A Dirty Death

by Rebecca Tope

  As Jonathan’s hand grasped the handle to the back door, Lilah said in a shrill voice, ‘Jonathan! That man you were talking about, who wouldn’t be able to bear it in prison – you did mean Sam, didn’t you?’

  Jonathan threw a quick glance at Miranda, shook his head at Lilah, as if to reproach her for voicing her thoughts, and left the house. They heard his engine start in the quiet yard and were left to face each other.

  Lilah felt she was living a nightmare. At the same time, she was embarrassed by her own outburst. Without meeting her mother’s eye, she stood up. ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  Jonathan was glad of the night drive. He had been shaken by Lilah’s behaviour, embarrassed and concerned. It struck him that never before had he been called upon to cope with a sobbing woman; Cappy was volatile in her own way, but she would never have lost control to the extent that Lilah had just done. He drew several deep breaths, but nothing would shift the sensation of a hand stirring everything in his midriff and the warning voice in his head that predicted much more trouble yet to come.

  As he passed through the village, he saw the dark outline of a man, leaning against the big beech tree which marked the top of the hill before plunging down into the valley that lay to the south of the village boundary. Something about the set of his head indentified the man as Tim Rickworth, whose house was a hundred yards distant. Jonathan stopped before he gave himself a chance to think. He pressed the button which lowered the window on the passenger side.

  ‘Waiting for someone?’ he called, already wondering whether he’d been an idiot to stop.

  Tim was casual. ‘No,’ he shrugged. ‘Just out for a little walk. It’s a lovely evening. Have you noticed the sky? After such a foul day, it’s quite a treat.’

  Jonathan didn’t even look; night skies didn’t interest him. He remembered that he was supposed to be hurrying. ‘Sorry to disturb you, then,’ he said. ‘I’m on an errand of mercy myself. Better get on.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Tim, slightly more animated. ‘Problems?’

  ‘Not really. Young Roddy Beardon is stranded at school. His Mum forgot to fetch him.’

  ‘But—’ Tim checked himself. Jonathan noticed the gaps in his own account.

  ‘I’d dropped in earlier this evening. While I was there, they remembered poor Roddy. I felt it was rather my fault, for distracting them. It made sense for me to go.’

  ‘Better get on, then,’ advised Tim. ‘It’s nearly eleven, I should think.’

  ‘Surely not! Can’t be.’ Both men looked at watches, but found it too dark to decipher them. Funny, thought Jonathan, you’d think he’d have one that lit itself up, yuppy like him.

  But he felt constrained to move on. The thought of the youngster waiting forlornly at the school gates spurred him on. What kind of a mother must Miranda Beardon be, anyway, to just forget the kid like that? For the rest of the drive, he considered the woman’s character, and what he knew of her. Pretty and looking a lot younger than her real age, she’d never seemed to fit the role of farmer’s wife. Odd, he discovered, that he hadn’t given her more thought before this. His flirting had been automatic, her response as casual as his intentions. The farm had been dominated by Guy and his furies. The obvious assumption had been that Miranda was a pale character, overshadowed and cowed by her much older husband. Only now was he learning that there might be more to her; that some of the whispered rumours of her having a secret life might indeed be true. Almost he could believe that she might be conducting a love affair with Sylvia, as Cappy had suggested. He had always dismissed it automatically; Miranda was too feminine, for a start. And surely a woman married to Guy would not dare? He must remember to ask Cappy to elaborate.

  * * *

  Roddy was forced to swallow his indignation at being forgotten when he realised who had come for him. A couple of his friends, who lived in streets close to the school, had waited with him, in no hurry to get home. They’d promised themselves that in five more minutes, they’d phone Redstone to find out what was going on. All three had steadfastly refused to acknowledge that some further disaster might have happened. Instead, they’d reminded each other about the thrills of Nemesis and the Ripsaw and how dopey Paul Mathers had been sick after the Corkscrew.

  At the sight of Jonathan, Roddy had felt a flutter of panic. ‘Is Mum all right?’ he’d asked, before getting into the car. ‘Why’ve you come for me?’

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ Jonathan soothed, giving a friendly wave to the other two boys. ‘Nothing at all’s happened. I’ll explain as we go, okay?’

  ‘I was waiting half an hour,’ Roddy said, factually. ‘We were due back here at ten, you know. We left Alton Towers at six, and it takes exactly four hours. Except we were late. There were roadworks on the motorway, or something.’

  Jonathan accelerated into the night, feeling gratifyingly useful for once, and vital to the happiness of the Beardon family. ‘It’s all my fault,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I turned up unexpectedly, and made your Mum forget to collect you.’

  ‘So nothing’s wrong? Really?’

  ‘Honestly. It’s weird, isn’t it, that feeling when you go away, even for a day, thinking something terrible’s going to happen when you’re not there. Cappy’s like that.’

  ‘Well, after what’s happened …’ Roddy stopped himself. It ought to be obvious to this fool that he’d worry. Why bother to explain?

  ‘So why did you show up, in the first place?’ he demanded. ‘You’ve never paid us a visit before.’

  Jonathan laughed. ‘That’s true. A lot’s changing without your dad around. I … had something to show your mum. She’ll tell you about it in the morning, I expect. Ten more minutes, max, and we’ll be there.’

  Roddy was quick to notice Lilah’s state of mind next day. He came in from milking to find her still in her pyjamas and her hair looking as if she’d been tearing at it like a Roman widow.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he demanded. ‘Not ill, are you?’

  ‘Shut up,’ she told him.

  He would not be deterred. ‘That’s nice. Aren’t you going to ask me about yesterday? It was great, actually, even though it rained a bit. We went on everything. It’s huge – the teachers kept getting lost. Thanks for forgetting to fetch me, by the way. I felt a right idiot with Nat and Ben staying to look after me, like a little kid.’

  ‘One of the teachers should have waited with you.’

  ‘That would have been even worse. I was safe enough – just pissed off.’

  ‘What makes you think you were safe? There are murderers about, you of all people should know that.’

  He pushed his lower lip out at her mulishly. ‘I don’t want to know anything about all that. It does my head in.’ He half-turned away from her, hunching a shoulder defensively. ‘I can still smell myself, sometimes, the way I stunk after getting him out with Sam. And I didn’t even go right in, like Sam did. Even so, I got filthy. I’m going to throw those jeans away that I was wearing.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘In a bucket outside. Mum chucked them in it on the day, and I don’t think anyone’s touched them since. They’re probably rotten by now, anyway.’

  How many pairs of mucky legwear were there in the neighbourhood, Lilah wondered. Guy’s own twill trousers must have ended up in a bin at the hospital; nobody had offered to give them back. And Sam’s moleskins had disappeared with the last dustbin collection.

  ‘You have to listen to me, Roddy,’ she insisted. ‘You can’t just run away from it.’ She bent towards him, wanting to penetrate the shell he’d developed around himself. As if connected to her by a rigid rod, he leant away, keeping the distance between them unchanged. He put up a hand, to brush her away. From the lump on his jaw, she could see he was clenching his teeth, perhaps trying not to cry.

  ‘Rod. Come on,’ she coaxed, as if he were the toddler she could still clearly recall. ‘There’s something else, as well. Something important. I
don’t know whether Mum told you she’d had a letter from Daddy’s first wife – Barbara. She wants to go and see her. We’ve got half-brothers.’

  ‘We always knew that.’

  ‘Well, yes, but it never seemed real to me until now. It seemed a sort of dream, something that happened a hundred years ago.’

  ‘I wish I could go with her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to. I wanted to have brothers. If I can’t have Dad back again, a big brother would be the next best thing.’

  ‘She won’t see the brothers – just the mother. They’re grown up now, and living miles away from her. They’ve got wives and kids and houses.’

  ‘But maybe she’ll ask them to come and meet us. A family reunion! Hey, Li, that’d be cool, don’t you think?’ His mood was altogether changed, his eyes now bright and eager. Lilah was bemused.

  ‘I don’t think you can go. You’re needed here. There’s too much work to do.’

  ‘Shit. Can’t we go when the hay’s finished? When’s Mum thinking of making this visit anyway?’

  ‘She didn’t say.’ She felt she was being unkind in not sharing Roddy’s excitement. But to her, if anything, the other family seemed more of a threat than a source of interest. The mysterious half-brothers might have been fun to meet ten years ago, but now she had no wish to get to know them. Life already felt unbearably fragile to her, and such an unpredictable element crashing in on her would not improve anything.

  ‘How did the milking go?’ she asked him. ‘Any problems?’

  He shrugged. ‘Nothing much. Sam isn’t as tidy as Dad was. He leaves things in the wrong places. There’s always something we can’t find. It’s annoying.’

  ‘You haven’t been rude to him, have you?’

  He gave her a withering look. ‘D’you think he’d notice if I was? After the way Dad was with him. He hardly takes any notice of me; you must know that.’

  ‘He’s got his own troubles.’

  Roddy shrugged again, as if it was too much of a bother to think about, and returned to the matter uppermost in his mind. ‘I’m going to ask Mum about going with her. Where does this Barbara woman live?’

  ‘Nottingham, or somewhere near it.’

  ‘Alton Towers is quite near Nottingham. We could get there and back in a day quite easily.’

  ‘You’re not going, Rod. She won’t take you.’

  ‘Li, you’re in a real stress today, aren’t you?’

  ‘Don’t you think I have a right to be, with my father murdered by the farmhand and everyone acting as if that’s perfectly okay?’ Her voice rose and then cracked. She felt the previous evening’s hysteria hovering somewhere, waiting to pounce.

  Roddy’s attention was finally held. All colour left his face. ‘What do you mean? Sam? Are you telling me it was Sam? That’s insane! The maddest thing I ever heard. He got Dad out, remember. You didn’t see him as I did. How upset he was. Of course he didn’t do it. I would bet anything – my life, even – that he had nothing to do with it.’

  Lilah had realised, during the sleepless hours of the night, that Jonathan’s discovery of the mucky clothes cast no real suspicion on Sam. The only pointer to him was that he lived at Redstone and the hedge where the things had been buried was bordering Redstone land. She thought carefully. If Sam had drowned Guy an hour or so before Lilah found him, getting into the pit with him, he could have found time to strip off those clothes and change into the moleskins, before going back to his normal routine. That’s what Miranda and Jonathan assumed – but Lilah could think of several ill-fitting details: what about his hands, for instance? Not just his hands, but his skin would have been filthy and smelly.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to say that I thought it was him. When I found Dad, Sam was in the outside loo. He had his moleskins on. He didn’t smell at all – and looked perfectly clean. But, Rod, someone did get right into the pit with him. Remember those trails of muck at the side of the pit? Before you pulled him out? They must have been made by someone climbing out, covered in the stuff. Someone held him down until he drowned.’

  ‘It’d have to be somebody strong.’

  Lilah nodded. ‘Mum’s pretty sure it was Sam.’

  ‘No!’ The cry echoed Lilah’s own reaction, the day before. With deliberate melodrama, Roddy dropped his head to the table and banged it three times against the wood. Lilah reached out and held him still.

  ‘Stop it, you fool. You’ll hurt yourself.’

  He looked up, with a dull stare that disconcerted her even more than his anger had done. ‘Rod?’ she queried.

  ‘It’s a bad dream, Li, all of it. A very yucky dream. That’s the only possible explanation.’ Tears filled his eyes. ‘But Dad’s not coming back, is he? Why is it so difficult to believe that?’

  She left a silence, waiting for him to get the weeping over with. Then she said, ‘So you definitely don’t think Sam could have done it? He couldn’t have forced Dad’s face into the slurry?’

  ‘Obviously he couldn’t,’ Roddy sniffed fiercely. ‘Could you? Could Mum? Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it any more.’ He got up from the table. ‘And you’d better get dressed. You’ll be needed.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ Roddy announced, after supper. ‘I need to get outside.’

  ‘Can I come?’ Lilah said, almost without thinking. ‘We could go into the village and have a drink at the pub.’

  Roddy and Miranda stared at her as if she had suggested an excursion to a strip club. The Beardons never frequented the local pub, which was unmodernised and unpretentious. Full of smoke and dark wood and elderly male villagers, it had never invited the attentions of tourists, women or children.

  ‘Why on earth would we want to do that?’ Roddy said.

  Lilah blinked at her own madness. ‘For a change,’ she said, weakly. ‘Because it’s there, and a beer would be nice. It’s what people do.’

  ‘Guy would have had a fit if he’d heard you suggest it,’ said Miranda.

  ‘I don’t think he would,’ Lilah argued. ‘What’s to stop us? It’s only fifteen minutes’ walk away.’

  Miranda widened her eyes and shrugged. ‘It’s fine by me,’ she said. ‘Don’t think I’m stopping you. It’s up to you what you do.’

  ‘Come on, Rod,’ Lilah was suddenly resolved. ‘Let’s give it a go.’

  ‘It’s Saturday, remember,’ he said, with growing reluctance. ‘Everyone from the village will be there. They’ll stare at us.’

  ‘Let them,’ said his sister.

  Within minutes they were on the road into the village, side by side, the sun setting over the treetops to their right.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me, I suppose,’ said Roddy, after a while. ‘You needn’t have gone to such extremes. Mum thinks you’re mad.’

  ‘I don’t care. We didn’t say everything this morning.’

  Roddy’s pace slowed, as his mind began to work. ‘Li, am I a suspect? Does Den think I killed Dad?’

  ‘Of course not. Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘But I could be the one. If you’re saying it might be Sam, it could just as well be Mum or me – or even you.’

  ‘Or some passing tramp. That’s my favourite theory. Has been from the start.’

  ‘I can see why it would be.’

  ‘I still want to work out how exactly it was done. Whether someone could hold him down till he drowned, and then just climb out and walk away afterwards.’

  Despite obvious squeamishness, Roddy gave it his consideration. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t be so difficult, if you were really determined.’

  ‘But surely he’d fight. There’d be wounds on him, and there weren’t any, apart from that bruise on his head.’

  ‘Not if he couldn’t get his footing. It was horribly slippery in there. Sam could hardly stay upright when we were fishing Dad out. We used the long hook, and a fork, because we didn’t want to get right into the middle. I pulled fro
m the side, and Sam pushed him from the pit. We told all that to your policeman.’ The boy was entering into the ghoulish discussion with more interest now; in spite of his qualms, it was a relief to talk about it at last.

  ‘I’m glad I missed that. I was in the house with Mum. I think I must have missed quite a lot.’

  ‘But you found him. You’re the chief witness. We must have obliterated all the clues when we dragged him out.’

  ‘So – we’re going round in circles. Could it still have been Sam, or not? Never mind his character or motives – could he physically have managed it? And there’s one other thing. Sam’s got Daddy’s gun. Except he seems to have lost it, or hidden it.’ She told her brother how she’d discovered the gun was missing, and how apparently unconcerned Sam had been.

  Roddy could make little of this information. ‘This is a very nasty conversation. I wish we could talk about something else.’

  ‘At least I can’t smell muck any more. Can you?’

  ‘No more than usual. I sometimes think I’ll be able to smell it for the rest of my life.’

  Lilah relented. ‘All right, we won’t talk about it any more – but it’s not finished, you know. Not by a long way.’

  ‘It’s finished for me. Sam’s our friend. More than a friend. If he married Mum, we could carry on pretty much the same as before. Did you think of that?’

  Now it was Lilah’s turn to be shocked. Her talk with Miranda came back to her – the hints of adultery and Miranda’s reluctance to cast Sam as a villain, even if he was technically guilty. The idea of her mother and Sam having an attachment was not totally new to her, but she had avoided facing it for most of her grown-up life. Her mind ran a review of all the instances when the two had been together – firstly over the past few weeks, and then back for as many years as she could remember. She came up with very little that would confirm the suggestion. Except—

  There had been an afternoon when Guy was ploughing, and hadn’t been back for lunch. Lilah had come home early from school because snow was forecast, and the buses had been summoned to deliver the outlying pupils home before it could block the roads. She had gone straight to see the new lambs in the barn. Sam had been nowhere in sight, and a ewe was delivering unattended. She had shouted for him, and getting no response, had supervised the birth herself. Only later – perhaps fifteen minutes later – had he come sauntering into the barn, an odd look on his face.