“I dare say that’s what we’re here to fi nd out.”
They walked down the Clitheroe Road together, in the direction of the church, past the front of terraced houses whose white, transomed windows were edged by a hundred years of grime that no mere washing could ever remove.
They found Colin Shepherd’s house next to the vicarage, just across the street from St. John the Baptist Church. Here, they separated, Deborah crossing to the church itself with a quiet “I haven’t seen it yet anyway,” leaving St. James and Lynley to conduct their interview with the constable on their own.
Two cars stood on the drive in front of the sorrel brick building, a muddy Land Rover at least ten years old and a splattered Golf that looked relatively new. No car stood on the neighbouring drive, but as they skirted past the Rover and the Golf on their way to Colin Shepherd’s door, a woman came to one of the front windows in the vicarage, and she watched their progress with no attempt to hide herself from view. One hand was freeing kinky, car-rot-coloured hair from a scarf that bound it at the base of her neck. The other was buttoning a navy coat. She didn’t move from the window even when it was obvious that Lynley and St. James had seen her.
A narrow, rectangular sign jutted from the side of Colin Shepherd’s house. Blue and white, it was printed with the single word
A dog began to bark in answer to their ringing of the bell. It was a sound that started at one end of the house, rapidly approached the front door, and took up a raucous position behind it. A large dog by the sound of it, and none too friendly.
A man’s voice said, “Quiet, Leo. Sit,” and the barking ceased at once. The porch light flicked on — although it wasn’t yet completely dark — and the door swung open.
With a large black retriever sitting at attention at his side, Colin Shepherd looked them over. His face reflected neither the anticipation attendant to greeting a request for his professional services nor the general curiosity attached to finding strangers at one’s door. His words explained why. He said them with a quick, formal nod. “Scotland Yard CID. Sergeant Hawkins said you might pay me a call today.”
Lynley produced his warrant card and introduced St. James, to whom Shepherd said after an evaluative glance, “You’re staying at the inn, aren’t you? I saw you last night.”
“My wife and I came to see Mr. Sage.”
“The red-headed woman. She was out by the reservoir this morning.”
“She’d gone there to walk on the moor.”
“The mist comes down fast in these parts. It’s no place for a walk if you don’t know the land.”
“I’ll tell her.”
Shepherd stepped back from the door. The dog rose in response, a rumbling in his throat. Shepherd said, “Be quiet. Go back to the fi re,” and the dog trotted obediently into another room.
“Use him for your work?” Lynley asked.
“No. Just for hunting.”
Shepherd nodded to a coat rack that stood at one end of the elongated entry. Beneath it, three pairs of gumboots lined up, two of them smeared with fresh mud on the sides. Next to these, a metal milk basket stood, with an empty cocoon of some long-departed insect dangling by a thread from one of its bars. Shepherd waited while Lynley and St. James hung up their coats. Then he led the way down the corridor in the direction the retriever had taken.
They went into a sitting room where a fi re burned and an older man was laying a small log on top of the flames. Despite the years that separated them in age, it was obvious that this was Colin Shepherd’s father. They shared many similarities: the height, the muscular chest, the narrow hips. Their hair was different, thinning in the father and fading to the colour of sand in the way that blonds do as they move towards grey. And the long fi ngers, sensitivity, and sureness of the hands in the son had in the father become large knuckles and split nails with age.
The latter man slapped his palms together briskly as if to rid them of wood dust. He offered his hand in greeting. “Kenneth Shepherd,” he said. “Detective Chief Inspector, retired. Hutton-Preston CID. But I expect you know that already, don’t you?”
“Sergeant Hawkins passed the information on to me.”
“As well he ought. It’s good to meet you both.” He shot a glance at his son. “Have you something to offer these good gentlemen, Col?”
The constable’s face did not change its expression despite the affability of his father’s tone. Behind his tortoiseshell spectacles, his eyes remained guarded. “Beer,” he said. “Whisky. Brandy. I’ve a sherry here that’s been collecting dust for the last six years.”
“Your Annie
“Nothing,” said Lynley.
“Nor for me,” St. James said.
From a small fruitwood side table, Shepherd poured the drink for his father and something from a spirit decanter for himself. As he did so, Lynley glanced round the room.
It was sparsely furnished, in the manner of a man who shops at jumble sales when a pressing need arises and doesn’t give much thought to the look of his possessions. The back of a beleaguered sofa was covered by a handknit blanket of multicoloured squares that managed to hide most of the large but mercifully faded pink anemones that decorated its fabric. Nothing beyond their own worn upholstery covered either of the two mismatched wing chairs, the arms of which were threadbare and the backs of which were permanently dented from serving as the resting place for generations of heads. Aside from a bentwood coffee table, a brass floor lamp, and the side table on which the liquor bottles stood, the only other item of interest hung on the wall. This was a cabinet that housed a collection of rifl es and shotguns. They were the only things in the room that looked cared for, no doubt companion pieces to the retriever who had sunk onto an ancient, stained duvet in front of the fi re. His paws, like the gumboots in the hall, were clotted with mud.
“Game birds?” Lynley asked with a look at the guns.
“Deer at one time as well. But I’ve given that up. The killing never lived up to the stalking.”
“It seems that it should. But it never does, does it?”
His sherry glass in hand, the Chief Inspector gestured towards the sofa and chairs. “Sit,” he said, sinking into the sofa. “We’ve just come in from a tramp ourselves and can do with taking a load off our feet. I’m off in about a quarter of an hour. I’ve got a sweet young thing of fifty-eight years waiting dinner for me at the pensioner’s flat. But there’s time enough for a natter fi rst.”
“You don’t live here in Winslough?” St. James asked.
“Haven’t in years. I like a bit of action and a bit of willing, soft girl-flesh to go with it. There’s none of the first to be found in Win-slough and what there is of the second’s long been tied up.”
The constable took his drink to the fire, squatted down on his haunches, and ran his hand over the retriever’s head. In response, Leo opened his eyes and moved to rest his chin against Shepherd’s shoe. His tail skittered in contentment against the fl oor.
“Got yourself in the mud,” Shepherd said, giving a gentle tug to the retriever’s ears. “A fine mess you are.”
His father snorted. “Dogs. Christ. They get under your skin about as bad as do women.”
It was an opening from which Lynley’s question rose naturally, although he was as certain the Chief Inspector hadn’t intended it to be used that way as he was certain the man’s visit to his son had little to do with an afternoon’s hike on the moors. “What can you tell us about Mrs. Spence and the death of Robin Sage?”
“Not exactly a Yard concern, is it?” Although he said it in a friendly enough fashion, the Chief Inspector’s response came too quickly upon the heels of the question. It spoke of having been prepared in advance.
“Formally? No.”
“But informally?”
“Surely you’re not blind to the irregularity of the investigation, Chief Inspector. No CID. Your son’s attachment to the perpetrator of the crime.”
“Accident, not crime.” Colin Shepherd looked up from the dog, his glass clasped in an easy grip in his hand.
