Tragedy at Two (12 page)

BY MIDNIGHT, THE FIRES WERE OUT, AND GROUPS OF GYPSIES stood around staring at the remains of their homes. Lois had established that both Athalia and George were safe, and had been told to make herself scarce. “Anything could happen tonight, Mrs. Meade,” Athalia had said. “There’s a time bomb ticking in this village. Go home to your family. We can look after ourselves.”

Derek finally managed to persuade Lois to leave, and they met Alf Smith as they walked away.

“A bad business, Alf,” Derek said. “I reckon you should have moved them on sooner. You’ve done ’em no favours, boy.”

Gran was waiting up for them. “So?” she said to Lois.

“So what?”

“So what did you say to that gypsy woman you took into your office this morning?”

Derek glared at Lois. “What’s this? I thought she was just selling pegs?” he said.

Lois sighed. She was exhausted, and very depressed by what Athalia had said. They didn’t want help, or integration with what they saw as a hostile world. She couldn’t change things single-handedly.

“Lois?” Derek looked at her coldly.

“Well, the gypsy woman is called Athalia, and she seems a good woman. We’ve talked before, and she told me how they live, or how they want to live, if people would leave them alone.”

Derek sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. “You fool, Lois,” he said. “Gypsies are not some persecuted romantic race of honest folk. They’ve earned their reputation of bein’ lawless thieves. They’re everything people say they are. And before you interrupt, I
know
they’re not all the same. Some, like your Athalia, are no doubt good people wanting to keep an old way of goin’ on. And some are like those two with the bull terrier, villains to the life, who hate us, and wouldn’t think twice about doin’ us harm.”

This was a very long speech for Derek, and Lois listened carefully.

“And what about the upright and honest characters who set fire to men, women and children tonight?” she asked. “What are they up to? What old way of going on are they trying to preserve? The old witch hunts? Rough music to get rid of outsiders who don’t want to fit in?’

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lois,” said Gran. “Derek is quite right. And don’t forget the proper sites being made for them now. Running water, respectable places, where they can settle down and send their children to schools and clean themselves up.”

Lois thought of the things that Athalia had told her about their own rules of hygiene, marriage, and teaching their children how to survive. And overall the tradition of generations who need to be travelling. But she was tired out with trying to think it straight.

“I’m off to bed now,” she said. “It’ll be a bad day tomorrow, if I’m not mistaken.”

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, Derek called out to her.

“Hey, Lois, love,” he said. “There was something I meant to tell you. Did you see that hooded wonder pass us by as we left? No? Well, I caught a glimpse of his face, and I could swear it was the one in the paper. Son of those new people in the village,” he added.

“Well, it couldn’t have been him what done it,” Gran said stoutly. “If it
had
been him, he’d’ve scarpered by then, for sure.”

Derek walked out of the kitchen and took Lois’s hand. “We only want you safe, me duck. Tomorrow’s another day.”

They went upstairs hand in hand, and Gran shrugged her shoulders. How
nice
of them to have offered to do the locking up and putting the cat out! How considerate to send her off to bed first, after what must have been a worrying evening for her, too. Huh! She went round the house, banging doors and turning keys, shouting loudly at the cat and Jeems, and coughed her way upstairs when she hadn’t even the smallest tickle.

NEXT MORNING, AGAINST THE ADVICE OF DEREK AND GRAN, Lois took Jeems, and keeping her on the lead, walked down to the campsite. Although it was only ten o’clock, she saw that the gypsies had been at work, probably all night. Everything was tidy, with the wrecks of caravans still hot to the touch, and against each one a bender tent constructed from bent saplings securely anchored and covered with tarpaulin.

Inside the half circle, a fire was leaping and smoking, and most of the gypsy families sat around it. A black pot simmered, and Lois caught the scent of rabbit stew. They were silent, except for the children, who ran around as usual, and when they saw her, pointed and shouted, and not in a friendly fashion.

Athalia saw her, too, and walked over to where she stood. “I thought I told you to stay away!” she said crossly. “There’s a lot of sad and angry people here this morning. We shall be moving on shortly, and then you can forget about us. The police have been here, and given us twenty-f our hours to be gone.”

“But can you get your caravans on the road by then? Looks like the fire did a lot of damage.” Lois thought how great it would be if a group of the village men came down to help. But she knew this was pie in the sky. Nobody but Alf Smith would help these people.

“We’ve sent for help from our own. Now go away and don’t come back.” She turned, but looked back at Lois and said, “No hard feelings, Mrs. Meade. Not your fault. People don’t change, neither them nor us.”

“Can’t I help at all?” Lois asked sadly.

“Yes,” Athalia said, and Lois brightened. “You can find the man who killed your Rob, and stop them hounding us for a crime we had nowt to do with.”

“Lois! Lois!” It was Derek, running towards her. “For God’s sake get back home,” he said. “That Cowgill’s on the phone and won’t go away until he’s talked to you.”

“Goodbye, Athalia,” Lois said. “And good luck. Maybe we’ll meet again someday.”

“I doubt it,” said Athalia, and disappeared into her tent.

 

 

“WELL? WHAT D’YOU WANT?” LOIS FELT SUPREMELY TIRED AND depressed. And, worst of all, she felt ashamed of living in a village that had done this to an almost certainly innocent group of outsiders.

“I need to talk to you. Can you come down to the station? It is perfectly legit. About the fire in the gypsy encampment.”

“No,” Lois said. “I had nothing to do with it. I’m not on the parish council, nor neighbourhood watch, nor any other of the do-gooding lot who stood by last night and did nothing. If you want to talk to me, you’ll have to come here, with a very good reason.
And
,” she added, “an explanation of why people whose homes have been destroyed have got to move on in twenty-four hours, or else.”

“Eleven o’clock,” Cowgill said. “I’ll be with you at eleven o’clock.”

On the last stroke of the church clock, Cowgill knocked at the door. Gran opened it and, as instructed, showed him into Lois’s office. Lois was sitting behind her desk and motioned him into a chair opposite her. Now she felt in the driving seat, and in control of the conversation.

“The fir st question is mine,” she said. He nodded.

“Why do they have to get out of this village in such a short time? What did they do wrong? Aren’t they the victims of this bloody awful crime?”

“That’s three questions, Lois,” Cowgill replied, attempting a smile. Lois immediately wiped it off his face.

“I warn you, Cowgill,” she said. “If you want my help, just get on with it and don’t try your winning ways on me.”

“Right,” he said. “In answer to your question, we have given them notice to move on, and there’s no ‘or else’ about it.”

“You’re evicting them,” Lois said angrily. “No need to mince words.”

“As I said, we have given them instructions to move on for their own safety, and they are well aware of this. Feeling must be running high in Farnden for someone to do such an efficient job of setting the whole encampment ablaze. And anyway, Lois, they were going soon to get to Appleby for the fair.”

“And how are they supposed to get there now?”

“They are apparently getting help from their own contacts. Now, the second question. We have no reason at the moment to suspect them of any crime. As you know perfectly well, there have been anonymous letters and phone calls implicating them in Rob’s death. We have no evidence of this, but are still investigating.”

“Wasting time,” said Lois. “Meanwhile, the real murderer is probably a hundred miles away.”

Cowgill ignored this, and continued. “And as for the third question, yes, of course they are victims. In any other circumstances we would be suggesting victim support. But they refuse all offers of help from anyone but their own contacts.”

“Can you blame them?” Lois asked. “Wouldn’t you, if you’d been hounded from pillar to post for generations, and—”

At this point, the door opened and Derek came in. He sat down and stared at Cowgill. “Finished?” he said. “Like to ask me some questions? I was there, too, you know.”

Cowgill sighed. “Very kind of you to offer,” he said. “Did you see anything that caused you to suspect who might have been responsible for this horrendous crime? Any strangers you didn’t recognise?”

Derek wondered for a couple of seconds if the hooded lad he thought he’d recognized would count as a suspicious stranger, and decided quickly not to mention it. Now was not the time for the plods to go tramping into the Browns’ home. He would discuss it with Lois first.

He shook his head. “Not really,” he said. “The whole place was well lit up by the fire, but I only saw gawpers from the village, firemen and the dids, of course, and a few kids rushing around. Gypsy kids, runnin’ and screamin’, horses goin’ mad with fear. That kind of thing.”

Cowgill got to his feet. “Very well. Thank you both for your help. If you think of anything that would help us find out who did it, please give me a ring.”

Lois was well aware that they had given him nothing to thank them for. But she was too full of anger and pain to care, and showed him out of the house without a word.

LOIS’S DAY WAS NOT GOING WELL. THE INTERVIEW WITH Cowgill had left her feeling unsettled and regretful. Not that she cared about his feelings, she told herself, but she had momentarily forgotten how much she needed him for information and advice on the hunt for Rob’s killer.

Then she had had a complaint about Sheila’s work for a new client in Fletching. “She takes too much on herself,” the woman had said. “I asked her to clean out a cupboard in the kitchen, and when I checked it—long after she’d gone, of course—I found half the stuff had been thrown away! And today is bin-men day, so I had no chance of reclaiming it. Really, Mrs. Meade, it is too much. Please see that it doesn’t happen again, or I must look elsewhere for a cleaner.” Lois had assured her she would have a word with Sheila. When she did, Sheila protested that half the tins were rusty, and the jams were growing mould.

Then came a call from Josie in tears. “Mum, I can’t cope. It’s suddenly got me. I’m not going to see Rob anymore, am I? And the last things I said to him were angry and horrible.” Lois said she would send Floss round at once to take over, and Josie must come home and stay for the rest of the day with Gran and herself.

And then, worst of all, there was a knock at the door and Douglas’s Susie stood there. As soon as she was settled in the kitchen with a coffee in front of her, she, too, burst into tears. It seemed she and Douglas had had a row, and she had told him she wouldn’t marry him if he was the last man left on earth. She had given him back his ring, and now she was heartbroken.

“I didn’t mean any of it! What am I going to do?”

“If he was the last man on earth, there’d be nobody to do the ceremony anyway, would there?” said Lois, having difficulty keeping a straight face. “Don’t worry, love. It’s just cold feet. Had them myself, didn’t I, Mum?”

Gran said she remembered it well. “There she was,” she confided, “all ready and dressed for church, an’ suddenly she went bright red and came out in a rash. Yelled that she didn’t want to marry him, and flung herself down on the bed in floods of tears.”

“What?” Susie said, staring at Lois. “You did that? I can’t imagine you doing that, honestly, Mrs. Meade.”