The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries (26 page)

“Eleanor told you the man she had killed was another of your mother’s conquests,” surmised Chaloner. “And you believed her – which is why you were startled when I
mentioned that Raven wasn’t interested in women. You realized then that Eleanor had stabbed an innocent man.”

“But it was Francis and I who offered to pay you if you discovered Raven’s identity,” said Eleanor with a bemused smile. “Why would we do that, if we were the ones
who’d killed him?”

“For two reasons. First, you were confident that you’d left no clues – especially ones that could be unearthed by a mere digger of graves. And second, you knew everyone would
think you were innocent
because
you’d financed the investigation.”

“And how did I kill Raven, exactly?” demanded Eleanor with a sneer. “A small woman against a tall, powerful man?”

“If you never met him, how do you know he was tall?” pounced Chaloner. Eleanor did not reply. “You killed him with one of Francis’s carpentry tools, which he leaves lying
around for his children to play with. Raven’s wound was oddly shaped, and will almost certainly match the chisel – and the chisel is sharp, because his son cut himself on it
today.”

Rector Bretton regarded Eleanor with cold, unfriendly eyes. “Don’t you remember the Latin I taught you?
Fossor
means a digger, or a man who delves. And that’s what this
Fossor has done – delved until he found the truth.”

“I loved my mother,” said Eleanor quietly. “And she was dying. I didn’t want the gossips saying that she’d entertained lovers in her last hours on Earth – and
Raven came to our house when Father was out, so who can blame me for thinking what I did?”

“You admit it?” cried Bretton in horror.

“No,” said Pargiter sharply. “She doesn’t. Fossor has no real evidence, only supposition. But if she confesses to the crime, she’ll hang. Conversely, if she keeps
her mouth shut, no one can prove anything. We may have had our arguments in the past, but I’ll not see my daughter on a gibbet.”

He went to stand next to her, gazing defiantly at Chaloner. Francis hurried to her other side, and Warren was quick to join them.

“You won’t repeat what you’ve heard today, Bretton,” said Pargiter softly. “You won’t want Margaret’s name dragged through the courts – nor her
beloved daughter swinging on a rope. And who’ll take Fossor’s word over a family of wealthy goldsmiths and the King’s chaplain?”

Bretton hung his head, and Chaloner knew Raven’s murder would never be avenged. Pargiter was right: without a confession, there was not a jury in the country that would convict
Eleanor.

The rain had abated by the following morning, and the sun glimmered faintly through thin clouds. Eleanor and her father stood side by side at the empty chasm that had been
Margaret’s tomb.

“Fossor came very close to discovering the real reason why I killed Raven,” she said softly. “That Raven only visited Cousin Warren because he wanted to spy on our family; that
his real objective was to confiscate our gold and give it to the government. Do you think Fossor will try to do the same – for whichever churchman he is working for now?”

“If he does, I’ll call on your services again,” replied Pargiter. “Only this time, don’t ask Francis to help. He’s too stupid for games of deceit, and almost
gave you away.”

Eleanor smiled. “But Warren played his role well. He was very convincing as the desperate debtor, and is more than satisfied with what you paid him.”

Pargiter was less complacent. “What about Bretton? Do you think he was convinced by what Fossor deduced?”

Eleanor shrugged. “He seemed to be. And why not? He loved Mother very deeply, and Fossor’s erroneous conclusions made it look as though I was desperate to protect her reputation as
she lay dying. As far as Bretton is concerned, I’m a dutiful daughter, prepared to kill a man and hide his body to save his Margaret from ridicule and gossip.”

“Well, now the spectre of a murdered government spy is truly dead and buried, you can come to live with me again,” said Pargiter, placing an arm around her shoulders.
“I’ve missed you these last three years. Francis can live in self-imposed poverty – he’ll never love me as you do – but there’s no longer any reason for you to
endure leaking roofs and smoking chimneys.”

Both jumped when someone emerged from the shelter of the churchyard yews.

“I heard you,” said Bretton in a strangled voice. “You didn’t murder Raven to protect Margaret’s name, but to defraud the government. That’s
treason!”

“Rubbish,” said Pargiter scornfully. “It’s business. And if anyone ever claims otherwise, we shall blame the whole affair on Margaret – say she
demanded
to
be buried with the gold as a way to stop the Royalists from getting at it.”

“I’ve been such a fool,” Bretton went on brokenly. “Three years ago, you paid for my roof to be mended – not out of kindness, but to pretend to your
Goldsmith’s company that you were a reformed man after they fined you for coin-clipping. The repairs included fine new lead drainpipes –
lead
drainpipes. You used the lining from
Margaret’s coffin, didn’t you?”

“It seemed a pity to waste it – lead is expensive,” replied Pargiter with a careless shrug. “And we could hardly sell it as it was! People have admired those drainpipes,
so don’t pretend you haven’t enjoyed showing them off . . .”

The rector suddenly shoved Pargiter towards the grave. With a sharp cry, the goldsmith toppled inside the hole, where his head hit the remains of the coffin. He lay still. Eleanor tried to run,
but Bretton grabbed her and hurled her after her father. She spat dirt from her mouth and tried to stand. Bretton struck her with a spade, and she dropped to all fours, dazed.

“I don’t want Margaret associated with any more scandal – or her liaisons discussed in a way that make her sound like a whore,” said Bretton brokenly. “I still love
her, and I shall protect what remains of her good name. If you’re dead, you can’t harm her, can you?”

He gripped the shovel and began to fill in the hole.

Note

Robert Bretton was chaplain to Charles II and rector of St Martin’s Ludgate. John Pargiter was a goldsmith, whom the diarist Samuel Pepys considered a
“cheating rogue”. Pargiter was fined several times by the Goldsmith’s Company for persistently shoddy workmanship and coin clipping, and his name was removed from the list of
aldermen in 1668, presumably because of his fondness for dubious practices. A merchant called Francis Pargiter also lived in London in the 1660s, although it is not known whether he and John were
kin. Thomas Warren was a merchant who traded overseas.

Shortly after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, there were many tales of exiled Royalists returning home to retrieve hoards they had secreted years before – some found them
undisturbed, others did not. One man was alleged to have chosen his wife’s coffin as his hiding place, and was reputedly delighted when he excavated her and found his money just as he had
left it.

Bill James

The thing about Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles, as many knew by now, was that at funerals he could get really a bit out of proportion. This one coming up today after
the crossfire killing: dicey, dicey, dicey, Harpur thought. It had big overtones and Iles loved overtones, danced and dreamed to them. Consider: a middle-aged, born-again factory worker, out
ardently slipping salvation gospel tracts through people’s letter boxes on his afternoon off, gets somehow in the way of a motorized turf battle between drugs firms and picks up two .38
bullets in the back. And a spread of spent bullets around, as well as those that hit him. Iles would scent chaos: this victim, born-again but dead. Did it
look
like salvation? Harpur himself
scented chaos. Iles would love to sound off to folk in funeral pews a bit about chaos, and more than a bit.

As an additional element, sure to disturb the Assistant Chief, this shooting took place very close to the spot where a young, cheery, ethnic girl, rather favoured by him, had her beat, and he
would fret in a very Iles style of fretting about the danger she, also, might have been in. Iles used to meet her down there on waste ground now and then, in change-every-time, by-the-hour hire
cars, for anonymity. Part of Harpur’s job was to know about anonymities.

At certain funerals following criminal violence, a police presence might be necessary as a public relations duty. It indicated concern and sympathy. Harpur always hated going with the ACC,
whether the service happened at a church or chapel or the crematorium direct, but felt he must be handy in case some kind of restraint were needed against Iles so as to preserve reasonable calm.
After all, Harpur considered it more or less obvious that funerals should have dignity, decorum. They could be ticklish events for him. Although only a Detective Chief Superintendent, he might be
required to curb and lull a superior officer while eyed aghast by the congregation and minister, possibly in parts of a church that would reasonably be considered special, such as the pulpit.

Actually, “such as the pulpit” would not really do in describing these crises. If Harpur had to reach him, and apply a degree of quietening, repressive force, it would nearly
always
be because Iles had decided to bulk out the proceedings with a personal, extra sermon, and had somehow taken over the pulpit – or its equivalent in fundamentalist meeting halls.
Then, at least until Harpur’s intervention with muscle and/or pleas for sense, the Assistant Chief could not be persuaded out and/or silenced. Now and then at tragic funerals he would weep
thoroughly; weep blatantly and noisily before he gave an address. Today’s was unquestionably a tragic funeral. There’d been bloodied tracts on the pavement. Sometimes during these
episodes, Iles would slander the Home Secretary for the national state of things leading to the death, or the Prime Minister, or the Trinity, or his mother and aunts, or school attendance officers,
or all of the above, or permutations. Often he slandered himself and, of course, Harpur. Generally, these onslaughts came over impressively via a pulpit microphone and amplifying system. Failing
these, Iles bayed.

Naturally, he would try to fight off Harpur, or anyone else who turned physical in an attempt to suppress him: say, a vicar, if he/she thought Iles’s behaviour had become too wild. The ACC
was not big, but possessed craftiness and knew head-butting well from way back in his career. Always, it had seemed especially unkempt to Harpur for someone to head-butt in a place of worship,
whether he, Harpur, was on the end of it, or somebody else. Against anyone who opposed or attacked him, Iles could summon an abnormal weight of momentary but true loathing, especially against
Harpur, on account not just of immediate irritation, but that past chapter with the ACC’s wife. These reserves of hatred seemed to help increase Iles’s hideous strength and, more often
than not, gave his lips true froth during tussles. He usually went to funerals in full dress uniform, and that made him additionally ferocious, unhinged and malevolent, as though convinced he
should live up to the high-grade cloth, Queen’s Police Medal ribbon, superb black lace-ups and insignia of his rank.

This funeral, then, Harpur considered could be one of the worst: one of the worst, that is, from the Iles aspect. Harpur guessed that, to describe the death, Iles would have been rehearsing some
of his favourite terms, such as “symbolic”, “ironic” and “encapsulates”, for any pastoral chat he might choose to offer. If he turned to abuse of one or several
or all of his targets, the words might be “slimy”, “smug”, “somnolent”, “supine”. Yesterday, Harpur suggested to him – hopelessly – that
it would be wise, in view of the extraordinary tensions, to send someone of lower rank to represent them – for instance, Chief Inspector Francis Garland. “How about thinking of it for
once from
my
angle, sir,” Harpur had said.

“Which angle would that be, then, Col?”

“Well, it could be stressful. If you become – I mean, I might have to do another grapple, and—”

“My soul’s involved here, Harpur,” Iles replied.

“That’s what I’m getting at, sir.”

“What?”

“The buzz will be around.”

“Which buzz is that, then, Col?”

“Re your soul, sir,” Harpur said. “People will tell one another: ‘This funeral: another Mr Iles soul session.’”

“I do try not to make too much of it – my soul. Showiness one abhors. Performances one detests.”

“But people already know you can be very souly, sir. You’re famed for it. Probably it’s on your Personnel dossier. ‘Deeply souly.’ People will realise you’re
likely to become uncontrollably moved . . . well . . . even berserked by the funeral, so we’ll get an enormous crowd there, sightseers, not just mourners, gawking in case you put on one of
your perf . . . in case your soul takes over again in that tremendous way it has. The shouting, the arc of armpit sweat, the alliteration.”

“I must go,” Iles replied.
“We
must go.” They had talked in the ACC’s suite at headquarters. Harpur occupied a leather armchair. Iles paced. He liked to
concentrate on nimbleness. There was a long wall-mirror near the door for him to check his appearance in civvies or uniform before going out. Harpur noticed Iles kept his eyes away from that now,
though, which must signal he had bad feelings again about how his Adam’s apple looked. The ACC regarded his Adam’s apple as part of a skilfully focused, foul genetic joke against him.
He had on one of his navy blazers, plus narrow-cut, dark grey flannel trousers to do his legs justice, and what might be a rugby club tie. He said: “This funeral demands me, Col. My presence.
Well, our.”

“I—”

“Unignorable, Col. This death, this pyre – unignorable.”

“I—”

“Oh, you’ll reply, ‘It was merely someone accidentally peppered in a gang spat.’”

“Well, no, I don’t think I would ever . . . I see nothing ‘merely’ about any death, sir. It’s just that, perhaps as far as the funeral goes, we—”

“People, Col. You mentioned
people
.”