5. Sophia Thatcher

The author's agent is alerted to something of interest.

WORDS MEAN DEATH
5. Sophia Thatcher
This, thought Mike Copperly, agent to minor wordsmiths, is beginning to look rally interesting…
As soon as he had decided there was a body at the bottom of Dorian Hemsworth’s neatly mowed back lawn, he returned to the front of the man’s house and from there to his car, because it was quite clear that however hard he knocked the man’s door he was in no position to answer it. He was quite sure the legs sticking out of a pile of grass cuttings must be the man he had an appointment with and consequently wouldn’t be able ro discuss his novel with even if he waited until time itself came to an unpredictable end. No, he’d made a wasted journey, but…
There was the sight he’d had of the clerical collar on Mike Copperly’s neighbour as he’d made his way onto the street.
Then he’d done the decent thing and reported the grisly scene to the police and was assured an officer would be on his or her way and would he remain where he was until he had given his evidence.
“Seeing a corpse from a distance of twenty yards isn’t actually evidence,” he had complained, “because that’s all I know. A kid screamed, I saw it and beat my way back to my car where I now am, but I have business down south as soon as possible.”
“It won’t take long,” he was assured, and to demonstrate the effciency of the Brumpton police force a police car, blue lights and screeching alarm, pulled up behind his own car.
A woman officer made her way to his car and indicated that she’d like him to open the passenger window so that she could be heard. Instead, he leaned over, opened the door, invited her in after seeing her warrant card, which she held in front of what he thought must be a very tidy breast.
“DI Gamble,” she introduced herself, “And I suppose you must be the gentleman who reported an unexpected dead body.”
“I am, and I’ve got pressure on my time,” he told he, not quite truthfully “I came to have a brief conference with Mr Copperly regarding his latest novel, and when nobody answered the front door I made my way round the back in case he was doing his garden, only to be alarmed by a schoolgirl screaming her head off, and drawing my attention to the poor man lying in a pile of grass cuttings, his legs sticking out and blood everywhere. I went too close for my own liking, but he was dead.”
“So you instinctively knew that he was dead? Did you touch him?”
“He couldn’t have been alive, and I guess you might call me squeamish because I beat my way back to my car as soon as I could, and phoned you lot.”
“But you didn’t check?”
“No. He was dead. That was obvious. Now is that all?”
“Just a moment sir, and then it’ll be all. Who else did you see?”
“There were the girls. Two of them in school uniform, behind a fence. As I said, two of them. Maroon blazers and little grey skirts, and one of them was screaming her head off because she noticed the dead man.”
“And she was the other side of the fence?”
“Of course. On a pathway, obviously terrified. I’d have gone to help her, but there was a six foot fence in the way. Oh, and the same vicar I’d seen leaving the house next door: he was standing several yards away. There must be an alleyway or something that he’d walked down because I’d swear black was white that it was the same man I’d seen at the front.”
“I see. And was there anyone else, sir?”
“No. I’m sure of it. That’s all that I know.”
“Thank you, sir, and if I can take your details just in case… but we’ll most likely not want to speak to you again.”
Mike reached into his pocket and pulled out a small visiting card. “It’s all on here,” he told her.
Dorothy Bramble glanced at the card, nodded, and climbed out of the car then made her way towards the sergeant who had climbed out of her own car.
Mike shook his head to clear it. He wasn’t used to this kind of excitement, not that he found it at all exciting. So he didn’t notice the young woman running across the road from a nearby house or know of her presence until t=she knocked his window, this time on the road side of his car.
“Now what?” he sighed, and opened the window.
“Can I help you?” he asked, trying to sound friendly and almost failing.
“It’s the writer bloke, ain’t it?” she asked, smiling, “is he okay?”
“You mean, is the dead man okay?” he asked.
“You mean, Christ Almighty, you mean he’s dead?”
“They both are,” muttered, less friendly because all he wanted to do was get away fom this street and the people who lived in it.
“Both?” she asked, eyes wide open.
“Yes. The writer bole, or Dorian Hensworth, as I know him, and Christ Almighty, Both very dead. Or so I believe.”
“Oh dead. Terrible, He was helping me with my book.”
“You’re writing a book too?” he asked.
“Trying to. I’m Sophia Thatcher and I’ve done two chapters already.”
“Well, let me know when it’s finished and I’ll see if I can place it for you,” he told her, not expecting anything to come from a chance meeting like this one.
“You know the spooky bloke next door,” she said, “the one with a dog collar? He’s known as the widow snatcher because he’s always nestling up to old ladies not long before they peg it. Well, his bird, an old biddy called Sylvia Standish, she might know summat about the writer bloke, Dorian what you called him, because I know he went to see her about summat in his own book…”
“That’s interesting…” he murmured, and it was. Maybe he could check up on the woman. She might know more than she thinks she knows about a dead novelist.
“She lives round that bend, at number 72,” pointed Sylvia Thatcher, and she grinned again. “It’ll not be so long that she’s breathing if the widow snatcher’s after her!”
“Thank you, er, Sophia, and I will call on her. Thank you very much…”
“She’s a nice old bird. Well, I like her and I don’t want to see any harm come to her.”
The young Sophia smiled, he closed the window, and she return across the road to her own home.
And he drove off, wondering why he was going to call on number seventy two just round the bend.

© Peter Rogerson, 08.01.24