The Wounded Snake

by Fay Sampson

  ‘No. Of course not. That didn’t come out the way I meant it to.’

  ‘Where is young Gavin, anyway?’ boomed Colonel Truscott.

  ‘His wife’s just died,’ Veronica said quietly. ‘In terrible circumstances. I don’t suppose he feels like eating.’

  ‘All the same,’ the silver-haired Lin looked around her shrewdly, ‘you’d think Theresa would have turned up. It’s not quite the thing to leave us all leaderless, after a shock like this.’

  ‘I’m not sure how much we need a leader. We’re hardly going to be trooping round to Lady Jane’s Chamber for Gavin’s evening session,’ Ben said, with an apologetic look at Jake. ‘It doesn’t seem quite the right moment to be reading out our character sketches of a murderer or their victim.’

  FIFTEEN

  Veronica and Hilary left the dining room early. Darkness was falling over those parts of the quadrangle where the lamps did not reach. A deeper gloom invested the lawns and shrubberies beyond the restaurant.

  There was a knot of people on the lawn, disregarding the notice asking visitors to keep to the paths. As Hilary and Veronica emerged, the group surged towards them.

  A light, shockingly bright, was beamed on to Hilary’s face. A microphone was thrust in front of her.

  ‘You’re from the crime-writing course, aren’t you? We hear one of your leaders has been murdered. Can you tell us about that?’

  Hilary recovered her wits. ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘I can’t. The police have asked us to say nothing about it.’

  ‘Is it true she was found in the Leechwells?’

  ‘I said no comment.’

  ‘Oh, yes, these ladies were certainly there. They were the ones who found her.’

  It was Jake who had come up behind her. He was grinning more broadly than the situation should have allowed. ‘Hilary Masters and Veronica Taylor, for the record. And I’m Jake Penderson.’

  ‘Jake! I could kill you for that!’

  Even as she spoke, she knew with dismay that her words were being filmed. She knocked the microphone aside and thrust her hand over the camera lens.

  ‘I’ll thank you to leave us alone. We have nothing to tell the press. Ask the police.’

  ‘And that,’ said the interviewer, as her cameraman righted his equipment, ‘is the scene at Morland Abbey tonight, as the shocked participants of the crime-writing course come to terms with a real-life murder.’

  Hilary seized Veronica’s arm and marched away.

  ‘So much for keeping the details quiet. The whole country will know before long.’

  They left Jake and Ben behind them. The two young men seemed not to be camera-shy.

  In the shelter of the shadows beyond the Great Barn porch, Hilary paused to recover her wits.

  ‘According to our timetable, we’re supposed to meet in Lady Jane’s Chamber at eight. But Ben’s right. I suppose that’s all out of the window now.’

  ‘Lin had a point. It seems strange, doesn’t it, just to abandon us like this? Gavin must be distraught, of course, but you’d have thought Theresa would have stepped up to the mark and shown some leadership.’

  ‘Unless the police are still grilling her. After all, considering what you told them, she and Gavin must be prime suspects now.’

  Veronica stopped dead on the path beside the Great Barn. ‘Oh, dear. Do you think so? I didn’t want to get them into real trouble. I just thought I had to tell the police what I heard.’

  ‘Of course you did, you goof. You couldn’t not tell them. And that was only when they were investigating Dinah Halsgrove’s suspicious illness. Now it’s a full-blown murder.’

  Veronica shuddered, a slight tremor of her clothing in the dusk. ‘That’s what I can’t get into my head. That Melissa is dead. That we actually saw her body. And someone, another human being, did that to her.’

  ‘The inspector seems to think there’s a high probability that that someone is staying in Morland Abbey.’

  They began to move along the path again. Hilary found herself darting glances to either side, into shadowed doorways, to places where creepers on the walls cast dark shadows. To the giant cypress tree that spread its branches over the lawn.

  ‘I don’t want to worry you,’ she said with a false attempt at cheerfulness, ‘but from the point of view of the murderer, we two must look like trouble. I find it difficult to believe that the inspector could have questioned Gavin and Theresa as hard as he needed to without giving away the fact that someone overheard them. I just pray that pair don’t put two and two together and remember seeing you in the tiltyard that morning. And, to cap it all, we have to be the ones who find Melissa.’

  ‘It’s too late, isn’t it?’ Veronica asked, her voice rather higher than usual. ‘I can’t un-say what I told the police. And we can’t un-find Melissa’s body. Somebody would have, anyway. It’s happened. Hurting us wouldn’t make things better for them, except to vent their anger, and that would get them into a whole lot more trouble.’

  ‘I should think committing murder is trouble enough for anyone. If they think they’ve been exposed, they may not care what they do next.’

  She was scanning the shadows more keenly now.

  ‘We’re assuming it was Gavin and Theresa,’ Veronica said after a while. ‘But it doesn’t make sense. Why would they?’

  Hilary shrugged. ‘We’ve only known them a day or so. How can we guess what sort of relationship goes on between the three of them? Let alone what they thought they could achieve by sending Dinah Halsgrove into a near-death coma.’

  A figure stepped out of the shadows in the corner where the Great Barn met the East Cloister. The voice revealed the dark bulk to be Colonel Truscott.

  ‘Good evening, ladies. I gather you’re wondering the same as the rest of us. What’s happened to our leader’s programme? What are we supposed to do now? And let me say I share your opinion. What would the two survivors have to gain from the death of Mrs Standforth? Assuming it was one of them, or both.’

  A flash of alarm stabbed through Hilary. How long had Dan Truscott been listening to their conversation? Could he have heard what she had said about Veronica overhearing an incriminating exchange between Gavin and Theresa? They had told no one but the police about that.

  Would it matter if he had heard her? Surely everyone else on the course must be as intent on discovering the perpetrator of the crime that made murder a sudden reality among them, as they had been on their fictional crimes?

  ‘I share your views on the intrusion of television at a time like this. If it’s any help, there’s a light on in Lady Jane’s Chamber,’ the colonel volunteered. ‘I say we march upstairs and install ourselves as though we expect someone to take charge of things. We paid good money to come here. Someone ought to stand and deliver.’

  ‘It’s got to be Theresa,’ Veronica said, as the two women stepped through the door he held open for them. ‘Gavin’s hardly going to be in a fit state.’

  ‘A rather cold fish, that one,’ Dan Truscott agreed. ‘Or reptile, should I say, under the circumstances? Sitting there as though she really was a toad, and watching us with those beady eyes. Not exactly the competent but sympathetic midwife type I’d hoped for, to help my infant fiction to birth.’

  ‘This evening would have been interesting,’ Hilary remarked, as she led the way upstairs. ‘I wonder what we thought about what sort of characters commit murder, or get themselves murdered, or dedicate their lives to solving murders?’

  ‘It would have been something of a revelation,’ came the colonel’s voice from below. ‘I’m guessing that most of us wrote about the investigator of the crime, seeing ourselves as the bringer of justice. But I’d like to know if there are any minds among us who felt drawn to write the murderer’s part. I can hardly imagine that any one of us thought of ourselves as the victim.’

  Hilary stopped on the landing. ‘Are you suggesting that you’re not a hundred per cent sure it was one of our leaders who killed Melissa? That it might actually
be someone else in the group?’

  ‘Oh, I leave that to the police,’ laughed Dan Truscott. ‘Sorry. It’s not a joking matter, is it, as I pointed out to those two young men. I’ll just say there’s too much about this weekend we still don’t know.’

  Light was streaming under the door of Lady Jane’s Chamber, which was not completely closed. Hilary drew a deep breath, wondering as she did so what she was afraid of. She pushed it open.

  A circle of chairs had been arranged around the room. Facing them, on a lone chair behind the table, sat Theresa.

  Hilary stopped, rooted to the floor. She had not come face to face with a suspected murderer before. She found herself staring at the dumpy woman behind the table, for once at a loss for words.

  A murderer? Was this the reality? Not the colourful fabrication of a TV drama?

  Theresa’s brown dress fell shapelessly about her, hiding her legs beneath the table. Her clumsily cut brown hair reached almost to her shoulders. She seemed to have no neck. Her rather square face was expressionless. She stared out at the newcomers with no indication of welcome or surprise.

  It was Dan Truscott who broke the charged stillness of the moment. He strode forward, hand outstretched.

  ‘Dear lady! We’re all so sorry about what happened. Mrs Standforth must have been a friend of yours. How gallant of you to step into the breach while poor Gavin is overwhelmed with grief.’

  Theresa’s face did not soften. She made no move to respond. The colonel’s hand fell to his side.

  Hilary felt a surge of respect for him. For someone who shared their belief that Theresa was one of the two people most probably implicated in Melissa’s murder, he was putting on a convincing show of ready sympathy. With a start, she realized that this was what all of them must do. It would not do for Theresa to know what they were really thinking, still less that Veronica had apparent evidence of her involvement.

  And yet … as Hilary’s unwilling feet broke into movement again and she walked towards the circle of chairs, it struck her that there was something odd about Theresa sitting here like this. There was no police officer in sight. Theresa must surely have been taken in for more rigorous questioning after Veronica’s statement. And yet the inspector had let her go. But then, the police needed to have hard proof, didn’t they? A half-heard conversation, however suspicious it sounded, was not enough to make an arrest.

  And so here was Theresa. Free, even if under suspicion.

  Or was there another suspect? One Hilary and Veronica knew nothing about?

  Hilary heard steps approaching on the stairs. Others were coming. Would-be crime hunters, now faced with this real-life murder. Hilary’s instincts overrode her more careful scruples. Theresa must surely have something to do with Melissa’s death … and with the near-fatal overdose Dinah Halsgrove seemed to have taken. It had been she who had stayed behind with the novelist while the rest of them were out on the river. Hilary felt the horror of it crawl over her skin. She sat down rather more rapidly than she had intended, to wait for what would come next.

  As the room filled up, Hilary looked more carefully to see how many had come. It was not difficult. Theresa had set out thirty chairs. Only four were empty.

  What had drawn them all back here, when the writing course could obviously not proceed as planned? Curiosity? The eagerness to know what would happen next?

  Still Theresa had not moved or spoken.

  When it seemed as though there was no one else to come, it was Lin who rose to her feet. That upright back, the determined lift of her silvered head. Her voice was thin but clear.

  ‘As one of the oldest here, I’d like to say on behalf of us all how very sorry I am for what has happened. It must be devastating for Gavin, and for you too. I’m sure we’re all praying for you both.’

  Hilary felt a stab of conscience. She had prayed for many things in the last twenty-four hours, but not for Theresa and Gavin. But didn’t she have a duty to pray for the guilty too, if she wished to have her own sins forgiven? And what if they weren’t guilty, the voice of honesty prompted her. Or only one of them?

  The shock of finding Melissa in the Long Crippler pool came back to her with an almost physical force. She felt sick. She could feel again the sodden wool and cotton of Melissa’s clothing, the chest compressing and lifting under her hands, the cold lips through which she had tried in vain to breathe life. The streaks of blood on that wet face.

  In other circumstances, given her professional career as a senior teacher, it might have been she who was on her feet acting as spokesperson. Now, she wanted nothing more than to sit silently, to be overlooked.

  ‘I’m sure it would be a relief to you if we all just packed up and went home,’ Lin was concluding. ‘But the police won’t let us do that, or at least they have strongly discouraged us from leaving. Like it or not, we’re here until tomorrow afternoon, when your course was due to end. But there’s no question of you feeling responsibility for us. We are blessed with excellent food, beautiful surroundings. We can look after ourselves.’

  Theresa spoke for the first time. A brief, dull: ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ It was the bright Jo Walters who had got to her feet, some distance further around the circle. ‘I’m not sure if I should say this, but I was in Melissa’s Snake group. There has to be a special frisson about her being found in the Leechwells from which Gavin got our group names.’

  So word of the details of Hilary and Veronica’s macabre discovery had spread beyond their own dinner table. It was, she supposed, inevitable. And of course, there was that television crew outside.

  ‘We’re only human,’ Jo continued. ‘We can’t help being curious about what the heck is going on here. It’s not for nothing we came on a crime-writing course. We all have that sort of mind. I think we’re struggling to piece together what happened and construct a credible scenario. Who did it to her, and why? And I for one would certainly want to exchange notes with the others. We can leave you out of this, Theresa, but I vote that those of us who care to follow this up should meet here after breakfast tomorrow to compare what ideas we’ve got.’

  There was a cautious ripple of surprise around the room. Some, Hilary saw, were shaking their heads. Others were brightening up, as though attracted by the idea. Tania and Rob, who had speculated that Dinah Halsgrove’s illness might be a hoax, were now consulting each other with animation.

  Hilary stared at them. A memory was growing in her mind. There had been something macabrely familiar about the way she had discovered Melissa. Savagely wounded, lying in a pool of water.

  The image snapped into place. That first morning’s session, when they had shared their murder settings. Hadn’t Rob envisaged just such a scene? A mangled corpse, lying in the pool below the wheel of Dartington Tweed Mill. His vivid description had unsettled Hilary even then.

  As if he read her thoughts, a sandy-haired young man in denims, sitting with the Slowworm group on the far side of the room, spoke up. ‘Is it true she was found in the Snake pool? That would be gruesomely appropriate, wouldn’t it? Given that she’s the leader of your Snake group.’

  New alarm bells rang in Hilary’s mind. It hadn’t been the Snake basin where Melissa lay face down, but the one the old man had called the Long Crippler. Suddenly she was sure that she hadn’t mentioned that particular detail to anyone other than the police. She looked enquiringly at Veronica, who shook her head.

  Jo Walters looked momentarily startled. ‘I don’t know. Hilary and Veronica found her, but there must have been other people in town who walked through Leechwell Lane this afternoon. Some of them must have seen her. Someone told the press.’

  ‘She was in the one they call the Long Crippler. Ceri told us, dear,’ said her husband helpfully, from the chair beside her. ‘The local lass, who knows about these holy wells. She must have been talking to some of her pals from the town.’

  Ceri had sat next to Hilary at dinner. She had said not a word about already know
ing of Melissa’s death, still less the details. Could she have been the informant? If so, how had she known?

  Everyone’s eyes went round the circle. Hilary looked in vain for the black curls of the woman who had protested about Gavin’s appropriation of the names Toad, Snake and Slowworm for his murder-solving groups.

  ‘Looks like she’s done a runner,’ said Jake from the far left of the circle. ‘She’s not sleeping here, is she? She’ll have gone home.’

  ‘Lucky cow,’ muttered someone on Hilary’s right.

  Ben warmed to Jo’s idea. ‘I don’t want to sound callous, but we have to do something to fill the time. Not just hang around to see if the DI wants to talk to us again. I’m with Jo. If anyone else wants to meet for a bit of brainstorming tomorrow, I’m in.’

  ‘You never know,’ added Jake. ‘It might just be one of us who comes up with the right solution.’

  Hilary was galvanized into a speech she had not intended to make. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. The police have a forensic pathologist to determine the time and cause of death. They’re taking statements from witnesses who might have seen something relevant. They can delve into Melissa’s history and contacts.’ She shot an anxious glance at Theresa, who sat impassive. ‘After all, isn’t it preposterously self-centred of us to assume her death has something to do with this weekend, when there’s the whole of the rest of her life we know nothing about?’

  ‘Well said,’ trumpeted Colonel Truscott. ‘It doesn’t seem the decent thing to be treating the poor lady’s death like a detective novel. We need to separate fact from fiction.’

  ‘All the same,’ Jo said in a lower voice. ‘It was a coincidence. Who else knew about the names of our groups?’

  Her eyes questioned Hilary.

  But Hilary’s attention was still on Theresa. She looked now not so much like a toad as a fat brown spider, lurking in the corner of her web, observing, waiting.