Untimely Graves

by Marjorie Eccles

  The young woman police officer who said she’d been trained in bereavement counselling, coming with John Riach to tell her what had happened, had accepted her dry-eyed reception of the news without surprise. It was shock, she told Hannah, she would cry later, and advised her not to resist it. But she hadn’t cried. Couldn’t.

  WPC Matthews, a big, clumsy, well-meaning young woman who said her name was Tracey, had offered to stay the night with her. However, the thought of a stranger in her home horrified Hannah, even someone as kind and understanding as Tracey was, despite appearances to the contrary.

  She picked up the phone and, without having to look up the number, tapped it out from memory.

  For nearly three years, two of them spent in the wastes of Antarctica – cold, white, empty, boring and windy, surrounded by miles of frozen sea – Sam had kept a picture of Hannah in his mind. He had no photographs, had needed none, to remind him. Slender, pliant, with soft, thick dark hair to her shoulders. Moving like a dancer, with a languid grace, a soft, slow smile that moved from her lips to light her big, brown eyes.

  But now … when Sam saw her, he was utterly shocked, wrenched with pity. She looked at least ten years older and, yes – bereft was the word. Yet he knew this was unlikely to be because of her husband. She was, by accident or design, wearing black. Long-sleeved and high-necked as were all her clothes, which he knew she made herself, and one of her soft, chiffon scarves. Her thick creamy skin looked dull and had lost its elasticity. Naturally slender, she was as painfully thin now as an anorexic model.

  She closed the door behind him and without words, he opened his arms. She went into them as if coming home, and he kissed her, breathing in the expensive scent he remembered so well. Her body moulded itself to him, feeling light and insubstantial, her arms tightened, her mouth opened hungrily under his, but he drew away gently, feeling strangely reluctant. ‘Not yet, Hannah.’

  ‘Not yet?’

  ‘He’s barely cold.’

  She shrank as if he’d doused her with icy water. ‘You think we should show respect for him?’

  ‘I think we should be careful, that’s all.’ He reached out his hand and gently undid the delicate, filmy material draped around her neck. ‘My God, it hadn’t stopped, had it?’

  Her hand flew to her throat, fluttered like a bird over the livid bruise, then dropped to her side. ‘It has now,’ she said flatly, retrieving the ends of the scarf and retying it.

  His pulses beat. ‘Why wouldn’t you leave him, Hannah? There was no reason for you to stay, with Paul grown up.’

  ‘I don’t know. Where would I have gone? How could I have lived? And remember, I am still a Catholic.’ She looked away from him. ‘Or maybe I couldn’t quite forget he was my child’s father, after all, that I had loved him, once.’

  Astonished as he was by the insight of this last, he thought sadly that the first reasons were more likely to have applied, as far as Hannah was concerned. Wetherby had provided her with a comfortable, even luxurious, home. He had money, over and above what he earned, both of which, Sam had to admit, were very important to Hannah, and whatever else his faults, he had been generous. But perhaps more to the point, she had never had any personal ambitions, unlike other women of her age who had careers, or at any rate aspirations to have one after their families were off their hands. Hannah had never done a day’s paid work outside the home in her life. He’d thought about this a lot while he was away, and understood a good deal more about her now than he had then.

  ‘The police will be here any moment. Will you stay with me? I don’t know how to face them. Am I supposed to show grief? I can’t feel it.’

  The door bell rang. Colour flew to her face, then receded, leaving her deathly pale. ‘I’m not ready for this,’ she cried in a panic. ‘Please help me – and Sam, don’t say anything about – don’ t say anything, please?’

  He had never had any intentions of referring to their one-time relationship. The fewer people who knew, the better. He was going to have enough trouble as it was, trying to break it to Hannah that, especially in view of what had happened, all must be over between them.

  After all, they weren’t what Hannah had expected, or at least the woman, Inspector Moon, wasn’t. They weren’t frightening, or accusing. Moon had a brisk manner, controlled in a way that suggested to Hannah she’d had to work at it, that she was naturally more spontaneous. Unlike Hannah herself, she looked very clear as to what she wanted from life, as if her expectations were high and she’d every intention of seeing them fulfilled. She frightened Hannah rather more than the quiet, authoritative man who was her superior. She was well dressed, in an olive-brown trouser suit, a colour chosen expressly to set off that lovely, thick, coppery, expensively styled hair. Beautiful teeth, noticed Hannah, who was always aware of that in other people, afraid it would be noticed when she smiled that she’d had to have one of her own front ones replaced.

  Hannah introduced Sam, and Sam asked if they minded if he stayed, while at the same time entrenching his big frame solidly and immovably into his chair. ‘Not if Mrs Wetherby doesn’t.’ Inspector Moon’s bright hazel eyes travelled from one to the other, taking in his determined chin and reddish blond hair, contrasting him with Hannah’s thin, dark tenseness. He was looking steadfastly at the carpet, as if determined not to interfere.

  They didn’t stay long, in the event. There was really nothing she could tell them, Hannah said tightly. Of course she couldn’t think of anyone her husband regarded as an enemy, but then, he wasn’t a man to show his emotions and he wouldn’t have confided in her even if he’d had any. She’d last seen him at breakfast. He sometimes came home to lunch, but today, he’d wanted to work on some papers for a meeting that afternoon and had decided to have a sandwich sent in to his office. She’d been at home here, all day, making costumes for the school’s production of The Beggar’s Opera. ‘The girl who’s playing Polly Peachum came during her lunch hour for a fitting. Oh, and John popped in, John Riach, he’s the Assistant Bursar.’

  Sam lifted his head and stared at her.

  ‘He walked across for some papers Charles had forgotten. He stayed and had a sandwich with me. Until Rosie came at one. Her fitting took about twenty minutes, I suppose. I was alone after that until John came back with your policewoman to – to tell me.’

  Suddenly, she exclaimed, hand to her mouth, ‘Paul! Oh God, I’ll have to tell Paul. How could I possibly have forgotten that?’

  ‘Who’s Paul, Mrs Wetherby?’

  ‘My son. He’s a cadet in the Marines.’ Her eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them rapidly away; her hand flew again to the knot of her scarf, then as if suddenly aware of the action, she withdrew it and twisted her hands tightly together on her lap.

  ‘We’ll get through to his commanding officer, if you like. It’ll be a comfort to you to have him home.’

  ‘I don’t see how that’ll be possible. He’s on some sort of training exercise in Belize at the moment.’

  ‘That won’t matter. They’ll give him compassionate leave.’ The superintendent spoke for the first time, and though the words were sympathetic, the quiet decisiveness of his voice suddenly made Hannah reverse her opinion of him. Perhaps he was the one she should be wary of.

  ‘No, I don’t want him here, not yet! There’s nothing he can do at the moment. I’d rather wait for the funeral. When – when will that be?’

  ‘It may be some time.’ The inspector explained the procedures – that there would have to be an inquest, which would be adjourned for the police to make further enquiries, that the coroner would not release the body for burial or cremation until they were completed.

  ‘There’s no need for him to come home,’ Hannah repeated. ‘I’ll contact his CO. Maybe they’ll let me speak to Paul. I’d like to tell him myself.’

  Well, it was her decision.

  Mayo was looking at a big, dark grey car parked on the drive outside the window. ‘Is that your Saab outside, Mr Leadbetter?’


  ‘No, I walked here. I’m staying with my aunt in Kelsey Road. I walked round when Mrs Wetherby telephoned with the news.’

  ‘It’s Charles’s car,’ Hannah said. ‘Your people said it could be brought back, so John Riach drove it round.’ She teased a fine thread on the hem of the scarf, which was patterned in soft greys and lilacs. Pretty but not a good choice, without enough colour against the black, draining her face of what little natural colour she possessed, Abigail thought judicially.

  Mayo was still looking at the Saab. ‘Did you share the car with your husband, Mrs Wetherby?’

  Her eyebrows lifted. ‘Me, drive Charles’s car? That’s the last thing he would have allowed! Anyway, I don’t drive. I walk into town, or take a taxi.’

  ‘We’re all chauvinists at heart, we men,’ said Mayo, who didn’t particularly care who drove his car, especially on long journeys. ‘Kelsey Road, you said, Mr Leadbetter? You’ll be Miss Lockett’s nephew, returned from the Antarctic?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, yes. How did you know?’

  ‘Oh, news travels fast in Lavenstock.’ Dorrie Lockett, he was thinking. The lady who was causing problems with the school’s new entrance. The nephew who’d written the letter. Probably insignificant, unrelated facts, but he filed them in his memory for future reference. He added, ‘For the record, where were you at twenty past one?’

  ‘Working in my aunt’s garden. It’s become a jungle while I’ve been away and I’m trying to clear it.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have heard the shot from there?’

  He shook his head. ‘Too far away It’s a ten-minute walk at least from the school.’

  ‘Of course.’ Mayo suddenly asked Hannah, ‘Do you – or did your husband – have a gun, Mrs Wetherby?’

  ‘A gun?’ She almost laughed, as if the idea was absurd. ‘Of course not!’

  Sam Leadbetter intervened. ‘What are you implying?’

  ‘Sam.’ It was Hannah who was being protective now. She put a hand on his arm, and then stated, almost as if convincing herself, ‘You’re saying Charles shot himself, aren’t you, Mr Mayo?’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. Not when he was shot in the back of the head.’

  A silence fell. ‘So he did have an enemy, after all,’ she said at last.

  ‘So it would seem. Or someone who needed him out of the way.’ He watched her take this without a flicker of emotion. ‘And what about you, Mr Leadbetter? Do you have a gun?’

  ‘No,’ Sam said shortly.

  Mayo paused before getting into the car as they left, looking back at the house. A brick-built 1950s detached, one of about a dozen similar ones on the steep, once-quiet Vanson Hill, off Tilbourne Road. Reasonably quiet, at least, before the hospital further down had been extended. Square and unadorned, postwar austerity style, built at a time when satisfying housing shortages was a first requirement, and imagination wasn’t, they’d nevertheless been desirable residences then, and still were, since most of them had good-sized gardens at the back, which allowed for extensions and improvements. They were set well back from the road at the front, the gardens endowed with now mature trees which gave them a spurious graciousness. The prices they fetched when one came on the market were astronomical, in view of their original cost. The Wetherbys had been lucky; the school had presumably bought this one years ago.

  He sat beside Abigail and she put the key in the ignition and waited. He seemed preoccupied and she knew better than to interrupt at such times.

  He was thinking of the room they had just left. For an artistic woman, said to be so apt with her needle, Hannah Wetherby had done little to enhance what was an exceptionally dull room, despite its being stuffed with expensive objects, unrelated and haphazard, as if a high price tag automatically guaranteed taste. Money had been spent, as if this were the prime objective, rather than comfort, or attractiveness, and it showed. Compulsive shopping? Compensating activity, who could tell?

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said at last.

  Abigail said nothing until she’d nudged the car out into the main road and into the stream of traffic. ‘She’s very nervous. Did you notice her fiddling all the time with that scarf she was wearing? And the long sleeves, the high neck?’

  ‘It’s a cold day.’

  ‘I’ll bet she wears them in summer, too.’ He looked at her. ‘I got used to noticing that sort of thing when I was with the DVU.’

  ‘You think Wetherby knocked her about?’

  ‘It’s not confined to the beer-swilling working classes you know!’

  ‘Yes, Abigail, I’m aware of that.’ Her unthinking, too-sharp retort earned her a raised-eyebrow glance, a warning not to go too far, not to take his tolerance too much for granted.

  She made an apologetic gesture, and sighed. ‘Yes, well. We all know about that, don’t we?’

  The first thing Abigail had noticed about Hannah Wetherby had been the wariness, like an animal who has learned not to trust human beings. The trapped look in her eyes that was all too familiar, one she’d learned to recognise from her stint with the Domestic Violence Unit, a few years ago.

  Why some men found it necessary to hit, or even torture, their wives, why women stayed with them until they were half-killed, or ran away then went back for more, was something to which Abigail, with her robust self-sufficiency, had never found an answer. It was one of the reasons she’d been glad to leave the unit behind, upset at the lack of understanding she’d felt in herself, at being unable to empathise with that sort of mentality. It demanded more of her than she was able to give: she could offer sympathy, and practical advice, but she could no more imagine what made these women endure a life of unremitting pain, violence and degradation than she could have endured it herself for one minute. If any man with whom she was in a relationship had raised his hand to her, just once, she’d have left him for good. She felt bad about her failure to comprehend, not only as a police officer, but as a human being, as another woman. They deserved more from her than she was able to give.

  Sometimes, of course, women did rebel. Picked up the bread knife and used it when a man slammed his fist, or his boot, into their stomach, or broke their jaw, or worse, much worse. Occasionally, they simply walked out. Or took a whole bottleful of sleeping pills and never woke up. Everyone has their cut-off point, for one reason or another. Even Hannah Wetherby? She’d denied that anybody at all could have hated her husband enough to shoot him dead. But for a moment there, Abigail had glimpsed something beneath the surface.

  She knew Mayo was thinking along the same lines, when he said, ‘She had a lot to lose by leaving him. Easy lifestyle. Nice house, status. Money.’

  And a lot to gain by having him dead. No more physical abuse, for one thing. And if there was money coming, an added reason. And she’d be free for a life with someone else.

  ‘Is there something going on there, do you think?’ he added, picking up her own thoughts again. ‘With Leadbetter?’

  ‘I’d be surprised if there wasri You could cut the vibes between them with a knife.’

  ‘Then we can assume they knew each other before he went away, unless it’s a relationship that’s developed bloody fast over the last few days.’

  ‘More likely one that’s flared up again since he came home – and Wetherby just got in the way.’

  ‘I wondered when we’d get round to that, the age-old motive rearing its ugly head. Sex. Or money Ten to one there’s private money there, too. Unless the Bursar of Lavenstock College is paid more than I think he is, she’s hardly likely to have murdered him for his pension. Though the real question is whether she hated him enough to kill him at all.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you feel like killing someone who’d been knocking you around for years?’

  ‘Probably. But I might have restrained myself. Besides, we don’t know that he had.’

  Abigail’s look said it all.

  ‘And probably verbal abuse, too,’ she added after a moment. ‘If it’s true that he had a nasty tongue. That can b
e just as bad, or worse, in a different way.’

  They drove in silence for a while, until Mayo said, ‘And what about Riach? Did I detect some nuance there, too? Is she the sort of woman who’d play one against the other?’

  If she was, that posed another question: was Wetherby entirely to blame for what had patently, in spite of the caution Mayo had just voiced about assuming physical cruelty, been an unhappy marriage?

  ‘None of them have an alibi worth considering. Covering for each other doesn’t constitute that, in my book – nor does it account for the time. But unless she’s lying about how long that fitting took, she didn’t have time to get to the school. On the other hand, Riach had plenty of time to get there, and as yet no alibi. And Leadbetter has none at all.’

  ‘If you’re guilty, you go to some trouble to provide one.’

  ‘Well, just now was hardly the time to press the point, but we’d better see to it we talk to Riach, and the other two again, separately. They’re the best suspects we have so far.’

  Abigail said, after a moment, ‘How about if she went from the back of the house and cut diagonally across the playing fields? That would cut the time down to ten minutes maximum, I’d say.’

  ‘Can you get into the playing fields that way?’

  ‘I walked across the rugger pitch and had a look. There’s a gate with a lock leading directly into a passageway between their back garden and the next door’s,’ said Abigail, stealing a march on him yet again.

  11

  If anyone had told Cleo that Daphne would be proved right and that very soon she’d be admitting that working for Maid to Order was a mistake of the first water, she wouldn’t have listened. But after that first day, she’d known guiltily how true it was, it was definitely out of her league. Not that it was a league she any longer wanted to be in. Getting the brasses to come up a treat without leaving a trace of polish in the crevices, chasing innocent spiders out of corners, vacuuming under the rugs – talk about life being too short to stuff a mushroom! She’d have packed it in there and then, only she’d promised Val to stay on until the staff-shortage crisis was over.