Hole in One (7 page)

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Authors: Catherine Aird

Tags: #Mystery

BOOK: Hole in One
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‘You could get a golfer to ask for you,' said Fred Shipley. ‘Like your father.'
She scowled. ‘Not my father.'
‘Or, in your case, miss,' said Dickie Castle, his expression absolutely deadpan and his voice solemn, ‘having a word with the professional might help.'
‘Do anything to help the ladies, will Jock Selkirk,' chimed in Hedges, winking behind the young woman's back. ‘I'm sure he'd put in a good word for you with the men.'
Hilary Trumper gave him a long considering look but said only ‘Right, I'll ask him.'
‘But no one's going out just now anyway,' said Hedges ‘because of this body they've found.'
The girl's head came up with a jerk. ‘Body?'
‘In the bunker behind the sixth. They're getting it out now.'
Provisional Ball
‘Teaspoons?' echoed Superintendent Leeyes in patent disbelief. He glared suspiciously at Sloan from under his bushy eyebrows. ‘Who says so?'
‘The Curator of the Greatorex Museum,' said Sloan. He had returned to the Clubhouse to report their findings at the sixth green.
‘You're not having me on by any chance, are you, Sloan?' The Superintendent had commandeered the little office of the Secretary of the Golf Club as his battle station. He was sitting there now amidst a welter of paperwork that had no connection with any police enquiry. Instead the walls were festooned with lists and charts that had everything to do with all eighteen holes of the Berebury Golf Course and nothing whatsoever - as far as he knew, that is – to do with the contents of the deep bunker at the back of the sixth green.
Sloan shook his head. ‘Teaspoons, that's what Mr Fixby-Smith at the Museum said were what you needed when you were working in sand.'
The Superintendent's eyebrows came together in a frown. ‘Isn't he that funny fellow with the hair?'
‘Rather on the long side,' conceded Sloan.
‘Wears odd jeans and funny jumpers?'
‘That's him.' With an effort Sloan averted his eyes from the Superintendent's clothes. His superior officer was presently attired in a bright green jersey hand-knitted in cable stitch, a pair of elderly plus-twos trousers, and stockings of a yellow and red diamond pattern worthy of a cross-gartered Malvolio. The jeans presumably went with the Curator's territory these days: he wasn't so sure about the Superintendent's outfit.
‘Teaspoons!' snorted Leeyes again.
‘Mr Fixby-Smith,' persisted Sloan, ‘says they're best for
very delicate excavations in sand.' Prompted by the sight of the Superintendent's stockings, his mind wandered away from the matter in hand and back to his schooldays again. There had been trouble getting any boy to take the part of Malvolio in
Twelfth Night
let alone wear yellow stockings. In fact the play hadn't gone down at all well with the English class … He came back to the present. ‘And Mr Fixby-Smith says he's done a lot of excavations in the desert.'
The Superintendent rolled his eyes heavenwards. ‘Teaspoons …'
‘Not spades, he meant,' amplified Sloan. ‘And he knows a lot about sand.'
Leeyes grunted.
‘It's an adult male in there, the doctor says,' offered Sloan without further explanation. Why males should have brows more ridged than females was something he didn't want to have to go into with the Superintendent now or, come to that, at any other time. Ridged brows or not, the man was never going to see eye to eye with the Equal Opportunities Commission.
‘Ah …'
‘And dead a matter of days rather than weeks, he says,' hurried on Sloan.
Leeyes pounced. ‘How many days?'
‘He won't say, sir. Not until he's seen a bit more of the body. But not many. Dr Dabbe insists that any fine-tuning on timing will have to wait until he's done a full post-mortem.'
‘And I suppose,' went on Leeyes sarcastically, ‘an opinion on the cause of death would be too much to ask?'
‘At this stage,' said Sloan diplomatically, ‘yes. It's early days yet.'
‘Identification?'
‘That's going to be difficult from the face,' said Sloan, suppressing any remarks about not even the victim's mother
being likely to know him now. ‘But Dr Dabbe has high hopes of the teeth.'
Leeyes grunted and changed tack. ‘Missing persons?'
‘All we can say for sure, sir, is that there's been no one added to our list in the Berebury area for several weeks.'
‘A stranger, then …' The Superintendent was strong on the territorial imperative.
‘Perhaps.' That wouldn't absolve the police from investigating the death, only make for more work, but Sloan did not say so.
To his surprise Leeyes gave a deep sigh and said solemnly ‘I'm very much afraid, Sloan, that whoever put the body there isn't likely to be a stranger. To the neighbourhood, perhaps, but not to the game or the course.'
‘Sir?' All information was grist to a detective's mill. What was different was that grist didn't usually come from the Superintendent.
‘You'd be out of sight of anyone on the course there,' continued Leeyes reluctantly, ‘unless they over-ran the green and actually sent a ball down into the bunker.'
‘Which I gather the really good players don't do if they can help it,' said Sloan. The Superintendent was right. It wasn't unreasonable to suppose that whoever had buried the body here had known that, too.
‘The hole's a dog-leg, as well,' said the Superintendent even more reluctantly.
Sloan looked up. Whoever had interred the body must have known that, too.
‘You've got to play to the left of the big oak tree,' explained Leeyes. ‘What you need is a good long drive and then a shorter, ticklish shot with a fairway wood. Too far and you're out of bounds, too short and you can't turn the corner with your next stroke.'
‘So you need it to be just right?'
‘Just right,' countered the Superintendent, ‘and you probably hit the tree. Never up, never in, though.'
There was a lot, decided Sloan, to be said for roses.
‘And the green isn't visible from the fairway,' said Leeyes.
‘I'll make a note,' promised Sloan.
Leeyes grunted again. ‘I'm not dreaming, am I, Sloan? You did say teaspoons, didn't you?'
‘Yes, sir.' He coughed. ‘Small paintbrushes come in handy, too, the curator said.'
‘So, Sloan,' Superintendent Leeyes came back smartly, ‘do facts and I'd like some more of them. And fast.'
 
Misery might make strange bedfellows but in the Ladies Section of the Golf Club it was keeping familiar faces together too. The women remained huddled in a group long after Helen Ewell had been borne away for sympathetic sedation. Held there in the Clubhouse by some common bond too deep for words, and grateful for the continued presence of Sergeant Perkins, none of them wanted to arrive home before their husbands got there.
Instead they clustered round the long windows at the end of the room that gave such good views out onto the course, exhibiting that aspect of flock behaviour associated with safety in numbers. They weren't the only ones with a wish to keep together. Others must be doing so, too, because the putting green in front of the window, normally the place for golfers to pass the odd half hour with club in hand, was deserted.
Indeed, there was little to see from the picture windows until a solitary figure came into view going in the direction of the professional's shop.
‘Isn't that the young Trumper girl over there?' said Anna, peering out of the window. ‘Luke's daughter.'
‘What on earth is she doing here?' asked Christine. ‘She's only a child, surely.'
‘I didn't know she played,' said someone else.
‘She doesn't.'
‘I've never seen her up here before.'
‘Today of all days,' shivered Anna, who hadn't enjoyed being questioned by Sergeant Perkins about her own round in the Rabbits' Competition.
‘She's been seeing rather a lot of one of the students who's caddying here in the vac,' the Lady Captain informed them.
‘It's a boy called Matt Steele.' Ursula Millward had declined the offer of sedation herself but wouldn't go home alone either. ‘Her people aren't at all keen.'
The Lady Captain shrugged her shoulders. ‘But what can you do when they're that age?'
‘Very little,' said a mother of another teenager realistically.
‘At any age,' groaned another mother, even more experienced in the ways of the young. ‘Except keep talking. That's all.'
‘Poor little rich girl,' murmured the Lady Captain.
‘Poor?' Anna's eyebrows came up. ‘You must be joking.'
‘Hadn't you heard?' said Ursula Millward, glad to be talking of anything but the body in the bunker. ‘Her grandmother's entered the fray.'
‘That's all the Trumpers needed,' sighed Anna, ‘just when they were trying so hard to play Happy Families for a change.'
‘Happy Families!' snorted another lady golfer. ‘You could have fooled me.'
‘She'll have stirred it up good and proper, if I know old Mrs Trumper,' remarked someone else who clearly did know the woman in question all too well.
‘They can't handle the old lady,' snorted Ursula Millward. ‘Never could. It's half their trouble.'
‘Go on,' Christine urged. ‘Tell us what she's gone and done now.'
‘Old Mrs Trumper,' said Ursula impressively, conscious
that she had everyone's full attention, ‘has given Hilary half her holding in the firm now and promised to leave her the other half when she dies.'
‘
Great Expectations
, then,' said Anna, a keen member of the Berebury Literary Circle.
‘More like Jarndyce and Jarndyce,' said the Lady Captain, who knew her Charles Dickens – and her Trumpers – better than most.
‘So where does the poor little rich girl bit come in then?' asked a newish member curiously.
‘There's Tim Trumper.'
‘Who he?' asked another member, younger than most, who liked to be thought of being with it, speech-wise.
‘Her cousin.'
‘So?'
‘Childhood sweethearts until a little chick from Calleford with attitude came along and got her claws into him.'
‘Now that must have really upset the Trumper applecart,' agreed Christine appreciatively.
‘Believe me, it did,' said Ursula Millward.
‘And put Hilary's nose out of joint, too, I daresay,' observed the mother of the teenager, well-versed in youthful angst. ‘What a family …'
‘For family,' said Ursula Millward, ‘you can read firm.'
‘Or dynasty,' put in someone else.
‘Apparently,' said Ursula, ‘this Matt Steele's a bit of a go-getter and if Hilary's got a major holding it's going to be difficult for the family to keep the man out of Trumper and Trumper (Berebury) Ltd., whether they want to or not.'
‘Tim Trumper isn't going to like having to share the firm with an outsider,' observed someone else.
‘Nor are his father and uncle,' forecast Ursula Millward. ‘They're still very active, you know.' She looked round to make sure she still had the attention of her audience before
she went on ‘I gather they're pretty interested in doing the proposed development here.'
‘You mean the new driving range?' asked one of them. ‘That's pretty small potatoes for a firm of their size, surely?'
‘It's not that bit of work that matters,' said Ursula. ‘It's the development value of the land the Club would have to sell to finance it that matters. You see grass,' she explained simply. ‘They see houses.'
‘So that's why the men are so excited about their driving range,' murmured the Club's dim blonde. ‘I wondered.'
‘Only half of them,' sighed the Lady Captain who had had to sit through the deliberations of the Men's Committee. ‘The other half are excited about having the driving range at all.'
‘So why is Granny putting her oar in like that?' persisted Anna. ‘Doesn't she like their wives or something?'
‘Tim Trumper's chick is an airhead into retail therapy,' explained Ursula, ‘and the old lady's afraid the girl'll ruin him.'
‘And by extension the firm, I suppose,' said Christine, nodding. ‘What do her parents say? Not,' she added realistically, ‘that that seems to make much difference these days.'
Ursula Millward said judiciously ‘If you ask me it's more a case of “No, my darling daughter” than of “O, my beloved father”.'
The ladies nodded as one. This they understood.
‘They do say,' said Ursula cautiously, ‘that Matt Steele is quite clever.'
The newish member, a little unsure still of the views prevailing at the Ladies Section, said timidly ‘It is possible for a man to be too clever, isn't it?'
Nobody in the Ladies Section of the Berebury Golf Club had anything to say to that.

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