At the door, he paused. ‘Meant to say I was very sorry about your husband, Mrs Deacon.’
She inclined her head. ‘Thank you, Major.’
The bell jangled as he opened the door. He paused again.
‘By the way, how did you know who I was? We’ve never been introduced, have we? I’d remember.’
She smiled. ‘You have quite a reputation in Frog End, Major. It goes before you.’
‘That so?’ He closed the door behind him and squared his shoulders. By Jove, a reputation! For what exactly? Well, whatever it was, he was rather pleased.
TWELVE
‘Good morning, Mrs Turner.’
‘Oh … good morning, Colonel.’
He was raising his cap to her very politely, as he always did whenever they happened to pass each other. Once or twice he had stopped to chat when she had been pushing Johnny to or from the Manor. He was one of the few people who talked to them quite normally, always including Johnny in the conversation. Not shouting like the Major, or speaking over the top of Johnny’s head as though he wasn’t there, like other people did. Although, it had to be said that Johnny never made any effort to reply or to be polite. There was nothing she could do about that, unfortunately, and it was a shame because the Colonel was a kind man who meant very well – unlike some people who were just curious and often interfering. They would make stupid suggestions about things that Johnny should do to help himself – exercises, for instance, that would, apparently, soon get him walking again if he did them often enough. Nothing would ever do that, as she and Johnny both knew, but they never answered people who talked that way. It was always best to say nothing.
This time, she was walking down the Manor drive on her own, having left Johnny at the Manor to work and the Colonel was on his way up. He stopped and smiled at her.
‘Mrs Harvey’s very pleased to have Johnny back again.’
Somehow she had been able to persuade Johnny to change his mind. He had kept on refusing until she had started to cry and once she’d started crying she couldn’t stop. He’d been very angry with her but, finally, he’d agreed to start work at the Manor again. The tears must have done it. He always hated them.
She said, ‘He thought he ought to help out, seeing as Mrs Harvey’s so short-handed.’
‘That’s very commendable. You must be very proud of your son, Mrs Turner.’
Nobody had ever said such a thing to her before. People often said that they were very sorry for Johnny, but never that there was anything to be proud of about him. And, of course, going back to work hadn’t really been his idea. She swallowed.
‘It’s all been very hard for him, you see.’
‘And for you, too.’
Unlike the Inspector, he seemed to understand, though how could he? How could anybody?
She said, ‘Mrs Harvey’s been very kind. She’s been teaching Johnny about gardening and lending him books. It’s helped such a lot.’
‘From what I hear, he’s getting to be a great asset at the Manor, especially now Jacob’s gone.’
‘Are the police still looking for Jacob?’
‘I believe so.’
‘Do they think he killed Mr Deacon?’
‘He’s definitely a suspect, I’m afraid.’
‘Inspector Squibb suspected Johnny too. He told me so.’
‘That’s just his way of working, Mrs Turner. I wouldn’t let it worry you. He likes to alarm people.’
‘Anyway, Johnny couldn’t have done it.’
‘Of course not. As a matter of interest, though, what did your son think of Mr Deacon?’
‘He didn’t see very much of him. They worked in different parts of the gardens.’
The Colonel said, ‘Did you know that the Deacons lost their only son in a motor bike accident many years ago?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
Lying was easy, once you got used to it. She could tell any number of lies for Johnny.
‘I wondered if perhaps Mr Deacon had ever sympathized with your son about his own accident?’
‘Johnny doesn’t like talking about it to people. He wouldn’t have said anything to anybody.’
‘You love Johnny very much, don’t you, Mrs Turner?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’d do anything for him, I’m sure.’
There was no need to lie this time. She said simply, ‘Anything.’
He raised his cap again and she went on her way, walking quickly in order to put a safe distance between them. The Colonel had been very nice and kind but he had asked too many questions. Johnny wouldn’t like that.
Alison came to stay for a weekend. The Colonel had not seen his daughter for several months. Her high-powered job kept her busy in London or on working trips abroad but she stayed in regular touch by phone.
He knew that she had worried about him since Laura had died but the fact was that he had worried even more about her. His hope had always been that she would find a good man to share her life but, as she had told him, so far it hadn’t happened. She loved her job, which paid her very well, and a man would expect her to iron his shirts. Find a man who doesn’t, had been his logical response but, apparently, it wasn’t quite so easy. And most men expected a lot more than ironed shirts, or so his daughter had discovered. A cook, a cleaner, a nurse, for example, as well as her full and undivided attention at all times, which meant neglecting her own work.
His hopes had been raised for a while when she had spoken of ‘meeting someone’, but the someone in question had turned out to be a married man.
A big name in the City, Alison had told him. Living apart from his wife and with a grown-up daughter who had left home. She got on brilliantly with him, she said. They spoke the same language, enjoyed the same things and he always got his shirts done by a specialist laundry. They were taken away by invisible hands and delivered back pristine on hangers, encased in plastic. Also, the big name wanted her to move into his penthouse flat on the north bank of the river which was quite an impressive place, apparently. She hadn’t mentioned the possibility of marriage and the Colonel doubted if it was in her mind, or in the big name’s mind either. She was still trying to decide about the moving in.
She drove down from London on Saturday morning. On previous visits he had taken her to the Dog and Duck for lunch, but this time he had decided to cook himself. Poached salmon fillets, new potatoes and salad, and he chopped up some parsley from the pig trough for decoration. It was all ready and waiting by the time she arrived.
He poured glasses of white wine and they sat out on the terrace. She looked as stylish as always in her London clothes. There would be no country concessions to Barbours or boots over the weekend. He wondered if she had made her decision about the married man but knew better than to ask.
She admired the pig trough which had progressed considerably since its early days. He had added sage and chives to his starter of parsley, as well as rosemary and thyme and Naomi’s mint and they were all doing well – the mint rather too well, if anything.
‘You’re getting to be quite a gardener, Dad. Mum would be proud of you.’
‘She would have been a far better one.’
‘She always wanted to live in a cottage in the country, didn’t she? I remember her talking about it.’
‘That was the general idea. When we retired.’
‘I thought at first it was a big mistake for you to bury yourself down here but you’ve made it very nice. Don’t you get bored sometimes, though? I mean, nothing much happens, does it?’
Frog End usually gave a false impression to people.
‘You’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘All sorts of things go on. We had another murder not so long ago.’
‘Another one?’
‘Somebody was hit over the head with a garden spade.’
‘How horrible! Who?’
‘A newcomer to the village. The police are investigating but they don’t seem to be able to nail the culprit.’
‘They
should be looking for the motive, shouldn’t they? Isn’t that always the big clue? There has to be a reason. Find it and, hey presto, you’ve got the answer.’
‘Easier said than done.’
Thursday had appeared casually from nowhere and walked past them. Alison was neither a cat nor a dog person and Thursday showed that he understood this by taking a middle path – close, but not too close.
‘He’s looking a bit thin, isn’t he, Dad?’
‘He’s not eating much. I’ve been trying all kinds of food but he’s not very interested.’
‘Maybe it’s old age.’
‘Maybe.’
‘You could take him to the vet? Get him checked over?’
He thought of his one and only visit to the surgery for a necessary inoculation and of Thursday’s spitting and clawing fury, veterinary blood drawn.
‘It’s not quite as simple as it sounds.’
Naomi arrived to join them for the customary six o’clock drink and the subject of Lawrence Deacon’s murder resurfaced.
‘Your father is solving the case for us. Aren’t you, Hugh?’
‘Are you, Dad?’
‘Not so far.’
Naomi said firmly, ‘Frog End is counting on him.’
Later, he took Alison to the Dog and Duck. During the years he had known it, the pub had progressed from flagstone floors, pickled eggs and ploughman’s to patterned carpeting, menus and a mock-beamed dining extension where full meals were served. Being a Saturday evening, it was busy and noisy. He had liked it much better as it had been before, but pubs, like every other business, had to move with the times.
Alison was saying something and he leaned closer to hear her better.
‘By the way, I won’t be moving in with the married man. In fact, I won’t even be seeing him any more. It wouldn’t work. And there’s no need to pretend you’re sorry, Dad.’
He said, ‘I want you to be happy. That’s all that matters.’
‘Like you and Mum were?’
‘Like you could be as well.’
She smiled. ‘I’m happy already, Dad, thanks all the same. You don’t need to worry. I’d much sooner be on my own than living with Mr Wrong and Mr Right is pretty hard to find. I don’t want to settle for Mr He’ll Do.’
He couldn’t argue.
They went to church on Sunday morning. Matins was always well-attended in Frog End and the Colonel enjoyed singing the hymns. It was also his turn to read the second lesson – a passage from Luke that he knew well.
‘“And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem …”’
The new and keen young vicar who had co-opted him both as an occasional reader and a part-time sidesman in spite of the Colonel’s confessed non-belief, bounded eagerly up to the pulpit to deliver a sermon about seeds scattered on good soil always providing a plentiful harvest. The Colonel’s attention drifted as the homily went on. Heads were bent. Old Mrs Watson sitting in a neighbouring pew seemed to have dropped off and the Major kept shaking his pocket watch and holding it to his ear. He noticed that Joyce Reed was present but alone, without her husband. No surprises there. Sunday Matins hadn’t a great deal to offer a fanatical golfer.
The vicar finished his optimistic sermon, heads were lifted up again and the organ, with Miss Hartshorne in command at the keys, wheezed into life. The final hymn began.
Lift up your hearts! We lift them, Lord to thee …
The congregation had lifted themselves as well as their heads and hearts. Even Mrs Watson was on her feet and trying to find the right place in her hymnbook. It was a rousing tune and another of the Colonel’s favourites, very familiar from his boarding school days. No need to look at the words.
Here at thy feet none other may we see:
‘Lift up your hearts!’ E’en so, with one accord,
We lift them up, we lift them to the Lord.
The Frog End congregation was making a valiant stab at it but, to his mind, so far as hymn singing was concerned, there was nothing to beat the sound of five hundred English schoolboys in full-throated unison.
Then, as the trumpet-call, in after years,
‘Lift up your hearts!’ rings pealing in our ears,
Still shall those hearts respond, with full accord,
‘We lift them up, we lift them to the Lord.
The Major waylaid them as they left after the service.
‘Jolly good to see your daughter again, Colonel. Not often we get the pleasure.’ He squeezed Alison’s arm. ‘You must come and cheer us up more often, my dear. This place is as dull as ditchwater.’
‘It doesn’t sound it. My father says there’s been another murder recently.’
He dropped her arm and tapped the side of his nose. ‘Best not to talk about it. Bit of a sore subject. Less said the better.’
Alison stared after his retreating back. ‘What’s bitten the Major? He seemed quite upset.’
‘He was involved in the murder.’
‘The Major? How could he possibly be?’
‘He was nearby when it happened and found the body. The police gave him a bit of a grilling.’
‘Poor old Major … still, they can’t suspect him of anything, can they?’
He smiled. ‘Isn’t it often the least likely person?’
‘That’s in books, Dad.’ She wagged a finger at him. ‘And don’t forget you’re supposed to be solving the case. They’re all relying on you. Look for the motive, like I said. You must be missing something. Something obvious.’
Alison left soon after lunch to drive back to London and he went and sat in the wing-back chair in the sitting room and listened to the grandfather clock tick-tocking. All the rest was silence. The silence that he still couldn’t quite get used to, no matter how hard he tried. All his life there had always been other people around – his parents, his brother, his school friends, his fellow officers, Laura and the children. Now there was no one, except for Thursday who couldn’t speak a word and was, in any case, usually asleep.
He got up and went over to the old gramophone that he had used for many years to play his collection of Gilbert and Sullivan records. Alison had tried to persuade him to buy some state of the art machine and modern disks but he took pleasure from handling a real old-fashioned record – admiring the cover again, sliding it from its sleeve, setting it on the turntable, pressing the switch, watching the record spin, the arm move across and descend, waiting for the music to begin.
He chose an old favourite from the stack and returned to his chair to listen.
I am the very model of a modern Major-General
I’ve information vegetable, animal and mineral
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical …
As a retired Colonel, he was far from any such paragon and he certainly wasn’t very modern either. His army career was past and done. His time, he accepted, was over. The things that were left to do were small things – community services, doing his bit where he could, giving a helping hand when needed, and, now it seemed, working out who had killed Lawrence Deacon. Jacob remained the chief suspect, at least as far as the police were concerned, but other than his panic-stricken flight, this case was giving no clues away. The motive was always the key, as Alison had correctly pointed out. There always had to be a reason. Jacob could well have had one, the product of his troubled mind, but who else? And what else?
I’m very good at integral and differential calculus
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
Claudia Deacon? She had freely admitted to him that her marriage had cooled ever since the tragic death of the young son they never talked about any more. The lovely boy who was very special, charming, kind, good-natured, full of life and whose loss
twenty years ago had virtually broken them both. But what connection could it have with Deacon’s murder?
She’d told him that her husband had been very difficult to cope with since his stroke and that he resented the time she spent in her flourishing gift shop. She had also told him that her husband suspected her – wrongly, so she had said – of having an affair. But maybe he had been right? Whatever the truth about it Claudia Deacon had had no need to murder her husband. She could have left him at any time, if she had been driven to such a point – of choosing between her husband and a lover and her shop. The choices were all hers.
But perhaps Deacon’s endless resentment and suspicions had finally proved too much for his wife? Perhaps she had simply wanted to be rid of him at any price?
What else had Claudia told him? That Deacon had apparently had no sympathy for young Johnny Turner, condemned for the rest of his life to a wheelchair. Deacon’s harsh view had been that it had been his own fault and that he was lucky to be alive – unlike his own son. If he had said as much to Johnny himself then the boy might have reacted violently. He could manoeuvre his wheelchair very well and he must have very strong arms. Arms that could propel him and his chair everywhere and could easily lift a heavy spade and strike a fatal blow.
Tanya Carberry? The grieving widow, as Naomi had described her. He had only met her once or twice – a coffee morning, a chamber music concert in the village hall, a gardening talk at the Manor. They hadn’t exchanged more than a few words. All he knew was that her husband had died very suddenly, soon after they had moved into their flat at the Hall, and that she had been doing occasional work at the Manor to help her get over depression. Naomi had voiced the rather farfetched theory that widows always attracted men and that Deacon had tried his luck. He couldn’t see that happening. Mrs Carberry was a good-looking woman but she was clearly still in mourning for her husband and would be far from grateful for the attention. In any case, Deacon had been a sick man, very much preoccupied with his own misfortune.
The Lifeline Page 15