The Wilt Inheritance (22 page)

‘No, she doesn’t sound like one.’

‘No, she really isn’t a Lady.’

‘Yes, as I said, she doesn’t sound like one,’ said the barmaid, feeling increasingly puzzled.

Wilt began to wish he’d never started. They sat there in silence for a while and then the barmaid said, ‘I’ve been thinking about the teenager with the gun. Do you think he’s got a licence for it?’

‘Probably not. On the other hand, his step-father is bound to. He has a cabinet full of the beastly things … not that I’ve seen him use them much. He did charge off once when I’d just told him I’d seen a caravan in the grounds and a woman hanging up washing on a line. He took a gun with him because he’s got some sort of obsession about trespassers. Mind you, he didn’t fire the thing.’

‘Does he keep that cabinet locked?’

‘He didn’t on that occasion. I didn’t stick around. I don’t like weapons.’

‘What I’m getting at is the fact that he left the cabinet open, and that when you went out of the room anyone could have nicked one of the guns – it sounds like there were a lot of them.’

‘I never counted the confounded things but I’d say about a dozen, maybe more,’ Wilt replied. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Never you mind. I’ll get to the point in a minute.’

‘If you say so. All I can see is Eva landing me in the shit again and there’s sod all I can do about it.’

‘Oh, but there is. You’re in a far stronger position than you realise. Number one – what was a teenager doing with a firearm for which he had no licence? Number two – why did Sir George Gadsley leave you
alone in his study with the gun cabinet unlocked and open? Number three – why were Eva and your daughters driven out of Sandystones Hall. Ask yourself that and you’ll come up with the answer to your worries.’

‘They left, as I keep telling you, because someone – presumably that young maniac – fired a series of shots at or near the quads when they were down by the lake and scared them out of the place.’

‘Exactly. Put the situation like that and the finest lawyer in Britain isn’t going to prove you guilty of anything. Add the unlocked gun cabinet and Sir George is bound to find himself in trouble with the law and lose his gun licence or be fined. Oh, yes. You’ll have them Gadsleys by the short and curlies.’

Wilt sighed and said he certainly hoped so, although privately he wondered how he had ended up in this increasingly mad and muddled conversation.

‘One thing you’re forgetting,’ he went on, unable to resist, ‘is that Sir George is a magistrate and must have influence in legal circles.’

‘That makes his position even worse! First he breaks the law himself by leaving his weapons unattended. And second, he knows that his son … all right, stepson … illegally has a gun because you told him the boy shot a deer or something.’

‘He said it might have been a wild boar which had got out of a farm where they breed the brutes.’

‘Well, there you are. So you’ve nothing to worry about.’

Wilt wasn’t at all sure that the barmaid’s logic made any sense whatsoever but felt grateful for her support. He rather regretted not having tipped her more, once he came to think of it, but suspected that offering her money now might not be viewed in the best light. Thanking her, he got up and offered her a lift back to the pub but she said she was going to stay on for a while.

As he drove back to the Hall he felt a little more cheerful. He’d enlist Mrs Bale’s help and ring round all the local hotels: he was certain Eva and the quads wouldn’t have gone all the way back home without him. They couldn’t be that difficult to track down. Certainly once seen, never forgotten. And once seen and heard, never recovered from. He parked in the back yard and went up the steps to the kitchen.

‘Oh, you’re back. Your wife’s been here looking for you,’ Mrs Bale told him. ‘She wanted the car.’

‘I don’t believe it! Why on earth didn’t the stupid woman ring me? I’ve been sitting outside the hotel like an idiot waiting for her. Where is she now?’

‘Well, she and Lady Clarissa had a flaming row about Clarissa having slept with you …’

‘What? We never did any such thing!’

‘I know you didn’t,’ Mrs Bale said, looking rather shame-faced. ‘Anyway, before Mrs Wilt realised that she was wrong, she’d said so many dreadful things that Lady Clarissa had to go and lie down to recover.’

‘Oh, Eva, what have you done now?’ muttered Wilt, seeing the legal bill mounting by the minute.

‘To make amends, she volunteered to go down to the Vicarage to make arrangements for the Colonel’s funeral.’

‘I thought he was being buried here on the Estate, and that all the trestle tables and umbrellas were for a funeral tea afterwards?’

‘Well, no. Sir George refuses to allow him to be buried in the family’s private plot. We’ve had to turn the mourners away at the main gate and the caterers are packing up now, Not that they were real mourners mind you. Just a load of nosey parkers from the village come to gawk at the house.

Wilt gaped at her.

‘And my wife has gone to make alternative funeral arrangements? How extraordinary!’

‘I would have thought you’d have realised by now that everything about this establishment is extraordinary.’

‘Yes, it’s a complete mad house, populated by lunatics.’

‘Well, I did warn you. Even though I thought you were her latest fancy man.’

‘Thanks for the compliment,’ said Wilt.

‘Having met your missus, I’d realise how wrong I was. She’s not someone I’d want to cross.’

‘Eva gives me absolute hell sometimes, it’s true, though I’m used to that. But if she’s in the village, then where are the girls?’

‘Goodness only knows. They said they were going down to the beach again … but if you ask me they never went there in the first place. You’ve got your hands full with those four.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ said Wilt bitterly. ‘I’d better go and look for them. They’ll be up to something disreputable, you can bet on it.’

In the graveyard the quads had placed the suitably sized piece of timber in the coffin, wrapped in a blanket they’d taken from the cottage earlier. After putting the coffin lid back on they returned through the pines, though this time taking a totally different route to avoid leaving an obvious trail to the corpse. They put their plastic gloves on and piled more dry wood around the body.

Samantha was about to strike a match to begin the cremation when the sound of Wilt’s voice calling reached them through the trees.

‘Oh, Christ,’ Josephine said. ‘All we need is for him to bloody well find us.’

They stayed quiet until their father’s voice started to recede.

‘Look, it’s too exposed here. Someone’s sure to see us. And we’d better go and head off Dad before he finds us here.’

‘It’s absolutely fine,’ said Samantha angrily. She was eager to begin and bored stiff by all the delays.

‘No, Josephine’s right,’ agreed Emmeline. ‘Let’s cover him up again and find another place … somewhere they would never think of looking. I suggest we spread out and search for the thickest patch of young pines, where grown-ups would find it very difficult to get through. In fact, we may even have to crawl ourselves.’

‘What are we going to be looking for?’ asked Samantha crossly. ‘I still think we should get on with it here.’

‘Somewhere not too far away but really dense, with lots of pine needles so we can cover the body with them and anyone looking for it will think it’s a fallen log.’

‘But logs don’t fall on newly planted pines.’

‘Of course they don’t. But haven’t you seen the sawn-off stumps of much older and bigger ones they’ve used for firewood in the Hall? Those pines shed needles in hundreds and thousands and could easily cover something up.’

‘Provided whoever is looking doesn’t step on it. They’d be puzzled to find a soft log.’

‘He’s hardly soft now, is he? He’s got rigor mortis.’

‘Yes, but you wait. In this hot weather he’ll start to
rot any minute, and then he’ll turn all soft and squidgy, not to mention smelling to high heaven.’

‘That won’t matter if we cover him really well with plenty of pine needles. You two’ – Emmeline pointed at Josephine and Penelope – ‘go over that way, and we’ll go this side where the trees are much thicker.’ A minute later all four quads had disappeared into the young trees.

Half an hour later, Emmeline had found a hollow which was filled with fallen leaves and pine needles. She showed it to Samantha who was delighted. Best of all it was screened by a thick undergrowth of young saplings.

‘It’s exactly right. We’ll get the other two and bring the Colonel down. We can shove him in there for now.’

‘Hadn’t we better clear all these leaves out and have it ready for him before we fetch him? And what about the bonfire we build? People are going to wonder what on earth it’s for.’

‘What people? Nobody comes up here. They’ll think it’s for Guy Fawkes Night or something like that. Anyway, the quicker we can get the body into that hole the better. You go and find Penelope and Josephine and we’ll meet up at the wood pile. It won’t take me long to get this lot out.’

Back at the wood pile the four of them started to drag the Colonel’s body back to the hollow, Penelope grumbling loudly that this wasn’t as much fun as she’d
thought it was going to be. Suddenly there was the sound of a shot and a bullet embedded itself in a nearby tree trunk, narrowly missing the girls. Three of the quads instinctively dived for cover and flattened themselves amongst the pine cones and bracken on the floor of the woods. Samantha, however, hid behind the nearest tree and so was able to see Edward walking towards them. To her amazement he reloaded and carried on firing his rifle, this time aiming for the dead body which lay where they’d dropped it, propped against a tree.

‘Killed you, you bastard!’ yelled Edward as he drew closer to the body. ‘Teach you to trespass, you dirty Hun!’

‘North by north-west!’ whispered Samantha, which was their code for going anywhere but north or northwest. She needn’t have worried since the gormless Edward didn’t know his north from his west from his east. He moved steadily forward, oblivious to the three girls creeping sideways out of the line of fire.

Samantha had picked up a few stones and was throwing them to distract him when a particularly large one accidentally hit him on the head. Edward looked startled and began to topple forwards: trying to save himself he tripped on an exposed tree root and the gun went off, shooting him between the eyes. There was a sudden silence.

‘Oh, shit,’ said Samantha. The others stood up and joined her.

‘Bloody hell!’

‘Bloody hell is right. Now we’re for it.’

‘Oh, never mind all that! Quick, change of plan. Help me lift Edward up and let’s put him closer to the Colonel’s body,’ said Penelope, which they did. She then took the gun from where it had fallen and fired a few more shots into the Colonel’s body, then pushed the gun back under Edward’s body so it was clear he had fallen on it after it had gone off.

‘Now it looks as though he was the one who pinched the body and was using it for firing practice or something when he tripped up and killed himself. Which, of course, is exactly what he did.’

‘Genius,’ said Samantha, ‘except now we don’t get to burn anything, which is a pity.’

‘Don’t whine. Come on, let’s get on with it before someone arrives to see what all the noise was about.’

Half an hour later the quads had removed any sign of the track they had made while dragging the naked corpse through the pines and had headed back to the Hall, having buried the Colonel’s medals and clothes in the hollow.

Not long before that, at the insistence of Sir George, the coffin had been removed from the family plot by the pall-bearers and returned to the hearse. As it wound its way back up to the gate and on to the main road, Eva could be seen getting in a taxi and following on.

‘Don’t forget to insist that he’s cremated,’ Sir George
told her as she left. ‘I don’t want to hear any more nonsense about his being buried here.’

Eva nodded, knowing full well that she had promised Lady Clarissa that her uncle would be buried and not burned.

Feeling distinctly self-conscious, she followed the hearse all the way to the Vicarage where she got out and knocked on the door. A few moments later it was opened by a woman who looked at her enquiringly.

‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ she asked.

Eva said she’d come to speak to the Vicar but, by this time, his wife had spotted the coffin.

‘Well, I’ll tell my husband it’s urgent although he is rather busy writing his sermon for Sunday,’ she replied, and went back into the house. Presently, an elderly man wearing spectacles and a dog collar came out.

‘I take it you want me to conduct a funeral. Is the deceased a local person?’

Eva shook her head. ‘I am certain he isn’t.’

‘I can tell you’re not from your accent,’ he commented.

Eva replied that she lived in Ipford herself, but had been asked to accompany the coffin to the Vicarage.

‘I know he was a colonel in the war and had a wooden leg,’ she added inconsequentially.

The Vicar looked at her over the top of his glasses.

‘I ask because the graveyard is almost full and we can only bury people who live hereabouts. Where exactly are you living?’

‘Actually I’m not living here. I was going to be staying here for the summer, up at the Hall …’

‘Sandystones Hall?’ asked the Vicar, looking shocked.

Some years before he had played golf with Sir George and been disgusted by his filthy language when he had hit a ball into a bunker. He had also strongly disapproved of Sir George’s habit of taking regular swigs of whisky from the silver flask he kept in his back pocket. Above all the Vicar objected to the Gadsleys’ refusal to attend any religious services on Sundays or any other day of the week, and was more than aware that everyone in the village disliked them intensely too.

He had just decided that anyone who stayed for the summer at Sandystones Hall must share all their undesirable attributes when Eva broke into his deliberations.

‘The four men who brought the coffin down have gone away,’ she said. ‘If you won’t take it into the church, I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t possibly take it away by myself.’