Malice On The Moors (21 page)

He detoured into Church Street to investigate a queue of people spilling out of a doorway next to yet another pub. It was a tiny fish-and-chip shop packed with customers stopping in on the way home to pick up their suppers. Through the steamy window, Powell could see the staff serving up impressive slabs of battered fish and mountains of chips. He stood there for a moment, the smell of hot fat and vinegar having triggered an inexplicable wave of nostalgia. As he turned to leave, he nearly collided with a small gray-haired lady in a wool coat and wool hat, clutching her grease-stained package.

She looked up and smiled at him. “You should try
some, luv. They're not as greasy as some of the others. I have to be careful these days—too much fat doesn't agree with my chemo—but I always say if you can't enjoy yourself now and then, there's not much point, is there?”

He smiled. “I think, madame, you have discovered the secret of a happy life.”

She beamed at him. “Bye-bye, luv.” Such a nice young man, she thought, as she hurried home to her cat.

CHAPTER 20

“Well, let's have it,” Powell said, setting his half-empty glass down on the table in front of him.

“Well, our Chloe's quite a girl,” Sarah began. “Twenty years old and the only daughter of Lord Aldershot, former advisor to Lady Thatcher on northern issues. The old boy owns half of Yorkshire, from what I can gather. Anyway, a year or so ago she decided to chuck the whole thing—you know, Royal Ascot, the endless parties, the weekends in London dancing the night away at the Ministry of Sound—”

“I get the point, Evans.”

“Yes, sir. Like I was saying, she decided to give up the frivolous life of a deb and devote herself instead to saving the world. She enrolled at the University of York last year, which is where she met Stumpy. They began a relationship that ended just a couple weeks ago, according to Chloe.”

“Did she seem upset about it?” 201

“Not so's you'd notice. She seemed more disappointed than anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it's like you said. I think she reckons Stumpy has sold out. Apparently he told her he wants to become an organic farmer when he finishes his degree.”

“Does she know about Katie Elger?”

Sarah shrugged. “If she does, she didn't mention it.” She hesitated. “It's hard to explain, but I got the impression that their relationship was more ideological than romantic.”

“They must have had some jolly times together,” Powell remarked sarcastically.

Sarah ignored his comment. “Just before she moved into residence this summer,” she went on, “Chloe was at her parents' home in Richmond, collecting her things, when she overheard her father talking to someone on the telephone about the Hull Water Corporation proposal for Brackendale. Lord Aldershot is one of the principals of the company,” she added by way of explanation. “Chloe confronted him and threatened to go to the press. He denied the whole affair, told her to get out, and more or less disowned her on the spot. She decided at that moment to do whatever she had to do to stop the project. It was shortly after that, that she recruited Stumpy to the cause.”

“Before you continue, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on her motivation.”

Sarah thought for a moment. “There's no doubt she thinks it's wrong to destroy one of the most scenic dales in the country for profit—what rational person wouldn't?—
but I also think that, for whatever reason, she's trying to get back at her father.”

Powell nodded. “Go on.”

“They planned the August twelfth protest together, hoping to scare Dinsdale off. Stumpy was incensed with Dinsdale and the local police over the way he was treated and began to make plans with Chloe for the next phase of the campaign. She claims that she didn't see much of him after the end of August. His excuse was he needed to get organized for school as well as prepare for court—the case against Stumpy, Chloe, and the other protesters will be heard on October 11 and Stumpy's case against the police comes up sometime in early November. I don't know if she believed him, though.”

“I think by then he'd shifted his attentions to Katie Elger,” Powell commented.

“That may be, sir, but he hadn't cut the cord entirely. Chloe says he spent the night with her on September twelfth.”

“Right. According to Inspector Braughton, she's his alibi for the thirteenth, the day Dinsdale was killed.”

“Well, not exactly, sir.”

“What do you mean?” Powell asked sharply.

Sarah leaned forward in her chair. “Well, sir. She says she spent the night with him, all right, but she now claims that he left around mid-morning.”

“Time enough to get up to Brackendale.”

“Exactly.”

“Did he tell her where he was going?”

“She says not.”

“This is interesting, Evans. You've managed to kill two grouse with one barrel, if I may coin a phrase.”

“Sir?”

“Not only has she discredited Stumpy's alibi, she's blown her own as well. Tell me, Evans, did Chloe Al-dershot strike you as the type of person who might take desperate measures to achieve her ends?”

Sarah frowned. “That's a difficult question. She impressed me as being a very committed young woman, but I don't know about murder.”

“All right. But isn't it fair to say that she and Stumpy were both committed to stopping Dinsdale, and that she had recently become concerned about Stumpy's devotion to the cause?” He looked at her.

“Yes, I think that's true. But even if both of them had a theoretical motive for killing Dinsdale, I don't see how either had the opportunity.”

Powell sighed. “There's no shortage of motives in this bloody case; when all is said and done, I think it does come down to who had the opportunity. The way I see it, we're dealing with two groups of people. Those who were present during lunch at the shooting box, but not up on the moor: Mrs. Settle, Katie Elger, and Emma Walker. And those who were in both places: the fifteen other guns and beaters—including Frank Elger, Albert Turner, Brian Whyte and his son, the rest of the farmers, as well as Harry Settle and Mick Curtis. Have I missed anyone?”

“I don't think so, but I would take issue with one of the names on your list.”

“Who might that be?”

“Katie Elger.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we know she was up on the moor just after Dinsdale was discovered by Mick Curtis. We only have her word for it that she wasn't up there earlier.”

“During the time she says she was lost in the fog?”

Sarah nodded. “It took Sir Reggie and me about ten minutes to walk from the shooting box to Dinsdale's butt the other day, and Sir Reggie is no marathon man. Yet Katie Elger says it took her nearly half an hour.”

Powell frowned. “She doesn't seem the type, somehow, but you have a point. We'd better put Katie on the second list then, which includes everybody I've already mentioned except Mrs. Settle and Emma Walker. Now, if Dinsdale was poisoned during lunch, any one of them could have done it. If he was slipped the cyanide on the moor, it must have been by someone on our second list. It seems less likely, given the time lag involved, but not impossible that he was poisoned before he arrived at the shooting box. In that case, we're looking at a third list.”

“Which would include Mrs. Walker, who arrived just before lunch and left shortly after,” Sarah pointed out.

“Right. We know she was at the Lion and Hippo when Dinsdale came to see her husband earlier that morning. And we shouldn't forget about Marjorie Dinsdale or her daughter.”

Sarah stared at the tiny bubbles rising in her tonic water. “I keep coming back to that damned adder,” she said, frustration evident in her voice. “If it's truly part of this thing, then the person we want must be on your first list, someone who was up on the moor. There is another possibility, I suppose: The murderer may have had an accomplice. Someone slips Dinsdale the cyanide at lunch,
then his or her partner inflicts the snakebite in the shooting butt to cover their tracks.”

Powell nodded absently. An interesting possibility, he acknowledged to himself. But something didn't fit and, once again, he couldn't put his finger on it. His head was spinning and not from too much bitter: love and hate environmental protest destruction and profit mongering rat poison sodium cyanide grouse crumble fog and venomous snakes … If he could only find the common denominator. He lit a cigarette and inhaled sharply.

Sarah interrupted his reverie. “I noticed when we came in that they have roast grouse on the menu tonight. I'd like to try it. Are you game?”

He smiled wryly. “It's probably about the closest I'm going to get to a grouse this season, so why not?”

The grouse and the cabernet sauvignon were both excellent, and as they sat sipping their coffees, Powell spoke. “I know we promised not to talk about the case over dinner, but something has been bothering me. It's Mick Curtis.”

“What do you mean?”

“The way Katie Elger described him when she first saw him. Pale and frightened looking—white as a ghost was the way she put it. It was no doubt quite a shock to find his employer a victim, by all appearances, of a venomous snake. It's just that—I don't know—Curtis doesn't strike me as the squeamish type. I can't help wondering if he might have seen something else that might explain it.”

Sarah laughed. “I'm sure there's even the odd gamekeeper who's afraid of the dark, sir.”

“Very funny. In any case, I'm going to have another
chat with him tomorrow. And I'd like you to have one more go at Mrs. Settle. They're moving to Scarborough on the weekend, so we may not get another chance. Go over the whole thing again with her. Who served what to whom, who poured the wine, where Dinsdale was seated in relation to everybody else—you get the general idea.”

Sarah sighed. “Right.”

Powell regarded her with amusement. “You'll soon learn, if you haven't already, Evans, that ninety percent of this job is sheer bloody boredom punctuated with the occasional moment of satisfaction when you finally get something right. I want you to know that I will be putting in a good word for you, for what it's worth, on the off chance that you are masochistic enough to want to continue in this line of work.”

“Thank you, sir.” Sergeant bloody Dogsbody, at your service, she thought sourly.

Powell had difficulty sleeping that night. The customary night breeze had not materialized and the air in his room was oppressive. He'd forced open his window the minuscule few inches it would go, but to little effect since his landlord had seen fit to turn on the central heating system full blast. Simply to torment him, he had little doubt. He'd rung Marion earlier and now lay thinking about how much more they needed to say to each other and what a fool he'd been and a hundred other things besides. And every so often some isolated thought or fragment or image connected to the investigation would pop uninvited into his head. When he could stand it no longer, he threw off the duvet, turned onto his back and tried to lay still, staring into the darkness until
he eventually slipped into unconsciousness. His dreams were populated with grinning adders and maniacal chemists concocting lethal cocktails on an endless plain of blasted heath.

CHAPTER 21

By the time Powell got downstairs it was after nine o'clock and the dining room was deserted. He went back up and knocked on Sarah's door, but there was no response. He assumed that she must have already left for the Settles'. Retracing his steps, he walked into the dining room and poured himself a cup of coffee from the carafe on the sideboard. He checked his watch. He'd already arranged the previous evening to meet Mick Curtis at ten o'clock up on East Moor. It didn't leave him much time for breakfast. With a grimace he helped himself to a small bowl of cereal.

As he was leaving the inn, he encountered a subdued-looking Mr. Walker in the front hall. “When Ms. Evans gets back, tell her I've gone up to East Moor, would you? I should be back by noon.”

“Yes, Mr. Powell,” the landlord mumbled.

Powell parked his car at the shooting box and followed the track up to the shooting butts. As he topped
the final rise, the full glory of the North York Moors, awash in morning sunlight, was spread out before him. To his right, the green furrow of upper Rosedale ploughed deep into the heart of the moors, with red-roofed farmsteads dotted here and there and fields enclosed by stone walls stretching away until they met a thousand acres of hazy moorland once trodden by Bronze Age chieftains and medieval monks. The purple of the heather and the vivid green of grass and bracken had faded now, giving way to highlights of bronze and gold and red. To the west, the line of stone shooting butts marched down into Brackendale. Sunlight glinted off a Land Rover parked about halfway down the slope, and he could see a figure working beside it.

When he got there a few minutes later, Mick Curtis was leaning on his shovel beside a pile of what looked like coarse sand that had been dumped beside the track. “Grit for the grouse,” he explained curtly. “You said you wanted to talk to me?”

Powell nodded somberly. “I'll try not to take up too much of your time, Mr. Curtis. I don't know if you've heard, but we're now treating Mr. Dinsdale's death as a murder. He was poisoned.”

Curtis looked surprised. “Poisoned? With what?”

“Sodium cyanide. I understand that it's used on the estate for gassing rats.”

The gamekeeper nodded. “Vermin get into the pheasant feed.”

“Harry Settle told me that someone broke into the shed where the pesticides are kept.”

“Right. Around the beginning of September, I think it was. We figured it was just some kids out to make
trouble. Nothing seemed to be missing, so we didn't bother to report it to the police.”

“You and Harry are the only people with keys?”

“As far as I know.”

“Well, whoever broke in and took the stuff knew what they were doing. The symptoms of cyanide poisoning aren't that specific and it's easy enough to miss if you're not looking for it.”

“I'm a bit puzzled, Chief Superintendent. What about the adder?”

“Dinsdale was bitten by an adder, all right, but that's not what killed him.”