This Private Plot

by Alan Beechey

  “I was in bed,” Toby answered, puzzled. “I was late getting back from the dig. Eric Mormal was supposed to give me a ride home, but he did his shift earlier than usual. I had to hitchhike from Stratford to Synne. Why?”

  “You didn’t stop off at the Common? To see if anyone was doing a midnight run around the Race?”

  Toby brightened. “Oh, did Effie tell you about that? It’s an interesting piece of Synne folklore, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll not be juggled with,” Oliver growled. “And why, for God’s sake, did you dangle the bait of falsehood in front of your Aunt Phoebe, of all people?”

  “It isn’t falsehood,” Toby protested. He sniggered suddenly. “I say, she didn’t try it, did she? And did she get Uncle Tim to go along, too? Oh gosh, this is priceless! I wish I had been there now. That should be on YouTube.” He continued to chuckle.

  “They weren’t the only ones,” Oliver said coldly. It was decidedly time for the Strongitharm Look.

  Toby stopped laughing abruptly as the implication struck home. He opened his mouth, but the unavoidable mental image of Effie wearing even fewer clothes clearly overwhelmed his powers of speech.

  “I think Effie has something to say to you,” Oliver continued, and moved to the side to avoid any crossfire. Look pale and tremble, Tobermory.

  “Toby’s right,” she said.

  “What?”

  Effie brandished the thick, black book she had been reading, and Oliver noticed the title on the spine: Folk Traditions of the Northern Cotswolds. “It’s in here,” she continued. “Toby was telling the truth.”

  “I didn’t mean to suggest…” Toby began, but choked again. Effie skewered her sunglasses into her fair ringlets.

  “You have nothing to reproach yourself for, Toby dear,” she soothed. “You clearly haven’t heard yet what put the damper on last night’s hijinks, but it had nothing to do with you. Now, Oliver, I think you’re the person who has something to say to Toby.”

  “What?” Oliver said again. No Look?

  Effie tilted her head. “Don’t you owe Toby an apology for being so rude?”

  “The hell I do.”

  “Oliver,” she prompted. Damn, she was almost at checkmate. Oliver turned toward Toby, noticing a tall figure framed in the doorway to the house.

  “Oh, all right. Toby, I’m sorry I called you a devious, hairy-palmed, weasel-faced troll.” He felt Effie’s toe jab him in the thigh and continued hastily. “Look, I’d gladly apologize until the cows come home, but Uncle Tim seems to have beaten them to it. Despite your complete innocence, you’re well advised to avoid him for the next couple of days. I’d start now.”

  He nodded over Toby’s shoulder. Toby turned to see his uncle glaring at him across the lawn, and without waiting, bolted toward a gate in the garden wall.

  “So much for him,” said Oliver. “I wonder what he’s been doing in his room all morning.”

  “Binoculars,” Effie murmured, swathing the wrap around her torso as Mallard approached. He was wearing an off-white linen suit with an ascot and a dapper Panama hat, which complemented his rakish white moustache.

  “Sergeant Strongitharm,” said Mallard, removing the hat, “I nearly didn’t recognize you with all those clothes on.” He fixed his gaze on a single cumulus cloud, adrift in the blue sky.

  “Phoebe and I have been at Dennis Breedlove’s cottage,” he continued, “making a statement to the CID officer in charge of the case. He wants one from you, too. Just a formality. He’s Detective Sergeant Culpepper, based in Leek Wootton.”

  “In that case, I’d better slip into something less comfortable,” Effie said. She stood up and handed the book to Oliver. “Be a precious bunny and take this back to your dad’s library. I’ll meet you by the front door in ten minutes.”

  Dad? thought Oliver. When had he ever called the brigadier “Dad”?

  “Oh, Tim,” she added, “Oliver wants to convince you that Uncle Dennis’s death was a conspiracy.”

  She kissed Oliver demurely on the cheek and sashayed away, fully aware that Oliver would be staring after her while Mallard, the perfect gentleman, would be deliberately studying something else.

  “Close your mouth, precious bunny,” said Mallard, replacing his hat. “So what’s this about Uncle Dennis?”

  “I don’t think he could have killed himself without help.”

  Mallard checked his watch. “All right, let’s hear it,” he said with a sigh. “But it’s too late to search for traces of extra visitors to the Race. The two of us did a good job of tramping around under the Synne Oak, not to mention that ambulance crew and who knows how many CID busies.”

  “You don’t need that sort of evidence,” Oliver answered, setting up the stepladder. “This ladder is the same size as the one we found last night. I borrowed it from the village peeping Tom.”

  “The village peeping Tom?”

  “Yes. Well, one of them anyway. Although the other one prefers the term ‘voyeur.’ Now watch.”

  Oliver climbed the ladder, reaching for the blossom-laden branches of the horse chestnut for support, and stood on the top step.

  “This is as high as I got last night,” he called down. “When I stood on tiptoe, I was face-to-face with Dennis, not a pretty sight under the circumstances. And I could just about touch the knot that tied the rope to a branch.”

  “So you could easily hang yourself, if it becomes advisable.”

  “I could, yes,” Oliver agreed, too enthusiastic to be sidetracked by Mallard’s comment. “I’m an inch or two under six feet tall. But Dennis Breedlove was a good six inches shorter than me. It was one of the reasons why children loved him when he was on the radio—they claimed they could tell from his voice that he wasn’t much bigger than them.”

  “So you think Breedlove was too short to reach the branch and tie the rope.”

  Oliver rattled down the ladder. “Exactly.”

  “Could he have tossed the rope over the branch and bent it downwards while he tied the knot?”

  Oliver shook his head. “It’s an oak tree. Not much flexibility in those lower limbs. A bit like old Dennis himself. And even if it did bend, it would surely have stayed bent from the weight of the body. Dennis’s feet were floating a good three inches above the top step of the ladder.”

  “Then he can’t have been standing on the ladder when he did the deed. He must have climbed up into the tree to tie the rope.”

  “In that case, how did he manage to kick the ladder over?”

  “Perhaps it fell down when he stepped off it.”

  Oliver considered this as they wandered out of the tree’s shade. “Well, that’s possible I suppose. But it still leaves the question of the short rope. It was just a couple of feet from the knot to the noose. Not much of a drop.”

  “D.S. Culpepper told me the rope was only about eight feet long to start with. Tying a proper hangman’s noose would shorten it considerably.”

  Oliver picked up Effie’s book with his thumb and forefinger and absently let it swing. “You’d think if Dennis was going to all this trouble—perfectly tied noose, ancient village gibbet—he’d have some concept of the basic principles of hanging.”

  “Hanging’s a science as well as an art. Suicides rarely get it right. You need a drop at least equal to your height to break your neck, a quick death. Even the public hangman used to have a few failures. Too short a rope, and the poor bugger slowly chokes to death, which is what happened to Uncle Dennis. Too long, on the other hand, and you can decapitate your client. A messy alternative, but at least it’s thorough. Ask the French.”

  “Most people think Jayne Mansfield was decapitated when she died in that car crash. She wasn’t. That’s a good example of the new trivia I plan to write about.”

  Mallard closed his eyes, as if in pain. “Oliver, can you focus? I have to get to Strat
ford for my next rehearsal.”

  “Sorry. I just think you can answer a lot of questions if you imagine a six-foot-plus man such as yourself tying the noose to the branch first and then lifting Uncle Dennis into it while still standing on the ladder. After all, why would a supposedly suicidal octogenarian carry an eight-foot stepladder all the way up to the Synne Oak on his own and then apparently hang himself by leaping upwards into a dangling noose? Why not just go into the garage and run the car? Why was the last act of his life so complicated?”

  “To make a point,” said Mallard, “you’d better talk to Culpepper. He may have something to show you.”

  “Did Dennis leave a note, then?”

  “In a way. But he didn’t write it himself.”

  “You’re being annoyingly cryptic, Uncle Tim.”

  Mallard tousled Oliver’s hair briefly, as if his nephew were a five-year-old. Oliver didn’t resent the gesture. “Go and see Culpepper. You’ll understand.”

  He turned toward the house. Oliver realized he was still holding the book from his father’s library. He cut across the lawn to the open French windows of the ground-floor study where Brigadier Swithin kept his collections of cast-iron toy soldiers, which his sons had never been allowed to touch, and books that were mostly about war in the twentieth century, which his sons had never asked to read. Oliver let his eyes adjust to the sudden shade, wondering where his father filed the books on local traditions.

  “Who’s there?” It was a sharp cry, from the depths of a leather wing chair near the empty fireplace. If Bob Swithin had been dozing over his magazine, he would never have admitted it.

  “It’s me, Father. Oliver.”

  He removed the resented reading glasses. His eyes were dark and small, dwarfed by untidy eyebrows, the only hair visible on his glossy head. Oliver was reminded again of his gratitude that male baldness was inherited from the mother’s DNA—although he had a nagging feeling this was another example of a fact that was widely known but completely wrong. It did seem to be the case that much of the anti-trivia he was collecting was incorrect. The Victorians didn’t cover up the legs of their pianos to disguise their lascivious profile, for example. There’s no evidence that Anne Boleyn had six fingers or three nipples. And Catherine the Great decidedly did not die while, well…

  “Something I can help you with?” asked his father.

  “Just returning the book Effie borrowed this morning.”

  He breathed deeply, as if relieved that the encounter would involve nothing more parental.

  “Effie, yes,” he said. “Spirited lass. Been courting her for a while now, eh?”

  “Nine months. Longest girlfriend ever.” The brusque phrasing that Oliver fell into when talking to his father gave the last comment a surreal twist, but he knew it wouldn’t register in the brigadier’s practical mind.

  “Well, don’t mess it up then.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Oliver was aware that his best had generally failed to meet his father’s standards and that, more than anyone, Bob Swithin was glad that his son wrote his children’s books under a pseudonym. Bob had never really forgiven Oliver for surpassing him in height at age fourteen.

  “Yes, rather fond of Effie. Reminds me a bit of your sister.” He referred to his only daughter, Eve, who came between Oliver and Toby in birth order and who was currently in New York. Oliver loved Eve and admired her achievements, so he took the comparison as a compliment, but he’d also noted that his father would create any opportunity to mention his favorite child, whose non-military ambitions offended him less because she was not male. Oliver spotted the gap on the shelves where the black book usually sat.

  “Oh, one more thing, Oliver,” the brigadier called as his son headed for the door. “This little Breedlove fellow who topped himself last night. Understand from your mother—or it could have been her sister, I wasn’t paying that much attention—that you and Timothy were on the scene.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I knew the old boy, of course—village business, parochial council. Decent enough blighter, could be quite entertaining, if you liked the cut of his jib. Your mother couldn’t stomach him. Good conversationalist. Always wore the same outfit. Anyway, I believe he was in your line of business.”

  “He didn’t write children’s books, he wrote about them,” Oliver informed him pointlessly.

  “Not a particular friend of yours, then?”

  Dennis Breedlove’s erudite and controversial books about children’s literature began to appear after he’d moved to Synne thirty years earlier, drawing upon thirty prior years of reading classic stories to children on BBC radio until the institution decided it no longer had time for them or him. The publication of the Railway Mice series had moved Oliver into the same literary circle as Breedlove, and he’d met the old man once or twice at the Sanders, the club for children’s authors on Pall Mall, when Breedlove—an honorary member—made one of his rare journeys to London. But last night’s encounter with Breedlove’s small corpse was the first time Oliver had come face-to-face with him in Synne. Of course, he’d always intended to pay a courtesy call on Uncle Dennis during one of his brief stays with his parents. But somehow that friendly visit had always been squeezed out by other things, including Oliver’s self-centered desire to get back to the city as soon as possible.

  “Not really a friend, no.”

  “Ah. No great loss, then.” The brigadier picked up his magazine from his lap and put on his reading glasses, signaling that Oliver wasn’t meant to take any further comments as an invitation to prolong their conversation. Brigadier Bob always liked having the last word.

  “Unpleasant business, hanging,” he commented, not looking in Oliver’s direction. “I’ve heard they foul themselves as they come down. And a chap can get a—well, not for mixed company.”

  “Mixed—?”

  “Pistol shot to the temple, that’s a man’s way.”

  “Yes, indeed, Father,” said Oliver and let himself out of the dim room into the large bright entrance hall, where Effie was waiting for him. She smiled broadly when she saw him, as she always did. If she ever stopped, he thought, the world would end.

  Chapter Three

  Saturday afternoon

  Dennis Breedlove’s cottage skulked on a quiet lane that sidled off the main road and led to Synne’s Parish church. The old, single-story house had been snarkily stuccoed many years earlier and defiantly patched whenever the local limestone threatened to show through. Small, latticed windows flanked an unusually grand porch with its own slate roof and fussy columns, hidden now by skeins of grape-scented Chinese wisteria. A black sedan was parked in front.

  With just enough room between the house and the road for a straggly privet hedge and a terse front garden, there was a marked absence of any springtime color, apart from the wisteria. Even the patchy lawn was partly hidden by a large pile of damp earth carelessly dumped beside the front path. It was clearly an old man’s neglected, unweeded garden that grows to seed. Dennis Breedlove’s property may have started at his garden gate, but his realm began at the royal blue front door, now standing slightly open. Two full bottles of milk stood by the door, and that morning’s Daily Telegraph lay on the doormat.

  Oliver paused beside the pile of dirt, unconsciously rubbing his thumb across the fingertips of his right hand, before he noticed that Effie had pushed the door open farther and walked in. Privately grateful for her brazenness, he followed, muttering hypocritical protests about trespassing, which masked his guilt that this was his first visit to Breedlove’s home.

  The chilly space they entered was clearly the heart of the house, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining every wall, and piles of paper mounting like stalagmites from the carpet. There were stacks of notes, magazines, and unsorted books on most surfaces, including the lone sofa. A pile of Beano annuals had become an unsteady pedestal for an old, blue
Smith Corona typewriter under its plastic cover. Although the papers were untidy, Oliver suspected that they were not disorganized—that their late owner could have told you in an instant where to find any note or publication. Would Uncle Dennis have appointed a literary executor, or would a distant relative just dump all of it, unread, into a recycled-paper sack? Should he volunteer to sort the papers?

  There was no sign of the car’s owner. Oliver prowled through the room, noting that the volumes of children’s literature on the bookshelves were alphabetized. He surreptitiously scanned for copies of his own Railway Mice series, and saw, with another pang of guilt, that Breedlove had the complete set to date under Oliver’s “O.C. Blithely” pen name, propped between Elizabeth Beresford’s Wombles books and the beginning of several feet of Enid Blyton. He pulled out his most recent best seller, The Railway Mice and the Vicious Mole. There was a worrying odor of mildew already in its pages.

  Effie wandered over to a heavy oak bureau against the side wall and glanced over some loose papers that had been left on the surface.

  “Looking for something, Curly?”

  An exceptionally tall, thin, black man wearing a tailored business suit, was still straightening after his entrance through a low inner doorway. He had spoken with a Birmingham accent, and was now staring at Effie with curiosity. The man was of the height that compelled new acquaintances to inform him helplessly that he was very tall and ask him if he played basketball. Oliver guessed that this was Detective Sergeant Culpepper, and he immediately sympathized, because he knew that the offhand greeting had just qualified the lofty policeman for a blast of the Strongitharm Look.

  But to his astonishment, Effie merely smiled and advanced toward the newcomer, hand outstretched. First Toby is spared, now this lanky colossus—was Eff losing her powers?

  She introduced herself. Culpepper looked abashed as he slowly shook her hand. “I assumed you were another of the deceased’s nosy-parker neighbors,” he apologized. “I had envisaged the famous Superintendent Mallard’s trusty sidekick as a much older woman.”