Caroline Graham - A Ghost in the Machine

Only Doris Crudge had reacted with genuine distress. The next day she brought Benny over some special chocolates. Really expensive ones that she’d been keeping for her sister’s birthday.

Benny was in the kitchen with Kate and Mallory. She took the box, put it aside and carried on talking. Doris was gobsmacked. Though familiar with the saying that someone or other had suddenly become “a completely different person” she had always thought it meant they’d had a sort of makeover, like on the telly. How else could a human being become completely different? Yet here it was happening before her very eyes.

Benny – shy, hesitant, anxious-to-please Benny – was actually arguing with Mallory over Dennis’s funeral.

“Honestly, Ben,” he was saying, “does it really matter?”

“Matter? Of course it matters.”

“The vicar thought…space…you know?”

“Dennis hated the idea of cremation.” Here Benny actually thumped one of her clenched fists on the table. “He had this terrible dream about being trapped in his coffin and coming round in the furnace.”

Mallory thought that sounded like a typical Benny Frayle dream. Then understood – of course! This is about having a body to exhume and re-examine when the non-existent murderer was finally caught.

But she was so very distressed and had been through a terrible ordeal. What did the way Dennis’s mortal remains were disposed of really matter? On the other hand, if a cremation was carried out it might help to put a stop to all these terrible imaginings.

“I’ll see what I can sort out, Ben.”

“Thank you,” said Benny. She got up, briskly abandoning the breakfast table. “I’m going over to the flat now to start on my campaign. I think the London papers first, don’t you?”

“I’m not sure,” said Kate. “More notice would be taken should your letter be published. On the other hand, they do get a huge amount so the chances of it happening are much less.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Benny. “Better start locally. And then after lunch I must talk to the police.”

Kate and Mallory exchanged wary glances. Doris, equally on edge, sat down at the table and poured herself some dregs of coffee.

She said, “I’m not really up to date on things here, Ben. What’s actually happening?”

“Kate will explain. We’re all working together on this.”

The police proved to be a tough option. No difficulty in dropping into Causton station at any time to have a chat. But great difficulty in speaking directly, face to face, with a senior officer in the Criminal Investigation Department. But surely, argued Benny, with the very pleasant-sounding woman on the other end of the telephone, as they were the people who would be dealing with the subsequent inquiry there was little point in her talking to anyone else.

Benny listened to the response for a moment, then switched off for it was plainly negative. Odd phrases filtered through. “…in the first instance…usual procedure…then your statement would be…an interview with…” She hung up. Now, what?

Benny, though normally hesitant, fluttery and somewhat gullible, was not a fool. She knew how she was regarded by those who did not know her well, which would certainly include anyone she spoke to at the police station. The chances were that if she simply turned up prepared to argue and stand her ground they wouldn’t take her seriously. They might ask – even force – her to leave.

What she needed was someone to vouch for her. A person who was on her side, obviously. And with some standing in the community. She thought of Dr. Cornwell. He had had a practice in Causton for over twenty years. The chances were high that some of his patients were police personnel. Perhaps one or two might be from the higher echelons.

Benny reached for her address book, then hesitated. She remembered the doctor’s last visit to Appleby House when she had practically accused him of incompetence, of misdiagnosing Dennis’s cause of death. He had not seemed to take offence but such an incident would hardly prejudice him in her favour. It might be safer to look elsewhere.

What about Hargreaves, Carey’s solicitors, an extremely respected and long-established firm in Great Missenden? The senior partner, Horace de Witt, had looked after her legal affairs for over thirty years and knew Benny well. He would be even better than Dr. Cornwell, being familiar to the police from appearances in court.

Pleased at her own cleverness Benny dialled the number, only to find that Horace had just left for a holiday in Guadeloupe and would be back in two weeks, just in time for his retirement party.

Benny sighed, made some tea and sat down to drink it. Who else could there possibly be? There was the vicar, of course. Heaven knew, he was respectable, but he was also new to the parish and so not really knowledgeable as to Benny’s finer character traits. She decided it would be kinder not to ask him to vouch for her.

More to give her mind a break than out of a wish to read, she picked up the Causton Echo. The murder of that poor old pensioner over at Badger’s Drift had still not been solved. The police were urgently seeking the public’s help. Two men had been seen getting into a G reg. green Sierra on the outskirts of the village shortly after six on the evening of…

Benny read on. At the end was an emergency phone number. She was about to put the paper down when, with a tremble of excitement, she recognised that she was now looking at a perfect means to an end. She found a Biro, drew a circle round the number and reached for the telephone.

Detective Sergeant Gavin Troy was entertaining himself by imagining his chief’s response when he showed in the middle-aged woman now trailing along behind him on the third floor of Causton police station. Responding to their appeal for information she had refused to speak to anyone but the officer in charge of the Badger’s Drift investigation.

How old she was was anybody’s guess. The almost fluorescent pinky orange hair was plainly not her own. It looked like the spun, varnished stuff glued to the heads of little girls’ dolls. Her dress was a muddy brown-green colour, swarming with black wriggly things. There was an awful lot of it and it was tied up in the middle with a length of shiny, pink ribbed plastic. She looked like a camouflaged bundle of washing. Troy opened a door inscribed “Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby” and followed her in. This was one interview he was not prepared to miss.

Benny regarded the man getting to his feet behind the large desk. She was not nervous. Her cause was just. But if it had not been she would certainly have been nervous. He was a very large man. Not fat but bulky. Solid in his build and in the way he looked at you. Very straight and direct from beneath thick, heavy brows.

“Miss Frayle, sir.”

The man introduced himself and shook Benny’s outstretched hand. “Thank you for coming in. Please sit down. I understand you have some information for us.”

“Yes I do,” replied Benny. She wished the thin, younger man had left them alone. She hadn’t taken at all to his weaselly profile and high-standing brush of stiff, red hair. Although he had been perfectly polite she had sensed hidden laughter. Unkindness too.

“Do you have any objection if we tape what you have to say?”

“Of course not,” replied Benny, thinking how encouraging such efficiency was. “But I’m afraid I don’t have any information regarding that terrible business at Badger’s Drift.”

“But I understood—”

“Yes,” replied Benny. “I do have information about a murder. But it is not that murder.”

“Is it something presently under investigation?”

“Not yet,” replied Benny. “Which is why I’m here.”