Grave Matters

by Margaret Yorke

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said David. ‘I’ll think of somewhere while we fetch him.’ Patrick forbore to point out that he owned at least four acres of land, much of it wild orchard. A suitable grave should not be difficult to find.

  ‘That sack won’t be big enough,’ he said. ‘Have you a knife or something? If we slit it, we could sling the dog in it and carry it between us. I could have brought him back myself but I thought it would upset Ellen.’

  ‘You were quite right. Anyway I’d like to see where it happened. I can’t understand it,’ David said. ‘He was my wife’s dog, but he spent most of his time with me. I was fond of him.’ And indeed he looked almost as shaken as Ellen had.

  He went into the house and returned with a large kitchen knife which he used to slit the sack so that it made a sheet. Then he went back into the house with the knife. A tidy man, Patrick thought.

  They walked together to the stream.

  ‘Was he an old dog? He doesn’t look it,’ Patrick asked.

  ‘No, he was only five,’ David said. ‘I got him as a puppy.’

  Heart failure was unlikely, then, as the cause of death.

  ‘Wasn’t it difficult, having him in London? Isn’t that where you lived?’ Ellen had told Patrick that the Bruces had lived in London. ‘A big dog like that must need a lot of exercise.’

  ‘We lived in Putney. I used to take him on the heath. And Carol gets about a good bit in her work. She took him with her sometimes. But it was better for him here, he loved it, running in the fields.’

  They could see the pale blob of the dog’s body on the bank of the stream long before they reached it.

  ‘My God! You poor old fellow,’ said David, bending over it. As Patrick had done, he turned it, lifting the limbs, searching for any mark.

  ‘Boys? Hooligans?’ Patrick asked, thinking of adolescents who cut tails off cats.

  ‘Very unlikely. Meldsmead isn’t like that,’ David said.

  ‘He couldn’t have just tumbled in,’ said Patrick. ‘Will you get the vet?’

  ‘I’d like to know what happened, but I think it would be very upsetting,’ David said. Patrick wanted to know too, but even if there was an autopsy it would be difficult for him to learn the results. Ellen might tell him, perhaps.

  They spread the sack on the ground and lifted the dog on to it. A smell of wet hair rose from him. They wrapped the sack around him and lifted it by the ends, but the bundle was dripping by the time they reached the garden of Abbot’s Lodge again.

  ‘I wonder if we should bury him before Carol gets back?’ David said. ‘She might want to see him.’

  ‘Well, you saw how upset Ellen was, and he isn’t her dog,’ Patrick said. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to get him out of sight, if you’re not going to call in the vet?’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ said David. ‘Very well. We’ll bury him in the rough grass over there.’ He pointed to an area under some trees where probably, in the spring, daffodils bloomed. Or if they don’t, they ought to, Patrick thought.

  ‘You could put a rose tree over him, one of those big spreading ones, what are they called, they turn into a great bush, my sister has one,’ he said, getting carried away by what Jane would have called his marshmallow streak. ‘Nevada, that’s the name. It’s lovely and grows huge.’

  ‘I’ll remember it,’ David said austerely. He obviously thought the idea a poor one.

  They chose a spot.

  ‘I’ll get a couple of spades. You wait here,’ David said. He seemed to assume Patrick would see the operation through. He would, of course.

  It was a morbid task. They dumped the dog on the ground and while David went off to the tool shed, which was part of the stable block, Patrick sauntered along looking at the various trees and shrubs in that part of the garden. He was no horticulturist, but since Jane’s marriage he had often lent her a helping hand in the garden, first in the rented cottage she had lived in at Winterswick, and later when Michael and she had bought their present house. He could recognise most ordinary trees and common flowers, and the Fellows’ garden at St. Mark’s was famous for its herbaceous border. He saw some lilacs, and what he thought must be a forsythia, and another, tall tree with a slender stem and slim, spreading branches. Under it a few seed pods lay on the ground. He picked three or four up and put them in his pocket.

  David returned with the spades.

  They marked the space to be dug and took out a deep trench, first lifting off the turf neatly for easier replacement.

  ‘Six feet it has to be in churchyards, I believe,’ said Patrick, labouring on. They settled for about four in this case, laid the dog in the narrow slit, and shovelled back the rich soil. There was quite a hump when they had replaced the turf on the top.

  ‘We could have carted some of the soil away and then it wouldn’t have shown,’ David said.

  ‘I imagine it will soon drop,’ Patrick said.

  ‘Maybe.’

  The thought ran through Patrick’s mind that perhaps David meant not to tell Carol what had happened, but to let her assume the dog had disappeared. He banished the notion instantly; Carol would tell the police the dog was missing. Why had such an idea even crossed his mind?

  ‘Well, that job’s done, then,’ he said, and handed his spade to David. ‘I’m sorry about it. I don’t suppose you’ll ever know what really happened. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to Ellen.’

  He enjoyed saying this, but the other man’s face gave nothing away.

  ‘Thanks for your help,’ he said.

  Patrick gave a slight wave, and hurried off across the garden, leaving David to follow with the spades. He walked quickly down the lane and let himself through the gate of Mulberry Cottage. As he walked up the path to the door he heard the sound of a car approaching. Carol Bruce had come home.

  PART FOUR

  I

  The following Wednesday two of Patrick’s pupils asked if they might switch their tutorials to different days, and thus suddenly freed, he went up to London. He drove straight to Bloomsbury and found a parking metre near the British Museum. A fine drizzle was falling as he approached the building through the main gate. There were a few coaches parked in the forecourt, and some clusters of school-children were being herded towards the entrance. Patrick decided that this particular temple lacked external magic; Pentelic marble, antiquity, and clear blue skies were necessary for spell-casting. He went inside and walked to the foot of the staircase which led out of the main hall. Here poor Miss Forrest had tumbled to her doom, but no trace of this recent tragedy seemed to lurk in the atmosphere; the usual air of controlled bustle prevailed. It was still early in the day, and at this time of the year there were few tourists about. Patrick wanted to visit the lonely caryatid, but first he walked slowly up the stairs. Half-way up there was a small landing; then the steps continued with another flight, and where they divided to branch right and left there was a wider landing and some seats covered in black leather. He sat there for a while, watching what went on below and meditating. People came and went down in the hall; others climbed up or descended the stairs, sometimes in groups and sometimes singly. After a few minutes he continued upwards himself to the central saloon, where he was in Roman Britain. This was a part of the museum he did not know well, though occasionally he went to the King’s Library, and passed through the Grenville Library. He used the Reading Room at intervals, but rarely. Before his recent visit to Greece he had spent hours studying the Parthenon frieze and the marbles from the pediment, and he knew his way round the ground floor well, but this upper floor was less familiar.

  He went downstairs again to the busy publications department and bought a guide map; then he returned to the half landing on the staircase where he sat down and studied it. After that he set out to explore a route. He found that by going through the Greek and Roman life room, on past innumerable Greek and Roman vases, turning right through the upper Egyptian galleries as if aiming for the Prints and Drawings gallery, he cam
e eventually to the north stairs, which were richly carpeted in bilious green. Down he went, and was at once on known ground outside the north library. In a very short time he had gone through the King’s Library and the Grenville Library and was back again at the foot of the main staircase down which Miss Forrest had fallen.

  If someone had known she would be on the front staircase that morning, followed her, and pushed her, he – or she – could have followed the route he had just taken and arrived back in the hall in time to observe the resulting confusion. Or, if they had not wanted to witness the scene, they could have left the museum by the north entrance and disappeared into Montague Place.

  But who could have wanted to do such a thing? And who would have known that Miss Forrest would be in the British Museum that day?

  Ellen had known, and Ellen had been present.

  She must, of course, have arrived, as she had said, a little late for their appointment, to find the accident had happened. But she could have told someone else about her arrangement to meet Miss Forrest: David Bruce, for instance, or Valerie.

  But neither of them could have had the slightest wish to kill harmless Miss Forrest. No, it was just coincidence that the two old ladies, friends in life, had met their deaths in similar ways.

  He wandered away, through the throng in the publications department and into the quiet haven of the Nereid Room. There he stood brooding for a long time in front of the solitary caryatid.

  After a while he went into the Duveen Gallery and took a look at the model of the Acropolis, but it did not depict the monuments as they were today and the steps leading up to the Propylaea were not restored in their present form. He took a quick tour round the huge room and was about to leave through the glass doors when he saw, seated outside, confronting the enchanting little temple-like building of the Harpy Tomb, David Bruce and Ellen Brinton. They sat close together, earnestly talking, totally oblivious of their surroundings. Nearby stood an attendant, carefully ignoring them. Many assignations must be made in these chaste surroundings, Patrick supposed grimly.

  He rushed back again into the sanctuary of the Duveen Gallery and stood scowling at a metope showing a particularly fierce centaur. The absorption between David and Ellen had been intense and unmistakeable. After a while he approached the doorway again and peered through. They had gone.

  Patrick had intended to ring Ellen at her office and invite her out to lunch. Instead he went straight back to his car, drove to Oxford very fast, and spent over an hour on the river in a skiff, furiously rowing.

  Late that night he did telephone Ellen at her flat. He held on while the number rang thirty times without an answer; then he gave up.

  II

  The next evening Patrick drove over to Meldsmead again. He arrived at about half-past six and went straight to the pub, this time parking in the yard at the rear, for his white Rover was distinctive; it was very unlikely that Ellen would be in the village in the middle of the week, but if by any chance she had come down, he did not want her to see his car. He found Denis Bradshaw alone in the saloon bar, talking to the publican, Fred Brown. They remembered him, and Denis insisted on buying his pint.

  ‘It’s still too early for any of our regulars, isn’t it, Fred? Thought it must be a foreigner when you opened the door,’ Denis said, with a grin.

  ‘Do you come in every evening, then?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘I do when my wife’s out, if I’m not too busy to stop work,’ Denis said. ‘Madge is off somewhere playing bridge. She won’t be home yet. There are others who come in nightly, though, luckily for Fred.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Newton does, on his way back from the hospital. Needs bucking up, I should think, after messing about with dead bodies all day, and I expect the house is a bit bleak when the kids are away. He doesn’t come in when they’re at home. And the new chap, Bruce, he comes in most days, doesn’t he, Fred?’

  ‘That’s right. Gets in about seven. He won’t be in tonight, though. He said yesterday he’d be staying up in London. He does that once or twice a week, seemingly.

  ‘His wife is often away, too,’ Denis said. ‘She’s some sort of writer – goes off photographing people and houses and writing about them for those magazines women read at the hairdresser’s. Is she better, Fred?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen her car go by today,’ said Fred. He added to Patrick: ‘She’s got one of those Lancias. Some job.’

  ‘And very nice too, but pricey,’ said Denis.

  ‘Has she been ill? Mrs. Bruce?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘Mm, yes. Funny business, that.’ Denis shook his head. ‘She’s so like Hesther Fellowes to look at. Don’t you think so, Fred?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought about it, but now you mention it, I suppose she is,’ said the other man. ‘Tall, and pale, and thin, but dressier, if you get my meaning.’

  ‘Her illness?’ prompted Patrick.

  ‘She’s not been herself since the dog died – oh, you wouldn’t know about that.’ Denis rushed eagerly into the story, giving Patrick no chance to confess that he did. ‘The Bruces had a golden retriever – lovely dog, he was, belonged to the wife in fact. He got drowned last weekend. Young Ellen Brinton was staying here at Mulberry Cottage with some boyfriend of hers and the fellow found him in the stream.’

  Patrick almost choked into his beer. If the identity of Ellen’s companion were to be disclosed he would have landed himself in a morass of deception.

  ‘How could a dog drown?’ he asked, sinking even deeper.

  ‘You may well ask. He may have eaten something that disagreed with him and gone to the stream looking for water. Might have got hold of some of that dehydrating rat-poison stuff.’

  His glass was empty and Patrick signed for Fred to refill it.

  ‘Hesther Fellowes had a dog too, and it was a golden retriever,’ said Denis. Over their second pints he told Patrick how this dog had been found, after her death, howling inconsolably in the graveyard, and had eventually been put down.

  ‘The dog would have had to have got hold of a deal of that poison to be affected,’ Fred said.

  ‘And Mrs. Bruce?’ Patiently Patrick returned to her.

  ‘Oh, the vicar’s wife discovered she wasn’t well,’ Denis said. ‘You know, in a village this size we all know each other’s business, eh, Fred? Anything unusual gets noticed. Mrs. Merry was in the Post Office yesterday and she saw the doctor’s car go down the lane towards Abbot’s Lodge, so off she trotted to find out what was wrong. Some sort of gastric upset, I believe.’

  As Patrick was absorbing this information the door of the bar opened and in came Paul Newton, followed by two of the other men who had been discussing yachting when Patrick was in the Meldsmead Arms before. If everyone knew each other’s business as definitely as Denis Bradshaw seemed to think, his own presence in the village would soon be revealed.

  ‘Ah, Paul. Cut up any interesting bodies lately?’ Denis asked heartily.

  The tall, pale pathologist sighed.

  ‘Denis, I keep trying to explain to you that I don’t deal with bodies. Other pathologists do, but I test blood and I look for bugs. It’s a wide subject, you know.’

  ‘And a gloomy one,’ said Denis. ‘Well, I must go. Madge told me to do something about turning on the oven. We’ve got an automatic switch but it’s gone wrong.’

  He finished his drink and went off into the night. Paul Newton remembered meeting Patrick; they talked generalities for a while and discovered, as so often happens, a link, for Newton had a nephew who had been up at Mark’s. Luckily Patrick remembered the boy from his days as dean; luckily too Patrick could recall only points in his favour. They talked about this for a while and then Patrick asked the other man what he thought about the reputation of Abbot’s Lodge. He remembered that at their earlier meeting Paul had said stories always circulated about old houses.

  ‘One does get a run of bad luck – or of good, come to that, sometimes,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s convenient if y
ou can blame it on your environment, I suppose, and not yourself or just the luck of the draw. Certainly the Braces seem to have had more than their share of minor misfortunes since they moved in. You heard about the dog?’

  ‘Yes.’ Patrick wondered if the other would volunteer a theory.

  ‘Odd, that. I’d have liked to have known the cause. But Bruce buried the dog without investigating. Less distressing for his wife, no doubt.’

  ‘She’s ill now, I hear,’ said Patrick.

  ‘So I believe.’

  ‘Have you met them?’

  ‘Yes. Denis and Madge had a party to introduce them round. He seems a decent enough chap, rather quiet. Does something in the city, I don’t know what. Must be doing pretty well to buy that place and run a couple of expensive cars. She seemed a bit edgy – she’d cut her arm and was all bound up. Did it mending a door hinge or something.’

  ‘What about the dog? Could he have got hold of some poison?’ Patrick asked. ‘There’s a lot of yew about that place, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yes, but I doubt if a dog would eat it, unless some got into his food by accident.’

  ‘What effect would it have? Would it cause some sort of coma?’

  ‘I’d expect vomiting and diarrhoea first,’ said Paul.

  Patrick had seen no trace of any of these troubles near the body of the dog.

  ‘What about rat poison?’

  ‘A big dog like that would need to swallow a lot to be fatally affected,’ Paul said. ‘And anything with strychnine in it would cause convulsions. He must have had a weak heart, I suppose. After all, animals do, just like people.’

  Paul Newton seemed set for a long stay in the pub. The bar was filling up now, and Fred Brown’s daughter had appeared to help her father. Patrick excused himself and left. As he went round the side of the building to collect his car a red mini came fast down the lane, scattering water from the puddles that had formed since it had rained earlier in the day. It must be Valerie. Though Ellen sometimes borrowed the car, she would never drive like that.