Beatrice (11 page)

“Detective Inspector Bosville, Great Tipton Constabulary.
This is my colleague, Detective Brown.”

The man
swallowed harshly and instinctively took a step back.

“What’s
your name?” Isaac demanded as he withdrew a little notebook and
pencil from his pocket. The simple action was apparently enough to
strike fear into the stranger’s heart, because his gaze began to
flicker around them as though he was about to turn tail and run
away.

“Sigmund
Hargraves,” he gasped. “My name is Sigmund Hargraves.”

“Where
do you live?”

“What?”

Isaac
sighed, and stared hard at the man. “Where do you live?”

Hargraves had the good grace to look uncomfortable while he
clearly struggled to come up with a plausible address. He studied
Isaac for a moment then shifted his gaze to Mark, who scowled
darkly at him. Eventually, he seemed to realise that he was going
nowhere until he told them what they wanted to know.

“24
Southside, Great Tipton.”

Isaac
jotted the address down and shared a look with Mark. They both knew
that Southside was the most deprived area in the county, where
single rooms could be occupied by families of up to 12 to 15
people, and living standards were dire. Crime was rife, and there
was nothing some of its residents wouldn’t do to earn a few extra
pennies; including murder.

“Who do
you work for?” Isaac’s look dared the man to deny that he worked
for anyone.

Unfortunately, Hargraves was not the kind of man who would be
cowed by a single look, and merely threw him a defiant look. The
snide smile that curved his lips warned everyone that he was not
going to co-operate without being pushed, or taken down to the
station.

“Unless
you are going to arrest me purely because I want my parcel back, I
don’t have to tell you anything,” Hargraves snapped.

“Someone
drove a carriage that looks very similar to yours down this lane
yesterday and nearly ran this lady over. Not only that, but they
returned and then nearly ran both the gentleman and the lady over.
That is attempted murder around these parts,” Mark
challenged.

“It
wasn’t me,” Hargraves snapped and glanced toward his carriage with
a shrug. “Lots of people have carriages like mine. You cannot pin
it on me.”

“It’s a
nice carriage,” Isaac mused as he studied the huge black
monstrosity that was parked at the end of Beatrice’s
driveway.

“I
bought it last year,” Hargraves reported proudly. “It’s top of the
range.”

“Must
have cost a pretty penny,” Mark replied thoughtfully.

Hargraves carefully ignored that and turned his attention to
Beatrice. “If you do receive a package and it contains a plant, it
is for me and I should be grateful for it back.” He turned around
to walk away only to find Isaac blocking his path.

“Before
you go; what were you doing yesterday?” Although his voice was
casual, there was a hint of steel hidden in the husky tones that
made Hargraves glance around him warily.

“Pardon?”

“Yesterday man; what were you doing yesterday?”

“I was
visiting a friend in Tipton Hollow. Then I went home,” Hargraves
replied crisply.

“Which
friend?”

Silence
settled over them for a moment. “He isn’t here anymore.”

“Who?”
Isaac demanded.

“My
friend, Barnaby Price.”

“Where
does he live now then?” Mark demanded. “This Barnaby Price?” He had
no doubt that Hargraves was just making information up as he went
along just to give them answers, but why?

“Look,
what is this? I haven’t done anything wrong so you have no business
asking me all these questions.” He pointed one long finger at
Beatrice. “She has a plant of mine and needs to give it
back.”

“I have
nothing of yours,” Beatrice argued. “You keep calling by here
because you refuse to accept my word.” She glanced at Mark. “When I
didn’t answer the door, he even tried to open the back
door.”

“Why?”
Mark demanded in a voice that was deadly.

“I knew
she was in,” Hargraves retorted, completely unconcerned that he had
been attempting to break in.

Hargraves opened his mouth to speak again only for Mark to
intervene.

“I warn you here and now, we will investigate your attempt to
enter this house without invitation. It is breaking and entering.
If your name and address turns out to be different from what you
have told us, I will arrest you for giving us false information and
hindering a police investigation. If you don’t provide us with your
exact name and address, and I find out that you have been pestering
these people again, we will find you and you
will
come down to the station to
answer a few pertinent questions. If we have to come after you
Hargraves, I promise you here and now that you will not leave until
you have told us the truth.” He poked one long finger at the man’s
chest. “If someone does not answer their door to you, and you let
yourself in, you are breaking and entering. So be warned. Stay out
of houses that don’t belong to you.”

Before
anyone could say anything else, Hargraves turned around and walked
away.

CHAPTER SEVEN

As soon
as Hargraves had gone, Mark turned to Beatrice.

“Now, I
understand that you have made a rather grim discovery this
morning?”

Beatrice
nodded. “It’s at the top of the garden,” she replied solemnly and
accepted the elbow Ben held out to her.

“You
don’t have to see it again if you don’t want to,” Ben assured
her.

“I am
alright. I have already seen it anyway.” Although her words were
brave, the reluctance on her face told them all that it was the
last thing she wanted to do. Sure enough, she got no further than
the rockery before she just couldn’t bring herself to go any
further.

“I will
wait here for you,” she sighed and threw them an apologetic look.
“I am sorry, I just can’t –”

Fred
smiled sympathetically at her and walked past her.

Mark
sighed as he squatted down beside the corpse and studied the handle
that protruded from the man’s chest.

“What
happened yesterday?” Isaac asked as he knelt on the other side of
the body.

Ben
sighed. “I found Beatrice hobbling along the road after the
carriage had nearly run her over. I brought her back here on my
horse. I stayed to help her with her boot and to wait out the
thunderstorm. I put my horse in the stable beside the house, and am
positive that the body wasn’t here then. I can’t say I really
noticed anything when I left a couple of hours later. It was dark,
you see, and I just didn’t look.”

He
didn’t add that he had been too busy thinking about Beatrice to
remember much of anything except the way the candlelight had
reflected in the softness of her eyes, and the intimate atmosphere
that had settled over them both during dinner.

“What
time did you leave?” Mark asked quietly.

Beatrice
sat on the rockery wall; close enough to hear them yet far enough
so that she didn’t have to look at the body.

Ben
looked at Mark, then Isaac. “I left here about ten o’clock. Mrs
Partridge went to her friend’s house after church, and stayed there
until the rain eased enough for her to come home. She got back here
about four o’clock and made dinner while Beatrice and I were busy
in the study. After dinner, I left.”

Mark
looked at Beatrice. “Apart from the carriage, there was nothing
else untoward happen that you noticed?”

Beatrice
and Ben shared a look but, before they could reply, Isaac
spoke.

“He
doesn’t look familiar to you at all?” Isaac glanced at Beatrice
expectantly.

“I have
never seen him before,” Beatrice replied.

“Me
neither,” Ben added.

“I don’t
think he is familiar with us,” Isaac muttered with a sigh and began
to rifle through the dead man’s pockets in search of
clues.

Aside
from a set of keys, and a few loose coins, there was nothing in his
pockets; no wallet and no identification of any kind. While Mark
and Isaac studied the body, Fred began to walk backward and forward
along the tree-line, studying the ground as he went.

Ben felt
a little useless and merely watched them for several long moments
before he turned to Beatrice.

“Fred,
go and find the doctor, and send for reinforcements to take him to
the mortuary,” Mark nodded to the body at his feet. “We will get
him out of here soon, Beatrice.”

“Has
there been any sign of a struggle?” Ben asked with a
frown.

“Doesn’t
look like it,” Isaac muttered as he studied the ground around the
body.

“There
must have been,” Beatrice sighed and turned around before she could
stop herself. She closed her eyes as soon as she saw the body and
turned her gaze resolutely toward Mark. “I mean; he can’t have just
been walking along and then just accepted being stabbed in the
chest. If someone comes at you with a knife, you would struggle for
your life, wouldn’t you?”

“Most
people would,” Mark agreed with a sigh. He had to agree with her
theory because the twigs on the trees were unbroken, and the ground
was unmarked by boot prints.

“Is
there anything else we need to know?” Mark asked, and frowned when
Beatrice and Ben looked cautiously at each other. Sensing there was
something they didn’t want to mention outside, Mark gestured toward
the house. “Shall we?”

Beatrice
nodded and didn’t bother to look back as she hurried across the
lawn.

“Stay
with the body until Fred gets back,” Mark ordered Fred before he
followed Ben.

Once
inside the sitting room, they explained about the plant and led
Mark and Isaac to the study.

“Good
Lord,” Mark was too polite to mention the smell that came with it,
but saw the wry look on Beatrice face and smiled. Beside him, Isaac
coughed.

“Do you
think it is supposed to smell like that?”

“If not,
it’s a science experiment that’s gone horribly wrong for somebody,”
she replied dryly.

“Let’s
go to the sitting room,” Ben suggested, and smiled when everyone
sighed with relief and hurried out of the room.

Mark put
the packaging paper back onto the table and looked at them. “Right,
well, until ownership can be established, given what is written on
the packaging, I consider that the plant is yours Beatrice. You
should not hand it over to anyone.”

Ben took
that moment to hand Mark the piece of paper he had prised out of
the dead man’s hand. He put it beside the single line of writing on
the packaging paper, and was unsurprised to find the writing was
identical.

“So the
dead man is the person who delivered the plant,” Mark murmured
thoughtfully.

“Beatrice also saw him outside the window during the worst of
the storm, when it was really black outside.”

Isaac
frowned. “He didn’t try to get in?”

Beatrice
shivered and drew her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “Nobody
knocked on the door, so he didn’t want to get in. He was just
looking through the window at us. One minute he was there, the next
minute he had gone.”

Mark
nodded although couldn’t exactly recall how bad the weather had
gotten outside yesterday. He hadn’t gone to church because he had
been called to investigate a burglary in Great Tipton, and Harriett
hadn’t gone because she had been feeling a little unwell. They had
spent their free hours enjoying the delights of matrimony and, as a
result, he had been too engrossed in his wife to care about what
was going on outside. Still, he could vaguely recall that it had
grown dark for a while, and had lain with his wife in his arms
listening to the rain for quite some time. He carefully tucked
those tender memories aside and turned his attention back to
Beatrice and Ben’s afternoon which, by all accounts, had been
completely different.

“I can
only assume that he may have been checking to see if you received
the plant. If he went to the woods, he may either have been
sheltering from the rain, or intended to make his way home once it
had been delivered,” Mark reasoned. “I think that the plant is
yours. The label certainly seems to suggest it. However, for now,
you should keep it in the study with the curtains drawn so that
anybody who looks into the house won’t see it. Also, keep Hargraves
– if that is his name – out of the house.” He picked up the list of
names they had found, and shook his head in disbelief. He thought
that the village would be able to enjoy a period of peace and calm
after the Psychic Circle debacle. Heavens, how wrong he had
been.

Beatrice
tapped the sheet that contained the diagrams and Latin names. “I
think that these are cultivation notes. We had planned to go to see
the people on the list this morning to see if the plant we have is
something my uncle had worked on.”