A Presumption of Death (22 page)

‘Here’s the rota, Mrs Ruddle,’ said Mrs Trapp. ‘The next one due is Joan Raikes’s; then Mrs Simcox . . .’

‘It won’t be a rota one!’ wailed Mrs Ruddle. ‘Too easy checked up on, it’ll be . . . oops!’ She stopped. ‘I’m off!’ she declared.

‘I’ll go,’ said Sam, looking up from the pile of comics he had been reading with Charlie, sprawled on the rug by the window. ‘I can run faster than that Ma Ruddle, any day!’

‘Well, whatcha waiting for?’ cried Mrs Ruddle. ‘Sooner you go sooner you get back again!’

‘Bunter, would you go and look in the shed?’ said Harriet. To Mrs Ruddle she said, ‘Would you like me to call the police?’

‘Oh, no, mum, don’t do that!’ cried Mrs Ruddle. ‘Please don’t. Just leave it to me and Bert and the locals. We’ll sort it out. And we’ll sort out ooever done it.’

‘I don’t like the sound of this at all,’ said Harriet. ‘If a pig has been stolen, why shouldn’t we tell the police? And come to that whoever is missing a pig has probably told Constable Baker already.’

‘Well, that’s just it!’ cried Mrs Ruddle. ‘It won’t be one of
those
pigs, it’ll be one of the extra ones . . .’

Bunter was lingering at the back door, on his way out. ‘Explain yourself, woman!’ he said, in terrible tones.

‘You need a licence to slaughter a pig,’ said Mrs Ruddle, not meeting his eyes. ‘But not if they don’t know you’ve got one. There’s some club pigs that aren’t on the rota. It’s all square,’ she added defiantly. ‘Everyone gets a cut just the same, as long as they can be trusted to keep it dark.’

‘And where are these extra-curricular pigs being kept, Mrs Ruddle?’ asked Bunter sternly.

‘I didn’t oughter tell,’ she said.

‘I could deploy the Home Guard to find them,’ said Bunter.

‘They’ve got more sense, most of them, than to look very ‘ard,’ she said defiantly.

‘I think Sam is already looking,’ said Harriet. She was remembering how anxious young Charlie had been on the day of the picnic with Charles and Mary that they should not enter the wood, and she thought she could make a good guess where Sam, his confederate, was looking. And was that what took Miss Twitterton up to the wood in the dusk? A turn at taking pigswill?

‘If we can’t keep a few things hid, we’ll be right down to what they say we can have on the rations,’ said Mrs Ruddle sadly. ‘And my Bert says if they feed us like pigeons, we’ll have the ’earts of pigeons.’

‘Feeding us
on
pigeons would be more practical,’ said Harriet solemnly. ‘Mrs Trapp makes an excellent pigeon pie.’

Bunter said, ‘I think the first step is to go and inspect the suspect equipment.’

‘Of course, Bunter.’

Harriet followed Bunter out into the yard. He unbolted the pig-shed door, and they looked in. Harriet saw at once that the great block of concrete was on the floor; the gadget had been sprung, and she was right, she
had
heard it go. Bunter took a torch from his pocket and played it round the shed; there were no windows, and they were standing in the light of the door. Harriet frowned deeply as she looked. The end of the rope now hung halfway from ridge to floor. It had been cut, leaving a rough end. Why? Wouldn’t one lower the pig again, slacken the loop, and remove it? Now a new one would need to be made and the rope would be shortened a bit.

‘Don’t go in, my lady,’ said Bunter. ‘You’ll get blood on your shoes.’

And indeed his torch showed the straw on the floor to be thickly fouled with dried blood. The whole shed had the smell of it. Bunter stepped in to shine his torch into the roof, and disturbed a cloud of flies from the straw. He moved around. ‘The blood buckets are empty,’ he said. ‘What a waste! What a wicked waste! The clowns who did this, m’lady, can never have heard of blood sausage, or black pudding. A bad business. It must have been a case of taking the meat, and making a run for it. I can’t imagine Mrs Ruddle and her like having a hand in such a botch.’

‘Well, that’s a relief,’ said Harriet. ‘I wouldn’t like to condone the black market, but I don’t want to pick a quarrel with village people who are all our neighbours, and some of them our friends.’

Bunter was shining his torch all round the shed. ‘Country people are usually so thrifty,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I imagine this is the work of a town’s person. But it would have to be someone who had lived here long enough to know how this works. And, of course, to know about the whereabouts of the pig.’

‘We have lots of Londoners here. But they’re women and children. Of course their menfolk come to visit sometimes, the ones that aren’t in the forces. But perhaps it’s simply that there wasn’t time to do it properly?’

‘The meat is inedible, my lady, unless it is drained,’ he said.

‘Well, I for one didn’t know that, Bunter.’

Mrs Ruddle must have been niftier than she looked in a crisis, for she had raised a widespread hue and cry, and various people were arriving: John Bateson, and Mr Puffett, and Archie Lugg, and Aggie Twitterton, and even Mrs Goodacre. Indignant voices filled the yard.

‘Well, but what can we do about it?’

‘We’ve been stung. Had. That’s what it amounts to,’ Mr Puffett was saying. ‘And we can’t complain to nobody.’

‘Just let me get my hands on whoever . . .’

‘Funny thing though. One or two people couldn’t hardly eat a whole pig, could they?’ asked Mr Puffett. ‘So I’d like to bet it’s gone down to London for the black market. Must have.’

‘Instead of being for our own black market, right here?’ That was Mrs Goodacre.

‘It’s not to sell, Mrs Goodacre. It’s only to eat,’ said John Bateson. ‘And it’s a damn fool regulation that makes a crime out of what has been going on peacefully for centuries.’

‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ Mrs Goodacre said sadly.

‘Well, let’s get things clear,’ said John Bateson. ‘There’s a pig been slaughtered here that none of us knows a thing about. Is that it?’

‘It seems so,’ said Harriet. Behind her she heard Bunter close the shed door. She heard the hasp pushed home on the hoop of the latch. He took a padlock from his pocket, and she heard it click shut.

‘So most likely,’ Bert Ruddles said, ‘one of our hidden pigs ’as been took.’

‘Whatever next?’ said Mrs Simcox. ‘Whatever next?’

‘Serves us right, really, doesn’t it?’ said Mrs Raikes.

And then Sam Bateson came running into the yard, bright-eyed and breathless. ‘It’s all right, everyone!’ he cried. ‘They’re both there! Kaiser and Führer, they’re both alive and rooting around just where they oughter be!’

Bunter said quietly to Harriet, ‘We’d better get the police. Whatever these good people say. At once.’

Hope Fanshaw, Mrs Mervyn Bunter, turned up unexpectedly, tapping at the front door, which was standing ajar, and stepping into the hall while Harriet was calling the police. She stood looking quizzical while Harriet briefly explained, and said, as soon as Harriet put the receiver down, ‘Not again!’

‘Oh, Hope!’ cried Harriet, ‘I am so glad to see you! I have been missing you badly!’

‘So what’s all this about the police?’ said Hope. ‘Has Mervyn been up to something again? I’m surprised at him, I always thought it was Lord Peter who led him into mischief.’

‘I’ll go and fetch him,’ said Harriet. ‘He’s just outside in the stable yards.’

‘Dealing with a crisis, I gather.’

‘Someone has been making use of our premises to butcher an animal without our knowledge,’ said Harriet, ‘and therefore, we assume, without a licence. But most likely with the connivance of somebody in the village.’

‘Is that all?’ said Hope. ‘Then I suppose Mervyn will have some time to spare. I’ve got forty-eight hours’ leave.’

Harriet said, ‘I’ve just remembered an errand. I’ll leave you to it.’

She went through the kitchen, asked Mrs Trapp to put the kettle on, and returned to the yard. Nobody was there now except Bunter.

‘People were not exceptionally keen to stay to talk to the police, my lady,’ he said. ‘They all remembered some chores they had to do, or an urgent errand of some kind.’

‘Funny thing, Bunter, I’ve just remembered an errand myself. And there’s an unexpected visitor in the house. Would you deal with it, please? I’ll wait here for the police officer.’

Harriet sat down on the mounting block at the stable door on the other side of the yard from the pig-shed. She closed her eyes in the warmth of the sun. Surely there was some way of finding room for Bunter and Hope? And preferably room for their baby son. Bunter said he was comfortable in the attic, but for a family you would need at least three rooms. How extensive were the attics, anyway? They were full of stuff moved up from the London house, but that could be shoved in a shed somewhere. How good it would be to recreate at Talboys the comfortable situation they had constructed in London, with the Bunters in the mews behind the house, and a pleasant friendship between herself and Hope. Harriet did feel lonely here. Surrounded by people and with three servants and all the children in the house she nevertheless had no friend of her own class. Miss Twitterton was the nearest to an independent and equal friend she had here. Perhaps that was why she had been so stung by Miss Twitterton’s refusal of confidence. There was the vicar and his wife, of course, excellent people. They reminded Harriet in many ways of her own parents. But London friends were out of reach now, Oxford friends even more distant.

There were letters, of course – everyone was diligently writing to each other. But a sort of official good cheer and uplift had taken over from intimacy, and the war had driven other subjects to the margins. Even Miss Martin, the dean of Harriet’s old college, and a close friend, wrote such letters now. What had she written about last week? Harriet rehearsed the letter in memory.

Harriet couldn’t remember what had followed the ‘but’. But how good it would be to hear from Letitia Martin about some arcane point of scholarship, or some completely trivial conflict in the senior common room, or some owlish comment about men, women and love! Harriet was homesick for normality. It would be very good to see more of Hope when she could get leave.

If only that cottage of Susan Hodge’s would come vacant! It was a short enough step away; but perhaps even better would be to arrange a swap: to put Bateson’s land-girls in the cottage, and take over their quarters as an annex to Talboys. It was a great pity the Yew Tree Lane cottage was not soon to be free, as well as surprising – she had a strong impression that Flight Lieutenant Brinklow was recovering well. Yet hadn’t Susan Hodge said he had taken it for another month? Perhaps, thought Harriet, the poor man was skiving, postponing his return to active duty. It must take a bit of manly courage having been shot down once to offer oneself for the same ordeal again. Perhaps it would be natural of him, if not admirable, to take his time.

‘Shame on you, Harriet,’ she told herself. Thinking of the poor chap as skiving, when – and then suddenly he snapped into focus in her mind, like one of those lantern slides the children played with in the nursery: he came into her mind’s eye running for the train. And yet hadn’t she seen him the other day, limping along on sticks just the same as before? A man of contradictions: a fighter hero afraid to get his teeth fixed. Very odd. And then something else occurred to her about Brinklow. He had been at the dance, standing talking, the night Wendy was murdered. He had not been down in the shelter below the Crown. Was he accounted for? Because he was the only man in uniform who would not have been going back to barracks that night. Kirk’s men had checked that every airman who came from the surrounding bases had got back again. What about an airman living in Susan Hodge’s cottage, right here? And another thought came to her: standing on the tower Fred Lugg had told her he had seen the Talboys party pass out of view behind the yew tree at the churchyard gate; surely that tree would also mask from view the junction of Yew Tree Lane with the High Street? If Wendy had met someone coming down the lane as she ran towards the shelter, Fred Lugg wouldn’t have seen that.

‘Oh, but this is ridiculous,’ she told herself. There hadn’t been the breath of a suggestion from anyone that Wendy and Brinklow had even clapped eyes on each other. Why would he strike her down in the street? But a quotation from the inimitable Sherlock Holmes came into her mind: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ At the very least, she should ask Superintendent Kirk to follow it up and get Brinklow to account for his movements on the night of the crime.

And here, as if called by her thought, came Superintendent Kirk with Jack Baker into the yard.

‘I’m glad of the excuse to come myself, Lady Peter,’ he said. ‘Now, what’s all this about a pig?’