The Body in the Trees

by Richard James

  “Just what is the constabulary’s position here?”

  Corrigan turned into the room and sighed. He gave every indication of rather being anywhere else. “It fell to me to alert the coroner to Cousins’ death and arrange for any evidence to be collected and witnesses to be questioned.” Bowman noticed that the ever-dependable Graves was scratching at his notebook.

  “Were there any witnesses?”

  Corrigan shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Not to the actual act, inspector, no.”

  “Any evidence?”

  “Not beyond the rope, itself,” Corrigan smirked.

  Bowman’s moustache twitched irritably on his upper lip. “I assume you spoke to Mrs Cousins, as my sergeant did?” Bowman gestured to Graves beside him.

  There was a pause. “I did not see the need.”

  “And I understand he has a son.” Bowman looked to his companion.

  “Tom,” Graves confirmed.

  “Yes, Tom.” Bowman turned to Corrigan again. “Was he questioned as part of your investigations?”

  Corrigan nodded. He could see the way the interview was going. “He’s slippery as a fish,” he offered. “Can’t say I’ve had the chance to catch him yet.”

  Bowman’s temples were beginning to throb. He was aware of a film of cold sweat upon his forehead. “Constable Corrigan,” he persisted, ‘do you concur then with the coroner’s findings?”

  Corrigan nodded, simply. “Leaving aside the village gossips, inspector, I do. Yes.”

  Bowman wiped the sweat from his forehead with a sleeve. Noticing the gesture, Whitlock stood to implore the inspector to sit once more. Refusing the invitation again, Bowman turned to lean nonchalantly against the wall.

  “I understand the finger of suspicion points to the gypsies in Chalk Wood.” He was grateful to feel the cool of the brick through his clothes.

  Greville Whitlock smiled sweetly as one may smile at a child, his double chin wobbling over his collar as he spoke. “It is my experience, inspector, that any number of ills may be laid at the gypsies’ door. I dare say,” he chuckled, “that if they were indeed guilty of all that was alleged of them, they would have little time for anything else.” He shared a look with Constable Corrigan, who was at least kind enough to return the coroner’s smile.

  Sergeant Graves was flipping through the pages of his notebook. “Mrs Cousins told me her husband was deep in debt.”

  “That’s right,” Corrigan concurred. “Maxwell Trevitt is known as a hard taskmaster and seldom pays on time.” Graves was at his notebook again, scratching at its pages with the stub of a pencil. “As a consequence, Cousins had borrowed money where he could not pay it back and even gambled at the Windsor races.” Corrigan looked directly at Bowman in conclusion. “All common knowledge amongst the people of Larton.”

  “You see, inspector?” Whitlock offered, benignly. “A little local knowledge is worth many hours of interrogation.”

  Graves was nodding to his superior, gesturing to his notebook with his pencil. “All this squares with Mrs Cousins’ statements, sir.”

  Whitlock’s eyes were twinkling behind his glasses. “So it has taken two detectives come from Scotland Yard to confirm what we already knew!”

  “Then what finally drove him to take his own life, constable?” Bowman asked with a forced politeness. “In your opinion?”

  “Cousins was a proud man,” Corrigan began, resting his weight upon the windowsill. “He left the gypsy life when he fell for Florrie Smallpiece here in Larton. It’s worse than a crime for a man to marry outside the gypsy circle, inspector, almost a sin. Yet Cousins met a woman whom he wished to take as his wife. He left the gypsy life to marry her.”

  “When was this?” Sergeant Graves asked, his pencil poised.

  “Their boy must be twelve or so,” Corrigan puffed out his cheeks. “He was born the year after.”

  “Hence the bad blood between Cousins and the gypsies that Trevitt mentioned.” Bowman’s frown cut deep into his forehead.

  The constable continued. “When Trevitt chose Cousins as his go-between, he must have thought it a good idea. Like turning poacher to gamekeeper.”

  “In fact,” Bowman said thoughtfully, “it put untold pressure upon him.”

  “And we know what can happen to a man under pressure,” insinuated Greville Whitlock from behind the desk. “Don’t we, inspector?”

  The remark hit Bowman off guard. Swallowing hard, he scrutinised the coroner’s face but saw nothing beyond a beatific smile. Perhaps the comment had been made in all innocence.

  “I’m afraid Mr Cousins relieved the pressure with alcohol.”

  “What did the post mortem reveal?” The inspector recovered himself. “Anything beyond the signs of his drinking?”

  The silence in the room was palpable. After sharing a glance with Corrigan, Greville Whitlock was bold enough to break it.

  “Out here, inspector,” he began with a weary note to his voice, “we are not blessed with the resources at your disposal.”

  “There was no post mortem?” Bowman's eyes were wide with disbelief.

  Corrigan cleared his throat. “I did not think it necessary.”

  Bowman was taken aback at the remark. “You, Constable Corrigan?”

  “As the coroner’s officer here in Larton, I have the power to rule out the need for medical evidence in cases of accident and suicide.” Corrigan was looking pleased with himself. “The local parish must bear the costs of all such investigations. It falls to me to weigh the need against the public purse. I did not think there was value in it.”

  “The misuse of alcohol is common enough, is it not, inspector?” Whitlock was smiling again. “I'm afraid I see it often enough to recognise it anywhere.” Bowman looked to his feet, unable to hold the coroner’s gaze. “In short,” Whitlock continued, “I am satisfied that Fletcher Cousins took his own life.”

  Bowman had to acknowledge that all he had to suggest otherwise was Lord Melville’s disquiet.

  Clearly believing the conversation over, Whitlock rose from his chair and clapped his hands together. “I am glad to have been of service,” he beamed, pulling at his waistcoat.

  “There is, however,” interjected Bowman with a glance to Graves, “the matter of the other deaths.”

  Whitlock was struggling to maintain his genial demeanour. “Other deaths?” he asked, slowing his step as he made for the door. “Inspector Bowman, I have been coroner here for a little over three years. I am afraid you will have to be a little more specific.”

  Bowman nodded to his sergeant that he should continue.

  “Those of Trooper Sharples of Larton Dean,” Graves said, flipping through the pages of his notebook, “and Erasmus Finch of Larton Village.”

  Whitlock drew his face up in an approximation of a smile. “What of them, sergeant?”

  “You recorded them both as suicide.”

  “Indeed I did,” Whitlock nodded, causing his jowls to wobble almost comically. “One, as I recall, from a bullet wound, the other from falling.”

  Bowman walked to the other side of the desk and planted his fists upon it for support, leaning his whole weight upon them. In truth, he was feeling most unsteady on his feet. Still, he thought, he must not sit. “You boast, Mr Whitlock, of your three years as a coroner - ”

  “A little over, in fact,” Whitlock interrupted, twinkling. “It is important to be precise.”

  “Quite so,” Bowman demurred. “And in your little-over-three-years in post, have you ever known three men from the same village take their lives in such close proximity to each other?” The inspector raised his eyebrows. “Both in time and geography?”

  Whitlock crossed his arms across his plump chest. “In time, certainly,” he sighed. “In geography, why not? Life here is hard, inspector,” he continued, a pained expression upon his face. “You and I are learned men of the world. We might consider ourselves fortunate. We may enjoy the comforts afforded us by the Empire’s beneficence.” He cast
a glance at Corrigan. “Larton is full of simple souls who are denied their share.” Bowman thought he caught a look of irritation in the constable’s face. “The Empire, I’m afraid, barely stretches to the shires. If you lived among these people, Inspector Bowman, I do not think you would find it at all unusual that there might be some in Larton for whom life is intolerable.” There was that look again. “After all, we all have our troubles, do we not, inspector?”

  Bowman turned to his sergeant with a meaningful look. It was clear that Maude, having witnessed the inspector’s start to the day, had been free with her opinions again. Word spread fast in so small a place. Reasoning that attack was the best form of defence, he rounded on the constable.

  “Constable Corrigan,” he hissed. “Would you say that, in each of these three cases, your investigations have been thorough, complete and exhaustive?”

  Corrigan stood square on to the inspector. “As much as our resources allow, yes.”

  The corners of Bowman’s mouth twitched. “That is some caveat, constable.”

  Corrigan took a breath, clearly growing weary of the conversation and not ashamed to show it. “We are somewhat overlooked in Larton. We are simply not allocated the men you are used to at Scotland Yard.”

  Bowman could not help but rise to the bait. “One man may be equal to ten Scotland Yarders,” he spat, his voice rising in volume. “If only he asks the right questions.”

  “Are you suggesting, Inspector Bowman,” Whitlock asked in all innocence, “That my verdicts in these cases are unsafe?” He looked almost hurt by the insinuation. “Sharples was a troubled man. He had lived through much.” Whitlock blinked at the inspector, the lenses of his spectacles catching the light from the small window.

  Bowman turned to the diminutive coroner. “I had the fortune to talk to Captain Kreegan who also lives in the almshouses by the church in Larton Dean.”

  “Sharples’ neighbour,” said Corrigan, nonplussed. “What of him?”

  “He was rather forthcoming with the details of the day he found Trooper Sharples.” Bowman had folded his arms across his chest, smoothing his moustache absently as he spoke.

  “As he was to me during my investigation of the case.” Corrigan was sounding exasperated.

  “If you’ll forgive me, inspector,” Whitlock interjected. “You do not seem to be drawing towards any particular point.”

  “Enlighten me, Constable Corrigan,” Bowman ploughed on, ignoring the coroner’s plea. “How did you arrive at the conclusion that Sharples took his own life when, upon hearing the exact same evidence from Captain Kreegan, it was clear to me that he must have been murdered?”

  Even Sergeant Graves was surprised at the announcement. He rested his pencil carefully upon his notebook and closed the pages around it.

  Whitlock sought to break the moment. Walking back around the desk, he took his seat again, leaning back and making steeples with his fingers as he spoke.

  “Do go on, inspector. I am certain we could all benefit from your wisdom.”

  Bowman swallowed. The small breakfast Graves had insisted he eat at The King’s Head was lying heavy upon his stomach. “Kreegan told me how he heard a shot from Sharple’s house before the sound of breaking glass.”

  “Quite so,” agreed Whitlock with a measured tone. “It seems he broke the glass of a small box as he fell against it. He used it for the safe keeping of certain mementos from his army years, his service revolver included.”

  “Ah yes, his service revolver,” Bowman exclaimed. “The very gun you say he used to end his life.”

  “We do not just say it, inspector,” Whitlock smiled. “All the evidence points to it.”

  Bowman nodded. “Where is the gun now?”

  Whitlock shifted his weight, causing the chair to creek beneath him. “It has been returned to the Royal Horse Guards in Windsor. It is government property after all. I am sure it will see service again.”

  “So quick?” Bowman raised his eyebrows.

  “I saw no reason to keep it.”

  “I assume that tests were run before its requisitioning? To see if the bullet that did away with Sharples may have been fired from its chamber?”

  “There was no need,” Corrigan interrupted. “It’s as clear as day he was killed by a bullet from his own gun, loosed by his own finger upon the trigger.”

  “There was no sign of forced entry, inspector,” Whitlock offered. “No sign of burglary. In short, no reason why foul play should be suspected.”

  Bowman slipped his hands into his pockets as he thought. “And yet the case was locked.”

  Corrigan shrugged. “What of it?”

  The inspector rounded upon him. “Would you have me believe, Constable Corrigan, that Trooper Sharples removed his gun, locked the lid to his box, shot himself, then fell forwards onto the glass lid.”

  Corrigan threw his arms wide in a gesture of futility. “Inspector Bowman,” he sighed, “you will know that there is an event in the village today. An event at which I am expected to be present in my capacity as the local constable.”

  “Yet surely the force of the bullet would have resulted in him falling backwards?” It was a simple enough assertion. Bowman watched the two men carefully.

  “Perhaps he did,” conceded Corrigan, simply.

  “But I saw blood on the opposite wall to the sideboard where the box was placed. He must have been facing the sideboard and the box as he pulled the trigger.”

  Whitlock looked to the constable as he stood by the window, his mouth hanging open in confusion.

  “If that is indeed the case,” Bowman concluded, a look of victory upon his face, “Just what caused the sound of breaking glass that brought Captain Kreegan to Sharples’ door?”

  XIV

  Regatta

  “You’re convinced it was murder, then?” The two detectives had eschewed the opportunity of hailing a cab from the station. Instead, they joined the steady stream of people walking to the regatta. The Larton Donkey disgorged itself of day-trippers intent on enjoying the day’s convivialities by the river. Bowman noticed smarter carriages rattling past from the Dean, their passengers reclining in their finery as they stared with disdain through the open windows. Ladies held their handkerchiefs to their noses in protest at the dust kicked up from the horses” hooves. The horses were bigger and smarter than any that Bowman had yet seen in Larton, including those in service at Larton Manor. It seemed that every carriage was grander than the last, and Bowman noticed a few stragglers from the Rise cast their eyes up in envy as they rattled past. Everywhere, mused the inspector as he walked the dusty road with his companion, there seemed to be a sharp line drawn between those that have and those that have not. He had not expected to see that line drawn so sharp in the country. Here there were crops in the fields and fruit on the trees, a glut of food that could feed the village three times over. Yet, twice a day, the produce from the farms and orchards was loaded onto carts and drays to be sent away. Most of the profit would then be spent in rent, all of it destined for Lord Melville and the Larton Estate, and so many of the villagers were held in thrall to a system where they worked the hardest for the smallest gain. Only those who had escaped into the respectable professions or, such as those in the Dean, had benefited from a wise investment had found the means to plough another furrow.

  “Yes, Graves,” Bowman replied as they approached the causeway between the Rise and the Village. “I believe Sharples was murdered. There is a detail in the case that I find most puzzling.” He squinted into the sun, fighting a heavy throbbing at his temples.

  “The glass breaking after the shot,” Graves nodded. “If he fell backwards and not onto the case at all, how to account for the glass breaking after he had shot himself.”

  The two men paused to lean over the bridge on the causeway. They stared into the shallow, murky water of the small tributary beneath, each deep in thought. Dragonflies danced amongst the bulrushes with butterflies and bees. A hungry heron stood still as a st
atue, its beady eye alert to every ripple in the water. Every now and then, a burp of bubbles would break on the water’s surface, indicative of life beneath or the movement of mud on the riverbed.

  “What’s our next move, sir?” Graves shook his blond curls in the heat.

  “It seems the whole of Larton will be gathered for the regatta today, Graves,” Bowman replied. “It’s the perfect opportunity to dig a little deeper. I would like to learn more of Erasmus Finch’s death, too. It would not surprise me at all if the two deaths were connected.”

  “But not that of Fletcher Cousins?”

  Bowman shook his head. “I am convinced Fletcher Cousins killed himself.”

  “If there is a pattern to the deaths,” the sergeant concurred, “then Cousins is an aberration, anyway. He died on a Tuesday.” Graves’ blue eyes twinkled in the sun. He was at his best when in the midst of a mystery, Bowman had noticed. He seemed to treat each case as a puzzle such as one might give to a child, as nothing more than a diversion. To Bowman they were confirmation of just how low the human spirit could stoop in the pursuit of self-interest, self-advancement or self-protection. In his experience, murder was as pure an expression of the self as he could imagine. In that one act, a person’s spirit was laid bare in all its primitive, primal brutality, shorn of the trappings of the civilised world.

  “As you say, Graves, if the pattern is to be repeated, there may be a death today.”

  “But what’s so special about the second Saturday of each month?” Graves let go a stone he had found on the road, and watched it fall to the water with a plop.

  Bowman smoothed his moustache between a thumb and forefinger. “Perhaps we might better ask what happened in the days preceding. We must learn more of Erasmus Finch and his fall from the church tower.”

  Graves whistled air between his teeth and shrugged. “But, how? Seems like most of the village is like a closed book to us.”

  “Then today might prove the perfect opportunity.” Bowman leaned back from the balustrade, suddenly conscious of the warmth radiating from the bricks as they baked in the sun. “Put yourself in their shoes, Graves. Two detectives from Scotland Yard arrive within their midst to pry and snoop. We don’t look like them or even sound like them. No wonder they’re suspicious. We’re the outsiders here, Graves.” Bowman gestured across the road to where the regatta was in full swing. He could hear the band playing something approximating to a military march. What they lacked in natural talent, he mused, they certainly made up for in enthusiasm. “Today of all days,” he continued, “they might well present themselves more pliable to investigation. We must take whatever opportunity we may find to gain their trust. Only then, I believe, will we know what happened to Trooper Sharples and Mr Finch.”