The Sting of Death

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘Can’t help you there,’ shrugged Roma.

  ‘I know!’ Helen squatted down low in the long grass just inside the field beyond the garden. ‘These grass heads are gorgeous when you see them up close. And it’s long over there too, by the hives.’

  ‘Careful!’ Roma teased. ‘Don’t get too close.’

  Helen threw her a savage look. ‘It’s not something to joke about,’ she spat. ‘It’d serve you right if you got stung to death yourself, one of these days.’

  ‘Well I won’t. You can bet everything you’ve got on that.’

  ‘I probably can, too,’ Helen glowered. ‘But that’s my shot, all the same.’ She eyed the hives. ‘I probably need to be about twenty feet away.’ Bravely she covered the distance, leaving Roma to watch in amusement. She refused to acknowledge to herself that the bees were always tetchy in August, with their honey stores to protect and the atavistic awareness of the impending end of the summer. The hive-robbing wasps wouldn’t have improved things, either. There was, in short, a fair chance that her sister would get stung if she approached too closely – especially if she was wearing any sort of perfume.

  But all was well. Lying on her stomach, the camera held awkwardly in front of her, Helen took her time in framing her shots. At last she returned triumphant. ‘Brilliant!’ she enthused. ‘There was even a butterfly in a couple of them.’

  ‘I should charge you a fee for using my props,’ said Roma sourly.

  ‘I had a letter from Penn,’ Helen began, over the salads. “She seems worried about Justine.’ Helen had promised herself that she would not be intimidated by Roma’s sensitive areas. Where other people tiptoed around her and obeyed unspoken taboos, Helen steeled herself and plunged in. Having survived the bees, her courage levels had risen. Roma might be her big sister, argumentative and irritable, but she seldom turned the full force of her rage or sarcasm onto Helen.

  ‘Oh, yes. Nobody seems to know where Justine is. Penn even got me worried about it for a few minutes. But really, I think it’s a fuss about nothing. If there’d been some sort of disaster, we’d have heard about it by now. The thoughtless creature has just gone off without telling anyone. To be perfectly honest …’ she paused, apparently having second thoughts. ‘Well, Penn seems to have been seeing an awful lot of Justine. I wondered whether she felt she needed a bit of space.’

  Helen sifted this jumble thoughtfully, overlooking the implied slight against her own daughter. ‘I’m surprised you think you know anything about your daughter’s motives. It’s at least five years now, isn’t it? She’s probably a completely different person by this time.’

  ‘Have you seen her?’ The question was abrupt.

  ‘Once. She came to us for a weekend with Penn, a couple of years ago. Her hair was so short, it was like an animal’s coat. She looked very strange. But Penn tells me it’s long again now.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Roma uttered, as if quite uninterested.

  ‘So you’re not bothered that she’s gone missing?’

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference to me, does it? She’s been dead to me for years anyway.’

  ‘Dead? Do you think she’s dead?’

  Laurie, at the end of the table, cleared his throat. ‘She doesn’t really mean that,’ he said softly, as if the suggestion upset him. ‘She’s more worried than she’ll admit.’ He twinkled fondly at his wife, but she did not seem inclined to twinkle back.

  ‘Don’t speak for me, please,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone how you were feeling.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he put up his hands defensively. ‘You’re quite right.’

  ‘But are you worried or aren’t you?’ Helen demanded. ‘Why haven’t you gone to the police? Why’s it all been left for Penn to investigate?’

  ‘It hasn’t. There’s a chap doing it for us.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It sounds a bit odd, I suppose. He’s married to Karen, which is a coincidence, because I happen to know him as well.’

  ‘Karen? You mean Sebastian’s niece?’

  ‘The very one. I imagine you knew her as a child. So it’s all in the family.’

  Helen went dreamy for a moment. ‘I haven’t seen Karen for – must be twenty years.’

  ‘Well, go and see her now, why don’t you? She lives in North Staverton, this side of Bradbourne. It’s only about six miles. She’s bound to be there. She’s got two small children.’

  ‘No,’ Helen decided. ‘I won’t go now. But I’m glad I’ve caught up with what’s going on. I hate feeling left out.’

  ‘Nothing’s going on,’ Roma said irritably. ‘It’s typical of Justine, getting everyone running round in circles. She always was thoughtless.’

  ‘Poor Justine,’ Helen muttered. ‘She could never do anything right, could she.’

  ‘She was perverse. She deliberately went against me, every chance she got. It was so stupid. That’s what I can’t get over. Like a brainless sheep, insisting on getting tangled in the densest brambles, when there’s a perfectly good path right beside it. That’s just how I see Justine – ramming her head into bramble thickets, just because I told her not to.’

  ‘She was just a normal teenager,’ said Helen quietly. ‘You over-reacted at every little thing. You made her far worse. All that foolishness about her turning out like our poor Uncle Angus. Either that or Carlos. You wished bad things on her with your nonsense. You made it happen.’

  ‘I lost interest,’ said Roma brutally. ‘I got terribly terribly bored by it.’

  ‘Don’t fool yourself,’ Helen said. ‘It certainly wasn’t boredom that caused all the trouble. What’s more, the way I heard it, it wasn’t even you who made the break in the end.’

  Roma scowled and said nothing to that. Helen began again on a lighter note. ‘So what happens now? I don’t think Penn’s going to let it drop. It’s not particularly common for a woman of twenty-six to go off without telling anybody.’

  ‘It’s a lot less common for her to be abducted and murdered,’ Roma flashed back.

  ‘Well, I hope for Penn’s sake that she shows up soon. My dear daughter doesn’t cope very well with mysteries. She gets scared.’

  ‘She didn’t strike me as scared when she came to see us last week. She seemed to be on rather good form, actually.’

  ‘Well, she would with you,’ said Helen. ‘Not that you’d notice if she was having a breakdown in the middle of your patio. You’ve never been aware of how anybody was feeling.’

  ‘Phooey,’ said Roma, with finality.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Karen was watching out for them when they got back with Mr French, and came into the office with Timmy on her hip as they were unloading their cargo into the cool room next door. ‘You’ve got to go out again,’ she said urgently. ‘I’ve got the name and address here.’

  ‘What? Another removal?’ Drew still used some of the jargon of the funeral directing business, despite his attempts to recreate it in a more approachable and informal fashion. ‘Someone in a hurry?’

  ‘It all sounds a bit messy,’ she grimaced. ‘It’s a middle-aged woman who’s been recovering from an operation at her daughter’s …’

  ‘If she’s recently had surgery there’ll have to be a post mortem,’ Drew interrupted.

  ‘No, it seems there won’t be,’ Karen went on. ‘The operation was a month ago and she’d been making very poor progress. The doctor’s signed her up, so she’s all clear for you.’

  ‘Then what’s messy about it?’

  ‘I’m not sure. The daughter was a bit coy.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll just be the usual,’ Maggs breezed. ‘People worry about every tiny leak. We’ll cope.’ She grinned at Drew. ‘Fancy – two in one day and it’s not even lunchtime.’

  ‘Take the mobile,’ Karen told them. ‘I’m going out this afternoon. I’ll switch the phone through before I go.’ She turned to go back to the house. ‘Roma Millan phoned as well,’ she remembered. ‘She wants you to pop round and see her sometime. Thi
s evening, for preference.’ There was a wistful note in her voice. It had been a long time since she’d been free to ‘pop round’ to anything with any kind of spontaneity.

  Drew and Maggs completed the removal without incident and Maggs went to work in the cool room, washing the body and dressing it in the smart outfit provided. Drew made phone calls to the doctor and the family, making sure the paperwork was in order. ‘Unusual,’ he remarked, ‘issuing the certificate so easily.’ But he spoke lightly, well aware of his role in the complex machinations involved in disposing of a human body. Burial was easier, with fewer forms to complete, and a generally more relaxed attitude. Even so, a doctor was inviting raised eyebrows by certifying a death as non-suspicious in these circumstances.

  ‘The family desperately wanted to avoid a post mortem,’ this practitioner now told Drew. ‘And it’s all perfectly kosher. I’ve seen the woman every day for weeks and it was obvious she wasn’t going to recover.’

  Drew’s next task was to make the firm point to both families involved in the impending funerals that since he and Maggs were not equipped for embalming, the funerals would have to take place within three days. He established dates and times with them, both burials taking place on the same day. The sense of being busily occupied, even slightly pressured, was gratifying. The sporadic income from Peaceful Repose Funerals, plus even more sporadic engagements as an officiant at non-religious cremations, meant that Drew and his family were forced to live very simply. The prospect of over a thousand pounds coming in for what was essentially a single day’s work, lifted his spirits. They’d be able to take the kids out for a day, buy Stephanie some new shoes, and stock up the freezer with some meat.

  He didn’t give Roma or Justine or Karen’s cousin Penn a thought until late afternoon. He’d gone out into the burial field to mark out the sites for the two new interments. The next morning, if it didn’t rain, he could make a start on the digging. Since his gravedigger had let him down, over a year earlier, he’d done the job himself, manually. The Peaceful Repose style was to keep graves as shallow as was practicable, but it was still an onerous job. Two in one day would leave him with a stiff back. Once in a while, members of the dead person’s family would do it themselves, but Drew was still required to advise and assist.

  Preparing for a funeral always gave him a buzz, even after years in the job. Unlike any other rite of passage, it gave no opportunity for second chances. Even a wedding could be done again if disaster struck. But a funeral only happened once, or so you could safely assume. It absolutely had to be given every chance of success. Drew always felt an obligation to give a perfect service. This meant attending to the details, even in the simple back-to-basics package that he offered his customers. The body had to be respectably contained, whether in coffin, shroud or willow basket. The procession from the cool room to the graveside had to be dignified and orderly. The lowering into the grave had to avoid clumsiness. Whatever words or prayers or music the family might choose to accompany the burial had to be respected. Drew and Maggs had sometimes been forced to bite back giggles, and avoid each other’s eye, at some of the more mawkish offerings at this stage, but they’d never disgraced themselves. He knew he could seem old-fashioned and slightly pompous in his insistence on the necessity for respect, but his worst nightmares all involved being caught out in frivolity during a burial.

  It was the bee that reminded him of Roma. As he bent to pull away a clump of overlong grass from the spot he’d chosen for Mr French’s grave, his fingers must have closed on a bee. The result was a painful sting, just below the first joint of his right forefinger. He could see the barb still in his flesh, with no sign of the offending insect, even though he was sure a bee always died after stinging somebody. Pulling out the sting, he expected the pain to subside, but instead it seemed to get worse. Red hot and acute, it felt much sharper than he remembered from previous experiences.

  He went back to the house and presented himself to Karen. ‘I’ve been stung,’ he whined. ‘It really hurts. What’re you supposed to put on bee stings?’

  ‘Are you sure it was a bee?’

  ‘Not really. It must have been quite small.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to ask your bee lady, won’t you? She’s probably got some patent remedy.’ Her lack of sympathy was characteristic. She was generally brisk about illnesses and ailments, apparently acting on the premise that the less attention you accorded them, the quicker they went away.

  ‘Roma? I forgot – she wants to see me. Should I go now, do you think? Maggs can cope without me for half an hour, till she goes home.’

  ‘What about supper?’ Karen did her best to maintain regular meals, resisting the growing tendency to let mealtimes move unpredictably across the day. But August was a sloppy month, especially to a former teacher. Drew didn’t think he’d be missing very much if supper went ahead without him.

  ‘I’m not sure how long I’ll be,’ he said.

  Karen shrugged. ‘We’ll just have some cheese and salad then. You can help yourself when you get back.’

  ‘Look! It’s going all red,’ he noticed. ‘Do you think it was one of those killer bees you hear about?’

  ‘No such thing,’ she scoffed. ‘That’s just an urban myth.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ he said, unconvinced.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about your brother Conrad?’ Laurie murmured smoothly, barely changing his tone, as he sat with Roma in the lounge, the patio doors open to the sweet-smelling garden.

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’ she stared at him wildly, her thick grey hair seeming to crackle with the energy of her astonishment.

  ‘He was stung to death by bees. Don’t you ever think about him?’

  ‘He was a brat,’ Roma said shortly. ‘I was actually quite pleased to be rid of him.’

  ‘Roma!’ For the first time, she saw horror and disgust on his face at something she’d said, and a sour disappointment seeped through her.

  ‘It’s true,’ she insisted. ‘I was six. I didn’t think the death of a child was anything to get so worked up about. Children didn’t seem particularly special to me at the time. Still don’t, I suppose, in a lot of cases, though I’ve got enough social conditioning now to understand a bit more about how people feel when their child dies. Listen,’ she said fiercely, pushing her face close to his. ‘Don’t you go judging me by some mindless tabloid morality. I hoped you’d be able to keep an open mind, to take me as I am, however deviant the rest of the world might think me. I hoped you’d be an ally.’

  He looked at her boldly, stalwart in the teeth of her rage. ‘Roma, you know I am completely your ally. But the fact remains you’re a creature from a different world to me. If I’m sometimes slow to react as you want, it’s because I can’t always keep up with you. It’s my failing, not yours. But what about your parents? They must have been shattered.’

  ‘Thank Christ you didn’t say devastated,’ she applauded, with a brief smile. ‘Yes, of course they were. They felt and behaved very much as you’d expect. And I was angry and jealous and – oh, furious. It’s always been the first emotion I reach for at times of crisis. I almost burst with it. But …’ she thrust her face at him again, ‘—I did not feel guilty. Contrary to what you might be deep down suspecting, I didn’t push the little fool into the hive. I actually wished I had, because they got rid of the dog, and I loved him considerably more than I loved little Conrad.’

  Laurie slowly closed his eyes. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Don’t say anything. It’s not worth the effort. It happened fifty-three years ago, if anybody’s counting. And until today, I don’t think I’ve thought about Conrad for at least a year. Probably a lot longer.’

  ‘So there’s no significance to the fact that you now keep bees?’ he asked. ‘I mean, it’s interesting psychologically, don’t you think?’

  ‘I realise you got all this from Helen,’ she said calmly. ‘And she will have told you how both our
parents would go berserk if a bee ever came into the house. She might not have mentioned that I always liked them, even before Conrad died. The people next door kept them, and I would lie in the grass beside the hive and watch them going in and out. They got rid of them, of course, as well as the wretched dog. I promised myself that I’d keep my own one day. It took a long time to get there, but I did. Satisfied?’

  ‘Perfectly. It’s rather a happy ending, in a way,’ he said, emolliently.

  Drew’s finger was still sore when he reached Pitcombe and parked beside Roma’s garden wall. Her cottage was a short way out of the village, surrounded by fields. All was quiet as Drew walked up the front path. It was a warm evening, with the heavy languor of high summer that seemed to occur more in memory than reality. Perhaps because it was rare and unexpected, he sensed an undercurrent. Such humidity surely presaged a storm before long? The very silence carried unsettling suggestions.

  In response to the doorbell, Roma appeared around the side of the house, and led him back into the lounge through the french windows. Laurie was comfortably settled in a soft chair and Drew hurriedly begged him not to get up. The two men knew each other only slightly. Drew imagined, rather to his surprise, that there was a glint of relief in Laurie’s eyes at his appearance.

  ‘I’ve been stung,’ Drew began, his finger still tingling. ‘It really hurt.’

  Roma glanced at the proffered finger. ‘It always hurts more if it’s close to a joint,’ she said. ‘It’ll soon be better.’

  Drew stifled a sigh. Women these days could be heartless creatures. ‘Karen says you wanted to talk to me,’ he said.

  ‘We had a call from the police,’ Laurie said quickly. ‘We weren’t expecting that.’ The reproach was unmistakable.

  Drew didn’t reply, but looked at Roma for elaboration. She squinted up at him from her chair. She wore a very low sun-top, her skin tanned but wrinkled. ‘Sit down,’ she said, nodding at the settee. ‘I’ll get us some nibbles in a minute.’