Six Feet Under

by Dorothy Simpson

  “You knew Miss Birch, and.…”

  “So did the postman and the dustman,” Ingram cut in with a little laugh. “And are you investigating them? Seriously, Inspector, my acquaintance with Miss Birch was no closer than theirs. I passed the time of day with her when I saw her and that was as far as it went.”

  Ingram was still slightly on the defensive but that could be perfectly natural. Thanet knew that even innocent people feel obscurely threatened when being questioned by the police. He was becoming more and more convinced that Ingram was telling the truth.

  On the other hand, he reflected as he drove back to the office for the daily stint of reports, Ingram might simply be a superb actor. He must, after all, have had plenty of practice in lying to his wife and, if he was guilty, the fear of being found out could be enough to inspire the finest performance of his life. If so, Thanet could only hope that sooner or later some kind of clinching evidence would surface. It was surprising how long it sometimes took for this to happen. People hesitated, forgot, did not realise the significance of some piece of information and it could be days or even weeks before they came forward.

  Meanwhile, he began to hope that Lineham or one of the others might have turned up something interesting today.

  No such luck, however. Lineham was just completing his reports when Thanet arrived and he shook his head gloomily in response to Thanet’s question.

  “More or less a blank, I’m afraid,” he said. “It’s all here,” and he tapped the little stack of papers beside him, “but briefly, there’s still no sign of the weapon or the handbag, no news of Ingram’s girlfriend, if he had one, and none of the PCC members saw or heard anything of interest on the night of the murder. They all left the vicarage together at ten, except for Miss Pitman. She’s the treasurer and stayed behind to have a word with the vicar about something.”

  “Yes, she told me. She didn’t see anything either, I’m afraid.”

  “The only interesting fact we’ve gleaned all day,” said Lineham, “is that Miss Birch used to catch the last bus home from Sturrenden on Thursdays.”

  In view of all the unfruitful work the others had put in today, Thanet felt a twinge of guilt that he had already learnt this for himself, but he told himself not to be so sensitive. That was, after all, police work: hours, days, weeks, sometimes months of dreary slog, only to find when you finally turned up something interesting, that the other chap had beaten you to it. “So I heard,” he said. “Jenny Gamble told me, and Susan Selby confirmed it. Tomorrow you’d better get the men on to trying to find out where she went in Sturrenden. Incidentally, Susan also put me on to Ingram’s girl friend.” And briefly, Thanet gave Lineham an account of his afternoon’s activities.

  Lineham left shortly afterwards and Thanet settled down to his own reports. By the time he had finished it was eight o’clock and his brain felt as though it were stuffed with cotton wool. He rubbed his eyes, stretched, then relaxed, consciously trying to empty his mind. What he needed now was a peaceful evening and a good night’s sleep.

  A peaceful evening! Inwardly, he groaned. Not much prospect of that. In his absorption in his work he had temporarily forgotten about Joan’s back-to-work campaign. As he drove home he hoped devoutly that she would not broach the subject again that evening. He really didn’t have the mental energy left to discuss it. Today he had seen so many people, assimilated and assessed so much information that he didn’t think he could manage anything more taxing than an evening sunk in stupor in front of the television set.

  For once it was a relief to find that the children were in bed and asleep. Thanet sniffed appreciatively as he stepped into the hall: some sort of savoury casserole, he decided. With herb dumplings, perhaps? Mouth watering, he made his way into the kitchen and gave Joan an enthusiastic kiss. As he did so, he felt a pang of regret. Would this kind of welcome soon be a thing of the past?

  Joan must have sensed the sudden reservation in him. “What’s the matter?” she said.

  “Nothing,” he lied. “Wearing day, that’s all.”

  She wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not, he could see. Always sensitive to his moods, she was probably interpreting his behaviour towards her at the moment solely in the light of his attitude to her problem. Correctly, as it happened.

  “Supper’s all ready,” she said. “I’ll dish up. Why don’t you go and have a drink, while you’re waiting?”

  The stiff whisky helped and by the time they sat down at the table he was a little more relaxed. Even so, he found himself on his guard, waiting for her to bring the subject up again, She did not do so until they were seated peacefully by the fire, drinking coffee.

  “Darling …” she said diffidently. Here it comes, he thought.

  “… what you said last night …” She was still hesitating.

  “Mmmm?” he said, head resting against the back of the settee, eyes closed. Even this non-committal response managed to sound irritated, long-suffering, he realised.

  “… about me going ahead,” she finished. “Did you mean it—really?”

  “Honey,” he said wearily, “can’t we leave it, just for tonight? I’m whacked.”

  She said nothing and he opened his eyes to look at her.

  She was staring into the fire, her lips set in a mutinous line. Guilt and anger warred within him, the latter flaring up as she said tightly, “Luke, we have to get this sorted out.”

  “But why now, for God’s sake?”

  She turned her face towards him and he caught his breath a little at the unhappiness in it. “But that’s the trouble, don’t you see?” she said. “It never is the right time. That first evening, when we started to talk about it, I told you I’d hesitated to broach the subject because I didn’t know how you’d react. But I didn’t tell you just how long I’d been hesitating, did I? Almost a year, d’you know that? And do you know why? Because it’s never the right time. Because you’re always too busy, too tired or too late, too some damn thing!”

  The unfamiliar, mounting anger in her voice suddenly faded and she turned away, staring miserably into the fire again. “Oh, I’m sorry … I didn’t want to say all that. I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, that you’d just say whole-heartedly, ‘Go ahead.’ But don’t you see, Luke, it’s time now for me to have something of my own to work for. All these years … I’ve tried hard to be the sort of wife you want, and I’ve even hoped that would turn out to be enough for me. But it isn’t, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise. So, don’t you see, we can’t just go on shelving the problem, hoping that it’ll go away. It won’t. And I can’t go ahead without your approval, I just can’t. I’m not that sort of woman. It’s not simply that, if I do get an interesting job, I’ll need you to be pretty easy-going in all sorts of practical ways—it’s that I want you behind me, morally speaking, interested in what I do. Can’t you see that?” And she looked at him pleadingly.

  Thanet was torn. Half of him acknowledged that what she said was true, that she had been a good wife, put his well-being and comfort first, always. But the other half was rebellious. Couldn’t she see that what she was asking was unreasonable? He’d told her last night to go ahead. What more could she ask? He couldn’t be expected to change his feelings, could he?

  “Of course I see all that,” he said, and was relieved that the irritation wasn’t showing in his voice. “And I told you last night, go ahead. Investigate the possibilities. Find something you’ll really enjoy and I’ll back you all the way.” But the words lacked conviction and he knew it.

  So did Joan. She looked at him dubiously. “You really mean that?”

  “Darling, how many times d’you want me to tell you?”

  A million times would not be enough, he realised, so long as he felt this way. Joan knew him well enough to sense that he was lying, however convincing he tried to be. He told himself that it couldn’t be helped, that he couldn’t change the way he felt, that she would just have to be satisfied with what she’d got. He felt agg
rieved. Surely he had done all that could be expected of him, and more? Not many men would have done as much, he was sure.

  Perhaps she had acknowledged this, for she smiled at him now, gave him a thank-you kiss. And, reluctant as he had been to enter into the discussion, he realised that it was after all better to have talked; now at least they could relax.

  Thanet meditated, not for the first time, on the way people function on two different levels simultaneously. On the public one they speak, gesture, apparently react; but it is on the other, the private one, that they are truly themselves. Here lie their secret thoughts, fears, hopes, fantasies; shared but occasionally, and only with those they really trust, those with whom they can allow themselves to be vulnerable.

  He had always thought that he and Joan were lucky. They were able to be themselves with each other—or so he had always imagined. Now he was learning that he had been wrong; all this time, Joan had been hiding away from him the side of herself that dreamed, aspired. As he, now, was hiding from her his true feelings on this subject. Perhaps their relationship was going to go the way of so many he had seen; perhaps their best and closest years together were over. It was a depressing thought and something that he was determined to prevent, if it was in his power to do so. But it seemed that if he was to succeed, somehow he was going to have to change his attitude towards this job business. And how could he do that?

  How could one change the way one felt?

  In bed later he lay listening to Joan’s even breathing and thought back over his day. In the darkness and the silence he gradually became aware of something hovering on the edge of his consciousness. He had no idea of its nature, but there it was, on the very periphery of his awareness. What could it be? The significance of some fact, so far dismissed as unimportant? Or some insight, vital to his understanding of the case? But it wouldn’t come. Perhaps, while he was asleep, his subconscious would give it a shove and in the morning there it would be, waiting for him when he awoke. It had often happened that way in the past. It was as if that submerged level of the mind was able to operate better when the surface ones were not functioning. From which level, he wondered, did the impulse to murder come?

  This meaty question occupied him until he fell asleep.

  15

  “Inspector Thanet?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Paul Ennerby here, vicar of Nettleton. Do you think you might be coming out to Nettleton this morning?”

  “Yes, I’ll be along shortly, as a matter of fact.”

  “Only, I’ve got something to tell you. Do you think you could call in at the vicarage?”

  Words to gladden any policeman’s heart, thought Thanet. Perhaps they would compensate for the fact that his subconscious had let him down; no dazzling revelation had awaited him this morning. “By all means,” he said. “What time would suit you?”

  “Fairly early? I’ve got a Mothers’ Union coffee morning at ten thirty. I’ll be working at home till then.”

  “Nine thirty, then?”

  “Fine. Thank you. Goodbye.”

  Lineham had just come in.

  “The vicar of Nettleton is about to Reveal All, by the sound of it,” Thanet said. Then, “You’re looking remarkably cheerful this morning, Mike.”

  “I told her,” said Lineham, beaming.

  Evidently he had plucked up the courage to tackle his mother.

  “You said you’d go ahead regardless?”

  Lineham nodded. “Not quite as bluntly as that, though. I … er … wrapped it up a bit.”

  “Naturally,” Thanet said. “And there’s no need to ask how she took it, by the look of you.”

  Lineham was going to tell him anyway. He was positively bubbling over with it. “To be honest, sir, I was scared stiff. Well, I thought, perhaps she’ll have a heart attack here and now, and she wouldn’t have if I hadn’t told her, if you see what I mean, and then I’d wish I’d kept quiet.” He stopped, looked hopefully at Thanet, as if wondering whether Thanet was following him.

  “Quite,” said Thanet encouragingly, pleased at the success of Lineham’s stand (and relieved, too, for if Mrs Lineham had had another heart attack it was he, Thanet, who would truly have been responsible, no doubt about that) but impatient to get out to Nettleton to see the vicar. It must surely be important, or Mr Ennerby would not have bothered to phone. Perhaps someone had confessed to him? No, it couldn’t be that. The secrets of the confessional were sacrosanct.

  “So she said …” Lineham was saying. He was obviously determined to give a blow-by-blow account of the conversation and Thanet didn’t have the heart to discourage him. Thanet couldn’t help rejoicing for his sergeant. He looked as though the troubles of the world had suddenly been lifted from his shoulders. Mrs Lineham had apparently been a little tearful to begin with, but when she realised that her son really meant what he was saying, she had given in gracefully. “D’you think I could just give Louise a ring, sir?” Lineham finished up. “I can’t wait to tell her and I didn’t like to ring from home …”

  “Go ahead,” said Thanet resignedly, thinking for the umpteenth time that he would be glad when all these traumas were over and Lineham was comfortably settled into married bliss. “You can follow me out to Nettleton. I’m going to see the vicar first, but then I want you with me when I see first Mrs Selby, then her husband. We really must find out whether or not Carrie went to the Selbys’ after leaving the Pitmans’. Susan says she must have, because Major Selby was not expected home until Tuesday, but it’s only an assumption on her part. I’ll see you in the church car park around ten.”

  The uncertain weather of the last few days had vanished overnight and it was a sparkling March morning. A frisky wind propelled fluffy white clouds briskly across the sky and tree branches dipped and swayed in the gardens as Thanet sped past.

  When he got out of the car in Nettleton he stood quite still for a moment or two, taking deep breaths of country air. There was a builder’s lorry parked opposite the end of the footpath which ran along the back of Church Cottages and two men were unloading sacks on to the narrow pavement. One of them set off along the footpath as Thanet passed on his way to the vicarage gate. He was trundling two of the sacks in a wheelbarrow.

  The other man was Arnold, the builder. He was systematically marking each thick paper sack with a wide-tipped black felt pen. Thanet stopped, intrigued.

  “Morning,” he said.

  Arnold glanced up, returned the greeting. “Bloody waste of time,” he muttered. “If you lot did your job properly, I wouldn’t have to be doing this.”

  Thanet came closer, peered down at the marks Arnold was making: a circle approximately six inches in diameter, with a capital A inside it. “What do you mean?” he said.

  “Some perisher’s been nicking my stuff, hasn’t he? Bag after bag of cement, sand, ballast … You name it, he’s had it.”

  “All in one go?”

  “Naw. Bit at a time. But it all adds up. Lost nearly fifty quid’s worth of stuff, I have, in the last month. And your lot have done damn all about it.”

  “You’ve reported it, then?”

  Arnold stood up, glanced impatiently along the footpath. “You bet. And a fat lot of good it’s done me. Where the devil’s Bill got to? Bill!” he yelled.

  “So you decided to mark it. Good idea.”

  “Only if we spot any of the stuff after. But believe me, if I do, I’ll knock the bleeder into the middle of next week.”

  “Much more sensible to let us know, first,” Thanet said mildly. “You wouldn’t want to end up on a charge of assault, would you?”

  “Justice!” muttered Arnold. He took one or two steps away from Thanet and peered along the footpath. “Bill!” he bellowed.

  The sound of the wheelbarrow heralded Bill’s appearance.

  “Where the hell’ve you been?” said Arnold. “We haven’t got all day, you know.”

  “I …”

  “Don’t give me any of your guff,” Arnold said. “Be
en chatting up that bird from next door again, haven’t you?”

  Bill did not deny the accusation, merely bent to lift another sack into the wheelbarrow.

  “Mr Arnold …” Thanet said, when Bill had set off once more.

  “Yeah?” Arnold was reaching across to ease a large sheet of plasterboard off the lorry. It, too, had been marked, Thanet noticed.

  “The night of the murder,” Thanet said. “Was anything taken?”

  Arnold slid the plasterboard into a vertical position and leaned it against the side of the lorry. Then he shook his head. “Nothing’s been nicked since the weekend. Saturday night it was, the last time. A yard of ballast! Makes you think, don’t it? I mean, it must be someone local. The bleeder must have carted it off in a wheelbarrow. Well he ain’t building Buckingham Palace at my expense, I can tell you. If anything else goes missing I’ll camp out in the house at night until I get him. I’m hoping this murder might’ve scared him off. It’s an ill wind, they say.… Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He lifted the sheet of plasterboard and set off down the footpath, crabwise.

  Pity, thought Thanet, watching him go. If the thief had been at work on the night of the murder he might possibly have seen or heard something and it would have been worth making an all-out effort to catch him.

  All the same, he thought as he pushed open the vicarage gate and walked up the path, the fact that nothing had been stolen on the night of the murder did not necessarily mean that the thief had not been in the garden of number two that evening. He might have gone along to steal something and been disturbed. Say that he had heard someone coming.… He would have hidden—there was plenty of cover. He might even have seen or heard the murderer as he dumped Carrie’s body in the privy.

  The vicarage door stood ajar and Thanet knocked absently, his mind far away. It could even be, he realised, that the thief himself was the killer. Say that on her way home Carrie had seen or heard something suspicious—someone carting something away in a wheelbarrow, for instance. Arnold might well have complained to her about the pilfering, told her that he suspected a local. He might even have asked her to keep her eyes open. Suppose, then, that she had recognised the thief.… This might be the reason why, after the initial blow on the head, the murderer had decided to finish her off: he could not afford her to recover consciousness and reveal his identity.