This Private Plot

by Alan Beechey

  “And the other pages are the same?” asked Culpepper.

  “They all start with a letter sent around this time of year. One shows three years of payments, another two years, and another just one year.”

  “An interesting way of celebrating May Day,” said Oliver through a mouthful of orange-and-raisin scone.

  “It’s a bit more lucrative than gathering nuts,” said Mallard.

  “The fifth page has only one line of writing, noting an initial letter sent,” Effie resumed. “It was dated two days before his death.”

  “Then why was the letter still on his desk?” Oliver asked.

  “Perhaps he hadn’t got around to sending it,” said Culpepper, producing a photocopy of the letter. “Or could it be sudden remorse? It’s consistent with suicide: Breedlove, ashamed of what he had become, chooses to take his life rather than continue this unpleasant hobby.”

  “It wasn’t a hobby,” Oliver said. “It was his livelihood. According to my mere acquaintance Scroop, Dennis was scheduled to run out of income about five years ago, having bet all his annuities on a seventy-five-year lifespan. With only a pittance from royalties for his nonfiction books, he needed alternative sources of money. And what does everyone say about him? That he was easy to talk to. It’s quite possible that in a quarter of a century of living in Synne, he’d collected a juicy confidence or two. Time to cash in.”

  “A big moral jump,” said Mallard.

  “It was that or starve.” Oliver noticed Culpepper laughing. “Okay, Lofty, what testicular pun did I make without intending to?”

  “No, it was ‘living in Synne,’” said Culpepper. “I’d never thought of it that way.”

  “That’s probably enough for the coroner, right there,” said Mallard, stretching. “Dennis Breedlove, blackmailer of four unknown victims, would-be blackmailer of a fifth, takes his own life for reasons unknown, but possibly because he was old, poor, tired, and disgusted with himself.”

  “Case closed,” added Culpepper.

  “No it isn’t,” Oliver snapped. “I’ve been saying all along that Dennis couldn’t have hanged himself without help. Four blackmail victims give us four suspects.”

  “Suspects for…?”

  “Murder. Murder most foul.”

  “But Ollie,” said Effie, “these people were coughing up a hundred quid or more a month, just to keep him quiet about their crimes.”

  “Or sins, perhaps,” Mallard speculated.

  “If Breedlove’s targets are terrified of public exposure,” Effie continued, “they’re hardly likely to find the cojones to break the world’s greatest taboo.” She gasped and lifted a hand to her lips. “Oh sorry, darling, that one was unintentional.”

  “Besides, why now?” Culpepper asked. “The time when a potential victim is most likely to bump off the blackmailer is when he or she is first approached. Which makes this year’s appointed King or Queen of the May the most likely culprit. But that initial letter was never sent, despite the entry in Breedlove’s book.”

  “Maybe one of the existing victims found the annual cost-of-living adjustment too much to take?” Oliver persisted. “Maybe they’d had enough of being a cash cow in Breedlove’s personal pasture?”

  “Look, Ollie,” said Mallard, “if it is murder we’re dealing with—mind, I said if—then we have the same problem we had before. Just as we couldn’t identify the blackmailer from the text of that letter, we can’t identify his victims from a list of cash payments. And the site of Breedlove’s death, up there at the Shakespeare Race, is already too contaminated to get any viable evidence. As for his cottage, presumably his starting point that evening, it’s been trashed.”

  Culpepper poured himself some tea, and Oliver had a sudden vision of the endless al fresco tea party in the first Alice book, posing pointless riddles and going round in circles. Effie would be a curly-haired Alice, Culpepper the lanky hare, Mallard clearly the hatter, even though he’d placed his panama under the chair. Did that make Oliver the Dormouse, with his slow movement and sour mood that morning? About to be stuffed into a teapot by the two detectives?

  “But we do have some clues,” he protested, grabbing at the nursery rhyme book. “Why did Dennis use this to record his income? Why not a ledger book or blank paper?” He flicked through the pages. “He didn’t start at the beginning of the book. Or even put the victims in order of their start dates.”

  “So?” said Culpepper.

  “I suggest that Dennis Breedlove, whose life was steeped in the world of children’s folklore and fable, chose each page for a reason. There was something about that particular nursery rhyme that reminded him of his victim. He had that sort of mind. It may seem like madness, but there’s method in it.”

  The Dormouse strikes back. Oliver flattened the book at one of Effie’s bookmarks, the victim who had first been contacted two years earlier, and read:

  “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

  How does your garden grow?

  With silver bells, and cockle shells,

  And pretty maids all in a row.”

  “Somebody called Mary?” Mallard offered, checking his watch. He was already late for his Hamlet rehearsal, and parking in Stratford was a bugger. “That really narrows it down. I bet it was the most popular girl’s name in Britain in the year Breedlove was born.”

  “Ah, but we’re not looking all over Britain. Breedlove rarely left the village. The people of Synne confided in him during personal chin-wags.”

  “And during one of those chats, one of his neighbors let on that his second cousin on the Isle of Skye was supplying half the Hebrides with hooch. ‘Mary’ could be five hundred miles away.”

  Oliver shook his head. “The victims are local. And maybe it’s not the name. ‘How does your garden grow?’ Is somebody in the village raising a crop of marijuana among her runner beans and lobelias, the blossoms of my Synne?” He threw the book onto the table, rattling plates and cups. It almost went into the butter. Culpepper winced and fumbled in his briefcase for an evidence bag.

  “Too neat,” said Mallard. “Breedlove’s not going come across somebody called Tom whose guilty secret is that he stole a pig, or a pervert called Georgie who kisses girls and makes them cry. Yes, when he caught the first fly in his web, four years ago, he probably decided it would be amusing to keep track of the payments in his old book of nursery rhymes. But the victims are who they are, and if his choice of pages has any significance, it’ll be something obscure, a contrived and opportunistic fit. You’d need to read Breedlove’s mind to get it. And for that, you need a crystal ball. Or two.”

  Culpepper claimed the book, slipped it into its bag and then into his briefcase, and stood up, brushing croissant flakes off his well-cut suit. Mallard also got to his feet and retrieved his hat.

  “So that’s it?” Oliver cried. “You’re leaving?”

  Culpepper snapped the briefcase shut. “Oliver, nothing’s changed,” he said quietly, without looking up. “I know you feel that when a blackmail victim kills himself, his blackmailer bears a moral responsibility for the death, and I agree with you. But when it’s the blackmailer himself who commits suicide, whom can we say drove him to it? I doubt some foul play ever happened.”

  “If he was murdered, I most powerfully and potently believe that we must find the murderer. That’s our duty. No matter what kind of ugly, reprehensible villain Breedlove turned into.”

  Culpepper finally turned his dark-eyed gaze to Oliver’s face. “I still have no evidence of murder,” he said firmly. “I have no suspects. Dennis Breedlove is dead and, as of yesterday afternoon, finally buried. Let’s leave this investigation with him.”

  He offered his hand to Oliver. For the first time in his life, Oliver was angry enough to consider not returning a handshake; but he also knew he would never sink that low. Culpepper and Mallard walked toward the kitchen door.


  Oliver reached for his orange juice, only to see several unidentifiable things, rank and gross in nature, now floating on its surface. “Why can’t I get your pal Simon the Giant to take this seriously?” he asked Effie.

  She chose to ignore the lingering hint of jealousy. “Are you surprised? As far as the police are concerned, the only good blackmailer is a dead one.”

  “But Uncle Tim—”

  “Tim has no jurisdiction here. Simon didn’t have to be as accommodating as he was. It just shows he’s a gentleman.”

  Oliver sniffed. “Your so-called gentleman friend never wanted to explore the possibility of murder, even when he thought Breedlove was an innocent victim.”

  “Yes, because that blackmail letter seemed to be a very powerful motive for suicide.”

  “And now that we have a very powerful motive for murder instead?”

  Effie was silent, watching a thrush peck at some early fruit on an espaliered apricot plant growing on the sun-drenched garden wall. A wood pigeon in the horse chestnut began its distinctive call.

  “Understand what you’re asking Simon to do,” she said. “You want him to identify four unknown blackmail victims who, by definition, have very good reasons for not wanting to be found. Then you want him to ask them, one by one, if they murdered an awful little man who may not have been murdered anyway.” She shook her head. “No overstretched police detective can give that much time to a case. And that’s not a reference to Simon’s height.”

  She rested her clasped hands on his shoulder, and laid her head on top. He could feel the curls pressed against his neck.

  “But a police detective who’s on holiday can help,” she continued idly. It took a moment for him to realize what she meant.

  “We’re going to keep working on this?” he asked in wonderment. She smiled, without lifting her head.

  “Sure. What else is there to do in Synne but look for sinners? But promise me this: that if we don’t ravel all this matter out by the weekend—let’s say by the time of Tim’s play on Saturday night—we leave it and go home. Not a jot more.”

  Oliver smoothed her hair. “I love you, Effie Strongitharm,” he said.

  “I love you too, Ollie, even though I probably won’t have all those children I’m longing for.”

  ***

  Five minutes later, Oliver was speaking on the kitchen phone, finger pressed on his right ear to shut out the noise of his mother filling the dishwasher.

  “The letter turned out to be irrelevant,” he said, having briefed his contact on all that had happened since their last meeting. “Apparently it was never sent, even though Breedlove had logged it.”

  “You might still try to find out who it was meant for,” replied Hyacinthe McCaw from her room in St. Basil’s, Oxford. “It does give some village malefactor a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  “Uncle Tim thinks Breedlove’s victims could be anywhere in the country.”

  “Then tell him from me he’s a tithead. Of course it’s local. Breedlove depended on his personal charm and sincerity to wheedle secrets out of people. You have to look them in the eye. What’s the set-up there?”

  “Synne has less than a hundred homes, say two hundred residents. There’s a neighboring village called Pigsneye, a little larger, that may have been in Breedlove’s purview, but nothing else for several miles around. That’s our known world.”

  “Then it’s positively Aristotelian in its unity of place. And trust me, mon brave, your problem won’t be finding suitable contenders for a spot of blackmail. It’ll be whittling down the list to only four or five.”

  The dreadful record of Synne.

  “But how do I start?”

  “Have you ever heard of the old prediction—that if you march up to any door in any town and say ‘the game’s up, hand over the money,’ then half the time you’ll actually get something? Most of us just don’t bother to ask.”

  “I find it hard to believe that Breedlove’s victims will be clamoring to confess, when it puts them into the frame for a murder investigation.” He put his hand over the microphone to muffle the noise of his mother dropping a saucepan into the sink and strained to catch Dr. McCaw’s reply.

  “Breedlove didn’t want his victims to reform. He wanted them to keep up the bad behavior, so they’ll keep up the payments. If you want the fruits of my advice, start by talking to the noted gossips of the community. Can you think of any?”

  “Oh certainly,” Oliver replied, watching his mother hurry out of the kitchen to answer the doorbell. “So do I still play up the sex angle?”

  “Bien sur, mon ami. We’re British. And apart from anything else, fiddling with your neighbor’s wife is a lot more interesting than fiddling the company’s books. More fun for the neighbor’s wife, too. Au revoir.”

  He hung up as Chloe returned to the sunlit kitchen, followed by Lesbia Weguelin, the grim, black-bobbed verger of St. Edmund and St. Crispin’s. Chloe introduced her distractedly and began to fill the kettle. The verger gave him a curt nod.

  “We’ve already met,” Oliver reminded her. “The other day near the church.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course,” Lesbia replied, and managed what she must have intended as a tight smile before turning back to Chloe.

  In the garden, Oliver found Effie leafing through a copy of Uncle Dennis’s Nursery Rhyme Book.

  “Did you lift that from Simon Culpepper’s briefcase?” he asked.

  “Tampering with evidence, what do you take me for? No, this is a spare copy that I picked up at Breedlove’s house last night, while you were distracted.” She gathered her dense curls behind her head, holding them back with two hands, then let them go again. Her hair fell back into place, fanning out around her head like a bird’s wings spreading for flight. “So we have to find four sinners in Synne, with only this book to go on.”

  “Five.”

  “Why five?”

  “Hyacinthe says we should pinpoint all five of Breedlove’s targets, actual and intended.”

  “Why?”

  “Purposes of elimination. If we know who victim five was meant to be, we know that he or she isn’t victim one, two, three, or four. And in five’s case, we have two sets of clues: the content of the letter and the nursery rhyme Breedlove chose.”

  Oliver’s mother arrived at the table carrying two steaming mugs. “I say, that Sergeant Culpepper is one tall, dishy drink of ink,” she said. She placed the mugs in front of them and turned back to the house. Oliver winked at Effie.

  “Mother, if you wanted to blackmail somebody in Synne, who would make a good target?” he asked.

  Chloe stopped, without turning to face them. “Why are you asking me?”

  “Well, you seem to have the lowdown on everyone in the village.”

  “Are you implying I’m an old gossip?” Chloe said, taking a seat at the table.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  She looked at him kindly, but he could sense something hardening behind her eyes. “No I’m not going to answer that question about blackmail.”

  “Now, mother, what’s the matter?”

  “I know what this is about, Oliver. You want to keep this Dennis Breedlove business going, just to satisfy your curiosity.”

  “It’s a little more than that, Chloe,” said Effie gently.

  “But you were happy enough to help me at the funeral yesterday,” Oliver broke in.

  “That was different, dear,” Chloe answered. “Then, you were looking for a blackmailer, a bad hat. Now you’ve found your blackmailer and you’re looking for his victims, who may not be bad hats.” She stood up. “These are my neighbors, Oliver. These are my friends. Leave them alone.”

  “But, Mother—”

  “We understand completely, Chloe,” Effie interrupted, laying a hand
on Oliver’s arm.

  “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” muttered Oliver as they watched her walk away, her white hair as bright as ice in the sunlight.

  Chapter Twelve

  Wednesday afternoon

  On Google Earth, the Shakespeare Race looks like a bull’s-eye, a target for a preposterously tardy Luftwaffe bomber. Zoom in closer, and you can discern its pattern of recursive, enfolded pathways, like a cabalistic tattoo or a Chinese decoration, its perimeter notched by the shadow of the Synne Oak. And if the photograph had been taken that Wednesday afternoon, you could have made out two figures lying on the green circle at the center of the turf maze. But if you were one of those people who think scrutinizing aerial photography for blurry naked bodies and posting the results on YouTube is a service to mankind worthy of your brief, precious time on the planet, you’d be disappointed to notice that these figures were, on this occasion, fully clothed.

  “I wish I’d listened to my mother,” said Oliver.

  “And what piece of maternal advice are you currently regretting?” Effie asked, tickling his ear with a long blade of grass.

  “Not advice. Gossip. Facts. Stories, complaints, jokes about the denizens of Synne. Our weekly telephone calls are full of them. I used to tune most of it out.” He brushed away a cranefly. “I was counting on Mother. Most pernicious woman!”

  “There’s a difference between private gossip and public exposure. Chloe’s just drawn a line, that’s all.”

  Oliver didn’t answer. He watched a cloud float across the sapphire sky, backed like a weasel, its edges steaming and morphing. The Race was the highest point for many miles, and the views toward the Vale of Evesham were breathtaking. A mild breeze caused the branches of the Synne Oak to groan slightly. He shivered with memory, despite the warmth of the afternoon.

  Effie lifted her head and looking around the deserted Race. “How come we’re the only ones here?”

  “There’s a big hole on the main road, something to do with drainage repair. Cars can get by, but the gap is too narrow for tour buses. Should be cleared up in a day or two.”