the teapot.

‘Just a fortnight. He arrived on the Tuesday and that’s one of my cleaning days. Mrs Carswell asked me to show him round and settle him in. There’s a flat in the attic where their eldest Nicholas lived, before he went off to Australia, and the house-sitters always stay there.’

‘What was he like, this Patrick?’

Percy was tempted to leave the women to it. This time of the evening he usually put on the television, and he never liked his routine disturbed. And he thought Susan would show herself up and say something nasty. But there was such a connection between the women, such concentration, that he was scared of moving in case he broke it.

‘He seemed pleasant enough,’ Susan said. Percy felt relieved. ‘Easy to talk to. Relaxed. I asked why he was house-sitting. It seemed an odd way for a bright young man to earn a living.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘That it suited him just at the moment. He was between projects and he was enjoying exploring the country.’

‘Projects?’ Vera squinted at her. ‘What did he mean by that?’

‘I’m not sure. But that was what he said.’

‘Where did he come from?’ The questions were coming quickly now. Percy thought the fat woman would surely have an address, if she’d found his driver’s licence, so what could that be about?’

‘He didn’t say.’ Susan sounded disappointed. He saw that Vera Stanhope was providing her with attention, and she didn’t get much of that these days.

‘But you might be able to guess,’ Vera said. ‘From his voice, the way he spoke.’

Susan thought for a moment. ‘He had a voice like a television newsreader. A bit posh.’

‘From the South then?’

Susan nodded.

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Yesterday afternoon. Today I work for the people who live in the barn conversions. There are three houses at the end of the valley.’

‘What time yesterday?’ Again the question was fired at speed. Percy thought the woman found it hard for her words to keep up with her brain.

‘About four o’clock. I was in the kitchen and he came in with the dogs.’

‘Did he seem okay? Not anxious about anything?’

Susan shook her head. Again she seemed disappointed because she couldn’t be of more help. She had no juicy bit of information to pass on. The detective got to her feet and that seemed to break a kind of spell, because Percy found that he could stand up now too. At the door the fat woman wobbled a bit as she struggled to pull on her shoes, and Percy put out his hand to steady her.

She turned to Susan and smiled. ‘Have you got a key to the big house? Could I borrow it?’

For a moment Susan was flustered; she’d never been any good at taking responsibility. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I should call the Carswells and ask their permission. They left me their phone number, in case of emergency.’

‘Why don’t you give me that, as well as the key, and I’ll sort it all out for you?’

So Susan handed over the bunch of keys and the piece of card with the number neatly written on, and the detective left the house.

They stood at the window and watched her walk out to her Land Rover.

‘Nice woman,’ Susan said. ‘You’d think she’d want to lose a bit of weight, though.’

When Vera arrived back at the scene, Joe Ashworth had turned up. He was talking to Billy Cartwright, the crime-scene manager, and they’d taped off the road.

‘You here already, Vera?’ Cartwright said. ‘There’s something ghoulish about the pleasure you take in your work.’

She thought he was probably right, but she didn’t deign to give him an answer.

‘What have we got then, Billy? First impressions?’ Billy might be too fond of the lasses, but he was good at his job.

‘This isn’t where the lad was killed. You need to be looking elsewhere for the murder scene.’

‘It
is
murder then?’

‘Not my job to tell you that, Vera my love. Paul Keating’s on his way.’ Keating, a dour Ulsterman, was the senior pathologist. ‘But I can’t see that it was an accident. He was put in the ditch because it was close enough to the road for someone to get him easily out of a car. And he was hidden. He might have lain there unnoticed for weeks.’

If Percy Douglas hadn’t been caught short. And, by then, the rats and foxes would have been at the body and that would have made life more difficult.

‘Tyre tracks on the verge?’

‘One set, very recent, most probably belonging to the chap who found the body.’

She nodded and thought there was nothing she could do here until the experts had finished poking around. And she was restless. She’d never been good at hanging about. No patience. ‘Joe, you come with me. I know where our victim lived, or where he’d lived for the past fortnight at least.’

He started to climb into the passenger seat of the Land Rover, but she called him back. ‘We’ll walk, shall we? It’s not far and I could do with the exercise.’

He seemed a bit surprised, but he knew better than to question her. Vera liked that about Joe. He could be as bolshie as the rest of the team, but he picked his battles and didn’t make a fuss about the trivial stuff. That got her thinking about Holly, who made a fuss about everything. ‘Has anyone told DC Clarke what’s going on?’

‘Aye, I let her know as soon as the call came through. She said she’d make her own way, but she’d be a while.’

They walked in silence for a moment. Vera was pleased it was just her and Joe. That was how she liked it best. She couldn’t imagine being any closer to a son. There was grass growing in the middle of the road and, once they were out of earshot of Billy and his team, it was very quiet.

‘What is this place then?’ Joe wasn’t a country boy and Vera sensed that he was out of his comfort zone. Joe aspired to a new house on a suburban executive estate, somewhere safe for the kids to play out. His ideal neighbours would be teachers, small-businessmen. Respectable, but not too posh. Vera’s neighbours were aristo hippy dropouts who smoked dope and drank good red wine. And worked their bollocks off on a smallholding in the hills that could hardly provide any kind of living.

‘I’m not sure what they call it. The nearest village is back on the main road. Gilswick. And that’s nothing but a few houses, a church and a pub. Maybe this valley doesn’t have a name of its own.’

They turned a corner and came to the entrance to a drive. Crumbling stone pillars half-covered in ivy. No gate. No house name. Vera had seen it on her way to chat to Percy, but she hadn’t stopped. The drive led through wild woodland underplanted with daffs, and at this point there was no sight of the house.

‘This is a grand sort of place for a young man.’ Joe was tense, a bit anxious. His dad was an ex-miner and Methodist lay preacher. Joe had been brought up to think that all men were equal, but had never quite believed it.

‘He didn’t own it!’ Vera gave a little laugh, but her second-hand impression from Susan was that Patrick Randle
might
have come from somewhere like this. An idle young man with time to laze around in someone else’s home. Enough money not to bother with a proper job. ‘He was the house-sitter.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Someone who looks after a house when the owners are away.’

They turned a corner and the house was in front of them. Not a huge mansion with pillars and turrets. This was compact and square. Old. Solid stone. A pele-tower at one end, long fallen into disuse. One of the fortified farmhouses that had been built along the border, to see off the Scottish reivers. In the last of the sunshine, the stone looked warm. ‘Nice,’ Vera said and felt a momentary stab of envy. Hector, her father, had grown up somewhere like this. The third son with no claim to the land, and anyway he’d upset everyone and the family had disowned him. Then she thought of her little house in the hills – she couldn’t keep that clean and maintained; she’d have no chance with something like this.

They walked on. To the side of the house there was an old-fashioned kitchen garden. Fruit bushes covered with netting, vegetables starting to come up in rows. Everything tidy. Susan hadn’t mentioned a gardener, and Vera thought she would have done if the family had employed a man. So this was the Carswells’ work. They loved this place, and they must surely be retired to devote so much time to it. Beyond the garden the hill rose steeply to a rocky outcrop. They stood for a moment and heard sheep and running water.

Susan’s key let them into a big kitchen. An old cream Aga at one end and a drying rack over it, empty except for dishcloths and tea towels. Beside it stood a basket containing a fat black Labrador, and a blanket on which lay another, thinner dog.

‘Shit!’ said Vera. ‘We’ll need to get someone to take care of the animals.’ She wondered if she might persuade Percy to take them until the family got home. Though it might be more a case of persuading Susan.

There was a big scrubbed pine table. The kitchen was tidy and everything gleamed, but it wasn’t
Homes & Gardens
. None of the chairs matched and the crockery on the dresser was old and some of it a bit chipped. The rug on the tile floor was made of rush matting. Presumably the cleanliness was Susan’s work. If Randle had lived in the flat in the attic, Vera supposed that he’d have his own kitchen there.

They wandered on through the house. There was a formal dining room, which felt cold and looked as if it was hardly ever used. Dark paintings of Victorian gentlemen in dull gilt frames. French windows led to a terrace of flagstones and then to a lawn. Vera wondered if cutting the grass was part of the house-sitter’s job description. Then a family living room. A fireplace with bookshelves in the alcoves on either side, old sofas scratched by generations of dogs, photos on the mantelpiece. One of a handsome young man in uniform standing next to a young woman in a floral dress; others of the same people as they got older: with two children on a beach, standing outside a college at a son’s graduation, in smart clothes at a daughter’s wedding. The last picture must be recent and showed the two of them sitting on a white bench outside this house. They were probably in their mid-seventies, but wiry and fit. The man looked at the woman with the same adoration as in the first picture.

‘The portrait of a happy marriage,’ Joe said.

‘Man, that’s a bit profound for you.’ Vera kept her voice light, but she was moved too. A tad jealous. She didn’t have any personal experience of happy families. ‘It’s easy enough to be taken in by appearances.’

A wide polished staircase led to the first floor. The bedrooms were big and airy. Old-fashioned furniture, sheets and blankets and floral quilts. None of that duvet nonsense, with cushions on the beds that you only had to throw off before you went to sleep. Two double rooms and two twins – the twin rooms still decorated for children. One with a train set on a big table and a moth-eaten rocking horse. Vera wondered if there’d been grandchildren. There’d surely have been photos, and they hadn’t seen any downstairs. Perhaps the Carswells were waiting in hope for their children to produce offspring. They found one family bathroom with a deep old enamel bath, and a more recent shower room, built in what might once have been a cupboard in the main bedroom. The only gesture towards modernization. No toiletries in either room to indicate they were used by a young man. And still there was no sign of disturbance, nothing that could be considered a crime scene.