Beneath the Soil (29 page)

Instead, a knot of figures, some in uniform, some not, were clustered around that single place in the yard which Tom had gestured to. Even from the back she recognized the tall figure of DCI Brewer.

Slowly the knowledge took shape in her mind of what it was they were surrounding. She had stood in this yard not half an hour ago, imagining her great-great-grandfather at work here. Drawing water for the horses from that same well.

‘No!' she whispered. ‘
No!
'

She made to rush forward, to break through the tape. This time it was Tom who held her back. She could not see what they were doing. She thought she glimpsed an officer in overalls clambering over the low brick wall that surrounded the well. She imagined all too vividly the rope around his waist, the dark shaft into which he must be descending. The cold water at the bottom. She could not bear to think what he might find there.

Tom was standing in front of her, his hands firm on her shoulders.

Beyond him, there was more activity now. The surrounding officers were not just onlookers. They must be hoisting that other officer out. Or raising something else. She strained against Tom's restraining hands, but he stood his ground, blocking her view.

Another siren screamed into the hush that had fallen over the yard. This time it was an ambulance that came rocking into sight to stop on the concrete farmyard. Two paramedics jumped out and went running towards the well. Suzie's fingernails were digging into her palms as she prayed in desperation. She knew it must be too late, but her mind would not accept it.

She turned her head and saw Millie, white-faced, beside her. Suzie reached out and took her daughter's icy hand.

It seemed an age that the group around the well remained largely hidden from her by Tom's shoulders. There were murmurs of unease and sympathy from the rest of the officers spread around the yard. To one side, Gina Alford stood defiantly still, handcuffed. Suzie tried to shut out from her mind all the vengeful things she would like to do to her. Nothing was more important now than the overwhelming grief she felt for the wounded body of her husband which they must now be hauling out of the depths.

Millie gripped her hand tighter.

There was new movement across the yard. The ambulance was creeping forward towards the well, turning, stopping again. Its back doors were open. A little party was carrying a stretcher towards it. Too far away to see the details of the dark burden it bore. Past Tom's arm she saw them loading it into the ambulance. The paramedics boarded their vehicle again. The ambulance moved off, through the quiet ranks of watching police officers. Past a silent Gina Alford.

‘That was Dad, wasn't it?' Millie said softly as the chequered vehicle disappeared down the track.

Suzie hugged her wordlessly.

Someone was coming towards them. The beanpole figure of DCI Brewer. Suzie tensed, waiting for the reprimand which would tell her she should not be here.

The Chief Inspector's grim face unbent slightly.

‘He's alive,' she said. ‘Just.'

S
uzie's heart leaped with a mixture of joy and panic when she saw Nick next morning. All night she had sat in the hospital waiting room, while he was treated for hypothermia, X-rayed, plastered. They had allowed her a brief glimpse of him in the intensive care ward, sedated and asleep.

Even now, only his head showed, propped up on pillows in a hospital bed. A white bandage swathed his black hair. His face beneath was deathly pale. There was a mound beneath the covers near the foot of the bed. She came hesitantly forward and touched him tentatively, as if she was afraid he might break.

He managed a ghost of a smile, though there were creases of pain and weariness around his darkened eyes.

‘Not too long,' the charge nurse warned. ‘It's been touch and go.'

Suzie bent to kiss him lightly, then drew up a chair beside him. ‘How are you?'

It sounded a trite thing to say, but it was all she could think of. She took his hand, and was alarmed at the slightness of pressure with which he responded.

‘Tired,' he said. ‘My head aches.'

‘I'm not surprised.'

She touched his face tenderly, marvelling that she could still do this. That she was listening to the voice she had thought she would never hear again.

‘I was an idiot. Going to meet her like that. Thinking I'd arranged to see Clive Stroud.'

She pressed his hand in sympathy.

‘You couldn't know.'

‘I was going to give him a piece of my mind for frightening you. That's why I rang him, or tried to. Instead I got her, and walked right into a trap.'

‘You phoned
him
?' Suzie exclaimed. ‘Not the other way round?'

‘No.' He closed his eyes and lay back. ‘I was going to tell him that you knew nothing about the murder, or about him and Eileen. That he should stop scaring you. She rang me back to say she'd fixed up a meeting.'

‘And you didn't tell me? Just said you wouldn't be home for tea?'

‘Well, I wasn't, was I?' His pale face creased in a half smile.

‘And you didn't realize it was her you'd got when you were taking photos in the wood?'

‘Photos? What's that got to do with anything?'

‘You don't know? Of course you don't. It was Millie's idea. We went through the photos on your camera you'd taken that Saturday in Saddlers Wood. And there was a flash of light through the leaves on one of them. Tom enlarged it. And there she was. Just the blur of her face and those horn-rimmed glasses. But it was enough. I knew she must be the one we'd heard in the wood. And she had to have been there for a reason. The only thing that made sense was that she was spying on Clive and Eileen. And if it meant that much to her, then it could have been her, not Philip, who shot Eileen. And used his gun to do it.'

Nick's eyelids closed again. ‘Sarah Lund has got nothing on you lot.'

‘The police were searching for you around Fullingford, after they found your car. You drove there, didn't you?'

Nick's forehead creased again. ‘I don't really remember what happened. But they tell me someone cracked my skull. After that …' A long shudder shook him. ‘I came round up to my neck in cold water, with the grandmother of a headache and a broken leg. Apparently I've cracked a vertebra as well. It was as black as hell. And cold like you wouldn't believe. I thought no one would ever find me …'

‘I know. They told me.' Her hands squeezed his, trying to put warmth into it.

‘It was a miracle I landed the right way up. And that there wasn't room for me to fall flat. As it was, my face was only inches from the water.'

‘Thank God it hasn't rained and the groundwater's low.'

They sat in silence, holding each other.

‘I thought I was going to die there. They only found me because you told them it was Gina Alford.'

‘I take back everything I've said about DCI Brewer. She conned Gina into thinking they had more proof than they did. Just one fuzzy detail in a single photo.'

‘My photography's not as bad as that. I'd have used a zoom lens if I'd known.'

‘It was a bluff. But it worked. Brewer convinced her it could help her if she told them where you were.'

‘Time's up,' said the charge nurse, returning. ‘You can come back this afternoon.'

‘Can I bring Tom and Millie?'

‘Give it till tomorrow. He needs to rest.'

Suzie leaned over and kissed his face.

There would be another morning for them. Nick had a fractured skull, broken bones from the fall, hypothermia. But he was alive.

Tears of joy were running down her face as she left the ward.

‘I never thought I'd see this day.'

Nick looked round at Tom and Millie. He was sitting in a chair in a sunny courtyard outside his ward. His leg was in plaster, his head still bandaged. But Suzie's heart warmed to see that colour had returned to his face.

In a low-walled ornamental pond, goldfish flickered in the sunshine or hid under lily leaves, showing only their quivering tails.

‘So it had nothing to do with the gold?' Tom asked. ‘After all that!'

‘Apparently not,' Suzie told them. ‘It's doubtful whether Gina Alford even knew about it. Of course, if she had, it might have made the idea of marrying Clive Stroud even more attractive.'

‘When she found he wasn't going to fall into her arms once Eileen was dead, I'm surprised she didn't kill
him
,' Millie said.

‘It must have been a terrible shock for her,' mused Suzie. ‘To find she'd done something so awful for nothing.'

‘Perhaps she still hoped he'd change his mind.'

‘But she'd be terrified that someone would find out.'

‘Us,' Tom said. ‘Dad's photo. She must have known he'd caught her.'

‘Let's not talk about that,' said Nick.

Suzie took his hand. He had less obvious wounds that would take a long time to heal.

‘What happens to the farm now?' Millie asked. ‘Presumably they've let Philip out of jail.'

‘It's not as simple as that,' Suzie sighed. ‘After the funeral, Matthew put the farm up to let and went back to Australia. I think they sold the sheep off immediately.'

‘That's terrible!' Millie exclaimed. ‘The poor guy's innocent, and he's lost his wife, his home, his job. Everything.'

‘He'll get the farm back. Eileen's will said he could stay there for life. But it's worse than that. It was heartbreaking to see them both at her funeral – Matthew on one side of the aisle, Philip on the other. Not speaking. Matthew wouldn't even look at his father.'

‘I guess if your son thinks you're a murderer, when you're not, that takes a long time to get over,' Tom said more soberly than usual.

‘Gina Alford has a lot to answer for.'

‘But she couldn't separate us.' Millie jumped up and ran to hug her father. ‘I wouldn't have believed that of you, whatever anyone else said.'

‘Steady on,' Nick laughed. ‘I'm breakable, remember.'

‘And Clive Stroud has got Puck's Acre,' Suzie mused. ‘I wonder if he'll do anything about the gold? He might want to keep it quiet, adultery with a murder victim.'

‘He's a director of Merlin Mines, remember?' Tom said.

Suzie watched the goldfish darting in and out of the sunlight. She had Nick back. That was all the gold she wanted.

T
he people, places and institutions in this book are fictitious. However, I am indebted to the many real-life people and organizations who have done so much to help my own family history research in ways that have inspired this book, or have given me other advice. They include the following:

Devon Record Office and the Westcountry Studies Library, now combined as the Devon Heritage Centre:
www.devon.gov.uk/about_the_devon_heritage_centre
.

British Newspaper Archive:
www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
and through subscription websites such as
www.findmypast.co.uk
and
www.ancestry.co.uk
.

National Archives, Access to Archives:
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a
.

Genuki genealogical website:
www.genuki.org.uk
.

Census returns, 1841–1911:
www.ukcensusonline.com
,
www.freecen.org.uk
, or subscription genealogy sites.

Parish registers: Devon Record Office and Devon Family History Society at Tree House.

While I have given free rein to my imagination here, many details owe their inspiration to people and places in my own family history research:

Richard and Charlotte Day's tombstone on which Charlotte is recorded with her first married surname, though she had remarried after Richard's death – The tombstone of Richard and Charlotte Lee in Higher St Budeaux churchyard. Charlotte had married Thomas Cross before she died.

Richard and Charlotte's move from a Moortown farm to the dockyard – Richard and Charlotte Lee moved in the 1850s from agricultural work at Moortown, outside Moretonhampstead, to St Budeaux, where Richard got work in Devonport dockyard.

The farmer fined for overgrown hedges – Robert Harris of Mariansleigh, reported in the
South Molton Gazette
, 24.12.1887.

The murder in the house next door to the Days – An unconfirmed memory of being told that a murder had taken place in a house my parents later moved into.

Advertisement of farm sale – Sale of the stock and implements of Trittencott, Mariansleigh, Devon, 1901,
South Molton Gazette.

The church of St Michael the Archangel in Moortown – St Andrews church, Moretonhampstead.

The find of gold in the Leigh Valley and at Puck's Acre – In 1997 gold was found in potentially commercial quantities in the Crediton Trough in Devon. The first indication was minute particles of gold in local streams.

The Young Farmers' sponsored tractor pull across the moor – In August 2012 Chagford Young Farmers hauled a tractor across Dartmoor from Princeton to Moretonhampstead in aid of Macmillan Cancer Relief.

The Avery family who ran a tannery in Moortown – The Nosworthy family of Moretonhampstead.

Suzie's tinner ancestor Barnabas Avery – Matthias Nosworthy Gent of Moretonhampstead appears in 1691 in a List of Tynners for the stannary of Chagford. Devon Record Office: Moretonhampstead 2961/PM 4.

The stannary jail at Fullingford – Lydford Castle, Devon.

The tinners' parliament – In Devon, the tinners' parliament met at Crockern Tor on Dartmoor.

Moortown as a centre of Dissent – Moretonhampstead.

The market hall in Moortown square – The Yarn Market at Dunster.