Chapter 8 - Fiona
Number seven was a tidy cottage in a row of eight. A cat was lazing on the roof in the fading sunlight, and dainty lace curtains took the place of nets behind the squared window panes. The small front lawn was neatly bordered with dwarf begonias and fuschias at regular intervals, but the effect was too military to please the eye.
Dean's stomach rumbled as the delicious aroma of barbecue wafted from one of the back gardens. He looked at Helford with a pitiful expression, and the older man smiled.
The gaunt figure of Fiona opened the door abruptly, a tight-lipped scarecrow wearing a brown plastic apron over her summer dress. She looked irritated, as though she had been interrupted in the middle of something. The detectives identified themselves, and held up their badges. Her attitude changed, and she beckoned them inside, away from the gaze of her neighbours. Dean found this amusing as there was no-one in the Close to see them.
"Yes, how can I help?" she demanded, as soon as the door was closed. They were standing in a tiny front lounge, which seemed filled with a three-piece suite in floral tapestry, and other low wooden furniture. She did not invite them to sit down, so they remained standing.
"You are Miss Fiona Carvell, the secretary at the Parish Council?" Helford asked, making it sound vaguely like an accusation. "Yes," she replied, "What is all this about?" Her tone was aggressive. Helford could see that this lady would not easily be intimidated. He decided to lay his cards on the table quickly, not least for the sake of Dean's stomach.
"Miss Carvell, we were called to Southcliff Hall earlier after a report of a body in the basement." He watched with satisfaction as her composure cracked, and her eyes widened in astonishment. "Please sit down, we need to ask you some questions."
Fiona sat down with a thud on the edge of the sofa. The officers took the two armchairs without being asked, and took out their notebooks. "A body - in Southcliff Hall - ?" Fiona spluttered, as if she had been told that a blue whale had been found in a bathroom at Buckingham Palace.
"What time did you leave work this evening?"
"About ten past five."
"Who was still in the building when you left?"
"The Clerk, Mr Goswell, and the Amenities Manager, Mr Tanner. Oh, I think he had one of his lads with him. I'm sure - yes, I'm sure everyone else had left before me."
Helford was glad that at least Miss Carvell was used to giving accurate information, and answered automatically with no hint of calculation in her responses. She would make an excellent witness, if she had seen anything.
"You live just around the corner from Mr Gerald Chewter, please can you tell me the last time you saw him?"
"Mr Chewter? He doesn't work for the Council any more. He - ah - retired. At the end of last year."
"So I understand. But you may have seen him since, perhaps in the corner shop, or when he dropped in to say hello to his old colleagues?" Helford was doing his 'Act Dumb' performance again.
"Yes, well, he did come in to the offices once or twice, wanting to help Mr Goswell ease into the job. But he just said 'Hello' to me, that was all. I don't see him locally."
"Did you like him?"
"That is an improper question, officer. Mr Chewter is entitled to his privacy. Why are you asking these questions about him?"
"We have reason to believe that the body found in the basement is Mr Chewter's." Helford waited for his words to have their effect.
Fiona gaped at him. "Mr Chewter? Whatever was he doing in the basement? How did he get in? He should have handed his keys back when he left! I mean, I'm sorry if the poor man felt so badly that he decided to take his own life, but really - in the basement of Southcliff Hall! It's - its - disgraceful!"
Dean was beginning to feel light-headed from hunger, and the tempting smell of the barbecue next door wasn't helping. He had a sudden urge to giggle at this skinny woman's outrage. He concentrated very hard on his notebook and kept his face down as Helford continued the questioning.
"Could you tell me who had keys to the basement, and in particular the archive rooms?"
"Yes, I have a full set of keys, so does Mr Goswell, and also Mr Tanner. Wait, though, you tell me Mr Chewter let himself into the basement? Perhaps he kept a key - but I'm sure - dear me, perhaps he intended to do this all along. In the morning I must check Mr Goswell's keys, in case any are missing. Mr Goswell is very lax about locking his desk, anyone could have taken his key without too much trouble."
Unaware that she had just incriminated every one of her colleagues in a murder investigation, Miss Carvell sat upright with her hands folded on her lap. She had regained her composure now, and tilted her head to one side waiting for any further questions. Helford concluded that she was either lacking in imagination or a very clever murderess. "Oh well," he thought, "Here we go again. At least she's not the fainting kind."
"We have reason to believe that Mr Chewter was murdered."
Miss Carvell sat perfectly still. Dean looked up at her from his notebook, and then looked at Helford. Silence reigned. The clock ticked, and one of the neighbours laughed loudly in the next garden.
Finally she spoke. "So I suppose you will be all over Southcliff Hall, looking into everything, and getting under our feet. The Council business must go on, you know - whatever's happened."
Helford was astonished. He had never come across such breath-taking single-mindedness.
"We have set up an investigation room in Mr Goswell's office, and we will require your full co-operation in this investigation, Miss Carvell. If you can tell us anything now that you think may be relevant, I would appreciate it." He waited.
"Of course I will co-operate with the police. I will get in to the office early tomorrow and start organising the files you will need," she stated grimly.
Helford wondered just how she would know which files he would need. Never mind - tomorrow he could start work preventing this steely female from picking and choosing what he found out. Clearly he would need to exert his full authority on her - he determined to get a search warrant without delay.
He briefly asked her opinion of Harry Tanner, which produced nothing helpful, and moved on to James Goswell. Here he detected a restraint in her answers - she claimed to have nothing bad to say against him, but she stiffened and seemed unhappy discussing him.
He wondered how old Fiona was. Her clothes and manner made her seem like an uptight school mistress from another era, but she couldn't be more than fifty - perhaps she pined secretly for a little romantic attention from the new Clerk. How often he had come across the syndrome: employees with passionate feelings for their bosses, teenagers in love with their teachers, spinsters swooning over the new vicar - it was the lot of the man in authority to have such an effect on the more impressionable female. Was Fiona impressionable? Repressed, definitely. In love with her boss? It was easy to see that James Goswell was a more likely object of desire than Gerald Chewter.
Finally he turned to the most interesting possibility on his list of initial suspects. "Please give me your views on Mrs Coulthard," he asked.
Fiona's mouth twitched primly. "She is a very capable RFO. Our jobs do not overlap a great deal, so I cannot say I know her personally to any degree," she responded, turning her gaze slightly away from Helford's face.
"When Mr Chewter left his employment with the Council, was there any bad feeling, any parting words for example, between him and Mrs Coulthard? She has told me herself the circumstances of his resignation."
The bony face of the lady on the sofa sneered just a little, and she replied dismissively, "Mrs Coulthard made a great deal of fuss, she had already had quite enough sympathy in the weeks before she made her complaint against Mr Chewter, and in my opinion she just wanted to remain the centre of attention. Her husband had left her, why I do not wish to know, and she wanted to pretend that another man was showing an interest in her. I'm sure he only made a few remarks to bolster her ego, and she took his complim
ents in the wrong spirit. That is what he told me, and I had no reason to doubt him. He was perfectly gentlemanly to me, and never behaved improperly. Perhaps that is because I maintain proper and respectful boundaries in the office environment."
"Or perhaps it's because you're a spiteful cat," thought Dean, making his notes. "Even Chewter wouldn't have touched you with a barge pole."
Helford remained impassive, jotting a brief note on his pad. "Thank you, Miss Carvell, that will be all for tonight. We will be at Southcliff Hall early tomorrow morning, and I will be needing access to every room and file. We are unclear yet as to motive, so we must leave no stone unturned." He rather hoped this would alarm her, and flag up anything she had to hide - or anything she would try to hide out of loyalty to her boss or the Council. People who feared discovery were so anxious to conceal certain evidence they might as well mark it with red ink in huge letters - if it didn't get offered to him in the first place, he wanted to know why immediately.
They took their leave of her and walked to the end of Edge Close to see where Chewter's house stood in relation to Fiona's. They could see it on the opposite side of Edge Lane, facing them on a corner. The road turning in front of it was a dusty mess, where even now a few construction vans were pulling out to go home at the end of a long day.
So this was the famous Development, the great hope of Pebbleton's future. Certainly it commanded plenty of acreage - where there had once been nothing but wooded fields, allotments and the odd smallholding behind Edge Lane, hidden from view by hedges and trees. Now Egron had acquired a massive area, and were rapidly laying out roads to accommodate housing and shopping centres, and to the right, flung along the cliff top, the beginnings of a holiday complex to include a swimming dome and numerous attractions. The Frayminster Guardian carried a story every week, following the construction project. It was still in Phase One, but even from here the policemen could see steel girders outlining future large structures. At this time of year, work was moving ahead rapidly.
"Bet it's noisy here during the day," Dean remarked. "And dusty."
"Quite," Helford agreed. "But look - see this side of the corner? A little newsagents-cum-grocers. What's the betting Miss Fiona Carvell pops in there regularly, and bumps into Mr Chewter from time to time? Shall we ask?"
They strolled down to the corner shop and Dean fished a pound coin from his pocket. "Starving," he said sheepishly when Helford looked at him. "Oh, your Mum is going to give you what-for. Ruining your dinner," Helford grinned. "Actually she'll give me what-for. But I won't mind if she gives me a slice of her rich fruit cake to go with it."
"Sir......!" Dean groaned at the mention of cake. They entered the shop and Dean was allowed to buy a snack and stuff it into his mouth before Helford claimed the shopkeeper as a witness. He established that Miss Carvell was a regular customer, then asked: "Are you familiar with the gentleman who lives over the road in that house?" The man raised an eyebrow and replied "You 'Press'?"
"Press? No, police." They showed their badges. "Ah," the man relented. "Had your lot in here earlier - uniform. Told them all I could - he ain't been in for his paper this mornin'. Usually pays me today - owes me a week now. Ain't seen him, not even watching them lorries. Always stood there outside his house, he is, morning or afternoon, watching all the comings and goings, like he was supervising it. Must be hard on 'im, having to leave it all before the big day."
"The big day?"
"When Council decided it would go ahead - worked hard for it, he had, as Parish Clerk. Still, he didn't look fed up, I must say - looked like he was enjoying it all, which was fair-minded of 'im. Not every man can do all the work and see another take the prize."
Helford was baffled by this view. "Would he have benefited, then, if he'd still been in office when the Council made the decision?"
"Course he would - public office like that, gotta get a backhander or two for a big 'un like that. Imagine all them contracts - never mind the glory of bein' the man in charge when it all gets opened. Won't be no Mayor of Frayminster cuts the ribbon on that, not likely - it'll be Parish Clerk, I reckon. We've always liked to keep it local, here on the Edge."
Helford blinked. Either this man knew of dark and dodgy deals associated with Egron's Development, or he had a jaded view of local government. But it was the last part that confused him most. "The Edge?" he enquired.
The man looked him up and down. "You bin here less than forty years, I reckon, or you'd know - we called it the Edge when we was nippers. Pebbleton, that's over there," he jerked his thumb towards Miss Carvell's side of Edge Lane, "But this side is The Edge. Old families, keepin' the land, and our families workin' for 'em - that's all there was, till now. Some said it was the river divided us, but it were more than that - they were a different class, over there," the thumb jerked again, "and we knew where we was best off. Did alright, we did, out of Clandecys and Monkfords and Acres. Nothin' left now," he finished sadly, "most of 'em dead, land all sold."
"River?" Dean asked, fascinated. "I grew up here, and I never heard of a river."
"Gone underground, it has, don't recall seeing any of it over ground since I were a teenager. Ran along this side of Edge Lane, used to be like a little brook. Don't know how it happened, but it just drained to nothin', and now it's so far down they reckoned it was all right to build this side. This shop, built in 'seventies. Same all along, nearly. Mr Chewter's house, see it's set back a bit? That was older, had a lovely view once before they put these up. Had the brook running round the front. Imagine, looking at that and then looking right out over the cliff, and the sea. Best house here, it were, apart from the big ones, o' course."
Helford wanted to take some notes, before the shopkeeper's words were forgotten. He hurried Dean out of the shop. Dean began to chat about the information they'd heard, but Helford made him be quiet until they had got in the car and as much as could be remembered was written down.
"What's up, sir?" Dean could finally ask. "I don't know, I just feel he's said something important," Helford frowned.
"About Chewter's house?"
"Maybe.......or possibly about backhanders to the Council, though I'm sure he was talking out of the back of his head for the most part."
They drove in silence, heading back to the police station, both tired and their heads bursting with information and questions.
"Night, sir," said Dean, as they parted company. "Early tomorrow, Dean," his boss replied. "Here, then wherever life leads." Dean smiled at Helford's ritual farewell.