Bury in Haste (10 page)

By the time he came round again he was, if not fine, at least a great deal better. He opened his eyes, and although the brightness was uncomfortable it didn’t hurt too much. In answer to his query a bustling nurse told him his wife would be in at visiting time that evening; relatives were only allowed in during the day under special circumstances, and once he’d regained consciousness that privilege had been withdrawn.

A screen was trundled back, giving him a view of the rest of the ward. There was a contraption of levers over the next bed, holding up a leg encased in plaster. Turning his head he saw a familiar face grinning at him.

‘Sarge?’ Deepbriar drew his brows together, puzzled. ‘What happened?’

‘Don’t you remember? No, I suppose you wouldn’t, you were the first to go down.’ Parsons went on to describe the near riot that had followed Deepbriar’s collapse, the strikers carrying the police line halfway to the yard entrance before smashing through it. He dwelt with relish on the way his leg had been broken when he was swept up against a concrete gatepost. ‘Hurt like the blazes. It’s a wonder there’s only the two of us in here. I didn’t see the last of it myself, got carted out of the way by a couple of the lads,’ he finished cheerfully.

‘I remember being in the van on the way to Belston,’ Deepbriar said, ‘it’s a blank after that.’

‘Not surprising,’ Parsons said. ‘That was a nasty knock you got, you had us all worried for a while, wondering if you’d ever come out of it.’

‘How long have I been here then?’

‘Work it out for yourself.’ The sergeant pulled a wry face. ‘They’ll be cooking fish for our dinner tonight. Out cold you were, until about eight o’clock this morning.’

‘You mean it’s Friday?’ Deepbriar sank back, digesting the magnitude of having lost three whole days. ‘No wonder I’m starving,’ he said.

‘You’ll need to be to enjoy the food in here, it’s all bloody slops and gristle.’ Parsons cast a guilty glance towards the door. ‘Have to watch my language,’ he explained. ‘That sister, she said if I turned difficult she’d wash my mouth out with soap and water. Reckon she would too. A man feels so flipping helpless with his leg hoisted up in the air.’

Parsons wasn’t exaggerating, the food wasn’t good. Although Deepbriar ate everything they gave him, he was still very hungry when visiting time came around.

‘Well, you’re certainly looking a lot better,’ Mary said, as she bent to kiss him. He was amazed to see that her eyes were damp with tears.

‘I’ve got the mother and father of all headaches,’ he grumbled, and she gave a quavering laugh.

‘Now I know you’re all right,’ she said, ‘if you’re well enough to start complaining.’

‘It was just a knock on the head, nothing for you to get upset about,’ he said.

‘Oh no, with you lying there like the dead, when I’d sent you off in the morning without even giving you a spot of lunch. And I’d hardly spoken a word to you in a week! I felt so guilty, and all because of that business over
Madame Butterfly
. As if it mattered, a silly little show in the village hall!’ Suddenly the tears were flowing, though she made no sound, and turned her head away so nobody else would see. He reached out to take her hand.

‘It mattered to you,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I’m sorry, love, I shouldn’t have stayed for a drink with young Harry and missed hearing you sing. Even if Mrs Emerson’s voice does sound as musical as a stick pounding on my old mum’s tin bath.’

She gave him a wan smile, drying her eyes. ‘We all know she’s not very good. It’s just that she puts so much into the production. Without her we’d have had no new sets or costumes at all.’

‘I’d rather listen to you singing at the kitchen sink wearing your old pinny, than sit in the Albert Hall listening to her, no matter how grand the costumes and the set were,’ Deepbriar said gallantly. ‘It’s time they let you take the lead part, your voice is better than the whole lot of them.’

‘Go on with you.’ She was blushing now, her tears forgotten. ‘You do talk a lot of nonsense.’

Mary had arrived burdened with a large shopping bag, and, suddenly businesslike, she lifted it on to her lap. Deepbriar sat up hopefully as she delved into it.

‘Clean pyjamas,’ she said, taking them out, ‘and I brought these two books that you left on the sideboard. At least you’ll get time to read them now. Then there’s this bottle of tonic that the doctor gave you when you had that cough last month, I’ll leave it with the sister; I thought it might help to build your strength up. And there’s a letter from Auntie May, telling us all about her new grandson. Look, she’s sent a photograph.’

Deepbriar’s stomach rumbled.

There was only ten minutes of visiting time left when Harry Bartle appeared at the door, peering hopefully down the ward. Mary Deepbriar rose hastily to her feet. ‘You’ve somebody else to see you,’ she said. ‘Anything you’d like me to bring in tomorrow?’

‘A bit of your apple pie would be nice,’ Deepbriar replied longingly. ‘Or some fruit cake.’

‘I’m not sure if it’s allowed,’ she said, bending to kiss his cheek. ‘I’ll have to ask the nurse.’ She hurried away, offering Harry a perfunctory greeting as she passed him.

‘Evening, Mr Deepbriar,’ Harry said, ‘I hope Mrs Deepbriar’s not too put out about me coming, but I wanted to bring you this.’ He reached into the pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a small parcel, which turned out to be another book. ‘
The Alphabet Murder
. I found it in that second-hand shop in Wood Street,’ he explained, ‘I thought you’d be bored, lying here with nothing to do.’

The constable forbore to explain about the headache which was still thudding away behind his eyes. ‘Thanks, Harry. Everything all right in the village is it? Has Bronc turned up yet?’

‘Not a sign of him. He’s really keeping his head down. We’ve asked everyone we can think of. I did find out a thing though. Bronc was in our porch again that Monday, at lunch-time. And evidently somebody was in there talking to him for a while, and whoever it was didn’t come into the bar, which could be suspicious, couldn’t it? A couple of people saw the man walking away down the road, and they said he was a stranger.’

Deepbriar pulled a face. ‘I don’t know Harry, I don’t suppose there’s anything in it. Maybe he offered Bronc a bit of work.’

‘Could be.’ Harry looked at Deepbriar anxiously. ‘But I did think it was a bit odd, so I took my bike over to Possington and Cawster on Tuesday, and spoke to a few people over there, asking if Bronc had been around, and I tried describing the stranger too. I hope you don’t mind, I never said it was anything to do with the police, just that I was looking for Bronc and this other chap. Nobody had seen them, anyway.’

‘No harm done,’ Deepbriar assured him. ‘Anything else happened out at Quinn’s?’

‘No. Old Bob came in last night, he said they’ve had one of those new police cars calling in, he was moaning about it, says they wake him up, driving in and out of the yard at all hours of the night and setting the dogs off, but at least there’s been no more trouble.’

‘They’ve not caught anyone though.’

‘They never get out of the car,’ Harry was scornful, ‘townies. Couldn’t catch a cold.’

The bell went then, ringing with a prolonged jangling discord that did nothing to improve the pain in the constable’s head. With the visitors gone the patients were supposed to settle down for the night, although it wasn’t much past eight o’clock. Deepbriar opened the book Harry had left, but he couldn’t read; the letters swam in front of his eyes and refused to make any sense.

‘What’s that you’ve got?’ Parsons asked, lifting his head awkwardly to see what Deepbriar was looking at.

‘I’ve got a thumping headache and all they brought me was books,’ Deepbriar complained. ‘And I’m lying here starving. My belly thinks my throat’s been cut.’

‘I’ll swap,’ Parsons said eagerly. ‘Look at this great heap of fruit. I couldn’t eat all that in a month of Sundays.’

‘You sure?’ Deepbriar looked hungrily at the basket on Parson’s locker.

‘If you can reach it, it’s yours, Thorny,’ the sergeant said, gesturing ruefully at his leg. ‘Sorry I can’t bring it over to you.’

He had been forbidden to leave his bed without the assistance of a nurse, since he felt dizzy as soon as he stood upright, but hunger drove him, and after a few false starts he made it to his feet and across the narrow gap to Parsons’ bed, where the exchange was duly made. He had barely clambered back under the covers when the sister arrived, tutting about the untidy state of his sheets. Deepbriar, with a mouthful of grapes and more clutched in his fist, didn’t attempt to reply.

The night seemed endlessly long as Deepbriar tossed and turned, wide awake. His mind refused to give him any peace, as if he had a touch of fever, and his thoughts kept ranging over the exploits of his two fictional heroes. Dick Bland wouldn’t have wasted time lying in a hospital bed. He would have got up as soon as he regained consciousness, and returned to the job, probably with the solution to his latest investigation already hatching in his mind. As for Mitch O’Hara, the blunt instrument wasn’t yet invented that could lay the American low; he had a skull like solid rock.

Deepbriar stared up at the ceiling. The answers were there, swimming around in the feverish confusion, tantalisingly close. If he could just get his mind to focus, maybe he’d think of something useful. He went over and over the attacks on Quinn’s farm until his aching head was spinning with the effort, and still he came up with nothing. What use was a solitary boot print, even if Sergeant Jakes had succeeded in making a cast of it? He couldn’t prove it belonged to the midnight marauder.

Then there was the matter of old Bronc; had he vanished by choice, or was there something more sinister behind his disappearance? At his age it was quite possible he’d been taken ill, or died even. And there was Harry’s news. Who had been talking to Bronc? Was it anything to do with the black car, and had that been the vehicle which carried Joe Spraggs off?

Spraggs. The name woke something in his memory; where had he heard it? His pulse thudded like a drumbeat in his head, beating out the name. Spraggs, Spraggs … Then it came to him. Just before the police line had broken and he’d got a crack on the head, Parsons had mentioned a woman who was plaguing Sergeant Hubbard, insisting that her husband had gone missing. Her name was Spraggs!

He delved deeper, rooting around in his memory; seeking for another connection, knowing it was there, turning the incident over and over, his body tossing and turning as he tried to pummel his unruly brain into submission. At last it came to him. He’d stopped outside the interview room, amused by Sergeant Hubbard’s predicament when he was faced with a woman reporting her husband missing. It had been the day Martindale had called him in to tell him about the picket duty.

The woman Hubbard was talking to had said something must have happened to her husband. ‘My Joseph’. That was it! If it was the same woman then the missing man was another Joseph Spraggs! It couldn’t be a coincidence.

Deepbriar forgot the pain in his head as he stared unseeingly into the darkness. He’d thought of it when he was talking to young Peter Brook, but he’d let the incident slip out of his mind. Just the name Joseph hadn’t been enough to link the two men; if only Martindale hadn’t appeared he’d have heard the surname as well.

As it was, he’d wasted a whole week. It couldn’t be down to chance that two men with the same name had vanished within a few days of each other. But had the second Joe Spraggs ever come back?

F
inally, at six o’clock, Constable Deepbriar fell asleep, only to be awakened half an hour later by a staff nurse, brightly assuring him that it was morning, despite the darkness still shrouding the world outside the windows. He felt drained. The fever had left him, but so too had the conviction that he had solved the puzzle of Joe’s abduction and Bronc’s subsequent disappearance. As dawn crept into the bleakness of the ward, Deepbriar decided that his over-active mind had endowed his nocturnal ramblings with a verity they didn’t deserve. In the grey reality of early morning they looked more like the wanderings of a mind still suffering the after-effects of concussion.

Having eaten his meagre breakfast, Deepbriar had to endure those indignities routinely visited upon the bedridden, grumbling intermittently at the two young nurses who conversed over his head about the Robert Ryan film they’d seen the night before. Then, with the pulse in his temples drumming, he was folded tightly between his sheets and warned not to disturb the bed with its neat ‘hospital corners’ before the doctor made his rounds.

The case of the second Joe Spraggs was once more revolving around Deepbriar’s brain. He concluded that there had been some sense in his meanderings during the night, after all, and he tried to get things straight in his mind.

Falling asleep wasn’t on his agenda, but his head was muzzy and it was restful to close his eyes against the glare of the lights; hours later he woke up to find the dragon-like Sister Hunt by his side, grasping his wrist with one hand while the other held up the watch she wore pinned above her ample bosom.

‘You had a nice nap,’ she said complacently, releasing him then thrusting a thermometer between his lips. ‘Doctor will be here in a few minutes, then you can have some lunch.’

Deepbriar’s mouth was dry and his stomach growled with hunger, but the headache had almost left him. ‘I gotha phone Falbrough folithe thtathion,’ he said indistinctly, holding the thermometer down with his tongue. ‘Fleathe can I go to the thelethone?’

She snorted. ‘You most certainly cannot! I told you, the Doctor is on his way. And I very much doubt if he’ll allow you out of bed today.’

‘Thomebody could thake a methage?’ he pleaded. ‘It’th urgent.’

‘Nothing is urgent on my ward except the care of the patients,’ she retorted, removing the thermometer and looking sternly at it. ‘I hope you’re not going to be difficult, Mr Deepbriar. The last patient I had from Minecliff was difficult. Fortunately
he
was only with us for a few hours.’ With that she marched away.

From the next bed Parsons chuckled. ‘You’ll not pull rank with that one. What’s the trouble?’

‘I remembered something that happened on Monday. I’ve only just realised what it might mean. I really need to talk to one of the officers at Falbrough. Hubbard would do, or the Inspector.’

‘It’s a shame you were asleep all morning, then,’ Parsons said. ‘Inspector Martindale popped in a couple of hours ago to see how we’re getting on. I’m not sure how he got past the dragon. Perhaps he went over her head and used his sweet-talk on the matron.’

‘Martindale was here?’ Deepbriar blew out his lips in frustration. ‘Dammit, it might even be his case.’

‘Watch your language,’ the sergeant cautioned, ‘she’s got ears like a fox that woman, and eyes like a hawk. What are you on about? What case?’

Deepbriar explained about Joe’s abduction and his subsequent return, and how he was sure it must be connected to the disappearance of Joseph Spraggs, a case Sergeant Hubbard had refused to take seriously. ‘But he’d have to listen now. A thing like that can’t be a coincidence,’ he said.

Parsons was dismissive. ‘I bet this missing man turned up, probably within minutes of his old woman getting back from the station. It happens all the time. Some chap goes out and has a few more drinks than’s good for him, then he ends up sleeping it off somewhere and wanders home the next day with his tail between his legs.’

‘But at least the Inspector might have known if he didn’t. I wish he’d woken me up,’ Deepbriar said.

‘I think he was feeling a wee bit guilty about getting you involved, you being a village bobby,’ Parsons confided. ‘You don’t get much practice at crowd control out at Minecliff, though to be fair nobody expected that picket line to turn into a riot. Dunno what things are coming to.’

Before Deepbriar could reply the double doors to the ward were swung open and the doctor arrived, advancing in procession with matron and three nurses who danced attendance on them; no more talking was allowed on the ward until the ritual was over. Deepbriar gritted his teeth and waited. It wasn’t until lunch time that he found a chance to try again, this time asking the nurse who brought him his dinner if she could escort him to the telephone.

‘You’re not allowed up yet,’ she replied. ‘And as soon as you’ve eaten you’re to rest. You need your sleep.’

‘I slept all morning,’ he pointed out.

‘You see? That proves you need it,’ she replied. ‘Just do as you’re told and you’ll be out of here all the sooner. Eat up, you won’t get your strength back if you don’t.’

‘I’m not likely to get much strength out of this,’ he grumbled, scooping thin soup on to a spoon. ‘A man needs a bit of decent food in him. Ham and eggs, that’s what I call a proper meal.’

She laughed. ‘That’s funny, the last man we had here from Minecliff said the same thing, but he wanted it for breakfast. He was really rude; you should have heard the things he said to sister! I told him he was lucky to get anything at all; he’d already had a nice bit of boiled fish, and some toast. We were glad to see the back of him, I can tell you; if he’d been here any longer there’d have been sparks flying. Sister Hunt won’t stand for any nonsense on her wards, and she doesn’t like difficult patients, so you’d better mind your p’s and q’s.’ With that warning she whisked away.

Deepbriar ate what she’d left him, then made a further attack on Parsons’ basket of fruit, now sadly depleted. He pondered briefly over the identity of the other patient from Minecliff, and realised it must have been Bert Bunyard. Deepbriar was indignant; it was a fine thing when a police constable found himself spoken of in the same breath as a man like that. And all because he was trying to do his duty.

The evening brought Mary, but although their reconciliation was complete, she refused to call Falbrough police station for him.

‘You’ll be back at work quite soon enough,’ she retorted, then distracted him from his bad temper by unpacking a fruit cake from her bag, hiding it, along with a sharp knife, behind the winter dressing-gown she’d put in his locker. ‘I’m not sure you’re supposed to have it,’ she said, ‘but you can share it around, I expect all you poor men miss a bit of home-cooked food.’

It was after midnight and he was on his second slice of cake when the night sister caught him. She scolded him as if he were a naughty child, and the remains of the cake were confiscated. ‘I’ll ask the doctor,’ she said, when he protested. ‘You’re lucky Sister Hunt’s not on duty, it would have gone straight in the pig-bin. I’ll see it’s taken care of, maybe you can have a piece after your dinner tomorrow, since it’s Sunday.’

‘If I don’t die of hunger before then,’ Deepbriar muttered sullenly.

Despite his gloomy speculation, Constable Deepbriar survived until midday on Tuesday, when an ambulance delivered him back to the police house in Minecliff. Mary fussed over him, insisting that he should lie on the settee with a blanket over his legs, since he refused point blank to go to bed. Deepbriar declared himself to be in no need of mollycoddling, hiding the fact that he still felt dizzy whenever he walked more than a few steps, and as soon as he could get a word in, he demanded to be allowed to use the telephone.

‘There’s a young constable in the office taking care of everything,’ Mary said. ‘Inspector Martindale sent him out so you wouldn’t be tempted to start work again until you’re better, he came to see me himself to tell me so. I’ll ask Constable Giddens to come in and see you once you’ve had your dinner, and you can tell him all about this man you’re worrying over. If he thinks there’s any need, he can phone the sergeant for you.’

With the meal out of the way, and compliments made to Mary concerning the quality of her cooking, which tasted even better than usual after several days of hospital fare, Deepbriar pushed to his feet. ‘I’m going to make that phone call,’ he said, when his wife tried to dissuade him. ‘It will only take a few minutes, and I’m not going to faint, or fall over, I promise.’

But Hubbard, when Deepbriar got through to him, was totally unhelpful. ‘Glad you’re back home, Thorny,’ he said, ‘we were all sorry to hear about that knock on the head, though we should have known your skull was made of pretty solid stuff. As for that Spraggs woman, you’re officially off-duty for the rest of the week, that’s what I’ve been told. I can’t talk to you about ongoing cases, can I? Have a good rest and get yourself fit again. Now put Constable Giddens on the line.’

There followed several minutes with Giddens standing rigidly at attention and saying ‘yes, Sergeant,’ and ‘no, Sergeant,’ at regular intervals. Having heard a few of Hubbard’s lectures himself over the years, Deepbriar gave the young man a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, sighed expressively and returned to the settee.

Shortly after that Doctor Smythe arrived, adding the full weight of his medical authority to that of Sergeant Hubbard and Mary Deepbriar. ‘You’ve been sent home to rest, Thorny,’ he said. ‘Though to my mind you’d have been wiser to accept the offer of a week at the convalescent home. You had a serious concussion, and it takes a man time to recover from a knock as hard as that. But since you’re here you have to do as you’re told; you can read for an hour or two each day if your head isn’t aching, but no work and no telephone calls. Visitors mustn’t stay more than half an hour, and you don’t leave the house.’

‘I’ll die of boredom,’ Deepbriar grumbled.

‘You can listen to the wireless,’ the doctor suggested. ‘There are some good educational programmes on the Home Service during the day. And if that’s not enough to keep you quiet then maybe Mrs Deepbriar could teach you to knit. By the end of the week you could have made yourself a nice woolly scarf!’ With that he left, laughing uproariously at his own joke.

By Thursday morning Thorny Deepbriar was seriously considering Doctor Smythe’s suggestion. He was so bored he didn’t even mind when Mrs Emerson came to call.

‘Poor dear man,’ she gushed, when he assured her he was feeling quite well. ‘So courageous. And you were injured in the line of duty by those awful ruffians. I read all about it in the local paper, you’re quite famous.’ She fluttered her eyelashes at him. ‘Oh yes, you can’t deny it. Now where else did I hear your name? It can’t have been more than a couple of days ago.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Deepbriar said, as a frown creased her brow.

‘Got it,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘It was Mr Witherby. He said he’d come to see you once you were recovered. I’m not sure why, it all sounded rather strange. I believe he was worried about something he’d found in the garden, or was it in the bothy? He interrupted me when I was busy with my voice exercises, and that’s not a good time.’

She gave a tinkling laugh. ‘We artistes have to look after our instruments. That reminds me, I must have a word with Mary, the Society still haven’t made a decision about our next production. Do you know, some of our members actually want to perform Gilbert and Sullivan! Such a waste of our talents. And of course the lead roles are totally unsuitable for me. We have a meeting on Friday, I’m sure Mary will give me her support. You’ll excuse me, I’ll just pop into the kitchen.’

Deepbriar pulled a face at her retreating back; he’d heard the same story from Mary, and was encouraging her to take the side of the operetta fans; if they won Mrs Emerson might take umbrage and decide to resign. Then he turned his thoughts to Simon Witherby, wondering if Bronc had returned to claim his belongings. It would be good to know that the old man was all right.

Despite his wife’s vigilance and Hubbard’s strictures, Deepbriar had twice managed to have a quick chat with Constable Giddens, who assured him he was continuing to enquire into the whereabouts of the missing tramp. Unfortunately there was no news, but he promised to keep trying. He also reported that Quinn’s farm remained quiet, and that as far as he knew, no major search for a missing man had been started in Falbrough, but whether that was because Joseph Spraggs had turned up, or because of Sergeant Hubbard’s prejudice against missing person’s cases, Deepbriar had no way of knowing.

The eight day clock on the mantel shelf struck ten, marking off another tediously long hour. Deepbriar rose and picked the clock up, suppressing an overwhelming desire to throw it out of the window; it had been a wedding present and Mary was fond of it. Instead he turned off the strike; with luck she wouldn’t notice.

There was a tentative knock at the parlour door, then Constable Giddens’s head appeared in the gap. ‘Just heard there’s been an accident on the arterial road,’ he said. ‘The fog’s really thick out there. Can you ask Mrs Deepbriar to pass any calls on to Falbrough for me, please?’

Deepbriar glanced out of the window. He could see nothing but a swirl of white. ‘Mind you don’t get lost,’ he said, only half joking, as Giddens withdrew, ‘and keep your ears open once you’re out of the village, drivers always take that road too fast in this kind of weather.’

The young man had only been gone a few minutes when the outside bell rang. Deepbriar was halfway to the office before he remembered he wasn’t supposed to go in there, but Mary didn’t appear from the kitchen, obviously still deep in conversation with Mrs Emerson, so he carried on and opened the door.

Two people stood on the step, their clothes spangled with shining droplets of dew from the fog. ‘Morning, Thorny,’ Colonel Brightman said, sweeping his hat from his head. ‘I heard you were still on the sick list. Don’t often see you in mufti.’

‘Good morning, Colonel,’ Deepbriar replied, opening the door wide and ushering him inside. ‘I’m not officially back on duty, but Constable Giddens was called out.’ At nearly eighty Brightman was still spry, but the years had worn him down to a thin stick of a man. Behind him came the bent figure of Simon Witherby.