Grave Concerns

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘You believed her then?’ Maggs blurted. ‘About Willard and Sarah?’

  ‘A dying woman wouldn’t lie,’ maintained Hubert.

  ‘She would,’ said Drew. ‘This particular dying woman would. You see – she was never any good at taking responsibility for her own actions. It was second nature for her to blame other people. I think she would have been capable of doing it right to the end.’

  Both the Graingers were looking at him, the faintest stirring of hope in their eyes.

  ‘I really think she lied to you,’ Drew spelt it out to them. ‘And I think your son-in-law could convince you if you asked him.’

  ‘Simon?’ queried Mildred. ‘We could never mention it to Simon.’

  ‘Believe me,’ Drew persisted. ‘I’m sure he could set your mind at rest. He was at college with Sarah – right?’ Mildred nodded. ‘So he’d be very likely to know about it if Willard was seducing female students. In Gwen’s day – even Genevieve’s – such a thing might have gone unremarked, which is probably why Gwen thought it was a plausible story. But things are very different now. The authorities are always very watchful for inappropriate relationships of that sort.’

  ‘Right!’ Maggs endorsed. ‘She made the whole thing up. You can see that, can’t you?’

  ‘Even if you’re right, we still killed her. We’re still murderers,’ mumbled Hubert.

  ‘That’s true.’ Drew clasped his hands together, trying to get a grip on all the new elements he had to absorb. ‘But try not to be too hard on yourselves. That was a vicious thing she did, right at the end – poisoning your minds against your daughter.’

  ‘Especially as she’d already tried to turn us against Simon,’ said Hubert slowly. ‘It was another attempt at the same sort of thing. You know – I think you’re right.’ He looked at his wife. ‘Don’t you think so, dear?’

  Mildred nodded hesitantly. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But – Sarah …’

  Drew faced her earnestly. ‘Sarah died because she was nothing worse than a hot-headed girl unlucky enough to talk to the wrong person about her views during a holiday she’d wanted for a long time. Simon went too far when he accused Gwen of deliberately causing his wife’s death. Look – there’s a man called Trevor Goldsworthy, a friend of Gwen’s. If we can find him again, he’ll tell you more of the background. Admittedly he was fond of Gwen, but he seems well aware of her failings, too.’

  ‘She did kill Nathan,’ Maggs said quietly. ‘We should remember that.’

  Drew suddenly recalled the word Free by Sarah’s name on Gwen’s list of the people in her tour group. Was that because Sarah was almost family, or because there was blackmail taking place? He shook the question away; it didn’t matter any more, either way.

  Hubert Grainger turned a paternal smile on Maggs. ‘Why, dear? Do you think it makes it better that Mildred and I killed her, if she was a bad person? That’s a kind thought, but I’m afraid—’

  ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right,’ supplied Mildred.

  ‘But we’ll never know precisely why she killed him, or how,’ concluded Drew. ‘Genevieve and Dr Jarvis both believe it was a selfish wish to escape the burden of his care. But neither of them mentioned his engagement to Sarah. I suppose it is possible that she was just so possessive she couldn’t bear to let Sarah have him, but it doesn’t ring true to me.’

  All four remained silent, as they contemplated the many twists and turns in the story. Then Mildred spoke. ‘You know, I don’t think she was really sorry to die. I realise it sounds like an excuse, but I really believe she was glad in the end. She was getting old and her life obviously wasn’t very much fun any more.’

  Hubert agreed. ‘She was at the end of her tether.’

  Drew thought of the soulless little bedsit, the estrangement from her family, the damage done to her travel business by the Saqqara shooting. Combined with the guilt and fear that Dr Jarvis had described, and the sad figure of Trevor, the picture emerged of a woman with nowhere to go but down.

  ‘The police thought it was the body of a vagrant,’ he said. ‘Maybe, when it comes to it, they weren’t so far wrong after all.’

  Maggs stirred restlessly. But Mildred hadn’t finished.

  ‘We put her in one of my dresses,’ she said. ‘Then we waited a whole day while we tried to think what to do with her. The longest Sunday of our lives it was. The local paper had reported on your field, how you’d got planning permission for an alternative burial ground, with trees and flowers and everything natural – and we thought it seemed right for her. It made what we’d done seem less bad, somehow. If we gave her a proper burial, I mean. She was very light to carry. And there wasn’t anybody about. I sat in the car and Hubert carried her up the field. He’s strong as an ox, you know. It only took him an hour to dig a grave and lay her in it.’

  ‘Were you scared when the train stopped?’ Maggs asked Hubert. ‘You must have known people could see you.’

  The Graingers exchanged bewildered glances. ‘There wasn’t any train,’ Hubert said. ‘We waited until past midnight – long after the trains stop running.’

  ‘And it was Sunday the thirteenth, not Saturday the twelfth,’ said Drew slowly. ‘And there was only one of you.’ He stared wildly at Maggs. ‘Caroline Kennett didn’t see it after all. Different field, different day.’

  Maggs stared back. ‘So what did she see?’

  ‘Somebody burying a sheep, or a cow they knew had BSE,’ Drew guessed. ‘Breaking regulations to save themselves a lot of bother. Happens all the time.’ So much for coincidence, he muttered to himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It was with difficulty that Drew quelled his triumph and prepared for the funeral of Vicky Gardner’s mother, the next day. He had sat with Maggs and Karen late into the previous evening, discussing the death of Gwen Absolon and all its implications. ‘The dog did it,’ said Karen, unambiguously. ‘And the dog is dead. No more to be done.’

  ‘Not true, I’m afraid,’ said Drew. ‘I’m going to the police as soon as I’ve done the funeral, and the Graingers are coming with me. They want to. They can’t go on as they are. Especially not now it’s all come out. In one way, of course, they’re relieved. At least their daughter has been restored in their eyes, and their initial assessment of Gwen confirmed. But after today, they’ll be even more nervous of being found out. They can’t stand all the lies and subterfuge any longer.’

  ‘What’ll happen to them?’

  ‘They’ll plead guilty with mitigating circumstances. They might even try for a plea of manslaughter. But there’s no saying what the sentence will be. They’re not all that old – she’s barely sixty. They seem to be prepared for the worst.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Six or seven years in prison. Separately,’ he said glumly.

  ‘And you?’ put in Maggs. ‘What’ll happen to you?’

  ‘I’ll be OK,’ he said bravely. ‘No, really,’ he insisted at their sceptical expressions. ‘There’s a fair chance that nobody will even think to accuse me of anything. I’m the public-spirited citizen with nagging suspicions, who devoted his own time to investigating an unsolved murder. Nothing like enough evidence to bother the police with, until a series of happy coincidences led me to the answer.’ He grinned. ‘Pretty nearly true, when you think about it.’

  ‘And no mention of the Slaters,’ said Karen.

  ‘Absolutely no mention of the Slaters,’ said Drew firmly.

  * * *

  Vicky and Nigel Gardner met him in the waiting room at the crematorium. He shook hands with them, and assured them that everything would go smoothly. Unlike Harold Hankey’s funeral, for this one, Drew was to fill all the time on his own. He warned the Gardners that he was intending to include some lengthy spells of silence, for the mourners to examine their own thoughts and feelings. A bit risky he knew, but he thought it would be all right.

  It was more than all right. Drew spoke for five minutes, initially, about the inevitability of death making no r
eal difference to the sense of shock and outrage, every time it happened. He spoke of the ripples, spreading out to all who knew the person now gone. He said much that he thought was obvious, and a few things he believed might strike his listeners as original. He spoke of life as a responsibility, to be used with integrity, in the certain knowledge that it could only end in death. He mentioned the need for courage. He held in his mind, throughout the entire twenty minutes, an image of Genevieve and Willard Slater, flanked by Nathan and Sarah and Doctor Jarvis. And of Gwen Absolon dying full of fear and hatred.

  He had been warned by Desmond that there was a following cremation, and any over-running would cause problems. Two minutes before the end of his allotted time, he broke a silence by saying very much the same words as he had done for Harold Hankey. ‘And now we say goodbye to Frances for the very last time. As the curtains close around her coffin, we might imagine her going on her last journey, into the peaceful conclusion of her life. Each in his or her own way must let go, and let her make this journey alone.’

  Permitting Vicky Gardner a moment of unrestrained weeping, he activated the motorised curtain, as well as the CD player, which quietly filled the air with an innocuous murmur of harp and bell music, which subtly suggested an image of other realms where all is peace.

  Ushering the twenty or thirty people outside was the usual unpredictable affair, some remaining sitting just that bit too long, others, standing to stare one last time at the closed curtain. Drew allowed himself a moment’s self-congratulation at having once again rendered a cremation just about as meaningful as it could ever hope to be.

  Outside at last, he stood aside as little groups of people chatted. Glancing at the far end of the building, where another funeral was preparing to begin, he saw Daphne Plant. Too late, she looked away. Without thinking, he trotted over to her, risking a blatant disruption to the funeral she was obviously conducting.

  ‘Not now!’ she hissed at him, alarm filling her face and voice.

  ‘This won’t take a minute,’ he said. ‘I just want to tell you I know exactly what you’ve been doing to try to sabotage my business. And to tell you that if there’s a hint of anything else I’ll go first to the papers and then to the police.’

  ‘Drew!’ she snapped. ‘Be quiet and listen. This isn’t public knowledge yet – but you can be the first to know. I’m selling Plant’s to SCI – the American funeral people. I’m signing the papers next week. So I don’t care what you do any more. I wash my hands of the whole business.’

  He gaped at her. Those three simple letters spelt the enemy, almost the devil, to family-owned British funeral directors. Selling out to them was a cowardly betrayal, or greedy self-interest.

  ‘Then to hell with you,’ he said furiously, and turned back to his own almost-concluded funeral.

  Driving home, he thought about the implications of what Daphne had told him. It would present the local population with an even starker choice than before. Prices would rise, with funerals ever more slickly packaged. Vulnerable bereaved people would be pressured into spending a lot more than they wanted to, on flamboyant memorials and elaborate coffins. Anybody wanting something different, like keeping their dead relative at home for the night before the funeral, or coming in to dress them personally, would be firmly discouraged. It would be nothing but a conveyor belt.

  And Drew could capitalise on this, if he could keep his nerve and face down the mighty power of American finance. He could establish a reputation for plain speaking, simplicity and sincerity. He might, if luck was with him, turn Daphne’s treachery to his own advantage. He was certainly going to try.

  ‘Plain-speaking?’ Maggs queried, when he told her the news, along with his thoughts on the subject. ‘Is that what I’ve been listening to for the past six weeks?’

  Drew blushed. ‘That was a means to an end,’ he told her. ‘It came out all right, didn’t it?’

  ‘Lucky for you,’ she sniped. Then she softened. ‘Lucky for me as well, actually.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Stuart,’ she said simply. ‘He’s asked me to go out with him. It’s brilliant, the way everything’s worked out. His Mum’s going to take the baby on, without any legal adoption or anything, but just as a sort of long-term foster mother. They’ll make sure she knows who her real parents are, when she’s old enough. And Stuart’s going to be staying around for a while.’

  ‘So something good has come of this,’ Drew said. ‘Assuming you and he don’t fight and cause each other more misery than happiness.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ she said smugly. ‘And I promise not to mention Genevieve in your hearing ever again. She’s done enough damage as it is.’

  He look narrowly at her, appalled at the idea that she might know exactly how he’d felt. ‘Do you think Karen knew?’ he whispered.

  ‘Drew – you’re not very good at hiding things,’ she said kindly. ‘But between us, we’ll keep you up to the mark. Now let’s lock up and you can go and be a good husband for a change.’

  Karen was in the sitting room, with Stephanie watching the television beside her. She was slowly counting stitches on the everlasting piece of turquoise knitting she’d started so many months ago. She looked up at him and giggled. ‘If I’m quick,’ she said, ‘it might just be ready for the next one.’

  About The Author

  REBECCA TOPE lives on a smallholding in Herefordshire, with a full complement of livestock, but manages to travel the world and enjoy civilisation from time to time as well. Most of her varied experiences and activities find their way into her books, sooner or later. She is also the author of the Thea Osborne Cotswold series.

  www.rebeccatope.com

  By Rebecca Tope

  A Cotswold Killing

  A Cotswold Ordeal

  Death in the Cotswolds

  A Cotswold Mystery

  Blood in the Cotswolds

  Slaughter in the Cotswolds

  Fear in the Cotswolds

  A Grave in the Cotswolds

  Deception in the Cotswolds

  Grave Concerns

  The Sting of Death

  A Market for Murder

  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  13 Charlotte Mews

  London W1T 4EJ

  www.allisonandbusby.com

  Published in paperback by Allison & Busby Ltd in 2011.

  This ebook edition first published in 2011.

  First published in Great Britain in 2000.

  Copyright © 2000 by REBECCA TOPE

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from

  the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–7490–1015–7