Mrs Sherratt sniffed. ‘Wei!, if you want the truth, she wasn’t liis type. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead and all that, but he could never bear them stuck-up types, all posh accents and jodhpurs. It was more likelv the other way round. I reckon v/ii took a fancy to him. He’s a good-looking lad, my Lee. 1 bet that’s what it was, and Mr Hoity-Toity Vernon wouldn’t like that, his girl fancying the hired labour.’
‘And, if that was the case, you don’t think Lee might have responded?’
‘No. Like I say, she wasn’t his type.’
‘Did he mention Laura Vernon much?’ ‘Hardly at all. He hardly mentioned any of them much. ‘Course, he didn’t see much of him, or the girl either, except in the school holidays. It was mostly her he saw, when he went up there.’
‘You mean Mrs Vernon?’
‘That’s right. Not that she would do anything but give him his orders, I suppose. None of them Vernons has ever mixed with anybody in the village, you know. They think they’re better than
.. j O J ^ J
the rest of us, just because they’ve got a bit of money to spend on big houses and flashy cars. Well, it isn’t so. Having money doesn’t make you a good person, does it? It doesn’t give you any better morals than the rest of us. Some of us know what’s right and what isn’t. If you ask me, them Vernons have forgotten all about that, with their money.’
Tailby’s attention was wandering. His gaze drifted out of the
J O O
kitchen window, across a small garden with a few vegetables struggling to force themselves through the weeds. There was a rickety garden shed and a small flock of house sparrows fluttering their wings in a depression in the dust in front of its door. A low wooden fence separated the garden from the field at the back of the property. It would present no barrier for anyone to climb over if they wanted to approach from the field instead of from the road.
105
‘So, as far as you arc awaro, there was no relationship between Lee and Laura Vernon, apart from the fact that she was the daughter of his employer?’
‘I told you. he didn’t like her.’
J ‘
‘He actually said so?’
‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure he did. Stuck-up little madam, he called her, something like that.’
‘Why did he call her that? Did he give any particular reason?’
Mrs Sherratt screwed up her face, which Tailby took to be a sign that she was thinking. ‘It was not Ion? after he had started
o o o
working up there that he said it the first time. He’d had a bit of a run-in with her one day, I think.’
‘You are referring to Laura now, aren’t you?’
‘I said so, didn’t I? She was at home from school one day. It must have been their holidays or something. I don’t know. But he said she was out in the garden, weighing him up, asking him questions. Lee said he made a joke, and she took exception. Told him to keep his remarks to himself, sort of thing. He was a bit put out when he told me about it, and he never liked her after diat.’
‘Was that anything to do with why he was sacked, do you think?’
‘I couldn’t say. Because she took against him, you mean, and told her dad? I don’t know. But he hadn’t done anything wrong, I know that.’
‘You don’t think Lee might have arranged to meet Laura after
o o
he had been sacked by Mr Vernon?’
‘No, I don’t. He’d be glad to get away from her, if anything. He wouldn’t have touched her, not in any way.’
‘Mrs Shcrratt, where does Lee usually go when he’s off wandering for a day or two?’
‘I don’t know,” she said. ‘He doesn’t tell me.’
‘Not to his girlfriend?’
‘I doubt it. But you can ask her, can’t you? I gave the other lot her name and address, to be helpful.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Tailby sighed. They had already interviewed the girlfriend in question, along with several others whose names
106
had been suggested by Lee Sherratt’s drinking pals. If he reallv was intending to get married, it hadn’t stopped him spreading himself around half the female population of the valley. But none of them admitted to knowing where Lee headed for when he
O
went wandering. Here at Wye Close, officers had also already searched the house, turned over Lee’s room, and checked out that garden shed.
o
‘Besides,’ said Mrs Sherratt, as if suddenly remembering
‘ > j &
something. ‘That girl at the Mount. She was only fifteen, wasn’t she?’
