The Body in the Trees

by Richard James

  “Eventually,” Prudence Finch was saying, “but not so quick as to be unseemly.” She folded her arms in front of her, defensively. “Then I moved in with Erasmus at his parents” house in Larton Rise, just near the station. I took work at Larton Manor but I was not liked at work or at home. His parents were - ” she paused. “Difficult.”

  “Why?” Bowman was engrossed.

  “Because I was not from Larton,” Mrs Finch said, simply. “In the eyes of the villagers here, there is no greater crime.” A rueful smile played about her lips. “They can hardly bring themselves to be civil to each other, let alone those from across the river.”

  Bowman thought back to the countless sly looks and suspicious glances he had encountered in just two days. “The people of Larton do seem somewhat insular,” he concurred. “I can imagine you encountered a certain resistance.”

  “Quite simply, I have always been a stranger in Larton. I am considered different, other.” Prudence Finch shifted on her chair. “The feeling was only compounded by the two of us making the biggest mistake of all.”

  Bowman raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “Moving from the Rise to Larton Village.”

  Bowman nodded in understanding. “I can imagine,” he sighed. From what he had learned of the people of Larton, that would have been a mistake indeed.

  “It was generally held that we had risen above our station,” Mrs Finch shrugged. “Erasmus had sought to better our condition, that is all, but we were not accepted into the Village.”

  Bowman smoothed his moustache. “Larton is a strange place, indeed,” he mused.

  Prudence allowed herself a wry smile at Bowman's observation. “You have a gift for understatement, inspector,” she teased. “To be born in any of the three constituent parts of Larton is to die in them. There is a fierce sense of identity here, and woe befall any who would seek to challenge it.”

  Bowman blinked sweat from his eyes. He was finding it hotter here beneath the glass than even outside. Raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, he chose his words carefully as he continued.

  “So your husband would undoubtedly have made many enemies on account of his ambitions.”

  “Doubly so,” Mrs Finch agreed, forcefully. “The people of the Rise shunned him for his pretensions to a better life in the Village, while to those in the Village we would always be outsiders.” She paused, looking down at her hands in her lap. “Even Erasmus” parents shunned us.” She swallowed. “They had nothing to do with us from that day to this, even after Erasmus” death.”

  Bowman could tell he was approaching difficult territory. He shifted his weight in his chair, leaning further over the table so as to watch Mrs Finch all the more carefully. She blinked furiously, clearly fighting back the tears at the memory.

  “And your employment at Larton Manor?” the inspector probed, gently.

  Mrs Finch shrugged again, as if the whole affair was beyond her. “I did not fit in there,” she said, simply. “The staff implicated me in a minor scandal, the supposed theft of some jewellery. The driver, Prescott, was chief among them.”

  Bowman did not doubt it. There was something about Lord Melville’s driver that he did not trust. “I was summarily dismissed,” Mrs Finch continued. “I was innocent, of course but, for an additional punishment, Lord Melville saw fit to raise the rent on our cottage.” She looked around her, sadly.

  “You are a tenant to Larton Manor?”

  “I should say most of the village is, inspector. We are all in thrall to the Larton Estate and, as such, all subject to Lord Melville’s whims.”

  The frown on Bowman’s forehead deepened. “You believe that is why your husband took his life?”

  Mrs Finch nodded. “With no employment for me and the rent increased, I’m afraid Erasmus found it too much to bear. He took it upon himself to end his life.” She rose abruptly from her chair to stand and face the garden through the glass. “And I will never forgive him for it.” Through the heaving of her shoulders, Bowman could tell she was crying. Pulling a handkerchief from a sleeve, Mrs Finch dabbed at her face, clearly determined not to be seen in so vulnerable a condition.

  “Perhaps he saw no other way,” Bowman soothed, rising clumsily from his chair. Feeling his head swim at the sudden movement, he leaned against the table to get his breath. His mouth was dry. It was notable that Mrs Finch had not seen fit to offer him a drink upon his arrival. Perhaps that was as well, he thought. She would not, in any case, have offered him the sort of drink he craved.

  “There is always another way,” he heard the woman at the window sniff. “There has to be.” Finally, she turned to face him, her eyes red. “God has granted us life, inspector. It is up to us to live it to the full.”

  “That is not always the easiest course to take,” Bowman heard himself say.

  “Life is never easy,” Mrs Finch scoffed. “But Erasmus’ cowardice has made mine worse. With no husband and no employment to be had for me in Larton, I can no longer pay my rent to Larton Manor.” Bowman heard a tremor in her voice. “It is surely a matter of a few days before I am thrown to the mercy of my family in Wootton Green.”

  Bowman was taken by surprise at Mrs Finch’s choice of words. “You think your husband a coward?” he stammered. He had not considered Erasmus’ suicide, if suicide it was, in those terms.

  The woman nodded her head. “He had not the courage within him to face his difficulties, difficulties we could surely have overcome together.”

  “Perhaps,” Bowman allowed. “But he cannot have been in his right mind.”

  Prudence’s gaze had fallen to Bowman’s hands on the table. “I see you are a married man, inspector.” Bowman’s eyes flicked to the ring on his left hand. A simple, gold band, he could not bring himself to remove it. Mrs Finch was moving closer now, her eyes appealing to him. “Surely you can understand?” Bowman could not avoid her gaze. “A marriage is a union is it not?” she continued. “It makes us doubly strong. But Erasmus has gone, and I am diminished.” Bowman felt the depths of her despair. “I am halved.”

  “You cannot blame him for wanting peace.” Bowman’s words sounded distant to his ears, as if he were overhearing a conversation from another room.

  “Surely to live is all?” There was a note of desperation in Mrs Finch’s voice. “He was not even permitted a full Christian burial.” This was almost too much for her, and Bowman saw her try to stem the tears again. Breathing deeply, she calmed herself enough to continue. “Do you think, inspector, he is damned?”

  Bowman could not find the words. How could a god grant free will to his creations, then damn a man for seeking respite from the trials of life? And yet he knew the Church’s teachings were against it. It was only recently that those who had committed self-murder had been permitted burial in holy ground.

  “Mrs Finch,” he said at last, “what did you notice about your husband’s behaviour in the weeks leading up to his death?” Bowman loosened his collar with a finger. “Was there a specific incident that may have weakened his resolve?”

  Mrs Finch sat again, her head tilted in thought. “Some weeks before,” she began, slowly, “he was suddenly possessed of a levity quite unlike him. He gave me to believe that our condition would soon improve, that he had found a way through our difficulties.”

  “Did he say what it was?”

  “He did not.” Mrs Finch wrung her hands as she spoke. “But his jubilation proved short lived.”

  “Indeed?” Bowman was concentrating hard.

  Prudence Finch took a breath. “One evening, he returned from an evening at The King’s Head to find an envelope beneath the door. Upon Erasmus opening it, there was a sudden and distinct change in his demeanour. He became at once withdrawn and melancholy.”

  “Could you more precisely tell me when he found the envelope?”

  “I can,” Mrs Finch nodded. “It was towards the middle of May, the very day before the old soldier was found dead in the Dean.”

  �
�Trooper Sharples,” Bowman whispered.

  “And Erasmus was dead just four weeks later.”

  A pause hung in the air long enough to admit the screeching of passing swifts.

  “How was your husband’s behaviour following the discovery of the envelope?”

  “Erratic,” Mrs Finch allowed. “He would disappear for hours at a time, returning in an agitated state.”

  “Where did he go?”

  Prudence spread her hands wide in a gesture of futility. “I do not know.”

  Bowman’s moustache was twitching at his upper lip. He cleared his throat. “Did he not share with you the contents of the envelope?”

  “He did not, inspector,” Mrs Finch’s eyes narrowed in thought. “But there was something peculiar about it.”

  Bowman lifted his eyes to meet her gaze. “The lettering or a postmark?”

  “It had been delivered by hand,” Mrs Finch continued, slowly. “But there was a design upon the envelope such as I have not seen before. It was... most strange.”

  Bowman was leaning even further forward on his elbows. “Mrs Finch,” he breathed, urgently, “could you reproduce the design for me?”

  With a dip of her head, Mrs Finch rose again from her chair and walked back into the parlour. Bowman was left alone for a moment; just enough to attempt to calm his breathing. There was a familiar throbbing at his temples. Leaning forward, he pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He felt empty to the pit of his stomach. He could not remember how long it had been since his last meal. Days, perhaps. He doubted he could have kept it down, at any rate. His stomach felt clenched as if in anticipation of some dreadful event. There was a knot in his belly. Breathing slowly now, he leaned back in his chair with a sigh, just in time to see Mrs Finch return with a pen and a bottle of ink. She laid a clean, fresh envelope upon the table before sitting to begin her work, her tongue poking beguilingly between her lips in an expression of concentration.

  Bowman stood to peer over her shoulder at her handiwork. Dipping the nib of her pen in the inkbottle, she first drew the prongs of some implement, joined by a hinge at the top and angled like the hands of a clock pointing down. Pausing for thought, she replenished her pen and drew a right angle beneath it, its two arms pointing up the page from its vertex. In the space between the two designs she fashioned a crude shape resembling a tree or, thought Bowman, a sheaf of corn. Suddenly, his breath came fast. Sweat pricked at his forehead and his lips dried.

  “Are you sick, inspector?” Mrs Finch enquired, concerned.

  Bowman’s head was swimming. He was certain he had seen that design before.

  XIX

  Fuel To The Flames

  Detective Inspector Ignatius Hicks was struggling. He had found the walk from Larton Village to Trevitt’s barn in the Dean hard enough. Now, he found himself tramping uphill to Chalk Wood, every step harder than the last. Soon, he was left straggling behind the villagers. He had watched as they streamed from the barn, each with a tool or improvised weapon in their hands. For a moment he was torn. Should he attempt to stop them or walk back to the police station in the Rise for help? He soon dismissed the former, being vastly outnumbered by the throng of villagers intent on making their point. Trevitt had whipped them up to such a frenzy that they were all on his side. Even those who had been against him at the beginning had evidently seen fit to set aside their differences in the pursuit of a common enemy. They had strode from the barn as a mob, each with a determined look upon their face. Some wielded pitchforks and shovels, others had gathered lengths of wood or discarded tools from the barn floor. Hicks felt nervous of confronting them in such a state. He also dismissed walking down the hill to the Rise in order to enlist support. In the time it might take for him to walk the distance, the war in the woods might be won or lost. His best option, he thought as he lumbered up the hill, was to accompany the villagers to the travellers’ camp in the hope of interceding at the point of their meeting. He would then make his presence and his purpose known, relying on his expert skills of negotiation to reach a peace between the two factions. He had not considered the walk.

  Puffing out his cheeks with exhaustion, Inspector Hicks swung the hat from his head, fanning his face with the brim. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the hem of his coat and reached into a deep pocket for his tobacco. Tapping his pipe against the stump of a tree, he loaded it with fresh fuel and struck a match against the heel of his shoe. He drew deeply on the smoke as the match flared in the bowl, the resultant smog rising into the canopy like a will-o”-the-wisp. Hicks squinted through the smoke at the villagers as they receded into the distance. Just a minute to recover his breath, the plump inspector reasoned, and he would join them. Leaning on the tree stump for support, he let his eyes scan the fields and trees about him. Looking down the hill, he was presented with an open vista stretching to Larton Rise and the Village beyond. The land rose the other side of the valley into a wooded escarpment, the ribbon of the River Thames threading its way through a patchwork of fields at its base. Ricks of hay were stacked at intervals and, even on a Sunday, Hicks saw those villagers who had not deigned to join the march on Chalk Wood scything at the long grass. Turning to his left, his eyes fell upon a dilapidated farmer’s cottage he took to be Trevitt’s farmhouse. Even from this distance, he could see it was in need of attention. A chimney pitched dangerously to one side upon the roof and several of the walls leaned at a crazy angle. The whole effect, mused Hicks as he caught his breath, was of a building that had given up the struggle to remain upright. Just as he determined to gird himself and follow the villagers, Hicks’ attention was caught by a movement in a woodpile by the cottage wall. He was sure he saw a wisp of smoke curling from the wood. Cursing under his breath that he might never be granted a moment’s rest, the inspector gathered his coat around him and lumbered off with such speed as he could muster.

  Soon, he was approaching a small out-building by the cottage. A makeshift door hung from its hinges at an alarming angle, allowing access to a small, ragged form that, even now, darted inside for more fuel. Quickening his step, Hicks negotiated his way through the debris in the farmer’s yard to the cottage wall. Stamping at the fire with his foot, he extinguished the flames before they caught a hold, reaching down to remove a smouldering log and flinging it clear of the pile. Then, positioning himself by the outbuilding’s ramshackle door, he tried hard to steady his breathing so as not to be heard. Just as he readied himself to enter, he heard a low, rumbling growl behind him. Turning, he was confronted by a large lurcher with a sharp nose and beady eyes. Its upper lip curled away from its teeth as a guttural snarl resounded deep in its chest. It stood stock still, its muscles tensed in anticipation.

  “Duke! What's the matter with you, boy?” Hicks heard the voice from within the building. It was the high-pitched call of a youth. As if to confirm his suspicions, a young boy with freckles and tousled hair suddenly appeared at the door, an armful of logs held close to his chest.

  “Duke!” He called again. “Quit yer hollerin”!”

  He barely had time to look up before he felt a hand pinching at his ear. Dropping his load in alarm, the young lad squealed with pain.

  “Hey! What yer doin’?” he yelled. “Let go of me!”

  “Stand your friend down and I’ll think about it,” Hicks responded, pinching harder.

  “He won’t hurt you,” the boy insisted, squirming with discomfort. “He’s all bark and no bite, the useless good for nuffin’.”

  “Is this Trevitt’s house?” Hicks thundered.

  “Might be,” the young lad spat, defiantly.

  Hicks twisted harder at the boy’s ear. “And just what do you think you were up to?”

  In response, the lad kicked at Hicks’ shins. The inspector allowed himself a chuckle as he held his young assailant at arm’s length. He was so small that, even at such a short distance, his arms and legs flailed helplessly in the air, failing to make any contact whatsoever.

  “He’
s a murderer,” the boy screamed, his face flushed.

  “Well, let’s see what he’s got to say about that, shall we?” Hicks marched the boy away from the farmhouse, his dog whipping between them uselessly as if the whole incident was one big game.

  “And let’s see what he thinks to you setting fires against his house.”

  The villagers had ascended the hill to Chalk Wood. Had they been of a mind, they might have paused to admire the view that encompassed the whole of Larton; Dean, Rise and Village. The land rolled away beneath them to a bright blue horizon, the perfect hunting ground for the wheeling kites that circled on the warm air, their keen eyes on the fields below. As it was, the irate mob barely faltered as it made its way along the track into the clump of trees at the brow. Of one mind, they marched almost in time, the occasional shout and whistle echoing into the trees above them. The smell of burnt wood assailed their nostrils, the conflagration of the night before clearly still smouldering ahead of them. As they reached the turning through the undergrowth that led to the travellers” camp, Trevitt raised his hand to bring the crowd to a standstill. Strangely, the woods were quiet. Aside from the heavy breathing of the villagers and the scurrying of squirrels in the branches above them, there was not a sound to be heard. Trevitt scowled. He had expected to have been met by now. He was certain Stoker would have employed a lookout following the fire and the incident outside the police station. Crouching low, he made his way into the traveller’s camp, his followers at his heels. Wielding his pitchfork ahead of him like a scythe, he quietly cleared his way of nettles and stepped stealthily into the clearing. The stark, chalk walls of the old quarry towered above him, studded with rocky outcrops and clumps of grass. The plaintive song of a blackbird pierced the still air.

  “They’ve gone!” Trevitt heard someone shout behind him.