Death in the Coverts

by Roderic Jeffries

  When she had finished the second drink, she looked up. ‘What… what happened?’

  ‘It seems he fell over his gun and it went off.’

  ‘I told him not to go shooting. I begged him not to.’ She turned and faced him. ‘That sort of thing wasn’t for Bill. They’ll just laugh at you, I said. Over six hundred quid it cost each of ’em, just to go and shoot something they could buy in the shops at a quid each. Six hundred quid and they never gave Bill more’n a couple to bring back with him. That’s all they bloody well gave him, two: can you believe it? Six hundred quid for a couple of birds each time you shoot is plain stupid. I told him. You’ve paid for ’em all – you tell ’em you want all you shoot. It don’t work like that, he said. It’s normal only to be given two. D’you know what the matter was? He was scared to ask for more. He went shooting there for just one thing, to be able to talk about going shooting with the Deckers. I’ve heard him and the others talking their heads off in the boozer. Good day out shooting, old boy. Been out on the Decker estate. You know the Deckers, don’t you? The Deckers of Hurstley Place? Nice folks. Grand old family. Descended from William the Corncurer. Huntin’, shootin’, and fishin’, don’t you know.’ She began to cry. The tears slid down her cheeks and fell on to her black cashmere. After a few seconds, the tears stopped.

  He offered her a cigarette and they both smiled.

  ‘He’s dead for sure?’ she asked. ‘There ain’t no chance the hospital can do something for him?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ He remembered the bloody mess that was part of Rafferty’s head.

  She looked down at her glass and then across at the cocktail cabinet. He refilled the glass for her.

  ‘How did he get on with the Deckers?’ he asked.

  She spoke scornfully. ‘They was always laughing at him. They knew what he was: their kind can’t help knowing. He could pay a thousand quid for a gun and not know the difference, but they knew what he was. I met ’em once: all of ’em. The old woman was dressed in dirty old clothes I wouldn’t be seen dead in, but she still knew she was a bleeding sight better than me.’

  ‘Did your husband often see them, apart from a shooting day?’

  ‘Just when he went to pay his cheque, which was the one time they lowered ’emselves enough to have him inside the house. He collected the money from the other three and gave the Deckers something over two and a half thousand quid. All that money just so as they could say they was shooting with the Deckers.’

  ‘Did he ever have a row with any of them?’

  ‘A row? You don’t have rows with the likes of them: they just looks through you until you get down and crawl. Bill asked ’em to dinner once, ’though I begged him not to. They thanked him all politely and said they was sorry but was fully booked up and didn’t know, like, when they’d be unbooked. Can’t stop sticking his neck out, can’t Bill. He knows they’re no better than he is, but he gets down on hands and knees for them to walk over him. I’ve shouted at him more’n once. You made all your money by working, I tell him. They got given theirs without doing nothing for it, so who’s the better person? He never could see it like that. Only yesterday he says…’ She suddenly became silent.

  ‘He said what?’

  ‘Said that now they’d have to have us to dinner and it didn’t matter how much they stuck their noses in the air.’

  ‘Why would they have to do that?’

  She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘He was alive then. He was alive this morning. I cooked his breakfast. Two eggs and four bits of bacon and some mushrooms. Always likes a good breakfast.’ She looked at the detective. ‘We’ve only been married three year. That ain’t very long, is it?’ Doherty made some conventionally sympathetic reply. Bitter experience had taught him that no one could ever comfort another with mere words: grief was a purely personal thing. In any case, he did not have to know her well to be able to judge that it would not be very long before she was worried more about how much money her late husband had left her than that he was her late husband.

  *

  Detective Constable Pawley, 31, a redhead without too much of the volatile nature traditionally ascribed to red-heads, knocked on the door of the large detached house which stood next to the church in the village of Yarnley-without. Without what, he wondered?

  The door was opened by a large, fat, oily man. ‘Mr Abbotts?’ asked Pawley.

  ‘Abbotts is the name, lad. Joe Abbotts.’

  He was not far short of being tight, thought Pawley. ‘I’m Detective Constable Pawley.’

  ‘Come on in. Dreadful shock, you know, knocks all the stuffing out of a man. I had a cigarette with Bill and then went to the stand and when it was all over he was dead.’ Abbotts brushed his moustache several times. ‘Come on through to the sitting-room and have a drink? There’s mostly anything you care to name.’

  ‘I’d rather have coffee, thanks.’

  ‘Coffee,’ repeated Abbotts, as they walked through. ‘You don’t mean coffee. Gin, whisky, brandy, rum, or one of them mucky French drinks: you name it, I’ve got it.’ Once in the sitting-room, Abbotts spoke again. ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘I’m telling you, he was a mess. Most of the head missing and just a mess of blood and God knows what else. Bang and he was dead and there was me, just going on shooting.’ He brushed his moustache again. ‘What’s it to be? A brandy?’

  ‘I’d rather have a coffee.’

  ‘Coffee. You don’t want coffee. It’ll have to come out of a tin, you know.’

  ‘That’s O.K by me.’

  Abbotts, looking puzzled, walked over to the door. There, he came to a stop. ‘We all had a drink or two at the pub afterwards. We was shocked, and no mistake. Old Bill could be a bit of a… a bit of… It’s a shock and that’s the truth.’ He left.

  Pawley looked round the room. It was furnished in a smart, but unemotional way: probably, he thought, Abbotts had gone in to one of the furnishing stores in Avonley or Ashford and told them to do their most expensive best. He noticed one furnishing that must be particular to Abbotts: on the walls hung four framed photographs of different women which were as frank as anything in Playboy. Obviously, Abbotts was a great man for the girlies.

  Abbotts returned to the room with a tray on which was one cup without a saucer, a bottle of milk, a teaspoon, and some sugar in a plastic container. ‘It’s my housekeeper’s day off so I’m on me own. I’ve done the best I can for the coffee.’ Whilst Pawley added sugar and milk to the odd-coloured coffee, Abbotts poured himself out a drink. When he went across to the settee, he slumped down on it as if his legs could no longer support his considerable weight.

  Pawley sipped the coffee and was relieved to find it tasted better than its appearance had suggested it would.

  ‘You’re from the police,’ said Abbotts loudly, as if he had just made that discovery.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’re on about Bill, of course?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Look, let’s have a quick whisper in the ear. Is there something funny about what happened?’

  ‘Funny?’

  ‘You know how I mean. Wasn’t it an accident?’

  ‘Why d’you ask?’

  ‘I was just wondering, like.’

  ‘You must have a reason?’

  ‘Me? Of course not. How could I have a reason?’

  ‘Then why think it might not have been an accident?’

  ‘I didn’t say it was like that.’ Abbotts brushed his moustache vigorously. ‘It’s just… Well, I just wondered, like.’

  Pawley checked a further question he had been going to put and instead asked: ‘Whereabouts were you standing when it happened?’

  ‘Me? I was at number five. The birds came over real fast, but I couldn’t hit ’em. Too bloody fast for me. Whoosh, and they was out of sight. Julian Decker was pullin’ ’em down, though. If I could shoot just half as well as him, I’d be proud, and that’s a fact.’

&n
bsp; ‘Did you hear Rafferty shoot at all?’

  ‘I heard shooting, naturally, but there’s no saying who it was. When the birds come over like that, it’s…’ Abbotts gestured with his hands, but seemed unable to find the right words. He swung himself round until he could lean against the arm of the settee and rest his feet on the cushions.

  ‘Are you surprised at the accident?’

  ‘Bill always was a bit careless with his gun. And did that make Julian Decker spitting mad!’

  ‘How did he get on with the Decker outfit?’

  ‘You don’t get on with the likes of them.’ Abbotts swung his feet back on to the floor and twisted round. His voice rose. ‘They’re colder than charity. I like to be friendly with everyone, doesn’t matter what they are, but they weren’t having any. Asked ’em to drop in for a drink anytime, I did. You’d’ve thought I was trying to lure ’em here for immoral purposes.’

  ‘Did any of you ever have a row with them?’

  ‘Not flipping likely. Look, mate, a row with them and we’d have been off the shoot as quick as a dose of salts.’

  ‘There are other shoots in Kent.’

  ‘Not owned by the Deckers, there ain’t.’ Abbotts drained his glass. ‘Not that I’m saying it was them that mattered. It was the shooting.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t care who I shoot or drink with, provided they’re friendly. Bill was different, though. D’you know, I told him, let ’em be. But he wouldn’t. Spent all his time aching to be invited there to dinner, with his missus. Ever met his missus?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind showing her my etchings and that’s straight. When I met her before they was married, I envied him. She’s got it all, I’m telling you. You name it, she’s got it twice over. She’s a lot younger than him, of course and that’s what makes him so jealous. Still, if she was my missus, I’d be jealous and no mucking about. I wouldn’t let her stroll about the woods with anyone else. Old Bill didn’t half get ripe when we teased him about Charlie.’

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘You know Charlie. Charlie Cranleigh.’

  ‘He ran a course with Mrs Rafferty?’

  ‘Our Charlie would run a course with anything that’s got two legs and long hair.’ Abbotts sniggered. ‘And sometimes I reckon he wouldn’t worry how long the hair was.’

  ‘D’you think he really ran a course with her?’

  ‘We all joked about it and Bill got really ripe. No sense of humour.’ Abbotts stood up and walked unsteadily across to the cocktail cabinet where he helped himself to another drink.

  Pawley looked up at the nearest photograph. He wondered whether Mrs Rafferty looked like that when she was being informal.

  Chapter Four

  Detective Sergeant Orr, recalled to duty from his first Saturday off in two months, drove to Henry Decker’s house, just behind Avonley High Street. The district was one of large, cumbersome Victoria houses, each in a fairly large garden. Some had been turned into flats and two were offices. Orr parked his car and crossed the pavement, went up the path to the stone steps and climbed them. He knocked on the front door. It was opened by a woman who regarded him with a disapproval that was automatic.

  ‘Is Mr Decker in, please?’

  She said he was and reluctantly showed Orr into a sitting-room which was so clean and tidy that he felt it was almost unsafe to move. After a last look round – to see if anything pinchable was lying about, he thought – she left. Henry Decker came in less than a minute later. He shook hands.

  ‘It’s just routine, sir,’ said Orr. ‘There’ll be an inquest and the coroner can be a real B if he reckons the police haven’t done their job.’

  Henry Decker went across to the blanked-off fireplace and switched on the electric fire in the grate. ‘It’s damned cold in here. Sorry about that, but we use one of the smaller rooms in winter. He stood with his back to the fire. ‘Now, how can I help you?’

  ‘You were out shooting today, sir?’

  ‘I was, thanks to my cousins. They very kindly ask me out during the season. Frankly, if they didn’t I wouldn’t see much sport. In the last few years the cost of shooting has risen so steeply you’ve got to be either landed gentry or in big business to be able to afford it.’

  ‘It’s like everything else, then, sir. Can you tell me where you were when Mr Rafferty was shot?’

  ‘I was number four gun.’

  ‘Could you see him where he was?’

  ‘Not so much as a hair of his head. The place where we stand is a bit like a jungle: it’s a mass of pollard ash and willow, bramble and bracken. Still, the birds go over there better than anywhere else and the dogs seem to manage a good pick-up.’

  ‘Would you know whether you heard him shoot at this place?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. When the shots are like hail in a hail storm, it’s impossible to pick out any particular one and know who fired it.’

  ‘People say he was always pretty careless with his gun?’

  Henry Decker moved away from the front of the fire and sat down in one of the arm-chairs. ‘Like everything else, times have changed. When I was a lad, gun drill was hammered into us by our elders and betters. If we’d dared point a gun anywhere near anyone, we’d have been slung straight off the shooting field and if we’d been fool enough to say it was safe because it wasn’t loaded, we’d have got a sharp clip round the ears to help us on the way. But people like Rafferty come to shooting late in life and never have the drill rammed home. I don’t suppose he ever realised that a gun could be just as lethal to a human as to a pheasant: not until it was too late.’

  ‘You’re not surprised he shot himself?’

  ‘Frankly, I was always scared I would be on the receiving end of the accident. Julian told him time and again that there were only two safe ways of carrying a gun, but he never learned and you’d see him trotting along with it at the trail. There was even one explosive occasion when he was seen to rest the butt on the ground and to lean on the muzzles.’

  ‘Something like he must have done today?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Just for the records, sir, what relation are you to the other Mr Deckers?’

  ‘I’m a cousin of the half blood. Our mutual grandfather married twice, the second time to a Bohemian lady, which clearly caused a flutter in the Decker dovecots. I like my ancestors and relations very much, but they do all suffer a certain streak of inherited puritanism. Family pride is one of those double edged weapons which sometimes cuts the wrong person.’

  ‘How would you say the guns got on together, sir?’

  ‘Is that a tactful way of asking how my cousins suffered the four Mustavabeers? I think you ought to ask the people concerned, Sergeant, don’t you?’

  Orr briefly smiled. ‘In my job, sir, we quickly develop thick skins and I’ve learned to poke and pry into everybody’s business without a blush.’

  Henry Decker was silent for some time as he stared at the electric fire. ‘There was never any overt unfriendliness,’ he finally said.

  ‘Nor, I suppose, was there any friendliness.’

  There was no answer.

  Orr stood up. ‘Thanks very much, sir. Sorry to have bothered you.’

  Henry Decker stood up. ‘I hope this thing won’t get inflated out of all proportion just because it’s the Decker family that’s involved?’

  ‘It won’t be inflated by us, sir.’

  ‘No, of course not. I was thinking of the papers.’

  ‘That’s one of the penalties of being who they are.’

  ‘Maybe. The trouble these days are that there are very few balancing advantages.’

  ‘I could maybe think of one or two, sir,’ said Orr.

  They left the room and Henry Decker led the way to the front door and opened it. On his way to the car, Orr looked up at the sky. It promised rain, with black-bellied clouds chasing one another. Maybe Henry Decker didn’t think there were any advantages to being the Deckers of
Hurstley Place, but he, Orr, could think of one right away: no work on Saturdays.

  *

  Julian Decker pushed the ready reckoner to one side and rubbed his eyes. He stared down at the sheets of paper, covered with calculations, on his desk. As far as he could estimate, the new government prices review meant that the farm income would fall by about five hundred pounds a year. That was a serious drop and one which it would be impossible to make up. Outsiders thought the Deckers were rolling in money, but the estate swallowed almost every penny of income: his father had for years neglected things so that now there was always more that needed to be done to buildings or land than ever there was money available. One of the worst features of let land was that the rent was at little more than a pre-war level.

  His mother came in. She crossed the room and stood by the fireplace, above which hung the illuminated address that her husband and she had been given on their marriage: fourteen tenants had the honour to assure Fawcett John deCourcy and Lydia Charlotte Decker of their warm wishes for all happiness and humbly hoped their present of a silver salver would be accepted. Around the walls hung other illuminated addresses, presented to the eldest male Deckers on their twenty-first birthdays and marriages. Probably, there would be no more. Tenants these days rarely had the honour to assure their landlords of anything but a claim for reduced rents, and illuminated addresses cost a great deal of money.

  ‘Are you coming in for coffee, dear?’ she said.

  He gathered up the papers. ‘This latest price review is going to knock us quite hard.’

  ‘I’m sure it is. As Dorothy said to me yesterday, the government thinks we’re criminals and ought to be punished. She says they’re going to rate agricultural land, but that’s impossible. What would happen to the cost of farming? Do come and have your coffee while it’s still hot, Julian, and try to stop Fawcett being so gloomy. He’s talking as if the world’s about to come to an end. It so reminds me of Wagner and his Götterdämmerung. It’s such nonsense.’