The Lifeline

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘I think he was hoeing in the rose garden. He must have had his sandwiches there.’

  ‘So you didn’t see Johnny at all?’

  ‘Not until later.’

  ‘Later?’

  ‘He came to the greenhouse after Mr Deacon’s body had been discovered. I expect he’d heard all the noise.’

  ‘Noise?’

  ‘Major Cuthbertson shouting for help.’

  ‘Which direction did Johnny come from?’

  ‘I didn’t notice. The rose garden, I suppose.’

  ‘What do you think of Johnny?’

  ‘I’m very sorry for him. Anyone would be.’

  ‘But not Mr Deacon, apparently. I gather he was fond of telling people that Johnny deserved everything that had happened to him.’

  ‘I never heard him say that.’

  ‘Do you think he ever said it to Johnny?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  There was a pause while the Sergeant flicked over a page of his notebook. The Inspector went on. ‘What about Jacob?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Did you see him at any time during the afternoon?’

  ‘No, I didn’t see him at all.’

  ‘Did you see Mr Deacon that morning?’

  ‘He came past the border where I was weeding.’

  ‘And stopped to talk to you?’

  ‘Only for a moment.’

  ‘What about?’

  You don’t have to tell him, she reminded herself. He can’t know. Nobody can.

  ‘He told me he’d been pinching out tomato side shoots and what a boring job it was. He was taking a break.’

  ‘Did you like Mr Deacon?’

  ‘I hardly knew him.’

  ‘But what was your general impression of him?’

  ‘He didn’t seem a very cheerful sort of person. Of course, he was still recovering from a stroke.’

  ‘Did he ever make any kind of unwelcome advances to you?’

  She said coldly, ‘I don’t encourage that sort of thing, Inspector. I’m not interested. My late husband and I were very close.’

  He changed tack. ‘Where were you when you heard Major Cuthbertson shouting out for help?’

  ‘I was back weeding the border.’

  ‘Had you gone straight there from the stables after your lunch?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you do when you heard the Major?’

  ‘I ran to the greenhouse.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I’ve already told you.’

  ‘Tell me again.’

  She went on doggedly with the same account: the Major in a state of severe shock, the hideous scene in the greenhouse, the overturned stool, the body, the spade, the blood. And there were still more questions.

  ‘When you first saw it, were you aware that the body was Mr Deacon’s?’

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘Even though he was lying face down and his head was covered in blood?’

  ‘I recognized his clothes.’

  ‘You were familiar with them? Yet you say you hardly knew him?’

  ‘He always wore the same things for work.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘A grey woollen jumper, a check shirt and brown corduroy trousers.’

  ‘Very observant of you, Mrs Carberry. Most people never notice details like that. So, after you had recognized Mr Deacon’s clothes, what did you do then?’

  ‘I went to find Mrs Harvey.’

  ‘Where was she?’

  ‘In the house.’

  ‘What was she doing there?’

  ‘Giving her baby, Alan, lunch.’

  ‘You hadn’t touched Mr Deacon, or attempted to move him?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  The Inspector smoothed his silk tie carefully, like stroking a cat.

  ‘I understand that you’re still working at the Manor, Mrs Carberry?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Doesn’t it upset you?’

  ‘I didn’t want to let Mrs Harvey down, Inspector.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’re aware that this is the second murder to take place there in recent years.’

  The second murder?

  ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Lady Swynford, Mrs Harvey’s mother, was suffocated with a pillow in her bedroom during a summer fête.’

  ‘How terrible! Did the police find out who did it?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I was in charge of the investigation myself so you don’t need to worry that the murderer is still at large. Tell me, Mrs Carberry, had you ever met either Mr Deacon or his wife before you came to live in Frog End?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  There were more questions – some old, some new. As far as she could, she told the truth. He can’t know, she kept telling herself. He can’t possibly know.

  Miss Butler knocked at the front door of Pond Cottage. A very timid knock, in case the Colonel was busy, or perhaps at work in his shed in the back garden. It wasn’t quite clear what he did in there but she was aware that for some reason gentlemen liked to shut themselves away in sheds and not to be disturbed.

  There was no question of her going round the side of the cottage. Mrs Cuthbertson, she understood, had been known to do so, and one or two other village ladies with similar nerve, but she had also heard that the Colonel never permitted any of them across the shed threshold. Not even Naomi Grimshaw, though she had often tried. The shed was apparently kept under lock and key and sacks hung across the inside of the windows. Of course, the Colonel was always most welcoming at Pond Cottage, but his shed was another story.

  She knocked at the cottage door once more, prepared to leave, but this time the Colonel opened it, inviting her inside.

  ‘Can I offer you a cup of tea, Miss Butler?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble, Colonel.’

  ‘You won’t. I’ve just put the kettle on. Shall we go into the sitting room? Milk but no sugar, isn’t it?’

  The cat, Thursday, was curled up in his winter place at the fire end of the sofa. Since it was now high summer and the grate empty, Miss Butler would have expected him to be out of doors, hunting things, but then he must be getting old, like everybody else. Rather to her relief, he took no notice as she sat down at the other end. She had nothing against cats, but it had to be said that the stray was no beauty – a battle-scarred thing with motley black and tan fur and a badly torn ear. The Colonel had been very good to give him a home. If he had turned up at Lupin Cottage, she, personally, would have shooed him away.

  The Colonel brought her a cup of tea – a proper bone china cup and saucer, not an ugly mug like most people seemed to use these days. He sat down in the wing-back tapestry chair opposite – a very fine and solid piece of antique furniture which she thought suited him well. After dark, with the lamps on and the curtains still open, she could see him sitting there from her front window.

  ‘Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Butler?’

  ‘Well, not exactly, Colonel … it’s just something that I felt you should know.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘But perhaps you already do?’

  He smiled at her.

  ‘I’m afraid we won’t know if I know until you tell me what it is.’

  Such a gentleman, she thought. Others might well have been impatient at her inability to express herself clearly and succinctly, but not the Colonel. She plunged on.

  ‘Well, you see, I just happened to be looking out of my sitting-room window when I noticed Inspector Squibb passing in his car.’

  Fortunately, the binoculars had been close to hand and she had been able to monitor the car’s progress round the green.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I saw the car turn into the entrance to the Hall where Mr Deacon’s widow lives. Mrs Carberry has a flat there too, of course, and Mr and Mrs Reed recently moved in
to Number 2 on the ground floor – as I’m sure you are aware, Colonel. I understand you’ve called.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘Rather an unlucky flat, I feel, don’t you?’

  ‘It certainly has an unfortunate history.’

  ‘Quite. Naturally, they would all have been interviewed by the Inspector at the time of Mr Deacon’s shocking murder. Mrs Reed wasn’t actually working at the Manor on that day, as I understand it, but I’m sure the Inspector would have included her in his general enquiries, don’t you think? Checked her story?’

  ‘Almost certainly.’

  ‘He’s nothing if not thorough. So, it occurred to me that the Inspector must be intending to question one of them again, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I think I do.’

  Miss Butler paused, collecting her thoughts. It was important to get the facts right and in the right order.

  ‘It was just before ten o’clock. I had seen Mrs Deacon leaving at a quarter past eight, as usual, to open her shop in Dorchester – she’s always very punctual – and so I deduced that it was most likely Mrs Carberry whom the Inspector had gone to see, since Mrs Reed can’t have had much to add to what she had already told him if she wasn’t even there. If you follow me.’

  ‘Yes, I follow you.’

  ‘Anyway, Inspector Squibb was there for a long time. An hour and a half, in fact. I timed it by my watch, which is very reliable. I had it in the WRNS and it’s never failed me. Which means that Mrs Carberry must be under suspicion. I thought you should know, Colonel – unless, of course, you knew already.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know, Miss Butler. But I think you may be jumping to conclusions. Inspector Squibb is making enquiries into a murder and he will need to gather as much information as he can from every source. It’s normal police routine and it takes time.’

  ‘Mrs Carberry is quite a stranger to the village, you see. An unknown quantity. And we never had a chance to get to know her husband before he died so suddenly.’

  He said mildly, ‘That doesn’t make her a murderer.’

  Her cheeks turned pink. ‘No, of course not. But I just wondered if perhaps there had been something going on between Mrs Carberry and Mr Deacon.’

  ‘I think that’s very unlikely.’

  ‘I agree that he didn’t seem at all her type. So, if it wasn’t Mrs Carberry who killed Mr Deacon it must have been someone else, mustn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. It must have been.’

  She looked at him earnestly, clutching at the handbag on her lap.

  ‘We’re all depending on you, Colonel.’

  ‘For what exactly, Miss Butler?’

  ‘To find the murderer, of course.’

  It had taken some time for Miss Butler to leave, during which the Colonel had done his best to convince her that he was not Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey and Hercule Poirot rolled into one, and that he had no more clues about the murderer’s identity than anybody else. Miss Butler had remained stubbornly hopeful. She, Naomi and an untold number of others in Frog End were apparently expecting him to conjure up a satisfactory solution out of thin air. And do it fast.

  The phone rang and it was Ruth.

  ‘Squibb has just paid us another visit, Hugh.’

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘He says Jacob’s fingerprints are on the spade handle. Not exactly conclusive evidence, of course … Jacob’s used that spade hundreds of times before.’

  ‘Where was it kept?’

  ‘In the tool shed, along with all the other tools. Sometimes they get left lying about but mostly they’re cleaned up and put away at the end of the day. Jacob has always been very good about doing that.’

  ‘Were there any other prints on the spade?’

  ‘Not according to the Inspector. Only Jacob’s. They searched his room yet again and took away an old scarf. Squibb says they’re going to use tracker dogs to hunt for him. Poor Jacob! Hunted down like an animal.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where he might be hiding?’

  ‘None at all. As far as we know, he has no friends. He never goes anywhere and he seems to have had a miserably lonely life. He’s very odd, of course – as we all know – but Tom absolutely doesn’t believe he’d attack someone, let alone kill them savagely. He thinks he’d run a mile sooner than do anything like that.’

  The Colonel hoped Jacob had run many miles, for his own sake.

  ‘Did Inspector Squibb have anything else to say?’

  ‘Only that they’d found out that the blood on the Major’s blazer definitely belonged to Lawrence Deacon. So, I’m afraid he won’t be getting it back for a while – if ever.’

  The Major was at his post at the Dog and Duck, putting the world to rights.

  ‘Too many damned foreigners let into this country, if you ask me. All kinds of odds and sods up to no good and jabbering away in some lingo nobody understands a word of. The Yanks can come if they want – they don’t count as foreign and they get by in English – but the rest of the buggers ought to be kept out. Drawbridge up for the lot of ’em.’

  The Colonel approached the bar. ‘The other half, Major?’

  ‘I don’t mind if I do.’

  ‘I hear the police are holding on to your blazer.’

  ‘Huh! Damned nerve! They still can’t find that lunatic, you know. Hounds baying all over the countryside and not a sniff of him. The Inspector had the gall to come round and ask me a whole lot more questions, even though it’s an open and shut case. They’ve got fingerprints and blood. What more does he want?’

  ‘Proof?’

  ‘My God, I practically saw the chap do the deed in front of my eyes. I’m their star witness, though you’d never think so. They’ve been bothering Mrs Turner too. Damned bad show! I saw Squibb knocking at her door – as if the poor woman hasn’t got enough to worry about, coping with that son of hers. I watch her pushing him backwards and forwards past us in that wheelchair and I don’t know how she does it. Nothing to her but skin and bone. I hope she told Squibb where to get off. But she wouldn’t, of course. Not that kind of woman. Too meek and mild for her own good.’

  The other half had arrived on the counter in front of the Major and he scooped it up deftly.

  ‘Your very good health, Colonel.’

  ‘Thank you, Major. And yours.’

  ‘We need it. We’re neither of us getting any younger, are we? Which reminds me about Marjorie’s birthday. That plant I’d chosen for her was wrecked, you know. Not sure I can face going back there to get another.’

  ‘You could buy her something else.’

  ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘Try Mrs Deacon’s gift shop in Dorchester.’

  ‘She still running it?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘I’ll give it a whirl.’

  After some more drinking the Colonel said, ‘By the way, that woman you saw in the distance at the Manor, have you remembered anything else about her?’

  The Major wagged his head. ‘No. There was something that rang a bell, but I’m blessed if I can remember what it was.’

  ‘Well, let me know if you do.’

  ‘She wasn’t the murderer, if that’s what you’re thinking. You didn’t see the body, did you? Not like I did. Close up. Believe me, no woman could have done that to anyone. It must have been a man.’

  Mrs Deacon’s gift shop in Dorchester was not the sort of place the Major would normally have been seen dead in, but the fact that Marjorie’s birthday was only three days away spurred him on. ‘Seek and Find’ it said in slanting letters above the window and the lights were on inside.

  Well, that was a promising start and when he peered in through the glass the stuff for sale looked pretty good. Bound to be expensive but worth a squint round. No need to buy anything. He could be just looking.

  A bell jangled as he opened the door. He rather liked that. It reminded him of the sweetshop in the village where he had lived as a child. There had been rows of big, glass, screw-t
op jars on shelves, full of his favourites: treacle toffees; sherberts that fizzed on your tongue and turned it yellow; long, black liquorice bootlaces; smooth, red aniseed balls; fat, striped humbugs. The man who had owned it always waited impatiently for him to make up his mind, drumming his fingers on the edge of the counter. The sweets had been weighed out on brass scales and tipped into a paper bag flipped over to twist its corners tight. Whatever the Major had chosen he often wished he’d gone for something else. Come to think of it, the same thing had kept happening in later life. The wrong path taken, the wrong door opened or shut, the wrong decision made.

  Now, he found himself surrounded by pictures, lamps, vases, candlesticks, cushions, tablecloths, trays, teapots, a set of rather nice whisky glasses – and without a clue as to what might please the old girl.

  ‘Can I help you, Major, or would you sooner just browse?’

  She’d come out from behind the counter. He’d only seen Mrs Deacon once before across a crowded village hall and she was a lot more interesting close up. Quite a few years younger than her late husband. Probably somewhere in her early fifties, or even less. Younger than Tanya, that was for sure. She was wearing black clothes but they didn’t look much like widows’ weeds to him. Ye gods, another widow, he thought! Frog End was attracting them like flies. And how had she known who he was?

  He bowed. ‘Very kind of you, Mrs Deacon. The Colonel recommended your shop, you see. I’m looking for a birthday present for my wife.’

  ‘What sort of thing do you think she might like?’

  He looked around helplessly. ‘Not too sure, to be honest.’

  ‘She’s a very busy woman, isn’t she? Very active in the village, so I’ve heard.’

  ‘Rather!’

  ‘Then I wonder if she might like something useful like this.’

  She had picked up a very smart, black, leather-bound notebook with a silver propelling pencil fitted into a slot at the side. She took out the pencil and fanned the leaves for him. They had silver edges.

  ‘Very nice,’ he said. It looked just the job for Marjorie, who was always writing things down.

  ‘You could have her initials put on the front in silver to match, if you’d like.’

  That would certainly please the old girl, he thought. Nice touch.

  ‘Jolly good idea. I’ll take it.’

  He paid and they sorted out the initials (five of them, thanks to his late mother-in-law who had had delusions of grandeur). The notebook would be ready for collection the next day. She was damned efficient, he reckoned. No wonder the shop was doing well.