by Amy Myers
Alice snorted. ‘Mrs Elfie wouldn’t have liked that. To think he’s her grandson. Didn’t like nasty things, Mrs Elfie didn’t.’
‘She liked love-in-a-mist,’ Georgia pointed out, ‘and even that has black seeds.’
Alice’s eyes hardened. ‘Not her fault it happened,’ she said darkly. ‘You be careful, very careful.’
Georgia had been glad that Luke hadn’t heard this. It would have confirmed his impression that everyone in Fernbourne was bonkers, and probably dangerously so. He had only reluctantly agreed to go straight back to talk to Molly about publications, rather than come with them to Shaw Cottage. That was, he agreed, a Marsh & Daughter affair. Nevertheless, she wished now that he had come with them. Alice’s words had conjured up a question mark that was not pleasant to contemplate as she and Peter drove to the cottage.
‘Where do you want to go first?’ she asked Peter as they parked in the drive. There were padlocks on the gates now, and for the first time they had been forbiddingly closed. Janie had warned them of this and given them the keys both to the gate and the house. ‘I don’t care what the answer is, I just need it over,’ she had told them vehemently.
‘It’s the garden rather than the house for us, more’s the pity,’ Peter answered her. ‘The terrace first.’ Once there he contemplated the bleak view in front of him. What was he looking for, Georgia wondered? What could emerge today that they hadn’t seen before?
‘Let’s get this over with – and quickly,’ Peter continued. ‘If Roy didn’t die in the Café de Paris, then he was probably murdered in Fernbourne before he could leave, rather than elsewhere. Agreed?’
‘Yes. Which means here …’ Georgia shivered. ‘Possibly the manor, if he went there with Gavin and Elfie after everyone else had left.’
‘Much more likely to be here. It would explain why the trust is so eager to keep the cottage within their control. We also know that Gavin and Elfie were here at least part of the time digging away for victory. If Roy was murdered, there are four suspects. Right?’
‘Or any combination within them, plus the outside chance it was someone from the village.’
He frowned. ‘I no longer see a group conspiracy. Do you?’
‘No, but I do see a cover-up.’
‘Even so, it’s unlikely all the other three conspired at the time. Too many different interests. And where would the body be buried? It wouldn’t be near the house. If Birdie and Alwyn were implicated in his death, they wouldn’t tolerate it so near, and if they weren’t implicated it would be too risky.’ He looked out over the garden again.
‘Let’s picture it,’ Georgia suggested. It was a cold day but she was shivering more from what she was imagining than from the cold. ‘If the murder was planned it wouldn’t have taken place in the house because of the mess, regardless of who killed him – unless he was strangled or poisoned.’
Peter shook his head. ‘They’d still have to move the body. Outside would be safer.’
‘During a walk in the woods?’
‘Too uncertain. Roy could simply say, “I’m knackered. I’m going to bed for the afternoon.” It’s more likely to have been a spur of the moment murder.’
‘What time of day? Afternoon, evening?’
‘After Alice had gone. Early evening or night, which puts walks in the woods out of the picture. This was March.’ He stopped abruptly, and Georgia waited hopefully. ‘We know that as well as London, there was a German raid over the south-east that evening,’ he continued, excited. ‘What does that tell you?’
‘If he was killed by a bomb, no need for—’
Peter shook his head impatiently. ‘Air-raid shelters,’ he interrupted. ‘An outdoor Anderson shelter. They wouldn’t have been having a midnight stroll round the terrace with the sirens warning of an imminent raid; they would have been in the shelter.’
That was the answer; Georgia was sure of it. Then she had doubts. ‘Again, if he were strangled or poisoned there, perhaps,’ she said. ‘But other methods would still have been messy for such a confined place.’
Peter took little notice. ‘Where was the Anderson? Nearly everyone had one.’ He surveyed the grounds before him. ‘I’ve struck gold,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Look.’ He pointed to the far left side of the gardens.
‘The rockery,’ Georgia exclaimed. Of course. The huge mound, now earthed over, could still be hiding the roof of the Anderson shelter, and even the steps that led down to the small space below. And that was where Alice had hunted for fairy rings by the remains of the stone statue.
‘Black seeds,’ she continued. Had Alice known all the time what had happened? Had she been involved? The whole garden seemed to take on a more sinister aspect. ‘Love-in-a-mist never grew there. Only ferns because of the damp. Do you think Roy could still be buried inside?’ That was a frightening thought.
‘No way,’ he said reassuringly. ‘The shelter would have to remain in use afterwards. It’s much more probable that he was buried elsewhere.’
‘Where?’ But the answer was inevitable, and it hit her stomach hard. ‘The woods beyond the stream.’
‘Yes, but where?’ Peter’s practical approach helped her recover. ‘We can’t expect Mike’s men to dig the whole wood up. I know they’ve got technology to indicate the likely places for a corpse, but we need to narrow it down. Besides, Matthew would be hopping up and down with fury at every false dig.’
Georgia swallowed, knowing there was only one answer. She’d have to find the possible sites herself. Come back another day with Luke? The temptation was strong. Then she thought of Janie’s face, of the need to get this over quickly.
‘I’ll go now,’ she said.
‘No,’ Peter said sharply.
It would soon be dark, and those woods were waiting for her with their silent threat. Suppose the watcher waited too? ‘You’re next’, Sean’s note had read. No one could be here today, however, with everyone concerned still at the funeral. Only ghosts from the past would be stirring.
‘I’ll take the torch,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘You can track my progress.’
Go now, Georgia, she told herself, before Peter talked her out of it, which wouldn’t be difficult. Go now before dark falls. In December dusk was short. She grabbed the torch, and began to walk towards the river, stumbling over the weeds and brambles. No love-in-a-mist now to mark the path that Alwyn had taken that day. Nothing but dead undergrowth and the smell of damp decaying leaves. No longer the pleasant ripeness of autumn but the stink of the detritus of the dying year.
As she reached the stream she hesitated, looking quickly back at Peter and waving the torch to reassure him. She could see the path that had led here from the rockery ended at the stepping stones she was about to cross, and images of a murderer dragging a body along it made her retch. Fantasies dreamed up in crime novels flashed through her head, wheelbarrows with grisly contents … Stop, she told herself. Stop this and go on.
What if she found a likely burial place? Mike Gilroy would have to be told and Matthew would then know too. He could continue to profess ignorance of Roy’s murder, lying through his teeth. So could they all. Which path to the truth? Find it, Georgia. Find it quickly. Cross to the woods beyond the stream and find out where he lies. In that glade that Adam had showed her? Had Birdie known about her sweetheart’s death? Had Elfie? Gavin? Alwyn? Had Roy betrayed Alwyn over Jenny Baker? Was Joe here all that day too, having brought Roy from the station in his delivery van? No proof, no proof. Go to the woods beyond the stream, she told herself again, and then hurry back to safety. Draw the curtains, light the fire, shut out the evil demons.
She steadied herself again. The first hurdle was to walk past the tree on which Alwyn had died. It still cried out for justice, but was Roy here too, joining his voice to Alwyn’s? The fingerprints of time hit her again as she crossed the stones to the far side of the stream, where the woods lay dark and uncompromising. Somebody had written a poem about a traveller and a dark tower. Where lay hers, wh
ere to look?
And then a sound split the heavy silence, and she let out an involuntary cry.
Whistling. Casual, perhaps, not meant to alarm, just to warn. Someone was there, deep within the evergreen laurels and holly that masked the glade. Alwyn’s ghost? Easy to imagine in the twilight here. No, something more human. Someone who watched over the grave. Someone who knew. Someone who had killed Clemence. You’re next … Someone who knew she was out of sight of safety, as Peter waited on the terrace. Someone who had heard her stifled cry.
‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
The soft voice. A man. Last time the whistling had been Adam’s, but it wouldn’t be Adam now. She listened to the rustling of bushes and the crunch of boots, frozen and powerless to move. Adam had learned his whistling from his grandfather.
It was Ted Laycock. He stopped a few feet from her, clad in gum boots and a long anorak over his funeral clothes. What lay in those deep pockets? A gun?
His expression was impassive, which made it all the worse. ‘I followed you from the funeral. There’s a short cut through the woods. You wouldn’t know it, not being local.’
‘My father …’ she began.
‘He can wait.’ He cut her off dismissively. ‘I’ll tell you only. No witnesses that way.’
‘You can’t have killed Roy Sandford,’ she burbled through trembling lips. ‘But his grave is here, isn’t it?’
He showed no surprise. Of course he wouldn’t, she thought. They all knew about this. ‘Yes. There.’
He indicated a spot further along the bank where the path disappeared into the woods by the oak tree and away from the stream. Beyond it the trees came almost to the water’s edge, but before that point she could see a grassy patch. Ted’s voice was so casual, he could have been pointing out a particularly fine rose.
‘Not the glade then. Adam showed me that.’ She managed to sound normal, as though she wasn’t terrified of what the ending of this nightmare might be.
‘He told me. I never knew he came here. The glade’s where Mr Roy and Mr Alwyn worked.’
And probably loved, she thought desolately. ‘Why are you here today?’ she asked. ‘As Matthew’s watchdog?’
He looked surprised. ‘No. It was my father. He told me to look after the grave. See no harm came to it. He told me about it when he was dying and said I’d have to do the same with Bob when I go. Twenty years I’ve been coming here. Every month or so, I check on it.’
‘Why your father? He didn’t kill Roy, did he?’ And now? Was he going to kill her so that the grave remained untouched?
‘Course not. He buried him though. He was gardener up at the manor. Adored Mrs Elfie, he did. She couldn’t have moved and buried him alone, not even with Mr Gavin’s help. He’d gone home to do some work, leaving Mrs Elfie here, and she called them over here after she’d done it. She was in a right state, Dad said, and no wonder. Someone had to get the body over here, so that was Dad with Mr Gavin helping when he could. Fair turned his stomach, Dad said.’
‘So it was Elfie who murdered him.’
There was an inevitability about the truth. Of course Elfie had killed Roy. He was in her way and so she had to remove him. Once, Georgia remembered, she had thought Elfie was another Elena. Now she shuddered at the thought. Elena, confronted with such an obstacle, would simply turn and take another path in life, whereas Elfie had removed the obstacle.
‘Didn’t know what she was doing,’ Ted told her. ‘He was a no-good that Roy, so Dad said.’
‘Did Elfie love Roy and he laughed at her for it?’ Had she been right all along about Elfie and Roy?
‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ he said with disdain. ‘And you a woman. She hated him and with good reason. She adored Mr Field and as she saw it Sandford took him away from her. He boasted to her about his sordid perverted practices. Told her Mr Field didn’t love her, he loved him, Roy Sandford. She blurted it all out to Dad that night and Mr Gavin, he just stood there, not knowing what had hit him, poor chap. Sandford had mocked her and Mrs Elfie couldn’t take it so she’d shot him. She knew Mr Alwyn’s father had a gun he kept at the cottage. Then she rang Mr Gavin, who got hold of Dad, and they risked the raids and ran over here. They had a discussion what to do, but Mrs Elfie was howling so much they decided to bury him straightaway, once the all-clear had sounded. Dad did most of that. Mr Hunt was in a blue funk. Once it was done, he took over though. Knowing that Miss Birdie and Mr Alwyn would be back in the morning expecting to see Sandford, Mr Gavin left a note that he had decided to go up to London after a phone call from a mate and wouldn’t be back that weekend. He was like that, Sandford, impulsive, so they didn’t question it. Why should they? Then on the Sunday Mr Gavin had a call from a friend of his, a Lady someone, who’d been at the Café de Paris when it was bombed on Saturday night. Told him all about it, in graphic detail about the bodies etc, clothes torn off them, some of them being looted even while they lay dying – and how they had all been there enjoying an evening out. There was a group of people at the next table, she said, some of them in uniform. When Sandford was missed because he didn’t show up at Biggin Hill on the Monday, Mr Gavin had the story ready. He’d made a few enquiries and discovered they were having trouble identifying the casualties. As Sandford had gone to London to meet friends, he wondered if he could possibly have been at the Café de Paris that night, because that was one of his favourite haunts. It went on from there. It might not have worked, but it did. In the war you were losing people all the time. Mourning time was brief.’
‘But what about Birdie and Alwyn?’ Georgia asked, aware of goose pimples that had nothing to do with the chilly afternoon. ‘They must have been grief-stricken. They both loved him.’
‘Yes. Dreadful that was, Dad said. Both in love with the sick bastard and weeping their hearts out, not knowing what had really happened.’
‘Did Birdie know Roy was bisexual, and that Alwyn was gay?’
‘Didn’t use those words then, and I reckon she didn’t. We didn’t think that way. If you ask me, she still doesn’t know, so don’t you go telling her,’ he finished grimly, taking a step towards her. It was all she could do not to move backwards.
‘And Alwyn?’ she asked again. ‘He loved Roy and couldn’t even talk about it to anyone.’
Ted looked surprised, as though that was the first time it had occurred to him, but he only shrugged. ‘Serve him right for upsetting Mrs Elfie.’
Georgia was repulsed, but she had to stand her ground. ‘And Elfie?’ she managed to say, since she was obviously all Ted could think about. Elfie had to be protected. Never mind that Elfie had killed a man in cold blood.
‘It turned Mrs Elfie’s head. Mr Hunt looked after her, told Mr Field she was going to stay at home with him and that was that. He’d lost her for good. Not that he cared.’
‘Did Alwyn not love her at all, not even as a friend?’
‘No idea.’
‘But she moved in here after he died, at Birdie’s invitation. That means Birdie never guessed about the murder.’
He hesitated. ‘She was told after Mrs Elfie died. Mrs Clemence knew by then because of Mr Gavin. When he died, she had to tell Mr Matthew, and then later after Mrs Elfie went, he told Miss Birdie – Mrs Atkin I should say.’
‘And presumably he had to tell her why Elfie killed Roy. That must have been a shock.’
‘Maybe,’ he said non-committally.
‘If Elfie still loved Alwyn, wouldn’t she be terrified he would find out she had killed his beloved Roy?’ Georgia thought of the love-in-a-mist carefully planted all the way down to the stream. What mists there must have been at Shaw Cottage. And what black seeds.
‘His own fault, weren’t it?’
There was no arguing with him. Georgia needed to get out of here though, and quickly, and took her courage in both hands. ‘And now?’ she asked. ‘You realize I’ll have to tell the police?’
To her relief, he nodded. ‘I suppose that’s only right. Things have gon
e too far. First that journalist, now Mrs Clemence.’
‘You’ll be questioned.’
‘Now Mrs Clemence has gone, I don’t greatly care. She was a good one. She never knew about it at the time, but Mr Hunt told her when he knew he was dying. Told her he relied on her to protect Mrs Elfie.’
‘And when Elfie died?’
‘We talked it over and decided to let things be. We had to think of Miss Field’s feelings. Besides, she might have wanted to sell the house. No harm done,’ he added fiercely, perhaps seeing the reaction Georgia knew her expression must reveal.
‘It might have saved two lives,’ Georgia said.
‘You’re wrong about that,’ he said quietly. ‘And before you ask, there’s the matter of my wife. Alice knows nothing, see?’
‘But she was there that afternoon.’
‘I said she knows nothing. She guessed a bit of it from what Mrs Elfie said about love-in-a-mist one day.’
‘The black seeds,’ Georgia said, understanding now.
‘We told her she was out with the fairies herself on that one. She’d take it too hard otherwise. Much too hard. See?’
‘I do.’ Georgia meant it.
‘So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be going. You can tell your father what you like, tell the whole bloody world. They’ll find the body, but you’ll never prove the story behind it.’
She could hear Peter calling faintly in the distance, and turned to flash the torch, though she doubted if he could see it from here. When she looked back Ted had gone as quickly as he had appeared. Realizing how long she had been, she hurried back to Peter.
He looked relieved as he saw her approaching. ‘You had me worried,’ he called crossly. ‘I couldn’t see the torch any more.’
‘I had myself worried,’ she said wryly. ‘I met Ted Laycock in the woods.’
An intake of breath. ‘You’re all right?’
‘Yes. He showed me where the grave was.’
‘And Elfie killed him?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ She hadn’t the strength to ask how he had guessed that.
‘I was watching you make your way down. Remember where that love-in-a-mist was growing?’