lies in Lashbrook 12

 

Chapter 12

 

“Have you touched anything?” asked Alexander.

“Yes, of course I have!” said Savin. “I went to see if life was extinct and I pulled the knife out because I could not bear to see it stuck in her neck like that.”

“Oh, Mr. Savin! You have not made it easier,” said Alexander. “I’ll be over with Inspector Morrell and Tim Mapp as fast as possible, and I want you to go out of the house, and sit on the seat I noticed outside your cottage. And don’t touch anything else.”

“No, sir, I shan’t. I’m sorry,” said Savin.

 

Alexander stopped at the church, and knocked up Dr. Brinkley.

“I need you as moral support for Theodore Savin, and to organise a coffin to bring his wife’s body back here,” he said. “Perhaps you’ll phone for the police surgeon as well?”

“Oh, dear, I did think her words at the inquest were foolish,” said Brinkley. “I will see to it all.”

“Thank you,” said Alexander. “I want to get there as soon as possible. Unfortunately he touched the body and the murder weapon.”

“I suspect most people would,” said Brinkley.

 

Having picked up Tim Mapp, Alexander drove to the Savins’ cottage.

“Tim, my lad, I can see the Twiddly-bonk woman peering through her nets; see if she can tell you what time the Savin female got home and if she had any visitors,” he said.

“Tweedie-Banks,” corrected Tim.

“I prefer Jeff’s version,” said Alexander. “I doubt she’d be forthcoming for either of us; I don’t think even now she believes we are real police.”

“Some people are just like that,” sighed Tim. “It took her three years to recognise that I am a policeman not a naughty little boy.”

“She’s one of these people who has made up her mind and does not want to be troubled with the facts,” said Alexander. “Which makes them awful witnesses as they see what they want to see. Unfortunately, it means that one can miss clues in trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, and if there is one tiny important point, they gloat forever that you took no notice of them.”

Tim sighed.

“I’ll take it down verbatim in shorthand,” he said.

“I write shorthand,” said Jeff. “You talk to her, and I’ll scribe for you. I’m sure Alex is capable of handling Savin and a body for a while.”

“Thanks,” said Alexander. “My shorthand is dodgy.”

 

Alexander found Theodore Savin sitting on the garden bench as directed. He looked lost.

“Mr. Savin? I will be going into your house to make a preliminary search and assessment of the scene,” said Alexander gently. “Will you mind if we also search your daughter’s room at the same time?”

“Do what you must,” said Savin. “Dear God! This is a nightmare. First, my bright, happy daughter, now my wife. I know she’s not much of a housewife, but... hell! I was thinking of divorcing her over the callousness she showed about Irma. But it’s hard to get my head round her being killed as well! Why? Who would kill her?”

Alex refrained from saying ‘Most of the women in the vicinity:’ it was hardly helpful.

“Your wife hinted at the inquest that Irma had confided in her over whom she was meeting the day she was killed,” he said. “It’s the official belief that this is connected. Now, this is going to get muddy because you handled the knife.”

“Oh, that cat next door will doubtless say I killed her,” said Savin, bitterly.

“I met her,” said Alexander. “She thinks I’m a vagrant.”

“Seriously? She must have bats in her belfry,” said Savin. “I suppose she thinks I just discovered that my wife goes into Oxford on Thursdays for her bit on the side, as well as her bit of rough with Tom the window-cleaner every other Monday. She doesn’t feel a need to have her hair and nails done for him, but she does bake. She’s an indifferent cook, but she can turn out a fair Victoria sponge. I get the leftovers every other Tuesday. We had a whole cake once when he didn’t turn up, and she was in such a temper I was sleeping on the couch all week. Having cake helped, but I let her think Irma was eating it, or she’d have binned it rather than letting me have some small pleasure.”

Alexander thought wryly that Savin was almost gleefully giving out motives for himself to be the killer. He patted Savin on the shoulder.

“When I’ve had a look, I’m going to let you in to pack a small case, and go stay with a friend or relative for a few days while the police paw over your life in the cottage,” he suggested.

“I... yes, it would be good to get away. I have a sister who is married to the solicitor in Bicester,” Savin said.

Alexander patted him on the shoulder, and squared his own shoulders for the unpleasant task ahead.

 

He could smell blood as he went in the front door. There was a room on each side of the short hall, which led to stairs up. The door to the right was open, so he moved through it. There was a dining table with a set of four chairs, a lowboy against the wall to the back of the cottage with a door beside it, opposite him was the fireplace with a reproduction of Constable’s ‘The Hay Wain’ over the mantel. Probably Theodore’s choice, a conservative man. On the front wall there was a window, and below it a chaise longue, on which the body of Violet Savin lay. Alexander sighed; her husband had plainly lifted her tenderly to place her there, and the bloody knife, a simple kitchen carving knife, lay on the floor. There was surprisingly little blood; some on the pillow of the chaise longue and some spatter on the heavy lace curtain. Likely enough she had been sitting there and her killer had sat beside her. Her expression held, if anything, faint surprise. There were no defensive wounds on her hands and she appeared not to expect anything untoward. From outside the window drifted the sound of Theodore Savin singing a prewar ballad called ‘My Jewel, my Joy,’

My jewel, my joy, don't trouble me with the drum,

Play the dead march as my corpse goes along;

And over my body throw handfuls of laurel,

And let them all know that I'm going to my rest.

“Poor blighter,” muttered Alexander. “Mrs. Twiddly-Bonk will doubtless make much of that, not ever having seen how grief takes people.” He had frequently poured too much alcohol into soldiers grieving comrades in similar ways. It was the way it sometimes took a man before he broke, and getting him drunk enough to cry was a way of postponing shell shock and keeping the unit running.

It hit worse if you postponed it, of course, but all the brass cared about were numbers in the trenches, warm bodies who could use rifles.

Alexander fought nausea as his nose, filled with the scent of blood, seemed to add the stink of decay, machine oil, human waste and strong tea, his ears filled with the sound of machine-guns, screams, the squeak of tank tracks, and the cries of the wounded, the voice of Theodore Savin mingling in his head with that of a young infantryman singing a psalm to the dawn in a Welsh lilt moments before a bullet turned his singing head into a spray of blood and brain matter.

Alexander shook his head.

“Concentrate,” he told himself. Nobody who was not mentally a brick had come out of the war unchanged; and sometimes he thought himself a fool for having a job which brought him into contact with dead bodies. But someone had to do it. It just hit hard sometimes.  This time more for the distress of the husband than because Mrs. Savin was any great loss.

He put on cotton gloves and placed the knife in a paper bag, labelled and dated it, with a note that the deceased’s husband had removed it from the wound so fingerprints may not be of much help. Violet’s blood had coagulated enough since her death that no more came out of the wound. It seemed likely that she had slumped against the back of the day bed, and her head fell forward, holding her mouth from dropping open. Alexander flexed the jaw; it was stiff. It was warm in the room; there was an electric fire sitting in the grate, which was on. Probably Violet had turned it on when she came in. It was fussy, but Alexander dusted the switch for prints and lifted what he found, carefully labelling it before turning the fire off.  Even if it had got hotter later, it was likely that she had not been dead much over two hours.  It was now seven in the evening; Tim had phoned to say he had spoken to Mrs. Savin at around three-thirty. She would be home well before four; turned on the fire, and sat down, kicking off her heels, Alexander noted. Someone had knocked? Or just come in? Someone maybe waiting in the kitchen for her to come in?

He opened the window.

“Did you go into the kitchen at all?” he asked.

“No, I came into the front room and saw her; the phone is in the room, on the lowboy. I had no need to go into the kitchen. She was sitting there, but her head had fallen forward. I... I went forward and touched her, and... and then I saw the knife as she sort of sagged.”

“Good man. Well done,” said Alexander. “When did you get home?”

“I get home, if the train is on time, between six thirty and six thirty-five,” said Savin. “I called you as soon as I had laid her down more... don’t laugh, please... more comfortably, having checked I could not help her.”

Alexander nodded.

“I’ll need to check with your colleagues that you left work at the right time, but assuming you did, nobody can point a finger at you.”

“Not that it will stop that cat next door,” said Savin.

“No, well, she can be censured by the court if she says anything out of turn,” said Alexander. He withdrew and went to take finger prints from the kitchen door handle, and the outer kitchen door, and the back door key, which was resting on the kitchen table. Doubtless it usually lived under a flower pot; the ways of village folk were usually quite predictable. He would be lucky to get a few smeared partial prints but it was worth a try. He telephoned Ida; it was better that another woman should go over a girl’s room. Ida readily agreed to come. Then he called Scotland Yard.

Superintendant Barrett answered.

“Edwin?” said Alexander, “Can you have someone pop into Tripp, Farley, Tripp, solicitors at law, and find out whether the clerk Theodore – with an e – Savin, S for strawberry, a for apple, v for vine, i for ice-cream, n for nuts, was in the office all day today and did not leave early.”

“Suspect?”

“Not really, but I want to clear the poor little sod of killing his wife, and so long as he did not leave early, it’s pretty much a physical impossibility. I doubt he knows enough to crank up the heat of an electric fire to speed up rigor, and moreover, we have lividity starting in the lower legs, as her sheer stockings show me. He handled the knife and moved the body.”

“Honestly, the general public are their own worst enemy,” sighed Superintendant Barrett. “I’ll have that done.”

“Many thanks, sir,” said Alexander. “I’m sending him off to his sister who lives one village over.”

“Fine,” said Barrett. “Do you have a suspect?”

“Yes, but I can’t figure out any point in writing poison pen letters. I now have two dead bodies, and I do not want any more.”

“No, quite; that would start to look like carelessness,” said Barrett. “Stay on top of it, Alex, and try not to offend Morrell now you have a truce.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Alexander.

 

Jeff Morrell and Tim came in.

“How did it go?” asked Alexander.

“About as well as might be expected,” said Tim. “I asked her if any strangers had come to the house, or even people she knew, after you had left, and got a tirade about poking around in other people’s lives. And with much prevarication she admitted to having had just a teensy sherry...”

“A ‘teeny weeny little bit of a sherry,’” said Jeff, glancing at his notes, “To ‘calm her nerves after those suspicious looking fellows were poking in the garbage,’ and she ‘might, as a result have been sufficiently overcome, on top of her nerves being overset, and dozed off.’  She thought she heard a bicycle but did not see one when she went to look. Because of course she went to look, to see if she could catch Violet Savin with a new lover.”

“And of course, she said that the husband must have killed her, citing how hard Violet was to live with, and that one could hardly blame him save for him sitting outside like nothing was wrong, and then singing,” said Tim.

“Oh, I knew she’d be at him for that. Drat the woman, she’s coming to harangue him; Tim, call him inside and go to his bedroom with him to pack an overnight bag.”

“Yessir,” said Tim, sliding out like an eel and forestalling Mrs. Tweedie-Banks before she could get started.

Alexander listened to the footsteps going up the stairs. He ignored the neighbour banging on the door.

“I’ve called in Ida to go through Irma’s room,” he said. “I thought another young woman would be more likely to find a diary.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” said Jeff. “Do you need me to do anything?”

“I think I did everything here...the vicar should be on his way with a coffin,” Alexander said.

“And here’s the hearse,” said Jeff, as the sound of horse hoofs approached.

“Oh, good,” said Alexander. “Dr.  Hammond should be coming to do an autopsy.”

“The crypt is seeing a lot of that,” said Jeff.

“Yes, and I’m hoping it won’t see more,” said Alexander, grimly. “I am sure I know who it is but I can’t prove it and I don’t know why.”

“We had three people we thought it might be,” said Jeff, slowly. “Could having one of those people accused benefit the one you suspect?”

Alexander froze.

“Oh, yes. I see,” he said. “Proving it might be harder. I am glad Savin’s upstairs,” he added as he opened the door to the undertaker.

“Yes, he doesn’t need to watch this,” said Jeff.

Alexander directed the removal of the body.

“Dr.  Brinkley,” he said, “I’ve sent Theodore Savin to pack for a few days, his sister lives in Bicester. Do go up.”

“Thank you,” said the vicar. He went upstairs and Tim came down.

“He’s not about to destroy evidence; and I thought spiritual aid would be better without a policeman on tap,” he said.

Alexander nodded.

Savin and Brinkley were coming downstairs as Ida turned up. She negotiated Mrs. Tweedie-Banks with alacrity and slid inside the cottage.

“I’ll drive Mr. Savin into Bicester,” said Alexander as Ida ran upstairs. He was going out of the door when Ida called down.

“Who’s already searched Irma’s room and made an awful mess?” she demanded.