Death in the Coverts

by Roderic Jeffries

  Doherty looked round the hall. It was a large, flag-stoned room with a vast fireplace in which was burning what looked to be the best part of a tree. The fire gave off no appreciable heat and the hall felt colder than outside. Along the walls were a number of weapons, ranging from halberds to flintlock pistols, and in each of the far comers was a complete set of armour, the hands of which rested on the hilts of broadswords. Above the weapons and hung round the walls were heraldic shields of designs that increased in complexity.

  A man, wearing a shooting-suit in a light heather mixture, came into the hall. ‘Good morning. I’m Julian Decker.’

  ‘Detective Inspector Doherty, sir, and this is Superintendent Earnest.’

  Earnest half bowed.

  ‘Let’s go into the study.’

  ‘Right, sir, but can I just check on one thing? Is anyone with the body now to see nothing’s disturbed?’

  ‘I’ve told my head keeper to see nothing’s touched, so you’ve no worries.’ Julian led the way from the hall to the smaller hall beyond, at the end of which was a flight of stairs. The study was on the right. After they had had a drink and Julian had given them a resume of the facts, they left the house. Julian drove the Land-Rover and the detectives followed in their car until they reached the field before King’s Beat. Here, the detectives left the car and climbed into the Land-Rover in which they crossed the field to the woods.

  They walked down the ride and between the pollard ashes and willows to number 6 stand. The body of Rafferty lay half doubled up, in what was nearly a foetal position. Adams waited at the edge of the small circular clearing of the stand.

  Julian looked at his watch. ‘You won’t want me around, will you?’

  ‘No, sir, thank you,’ replied Doherty. ‘But I would be grateful if someone could stay with us in case we want some help.’

  Julian spoke to Adams. ‘Have you eaten yet?’

  ‘No, sir, but there’s no rush. If you’d just tell Latham he can take over from me when he’s fed.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’ Julian spoke to Doherty. ‘Let me know if I can help in any way.’

  ‘Thank you very much, sir.’

  Julian turned and left. Doherty watched him until he was out of sight and thought how difficult, perhaps impossible, it would be to mistake Julian Decker’s position in life – yet there did not seem to be any arrogance in the man. Doherty was amused by his own train of thought. What had he been expecting: the traditional village squire, claiming his droit de seigneur?

  He stood close to a willow and studied the scene. Rafferty appeared strangely peaceful until one looked at his head and then there was a bloody mess. Just beyond the body, lying on its side with the butt towards the body and the muzzles pointing away from it, was a double-barrel shotgun. Two feet to the right was a leather cartridge bag on which were stamped, in large gold letters, the initials W.R.

  Doherty stepped across to the body. He looked down. The side of Rafferty’s head, above the ear, had been blown in and it seemed as if the path of the shot had been level. This, in conjunction with the way the gun was lying, suggested it had been an unusual accident.

  Doherty turned and spoke to the keeper. ‘Had he been shooting for long?’

  Adams hawked and spat. ‘Him? Never touched a gun ’til he was too old to know what to do with it.’

  There would have been no love lost between Rafferty and Adams, thought Doherty. There was no snob so great as the man who had worked for a large family for a number of years and it was pretty obvious that Adams had been with the Deckers for some time. ‘Was he often careless about how he handled a gun?’

  ‘I’ve seen the size of his shot more times’n I can remember.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ asked the superintendent.

  Adams spoke scornfully. ‘I mean he’d wave them barrels around so as you’d find yourself lookin’ down ’em.’

  ‘Then you’re not surprised he shot himself?’ asked Doherty.

  ‘I’m just astonished it took so bloody long.’

  Doherty looked more closely at the gun. He knew enough about shotguns to be able to judge that this was probably a best-London gun, but he put the question to Adams to make certain.

  ‘Aye,’ replied Adams, ‘it’s a real good’un. A thousand quid, but he’s so poor a shot I can shoot better with a twisted Belgian than he could with that.’

  ‘How long’s he had it?’

  ‘Asked me before his first season here what gun he ought to use. I told him something cheap, so as not to waste good money. Nothing cheap for him, though. He makes out he’s a first-class shot and goes up to London for the best and wasn’t he downright upset when they told him it’d take more’n a year for delivery.’

  ‘You wouldn’t really expect this quality of gun to go off accidentally, would you?’ ‘Anything’ll go off wrong if you treat it wrong. Quality don’t count for much if you’re stupid.’

  Doherty showed an endless patience. ‘It looks in good order?’

  ‘Should be.’

  ‘If it is, surely it wouldn’t easily go off accidentally?’

  ‘Depends whether he had the safety on, don’t it?’

  Doherty walked round the gun until he could clearly see the upper part of the butt. The safety catch was forward on the off position. Suppose Rafferty had released the safety catch and been about to shoot at a bird when he tripped over, could he have suffered the kind of wound he had? The experts would answer that one.

  Doherty stepped away from the gun. Once it had been photographed – obviously he was going to have to call the photographer in – he would break it and see which barrel had been fired. After that, he’d send it to a firearms expert to discover whether the mechanism was in good order. Long ago, Doherty had learned that whenever there was even the slightest possibility of doubt, the matter was best treated in its gravest light. If this proved to be an accident, then all that would be wasted would be a few photographs and the time of a few men.

  The superintendent took off his peaked hat and scratched the bald patch on the top of his head. ‘How many people were out shooting?’

  ‘Just the seven,’ replied Adams.

  ‘What about you keepers: don’t you carry guns?’

  ‘You don’t know much about shooting, do you? Keepers carrying guns on one of the days?’

  Doherty briefly smiled, thereby dispelling his naturally gloomy expression. It would be more accurate to say that the superintendent knew absolutely nothing about covert shooting. He spoke to Adams. ‘Do all the guns stand in a line here?’

  ‘The woods come down in a V, like, and numbers two to seven stand round the V.’

  ‘Not number one?’

  ‘He starts back up the ride, well above number seven, and comes down with the beaters. When he reaches number seven, he walks right round the ride to take up position at his stand at number one.’

  Doherty turned round and stared at the undergrowth. ‘You can’t see any ride from here.’

  ‘You won’t see nothing, and that’s fact. I keep on to Mr Julian to have some of the rubbish cleared to help the pick-up, but there’s always more important things for the woodmen.’

  ‘D’you know who number one gun was?’

  Adams scratched the side of his face. ‘Mr Wade,’ he said finally.

  ‘So he’d have started right back and then when he reached the ride we came down on he’d have gone along it and right round?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Would there have been anyone on the other side of the ride?’

  ‘The pickers-up.’

  ‘The what?’ asked the superintendent.

  Adams shrugged his shoulders wearily, as if unable to understand such ignorance.

  ‘People with dogs, sir,’ explained Doherty, ‘who pick up the birds which are shot and land well back from the guns.’

  ‘What a bloody how-d’you-do just to get a few birds for the pot,’ muttered the superintendent.

  Adams hawked and spat with
great deliberation.

  ‘Well?’ said the superintendent.

  ‘We’ll have to go ahead with everything, sir just for the moment.’

  The superintendent shoved his hands into the pockets of his uniform mackintosh. ‘It could easily have been a complete accident.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But as of now it might almost as easily have been something else.’

  The superintendent shook his head. Doherty was uncertain whether that meant the other didn’t agree or whether it was an expression of regret that he had to agree.

  Chapter Three

  Following a quick lunch, and Barbara’s departure, Julian walked round the house to the southern face. Here was his favourite vantage point. The southern face of the house was William and Mary and as the wind was hardly visible the house was reduced to pleasing proportions. During his mother’s life it was quite impossible to alter the house because to do so would be to hurt her very much, but after her death he would have the Victorian wing, with its now anachronistic ballroom, knocked down and, if he could afford it, the top floor of the house removed. Thirty-one bedrooms had been a workable proposition in the days of servants galore, but in the present day so great a number meant only woodworm, rot, falling plaster, and decay. His mother still regularly dusted the twenty bedrooms on the top floor and polished the brass handles of the doors, as if some day they might again be inhabited, but it was a hopeless gesture. Not that this hopeless gesture was in any way pathetic. Lydia Decker was too genuine to be pathetic. She might revere the past and Hurstley Place beyond anything else, but underneath her apparent detachment from the world she seemed surprised to find herself in was a sharp mind and a natural ability to differentiate in a second a man from a rotter. That was why she had disliked Rafferty so much. Her dislike had grown when he had gushingly presented her with the most expensive transistor wireless on the market – he casually mentioned it was the most expensive – as a ‘small token of my humble esteem and gratitude.’ Rafferty always believed she disliked him because she was an insufferable snob: nothing would ever have persuaded him that she just plain disliked him. Rafferty had been a rotter, all right, but for a long time they hadn’t realised just how much of a one: not, that was, until he started to blackmail them.

  Julian leaned against the weathered bricks. He looked across the twenty-yard wide terrace at the stone balustrade and noticed one of the stone vases in front of the balustrade needed repairing. Then he looked beyond, at the park. A large flock of Romney Marsh sheep were grazing the ley that had been planted the previous autumn. Until his father had died, the park had never been cultivated and had always contained a large herd of fallow deer. One of the traditions of Hurstley Place had been the herd of deer, said to have been started back in 1473 when the family had lived in a castle a mile from the present house. His father had always said that if ever the deer went the Deckers would go, but after his father’s death tradition had had to give way to practical farming. The park was almost two hundred and fifty acres, of which one hundred and fifty could be farmed. At a time when any and every family estate was threatened with extinction from one cause or another, every acre of land properly farmed was an insurance.

  He jerked himself away from the wall, crossed to the balustrade, turned, and looked back at the house. From here, it appeared so much more friendly than from anywhere else: it became an overgrown home and not a mansion. It was frightening to think that if Rafferty had lived they might have lost it.

  It was difficult to say exactly what Rafferty’s motives had been for his blackmail. It wasn’t simply money, because Rafferty had been rich – not that any man said no to more than he had. But, again, it hadn’t simply been a childish attempt to force his acceptance into a society he professed to despise, yet secretly longed to enter: though God knows why. Perhaps his motives had been a confused mixture of envy, hatred, greed, and the desire to prove he was really the better man.

  Lydia Decker walked round the east corner of the house. She was wearing an old and patched coat over the apron she had put on as soon as lunch was finished. When she wasn’t polishing, she was cleaning: when she wasn’t cleaning, she was washing-down. Her sons had long since ceased to try to dissuade her from working so hard as they realised that this was all she wanted to do. She was rendering homage to Hurstley Place, built in 1692, alterations in 1735, additions in 1873, situated on land enfeoffed to the Lanchvilles in 1083 which had descended to the Deckers in 1254, confiscated from the Deckers in 1651 by the sobersides of The Commonwealth, restored to the Deckers in 1662 after merry Charles had been on the throne for a couple of years and had met Sarah Decker, whose portrait in the red withdrawing-room showed how attractive she had been.

  ‘Aren’t you cold, Julian?’ asked Lydia, as she came to a halt. ‘The wind’s becoming very sharp. I told Barbara she should wear a thicker coat. These days, women go around in underwear that is worse than useless and it’s no wonder they’re always catching colds. They should wear woollen underwear…’

  ‘Mother, can you imagine Barbara in long woollen combs?’

  ‘She’s used to that place of hers Julian, with central heating making it like a hot-house and when she comes to live here she’ll just have to wear something warmer.’

  ‘Then she probably will, but not long woollens.’

  ‘I’ve been wondering whether to have just a little central heating put in The Red House. What do you think?’

  ‘It’s a good idea.’ He wondered whether she would live for long once he was married and she had moved to the dower house? Most of her purpose for living would have gone. Yet when he and Barbara had tentatively, and very reluctantly, suggested she should continue to live at Hurstley, in a self-contained flat, she had refused.

  She turned up the collar of her coat. ‘Are you sure you’re warm enough, dressed as you are?’

  ‘Quite sure, thanks.’

  ‘What are the police doing?’

  ‘I left them in the woods and haven’t seen anyone since.’

  ‘Fawcett is in one of his moods, now.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘The poor boy suffers so much. Julian, do you think it’ll all come out about your father?’

  ‘I don’t see why it should.’

  ‘But if they start finding out things…’

  ‘Don’t worry so, Mother.’

  ‘I can’t help worrying. I dreamt last night that the house had to be sold.’

  ‘Rafferty was alive last night so your dream can hardly be relevant.’

  ‘It was a premonition. I’ve told you time and time again that my Irish blood allows me premonitions. After all, my grandmother was granted a vision.’

  ‘Your last premonition was the winner of the Derby. You backed it and lost all your five shillings.’

  ‘Did I? Are you sure that was a premonition and not a tip?’

  ‘Quite sure. You tried to persuade me to put a pound on it because it couldn’t possibly lose as your premonitions were always true.’

  ‘You could be right. You’re usually so very practical.’

  ‘Somebody around here has to be.’ He tucked his arm round hers. ‘Let’s go inside. I’d better try and cope with the latest batch of agricultural returns.’

  ‘I just cannot understand what they do with all the forms. Look at the number you have to fill in and send off and when you think of all the other farms in the country there must be…’

  He ceased to listen. Her dream of losing Hurstley was one that she had quite often and it must express some of her deep-rooted fears: but this time it might truly be called a premonition. Everything depended on whether the police closely investigated Rafferty’s past life and on how much evidence Rafferty had left lying around.

  *

  Detective Inspector Doherty brought his Hillman, squeaking mournfully, to a halt before the front door of Rafferty’s house. He climbed out. The wind flicked the ends of his hair where it was kept long to try to conceal the growing baldness. Mrs Rafferty was probabl
y somewhere about the house, watching the television maybe. Everything in her world was fine. She lived in an expensive house, her husband was wealthy, life was easy. Now, she was going to be brought face to face with a gloomy D.I who would tell her, as gently as possible, that her comfortable world had been irretrievably shattered about three hours ago. Three hours ago she had become a widow.

  Of all his jobs, this was the one he loathed the most and which worried him for days afterwards. He went up to the front door and hammered the ornate brass knocker down on to its stud.

  The door was opened by a woman with the kind of round, beautiful face that made it difficult to judge her age. Doherty guessed it to be about twenty-five. She had a slim figure with the right curves that were carefully underlined by her clothes.

  ‘Is your mother in?’ he asked.

  She replied, angrily, that she was Mrs Rafferty. He cursed himself for having made the same kind of mistake twice in a day. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Doherty. May I come in?’

  ‘What… what’s happened?’ She put her hand up to her heavily lipsticked mouth.

  He stepped inside the house and she shut the door. ‘I’m afraid there’s been an accident,’ he said.

  ‘To… to Bill?’

  ‘Yes. In the shooting field.’

  ‘Is he… is he…’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’

  ‘Oh, gawd!’ she murmured. She slowly dropped her hand from her mouth.

  He heard no sounds other than those of a television set, which suggested she was the only person in the house. Walking stiffly, with eyes focused apparently on some immeasurable distance, she led the way into the sitting-room. There was a cocktail cabinet in one corner and she crossed to it and poured herself out a brandy. She went to one of the leather arm-chairs, sat down, and drank.

  He studied her. She was shocked, but almost certainly not as grief-stricken as he would have been had someone suddenly told him that Peggy was dead.

  She finished the brandy and when he offered to pour her another, she held out the glass. On his way past the television set he switched it off, cutting short the commentary on an international rugby match.