by Tom Sharpe
Sir George reckoned he’d have the Superintendent on his side, too, as he seemed to view Wilt with the utmost suspicion and his interrogation was already taking on a particularly nasty tone.
“What other body?” asked Wilt, bewildered.
“My darling Edward…Edward, my son and heir. My beloved Edward!” bawled Clarissa, racked with grief. “It’s all your fault,” she cried, turning on her husband. “You never liked him. You let him have your guns and encouraged him to shoot himself…”
“I did nothing of the sort. I can’t help it if Eddie was stupid. Anyway, it must be Wilt here who’s to blame.”
“Now hang on,” protested Wilt. “What are you on about? I’m not involved in anything. Is Edward dead as well?”
Sir George ignored him and carried on shouting at his wife. “You were the one who brought him here to teach your idiot son, and I know for a fact he’s been teaching him the history of warfare. Eddie must have got worked up then stolen your uncle’s body to use for target practice. For all we know, Wilt might even have helped him set up the corpse in the woods.”
Wilt turned pale and sank down on to a chair.
Sir George seemed quite pleased with his argument and carried on: “And how did the Colonel come to die so conveniently, I ask you? Just when Wilt was coming. And don’t think I didn’t know you could hardly wait to shag him…”
“You complete bastard,” Clarissa sobbed. “Uncle died and you couldn’t have cared less. You wouldn’t even let him be buried in the family graveyard. And now you’re insulting the memory of my dead son. And it’s you who got Edward killed, not me. Yes, you! All because you want to make sure there’s none of us left who aren’t Gadsleys by blood.”
“Oh, no, not me, my dear. You and your lover Wilt have probably been in league together.”
Wilt could not believe what he was hearing. “Contact Detective Inspector Flint in Ipford. He can vouch for my innocence,” he insisted.
“We’ve already done that,” the Superintendent told him, just as the man himself walked in to join the fray.
“Flint!” shouted Wilt. “Am I glad to see you! Tell them I couldn’t kill a flea.”
The Inspector remained poker-faced. “But maybe this time you have. It was just that I could never pin anything on you before. Looks very much to me as though we’ve finally caught you red-handed.”
Wilt realised he was in deep trouble and very much on his own. This situation was rapidly becoming a nightmare. He knew who he blamed for everything: Eva. This was all her doing, and when he got out of this mess he intended to put his foot down. The quads were definitely going back to the Convent.
“But why would I want to get Edward killed?”
“Because you yourself thought him a fool and he has been taking pot shots at your quads,” Sir George answered.
“Well, yes, but…”
The Superintendent felt he was losing control of the situation.
“Lady Clarissa, I must ask whether you have been having…well…relations with Mr Wilt here, as your husband claims?”
“Don’t you try to pin this on me, you bastard!” yelled Lady Clarissa, turning on Sir George.
“Now let’s all calm down,” Flint said in a calm but firm tone, trying to exert some authority over the situation.
“Wilt, are you saying you were nowhere near the scene of the crime?”
“No, I haven’t said that. I was near the place where the bodies were found as I walk there pretty often.”
“So you admit you are involved?”
“No, I don’t! As I just said, I was near the scene of the crime, but that does not mean I was involved in the crime itself or that it was a crime to be there.”
“If you were not involved, although you were there, why were you there?” Flint was experiencing the usual sense of incipient mental collapse which always descended when he was confronting Wilt.
“Look – I had no interest in getting Edward killed. Why would I when I only took a job here in the first place because I needed the money I was paid to teach him? No more Edward means there will be no further need of my tutoring services.”
“Ah! But that leaves the way open for you to start dispensing your services in other ways,” cried Sir George, trying desperately to steer the blame back on to Wilt.
“I wasn’t going to pay him for that!” cried Lady Clarissa, before she could stop herself.
“So what were you going to pay him for?” asked Flint.
“I wasn’t going to pay him for anything. Sir George was going to pay him.”
Wilt, Flint and the Superintendent all turned and stared at Sir George.
“What? I haven’t arranged anything, I tell you. It was Lady Clarissa who arranged for Wilt to come here. She was the one.”
Wilt, Flint and the Superintendent all turned and stared at Lady Clarissa.
“Are you suggesting that I could have arranged for Wilt to kill my own little Edward? He was only meant to tutor him – to get him into Cambridge!”
Flint thought that an unlikely story judging from what he had heard about the boy. However, he was by now totally confused as to who had arranged with whom to do what, and where exactly Wilt fitted into what was clearly a carefully laid plan…before it had gone wrong along the way. Or had it? Flint was completely flummoxed because he couldn’t make sense of any of it.
“Look – we’re not getting anywhere. Let’s break for a bit and carry out some interviews with the rest of the household, not to mention Mrs Wilt and those four girls,” he suggested. He, the Superintendent and the Constable went off to the kitchen to try and find someone to make them a cup of tea, only to find it empty. They had to settle for helping themselves to tap water instead.
Mrs Bale entered the study by the other door, carrying a mug of tea for Wilt, whom she had rightly guessed was in dire need of it, and a glass of whisky for Sir George. Lady Clarissa was left to help herself to some cognac.
Wilt drank his tea down quickly then left the study to find Eva and the quads and tell them to get ready to leave, with or without him. They were all sitting together on the edge of the moat, the first sniffer dog having now been joined by the second and both of them pawing occasionally at the quads, despite Eva’s best efforts to repel them.
“Mummy, is Daddy going to be arrested?” asked Emmeline.
“It’s not fair if he is. That stupid boy shot himself,” Samantha added.
Wilt stared at her.
It was at this juncture that it suddenly dawned on him that his terrible quads were definitely involved in this freebie holiday-turned-tragedy. God, he might have known it. He daren’t let Flint and the other policemen anywhere near them: he had to keep the girls out of this at all costs. He told them not to speak to anyone but to go and sit in the car and wait for him there, then handed over two £10 notes when they refused. The quads ran off, secretly glad to get away from all the sniffing and pawing. Wilt ignored Eva’s questions and ordered her to follow him. After looking at his face, she obeyed him for once and let him steer her back into the house.
Left alone in the study, Sir George and Lady Clarissa glared at each other over their drinks.
Sir George knew that he could not get out of this plight without his wife’s support, but at the same time couldn’t see how he might call on it. Eddie was dead, and he himself had been reckless about his gun cabinet precisely because he had secretly hoped the boy would kill himself or someone else and thus be off their hands.
Lady Clarissa sobbed into her drink, feeling guilty that she had treated Uncle Harold with less respect than she should have, and certain that her harbouring lustful thoughts about seducing Wilt must have brought about the death of her beloved son.
For the first occasion in a very long time, Sir George went over to Lady Clarissa and put his arms around her as if to comfort her. Drastic situations called for drastic measures so he said, “Darling, I’m really sorry about Eddie…I mean, Edward. I didn’t want him killed – I just wanted hi
m to have some fun with my guns because that was the only thing he seemed to enjoy. If it’s any consolation, you can bury him here. Even though, strictly speaking, he’s not one of the Gadsley family…” He broke off as Lady Clarissa started to wail even louder, “…he must of course be buried nearby. And, what’s more, I’ll pay for you to fly out to Kenya with your uncle’s ashes so that his last wishes are respected. And, while you’re there, why don’t you take a long holiday at the same time?”
Lady Clarissa was no fool. She turned her tear-stained face towards him and demanded, “And what do I have to do in return for this display of generosity?”
“Oh, nothing at all. Except to tell those policemen that Edward must have known where the keys to the gun cabinet were kept. And I swear to you on my mother’s grave that I never wished him to get himself killed. It was a tragic accident, poor boy.”
It was a most convincing act by Sir George. It was only much later, when Clarissa was on the plane, in first class of course, that she remembered Sir George’s mother was one of the few Gadsleys who was not buried in the family graveyard. In fact, Sir George had never known where his mother’s body had ended up after she was swept away by a freak wave on a family holiday on the Costa Brava. Or so his father had claimed.
∗
Inspector Flint and the Superintendent returned to the study rilled with new resolve: to get to the bottom of this death or two deaths or two murders or one murder and one death or God knows what.
They found a completely different atmosphere inside the room from the one that had pervaded it barely half an hour before. Sir George had clearly made things up with his wife and there was an air of reconciliation between the two of them as they exchanged contrite smiles with one another.
“Superintendent…Inspector,” began Lady Clarissa grandly, “I’m very sorry that you’ve had your time wasted investigating what was obviously a terrible accident. My poor silly boy,” and here she paused to sniff loudly, “was probably trying to help me by taking charge of Uncle’s body after my husband misguidedly refused to recognise him as family. I expect he thought he could bury him here himself, tripped as he tried to do so and was fatally wounded.”
“But why did he take the clothes off the body?” asked Flint.
“Only Edward will ever know that,” said Sir George as he slid his arm supportively around his wife’s shoulders. “But I expect he wanted to give his poor mother the medals to remember her uncle by.”
He stopped as Wilt came in, tugging Eva behind him. Having forgotten the rude behaviour of Lady Clarissa earlier on, she said how sorry she was about Edward’s tragic end, and added that it would probably be best for all of them if the Wilts left the Hall immediately. They could ‘settle up’ later, once the police inquiry was over.
“What do you mean by ‘settling up’?” queried Flint.
“The money that Lady Gadsley owes Henry for teaching Edward,” replied Eva. “In the circumstances we’ll forget about the other costs we’ve incurred along the way.”
“So the payment to Wilt was for tutoring your son and not for…” Flint stuttered.
“That’s what I said but you didn’t believe me,” retorted Wilt. “And now that you have the Colonel’s body, you can easily find out if he was done to death or in fact died from something self-inflicted. There is a certain taste for alcohol in the family. You know where to find me in the event of any suspicious circumstances.”
“Tell me, Flint, did you really believe I would have stayed anywhere near someone firing live ammunition? You know me too well to believe that. Just as you already knew it was highly unlikely I could ever have killed anyone. I am really disappointed in you for considering it a possibility.”
From having three suspects, Flint and the Superintendent found themselves left with none. But the Superintendent had one last ace to play. “Perhaps Edward’s death was a case of death by accidental means or misadventure, but I’m still going to charge you, Sir George, with contravening the law by leaving a gun cabinet unlocked, a dereliction of duty which has inadvertently led to the demise of a young lad.”
At that Lady Clarissa took up her handkerchief and wailed convincingly that Sir George always kept it locked but Edward must have found the keys and helped himself to the gun. The Superintendent’s shoulders slumped. He was going to have to leave this place without charging anyone, not even the dreadful Sir George, and his dream of slapping the smug pseudo-aristocrat in irons and earning a slap on the back from the Chief Constable dissolved.
The Wilts departed, leaving Flint feeling once again, defeated and deflated. He’d been so sure that this time Wilt would not get away, but he had. Yet there were still so many questions left unanswered…
Why was the log put into the coffin?
Why strip the Colonel naked just to remove his medals?
Why was Wilt always there when there were bodies about?
And why was Flint the unlucky sod whose path had crossed Wilt’s in the first place?
29
Edward was buried in the family graveyard with Sir George officiating at the ceremony. At the same time the Colonel was cremated, but not before an autopsy had found no trace of any poison or suspicious substance. His remains were put into an urn and delivered to Lady Clarissa. His medals had finally been found by a sniffer dog borrowed from the local police force by Sir George, in return for his resignation from the bench, and were stuck inside the urn so that the Colonel would be symbolically reunited with his old regiment.
Clarissa flew to Kenya the next day with the urn travelling in her excess baggage. She spent a three-month holiday in several five-star hotels. The man from the garage drove her to the airport and then, strangely, went missing for the next twelve weeks. When Lady Clarissa returned to Sandystones Hall she had a wonderful glow to her cheeks, but, as Mrs Bale was overheard to remark to the postman, no suntan. While she was away Sir George borrowed the sniffer dog once again and tracked down his beloved Philly’s caravan. He welcomed the cook back into the kitchen and then into his bed. He died suddenly two months later but it was said that he had a wide grin on his face when the doctor was called to pronounce him dead. Whether it was one suckling pig too many or some other strenuous activity that his heavily clogged-up arteries could not support, no one would ever know for sure. When his will was read, as expected everything went to his wife – with the exception of the computer, fax and telephone in the secret lavatory which he left to Mrs Bale together with the torch.
∗
The quads were reluctantly readmitted to their private school: Lady Clarissa had forked over the bonus plus the weekly fee she owed Wilt as she said it wasn’t actually down to him that Edward had failed to pass his university entrance exam. The Headmistress was very alarmed to see the girls arrive back armed with both mobile phones and iPods, but Wilt’s parting threat to them that he’d have all of their electronic equipment confiscated unless they stayed out of trouble for at least one term seemed to be working.
Back in Ipford, Wilt and Peter Braintree shared a pint at the Hangman’s Arms as they caught up with each other before the new term started. Peter had been looking forward to sharing his latest news with Wilt, and the latter more than fulfilled Peter’s expectations by being absolutely stupefied to hear that Fenland University was going to be closed down and a technical college re-opened in its place. Wilt sat back in his chair with his mouth half-open.
“Good God, I never thought I’d live to hear that,” he said. “I really didn’t. It’s incredible…and absolutely marvellous. The damned place should never have been opened in the first place, and wouldn’t have been if it hadn’t been for that lunatic Mayfield and his crony Vark.”
“You are forgetting that vile multi-billionaire crook Pinson who wanted to be in the House of Lords and donated a billion to the two main political parties to ensure he got in. That’s how Fenland was allowed to build such ghastly buildings and get away with it.”
“Talking of money, what will happen to
us? I’ve just sent the quads back to boarding school and it costs a damn’ fortune.”
Peter thought for a bit.
“I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what the authorities want us to do. Or what they intend to do, more to the point. They may want to bring in fresh lecturers. Or, then again, fresh subjects with old lecturers, like us.”
“Do you think they’ll bring back Liberal Studies? I enjoyed being head of that, and I’m sick to death of bloody computers,” said Wilt.
“Goodness only knows, though the Government is frightfully worried about the huge unemployment figures and lack of skilled workers so I’d be surprised if we weren’t still swamped with youngsters signing up for one heavily promoted scheme or other. You’d only need the Government to bring back something along the lines of the 1944 Act, which included a compulsory hour of Liberal Studies a week, and then you’d be back in your old position pronto. But you’re already Head of Computer Studies, so come what may I don’t expect you’ll be for the scrap heap.”
“Well, we’re still speaking English – just – so you’ll be all right as well. Perhaps we’ll all get better salaries in compensation for being downgraded from a so-called university.”
“Oh, quite. In devalued pounds. Big deal,” sighed Braintree. “I’ll get another round in.”
And at that, Wilt felt quite hopeful.
He’d deal with Eva and the quads when the next full-blown situation arose as he had no doubt it would. But he hoped to God it was a long way off.
EOF