A Presumption of Death Read online

  ‘Not that that’s logical,’ observed Rita. ‘The truth is, it hasn’t sunk in yet, Lady what’s-your-name.’

  ‘Call me Harriet. I’ve come to ask you, semi-officially, whether any of you know any reason why it was Wendy who was attacked.’

  ‘What difference does it make, now she’s dead?’ someone asked – a stringy-looking girl sitting at the far end of the table.

  ‘That’s our barrack-room lawyer,’ said Rita. ‘Always has a question.’

  ‘It might make a very great difference,’ said Harriet. ‘If it was a private quarrel of some sort, then most likely, having settled his score – or her score, of course – the murderer will not act against anyone else. Or, alternatively, he might be a threat to any and every one of us. So, the simplest question is, do any of you know of anyone who had a grudge against Wendy? Did she have enemies?’

  ‘She annoyed people,’ said Rita, ‘but . . .’

  ‘How?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Well, she was a devil of a tease,’ said Rita. ‘She loved having fun. She would flirt with anybody.’

  ‘And once or twice people thought she was serious,’ said Muriel, ‘and got very put out when she just laughed it off. I was always telling her it wasn’t kind.’

  ‘And she just laughed at you, I suppose?’ said Rita. ‘We’re a mixed bunch here, Lady . . . Harriet, I mean. We’ve got all sorts of background; up and down the country, rich and poor. You can tell a lot from our voices – that Muriel and me are out of different boxes: she is nicely brought up – we’re all different. But Wendy didn’t fit with any of us. Don’t get me wrong; we rub along all right. We have a good laugh together over it. But . . .’

  ‘Wendy didn’t laugh?’ prompted Harriet.

  ‘She was quick enough to laugh at us,’ said Rita.

  ‘About what sort of thing?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Well, she thought of herself as a cut above her company,’ said Rita, who seemed to have dropped her hostility and decided to co-operate. ‘Not because she was posh – she wasn’t as posh as Muriel here, as far as I can tell. Not that I know about that sort of thing. But she was clever; she was better educated than anyone else here. She’d been to university.’

  ‘Only Reading University,’ offered the stringy young woman from the far end of the table. ‘It wasn’t Oxford. Besides, surely people don’t get murdered for having a degree in Modern Languages.’

  ‘Well, I could have murdered her for carrying on about the English being narrow and insular,’ said Muriel. ‘And name-dropping. Place-name-dropping, that is. Nice, and Grenoble and Madrid, and Zurich.’

  ‘No, you couldn’t, Muriel, don’t be silly,’ said Rita. ‘If you were capable of killing anyone, you would have murdered me. Several times. We do get ratty with each other when we’re tired and hungry,’ she added, turning to Harriet.

  ‘Of course you do,’ said Harriet. ‘But have I got this right: none of you got on easily with Wendy; none of you liked her?’

  ‘Oh, no, wrong,’ said a rather older woman. ‘We’re giving the wrong impression. Wendy was lovely; she was lots of fun. She could be a bit outrageous, but it was only fooling around. She never meant to be unkind. People could take it wrong, that’s all.’

  ‘What about boyfriends? Did you say she flirted?’

  ‘All the time. But that was as far as it went. We’re all sleeping in a hay-loft here, Lady Peter. We would know if anyone wasn’t in their bed.’

  ‘We sleep soundly, though,’ said Rita.

  ‘And of course, wickedness is possible in the forenoon, and the tea-break,’ said Muriel, ‘as well as by night.’

  ‘We work all day except Sundays,’ said the older woman. ‘And I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m too dog-tired for wickedness any time of day from the lunch-break onwards.’

  This remark was greeted with rueful laughter.

  ‘Do you know who was upset? Who had taken her more seriously than she meant? Could you give me names?’ Harriet was met with an embarrassed silence. ‘I know it feels like sneaking to the teacher. But Wendy was killed by someone who could do it with his bare hands, very quickly. He didn’t need a weapon. He could strike again any time. So let’s start with that dance.’

  ‘She didn’t go,’ said Rita at once. ‘She said she had a headache, ho, ho.’

  ‘You didn’t believe her?’

  ‘Well, I thought her headache might have been called Roger.’

  ‘You had better explain that, Rita,’ said Muriel.

  ‘Wendy had gone out a couple of times with one or two local fellows: Archie Lugg, for one, and Jake Datchett. They were offering to fight each other over her, and she thought that was positively hilarious. She called them the bumpkins. She had promised both of them a dance on Saturday. But a month ago she met Roger Birdlap – he’s an RAF officer over at Steen Manor – and she fell head over heels for him. Really deep stuff. So I rather think the dance was a good opportunity to meet him somewhere quiet; here, for example. We were all going to the dance; he would come over in the vans from the base with all the others, and slip away quietly to meet her. Then when the dance was over the air-raid practice would give them plenty of warning, because you can hear the sirens from here. He would rejoin his mates, and she would scamper along to the shelter.’

  ‘She was dressed for the dance,’ remarked Harriet.

  ‘If she hadn’t dressed up, we’d all have noticed,’ said Rita. ‘That was a very nice frock to put on for him, and take off for him.’

  ‘But surely she wouldn’t have liked to be quite alone with a man . . .’ said a young rather pallid-looking girl, with an Alice band holding back mousy hair.

  ‘Mistake,’ said Rita tartly. ‘You wouldn’t like to be quite alone with a man. Most of us would grab the chance if we fancied the fellow in question.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘It isn’t entirely respectable? Your mother wouldn’t like it? Gentlemen prefer virgins? For lord’s sake, there’s a war on.’

  ‘I don’t see what the war’s got to do with things like that,’ said the girl, who was blushing crimson under Rita’s assault.

  ‘You don’t see what difference it makes that those airmen are about to be slaughtered by the enemy? That none of us may live to see our next birthday? You really don’t?’

  Rita turned her back on the company and took to stirring a pan of soup on the primus stove. Harriet thanked them all, including Rita’s back, for helpful information, and took her leave. She was followed across the yard by Muriel. ‘Lady Peter, could you, I mean if you can, would you keep us abreast with things? With the investigation? Even if we can’t help any further?’

  ‘Yes, of course I will,’ said Harriet. There was a just perceptible glint of tears in Muriel’s pallid blue eyes. Wicked Wendy had had a friend after all.

  Returning to her house, Harriet found her nephew Charlie Parker and Lord St George, heads bent, absorbed in a task which had covered the sofa table in the drawing-room with bits and pieces. Charlie looked up with shining eyes.

  ‘Aunt Harriet, guess what!’ he cried. ‘Uncle Jerry has bought me a crystal set kit and we’re just putting it together now! Wait till I show Sam Bateson – he’ll be green with envy!’

  ‘Don’t gloat over your friends, young Charles,’ said Jerry firmly. ‘The best people don’t do that. Besides, you might need his help. I’m not putting it together for you, I’m just showing you how it goes and how to work it. You’ll have to assemble it yourself.’

  ‘But you’ll help me?’

  ‘Sorry, chum, I have to be off in a mo. As soon as I’ve said goodbye to your aunt here.’

  ‘Oh, Uncle Jerry,’ groaned Charlie. ‘Can’t you stay till tomorrow?’

  ‘Wish I could, old man, but duty calls,’ said Jerry. ‘You just clear all this stuff off the table back into the box, and take it upstairs and get going on it.’

  When the boy had departed, arms full, and shunted the door closed behind him with his left foot, Jerry said
to Harriet, ‘Are you getting involved with this murder, Aunt Harriet?’

  ‘Somewhat, Jerry. Do you think I shouldn’t?’

  ‘Well, if Uncle Peter were here . . .’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘You don’t think it might be dangerous?’

  ‘A village mystery? Hardly . . . Compared to the general danger . . .’

  ‘It might not be unrelated.’

  ‘Well, the victim wouldn’t have been here apart from the war. The land would have been worked by Peter Gurney, Harry Hawk, Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all, and Wicked Wendy would have been – I wonder what she would have been? Working as a school-teacher perhaps?’

  ‘Hardly. She wasn’t the type. She was drinking in the Crown last time I was here on leave, and vamping all the chaps, Aunt Harriet,’ he said. ‘If I weren’t hopelessly infatuated with my aunt by marriage, I would have been taken for a ride myself.’

  ‘But it’s funny how often, when the murder victim is a woman, it turns out to have been mostly her fault. She was too cold, or too enticing, or flirtatious or chilly, but somehow . . .’

  ‘She is made out to deserve her fate. I see what you mean. It’s very unfair to the fairer sex. And the dead can’t defend themselves. Just the same, take care.’

  ‘I might rather say the same to you. If fighter pilots can take care.’

  ‘I can take care that if I go down I’ll take one of the bastards with me. You can be sure of that.’

  ‘Come back alive. Or you’ll break your father’s heart.’

  ‘Not really. It’s not me he’s so sold on, it’s an heir. Now if I would break your heart, that would be an inducement.’

  ‘Jerry, don’t you ever stop fooling? Of course I would grieve for you, deeply; but I’d rather have you living, and giving me cheek.’

  ‘Alive or dead, I’m breaking my father’s heart, you know,’ he said, suddenly sombre. ‘If I inherit the title and the land and all that, I shall sell it all at once, and set myself up in a nice bachelor flat in West One.’

  ‘So you think now. You might surprise yourself.’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said, flushing slightly, and looking at his watch. ‘Kiss me goodbye?’

  Harriet kissed him on both cheeks, and watched him run away, swinging his case into the passenger seat of his sports car, and roaring off down the drive.

  ‘Oh, Jerry,’ she said softly to herself, sighing.

  Three

  We’re being led to the altar this spring: its flowers

  will I suppose nod and yellow and redden the garden

  with the bombs falling – oh, it’s a queer sense of

  suspense being led up to the spring of 1940.

  Virginia Woolf, Diary, 8th February, 1940

  Harriet spent Tuesday morning at the Vicarage, helping Mrs Goodacre. The Vicarage was even more crowded than Talboys, since the Goodacres had taken in an assorted crew of refugees, ranging from three Czechs of Jewish descent to a Polish chicken-farmer who was trying to enlist in the air force or the army and lying robustly about his age. The Pole was busy in the kitchen when Harriet arrived, expertly plucking a fowl and putting the feathers in a sack.

  ‘Jan is very good at cooking,’ Mrs Goodacre told her visitor. ‘Although he would rather be fighting, if we would let him.’

  ‘How old I look?’ Jan asked Harriet.

  She contemplated him. His round and friendly face was not heavily lined, except on smile lines, but his hair was greying.

  ‘Forty?’ she guessed. ‘Forty-five?’

  ‘Is fifty,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘They say no good for army. Less good even for air force.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Harriet, as though she had herself formulated the policy. ‘But surely they will find you something else to do. Some sort of war work.’

  ‘Farm work is all,’ he said.

  ‘Cheer up,’ said Harriet. ‘Food is a munition of war, they keep telling us.’

  The vicar’s wife had undertaken the contentious task of billeting officer for Paggleham, and was organising visits of inspection to every family that had taken in evacuees. Many of them had been taken home again by their London families, for a variety of reasons. Now Mrs Goodacre needed an up-to-date survey of who had still got their evacuees, who had now got spare rooms, who was willing and who would be difficult when the next wave of displaced mothers and children had to be accommodated. It was all too clear that any German advance across northern France would bring bomber bases ever nearer English targets, and as soon as the long feared and awaited attacks on cities began, it was very likely that the evacuees would be back in the countryside in large numbers.

  Mrs Goodacre settled down with Harriet at her kitchen table, and sorted out a bunch of cards from her index of families and addresses. She gave Harriet nine cards to direct her part of the task. Glancing through them Harriet saw to her amazement the letters VD against some of the children’s names, and one VD against the address of Mr Maggs.

  ‘Good lord, Mrs Goodacre!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve heard of bed-wetting and head-lice among the children, but VD?’

  ‘Well, a lot of them were, when they arrived, and as for that Mrs Maggs, you should have seen her kitchen, Harriet . . .’

  ‘A lot of them were what?’ asked Harriet faintly. ‘And what was in the kitchen?’

  ‘Very dirty,’ said Mrs Goodacre. ‘It’s my shorthand for very dirty. And what was in the kitchen was cockroaches.’

  ‘Well, thank heavens for that!’ said Harriet.

  ‘Thank heavens?’ said Mrs Goodacre in surprise.

  ‘That it was nothing worse,’ said Harriet solemnly.

  ‘I suppose things could have been worse,’ said Mrs Goodacre doubtfully. ‘But I do rather feel that the government have been a little unimaginative about some things: dislocation of commerce, and evacuation and that kind of thing. They seem, the government, I mean, to have thought out the beginning of everything very well, and then to have rather stopped thinking! Like the schoolchildren for example: I expect it was necessary to get them out without any books or pencils or anything to the nearest available place; but I do think the government might have helped the subsequent arrangements rather more, and got the schools together and organised the distribution of equipment and things.’

  ‘Well, if they thought we could be relied on to just get on and manage, they might not be so wrong, Mrs Goodacre,’ said Harriet, smiling at her friend.

  ‘But it’s a dreadful pity that so many of the children are being taken home again; it’s so good for them to get a bit of air and exercise, and find out how country people live. Someone told me the other day that her little London boy had piped up suddenly and asked if sheep laid eggs! Did you ever!’

  ‘I suppose it’s natural for parents to want their children with them,’ said Harriet. ‘When large-scale bombing begins—’

  ‘Paggleham at least will have an up-to-date register of billets,’ said Mrs Goodacre.

  Harriet’s tour of duty revealed nothing that surprised her. Mrs Marbleham, billeted above the greengrocer’s shop in pleasant sunny rooms, was very far from grateful. She complained to Harriet that she was woken every morning by the greengrocer setting up shop at an unearthly hour, clattering his boxes as he spread out across the pavement, and whistling to himself as he worked. Harriet wondered if she could ask him not to whistle, and decided against it.

  ‘It must be nice to have his shop just down the stairs, though,’ she offered.

  ‘Not really. We don’t eat vegetables. Not being pigs. Not like some,’ the woman replied.

  ‘Vegetables are good for you,’ suggested Harriet, rather dismayed on behalf of the Marbleham boys.

  ‘Well, we don’t eat them. Only chips,’ was the reply. ‘What I wouldn’t give to be back right near a good fish and chip shop . . .’

  Harriet couldn’t help that. She was more useful at Mrs Maggs’s cottage. The Maggses had a rambling set of bedrooms up a second stair that had once housed the blacksmit
h’s apprentices. They had taken in six boys, aged from ten to fourteen, from two different families. One family had sent enough warm clothes, and the other had sent nothing. One family paid up their ten and six for the first child, and eight and sixpence a week for the others very regularly; the second family had sent nothing. At least the clothes could be sorted out; Harriet wrote out a ticket to the clothes exchange organised by the WVS.

  The third family she visited was very crowded, with the daughter sharing her bedroom with a little London girl who cried for her mother at night. And billets in Paggleham were not plentiful.

  Passing the end of Church Lane on her way back to the Vicarage, it occurred to Harriet that Susan Hodge’s cottage, rented out to Flight Lieutenant Brinklow, would become available when he went back to his unit. She walked down to it. It stood four-square a little apart from its neighbours in an overgrown garden that was mostly old apple trees. The garden abutted an arm of Blackden Wood. Peter had bought the wood a couple of years back to stop it being clear-felled, because the hillside it stood on was in plain view from the bedroom windows of Talboys. At the time Harriet had thought it extravagant of him, and she had been amused when he said woodland always came in handy, but now it was providing firewood for Talboys, and most of the villagers, she couldn’t dispute it. It was handy to own it. Peter said there was an implied permission for anyone to take sticks for firewood – anything they could get ‘by hook or by crook’ – but no gathering with axe or saw.

  Harriet knocked at the cottage door, waited and knocked again. The officer must be out. It was rather an isolated dwelling, she thought, but it looked as though you could put a whole family in it, which would certainly cheer it up a bit, and it would be nice for a London family to have the run of the wood. She must find out tactfully about the condition of the house, and the rent. She didn’t want to suggest the requisitioning of something that was essential to a local family’s income.

  Later that day Harriet went into Great Pagford to shop. Paul needed larger clothes every week, it seemed, and it was getting very difficult to find things. She dropped in on Mr Kirk at the police station and gave him the names she had elicited. He thanked her in an abstracted way.