A Crowded Coffin (14 page)

‘You’d better ask Rory,’ was the only response she got as Karen disappeared into the large, walk-in larder.

‘Don’t shoot!’ He held up a hand in supplication. ‘Cousin Walter rang me after Sam and I left you in the cathedral. I forgot to tell you, with everything else that was happening. He told me they were having a small celebration drinks party and asked me to get on to Gordon Dean and invite his household, so I did. They’re all coming and I gather your grandmother has been on the phone so most of the village will be coming too. Sam can’t make it, by the way, he’s got something on in Southampton tonight. I’ve no idea what the party’s about, though.’

‘Well, there’s one good thing,’ remarked Karen. ‘We’ve got some olives. I asked the vicar to pick some up from the man in the market, seeing as he was on his way to Winchester, and he dropped them in an hour or so ago.’

‘He’s been to Winchester today?’ Rory made an obvious effort to control his start of surprise as he turned to Karen. ‘What time was that, then?’

‘About 10.15, more or less.’ She looked surprised. ‘I bumped into him at the village shop and passed the time of day. He mentioned where he was off to and I just said that if he happened to be walking through the market, would he pick up
some olives for the party.’ She was working as she spoke and soon had a tray ready. ‘Here, make yourselves useful and take some tea upstairs.’

‘My dear child.’ Edith’s grandfather glanced across at his wife and smiled. ‘The party is a makeshift attempt to dig myself out of a very deep hole. Today, as I’m sure you have forgotten, as I did, I’m ashamed to say, is our wedding anniversary. It’s
fifty-nine
years to the day that I did the decent thing and made an honest woman of your grandmother. The party is an impromptu way of apology.’

Penelope Attlin nodded and smiled. ‘He did trot out his usual excuse,’ she said with a mock frown at her husband. ‘You know, he says he doesn’t like to rake up old grievances and
anniversaries
are best forgotten.’

During the laughter that followed Walter Attlin’s ancient family joke, Rory glanced across at Harriet. She was looking decidedly weary and he went over to sit beside her.

‘Don’t say it,’ she answered his concerned look. ‘I know I look a wreck. I’m worn out. Penelope and Walter are being lovely but I’m going to call it a day soon and head for bed. I’m in no state for a party and besides, the painkillers I’m on are making me very woozy.’ She had dark circles under her eyes but managed a smile as Rory described Sam’s new housemate. ‘Bless him,’ she nodded. ‘Soft as butter, Sam’s heart, but a cat will be good company for him. I look forward to meeting Hector and to getting home to my own little moggie tomorrow.’

‘What do you think about this party tonight, Harriet?’ Rory was still wondering about it.

‘I think Walter is lighting fires to keep the darkness away,’ she said, surprising him, and smiled faintly at his reaction. ‘Or the modern equivalent,’ she explained. ‘I mean he’s insistent that his accident hasn’t put the fear of God in him and having a party
is one way of showing he’s not to be browbeaten. Besides,’ she added, ‘as he always says himself, old people have to kill
themselves
in their own way. They survived last Friday’s dinner remarkably unscathed, so why not a small drinks do in their own home? And a fifty-ninth wedding anniversary is reason enough.’

Rory nodded and got up to corner the old man. ‘Cousin Walter,’ he murmured, ‘did you really not see who it was, who drove into you, I mean?’

His host eyed him with resignation. ‘You’re just like the rest of them, aren’t you?’ he sighed. ‘I suppose Edith’s got you playing detectives with her? Oh yes,’ he grunted with
amusement
. ‘You think anything goes unnoticed round here? It’s all over the village that you’ve been poking about in the archives with Sam Hathaway and that he’s been asking lots of questions. And Edith has been going about practically wearing a
deerstalker
.’ He glanced across the room and caught Harriet’s eye. ‘You too, I gather?’

He waved aside Rory’s indignant denial and Harriet’s sudden, anxious frown. ‘If you must know, I didn’t actually see who it was but I did have a kind of intuition, some sixth sense. I felt sure it was the four-by-four that belongs to Gordon Dean.’

To Rory’s intense irritation Edith interrupted at that point, full of something she’d just remembered. She had clearly not overheard the exchange between the two men.

‘Grandpa, when you had your accident—’ She looked
haughtily
at Rory and Walter who had burst out laughing. ‘I’m sorry? I didn’t realize it was something to laugh about. Anyway,’ – she could never bear a grudge – ‘I was thinking about it earlier on. You were very cagey about it. Did you see something? Or someone?’ She looked suddenly confused and a little
shamefaced
. ‘I mean, you didn’t see Lucius, did you, Grandpa? Lucius Sextus Vitalis?’

This was greeted by gasps and Rory was about to make some sarcastic remark when he glimpsed his elderly relative’s
expression
.

‘You mean … you really think you
did
see him?’ He goggled at the old man in disbelief.

‘I don’t know.’ Walter Attlin sounded defensive but he went on, ‘I don’t honestly know what I saw. I wasn’t going to mention it, and if either of you breathes a whisper, I’ll skin you alive. That goes for you too, Harriet. I refuse to be branded a senile old dodderer.’

He took a deep breath. ‘It was at the moment I realized that the noise I could hear was actually a car. I half-turned and managed to jump out of the way, and I’d have been fine if I hadn’t gone and tripped, which is how I broke my damned collarbone. I thought I saw someone in the distance, over by the angel stone.’

Edith and Harriet stared wide-eyed, while Rory tried to
maintain
his scepticism in the face of the old man’s level voice and evident sincerity.

‘It was the briefest possible glimpse, an impression of a figure standing there; and there was a flash of something silvery.’ Again he shook his head, something defiant in his attitude. ‘I know it sounds insane but it made me think of armour, of a Roman breastplate.’

Edith had snatched a brief conversation with Harriet just after tea, but when she looked in on her an hour or two later, hoping for a further discussion, Harriet was drowsing comfortably, already tucked up in bed.

‘It’s bliss, sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘Just giving in to
whatever
is getting on top of you. You were right, Sam was right. I’m better off here tonight while I’m still so woozy. But tomorrow,’ she looked defiant, ‘tomorrow I’m going home. Sam will either be next door in his own house, or in mine – or more probably pottering between the two. I’ll be fine.’

‘’Course you will,’ Edith nodded. ‘Tough as old boots, aren’t you? Did you know we used to call you Boudicca at school?’ As Harriet nodded, looking smug, Edith shrugged. ‘I might have known we’d never have got anything past you. But listen, Harriet,’ she suddenly sobered. ‘What about what Grandpa said? I know the farm is supposed to be haunted but he’s never mentioned seeing anything before.’

‘Well,’ Harriet’s tone was bracing, ‘for a start I don’t think you need to panic about Walter losing his marbles. Maybe he did see a ghost. Who are we to argue with him? Although,’ she gave it some consideration, ‘I’m more inclined to think it was the clouds parting and a shaft of moonlight briefly glancing on a tree trunk or something.’ She closed her eyes for a moment before she added, ‘I wouldn’t dream of contradicting him, though. If it was the family’s tame Roman he’s not going to
cause trouble for his descendents, is he? Although,’ her eyes snapped open, ‘I felt I’d better not rile Walter by wondering why Lucius would have felt the need to wear his army breastplate long after he’d become a civilian.’

She snuggled down and waved a languid hand at her visitor. ‘You’d better go back to your guests,’ she said. ‘Whatever those pills are that I’m taking, they’re pretty strong and I’m almost asleep as it is. Off you go; if it’s anything like that lunchtime do at Gordon’s, you’ll spend your time fending off unwanted advances. Have they all turned up yet? The vicar and Brendan,
et al
?’

‘I expect they’ll be there,’ Edith told her as she turned to go. ‘I think they were just bored at Gordon’s party, and I was a novelty. I’ll fight them off, no worries.’ She picked anxiously at her thumbnail. ‘I don’t know what to think now, though. Not after seeing them—’ She broke off in mid-sentence. Harriet was in no state to be worried, even though Edith was more and more confused about the supposed treasure-seekers and their
activities
.

‘You might be right.’ Harriet sounded drowsy. ‘Be careful, love. I just don’t like any of them, but I’m too doped-up to remember why at the moment.’ She roused herself reluctantly to add, ‘I never actually said thank you, Edith, for nipping back to feed my cat. I expect he was glad to see you.’

Edith nodded and left the room, thinking hard. Now was not the time, she frowned, to tell Harriet that she’d felt something different about the cottage when she had nipped in to check on Harriet’s cat an hour ago. There was no sign of forced entry but she thought papers could have been moved and some of Harriet’s bits and pieces were out of place. A cursory look round the house reinforced the sense of intrusion – a bedroom door now open when Edith knew she had shut it herself – but there was no concrete evidence and nothing seemed to be missing.
Time enough to tell Harriet tomorrow morning or perhaps it would be better to tell Sam instead.

As she approached the galleried landing in the oldest part of the house, Edith jumped out of her skin as Rory loomed out of the shadows. He reached out instinctively to steady her and then somehow she was in his arms and he was kissing her. For a moment she responded, then all her uncertainties and
confusion
about him reasserted themselves.

‘No …’ she whispered as she pulled herself away, leaving him to stare as she headed for the top of the stairs. Before he could speak she had halted abruptly.

‘Oh my God.’ Her horrified whisper reached him and he looked over the balustrade to see what had shocked her.

‘He looked like Sam,’ she said, gripping the carved wooden banister. ‘In the cathedral, I’ve just remembered. Dr Sutherland looked a lot like Sam from where I was looking down at him.’

‘So? I wouldn’t have said there was much resemblance between them.’ Rory peered down into the Great Hall but could see nothing out of the ordinary. Twenty-or-so assorted
neighbours
were standing about, chatting and drinking, as a convivial hum rose up to them. ‘What are you talking about, Edith? What the hell’s the matter?’

‘When we were in the cathedral,’ she told him, ‘you and Sam were already on the move and I looked down from the gallery. There was a crowd, a bit like this one, and Dr Sutherland spotted me and waved. I waved back to him and he pointed to the chapel, to show he was going in there.’ She faltered, her difficulties with Rory forgotten. ‘But when I looked down again, on the way down, I felt odd, unsettled I suppose. I’ve only just realized why. I couldn’t see Dr Sutherland’s face, just his silver hair and cream jacket. And Sam’s panama hat stuck over his face, I suppose to help him snooze.’ She stared at Rory. ‘And Sam’s blue hanky; he was using it to fan himself.’

‘But why has that got you in such a state?’ He was puzzled and took another look over the railing. ‘It’d be more to the point if you’d seen this tall, dark man Dr Sutherland reckoned he’d seen following him and Sam. I’d forgotten about that till now.’ As he gazed downwards, Brendan Whittaker sauntered across the room, nodding in passing to the American, Mike Goldstein. ‘Have you checked if either of those two just happened to be visiting the cathedral today?’

Edith was still lost in thought, still looking shaken, and Rory continued, trying to work out what her problem was. ‘Sam thought it was nonsense, this tall stranger, we all did; an old man being mischievous, teasing his friend. But,’ he stared at her, ‘what are we saying, Edith? That someone somehow harmed the old boy? It was a heart attack, the doctor said so. How could it be anything else? And what’s this about Sam and Dr Sutherland?’

‘I don’t know.’ She shivered, looking so forlorn that he put a tentative arm round her shoulders, tightening his grasp when she didn’t recoil. ‘I just thought … what if someone
did
kill him? But what if it was a mistake?’

She turned to him, wide-eyed. ‘Why would anyone want to harm an old man? Nobody, as far as we know. But what if….’ She faltered, fumbling for words. ‘Suppose it was a mistake. Suppose it was Sam who was supposed to die. He’s been asking an awful lot of questions; maybe he asked one too many, the wrong one.’ She shivered and didn’t move away when he reached for her hand. ‘What can we do?’ she went on. ‘The police would laugh at us or more likely charge us with wasting their time. They’re stretched and you saw how high on their list they put my call about the other night – nobody’s been to check it out yet. You can’t blame them; they believe a drunk driver pushed Harriet off the road. Harriet says it was deliberate and she believes it was someone local. An old man dies peacefully in
a cathedral and another old man trips and breaks his collarbone. And what about the missing man, last seen in this village?’ She shivered. ‘Plus, I think someone has been in Harriet’s house, poking about in her desk and among her things.’

At his exclamation of surprise she explained her earlier feeling of unease, then sighed. ‘This won’t do, we’re supposed to be on duty. We’d better go and mingle.’

‘Tomorrow morning,’ he said firmly, still holding her hand, ‘we’re going to the cops, whether they laugh at us or not. This is all too weird and we
have
to get help.’

Downstairs, Rory was captured by members of the local art group while Edith greeted old friends, explaining that she was back for good and planning to start investigating ways of making the property pay for its keep. ‘I’ve got loads of vague ideas, she explained to one of her grandmother’s cronies. ‘I’ve emailed a friend from uni who knows about converting old buildings and I want to see if we can turn the stables into holiday lets. It must be possible to do something with them. Anyway, that’s just one avenue to explore.’

She nodded to another old friend. ‘Gran’s talking about turning downstairs into a flat for them and letting me make over some rooms on the first floor. That way we’ll be independent but close enough for company. As for Karen,’ she paused and waved to her old school friend who was bustling past with a tray of canapés, ‘I’m just praying she and Elv
eece
will stay on for ever and ever.’

Her attention was claimed by Brendan, who had Mike Goldstein in tow. ‘How’s poor old Harriet coping?’ Brendan sounded solicitous and even as she murmured a polite answer, Edith had to stifle a grin at the thought of Harriet’s outrage at such familiarity.

The tall American chipped in. ‘I heard about Miss Quigley’s accident,’ he remarked in his attractive drawl. ‘She’s got to be a
tough old bird to have survived something like that. You must have your hands full, with a party on top of everything.’ He smiled down at her, a gleam in his dark eyes. ‘What made you decide to have a party, tonight of all nights? Is this an example of the well-known British stiff upper lip?’

‘Harriet’s gone to bed,’ she told him. ‘She’s not too good tonight, but she’s very resilient. Now, can I get you another drink?’

Rory was heading for the kitchen with a tray of empty glasses when his phone rang. ‘Sam? Hang on, reception’s not too good here, I’ll nip outside. That better? Harriet’s fine, in case you’re worried; she’s tucked up in bed, fast asleep.’

‘I hope to goodness she stays there,’ Sam retorted. ‘But it’s not Harriet I wanted to talk about. I’ve been doing some more poking about, turning over the odd stone, and I bumped into a very old friend tonight. Nothing to do with the diocese – he’s a retired engineer who was a colleague of mine before I entered the Church. He used to have some contacts with the oil
business
. I know I can trust him, though I swore him to secrecy anyway and I told him about all these ill-informed rumours of oil prospecting.’

‘Did he come up with anything?’ Rory was intrigued.

‘I’m not sure. He says himself he’s been out of that world for twenty years or more, and the technology’s moved on rapidly, which obviously makes his know-how a bit dated. He was intrigued, though, and told me that there are several ways of sussing out if there’s oil around. You can do aerial surveys to measure the magnetic fields, plus there are airborne radar and satellite images that map the earth’s surface. He pointed out that besides the commercial flights from Southampton Airport there are several smaller flights, instructors, and so on, and who’s to know what they’re looking for as they fly overhead? He’s not suggesting that anything like this has actually been done,
though he’s promised to put out some discreet feelers tomorrow, but you get the picture?’

Rory grunted, remembering a light aircraft that had been circling overhead a few days ago. Sam went on, ‘I made some notes, hang on. Right, a seismic survey would record differences in how rocks reflect shock waves and there are also ways to measure magnetic and electrical fields; variations in any field can signal a rock layer that could be interesting. But my friend did say that a lot of this will probably be done by computer these days. This is just background info.’

Sam paused, and Rory could hear him riffling through his notes. ‘I’d better hurry up,’ he said and Rory could hear the laugh in his voice. ‘I’m supposed to be on a pee break; they’ll start worrying about my prostate. Okay, here we are. Apparently, at about Easter time, there was a gang of people in diving gear over at the Hag’s Hole.’ Intent on his report he missed Rory’s interrogative, ‘Huh?’

‘The grapevine said it was a team from the university, scuba diving or something, but what my friend said is that there’s another gadget called a sniffer that’s used underwater to detect traces of gaseous hydrocarbons. For instance if they were bubbling up from an oil reservoir.’

Rory was about to comment when Sam cursed quietly. ‘Damn, got to get back in to the meeting. Look, ask Walter Attlin about the Hag’s Hole but try not to alarm him. He’s got his own fish to fry and I can’t betray a confidence, but one thing I can assure you is that
he’s
not looking for oil. So if someone else
is
, they’re doing it for their own ends.’

Even allowing for Sam’s elderly acquaintance to be completely out of date regarding current oil exploration, Rory thought there was enough there for food for thought. He drifted back into the party and sought out his cousin Walter.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ said the old man with a smile. ‘I
know Edith’s been watching me like a hawk, but I’m fine, and so is Penelope. How are you getting on with the neighbours?’

‘Fine, they’re a nice bunch. But somebody mentioned a place called the Hag’s Hole and I didn’t get a chance to find out more. It sounds a bit indelicate, I thought.’

This time the old man laughed out loud. ‘Indelicate? Of course it is, this village is full of indelicate people! No, it’s always been called that, witches and so forth, I expect, as well as the God-awful stench that hangs about the place. It’s a biggish pond, a lake really, on land that belongs to me but which I’ve leased to Gordon Dean for the last couple of years. It’s next to his boundary and I believe he originally had some idea of cleaning it up and stocking it with trout. Hasn’t happened, though, I could have told him so.’