Page 17 of Murder in the Winter Woods (Julia Bird Mysteries #8)
‘I’m sorry, Hayley, it seems I was wrong about everything. The dent on the car, the blood…I thought it was important, but it turns out I wasted everyone’s time. All those forensics people…’
Julia shuddered at the memory of them all swooping into the lane in their vans, donning their white booties and their gloves, unrolling their spools of crime scene tape. She’d watched them start with the careful digging and bagging of the earth where Ollie had been digging not an hour before.
Julia had left then, and was grateful not to have been at the scene for the discovery of the buried evidence.
It was a corpse – not a human corpse, but that of a large white swan, she heard later from DC Walter Farmer.
She felt a fresh flush of horror, imagining the bird’s long floppy neck and orange beak emerging muddied from the hole Ollie had dug, and a flush of shame for all the trouble she’d put everyone to.
Jake padded across the kitchen floor and sat next to her, leaning his big brown self against her thigh in a supportive sort of way.
She stroked his silky head and did feel a little calmer.
Hayley put down the mug of tea Julia had made her and reached across the table to pat her hand. ‘That’s what forensics are for – to determine what, if anything, the evidence means.’
‘Which turned out to be nothing, in this case.’
‘Not at all, Julia. We got new information and discounted a potential suspect. Based on what you’d heard and seen, you did the right thing, telling the police. You heard Poppy and Ollie talk about hiding evidence of a crime, and you saw him furtively digging in a secluded area.’
Julia had expected a proper talking-to, after her interference. The fact that Hayley was being so nice and understanding made Julia feel, if anything, worse.
‘How were you to know,’ Hayley continued, ‘that it was nothing to do with the two motor-vehicle-related deaths? That she’d killed a swan?’
‘Poor swan. And poor Poppy,’ said Julia. ‘She is so devoted to animals; she must have felt terrible hitting that swan with her car.’
‘She did. Her story, when we called her in, was that she had hit a hare. As soon as they found the swan, I told her what we’d discovered. She did feel awfully guilty and sad. And she was scared. She’d heard – like most of us have heard – that all swans belong to the king.’
‘I looked it up,’ Julia said. ‘Apparently the monarch has the right to claim ownership to any white swan in the open waters of Britain, but doesn’t generally exercise that right.’
‘Well, Poppy seemed to think that killing one was some sort of crime against the monarchy, which was why Ollie was burying it. Heaven knows what they thought was going to happen to her.’
‘Probably thought you’d march her off to the Tower of London or something.’
Hayley gave a weak chuckle at Julia’s little joke. ‘Maybe a few days in the stocks.’
‘A public flogging.’
Hayley drained her tea, and put the cup down.
It was a gesture that spoke of finality.
Hayley had stopped at Julia’s house on her way back from the crime scene.
She’d accepted a cuppa and a piece of toast, having missed both breakfast and lunch.
Having hoovered them down efficiently, and updated Julia on the swan discovery, she was no doubt impatient to go.
‘I should get to the station,’ she said. ‘Walter will be wondering where I’ve got to. And there will be the usual avalanche of paperwork.’
‘Sorry if I added to it.’
‘Look,’ said Hayley, ‘I shouldn’t say this, but we were actually in the process of checking all the panel beaters in the area in any event. Your lead was, if anything, the best result that we had. I guess people don’t really take their cars to be fixed if they got dented committing murder.’
‘So it’s official. You think Lewis and Matthew were killed?’ Julia hesitated, and added, for clarity, ‘On purpose? By the same person?’
Hayley considered her answer. ‘I am now working on the assumption that the deaths were deliberate, and connected.’
‘I agree. It’s too much of a coincidence, the two of them dying like that, in such a similar manner. But why? And who?’
The detective stood up and hoisted her bag over her shoulder. ‘That, Julia Bird, is what I aim to find out.’
With Hayley gone, Julia squeezed the last half-cup of tea out of the pot and put a second slice of bread in the toaster.
It was a surprise to discover it was only 3.
45 p.m. She’d been up early to get to the yoga class, and had been running around ever since.
Jake was wandering around looking at her in an expectant sort of way as he did when he was hoping for a walk. It was that time of day, after all.
‘Give me a minute,’ she said. ‘We’ll do a short trot around the block when I’ve finished my tea.’
She felt like nothing more than an hour or two on the sofa with the cosy mystery story she had downloaded onto her Kindle, but she knew a short walk would do her the world of good. There would be time for reading later.
Julia was as good as her word. Ten minutes later, she was walking down the lane with Jake trotting happily at her side.
They made fairly slow progress, because the world was full of fallen leaves that required urgent investigation by a shiny brown nose.
Once they got to the river path, Julia let him off the lead.
She dawdled while he raced up and down the path.
She was in no hurry. Her mind was still mulling over today’s developments, and one thing in particular – that DI Hayley Gibson believed that the deaths of Lewis and Matthew were not horrible accidents, coincidentally occurring within weeks of each other.
On the contrary, they were deliberate, and somehow connected. But how?
Julia wondered if the two men had known each other and, if so, how well.
They lived in the same village and were roughly the same age, so it was very likely that they were acquainted, but to the best of Julia’s knowledge, Matthew and Lewis had lived in quite different worlds.
Matthew was quiet, gentle; a maker and doer and grower of things.
He was a homebody who spent most of his time with his wife and his bees, when he wasn’t working the markets.
Lewis was personable and chatty, always on the road, always in the know, a favourite of the elderly neighbourhood ladies who he drove to the bigger towns for theatre or shopping.
‘Come in, Jake,’ Julia called, spotting the emaciated figure of Aunt Edna coming towards them.
The woman had a distinctive listing, tottering sort of gait, but she kept up a fair pace, given her advanced years (her exact age was unknown, but apparently Edna had already been ancient and mad when Tabitha had moved to Berrywick well over a decade ago).
Jake came in and Julia clipped on his lead.
‘A short leash makes for a good dog,’ said Edna.
Her pronouncement had a profound sort of truth to it, and Julia wondered if she’d made it up on the spot, or if it was an ancient adage.
‘A short dog is no good though. Too close to the ground, is a short hound,’ said Edna, rather undermining the profundity of her first statement.
‘How are you today, Edna?’ asked Julia.
‘As well as can be expected, given, you know…’
Julia didn’t know. She raised her eyebrows in an encouraging, quizzical sort of look.
‘The war, of course!’ the old woman said, crossly. ‘Goodness, you young people.’
‘Ah yes, well, war is terrible, of course.’ Julia wondered which particular war Edna was referring to. One of the World Wars? The Gulf War? The war on drugs? It could have been the American Civil War, for all the sense Edna made.
‘Mostly, trouble is closer to home,’ said the old woman, cheerfully. ‘Right on your doorstep. Right next door, even. Old wounds, old wounds.’
She turned her pale, watery eyes to Jake and wagged a bony forefinger: ‘You mark my words, and I’ll mark your birds.’
Edna tottered off without a goodbye, leaving a nervous-looking Jake and a pensive Julia on the river path, watching her go.
‘Right next door?’ Julia said out loud to herself. ‘That reminds me, I’d better pop over to Hester and see how she’s doing.’
Hester was sitting at her kitchen table, staring at three bunches of flowers that were lying on the table, slowly dying.
‘Why do people even send flowers?’ she said to Julia, who had let herself in after calling out a few times. ‘All it does is remind us that everything dies.’
‘Well,’ said Julia. ‘Let me put these in vases for you, and then perhaps the reminder will be less immediate.’ She wasn’t one hundred per cent sure, but she thought she saw a small twitch of humour at the corner of Hester’s mouth.
‘It’s Christmas that I’m dreading most,’ said Hester, as Julia put the flowers in three vases that she found in a cupboard under the sink.
She tried to arrange them artfully, hoping that some beauty might bring Hester a small comfort.
But flower arranging had never been Julia’s strongest skill, and after a few useless moments fluffing up and rearranging the blooms, she put the vases to the side, and opted instead for making tea.
She felt on decidedly firmer ground with tea, and she could see that someone had dropped off some fresh mince pies.
‘I suppose this way, at least Violet will now come for Christmas. She wasn’t going to. But she has to come now, doesn’t she?’
Julia put a cup of tea and a mince pie down in front of Hester, feeling sad at how difficult relationships with adult children could sometimes be.
‘I’m sure it will help you to have her here,’ she said gently.
‘She’s devastated. A real daddy’s girl.’ Hester said this fondly, a small smile on her face. ‘Of course, we need to let Lewis be buried first. Two such deaths so close. I can’t believe it.’