Murder on the Hour (20 page)

Victoria stopped typing and looked at her friend. “Yes, he was. But Penny, maybe you should prepare yourself that Michael's not…”

Penny interrupted her. “Yeah. He's just not…” Almost at the doorway, she turned back and asked, “Does our photocopier do enlargements?”

“Why, you're not going to blow up a photo of Michael are you?” At the look of pained disgust that flashed across Penny's face, Victoria recoiled.

“Oh, God, Penny, I'm sorry,” she said as she stood up and came round the side of her desk. “I could kick myself. I don't know what possessed me to say such a stupid thing. That was so insensitive. I'm an idiot. I'm so sorry.”

“It's all right,” said Penny. Victoria touched her arm. “Yes, I think we can make an enlargement. I'm not sure how, but I'll work it out. Do you want to e-mail me the photo—I'm assuming you've got a photo—and I'll sort it for you.”

“Fine. Thank you.” Victoria had never heard Penny sound so cool. She lowered herself into her chair and rested her head in her hands. She'd have to find a way to make it up.

A few minutes later the e-mail arrived and Victoria printed the attachment and took it to the photocopier. After she'd tried several settings, it finally cranked out a large sheet of paper with a series of little scratches that looked vaguely like ancient cave art.

Hoping Penny would accept it as a peace offering for her tasteless remark, she set it down on her desk.

“What is it?” Victoria asked.

“It's a photo of some scratchings or carvings on a slate fence post,” Penny said as she picked it up. “You know, the ones that look a bit like grave markers. They're flat and wired together to make a fence.”

She tipped the paper toward the window to catch the light and then walked over to it.

“It looks a little like the map I saw in Haydn's kitchen.” She spread it out on her desk and clicked on the task light to shine a bright beam on it.

“What do you see here?” she asked Victoria. “Describe it to me. Talk me through it.”

Victoria sat down and pulled the paper closer to her.

“I see a series of funny little drawings. If we start at the top, it looks like a … little bug?” She pinched her lips as she concentrated. “Then there's something that might be a sheep and a stone wall and a number one hundred.” She rested her hand on the paper. “Sorry, I'm not much use. It doesn't mean anything to me. Or at least, I can't make any sense of it.”

“I'm going to see if Haydn's home.”

A moment later she put the phone down. “He's taking a photo of his map and will send it to you. Would you mind making an enlargement of it, too? In fact, please make two copies.”

About twenty minutes later Victoria appeared in the doorway of Penny's office, waving a piece of paper. “Here it is. The background is very grey, so the figures are a little hard to see.” Penny took the paper and then pulled a black marker out of her drawer. With it, she carefully outlined the small symbols, a scattering of small, child-like drawings. When she'd finished, she set the two photocopies side by side on her desk and, her head moving slightly side to side, compared them. Victoria watched, saying nothing. Finally, Penny looked up.

“Believe it or not, Haydn's map is roughly the same as the carving on the slate fence. What are the chances of that? I believe two boys made the map, tore it in half and one boy—Haydn Williams's great-grandfather—kept half and hid it in the clock and the other half of the map was given to the other boy. And if I'm not mistaken, that boy was Herbert Bellis, because we know that Herbert and Wilfred were friends. And I think his half of the map for some reason found its way into the quilt that Catrin had. Maybe they each agreed to hide their half of the map. Then, the boys carved the map into the fence on their way home from school, all those years ago.”

“Could be.”

“Now, Haydn's map just covers the top part of the fence, so the bottom half must be the other part of the map, the bit that was in the quilt.”

“Which we don't have.”

“No, we don't have it, but we do have this,” she tapped the photocopy of the drawings on the slate fence. “So maybe we don't need the other half.”

“We just have to work out what it all means,” said Victoria. “But there seems to be a lot of leaps in your logic there. Do we have anything that proves half a map was in the quilt?”

She waited for a reply, but when none came, changed the subject and continued. “Now about Saturday morning. Jessica Hughes's wedding. You and Eirlys have to be at the farm by nine to get Jessica, her mother, and her bridesmaids ready, so let's all meet here at eight thirty and I'll drive you.”

Penny didn't look up from the maps, and as she left the room, Victoria wasn't sure she'd even been listening. Just outside Penny's office she bumped into Eirlys, head down, approaching from the other direction.

“Eirlys! Watch where you're going!” Victoria said. “Where are you going, by the way?”

“Just into the supply room to look through the lost and found box. There's a lady on the phone who wants to know if we found a scarf.”

“Scarves, gloves, we find them all the time,” said Victoria, “although not so much now that summer's almost here.”

“Not that kind of scarf. Not a winter scarf. A neck scarf with little flowers on it.” She made a looping movement under her chin. “You know, the kind you put around your neck and tie.”

Penny got up from her desk and stood in the doorway.

“Go on,” she said. Eirlys looked at the scrap of paper in her hand. “Little flowers,” she repeated. “That's all I know.”

“Who's looking for this scarf?” Penny asked.

“Tegwen Driscoll. She had her hair done a while ago and thinks she might have left her scarf in the salon.”

“I don't think she did,” said Penny, “but go and check anyway.” Eirlys was soon back, shaking her head. “Not there. I'll ring her back and tell her we don't have it.”

Penny held out her hand for the piece of paper. “You can leave that with me, thanks. I'll ring her.” She checked her watch. “But it'll have to wait.” She glanced at Victoria. “We have to get ready for the retirement party tonight.”

 

Twenty-eight

DCI Gareth Davies had been to a lot of retirement parties during his long career with the North Wales Police Service, but this would be the first and last time he'd attend his own. A few years ago, he'd have worn a suit with a tie, but now, in these more casual times, that seemed overdressed. So he chose a pair of grey trousers, a navy jacket, and a light blue checked shirt, open at the collar with no tie. In his late fifties, he was lean and fit. He watched what he ate, bicycled regularly, and spent his spare time maintaining a meticulous garden. He wasn't concerned about filling the retirement hours that would come in about three weeks.

He checked his watch. Alan Nesbitt and his wife, Dorothy Martin, should be arriving soon. He opened the door to the guest room and peered in. His weekly cleaner had left everything welcoming, a simple bouquet of carnations on the dresser and a couple of new paperback mysteries on the bedside table. Unable to ever quite leave policing behind, he and Alan, retired chief constable for the county of Belleshire, enjoyed their conversations over a pint of bitter discussing how fictional detectives almost always get the procedures wrong. He'd met the couple a few years ago through Penny, when Dorothy, an ex-pat American, had dropped into Penny's old manicure salon and the two women from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean had struck up a friendship. Davies had hoped his relationship with Penny would end in marriage as Alan's and Dorothy's had, but he knew now this was not going to happen. He'd heard she was seeing some kind of artist fellow from Bangor, but had resisted the temptation to find out what he could about him.

*   *   *

A tired silver banner proclaiming
HAPPY RETIREMENT
! surrounded by swirls and stars that was trotted out at every retirement bash had been strung across the bar of the modest function room in the local golf club. Davies didn't need to worry about his send off being poorly attended—although the food was mediocre, everyone's invitation came with two free bar tickets. After that, guests paid for their own but the drinks were relatively inexpensive and for obvious reasons, because the attendees were mostly serving or retired police officers, plenty of free cabs were booked throughout the evening to see everyone safely home. The attendees tended to be one of two kinds: the kind who came along to say a polite good-bye and stayed just long enough for the most senior officers to note their presence and the kind who were there for a good time and would drink until the bar closed. Davies had always belonged to the first group and wondered vaguely how soon after the speeches and presentations he could make a decent escape from his own party without attracting too much attention.

As the party got underway, a blonde woman wearing a pair of tight black trousers, high heels, and a sparkly blue jacket teetered toward him, holding a glass of wine in one hand and a small clutch bag in the other.

“Hello, Gareth,” she said. “How are you? Haven't seen you in ages.”

“Oh, hello, ah…”

“It's Isla. From the evidence room?”

“Ah, the evidence room. Of course, Isla. Good of you to come this evening.” She bestowed a wide smile on him and made the occasional emphatic gesture with the clutch bag as she chattered away. Every now and then he smiled down at her, occasionally lowering his head to hear her better against the increasing crowd noise as the room filled up.

With as much subtlety as he could muster, he scanned the room looking for the latest arrivals and eventually was rewarded when he spotted the woman he'd been waiting for.

“Excuse me a moment, Isla,” he said. “A couple of old friends have just arrived.” Penny and Victoria had been a big part of his life over the past two years and he was going to miss both of them.

“Here you are. So glad you could make it. Will you join us? We saved spots for you at our table.” He smiled at Penny. “Dorothy and Alan are here. And Bethan, of course.”

As he led the way to his table through the small crowd of noisy drinkers Isla glided along beside him and when he introduced her to Penny and Victoria as, “Isla from dispatch,” she corrected him, “the evidence room, Gareth,” and grabbed the chair beside his. Penny and Victoria found places on the other side of the table and exchanged warm greetings with Dorothy and Alan. Penny watched Isla laughing with Gareth, leaning into him, taking an occasional sip of wine as she touched his arm, and listening to him with her head lowered while she looked up at him with what she probably hoped were wide, doe-like eyes.

Penny turned to Dorothy.

“I always find it so hard to hear what anyone's saying at events like this,” she said. “The background noise can be so overwhelming and on top of the music, it's hard to carry on a conversation.”

“You're right,” agreed Dorothy, who had been observing Penny's uneasiness with increasing concern. “Let's find a couple of comfortable chairs in the lobby where it's a bit quieter and we can have a good chat.”

They settled into side-by-side wing chairs and Penny told Dorothy about the drawing on the slate fence and the piece of paper found in Haydn Williams's clock. When she got to the part about the map having been torn in half, Dorothy, who'd solved a case or two of her own, laughed.

“Oh, the number of times I've seen that,” she said. “Remember, Penny, I used to be a teacher. The kids—and they were mostly boys—were forever drawing maps and tearing them in half to share with their best friend. And then the next year the friend moves away or they each find new friends, and it's all meaningless.”

“Why did they draw the maps in the first place?” Penny asked.

“It'll be about something buried,” replied Dorothy. “The boys were always burying something, and usually it was a pocket knife. Why, they did that, I don't know. There must be hundreds of pocket knives buried across the American Midwest.” She took a small sip of wine.

“I think the other half of the map was hidden in a quilt,” Penny said, “and the person who owned that quilt was murdered.”

“Oh, dear me. How awful!”

“Now whether she was murdered for the map, or for some other reason, I don't know,” said Penny. “But I think her death is linked somehow to the map. Because it's pretty certain that whoever killed her, took the quilt.” They chatted about the case for a few more minutes and then Penny abruptly changed the subject.

“Who's that woman with Gareth?”

“I don't really know,” said Dorothy. “He never mentioned her on the way over but they were having a good chat before you arrived. I wouldn't be surprised if she's set her cap at him. She certainly seems possessive and he seems to like the attention.”

Penny frowned.

“You don't like that?” Dorothy asked gently. “But you've moved on. Surely you don't mind if he does, too.”

“I don't know what I think,” muttered Penny. “I didn't think I minded, but then seeing her simpering at him like that … well, I just hope he knows what he's doing. I don't like the look of her. Did you see the way she grabbed the spot beside him? You'd think she was playing musical chairs.” Dorothy gave her a relaxed, fond smile and stood up. “I'd better get back to Alan,” she said. “If I'm away from him for too long he always assumes I've gone looking for trouble.”

“I'm just going to pop into the loo,” said Penny, “and I'll see you in a few minutes.”

She frowned at herself in the mirror as she passed the sinks and entered a cubicle. She had just secured the lock when the outside door opened and a moment later, over the sound of running water, voices she recognized drifted over the top of her stall.