by Tom Sharpe
He leant back against a trunk, his spirits sinking as he watched the sun gradually appear above the tops of the pines below.
27
In the study, Sir George and Lady Clarissa were having a particularly vicious argument. Lady Clarissa had started it over breakfast, much to the embarrassment of Mrs Bale who had come to report that the boy still hadn’t turned up.
“Edward’s probably run away because you’re so hateful to him!” Clarissa shouted at her husband. “You’ve never liked him, I don’t care what you say. In any case, it’s your fault he likes shooting. You encouraged him from the start.”
“I did nothing of the sort. That’s a downright lie, and you know it.”
Lady Clarissa was driven to fury.
“I will not be called a liar by anyone…and you’re the last person to talk about lying! I heard what you said to that policeman last night even if you won’t tell me why he was here. When he comes back, I’m going to let him know that you always leave that gun cabinet unlocked deliberately. That’s why Edward can always get his hands on a gun. Oh, yes, I’ve seen the look of hatred on your face when he’s out with one. I wish to heaven I’d never married you.”
Sir Georges face had turned almost purple. “Aren’t you forgetting you married me for my money? You knew I was extremely wealthy and, like an idiot, I thought you were charming and gave you a very generous allowance as well as a wedding ring. All you’ve done since then is spend it on that bloody moth-eaten old Colonel and the yobs you’ve been shagging. Or, more likely, paid with my money to sleep with you. If I had known what a whore you are, I wouldn’t have come near you with a bargepole. You’re nothing but a slut!”
“You bastard!” Clarissa screamed. “My uncle has just died and what sympathy do I get? You won’t even let him be buried in the family plot so I’ll have to go into the village whenever I want to visit the grave. And now you’ve driven my son away with your hateful remarks and insults. Well, I’m going to see that you pay for it, if it’s the last thing I do. And don’t think I can’t ruin you. I’ve kept a record of all the financial rackets you’ve been involved in, let alone all your nasty little perversions. It’s not just me who hates you either: you should know by now how loathed you are by all the staff, not to mention the locals.”
They were still shouting at one another when the police van drove up to the drawbridge and the sniffer dogs were led out. Behind them two Constables were holding pieces of clothing while a third carried a rifle. The Superintendent’s car followed. He got out and crossed the drawbridge where he almost tripped over the quads who had raced to be the first to the door, flinging it open before he’d even rung the bell.
“Damn those bloody police!” shouted Sir George, having seen them arrive through the window, while in the background Lady Clarissa could be heard sobbing and moaning about her darling boy.
She left the study when the Superintendent arrived escorted by Mrs Bale, the quads and Eva, who had come to see what on earth was going on.
“Good morning Sir George.”
The old man nodded.
“As a magistrate you must realise what this situation entails,” the Superintendent said with the same air of calm assurance he’d shown the previous evening. “I have a warrant here to search the grounds and the Hall itself, and I’ve had some officers investigating in Ipford where they’ve ascertained that there was indeed a body dispatched to the Hall, that of an old man whom I further believe was related to you.”
“He wasn’t any bloody relative of mine,” growled Sir George.
“That’s as may be, sir, but we’ve also obtained some of the old gent’s clothing. We’ll find out soon enough if his body is here on the Estate.”
“Don’t be bloody ridiculous. Of course he’s not here on the Estate, you idiot. And by the way, do you have any idea who I am? I only need put a call in to your superiors and you’ll be back plodding the beat, you wait and see.”
“Are you threatening me?” the Superintendent asked, having had more than enough of Sir George’s ranting and raving already. “I’m putting you on a caution for Corruption. Let’s wait and see what other charges we’ll be making by the end of today, shall we?”
The quads were agog at this drama which was already turning out to be better than they could possibly have hoped. They couldn’t decide whether to stay in the study and listen to Sir George and the policeman or whether the best of the action was outside, where they could hear the dogs barking loudly and Mrs Bale asking if anyone wanted a cup of tea. In the end they decided to split up into pairs. Josephine and Penelope went into the garden where they watched as the dogs were made to sniff some pieces of clothing and then started to strain at their leashes, yelping as they sought to be let free to run off after the scent.
Back in the study, the Superintendent continued to caution Sir George.
“Now then, we also need to talk to that boy of yours. We have the lad’s birth certificate and your step-son is way under-age to be using a powerful rifle. Forensics have been working overnight and the bullet we exhumed from the log was found to be a .303 from the Second World War…”
“So what?” interrupted Sir George. “My father brought it back as a memento.”
“So you admit that the bullet was fired by your gun? And that your step-son in all probability fired it?”
“Yes, of course I do. He was probably shooting at something in the woods, the silly oaf. He’s the one you want to arrest, not me. I didn’t tell him he could take the gun.”
“But you left the gun cabinet unlocked all the time, didn’t you?” said Lady Clarissa, who had come back into the room just as Sir George was protesting his innocence. “You encouraged him to fire at people and property, and I’m willing to testify to that in court.”
“Shut up, you stupid woman. Look, he’s obviously stolen the gun,” said Sir George, flinging open the doors to the cabinet to show that there was a weapon missing. “He’ll have gone off and fired it at things in the woods, which is when that blasted branch must have got winged, and then run away to join the army, I should think.”
“It seems to me that you allowed your step-son illegally to use a dangerous weapon. That’s the first offence. The second is that we’ve witnesses to say he fired from what you call your private property across the road, which is a public thoroughfare. And let’s not forget your threat to get me into trouble as well – an even more serious crime – which brings the running total to three, so far.”
The Superintendent spoke to the Sergeant behind him.
“Lets get the tracker dogs on to it,” he ordered, then turned back to Sir George who was looking distinctly pale now. “We are going to ascertain where the body of the Colonel has actually been buried, whether on the Estate or nearby. It’s difficult for us not to suspect foul play, if not actual murder. At the very least, we’ll probably have you for burying someone on unsanc-tified land.”
Lady Clarissa was looking extremely confused, having no reason to believe that her uncle’s body was anywhere other than at the Vicarage.
“I did nothing of the sort! I sent his damned coffin down to the village. We only bury members of the family in our cemetery.”
“George, what’s going on? Where is Uncle?”
“Looks like you’ve some explaining to do, Sir George. I’ll leave you to it – for now. We’ll be back to search the house once we’ve gone through the grounds.”
The Superintendent left the room followed closely by the two remaining quads. Out in the yard, the sniffer dogs, both Collie crosses, had finished snuffling at some of the Colonel’s possessions and old clothes. As they were let off their leads the dogs out to have been able to find the dead man twenty miles away, let alone on the Estate. But to their handlers’ confusion they started running round in circles, with one dog going first to the four girls standing watching and the other heading straight for the woods. The policemen looked very taken aback. After a few moments the one left behind dragged his dog off the g
irls and started running after his colleague. The quads looked rather shaken by this but after a few moments set off in pursuit.
Back in the study, Lady Clarissa confronted her husband. “What on earth is all this about a log full of bullets found in a coffin? And why does the Superintendent think you’ve done something to Uncle?”
But Sir George had slumped back in his chair, powerless to answer her. He didn’t understand a thing that was going on but he knew he was up to the eyeballs in terrible trouble, with incriminating circumstances stacked well and truly against him.
∗
Still slumped against the tree, Wilt had been thinking back over his conversation with Mrs Bale the previous evening. She’d told him how furious Sir George was at the thought of the police returning with a warrant to search the Hall and Estate.
“Whoever put that wooden thing in the coffin knew he’d create one hell of a row. Lady Clarissa will go mad when she hears about it.”
“I suppose the disappearance of her uncle’s body will really upset her.”
“Not on your life! She’ll be more upset by the thought of losing all of ghastly Gadsley’s fortune if he does divorce her. They were having a terrible fight about it before the police arrived. He’d threatened to cut off her allowance and sue her for adultery, and he could do that easily enough. After all, she didn’t go down to Ipford every weekend just to see her uncle…I happen to know she didn’t even like the old man much.”
Mrs Bale stopped gossiping while she made the tea. It was Wilt who broke the silence.
“I must say, I find Sir George a singularly horrible man. There’s a degree of suppressed violence in his character I have never encountered before. I can’t imagine what he’d be like as a magistrate. I certainly wouldn’t want to be sentenced by him.”
“Now you see why he’s detested in the village. The man is a monster,” Mrs Bale agreed, handing him his cup of tea. “Though to be honest, the pair of them are as bad as each other.”
“When do you think he’ll tell Clarissa that her uncle’s body is missing?”
“Never, if he has any sense. Let’s hope it turns up before things get much worse.”
Wilt had privately thought that things couldn’t be much worse than having four terrible daughters running riot at school and destined to be his responsibility for the rest of his life – and sadly not one he could simply divorce himself from.
As he sat there in the woods he thought, for the umpteenth time, that he should never have married wretched Eva and then he wouldn’t have had four hell-cats to show for it. Looking back on that awful occasion, he reminded himself that he hadn’t actually proposed to her at all; she’d proposed to him when he was drunk and hadn’t known what the hell he was doing. He knew now.
The first tracker dog shattered his reflective mood as it appeared round a bend in the path, barking excitedly, with three plainclothes policemen trailing behind it. Before Wilt realised what it was doing, it had dashed into a thick clump of young pines.
“Go in and see what the dog has found. I’ll stay here and see if this bloke knows anything,” said one PC, taking a notebook out of his pocket. “May I take your name and address, sir?”
“Wilt…Henry Wilt. I’m staying at the Hall with Sir George. He’ll confirm my identity.”
“How do you spell your name?”
As Wilt began to tell him there was a shout from deep in the pine wood.
“He’s found a naked body with a wooden leg…and we are coming out fast!”
“Why?”
“Because it stinks to high heaven, that’s why.”
Two minutes later the dog handlers, clutching handkerchiefs to their white faces, came hurriedly out of the trees.
“Bloody hell! There’s two of them in there.”
“Two what?”
“Two corpses! One lying face down on the ground and the other propped up against a tree. I thought we were only looking for one?”
“Well, yes, we are. Were. But at least we’ve done what the chief told us to do. And he ought to be especially pleased ‘cos we found two. Where’s the dog?”
“Probably vomiting its guts out. Another five minutes in there and I know I’d have been doing the same. Now where is that bloke who was here when we arrived…”
But Wilt had taken the opportunity of all the shouting and confusion to dash down to the cemetery and had hidden himself behind the altar in the chapel. He had already had too many encounters with coppers who tried to pin crimes on him he’d never committed. He’d left before hearing they had found two bodies and before the quads turned up in hot pursuit of the lead dog, closely accompanied by the second animal which seemed unable to stop sniffing at them.
After three-quarters of an hour, Wilt was so uncomfortable he crawled out of hiding and headed away from the cemetery. He kept close to the wall beside the road until he reached the back gate and could hurry into the parking area. For the first time that morning he felt safe from both bullets and police. He ran across the yard and up to the kitchen where Mrs Bale was having a cup of tea as usual.
“You look as though you could do with some too,” she said. “And where on earth have you been? In a jungle of fir trees from the state of you.”
“You’re right about the jungle, and I’d certainly appreciate a cup of tea. I’ve been watching the police find the stark bollock naked body of the Colonel, which stank to high heaven – or more accurately high hell.”
Mrs Bale shuddered.
“I’m not surprised. What I don’t understand is why he had been stripped naked? It doesn’t make any more sense than hiding him in the wood in the first place. And why put a log in his coffin?”
Wilt shrugged and said he had no idea. “Someone round here must be crazy. What does Sir George say?”
Mrs Bale hesistated before answering.
“Well, when he heard about the empty coffin, he reckoned it was either you or Edward who took the body.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“I’m not saying you did, just that that’s what Sir George thinks. Is it definitely the Colonel, though? Did he have a wooden leg?”
“Who else would it be? And he certainly had only one leg, according to the Constable I heard shouting.”
“That means it really is the Colonel. Lady Clarissa will be beside herself, though it could have been worse: at least the body has been found, I suppose. I tell you, I’m sick to death of seeing her drooping about the place.”
“You mean, she’s in mourning for him?”
Mrs Bale laughed.
“Not on your nellie! It’s mainly because she’s got no excuse to go down to Ipford every weekend and sleep with the garage man.”
“Yes, well…” said Wilt, who still felt very uncomfortable talking about Lady Clarissa’s sex life. “I suppose I’d better go and tell them about the body.”
He left the kitchen and went down the corridor to the study, only to find the Superintendent already there with Sir George and Lady Clarissa, who was bawling her eyes out.
The Superintendent looked at Wilt suspiciously.
“And where did you get to?” he demanded. “Come to that, what were you doing so near the corpses? According to my men, when they arrived you were sitting no more than forty yards away.”
Wilt thought he had a strange turn of phrase, plural-ising everything, probably attempting to impress Sir George. He glanced nervously over at Lady Clarissa, wondering why she was quite so upset given that her uncle’s body had at least been recovered.
“So what? I wasn’t to know there was a grave nearby. I told the officers I was simply going for an early-morning walk, well away from the idiot I’m supposed to be tutoring. You might not have noticed but the boy spends his time shooting anything he sees moving. That’s why I can only take a walk at first light. And that’s also why my wife went away with the quads.”
“With the whats?”
“Our four daughters, born at the same time. Quads is short for quadruple
ts,” Wilt tried to explain over the noise of Lady Clarissa’s wails which had become even louder.
The Superintendent decided to change his line of questioning.
“And what about the smell? The men on the scene said it was disgusting…utterly revolting. How did you get to be relaxing about the place, without a care in the world, that’s what we want to know? Only forty yards away and yet you didn’t smell anything? The sniffer dog did as soon as it got there.”
“I am not a sniffer dog. I simply sat down to have a rest and look at the view. Anyway there was a strong breeze blowing from the east which probably carried the stink off in the opposite direction. If the corpse was smelling so foully it could be noticed from where I was, your men wouldn’t have gone in in the first place. They came out fast enough.”
“True,” said the Superintendent desperately. This bastard had a logical answer for every question.
“But tell me,” said the Superintendent, screwing his eyes into slits, trying to look shrewd and professional, “what do you have to say about the second, non-smelly body?”
28
As he stood listening to the Superintendent subject Wilt to a barrage of questions, Sir George began to put two and two together. God, how he cursed the day he had married a good-looking woman with the morals of an alley cat on heat and a son who could no more get into university than run a mile in ten seconds. And now this! He just knew that the young imbecile had been the one who’d emptied that coffin and taken the body – probably for target practice, knowing him. And then the bloody fool had obviously gone on to shoot himself accidentally! Clarissa, who was by now in an inconsolable state, would make her husband pay dearly, though, of that he was sure. That Edward had brought this upon himself Sir George was completely convinced, but he was already struggling to think of a way of avoiding the scandal that was bound to ensue and would in all probability focus on himself. God knows, that bloody Vicar was going to have something to gloat over now. If he could somehow pin Edward’s death on Wilt, that should give him a chance to get himself off the hook…And, now that he thought about it, if Wilt were found guilty, Clarissa would only have herself to blame, given that she’d brought the man to the Hall in the first place.