Scaring Crows (28 page)

So she kept her eyes trained on Arabella Rowan while Mike led the questions. ‘How long did you say that Ruth Summers had worked here?'

‘A year,' Arabella snapped. ‘Now can we go into the kitchen? I'm not terribly anxious for my guests to overhear my being questioned about a murder.'

They followed her into the kitchen. As soon as the door was closed Mike spoke again. ‘How did you come to employ her? Did you call round to Hardacre?'

‘Certainly not.' The question undoubtedly rattled Mrs Rowan. ‘I've
never
been there in my entire life. We talked – in the market. She said what a struggle things were – financially. And I said how difficult it was managing the barn conversions.' Her voice became laden with sarcasm. ‘Especially on a Saturday.' Laughter wafted in from outside. A scream. ‘
Mum, Peter hit me!
'

Arabella rolled her eyes and continued. ‘People leave them in such a mess and they soon complain if they aren't perfect when they arrive. It seemed the ideal solution to take advantage of her offer,' she finished bleakly. ‘She would arrive about eleven and clean the barns for a couple of hours.'

Joanna interrupted. ‘She was a thorough cleaner?'

‘We had a few words,' Arabella said defiantly. ‘She wasn't used to being too particular around the house. I hardly think Aaron and Jack were exacting with their standards of hygiene.' Joanna visualized the rooms at Hardacre, shabby, neglected but superficially clean.

Ruthie had had her standards but they would hardly have come up to Arabella Rowan's bench mark.

‘And what was the date that you last saw her?'

‘Early – no mid – June.' Arabella seemed flustered. ‘Perhaps the end. About a month.' Her pupils suddenly sharpened to pencil points. ‘You've asked me all this before, Inspector.'

‘We just want to be sure.'

There was a brief silence until Joanna spoke again. ‘So the exact date please, Mrs Rowan.'

‘I shall need my booking cards.'

‘If you wouldn't mind.'

Arabella whisked out of the room, practically knocking her husband over just outside. He straightened up, gave an embarrassed laugh. His wife scowled at him.

Joanna addressed him. ‘I'm glad to see you, Mr Rowan.'

‘Well thank you, Inspector,' he replied smoothly. ‘What can I do for you?'

‘We noticed a barn on the left-hand side as we came up the drive.'

‘I've lots of barns,' Neil Rowan said awkwardly. But there was a wary look in his eyes.

He hadn't been expecting this one.

‘It has a green painted door, sir,' Mike said brusquely.

Neil Rowan didn't like Mike, but he almost managed to hide it. It showed only in the small muscle that twitched at the side of his mouth. ‘I don't actually use the field with that barn in.'

But the grass had been grazed short. ‘So who does?'

‘I rent it out to Fallowfield. Pinkers has a use for it.'

‘Ah.' In actual fact Joanna saw nothing. The question about the barn had merely been idle introduction to the business of the day but Neil Rowan's eyes held a faintly worried look now and his head moved slightly towards the window – and the tiny barn whose roof was barely visible at the bottom of the drive.

It set Joanna's mind working. The field was more than a mile from Fallowfield. And not convenient for Martin Pinkers at all. The barn was small. Not big enough for hay or secure enough to store machinery. It was stuck out, on its own, an isolated barn with not enough room to hold more than a couple of animals. Or one large one. She felt curious. It was with an effort that she diverted her mind back to the dead girl.

‘What did you think of Ruthie Summers?'

Rowan knew it was a catch question but he disguised his discomfort with a loud, hearty laugh.

‘She seemed a nice girl,' he said casually. ‘Arabella was pleased with her. She did her work adequately.' He was beginning to bluster. ‘I had hardly anything to do with her. I don't know why you ask me.'

‘No?' Joanna watched his eyes slide away from hers. At least he had the decency to blush.

‘Terrible what happened to her.' He left a short, probing pause. ‘I assume the third body
was
hers?'

‘Yes.'

He was on his guard now, a coiled spring, tense, alert. ‘Murder,' he managed.

Joanna shook her head and noted his puzzlement. ‘Then what ...?'

‘She was pregnant.'

The muscle began to twitch again.

‘Mr Rowan,' Joanna moved her face closer to his so she could see right to the back of his brown eyes. ‘When we know who the father of Ruthie's child is we shall almost certainly know who wiped out the rest of her family.'

‘You've no right to threaten my husband like that.' Arabella had returned to speak from the doorway.

Neil Rowan was a coward. Joanna watched him shrink from his wife's sharp crack of a voice. He looked frightened. His wife shot him a glance of pure disdain and then ignored him, taking up the challenge of Joanna's smoky blue eyes instead.

‘So what line of questioning are you pursuing now, Inspector?'

‘Well, Ruthie Summers died of natural causes, Mrs Rowan.'

Joanna could have sworn Mrs Rowan already knew that by her flat reaction. But she had not told her husband.

‘She was pregnant.'

Oddly, Arabella Rowan's face displayed faint amusement. Either she knew her husband was in the clear or else she didn't care. She could throw him to the dogs, carry on with her life unimpeded by a philandering husband.

Joanna continued. ‘Naturally we connect her death with the murders of her father and brother.'

‘Naturally.' Maybe Arabella Rowan was extremely brave, or a good actress. Or she could see a flaw in Joanna's reasoning. It unnerved the detective.

She glanced across at Neil Rowan and realized he was relaxed now. Sit back and let the wife sort it out. Then Joanna realized. It was talk of the baby that had
relaxed
him. It was the double shootings which had
unnerved
him.

Joanna was even more confused and floundered with her questions. ‘Tell me something about the workings of a farm like yours.'

The nervousness had returned. He was completely thrown off balance by the question without realizing it had been blindly asked. But then Mike too was confounded, staring at her as though she was crazy. She gave him a tiny smile meant to reassure him of her control.

‘It's a good, profitable concern,' Neil Rowan said shortly. ‘What else do you need to know?'

Joanna deliberately turned her face towards him to cut out Mike. She had an idea where she hoped her questions would lead. He didn't.

‘Dairy or beef?' she asked idly.

‘Both.' His answers were short to the point of rudeness and a flush was creeping up his neck.

‘You have calves?'

‘Of course.' His face was suffused now. ‘All dairy herds have calves. You can't help it. They're a byproduct of milk production.'

‘A bull?'

To her side Mike stiffened.

‘I
had
one.' His forehead was glistening now. ‘Now I...' His wife's eyes were on him, mocking, disdainful, uncaring, disliking.

And now Joanna knew. Pinkers and Rowan had
both
helped themselves to the animals from Hardacre. They had fleeced their poverty-struck neighbour, increased his run of bad luck, reduced his livelihood to a mere scratch. His good fortune had become theirs.

So what about Ruthie? How much had she discovered? She had been the clever one, the natural manager of the old farm. The theft of the bull as well as the cows would have meant more to her sharp brain than to her father who was dying of cancer and her brother who would never be capable of managing the farm alone. But Ruthie? It had been her livelihood too. She had worked, selling eggs, cleaning. Hardacre had been important to her. And Joanna knew instinctively that it was the farm, its animals as well as its future that had lain in Ruthie's heart rather than a man.

So how much had the girl worked out about the fate of the missing cattle? Had she found Doric, the bull she had so fancifully named? One morning as she walked to work had she peered inside the barn and seen the animal which had been stolen? And why the hell had they kept him there, so near the road?

The answer flashed through her mind. Because there was joint responsibility. While the Rowans had
owned
the barn Pinkers had been the one to use it. So who would she have told? Again the answer was obvious. A woman would confide in her lover. But who had he been? What part had he played in the looming tragedy? And why? Had the farm been of such importance to him too? Had he been someone like Shackleton who must have seen the farm as potentially profitable? Or had it been the delicate woman herself with her heart-shaped face and romantic features that had seduced the man?

In other words had it been Mothershaw? Had the artist found a piece of rural England he had longed to possess and keep? And with that land had come the farmer's daughter to entice him with her singing and her honest, country ways? Had he been seduced by the illusion of a girl collecting eggs, herding cows, singing, singing.

So what had her lover thought when she had vanished? What would he have thought of Neil Rowan's clumsy attempts to seduce such innocence? Would he have taken up the bludgeon in defence of her innocence and the stolen cattle? Joanna pictured him as she had first seen him, in yellow trousers and pale shirt and she doubted it. To Titus Mothershaw cattle would have been artistic props, rather than practical, bread and butter objects of value.

She looked helplessly at Mike. There were still too many unanswered questions and she was impatient to know who was the father of Ruthie's child.

Neil Rowan spoke. ‘Where did you find her?'

For the first time she could believe he really cared. His forehead was wrinkled with earnestness and he had stopped looking at his wife with quite such apprehension.

‘Behind the wall in the back of the larder.' Joanna had decided to spare neither of them. ‘Her body was partly decomposed. She'd been there about a month.'

She thought Neil Rowan was about to be sick.

Even Arabella turned white. ‘I wondered ...' She had to start again. ‘I wondered. She hadn't turned up. Work. I thought ...'

‘That your husband's attempted philanderings had put her off?'

Arabella Rowan nodded dumbly. She gave a loud, inelegant sniff and collapsed into the kitchen chair, her head dropped on to her folded arms. But she wasn't crying. Joanna sensed the woman felt too much anger for that.

Neil Rowan crossed the room to touch his wife's shoulder, timidly. ‘It was only a bit of fun,' he said. ‘Nothing serious. She was just a young woman.'

His wife raised her face. ‘You fool,' she said softly, but strangely, not without some affection. ‘You are such a fool, Neil.'

Then she held the bookings cards out to Joanna and her voice steadied. ‘She last worked here on June 16th.'

‘And did she seem all right?'

Arabella Rowan frowned. ‘No,' she said. ‘Not really. As far as I can remember that day she left here early. I think she said she had a stomach ache. I could see she wasn't well. We did offer her a lift home but she said it was OK, that the walk would do her good. And I saw Aaron and Jack the following Monday at market. They said she wasn't too grand and she wouldn't be in for a week or two.' It took a minute or two for the facts to sink in before she added in a small voice. ‘Did she die then?'

‘Almost certainly.'

Mrs Rowan ran her fingers through her hair and looked years older, control finally lost. ‘How awful,' she said. ‘How bloody awful.'

‘Isn't it?'

But Joanna was watching Arabella Rowan very carefully. ‘Didn't you wonder why she didn't come back?'

Mrs Rowan looked embarrassed. ‘To be honest,' she said, ‘I thought she must have said something to either Aaron or Jack about...' She eyed her husband. ‘Well. I thought she must have said that Neil was being over-friendly. I made up my mind to manage on my own in future.'

It was a clear, sad picture, a woman working hard to make a success of a business. She had help to do the work. But her husband was a Romeo. So Arabella must manage on her own.

7.15 p.m.

The heat was draining out of the day, leaving a cool breeze to play with the landscape, rustling trees, waving long grass, stroking the flowers with subtle movement.

Mike took the wheel and they drove down the winding lane towards the barn standing square against the road, a grey scar on the landscape. An ancient barn. Yet it was in good repair. There were no tiles missing from the roof and the door looked as though it had been freshly painted.

Mike pulled the car into a passing place and together they swung the five-barred gate open and approached the barn.

They could hear the bull bellowing as they got within five yards. He was kicking the door. They watched in fascination as it shuddered. This must be some animal, large and strong who wanted to be in the fields enjoying himself, not cooped up in such a small space.

Mike backed away. ‘I'm not going in there. What's it got to do with the case anyway?'

Joanna didn't know but felt such relief at having tracked down the missing animal she couldn't resist teasing him. ‘Come on, Mike,' she said briskly. ‘You don't expect me to enter, do you? You see it might not be Doric.'

He gave her a quick, worried glance. ‘I mean it, Jo,' he warned. ‘It sounds dangerous to me. I'm not going in.'

But she wasn't going to let him off the hook yet. ‘I'm afraid, Sergeant.'

‘You must be joking.' And then he caught the gleam in her eyes and they both started to laugh.

‘We can peep through the window, can't we? Give me a leg up.'