Grave Concerns (7 page)

He hadn’t tried to argue with her. He saw only too clearly how it appeared to her, under her unwavering value system. Her family had been in the business for generations, fighting off threats from voracious American funeral companies, building determinedly on Plant’s commitment to the local community, with their intimate knowledge of family connections. Daphne couldn’t
afford
to listen to Drew. Even though funeral practices had scarcely changed in a century or more, there was no room for complacency. A natural burial ground, with its overtones of recycling and ecology, and a move away from empty ritual orchestrated by an unknown minister, just might be the future
preference for a substantial proportion of the population. Drew could hardly expect his former boss to send him off with her blessing.

Cynthia Smithers’ daughter quickly redeemed herself, however. ‘Could we have one of those pretty willow baskets?’ she asked. ‘We’ll come and decorate it ourselves, if that’s all right. And we’ll dress Mum up in her Sunday best.’ For the next day and a half, no fewer than nine members of the woman’s family made free with Drew’s cool room behind the office, making up for the shortage of money with an infinity of time and care and attention. Drew almost wept with relieved admiration.

‘Could we put up a bird box?’ asked a grandson. ‘So she can be sure to have some bluetits around her? She loved bluetits, did Granny.’ Drew went with him to select a suitable point on the trunk of one of the beech trees, indulging in a glowing vision of a succession of such suggestions, until the field became an overflowing paradise of colour and wildlife and individual statements of love. Yes! he crowed to himself.
It’s really going to work
.

Cynthia’s two sons dug the grave themselves, saving another eighty pounds on their bill and doing Jeffrey out of a job. They went down three and a half feet, which Drew advised was the deepest he thought sensible. After some research,
he had worked out how to get the significance of this across to people, without getting too graphic. ‘There’s virtually no oxygen deep in the ground,’ he explained. ‘So the natural processes don’t happen properly. And in this particular bit of ground, there’s a layer of clay at about four feet, which only makes it worse. I won’t go into the biochemical details, but ecologically speaking, a body is going to be a lot more useful if it’s not buried too deep.’ Privately, he wished they’d made it even shallower, but it was still a decided improvement on the traditional six feet.

‘Er – there isn’t any danger of animals – you know—’ the elder son asked uncomfortably. ‘I mean – that’s why burials are usually quite deep, isn’t it?’

Drew smiled reassuringly. ‘No need to worry about that,’ he said. Bland remarks of this kind came automatically to his lips these days. He knew when to tell people what they wanted to hear. It was true, anyway, more or less. Only if the mysterious workings of the earth brought the body very much closer to the surface – and such things had been known to happen – was there any chance of a hungry badger or fox making predations on the grave. Drew was keeping a close eye on his charges for this very reason. Any sign of an animal digging would call for some urgent action.

The interment itself was a classic. The family,
sons and daughters together, lowered their mother into the grave, and covered her with flowers. She was wrapped in a sheet of pure linen, folded into the basket. Her children read poems as she lay there, and shared stories about her. Weeping came and went like the scattered April showers that the day had provided. Nobody mentioned God or the life to come. Drew and Maggs, standing at a little distance, interested observers and nothing more, shared a moment of intense satisfaction. Afterwards, she said, ‘That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Give it ten years, and everybody’ll be having funerals like this.’

‘We wish,’ he smiled. ‘But yes – it was very good. It said it all, when you think about it. She’s a lucky lady.’

Maggs met him at the office door as he finished with the departing family. ‘The postman just gave me this,’ she said. ‘Second post.’

He knew instantly what it was. The same brown envelope, with the same neat address label. He thought briefly about trying to conceal it from Maggs, only to conclude that there was little point. With shaking hands, he tore it open.

Maggs, looked over his shoulder. ‘I recognise that typeface. Comes out rather well, doesn’t it.’

‘What?’ Drew stared at her on complete confusion. For a moment he thought she’d written the letter herself.

‘It’s one of the fonts on the computer. I was going through them all for our leaflets, and this one was one of my favourites. Not really much use, though.’ She looked at the piece of paper again. ‘Hey, Drew! That’s not very nice, is it.’

He laughed painfully. ‘That’s exactly what Karen said about the last one,’ he told her. ‘Typical English understatement. It’s hate mail, Maggs. Very unpleasant. Definitely not the slightest bit nice.’

‘But nothing to worry about,’ she told him bracingly. ‘Just some idiot who thinks we’re the anti-Christ for giving people what they want without vicars being involved. You always get a few nutcases like that.’

‘Oh? You know about this sort of thing, do you?’

She pulled back her shoulders and gave him a hard look. ‘Don’t you start,’ she warned him. ‘I had all that stuff from Jeffrey.’

He was bemused. ‘All what stuff?’

‘He thinks that because I’m black, I understand voodoo and the dark arts, or whatever they’re called. Bloody fool.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ Drew said. ‘You know I didn’t.’ He sighed in frustration. ‘This is the second anonymous letter I’ve had. The first one was pretty much the same as this. One more and I’ll have to take it to the police.’

‘And what’re they going to do about it?’ she said sceptically. ‘There’s no death threat or anything. I wouldn’t think they’d be very interested. And they’d gossip about it. It’d be bad for business.’

He looked at her uneasily. ‘So what can we do?’ he asked.

‘Ignore it. Don’t give them the satisfaction of being taken seriously. Don’t let it spoil today, either. You’ve just done a really great funeral for some really nice people. Everybody’s pleased with you. The sun’s shining. Concentrate on the positive – it’s the only way. Ignore the bad, and it’ll wither away. That’s what my Mum always says, and it works for her.’

‘Maggs, you’re a marvel,’ he said, automatically. It was beginning to sound like a mantra.

For the next week, Drew had no problems forgetting the hate mail, because his thoughts hovered almost constantly on the image of Genevieve Slater. Was she going to contact him again, and what would she ask of him if she did? He had thought about her visit from every angle
and never came to any other conclusion but that she had already decided the body was indeed her mother’s, and that she wanted only to confirm the fact. If this had been all, he wouldn’t have minded helping her. But the body was in all probability a murder victim. It was the subject of an ongoing police enquiry, however inert that enquiry might be. Any facts uncovered about it were directly relevant to that enquiry, and definitely ought not to be withheld. There was no way around that reality, as far as Drew could see.

Another scenario had occurred to him, even more uncomfortable than the first: Genevieve had fabricated the whole story about her mother, as an excuse to come and see him again. He knew she liked him; there had been no mistaking the mutuality of the attraction, neither two years ago, nor last week. The voice of caution repeated regularly that it would be best if he never heard from her again. He wanted it too badly, he had too vivid a mental picture of her. And – the biggest warning sign of all – he hadn’t mentioned her visit to Karen.

He tried telling himself it was the mystery of her mother’s disappearance and her husband’s suspected guilt that magnetised him, but he knew he was fooling himself. However unlikely a pair they might be, the bald truth was that he found her fascinating, warm, intelligent and vulnerable.
Vulnerable?
he repeated to himself, as the word came unbidden to his mind. That, of course, was the key. Drew knew himself to be a pushover for the vulnerable. Genevieve knew he was capable of telling lies, big lies, when the need arose. This put him at a disadvantage. She had seen his less-than-perfect side, and this – he had to admit – made
him
vulnerable, too. Genevieve understood that it had been a bigger deal for him than it might have been for other people. Most people lied when they were buying or selling a house – it was
expected
, for heaven’s sake – but Drew wasn’t like that. The main thing about Drew Slocombe was his straight dealing and honesty.

When Genevieve did finally call, he was outside directing fence-building operations and missed it. The answerphone carried no message and trying 1471 merely yielded the information that the caller had withheld their number.
Please try again
he silently begged, knowing it must have been her. When the phone rang again twenty minutes later, he snatched it up.

‘I thought you couldn’t be far away,’ her rich voice said, without preamble. ‘Were you having a romantic burial under an oak tree?’

‘Putting up a new fence, actually.’

‘And was that sweet daughter of yours helping?’

‘Luckily, no. She’s having her afternoon sleep
at the moment. I’m glad you called back,’ he added before he could stop himself.

‘Have I given you long enough to think?’

Too long
he wanted to tell her.
And anyway, what was there to think about?

‘I really don’t see how you’re going to avoid the notice of the police,’ he began conscientiously. ‘If they do release the body at the end of the month and we bury her here, they’re sure to send an observer to see who turns up. It’s routine in a case like this. They’d probably make sure the papers carried the day and time, for that very reason. They won’t just forget the case completely, even if it looks that way.’

‘I don’t want you to get yourself all worked up about the police, Drew. I realise it isn’t fair to you, suggesting I might know who the body is—’

‘I can’t see any way around it,’ he admitted. ‘It just keeps coming back to the same thing. I know you’re probably right – that they wouldn’t get anywhere, even if they investigated your mother’s disappearance – not unless you cooperated with them.’ He spoke jerkily, the familiar cloud of mixed emotions descending yet again. ‘But I can’t help feeling we ought to give them a chance.’

‘And I have to tell you again that Willard and I wouldn’t cooperate. We haven’t got anything here that was hers, anyway. She didn’t leave anything, and it was months ago. I’m not much
of a housekeeper, but I’m sure I’ve vacuumed and dusted the room she used once or twice since then.’

‘You underestimate forensics these days,’ he told her. ‘If they decided to take the idea seriously, then they’d be sure to find something they could use for comparison. Don’t you think it would be best if you just let them get on with it? You would at least get a proper identification – that’s what you want, isn’t it? And they probably wouldn’t find any evidence for a murder prosecution. They haven’t so far. Why don’t you compromise? I’d help you then, with a clear conscience.’ There was a silence at the end of the line. ‘Genevieve? Are you still there?’

‘Your
conscience
,’ she said, her tone icy. ‘Is that all that matters to you? You think they
probably
wouldn’t find any evidence. That’s not good enough, Drew. What if they find something they’re sure is a murder weapon, or blood stains on some garment of Willard’s that match hers? How do I know where they’d stop?’ Her voice was rising sharply, close to hysteria.

‘OK,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Calm down, for heaven’s sake. I see your point. So – what do you want from me now?’

‘Perhaps we should meet again – and I’ll tell you more of the story. You could do a bit of detective work for me – go and see if she left
anything behind in that bedsit of hers, that sort of thing. I know you fancy yourself as a detective—’

‘Hey!’ he put in with some indignation. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘Come on. I read the papers. What about that business last year – Lapsford was the name, if I remember rightly. Drew Slocombe, heroic amateur sleuth. Front page news.’

‘But I wouldn’t be a hero this time, would I?’ he said cynically.

‘Who knows?’ She sounded much more cheerful, as if already sure of him. ‘You might.’

He tried hard to cling to his rapidly evaporating common sense. Instead came the faces of Stanley Sharples, shrugging off the one-too-many dead bodies that Drew had landed him with; of Daphne Plant, who cared little for the niceties of legal requirements if they interrupted the smooth running of her business; of Karen, visibly losing faith in him and his new business; of Genevieve herself, telling him in all earnestness that she really did want to do the right thing. These faces all danced and flashed in front of him, taunting him with his indecisiveness.

‘I’m not making any promises,’ he said feebly. ‘But I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have a bit of a snoop round.’

She gave a small cheer. ‘Thanks, Drew. I knew I could depend on you. Come and see me one
morning next week, if you can, and I’ll give you the background.’

He agreed with a sense of relief. After all, what had he committed himself to? Nothing – yet – that would give the police any grounds for serious protest. It took scarcely any effort to assure himself that going to them now would simply be a waste of their time. Let the whole peculiar story drift forward just a few more steps, before any action of that sort was required.

‘There’s a police car pulling up outside,’ Maggs observed casually, later that afternoon, a few minutes after Karen had collected Stephanie. Drew’s resulting stab of guilty alarm was quickly subdued by means of a deep breath and a rapid assessment of the worst that could possibly happen.
I haven’t done anything
, he reminded himself. Yet, he added.

He waited for the knock on the office door, and then opened it promptly. He knew the police officer slightly, from his time at Plant’s, but had never seen the woman with him before. ‘It’s Graham, isn’t it?’ he said affably. ‘What can I do for you?’

The constable was formal, but much less stiff than he might have been. ‘This is Mrs Caroline Kennett,’ he introduced the woman. ‘She’s the lady who thinks she saw something happening in your field from a train last summer.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Drew, frantically trying to work out whether the visit carried any threat to his incipient arrangement with Genevieve. ‘On the glorious twelfth, if I remember rightly.’

Both visitors looked at him blankly, and behind him Maggs gave a soft snort. Would he never learn, he asked himself unhappily.

‘We thought it might help Mrs Kennett if she could come and see your burial ground,’ the policeman continued, ushering the woman into the office. She stepped into the room nervously, as if expecting to see corpses laid out on the desk. Drew smiled at her. She looked very ordinary: anybody’s mother, with neatly cut hair and cheap-looking spectacles. The mere fact that the police were taking this much interest was significant, he supposed. From his talk with Stanley, he’d assumed they would have more or less given up the whole case by this time.

‘It’ll look a bit different from the way it was in August,’ he said. ‘We’ve tidied it up a lot since then.’

‘Well, let’s give it a try,’ said Graham. ‘OK?’ he asked Drew.

‘Help yourself,’ Drew waved them towards the back door, which opened onto the field. ‘You don’t need me, do you?’

‘Can we still see the site of the grave?’ the policeman asked.

Drew pointed it out to them, the soil still disturbed. None of his official graves was yet in that section of the field, so there could be no confusion. The two set off up the path, oddly formal, like a couple of rather poor actors trying to walk naturally for a film shot.

‘What’s that about?’ Maggs hissed at Drew, when she judged they were out of earshot.

‘The woman thinks she witnessed people burying the body out there last August. She was in a train and saw them digging a hole, apparently.’

Maggs stuck her lips out dubiously. ‘Bit of a coincidence!’ she said.

‘Life’s full of coincidences,’ he said, absently, watching the proceedings outside. ‘She’s nodding – look.’

‘Is she? I can’t see that far.’

The witness and her escort had walked up to the boundary fence, and turned to face down the slope. The woman pointed up at a tree, and then put her hand to her mouth as if thinking hard. Drew’s pride in his excellent long sight was overlaid by an abiding anxiety. ‘You should get glasses,’ he told Maggs.

‘I’ve got some – but I never use them,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t often have to read faces at two hundred yards.’

‘She looks fairly confident,’ he said, helpfully.

‘There must be loads of fields like this along the railway line,’ Maggs said. ‘How can she be sure it’s the right one, after eight months?’

‘They seem to think she’s an important witness.’

‘Only because she’s the only one they’ve got. Imagine trying to use it in court! She wears glasses; train windows get steamed up; it was ages ago, and she might have been asleep and dreaming, in any case. I’d love to be the prosecution cross-examining her.’

Maggs had a taste for legal thrillers, and an impressive grasp of the complexities of courtroom procedure. He supposed that if the case ever did get as far as a prosecution, he’d want the right person to be charged and sentenced. A reliable witness was surely something to be prized. He just wished it could all be postponed until he’d extricated himself from his uneasy connection with Genevieve Slater.

‘All right?’ he asked Graham when the two returned.

‘It’s a bit difficult,’ said the woman, who seemed more relaxed now. ‘It was dark, you see. And I was half asleep.’

‘But you thought the trees looked the same,’ Graham supplied for her.

She screwed up her face. ‘Well, I know there
were
some trees,’ she said feebly.

‘I think it’s very probable that you did witness the burial,’ the policeman said confidently. ‘And that’s very helpful to us. It gives us a firm date for the killing.’

‘Not necessarily the
killing
,’ interposed Maggs. ‘Just the disposal of the body. It might have been days later.’

‘That’s true,’ Graham conceded, with some irritation. ‘But unlikely, wouldn’t you say?’

Maggs shrugged. ‘Don’t see why,’ she told him.

Graham knew better than to argue. He guided his witness outside, turning briefly to thank Drew. ‘Can’t see this getting us very far,’ he said quietly. ‘No closer to getting an ID on the body – and we already know somebody buried her here, don’t we? Still, it’s as well to go through the motions. Don’t want anyone accusing us of being slack.’

‘I should say not,’ Maggs endorsed with a serious expression. Drew inwardly prayed that Graham wouldn’t realise he was being mocked. He closed the door as soon as he decently could, and gave his assistant a light cuff on the arm.

‘They’re not all stupid, you know,’ he said.

‘Oh yes they are,’ she disagreed comfortably.

‘The childcare thing isn’t working as well as I hoped,’ Drew admitted reluctantly to Karen that evening. The second week of term had begun and it already felt like a month or more. ‘Stephanie’s very good, but when she starts walking I don’t see how I’ll get any work done at all.’

‘But you said it would be fine. Maggs is there when you’re not. And if you’re both needed for a funeral, Jeffery can stay in the office with her.’

‘Maggs and Jeffrey have both made it clear they don’t want to be used as unpaid childminders,’ he said unhappily. ‘That’s the bit we didn’t take into account. I suppose you can’t blame them, but it never occurred to me they’d see it like that. I mean – she’s so
good
, you can’t call it work.’

‘People do, these days, unfortunately.’ Karen sat at the kitchen table, finishing her coffee, head leaning on one hand. She looked tired and even paler than the previous week. ‘It’s a whole industry, looking after kids.’

‘We need a granny,’ he said glumly. ‘Or a nice lady next door.’

‘You’re thirty years out of date. A
great
-granny might just have some time to spare, but the grannies are totally out of the question.’

‘I know.’ Drew’s mother had taken a law degree in her late thirties, and was still practising in her sixties. Karen’s was running a small hotel in North Wales with her second husband. ‘Maybe
a grandad would be a better bet – men seem to retire more firmly than women.’

‘Nice idea. You just have to persuade them to move down here.’

‘Well, never mind. I’m not really complaining. We haven’t had any panics yet – I was just a bit thrown by Maggs’s attitude. I can’t depend on her as I assumed I could.’

Karen frowned worriedly. ‘We do need backup, though. If you and Maggs have to go and remove a body at short notice and you can’t persuade Jeffrey to take over – or he’s not around – you’ll be sunk. It’d be different if I worked at the Comprehensive – they’ve got a creche. Primary schools aren’t so enlightened.’

‘They haven’t got the resources,’ he said pedantically. ‘Look – don’t worry. We know people in the village. There’s Jane with her twins, for instance. We could ask her if she’d mind being on standby.’

‘We can’t, Drew. You can’t impose on people like that. They’d be sure to have something planned on the day you needed them. God – this is a nightmare.’ She smacked a hand on the table in frustration, glared at him, and tightened her lips. He could almost hear the suppressed accusation:
If only you had a proper job, we could afford professional childcare
.

‘Hey!’ he soothed. ‘It’ll be OK. I
like
looking
after her. She’s the light of my life. She brings me sunshine. If I have to, I can take her with me on a removal. It’ll be another break with tradition.’

‘It’ll freak people out – not least the Social Services. It’s probably child abuse to let them anywhere near a dead body. I’m not sure I’m too keen on the idea myself, come to that.’

‘It’d be wrapped up. She wouldn’t see anything.’

‘I’ve got to go and do my lesson plans.’ She stood up slowly, resting her weight on one hand for a moment. Drew watched her closely. ‘You’re not very well, are you?’ he said suddenly. ‘Pale, tired, seeing the black side of everything. What’s the matter with you?’

She shook her head. ‘On my feet most of the day – getting back into the routine. Not sleeping too well. Tired all the time. Indigestion. Nothing they invented a cure for. I’ll be OK. And I miss Stephanie.’ Suddenly she was crying, both hands hiding her face. She sat down again heavily. ‘I wish I could just stay at home,’ she wept.

‘Oh, sweetheart. I’m sorry.’ He put his arm round her shoulders and ran over her list of symptoms in his head, trying not to linger on possible diagnoses: leukaemia, Hodgkins, ME. Once a nurse, always a Jeremiah when it came to health matters. But none of these were going to happen to his stalwart Karen. Of course they weren’t.

‘Look – you’ll be late,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about it this evening. Maybe we can think of something that’ll make it easier. Maybe you could go part-time?’

She wiped her nose fiercely, and stood up again. ‘Ignore me,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘Too many changes all at the same time. I’m just not as tough as I thought I was.’

‘I phoned him today,’ Genevieve told her husband. ‘He’s coming round to see me.’ Willard lowered his newspaper a few inches, and threw a glance at her, sliding his eyes briefly up and down her body, as he’d done ever since they’d realised she was pregnant. She knew what he was thinking, behind those small curtained eyes. He was feeling trapped and suspicious. A child had never been part of their life plan, and her insistence on proceeding with the pregnancy had frightened and infuriated him. But his reaction had been typical: he had carried on since that first startled moment as if nothing was happening. Except that he could no longer look at her properly.

As his glance slid away, she grunted suddenly, a small ‘
Oof!
’ of discomfort.

Willard’s look was enough of a question.

‘Just a particularly unpleasant kick from this brute.’ She patted her bulge. ‘Nothing that need alarm you.’

‘I wasn’t alarmed.’ He was sitting at the dining table with a newspaper spread out in front of him. Other papers and magazines were stacked on the floor nearby, awaiting his attention. ‘You should leave the poor fellow alone,’ he returned to the matter in hand. ‘There’s absolutely no cause for concern over your mother. Opening cans of worms – literally, I suppose, in this instance – is never a sensible idea.’

Genevieve flinched exaggeratedly at his all-too-appropriate metaphor. ‘You don’t care what you say to upset me, do you?’ she accused.

‘Not really,’ he told her. ‘It never makes any difference, anyway. Water off a duck’s back. If it mattered what I say, things would be entirely other than they are now.’

‘Your capacity for self-deception never ceases to amaze me,’ she told him.

‘And your lack of logic never ceases to depress me.’

‘Well, at least I’m trying to
do
something. We can’t go on indefinitely just assuming Mum’s perfectly OK. I want to
know
, Willard. Is that too hard to understand? She might not have been the best mother in the world, but in a few weeks, I’m going to be a mother myself, and believe it or not, that makes a difference. Call me childish if you like, but the truth is, I want my own mother to be around. I need her.’

He worked his mouth as if trying to spit out this sudden dollop of sentiment, then visibly braced himself to look her full in the face. ‘So – if this unidentified murder victim turns out to be your mother – and that, I suppose, can only be proven with our cooperation – you’re perfectly prepared to get involved in a police murder investigation, are you? With all the questions and intrusions that that involves. Possibly a trial, in the extremely unlikely event that a culprit is found. Can you cope with that, my sweet? My neurotic darling – can you actually see yourself standing up in court as a key witness for the prosecution? Can you see yourself listening to the defence call your mother a slut, a whore, a failure as a woman?’

She shrank away from him, wilting under the vitriolic blast of his contempt. ‘Stop it,’ she implored him. ‘Don’t be so cruel. I’m only trying to do what’s right.’

His laugh was another deluge of acid. ‘
Right!
’ he mocked. ‘It takes a fully grown-up person to understand what’s right. It’s well beyond your capacity, my immature little pet, believe me. But don’t let me stop you. Just you carry on your own sweet destructive way. Just don’t expect me to be around to pick up the pieces.’

Genevieve whimpered her frustration. ‘You make it all so much worse,’ she whined. ‘I thought
you’d help me. I thought I could depend on you.’

‘I thought so too at one time,’ he agreed conversationally. ‘Fools, weren’t we?’ And he returned calmly to his perusal of the newspaper.

It was a familiar signal that he no longer wanted to talk to her, and she came very close to accepting it as her dismissal. But another nudge from the unborn child prompted her to persist.

‘Willard,’ she said, her tone almost normal again. ‘This does involve you, you know. If my mother isn’t here, then you’re going to have to help with the baby. Malcolm Jarvis has only agreed to come for the delivery, and make sure everything’s all right. After that, we’ll be on our own.’ Despite herself, her voice began to rise again, returning to the shrill tones that Willard’s silence so often reduced her to.

‘Millions of women face childbirth every day,’ Willard told her, without a trace of sympathy. ‘You should have thought of that earlier. Too late to decide you can’t cope now.’