The Wild Wood Enquiry (6 page)

Miriam looked about her. She saw the place where Rose’s shoes had trampled down the undergrowth and then stopped short. “That’s it,” she said, triumphantly pointing. “There’s the bracken I was telling you about. See the curls?”

“That’s all I can see, Miss Blake,” said Frobisher. “No hand. Perhaps you could show us?”

Miriam peered down into the bracken, frowned and parted the fronds with her boots. “It
was
here, right here!” she said. “It’s gone!” She began to stamp down the surrounding brambles.

Frobisher took her arm. “Please don’t do that, Miss Blake. We may need to inspect this whole site. But for now, as you so perceptively observe, the hand has apparently gone.”

They returned to the cottage in silence. As the policemen prepared to depart in their car, Frobisher leaned out of the window and said, “Miss Blake, over here, please.” Miriam walked towards him and stood abjectly by the car.

“I’m very sorry, Inspector,” she said. “I know you think
I’m having you on, just for a joke. But I promise you there
was
a hand sticking out of the bracken. It was a horrible whitish colour, sort of dead looking.…”

Miriam tailed off, as the car began to move away.

“Let us know if you have anything else to report,” Frobisher called back to her, and then they were gone. It was not until Miriam was back in her house that she remembered Rose. Of course! She could back her up. She’d seen the hand and had fainted at the sight. She was going to look a right fool, not telling the police about Rose straightaway. Well, the hand had gone, so a phone call could wait until tomorrow.

MIRIAM ARRIVED AT the Budds’ cottage in time for an early supper before she and Rose set off for the WI meeting. She had spent the last few hours turning over in her mind what she would say. Rose would certainly have told David about the hand in the woods and would want to know what happened when the police arrived. They would have been expecting an ambulance and police cars and sections of the lane cordoned off from the general public. The whole business, in other words. But there had been nothing, just a police car driving away and not returning.

“Hello, Miriam! Come in—we’re dying to know how you got on with the police!”

So, thought Miriam, in at the deep end. She had finally decided to tell the exact truth; then there would be no complications when the police would be bound to return.

“Let the poor woman sit down, Rose!” said David Budd. “And you two boys, sit still and behave yourselves at the table. Pepper and salt, Miriam?”

She began slowly, explaining how she had intended to spare Rose from police questioning until they had seen the site. Rose had been so upset, she told David, and she was hoping to avoid both of them having to go back to the grisly scene. So she had escorted the two policemen up to the woods, and—here she paused dramatically—the hand had gone. There was no sign of it. “I could see then that they didn’t believe me. They had me down as one of those nutty spinsters with nothing to do but make up fantastic stories. They couldn’t wait to go off home.”

“Didn’t they suggest talking to Rose? She could have supported your story,” David said.

Miriam flushed. “I still hadn’t told them about Rose. I was going to, and then the fact that the hand had disappeared made me look a proper liar and knocked me sideways, so I forgot. I remembered after they’d gone that all they would have had to do was ask Rose. I’ll ring them tomorrow, if that’s okay with you.”

David looked at Rose, and she frowned. “Well, I suppose that’ll be all right,” he said. “If the hand really had gone, the police will keep until tomorrow. It is possible, I suppose,” he continued, looking from one to the other, “that a person might have been alive and hiding under the bracken for some unknown reason. I suppose there weren’t any film cameras about? Sounds like the plot of a horror film to me.”

“What’s a horror film?” piped up one of the boys.

“Never you mind. Just eat your supper, and then we’ll go out and shut up the chickens.”

WI MEMBERS HAD gathered in the village hall, most of them carrying bunches of nettles and a few tentatively handing in mushroom-shaped toadstools. The expert on foraging for food in the wild, a hairy man with deep blue eyes and a winning smile, tactfully pointed out suspect features of these and put them to one side.

“Later, in a month or so,” he said, “the hedgerows will be full of colourful berries and leaves, but I am glad to see someone has found wild garlic, and—” He stopped and picked up from the table a ready plucked and drawn pheasant. “Now, did this fall or was it pushed?” The ladies laughed, and one of them said she was driving along, and the pheasant ran across the road and under the wheels of the car in front of her.

“It’s okay to pick it up if you didn’t run over it yourself,” she said, winking at the expert, who nodded and suggested they move on to a heap of fresh dandelion leaves. “Delicious with a little lemon juice and olive oil,” he said.

Miriam could not concentrate, until Ivy Beasley announced firmly that if anyone asked her, it was asking for trouble, picking up dead things from the road and nasty poisonous plants from the woods. Miriam, along with the rest, listened with bated breath to hear what Miss Beasley would say next.

“In fact,” said Ivy, “if you stick to things in packets and tins, you can’t go wrong. That’s what I always say.” She folded her hands in her lap and looked pointedly out of the window.

Miriam smiled. She was reminded of Miss Beasley and her friends in Enquire Within. After she had telephoned the police tomorrow morning, she would go to see Ivy at
Springfields and ask for help. She did not accept David’s suggestion that it might have been anybody, alive and well, hiding under the bracken. Although she had seen only the hand, there was something unquestionably dead about it.

After the business of the meeting, when the expert had dismembered the pheasant, braised it and served it up with a dandelion salad and nettle sauce, and each member, except Miss Beasley, had had a taste and pronounced it delicious, Miriam and Rose walked back to Hangman’s Row together.

“So will you let me know what the police say tomorrow?” Rose said. “I do need to go into town to do some shopping, but I can put it off if necessary.”

Miriam had thought long and hard about tomorrow and now said she wondered if Rose herself should make the call to the police. “They’ll realise you’re a young mum with two boys to look after and a farm-manager husband and be more likely to take you seriously. Do you mind, Rose?”

“Um, no, I suppose not. Can you come round, and we’ll do it together. I’ll do the talking and you can stand by.”

“That’s great,” Miriam said, as they reached the cottages. “I’ll see you tomorrow—about ten? You’ll be back from taking the boys to holiday club then. And then I have to go out myself, unless the police have other ideas!”

She returned to her house and turned on the television, now feeling much more relaxed. It would be much easier with Rose making the call, willing to describe what they had seen. She looked at her watch and saw that it was nine o’clock. Too late to telephone Miss Beasley? She feared Ivy’s sharp tongue and decided to do it first thing in the morning. The idea of private enquiries going on, whatever the police decided to do, appealed to Miriam, and since her lovely Gus next door was part of the Enquire Within team, she looked forward to working with them.

As she locked up the house, she remembered Katherine Halfhide. She went upstairs to check the spare room and found no sign that she had returned. Miriam guessed she had gone back to London, without saying good-bye or offering to pay for her bed and board. Well, good riddance! It was unlikely, but if she came back and was unable to get in, she had been told where the spare key was hidden. Miriam continued to lock all the doors and finally went upstairs to bed. With a violent murderer about, she was taking no chances.

IVY AND ROY had finished breakfast and were sitting in the lounge reading the newspapers. A royal engagement had just been announced, and all the papers were full of photographs and details of the couple’s private lives, down to the brand of toothpaste they used.

“If you ask me,” Ivy said, “they should be stopped.”

“Who?” said Roy, peering at Ivy over the top of his
Times
. “And what should they be stopped from doing?”

“These newspapers, of course. How would we have liked it when we announced our engagement, if journalists had come pushing in here, wanting details of our private lives? And look at these family trees! What does it matter if dozens of her ancestors have been street sweepers? Jolly good thing, I say. Put a bit of new blood into that family. It’s like dogs. If you interbreed them, they end up weak in the head.”

Roy started to shake, and then he put down his paper
and roared with laughter. He leaned forward and took Ivy’s hand. “I don’t think the big wide world is in the least interested in us, my beloved,” he said. “But as to dogs, you are quite right.”

At this point, Mrs. Spurling approached. “Telephone call for you, Miss Beasley,” she said. “Will you take it in your room, or would you like to come into the office?”

“I’ll take it in my room, thanks. I am safe from eavesdroppers up there.” She got to her feet and made her measured way up to her room. “Hello? Who’s that? Speak up, do!”

“Good morning, Miss Beasley,” said Miriam. “I wonder if I could come to see you on a possible job for Enquire Within. It is quite urgent, so if you could see me this afternoon it would be really helpful.”

Ivy had known Miriam for some while and was familiar with her overactive imagination and love of drama. “Better come straightaway, if it’s that urgent,” she said. “And I hope you won’t be wasting my time, Miss Blake,” she added. She contacted reception and told them to show Miss Blake up to her room when she arrived and also would they please ask Mr. Goodman if he could come up at once.

“You’d think we had nothing more important to do than run around after her!” Mrs. Spurling said to her assistant. “Go and tell poor Mr. Goodman he’s wanted upstairs, please, Miss Pinkney.”

Miss Pinkney obeyed, wondering why Mrs. Spurling had not yet realised that Roy Goodman would happily do Ivy’s bidding, whenever and whatever it proved to be.

MIRIAM SET OFF from her cottage, calling in to tell Rose not to ring the police until she was back from Springfields.
“Shouldn’t be late,” she said. “Miss Beasley isn’t a great one for idle conversation.”

She passed the shop and then stopped and turned back. Juicy Jellies might be a good idea to sweeten up the old thing. James was in the shop, stacking supplies and listening to news of the engagement on the radio. He turned it off and greeted Miriam. “Not your morning here, is it?” he said, smiling. Miriam was a good shop assistant, and he relied on her completely.

“No, I’m a customer today. Juicy Jellies for Miss Beasley,” she said. “Most of the old ladies like these.”

“That’s why Miss Beasley loathes them. I recommend these Devon clotted cream toffees.”

“Hope her teeth are good, then,” she said.

As she turned to go, James said, “No trouble down Hangman’s Lane, I hope. I heard there were police cars down there yesterday.”