Buried With Honours: A DCI Thatcher Yorkshire Crime Thriller Page 10

  “Lots of Americans?” I asked.

  “Oh, by the coachload. We put on the whole show for them and all,” she chuckled. “I don’t think we help with any of those English stereotypes, but if it means they come and spend a few quid on some local ale, I’m not fussing.”

  I grinned up at her. “Nor should you.”

  “The inn will stay open, though, won’t it?” her daughter asked, peering around her mother’s arm. “It has to. You can’t let all of that lot go without pay.”

  “I’m sure they’ll come to something, love,” her mother assured her, patting her on the arm. “They’ll not let any of them suffer, that’s for sure, and in any case, I doubt it would be closed long, would it?”

  “Hopefully not,” Mills answered.

  “We’ll do our best to ensure not,” I added. The daughter nodded, tucking her hair from her face and walked away, back over to the bar. “She’s a fan of the inn?”

  “We all are. It’s a lovely old place. But she’s friends with Daisy, and she doesn’t half worry about the girl. Did you meet Daisy?”

  “We did.”

  “Bright little thing. I think they’re aiming to teach her up so that she can take over the ropes one day, run that place. She’s more than able to, and the baroness has always had such a soft spot for her.”

  Mills shifted in his seat, looking up at the landlady. “Do you think she’d have preferred her son to marry a local girl?”

  The landlady shrugged. “Who knows what goes on in her mind? She’d say so now, but I imagine that’s more out of dislike for Sara than anything else. She still cares about it all, money and family and all that. Sara’s got both. Who knows why she doesn’t like her? Must be hard for her, though,” she added sympathetically. “Her only child is ill, and her only family now is practically a stranger to her.”

  “We heard that her son was in hospital,” I remarked. “Has he been ill for long?”

  “Too long for one his age, I can tell you that. In and out of hospital, he’s been for a few years now, but earlier this year, around January, I think it was. A nerve issue,” she told us. “Got some long name I can’t remember, but the poor lad has been in a lot of pain and his immune system’s shot to pieces, so they’ve kept him there since. It was around then he got the will sorted out, just in case.”

  “Do you think that Sara will make a good, whatever her title would be exactly?”

  The landlady blew out a long, slow breath. “Yes and no. She’s a clever woman, got her head screwed on right, and I think she can do good things here.”

  “But?” I prompted when she trailed off.

  “She’s not one of us,” she answered simply. “Now, is there anything I can get for the two of you?”

  “No, thank you very much.”

  “Not a problem. You warm yourselves, lads. I hoped you parked close,” she added before bustling back to the bar.

  At the thought of the car and how far away we’d left it down by the river, Mills blanched a little.

  “Maybe it’ll get warmer before we need to leave,” I said hopefully. Surely the closer to midday we got, the warmer it would get.

  Mills made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and cradled his mug in his hands. “What do you make of all that?” he asked with a subtle nod in the landlady’s direction. “The baroness and her daughter-in-law?”

  “There’s not much love there, but we saw that yesterday,” I said, sipping my drink. “It’ll be a rough time if Miss Graham does inherit, for the baroness and the locals, by the sound of things.”

  “She kept her own name,” Mills observed. “Didn’t take on the Flitting mantle. That can’t help sway things in her favour, surely? Not if she’s taking over the estate.”

  “I’d like to disagree with you here, but I’m afraid in families and situations such as these, you’re right. I wonder why she didn’t.”

  “Maybe the Grahams are big cheeses back in Canada,” Mills suggested.

  “Maybe. But here, the Flitting name means a lot. To the locals as well, we can’t overlook that.”

  We sat quietly for a moment, sipping our blissfully hot drinks and looking at the fire.

  “Do you think—?” Mills began, breaking off awkwardly.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Do you think it’s connected somehow? Riggs, the baroness, all that.”

  I sat back in my chair, the leather creaking, and swirled the contents of my mug around.

  “On paper, no, there’s no connection. But I know what you mean,” I quickly added reassuringly. “Riggs comes to this village, with all of this unease surrounding it, and ends up dead. There might be a link there, but it’d be a bloody faint one. I have no idea of firstly how we’d find it and then how we’d bring it before the court. Or Sharp.”

  Mills hummed, nodding as he looked over to the bar where the landlady and her daughter stood cleaning glasses and talking quietly to each other.

  “I can’t shake the feeling, though,” he muttered.

  Nor could I, in truth. It hung in the back of my head like an annoying itch that I couldn’t reach. There was something about it all, the baroness and Sara Graham that made me want to stay and poke around, but how any of it would draw back to Riggs was a mystery, and we couldn’t afford to waste time and bear Sharp’s inevitable scolding, not with the military watching us from afar and Sybil and her fiancée looking for answers.

  “Let’s carry on for now,” I decided, “and if there is a link, no doubt it’ll draw us back here in due course, anyway. For now, the village is connected, and the baroness owns the village, and that’s good enough of a link for me to say that we’ll be back here in due course.”

  Mills nodded, looking pleased with that decision, and he drank the rest of his hot chocolate, then took both empty mugs over to the bar as I rose and pulled my coat back on, ready to brace the cold again. Walking along the river had made sense at first, but now I was annoyed about our trek back down to the car. At least it would count as some good exercise, if nothing else. As I waited for Mills, who ducked into the bathroom, I looked at some of the pictures on the wall, stopping at one.

  I recognised the baroness in the image, about fifty years or so younger, standing outside the pub with a young man, arm in arm.

  “That’s her brother,” a small voice joined me. The landlady’s daughter, standing by my shoulder. “He was to inherit, but he died.”

  “I thought she was an only child,” I murmured.

  The girl shrugged, and I looked back up at the image, at the brother’s face and found something familiar about it, something that I couldn’t quite peg. He was younger than she was by some years. That much was clear. I wondered what the story was there, knew that old families always had stories knocking about.

  “She must be anxious about losing the place,” I muttered.

  “She’s been looking after the estate and the village since she was my age,” the girl said. “You’d be scared to lose something you’d spent so long looking after, especially to someone who doesn’t much seem to care about it all.” A touch of bitterness tinged her voice.

  I studied the picture some more, unable to pin down what about the boy looked so familiar. Lavinia Flitter had been baroness here for years, likely because her brother died. Handing it over to a stranger wouldn’t be easy. And for the locals, seeing that happen to a woman they clearly all admitted wouldn’t be easy either. I wondered what they would do to keep it from happening.

  Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with Major Riggs, so I turned around and left the photographs, the girl wiping down our table before going back to her mother. Mills returned shortly, looking very annoyed at the prospect of heading back outside, but needs must.

  “I was wondering if it would be worth checking out the inn again?” he suggested when he joined me. “See if there’s anything fresh that we missed yesterday.”

  “Could be,” I muttered. “What I really want to do is check out more of the river, but
we can’t do that without your nose freezing off and trespassing over private land.”

  Mills shook his head. “So, we head back to the station?”

  I sighed, unable to see what our other options were. “I suppose so. Nobody here’s got anything interesting to offer us about Riggs. Seems like he arrived, slept, left, and came back again. Then somewhere in the middle of the night, he was murdered and dumped in the river, and we’ve got absolutely nothing on why or how or who.”

  I could hear the annoyance in my voice, sharp and unforgiving. I hated cases like these. More often than not, they went unsolved, an undeserving end for the victims and their loved ones and a forever hanging reminder over the men and women who’d struggled to piece together enough clues and evidence to find their killer. Mills studied my glowering face, a faint crease between his eyebrows. Then he nodded.

  “After that hot chocolate, I could probably manage another search along the river,” he said. “We need to go that way anyway, so we might as well have another gander.”

  I smiled at him. “You’re a good one, aren’t you, Isaac? Alright then, let’s hope a bit of warmth and sugar has made us better detectives.”

  Leaving the village so soon felt annoying, like I knew we would be back sooner rather than later, but we had no reason to stay. None of the villagers had any information for us, nothing that we could use to find out what happened to Riggs anyway, so leaving it was.

  We said goodbye to the landlady and her daughter, who waved from behind the bar and walked back out into the brisk weather.

  “I’ll buy you a proper hat,” I told Mills, watching his hair blow around his head. “For your birthday.”

  “I’m surprised you even know when my birthday is,” he commented.

  “Hurtful. Of course, I do. It’s on the calendar and everything.”

  Mills looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Who put it on the calendar, though? Was it you?”

  He knew me too well. It had been Lena.

  “Hush up, and let’s get moving,” I dismissed his question, walking away from the pub.

  Twelve

  Thatcher

  We didn’t make it very far. A few metres from the pub, a voice flagged down us, and we turned to spot a long-legged man running our way, one hand on his head to keep his hat from falling off as he ran over the uneven road. We stayed put, waiting for him to reach us, and a few strides later, he was there, bent over double and panting, his face flushed red.

  “Sorry,” he breathed, holding up a hand in a “please wait” gesture.

  “You alright?” Mills asked, looking down curiously at the man, whose sudden and strange arrival seemed to have distracted him from the cold.

  “Yeah.” He straightened up, offering us a smile. He was young, around the same age as Daisy or the pub landlady’s daughter, and had clearly just come from the nearby farm, fresh-faced and strong.

  “I’m Jim Pinnick,” he said, lifting a hand. “I heard you were here about that soldier. The one from the inn?”

  “Hi Jim,” I replied after sharing a quick glance with Mills. “You heard about him?”

  “Saw him,” Jim said. “Saturday night, I saw him in the carpark.”

  “What time was this?” I asked.

  Jim deliberated for a few seconds. “Not long after nine—maybe half-past? I was up there myself, dropping off some eggs and stuff for their breakfasts.”

  “Can you tell us exactly what you saw, Jim?” I asked, drawing him over to the side of the road.

  He nodded. “I went in through the back door, dropped off the stuff in the kitchen and when I went to lock the car, I saw him. He’d just pulled up, jumped out of the car and headed through the front door.”

  “Did you see him leave again?” I asked.

  “No. I left once I dropped everything off, don’t like to keep the parents waiting, you know? But we can see the inn from the house,” he said, pointing along down the road. “And I was out with the horse in the stable later on. The mare was pregnant. And I didn’t see him leave.”

  “What time?” Mills asked.

  “Eleven, or roundabout. We don’t have a clock in the stable.”

  I raised an eyebrow, turning to share a look with Mills. He gave a small shrug, and I looked back at Jim.

  “Could you show us?” I asked.

  He lifted his chin, nodding. “This way,” he said, leading us along the road. “I was hoping I’d be able to help. When I heard he’d died, I thought, weird, I could have met him, you know?”

  I let Mills be the one to make polite conversation as we followed him down the lane and into the fields, to where a farm stood, a big stone house and surrounding barns. Jim, so far, was the only person who had actually seen Riggs that night. Saw him get back to the inn, if nothing else, which helped to narrow down our window. But nobody saw him leave. That was sitting oddly with me.

  Jim had slowed his pace as we walked, his gangly legs carrying him along at a bizarre speed, down through the farm and up the sloping hill to the stables. The building was warm and smelt of the hay that was strewn along the floor. As he walked us to the other side of the building, Jim stopped and peered over a stall door.

  “Looking good,” he muttered. Mills and I joined him and found ourselves looking at a baby horse curled up by its mother. “Came last night.” He walked to the back doors. “I stayed here the whole time, had these open.” He pushed the sliding door to one side and stood at the threshold.

  I stepped over, standing next to him. Despite the fields in between, the hedges and bushes that marked out sections of field and farm, the view was a clear shot up to the inn. I could see the front door from here, clear as day.

  “Is the view as good at night?” Mills asked.

  “I had the lights on here, and they’ve always got lights on up there in case of weary travellers or summat.” Jim turned to look at us, his hands on his hips. “Either way, I’d have seen if the door opened, and someone came out. They’d have had a torch as well if they were smart.”

  Riggs was smart.

  “You said you took your deliveries to the side door,” I said. “Is that the one that opens into the carpark?”

  Jim shook his head. “No, that’s the side door. The back door opens from the garden into a storage room next to the kitchen. I always take it through there so that I don’t trek mud all through the house.”

  Back door? Interesting. One look at Mills told me that he shared my thought.

  “Thank you, Jim,” I said, giving him a smile. “You’ve been the most help from anyone since we got here.”

  He flushed, chest rising with pride. “So, the running was worth it then?”

  “I’d say so.” He chuckled and looked back over the view with a sigh.

  “I imagine there would have been times you weren’t looking out,” I remarked.

  “Not often.” Jim scratched his head. “There’s not much I could do, really. It’s a waiting game. The foal came around one, and I was home by two. Before then, I just hung here, sat there.” He pointed to a stool that rested by the doors.

  That fitted with the window for the time of death that Crowe had given us. So, Riggs had managed to leave but not by the front door. I wondered if the back door was common knowledge or if a guest would even have the foresight to leave through it. I looked back up at the inn. We couldn’t see the side door from down here either, protected as it was by the tall hedge that served as a fence around the carpark. Mills and I would be heading back there after all, then.

  “We’ll get out of your way now, Jim,” I said, offering him a hand. He shook it, his grip surprisingly strong.

  “Can you find your way back?”

  “We’ll figure it out. Thank you for your help.”

  “I hope it does help,” he replied, sticking his hands in his pockets.

  We said goodbye, leaving a card with him in case he needed to get in touch with us, and left the stable, peering quietly in at the foal again before striding out through the farm
and back onto the lane.

  “Thank God for Jim,” Mills muttered as we walked back up towards the village.

  “I know, someone actually had something useful for us.”

  “Think it’ll make a difference?” Mills asked. “If Riggs went out through the side or back door, that doesn’t mean he left something behind.”

  “I know, but it’s worth a look. He was smart enough to leave the code for us, after all.” If he did it on purpose.

  Mills didn’t look overly convinced but didn’t offer up any other argument as we made our way up the road. The inn rose above us, and as we reached the top of the hill, I walked towards the front door and turned around, looking back across the fields. I could see Jim’s stable from here, now that I knew what it was. And I could see the doors open, Jim standing in the space. He lifted his hand in a wave before sliding the doors shut. Clear sight across the field and, even in the dark, the light from inside the stable meant that Riggs would have been able to see across. Maybe that’s why he took another door, I thought, to avoid being seen by anyone.

  “Side door first or back door?” Mills asked.

  “Side door,” I said, leaving the front stoop and following him round into the carpark, over to the door that Helen had spoken to us from yesterday. Without her here, we had a proper look around, checking the ground for any shoe scuffs or, if we were lucky, blood. The gates were fine, a bit squeaky, but nothing had been broken or bent out of shape. We walked through the back one, out into the garden, an unexplored space so far.

  The garden stretched all the way to the end of the property, vanishing over the hill beyond. The hills and moors rose up on the horizon, the clouds hanging low over them. A stone path ran from the inn down along to a pond to the side, larger sections of flattened earth with tables and chairs set out for outdoor dining, not that they’d be in much use right now. We walked into the garden, surrounded by neatly kept rose bushes and looked back at the inn. There were two doors leading into the garden. A set of glass doors leading out from the sitting area inside, no doubt for the guests to use, and a small, unnoticeable door, partially hidden by ivy, that must be the one Jim told us about, leading into the kitchen.