Death in the Coverts

by Roderic Jeffries

  The guns began to fire. The gun in the field was using both barrels every time and there was never a single shot: that meant he was missing every bird, at least with the first shot. The top gun in the woods was firing both barrels pretty regularly, but there was enough break between the first and second shot to show that the target was different birds: he must be either Mr Julian or Mr Fawcett, or perhaps Mr Henry Decker. Mr Henry Decker was a reasonable shot, streets ahead of any of the Mustavabeers, but not in the same class as Mr Julian or Mr Fawcett. You couldn’t expect him to be. He wasn’t a real Decker.

  There was a heavy flush of birds and Adams called the line to halt. Someone shouted ‘Fox.’ Adams quickened the rate of tapping of his stick and swore, as if his words would force the fox out forward before the guns. Foxes and pheasants didn’t mix and M.F.Hs were a public nuisance. He called the beaters on. Soon, there were two more heavy, but controlled, flushes. For once, even he had to admit that the birds were flying well, rising in order and not as one great cloud, going forward and then curling round to cross the field to the next wood. Two, 3 and 4 guns would have hot barrels. Before the last war it had always been double guns, but those were the days when five thousand birds were put into the woods.

  They reached the end of the beat and the hedge that bounded the field. Adams yelled at the beaters to drive the hedge itself and another half-dozen pheasants got up. The new gun was in the field and to Adam’s complete disgust he clean missed the two birds that went straight over his head. Two of the remaining four went down the field and curled over the guns, where one was shot, two curled immediately and were missed by number 3 and both brought down by number 2.

  Abbotts climbed over the hedge into the field. He picked up a dead hen and the gun in the field called out that there was a cock somewhere about twenty yards to the right. And that, thought Adams disgustedly, seemed to be the sum total of number l’s bag. He spat. He found and picked up the second bird and then went down the field and climbed back into the woods level with number 5 gun. Toby, Miss Harmsworth’s dog, flashed past him with a runner in his mouth. The dog wasn’t too bad on runners.

  He pushed through the bracken and came round one of the fir trees to number 5 stand. He hoped someone would give him news of a dead fox. Then, as he stepped round a chest high patch of brambles, he saw a body on the ground.

  Chapter Nine

  Lydia, Henry Decker, Barbara, Fawcett and Julian were in the red withdrawing-room. Lydia and Barbara sat on the large settee to the left of the fireplace and were hardly warmed by the roaring fire. Henry Decker stood between the fireplace and the right-hand wall, Julian stood by the table in front of the French windows. Fawcett had moved his wheel-chair across to the billiards table and was playing with snooker balls, throwing them along the table. One went with such force that it jumped up on hitting the cushion and landed on the floor with a crash that made them all start.

  ‘The fat bastard,’ said Fawcett. He aimed the last ball, the black, at the end pocket and threw it. It hit the cushion to the right of the pocket, rebounded, and rolled to a halt just beyond his reach. He dragged himself out of the chair to try to lean over and get the ball and lost his balance. He fell back on to the chair and from there to the floor.

  Julian hurried forward, but came to a stop as Fawcett angrily demanded to be left alone. Lydia shivered and looked away so that no one should see the expression on her face.

  After a while, Julian spoke. ‘It’s an impossible coincidence.’

  Fawcett, using the immense strength in his arms and shoulders, pulled himself up

  the side of the chair and swung himself into it.

  ‘He… he might have had an accident,’ suggested Barbara.

  ‘Sheer wishful thinking,’ said Fawcett. ‘The blind human reluctance to face up to the facts if they’re nasty. Julian’s quite right: the coincidence is impossible. Abbotts was murdered. And so, I congratulate the murderer. After Rafferty, he’s the man I’d have next nominated for an early death.’

  ‘Please don’t speak like that, Fawcett,’ said Lydia.

  ‘Why not? I never did believe in the overworked tag, de mortuis nil nisi bonum. Death doesn’t recklessly sprinkle sanctity over the corpse. Abbotts was fat and oily. He lived on beer, lavatory stories, and the boozy envy of anyone he could persuade to drink with him. Death hasn’t turned him into a saint.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Henry Decker, ‘but it’s probably best not to underline the fact too hard.’

  ‘Not so, Cousin?’

  ‘Not so, Cousin.’

  ‘Surely you’re not going to tell me that it’s the evil and not the good which gets buried with the man?’ Fawcett spoke more quietly. He had always respected Henry Decker for a man with a lot of common-sense – even if that common-sense had forsaken him at the time of his marriage so that he had married a shrew.

  ‘I’m concerned with the living. If Abbotts was murdered, someone murdered him.’

  ‘Your logic is quite unassailable.’

  ‘The police will be investigating. They might misunderstand you and take some of the things you say in the wrong light.’

  ‘Would that matter? Suppose I killed Abbotts: shot him in his fat, stupid, blubbery head. I’m arrested, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Where would they imprison me, since I am only complete when with my wheelchair? And how soon will my body make a mockery of their sentence?’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Lydia, her voice high.

  ‘Please, please don’t talk like that,’ pleaded Barbara.

  As Fawcett looked at Barbara, the harsh lines about his mouth eased. ‘I’m sorry, my child. I was completely forgetting my manners. Will you forgive your contrite future brother-in-law?’

  She nodded her head, but uncertainly, plainly not knowing whether Fawcett was mocking her, or not.

  ‘I know it was just an accident,’ said Lydia. ‘The most astonishing coincidences happen every day. A friend of mine was out riding and the horse put its foot down a rabbit hole and pitched her off. She broke two of her left ribs. Now who’d believe that?’

  ‘Where’s the coincidence?’ asked Fawcett.

  ‘That it could happen to two friends of mine in one week.’

  ‘You’ve only mentioned one set of broken ribs, Mother.’

  ‘Nonsense. The trouble with you, Fawcett, is that you won’t listen. Just like your father. I used to tell him something and I’d know very well he wasn’t listening so I’d question him about what I’d just said and quite often he couldn’t answer even a single question. Barbara, dear, that reminds me. I’ve heard of a wonderful firm for your wedding reception. They do absolutely everything and even send polite congratulatory telegrams if you think you may not get enough. They’re a little bit expensive, but I’m sure your father won’t be worried by that. I wrote their name down on a piece of paper and put the paper somewhere safe, but just for the moment I’ve forgotten where. As soon as I find it, I’ll give it to you.’

  ‘The detective has asked us all to hang around so that he can have a word with us,’ said Julian.

  ‘Julian,’ snapped Lydia, ‘you’re more annoying than ever. You know very well I was trying to change the conversation.’

  ‘It’s a little difficult to forget what’s just happened.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how difficult, you’ve got to try. It’s like the story of the Egyptian who was promised wealth to make him the richest man in the world provided he did not think of fish for an hour. Of course, being an Egyptian he immediately thought of fish. They’re a feckless race. When your father and I visited the country, we had a terrible job trying to find some honest and industrious boys.’

  ‘Did you hear him have any shots, Henry?’ asked Julian.

  Lydia stood up. ‘I’m going to go and make some coffee and by the time I come back I hope you’ll all have found the manners not to discuss the matter for another second.’ She quickly walked out of the room.

  Fawcett propelled his ch
air across from the billiards table to the settee. ‘How long are we supposed to wait on the detective’s pleasure?’

  No one answered him. He put the same question to Henry Decker that Julian had done earlier. ‘Did you hear Abbotts fire a single shot?’

  ‘Damned if I can really say. You know what it’s like once the birds are coming: you’re concentrating so hard on them that you’re not really conscious of anything or anybody else.’

  ‘What about before the birds really started coming?’

  ‘There were several odd shots, weren’t there? Those high pigeons came over and all departed unscathed. They must have had a few shots fired at them and I’d have said Abbotts had his fair share, but it could have been Wade.’

  ‘Is Abbotts married?’ asked Barbara.

  ‘No,’ replied Julian. ‘He was the eternal jolly bachelor, with an inexhaustible fund of tales about nights out with the girls.’

  ‘But why should anyone want to shoot him?’

  ‘God knows.’ Rafferty and Abbotts, thought Julian. The first death might or might not have been part of a pattern, but the second death blueprinted that pattern. How much were the police going to find out this time? Now they knew it must be murder, their investigations would be far more intensive, so could they fail to discover the truth? Was it to be good-bye to Hurstley Place, to this huge room with moulded plaster ceiling, to the portraits of long dead Deckers with their long, lean faces? He looked across the room at his brother. Why in the name of hell hadn’t Fawcett realised this? he thought wildly.

  *

  Doherty walked slowly down the field, ten feet from the trees. Behind those trees, grown to make the birds lift high, were the stands, amongst the same kind of undergrowth as King’s Beat. Adams had said what a strange coincidence it was that the deaths had taken place at the only two beats where the guns stood amongst so much covert. Coincidence nothing. The killer had used these two beats because they were the only two where he could move unseen from stand to stand.

  The new gun, Lenton, had been in the field and one of the stops had been able to check that Lenton had. never moved away from his stand. He was the only one who could be eliminated as a suspect.

  Doherty came to a halt by the wooden gate and lit a cigarette. Here he was, thinking about eliminating suspects before the death could be named murder. Abbotts was sprawled on the ground, very much as Rafferty had been. The ground around his head was soaked in blood. His gun, a best London sidelock ejector with superb engraving, had pitched forward in a similar manner to Rafferty’s. So just suppose the pathologist said this could have been an accident and the gun expert said this could have been an accident – what then? Two deaths like these could not be accidents – the odds against such a coincidence were far too high – but how did you prove they were murders if you had no more evidence to use than with Rafferty’s death?

  Doherty shook his head. He was stupid to meet trouble half-way and in any case although one murder might be perfect, two almost certainly couldn’t be. Then he thought of all the well-known cases of multiple murder where it was only the fifth, sixth, even tenth murder before the murderer made his first detectable mistake.

  He climbed over the gate at the hinge end, careful not to put any weight on the broken top bar, and walked a short way along the main ride to the smaller ride which wound through the undergrowth and around trees from which the guns went to their stands.

  At number 5 stand, photographs had been taken, sketches had been made, the doctor had gone, the gun had been taken to Ashford, the body had been carried away in a Land-Rover to the plain undertaker’s van, and now only some white tape, pegged in the shape of the body, marked what had happened.

  One of the searching constables saw him and came over to him. ‘Sir.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve found what could be a track, only it’s faint.’

  Doherty was shown the track which was at the end of the path that went from the ride to the stand. The constable had been only too correct when he said it was faint; it was very faint.

  Doherty called for something to kneel on. When his eyes were close to the earth, he could make out the rough shape of the short, shallow depression and he thought that it could have been made by the solid tyre of a wheel-chair. There was little value in this track because it was so indistinct, yet an effort must be made to photograph and then possibly lift an impression of it. There was one chance in a hundred of lifting an impression and one in ten thousand that some distinguishing feature would be discovered.

  He stood up and dusted his knees free of the dust that had been on the sacking. He sent the constable off to find Detective Sergeant Orr and tell him to come along and do what he could with the track, then he left and returned to the ride. Fawcett Decker had been at number 7 stand, the one nearest the ride at the bottom of the wood and close to the broken wooden gate. Wade had been at number 6. Doherty walked down the ride and up the path to number 6 stand. In the small clearing was a stick with its red marker in the top and on the ground were a large number of empty cartridges. He picked up a handful. All were Westley-Richards and all were number 6V2 shot. He turned round. From here, the ride was not visible and a person coming along could easily conceal himself by stooping – or by being in a wheel-chair. Even if someone had walked along upright, Wade would probably have missed him. Wade would have been concentrating on the birds.

  Doherty returned to the ride and went down it, past number 7 stand, to the gate. Detective Sergeant Orr reached the gate, from the opposite direction, at the same moment. He lifted his photographic equipment over the gate. ‘I was just on my way home,’ he said, ‘this being a Saturday.’

  ‘And now you’re not. That’s what makes for a tough life.’

  ‘It’s that all right.’

  ‘Just don’t weaken.’

  Orr climbed over the gate.

  ‘See what you can do with the imprint in the ground,’ said Doherty. ‘It’ll need a miracle to make anything of it, so arrange a miracle.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m hot on miracles on a Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘It’s a tough life,’ replied Doherty, for the second time. After Orr had gone up the ride, he leaned against the gate and lit a cigarette. With cigarettes at their present astronomical price, he couldn’t afford to smoke, but a case like the present one would make a chain smoker out of anyone.

  What would the pathologist and gun expert have to say? Would they be able to prove this a murder?

  *

  Doherty drove up to Hurstley Place and climbed out of his car. The late afternoon sky was solid with cloud which from time to time shed showers of sleet. He looked up at the house and saw it now not as an ugly pile of bricks and mortar, but as a house strong enough to endure through the ages.

  He knocked on the door and stood below the almost frightening heraldic beast carved in the stone. A woman opened the door and he correctly identified her as the wife of the butler-cum-handyman. She was plump, almost fat, had a very dark complexion, and her jet black hair was tied back severely into a bun. He asked if he could speak to Mr Fawcett Decker. She left him in the hall and went off in the direction of the drawing-rooms.

  He corrected his thoughts. Withdrawing-rooms. He was faintly surprised to discover that it now seemed right and natural that here the ancient name for the rooms should have been maintained in face of all common usage. The Deckers did not need to bother about common usage.

  Lydia Decker came into the hall. She was wearing a tweed suit that was clearly all but worn out. In direct contrast, she had round her neck a double row of pearls, beautifully matched and graded, which Doherty did not doubt were natural pearls and worth a fortune.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Doherty. There, I’ve remembered your name, haven’t I?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Decker, you have.’

  ‘I know my memory isn’t as bad as some people will try to make out. Only two weeks ago…’

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but is Mr Fawcett Decker in?’


  She ignored the question. ‘You’ve just reminded me. I’ve been searching the records, Mr Doherty, and Peverill Decker refused to shoot his pistol or order a charge near Castlereagh. Is that where your grandfather would have joined the uprising?’

  ‘They used to live in County Galway.’

  ‘The very next county. Obviously, the famine had sent them wandering in a desperate search for food. I feel convinced now that your ancestors and mine faced each other: if you will allow that they are my ancestors – as I told you, the Awcotts are distinctly related to the Deckers. Who was the poet who said that each meeting is simply the tangible proof of the great tapestry of life into which we are all woven?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t…’

  ‘Or was it one of those tiresome gentlemen who used to write aphorisms and epigrams in order to appear in the reference books of quotations? I’m convinced that that odious Mr Johnson wouldn’t even say good morning until he was satisfied Boswell was ready to start writing. Epigrams always get so dusty. There was an Amelia Decker who kept a diary in the middle of the eighteenth century and it would have been a very interesting record had she not insisted on larding every other sentence with a sanctimonious epigram.’

  ‘Can I…’

  ‘I’m certain a diary should be short and sharp and preferably scandalous. Pepys’s diary really is the perfect example. The man must have been a little monster, but…’

  ‘Mrs Decker, I’m afraid it’s no good.’

  ‘No good?’ she repeated, in surprise.

  ‘I have to speak to Mr Fawcett Decker.’

  ‘Oh!’ She fingered her pearls. ‘You’re a very insistent man.’

  ‘I’m afraid that it’s my job to be.’

  ‘It’s the Irish blood in you. The Irish have deliberately projected the popular conception of their character as totally irresponsible as a kind of smoke-screen. In reality, they’re nothing of the sort…’

  ‘Is he in?’