‘No, that’s all right.’
She took the chain off and let him into the bungalow.
‘Edward and Frances, is that right?’
‘I’m Frances, Edward is my husband.’
‘And is Mr Birtland in?’
‘Yes, Ted’s in the back. Would you like a cup of tea, Mr Cooper?’
‘No, thank you, Mrs Birtland. I won’t be keeping you long.’
Being called ‘Mr Cooper’ made him smile even more. That really was a rarity in this job.
‘Ted,’ called Mrs Birtland, ‘we’ve got a visitor.’
Edward Birtland didn’t get up when Cooper entered. He was seated in a well-used armchair by a random stone fireplace, a fragile man of about seventy. He held out a hand politely, and Cooper couldn’t do anything else but shake it. The grip of Mr Birtland’s fingers hardly registered.
‘So,’ he said, ‘how did you hear someone had been killed?’
‘The murder?’
‘Well …’
Frances Birtland chuckled. ‘It was Bernie. Our postman knows everybody.’
‘Of course he does.’
‘You brought him back to Foxlow when he’d nearly finished his round. He stopped and told a few people about it on the way home.’
‘I understand how Bernie Wilding knows everybody. The question I’ve come to ask you is how well you knew Rose Shepherd.’
‘We didn’t know her at all. She hadn’t been in the village long.’
‘About ten months,’ said Cooper. But it wasn’t the first time he’d heard that sort of period dismissed as if it was yesterday. Your family had to have lived in some of these villages for generations before you belonged.
‘Are you Foxlow people yourselves?’
‘Of course,’ said Mrs Birtland. ‘We’ve lived here all our lives. We had a house on the High Street when we were married. We bought this little bit of land when Ted retired, and had the bungalow built. It took all the money we’d ever have – though we didn’t know it at the time.’
Cooper glanced at Mr Birtland, who smiled sadly and patted his wife’s hand.
‘I thought I had a good pension put away,’ he said, ‘with the company I worked for. But it didn’t turn out the way we planned. Once we’d paid for the bungalow, suddenly there was nothing left. So we just have our old age pensions to live on.’
‘The only way we could live any better is by selling the bungalow,’ said his wife.
‘And moving away from Foxlow, I suppose?’
She nodded. ‘And we could never do that.’
‘Can you think of anyone in the village who would have known Miss Shepherd better?’
Mrs Birtland shook her head. ‘No, not really.’
‘Have you tried the Ridgeways on the other side?’ said her husband. ‘They live in the barn conversion. Well, I say barn conversion – that was Church Farm until a few years ago. My grandfather was a cowman there. He worked for the Beeley family all his life. It’s gone now, and so have the Beeleys.’
‘One of my colleagues is talking to Mr and Mrs Ridgeway. Do you think they might have known Miss Shepherd well, then?’
‘We couldn’t say.’
‘Don’t you talk to the Ridgeways either?’
The Birtlands glanced at each other, exchanging some thought that they decided not to share with their visitor.
‘They moved into the village about the same time as Miss Shepherd,’ said Birtland finally. ‘So I suppose we tended to associate them together in our own minds. We didn’t know where any of them came from. Being located where we are, at this end of Pinfold Lane, we’ve started to feel as though we’ve been cut off from the rest of the village by incomers.’
‘I see.’
Birtland looked at him expectantly. ‘You haven’t asked us yet whether we heard anything,’ he said.
‘It was the next question, sir.’
‘Ah, good. Well, we’ve been thinking about it since we heard that Miss Shepherd had been killed. Was she shot?’
Cooper leaned forward. ‘Did you hear shots on Saturday night?’
‘Well, that answers my question,’ said Birtland with a chuckle. ‘We think maybe we did.’
‘What time would that have been?’
Birtland reached out to pat his wife’s hand again. ‘We disagree on that, I’m afraid.’
‘Ted thinks it was about two o’clock in the morning, but I think it was more like three,’ she said. ‘I don’t sleep too well sometimes, and I’m often starting to come awake by then.’
‘But you didn’t look at the clock to make sure?’
‘No, we didn’t. We didn’t take much notice, you see. We often hear people shooting around here. We always have, all our lives. As long as the shooting isn’t too near our house, we don’t bother. I don’t think Ted even woke up. If he did hear the shooting, he must have gone straight back to sleep, that’s all I can say.’
Birtland laughed. ‘I don’t suppose that’s much use to you.’
‘Could you say how many shots you heard?’ asked Cooper, afraid to go back to the DCI with anything so vague.
‘Two or three,’ said Mrs Birtland.
‘Or four,’ said her husband.
Cooper sighed. ‘Thank you.’
‘We would have come forward anyway when we heard somebody had been killed, you know. But we were told you’d be calling today.’
‘That’s all right.’
Mrs Birtland accompanied Cooper to his car. ‘I’m sorry if we don’t appear very hospitable,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry. But if you do happen to remember anything more about Miss Shepherd, or about any visitors she had –’
‘Yes, of course, we’ll let you know.’
‘Thank you.’
Frances Birtland looked up the street towards the village. ‘You know, we always thought we’d be comfortably off when we got old,’ she said. ‘But look at us now. There are young kids around here who get more pocket money to spend than we get in pension. The world’s gone crazy, don’t you think? And it was just our luck to be at the wrong end of our lives when it happened.’
Cooper knew what Fry would have said if she’d been at the Birtlands’ with him. ‘So much for neighbourliness. What happened to that famous community spirit you’re always telling me about, Ben?’
When he picked her up, Fry was about a hundred yards further down the road from the Ridgeways’ barn conversion, on the corner of the High Street. She seemed to be looking at the square tower of the church rising above yew trees in the graveyard, and at a cottage next to it, with honeysuckle hanging from the roof of the porch.
‘Any luck?’ he said when she got into the car.
‘They didn’t hear anything. Their double glazing is too good. You?’
‘The Birtlands might have noticed the shots. But they’ve been here all their lives, and they’re used to hearing people shooting rabbits.’
They pulled in through the gates of Bain House and parked behind a dog handler’s van.
‘By the way, the Ridgeways think Rose Shepherd was a foreigner,’ said Fry.
‘That’s funny. The Birtlands think the Ridgeways are foreigners.’
Fry snorted. ‘They’re from Luton.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Oh, I see. So the Ridgeways are the awful incomers. What happened to that famous –’
‘I know, I know.’
‘Also, Mr Ridgeway kept banging on about grey squirrels. He seems to have a bit of an obsession with them.’
‘They’re a big problem,’ said Cooper. ‘The government ought to do something to eradicate them.’
Fry just groaned. And Cooper wondered what he’d said wrong this time.
8
Moira Lowther gave her son another hug. ‘Take care, John. Give us a call if you need to talk. You know we’re here, don’t you?’
‘Yes, that’s all right.’
She looked suddenly anxious and tried to hold him back. ‘And you’re taking – You’re doing everything you should, dear?’
‘It’s fine. Everything’s under control.’