The Dead Girl's Shoes Read online

  ‘Well,’ said Phineas. ‘It is murder. No doubt about it. A nice uncomplicated clunk on the head. Done with an axe or a hammer; something very large and heavy, with a sharp edge, as there’s a deep cut on the head as well as the massive indentation. She was hit from the front, and I think she must have known her attacker because there is no sign of a struggle that I can see. Of course, I might find more back at the lab. But one thing I’m certain of is that it was not done here. Plenty of blood on the thin skin of the skull you know…’

  ‘I know,’ interrupted Maguire. ‘No need to go into details, Phineas.’ He reached the tent and stooping down pulled the awning aside and looked in. He could see a pretty girl. Her blonde hair matted with blood, now turned black and sticky. She was wearing a white frilly blouse, and a short black skirt. Her legs were long and tanned, and she wasn’t wearing shoes.

  ‘As far as I can tell, which isn’t much here,’ said Phineas, ‘I don’t think anything sexual was involved. It all seems fairly straightforward.’

  Grayson squeezed in beside Maguire. ‘Dan Grayer said she was doing a waitressing job last night at the Country House Hotel. There was some big do on organized by a London firm. Something to do with the perfume of a rose from Avon Hall. I don’t think many local people were there. According to Dan they were mostly Londoners, all involved with fashion and film and stuff.’

  ‘I know, because I was invited,’ said Maguire, ‘but I gave it a miss. Not my scene, that sort of thing.’ He saw Steve’s quizzical look. ‘It was organized by Lizzie Browne’s daughter for her new firm in London. That’s why I was invited.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Phineas, ‘and Audrey persuaded me to splash out on a very expensive bottle of eau de cologne, Black Rose. An expensive evening it turned out to be, although the wine was good.’ He looked down at the body of the girl lying at their feet. ‘’Met her for the first time last night, lovely looking girl, and now she’s here, lying dead without her pretty shoes.’

  Grayson consulted his iPad. ‘Dan was also there, he was employed for the evening by the company supplying the wine and beer. As a labourer I gather, humping the boxes of booze from the lorry into the kitchens.’

  ‘Do you know what time he left the place?’

  Grayson consulted his iPad again. ‘He says about half past midnight. After they’d finished loading the lorry, which was going back to London.’

  Maguire turned back and looked at the girl again. ‘She doesn’t look very old,’ he said. ‘About 20 I suppose.’

  Grayson looked at his notes again. ‘You’re right. She was just 20, second year at university,’ he said. ‘Dan Grayer told me. He knows her quite well. They both grew up here in the village of Avinton, and went to the primary school in the village. Then she moved on to a private grammar school, and Dan came down into Stibbington to the comprehensive. Afterwards she went to Salisbury university, apparently to study drama and English, and he started gardening up here at the Hall.’

  ‘I’m not going to find out anything more here,’ said Phineas, who’d been listening to Grayson’s evidence. ‘Can I move her?’

  ‘Of course.’ Maguire looked around the garden. The original peace and quiet had gone now as the SOCO team were staking out the ground around the site and rigging up another tent across the entrance to the icehouse. The blackbird had stopped singing, frightened away by all the activity he supposed. ‘Have you looked in the icehouse?’ he asked Grayson.

  ‘Haven’t had time, sir,’ came the reply.

  Together they walked around the tent still masking the body and came to the entrance of the ancient icehouse. ‘Amazing, isn’t it,’ said Maguire. ‘To think they could actually store and keep frozen great chunks of ice throughout the summer in olden days.’

  ‘When in olden days?’ asked Steve, who always liked the finer details.

  Maguire shrugged. ‘I think they were first used in the 17th century. England and Scotland had plenty of ice then, it was colder, and then later it was imported from Scandinavia in Victorian times.’

  ‘Well, we learn something every day,’ was Steve’s comment.

  ‘Yes, and we need to learn who knew it was here, and thought it a handy place to hide a body. Even if they didn’t make a very good job of it,’ replied Adam.

  They reached the icehouse and stood looking at it. It was brick built and domed, so that it looked a bit like an igloo. Turf had grown over half the domed roof, which disguised it. The wood that had been across the entrance still lay where it had been tossed aside by Dan when he’d opened up the ancient building to get at the body. The whole area was overgrown and shaded by an enormous fig tree. The leaves of the tree were big and glossy, and the newly formed figs were already quite fat; heavy branches trailing to the ground in some places disguised the entrance.

  Bert Grayer came and joined the pair of them, and leaned on his shovel. ‘Not many people knew it was here,’ he said to Maguire. ‘Whoever put Miss Jemima in this icehouse knew this garden. The Villiers don’t even put it on the plans of the garden now. So visitors don’t know anything about it. Most of them don’t bother to come up this far into the garden, they stay by the roses.’

  Maguire liked the way he referred to the dead girl as Miss Jemima; it gave her a certain dignity which was lacking when she was just a body. ‘Why is it kept secret?’ asked Maguire. ‘Do you know?’

  Bert grunted. ‘Health and safety,’ he said. ‘Bloody ridiculous rules about everything. We had these chaps come round you know. This was dangerous, that was dangerous. They even wanted to stop me going up the ladder to prune the roses. I ignored the lot of them. But Mrs Villiers insisted that double boarding be put across the entrance to the icehouse, and then we planted turf and lavender bushes to disguise the place.’

  Maguire bent down and looked at the discarded boarding. It was very thick, and the nails holding it together were large and strong. ‘It must have taken some effort to break it open,’ he said.

  ‘Ay,’ said Bert. ‘And I’m thinking they were disturbed. Because I think they were going to put the boards back, but they didn’t have time.’ Putting down his shovel he picked a board up and turned it over. ‘See how they’ve been broken. Careful like, along the seams of the planks. A good carpenter could put it back together and it would hardly notice. And look at the turf and the lavender bushes. They haven’t been pulled up, they’ve been dug up. They were going to be planted back.’ He picked up his shovel again and dug it into the earth in a sudden vicious movement. ‘Yes, poor little miss Jemima could have been lying there in the icehouse for years and not been discovered.’

  Get the SOCO team over here as soon as possible,’ Maguire said to Steve Grayson. To Bert he said gently, ‘it sounds as if you were fond of Miss Jemima.’

  ‘I was that,’ said Bert. ‘Dear little thing when she was little. Always used to come with me in the garden. Said she wanted to be a gardener. She was the best of the bunch. Her, and her father, Alex. But he’s been long gone, and now so has she.’

  ‘Mrs Villiers said she didn’t come back so often since she moved to Salisbury,’ said Maguire.

  Bert shook his head. ‘No, she told me once she wasn’t welcome at the Hall, and they never treated her right, not even when she was little, and alone after her mother and father died in that car crash. They weren’t cruel,’ he added quickly, ‘it was just that they left her out of things. Ruth was her mother’s favourite. Spoiled she was. Yes, spoiled, but to give her her due, she loved Jemima and always shared things with her when they were little.’

  ‘Did Jemima have any boyfriends that you know of?’ asked Steve.

  Bert snorted. ‘Brought one round the gardens once, and showed him the icehouse. Don’t know his name. I didn’t take to him at all. All airs and graces, velvet jacket and hair tied back in a ponytail. A real poofter he was.’

  But Bert couldn’t remember the name of this objectionable bloke as he called him. Grayson made a note of Bert’s remarks. ‘We’ll be able to spot him if he comes r
ound this way,’ he said to Maguire. ‘Not many velvet jackets and ponytails around the Stibbington area.

  *

  Back at Avon Hall Amelia Villiers woke Janet Hastings. She was still asleep in her private room at the hall where she stayed when on duty. ‘I need you down in the office with me now,’ said Amelia. ‘And by the way, you will have to cancel your holiday next week.’

  ‘But I’ve made arrangements.’ Janet’s plaintive voice echoed down the phone.

  ‘Then you will have to unmake them,’ snapped Amelia. ‘Jemima, my niece, has gone and got herself murdered. Here in the icehouse in the garden of all places. We have to close the estate today, that means cancelling everything, so you need to get on and do all that entails, and then there is bound to be other stuff to do. I can’t do without you. And Harold is away again. Wretched man. Do you know where he’s gone?’

  ‘No.’ The answer came back swiftly, leaving Amelia feeling even more annoyed. What was the point of having a personal assistance if she didn’t know where everything and everyone was!

  ‘I expect you down in the office with me in five minutes.’ Amelia clicked the phone off abruptly.

  *

  Bert Grayer’s words about Jemima and the Villiers family rang through Maguire’s mind long after he returned to his office. ‘We’re going to have to do a bit of digging into the Villiers family,’ he told Steve Grayson and Kevin Harrison.

  ‘You think they had something to do with this murder?’ queried Steve.

  ‘A family is always as good a place as any to start,’ said Maguire. ‘We’ve not got anything else to go on yet. And Amelia Villiers doesn’t seem particularly upset over the death of her niece.’

  Chapter 3

  On the Friday morning following the perfume launch Ruth levered herself carefully from the bed she shared with Tom, and reaching out a hand fumbled around until she found the shrilling alarm clock and managed to silence it. Tom groaned, and turned over in bed taking most of the bedclothes with him, but didn’t open his eyes. ‘I told you that you shouldn’t have gone to that do last night,’ he said grumpily.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ muttered Ruth towards his back, ‘you haven’t got a tutorial to go to this morning.’

  ‘You never listen to me,’ said Tom sleepily. I knew you’d be very late back and you were. You were even later than I thought. I waited up for you until gone midnight, then I came to bed and fell asleep.’

  Ruth clambered from the bed and tottered over to the bathroom, closed the door then looked at herself in the mirror. It was not a pretty sight, as she’d not removed her make-up from the night before and her foundation had a yellowish tinge. She should have listened to Jemima and used the expensive foundation she’d offered instead of the cheap one she’d bought herself. Too late now, but at least Tom hadn’t noticed; she switched on the shower and washed the offending make-up away.

  But Tom had noticed and remarked on it when she emerged from the shower room. ‘I bet Jemima didn’t go to bed with all her make-up on,’ he said. ‘She’s not the type.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Ruth, throwing on her clothes. ‘I’ve got to get going.’ She left, leaving Tom to drift back to sleep

  *

  That same morning as Ruth was rushing off to her tutorial Lizzie arrived into work early, long before the rest of the staff arrived. Having been out the night before meant she hadn’t had time to write up the notes of the previous days’ patients. She hated getting behind, unlike the senior partner, Dick Jamieson, who was permanently behind, because he hated using the computer. Tara or Sharon, the two girls in reception, often helped him out and got him up to date, but it wasn’t long before he needed assistance again. However, Lizzie was different; being methodical to a degree that sometimes drove her new partners mad. This particular Friday morning, she made herself a coffee, then took it through to her consulting room and started on her notes. She’d nearly finished when she began to hear the clatter of the rest of the staff arriving for the day. A knock on her door heralded the arrival of Tara Murphy, the senior receptionist, with a piece of paper in her hand.

  She stopped in the doorway, startled to see Lizzie. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said. ‘I thought the room was empty. I was going to put this on your desk so that you saw it first thing when you came in.’

  Lizzie stretched out her hand. ‘Well, better than that, Tara. You can give it to me now.’

  Tara passed the slip of paper across to Lizzie. ‘It’s Mrs Villiers,’ she said. ‘She wants a doctor quickly.’

  Lizzie read the note and frowned. ‘It doesn’t say anything here about an emergency.’

  Tara fidgeted in the doorway. ‘Well, it is, and it isn’t,’ she said.

  ‘And what exactly does that mean?’ asked Lizzie. ‘I take it she must be one of my patients.’

  ‘She’s on your list now,’ said Tara. ‘But she never comes in. She was one of Dr Burton’s private patients. He always went to see her at the Hall.’

  Lizzie waved the note at Tara. ‘I don’t have any private patients. So you’d better take this and give it to someone who does.’

  Tara looked worried. ‘That’s the trouble. Now that Dr Burton has retired no one here does private work. And I thought because you replaced Dr Burton you’d take on Mrs Villiers as a patient.’

  ‘Of course I will. Make her an appointment for later on this morning and I’ll see her here.’

  Tara took back the note from Lizzie. ‘I suppose I could try and make an appointment for her,’ she muttered.

  ‘Not try to, just do it,’ snapped Lizzie, losing patience. ‘Now Tara, please go. I must finish these notes on the computer otherwise I shall be late for morning surgery.’

  Tara didn’t reply. She backed out of Lizzie’s room looking very unhappy, and Lizzie concentrated on the rest of her notes and forgot about Mrs Villiers.

  *

  It wasn’t until noon when she finished with her last patient, a large young woman named Rosie, who was determined that she needed antibiotics for her chesty cough. Lizzie was equally determined that she did not need antibiotics, and thought that if she cut down or stopped smoking altogether, her chest would be much improved and told her so. This did not go down well with Rosie, who argued forcibly to the contrary. The altercation left Lizzie feeling exhausted, but at least she had the satisfaction of seeing her patient walk away with a prescription for nicotine patches not antibiotics.

  ‘They won’t do me no good,’ grumbled Rosie.

  ‘They will if you give them a fair trial, and try to stop smoking,’ said Lizzie firmly. Although she was doubtful whether Rosie would attempt either, she at least had the satisfaction of trying to steer her on to the straight and narrow as far as smoking was concerned.

  Walking through the now empty reception area, she went into the common room and poured herself the second coffee of the day. Dick Jamieson, the senior partner, was already there, munching through some egg and cress sandwiches and reading the BMJ.

  ‘Oh Dick,’ grumbled Maddy, the Practice Nurse, ‘I do wish your wife wouldn’t give you egg sandwiches. They make the whole place smell of sulphur.’

  ‘Better than tuna though,’ said Stephen Walters, one of the other partners. He, Lizzie noticed, was delving into an unhealthy serving of pot noodles. She almost remarked on it, but then thought better of it. She was trying to forge an improved relationship with Stephen as they’d got off to a bad start when she’d joined the practice.

  Picking up the list of afternoon visits from her pigeonhole, she noticed that the first visit was to Mrs Amelia Villiers, Avon Hall. ‘Well I’m damned,’ she exploded. ‘She’s not getting round me that way. She can come in like everybody else.’

  ‘Aah,’ mumbled Dick, through his egg and cress sandwich. ‘I take it you are referring to Amelia Villiers.’

  ‘I certainly am. I told Tara…’

  ‘And I told Tara to put her on your list for this afternoon,’ said Dick, putting down his sandwich and staring fiercely at Lizzie. ‘She has
phoned in saying that she is too nervous and unwell to drive herself here to Honeywell Health Centre, so we are obliged to go and visit her. She may be very ill.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’ demanded Lizzie.

  ‘Not really,’ said Dick calmly. ‘But we’ve got to give her the benefit of the doubt. You will visit her this afternoon, make your diagnosis and prescribe treatment, if necessary, and then tell her at the same time that in future she must come to the Health Centre the same as everyone else. Either that, or she finds herself another physician in the area who is willing to look after her privately.’

  ‘I’ll look after her privately,’ said Stephen Walters. ‘No bother to me at all. I could do with the extra money.’

  ‘No you won’t,’ said Dick. ‘When old Dr Burton retired, we all agreed that we would have no more private patients at this practice. It causes too much confusion and kerfuffle. You agreed as well, Stephen. So forget it.’

  Stephen heaved a big sigh. ‘Yes, I know. It’s just that I hate turning down such easy money.’

  ‘Not that easy,’ said Dick, levering himself from his armchair and making for the door. ‘Once you’ve taken their money you are at their beck and call whenever it suits them.’ He paused in the doorway and looked back at Lizzie, who was still glowering at the list. ‘I’m sure you will deal with her in your usual charming manner, Lizzie.’

  ‘Huh,’ grunted Lizzie, and made herself an instant coffee. Well! She decided Mrs Villiers can wait until late afternoon. I’ll make her my last visit, not first. There is nothing to indicate that the woman is seriously ill. Being nervous and unwell is not life threatening!

  *

  Later, at 4.30 in the afternoon, Lizzie eventually drove up to the wrought iron gates of Avon Hall. The gates were closed, and a large notice was tied to the iron bars.

  WE REGRET THAT AVON HALL IS CLOSED TO VISITORS

  UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.