by Anne Morice
‘The trouble is, my dearest, there is something I need, only it’s not in his power to provide it.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I want him to go away and stop reminding me of events which I am trying to forget. His mere presence undermines my good intentions, or, rather, forces me to recognise what frail foundations they were built on. As soon as I saw him, my mind ceased to dwell on sheep and chocolate pudding and how it would feel to be as rich as Mr God, and slid back into its everyday groove. However, I won’t be beaten. I mean to rise above it.’
‘Okay, so what shall we do this evening, to send the ghosts on their way? How about driving over to Bath for dinner? There might be something on at the theatre?’
‘That’s not what I call beating it, that’s just running away. Besides, you seem to forget that I don’t know how it feels to be as rich as Mr Godstow and our terms here cover full board and lodging. Everything included except wine and spirits.’
‘Oh, all right, but that doesn’t mean that we have to hang around waiting for the next fully paid up meal. I know, let’s go for a drive and find some picturesque pub, where we can drink our wine and spirits without wasting a penny and still be back to claim our money’s worth at dinner.’
‘There could be another way of tackling the problem, you know,’ I remarked, as we sat facing each other across a picturesque and rickety wooden table in the garden of the Rose & Crown at Middle Hinkley, which happened, although obviously this had nothing to do with running away, to lie eight miles in the opposite direction from Chissingfield. ‘What you might call the psychiatric approach.’
‘Oh, you think I’m ready for the couch now, do you?’
‘Why not? It has been known to work and all you have to do is spill it out in any old order and, when you’ve parted with the last little secret failure, you’ll be a free man. It ceases to be your problem and you listen with lofty detachment while someone else explains the whys and wherefores.’
‘Someone like yourself, for instance? I must tell you that it wasn’t quite my understanding of how the treatment works. I thought it took months, or even years, to dig out the last buried secret. And then, after all that effort, it turns out to derive from some unhappy experience in my childhood, like being shut in the broom cupboard.’
‘That’s precisely what we need to find out.’
‘No, we don’t. I had an idyllic childhood and the only thing that bothers me now is that, somewhere, there is someone who committed a vicious and brutal murder, for which he will never be called to account and that it is partly my fault. And what on earth would be the point of dragging that up again? You must remember the case almost as well as I do?’
‘No, I don’t. I’ve had a lot of other. . . . I mean, you’ve been involved in a lot of other tricky cases since then and I sometimes get them mixed up. Four years, after all . . .’
‘Not four years, two.’
‘Oh yes, I keep forgetting. All the same, two years is a long time to remember all the details, so why not humour me and give it a try?’
‘Two years ago last February,’ Robin began in a parrot-like voice, ‘a girl called Pauline Oakes, a hard-working, nice-looking, serious-minded young woman, who worked for a firm of estate agents, was found murdered on the heath by Chissingfield race course.’
‘Who found her?’
‘A woman named Eve Pollock, who had been almoner at Chissingfield General Hospital. On her retirement she had moved into a bungalow on a housing estate overlooking the race course, and she made the discovery one morning when she was exercising her dog. To be precise, it was the dog who made it. Pauline was not then visible to the human eye.’
‘You mean she’d been shoved into some bushes, or something?’
‘No, that isn’t what I mean. She was lying on open ground, covered by a tarpaulin, where she’d been for exactly ten days.’
‘But even between meetings there must be people about, the clerk of the course and groundsmen, for instance. So, if she was on open ground, why hadn’t someone found her before? And, if not, how was it possible to tell how long she’d been there?’
‘It was like this. Friday, the 10th of February that year was the opening day of Chissingfield’s biggest National Hunt meeting of the season. It attracts people from all over the country arid weather conditions were so chancy at the time that some of them played safe and arrived the day before. So by Thursday evening the town was beginning to fill up. As it happened there was only a slight snowfall that night and when the stewards made their last inspection of the course on Friday morning, they gave the go-ahead. The first race went off according to schedule and was notable in two respects. One was that the odds-on favourite, with the champion jockey on board, was beaten by a twenty-to-one outsider.’
‘It can happen.’
‘In this case, there was a stewards’ enquiry, complete with patrol camera and all the rest of it, as a result of which the losing jockey was hauled up and reprimanded for dropping his hands fifty yards out from the post.’
‘And did the favourite and the lucky outsider come from the same stable, by any chance?’
‘I always forget how knowledgeable you are about the seamy side of racing.’
‘It’s just that I remember something like that happening once at Lingfield. I’d backed the outsider that time, simply because it was called Gala Performance, but it was a real turn up for the book and it made a lasting impression on me. You wouldn’t happen to remember your trainer’s name, I suppose?’
‘As though you hadn’t guessed! I’ve told you already that I’d had a minor setback before Jake came prancing up and delivered the knock out. I’d almost got over it by then, too. Reminded myself that it was only natural that Symington should have friends and connections in this neighbourhood and that it wasn’t his fault if his presence in the dining room brought back memories I’d been striving for the past two hours to bury.’
‘It’s a pity I told you who he was. Still, it’s done now. What else happened in the first race?’
‘You asked me how it was possible to establish to within hours when Pauline was killed, after such an interval?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘And, if you have also been wondering why there should have been such an interval at all, the answer to all three questions is the same. It had started to snow again by the time the riders got up to the start. Twenty minutes after it was over, and while the enquiry was still going on, it was falling so thickly that visibility was down to a few yards and the meeting was abandoned. It went on snowing throughout the whole of Friday and that night a hard frost set in. This pattern was repeated without a break for over a week.’
‘I begin to get the picture.’
‘And what a picture it was! I daresay the people round here will be talking about it for years to come. Hundreds of sheep were lost, and just travelling from one point to another, either on foot or by car, became a major operation. Every day a fresh layer of snow falling on a layer of frost before there’d been time for it to melt, to be followed by another frost as soon as it got dark.’
‘And this went on for ten days?’
‘Not quite. On the ninth day the wind changed and conditions began to improve. By the 20th of February the thaw had well and truly set in. The ground was still blanketed in snow, but the trees no longer looked like abandoned igloos and Miss Pollock ventured out with her dog on their favourite walk across the heath which separated her garden from the race course.’
‘Although I imagine it is not her favourite walk any longer?’
‘Probably not, but we had reason to be grateful to her for braving it then. Another twenty-four hours of steady thaw would have changed everything. As it was, the state of that patch of ground where Pauline was lying proved beyond doubt that she had been there since the first snowfall. Nature, if you will forgive the whimsy, having obligingly encased her in its very own deep freeze before rigor mortis set in, it was possible to establish the date, almost th
e hour of her death.’
‘Yes, I see!’
‘Unfortunately, that was the first and only break to come our way and it opened up such an enormous field for investigation as to make the task hopeless from the outset. Two or three hundred nameless, faceless potential suspects, all able to claim a valid reason for being in Chissingfield on that evening and all of whom had melted back into their unknown backgrounds ten days before anyone knew there’d been a murder. I ask you!’
‘But you were able to eliminate all the local people?’
‘Well, I suppose it could never be said that it wasn’t one of them, but after three or four weeks of unremitting slog, following up every tiny lead that came our way, we had to give up on that one. Pauline appeared to have no enemies, no broken or unbroken love affair; no one in her circle with a history of violence and there had been no previous attacks of that nature within living memory. So it must have been an outsider and I have as much chance of finding out now who he was as I had two years ago. Which is why I had begun to realise what a fool I was to try and put the clock back, when we’re supposed to be here to relax and enjoy ourselves.’
‘All the same, Robin, there must be more to it than you’ve told me. Ten days is a hell of a time for someone to be missing, and not even presumed dead. What sort of a girl was she, this Pauline, apart from being serious-minded and hard-working?’
Robin glanced at his watch: ‘Fillet of beef, did you say?’
‘That’s what I saw on the card when I was snooping around during your siesta.’
‘Well, we don’t want that to be overcooked, do we? Perhaps we’ll talk again about Pauline, but for the moment I’ll leave you with one fact, which will interest you. She was someone who had a phobia about horses and everything connected with them. For which, I might add, she had the best of reasons.’
(5)
I tried to get him to enlarge on this statement on the drive back, but he would not be drawn.
‘No, Tessa, one session on the couch will do for today. In fact, one may be all I needed. I suppose that deep down in my sensitive soul, I’d been haunted all this time by the fear of having left undone something which ought to have been done, but your treatment has done the trick. I can see now how vain that was. Admittedly, it turned out not to be enough, we did the best we could and lack of supernatural powers is nothing to kick oneself about. So I’m grateful to you and you shall have your reward. Let’s swop roles and you tell me about that other mystery you referred to before we got bogged down in mine. With any luck, it’ll turn out to be a lot more amusing.’
‘No, even more flat, stale and unprofitable, I’m afraid. What used to be called the eternal triangle. Although I do now detect the hint of a twist in its tail.’
‘Well, that sounds promising. Proceed!’
‘What we have here is that childless couple, who have been married for, let us say, ten or twelve years and who are now held together more by a shared interest in their work than by emotional ties. Then along comes an attractive and impressionable young woman from a more gracious and secure world and the inevitable happens. Not much, is it?’
‘No, and I would have expected your celebrated imagination to have provided you with something a little more daring than that.’
‘It has nothing to do with my imagination, it is a fact.’
‘Oh, come on, Tessa! We’ve only been here for eight hours, all of which has been spent eating, or sleeping, or discussing our private affairs.’
‘No, there was an hour in the middle when I was doing none of those things.’
‘During which, I am to believe that Jake and Verity obligingly allowed you to stumble on them locked in each other’s arms?’
‘To be fair, I didn’t actually see them, but they both told me in the clearest terms that they had been.’
‘How very thoughtful!’
‘It was forced on them. There hadn’t been time to compare notes, with the result that the two accounts were somewhat different.’
‘No wonder your curiosity was aroused! Tell me more!’
‘I will, even though I’m aware that you’re only humouring me. It may possibly have some bearing on your own problem.’
‘I told you that had now been disposed of.’
‘Yes, but it doesn’t follow that it has become an unmentionable subject. When you’ve narrowly escaped being killed in a car crash, you’re no longer afraid, once the danger has passed, but it doesn’t usually make you reluctant to talk about it.’
‘Stop arguing and go on with the story.’
‘Well, you see, Robin, the period between lunch and tea is a very dead one at the hotel. The domestic staff disappears and the only residents, apart from ourselves, are an elderly couple, who are doubtless in the habit of taking an afternoon rest, having spent most of their lives in the tropics.’
‘How did you pick up that information, if they were resting?’
‘That’s another story and it’s not important. The point is that this afternoon was deader than most, in so far as Louisa had gone to Chissingfield. So, if Jake and Verity had wished to meet in the summer house, this was the moment for it.’
‘Though not reckoning with you, of course?’
‘Just so. When Verity left to come back to the house, having ostensibly been exercising the dog, she saw me on the terrace and instantly became far more out of breath and out of temper than was natural for a sporty, athletic type like her. Then, when she’d got herself together, she came and stood behind my chair, to find out whether I could see the summer house from where I was sitting.’
‘And?’
‘Finding that I could, she gave me a circumstantial account of how she had stopped off there, to pass the time of day with Jake, although she hadn’t been able to stay for more than a minute.’
‘And could you be sure that she had?’
‘ Jake saw to that. When it came to his turn, he said that he remembered having caught sight of Verity somewhere in the garden and had presumed she was taking Lupus for a walk.’
‘Yes, well, that does sound highly incriminating, although, as you say, it’s not exactly a novel situation and I doubt if it will provide enough interest to fill up the long days of leisure and pleasure that lie ahead. Perhaps you’ll have better luck with the elderly couple from the tropics.
It might turn out that the suntan comes out of a bottle and that she isn’t his wife at all, but the dispenser who concocted the untraceable poison from which his real wife died. If that fails, there’s always Mr God and all the angels for you to work on. The barman says he’s pretty often around, when in residence at his very gracious mansion.’
‘Why does he say that? Is he American?’
‘No, just getting into practice for the tourist season, I gather.’
‘Well, thanks for the guidelines, which I am sure will come in handy, but I haven’t quite finished with Jake yet, as it happens, and this is the bit which concerns you. You remember how I got it so fixed in my mind that this murder, which you are now able to talk about with such detachment, occurred four years ago, and not two?’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, it was Jake who fixed it there. And he didn’t just throw it out in an absent-minded way, either. He said it was fixed in his own mind because it had coincided with him and Louisa taking over a pub in Chissingfield and that it had been a great help to them in building up a clientele in the bar. He was just as amateurish as Verity; not content with a slight deviation and leaving it there. He had to go and build it up with a lot of superfluous details.’
‘I get your drift. You imply that he was lying about it deliberately, to confuse the issue, and therefore must have had some devious motive for doing so?’
‘Why not?’
‘But you also seem to be under the impression that half a dozen skilled and experienced men would have buzzed around asking questions and, having noted the answers, would take these as the final word on the subject. I assure you it is not so. Every
single statement, however remotely connected with the case, was checked and cross-checked in a dozen different ways before being classified as reliable evidence. And, even supposing that despite all this, Jake had managed to put one over on us, what do you propose I should do about it now?’
‘Oh, forget it, I suppose. I was rather pleased with myself for catching him out in a couple of whoppers in the space of ten minutes, but you’ve deflated me now.’
‘Cheer up! As I say, the elderly couple are far more likely to provide you with some useful material to stave off the boredom. And if, by some misfortune, they should turn out to be exactly what they appear to be, we’ll go to Bath tomorrow and try our luck at the theatre. They might even be doing one of those good old-fashioned plays which, unlike life, have a beginning, a middle and an end.’
(6)
‘Here’s one which fits the bill,’ I said, having eased myself on to a bar stool and studied the brochure entitled “Forthcoming Attractions”, which I had extracted from Verity. ‘No loose ends here. All the misunderstandings sorted out and everyone back in his right place for the final curtain. Just as you like it, in fact.’
‘Oh God, must we? Shakespeare’s bad enough, but Shakespeare done by amateurs would be more than I could take.’
‘These are not amateurs. It’s a professional repertory company and they’re here for a ten week season.
Furthermore, it says here that the theatre where they’re playing is a converted Mill House of great charm and historical interest, set in the heart of the Mendip Hills, with its own bar and restaurant. How about that?’
‘What else are they doing?’
‘The Doll’s House and a thriller, which was on last year in London. That won’t do, you always say they’re so untrue to life.’
‘And so they are.’