Grave Mistake (27 page)

“This is a shocking business,” said the Vicar. “I can’t tell you how distressing I find it. Is it — I mean I suppose it must be — absolutely necessary?”

“I’m afraid it is,” said Alleyn.

“Inspector Fox,” said the Vicar, looking wistfully at him, “was very discreet.”

Fox modestly contemplated the far wall of the study.

“He said he thought he should leave it to you to explain.”

“Indeed,” Alleyn rejoined with a long hard stare at his subordinate.

“And I do hope you will. I think I should know. You see, it is consecrated ground.”

“Yes.”

“So — may I, if you please, be told?” asked the Vicar with what Alleyn thought, rather touching simplicity.

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll tell you why we are doing it and what we think we may find. In honesty I should add that we may find nothing and the operation therefore may prove to have been quite fruitless. But this is the theory.”

The Vicar listened.

“I think,” he said when Alleyn had finished, “that I’ve never heard anything more dreadful. And I have heard some very dreadful things. We do, you know.”

“I’m sure.”

“Even in quiet little parishes like this. You’d be surprised, wouldn’t he, Sergeant McGuiness?” asked the Vicar. He waited for a moment and then said: “I must ask you to allow me to be present. I would rather not, of course, because I am a squeamish man. But — I don’t want to sound pompous — I think it’s my duty.”

Alleyn said: “We’ll be glad to have you there. As far as possible we’ll try to avoid attracting notice. I’ve been wondering if by any chance there’s a less public way of going to the church than up those steps.”

“There is
our
path. Through the shrubbery and thicket. It will be rather damp but it’s short and inconspicuous. I would have to guide you.”

“If you will. I think,” Alleyn said, “our men have arrived. They’re coming here first, I hope you don’t mind?”

He went to the window and the others followed. Down below on the “green” a small delivery van had pulled up. Three men in mackintoshes and wet hats got out. They opened the rear door and took out a large carpenter’s kit-bag and a corded bundle of considerable size that required two men to carry it.

“In the eye of a beholder,” Alleyn grunted, “this would look like sheer lunacy.”

“Not to the village,” said the Vicar. “It they notice. They’ll only think it’s the boiler again.”

“The boiler?”

“Yes. It has become unsafe and is always threatening to explode. Just look at those poor fellows,” said the Vicar. “Should I ask my wife to make tea? Or coffee?”

Alleyn declined this offer. “Perhaps later,” he said.

The men climbed the path in single file, carrying their gear. Rain bounced off their shoulders and streamed from their hat brims. Alleyn opened the door to them.

“We’re in no shape to come into the house, sir,” one of them said. He removed his hat and Bailey was revealed. Thompson stood behind him hung about with well-protected cameras.

“No, no, no. Not a bit of it,” bustled the Vicar. “We’ve people in and out all day. Haven’t we, McGuiness? Come in. Come in.”

They waited, dripping, in the little hall. The Vicar kilted up his cassock, found himself a waterproof cape and pulled on a pair of galoshes.

“I’ll just get my brolly,” he said and sought it in the porch.

Alleyn asked the men: “Is that a tent or an enclosure?” A framed tent, they said. It wouldn’t take long to erect: there was no wind.

“We go out by the back,” said the Vicar. “Shall I lead the way?”

The passage reeked of wetness and of its own house-smell: something suggestive of economy and floor polish. From behind one door came the sound of children’s voices and from the kitchen the whirr of an egg-beater. They arrived at a side door that opened on to the all-pervading sound and sight of rain.

“I’m afraid,” said the Vicar, “it will be rather heavy going. Especially with—” he paused and glanced unhappily at their gear, “—your burden,” he said.

It was indeed heavy going. The shrubbery, a dense untended thicket, came to within a yard of the house and the path plunged directly into it. Water-laden branches slurred across their shoulders and slapped their faces, runnels of water gushed about their feet. They slithered, manoeuvred, fell about and shambled on again. The Vicar’s umbrella came in for a deal of punishment

“Not far now,” he said at last and sure enough they were out of the wood and within a few yards of the church door.

The Vicar went first. It was already twilight in the church and he switched on lights, one in the nave and one in the south transept, which was furnished as a lady chapel. The men followed him self-consciously down the aisle and Bailey only just fetched up in time to avoid falling over the Vicar when he abruptly genuflected before turning right. The margin between tragedy and hysteria is a narrow one and Alleyn suppressed an impulse, as actors say, to “corpse”; an only too apposite synonym in this context.

The Vicar continued into the lady chapel. “There’s a door here,” he said to Alleyn. “Rather unusual. It opens directly on the Passcoigne plot. Perhaps—?”

“It will suit admirably,” Alleyn said. “May we open up our stuff in the church? It will make things a good deal easier.”

“Yes. Very well.”

So the men, helped by Sergeant McGuiness, unfolded their waterproof-covered bundle and soon two shovels, two hurricane lamps, three high-powered torches, a screwdriver and four coils of rope were set out neatly on the lady chapel floor. A folded mass of heavy plastic and a jointed steel frame were laid across the pews.

Bailey and Thompson chose a separate site in the transept for the assembling of their gear.

Alleyn said: “Right. We can go. Would you open the door, Vicar?”

It was down a flight of three steps in the corner of the lady chapel by the south wall. The Vicar produced a key that might have hung from the girdle of a Georgian jailer. “We hardly ever use it,” he said. “I’ve oiled the key and brought the lubricant with me.”

“Splendid.”

Presently, with a clocking sound and a formidable screech, the door opened on a downpour so dense that it looked like a multiple sequence of beaded curtains closely hung one behind the other. The church filled with the insistent drumming of rain and with the smell of wet earth and trees.

Sybil Foster’s grave was a dismal sight: the mound of earth, so carefully embellished by Bruce, looked as if it had been washed ashore with its panoply of dead flowers clinging to it: disordered and bespattered with mud.

They got the tent up with some trouble and great inconvenience. It was large enough to allow a wide margin round the grave. On one part of this they spread a ground-sheet. This added to an impression of something disreputable that was about to be put on show. The effect was emphasized by the fairground smell of the tent itself. The rain sounded more insistent inside than out.

Then men fetched their gear from the church.

Until now, the Vicar, at Alleyn’s suggestion, had remained in the church. Now, when they were assembled and ready — Fox, Bailey, Thompson, Sergeant McGuiness and the three Yard men, Alleyn went to fetch him.

He was at prayer. He had put off his mackintosh and he knelt there in his well-worn cassock with his hands folded before his lips. So, Alleyn thought, had centuries of parsons, for this reason and that, knelt in St Crispin’s-in-Quintern. He waited.

The Vicar crossed himself, opened his eyes, saw Alleyn and got up.

“We’re ready, sir,” Alleyn said.

He found the Vicar’s cape and held it out. “No, thanks,” said the Vicar. “But I’d better take my brolly.”

So with some ado he was brought into the tent where he shut his umbrella and stood quietly in the background, giving no trouble.

They made a pile of sodden flowers in a corner of the tent and then set about the earth mound, heaping it up into a wet repetition of itself. The tent fabric was green and this, in the premature twilight, gave the interior an underwater appearance.

The shovels crunched and slurped. The men, having cleared away the mound, dug deep and presently there was the hard sound of steel on wood. The Vicar came nearer. Thompson brought the coils of rope.

The men were expeditious and skillful and what they had to do was soon accomplished. As if in a reverse playback the coffin rose from its bed and was lifted on to the wet earth beside it.

One of the men went to a corner of the tent and fetched the screwdriver.

“You won’t need that,” Fox said quickly.

“No, sir?” The man looked at Alleyn.

“No,” Alleyn said. “What you do now is dig deeper. But very cautiously. One man only. Bailey, will you do it? Clear away the green flooring and then explore with your hands. If the soil is easily moved, then go on — remove it. But with the greatest possible care. Stand as far to the side as you can manage.”

Bailey lowered himself into the grave. Alleyn knelt on the ground-sheet, looking down, and the others in their glistening mackintoshes grouped round him. The Vicar stood at the foot of the grave, removed from the rest. They might have been actors in a modern production of the churchyard scene in
Hamlet
.

Bailey’s voice, muffled, said: “It’s dark down here: could I have a torch?” They shone their torches into the grave and the beams moved over pine branches. Bailey gathered armfuls of them and handed them up. “Did we bring a trowel?” he asked.

The Vicar said there was one on the premises, kept for the churchyard guild. Sergeant McGuiness fetched it. While they waited Bailey could be heard scuffling. He dumped handfuls of soil on the lip of the grave. Alleyn examined them. The earth was loamy, friable and quite dry. McGuiness returned with a trowel and the mound at the lip of the grave grew bigger.

“The soil’s packed down, like,” Bailey said presently, “but it’s not hard to move. I–I reckon—” his voice wavered, “I reckon it’s been dug over — or filled in — or — hold on.”

“Go steady, now,” Fox said.

“There’s something.”

Bailey began to push earth aside with the edge of his hands and brush it away with his palms.

“A bit more light,” he said.

Alleyn shone his own torch in and the light found Bailey’s hands, palms down and fingers spread, held in suspended motion over the earth they had disturbed.

“Go on,” Alleyn said. “Go on.”

The hands came together, parted and swept the last of the earth.

Claude Carter’s face had been turned into a gargoyle by the pressure of earth, and earth lay in streaks across its eyeballs.

iii

Before they moved it Thompson photographed the body where it lay. Then with great care and difficulty, it was lifted and stretched out on the ground-sheet. Where it had lain they found Claude’s rucksack, tightly packed.

“He’d meant to pick up his car,” Fox said, “and drive to Southampton.”

“I think so.”

Sybil Foster was returned to her grave and covered.

The Vicar said: “I’ll go now. May God rest their souls.”

Alleyn saw him into the church. He paused on the steps. “It’s stopped raining,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed. How strange.”

“Are you all right?” Alleyn asked him. “Will you go back to the vicarage?”

“What? Oh. Oh no. Not just yet. I’m quite all right, thank you. I must pray now, for the living, mustn’t I?”

“The living?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Vicar shakily. “Yes indeed. That’s my job. I have to pray for my brother man. The murderer, you know.” He went into the church.

Alleyn returned to the tent

“It’s clearing,” he said. “I think you’d better stand guard outside.” The Yard men went out

Bailey and Thompson were at their accustomed tasks. The camera flashed for Claude as assiduously as a pressman’s for a celebrity. When they turned him over and his awful face was hidden they disclosed a huge red grin at the nape of the neck.

“Bloody near decapitated,” Thompson whispered and photographed it in close-up.

“Don’t exaggerate,” Fox automatically chided. He was searching the rucksack.

“It’s not far wrong, Mr. Fox,” said Bailey.

“If you’ve finished,” Alleyn said. “Search him.”

Bailey found a wallet containing twenty pounds, loose change, cigarettes, matches, his pocket-book, a passport and three dirty postcards.

And in the inside breast pocket, a tiny but extremely soiled box such as a jeweller might use to house a ring. The key was in Claude’s wallet.

Alleyn opened the box and disclosed a neatly folded miniature envelope wrapped in a waterproof silk and inside the envelope, between two watch-glasses, a stamp: the Emperor Alexander with a hole in his head.

“Look here, Fox,” he said.

Fox restrapped the rucksack and came over. He placed his great palms on his knees and regarded the stamp.

“That was a good bit of speculative thinking on your part,” he said. “It looks to me as if that large box we found in his room could have contained this one and left the trace in the rubble, all right. Funny, you know, there it’s lain all these years. I suppose Captain Carter stowed it there that evening. Before he was killed.”

“And may well have used some of the cement in the bag that’s still rotting quietly away in the corner. And marked the place on the plan in which this poor scoundrel showed such an interest.”

“He wouldn’t have tried to sell it in England, surely?”

“We’ve got to remember it was his by right. Being what he was he might have settled for a devious approach to a fanatic millionaire collector somewhere abroad whose zeal would get the better of his integrity.”

“Funny,” Fox mused. “A bit of paper not much bigger than your thumbnail. Not very pretty and flawed at that. And could be worth as much as its own size in a diamond. I don’t get it.”

“Collector’s passion? Not I. But it comes high in the list as an incentive to crime.”

“Where’ll we put it?”

“Lock the box and give it to me. If I’m knocked on the head again take charge of it yourself. I can’t wait till I get it safely stowed at the Yard. In the meantime—”

“We go in for the kill?” said Fox.

“That’s it. Unless it comes in of its own accord.”