The Marriage Hearse (21 page)

‘Now all we need to do is to find out who killed our friend in the guesthouse,’ Wesley said as he fell into step alongside
the boss.

‘It must have been that French lass. She was the only person who was seen visiting the victim. It’ll be one of those
crimes passionnels
like they have in France. And I reckon that’s where she is now … France. Perhaps we’ll have to get the gendarmes to pick
her up.’

‘Has anyone checked her room yet? Is her passport still there?’ Heffernan didn’t answer. Not searching Françoise’s room at
the college as soon as she went missing was an oversight. But they had been concentrating on Kirsten Harbourn’s murder at
the time.

‘I’ll send Rachel and Trish to go through her things later,’ said Wesley, thinking it best not to comment on the delay. After
all, it was doubtful whether anyone could have interfered with her belongings without her fellow students having noticed.

They entered the interview room and found Stuart Richter sitting there, looking thin and pale beside his plump and florid
solicitor. He had no chance of escape now. Thanks to the DNA evidence they had caught him as surely as a spider catches a
fly in its web, imprisoning it in silken threads until it can no longer move. Stuart Richter wasn’t going anywhere, except
to prison on remand and then to the Crown Court to stand trial. Now it was just a question of completing the paperwork.

Strong. Bartholomew. Of Cudleigh Farm in the parish of Upper Cudleigh. Neil Watson had a vague idea that he should start searching
for him by trawling through the parish records of the time but he wasn’t sure exactly where to start. However, he knew a woman
who did.

It was rumoured that Annabel, his ever cheerful darling of the Exeter archives, rode to hounds when she wasn’t ferreting around
amongst dusty documents and that she had a polo-playing boyfriend who was a friend of at least one member of the Royal Family.
Annabel spoke with an accent normally only heard in British wartime movies – the enunciation of Celia Johnson or Anna Neagle.
She wore cashmere twin sets topped with strings of real pearls and her silky brown hair was usually held back by a velvet
Alice band. Someone had once told him that her father
had a title but, in spite of all these social disadvantages, Neil liked her. And, as usual, she came up trumps.

‘I’ve found Bartholomew for you,’ she said in a stage whisper as she donned a pair of white cotton gloves. ‘The entry in Upper
Cudleigh’s marriage register says that on the twenty-third of September 1559, a Bartholomew Strong married a Catherine Tracey.’

‘Is that all?’

Annabel looked smug, as though she was harbouring some juicy secret. ‘No. In March 1560 a Bartholomew Strong Junior was baptised,
son of Bartholomew Strong.’

‘Catherine was pregnant when they married then.’

‘It was hardly unknown in those days. Quite common actually. In 1561 there’s another baptism in the registers. A boy called
Ralph. Then a year after that a girl named Catherine … but she crops up in the burial register six months after her birth.
Same with the next daughter, Elizabeth … she died aged three months. And the son, John, born in 1565. He lasted ten months.’

Neil sighed. ‘Life was tough.’

‘It’s not all bad news. A daughter, Jane, born in 1566 lasted until she was in her sixties.’

‘And the surviving boys?’

‘Bartholomew junior was buried in 1633, aged seventy-three … a ripe old age in those days. He’d married a Lettice Underhill
who came from prosperous yeoman stock. Lots of her people get a mention in local records. It probably gave old Bartholomew
junior a step up socially and she gave him five children as a bonus – two boys and three girls.’

‘What about the younger son, Ralph?’

‘No mention of him in the parish records after his baptism, I’m afraid.’ She frowned. ‘The name seemed familiar though so
I did a bit of digging and found the answer in a most unexpected place. I was reading the local paper and there was an article
about a play that’s going to be performed at the Neston Arts Festival. An Elizabethan play that was found in the archives
at Talford Hall. It was written by a Ralph Strong … a local boy who’d gone to London to become an actor. It must be the same
one. It must be our Ralph.’ She smiled at him triumphantly. ‘I’m wondering if
your skeleton was Ralph’s girlfriend. Did he kill her then run away to London where he could get lost in another world where
nobody would ask too many questions?’

She had put his thoughts into words exactly. ‘I don’t suppose the theatre in those days was the model of respectability.’

‘Weren’t the theatres in the stews of Southwark amidst all the whorehouses?’ She grinned. ‘I should imagine tolerance was
the order of the day. You’d be forgiven a lot there that you wouldn’t be in an insular little Devon village.’

‘Even murder?’

She shrugged. ‘Nobody would know unless he told them and he’s hardly likely to bring the subject up, is he? If he murdered
a local girl here in Devon there was no police force to track him down. There might have been a parish constable – in fact,
the churchwarden’s accounts for Upper Cudleigh mentions that they had one – but he was hardly equipped to trace someone to
London.’

As usual Annabel had hit every nail on the head. At the moment it looked as if the playwright, Ralph Strong, was a possible
suspect for the murder of the girl who’d lain for centuries in Margaret and Brian Lightfoot’s lower meadow. The jewels found
with her certainly looked Elizabethan and the pottery nearby supported that date. But, like many things in archaeology, without
solid documentary proof – such as a signed confession in the church archives – all he had was suspicions. Sometimes he envied
Wesley – at least he could question his suspects.

‘I’ll dig a bit further,’ said Annabel cheerfully. ‘See if I can find anything else. Quite exciting this, isn’t it?’ she giggled.

As Neil was about to take his leave, he had a thought. ‘Fancy going to the theatre?’

Annabel looked surprised, even shocked.

‘That play Ralph Strong wrote … it’s on in Neston. You interested?’

‘Yes,’ she said after a few moments’ thought. ‘Why not?’

The accommodation given to the students at the Morbay Language College was hardly luxurious. Rachel had seen better appointed
prisons.

What was once a large bedroom had been divided into three small student rooms with disproportionately high ceilings. The original
chamber’s elaborate cornices were still there, although they halted abruptly at the thin partition walls, rudely truncated
by the unsympathetic alterations. The walls were painted an institutional green and each room contained two narrow single
beds, two cheap white wardrobes and two matching chests of drawers. Adequate but Spartan.

Carla Sawyer, bristling with impatient indignation, told Rachel and Trish that Françoise shared with the Dutch girl, Berthe
Van Enk. Berthe, she added ominously, wouldn’t take kindly to having her privacy invaded so they were to make sure that only
Françoise’s belongings were searched.

Rachel agreed just to keep the woman happy. But what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over. She couldn’t allow
Carla’s qualms to get in her way once she and Trish were alone in Françoise’s room.

The two women began their search, Trish tackled the wardrobe and Rachel the drawers.

At the back of the top drawer, Rachel spotted an EU passport. It belonged to Françoise and when she turned to her photograph
the missing girl gazed out at the camera with wide, innocent eyes. It was hard to believe that hers might be the face of a
killer.

‘She’s got some very expensive clothes,’ Trish remarked and she rifled through the wardrobe.

Rachel didn’t answer but, as she searched the lower drawers, she rapidly arrived at the same conclusion. Françoise had expensive
tastes and most of her possessions seemed to be new: some were still folded in carrier bags bearing the names of exclusive
shops, their receipts tucked inside. Some were hung up in the wardrobe with the price labels still attached. She’d been on
a spending spree. And very recently.

‘Perhaps her parents sent her some money,’ Trish suggested.

‘Or she earned it somehow. I think she was on the game. I wonder if Mrs Sawyer’s running a high-class brothel here.’

Before Trish could reply, Berthe Van Enk appeared in the
doorway. She didn’t look surprised to see them. Perhaps Mrs Sawyer had told her they were searching her room and she’d come
to make sure they didn’t stray too far into forbidden territory.

‘You are searching Françoise’s possessions, yes?’

Rachel cleared her throat and tried to look friendly, approachable. If they were to learn anything from the missing girl’s
room mate, she knew they had to gain her trust. ‘We’re very worried about her. We’re hoping we’ll find something to tell us
where she might be.’

‘I too am worried.’ She walked over to her bed and sat down, looking up at Rachel nervously. ‘If Françoise has done something
wrong, what will happen to her? Will she go to prison?’

It was a strange question and not one Rachel had been expecting. ‘That depends what she’s done. You do know that someone answering
Françoise’s description was seen at a guesthouse where a man’s body was found?’

‘It is in the newspaper I think. But Françoise could not kill a man. I know her. She could not do this.’

Rachel thought it was time she dropped her bombshell. ‘Did you know that Françoise was married to the dead man? She married
him last Saturday. His name was Abdul Ahmed.’

Berthe’s expression remained calm but Rachel noticed that her hands were clenched.

‘Did she tell you about this man? You were sharing a room with her. You must have talked about boyfriends.’

Berthe’s eyes darted from one policewoman to the other. Rachel could almost hear her brain processing the options. ‘Yes. She
spoke of him. She was in love. I told her not to be – what is the word? – hasty. But she take no notice.’

‘So you knew about the wedding?’

‘She tell me afterward. She know I do not approve. She tell me she was going to see her husband in Morbay. He was staying
in a hotel. But she never come back. I thought they go off together.’

‘Did you meet him?’

Berthe shook her head. ‘I have told you all I know.’ She stood up and picked up a colourful textbook that was lying on the
chest of drawers. ‘I come for my book. I go now. I have a lesson.’

‘Did Françoise have any other boyfriends?’ It was Rachel who asked the question.

Berthe hesitated. ‘There was one. A man who did work here. Elec— He mend the lights.’

‘Electrician. She went out with him?’

‘Yes. He want to marry her.’

‘But she met Abdul?’

Berthe nodded vigorously. ‘I must go.’

‘What was this electrician’s name?’

For the first time, she looked alarmed. ‘I can not remember. I must go. I am late.’

‘What’s going on here, Berthe? Does Mrs Sawyer ask some of the girls to sleep with men for money?’

Berthe rushed from the room without answering.

‘I think you hit the target there,’ Trish said. ‘Mrs Sawyer’s running a brothel. And it’s my guess that Françoise was one
of her girls. That’s where she got all the money for those clothes.’

‘But she left them behind.’

‘She’s on the run. I think that man, Abdul Ahmed, was one of her clients. I think they fell for each other. Then they quarrelled
– maybe about her arrangement with Sawyer – and she killed him. It might even have been self-defence.’

‘Think Berthe’s involved?’

‘No idea. But we’ve got her worried,’ Rachel looked round the room. ‘There’s nothing here. Let’s go and ask Mrs Sawyer who
worked on her electrics, shall we?’

Ten minutes later they had a name. But as far as any possible illegal sidelines were concerned, she was giving nothing away.

Stuart Richter was sticking to his story.

Yes, he did go round to Honey Cottage on the morning of Kirsten’s wedding. He was going to make a desperate last effort to
persuade her not to go through with it. He was going to tell her how much he loved her and that she was making the mistake
of her life. He adored Kirsten and if he’d been going to kill anyone, it would have been Peter Creston.

But the evidence was there. Richter had been obsessed with
Kirsten to the extent that he hired private detectives to follow her. She was about to marry a man whose friends had beaten
him up, something that would have angered the most reasonable of men. And all the forensic evidence pointed to the fact that
he was there in that bedroom with Kirsten at the relevant time.

When Gerry Heffernan asked him how he explained the presence of his DNA at the scene, Richter had the answer ready. He had
arrived at Honey Cottage and found her dead. She was still warm, he added. Mad with grief and shock, he had knelt by the bed
and kissed her face, leaving his DNA behind. Then he panicked and left and, once he had composed himself, he had tried to
go back to work as though nothing had happened. He had tried to block the whole thing out but it hadn’t worked. He kept seeing
Kirsten lying there, the flex from the bedside lamp twisted around her neck. But he hadn’t put it there. Someone else had
killed her. And he had no idea who that someone was.

Then Marion Blunning had seen him and virtually accused him of killing his beloved Kirsten. His world had collapsed and he
knew it would only be a matter of time before the police came looking for him. The only thing he could think of was to run
away.

Richter told his side of the story with a simple sincerity that almost had Wesley Peterson convinced. But Gerry Heffernan
seemed to have made up his mind. As the charges were read out to him, Stuart Richter collapsed against his solicitor’s shoulder,
his body shaking. The solicitor, obviously wishing he was elsewhere, pushed his client away gently and requested that he be
seen by a doctor. Heffernan agreed readily.

He’d agree to anything now he’d got his man.

Simon Jephson jumped up in alarm when he heard the noise. But then he realised it was only the sound of the key turning in
the lock. Julia was back.