Murder in Steeple Martin - Libby Sarjeant Murder Mystery series

by Lesley Cookman

  ‘Well done, Libby.’ Ben leaned forward and kissed her cheek and Libby jumped backwards, feeling the colour sweep up into her cheeks. He raised an eyebrow and stepped back.

  ‘Very good, girl,’ nodded Hetty gruffly and at this mark of approval, they all joined in, even Millie, Libby noticed. Susan and David smiled vaguely at Libby as though they didn’t know quite why they were there, and Gregory sat on one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs and engaged her in polite and intelligent conversation while looking as though he should be in bed. Lenny and Flo stood proudly on the outskirts as though they were responsible for the whole thing. For the first time, she realised James wasn’t there. And Sergeant Cole and DS Burnham had long since vanished into the night.

  ‘Very relieved, girl,’ whispered Lenny as she passed him to collect another drink from the bar.

  ‘So am I,’ she whispered back and wondered briefly if she was ever going to find out what the family secret was – and, indeed, if it had anything to do with the incidents of the past two weeks.

  ‘That girl weren’t bad,’ said Flo, ‘the one who played me. I reckon she were better’n that other one. Younger.’

  ‘Flo!’ Several scandalised voices rose in concert.

  ‘I agree.’ Everyone looked at Millie in surprise. ‘Well, of course, I’ve lost a daughter-in-law, but she wasn’t any good, was she?’

  A dreadful little silence fell, while no one looked at anyone else, until David said in a gruff voice: ‘I don’t know what she was like in the play, Mill, but she was a very nice person.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Millie with a grating tinkle of a laugh, ‘that’s exactly what I meant. Of course.’

  Libby looked round for Peter, but he was behind the bar with Harry. She willed him to stay there.

  ‘Didn’t know ’er meself,’ said Hetty. ‘Sorry, and all that, but didn’t know ’er.’

  ‘Neither did I, Mum,’ said Susan. ‘Don’t worry about it. David and Ben knew her, though, didn’t you?’ She turned and looked up at her husband.

  ‘Did you, David?’ said Libby. ‘I thought you said she wasn’t your patient.’

  ‘Used to be,’ David said. ‘Before she moved.’

  ‘When did she move?’ whispered Libby to Ben, as David turned to speak to his mother-in-law.

  Ben looked surprised. ‘You knew she left. She went to London. Years ago. She was back long before I came back to The Manor.’

  ‘Not recent, then,’ said Libby.

  Ben laughed. ‘Still looking for suspects, Lib?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said airily, and wandered away to speak to someone else.

  Several times after that she caught Ben’s eye and realised that excitement was building in her for quite a different reason. Eventually, Hetty signalled that it was time to go and her heart sank as she saw him collect his coat and shepherd his charges to the door. Reluctantly, she went to say goodbye.

  ‘You’ll still be here for a while, won’t you?’ he said, as she shook hands with David and Susan.

  ‘Yes, I should think so,’ she nodded, her heart clambering back up again.

  ‘Good,’ he said and disappeared through the glass doors. Libby floated back to her exuberant cast and bought another round of drinks.

  It was another hour before the cast and crew began to drift off and still Ben hadn’t reappeared. Stephen left with no further offers of escort, but Peter and Harry cashed up the bar and offered to walk her home. Libby managed to put them off, indicating the last few stragglers. She lingered on the pretext of securing the theatre, disappointment seeping unwillingly through her body while she tried to tell herself that perhaps he would come to the cottage if the theatre was closed. And perhaps he wouldn’t, she told herself as she collected her bag and cape from the dressing room. It was one thing to come back to a party after dropping off your elderly parents, another to make a clandestine visit to a female in the middle of the night.

  She checked that the front doors were locked and began to retrace her steps through the empty theatre, turning off lights as she went. It was as she crossed the stage that she realised that the light in the scenery dock had inexplicably come back on.

  ‘Hallo?’ she called hesitantly. There was no answer, just the tapping of ropes and canvas in the breeze. Breeze? She froze. There shouldn’t be a breeze. Very slowly, she forced her leaden feet to move towards the stage door.

  It was wide open. Libby stood irresolute for a moment before slamming it behind her, not bothering to go back inside to turn the lights off, before she realised that whoever had opened the door could well be out here with her. She peered into the darkness and tried to decide which would be the best way to go. If she had come out of the front doors she would have been on the well-lit drive and could have got as far as Peter and Harry’s cottage within a few minutes, but this side was dark and involved a passage through the shrubbery before getting to the front. It would have to be this end of the drive and The Manor.

  She ran up the drive, stumbling in the darkness, to the front of The Manor, then, remembering that Ben had said that Hetty didn’t lock the kitchen door, she veered round to the side.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  The voice seemed to come out of nowhere and Libby was ashamed to hear a small scream break from her own lips.

  ‘Where are you going?’ A shape was moving over to her right, moving towards her. ‘You can’t go towards the huts, you know.’

  Libby stopped, her knees trembling.

  ‘Millie?’ she said, in a voice that didn’t belong to her.

  ‘You can’t go to the huts, you know. They’re not there. They’ve put them in the Oast House.’

  Something was very wrong.

  ‘Have they?’ she said, inanely.

  ‘In the Oast House. I’ve seen them.’ Millie was nearer now, standing quite still, hunched in her camel coat.

  ‘Have you just been in there, Millie?’

  ‘Yes. I go to look at them. They shouldn’t be in there you know. You,’ she took a step nearer and peered at Libby, ‘you made them put them in there.’

  ‘They aren’t the real ones, Millie. The real ones are way over there. Near the bridge.’

  ‘They aren’t the real ones either. She had to put them up, after.’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘Come on. I’ll show you where they should be. Then you can put them back.’

  Libby thought she wouldn’t ever be able to move again as Millie came towards her and grabbed hold of her arm.

  ‘Really, Millie – I don’t think –’

  Millie simply pulled.

  They always say they have amazing strength, mad people, thought Libby wildly, as she was dragged along in Millie’s wake. Her foot caught in something and wrenched her ankle, but Millie didn’t stop, just kept pulling, while Libby sobbed and panted behind her. As they came on to the fields, it was lighter, but Libby had no idea where they were going, or even in which direction they were heading.

  ‘There.’ Millie stopped. ‘That’s where they should be. There.’

  Libby’s breath was coming so fast it hurt.

  ‘All right, Millie,’ she managed. ‘We’ll put them back. Now I know.’

  Millie was looking at her oddly. ‘Perhaps I’d better show you why,’ she said and moved over to what looked like a recently dug flower bed.

  ‘They don’t know I did this, you see. No one ever comes here. No one saw me. I just wanted to make sure.’

  Still holding Libby’s arm, she bent to pick up a spade lying at the edge of the flower bed.

  ‘You can do it. I’m tired,’ she said, and handed Libby the spade.

  Libby’s first thought was to run, or use the spade as a weapon, but hard on the heels of the thought came the realisation that Millie would grab her or the spade before she’d gone more than a few feet.

  ‘Where?’ she asked. Millie pointed. Libby began to dig. It wasn’t hard. Millie had obviously been up here very recently. The earth was quite soft. As
she dug, she began to wonder what she was digging for. What was buried here, where the old huts had been? She hadn’t thought she could get any more frightened, but now her limbs were turning to water, her mind beginning to crack under the strain. She could feel it, feel the screaming inside her head.

  It was as the spade suddenly shot downwards and the earth fell away under her feet, that she realised the screaming wasn’t inside her head but voices calling. She lost her balance and fell down into the grave. For it was a grave. Her leg was resting on a skull.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  LIBBY ONLY HAD A dim memory of being lifted out of the ground. It seemed a long time, but at last she was being put into some sort of vehicle and bumped slowly towards safety. The bumping made her feel sick, but she managed to take very deep breaths until she was carried inside, when she asked plaintively – and a little desperately – for a bathroom.

  She was sitting on the side of a bath, her head resting on the sink, when there was a gentle rap on the door.

  ‘Libby? Are you all right? Can I come in?’

  She stood up on shaky legs and opened the door. Ben stood outside, and she realised, from the state of his clothes, that it had been he who carried her in here – to The Manor, she now saw.

  ‘Can you make it in to the sitting room?’ he asked, putting both arms round her and holding her like a child.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m so heavy,’ said Libby into his sweater, and felt him laugh.

  Hetty was sitting by the fire in the sitting room. She seemed to have aged ten years since Libby saw her last.

  ‘There’s brandy or tea,’ she said, indicating the table, as Ben put Libby tenderly on to the sofa and sat down beside her.

  ‘Both,’ he said, and handed Libby a glass.

  ‘I’ve got to tell you I’m sorry, girl.’ Hetty wasn’t looking at her, but into the fire.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault –’ began Libby.

  ‘Oh, yes it was. Start to finish.’

  ‘Mum – Aunt Millie has had a breakdown – that’s not your fault.’

  ‘It is, son, it is.’

  Ben looked briefly at Libby and then back at his mother.

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to bed, Mum? All this has been a bit of a shock …’

  ‘No, son. She might not make any sense, but she was babbling fit to bust when David came to take her away.’

  ‘David?’ Libby turned to Ben and was shocked beyond measure at the expression on his face. He nodded.

  ‘Mother called him. It seemed best.’

  ‘He’s took her home to Susan for now. They’ll look after her. See what’s to be done.’ Hetty shifted her position so that Libby couldn’t see her face.

  Libby looked at Ben. ‘Do you know what all this is about? Is this why you were trying to persuade me not to go on?’

  ‘I didn’t do that, exactly –’

  ‘Well, that’s what it seemed like. You and Peter.’ Libby took a shaky swallow of her brandy.

  ‘Libby – I’m sorry –’ began Ben.

  She squinted at him. ‘All right, all right. I realise that this has something to do with the family – and solidarity and all that, but how come it only turned up over the last couple of weeks? Why was everyone all for the theatre and the play and everything until then? What happened then? Was it Lenny coming down that sparked it off?’

  ‘In a way.’ Ben stood up and walked into the shadows that shrouded the rest of the room away from the bright circle of firelight. ‘Peter was already nervous.’

  ‘Yes, I realised that, but I didn’t know why.’

  ‘That was Millie and her ghost stories.’ Ben came back to look down at her. ‘Millie’s nightmares had started again –’

  ‘Nightmares?’

  Ben glanced at her. ‘Sorry, you wouldn’t know. Millie used to have nightmares as a child, and she told Peter all about them, just as she used to when he was little. She called them ghost stories. He began to realise …’ He broke off. ‘Well, then, when Uncle Lenny came down and started doing his “I know something you don’t” routine, it sent Millie over the edge.’

  ‘So when did you find out?’ Libby’s sense of righteous indignation as opposed to bone-melting fear was reinstating itself. ‘And why didn’t you tell me?’

  Ben shrugged. ‘Peter told me on Monday night – about Millie’s nightmares, I mean. And then –’

  ‘Then there was the fire. Which you found.’ Libby finished her brandy and made her eyes water.

  ‘Yes, I did. I gather that you thought I started it.’

  ‘It did cross my mind,’ admitted Libby, looking him in the eye but feeling the colour creep up her neck.

  ‘I had been with Peter and Harry. After you left them. That’s what I was going to say before you interrupted me. I was on my way home.’

  ‘Oh’, said Libby, deflated. ‘Well, what is the problem? Why did Millie have this mental breakdown? Don’t I have a right to know?’

  Ben looked at his mother. Hetty shrugged.

  ‘I’ll have to tell you it all, and what you do about it will be up to you. She’ll tell now.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Ben, and sat down next to Libby.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ said Libby after a long silence, ‘Is why Warburton was buried there? His death wasn’t hushed up. Why didn’t he have a normal funeral?’

  The quality of the silence changed, and Libby found that she was holding her breath. When Hetty spoke, the words seemed to be dragged out of her, from a great distance.

  ‘That wasn’t Warburton. That was my father.’

  Chapter Twenty-five – 1943

  HETTY WENT INTO FLO’S hut that night. Lillian, pale and drawn, insisted that it was better, Millie and she would be all right. Hetty gave in gratefully and prepared to answer Flo’s mother’s questions. To her surprise, there weren’t any, merely a motherly concern for the huge lump and cut on the back of her head from which blood still trickled sluggishly.

  She dreamed, that night. Warburton was coming for her, Warburton was lying on top of her, Father was hitting Greg with a gravestone. She woke up to find Flo bending over her in the half-light from the top of the door.

  ‘Het. Het. Wake up.’

  ‘Wha-a?’ Hetty peered up at her friend’s shadowed face.

  ‘You was dreaming. You’ll wake Mum and Gran.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Hetty moved her head and winced.

  ‘Is it your head?’ Flo asked sympathetically. ‘Fancy a cuppa?’

  Hetty sat up and nodded, cautiously.

  ‘Come on outside then.’ Flo scrambled over the two older women still snoring on their faggot bed and pushed open the door. Hetty followed, shivering in the dew-soaked greyness that enshrouded the huts. She was still wearing her cotton dress and cardigan, which she drew tightly around her. She watched Flo bustling around lighting the fire, pouring water from the bucket into the kettle and hanging it on the hook.

  ‘Won’t be long,’ she said, coming to sit beside Hetty on one of the old chairs that lived permanently outside the hut.

  ‘Flo,’ Hetty began, pleating her dress between her fingers.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is it so bad, me seeing Greg?’

  Flo shrugged. ‘I would’ve thought it’d be worse for his family than yourn. Seeing as how they think we’re filthy hoppers.’

  ‘Greg’s family don’t. We’ve all been coming for years. They know what we’re like. Carpenter doesn’t think that, does he?’

  ‘No,’ Flo looked away. ‘He’s a good man.’

  ‘Has he –?’ Hetty hesitated. ‘I mean, have you–?’

  Flo looked at her, surprised. ‘If you mean has he had me on me back, no, he hasn’t. He’s a gentleman, is Frank.’

  ‘Sorry, Flo.’ Hetty shivered. ‘It’s just that you’ve always seemed so much more – well, experienced – with men, you know.’

  Flo laughed. ‘Not that experienced, ducks. Oh, I know what they’re like and what I can do to ’em, but
I don’t want to get caught up the duff, do I?’

  Hetty felt her insides turn to water. ‘What?’ she whispered.

  Flo looked into her face closely. ‘Having a kid, Het. That’s what happens, you know. How do you think they get there? Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Something goes in there, and something comes out – nine months later.’

  ‘Always?’ Hetty’s voice was a thread.

  ‘Not always, no, but you can’t take the chance, can you?’ Flo got up to stir tea into the boiling kettle. ‘Oh, some of ’em do. There’s ways, see? To make sure it doesn’t happen. But you have to be clever. And I don’t want to do it with anybody ’til I feel it’s right. Sometimes it feels as though I want to, but I get scared, see?’

  ‘Are you scared with Carpenter?’ Hetty was trying to fit this new information into her jigsaw and seeing with awful clarity how well it fitted the empty spaces.

  ‘No, I’m not. He wouldn’t try it on, see. Oh, he’s kissed me. Asks first, o’course. And sometimes I wish he’d sort of, let go, like. But it’s better this way. Specially as we’ve got to go home in a coupla weeks and that’ll be the end.’

  ‘Couldn’t it go on? Couldn’t you stay?’

  ‘Eh?’ Flo looked shocked. ‘Of course not. Where would I stay?’

  Hetty shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I thought perhaps he might marry you.’

  She was surprised to see Flo blush, something that Hetty herself did frequently, but she had never seen happen to Flo.

  ‘Yeah, well. Pigs might fly.’ Flo stood up abruptly and rummaged in the box for enamel mugs.

  ‘So why is my dad so set against me and Greg?’ Hetty changed the subject.

  ‘Your dad’s set against everything, ain’t he? I don’t know whether it’s Greg, or just ’cause you’ve been doing it with him – could’ve been anybody. Pride, I’d say.’

  ‘My dad? Pride?’ Hetty let out a bitter little laugh. ‘That’ll be the day.’

  ‘You have been doing it with him, haven’t you, Het?’ Flo suddenly turned on her, her face serious.

  Hetty’s blush suffused her whole body. She nodded.