A Presumption of Death (23 page)

William Shakespeare, sonnet 146, 1609

The Superintendent dealt briskly with the pig. He told Jack Baker to lock the shed behind him, and put an official police seal on the door. Then he was to tour every registered pig in the village, and satisfy himself that it was still alive.

‘As for unregistered pigs . . . I expect that’s what we have here, Lady Peter, and a bother and trouble it is likely to be.’

‘I think you’re right, Superintendent. Come indoors, and we can talk quietly. I’ve thought of something. Or someone, rather; someone we haven’t checked.’

‘You are quite right!’ Superintendent Kirk exclaimed, after she’d told him who was on her mind. ‘He wasn’t a villager, so we didn’t check up on him as one of them, and he wouldn’t have been one of the officers returning to base. We just plain overlooked him.’

‘I haven’t a clue why he might have been a danger to Wendy,’ Harriet said. ‘He seems only marginally more likely than the notorious wandering maniac. But I think we should ask him where he was, don’t you?’

‘I’ll get on to it right away,’ said Kirk. ‘May I use your phone?’

‘It’s very interesting work,’ Hope told Harriet and Bunter. They were having mugs of Ovaltine, sitting in the kitchen, after everyone else was in bed. Harriet was resolved to go soon to bed herself, but she was indulging herself in catching up a bit with Hope. ‘Of course I can’t tell you much; the interesting thing about it is how unlike it is from the photography we used to do, Mervyn. I would have chucked out any blurry negative I got, just reproached myself, and tried to focus better next time. But now I have to really look hard at them, however technically faulty they are. You have to have an eye for detail; Suffolk and Essex are full of ancient farmhouses with the same footprint as this one, for instance; you’d have to study outbuildings and road junctions to place things. But you’d be surprised how much small things can show, when it really matters to decipher them. You can spot troop movements, and changes in buildings. When they camouflage something you can see them doing it, from one picture to another, and wonder why. What they are hiding. It can even be funny. AS sorties lose people, and a little light relief is very welcome.’

‘What’s an AS sortie, Hope?’ asked Harriet.

‘Aerial Surveillance. Hazardous, very often. Although not as bad as fighter squadrons. One of the units picked up a dummy airfield being built. They kept an eye on it, and we could see them making makeshift runways, and all these shacks to look like hangars. They even put some mock-up planes on it, would you believe. All intended to draw our fire from something else. Then when it was ready and complete we bombed it – with wooden bombs!’

Harriet laughed. ‘Hope, I do miss having you nearby. I’m keeping a close eye on that cottage I wrote to you about.’

‘The one with the downed airman in it?’

‘The very one. He must be well enough to return to active service soon. The cottage is just up the lane to Blackden Wood. Five minutes from here. You could have the baby with you.’

‘Sounds rather too good to be true,’ said Hope. ‘But I wish the airman well. What do you think, Mervyn?’

Harriet left them to it. She went to bed, stopping to look into the nursery on the way. All was well. Charlie’s crystal set was carefully set on a shelf above his bed. That tale about wooden bombs sounded exactly the sort of thing Jerry would get up to.

Jack Baker appeared in the Talboys kitchen quite early the next morning, important with news.

‘Superintendent Kirk says to tell you, m’lady, that Lieutenant Brinklow isn’t to be found. He would like to know when you last saw him. He’s not answering the door.’

Bunter was in his shirt-sleeves, putting Hope’s breakfast on a tray, since she had slept late that morning.

‘I’ll come,’ said Harriet, getting up at once.

Superintendent Kirk was standing at the gate of Yew Tree Cottage. He greeted her gloomily. ‘Seems that nobody has actually seen him for several days,’ he said. ‘Susan Hodge says it wouldn’t be unusual, he kept himself to himself.’

‘The obvious thing would be that he has gone back to his unit,’ Harriet said.

‘Do you happen to know which unit that is?’

‘I’m afraid not, Superintendent. Has he taken all his things?’

‘I can’t get in to look. I haven’t broken the door down. I’d need a warrant for that, and grounds for asking for one. Whereas all I’ve got is instinct. I don’t like the feel of this at all.’

‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark?’

‘Hamlet
,’ he said glumly. ‘Yes, that’s about it.’

‘I hope no harm has come to him,’ said Harriet. ‘I hope it isn’t the wandering maniac strikes again.’

‘My guess would be that he cottoned on to it that we were catching up with him to ask about Wendy Percival, and he’s done a bunk. You’d be amazed how often a suspect bolts for it when there’s hardly a thread of evidence, and then you’ve got him. If you haven’t anything to hide, you ask ’em, why did you scarper?’

‘You don’t think he might be a second victim?’

‘It’s one thing to attack a defenceless woman,’ said Kirk. ‘Quite another to have a go at a man in the prime of life, trained, fit, tall. Even if he did have a gammy ankle.’

‘That ankle!’ she said. ‘But I saw him running for a train!’

‘Did you indeed? When, exactly?’

‘A fortnight ago; the day I was in London. And now I come to think of it that was before he took this cottage for another month. Now the plot thickens very much upon us . . .’

‘That’s a tough one, Lady Peter. I don’t have enough eddication for that one. And I do think as how we’ve got to get in to this cottage.’

‘It is rather obscure, Mr Kirk. The Duke of Buckingham, in a play. Miss Hodge would let you have a key.’

‘To sneak a look? Against the rules.’

‘I’ll get the key,’ said Harriet. ‘And if anyone objects I shall say with perfect truth that I was looking over the place because I want to rent it as soon as it’s available. You just happened to be with me.’

She left him standing in the garden and went to look for Susan Hodge.

Brinklow hadn’t taken his things. His shirts were in the wardrobe, there was food in the larder – bread, curdled milk, some rather grey-green-looking sausages – his ration-book was propped behind the clock on the kitchen mantelpiece. A game of chess was laid out to be played solitaire, with a chess problem book open on the table beside it. It was the ration-book that was conclusive; to leave it was to risk starvation. A little discreet rummaging in a chest of drawers produced a wodge of banknotes in an elastic band. A lot of money.

‘He’s coming back,’ suggested Harriet.

‘Looks as though he meant to,’ Kirk agreed. ‘I still don’t like the look of this. I’m going to get a warrant, and search properly. I could do with fingerprinting the scene, just in case. I suppose Mr Bunter wouldn’t care to assist?’

‘I’ll ask him,’ said Harriet. ‘But his wife is with us just for two days, so don’t keep him too long, will you?’

This led to a briefing of Bunter, who was very willing to help out, and put on his jacket at once. He borrowed talcum powder from Harriet, and set off. She went to her desk, and opened her notebook to work.

Perhaps an hour later Hope began to play the piano in the room below. Harriet laid down her pencil and listened. She loved the sound of the piano being played in another room, the sense of the house shared with music. Her mother had played, though mostly hymn tunes. Peter played, mostly Bach. Hope was playing Chopin: a nocturne. And it was a piece that Harriet knew from long ago, because the German music teacher at her school had loved it, played it often, played it with intense feeling. The Fräulein had not succeeded in teaching Harriet to play; she had managed in the course of that failure to teach her to listen. So now the Fräulein was back in Harriet’s mind: her blunted features, dark straight hair, strong square hands on the keyboard. A couple of years back Harriet had suddenly and unexpectedly had a letter from her, forwarded by the school. The Fräulein remembered England with much affection. She had heard that Harriet was a writer; she would like to read something Harriet had written. Would Harriet, for old time’s sake, send her a copy? Ordering books from England cost more than she could afford. Times were hard; it was very hard indeed for musicians to live in Germany nowadays. ‘Of course,’ she had added, ‘I am an ardent Nazi.’

Harriet had sent the book. And now she sat wondering what becomes of ageing women whose skill is rooted in the wrong memories, when times turn murderous? It might well be that ardent Nazis were not encouraged to play Polish music. Had the Fräulein been playing Chopin when the bombs fell on Warsaw, or did the nocturne ring out for the last time on the last night of August last year?

If Chopin and the old school hall were out in force taking messages to the Fräulein, Harriet would not have cried halt. Deeply troubled, seeing suddenly how deadly the virtues of England were, she began at the climax of the music to weep. Quite silently. She did not hear the light step on the stair. She heard, with the zany inconsequential quality of a dream, Peter’s voice behind her saying: ‘And sorrow proud to be advanced so . . . what’s amiss, Domina? I hope you’re not regretting your skills as a code-breaker; never was a wife presented with so elegant a chance to disembarrass herself of a husband without the trouble and expense of a divorce . . .’ But his voice was shaking. She pushed back the chair from her desk and went straight to his arms.

The house had fallen quite silent. Not another note, not a step on the stairs, not a voice in the hallway. It was as if the two of them had boarded the
Marie Celeste
alone. Some time later, Peter said, ‘This can’t be true, can it? Aren’t you going to produce Miss Twitterton from a closet, or a body from the cellar to locate us on solid ground?’

‘Yearning for pumpkin-time? Not charming of you, my lord. I don’t need stage props to find you real. Although perhaps you are rather unbelievably kempt and clean. Bunter was more than scruffy when he showed up again.’

‘Scruffy? Bunter? Oh frabjous day! I wish I had seen that.’

A tap on the door announced not Bunter, but Mrs Trapp. ‘Very sorry indeed to disturb you, my lord, my lady, but Superintendent Kirk is downstairs in a somewhat agitated state, asking to see Lady Peter. I did not take the liberty, my lord, of informing him that you had returned. I thought you might like to tell him yourself.’

‘Peter, if you laugh as hysterically as that he will hear you, and the cat will be out of the bag.’

‘And what kind of a cat, may I ask, do you take me for? Pedigree Persian? Siamese?’

‘A common sort of a ranging tom, I think, with a tabby coat like a garden tiger.’

‘Mewing to be stroked,’ he said.

‘You shall have milk and fish and infinite caresses. But first we must assist the police. Our ordinary duty in peace and in war.’

‘But, Harriet, I haven’t an idea what is going on. I am quite clueless. Have you been doing a bit of sleuthing on the side, to fill in long hours of idleness while I have been away?’

‘What makes you think I am idle in your absence? I wrote it all down for you, Peter, you can read it up tonight.’

Superintendent Kirk was not as amazed to see Peter as Harriet had expected. He did say warmly, ‘Glad to see you back, my lord,’ but he was deeply preoccupied with the matter in hand.

‘We’ve called off the search for Brinklow, Lady Peter,’ he said. ‘We have, in a manner of speaking, run him to earth. And guess what—’

‘Brinklow?’ said Peter. ‘A Flight Lieutenant Brinklow?
Alan
Brinklow?’

‘That’s him,’ said Kirk.

‘He’s dead,’ said Peter.

‘Now, however did you know that, my lord?’ said Kirk.

The question hung in the air between them like an undetonated bombshell. Peter opened his mouth and shut it again.

‘We only found him an hour ago,’ said Kirk.

‘You can’t have,’ said Peter. ‘He’s dead.’

‘You’re right there, my lord,’ said Kirk. ‘He’s as dead as any corpse I’ve ever seen. But what I want to know is, how do you know that?’

‘Peter must be guessing, Superintendent,’ said Harriet. But she was looking at her husband with an expression of astonishment. He had gone very white, she saw. He was definitely in earnest.

‘Guessing, my arm!’ said Kirk.

‘Hell,’ said Peter. ‘Hell, hell, hell. Look, Kirk, where did you find this corpse whoever it is, and why were you looking for him?’

‘As to why, my lord,’ said Kirk, ‘your good lady knows all about it. She will fill you in. He was wanted for questioning in connection with the events of the night of the 17th of February. As to where, buried in a pile of loose earth in George Withers’s back garden. A pile of earth thrown up beside the hole he was digging to plant his Anderson shelter. Says it’s been there for days and days. He dug the hole, and then he went down with flu and hasn’t been near the job for more than a fortnight. Then this morning he was feeling up to it again, he got the metal bit bolted together and standing ready, and when he went to shovel the earth back on top of it like the Ministry pamphlet says to do he had a nasty surprise.’

‘Cause of death?’ asked Peter.

‘Throat cut. The pathologist is there now, and I must get back there. I have left Mr Bunter standing guard over the cottage in Yew Tree Lane, and I have just called in to ask Lady Peter to send someone up there to tell him not to bother. Contents of the cottage can wait.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Peter. ‘Haven’t seen Bunter in weeks. But look here, Superintendent, whoever you’ve got laid out in Mr Withers’s garden, it isn’t Alan Brinklow, believe me.’

‘But how do you
know
, my lord?’ cried Kirk in exasperation.

‘Because, as I said, he was dead already,’ said Peter mysteriously. ‘Look, Kirk old chap, you’ll have to wait a couple of hours for an explanation.’