Suspicious Death Read online

  Kimberley sighed. ‘Oh yes. There’s a rotting signboard at each end. They must have been there since the year dot. I don’t think anyone’s really noticed them for years but of course, when this business came up, we couldn’t deny that they were there, even if they were barely legible. There was quite an uproar about it in the village, they even had a public meeting. There’s no bus service through Telford Green any more, so people without cars have to walk to the Sturrenden road to catch a bus into the town. This footpath saves a good mile or more.’

  ‘And now you say they’re up in arms over this Harry Greenleaf business?’

  ‘They certainly are. They can’t see any reason why Harry should be made to go. He’s absolutely harmless, never bothers anybody, just seems perfectly content to keep himself to himself. You’d hardly know he was there, really … To be honest, sir, Mrs Salden seems to have managed to stir up an awful lot of bad feeling in the time she’s been here.’

  ‘You’re not telling me there’s more?’

  ‘Where would you like me to start?’ said Kimberley with a grin.

  ‘Good grief.’ Thanet waved a hand. ‘Wherever you like.’

  ‘Well, the latest thing is Telford Green Farm.’

  ‘What about it? Where is it?’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s the point. It’s where it is that’s caused the trouble.’ Kimberley came to a halt and pointed. ‘You see those farm buildings, over the other side of the river?’

  Thanet and Lineham looked. The hawthorn hedge on their left had ended abruptly, giving way to open parkland across which in the distance could be seen the avenue of trees leading up to the Manor. Half a mile ahead of them in the shallow valley of the Teale lay the village of Telford Green, its mellow roofs strung out on both sides of the old stone bridge for which the footpath was obviously heading. It was almost certainly somewhere along this stretch of water that Marcia Salden had gone in. To the right the wood which Thanet by now thought of as ‘Harry’s Wood’ curved gently away, petering out a couple of hundred yards short of the river. From here this was glimpsed merely as a sparkle of fast-flowing water between the trees and shrubs which lined its banks. In the open space between woodland and river was a small group of perhaps ten to fifteen people, all staring up in Thanet’s direction. This, he realised, must be the welcoming committee prepared for the bailiffs, on Harry Greenleaf’s behalf. Kimberley’s request for reinforcements had been met; two uniformed policemen were standing by.

  Thanet followed the direction of Kimberley’s pointing finger. On the far side of the river, opposite Harry’s Wood and between the line of village houses and the water, was a cluster of farm buildings surrounded by neatly fenced fields – empty fields, Thanet realised. The place, in fact, looked deserted.

  ‘Old Mr Tiller died about six months ago,’ said Kimberley, ‘and Mrs Tiller sold up. Went to live with her daughter the other side of Sturrenden … You couldn’t blame her, of course, for taking what she could get.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Lineham.

  ‘Well, the village has never had a hall and they’ve been fund-raising for years and years. Apparently, if a village has no hall the County Council will help out with grants and loans to build one, but you’ve got to have a certain amount of money in hand and of course you’ve also got to have the land on which to put it, first. So the Parish Council negotiated with Mr Tiller for a piece of land behind the pub – the Crooked Door, look, you can see it there, right next to the bridge. It would have been an ideal spot, right in the centre of the village. But before the negotiations were complete Mr Tiller died. Everyone naturally thought that the deal would still go ahead, but unfortunately that was where Mrs Salden stepped in. As soon as the farm was put up for sale she offered to buy it well above the asking price, on one condition – that Mrs Tiller also sell her the piece of land earmarked for the village hall.’ Kimberley shrugged. ‘I suppose, as I said, you couldn’t blame the old lady for accepting. It wasn’t as if she was going to go on living here any more – and, to tell you the truth, I think she was in such a daze she didn’t really realise what she was doing, it all happened so fast. Anyway, you can imagine how people in the village felt, when they heard.’

  Two people, a man and a woman, had detached themselves from the group by the river and started up the slope towards Thanet. The man was carrying something bulky.

  ‘But why was Mrs Salden so determined to get that one little bit of land?’ said Lineham.

  ‘Ever heard of Naboth’s vineyard, Mike?’ said Thanet with a grin.

  ‘She made it quite clear why she wanted it, sir. She hoped to get planning permission to build over the entire farm. The village hall, she said, would lower the value of the properties – there’s always a certain amount of noise from discos, cars starting up late at night and so on … A delegation from the Parish Council went to see her, and she was quite blunt about it. Wouldn’t budge an inch, apparently.’

  ‘She certainly seemed to have the knack of making herself unpopular, didn’t she?’ Had this knack extended to her personal relationships? Thanet wondered. If Marcia Salden had trampled carelessly all over the feelings of those closest to her in the same way as she had totally disregarded the local climate of opinion, it wasn’t perhaps surprising that she had ended up in the river.

  ‘Went out of her way looking for it, if you ask me,’ said Lineham.

  The bulky object, Thanet now saw, was a hand-held television camera. No doubt TVS had been told of the eviction and had come along to film the fun. There was no way that the film unit van could have gained access to the site of Harry’s hut, he realised, without entering the Manor gates and driving across the open parkland of the Manor grounds. No doubt these two had decided to proceed on foot via the footpath from the bridge. For the first time he wondered how, if the hut was deep in the woods, the bulldozer would have got to it.

  ‘Anyway, she’d never have got planning permission to build there, surely,’ Lineham went on. ‘I mean, it’s prime agricultural land and outside the village envelope …’

  ‘Hmm. I don’t know,’ said Thanet. ‘Controls are not quite as strict as they used to be. And I remember my mother-in-law telling me that someone she knew of had got a planning permission everyone had thought was out of the question because he had donated part of the land to the community for a village hall and children’s playground.’

  ‘You think that’s what Mrs Salden might have had in mind?’ said Kimberley.

  ‘Could be why she was so insistent on wanting that bit of land too. If she could swing the larger issue by appearing to be a public benefactor …’

  Lineham was looking puzzled. ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Thanet, ‘as I understand it, in order to get planning permission you have to get first the approval of the Parish Council, then of the Borough Council. I’m just saying that maybe Mrs Salden was determined to have the village hall site included in her purchase of the farm because she wanted later to be able to offer it as a gift to the Parish Council as an inducement to them to approve her application for planning permission on the rest of the land.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ said Lineham. ‘It would certainly be worth her while financially. How big is the farm?’

  ‘Three hundred acres,’ said Kimberley.

  Lineham whistled. ‘If she paid two thousand an acre and got – what? – a hundred thousand an acre, with planning permission …’

  ‘Big money,’ said Thanet. It had just occurred to him. Wasn’t Lomax chairman of the borough planning committee? Surely, if Marcia had been hoping to influence him, she would have been more discreet than to invite him openly to her house? Suddenly that odd dinner party began to make rather unpleasant sense.

  The girl reporter, wearing what she no doubt considered to be appropriate country gear of green wellies, Burberry and a checked scarf which matched the lining of her raincoat, reached them first.

  ‘Tessa Barclay, TVS. Can you tell us what’s happening?’ She h
ad selected PC Kimberley as being in charge, no doubt because of his uniform.

  Perhaps, thought Thanet with amusement, she thought that he and Lineham were bailiffs. She was a good candidate for the small screen, with excellent bone structure, winning smile and pleasant manner. She must be new. He knew most of the regular TVS Coast to Coast reporters.

  The photographer came puffing up beside her. ‘Cor,’ he said, patting the flabby flesh which hung over the waistband of his trousers, ‘it really is time I started to lose some weight.’ He was older than the girl, in his forties, perhaps, and beginning to lose his hair.

  The girl flashed him an impatient smile and turned back to PC Kimberley. ‘Can you?’

  Kimberley glanced at Thanet, who hesitated. He didn’t really want to find himself giving a television interview on the subject of Marcia’s death just yet. On the other hand, the villagers down there were not going to disperse without being given a good reason why the eviction had, temporarily at least, been postponed. ‘There’ll be no eviction today.’

  ‘Why is that – sorry, Mr …?’

  Thanet sighed. ‘Detective Inspector Thanet, Sturrenden CID.’ He saw the hungry look flare in the girl’s eyes as she scented news. She glanced at the man beside her and the camera swung up.

  ‘What are you doing here, Inspector?’

  He could give some evasive answer, of course, but she would no doubt find out about Marcia Salden later today in any case. And it was never wise to antagonise the media, particularly TVS, who were always very helpful towards the police, both in putting out bulletins when necessary and in Police 5, a weekly programme dedicated to solving crime by the reconstruction of past cases. ‘Mrs Salden was found drowned this morning.’

  The girl glanced down the slope at the river. ‘Down there?’

  ‘No, at Donnington Weir.’

  ‘It was Mrs Salden who was going to evict Harry Greenleaf and bulldoze the little hut he built, and in which he has been living for ten years?’

  She was spelling it out for her potential viewers, Thanet realised.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you suspect foul play?’

  ‘We suspect nothing and no one at the moment. All cases of sudden death have to be investigated, as you know. We are merely trying to find out how it happened.’

  ‘And Mr Salden has called off the eviction?’

  ‘Mr Salden is in no state to make any kind of decision, as you can imagine, or to deal with the kind of problems that might have arisen if the eviction had gone ahead. I gave the authorisation for the eviction to be postponed.’

  ‘Postponed … Then does that mean …?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I really can’t say any more at the moment. Excuse me.’

  Thanet set off down the slope at a brisk pace, Lineham and Kimberley following. The cameraman trotted alongside him on one side, the girl on the other, alternately speaking into the microphone and holding it out in front of his face.

  ‘Who found the body, Inspector?’

  ‘Where, exactly, was it found?’

  ‘What time was it found?’

  Thanet stopped, turned to face her. ‘Look, Miss Barclay …’

  ‘Tessa,’ said the girl, showing very white teeth in a ravishing smile.

  ‘… I really cannot release any more information at the moment. And I have a great deal to do, so …’

  ‘OK.’ She shrugged, turning up her hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I give in. If we could interview you later …?’

  ‘Ring my office, late this afternoon,’ said Thanet, privately resolving not to go anywhere near Headquarters at that time.

  ‘Right.’ Another melting smile. ‘Thanks.’

  She fell back, allowing Lineham and Kimberley to flank him once more.

  Kimberley at once left the footpath and cut off diagonally down the slope. The villagers, Thanet noted, had disappeared. A minute or two later, he saw why. As he rounded the edge of the trees near the river he saw that to his right a long tongue of grassy meadow protruded into the wood. At its tip, some two hundred yards away where the trees began again, was a ramshackle wooden hut of tarred boards, with a corrugated iron roof. Harry’s, no doubt. And now he saw where the people had gone. They had obviously assumed that he and Lineham were bailiffs. Strung out across the width of the meadow, sitting cross-legged on the ground, hands linked, they were waiting in silent protest for the confrontation to begin. Here and there a hand-held notice sprouted: HANDS OFF HARRY; HAL’S OUR PAL; JUSTICE NOT LAW. Fleetingly, Thanet wondered how they had heard about the eviction. From Edith Phipps? From Marcia herself? (Unlikely, surely.) From Harry? For the first time he began to wonder what sort of man this was, that he could arouse such strong feelings of loyalty. Or was it simply that he had, by virtue of his peculiarly unfortunate circumstances, unwittingly enlisted the crackpots, the sensation-seekers and the misguided?

  Thanet stopped, raised a hand in greeting to the two uniformed men waiting nearby and, cupping his hands around his mouth, called, ‘All right, you can go home now. The eviction’s been postponed.’

  A buzz of excitement ran along the line, like lightning conducted through their linked hands. But no one moved.

  ‘It’s true.’ Thanet waved a hand. ‘You all know PC Kimberley. Ask him.’

  ‘Is it, Jack?’ shouted one of the men in the middle of the line, a stringy man in his sixties, wearing (symbolically?) a combat jacket and ancient corduroys.

  Kimberley nodded. ‘True enough.’

  Looks were exchanged, then the line broke up as people began to struggle to their feet.

  Their self-appointed spokesman was the first to reach them.

  ‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘What made ’er change ’er mind? Get cold feet, did she?’

  ‘You’ll wish you hadn’t said that, Dan,’ said Kimberley. He raised an eyebrow at Thanet, who nodded. ‘This is Detective Inspector Thanet, Sturrenden CID. Mrs Salden is dead.’

  The word caused a sudden hush, and an uneasy exchange of glances. Most of the villagers, Thanet noted, were either pensioners or middle-aged women, with a sprinkling of presumably unemployed youths.

  The man’s hairy eyebrows met in a fierce frown. ‘Dead, you say?’

  Kimberley nodded. ‘She was pulled out of the river at Donnington Weir this morning.’

  ‘’Ow did it ’appen?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. But as Inspector Thanet says, there’ll be no eviction today. You can all go home.’

  However anti-Marcia they had been, the news had subdued them and they began to drift off in twos and threes. The man called Dan, however, began to march purposefully off up the slope towards Greenleaf’s hut.

  ‘Just a moment,’ Thanet said.

  The man halted. ‘I was only going to tell ’Arry. It does concern ’im, you know.’

  Thanet ignored the sarcasm. ‘I’ll do it myself.’

  The man’s lips tightened but he said nothing, turning away and hurrying to catch up with some of the others.

  ‘Right, the excitement’s over,’ said Thanet to the uniformed policemen. ‘You can get off back to Headquarters. Have you seen any of my team?’

  ‘Only in the distance, working along the river bank.’

  ‘Where are they now, do you know?’

  ‘They only came a short distance from the village, then turned back.’

  It looked as though they might have found something. ‘Tell them I’ll be along shortly, will you? I just want a word with Greenleaf, first. Kimberley, I’d like you to stay with us for the time being.’

  ‘Sir …’ said Kimberley as they started up the grassy slope to Harry’s hut.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just thought you might like to know …’

  ‘Well? Come on, spit it out, man.’

  ‘I saw Mr Salden last night.’

  Thanet stopped walking. ‘Oh, where?’

  ‘In the pub. Must have been somewhere between half-past eight and nine.’

  ‘Was he alon
e?’

  ‘Yes. Looked a bit down, I thought.’

  ‘Does he often go to the pub?’

  Kimberley shrugged. ‘From time to time.’

  ‘By himself?’

  ‘Usually. But he’ll have a pint and a chat. Last night he … Well, he gave out the impression that he didn’t want to be sociable. Nothing was said, but it was interesting that apart from saying hello, people gave him a wide berth. And I noticed he was drinking whisky. Doubles.’

  ‘Don’t miss much, do you?’

  Kimberley grinned. ‘Try not to, sir.’

  ‘He’d just have come from his mother-in-law’s house,’ said Lineham. ‘Remember, he said he went out for a walk.’

  ‘Yes … Did anyone in the pub comment, Kimberley?’

  The policeman shrugged. ‘I imagine they just assumed, as I did, that he was upset because of Mrs Carter. It was common knowledge that he was very fond of her – his own mother’s long dead, I believe – and she thought the sun shone out of his eyes, by all accounts.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have thought he’d had a row with his wife?’

  ‘No, I’m pretty sure not. I haven’t heard any rumours in that direction.’

  ‘How long did he stay in the pub?’

  ‘Not much more than twenty minutes, I’d say.’

  ‘And he had how many drinks?’

  Kimberley thought. ‘Three.’

  Thanet turned and began walking up the slope again. ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘I don’t know him that well, but he’s pretty well liked in the village.’

  ‘Unlike his wife.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know if you realised, sir, but Mrs Salden was a local girl.’

  ‘Miss Phipps told me.’

  ‘I think people found it difficult to accept her as lady of the manor, so to speak. And she made it worse by not making any attempt to enter village life. I mean, she didn’t come to church or take part in any village events, or offer the Manor grounds for the village fête, or buy her groceries at the village shop … And of course, there’s been all that trouble over the footpath and the village hall and now over Harry. Mr Salden is a different matter – he’s on the PCC, gives a hand at village events …’