Grave Mistake ra-30 Page 25

  “She went back there after the funeral. Now I come to think of it, she said that tomorrow she’s going to London for a week.”

  “Good.”

  “Why good?”

  “This is not going to be pleasant for you, I know. I think you must have felt — you’d be very unusual if you hadn’t — relieved when it was all over, yesterday afternoon. Tidily put away and mercifully done with. There’s always that sense of release, isn’t there, however deep the grief? Prunella must have felt it, don’t you think?”

  “I expect she did, poor child. And then there’s her youth and her engagement and her natural ebullience. She’ll be happy again. If it’s about her you want to ask, you’re not going to—” Verity exclaimed and stopped short.

  “Bother her again? Perhaps. I would like to know what you think. But first of all,” Alleyn broke off. “This is in confidence. Very strict confidence. I’m sure you’ll have no objections at all to keeping it so for forty-eight hours.”

  “Very well,” she said uneasily. “If you say so.”

  “It’s this. It looks as if we shall be obliged to remove the coffin from Mrs. Foster’s grave for a very short time. It will be replaced within an hour at the most and no indignity will be done it. I can’t tell you any more than that. The question is: should Prunella be told? If she’s away in London there may be a fair chance she need never know, but villages being what they are and certain people, the Vicar for one, having to be informed, there’s always the possibility that it might come out. What do you think?”

  Verity looked at him with a sort of incredulous dismay.

  “I can’t think,” she said “It’s incomprehensible and grotesque and I wish you hadn’t told me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “One keeps forgetting — or I do — that this is a matter of somebody killing somebody whom one had known all one’s life. And that’s a monstrous thought.”

  “Yes, of course it’s monstrous. But to us, I’m afraid, it’s all in the day’s work. But I am concerned about the young Prunella.”

  “So of course am I. I am indeed,” said Verity, “and I do take your point. Do you think, perhaps, that Gideon Markos should be consulted? Or Nikolas? Or both?”

  “Do you?”

  “They’ve — well, they’ve kind of taken over, you see. Naturally. She’s been absorbed into their sort of life and will belong to it.”

  “But she’s still looking to you, isn’t she? I noticed it yesterday at the funeral.”

  “Is there anything,” Verity found herself saying, “that you don’t notice?” Alleyn did not answer.

  “Look,” Verity said. “Suppose you — or I if you like — should tell Nikolas Markos and suggest that they take Prue away? He’s bought a yacht, he informs me. Not the messing-about-in-boats sort but the jet-set, Riviera job. They could waft her away on an extended cruise.”

  “Even plutocratic yachts are not necessarily steamed up and ready to sail at the drop of a hat.”

  “This one is.”

  “Really?”

  “He happened to mention it,” said Verity, turning pink. “He’s planning a cruise in four weeks’ time. He could put it forward.”

  “Are you invited?”

  “I can’t go,” she said shortly. “I’ve got a first night coming up.”

  “You know, your suggestion has its points. Even if someone does talk about it, long after it’s all over and done with, that’s not going to be as bad as knowing it is going to be done now and that it’s actually happening. Or is it?”

  “Not nearly so bad.”

  “And in any case,” Alleyn said, more to himself than to her, “she’s going to find out — ultimately. Unless I’m all to blazes.” He stood up. “I’ll leave it to you,” he said. “The decision. Is that unfair?”

  “No. It’s good of you to concern yourself. So I talk to Nikolas. Is that it?”

  To Verity’s surprise he hesitated for a moment.

  “Could you, perhaps, suggest he put forward the cruise because Prunella’s had about as much as she can take and would be all the better for a complete change of scene: now?”

  “I suppose so. I don’t much fancy asking a favour.”

  “No? Because he’ll be a little too delighted to oblige?”

  “Something like that,” said Verity.

  ii

  The next day dawned overcast with the promise of rain. By late afternoon it was coming down inexorably.

  “Set in solid,” Fox said, staring out of the station window.

  “In one way a hellish bore and in another an advantage.”

  “You mean people will be kept indoors?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’ll be heavy going, though,” sighed Fox. “For our lot.”

  “All of that.”

  The telephone rang. Alleyn answered it quickly. It was the Yard. The duty squad with men and equipment was about to leave in a “nondescript” vehicle and wanted to know if there were any final orders. The sergeant in charge checked over details.

  “Just a moment,” Alleyn said. And to Fox. “What time does the village take its evening meal, would you say?”

  “I’ll ask McGuiness.” He went into the front office and returned.

  “Between five-thirty and six-thirty. And after that they’ll be at their tellies.”

  “Yes. Hullo,” Alleyn said into the receiver. “I want you to time it so that you arrive at six o’clock with the least possible amount of fuss. Come to the vicarage. Make it all look like a repair job. No uniform copper. There’s a downpour going on here, you’ll need to dress for it. I’ll be there. You’ll go through the church and out by an exit on the far side, which is out of sight from the village. If by any unlikely chance somebody gets curious, you’re looking for a leak in the roof. Got it? Good. Put me through to Missing Persons and stay where you are for ten minutes in case there’s a change of procedure. Then leave.”

  Alleyn waited. He felt the pulse in the bruise on his jaw and knew it beat a little faster. “If they give a positive answer,” he thought, “it’s all up. Call off the exercise and back we go to square one.”

  A voice on the line. “Hullo? Superintendent Alleyn? You were calling us, sir?”

  “Yes. Any reports come in?”

  “Nothing, sir. No joy anywhere.”

  “Southampton? The stationer’s shop?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Thank God.”

  “I beg pardon, Mr. Alleyn?”

  “Never mind. It’s, to coin a phrase, a case of no news being good news. Keep going, though. Until you get orders to the contrary and if any sign or sniff of Carter comes up let me know at once. At once. This is of great importance. Understood?”

  “Understood, Mr. Alleyn.”

  Alleyn hung up and looked at his watch. Four-thirty.

  “We give it an hour and then go over,” he said.

  The hour passed slowly. Rain streamed down the blinded window pane. Small occupational noises could be heard in the front office and the intermittent sounds of passing vehicles.

  At twenty past five the constable on duty brought in that panacea against anxiety that the Force has unfailingly on tap: strong tea in heavy cups and two recalcitrant biscuits.

  Alleyn, with difficulty, swallowed the tea. He carried his cup into the front office where Sergeant McGuiness, with an affectation of nonchalance, said it wouldn’t be long now, would it?

  “No,” said Alleyn, “you can gird up your loins, such as they are,” and returned to his own room. He and Fox exchanged a nod and put on heavy mackintoshes, sou’westers and gum boots. He looked at his watch. Half-past five.

  “Give it three minutes,” he said. They waited.

  The telephone rang in the front office but not for them. They went through. Sergeant McGuiness was attired in oilskin and sou’wester.

  Alleyn said to P.C. Dance: “If there’s a call for me from Missing Persons, ring Upper Quintern Rectory. Have the number under y
our nose.”

  He and Fox and McGuiness went out into the rain and drove to Upper Quintern village. The interior of the car smelt of stale smoke, rubber and petrol. The wind-screen wipers jerked to and fro, surface water fanned up from under their wheels and sloshed against the windows. The sky was so blackened with rainclouds that a premature dusk seemed to have fallen on the village. Not a soul was abroad in Long Lane. The red window curtains in the bar of the Passcoigne Arms glowed dimly.

  “This is not going to let up,” said Fox.

  Alleyn led the way up a steep and slippery path to the vicarage. They were expected and the door was opened before they reached it.

  The Vicar, white-faced and anxious, welcomed them and took them to his study, which was like all parsonic studies with its framed photographs of ordinands and steel engravings of’classic monuments, its high fender, its worn chairs and its rows of predictable literature.

  “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.

&
nbsp; 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.