“I've just told him, Alice.”
“I don't mean about your friend, though that's really good, isn't it, Seb? I meant the woman who's been found.”
“Yes, Alice, Louisa's told me.”
“What you can't have heard â nor you, Louisa, since it's just come from Joe Simmons â is that they don't think she died from exposure.”
“Then what?” Louisa sounded a little nonplussed.
“Joe Simmons says there's a police inspector come from Bridgnorth, and he thinks she was killed! Old Perkins says she might have been trespassing and was shot.”
“What!”
There followed a taut silence before Louisa and Sebastian spoke simultaneously: “Then Old Perkins has been at the bottle again, take no notice,” came from Louisa, and from Sebastian, “My dear Alice, you'd better inform Tom Perkins that we haven't yet started shooting trespassers at Belmonde.”
In any case, it was inconceivable that anyone would have been out shooting in that weather yesterday â or even if they had, that the woman had been shot, accidentally or otherwise.
“Well,” said Alice with relish, “they're taking her away to cut her open and find out more.”
As a young child Sebastian had been subject to nightmares, and he could not now rid himself of the feeling that he was again in the middle of one. The bad feelings he'd had about this woman, right from the first moment he'd seen her, were reinforced tenfold. He was aware of shadows closing in, of a scent of evil.
Â
As he left the Fox's house and began to walk home to Belmonde, taking the short cut behind the house which avoided the longer
way through the village, he tried to reassure himself he couldn't realistically have been expected to go searching through the sodden woods yesterday for a woman he might or might not have seen. But his conscience gave him a wretched feeling that had he done so, and offered help, she might have been alive now, and not have died from exposure â or, unlikely as it seemed, from being shot.
That being said, on the premise that sooner or later the police would want to see him, and the feeling that it would look better if he were to approach them rather than the other way round, after hesitating for only a moment, he made a firm decision and turned back. Outside the village school, the crowd had thinned, though some with nothing better to do were still hanging around. Sebastian had been known to them all from childhood, and though he was Sir Henry's son, he was well-liked; they exchanged greetings as he made his way to the door, but he was aware of curious glances, people wondering what connection the folk from the big house might have with this business.
“What's going on, Joe?” he asked the village policeman who was standing on guard, arms folded.
“Haven't you heard, Mr Sebastian? There's been a dead woman found in the Abbey woods.”
“Yes, I do know that, and I'm sorry to hear it. Who is she?”
“Don't ask me. But we got the big guns out,” Simmonds said, rolling his eyes. “Chief Constable's been here from Shrewsbury and the inspector from Bridgnorth's come over, so I dare say we shall find out just now. Want to see him, then, the inspector?”
“It might be as well.”
When Sebastian was taken inside, he found himself alone with a policeman who was engaged in a struggle with a long hooked pole, trying to open the top of one of the high windows. As well he might wish to, for the room was stifling, with the peculiarly distinctive school smell of chalk-dust, ink, the dry wood of the planked floor and generations of children. All Miss Edith Swanson's pupils, from five years old until they left at thirteen, were housed together in the one room, where the older ones (those who were bright enough) were expected to help the younger to learn their letters and do their sums. But now, with
the harvest holidays still on so that the children could help in the fields, and Miss Swanson on a walking tour in the Dolomites with her old college friend, the room was presently out of use. The big blackboard on its easel had been rubbed clean and all the child-sized double desks, each with its built-in bench and its desktop scarred with generations of inkblots and scratched-on initials, had been pushed to the sides of the room, as they were when the schoolroom doubled as the village hall.
The inspector acknowledged Sebastian's arrival with a nod, and valiantly carried on with his task, while Sebastian, wondering whether to offer to help and deciding it wouldn't be appreciated by one of the stalwarts of the police force, perched on one of the desks, prepared to wait.
Having finally succeeded in letting some air into the room, the other man, mopping his perspiring face and rubbing his hands with a handkerchief, came to sit at Miss Swanson's desk which, with the blackboard, was set on a dais, and was now covered with official looking papers. “That's a bit better,” he announced. “Can't work without breathing, eh?” He still looked mightily as though he'd have liked to open the neck of his thick navy blue serge tunic, were it not for holding on to his dignity; as it was, he made do with passing a finger between the inside of the high collar and the roll of damp red flesh it had pushed up.
After ascertaining Sebastian's name, the inspector offered his own. A Welshman by the name of Meredith, he was stockily built, short for a policeman. Settling himself down, he regarded Sebastian steadily. “You got something to tell me, sir?”
Before answering that, Sebastian asked a question of his own, the one he'd asked of Joe Simmonds. “Who is she, this woman who's been found?”
“Haven't been able to identify her yet. Seems she's a stranger to these parts.”
“Is it true she's been shot? If so, we'd better find out which tomfool was out there at Belmonde with a gun â without permission, and on a day like yesterday.”
“Oh, and where did you get the idea, then, that she'd been shot? And at Belmonde?” Meredith asked, very Welsh, giving an appraising glance to this assured young sprig of the landed
gentry perched against a child's desk, one leg thrown negligently over the other knee; polished but mud-stained gaiters, well-cut tweeds, high round stiff collar, thick dark-brown hair neatly side-parted.
“Well, she was found in the grounds, after all, wasn't she?” Sebastian was disconcerted by the keen glance, but rather relieved at the implications of the inspector's words. “Do you mean she
did
die from natural causes?”
“As to that no, I'm afraid she did not. And as to dying at Belmonde â she could have been killed elsewhere and brought in â dumped, like.”
“But I saw her there â alive. That's what I came to tell you. At least, I thought I got a glimpse of her before she disappeared,” Sebastian added lamely, slightly less assured. “Disappeared from sight, I mean.”
Meredith's interest sharpened. “Saw her, did you? And what time was this, then?”
“Thought I saw. I couldn't really swear to it, you know. I only saw her in a flash, as I was driving up to the house. It was bucketing down and she wasn't equipped for the rain. I thought to give her a lift, but when I reversed to where I'd seen her, I could see no one. Perhaps it wasn't the same woman.”
“No, I think we might reasonably assume there was only one.” Meredith spoke quietly, slowly, but Sebastian had the sense that his intelligence was as sharp as the polished silver buttons on his tunic. “And the time?” he repeated.
“About half past three it would have been. But Mr Blythe â the butler â could probably tell you more precisely. I arrived at the house a few minutes later.”
Butlers, was it? Didn't have butlers in the Rhonda, where Daffyd Meredith came from, and sometimes wished he could return to, pleasant as the quiet town of Bridgnorth was. The reason he lived there at all was that he'd married a girl whom he'd met on a bicycling holiday when he'd strayed over the border, and she wouldn't move away from her native town. “Quite so. Sheltering under the trees, was she? No umbrella â only a hat and coat?”
“As far as I could see.”
“And you've no idea who she might be?”
“No,” said Sebastian, in the face of the sinking feeling that he might now be able to make a guess, at least in a general direction.
Meredith heaved himself out of his chair and went across to the group of desks behind Sebastian. When he came back, he was holding out a sodden bundle. “Would these be the garments?”
The cloth of the coat and skirt was heavy brown tweed, the hat was one that would be deemed serviceable rather than fashionable, a stiff brown felt with a deep crown, the brim turned up at one side and held in place by a modest brooch of some pewter-like metal set around an insignificant chip of amber â the sort of hat his mother or his sister probably wouldn't acknowledge as existing. The smell of wet wool rose up as Meredith held up the articles. Sebastian shrugged, aware of the feelings of pity and anger the pathetic belongings aroused in him. “Something like that, I suppose, but it's impossible to say. I tell you, I wasn't anywhere near her.”
“She was also wearing strong boots, recently resoled and heeled. The costume's not expensive, but it's of decent quality. Apart from the pin in her hat, she wasn't wearing jewellery of any kind, not even a wedding ring. And her gloves â grey cotton, darned at the tips of one forefinger and the thumb, look you. I'd put her down as a respectable, working class woman â not, at any rate, a woman able to indulge in expensive tastes. But â¦take a look at this.”
âThis' was a silk scarf which Meredith now brought to the table, watching Sebastian's frown as he looked at the delicate thing, its rich, iridescent peacock colours catching the light. “Anything strike you as odd, sir?”
Odd, no. But it was faintly recognisable. Then he remembered he had bought a similar scarf in Regent Street for Louisa's last birthday. It hadn't come cheap. “Compared with the other clothes â¦well, it's a pretty incongruous combination.”
“Very good.” The inspector nodded approvingly. “I see you follow my meaning.”
“Not entirely ⦔
Instead of explaining himself, the inspector said obliquely, “She wasn't shot, as you assumed, Mr Chetwynd, accidentally or
otherwise. She was found in the stream.”
“You mean she fell in?”
Meredith weighed him up before answering. “There is reason to believe she was dead
before
that. When a person drowns, you see, there are signs â froth from the mouth or nose, that sort of thing. There was none in this case. There will be a post mortem, of course, and if there is no water found in her lungs, which the doctor believes there will not be, then she was not breathing when she entered the water.”
“She died and
then
fell in?”
“Or died and was
put
in.” He paused. “There were also marks on her throat.”
“Good God!” The impossible conclusion hung almost tangibly on the air.
Murder
. At Belmonde. Where violence had been virtually unknown since the Dissolution, when the abbey had been sacked by the troopers of Henry the Eighth. Sebastian felt a kind of anger: what right had this woman to have the temerity to walk into Belmonde and disturb its serenity by getting killed? Then he saw how absurd this was, not to say unfeeling, and laughed at himself shamefacedly.
“With â the scarf?”
The inspector shook his head. “The marks were not the mark of a ligature. Someone had his hands around her throat while she was still alive. If that was how she died, why she was left in the stream afterwards is still a puzzle.” Leaving it at that, he walked to the table where the clothes had lain and, like a conjuror producing rabbits out of a hat, he brought forth a small pasteboard oblong, which he put on the desk.
“Return ticket to London. Looks as though she intended to go back the same day. Slipped inside the palm of her glove, see, for safe-keeping. She didn't have a bag with her, which I find interesting. Never known a woman happy without a bag of some sort for long â no money, no comb, not even a handkerchief.”
The inspector sat down and there was silence for a while. “Where exactly was she found?”
“Where the stream goes by that derelict gamekeeper's cottage, near what seems to be called the bothy and the pheasant pens.”
“The devil she was!”
“It was the gamekeeper, Jordan, who found her.”
Jordan was a black-browed, sour individual, taciturn of speech but, according to Sir Henry, the best gamekeeper in Shropshire. Unmarried, wary of women. Not, one would have thought, the type to get near enough to any female to strangle her, much less with an expensive silk scarf. And for what reason? He might knock a man down, or break his head with a stick, when his black temper was up; he had big, coarse hands that would certainly be capable of strangling anyone, but Sebastian had seen him free a dog caught in a rabbit-snare with a touch as gentle as a woman's. “He wouldn't have done anything like that, not Tom Jordan.”