Murder in Steeple Martin - Libby Sarjeant Murder Mystery series

by Lesley Cookman

  Flo sighed. ‘Silly cow. Bad enough with one of the lads back home – but this. And Warburton found out?’

  ‘I think he saw us. The first time –’

  ‘Cor, that was bad luck, wasn’t it?’ Flo laughed mirthlessly. ‘What a bloody mess. How many times you done it?’

  Horrified, Hetty shook her head, too embarrassed to speak.

  ‘Come on, Het, once is enough for a kid, but sometimes you get away with it. If you do it a lot – well your odds is against you.’

  Hetty felt something inside her shrivel. ‘Every day,’ she whispered, ‘since last week.’

  ‘Gawd.’ Flo put her head in her hands. ‘Had your monthlies yet?’

  Hetty shook her head. ‘Not till next week.’

  ‘Well, keep your fingers crossed, then. Not much use keeping your legs crossed now, is there?’

  There was no picking on a Sunday. Hetty and Flo went to the mission meeting held on the common by a visiting preacher who clearly thought there was about as much potential in his congregation as in a field of rabbits. The text of his sermon demonstrated his belief that their habits were fairly similar, as Flo remarked. Hetty kept out of the way of her father and her own hut until she saw the men making their way to the lane, which led to the village. Lenny loitered behind, she noticed, then doubled back and panted his way across the common to where she sat at the edge of the hop garden.

  ‘Mum says you can go back, now, Het.’

  ‘Thanks, Lenny.’ Hetty stood up stiffly and brushed down her skirt. ‘You get off to the pub, then.’

  Lenny nodded, and somewhat reluctantly stomped his way back across the common.

  ‘You’re a fool, girl, you know that.’ Lillian must have heard her coming but didn’t look up.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum.’

  ‘He’s not our sort. He’s using you – like a whore.’

  Hetty winced. ‘Mum – he’s not.’

  ‘You’re seventeen. What do you know about it? More than I thought, I’ll allow, but not much.’

  ‘Mum, isn’t it natural when you love a person?’ Hetty crouched down by her mother’s feet. Millie trotted up and put her arms round her neck.

  ‘Love?’ Lillian turned hollow eyes on to her elder daughter. ‘Love’s a joke, Het. It don’t mean nothing. It’s not real.’

  Defeated, Hetty sat back on her heels and watched as her mother stirred the big hopping pot.

  ‘What’s Dad going to do?’

  ‘Get drunk. What do you think? I’d make yourself scarce when he gets back. I’ll save you some dinner.’

  ‘When’s he going back?’

  ‘Later. Soon as Lenny can drag him away. Got to get the train, see?’ Lillian stood up and wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Bring a chair.’ She lifted her own and carried it across to Connie’s hut, where Connie, Flo and Flo’s mother and grandmother, were already seated, a couple of bottles of stout on the ground before them. Hetty followed slowly with Millie hanging on to her skirt, consumed with embarrassment at facing the combined curiosity of the little group.

  In fact, the faces turned towards her were blandly welcoming. Flo made room for her between them and picked up the threads of the conversation almost without a break.

  The sound of singing alerted them to the return of the men. Hetty stood up unsteadily, Millie in her arms. The other women got up unhurriedly and began to move in front of her, bending over Connie’s hopping pot, shielding her from the eyes of anyone who happened to be looking their way.

  The men scattered like a handful of gravel thrown on the ground and Hetty, her view obscured, waited with bated breath.

  ‘They’re not here, Het.’ Flo turned to her as the other women separated and drifted towards other groups. ‘None of them have come back.’

  ‘Dad?’ Hetty managed, out of a dry throat.

  ‘Your dad, Lenny and your Uncle Alf. Your mum’s gone to ask if anyone’s seen them.’

  Eventually, Lillian and Connie dished up their meals and Millie, Hetty, Connie and Lillian, Flo and her mother and grandmother sat down to eat them together. They had almost finished when a shout pierced the still afternoon air.

  ‘Mum.’

  Everyone turned to see Lenny coming at a staggering run towards them.

  ‘Mum.’ He was breathing hard and the smell of drink surrounded him almost visibly.

  ‘Where’s your father?’ Lillian’s face was devoid of expression.

  ‘Don’t know. He went off. He wouldn’t listen –’

  ‘Sit down, Lenny.’ Flo pushed him down into her own chair. ‘Get your breath.’

  ‘Warburton was at the pub.’ Lenny looked up at Hetty and a ripple went through the assembled women.

  ‘He was getting at Dad. Anyway, he went and Dad started going on about – about –’ he hesitated and looked at Hetty again.

  ‘Yes, we know. Get on with it.’ Lillian’s eyes were fixed on her son’s face.

  ‘When we left he said he was going to find Carpenter. We tried to stop him – followed him up to Home Farm.’ He stole a quick look at Flo, who kept her eyes down. ‘Carpenter wasn’t there. So then he just ran off towards the home wood. We lost track of him, so they sent me back here while they carried on looking.’

  The women looked at each other. Lillian, whose colour was high, stood up.

  ‘Sorry about this, Connie. If you’ll give Lenny his dinner, then I’ll go and help them look.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, Mum.’ Hetty stood up bravely.

  ‘You stay here and look after Millie.’ Stay out of trouble, her tone said.

  It was nearly dark when they came back. Ted Fisher was not with them. Connie and Hetty dished up overdone stew and vegetables and sat down to watch them eat.

  ‘What you going to do about getting home, then?’ Connie asked.

  Alf shrugged. ‘Dunno. First train in the morning.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to your jobs?’ Hetty grabbed Lenny’s arm. ‘You can’t afford to lose your jobs.’

  ‘We’ll get back in time. Don’t worry. The veg lorry goes from the village in the early hours. Uncle Alf – you game for going on that?’ Lenny waved his knife at his uncle.

  ‘You get me up, boy, I’ll go on the veg lorry.’ Alf nodded and returned to his plate of stew.

  Hetty wondered how her mother remained so calm during the evening. Lenny and Uncle Alf went back to the pub to see if Ted had returned and the women sat, talking, trying to pretend that things were normal. Millie was put to bed and, at last, Lillian and Hetty were the only two still sitting over the remains of the fire.

  ‘Mum. Hetty.’ Lenny’s voice came as a stage whisper from somewhere to Hetty’s left. ‘He came back. He’s gone after Warburton.’

  ‘Where’s he gone?’ Lillian stood up slowly.

  ‘Along the ditch towards the bridge.’

  Afterwards, Hetty remembered little of how they made the journey along the bank of the ditch at the edge of the gardens. All she remembered was coming to the bridge and seeing the solitary figure swaying on the wooden bridge, silhouetted against the sky. And her mother’s gasping cry as she looked down into the ditch and saw her husband’s body face down in the brackish water.

  ‘He came at me.’ Warburton’s voice was slurred and scared. ‘I had to defend meself.’ He turned and swayed towards Hetty. ‘This is your fault, you bitch.’

  Hetty screamed as she smelt the sour breath as he lurched forward and made a grab for her. Somehow, there was a stone in her hand – a big stone – and, somehow, she was hitting him with it. Over and over again. At first his arms went up to shield his head, then he was staggering backwards and then she watched him crumple like a sheet blown off the line, down the bank and into the ditch where he landed half on top of Ted Fisher.

  Lenny was screaming at her. She couldn’t understand the words and then she felt her mother pulling her away.

  ‘Get him out of the ditch, Lenny.’ Lillian sat her down on the bank and shoved her head roughly between her
knees. Lenny was gibbering, but Lillian went down into the ditch and helped him drag Ted’s body from underneath Warburton’s and up the bank.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Hetty was suddenly cold and frightened. Her mind couldn’t yet grasp what she had done and she took refuge in Lillian’s unfailing common sense.

  ‘We’ll bury him. Then no one’ll know he was here, so they’ll think Warburton was drunk – fell in the ditch. Or done for by one of the travellers.’

  ‘We can’t bury him.’ Lenny’s teeth were chattering. ‘Everyone’d see where we’d dug a hole. Anyway, what do we dig it with?’

  ‘Tools in the barn.’ Lillian looked down dispassionately at the body of her husband. ‘No, we can’t bury him out here. Under the hut.’

  ‘What?’ Hetty couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. She felt as though she was moving in some sort of nightmare where nothing bore any relation to normality.

  ‘Under the hut. Floor’s earth. Come on, Lenny, take his top end. Hetty and me’ll take a leg each.’

  From not remembering much of the outward journey, Hetty remembered every terror-filled second of the return one. She heard Lenny retching behind her, her Mother’s laboured breathing and the squelch of her feet in the mud. They kept alongside the ditch and came up behind the huts.

  ‘Go and get the tools, Len. Hetty, you go and get Millie up and get her away.’ Lillian stood upright and rubbed her back.

  Millie half woke, and Hetty wrapped her in a blanket and carried her outside. Her brain seemed to have closed down now and all she could think of was where she could sit with her heavy burden and how tired she was. The cookhouse was quiet, not many people used it during the day; at night it was the perfect place to sit on the floor and lean her back against the wall.

  She awoke with a start to realise that Millie was no longer curled up in the crook of her arm. All the blood in her veins seemed to drain into her feet and she struggled to her feet, her heart hammering.

  A glimmer of light showed where Lenny and Lillian were working, which suddenly became brighter. Hetty’s heart filled with dread as she ran towards the hut.

  Her mother turned on her with a face ablaze with anger and grief as she fell through the door.

  ‘What was you doing letting her get away?’

  Millie was clasped in her mother’s arms, her little face white and blank.

  ‘Daddy,’ she said. ‘Daddy.’

  Hetty looked down and saw her father’s body half covered in earth.

  ‘Christ,’ said Lenny.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  ‘IT DIDN’T TURN OUT the way Mum thought, of course. Everyone thought Dad had killed Warburton, but we couldn’t say, see?’ Hetty leaned back in her chair, her face still hidden.

  ‘But why?’ Ben burst out. ‘Why couldn’t you have left them both there? No one would have known you had anything to do with it. No one saw you go after them, did they?’

  Hetty shrugged. ‘I don’t rightly know, son. None of us were thinking very straight. Perhaps it would have been better, but one of them couldn’t have killed the other and then knocked himself out, could he?’

  ‘Nobody saw you bring the body back?’ asked Ben, eventually.

  ‘Not apart from Millie. So you see, it is all my fault. We thought she’d got over it. She stopped having the dreams when she moved back down here with me – funny, that. But this play brought it all back. And then Lenny coming down. He wouldn’t have said anything, though. He’s just a silly old fool. Liked to tease me about it.’

  Libby suddenly found herself disliking Uncle Lenny intensely.

  ‘So she tried to stop the play.’

  ‘Thought it was all going to happen again, I think, poor old girl.’

  ‘And the bridge?’ Libby asked.

  Hetty shrugged. ‘No idea. I suppose it was the photographer. She was taking pictures of all the old places. Millie must have thought she’d find Dad’s grave. She wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have let her.’ Hetty stood up. ‘I’d better go and see how your dad is.’

  ‘Does Dad know?’ Libby felt Ben’s hand tighten on her own.

  ‘No. Didn’t tell him at the time, did we? And then after, after the war, well, it would have killed him.’

  Ben nodded and she left the room.

  ‘The fire,’ said Libby quietly. ‘Was that Millie?’

  ‘Yes. She was still there when I arrived. In fact, I saw her before I saw the fire and stopped to see what she was doing. I’d just been listening to Pete’s horrific ghost stories, don’t forget.’

  ‘Had Millie told him the truth?’

  ‘In a garbled fashion, yes. He told me and we thought she’d got it wrong, of course.’ He sighed. ‘But she hadn’t.’

  ‘So she thought it would come out if we did the play? But how?’

  ‘I can see it, can’t you? If a series of events is being replayed in public it stands to reason someone might find out.’

  ‘Well, I have. And what about Susan and David? They’ll find out.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will she be all right?’ asked Libby after a while.

  ‘Mum? Or Aunt Millie?’

  ‘Both, I suppose. But I actually meant your mum.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘God, what an awful story.’ Libby shivered. ‘Will you tell her everything will be all right?’

  ‘Will it?’ He held her away from him and looked at her.

  ‘We can just forget it all again, can’t we? Only the family know.’

  ‘And you.’

  ‘Well, we can pretend, can’t we? Like we were going to pretend to be grown-up middle-aged people.’

  Ben pulled her close to him and Libby tried not to mind that her back felt as if it was breaking.

  ‘What about the play?’ she asked, after a muffled moment.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Do you want me to cancel it?’

  ‘No. There’s absolutely no reason to, now. And it was a great success, wasn’t it? We’ll make it a memorial to my grandfather.’

  ‘Perhaps we could have a plaque in the theatre. Sort of put a full stop to it. For Hetty’s sake.’

  Ben kissed her. ‘I knew I was right about you.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Libby, blushing again.

  Then he stood up and pulled her to her feet.

  ‘Can you walk? As far as the front door?’

  ‘I’m only a bit bruised, that’s all. And I might have a few nightmares for a bit, I suppose.’

  ‘Then I shall go upstairs and have a quick word with Mum before I drive you home.’ He went towards the door, then turned and came back.

  ‘Do you want to get someone to stay with you? Will you be all right on your own?’

  Libby sighed. ‘I shall be fine. Fran’s coming down tomorrow, so it’s only tonight.’

  ‘You don’t want me to ask David to come out and have a look at you?’

  ‘I thought he was looking after Millie?’

  ‘Susan’s there as well, don’t forget, and, dull though she may seem, she’s been a doctor’s wife for years. Very capable woman, my sister.’

  ‘I’m sure she is,’ said Libby, ‘but I don’t need David. As I said, I’m only bruised.’

  But it wasn’t the bruising or the expected nightmares that kept her awake once she got home, it was Paula’s murder.

  It was now perfectly clear that Millie had tried to sabotage the play, although Libby still couldn’t see her climbing up to cut steel wire, but it was also clear that it had nothing to do with Paula. She wondered briefly if anybody would tell DS Cole or DCI Murray about the events of the evening, but decided that it was in everybody’s interest to keep quiet. After all, what good would arresting Hetty do after all this time?

  Not, of course, that it mattered to them now. There would be no more incidents, Paula’s replacement was, if anything, better than she had been, and, unless the police tried to disrupt the proceedings, as far as the play and the theatre were concerned that was th
e end of the matter. But, somehow, Libby felt that it wasn’t. A mildly malign influence when alive, Paula was still interfering when dead. It was thoroughly un-nerving. After all, if suspicion continued to fall on James, Peter or Harry, or even Ben, the effect would be catastrophic. And Ben had been particularly attentive tonight, thought Libby, turning over with a smile, before drifting into sleep.

  The nightmares did wake her up after all. Trying to overcome the irrational fear of getting out of bed, she managed to switch on the bedside light and lay listening to the sound of her own heartbeat. Sidney, obviously having noticed the light going on, decided it was breakfast time and began complaining loudly outside the bedroom door. Berating herself for being stupid, Libby slowly swung her legs out of bed and reached for her dressing gown.

  Downstairs, light was beginning to filter across the garden and Libby’s heart rate slowed to normal. She fed Sidney, put the kettle on the Rayburn and began to go back over the events of the previous night.

  Sadly, the triumphant first night performance of The Hop Pickers had been totally eclipsed by what had followed. Libby wondered how David and Susan were coping with Millie, and what Peter would have to say about it all. She had a feeling it was going to hit him harder than anybody, even James, who presumably had more to worry about than the past peccadilloes of his family. And, in the cold light of day, with a slightly clearer brain, Ben’s attentiveness fell into place as nothing more than a giving and receiving of comfort.

  How embarrassed he was going to be this morning, thought Libby, as she poured boiling water into the teapot. She, a stranger, had been made privy to the most intimate and shocking secrets of his family, secrets of which even other members of the family were unaware. She gazed miserably into her mug, telling herself off for being shallow enough to mind, but minding all the same. It appeared that the female psyche remained a perennial teenager despite the slow degeneration of its outer covering. Ever since Ben had walked into the pub that evening two weeks ago, she had reverted to her eighteen-year-old self, plagued with sexual jealousy and insecurity, even, she thought in disgust, in the face of bloody murder.

  She poured tea and sat down at the kitchen table. The garden was getting lighter, and Sidney made for the conservatory and his cat-flap. Libby watched him prowl round his territory and wondered if Paula’s was a territorial killing. Someone who felt that she was trespassing? But that would mean a woman, and apart from Millie, whom she had never seriously considered, there were no women in the case. Or were there?