The afternoon was advanced by the time they approached the hamlet where the Lorimers were now living. The sunlight was waning. Across the fields a thin mist rose where a line of willows marked the course of the river.
They were now in deep country. Sheep grazed in the pastures. A green woodpecker flew across in front of their car. As they rounded a bend a young dog fox started out of the grassy bank a little way ahead, his tawny coat sleekly gleaming. He glanced at the approaching car, turned and trotted back again, without haste.
There was little sign of prosperity or development. The whole area had a gloomy, settled look, as if it had been forgotten or bypassed, but hadn’t succeeded thereby in achieving contented serenity, only this insidious, seeping melancholy. Trees and hedges were thickly draped with trailing, mist-grey growths of old man’s beard. Such isolated properties as they came across looked run-down and neglected. They encountered no traffic, saw not a single soul.
A dilapidated wooden board, amateurishly lettered at some distant time, directed them along a winding lane to Furzebank Cottage. The dwelling stood on rising ground behind a thick screen of red-berried thornbushes. There was no other dwelling in sight. In the field opposite, four donkeys eyed the car; crows pecked the ground between.
A broken wooden gate, permanently propped open by a large mossy stone, gave entrance to a decaying stretch of hard standing, where they left the car. The path leading up to the house–scarcely to be dignified with the name of a drive, with its rutted, potholed surface overgrown with weeds–ran between crumbling banks of earth. Withered remnants of former days when someone had hoed and planted, pruned and watered, still survived among the encroaching bracken and thistles: shrivelled, blackened sprays of buddleia, desiccated heads of hydrangea faded to a harsh, mottled red, tattered plumes of pampas grass.
The house was of no great size, foursquare, sturdily built, faced with flaking, dun-coloured stucco, the paintwork blistered and peeling. The front door and all the front windows were closed but as he got out of the car Sergeant Lambert could hear the crackle of a bonfire, the sound of activity some little distance away, round the back. A smell of woodsmoke drifted to his nostrils.
They didn’t bother knocking at the front door but went straight round in the direction of the sounds. They found themselves in what had clearly once been a cultivated garden, an acre or more in extent, run wild now for many a year, invaded by the prickly, yellow-flowered gorse from which the cottage took its name. The ground was enclosed by tall, straggling, neglected hedges.
Several yards away a man stood with his back to them, a tall, lean man in old jeans and pullover, energetically forking lopped branches on to a bonfire. Further on, a woman slashed at the strong, stubborn weeds with a billhook. She stood sideways on to them. As she straightened up after a sweeping stroke she suddenly caught sight of the two men. She froze for an instant, then said something to the man; Kelsey couldn’t catch her words.
The man didn’t at once stop what he was doing. He took up another forkful of wood and flung it on the flames, then he turned deliberately and stood leaning on his fork, regarding them in silence with an alert, wary air.
‘Mr Lorimer?’ Kelsey asked as he came up. ‘Victor Lorimer?’
The man nodded. An unremarkable face, by no means ill favoured. Light brown hair, light grey eyes.
The woman walked across to them. ‘Mrs Lorimer?’ Kelsey asked. ‘Enid Lorimer?’
She nodded. A slim, lithe woman, a little above average height. A quiet manner, suggesting discipline and restraint. A neat, orderly look, even in old gardening clothes. An everyday face that would never attract a second glance in the street. No make-up, no artifice. By far her best feature was her thick, lustrous, nut-brown hair, freshly washed, taken simply up in a knot.
Kelsey told them who he was. Before he had time to say more Lorimer suddenly exploded into speech.
‘Can’t you leave me alone? I’ve served my time. You’ve no reason to come poking your noses in here, checking up on me. Leave me alone to get on with my life.’
His wife slid him a warning, quelling glance and he reluctantly fell silent. He turned and thrust savagely at the pile of branches, swept another forkload up on to the leaping scarlet flames.
‘Don’t put any more wood on,’ Kelsey said brusquely. ‘Let it go out.’
They both stared at him in surprise. Lorimer looked as if he would make an angry rejoinder but Enid laid a hand on his arm. He said nothing but turned from the fire. He took out a packet of cigarettes, lit one and began to smoke, inhaling deeply.
The Chief didn’t give any reason for his presence. ‘We’d like to take a look round,’ he told them. They digested this in silence, not looking at each other. A few moments later when there was still no response, Kelsey set off with Lambert beside him.
After a brief hesitation the Lorimers fell in behind them, following closely as the two men walked across to the hedge, right round the perimeter, then methodically set about quartering the entire area, searching, examining, peering into bushes, shrubs, parting brambles, briars, saplings, long grass, weeds.
They looked through a mouldering fowlhouse, a rotting toolshed. A three-sided timber structure in an advanced state of disrepair served as a run-in for an estate car. The vehicle was a good ten years old, very well cared for, a deep slate blue.
‘This your car?’ the Chief asked Lorimer.
‘It’s mine,’ Enid put in. ‘It belonged to my first husband.’
Kelsey scrutinized the vehicle, inside and out. It was in first-class condition for its age, immaculately clean and shining. ‘You certainly look after it,’ he said to Enid.
She inclined her head. ‘I don’t like to see a dirty car.’
‘How do you clean the inside?’
‘I run it up to the back of the house. I use the tools from the vacuum cleaner, there’s a socket just inside the back door. I did it this morning, while the weather was fine.’
‘You had the car out yesterday?’
She nodded. ‘We went over to the Fairdeal supermarket.’ This was a large supermarket opened a couple of months back with a good deal of trumpeting in the local press. It stood in an out-of-town setting some ten miles away to the north. It particularly prided itself on its keen pricing policy.
‘What time was that?’ Kelsey asked casually.
‘We left here just after lunch,’ Enid told him. ‘We had some tea in the restaurant at Fairdeal after we’d finished our shopping. We got back here about half past five.’
‘Did you go out again?’
She shook her head.
‘What did you do after you got home?’
‘We put the shopping away, watched the news on television at a quarter to six, then we switched over to see the Western. Victor’s fond of Westerns, he particularly wanted to be back in time for the one yesterday evening, it was an old Randolph Scott.’
‘And after the Western?’
‘The film finished at seven-thirty. We had supper–some cold cuts we’d bought at Fairdeal. We watched some more TV, then we went to bed. That would be around ten-thirty.’
At the Chief’s insistence she recalled precisely which programmes they had watched after supper. Lorimer stood listening to all this without comment. He appeared to have simmered down. During his tramp round the garden on the heels of the two policemen he had spoken not a word. He appeared content now to let his wife do whatever talking was necessary. He smoked all the time, lighting each fresh cigarette from the stub of the last.
Kelsey asked him to hold out his hands. He expected Lorimer to explode into another protest but he extended his hands without any change of expression, turning them over unasked. Enid also put out her hands for the Chief’s inspection, although he had clearly not included her in his request.
Neither of them had been wearing gloves during their attack on the garden. Enid’s hands were basically well cared for but stained and scratched now from her gardening efforts, with little tricklets of dried blood here and there. Lorimer’s hands were less carefully looked after, though far from neglected. There were a number of cuts and abrasions, scars and marks, recent and less recent, some of long standing. His fingers were lightly stained with nicotine.
‘You don’t bother with gardening gloves?’ Kelsey asked him.
‘No.’ Just the bare monosyllable.
‘What about driving? Do you wear gloves then?’
‘No.’
‘Do you possess any driving gloves?’
‘No.’
‘We’ll take a look inside the house now,’ Kelsey announced. Neither made any protest. Enid led the way across to the back door. Inside the dwelling the Chief went upstairs and down. Not a detailed and thorough search but more than a superficial survey. Here and there he opened a drawer or cupboard, knelt to look under a bed or a piece of furniture. Neither Lorimer nor his wife objected or asked the reason for all this, what it was they were looking for. And Kelsey volunteered no explanation.
The house appeared generally in a fair state of repair but in a very dingy condition as far as decoration was concerned. There was no cellar, no attic. The downstairs rooms had been furnished comfortably enough but wore a makeshift air as if whoever had attended to the furnishing had given it little thought, didn’t intend looking on the cottage as more than a temporary halting-place.
There were three bedrooms, the largest provided with a double bed and other items. The second bedroom clearly served as a dressing room for Lorimer. The third was out of everyday use, being crammed with furniture, pictures, rolled-up carpets, rugs, blankets, curtains, a miscellany of household goods, methodically stacked. In this room Kelsey did no more than stand just inside the threshold, raking the contents with his eye.
He went downstairs again, into the living-room. ‘Have either of you been away from the house today?’ he asked.
They both shook their heads. ‘We’ve been out in the garden all day,’ Enid told him. ‘Victor’s been working hard on the garden ever since–since he came here.’
Kelsey asked to see what they had bought the previous day in the supermarket. They showed him groceries in the larder, food in the fridge, tins and packets bearing Fairdeal own-brand labels; bread, fruit, vegetables. They had also bought some articles of underwear for them both, a shirt and sweater for Lorimer.
Kelsey asked to see the garments. Enid took him upstairs and opened drawers. She showed him all the articles, carefully folded away. He asked if she could produce any wrappers or price tags but she shook her head. She had dropped all those into the waste basket when she put the garments away. She had burned the contents of the basket, together with the other household refuse, this morning, in the garden bonfire. She showed him the empty waste basket. ‘We don’t get many refuse collections out here,’ she explained. ‘We burn all we can. Victor lights a bonfire most days, when he’s working in the garden.’
Downstairs again, Kelsey asked if Enid could produce till receipts, which could be expected, in a new, up-to-date supermarket, to show the date and time of day. But she had similarly disposed of those.
He asked how they had paid for their purchases. In cash, she told him. He asked nevertheless to see their chequebooks. They had a joint account with an Okeshot bank. Neither cheque-book showed any cheque drawn yesterday. Nor, for that matter, within the last few days.
He asked if either had visited Cannonbridge at any time on the previous day. They were both emphatic that they had not. Their trip to the supermarket had taken them in the opposite direction; it was most definitely the only journey either had made yesterday.
It was by this time abundantly plain that the two policemen hadn’t driven several miles to Furzebank Cottage to carry out some vague general check on Lorimer; their visit had clear reference to some specific offence that had taken place on the previous day. But neither of the Lorimers raised this point, nor did they ask any questions themselves. Lorimer’s manner had subsided into a watchful calm although he still chainsmoked.
Kelsey asked the pair to show him the clothing they had worn on their trip yesterday. They complied without protest. Some of the garments–blouse, shirt, underwear, socks, tights and the like–had been washed earlier in the day, dried outdoors, ironed where necessary, and were now being aired in a little utility room next to the kitchen. Kelsey was shown the articles tidily arranged over a clothes rack.
The other, outer, garments were produced for his inspection. A two-piece suit of Enid’s, expensive when new–a few years back. Made of dark, heathery tweed, with a close-fitting jacket and straight skirt. A pair of plain brown leather court shoes with a heel of medium height. A tan-coloured suède jacket of Lorimer’s, by no means new but of excellent quality, in good condition; brown worsted trousers in a small check, roughly the same age and condition as the jacket; tan leather brogues, expensive make, some years old but very well looked after. Every article clean, undamaged–and bone dry.
The Chief pointed this out. ‘It rained on and off yesterday from around lunchtime over the whole of this area,’ he observed. ‘Some of the showers were very heavy.’ The cottage was cold and smelled of damp. There was no central heating, no obvious way to dry clothing, no trace of any fire having recently been lit in the old-fashioned grates. The only sign of heating was a radiant electric fire–not switched on–standing in a corner of the living-room.
‘We didn’t get wet yesterday,’ Lorimer said in a voice that now sounded utterly weary. ‘It wasn’t raining when we got into the car and it wasn’t raining when we got out of it again, back here.’ It had come on to rain, quite heavily, on the way to Fairdeal and it was still raining when they got there. But there was more than one car park at the supermarket; one of them was covered, and that was the one they had used. ‘You go straight from the car park into the store,’ he added. ‘You’re under cover all the way. It had stopped raining by the time we left Fairdeal and it didn’t rain again till some little time after we got home.’
In spite of these assurances Kelsey took them both upstairs and in front of them went through all the footwear he could find, all the outdoor garments in wardrobes and chests, in both the double bedroom and the dressing room. He then led them downstairs again and looked through the front hall and the downstairs rooms on a similar mission. His searches were fruitless.
‘I put it to you that it wasn’t after lunch when you left for Fairdeal,’ he suggested, as if the detail might somehow have slipped their minds. ‘I put it to you that it was after breakfast, that you were back here well before lunch, before the rain started.’
Lorimer looked as if he might be coming to the end of his patience. ‘We left here after lunch,’ he asserted stubbornly, with a visible effort controlling irritation. ‘We got back around half past five. There’s no possible doubt about it.’
Kelsey regarded him for some moments. ‘I further put it to you that at some time yesterday afternoon you left here in the car, on your own. You didn’t get back till some hours later.’
Lorimer vigorously denied this, as also did Enid.
‘This meal you say you had yesterday in the Fairdeal restaurant,’ Kelsey pursued. ‘What exactly did you have to eat?’
Lorimer uttered a sound of rising exasperation but Enid answered calmly. ‘We had toasted muffins. With butter and bramble jelly, if you must have every tiny detail.’ She smiled faintly. ‘We very much enjoyed them. You don’t often see muffins these days.’
The Chief doubled back on his tracks, jumping on their timings from various angles but always without result; they both remained rock-solid.
Lorimer suddenly raised a hand with an air of triumph. ‘I’ve just remembered something. We passed an accident on the way home, on the other side of the dual carriageway.’ He named a spot some five miles distant. ‘I saw a police car there, and an ambulance drove up as we went by. From what I could see it looked like a big Volvo and a Ford Cortina. It would have been about ten past, quarter past, five, something like that. I think the Cortina was grey, but I couldn’t swear to it.’
The Chief asked Enid if she had seen the accident.
She agreed that she had. Victor had slowed down, they had both looked across, had commented on it. It was exactly as her husband had described.
The Chief sat regarding them both in silence. They evinced no sign of discomfort now, sat waiting for him to continue–or take himself off.
‘You don’t ask what all this is about,’ he finally observed.
Lorimer moved his shoulders. ‘I dare say you’ll tell us in your own good time–if you intend telling us at all. I’ve long ago given up trying to puzzle out the ways of the law.’
There was another pause, then Kelsey uttered the words: ‘Karen Boland.’ Just that, the name, dropped into the silence. He felt the atmosphere in the room alter. Lorimer sat rigid in his seat, Enid drew a little sighing breath.
‘When was your last contact of any kind with Karen?’ the Chief asked them both.
They answered readily. Neither had seen her since the trial, neither had made any attempt to see her or contact her in any way, not even through a third party. Nor had Karen ever made any attempt to contact either of them. Enid was aware that Karen had gone to live with the Wilmots at the end of July, that she had started a course at the Cannonbridge college in September. Under James Boland’s will Enid had been appointed joint guardian of the girl, the other guardian being Boland’s solicitor; she was kept punctiliously informed of any such changes in her stepdaughter’s life.
Again Kelsey persisted: had either of them been in any kind of contact yesterday with Karen? But again he couldn’t shake them.
By the time he actually got round to breaking the news of her death they were both well prepared, fully armoured against anything he might spring on them
‘I’m afraid I’m the bearer of bad news,’ he said at last. Enid drooped her head, she sat looking down at her hands. Lorimer gazed expressionlessly at the Chief. ‘I very much regret to have to tell you that Karen is dead.’
Enid put her hands up to her face and began to cry softly. Lorimer stood up and went across to her. He sat on the arm of her chair and put his arm round her shoulders. She turned to hide her face against him.
‘How did it happen?’ Lorimer asked.
‘Her body was found this morning in a wood near Cannonbridge.’
‘How did she die?’
‘We won’t know all the answers till after the post-mortem. But she was certainly murdered.’
Enid’s head jerked round. ‘Murdered?’
‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it.’
She began to cry more unrestrainedly. Kelsey suggested tea and Lorimer nodded acquiescence. While Sergeant Lambert was in the kitchen Kelsey didn’t speak. He crossed to the window and stood looking out at the distant landscape, the mist thickening along the river.
By the time Lambert returned with the tea Enid had recovered sufficiently to take the cup he offered and begin to drink it. Lorimer disposed of his scalding hot tea in a few swift gulps.
Kelsey sat down with his own cup. He asked Enid in a conversational tone how she had got on with Karen in the years after James Boland’s death, before she had any thought of remarriage.
‘Well enough, in all the circumstances,’ she told him. Her manner was calm and disciplined again. ‘We were never very close but there was never any hostility, any arguments. Her father had doted on her and she missed him dreadfully. Naturally, she didn’t think me much of a substitute. But I always did my best for her, I always tried to carry out my duty towards her. I’m sure she understood that, and appreciated it. She was never a troublesome child. Not very forthcoming as far as I was concerned, but never awkward or difficult.’
Kelsey looked at his watch. Time to be getting back to Cannonbridge for the results of the post-mortem.
The light was beginning to fail as they left the house and walked across to the remains of the bonfire. Kelsey insisted that the Lorimers went along with them, stood watching as he and Sergeant Lambert raked carefully through the ashes.
They found nothing of any significance.
The overhead lights in the mortuary corridor shone harshly down as Kelsey stood talking to the pathologist. The postmortem findings had confirmed earlier opinion: Karen was already dead from asphyxia before the first blow struck the back of her head. Two small bones in her right ankle had been broken as she stumbled and fell to the ground. There had been no attempt at any sexual assault.
It was now possible to narrow the limits during which the crime must have taken place. The contents of the stomach showed that it was several hours since she had eaten a meal but that shortly before her death–some sixty to ninety minutes before–she had consumed a small quantity of chocolate, nut milk chocolate, to be precise.
The Chief asked if the assault had required an unusual degree of strength.
The pathologist shook his head. ‘She was no great size, disabled by the fall. Any ordinarily active, healthy man or woman, particularly in a state of frenzy, could have carried out the attack. She was in no condition to put up any kind of struggle. She would be totally at the mercy of her killer.’