A Dirty Death

by Rebecca Tope

  The house was scarcely recognisable. Nothing was as he’d left it. The toppling pile of official documents from Mum’s bureau now sat squarely in the middle of the kitchen table, tied up with odd-looking tape; drawers which had been pushed in crookedly, overflowing with string and paper bags, were now closed properly, flush with each other; the kitchen, always cluttered with unwashed crockery and greasy pans, coats and boots kicking around on the floor, was impossibly clean and tidy. Amos sat down at the table, on a chair that had been brushed clear of cat hairs and mud, and laughed. It was the complete reversal of what he had expected. Every television show he could remember had depicted the aftermath of police investigations as a total mess. They hacked things down with axes, turned everything out onto the floor, tore pages out of books, tipped sugar, tea, rice in heaps onto the table. Was it possible that the reality could be so far removed from what he’d been led to believe? If so, surely those film people had a lot to answer for. He could hardly give credence to the idea that the new government, elected only a year ago, would have bothered to make such drastic changes as to insist on police time being spent on tidying up the scene of a murder. He laughed again at the procession of crazy ideas marching through his head.

  The obvious explanation, of course, was that some friend from the village had come in and cleaned the place up for him. The presence of a vase of forsythia and long white daisies from the garden reinforced this idea. The only flaw was that Amos had no friends in the village. Amos and Isaac had made themselves into recluses, and apart from obligatory nods in passing, nobody visited them, or cared what became of them.

  Fleetingly, he wondered whether Miranda Beardon would have taken the trouble to do all this. His heart lurched with excitement at the thought. Now that her husband was gone, she might be free to do that kind of thing. But regretfully he dismissed the notion. Miranda wasn’t a cleaner, or a flower arranger. She would never even have given him a thought, so deeply immersed in her own troubles would she be.

  Cautiously, he climbed the stairs. His own bedroom was much less changed than the downstairs rooms had been. The rug beside the bed had disappeared, and the sheets and blankets looked oddly smooth and flat, like those in hospital. The windows had been cleaned, and the cobwebs from the corners of the ceiling had disappeared. But his clothes were all in place, as were the ornaments on the shelf beside the bed.

  It took considerable reserves of courage to enter Isaac’s room. Amos’s first inclination was to ensure that the door was tightly closed, and then never go in there again. His brother had lived in that room from a small boy, little changing apart from the size and nature of his clothes. Amos had passed on some of his own things to brighten up the room a bit – a model ship that he’d made, a dish to keep loose change in. Isaac had been fond of hoarding money, counting it carefully and planning small treats for himself.

  But eventually Amos forced himself to look, prepared for almost anything. Splashes of blood on the ceiling, the smell of death, an uneasy ghost. What he found was quite an anticlimax. The bed was stripped down to the saggy old mattress. Isaac’s clothes were neatly folded and piled on his big chair. The room smelt of some synthetic cleaning substance, perfumed with pungently artificial pine. It was nicely done, more as if Isaac had gone away on holiday than was dead and never coming back.

  Downstairs again, he found cheese and eggs in the fridge, and a packet of cracker biscuits which had not been there before. A few tins – beans, tomatoes – had been added to their slender stores. He fingered them, moving them about to admire the breathtaking cleanliness of the cupboard. Other things had disappeared – ancient jars of chutney with the metal lids rusting through; leaking bags of sugar; jellies, which Isaac had been so keen on at one time, and then perversely refused, and which had softened and oozed and stuck themselves to the shelf. Well, he decided, from now on, he would keep it like this. No more mess or dirt. He was a reformed character. Looking round, he realised how free he felt, airy with relief and pride at the way his neglected house could look, with a bit of effort.

  He ate crackers and cheese and made himself some black coffee. Then he remembered the cats. There had been five of them, at least, all Isaac’s special darlings. They had run at will through the house, adding to the smell and untidiness, leaving muddy footmarks and hairs wherever they went.

  So where were they? Who had fed them while he’d been away? Had that tortoiseshell hussy had yet another litter of kittens out in the barn? She’d looked imminent when last he saw her. Cramming the last biscuit into his mouth, he went out into the yard, glancing automatically down at Redstone as he did so. Most of the house was visible, just the lower half hidden by the swell of the field, down which he had hurtled on that dreadful morning. He could see the milking parlour, and the bright red splash of the smaller car sitting in the yard, close to the farm gate. He had thought of the Beardons as ‘neighbours’ ever since they’d come to Redstone, even though it must be a good five hundred yards from one house to the other.

  ‘Kitty, kitty,’ he called, in a low voice. He could scarcely remember a time when he’d been here alone, and it made him nervous. ‘Where are you? Cats! Come on.’ There was nothing but silence. All the cats had gone. Perhaps they’d simply decided to seek hospitality at some other farm, or perhaps some officious RSPCA person had rounded them all up and impounded them.

  They had other livestock: fifteen ewes, two Aberdeen Angus heifers and a donkey, all but the donkey kept for breeding and a small income realised from their offspring. In summertime, they would have come to no harm, grazing the few acres left to the Grimsdales after Guy Beardon’s land purchases. Amos postponed the short walk necessary to check that all was well with them. His head was aching, the bruised flesh nagging for peace and calm and a cool flannel. Instead he turned back to the house, only to be arrested by the sound of a motor vehicle coming down the bumpy track which led nowhere but to his door.

  He waited, forcing down an apprehension that it might be his attacker returning to complete the job. The policeman in the hospital had been reassuring, though vague. He had mentioned ‘surveillance’, with regular trips made to the area, and a close eye kept on any strangers. Surely no one would be daft enough to repeat the assault, at least not in broad daylight …

  A battered yellow van came into view, then stopped beside his gate, so he could not quite see the driver. He dithered between retreating back into the house and waiting where he was, on the assumption that his visitor would eventually find him whatever he did. A few seconds’ hesitation made the decision for him. The newcomer had already climbed out of the van and was striding towards him.

  It was a woman, black hair flowing loose, a cotton dress tight across breast and thighs, a sturdy-looking forty-five or thereabouts. Amos stared. It had been five years or more since he last saw her as close to as this. Longer than that since they’d last spoken.

  ‘Hello, Amos,’ she said, a little breathlessly. ‘You’re home then.’

  He spread wide his arms, leaving himself open, a gesture saying, ‘As you see.’ A gesture which also betrayed his bewilderment.

  ‘They haven’t buried Isaac yet, you know,’ she said, hands on her hips. ‘That’s for you to see to. Time you shifted yourself, old man.’

  He shook his head. ‘Someone’s supposed to be coming to see me. I ha’n’t thought about it yet.’ He stopped the head-shaking quickly as the pain intensified and gazed intently at his tormenter, still bemused at the sight of her. ‘Why—?’ he began.

  She laughed. ‘Someone had to see to the place, feed the cats, check those straggly ewes. Their bottoms are filthy, I might add.’

  ‘But, you. What’s it to you? I’m nothing to you.’

  ‘Amos Grimsdale, don’t act daft. You were never the daft one. Not that Isaac had so much wrong with him.’ She laughed again, the sound jarring on Amos, making him want to cover his ears. Tears gathered, scalding, behind his eyes and nose.

  ‘They were glad when I offered. The police. Aw
kward buggers, they were, leaving everything in a mess.’

  Dread seized Amos. He felt weak like the newborn kittens which he knew now had been destroyed. She’d offered to feed the cats and then done away with them. She would. He searched his mind for what else she might have done to hurt him. What else did he have that he was afraid to lose? It was with a strange, wry relief that he realised there was nothing. And the realisation gave him strength.

  ‘Did you kill the cats?’ he challenged.

  ‘Not all of them,’ she retorted. ‘You know yourself there was too many. The rest went to new homes.’

  ‘Was it your business?’ he said, as if he genuinely wished to know. ‘They’d have got by.’

  ‘Cats do no good,’ she decreed. ‘Messy, selfish, mean-minded things. My Elvira hates ’em.’

  ‘And what’s she got to do with it?’

  She shrugged. ‘You’ll see. Now, I’m off. Will you come and visit me one day? There’s a matter to talk over. But you’re not fit for it now.’

  ‘What matter?’ he asked tiredly. ‘Phoebe, I have nothing to speak to you about. You’re not meaning me any good, that much I can see.’

  ‘Ungrateful bugger!’ she laughed. ‘After I wore myself out cleaning this pigsty for you. Took me three whole days, and nothing from you but moaning about cats.’

  ‘You didn’t do it for me,’ he said flatly. ‘So what was it for?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Come and see me when you feel better and we’ll have a talk. And get that funeral seen to. It’s not proper to leave it so long. After that, you should get those poor sheep shorn. They’ll have maggots otherwise.’

  Amos shrugged. Funeral rites were of scant importance to him. Phoebe glanced round, throwing a brief, passing look at Redstone, and stood still for a moment, a hand held oddly to her chest. ‘I’ll be off then. You needn’t thank me for straightening the house, or getting in something you could eat. I don’t expect thanks. But I’ll be seeing you, Amos Grismdale. Don’t think I won’t.’

  She left him, almost running back the way she’d come. But at the van she stopped and looked back, throwing him a smile of triumph that stayed with him throughout that day and the long sleepless night that followed it.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The day of the inquest came after several days of comparative peace for the Beardons. The police had spent another morning questioning them about anybody they could think of who might have hated Guy enough to kill him, and they had made them repeat yet again every detail of what happened on the morning he died. Miranda then showed them Guy’s will, its bleakness mirrored in her face. ‘Does this surprise you?’ the policeman asked her.

  ‘A bit,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t think he would be so generous to Sam. It makes it more difficult to know what to do next. I was hoping I’d be free just to sell up and move. Now it’s more complicated.’

  The police warned all three Beardons, as well as Sam, that they would have to make detailed statements about how Guy was found, at the inquest. All four of them felt resigned about it by this time, regretting more the day lost from the farm work than the ordeal of speaking out in public. Even Sam, unaccustomed to making himself conspicuous, seemed relaxed as they piled into Guy’s big car, to arrive in style.

  ‘It feels very naughty of us to be driving this,’ said Miranda, wriggling about on the wide seat. ‘Guy would be furious.’

  ‘He let me drive it once,’ said Lilah. ‘On the long, straight bit into town. It felt so smooth.’

  The car was a Jaguar, almost twenty years old, kept polished and pristine, the perfect foil for Guy’s character. He went to the races in it, and used it on the rare occasions when a long journey was called for. For short trips into town, he had used the smaller runabout, which Lilah regarded as mainly hers.

  ‘I bags the Jag as mine when I’m driving,’ said Roddy, from the back seat, next to Sam.

  ‘Sounds fair to me,’ laughed his mother. ‘Except it’ll cost about a thousand pounds to insure you for it.’

  ‘That’s okay. It’d cost that to get me another car, anyway.’

  ‘True.’ Miranda hummed a little as she manoeuvred the car out of the yard, pretending nonchalance. They all felt a shiver of concern at leaving the farm so unprotected. None of them could remember even an hour when there’d been nobody at all, not so much as a dog, to keep an eye out.

  ‘It shouldn’t take long,’ Miranda said, trying to reassure herself as well as the others. ‘We’ll be back soon after lunch.’

  ‘But everyone knows we’ll be away.’ Lilah gave a backward glance, wondering what could happen. The cows all massacred? The house burnt down? ‘We should have asked the police to watch it for us.’

  ‘Too late now.’ Miranda spoke impatiently, her habitual refusal to worry asserting itself. Lilah, for the first time, began to see her mother as seriously irresponsible.

  As they drove through the village, Lilah spotted Sylvia standing outside the Post Office, and she called ‘Stop!’ so suddenly that Miranda overreacted and sent everyone lurching forward.

  ‘Bloody good brakes,’ she remarked, ruefully.

  ‘We can ask Sylvia to go and keep an eye on the farm,’ Lilah said, inspired. ‘She’d be glad to do that for us, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘We can ask.’ Miranda wound down the window, and waited for Sylvia to trot the few yards after them. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Lilah has a favour to beg of you.’

  ‘Mum!’ The girl was outraged. Sylvia’s head appeared through the window, eyeing the car appreciatively.

  ‘Didn’t recognise you in the limousine,’ she said. ‘Very grand.’

  ‘It’s the inquest,’ explained Roddy, in exasperation. ‘And we’ll be late at this rate.’

  ‘Look, love,’ Miranda smiled into her friend’s eyes, ‘would you be a real angel and go up to Redstone in about an hour’s time. Make sure all’s well. We’ve never left the place totally unguarded before. And, well, with all this …’ She gazed round the innocent-seeming village helplessly. All this seemed hard to define.

  ‘And get my head smashed in, you mean. Fine. Delighted to be of use to you. Lucky I’m so big and strong.’

  Miranda raised her eyes skywards. ‘You don’t have to do anything. Just drive round the yard and out again. They call it showing a presence.’

  ‘Course I’ll do it. I’ll go every half hour until you’re back. Now scoot. And let’s hope it isn’t too gruelling for you.’

  The Coroner was a small man with a curious pied moustache, giving him the look of some bristly hedgerow animal. He seemed not to enjoy his work. He listened with visible scorn to evidence from police, family and expert medical witnesses and frequently shook his head in exasperation. His summarising, when it came, was brief but passionate.

  ‘This case,’ he snapped, ‘is a perfect example of the folly of assuming that a death is accidental, and failing to make adequate investigations at the scene at the earliest opportunity. Although no evidence has been found of any direct connection with the violent killing of Mr Isaac Grimsdale on the neighbouring farm, it has to be taken as strongly suggestive of a double killing. We do at least have irrefutable evidence for that death being a case for criminal investigation, and the police are actively pursuing a murder inquiry into that death.

  ‘It is not, however, part of my brief to go into that. Mr Beardon’s unfortunate decease is perhaps due in part to the accessibility of the lethal slurry pit, built in defiance of planning regulations which have been formulated solely for the purpose of avoiding just such a tragedy. If Mr Beardon had consulted the Planning Officer – as he was statutorily obliged to do, I might add – he would very possibly still be with us today. It would be pure supposition on my part, at this juncture, but the strong probability seems to me to be that this was an opportunist killing, probably by an intruder, who simply pushed the unfortunate man into the pit, and held him down until he drowned.

  ‘But I must emphasise that there is no evidence so far discovered to indicate
precisely what did happen. We have heard that there were no unusual sounds, the body showed no signs of a struggle, and aside from the single bruise on Mr Beardon’s head which appears to predate the morning of his death, he was completely unharmed. We have heard the singularly distasteful details of what happens to a person having the misfortune to fall into a slurry pit such as this one. Despite the relatively shallow depth, and the common expectation that it would be a simple matter merely to stand up and wade out, the consistency of the material renders this almost impossible. It has a similar effect to quicksand, and we must allow for the possibility that this was in fact an accidental death – that Mr Beardon was unfortunate enough to slip over the edge of the pit, land face down, and despite considerable struggle, never to have succeeded in regaining his balance. We have had it amply demonstrated to us how this might happen, given the inevitable horror and panic that would accompany such a calamity. In the light of everything I have heard here today, I must record an open verdict and offer my most sincere condolences to the grieving family. Perhaps I need hardly add that there must be no further usage of the slurry pit as it now exists. Neither can I allow this opportunity to pass without giving the strongest possible warning to any other farmers …’ here he raised his head and cast a sweeping glance around the crowded room ‘… of the serious folly of neglecting to respect the safety rules for such pits.’ With a sigh and a businesslike stacking of the papers in front of him, he added, ‘Thank you, everyone. This case is now concluded.’

  Miranda and Lilah sat still for a moment, hardly aware that they had clasped each other’s hands for the summing up. Hearing it stated so baldly that Guy had very probably been unlawfully killed was a greater shock than they had expected.