Bricks and Mortality: Campbell & Carter 3 (22 page)

Jess thanked them both for their time and left them looking after her with equally dissatisfied expressions.

The lounge now had several people in it. The waiter had reappeared and was taking orders for snacks and drinks. Gervase Crown put down
Country Life
and raised his strongly marked black eyebrows.

‘Any luck?’

She shook her head. ‘I got pretty much the same answers you did. We’ll get on to this, Mr Crown. In the meantime, take care. If there is anything else, if anyone contacts you in any way, or you remember something, let us know at once. Oh, and if you can think of anyone who might bear you a particular grudge …’

‘I’m sure you’ve heard about the Stapleton family. Well, whatever you’ve heard, you can forget them as suspects. It wasn’t either of the sisters!’ Gervase said angrily. ‘Petra couldn’t and Kit wouldn’t.’

You’d be surprised how out of character people can act, thought Jess, but didn’t say it. ‘You’ve seen both sisters since your return?’

‘You obviously know that I have.’

‘Actually, I only knew for certain that you’d seen Petra. I guessed you might also have seen Kit by now.’

‘Indeed I have. She was round here like a shot to tell me off as soon as she heard I’d called on Petra. But that, Inspector Campbell, is Kit’s style: right to your face. She wouldn’t shove bits of paper under doors. And as for their mamma, she’s a very proper sort of woman. She wouldn’t send letters made of bits of newsprint. She’d write by hand on headed notepaper. What’s more, she wouldn’t send threats – and I haven’t seen her since my return.’

Gervase had recovered his equanimity. He stood up and accompanied her courteously to the cobbled yard and her car.

‘Thanks for coming so quickly, anyway,’ he said. He smiled. ‘I do appreciate it, and your taking my problems so seriously, because I don’t suppose you’ve got much time for me, either.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Jess felt herself flush. ‘Why on earth should I dislike you?’

‘Why shouldn’t you? Most people seem to. Anyway, I’ve done time, as they say. I’ve got “previous”. Don’t pretend you don’t take that into consideration whenever you look at me, or discuss me with your boss.’

It was what she had thought when she had first met him. He knew it. He was using that knowledge now to rile her. It seemed an extraordinarily unwise thing for him to do and she wondered why he was doing it. She said angrily, ‘I think, Mr Crown, that you are attempting to test me in some way. If you are, then I can tell you I don’t have time to waste on that sort of mind game. As regards our dealings now over the matter of the threatening message you’ve received, and the arson attack on your house involving a fatality … I’m a police officer, a professional. That I am aware of your past history doesn’t mean it influences any investigation I make. You’ve been out of the country until recent events. So far, you’re the victim in all this. And Mr Crown, you
do
need me on your side.’

‘Believe me,’ Gervase said fervently, ‘I’d
hate
to have you as an enemy!’

‘I’m not your enemy. Don’t treat me as one.’

‘
Jess!
’ yelled a childish voice. Feet clattered across the cobbles and Millie appeared unexpectedly, running beneath the arched entry into the yard. She came to a halt by them and stared long and hard at Gervase, who stared back saying nothing.

‘Who is he?’ asked Millie of Jess, pointing at the stranger.

‘Don’t be rude, Millie,’ said Jess gently.

‘I’m Gervase,’ said Gervase. ‘You are Millie, I gather.’

Millie greeted this coldly. ‘Jess is my daddy’s friend,’ she told him in a stern voice.

‘No!’ gasped Jess, ‘I mean, not like that …’

‘Haven’t you got some dolls to play with or something?’ asked Gervase.

Millie’s opinion of him, obviously already poor, now hit the floor. ‘I don’t play with dolls! MacTavish doesn’t like them.’

Gervase looked enquiringly at Jess.

‘He’s a bear,’ explained Jess. ‘Millie, where’s Monica?’

‘Coming,’ said Millie vaguely, waving towards the archway. She turned her attention to Gervase again. ‘My daddy,’ she said loudly and very clearly, ‘is a—’

‘Goodness, Jess!’ Monica arrived, puffing, in the nick of time. ‘Millie, you shouldn’t run off like that. Gervase, it’s you!’ Monica realised that Crown stood by Jess. ‘Monica Farrell, you remember me?’

‘Indeed I do, Miss Farrell.’ He shook the hand she held out. ‘I passed by your old schoolhouse this morning. It seems to be a private residence now.’

‘It is, everything’s changed since you left here. I’m sorry such a tragedy brought you back, Gervase. But it’s good to see you.’

Gervase glanced at Jess with a faint smile, as if to say, ‘Not everyone dislikes me!’ Then, soberly, he told Monica, ‘I’m sorry about the dead guy, not sorry about the house.’

‘Millie and I are about to treat ourselves to a hot chocolate in the lounge here,’ Monica said. ‘If either of you can join us?’

‘Not me, thanks,’ said Gervase. ‘I’ve seen more than enough of The Royal Oak’s lounge this morning. I’m just about to drive off seeking a spot of lunch somewhere else, well away.’

‘I’ll put my head round the door before I leave,’ Jess promised Millie.

Monica and Millie departed, Millie casting a farewell warning glare at Gervase over her shoulder.

‘You see?’ Gervase smiled wryly at Jess. ‘Miss Farrell aside, I’m cut out to be unpopular. She was the local schoolteacher. She’s programmed to see something positive in the most unpromising subject. She’s in the minority. Even your boyfriend’s kid doesn’t like me.’

‘He’s not my boyfriend!’ insisted Jess. ‘He’s – he’s a colleague.’

‘Oho! A copper, eh? Well, whatever, no sweat.’ Gervase waved a nonchalant hand in goodbye and strolled off towards his hired blue BMW, parked in a corner of the yard.

Millie and Monica were in the far corner of the lounge. Millie had obviously been waiting for Jess to join them and bounced up to wave vigorously. ‘We’re over here, Jess!’

‘I’m glad I’ve seen Gervase,’ said Monica placidly. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye open for him, knowing he was staying locally. I didn’t fancy actually calling round here to see him on purpose because he might think I was being inquisitive. You know he really does look like a— he does look as Stephen Layton described him to me. I told Ian about it. Stephen met Gervase outside the front door here, on the night he arrived from Portugal. Ask Ian how he described him.’ Monica gave a slight nod of the head towards Millie, indicating she did not want to repeat it for youthful ears. She needn’t have worried. Millie had already made up her own mind about Gervase.

‘
I
think he looks like a murderer,’ said Millie.

Gervase himself, having declared his intention to drive out and find a decent-looking place to lunch, had decided that he’d better do it. If the red-haired inspector came back to the yard and saw his car still parked there, she’d be looking for him again.

‘Sod this,’ said Gervase mildly to himself, ‘I’ve had enough of the police.’ He glanced around him. ‘And enough of Weston St Ambrose.’

He got into the rented BMW as Jess went into the back entrance of the hotel, and pointed it towards the arched way out into the main road. The exit was blind, any car having to cross the pavement before it got to the street. Aware of pedestrians on the footpath, he looked carefully from side to side and, as a result, almost failed to spot a middle-aged woman on an old-fashioned bicycle in the road ahead of him. In the nick of time, he braked. The bicycle wobbled, a couple of books in the wicker basket on the front fell out; and its rider put a foot to the ground and glowered at him.

Gervase opened the car door, half got out and called, ‘Sorry, you OK?’

‘That is a very dangerous exit,’ said the woman. ‘You should take more care.’

‘I was taking care,’ returned Gervase unwisely.

‘Not enough!’ snapped the woman. She clambered from her bicycle. Under her quilted jacket she wore what looked like some sort of uniform.

Gervase realised she intended to retrieve the books on the ground and hurried to do it first, but she beat him to it. She stood there with the books – they had the look of library books about them – gripped in her hands. There was something vaguely familiar about her but he couldn’t place her. She, too, was studying him.

‘Gervase Crown,’ she announced at last. ‘My husband told me you were back.’

‘Good grief,’ Gervase said, ‘Mrs Layton, if I’m not mistaken. Have you, er, been to the library?’

‘Yes. Our local library is now staffed by volunteers. The cuts, you know.’

‘Cuts?’

‘Government cuts. It’s disgraceful, of course, but we’ll keep our library going as long as we can.’ She peered at the books. ‘Although it won’t help if the books are damaged!’

‘Are they?’ asked Gervase. ‘I’ll replace the damn things if necessary.’ They were, he noticed, both volumes of crime fiction.

‘They’re all right!’ she said sharply. She dusted the jackets off before turning to replace the volumes in the wicker basket. ‘How long do you intend to stay?’ she asked.

‘Until matters relating to my house are sorted out.’

‘Can’t Reggie Foscott handle that for you?’

Gervase said icily, ‘I can handle my affairs myself, thank you.’

‘Mm, I suppose you can.’ Mrs Layton climbed aboard her aged metal steed. ‘Don’t pile yourself up in that car, too,’ she said, nodding at the BMW, and pedalled away before he could retort.

‘This,’ Gervase informed a pair of late-season tourists emerging into the street from the hotel, ‘is the village from hell.’

They looked understandably alarmed.

On leaving the lounge a little later Jess hesitated for a moment in the entrance lobby of the hotel. She had left Monica and Millie still sitting over their hot chocolate, and discussing the bar menu. She had excused herself from sharing their meal. The waiter, in any case, now appeared to have given up on ever persuading her to order anything, and had ignored Jess. Her car was in the courtyard car park at the back; but Jess turned to the front entrance and stepped out into the street. Three minutes earlier and she’d have seen Gervase drive away. As it was, all she saw were two tourists, husband and wife, peering cautiously around them.

What she was now doing, she told herself as she walked along, was checking out the story Gervase Crown had told her. But she knew in her heart it was blatant curiosity. She glanced at her wristwatch. Half an hour, so Gervase had said. That’s what it took him to walk to the churchyard, find his father’s gravestone, and walk back to The Royal Oak. He hadn’t hung about.

The church loomed up ahead. It stood almost opposite Monica Farrell’s cottage. Its churchyard was dark, shaded by ancient trees and overgrown with a thick tangle of vegetation. Only the very latest burials, few in number, were clustered together and an attempt made to keep the area tidy. As for the rest, it was a wildlife paradise, undisturbed and given over to nature. Sebastian Crown’s ashes had been placed here some years ago. The spot would be marked not by an upright but by a flat stone and that, Jess stared around in despair, would be somewhere in this jungle.

But someone had been here before her and recently, treading down the grasses and making a narrow footpath twisting towards a far corner. Gervase? He would have known where to look. Jess followed this narrow trodden route. All around was a strong smell of earth and decay and a stillness as of time suspended. It was hard not to feel that the eyes of those who rested here were upon her. Birds flew up into the overhanging branches at her approach. A grey squirrel sitting atop a lichen-encrusted Victorian urn ran down it, dashed across the narrow track and up the nearest tree trunk. Small creatures scuttled about unseen in the long grass and insects buzzed around her. Even with prior knowledge of its location, she wondered that Gervase had found his father’s memorial at all. But suddenly she came upon a flatter area in a far corner, where someone had chopped inefficiently at the grass in an attempt to keep it down and the area respectable. Here a plot had been set aside for the reception of ashes. Rows of small square stones in the grass marked the locations. A couple were quite recent, but dirt and moss had encrusted most of the stones rendering the words illegible. However, at one of them someone had recently scraped the grime away. Jess stared down. This was Sebastian Crown’s last resting place. His stone was engraved simply with his name, his year of birth and that of his death.

This is it, then, thought Jess. Shelley’s Ozymandias’s broken statue emerging from the sand could not have said it better. Here was all that remained on earth of a wealthy, powerful, strong-willed and – towards his wife at least – violent man. Just this: one small square of stone, green with moss, the incised inscription filled with dirt. She glanced at her watch again and noted the time. Gervase would probably have spent a few minutes here, remembering his childhood, and then he would have set off back to the hotel. The timescale was about right. She had no reason to doubt his account.

Jess left the churchyard and began to walk back to The Royal Oak. But before she reached it any sober meditation on life and death she might be tempted to make was driven out of her head. Coming towards her she saw a vaguely familiar form. It defined itself as a young man, scrawny in build, narrow faced, and wearing only a thin short-sleeved T-shirt with his jeans, even in this chilly weather. The shirt had lettering on it, but Jess couldn’t make it out at this distance.

The young man had seen her now, and recognised her too. He swung about to make off in the direction from which he’d come but Jess had remembered his name and called it loudly.

‘Alfie! Alfie Darrow!’

Alfie stopped in his tracks at the sound of the law calling his name. When she reached him he was still standing there, head down, refusing to meet her eye.

‘Hello, Alfie,’ said Jess pleasantly. ‘I thought I’d recognised you. Even though you’ve started to grow a beard since we last met.’ She was being generous. Alfie’s beard clung to his chin in ragged patches and resembled the lichen adorning the gravestones, rather than hair. She wondered why he’d decided to adopt a fashion that she would not have thought appealed to him. Was he trying to change his appearance? If he was, why?