A Corpse in Shining Armour (11 page)

‘Servant from the hall, from what I heard.’

We turned on to a rutted track through woodland, and came to a halt in a clearing just wide enough for the curricle to turn
round, with a view of sunlight glinting on water.

‘Here we are, ma’am.’

The cottage was like a child’s playhouse only slightly enlarged, built in the picturesque style with a steep tiled roof and
gables too large for it, like eyebrows raised in surprise. The garden was a mass of hollyhocks, penstemons, roses, all growing
higgledy-piggledy together, with a row of red and white flowered runner beans on poles. Beyond the garden, a patch of rough
grass sloped down to the river. In winter the cottage must be damp and probably quite often flooded, but in June it was so
beautiful I wished I really were there on a holiday. I found a key left ready in the front door, opened it and let the driver
and Tabby carry the trunk inside. A note was lying on the stone flagged floor inside the door from the steward, Mr Whiteley,
addressed to me by name, trusting I would find everything satisfactory and recommending a woman from the village who would
clean and cook. The curricle rumbled away and I set Tabby to unpacking.

There were just four rooms, none of them large. The main one downstairs looked out on the garden and the river, with a cubbyhole
of a kitchen at the back. Upstairs was a bedroom and a box room, both with beds and wash stands. I set up my spirit stove,
found my tea caddy and sent Tabby to dip a kettleful of water from the river. We drank our tea without milk, sitting on a
bench by the porch. Tabby started talking again and it was a relief to find she hadn’t been terrified by the journey as I
feared, simply noticing everything. She could describe almost every building of any size we’d passed on the way, and imitated
the nervous cough of the lawyer-like man so perfectly that he might have been sitting beside us. I was almost envious. I’ve
had to cultivate my powers of observation as a professional necessity. Tabby seemed to have them as naturally as a bird sings.

‘So what do we do now we’re here?’ she said.

I’d been wondering that myself.

‘I think we’ll walk to the village to see if there’s anywhere we can buy bread and milk,’ I said.

It was about four in the afternoon by then, the air warm and languorous. I could happily have sat there for hours, with the
bees buzzing in the hollyhocks and the murmur of the river in the background, but there was work to be done. The first thing
was to find a way into village gossip and ascertain, as delicately as possible, the local opinion of the lady of the manor’s
sanity.

We walked together up the path through the woods, Tabby carrying my empty travelling bag for our shopping. The village seemed
almost deserted, with most of the men likely to be out working in the fields because it was hay harvest time. There was a
village shop of a kind, consisting of the front room of one of the cottages, with a drowsy-looking young woman behind the
counter. When Tabby and I went inside, the three of us filled up the small room almost completely. Of the small stock available,
I managed to buy a pint of milk, with the loan of a lidded can to carry it, some cheese, a none-too fresh loaf of coarse bread
and about half a pound of strawberries, over-ripe and weeping their pink juice. I reminded myself not to be critical. It was
a Saturday afternoon in a village probably not much used to visitors. I paid for the groceries and told Tabby to carry them
home.

‘Can you find your way back all right?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

She sounded doubtful. I saw her to the start of the path through the woods then turned back to the village, looking for the
cottage of the woman who would clean and cook. According to Mr Whiteley’s note, she was called Mrs Todd and lived next to
the church.

Mrs Todd came to the door with a scarf round her hair, a child clinging to her skirt and another one yelling in the background.
She looked so tired that I felt guilty about asking her, but she was eager to work every day from ten till one, Sundays excepted.
Goodness knows what I’d find for her to do in our tiny residence. A side gate into the churchyard stood open opposite her
cottage. There was only one fresh grave there, a hump of brown soil in the closely mown turf, in the far corner of the churchyard
by the wall, in a space on its own. I was almost certain I knew who was lying under that hump of soil. Naturally there was
no cross or headstone on it, as the burial had taken place just that morning, but what was odd was the complete lack of any
floral tributes, not a flower or a laurel leaf. I stood for a while, then strolled away from it, past gravestones recording
many generations of the same family names, and out of the main gate back to the village street, just in time to see something
happening.

It would have been no event at all in London, simply a builder’s wagon, loaded with pieces of squared stone, drawn by a cobby
grey. The horse was standing quietly with nobody holding it, while two men unloaded a few pieces of stone and some tools from
the wagon into a handcart. When the handcart was half full, they dragged it across the road and through the churchyard gate,
straining to pull it up the incline. Then they manoeuvred it past the gravestones towards the hump of fresh earth. At first
I thought that people were concerned about the new grave after all, and these were memorial masons come to give it a stone
surround. But they dragged their cart past the grave, right to the corner. They set it down, produced a hammer and chisel
from the cart and set about demolishing the existing wall. It looked to me a perfectly good wall as it was. I went closer
and watched, unnoticed, as they removed a course of stone blocks from the top of the wall and piled them up neatly. They’d
started on the second course when an elderly man came running out from the church porch, shouting at them.

‘What do you think you’re doing? Leave that alone.’

The two men stopped work briefly.

‘Ladyship’s orders.’

‘You can’t go taking down the wall.’

‘We’re going to build it up again, just on the other side of this.’

The workman indicated the grave mound. The elderly man gave them another scandalised look and hurried back into the church.
He came out again with a young and nervous man in clerical bands.

‘Stop it at once. What do you think you’re doing?’

The vicar’s voice came out as a high bray, but respect for the cloth made the two men stop work again. The one who did the
talking touched his cap.

‘Excuse me, Reverend, but we had instructions from her ladyship it was to be done at once. She said she’d be sending to you
to explain.’

‘Explain what? Why in the world does she want the wall taken down?’

‘Because she wants him outside of it,’ the workman said, nodding towards the mound of earth.

Comprehension and embarrassment flared on the vicar’s face.

‘You can’t, you know. You really can’t…’ he began.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Headingley, but it’s necessary.’

A new voice, a woman’s voice from behind us. We all spun round. She was dressed in floating green silk, with the inside of
her bonnet green-trimmed to match. She was probably in her late forties, with a square forehead, high cheekbones and a determined
chin, her hair showing streaks of grey. Even in youth, she would have lacked the softness of conventional beauty but age had
given her face authority and distinction. Her voice too. There was a tone of command in it that struck the men to silence.
She took a few steps towards the clergyman, speaking more softly.

‘But I do beg your pardon. I’d intended to come and speak to you before they started work, but something delayed me.’

‘But why…?’ he said.

‘It’s all been an awful mistake.’ She gestured towards the burial mound, a full-armed gesture, theatrical. ‘He should never
have been buried in the churchyard. He should never have been brought back here at all. I’m afraid my son totally misunderstood
my wishes. I sent word to you as soon as I knew what had happened, but evidently it came too late.’

Beads of sweat ran down the clergyman’s forehead.

‘I…I didn’t receive your message until after the ceremony.’

‘So early. Why did it have to be so early?’

He swallowed, trying to cling on to his courage. Almost certainly, the living of the church was in the gift of the estate.
Lady Brinkburn’s husband had appointed him and, even if she couldn’t dismiss him, her patronage was important.

‘In any case, I had no reason to bury him outside the churchyard,’ he said.

‘No reason? Why should a man like him lie alongside these good people?’ Another gesture took in the gravestones as witnesses.
‘He has no business in sacred ground, and you know that as well as I do.’

‘But since it’s done now…’

‘I don’t suppose you’d let me have him dug up, so this is the next best thing.’

The workmen stood stolidly by the wall, hammers and chisels ready to start work again. The clergyman looked from her to them
and back again.

‘It
is
parish property,’ he said apologetically.

‘Of course it is, and I’m willing to make a more than fair exchange. I’ll give the parish that acre next to the school. I
know they’ve had their eye on it for years.’

Land-greed on behalf of his parishioners shone in the vicar’s eyes.

‘Where would you want the wall to go?’ he said.

She looked at him, then slowly paced a line a few feet from the inside of the grave, running diagonally to connect with the
existing wall in the corner. A perfectly reasonable line that would leave Handy’s remains in the next-door pasture with the
cows. The land lost to the parish had nothing else on it but a heap of broken flowerpots, and it was only a small fraction
of the acre she’d offered in exchange. She turned at the corner and walked back to us, face calm. Under the floating hem of
her silk dress she was wearing plain cotton stockings and sensible brown leather shoes for walking.

‘I’ll have to consult the parish council,’ the clergyman said, admitting defeat.

She smiled for the first time.

‘Of course you will. But when they see where the new wall runs, I’m sure they’ll realise it’s no loss. I’ll have the deeds
for the school acre drawn up at once.’

She nodded to the workmen. Two hammers clinked on to two chisels simultaneously, like figures on a German clock.

Satisfied that her orders were being carried out, she turned and noticed me for the first time. Her eyes looked a question.
She knew everybody in the village. I introduced myself and explained that I was staying at her cottage. Her expression changed
in an instant, the planes of her face softening from determination to polite sociability.

‘Whiteley did mention it. You are comfortable there?’

‘Very. It’s a beautiful cottage.’

‘I’m glad you think so.’

Her eyes were an unusual shade of pale blue that gave an other-worldly quality to her look. She began to walk towards the
gate, disregarding the vicar who was still hovering, perhaps hoping to make a last appeal. I went with her.

‘Whiteley tells me you paint,’ she said.

‘Sketch a little. I have no great talent.’

‘Great talents are granted to few of us. Still, me must do the best we can, mustn’t we?’

Her mind wasn’t on what she was saying. I sensed in her some of the drained feeling that comes after an argument. She’d won,
but wasn’t enjoying her victory. We went through the lych gate on to the road. The builder’s horse was dozing in his shafts.
Two women in the porch of one of the cottages were pretending not to look at us. The story of her ladyship and the wall was
probably running round the village already.

‘You must come to tea,’ she said. ‘Monday at four o’clock. We shan’t talk about this miserable business.’

It was more of a command than an invitation. I said I should be glad to. I thought there might be a carriage or at least a
horse waiting for her, but she simply wished me good afternoon and turned along the road in the direction of the hall, walking
purposefully in her sensible shoes, silk skirt fluttering.

Next day was Sunday. I decided against going to church in the village, although the bells were ringing out their invitation
over woods and fields. I left Tabby washing up after our breakfast and went for a solitary walk along the river bank with
my sketching things. A narrow footpath ran upriver from the cottage. I followed it between swathes of meadowsweet and purple
loosestrife, past clumps of yellow irises, thinking hard about what had happened in the churchyard. I’d got what I wanted,
my invitation to Lady Brinkburn’s home, but it was hardly necessary any more. If I reported what had happened to Mr Lomax,
he’d probably say that my task was accomplished already. A woman of wealth and title has a churchyard wall knocked down and
moved, which probably amounts to sacrilege, argues with her vicar in public and parts with an acre of land, all to make sure
that an unsatisfactory servant rots under the hooves of her cows, rather than decorously among the gravestones. When that
story was told, any court in the land would be likely to judge Lady Brinkburn as mad as a March hare. If I’d only heard the
story without meeting her, I’d probably have agreed.

And yet, and yet, and yet. Looked at in another way, this was a woman of more than common strong-mindedness. Faced with something
she believed to be wrong, she’d weighed her alternatives and come to a solution. If Handy once buried couldn’t be taken from
the churchyard, then the churchyard could be taken from Handy. Within hours, she’d organised her workmen and set about it.
When faced with opposition from the vicar, she’d used both bullying and bribery effectively. The offer of the school acre
had apparently been made on the spur of the moment and showed an impressive capacity to improvise. If this was madness, then
it was of a disturbingly rational kind. What weighed with me as much was her air in those few minutes when we were walking
across the churchyard together. There’d been a sadness about her that seemed at odds with the rest of her behaviour. I wasn’t
sure whether I’d like her or not on closer acquaintance, but I didn’t have the impression of a hard-natured woman.