Beneath the Soil (8 page)

She looked around, wondering if it was time for her to make a quick withdrawal, before the group around the grave broke up and came this way. This extension to the graveyard was barer than the older churchyard. It lacked the tall dark yew trees, the grand monuments and large crosses of the more ostentatious memorials of the past. Across the wall, in the modern plot, there were only three rows of graves as yet. The rest was green grass on an open hilltop overlooking the town. The few gravestones already there were modest, not more than a foot or two high. It felt exposed.

She was not the only one to watch from a distance. Two people, a man and a woman, stood respectfully back among the new graves. Police? She remembered her conjecture that detectives might want to see who came to watch the burial of their victim. Yes. She recognised the beanpole figure of Detective Chief Inspector Brewer. The shorter, bearded man beside her was unfamiliar to her.

A prickling on her neck made her turn her head. Her heart gave a sudden start. There was someone else behind her, on the older side of the churchyard wall. He wore a dark raincoat buttoned up to the neck. His balding head was bare. He was half hidden by the tall shaft of a Celtic stone cross, but through its wheel-head she could see that he was staring, not at the closing moments of the burial, but at her.

With sudden panic, she turned and sped down the path towards the crowded square, at a walk so fast it was almost a run.

T
he burial was over. There were still knots of people about in the square, conspicuous in their black funeral clothes. Philip and his warder had been driven back to prison. But most mourners were drifting away, back to everyday reality. At Suzie's Methodist church, there would have been an invitation for anyone at the service to stay and join the family afterwards for refreshments. No such general invitation had been given here. She suspected that the family's friends would have been invited to a funeral tea in some hotel function room.

The press photographers and television crews had packed up and gone, Suzie was relieved to see.

Her heartbeat was quietening, but she was still tense. Should she risk turning her head to see if that man in the black raincoat was following her? Why was she of interest to him? Why had he scared her?

A hand grasped her wrist. She gasped.

‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you.'

It was a woman's voice. Suzie brought her panic under control and turned.

The woman was dressed in a black suit with a crisp white shirt. She wore her funeral clothes with an understated elegance, almost like an habitual uniform. A coil of dark hair fell forward over one shoulder. She was, Suzie guessed, about her own age, with a diamond-shaped face slanting from pronounced cheekbones.

She smiled now, though she was watching Suzie keenly. Her narrow fingers still held Suzie's wrist, like a bird's claw.

Behind her, Suzie saw the party of chief mourners coming slowly down the path from the grave. The rector's white surplice flapped in the breeze. Her hurried eyes thought they saw the watcher in the raincoat following them. A broad-brimmed leather hat hid his bare head now. The summer day was overcast, but his shielding clothes looked out of place for this time of year.

She tore her eyes away and made herself speak with a semblance of naturalness to the woman partly blocking her view.

‘It's all right. I think I'm just a bit strung up.'

The woman's dark eyes narrowed. She let go of Suzie's arm and held out a small hand.

‘Frances Nosworthy. I'm Philip Caseley's solicitor.'

The image jumped into place. It was easy to imagine this smart but soberly dressed woman in a law court, as well as at a funeral. It was a few seconds before the oddness of the introduction caught up with Suzie.

‘His solicitor?' The unspoken question was, ‘
What do you want with me?
' She had only come because of a moment of unsatisfied curiosity, and a sadness for the woman so briefly met.

‘I hope you won't think me intrusive, but I wondered who you were. We're a fairly close-knit community here. I think I know most people in Moortown. But you obviously knew Eileen well enough to want to follow her to her grave.' A thought seemed to strike her. ‘You're not a reporter, are you?'

‘No! No.' Suzie found herself blushing. ‘I probably shouldn't be here. It's just …' She heard herself repeating the story of their expedition to Saddlers Wood, the gunshot, Eileen's evident distress, but then her gallant attempt at hospitality to the Fewings.

‘I felt – I don't know – that I owed her something.'

‘Yes, Eileen had a warm heart. You wouldn't have got away from her without a cup of tea, no matter what was happening.'

‘But you're representing Philip.'

Frances Nosworthy made a face of distaste. ‘It's a tricky situation. The Nosworthys are the family's solicitors, have been for generations. My grandfather and old Michael Caseley. My cousin John is representing Eileen's side, and the son, of course. But my father branched out into his own law firm, so I'm representing Philip. It's a bad business. We're trying to avoid a conflict of interest.'

‘You don't really think Philip killed her?'

The solicitor's hand was suddenly back on her arm, drawing her away from the gate. The rest of the mourning party were coming through into the square. Suzie fell silent as they passed. The tall, suntanned man she thought must be the Caseleys' son passed her. His mouth was set in a grim line. He nodded curtly to Frances.

She spoke in a low voice. ‘Matthew. I'm so sorry.'

He walked on without answering. The black-clad party turned away along the pavement.

The two detectives, who had watched the burial from a distance, left a tactful space before they followed. As they passed Suzie and Frances, the tall chief inspector let her eyes dwell on Suzie for an electrifying moment. Suzie read all too clearly her surprise and condemnation at seeing her here.

It took a moment for Suzie to recover.

When she did, she was relieved to see that the man in the raincoat and the broad-brimmed hat had gone.

‘Sorry about that,' Frances said, letting her go. ‘Matthew's not speaking to me. Of course I'm defending Philip. That's my job, but I'd do it anyway. Though at the moment, I'm searching for crumbs.'

Words hovered on the tip of Suzie's tongue. ‘Only …'

‘Yes?' Again that narrowing of the eyes. The sense of a sharp intelligence leaping into action.

‘There was more than I told you. That afternoon, and again later.'

The dark eyes summed her up. ‘Do you have time for a cup of tea? I've been invited to the official tea at the Tor Hotel, but it might be a bit delicate, under the circumstances. A bit like Banquo's ghost at the feast. And if you have any information that might help Philip …'

‘We told the police, but I'm not sure it made much of an impression.'

‘Well, tell me.'

Suzie let herself be steered to a tea shop, with chintz-covered cushions on the wheel-backed chairs. She would miss the bus she had intended to catch, but there would be another one in an hour.

‘Now,' said Frances Nosworthy, setting down her patent-leather handbag. ‘This one's on me. Could you manage a cream tea? I don't know about you, but I feel in need of something to cheer me up.'

Suzie looked at the other woman's enviably slender figure. But the lure of scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam was too much. ‘Yes, please. Me too.'

Frances placed the order. ‘Now,' she said, getting out a notepad from her handbag. ‘Let's take it from the top, shall we? You went to Saddlers Wood on …?'

‘Saturday, the thirteenth of July.'

She told it all. The path Eileen Caseley said was infrequently used, down which they had seen Philip stride with his gun. The crack of wood snapping as they explored the ruined cottage. The sense of being watched. And then her joining Tom and Dave's hare-brained adventure to discover more. The evidence of surveying in the patch of moorland just beyond the wood.

‘It makes sense,' Frances said, laying her pen down among the crumbs of scone on the tablecloth. ‘I can't reveal the family business, of course, but I'm not actually surprised.'

‘What I don't understand,' Suzie said, ‘is, if Philip was opposing the exploitation of mineral rights, why anyone should want to kill Eileen, and not him.'

‘Hmm.'

Frances's narrow fingers tapped on the table top. ‘I can't discuss the family's affairs. But you've just said enough to make me sense it's not an open and shut case of domestic violence. I was never convinced that it was, but what do I know? I sit in my snug little solicitor's office; business goes on – wills mortgages, land sales, drink driving charges. The recession doesn't really hit us. Perhaps a few more DIY divorces, instead of paying people like us who know what we're doing. But out there on the farms, it's a different picture. It's a hard row to plough – low prices, high costs. The sort of loneliness there used not to be when every other man was an ag. lab. And now climate change on top of everything else. It's either drought or floods these days, and another season's crop lost. It can drive a man to suicide, or worse.'

She played with her teaspoon, her eyes bent downwards.

She recovered herself with a visible effort.

‘I'm sorry. I shouldn't be loading all this on you. You've been really helpful. And goodness knows Philip needs all the help he can get. Look, take my card. If you can think of anything else that might be relevant, ring me.'

Suzie looked over her shoulder. A single-decker bus was pulling into the square. She yelped with dismay. ‘My bus! Sorry, I've got to go. Thanks for the tea – I haven't had scones and cream in ages. Look, if you need me again you can find my number on the website for the Age of Silver charity. I must fly.'

‘Of course. And thank you again.' Frances moved her chair aside as Suzie fled for the door and raced to the bus stop on the other side of the square.

Suzie leaned back in her seat, recovering her breath. The bus rolled forwards, past the now-empty churchyard.

Only then did she remember that she hadn't told Frances Nosworthy about the man lurking among the graves.

S
he should not have felt guilty about attending a funeral. But as the bus rolled homewards, she felt a peculiar reluctance to tell her family where she had been. The lashing tongue of DCI Brewer still smarted. Just for a moment, as the two detectives had passed her at the church gate, she had met the taller woman's cold blue eyes. The police officer had said nothing to her, but Suzie had felt her disbelief and scorn. She knew the chief inspector was angered by her determination not to let the matter go and leave it to the professionals.

It wasn't like that, Suzie argued with herself. I didn't go to Moortown because I thought I might discover something. I went to the funeral because … oh, because Eileen Caseley had been so troubled, yet so generous. She could just have sent us away. But she took us into her home and gave us what help she could.

She thought of the woman's attempt at smartness, the silk blouse and the linen skirt, incongruous in the dilapidated farmhouse.

And now she's dead. Violently. I wanted to do what little I could to pray her to her rest.

She was afraid that the rest of the Fewings would see it as the chief inspector did.

And, after all, she
had
found something. She shivered as the summer landscape sped past her. That strange man in the leather hat. She had not imagined that his eyes had been directed at her, rather than at the people round Eileen Caseley's grave. It was unsettling that a silent stare should be so frightening.

At least Frances Nosworthy was an ally. She had seemed genuinely grateful for Suzie's information. It was somehow reassuring to know that the solicitor's business card was tucked into her shoulder bag.

She was later back than she had intended to be. She fended off Tom and Millie's questions with the excuse that she must hurry to get the meal ready.

Millie, untypically, joined her in chopping vegetables. When Tom was out of earshot, she threw her mother a conspiratorial grin.

‘So you went, then? To the funeral.'

Suzie paused in the act of stirring flour into the sauce. ‘How …?'

‘Give me credit for some intelligence, Mum. Look at you. Dark grey skirt, white blouse, in the middle of summer. Why aren't you wearing slacks and a tee-shirt? Or a summer dress?'

Suzie looked down at herself. She had hung up the mauve jacket in the wardrobe. What was left was not obviously funereal, just more sober than the clothes she normally wore.

She sighed. ‘There's no getting past you, is there? I'd be grateful if you didn't mention it to the others.'

Millie's eyebrows climbed. ‘You think Dad would be cross with you?'

Suzie hesitated. She felt again how scared she had been by the stare of the man in the raincoat. She badly wanted to feel Nick's arms around her. Should she tell him after all?

But the moment passed. She heard his key in the door. Something told her he would think she had been foolish. Exaggerated her own importance in a murder case. Failed to heed the warnings of the police. He had been less than sympathetic when Tom had stormed at him about their chilly reception at the police station. He had seemed less enthusiastic than Tom was about the evidence that more had been going on at Saddlers Wood than domestic tension between a couple on an isolated farm.

Now Nick came striding down the hall and kissed her warmly. He said nothing about what she was wearing. Trust Millie to be the only one to notice.

She could not sleep. The night was warm and muggy, the threat of summer rain in the air. She lay awake in the darkness. Even the presence of Nick sleeping beside her could not shut out the remembered menace of this afternoon. She felt again the prickle on her neck that had made her turn even before she saw him. The glimpse of eyes fixed on her through gaps in the wheel-head of a Celtic cross.
Why?
Who was he, and why was Suzie of such interest to him, out of all the people in that graveyard? She had not imagined it, had she? It had been her the man was watching.