Beneath the Soil (12 page)

Tom rounded on her, ‘But then, why would he kill her?'

‘I didn't say he did, half-brain. But he might be the reason someone else did.'

‘Philip,' said Suzie. ‘You mean you think he did it, after all?' She felt a sense of weary disappointment, for a reason she could not name. She felt her brow furrow. ‘But Frances Nosworthy seemed sure he didn't, and she seems to be, not just his solicitor, but a family friend.'

‘So? She probably fancies him. Doesn't want to believe he could do anything as bad as that. Come to think of it,' Millie was warming to her subject, blue-grey eyes alight now, ‘she might even be an accomplice, so that she could marry Philip once she's got him off the hook and this is all over. Mum, you'd never met her before the funeral. And she sounds keen as mustard to have you spin her a story that would throw suspicion on someone else. It all fits!'

Suzie felt a heavy sense of disbelief. She could see the logic of what Millie was saying. It was an old, old story, far more common than the complicated scenario she and Tom had concocted around a surveying nail found on Caseley land. But then, she argued with herself, money was another standard motive for murder.

‘That doesn't explain,' she said more aggressively than she intended, ‘why this man you say was Eileen's lover was staring at
me
. What would I have to do with it?'

Millie shrugged. ‘Look at it from his point of view. Party round the graveside. Two detectives watching. They could be a problem, so he's hiding behind that cross. And then there's you. Unexplained woman. Also watching from a careful distance. You say he spooked you. But what if you spooked
him
?'

Suzie turned this new idea over in her mind. It had a kind of uncomfortable plausibility. She could not explain why she found it so difficult to accept.

‘Should we go to the police with this?' Tom suggested. ‘Change of heart?'

‘No need,' Millie said. ‘Your Detective Chief Inspector Brewer was there. She must have seen him. I'm quite sure she can work it out for herself.'

Suzie sat in her office at the back of the charity shop, trying to keep her mind on her job. Confusing thoughts chased each other through her head. She had been so sure that the truth about Eileen Caseley's murder lay outside the domestic sphere. But why? It had all stemmed from that one sharp crack of a broken branch, the feeling of being watched as she stood by the ruins of her ancestors' cottage in Saddlers Wood. She could see now with increasing clarity why that wasn't enough to convince the police.

Millie's explanation made such perfect sense. A secret lover, a jealous husband. And yet … Her mind flew back to Frances Nosworthy's phone call. It had not been possible to convey to the others, or to Detective Sergeant Dudbridge, the contrast between the eagerness with which Frances and Suzie had discussed the case over tea, and the curtly formal telephone communication. The woman who had been sufficiently keen for Suzie to call her with fresh information to give her a business card, then flatly ordered her to stay out of it and make no further contact.

Was it just that Suzie's own pride and self-importance had suffered a slap in the face? She was no longer wanted, of no significance in this case.

Or … Her skin crawled as she thought through the rest of Millie's speculation. Was it really possible that Frances herself had been behind Eileen's death? That she and Philip …?

Had Frances only latched on to Suzie after the funeral in the hope that the latter's suspicions about a mining company might lead the police away from her?

Suzie thought back to that hour in the tea room. She found it hard to believe that the warmth she had felt towards the other woman had been based on a lie. Or did her pride not want to accept she had been duped?

So had she been conned again by that phone call? Had there been nothing after all in that seeming plea for help at the end:
Do you understand?

She sighed with frustration and turned her attention to the work in hand. It was only two days now to the sponsored tractor pull on Saturday. Teams from a local Young Farmers Club were taking turns to tow a tractor right across the moor. Suzie had walked the moor enough to know what a challenge that was. Of course, they would be sticking to the road, not climbing the higher tors on either side, and the really steep gradients were not on the moor itself, but in the river gorges around it. Still, it was a formidable undertaking. She hoped the weather would keep fine for them.

She reached for the map. The patron of the old people's charity would be starting them off on the western side, and at the eastern end the MP, Clive Stroud, would be there to meet them in … Moortown.

The name leaped out at her from the page. She had known this for weeks, of course. She'd made all the arrangements, invited the MP, organised the WI to lay on the refreshments that would be ready for the triumphant team and the welcoming party. She had even known that she would need to be there to see that everything went off smoothly. But not until this morning had she connected the two strands in her mind. She had wanted to keep away from Moortown after her brush with Chief Inspector Brewer and that warning call from Frances Nosworthy. But now she couldn't help it. There was no one else she could delegate this to. It was a small organization. She was the sole local administrator.

She felt her heart sink as she realized that she would have to go.

Her ears were alert for Nick's key in the front door at the end of the afternoon. Until now she had not realized how much she had been both anticipating and dreading a closer look at the face which had been watching her in the graveyard. If Millie were right, then this man might be guilty of adultery, but not murder. He had come to the funeral torn by a grief he could not express openly.

But she was still left with that feeling of menace as her eyes met his between the interstices of the Celtic cross.

And if Philip had found out about the affair, why not kill this man as well as Eileen?

She was in the hall to greet Nick, her face eager for news.

‘Hey, I don't usually get this sort of welcome.'

‘Have you got it? The photograph?'

‘Should have known it wasn't my bright blue eyes you were pining for. No.' He slapped his car keys down on the hall table in frustration. ‘Come back tomorrow, they said. Can't do it any sooner. I'm sorry.'

She did not know whether it was disappointment or relief she felt.

Instead she changed the subject. ‘Look, I know you'd rather we kept away from Moortown, under the circumstances. But it had gone clean out of my head that there's this sponsored tractor tow across the moor this weekend. I'm supposed to be there when the MP meets them at the finish in Moortown. I can't really get out of it.'

His eyebrows flicked casually. ‘Of course you have to go. Why not? It can't do any harm. There'll be crowds of people around. And you'll be there in your official capacity. It's not as if you'd give them the impression that you were nosing around in the murder case. Do you want me to drive you over?'

‘If you wouldn't mind. I still feel a bit shivery about going back there. I'd be glad of the company.'

He put his arms around her lightly. ‘Consider yourself escorted. I'll be there to watch your back. And a tractor tow sounds like it could be fun … as long as nobody's expecting me to take part. OK?'

‘Thanks,' she said, and meant it.

S
uzie hesitated at the end of their avenue. One branch of the main road led to the Record Office in an industrial estate on the edge of town, the other to the police headquarters. It seemed a symbolic choice. There was nothing new to report to the police, was there? Even if they were interested. Detective Chief Inspector Brewer must surely have noticed the man in the photograph – that was why she was at the funeral, to look for anyone acting suspiciously.

Including me.

The senior investigating officer was not going to welcome Suzie teaching her her job.

On the other hand … Some of what Millie had proposed was disturbing. About Frances being personally involved in Eileen's death.

But there was nothing more she could do about it. She felt a lift of her spirits she had not experienced for several days. She could go back to what she enjoyed most: delving into the history of this area that was not only her own home, but that of countless generations of her ancestors.

There was a swing in her step as she walked up the hill and crested the rise above the industrial estate.

The Record Office nestled in an older house that had been here long before the car showrooms and DIY centres. More recently the council had added a new wing with state-of-the-art conservation facilities for the county's historical documents. It had become Suzie's playground since its opening.

She stowed her belongings in a locker and put her essential tools in a clear plastic bag. No chance of smuggling irreplaceable papers out under the archivist's eye. She had brought her laptop. Suzie smiled wryly as she realized that her decision to come here, and not to the police headquarters, had been made the moment she picked it up.

She wondered where to begin. She knew that her ancestor Barnabas Avery had been a tinner back in the 1600s. As she had told Tom, that didn't mean he hacked the tin from the moor with his own hands. In fact, the Averys had run a tannery in Moortown. But Barnabas had inherited the historical rights and privileges of a tinner. He was, in a small way, a mining magnate.

She felt the tension immediately. This was too close to what they had thought when they made that discovery of the survey nail. That whoever was in that wood the day they'd met Eileen Caseley had a stake in a mining company that was eager to get its hands on what lay under the soil. Had it been Merlin Mines?

She pushed the thought away. It was because she thought she could put that idea behind her that she had come here. Should she just zip her laptop back into its case and go home?

She steeled herself to concentrate on the seventeenth century. It was an era that had known the bitterness of civil war, the beheading of its king, the lurch back from Puritanism to hedonism with the Restoration of the monarchy, and then the flight of the Catholic-leaning James II before the Protestant William of Orange and Queen Mary.

Troubled times.

What century was not?

She took down a history of Moortown from the shelves and scanned the index for
Avery.
Her ancestors had been sufficiently significant in Moortown to warrant five mentions. One in particular stood out. A ‘List of Tynners' for 1691.

It contained the names of Moortown men and women ‘that are to maintain Armes wthin our pish for the Stannary of Moortown'. ‘Pish' was, of course, ‘parish'. Clearly these citizens, who included several widows, were not working the tin mines on the moor. They were wealthy landowners, who had inherited or otherwise acquired the statuary rights of tinners, and the consequent responsibilities.

‘Barnabas Avery Gent' was listed twice. He was solely responsible for contributing ‘one man's Armes' towards the Muster Roll and the same amount jointly with three others. Perhaps the second reference, to a lesser amount, was for his son.

Only some of the men were styled as ‘Gentleman'. Barnabas Avery was clearly a leading citizen.

She typed out a transcript on her laptop. She could have used the photocopier, but to do so risked transferring the information from one sheet of paper to another without it passing through her brain. This way, she was forced to concentrate on every word she was copying.

She checked the catalogue and the archivist brought her the next papers she asked for, relating to the tinners' stannary court. These were the originals, not yet digitized or microfilmed. She hoped she would be able to read the old handwriting.

As she made a second transcript a phrase leaped out at her. ‘
Abraham Hutchings sentenced to three yeres in ye gaol.'

She sat back and looked at the screen. Barnabas Avery had been among those who sat in the tinners' parliament. Might he also have been a judge in the stannary court? Had he passed sentence of imprisonment on one of their number who had broken the rules of their guild?

The Fewings had visited that stannary jail on the edge of the moor. It was partly ruined now, and in the care of English Heritage. It was a gloomy place. It stood foursquare, like a castle keep, grim-faced, without embellishment. They had been down in the dark depths of the dungeon when a thunderstorm broke. Thunder had shaken the walls and lightning blazed through the darkness. Millie, much younger then, had been terrified.

There was no reason to connect that frightening moment with the man in the raincoat and the dark-brimmed hat.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to come here, to open this particular file.

The whole Fewings family gathered around Nick as he drew the large photograph out of its envelope and laid it down on the table.

Suzie hung back a little, letting Millie and Tom pore over it. She felt an odd reluctance to look. It was Tom who noticed and stepped back for her.

‘Hey, Mum, Take a look at him. Does this tell you anything you didn't already know?'

Suzie made herself step forward to the edge of the table. The high-quality print showed its subjects in shockingly clear detail. The photographer had not used his most powerful lens, but it was enough.

In the middle distance, the party around Eileen's grave were figures only, the rector most noticeable in his white surplice and black cassock. At the head of the grave stood her son, Matthew Caseley. Suzie could clearly distinguish his tall, broad-shouldered build. At the foot, separated from the other mourners, Philip Caseley and his warder had their backs to the camera. The undertakers were lowering Eileen's coffin into the grave. It was half hidden by the figures standing around it, but it conveyed the ineffable sadness of the woman Suzie had met only once, and would never see again.