Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (11 page)

But Daisy had heard the man she had not seen start a car she had not seen after the man she had seen had shot her and her family.

Probably he had left the house by the back door and brought the car round to the front. He had escaped when he heard noises overhead. The

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man who shot Daisy also heard noises overhead, which was why he had not fired another shot, the shot that would have killed her. The noises were, of course, made by the cat Queenie, but the two men were not to know that. Very likely, neither of them had been to the top floor, but they knew there was a top floor. They knew someone else might be up there.

This was an entirely satisfying explanation in all respects but one. Wexford was standing by the side of the road, looking behind him, pondering on this single exception, when car lights came up out of the wood on the main road. They turned off to the left just before the wall was reached and in the light from the house Wexford saw that it was Gabbitas's Land Rover.

Gabbitas stopped when he saw who it was. He wound down the window. "Were you looking for me?"

"I'd like a word, Mr Gabbitas. Can you spare me half an hour?"

For answer, Gabbitas leaned across and opened the passenger door. Wexford hauled himself in. "Would you come over to the stables, please?"

"It's a bit late for that, isn't it?"

"Late for what, Mr Gabbitas? Pursuing a murder enquiry? There are three people dead here and one seriously injured. But on second thoughts I think your house might be the better venue."

"Oh, very well. If you insist."

This little exchange had served to inform

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Wexford of things he had not noticed at their first meeting. From his accent and his manner, the woodsman showed himself a considerable cut above the Harrisons. He was also extremely good-looking. He was the type of a Cold Comfort Farm hero. He had the looks of an actor some casting director might pick to play the male lead in a Hardy or Lawrence adaptation. Byronic but rustic too. His hair was black, his eyes very dark. The hands on the wheel were brown with black hairs on the backs of them and on the long fingers. The half-grin he had given Wexford when asked to drive down the by-road had shown a set of very white, even teeth. He was a swashbuckler and of the type that is supposed more than any other to be attractive to women.

Wexford climbed into the passenger seat, "What time was it you told me you came home last night?"

"Eight twenty, eight twenty-five, that's the nearest I can make it. I didn't think I'd have any reason to be precise about the time." There was an edge of impatience to his tone. "I know I was back in my house when my clock struck the half-hour."

"Do you know Mrs Bib Mew who works at the house?"

Gabbitas seemed amused. "I know who you mean. I didn't know she was called that."

"Mrs Mew left here on her bicycle at ten to eight last night and reached home in Pomfret Monachorum at about ten past. If you reached home at twenty past it's likely you might

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have met her on your way. She too used the byroad."

"I didn't meet her," Gabbitas said shortly. "I've told you, I met no one, I passed no

one."

They had driven through the pinetum and reached the cottage where he lived. Gabbitas's manner, when ushering Wexford in, had become slightly more gracious. Wexford asked him where he had been on the previous day.

"Coppicing a wood near Midhurst. Why?"

It was a bachelor's house, tidy, functional, a little shabby. The living room into which he took Wexford was dominated by objects which turned it into an office, a desk with laptop computer, grey metal filing cabinet, stacks of box files. Bookcases full of encyclopaedias half filled a wall. Gabbitas cleared a chair for him by lifting off its seat an armful of folders and exercise books.

Wexford persisted. "And you came home along the byroad?"

"I told you."

f "Mr Gabbitas," said Wexford rather crossly, pounds ou must have seen enough television, if you know it from no other source, to understand that a policeman's purpose in asking you the same thing twice is, frankly, to catch you out." $ ^"Sorry," said Gabbitas. "OK, I do know that. jl's just that a -- well, a law-abiding person, i't much like to have it thought he's done ig to be caught out about. I suppose I

>ect to be believed." res, I daresay. That's rather idealistic in

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the world we live in. I wonder if you've been thinking about this business much today. While you've been in your woodland solitude near Midhurst, for instance? It would be natural to give it some thought."

Gabbitas said shortly, "I've been thinking of it, yes. Who could help thinking of it?"

"About the car these people who perpetrated this -- this massacre, arrived in, for instance. Where was it parked while they were in the house? Where was it when you came home? Not making its escape by the by-road or you would have passed it. Daisy Flory made her 999 call at twenty-two minutes past eight, within a few minutes of their leaving. She made it as fast as she could crawl because she was afraid she might bleed to death." Wexford watched the man's face while he said this. It remained impassive but the lips tightened a little. "So the car can't have gone by the by-road or you would have seen it."

'Obviously it went by the main road."

'There happens to have been a squad car on the B 2428 at this time and it was alerted to block the road and note all vehicles from eight twenty-five. According to the officers in that car no vehicle of any kind passed until eight forty-eight when our own convoy with the ambulance came. A roadblock was also set up on the B 2428 in the Cambery Ashes direction. Perhaps our block was put on too late. There's something you can perhaps tell me: is there any other way out?"

"Through the woods, d'you mean? A jeep

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"(

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could perhaps get out if the driver knew the woods. If he knew them like the back of his hand." Gabbitas sounded extremely dubious. "I'm not sure I could do it."

"But you haven't been here all that long, have

you?"

As if he thought explanation rather than an answer required, Gabbitas said, "I teach one day a week at Sewingbury Agricultural College. I take private work. I'm a tree surgeon among other things."

"When did you first come here?"

"Last May." Gabbitas put his hand up to his mouth, rubbed his lips. "How is Daisy?"

"She's well," Wexford said. "She's going to be very well -- physically. Her psychological state, that's another thing. Who lived here before you came?"

"Some people called Griffin." Gabbitas spelt it. "A couple and their son."

"Was their work confined to the estate or did they have outside jobs like you?"

"The son was grown-up. He had a job, I don't know what. In Pomfret or Kingsmarkham, I should think. Griffin, I think his first name was Gerry or maybe Terry, yes, Terry, he managed the woodland. She was just his wife. I think she sometimes worked up at the house." � "Why did they leave? It wasn't just a job to ^eave, it was a house too."

'JS**

pounds <&' "He was getting on. Not sixty-five but getting ta. I think the work got too much for him, he k early retirement. They had a house to go

'j a place they'd bought. That's just about all

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I know about the Griffins. I met them just the once, when I got this job and I was shown the house."

"The Harrisons will know more, I imagine."

For the first time, Gabbitas really smiled. His face was attractive and friendly when he smiled and his teeth were spectacular. "They weren't on speaking terms."

"What, the Harrisons and the Griffins?"

"Brenda Harrison told me they hadn't spoken since Griffin insulted her months before. I don't know what he said or did, that's all she told me."

"Was that the real reason for their leaving?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Do you know where this house they moved to is? Did they leave an address?"

"Not with me. I think they said Myringham way. Not all that far. I have a distinct memory of Myringham. Would you like a coffee? Or tea or something?"

Wexford refused. He also refused Gabbitas's offer of a lift back to where his car was parked outside the incident room.

"It's dark. You'd better take a torch." He called after Wexford, "That was her place, Daisy's. Those stables, they were her private sort of sanctuary. Her grandmother had them done up for her." He had a kind of genius for minor bombshells, small revelations. "She spent hours in there on her own. Doing her own thing, whatever that was."

They had taken her sanctuary over without asking permission. Or, if permission had been

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asked and obtained, it was not from the stables' owner. Wexford walked along the winding path through the pinetum, aided by the torch Gabbitas had lent him. It occurred to him as the now dark bulk, the unlit rear, of Tancred House came into sight, that all this now probably belonged to Daisy Flory. Unless there were other heirs, but if there were, newspaper articles and obituaries had made no mention of them.

She had come into all this narrowly. If the bullet had been an inch lower, death would have robbed her of her inheritance. Wexford wondered why he was so sure that her inheritance would be a liability to her, that when she knew of what some would call her good fortune, she would recoil from it.

* * *

Hinde had checked the items listed by Brenda Harrison with Davina Flory's insurance company. A string of jet beads, a rope of pearls that, whatever Brenda might insist, were probably not real, a couple of silver rings, a silver bracelet, a silver and onyx brooch, she had not bothered to insure.

On both lists were a gold bracelet valued at ithree thousand five hundred pounds, a ruby ring �with diamond shoulders valued at five thousand Ipounds, another set with pearls and sapphires Jpt two thousand, and a ring described as a """" amond cluster, a formidable piece of jewellery is, valued at nineteen thousand pounds.

Ill

The whole seemed to be worth rather more than thirty thousand. They had taken the less valuable pieces as well, of course, not knowing. Perhaps they had been even more ignorant and had supposed their loot worth far more than it was.

Wexford poked at the grey furry cactus with his forefinger. Its colour and texture reminded him of Queenie the cat. No doubt she too had thorns concealed by silky fluff. He locked the door and went to his car.

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8

FIVE cartridges had been used in the Tancred murders. The cartridges, according to the ballistics expert who had examined them, had come from a Colt Magnum .38 revolver. The barrel of every pistol is scored inside by distinct lines and grooves which in turn leave their mark on the bullet as it leaves the gun. The interior of each barrel contains unique marks, as individual as a fingerprint. The marks on the .38 cartridges found at Tancred House -- all had passed through the bodies of Davina Flory, Naomi Jones and Harvey Copeland -- matched and could therefore be concluded to have come from the same gun.

r Wexford said, "At least we know that only one gun was used. We know it was a Colt Magnum .38. The man Daisy saw did all the fhooting. They didn't share it out, he did all |he shooting himself? Is that odd?" ? "They only had one gun," said Burden. "Or pnly one real gun. Do you know, I read ^omewhere the other day about a town in ?Jtfae United States where a serial killer was Ita the loose, that all the students on the ^university campus were permitted to go out d buy guns for their own protection. Kids nineteen and twenty they must have been, ink of that. Handguns are still hard to come

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by in this country, thank God."

"We said that when poor Martin was shot, remember?"

"That was a Colt .38 or .357 too."

"I'd noticed," Wexford said sharply. "But the cartridges used in the two cases, Martin's killing and this one, don't match anyway."

"Unfortunately. If they did we'd really be getting somewhere. One cartridge used and five left to go? Michelle Weaver's story wouldn't look quite so fantastic."

"Has it occurred to you it was odd using a handgun at all?"

"Occurred to me? It struck me at once. Most of them use a sawn-off shotgun."

"Yes. The great British answer to Dan Wesson. I'll tell you something else that's odd, Mike. Let's say there were six cartridges in the cylinder, it was full to capacity. Four people were in the house but the gunman didn't fire four times, he fired five times. Harvey Copeland was the first to be shot, yet, knowing he had only six cartridges he fired twice at Copeland. Why? Perhaps he didn't know there were three more people in the dining room, perhaps he panicked. He goes into the dining room and shoots Davina Flory, then Naomi Jones, one cartridge each, then Daisy. One cartridge remains in the cylinder but he doesn't shoot Daisy twice to 'finish her off', as Ken Harrison might put it. Why doesn't he?"

"Hearing the cat upstairs surprised him. He heard the noise and ran?"

"Yes. Maybe. Or there weren't six cartridges

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in the cylinder, there were only five. One had already been used before he came to Tancred."

"Not on poor old Martin, though," Burden said briskly. "Anything come in from SumnerQuist yet?"

Wexford shook his head. "I suppose we must expect delays. I've put Barry on to checking where John Gabbitas was on Tuesday, what time he left and so on. And then I'd like you to take him with you and find some people called Griffin, a Terry Griffin and his wife living in the Myringham area. They were Gabbitas's predecessors on the Tancred estate. We're looking for someone who knew this place and the people who lived here. Possible for someone with a grudge against them."

"A former employee then?"

"Perhaps. One who knew all about them and what they possessed, their habits and so on. One who's an unknown quantity."

After Burden had gone, Wexford sat looking at the scene-of-crime photographs. Stills from a snuff movie, he thought, the kind of pictures ao one but himself would ever see, the results �f real violence, real crime. Those great dark Splashes and stains were real blood. Was he j$rivileged to see them, or unfortunate? Would jibe day ever come when newspapers displayed jttch photographs? It might. After all, it was not jj� long ago that no publication ever showed a