Murder in Steeple Martin (14 page)

‘Why didn’t you phone me?’

‘Pete said he’d do it,’ said Libby, uncomfortably aware that she should have phoned him as she was responsible for him being involved. ‘I’m sorry. I was entirely in their hands –’

‘Whose hands?’

‘Pete’s and Ben’s. It was up to them whether we carried on or not. I don’t think they wanted to, but now they seem to have changed their minds.’

Stephen’s expression told her what he thought of Peter and Ben. ‘And who’s this?’

‘Fran. She’s a – a work associate of Ben’s, and a friend of mine. Down for the weekend.’

Stephen looked marginally more cheerful at this, and went off to his workshop, presumably to make the first cup of tea of the evening.

They all went into the auditorium, where first Peter and then Libby had a brief chat to explain the situation, and Peter offered Paula’s part to one of the young hop-pickers, who was blushingly grateful.

‘It means we’ve got to work hard over the next few days, and we’ll have to put in time over the weekend,’ said Libby, ‘but I feel sure we can do it, and we’ve all put in so much work so far we don’t want to waste it. And,’ she said, invoking the phrase that would carry them through the next few days, ‘I’m sure it’s what Paula would have wanted.’

There was a murmur of assent from the company.

‘And there won’t be any more incidents,’ said Peter, voicing the fear that Libby could almost hear rustling through the auditorium. ‘Whatever, or whoever, was responsible won’t try anything else. It would just be too tacky.’

A bubble of nervous laughter broke out and was quickly suppressed. Peter grinned round at them all. ‘And now, let’s get on with it. No mournful faces,’ (there weren’t many) ‘it will be the best memorial Paula could have.’

Libby slid off the stage and organised her troops into setting the first scene and reassuring Paula’s replacement that she was going to be fine.

‘Tell me you’re not still investigating, you old trout.’

Peter’s voice in her ear made Libby jump.

‘No.’ Libby turned to face him.

‘No, you’re not? Or no, you won’t tell me?’

‘No, I won’t tell you. Fran invited herself down, and if she picks up any vibes or whatever, I’ll be glad if she tells me.’ Libby looked up defiantly. ‘And so should you be. She’s absolutely convinced Harry had nothing to do with Paula, no matter what the police think.’

Peter frowned, looking anything but mollified. ‘They don’t think he did it. Any more than they think I did. They’re just casting about. I’m more worried about James.’

‘But why would he do it? She was going to have his baby. They were moving in together.’

‘Good enough reason, if you ask me. We all know he’d been trapped, don’t we?’

Libby shook her head. ‘This isn’t the time to discuss it,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I’m not interested in the murder, only the accidents. Well,’ she added, ‘I don’t mean I’m not interested, exactly …’

‘I know what you meant,’ said Peter, giving her a sudden hug. ‘Now go and be a hotshot director.’

Surprisingly, the rehearsal began well. The girl now playing Flo’s character had obviously been paying attention over the last couple of months, and knew the moves and even some of the lines. Libby had to acknowledge that Peter’s choice had been the right one. During a scene change Libby went back to where Fran was sitting unobtrusively at the back of the auditorium.

‘What do you think?’

‘Good.’ Fran nodded. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but better than I expected.’

‘Thank you. They’re all trying very hard.’ Libby fiddled with a scarf. ‘No – er – thoughts?’

Fran smiled. ‘Nothing,’ she said.

The play moved on to the difficult seduction scene, and Libby found herself holding her breath. This, after all, was the crux of the whole story, the event which set in train the tragedy to follow. She just hoped she’d got it right.

Chapter Eighteen – 1943

T
HE MIST STILL
shrouded the gardens as they walked across the common. Flo carried Millie on her hip and Hetty clenched her hands inside the pockets of her old coat to try and warm them up.

Lillian pushed the hopping box with the billies and the thick doorsteps of bread for their lunch. Hetty was already aware of the slight tightness round her waist brought on by eating so much bread and so many potatoes over the last week and a half. And although they worked in the fresh air all day, she no longer walked two or three miles a day to and from work, the farm being comparatively small. Still, she knew she looked healthier, and a pink flush to her cheeks had replaced the East End pallor.

Lillian led the way to the middle of the row where they had finished yesterday and they spent the next few minutes establishing themselves for the day. Flo was working with her mother next to them, and in order that the two families stayed close together, Hetty used to help her from time to time, or the tally would have been too small for them to move on when Lillian had finished her row. The call came to start picking and Hetty looked up, a tingling feeling of anticipation spreading through her to her fingers and toes as she saw the tall outline of the pole puller on his stilts moving towards them.

She squinted up at him as he deftly unhooked a bine and laid it across Lillian’s bin. Ignoring Flo’s dig in the ribs, she moved slightly closer and met his eyes. The green tunnel receded and there were only the two of them in the world as she received the promise in the shared look of complicity. She nodded, imperceptibly, she hoped, and stepped back to let him move on.

The sun grew hot on her head as the morning progressed and her hands became inured once more to the stinging of the bines as they dried out.

‘Cor, it’s hot this year.’ Aunt Connie struggled out of the old army greatcoat that she habitually wore down hopping. ‘We ain’t had no rain, yet, neither.’

‘Good.’ Lillian rubbed a hand across a sweating brow. ‘Better tally.’

‘Just as well.’ Connie nodded at Hetty. ‘Now Warburton’s got his claws into our Het.’

‘Auntie, he hasn’t. Why should you think that?’

‘He fancies you, duck.’ Connie was matter of fact. ‘And we’ve told you what happens then. If you give in to him, fine – but if you won’t have none of him – well, pity for you.’

‘Is he measuring us heavy, then?’ Hetty stopped picking, an unpleasant sensation starting somewhere under her waistband and spreading down her legs. It was how she used to feel if she got called out in front of the class at school, desperately trying to think of what she’d done wrong.

Lillian shot her a quick look. ‘Don’t you worry about it, Het. He’ll soon see he can’t blackmail us. I’m goin’ to report him to Mr Carpenter.’

‘Shall I do that for you, Mrs F?’ said Flo.

‘No, dear. It’s our concern. You got plenty of excuses to get up there and see Mr Carpenter, anyhow.’

Flo giggled and then caught sight of Hetty’s stricken face.

‘Cheer up, Het. Don’t you worry about it.’

Hetty felt the sweat prickle under her arms and took a deep breath to subdue the panicky beating of her heart. She tried to smile. ‘All right.’

The day wore on. The whistle blew at half past twelve and they sank gratefully to the floor round the bin. Hetty drank some of the cold tea which always made her wince and tried to eat a slice of bread, but her churning stomach threatened to give it straight back to her.

Flo edged over and sat beside her.

‘What is it, Het? You worried about Warburton?’

Hetty gave her a quick sideways smile. ‘A bit.’

‘Has he found out?’ Flo’s voice was hardly above a breath.

‘I don’t know.’ Hetty pushed down a renewed surge of panic. ‘How could he?’

Flo shook her head.

‘I know Mum said it wasn’t your business – but could you ask Carpenter? … I mean –’

‘Ask him what? I can’t ask him if Warburton knows about you and Mr Gregory – that’d be daft. Besides, I’m not quite on those terms with him.’

‘Come on. Flo. He really likes you.’

Hetty was surprised to see her friend blush. ‘Does he?’ She pleated the front of her apron.

‘You really like him, don’t you?’

Flo looked into the distance. ‘He’s different, Het. Not like the boys at home. He makes me feel – I dunno – special.’

Hetty sighed. ‘I know.’

Flo brought her gaze back to Hetty. ‘Yeah. You would.’

During the afternoon Cousin Bet and Millie went off to buy sweets from the lolly man and the sun moved round so that Lillian’s bin was in the shade. At half past four, the whistle blew again and the shout ‘Pull no more bines,’ echoed up and down the green tunnels. Hetty pushed the box back to the huts on the return journey and went to fetch water while Lillian and Connie lit fires. Flo met her at the water pipe.

‘Going for a walk, then, Het?’

‘Yeah. You coming?’

‘Yeah. See you in a minute.’

Hetty helped wash Millie down in the enamel bath and get the beds ready, then wandered off to the end of the row of huts to meet Flo. Without speaking, they set off across the common away from the Manor. The path forked and Flo turned right.

‘See you later, then,’ she said. ‘No more’n an hour, mind.’

Hetty shook her head and started up the left-hand fork, which led down the stream to the lake and the ruined chapel. Anticipation bubbled under her ribcage as she picked her way along the dry, rutted track towards the rusted iron gates that hung drunkenly in their tall, crumbling gateposts. Past the dark, forbidding yew trees, over the moss-covered gravestones that stood at improbable angles, as though the dead were trying to raise them.

He turned from contemplation of the lake, ruffled now by an errant breeze, reflecting broken images of approaching grey clouds. They stood for a moment, staring at one another across the encroaching undergrowth, then Hetty stumbled forward, caught her foot in a trailing bramble and pitched into his waiting arms. She felt his warm breath on her forehead and the immediate hardening of his body that she had come to expect, before she raised her mouth to his.

Their kisses were becoming more explicit, mirroring the desires of their bodies, and he rolled her over until she lay underneath him, the breath squeezing out of her body.

‘Gregory,’ she gasped, as his hand searched vainly for the buttons on her dress. ‘Stop. We can’t.’

Hetty didn’t know what it was that they couldn’t do, just that since the morning’s revelations about Warburton, she shouldn’t be here, and the feelings that had sprung into life during the past week’s meetings with Gregory were quite definitely not appropriate.

He hesitated, raising the thin, intense face above her and fixing her with ice blue eyes. ‘Why?’

Hetty struggled from underneath him and raised herself on one elbow. ‘Warburton has got it in for me. He might know about us.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Of course it matters. You know what your folks’d say if they knew you was meeting me.’

‘Oh, Hetty. Do you think I’d care?’

‘Of course you would. And my folks’d say the same. We don’t mix – your folks and mine. Think what the home-dwellers say about us – even if you know it isn’t true.’

Gregory sat up and clasped his hands loosely round his knees. But for the well-bred, intelligent face, he could have been any other farm worker, in his corduroys tied round with string, the worn jacket and the cap that lay on the ground beside him. Hetty experienced a sudden rush of emotion and knew without a doubt that she loved him.

‘Hetty,’ he began, ‘I’ve loved you since I saw you last year. I didn’t know I loved you – just that you did something to me that I had never felt before. Now I know I love you, and I don’t care about Warburton, my family or yours. I just know we’ve got to be together.’

‘They won’t let us, Greg,’ Hetty whispered. ‘And Warburton’ll do anything to get back at me.’

‘Why?’ Gregory turned and looked at her. ‘Why should he?’

‘They say he fancies me.’ Hetty was bright pink with embarrassment, but Gregory shouted with laughter.

‘Well, I don’t blame him,’ he said, ‘so do I.’

‘But I don’t like him, see. And he knows it, so he’s got a down on us – me and my folks. He’s measuring our bins heavy. And he’ll look for any excuse to report us.’

Gregory frowned. ‘Measuring heavy? What do you mean?’

‘He pushes the hops down in the bin – hard. Then when he puts his stick in it don’t measure as much, so we have to pick more to get our money.’

‘That isn’t right.’ Two pink spots appeared on Gregory’s thin cheeks.

‘No. He says he’ll measure light for some women – if they’ll – well –’ Hetty took a deep breath, ‘If they’ll – you know.’

Gregory’s eyes narrowed. ‘I can guess. Does Frank Carpenter know this?’

Hetty shrugged. ‘He’s a good bloke. I don’t suppose so.’

‘We’ve never had trouble with our pickers. Father knows all of them, as well as Frank Carpenter.’

Hetty nodded. ‘We hear all sorts of stories from other families at home, who go to the bigger farms.’

‘So why is Warburton behaving like this? I’ll get him turned off.’

‘Oh, Greg, don’t.’ Hetty knelt up in a panic. ‘How would you say you found out? It’d all come out – and I couldn’t bear it.’

His face softened. ‘All right, my beauty, I won’t.’ He lifted a long finger and traced the curve of her cheek. Hetty gasped and felt her breasts tighten underneath the cotton dress. She saw his eyes drop to them and watched as he turned towards her and took her hand, guiding it down his body. Excitement built quickly inside her and she collapsed beside him, her breath coming fast.

‘Hetty –’ he groaned as he freed himself from the constraints of corduroy and leather, his hands returning to explore Hetty’s newly exposed flesh, ‘we can’t give this up.’

Then he was inside her and Hetty was beyond reply, the sensations in her body demanding all her attention as something pulled tighter and tighter inside her, aching to be set free. And then it was. Her eyes widened in shock and surprise before the sensations exploded again and a sense of unimaginable urgency took over, until they both came to a shuddering, juddering stop.

Hetty became aware of other things slowly, one by one. First, Greg’s weight on her, second, the clouds scudding fast across a dull sky, then the top branches of the yew trees waving frantically in the wind and, last, something uncomfortable digging into her back. She tried to move away from it.

‘Hetty.’ Greg lifted a desolate face. ‘I’m sorry, Hetty. I didn’t mean that to happen.’

Hetty was surprised. How could he have not meant it to happen? He did it – he started it – she was only a willing accomplice.

‘Didn’t you like it?’ she asked ingenuously.

Gregory collapsed on her, laughing ruefully. ‘Of course I
liked
it. Did you?’

‘It was wonderful,’ Hetty breathed. ‘That must be what all the other girls talk about. No wonder they get so excited.’

‘Do they talk about it?’ Greg lifted his face again.

‘At work, sometimes. I didn’t know what they were talking about. I suppose this is it.’

‘Don’t talk about this, will you, Hetty?’ Greg’s voice was urgent. ‘This is ours. It’s special and it belongs only to us.’

Hetty shook her head. ‘I couldn’t,’ she said.

A drop of rain fell on her nose. ‘Oh, Greg. I must get back. I told Flo I’d only be an hour.’

He rolled off, leaving her uncomfortably sticky. ‘Will she be waiting for you?’ He turned away while she pulled on knickers and he tidied himself up.

‘Yes – by the fork in the road. She’s been up to Carpenter’s.’

‘She won’t say anything?’

Hetty shook her head again and stood up, brushing herself down. A movement beyond the yew trees caught her eye and she grabbed Gregory’s arm.

‘Someone’s there, Greg!’

He turned round, but nothing could be seen but thick dark trunks and sombre green leaves rustling above ancient gravestones.

‘There was – I swear. Oh, God – someone’s seen us.’

Gregory took her into his arms. ‘No, they haven’t. Look, I’ll wait here until you’ve gone past the gates. I’ll see if there’s anyone there.’ He kissed the tip of her nose. ‘Tomorrow?’

‘If I can.’ Hetty hid her face in his shoulder, then turned and ran, scrambling through the brambles and over the gravestones, the wind whipping at her thin cotton dress.