Ken McClure: Tangled Web

‘Good Morning, Mrs Marsh, he’s not been stripping furniture again, I hope,’ said Gordon.

‘Oh, Good Morning, Doctor, I didn’t see you there. No, it’s worse than that, God bless ‘im, the poor man’s dead. He was found dead at his work apparently.’

‘How awful,’ said Gordon. ‘What happened?’

‘The police aren’t saying. It was his neighbour who told me. Poor Mr Dawis, such a gentleman, he was.’

‘Dawis,’ repeated Gordon, bells ringing in his head. The woman had pronounced the name, da-wis; but the fact that he had died at work and the police were involved suggested suddenly that the name was, in fact, Dawes.’

‘Did your Mr Dawis work in Caernarfon, Mrs Marsh?’

‘Yes,’ replied the woman. ‘Why?’

‘At the hospital?’

‘I don’t rightly know what he did,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t think he ever said. We never spoke much, he was always out when I arrived, see. He just used to leave the money for me on the hall table. I think the last time I saw him was when I had to complain about the fumes. Remember?’

‘I do indeed,’ said Gordon. He was thinking that he couldn’t see Ranulph Dawes as the furniture-stripping type and the bells inside his head were still ringing. ‘You must have your own key for the place,’ he said.

‘Yes...’ agreed the woman, a note of puzzlement and caution creeping into her voice.

‘Could I have it?’

Blodwyn Marsh’s eyes opened wide. ‘I don’t rightly know,’ she stammered.

‘I’ll see that the police get it, I promise,’ said Gordon. ‘They’ll know what to do with it.’

‘Well, that would save me having to do it, I suppose. I don’t mind telling you, the news gave me quite a turn.’

‘You could do with a cup of tea,’ said Gordon solicitously. ‘I’ll walk you over to your house.’

Brushing aside Blodwyn Marsh’s protestations, which were weak enough to suggest that she was secretly pleased at the offer, Gordon insisted on accompanying her the few streets to her home where her husband came out to see what the matter was. ‘She’s had a bit of a shock,’ explained Gordon. ‘I think strong sweet tea is called for.’

Feeling that he’d done his good deed for the day, Gordon walked back to Main Street, the fingers of his right hand playing with the keys to Dawes’ house in his jacket pocket. Just what the hell was it that Dawes had been doing that involved fuming chemicals, he wondered? Apart from that, he had been living in furnished, rented accommodation. The furniture wasn’t his to play around with, even if he had been into DIY. The intriguing question was, could he have been carrying out some kind of experimental work at home? Something to do with the cloning business, something that he couldn’t do openly at the IVF unit?

Gordon supposed that the police would get round to looking the place over but, at the moment, they were more interested in making inquiries about Dawes’ movements. He toyed with the idea of taking a look for himself as he descended the harbour steps. He knew that it was something that he shouldn’t even be contemplating — Davies would probably go ballistic, but he found the temptation just too great. He started up the Land Rover and set out for Aberlyn.

It was only four miles from Felinbach to Aberlyn but Gordon had seldom had occasion to visit it. It was a small village, much like Feli itself, sitting on the shores of the Menai, looking out towards Anglesey, but access to it was by a single-lane road that led down from the main road. You didn’t drive through Aberlyn on the way to anywhere else.

Gordon was unlucky enough to meet a tractor coming towards him about a mile from the edge of the village. He had to back up nearly three hundred metres before he found a suitable cutting to move into. The tractor driver drove by without any recognition of Gordon’s action. ‘Have a nice day,’ murmured Gordon. He drove on down to the village and parked the Land Rover well away from the houses on a patch of shingle leading down to the shore. In North Wales, Land Rovers were so common that they were practically invisible. They were the standard form of transport for the sheep farming community and also much in evidence for mountain training and rescue organisations, not to mention the Coast Guard Service and the Electricity Board. His would not attract any undue attention.

The tag on the key ring said 13, Beach Road . It suggested to Gordon a cottage in one of the narrow streets fronting the water but, as it turned out, Beach Road stretched a good bit inland and the houses on the outlying part of it were really quite large. Number thirteen turned out to be a sandstone, Victorian family house on two floors, possibly built for a retiring businessman in its day. It had clearly seen better times; its gardens were unkempt and its roof looked as if it could have done with some attention but all the same, Gordon was impressed with it. It had character.

At first, he walked past the house, feeling it possible that he might be being observed from the neighbouring house he’d just passed — pedestrians would not be too common on this road. On the way past number 13, he noted that there was a side door to the garden; this was on the blind side of the neighbouring house. He decided to try for entry there, hoping that one of the three keys on the ring might fit the back door, which again, would be sheltered from view.

He was lucky: the side door to the garden opened after a turn of the iron ring handle and a hefty push with his shoulder to clear beech leaves and other debris piled up behind it. He stood for a few moments after closing the door in the wall behind him and took in the broody silence of the place. He wasn’t sure if the unpleasant atmosphere he sensed was associated with knowing that Dawes had lived here or down to the house in its own right, but he certainly didn’t like it. He walked round the back and found that the long key on the ring fitted the kitchen door. It opened with a slight shudder due to an imperfect fit in the frame and Gordon stepped inside to a smell of dampness and old carpets.

He could see that Mrs Marsh had obviously not stayed to carry out her cleaning duties today. Breakfast dishes from the previous day still lay in the sink and a packet of cereal stood on the draining board, the back of which advertised subsidised air fares to Paris through the collection of tokens on packet lids. ‘Guess not, Ran,’ Gordon muttered, as he started a tour of the ground floor rooms, not entirely sure of what he was looking for but alert to everything.

It was clear that Dawes had only made use of three rooms on the ground floor — the kitchen, a large bay-windowed room he’d used as a sitting room — evidenced by a portable television and various books and magazines left lying around, and a small study. There were three other rooms on this level, including a dining room, but the lack of any personal objects in them suggested that Dawes hadn’t used them. In fact, a general absence of personal possessions made Gordon wonder why Dawes had needed or wanted such a large house in the first place. It must have been like living in a Victorian museum. It even had a stuffed owl in a glass case sitting on top of an old upright piano.

One thing he realised as he neared the end of his tour was that he had seen no evidence of any recently stripped or re-varnished furniture in any of the rooms, but then he hadn’t expected to. Such an activity would have been out of character for the man, especially as he had so little in the way of worldly goods.

Gordon returned to the study and sat down behind the desk. The desk itself was an old oak twin-pedestal model with an apple tree carved on the front panel and with two deep, brass-handled drawers on either side of the knee hole. He pulled each out in turn, reluctant to touch anything unnecessarily, just as he had been with Thomas’s personal things at the hospital, but this time he reminded himself that it really didn’t matter. Dawes was dead.