Death on the Downs

Ten

Having cracked that first clue, Carole’s mind moved up a gear and she had nearly completed the Times crossword by the time Jude joined her in the Hare and Hounds. They ordered cottage pie and yes, both did have a glass of white wine.

“Just the one,” said Carole automatically. “Driving.” Then she asked about her Mend’s visit to the Lutteridges.

“Odd. Very odd.” Jude screwed up the skin around her large brown eyes. “Miles was in a terrible state of panic, but Gillie seemed unnaturally calm.”

“Is she normally a calm person?”

“From the outside, yes. If you didn’t know her, you’d have no idea what she’s thinking. But over the time I spent with her and Tamsin, I did get to know her quite well, and she’s not calm – at least not where her daughter’s concerned. But this morning she kept saying she knew Tamsin was all right.”

“Positive thinking.”

“Maybe it’s just that. I kept wondering whether maybe she was telling the truth. She knows that Tamsin’s all right.”

“But if she did know that, surely she’d tell her husband? If he’s in as bad a state as you say.”

“Yes. She would. Gillie’s always been very supportive to Miles. She wouldn’t let him suffer unnecessarily.” Jude took a thoughtful sip of wine. “That’s what’s so odd about it.”

Their cottage pies arrived, each neat in its oval earthenware dish on a wooden platter. Another earthenware dish contained carefully apportioned vegetables, exactly the same number for each of them. The food looked fine. But the gloss was taken off it by the fact that Carole knew identical portions were being served at the same moment in every one of the Home Hostelries chain.

“Tell me more about these bones,” said Jude, as they started to eat.

“I’ve told you most of it. There were just these recognizably human bones in two fertilizer bags.”

“But you didn’t get any feeling how old they were?”

“I’m not a forensic pathologist, Jude.”

“No, but…I was just thinking…Tamsin’s been missing for four months. Left her parents’ house on the night of Hallowe’en. I remember, because at one stage Miles thought that might have some significance.”

“Why?”

“He’s very confused about complementary medicine. He assumed it had something to do with witchcraft.”

“I see.”

“Anyway, say Tamsin was abducted and murdered that very evening…which is the first possible time she could have been…would there have been time since then for the bones to get as clean as you said they were?”

“Depends where they were left. Out in the open on the Downs…there are plenty of predators who’d pick all the flesh off them.”

“But if the body had been left in the open, someone would have seen it, surely?”

“Possibly not. I’m sure there are lots of secret places round here…copses, streams, old chalk pits. I should think it’d be easy enough to hide a body if you set your mind to it. I don’t know, though…We don’t really have enough information.”

As if putting a full stop to the conversation, Carole took a large spoonful of cottage pie.

“No. But think about it,” Jude persisted. “The world is full of missing persons – vagrants, tramps, travellers…The bones could belong to any one of them. And yet everyone’s assuming they’re Tkmsin’s.”

“Village mentality for you.”

“I suppose so. And until Tamsin is actually found alive – or until the police prove the bones belong to someone else – they’ll go on thinking it’s her.” Jude speared a head of Home Hostelries broccoli and looked at it pensively. “I think I’d better find Tamsin.”

“Where would you start looking?”

“I know some of the people she might have contacted.”

“What kind of people?”

“Miles Lutteridge and a lot of other blinkered locals would probably call them ‘New Age quack doctors’.”

“Ah.” Carole didn’t like to admit that she was probably one of the ‘other blinkered locals’. And what would you call them?”

“I’d call them ‘alternative therapists’. And some of them are good, and some of them are not very good, but none of them is deliberately trying to do harm. They’re trying to help people…and very often they succeed. Anyway, I’ll make some enquiries.” And she popped the piece of broccoli into her mouth.

“I think you should market it as one of the murder villages of the South Downs.”

Both women turned at the sound of the loud voice from near the bar. Indeed, most of the customers in the pub stopped talking and turned towards the sound.

The man who had spoken did not seem averse to being the centre of attention. His face was thin, its skin apparently drawn towards the point of a sharp nose. Probably in his forties, with wild hair that hadn’t seen a brush – or shampoo – since he got up that morning, he wore a black beret and a long cracked leather coat of the style favoured by Gestapo officers in British war movies. His thin legs in faded jeans ended in large laceless boots which splayed out from his ankles. The glass in his hand looked as though it contained gin and tonic. He was nominally in conversation with Will Maples, who had appeared behind the bar, but clearly his observations were meant for the whole assembled company.

“No, it’s good marketing, Will. Lot of people with ghoulish tastes around these days. Look at the way horror movies sell. You want to get some literature out to market this place. I’ll write it for you, give it that professional gloss – for the right money. You know horror’s my speciality. Eat your heart out, Stephen King. You haven’t begun to see nasty until you’ve read my stuff.

“So what should I write for you, Will? ‘Come to the Hare and Hounds in Weldisham, the village of murder. Sit in the quaint bar, where the local serial killer supped his foaming pint while he targeted his next victim.’”

The man giggled.

“Don’t be silly, Brian.” The manager’s manner was embarrassed, as if he wanted to ignore the speaker, but for some reason couldn’t. His body language was trying to draw him away, but the man called Brian held him.

“We’re not talking about serial killers. We don’t know there’s even been one murder yet.”

“Are you telling me that people who die natural deaths are in the habit of neatly stacking up their own bones in fertilizer bags?”

Though the man called Brian was speaking as loudly as ever, conversations around the pub had started up again. There was an air of that embarrassment that people often manifest in the presence of the mentally ill. The man didn’t seem completely sane. Despite the jocularity of his manner, there was an edginess to him, a sense that his mood could shift very suddenly.

“And as to what you were saying about serial killers, Will my old darling…” The manager didn’t look pleased to be the recipient of such an endearment. “They’ve all got to start somewhere. You need the first murder before you can move on to all the others. We’ve only had the first one so far here in Weldisham, but that’s the one with which he defined his ritual. Mm, I think I might make a very close study of this case – could be the basis for my next bestseller. Very gory it’ll be. Watch out, young girls. The Weldisham serial killer is going to spend the rest of his days repeating in exact detail the way he killed Tamsin Lutteridge.”

Jude thanked any god who might be listening that Gillie and Miles weren’t in the pub at that moment.

After she had dropped Jude at her home, Woodside Cottage, Carole put the car in the garage and went inside to the martyred whimpering of Gulliver. She felt frustrated. Jude had something to do. She was going to try to get a lead on the whereabouts of Tamsin Lutteridge. But there was nothing Carole could do that was in any way connected with the case.

Case? Was there a case? And if there was, what could it possibly have to do with her?

The telephone rang.

“Hello. This is Graham Forbes. We met in the pub just now.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I mentioned the possibility of your coming to dinner with us at Warren Lodge. Well, as soon as I got home, my wife, Irene, said she’d had a call from one of our friends who was going to join us this coming Friday. Been called away by a family bereavement. And I apologize that it’s awfully short notice…but I wondered, Carole, if you might by any chance be free that evening?”

She accepted. But, as she put the phone down, she thought, that was quick.