Wycliffe and the Three Toed Pussy

by W.J. Burley

Genres: Mystery; Cozy Mystery; Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

A case involving a dead woman with a deformed foot and a mysterious past requires all Superintendent Wycliffe's investigative skills. The peace of the village of Kergwyns in Cornwall has been shattered by a bizarre murder. A beautiful young woman has been shot. The only thing taken from the scene is the shoe and stocking from her left leg - exposing her deformed foot. Detective Superintendent Wycliffe uncovers evidence of an unhappy woman who routinely manipulated the men in her life. As half the men in the village have been known to visit her, and most have reason to lie about it, finding the murderer will not be easy. Wycliffe's task is complicated by the discovery of some clues in the form of crossword puzzles left by the victim herself. If Pussy knew she was going to die why did she make no effort to save herself? When several men have been incriminated in the murder Wycliffe begins to wonder if someone very powerful is stage-managing events . . . Why readers love W.J. Burley: 'First-class, old-time, hyper-ingenious whodunit.' Observer 'You can always count on Wycliffe ... he inevitably guarantees a good story, convincing characters and appealing landscape ' Financial Times 'Wycliffe teases out the truth with delicate skill that leaves the reader intrigued and convinced.' Mail on Sunday 'Gripping.' The Times Fans of Ruth Rendell, Val McDermid and Peter Robinson will love W.J. Burley: 1. Wycliffe and the Three-Toed Pussy 2. Wycliffe and How to Kill a Cat 3. Wycliffe and the Guilt Edged Alibi 4. Wycliffe and Death in a Salubrious Place 5. Wycliffe and Death in Stanley Street 6. Wycliffe and the Pea-Green Boat 7. Wycliffe and the School Bullies 8. Wycliffe and the Scapegoat 9. Wycliffe in Paul's Court 10. Wycliffe's Wild Goose Chase 11. Wycliffe and the Beales 12. Wycliffe and the Four Jacks 13. Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin 14. Wycliffe and the Winsor Blue 15. Wycliffe and the Tangled Web 16. Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death 17. Wycliffe and the Dead Flautist 18. Wycliffe and the Last Rites 19. Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery 20. Wycliffe and the House of Fear 21. Wycliffe and the Redhead 22. Wycliffe and the Guild of Nine * Each Inspector Wycliffe novel can be read as part of a series or as a standalone*

Release date: December 16, 2010

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 155

Sample

Pussy Welles.

Slumped on her plain oatmeal carpet in ultimate relaxation, in the abandoned posture of a child asleep; one arm beneath her body, the other flung out, fingers flexed but not clenched. Her auburn hair shone lustrous in the sunlight, splayed on the pile. Her simple cornflower-blue frock made a splash of colour on the neutral ground. One leg – the right – drawn up under her, only visible below the knee; seamless nylon and a neat, though by no means elegant, flat heeled suede shoe. Her left leg straight and bare, no stocking, no shoe.

The foot was deformed.

Two toes missing, the first and second; obviously a congenital malformation, not a consequence of accident or surgery. All these things ought to have seemed trivial in contrast with the jagged hole between her breasts and the dark red viscous mass clogging the fabric of her dress and the pile of the carpet. But it was not so for the two men who stood over her.

The sergeant was deeply moved by the sight of her deformed foot, a gross flaw where he had supposed only perfection. For the superintendent, it had always been the fact of death and not the means that shocked him; the dissolution of a personality. But they both bent over her in professional scrutiny.

They could not see the wound of exit – if there was one, it must have been hidden by a fold in the material of her dress; but the entry was horrifyingly apparent. They did not touch her; she would have to be photographed, examined and inspected by a gaggle of experts before she was moved. The superintendent looked round the room; all the furniture stood on legs, easy to clean underneath, no draperies, nowhere to lose anything, just an expanse of carpet from wall to wall. The cartridge case lay plain to see against the white skirting board, under a china cupboard.

‘An automatic,’ the sergeant said, ensuring his credit. ‘It looks like a .32.’

‘We shall know soon enough.’

Wycliffe wanted to stop the sergeant talking. Soon there would be more than enough talk, an avalanche of facts, fictions, surmises and explanations; for the moment, he wanted to form impressions of his own. He knew the girl’s name – at least, he knew what they called her – Pussy Welles. And Pussy Welles was dead, apparently shot through the heart. He could start from there.

As far as he could tell, she must have been about twenty-five or six. He thought her beautiful, and, in death, she had a look of innocence. Deceptive? Why should he think so? Perhaps because a girl is unlikely to be called Pussy for her innocence. Feline – but of what kind? I love little pussy, her coat is so warm – that sort? Or green eyed, sleek and stealthy? He could find out by asking the sergeant who was bursting to tell all he knew of the girl, but the superintendent preferred to wait. In any case, he thought he knew already the kind of cat she must have been.

She had money, or at least, she spent it. It was only a cottage, one of those four-square little granite blockhouses with slate roofs that form the nucleus of every Cornish village, but like many of them nowadays, it had been elegantly modernized, gutted and reconstructed from within. This one room ran the length of the cottage and it had two bow windows. The furniture was good quality reproduction stuff – or was it genuine?

Superintendent Wycliffe stood at one of the windows looking out. The little front garden was paved with granite sets and succulents grew in the cracks, sedums and houseleeks. The wooden palings were painted pale blue, a colour which seems to be the badge of those cottages which have undergone their metamorphosis. Beyond, a narrow lane, a stone wall, and the lichen covered roofs of more cottages, grey-green and orange, then the grey square tower of the church rising out of a clump of sycamores just coming into leaf.

A strange spot for the kind of girl she seemed to be. It occurred to him that she was not freckled as most auburn haired people are; her skin was clear, rather pale, translucent. He could swear that she was a natural blonde but what could it matter if she dyed her hair? Most girls do. In any case it would all be in the report.

Deceased met her death as a result of a gunshot wound. The bullet was fired from a Webley .32 automatic pistol and entered the body between the sixth and seventh ribs slightly to the left of the sternum. The wound of entry indicates that the shot was fired at close range, the weapon being held at less than fifteen inches and more than nine inches from the surface of the body …

It would all be there, in a wealth of boring detail, essential for the court, if it ever came to court, but very little help in detection. Crimes like this, nine times out of ten, are an explosive result of a build up of tension in human relationships. When those relationships are known, the criminal is known though the technical data may be needed to convict him.

Two men were walking down the lane, dawdling, obviously trying to see as much as possible during their brief passage, unwilling to stop and stare openly. One was heavily built, florid, fortyish; he wore a black polo-necked jersey. The other was younger, slim, small; only head and shoulders visible above the palings, but it was enough; green corduroy jacket, orange cravat; thin, pale, sensitive features, black hair scrupulously parted. He caught sight of the superintendent and looked away at once. As they disappeared down the lane he was gesturing vigorously in conversation with his companion.

Wycliffe smiled. Unlikely that these boys would tangle with a woman!

Her deformed foot was beginning to trouble him, not for the reason it worried the sergeant. The superintendent knew that total perfection is so rare that when it seems to be, one looks the more diligently for flaws. His was a more practical point. Why only one stocking and shoe? Even if she had started to undress in her sitting-room, the other stocking and shoe should be there, and they were not.

He nodded unconsciously in confirmation of a conclusion, having convinced himself that this was a deliberate advertisement of deformity.

A police car came to a halt in the lane, blocking it completely and a second pulled up, hard on its heels.

‘They’ve come. I’m off!’

The sergeant’s surprise and obvious disapproval annoyed him, so that his manner became peremptory. ‘Ask the inspector to see that everything is put back exactly as they find it and nothing to be taken away without my permission.’

‘Where will you be, sir? – in case the inspector wants you?’

‘At the pub – there is one, I suppose?’

Although he was successful, having what is called a distinguished record, he always lost confidence in himself at the beginning of a case; he would avoid his subordinates for fear of sensing their mute criticism, and, forced into their company, he became aggressively dictatorial. Those who knew him shrugged. He’ll be all right when he’s run in.

Now he escaped through the backway, through a little modern kitchen with a dining alcove, into the garden. It should have been a potato and cabbage patch, hard won from the thin, black stony soil of the moor, but somebody had transformed it into a delightful walled garden with rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and laurels. Obviously not the dead girl; the garden was made before she was born. A door in the high wall brought him out on to the moor for the house was on the very outskirts of the village. Gorse, heather and brambles grew almost to the door but there was a path of sorts and he reached the lane and made off down it like a guilty schoolboy, away from the police cars. A hundred yards and the lane turned sharp right and on the corner, facing back up the lane, a substantial farm house meticulously cared for; a white gate with a varnished plaque:

Anybody in that house sufficiently interested would know a good deal of what went on in the dead girl’s cottage.

The turn in the lane brought him to the square; the church opposite, the pub on his left and a score or so of cottages completing the square. A war memorial in the middle. A pleasant little place, sleepy at this time of year but, no doubt, busy enough in the season.

It was deserted now at any rate but there were plenty of discreetly curtained windows and those who watched, saw him pause, resting on his stick, taking things in. Unless they knew, they would hardly suspect that he was a policeman; he prided himself on that. Barely the regulation height, slender in build, it was difficult to believe that he had ever walked a beat, but he had – twenty years ago. He looked comfortable in his tweeds, not a bit like a bobby off duty. With binoculars slung over his shoulder, he might have been one of the bird watchers who frequented the neighbouring cliffs and coves. But he had no binoculars, just his stick.

Wycliffe never felt like a policeman. Often during his twenty-odd years of service he wondered why he joined. He hated discipline, hated regimentation and sometimes he hated order; but he hated violence more. Perhaps that was why he stayed, but he had joined for no better reason than to get out of the family business. The Wycliffes were large scale market gardeners in Hereford.

Pussy Welles had been murdered; there could be no doubt of that. Perhaps she was not much loss, but violence must never be tolerated. That was his creed. By the same token he was, unlike most of his colleagues, opposed to capital punishment. No compromise! Otherwise you are on the road to Belsen and Hiroshima. For whatever reason he had become a policeman, that was why he remained one.

‘Good morning, superintendent, what will you have?’

A modest fame which should have flattered but merely irritated. His answer was surly but the man behind the bar was not easily put off.

Mike Young, licensee, in striped shirt and fancy waistcoat. A heavily built man, running to fat, a high colour and blond, thinning hair. But it was his face which captured reluctant attention. One side of it was a caricature, a series of livid scars from well above the normal hair line down to his jaw bone; the ear pinna was missing altogether and his neck was deeply furrowed by the scars of complex lacerations.

Wycliffe sipped his whisky. There were only two other customers, the two men he had seen passing the cottage. They sat close in the window seat, silent. The older one had a tankard of beer, the other, some short drink, probably gin. Wycliffe had his back to them but he knew they were watching him with interest and apprehension.

‘A nasty business, superintendent! Who would want to kill a girl like Pussy Welles?’

‘You knew her?’ A fatuous question in a village of two hundred people but Young seemed anxious to answer.

‘Everybody knew her – and liked her – she brought a bit of life into the place. I’d like to get my hands on the bastard that killed her!’ His great thick fingered hands closed convulsively; a man of violence. He picked up his cigarette that smouldered in an ashtray, drew on it deeply and exhaled the grey smoke through pouting lips. Then he leaned forward and lowered his voice confidentially.

‘I might as well tell you that the cottage is mine.’

‘You mean that she rented it from you?’

The landlord nodded and Wycliffe sensed an embarrassment though he could not divine its cause.

‘She took it four or five years back when my mother and father died.’

‘Did she have relatives here?’

‘Not that I know of.’

Wycliffe filled and lit his pipe, watching the landlord over the undulant flame of the match. ‘An odd place for a young woman to settle, a village like this, don’t you think?’

Young raised his massive shoulders expressing unwillingness to comment.

‘Was the cottage furnished?’

‘No, she brought her own.’

‘Did you get your rent?’

Hostility and suspicion flared in his eyes. ‘I don’t know what you mean!’

‘I mean did she pay her rent?’ The menace in his voice was the more effective in that it was unconscious. He disliked the landlord.

Young reached below the bar for a cloth and began to wipe the polished surface in a reflex action. ‘She always paid,’ he said sullenly.

A complication here, and Wycliffe thought he could guess what it was. After a prolonged silence, Young looked at him sheepishly. ‘I suppose you’ll be staying to lunch, superintendent?’

‘And I’d like a room for two or three days.’

‘I’ll go and fix it now.’ He was anxious to be gone. Wycliffe detained him.

‘As you rented her the cottage, you must know something about her – references – that sort of thing.’

‘No, I knew nothing about her, superintendent. She paid me a substantial deposit when she took over and that was good enough for me.’ He edged away, like a guilty schoolboy, itching to go before he commits some indiscretion.

‘One more thing,’ Wycliffe said, ‘the antique dealers, what sort of people are they?’

No mistaking relief in Young’s distorted grin. He nodded towards the pair in the window. ‘You’re in luck, superintendent, meet Mr Clemens and Mr Reed.’

Wycliffe took his second whisky to the window and drew up a chair. It was pathetic; they waited for him to speak in frozen attitudes so that he felt like a predator. He introduced himself – superfluous – but it enabled him to be friendly and they responded, tentatively. Harvey Clemens and Aubrey Reed. (Why, for God’s sake? – do they change their names when they feel the call, like film stars?). Aubrey was the younger; Nature had played a shabby trick, endowing him with the essential attribute of masculinity when, in all else, he was a woman.

‘We know why you are here,’ Harvey said.

Wycliffe smiled. ‘I suppose the whole village knows by now. Mrs Vines, the lady who found her, will have spread it round a bit.’

Aubrey made an angry gesture. ‘She’s an old witch! We used to have her to do our cleaning – didn’t we, Harvey? – but we had to get rid of her. You don’t want to take notice of anything she tells you!’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ the superintendent said.

‘What do you want from us?’ Aubrey was petulant, suspicious.

‘Just that your cottage overlooks the dead woman’s and you may know who visits her – her friends, if you like.’

‘Men,’ Harvey said.

Aubrey looked nervously at the bar but the landlord had gone. ‘We don’t spy on our neighbours, superintendent.’

Wycliffe let his cold eyes rest on Reed for some time before he spoke. ‘Perhaps we should continue this conversation at the police station in a more formal atmosphere.’

Aubrey made a little grimace of shocked distaste. ‘We don’t want to go to the police station, do we, Harvey?’ He put his hands meticulously together and locked them between his knees. ‘She had a lot of men friends.’

‘Disgusting!’ Harvey said.

‘Who, for example?’

Aubrey nodded towards the bar. ‘He used to be one.’ It was obvious that he hated the landlord; equally obvious that he was afraid of him.

Wycliffe refilled his pipe and carefully pressed down the tobacco with a fitting on his penknife. ‘Used to be?’

‘Until he had that accident. Now, I suppose even she …’

‘It must have been some accident! – what happened?’

Harvey cut in. ‘He was thrown through the windscreen of his car! Right through the glass! They couldn’t see him for blood when they found him.’

Aubrey shuddered. ‘Harvey! He was driving home from St Ives late at night, and his car skidded on a patch of oil.’

‘Oil?’

‘Yes. A five gallon drum of oil all over the road. They think it must have fallen off the back of a lorry or something.’

‘He was drunk,’ Harvey said.

‘Anybody else?’

Aubrey kept his hands tightly locked and swayed gently from side to side.

‘There’s Dr Barnes,’ Harvey said. ‘He’s a lecturer in archaeology at the University. They’ve got the cottage going down at Kitt’s Cove.’

‘They?’

‘He and his wife; they spend their vacations down here.’

‘Are they down, now?’

‘He is,’ Aubrey said, ‘I saw him yesterday.’

The superintendent lit his pipe and puffed until it was drawing to his satisfa. . .