by Ali Carter
‘My God Susie!’
I then confessed that I hadn’t mentioned this theory to the police.
Toby was silent. ‘Spire is a small village, Susie. It would be damaging to accuse Ronnie if he’s innocent. For the sake of not completely ruining his trade I think we should bide our time. It would be too obvious if he made a run for it, so at least we know where to find him when we’ve narrowed down the other suspects.’
Then Toby wrote:
2. Keep an eye on R.R.
‘As for withholding information from the police, this is a thin line you are treading Susie, and I would strongly advise you to own up to finding the Globus Cruciger.’
‘But I re-hid it in the hedge.’
‘Even so, you can’t keep concealing information from the police. It’s dishonest and this is a piece of evidence which could aid the investigation.’
Toby was right.
‘Okay,’ I said in agreement. ‘Thank you for being straight with me.’
‘I trust you Susie, but don’t want to see you getting into trouble. I’m sure you can finesse how you will tell Inspector Grey, so let’s move on.’
I looked at my tree. La.C., R.R., P.Y., I.Y., M.F., S.L., were the only initials not crossed out.
‘Mrs Fishbone, she’s our Lord-Lieutenant. Surely you can cross her out,’ said Toby.
‘Okay, I know she couldn’t possibly have done it herself, but she is the one person I feel may well know who did it.’
‘Surely she would have said?’
‘I don’t necessarily think so. From what I’ve learnt she sounds quite an unpleasant woman, who gets a kick out of having something on somebody else.’
‘This Henry Dunstan-Sherbet, he a friend of yours?’
Did I detect the slightest of edges to Toby’s voice?
‘No,’ I said, a little too defensively. ‘He’s an old friend of Ben Codrington’s.’
‘Were they at uni together?’
‘No, Ben was at Oxford and Henry’s a Cambridge medic, same college as Lord Greengrass coincidentally.’
‘Do you think there’s a link?’
‘What between Henry and Alexander?’
‘Yes, that charitable donation went to medicine, didn’t it?’
‘Yes, but Henry didn’t know Alexander.’
‘Are you sure?’ Then Toby wrote on the pad:
3. Look into charitable donation.
‘Yes.’
I asked Toby about last breaths.
‘We, or my team in the mortuary, have to do their very best, as we are doing here, to narrow down the options of causes of death,’ he said. ‘A last breath has a very distinctive sound and according to all three of your statements we agreed that what you heard was Lord Greengrass’s last breath…And I spoke to Inspector Grey this afternoon and he said that May, the Codringtons’ nanny had spent her day off at the dog races with her sister June. They have handed in all their chits, which confirmed bets placed over the time of the murder. There’s something to be said for the older generation who don’t throw anything away.’
Toby looked at his watch and then tore the list out of his pad and gave it to me. ‘There you go, Susie. Let’s discuss again once you’ve looked into these.
‘Now are you going to tell me about S.L?’
Damn it, he hadn’t forgotten I’d kept something secret from him. Was a good memory a point in his favour, or against? I couldn’t quite decide.
‘Promise you won’t judge?’
‘I wouldn’t worry – so far I like what I see.’
That was the most forward thing any man had said to me for a long time. I tried and failed to stop a loon-like smile racing across my cheeks, so I had to make a show of searching in my bag for my sketchbook with my face firmly pointing downwards. I pulled the photograph out of my sketchbook and placed it in front if him.
‘Where did you get this from? It’s the original.’
‘I found it in Lord Greengrass’s study. Do you know this man? It’s S.L.’
‘I’m sorry to say I do. It’s a sad story, as he died at the beginning of the year. I recognise that picture as the one used in the paper when Lord Greengrass resigned as chairman of the Game Conservancy, and when S.L. died.’
‘Lord Greengrass resigned? I thought he retired.’
Toby pointed at the stranger. ‘That man is Kevin Hawker. He was loading for Lord Greengrass at the Egerton Gough shoot, and was shot by a neighbouring gun.’
‘How absolutely terrible. He wasn’t a friend of Ronnie’s was he?’
‘He may well have been. He was local and so he probably drank in the Horn.’
I remembered Ronnie’s dead friend, whom Nanny had mentioned.
‘How did it happen?’
‘There was an American man who’d won a day’s shooting at a charity auction; he had all the gear and no idea. He swung at a low bird and killed Kevin stone-dead. Lord Greengrass resigned from the Game Conservancy the very next day and this picture accompanied the newspaper story.’
I slipped the photograph back into my sketchbook together with Toby’s list and crossed S.L. off my Tree of Suspects.
‘Pudding? They’ve got good ice-cream here.’
‘I’m okay, thanks.’
‘Well, we should come back sometime. It’s worth it for the ice-cream, although nothing over here is nearly as good as the Italians. I was in Verona earlier this year,’ it hurt to hear he’d been somewhere so romantic, ‘visiting my sister,’ I smiled again, ‘and I can’t tell you how good the ice-cream is there.’
‘Pistachio with salted caramel is my favourite. I can never resist going for two scoops.’
‘You are posh! Salted caramel is fancy.’
I thought the opposite actually; these days salted caramel this and that is everywhere, but it made me realise that I hadn’t considered our backgrounds until now. Toby spoke with only the occasional twang of a West Country accent. His clothes were clean and shabby, his shoes round-toed and wax jacket suitably worn – he definitely didn’t fall into the money-driven, nondescript layer of the county classes; types I don’t generally go for. If I had to, I’d probably pigeonhole him as intelligentsia.
My father has always wanted a son-in-law with brains. Several times over the years he has reminded me that looks don’t last but intellect will challenge, interest and accompany a partner all their married life. He had a point, but luckily for me Toby had both brains and looks.
‘I did go to private school.’ I rose to his teasing.
‘Did you?’ Toby sounded surprised. ‘I know you’ve got connections as you wouldn’t be a friend of Lady Greengrass if you didn’t. But you’ve got more about you than most horsey public school girls.’
‘Well, I’m not horsey that’s for sure.’ I was mildly offended by his assumption. ‘My south London background probably gives me the edge. I was very lucky and got fully-funded scholarships to school.’
‘I knew it.’ Toby congratulated himself. And I congratulated myself that he had been thinking about me.
Nanny was still up when I got back, with the glow of orange light escaping from under the door. I knocked and pushed it open. The television was blaring.
‘Susie!’ her face lit up, although her colour was already high; she was a little tipsy as she fumbled with the channel changer to turn the volume down, and in fact turned the TV off entirely.
‘Whoops, never mind. Did you ever hear the television up at the Manor? I could practically hear it down here. Shooting Susie, that’s what does it, too many pheasants. Lord Greengrass could hardly hear at all.’
Nanny was exaggerating but only a little.
‘Nice evening, Susie?’
‘Yes, we went to the Pig’s Trotter. It’s a lovely pub.’
‘Did you try their ice-cream?’
‘No, but I did hear about it.’
‘You eaten?’
‘I have but have you? I could knock something up quickly if you want?’ I offered, although I really didn’t
feel like doing this at all.
‘I ate early with the boys. We had macaroni cheese. When they move into the manor house I won’t be doing any of the cooking any more so I’m making all the things I like making while I still can.’
‘Will you miss cooking?’ I couldn’t tell from her roundabout sentence.
‘Not an ounce. I don’t mind cooking for the children, but Arthur and Asquintha are a different matter. She’s gluten-free and that makes it difficult.’
‘Is she really? Poor her.’
‘Well Susie, I would never ask, but I bet Asquintha couldn’t tell me what would happen if she did eat gluten.’ Nanny stared into the room. ‘Nothing. That’s what, Susie. It’s all about being able to afford specialist food and believing that eating it will make you super skinny.’
I agreed. You only have to look on a London menu and notice the price rise on gluten-free options to see that Nanny had a point. I would have thought that if an ingredient was taken out, it would make the end product less expensive but it always seems to have the opposite effect. You pay more for yeast-free, gluten-free, sugar-free, fat-free, whatever it may be that it does not have in it. Almost the worse something is for you – super-sized, deep-fried, triple-layered, double-coated – then the cheaper it is. There is a balance in the middle somewhere and I thought of Antonia, who had said to me as I’d watched little Bella being fed half-fat wholewheat couscous, ‘Here’s hoping that celebrity chef that came up with this recipe can work out the balance some day soon, and then his poor wife can stop having babies to promote his latest book.’
I bent down to pull the Farby Farm Shop flier out of my bag and flapped it at Nanny. ‘I picked this up in the pub. I bet they sell all sorts of faddy stuff.’
She took it from me and put it straight down to rest on the table between us, hardly glancing at it. ‘I wouldn’t know.’
I didn’t let Nanny’s reaction put me off. ‘I never knew there was a farm shop so close by. It seems strange to me that no one’s ever mentioned it.’
‘I’ll be in trouble if her Ladyship sees that flier. Neither she nor his Lordship liked us shopping there and so we stopped.’
‘They are the same Yards who used to farm here, aren’t they? The ones Mary mentioned?’
‘Yes,’ said Nanny quietly. ‘They are.’
Was there a hint of guilt in her answer or perhaps she was just fading at the end of a long day? Either way I didn’t think it was fair to point out that on Monday she had told me she had ‘no idea’ where the Yards lived. Nanny clearly feared the wrath of Diana and I wasn’t unsympathetic.
‘Who’s this friend of yours that’s put a rosy glow in your cheeks?’ she asked.
How could Nanny tell? People often can, can’t they? It’s like when friends of the family say, ‘Gosh, you look so well’. What they really mean is ‘I am so pleased to see you’re happy and have someone in your life’.
The longest relationship I’d ever had was eleven months. A year for me was a hurdle, and I hadn’t yet found anyone special enough to get over it with. It’s great fun having a boyfriend but I didn’t think my life was unhappy without one. And then I thought of Toby, and I wondered if perhaps I was now ready to find someone to feel more serious about.
‘Just someone I know locally,’ I replied vaguely, and then asked Nanny about her evening.
Shepherd and Mary had stayed for some time and quite a lot of alcohol had been consumed, Nanny letting slip that Shepherd liked to tuck it away.
‘Just like Ronnie,’ I said, intentionally introducing his name.
‘Ronnie! That’s who we think did it.’ Nanny gave a hiccup. ‘I’ll bet he was snooping round the graveyard on Sunday morning.’ Two more hiccups followed. ‘Pardon me, Susie, I thought I’d got rid of them before you arrived.’
‘What makes you think Ronnie was in the graveyard?’
‘Because that’s where Lord Greengrass’s body was found.’
‘Yes of course. Any other reason?’
‘Shepherd heard that the police were at Ronnie’s house this afternoon for a long time.’
‘Did they find anything?’
‘None of us know.’
Nanny let out a yawn and so I picked up my bag and turned for the door. ‘I’ll see you in the morning. Thank you again for having me to stay. I’m getting quite used to living here.’
I didn’t feel all that sleepy, sort of too tired to read a book but not tired enough to go to sleep. I’d scoured last week’s Week cover to cover and wished I had another with me. Diana’s coffee-table books would come in handy now but I wouldn’t find anything similar in Nanny’s house. There wasn’t even a bookcase in my bedroom.
Nightie on, I went to brush my teeth. Looking in the mirror I remembered the Spectator in Henry’s bag. That would do.
As I went back to my room I could hear Nanny’s heavy breathing coming through the ajar sitting room door, clearly she’d failed to get up from the armchair.
Henry’s bag was under the desk, just within reach without me having to get down on the floor. I stuffed my hand in the top of it and pulled at the magazine and out with it came his notebook.
I couldn’t resist looking through it once again. This time I took care flicking the pages and found one thing written at the end, in small writing.
6:45pm
125 Devonshire Place
6 sessions
£80
Curious, I sat on my bed and Googled 125 Devonshire Place. Up popped a martial-arts website registered to the address; no wonder Henry had such a strong athletic physique. I cast the notebook towards the open satchel and missed.
The Spectator provided an array of suitably drab, densely texted and unillustrated articles. I chose the longest and five minutes later it had sent me fast asleep, snuggled down cosily under the duvet.
Other than the night before, I had been dressing, during my unexpectedly lengthy stay at Beckenstale Manor, in demure underwear, not feeling in the mood for anything fancy or remotely uplifting. It’d been mainly my thermal twinset, with me washing it at night, drying it on the bathroom pipes and slipping into it again the next day. But the morning after my drink with Toby, I was back in a push-up bra and skimpy panties.
It was early and still dark, but I was all fired up for a visit to the Farby Farm Shop. I didn’t have a plan, and so I decided to strategise on my way there, or failing that, take in my stride anything thrown at me.
‘Morning, Susie,’ said Nanny’s voice as soon as I opened my bedroom door. I wasn’t expecting her to be up yet and, having flicked on the light in the corridor, I wasn’t prepared for the shock of the salmon-pink Terylene vision before me. It was magnificent, although I couldn’t help but think that poor Nanny would go up in a smoke if she stood anywhere near a naked flame in this particular nightie. The look of me shocked her too as she gave a visible jump.
‘Sorry, Nanny.’
‘Don’t you worry a bit. It’s me who should be sorry. Look at you all dressed already and back in that lovely, woollen skirt.’
‘I woke early and thought I’d pop out to see the sunrise.’
‘That’s the artist in you, Susie.’
I smiled in agreement.
My headlights lit up the ornamental ewes grazing in the park. I must try and find time to draw them before the winter sets in and their fleeces become dirty and raggedy, I thought to myself. I love sheep and I’m always tickled by this rare breed of squat, docile bundles of wool with two ears poking out and an adorable pink nose with a grin beneath. Diana had told me that although once Beckenstale Manor had been a large producer of lamb, these days there was no need for the estate to employ a commercial farmer. A freelance shepherd kept this ornamental flock looking pretty and would have a few of the younger ones tupped from time to time to keep numbers even.
It was light by the time I turned into the yard before the farm shop, and I wasn’t surprised to see mine was the only car. In my rear-view mirror I watched a thin-shouldered woman, Iona I gu
essed, flipping the sign on the door to ‘open’.
‘You’re our first customer,’ she said, as I unavoidably dinged the enormous bell on a string attached to the door.
I was left to stroll around and take a gander at their shelves. Squeezing between wooden boxes of vegetables and trying hard not to topple over the glass bottles of olive oil standing to attention on top of an old ale cask, I made my way to the prettily wrapped soaps and assortment of hand creams. There was an offer on gift boxes of three bars of guest soap – rose, sandalwood, and lime and bergamot. They smelt lovely so I thought they would do very nicely as a weekend present for my host on a future commission.
‘Lovely gifts you sell,’ I said on my way to the counter that doubled up as a barista bar. There was a delicious smell wafting from the coffee machine and some rather tempting Danish pastries that looked as if they had just come out of the oven.
‘Thank you. We spend a lot of time sourcing our stock; my husband and I like to give the customer that extra bit more.’ She took the soap from me and slipped it into a brown paper bag. ‘Anything else for you today?’
‘Please can I have a cup of black coffee?’ I dithered over a pastry and then chose the largest.
‘Sit-in or take away?’
‘Sit-in please.’
‘Pop yourself on one of those stools and I’ll bring it over.’
The stools were two feet from the till and pulled up to the window, which looked out into the yard. Not a good view but enough to stare out at.
‘Are you local? I don’t think we’ve met before?’ she said, as I turned around and took from her a steaming cup of coffee.
‘I’m working for someone who lives nearby. I’m drawing their dog.’
‘That sounds a lovely job. I’m Iona by the way.’
‘Thank you.’ I put the coffee down in front of me. ‘I’m Susie.’
She headed back to the till with purpose, and then passed me a pastry. ‘Just let me know if there’s anything else I can get for you.’
I saw a noticeboard of local services near the door, and I thought it might be a good place to pin one of my business cards; having seen how much the coffee and pastry were, the people who could afford to shop here might very well be the sort of people who would think nothing of spending hundreds of pounds on having me immortalise their pet. But I decided to wait and see how the visit went before doing this, as if Iona realised I was staying at Beckenstale Manor she might not be keen.