Heirs and Assigns

by Marjorie Eccles

  Outside the windows at the back of the house, a narrow stream that ran down the hillside to join the river below had been diverted at one time and dammed to make a small pond out of what Anna had thought might have been the original sunken garden, but it had long ago silted up, the dam had given way and the stream now followed its natural course. At some point, the space the pond had occupied had been roughly filled in, perhaps to allow more room for farm carts to turn around or for some other mundane reason. Farmers, even now, didn’t usually see the sense in wasting land that could be more usefully used in other directions on merely ornamental purposes. The pond had still been there when farming had been abandoned by his father, said Pen. He had particular memories as a boy, of lying in the grass at the edges, watching dragonflies skim its surface, though precisely when it had been filled in he couldn’t remember, or why. Whatever the reason, it had left a sizeable but bumpy space in front of the windows, separated from them by a few square yards of old flagstones, before the gradient became steeper, eventually stopping at the wall above the giddy drop to the river.

  As a garden, it was half-hearted to the point of non-existence. The addition of low, clipped knots filled in with herbs and flowering plants would add the character and interest it lacked, Pen had enthused, and although Anna had been doubtful of its appropriateness in such a context, she hadn’t said so. The two young farm lads who were presently working as her assistants, at the moment unemployed because of the seasonal nature of farm work, were glad to have this job. Eamon Brannigan was one of a large Irish family who had for some reason fetched up in Hinton, a young giant who laughed and talked so much no one else got a word in edgeways. He was a cheerful presence and everyone liked him, despite the fact that he was wont to regale the world at large with not always tuneful renderings of ‘O’Rafferty’s Pig’ and the like when he was wielding his pick. The much quieter Ned Clifford, Prue’s brother, was tall, gangly and thoughtful, a sensitive lad who always had a book with him to read whenever he got the chance. Accustomed to hard farm labour, they were making good progress in the first digging of the hummocky ground.

  The morning after Huwie’s disappearance, Anna was taking a breather from calculating the number of box plants, hundreds certainly, that she would need to order for the low hedging which would set the Celtic knot pattern Pen had finally decided on. Crossing her arms against the cold she clutched her clipboard to her chest as she considered what flowers would complement and give colour to the traditional but duller herbs to be planted within the hedges: the lavenders, sages, thymes, rue and so forth. Deep in thought, the shout from a few yards away so startled her she almost dropped the clipboard.

  Ned was standing as if God had sent a thunderbolt and struck him rigid, looking down at the freshly turned red earth. As Anna joined them, Eamon backed away. His face was white under its weatherbeaten tan. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ he breathed, crossing himself.

  ‘What’s the matter, Eamon?’

  Wordlessly, he pointed downwards. The sun gleamed on something white, only partly visible under a thin layer of disturbed soil, but unmistakably a skeleton, laid out flat. She could see clearly what looked very much like the top of a skull.

  Ned managed to find his voice. ‘We came to that big rock,’ he said unsteadily, pointing to a great slab of sandstone on one side. ‘When we managed to move it, we saw it.’

  Pulling herself together, Anna said, ‘I think the police are still here, in the office – one or other of them, at any rate. Go and tell them, Ned, will you? Don’t say anything to anyone else.’

  He nodded, and seeming glad of the action, sloped off at speed round the corner. Anna took the other boy’s arm and led him to a wooden seat that stood by the dining-room windows. For all his strapping physique and extrovert personality, Eamon was far more shocked than Ned. ‘I have to go,’ he said, looking towards the turned earth and beginning to shake. ‘Sorry, Mrs Douglas, but I can’t stay here.’

  ‘Eamon, I think you should, until the police have spoken to you.’

  Their jackets had been thrown on the seat and she picked up the nearest one and placed it round his shoulders. Superstition ruled in the Brannigan family. His mother was reputed to have the gift: she could see spirits and the wee folk; she never let her children wear green or bring branches of mayflower into the house and she’d seen a crow hanging around their garden for days before Pen died. Anna forced herself to be calm. This might not be what they imagined. She had worked on the land during the war, doing her bit, and seen what a plough could turn up – pottery shards and glass bottles, sometimes ancient coins. Bits of old farm machinery and even, once, the grisly skeleton of what turned out to be a monkey, a source of absolute wonder that no one had ever been able to account for.

  When the study door burst unceremoniously open, Reardon was engaged in a difficult telephone conversation over the usual crackly line with Superintendent Cherry, trying to persuade him it was necessary for both himself and Gilmour to make the trip to London. He listened with half an ear as Ned burst in, but Cherry was on the point of giving rather grudging consent and he flapped an in-a-minute hand towards the boy. Gilmour, however, heard him out and left at a run, arriving at the scene with Ned not two strides behind him.

  The commotion had by now brought others out of the house, too. Everyone but Eamon stood on the bank of earth that had been thrown up around the turned-over area, staring down. Gilmour too looked at what lay half-concealed below until, after a moment or two, something about the arrangement of what he could make out began to seem not quite right. He turned to Mrs Knightly. ‘Do you have a brush – a soft one?’

  She nodded to Prue, who sped away and came back with a small, soft-bristled hand brush. ‘Will this do?’

  He probably shouldn’t be doing this, Gilmour thought as he knelt on the soft earth, but if he was right … Very gently he brushed away the light covering of soil to expose the rest of the skull and then sat back on his heels. It took a moment for everyone else who had been following his actions to realize what they were seeing. There was a stunned silence. Then Ida, her hand to her mouth, exclaimed, ‘Oh, my God, it’s Rory!’

  ‘He was our dog. A beautiful creature, an Irish wolfhound.’ Theo’s lugubrious face looked more mournful than ever.

  ‘He was bigger than a donkey,’ Ida remembered, ‘one whisk of his tail might break your leg – or sweep everything off a table, come to that. He was always Theo’s dog, really, hardly left his side, but everyone loved him.’

  ‘Not everyone,’ Theo corrected sharply. ‘Though he was the gentlest, most sweet-tempered dog in the world.’ For a man so little inclined to show his emotions, he was clearly upset by the discovery of the dog’s skeleton. It wasn’t hard to believe him one of those who liked animals better than people.

  ‘So how did he come to be buried there?’ Reardon asked them, asking himself how was it Theo hadn’t known the grave of such a beloved dog was in the very place where they would be digging. ‘Suppose one of you tells us when and how he died?’

  Ida shrugged. ‘Theo’s the one to tell you. It must be over twenty years ago and I for one wasn’t here when it happened, nor was Pen. We’d both married and left home by then. You were a late-starter, weren’t you, Theo?’

  ‘Claudia and I were in fact just about to be married. But … Look here, it was all a very long time ago and in any case I fail to see why it’s necessary to drag up totally irrelevant stories about dead pets.’

  ‘These family quarrels can be the very devil, can’t they?’ Reardon said.

  Theo fixed Reardon with a basilisk stare. ‘And just what made you say that, inspector?’

  Reardon wasn’t sure himself. Except for that ‘not everyone’ from Theo just now, which he thought was a dead giveaway. ‘Your brother, Huwie, left home after some sort of contretemps between you. I think it had something to do with your dog’s death.’

  ‘And if it had …?’ Theo drew in a deep, angry breath. ‘Inspector, my other brother’s
death is the unfortunate reason you’re here, but I fail to see why a decades’ old family disagreement which didn’t involve him is any concern of yours.’

  Reardon was fast losing patience. ‘Yes, we are here to investigate that death. And now another. Murder regrettably includes washing dirty linen, Mr Llewellyn.’

  Theo was silent for so long Reardon thought he was going to refuse to answer. Ida nervously took her cigarette case from her bag and offered black Sobranies all round but only Theo took one, after a moment’s hesitation. The smoke curled over the table and Ida finally burst out, ‘Oh, do explain, Theo. We shall be here all day, otherwise.’

  ‘It was something and nothing, that just got out of hand,’ he said at last. This was so obviously not true, it must have sounded ridiculous to him also. At any rate, he suddenly abandoned the stonewalling and began speaking rapidly. ‘I was home from London for the weekend, preparing to leave. It hadn’t been a very comfortable weekend – the usual rows between my father and Huwie. He’d left school about two years previously … trying his hand at various jobs and not staying long in any of them, showing no signs of settling to anything. He’d brought an old school friend to stay that weekend, someone he’d been at Uplands House with, and they’d been out rabbiting. It was a hot day and we – my parents and I and two or three friends who’d joined us for lunch – were sitting outside taking coffee before I left. The two of them came back in tearing spirits – I think they were half drunk, in fact. Huwie didn’t dare to drink too much in front of my father but no doubt they’d had a bottle with them. When they joined us they were cock-a-hoop because they’d bagged half a dozen rabbits and a few pigeons and Huwie tossed the bag down, silly fool, instead of disposing of it before they came to sit with us. Rory was a wonderful hunting dog – he had a gentle mouth, though he’d chase anything that ran. And …’ He took a deep drag of the cigarette he’d only half-smoked, then squashed it out.

  ‘And?’

  ‘You can guess the rest. His natural instincts were roused. He went sniffing round the bag of course … grabbed it and was off with it before he could be stopped. He wasn’t so young any more but he still had a turn of speed. The chap who was supposed to be a guest simply picked up his gun and shot him, dead.’

  ‘Shot him? That was overreacting, surely?’

  ‘Yes. But to give the young fellow his due, he was absolutely aghast at what he’d done. I think he’d picked the gun up instinctively, meaning to frighten Rory off – but a dog doesn’t recognize that kind of threat. I’ve told you they were probably drunk but that was no excuse, and I … I didn’t stop to think, I just saw red – and knocked the blighter down. He just lay there, looking positively sick and kept repeating he was sorry, but Huwie came for me like a fury. It was ridiculous, or so it seemed afterwards. Two grown men, fighting like street urchins. At the time, it seemed anything but that. I … well, I’d been good at boxing at school, and I only felt it was time somebody taught my stupid little brother a lesson he wouldn’t forget.’ A dark look crossed his face. ‘God knows what would have happened, if it hadn’t been for my mother. She jumped up – I think she had some idea of separating us – and then she just … collapsed. After that …’

  It was lucky that Gerald Fairlie was one of the guests, Theo continued when he’d gathered himself. He still hadn’t fully qualified, but he’d known enough to get Mrs Llewellyn upstairs and administer her medication. Theo had gone up with them and didn’t come down again until after he’d seen his mother settled. By that time, neither Huwie nor his friend was to be found. ‘I didn’t in fact see my precious brother again until he came here for Pen’s birthday party.’

  ‘And Murfitt?’ There was a silence. ‘It was Adrian Murfitt who was the guest, wasn’t it?’ Murfitt, whom Mrs Knightly said had been sent to school at Uplands House, where Huwie had also been a pupil. (The same school, incidentally, where Kate had taught, though not at that time.)

  ‘Yes. Yes, it was. How did you know?’

  Gilmour said, ‘We found a note from him addressed to your brother.’

  ‘But my God, you surely don’t believe I’ve harboured a grudge against him all these years until I could get rid of him?’

  ‘People have been known to do that.’

  ‘Except that I’m not one of them. Murfitt in fact had the grace to write me a letter of apology afterwards, which put an end to the matter as far as I was concerned.’

  ‘So you forgave him?’

  ‘It was a terrible thing to have happened, but it wasn’t calculated, the drunken impulse of a moment, and I believe he deeply regretted it. It was my brother I couldn’t forgive,’ he said coldly. ‘If he hadn’t interfered, my mother would not have collapsed. He disappeared that same day and made no effort to contact her afterwards … She was never herself again, never quite recovered. As it was, I had to leave for London almost immediately, so my father saw to Rory’s burial. In fact, I was glad of that, I preferred to forget the whole thing, as long as I didn’t have anything to do with my brother – or his friend – ever again.’

  ‘But you did have dealings with Murfitt later, when he was working in that London bookshop. How did you feel about meeting him again?’

  He shrugged. ‘It was a long time ago. As I said, he’d made his apologies.’

  ‘And you’d forgiven him. Of course. But not forgotten?’ He didn’t deign to reply. ‘Have you any idea why your brother should have disappeared again?’

  ‘Has anyone ever known why Huwie does anything?’

  ‘You say your brother Penrose wasn’t present at this fight you had, but he must have been told about it – and the part Murfitt played?’

  ‘Of course he knew.’ Ida put in. ‘We all did.’

  ‘We know he sponsored Murfitt’s bookshop here in Hinton. Under the circumstances, wasn’t that rather strange?’

  For the first time there was no aggression in Theo’s response. He spread his hands, and Reardon felt he was genuinely at a loss.

  Gilmour and Constable Kitchin from Wyvering had spent most of the afternoon canvassing the residents in the outlying parts of Hinton. Nearly all those they spoke to admitted to seeing Murfitt at some time or other and most of them remembered the dark green loden cloth topcoat he had taken to wearing when the weather had turned cooler. It was a distinctive coat and if it had turned up anywhere unexpectedly it would have caused comment, so it had either been destroyed already, or was being kept out of sight until it could be disposed of. Gilmour had gleaned nothing they hadn’t already learnt about Murfitt – most people’s recollections of him were vague, since he hadn’t stirred much out of his shop and few had exchanged words with him, unless they had been customers – and the rumours which had circulated about him had ensured there were not many of those. His death had been an unenviable end to a solitary existence, his only acquaintances being his aunt, Mrs Knightly, and the two unlikely young women, Verity and Sadie Bannerman. Which in itself was intriguing, thought Gilmour.

  The afternoon was drawing in when he returned to Bryn Glas to make his unsatisfactory report to Reardon and found that Cherry had in fact just rung back to sanction the trip to London for the next day. Reardon was making plans for how they should each make use of the time there. He viewed Gilmour’s lack of progress with a shrug. ‘No more than I expected.’ He gathered up his papers and announced he would like to call in on Dr Fairlie on their way back to the Fox.

  ‘Shouldn’t we make an appointment? He’s probably out on his rounds.’

  ‘We’ll take a chance.’

  On their way out, Gilmour left Reardon to walk to the car while he delivered back to the kitchen the tea tray that Prue had earlier brought into the study. As he was pushing open the kitchen door with his knee he heard raised voices and met the unusual sight of Mrs Knightly and Prue facing each other, their faces flushed. They both looked upset.

  Prue was saying, ‘Look, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I just can’t bear thinking about poor Mr Llewellyn, and not knowing �
� If there’s any chance it might help to find who did it—’

  Simultaneously, they saw him standing there in the doorway. Prue gave the housekeeper an odd look, half-pleading, half-defiant, and threw another, almost stubborn one, at Gilmour. Mrs Knightly turned away and began taking plates from the wooden drying rack by the sink. With her back to the room, she said, ‘Go on then, tell him, seeing you’re so set on it.’

  ‘Mrs Knightly, they have to know. It can’t hurt anyway, not now.’

  Hurriedly, Prue almost snatched the tray from Gilmour, jerked her head for him to come in and then said again, almost pleadingly, ‘I have to, Mrs Knightly, I’m really sorry, but I do have to tell.’

  Mrs Knightly didn’t reply. She took the plates she’d stacked and put them in a cupboard and then suddenly turned to put her arm round Prue’s shoulder. ‘Oh, don’t go on so, girl. You’re right, it can’t hardly hurt now. But better from me. You’d best sit down to hear this, sergeant.’

  Gilmour chose to prop himself against the table, while she picked the old cat up from what he evidently thought of as his rightful place in her basket chair. He settled on her knee and automatically her hands moved to stroke him. ‘All right …’ she began hesitantly, and then went on rapidly, as if determined to get out what she had to say before she regretted it. ‘When we first spoke, Mr Reardon asked me who was in the house the night Pen died. I told him there was only the family and me. Well, that wasn’t exactly so, I’m afraid. But it won’t get you any further in finding out who killed poor Pen, because it was only my nephew who was in my room and I know he couldn’t have killed anyone.’