Death on the Downs

by Simon Brett

  Cowed, Carole could do nothing but what he wanted. She dropped to her knees and then rolled sideways into the rank darkness.

  She could still feel the tension on the rope, and waited for him to follow her in and truss her up again. He’d tie her legs, and shackle her once again to the tree root. And that was the position in which she would stay, for the rest of her life. Which wouldn’t be very long.

  Then one day perhaps another walker, wandering off the beaten track across the Downs, would stumble on her catacomb. And another set of female bones would be found to feed the mills of gossip and conjecture that ground endlessly in the village of Weldisham.

  Carole Seddon had often thought her life was unimportant. Never till that moment had it felt so essential. She dreamed of being back in a hot bath at High Tor, and she knew how unlikely that dream was ever to be realized.

  She lay on the slimy floor, breathing the chill, dank air, waiting for her murderer to come into the cave after her.

  There was a moment of stillness, then a shout, and a yank on the rope that almost pulled her arms from their sockets. She was aware of herself screaming.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Suddenly, mercifully, the rope was released.

  There were sounds of confusion, shouting, possibly fighting, from outside. Then the entrance to the cave was once again darkened by a human body.

  And Carole heard the most welcome sound of her life. It was the anxious voice of Ted Crisp asking, ‘Are you all right, Carole? I’ll kill the bastard if he’s hurt you.’

  She felt Ted’s strong arms helping her out and, once she was upright, fell into them. His body felt huge and wonderfully solid.

  It was still just light at the foot of the chalk cliff. Carole took in Nick, holding a tyre iron, guarding the Land Rover to prevent Brian Helling’s escape by that route. Beside him was a sight almost as welcome as Ted Crisp – Jude.

  But Jude was looking upwards with fear in her eyes and there was shouting from above them.

  Carole, still holding Ted Crisp’s hand, moved backwards to see what was going on at the top of the cliff.

  Brian Helling had scurried up a narrow diagonal ridge across the chalk face. An escape route from Fort Pittsburgh that they’d found in their childhood games. But, at the top of the cliff, knowing the way Brian would come, stood Lennie Baylis.

  The sergeant was much heavier in build than his opponent, who looked effete and slightly ridiculous in his trademark beret and black coat. The leather was scored with white chalk marks where Brian had scrambled against the cliff.

  They faced each other for a moment in silence, then Brian Helling’s escape was cut short as Lennie Baylis’s heavy body slammed into him. For a moment it looked as though the lighter man had lost his balance and would fall back down the chalk. But somehow he managed to grab hold of his assailant and, watched with appalled fascination by the four below, the two bodies grappled together on the cliff top, re-creating a long-remembered childhood conflict.

  There was a sound like a gasp and, gradually, the bodies separated. As in slow motion, one slipped away from the other. Then, gathering momentum, the body slithered down the face of the cliff, leaving a livid smear of red on the discoloured chalk.

  At the top, with bloodied knife in hand and an expression of triumph on his face, stood Brian Helling.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Jude had rung the police on her mobile. Brian Helling offered no resistance when Ted Crisp tied him up with the orange nylon rope. The murder of Lennie Baylis seemed to have calmed him down, perhaps provided a resolution to emotions that had tortured him throughout his life.

  The police arrived in a convoy of Range Rovers. They were very solicitous, and a female officer looked after Carole. Respectful of the state she was in, they kept their questioning to a minimum and, once reassured that Brian Helling hadn’t touched her sexually and that she really did feel all right, allowed her to fulfil her fantasy of ending up that night in a hot bath back at High Tor.

  There would be more questions later, but, they implied, not until Carole felt ready to answer them.

  Jude went back with Carole, but neither felt like talking. Carole promised Jude she’d ring through if she woke in the night feeling bad, but she didn’t think it’d happen. The emotions of the previous twenty-four hours had left her so drained she didn’t feel anything, except extraordinarily tired. She could sleep for a week.

  The police were back to Carole earlier than she’d expected. The very next morning, in fact. But her visitors weren’t from the teams investigating the three Weldisham murders. They comprised an assistant chief constable, resplendent in his uniform, and a female detective constable in designer plain clothes.

  They were polite, but went straight to the purpose of their visit. ‘Mrs Seddon,’ said the assistant chief constable, ‘we’re here in connection with the late Detective Sergeant Baylis.’

  ‘Yes. It must be dreadful for his family.’

  ‘Of course.’ He dismissed the family with a perfunctory wave of his hand. ‘I need to understand, Mrs Seddon, how much you knew about Detective Sergeant Baylis.’

  ‘Not a lot. I met him first a few weeks back. He was called out to Weldisham when I reported my discovery of the bones in South Welling Barn.’

  ‘And you saw him after that occasion?’

  ‘Yes, once or twice. He encouraged me to let him know how my thoughts were going about the . . . well, I suppose I have to call it the “case”. He seemed very concerned that I should keep him up to date with anything I’d observed round the village.’

  ‘Didn’t you think that was odd?’

  ‘Well, I suppose a bit . . . He did seem to take a very personal interest in the case.’

  A look passed between the assistant chief constable and his sergeant. It seemed to confirm some conjecture that they’d shared before the meeting.

  ‘Did Detective Sergeant Baylis say anything to you about drugs, Mrs Seddon?’

  Some instinctive caution made Carole decide to forget the conversation that she had overheard at Fort Pittsburgh. ‘Well . . . He did say that Brian Helling had got involved with drugs . . . that Brian owed a lot of money to some men in Brighton.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘No.’

  Her answer seemed to satisfy the assistant chief constable. ‘Mrs Seddon, I must request your complete confidentiality in this matter. Please don’t talk about it to anyone, least of all the press. The fact is that Detective Sergeant Baylis had been under internal police investigation for some time . . .’

  ‘About drugs?’

  ‘Yes. Baylis used to be based in Brighton and there were allegations that he . . . got rather more friendly than he should with certain club owners . . . That he from time to time turned a blind eye to deals that . . . As I say, these were only allegations, which were in the process of being investigated when he died . . .’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Precisely. Now what will happen to that investigation in these new circumstances . . . Well, who can say at this point? Obviously, if the investigation is wound up, that will save Sergeant Baylis’s family a good deal of suffering . . .’

  Might also save you a good deal of adverse publicity, thought Carole.

  ‘As yet, as I say, no decisions have been taken about the inquiry, but, because of its sensitive nature, I hope I can rely on your . . . absolute discretion.’

  ‘Of course.’ Carole’s cases were solved. She had no interest in the unsavoury past deeds of the late Detective Sergeant Baylis.

  One thing she did wonder, though . . . Had Lennie Baylis been tempted to supplement his income so that he could one day afford a property in Weldisham? Was he another wistful local boy, like Harry Grant, who wanted to demonstrate his success by moving back into the village where he had grown up?

  ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Seddon. We appreciate your cooperation. Now there’s someone else we have to see nearby . . . What was the address, Sergeant?’

&nb
sp; A rustle of papers consulted. ‘Woodside Cottage.’

  ‘It’s right next door.’

  So Jude was going to get the same request to keep her mouth shut.

  Chapter Fifty

  The news that Graham Forbes had had a second stroke came to Jude via Gillie Lutteridge. As soon as she heard, she told Carole and they agreed she should ring his wife.

  On the phone Irene Forbes sounded as poised and serene as ever. She gracefully accepted Carole’s commiserations and hopes for her husband’s speedy recovery. Graham was in a private hospital in Chichester. There hadn’t been much change in his condition since the second stroke, but the consultant was optimistic about his chances for at least a partial recovery.

  Irene was taken aback and seemed poised to say no when Carole asked if she could go to the hospital to visit. ‘I would like to go with my friend Jude.’

  ‘Jude . . .’

  ‘The blonde woman who—’

  ‘Yes. I know who you mean.’ There was a silence, during which perhaps Irene Forbes was reliving her conversation with Jude. ‘Very well, you’d better visit him. But go on your own. Graham hasn’t met Jude. He can’t cope with anyone new at the moment. Go before three o’clock today. I will be going to the hospital at three. He will be busy then.’

  It was not easy to hear what Graham Forbes said. The stroke had pulled his face sideways, like a poster misapplied to a wall. Saliva dripped from the useless edge of his mouth.

  But if Carole concentrated, she could understand him.

  His thin body looked too long for the hospital bed in which it was coiled. He’d been prepared for her arrival, however. Presumably Irene had rung through and told him the visitor was on her way. Even in his debilitated state, Graham Forbes managed a courteous greeting.

  Then he gasped out the words, ‘Have you come to ask me if I’m sorry? Do you want me to say I regret what I did?’

  ‘No,’ said Carole.

  ‘Just as well. Because I’ll never say it. I can’t say what I don’t mean. I had twenty-eight years of misery married to Sheila, thirteen years of bliss living with Irene. I’m afraid, for me, those facts answer all the moral arguments.’

  ‘“Thou shalt not kill”?’

  His thin shoulders managed a shrug. ‘That one too. Even in the days when I went along with the observances of organized religion, I never believed any of it. We have to make our own moral values, according to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. There’s no absolute right or wrong. And we’re only here once.’ There was a cough that could have been a chuckle. ‘Not that I’m here for a lot longer.’

  ‘Can you just . . . would you mind . . . for my personal satisfaction . . . telling me if what I’ve worked out about what happened is actually right?’

  ‘Oh, Carole, you been playing amateur detectives, have you?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘All right, you spell out how you think the master criminal wove his evil schemes, and I’ll tell you where you go wrong.’

  So Carole did as she was told. Occasionally, Graham Forbes nodded, though she couldn’t tell whether it was in appreciation of her cleverness or his own.

  When she got to the events of Thursday 15 October, the night of the Great Storm, he couldn’t help himself from taking up the narrative. ‘I remember how miserable I’d been that evening, stuck in the house with a woman I had hated through most of our marriage, knowing that – if I didn’t put my plan into action – in a few days I’d be back in KL and I’d see Irene again, and I wouldn’t be bringing what I’d promised her.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Myself. Free. I’d met Irene two years before. We both knew what we felt for each other, but she was very . . . proper. Had been brought up to do the right thing. Strange, really, Chinese girl, raised as an Anglican in Malaysia. Anyway, she made her rules clear. I was married. Nothing could happen to our relationship while I remained married. She didn’t deny she loved me, but . . . Rather quaint and old-fashioned in these cynical days, isn’t it?

  ‘Anyway, before I left KL for that leave, I promised Irene I’d talk to Sheila about getting a divorce. And I did. Nothing. She wouldn’t give an inch. Sheila wasn’t going to give up her status as the memsahib out East, or as the Lady Bountiful back in Sussex. Since passion had never played any part in her life, she had no sympathy for what I was going through. So . . .’

  He paused, exhausted by his confession.

  ‘But you’d planned it,’ Carole prompted gently. ‘To have time for Pauline to get her passport, you must have planned it.’

  ‘Yes, I planned it, but I still didn’t know whether I could carry it out. That was why I was so depressed the evening before the storm . . . because I thought I didn’t have the guts . . . or I was too decent . . . too British . . . that I’d just accept my lot in life . . . and lose Irene.’

  ‘When had you worked out your plan?’

  ‘Soon after we came back for the beginning of that leave. Pauline was cleaning here one morning, and Sheila was being her usual hyper-critical self, bawling the woman out for not dusting on top of the picture rails or something, and they had a row. Suddenly, as the two of them stood toe to toe, shouting at each other, I realized how incredibly alike they looked. Once that seed was planted, the rest of the details fell into place.’

  ‘But you still didn’t think you’d summon up the nerve to carry it out?’

  ‘No. I have the storm to thank for the fact that I did.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The Great Storm started late the Thursday evening and got worse in the small hours. I remember, you could hear the wind getting louder and louder. And then gates began banging, windows rattling, dustbins being blown over, branches torn off trees. Well, all this noise . . .’ He smiled a lopsided smile. ‘It had the nerve to wake Sheila up. Never a good idea, as I’d discovered very early in our married life.

  ‘And, of course, being Sheila, when something she didn’t want to happen happened, she had to find someone to blame for it. And there, as ever, in the single bed beside hers, was me.

  ‘So she starts in at me. Why hadn’t I fixed the gates more securely? Any husband worth his salt would have had Warren Lodge’s loose windows replaced. Why was I so incompetent? It was all my fault.

  ‘And that was it. I didn’t mind being blamed for things that I might possibly have done or failed to do, but to be blamed for freaks in the weather . . .

  ‘In one movement I rolled out of bed, put my hands around her throat and squeezed harder than I’d ever squeezed anything in my entire life . . .

  Carole let the silence ride, till he broke it with a little choke of laughter.

  ‘Funny. The killing wasn’t premeditated. But unavoidable. At the moment I did it, I couldn’t have done anything else to save my life.’ He became aware of what he’d said. ‘Or indeed to save hers.

  ‘I stayed still in the bedroom for a some time, while the storm roared and crashed around outside the house. And then, slowly, I realized it had all been meant. My plan had been set up. I’d only lacked the nerve for the vital moment of murder. The storm had given me that nerve.

  ‘Unlike Irene, I don’t have any religious faith. But I believe that moment was orchestrated for me by some kind of higher power.’

  ‘Be a strange kind of higher power that facilitates murder.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it, Carole. Read some history. Start counting up the number of wars that have been started for reasons of religion.’

  ‘Maybe. What happened then, Graham?’

  ‘I was very organized. I wrapped Sheila’s body in a sheet, carried it down to the barn. With the way the storm was still raging, I was in no danger of anyone seeing me.’

  ‘But weren’t you in danger of people going into the barn and finding the grave? Everyone in the village seems to use the place as a rubbish tip.’

  ‘They do now. But it’s only been happening the last five years or so. One person chucked in a fridge and . . . suddenly everyone
was doing it. A nasty element has moved into the village recently, you know.’ The was a slight edge of parody in his voice, sending up some of the crustier members of the Village Committee. He shrugged and turned his faded brown eyes on to Carole. ‘And do you know, very soon after Sheila had died, I forgot about it. I could put it from my mind. My life was so much better, so much more fulfilling, that her death was something that was clearly meant to happen.’ ‘You weren’t worried?’ ‘Not after the first few days, no.’ ‘And you didn’t tell Irene what you’d done?’ ‘No. That was bad of me perhaps. When I got back to KL after . . .’ He seemed amused as he thought of the word. ‘After the murder . . . I didn’t contact her for a week or so. Then, when I did, I gave her the story about Sheila having gone off with another man. Irene was so delighted to hear I was finally unencumbered that she didn’t question me about the details.’

  ‘So your life together has been based on a lie?’ ‘Don’t go all po-faced on me, Carole. It doesn’t suit you.’

  She was appropriately contrite, before continuing, ‘But when you heard I’d found the bones in South Welling Barn, didn’t that worry you?’

  ‘No. Never occurred to me they might be Sheila’s.’ ‘Hadn’t Brian Helling already made an approach to blackmail you?’

  ‘No. I’d been out when he called. He spoke to Irene and she . . . kept it to herself.’ He chuckled. ‘Proverbially inscrutable, the Chinese.’

  A lot of contradictory details explained themselves in Carole’s mind – why Graham had seemed so insouciant when she first saw him in the Hare and Hounds, why Irene had been weeping in St Michael and All Angels. But another detail still needed clarification. ‘So you didn’t know they were Sheila’s bones when you invited me to dinner?’

  ‘Good lord, no.’

  ‘Then why did you invite me?’

  ‘I told you. Someone had dropped out. You seemed intelligent, literate . . . you did the Times crossword . . .’

  So there had been nothing sinister about the invitation. Carole thought ruefully of the time she had wasted trying to work out the hidden agenda in Graham’s gesture.