Shroud of Silence

by Nancy Buckingham

  He stumbled away from me, blundering out of the room. I could hear him just outside in the hall. It sounded as if he was frantically searching the cupboard, under the stairs flinging stuff about in wild confusion.

  I sat in the chair, pressed down by swelling terror. My eyes turned to the curtained windows. Should I try to make a run for it? But Bill would be upon me before I so much as got the casement open.

  And then Bill was coming back. He carried a dusty crumpled brown paper bundle, holding it by the string away from him,

  “There you are, then,” he shouted angrily and hurled the bundle so that it thumped at my feet. “Since you’re so interested—that’s Brian’s jacket.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I cringed back in my chair, staring down at the shapeless parcel. And then I raised my eyes to the man who had flung it on the floor.

  Bill was glaring at me in silent rage. There was no sound in the room. And outside, the brooding quiet of Sussex woods. A panting stillness,

  I couldn’t speak.

  At last Bill broke out: “I wish to God I’d never found the damned thing.” His voice was a harsh discord.

  “Found it?” I was startled, and in the same instant a lot less afraid.

  He regarded me scornfully. “Did you think I took it off him?”

  “Well, somebody did.”

  “It wasn’t me, though.”

  Suddenly his anger was gone. He sounded defeated, as if he couldn’t blame me for my attitude. He added slowly, painfully, “Please believe me, Kim.”

  “Where did you find it?” I wondered if I was being a gullible fool even to ask the question,

  “It was under a gorse bush, about a hundred yards from where he ... from where I found the body.” Bill made a grim face at the memory. “It had obviously been completely sodden, and until now I couldn’t begin to guess why.”

  He crouched down and started undoing the parcel. The string was loose and slipped off easily. I caught the smell of mildew as he pushed back the wrapping paper.

  I saw a brown tweed sports jacket. It was crumpled and dirty, crusted with dried mud.

  We neither of us moved as we stared at the gruesome relic. I shivered with a crawling revulsion.

  “But surely ...” I was floundering in a state of half-belief. “But why didn’t you say anything to anyone?”

  “I didn’t find the wretched thing until after the inquest was all over. The whole business was wrapped up tidily. Nobody had been asking questions about a missing jacket.” He shook his head. “There are times when it’s best to keep your mouth shut.”

  “But you can’t just hide things like that. You should have handed it over to his mother.”

  “What, in the state Tansy was in? You didn’t see her. She’s bad enough now, but at the time she was really haywire. Besides...” He glanced at me for a second, and then down again as he mumbled:. “You never know what a chap might have in his pockets,”

  “Are you saying you never looked?”

  Bill had the tan of a long hot summer upon his face, but even so his embarrassed flush showed through.

  “Well ...”

  Impatient with him, I cut in, “You don’t, need to start apologising to me. Somebody must have had a strong reason for taking a jacket off a dead body. Did you find anything in the pockets that might explain? I mean, was there anything missing?”

  “That’s a damn silly question to ask. How am I supposed to know what Brian might have had on him?” He stood up restlessly and then sat on the arm of a chair opposite. “Why don’t you take a look for yourself?”

  I glanced down at the crumpled jacket with loathing. “You mean, everything’s still there—as it was?”

  “Of course. Do you imagine I’ve stolen it?”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  Bill softened a bit. “I can tell you this much. There’s three pounds ten in his wallet, so presumably theft wasn’t the; motive.”

  I was thoughtful. There were strange implications stretching beyond the basic mystery. Even allowing for the terrible upset of her son’s death, why hadn’t Tansy ever reported that Brian’s jacket was missing—or at any rate the contents of his pockets? A man and his wallet are almost inseparable, like a woman and her handbag. Surely the fact that it was not found among his things would be noteworthy. Enough to trigger off suspicions of theft.

  Yet Bill Wayne had hung on to the jacket and wallet for two whole years. And nobody, apparently, had expressed any curiosity.

  Surely Drew ... ?

  “Why didn’t you take it to Drew?” I asked Bill abruptly. “Isn’t it more his responsibility than ...”

  “Than mine?” Bill crouched down again and rolled up the jacket in its dirty brown paper, handling it with distaste. “Do you think I didn’t consider doing just that, over and over again? At first I used to have the damned thing out every evening, arguing with myself whether I should give it to Drew or get rid of it. In the end I did neither. As the days went by I realized that the time for handing it over was past. Yet somehow I could never bring myself to destroy it. Can you imagine what it feels like to live with a time bomb in the house?”

  “But I still don’t understand. Drew was Brian’s cousin. Almost like an elder brother.”

  “And you think that’s a good enough reason for me to pass the buck?”

  “You’d no right not to.”

  He was going to say something sarcastic again, but he choked off the words, shaking his head at me in wide denial. “You don’t understand. How could you understand?”

  “I want to. I’m asking you.”

  Bill shoved the parcel behind a chair, pushing it right out of sight with his foot. But on the carpet between us were a few flakes of dried mud to remind us what had lain there.

  “You must take it from me that I had a good reason for not telling Drew about the jacket.”

  I couldn’t leave it at that. I’d come much too far along the route of discovery. I had to reach the end now.

  “I’m sorry Bill, but you must tell me.”

  He was silent, but I had a hunch that like Gwen he’d be only too glad to unload some of the weight on his mind.

  I cajoled him, to make it easier. “Come on, Bill. You’ll have to tell me in the end.”

  He was aggressive and defensive at once. “If you must know, I reckoned that Drew might have had something to do with Brian’s accident.”

  “You suspected that Drew ... ?”

  Cold shock waves were washing through me. Great battering waves of icy horror.

  “You’ve got to look at it my way, Kim. Brian gets drowned and his jacket has obviously been in the water too. Yet I find it a hundred yards away. I came to the only possible conclusion—that it had been taken off him and searched. Not for money, but for something incriminating. The whole thing’s still mighty peculiar, but at least we know now that Drew didn’t ... well, didn’t push Brian into the pond.”

  My mind was on a single track. “But why did you suspect Drew? Why Drew?”

  Bill looked at me steadily for a good half minute. Then he said slowly, “Because Brian was having an affair with Corinne.”

  “Oh no,” I gasped.

  In a way, though, I wasn’t all that surprised. I’d already decided that Corinne was the type to bed around. But to pick on Drew’s own cousin! A man younger than herself by several years, and living right here at Mildenhall!

  I said in a low whisper, “And Drew knew this was going on?”

  “You’re darned right he knew. Corinne doesn’t make a virtue of discretion, either.”

  I felt a surge of compassion for Drew. Who could possibly have blamed him if he had killed Brian—except the law, that is. Thank God that Gwen’s story put Drew absolutely in the clear.

  Bill sighed. “I wish to God I’d never found the thing!”

  “It doesn’t help to keep saying that,” I retorted rather sharply. “I suppose we’ll have to tell Drew before we’re done.”

  “
And what’s he going to say about me keeping it dark now? I can hardly tell him why.”

  “Who else do you suggest we go to? Tansy?” I was scornful. “Or the police?”

  “No! Not the police.”

  “They may have to be brought in before we’re through. But that’s a matter for Drew to decide.”

  He chewed over what I’d said for quite a while. In the end he nodded unhappily. “I suppose you’re right, Kim. But don’t tell him just yet. We might find there’s a perfectly innocent answer to the whole ghastly business.”

  I agreed to go along with him. In theory I was all for telling Drew. In practice I was every bit as reluctant as Bill.

  Trying my hardest to be objective, I said, “Could we sort out what happened that evening? I mean, the other things that happened. What everybody was doing at the time.”

  “You’re suggesting that somebody at Mildenhall must have been responsible?”

  “Not necessarily that,” I said hurriedly, and stumbled on, “We might dig out something that will give us a clue. You know what I mean—a person sees something they thought nothing of at the time, but in the light of what we now know, it could be significant.”

  Bewildered by this cloud of words, Bill shook his head. “To get anywhere at all we’d have to put everyone through a full-scale interrogation. And don’t forget all this business happened a couple of years ago.”

  “Well then, what else do you suggest?”

  We tossed around a few vague ideas, kidding ourselves that we were being practical and down to earth. But in the end we had to admit that we were still adrift.

  “Perhaps we’d better bring Gwen in on this,” I ventured. “She ought to be able to put us more in the picture about that evening.”

  Bill didn’t much like the suggestion.

  “You mustn’t tell Gwen about me finding that jacket,” he said with a desperate sort of emphasis. “You know what she’s like when … well, she does drink rather heavily, doesn’t she?”

  “I don’t think you need worry yourself on that score. She’s hardly likely to blurt anything out.”

  He looked skeptical, and I made a suitable amendment. “Well, she must feel pretty guilty about not raising the alarm when she saw Brian fall in.”

  “Mmmm!”

  He still sounded doubtful, but in the end he agreed I’d better talk to Gwen. After all, there was really nothing else that either of us could suggest.

  * * * *

  On Saturday morning, first thing, I went to see Gwen in her bedroom. She was already awake and seemed remarkably calm.

  “How are you feeling, Gwen?”

  I think she was a bit ashamed to be looking so well, so comparatively free of care.

  She gave me a diffident smile. “I slept fairly well, thank you, Kim dear.”

  “That’s good,” I snapped in swiftly, “because I want to have a serious talk with you.”

  “Oh!” Apprehension swept her features as she groped on the bedside table for her spectacles. “What is it you want to talk about, dear?”

  “About Brian, of course.”

  Did she imagine the Brian Hearne drowning case was neatly closed and filed away. I decided it was more than time to put a rocket under Gwen Barrington.

  “The jacket has turned up.”

  For a second or two she didn’t react, then shaking hands flew to her face as if to stifle a scream.

  “It’s all right, Gwen,” I said quickly. “Not the police. Bill Wayne found it”

  That didn’t help soothe her down. In a tumble of terrified words she asked me when and where and how and why?

  “Look, Gwen, you don’t have to worry. Bill won’t talk.”

  I got her calm enough to listen. I told her how much I’d explained to Bill Wayne, and how much I’d deliberately concealed from him.

  “But why did you tell him anything at all?” Gwen cut in with bitter reproach.

  “Because he was the one who found the body. I thought he might know something about the missing jacket.”

  I damped down Gwen’s fears by giving her the story of my talk with Bill. Or at least, an edited version. I skated over Bill’s reasons for keeping quiet about his discovery, his vague suspicions about Drew. I said merely that as the inquest was over and done with when he found the jacket, he hadn’t wanted to upset anybody by producing it. Especially Tansy.

  When I had finished Gwen brooded for a bit and asked a few questions. Then she announced that she wanted to get up.

  “I feel so helpless lying here in bed.” Even though it was still before breakfast, I was scared she’d run to bottled courage the minute my back was tinned.

  Hesitantly, I began, “Gwen, you won’t ...”

  “Run away? No, my dear, I won’t run away.”

  I wasn’t thinking of her running away; I doubted if she could. But then I realized this was her way of answering the question I hadn’t liked to finish.

  It was scarcely ten minutes later when Gwen came into my room. She had pulled herself together. She looked quite spruce and spoke almost briskly. “Well, Kim, what are we going to do?” I explained what Bill and I had in mind. “We ought to be really methodical about it, Gwen. Can you remember what each person at Mildenhall was doing on that evening?”

  Like Bill, she was shocked at the inescapable inference. “Surely you don’t suspect one of the family?”

  “No, of course not,” I said uncertainly. “But we’ve got to make a start somewhere. We know too much now just to shut our eyes. Something happened that night Brian died, something neither you nor Bill can explain. We can’t pretend it didn’t happen, Gwen. Don’t you see?”

  I couldn’t win her round, not all the way. She was distant, distrustful.

  “Very well then,” she said reluctantly, perching herself on the bed. “I’ll do my best to help.”

  First of all we tried to establish what everybody had been doing that evening, to get a clear picture in our minds. There was Gwen herself, of course. Bill Wayne I’d not thought to ask. That left Drew and Corinne and Tansy—and Brian,

  “No visitors?” I checked.

  Gwen shook her head. “Verity and Felix often came down, but not that weekend. It was before they virtually moved themselves in.”

  Dinner would have been at eight o’clock—it was as regular as clockwork in those days. There were three of them at table. Gwen, Tansy and Drew. A place, was laid for Brian, but he didn’t come, presumably having gone off to the pub already.

  “But what about Corinne?” I asked.

  Gwen grunted. “She was at some party or other. Took Jane with her, I remember.”

  “In the evening? Jane was only three years old then!”

  From the lift of her eyebrows I might almost have imagined Gwen was amused. “That’s right.”

  “Did she often take Jane out late like that?”

  “Only the once to my knowledge. But she was always out herself in those days, racketing around all over the place and never bothering about the child. From something Drew let slip at dinner, I gathered he’d read her the riot act and Corinne was getting her own back. I bet it amused her no end to flout him like that. She took Jane out with her in the afternoon, which was very unusual for a start. And then, well after the child’s bedtime, Corinne phoned and left a message with Pinky that she was going straight on to a party and was taking Jane with her.”

  ‘“I see. How did Drew take it when he heard that?”

  “He was absolutely furious, though he didn’t say much. Just looked like thunder. He hardly ate a thing at dinner, and suddenly got up halfway through saying he was going to fetch them both home.” Gwen sighed. “Poor Tansy was terribly worried and upset about it.”

  There was something about her tone that made me ask quickly, “Tansy? Why so, specially?”

  Gwen hesitated, before saying cautiously: “Well you see she had overheard Drew and Corinne having an argument at lunchtime.”

  “I shouldn’t have thought a tiff between Dre
w and Corinne was all that unusual. Or was it different in those days?”

  I got a feeling that Gwen already regretted saying so much. But then she gave a little shrug, prodded her glasses firmly into place and went on: “Well, actually, it was the very devil of a row. They were at it hammer and tongs. And Tansy felt that she was to blame.”

  “Why should it have been Tansy’s fault?”

  “She thought it was because of something she’d told Drew.”

  “You mean about Corinne neglecting Jane?”

  Gwen was still being cautious, and I was having to squeeze out each reluctant word.

  “Oh no, it was something quite different,” she said slowly. Then in a sudden burst, she protested: “Of course Tansy didn’t know what it was they quarrelled about. She didn’t listen.”

  “Of course not,” I said impatiently. “But she might have got some idea what it was about.”

  “Well...” After a last-ditch hesitation, Gwen plunged on, “There wasn’t any doubt, really. You see, Corinne was having an affair with Brian.”

  I nodded. “Yes, I know about that.”

  “You know?” Gwen’s jaw dropped. I think she felt cheated of an astonished reaction from me.

  “It doesn’t seem to have been a very well-kept secret,” I observed shortly, and returned to the main question. “You still haven’t told me why Tansy felt she was to blame for the quarrel. What was it she had said to Drew?”

  Again Gwen prodded the goggle-glasses back into place on her nose.

  “Well, you see, it was Tansy herself who told Drew about the affair. Just an hour or so earlier,”

  This time I felt the full blast of her bombshell. It seemed to hit me from every direction at once, settling to a confusion of eddies in my mind. Tansy had told Drew that his wife was having an affair with his cousin. On that very same day Brian had met his death. Drew and Corinne had been overheard by Tansy in a terrible quarrel, presumably over Brian, and the next morning he had been found drowned, his jacket mysteriously removed from the body.

  Was it just coincidence?

  Unwillingly I searched for a connection. My brain tried to turn wild thoughts into rational theories. But the facts were too hard and they just refused to bend.