Winifred Sibley’s pretty cottage was at the edge of the village green, several doors from Lily Duggins’ home. Lights each side of the front door picked up a coat of fresh powder green paint.
A SOCO van was parked at the curb of a narrow pavement and LeJuan Harding parked between that and the nondescript vehicle he recognized as the police surgeon’s.
At the windows of every little home, lights shone cheerfully through the darkness. At first glance, it was an almost magical scene that belied the violence LeJuan expected to find shortly. As soon as he got out of his car he heard quiet conversation. Just past the SOCO vehicle, people had gathered on the pavement. Their tones were horrified, disbelieving.
He approached quickly, beckoning a young woman constable to accompany him. ‘Evening all. Please move back. The officer here will place tape so you’ll know the area we need to keep clear. Thank you all for your cooperation.’
‘Make sure no one gets past the tape,’ he said to the constable quietly. ‘Patrol until you’re relieved. Eyes open for media. No one gets past. No details given out.’
‘Yessir,’ she said smartly. ‘These people will already know the name of the victim. They may know more. They’re likely to talk.’
‘Nothing we can do about that. With any luck we’ve got a bit of time before the press get here.’
The front door was closed and an officer had been stationed there. Silently, he indicated a path around the cottage and LeJuan quickly reached the back garden, cast in odd gray and white shapes by the glaring lights that had been erected. The temperature had plummeted again and iced-over puddles of melt shone glassy black.
A tiny white dog, his fur standing up all over, had parked himself a few feet from a surprisingly large shed with an open door and constant movement inside. The dog gave an unearthly whine that broke into bursts of frantic yips before sinking back to the whine. LeJuan gave the dog a quick stroke on his way past. Dog, or oversized white mouse? He stopped to scratch the creature’s neck before moving on.
Dr Lewis’s was the first voice he heard, strident as usual. DCI O’Reilly’s face turned to him the instant he stepped through the door.
‘Good for you, LeJuan,’ O’Reilly said. ‘That was quick.’
LeJuan didn’t volunteer any information about where he’d been when the call came in. ‘Dispatch said one victim. An older woman. Is it murder then, guv?’ He could see the victim and already knew the answer.
‘Yes, poor woman.’ O’Reilly screwed up his eyes. ‘What’s that bloody racket out there?’
‘I’d say a mourning dog, guv,’ LeJuan told him. ‘Be a disaster if someone trod on it. Might weigh a couple of pounds soaking wet. I don’t like to call Animal Control. Could be someone else it’s close to will take it in.’
The dog cried out again and then didn’t stop. ‘Of course. I already knew about him. Have someone take him across the road to the pub and keep him warm in a coat pocket or something,’ O’Reilly said. ‘Tony Harrison’s there. He might as well do something we ask him to do for once and quiet the dog down.’
Another uniform dealt with removing the dog but the sound it had made stayed in LeJuan’s head. ‘Poor little beggar,’ O’Reilly muttered and LeJuan liked him for it.
The dead woman, wrapped in several old sweaters and with a scarf around her neck, was slumped sideways in a wooden rocking chair beside an electric bar fire. Her right hand rested in her lap, a long length of white material beneath her fingers. The left arm hung beside the chair.
On the right side of the head was a terrible wound. Blood was stuck thickly in her hair and made spidery blackish rivulets across her face.
‘Furious force there,’ O’Reilly said. ‘Hit her twice, although I’d say the second blow was unnecessary. She would probably already have been dead.’
‘Don’t see why I had to come at all,’ Dr Molly Lewis said, but with humor. ‘I’d say you were right, Dan. But the second hit was responsible for a lot of the mess. Took out the eye and socket, the cheekbone and most of the nose. Crazy bastard whoever he is.’
LeJuan winced.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any hunches about whether this is our man from Darla Crowley?’ Dan asked.
‘Hunches?’ She looked around. ‘Just making sure you aren’t talking to someone else, my friend. I don’t work on bloody hunches. This doesn’t have to be the same perpetrator, but I wouldn’t be amazed if it was.’
‘Is this as pointless as it looks?’ LeJuan heard himself say. ‘What was she doing? Making lace? God, I didn’t know anyone still made the stuff. There’s blood on it.’ He rubbed a hand across his eyes. There were times when he wavered, times when he wasn’t sure this was his life’s work the way he’d once been so convinced – when he was younger and thought he was needed to help avenge the cruelly treated.
‘Bastard,’ O’Reilly said. ‘I don’t know who he is but I hate his guts. Still, this is our job, stopping the crazies. I think I’ve got everything I’ll get here, Molly. I’ll be there when you do this one. When do you think you’ll get to it?’
‘In the morning,’ Molly said and her voice was as flat as LeJuan felt. ‘I’ll get to her first thing. Shall we say eight?’
‘Eight it is.’
LeJuan stood with O’Reilly who said, ‘I should mention we’ve had a break about Darla. She was Lance Pullinger’s sister. Looks like he bought the cottage as a place to keep her safe. Not sure from what yet. Now we’ll go to the kitchen and talk to the woman who called in. Bill was dead on his feet so I told him to turn in. You can fill in for him, not that there’ll be much to deal with until later when we line up more interviews.
‘The neighbor who found the deceased came to check because of the dog. A lot of neighbors will have heard him so checking the times should be easy enough. House-to-house with the usual patience. Follow-up on Winifred Sibley’s close contacts and her movements over the past day or so. Emphasis on last night, of course. I doubt she went out to her workroom to make lace after midnight but we’ll know more when we get an idea of the time of death.’
‘Right,’ LeJuan said. ‘Should I put someone on making a list of family, friends, neighbors and such?’
‘Yes. You’ll have plenty of help with that. She worked for Mary and Harriet Burke at Leaves of Comfort.’
LeJuan watched the photographer work. ‘That will be a good source of information. The ladies know what goes on locally, don’t they?’
‘They do. Now let’s get this initial interview over with fast and move on. Lily Duggins called in the death. She’s the one who found the victim.’
‘The police are out there in the shed now,’ Lily said into her phone, looking along Winifred Sibley’s back path toward her shed. ‘All kinds of them. No, Alex, I’m not a wreck, I’m more-or-less OK. Shaken up, naturally, and sad but I haven’t fallen apart. The shock will come later.’
She listened to Alex worrying and trying to plan for what Lily should do next and interrupted, ‘James is on his way here now. Nothing for you to worry about. Yes, I know they took the little dog over to Tony. Nice little girl. Her name’s Lillie Belle … yes, it does suit her. I think she’s a Maltese. She’s so upset.’ Lily was also upset, sick to her stomach and frightened, but she wasn’t going to tell Alex or anyone else just how frightened.
‘Alex, I think we’re going to find ourselves more in the middle of whatever’s going on around here. It’s different, isn’t it … yes, I know murder’s always different, of course I do, but, well, you’re a bit more involved than usual. I hate to say murder is usual but you do seem to get yourself dragged into these awful cases.
‘You do know Gladys has been close friends with Winifred forever, don’t you?’ The younger generations didn’t tend to take a lot of notice of what older people did. ‘Well, she was and she’s going to take this very hard. So are Harriet and Mary.’
‘Winifred? No, not married, or not officially. She did have a close friend for some years but that must have ended and we never spoke of it. She doesn’t have any close family, just an ancient aunt somewhere up north.’
She listened to Alex trying to decide how the Burke sisters should be told about Winifred. ‘The police are going to ask me questions soon, sweety. Don’t worry, I’ll mention Harriet and Mary and find out if James can be the one to tell them. He isn’t just their doctor, he’s their good friend. He’ll make sure they’re all right – not that I don’t think they’re stronger than the lot of us. Try to get some sleep yourselves. I expect Tony can give Lillie Belle something to calm her down. Tell him his dad’s coming to me … yes, all right, I’ll let you know what the police say. Now I’d better hang up. I see Dan and LeJuan coming along the path.’
She turned the kettle on and stood at the door while they picked their way over uneven crazy paving.
Dan looked up and raised a hand in greeting. ‘Hello, Lily,’ he said. ‘Bad night all around. We’re sorry to keep you hanging around like this.’
‘I understand. Coffee or tea? The kettle’s on.’
‘Tea,’ the men said in unison.
Were there things she should avoid saying, Lily wondered, if only for selfish reasons. Winifred had been Gladys’s close friend and they must have talked about so many things. Sometimes she couldn’t decide how much Gladys remembered of Lily’s early days in Underhill and Folly but she’d rather they were not brought up with strangers like Dan and his people. She had a disturbing thought that it no longer mattered what Gladys might have told Winifred.
The men came in looking tired. Dan sat immediately and rubbed his hands over his face. She had kept the kettle close to a boil while she waited for them so the tea was quickly made. Again, using Winifred’s things while she lay dead at the bottom of the garden caused a nasty sensation. Lily couldn’t bring herself to look for biscuits.
‘Just routine questions for now,’ Dan said.
It was LeJuan who took out his notebook and began to write. He gave her a reassuring smile.
‘The dog woke me,’ she said. ‘Poor girl howling like that must have woken up the village. I thought she’d got locked outside. The light was on in here so I knocked. When Winifred didn’t come, I opened the door but she … she wasn’t in here, was she? Lillie Belle ran back and forth on the path and that’s when I saw another light in the shed window – there’s a window in the door – and I found her.’
‘That’s all very clear, Lily,’ Dan said while LeJuan scribbled rapidly.
Tears shocked Lily, first stinging her eyes, then pouring. Her throat burned and she coughed, couldn’t stop coughing.
LeJuan steered her into a chair and brought her some water. She heard the two of them murmuring but not what they said to her. With tissues pressed to her eyes and face, she gradually caught her breath. The tears took longer to stop.
‘Hey, there, Lily.’ She looked up into James’s face. He rubbed the back of her neck and her shoulders. ‘Take your time. These things are shocking.’
‘She’s a trooper,’ Dan said.
‘We want James to tell Harriet and Mary,’ Lily said. If she sounded odd, so what? ‘I told Alex I’d ask. She’s worried the upset will be too much for them.’
‘Understood,’ Dan said. ‘But you accept we’ll have to be there, too. First reactions are important.’
Lily nodded, yes.
They went through all the simple questions she’d expected and her muscles began to relax a little. James stood beside her. She had never needed anyone to help her get through, even if she might have liked stronger support sometimes, but she needed this man now.
‘We’re finished for now, then?’ she asked.
Dan helped himself to more tea. ‘Not quite. What time did you come over?’
‘Well before midnight. Lillie Belle had been barking a long time.’
‘Make sure Molly knows that,’ Dan told LeJuan.
‘Switching gears a bit. I’m told Gladys Lymer was her best friend.’