Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder by Ann Cleeves Read Free Book Online Page B

did not look at her grandmother immediately. Then she saw the silk pastel print of Eleanor’s dress against the green grass, and the fine limbs jointed like a puppet’s. She saw that the bird was perched on the woman’s shoulder and had torn the fabric of the dress with its talons. The sharp cruel beak was pointed towards her grandmother’s face.
    She ran screaming to the man in the Range-Rover, hammering on the door and yelling to him that the birds had killed her grandmother and were pecking out her eyes. Then to her later, secret satisfaction, she fainted.

Chapter Three
    George heard the screaming. When he reached the weathering ground a crowd had gathered round the roped-off area and were staring, fascinated, at the huge bird perched on the frail and slender body of the woman. The bird, sensing the attention, stretched its wings and turned its head. The woman’s body was almost covered by the feathers. No one dared to approach the birds and a policeman, who had been at Gorse Hill to control the traffic, was clearly out of his depth.
    ‘Let me bring the bird out,’ Fenn was saying to him, his voice shaken and distressed. ‘The woman’s obviously dead. The red-tailed hawk couldn’t have killed her look at her head – but it’s a carrion feeder. It’ll treat her as it would any other dead body.’
    Fenn was a short man. He hardly reached the policeman’s shoulder. He was white, almost incoherent with shock, and the policeman seemed unwilling to take him seriously. He was remembering rules about approaching the scene of the crime and the unwitting loss of evidence.
    ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Murdoch Fenn screamed, an indication at last of his hysteria. ‘If we don’t move the hawk soon there’ll be no body left for your pathologist to examine.’
    He looked around wildly for a way to convince the policeman and saw George. It seemed to George that he was on the verge of breakdown.
    ‘Look,’ he said gratefully. ‘There’s Mr Palmer-Jones. He works for the Department of the Environment as a Wildlife Act Inspector. Ask him.’
    Finally the policeman allowed Fenn and George into the enclosure and all the birds were put on portable perches in the back of the Range-Rover. The policeman cleared the people from the field, though by then the grass had been churned by their feet, and George thought there would be little to assist the forensic officers. Eleanor’s body was left, roped off, as if the police had already been there and begun their work. As Fenn had said, it was obvious she was dead, but George, stooped over her body in a vain, childish hope that it was all a mistake. Her skull had been smashed, just above one eye, and though the skin was not broken the shape of her face was quite altered. He thought for a brief moment that it was not Eleanor at all but some other woman, then he realized he was deluding himself. He had known from the beginning that no bird could have killed her. Even if, as in some melodramatic horror film, the hawk had been trained to attack humans, Eleanor would have had no reason to wander into the weathering ground. Now the head wound showed that she had suffered no accident, no heart attack. She had been murdered.
    He had always thought revenge a misguided and destructive emotion, but having seen Eleanor lying on the grass amidst the droppings, the dirty straw, the discarded pieces of fur and feather of the birds’ prey, he felt angry and violent. She was beautiful, he had admired her and she had been killed.
    He looked briefly around him for some smooth round implement which might be the murder weapon but there was nothing. He slipped away from the field and went into the house by the back door. He collected his binoculars and telescope from his room then joined the gossiping people who had been excited by the tragedy and were making their way down the drive to the lane. Mrs Masefield had had a seizure, some said. She hadn’t been herself for some time. It was those evil