Murder in Steeple Martin (5 page)

Chapter Seven

R
EHEARSALS WERE QUIET AFFAIRS
on Wednesday and Thursday. Nobody saw Uncle Lenny, or any of the family except for Peter, who was uncharacteristically subdued and disinclined to chatter. Paula didn’t appear, and Libby was surprised to receive a call on her mobile half-way through Thursday from James, apologising on her behalf and muttering something about stress and nervousness.

‘Does she think the perishing roof’s going to fall down again?’ Libby asked him. ‘Because you can assure her it won’t. We’re not using it at the moment.’

It wasn’t that, apparently, said James and bade her a hurried goodbye.

Dealing philosophically, and with some relief, with the absence of Paula, Libby stuck to her original rehearsal schedule and allowed them Friday off, but warned them that extra rehearsals might be slotted in during the following week.

‘Libby?’ The telephone shattered Libby’s peace over toast and tea and Radio Four on Friday morning.

‘Hello?’ She recognised the voice but wasn’t going to let on.

‘It’s Ben. I wondered, as there’s no rehearsal tonight, whether you would like to go out to dinner?’

Libby struggled with herself.

‘I’m sorry, Ben, but I’ve got that delivery today and I’m staying with friends overnight.’

‘Oh, pity. Back tomorrow?’

‘Yes. I’m going through the lighting plot tomorrow afternoon.’

‘How about dinner tomorrow, then? Or we could go and see that thing at the Gulbenkian, if you fancy it.’

I ought to say no, thought Libby.

‘Thank you, I’d like that. Dinner, though. I want to get away from theatre.’

‘I take it you don’t fancy The Pink Geranium, then?’

‘I’m just not a vegetarian.’ Libby was apologetic.

‘Neither am I. There’s a couple of decent Thai places in Canterbury, aren’t there? How about one of those?’

‘Lovely.’

‘Pick you up at seven, then – or is that too early?’

‘No, seven will be fine.’ Not so long to wait and get nervous.

‘See you, then.’

It was mid-afternoon before Libby was organised enough to leave. Sidney glared at her out of the front window as she loaded her bag into her ancient Renault.

‘You’ll be all right,’ she told him. ‘Mrs Next Door will be in to feed you. Stop making me feel guilty.’

‘Hey, Libby.’

She turned round quickly to see Harry loping down the lane.

‘Where are you off to?’

‘Delivering paintings.’

‘You workaholic, you. Listen, I was coming with a bit of news – have you got time?’

‘Only just. I’m late as it is, and I’m going to catch all the traffic on the ring road now. Why didn’t you ring me?’

‘I did. There’s a message on your answerphone, if you bothered to listen to it, and your mobile, as usual, is switched off. Anyway, it won’t take long. You know what you were saying about publicity?’

‘You haven’t committed a murder specially for us, have you?’

‘Get you, ducky. No, Pete just called to say he’s organised some chap to come down from some paper–’

‘
Some
chap from
some
paper?’ said Libby.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Photo-journalist or something, I think he said. Stop interrupting. Anyway, he’s coming down to do a nice little piece on the original people and the original sites and then wants shots of the cast and the sets. Isn’t that lovely?’

‘Great. When’s all this happening?’

‘Sunday. So that everybody can be around during the day.’

‘Oh, hell. So I’ve got to call everybody, have I? But I won’t be back ’til lunchtime tomorrow.’

‘Oh, Pete and I will pass the word, don’t worry. Chinese whispers and all that. By the time we’ve finished they’ll all think they’ve got to be somewhere else on the wrong day, but I shouldn’t worry.’

‘Prat.’ Libby opened the car door again. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll give you a ring tomorrow.’

On Saturday morning Sidney welcomed her with complete indifference and the expectation of another breakfast. There were four messages on her answering machine, one from her daughter, one from Peter saying Sunday was all set up and complaining that she never remembered to take her mobile with her, and one from a member of the cast saying they were going to see Granny on Sunday. One from Stephen asking if she was doing anything tonight. Nothing from Ben.

‘Well, why should there be?’ she asked Sidney, ‘he’ll be seeing me later.’

She screwed up her courage and phoned Stephen, feeling guiltily thankful to find his answering machine switched on, after which she wandered round the cottage for a little while, trying to tidy up, putting some washing in the machine and finally coming to rest in the studio where she regarded a half-finished masterpiece on the easel with deep gloom.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ she told Sidney.

The walk took her, predictably, to The Pink Geranium (open for lunch on Saturdays) where she was invited to sit down. Peter was sitting at a corner table with the newspapers and pushed a batch aside for her.

‘Thanks for organising tomorrow, Pete.’

‘Pleasure, dear heart. Didn’t get hold of everybody, I had to leave messages for Paula and Stephen.’

‘Did they get back to you? I would have thought Stephen ought to know what’s going on at the theatre.’

‘Not a dicky from either of them yet, but I wouldn’t worry. Stephen’s far too conscientious to ignore a call to duty. Everybody else was quite enthusiastic – made a change.’

‘Even the family?’

‘Well, my dear mama doesn’t have to be involved does she? She wasn’t involved in the original scenario and certainly isn’t with the current one, so I haven’t bothered to tell her. And Hetty doesn’t mind. At least, I don’t think she does. You never can tell with Hetty. But she’s agreed to wheel Greg out for the occasion, so that can’t be bad.’

‘How is he?’

‘Frail. I don’t think anybody thought he’d last this long, frankly, but on he goes – the proverbial creaking gate.’

‘Was it the war that caused all the problems?’

‘Oh, yes, dear. You know he was missing presumed dead for a year?’

‘No. Really? How awful for Hetty.’

‘Yes, specially as by that time she was down here with Ma-in-law on the doorstep. And when Pa-in-law began to fail, she had to take over the running of the hop farm. The old girl was useless, apparently.’

‘Yes, you told me.’

‘Did I? Oh, yes. Well, anyway, it was Hetty who had the new huts built, you know, the proper brick ones with proper roofs. Good job they weren’t there before the war when you think of what happened the other night.’

‘I don’t
want
to think of what happened the other night,
thank
you.’

‘Sorry, dear.’ Peter stood up and stretched. ‘Ready for a little drink? Or would you prefer coffee?’

‘Coffee, please. And I think I ought to have something to eat.’

‘A nice slimming salad, or something?’

‘Don’t be rude. No, something hot. Soup?’

‘I will ask the chef, m’lady.’ Peter bowed and disappeared kitchen-wards. Libby sat and looked out of the window at the wide High Street, with its eclectic mix of houses from the last four centuries bathed in unexpectedly brilliant sunshine.

‘I hope it’s like this tomorrow,’ she said, as Peter returned with a cafetière and two mugs.

‘Course it won’t be. It’ll be pouring with rain, we’ll all get soaked and Hetty will stomp round all tight-lipped in her green wellies.’

‘Where are these photographs going to be taken?’ Libby pressed down the plunger and poured coffee.

‘The huts –’

‘New or old?’

‘Hetty had the old ones knocked down, didn’t she, so it’ll have to be the new ones, except that they’re outbuildings now, so they don’t look quite the same. Still, we’ll move all the extraneous rubbish out of the way and tart it up a bit.’

‘When are we going to do that?’

‘How about this afternoon? Got anything on?’

‘I’m supposed to be going through the lighting plot.’

‘No, you’re not. I forgot – I was asked to pass on the message.’

‘In that case, no, not until this evening.’

Peter’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Ooh. Got a date, have we?’

‘Not really,’ Libby tried to appear cool, ‘Ben and I are going out to one of the Thai restaurants in Canterbury.’

‘What’s that then, if it isn’t a date?’ Peter cackled. ‘You crafty old moo.’

‘I’m not. We’re just both at a loose end, that’s all.’

‘I shall refrain from making the obvious vulgar remark.’ Peter raised his mug. ‘Cheers.’

Harry provided them with soup and fresh bread, a bottle of wine and more coffee and promised to join them later if he wasn’t too tired.

‘All the prepping up for this evening, you see, ducks. We don’t just stop when we chuck the punters out.’

The new hoppers’ huts were now on the edge of a paddock some distance from both The Manor and the Oast House.

‘This used to be the “common”,’ Peter told Libby as they picked their way along the edge of the ditch that ran behind the huts. ‘The Sally-Ann and the lolly-man all used to set up here. And they had a huge party at the end of the picking.’

‘Lolly-man?’ panted Libby, feeling hot inside her layers. ‘I know the Sally-Ann is the Salvation Army.’

‘The lolly-man used to come round selling sweets for the children. And the fish van used to come on Fridays – oh, a regular little hive of industry, it was.’

‘Didn’t they use the shops in the village?’

‘Oh, no, dear. Out of the question. The villagers hated them. The hoppers used to call them “home-dwellers” and if ever they got together all hell broke loose. They say it was after one of those fights on a Friday night that Hetty’s dad had a go at her.’

‘How come he hadn’t heard all about it until then?’

‘The men used to come down at the weekends – come on, ducky, you’ve read the play –’ he stopped and raised an eyebrow at her. ‘You
have
read the play, haven’t you?’

‘I know that, but why hadn’t he heard before if it was such common knowledge?’

‘He didn’t come down every weekend. According to Lenny, he had other fish to fry. Not a nice person.’

Libby struggled along in silence for a few minutes.

‘There’s another thing I don’t understand.’

Peter raised his eyes to the skies. ‘
Now
she tells me.’

‘No, listen. It’s just struck me. How can even Hetty have known she was pregnant by that time? The hopping season was only three or four weeks in September, wasn’t it? Well, even if she’d conceived on her first day here she could only just have known herself and perhaps not even then. And we know that they didn’t actually
do
it until they’d been seeing one another for a couple of weeks.’

‘If you’d been paying attention, Sarjeant Minor, you would have remembered that it wasn’t the pregnancy that caused the bit of bother – nobody knew about that then. They didn’t discover it until after they’d gone back to London. No, it was the very fact that they
had
been doing it that upset the apple cart. They were funny about those things then.’

‘Well, she was only seventeen.’

‘And he was the wrong class. It meant as much to the lower classes as to the upper, this wrong side of the tracks business. You just did not cross over.’

‘We’re here.’ Libby stopped. ‘Aren’t they small?’

They were facing a long stone building with about a dozen plain wooden doors dividing it into different sections.

‘Have you never been up here before?’

‘No, never. It’s quite a long walk, isn’t it?’ She threw him a lowering glance.

‘Only a mile or so.’ Peter was nonchalant, opening doors and peering in.

‘You could have warned me,’ Libby said, trying to see over his shoulder. ‘Golly. They lived in
these
?’

‘And the old ones were worse. The interior walls didn’t go all the way up, so you could look over into next door, like you can in the school toilets.’

‘But they’re so tiny. At least you can stand upright in the ones we’ve built for the set.’

‘Artistic licence, dear.’ Peter backed out. ‘What we’ll do is, we’ll clear out one hut, so that he can get a shot of an interior, and shove all the rubbish into the others. There’s nothing very heavy here. Do you want to take that horse blanket off?’

‘I suppose so. I’m going to ruin my clothes.’

‘Oh, I thought you’d put them on special, like.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Libby.

It took them nearly an hour to clear the hut and move some of the most obvious junk out of sight, by which time Libby was sure she had lost at least a stone, was bright red in the face and damp all over.

‘There.’ Peter straightened his back and stretched. ‘That wasn’t as bad as I thought.’

‘You speak for yourself,’ muttered Libby, looking in vain for somewhere to sit down. ‘And now we’ve got to walk all the way back.’

‘No, we haven’t,’ Peter pointed. ‘Here comes the cavalry.’

A muddy four-wheel-drive was bouncing over the common towards them.

‘It’s your swain, come to rescue you.’

‘Oh, no,’ moaned Libby. ‘Just
look
at me.’

‘As lovely as usual, dear heart. And if you’re worried about the way you look, it definitely
is
a date.’

‘You dare –’ began Libby.

‘Hallo, folks. Spring cleaning?’ Ben jumped down from the driver’s seat and strolled over. ‘You should have let me know. I would have come to help. Anything I can do?’

‘Just in time to be too late, lucky legs.’ Peter picked up his waxed jacket. ‘But you can take us home again.’

‘What about the other sites?’ asked Libby. ‘For the other shots.’

‘Oh, the fight took place on the side of the ditch just along there, by the bridge where we crossed over. At least, that’s where Warburton’s body was found. Nothing to do there.’

‘How did you know we were here?’ asked Libby.

‘I called the caff to find out what time the shoot was set for tomorrow and Harry told me. Do you want to come and have a cup of tea up at the house, or would you rather go home?’

‘I would rather go home and have a bath, if you don’t mind.’ Libby surveyed her clothes and sniffed suspiciously. ‘I know just how those hop pickers must have felt. Fancy not being able to have a decent wash feeling like this.’