Death on the Downs

by Simon Brett

  ‘And also,’ he continued sheepishly, ‘we did need someone to pair up with Barry Stillwell.’

  The expression she turned on him didn’t need words.

  ‘Sorry about that, Carole. So there you have it. I may be guilty of many crimes, but inviting you to dinner was not among them . . . Unless of course you’re of the – quite legitimate – view that inviting anyone to meet Barry Stillwell constitutes a crime.’

  The old man’s angular body made an attempt at a shrug. ‘And that’s it. You know the rest. You worked it all out. Well done.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What put you on to the fact that it was Pauline who went with me to KL?’

  ‘You weren’t met at the airport by your favourite driver. You’d talked about Shiva, how he always drove you everywhere in Malaysia, and yet you organized a new driver at the airport, one who’d never seen your wife and who wouldn’t realize that Pauline was an impostor.’

  He nodded appreciation for her logic. Then a thought struck him. ‘But who on earth did you get that information from?’

  ‘Sebastian Trent.’

  Graham Forbes winced with distaste. ‘Him.’

  ‘Doesn’t he conform to your rule about all writers being enormous fun?’

  ‘God, no. Sebastian Trent is a complete arsehole.’

  There was a warm, mutual chuckle. Then Carole asked, ‘Have you told all this to the police?’

  ‘Oh yes. Told them everything. Made a clean breast of it. Confession eases the guilty soul, eh? And it brings other benefits too.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘After thirteen years of living a lie, poor old Sheila is now officially dead.’ This time the cough was definitely a chuckle.

  ‘And, for those who demand retribution, I’m being punished. It’s no fun lying here like this, let me tell you. Had the first stroke when Lennie Baylis told me they’d be checking whether the bones belonged to Sheila, second when some other policeman came to charge me with her murder. I’d say that’s my punishment . . . and a very big disincentive ever to leave this place.

  ‘I want to die now,’ he went on, but there was no unhappiness in his tone. ‘And when I do die, I dare say you’ll look back on my life as a crime story. I wouldn’t. Nor will Irene. So far as we’re concerned, my life has been a love story. But not any more . . .

  ‘While I could do the things I wanted to do, I wanted to live. While I could be with Irene, love Irene, while I could use my mind, I wanted life to go on for ever. Now . . . I don’t want to continue if I’m impaired.’

  His choice of the exact word Irene had used to Jude made Carole realize how the two lovers must have discussed this eventuality, and prepared their reactions to it. Maybe that was the explanation for Irene Forbes’s serenity in the face of tragedy.

  ‘Even if they let me smoke in here, I couldn’t keep the pipe in my mouth, so there’s one of my pleasures gone. Can’t even do the Times crossword either,’ Graham Forbes went on wistfully. ‘What’s the point of being alive if you can’t do the Times crossword?’

  Carole noticed there was a copy of the paper at his bedside. The first section was folded back in the familiar way to frame the crossword. But the grid was blank.

  ‘Come on, Graham,’ she said softly. ‘I’m sure you can fill in one answer . . .’

  He grunted. ‘Make it a very easy one.’

  Her eyes were nowhere near the paper as Carole invented her clue. ‘Pope’s versified magistrate. Six and seven.’

  ‘Good. Very good.’ The side of his face that could smile smiled. ‘Poetic Justice,’ said Graham Forbes.

  In the entrance hall of the hospital, Carole found Jude chatting to Irene Forbes. The latter was dressed in white and very animated. Girlish, almost giggly.

  On the dot of three she was joined by a priest. Irene asked Carole and Jude if they’d be witnesses.

  And, as the four of them went through to the private rooms, Carole realized what Graham Forbes had meant about the benefits of his first wife being officially dead.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Brian Helling was charged with two murders – those of his mother and Lennie Baylis. He was also charged with the abduction of Carole Seddon. There was discussion in the Hare and Hounds as to whether his counsel would put up a defence of insanity, though the general view was that he was not mentally ill, just a bad lot. And, now the murder had happened, everyone was suddenly full of recollections of bad blood between Brian Helling and Lennie Baylis, the antagonism that went all the way back to their childhood.

  But the British justice system ensured that the trial lay a long way off yet.

  The Hare and Hounds got a new manager, and, so far as the residents of Weldisham were concerned, Will Maples slipped off the face of the earth. Whether he’d been sacked by Home Hostelries, whether he’d ever been charged with drugs-related offences, no one knew.

  Harry Grant got his own builders started on the barn conversion. The plans had been approved, but members of the Village Committee watched night and day for any evidence of extraneous features sprouting on the building. The first sign of a turret or solarium and they’d be on to the local authority straight away. In Weldisham the Neighbourhood Watch was generally more concerned about builders than burglars.

  Meanwhile Jenny Grant increased her dosage of Librium and waited with mounting terror for the day when they’d have to move. Harry wouldn’t be aware of it, but she knew they’d never be accepted in Weldisham. She anticipated spending the rest of her life in an isolation as total as that of Pauline Helling.

  The old woman’s spaniel, incidentally, was never seen again in the village after Heron Cottage burnt down. The police initially put the dog into their kennels, but soon arranged to have it adopted by a nice family with three young children in the adjacent village of Blundon. Nobody in Weldisham knew of the spaniel’s fate. Blundon was three miles distant, and that was a long way away.

  Graham Forbes didn’t die immediately. He stayed in hospital, too ill to be moved to prison, too ill to appear in court, and his adoring second wife went to visit him every day. Sometimes he could do a few clues of the Times crossword; other days he looked at it as though it were in a foreign language.

  Like Graham’s, the health of Tamsin Lutteridge hovered between the positive and the negative. After Brian Helling’s arrest, when his threat to her life no longer posed a danger, the girl had been visited at Sandalls Manor by her mother and Jude. They had gone in the full expectation of bringing Tamsin home to Weldisham with them. But they found her unwilling. She really thought that Charles Hilton’s treatment was beginning to work.

  And some days it was. Then she felt optimistic and positive. Other days she was listless and ached all over. But, until a real cure for her debilitating illness was found, what Charles Hilton did seemed neither better nor worse than any other treatment on offer.

  He meanwhile continued to offer therapy, understanding and personal attention to his patients. The young, pretty female patients continued to get more personal attention than the others, and Anne Hilton continued to have suspicions but no proof.

  Within two months of Brian Helling’s arrest, Gillie and Miles Lutteridge had quietly separated and set divorce proceedings in motion. Gillie lived alone in Weldisham for a few months more and then their showhouse was sold to another Londoner who’d ‘always wanted to live in the country’.

  When he met this newcomer in the Hare and Hounds, Freddie Pointon put him at his ease, asserting what a wonderful place Weldisham was, and when he got out of the train at Barnham how really uplifted he felt by that first breath of country air.

  Meanwhile, in their weekend cottage, Pam Pointon continued to get noisily pissed.

  At a Ladies’ Night of the local Rotary Club, Barry Stillwell met the widow of another past president. Since they both found life very interesting, they decided to get married.

  It was a couple of weeks after her abduction, and Carole was sitting in the Crown and Anchor having
an early evening drink with Jude. Carole had noticed her friend seemed a little subdued recently and deduced that the change of mood had something to do with the man Jude had spent the weekend with in London. But when she tried to find out more about the situation, the conversation kept doing its old trick of moving on to other subjects.

  ‘You going to be all right this evening?’

  ‘Yes, sure,’ said Jude. ‘I’ll probably grab something to eat here, and then go back for a really long soak in the bath.’

  ‘With all your aromatherapy oils?’

  ‘You bet. My idea of bliss.’ Jude didn’t say that, before her bath, she planned to look through some estate agent’s details for houses in Ireland. The break-up with that man had really unsettled her and she’d never stayed anywhere for long. She hadn’t made any firm decision about moving yet, but it was a thought . . .

  As usual, Carole had no idea what was going through her friend’s mind. Her own was happily full, particularly of the new blouse she was wearing that night. Marks & Spencer’s were getting in some quite designery things these days. Carole wouldn’t have thought she could wear red, if she hadn’t been so firmly told that it made her look great.

  The door from the kitchen clattered open and Ted Crisp appeared. He was wearing a suit. Not only that, it was a suit he had had cleaned. And he was wearing the tie Carole had given him.

  His hair and beard remained as unkempt as ever, which caused her a momentary pang of annoyance. But she quickly reassured herself. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Time enough to get his hair – and a few other things – sorted.

  Jude let out a low whistle. ‘My God, it’s Rudolph Valentino!’

  ‘Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer more like,’ said Ted. Then he stepped round the bar and crooked out his arm in a self-consciously gallant manner.

  ‘Mrs Seddon . . . are you ready to accompany me? And may I say how well you look in the red? Positively in the pink, if you’ll pardon the expression.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Carole, dropping a mock-curtsy before she took his arm.

  ‘Where is it you’re off to tonight?’ asked Jude.

  ‘New Mexican place just opened in Worthing,’ Ted replied. ‘Won’t be able to move in there for sombreros and zimmer frames. Are we set then, Carole?’

  ‘Certainly are.’

  ‘Right. Good luck,’ he called out to his bar staff. ‘Don’t drink all the profits. See you, Jude.’

  ‘Yes, sure,’ she said, and looked down into her drink.

  Carole Seddon liked the bulk of Ted Crisp’s arm against hers. And she looked forward to the evening ahead. She didn’t have much to thank Barry Stillwell for, but at least he’d reminded her what a date was.