The Skeleton in the Grass (12 page)

“Dr. Bailey isn't committing himself,” Minchip was saying. “He never does if he can help it, not at this stage—and precious little later on. All I've got from him so far is that he doesn't think it could have been committed much later than two a.m. As to the earlier time, he's holding out entirely. So let's say he was killed some time in the evening, or the early part of the night. Now, continuing on from your account of these daft tricks, why was he
here
? The family didn't walk to Beecham Park, and apparently had never said they intended to.”

“As to that,” said South, “I doubt this was where he intended laying the thing out. That would have been by the front door, or somewhere else where they'd have been bound to see it when they drove home. Either he stopped for a rest—because this skeleton contraption would be very difficult to carry in the dark without damaging it—or he was stopped in his tracks by the dog, and put this little bit o' horror down carefully to avoid damaging it.”

“Fair enough,” agreed Minchip. “Or just possibly was stopped in his tracks by someone whom he had every reason to believe was a friend. Now, we take it, do we, that he was taking the river path from the village rather than the road? And that he was coming that way because there was little or no chance of his being seen?”

“That's it, sir. Deserted at that time of night it would have been. There was a torch in his pocket which he probably stopped using once he got in sight of the big house.”

“You say there was moonlight.”

“There was, sir. Near a full 'un.”

“So he was on his way to the house, and for one reason or another he paused—laying that silly skeleton out to avoid damaging it. Next question: was he alone?”

“That's a big one, isn't it, sir?”

“You're going to have to make use of all your contacts in the village, South.”

“Aye, sir. But you know what villagers are like. A bit of gossip gets round like wildfire, but if they want to protect one of their own, they can clamp up like they had padlocks on their silly mouths.”

“You think they'll want to protect their own?”

“Couldn't say, sir. I'll find out soon enough. Unpredictable, that's what folk around here are. My guess would be, anyway, that he was on his own. Or thought he was.”

The Inspector turned, interested.

“Why do you say that?”

South pondered, in his slow way.

“Seems to me, sir, these pranks were something in the nature of an initiative test. Each lad given something to do. And I think it'd be on his own. That way it'd be much less likely to be brought home to the real instigator.”

“Coffey?”

“Oh, I don't have much doubt about that, personally.”

“Yes. We've got a file on him—mostly stuff sent to us from the Metropolitan Police, about his activities in London back in the ‘twenties. Seems like he's pretty good at wriggling out from under.”

“Even if he warn't on his own, there's no guarantee it was the other one who did it,” South pointed out. “If they were . . . confronted, like, the other could have panicked and run.”

“Confronted by someone with a gun?”

“Maybe,” said South hesitantly.

“These landowners are pretty protective still, even in these days.”

“Hardly the Hallams, sir. The present Mr. Hallam has often refused to prosecute poachers caught on his farms. Some of the tenants are quite bitter about it. Anyway they were all at Beecham Park.”

The Inspector raised his eyebrows.

“The bridge over the river is not more than a hundred yards away.”

“But to come from Beecham
with a gun,
sir. The Wadhams are not sporting people . . . Though the young chap there
has
done a bit of shooting, now I come to think about it.”

“And any country house
has
guns. There's always been a sporting man there in the past. Whether in good nick or not is another matter. At the moment I can't see for the life of me why Christopher Keene should have had a gun with him. Damned awkward thing to carry, if he was on his own, and had the skeleton as well.”

“As to that, sir, the Major's a military man, and he probably presented these tests to the boys as something in the nature of a military manoeuvre. Sort of incursion into enemy territory.”

“Bloody fool. But you're probably right. Sound suggestion.”

Sergeant South glowed, mildly. He had another idea as to why Chris Keene should have brought a gun, but for the moment he was keeping it to himself. He had, in many ways, the soul of a villager.

“I
offered him a room in this house to use,” said Dennis suddenly during breakfast next morning.

“Sorry. Offered who what?” said Helen, looking up from crumbling her toast.

“I offered the Inspector—what's his name?—the use of a room in this house for the investigation. Of course he refused.”

“Why ‘of course'?” asked Elizabeth.

“Because we're suspects.”

“Oh come, Father,” protested Oliver.

“I should have realized. We must get used to the fact. Naturally we're under suspicion. We were being persecuted, and we fought back. That's one of the possibilities the Inspector has to consider.”

“Nobody who knew us could believe that,” said Helen.

“The Inspector does not know us—and it's quite right that he shouldn't. I should hardly like to be exonerated by someone who's a family acquaintance. In point of fact he was quite short with me when he turned down my offer. Obviously I had offended against police etiquette in some way or other.”

“And where does police etiquette say that the inquiry
should
be held?” asked Elizabeth.

“In the police station at Chowton. It will be very cramped and inconvenient. It's also Sergeant South's home, after all. Haven't the Souths got children?”

“Two, quite young,” said Oliver.

“Well, no doubt something will be improvised. Anyway, at some point in the day he will want to see all of us.”

“Including me?” asked Sarah.

“Oh yes. All of us who were at the Waddies'. So let's all try and remember as much as we can about the evening, what we were doing, and what other people were doing. And
please
let's not try to prevaricate or sidestep the truth. We have to get to the bottom of this ghastly business as soon as possible.”

Everyone nodded, Sarah among them, and as Dennis threw down his napkin Mrs. Munday put her head around the door.

“Is it all right if I clear away now, Mrs. Hallam? I've got a lot of cleaning and dusting to do this morning. Mrs. Puncheon won't be coming in today.”

Mrs. Puncheon was one of the three cleaners who came in on various days of the week to keep Hallam looking presentable.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” said Helen. “Is she ill?”

“She sent her apologies,” said Mrs. Munday, busying herself at the table. “She's a friend of Mrs. Keene's.”

At the time her words produced only the faintest of clicks in Sarah's mind. Later she was to see them as her first intimation of the start of something.

“That was the beginning of the end for your parents,” she said one day in 1967, during one of her regular lunches with Chloe in La Bella Isola, in Romilly Street. Chloe, plump and mini-skirted, was smoking between her soup and her main course.

“I've always hated villages,” Chloe said, puffing as she looked around to see who was there. “God, how I hated Poolton Lacey. Richard insisted that we rent his aunt's cottage there, while he wrote his thesis on Robert Musil. My God—the looks, the gossip, the narrowness! It was that village that broke up my marriage.”

“Probably,” Sarah ventured, “the marriage wouldn't have lasted for ever.”

“Heavens above! I should hope not,” Chloe giggled, a sound like champagne going down a plug. “I don't think I was made for marriage . . . Probably I was made for adultery.” She looked down at her ample expanse. “Nowadays I'm not even made for that.”

It was that rapturous giggle, filling all corners of the little restaurant, that reminded Sarah of the child Chloe.

“As a matter of fact you loved Chowton when you were a girl,” she said. “And knew all about it.”

“Villages are fine for small children,” said Chloe, stubbing out her Rothmans as the veal approached. “As their minds expand, they need expanded surroundings. I've never liked Chowton whenever I've gone back to it. Give me Hampstead village any day!”

Sarah, who still, after three decades, felt herself perched uncomfortably in London, wished she could agree.

At the time Mrs. Munday's words caused only the faintest of reverberations in her brain. As the cereal bowls and toast racks were cleared away, the family began dispersing for a difficult day. Things became no easier when, in the hall, Pinner handed them another postcard from Will in Barcelona.

 • • • 

The headquarters that Inspector Minchip had set up in Sergeant South's square, bare, ugly little council house was indeed inconvenient. Sergeant South's normal office, where people from the villages came to notify him of lost dogs or bicycle lamps, cheeky children and stripped fruit bushes, now served as a waiting-room. Sergeant South's living-room now became the interview room, and under the Sergeant's supervision his wife had removed from it as far as possible all traces of family life, so that it looked bare and comfortless. She had lodged the children for the
time being with her sister in Hatherton, and she felt sorely tempted to decamp there herself, if the case was to go on for long.

Inspector Minchip did not sigh for headquarters in some little-used corner of Hallam. Quite apart from the unorthodoxy of the suggestion, he would not have felt at home there. His professional life was spare, chill and cheerless, and he was perfectly happy for his physical surroundings to suit. His imaginative life revolved around colourful historical novels such as
Anthony Adverse
and
Captain Hornblower,
but his imaginative life cast no shadow over his professional one. He was never tempted to buckle a swash.

If he had had his way, and a car, he would have liked to travel around and interview the people concerned in their home settings—at Hallam, at Beecham, or at Cabbot Hall. This not because he would have felt at home there, but because the suspects would. A relaxed suspect, in command of his world, is a careless one. Here none of them would feel at home: it was too bare and hard. The villagers would be tongue-tied because they were in a police station, the gentry would feel awkward because they were in a working man's home. But there was no help for it. The car in which he had arrived at Hallam was the only one possessed by the force at Banbury, where Minchip served, and it had been recalled for use by the Superintendent. It was always needed for use by the Superintendent. Minchip might have been able to secure the use of a motor bicycle, it was true, but he disliked the machines and distrusted his ability to fix one of them if anything went wrong. Otherwise there was the bicycle, which took time. Best, on the whole, to call people in to No. 7 Hopper Lane, Chowton.

It had to be Dennis Hallam first. Though Minchip would have liked to have saved him, to have got the feel and
savour of the Oxfordshire gentry of these parts first before coming to its most famous representative, it had to be Dennis first. If he and everyone else were not being led up a blind alleyway by a monstrous red herring, the case had to revolve around Dennis Hallam. Minchip had heard Dennis giving thoughtful talks on matters of current moment on the Home Service. He had even read some of his reviews, when staying with his sister (she and her husband were both teachers of vaguely progressive outlook, who took the
Observer).
But Minchip was nervous of Dennis. He hoped the man had nothing to hide, because he feared that the Hallam intelligence and charm might be more than a match for him if he had.

“This is a terrible business,” said Dennis, looking around him as he was ushered into the room as if he were a clergyman doing a spot of poor visiting and checking whether the roof was leaking. “Are you any further with it?”

“A little, a little,” said Minchip, not willing to let this become an inquisition of himself. “But I expect this to be a case that takes time. Do sit down, sir.”

Dennis sat on the other side of the dining table, facing Minchip with his battery of files and notepads. “Like being back in the headmaster's study,” he told them at Hallam later.

“Now,” said Minchip, “I've got the general idea of what you were doing on Saturday night. You were all—including the little girl—at a party at Lord Wadham's. I've heard of him, from odd little items in the popular press, but I've never met the gentleman. I gather this party was—how shall I put it?—sporty. Lots of games and so on.”

“That's right. Like a big Christmas party for the district,” said Dennis. His face became thoughtful. “It's odd, isn't it? Coffey—or
someone
—plays these childish practical jokes on us, and we go away and play childish games at Beecham park. Is the world reverting to infantilism?”

“But this party was something of a tradition, I gather.”

“Oh yes. Happens every year. And very enjoyable.”

“So you knew about it well in advance?”

“Certainly. It's always a weekend or two before Parliament resumes.”

“And everyone in the district would know about it too?”

“Oh yes. Many of the village people would have been helping with the preparations. The Waddies don't have a great deal of money, not these days, but this is the social event of their year. There's lots of cooking to be done, and some of the men help with setting up the games in the garden.”

“Games in the dark?”

“Sounds odd, but yes. The Waddies would play cricket in the dark if they thought it would be fun.”