The Devil's Chair (15 page)

She continued with her grumbling. ‘You'd have thought Shirley would have made a bit of an effort,' she grumbled. ‘Put the heating on or something.'

‘We asked her not to come,' Delia Shaw responded smoothly. ‘We know that our mystery call was made from here.' She ignored the outraged, ‘
Bloody cheek
,' and continued. ‘We don't know who she is and we didn't want your cleaning woman to destroy any potential evidence. We think our caller is the key to finding the little girl.' She dropped her eyes. She didn't want Charity to read her private fear that either they never would find Daisy alive, or that they would find her decomposed body.

Somewhere.

But if she'd thought that mentioning Daisy Walsh would soften Charity's anger she might have considered again. It did nothing. She marched around the rooms, her aggression as obvious as steam coming out of a dragon's furious nose.

Belying its Victorian exterior, the cottage was very modern inside and it was obvious that Charity's tastes were for the ultra-contemporary. Everything was Spartan white. Even the sofa was spaceship-white leather and looked very uncomfortable, the sort where the cushions slide off and is always cold to the touch. Delia Shaw took a surreptitious glance at Ms Ignatio and added,
like its owner
, to her observation. Charity might have a warm, traditional name but there was nothing either warm or traditional about her or her abode. In fact, the puzzle was why on earth did she choose to live
here
? Of all places? She would surely have been much more at home in a Mayfair flat. It would have been more convenient too for someone who spent their life travelling between international airports. So she watched her closely and with scarcely concealed curiosity.

The two officers followed Charity around in their stockinged feet, Ms Ignatio having insisted they remove their shoes first. They didn't mention the fact that forensics had done a thorough hovering job and was currently analysing every speck of debris that had been lifted from the carpet. If Ms Ignatio thought the carpet looked extra clean she didn't say so.

The kitchen was Tardis spacious with white wood units and pale granite tops, and it had a wonderful view out towards the sheep scattered along Carding Mill Valley and the Burway which looked a thin, precipitous ribbon of tarmac heading upwards and out of sight. Charity stood in front of the window and stared out, apparently lost in thought.

Delia Shaw cleared her throat. ‘
Is
anything out of place?'

‘No. But …' Charity turned around. ‘You'll think I'm being fanciful,' she said, embarrassed, ‘but I can feel a presence.'

‘It's possibly because you
know
someone's been here,' Coleman said, ever the pedant. ‘It's quite common when there's been an intruder to feel that they've left their mark somewhere.'

‘Is anything out of place?' Delia Shaw persisted.

Charity looked around her, frowning. ‘I can't work out what it is,' she said, ‘but something is different.' Her eyes scanned the room as she scowled.

Both Shaw and Coleman would dearly have loved to press her or even mention the intensive forensic ‘scrub' but Charity's shoulders dropped and she continued with her tour without saying anything more.

They trailed after her around the small, two-bedroomed cottage, her misgivings translating to them and altering the innocent character of Hope Cottage. Instead of appearing a tidy, hardly lived-in home it seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for them to discover something. Delia Shaw glanced at her colleague. Was it possible the child
was
here after all?

It appeared that Charity felt the same. She was opening cupboards and searching under beds, her fingers spread out, her features puzzled.

As the cottage had a sloping roof upstairs the loft was very small, with only room for the water tanks and a small, wooden boarded area, no more than three foot square. The police had already searched up there and found nothing but Charity had the eyes of a hawk. She dropped the ladder down and climbed right into the loft, switching an electric light on as she went while the two police waited at the bottom of the ladder, looking at each other, their shoulders up, querying.

‘Aha,' Charity said, scrabbling around up there. ‘Not mine, I think.' And she dropped a small fluffy pink slipper right into Delia Shaw's hand. It had a scuffed plastic Barbie doll on the front and was a twin for the other.

Delia Shaw felt her face flame, while Coleman gave an embarrassed scrape of his throat.

Martha, meanwhile, was speaking to her officer. Jericho was listening intently, his head titled to one side, his eyes gleaming. He loved playing detective and his memory for old cases was prodigious, much better than Martha's. His mind was like a filing cabinet, everything neatly placed in chronological and alphabetical order.

‘Did I dream it, Jericho,' she was saying, ‘or did it really happen?' And then she told him about the bunch of herbs and the message it had conveyed, which had led to her question about a past case.

Jericho was silent for a moment, his mind flicking through cases as though they were cards in a pack. King, queen, ace, jack. He looked at her. It was the jack. The jack of clubs. A naughty card not, in this case, a male, but a female of the species. Jericho Palfreyman felt happy. He so loved a cliché.

‘Deadlier than the male,' he murmured appropriately.

And Martha had got her clue.

‘In 2002,' he said decisively. ‘It were a wench what cooked tea for her family. You remember,' he prompted. ‘They lived in Hope Bowdler. Father, stepmother and half-brother.' He screwed his face up in concentration. ‘The girl made some sort of a soup and they all fell ill.'

Martha looked dubious. ‘I'm not sure whether …'

‘Aye, but she must have had a witch's knowledge of plants,' he said. ‘There was no proof what she'd bin up to but someone left some Death Cap on 'er doorstep.' He looked at her in some surprise. ‘Don't you remember, Mrs Gunn?'

‘Not as well as I should,' she said. ‘Who did you say died?'

‘The whole family,' he said, ‘except 'er.'

Martha screwed up her face. She still didn't remember the whole story – only fragments. It had always been a jigsaw with too many pieces missing. ‘I remember the verdict,' she said. ‘Misadventure. I had no option. I just remembered the case. I wonder what happened to her.'

Jericho looked very slightly irritated because now he didn't quite have all the answers. ‘Give me a few days,' he said.

Randall was still pedantically pursuing leads, his officers increasingly frustrated.

WPC Lara Tinsley had the pleasure of PC Sean Dart's company when they went back to interview Lucy Stanstead at DI Randall's insistence. He didn't feel comfortable with the role of the naval captain's wife in all this. Tinsley watched the PC concentrate on driving the squad car and wondered. She hadn't quite made up her mind about Sean, whom she'd privately christened Sean Dark Horse. He'd recently transferred to Shrewsbury from Halifax but no one really knew why. She suspected it was to do with a marital breakup – he had a bitter twist to his mouth and never mentioned his family. Not his partner (male or female) or children, not even his mother or father, or anyone, in fact. He really was the proverbial dark horse and Lara Tinsley, who had a slightly nosey streak to her, had made it her mission to winkle out his backstory.

She thought this was possibly a waste of time and didn't quite see how Lucy Stanstead could possibly further their enquiries into Daisy's disappearance but hey, this was a major investigation. Sometimes you prodded around in a dark hole and found something surprising.

She just hoped that Lucy would provide something.

But it was their bad luck that the woman Neil Mansfield was suspected of having an affair with was not alone. However much he was away her burly Royal Navy captain husband was very much at home now. All six foot four of him. And he was not in a good mood.

He snatched the door open with a bad tempered scowl which only slightly meliorated when he registered the fact that they were in uniform.

‘What?' he snapped.

Lara Tinsley gave him her nicest smile. ‘I'm
so
sorry to bother you,' she said, oozing out all the charm she possessed, ‘but we're investigating the accident that happened on the Burway and the disappearance of a little girl, Daisy Walsh.'

His fury was as intense as an Australian bush fire. ‘What the hell do you think it's got to do with us?'

This was a tricky one. At her side Lara saw Sean Dart's mouth drop open as he waited for her to squirm out of this.

‘The child's stepfather is currently doing some decorating here,' she tried, knowing it was as an excuse as weak as water.

Captain Stanstead scowled. ‘That's a
nice
way of putting it,' he sneered.

Lara's shoulders dropped and she sneaked a glance at her colleague, with a mute appeal.
Help me out here, Sean?

He did not respond but stared woodenly ahead.

Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Behind the captain they caught a movement. A petite woman in her thirties, eyes wide with fright, met their eyes, gave a very slight shake of her head and then there was another mute appeal.
Please
.

‘Look,' the captain said, directing a very threatening-looking index finger at them. ‘You get that bastard to finish his bit of
decorating
and then he can get out of our lives for ever.'

‘We-ell, he's having a difficult time at the moment,' Tinsley tried. ‘He's been spending a lot of time at the hospital with his partner and now, of course …' She dropped her eyes then sneaked an upwards glance. Lucy Stanstead was holding her breath while her husband had not lost any of his anger. ‘She died, then,' he snapped.

‘Unfortunately, yes.'

Stanstead gave a cynical snort. ‘She's better out of it,' he said.

‘Can we talk to your wife?'

Stanstead's eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘How do you think she can help you?'

Tinsley bounced his suspicion back with a bland smile. ‘We don't know,' she said, ‘but we do need some help.'

Ideally they would like to have spoken to Mrs Stanstead on her own, but the captain was patently not going to allow them this.

Lara Tinsley and PC Dart followed the couple into a large sitting room at the back of the house. There was still a strong smell of paint, even though Neil couldn't have been here for more than two weeks now. He'd been largely staying at home in case Daisy ‘turned up'. It was a very optimistic point of view but no one had had the heart to disillusion him.

The room was light and bright, a conservatory leading off into a garden which was spring bright and full of flowering bulbs. Someone was a good gardener. Tinsley had never got her garden to look anything near as lovely as this. She glanced out of the French windows in admiration then turned back into the room.

‘So?' the captain demanded.

Tinsley directed her questions at Lucy. ‘Tell me about Neil Mansfield.'

Lucy licked her lips. ‘What do you want to know?' Her voice was faint with a slight tremor. Lucy Stanstead was very nervous.

‘How did you find him?' Lara Tinsley asked conversationally.

‘He … he'd … he'd done some work for Mrs Price – the lady who lives opposite.'

Tinsley wondered exactly what nature of work Mansfield had done for Mrs Price. More of the same?

Lucy was gaining confidence. ‘She said he was neat and clean, did a good job and didn't charge extortionate prices.' She was patently on safer ground here.

‘So I rang him.'

‘What was your impression of him?'

‘He seemed polite. He listened to what I wanted doing and turned up on time.'

Her eyes were still begging for them to keep her secret.

‘Did he ever mention his partner, Tracy?'

Lucy had a swift look at her husband, whose eyes were fixed on her, a tautness to his mouth that Lara didn't like. She'd seen enough cases of domestic violence to recognize the tension that existed between Captain and Mrs Stanstead.

Lucy gave her husband a nervous look that reminded Tinsley of bushbuck or fawns – always wary – then bravely answered the officer's question.

‘I got the impression they weren't very happy,' she said.

Her husband gave her a warning sign, clearing of his throat.

But his wife was past caring now. ‘I think he planned to leave her.'

‘Really?'

Lucy Stanstead tucked her thin, pale hair behind her ears and nodded.

‘And Daisy, the little girl?'

‘I think that was what had stopped him leaving before. You see, he hadn't legally adopted her and he wasn't her father so he would have no right to see her and he didn't …' Another swift glance at her husband. ‘He didn't,' she repeated, ‘think that Tracy was a very good mother. What he said was that if he left Daisy would have no one who cared about her.'

Something struck Tinsley. She looked at Sean Dart and wondered if the same thought had entered his brain – if he had one. She wasn't convinced. Yet.

‘Did you ever meet Daisy?'

Now Lucy Stanstead did look anxious. She gave a tiny nod without vocalizing, as though she thought her husband might miss the affirmative movement. ‘He brought her here once or twice when Tracy was working.'

When Tracy was working
. The phrase seemed important to Lara Tinsley. She would bring it up at the next briefing. Apart from an initial superficial interview with her employer they had largely ignored Tracy's place of work. What if there was something or someone there that had some bearing on the events of 6 and 7 April?

‘Do you have any children of your own?' She'd deliberately addressed the question to them both. Captain Stanstead merely tightened his lips while his wife shook her head – with a tinge of sadness, her mouth drooping in unhappiness. Lara Tinsley decided not to pursue the reason why they had no children, instead turning the focus of her questions back to Neil Stanstead.