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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Devon Mysteries
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
When Juno Browne purchases a wardrobe to stock in her fledgling antiques store, she doesn't expect to find a dead body inside. And when the man she bought it from, rascally farmer Fred Crick, is found battered to death in his blazing cottage, the hunt for a double murderer is on. Despite the police struggling to connect the two deaths, this time Juno is resolved to ignore her impulse to investigate. Until, that is, a stranger arrives who bears an uncanny resemblance to the dead man in the wardrobe. Determined to discover how his identical twin brother died and impressed by Juno's reputation in the local press as Ashburton's amateur sleuth, Henry tries to drag her into his quest to solve the mystery, with disastrous results.
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The Dartmoor Murders
STEPHANIE AUSTIN
For my sister Rosie
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
There’s nothing like a dead body for adding weight to a wardrobe. It wasn’t in the wardrobe when I bought it, of course. There was nothing in it then but a lonely wire coat hanger and a faint smell of mothballs. I didn’t want to buy the thing in the first place, but the crafty old bugger wouldn’t sell me what I really wanted unless I took the wardrobe too.
I’d only met Fred Crick the day before I bought it. I’d been in Ashburton minding my own business, walking past Keepsakes antique shop. I had slowed down for a sneaky look in the boxes of junk arranged on the pavement outside when Ron and Sheila spotted me and beckoned me in. I had to remember to stoop slightly as I entered. I’m tall, the ceiling is low and made even lower by all the paraphernalia hanging from the beams. Glass fishing floats hang in clusters like giant Christmas tree baubles, I’ve tangled my hair in chandelier drops before now and I’d nearly brained myself on a copper preserving pan the last time I’d come in. Entering Keepsakes at all had become a hazardous experience. The sheer quantity of clutter makes it dim inside the shop, and at first it wasn’t easy to distinguish Fred from the dark mahogany and dusty velvets surrounding him. He was standing by the counter looking like an antique himself in his flat cap and old corduroy suit, a mug of tea in hand. He wanted to get rid of some old furniture, Ron and Sheila told me as they introduced us. They knew I was always hunting for stock.
‘This is the young lady who’s taken over Old Nick’s place,’ Sheila told him as I shook his hand. His fingers were yellowed with nicotine and his breath was smoky.
‘Juno Browne,’ I said. ‘Hello.’
He nodded, surveying me with narrowed eyes. ‘I heard Old Nick had got himself murdered.’ He cleared his throat, his voice roughened by fags. ‘Left you his place in his will, I heard.’
‘You heard correctly,’ I told him.
He grinned, showing dingy teeth. ‘Bit of luck for you, wasn’t it?’
I didn’t like the tone of his voice or what he implied. ‘No, actually it was revenge.’
Sheila laughed uncertainly. ‘You mean it was revenge against his family,’ she asked me, ‘Nick not leaving his shop to them?’
‘No,’ I answered, ‘revenge against me.’ I’d decided this after I’d managed to pay off the last lot of business rates. During the months I’d worked for Nick I must have upset him and he’d lumbered me with his antique shop to teach me a lesson. Anyway, I needed some furniture to fill up empty space and it sounded as though Fred was selling cheap. He just wanted to get rid of the stuff, he assured me, clear it out. It had been taking up room in his shed for too long. He wasn’t asking much for it. So, after taking his address and getting directions to his cottage, I promised I’d drive up and look the stuff over next day.
It would be my first proper foray after stock for some time. A few months before, I’d been involved in an incident that left me with a fractured skull, a broken ankle and cracked ribs. Ironically, the most serious of my injuries, the depressed fracture of the skull, was the one which had given me the fewest problems since. Once the headaches had settled down my head was fine, the thin scar on my scalp increasingly hidden by the mad tangle of my hair. But I’d been on crutches for weeks and forced to stay with my old friends, Ricky and Morris until I could manage to walk unassisted. I’d lived downstairs in their guest bedroom, all the rooms upstairs filled with rails of costumes they hire out to theatrical companies. I’d had to attend a christening in April with one leg protected by a big Kevlar boot, which rather ruined the effect of the chic Chanel dress I’d borrowed from their stock.
Now I was safely back in my own flat, and except for my ankle aching whenever I changed gear, I was fine. It was a relief to be back in my own space, even if it meant swapping Morris’s cooking for mine and the Georgian gorgeousness of Druid Lodge for a flat with a mouldy kitchen wall and dodgy boiler.
And it was a relief to be out and about again, returning to my work as a domestic goddess – dog walking, gardening, caring and cleaning for my various clients round about, the business I’d been engaged in before I’d inherited Old Nick’s. At least my enforced stay indoors had allowed me to take stock in the shop, catch up on some polishing and read some books on antiques, a subject about which I am still deplorably ignorant. I’m studying silver hallmarks at the moment, trying to educate myself on one thing at least.
So, despite the fact I had found him vaguely obnoxious, I looked forward to my trip up to Fred’s place. It wasn’t far to drive, White Van trundling up the hill out of Ashburton, past Buckland and over the moor towards Widecombe. It was a pretty run with spring just turning to summer, the hedgerows frothing up with the creamy yellow heads of alexanders and here and there a touch of white may blossom. I’d missed the primroses of spring, hobbling about indoors.
According to Ron and Sheila, Fred had made a pile of money selling off his old farm, except for the worker’s cottage where he now lived. I found his old place, Cold East Farm, easily enough, the farmhouse set back from the road, separated by a garden and an orchard. The current owners had invested in a new thatch. It flowed like a gold coverlet over the stone building, the edges of the newly-cut reed sharp and crisp. There was a digger hard at work as I drove past; some sort of conversion work going on in the barn. By the roadside, a freshly-painted sign advertised eggs and honey for sale. There was a sense of optimism about the place, of new replacing old, of moving forward.
The same couldn’t be said of Fred’s cottage a quarter of a mile further on. Here the sagging thatch was turning black with rot, heavy with moss, and urgently in need of replacement. But Fred was a skinflint, Ron and Sheila warned me, and wouldn’t spend any money. Make sure he doesn’t charge you too much for that old furniture, they said. Don’t worry, I’d told them, I won’t. For one thing, I haven’t much to spend.
I would have loved a poke about inside that cottage, but a squint through the foggy glass of a tiny window whilst waiting for Fred to respond to my knock on his door showed me nothing more than a deep and cobwebby window sill, and was as close as I got. From his doorstep I could look down the valley towards Widecombe-in-the-Moor, the fields a quilt of different greens stitched together with dark lines of hedgerow.
Fred emerged suddenly, greeting me with a nod, a skinny roll-up pressed firmly between his lips, and pulled the door sharply behind him. I could smell whisky on his breath. ‘Furniture’s over here.’ He gestured towards a ramshackle shed and led the way. ‘Just a few bits I brought with me from the farm, but I haven’t got the room for ’em.’ I followed him through an overgrown garden that, like the thatch, was screaming for attention, invading brambles ramping over tumbled stone walls, wandering chickens picking their way through the long weeds. ‘Your new neighbours seem to be busy,’ I ventured, ‘lovely new thatch.’
It seemed Fred did not approve of the people who’d bought his farm. ‘Call themselves farmers? Bloody toy farmers, that’s all they are, them with their fancy breeds of sheep. What’s wrong with an honest Dartmoor Whiteface?’ he demanded. ‘They’re gonna do cream teas,’ he sneered ‘and they’re converting that stone barn into holiday cottages for bloody tourists.’
‘Lots of farms around here offer holiday accommodation,’ I pointed out. ‘It helps pay the bills.’
Fred snorted. ‘Ain’t proper farming, though, is it?’
The light inside the shed was dim, sunlight falling in ragged slices through gaps in the wooden walls. It was cluttered with rusted lumps of farm machinery whose purpose I couldn’t identify. There were old tools hanging from the rafters, a few vegetable crates piled in the corner, and some hulking shapes hidden beneath mouldy-smelling tarpaulins scattered with bird droppings.
‘Here we are!’ Fred threw back a tarpaulin with all the flourish of a magician performing his greatest trick and I coughed, trying not to inhale too much of the dusty cloud flicked up from its surface. Revealed was an ugly dark wardrobe with a speckled mirror set in its door and an old chaise longue with a lump of horsehair stuffing poking through its cracked leather seating. There were several wooden fruit boxes filled with items wrapped in newspaper, a brass warming pan and a writing table.
To be exact, it was an eighteenth-century writing table in golden walnut, its slender legs tapering to carved ball-and-claw feet, the drawer in its bow front hung with delicate drop handles. I ran a hand over the walnut veneer. The surface should have been glossy, but this was clouded and buckled, the edges of the veneer lifting, almost certainly the result of damp. A table like this shouldn’t be kept in a shed, protected by nothing but an old cloth. It would take skilful restoration to bring it back to the way it should look. I slid open the drawer, which jammed halfway. I had to wiggle it gently to get it out. I turned it over. The dovetail joints were hand-cut, suggesting an early date; later they would have been cut by machine. I looked up; Fred was watching me closely. Even in the dimness I caught the gleam in his eye. I’d shown too much interest. Genuine or not, the price of this writing table had just gone up.
I replaced the drawer and looked around me as if I was expecting something more. ‘Is this all of it?’ I asked, with an attempt at indifference. I pointed to the wooden fruit boxes. ‘What’s in those?’
He shrugged. ‘Take a look.’
I unwrapped damp-smelling newspaper to find a pair of ugly vases and various mismatched components of brass oil lamps, some with their glass funnels intact, all of them missing their decorative shades. There were also some stone cider jars and old flat irons, the sort of things that make useful doorstops or look good sitting by the range of a modern country kitchen. ‘So, how much for what’s in the boxes and that brass warming pan?’ I asked. I didn’t mention the writing table; I’d get round to that. ‘I’m not interested in the chaise longue or the wardrobe.’
Fred gave a ferrety grin. ‘You take it all or you don’t get none of it.’
I pointed to the chaise with its stuffing hanging out. ‘I don’t want that. It needs to be completely reupholstered. It would cost me a fortune.’
Fred scratched slyly beneath his flat cap. ‘Look good when it’s done up, though, won’t it? Some posh second-homer will snap that up.’
‘Maybe,’ I conceded. I nodded at the wardrobe. ‘That thing’s just damn ugly.’ As I took a step towards it, the door creaked open, revealing its dark and smelly interior. I tried to shut it again. There was no key in the tiny lock; that was probably lost years ago. As I stepped back the door yawned wide for a second time. ‘It doesn’t shut.’
‘It’s only cos the floor in here is uneven.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘But you want that little table, don’t you?’ he said. ‘My wife used to use it for a dressing table.’ Suddenly it had become an item of sentimental value. ‘She used to stand a mirror on it.’
‘Have you still got the mirror?’ I asked.
‘It got smashed.’ He ran his yellowed fingers pensively over the patchy stubble on his chin. ‘Tell you what, you give me a good price for that table, I’ll throw in the sofa and wardrobe for free.’
‘I don’t want the wardrobe,’ I protested, ‘or the chaise. If you don’t want them, why don’t you take them outside and burn them?’
I’d obviously shocked him. He exploded in a long, drawn-out coughing fit, the phlegm rattling in his throat. I was getting ready to slap him on the back, but he got control of himself after some truly horrible hawking noises, as if he was bringing up a fur ball.
My eyes strayed back to the little writing table. ‘How much?’
If there’s one thing I really don’t like about the antiques trade, it’s the haggling. A fair price is a fair price. I may be short of money, but I find wrangling over every last penny embarrassing. Fred obviously loved it. He named an extortionate price. It took fifteen minutes to settle on a figure I could reasonably afford. In the end we struck a bargain that included my taking all the stuff away. The little writing desk was small enough to fit in White Van. I could have taken it with me, but Fred wasn’t having that. I could only pick it up when I collected the chaise longue and wardrobe, he insisted, otherwise I might not come back for them at all.
‘All right,’ I agreed unhappily, ‘but I can’t do it today.’ To shift all that lot, I’d have to hire a lorry.
He shrugged. ‘The stuff’s not going anywhere. You pick it up when you want. Don’t matter if I’m here or not.’
Before I handed over my money, I demanded a written receipt.
He’d grinned. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
‘No,’ I told him frankly.
I then had a ten-minute wait while a grumpy Fred disappeared into his cottage to hunt for pen and paper. He didn’t invite me in. Eventually he emerged with a smoothed-out piece of kitchen roll on which he scrawled the items I was buying in black carpenter’s pencil. He couldn’t find a pen, apparently. He apologised for the brown stain on the paper, which he assured me was only pickle. I held out my hand for it, but Fred held it back, staring at me appraisingly.
‘So why did Old Nick leave you his place, then?’ he asked. ‘Young creature like you?’
I shrugged. ‘I wish I knew.’
He gave a jaundiced leer. ‘You turned his head, I reckon − all that red hair.’ He ran his eyes over me in a way that made my skin crawl. ‘You’re like one of them Viking women off the telly − enough to do for any bloke.’
I made no response to this, other than to wonder what on earth he’d been watching. I just eyed him balefully and held out my hand for the pickle-stained receipt. He chuckled and let me have it.
I trundled down the hill in my little white van, the boxes of small items rattling in the back. Actually, we hadn’t struck a bad bargain. I just hoped I hadn’t made a mistake about that writing table.
On the way back I stopped at Cold East Farm. I was not so much lured by the prospect of free-range eggs and honey as a nosy desire for a look around, but I bought some anyway.
I ignored the honesty box nailed to the fence and walked up the little track towards the farmhouse. The front door was open, and I knocked, calling out a hello.
A little blonde angel of about two years old scampered to the door, took one look at me and turned back whimpering, colliding with a young woman with cropped fair hair who scooped her up in her arms. ‘Amy’s very shy,’ she explained as the little girl hid her face. She smiled at my request for change and invited me into the cheerful chaos of her kitchen for a cup of tea. Her name was Carol, she’d told me, and she’d bought the farm along with her husband a year ago.
‘I saw your van go up the hill earlier,’ she said. ‘Have you been to see Fred?’
I told her about my purchases and she laughed. ‘He’s a weird old chap. He sold us the farm last year, but he doesn’t really want to let it go.’
‘I gathered that. I don’t think he approves of change.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘He doesn’t approve of anything we’re doing. But we’ve only just started.’ She pointed towards the barn. ‘Four self-catering cottages we’re creating there, and we’re building a toilet block and laundry out in the paddock for campers. You’ve got to diversify these days if you’re going to survive.’
‘You’re after the holiday trade, then,’ I said.
Carol nodded enthusiastically. ‘I’m planning on cream teas in the garden later in the year. We’ll still be farming, of course. We’ve got a flock of a hundred and fifty Devon Longwools.’ She smiled down at her little girl. ‘Amy and I were just going out to see them. Would you like to come?’
We trudged over the fields, little Amy toddling on in front, Carol in her wellies lugging a bucket containing some kind of sheep nibble.
‘Fred spies on us from that rock up there.’
I looked up the long sweep of grass. Set on top of the hill was a bulky outcrop of granite. This was not a named tor as far as I knew, just a big rock, rising about fifteen feet from the ground, its scarred sides cleft with seams and ridges, dark bushes of gorse and elder clustering at its foot. The top was flat like a table, an easy standing place.
‘He sits up there for hours,’ Carol went on. ‘We’ve seen him watching the building work through his binoculars.’ She laughed, mystified. ‘I don’t understand why he doesn’t just come down here, ask what we’re up to, pop in for a chat and a cup of tea.’
Somehow Fred didn’t strike me as the popping-in sort.
At the sight of Carol’s bucket, a group of stocky little ewes eagerly crowded up to the gate. I don’t know how they could see her, long ringlets of wool covering their eyes, but they were pretty creatures. They were bred for both their meat and their wool, Carol informed me proudly as she dished out the treats.
On our way back we had to stop in the orchard so I could admire Amy’s rabbit and feed him dandelions. The blossoms of the apple trees had been scattered by the wind and petals lay like snowflakes in the grass. ‘We’re hoping to press our first lot of apple juice this autumn,’ Carol told me. ‘You must come up and try it.’
‘It’s a date,’ I promised.
As I turned to get back in the van, I was sure I caught a flicker of movement on the rock up on the hill, the sun glinting on a pair of field glasses. Fred, it seemed, was still watching. Strictly speaking, Old Nick’s isn’t just an antique shop. When I decided to try and make a go of the place, I divided it up into several units in the hope of attracting other traders who would pay me rent; an optimistic plan, which hadn’t worked out so far. Only two units are occupied: one by my artist friend Sophie, who uses her part of the shop as a studio, and the other by Pat, who makes craft items to raise money for the animal sanctuary she runs with her sister and brother-in-law. They both struggle for money and I don’t take rent from either of them. In return, most days, they man the shop.
My part of Old Nick’s, the antiques bit, is in what used to be a storeroom at the back, where as well as my own quaint assortment of second-hand wares, I sell vintage clothes on commission for Ricky and Morris, who are always intending to retire from their theatrical costume hire business but never manage to get that far.
When I arrived back in the shop later that afternoon, I stood in the storeroom considering where I could put that wretched wardrobe. It wouldn’t look too bad standing in the corner, I decided. It would fill up some empty space, and if nothing else I could hang some of the vintage clothes in it. As for the chaise longue, I could fling some sort of cover over it until I could afford to get it reupholstered. And whether or not either item was saleable, they would fit in with the general air of a shabby but genteel brothel created by Ricky and Morris, who had filled the room with dressing screens, mirrors, rails hung with silk underwear, net petticoats, frills, beads and feather boas.
My eye lighted on the glass display cabinet where I keep a few precious antique objects under lock and key: jewellery and hatpins, diamante dress clips, a few scent bottles, a snuff box, a silver pincushion shaped like a pig. I love these tiny things and bygones that no one uses any more, like match holders and glove stretchers, page turners, candle snuffers and vinaigrettes. The little treasures in my cabinet may not be top quality but they are the most precious things I have to sell.
Unless, of course, I was right about that writing table: which brought me back to the problem of how I was going to get it home to Ashburton. I phoned Tom Smithson, who runs an antiques business near Exeter and owns a van large enough for transporting the chaise and the wardrobe. He’s a kind-hearted old chap and as soon as I told him my problem, he offered to help me out.
‘I’ve got to deliver a sideboard to a house in Broadhempston, as it turns out,’ he told me cheerily. ‘I can easily pop along to Ashburton, drive us up to Fred’s place and collect your stuff. In fact, Vicky will probably come along for the ride. We haven’t seen you for ages. How’s the ankle?’
‘All better now,’ I lied as I rested my socked foot on my coffee table and waited for the painkillers to kick in, and we agreed to do the job on Sunday when I wouldn’t have any clients to worry about. I promised them tea when we got the stuff back to the shop.
The phone rang almost as soon as I replaced the receiver. Ricky and Morris were still checking up on me every day.
‘Hello, princess!’ Ricky’s voice sounded raucously in my ear. ‘How’s it going?’
I told him about my visit to Fred Crick’s, my own voice echoing because he’d put the phone on loudspeaker so that Morris could hear the conversation.
‘Do you want us to come along?’ he offered when I outlined the plan for Sunday, ‘give a hand with loading?’
‘You mustn’t try and lift heavy things,’ Morris called anxiously from somewhere in the background.
‘I’m sure we’ll manage. Tom’s got a sack truck. I don’t think the things are too heavy and Fred might even lend us a hand if he’s around.’
‘Tell you what,’ Ricky said. ‘We’ll pop down to the shop and help with the unloading when you get back this end.’
No amount of arguing would persuade them that their help wasn’t needed. They hate to miss out on whatever’s going on.
‘We’ll get the kettle on for when you arrive,’ he promised.
‘And we’ll bring cake,’ Morris shouted.
Well, that settled the matter: cake. No further argument required.
CHAPTER TWO
My alleged admirer, Mr Daniel Thorncroft, did not ring me that evening. He hadn’t phoned me for two weeks. And my pride won’t let me phone him. This is the man who, after a brief but eventful stay in Ashburton, swore he wanted to get to know me better and then buggered off to work in the Scottish Highlands for six months. He is passionate about his work and also inclined to be absent-minded so it’s not impossible that he has forgotten about me altogether.
I’ve only seen him once since the incident. He travelled by train to Bristol for a weekend conference and hired a car to drive down to Ashburton to see how I was. It was very sweet of him because he could only stay an hour before he had to drive back again. I was still convalescing with Ricky and Morris then, hobbling around on my crutches. It wasn’t a good day for me; I was suffering from a blinding headache and feeling wobbly but we managed a brief encounter over tea and cakes.
We had exchanged letters when I was in hospital, but it was the first time since the incident that I had seen him face-to-face. I was still uncomfortable with the fact he’d saved my life. In the past I’d always managed to get myself out of trouble. The difficulty was I didn’t know how to thank him and he didn’t know how to be thanked. In the end we’d agreed never to mention the incident again. It was an awkward meeting, made more awkward for me by the suspicion that Ricky and Morris, who had graciously left us alone to give us some privacy, were in fact lurking somewhere where they could hear every word.
Oddly, there was someone missing who might have lessened the awkwardness between us – Lottie, Daniel’s little whippet; but he had left her behind in Scotland, looked after by friends, because she was nervous on public transport. So we talked mostly about my recovery and a little about his work and his plans for the derelict house he’d inherited from his aunt. He hoped that he’d be coming to settle in Devon as soon as he had finished his current project in Scotland. It’s just he wasn’t sure how long that was going to take. He almost made himself late for catching his train and our farewell kiss was snatched in haste. That was weeks ago. And in the time since, I have often thought about how intelligent and funny he was and wondered why it had taken me so long to realise how much I fancied him.
To be honest, I’m not totally sure what he does. He works for a company involved in re-wilding projects and calls himself an ‘environmental analyst’, whatever that is. He claims to be no more than a glorified number cruncher, an analyst of data, and whilst I have certainly observed him crunching numbers on his computer, I get the feeling he’s a lot more hands-on than that. Apparently, he was one of the founding members of this company and says his job description is ‘elastic’. He does whatever is needed. He’s currently involved in a scheme to return wolves to a Scottish island, except he won’t say which one. He’s a bit of a mystery man, intriguing but annoying. The mobile phone signal where he’s currently staying is no more reliable than the one here in Ashburton, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at his lack of contact. We’d be better off relying on smoke signals. Anyway, typically, he left his umbrella behind when he came to visit me, and if he ever wants to see it alive again, he’ll damn well have to come and fetch it.
There was no sign of Fred Crick when I arrived at his cottage with Tom and Vicky on Sunday afternoon. His battered old car was parked in his garage, visible through the sagging wooden doors, but he didn’t seem to be at home. Perhaps he’d gone to the pub. He didn’t respond to our knocking on his front door or calling out his name in the garden. We wandered around the back and tried the kitchen door but there was no response there either. He had told me I could take the stuff whenever I wanted, so we decided to get on with it.
In the old shed the furniture was standing exactly as before, except that the wardrobe had been tied around with a piece of frayed rope, presumably to keep the door shut. That was helpful, at any rate, and Tom is very experienced at transporting furniture. The writing table was lightweight and he carried it easily on his own. We lifted the chaise longue between the three of us, Tom at one end with Vicky and me at the other, and carried it out to the van. For the wardrobe he deployed the sack truck, sliding it underneath the base. It was heavier than I thought it was going to be. It took some pushing and wriggling to manoeuvre the wooden carcase until it was sitting safely on the metal base of the sack truck. Then Vicky and I steadied it as Tom leant it back at an angle so that it could rest against the frame as he wheeled the thing away. As he tipped it, we heard the muffled noise of something lumpy shifting its weight, sliding about inside.
‘What’s that?’ Tom asked. ‘Nothing that’s likely to get broken?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ I didn’t remember having bought anything else. Fred had probably stuffed it full of old rubbish he wanted to get rid of. We’d find out when we got back to the shop.
Manoeuvring the wardrobe into the storeroom at Old Nick’s turned out to be a lot more difficult than extricating it from Fred’s shed. It was a good job Ricky and Morris had turned up to help, even though they were even more ancient than Tom and not what I would call used to heavy lifting. The chaise longue and writing table fitted easily through the shop door, but Tom thought the wardrobe might get stuck when we tried to turn left through the doorway that led into the storeroom. We’d already had to move Mavis the mannequin, who usually stands in the hall displaying a sign pointing the way to Antiques, Collectibles and Vintage Clothes. It would be easier, he suggested, if we wheeled the wardrobe into the alley at the side of the building and came in through the door that led to the flat above. That way, we could wheel it straight down the corridor into the storeroom without having to turn it. Provided, Ricky pointed out, we could get the bleeding thing past the bottom of the stairs.
Tom and Ricky managed it between them; there wasn’t room for anyone else in the corridor to do anything but get in the way, so we left them to it. By the time they finally deposited it in an upright position in the middle of the storeroom, Morris had already brewed some tea and arrived downstairs with a laden tray. The two furniture removers collapsed on the chaise longue next to each other, declaring they were gasping for a cuppa.
Ricky attempted to bounce on the seat. ‘Blimey, this thing’s comfortable! It’s like sitting on a tomb. Hasn’t it got any springs?’
Vicky asked if she could look at the items in my display cabinet. I was only too happy to let her look, grateful for any knowledge she was willing to pass on. She picked out a couple of scent bottles. ‘I like this ruby glass one,’ she said, rolling the little cylinder in her fingers. ‘But you should be charging more for it. This cap is nine-carat gold.’
She picked up the other one, a squat, heavy bottle that I thought was Chinese. It was made from a white, stony material, the surface cloudy and opaque. ‘I found that in a car boot sale,’ I told her. ‘It’s agate, I think.’
Vicky shook her head, closing it in her palm. ‘It’s jade.’ She smiled at me. ‘Jade is cold to the touch, just as amber is always warm.’
‘I thought jade was green.’
‘This is what we call mutton-fat jade. It’s pale and cloudy like this. And this isn’t a scent bottle.’ With delicate fingers she prised off the cap and drew out a tiny spoon attached to the underside of it. ‘I thought so. You see this little spatula? It’s for snuff.’ She glanced at the price label. ‘Again, you could up the price a bit. This is an old one. On the whole,’ she added, returning the bottles to their glass shelf, ‘you’re building up a nice little collection in there. You’ve got a good eye. I’m very tempted by that silver pig pincushion.’
‘Birmingham silver,’ I told her, showing off my newly learnt hallmark knowledge, ‘1893.’
We sat happily chatting over mugs of tea and the chocolate cake provided by Morris. I asked Tom what he thought of the writing table.
‘It’ll need a bit of spending on restoration,’ he admitted, ‘but it’ll be worth the expenditure. It’s a pretty thing, very saleable.’ He asked how much I’d paid for it. ‘Well done,’ he added with a grin. ‘But don’t attempt to restore it yourself,’ he warned. ‘Get it done professionally.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I mumbled through a mouthful of cake. Restoration was not something I’d even contemplate trying.
‘So, what’s in the wardrobe?’ Vicky asked. ‘Do you remember?’
‘No, I don’t.’ I put my mug of tea down and stood up, dusting cake crumbs from my fingers, and untied the knot in the piece of rope that was keeping the door closed. It was frayed at one end and felt slightly oily, as if it might once have been used as a tow rope. As I coiled it up in my hand, the door of the wardrobe yawned slowly open and I took a step backward. Behind me I could see Morris’s bald head reflected in the mirror, his little gold specs halfway down his nose, Vicky sitting next to him, poised elegantly with her mug of tea, and Ricky’s louche figure lounging on the chaise next to Tom, his long legs stuck out in front of him.
Something dropped out of the wardrobe door with a soft thump and lay on the floor inches beneath. There was a moment of shocked stillness in the room, then the sharp intake of Vicky’s breath.
‘Good God!’ murmured Tom. ‘That’s not—’
‘Bleedin’ hell!’ Ricky started. He sprang forward as if he’d been poked by a cattle prod.
The something was a hand, a man’s hand, lying palm upward, fingers loosely curled, and attached to an arm that disappeared behind the wardrobe door.
‘There’s someone in there,’ Vicky breathed.
‘Don’t move!’ Ricky commanded. ‘All stay where you are! I’ll look.’ He peered cautiously around the wardrobe door and into its dark interior. Then he stood perfectly still for several moments, transfixed by what he was seeing inside.
‘Who is it?’ Morris whispered fearfully. ‘Is he dead?’
‘Well, if he isn’t,’ Ricky responded, ‘I don’t like the way he’s staring at me.’
‘Is it Fred?’ Tom asked.
I didn’t think it could be. The hand was too pale, too plump, the nails were clean and there was no nicotine staining on the fingers. I peered cautiously around the edge of the wardrobe door for a look.
The man slumped in the bottom of it was obviously dead, his pale eyes wide and staring, his lips drawn back in a ghastly grin as if death had come as a shock to him. He looked like a ventriloquist’s dummy or a collapsed puppet with its strings cut. He was younger than Fred, with thin, crinkly brown hair receding from a round face.
‘Who is he?’ Ricky asked me, his gaze held by the corpse.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, you had him delivered.’
‘I’ve never seen him before.’
‘We’re sure he’s dead, are we?’ Tom came to join us by the wardrobe door. ‘Oh, yes,’ he added, seeing the fixed grin and staring gaze, ‘so he is!’
Even so, I thought we ought to feel for a pulse. After a moment’s hesitation, I knelt down and placed my fingers on his wrist.
‘Anything?’ Tom asked.
I shook my head. There was not the faintest flicker. ‘Nothing at all,’ I withdrew my fingers, unable to resist the impulse to wipe them on my jeans. ‘He is um … still … well, he’s not cold. He can’t have been dead very long.’
‘Phone the police,’ Ricky instructed Morris as he edged nervously round the door to take a peek. But Vicky had already pulled out her phone.
‘You won’t get a signal down here,’ I told her. ‘Use the landline up in the flat.’
‘Right.’ She headed upstairs, sensibly deciding not to look at the corpse herself.
‘Tell them there’s been a murder,’ Ricky added.
‘How do we know he’s been murdered?’ Morris asked, blinking nervously.
‘What d’you think he’s doing in there, playing hide-and-seek? Looking for Narnia?’
‘No, but—’
Ricky rolled his eyes in exasperation. ‘He didn’t stuff himself in the wardrobe, now did he?’
I looked down at the piece of frayed rope that had kept the door tied shut. It lay on the floor in a big question mark. ‘No,’ I agreed grimly. ‘He didn’t.’
CHAPTER THREE
As he stood surveying the inside of the wardrobe, Detective Inspector Ford did not look like a happy man. ‘You’ve done it again, Juno,’ he admonished me, glowering from under his heavy brows.
‘It’s not my fault I keep finding bodies,’ I protested. ‘I don’t do it deliberately. I didn’t buy the wardrobe and ask Fred to chuck in a corpse for free.’
‘You say Fred Crick wasn’t about when you picked the wardrobe up?’
‘No,’ I responded, ‘well, he didn’t answer his door.’ I wouldn’t have put it past Fred to have deliberately ignored our knock so that he didn’t have to come out and help move the furniture.
The inspector turned to his colleague, Detective Sergeant deVille. ‘Get up to his place and find him. We need to ask Mr Crick some questions. And get Collins up there as well.’
‘Sir,’ she answered crisply. As she passed, she shot me a sharp look from her strange, violet-coloured eyes. Relations between Cruella and I were not exactly cordial.
‘Let’s clear this room, shall we?’ Inspector Ford went on, ‘Let the scene of crime officers do their job?’ He ushered us all out before him and we trickled into the main shop. ‘Constable, we will need to take statements from each of these ladies and gentlemen,’ he addressed the woman in uniform who’d been hovering awkwardly in the hall like an animated version of Mavis, ‘and then I would like them all to go home.’ He turned to me. ‘Is there another room we can use?’
I suggested the kitchen upstairs but the inspector decided it would be better if we all waited up there and he took our individual statements down in the shop. So we sat around the kitchen table waiting for our turn to be called and having a macabre conversation about the logistics of stuffing a dead body into a wardrobe, particularly if it didn’t want to go. It’s the kind of thing people do when they are feeling slightly hysterical.
‘Were there any signs of violence on the body?’ Vicky asked.
I shook my head. ‘Not that I could see, but he was sort of … folded up, collapsed forward. I couldn’t see much of him.’
‘You know, the thing is,’ she went on, frowning, ‘while we were at Fred’s place earlier, I had the oddest sensation that we were being watched.’ She gazed up at me, her blue eyes serious. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘Can’t say I noticed,’ I admitted. ‘Perhaps Fred was lurking somewhere, peering at us through his binoculars.’
‘Your imagination’s getting the better of you, old girl,’ Tom told her cheerfully.
‘It is not,’ Vicky responded, annoyed. ‘I had a definite feeling we weren’t alone.’
‘Well, I didn’t notice anything.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t!’ she retorted. ‘A herd of elephants could have hurtled through the place and you wouldn’t have—’
She was interrupted by a tentative knock as the lady copper stuck her head around the door.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Browne,’ she said to me, ‘but I’m afraid forensics is going to have to remove the wardrobe.’
‘Blimey! He’s not still in it, is he?’ Ricky demanded. ‘Can’t they get the poor bugger a stretcher?’
‘The body has already been removed, sir,’ she reproved him, her cheeks reddening.
‘Take no notice of him, miss,’ Morris said to her kindly. He nudged Ricky with his elbow. ‘Show a bit of respect.’
‘They can take the wardrobe and burn it,’ I told her. ‘I never want to see that thing again.’
‘Tell them they can borrow my sack truck to move it,’ Tom called to her.
She nodded and made a hasty retreat. Shortly afterwards we heard a lot of banging from downstairs. It seemed the forensics team weren’t finding it any easier to move the wardrobe than we did.
I don’t understand why statements have to take such a long time. Frankly, there wasn’t a great deal to say, but we sat in that kitchen for hours. I was left till last, of course. But instead of taking my statement, the inspector told me he was driving me up to Fred’s place.
‘I want you to show me this shed. I want to see exactly where this wardrobe was standing before you took it away.’
‘You think whoever stuffed that poor man in there might have left traces behind?’
He grimaced as if he thought this was unlikely. ‘We live in hope.’
In fact, it wasn’t the inspector but the WPC who drove. As we broached the top of the hill, heading towards Widecombe, an urgent buzzing came from the inspector’s phone.
‘What?’ he demanded loudly of the caller. ‘You’re joking? Oh, bloody hell!’ He sighed heavily as he disconnected. ‘Step on it, Constable!’ he urged the driver. ‘Fred Crick’s cottage is on fire.’
There’s a lot of smoke when a thatch catches fire. We could see it, thick and black, billowing into the soft pink of the early evening sky long before we arrived. We could smell it too, taste it, acrid and bitter even inside the car. By the time we reached Fred’s cottage it was well alight, each window a blazing rectangle lit by orange flames. Two firemen perched up on ladders were battling with drag hooks to pull the thatch away, flinging aside the smouldering reeds and sending sparks flying into the air. Other crewmen worked with hoses, flooding the ground with puddles that shone golden, reflecting the flickering light of the flames.
There were three appliances in attendance, crews drawn from Buckfastleigh and Newton Abbot as well as from Ashburton and Torquay. All thatched properties were held on a fire service ‘at risk’ register, I learnt later from a talkative fireman, and it was standard practice to bring additional pumps and a water bowser to such a property whenever a shout came in. There was also an ambulance drawn up on the roadside. As we stopped and got out of the car, I could see Cruella and Detective Constable Dean Collins standing in the road, talking to the fire officer in charge.
‘Take Miss Browne to that shed,’ Inspector Ford instructed our driver, slamming the car door as he got out. ‘Get her to show you exactly where she found this wardrobe. I’ll be with you in a moment.’ And he strode off to join his fellow officers.
It was almost dark inside the shed, the only light an orange flickering glow coming through the gaps in the walls, but I showed the constable where the wardrobe and the other furniture had been standing. She cast around, shining her torch over the earthen floor; but if there were any significant footprints, Tom, Vicky and I had probably obliterated them with all our comings and goings.
When the inspector appeared, he didn’t seem much interested in footprints. ‘Come with me, Constable,’ he barked. ‘Back in the car please, Miss Browne,’ he ordered me, ‘and stay there.’
‘Oh, don’t you want—?’
‘Just do as I tell you!’ he snapped. Then he drew breath and after a moment added more politely, ‘Please, Juno.’
As I marched a little huffily back towards the car, I heard him murmur to the constable, ‘This is a double murder we’re looking at now.’
I stopped in my tracks, turning back to stare at the blazing building. The crew were playing their hoses on the roof, flames crackling upward through what was left of the thatch. I could feel the fierce blast of heat from where I stood.
‘It’s all over now,’ a voice told me with gloomy satisfaction. I turned to see a fireman leaning against his vehicle, keeping an eye on proceedings. He beckoned me over.
‘What d’you mean?’ I asked.
‘We can’t save the place. We had two men in the loft with hoses, but we’ve pulled them back. We’re pulling all the guys out from inside.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the vehicle’s radio. ‘I’ve just heard the orders come through on comms.’ He nodded at the blaze, the glowing light reflecting in his eyes. ‘Whoever set this going did a good job of it.’
‘It wasn’t an accident, then?’
He grinned. ‘That’s what we’re supposed to think − poor old bloke put his frying pan on the stove, sat down for a cigarette and fell asleep in his chair.’
I couldn’t drag my eyes from the burning building. ‘Is he still in there?’ I felt sick at the thought of it.
‘He was.’ He gestured towards the ambulance. ‘He’s in the bone wagon now.’ Just as he spoke, it pulled silently away from the verge and drove off, no blue lights flashing, no sirens wailing. ‘No rush,’ he chuckled grimly.
‘We can tell, you see,’ he went on in the voice of a man who enjoyed airing his knowledge. ‘We can follow the path of the fire.’ He’d seen me get out of the police car with the others and I wondered if he might have mistaken me for a detective. I suppose I should have told him I was just a nosy civilian, but I didn’t. I let him chatter on.
‘Clearly an accelerant was used. And the other thing,’ he beckoned me closer, as if he were sharing a secret, ‘a lot of smoke often smothers a fire before it can get started. But whoever did this left the front door and the back door open, just enough − made sure the fire had plenty of oxygen − opened the hatch to the loft as well.’ He nodded in the direction of Inspector Ford and Cruella, fast approaching. ‘Make sure you tell your boss.’
I scuttled back towards the car, but I was too late, I’d been spotted. ‘I told you to stay inside the car, Miss Browne,’ the inspector admonished me, holding open the door.
‘Sorry.’ I slid on to the back seat and repeated what the fireman had told me. ‘I think he thought I was one of you,’ I added lamely as the inspector frowned at me in the rear-view mirror.
‘And why would he think that?’ Cruella turned around to look at me, her little face pinched with disapproval. ‘You realise impersonating a police officer is a serious offence—’
‘Oh, shut up, Sergeant!’ The inspector silenced her as if she were a yapping terrier and her mouth shut like a trap.
‘The point is,’ I went on, struggling to suppress a smile, ‘that when we called to collect the furniture, the cottage was locked up tight. We tried to knock Fred up, and went around to the back door but it was all locked.’
‘And what time was this?’
‘About three, I think.’
‘And you didn’t see anyone else around at that time?’
‘No. Although Vicky said she felt someone was watching us.’
‘Yes, so she said in her statement,’ the inspector acknowledged. ‘And you saw no other vehicles parked around here anywhere?’
‘None.’
‘Thank you, Juno.’ I must have restored myself to his good opinion, I was ‘Juno’ again, not ‘Miss Browne’. He thought for a moment, his tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. Then to my relief, he ordered Sergeant deVille to stay at the scene with him and arranged for Detective Constable Collins to drive me home. I could have cheered. I sat in the car with dire warnings from the inspector about staying put and waited.
Dean greeted me loudly as he slid his considerable bulk into the driver’s seat. ‘What have you been up to now?’ He brought with him a smell of scorched clothing, as if he’d been standing too close to the blaze.
‘I haven’t been up to anything,’ I protested indignantly.
‘What’s all this I hear about a body in a wardrobe?’ He turned to look at me, his blue eyes twinkling. ‘You getting them delivered these days?’
I groaned. ‘Don’t you start.’
He grinned as he turned his head. I studied the back of his neck, thickset, the brown hair shaved to stubble. Dean and I were mates. I was godmother to his daughter. He could be a useful source of information if I leant on him in the right way.
‘So, do we know who he was, the man in my wardrobe?’ I asked.
‘No, we don’t,’ he responded, in his flat northern vowels. ‘He wasn’t carrying any kind of identification. And,’ he added, trying to sound severe, ‘you know I couldn’t tell you if we did.’
I let him get away with that, for the moment. ‘What about Fred? The fireman I talked to said the fire had been started with an accelerant.’
‘Well, he was burnt to a crisp if that’s what you want to know,’ he answered grimly. ‘Something had been poured over his body.’
I shuddered. ‘That’s awful.’
‘It’s not what killed him, though,’ he said, glancing at me in the rear-view mirror, ‘he was already dead. And no, I am not going to tell you how he died,’ he added emphatically before I could ask. ‘For a start, we won’t know that for sure until after the post-mortem.’
‘Do we know how the man in the wardrobe died?’ I asked.
Dean shook his head. ‘No. Not yet. The crucial thing is to find out how long he’d been in there.’
‘Well, he seemed fairly … um … fresh,’ I volunteered. ‘I mean, he was still faintly warm. And there didn’t seem to be any signs of violence. Do you think he was murdered by the same person who killed Fred?’
He shook his head, grinning despite himself. ‘Stop asking questions you know I can’t answer.’
‘Perhaps Fred killed him.’
Dean braked and turned to look at me. ‘I’m gonna chuck you out of this car in a minute, Juno,’ he threatened, ‘and make you walk home.’
