Death of an Old Git (The Falconer Files - File 1)

DEATH OF AN OLD GIT

ANDREA FRAZER

In the quiet village of Castle Farthing a mean-spirited, spiteful, curmudgeonly old man is found drugged and strangled in the kitchen of his cottage, with no obvious clues to who perpetrated the crime. DI Falconer and Acting DS Carmichael are summoned from the police headquarters in the nearby town of Market Darley and begin to uncover a web of grudges against the old man and a sea of surprising connections between those who knew him. As the summer heat continues relentlessly, tempers flare, disturbing the usual rural calm of the village – and the normally imperturbable Harry Falconer.

Faced with a case that has no obvious prime suspect, and the many idiosyncrasies of his new partner, Carmichael, he feels that he is gradually losing his grip on the case as the body count rises.

Only a moment of serendipity will show him how events actually unfolded, and allow him to close his file on Castle Farthing, still smarting from the hideous twist with which events finally come to a head.

Death of an Old Git
is the first of Andrea Frazer’s Falconer Files: a detective series chock-full of picture-postcard villages, dastardly deeds, and a delightful slice of humour.

The Falconer Files by Andrea Frazer

The Falconer Files

Death of an Old Git
Choked Off
Inkier than the Sword
Pascal Passion
Murder at the Manse
Music To Die For
Strict and Peculiar
Christmas Mourning
Grave Stones
Death in High Circles

Falconer Files – Brief Cases

Love Me To Death
A Sidecar Named Expire
Battered To Death
Toxic Gossip
Driven To It

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The Residents of Castle Farthing

Cadogan, Martha – retired schoolmistress
Covington, George and Paula – licensees of The Fisherman’s Flies
Lowry, Kerry (née Long) – ex-wife of Mike Lowry
Lowry, Michael – owner of the village garage
Malpas-Graves, Brigadier Godfrey, and Joyce – of The Old Manor House
Manningford, Piers – IT consultant, married to:
Manningford, Dorothy – interior designer
Morley, Reginald – an unpleasant old man
Rollason, Rebecca, and Nicholas, son Tristram – run the village tea-shop
Romaine, Cassandra – artist, married to Clive
Swainton-Smythe, Rev Bertram – vicar, married to Lillian
Warren-Browne, Alan and Marian – run the village post office
Wilson, Rosemary – runs the village shop, Allsorts

The Officials

Detective Inspector Harry Falconer
Acting Detective Constable ‘Davey’ Carmichael
PC John Proudfoot
Sergeant Bob Bryant
Dr Philip Christmas

Prologue

I

The village of Castle Farthing drowsed in the heat of the July sunshine, postcard-pretty with its diamond-shaped green duck pond and Saxon church.

At the top of the High Street, at the Old Manor House, Brigadier Malpas-Graves scratched his head and frowned as he surveyed the empty patches in his asparagus beds. He was sure and certain that they had not cut that much over the last few days. From the soft fruit beds his wife’s voice called, ‘There’s hardly a strawberry here, and I know there were more raspberries on these canes yesterday. Have you checked the hens?’

‘I have indeed,’ replied her husband. ‘Only the two eggs, and I’m sure it wasn’t a fox made off with that bantam the other week. If it was, there would’ve been feathers and injured birds. I’m going to have to put a stop to this before it gets out of hand.’

‘Oh, Godfrey, must you? You know how I hate bad feeling between neighbours.’

‘I’m sorry, Joyce, but I must. We’re not a charity and I won’t be taken for a fool. It has to stop now.’ So saying, the Brigadier smoothed down the ends of his white moustache, hitched his belt over his prominent frontage and marched off to check his salad beds.

II

To the west, at The Old School House in Sheepwash Lane, the white-haired figure of Martha Cadogan could be seen bobbing about in the garden as she twitched out chickweed and other invading greenery from amongst her beloved blooms. Really, she thought as she weeded, these raised beds that Bertie built for me are a real God-send. Nowhere nearly so much bending, and the stonework is really very attractive. She stopped for a minute and smiled as she thought of all the hard work put in by her beloved nephew-in-law, then, spotting greenfly on her rose bushes, resolved to give them a good spray before she set off for her Sunday afternoon stroll, a habit that eased the ache of her arthritis and gave her much-needed contact with the other folk of the village. Since her retirement from teaching she missed the daily hustle and bustle of social intercourse, and did what she could to get out and about and keep up with what was going on in what she considered to be ‘her patch’.

III

Next door to her property was an unusual oval-shaped thatched property, appropriately named ‘The Beehive’ as it boasted several of these in its rear garden. With its whitewashed walls and black-painted window frames and door it had a very attractive appearance which would not have looked out of place on the top of a jigsaw-puzzle box. To the rear of the property, beyond the hives and abutting the orchard wall of ‘The Rookery’, stood an outbuilding that served as a studio. Inside, Cassandra Romaine was just laying down her paintbrush as her husband Clive appeared in the doorway.

‘I’ve got to nip into the office to get some paperwork for tomorrow. Do you want to come with me for the ride?’

‘No thanks. I’ve got a bit more to do here, then I thought I’d go for a walk to clear my head. You go on. I’ll see you at teatime.’ As the door closed she picked up her brush again and frowned at the canvas on the easel. It was always so difficult to know just when something was finished.

IV

On the corner of Sheepwash Lane and the High Street, in the substantial residence known as Pilgrims’ Rest, Piers Manningford was pacing impatiently round the drawing room, occasionally glancing at his watch and sighing. His wife, Dorothy, at forty-nine eight years his senior, looked up from her laptop and tutted. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, Piers, isn’t there something you could be doing? I’ve got to get the design for this warehouse conversion finished today and you’re driving me to distraction.’

‘Sorry, dear. I wasn’t thinking.’ He glanced at his watch again. ‘I think I’ll just go for a stroll down the Carsfold Road and see if the hang gliders are up, if that’s all right with you.’

‘Go, go, and give me a bit of peace and quiet. And don’t hurry back. I’ll be glad to see the back of you for a couple of hours.’

Piers’ bored expression dissolved as he headed for the hall to collect his binoculars, stopping at the hallstand to check his already immaculate appearance.

V

In Jasmine Cottage, in the High Street opposite the village green, Kerry Long was on her way out into the back garden to bring in her washing. Sunday was the one day of the week when she did not work, and she liked to keep up to date with her household chores. The cottage was one of a thatched terrace of six, in the past home to the workers on the land that used to be Manor Farm. The land had been sold off in parcels since the last war, first by the Brigadier’s father, then by the Brigadier himself, in an effort to afford the upkeep and maintenance of The Old Manor House. Where once there had been cows and crops, now there was a trout farm and fishery, a caravan park and a small development of modern houses. The terrace housing Jasmine Cottage and a similar terrace of six in Drovers Lane had since ceased to be tied cottages and had, likewise, been sold off to bolster the coffers of ‘the big house’.

Kerry’s smile of approval at her brilliant white sheets moving in the slight breeze turned to a grimace of disgust as she noticed a brown stain in the centre of the folded double sheet. Her gaze moved down to the ground, to the path below the washing line, where lay the culprit, a misshapen but nevertheless recognisable lump of dog dirt. Her temper began to rise. Many a time she had suspected that her next door neighbour had encouraged his Jack Russell to push its way through the hedge to do his business in her garden, and scratches in the herbaceous borders had argued the accuracy of her suspicions. This, however, was entirely different. Buster could not have made that mark: it was a good three feet from ground level. The ‘missile’ had been aimed and thrown, calculated to smear the largest item on the clothesline, the most awkward to rewash, for she boasted no washing machine.

Turning to shoo her two children back indoors so that she could safely dispose of the health hazard, she leaned over the fence, her anger getting the better of her. ‘Are you in there you malicious old sod? Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve done. Well, you’re not getting away with it any more. I’ve had you and your twisted mind up to here. It’s about time something was done about you, so take fair warning that I’m the one who’s going to do it.’

VI

That ‘old sod’, aka Reginald Morley, sat in a battered old Windsor chair in the kitchen next door in Crabapple Cottage, and wheezed the asthmatic laugh of an elderly smoker. At his feet Buster twitched in his sleep, as the shrill voice from next door berated his master. Reg was greatly cheered, not just by the accuracy of his shot, but at the reaction it had produced. A wizened old man, long past his eightieth birthday, he seemed to have shrunk, dried out, and gone bad like an old plum since his wife had died. They had not been able to have children of their own, and his wife’s bitterness at this misfortune had turned him against children in general. In his wife’s lifetime it had been just a fairly mild aversion, but since her death it had turned to open hostility. Since Kerry Lowry and what he mentally referred to as ‘those two mewling, snotty-nosed brats’ had moved next door he had made it his life’s mission to make all their lives a misery. Every little victory, every point scored, he hugged to himself in silent glee and added to his twisted treasury of sour memories.

VII

In St Cuthbert’s parish church, opposite the village green on the eastern fork of the Carsfold Road, the Reverend Bertie Swainton-Smythe was stacking hymn books at the rear of the church. He was a tall man in his early fifties, just beginning to run to fat. Generally good-humoured and easy-going, with a slight twinkle in his hazel eyes, he was considered by the village to be a good man to have around in a crisis.

His mop of thick brown hair bobbed back and forth as he bent to his task. Matins and the Eucharist were over and, as it was the third Sunday of the month, there would be no Evensong. Business was over for the day, as it were. The coarseness of the expression made him wince, and a vision of his wife popped involuntarily into his conscious thoughts. Although he loved her dearly, he sometimes wished she could be a little more like her Aunt Martha in her ways: a little more genteel, a little more ladylike. Bertie sighed, recognising a prayer to St Jude when he heard one, and continued with his monotonous task.

At the front of the church Lillian Swainton-Smythe was rearranging the floral displays, removing faded blooms and redistributing greenery to try to get a few more days out of them before they needed to be discarded and replaced with fresh ones. Less than a year younger than her husband, she was the complete antithesis to him in temperament, tending towards the hyperactive, even the manic; she was very outspoken, and gave a good impression of a headless chicken when faced with any sort of crisis. She was short of stature and, like Bertie, becoming slightly tubby. Her eyes were blue; her hair a thick, shoulder-length style, highlighted to disguise the influx of grey that had invaded her tresses over the past few years. She was the perfect foil for her husband: they balanced each other out nicely because of their differences.

‘Oh, to hell with these flowers! They’ll keep till the morning,’ she muttered to herself then, raising her voice, called, ‘How about we call it a day, Bertie? Fancy a G and T?’

Slipping the final hymn book back into place, her husband called back, ‘Lovely, but just the one. I’ve got to pop out later.’

VIII

Even though it was high summer, the Castle Farthing Teashop was shut for a few hours, its owners next door in The Rookery enjoying a rare family moment together. As it was such a beautiful day, Tristram Rollason (aged fourteen months) was out and about in the garden, sampling woodlice, daisies and other such outdoor delicacies. He had very magnanimously agreed to his parents joining him on this Sunday treat, and they reclined now in sun loungers sipping iced lemonade, occasionally chatting, but mainly watching the antics of their beloved first-born.

The Rollasons were in their late twenties, both born locally. A tall man with blue eyes and light brown hair, Nicholas could definitely be described as a strong, silent, traditional Englishman. On weekdays he worked for an insurance company in Carsfold. Rebecca was a tall, solid country girl with dark hair, green eyes and a smile of dazzling beauty. Tristram looked the image of his father until he smiled, when he became an angel.

Rebecca had had the (good) luck to be made redundant from her job just before she discovered she was pregnant. This proved a blessing in disguise, as the redundancy money helped them pay for the lease on the teashop, and meant that Rebecca could continue to work after Tristram was born, but had no need to leave her baby with someone else to do so. Life could hardly have been more perfect for the little family. There was only one fly in their ointment and Nicholas had resolved to squash that insect.

‘I’ve been asking around and it’s got to be him. You know what a nuisance he was when we were courting. I’m going to face him with it. It has to stop now.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t, Nick. I should have remembered to draw the curtains. It’s not as if we live in the middle of nowhere. I should’ve thought.’

‘Curtains, be blowed. That’s our own back garden out there. I’m going to speak to him about this, for if it happens again I’ll not be held responsible.’

‘Oh, Nick!’

‘Well …’

‘That’s that, then. Good. Oh no, look at the time! I’ll have to get my skates on if we’re to be open in time for afternoon teas.’

IX

Next door to the teashop the CFFC (Castle Farthing Farmers’ Co-operative) was closed for business. Run by a couple, both the offspring of local farmers, they preferred to spend their Sundays catching up with the fascinating developments of family and farming life during the previous week.

Next to this establishment, on the corner of Drovers Lane, the general store, ‘Allsorts’, stayed open for those dilatory few who ran out of gravy browning, or who had forgotten to buy eggs. Rosemary Wilson, who ran the shop, considered Sunday opening not so much a commercial exercise as an example of social work.

As she served her few customers, the sound of banging and metal-cutting drifted across from the workshop at the rear of Castle Farthing Garage in Drovers Lane. Rosemary sighed. That boy was working on a Sunday again, when he couldn’t find five minutes to spend with his own kiddies. If he could not find the time, at least all this extra work ought to make him enough money so that he didn’t fall behind with his maintenance payments.

X

The sound of metal on metal also reached the walled garden of the post office, where Alan and Marian Warren-Browne were sitting in the shade of a venerable tree. Alan set down his teacup and frowned.

‘I hope that racket doesn’t start off that damned dog next door.’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so,’ opined his wife, although her expression was an anxious one. ‘We heard nothing from him when Kerry was calling for the old man a while ago. Maybe they’re having a nap, or even out somewhere.’

The clang-clanging and grinding of metal on metal continued unabated.

XI

At The Fisherman’s Flies, Castle Farthing’s only hostelry, George and Paula Covington may not have been in the first, or even second, flush of youth, but they could have taught today’s young quite a bit about the execution and enjoyment of a little bit (or even a lot) of ‘afternoon delight’. They anticipated it eagerly as they finished clearing away the last of the lunchtime debris.