A Crowded Coffin

A Crowded Coffin
is a work of fiction so all the people in it are products of my imagination, as is the village of Locksley. Winchester Cathedral, however, is exactly as described – apart from the corpse – and is a must-see on every visitor’s itinerary. The history is as accurate as I can make it but, sadly, I forgot to keep a record of the dozens of books and websites I consulted when doing research. However, I’m enormously grateful to everyone whose brains I picked, whether they knew it or not! Finally, thanks to my brilliant first readers, Olivia Barnes, Linda Gruchy and Joanne Thomson, who did their usual thing by spotting typos, idiotic mistakes and gaping plot holes.

Assorted cats, dogs, art historians, ghosts and villagers

Murder is easy. It’s disposing of the body that throws up a few problems.

You might think a piggery would provide the perfect solution but you’d be wrong.

‘Dispose of a body?’ The pig farmer’s roar of laughter bodes ill when, oh so casually, you pose the question. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, that old chestnut does crop up. You wouldn’t believe how many times I get asked that.’ He shakes his head and takes the trouble to explain. ‘You can’t just throw a body to the pigs, you see. You’d need to dismember it first and who has that kind of equipment handy in their kitchen?’

Who indeed?

So why, with the pig farm only one of a dozen discarded avenues, scarcely remembered for ages, should you suddenly find yourself, of all things, unable to face bacon or roast pork?

He cowers there, flattening himself into the mud, waiting for the enemy to strike again, slipping in and out of consciousness until memory reminds him that this isn’t Korea and he isn’t a young soldier any more.

So why is he lying in the cold and dark, hurting, injured, knowing he is in mortal danger? He tries to move, his old bones grinding, one arm slack and useless. He feels inside his sodden shirt with his good hand. Collarbone broken, most likely. But how? What has happened? Why is he lying out here? The last thing he remembers clearly is leaning on a five-barred gate, surveying the farm and thinking there was rain in the air.

He winces as he tries to move, sure he is in a puddle; plenty of rain now. How long has he been out of it, then? Thinking is a huge effort but he has a vague memory of a noise just before it happened. Thunder? No, not thunder. Despite the pain, the fog in his mind is clearing. He’d thought it was thunder, that’s it, but his hearing isn’t too good nowadays (not that he’d ever admit it to his wife) and he’d been distracted by something on the other side of the field. Something that couldn’t possibly be there.

The rumble of a car approaching along the track had startled him from his reverie, the sudden hard revving of the engine his only warning as he’d leaped out of its way.

‘Someone drove at me deliberately,’ he whispers now.

And there it is again, the low growl of an engine approaching. Coming to finish him off.

Harriet Quigley glanced at the Arrivals board at Southampton Airport. Twenty minutes until her cousin Sam’s flight landed gave her time for a coffee and a welcome pause for thought, even though she was desperate to discuss the awful news with him. A good deal had happened in the two days since she had dropped Sam off on his outward journey. Their parting
conversation
had seemed almost trivial at the time but had now acquired a sinister significance.

‘Did I tell you I had lunch with old Walter Attlin? From your village?’ Sam had asked as they left the M3.

She’d been intrigued. ‘My cousin Walter? I didn’t realize you were on lunching terms with him.’

‘I’m not really,’ he’d said. ‘But I bumped into him the other day in Winchester High Street and he buttonholed me. Said he had a problem and I was just the man to help, so we had lunch in the cathedral refectory. He’s a great character, isn’t he?’

She nodded. ‘So what was his problem? And did you solve it for him?’

‘Not really.’ His grin was mildly apologetic. ‘Sorry, Harriet, he swore me to secrecy but I think it did help him to thrash it out with someone from outside, as a sort of sounding board. He said the trouble with getting to your eighties is that the friends you always trusted are either dead or demented, and he’s been worrying himself silly. It’s a pretty tenuous link between us, but the fact that he’s related to you through your father, and that you and I are first cousins on the other side, seemed to make him feel more comfortable about talking to me, even though we’ve never really known each other well.’

Now, as she spooned froth off her cappuccino, and waited for Sam’s arrival, she shivered. Her elderly relative, Walter Attlin,
was foremost in her thoughts. His misadventure the other night had shocked everyone in the close-knit village, and she had a lot to discuss with Sam, who was not just her cousin, but her closest friend. Things were happening and Harriet was worried.

‘Penny for them, Harriet?’ The tall, silver-haired clergyman was standing in front of her now with an amused expression on his long, pleasant face. ‘You were miles away. Are you all right?’ Concern replaced affection as he asked, ‘How are you? And what’s the latest on Walter?’

‘I’m fine, Sam.’ She rose – very like him in looks; tall and slim, with a smile never far away, though her own hair was firmly kept to a natural-looking honey colour – and gave him a brief but affectionate hug. ‘Got all your stuff? Great, let’s get going. Walter’s—’

She was interrupted by a shout. ‘Miss Q? Oh my God. Grandpa? You.…’ she stammered, her face ashen. ‘He’s not … you haven’t come to tell me …?’

Harriet turned in surprise to see a petite twenty-something girl steaming towards her, face puckered with anxiety.

‘Edith? What on earth are you doing here? I thought you were in America.’

‘But Grandpa. Is he … is he …?’ The girl fell into Harriet’s welcoming arms.

‘He’s fine, honestly, Edith. As fine as an eighty-something man with a broken collarbone can be. And better than most, tough old devil that he is.’

‘Oh, thank God. You’re sure?’ the pretty blonde said as she emerged from Harriet’s affectionate hug, still pale though some of the tension had clearly drained away. ‘But if you’re not here to tell me bad news, then what are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to meet Sam. Do you know my cousin, Sam Hathaway? He’s a canon at the cathedral. Sam, this is Edith Attlin, my very distant relative and erstwhile pupil. Of course,’
she added with a grin, ‘that was before I retired and found myself busier with village life then ever I was as a headmistress. I’m sure you must have met her a long time ago because Edith’s grandfather is Walter, from Locksley Farm Place.’

Sam Hathaway looked relieved at Harriet’s news about Walter, but he made no comment as he shook hands with the new arrival.

Edith gave Sam’s hand a perfunctory pump. ‘This is going to be very cheeky but could I hitch a lift, please? I have to get home straight away. I was going to get a taxi, never mind the expense, but if you’re heading my way….’

‘Of course you can have a lift, but what on earth are you doing here?’ Harriet was leading the way to the car park. ‘Your grandfather is doing remarkably well, in the circumstances, so do stop panicking.’

Her expression lightened and, blue eyes twinkling, she added, ‘I rang your grandmother first thing and she said that, according to the hospital, he’s recovering in leaps and bounds and is anxious to get home. I think she translated that as meaning he was driving them mad. Now, where did you spring from? Nobody said anything about expecting you.’

They reached the car, an immaculate, original Mini. ‘My VW Golf died so I thought I would put my mother’s car back on the road. She had it from new and it’s still going strong,’ Harriet explained as Edith clambered into the back seat and Harriet tucked assorted bags around her.

Sam, with a rueful look at the leg room, folded up his long body like a penknife and slotted himself into the front passenger seat. Harriet ignored his grunts as he settled himself, and as she drove back towards the motorway, returned to her question. ‘Where have you sprung from anyway, Edith? You weren’t on Sam’s flight from Belfast, surely?’

‘No, I came home via Amsterdam. It was the quickest way I
could get back from the States. We landed earlier but there was a problem with picking up the luggage.’ She leaned forward. ‘You’re really sure Grandpa’s all right? The message I got was that he’d been run over and rushed to hospital. Gran insisted he wasn’t in danger and that I was to stay put, but I couldn’t. I just had a few loose ends to sort out, which took a day or so, and after that I got the first possible plane out.’

Sam twisted round to look at Edith, his eyes showing his concern. He opened his mouth to ask questions, but as Harriet tanked over him, he sat back, knowing he wouldn’t be able to get a word in edgeways.

‘Your grandmother was quite right; he’s shaken and
uncomfortable
but he’s going to be fine, honestly. How long can you stay?’

‘I’m home for good,’ Edith said briefly, her face still taut with anxiety.

‘Really?’ Harriet glanced back at her. ‘I thought you were happy earning shed-loads of dollars in Hollywood as the very upmarket English governess to the brats of the rich and famous. Film stars and directors and so forth.’

‘I was, until my latest employer suggested I might like to consider becoming his fourth wife, even though he was still apparently happily married to his third one. Unfortunately she overheard him proposing and things got a bit out of hand, to say the least.’ Harriet looked surprised and Edith shrugged. ‘Like I said, it was awkward, so I packed my bags and camped at a friend’s house while I said my goodbyes. I’d actually handed in my notice anyway, which is probably what prompted his suggestion, and packed up ready to leave, so I was able, pretty much, to hop on a plane when I got the phone call about Grandpa. Anyway, I haven’t been home since Christmas and I do worry about them, so it seemed a good time to make a break.’

‘Yes, well.…’ Harriet took a sharp corner at a risky gallop
ignoring Sam’s sharply indrawn breath as she did so. ‘About your grandfather, Edith. As I told you, nobody’s worried about him long-term, but a broken collarbone and bruising at his age is always tricky so they decided to keep him in hospital for a day or so, purely for observation.’

Sam nodded, concern furrowing his brow, while Edith looked pale and anxious as she asked, ‘Are you
sure
that’s all, Miss Q? What happened? I never got the whole story from Gran.’

‘Quite sure, I promise you. As I keep saying, he’s said to be recovering well. Apparently he went for a stroll round the garden then decided to walk down the lane to the Burial Field but he claims he was distracted by a noise just when he reached the gate to the big paddock. He thought it was thunder – it was a muggy night – so he just carried on pottering. This is where it gets a bit hard to swallow…. He says he’d just reached the rise when he thought he saw something at the edge of the copse. He stopped to look and that’s when he realized it wasn’t thunder he’d heard at all.’ Harriet concentrated on the traffic for a moment then continued. ‘He says the car drove straight at him. God knows how he managed to leap aside but he says the car didn’t actually hit him. It was when he fell that he broke his collarbone.’

Sam and Edith both looked appalled and Edith exclaimed, ‘But, but that’s … that’s…. Is he sure?’

Harriet glanced at her cousin who shook his head slightly. Walter Attlin might be in his eighties but he was an astute old man with a logical, practical intelligence and a calm temperament. If he said that a car had been driven straight at him, then that was what had happened, unless….

‘He’s, he’s all right, is he, Miss Q?’ Edith faltered. ‘He’s not – not getting—’

‘You mean, is he getting senile?’ Harriet snorted. ‘Of course he’s not. He told the police what had happened and someone
came out to take a look but there was a terrific downpour later that night and the place was like the Somme so any evidence, tyre tracks and so forth, was washed away. Besides, even though it was a failure to stop after an accident, there wasn’t much they could do except put it into the system. I don’t think they took seriously his assertion that he was deliberately targeted; after all, they don’t know him the way we do. And anyway, what action could they actually take? The car and driver were long gone.’ She concentrated on overtaking a
car-transporter
. ‘I gather he’s backpedalling now,’ she continued. ‘I suspect it’s because he doesn’t want to upset your
grandmother
.’

Sam Hathaway digested this information then returned to something that had caught his interest. ‘What’s this about a burial field?’ he asked. ‘I’ve only been to the house a couple of times, a long while ago, when we were kids, remember, Harriet? It’s not my side of the family, though I do know the old boy slightly. Who have you got buried in there? Family graveyard?’

‘It’s where the original Roman villa is said to have been built.’ Edith sounded glad to take her mind off her grandfather’s
accident
. ‘Did you know that story?’ Sam nodded and she carried on. ‘Well, there’s a stone there, in the middle of a little copse. Oh, you really must come and see it, Canon Hathaway, it’s difficult to describe. And Grandpa would love to show it to you.’

She looked anxiously at Harriet. ‘Is that all, Miss Q? I got the impression when I phoned a couple of weeks ago that Grandpa was worrying about something. That’s another thing that had already prompted me to come home, really.’

‘You might as well know,’ sighed Harriet, taking the turning off the roundabout and heading towards Hursley and Locksley village. ‘There’s been something rather odd going on. The tenant of Walter’s other farm died recently, old Misselbrook, and practically the minute he died, not quite three weeks ago, Walter
received an offer for the smaller farm to include the Burial Field and the big paddock that both border on to it. A very good offer, and all done properly through an agent, but he turned it down, of course. Walter’s sold land in the past but, not this particular parcel. They would never let the Burial Field go, even without all the history. It’s much too close to the house.’

Edith looked puzzled as she nodded agreement, then Harriet changed the subject. ‘And while I think about it, Edith, it really is time you stopped calling me Miss Q and called me Harriet. It’s years since I was your headmistress and we’re related after all. Besides, if even your grandparents’ aged retainers can call me Harriet, it’s silly of you to be so formal.’

‘Aged retainers?’ Edith’s puzzled frown deepened as Sam Hathaway joined in Harriet’s laughter. ‘What do you mean?’