by Simon Brett
Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures,
And of so easy and so plain a stop
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wavering multitude,
Can play upon it!
“I’m sorry. I don’t know the reference.”
“No reason why you should. I think it’s probably too obscure to crop up in the Times crossword. The Bard, inevitably. Henry IV, Part 2. The Induction. “Enter RUMOUR, painted full of tongues.” I’m not sure that any of the good folk of Weldisham are actually ‘painted full of tongues’, but they’re nonetheless very skilled in the dissemination of vile rumour.”
“Ah.” There was a silence. Graham Forbes took another swig of whisky, before Carole asked, “So was there something you wanted to say about the bones?”
“Sorry?”
“Well, you raised the subject.”
“Yes. Of course I did. No, I only wanted to say, so sorry, you have my sympathy. It must have been a horrible experience for you.”
“It has been…surprisingly unsettling.”
“I don’t think you should be surprised at all that you’ve been unsettled. Ghastly for you, coming upon that little cache by pure chance. Or at least I assume it was by pure chance…”
“Hm?”
“Well, you hadn’t set out looking for bones, had you?”
“Hardly.” She gave him a strange look, until she realized he was joking.
“I’m sorry, Carole,” he chuckled. “You get plenty of odd types walking on the Downs. Archaeologists, people with metal detectors…Some of them probably are looking for bones.”
“Well, I can assure you I wasn’t.”
“No. I’m sure you weren’t.” Graham Forbes looked at his watch, swilled down the remains of his whisky and said, “Must be off. Lunchtime. It’s been such a pleasure to meet you, Carole.”
“You too.” She meant it.
“I’d love you to come and meet my wife, Irene, at some point. As I say, we’re just down the lane. Warren Lodge. We always give a little dinner party Friday nights. Maybe we could inveigle you along to one of them?”
“I’d like that very much.” Carole was slightly surprised by the offer, but certainly not averse to the idea. Her Fethering social circle was narrow and not wildly interesting. It would be a pleasure to meet some new people, particularly if they were all as charming and cultured as Graham Forbes.
They exchanged phone numbers and he left for his lunch. Carole readdressed her crossword. Instantly she got her first solution.
The clue was: “A sailor’s in brass, for example, and bony (10).”
She wrote in METATARSAL.
∨ Death on the Downs ∧
Nine
Jude had been to the Lutteridges’ house before, and the first time she had seen its interior she had been impressed by how ‘finished’ everything was. All the paintwork gleamed like new, the carpets might have been laid the day before, the furniture just delivered from the showroom. Jude, whose own style of decor was ‘junk-shop casual’, was amazed how anyone could keep a home looking like that. She could understand that a museum might maintain such standards, but couldn’t equate it to an environment in which people actually lived. When she first went there, the fantasy grew within her that somewhere in the house was a glory hole, a haven of dusty squalor into which were tumbled all those miscellaneous objects which lend character to the average dwelling. But the more time she spent with the Lutteridges, the more that fantasy dwindled. There was no glory hole; the house was perfect throughout.
Gillie Lutteridge also looked as if she had stepped straight out of a brochure. Jude had worked out, from hints and date references in conversation, that Tamsin’s mother must be in her late forties, but the smoothness of her made-up face and the immaculate shaping of her blonded hair could have placed her anywhere between thirty and fifty.
She didn’t seem to possess any ordinary clothes, like most people did. Her garments came straight out of the brochure too – and a pretty up-market brochure at that. She wore them in a way that defied creasing. If she hadn’t seen it happening with her own eyes, Jude would have sworn Gillie Lutteridge never sat down.
That morning, she was wearing a loose ash-grey cashmere sweater, black and white tweed trousers with ruler-edge creases and gleaming black shoes with gold buckles.
In spite of her deterrently flawless exterior, Jude got on very well with Tamsin’s mother. Gillie was sensitive, compassionate, warm; she possessed all of the qualities that her appearance seemed to make unlikely. And, from the moment it first manifested itself, she had been deeply anxious about her daughter’s illness.
But that Monday morning she seemed no more anxious than she had been when Tamsin disappeared from the family house four months previously. So unworried did Gillie Lutteridge seem that Jude wondered whether she had actually heard the rumours about the bones in South Welling Barn. Having no skills in prevarication, that was the first thing Jude asked her about.
“Yes, I heard,” Gillie replied. “But that’s just village gossip. I’m sure the bones have nothing to do with Tamsin. Tamsin’s not dead.”
The words were spoken with firmness and a degree of calm. But was that just the desperate resolution of a mother unable to believe her child was no longer alive?
“Still, it must be hurtful for you even to hear people make the suggestion.”
Gillie Lutteridge shrugged her perfectly tailored shoulders. “People are not very bright – certainly not here in Weldisham,” she said. “They tend to go for the obvious. A dead body’s found. A girl’s missing. If you haven’t got much imagination, then you assume the two must be related.”
“Have the police talked to you?”
“Yes. Nice young man, Lennie Baylis. I’ve often seen him round the village. I think he even used to live here. Anyway, he came. He was very reassuring.”
“What, you mean they’ve identified the bones and they definitely know they’re not Tamsin’s?”
“No. Apparently that’ll take a bit longer. The…” For a moment her equilibrium was shaken by the thought of what she was saying. “The…remains are at the police laboratories. But Lennie said there was nothing so far to connect them with Tamsin. There was no reason for us to panic.”
“It looks as if panicking is the last thing you’re doing.”
“I’m very optimistic by nature, Jude. I’m positive Tamsin’s still alive. Miles, though…Miles is taking it rather hard.” Gillie Lutteridge sank into an irreproachable armchair, giving for the first time some hint of the strain that she was under. “Miles sees this as kind of…the end of a process.”
“What process?”
“The process that began with Tamsin’s illness. That hit him very hard. Everything had always gone well for us. We’d been fortunate. Tamsin had always done well…school, university, walked straight into her job in magazine publishing. When she got ill, it was the first reverse in her life, in our lives too, I suppose. Miles couldn’t really cope with the idea. He saw it as a reproach, almost as if it was his fault.”
“Of course, he never really believed in Tamsin’s illness, did he?”
“No, he thought it was psychosomatic, that she was malingering. Everything’s very black and white for Miles.”
“And very black at the moment?”
Gillie nodded. “It’s dreadful to see him like this. He’s always been so positive. He’s not gone into work today. The weekend was dreadful. Ever since Lennie Baylis told us about what had been found in South Welling Barn, Miles has just been twitching round the house, waiting for the phone to ring.”
“Is he here now?”
“In the garden. Pretending to be busy. He won’t stay out there long.”
As if to prove her point, Miles Lutteridge appeared in the doorway. He looked at Jude with undisguised disappointment. “Oh, it’s you.”
The husband manifested the same brochure-like quality
as his house and his wife. He was expensively dressed in a pale lilac jumper with a designer logo which hid the designer logo on the cream polo shirt he wore underneath. The creases in his beige trousers were as sharp as his wife’s and his brown slip-on shoes carried the same shine.
The only things that would have kept him out of a leisurewear catalogue were his thinning hair on top and the expression of grey anxiety on his face.
“Good morning, Miles,” said Jude.
She knew he didn’t like her – or perhaps just didn’t trust her. She was too forcible a reminder of his daughter’s illness, the very existence of which he sought to deny. He had met her once or twice when she’d come up for exploratory chats with Tamsin and hadn’t disguised the fact that he thought her only one step away from charlatanism.
“I’m very sorry to hear about the rumours going round the village,” Jude continued. “I’m sure it’s nothing to do with Tamsin.”
“What do you know about it?” Miles Lutteridge demanded brusquely. In their previous encounters he’d always managed to stay the right side of politeness. Worry was taking its toll on his civility.
“I don’t know anything for certain,” Jude replied evenly. “I just think it very unlikely that Tamsin would have stayed around this area.”
“Do you mean you know where she did go?” The glint in his eye revealed both hope and suspicion. “I bet she went off with one of your lot.”
“By ‘my lot’, do you mean some alternative therapist who was trying to help her with her illness?”
“If ‘alternative therapist’ is what you want to call it, yes. I mean some New Age quack doctor who took my daughter for everything she was worth by giving her false hopes he’d find her a cure.”
“Are you talking about someone specific?” asked Jude.
But Gillie decided the conversation had become too adversarial for polite society. “Miles,” she intervened, “it’ll be all right, I promise.”
“How can you make promises like that? What meaning do they have? You aren’t a god. You can’t bring Tamsin back to life, Gillie.” He was getting very overwrought now. Tears glinted in his eyes.
“I don’t need to bring her back to life. She is still alive.”
“Can you give me any proof of that?” he bellowed.
There was a long silence while husband and wife held each other’s gaze. Gillie seemed about to say something, but decided against it. She looked down and shook her head.
“See!” He spat the word out. “Why does it happen to my daughter? First she gets some phoney illness. Then she starts mixing with alternative therapists.” He loaded the words with contempt. “And now she’s probably dead!”
“Miles, she isn’t!”
But he’d gone. Afraid to have his tears witnessed, Miles Lutteridge had stormed out of the room.
Jude talked to Gillie for a while, but little new was said. The mother retained her conviction her daughter was alive; the father was convinced she was dead. And all Jude was aware of was how much this new situation had driven a wedge into their marriage. While everything had been going well, Miles and Gillie Lutteridge seemed to have been fine. Tamsin’s illness made the first crack in their unity, pointing up the differences between them – Gillie’s belief in the illness and her search for a cure, Miles’s disbelief and desire to pretend it wasn’t happening. And the discovery of the bones at South Welling Barn had made that rift wider still.
∨ Death on the Downs ∧
Ten
Having cracked that first clue, Carole’s mind moved up a gear and she had nearly completed the Times crossword by the time Jude joined her in the Hare and Hounds. They ordered cottage pie and yes, both did have a glass of white wine.
“Just the one,” said Carole automatically. “Driving.” Then she asked about her Mend’s visit to the Lutteridges.
“Odd. Very odd.” Jude screwed up the skin around her large brown eyes. “Miles was in a terrible state of panic, but Gillie seemed unnaturally calm.”
“Is she normally a calm person?”
“From the outside, yes. If you didn’t know her, you’d have no idea what she’s thinking. But over the time I spent with her and Tamsin, I did get to know her quite well, and she’s not calm – at least not where her daughter’s concerned. But this morning she kept saying she knew Tamsin was all right.”
“Positive thinking.”
“Maybe it’s just that. I kept wondering whether maybe she was telling the truth. She knows that Tamsin’s all right.”
“But if she did know that, surely she’d tell her husband? If he’s in as bad a state as you say.”
“Yes. She would. Gillie’s always been very supportive to Miles. She wouldn’t let him suffer unnecessarily.” Jude took a thoughtful sip of wine. “That’s what’s so odd about it.”
Their cottage pies arrived, each neat in its oval earthenware dish on a wooden platter. Another earthenware dish contained carefully apportioned vegetables, exactly the same number for each of them. The food looked fine. But the gloss was taken off it by the fact that Carole knew identical portions were being served at the same moment in every one of the Home Hostelries chain.
“Tell me more about these bones,” said Jude, as they started to eat.
“I’ve told you most of it. There were just these recognizably human bones in two fertilizer bags.”
“But you didn’t get any feeling how old they were?”
“I’m not a forensic pathologist, Jude.”
“No, but…I was just thinking…Tamsin’s been missing for four months. Left her parents’ house on the night of Hallowe’en. I remember, because at one stage Miles thought that might have some significance.”
“Why?”
“He’s very confused about complementary medicine. He assumed it had something to do with witchcraft.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, say Tamsin was abducted and murdered that very evening…which is the first possible time she could have been…would there have been time since then for the bones to get as clean as you said they were?”
“Depends where they were left. Out in the open on the Downs…there are plenty of predators who’d pick all the flesh off them.”
“But if the body had been left in the open, someone would have seen it, surely?”
“Possibly not. I’m sure there are lots of secret places round here…copses, streams, old chalk pits. I should think it’d be easy enough to hide a body if you set your mind to it. I don’t know, though…We don’t really have enough information.”
As if putting a full stop to the conversation, Carole took a large spoonful of cottage pie.
“No. But think about it,” Jude persisted. “The world is full of missing persons – vagrants, tramps, travellers…The bones could belong to any one of them. And yet everyone’s assuming they’re Tkmsin’s.”
“Village mentality for you.”
“I suppose so. And until Tamsin is actually found alive – or until the police prove the bones belong to someone else – they’ll go on thinking it’s her.” Jude speared a head of Home Hostelries broccoli and looked at it pensively. “I think I’d better find Tamsin.”
“Where would you start looking?”
“I know some of the people she might have contacted.”
“What kind of people?”
“Miles Lutteridge and a lot of other blinkered locals would probably call them ‘New Age quack doctors’.”
“Ah.” Carole didn’t like to admit that she was probably one of the ‘other blinkered locals’. And what would you call them?”
“I’d call them ‘alternative therapists’. And some of them are good, and some of them are not very good, but none of them is deliberately trying to do harm. They’re trying to help people…and very often they succeed. Anyway, I’ll make some enquiries.” And she popped the piece of broccoli into her mouth.
“I think you should market it as one of the murder villages of the South Downs.”
Both w
omen turned at the sound of the loud voice from near the bar. Indeed, most of the customers in the pub stopped talking and turned towards the sound.
The man who had spoken did not seem averse to being the centre of attention. His face was thin, its skin apparently drawn towards the point of a sharp nose. Probably in his forties, with wild hair that hadn’t seen a brush – or shampoo – since he got up that morning, he wore a black beret and a long cracked leather coat of the style favoured by Gestapo officers in British war movies. His thin legs in faded jeans ended in large laceless boots which splayed out from his ankles. The glass in his hand looked as though it contained gin and tonic. He was nominally in conversation with Will Maples, who had appeared behind the bar, but clearly his observations were meant for the whole assembled company.
“No, it’s good marketing, Will. Lot of people with ghoulish tastes around these days. Look at the way horror movies sell. You want to get some literature out to market this place. I’ll write it for you, give it that professional gloss – for the right money. You know horror’s my speciality. Eat your heart out, Stephen King. You haven’t begun to see nasty until you’ve read my stuff.
“So what should I write for you, Will? ‘Come to the Hare and Hounds in Weldisham, the village of murder. Sit in the quaint bar, where the local serial killer supped his foaming pint while he targeted his next victim.’”
The man giggled.
“Don’t be silly, Brian.” The manager’s manner was embarrassed, as if he wanted to ignore the speaker, but for some reason couldn’t. His body language was trying to draw him away, but the man called Brian held him.
“We’re not talking about serial killers. We don’t know there’s even been one murder yet.”
“Are you telling me that people who die natural deaths are in the habit of neatly stacking up their own bones in fertilizer bags?”
Though the man called Brian was speaking as loudly as ever, conversations around the pub had started up again. There was an air of that embarrassment that people often manifest in the presence of the mentally ill. The man didn’t seem completely sane. Despite the jocularity of his manner, there was an edginess to him, a sense that his mood could shift very suddenly.