Death on the Downs

Eight

It was only just after twelve, but already there were people having lunch in the Hare and Hounds. Their average age was probably round seventy, but they looked well groomed in their leisurewear and prosperous, enjoying their well-endowed pension plans.

For a moment Carole luxuriated in the boldness of walking into a pub on her own. She wasn’t by nature a ‘pub person’ and a year ago she wouldn’t have done it. The new boldness was a symptom of the changes that had come over her. Until she met Jude, Carole had expected – indeed courted – a predictability in her life in Fethering. Jude had shown her that change was possible, and even desirable.

Carole ordered a Coca-Cola. She was sure she’d have a glass of wine when Jude arrived, but she needed to pace herself. Mustn’t forget she was driving. She was served by a girl she hadn’t seen before. There was no sign of Will Maples.

All the seats in the Snug were taken, so she found a table for two by a front window that looked out at Heron Cottage. But after a brief glance across the road, she turned her attention to the crossword. Usually easy on Mondays. She had a suspicion the compilers did that deliberately, to make their addicts feel intellectually on top of things, put them in a good mood at the beginning of the week.

But, to her annoyance, that day’s clues read like a foreign language. Carole’s approach to the crossword was very linear. She always started with the first Across clue; if she couldn’t get that, she moved to the second Across clue. Only when she’d got one correct solution did she investigate the possibilities opened up by its letters. And if she got stuck again, she’d move on to the next Across clue.

That Monday, the clues seemed particularly intransigent. She knew it was her attitude that was wrong. Solving crosswords required a kind of mental relaxation, a willingness to think laterally, to let ideas flow. But Carole’s mind wasn’t feeling relaxed. It floated over the words of the clues, not concentrating, not breaking them down into components to tease out their solutions.

She knew that her mind was really with Jude and what was happening in the Lutteridges’ house. To her annoyance, she found herself at the end of all the Across clues without having got a single answer. She couldn’t remember that ever happening before. With a ferocious effort of concentration, she focused on 1 Down.

“Tricky today, isn’t it?”

She looked up to see the tall figure of Graham Forbes stooping over her. He was wearing the same three–piece tweed suit and holding a whisky glass. His unlit pipe was clenched in his teeth. He must have just arrived. He certainly hadn’t been in the pub when she came in.

“Yes. Yes, it is,” she agreed.

“And one always thinks Mondays’ are going to be easy.”

He so exactly reflected her own views that she grinned.

“Took me ages to get started today,” said Graham Forbes. “Had to stay at the breakfast table much longer than I’d intended. Then I got a couple and it all fell into place.”

“Well, please don’t tell me any of the answers.”

He raised a hand histrionically, appalled by her suggestion. “My dear lady, what do you take me for? There is honour among crossword solvers, you know.”

“I do know. And I apologize humbly for my careless imputation.”

He chuckled. “Didn’t I see you in here on Friday?”

“Yes.”

“Have you just moved to Weldisham?”

“No, I live in Fethering, actually.”

“Ah. Different country.” He chuckled and indicated the chair opposite her. “Mind if I join you?”

“I’ve got a friend coming…”

“Oh, well, I’ll…” He made to move away.

“No, please.” Carole glanced at her watch. “She won’t be here for another twenty minutes.”

“I’ll be gone by then.” He sat down and raised his whisky glass. “Just always come in for my pre-lunch tincture, you know. Are you an every day Times crossword person?”

“Oh yes, part of my ritual.”

“Me too. Get in a very bad mood when I can’t finish it. Wife knows to keep out of the way on those days.” Another chuckle.

Carole couldn’t help being charmed by this man with his old–fashioned urbane courtesy. He seemed entirely different from the pontificator she’d heard talking on the Friday. Maybe she had misjudged his character. What had sounded right-wing might just have been nostalgia for a simpler time.

“Don’t like a lot of things about The Times these days,” he went on, confirming her conjecture. “Going very tabloid, all those colour photographs and what have you. Any excuse to get a pretty girl on the front page. And the Diary is an absolute disgrace. I’m afraid I’m of a generation that looks back fondly to the days when The Times didn’t have any news on the front page.”

“I can remember that too.”

“Well, all I can say is you must’ve been very young at the time.”

Graham Forbes’s gallantry was of another time, but it was comforting. Carole regretted that political correctness had rendered modern men wary of making that kind of remark.

“Tell you the favourite Times crossword clue I can remember…It was a Down clue, and it was just two words. ‘Bats do.’ Five letters.”

He looked interrogatively at Carole.

“Bats do’…” she repeated slowly, trying to take the words apart.

“Not fair to throw it at you like that. You have to see it written to make sense of it. I’ll tell you, because I don’t want to prolong the agony. PEELS.”

“Right.” Carole nodded her appreciation. “SLEEP upside-down. Bats sleep upside-down.”

“Exactly. Damned clever, I thought.”

“It is, yes.”

“Sorry, should have introduced myself.” He stretched a thin freckled hand across the table. “Graham Forbes.”

“Carole Seddon.”

“Pleased to meet you. I live just a couple of doors from the pub, so I keep turning up here like a bad penny.”

He took a sip of his whisky. “Lovely stuff. I swear my innards are pickled in it, you know. So what do you do, Carole?”

“I’m retired.”

“Really? Must’ve been an extremely early retirement.” Again the automatic chivalry contrived not to be offensive.

“Well, it was early, yes.” And that earliness still rankled with Carole. She hadn’t wanted to stay till she was sixty, but she’d have preferred to have made her own decision about her leaving date, rather than being informed of it.

“What did you do before you retired?”

“I worked at the Home Office.”

“Fascinating. What part of the Home Office?”

“Moved around. A lot of the time dealing with the Prison Service one way or the other.”

“Hm. Travel much?”

“Only round this country.”

“I think maybe you were fortunate. Now I’m permanently settled here, I realize how much I missed about England.”

“You worked abroad?”

“Yes. British Council.”

“Oh, I had a friend at university who went into the British Council.”

Carole hadn’t thought about him for years. She wondered whether he still kept up the front he’d maintained at Durham that he wasn’t gay. Or maybe more tolerant times had allowed him to relax into his own nature. “His name was Trevor Malcolm.”

Graham Forbes shrugged his thin shoulders. “It’s a big organization.”

“Of course.”

“Anyway, I worked for them all over the shop. Had the place here in Weldisham for a long time, but only used to come back for leave and breaks between postings. Often wonder if I wouldn’t have been happier staying here all the time.”

“I never think there’s much point in talking about might-have-beens.”

“And you’re absolutely right. What a sensible woman you are, Carole. No, I can’t really complain. Seen some fascinating places, met some fascinating people. Real characters, you know, the locals, librarians, drivers we had…And yet…Oh well, it’s human nature not to be content, isn’t it? Always remember a line of Hazlitt’s…‘I should like to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home.’ ”

“That’s good. I think it sums up what most of us feel.”

“Yes, grass is greener, all that stuff. No, can’t complain. Had an interesting life, still with the woman I love at age seventy-five…What more can you ask, eh?”

“Not a lot.”

“No.” There was a silence. “Incidentally…when you were in here on Friday…did you hear what I was talking about with that chap at the bar?”

Carole blushed, though there was no real reason why she should have felt guilty. Short of putting in earplugs, there was no way she couldn’t have heard what was being said at the bar.

“About the discovery of the bones at South Welling Barn?”

“Yes. Well, putting two and two together, I reckon you must have been the person who found them.”

“Where did you get your two and two from?”

“Lennie. Sorry, Detective Sergeant Baylis. The policeman who you talked to.” In response to her look of surprise, he explained. “Lennie talked to me on Saturday. I’m Chairman of the Village Committee here, you see. He wanted us to keep an eye out for press, snoopers, ghouls…You know, the people who turn up when something nasty’s happened, the kind who queue up on motorways to look at pile-ups. Anyway, Lennie said he’d been talking to you in the pub, I saw you in the pub, I put two and two together.”

“Right. But was it Detective Sergeant Baylis who told you about my finding the bones in the first place?”

“Sorry?”

“Well, what struck me last Friday was how quickly you knew about what’d happened. I’d found the bones at…what…? Round four o’clock? And by six-fifteen you were in here, talking about them.”

“Ah, with you, see what you mean. Yes, it was Lennie. He was brought up here in Weldisham. He knows how the gossip-mill works in a village like this. So he gave me a quick call the Friday afternoon. Thought it better someone heard officially about what’d happened, rather than letting rumours run riot. Dangerous things, rumours.” Suddenly, he was into quotation.

Rumour is a pipe

Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures,

And of so easy and so plain a stop

That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,

The still-discordant wavering multitude,

Can play upon it!

“I’m sorry. I don’t know the reference.”

“No reason why you should. I think it’s probably too obscure to crop up in the Times crossword. The Bard, inevitably. Henry IV, Part 2. The Induction. “Enter RUMOUR, painted full of tongues.” I’m not sure that any of the good folk of Weldisham are actually ‘painted full of tongues’, but they’re nonetheless very skilled in the dissemination of vile rumour.”

“Ah.” There was a silence. Graham Forbes took another swig of whisky, before Carole asked, “So was there something you wanted to say about the bones?”

“Sorry?”

“Well, you raised the subject.”

“Yes. Of course I did. No, I only wanted to say, so sorry, you have my sympathy. It must have been a horrible experience for you.”

“It has been…surprisingly unsettling.”

“I don’t think you should be surprised at all that you’ve been unsettled. Ghastly for you, coming upon that little cache by pure chance. Or at least I assume it was by pure chance…”

“Hm?”

“Well, you hadn’t set out looking for bones, had you?”

“Hardly.” She gave him a strange look, until she realized he was joking.

“I’m sorry, Carole,” he chuckled. “You get plenty of odd types walking on the Downs. Archaeologists, people with metal detectors…Some of them probably are looking for bones.”

“Well, I can assure you I wasn’t.”

“No. I’m sure you weren’t.” Graham Forbes looked at his watch, swilled down the remains of his whisky and said, “Must be off. Lunchtime. It’s been such a pleasure to meet you, Carole.”

“You too.” She meant it.

“I’d love you to come and meet my wife, Irene, at some point. As I say, we’re just down the lane. Warren Lodge. We always give a little dinner party Friday nights. Maybe we could inveigle you along to one of them?”

“I’d like that very much.” Carole was slightly surprised by the offer, but certainly not averse to the idea. Her Fethering social circle was narrow and not wildly interesting. It would be a pleasure to meet some new people, particularly if they were all as charming and cultured as Graham Forbes.

They exchanged phone numbers and he left for his lunch. Carole readdressed her crossword. Instantly she got her first solution.

The clue was: “A sailor’s in brass, for example, and bony (10).”

She wrote in METATARSAL.