by Alan Beechey
They walked out of the house again and paused on the porch while Culpepper locked the bright blue door and positioned a strip of broad yellow tape across the door and its frame. It gave the scene a nautical look, despite the fierce POLICE – DO NOT ENTER message, a welcome splash of color in Breedlove’s dismal front garden. Oliver noticed again the mound of damp earth that sat beside the garden path. It was darker than the ground it lay on, and since Oliver could see no corresponding hole, he guessed that it been delivered for some landscaping purpose, now gone with Breedlove to his grave. It reminded Oliver that he’d noticed some caked dirt on his own hands the previous evening, shortly after grabbing onto the swinging body in the tree.
“When Dennis was taken down from the tree, were his clothes dirty?” he asked Culpepper.
“Yes, they were, almost muddy, as if he’d been lying in it. He probably fell down a couple of times on his way across the Common.”
Oliver nodded. The damp mound in front of him showed no signs of any collision with a suicidal, eighty-year-old expert on children’s literature. But when had it rained last? The dust from the Common, which had swirled off his feet in the shower last night, was lighter in color.
“So these naked women observed by the Vampire of Synne?” Effie began.
“Merely a trick of the light,” said Culpepper quickly. “It certainly isn’t worth putting into my report, and Superintendent Mallard agrees with me.”
“I can see why my uncle took a liking to you, Detective Sergeant Culpepper,” said Oliver, shaking hands with the tall policeman.
“Oh well, it never hurts to have friends in high places.”
“And vice versa.”
Culpepper frowned. “I’m not with you, I’m afraid.”
“A little joke…” Oliver began, with a smug smile.
Chapter Four
Saturday afternoon (continued)
Visitors often mistake the tall stone obelisk in the middle of Synne’s Square for a war memorial, erected during the spate of numb memorializing that followed the First World War. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on your perspective—there wasn’t a single villager who’d even joined up to fight the Great War, let alone given his life for King and country. But not to be out-commemorated by the neighboring village of Pigsneye, which had sacrificed half its male population at Passchendaele, the Parish Council of the time erected this monument to the one Synne resident who had gone down on the Titanic in 1912, two years before the war began (or five years before, if you’re one of Synne’s frequent American tourists).
After the Second World War, which also found Synne unrepresented in the armed forces, the Parish Council discovered that a man born in the village had died in the crash of the Hindenburg in 1937, oddly enough, two years before the war began (or nearly five years before, if you’re an American tourist) and his name was duly added to the memorial, conveniently omitting the fact that he had been part of the cabin crew and a keen member of the Nazi Party.
Oliver and Effie were sitting on the steps in front of the obelisk, sharing a stale jam doughnut they’d bought from the village post office across the street. In the afternoon sunlight, the stone cottages facing the Square exhibited a range of shades from cream to pewter, from ivory to amber, spattered with the seasonal primaries of window boxes and hanging baskets of petunias, and, in the case of one house that juts into the road, paint samples from many European car manufacturers.
Signs and displays in the windows added more color, since many of the restless homeowners, unable to abandon their entrepreneurial pasts and desperate for fresh company, had turned front parlors into antique “centres” or estate agencies showing pictures of thatched cottages for sale (of which Synne possessed nearly one) or cramped art galleries for the residents’ watercolors of the same buildings. Tourists pausing for refreshment in one of Synne’s five tearooms were often baffled to find that their twelve-pounds-fifty didn’t just buy them a pot of Earl Grey and a powdery scone, but also a lecture from the proprietor on current trends in conditional variance swaps.
Effie turned and looked at Oliver for several seconds, with a mixture of affection and pity.
“I can’t believe you told Simon that he was very tall,” she said.
“I was explaining the joke,” Oliver bleated. “With Simon, Uncle Tim also has a ‘friend in a high place,’ as it were.”
“I can’t take you anywhere,” Effie sighed, licking sugar from her fingers. The distant purr of a car engine began to drown out the conversation some rooks were conducting in a nearby hornbeam.
“Tell me something,” said Oliver. “How did Culpepper get away with calling you ‘Curly’? Why didn’t you put him in his place with that magic Look of yours?”
“My what? What on earth are you talking about?” She screwed up the empty paper bag and tossed it into a rubbish bin a few feet away, beside the bus shelter built to celebrate the Festival of Britain in 1951, although Synne had never had a bus service before or since.
The car was louder now, clearly a sports car, clearly being driven too fast for England’s meandering country roads. It was approaching from the west.
“No, I chose to give Simon a chance to explain himself,” she continued. She smiled contentedly. “It was worth it,” she added, remembering the tall detective’s compliment.
There was a cinematic squeal of tires and another throaty roar, suggesting that the car had reached the pointless double bend in front of the manor house.
“So I have competition, do I?” said Oliver, pretending to be fascinated by a pigeon that was ambling past them.
Before she could answer—before he knew whether he was going to get an answer—a black Lamborghini sped into view, barely slowing as it hurtled along the stretch of road in front of them, raising clouds of dust and rattling crockery on the small tables outside the tea shops. A small, elderly man stepping out of the post office leaped backwards in alarm and dropped an ice cream cone. Oliver thought he looked vaguely familiar, but not from Synne. The pigeon flew off, affronted. With a shriek of brakes, the car swerved onto the footpath that led to the Swithins’ house. The driver gave one more unnecessary prod to the accelerator and then turned the engine off.
“Ben’s arrived,” said Oliver. He stood up and offered a hand to Effie. She let him pull her to her feet, and then slipped her arms around his waist and kissed him briskly on the chin.
“Are you even slightly jealous?”
“Not a bit,” Oliver lied.
“Good. I don’t play those games, Ollie. If I ever want someone other than you, you’ll be the first to know.” She kissed him again, while he registered the fact that she’d said “if” and not “when.”
Ben Motley was Oliver’s friend and landlord, a photographer whose studio occupied the top floor of the Edwardes Square townhouse they shared with their friends Geoffrey Angelwine and Susie Beamish. Ben oozed his tanned and well-toned body out of the Lamborghini and reached behind the driver’s seat for a leather overnight valise and an aluminum case of photographic equipment. He caught sight of Oliver and Effie across the Square and waved delightedly, pulling his sunglasses from his handsome face.
“Tell me again where we’re going this evening,” Effie asked as they walked toward the house, trying to avoid the broken sticks, bedraggled paper flowers, discarded straw hats, and the occasional shard of a beer bottle left over from the previous morning’s May Day event, the annual Beating of the Morris Dancers.
“You and I and Ben and the egregious Toby are having dinner with some old family friends, the Bennets, over at Pigsneye.”
“Does Ben know them?”
Oliver spotted her subtext: Am I the only stranger?
“No, but Mother let slip that he was staying with us, so Wendy Bennet issued a very insistent invitation. She and her husband have five unmarried daughters, and a famous and famously single fashion photograph
er is irresistible husband material in these parts.”
“Hang on. A family called Bennet? Living in the country?”
“That’s right.”
“With five unmarried daughters?”
“Er, yes.”
“Is this some kind of put-on? Their names aren’t Elizabeth, Jane, Mary, Kitty, and whatever that slutty Lolita who runs off with Mr. Wickham was called, are they?”
“No.” Oliver cleared his throat. “They’re Davina, Catriona, Clarissa, Xanthe, and Lucinda.”
“Great. I can see I’m going to fit right in.”
She strode ahead to greet Ben. Oliver hung back, using the few extra seconds to recall the text of the blackmail note once again. It was probably the twentieth mental review, with increasing intervals, and he thought he had it by heart.
He didn’t agree with Culpepper. Whoever had sent Dennis Breedlove that letter drove the old man to his death. It was the moral equivalent of murder. And if the Warwickshire police couldn’t spare the manpower for moral equivalencies, and Scotland Yard was forced by etiquette to sit on his and her hands, then maybe it was up to him to find the murderer.
Did you think you could hide your history? Did you think this whole blessed plot would be covered up forever…?
Chapter Five
Saturday evening
“Thirteen at dinner,” sniffed Mrs. Bennet. “I thought we were twelve, six men and six girls. I don’t know how I miscalculated.”
Oliver knew. The forgotten guest was clearly Effie, since the other six females were all called Bennet, the middle-aged Wendy considering herself as much a “girl” as her five daughters. He glanced behind him, but Effie was still standing by the front door out of earshot, taking in the capacious entrance hall of the Bennets’ eighteenth century mansion.
Mrs. Bennet leaned closer. She was almost as tall as he was, with black bobbed hair and abrupt features and wearing a yellow silk sheath that you’d have said was too small for her (although you’d have thought that she was too big for it). “I’m not usually superstitious, Oliver, but we don’t want to risk any bad luck tonight, because of Lucinda’s engagement.”
“Lucinda’s getting married?” Oliver was genuinely delighted, because it would reduce the number of Bennet sisters who considered him a potential husband by twenty percent. This was not a flattering distinction; the number of males who fit this target category was, by now, approaching half the population of Europe, including gay men if necessary; but it still required him on these rare occasions to suffer two or three hours of unwelcome flirtation across the dinner table. Or it would have, had Effie not been there. He hoped.
The trip from Synne to Pigsneye was short, even though no English road planner had followed flying crows since the Roman occupation. Effie drove them in her Renault, because Ben’s Lamborghini was a two-seater. She seemed to be avoiding any discussion of the approaching dinner.
“What are you working on when you’re not shooting semi-naked models?” she had asked Ben, accelerating around a blind corner on the country lane.
“Wallpaper.”
“You design wallpaper?”
“I photograph it. Some of my wealthier clients have the most beautiful wallpaper in their homes—William Morris, Alphonse Mucha, much of it original. I want them to see that it can be more striking than the paintings or prints they hang over it. So I take a large-format photograph of the wallpaper and they display it in a frame in front of the real wallpaper.”
“But what’s to stop them just hanging up an empty frame instead of hiring you?” asked Oliver from the backseat.
Ben sighed. “Because, my dear Ollie, that’s not ironic. That’s just lazy.”
“What’s the difference?”
“About £10,000 a session.”
Following Oliver’s directions, Effie had pulled into a gap in a dense arborvitae hedge. A gravel driveway led eventually to a substantial Georgian mansion where she stopped the car under a porte-cochere. “I smell money,” she had muttered. Stepping across the threshold of Bennet Hall, she seemed to shrink slightly and become distracted by the appearance of her shoes. Mr. Bennet, a small man, balding and bespectacled, who always looked as if you were about to speak to him, helped her remove her thin raincoat, exuding nervous hospitality. Oliver had noticed before that Effie, self-assured and fearless when on official police business, was uncomfortable in social settings that contrasted with her own upbringing. At least, he’d always assumed she had a working-class background, although she rarely spoke of her childhood. He’d never met her family.
“So who’s Luce’s lucky man?” Oliver asked Mrs. Bennet.
“The Honorable Donald Quilt-Hogg, fifth son of the Earl of Yateley. The Honorable Donald is with us tonight. It’s an excellent match—not too many potential spouses out there who have all the requirements: just nineteen, a guaranteed virgin, as pure as snow, knows one end of a horse from another, and would look good in a Countess’s robes just in case of a regrettable quartet of family tragedies.”
“Well, as long as Luce doesn’t mind about the cross-dressing.”
Mrs. Bennet gave what she thought was a girlish giggle.
“I’m describing Lucinda, you rogue, as you well know. It’s my heart’s desire to see one of my girls marry into the aristocracy.”
Oliver thought, “It’s your heart’s desire to see one of your girls marry full stop.” Although the oldest Bennet sister was only twenty-five, that was thirty-nine in debutante years. Lucinda, fresh out of the starting gate at nineteen—he’d assumed Wendy had measured her daughter in years, not hands—was bucking a trend. Still, from what he’d heard about the current finances of the current Lord Yateley (and currency didn’t feature much), there was a clear tit for tat in the pairing, no doubt starting with Lucinda’s well-heeled father helping to get the Yateley family jewels out of hock in time for the wedding. Never mind the nouveau, feel the riche.
“And when did the Hon. Don pop the question?” Oliver asked.
Mrs. Bennet lowered her voice still further. “Well, dear, he’s not exactly asked her in so many words, which is why we don’t want to take any chances with Lady Luck. Lafcadio and I will leave the dining room to you eleven youngsters. I’d join you, but Lafcadio sulks if he’s made to dine alone, the brute, and we girls may not see the checkbook for a month.”
We girls. Wendy Bennet didn’t like to be reminded that there was any generation younger than her own. “My oldest daughter’s in her twenties,” she would frequently confess with an expression that anticipated your shocked disbelief, and then would look away coyly so she never had to notice that it wasn’t forthcoming.
Mr. Bennet was now ushering Effie into the presence of his wife, who managed to force her lower face into a dazzling smile while her eyes skewered the surplus female guest with a malevolent glare. Effie, who had faced down criminal court judges, murderers, and other evildoers, quailed slightly. The senior Bennets withdrew to bully the hired kitchen staff, and the new arrivals were shown into the drawing room.
Once Effie’s pupils had adjusted to the blaze of gilded furniture, ormolu clocks, and gold-edged porcelain, she became aware that the settees supported a full hand of Bennet daughters, all staring at her with a mix of curiosity and appraisal. It was unlikely that anyone had ever dared bring the girls’ shared plainness to their notice, but that hadn’t stopped them devoting much of their time—it would be redundant to call it their “free” time—and much of their father’s fortune to grooming and styling. For a quiet dinner at home, the sisters were decked out in bright bracelets, necklaces, and earrings that almost, but not quite, eclipsed the satin and chiffon of their designer gowns. Effie, cool and stunning in the newer of the two dresses she’d brought with her—a blue cotton Monsoon sundress that Oliver had assured her would be adequate for the occasion—felt self-conscious and underdressed.
As Oliver made the int
roductions, she used her police training to fix which sister was which, noting the color of their dresses and their expensive hairstyles. (Her own mutinous curls had been dragged into a tentative ponytail.) The girls’ listless conversation gave her less to work with, with the possible exceptions of Davina, the oldest and least unattractive (dark bob like her mother’s, black Valentino), who seemed to have some spark of personality. Unfortunately, not a very pleasant one. Lucinda, the youngest (medium brown hair, long and upswept, caramel Dior) never spoke at all, but gazed with a half-smile at the Honorable Donald Quilt-Hogg. The other sisters gazed frankly at Ben. As Oliver had once commented, Ben didn’t so much ooze charm as squirt it.
The same could not be said of the Honorable Donald (Norton & Sons, tweed). He was a tall, well-built young man, with prematurely thinning blondish hair, whose speech was similarly sparse, apart from a sporadic comment that sounded to Effie like “Ah, jolly old honkers!” followed by a throaty chuckle.
Oliver, sensing Effie’s discomfort, poured two glasses of white Sauterne from a gold-rimmed cooler on the sideboard and passed one to her without asking. She finished it in two gulps. After an agonizing twenty minutes of desultory small talk about the London Season, the door opened and Toby came in, followed by another young man.
“Sorry I’m late,” Toby said. “Eric and I got caught in the theatre traffic.”
“Still, better it’s us that’s ‘late’ than any of you girls, eh?” said his companion, with a general leer for the room. “Know what I mean?” he added unnecessarily, but the sisters’ laughter was apparently genuine. Lucinda whispered an explanation into Quilt-Hogg’s ear, and he nodded, muttering his favorite phrase again.
“Oh, Eric,” cried Davina, taking the newcomer by the arm, “for Jesu’s sake, forbeare. Come and meet the new arrivals.”
“At your cervix, dear madam,” the young man declared. He was introduced to Quilt-Hogg, Ben, and finally to Effie, to whom he bowed with comic gallantry.