This Private Plot (8 page)

Oliver had slipped from the bed early, leaving her gently snoring, oblivious to the single tolling bell summoning the few churchgoing Synners to St. Edmund and St. Crispin. He started making his phone calls about Dennis Breedlove, apologizing to old college friends with BBC connections or fellow authors from the Sanders Club for disturbing their Sunday morning. Effie had appeared much later, moving cautiously through the kitchen, sucking on a hot and full cup of coffee and allowing him a weak smile of greeting.

He was irritated to hear that he had missed Mallard, whose Jaguar had sped away before breakfast, heading for an all-day rehearsal. So after Effie had left with Ben, he was forced to accept a ride to Stratford with Toby in the Co-op farm delivery van that Eric Mormal drove, squashed onto the front bench between the two men because the rear compartment was full of organic burdock and unable to forget that Mormal had dropped his trousers in the same place twelve hours earlier. They deposited Oliver at the theater before heading off to the dig.

“Neither Effie nor Simon Culpepper think Dennis Breedlove could have been killed by his blackmailer,” Oliver said to Mallard. “What do you think?”

Mallard looked up from his book. “Are we back to that? Ollie, Breedlove committed suicide. Didn't Culpepper convince you of that?”

“He convinced me that Uncle Dennis had a motive for taking his life, although there was no suicide note. But I still don't think Dennis could have done it without some assistance.”

“Blackmailers aren't murderers. They threaten exposure, not death.”

This one is, in my book, Oliver thought. Aloud, he asked, “What if Dennis had threatened to go to the police instead of paying up?”

“Blackmailers assume their victims want to keep their secrets. But just in case, they typically don't reveal their identities until they've hooked their victim. Culpepper showed you that letter. Was there anything that indicated who the writer was?”

“I don't remember.”

“No? Then why don't you check that copy you have hidden in your bag.”

“Lovely, darlings, lovely,” cried Humfrey Fingerhood, leaping from his seat and applauding the post-coital actors lying in a fleshy heap on the stage. “Ophelia, nice baring of your fardels, but put them away now, dear. Now, while watching you, I've had the most wonderful idea. I want to do the whole speech as a PowerPoint presentation…”

Mallard scribbled a name and telephone number on a page in his notebook, which he tore out and handed to Oliver.

“If you want to know about blackmail, call this number,” he said, standing up and sidling out of the row.

Chapter Seven

Monday morning

Unlike the aloofness of most classical busts, the famous stone heads outside Wren's Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford—Roman emperors, according to Max Beerbohm, their eyes like pitted olives—glare around with undisguised scorn. And for well over a hundred years, the principal object of their goggling disdain has been St. Basil's College, facing them across Broad Street, snuggled between Trinity College and the New Bodleian Library.

The bells of the city were striking eleven as Oliver strode into the nondescript main entrance to St. Baz's, stepping around a cluster of students who were attempting to disentangle the knotted and combined locks that tethered their bicycles to the college railings. After a brief conversation in the murky porter's lodge with a talking white beard, behind which traces of a human face could just be made out, he scurried around the main quadrangle to an archway in the far corner. Painted on a board was the name Mallard had scribbled down for him: Dr. McCaw. Oliver clumped up the wooden staircase to the third floor and tapped on the double door to Dr. McCaw's room.

A hand immediately shot out, passing him an electric kettle.

“Fill this up in the toilet down the hall, there's a dear. It's just you, is it?”

Oliver confirmed that he was alone, although with a stab of guilt as he recalled Effie's look of surprise when he'd told her that he wouldn't be joining the household jaunt to Warwick Castle because of a business meeting in Oxford. But he knew he couldn't bring her with him or even reveal the true purpose of the outing. Effie had made it clear that she was required to leave the Breedlove case to Simon Culpepper and the Warwickshire CID—a protocol that Mallard clearly shared, although the brief consultation with his uncle the previous day had at least led to today's appointment.

He returned to the room. Dr. Hyacinthe McCaw took the kettle and motioned him to sit down on the room's only sofa. She was a short, sturdy woman, probably in her eighties, wearing a garment that was either a high-quality floral housecoat or a low-quality floral dress. She had a tangle of long, gray curls gathered loosely on top of her head that seemed in permanent danger of slipping off, whether or not they were actually rooted in her scalp. Her eyes were also gray and bright in a pleasant, remarkably unlined face.

“I'm old enough to remember Uncle Dennis on the radio,” she said, looking over the text of the blackmailer's letter. “A shame his life had to end this way. There was no suicide note?”

“No.”

“Is it possible that the blackmailer got wind of the death and broke into Dennis's home to remove such a note, in case it named him or her?”

“Then he or she would have taken the blackmail letter, too, surely. It was open on the desk, in full view.”

Dr. McCaw nodded and reached up to adjust the pile of hair, which was threatening to spill over into her face.

“Well, since this is clearly the first message Dennis received, there's precious little to identify the writer. In my opinion, this was composed by a professional, someone who's blackmailed before. An amateur would get to the demands sooner. So I'd focus on the recipient. What can you tell me about the late Uncle Dennis?”

“He lived a blameless life for thirty years, on his own in a tiny Cotswold village,” Oliver said with a shrug.

“Wasn't it Agatha Christie who said there was more evil in a country village than in the whole City of London?” She handed him a mug of tea.

“Then Sir Arthur Conan Doyle beat her to it: ‘The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.' That's Sherlock, in
The Copper Beeches
.”

“You
are
Tim's nephew,” McCaw said, with a smile. “So what about the dreadful record of Synne?”

“If Dennis had misbehaved since he moved to the village, everyone would know. Especially my mother.”

“Then you need to go back further. Much further, from the tone of the letter—‘history,' ‘the past.' What about this ‘family secret' reference? Do you know much about his early life, his relatives?”

“I'd imagine the older the secret, the deeper it must be buried.”

“It may not be as hard to uncover as you think. Foul deeds will rise. Blackmail victims are often the last people to realize their well-tended secrets are, in fact, common knowledge.”

“Then if I'm looking into the dark recesses of Dennis Breedlove's early days, where do you think I should point my flashlight?”

Dr. McCaw thought for a moment.

“Sex,” she stated.

“Sex. Why?”

“Because whatever happened in the past still bothered Breedlove to this day, to put it mildly. And sex is the only thing the British fixate on forever. A life of crime? We love a reformed wrong 'un. Financial shenanigans? Name an MP who hasn't fiddled his expenses but still parks his arse on the green leather of the House of Commons. Drugs, alcohol? Everybody adores a reformed hell-raiser. Shame, where is thy blush? No, for the British, sex and blackmail go together like the Lion and the Unicorn. You'll always remember the front-page peccadilloes of John Profumo and that lovely Hugh Grant.”

She took a sip of tea. “It doesn't apply to the Europeans,” she continued. “They have an adult acceptance of sexual mores. The American attitude to sex, on the other hand, is positively infantile. But the British, as in so many things, are bang in the middle. They stay mired in their adolescence. They can't stop thinking about sex, but they never get it right. That's why the British can be funnier about their sex lives than any other nation.”

Oliver took this in, gazing at McCaw's bookshelves. On the subject of the British, she had been disturbingly close to home. Although the room he and Effie were sharing in Synne, sanctified by his mother as Oliver's Room, bore no sentimental value for him, it was still his furtive ambition to carve at least one notch on the figurative bedpost of his late-teenage-years bed. Effie had been in better spirits the previous evening, so Oliver tentatively tried to resume the lovemaking that had been deferred since the Mallards' arrival in the Shakespeare Race, two eventful nights earlier. He was starting to stroke Effie's stomach, wondering whether to let his hand drift north or south, when a vixen's blood-curdling screech from a nearby garden caused him to yell involuntarily, setting off a fit of laughter from Effie that completely destroyed the mood.

Well, there was always tonight. But what role had sex played in Dennis Breedlove's life? Surely none that would cause him, at the age of eighty, to kill himself at the first hint of exposure? And why are Dr. McCaw's books all upside down?

He blinked and looked again. And then he realized they were French books, novels mainly, the lettering on the spine running bottom to top, according to French publishing practice. When scanning a bookshelf, the French reader's head tilts appropriately to the left.

“You like French literature, I see,” he remarked, drinking his tea.

A puzzled expression crossed her face. “I should hope so, dear, since I teach it. My mother was French—my first name is pronounced the French way. Nobody gets it the first time.”

“But I gathered from my uncle that you're an expert on blackmail,” Oliver stammered.

“C'est bien vrai
.”

“So I assumed you'd be a fellow in Law or maybe a Psychology lecturer, with a specialty in criminology or something.”

She shook her head, gazing at him with amusement.

“Then may I ask how you know so much about blackmail?” he persisted.

“Because I'm a blackmailer. Or I used to be, until your uncle arrested me for the first and last time.”

“Good heavens!”

“Ah, he didn't mention that? Well, it's ancient history now, of course. Tim Mallard helped me see the error of my ways. Bit of a quid pro quo, you see. Or in my case, fifty quid pro quo, which was how much I was collecting each month from a fellow of Oriel. His shameful lust for one of the more sensitive male undergraduates in his tutorial group turned out, unbeknownst to
moi
, to have played a peripheral role in a particularly tricky murder. Timmy was only an inspector in those days, quite a dashing
flic
, but too fond of his wife, alas. In gratitude for my assistance, he dropped the charges, as long as I promised to go straight.”

She took another gulp from the mug of cooling tea. “Rather a pity,” she continued. “The pickings had been fat around these parts. Before the Berlin Wall came down, I made several thousand pounds off a nervous New College don whose affection for the Soviet regime had been bruited around the bathhouses for decades.”

Oliver smiled, making a mental note to take some revenge upon Mallard for not warning him.

“Still, I was going to retire anyway,” McCaw continued.

“Guilty conscience?”

“Dwindling opportunities,
mon cher
. You see, nobody's ashamed of anything these days. When I started, I could hide in the bushes on Hampstead Heath with a torch and a notebook, and come up trumps every time. Today, ambitious young political hopefuls are clamoring for
Private Eye
to find out about their experiments in Eton dormitories, in hopes it'll lead to a cabinet position. Our indiscretions sometimes serve us well. There's a glamour in having a past. The aging pop star on the talk show who announces he's been sober and clean for all of three days now gets a standing ovation, while the poor schmo who's never touched the stuff in his life is dismissed as a prude. Perhaps they're the ones I should target.”

There was a hesitant tap on the door. She opened it. A trio of female students was waiting nervously on the landing, clutching essays and textbooks.

“Any last suggestion as to where I start?” Oliver asked her quietly as the young women filed past him into the room.

“Remember the ‘family secret,'” she said. “Go to the funeral. Watch the mourners.
A bientôt.
”

Chapter Eight

Tuesday morning

“At least he picked a nice day for it,” said Chloe Swithin. She and her son were standing outside the Church of St. Edmund and St. Crispin, half an hour early for Dennis Breedlove's funeral.

“I don't think the weather has much to do with this unseemly rush to put him six feet under,” Oliver said, slipping a finger inside his tight shirt collar.

“Oh, there are plenty of countries that would bury a stiff much earlier than this. Especially as you get closer to the equator. It's the heat. They tend to go off sooner.”

“Thanks for the mental image.”

Oliver had returned from Oxford to discover that the funeral Dr. McCaw had just ordered him to attend was scheduled for the next morning. Detective Sergeant Culpepper had traced Breedlove's only remaining relatives to Hull, and when the vicar had called to them to make arrangements, they had insisted on a quick funeral and burial. Edwards the Concessor's attempt to gain a little more leeway only succeeded in getting the service moved up from Thursday to Tuesday, leaving Oliver no time to fetch his best (and only) suit from London. Forced to rob the sartorial grave that was his old Synne wardrobe, he had come up with a pair of gray flannels and his last school blazer. Toby had lent him a white shirt that was a collar size too small. At least the fashion-conscious Ben wasn't there to despair of him—he had headed back to London earlier that morning.

Oliver had persuaded Chloe to come early and wait with him by the church's Norman doorway. He was following Dr. McCaw's instructions, but he needed his mother's help to identify the mourners.

“Do you think this could be a relative?” he asked. A man had come into sight, walking briskly toward the church, humming quietly and wiggling the fingers of his right hand in time with his private music.

“No, that's Sidney Weguelin, the church organist,” Chloe told him. “He's one of us, moved here a couple of years back.”

Weguelin reached them, and Chloe introduced Oliver.

“My wife mentioned that she'd bumped into you the other day,” Weguelin said, addressing Oliver as he shook hands, rather limply. Odd to think that those flaccid fingers would be powerful enough for toccatas and fugues. He mentioned a wife? Oh, yes, Lesbia, the straight-faced verger of St. Edmund and St. Crispin, she of the black plastic specs and artificial-looking bob.

One of Mallard's former sergeants, now Detective Inspector Welkin, had the peculiar trait that he always reminded people of somebody they knew; Sidney Weguelin had the same effect on Oliver now, although he'd surely have remembered who else possessed poorly cut, crinkly hair and a fussy moustache and goatee. Weguelin's beaklike nose supported unfashionable gold-rimmed spectacles. Oliver always thought too much facial hair was a mistake for the habitual wearer of glasses. It gave a cluttered impression. Even his uncle's disreputable white moustache was pushing the limits. And since most beards are cultivated to disguise a plurality of chins, Weguelin's decision to grow hair on a well-etched jawline seemed even more regrettable.

“He and his good lady must make a strange-looking pair,” Oliver commented, after the organist had passed into the church, trading the warm spring sunshine for the chilly interior of the sixteenth-century nave. More people were coming along the lane.

A red sports car threaded its way around the pedestrians and stopped close to the lych-gate, crushing an orange bollard that marked a parking space for the expected hearse. A tall, middle-aged man vaulted nimbly from the seat and, to Oliver's irritation, failed to fall onto his face. The man wore his elegant dark suit and silk tie as if it were a second skin and the funeral an afterthought.

“He's cute, in a rich, well-tailored sort of way,” said Chloe. “Which, when you think about it is the best way. I don't know him, though.”

“I do,” said Oliver, and switched on his most insincere smile. “Mr. Scroop,” he cried, as the man strode toward them. “Fancy you making any kind of effort whatsoever to be here!”

Scroop returned a smile of the same quality. “Oh hello, Swithin,” he drawled. “I heard these were the very sticks from which you hailed. I have traveled the considerable distance from London—geographically and socially—as the delegate of the Sanders Club, since nobody in the club could conceivably trust you to represent them.”

Scroop paused to scrutinize the Latin motto on the breast pocket of Oliver's shabby blazer. He shuddered. “You're lucky I'm here,” he continued. “I'm of a class that generally expects more than a nanosecond's notice of a burial. I always associated indecent haste with country weddings, not funerals.” It occurred to him that Oliver had a female companion, and his tone softened.

“But my dear Oliver, aren't you going to introduce me to your sister?” he crooned. “You are so remiss in your manners, young man—this isn't the first time I've had to scold you.”

Oliver sighed. “Mother, this is Mr. Scroop, who writes books. You won't have heard of him. Mr. Scroop, my mother,
Mrs.
Chloe Swithin, the former Miss Winsbury.”

Chloe beamed broadly while Scroop lifted her hand to his lips.

“Ah, Mrs. Swithin,” he crooned, “such a joy to meet the only person poor Oliver can count on to read his, uh, works, I suppose I should call them. You do read his books about our woodland chums, I'm sure.”

“Oh yes,” Chloe replied. “I've read them all. At least I've read one of them. That's the same thing.” She withdrew her hand from Scroop's grasp to swat furtively at Oliver, who had pinched her. The top button of Oliver's shirt snapped off and skittered across the paving stones.

“A sad occasion for such a delightful encounter, dear lady,” said Scroop. “Frankly, most of us in the club were surprised the old sod was still alive. Dennis told me once, many moons ago, that he'd never expected to make it past seventy-five, so he'd planned all his pensions and annuities to run out five years ago. Goodness knows what he's been living on. Country air and the beauty of his neighbors, I presume.” He bowed slightly to Chloe, ignored Oliver, and strutted into the church, stooping unnecessarily in the doorway to imply that he was even taller than his six-foot stature.

“He's very charming,” Chloe said, smoothing her close-cropped gray hair, but Oliver's mind was on other matters. If Dennis was out of money, how could he pay a blackmailer? Was that why self-slaughter was his only option when he opened that letter, even before he knew the amount of the vig? Could have been dead for a ducat.

More people were following Scroop into the church, all Synne residents, identified by Chloe:

“Woman who runs the village post office, lesbian but not in a way that would interest you…

“Local gynecologist, also village peeping Tom—well, one of them…

“Retired PR guru, tried to boost Synne's profile by renaming it ‘Synne!' Came up with the slogan ‘It's the end of the Wold as we know it.'

“Relic of the sixties satire boom. Famous for not being famous. Claims he's the Ninth Python and the Fourteenth Beatle…”

From inside the church, Sidney Weguelin began a meandering improvisation on the organ. Oliver noticed the same small, elderly man he'd seen stepping out of the village shop on Saturday, now observing the church from the other side of the lane. Where had he seen him before?

“Who's that one?”

“What one?”

“The man standing in the street. I know him from somewhere.”

Chloe peered across the lane, but the man was gone.

“I didn't see anyone,” she said with a shrug.

The arrivals continued, including Davina Bennet as the representative of her clan, accompanied by vulgarian Eric Mormal. A stout woman in her early forties followed them and nodded to Chloe.

“Maudie Purifoy,” Chloe whispered. “Art dealer, late-in-life single mother, convinced her only son is a four-year-old genius. One of these women who uses the phrase ‘who is gifted' all the time, as if it's the kid's middle name. You know: ‘My son, Hugo, who is gifted…Hugo Who Is Gifted…' Never had that problem with my kids. She's in the vicar's writers' group—she's trying to get Hugo W.I.G. to dictate his memoirs.”

“Writers' group?”

“A handful of locals, all working on some book or other, meet in the vicarage once a month to critique each other's work. Very exclusive.”

The party from the Swithin house came into view over the churchyard wall…Bob striding ahead, Tim and Phoebe Mallard walking with Effie, who'd borrowed a simple black dress from Eve Swithin's closet, and Toby bringing up the rear staring at Effie's. A hearse was also approaching, drifting slowly along the narrow lane, followed by a large, black limousine.

“Hey, there's an idea,” said Chloe. “You're a visiting author. Get the vicar to invite you to talk to the group. I think there's a meeting this week.”

“Well…”

“Go on, they'd be all over you. Just tell Mr. Edwards you've heard about their activities and you'd like to join in for an evening. He'll be tickled pink, but being him, he'll make it sound like he doesn't want you there at first. Tell him you know what it's all about and that you'd really like to see what they're doing. Oh, Ollie, it'll be good for you—everyone likes an audience. Effie can spare you for a while, I'm sure.”

“I'm certainly getting used to it,” Effie said as she reached them. She slipped her hand into the crook of Oliver's arm. He squeezed it with his other hand, but he was watching the limousine, now disgorging the distant kin of Uncle Dennis: a couple of older women, closing in on Dennis's age, whose permed, thinning white hair, blue plastic glasses, frowns, and plain Marks & Spencer raincoats made up the uniform of their years; a middle-aged married couple, the portly husband uncomfortable in his suit, the bony wife uncomfortable in her life; and a slew of their overweight, unruly children, whom the couple succeeded in ignoring almost as expertly as they ignored each other.

The visitors wore their dissatisfaction with the world almost like a proud campaign medal. Were these the guardians of the Breedlove family secret, the insiders to the blessed plot? Was the haste over the funeral just their impatience to find out what was in Uncle Dennis's will—not much, if Scroop is to be believed?

“We'd better go in,” said Chloe, as the relatives formed a loose knot behind the coffin. The Reverend Mr. Edwards himself, cassocked and surpliced, passed them in the opposite direction and stepped out into the sunlight to greet the funeral party.

The Swithin family found an empty pew near the middle of the church, giving Oliver a good view of the thirteenth-century doom painting above the altar, a well-preserved decoration that had been carried over to the current building from its Norman predecessor. An emaciated, mildew-stained Christ sat enthroned on judgment day, flanked by the kneeling images of his mother and the Apostle John. Scattered below them were the naked figures of the judged, rising from graves and either being led by angels into a celestial city or getting tortured and devoured by demons. It could have been a scene from a television talent show.

Given that most artists of the day worked for religious orders, Oliver was always intrigued by how frequently their holy subjects gave them an excuse to conjure gruesome images of blood-drenched torment for the damned, plus some well-drawn derrieres. Sex and violence on the church wall, the medieval equivalent of late-night TV. The artistry made him think again of Effie's athletic posterior, moving ahead of him in the moonlight on Synne Common, or as he'd last seen it that morning when she was wandering unselfconsciously through the bedroom, wearing only a tight pink t-shirt.

The previous evening had been yet another sexual washout. Effie was clearly still chafing from his absence during the day, so to help the atmosphere, Oliver had found a radio station playing romantic songs that he'd left on at bedtime. The kissing and casual stroking stage was promising, and he was about to make the next move when the program broke for a news broadcast, ushering in reports of a flood in Bangladesh, wildfires in California, and National Health Service waiting lists for hernia operations. He leaped from the bed and groped in the dark for the radio's off-switch, overturning the bedside lamp and spilling a glass of water over his side of the duvet. But by then, the bounce had gone out of their bungee.

The congregation in the church rose, and Uncle Dennis himself made the slow journey down the nave behind the vicar, who was holding a lit candle. The coffin was placed on wooden trestles, and the Breedlove relatives sidled into a reserved pew in front of the altar rail. Two of the children began a pillow fight with hassocks.

The vicar carried it off well. After prayers and a hymn, he delivered a brief address, making just two approving references to the ancient habit of burying suicides at a crossroads and ignoring the moment when an entire bag of candies spilled out of the front pew, although he did glower slightly as the unmistakable aroma of a McDonalds Happy Meal started to spread through the church. Whoever had briefed him on Dennis Breedlove's life had covered all the salient points that Oliver already knew, but added nothing fresh.

Oliver gazed around the nave. The relatives were too far forward to see their faces, but Breedlove's neighbors showed a mix of solemnity, boredom, and slight amusement. Even Oliver's mother and her sister wore identical faint smiles, as if contemplating the late author's heavenly reward. Assuming, that is, he qualified for the next round, eschatologically. Nobody was weeping, although Toby would win the prize for the saddest expression.

The service continued, brief, with no eulogies or tributes. After a final series of prayers, the vicar took up a position at the far end of the coffin.

“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace…” Edwards began.