Lesley Cookman - Murder to Music

‘Oh, not only with the ladies.’ George leant forward. ‘He thinks he knows everything about everything. That manager of his – the pub wouldn’t be nothing without her – yet he goes on about it as if he did it all. And I’ll tell you, the ladies don’t always like it. I’ve had a couple in here who say they wouldn’t go back.’

‘Why did he buy it?’ asked Fran, blowing froth.

‘Buy it? Lord above, he didn’t buy it! It was part of the estate. He lives in the old Court barn, now.’

‘Yes,’ said Libby, not wanting to admit that they’d been there. ‘Was it a big estate, then? I thought it was just the land between there and the coast road.’

‘His old man owned the whole village.’ George sat down on his own stool. ‘In the family, like. At least, I think so. All those cottages an’ all.’

‘But we met one person who apparently owned one of the cottages,’ said Libby.

‘Oh, yeah. Old man sold a load off over the years, as people died. You still looking into things up there? Shocking, innit? Them honour killings is it?’

‘I don’t think that’s been confirmed,’ said Fran.

‘Said on the news they was all Asian, the bodies, and all female. Stands to reason.’

‘Mmm.’ Libby drank more coffee and licked froth off her upper lip.

‘Well old man Weston won’t like that. Darkies buried on his land? He’ll go loopy.’

‘He’s racist?’ Libby was surprised. ‘But he seems to be quite friendly with another of the residents -’

‘Old Vindari? Yeah, only on the surface though, I bet,’ said George. ‘He’s all right, though. Got a couple of good restaurants.’

Libby and Fran agreed and fell silent.

‘So you’re involved, eh?’ George prompted.

‘Sort of,’ agreed Libby. ‘Although we’ve been told to stay out of it now.’

‘Getting too dangerous, is it?’ Seems to me you two like a bit of danger. I keep an eye on you in the paper. And that young Jane from the Mercury and her husband come in here sometimes. Haven’t see them for a bit, though.’

‘You won’t either. They’ve just had a baby girl, Imogen,’ said Libby.

‘Oh, that’s nice. Tell them George said congrats, won’t you?’

‘What did Colonel Weston’s father do?’ asked Fran, out of the blue. George and Libby looked surprised.

‘Do? I don’t reckon he did anything. Farmed the land a bit, although that wasn’t him, it was the tenant farmer, I think he had what they call business interests and he’d been in the war – course, most people his age had been. I think he just came home and played the landed gentry. Sent young Hugh off to boarding school, and then into the army.’

‘He’s a typical product of that sort of upbringing,’ said Libby.

‘Any brothers or sisters?’ asked Fran.

‘What Hugh? Not as far as I know. And what I do know’s general knowledge, anyway.’

‘Business interests,’ said Fran thoughtfully.

‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Libby, as another couple of customers came in and George went to serve them. ‘People like that always had business interests.’

‘I’d like to know what they were.’ Fran drained her mug. ‘Who’d know?’

‘Bloody hell, Fran! How do I know?’

‘Would you have to go to the chamber of commerce or something?’ Fran was staring at the bottles behind the bar not seeing them. ‘Or Rotary?’

‘I thought Rotary clubs were charitable organisations?’

‘But it’s all local businessmen, isn’t it? They’d know about other businessmen.’

‘I don’t think they’d particularly want to be asked questions like that.’

‘Solicitors,’ said Fran. ‘They always know. Ian said he’d been in touch with the firm that rented out White Lodge in the sixties, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, but we couldn’t go asking about Colonel Weston’s dad! What are you thinking? And why, anyway?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Fran, looking more normal. ‘I’ll have to think it through.’

‘You do that,’ said Libby, ‘and let me know when you get the answer.’

‘You do realise, don’t you,’ said Fran, ‘that Rosie and Hugh are about the same age. They could have known one another.’

‘Unlikely, isn’t it? The houses are quite far from one another, and Rosie didn’t live here, she only visited.’

Fran nodded. ‘Suppose so. Want another coffee?’

‘No thanks. I’ll get home and be a good little housewife.’

‘You’re not a wife.’

‘Good little house-concubine, then.’ Libby slid off the stool. ‘Come on.’

They waved goodbye to George.

‘Thanks for the information,’ Fran called, and George waved back.

‘Did Ian say when the cellar was bricked up?’ asked Fran, just as Libby was getting into her car.

‘I think Ben thought it was comparatively recent. In years, I mean. Don’t think it was done when Findon was killed.’

‘Oh, so you think he was murdered, too?’

‘Slip of the tongue.’

‘Someone, then,’ said Fran, unlocking her car, ‘knows about it. So the police should be able to track down who did it.’

‘Should they?’ said Libby doubtfully. ‘No one would admit to it, would they?’

‘No,’ acknowledged Fran, ‘but I feel sure they’ll be found.’

‘They?’

‘Whoever bricked up the cellar. And then – who told them to do it.’

‘But that’s got nothing to do with the honour killings.’ Libby was puzzled.

‘There’s got to be a link somewhere,’ said Fran, and got into her car.

‘WHAT LINK?’ LIBBY SAID out loud to herself as she drove home. ‘How can there be a link between Paul Findon, the bricked-up cellar and the bodies in the barn?’

She began to review the whole case in her head so thoroughly that she found herself outside number seventeen with little knowledge of how she got there.

First, there was Rosie and the dreams. Then Fran and Libby had visited the house and heard the music and discovered the grave. That was another thing, that grave. Why was it a new grave with an old body? And who laid the flowers? After that, they discovered that Rosie had actually been to the house. Then came the advent of Andrew, the discovery of the archives and of Rosie’s relationship with Paul Findon. Ian’s further revelation of the legacy, Andrew’s claim that he and Rosie had become rather intimate and Rosie’s new, strange attitude.

Almost completely unconnected was Libby’s discovery of the barn, Fran’s suspicions about it and finally, the discovery of the poor mutilated bodies. And Sophie’s missing friend, Rachita, of course.

No. She shook her head as she opened the door and Sidney shot between her legs. There was absolutely nothing to connect the two cases.

Except – Libby stopped and stared hard at the fireplace. All the bodies were on the same estate. That was a given, no one had questioned it, but why were they? Simply because the barn had lain semi-derelict for years and someone knew about it? That could mean anyone in Cherry Ashton, though. So that was a non-starter.

She wandered around the cottage trying to make some sort of sense of the chain of events, then picked up her basket and left the house again. She arrived at the Manor five minutes later.

‘Het,’ she said following her knock into the kitchen, ‘have you ever heard of a Colonel Weston?’

‘Weston?’ Hetty looked up from her old-fashioned yellow mixing bowl. ‘Weston. Rings a bell, but it ain’t an uncommon name, so I coulda known lots of Westons.’

‘Do you think Greg might know? His father was a Weston out at Cherry Ashton.’

‘Go and ask him, girl. You know where to find him.’