Cursed Inheritance (25 page)

the front porch. The man putting a considerable strain on

the swinging rocking chair was big in every direction. As

soon as he spotted Neil he stood up.

‘You Neil Watson?’ The way he said it told Neil that this

was no friendly greeting. The man took a step towards him.

He was probably in his forties or early fifties. His ginger

hair was cropped short and he wore a bright Hawaiian shirt . over a pair of baggy beige slacks. He had bright blue eyes,

the colour of Neil’s own, and a mouth that didn’t smile.

‘Yeah. That’s me. Where’s Max?’

‘In the back yard. I wanted to speak with you In private.

You know who I am?’ There was contempt and just a hint

of a threat behind the question.

Neil shook his head, puzzled by this stranger’s hostility.

‘I’m Brett Selbiwood. I’m Max’s son. He’s told me all

about you.’

Neil automatically held out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet

you. I suppose that makes you my uncle. You know all

about my grandmother and … ?’

Brett ignored Neil’s outstretched hand. ‘You do know

you have no claim on him? Or his property?’

‘Of course not. I never thought … ‘

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‘There’s not even proof that your … mother, is it?’

Neil nodded.

‘There’s not even proof that she is who she says she is. And even with DNA evidence I’ll fight this through the courts … ‘

‘Hang on. I think there’s been a misunderstanding here.’

Brett Selbiwood took another step towards him. Neil backed away. ‘There’s no misunderstanding. If you’ve gotten it into your head that you can get anything out of my pa, you’re mistaken. Now get out of here.’

Neil stood his ground. ‘At least let me see Max. He’s coming over to England with me and … ‘

Neil was quite unprepared for the sharp pain of the punch when it came, and as he drove away fast in Chuck’s pick-up, his nose dripping blood, he thought of all the bril-liant things he ought to have said. And wondered what to do next.

As Wesley and Heffeman parked outside Potwoolstan Hall for the second time that day, a cloud of black crows rose, screeching, from the tops of the trees. Something or someone had disturbed them. The sky was an ominous shade of grey, laden with rain.

In the entrance hall they almost collided with a woman in a wheelchair: Mrs Carmody. She was wearing a coat and there was a suitcase by the front door. It looked as if she was leaving. She fluttered apologies and made a feeble joke about being a bad driver before Pandora appeared, relieving them of the need for further pleasantries. After assuring Mrs Carmody that her taxi was ordered, speaking in a tone people usually reserve for backward children, she showed them into Jeremy Elsham’s office. As he stepped over the threshold, Wesley glanced back over his shoulder. Nigel Armley, Catriona Harford’s fiance, had been found in the hallway with his face blown away.

He forced himself to concentrate on what Jeremy Elsham was going to tell them … whether he wanted to or not.

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Elsham sat behind his impressive desk. The bags beneath his eyes had grown deeper and darker and he turned a pen over and over in his fingers, staring at the unmarked pink blotting paper before him.

‘Sorry to bother you again, Mr Elsham. But I believe you have some information for us,’ said Wesley.

Elsham looked puzzled. ‘I’ve told you everything I know.’

‘You make tapes when your clients are regressed to their childhoods. ‘

‘Do I?’

Heffeman banged his fist on the table. ‘Don’t mess us about. We know you do.’

Elsham reddened. ‘There’s nothing sinister about it, Inspector. It helps to have a record, that’s all.’

‘May we hear Emma Oldchester’s tape?’

‘Not without her permission. ‘

‘This is a murder enquiry,’ Heffernan growled.

Elsham hesitated. Then he walked over to the wall opposite the window and swung a seascape in oils to one side. Behind it was a safe. He unlocked it and took out what looked like a casSette tape which he handed to Wesley who passed it to Heffeman. .

‘Do you always lock the tapes in your safe?’

Elsham nodded. ‘These things are highly confidential. ‘

Heffeman leaned forward. ‘I bet you hear some juicy bits of scandal, eh. You’re never tempted to pass anything on to the Sunday newspapers?’

Elsham bristled with righteous indignation. ‘That’s an outrageous suggestion. Do you want my cooperation or not?’

‘Of course we do, sir,’ said Wesley quickly in an attempt to smooth Elsham’s ruffled feathers. Sometimes tact wasn’t Gerry Heffernan’s strong point. ‘If we could hear the tape…’

Elsham put the cassette into the machine and pressed the button. Wesley coul.d tell he was seething inwardly. Maybe

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the boss had gone too far.

First they heard Elsham’s voice, soothing, hypnotic. He was putting Emma under, telling her that she was feeling , drowsy and peaceful and that she would soon be asleep. The voice seemed to be having a similar effect on Heffernan, who had closed his eyes.

Emma’s voice was fairly high-pitched with a soft local accent. Elsham prompted her from time to time, moving her backwards in time gently. It was about five minutes into the tape that Emma began to relive the events of 1985. It was no longer her voice but the voice of a terrified child, hidden in the pantry, peeping through a grille in the door, paralysed with fear. A child who had watched someone place a gun in her dead mother’s hand.

They heard Jeremy Elsham’s voice, soft and coaxing through Emma’s distressed sobs, asking who it was. Did she see the killer’s face?

There was a short period of held breath, of expectation, before she answered.

‘He’s in the kitchen.’ The child was crying now, almost incoherent.

‘Who’s in the kitchen, Emma?’

‘Mr Bleasdale,’ she sobbed. Then she seemed to waver. ‘No. The other man. He shot my mummy.’ With that Emma Oldchester had begun to weep uncontrollably.

‘And you were going to keep that from us, Mr Elsham?’ Wesley asked.

Jeremy Elsham hung his head and said nothing.

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Joshua Morton is dead, perished in a grievous misad-venture. He was hunting with his brother, Isaac, when they came upon some wild creatures, strange birds that some call turkeys. Isaac fired upon the birds but his brother had stepped between him and his prey, quite unaware of the danger.

Penelope keeps to her quarters as befits a widow and the whole settlement met together beneath our sail to pray for her.

Isaac Morton is said by all to be half mad with grief but I have reason to doubt the truth of this. I was walking near the river when I heard a sound in the bushes. Thinking it was some creature, I stepped softly towards it but the sight that met my eyes .made the bile rise in my throat. Penelope was there, lying on the ground, her skirts lifted while Isaac Morton had his pleasure of her, enjoying her body after murdering her husband, his own brother. I watched them from the shelter of the bushes … watched while Isaac grunted above my beloved like a beast.

The next day Isaac Morton was found dead, his life ended by a musket ball. Some say he shot himself out of remorse for his brother’s death. But I say he hath been punished for his unnatural lust.

Set down by Master Edmund Selbiwood, Gentleman,

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on the sixth day of September 1605 at Annetown,

Virginia.

Wesley stared at the wall of the CID office, at the two images of Patrick Evans. Alive and dead. He wasn’t sure when Kirsty planned to go back to London. Perhaps he should make another effort to see her. To make sure she wasn’t left alone in a strange town. But, on the other hand, it might be a mistake to become too involved.

As the Senior Investigating Officer, Gerry Heffernan had planned their tasks for the next day; who they were going to interview and what lines of enquiry they were going to follow. He told the team to get an early night because he wanted them in the office first thing. Wesley decided to go home. He needed a change of scene. And he might think better slumped on the sofa with a glass of wine in his hand.

As he walked home, up the narrow streets, he couldn’t get Emma Oldchester’s voice out of his mind. She had said a name - Mr Bleasdale; no doubt her mother had encouraged her to call the gardener that, to show some respect. Then she had come out with the strange utterance about the ‘other man’. But which other man? And why Bleasdale? Bleasdale hadn’t even been there at the time. He had gone up north to start a new job.

He had decided against questioning Emma again for the moment. He was terrified of upsetting her. If she was to relive the events of 1985 it should be in the presence of an expert, a psychiatrist perhaps, who knew what he or she was doing. Unlike Jeremy Elsham. There were some officers who’d risk Emma Oldchester’s sanity to get a result. But Wesley Peterson wasn’t one of them.

At least they knew that Evans hadn’t talked to Emma. Her husband and father had fended him off. But was Barry Oldchester just over-protective? Or was he afraid of something? He was considerably older than Emma - fifteen years or so. A middle-aged man wedded to a waif-like girl. He must have been in his early twenties at the time of the

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shootings - old enough to kill. Had he been involved somehow? Had he his own reason for making sure Evans’ s book never saw the light of day? He resolved to check out Oldchester’s background. There were so many possibilities. And none of them made the slightest bit of sense.

And another thing that didn’t make sense was the witchcraft element: the dead crows that had been nailed to the doors. Had the murderer put them there for some twisted reason? Perhaps the killer had some connection with the occult. He was keeping an open mind. But he was sure of one thing. Patrick Evans had been getting near the truth. And that meant the Harfords’ killer was close at hand.

These thoughts made the journey home seem short. When he reached home he put his key in the lock, wondering what domestic chaos awaited him.

Pam didn’t rush to the door. She rarely did these days. Once she would have come running into the hall to greet him with a kiss.

She was upstairs, putting Michael to bed. He opened the door to Michael’s room and crossed the threshold on tiptoe. Pam was sitting on the old wooden chair she kept by the cot. She glanced up when he entered but carried on reading from a large story book in a low, hypnotic tone; something about a lazy teddy bear. Wesley crept out. Ifhe disturbed Michael just as she was getting him off to sleep there’ d be hell to pay.

A few minutes later she joined him downstairs. He noticed she was wearing lipstick and the perfume he’d given her for her birthday.

‘I saw you in Tradmouth at lunchtime,’ were her first words.

Wesley felt slightly uncomfortable. ‘Really.’

‘Who were you with? Someone from work?’ The question was more than casual. If Wesley didn’t know better, he would have said that she was jealous.

‘It was the widow of that man who was killed: Patrick Evans. She’s come down from London to make some arrangements. ‘

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Pam muttered something about food and hurried off into the kitchen, leaving Wesley sitting awkwardly on the sofa with no option but to pick up the TV remote control and flick through the channels in search of something interesting. He happened on a travel programme extolling the virtues of visiting Virginia USA. It was always odd how places one had hardly given a thought to keep popping up once some connection is established.

Neil was lucky, he thought. The place looked attractive with its white colonial houses, its sandy beaches and blue water and its old tobacco barns set in the lush green wooded landscape. He started to watch the programme and soon a reconstructed early settlement appeared on the screen with people in seventeenth-century costume re-enacting the bygone minutia of everyday life. A disembodied voice informed the viewer that it was here near the Anne River that the early settlers had landed, some years before the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers. Wesley stared, fascinated, searching each face, looking for Neil but telling himself that the programme had probably been filmed months ago, long before Neil set foot on American soil. After five minutes Pam called out to tell him that the food was ready and he immediately felt guilty that he hadn’t helped her. But he was tired, exhausted by turning all the possibilities over in his mind. He needed some time out to think. But he had as much chance of getting it as he had of taking off on a Caribbean holiday the next day. Zero.

‘Neil’s asked me to send him some pictures of Potwoolstan Hall,’ Pam said as soon as they had finished eating. ‘I found a book on local history in the library this afternoon and 1 scanned in some pictures of the hall and emailed them to him. Did you know there’s supposed to be a curse on the place? The man who built it, Josiah Selbiwood, killed a local girl and buried her somewhere in the grounds. Legend has it the villagers found out and murdered him. Then they cursed the Hall by hanging dead crows on the doors: quaint local custom, apparently.’

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She suddenly had Wesley’s full attention. ‘Crows?’

‘Dead ones.’

He smiled to himself. That explained a lot. Whoever had murdered the Harfords knew about the Hall’s history.

‘Why’s Neil so interested in the Hall?’ It struck Wesley as strange that Neil was demanding pictures of the epicen-tre of their enquiries.

‘Max is a descendant of one of the Selbiwoods who settled in Virginia and the Selbiwoods built Potwoolstan Hall. Max is trying to discover his roots.’

She stood up and started clearing the dishes away noisily. ‘I’ll do that,’ said Wesley gently, touching her hand. ‘Go and put your feet up.’

She left the kitchen without a word and Wesley packed the dishwasher, his mind only half on what he was doing. Emma Oldchester’s voice kept echoing through his head. Where was Bleasdale, the gardener, the man she had named before apparently changing her mind?