Death of a Friend (4 page)

Fairfield reared back, chin tucked into his neck.
‘Good God!’ he said. ‘I had no idea. I thought you wanted to go over the Nesbitt woman again.’ He paused and inhaled deeply. ‘Grattan dead, eh? You astonish me.’

Den more than half believed him. The flicker of glee, the triumphant twitch at the corners of his lips, seemed too genuine for this to be old news. On the other hand, Fairfield was as undemonstrative as anyone of his background, and the clues as to his mood were so fleeting they might have been mere imagination.

‘It looks very much like murder,’ Smith continued. ‘He was attacked by a horse, which as you know, is unlikely to occur without the involvement of a human being.’

‘Wait, wait.’ The Hunt Master put up his hands. ‘You’re telling me that both these antis have been killed by horses within a few days of each other? That’s incredible. Somebody’s playing a game.’

Smith manifested puzzlement. ‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked.

‘Nothing in particular, just that Grattan always sailed closer to the wind than was good for him. If he’s been bumped off now, it strikes me that’s too much of a coincidence. Wouldn’t you say? I’d call it a game,’ he repeated.

‘A game with very high stakes,’ Smith remarked coldly. ‘Now, sir, if you could tell me
where you last saw Mr Grattan and fill in your own movements as fully as you can for Sunday and Monday, perhaps we can eliminate you from our enquiries.’

‘You think
I
did it? You think I’d ride out, chasing after Grattan and somehow get poor old Shamrock to repeat his performance of last week? Ludicrous, Inspector, if I may say so. Surely the poor creature’s in enough trouble as it is. I’ve had to keep him in, with a lock on the stable door, in case any of those hooligans take it into their heads to avenge the Nesbitt girl.’

‘Would you just answer the question, sir?’ repeated Smith flatly.

‘I last saw Charlie Grattan a week ago. Thursday, at eleven in the morning, when my horse had just killed his fellow protester. He was shouting and wailing in a highly uncontrolled fashion, which I admit to finding most unpleasant. On Sunday I drove down to Penzance and back, to visit my sister. On Monday I was mostly in my estate office, although I did call in on Bruce Wragg in the afternoon. He’s the Field Master and we wanted to discuss the Hunt programme. We also discussed whether either of us would attend the funeral at High Copse. You may know that I did eventually go along and made a short address. I felt I owed it to the family. And of course Hermione’s a personal friend.’

Smith made a few notes, before raising his gaze interrogatively. ‘Hermione?’

‘Nesbitt. Mother-in-law of the deceased. Keen huntswoman in her own right. Highly embarrassed by the girl’s antics, I can tell you. Dotes on the grandsons, of course.’ He turned to Den for the first time. ‘I seem to recall you were there last week,’ he said. ‘You saw how she was with them.’

Den nodded minimally and Smith intervened. ‘We’re here to investigate the death of Charlie Grattan,’ he said. ‘Not Nina Nesbitt.’

‘Seems to me you can’t separate the two,’ argued Gerald. ‘I’ve always thought that’s a failing with you police people. You don’t see the wider picture.’

‘And it seems to
me
,’ Smith snapped back, ‘that you’re avoiding the subject of Grattan’s death.’

‘Not at all,’ Fairfield disagreed. ‘It’s just that I have nothing whatsoever to say about it. It’s too bizarre. Besides, I hardly knew the fellow. What makes you think it was a deliberate killing, anyway? Couldn’t he have fallen somehow, or got himself kicked accidentally? Horses don’t attack people, not around here at least. They’re all far too well bred for that.’

Den could not restrain a slight hiss of disagreement. Both the older men looked at him.
‘Sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn’t go along with that. Remember that little girl, eighteen months ago, who had her back broken when her pony knocked her down and rolled on her?’

Smith nodded briefly and repressively, and Den understood that arguing with the interviewee was not part of his role. Fairfield sat passive and patient, ready for the next question.

After a short silence, Smith said, ‘I take it the news of his death is not entirely unwelcome to you?’

‘Steady on! Young man, presumably with a family, life ahead of him. I wouldn’t wish death on anyone. Whatever you might think, I’m still trying to get over last week. That was a terrible thing. He’ll tell you—’ He nodded at Den. ‘That crack, bone on bone … ghastly thing to happen. Sorry, sorry.’ He raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Doing it again, aren’t I. But you see, Grattan’s a pinprick compared to that. I can’t pretend I liked him. Thought he was a complete nutcase, if I’m honest. But I didn’t kill him. I can see the way your mind’s working, and I admit there’s a kind of logic to viewing me as a suspect. But you’ll have to think again, Inspector. I promise you that nobody who works with horses would deliberately use one to kill a man. The psychology of that is way off the mark.’

‘Perhaps, while you’re here, we could ask
one or two technical questions?’ The Inspector adopted a subtly submissive demeanour as he said this.

‘Fire away,’ the landowner invited, placated.

‘Firstly, what would be a reasonable distance for a rider and horse to travel, say in two or three hours? At the sort of pace designed not to attract attention.’

Fairfield answered unhesitatingly. ‘Fifteen, twenty miles, maximum. Further than that, and they’d be cantering. Though I’m not sure anybody would take notice of a rider cantering along some of the quieter bridleways. Thirty-five miles wouldn’t be impossible for a good animal. Opens up a pretty wide range of possibilities for your enquiries, eh, Inspector? Glad I’m not in your shoes.’

DI Smith made some notes, thanked his witness and suggested that Den drive him home again. They parted with high civility, each acknowledging that jobs must be done and roles must be played. But as he walked out to the car, Den knew that Gerald Fairfield still had to feature significantly on the short list of those who had means, motive and opportunity to kill Charlie Grattan. Indeed, Den concluded with a wry smile that Gerald was on a very, very short list of such individuals.

In the car they talked inevitably of Nina. Den
was aware of a mutual need to replay the scene of her death with someone who had been there. ‘I’ve been dreaming about it,’ Gerald admitted. ‘In the dream, the horse is covered in blood. Nobody ever asked about his welfare, you know. Whether the poor lad had a bruised nose. All that shouting and screaming upset him; he’s been off his fodder ever since. I’m not complaining, obviously. I’m probably lucky nobody’s demanded he be put down.’

‘They
are
animal rights activists,’ Den pointed out. ‘That presumably extends to horses.’

‘Hah!’ Gerald laughed sarcastically. ‘You’re joking! You, of all people, must know what they get up to, what they do to police dogs and horses. They’re nothing but hypocrites and fools. Surely you’re with me on that?’

‘I think that’s a bit sweeping,’ Den ventured. ‘I haven’t much personal experience, but from what I’m hearing about Charlie, he was no fool. He had a lot of respect from a lot of people. He was a Quaker, too. I don’t think they’re generally regarded as hypocrites.’

‘A Quaker, eh? Like old Barty White, my terrier supplier. He’s no hypocrite, either, though I bet his Quaker pals think he is. He’ll know your Charlie, I suppose.’ He gave a slight chuckle. ‘I don’t envy you sorting this one out. That Cattermole family defies comprehension, for a
start. You won’t have known the old woman, I imagine? Died four or five years ago now.’

‘Old woman?’

‘Eliza. Mother of the three girls. Amazing character. When I was fifteen, I was insanely in love with her. Never really got over it – though that’s off the record.’

‘But she must have been …’

‘Mid-thirties, at least. Hadn’t had any of the girls at the time. She was working on it, though. Eliza Cattermole brought the sixties to Devon all by herself. God, it seems like another world now.’

‘What happened to her husband?’

‘No such person. Didn’t hold with anything so conventional as marriage. You ask Martha – she’ll cheerfully tell you. She’s the best of the bunch by a long way. The only one with a proper job and her feet on the ground. Not that any of that’s got anything to do with this business.’

Den wasn’t so sure. In his limited experience, he had already learnt that motivation for murder was highly likely to extend a long way back into the past.

‘So who’s their father? Is he still around?’

‘It wasn’t just the one chap,’ Gerald explained patiently. ‘There were three different ones. Nobody from round here. She’d go off to London or wherever and come back pregnant. Did it deliberately. We assumed it was because
she couldn’t find anybody good enough for her on this side of the country.’

‘How did she manage for money?’

‘Hasn’t anyone told you this story?’ Gerald stared at Den, turning sideways in the car. Den shook his head. ‘When she was eighteen, her parents sent her to London for the society season. I don’t know how it happened, but she was taken up by some film agent chap and given a star part in a big American film. Paid her very generously, took her to California for a year or two – real fairytale stuff. She met Monroe, Ava Gardner, Cary Grant – the whole shooting match. But she only ever made the one film – which was a big success – and came back in about nineteen fifty-five with her pockets full of cash.’

‘What was the film?’

‘Can’t remember now. I suspect she was cast for her looks, not her talent. But she made the money work for her and it saw her through when she needed it. Mind you, living at that place, before they sold off most of the land, can’t have been easy. I remember they cut down acres of fine oak and beech, to use on the open fires that were all they had for heating.’

Den dropped his passenger outside his own impressive house, built from old, mellow stone with a creeper covering the façade. Stables, offices, a large stone-built barn and an open-fronted shed
housing two gleaming new tractors formed three sides of a muck-free yard. For some people, the vagaries of contemporary agricultural politics hardly seemed to impinge at all.

He drove back to the police station thinking about the Cattermole inheritance, which may or may not still exist. High Copse had struck him as being in decline and not at all the home of people living on substantial private means. Had the daughters squandered it, or had there never been as much as local rumour believed?

One note found its way into his jotter before he went on to the next job:
Gerald Fairfield was once in love with Eliza Cattermole
. It seemed to be a small detail that was unlikely to be substantiated by any of his forthcoming interviews.

Back at the station, Smith called Den in for a talk about Fairfield.

‘He talked about the Cattermoles in the car,’ Den reported, and summarised the handful of facts he’d gleaned.

‘Interesting. Now let me try this one on you, just off the top of my head.’

Den leant back against the table behind him. It made him appear less tall, a wise move when face to face with DI Smith, who stood a full five inches shorter. ‘Okay,’ he invited.

‘Imagine the disgruntled Gerald is out for a ride – probably on one of his hacks and not the ill-fated beast that killed Mrs Nesbitt. He heads towards High Copse, either out of curiosity or
because it’s as good a route as any. Meets Grattan, who starts abusing him, calling him a murderer, being thoroughly provocative. With me so far?’

Den nodded. ‘Sounds like the Charlie Grattan I saw last week.’

‘After a bit of this, he sees red, charges after Charlie, and the horse tramples him, maybe by accident. But nobody’s going to believe that, are they? So he puts on the act we’ve just witnessed, and bloody good it was, too. He persuades his sister in Penzance to give him an alibi – we’ve phoned her by the way, and she backs his story. What d’you think?’

Den examined a worn patch in the vinyl floor covering, trying to find the right response. ‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘Except—’

‘Yes? Except what?’

‘Well … would he have gone to High Copse, after what happened? He doesn’t strike me as the sort of horseman who goes out for a casual trot along a bridle path. He’s got enough land of his own. And if Charlie had yelled and screamed at him in that field, someone from the house would most likely have heard him. It’s not very far away.’

‘Interesting,’ said Smith again. ‘Thanks, Cooper. You’re coming along, you know.’

Den watched in vain for a smile to accompany the words.

Given the task of going back to the scene to ask a whole tranche of new questions, Den rehearsed his enquiries as he drove south-westwards towards High Copse. He had lived in the area all his life, going to school with people from a range of outlying villages, but there were still isolated settlements that he had never visited, within the triangle formed by Okehampton, Tavistock and Launceston. There were perhaps fifty tiny communities, some of them nestling at the end of high-banked country lanes, others bordering the busier roads. High Copse was two miles from any of these; their closest neighbour was a white cob farmhouse almost half a mile away.

The outline of Brentor seemed to follow him as he drove, a landmark visible across the whole area, with its almost comical little church perched crazily on the granite outcrop. Den found his gaze drifting towards it more than usual.

Jane Nugent had spoken to him briefly about Hannah and Bill Grattan and their Quaker Meeting. ‘Doesn’t sound like any church I’ve ever come across,’ she said. ‘She never mentioned God or forgiveness or any of the usual religious stuff. And yet it sounded …
nice
, somehow.’ She laughed in embarrassment, hearing herself. Perhaps her words were still in Den’s mind as the church in the sky watched him drive through the narrow lanes. 

The big house was a worthy partner for Brentor. Visible from a lesser, but still impressive, distance, nestled halfway up a steep hill, as many houses were in this uneven landscape, High Copse had definite presence.

From the gravelled car-parking patch at the front of the house, Den could see the red mound of earth bordered by banks of vivid funeral flowers that was Nina’s grave. It was sheltered by a spreading oak tree, at least three hundred years old and not yet in leaf. The grave’s distance from the house was an unsettling forty or fifty yards, but it could only be seen from one or two windows. Perhaps they would grow a thick hedge around it. They must have stronger stomachs than his, though, to live with the knowledge of her lying there, decomposing year after year.

Martha came to the door with young Clement at her side. She invited him in, and he wiped his feet before stepping into the long, dark corridor that ran through to the back of the house.

‘Alexis isn’t here,’ Martha told him, when they were once again in the warm kitchen. ‘She’s gone to see Charlie’s family. I don’t think she’ll be long. Clem …’ she put a hand out to the boy as he stood at the table flipping through a comic, ‘can you go somewhere else? I don’t think the policeman needs you to be here.’ She raised an eyebrow at Den, who shook his head. 

Clement sighed and stayed where he was. ‘What’s he want, anyway?’ he demanded.

‘He’s come about Charlie. I told you.’

Clem narrowed his eyes. ‘Everybody’s dying,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘Me neither,’ Martha agreed. ‘It’s a bummer. But keep smiling, eh? Nev should be here tomorrow – that’s something to look forward to, isn’t it. And Hugh’s up there in the rumpus room, isn’t he?’

The child shrugged. ‘He won’t let me do anything with him today. He says I’m a nuisance.’ The petulance was exaggerated, but even so he cut a pitiable little figure.

‘Oh, Clem.’ Martha tightened her lips, turning them inwards to be caught between her teeth. She averted her face from him, blindly holding his hand in a tight squeeze. ‘This won’t take very long, I promise. When Alexis gets back, I’ll do us some lunch. How about putting a video on in my room? You can choose anything you like.’

With a show of reluctance Clem left the kitchen. Soon Martha and Den heard him going upstairs, his pace quickening as he climbed. She smiled. ‘Special treat, he’s got a thing about old musicals, but Hugh laughs at him about it. He’ll be all right for an hour or so now.’

‘Nice little kid,’ said Den. ‘What’s going to happen to them?’ 

She gave him a challenging stare. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to them. They live here. They were born here.’

‘Unusual,’ he commented with a touch of apology. ‘These days, anyway – a real extended family.’

‘I don’t know why you say that. If this was an inner-city estate you wouldn’t be at all surprised to find a set-up like ours. Your problem’s with the house, not the people in it.’

He leant back in the chair, fixing his gaze on a large cobweb in the corner where two walls met the ceiling. The police were trained to deal with unexpected hostility from the newly bereaved. They’d all done the role play and watched training videos. The vital thing was not to respond to it. Besides, what Martha had said was true, at least in part.

‘I have to ask you some questions,’ he said firmly. ‘Following on from yesterday, can you think of any connections between the two deaths?’ He held up his hand as she began to speak. ‘No, wait. I don’t need convincing that your sister died by accident. That isn’t what I mean. But can we have a list of people who knew both her and Grattan? And what was the relationship between the two of them?’

Martha clasped her hands together into a double fist and rested her chin on it. ‘That could
take all day. You’re asking me to give a complete account of their lives.’

He nodded. ‘That’s generally the way of it in a murder inquiry, unfortunately.’

‘I’ve been thinking … isn’t it possible that Charlie also died by accident? I didn’t take in much detail, but Richmond says he might have been knocked into the ditch by a horse that was just being a bit too exuberant, and then he got kicked in the head. Are you quite sure that couldn’t be what happened?’

Den pursed his lips. ‘Doesn’t fit the facts – sorry. If someone riding a horse had just knocked him over by mistake, it stands to reason they’d do something to help him. They wouldn’t just keep quiet about it and go home as if nothing had happened. Have you got a large horse liable to go wild, with access to that field?’ She shook her head regretfully. ‘No, I thought not. And nobody’s reported seeing a loose horse. Did Charlie have a mount of his own?’

‘No. He had a thing about “slave animals” as he called them. Said humans exploited them for their own ends. He had all sorts of silly plans for buying land and turning animals loose on it to live free. He was never going to have the money for anything like that. And of course it could never work, if he had.’

‘I see. Well, we’re still looking for a horse,
then. I can’t tell you much, but I’m afraid there is no doubt at all that your sister and Charlie Grattan both died from violent contact with a horse.’

Martha worked her mouth, her flexible features making a succession of faces. Den read worry, hesitation, disbelief and resolve, one after the other. ‘If it’s about horses, well … there’s Frank,’ she said at last. The words emerged explosively, as if escaping against her will. She put one hand to her mouth. ‘But—’

Den waited. Better if she elaborated without any prompting from him.

‘Charlie’s brother, he’s called Frank. He lives near Ashburton, across the moor from here. Breeds horses for riding stables. He and Charlie scarcely saw each other; the family have more or less disowned him. I wonder if they’ve even thought to tell him the news.’

‘Older brother or younger?’

‘Older, by quite a bit. You need to ask Alexis, she knows more about him than I do. I think she even met him once. If we’re talking about horses, you can’t really ignore Frank.’

Den made a long note on his increasingly scruffy notepad, and tried to suppress his excitement. ‘Did he know Nina?’

‘Not really. But he did come here once, some weeks ago, and talked to her for a while. There
was nobody else here, so I’ve no idea what was said. I just know she was rather upset afterwards, and kept talking about “the brother from hell”. Charlie asked why she didn’t like him, and what he’d done to annoy her, but she didn’t have much of an answer.’

‘And he’d never been here before?’

‘Not to my knowledge. I assumed he wanted to see Charlie, and someone had told him he’d probably find him here. Frank didn’t wait around, though. I don’t think Charlie’s seen him for months, maybe even years.’

Den nibbled his pencil, trying to think of further questions. The link between Nina and Charlie was still frustratingly tenuous. ‘Nina was well known, I gather? A lot of people came to her funeral, according to Lilah. Would any of them blame Charlie for her death?’

‘Hang on,’ Martha protested. ‘One thing at a time. Yes, she was well known. She got herself into the news often enough, and not just because of animal rights. She was against the supermarket coming to town, the bypass, the closing of rights of way, packaging, cuts in bus services …’ She ticked them off on her fingers.

‘Packaging?’

‘You know – using stupid plastic trays for four apples, so you can’t buy one or three or five, and wrapping everything up in three layers of 
impenetrable polythene. Quite honestly, that was the cause I had most sympathy with. I’ve written one or two letters to supermarkets myself about that one.’

‘So she would have upset plenty of people.’

‘Very much so. Although she was charming to them all individually. I don’t think many would have borne a grudge for long. And anyway …’

‘Yes, I know. And anyway, her death was an accident. Which brings me to the next question. Charlie’s involvement in what happened at the hunt.’

‘You were there. You saw it for yourself. How could it be Charlie’s fault?’

‘If he was seen to be the ringleader, sending her into a dangerous situation …’

‘You obviously didn’t know Nina,’ she said scornfully. ‘Nobody could
send
her anywhere. Nina did what Nina wanted to do. It would be lunatic to think of blaming Charlie.’

The banging of the front door interrupted them. They waited, without moving, until Alexis came into the kitchen.