02 Murder at the Mansion (16 page)

“The boy’s fine,” Shona Alexander assured her sister on the phone, “he’s a little scamp. With a boy like him you only need to worry about when he’s
not
up to something… Oh, of course he misses you. He asks after you every chance he gets… He’s fine for now, he’s still so distracted by the excitement of a new place… You’ve got enough to worry about right now with the chemo, Olivia, just let me take care of Dougie for now… Oh, wait, I think I hear him coming in now. I’ll send you a message later, okay? Bye, Olivia.”

Shona placed the receiver down gently and turned around.

“That was your mot-”

“Aunt Shona!”

Shona and Dougie stared at each other, each bearing an expression of absolute horror.

“Good God, Dougie! Look at you!”

“There’s a.... There’s… It’s… I don’t know why it’s there!”

“Is that a rip? Turn around! Turn around, now! Oh dear God…”

“No, Aunt Shona… I saw a… It was right there!”

“What was?”

“A… It looked like…, there’s a dead body in the woods!”

“Oh, there’ll be a dead body in the woods, alright, if you don’t explain to me how you made a mess of yourself when I specifically told you not to go running about before coming home to change.”

“Really, Aunt Shona! There’s a bone sticking out!”

“Sticking out of where?”

“Out of the ground! I tripped over it!”

Shona placed two hands upon her hips and circled Dougie as if inspecting a car, shaking her head as she noticed every stain, assessing how much time it would take to get each out.

“You really do have quite an imagination. I hope you realize this means you won’t be playing football this weekend, young man!”

Dougie stamped his foot impertinently and cried out desperately. “I don’t care about the football! There’s a dead body in the woods!”

Bizarrely, Shona found Dougie’s first statement more surprising than the second, and when she saw the earnestness in the boy’s face, she realized that he meant both of them sincerely. Dougie certainly attracted more than his fair share of trouble, but if anything, it was his open, impatient nature that drew him to it, rather than his proclivity to spin tall tales.

“Sit down,” Shona commanded the boy, as she pulled out a chair and sat on it herself. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

Inspector Mike Nicholls was in no mood for games and hadn’t been for a while. He had grumbled and complained his way through each workday for over two weeks, and yet his fellow officers had grown none the wiser as to the cause. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and the incidents they had dealt with were remarkable only in their consistency and mildness. Even the weather hadn’t been so bad. Yet not even a cup of tea could be served to the Detective Inspector without a vociferous complaint. The tea might be too hot, too sweet, too strong, or the wrong kind of brew entirely. Officers within his vicinity were liable to receive spiked comments about their manner or work ethic, and even those not present would be noted for their absence, considered undoubtedly nefarious in the Inspector’s newly negative outlook.

So when the call came from Constable Raven that drove the Inspector to leave the city for the rural countryside immediately, the officers of Truro police station breathed a sigh of relief before drawing straws to decide who would go with him. Constable Colback drew the short one.

After a long trip, during which Inspector Nicholls articulated his grievances on topics as wide-ranging as long car journeys, false police calls, the declining standards of police ceremonies, and the road manners of his fellow drivers, he and his bedraggled constable met Constable Raven outside Shona Alexander’s house.

“Hello Inspector! Long time no see,” said Constable Raven, more cheerily than the grave circumstances demanded.

“I have a forensic team on standby, Constable,” the Inspector responded curtly. “So I sincerely hope this is not a waste of time.”

Picking up on the Inspector’s unusually stern tone, Raven stood upright.

“I don’t think so, Inspector. Ms. Alexander and Dougie, her young nephew, sound very concerned.”

“Wait a minute, Constable,” Nicholls said, a dark cloud passing over his face. “Are you telling me that I’ve just put all my other duties aside, made a formal request for the forensic team to enter the area, and driven for almost an hour, based on the story that an eight-year-old boy told his aunt? You didn’t check the site yourself?”

Constable Raven struggled to disguise his gulp. He was an informal but effective officer, though diligence and rigor had never been his strengths. Under the intense glare of the Inspector, he wished they were.

“I didn’t want to disturb the scene, Inspector. I thought it right that you be here to witness it first.”

DI Nicholls winced, opened his mouth to say something, decided against it, and walked up the pathway to Shona Alexander’s door, leaving Constables Raven and Colback to exchange sympathetic glances.

“I’m Detective Inspector Nicholls,” he said to the blonde woman who opened the door, “I believe you are Ms. Shona Alexander and this lad is Dougie Dewar?”

“Yes, thank you for coming, Inspector.”

The Inspector crouched, bringing himself to eye-level with the freshly-washed boy who clung to his aunt’s trouser leg.

“What did you see out there?”

After a few seconds, Dougie gathered up the courage to speak.

“There was this bone. An arm bone, sticking out of the ground. I tripped on it and got mud and dirt all over me.”

“How big?”

Dougie raised his hands and held them about four inches apart. Nicholls turned around to cast another stern glare at Constable Raven.

“Now are you sure it wasn’t a twig? A strange stick, or maybe something plastic?”

Dougie shook his head, too intimidated by the Inspector’s direct, unyielding approach to speak.

“A lot of animals have bones, you know. Tell me why you think this was a human bone? An arm, you say?”

“I studied the skeleton at school last week. It has a curve like this,” Dougie said, proudly tracing his finger along his forearm, “and another bone next to it like this. That’s what it looks like.”

Nicholls sighed deeply.

“Well, let’s get to it then. The young lad can show us the path and tell us all about it on the way.”

The detective stood up and began walking back down the path, followed by Dougie and his Aunt Shona. As he passed Constable Raven, he glowered once again and said:

“I hope this kid’s knowledge of anatomy is better than your knowledge of police procedure. For all our sakes.”

The sky was turning a dark shade of orange as the five figures approached the long shadows of the woods. Though the days still bore the pleasant warmth and brightness of summer, the sharp decrease in temperature as the sun set over the hills indicated that the warm season was about to be chased away. There was a little crunch in the rustle of leaves underfoot, and the fervent greens that rolled away in all directions began to wane into shades less vivid, encroaching hues of brown and yellow.

Though Dougie was meant to lead them, he shuffled along beside his Aunt Shona, clutching her hand, while Inspector Nicholls strode forward, setting a brisk pace. Constables Raven and Colback brought up the rear, chattering a little and scanning the surroundings purposefully when they thought Nicholls was watching.

DI Nicholls turned to Dougie as they passed through another clump of trees and began to navigate the deepening shade of the dense forest. Dougie, still rather intimidated by the Inspector’s silent intensity, raised his arm and pointed ahead, a little to one side. Nicholls turned and continued onwards determinedly.

“There!” Dougie squealed suddenly. “That’s where I fell! So the bone is…”

Everyone watched the boy’s finger trace a trajectory until it landed on a spot, before Dougie stepped back and pressed himself up against Aunt Shona’s trouser leg once again.

DI Nicholls almost leaped toward it, followed closely by the two constables. They gazed at the strange protrusion for a few seconds, musing over its unusual shape.

“Take the woman and the boy to the edge of the forest, Colback. It’s a little way over. You can meet the forensic team there if we need them. Constable Raven?”

“Yes sir?”

“Help me dig it out a little – carefully.”

“Yes sir.”

As Shona walked after Constable Colback, pulling Dougie away and holding his head so that he couldn’t look back, Nicholls and Raven pulled away at the dirt from which the bone emerged. After almost ten minutes of clawing at the ground, growing increasingly impatient and frantic, they unearthed what was unmistakably a human elbow.

DI Nicholls pulled out his phone.

“Raven? Call in the forensic team, and bring them over. Tell them we’ve confirmed it.”

Within the hour, Upton St. Mary had become shrouded in darkness. Though it came swiftly and abruptly, the sky was clear enough for moonlight to help walkers along their way. Still, drivers of the lazily curving roads had to depend upon their headlights for vision, and the quaint nature of the cottages and houses was apparent only by the warm glow of their windows and visitor lamps.

Tonight, however, there were vibrant additions to Upton St. Mary’s usual pleasantly subtle nighttime illumination. Multiple police cars had parked by the wall of trees at the woods’ edge, their blue lights casting ominous blinking shadows across the forest flow. A little deeper in the woods, powerful lamps, set up by the forensic team, cast a piercing white glare over the specialists as they carefully excavated and examined. Police officers circled the area, scanning for clues or merely making their way through the unlit portions of the woods, directing flashlight beams with the erratic focus of roving spotlights.

There would be gossip in the morning for sure, thought DI Nicholls, as he marched back toward the woods from Shona Alexander’s house. He had really needed that cup of tea, but his lengthy conversation with Dougie and Ms. Alexander had not revealed much. The boy had been more concerned with the mess he had made of his uniform, while Shona had seemed to live an incredibly isolated life at her home, sentimentally titled “Honeysuckle House.” Despite experiencing fifteen years of life in Upton St. Mary, the closest Shona had come to giving him a lead was information concerning a land dispute that had been resolved eighteen months ago.