Death Dance (4 page)

The PM continued for another eon; or so it seemed to Rafferty. But eventually, Sam pulled off his gloves, threw them in the general direction of the waste bin and gestured to his assistant that the victim could be sewn up.

Fortunately, the body had been found quickly. Sometimes a cadaver was in such a bad way that Rafferty had to resort to breathing through his mouth and holding his nose. Still, even though the body was in a fresh condition, Rafferty had elected to postpone lunch until the PM was over – the awful offaliness of the procedure tended to make him feel sick to his stomach – something he had learned during previous procedures. Llewellyn, of course, as if to make Rafferty appear even more squeamish, was unaffected by the smells, sights and sounds of a PM.

Sam whipped off his protective gown, turned to Rafferty, and observed, ‘Not long now till the big day. How’s Abra bearing up at the thought of becoming Mrs Rafferty? Not getting cold feet?’

‘Of course she’s not getting cold feet. Why would she?’ Why did everyone keep asking him that? Rafferty wondered irritably. And why did no one ask if
he
was getting frosty extremities?

‘Not every woman considers that marrying a policeman is the best they can do. In fact, I would think that Abra could certainly do far better and find herself a man who earned more, worked fewer hours and didn’t keep letting her down over social arrangements. Perhaps she’ll realise that before Saturday.’

That was something Rafferty worried about a lot; how could he not, after his late, first wife, Angie’s jibes? Stung, even though he knew Sam was only teasing, he retorted, ‘I imagine your lady friend thinks the same about you. It can’t be nice to contemplate what the hands of a man in a job such as yours do all day before he comes home to her.’

Rafferty felt a bit mean-spirited after he’d said it. Because Sam’s wife had died a year or so ago and for a time he’d been morose and inclined to be snappy. But then he’d met Mary, a lady of his own age and he was nowadays a far more contented soul.

Sam smiled and told him, ‘My lady’s not squeamish like you, Rafferty. Stomach of iron she’s got. In fact she’s so not discombobulated by my job that she’s come in more than once and watched me performed PMs. Nor does she forego her lunch before doing so, unlike some people I could mention.’

Rafferty pulled a face at this below-the-belt riposte and said to Llewellyn, ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here. I’ve heard enough for one day about both my wussy stomach and my unworthiness as a bridegroom.’ He hurried to the door, followed by Llewellyn. Sam’s derisive laughter floated after them.

They went back to the station and yet more paperwork. They worked steadily through it. Finally, Rafferty slumped back in his chair, glanced at the clock and said, ‘time’s getting on, Dafyd. Let’s get ourselves over to Gary Oldfield’s place and see if his girlfriend can confirm his alibi.’

But Oldfield was alone when they got to his flat, with no alibi-confirming girlfriend in sight.

‘So where is your girlfriend, Mr Oldfield? Rafferty asked. ‘You said if we came over this evening she would be here.’

‘I thought she would be, but she suddenly decided to go to her parents for a few days.’

‘Well, we need to speak to her, so can you let me have their address?’

Oldfield rattled it off and Llewellyn noted it down.

Rafferty’s interest pricked up at the name. ‘Heathcote Manor? Sounds an interesting place.’

Rafferty came from a long line of builders and house renovators. His brothers were both in the trade as were most of his cousins. Mickey was a carpenter and Patrick Sean was a brickie. Rafferty and his cousin, Nigel, were the only ones who had gone off in a different direction. Rafferty, pushed by his mother, into the police and Nigel, because he had both a love of money and a horror of getting honest dirt on his hands, had gone into the estate agency business.

‘Yeah,’ said Oldfield. ‘Worth a fortune. It’s Elizabethan. Or something. Cold and draughty, anyway. Give me a modern house any day.’

This was sacrilege as far as Rafferty was concerned. He had, over the years, developed a love of old buildings; it had turned him into something of a history buff.

According to Oldfield, Heathcote Manor was in the country, to the northeast of Elmhurst, not that far from the ruined priory that Henry VIII had destroyed during the Dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century.

He thought it odd that Diana Rexton should have found it necessary to stay overnight with her parents when she lived in the same town as them. He suspected she and Oldfield had had a row and he wondered what about. Had Oldfield asked her to lie for him about where he’d been when Adrienne Staveley was murdered?

Chapter Four

But Oldfield wasn’t saying, so they left him to his poky modern flat in a nondescript block in the poorer part of the town and drove to Diana Rexton’s parents’ place. It was a gloriously warm and bright evening, which made for a pleasant run out and for once, Rafferty was happy for Llewellyn to do the driving. He sat back and enjoyed the journey and didn’t urge Llewellyn to get a move on, as he usually did.

The house, when they found it, down one of the quiet lanes leading eventually to the A12, was an exquisite Elizabethan gem, with tall chimneys and rose-red brick softened and weathered by the centuries. The huge window of the great hall was still in place and it looked like it was the original – as he got nearer, he could see the wavy glass that had been used in the sixteenth century.

He became conscious that his heart was beating a little faster and that his mouth had gone dry. He couldn’t wait to see inside – he so hoped it hadn’t been ruined by some ‘improving’ Victorian gentleman as so many had.

He wasn’t disappointed. Once the massive oak door was opened by a middle-aged man in a threadbare cardigan and baggy corduroy trousers, whom Rafferty presumed was the odd-job man and he explained his business, he was led inside and saw that it had scarcely been touched by the passing of the centuries. It really was an architectural marvel and Rafferty felt a pang of envy for its owner. How he’d love to live in such a place. Oldfield must be a barbarian indeed if the first thought he had about the house was in terms of its financial rather than its architectural and historical value. ‘Cold and draughty’ was how he had described it. Rafferty would willingly put up with any number of draughts to live in such a house and enjoy the rich texture of history all around him.

By the time the odd-job man had gone in search of Diana Rexton, Rafferty had almost forgotten the purpose of his visit, so lost was he in soaking up the atmosphere of the great hall, with its mighty oak beams and the enormous window that flooded the huge space with light. There was a mass of photographs scattered about the room: on the windowsills, the manorial-sized mantelpiece, on the walls amongst the ancestral portraits that, judging from the clothing worn by the subjects, went back to when the house was built. An outstandingly pretty girl featured in the vast majority of them; Diana Rexton, he presumed. She had dark shining curls and delicate skin. The fireplace was currently playing host to a massive display of dried flowers. It was very well done and Rafferty wondered who had created it as it had a professional air to it. He could imagine the fireplace on a cold winter night, its flames crackling among the logs as the family sat around the fire telling each other ghost stories. He wondered if they had a resident ghost. It seemed that kind of place. He wondered if—

He forced himself back to the present with an effort of will when somebody said his name. It was a wrench.

‘I’m Diana Rexton, Inspector. What can I do for you?’

Rafferty did a double take when he saw her. For this wasn’t the gorgeous girl in all the photographs. This Diana Rexton was plain, with a pallid slab of a face. She had bad skin and looked dowdy in well-worn jodhpurs and a jumper that was a match for the odd-job man’s holey cardigan. Her body looked wiry rather than slender, and he would bet that under her clothes she was well muscled. Was it possible that she believed the shallow Gary Oldfield could possibly be interested in her for anything other than her money?

‘Miss Rexton,’ he said. ‘I’m here about the murder of a Mrs Adrienne Staveley. I understand your boyfriend knew her quite well.’ “Knew” in the biblical sense, he felt like adding, if only to save her from Gary Oldfield’s greedy clutches. Because it was clear that her money was what Oldfield was after. The family must be loaded to live in such a house. Rafferty could imagine the sort of woman that would really appeal to Oldfield: blondes, probably of the bottled variety, who wore short, short skirts and tops low-slung enough to show off their considerable assets.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘My father said. How can I help you, Inspector?’

‘I just need to ask you a few questions. Nothing to worry about.’ Rafferty was surprised to learn that the ‘odd-job’ man was her father and presumably the seriously rich owner of the house. He was surprised, too, that her father hadn’t stayed to give his daughter moral support once he knew why they needed so speak to her.

She had straw in her straggly mousy hair and when Rafferty pointed this out to her, she ran her hand through her hair till she found it and removed it. She crushed it and dropped it in the huge fireplace. Her wry smile transformed her face and showed how attractive she could have been had nature been kinder to her.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve been with Benjy.’

‘Benjy?’ Rafferty repeated, imagining that she’d been rolling in the hay with some country bumpkin who couldn’t afford to take her to a hotel. He wondered did Oldfield know he wasn’t the only one who had been playing away.

Then she explained and Rafferty knew his imagination had led him astray. Not for the first time.

‘Benjy’s my horse. Sixteen hands of muscle with a temper.’ She laughed, showing off well-tended, middle-class teeth. ‘If I forget to bring him an apple or carrot in the morning when I muck him out, he tries to kick me. He broke my wrist last year. Evil brute.’ She turned and picked up one of the photographs that were on the window sill. ‘That’s Benjy.’

Rafferty found himself face to face with the most vicious set of teeth he’d ever seen on man or beast. Beside him, smiling radiantly, with arms tightly hugging the head with the mad-looking eyes, was Diana, with all the love and pride of ownership sparkling from her dull brown eyes.

‘He can be a bit of a devil. But I know he loves me really. He won’t let anyone else ride him.’ She laughed again. ‘No one else wants to. But he’s an old softy at heart.’

Rafferty doubted this. It seemed Ms Rexton was as bad a judge of horseflesh as she was of men. He wouldn’t willingly have gone within six yards of the beast. It was beyond him how Diana Rexton could cheerfully climb on his back and trust herself to the untender mercies of the creature behind those wildly rolling eyes. It was obvious that she was waiting for some words of admiration and Rafferty duly obliged. ‘Magnificent beast.’

It was a mistake. ‘Isn’t he? Are you a horsy person, Inspector?’ she asked. But before he could answer in the negative, she said, ‘Come and say hello to him. He normally doesn’t like strangers, but we might be lucky as he was in quite a good mood when I left him.’

With a heavy tread, he followed her out of the great hall and along a dimly lit passageway to a back door. Llewellyn, wisely kept behind him. The passageway led to a quadrangle, made up of three parts house and one part stable block. Only three horses peered over the half-doors. One of them was Benjy. Rafferty had no trouble recognising him. The horse neighed when he saw Diana, exposing those nasty teeth, much to Rafferty’s discomfiture.

‘Other people tell me he’s an ugly-looking brute, but they’re wrong. Perhaps it takes love to see his beauty? Because to me he’s beautiful. I’ve had him since I was ten years old. He was a foal when I first got him. Even then he had a nasty temper.’

Why on earth had her father bought such an animal for his daughter? Rafferty wondered. It seemed an unwise purchase.

‘I’d never trade him in for some pretty faced gelding. He’s a stallion with a stallion’s pride, aren’t you Benjy?’ she said as they reached the stable door which, thankfully, contained the beast with a sturdy bolt

Benjy nodded his head in agreement and exposed those teeth again.

‘For all that our friends say he’s bad-tempered, he’s sired half the foals in the neighbourhood. The owners who want to put him to their mares forget what they call his devilish looks and look instead at his pedigree — King Charles out of Flanders Mare.’

She gazed at Rafferty as if she expected this lineage to mean something to him. He managed to murmur something that sounded like he was suitably impressed and quickly passed on to the reason for their visit, worried in case she might take his fake admiration for the real thing and suggest opening the stable door so they could get better acquainted with this equine wonder.

‘Mr Oldfield said you were together from four o’clock on the day of Mrs Staveley’s murder and for the rest of the evening. Can you confirm that?’

‘Yes, of course. Gary didn’t go out at all. We spent the evening together and watched a sloppy romance on the television. Gary professes not to like such films, but he watched it till the end with me, then we went to bed.’

‘I see. Have you known Mr Oldfield long?’

‘Not long in time terms, I suppose. About three months. But I feel I’ve known him for far longer. We’re soul mates and hope to marry.’

Her love for the oily Oldfield shone in her eyes. It was clear she was besotted. It was Benjy all over again.

Rafferty bit down on his lip to forestall any comment. It was none of his business what she did with her life. When he judged himself sufficiently past commenting on her unwise romance, he said, ‘Thank you, Miss Rexton. That’s all we needed. We’ll leave you to Benjy now.’

She smiled and thanked him, clearly unable to hide her eagerness to get back in the stable with the horse. But good manners prevailed and she led them across the quadrangle and back down the stone passage to the nail-studded front door. She had closed it after them before Rafferty had managed to find a way to express his desire to see more of the house without compromising his official role.