Dead Man Riding (23 page)

By the Old Man's standards that seemed fit and proper so far, but it didn't account for Alan's expression or the tone of his voice.

To Mrs Mary Dulcie Berryman, of Studholme Hall, I give and bequeath my personal chattels and the remainder of my estate to be held in trust for her child …

‘What?' Gasps from everybody. Alan disregarded them.

… to be held in trust for her child, fathered by me, until such time as the child attains the age of twenty-one. Until that time, I direct my trustee to invest the remainder of all monies in my personal estate, excluding the amounts bequeathed elsewhere, and to arrange that the aforesaid Mrs Mary Dulcie Berryman shall receive the dividends, interest and annual income thereof.

Alan added, into the breathless silence, ‘It's dated June the nineteenth this year and witnessed by two clerks in the solicitor's office. All properly done, Mr Stone assures me.'

Then he waited, staring at the paper, while everybody talked round him.

‘Can he do that?' Imogen.

‘Fathered by him? Dulcie Berryman and him?' Kit.

‘Where is the child? What's happened to it?' Midge.

‘Is the rest of the estate substantial?' Meredith, sounding calmer than the rest.

‘The solicitor says another five thousand at least, quite possibly more.'

Alan's reply was calm too, but only superficially. While we'd been talking he'd been biting his knuckle so hard I thought his teeth would crunch through to the bone. ‘Then there's his codicil':

I direct that my great nephew, Alan Beston, shall arrange that my body is burnt on a pyre on the topmost field of my land without religious ceremony of any kind, as a beacon to cheer my friends and my enemies, and he shall light the torch for me.

Stunned silence. Then, as it sank in, Nathan gave a whistle of admiration.

‘Well, the thorough-going old barbarian.'

Imogen laid her hand on Alan's arm. ‘Nobody can expect you to do it. He just wasn't in his right mind.'

‘That's why he said you'd got a good steady hand,' I said.

Alan swung round at me. ‘What?'

‘Just after we got here. He asked you to pour drinks and said you'd got a good steady hand and that's why he'd invited you.' I could see it so clearly, Alan pouring and the Old Man watching him in the lamplight. ‘He planned it from the start, having you here to light his funeral pyre.'

‘Which just proves it,' Imogen said. ‘He'd planned to kill himself in the most melodramatic way possible, making as much trouble as he could for other people, and that's just what he's done. No court or inquest could possibly say he was sane.'

Meredith said quietly, ‘If he wasn't in his right mind that would invalidate the whole will, the five thousand to Alan as well as everything else.'

‘How could I take it anyway under those conditions?' Alan said.

‘I don't see why not.' Kit's tone was harsh and bitter and he didn't look at Alan. ‘We've all been discussing justice haven't we? Giving every man what's owing to him and so on? As far as I can see, everybody's getting what he wanted. The Old Man wanted to be dead and he's dead. Alan and Mrs Berryman get his money. And if he wants to be burned instead of buried I don't see that he's doing anybody any harm except cheating the worms out of a dinner.'

‘Don't be so cold-blooded,' Midge protested.

‘I don't see the point of priding ourselves on our rationality and abandoning it as soon as anything happens.'

‘He doesn't say whether the child's a son or daughter,' Nathan said. ‘Are you assuming that—'

Midge shushed him and looked round the yard to see if Robin was within earshot but there was no sign of him.

‘But I don't see how it happened,' Alan said. Then blushed. ‘What I mean is, when did he have a child by Mrs Berryman? He's only been living in this part of the world for a few years and before that…'

He let it trail away unsaid, but I guessed what he was thinking. Until recently, according to local gossip, Dulcie Berryman had been Major Mawbray's more than housekeeper.

‘Does Mrs Berryman know about the will?' Midge asked.

‘The solicitor's in there telling her now – assuming that she didn't know anyway.'

I said, ‘I wonder why he didn't name the child in the will.'

‘I asked the solicitor about that. He said he suggested quite firmly to the Old Man that they should put a name in, but apparently he wouldn't have it. It creates what Mr Stone calls an ambiguous situation.'

Nathan said, ‘You mean if she happened to have a child handy she could pass it off as his and claim the money for it?'

Alan nodded. I guessed like me that he was thinking of the anonymous note.

There was silence for a while, broken by Meredith. ‘I don't know if you all realise that a consequence of this will is that we're all guests of Mrs Berryman?' People made questioning or unbelieving noises. ‘The remainder of the estate goes to her. I'm no lawyer, but I take that to include the tenancy of this place. Of course the will has to go for probate, but at present if anybody has the right to stay here, she does.'

Alan said, sounding dazed. ‘I'm supposed to be executor, aren't I? Are you saying I should go and talk to her?'

‘That's up to you.'

Another silence, then Alan stood up. The anger that had been there when he was reading the will had turned to bewilderment and he seemed hardly capable of walking until Meredith took his arm, turned him round and gave him a reassuring push towards the house. We all watched him go.

‘I suppose he could just take the horses and go,' Nathan said. ‘Shall we all take to the road as Scholar Gypsies?'

Kit growled at him not to be more of a silly ass than usual.

*   *   *

At any rate, Dulcie Berryman didn't turn us out. None of us knew what was said in the conversation between her and Alan (except possibly Imogen and she wasn't saying anything) but we all of us sat round the lamplit table in the big kitchen, Robin included, and ate ham and fried eggs almost as if nothing had happened. Nobody talked much, though. When we'd finished Robin went out to check the horses, Alan and Imogen disappeared somewhere and the rest of us stayed in the kitchen to help Dulcie Berryman clear up. She went about the business of collecting plates from the table, apparently calm and untroubled by either her scandalous past or her prosperous future. It struck me that in this respect Dulcie Berryman might be a better practical philosopher than any of us. Amused by this idea I looked up and saw her standing idle for a moment, watching Nathan as he worked the pump over the stone sink. She had a little smile on her face and was standing quite relaxed with her feet apart, a little flat-footed, with her stomach thrust forward and a hand supporting the small of her back, fingers spread.

At that moment, I recognised her from years back, from ten years back or more when I'd been a child in Manchester or Liverpool or maybe the East End of London. Then I knew I was a fool because I'd never seen Dulcie Berryman in my life before. It wasn't her I was remembering, but a way of standing. Goodness knows in what particular waiting-room at one of my father's many clinics I'd first been aware of women standing in that way and known why. Probably my mother or father, who unusually for their generation believed in telling children things, had explained it to me. But that stab of memory was quite unmistakable. Dulcie Berryman was expecting a baby. The child the Old Man had acknowledged by leaving a large part of his estate to wasn't Robin or any other child breathing or walking around. He or she was still waiting to be born. And at much the same moment another memory came to me, a much more recent one: the Old Man just after his stallion had mounted a mare, standing in the yard with his arm round Dulcie's haunches. And the words I'd overheard that had made Dulcie so anxious suddenly: ‘You'd think he'd know when he'd done it, wouldn't you?' At the time, I could make no sense of them, but now it was all too clear. Dulcie had told the Old Man that the child she was expecting was his. He'd been pleased enough to make provision for it in his will then for some reason he'd come to doubt it. Dulcie saw me looking at her and smiled her slow, likeable smile.

‘You all right, then?'

‘Yes,' I said, ‘and thank you for cooking the meal.' What else could I say?

Chapter Fourteen

I
GOT UP EARLY NEXT MORNING WHILE THE OTHER TWO
were still asleep and went down to the kitchen. Robin was sitting at the table, drinking tea. Judging by the straws on his jacket he'd already been at work. Dulcie was at the sink. She turned round when I came in, smiling as usual.

‘Tea's in the pot. If it's stewed, I'll make you some fresh.'

Kind, smiling Dulcie, did you kill him because he was having doubts about who the father of the baby was? If the lawyer's right, your share of his property could come to even more than Alan's five thousand pounds, more than you could possibly earn in several hard-working lifetimes. Did you knock him on the back of the head when he was sitting at the table where I'm sitting, possibly with something like that old five-pound scale weight I see you use as a doorstop? Did you carry him out in those strong arms of yours that look so used to carrying things? He wouldn't be much heavier than a potato sack, I'm sure. Did you tie his feet to the stirrups and his wrists to a leather strap as calmly and neatly as you'd knot a pudding cloth?

‘I like my tea strong,' I said, pouring. ‘Don't brew fresh for me, thank you.'

Robin pushed the milk jug towards me, white china with broad blue stripes, chipped on the rim showing the yellowed clay under the glaze. He smiled too, more shyly than Dulcie, but not so scared as he'd looked when we first arrived. Working with the horses together had given us a kind of fellowship.

‘The mare that was kicked's doing well,' he said. ‘Will I put her out with the others?'

And you, Robin, with your soft voice and teeth as white as the milk I'm pouring into my tea. Did you fetch Sid from the field when she told you to, hold him still while she did it? You liked the Old Man, I believe it. So why would you do it? The baby must have a father after all, and if it wasn't the Old Man's there aren't many more men up here, miles from town. A hundred pounds is a lot of money for a lad too, more than you'd ever expect to hold. He was looking at me, waiting for an answer, and I felt my face going red and hot at what I was thinking.

‘It's really for Alan to say,' I told him, ‘but in your place I think yes, I'd put her out.'

I escaped from the kitchen as soon as I'd got the tea and a crust of bread down. We'd discussed the night before whether we should all go down to the town for the opening of the inquest and decided against it. Alan was the only one needed on this occasion and it would attract unwanted attention if we all turned up. Meredith, as usual, would go with him as moral support. I swept the stable yard while Robin took the mare down to the field and brought Bobbin back up, then helped get the wagonette ready for the trip to town. Alan climbed into the passenger seat, pale and serious in dark suit and dark blue tie. It should have been black, but naturally he hadn't packed a black tie to bring on holiday. He'd buy one down in the town if there was time. At least he had a black hat, a battered Homburg borrowed from the Old Man's wardrobe. Meredith got in beside him, picked up the reins and we watched until they were out of sight on the road.

After that we all went our separate ways. Midge suggested she should take Imogen's mind off things by teaching her some algebra in exchange for all that Greek so they took their books and papers off to some shady place. I didn't join them because I had my own plan for the day and was sure that Imogen wouldn't approve of it. Meredith probably wouldn't have approved either, which was why I hadn't discussed it with him. I didn't approve of it much myself, but it was the only thing I could think of that might help.

The fact was that the disclosure of the Old Man's will had come as a bad blow because now we had reason to suspect Dulcie and probably Robin as well. As I walked along the river checking the mares I wondered why that should matter so much. Less than two weeks ago we hadn't known either of them existed. I decided the Old Man would have had the answer. Bread and salt. The simplest of tribal laws from Homer to the Bedouin – if you ate a man's bread and salt there was a bond that couldn't be broken. His friends were your friends, his enemies your enemies. This was logical nonsense, of course, but it still had force. If you sat and ate with people it was almost impossible to think of them as murderers or do anything that would lead to their harm. If there was any possibility that they weren't guilty I wanted to follow it, which was why I'd made up my mind that before the day was over I was going to speak to Major Mawbray.

*   *   *

I waited until early afternoon, doing odd jobs around the place, then went up to our loft and made myself look as presentable as possible with the limited wardrobe I'd brought with me: navy skirt and jacket, blue blouse with ruffles at the neck, little navy straw hat with cornflowers on the brim that had miraculously survived in my pack no more than slightly squashed. It wasn't the most comfortable of outfits for walking in what felt like the hottest day of the summer so far and I was afraid Midge and Imogen would see me going up the track and want to know what I was doing.

I made it to the road unchallenged and consulted my map, trying to locate the house with the red roof I'd seen from up on the hill. As far as I could see it was Beck Hall, half a mile down the road as if going to the town, then left and another mile or so from there. The roads were narrow and shady, with no carts around to stir up dust so I enjoyed the walk in spite of the unsuitable clothes, not hurrying and trying to work out how I'd get him to talk to me. We hadn't been introduced, we had no friends in common and the only social contact between us had been two glares from him to me. Still, years of bargaining for cheap rooms in unfashionable hotels across Europe had given me a tolerably thick skin and an officer and gentleman could hardly have a lady thrown out on her ear, even if he were a murderer.