The Scent of Murder (26 page)

‘Yes, Pike,’ she answered firmly, looking him directly in the eye for the first time since the assault. ‘Seeing Sir Desmond arrested would give me no end of pleasure.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

After a supper of watery cauliflower soup and soggy jam rolypoly in the Green Witch’s dining room, Dody, Florence and Pike took their customary seats in the parlour of the public house. Although Florence seemed a little brighter than the day before, the strain of spending the day with Tristram’s mother, Mrs Slater, showed in her face. Black circles had formed under her eyes and there were now delicate marionette lines trailing down the sides of her mouth that Pike was certain had not been there at the beginning of the week.

‘I’m afraid you’re not popular with either the Slater or the Fitzgibbon family,’ Florence said wearily to Dody. ‘They’ll never forgive you for delaying the funeral.’

‘I was legally obliged to inform the magistrate of our findings,’ Dody replied gently.

‘Dody is the official medical examiner for the case. She is merely following procedure,’ Pike said, coming to her aid.

‘Yes, but they see all this as her fault. And you’re just as unpopular with Sir Desmond, Pike. Why on earth did you have to confiscate his guns?’

While Pike proceeded to give Florence a lesson in ballistics, Dody extracted her clay pipe from her Gladstone bag and rummaged around for a bit longer. ‘Bother, I’ve left my tobacco upstairs.’

Pike reached into his jacket pocket. ‘Cigarette?’

‘It’s all right, I may as well get my pouch. I’d like to check on Annie too, make sure the kitchen staff have given her some supper.’

‘If she was given what we had, we’ll never hear the end of it,’ Florence said.

Pike climbed to his feet from the ill-sprung armchair and opened the parlour door for Dody. When he turned back into the room he found Florence standing up too, legs planted firmly on the threadbare carpet, arms akimbo. ‘Well, Pike?’

She’s not tapping her foot at least, he thought, glad to see that Florence had recovered some of her spirit. ‘Well, what?’

‘What are you going to do about Sir Desmond?’ she demanded.

‘If I can prove that he murdered the girl, I shall arrest him,’ he said levelly.

‘As indeed you should. But I think we both know the murder of the girl is not the misdemeanour to which I am referring.’ Now the foot tapping began.

Oh, God, so this is what it’s about, he thought. The sisters were close; it should be no surprise to him to learn that Dody had told Florence what had happened in the tack room. But how did Florence know he knew, especially when he and Dody had not even discussed the incident?

‘You’re a detective, Pike. I didn’t think it would take long for you to work things out for yourself,’ she said, as if reading his mind. ‘So, I ask again: what are you going to do about him?’

Pike took a breath, faltered. ‘Did he — you know?’

‘As good as.’

He swallowed, and felt physically sick. Suddenly he wanted no more details. ‘There’s not much I can do if Dody won’t press charges.’

‘Of course she’s not going to press charges. Sir Desmond will ruin you both if she does. Really, Pike, don’t you think she would have done something about it if she were able?’

On his guard now, Pike said nothing. He knew what Florence could be like once her passions were inflamed. Experience told him to walk away and give her time to cool down before entering into further discussion.

She pre-empted his move to the door and barred his exit. ‘Hell’s bells, Pike! The man needs a good thrashing! And if you don’t do it, then I will find someone to do it myself.’ Her voice rose. ‘God, there are times I wish I were a man. Really, I would have expected more from you. You don’t deserve my sister, you really don’t!’

Florence’s face crumpled and the bitter tears began to flow.

Pike felt as if he’d been dealt a body blow. Did Florence really think that, or was it her grief for Tristram making her speak so? He stepped towards her, not sure what to do about her sudden outburst. He had the distinct feeling that if he moved any closer, she might slap him — it would not be the first time.

Dody re-entered the room. ‘Annie’s sulking again, just as I expected—’ She stopped, saw the state Florence was in and rushed to her side, drawing her sister into her arms. Florence stopped sobbing, looked over Dody’s shoulder and glared at Pike in a way that made him think she was handing him a white feather.

The next morning Florence returned to the Hall to spend another day with Tristram’s mother, Mrs Slater. Under a pale sky of wintry blue, Dody and Pike travelled by trap to the field where they had seen the magpie. It slanted upward and ended in a small copse some distance from the road. The isolation made it an ideal place to test Sir Desmond’s guns without fear of discovery.

They trudged up the hill across the rotting stubble, Pike carrying the canvas sack of weaponry and ammunition, until they found a small stack of the previous year’s hay.

‘This should do,’ Pike said, kicking the pile with his foot. The stack was damp and dense with weeds, and exuded a sickly, mouldy smell. ‘No stock could eat this.’

He walked behind the haystack to ensure there was nothing damageable in the line of fire and then beckoned Dody to follow him back down the hill for a distance of about thirty feet.

‘Stand here,’ he instructed, ‘and we should cause minimum damage to the bullets as well as increasing our chances of finding them again.’ Pike placed the canvas sack on the ground and slid the miniature .22 rifle from it.

Dody declined his offer of first shot. While she knew the fundamentals of firing a weapon — her father had insisted on giving her lessons when they had first moved to Kent — she’d seen enough damage to the human body caused by guns, both deliberate and accidental, to want nothing further to do with them.

Pike fired several rounds from each weapon into the densely pressed hay. Then came the prickly and dirty task of retrieving the spent bullets from the stack and examining them under the magnifying glass. It was impossible to find all the bullets fired, but they retrieved enough to make their experiment credible.

Before Annie had left for the Hall with Florence, she had packed Dody and Pike a picnic basket of bread, ham, pickled onions, cheese and two bottles of brown ale. Dody spread the picnic blanket under an oak tree, in a spot where the small copse afforded some shelter from the bitter wind. The fare was simple and wholesome, the experiment interesting, and Dody would have enjoyed the experience if not for Pike’s protracted silences and apparent preoccupation with matters she assumed were related to the pressure he was under to return the guns.

Leaning back on his elbow, he clicked several of the bullets together in his hand and cast his gaze absently towards the trees. ‘I’d hazard a guess the bullet that killed the girl came from a revolver,’ he said finally.

‘How can you tell?’ The wind batted Dody’s hair against her cheeks. Her enthusiastic scrabbling in the haystack had resulted in the partial collapse of her chignon. She wound a recalcitrant strand behind her ear as she listened to Pike’s answer, aware too late of the smudge of dirt left behind on her face from her dirty fingers.

‘I telephoned the Yard gunsmith first thing this morning and got some tips.’ He stopped his clicking, sat up straight and handed her one of the bullets. ‘Here is the lethal bullet. Have a look at it.’

Dody took the bullet. ‘It’s like the buttons Tristram found: so worn I can hardly see anything on it at all.’

Pike took the bullet back, licked his finger and passed it across the bullet’s damaged surface to reveal faint scratch marks on its pointed end.

‘See the skid marks on its nose? These marks do not show up on our wax plug because the wax plugs can only duplicate the striations on the
sides
of the bullets. These marks, however, do appear similar to those on the noses of the test bullets we have just fired from Fitzgibbon’s revolver.’

‘And the rifle?’

He shook his head. ‘Different altogether, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Look here, though, at this one from the revolver.’ He handed Dody the two bullets and she held them side by side.

‘Similar. Possibly.’

‘Indeed, but similar is not good enough for a court of law.’ Pike sighed. ‘And it will take more than a telephone consultation to ascertain if both bullets were definitely fired from the
same
revolver — that is where the wax plugs and the gunsmith’s camera come into it. What we can at least be sure of now is that the bullet that killed the girl definitely came from a revolver or handgun. A revolver leaves marks on the bullet’s nose like this, whereas a rifle, so I was told, and as we have seen just now with our own eyes, always leaves them on the base.’ He handed her a rifle bullet to show her what he meant. ‘You can see now why I needed to test-fire Fitzgibbon’s guns: I needed to see the marks for myself.’

‘Sir Desmond is the only person who owns a revolver.’

‘True, but we still don’t know it was
his
revolver that killed the girl until the gunsmith has conducted his own thorough testing. We can’t convict Sir Desmond merely because he owns a revolver.’ Pike took hold of a twig and began to poke the ground with it. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if I’m totally wrong. The murderer could have left the area years ago and taken his gun with him.’ He ground the twig into the earth and snapped it. ‘I fear we might both be guilty of bias against Sir Desmond.’

He climbed to his feet then helped Dody up, and they brushed hay stalks from one another’s clothes. Dody succeeded in relaxing under Pike’s touch. Physical contact with him was becoming easier with every hour that had passed since the assault, she realised. She smoothed hay dust from his eyebrows. He brushed her escaped hair aside and dabbed the dirt from her cheek. She felt the soft press of his lips on her neck. With no further thought, she opened her arms to him.

‘I don’t deserve you,’ he murmured as they held each other tight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Edie was the first in the dormitory to wake and that meant window duty. She dashed from one sash window to the next, hurling them open to admit a rush of cold morning air before scampering back to her bed. Should have about half an hour to snuggle with Bessie, she reckoned, before the wake-up bell was rung.

That afternoon she was being sent to the kennels to help the Master with the dogs. She had been worrying about it for most of the night, but as the darkness had begun to recede, so had some of her anxiety, and the thin morning light had brought with it a slight tempering of her fear. There was nothing she could do about it, she decided, so she might as well just grit her teeth and put up with it. If she could just manage to do as she was told and please the Master and Matron, she might, with any luck, continue to be sent to work at the Hall, and eventually leave the poorhouse for good.

She’d been with the Master before and survived, hadn’t she, like the other chosen girls? The dogs were the scariest part by far, but she was sure the Master wouldn’t really let them hurt her. If they did, they would leave bite marks on her body that would have to be explained. Unlike the other thing he did to her.

That was a bit painful and embarrassing, but not as bad as when Matron stripped her and flogged her across her desk, or tied her down and brushed stinging nettles down the backs of her legs with the Master looking on, a strange smile on his face.

It was the chase that was the worst part. Once the dogs had followed her scent and caught up with her — the dogs were ever so clever; no one got away — all she had to do was close her eyes and take herself into another world while he carried on with his business, grunting away on top of her. She was good at that: imagining. Her favourite imagining was being the housekeeper of the Hall, just like Mrs Hutton was now, with a black silk dress to swish about in and a bunch of important keys jingling on her belt.

Endeavouring to keep her spirits buoyed and her body warm, Edie continued to imagine what it would be like to be housekeeper: as much food as she could eat, a warm bed, and her own sitting room. She’d be firm but kind: she wouldn’t never beat any of the young maids and they would respect her all the same and call her Miss Pratt. No one had ever called Edie ‘Miss Pratt’. It might feel a bit strange at first.

As she continued to daydream, spooning herself around Bessie’s hump, her mind drifted to Joe. You never knew, he might even be working at the kennels this afternoon. He was sometimes sent there if work at the dairy finished early. It’d been ages since they’d last had a good natter. Thinking of Joe usually gave Edie a warm glow, but for some reason she felt colder than ever this morning.

For the last few days Bessie had been as hot as a combustion stove, though not much heat was coming from her now. Unable to lie on her back because of the hump, Bessie always slept on her side. Edie flopped her arm over Bessie’s shoulder and tickled her face. Bessie hated her face being touched, but if Edie had to be cold and awake, then she might as well have Bessie to talk to.

Bessie didn’t flinch. Something wasn’t right. Edie touched Bessie again. Blew in her ear. Shook her hard. The movement released a horrible gurgling sound from deep in Bessie’s stomach. Only then did Edie begin to scream.

The guns had been returned at the appointed time and Sir Desmond had been unable to find fault when he inspected them for damage. Pike had thoroughly cleaned the barrels with warm oil and removed any traces of wax. Just as well Sir Desmond had no idea what his precious guns had been subjected to, thought Dody. It was now Saturday, and she sat close to Pike in the trap as they made their way to Uckfield to meet Mr Barnstaple, the coroner assigned to Tristram’s case. The morning was still and overcast, the woods sparse, soggy leaves rotting in piles by the side of the road. The clop of the mare’s hooves sounded extra-loud. They came across little traffic: a few solitary riders, a man on a bicycle, a butcher’s cart and a sporty little motorcar that startled the mare. Above them rooks cawed from skeletal trees.