Souvenirs of Murder Read online

  Previous Titles in this series by Margaret Duffy

  A HANGING MATTER

  DEAD TROUBLE

  SO HORRIBLE A PLACE

  TAINTED GROUND *

  COBWEB *

  BLOOD SUBSTITUTE *

  * available from Severn House

  SOUVENIRS OF MURDER

  Margaret Duffy

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2009

  in Great Britain and in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2009 by Margaret Duffy.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Duffy, Margaret.

  Souvenirs of Murder – (A Patrick Gillard and Ingrid

  Langley mystery)

  1. Gillard, Patrick (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Langley, Ingrid (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  3. Great Britain. Serious Organised Crime Agency–Fiction.

  4. Murder–Investigation–Fiction. 5. Detective and mystery

  stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9’14-dc22

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-090-6 (ePub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6810-7 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-174-4 (trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  ONE

  In hindsight, it is difficult to decide which of the two was the most momentous; The Case of the Man who Tried to Take Over a Village and Ended up Dead or the fact that my husband, Patrick, had been given the job of catching a woman regarded as one of the world’s most dangerous criminals and was accused of her murder. At the time, of course, the latter was the priority, the former not affecting me so personally, although it did others to whom I am close, very much so. My first, and at the time I hoped my only, contribution was that of finding the corpse.

  Patrick had been an ‘adviser’ for SOCA, the Serious Organized Crime Agency – the inverted commas necessary as this particular operative goes to work armed to the teeth – for several months when he was given the assignment. It was felt by those in charge, namely Richard Daws, his one-time boss in MI5 who never seemed to be allowed to retire, and Commander Michael Greenway, a lesser mortal to whom Patrick now answers, that he was exactly the right man for the job. My unease started at this point. I knew full well – the novelist wife is on the payroll as ‘consultant’ to the ‘adviser’ – that he did not exactly have bucketfuls of experience in dealing with glamorous females who regularly execute those members of their establishment who fall short of expectations by personally garrotting them with a length of fine wire. I had pointed this out to Commander Greenway, adding that the harpy no doubt kept it neatly rolled up in her knickers’ drawer and wouldn’t an equally off-the-wall member of staff of SOCA, if there was such a person, be more suitable for the job?

  Greenway had given me a wary smile. I know he values my contributions but has also learned that this female novelist comes at the price of asking the questions that Patrick, for several reasons, does not. His wariness was also due, I felt, to the fact that I was hugely eight and three-quarter months pregnant at the time and he thought of me along the lines of an unexploded bomb. I had every sympathy for him as, although a married man with a family, he did not want to have to play midwife on his office carpet.

  ‘Patrick can do off-the-wall though, can’t he?’ he had remarked gently, the man in question a little late for the meeting, stuck in a traffic jam.

  ‘Yes, he can, but with the kind of skill that impresses men,’ I had replied. ‘As you know, he’s an ex-undercover soldier, used to dealing with terrorists and the like. He’s only ever really operated in a man’s world.’

  And can reduce strong men to tears with his voice alone and at Christmas often cracks walnuts just with his fingers.

  ‘With the help of criminal profilers we’re going to turn him into the kind of person to impress this woman,’ Greenway had said after a thoughtful pause. ‘And look, although the assignment’s not going to be achieved in five minutes the groundwork is being done by others – he’s not going in alone.’

  So I had had to resign myself to the inevitable.

  This conversation was nothing to do with the fact that Mark was born the following day, at around four in the afternoon, not that I was actually bothered by what hour it was at the time. He was in as much of a hurry as Justin, our first, who had arrived in the ambulance, and Patrick made it to the delivery room with five minutes to spare. I was glad about this, he is not the kind of man to have the emotional stamina to be able to bear his partner yelling her head off in the throes of childbirth for any length of time.

  We were living in a rented furnished house, having sold our home in Devon, while extensions were added to the old rectory at Hinton Littlemoor in Somerset that we had bought from the diocese. Patrick’s parents – his father is still rector there – had been due to be rehoused in a gerbil hutch of a new bungalow, one of several being built on land that is, since the railway closed and all the culverts became blocked up, in effect, the village’s flood plain, and the rectory put on the market. The prospect of this was simply too awful for words and Patrick’s anger had honed his haggling skills to drive down the price: it was no secret that the building needed a new roof.

  ‘No more babies,’ Patrick had muttered just after the birth, rescuing his wrung hands that I had been holding so that he could mop my hot brow.

  ‘I’ll make an appointment for you at the vet’s as soon as I get home,’ I had promised, looking down into the little red crumpled face and praying that this one wouldn’t be as stroppy as his brother.

  That we have two children already – Victoria was the second – is something of a miracle, Patrick having been seriously injured in his Special Forces days before he joined MI5. Then Patrick’s brother, Larry, was killed and we adopted his two, Matthew and Katie, and suddenly the Dartmoor cottage seemed rather small. I was desperately hoping that our nannie, Carrie, would be able to carry on. She had moved with us to Somerset but her overriding concern was her mother, who lived in Plymouth and did not enjoy the best of health. The matter was soon, and amazingly, solved to everyone’s satisfaction when a recently widowed friend whom she had known at school – both ladies are natives of Bath – asked her if she would like to go and live with her on the
outskirts of the city.

  Just over a month later, my domestic arrangements more or less intact, I found myself, in a dismal February in the rented house, a barn conversion a mile from Hinton Littlemoor, with a new baby, a figure more redolent of a champion Jersey than that of any kind of consultant to a crime-fighting agency and a bad case of post-natal blues. At least, that was what other people who happened to be around when I suddenly burst into tears were calling it. I thought it had far more to do with the fact that I was not only site managing the building work on the rectory and had been right from the beginning, but now was lugging Mark around, by this time a healthy nine pounds in weight, for what seemed like hourly breastfeeds, never mind the aftermath. Patrick’s parents were having an extended holiday while the worst of the mess at the rectory was going on – for a few weeks the house was uninhabitable – their son heaven only knew where undergoing ‘training’. In view of the proposed assignment I was agog to know what this entailed.

  And, of course, the business of writing books had gone right out of the window.

  The builders, who were working to a very tight schedule, had at first tended to dismiss the pregnant and then somewhat dour nursing mother who turned up every day – I did not take the baby into the house while work was going on – as a dimbo to be smiled upon and ignored. After a few skirmishes along the lines of their being content to use the wrong roofing slates, not the ones we had ordered, they were now brewing me tea while bringing me up to date, exactly, with the work in progress and would I like to inspect what had been done since my previous visit?

  Church services were being taken by a retired bishop, a lay reader and any other clergy who were deemed to be free. While John had been in need of a complete break from what is, in effect, a seven day a week job Elspeth had been particularly reluctant to go away with a new grandchild on the scene and while I might need help.

  Late in the morning of the day when they were due back, a Saturday, I was on a mission to harry the decorators who were putting the finishing touches to John and Elspeth’s new two-bedroomed annex. All on the level, it had been created from the old garage and stable with a new floor above that gave the house another two bedrooms, one with an en suite bathroom that would be for Patrick and me, the other for any visitors. A boxroom with a big cupboard was now the nursery with a connecting door to our room – Carrie’s was just across the landing. My priority on this particular morning was to get John and Elspeth’s new home fit to live in but if furniture could not be brought in or curtains fitted today because paint was not dry then it was not a disaster if they had to stay in bed and breakfast accommodation in the village for one night. This eventuality had been pencilled in at Rose Cottage, a short distance away just off the high street.

  The main part of the rectory was still full of the racket of sawing, nail guns and drills but at least the doors of the rooms that were not being touched, most of those downstairs, had been sealed with special tape to prevent the entry of dust. This had meant that the furniture in them could remain in situ. Another single-storey extension was being built on to the kitchen to make it bigger, swallowing up an old integral coal store and outside toilet, plus providing a small room where the children could have their computer and do homework. Later, a large conservatory would be built over the courtyard outside with a door into it from the kitchen, another from the living room and yet another that was the entry to Elspeth and John’s quarters so they would not have to go out into the open in order to join us. On the opposite side double doors would lead on to the garden. John would still have his book-lined study in the main house: that was sacrosanct.

  My mind full of colour schemes – it had been difficult to organize these over the phone and in the end Elspeth had said it was safer to leave it all up to me – I first went round to where the painters were emulsioning the walls of the annex pale cream, the plaster too new to cover with wallpaper. I was told that they hoped to put the final coat of gloss on the woodwork in the afternoon and it was obvious it would not be dry in time for the rector and his wife to move in that day, the smell of paint notwithstanding. Therefore I would have to put off the curtain people and the carpet fitters.

  This area was no longer a building site so I had Mark in a sling around my neck. He was sound asleep making very tiny snoring noises. I am not a cooing kind of mother but had to admit that he was extremely cute: Patrick was missing a lot. He had rung me the night before, sounding tired, but would not go into details about his activities, merely saying that he was fine and on a ‘refresher course’. Ye gods. Doing what?

  Quick footsteps crunched on the gravel outside and a woman peered through the open doorway.

  ‘Oh! Aren’t they back yet?’

  ‘This evening,’ I told a bad case of growing out black-dyed hair and a frown. This was Mrs Crosspatch, Elspeth’s alternative name for the wife of the chairman of the PCC, Frank Crosby, who had been pointed out to me and in my presence spoken of as ‘nosy, unpleasant and interfering’. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I don’t think we’ve met. I’m John and Elspeth’s daughter-in-law, Ingrid.’

  She ignored the introduction, marching agitatedly right up to me to say, ‘It’s after eleven and the church is still locked. It’s most important that I check the flowers.’

  ‘Isn’t locking and unlocking the church the responsibility of the sexton while the rector’s away?’

  ‘Yes, but he often oversleeps and you’re nearer. You’ve got a key, haven’t you?’

  Her voice had risen to tones of withering scorn.

  I was not too sure about this and was about to point out that we did, actually, have the builders in when I remembered seeing a large key of ancient and noble appearance hanging on a hook in John’s study, one of the rooms that had not been closed off in case any of the parish records kept in the safe in there were needed. Asking La Crosspatch to meet me around the front of the house – I had already invented another nickname for her – I went across the courtyard and into the rectory, picking my way over toolboxes and around a platoon of men in dusty jeans and sweatshirts, hanged if I was going to ask my visitor to hold my son in case he caught something nasty from her bad breath. The key was where I remembered seeing it.

  ‘The WI had to have their committee meeting in the parish hall, you know,’ the woman said as we went through the small gate from the rectory garden into the churchyard. ‘It really was most inconvenient not being able to have it here.’

  ‘Where do you have your ordinary meetings?’ I asked, knowing full well.

  ‘In the parish hall, of course.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to carry on having them there or somewhere else,’ I said with regrettable satisfaction. ‘The rectory is now a private house.’ I was aware that what had been missing was Elspeth’s home-baked cakes and a very comfortable setting. Elspeth had said to me that she thought it about time someone else did all the hard work and now was a good time to make the break.

  Mrs Crosby’s mouth snapped shut into a thin straight line and she stomped on ahead of me.

  Keeping hold of the key – I was damned if I was going to give her that either – we went into the church porch. It was piled with autumn leaves blown in from the previous night’s gale which my companion tut-tutted over with a glare in my direction as if to say that I should have dealt with them. I unlocked the door.

  The flowers, some on the altar, a few arrangements on tables and a window ledge, were definitely not fresh.

  ‘But this is disgraceful!’ the PCC chairman’s wife gasped. ‘Nothing’s been done! All I should have to do is check that they’re ready for the services tomorrow.’

  ‘Who was due to do the flowers?’ I asked.

  She went back into the porch, found her glasses in a pocket and consulted a list pinned to the notice board.

  ‘Pauline Harrison.’ A snort. ‘You wait until I get on the phone to her.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘No? What do you mean, no?’

  ‘I happ
en to know that her father’s been taken to hospital after suffering a stroke.’

  ‘That’s no excuse.’

  I closed in on her. ‘No,’ I repeated in level tones. ‘You will not phone her, other than to ask how he is. You will also kindly deal with the problem here. The village store sells flowers that are good enough for an emergency and you can help yourself to whatever foliage you need from the rectory garden. Is that understood?’ We stared at one another eye to eye. I very rarely lose this kind of confrontation.

  At last the woman said, ‘Very well. But the box with the flower fund money’s in the vestry which I would like to have access to as I didn’t bring my purse with me. I don’t live nearby.’

  She knew where that key was; tucked out of sight on a ledge by the organ.

  A well-built man was spreadeagled face up on the floor of the vestry. He was very dead and all I noticed just then was that the body had some kind of plastic tube protruding from the mouth.

  Not necessarily a natural death then.

  Having made his way between the police vehicles and personnel Detective Chief Inspector James Carrick swithered between admiring the new member of the Gillard family – he and his wife Joanna are friends of ours – and his professional duties and then caved in and grinned at Mark, who was awake and beaming gummily up at him, before gently touching a chubby cheek with a forefinger.

  ‘He looks like you.’

  I did a double take of my son. ‘Really?’

  ‘And I’d put money on him being the quiet, introverted and artistic one.’

  ‘But I’m not like that,’ I protested.

  ‘Compared with that husband of yours and Justin you are.’

  I had to admit that he had a point. Hadn’t the two of them recently fought a water pistols at dawn duel? Even at six years old Justin had thought himself a better shot than his father. Not so.

  We were standing on the gravelled path leading up to the church near the lych gate where I had met Carrick in order to tell him of the circumstances of the discovery. I had thought it best that as Mrs Crosby had understandably been shocked – I had escorted her to a nearby friend’s house where she was having a recuperative cup of tea – that I take over the business of flowers. They could be put in a bucket of water until restrictions of entry to the building had been lifted. I was hoping this would be in time for the services the following day. If not, Elspeth could have them.