Death in the Coverts

by Roderic Jeffries

  ‘Have you, sir?’

  ‘Every half hour the A.C.C’s been on to me with a shower of questions. What’s your D.I doing in the Decker case? Is he doing anything? Is he asleep? What’s he discovered in France? What’s he doing now? Where is he now? Where, what, when, how, why? I tell you, Sam, I’m doing my nut.’

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t…’

  ‘Did you get anywhere? Have you got the answers?’

  ‘There was a P.M. The elder Decker did die from cerebral thrombosis and there’s no question of any other cause. There is, however, cause to suspect the date of death on the certificate.’

  ‘The date?’

  ‘Officially, he died on the fifteenth of June. That’s two days after the end of the five year period during which the estate had been in trust in order to escape death duties. If Decker had died more than two days before, the estate would have been liable for full death duties and that almost certainly would have meant the end of it.

  The family would have had to sell up.’

  ‘Good God!’ muttered Quincy.

  ‘My guess is that he died about two days before the day that marked the end of the five year period, or five days earlier than the certificate says. Julian Decker had been called to Plincennes where his father lay very ill in a hotel room. Both men knew only too well what a premature death would mean to the estate and to them the estate was greater than anything else. The doctor called in happened to be an elderly man, nearing retirement, with not much of a practice. He must have said the sick man must go into hospital. The Deckers refused. If the father were to die too soon, it would be catastrophe for the estate and rather than that they were prepared to do, or try, anything. Julian Decker must have explained the facts to the doctor and offered him a fortune for full co-operation if it became necessary. It did, and as a result the doctor was given the chance to go and live in the south, a chance that would never come a second time. He took it and hid the death for about five days.

  ‘In July, the doctor suddenly became possessed of a great deal of money. He left Plincennes and went to live in the south. The Deckers did not have to sell Hurstley Place. Then, recently, Rafferty discovered a hint of what had happened. He detested the Deckers and saw this as a chance to throw some of their arrogance back in their faces. He and Abbotts went to Plincennes and down to Cagnes-sur-Mer, where they saw Doctor Roget just before he died. Roget’s bank statements show that at this time he received a large sum of money. When they got back to this country, Rafferty knew that he could, at any moment, ruin the Decker estate. He cracked the whip and they had to prepare to dance. Just before they danced too long or too hard, they made one last effort to save everything. After all, Fawcett Decker had little to lose, but a great deal to protect.’

  ‘What proof have you?’

  ‘Proof?’ Doherty shook his head. ‘No legal proof.’

  ‘But can you prove the date of old man Decker’s death?’

  ‘There’s some circumstantial evidence. We know when the elder Decker was taken ill, when Julian Decker booked in at the hotel, when the doctor was called in, when the chambermaids were told on no account to enter the sick man’s room and disturb him, when the undertakers were called in and what they thought, when the doctor received a large sum of money from nowhere… But the kind of proof that a court of law deals in? No. No, sir, at the moment’s there’s no proof.’

  ‘Rafferty must have bribed the doctor to make a sworn statement. Find that.’

  ‘We’ve already searched and found nothing. Now we’ll search again, but… I don’t think we’ll find it.’

  ‘And if you don’t?’

  ‘Then I suppose one result will be that the death duty bastards won’t get their hooks into the estate.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Adams called the line of beaters to a halt and cursed them for getting out of order. One of the grammar school boys laughed, but immediately stopped when Adams walked over to him and cursed him, personally. After a while, Adams returned and gave the order to move forward once more and to keep a straight line or clear off home and watch the telly.

  Several birds flushed on the right and two came over Adams’s head. He looked up between the ash trees and watched them go. They were both cocks. By this stage of the season, the cocks had learnt what a shoot was all about and they tried either to scuttle round the beaters, with the cunning of a fox, or else to take wing early and escape out of the coverts at points where there were no guns. If too many had become wise, relatively few birds would go over the guns. This was King’s Beat. If the birds were thin over the guns he’d break the bones of every flaming beater who didn’t know that a straight line was one which didn’t bend.

  Two birds rose ahead and started to come back over him. He waved his hands and they turned, so that when they were clear of the trees they were heading for the guns. He heard two shots. That was better. With both previous shoots getting mucked up by the bloody fools killing themselves, this one had to be a success. It was useless having too many birds around near Xmas: they brought in the commercial poachers who’d beat up any keeper who dared to try to stop them. The modem poacher was a criminal, and a vicious one at that, not a hungry countryman.

  His Labrador was worrying a large patch of bramble. He went over and hammered the near edge with his stick: there was a violent movement on the far side as a cock pheasant struggled to disentangle itself. The Labrador saw what was happening and dashed round and the pheasant, in one last frantic and desperate effort, broke free from the brambles and took to the air. A few yards farther on, there was a large flush of birds. Adams shouted to the line to hold, but to keep the sticks tapping. Three of the boys tried to play the fool, but another shout stopped them. Why didn’t Jim keep some of them in order, he thought angrily?

  The firing became heavy. The birds were going nicely over the guns and not all in one cloud. He wondered what the new guest was like and whether he knew which end of the gun the shot came out of. It was a tragedy that the blokes who could shoot hadn’t any money and the blokes who had the money couldn’t shoot. No matter how understanding the boss, a season’s shooting was finally judged by the number of birds that had been killed and not by the number which had been shot at or got away.

  As the flush was over, he called the line forward. They pushed their way slowly through the rhododendrons. Now, the birds were getting up in large numbers and the firing at times became like a roll of thunder. Adams relaxed slightly as he slowly admitted to himself that things weren’t going too badly. Jim said he was a fool to worry himself sick but a real keeper had to worry.

  They reached the last few yards and some boys in the centre forgot all orders and rushed forward to the flushing wire. This parted the remaining birds so that they fell out to the right and the left, instead of going straight ahead, thereby depriving the central guns of their final sport. Adams cursed, but without much venom since it was too late for too much harm to have been done.

  He reached the flushing wire, lifted it, and stepped over. He pushed his way through the undergrowth and went round a couple of pollard willows which brought him to number 4 stand. The new man, Gross, was here. He’d been introduced to him after the first beat by Mr Julian. At first acquaintance, it seemed he wasn’t a bad sort, a long way removed from the departed but unlamented Abbotts or Rafferty.

  Gross spoke excitedly. ‘I’ve never before seen birds like that, coming so evenly. They are wonderfully presented.’

  ‘We did our best, sir,’ replied Adams, with just a trace of arrogant pride in his voice. It was right and proper that the gun should acknowledge the quality of this shoot. ‘How many did you get, sir?’

  ‘I’m afraid some of them were too good for me.’

  ‘They do come fairly high.’ Adams looked at the dead birds which were in a small pile by the stick.

  ‘I’ve twelve more to pick,’ said Gross.

  ‘Right, sir. I’ll tell one of the pickers-up.’

  Adams pushed his way
through the bracken and the brambles to the ride. The new chap not only knew his manners enough to say what a bloody fine job the keepers had done, but also was a fair to reasonable shot. Adams felt almost cheerful.

  He stood on the ride and looked to his right. With the wind as it was, numbers 2 and 3 would not have seen much of the shooting. One might have had some sport back on the flank, but after he’d come round the ride behind the other guns to take up position at his stand he would only have had the birds which broke across for Fage Wood.

  He looked to his left and his attention was taken by something on the edge of the ride, sticking out from behind the trunk of an old oak tree that had fallen during the summer gale. He called his dog to him and went up the ride. As he neared this object, he identified it as the pushing bar at the back of the wheel-chair. An icy fear settled in his normally unimaginative mind. He ran to the trunk and then stopped suddenly, his left hip almost touching the wood. The wheel-chair was slewed half off the side. Mr Fawcett lay sprawled across the far arm. He had been shot.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Williams made his final report on the following Tuesday. Doherty met him in the detective inspector’s room in Ashford police station.

  Williams took a cartridge case and a small plastic bag, filled with shot, from his suitcase and put them on the table by the desk. He looked across at Doherty. ‘Have you seen the pathologist’s report?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I agree with all the major findings. The dead man was shot at a range of about twelve feet and test firings with the suspect’s gun confirm these figures.’

  ‘Is there any possibility this time that it might have been an accident caused by the deceased’s gun?’

  ‘I’ve already said the range was twelve feet. Dammit, the dead man’s gun was found just in front of the wheel-chair and in any case it was broken and unloaded.’

  ‘I know, sir, but just for the records… When you say broken, you mean that the breach was in the open position?’

  ‘Of course I mean just that.’

  Doherty wrote in his note-book. Williams could huff and puff as much as he liked, but the evidence had to be noted down exactly, and comprehensively, for the lawyers.

  Williams put his hands in his pockets and paced up and down the room. ‘The gun was fired from a height of about four and a half feet, which is the height the muzzles of the gun would be at when at the shoulder of a man six foot tall and when aimed at the head of a man in a wheel-chair at a distance of twelve feet.’ Doherty made a rapid sketch and on this placed the figures he had just been given.

  Williams came to a halt by the table and picked up the empty cartridge case. ‘This is a sixteen bore cartridge which was loaded with number five shot. It was fired in an ejector gun. On the brass head are several distinctive marks caused by the ejector and by the firing-pin, marks which are exactly duplicated on test cartridges I have fired in the suspect’s gun. I have prepared the usual comparison-micrometre photographs. There can be absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the cartridge case in question was fired from the suspect’s gun.’ He put the cartridge case back on the table and picked up the plastic bag of shot. ‘Due to the centre of shot being fairly low and the spread being only a matter of an inch or so, we have been able to recover all the pellets. They form the load of a sixteen bore, number five, two and a half inch cartridge.’

  Williams put the plastic bag of shot next to the cartridge on the table. ‘One final point. As requested, immediately I had finished with the cartridge case, including the tests on the deposit, I sent it to the metallurgist, who returned it to me first thing this morning. Have you had his report yet?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He telephoned it through. He can say quite positively that that cartridge case was not lying out in the open for more than twelve hours.’

  Williams closed his suitcase. ‘I’m handing these two exhibits over to you and I’ll send the photographs along as soon as possible.’ He picked up the suitcase. ‘Will you be charging him with the other two killings as well?’

  ‘That’s one problem being left to the legal boys, sir.’ He crossed to the desk and picked up the cartridge case and bag of shot. Automatically, he made certain the identifying labels were properly made out and attached.

  ‘I hear you found the game counter as well?’ asked Williams.

  ‘It had fallen into the tum-up of Fawcett Decker’s trousers.’

  ‘Have you been able to check on the number of birds he’d shot up to that beat?’

  ‘The figures we have match. In any case, he doesn’t deny it’s his counter. What he claims is that he lost it sometime and couldn’t find it at the beginning of the day.’

  ‘If he lost it then, how does he explain how the right number of birds shot by him appears on the counter?’

  ‘He hasn’t yet found a reasonable explanation for that one.’

  Williams walked, with short jerky strides, over to the door. ‘What’s the estate worth?’

  ‘They say it’ll fetch half a million any day of the week.’

  ‘I wonder how many of us would shoot our brothers for half a million?’ Williams left the room and slammed the door shut behind himself.

  Doherty stared at the far wall. Money, in any form, always had tempted man and always would. But how many men were so rotten, so devoid of any degree of common humanity, that money would tempt them to commit fratricide? He felt deeply shocked that Julian Decker should have done this terrible thing: since he had met the Decker family his own feelings towards them had changed from amusement to respect. Now he found that he had been respecting a tradition that had grown rotten. Maybe all traditions became rotten after a while. He could have understood, and indeed had, the shooting of Rafferty and Abbotts – but there could be no understanding the crime of fratricide, committed for gain. Half a million pounds. Julian Decker had shot his brother for half a million pounds.

  *

  Julian sat on the bunk in the cell. On the opposite wall, the whitewash was peeling: in one patch where it had not done so, some previous prisoner had written a virulently obscene description of the law.

  He had been charged with the murder of Fawcett. It seemed an impossibility, until he looked round and saw the dirty walls, the dirty ceiling, and the steel door with its cyclopean peep-hole. How could any sane person believe he would murder Fawcett for the sake of inheriting the estate? How could any sane person believe he would so dishonour the family? He wasn’t the first Decker to be imprisoned, but other Deckers had done no more than commit treason in the days when every man who supported the defeated claimant to the throne was guilty of treason. He was imprisoned for one of the filthiest of crimes.

  He turned and hammered both fists against the wall of the cell at the back of the narrow bunk. Pain streaked up his arm and restored some sense to him. If he smashed his flesh against the wall for the next twenty-four hours, it would change nothing. He was charged with murder and he would be tried for murder: the murder of Fawcett Decker, his brother.

  He remembered how, when she first heard what was happening, Barbara had stared at him with an expression of blank horror so great that it had robbed her of all her beauty: he hoped to God he never saw such an expression again.

  He remembered the day of the shoot. She had met him on the ride as she came down it to take up position for picking-up in the Larch Plantation. At the time, she had wondered what he was doing there as the birds were already coming over. He’d told her how he’d had a shot at a fox which he was fairly certain was seriously wounded and that he’d left the stand to try and find the fox and put it out of its misery. She had accepted the explanation without question. But when she heard about how Fawcett had been shot from the ride just for one fraction of a second there had been a doubt in her mind. That doubt had gone immediately. She trusted him. But if even she could momentarily doubt him, what were the jury going to do? Oh God! part of his mind cried, how had it happened? Suppose… suppose he were found guilty? Surely, despite her tru
st, she must eventually begin to believe the lie. It wouldn’t be at the beginning, of course, but after a while the poison would act and the first doubt would creep into her mind. Doubt would multiply wildly, like a cancer. No matter how loyal she wanted to be, she could never stop that doubt from multiplying.

  He hadn’t killed Fawcett: nothing on earth would have made him lift a hand against his brother. Yet the evidence was there. No matter how loudly he cried his innocence, he knew the evidence was there. Fawcett had been murdered. He had been shot with a sixteen bore cartridge that had been fired from the gun he, Julian, was using. It was impossible, yet the expert evidence was beyond contradiction. His lawyers had told him again and again that he could do himself nothing but harm by trying to disprove this evidence. Yet it had to be disproved because it was impossible. He hadn’t fired a shot at the point where the empty cartridge case had been found.

  It was like his game counter that the police had found. That was impossible. He had said again and again to the lawyers that it was impossible and they had sighed wearily. The counter was small, no bigger than the old fashioned type of bicycle milometer, with a plunger. He used it to record how many birds he had shot. That Saturday, he had searched for it in the gun-room and had failed to find it. Later, the police had discovered it in Fawcett’s tum-up and it had recorded 36. The police had been clever. At first, they had merely asked him how many birds he had shot up to the beginning of King’s Beat. He had told them, 33. He’d also said that because he’d lost the counter, he’d had to keep a mental count. Then they asked him, so casually, about the counter. He told them that at the end of each shooting day he entered the number it recorded in his game-book, after which he reset the counter to zero. Did he always re-set the counter to zero? Always, he answered. And how many birds had he shot the previous shoot? 51. Only later did he discover how self-incriminating his answers had been. The police went on to question the other guns to find out how many birds they’d shot: no one had shot more than 20.