Fethering 02 (2001) - Death on the Downs

by Simon Brett

  “Do you?” Some of the cockiness Brian Helling had shown in the pub returned to his manner. “I won’t have to worry about that.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m a writer. Writers don’t retire.”

  “Ah.” Even those writers who never make any money from their writing?

  He moved towards the Land Rover. “Right. I must get back.”

  “Mr Helling…”

  He stopped and looked at her. There was still malevolence in his eyes.

  “I just wanted to ask…given the fact that something like the discovery of these bones is, as you said, going to start a lot of rumours in a small place like Weldisham…”

  He didn’t help her. He just waited.

  “Which of the rumours would you go along with?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Who do you think the bones might have belonged to?”

  He was about to give a brusque answer, but stopped himself. As he smiled, Carole noticed that he had almost no upper lip, just a line above his teeth where the flesh stopped. “I think, to answer that,” he began slowly, “you’d have to ask yourself who’d gone missing from Weldisham in the past twenty years…”

  “Yes,” Carole prompted. That was the conclusion she’d reached herself.

  Brian Helling let out a little grunt of a laugh. “Wouldn’t you say Lennie Baylis was taking rather a personal interest in this case?”

  “In what way?”

  “He seems to be around the village more than he needs to be.”

  “But he used to live here, didn’t he? Maybe that’s the reason.”

  “Yes, but Lennie’s always been a snooper. I was at school with him, I know. Don’t you think it’s odd, though, the way he keeps checking up on everyone here in Weldi-sham, seeing if they’re all right, finding out what they’re thinking?”

  It was true. Carole had put his solicitude for her down to compassionate professionalism, but what Brian Helling was hinting at also fitted the facts.

  “Well, you probably don’t know,” he went on, “but more than twenty years ago, his mother walked out.”

  “He did tell me that, yes.”

  “Or was supposed to have walked out,” said Brian Helling slyly. “It was a very unhappy marriage. Lennie’s father beat her up…That wasn’t the kind of thing you could keep quiet in a place like Weldisham. Everyone knows everyone’s business.”

  “And you’re suggesting Lennie Baylis’s father may have killed his wife?”

  He shrugged. “There was talk at the time. I remember my mother talking about it. She’s always known everything that went on in Weldisham.”

  “But she wasn’t living here when Mrs Baylis disappeared.”

  “Not living here, but working here. Anyway, some of the rumours about Lennie’s dad doing away with his old woman have resurfaced in the last couple of weeks…Might be worth investigating.”

  “Yes.”

  Abruptly Brian Helling stepped up into the cab of his Land Rover. He slammed the door and, as he peered fixedly at Carole, underwent another of his sudden mood changes. “But not investigating by you,” he hissed. “Weldi-sham is a tightly knit community. It doesn’t like outsiders snooping into its affairs.”

  He started the engine, slammed the Land Rover into reverse and set off at breakneck speed, skidding over the track back to Weldisham.

  Leaving Carole in no doubt that she had been both warned off and threatened.

  IWENTY-EIGHT

  “But I’m sure I’m right,” Carole crowed.

  “Hey, watch how you’re driving!”

  “Sorry, Jude.”

  Carole slowed the Renault down. The Weldisham Lane was too narrow for the speed she’d been doing. She must slow herself down too. Relief after her unpleasant encounter with Brian Helling was compounding the excitement with which her mind was racing to make her heady and irresponsible. Stop it, she told herself. You are Carole Seddon. Boring, reliable old Carole Seddon. Carole Seddon doesn’t behave like this.

  With the Renault progressing as if to a funeral, she laid out her thinking with all the sobriety of a Home Office departmental strategy presentation. “Jude, the clincher is that Lennie—Detective Sergeant Baylis—was going to see Graham Forbes. That must mean he’s suspicious about what happened to Graham’s first wife.”

  “It could mean a lot of other things. Detective Sergeant Baylis has been to see you a couple of times, and that doesn’t mean he’s suspecting you of murder, does it?”

  “No, all right,” said Carole testily.

  Jude giggled.

  “What’s the joke?”

  “I’m sorry. This is just such an unfamiliar role for me—playing devil’s advocate.”

  “It’s becoming more familiar by the minute. You were doing exactly the same thing last night.”

  “Maybe it’s the part I’ll play for the rest of my life. Is that my future—the eternal wet blanket?”

  “I can’t see it.” Carole was not going to be deflected. “Look, just let me spell out my scenario, and don’t stop me till I’ve finished. Then pick holes in it, by all means…Though,” she said with an uncharacteristic moment of cockiness, “I don’t think you’ll find any.”

  “Well, well, there’s confidence for you. OK, spell away.”

  “All right. I’ll take the starting point I did last night. In 1987, on the night of the Great Storm, Graham Forbes, driven mad by the aridity of his marriage and the fact that he’s fallen in love with Irene out in Kuala Lumpur, kills his wife, Sheila.”

  Jude opened her mouth to make some comment, but managed to stop herself.

  “He buries her body in the old barn. He puts it there, because the barn’s right behind his house and nobody can see him from the rest of the village. Then, on the Monday morning he catches his flight to Kuala Lumpur and is reunited with his beloved Irene. When he next returns to England, he’s alone and he has this hard-luck story about Sheila having gone off with another man. Three years is reckoned to be a decent interval, so when he retires in 1990, he brings back his new bride and they settle down to live permanently in Weldisham.”

  Jude could restrain herself no longer. “That’s virtually exactly what you told me last night.”

  “No. We have a very important new element—the fact that the body was buried in the barn.”

  “Then why was it moved from the barn?”

  Carole grinned triumphantly. “I was just coming to that. Graham Forbes’s secret is safe so long as the barn remains a dilapidated wreck. Various people, the latest of whom is Harry Grant, have plans to convert it into a dwelling. But each time the issue arises, the Village Committee makes such a fuss with local objections that planning permission is refused. And who’s Chairman of the Village Cpmmittee? Graham Forbes. So he sees to it that every time his secret is threatened, he coordinates the opposition. And he always succeeds. Until this time.

  “This time, a few different members on the Planning Committee and a new government policy about building more homes in Sussex mean that finally Harry Grant gets the go-ahead he’s been waiting for all this time.

  “But, of course, that has very serious implications for Graham Forbes. A house won’t have an earth floor. A house will have proper foundations dug. And once those are dug, his thirteen-year-old skeleton in the cupboard—or rather under the barn—is going to be discovered.

  “So, as soon as Graham Forbes gets the tip-off that the Planning Committee decision has gone against him, he has to move his wife’s remains.” Carole was trying to sound all sober and objective, but she couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice as she went on, “However, the night he chooses to perform the grisly task of exhumation happens to be the night that Tamsin Lutteridge, knowing her father’s away on business, has come to visit her mother.”

  Jude let out a little gasp as the excitement got to her too. She hadn’t previously made the connection that Carole continued, with mounting triumph, to spell out.

  “So now we fit
in what you found out from Gillie Lutteridge. That night Tamsin can’t sleep. She’s dying for a cigarette. She goes out into the garden. But it’s cold. So, as she has often done in the past, she goes into the old barn.

  “Inside she sees Graham Forbes and she sees what he’s doing. There is a confrontation. He threatens to kill her if she ever breathes a word of what she’s seen. Tamsin is so terrified that she hides herself back in Sandalls Manor, genuinely afraid that she’ll be killed if she ever conies out.”

  Carole Seddon stopped and looked across at the passenger seat. Jude was nodding her head slowly, as she tested the junctions of the logical progression her friend had just described. Finally, she said, “No, Carole, that’s good. It’s very good.”

  “Thank you.” Carole turned the Renault sedately out on to the main road towards Fethering. “And you’d say that even with your devil’s advocate hat on, would you?”

  Wryly, Jude shook her head. “Ooh no. The devil’s advocate in me would want various points proved.”

  “Oh. What points?”

  “Let’s just start with three obvious ones. The devil’s advocate in me would want proof (a) that Graham Forbes had met and fallen in love with Irene before he returned to England for the leave that ended on the weekend of the Great Storm, (b) that he was definitely on his own when he travelled back to Kuala Lumpur the following Monday, and (c), coming up to date, that he knew the likely outcome of the Planning Committee’s meeting two weeks before it happened.”

  There was a silence. Then, bitterly, Carole said, “God, you’re picky.”

  §

  “Darling, how too, too wonderful to hear from you!”

  It was clear from Trevor Malcolm’s opening words that he’d overcome any reticence he might once have suffered from about his sexual orientation. It was also clear that the lunch he’d returned from had been a good one.

  “I’m sorry it’s been such a long time.”

  “Carole, my dear, what is thirty years between friends? Presumably you want something?”

  “Well…”

  “Oh, come on, dearie. I know I made a huge impression on you at Durham and you’ve been holding a candle for me all these years…no doubt in the snug security of your spinster bed…”

  “I did actually get married, Trevor.”

  “Did you? Little devil. Are you still?”

  “No.”

  “Thought not. That’s the thing about me. I spoil people for other men. No one really matches up, you know.”

  “Mm. You didn’t get married, did you?”

  He giggled a tinkling giggle. “No, I don’t think that would have been…um…appropriate. Why make one woman unhappy when you can make lots and lots of men happy?”

  “Right.”

  “So come on, what is it you want from me…now we seem to have ruled out the possibility that it’s my body?”

  “OK. I need some information about the movements of someone who used to work for the British Council.”

  “Ooh, how very sinister. What is this, Carole—are you turning detective?”

  She laughed. The suggestion was too silly.

  “Or is it something to do with your work? Yes, you’re at the Home Office, aren’t you?”

  “Was. I’m retired.”

  “Oh, my God! I don’t believe it. Anno Domini’s so cruel, isn’t she? The policemen’re looking so young these days, I feel like I’m positively cradle-snatching. And you only have to scan the obituaries to see that people are dying at absurdly young ages. No, it’s dreadful, Carole, I’m the only person of my age I know who’s kept his looks.”

  “Ah.”

  “Mind you, the picture in the attic is positively wizened. OK, so tell me what you want to find out and I’ll see if I can help you.”

  Carole told him.

  When she’d finished, he said, “Ooh, how intriguing. I’m far too polite to ask you why you want to know. I’ll just let my little mind buzz with conjecture.”

  “Do you think you’ll be able to help me?”

  “Might.”

  “Or is all that kind of information high security?”

  “Of course it is, Carole dear.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “But don’t you worry about that. I’ll find it. I always think discretion’s such an overrated virtue…don’t you?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Trevor Malcolm rang back within the hour. It was nearly six o’clock. “You’re lucky to get me still in the office this late on a Friday.”

  “I do appreciate it, Trevor.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. Nothing I like more than a little intrigue. And I’m afraid this evening I haven’t got a whole raft of young Adonises fighting over my body.” For a moment, his facade slipped and he sounded a little wistful. “In fact, young Adonises are a bit thin on the ground these days. I keep myself in shape, but do they notice?”

  Carole cut through the potential introspection. “Did you have any luck?”

  “Not with the young Adonises, no.”

  “I meant—”

  “I know exactly what you meant, dear. And I wouldn’t have rung you back if I hadn’t got anything to tell you. The assignment wasn’t easy, let me tell you—”

  “I do appreciate your making the effort, Trevor. It’s very generous of you.”

  “Yes, I am generous. Not recognized as much as it should be, perhaps, but it gives me a warm inward glow. And you don’t get many of those to the pound these days. Still, you want to know what I found out, don’t you?”

  “Would be nice.”

  “Mm. Well, I had to be a bit lateral. Most of the relevant information would be in personnel files and the Council tends to be a bit anal with those, very unwilling to let all and sundry peer through them…which I suppose you can understand. There are a few little details of my time in Morocco that I wouldn’t necessarily want everyone to know about. By no means. That business with the two waiters and the camel…hmm…So, as I say, I had to think laterally…I went to the Literature Department instead.”

  “How would that help?”

  “A lot of the work someone like Graham Forbes would have been doing out in Malaysia would be hosting tours by British writers, you see. So I thought, if there was anyone out there over the time you’ve asked about…Well, Bob would be your male aunt, wouldn’t she?”

  “Yes,” said Carole, a little bewildered. “Very clever.”

  “Hm…Yes, I always have been clever…in every area except my private life…Still, I don’t want to whinge. That would just be too painful. No, it was wonderful. I hit pay-dirt straight away. There was a writer out on a tour in Malaysia at exactly the right time.”

  “Brilliant. Do you have any means of contacting him?”

  “All on his file. Address, telephone, fax…It’s even been updated with an e-mail address.”

  “Trevor, you’re a genius.”

  “Yes, I am, aren’t I? Not that you’d know it from the way the riff-raff round here treat me…Some of us were born, you know, just not to be appreciated…”

  §

  Carole had heard a blip on her Call Waiting towards the end of her conversation with Trevor Malcolm, but she hadn’t bothered to respond to it. At the end of her call, she checked 1471.

  At first she didn’t know the number. Then she recognized it as Barry Stillwell’s. It didn’t seem like less than twenty-four hours since she’d had her date with him; could have been years before.

  What on earth did Barry want? She didn’t bother to ring him back.

  §

  Sebastian Trent was very happy to talk to them. Carole had rung on the Friday evening and he’d said in his laid-back, slightly aristocratic voice that he always did ‘interviews and stuff in the afternoon. “I write in the mornings. Can only do three hours a day. If I do more, my writing just gets glib.”

  He suggested three o’clock on the Monday. Carole tried to spell out to him what she wanted to ask about, but he waved the detail away with
, “I’m sure we can sort all that out when you come. House is dead easy to find. You are familiar with Hampstead, I assume?”

  She didn’t really know why she wanted Jude to come along with her for this part of the investigation. Maybe it was just that she felt uncertain of her own people skills and knew that everyone responded to Jude’s easy manner. She was also keen to bring their enquiries together, so that they didn’t get into another ‘devil’s advocate’ situation. If they both got information at the same time, they might find making sense of it easier.

  Jude agreed readily—indeed enthusiastically. “Yes,” she said, “I haven’t had to go to London for a while. The timing’s right.”

  That was intriguing. Why did Jude have to go up to London? But, as ever, Carole didn’t have time to put the supplementary questions.

  “But can we meet there—at Sebastian Trent’s house?”

  “Yes, if you like.”

  Carole was slightly put out. She’d had in mind a girls’ jolly, travelling up on the train from Fethering together and then perhaps a nice lunch somewhere. She didn’t, however, let her disappointment show.

  Jude went on, “I think this was meant to happen.”

  “What was meant to happen?”

  “You suggesting I should go up to London. I’m clearly meant to go up there this weekend. It’s a synchronicity thing. There’s someone I ought to see.”

  But, once again, before the compulsion to see this person—or indeed his or her identity—could be explored, the conversation had moved on.

  §

  On the Sunday morning, Carole took Gulliver for a long walk on Fethering Beach. He was completely recovered now from his injury and extravagantly grateful to her for the extended excursion.

  Automatically, when she got back to High lor, Carole went to the phone and checked 1471. Barry Stillwell had rung again. Again she didn’t call him back.

  THIRTY

  “I just feel story-telling is simplistic. There’s so much one can do with language beyond merely passing on narratives. Rather than opening up the potentialities locked in language, plotting can limit them.”