Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder by Ann Cleeves Page B

and Bethan big and blousy, feeding the latest baby and talking to her mam on the telephone. Alan loved it. He raged occasionally against the mess, the constant diet of take-away meals, the ruinous phone bills, but he would not have changed it. He would never have exchanged Bethan, wide and easy and laughing, for the nagging, shrewish housewives his friends described, or his boys for their soft, pink, well-behaved children.
    When he arrived at Gorse Hill Pritchard thought he had come to a madhouse. He had received a garbled message about a woman who had been attacked by a giant bird. The thing sounded like a grotesque practical joke and he could find no one to explain what had happened. He had not been told about the Trust’s Open Day and the remnants of the event confused him. Most of the stallholders and visitors had gone, but there were upended trestles on the lawn and rubbish all over the grass. The scene-of-crime team had not arrived – Sunday was the worst possible day to get officers out – and the family were no use to him at all.
    Richard Mead came to speak to him but was too concerned about his wife and daughters to talk much sense. ‘Speak to George,’ he said. ‘ He’s a private inquiry agent, Eleanor hired him. He’ll tell you what it’s all about.’ Then he had gone to phone a doctor because Veronica would not stop sobbing and there was nothing he could do to comfort her.
    So when George returned from the hill Alan Pritchard was asking for him. He was less concerned about George’s unofficial status than he might otherwise have been and was only grateful that in this confusion of birds and weeping women he had found someone who could explain what was going on.
    They had their first discussion in the conservatory. They sat among the plants on white wicker chairs. It was warm and humid and quite quiet. It was an incongruous setting to discuss a murder, George thought, far too old-fashioned and genteel. They should have been a vicar and his curate discussing sermons over tea and thin slices of Victoria sandwich. But perhaps it was an apt place to talk about Eleanor’s murder. It suited her.
    ‘I don’t understand any of this,’ Pritchard said, breaking in on George’s thoughts. He was big, round-faced. He had been a rugby player in his youth but he had drunk too much and put on weight. George thought from the beginning that Pritchard was a clever man, confident enough of his own ability and position to be informal, not to be worried about breaking a few rules, yet something about his manner irritated George. He seemed to have no sense of urgency. He was too detached. The policeman stretched in his chair and stifled a yawn. ‘ You’ll have to tell me what it’s all about.’
    But George did not answer directly.
    ‘Was Eleanor Masefield wearing both shoes?’ he asked. ‘ I didn’t notice. Perhaps I should have done. But I was looking at her face. I was rather upset.’
    ‘She was only wearing one shoe,’ Pritchard said.
    ‘Then I know where she was murdered,’ George said. ‘At the end of the lane by the barn. Just on the other side of the stile on the hill there’s a ditch. The other shoe is caught in there.’
    He had expected some immediate reaction, a flurry of activity, but Pritchard did not move.
    ‘Explain what you’re doing here,’ the policeman said comfortably. ‘It might help me to understand the background to all this.’
    Briefly and logically George explained his connection with the Masefield family, how his experience of working in the Home Office had led him to form the advice agency, the summons from Eleanor and her concern that the peregrine chicks might be stolen.
    ‘I didn’t have the opportunity to talk to her in any detail,’ George said, remembering with regret their last meal together. ‘The local Wildlife Trust held its Open Day here and she said she was too busy to discuss the peregrines until it was over. I presumed she was worried that some unscrupulous