A Dirty Death

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘I won’t get hurt,’ he assured her. ‘I’m bomb-proof, you know that.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  By morning Lilah’s dream was still not entirely forgotten, leaving a jangled sense of something disturbed, something irrevocably wrong. She was irritable with everyone, even the postman when he drove into the yard just as she was walking back to the house and handed a bundle of letters to her.

  ‘Save my legs, eh,’ he said brightly. She just grunted at him, not even bothering to flick through the envelopes to see if there was anything for her. What would be the point?

  They were all for Miranda, who opened them absently; letters from strangers had become a daily occurrence following her husband’s demise. Guy had been a man of many parts, member of a number of societies, several of which seemed to have learnt by some kind of telepathy that he was dead. One was in a pale green envelope, addressed in plain handwriting, a second-class stamp in the corner. Having opened it, Miranda had to read it three times before the significance was fully clear to her.

  It was handwritten on both sides of lined A4 paper in a spiky style, with a rather spiky black nib.

  Dear Mrs Beardon,

  I presume you know that I exist. I have just heard from a mutual acquaintance that Guy is dead. Since I was his first wife, I think I ought to have been informed directly by you. As it is, I believe I am due something in his will. I am told that he lived well with you on a big farm and was well regarded in the village. He must have changed a lot in twenty-five years. When I knew him nobody had much respect for him. But that’s all water under the bridge now I suppose. I don’t want to upset you or anything like that, and I don’t want to seem grasping. It’s only that you might think of me if there’s a shareout. I’ve been pretty hard up since he left me for no good reason, and now he’s dead I think I should be remembered.

  Perhaps you’ll think better of me if I tell you something about my present situation. My eldest son Leo lives in France with his wife Yvonne and four children. He was always a bright boy – his father’s pride and joy at one time. He’s in his thirties now, and has a lot of trouble with asthma. It interferes with his work, and sad to say he hasn’t much in the way of prosperity. He lives more like a gypsy than a respectable person.

  Terry, the youngest, is over thirty, too, but you’d never think it. You might not know that I was ill after Guy left, and my aunt in County Monaghan took Terry on. He lived with her through most of his childhood, which is a great sadness to me now. But he came back to me when he was grown up, and we’re good friends again by this time. He loves the land and animals, and is the living image of his father. He did well enough at school, considering, and has a sales job, covering the whole South of England.

  So you see, both the boys, as well as myself, would much appreciate any small share of Guy’s legacy. I never married again, and now I’m getting on everything seems to be falling apart. It’s a bad world, these days, and I always think it was Guy who set me on the wrong path. Marrying too young, and him never happy with anything. He was never a very good teacher, in spite of all his cleverness and writing and everything. I have wondered so often how he was in later life. That’s really why I’m writing to you, I think. Never mind money, I’d be thrilled if we could meet one day and talk about it all.

  You can write to me at the address above.

  With best regards,

  Barbara Beardon (Mrs)

  The address was in Nottinghamshire and meant nothing to Miranda. Her first reaction was curiosity about the ‘mutual acquaintance’ who had passed on the news of Guy’s death. Curiosity – and a sharp pang of fear. There had been people spying on her. From one moment to the next her whole view of the village changed. This Barbara sounded seductively interesting. What had she done with her life? She had had twenty-five years as a single woman, with very little childcare responsibility, by the sound of it.

  The references to money and legacies was worrying. Did this woman indeed have ‘rights’ of some kind? Had Miranda been wrong in not seeking her out and keeping everything open and legal?

  ‘Lilah!’ she called, glimpsing her daughter going into the barn, ‘Lilah, come here and have a look at this.’

  Lilah looked up, irritation plain on her face. ‘What do you want?’ she shouted. ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘This letter. You should read it.’

  Lilah made a show of clumping crossly across the yard, where Miranda waited at the kitchen door. She snatched the letter, and glanced impatiently at it. Miranda watched her face register incomprehension, dismissal, then a sudden profound interest. The girl read it right through twice. ‘Oh!’ she said.

  Excitement rippled through her. Despite knowing and wondering about her father’s first family, she had never expected them to take the first step in making contact. It had always been as if they lived in Australia; or even that they were dead. They had never mattered, never seemed real. To receive a letter from them was very strange indeed, as if a famous personality had called round uninvited for a cup of tea. It was something unreal that you could never have predicted. She looked up at her mother warily.

  ‘She sounds a bit peculiar,’ she remarked.

  ‘She didn’t have much of an education, apparently. She married Guy when she was only nineteen. He always said that was why it went wrong.’

  ‘How old is she now?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Much older than me. Mid-fifties, I think. Not much younger than Guy. What a terrible cheek she’s got, writing like that.’

  ‘“Mutual acquaintance”. Who’s that, then?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. That’s the bit I didn’t like. Somebody’s been spying on us and sending news of us to this … Barbara. It makes my skin crawl.’

  ‘Scary,’ agreed Lilah. ‘She wants money, presumably. Has she got any claim, do you think?’

  ‘I bloody well hope not. They were divorced ages ago. I saw the papers – I had that much sense. I made Guy prove it wasn’t bigamy before I married him. He cut off all contact. We assumed she’d married again.’

  ‘This is so weird, Mum. Ghosts from the past.’

  ‘It’s always the same when someone dies. All their secrets come crawling out. It was like this with my Grandad. He had another woman, that nobody knew about. She turned up at his funeral, bold as you like. I shall never forget my poor Gran’s face. And my mum. I had to take her outside, before she could scratch the woman’s eyes out.’

  ‘How did anyone know who she was? She might have just been a friend?’ Lilah had never heard this story before. She couldn’t imagine her mother’s frail parent wanting to savage anyone.

  ‘It was obvious. She was crying. And she was wearing one of his old jumpers. Totally wrong for a funeral, but you could see she wanted it for comfort. Something of his to hold against her skin. I felt sorry for her. She was a nice woman, really. Surprisingly young. Grandad was nearly eighty when he died, and she was still in her forties.’ Miranda was focusing on the memory, forgetting her daughter and the letter.

  Lilah felt ensnared in the tangled family mysteries. All her life, she had felt like she belonged to any normal nuclear family. Both parents lived with the children, slept in the same bed, and more or less got on together. It was more than many of her peers could claim. Now one of those parents had died in bizarre and suspicious circumstances, and half-brothers were materialising as if by magic.

  Miranda squared her shoulders. ‘Give me the letter. I’ll have to write back to her. What do you think I should say?’

  ‘It’s entirely up to you. I suppose it would be best to meet her. If you could stand it.’

  ‘Why? What do you think might happen?’

  ‘Nothing, Mum. What do I know about it?’

  But Miranda was intent on the letter yet again. Lilah could see that there was some attraction in this voice from the past. Perhaps, she thought, there would be a kind of consolation in discussing your dead husband with a woman who had also been his wife. Lilah herself had wished since G
uy’s death that she’d had a sister, so that she could share with another daughter the precise nature of her loss. Watching her mother, she felt no resentment or criticism. But always, there was the pressure of the work, and she gave herself a brief shake.

  ‘You might be able to go and see her when things quieten down a bit. When Roddy’s exams are over, and the hay’s all in. Though I’d say Sam deserves a break more than you do.’

  ‘Since when did Sam ever want time off? He wouldn’t know what to do with it.’

  ‘You shouldn’t assume that. It isn’t fair.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about fair,’ Miranda suddenly shouted. ‘That’s the last word you should be using to me these days.’

  ‘Okay.’ Lilah turned an offended shoulder to her mother and strode back to the barn, full of resentment and confusion. Every time she got into some kind of routine or rhythm, another distraction happened. Some new turn to the nightmare sent her spinning all over again.

  Take yesterday, she thought, as she threw straw bales about, trying to make space for a batch of new calves expected in the coming week. Cappy’s story of Guy and a stranger arguing in the street; Jonathan hinting that he knew more than he would say; Sam so silent and watchful; disgusting goings-on in the Redstone fields. At least, it hadn’t really been disgusting – that was her dream, making it in retrospect so violent and horrible. The dream had stayed with her ever since. What was there in her own mind that could transform a simple sex act into something so gruesome? The vicar and Sylvia, for heaven’s sake! There could be no sane reason for that conjunction. The only thing connecting them was the fact that they lived next door to each other, Sylvia’s smallholding running alongside the vicar’s extensive garden. Neither had found Guy especially congenial … but that could be said of almost everyone who knew him.

  Sam was greasing machinery, in a smaller shed next to the barn. She could hear him clanking about; for a mad moment she imagined it was her father. But Guy would have been muttering or singing to himself as he worked; Sam was completely silent. The grass was ready for cutting, for the hay; that meant the mower’s blades had to be checked and probably sharpened, the hayturner dusted down, the baler set up with twine. Fortunately Sam knew the minutiae of these preparatory jobs; she certainly didn’t.

  Having finished her rearrangement of the barn, she strolled round to see exactly what Sam was doing. They hadn’t talked seriously for days, except to share the farmwork and puzzle over which cows to dry off. Now, looking at him, she was shocked to see tears on his cheeks. He could only be crying for Guy, and she felt oddly reproached by this evidence of grief. Sam had known her father for longer than she had; he owed everything to the farmer, had been as close as a brother or son. Nobody had properly acknowledged this, and she felt painfully ashamed of herself, all the more so as she recalled her conversation with her mother the previous evening. Miranda seemed almost sure that Sam had killed Guy. Looking at him now, this seemed unthinkable to Lilah.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked him gently.

  ‘You can’t forget about it, can you?’ he mumbled. ‘I keep seeing it all, inside my head. Muck everywhere. I can smell it as well, and feel him, all weighted down with it. I can smell it on myself, now and then. Look – there’s still a bit in my fingernails, and I’ve scrubbed them raw trying to get it off. I threw my moleskins away, you know, stuffed them in the dustbin. Couldn’t abide having that smell on them.’

  She looked, as invited, at his fingernail. ‘That isn’t muck, Sam. It’s a little scar. You’ve got a Lady Macbeth complex.’ Too late, she realised what she’d said. ‘Not that I mean—’ He didn’t seem to have grasped any sinister implications, though he snatched his hand away, and turned back to greasing the blades of the mower.

  Lilah pressed on, wanting to get some things straight, things she should have talked over with him days ago. ‘Den said we ought to have left it all, for their investigation.’

  ‘What – left him in there?’

  ‘Perhaps not that – but not cleaned up, at any rate. They might have been able to work out exactly what happened, if you hadn’t hosed down the edge of the pit.’

  Sam shrugged. ‘I thought it was best.’ He fell silent for a moment, scratching his thick, greying hair. At forty, he looked much older. Although healthy enough, the outdoor life had not treated him well. Broken veins and rough hands, a slight limp from the time Guy had let an implement fall on his foot, and above all a permanently downcast glance: it all made him appear less than Lilah knew him to be. She noticed that he was wearing one of Guy’s wax jackets and it seemed to her rather endearing that he should have taken on the boss’s mantle like this. He was, in effect, the farmer now.

  ‘There was muck everywhere, you see. I thought, well – I thought your Dad might feel a bit embarrassed, his yard in such a mess. With officials all over the place. Daft, I suppose. I didn’t think.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ She spoke the plain truth. Guy’s first response to any kind of bureaucratic visit was to get Sam to hose down the yard, which did tend to accumulate manure and mud at a surprising rate from the brief twice-daily crossing made by the cows.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now, anyway.’ They looked at each other, sharing the moment of despair and acceptance. Lilah had spoken for both of them, and he nodded slowly in agreement. Miranda had been right, Lilah realised: Guy was dead, killed by someone who had reason to commit murder. A dirty death, for a man who’d carelessly hurt a lot of people. It didn’t matter, not in any serious way, whether or not that person was arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned. The facts would remain unchanged.

  Sam squared his shoulders. ‘I meant to tell you – I’ve taken Boss’s gun, to keep with me. Thought it might be a good idea.’

  She looked perplexed. ‘What made you think of doing that?’

  ‘The police said something about being careful. That gave me the idea.’

  ‘Did you tell them about the gun?’ He shook his head again. ‘Show me where you keep it,’ she said firmly.

  With a sigh, he led the way back to his room. She followed him out of the barn, across a corner of the yard, past Miranda’s modest front garden, still weedy and unimpressive, and up to Sam’s door. As a young girl, she had gone in and out freely, visiting Sam as if he had been a brother or uncle. It had been Guy who noticed this one day, and ordered her to knock in future. ‘Give the man some privacy, damn it,’ he’d said angrily.

  Sam had his own small cooker, a sink and tiny shower room. He had a bath in the big main bathroom every Sunday morning, a ritual for which Miranda heated the water specially. He kept everything clean and tidy, his bed under the far window, a table and upright chair close by the door, and a chest of drawers filling most of the remaining space.

  ‘There,’ he pointed. The gun stood discreetly in a narrow space between the bathroom door and the chest of drawers. ‘So I can grab it quickly.’

  ‘Is it loaded?’

  He looked uneasy, and chewed his lips. Finally he nodded.

  ‘Sam! Daddy would be furious. He never left it loaded.’

  ‘I thought I might need it in a hurry,’ he said. ‘It’s only for a bit, till all this is settled. Nobody’s going to see it there. I’ll clean it when I’ve got a minute, too. There’s a pull-through thing in the barn.’

  ‘I’m going to pretend I don’t know about this,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you know what you’re doing.’

  Back in the farmhouse, Miranda slowly opened her remaining mail. A long white envelope proved to be from the solicitor, containing the contents of her husband’s will. It took five lines to convey:

  Mr Guy Beardon has bequeathed his entire estate to be shared in equal parts between his wife, Mrs Miranda Beardon; his daughter Miss Lilah Beardon; his son, Mr Roderick Beardon, and his partner Mr Samuel Carter. The executors are to be Mrs Beardon and Mr Carter.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Amos surprised himself at the effectiveness of his acting. Ignoring his pounding head, he beg
an his campaign for release early next morning. Smiling cheerfully at the nurse who came to wake him twenty minutes before any possible reason could be found for doing so, he expressed a desire for a bath. Baths, he had observed, were held in high regard by these people.

  He visited the lavatory, and untruthfully announced success in moving his bowels – another bizarre obsession amongst the nursing staff. When the interminable doctors’ round finally reached his bed, he squared his shoulders, widened his eyes, and answered the brief questions clearly. It was amusing to see the surprise on the faces of the white-coated people. ‘Well,’ said the man in charge, ‘you’ve certainly taken a turn for the better.’ Amos managed a proud blush at this approval.

  ‘At this rate you’ll be able to go home in a day or two,’ the doctor said. Then, abruptly remembering something of the story attached to this case, he switched on an expression of concern, and lowered his voice. ‘Will you … er … be going back to the same house as before?’

  Amos pouted a little, suggesting self-pity and indecision. ‘Oh yes, sir, I think so,’ he murmured. ‘No choice, come to that.’

  ‘Well, see Sister about it. She’ll sort something out with the social services, if you need her to. Won’t you, Sister?’ He beamed down on a rotund woman of dark colouring who responded with the most imperceptible of nods.

  It seemed to Amos that from then on he was on some kind of helter-skelter. Forms were brought for him to sign; the policeman visited yet again, trying to assure him that his house had been cleaned up and there was nothing for him to worry about; a woman with frizzy, grey hair bustled to his bedside at mid-morning teatime, smiling patronisingly and talking about post-traumatic stress, which he made her repeat three times, in revenge.

  Next day, they took all the bandages off his head for the last time and replaced them with a neat sticking plaster. He was instructed to present himself at his local doctor’s surgery in a few days for stitches to be removed and the whole wound examined. A young female doctor shone a torch in his eyes and said he was fit to be discharged. Just before lunch, they wheeled him into a lift, and out to the front entrance, where a car was waiting for him.