Grave Matters (14 page)

‘Studying?’

‘Yes. That’s what she was doing, wasn’t it? Out all day, she was, at museums and things. ‘Course, I only come here in July, I’m the manageress, but she’d gone off, I could see that,’ said the blonde. ‘Not like our other tenants, she wasn’t.’

Ellen could believe it.

‘Still, better to go quick like she did than end up in one of them jerreetric wards, is what I say,’ added the landlady.

It would indeed have been terrible if Miss Forrest had ended in a geriatric ward, Ellen agreed. She walked away feeling profoundly depressed. What a set-up. The house, and doubtless many others in the area, must be owned by an absentee landlord who installed an overseer with plenty of time to pursue any individual sideline of their own. Poor Miss Forrest must have felt very much out of her depth as the type of tenant changed. Soon the management would have found some way to get rid of her – she would have been forced out by increased rent, or even by the excuse of her age. Ellen had asked for the brother’s address. The blonde had made a note of it, in case any bills came for Miss Forrest after her death, and reluctantly she invited Ellen in while she hunted for it among scraps of paper in a drawer of a shabby desk in what seemed to be her office. The whole house smelled, and the prevailing odours were not pleasant; Ellen, while she waited, detected boiling cabbage, cheap scent, musty damp, and an odd, smoky smell whose probable cause filled her with revulsion. Not the right sort of lodgings for Miss Forrest to have had at all, and no wonder she loved coming to Mulberry Cottage so much. She should still be there, Ellen thought, in sudden misery. Amelia should have left it to her for her lifetime.

Events were pressing in on her: things seemed to be hurtling on too fast for her to grasp their full significance. Isolated, like a tranquil island in the middle of it all, was the remembrance of her weekend in Oxford, a brief escape to sanity.

It was pointless to think of it again. She hurried away down the road, the damp leaves that littered the pavements eddying round her feet as she walked. David was staying up in town tonight and would be arriving at her flat in half an hour.

While Ellen was seeking the lost Cicero, Patrick, Jane, and Michael were in Meldsmead. Michael had been eager to join the expedition and came home early from the office so that they might set out in good time. Patrick felt his brother-in-law did not quite trust him to look after Jane properly; but in fact Michael had become interested in the whole problem himself. He had been in America the first time Patrick had got mixed up with a sudden death that had turned out to be a murder; that time, Jane, unwillingly at first, had listened to his deductions and finally had helped tie in the ends. The next occasion had been when Patrick was in Austria; he had never told them the full details of what had happened, nor had any hint of his involvement been mentioned in the newspapers. He noticed things that other people paid no heed to; and this time, Michael knew that Jane was worried because she thought Patrick was emotionally involved and in danger of losing his objectivity.

‘You academic types are lucky, taking time off whenever you like. How often have you been down to this Hampshire hamlet in the past month?’ Michael asked, as they set off. They were in his car, a sober grey Cortina; Patrick’s white Rover had been seen often enough in Meldsmead.

‘It’s bigger than a hamlet. It’s got a church and a pub and a garage,’ said Patrick, who was sitting in the back and hating it. He loathed being driven, but knew he must put up with it this time. ‘I’ve been there several times,’ he added airily. In fact he could have told them with accuracy the number of hours he had spent with Ellen, apart from the details of his other visits to the village. ‘And I can’t slope off whenever I want to. I work into the stilly hours, catching up, while you’re sleeping peacefully in bed with my sister.’

At any other time, Michael’s retort to this would have been that Patrick should seek the embraces of a wife too, but now he tactfully refrained, in view of Jane’s misgivings over Ellen.

‘It soon won’t be very peaceful, if Miss Conway is as active before she appears in this world as Andrew was,’ he said instead.

Jane’s pregnancy still scarcely showed, but she had dressed this evening in a tunic over trousers, and a loose jacket, so that when she did her fainting act her condition should be unmistakeable. Patrick had been anxious in case she felt sensitive about being exploited in this state, but she reassured him. She was looking forward to meeting some of the people Patrick had described, and her one regret was that Ellen would not be there. Patrick said that on several Thursdays recently David Bruce had spent the night in London; it would be interesting to discover if he was doing so this week. As far as he could learn, Carol occasionally went off on writing assignments but more often stayed at home.

‘What is the purpose of this expedition?’ Michael asked as they headed southwards. They were approaching Meldsmead from a different direction than Patrick’s usual route, since they had left from the Conways’ house and not from Oxford, and they would enter the village from its other approach, the lane where Patrick had parked on his nocturnal exploration.

‘We’re hoping to meet lots of the locals,’ said Patrick. ‘I can’t get the feel of the people involved in all this. I’ve met Carol Bruce once, and her husband twice. I don’t know either of them as individuals, or Valerie Brinton. I’ve met her once, and seen her haring along in her car – she’s a menace at the wheel.’

‘We won’t see her tonight. She works in London, doesn’t she?’ said Jane.

‘True – but we may be able to get the atmosphere of the place better than I’ve managed so far,’ Patrick said. ‘In Winterswick that time, you remember, I was staying with you, Jane, while Michael was away. It was easy to find excuses to visit the various people I was interested in. And in Austria it was the same; we were all cooped up in the mountains, cut off by an avalanche.’

‘You have been popping down to Meldsmead fairly often, Patrick. Michael’s right.’

‘Yes, but it hasn’t always been straightforward,’ Patrick said. ‘It doesn’t seem to me to be very much like Winterswick – the village, I mean – and it isn’t like North Crowley either. Villages do seem to vary.’

‘North Crowley’s going to end up a small town,’ Michael said, ‘but at the moment it’s a pleasant place to live in.’

‘Meldsmead’s much smaller,’ Patrick said. ‘And there hasn’t been all that in-filling development. I should think several big landowners must own most of the surrounding country.’

‘Do you mean to say you don’t know?’ Michael asked mildly.

Patrick was suitably abashed.

‘I haven’t looked into it,’ he admitted.

‘Maybe one of your illustrious colleges owns some of it,’ said Michael. ‘I’ve noticed that a number of rather unspoilt villages about the place belong to such institutions.’

‘Wouldn’t you know, Patrick if that was so about Meldsmead?’ Jane asked.

‘No. Only if it belonged to Mark’s,’ said Patrick. ‘We do own quite a bit of property, but it’s to the west of Oxford, mostly.’

‘It’s agricultural, anyway, isn’t it?’ said Michael. ‘Meldsmead, I mean. So there wouldn’t be a lot of building.’

‘I think the people who live there value their privacy too much to sell any plots nestling beside them for pure gain,’ said Patrick. ‘It’s a prosperous area – people aren’t going to jump on to the band wagon of land speculation because they’re affluent anyway.’

‘Lucky things,’ said Jane. ‘Well, I hope we achieve something. You’ll probably find there’s a British Legion meeting or something, and we can’t burst in on anyone.’

‘I don’t see how you’ll discover anything if we do,’ said Michael. ‘I’m pretty embarrassed about the whole thing.’

‘You aren’t at all. You’re longing to do some detecting and pull Patrick down a peg,’ said Jane.

‘We’ll just have to play it by ear,’ Patrick said. ‘If we get in somewhere, and you two meet somebody, you can get talking – something may come up. For instance it may be common knowledge that, we’ll say, Paul Newton, – he’s the pathologist – was given to going for walks beside the stream and wandering round Abbot’s Lodge garden.’

‘He’s melancholy, you said. He wouldn’t devise accidents for Carol Bruce, though, would he?’

‘Who can tell? Maybe he’s unhinged,’ said Patrick. ‘No, I’m not looking for anything specific – just your reactions to the place, and another opportunity to see it for myself.’ He paused, then added, ‘We’ll say we’ve been visiting friends and I’ve told you what a pleasant place Meldsmead is, hence our detour through the village.’

‘What friends, in case we have to give chapter and verse?’ asked Michael.

‘No need to be specific – evade an answer,’ Patrick said. ‘After all, Jane will be swooning. There’ll be all that to divert whoever we meet.’

Jane was feeling particularly well that evening. The lethargy she had experienced for some weeks past had gone; she felt alert and eager, not at all likely to buckle at the knees, but she hoped she would give an adequate dramatic performance.

It was almost dark when they reached the spot where Patrick had left the Rover before his two walks across the fields. He asked Michael to stop there so that he could point out to them the cross-country route to Abbot’s Lodge. It was the sort of twilight when those out of doors can see quite well, but lights come on in houses and the sky, seen from within, seems navy-blue. It was difficult to distinguish even the bulk of the house in the dusk, but Michael and Jane took Patrick’s word for where it stood behind its hedge of yew. Then they drove on, and he pointed out the vicarage, the Queen Anne house which was the Kents’ and the lanes leading to the Bradshaws’ market garden and to Mulberry Cottage. They parked outside the Meldsmead Arms, and went into the saloon bar.

Patrick introduced Jane and Michael to Fred Brown and explained why they were in the village, in accordance with the plan they had made. It was early, and no one else was in the bar, which in a way was disappointing but it made his scheme for suggesting a stroll before they drove on easier to put into practice.

‘Good job it’s a fine night,’ said Jane, as they started up the road. ‘What would you have done if it had been raining?’

‘Driven slowly, while we decided where to call,’ said Patrick.

They walked towards the centre of the village, Jane between them, arm-in-arm with both of them. She was too happy to worry about the role she was expected to perform soon, for she was with two of her favourite men; the third was safe at home with his excellent baby-sitter. It was a joy to her that Michael and Patrick got on so well together; though on the surface they seemed to be very different, in fact they were not so unlike each other. She could never have married a man who was dull or insensitive; and Patrick, though not particularly handy in the house because he had never had to do much cooking or carpentry was in fact very practical. Both of them were men who cared deeply about other people; Patrick considered indifference to be a cardinal sin, and often said so; Michael, without talking so much about his shared belief, practised it at work where his gift for smoothing ruffled feelings and the development of harmonious relations between departments was constantly exploited. Jane was so happy in her own marriage that she wished the same experience for her brother, but she knew no second best would do for him, and that was why nothing had come of various attachments in the past. Probably this Ellen was no better than anyone else he had been drawn to before; in fact, she must be less than admirable, or why did she prefer this David, a married man, to Patrick?

‘Tell me when to faint,’ she said.

As she spoke they were nearing the turning to Mulberry Cottage, and the sound of a car could be heard from down the lane.

‘Someone’s coming,’ Michael said, superfluously.

They moved in to the side of the road; Patrick knew that the engine note was not that of Carol’s Lancia. Sure enough, a mini paused for an instant at the junction into the main street and then turned right with a lurch before haring off towards the church.

‘Valerie Brinton,’ Patrick said. What was she doing in the village in the middle of the week? She had been here before on a Thursday, he remembered, the night he had been so warmly welcomed by the Merrys. It must be some other house that they invaded tonight; he could not treat the kind vicar and his wife so summarily again.

‘It was certainly a mini, but you couldn’t be sure it was red and you couldn’t see the driver,’ Michael said.

‘Correct. Always check your facts,’ said Patrick, cheerfully accepting the reproof.

‘If we walk on a bit we may find out where she was going,’ Jane suggested.

‘Sure you aren’t tired?’ asked Patrick.

‘Not a bit. I’m enjoying it. Exercise is good for me. Tell him Michael.’

‘Exercise is good for her,’ Michael repeated obediently. ‘She’s O.K. After all, when she does her faint, we can leave her and fetch the car. She needn’t walk back.’

‘True.’

They soon discovered where Valerie was going, for her car was parked outside the Kents’ house.

‘Don’t they use their legs in this place?’ Jane remarked. ‘It wouldn’t have hurt her to walk.’

‘She must have been late,’ said Patrick. Was Valerie making a habit of using the cottage during the week? Perhaps she was exploring the possibilities of commuting to work.

‘I think you’d better faint out here, Jane,’ he said. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, the Kents are the ones who are second time round in the marriage stakes – or he is. I haven’t met her. Oh, by the way, keep quiet about having been at Slade House.’

‘This is the stockbroker?’ Jane wanted to be sure of where they were going.

‘That’s right.’ Patrick was pleased to find she remembered what he had told her. ‘Oh, look,’ he went on, in lower tones. ‘Someone else is coming – with luck we may find it’s a party. It’s the pathologist, I think. Faint away, old girl.’

Jane decided it was no use being embarrassed about gate-crashing a party. She uttered a small moan, came to a halt, and swayed realistically against Michael.