This Private Plot (9 page)

There was an odd noise from the opposite end of the church, like a snappish release of compressed air coming from the vicinity of the font. In the solemnity of the moment, nobody dared move. Edwards glared at something and began again.

“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart
in peace
,” he repeated, but the sound came again—somebody trying to attract his attention with a loud “pssst.”

The mourners began to look for the source. An elderly man was tiptoeing slowly down the aisle, adopting that hunched gait that people think makes them invisible, even after fifty pairs of eyes had fallen upon him. He was wearing old, worn clothes, and his trousers were stained with mud.

“Not the best time, Mr. Sowerbutts,” said the vicar through clenched teeth, as if, in his turn, a semblance of ventriloquism might persuade the congregation that he hadn't really spoken.

“Sowerbutts, the sexton,” Chloe whispered into Oliver's ear.

“Sorry, your worship,” said Sowerbutts, stopping in the center of the church. He had removed his cap and was nervously kneading it in both hands. “But would I be right in thinking you're going to stick him in the ground right away?”

It was the genuine local accent of Synne. Shakespeare would have spoken like Sowerbutts—Stratford Will, anyway.

“We are proceeding immediately to the committal, yes,” said the vicar firmly, with a glance of apology toward the relatives' pew. A small female occupant said “penis” to him and dissolved into chuckles.

“Ah,” confirmed the sexton, but stayed where he was. He smacked his lips. “Any chance of a bit of delay, vicar?”

“A bit of a delay?”

“Well, he's not in a hurry, is he?” Sowerbutts nodded toward the coffin. There were some mild, controlled sniggers. Edwards took a step toward the sexton, but skidded on a candy.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Sowerbutts?”

“I told you, your reverence. It's the grave.”

“The grave? What's the matter with the grave?”

“Well, it was fine last night, sir.”

Most of the congregation had now given up all attempts to preserve the solemnity of the occasion. Many were pressing handkerchiefs to their mouths.

“I haven't been drinking, your grace,” protested the sexton. Some mourners broke into open laughter. Davina Bennet took out her iPhone and began to text rapidly.

Edwards tried to exert some priestly authority by clapping his hand several times. The small children in the family pew picked up the cue and burst into applause, which didn't cover the noise of a beer can being opened by their father.

“But you did dig the grave, Mr. Sowerbutts?” Edwards resumed wearily.

“Oh, yes, I dug it all right, your grace.”

“Splendid.”

“Ah, but where is it now?” Sowerbutts tapped the end of his nose and winked at his audience.

“What?”

“Old Mr. Breedlove's grave, vicar. Where is it now?”

“Well, where you left it, you idiot!” yelled Edwards, immediately followed by a guilty glance across his shoulder at the picture of Christ in judgment. But the damage was done—every new utterance was now greeted as raucously as if the event were an Eddie Izzard stand-up. Even the sexton's name was a cause of joy with each repetition. Some mourners were leaning against each other in helpless mirth. Maudie Purifoy hastily exited her pew and headed for the church toilet.

Well, thought Oliver, they're weeping at last. Like Niobe, all tears.

“That's just it, your highness,” Sowerbutts resumed. “It's gone.”

“Gone?” Edwards shrieked.

“Yes, squire. Somebody's stolen it.”

Chapter Nine

Tuesday morning (continued)

“Do you think I should call the police, Superintendent Mallard?” Edwards asked nervously. “Officially, I mean. Though I hate to bother Constable Bostar. He gets so cross if you disturb him during his soap operas.”

“If you think about a freshly dug grave,” pondered Mallard, contemplating the intended site of Dennis Breedlove's last resting place, “it's not a thing.” He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and jingled the loose change. “It's an absence. A hole. Somebody stole a hole. And I'm not at all sure that particular fault is a crime.”

“A bit like the Grand Canyon,” Oliver offered.

“You can't steal the Grand Canyon.”

“No, but every year, millions of tourists trek out to Arizona to see a big, long, deep hole. They don't go there because of what's there, but because of what's not there that should most decidedly be there. A pregnant negative, as Toby would say. Like the curious case of the dog in the nighttime.”

Mallard shot him an exasperated glance. “Now, if the earth taken out of the grave had been stolen, you might have a crime,” he continued, philosophically. “But there it is.”

The three men stared at the pile of soil that Sowerbutts had deposited, a yard or so from the original hole. The hole itself was plainly outlined, a long oblong surrounded by grass, but it had been filled to the brim with dark earth.

When it became clear that the funeral could not continue, Edwards had rapidly blessed the congregation and asked some of his less judgmental parishioners to escort the Hull contingent to one of the village pubs for lunch. Most of the churchgoers had staggered gleefully back to their homes at the same time, leaving Dennis Breedlove's remains alone in the nave. Effie had chosen to walk back with the Swithins.

It was obvious to Mallard what had happened. The way to the grave was an overgrown, brambly path that weaved between the tombstones, tricky for the pallbearers, even harder for a half-dozen trips with a wheelbarrow full of damp earth, and besides, there were no fresh wheel tracks through the grass. But the gravesite was next to the low drystone wall that surrounded the churchyard. If a lorry or tractor had pulled up on the other side, it would have been fairly simple for one or two men to shovel the dirt over the low wall and into the open grave. A clump of dense bushes would have hidden them from the lane.

“A practical joke, I suppose,” Edwards remarked. “Someone with an antic disposition. Like those fellows who make crop circles with a plank of wood and hope we'll think they're landing strips for flying saucers. Although there's no reason why a believer should pooh-pooh the possibility of alien visitors outright. There are more things in heaven and earth, as it were, and in fact some people believe the shining angel messengers mentioned in our New Testament are actually men in spacesuits—”

“I'd get your sexton to dig it out again,” Mallard cut in. He knew the vicar's conversational style. “Then you can get the burial done before Breedlove's people go back to Hull or Hell, whichever they hail from.”

Mallard and Oliver turned away from the grave, or lack thereof, and walked back toward the church. “Well?” Oliver said, once the vicar was out of earshot.

Mallard shrugged without stopping or looking back. “A prank, like the vicar said. Half of the village was here. Great audience. Put the ‘fun' in ‘funeral.'”

“You don't believe that. If it's a practical joke, why not just dump back the dirt that Sowerbutts dug out? There's more to this. We have a man being blackmailed with a letter that mentions plots and digging up the past. And now here's a plot—
his
plot, his private plot—that's been dug over. Coincidence?”

“They do occur.”

“Oh, come on, Uncle Tim. It's evidently a message of some kind. Someone has unfinished business with Dennis Breedlove, which didn't end with his death.”

“So you say.”

“You don't think the blackmailer's still on the scene? You don't think that's who filled up the grave last night, after old Sowerbutts had gone? You don't think he was sitting in that church, enjoying the mirth in funeral with the rest of us?”

Mallard halted. “Ollie, I have no idea,” he said. “And I'm really not concerned. Just because you're bored witless out here in the wilds of Warwickshire, you don't have to drag everyone else into your private fantasies. And incidentally, Hyacinthe McCaw would tell you that a thwarted blackmailer would be too wary and just too bloody embarrassed to turn up at the burial of a victim.”

“If you're not concerned, why did you send me to Dr. McCaw?”

“So she could convince you that it's impossible to identify the blackmailer from the text of that first letter.”

“Then Dennis's killer gets away with it?”

“Dennis killed himself!” spluttered Mallard.

“So you say.”

Mallard took a deep breath and perched on a tilted headstone. “My dear nephew,” he continued, plucking burrs from his trousers, “you knew the victim only slightly, you happened to discover his body. That's not enough to spur any dull revenge. Leave the investigation to the excellent Sergeant Culpepper and pay attention to poor Effie instead.”

“Effie?”

“She's taken more than a week of her precious holiday entitlement to be with your family, and so far, you seem to have arranged an evening of abuse and embarrassment, left her for two days in the company of an unnecessarily handsome houseguest, and then treated her to a funeral. Not much joy for her.”

Oliver realized with sudden dismay that his uncle was right. Poor Effie. “I could take her somewhere nice after lunch,” he ventured, after a moment's contemplation.

“She told me she's never been to Stratford-upon-Avon.”

“Then I'll show her the sights! The Birthplace. Hall's Croft. Holy Trinity. And we can take a look at Toby's dig.”

“You might want to come by the theater. We're rehearsing again this afternoon.”

“And have Effie witness the filth that I saw yesterday?”

Mallard laughed. “Oh, Humfrey changed his whole conception of the play again. It now takes place in a nunnery and we're performing it backwards. But you're probably right to skip the rehearsals. Save your applause for Saturday, the big night.”

He walked away, not knowing that he had been entirely wrong about the blackmailer's presence at the funeral.

Oliver stood thoughtfully, looking at a double coil of blue columbine that cricked its way up the rusty railings enclosing a ancient chest tomb. (Were the spikes on top to keep intruders out or occupants in?) Yes, he needed to nurture Effie. And there was still the spotless reputation of his teenage bedroom to be besmirched. He sneezed four times.

“Bless you,” said the vicar. Oliver hadn't heard his approaching footsteps, muffled in the long grass. “That was in my secular capacity,” Edwards continued affably, as they began to walk together toward the church. “The habit of blessing the sneezer probably comes from the superstition that a sneeze can release one's soul into the air and leave it prey to evil spirits. But popular tradition insists on linking it to the bubonic plague. The same misguided belief applies to the children's rhyme ‘Ring a Ring o' Roses'—‘Ring Around the Rosie,' as they call it in America, but then they call the ‘Hokey Cokey' the ‘Hokey Pokey,' so what's that all about? Sneezes were never especially symptomatic of the plague, and many variants of the rhyme don't include the words ‘a-tish-oo.'”

Oliver made a mental note to include this misconception in his book. “Dennis Breedlove wrote an entire book debunking the myth about ‘Ring a Ring o' Roses' and the Black Death,” he commented.

“That's where I got my information. He and I used to have some great chats. Ah, Dennis—we have done but greenly in hugger-mugger to inter him.”

“Do you know much about Dennis's life before he came to Synne?” Oliver asked, sensing the opening. “Religious background, that sort of thing?”

“No, he never talked about that,” Edwards responded briskly, and Oliver found another example of a positive absence, like the openness of an empty grave: the sudden silence that fell where the vicar's habitual second sentence should have been. Here endeth the lesson. Ah, that reminded him.

“I understand you have a book club,” Oliver said, as they stopped by the church door.

Edwards frowned. “We have a writers' group in the village, if that's what you mean. There are about ten of us. We do take it very seriously—only people who are working on a manuscript may join.”

“You're writing a book, too?”

“I'm ever hopeful that my weekly sermons will be less ephemeral.”

“And less heretical,” thought Oliver. Aloud he said, “May I join you for your next meeting?” The vicar shook his head before the offer was complete.

“Oh, no, no, no, out of the question. We couldn't possibly…I wouldn't dare intrude on your precious family time.”

“It would be fun for me.”

“Ah, but under your feminine
nom-de-plume
you're the celebrated creator of The Railway Mice and that paragon of animals, the sublime Finsbury the Ferret. You don't want to be pestered by unpublished midges.”

Why does everyone assume O.C. Blithely is a woman?
What had his mother said? Be insistent. Tell him you know what it's all about.

“I do know what it's all about,” he said.

Edwards fixed his gaze on a fat bumblebee, dithering around an azalea. “You do?” he asked, after a few seconds.

“Oh yes. And I'd really like to see what you're doing.”

“You would?”

“Absolutely. Count me in. After all, everyone likes an audience.” Chloe's prompts seemed to be working, Oliver reflected.

Edwards brightened a little. “I see we understand each other.”

“Then I can come?”

“Very well. We meet at the vicarage tomorrow night, seven o'clock. If you've done this before, I'm sure you know what to expect.” He smiled shyly at Oliver. “Perhaps you feel this a little, shall I say, unorthodox? Especially for a man of the cloth.”

“Not at all. We do so much of it alone, behind closed doors—it helps to show it to somebody else, from time to time.” Oliver remembered his mother's comment about Effie's sparing him for the occasion. But did she have to? “Can I bring my girlfriend?” he asked.

“We don't generally allow couples.”

Oliver guessed that Edwards was concerned about Effie's non-writer status. But Effie was a discerning reader and was unafraid to voice her opinions on works in progress, although admittedly, he'd only heard them in the context of the adventures of woodland animals as told for pre-teens; she might be a tad more scathing about four-year-old Hugowhoisgifted's maternally ghosted life story.

“Oh go on, say yes,” Oliver pleaded. “It's a chance for her to see what I get up to while she's at work. And she's quite prepared to join in.”

“Really? Effie?”

“Yes. She'd never be content to sit on the sidelines and just observe. You may have trouble shutting her up.”

“I see. Intriguing. Well, tomorrow then.” Edwards brushed some dirt from his white surplice, noticing as he did that the lower part of the vestment displayed the outline of a generous set of male genitals, executed in tomato ketchup. He sighed.