Grave Matters (3 page)

‘A red one?’ Patrick asked, warily.

‘No, mustard-coloured. Why? Did you meet a red one in the lane?’

‘Yes.’ Patrick said no more but drank deeply from his tankard.

‘Going rather fast, eh?’ said the other man, and Patrick nodded. His new friend chuckled.

‘She’s not a real native of Meldsmead, though she may become a permanent fixture,’ he said. ‘I say,’ he called out to the pair remaining by the window. ‘Someone else has met our Valerie in the lane and managed to survive.’ He added to Patrick, ‘George Kent there met her bonnet to bonnet last weekend. A narrow miss, he had, ha, ha! Miss Valerie,’ he added, in case anyone had not got the point of his quip.

The crack provoked satisfactory mirth, and on its wave Patrick found himself included in the group. He supplied his own name, and learned that his sponsor was Denis Bradshaw. The third man was Paul Newton.

Patrick had been alerted at the mention of Valerie. From what had been said it seemed that the wild driver he had met might be Miss Amelia Brinton’s niece. The other men were continuing to talk about her.

‘Is she going to stay on here, George?’ Denis asked.

George Kent was a red-faced man with bright blue eyes. He looked cheerful.

‘I don’t think she’s decided yet,’ he said.

‘The lady Jehu you met has just inherited a cottage in the village,’ Denis explained. ‘It belonged to her aunt, an odd old woman, very brainy, but nice with it, if you know what I mean. It’s down one of the dead-end lanes up there.’ He gestured in the direction of that part of the village where Patrick had not yet been. ‘The old girl died about a month ago, rather suddenly. Some sort of accident. Fell down some steps in Greece.’

Patrick did not want to let a web of deceit accumulate.

‘Was that Miss Amelia Brinton?’ he asked.

‘That’s right. Had you heard about it? There was a bit in some of the papers. Turned out the old girl was rather well known in her day. Had a famous father, it seems.’

‘And the niece?’ Patrick prompted.

‘She’s inherited the lot. Not that there’s much except the cottage, I don’t suppose, and it’s in pretty poor nick. Every wall smothered in books, I should think that’s what holds it together, stops the walls falling down. Isn’t that right, Paul?’

Paul Newton took his pipe from his mouth.

‘There’s something in what you say, Denis, as always. But I think the cottage is sounder than you imply. It’s been standing a good few years now.’

‘It’s old, is it?’ Patrick asked.

‘Yes – beamed and thatched,’ said Denis. ‘Too quaint for Valerie, I’d guess.’

‘You hope, you mean,’ grinned George Kent. ‘You don’t want to risk your neck every time you go down the village street.’

‘It’ll be too quiet here for Valerie,’ Denis said in a hopeful voice. ‘Anyway, she’d only use the cottage for weekends. She’s got some very high-powered job in London,’ he told Patrick.

‘Can’t you commute from here?’ Patrick asked.

‘Easily,’ said George. ‘I do.’ He finished his beer and glanced at his watch. ‘Well, I must be off now or Winifred will be after me.’

He left them, and through the window Patrick could see him walking briskly down the lane.

‘George doesn’t spend long in here these days,’ said Denis. ‘He’s got a pretty new wife – plump, you know, but comely, like the poet said.’

Patrick had a feeling he was really quoting the Bible and had got his adjectives confused, but kept silent.

‘His second,’ added Denis. ‘Can’t neglect her.’

‘Here comes Valerie again,’ said Paul Newton, who seemed content to remain in the conversational background. ‘Hope George hears her coming.’

They watched the red mini skelter past; it sped on and then swung wildly round to the right.

‘She’d a passenger,’ Paul said.

‘Must have been to fetch her from the station,’ said Denis. ‘We’ll have to train Valerie if she’s going to stay on here. Or get her copped. Can’t have our lane a death trap. Still, you’re usually around, aren’t you, handy enough. Paul’s a sawbones,’ he said to Patrick.

Patrick had been wondering what the quiet man did. He was tall and very thin, and had an abstracted expression.

‘I’m a pathologist,’ he said to Patrick. ‘I don’t often get at living bodies. Not that there’d be much of you left alive after a head-on collision with Valerie Brinton.’ His face took on a more sombre look as he said this.

‘Interesting profession,’ Patrick said, his eyes lighting up. This man must know a great deal about forensic medicine, a subject Patrick found absorbing, to his sister’s great disgust: she thought it morbid. ‘You live here too?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Up that way, near the church, past George’s house. His is just out of sight round the bend.’

‘Do most people work locally, or are there many commuters?’ Patrick asked.

‘A good number go to Newbury or Winchester, or even as far as Southampton,’ Paul said. ‘George is a stockbroker. He goes up from Newbury, and so do a few more. Denis here has the best of things. He grows vegetables and sells them.’

‘What does the chap who’s bought Abbot’s Lodge do?’ Denis asked. He spoke quickly, almost cutting into what Paul was saying. Patrick guessed he had been made redundant in middle age and been forced to find a new career; it was a common enough story.

‘I didn’t know it had been sold,’ Paul said.

‘Oh yes. All signed and sealed, and the new people move in any day, I believe,’ said Denis. ‘They’re going to spend a fortune on it, doing it up, so I’m told.’ He explained to Patrick: ‘It’s down the lane past Mulberry Cottage, where that maniac in the red mini is temporarily installed. Got a terrible reputation. The house, I mean.’

So had the unfortunate Valerie, it seemed, though only for her driving.

‘Why? Is it haunted?’ Patrick asked.

‘It was once part of an old abbey,’ Paul Newton said. ‘You know how stories grow about these old places. Naturally through the centuries it’s seen its share of tragedy. Well, I must go. Nice to have met you, Grant. See you soon, Denis, I expect.’

‘Certainly,’ said Denis, and when Paul Newton had gone he said to Patrick, ‘Clever chap, that, but melancholy. His work, you know. Must be most depressing. And I shouldn’t have said that about him mending the victims if Valerie Brinton mowed anyone down in her wild way. His wife was killed in a car smash a couple of years ago.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Patrick. ‘Well, you can’t watch every word.’

‘One forgets, you see,’ said Denis. ‘But he doesn’t, poor chap. He was at the hospital when they brought her in. She was in an awful mess.’

‘Has he a family?’

‘Rather a nice schoolgirl daughter, and a student son, going to be a doctor. We don’t see much of the boy, now, but the girl appears in the school holidays and rides a pony round the place. She’s at boarding school. Miss Amelia Brinton, the old girl who died, helped Paul fix it up, in fact. They were great friends, he and Amelia, they used to talk about Egyptian tombs and things. It seemed best for the girl after Angela died. Paul’s lonely, though. We see quite a bit of him, he plays bridge and so does my wife, and he comes for a meal now and then. You’d think he’d marry again but he seems to be interested only in dead bodies.’ With this pronouncement, Denis finished his beer. ‘Well, I must be off now. I live down the lane on the left, Meadow Farm, my place is called. Come in any time if you’re back this way.’

He called out a farewell to the landlord and was gone. Patrick bought himself another beer and ate his sandwiches, which he had felt unable to tackle during this burst of friendly conversation. The sailing party had produced some charts now, and were engrossed in their plans, though the three women spared him a glance as he sat down in a corner of the bar. But he was prepared too. He took a little book from his pocket and began to read it while he ate. It was a paper-back volume of essays about the tragedies of Shakespeare by one of Patrick’s colleagues, whose theories he always tried to demolish when he got the chance.

Later, Patrick drove through the village to the church. He went slowly past a pleasant Queen Anne house, with a well maintained garden separating it from the road. Several houses built of mellow brick were clearly converted from what had once been farm cottages, and there was a small close of neo-Georgian modern houses which would blend in well when their bricks had weathered and their newly laid-out gardens had matured. He wondered where George Kent and his new wife lived, and which was the lonely abode of Paul Newton. In the centre of the village, opposite the post office, was a garage, with a workshop at the side of a row of petrol pumps.

He went into the church, part of which dated from Norman times. In the porch, among notices of service times and posters about charity appeals, was pinned a list of names and dates: the flower-arranging rota shared by women in the parish. He saw the names of Mrs. Kent and Mrs. Bradshaw among others.

Inside the church there were box pews and a fine marble tomb which held the remains of a fifteenth century abbot. A short history in a frame on the wall told the visitor that the church had once been part of the abbey, and remembering the talk in the pub about Abbot’s Lodge, Patrick wondered if an abbot’s ghost rose from here and stalked across the fields. He went round reading the inscriptions on the walls, and had lifted up a strip of carpet in the chancel to inspect the brass below when a voice behind him spoke.

‘Do you want to take a rubbing?’ asked the vicar. He was a small man with a round, cheerful face, and he was wearing a cassock.

‘No—no. I was merely curious,’ Patrick said, restoring the carpet to its original position and standing up again. He felt as guilty as a schoolboy caught cribbing.

‘It’s quite a good one,’ said the vicar. ‘We get a lot of people coming in. I never mind if they ask, naturally, but sometimes you find them here, crouched like mantises, just when there’s about to be a wedding, or worse, a funeral. It leads to complications. The vicarage is just next door. It’s so simple to seek permission first.’

‘Quite,’ Patrick agreed, and deemed it wise to introduce himself. As soon as he mentioned his name the vicar looked alert.

‘You are the good soul who saw our dear Miss Amelia Brinton to her rest,’ he said, greatly embarrassing Patrick by this verbal extravagance. ‘And you wrote such a thoughtful letter. Valerie showed it to me. I should like to see that corner of Athens you described, where she lies now. We were all so shocked by the accident. It was very sad.’

‘It was horrifying,’ Patrick said.

‘I suggested a memorial service here, but Valerie would not agree. She thought no one would come. I knew the whole village would turn out, but she still refused. We said some special prayers in our ordinary services.’

‘It was all very proper, in Athens,’ Patrick said, as he had emphasised in his letter.

‘Oh, I’m sure. There is solace in ritual,’ said the vicar. ‘Have you come here to see Valerie? She’s staying at Mulberry Cottage this weekend.’

‘No. I just happened to be passing,’ Patrick said, and explained his presence in Meldsmead. It turned out that the vicar, whose name was Lionel Merry, knew Canon and Mrs. Fosdyke, so they explored this link for some time, until the vicar remembered why he had come into the church, which was to look up something in a register.

‘Do call on Valerie if you’ve time, before you leave the village,’ he urged Patrick. ‘She’s got Mildred Forrest staying with her. She was a great friend of Amelia’s and until this year always went with her to Greece. She has a weak heart and felt she would hold Amelia back if she accompanied her again. A pity. She’s grieving for her friend. I think it would comfort her to meet you. Valerie doesn’t mean to be unsympathetic but she has little time for the softer side of life, the small deeds that cushion things for others less tough than she is. I suppose it’s to be expected. She has an excellent job in industry.’

Patrick remembered Valerie’s curt little note.

‘Was she fond of her aunt?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps she didn’t see much of her?’

‘She came to stay sometimes. Not often. Amelia respected her very much for her achievements and often talked of her with very great pride. But I sometimes wonder if Valerie has ever had time to grow fond of anyone,’ was the vicar’s sad reply.

‘I’ll certainly call on Miss Forrest, if you think she would like me to,’ Patrick said.

‘Please do. If you lose your nerve, say I suggested it,’ said Mr. Merry. ‘I wish I could invite you to supper at the vicarage, but we have a social in the parish hall tonight and both my wife and I will be out. Another time, perhaps, if you should be this way.’

‘Thank you,’ said Patrick.

He walked slowly down the church path back to his car pondering on this exchange. The vicar had painted a not particularly alluring portrait of Valerie Brinton, but surely he did not expect Patrick to shrink from her in fright? She could hardly be more daunting than some of the female dons he knew who were often much cleverer than he was, but who seldom filled him with alarm.

Patrick knew which turning to take for Mulberry Cottage because he had earlier seen Valerie Brinton swerving round the corner. He drove slowly down the lane. There were fields on either side, and he had travelled about three hundred yards before he came to a thatched cottage on the left-hand side of the lane. A red mini with a dent in its wing was parked outside. Patrick went past, looking for somewhere to turn, but there were no gateways until he reached the end of the lane, where it widened out in front of a large house built of stone. This must be Abbot’s Lodge. A high yew hedge concealed most of it from the road, but Patrick could see the leaded windows in the upper rooms, and the tiled roof. There was space for him to swing the Rover round without reversing into the gateway of the house; as he slipped into first gear he heard the deep barking of a large dog somewhere not far away.

Abbot’s Lodge certainly was secluded, almost isolated in fact, he thought as he returned the way he had come, and so was Mulberry Cottage. He drew up behind the mini and saw that as well as a dented wing it had a crushed bumper. Then he looked at the cottage. It was very old, probably 17th century, he decided, built of the soft-coloured brick that predominated in the village. The windows were small, the two upper ones peering like eyes out of the fringe of the thatch that framed them. The ridge line of the roof sagged in the middle, and though it was wired, in places the wire had rusted and the birds had made merry with the straw, removing some of it for nests, and in other places burrowing in and building on the spot. A fence, rotted in places, separated the cottage garden from the road, and there was a wicket gate in it that opened on to a flagged path leading up to the front door. There was no garage, and no other gate large enough to let a car in off the road, but there was quite an area of garden around the cottage, filled now with dahlias and michaelmas daisies, and large yellow chrysanthemums.