Shroud of Silence (13 page)

“Why didn’t you tell me it was you who found Brian’s body?”

The grin was swept from his face as a windshield wiper clears rain. He jumped up too, pretty nearly spilling his drink before putting it safely on the mantelpiece.

“There’s no need to look so shaken,” I said, feeling considerably shaken myself.

He gave a good imitation of a laugh. “It was just such a damn sudden change of subject,”

I knew there was a lot more to it than that. Again I poked the stark question at him. “It’s simple enough, Bill. I’m asking why you didn’t tell me it was you who found Brian’s body.”

“Well ... the occasion never arose.”

“Oh yes it did. Wasn’t it very odd to tell me about him drowning, and yet not say you found the body? Weren’t you being a bit evasive?”

Bill made no attempt to deny this allegation. “Just forget, it, Kim,” he mumbled. “It’s not important. Who told you, anyway?”

I explained to him that because I was sure it had a bearing on Jane’s problem I had gone to the trouble of looking up the Coroner’s verdict in the paper.

“But there’s something very strange, Bill.”

“What’s so strange?”

His face had turned a curious putty-grey color. All at once he looked desperately tired. When he picked up his drink and finished it, I heard the quick rattle of glass against his teeth.

My difficulty was, how much should I tell him? I wasn’t going to implicate Gwen if I could possibly avoid it. I’d have to go along just playing by ear.

I began very deliberately. “The newspaper report described how you found the body dressed in shirt and trousers.”

“That’s right.”

“No jacket?”

Bill was a rotten actor. A whole gamut of emotions registered on his face. I recognized astonishment, incredulity, plain fear, and then a wary calculation of my motives.

 “Wasn’t Brian wearing a jacket?” I persisted.

“Why should he have been? It was a warm night.”

“There’s a very good reason, Bill. You see, Brian was quite definitely wearing a jacket when he fell in the pond.”

Bill didn’t drop his glass; he hung on to it. I heard a crack, and saw his hand clenched, knuckles hard and white and shining. A drop of blood dripped to the carpet.

I crossed to him quickly. “You’ve cut yourself. Let me see.”

I went to take the broken glass away, but his fingers stayed gripped tight. He spoke in a soft voice, slurring the words almost as if he were drunk.

“How could you possibly know what Brian was wearing?”

“I was told.”

Almost before I’d spoken, he shouted. “Who the devil told you then?”

He made a frightening picture, his eyes glaring, blood dripping steadily from his hand to the carpet. At last I said carefully, “Never mind who told me. I just know.”

He stood rock still, not even blinking. Suddenly he flung out, “It must have been Gwen.”

“Gwen?” I managed to say with apparent surprise. “What makes you think it was her?”

“It has to be Gwen,” he said decidedly. “Felix and Verity weren’t here when it happened, and there’s nobody else at Mildenhall likely to have told you a thing like that.”

I was silent. I’d not bargained for Bill having such a logical mind.

“It was Gwen, wasn’t it?” he punched at me. “But how the devil does she come into the matter?”

He had to be told something, so I measured out a small dose of fact.

“Gwen saw him fall in. She was actually there.”

Bill glanced down at his hand and for the first time seemed aware of what he had done. The small tumbler was crushed into a dozen savage splinters of glass. He started picking them out of the flesh one by one, building a neat pile on a brass ashtray. His palm was a horrible mess of blood.

“For heaven’s sake, Bill, you’d better go and wash it.”

He gave a wry smile. “There’s no need. The whiskey will be disinfectant enough.”

Pulling a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, he wound it roughly around the cut hand.

Then, still looking down, he said thoughtfully, “If Gwen saw Brian fall in the pond, why didn’t she help him to get out?”

“She couldn’t,” I improvised. “He was too drunk.”

Bill eyed me shrewdly. “I see! The man was incapably drunk, so she left him to drown?”

“No, of course not. It wasn’t like that at all.”

“So what was it like?”

Somehow I had to make half the truth sound sufficiently credible to satisfy Bill.

“Gwen was out for a walk and met Brian coming back from the pub. He was pretty high and apparently ribbed her like mad—you can imagine the sort of thing. Really meant to hurt. When he staggered and fell into the pond, she thought a cold douche would sober him up. So she left him to it. She went back to the house and straight to
bed.”

“And she never told anyone?”

“Isn’t that easy enough to understand? Next morning when you.... when the body was found, she felt terrible about it. But nothing she said then could possibly help Brian, and besides she was bitterly ashamed.”

Bill nodded. “Yes, I can believe that. But why should she spill it all to you now?”

“She didn’t mean to. It was when I showed her the report of the inquest. She was badly shaken when she read the bit about Brian being dressed just in shirt and trousers.”

Bill went over to the drinks table and got himself another glass.

“As a matter of fact,” I volunteered, “Gwen seemed to find it rather a relief to tell someone. She’d had the weight dragging on her mind for a long time.” I paused a moment before adding very deliberately, “Like you, Bill.”

I watched his guard click into place.

“And what might that mean?”

“You know something about Brian’s missing jacket, don’t you?”

We went on staring at one another, silently fencing for position. But I knew I was on top.

To disengage his eyes Bill did a fussy bit of business with the armchair, quite unnecessarily pulling it round for me.

“Do sit down again, Kim.”

I sat down. “Well?”

“Gwen must have been mistaken,” he said smoothly. “There was no jacket when I found him.”

“Gwen wasn’t mistaken. You should have seen her reaction to that newspaper report. She jumped even higher than you did just now.”

“Me
jump!”

“Come off it, Bill, You didn’t crush that glass and gash your hand just for the sheer hell of it.”

He changed tactics swiftly. “It was the shock,” he admitted. “What you said was fantastic! Unbelievable!”

“Not unbelievable at all. Gwen says he went into the water with a jacket on, and you say he came out without one. So somebody must have taken it off him in the meantime. What I want to know is who? And why?”

“Well, don’t ask me. How should I know?”

But Bill did know. Or at least he knew something. He had the look of a man really on the defensive.

I decided it was time to push him hard. Feeling an awful heel because I was only bluffing, I put on a virtuous tone. “I think perhaps I ought to report this business to the authorities. There’s clearly something that needs investigating,”

“Don’t be crazy!” Suddenly Bill was gripping my shoulders as if he wanted to shake the life out of me. There was a wild look in his eyes. He seemed near the !limit of self-control.

All at once I was trembling, scared by the new thoughts that rippled through my brain. Before, when I’d been talking with Gwen, I’d easily rejected the idea that Bill himself might have removed the jacket. He was much too normal, much too nice.

But now I was seeing him in a new light.

It was a logical conclusion. The fish ponds were on private land. Remote. No stranger would come past that way at night. Bill Wayne had admitted to finding Brian early in the morning, soon after daybreak. Wasn’t it only too likely that he had been the first person to see the body?

Terror crashed through me. Not a soul knew where I was. I had come alone to Bill’s cottage, thinking I’d been clever to slip away from Mildenhall unseen.

Bill was still looming over me. He held me in a vicious grip, fingers biting brutally into my flesh.

I screamed.

I think it was only a little scream, more a whimper of fear than a cry for help. But it was enough to make him drop me. He let me go like I was suddenly hot.

He stumbled away from me, blundering out of the room. I could hear him just outside in the hall. It sounded as if he was frantically searching the cupboard, under the stairs flinging stuff about in wild confusion.

I sat in the chair, pressed down by swelling terror. My eyes turned to the curtained windows. Should I try to make a run for it? But Bill would be upon me before I so much as got the casement open.

And then Bill was coming back. He carried a dusty crumpled brown paper bundle, holding it by the string away from him,

“There you are, then,” he shouted angrily and hurled the bundle so that it thumped at my feet. “Since you’re so interested—that’s Brian’s jacket.”

I cringed back in my chair, staring down at the shapeless parcel. And then I raised my eyes to the man who had flung it on the floor.

Bill was glaring at me in silent rage. There was no sound in the room. And outside, the brooding quiet of Sussex woods. A panting stillness,

I couldn’t speak.

At last Bill broke out: “I wish to God I’d never found the damned thing.” His voice was a harsh discord.

“Found
it?” I was startled, and in the same instant a lot less afraid.

He regarded me scornfully. “Did you think I took it off him?”

“Well, somebody did.”

“It wasn’t me, though.”

Suddenly his anger was gone. He sounded defeated, as if he couldn’t blame me for my attitude. He added slowly, painfully, “Please believe me, Kim.”

“Where did you find it?” I wondered if I was being a gullible fool even to ask the question,

“It was under a gorse bush, about a hundred yards from where he ... from where I found the body.” Bill made a grim face at the memory. “It had obviously been completely sodden, and until now I couldn’t begin to guess why.”

He crouched down and started undoing the parcel. The string was loose and slipped off easily. I caught the smell of mildew as he pushed back the wrapping paper.

I saw a brown tweed sports jacket. It was crumpled and dirty, crusted with dried mud.

We neither of us moved as we stared at the gruesome relic. I shivered with a crawling revulsion.

“But surely ...” I was floundering in a state of half-belief. “But why didn’t you say anything to anyone?”

“I didn’t find the wretched thing until after the inquest was all over. The whole business was wrapped up tidily. Nobody had been asking questions about a missing jacket.” He shook his head. “There are times when it’s best to keep your mouth shut.”

“But you can’t just hide things like that. You should have handed it over to his mother.”

“What, in the state Tansy was in? You didn’t see her. She’s bad enough now, but at the time she was really haywire. Besides...” He glanced at me for a second, and then down again as he mumbled:. “You never know what a chap might have in his pockets,”

“Are you saying you never looked?”

Bill had the tan of a long hot summer upon his face, but even so his embarrassed flush showed through.

“Well ...”

Impatient with him, I cut in, “You don’t, need to start apologising to me. Somebody must have had a strong reason for taking a jacket off a dead body. Did you find anything in the pockets that might explain? I mean, was there anything missing?”

“That’s a damn silly question to ask. How am I supposed to know what Brian might have had on him?” He stood up restlessly and then sat on the arm of a chair opposite. “Why don’t you take a look for yourself?”

I glanced down at the crumpled jacket with loathing. “You mean, everything’s still there—as it was?”

“Of course. Do you imagine I’ve stolen it?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

Bill softened a bit. “I can tell you this much. There’s three pounds ten in his wallet, so presumably theft wasn’t the; motive.”

I was thoughtful. There were strange implications stretching beyond the basic mystery. Even allowing for the terrible upset of her son’s death, why hadn’t Tansy ever reported that Brian’s jacket was missing—or at any rate the contents of his pockets? A man and his wallet are almost inseparable, like a woman and her handbag. Surely the fact that it was not found among his things would be noteworthy. Enough to trigger off suspicions of theft.

Yet Bill Wayne had hung on to the jacket and wallet for two whole years. And nobody, apparently, had expressed any curiosity.

Surely Drew ... ?

“Why didn’t you take it to Drew?” I asked Bill abruptly. “Isn’t it more his responsibility than ...”

“Than mine?” Bill crouched down again and rolled up the jacket in its dirty brown paper, handling it with distaste. “Do you think I didn’t consider doing just that, over and over again? At first I used to have the damned thing out every evening, arguing with myself whether I should give it to Drew or get rid of it. In the end I did neither. As the days went by I realized that the time for handing it over was past. Yet somehow I could never bring myself to destroy it. Can you imagine what it feels like to live with a time bomb in the house?”

“But I still don’t understand. Drew was Brian’s cousin. Almost like an elder brother.”

“And you think that’s a good enough reason for me to pass the buck?”

“You’d no right not to.”

He was going to say something sarcastic again, but he choked off the words, shaking his head at me in wide denial. “You don’t understand. How could you understand?”

“I want to. I’m asking you.”

Bill shoved the parcel behind a chair, pushing it right out of sight with his foot. But on the carpet between us were a few flakes of dried mud to remind us what had lain there.

“You must take it from me that I had a good reason for not telling Drew about the jacket.”

I couldn’t leave it at that. I’d come much too far along the route of discovery. I had to reach the end now.

“I’m sorry Bill, but you must tell me.”

He was silent, but I had a hunch that like Gwen he’d be only too glad to unload some of the weight on his mind.