In the previous three parts, an unexpected change of plans allowed Trixie to accompany Jim on a trip north, where she soon discovered that the woman next door had been murdered. In the time since, Trixie has dug out quite a number of dirty secrets and she is homing in on the murderer…

Part Four

“I hear there’s been an arrest,” Jim announced, as he arrived home from work that evening. “Mrs. Hill’s son.”

“What?” Trixie nearly dropped the spoon she was using to stir the bolognaise sauce. “But I’m sure he didn’t do it!”

Her husband shrugged, as if to distance himself from the decision. “I’m sure they know what they’re doing,” he murmured.

Trixie turned her back on the stove and began expounding her position. “What benefit would he get from murdering her?” she demanded. “She’d already settled the money on him; there wasn’t much left to get. And besides, he seems to be pretty well-off in his own right. Besides, they were estranged and had been for years! It’s not like she was bothering him all the time. They didn’t see each other at all, as far as I can tell. There just isn’t a motive there. And why would his wife want to kill her, either, especially since she’s divorcing him. If she was after money, you’d think she’d stay with him until after he inherited, if she was planning the murder. And wouldn’t she already know that he wouldn’t get much else? Anyway, I know she didn’t do it herself, because of her nails.”

“Her nails.” Jim’s flat tone showed his confusion at the statement.

“She’s got long, red nails, like talons,” his wife explained impatiently. “You can’t strangle someone with a cord with nails like that; I checked. As I was saying, I don’t think the business partner is involved – he seemed so sincere, though of course that doesn’t mean he actually was, but also it does look like nothing changes for him by her death. What he told me about selling checks out with what happened before the murder. Olivia’s uncle was really, truly upset – about the only person who actually was – so I don’t think it was him, either. And after what happened with Olivia and that developer, I don’t think he has what it takes to kill someone!”

There was a silence, as Jim thought about what she had said. “So, if none of those people did it, who did?” he wondered aloud. “You seem to have eliminated every single suspect.”

“I know,” she admitted, flopping down onto a chair. “There just has to be another motive, though, because I’m pretty sure now that none of them did kill her. I just can’t seem to figure out what it could be.”

Her lack of progress making her restless, Trixie spent much of the next evening fidgeting around in the trailer. In an effort to break the destructive pattern, she had turned on the tiny television set and tuned in to the evening news, but it did not hold her attention. One news story finished and the next began. Suddenly, Trixie became fixated on the screen. A man had assaulted a camera crew outside a courthouse and, as they are wont to do, the news service was making a great fuss of the matter.

The news camera focussed on the hunched figure of Reg Hill Jr., just before his hand reached out and shoved the lens violently. The picture wobbled and then refocussed on the retreating figure. As he passed off the left of the screen, Reg appeared for a moment in profile. Trixie let out a startled gasp.

“Jim!” she cried. “Oh, Jim! It’s him! Don’t you see? If he’s the ‘ghost’, then he can’t possibly be the one who buried the body, because I saw him at the same time that I heard the digging! Quick! I need to call the police and tell them they’ve made a mistake!”

“They’re not going to like that,” Jim pointed out, reasonably. “Besides, where would you call from?” There was no telephone in the Robin. “Morning will be soon enough.”

“I guess,” she conceded, while still pacing back and forth in the limited space. “But, whether they like it or not, he didn’t do it!”

True to Jim’s prediction, the police most decidedly did not like being told that they were wrong. It took a great deal of persistence on Trixie’s part to even get to speak to the officer in charge of the case, and when she did, she found him patronising in the extreme.

“People see all kinds of things on dark nights,” he told her. “Thank you for your call. I’ll bear it in mind.”

Trixie stamped her foot and tried to think up a strong enough exclamation to express her frustration. “That… that… man!” she cried. “He didn’t listen at all. I just know that it wasn’t her son, and I’m going to prove it.”

Jim, in whose office she had made the call, raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think the police are going to solve this by themselves?” he asked.

“That man couldn’t successfully investigate the whereabouts of his own rear end,” Trixie exclaimed, still furiously angry. “I need some air.”

After half an hour’s walk, Trixie had regained her temper. Certain that she was still missing something important, she returned to the library’s newspaper archive in order to widen her search. After a weary hour, she came across a wedding notice for Mrs. Hill’s aunt and a man whose surname was the same as that of her late husband’s business partner.

“Pickering,” she murmured to herself. “Too many Pickerings in this town. I wonder if there’s a connection.”

Continuing the search, she finally came across a birth notice for that couple: a boy named George. From there, it was only a matter of time until she established that this George Pickering was the very same man who later started a business with the late Reg Hill.

Could this be a clue to the motive? she wondered, while busily making notes. Is there someone else who’s related to both parties somehow, who thinks they can gain from Mrs. Hill’s death? Trixie frowned. Unfortunately for the investigation, there was no clear familial relationship to be seen. Eight of the nine children in the original Lychfield family had been girls. Over the years, there had never been more than one son passing on that surname in a generation with the result that many families in the area were related, but none were named Lychfield.

Returning to the genealogical chart in the booklet she had purchased, Trixie traced through the generations, looking for a clue. Early on, she had identified Mrs. Hill as being the daughter of the last surviving male Lychfield. According to the chart, he was the third and final child of the second-last male survivor. Mrs. Hill’s father, then, had two older sisters. The middle child had married into the Pickering family – the aunt whose marriage announcement Trixie had found earlier. Trixie’s fingertip tapped the name of the eldest sister. I wonder…

With renewed energy, she plunged back into the archives and within an hour had discovered the eldest sister’s married name, as well as the name of her only child, Gervaise Dittman-Cox. That name had been slightly familiar from some of her earlier researches and it did not take long to track down his recent accomplishments: until his retirement a few years ago, he had been the mayor. Satisfied with her day’s work, she headed home for the evening.

By the time morning came, a plan of sorts had matured in Trixie’s mind. Jim had brought the news that the police had received a tip-off and were on the verge of a break-through. Local rumour had it that they would be beginning a new search the following day. This was heightened by the presence of police cars in and around Mrs. Hill’s house. Hoping to catch her suspect out, she set off early to undertake some surveillance. The sun was still low in the sky when she found a suitable position outside Gervaise Dittman-Cox’s residence and his house was still and silent. Trixie settled back for a long wait.

After about half an hour, the front door opened and a man emerged. Trixie recognised him immediately from the photographs she had seen as Mr. Dittman-Cox himself. He was dressed in casual clothes and apparently intended to take a walk. Keeping a discreet distance, she followed along. The walker took a circuitous path through the town, stopping frequently to speak to other residents, to smell a rose which overhung a front fence, or to admire a view. After a time, he began to slow down and look at his surroundings more carefully.

Instinct warned Trixie that she should not let herself be seen, so she ducked around a corner, into a shelter of a large and bushy conifer. Parting the branches slightly, she gained a view of her quarry and saw him enter the grounds of St. Leonard’s Mission. Deciding against using the main entrance, she ran up to the boundary and climbed over the fence. Her times of exploration served her well, as she knew that she would find shelter in the thick bushes below the lawn.

It took some time to discover the whereabouts of the man she followed. He had stood still and watched at the bottom of the drive until he was sure that there was no one around. Minutes later, he was apparently satisfied, as he entered the shrubbery and approached the spot where Trixie hid. She glanced down and saw a disturbed place in the soil, right under her feet.

He’s coming here, she realised, stepping back and scuffing her footmarks away. She ducked further into the bushes just in time. A moment later, Gervaise Dittman-Cox stooped at the very same place and brushed at the dirt with his fingers.

“Where is it?” he muttered, almost inaudibly. “It’s got to be here somewhere.”

He began to widen his search, poking around under the nearby plants and brushing aside the leaf-litter. Standing up, he spent a few minutes just staring at the ground around him, a worried look on his face. He shook his head and swore softly, before bending to spread fallen leaves across the disturbed area. Then, turning, he left in the direction he had come. Trixie watched for a moment, then decided that there would be no point in following him back again. His purpose, whatever it had been, had lain here.

Leaving the shrubbery, she wandered back across the lawn to the trailer. She had a decision to make, and needed a peaceful and secure place to contemplate it unhindered. Before her lay a clear choice: either she could excavate the spot herself, and possibly compromise the police investigation, or she could call them and let them have the discovery. Her own curiosity urged her to take the former path, but her sense of responsibility rebelled.

Safe inside the trailer, she tried to come to a clear decision, but the matter refused to resolve itself in her mind. Her distrust of the local police had grown so that it warped all logic regarding them. She knew in her mind that they could not possibly be as inept as she thought them, but somehow that did not change her thinking.

Frustrated, she tried to set the ethical dilemma aside and consider the other implications of what she had just seen. He buried something, she mused, as she began to pace up and down the limited space. That much is obvious. I guess he must have lost something while he was doing so, and that’s what he was looking for this morning. But what could he have buried? It can’t have been all that big; the disturbed spot was only about a foot square. So, something fairly small; something he doesn’t want associated with himself, since he was so anxious to retrieve whatever it was that he lost, but not so anxious that he’d risk digging it up again to find it.

A vague memory persisted in Trixie’s mind, but refused to come into full focus. There was something that she had seen, or heard; some clue to the whole mystery. Shaking her head, she continued to pace. In her mind, she was now certain that Dittman-Cox was the murderer, however unlikely that seemed on the surface. His actions of this morning were suspicious in and of themselves, but there was a deeper reason, which Trixie could not quite clarify.

In her distraction, she began to rearrange their belongings in the trailer, moving trivial items from one place to another. She was on her third trip from one end of the trailer to the other when her eyes fixed upon a space. The entire time that they had been living here, the cookie jar had rested in that spot. In moving it to the other side of the galley kitchen, a space had been left – along with a tell-tale ring.

Now, where did I see something like that? she wondered, staring at the mark in bewilderment. It was somewhere I didn’t expect it… An image came to her mind of an immaculately clean house – and the disarray she had found in the main bedroom. Was it her imagination, or had there been a mark like this one, which did not match any of the objects lying about? The more she thought about it, the more certain she became that it was a genuine memory.

I thought the things had been knocked over by the curtains, she remembered, but now I’m not so sure. Was the table really close enough for that to happen? Ruing the lack of suitable curtains in the Robin to aid her in an experiment, Trixie made a silent resolution to find out and turned her attention to other matters.

So, maybe I was right when I thought of someone breaking in through that window. They knew the object would be there, not far from the window. They broke it, but Mrs. Hill came and interrupted before they could steal whatever it was. She frowned, as she tried to reconstruct the next part. They snatched up something with a cord – maybe a hair dryer, or an electric clock? – and strangled her. They hid the body, took the object and left the house, but they were keeping an eye on the place because they knew that I’d been looking around. But what could they have stolen?

Her brow creased, as she tried to determine the size and shape of the object which must have rested there. It must have been heavy, for her not to have moved it to clean underneath, she decided. Not too big, though, since the base wasn’t all that large. Maybe it was delicate, and that’s why it wasn’t moved. Valuable? Or just of sentimental value? If her earlier theorising was correct, it must be an object that Mrs. Hill’s grandfather wanted to remain owned by Lychfields, rather than descendants of different surnames.

Once more, Trixie returned to her copy of the local history society’s research and flicked through its pages for a clue. A grainy photograph caught her eye and she opened the book at that page to examine it more closely. It showed a fine, old clock embellished with intricate decorations. An inset showed the inscription, from the original presentation to a Lychfield ancestor. The caption annotated it as having been passed down the male line of the Lychfield family, and gave some rough dimensions.

It passed down the male line, she thought, as her excitement increased. Down the male line, but Dittman-Cox’s mother was the eldest in the family and in the next generation the male line died out. Would he have felt that it should have come to him? Did she bequeath it to someone outside the family… such as a charity, or museum?

With a wildly beating heart, Trixie marked out the approximate size on the bench top with her fingers and found that it was just like the mark she had remembered. If something of that size were secured inside a watertight container and buried, the resulting hole would quite likely be around a foot square…

The dilemma dissolved before her: she needed to call the police. Without another thought of her own investigation, Trixie marched across to Jim’s office and demanded use of his phone. She dialled the number which she by now knew by heart, and successfully got past the desk officer. With an economy of words, she explained what she had seen and what she had deduced to the officer in charge. This time, his tone showed a little more respect – though not as much as Trixie felt she deserved.

“We’ll look into it,” he promised, and sounded sincere as he did so. “Keep right away from the area, and keep this knowledge to yourself.”

Readily agreeing, Trixie resigned herself to wait and watch.

Days passed without a sign of anything happening. Trixie’s impatience turned to frustration, and then to a renewed lack of confidence in the police. As far as she could tell, no one had been near the place where the clock was hidden since she had left it a few mornings before. The rumours had died away, with the general opinion that the tip-off had been a prank. Her surging emotions made her irritable and difficult to live with, resulting in a number of small but fiery arguments between herself and Jim.

The worst of them happened one evening around dusk, ending when Jim declared that he’d had enough of her and returned to his office. Trixie knew that she needed to work off her frustration somehow, or it would consume her. With the feeling that she was at the end of her tether, she stormed out of the trailer and headed down the hill towards the road.

Her steps were quick and a little uneven, as she tried to force herself into a steady rhythm. Her eyes swam in and out of focus; her attention was divided between the jumbled thoughts and feelings associated with the case and the more mundane matter of where she was and where she was going. She reached the edge of the shrubbery, not far from the main drive, and stopped with a jolt as she bumped into something solid.

She looked up into unfriendly eyes and realised that her ‘something solid’ was, in fact, being carried by someone – Gervaise Dittman-Cox. Almost without her consent, her gaze transferred to the dirty plastic container he held and she had bumped. The hands which held it were also dirt-smeared. Through the translucent container, Trixie could just make out the shape of the clock, swathed in bubble wrap.

Recognition must have shown on her face, for in an instant, the man had dragged her into the undergrowth. An involuntary cry escaped her lips, but Trixie knew that no one would hear. She tried with all her might to wrench herself free of his grip, but Dittman-Cox was stronger than he appeared. He pulled her with him as he bent to put down the box, and before she knew what was happening, his hands were on her neck.

Trixie scratched at the hands which held her, and struggled to connect a blow, but in vain. The world was beginning to fade away, and her lungs screamed for oxygen, when she felt a jolt, then a glancing blow to her shoulder. The grip on her neck loosened, and she fought free, gasping for breath. An urgent sense of self-preservation caused her to look at her attacker and see if he was preparing for another attempt at her life. Instead, she saw the welcome sight of a hefty police officer in the process of restraining the man. A moment later, a second officer joined him and the prisoner slumped in defeat.

“It should have been mine,” Dittman-Cox spat, despite having been issued a warning. “I doesn’t belong in some dusty old museum.”

Still breathing heavily, Trixie watched as one of the officers unlatched the lid of the container and took a peek inside. He nodded to his colleague, who began the usual procedure to arrest the man.

Late that night, snuggled safely in Jim’s arms, Trixie’s mind cast back over the events of the last few weeks and tried to find what it was that she could have done differently. She could not help but feel guilty for once again falling into the hands of the villain of the piece, but in this case she could not actually find a place she had gone wrong – other than being unwise enough to take a walk at nightfall.

“I really think that I’d rather you didn’t pursue murderers in future,” Jim murmured into her hair. “I don’t think I ever want to open the door again to a police officer who tells me you’ve been attacked.”

“I’m sorry, Jim,” she told him for about the fifth time. “I didn’t mean to put myself in danger. I was just so frustrated with the police that I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t know they were staking out the spot, hoping to catch him there.”

“I know,” he replied. “Next time, though, I think we’d better find another outlet for your frustration, other than walking into traps.”

She smiled, and cuddled in closer. “Did you have something in mind?”

“I could think of one or two things,” he admitted. “Want to try some of them out?”

“You know me,” she replied, with a smile. “I’m always game.”

The End