This Private Plot

by Alan Beechey

  “I thought I heard something,” Effie said quietly, without turning around. Oliver caught a faint shriek in the distance.

  “There it is again,” she said.

  “If it’s that bloody vixen, I’m going to campaign to bring back fox hunting,” Oliver muttered, stepping over to her and beginning to kiss her bare shoulders.

  “I don’t think it’s coming from outside,” she answered, ignoring his attentions. “And can you hear a sort of banging?”

  So it wasn’t just his circulatory system. He paused and listened. The regular, percussive beat seemed to be coming from the ceiling, and there were more vocalizations, louder, more frequent, and clearly human. Dear Lord, was someone being attacked again, this time inside the house? It sounded like Susie’s voice, and her screams were gaining in volume and intensity. Had Geoffrey snapped? There were words, a phrase shouted over and over. Was it “Help me?” Something “me,” anyway.

  “Oh, my God!” Oliver exclaimed. “They’re…”

  Effie burst into laughter. “It sounds as if your advice worked,” she said, switching on the bedside lamp. “I think you can say they’ve reached a rapprochement.” She gathered the top cover from Oliver’s bed and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  Effie paused and glanced up at the ceiling. “I’m not staying here with that soundtrack.”

  “It’s not our fault. We shouldn’t be driven out of our own room because someone else beat us to the nookie.”

  “Then you go upstairs and tell them to stop,” she replied, yawning one more time. “I’m going to sleep on the couch downstairs. If you come with me, I’ll share the duvet.”

  “Okay, but does this mean we aren’t… ?”

  She stopped and looked at him tenderly. “I’m afraid so, darling. The public rooms of your parents’ home are off-limits to the four-footed frolic by sheer definition.”

  “But when Geoff and Susie are finished…?”

  “Who knows when that will be?” she said, with another wary glance upwards. “I have to get up early. Besides, if the walls of the Chateau Swithin are that thin, I’d prefer to wait until we get back to London.”

  Oliver stood still, dejected, glaring at his still-unnotched headboard. It certainly sounded as if Geoffrey and Susie’s first close encounter was going to be a long one. Geoff may have been a novice in the art of love, but he’d put himself in the hands, arms, and presumably other body parts of an expert.

  “Thank you, Geoff,” he grunted—or something fairly close phonetically—and followed Effie out of the room.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Friday evening (continued)

  Oliver went downstairs to find Effie cocooned on the sitting room couch, already dozing, with the opportunistic cat furled beside her. He doused the lights and took the Guardian crossword to the kitchen, hoping to catch Toby. After half an hour of waiting, he decided instead to defy his uncle and continue the surveillance of Sidney and Lesbia. Effie may have fallen into line, but Mallard wasn’t his boss. Some must watch while some must sleep. He let himself out the kitchen door and strolled around the side of the house.

  He stopped dead when he saw the black-clad figure, crouched over the stepladder he had planned to use. The intruder hadn’t heard his approach. Oliver looked around for a weapon, saw nothing in the moonlight. But in the last twenty-four hours, hadn’t he proved he could take care of himself? Two victories, no defeats, after all.

  On the other hand, fighting hurts, even if you win.

  He slowly removed his glasses and placed them on the nearby window ledge. The man was still unaware that he’d been seen. The readiness is all. Oliver tapped a blurry body part that he hoped was a shoulder, then shifted his weight back, ready to land the first punch.

  The intruder spun around with a low whimper, dropped backwards, and sat on the ground.

  “Lawks-a-mercy!” he exhaled. “It’s you, Oliver. Oh, you did give me a turn.”

  Oliver put on his glasses. As he’d guessed from the voice, the intruder was Vic Flimsy, the Peeping Tom from whom he’d borrowed the stepladder a week earlier. Flimsy was a middle-aged man, with an untidy growth of caramel-colored hair and eyes that were too small for his face by precisely the same percentage that his nose was too big for it.

  “Good evening, Mr. Flimsy,” said Oliver. “My apologies for the scare. Doing us tonight?” Had Flimsy heard the top-floor fornication from the street, like a dog whistle?

  Flimsy shook his head and got to his feet, a pair of binoculars swinging from a strap around his neck. “Oh no,” he chirped, “I have much too much respect for your dear parents. They’re church people. No, I’m visiting the Crumbs, in the Close—they’re Baptist heathens. Their youngest is just back from a fortnight in Ibiza. That’s why I need my ladder.”

  Oliver nodded, half-remembering that the Crumbs’ resident daughter, Clodagh Crumb Maxwell, was a morose divorcee in her early forties who never closed her bedroom curtains. Do peepers and exhibitionists complete each other, he wondered? Or does it deprive the voyeur of the thrill of the hunt? He didn’t feel inclined to discuss this with the unsavory Flimsy, who was now struggling to balance the long stepladder on his shoulder. But then a thought struck him.

  “Mr. Flimsy, you have your ear to the ground in Synne,” he said. And your eyes to the keyholes. “May I detain you for a second?”

  “That’s all right, sir. Clodagh won’t start without me.”

  “Have you heard any rumors about the late Dennis Breedlove?”

  “That he was a blackmailer, you mean? You’re helping the police clear that up, aren’t you? I assume that’s why you borrowed old Bessie here.” He patted the stepladder affectionately with his free hand.

  Oh, great, Oliver thought. If the village grapevine knew about his investigation, then last night’s attacker could have been anyone in Synne with a balaclava and a guilty conscience. (And surely a broken nose, today?)

  “In your, uh, research, have you come across anything that might have whetted Breedlove’s appetite?”

  Flimsy sucked on his teeth. “Well, there’s the vicar, obviously—we all know what his book club’s really about.” He lowered his head sadly. “Shameful business, on church property. I have more self-respect than to sully my binoculars on the vicarage curtains. And you might want to keep an eye on that kid Eric from Pigsneye. Not Normal.”

  “No, he certainly isn’t.”

  “No, I mean his name’s not Normal, it’s something like it. Norman? Mormon? Moron? Anyhow, I’ve noticed him in Stratford, mixing in with the young lady tourists, working the camcorder-in-the-bag gag. Bleedin’ amateurs, relying on this newfangled technology—where’s the skill, where’s the craft? They have no technique to fall back on. Oh, and there’s something very fishy about that chap who moved into the manor house last year. Keeps odd hours, men coming and going at night. Not that I’ve given him any of my services. I’m strictly heterosexual, as you know, Oliver. Old school.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I’m what?”

  “Old school.”

  “Eh? No, I meant you could check out the old school. It’s just been converted into a dwelling. Couple from the Smoke. Rich, not gaudy. Wifey used to manage a hedge fund, hubby makes bloody pottery, we don’t care.”

  Newcomers, Oliver thought. Breedlove wouldn’t have got to them yet. But why hadn’t he thought of consulting Vic Flimsy before? This is golden.

  Flimsy had stopped, distracted by a light that had just come on in a second-floor window across the Square. Bessie seemed to shiver, as if straining at a leash.

  “One last question,” Oliver ventured. “I don’t suppose you’ve peeped in on Mr. and Mrs. Weguelin?”

  Flimsy stared at him censoriously in the moonlight. “How dare you!” he exclaimed. “Sidney and Lesbia are pillars of the church. The
very idea of subjecting them to my vile attentions! I’m surprised at you, young Oliver.”

  He hoisted Bessie higher on his shoulder and marched primly away. Oliver followed at a distance, relieved when the voyeur walked past the turning that would have taken him to the Weguelins’ back garden.

  An hour later, Oliver was holding his position behind the Weguelins’ house, in the fading hope that they hadn’t retired for the night, although all the rear-facing windows were dark. The high wall had been a challenge without Bessie, but once he’d jumped and established a handhold on the coping, he found he could wedge his foot onto a slightly projecting brick. He’d fallen only twice, first onto a pile of earth that someone had dumped behind the wall, and the second time into the soft, familiar, welcoming bed of stinging nettles.

  It was well after midnight by now, and the half-moon was close to setting. A light breeze brought a sweet gust of night-scented stock from the Weguelins’ garden. The air was filled with the odd metallic hum of insects. A badger snuffled past in a nearby field. A hand clamped onto Oliver’s shin.

  “I thought I told you to stay out of this,” came a voice, alarmingly close. Oliver risked a look down. The beam of a flashlight met his eyes, blinding him.

  He kicked back wildly with his free foot like a donkey, toward the place he thought a head should be, and was satisfied when his shoe made contact with something other than air. There was a grunt of pain and the man—oh, let it be a man—fell backwards. But he kept hold of Oliver’s leg. Oliver was pulled from the wall, and both men plunged into the nettles. Oliver landed two punches into the stranger’s stomach, which felt annoyingly well-muscled. The hand let go.

  Oliver rolled and got to his feet first, blinking away the snake-like afterimages of the flashlight bulb. Amazingly, his glasses had stayed on. He adopted a fighting stance, bent forward, center of gravity low, and waited for the first sign of a fresh assault.

  The dark-clothed man was breathing hard, trying to speak. He rolled cautiously onto his side, but still made no attempt to stand. Oliver took a step nearer, trying to see his opponent’s face in the deep shadows. The flashlight lay a few feet away, illuminating a patch of fleabane.

  Suddenly, Oliver was tipping. The man had hooked one foot around Oliver’s ankle, and now pushed with his other foot against Oliver’s knee. Oliver tumbled backwards, over the edge of a drainage ditch. He landed hard on its slope, wheezing and flailing for support.

  The man rose to his feet and, from Oliver’s point of view, failed to leave off the ascent where most people would. He recovered the flashlight and shone it again on Oliver’s face. Oliver closed his eyes to the blazing glare and prepared for the coup de grace.

  “It’s the purple trainers that are the giveaway,” said the man breathlessly. Another familiar voice, this time with a thick Brummie accent.

  “Simon?” Oliver ventured.

  “A piece of him.”

  Oliver scrabbled at the grass around him and tried to climb out of the ditch. Culpepper offered him a hand. The two men found themselves standing together in the darkness, in an awkward facsimile of a handshake.

  “I guess I’m under arrest,” said Oliver, letting go and tugging his wet trousers away from his skin.

  “Frankly, I wouldn’t know where to start. Assaulting an officer, public nuisance, trespass, interfering with an ongoing investigation, wasting police time…” Culpepper straightened his tie. “Fortunately for you, Oliver, your uncle called me earlier and told me about last night’s assault. So despite the bruises and the nettle stings, I’m inclined to excuse your belligerence.”

  They subsided onto a patch of grass on the bank, side by side, still breathing hard.

  “Did you just happen to be passing?” Oliver asked.

  “Not at all. Sidney Weguelin called a short while ago and claimed that someone was peering at them over the back wall. They’ve been hiding inside with the lights off.”

  “Why you? Why not Ernie Bostar?”

  “I left my phone number with the Wegeulins when I interviewed them about Breedlove’s death. As it happened, I was in the area. I’d better call Sidney and tell him it was all a mistake. You should clear off.” He produced his mobile phone from a pocket and began to search through the list of recent calls.

  “Hang on,” said Oliver, frowning. “You said you interviewed ‘them.’”

  “Yes, last Sunday afternoon. The day after I first spoke to you and Effie. Just routine.”

  “But you saw them separately. At different times.”

  “No. I went to their house and spoke to them together.”

  “Together? Together in the same room at the same time?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “Are you sure there wasn’t a big mirror in the room, and one of them only sat sideways to you? Was Lesbia on a closed-circuit television from a different room? Or did Sidney seem very stiff in his movements, like a big ventriloquist dummy?”

  Culpepper switched off his phone without placing the call. “And offer me a gottle of geer while Lesbia drank a glass of water?” He gave a sharp laugh. “So that’s why you’ve been spying on them. You think Sidney and Lesbia are the same person and Breedlove was blackmailing them to keep quiet about it. Which of the rhymes was that brainwave supposed to apply to? Jack and Jill?”

  “Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” Oliver mumbled.

  “Well, it fits, in the sense that we just had a battle.” Culpepper prodded his stomach and grimaced. “But no, I can confirm that there are two of them. By the way, Sidney told me that he suspected it was you at the bottom of his garden. You’re not good at being furtive, are you, Oliver?”

  “I suppose that’s a sort of compliment.”

  “Maybe. Now bugger off before Sidney comes out to see what’s been going on.”

  Oliver hurried away along the lane and back to the deserted main street. He stopped in the bus shelter, catching his breath and straining to read his wristwatch in the darkness. Bollocks! Now he needed a new candidate for Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Oldest Member of the Breedlove Blackmail Club.

  There was a slight movement to his left. Without shifting his body, he turned his head. A man in dark clothes was leaning against the village memorial, watching him. At least, he supposed it was a man. These figures usually were.

  He knew he’d been seen. His fair hair was too conspicuous in the moonlight. But the watcher said nothing, no evening greeting, no genial comment to a passing stranger about the lateness of the hour. That couldn’t be good. After two false starts, was this finally the reappearance of yesterday’s attacker? The stranger’s head was certainly covered in something dark.

  Oliver pretended he hadn’t noticed the figure and started slowly back across the Square toward his parents’ home. The edge of the obelisk’s broad stone plinth came between him and the silent watcher. He abruptly reversed course and tiptoed directly toward the memorial, flattening himself against the stonework and cautiously peering around corner.

  The stranger had gone, vanished.

  Oliver paced forward, clockwise around the obelisk, lowering his feet quietly on the grass. He craned his neck to view the street side of the memorial. Again, no sign of the stranger. But he couldn’t have escaped. If he’d gone along the main road, his footsteps would have been audible. And if he’d crossed the village green, Oliver would have seen him.

  Advancing cautiously, like a child in the last round of musical chairs, he looked around the next corner. Nobody. Oliver completed his circuit. Still nobody. Either the stranger had vanished, or he’d been circling the memorial, too, always keeping it between him and Oliver. In which case…

  Oliver spun around. The dark figure was standing behind him.

  With a cry of battle, Oliver snatched off his glasses and lunged forward.

  The next moment, he was airborne and upside down. He landed flat on the grass, w
ithout the relative softness of the nettles to break his fall this time, but aware that hands gripping his sleeves had expertly controlled his descent. Winded, he decided to lie still for a few seconds and enjoy the clarity of the stars. Was that Cassiopeia?

  Above him, his opponent’s face loomed into sight, upside down from his vantage point. He watched fascinated as the figure used a free hand to remove a tightly tied black headscarf. The dark, round outline of the head abruptly transformed into a more trapezoidal shape as a mass of light curls sprang out. And Oliver knew he was going to recognize this voice, too.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Saturday morning

  “A young Shakespeare scholar named Toby,

  Is no expert on Melville’s Dick, Moby,

  But his inquiry proper

  Contains such a whopper

  You’d say it’s very like a whale.”

  Oliver opened his eyes. “You might have rhymed,” he said aloud, but the shadow of a dream was already slipping from his short-term memory, like soapy fingers trying to turn a doorknob. He tried to remember, knowing that this waking rehearsal would soon be all that he’d recall, a shadow’s shadow. Finsbury the Ferret, dressed as Hamlet, declaiming the limerick from a stage set up in the middle of the Shakespeare Race, then telling him to jump.

  Oliver had looked around, but it hadn’t been one of those dreams that left him teetering on a precipice. “Jump?”

  “Jump upon this bloody question.”

  Question?

  It was ten o’clock. Morning sunshine streamed through the east-facing window. Oliver turned, but he was alone in his bed. Effie must have left for her appointment to revisit the vampire with Mallard. Memories of real life rushed back: Effie angry that she’d woken to find him missing; angry that she’d had to throw on dark clothes and a headscarf to scour the shadowy village; and angry—he presumed—because he had so quickly and brazenly flouted Mallard’s warning, knowing that she was constrained by loyalty to her disgruntled boss. (Oliver had no idea that this masked a deeper anger with herself for breaking her private pledge to Mallard to keep his nephew safe.) Despite the occasional giggle from the floor above, they’d returned to his bedroom and lay parallel in bed and in silence until sleep took pity on them.