Amendment of Life (2 page)

The carer had settled the wheelchair in exactly the same place – had she known it – from which the ladies of Aumerle Court of yesteryear had also diverted themselves by looking down on the maze. It had been convention, not arthritis, which had prevented those earlier gentlewomen from going outside, but they were the spiritual sisters of Daphne Pedlinge all the same. They, too, had always wanted to see what was going on in the maze, hoping for some little excitement to enliven their dull days.

Had they seen what Daphne Pedlinge saw there when she first looked down this Monday morning, they might not have reacted with her speed – after all, the Tudor age was one quite accustomed to death – but they, too, would have done exactly what Daphne Pedlinge did and rung for help and told their waiting women that there was a body in the maze and to do something about it.

Miss Pedlinge also pointed out to a shocked Milly that, in the fullness of time, Pete Carter and his brush and shovel would be happening upon it, and that something should be done about that, too.

And quickly.

Chapter Two

Mondays were not usually the busiest day of the week at Berebury Police Station – in theory, that is.

Saturday held the crown in that respect, especially if there happened to be a football match in the town; even more so if the game was a local Derby played between neighbouring teams. Fixtures between, say, Berebury United or Calleford City called for a lot of policing. When the industrial town of Luston played their away match at Berebury, often enough it was extra ambulances that were needed rather than policemen.

On the other hand, Mondays weren't the quietest day of the week at the police station, either.

Not by a long chalk.

As far as Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan was concerned, they didn't have quiet days there at all. And he thought he was a man in a good position to know. After all, he was head of the tiny Criminal Investigation Department of ‘F' Division of the County of Calleshire Constabulary. Reports of such crime as there was in that division usually landed on his desk. Detective Inspector Sloan was known to his nearest and dearest as Christopher Dennis and – for obvious reasons – to his friends and colleagues at the police station as ‘Seedy'. His superior officer, however, used neither of these names this morning when he sent for him.

‘Ah, there you are, Sloan!' Superintendent Leeyes glared at him from under bushy eyebrows. ‘Don't just stand there. Come in. There's been a very odd message from a care assistant to an old lady out in the sticks.' He looked down at a message sheet in his hand. ‘Over Staple St James way. At Aumerle Court—'

‘The Pedlinges' place,' responded Detective Inspector Sloan, himself a Calleshire man born and bred. He didn't say so, but – as the old phrase had it – the Pedlinge family were ‘as well known as the bell man'. ‘It's over towards Calleford.'

‘The carer – Milly Smithers is her name – says', went on the Superintendent, still staring down at the paper on his desk, ‘that her old lady insists there's a dead body in the grounds.'

‘And what does the carer say on her own account, sir?' asked Sloan, a man who, in his time had had his full meed of the dotty and the delusional. In the police force, dealing with the mentally deranged had always gone with the territory. Every beat officer got quite good at it early on in his career.

‘This Milly Smithers agrees that there's definitely a person lying out there – she could see it, too, from where the old lady is – but she herself isn't absolutely sure that it is a dead one.'

‘And what, may I ask, sir,' enquired Sloan, ‘makes the old lady think that she knows better?' Their Station Sergeant had daily visits from a man who was unshakeably convinced that his television dish was picking up messages from alien bodies on Mars; messages of an obscure nature that nevertheless the police should do something about then and there. If not sooner.

‘She doesn't think,' growled Leeyes. ‘She knows…'

‘Ah.'

‘She says it was her wartime service in the FANYs,' quoted Leeyes. He scowled. ‘I think someone somewhere must be trying to have us on, Sloan.'

‘They may not be, sir.' He frowned. ‘I rather think that there was a women's outfit in the Services in the last war known as the FANYs. The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry or something like that. FANYs for short.'

‘And there was I', marvelled the Superintendent, ‘thinking about Sweet Fanny Adams instead.'

‘Yes, sir,' said Sloan stolidly.

‘Anyway,' Leeyes snorted, ‘the carer wanted to send for an ambulance, but apparently the old lady wouldn't hear of it. Made her carer send for us instead. Insisted on it, in fact.'

‘Do we know why, sir?' He had an idea that in their day – in the war, that is – the FANYs had done something clandestine, but he didn't know exactly what.

‘She – that's this Miss Daphne Pedlinge—'

‘The old lady at Aumerle Court,' put in Sloan, getting out his notebook. It – a name and address, that is – was as good a place as any to begin.

‘She said that the ambulance people might destroy the evidence.'

‘So Miss Pedlinge thinks we need to be there first, does she?' mused Sloan. ‘That's interesting, sir. And that she thinks there's evidence to be destroyed, too. That's interesting as well.'

The Superintendent wasn't really listening. ‘I don't know about getting there first, Sloan, but she says that the police do need to reach the body before a workman called Pete Carter gets to the spot with his shovel and dustbin.' He sniffed. ‘What does she imagine he's going to do? Sweep it up and put it on the rubbish tip? Sounds to me as if you'd better take a straitjacket out there with you.'

‘Yes, sir.' He sighed unenthusiastically. ‘Presumably this Milly Smithers will be able to direct us to the body.'

‘I shouldn't count on it if I were you, Sloan.'

‘Sir?'

‘What you are going to be looking for is lying somewhere in the famous Aumerle maze,' said the Superintendent, adding, quite unabashed, ‘Didn't I say?'

‘No, sir,' Sloan said expressionlessly. ‘You didn't say.'

‘Well, it is, and I don't want you and your Sergeant spending all morning playing about in there either.'

‘I'm afraid, sir,' said Detective Inspector Sloan with an even more marked lack of enthusiasm, ‘that I'll have to take young Crosby with me today instead.' Detective Constable Crosby, inexperienced and inept, was not a useful man to have at his side – or anyone else's – on a case. ‘Sergeant Gelven rang in sick first thing this morning. He's not going to be well enough to be on duty at all this week.'

‘That's the worst of Monday mornings,' pronounced Leeyes elliptically. ‘They come after Saturday nights.'

But it wasn't the worst of this Monday morning.

By any means.

*   *   *

There was one place in the County of Calleshire where Monday was definitely not the busiest day of the week and that was the Bishop's Palace at Calleford.

‘Your egg's done, Bertie,' a woman's voice called up the stairs. ‘Don't let it get cold.'

‘Coming.' His Grace, the Bishop of Calleford, the Right Reverend Bertram Wallingford, always made sure that Monday was kept as a day of rest by the simple device of remaining in his pyjamas and dressing gown as long as he could, and staying in bed as late as his wife would let him.

‘I'm putting the toast in now,' said the same voice a few minutes later, more firmly this time.

‘I'm on my way.' A moment later a dishevelled figure arrived at the table and sat down heavily, fingering an unshaven chin.

Mary Wallingford regarded her husband with despair. ‘It's just as well you've already got preferment in the Church, Bertie. If anyone in the diocese saw you now they'd say you'd never make a curate, let alone get a bishopric.'

‘They would if I were non-stipendiary,' he said realistically. ‘In my opinion you can get away with murder in the Church of England if you don't need paying.'

‘And,' she said, undeflected, ‘if any of the women's groups in Calleshire which I give my talks to ever caught sight of you in that deplorable dressing gown, they'd drum me out immediately.'

Unabashed, the Bishop looked down at what had once been a brown-and-white checked pattern. ‘What's wrong with it?'

‘Old age,' she said crisply.

‘People live longer these days,' he said. ‘Why shouldn't dressing gowns?'

‘You shall have a new one for Christmas.'

‘That sounds more like a threat than a promise.' He gave a great yawn and stretched his arms upwards. ‘That was a very good meal last night, Mary. One of your best.'

‘You can't beat a good beef casserole,' said the Bishop's wife, well versed in dishes that could wait upon the end of Evensong (with sermon). ‘And a plum tart afterwards.'

‘It did Malby a power of good, anyway,' said the Bishop, running his hands through his tousled grey hair. ‘Poor fellow. He does so look forward to your Sunday evening suppers now.'

‘It must be very lonely at the Deanery these days,' said Mary Wallingford. ‘Not having a wife to come home to any more…'

‘And to share your worries with,' finished Bertie Wallingford simply. He had made a practice throughout their marriage of pouring out his own troubles – or nearly all of them – to his wife as soon as he stepped back over his own threshold. He gave this fact, and her, all the credit for his not having succumbed early – like many better men in the Church – to a coronary thrombosis.

‘I thought deans didn't have any worries,' she said, tongue-in-cheek, ‘and that only bishops and archdeacons did … or have I got that wrong?'

‘Malby's got worries,' said the Bishop earnestly. ‘Big ones.'

‘Not the Church Commissioners again, I hope?'

He shook his head. ‘There's been a sudden outbreak of prowlers in the Close, for one thing. The security people don't seem able to do anything about them – it's not as if the Minster is enclosed—'

‘A precinct would be safer,' she agreed, echoing, had she known it, many an early medieval builder.

‘And then…'. He paused.

‘And then?' she prompted him.

‘And then, first thing the other morning one of the gardeners found some odd things outside Canon Willoughby's front door.'

‘How odd, exactly, these things?' she queried.

He hesitated. ‘If you must know—'

‘Of course I must know, Bertie,' Mary Wallingford interrupted him impatiently. ‘Don't be silly.'

‘What I think you might call signs of uncanonical practices.'

‘Such as?'

‘A sheep's head.' He dropped his gaze. ‘And some burnt feathers and other things.'

‘Ah,' she nodded. ‘I thought Malby was rather quiet last night.'

‘He told me not to worry you.'

‘That was nice of him.'

‘So', hurried on the Bishop, ‘the Chapter has asked that firm in Berebury which has been so efficient with the Minster floodlighting…'

‘Double Felix, Ltd.' Her lips twitched. ‘Such a clever name – and neat, too, having those “two cats rampant” as their logo. That's really brilliant.'

‘Them,' said the Bishop, hitting his egg with a spoon. ‘Malby told the Clerk of Works to get them in as a matter of urgency. They've been putting up some more security lights in any especially dark corners in the Close.'

‘Good,' said Mary. ‘You never know what's going to happen next when people start to get funny ideas about the Church.'

‘Well, you needn't worry now because Double Felix are working on it flat out. I know that because Malby and I saw their head-wallah – David somebody … I forget his name—'

‘Collins,' she supplied.

‘That's right – him – still at it in the slype yesterday evening when we came across here for supper after the service.'

‘I expect David Collins is quite glad to get out of the house just now,' said the Bishop's wife sympathetically. ‘Work is a very present help in time of trouble. It can sometimes take your mind off other things.'

‘Of course.' The Bishop bowed his head. ‘I was forgetting about his little boy's illness. He's not any worse, is he?'

‘Not that I've heard,' said his wife, ‘but it's a nasty operation for a young child, losing an eye like that, and you never know with that sort of cancer, do you?'

‘We've a lot to be thankful for,' he said humbly. ‘How do you come to know all this about the Collins family?'

‘Margaret – that's his wife – comes in from Nether Hoystings to our pre-school nursery with the boy.' Being the treasurer of this was just one of Mary Wallingford's many voluntary jobs. ‘She's quite a striking-looking woman in a rather sultry way, but always very pleasant to talk to. They're both shattered about the eye naturally. He's an only child, too.'

The Bishop nodded. ‘I can understand the man throwing himself into his work—'

‘Even if it's in the slype after hours on a Sunday?' Mary Wallingford shivered. ‘I've never liked the place. Nasty, narrow and dark…'

‘Well, at least it's not going to be dark for long.' Bertie Wallingford started to cut his buttered toast into nursery-sized ‘soldiers'. ‘But I'm afraid', he added drily, ‘even the Dean can't do anything about the slype being so narrow – he'd have to move the Chapter House first.'

‘And yet, Bertie,' his wife gave him a teasing smile, tongue well in cheek, ‘you're always saying that compared with bishops, deans have all the power in the world.'

‘And even with Malby Coton's very considerable autonomy, he can't shift the Minster transept either.' The Bishop reached for the salt. ‘And as for the slype being nasty…'