Dead Man Riding (12 page)

‘Apart from the grocers, you mean?'

‘That can wait.'

She put the list back in her pocket and we asked directions to the police court. It turned out to be alongside the police station, but luckily there was no sign of Alan and Meredith by the time we got there. There was a constable at the entrance to the court. I asked him when the magistrates would be sitting and he said from ten o'clock onwards.

‘Will Mr Mawbray be on the bench?'

‘Major Mawbray's chairman of the magistrates, miss.'

Later in life I spent a lot of time in police courts, but this was my first experience of one. The public bench turned out to be quite crowded because the main attraction of the morning concerned a fight in a public house between two local poaching families, with most of the evidence delivered in such strong Cumberland accents that it was hard for us to follow what was happening. At least it wasn't difficult to pick out Major Mawbray. He was the middle one of the three magistrates on the bench, a thin and upright man with sparse dark hair and yellowish skin stretched tight over a broad forehead and narrow jutting chin that gave his head the shape of an angular pear. He was clean shaven, apart from a thin moustache, and when he spoke to ask a witness a question his voice was sharp and soldierly, with no trace of local accent. He kept taking little sips from a glass of water. From that and his complexion I guessed that his health wasn't good. Digestive problems possibly, which might account for the sharpness of his tone.

Midge and I were squeezed as a buffer between friends of both parties of poachers and kept getting jostled and nudged in the ribs when some particular allegation or piece of evidence made our line hiss and quiver like a breaking wave. At one point the usher threatened indiscriminately to have us all thrown out and Major Mawbray backed up the threat with a glare at the public bench. He noticed the two of us and the glare turned into a puzzled look. He probably knew all the wrongdoers and their relatives in the whole town and country around, and we were strangers. As far as I knew, he had no reason to connect us with the Old Man but we seemed to bother him all the same. We stayed until the end of the case (three months all round, groans and sounds of protest from friends quelled by another warning from the usher, a promise from Major Mawbray, sounding infinitely weary, of more serious sentences if they came up before the bench again) then we walked out into the sunshine.

*   *   *

It was past eleven by then and we'd have to hurry if we were going to get the shopping done. The day had turned bakingly hot and it was a relief to get into the cool cavern of the grocer's shop with a yellow tiled floor, bins of flour and oatmeal around the walls, shelves with red laquered tins full of different teas and coffee beans. A smell of ham and coffee hung over everything and soft-voiced male assistants sliced bacon and slid sugar and rice and dried peas from the shiny bronze bowl of the weighing machine into brown paper bags. We ruthlessly edited the men's shopping list, leaving out luxuries like Carlsbad plums and Gentlemen's Relish and adding two more legs of ham, several large cheeses and patent soup in slabs. They'd all insisted on Cumberland sausage so we bought pounds of it from the butcher's shop next door, though we were worried about how long it would keep in the heat. Naturally there were no fruit or vegetables on the list, but we found a greengrocers and added a sack of potatoes, a dozen large cabbages and half a dozen punnets of big golden-skinned gooseberries. As we were doing all this, we got some curious looks from shop assistants and other customers, but at least no sign of hostility.

We were walking back to the public house with ten minutes to spare, feeling pleased with our work, when Midge said, ‘We've forgotten the butter.' We were just crossing a side street and further up it there was a dairy with shining milk churns outside and a blue sunblind. The woman inside had grey hair and quick little hands. She carved a lump of butter out of a big tub in the cool at the back of the shop, weighed it, slapped it into shape on a marble slab with a pair of ridged wooden butter pats then picked up a wooden stamp and pressed the outline of a cow on the top. I said I was afraid the cow would have melted by the time we got it home.

‘Oh,' she said, ‘Ah like to mek it conny.' Her accent was as strongly Cumberland as Dulcie's, but not so langourous. She asked if we had far to carry the butter. Experimentally, and because she seemed friendly, I said ‘Studholme Hall' watching to see if her expression changed. She beamed.

‘You'll be staying with Mr Beston. How is the gentleman? Tell him Dolly Wilson sends her regards.'

Far from being hostile she couldn't do enough for us and hustled us through to a little garden behind her shop, carrying the butter wrapped in paper.

‘Rhubarb leaves'll take care of it.'

The rhubarb was growing against an outhouse wall. She pulled three stems and twisted off the floppy leaves, her small hands unexpectedly powerful. As she wrapped the butter in rhubarb leaves to keep it cool I asked if she knew Mr Beston well.

‘He's always been a very civil man to me and that gannan-lad of his cured our little cuddy when it was ganging cockly.'

Midge gave me a look as much to say, ‘You're supposed to be the linguist.'

‘Gannan-lad?'

‘The Gypsy lad. The little donkey that pulls our milk cart went lame. Mr Beston saw me in town fair greeting for worry over him so he said he'd send his lad to see to it and now he trots as well as any creature in the county. Say what you will about gannan-folk, they've got their ways with a hoss or a cuddy other folk don't know.' She secured the rhubarb leaves with a twist of raffia from her apron pocket and handed the little package to me. I offered her some coins, but she shook her head.

‘With my good wishes.'

A clock was striking midday. Midge signed to me to hurry up, but now we'd found somebody on the Old Man's side I wasn't going to give her up so easily. I thanked her and said not everybody in the district seemed to think so well of Mr Beston.

‘Oh, that's nobbut politics. They'll get over it in a while.'

‘Some people seem to think he shot Major Mawbray's son.'

‘Some blatherskites will say anything. If Arthur Mawbray and his gang of gowks go making a shindy and firing an auld man's byre, they should expect to cop a bit of a shooting.'

‘As I heard it, nothing's been seen of young Mawbray since the night they set fire to the barn.' She gave me a sideways look that said a lot. ‘You have your doubts, then?'

She took her time answering, then, ‘It wouldnae be the first time that young man had taken himself off. When he was no more than fifteen, just after his mother died, he quarrelled with his father and went off on a fishing boat. They brought him back from somewhere way up in Scotland and sent him away to college for a fair while, but folk say it didna make any great difference.'

‘How long ago was that?'

‘Four or five years, maybe. I'm not saying there's any great harm in the lad, only he's got no more sensible as he's got older and he's given his father a deal of trouble.'

Midge was practically dragging at my sleeve by now so we thanked her again for the butter, promised to give her regards to Mr Beston and hurried to meet Alan and Meredith outside the public house.

*   *   *

They were waiting for us and Alan was looking impatient and careworn. Before Midge or I could ask any questions he said, ‘Do you mind if we leave it until we're all together? I don't want to have to go over it twice.'

That didn't sound as if the interview with the police had brought any good news and it clearly wasn't the time to start talking about the woman in the dairy. They'd already been into the stable yard and asked the groom to harness up Bobbin so we decided to drive the wagonette to collect the stores we'd bought from the various shops then head for home. Whatever had happened in the police station, I think we were all relieved that our appearance in public hadn't resulted in stone-throwing or insults. While Meredith was paying the groom Midge and I got on board and stowed the butter in a shady place under the seat. As I was straightening up, I noticed an envelope. It was coarse in quality, tied to the side rail of the wagonette with a piece of string knotted through a hole punched jaggedly in the top right hand corner. I unknotted it, already apprehensive and saw the name J. BESTON ESQUIRE in pencilled capitals. Alan climbed into the front passenger seat and saw me looking at it.

‘What is it now?'

‘It's addressed to your uncle. I have an idea it might not be friendly.'

Meredith finished paying the groom and swung himself into the driver's seat. Alan showed him the envelope.

‘It might be a threat of some kind. I think I ought to open it.'

Meredith nodded and Alan tore open the envelope and took out a single sheet of notepaper. He read, started to say something, then handed it to Meredith. When I thought he'd had time to finish – and there were no more than two lines of writing – I leaned over and held out my hand for it. If the message to the Old Man were being treated as public property I thought we had a right to see as well. Alan made a movement probably intended to spare my eyes from it, but Meredith passed it over. I held it so that Midge could see too. It was different paper from the envelope, thin and yellowed as if from a pad in a household where not many letters were written. The message was all in capitals with no signature.

DID YOU ARSK DULSIE WHO HER BASTARDS FATHER REALY IS.

Alan had his head in his hands. ‘Oh God, isn't it ever going to stop?'

I gave the letter back to him and we drove home.

Chapter Eight

T
HE OTHERS MUST HAVE HEARD US ON THE ROAD
because by the time we got down to the yard outside the house Imogen, Kit and Nathan were waiting. There was no sign of the Old Man or Mrs Berryman though Robin appeared, silent as usual but smiling, to take Bobbin and the wagonette when we'd finished getting things out of it. We portered armfuls of bags, boxes and bottles up to the barn and stowed them away in a corner. When we were ready to talk it was still so hot that we stayed inside the barn for shade sitting on our heaps of hay, except for Nathan who'd brought his chair inside and went on working at it. Alan looked round the semicircle, hesitated then plunged in.

‘The police aren't sure one way or the other, but they think he might have done it.'

In the silence, you could almost hear hearts dropping.

Midge asked gently, ‘Were the police very … Were they rude to you?'

‘No, awfully polite in the circumstances, wouldn't you say?' Alan glanced at Meredith, who nodded. ‘In fact, Meredith and I got the impression they were almost relieved to have somebody from the family to talk to. The desk sergeant was a bit slow at first and we had to wait and see the inspector – Armstrong his name is, decent sort of man – and he explained things to us pretty straightforwardly. But he didn't try to hide that it looks bad for the Old Man and they're treating it as a possible murder case.'

‘Not manslaughter?' Kit asked.

‘No, for two reasons. The first one is that they never found a body. They accept that it could have happened more or less as the Old Man says – he fires in the dark and young Mawbray dies – but if it had been an accident wouldn't he have tried to get medical help, or at least if he was beyond help see that the family got his body back?'

‘He might have panicked,' Nathan suggested. He'd found a piece of gritty stone from somewhere and was using it to rasp at a rough place on his chair. Alan went on with his story, not bothering to reply.

‘Inspector Armstrong thinks the Old Man hid the body or got rid of it. What my uncle didn't tell us was that the police had a dozen people up here for two days after it happened, turning over every room in the house and all the outhouses, looking round the fields for any freshly dug patches. They even raked over the ashes of the other barn that got burnt, in case he'd stuffed the body in there while it was still alight. Nothing.'

‘That should be in the Old Man's favour,' Kit said. ‘With his age and build, he couldn't go dragging bodies all over the country. I suppose this Mawbray fellow was an average sort of size.'

‘Yes. The police have their theory on that as well. They think Robin helped him, possibly Mrs Berryman too.' Alan looked, if anything, even more unhappy. ‘Robin's a Gypsy and Mrs Berryman has, well … has a bit of a past. We got the impression that Inspector Armstrong didn't think much of either of them.' Again he glanced at Meredith for support and got a nod.

Midge said, ‘Just because he's a Gypsy—'

And Imogen, speaking at the same time, ‘What sort of past?'

Alan blushed. ‘She used to be housekeeper to somebody else and apparently rumours got around that she was … well, more than just a housekeeper.'

Imogen said, ‘You mean she had a sexual relationship with her former employer?'

‘Well yes, we gathered that's what the rumours were though he didn't come straight out and say so. I suppose he…' Alan was floundering. Imogen had sounded very sharp with him and he didn't seem to guess it was from her own embarrassment.

Midge said, ‘Even if she did, I can't see what that's got to do with helping her next employer hide bodies, any more than being a Gypsy does.'

‘Police tend to proceed by association rather than logic,' Meredith said. He'd been silent until then and was probably taking up the story to give Alan a chance to recover from his confusion. ‘There are a lot of Gypsies in this part of the world. They come over from Ireland for horse trading and the local people tend to hold them responsible for everything from stealing chickens to starting fights in public houses.'

‘It's still a long way from that to hiding bodies,' Midge said stubbornly.