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Authors: S. T. Haymon

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BOOK: Stately Homicide
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She was nearly abreast of the footbridge when, with a lift of the heart, she came upon the fish at last, hanging in the water and browsing in a somewhat agitated way on some greyish fragments difficult to identify. They took no notice of Mrs Barwell's arrival, and, although she was by nature a rather phlegmatic person, tears came into her eyes at their desertion.

She leaned the bicycle against a garden seat at the side of the path, took out a tissue and blew her nose strongly; then bent over the edge of the grassy bank which at that point sloped steeply down to the water. She was determined to clear up what it was that had lured the fish from their allegiance.

As she did so, the surface of the moat, a few yards further along, shattered in a sudden convulsion. The mirrored house and sky broke up in a turbulence in which all that could be distinguished with any certainty were momentary glimpses of serpentine bodies of a yellowish-grey looping above the surface and then dropping back to the depths.

Mystified, Mrs Barwell hurried along the bank to a point directly opposite the area of greatest disturbance. With a certain amount of effort she lowered herself on to her hands and knees, the better to see what was happening. As she did so, a segment of smooth, silvery body arched itself in the air before submerging again; and slowly, very slowly, just below the surface, like a barrel rolled over by the pull of ropes fastened round its middle, something in the water turned over.

For a moment, Mrs Barwell's eyes failed to make sense of what they saw.

For a moment.

Then she began to scream.

Chapter Eleven

The Superintendent settled back in his chair and said: ‘If I hadn't been sure you'd stop off for a beer I'd have had the Scotch out. From what Colton told me on the blower I guessed some restorative might be called for.'

‘Two beers, actually.' Jurnet evinced no appreciation of his superior officer's kind thought. Condescending bastard!

Choking back his annoyance as, earlier that morning, he had choked back his nausea, the detective asked: ‘Dr Colton have anything to say yet?'

‘Give the man a chance! He's hardly got the body on to the slab. Tremendously chuffed, though. Says he's never seen anything like it.'

Detective-Sergeant Jack Ellers, whose chubby face, bleached of its normal high colour, looked like something which had been laundered on the wrong programme, raised his eyes to the ceiling and vowed: ‘Strike me dead if I ever touch another dish of 'em, not if I live to be a hundred!'

‘Funny things, eels,' the Superintendent remarked conversationally. ‘Used to go bobbing for them myself, down on the Bure, when I was a kid. All you need is a ball of your Mum's old knitting wool, a few hooks, and forty or fifty worms. Thread the worms on to the wool, weight it, and tie it on to a short line. Then you take your boat out – coming up to dusk's the best time – and so long as you know the right places to look, you can get five-or six-pounders. The eels bite at the worms, d'you see, and get their teeth tangled up in the wool. All you have to do is jerk the line out of the water smartish, before they can saw themselves free.'

‘Thanks for the natural history lesson,' Jurnet said, risking the impertinence and not giving a damn anyway. ‘We know all about eels, Jack and I.'

When, in response to a call, the two had arrived at Bullen Hall, it had not been immediately obvious which was the casualty. A large woman, her dress rucked up to disclose formidable bloomers, lay on the gravel path, mewing. A short distance away, young Steve Appleyard sprawled white-faced on the grass, Jessica Chalgrove kneeling by his side. On the grass above the moat, two men – one of them Mr Benby, the estate surveyor; the other, judging by his apron bulging with tools, a carpenter or handyman – stood guard over a sheet of black polythene, from beneath which a pair of feet protruded.

The feet were what attracted Jurnet's first attention. There was something decidedly odd about the feet. Tatters of brown stuff that could conceivably once have been socks adhered to them, and tatters of skin and bone that could conceivably once have been toes.

The handyman, whose name was Bert Archer, said shakily: ‘Wait till you see his bloomin' face.' Mr Benby stumbled away without saying anything, and sat down clumsily on a nearby seat, dislodging an antique bicycle propped there. The bicycle clattered to the ground where it lay like an additional victim of the prevailing calamity. A wheel revolved frenetically for a few seconds, then stilled: dead like whatever was under the black polythene.

It would have been hard enough, even without the heaving stomach, to have recognised in those ravaged remains the debonair new curator of Bullen Hall, the well-known author, the romantic young man with the tumbling curls. Sergeant Ellers, who had turned back the polythene a little way, did not see fit to turn it back further.

Jurnet lent a hand to drag the sheeting back into place.

‘Get back to the car, Jack, and get things moving.' To the handyman: ‘Anyone done something about getting medical aid for the lady?'

‘She'll be all right.' Bert Archer did not sound notably sympathetic. He crossed over to the woman and stood looking down at her. ‘Police is here, Mabel, and you showing your what's-it. Ought to know better at your age!'

The woman did not stop mewing, but a large hand moved like a questing lobster and tugged unavailingly at the skirt of her dress. The large bottom levered itself off the path to release the bunched-up material.

‘Tha's more like it,' the handyman said encouragingly, ‘though you sound a right old fool, Mabel, belling away like a randy heifer. When I tell 'em back in the village –'

‘That'll do, Bert Archer!' Mrs Barwell sat up abruptly. ‘Stop your gabbing and gi' me a hand.'

Jurnet murmured softly to Ellers, who had remained standing where he was, looking green and shaken: ‘What are you waiting for, boyo? Get on with it while I find out what ails the young gentleman.' He watched as the little Welshman disappeared at a sudden run round the corner of the house. Hope he makes it to the shrubbery, he thought, forcing back the vomit he felt rising anew in his own throat.

On the narrow strip between moat and house some stones of varying sizes lay strewn about the grass. Raising his eyes to the roof, Jurnet saw that the line of the balustrade was interrupted by a gap perhaps two feet wide, whence several pieces of masonry seemed to have fallen away.

From the garden bench Mr Benby moaned: ‘If I told him once not to go near that edge, I told him a dozen times. Never mind it looks solid as a rock, don't trust it, I told him.'

‘Not your fault,' Jurnet returned soothingly. ‘No call to take on.'

So: fell off the roof at the end of the peninsula which housed the curator's flat and the floors below, and landed in the moat. Only, what in heaven's name did they keep there? Man-eating crocodiles?

Jessica Chalgrove stood at his side and said: ‘You don't have to be worried about Steve. It's just that he's never seen a dead body before.'

The detective looked at the girl curiously. She looked pale, the dark eyes enormous in the heart-shaped face. Yet there was something – the way she held herself, the small breasts thrusting against her T-shirt; a sense of power and elation at being in control. For the first time Jurnet saw her as a person in her own right, not as one half – the compliant half at that – of a pair.

‘What about you?'

‘Oh, I haven't either. But I'm fine,' the girl answered, as if irked by the question. ‘Steve and I were the first ones here. We heard Mrs Barwell screaming, and we came running. At first we couldn't imagine – we thought she'd gone bonkers or something. Then she pointed to the moat and we saw them.'

Her eyes, if possible, grew even larger.

‘Them?'

‘The eels. Creat, enormous things, like the sea serpents that came out of the sea at Troy and killed Laocoon and his sons –'

Jurnet, who did not recognise the allusion, nodded nevertheless.

‘They were tumbling about in the water. Some of them were coiled round Mr Shelden's body. They kept rolling him over and over, almost as if they were playing with a beach ball. Only all the time they were biting and tearing –' For a moment the girl's voice trembled. Quickly recovering: ‘I didn't have to think who it was because he was still wearing his velvet jacket. Steve said last night he'd like to get himself a jacket like that. Mrs Barwell was lying on the ground having hysterics, and Steve nearly passed out, but I –' now there was no mistaking her pride in her own self-mastery – ‘first I went and phoned the police. I particularly asked if they could send you. I hope you don't mind –'

‘What we're here for,' Jurnet answered stolidly, concealing his gratification.

‘– And then, when I came back, there was a spring rake one of the gardeners had left out on the grass, and I went and got it, and tried to beat the beastly things off. I would have, too, if Mr Benby and Bert Archer hadn't come to see what was the matter.' She sounded aggrieved. ‘Bert lay down at the edge and got hold of Mr Shelden's jacket, and the two of them dragged him out on to the grass.' Jessica Chalgrove broke off and flushed a deep red which made her look more like the girl the detective had seen the day before. ‘I wouldn't want you to think badly of Steve –'

‘Never occurred to me,' Jurnet replied truthfully. ‘All I could do not to throw up myself, and I've seen more bodies than you've had hot breakfasts.'

‘He's awfully sensitive, that's what it is. Things affect him more than they do some people. But being Laz Appleyard's son –'

‘Feels he has to be a toughie, eh?' Jurnet smiled. ‘Want to know what my colleague, Detective-Sergeant Ellers, is doing at this moment? Bringing up his eggs and bacon somewhere we can't see him. Tell that to your boy friend when he's feeling ready to listen. It may help him feel better.'

‘I will!' she exclaimed. Soberly she persisted: ‘It's because Mr Appleyard died the same way – drowned, I mean – and Steve's probably wondering if there aren't eels like that over at the mill.'

‘Sounds very unlikely to me.' Knowing about the deceased hero's near-decapitation enabled the detective to speak with conviction. ‘Anyway, as yet, we don't even know how Mr Shelden died – whether by drowning, or a fall from the roof, or something else altogether. Could have had a coronary, for all we know to the contrary, as of this moment. Take the young fellow home and make him a good, strong cup of coffee. He'll feel better in no time!'

By the time Sergeant Ellers came back, looking pale, Mrs Barwell had gone, angrily rejecting the offer of a lift home. Steve Appleyard and Jessica Chalgrove had gone, too, the girl doing the leading this time, but already with enough sense to conceal her new-found awareness of her power. Bert Archer and Mr Benby stood about uncertainly, hoping for their dismissal, but not liking to ask for it.

‘All laid on,' the little Welshman reported. His eyes turned, unwillingly compelled, towards the square of black polythene. His whole body stiffened.

‘Ben! He's moving!'

Jurnet began: ‘Don't talk so daft –' when Bert Archer shouted: ‘Oh, my God!' Mr Benby collapsed on to the seat again.

Unbelievable as it seemed, the polythene was moving, in light-catching undulations which gave it a life of its own. Then, out of the end of pyjama leg which showed above a macerated foot, a yellowish head with small eyes appeared, weaving from side to side; a heavily muscled jaw, and teeth like executioners. Mesmerised, the men on the lawn watched as the great eel, a good four feet long and thick in proportion, with a grace that was more baleful than all its ugliness, slid from its hiding place and slithered towards the moat.

It had almost reached the water when, with an inarticulate cry, the handyman sprang forward, a knife in his hand. Jurnet closed his eyes involuntarily. When he opened them again, the creature's head lay almost severed from a body which rippled a moment longer, then was still.

‘The bloody bugger!'

Rage shook the handyman; but the hand with the knife held steady. When the head was off, and lay gleaming on the grass, the man turned his attention to the body, planting a foot squarely on the severed end, and taking a firm grip on the tail. The knife flashed, too fast for Jurnet to follow: a sharp pull and an odd rasping sound, and the eel's skin peeled off like one of those long white gloves debutantes used to wear halfway up their arms when they went to Buckingham Palace to curtsey to the King and Queen.

For a moment longer the denuded corpse, unexpectedly frail without its protective sheath, lay on the grass, a monster made piteous. Then the man kicked out and sent it sliding down the slope into the moat. He looked down at the skin in his hand as if surprised to see it there, and threw it after the body. The head lay forgotten, a bluebottle already buzzing at an unregarding eye.

A sound of splashing came from the moat. The eels had returned for another funeral wake.

‘Not fair on the eel, of course,' the Superintendent remarked. ‘Only doing what it was put on earth for – to eat whatever fate sends it, so that it can grow big and strong enough to fulfil its own particular destiny. Just as it's ours to discover exactly what happened to poor Shelden.'

‘Yes, sir,' Jurnet said. ‘After the boys took the body away, Jack and I went over the bit of lawn in front of the flat door. It's a kind of recess, with the building sticking out on either side, like a letter E, only without the middle bit, if you follow me. There were several bits of stone that appeared to have fallen from the parapet. What we also found was a small stained area that could have been blood – Forensic 'll be letting you know – and the top joint of a little finger.'

The Superintendent's head came up with a jerk.

‘On the grass? At the edge of the moat, d'you mean?'

BOOK: Stately Homicide
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