Death of an Old Git (The Falconer Files Book 1) Page 9

  ‘What time was this?’

  Again, a pause. ‘It was nine o’clock. I remember because the church clock had just struck the hour when I went into the kitchen. I happened to glance out of the window – it wasn’t fully dark – and I saw someone outside his front door.’

  ‘Have you any idea who it might have been?’

  ‘Let me look at it again,’ and she closed her eyes, then said, ‘Yes. It was the Brigadier. It must have been him because of the stick.’

  ‘The stick?’

  ‘Yes. The Brigadier always carries a walking stick – silver-topped one it is, used to belong to his father. He had a stick, so it must’ve been him.’

  Marvelling at what he perceived to be female logic, Falconer nevertheless added this little snippet to his ‘to do’ list and pressed on. ‘We have been told that Mr Morley was a bit of a voyeur. Do you know anything in this regard?’

  ‘A bit of a what?’

  ‘A voyeur. Liked to spy on people. A bit of a peeping tom,’ he explained.

  At this the young woman blushed and turned away, her good humour momentarily quenched. ‘S’pose he was.’ She was defensive now. ‘Used to spy on us when we were courting. He did it to all the local couples, not just us, but that was just his way.’ She ground to a halt.

  Falconer let the silence draw out for nearly a minute to increase the tension, before he cut to the chase.

  ‘Nothing more recent that you recall?’

  No reply. Rebecca made a play of straightening Tristram’s romper suit and pushing back his fringe.

  ‘Nothing regarding yourself?’ Even Carmichael was squirming now.

  With an attempt at belligerence that did not quite come off, she turned towards him and blurted out, ‘So what if he did spy on me a bit? He’s dead now, so it’s hardly going to happen again, is it? So the matter’s closed.’

  ‘Did you or your husband speak to Mr Morley about his intrusive behaviour?’ Falconer could match her, snit for snit.

  ‘When Nick told me that Martha Cadogan had more or less caught him red-handed in the back lane, I told him to leave it be. I should have made sure the curtains were closed. I didn’t want any trouble, and Nick said he’d leave it. That was it.’

  Was it now? thought Falconer, remembering what Kerry Long had told him. ‘You said your husband went to the local pub for a drink on Sunday night? What time did he get in?’

  Not seeing any connection between this and the previous questions, Rebecca looked relieved and answered without hesitation. ‘About a quarter past ten.’

  Chapter Eight

  Tuesday 14th July – early afternoon

  I

  The Old Manor House really was old, the original building having been constructed during the reign of the first Elizabeth. Although added to over the centuries, the additions had been sympathetic to the original style and it faced the world, a gracious confection of beams, mullioned windows, leaded lights and fancy brickwork. Several barley-sugar-twist chimneys sprouted from its gabled roof, and its slight air of shabbiness merely enhanced its charm.

  Its main door was unexpectedly large: heavy oak blackened with age and wear, and heavily studded. To its right hung an old-fashioned bell-pull, which Falconer viewed with some suspicion. Such objects had been known to come off in his hand before now. He decided to take no chances and indicated to Carmichael to give it a tug. The resultant dull clang was in perfect sympathy with the younger man’s funereal appearance, and the scene would have made a suitable opening for a horror film.

  The door opened to reveal a well-preserved man with a venerable paunch, who could have been any age from sixty-five to eighty. Brigadier Godfrey Malpas-Graves was, in fact, seventy-seven years of age, but was extraordinarily active for a man of his vintage. Of above-average height, he had neatly cut, short greyish-white hair and an expertly clipped white beard. His clothing, although casual, was immaculate and, as he offered a greeting to the callers, his still-blue eyes twinkled a welcome.

  ‘Police chappies? Thought so. Godfrey Malpas-Graves at your service. Come on through. Don’t mind if I carry on with the gardening while we talk, do you? Wife and I are doing a spot of tidying in the old veg patch. Daren’t leave it a day or old Mother Nature’ll be in there wreaking havoc with her blasted weeds.’

  As they completed the introductions, he preceded them through the house, and back out by a side door that led to an extensive kitchen garden. Row upon row of plants were interwoven with narrow pathways, beans scaled dizzying heights on a complicated arrangement of canes, and at one end sprouted a profusion of netted soft fruit bushes and strawberry beds. A further enclosure of wire housed a number of hens and a belligerent and very vocal cockerel.

  At their approach, a woman rose from her kneeling position next to a trug half-full of already wilting weeds. Although dressed in a light summer frock and sandals, she wore stout gardening gloves and held a trowel in her right hand.

  ‘Joyce. Police chappies here to see us about that old reprobate, Morley.’

  ‘Really, Godfrey, that’s hardly appropriate language, given the circumstances.’

  ‘Speak as I find, my dear, speak as I find. Should know that after all these years. By the way, this is Inspector Falconer, and this sinister chappie here is Acting DS Carmichael. You wearing that outfit for a bet, sonny?’

  Falconer cleared his throat loudly and asked them if they knew anything that could throw light on Reg Morley’s demise.

  ‘Not a thing, old boy, I’m afraid.’

  ‘But we have heard that the old chap was loaded,’ Joyce cut in, a steely glint in her eyes. ‘Buckets of money found in the cottage, and him as mean as old Scrooge himself.’

  ‘And helping himself from our garden, whenever the whim took him.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Falconer interrupted. ‘How did you know about money being found?’

  ‘Everyone knows. Village grapevine. Fastest growing plant around. Wish these blighters were as fast-growing, I can tell you,’ he explained, tilting his head towards his own produce.

  ‘Buckets and buckets of money,’ continued his wife, not wanting to let the matter drop. ‘How much was it exactly, Inspector?’

  Falconer decided to wait until he had more time to give Proudfoot as good a verbal working-over as he was ever likely to get, and gave by way of scant explanation, ‘Let’s just say it was a considerable amount, Mrs Malpas-Graves.’

  ‘Party pooper!’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Had he really heard that?

  ‘Nothing, Inspector. Just clearing my throat.’

  ‘To continue, I understand that you had a bit of a run-in with Mr Morley in The Fisherman’s Flies last Friday, Brigadier. Would you be so good as to tell me about it?’

  The older man harrumphed a bit and coloured slightly, before beginning his narrative. ‘Feel rather ashamed about it in retrospect. Damned silly thing to do, but I’d had a few little snifters, and that old sod had been at my fruit and veg yet again. When he started to make snide comments, I just lost my rag.’

  ‘He’s like that, you know,’ his wife commented almost absently. Her gimlet eye had just fallen on a clump of chickweed over by the lettuces, and she was eager to eradicate it. ‘Loses it easily, but it never lasts long. Quick to anger, quick to cool, is Godfrey,’ she concluded, sidling away from them to uproot her quarry.

  ‘We must’ve looked a right pair of old fools,’ her husband continued with his narrative, ‘squaring up to each other like that. It’s just as well George Covington had the good sense to step in when he did. All in all, made a bit of an ass of myself.’

  ‘And that was it, was it? You didn’t try to tackle him about it again, did you?’

  Carmichael had sat himself down on a sawn-off tree stump and was busily scribbling in his notebook, a petulant scowl on his face at the Brigadier’s earlier description of him.

  ‘Don’t think so, old chap, don’t think so.’

  ‘Well do you think you could think again, and tell me wha
t you were doing at the door of Crabapple Cottage at nine o’clock on Sunday evening?’

  The Brigadier’s eyes popped wide open as he observed, ‘I say, you have been doing your homework, haven’t you? Caught me out fair and square with that one.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I was there, and it was at nine o’clock. Heard the clock strike as I was trying to make myself heard at the door. Thought I ought to have it out with him properly. He’d had my asparagus and my soft fruits – hardly the choice of a hungry man, more that of a greedy man.’

  ‘And what did Mr Morley have to say about this?’

  ‘Oh, I never spoke to him. I hammered on the door a few times, but I could hear raised voices coming from round the back, and presumed someone else was getting their twopenn’orth in. So I came home.’

  ‘And the next we heard he was dead,’ Joyce concluded for him.

  ‘Did you see anyone else about, when you were there?’

  ‘Only … No, no, sorry, no one. Never saw a soul.’

  ‘Are you absolutely certain about that?’ (Would you like to phone a friend?)

  ‘Got there at nine. No one about. Bashed the door a bit, then walked back home. Not a soul around.’

  ‘Thank you, Brigadier. No doubt we’ll speak again.’

  As they left The Old Manor House Falconer turned to Carmichael and said, ‘We’ve not got the full story from that old cove. We’ll leave him to stew for a bit, and then I’ll see if I can get him to trip himself up. But for now, I’d like another word with that Lowry chap, ask him about trying to tap his great-uncle for a loan. Money’s always an excellent bet for motive in any murder case.’

  ‘So’s sex, sir,’ added his sergeant, eager to display his knowledge.

  ‘Yes, Carmichael, but hardly in this case.’

  Chapter Nine

  Tuesday 14th July – afternoon

  I

  School was already out for the day, and the near-emptiness of the village earlier had changed with the arrival of the school bus. As Falconer and Carmichael skirted the village green, a group of teenagers lounged on the benches smoking, the boys showing off, hoping to impress the girls by chasing the ducks, or by displaying the pretend intent to ‘duck’ one of the fairer sex in the green waters of the pond. A trio of younger children sat in the welcome shade of one of the massive oaks, giving their complete concentration to the task of manufacturing daisy chains, oblivious to the horseplay of those a few years their senior. Outside the teashop, a couple of young mothers with pushchairs had stopped to chat with each other and, in the distance, a dog barked intermittently.

  Turning off into Drovers Lane, these signs of life ceased, however, and no through traffic spoilt its calm. It was, then, completely out of keeping with the tranquillity of the scene, that three sharp cracks rang out from the direction of the rear of the garage, and the two men unconsciously increased their pace in pursuit of the source of these reports.

  Rounding the garage shop and pumps and entering the rear workshop bay, they found the proprietor taking his ease on a pile of worn tyres near the rear perimeter wall, a cigarette (surely dangerous) in one hand, an air pistol in the other. Seeing them approach, he greeted them with barely concealed contempt. ‘Well, if it isn’t Sherlock bleedin’ Holmes again. And who is your lovely companion for today? Herman Munster, as I live and breathe. What have you come to waste my time with today?’

  ‘We’d like another word with you about your relations with your great-uncle, sir.’ Falconer was coldly formal, as he dusted off his dander, prior to erecting it. Carmichael, trying his best for a contemptuous sneer and failing, merely glowered and silently produced his notebook. ‘But before we do that, exactly what are you doing with that air pistol? Isn’t it a little dangerous discharging it a, near flammable substances, and b, in an area into which anyone could wander at any time, and into which we just did?’

  ‘Missed you, didn’t I? And for your information Mr Policeman, a, I know where not to fire it, and b, I know when not to fire it. And to answer your first question last, I’ve got to keep the rats down somehow, and they don’t all go for the poison I lay down. So I get a bit of target practice – so what? They’re only vermin. I can assure you I don’t shoot pigs, no matter what the provocation,’ this last ignored, but recognised as intentionally inflammatory.

  ‘You lay poison out here?’ Carmichael looked disturbed. ‘What about cats and the like? Isn’t it dangerous for them?’

  ‘Occasionally. Tough, though, innit? Usually just the odd feral cat, and they don’t have much of a life anyway, so I reckon I’m doing them a service. Forget it and let’s get on with what you’ve come about. I don’t want you wasting any more of my time than you have to. Some of us have got a living to earn.’

  Carmichael looked down at his waiting notebook, an expression of contempt and disgust on his face. He knew rats needed keeping down, but Lowry did not seem to mind what took the bait. Falconer, with a blank expression, took up the reins. ‘Do you own this garage, Mr Lowry?’

  ‘I own a short-term lease on it.’

  ‘And how did you finance the purchase of that lease?’

  ‘Is that any of your damned business?’

  ‘At present, I rather think it is.’

  ‘What possible bearing could that have on the old boy’s death? I think you’re just being bloody nosy.’

  ‘You can think what you like. I think the answer may be important to this investigation, and if you’re not prepared to answer my questions freely here, then maybe you had better accompany us to Market Darley and we can continue this conversation there on a more formal footing.’

  ‘OK, point taken,’ Lowry capitulated with a bad grace. ‘I got a bank loan. Didn’t have much in the way of savings, so I’ve hocked myself to the moneylenders.’

  ‘To the official moneylenders, Mr Lowry. But first of all, didn’t you try to obtain money from an unofficial moneylender?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The air of challenge had left him. He no longer looked Falconer in the eye, and was beginning to bluster. ‘I borrowed it from the bank fair and square. Where else is someone like me going to lay their hands on a lump sum like that?’

  ‘Perhaps from his great-uncle, sir.’

  ‘What do you mean? What are you implying?’

  ‘Do you deny that you approached Mr Morley in the hope of securing a personal loan, to avoid the steep interest charges incurred by a loan from a bank?’

  ‘I don’t …’

  ‘And do you deny that he turned you down flat, and that was the reason you were forced to accept finance from the bank?’

  ‘Who told you this? Where did you get this from? Oh, I know, it was that Romaine tart, wasn’t it? She’s the only one would say anything about that. Cheap little tramp. Did she turn a trick for you, Inspector, or wouldn’t even she stoop to that? Poking and prying into other people’s private business – how can you stoop so low?’

  ‘How could anyone stoop so low as to murder an elderly man in his own kitchen?’ countered Falconer. ‘Now, for the last time, did you approach your great-uncle for a loan, Mr Lowry? I shan’t ask you again.’

  ‘I was his only living relative,’ he said, casually ignoring the existence of his own two children, ‘I knew he had it, mean old skinflint, and he sent me away with a flea in my ear. Laughed, he did, when I pleaded with him. His only living relative and he turned me away. Well, much good it’ll do him now. There are no pockets in a shroud.’

  ‘Indeed there are not, Mr Lowry. And your great-uncle would need very large pockets indeed to hold what we found upstairs under his bed. Nine thousand pounds, Mr Lowry, is what we found. And you say you’re his only living relative? I suppose you’ve just conveniently forgotten the existence of your sons?’

  II

  As they turned to take their leave, they were almost bowled over by a furious-looking Kerry Long, dragging in her wake two children aged about five and six. ‘Daddy, Daddy,’ they choruse
d, pulling free and hurtling towards him to grab him round the waist and be shooed away back towards their mother.

  ‘Don’t you “Daddy” him, the tight-fisted, good-for-nothing,’ she grated, preparing to launching into a full, bitter flood.

  ‘Slowly, Carmichael,’ hissed Falconer, dropping his progress to a snail’s pace. ‘Walk very slowly, and when we get to the corner we’re going to slip round there and see what we can hear.’ And with this somewhat confusing instruction, he tugged on his sergeant’s T-shirt to guide him out of sight, but still within earshot. It was like trying to tow a small mountain.

  ‘Where were you yesterday, then? You were supposed to bring round the maintenance but, as usual, you were nowhere to be seen. You know damned well that both these two need new shoes, and I haven’t even got their school dinner money this week. And how do you think it’s going to look come Thursday, when I won’t even have the cash for them to go swimming with their classmates?’

  ‘Hold up there, Kerry, I can’t give you what I haven’t got, can I? And I was a bit distracted yesterday, what with old Uncle Reg getting the chop …’

  ‘Oh, so it’s old Uncle Reg now, is it? How convenient. It was “that miserable old bastard” before. You can change your tune when the mood takes you, can’t you?’

  ‘Be fair, Kerry.’

  ‘Be fair? Be fair? When were you ever fair to me or to these two kids of yours? I do what I can, but I don’t get paid till Friday, and I’ll not ask Auntie for another sub. It’s all she can do to keep her head above water, without me sponging off her.’

  ‘Well, what do you expect me to do?’

  ‘Give me my bloody maintenance, that’s what I expect you to do. This time is the last straw. Uncle Alan says he’s going to speak to his solicitor so that you’re legally bound, and Auntie said you’d better get used to shopping in Carsfold for your groceries. She might be struggling, but she said she’d rather go under than serve the likes of you again.’

  ‘Where am I supposed to get the money from, then, girl?’