Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder (10 page)

‘I suppose so,’ George said. ‘Everything points that way.’ He resented her breaking in on his mood. The irritation was a novelty. Although he had married Molly because she challenged him and startled him into new ways of thinking, he had been comfortable with her for many years. He had always thought he would have been pompous and dull without her, but now he felt disconcerted by her questioning. It occurred to him then that they should return immediately to the big untidy house where they were at home with each other. He no longer wished to be startled. But the romantic idea that he was serving Eleanor remained and he did not suggest it. Molly seemed not to notice his confusion. She hated his mood of self-pity.

‘Pritchard seems a competent man,’ she said. What right had George, after all, to stare out of the window and exclude her from his thoughts? They were partners.

Reluctantly he moved away from the window.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think he knows what he’s doing. He wants me to go with him to Puddleworth tomorrow.’

‘Why does he want to go to Puddleworth?’

‘He thinks Oliver might not have been working alone. He’s probably right. I think it would take at least two people to go down that cliff.’

‘Don’t the police think now that he recruited his son, Stephen, to help him?’

‘Yes,’ George said, ‘but Pritchard seems to think it unlikely that Oliver planned the theft himself. He seems to have taken a dislike to Fenn. I think he’d like to find evidence that the raid was all Fenn’s idea even if he had no part in the murder.’

‘Will you go with Pritchard to Puddleworth?’

‘Oh yes,’ George said. ‘ I think I shall go. I want to see the thing through.’

You’re too involved in this case, Molly thought. You’ve lost your sense of perspective. ‘What would you like me to do while you’re away?’ she asked.

‘You?’ he said surprised. ‘I don’t think there’s anything you can do.’

Pritchard arrived at Gorse Hill at eight o’clock the next morning to collect George and take him to the Puddleworth Falconry Centre. He seemed well rested and refreshed, cheerful.

Pritchard drove north along country roads through half-timbered villages, where cottage gardens were filled with bulbs. It was another sunny day but there was a strong, westerly breeze which blew round white clouds over the sky and the lines of washing in the long back gardens. They stopped twice – once to allow herds of cows to cross the road, on their way back to the low riverside fields from the milking parlour, and then in Ludlow because Pritchard was starving and needed a bacon sandwich and a mug of tea.

Puddleworth was on the east side of Wenlock Edge, surrounded by open countryside but only three quarters of an hour from the centre of Wolverhampton. The village was pretty, with the same clean, preserved look as villages in the south-east of England. No cow would make a mess on the road here, the pubs were so smart that they would intimidate any farm worker in boiler suit and boots, and the village shop sold camembert, pâté and ground coffee. The houses round the green were freshly painted and tastefully restored. Most, George thought, would be owned by people who preferred to commute to work in Wolverhampton or Birmingham every day than live in the city. He could not blame them. He too had been a commuter. But there was something sad and sterile about the place. A group of farm buildings in the centre of the village was being sold for development and in a field nearby the bulldozers had already begun work on a small complex of detached executive homes. The residents of Puddleworth would be prosperous, respectable and hard working.

The Falconry Centre too had an air of affluence, of respectability. A high, white-painted fence surrounded the large grounds. It was clear that visitors were not allowed a view of the birds without paying their two pounds entrance fee. The car park was outside the fence and empty. A young, well-spoken woman in green wellingtons came out of the ticket office to tell them that actually the centre didn’t open until ten.

‘Who are you then?’ Pritchard asked, staring frankly at the tight jeans and sleeveless vest. She had a long, tawny mane of hair, freckles and blue eyes. She stared back at Prichard with hostility.

‘I’m Kerry Fenn,’ she said as if Pritchard was hardly worth the effort of answering. ‘Actually, my father owns the centre.’

‘That’s lucky then,’ Pritchard said happily. ‘You can tell your dad we want to see him. My name’s Pritchard. Superintendent Pritchard.’

She left them on the car park side of the turnstile and walked away across acres of gravel.

‘Spoilt brat,’ Pritchard said when she was still within hearing. He watched her contentedly.

Murdoch Fenn insisted on accompanying them round the centre despite Pritchard’s attempt to let them look for themselves.

‘You’re a busy man,’ Pritchard said. ‘ Mr Palmer-Jones knows his way round. Just pretend we’re not here.’ But wherever they went Fenn was behind them, immaculate and resentful.

In fact the place was so big that George would have had difficulty in finding his way round and was glad of Fenn’s presence. The centre had expanded since his last visit. The gatehouse led directly into a large, airy brick building which Fenn called the interpretive centre. A series of display panels explained the work of Puddleworth and the history of falconry. There were glossy photographs and professionally produced diagrams.

‘Kerry works in here during the day,’ Fenn said. ‘ She’s very good with the schoolchildren.’

At the end of the building in a separate, smaller room was a collection of original paintings. The subjects were exotic and romantic, and had little connection with the English countryside. There was an Indian rajah with a peregrine on his wrist, a group of Arabs in the desert hunting bustards and a sheik on horseback holding a saker falcon. Fenn led them through a door back into the open air. The hawk houses and aviaries were built on two sides of a large gravel square. The interpretive centre and art gallery formed the third side. On the fourth was an open, grass weathering ground, with birds on blocks and beyond that a glass dome.

‘This is our new hawk house,’ Fenn said proudly. He seemed for a moment to have forgotten his resentment. He was so pleased with his new acquisition that they might have been knowledgeable and rather important guests. ‘We keep our New World birds of prey in here.’

The dome was separated into six segments by glass walkways which met in the middle to provide a viewing gallery so that members of the public could stand with the enormous birds all around them.

‘We’ve recently acquired a crested caracara,’ Fenn said. ‘ We’re very proud of it.’

Pritchard followed Fenn round the dome with childish enthusiasm and gave no sign of impatience.

‘So you breed these things in captivity, do you?’ he asked.

‘Not here,’ Fenn said, responding again to the interest. ‘Most of our breeding is done in a special area, beyond that hedge, where our visitors aren’t allowed, but we have one house where we can show the public the steppe eagles’ nest.’

He took them into a large building about one hundred and fifty feet long, forty-five feet wide and thirty-five feet high. The door led into a narrow corridor with a window into the barnlike room beyond.

‘That’s a one-way mirror,’ Fenn whispered. ‘Of course we can’t allow the birds to be disturbed.’ The place had wooden perches and branches and in one corner the female steppe eagle sat on the huge stick nest.

‘I think Superintendent Pritchard might be more interested in seeing the British birds of prey,’ George said. ‘That might perhaps be more relevant to his inquiries.’ It seemed to him that this guided tour was a waste of time, leading nowhere.

‘Of course,’ Fenn said formally, obviously offended, but Pritchard seemed to be in no hurry and was gazing, fascinated, at the nest.

The aviaries where the British birds were kept were smaller and made of linked wire-mesh, with a wire-mesh roof.

‘We keep the birds in individual flights,’ Fenn said, and pointed out buzzard, goshawk, sparrowhawk and finally peregrine.

‘Of course that’s the bird that breeds above Gorse Hill,’ George said. He felt he had to drag Pritchard’s attention back to the inquiry. The policeman seemed to be treating the whole trip as a jolly day out.

‘Beautiful thing isn’t it?’ Pritchard said.

George would have liked to say that the bird was much more beautiful when it was flying free over the hill at Sarne but said nothing. His comment at least seemed to have had the required effect because Pritchard asked to be shown the aviaries not accessible to the public where birds were breeding or in quarantine, and the tour of inspection was finally completed.

‘Where do you keep all your paperwork?’ Pritchard asked when they were at last back on the gravel yard.

‘In my office,’ Fenn said. ‘In the house.’

‘That’s convenient,’ Pritchard said. ‘Perhaps your wife could make us all a nice cup of coffee while Mr Palmer-Jones checks that everything’s in order.’

‘My wife’s dead,’ Fenn said abruptly. ‘A car accident. About seven years ago.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Pritchard said. He meant it and Fenn nodded in recognition of his sincerity.

‘I can make coffee,’ Fenn said, ‘if you’d like it. And I’ll show Mr Palmer-Jones into the office.’

The house was a long, modern bungalow, built within the fence but beyond a small copse of trees. It was like something he had seen on American television, Pritchard thought. The kitchen was huge and spotless. Fenn made instant coffee and carried the three mugs to his office on a tray. George was obviously not to be allowed to look through the records alone. Fenn unlocked the filing cabinet for George, sat in one of the swivel chairs in front of the desk and motioned Pritchard to take the other. In the distance through the trees they could see Kerry leading a crocodile of schoolchildren over the gravel from the interpretive centre.

Pritchard gulped hot coffee.

‘Your daughter didn’t go away in the end then?’ he said.

‘Pardon?’ Fenn looked surprized.

‘You said you had to be back last night so your daughter could go away.’

‘Oh yes,’ Fenn said. ‘She decided not to go in the end. I was so upset when I got home that she offered to stay with me.’

‘We’ve talked to a lot of witnesses now,’ Pritchard said. ‘You’ll be glad to hear that you were seen for most of the afternoon. You wouldn’t have had time to get on to the hill to kill Mrs Masefield.’

‘Of course I didn’t kill her,’ Fenn said angrily. ‘Why should I want to do that?’

‘You might have wanted the birds,’ Pritchard said. ‘Henry VIII took his falcons from Sarne, didn’t he? And history’s very important to falconers. We learnt all about that in your magnificent exhibition. Those birds must be very valuable.’

‘I wouldn’t steal birds from the wild,’ Fenn said.

‘We know you didn’t steal them,’ Pritchard said. ‘As I explained before, you wouldn’t have had time to. But it seems to us very likely that Frank Oliver might have done. He’s disappeared, hasn’t he? So I want to hear everything you know about Frank Oliver.’

‘He used to keep his own birds,’ Fenn said quickly. ‘I don’t know where he got them from. They might have been taken from the wild. It was more common in those days …’

‘What are we talking about?’ Pritchard interrupted. ‘What days are those?’

‘I don’t know,’ Fenn said. He seemed uncomfortable. ‘Perhaps ten years ago. He was working as a steward on the railway then. I met him through the British Falconry Society. At first I thought he was a brash, unpleasant little man, but he was achieving some wonderful successes with his birds even then.’

‘What sort of successes?’ This time George interrupted, looking up from the file he was reading.

‘You must know that goshawk is very difficult to breed in captivity, yet season after season he was rearing young birds in the most primitive conditions in a hawk house at the back of his home.’

‘Are you sure he was breeding the birds?’ George asked. ‘The Greenholme forest isn’t far from here. He would have known where to find young goshawk.’

‘I was suspicious at first,’ Fenn said. ‘ In the beginning he may have been taking birds illegally, but really he had great skill at handling the birds. He almost seemed to communicate with them. He was the most natural falconer I’ve ever met.’

‘So you asked him to come to work with you?’

‘Not immediately. The Centre wasn’t so big or well established then. It was a struggle to survive … All my savings had gone into the project and I would have been unable to employ him. But because he worked long shifts for British Rail he seemed to take a lot of time off. Perhaps he was not so conscientious about his work as he should have been. In any event he seemed content to spend all his time here as a volunteer and in the end he brought his own birds here.’

‘I don’t suppose you were very popular with his wife if he spent all his free time here.’

‘I suppose not,’ Fenn said. ‘In the end she left him. Oliver seemed not to mind. In a way it was more convenient.’

‘So he came to work here?’

‘Eventually yes. It must have been about three years ago. I think he was probably sacked from his job with British Rail. He told me he was made redundant but I think he was probably sacked. The Centre was doing rather better then and I could afford to pay him a modest wage. I was afraid that if I didn’t employ him he might go elsewhere. I’ll admit that by then I’d come to depend on him. He had developed some marvellous techniques to manipulate imprinting.’

‘What’s imprinting?’ Pritchard asked.

Fenn looked helplessly at George as if it were beneath his dignity to explain so basic a concept.

‘All newly hatched birds develop a relationship with their siblings and parents, which is part sexual, part food dependent and part aggression,’ George said. ‘If birds are hatched artificially they come to regard humans as their role model. They act unnaturally then. Some vets even say the birds become psychotic.’

‘And Oliver found a way of overcoming that problem?’ Pritchard asked.

‘Yes,’ Fenn said. ‘Oliver wore a glove shaped a little like a bird, and put the glove into the cage to give food or water. That way there was no human contact. The falcon even came to regard the glove as a potential mate and we were able to obtain sperm for future breeding programmes.’