Fethering 02 (2001) - Death on the Downs

by Simon Brett

  One thing she did wonder, though…Had Lennie Baylis been tempted to supplement his income so that he could one day afford a property in Weldisham? Was he another wistful local boy, like Harry Grant, who wanted to demonstrate his success by moving back into the village where he had grown up?

  “Thank you very much, Mrs Seddon. We appreciate your cooperation. Now there’s someone else we have to see nearby…What was the address, Sergeant?”

  A rustle of papers consulted. “Woodside Cottage.”

  “It’s right next door.”

  So Jude was going to get the same request to keep her mouth shut.

  FIFTY

  The news that Graham Forbes had had a second stroke came to Jude via Gillie Lutteridge. As soon as she heard, she told Carole and they agreed she should ring his wife.

  On the phone Irene Forbes sounded as poised and serene as ever. She gracefully accepted Carole’s commiserations and hopes for her husband’s speedy recovery. Graham was in a private hospital in Chichester. There hadn’t been much change in his condition since the second stroke, but the consultant was optimistic about his chances for at least a partial recovery.

  Irene was taken aback and seemed poised to say no when Carole asked if she could go to the hospital to visit. “I would like to go with my friend Jude.”

  “Jude…”

  “The blonde woman who—”

  “Yes. I know who you mean.” There was a silence, during which perhaps Irene Forbes was reliving her conversation with Jude. “Very well, you’d better visit him. But go on your own. Graham hasn’t met Jude. He can’t cope with anyone new at the moment. Go before three o’clock today. I will be going to the hospital at three. He will be busy then.”

  §

  It was not easy to hear what Graham Forbes said. The stroke had pulled his face sideways, like a poster misapplied to a wall. Saliva dripped from the useless edge of his mouth.

  But if Carole concentrated, she could understand him.

  His thin body looked too long for the hospital bed in which it was coiled. He’d been prepared for her arrival, however. Presumably Irene had rung through and told him the visitor was on her way. Even in his debilitated state, Graham Forbes managed a courteous greeting.

  Then he gasped out the words, “Have you come to ask me if I’m sorry? Do you want me to say I regret what I did?”

  “No,” said Carole.

  “Just as well. Because I’ll never say it. I can’t say what I don’t mean. I had twenty-eight years of misery married to Sheila, thirteen years of bliss living with Irene. I’m afraid, for me, those facts answer all the moral arguments.”

  “‘Thou shalt not kill’?”

  His thin shoulders managed a shrug. “That one too. Even in the days when I went along with the observances of organized religion, I never believed any of it. We have to make our own moral values, according to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. There’s no absolute right or wrong. And we’re only here once.” There was a cough that could have been a chuckle. “Not that I’m here for a lot longer.”

  “Can you just…would you mind…for my personal satisfaction…telling me if what I’ve worked out about what happened is actually right?”

  “Oh, Carole, you been playing amateur detectives, have you?”

  “Well…”

  “All right, you spell out how you think the master criminal wove his evil schemes, and I’ll tell you where you go wrong.”

  So Carole did as she was told. Occasionally, Graham Forbes nodded, though she couldn’t tell whether it was in appreciation of her cleverness or his own.

  When she got to the events of Thursday 15 October, the night of the Great Storm, he couldn’t help himself from taking up the narrative. “I remember how miserable I’d been that evening, stuck in the house with a woman I had hated through most of our marriage, knowing that—if I didn’t put my plan into action—in a few days I’d be back in KL and I’d see Irene again, and I wouldn’t be bringing what I’d promised her.”

  “What was that?”

  “Myself. Free. I’d met Irene two years before. We both knew what we felt for each other, but she was very…proper. Had been brought up to do the right thing. Strange, really, Chinese girl, raised as an Anglican in Malaysia. Anyway, she made her rules clear. I was married. Nothing could happen to our relationship while I remained married. She didn’t deny she loved me, but…Rather quaint and old-fashioned in these cynical days, isn’t it?”

  “Anyway, before I left KL for that leave, I promised Irene I’d talk to Sheila about getting a divorce. And I did. Nothing. She wouldn’t give an inch. Sheila wasn’t going to give up her status as the memsahib out East, or as the Lady Bountiful back in Sussex. Since passion had never played any part in her life, she had no sympathy for what I was going through. So…”

  He paused, exhausted by his confession.

  “But you’d planned it,” Carole prompted gently. “Ib have time for Pauline to get her passport, you must have planned it.”

  “Yes, I planned it, but I still didn’t know whether I could carry it out. That was why I was so depressed the evening before the storm…because I thought I didn’t have the guts…or I was too decent…too British…that I’d just accept my lot in life…and lose Irene.”

  “When had you worked out your plan?”

  “Soon after we came back for the beginning of that leave. Pauline was cleaning here one morning, and Sheila was being her usual hyper-critical self, bawling the woman out for not dusting on top of the picture rails or something, and they had a row. Suddenly, as the two of them stood toe to toe, shouting at each other, I realized how incredibly alike they looked. Once that seed was planted, the rest of the details fell into place.”

  “But you still didn’t think you’d summon up the nerve to carry it out?”

  “No. I have the storm to thank for the fact that I did.”

  “Oh?”

  “The Great Storm started late the Thursday evening and got worse in the small hours. I remember, you could hear the wind getting louder and louder. And then gates began banging, windows rattling, dustbins being blown over, branches torn off trees. Well, all this noise…” He smiled a lopsided smile. “It had the nerve to wake Sheila up. Never a good idea, as I’d discovered very early in our married life.

  “And, of course, being Sheila, when something she didn’t want to happen happened, she had to find someone to blame for it. And there, as ever, in the single bed beside hers, was me.

  “So she starts in at me. Why hadn’t I fixed the gates more securely? Any husband worth his salt would have had Warren Lodge’s loose windows replaced. Why was I so incompetent? It was all my fault.

  “And that was it. I didn’t mind being blamed for things that I might possibly have done or failed to do, but to be blamed for freaks in the weather…

  “In one movement I rolled out of bed, put my hands around her throat and squeezed harder than I’d ever squeezed anything in my entire life…”

  Carole let the silence ride, till he broke it with a little choke of laughter.

  “Funny. The killing wasn’t premeditated. But unavoidable. At the moment I did it, I couldn’t have done anything else to save my life.” He became aware of what he’d said. “Or indeed to save hers.”

  “I stayed still in the bedroom for a some time, while the storm roared and crashed around outside the house. And then, slowly, I realized it had all been meant. My plan had been set up. I’d only lacked the nerve for the vital moment of murder. The storm had given me that nerve.

  “Unlike Irene, I don’t have any religious faith. But I believe that moment was orchestrated for me by some kind of higher power.”

  “Be a strange kind of higher power that facilitates murder.”

  “Don’t you believe it, Carole. Read some history. Start counting up the number of wars that have been started for reasons of religion.”

  “Maybe. What happened then, Graham?”

  “I was very organized. I wrapped S
heila’s body in a sheet, carried it down to the barn. With the way the storm was still raging, I was in no danger of anyone seeing me.”

  “But weren’t you in danger of people going into the barn and finding the grave? Everyone in the village seems to use the place as a rubbish tip.”

  “They do now. But it’s only been happening the last five years or so. One person chucked in a fridge and…suddenly everyone was doing it. A nasty element has moved into the village recently, you know.” The was a slight edge of parody in his voice, sending up some of the crustier members of the Village Committee. He shrugged and turned his faded brown eyes on to Carole. “And do you know, very soon after Sheila had died, I forgot about it. I could put it from my mind. My life was so much better, so much more fulfilling, that her death was something that was clearly meant to happen.”

  “You weren’t worried?”

  “Not after the first few days, no.”

  “And you didn’t tell Irene what you’d done?”

  “No. That was bad of me perhaps. When I got back to KL after…” He seemed amused as he thought of the word. “After the murder…I didn’t contact her for a week or so. Then, when I did, I gave her the story about Sheila having gone off with another man. Irene was so delighted to hear I was finally unencumbered that she didn’t question me about the details.”

  “So your life together has been based on a lie?”

  “Don’t go all po-faced on me, Carole. It doesn’t suit you.”

  She was appropriately contrite, before continuing, “But when you heard I’d found the bones in South Welling Barn, didn’t that worry you?”

  “No. Never occurred to me they might be Sheila’s.”

  “Hadn’t Brian Helling already made an approach to blackmail you?”

  “No. I’d been out when he called. He spoke to Irene and she…kept it to herself.” He chuckled. “Proverbially inscrutable, the Chinese.”

  A lot of contradictory details explained themselves in Carole’s mind—why Graham had seemed so insouciant when she first saw him in the Hare and Hounds, why Irene had been weeping in St Michael and All Angels. But another detail still needed clarification. “So you didn’t know they were Sheila’s bones when you invited me to dinner?”

  “Good lord, no.”

  “Then why did you invite me?”

  “I told you. Someone had dropped out. You seemed intelligent, literate…you did the Times crossword…”

  So there had been nothing sinister about the invitation. Carole thought ruefully of the time she had wasted trying to work out the hidden agenda in Graham’s gesture.

  “And also,” he continued sheepishly, “we did need someone to pair up with Barry Stillwell.”

  The expression she turned on him didn’t need words.

  “Sorry about that, Carole. So there you have it. I may be guilty of many crimes, but inviting you to dinner was not among them…Unless of course you’re of the—quite legitimate—view that inviting anyone to meet Barry Stillwell constitutes a crime.”

  The old man’s angular body made an attempt at a shrug. “And that’s it. You know the rest. You worked it all out. Well done.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What put you on to the fact that it was Pauline who went with me to KL?”

  “You weren’t met at the airport by your favourite driver. You’d talked about Shiva, how he always drove you everywhere in Malaysia, and yet you organized a new driver at the airport, one who’d never seen your wife and who wouldn’t realize that Pauline was an impostor.”

  He nodded appreciation for her logic. Then a thought struck him. “But who on earth did you get that information from?”

  “Sebastian Trent.”

  Graham Forbes winced with distaste. “Him.”

  “Doesn’t he conform to your rule about all writers being enormous fun?”

  “God, no. Sebastian Trent is a complete arsehole.”

  There was a warm, mutual chuckle. Then Carole asked, “Have you told all this to the police?”

  “Oh yes. Told them everything. Made a clean breast of it. Confession eases the guilty soul, eh? And it brings other benefits too.”

  “Like what?”

  “After thirteen years of living a lie, poor old Sheila is now officially dead.” This time the cough was definitely a chuckle.

  “And, for those who demand retribution, I’m being punished. It’s no fun lying here like this, let me tell you. Had the first stroke when Lennie Baylis told me they’d be checking whether the bones belonged to Sheila, second when some other policeman came to charge me with her murder. I’d say that’s my punishment…and a very big disincentive ever to leave this place.

  “I want to die now,” he went on, but there was no unhappiness in his tone. “And when I do die, I dare say you’ll look back on my life as a crime story. I wouldn’t. Nor will Irene. So far as we’re concerned, my life has been a love story. But not any more…

  “While I could do the things I wanted to do, I wanted to live. While I could be with Irene, love Irene, while I could use my mind, I wanted life to go on for ever. Now…I don’t want to continue if I’m impaired.”

  His choice of the exact word Irene had used to Jude made Carole realize how the two lovers must have discussed this eventuality, and prepared their reactions to it. Maybe that was the explanation for Irene Forbes’s serenity in the face of tragedy.

  “Even if they let me smoke in here, I couldn’t keep the pipe in my mouth, so there’s one of my pleasures gone. Can’t even do the Times crossword either,” Graham Forbes went on wistfully. “What’s the point of being alive if you can’t do the Times crossword?”

  Carole noticed there was a copy of the paper at his bedside. The first section was folded back in the familiar way to frame the crossword. But the grid was blank.

  “Come on, Graham,” she said softly. “I’m sure you can fill in one answer…”

  He grunted. “Make it a very easy one.”

  Her eyes were nowhere near the paper as Carole invented her clue. “Pope’s versified magistrate. Six and seven.”

  “Good. Very good.” The side of his face that could smile smiled. “Poetic Justice,” said Graham Forbes.

  §

  In the entrance hall of the hospital, Carole found Jude chatting to Irene Forbes. The latter was dressed in white and very animated. Girlish, almost giggly.

  On the dot of three she was joined by a priest. Irene asked Carole and Jude if they’d be witnesses.

  And, as the four of them went through to the private rooms, Carole realized what Graham Forbes had meant about the benefits of his first wife being officially dead.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Brian Helling was charged with two murders—those of his mother and Lennie Baylis. He was also charged with the abduction of Carole Seddon. There was discussion in the Hare and Hounds as to whether his counsel would put up a defence of insanity, though the general view was that he was not mentally ill, just a bad lot. And, now the murder had happened, everyone was suddenly full of recollections of bad blood between Brian Helling and Lennie Baylis, the antagonism that went all the way back to their childhood.

  But the British justice system ensured that the trial lay a long way off yet.

  The Hare and Hounds got a new manager, and, so far as the residents of Weldisham were concerned, Will Maples slipped off the face of the earth. Whether he’d been sacked by Home Hostelries, whether he’d ever been charged with drugs-related offences, no one knew.

  Harry Grant got his own builders started on the barn conversion. The plans had been approved, but members of the Village Committee watched night and day for any evidence of extraneous features sprouting on the building. The first sign of a turret or solarium and they’d be on to the local authority straight away. In Weldisham the Neighbourhood Watch was generally more concerned about builders than burglars.

  Meanwhile Jenny Grant increased her dosage of Librium and waited with mounting terror for the day when they’d have to move. Harry
wouldn’t be aware of it, but she knew they’d never be accepted in Weldisham. She anticipated spending the rest of her life in an isolation as total as that of Pauline Helling.

  The old woman’s spaniel, incidentally, was never seen again in the village after Heron Cottage burnt down. The police initially put the dog into their kennels, but soon arranged to have it adopted by a nice family with three young children in the adjacent village of Blundon. Nobody in Weldisham knew of the spaniel’s fate. Blundon was three miles distant, and that was a long way away.

  Graham Forbes didn’t die immediately. He stayed in hospital, too ill to be moved to prison, too ill to appear in court, and his adoring second wife went to visit him every day. Sometimes he could do a few clues of the Times crossword; other days he looked at it as though it were in a foreign language.

  Like Graham’s, the health of Tamsin Lutteridge hovered between the positive and the negative. After Brian Helling’s arrest, when his threat to her life no longer posed a danger, the girl had been visited at Sandalls Manor by her mother and Jude. They had gone in the full expectation of bringing Tamsin home to Weldisham with them. But they found her unwilling. She really thought that Charles Hilton’s treatment was beginning to work.

  And some days it was. Then she felt optimistic and positive. Other days she was listless and ached all over. But, until a real cure for her debilitating illness was found, what Charles Hilton did seemed neither better nor worse than any other treatment on offer.

  He meanwhile continued to offer therapy, understanding and personal attention to his patients. The young, pretty female patients continued to get more personal attention than the others, and Anne Hilton continued to have suspicions but no proof.

  Within two months of Brian Helling’s arrest, Gillie and Miles Lutteridge had quietly separated and set divorce proceedings in motion. Gillie lived alone in Weldisham for a few months more and then their showhouse was sold to another Londoner who’d ‘always wanted to live in the country’.

  When he met this newcomer in the Hare and Hounds, Freddie Pointon put him at his ease, asserting what a wonderful place Weldisham was, and when he got out of the train at Barnham how really uplifted he felt by that first breath of country air.