“Has he actually buried anyone there?” The Superintendent looked particularly interested in hearing more about that.
“Not as far as I know. But, don’t you see? That must be why he sent down this coffin with a log in it – to try to make a fool out of me because I wrote a letter to the local paper saying that private graveyards are wrong.”
The Sergeant and Superintendent exchanged glances.
“And is that it, sir?”
“Well, no. Since that piece appeared he’s cut me – not that it bothered me. But then he began to spread really scandalous rumours about me…”
“If they are as nasty as you’re suggesting, why haven’t you sued him? It seems the obvious thing to have done.”
“Because the villagers generally dislike Sir George so much he wasn’t believed. And in any case, I don’t want an accusation like that spread all over the newspapers.”
“What sort of accusation? Perhaps we could prosecute Sir George.”
“Oh, the usual. That I’m a pervert who interferes with small boys,” the Vicar told him.
The Superintendent thought this over for some moments.
“And are you, sir?”
“How dare you! Of course I’m not. You can ask my wife, if you don’t believe me. I don’t even like small boys…nasty, vicious little things. Or big boys, come to that.”
The Superintendent thought about reminding the Vicar about the inclusiveness of Christian love again, but thought better of it. There was a short silence and then he announced, “I think it’s about time I met Sir George Gadsley. In the meantime, Sergeant, can you get that branch back to Ligneham and have it locked up in the evidence room? Now then, Vicar, is there anything else we should know?”
“Well, I ought in all conscience to warn you that Sir George can be a difficult customer. Drinks like a fish as does his wife – and, of course, she’s very keen on men. Frankly, if it weren’t uncharitable I’d call her something worse.”
“What would you call her then?”
“There’s really only one word for it,” said the Vicar with relish. “Nymphomaniac.”
“Now now, Vicar, we’ll be cautioning you next, for spreading malicious rumours.”
The clergyman turned red but couldn’t resist saying, “I think not, Superintendent, since all I’ve said is absolutely true. You can ask that boy outside. He works at the garage.”
Bidding him good day while thinking once again that this man of the cloth wasn’t all he was cracked up to be, the Superintendent went off to question the trainee mechanic about the woman who had accompanied the coffin. The young man had never met her before.
“Proper scared she looked when she took off, saying something about needing to get back to her daughters. Mind you, I’m not sure she was entirely all there in the first place. When she saw the branch, she kept saying it was a leg.”
“Was it her accent? Perhaps she meant log?”
“No, she definitely said a leg…when anyone could see it was just a lump of wood. And pollarded at that.”
25
Back at the Hall, Wilt felt as though he had been tramping the woods for hours. Although he’d shouted and sworn and then resorted to broadcasting blackmail and promises, the quads had failed to materialise. He found one of the girls’ cardigan and a pair of socks at the edge of the lake and briefly wondered whether something terrible had happened to them. It seemed unlikely that all four would have drowned at once, but neither would he have put it past them. On the other hand, it was more likely that they would fake their own deaths and were at that very moment hidden somewhere nearby, giggling at him. He experimented with whirling round suddenly, hoping to catch them out, but just received some very curious looks from the caterers who were busy packing up their stuff.
He was seriously unnerved when he heard the sounds of gunfire in the distance, followed by some squealing, but when all fell silent again he concluded that Edward must have bagged yet another wild beast.
Wilt must have been on his fifth or sixth circuit of the grounds when he came across the half-concealed caravan. Although it seemed unlikely the quads would be hiding there, he thought he should probably look inside. As he drew nearer he saw the branches around it shaking and the caravan itself rocking from side to side.
“I bet that’s the quads,” he said to himself. Then, quietly creeping up to the window, decided he would give them the rude shock they deserved. But in fact it was Wilt who had the shock, and it was a rude one all right, when the sight of Sir George’s rear end, bouncing up and down on what appeared to be the trespasser, came into view.
Fortunately they were both too preoccupied to notice him peering in at the window. He beat a hasty retreat, deciding he had better head back to the Hall.
Mrs Bale met him at the top of the kitchen steps.
“Thank goodness you’ve returned,” she said. “Your wife’s in a terrible state.”
“She’s always in a terrible state. What’s happened now? If it’s those damned girls, you can tell her from me I’ve spent hours looking for them. It’s no good: they’re officially missing.”
“The girls? No, it’s the uncle. He’s the one who’s gone.”
“I know he’s gone, poor bugger, and I’m very sorry for him. But I don’t know what that has to do with me or with Eva, for that matter.”
“No, he’s gone. As in, his body has gone. Disappeared. Vanished. Vamoosed. Mrs Wilt has had a terrible shock and she’s worried sick about telling her ladyship the truth.”
With this, Mrs Bale rushed back to the kitchen from where, as he followed, Wilt could hear the sound of Eva’s hysterical sobbing. His first instinct had been right. This was a bloody mad house.
It was some while before he was able to calm Eva and in the meantime the girls had slunk back into the house, saying they’d only been to the beach again and didn’t know why there was such a fuss. Looking at their four guilty faces, not to mention the pine needles all over their clothes, Wilt didn’t believe them for one second but, given the state Eva was in, decided not to say anything. He was about to ask them whether they’d heard all the gunfire when there was a bellow from the study. Sir George was obviously back and in a temper. Mrs Bale got up hurriedly and dashed out, thinking she had better be with Lady Clarissa. Wilt shut the door and sat down again next to his wife. He didn’t want to know what the latest row was about.
The quads were certain they already knew and stealthily made their way into the corridor to eavesdrop. They soon discovered they were wrong: no one seemed to have found the bodies yet. Instead Sir George was furiously berating a Police Superintendent and shouting that he must be mad to accuse him of putting a log in a coffin.
“What the fuck would I do that for? You’re lying through your goddamn’ teeth. Now get out of my house!”
There was a pause which allowed the quads to slip into the library and hide behind the open door where they could hear what was said or shouted in the study.
“If you really want to know, the Vicar found it when the coffin was opened,” the Superintendent told him.
“And you believe that old fool? He’s off his head. A piece of wood in a coffin? That is absurd.”
“Absurd it may be, but we have witnesses.”
“So what makes you think this wood or whatever it was came from here?”
“Because the pall-bearers who brought it down said it did. There was a woman with them, too, who apparently said she was staying at the Hall for the summer.”
“Christ, the Wilt bitch!”
“I’ve another question for you, Sir George. Do you always keep that gun cabinet locked?”
“Of course I do. What’s it got to do with you?”
“Then why was it unlocked when I was shown in here and you hadn’t arrived from wherever you’d been? Leaving a gun cabinet unlocked is against the law. I trust you have a firearms licence?”
Sir George replied that of course he did and produced one from a drawer in his desk. He was begi
nning to grow slightly alarmed by the way this plainclothes policeman remained so calm, in spite of having been shouted at and ordered to get out of the bloody Hall. The Superintendent’s next question made him even more wary.
“How old is your step-son?”
“I’ve no idea. Can’t stand the boy.”
“Does he do much shooting? I mean, does he have a gun?”
Sir George hesitated and then said he had not noticed. “Why do you ask?”
“Because there’s a bullet hole in the log in the coffin, and I just thought there may be some connection between a boy with a gun and that hole,” said the Superintendent. “Is it possible you might not have ‘noticed’ one of your guns missing too, do you think? It’s a very serious matter, permitting unlicensed young people to use powerful firearms.”
Sir George was beginning to sweat. This wasn’t going at all the way he’d expected it to. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There was no funeral here so why would we have a coffin? There hasn’t been one for over a thousand years…except for family descendants, of course, but the last of those was an age ago. The Vicar must have explained all that to you.”
“He did, but we’ve also been in touch with all the undertakers in the vicinity and had it confirmed that an Ipford hearse was seen making its way to the Hall. The locals noticed it because of their not getting the business themselves, of course.”
“They must have been mistaken. No one’s died. Now bugger off!” said Sir George.
“We’ve a hearse and a coffin but no body, and that doesn’t look good to me. It’s why we want to search the Estate.”
Sir George knew he ought to restrain himself. He couldn’t.
“Search the Estate? You bloody well won’t! I’m damned if I’m having policemen poking their noses in all over the place,” he shouted.
“There’ll only be a few of us and the dogs. Sniffer dogs. If the real corpse is in the grounds, the dogs will find him,” the Superintendent told him with a smile. “They’ve never been known to fail.”
“To hell with your sniffer dogs! This is my private property and you’re not bloody well searching any part of it.”
The Superintendent shrugged.
“If that’s your attitude then I’ll have to get a warrant,” he said. “I’ll be back in the morning.” And stalked out of the front door and got into his car.
26
The quads sneaked back through the kitchen and out into the grounds where they watched the police car go off up the driveway, clipping its wing mirror as it failed to negotiate the first of the terrible turns. Emmeline laughed loudly, earning herself a filthy look from the police driver, and then went to sit next to her sisters on the grass.
“Sniffer dogs! What are we going to do now?” asked Josephine. “I hope they won’t sniff up to us after that pulling and pushing we’ve done. The smell of the bodies must be all over us.”
“It’s not as though we haven’t washed since,” Emmeline reminded her. “But I should think the dogs are bound to find the bodies.”
“Yes,” said Penelope. “And when they do, what about the medals and clothes and stuff? It’ll be very difficult to come up with a reason why they’ve been buried by Edward if the dog finds them as well.”
“They won’t be found, stupid. Bet they’ll be there forever.”
Samantha thought for a moment and then spoke.
“Not necessarily. You remember that TV programme with dozens of hounds who followed pieces of cloth that had been rubbed against a fox, so they could smell it and chase it?”
“But fox hunting is against the law. They aren’t allowed to do it now,” Penelope protested.
“They aren’t allowed to kill a fox, I know that. But they can hunt one.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, shut up. What’s it got to do with us anyway? We aren’t going to go fox hunting. Look, it doesn’t matter if they find the bodies or the uniform or whatever, does it? It’s whether they believe Edward did everything and don’t suspect it was really us.”
There was a brief silence. Then Emmeline spoke.
“Maybe if they don’t find them for a bit there’s less chance of any forensic evidence.”
“Forensic evidence?”
“Yes, you know, stuff that shows we were there and it wasn’t all him.”
“I think we should plant lots of false leads to muddle them and then they can’t prove anything,” said Josephine.
“Like what?”
“Well, if the police are bringing in sniffer dogs, ones that can find dead bodies and things that are lost, we need to confuse them. So if we collect all the Colonel’s clothes and medals and shoes and scatter them all over the woods, it’ll throw the dogs of the scent.”
“Now I’m the one who’s confused,” said Penelope. “Shouldn’t we be worrying about our alibi, not the sniffer dogs?”
“Oh, Lord! You’re right: there’s that too. But I bet we can make Dad say we were somewhere with him.”
“Huh! Why would he? He’d rather we were in jail than bothering him. I heard him tell Mum he thought we were little psychopaths who were going to end up in prison anyway.”
“Because we’ll tell him that if he doesn’t say we were with him all the time, we’ll let Mum know he really was sleeping with Lady Clarissa. We can say we saw him.”
“But we didn’t. And he wasn’t, was he?”
“No, but he knows Mum will never believe that.”
Pleased with their plan, the quads went back into the Hall where they discovered that it had been decided everyone would stay the night rather than go back to the guest house. They were going to be in the cottage with Eva, and Wilt would stay in his room at the Hall. Much to their surprise Sir George and Lady Clarissa had already gone to bed, but when the quads suggested it must be because they wanted to get sexy, Mrs Bale told them there was more chance of seeing some pigs fly past.
It was only later that evening, when Eva said she was still frightened of being shot at by Edward, that Mrs Bale realised no one had seen him all day. By now it was too dark to conduct much more than a cursory search of the grounds so, concluding that the boy was skulking out of sight somewhere, she left out some sandwiches for him and went off to bed.
Down at the cottage, the quads stayed awake for hours, trying to think up better alibis in case they needed them, but their whispering didn’t disturb Eva who had taken a sleeping tablet and was snoring loudly. Wilt, however, slept only in fits and starts. In his wakeful intervals he spent much of his time unable to forget Sir George’s first enraged bellow and the subsequent calm questioning of the Superintendent. He couldn’t help thinking that the quads must be involved in the business of the coffin with the lump of wood in it…although surely even they would stop short of actually moving a body? And what was Lady Clarissa going to say in the morning when she heard that her uncle was missing and some kind of log had appeared in his place? And when he finally managed to get his mind off the puzzle of the empty coffin and the quads’ putative involvement, it was only to start thinking about the missing boy. Eva would undoubtedly insist that he continue wasting his time supposedly coaching the lad when Wilt knew perfectly well that Edward’s education was a lost cause.
His mind went round and round, thinking about the useless boy and the guilty looks on the quads’ faces and the missing body and the terrifying roars he had heard coming from the study…
It was obvious the dreadful Sir George was an extremely dangerous man. His collection of rifles was proof of that, and he had the most uncontrollable temper. Goodness only knew what he would do if he learnt Wilt had seen him and the trespasser through the caravan window. Probably shoot him.
At about five in the morning Wilt finally gave up any pretence of sleeping and decided to go for a walk. He’d go up the back road and stick close to the wall on the far side of the woods screening the hideous Hall. With dense forest on one side and a high wall on the other he should be safe from Edward and his damned gun if he’
d been out there on night target practice, not that Wilt had heard any gunfire since the previous afternoon. All the same, remembering that Sir George had warned him that his step-son shot at anything that moved, Wilt kept his eyes skinned for the brute. At least he couldn’t open fire from the wall without being easily spotted.
Half an hour later, Wilt had reached the high hedge behind which he had last seen the caravan, but although he went to the gate through which it must originally have come he could see no sign of it now. The padlock Lady Clarissa had attached looked to have been smashed although he thought it might just as easily have been shot off. To his right lay the entrance to the family graveyard. Wilt crossed the short open space to it and felt safer. On the slope above it he would be hidden by the dense pine plantation. He followed the path that led through the trees to the top, unknowingly passing by on the other side of the tree where the Colonel’s corpse was propped up and Edward’s body lay a short distance away, face down in the bracken.
Finally he found himself standing beside what seemed to be a small hollow: looking down the hill he could just see a corner of the chapel’s roof. In short, the view was as calm and tranquil as he could have wished. Feeling peaceful at last, he turned to carry on up to the top of the slope where he stopped to rest in a little clearing among the pines.
As he sat and thought about all that had gone on, his mind kept returning to the puzzling disappearance of the Colonel’s body. Its whereabouts could easily become something of an obsession since it had scarcely left his mind since he’d first overheard the gossip about it. The more he thought about it, the more Wilt felt sure that it lay somewhere in these woods although at the same time he was conscious he had no real reason for this conviction of his. It was based on nothing more than intuition and the knowledge that, whenever something went wrong, those blasted girls of his were somewhere at the root of it.
Wilt glumly pondered his future. It was years until he’d be rid of the quads. Knowing his luck, they’d want to go to Fenland University when they finished whatever school could be made to now take them, so that they could live at home and save money. It didn’t bear thinking about.