Down Among the Dead Men Page 2

  Sam scowled. 'I wish you'd get it into that thick Irish skull of yours that pathology is a bit more demanding than the average British Rail timetable. They don't have to get up in a court of law and defend their claimed departure times; I do.' Having vented his irritation, Sam relented a bit. 'All I'll say is that I'd plump more towards the time you're enjoying your second cup of tea of the afternoon. Satisfied?'

  Rafferty nodded. It narrowed the time down nicely. If Sam was right, the time of death had probably been between three and five o'clock yesterday afternoon. According to her sort of brother-in-law, the victim had last been seen alive at 3.00 p.m. Rafferty tried his luck further. 'Can you confirm the cause of death, Sam? Was she suffocated?'

  'Probably.' He picked up his bag, and, smiling for the first time that morning, he added before he walked away. 'But you'll not make me commit myself till I've done the p m.'

  Rafferty hadn't expected anything more, but he was satisfied. To get a "probably" out of Sam was akin to a definite confirmation from anyone else.

  Before he followed Dally, Rafferty had a word with the most senior member of the SOCO team. He wasn't surprised when he was told that they had, as yet, discovered nothing of obvious interest. It was early days, and their painstaking work would go on for some time yet, both at the scene of the crime and back at the laboratory. Still, he was hopeful, more so because it very much looked as if she had died where she had been found. The dry grasses under her heels had been reduced to tiny, broken stalks, as if her shoes had pummelled the ground as she had struggled with her killer.

  The countryside just here was sparsely populated; apart from some farm buildings several hundred yards away across the fields, there were few houses, just the tiny village of St Botolphe further along the main road, towards Elmhurst.

  He got in the passenger seat. Llewellyn started the car and turned its nose in the direction of the Shores' house as Rafferty got on the radio to the station. As the meadow was in such a lonely spot, he doubted much would come of the house to house. He hoped they would manage to turn up more information from a second team, arranged to question the motorists using the main road adjacent to the meadow.

  Radioing done, he sat back and thought about the victim. Had she been younger, he'd have thought it likely she had arranged to meet a lover, and had gathered the flowers while she waited for him. But this woman was in her late twenties, according to Charles Shore, and likely to prefer her clandestine couplings on soft sheets rather than dry grass shucks and hardbaked soil. So what had she been doing here? Surely, in this violent age, she hadn't just come to gather flowers, no matter how rare and enticing the local flora? Especially in the flimsy get-up she had on. It was asking for trouble in normal times, but with a known killer just a few miles over the county border....

  The only route from the meadow to the Shores' house was via a road full of meandering curves. Occasionally, as the highway wound lazily eastwards, back upon itself, and the hedgerows parted, they caught a glimpse of the river to their right, straight as a Roman road, the sun making a tarnished sheet of glass of its sluggish green surface. It shadowed as a flock of black and brown Brent Geese rose from the nearby mud flats, swooped low over the water and headed north, their plaintive 'rott, rott, rott' cry echoing across the still countryside, as if mocking Rafferty and his habit of constructing theories before he had any facts to back them up.

  After about ten minutes, tall grey chimneys reared up above the river's west bank. The Shores' place, thought Rafferty. From this distance, it had a touch of Victorian workhouse Gothic. The gloomy drive, edged with dusty, dark green, graveyard yews, bearing a miserly scattering of scarlet fruit, disappeared behind the house. The house itself echoed the sombre theme. It was grotesque. There was no other word to describe it. So ugly, it had a peculiar fascination of its own, like an over-the-top first prizewinner in a bad taste contest.

  Constructed in grey stone, at a distance, it had looked merely drably institutional. It was only as they got nearer that the appalling decorative reminders of death - the great modern day unmentionable - became visible. The roof-line was broken up with the most fantastic gargoyles; satyrs and devils, with evil, grinning faces, clutched three-pronged forks and stabbed, with undisguised relish, the eternally damned human wretches sharing their strange eyrie.

  Of course, to the Victorians who had built the place, sex was the great unmentionable, he reminded himself. They had been only too familiar with death, in its many guises. As he stared again at the high-rise etchings, some details of the earlier tragedy in the Shore family came filtering back. Maximillian Shore, Charles Shore's father, had been murdered years earlier, blown to bits in his booby-trapped car. The old man had been a hard bastard, by all accounts and although the case had never been solved, there had been a suspicion that one of his business rivals had been responsible.

  Maximillian Shore - or Schurr as he'd been then, before he'd Anglicised it - had had a tragic beginning. His parents, his entire family, had died at the hands of the Nazis. The only survivor, he had arrived in England, with just the clothes he stood up in; penniless, parentless and homeless. Yet he had thrived. Today, the Shore family empire was international and encompassed the wide arena of newspapers, chemicals and finance. It wasn't difficult to imagine the difficulties that the traumatised orphan must have had to overcome in order to acquire the wealth that had begun it all. The grinning devils dancing on the roof must have appealed to old Maximillian when he bought the place, Rafferty reflected, as he recalled the stories the papers had dredged up after the old man's murder. With his early experiences, he would have known more about the evil core of humanity than most. After telling Llewellyn about the earlier tragedy in the family, he remarked, 'Not a lucky family, despite their wealth.'

  'Every man is the architect of his own fortune,' was Llewellyn's murmured response. 'Sallust, sir,' he explained to Rafferty's blank face. 'He was a Roman historian at the time of Julius Caesar and he...'

  'Yes, yes. Thanks for another piece of useless information.' Llewellyn lapsed into silence and Rafferty, noting the glint in the Welshman's dark eye, wondered, not for the first time, if Llewellyn paraded his erudition out of sheer mischief. It was impossible to deduce much from that impassive poker face. 'I mightn't know much about this Sallust johnny,' Rafferty admitted briskly, 'but, one thing I do know, is that the Super will hang me out to dry if I make a mess of the case, so perhaps we can get on?' However, before he could carry out his good intentions, as they got closer to the house, the sound of youthful voices distracted him.

  'Stupid, stupid. Mini Maxie's stupid.'

  'I'm not stupid.' The older boy's deeper voice broke through the piping taunts. 'I'm not stupid,' the boy repeated. 'I'll prove it, just you wait and see.' But his boasts only brought more jeering laughter.

  'You?' The younger boy's voice was shrill with spite. 'You can't even get basic grades without my father paying for extra holiday tuition.' In the precocious manner of modern children, he sneered, 'I heard him telling mother that if your mother had been his sister-in-law instead of his sister, he'd suspect you were the result of some affair and had no Shore blood at all.'

  The sound of a blow broke into the stillness of the morning, and the older boy's voice, its triumphant note unmistakable, echoed towards them. 'You said it! At least I can be sure I belong here, as you'll realise before you're much older, which is more than can be said for you; with your mother.'

  'You hit me!' Rafferty wondered why the younger boy should sound so surprised? He had certainly asked for it.

  'Yes, and I'll hit you again, you little rat. It's about time somebody taught you some manners. Come back here!'

  The next second, a well-built and weasily-faced boy of about ten raced around the side of the house, pursued by a tall, wiry youth, of about fifteen. The smaller boy easily avoided Rafferty, but the older one, probably because his eyes had that glazed, unseeing look brought on by anger, cannoned into him. He was panting heavily and, as his vision c
leared, he looked wildly from Rafferty to Llewellyn and back again, before he tore himself out of Rafferty's grasp and continued his pursuit round the far side of the house.

  'They must be old Max's grandchildren,' Rafferty remarked. As he wondered what relation the dead woman was to them, he spared them a moment's pity. The years of childhood were all too brief; if the relationship was a close one, it was likely that the dark, adult passions that had brought the woman's violent death would shatter their childhood forever. The thought depressed him.

  He gave the gargoyles one final glance, tightened his tie and made for the front door. Depressing or not, you've got a job to do, Rafferty, he reminded himself. Just climb out of the slough of despond and get on with it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A woman of about fifty opened the door to their ring. The housekeeper, Rafferty guessed. Deep lines were scored from her nostrils to her mouth and her lips were puckered, as if life had sapped her dry. Her eyes, though were sharp and bright with curiosity.

  Her appearance only served to increase Rafferty's sense of foreboding. For, in an attempt to bridge the intellectual divide between Llewellyn and himself, he had recently embarked on some self-education, starting with what he chose to regard as the lighter classics, and the grim housekeeper reminded him strongly of Mrs Danvers.

  In case the resemblance to the Manderley housekeeper should extend to the personality as well, Rafferty was at his most formal as he introduced himself and Llewellyn. 'We'd like to see Mr Henry Longman, please,' he requested, putting away his warrant card. 'It's about his wife. We have some news for him.'

  'I see.' Her gaze flickered over him, and although she didn't question him, Rafferty got the impression she guessed they didn't bring good tidings. Silently, she ushered them inside.

  'You're Mrs...?'

  'Mrs Griffiths. I'm the housekeeper here.'

  Rafferty nodded. Been here for years, he imagined. She had that air about her that suggested she would know all the family secrets.

  They followed her down the hallway. On the walls on either side were what appeared to be hand painted flower pictures. The hallway was too dark for Rafferty to read the inscriptions under the flowers, but the paintings were exquisitely executed, and even Rafferty, whose knowledge of flowers was scanty, had little difficulty in recognising several of the more distinctive flowers; pansies and marigolds and delphiniums.

  As they passed the last of the paintings, the perfume from a massed arrangement of late roses greeted them and Rafferty paused to admire the display. Palest pink, each petal was touched with yellow, and their spicy fragrance provided much more of a welcome than had the housekeeper. The flowers looked fresh, as though they had only been picked the day before, yet already, several bright petals lay scattered like fallen tears on the polished mahogany table and, in a return to the fanciful earlier mood, Rafferty imagined they wept for the dead fairy nymph in the meadow. He gave an appreciative sniff and murmured, 'Beautiful.'

  Obviously Mrs Griffiths wasn't a nature lover, for her lips tightened and she observed tartly, 'Beautiful maybe, for those who haven't got to keep clearing up petals from all over the floor.' She met Rafferty's glance with an uncompromising stare and said no more.

  The old mahogany panelling, that looked as if it had been there since the house was built, made the hall depressingly dark, and the flowers provided a delightful and much needed splash of colour and scent. Rafferty was surprised that such a high flier as Charles Shore hadn't torn out all the morbid panelling years ago, or at least stripped off the old varnish. Perhaps, he mused, he was fostering a lord of the manor image, but if so, the ugly Victorian mansion was hardly appropriate.

  'Mr Henry's upstairs,' Mrs Griffiths informed them. She opened a door to the left of the hallway. 'Perhaps you'll wait in the library while I tell him you're here?' Unsmilingly, she shut the door on them.

  There were more roses in the equally gloomy library. By way of contrast, these were yellow, flushed with pink, and had the sweet soapy scent of a freshly scrubbed infant. The room should have been bright and airy with its high ceilings and large windows, but, like the hall, the panelling defeated other architectural merits. Perhaps in the winter, with a fire crackling merrily in the grate, the room would shed its melancholy atmosphere, but somehow Rafferty doubted it and now, the oppressive heat, the heavy old-fashioned furniture and the dark wood walls, all combined to give him the sensation of being enclosed in a king-sized coffin. Striding over to the windows, he flung one open to its full extent before gazing around the rest of the room.

  As a bit of light relief from the panelling, floor to ceiling bookshelves covered one entire wall and part of a second. He'd never seen so many books outside a public library. There were literally hundreds of them, all with rich dark green leather bindings, and gold lettering, that echoed the geometrical patterns of the crimson rug that covered the middle of the floor.

  'Keshan,' Llewellyn commented, as he followed Rafferty's gaze. 'Persian,' he enlarged, when Rafferty still looked blank. 'Made of silk. Much sought after now, I believe. There's an old Persian saying, "The richer the man the thinner the carpet."'

  'Prefer a nice Wilton myself,' Rafferty retorted. Aware he had uttered a heresy, he turned away and studied the stacks of books. The dismal thought occurred to him that he might have to get through as many as those before he could match Llewellyn, knowledge for knowledge and quote for quote.

  More books were scattered on assorted tables. Whoever had stocked the library had certainly had a lively interest in other people's business, he realised, because as he roamed around the shelves, he noticed that there were a great many histories and biographies of well-known people; Chaplin, Abraham Lincoln, Tolstoy, Mark Twain, all the greats from every sphere were represented here, politicians, sportsmen, industrialists, writers. Unsurprisingly, given that the Shore family's entrepreneurial skills had gained them the bulk of their wealth, biographies of businessmen seemed to predominate.

  School-books were strewn on the long table under the windows; an open exercise-book showed no more than half a dozen badly spelled and ungrammatical lines, scrawled in an immature fist. The older boy's extra holiday work, Rafferty guessed. Poor little sod, he thought wryly, reminded of his own extra-curricular reading tasks, he didn't seem to have got very far with it. It appeared that, like himself, the boy wasn't much of a scholar.

  Suddenly becoming conscious of eyes staring at him, Rafferty raised his head to the portrait which hung between the windows. It was a magnificent piece of work. It dominated the room and, although like the house, the oil colours were sombre - workhouse grey and mourning purple - the personality of the subject fairly leapt out of the canvas.

  There was no mistaking the family patriarch; it was old Maximillian Shore to the life. Rafferty guessed that it must have been done not long before his murder, because he remembered exactly the same uncompromising features staring out from newspapers after his death. Almost biblical in appearance, his was the sort of uncomfortable face that caused a lapsed Catholic like Rafferty to seriously consider his sins. Under black brows fairly bristling with Old Testament fervour, the fierce grey eyes that had demanded his attention, stared contemptuously back at him, as if taking in every detail of his unruly auburn hair, his carelessly tightened grass green tie, and scuffed, down at heel black shoes.

  Feeling censured, Rafferty looked down at the inscription beneath the portrait, but was irritated to discover that this was in Latin and he was unable to read it. As he remembered that the old man's background was no more grand than his own, he raised his eyes to Shore's disdainful countenance and exclaimed cuttingly, 'Latin! You're a pretentious old twat, that's what you are.'

  Llewellyn came to stand beside him and - naturally - read the inscription on the portrait with ease. '"Hoc volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas" - "The fact that I wish it is reason enough for doing it",' he translated, 'from Juvenal's Satires. A more literal translation might go something like, "This I will, thus I command;
let my will serve as reason". Pretty apt choice for Maximillian Shore, wouldn't you say, sir? From what you told me about him, I gather he was something of a tyrant.'

  'Oh, yes,' Rafferty snapped. 'It's exactly what I'd have chosen myself.' It was ironic, he reflected, that, although he was a Catholic, the only Latin he knew was from the assorted hymns he used to sing as a schoolboy, at Benediction on Friday afternoons. Like a gathering of parrots, he and his classmates had chirruped away, without the least idea what they were singing about. The religious classes had been mostly conducted on similar lines, and he recalled the rows he'd had with his mother because he refused to believe something was true just because a humourless man in a black frock told him so. Such independence of mind was probably the reason he'd ended up a policeman instead of a builder, like the rest of his family, he concluded. Though, of course, his ma had had something to do with the choice. He still wasn't sure whether to be pleased or sorry, but when his sergeant insisted on putting his Latin prose through its paces, the thought of a building site, even on a freezing winter's morning, appeared surprisingly attractive. At least there, the only impressive gift for language he'd be exposed to would be the crew's rich and unabashed fluency in Anglo-Saxon.

  Scowling at the portrait and its inscription, Rafferty, more to shut Llewellyn up than from any great interest, picked up a book about Lloyd George from the table and flicked though it, only to shut it hastily as he heard a hesitant throat clearing from the doorway. Expecting a thrusting executive type, he was surprised to see some kind of handyman hovering there instead, clad in an old shirt, covered in a colour kaleidoscope of what looked like paint stains. It gave him a raffish, Bohemian air, which was at odds with his anxious, unbohemian expression. As the man just stood there, saying nothing, Rafferty, made impatient by the heat and his anxieties about the case, demanded gruffly, 'Yes? Can I help you?'