“It’s the coming place, Sergeant, haven’t you heard? The healthiest place on earth, according to the publicity handouts. If I stayed here long enough, who knows, I might even get the sight of my eye back!”
A bitter note. But bitter enough to lead to murder?
He said, “Had you ever been on the grounds of the hall before you went to the hog roast?”
“It’s possible,” she said. “I’m fond of walking. I may have strayed onto the grounds during one of my strolls.”
“Surely you’d have known?”
“Why? Like yourself, Sergeant, I’m a stranger here.”
Like an expert dancing partner, she was moving exactly in time with him.
He said, “How did you feel about Lady Denham?”
“Some distant personal resentment, naturally.”
“Enough to make you target her in your capacity as an animal rights activist?”
“Certainly not,” she said. “Her ownership of the Hollis pig business is enough to earn her that privilege without anything personal coming into it. Conditions on that site are a disgrace. I have some photographs in my case if you would like to see for yourself.”
There it was, an invitation to look in her case. Could be a double bluff, of course, in the hope of putting him off.
He said, “Thank you. Yes, we’d like to search your luggage, if you don’t mind.”
She pushed the key ring toward him.
“Be my guest.”
He didn’t touch the key but said, “Is there anything you’d like to add to the account you gave DC Seymour here of your attendance at the hog roast yesterday?”
She said, “Only that after a good night’s sleep, I woke this morning feeling I’d walked into someone else’s drama and the best thing for me to do was head off home.”
There was a tap at the door and Bowler stuck his head in and mouthed, “Got a mo, Sarge?”
“Interview suspended,” said Wield. “Dennis, why don’t you take a look through Mrs. Griffiths’s case while I’m gone?”
He stood up and went out of the room without even glancing at the woman.
He would have liked to think he was getting on top here, but the best an honest assessment could give him was a score draw so far. His gut feeling was that Lady Denham’s death had nothing to do with animal rights, but gut feelings weren’t for sergeants. His job was to advance cautiously through the darkness, step after blind step.
The old proverb popped into his mind-In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Make that woman and queen.
3
Hat Bowler greeted him with a smile too bright to be genuine.
Wield said, “Right, Hat. What’s so important?”
“Nothing important, really, Sarge,” said Bowler. “It’s that Miss Brereton. She’s at the Hall. Says she wants to collect some of her clothes and other personal belongings.”
Wield, in both his personal and his professional life, had developed a sensitive ear for an evasion. He said, “You mean Miss Brereton’s being detained outside the Hall by PC Scroggs who is under strict instructions to admit no one without contacting me?”
“Not exactly,” said Bowler.
“Then let’s start again, this time exactly,” said Wield.
It turned out that Bowler had glimpsed a figure passing behind an upstairs window and when he asked Mick Scroggs who he’d let in, he received the answer, “No bugger.” Investigation revealed Clara Brereton. She said she’d entered by a rear door to which she had a key. In Bowler’s eyes this cleared Scroggs of any blame, but the fearful constable, in unsolicited testimony to Wield’s reputation as Pascoe’s enforcer, had said, “Doesn’t matter, yon ugly bastard will kill me!”
Bowler had a kind heart and Scroggs was a likable youngster and the DC might have been tempted simply to approve the young woman’s request to pick up her clothes, then escort her off the premises, but for one thing.
“Thing is, Sarge, it wasn’t her room she was in, it was Lady Denham’s.”
“How do you know?” asked Wield.
“Didn’t look like the kind of room I’d have expected someone like Miss Brereton to have,” said Bowler. “Too fussy. And the wrong stuff lying around.”
“Mebbe she’s an old-fashioned girl.”
“No. I got Scroggsy to take her downstairs and I had a poke around. It was definitely the old lass’s.”
“You ask Brereton what she was doing there?”
“No. Thought if she was looking for something, it was best not to alert her we knew, not without talking to you first.”
“The room’s been searched, you know that? DCI was very particular about that. Nothing found that seemed relevant, so what could Brereton have been after?”
“Maybe these,” said Bowler.
He produced a manila A5 envelope from which he spilled four photographs onto a table. The color wasn’t great and they’d been printed on ordinary cartridge paper, but the images were clear enough. Taken from above they showed a middle-aged man lying on top of a young woman. They were both naked. The shadows suggested the sun was high in the sky. The ground beneath them looked sandy, possibly a beach.
Wield examined them. Bowler’s awkwardness was explained now. He’d done well to unearth these, but claiming the credit meant dropping Scroggs in it.
“It’s not Brereton,” said the sergeant.
“No. She looks Asian to me. You know the man, Sarge?”
“No. Where were these?”
“In this antique writing desk.”
“So why weren’t they found during the search?” asked Wield in some irritation. “Some bugger’s been careless.”
“Don’t think so, Sarge,” said Bowler. “There’s a drawer hidden beneath a drawer. My granddad was a cabinetmaker and I used to enjoy helping him when I was a kid and he taught me all about this kind of secret drawer. Everyone thought I’d probably go into the business, but it wasn’t the woodwork that fascinated me, it was the business of hiding things and finding them out. Sorry…”
He tailed off, thinking this was more than the sergeant probably wanted to hear, but Wield nodded as if he understood, and said, “Good work. So what would Lady Denham be doing with mucky pictures?”
“And why would Miss Brereton want them?” said Bowler.
“If that’s what she were after,” said Wield. “Did she have a bag?”
“No.”
“What’s she wearing?”
“Sun top, loose cotton jacket, lightweight fatigues, the kind with the big pockets down the front.”
“You had a good look at her then?”
Hat flushed, then grinned.
“Close observation, that’s what you taught us, Sarge.”
“That’s right. So you go back and closely observe Miss Brereton till I finish up here. I shouldn’t be long.”
He went back into the interview room. On the table were spread the contents of Sandy Griffiths’s case, clothes, toiletries, a notebook, a couple of paperbacks, and a laptop that was switched on.
He looked questioningly at the woman, who said, “I told Mr. Seymour it was all right to look.”
She kept a tidy machine. Her address book was minimal, the recycle bin was empty, and her documents contained only a single folder entitled Hollis.
He opened it. There were photographs of pigs, close crowded in metal pens. His mind registered distaste though his face showed nothing. He didn’t know if any welfare regulations were being broken here, but this was not a sight anyone who enjoyed a pork chop wanted to see. Some of the pictures showed dead piglets, lying in filth.
“Did you take these?”
She shrugged.
“Is this why you came to Sandytown, so you could do a raid on the pig farm?”
“Has there been a raid?”
“Someone defaced the sign at the main gate, I understand. The night of your arrival, I think it was.”
“There you go. We’re not alone,” she said, smiling.
“So you’re denying it was you and your nieces.”
“Of course. We want to use the law against these people. Why should we alienate it by committing criminal damage?”