The Skeleton in the Grass

by Robert Barnard

  “Oh God—he’s on that tack too, is he? Like that damned warmonger Churchill.”

  “Not quite, sir. Major Coffey sees our next enemy as Stalin and the Russians.”

  Dennis gave a wintry smile.

  “I might have guessed that. Well, Stalin is doing some fine things, but I don’t admire him with quite the fervour that Shaw and the Webbs display, so I can’t say I relish being some sort of stand-in or stalking-horse for him.”

  “I have taken some guns from Coffey’s cottage, but I have no great expectations from them. Tell me, sir, do you have any guns in this house?”

  “No,” said Dennis, without having to pause to think. “None at all. I don’t shoot game, and I got rid of the family guns. I didn’t want my children to grow up regarding the hunting and shooting of living creatures as a light matter.”

  “No war souvenirs?”

  Dennis flinched.

  “One keeps souvenirs of happy experiences. I do, anyway.”

  “I take your point, sir.”

  “I believe there was something you wanted to ask me, Inspector.”

  “In point of fact, no, sir. Not at this time. The person I wanted to talk to was Mrs. Hallam.”

  “Oh—ah—”

  Minchip looked at him acutely.

  “You seem to have an inkling of what I want to talk to her about, sir. You wouldn’t prefer that I talked it over with you?”

  “No. No, of course not. This isn’t the sort of household where the husband speaks for the wife. Naturally you must talk to Helen.”

  But Minchip thought he had seldom seen a man more miserable.

  • • •

  Chloe was in most ways an admirable child. She was quite happy to be sat in the morning-room at Cabbot Hall with drawing-book and crayons. Inevitably she was a favourite with the staff, and one of the maids promised to look in periodically to see that she was all right. Sarah was not too happy when the little girl announced to Winifred that they’d had a murder at Hallam—murder was a word she’d picked up from Mrs. Munday, and she said it rather as she might have announced a cocktail party or the village fête—but Winifred smiled vaguely and talked of something else.

  So Sarah and Winifred roamed the garden, talking begonias and wistaria, the horror of hydrangeas and the techniques of planning a wilderness. Most things in the garden were over, or near-over, but Winifred’s enthusiasm and knowledge recreated the effect Sarah remembered from the July visit. In between they talked and gossiped, not of the murder, but of the King’s Matter.

  “Mostyn says it’s about to break,” said Winifred. “But he’s been saying that for weeks. If it doesn’t break soon he’ll burst! I think it’s just going to cool off, because I can’t believe the King would be such a fool.”

  “What’s she like, this American woman?”

  “Very striking. Immensely smart, in an un-English way.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “Just once. At the opera, when he was still Prince of Wales. He looked so boyish, beside her. She actually straightened his tie in public! People in the Crush Bar were absolutely horrified, though looked at in another way it was rather sweet.”

  “What I actually meant was, what’s she like as a person?”

  “I only know what people say. Sophisticated. Clever—as our royal family as a whole is not. Dominating rather than domineering. Unwise, it is said. But that may just mean she doesn’t understand English ways, or think like an English person.”

  When they had finished their tour of the garden, and before going in for lunch, they stood by the corner of the house, in a patch of weak October sun, and Winifred asked: “How are the Hallams taking this?”

  “Very well. But their nerves are frazzled. And I’m not sure that Dennis and Helen realize the full . . . implications.”

  “You mean the village reaction? No. Dennis and Helen are charming people, and good ones, but they don’t always understand how ordinary people think.”

  “I only hope the village reaction will pass.”

  “It may. The old habit of loyalty to ‘The Hall’ has not entirely died. Then again, the fact that the Hallams are embarrassed about employing servants, and tend to have people in from the village part-time, means that quite a lot of people in Chowton are economically dependent on them. It’s an awful thing to say, but it keeps them respectful.”

  “What I really hope for,” said Sarah, “is an arrest.”

  “Oh, so do I. That would really clear things up. But Mostyn is not hopeful. He says that the longer it goes on the less likely it is to be cleared up.”

  “Yes, Oliver says the same . . . They’d hate that.”

  “Anybody would. It will hang around like a cloud . . . How long do you plan to stay at Hallam?”

  “As long as they’ll have me, I suppose. They’ve mentioned one year or two, possibly longer.”

  “But you don’t plan to make a career of governessing?”

  “Good heavens, no. There’s less and less call every year for such a person. This is just while I think what to do.”

  “You may find that more than a year is too long. These days a woman has to decide what she wants to do and drive straight for it. My generation got the vote and then sat back and thought everything was settled. It wasn’t. A woman’s got to be ruthless if she’s going to get what she wants.”

  “You don’t sound like a Conservative MP’s wife,” said Sarah, laughing.

  “I am that, but I’m not a Conservative wife. Oh—I am very conventional in most ways. I would have settled for the wife and mother role.” Winifred looked at the ground. “But if the ‘mother’ business doesn’t come off, the most interesting part is lacking . . . There’s a void, a gaping hole. That’s why I say to you, have a goal and go for it.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. But of course the last thing I’d think of doing is leave the Hallams at this moment.”

  “Oh, my dear, the last thing I’m suggesting is that sort of treachery,” said Winifred warmly. “But you mustn’t go from being dependent on your own family to being dependent on another. You mustn’t think because they are so charming and warm that they offer you a future. The reason I say this is because Mostyn and I have a good friend at Kew.”

  “At Kew Gardens?” said Sarah, her interest quickening.

  “Yes. He’s more or less in charge. They take trainees there, who as part of the training do various courses—Botany naturally, and garden planning—at London University and other places. It provides a very good grounding, the best there is.”

  “It sounds very interesting,” said Sarah. “In fact it sounds ideal, if that’s what I decide to go in for—It’s all so difficult at the moment, so difficult to think.”

  “It must be.”

  “I suppose the Inspector will be there by now.”

  “Yes . . .” Winifred hesitated, and looked embarrassed. “I’m afraid his visit may be partly due to Mostyn.”

  “To Mos—to your husband?”

  “Yes. The Inspector was up here questioning us yesterday. Luckily Mostyn was down on constituency business. He told the Inspector that he saw Helen walking in the kitchen garden at Beecham with Jeremy Cousins, and I’m afraid it turned out that Helen hadn’t told the Inspector that.”

  “Jeremy Cousins? Isn’t he the handsome neighbour? Why shouldn’t she have told the Inspector that?”

  “They had a brief fling, long ago. Oh, don’t look so shocked, my dear. It’s long ago and long over. But they remain sentimental friends. I think they have an idea that nobody knows about it, though everybody does. It will be much better if she gets it off her chest to the Inspector. It will strengthen her alibi, for a start.”

  “Helen doesn’t need an alibi,” said Sarah stoutly. “The idea of her struggling with a village boy on her own lawn and then shooting him is quite ludicrous.”

  Winifred cast an anxious, longing look at the window of the morning-room.

  “We’d better go in and see how Chloe is,” sh
e said.

  • • •

  Inspector Minchip, sitting opposite Helen in her little sitting-room at Hallam, also thought it was ludicrous to imagine her struggling with Chris Keene and killing him. He thought as well that she looked quite breathtakingly beautiful. The auburn hair, the delicate, almost translucent skin, the filmy, loose morning dress—all these took Helen into a realm of womanliness that Minchip had previously only glimpsed, or read about. The idea of such a delicate creature taking on a village lout was absurd.

  It was also, apparently, impossible, which from a police point of view was much more satisfactory. She had been with Jeremy Cousins throughout the first part of the evening. She was, however, finding talking about it very difficult, and from time to time she screwed up her mouth in a grimace of distaste. Minchip felt like a heavy-booted intruder.

  “Yes, we were together till well after nine,” said Helen, her voice low. “We are . . . very old friends.”

  “Maybe,” ventured Minchip, trying on delicacy as if it were a new suit, “since I have to understand why you didn’t tell me of this before, you could be a little more specific about your relationship? How close it was . . .”

  “All the words seem wrong,” said Helen, as if to herself. “ ‘We were lovers,’ ‘we had an affair’—all of them seem too brutal, too definite. For a very brief period we were in love.”

  “When was this?”

  “At the beginning of the war. Nineteen-fifteen. I’d just had Oliver, but Dennis was away with the Expeditionary Force in Egypt. Dennis I had known all my life. We are cousins. Jeremy was . . . something new. He had been wounded at the first battle of Ypres, and was home recuperating.”

  Minchip said nothing, feeling that anything he could think of would be wrong. He waited.

  “He was unmarried, and I was lonely. And frightened, I think. It was just a . . . a brief interlude of tenderness. There was nobody at Hallam except me and Oliver, and Dennis’s mother. His brother Edward was in France, fighting in the trenches. It was a short episode—a matter of two or three months. A rather damp and cold affair, mostly in the open. But it was his only chance of happiness before he went back to the front. I know he thought a lot about it when he was back in France, but by then it was over. For a time he wrote, but he knew and I knew it was ended. I’d heard that Dennis was wounded and was returning home by sea. I’d never stopped loving Dennis. I’m afraid it’s not true that you can’t love two people at the same time.”

  “And the . . . affair has not been renewed?”

  “No.” Helen was very definite. “When we meet we like to get together . . . to talk. Mostly about old times, really, as if we were old people. Dennis knows about it, and accepts that we have, still, a sort of bond. So does Jeremy’s wife. It’s probably sentimental and silly, but we always do it, whenever we find ourselves thrown together. That was what we were doing on Saturday night.”

  “I see. Well, I don’t think I need cause you further pain by going into it any deeper. You understand,” Minchip concluded, getting up, “that I shall have to check this with Mr. Cousins?”

  “Yes,” said Helen bitterly. “In this horrid affair everything decent and beautiful gets trampled over.” She looked up and saw a pained expression on the Inspector’s prosaic but well-meaning face. She dabbed her eyes and smiled at him. “Don’t think I blame you because you have to do the trampling.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Inspector Minchip used the Chowton Police bicycle to get to Beecham Park. The bus would have put him down just outside the park gates, but the bus meant queueing in the main street, and enduring the curiosity of the villagers, barely repressed. And of course he could say nothing. He was sorry for the Hallams, was convinced that the villagers’ line of argument that blamed them was foolish or malicious, but there was no way he could give them a clean bill of health. He simply did not know. So he took the bicycle, and his none-too-expert departure from the village riding it was watched by many curious and frustrated eyes.

  Minchip thought Beecham Park very inferior to Hallam, which indeed it was. Hardly more than a ramshackle large house—and he suspected that the ramshackleness had been acquired during the present Lord Wadham’s stewardship. The gardener, leaning on his spade, seemed more a token presence than a genuine fighter against the encroaching wilderness. There seemed neither pleasure nor profit to be gained from grounds such as these, though he noted that the grass around the house itself had recently been mown. Croquet on the lawn, he said to himself. In the dark, he added, and shook his head.

  He was met at the door not by any maid or butler, but by a figure who, from its shabbiness, he recognized as Lord Wadham.

  “Saw you coming,” Waddy said genially.

  Behind him as he led the way in he saw the figure of Josabeth, Lady Wadham, in grey flannel skirt and ankle socks. Both of them seemed innocently excited by his visit. There was an air of bumbling anticipation about both of them, as if he were some kind of school treat. In the background he sensed rather than saw the shape of two girls. The daughters, presumably. No doubt he was making their day too.

  “You’re damned lucky to find me in,” said Waddy. Minchip had in fact saved his visit for a Friday, on the assumption that the Lords, who were apparently clearing up old business before the new session began, would have no matters of moment on that day, but he merely nodded. “Been to London,” Waddy continued, with an air of consequence. “Stayed at my club all week, and attended the debates.” He seemed to be waiting for Minchip to say something, and when he didn’t he added: “You may have seen my name in the Daily Mail.”

  Minchip, who had used the popular newspapers to shield him from the curiosity of the regulars at the Silent Swan in Chowton, where he was staying, was forced to assent.

  “I did, yes. ‘Self-control rather than birth control,’ wasn’t that it? Striking phrase.”

  Waddy puffed out his tummy.

  “He’s a good man, that parliamentary reporter on the Mail,” said Josabeth, apparently equally pleased at the publicity. “Waddy tips him the wink when he’s going to say anything good.”

  “Two column inches,” said Waddy. “As they say in the trade.”

  “Now, this business of the death at Hallam,” said Minchip, feeling the Waddy self-congratulation had gone on long enough, and trying to inject a more businesslike note into the conversation. “There’s one or two questions I’d like to ask.”

  “Do what we can to help,” they both said, with puppyish eagerness.

  “It’s partly a question of movements. Major Coffey’s for example—”

  “Who’s that? Oh, that friend of Simon’s.” Waddy shook his head. “Didn’t see him all evening, apart from being introduced. Wasn’t at my reading. Damned unsociable type, if you ask me. Military man. They’re like that. The iron enters their soul.”

  Minchip sighed.

  “So you didn’t see him all evening. What about Helen Hallam?”

  “What does she say she was doing?”

  “I’d rather ask the questions, Lord Wadham.”

  “Because whatever she says she was doing, I’ll back her up. Straight as a die, Helen. Incapable of untruth.”

  “You saw her during the evening?”

  “Don’t remember. But I’ll back her up.”

  This was becoming ridiculous. Could Waddy be as infantile as he appeared? Minchip tried again.

  “And Oliver Hallam?”

  “I had a conversation with Oliver,” said Josabeth triumphantly. “Such a nice lad.”

  “When was that?”

  “I don’t remember when it was, but we were standing right here!” Josabeth pointed delightedly to the floor, as if that were the vital and corroborative fact.

  “The time is more important than the place,” murmured Minchip.

  “Well, as I say I don’t remember the time, but I do know we were talking about crosswords.”

  “Crosswords?”

  “I was telling him how much better the Telegraph cro
ssword is than The Times, and that we took the Telegraph for that reason, because it’s silly to take a paper with a crossword you can’t do.”

  “Don’t you think the Hallams might manage The Times one?” asked Waddy. “They’re awfully brainy.”

  Minchip decided to seek refuge from an increasingly surreal situation.

  “I’d like to talk to your son.”

  “My son? Simon?”

  “He’s not away at school?”

  “School?” said Waddy. “Good Lord, no. Left school last June. Says he wants to go into the family firm. We’re keeping him here for a year or two. Ought to have a bit of fun first, eh? Mustn’t grow up too soon.” Minchip wondered what fun there was at Beecham. Apple-pie beds and Snap after tea. “Haven’t the foggiest where Simon is,” continued Lord Wadham.

  “He’s in his room.”

  The information came from one of the dark shadows in the background. One of the girls. Minchip hadn’t been introduced, so he didn’t know which. Even if he had been, he doubted if he could have told them apart. He sensed in their tone a desire to land their brother in something nasty. Well, if what he had heard about Simon Killingbeck was right, he would hardly be popular anywhere.

  “Then if someone will take me up to him . . .”

  “I’ll show you up,” said Waddy. “But it’s all a lot of nonsense, this, you know. Boy shot himelf.”

  “In that case, sir, we’d very much like to know what happened to the gun.”

  “Shot himself down by the river. Gun fell in, the boy staggered up the bank to die. Have you dragged the river?”

  “No, Lord Wadham.”

  “There you are then. Anyway, that’s what Josabeth thinks, and she’s the brains of the family.”

  Minchip shuddered. They were about to start up the stairs when he thought to ask: “Lord Wadham, do you have any guns at Beecham?”

  “Guns? One or two. Don’t touch the things myself. Might go off. But my father used to shoot deer down in the West Country now and then, and my grandfather used to shoot poachers. Think the boy stole the gun from here?”

  “Could be,” said Minchip, who thought nothing of the sort. “May I see them?”