The Skeleton in the Grass (11 page)

She repressed the urge, of course. Why frighten the mite? Why feel fear herself? She forced herself to walk after the little girl in the direction of the willow, forced herself to stand where she remembered the body to have lain. There was no bloodstain. Naturally there was no bloodstain. The new grass grew lustily. She reproved herself: she was a woman of the twentieth century, above such foolish fancies. Nevertheless, when she saw her grand-daughter galloping down the bank towards the river, her quickened step was not caused by fear for her safety alone.

 • • • 

There was not a lot of blood to be seen, even on that October morning in 1936.

Sarah awoke around eight, conscious there had been barking. There was a nip in the air, and she thought she would soon accept Mrs. Munday's offer of one of the stone hot-water bottles that hung in the kitchen. Then she heard voices below her window, and she felt sure they were not the voices of any of the jobbing gardeners who came in regularly from the villages. Anyway, today was Sunday. She drowsed on a bit, registering that Bounce was barking again, this time from inside the house.

Still there were voices, men's, but now they were from further away. A sense of unease invaded her, and she got up and went to the window.

The voices came from the far end of the great lawn, from beside the weeping willow that was Sarah's favourite tree in the grounds. It was a long way away, too far for Sarah to be quite sure who the figures were. That surely was Pinner, not yet dressed for the day, for he certainly
had no jacket on, and Sarah could picture him as she had sometimes seen him in the early morning, with braces on, and without collar and tie. The other figure—was it Oliver? Or was it Dennis? That looked like an old sports jacket Dennis sometimes wore around the house. And there was a third figure, on the ground . . . not getting up. Sarah shivered.

And there was something else too. She strained her eyes. Something that glowed . . .
Glowed?
As she drew the curtains to, the figures on the lawn seemed to finish their conference. They turned and began to hurry towards the house.

Sarah quickly gathered together her clothes for the day. In a couple of minutes she was dressed and slipping out on to the landing and down the broad wooden staircase. Pinner had unlocked and unchained the front door—good. She would certainly be intercepted if she went through the kitchens. Why she wanted to see what was there by the willow tree she could not have said, but she was a girl who had always believed in facing up to the worst—evaluating and assimilating it. Her upbringing had done that for her, at any rate. Now she had an instinctive feeling that life at Hallam was never to be the same again.

She hurried across the lawn, not running, feeling that would be wrong, or undignified. She was headed towards the weeping willow, not trying to make out what was nearby it. As she gained the further stretches she heard a shout. She turned. On the balustrade of the formal garden Pinner was calling to her, gesturing to her to come away. She stood her ground, and then looked back towards the leafy willow.

The strangest component of the grotesque little tableau was the object that had caused the glow which Sarah had noticed from her bedroom window. It was a lifesize reproduction of a human skeleton, made with some kind of
light wood, and painted with a silvery, phosphorescent paint. It was the sort of scary-funny object that might be obtained in any joke shop, particularly now, with the approach of Hallowe'en. The skull glistened blankly up to the morning sky, the trunk lay outstretched in the posture of death. Except, Sarah noted almost subconsciously, that the backbone had been painted out.

The young man, dead beside it, was less formally laid out. The body was also on its back, but more higgledy-piggledy, apparently because he had died in the course of a struggle, or some violent exertion of some kind, and had been left where he was. There was a hole in his forehead, and the back of his head . . . Sarah could hardly bear to look at the back of his head . . . But she registered a little patch of blood on the grass, and wondered that such a terrible wound had not produced more. She turned away from the sight, feeling sick.

“We tried to stop you seeing it,” said a voice behind her. It was Dennis, looking haggard and unwell.

“I prefer to know the worst,” said Sarah. “I could see there was something wrong as I was getting up . . . It's grotesque. That ridiculous skeleton, yet with real death beside it.”

“He'd painted out the backbone,” said Dennis, his voice low and hollow. “I was a fool to think they'd ever run out of metaphors for cowardice.”

He put his arm out to lead Sarah away, but she forced herself to turn back.

“I think I've seen him,” she said, her voice almost reduced to a whisper. “Who is he?”

“One of the village lads.”

“I think I saw him, the last time I went to the pictures in Willbury . . . Was it Christopher Keene?”

“That's who Pinner thought it was.”

Sarah let herself be gently led away by him, back towards the house.

“We know what he was doing, or planning to do,” she said, trying to get her voice back to normal. “If only we could work out how it could have happened.”

“It could have been an accident,” said Dennis.

If only it could! If only it could!

“Then where is the gun?” asked Sarah, her voice sounding harsh.

“I know, I know. But he could have had a friend . . . an accomplice. They could have been horsing around.”

It was a possibility Sarah had not considered.

“And when the gun went off and killed him, this friend who was helping him took fright and ran away, still holding the gun. Yes, it could have happened like that. But the gun would be terribly incriminating.”

“The friend might not be very bright.”

“Barry Noaks,” said Sarah, her voice flat, but with something like hope in it.

“Is he the idiot boy from Chowton?” Dennis thought for a few moments. “It's possible.”

“But why in any case bring a gun?” Sarah asked. “Were they planning something else?”

“You mean direct violence against one of us? It doesn't seem to go with the practical joke.”

“Barry Noaks seems to be obsessed with dead things,” said Sarah, shivering. “He seems to enjoy the idea of blood.”

“We mustn't jump to conclusions. The police will have all the scientific means to find out, and the experience. If it's possible to get at the truth, they'll get there, and we must leave it to them . . . And if I'm not mistaken, this will be them now.”

A black Morris Oxford was driving through the gates, and up towards the entrance to Hallam.

“I'll go and talk to them,” said Dennis. “Will you take charge of Chloe and shield her from some of this? I think
it would be best if she didn't have breakfast with the family. We can hardly avoid the subject.”

Best she didn't have breakfast in the kitchen either, Sarah thought. Mrs. Munday and Pinner would regard it as a dreadful intrusion into their discussion of the subject. Constantly busy though they were, they did dearly love to chew over a piece of gossip, if one came up. When she got back upstairs she found that Chloe had already dressed herself, so Sarah installed her in the little schoolroom and fetched a light breakfast for the two of them on a tray. She found it was as much as she could do to toy with a piece of toast, and Chloe, bright as always, noticed her lack of appetite.

“Desks are for writing on, not for eating breakfast on,” she announced. “Why are we eating breakfast here?”

“To keep out of everybody's way,” answered Sarah.

“Why today? Why do we have to keep out of everybody's way
today?”

“There's been a spot of bother.”

Chloe bided her time. She could be a thinking, watching, waiting child when she wanted to be. When the tray had been put outside the door, and Sarah had set her to copying sentences from a spelling book, she was ready to attack again.

“What
sort
of bother is it there's been a spot of?”

The very complexity of the sentence showed her to be a Hallam. Sarah was standing at the window watching the little knot of men at the far end of the lawn. Only two had come in the Morris Oxford, but now they had been joined by more—trilby-hatted men, one of whom was setting up tripods and unloading photographic equipment. Sarah thought how very unglamorous police detectives were. Then she thought: She'll have to be told something soon.

“There's been an unfortunate accident,” she said carefully.

“What sort of accident? A motor accident?”

“No, not a motor accident.”

“What sort, then?”

“There was a young man trespassing in the grounds last night.”

“While we were at the Waddies'? Tres-passing is when you go on other people's land, isn't it?”

“That's right.”

“Tres-passing is not an accident.”

“Unfortunately the young man had an accident.”

“Is he dead? Or is he just wounded?”

Sarah believed in telling the truth to children.

“I'm afraid he's dead.”

Chloe took it quite calmly.

“I know all about death. Grandmother Fawcett died, and Uncle Edward in the Great War. That was before I was born. But I know about dying.”

She seemed entirely satisfied, though it would probably not be long before she had thought up more questions. Now, at any rate, she was concentrating on her copying, and Sarah took the chance to skip downstairs.

When she walked into the breakfast-room she found the Hallams slumped over the table in gloomy conversation. She had never known them so dreary. Even Elizabeth was quite without sparkle. They had never gone in for the lavish country house breakfast, but today they seemed to have eaten practically nothing. They accepted Sarah as a natural part of any family conference.

“I've talked to Sergeant South,” said Dennis. “He confirms that it is Christopher Keene.”

“Yes,” said Sarah flatly. “I thought it was. I knew he was involved in these silly pranks, but when I saw him at the pictures—” she struggled to explain—“he seemed . . . such a lively young man. Very bright. It's quite dreadful.”

“I'll go and visit his mother,” said Oliver quietly. “I
know her a little. I helped her fill out a form to get money from the Foresters when his father died.”

“Wasn't his father a bit of an invalid?” asked Helen.

“Yes. He'd been gassed in the War. He did farm work, but he'd never really recovered. I know Mrs. Keene had some help from the British Legion too.”

“Do go and talk to her,” said Dennis. “But perhaps not yet. There'll be an awkwardness, in the circumstances. It beats me how a lively boy, and one whose father was ruined by war, could fall victim to a charlatan like Major Coffey.”

Sarah remembered Roland's remark, and adapted it a little.

“Perhaps he offered a bit of excitement. A sort of escape from the humdrum. There's not much for a lively young person in a village, even in these days.”

“No . . .” Dennis thought. “Perhaps we should have understood that. Perhaps we live too much in books.”

“Is it known when it happened?” asked Sarah. “Was it when we were at the Waddies'?”

“We'll have to wait for the police doctor's report before we can know that,” said Oliver.

“Well, in fact I think we can have a good idea,” said Helen. They all looked in her direction. “I've been talking to Mrs. Munday. You know it was Pinner's night off last night, so she was in the house alone until well after the pubs closed. She was going to listen to a light music programme with Gwen Catley at ten, and she said Bounce began to get restless just before that. Barking, wagging his tail, going to the door—‘let me get at them,' you know the way he is. Finally she let him out, and he went out on to the parapet above the lawn and barked into the darkness—down towards the river. As usual, as soon as he's allowed to get at them he doesn't dare to. Eventually, she called him in, but he was very restless for the rest of the evening. I think that must have been the time when . . .”

Her voice faded into silence.

“Very likely,” agreed Dennis.

“But not conclusive,” said Elizabeth. “It could have been a stray cat, or a squirrel.”

“Did she hear a shot?” asked Sarah.

“No. But her hearing's not very good, and it was some way away from the kitchen, and on the other side of the house.”

“If it agrees with the police doctor's conclusion,” said Dennis, “then we can be pretty sure that was when it happened, or about then. But the doctor may not be at all definite. If he had seen the body earlier he probably could have been, but—what?—twelve hours or more have gone by. Knowing doctors, I suspect he will probably be very vague.”

The prospect of the police doctor being quite open about the time of the murder, of the whole period of their visit to the Waddies being in question, maybe even the nighttime after their return home, depressed the Hallams still further, and made them silent. Sarah murmured that she must see to Chloe, and slipped out and upstairs. As she went she was thinking: ten o'clock. What was I doing at ten o'clock? She must have finished the game of croquet with Simon Killingbeck. Was she playing Murder? Or was she talking to Elizabeth and Dennis over the array of nursery foods? That at any rate would mean that three of them were out of the running. Except that it might have been a cat or a stray squirrel.

And what on earth did she mean—out of the running?

 • • • 

Out on the lawn, a little way away from the posse of men in trilby hats and raincoats, Sergeant South was talking in low tones to Inspector Minchip.

Minchip, to an outside observer, was much the less impressive figure of the two. Three or four inches shorter, lean almost to the point of weediness, he had a ferrety face and a straggling moustache that did nothing for it. Only a
steely glint in the eyes and an air of being accustomed to command might suggest that he was a man very much on top of his job. His clothes would have suggested that this was a job which, at the time, Society did not feel called upon lavishly to reward. Notwithstanding that, Sergeant South treated him with immense respect.