Death on the Downs

by Simon Brett

  He sat back with a complacent smile on his thin lips. ‘Up to you, Carole.’

  ‘Tell me, Barry . . . what did happen to your conservatory during the Great Storm?’

  She couldn’t have picked a better subject. He leaned forward with relish and began, ‘Well, this is extremely interesting . . .’

  Carole’s mind was racing and she didn’t take in anything he said. She didn’t really notice the end of the meal. She was still distracted when Barry asked her if she’d like to meet up again, and dangerously vague in her answer.

  And she hardly noticed as he leaned down to kiss her when she was safely ensconced in the Renault. All she was aware of was a sensation as if her cheek had been wiped by a soapy facecloth.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The downstairs light in Woodside Cottage was still on when Carole drove past on the way back from the restaurant. As she parked the Renault, what for her was a daring thought crept into her mind. Suppose she went round straight away to see if Jude was still up . . .

  It was a very un-Fethering idea. In Fethering no one except the police or a family member who had lost their key would knock on a door after nine o’clock at night. And ten o’clock was very definitely the curfew for phone calls. These rules did not trouble Carole – she had instinctively abided by them all her life. But, emboldened by two glasses of wine and bubbling with the ideas her conversation with Barry Stillwell had engendered, she went straight round and tapped on the wooden front door of Woodside Cottage. Even though it was nearly half past eleven.

  Jude was, of course, totally unfazed when she let her neighbour in. ‘Oh, thank goodness you’ve come. You’ve made a decision for me.’

  ‘What decision?’

  ‘I’d just finished a bottle of wine. I was divided between opening another one and going to bed. Now opening another one is no longer mere self-indulgence; it’s become a social necessity. Do sit.’

  As she went through to the kitchen, Jude waved vaguely to the array of sofas and armchairs, all covered with brightly coloured drapes and bedspreads. Carole sank tentatively into one. It was surprisingly comfortable. She couldn’t feel the outlines of the structure that lay beneath the patchwork quilt, but the contours settled easily around her thin body.

  Jude returned carrying a moisture-beaded bottle of white wine and a corkscrew. ‘You open this. I’ll get some life back into the fire.’

  A few seconds’ ministration with coal, logs and poker set up a promising blaze. Jude squatted back on her heels and looked teasingly across at her friend. ‘So what have you come to tell me? That you completely misjudged Barry Stillwell? That he is the Mr Right you have been searching for all these years? And that you are going to spend the rest of your lives together?’

  ‘God, no. I’ve got something much more interesting than that. I think I know who . . .’ But she stopped herself. Carole reckoned she had a good story to tell and she didn’t want to give away the best bit first. ‘You remember the Great Storm, don’t you, Jude?’

  ‘Well, I heard about it. I was living in Australia when it happened.’

  ‘What were you doing in Austr—?’

  ‘But what’s the Great Storm got to do with the case?’

  Never mind Australia. Carole could find out about that another time. What she had to say was much more interesting.

  ‘I think the weekend of the Great Storm has a huge significance in the case. I think that was the date of the murder, the evidence of which I found in South Welling Barn.’

  ‘And you got this from Barry Stillwell? Well, that is a turn-up. You turned the heat on him and he confessed to you, did he?’

  ‘God, no. Barry’s far too boring to do anything as interesting as murder.’

  ‘So who is your murderer?’

  ‘Let’s start with the victim. You know I told you that Graham Forbes had been married twice . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think the victim was his first wife, Sheila.’

  ‘What do you base that on?’

  ‘Instinct.’

  A sceptical lower lip was jutted out.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? Why aren’t you excited?’

  Jude slowly shook her head, in some bewilderment. ‘There’s something wrong here, Carole. I’m the one who’s supposed to respond to instinct. I thought, of the two of us, you were the rationalist.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well, then give me your rationale for saying that the bones belonged to Sheila Forbes.’

  ‘All right. They’re a woman’s bones for a start. Aged between thirty and fifty. That fits.’

  ‘OK.’ Jude looked at the fire through the wine she was swirling in her glass. ‘What else?’

  ‘Graham Forbes is deeply in love with his second wife, Irene.’

  ‘Are you saying that means he must’ve murdered his first wife?’

  ‘I’m saying it would give him a motive to do so.’

  ‘Only if he had met Irene before his first wife died.’

  ‘He must’ve done.’

  ‘We don’t know that.’

  ‘Well, let’s assume he did.’ Carole ignored Jude’s sardonic expression as she hurried on, ‘So, the weekend of the Great Storm, Graham Forbes, tortured by his love for Irene and infuriated by the loveless marriage he shares with Sheila, decides to solve all his problems at a stroke. He murders his wife, hides her body somewhere in the village and on the Monday travels back to Kuala Lumpur alone. Everyone in Weldisham imagines that Sheila went with him. Then on his next leave, he comes back without her and tells everyone she’s dumped him and run off with this academic. Everyone believes him. Why shouldn’t they? He’s a pillar of the local community. When he’s out in Malaysia he happily spends all his time with Irene. Back in England, he does his impression of the miserable abandoned husband. Then when he retires, he brings Irene back to Weldisham as his new bride, maintaining he’s only recently met her.’

  There was a long silence. At first Carole was disappointed not to see Jude carried along by her enthusiasm. Then she started wondering quite how watertight the scenario she’d presented was.

  Finally, Jude spoke. Shaking her head wryly, she said, ‘How much did you have to drink this evening, Carole?’

  ‘Only a couple of glasses. What’re you on about? Can’t you see the logic of what I’ve just spelled out?’

  ‘I can see a logic,’ said Jude, ‘but I don’t think it’ll stand up to very close scrutiny. I know Malaysia’s a long way away, but I’m sure somebody would have noticed if Graham Forbes’s wife suddenly vanished off the face of the earth. I mean, they must’ve had staff out there, friends, who’d notice her absence.

  ‘Also, if her body’s been hidden since 1987, why do her bones suddenly turn up now? And, if they are Sheila Forbes’s bones, why haven’t the police been to question her husband?’

  ‘We don’t know they haven’t,’ said Carole truculently. She had been so excited by the edifice of conjecture she’d constructed that she wasn’t enjoying seeing it demolished brick by brick.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’d need more evidence before I could go along the route you’re suggesting. I’d need proof that Sheila Forbes wasn’t seen out in Kuala Lumpur after the weekend of the Great Storm. I’d need proof that Graham Forbes did know Irene before he supposedly murdered his wife. I’d need . . . I’m sorry, Carole. I’d just need so much more information.’

  ‘What kind of information?’

  ‘Information that presumably the police have access to. Surely these days they can identify human remains by DNA, apart from anything else.’

  ‘Only if they have some sample of DNA to match it with,’ said Carole, with a feeble attempt at triumph in her voice. ‘And if Sheila Forbes had totally disappeared they wouldn’t have that.’

  Jude’s mouth was still crinkled with scepticism. ‘No, but they could probably link the DNA to her through relatives, other family members. We need something a bit more positive. As I say, if we had evidence from someone
in Kuala Lumpur that Graham did arrive out there in 1987 on his own . . .’

  ‘Well, I’ll get that,’ said Carole defiantly. ‘I’ve got a friend who works in the British Council.’ It didn’t seem worth mentioning that she hadn’t been in touch with Trevor Malcolm for nearly thirty years.

  ‘OK.’ Jude grinned one of her huge, all-embracing grins. ‘I’m ready to be convinced. Convince me.’

  Carole woke the next morning with a hangover. It was partly physical – she and Jude had finished the bottle – but more it was mental. She felt embarrassed by the way she had let her ideas run away with her the night before. Jude was right. The scenario she’d expounded, casting Graham Forbes in the role of murderer, was a fabrication of unsupported conjecture. Its logic was full of holes, and in the cold light of day looked even more threadbare.

  Where, Carole thought, did I get the idea that I have any aptitude for criminal investigation? The evidence at the moment does not support the claim. Solving murders should be left to the professionals. The police have all the information; no one who hasn’t got all the information stands a chance.

  But greater than all the mental discomforts she felt was the fact that she’d behaved out of character. Carole Seddon had always prided herself on having a rational mind, but the previous evening she had ignored its dictates and followed a path of whimsy. What hurt was that, by her behaviour, she’d lost any intellectual ascendancy she might have had over her next-door neighbour.

  Carole had made a fool of herself, and Jude had been the one who was all sober and sensible.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Still, she could at least do the one bit of follow-up she’d promised. She found the number of the British Council office in Spring Gardens and rang through. It was a long chance that Trevor Malcolm had remained in the organization he’d started with in his early twenties and, even if he had, a long chance that he was still there. As Carole knew to her cost, there were a lot of early retirements around. And, in the unlikely event that Trevor was still employed by the British Council, he would almost certainly be working abroad.

  But her gloomy prognostications proved unfounded. When she asked for the name, she was put through without hesitation and the girl at the other end certainly knew who she was talking about. But Trevor was out at a meeting. He’d be back after lunch . . . ‘Probably best to leave it till three-thirty or so.’

  Oh well, thought Carole as she put the phone down, might give him a call then. But she didn’t think it with great determination. Whatever she’d felt about the case the night before had dwindled away into a vague residue of dissatisfaction. It was a police matter. Unidentified bones were their job.

  Only shortly after that, her doorbell rang. Jude was standing there, swathed in a long burgundy velvet coat. A peach-coloured scarf was wrapped around her face so high that only her bird’s-nest of blonde hair and her brown eyes showed over the top.

  ‘Came round to say sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘For being a wet blanket last night.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know that you were. You were just sensible.’

  ‘There are already enough sensible people in the world without me joining their ranks. No, I was just feeling down.’

  ‘You? Down?’ It was a novel concept. Jude always seemed to be on top of everything.

  ‘Yes. Some bloody man.’

  ‘Which bloody man?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter which when they behave like that. They’re all the bloody same, aren’t they?’

  ‘Well . . . Surely you can tell me what—?’

  But this new window for an insight into Jude’s private life was quickly closed. ‘Never mind. Perdition to the lot of them, eh? I want to make amends by taking you out for lunch . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And I have to confess, Carole, my motivation is not entirely altruistic. I just had a call from Gillie Lutteridge, and I promised to go and see her. So I’m offering you lunch in the Hare and Hounds at Weldisham . . .’

  ‘In return for a lift up there?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  After some havering, Carole decided not to take Gulliver, in spite of the agonized importunity in his endearingly stupid face. He still couldn’t be trusted up on the Downs, and he would hate being shut in the Renault behind the Hare and Hounds while they had lunch.

  There was a man leaving the pub as they reached the door. He wore a grubby denim jacket over a tartan working shirt. He crossed to a tractor with an enclosed cab that was parked opposite the pub.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Jude whispered. ‘You looked like you recognized him.’

  ‘Name’s Nick. He was in the Hare and Hounds first evening I came here. One of the Estate workers, I think. Extremely taciturn . . . or he certainly was that night.’

  Inside the pub, although it was only twelve-thirty, tables were already full of pension-happy lunchers munching their way through the Home Hostelries blackboard specials. There was also a figure standing by the log-effect fire in the main bar whom Carole recognized from the Forbeses’ dinner party.

  ‘Hello, Harry,’ she said, as Jude went to get the drinks and order the food.

  He gave her a bemused look, unfocused, as if he had already been drinking. ‘Oh yes . . .’ he said vaguely. But even using it vaguely, his voice was loud.

  ‘We met at Graham and Irene’s last Friday.’

  He nodded, recollection slowly returning. ‘Of course. Caroline, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Carole.’ Big impression she’d made.

  Harry Grant grinned. ‘I’m actually in here waiting to see Graham. Always comes in for his pre-lunch snifter. Isn’t that right, Will?’

  The manager, who had just given Jude her change, looked across. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I said Graham always comes in for a pre-lunch snifter, isn’t that right?’

  ‘Every day, regular as clockwork.’ And Will Maples turned back to chivvy one of his barmaids.

  Jude was standing beside her with their two glasses of white wine. ‘This is my friend, Jude.’ Ridiculous, thought Carole, I still don’t know her surname. I really must ask. ‘Harry Grant.’

  ‘Nice to see you.’

  A grin spread across Harry’s broad face. He fancied Jude, Carole could tell. Jude was the type men fell for. Whereas she . . . Her exploratory use of ‘feminine wiles’ on Barry Stillwell felt a bit shabby in retrospect.

  ‘All well with you and Jenny?’ asked Carole, not sure whether she was deliberately mentioning his wife’s name to stop him ogling Jude.

  ‘Yes, yes, fine.’ He turned his thick neck and slowly refocused on her. There was no doubt. He had been drinking. ‘More than fine, in fact.’ He raised a half-empty pint in salute. ‘I am celebrating my return to “the land of my fathers”.’

  ‘You mean you’re Welsh?’ asked Jude.

  He found this funnier than it was. ‘No, no, no,’ he said finally, wiping the spittle from his lips. ‘I was born here in Weldisham . . . and I’m coming back to live right here in Weldisham.’

  Carole understood immediately. ‘You’ve got the planning permission on your barn?’

  ‘Exactly. The application has finally been accepted. Yesterday’s meeting. Composition of the Planning Committee had changed a bit, one or two people I knew had joined . . . Suddenly they’re looking on my plans with a much more friendly eye. As everywhere else in the world, round these parts it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And when I was growing up here, the only people I knew were Lennie and Nick. They might have been good at building forts and things, but otherwise . . . useless people. Now, though, I know the right people. At last I know the right people. So now all the toffee-nosed prigs of Weldisham are going to have Harry Grant as their neighbour . . . like it or not!’

  He didn’t realize how much his excitement had raised his voice and looked embarrassed by the silence he’d created in the pub. He leaned close to Carole and Jude and confided, in an elaborate whisper, ‘So that’s why I’m waiting i
n here for Graham Forbes . . . just for the pleasure of seeing him laugh on the other side of his face.’

  Triumphantly, Harry Grant swilled down the rest of his beer and turned back to the bar. ‘Think I could manage another of those, thank you, young Will.’

  Carole and Jude made good the opportunity to take one of the few remaining empty tables. The developer didn’t seem to notice their absence. He stayed leaning against the bar, making desultory conversation with Will Maples when the manager wasn’t busy serving his customers.

  Harry Grant wasn’t on his own for long, however. Detective Sergeant Baylis came into the bar and joined him. The meeting did not appear to have been prearranged, but Carole remembered that the two of them had grown up together in the village. They’d have plenty to talk about. Two Weldisham boys, both resentful that they couldn’t live there any more. Except, of course, for Harry Grant that exclusion was now at an end.

  Lennie Baylis ordered a pint and got another one for Harry. To the scrutiny of Carole’s beady eye, once again no money seemed to change hands. What was the hold that the sergeant had over Will Maples? Was she witnessing some minor level of police corruption? And once again, Baylis didn’t seem to suffer from the ‘not while I’m on duty’ attitude to drink.

  Carole chided herself. After the previous night’s exhibition, she should be a little more wary of leaping to conclusions. She kept an eye on the bar, but although the two men were deep in conversation, she had no inkling of what they might be discussing. Once or twice, Harry Grant turned round to look at the door and then consult his watch. Graham Forbes was evidently late for what she remembered he’d called his ‘pre-lunch tincture’, and so the developer’s moment of glory was postponed.

  Downing the remains of his pint, Detective Sergeant Baylis turned away from the bar, and that was the first time he noticed Carole. With a word to Harry, he came across to join them.

  ‘Sergeant, this is my friend Jude.’

  Baylis seemed as impressed with Jude’s looks as Harry Grant had been.