Death of an Old Git (The Falconer Files - File 1) (5 page)

‘Anything at all would be helpful, Mrs Wilson.’ Really, thought Falconer, this was not at all how he had envisaged this conversation. He should now be overwhelmed with a torrent of local rumour, malice and spite. This was more like pulling teeth.

‘Well,’ she capitulated slightly, ‘he didn’t like the Warren-Brownes at the post office. He had them down as stuck-up because of their double-barrelled name, and them liking to keep themselves to themselves. He had it in for them.’

‘In what way did he have it in for them? Can you be a bit more specific?’ Falconer knew he was covering old ground here, but encouraged the woman, to check the accuracy of what he had already been told. If her account tallied with the one the Warren-Brownes had offered, it meant that any further information from this source could probably be relied upon.

‘Well, Mrs Warren-Browne – Marian – is an absolute martyr to them migraine headaches – these painkillers here,’ she pointed to her right on the display behind her, ‘I started stocking just for her. Now, not even they are strong enough, and the doctor’s trying to find something as’ll work for her. And Mr Warren-Browne – Alan – he’s that protective of her, her being so frail.’

‘And Mr Morley?’ prompted the inspector, aware of time passing. Carmichael, sensing repetition, had lost all interest in the proceedings and was gawping round the wares displayed with keen interest.

‘He goaded that dog of his,’ she continued. ‘Goaded it, every opportunity he got, to make it bark. Knew it would set her off with one of her heads.’ Once more Falconer could not afford the luxury of time to enjoy this vision. He would have to save that for later. ‘And the old man seemed to time his dog’s walks so that it would quite often do its business outside the post office. Can’t blame the animal, of course, and Reg Morley wouldn’t know a poop scoop if one hit him in the eye.’ (Another surreal vision for later.) Mrs Wilson’s questing finger to the wall on her left, indicated a multi-coloured array of what were described on the backing cardboard as ‘Doggy-Do-Aways’.

‘Anything else you feel able to help us with?’ the inspector interjected at this natural break.

‘Bit of a dirty old man, as well,’ she offered.

‘How did that manifest itself?’ he prompted her, elbowing Carmichael in the ribs, to rouse him to take note of this new information.

‘Why do you think he walked that dog of his in the woods? Young courting couples, of course! Dirty old man! Better than the telly, he thought, if he could have a good peek at young folks’ goings-on.’ The shopkeeper finished with a snort of disgust and a moue of distaste.

‘What about relations with his other neighbours?’

This seemingly innocent question must have touched a nerve, for she coloured momentarily and said, ‘If you really want to know about him why don’t you speak to his nephew – or rather, great-nephew, I should say. He’ll give you chapter and verse, I don’t doubt. His name’s Mike Lowry and he runs the garage – out of the shop and it’s opposite on your right.’ And more than this she refused to say.

As they exited, Carmichael summed up his impressions of the shop. ‘Funny smell in there, and it seemed so old-fashioned, it ought to have been in black and white.’

Unlike you, my lad. Unlike you! Falconer could not suppress the thought.

IV

Castle Farthing Garage was just in Drovers Lane, which ran west from the village green. It had a small forecourt with three petrol pumps, a small pre-fabricated shop that sold only car-related products, and a workshop at the rear where repairs and MOTs were carried out. The pumps were not self-service, and an oil-smeared notice on the shop door directed any callers to the workshop.

It was here that Falconer and Carmichael found the proprietor, his oil-stained overall legs protruding from under an elderly Mini. By the side of the car a transistor radio blared, and it was only by directing Carmichael to switch this off (Falconer did not want to get oil on his hands) that the inspector gained the mechanic’s attention.

As he rose from his prone position, the begrimed young man caught sight of Carmichael and let out a hoot of amusement. ‘I hope you won first prize.’ He grinned. ‘You certainly worked hard on your costume.’ This comment drew a blush from the young policeman and a frown of disapproval in his direction from his superior. He really would have to speak to Carmichael about his plain clothes being a little more, well,
plain
, in the future.

Lowry did not deny his blood-tie with the old man, but said there had been a family rift, years before he was born, between his great-uncle Reg and the rest of the family, and he had hardly ever spoken to the old man, as he did not seem of a mind to let bygones be bygones. ‘I never did have any idea what the original tiff was about – blew up over something and nothing, I seem to recollect, the way a lot of these things do. He were a right hard old sinner, though, and visited his contempt down the generations,’ he explained, wiping his hands on a rag so oily it was probably achieving the opposite of his intentions.

‘So you had little to do with him?’

‘Best part of nothing. He wouldn’t acknowledge my existence: I didn’t want to know him.’

‘Were you working here yesterday evening, Mr Lowry? Did you happen to notice anyone cross that way towards Mr Morley’s cottage?’

Lowry shook his head. ‘I was closed up out front and working out here under this little wreck. Not sure what time I finished. I was that beat, I washed up and went straight to bed.’

‘And you live where?’

‘Here. Back of the shop. Sort of bed-sit, but it does me.’

Mike Lowry was a slimly built man, tall and rangy, with fair hair and grey eyes that never wavered from the face of the person to whom he was speaking. He had a certain charisma that even Falconer, as a male, could recognise (and resent), and he put the question that this, together with the last bit of information, left uppermost in his mind. ‘Not married then, Mr Lowry?’

‘Was.’ The muscles in Lowry’s face tautened, and Falconer found himself probing deeper – but, hell, he wasn’t being nosy, it was his job to ask questions.

‘Anyone local?’

‘Yes.’

‘Name?’

‘Any of your business?’

‘Might be. Now, what’s the missus’s name. I’m sure there are plenty who would be willing to tell me.’

‘Kerry.’

‘Not Kerry Long?’

‘Went back to her maiden name.’

Falconer suddenly felt a penny drop. ‘So those children next door were actually Reg Morley’s own flesh and blood. Well, I’ll be damned. And you say you had no occasion to speak to him, not even about how he was treating her and the children?’

‘She had no need of me to defend her.’ Lowry was beginning to look aggressive. ‘Not with that Auntie Rosemary of hers, riding into battle for her.’

A further penny began to roll towards the edge. ‘That wouldn’t be Auntie Rosemary Wilson, by any chance?’

‘Got it in one, Sherlock! She’s like Boadicea when she’s roused, believe you me. I’ve had the rough side of her tongue on more than one occasion, and it’s left me reeling.’

Falconer was still puzzled. Village ways were a closed book to him and he sought enlightenment. ‘Ms Long said nothing about having been married to you, or your relationship to Mr Morley, and neither she nor Mrs Wilson said anything about being related to each other. How do you explain that, man?’ he asked in exasperation.

Lowry stared at him as if he was stupid. ‘You probably didn’t ask them.’

Chapter Five

Monday 13th July – afternoon

I

At the vicarage in Church Lane, Bertie Swainton-Smythe was in his study, working on his sermon for the following Sunday, but apart from a facetious phrase in Hebrew and the words ‘Pentecost 6’ at the top of the sheet, the paper remained stubbornly blank. His wife Lillian was vigorously dusting the numerous bookshelves that lined the walls. What light managed to penetrate this gloomy sanctuary merely highlighted its shabbiness. The carpet was worn through to its backing in places, the curtains frayed, the furnishings not so much antique as ‘early jumble sale’. Chipped and battered ornaments spoke of a boisterous brood of children, but no such brood had ever blessed their union.

‘I don’t know why you’re letting the death of that old goat get to you, Bertie. He was hardly a Christian soul, rarely in church. Not what you’d call a regular worshipper, and when he was there you know he helped himself from the collection, rather than part with a penny to add to it. In fact you said yourself that he only came to services when he was short of a bob or two.’

‘Suspected, Lillian, suspected. I never had any proof, and I never confronted him,’ chided the Reverend Bertie, somewhat hurt by his wife’s forthright manner.

‘Suspected, be blowed. Don’t be such an old hypocrite,’ accused Lillian, pulling out an ancient set of bound eighteenth-century sermons by some obscure country cleric, in pursuit of a spider. ‘You said yourself that takings were always down when he turned up.’ A muffled thump and a grunt of satisfaction showed that she had achieved her objective.

‘Why, at Easter, the Brigadier said that when you cashed up,’ (her husband winced at such a commercial description), ‘that he had put a ten-pound note in the bag, and there wasn’t a sign of it, and no one has admitted to the twenty drachma coin that was in there, either. What other conclusion is there to draw?’

‘One mustn’t condemn without proof, my dear. And if the old man’s needs were greater than God’s, who are we to stand in judgement?’

‘Oh, stop being such a saint, Bertie. Wake up and smell the coffee. Don’t you remember the uproar he caused when you wanted to move the time of the carol service last year, so that the kiddies could join in and do a little nativity scene? I honestly thought there’d be blood on the pews before he was over-ruled. Really, some of the old folk in this parish seemed to be as anti-kiddie as he was. At times, I could hardly believe the evidence of my own ears.’

At this, the vicar put down his pen and squared himself up for confrontation. ‘A little eccentric he may have been, but I will not have ill spoken of the dead in my own study, in my own vicarage, by my own wife.’

‘Bertie, you said you could have throttled him, when he said that children shouldn’t be allowed to have anything to do with Christmas.’

‘Figure of speech.’

‘And that they should be seen and not heard, and how they’d all turn out better if they were locked in an under-stairs cupboard for cheeking their elders and betters.’

‘That is enough, Lillian. He was an old man and he has been murdered. He’s been murdered in my parish, and I won’t sit here and stand for it,’ he concluded in somewhat muddled terms. ‘I simply won’t stand for it.’

And he did not have to for, at that moment, the front doorbell wheezed asthmatically through the first half of the main theme of that infernal piece by Beethoven (‘Ode to Joy’), and faltered to a flat-batteried halt, as Bertie tugged on the ill-fitting lump of wood that was the vicarage door. The vicarage faced north, and the aforementioned door was a martyr to the weather, never quite making up its mind whether to shrink and admit shrieking draughts, or swell and try the patience of a near-saint. Whichever it chose made little difference to this hypochondriac piece of carpentry, so long as it drew attention to itself.

‘Must get this seen to,’ he puffed, as he revealed Falconer and Carmichael waiting impatiently on the step. ‘Ah, we meet again.’

‘Indeed we do,’ concurred Falconer, cocking a sardonic eyebrow. ‘If you can spare us the time, we need to go through exactly what happened earlier on today, and then see if there’s any other information you may have to offer us, that might prove useful in the course of this investigation.’

Bertie looked pained. ‘I don’t know that I know anything helpful.’

‘Ah, you’d be surprised at how much you do know, Reverend, and how useful even the most trivial of things might prove.’

At this moment the door from the study opened, and the gap left by it was partly breached by a stout figure holding a feather duster. ‘Friends of yours, Bertie? Hadn’t you better make some introductions before I begin to feel left out? Just got back from your holidays, son?’ this last to Carmichael as her gaze travelled down his Technicolor length. Her voice was husky, with a persuasive quality that left the listener anxious to please.

‘Of course, my dear. This is my wife Lillian. Lillian, this is Mr Falconer – Inspector, if I remember right.’ Bertie indicated the shorter of the two callers, beaming at his feat of memory, then his face clouded as he surveyed the rainbow-clad Everest that was caller number two. ‘I’m afraid I seem to have forgotten the name of your, ah, multi-coloured colleague,’ he admitted, a wave of crimson washing up from beneath his clerical collar, lest his description cause offence.

‘Carmichael, Vicar. Davey Carmichael,’ carolled the young giant, not in the least offended.

As they followed the incumbent and his wife down the narrow, gloomy corridor in search of the sitting room, Falconer looked puzzled. He had had a quick look at Carmichael’s file (no questions asked) when they had been thrown together, as it were, and this did not tally. ‘I thought your name was Ralph.’

‘’Tis.’

‘Then why did you say you were called Davey?’

‘’Cos I am.’

‘Let me get this right, your name’s Ralph, but you’re called Davey?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is Davey your middle name?’ All this sotto voce as they walked.

‘No.’

‘David?’

‘No.’

‘Then why?’ Falconer pleaded for enlightenment in an exasperated whisper.

 ‘If you had a name like Ralph, wouldn’t you prefer to be called Davey, or something else ordinary?’

‘Don’t you have a middle name you could use?

‘Yes. But I don’t want to.’

‘What is it?’

‘Not telling.’

‘That’s an order, Carmichael.’

‘Orsino. Me mum saw some play when she were having me and liked the sound of it.’

‘’Nuff said.’ Harry Falconer could not see too much wrong with the name Ralph, but anyone whose mother had saddled her son with a name like Orsino deserved at least a little sympathy and tact.

II

The reception room referred to as the ‘sitting room’ proved as unwelcoming as Falconer had imagined, from his first impressions of the vicarage. A selection of misfit chairs and a sofa, all dating from the three immediate post-war decades, clung to the walls like maidens shunning the dance. No two pieces shared the same upholstery, and the carpet was a much-worn nylon twist in a nauseous shade of mustard. In the centre of the room stood a coffee table that had obviously achieved its current status by the use of a saw (not quite evenly) on the legs of, what had once been a hall or small dining table. A bulky television set with enough dials and knobs to declare it pre-remote control lurked in a corner, and the windows were framed with slightly too short, dull gold-coloured curtains in unlined brushed nylon. This room faced east and north and had little light at this time of the afternoon.

Bertie Swainton-Smythe confirmed to the two policemen how he had heard of the death of one of his parishioners, and how he had reacted to this news, describing his earlier meeting with the inspector in the kitchen of Crabapple Cottage, and of course his visit to St Cuthbert’s to pray for Reg Morley’s immortal soul.

At the conclusion of his narrative, Lillian shooed him off to make coffee, as she obviously had some business of her own to conduct. Her eager flow of gossip merely confirmed the relationships between the deceased, his neighbours and his great-nephew, but when the monologue (with breaks for suitable exclamations) reached the village shop, she did have something new to impart.

‘… and it wasn’t just his treatment of Kerry and the children, even though Mrs Wilson feared the boys getting toxocara from the dog’s mess. He was a thieving old git.’ Both policemen looked mildly disapproving of such uncharitable language from the wife of a man of the cloth. ‘And don’t you cock your eyebrows at me. You didn’t know him. He’d pocket anything he could. She had to watch him like a hawk, once she’d found out who was responsible for the bulk of her shrinkage – that doesn’t sound right, but you know what I mean.’ Carmichael grunted as his pen flew across the page of his notebook, in an effort to keep up with the flow, Falconer nodded, not wishing to speak and stem it.

‘And do you remember Easter this year?’ she called in the direction of the kitchen ‘It was that wet, I told Auntie I’d have to order some cubits of wood, so that Bertie could get on with building an ark. Anyway, that week when it rained pretty much non-stop was the week that Mrs Wilson went up north to visit her family, and she left a friend of hers from Carsfold in charge of the shop.

‘Well, that Reg Morley could sniff out a ‘live one’ at a hundred paces. When he worked out he wasn’t being watched like a hawk, he starts to ingratiate himself with the temporary help when Kerry was on her breaks. The help was a fairly old dear herself, and by the time Mrs Wilson gets back from her little trip, he’s run up a slate into three figures, and got the old dear to keep it to herself and not bother Kerry with the details.

‘Try as she might, I don’t think Rosemary’s seen a penny back this four-month. Maybe now he’s dead, she’ll be able to make a claim against his estate. I know she could do with it. That little shop’s been that close to closing down many a time, and something like this could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.’

‘Not gossiping, I hope, dear?’ asked the Reverend Bertie, returning with a laden tray.

‘Of course not, Pops.’

Short for ‘Sweetie Pops’? wondered Falconer, who, not being a sentimental man, shuddered, mentally searching for a new direction for the conversation and unexpectedly finding it in Carmichael.

‘What about the little dog in all this? His owner’s dead, but we’ve not seen him. All we know is that someone came and took him away …’ He faltered to a halt, slightly embarrassed at being the centre of attention, and Bertie’s next remark did not help.

‘What a kind-hearted young man you are. No, I’m glad to say that poor Buster has been taken in by a kind neighbour with an excellent pedigree. In fact, she’s my wife’s aunt. Martha Cadogan.’

‘The old schoolmistress?’

‘That’s right.’ Lillian took the conversational reins. ‘Auntie and Reg Morley were of an age, at school together, knew each other all their lives, although not intimately as friends. She persuaded that rather crimson constable to let her have Buster’s bits and pieces, and took the little animal off to her place, saying that, even if he only stayed for a while, he’d be company, and the extra exercise would be good for her arthritis.’

‘Aunt Martha is an angel.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far, Bertie, but her heart’s in the right place, and if someone hadn’t taken responsibility, that dog would have been a real nuisance running loose.’

‘So your aunt must have known quite a bit about Mr Morley over the years?’ prompted Falconer.

‘She’d known him as long as anyone locally, and probably as well,’ agreed Lillian.

‘And where does she live?’ Proudfoot had mentioned where, but they had not made a note of it at the time.

‘Right up the High Street, turn left into Sheepwash Lane, third property on the left – The Old School House, it’s called.’

III

Upon leaving the vicarage, Falconer and Carmichael returned to Crabapple Cottage to give it the once-over, now that forensic evidence had been taken and the body removed. Proudfoot had shown them the battered box of crumpled and ancient grubby bank notes, and had been dismissed with it, to lodge it at headquarters in Market Darley for safekeeping.

Looking round them now, even with the addition of fingerprint powder, the place seemed no more grubby, and they commenced their search, Falconer with a handkerchief fastidiously wrapped round his right hand.

In the kitchen-cum-scullery they found little more than cracked and chipped crockery, elderly cooking pots and half-used packets and jars of various foodstuffs. There was no refrigerator, and foods liable to spoil were kept in an old-fashioned metal meat safe, on a slab of marble in the larder. It was Falconer who made this discovery, and he immediately instructed Carmichael to dispose of the contents with some haste. The milk had turned in the heat, and the few rashers of bacon in there seemed intent on following it. Falconer’s face was a picture of disgust as he withdrew from the claustrophobic space, a hand over his mouth and nose.

A plethora of bills, both paid and unpaid, resided behind the mantel clock, and the two drawers by the sink held a collection of unmatched cutlery, and several money-off coupons for such items as dog food and tea bags. The sink itself held two or three inches of greasy water and several unwashed items, including a saucepan, probably the one used to heat the milk for the old man’s cocoa.

The middle room was empty except for a battered table, a wooden chair, a lop-sided stool, and several teetering piles of books which proved all to have come from the County Library, and which should have been returned, some as long as twenty-three years ago. So the old man had had a hobby after all, and it seemed to be kleptomania.

The tiny front room had little to yield in the way of information on first inspection, but presented plenty for them to sift through. Newspapers were ranged in piles around the walls, as if the old man had never thrown anything away. One armchair was piled high with an assortment of broken clocks and radios, and an old bureau seethed with a collection of paperwork that probably stretched back over several decades. The one electric light hung, unshaded, from the centre of the ceiling. There was no television set.