Within the hour, two detectives arrived. Alex had already talked to both of them at the death scene, where they’d identified themselves as coming from Gloucester. Murder squad detectives, she was sure, which seemed unreal.
The darts cupboard wasn’t locked; a point Detective Inspector Dan O’Reilly had been quick to criticize soon after he got there.
O’Reilly came to the pub in an unmarked car with a Detective Sergeant Bill Lamb and asked for the pub to be cleared until he said otherwise.
People shuffled out, grumbling, while Lily took the Burke sisters and a number of the regulars, including Major Stroud and Reverend Restrick, into the comfy private bar still called the snug in the old-fashioned way. They settled into worn tapestry easy chairs around dark oak tables. Silence lasted only long enough for the door to close behind Lily.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ Alex said, smiling and inclining her head to the snug where low voices were already very busy.
Lily said, ‘Don’t you worry. It’s a terrible thing but people will lose interest soon enough.’ A little gray streaked through hair which was as dark and curly as Alex’s own. They both had the oval, greenish eyes Alex had been teased about as a girl when other children accused her of being a witch. Lily continued, ‘We don’t want to put any regular customers’ noses out of joint, though. They’ll be happy enough in the snug. This is one of those times I’m glad we’re among the few pubs that kept one. I’ll be at the desk. Bad news travels fast. We’ve got a line-up for the restaurant – curiosity fills tables, I suppose. They’re rushed off their feet in the kitchen.’
The Cummings had already left for their rooms. Reluctantly, feeling unsure of herself, Alex returned to the pub, where boxes of darts were being removed from their cupboard and dropped into plastic bags by a man in a blue jumpsuit that rustled like paper with every move. Very tall and thin, his head brushed the swags of dried hops that decorated exposed beams. He left without a word and with several yellowing hops stuck in his dark hair.
The detectives indicated a table and they all sat down. Both men were well dressed. Nothing said ‘detective’ about this detail. Alex had the thought that O’Reilly’s dark gray suit probably hadn’t hung on any rack.
‘Did you know him?’ he asked her without preamble.
‘The dead man?’ Drawing away from the table a little, Alex went on: ‘No. I never saw him before, or I don’t think I did. With all the …’ She looked away and muttered, ‘I didn’t get a really good look at his face. Poor man. No one should die like that.’ A flash of anger surprised her. ‘No one should interfere with another life. It’s sick and evil.’
‘Why aren’t those darts kept locked away?’ O’Reilly continued, ignoring her comments and repeating his earlier remark while the detective sergeant made notes. ‘Or are they normally?’
‘Never,’ Alex told him. ‘The cupboard is high on the wall and children don’t come in the bar alone anyway. With the scoreboard over it, most people wouldn’t know there was a cupboard.’ Chalked-up scores remained on the blackboard from a recent match. ‘The darts we keep here are for anyone who wants a casual game. Serious players bring their own sets. Do you know if it was one of our darts—?’
O’Reilly cut her off. ‘The Black Dog has a darts team, does it?’
‘Runner-up league champions,’ Alex said. ‘We’re proud of them.’
‘We’ll have a list of their names later, right?’ O’Reilly said. His Irish accent was pleasing in a low, quite soft voice. He had dark, thoughtful eyes and the hands he rested on the table were long-fingered and expressive. Alex realized he was the kind of man who inspired trust.
‘Would you go through the details of what happened this morning, please?’ This was the detective sergeant. ‘Would you start with leaving home?’
‘I didn’t find him till I’d already walked through the woods and turned back again.’
‘Sometimes it helps to start at the beginning and see if everything is exactly as you think you remember it. Little details can pop up. You live where?’ He sounded unthreatening.
‘Lime Tree Lodge. In the Dimple. That’s what we’ve always called it around here. Right on the other side of the big hill, like a shallow oval valley. I do have a room here, of course. Just in case.’
Alex heard her voice chattering about stuff no one wanted to know and cleared her throat. Composing herself, she rubbed the space between her eyebrows.
Lamb wrote as if he were taking lecture notes and falling behind. ‘Why did you decide to walk this morning?’ he asked without looking at her. The top of his head showed off straight, thick sandy hair that was short enough to stand up all over – but tidily. ‘Miss Bailey-Jones?’ he prompted.
‘Ms,’ she corrected him automatically. ‘I walk as many mornings as I can – most mornings.’
‘Even in the snow?’ Blue eyes, oddly innocent, suggested she couldn’t expect him to believe her.
Flustered, Alex said, ‘The snow had almost stopped. I wished it hadn’t. I love walking in a snowfall. Let me get you both something to drink.’
‘We’re on duty,’ Lamb said promptly.
‘I meant coffee,’ Alex said, and felt a bit smug.
Both men shook their heads, no, and muttered thanks.
‘You own this place?’ O’Reilly asked. He dug a crumpled white paper bag from his jacket pocket. It was obviously lumpy with the sweets inside.
‘I’ve already said I do.’
The man smiled slightly. A good face, lived-in in a nice way with laugh lines among signs of a lot of frowning. A crooked scar on his jaw didn’t look very old. He offered the bag to Alex and the sergeant. When they both refused he fumbled inside, dislodged a sticky, yellow sherbet lemon and held it between his fingers.
‘So you left Lime Tree Lodge at what time?’ he asked.
‘Just before seven. We usually open at ten but people were waiting outside today so we let them in early. Will and Cathy Cummings manage the place well – they live in – but there’s a lot to do before we open and I like to be here. It’s not that they need me, but I’m hands-on. I don’t stay late.’
Both men stared at her until she began to think she’d said more than necessary again.
‘Is there a Mr Bailey-Jones?’ Lamb asked.
Thinking about Mike still brought back the sadness. ‘We’re divorced.’
‘I see,’ Lamb said. ‘Do you always go through the woods? Seems a pretty lonely part of the route.’
‘The whole route is lonely. Quiet is a better word. This isn’t a bustling kind of place.’
O’Reilly sucked the sherbet powder from the middle of his sweet and Alex’s mouth watered just imagining the tartness.
‘The Cummings live here?’ Lamb said.
Alex hoped they wouldn’t want the same information twice on every topic. ‘They do.’
Lamb made another note and underlined it twice.
‘You said you went back into the woods because you heard a dog howl.’
‘Yes.’ That had to be three or four times.
‘Not very cautious, are you?’ O’Reilly tucked what was left of the sherbet lemon into a cheek. He tended to stare rather than look at you, and the sensation unsettled Alex. ‘All alone up there with an animal who could have been dangerous and you trotted back to do … what?’
A vague sickness started in the pit of her stomach. ‘I wanted to see if an animal was hurt and needed help.’
‘You said you saw the dog running around.’ Lamb and his boss traded off questions.
‘I said I thought I saw an animal move. But at first I wondered if it was a bird, even.’
Lamb’s guileless eyes settled on her face. ‘But you talked about a dog howling. Why would you think it was a bird?’
‘I said,’ she told him slowly and clearly, ‘that I thought I saw something move and didn’t know what it was for sure. I carried on walking, heard a howl that sounded like a dog, started thinking about traps, and went back.’
‘Traps?’ Lamb appeared bemused.
‘In case there was another animal caught in a trap and the one I saw move was howling for help.’ And she was sinking into the weeds. ‘They’ll do that if they run together. Like packs – they look out for each other. Or for all I knew it could have been the one I saw that was caught … Oh, I don’t know. I did what I did. Some of us are more interested in animals than people on occasion. I love animals.’ She looked at her hands, then back at O’Reilly.
He gave her a nice enough smile. ‘We’ll come back to that.’
A third man came into the bar with a brown envelope in hand. ‘They’ve done the best they can with these,’ he said. ‘Better be a bit careful how you show them, though.’ He shrugged.
‘Thanks.’ O’Reilly took the envelope and slid out several photographs. He held them up so that she couldn’t see them and Lamb got up to look over his shoulder.
‘There’s a woman out there,’ the third man tilted his head, indicating the door leading into the pub. ‘She saw the envelope and asked if I had photos of the victim. I didn’t say one way or the other but she just about lost her wool, throwing her arms about and saying she needs to see whoever’s in charge – and the victim. That’s what she said – she wants to see the victim.’
O’Reilly frowned. ‘We’ll have to ask you to wait in another room, Ms Bailey-Jones. Please don’t leave. Send the other one in, Madden.’
‘Who is it?’ Alex asked, unable to stop herself.
Lamb muttered, ‘Doesn’t matter if she knows.’
‘Right you are,’ the man, Madden, said. ‘She says she’s one of the managers here. Cathy Cummings.’