The Case of the Stained Glass Widow Read online

  The Case Of The Stained Glass Widow

  a DCI Jericho story

  by

  Douglas Lindsay

  Published by Blasted Heath, 2012

  copyright © 2012 Douglas Lindsay

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author.

  Douglas Lindsay has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Blasted Heath

  Visit Douglas Lindsay at:

  www.blastedheath.com

  Version 3-2-4

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  The Case of the Stained Glass Widow

  Also by Douglas Lindsay

  About Blasted Heath

  The Case of the Stained Glass Widow

  i

  DCI Robert Jericho walked slowly up the short length of Wells High Street. A damp Wednesday morning in February. It had been a long, bleak and mild winter. Dull days, with not a hint of snow and only the most infrequent frost. Up ahead the midweek market was being set up in the city square, and the air was filled with the ringing of the Mattin bells from the Cathedral.

  Jericho was walking with even more of a stoop than usual, having woken with a cricked neck. Before emerging like a hunchback out into the grey of morning, he had swallowed four pain killers and had rummaged through the cabinet in the bathroom – the contents of which had been moved wholesale from his house in London some years earlier, remaining untouched ever since – managing to dig up a Deep Heat aerosol which had gone out of date in 1995. He had sprayed it on his neck and back the best he could, which had given him the benefit of the medicinal stench without helping his neck in any way.

  He attracted a couple of glances from the market stalls, but Jericho generally wasn't the kind of man that people looked at in the street. He slipped by, invisible to most, blending in with whatever setting he happened to be walking slowly through at the time.

  Which was odd for a man who remained the most famous detective in the country.

  He walked through the arch at Penniless Porch, immediately seeing the object of his mission before him. As the bells rang out across the Cathedral Green, a lone man stood before the great 13th century building. A placard in one hand, his other arm raised in anger, shaking his fist at Wells Cathedral as if the old structure was itself communicating.

  'Bloody bells!' shouted the old man, his fist shaking. 'Shut the fuck up!'

  Jericho hesitated while he took in the scene, and then moved forward at the same strolling pace at which he'd walked up the High Street. As he came alongside the old man, who was clean shaven, wearing a slightly bizarre long mauve raincoat and an old pair of black Wellingtons, the bells suddenly stopped, and this man, who'd been so forcefully haranguing the entire Church of England, stopped mid-rant and snorted.

  ''Bout bloody time, innit?' he muttered.

  He turned as Jericho stopped beside him. 'Bloody bells,' he said, when he saw that Jericho was about to engage him. 'What do you want?' he added sourly.

  Jericho flashed his badge at the old man, who was already well aware of Jericho's identity.

  'Professor Wittering,' said Jericho, his voice weary, 'you've been warned. This is the last time. Really. If you're back here tomorrow, we're bringing you in.'

  'Bloody bells,' said Reginald Wittering. 'Anyway, what are they doing sending a Chief Inspector? And a detective at that. This your punishment for smelling like a jockstrap?'

  A couple of guys had called in sick. They'd been thin on the ground. Jericho had fancied the walk and said he'd take it. No other reason.

  'How long have you lived in Wells?' said Jericho, ignoring the question.

  Wittering knew where this line of questioning was leading.

  'Three years,' he muttered in reply, giving Jericho a look of loathing.

  Jericho nodded. He turned and indicated the Cathedral, then looked back at Wittering, wincing slightly at the movement.

  'Slept funny?' asked Wittering, taking some pleasure in the question.

  'Three years...,' said Jericho dryly. 'This lot, the church, they got here a long time ago. They got here first. These bells have been ringing out over here for centuries. If you don't like the sound of bells, go and live... God, I don't know, Istanbul... Tehran.... wherever...'

  Wittering raised an eyebrow, then looked back at the Cathedral. Which was when it started; what was to become known as the Case of the Stained Glass Widow.

  As the two men looked at the Cathedral – as if expecting something to happen – something did. The small door at the front was flung open, and out ran a man in the long white tunic of a church deacon. He stopped on the grass outside the Cathedral and looked around at no one in particular; as it was, the only two people present on the green were Jericho and Wittering.

  'There's been a murder!' cried the deacon loudly, his voice tinged with desperation. The words echoed out into the silence of 7:27 on a weekday morning.

  Jericho groaned.

  'Hah!' barked Wittering, smiling broadly. 'That'll be why they sent a fucking detective.' Then, holding tightly onto his banner, he turned and started walking away from the Cathedral.

  'For fuck's sake,' muttered Jericho darkly, and then, with another wince at his sore neck, he walked towards the Cathedral.

  Fucking murder, he thought.

  ii

  Mattins had been cancelled, the crowd of seventeen filing slowly out into the grey morning, as dawn appeared mournfully over the city. Jericho had stood over the body in the Cathedral, ascertaining that murder had indeed been committed – the knife buried in the neck seemed confirmation in itself – and had put the call through to the station to raise the alarm. All hands required; it was time for the two constables who had called in sick to down the paracetamol and crawl into the office.

  The body had been discovered in the Chapter House, a large, round room to the side of the Cathedral, up a wide flight of worn and ancient stairs. The pool of blood had spread wide, seeping into the stone floor. The stain would never quite be removed.

  It was a little after nine. The Cathedral had been closed off, all other morning activities postponed. Jericho was standing outside the Cathedral keeping an eye on the small crowd that had gathered at the exciting news. He could hear the sound of the Cathedral School swing band coming from the old music department building adjacent to the Cathedral; he wasn't sure, but they seemed to be playing We All Stand Together from Rupert & The Frog Song, lending a slightly bizarre air to the murderous morning. A large majority of the gathered crowd – standing as if they might expect to see at the very least an action replay of the first murder or, if things really picked up, a second killing – seemed to be made up of school children who had elected to be late for their first lesson of the day.

  Jericho's latest Detective Sergeant came and stood beside him, joining his boss in surveying the scene. Sipping a cup of coffee. DS Haynes.

  'We've had the i.d. confirmed, Sir, they're just bagging up the stiff now. Jeffery Parks, 57, owned the old bookshop out on the Bath road. I thought I'd get out there now.'

  'Where did you get that?' asked Jericho.

  Haynes followed his eyes to the cup of coffee.

  'Constable Walker got it for me. Did you want one?'

  Jericho grumpily eyed Haynes from a distance of two feet. Haynes found himself involuntarily stepping back an inch or two.

  'Is
there a wife?' asked Jericho. 'Well... widow.'

  Haynes indicated the Cathedral.

  'Seems to be. The guy we talked to, you know, he's just some guy who works in there. Knew Parks a bit. Says he was married, but didn't know much about them.'

  'We'll go to his house first,' said Jericho. 'Then the shop.'

  He started to walk off in the direction of the market square and then stopped, Haynes on his heels.

  'Where are we going?' asked Jericho. 'I presume you've got an address.'

  'This is right,' said Haynes glibly. 'I'll get you a coffee on the way...'

  ***

  There was nobody home. There aren't many places in Wells that are more than a fifteen minute walk from the Cathedral, although it turned out that Parks' house was right at the far end of the town, and in the opposite direction from the book shop where he'd worked.

  'Will I get a car to come and pick us up?' asked Haynes, as they turned away from the house and started walking back towards the centre of town.

  'We'll walk,' said Jericho. 'It's good for you.'

  They walked on in silence. Jericho finished his coffee and tossed the cup into a bin, wiped his lips with the sleeve of his coat. He was aware that Haynes was casting glances at him, waiting for him to do something. Something to dramatically take the lead in the investigation.

  Jericho had come to Wells to disappear, to lose his reputation in a quiet backwater where nothing much ever happened. There were worse reputations to have than the one with which he'd been landed, but it still annoyed him. He didn't want anyone having expectations of him.

  'What?' said Jericho eventually.

  'Just, you know....' began Haynes uncertainly. 'What do you think? Of the murder?'

  'What makes you think I think anything?'

  'You're like this thing,' said Haynes. 'Never failed to solve a crime. The papers say you've always got the killer pegged in the first five minutes of the investigation.'

  'The papers are full of crap, Sergeant,' said Jericho. 'Make any sort of decision in the first five minutes and you're going to prejudice the process of the entire investigation. Contrary to what the papers say, you should keep your mind open right up until the point you have concrete proof.'

  Haynes nodded, a look on his face like he was mentally writing it down so that he could put it on Twitter the first chance he got.

  'Even then,' said Jericho, 'remember that if it gets hot enough, concrete melts.'

  'You think?' said Haynes. 'Doesn't it break into its constituent parts and go on fire and evaporate, or carbonise, something like that?'

  'Yeah, whatever,' said Jericho with a dismissive hand. 'Look, the papers say whatever helps sell, whatever sounds like a good story. Everyone knows that, everyone knows they just make shit up and bend facts to fit the story they want to print, and yet people still believe the crap they read. Isn't it weird?'

  Haynes glanced at him, wondering if he was supposed to answer.

  'Middle-aged detective continues to get lucky...,' said Jericho. 'That's not a story. No one gives a shit. However, modern day Sherlock Holmes nails another bastard with stroke of sleuthing genius. That's a story. Who cares whether or not it's true?'

  Haynes nodded.

  'So, you don't already know who did this?' he asked anyway.

  'Have I just been talking?' said Jericho. 'Of course I don't know. So far, who have we got? The guy who found the body? The widow who we haven't met? His work colleague, assuming there is one?'

  'Well?' said Haynes. 'Which one do you think?'

  Jericho gave him the resigned look of a tortured parent.

  'The widow,' he said, eventually. 'It's the widow.'

  Haynes smiled. 'I'll hold you to it,' he said.

  'Fuck off.'

  iii

  The shop was small and pleasantly old-fashioned. An independent bookshop, where books cost what they were supposed to cost and hadn't been reduced to £1.99; where the recommendations had been read by the staff and recommended because they were good, and not because the publisher had forked out £25,000 for the privilege; where novels mixed with travelogues and biographies of war-time pilots, and there wasn't a hint of a book ghost-written on behalf of someone called Wayne or Katie or Cheryl. The whole place was so alien to what has become the norm, that it was like walking into Narnia.

  The small bell tinkled on the door as they entered. There were no customers; a small attractive woman looked over the counter from behind heavy black-rimmed glasses. Her eyes were red, and Jericho wondered if she already knew.

  They closed the door and paused for a moment to take in the surroundings.

  'Are you Caroline?' asked Jericho.

  She shook her head.

  'Caroline comes in at the weekend,' she said, her voice sounding stronger than she looked. 'Are you looking for her?'

  'No,' said Jericho, 'just saw her name on the staff recommendation in the window. You must be Ilsa?'

  Haynes smiled and shook his head, as if in awe of Jericho's observational genius.

  Ilsa Ravenwood looked slightly confused, so Jericho walked forward and held out his badge. Immediately her hand went to her mouth and she seemed to shrink an inch or two in height.

  'Has something happened to him?' she asked, her voice having instantly weakened.

  'You're missing Mr. Parks?' said Jericho.

  'I was supposed to see him last night,' she said, immediately biting her lip.

  'He's dead,' said Jericho bluntly. 'Someone stabbed him in the neck.'

  She gasped, took a step backwards. Haynes, who had taken the course, moved forwards around the counter and took her arm. He glanced at Jericho, taken aback by his lack of compassion.

  'Maybe you should sit down,' he said, and eased her back towards a small chair beside a desk.

  Ilsa Ravenwood slumped down into the seat, her face crumpled in shock.

  'Ilsa,' said Jericho. 'Like in Casablanca.'

  ***

  It took twenty-five minutes before she was able to talk any further. After placing the Closed sign on the door, Haynes made her a coffee and sat beside her saying what he presumed to be the right things, while Jericho perused the books. He liked the look of The Closing of the Western Mind by Charles Freeman, but thought it might be insensitive to offer to buy it.

  Eventually, at a nod from Haynes, Jericho came over and stood at the counter.

  'Can I ask you a few questions, Mrs. Ravenwood?'

  She nodded, Haynes looked at Jericho and wondered how he knew she was married.

  'Can you tell us where we might find Mrs. Parks?'

  'Australia,' she said. 'She left last week to spend some time with her sister in Sydney.'

  'How long was...?'

  'About a month.'

  Haynes glanced at Jericho, a wry smile.

  'And you and Mr. Parks were using the opportunity of his wife's absence to further your affair?'

  Ilsa Ravenwood stared at Jericho, and then finally crumpled forward, her head in her hands, sobbing bitterly.

  ***

  They walked away from the shop half an hour later, leaving the bereft Mrs. Ravenwood in the hands of a young female police officer, trained in the modern arts of compassion.

  'See,' said Haynes, as they headed back in the direction of the Cathedral. 'That was brilliant.'

  Jericho gave him a sideways glance.

  'Why?' he asked.

  'You just, like, spot stuff. I mean, how do you do all that? She's married, she's having an affair... like, it's brilliant.'

  'Are you serious?' asked Jericho, as they passed the lower end of Vicar's Close, and could hear the random runs of a student practicing scales on a piccolo.

  'Like, d'uh...,' said Haynes. 'It's awesome, that thing you do. That's why the papers are always on about how brilliant you are.'

  'The woman was wearing a wedding ring, for crying out loud,' said Jericho irritably.

  'Oh, like, you mean the gold thing on her finger? That's so last century, I always forg
et about it. All credit to you for noticing.'

  Jericho slung him another glance.

  'What about the affair?' continued Haynes, undaunted. 'I mean, that was instinctive genius, surely. That's the kind of thing they talk about in the Sun.'

  Jericho gave Haynes the look that he was disposed to give younger officers several times a day. The urge to shut down, to go and sit in a corner and drink coffee and not talk to anyone, swept over him.

  'She'd been crying,' he muttered. 'She was obviously upset at him not being somewhere he should have been, and it wasn't because he was late getting to work. We'll find that he's been dead since some time yesterday evening.'

  Haynes was shaking his head.

  'That's just complete genius.'

  'No, it's not,' barked Jericho. 'If you're an idiot, I don't have to be a genius to be smarter than you.'

  'That's just so cool,' said Haynes, as if Jericho hadn't spoken. 'That whole thing. I love it. Of course, you were wrong about the widow.'

  'For a kick-off,' barked Jericho, 'I never said I thought it was the widow.'

  'Sure you did.'

  'I was being facetious. I had, and still have, no idea who did it. And secondly, let's just establish that the widow is definitely in Australia before we go taking her off the slate, eh? And let's not rule out the possibility of her having an accomplice.'

  Haynes nodded and started looking at his phone.

  'See what you're doing there,' he said. 'Covering the angles. Very nice.'

  'Sure,' said Jericho sarcastically, 'sometimes I amaze even myself. I'm going back to the Cathedral. You get down to the station and start making enquiries after the wife. If you get a number for her, wait until I get back and I'll give her a call.'

  'Yes, Sir,' said Haynes, and he saluted and walked quickly away, past the dwindling crowd of curiosity.

  iv

  Three hours later. Jericho was back at the station, sitting in his office, looking out over the fields which stretch towards Glastonbury. Usually he could see the Tor; it didn't even have to be a good day. Today, however, the weather was so grim, so coldly claustrophobic, that the hill was lost in the murk. It was lunchtime, he was hungry, his stomach was making strange noises, the painkillers were wearing off and his neck was beginning to hurt again. He was drinking his fifth coffee of the day.