The Evil that Men Do

by Jeanne M. Dams

  ‘What happened to your new-found love of the earth, walking the paths trod for hundreds, nay thousands of years?’

  ‘I think it got rained out. Where shall we go?’

  ‘I’ve been looking at the map. There’s a town called Upper Pinnock just about in the middle of where we intended to walk, roughly equidistant from here, Winchcombe, Bourton-on-the-Water, and Moreton-in-Marsh. And there’s a highly recommended holiday cottage just outside the town, within easy walking distance of two stately homes you’ll love, Sezincote and Stanway. Shall I see if we can book it? Oh, I should warn you, it’s self-catering.’

  ‘That means I cook.’

  ‘That means we cook. Or eat out.’

  ‘Show me.’ I leaned over the map as Alan unfolded it on the bed.

  ‘See? Here’s Sezincote – you’ll love that, it’s incredible, quite a lot like Brighton Pavilion – and here’s Stanway. And right at this crossroads is the cottage.’

  I looked at the many inches between the indicated crossroads and the two little symbols that meant stately homes. ‘That’s easy walking distance?’

  ‘Less than four miles to either. You’re forgetting the scale of the map. The whole map, both sides, covers only about a twenty by twenty-five mile area. A good walker could cover the whole perimeter in less than a week.’

  ‘Well, I don’t propose to find out. But, yes, see if the cottage is available. It sounds ideal.’

  We said goodbye to Pam with real regret, and to the Irish ladies with considerable relief, which I hope we managed to disguise, and headed out. We stopped at one of Broadway’s excellent shops to pick up a hamper and a selection of delicacies to fill it, and then concentrated on finding our way down roads charitably described on the map as ‘generally less than 4m wide’. In some cases, considerably less. Blind corners abounded, and the rain didn’t help. If I’d been driving I would have been reduced to a quivering jelly in about ten minutes – just as we encountered the first flock of sheep.

  Alan, however, is used to this sort of thing, and managed to keep the car on the road and off the sheep, and found our destination with no more than a few words we wouldn’t have wanted our clergy friends to hear.

  The owner, Mrs Bostock, was waiting for us. ‘So sorry about the rain,’ she said, as we stood in the front hallway dripping. ‘Don’t worry at all about tracking in. It can’t be helped, and the rugs are all washable. I’ve turned the heaters on, to take the chill off, and there’s plenty of wood for a fire if you’d like one later. The larder’s stocked with the basics, and you’ll find milk and eggs in the fridge. All right?’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Alan. ‘And the key?’

  ‘Oh, we never bother about keys, I’m afraid. The area isn’t teeming with desperadoes. If you really want one, I could ask my husband. He might know what we’ve done with it.’

  ‘Oh . . . well . . . I wouldn’t want you to go to the trouble. It’s your house, after all, and if you’re comfortable leaving it unlocked . . .’ I left the sentence unfinished, and she nodded briskly.

  ‘The doors do bolt from the inside if you’ll feel safer locked in at night. Actually it might be a good idea, because we do have the occasional marauder.’

  ‘I thought you said . . .’ Alan began.

  Mrs Bostock grinned. ‘Not your usual thieves. Goats. We try to keep them penned up, but they’re clever rascals, and curious as cats. And of course they’ll eat anything. So . . .’

  She smiled, and we laughed. ‘We’ll keep a sharp eye out for criminally minded goats,’ Alan assured her.

  ‘I’ll leave you to get settled, then. If you need anything at all, we’re just down the lane, and our phone number’s posted in the kitchen. Enjoy yourselves, and I do hope the rain stops for you.’

  ‘Why do the English keep apologizing for the weather?’ I asked idly as I found tea things and turned on the kettle.

  ‘Don’t Americans?’ asked Alan in surprise.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ I tried to remember. ‘I think we complain about it, constantly. Or brag about it, in a sort of reverse snobbery. “You think this is bad. You should have seen the Blizzard of Seventy-Eight!” That sort of thing. And actually, American weather can be far worse than English. Tornadoes, hurricanes, blistering heat, frigid cold, not to mention earthquakes. A little summer rain is nothing.’

  ‘Then shall we go for a nice walk before lunch?’ he said wickedly, looking out the window at the rain splashing in the puddles.

  ‘Certainly. As far as the car.’

  We had our tea, and then unpacked. The cottage was roomy and pleasantly appointed, with all the necessities of life for a few days. Big bathroom, fluffy towels. Comfortable bed. Dishes and glassware and cutlery, and a modest selection of pots and pans – and the all-important dishwasher. Tea, coffee, sugar, milk, eggs, breakfast cereal, bread, butter, biscuits. The basics, as Mrs Bostock had said. We’d brought ham, various cheeses, smoked salmon, marmalade, and salad makings, along with fruit and an utterly sinful and delectable chocolate cake I could not leave in the shop.

  We did in fact take a stroll before lunch, just to get our bearings. The rain wasn’t overpowering, though it was deceptively wet, making its way into any possible gap in one’s rain gear. We could see well enough, though, and the view almost made up for the rain.

  We were situated on the top of a hill, the land before us rolling in typical Cotswold fashion. It’s a gentle sort of country, content with the quiet beauty of fields and woods, streams and hedges, crops and sheep and cattle.

  My native country is huge, with so many different kinds of scenery that it’s impossible to pick one and say ‘This is America.’ But for me, growing up in the Midwest, Indiana cornfields were America. England, on its much smaller scale, is also quite varied. At that moment, looking out over the Cotswold hills, I was quite sure this was the essence of England.

  Our home from home was just outside the town of Upper Pinnock, which stretched out below us. ‘Upper’, Alan explained, referred not so much to the elevation, but to the fact that the town lay upstream from, and was also much more important than, the companion Pinnock.

  ‘So where is Pinnock?’

  ‘Vanished completely. It was a medieval village, over more or less that way, I think. All that’s left of it is a few depressions in the earth where houses and barns used to be.’

  ‘Good grief, what happened to it?’ Visions of fire, of plague and pestilence, of internecine warfare flashed across my brain.

  ‘I have no idea. You’re free to use your lurid imagination.’

  ‘And what’s in Upper Pinnock?’

  ‘Again, no idea. It’s good-sized on the map, looks to be nearly the size of Cheltenham, so presumably there will be all the amenities of a Cotswold market town.’

  ‘Well, the amenities I’m concerned with right now are first, towels, and second, food.’

  We lunched on smoked salmon, salad, and crusty bread. Simple and very satisfying. I virtuously topped off my meal with a handful of grapes, saving the cake for dinner. Alan helped with the dishes, no great chore.

  It was still raining.

  ‘No walk to Sezincote today,’ said Alan. We were sitting in the lounge, in seductively comfortable chairs. ‘I don’t even care to walk into the town.’

  I shivered, quite unnecessarily. The room was warm. ‘Nap time?’

  Alan just looked at me.

  ‘Well, no, I’m not actually sleepy, either.’

  There was a little silence. Then Alan said, ‘There’s no point in trying to run away from it.’

  ‘Is that what we were doing?’

  That look again.

  I sat up a little straighter. It took some effort. ‘All right. What are we going to do?’

  ‘We’re going to be methodical about it. Do you suppose there’s anything to write on in this establishment?’

  ‘Have you ever known me to be without a notebook?’ I am addicted to spiral notebooks, and carry one everywhere I go. I struggled out
of my chair, nipped into the bedroom, and found the small one I’d brought along. ‘Now.’

  Alan tented his hands in a gesture that made him look more like Alistair Cooke than ever. ‘First: what do we want to know?’

  I headed a page ‘Queries’ and created a subhead, ‘Paul’. ‘There’s a lot we want to know about Paul. Why was he staying in Broadway – or why is he staying there? He may have come back, after all.’

  ‘Right. And why was he incognito?’

  ‘Oh, but that’s an easy one. He—’

  ‘No, let’s get the questions down first, and then see if we have any answers. There’s quite a lot more about Paul. What is his real name, Paul Jones or Peter James, or maybe something else entirely?’

  I got that down. ‘Why did he disappear, and where did he go?’

  ‘We know part of the answer to that one, but the most puzzling one is, why was he so upset when he nearly ran into you?’

  ‘Yes, and where did all that blood come from?’ I paused. ‘Any more about Paul?’

  ‘Not that I can think of at the moment. Oh, yes, there’s one, but we might as well make it a query about Jo Carter. Why is she, or was she, trying to find Paul?’

  ‘Or in general, what’s she up to? What’s her relationship with Sarah? Where is she, Jo, I mean, where is she now?’

  Alan thought for a moment. ‘Well, as we’ve got to Sarah, what is it that’s troubling her so badly?’

  ‘And to that one I haven’t a clue.’ I looked at my list. ‘Goodness, there’s a lot we don’t know.’

  ‘And you’ve forgotten the matter that really should have come first,’ said Alan, looking very sober.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Who killed William Symonds, and why? That’s where this all started, you know.’

  ‘Or at least where we came into it. Alan, I have the feeling we’ve waded into something that goes a long way back. There was a novel I read once, by Mary Stewart, I think, that talked about entering a situation in the middle of the third act, with no idea what the play was about or even who the characters were. That’s the way I feel now.’

  ‘That’s nearly always the way it was in police work, Dorothy. Or at least, no. Most of the time it was boring routine. Wife throws pot at husband, husband stabs wife. Thieves fall out. Drug deals go bad. A crowd of bored, stupid teenagers decides to go on a rampage.’

  I shuddered. ‘I’m very glad you’re out of all that.’

  ‘Not half as glad as I am. But in the odd case when the solution wasn’t obvious, we always had to go back. It was almost never a matter of where John Doe was at ten thirty on the night of the fifteenth. Oh, it came to that in the end, of course, when we knew who the villain was and had to find the evidence to prove it. But in order to come to that assurance, we had to look into the relationships of everyone concerned, what someone stood to gain, or to lose. It was almost never pretty.’

  ‘No. Crime isn’t, is it? But Alan, that’s exactly the problem with the death of the farmer. There’s nothing in his background that could lead to murder. And yet he’s dead. I suppose the police in Broadway really did their job?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It’s easier in a village. In a city a man can be anonymous. Not in a village. Believe me, if Bill Symonds had any secrets in his life, past or present, they would have been discovered instantly. There was no reason for him to be killed.’

  ‘Well, then, logically, he’s still alive.’

  ‘Which he is not. Therefore the logic has a flaw. And as we have no idea what it is, perhaps we’d be more productive exploring some of our other questions. What do you suggest?’

  I looked again at my list. ‘I’ve numbered them. How about Paul, question two: why was he incognito? I think the answer to that one is obvious.’

  ‘Do you? And what is your answer?’

  ‘He’s a rock star. He didn’t want to be recognized. Hence the beard and the false name.’

  ‘Ah, but that answer raises more questions. Why didn’t he want to be recognized?’

  ‘His fans. He didn’t want to be mobbed.’

  ‘You’re forgetting a couple of things, love. One: Saturday night was his first appearance on television. That means the number of people who knew what he looked like is limited.’

  I grinned, happy to be one-up for a change. ‘You are forgetting the Internet, and YouTube, and Facebook, and all the other ways teenagers trade information these days. Half the world could know what he looked like, and we old fogies would be the only ones left in the dark.’

  ‘All right. I’ll grant you that one. Do you think that’s why he came to the Holly Tree? He must be making a fortune. He could have stayed anywhere.’

  ‘Well . . . it does seem an unlikely place for him. And you know, you’ve raised some questions in my mind, actually. Most rising young stars revel in publicity. They wallow in it. I suspect their agents insist. And here he is, just on the verge of his big television debut, choosing to hole up, incognito, in a small B-and-B in a Cotswold village. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.’

  ‘Which gets us back to . . . would it be Paul, question one, on your list? Why he was in Broadway at all?’

  ‘It would be, and that’s been one of the big questions all along. Even before the death of the farmer.’

  ‘He was there for a private reason, something that had nothing to do with his career. I’ll swear to that. His whole demeanour was that of a private individual. When he ran you down—’

  ‘Nearly. Not quite.’

  ‘—nearly ran you down, he was terribly shaken, but it wasn’t the fear that he would be exposed, the great Peter James, as a reckless driver. He was concerned about you.’

  ‘And about something else. His anxiety was out of all proportion to the minor damage he’d done to me, or to himself, for that matter. Alan, that child was terrified.’

  ‘I agree. So let’s put a few facts together. First, where was he coming from?’

  I looked blank. ‘I haven’t the slightest idea. I wasn’t paying attention. We were leaving the pub. I don’t remember the name. It wasn’t very nice.’

  ‘The Hunting Dog. Near the bottom of the High Street. We had turned to go back to the Holly Tree, or in that direction, anyway. He came from behind us. Therefore from the west.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said I, the geographically challenged.

  ‘Second, what was the time?’

  ‘Around lunchtime. We had stopped in the pub to get some lunch.’

  ‘So, say around one, or a little past. Now, do you remember when William Symonds was presumed to have died?’

  I felt a distinct chill. ‘No.’

  ‘Latest time, around one. Earliest, about ten that morning.’

  ‘Alan, you’re not saying Paul killed him? I thought we disposed of that long ago.’

  ‘I think so, too. I’m saying, as a hypothesis, that he saw him killed.’

  ‘But . . .’ I stopped talking and thought about that. ‘Why would he not go to the police?’

  ‘Because he knew the killer.’

  THIRTEEN

  That one silenced me. ‘How do you work that out?’ I said, finally.

  ‘I said it was only a hypothesis. I can’t come within miles of producing evidence, but it fits the few facts we know.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Fact: William Symonds was killed sometime between ten and one on Tuesday. Fact: Paul Jones – we’ll call him that for now – was going somewhere at a hell of a clip just before one. Fact: he was coming from the west.’

  ‘That’s an inference, not a fact,’ I argued. ‘We didn’t see him coming. And even if he was, how would that mean he was coming from that quarry? Isn’t it more or less south of here? Of Broadway, I mean?’

  He looked at me in some surprise. ‘Your geography has improved.’

  ‘No, it hasn’t. I’ve been studying that miserable OS map until I’m nearly blind, and even I know that down, on a map, is south.’

  ‘Yes. Well. The point is
, yes, you’re right about the direction. But remember that Paul was on a motorbike. He couldn’t have ridden that to the quarry, or back. Even the Land Rover had to stop some distance away, you remember. And if you can bear to look at the map once more, I think you’ll see that he would have had to go west from the quarry to get to anything like a road.’

  ‘All right, but why would he have been to the quarry at all? I wouldn’t have said he was the outdoor type.’

  ‘I have no idea, at least not yet. But you will have to admit that he was in a state of near collapse when we saw him in front of the Hunting Dog.’

  ‘No argument about that. But any number of things could have caused that.’

  ‘For instance?’

  ‘Well . . . he had a fight with someone. That would explain the blood, too.’

  ‘With whom?’

  ‘I don’t know! I know nothing about him, really. Maybe with the person he came to Broadway to see. And that would explain why he left town right away, too. He was fed up with the situation and wanted to get away.’

  ‘It’s possible. I don’t think so, though. Dorothy, you’re better than I at reading people’s reactions, but at the time we both thought Paul was struggling with fear, not anger.’

  I cast my mind back to the boy’s face, ashy white where it wasn’t covered with blood and mud. I saw again his frantic haste, his reluctance to talk, his desperate effort at courtesy in spite of everything. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ I said slowly. ‘He was afraid. All right. Your theory is full of holes, but all right. For the sake of the argument, he saw the murder done. I repeat, why didn’t he then go to the police? He seems to me to be a law-abiding sort.’

  ‘And I repeat, he knows the murderer. And is terrified of him, or her.’

  ‘Terrified of him? Or for him?’ A new idea was trying to surface in my brain.

  Alan leaned forward, or tried to. ‘Blast it, this furniture is demoralizing! Comfortable, but not conducive to escape. Dorothy, you may have something there. Afraid for the murderer. I like it. That seems to capture the sense we had, or at least I had, of his condition at the time. Afraid, yes, but afraid something worse was going to happen to someone he loved.’