Death of an Old Git (The Falconer Files - File 1) (16 page)

The impact crushed the front end of the vehicle and shattered the windscreen, throwing around the upper half of the driver like a rag doll.

In the silence that followed the squeal of tyres, the crunch of twisting and tearing metal and the tinkle of breaking glass, there came no movement from within the vehicle. The driver hung, slumped sideways in the seatbelt, and unmoving. All was still.

Chapter Twenty

Friday 17th July – late afternoon

I

It was almost six-thirty and Falconer was thinking about going home, about dinner and a little piano practice, when his telephone rang. Damn! It had better be something trivial. He answered it and, as he listened, his face became progressively more glum. With an ill-tempered, ‘Damn, blast, bugger and bum!’ he replaced the receiver.

Carmichael looked across at him in surprise. ‘What’s up, sir? Is it your car?’

‘If only it were. Nothing so simple. There’s been an RTA on the Carsfold Road.’

‘But that’s Traffic, isn’t it?’

‘It was when it happened. Now it’s ours. Dorothy Manningford was the driver.’

‘She’s not dead, is she?’ Falconer could see a body count going on in Carmichael’s eyes.

‘No, but she’s injured and unconscious.’

‘What happened?’

‘It would seem that she lost control of the car on a fairly tight left-hand bend, went off the road and hit a tree. No witnesses. Someone driving by saw the car and dialled 999 on their mobile, so we’re not even sure exactly when it happened.’

‘She was on her own?’

‘Yes, but it took some time to cut her free, apparently. She’s in the ITU in Market Darley County Hospital. Come on, we’d better get ourselves over there, see what we can find out.’

II

The ITU sister went through Dorothy’s injuries with them before allowing them to look in on her. ‘She’s still unconscious, although there’s no skull fracture. Broken right femur, left ankle and right tibia, several broken ribs, severe bruising, and some cuts and abrasions. She’s lucky to be alive.’

‘But she will live?’

‘The prospects are good. We’ve not detected any signs of internal injury or brain swelling, which is good. It’ll be a long road to recovery though, and there’s no telling when she’ll wake up.’

‘Do you think she’ll remember what happened?’

‘Who knows? It’s doubtful, though. So often the accident itself, and sometimes quite a few hours before it, are wiped from the memory banks. It might come back in time, it might not.’

‘Can we take a look?’

‘Just for a minute. She’s already got someone sitting with her.’

As Falconer and Carmichael entered the hospital room they saw Dorothy, head swathed in bandages, face cut and bruised, one arm in plaster, one leg plastered and raised in traction. A cage under the sheet was an obvious protection for her (probably plastered) broken ankle. A couple of plastic bags suspended above the bed snaked feed lines towards the back of her left hand. There were monitor wires attached to her chest just below her neckline and a ventilator hissed as it fed her lungs with air. A heart monitor by the bedside beeped the news that she was still in there, fighting.

They also saw, his back to them, the inevitable black-cassocked figure sitting by the bed, head bent in prayer. ‘Rev. Swainton-Smythe, what a surprise. Third time lucky, eh? Except this one’s still alive.’

The vicar turned to look at them. ‘Inspector, Sergeant, I had to come. Not only is Dorothy one of my parishioners – one of my flock, if you like – but I also happen to think that this dreadful accident is all Lillian’s and my fault.’

‘Is that a confession, or are you just exercising your guilt muscle?’ Falconer was flushed with anger. Would no one rid him of this accursed cleric?

‘Don’t be flippant, Inspector. Just give me a chance to explain and I’ll go. I can pray just as well somewhere else. I’ve got a quick one to send up to St Anthony for Aunt Martha, and I think I might also say one for Lillian as well,’ he finished, matching Falconer, ‘flip’ for ‘flip’.

‘Go on.’

‘You saw how Lillian was yesterday morning. I can’t believe you didn’t notice she was …’

‘A little tired and emotional?’

‘Thank you for your tact. Yes, and she got more tired and emotional as the day wore on, to the point where she was, shall we say, roaring tired and intensely emotional.’ Falconer could imagine it, and involuntarily shuddered. ‘Exactly! And when she’s like that, she does rather get a bee in her bonnet. This time she thought the whole parish was going to the dogs. Then she got fixated with … Do you think we could continue this conversation out in the corridor? I know Dorothy’s unconscious, but it is possible that she can hear all this.’

‘Of course.’

Outside the room, the door firmly shut, Rev. Bertie continued his sorry tale. ‘Lillian got all worked up about adultery. I’m usually very patient with her, but with all that’s happened recently in the village I was feeling a little on edge myself. I’d just about had enough. I’d put up with it all day, hoping she’d just go to sleep, or pass out, or something, but she didn’t. On and on she went, practically raving, and I just reached the end of my tether. I walked out and left her to it.’

Why doesn’t the man get on with it? Falconer thought. He’s treating this like an embroidery competition. ‘So what happened?’

‘I didn’t know anything had. I went for a long walk to clear my head, dropped in at the church for some quiet contemplation, and when I got in she was out cold on the bed, fully dressed and snoring like a drain. I slept in the spare room and didn’t bother to wake her this morning. I knew she’d be feeling like death, and I just left her to it and went about my business – had an MU meeting as it happens.

‘Then, when we were finishing a rather late lunch (not that she was able to eat much) she apologised for her behaviour and told me she’d done a very stupid thing.’

‘Which was?’ Falconer already knew the answer to this one, but he did not want to break the narrative thread.

‘She’d phoned Dorothy on her mobile and told her all the gossip there had been about Piers and Cassandra Romaine. Well, as soon as I could, I cycled up to Pilgrims’ Rest to see if there was anything I could do, but only Piers was there, looking somewhat the worse for wear. He said she’d packed a bag and stormed out just after you two left, and he had no idea where she’d gone. I made him some tea and sat with him for a while, then the phone rang with news of this terrible accident.’

How did he take it?’

‘Not very well. I brought him straight here and we waited for her to come out of theatre, but there was nothing he could do, so I took him home, got Aunt Martha to sit with him, and came back to, er, put in a bit of overtime, I suppose you could call it. Do you want me to turn out my pockets now?’

‘Don’t bother. I’m hardly going to arrest you for misappropriation of a bedpan or illegal possession of grapes, am I?’

‘I’ll be off then. Goodbye.’

As he walked away from them Falconer said, ‘Right, Carmichael, I want you to sit in with her in case she comes round. I’ll make arrangements for you to be relieved later. This might have been an accident, pure and simple, and it might not. I want you to keep a watchful eye on her, and let me know if there’s any news.’

‘How will you get home, sir? We came in my car, remember?’

‘I’ll walk. It’s not far, and the exercise will do me good.’ And he would not have to have another ride in Carmichael’s Skoda-badged motorised dustbin.

III

Back home, and after a light but healthy (naturally) supper, and half an hour of tinkling the ivories – with the odd bruise here and there – Falconer was sitting in his study, his mind turning over and over the Swainton-Smythes’ connection with what he was beginning to think of as ‘The Castle Farthing Curse’. Oh, how he wished for a nice, simple, town murder.

His first thoughts were of the vicar, whose presence at the scenes of death and injury was getting a bit too ubiquitous for his liking. When he and Carmichael had first arrived in the village to call at Crabapple Cottage, there was Rev. Swainton-Smythe, left alone with both body and evidence, to do as he pleased. When they had returned to visit Mike Lowry’s bed-sit, there he was again, all alone and unsupervised. When they had arrived at the County Hospital, guess who was at the patient’s bedside? Got it in one – Reverend Swainton-Smythe, and not a nurse or a doctor in sight.

But could the reverend gentleman really have been responsible for one or all of the incidents? Falconer wracked his brain, trying to put together a case against him. Why Reg Morley? Mrs Swainton-Smythe (or Lillian the Lush, as he was now beginning to think of her) freely admitted that the old man had caused a lot of trouble in the parish (didn’t everyone?), had been a thorn in her husband’s side on many an occasion, from petty theft, through general trouble-making, to downright vandalism, although not all proven. Given the level of irritation and bad feeling that the old man caused, would this be enough to push a shepherd to cull one of his flock for the benefit of the rest? Could his wife’s ‘little failing’ have helped to unbalance him mentally?

And what about Lowry? Had Swainton-Smythe seen a similar behaviour pattern developing there and put him down the way one does a rogue dog for sheep-worrying? Really, all this rustic nonsense was affecting his brain. There were far too many animals creeping into his reasoning. He would be turning into David Attenborough if he were not careful.

At that moment the telephone rang, disrupting his thoughts and bringing him back to the here and now. With a sigh of annoyance he lifted the receiver. ‘Bob Bryant here, sir,’ (was the man never off duty, or did he have a clone?). ‘Just got the report in, on the car from that RTA on the Carsfold Road. Thought you ought to know what they found, right away.’

‘Go on.’

‘Brake pipes cut through, brake fluid must’ve bled away. She went off on that sharp left-hander. Must’ve tried to brake, nothing happened, and she lost control. Sorry to disturb you on your evening off, but I thought you’d be interested.’

‘Thanks very much, Bob. That’s along the lines of what I was expecting.’

Replacing the receiver, Falconer returned to his speculations. What possible motive could the vicar have for wanting rid of Dorothy Manningford? Think about it, he urged his brain, there must be something there. Yes, he had got it – Lillian’s drunken telephone call. If Lillian had known her husband was guilty of the murders, she may have let something slip over the phone, in vino veritas. Then, she confesses to her husband what she has done, and off he races to see if Dorothy has dropped him in it. And she hasn’t, so he ‘fixes’ her car.

And the same went for Lillian Swainton-Smythe. She may have ‘removed’ the first two victims because they were causing her husband anguish, upsetting people and generally disrupting the parish. Swainton-Smythe had said she had got a bee in her bonnet about adultery. Maybe she had thought that Piers would drive the car, or maybe she had said something in her inebriated ravings to Dorothy, to indicate her own guilt.

Here he ground to a halt, a large hole suddenly appearing in his neatly knitted garment of culpability. Lillian had told her husband what had happened, in the afternoon. When the vicar got to Pilgrims’ Rest, Dorothy had already left, and he had said himself that he had attended a meeting that morning. Falconer hardly expected a bunch of mothers to lie for their pastor. And Lillian had been sleeping off a spectacular binge, followed by what sounded like a similarly spectacular hangover. She would have been incapable of walking the previous evening and, even if she had had the gall to stagger up to Pilgrims’ Rest that morning bent on mischief, surely someone would have noticed her, the state she must have been in? No, the Swainton-Smythes looked well and truly out of it. He would have to start looking somewhere else for his murderer.

Piers Manningford was the most obvious choice, because his motives were the most simple. Falconer began to re-do the jigsaw puzzle, hoping he did not have too many pieces of drainpipe in the postman’s leg. That accident, had it been an accident, would have been just a little bit too convenient, given that Dorothy Manningford was the moneyed one and held the purse-strings.

From the top then, Piers knew that Reg Morley knew that he and Cassandra Romaine had embarked on an adulterous relationship. (It sounded like a rather muddled thought, but Falconer knew what he meant.) Manningford knew he could not withstand blackmail, as Dorothy would want an explanation of where the money was going, so the only solution was to remove the old man. That way there would be no blackmail, and no opportunity for Morley to make the affair public knowledge. Strike one!

Lowry had made it pretty obvious, and publicly so, that he knew about it too. By now Manningford must have been almost insane with worry. Killing Lowry may have been the act of a desperate man, to remove the only other person who seemed to have direct knowledge of the illicit relationship. Maybe he thought that with Lowry gone and Morley not having had the chance to say a word, he could convince Dorothy that it was just malicious village gossip. If it were so, then it was a drowning man clutching at straws, but it was just plausible, given Manningford’s probable state of mind after that outburst in The Fisherman’s Flies. Strike two!

Then, just when he thinks he has got himself into a position he can talk his way out of, Lillian puts a spanner in the works and delivers a drunken sermon on adultery and the sins of the flesh to his wife. What was even more surprising was the cunning used by the old soak in ringing Dorothy’s mobile, thus avoiding being fobbed off by Piers on the landline. So, Piers still thinks he’s safe, as Dorothy lies doggo and bides her time, even setting him up with a little time trap of her own. Does the stupid man fall straight into it? Of course he does, led by vanity. And his dick.

Then the balloon goes up and Piers is caught with his trousers down (and a pretty good left hook, if Falconer was not mistaken). All hell breaks loose: the man is scared witless he’ll lose everything. What on earth is he going to do now? Do away with Lillian? That would solve nothing. No, he must get rid of Dorothy.

She was obviously going to walk out on him. Even if she threw him out first, she had her own car. She would drive it sooner or later. Cutting the brake pipes was money in the bank for him, literally. It was also crazy, but Manningford was probably not feeling particularly rational with all that had happened recently.

There he was, nice home, nice lifestyle, plenty of money, hot little bit on the side. All was well with his world. Then it just blew up in his face. How could he possibly have acted rationally as things went from bad to worse? Strike three! Except that Dorothy was still alive. That had not been part of the plan.