This Private Plot (2 page)

“Who's there?” he demanded. Oliver guessed, to his relief, that his uncle had also discarded his glasses and, fifty feet away, could not see them clearly.

“Uncle Tim, it's me. Oliver, your nephew.”

“Oliver?” Mallard repeated, edging nearer, with Phoebe shuffling behind him.

“Don't come any closer—Effie's here, too.”

“Effie?” echoed Mallard, as if taking attendance. He squinted into the darkness. “Are you both…?”

“Yes, from top to toe, from head to foot.”

Mallard clasped his hands over his groin, like a soccer player in the line of a free kick. “Effie can't see me in my birthday suit,” he cried, scandalized.

“I have my eyes closed,” Effie assured him. “And you'd better, too. Sir.”

“Then I guess I'm the only one who can expose myself,” Phoebe called from behind Mallard's back. “Effie's the same sex, Tim's my husband, and Oliver's family.”

“I can't see you in the altogether, Aunt Phoebe,” Oliver protested. “You look like my mother. It's too Freudian, I wouldn't enjoy it.”

There was a silence.

“I have an idea,” Effie called out. “Come to the middle of the maze. Keep your eyes down and look for feet.”

Mallard and Phoebe shuffled to the maze's grassy center, and then, on Effie's count, the four turned and faced outward on the cardinal points of the compass. There was another long, uncomfortable silence.

“I'm going to kill Toby,” Oliver muttered eventually.

“You'll have to join the queue,” said Mallard.

“As the actress said to the naked policeman.”

“It's a good job for you I can't turn round.”

“You're telling me.”

“I bet the little bugger was making it all up,” sniggered Phoebe. She was the only one enjoying the situation. “It means mischief. I'm surprised he's not up that tree with a flash camera.”

Like an old sleeping dog flicking its tail when it hears its name, a long branch of the Synne Oak creaked.

Silence again.

“We can't stand here all night,” said Oliver. “How do we get out of this?”

“Look,” Effie said, “or rather, don't look, but pay attention. We need one member of each pair to go and retrieve the clothes from wherever they left them. Since the men can't see where they're going, that leaves Phoebe and me. Come on, Phoebe. Boys, you're on your honor to keep your eyes closed for ten seconds.”

And Oliver and Mallard found themselves alone.

“A remarkable woman in a crisis,” said Mallard, always proud that he had been instrumental in bringing his nephew and his sergeant together. “I assume Effie put you up to this little escapade?”

“It was supposed to cheer me up.”

“What should a man do but be merry?” They broke from their north-south orientation and sat down on the low turf island, each doggedly gazing toward the Synne Oak and avoiding eye contact.

“Yes, streaking doesn't sound like your particular brand of lunacy,” Mallard continued. “How long have you and Effie been an item? About nine months. And she's already got you leaping around like a trained haddock. To thine own self be true, Oliver.”

“Aunt Phoebe made you do it, then?”

“Of course.”

The two men laughed, looked at each other briefly, and then hastily returned their attention to the tree.

“Phoebe thought it would enhance my performance,” Mallard continued.

Oliver whistled softly. “And you'd think the nipping and eager air would have the opposite effect.”

“I mean my performance as an actor. Inspired by your idiot brother's folktales, your aunt thought a nude run around the Shakespeare Race would be like one of those acting exercises that release you from your inhibitions.”

“You're not treading the boards again?”

Mallard nodded. “My drama group, the Theydon Bois Thespians, won a contest. The prize is to give one performance of a play by Shakespeare on the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford. And since that's just up the road from Synne, we're staying with your parents during the rehearsals. The performance is next Saturday, a week from tomorrow. I don't think you'll see much of me until then.”

“I've already seen more than enough of you. What play's the thing?”

“Appropriately enough,
Hamlet
. At least, I think it is. Our director, Humfrey Fingerhood, changes his concept so often that it might be
Cats
by the weekend.”

Oliver stood up abruptly and walked toward the Synne Oak. It struck Mallard as a reasonable reaction to any mention of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

“What's the matter?” he called. Oliver didn't answer but stopped on the outer circle of the maze, staring up into the branches of the gallows tree. He beckoned to Mallard, but realizing that his uncle couldn't see him, gave a sharp whistle. Mallard clambered stiffly to his feet.

“I thought I saw something, up in the tree,” Oliver said.

“A Cheshire Cat?”

Oliver ignored the comment. He strained his eyes into the darkness.

“There!” he said, pointing. “There's something there, Uncle Tim. Like a sack or a big balloon, caught in the branches. Whatever it is, I don't think it's alive.”

“In that case, it can hang there till the morning,” said Mallard with a yawn, “when somebody else can take care of it. Maybe it'll fade away and just leave its grin. I wonder what's taking the ladies so long.”

He wandered away around the tree. There was an abrupt metallic clatter, followed by several choice curses. Mallard sat up in the long grass beside the fence, disentangling his legs from whatever he'd tripped over, and found himself glaring at an aluminum stepladder.

“Thanks, Uncle Tim, that's just what we need,” said Oliver, picking up the lightweight ladder and setting it firmly where he'd been standing. Its top step was about eight feet from the ground, level with the lowest branches of the tree. He glanced down at Mallard. “When you've finished messing around down there, get up and hold the ladder. I don't want to fall arse over Titus Andronicus.”

He started up the shaky stepladder. Mallard reluctantly braced himself against the framework. Oliver managed to grab a branch and reached blindly into the leaves for another handhold.

“Uh, Uncle Tim…” he called after a moment, a tremor in his voice. “We have a problem.”

Mallard looked up. Oliver's upper body was hidden by foliage.

“What is it?” he asked, sensing the sudden fear in his nephew's voice.

“Who is it, is more to the point. There's a dead body up here.”

Mallard's police instincts took over. “Come down,” he commanded. “Ollie, come down now. Let me deal with this.”

“It's okay, Uncle. I'm fine.”

“Are you sure it's dead?”

“It's dead, all right. Cold. A man. Hanged.”

“Jesus Christ, Oliver, get down this moment!” Mallard shouted. “Don't touch anything. It's a police matter now.” He shook the ladder. “Oliver Swithin, I'm ordering you to return to the ground. I'm moving you on. It's bloody official, sonny!”

There was a pause. Mallard breathed heavily, impotently. Oliver stood on tiptoe, balancing on the highest step.

“Oh no!” he exclaimed.

“What?” Mallard demanded, staring up into the darkness. “Tell me!”

Again, Oliver waited. Then he said, “Hold tight to Exhibit A, Uncle Tim, I'm coming down. I am tame, sir.” He descended the ladder cautiously until he could turn around and sit on the top step.

“Well, I hope I shall not look upon his like again,” he said, wiping some moisture from his eyes with the heel of his hand. Mallard could not tell if it was sweat or a tear.

“Strangulation does some terrible things to a face,” he said.

Oliver wrapped his arms around his knees. “I know him, Uncle Tim.”

“What?”

“That's why I needed to see the face. I had my suspicions when I saw what he was wearing. Despite the… changes, the lips, the tongue, I still recognized him. It's Uncle Dennis.”

Mallard frowned. “You don't have an Uncle Dennis.” Was Oliver hallucinating under the stress?

“Everyone has this Uncle Dennis. Dennis Breedlove. He used to read stories for children on BBC radio. Called himself ‘Uncle' Dennis. A worthy pioneer. Retired long ago to write books. Lived in Synne for years. Sorry, that always sounds bad, doesn't it? Little man. Happy. Always wore the same outfit—tweed suit, yellow waistcoat, spotted bow tie. That's why I thought I knew him. Had to see the face, you see. To be sure.”

“It's probably a suicide,” Mallard said. “Perhaps there's a note—in his pocket, back at his house.” He shivered. “We really should leave this to the local plod.”

Oliver nodded glumly. He stood up. The stepladder shook and tilted, one of its feet sinking deeper into the soft dirt.

“It's all right, I'm holding it,” Mallard called.

“Yes, but who's holding me?”

Oliver tipped sideways. Mallard let go of the ladder, which slammed into the trunk of the oak, and tried to catch his falling nephew. His arms closed around Oliver's waist, his nose going into the young man's navel. The two naked men staggered toward the maze and landed on the soft turf, winded and wrapped in each other's arms, dimly aware that two fully dressed women were watching them curiously.

“Superintendent Mallard,” Effie called, as she dropped a bundle of clothes and turned away again. “I wonder if this is a good time to discuss my promotion to Inspector.”

Chapter Two

Saturday morning

Pry up the staple in the middle pages of the
AA Drivers Atlas to the British Isles
and you may find Synne, a speck of a village sideswiped by the northeastern edge of the Cotswold Hills as they lap up against Shakespeare Country.

Guidebooks to the area have given up trying to explain why the tiny village of some ninety houses should ever have come into existence. Synne was never close enough to the great Fosse Way to have offered a rest stop for foot-weary Romans, nor in later years was it a staging post on the coach route from London to Worcester. It has no historical connection with the Cotswolds wool trade, or the cloth and silk trades, which followed and failed. No healthful spring bubbles up through its limestone. There isn't a working farm within a three-mile radius. The reason for Synne's survival for half a millennium is a complete mystery to most people.

But an isolation that was inconvenient in the past can be a boon today if handled by a canny estate agent. Synne's honey-toned sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century cottages are now occupied by retired advertising executives, media consultants, and BBC radio producers, once beguiled by the prospect of rural life and now bored to death by its reality. Seven recent arrivals penned opportunistic journals of their first year in the village: five of them were titled
Living in Synne
; the other two were called
A Year in the Cotswolds
; none was published. Meanwhile the born-and-bred Synne-folk they displaced shifted to a clutch of tasteful modern houses just north of the main road, grateful for central heating and windows that close properly at last.

Most of the picturesque older cottages jostle along the main road, particularly where it skirts the long north edge of Synne's triangular village green, inevitably called The Square. It has the shape of the down arrow on an elevator button, pointing due south at nothing in particular.

On the southeast side of the Square is a pair of Georgian houses, handsome but incongruous, the one on the right being the home of Brigadier (retd.) Robert Proudfoot Swithin, DSO, and his wife, Chloe. In front of the house, there's only a shallow flowerbed with a scattering of hollyhocks—a rare example of a flower that Oliver could identify, because he had tried to rhyme them with “bollocks” in a limerick. But to the rear is a deceptively large walled garden, with a generous lawn and, at its center, a massive horse chestnut tree, now covered in blossom.

Effie Strongitharm was spread out serenely on a lounger in a sunny corner of the lawn, wearing a modest black bikini and reading a book. She had chosen to ignore the occasional twitching of curtains at an upper floor window, which she had pinpointed as Toby Swithin's bedroom. She had also decided to ignore the frequent grunts and clatters coming from the tree behind her, caused by the percussive combination of an aluminum stepladder, a steel tape measure, and her boyfriend. But a sneeze followed by a particularly loud crash did make her sit up and glance around. The ladder had fallen. Oliver was not immediately visible, but then two legs in jeans and purple sneakers descended slowly into view from the lowest branches and kicked in mid-air like a frog. Effie turned back to her book and so did not see Oliver drop the remaining six feet to the ground.

He lay flat on his back for a few seconds, then sat up and groped for his eyeglasses. He stood warily, crept up behind Effie, and covered her eyes. “Guess who?”

Effie gave a small gasp of girlish delight. “Johnny Depp!”

Oliver smirked. “You're getting warm.”

“I would be if it really was Johnny Depp.”

“Oh. Well, it's me, I'm afraid.”

Effie lifted her sunglasses and scrutinized him. “Don't I get two more guesses?”

“Because of that, I'm not going to tell you what I've found out.”

“Okay.” Effie returned to her book. Oliver perched on the lounger, dimly aware that he'd just moved himself into check. He sneezed.

“You don't seem too bothered that we discovered a body last night,” he attempted, wiping his nose.

Effie looked up again. “Naturally, I'm sorry about poor Mr. Breedlove. But in case you'd forgotten, Ollie, I am on your uncle's Murder Investigation Team.” She leaned toward him and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I see dead people,” she hissed. Oliver flinched.

“But I see them in London,” she continued. “A simple suicide in Synne is none of my business professionally, and it would be a complete and utter no-no for the Yard to interfere with a local investigation.”

He was back in the match. “But what if it wasn't a simple suicide?” he began eagerly. She held up a hand.

“Save it for Tim,” she interrupted. “I'm on vacation. I must be idle.”

Mallard might make a better audience, Oliver considered. His uncle had taken charge the previous evening, dressing hastily and using his mobile phone to report the discovery of the body. And then they had waited for half an hour until a uniformed policeman, fat and scant of breath, trudged up the path to the Shakespeare Race. Unlike the rural policemen in detective fiction, Police Constable Ernie Bostar did not secretly long for the opportunity to impress when he found a Scotland Yard superintendent within his truncheon's length. In fact he did not relish any form of work. So he quickly placed a call to the county detective branch and then, with a grumble or two, took only brief statements from the four witnesses.

They managed to tell their tale without any mention of nudity, and the only detail that intrigued Bostar momentarily was the women's report of spotting a figure on the edge of the Common—a man on foot, robed like a monk, with a hood pulled over his head, who seemed to be scanning the moonlit scrubland from the road. It was this observation, made from behind a convenient gorse bush, that delayed their returning with the men's clothes. But because Breedlove had died at least an hour earlier (based on Mallard's swift appraisal of the dangling body) and a good half-mile from this apparition, Bostar quickly lost interest again. The four slipped away just as the maze was raked by the bucking headlamps of an ambulance, which had taken the barely negotiable car track up to the Race from the far side of the Common.

Their amorous mood spoiled, Oliver and Effie had climbed into bed in Oliver's old bedroom, holding each other and furtively maneuvering so as not to be the owner of the superfluous fourth arm that always gets lain upon when two people cuddle. While waiting for sleep, Oliver was struck by a nagging issue, which had caused him to spend most of Saturday morning recreating the death scene in the Swithins' garden.

He was wondering whether to give Effie the satisfaction of interrupting her again, when he caught sight of his younger brother in an open doorway.

“Toby! Come out here!” Oliver yelled. After a moment's nervous hesitation, Toby complied. Effie reached for a multi-colored wrap on the grass beside her and draped it around her shoulders.

Toby Swithin bore little resemblance to his older brother. Although they were both thin, Oliver was taller. While his hair was blond and floppy, Toby sported a nest of dark waves. Oliver's eyes behind his cheap, wire-framed glasses were blue, like his mother's; Toby, who didn't need glasses, had his father's dark brown eyes and sharp nose, which gave his face a wary intensity. He always looked like he'd just been asked a slightly unnerving question. The overall effect was as if someone had cloned the poet Shelley but tossed in a few otter genes for good measure. Despite the warm day, Toby wore a shapeless white cricket sweater over muddy denims.

“Tobermory Swithin,” Oliver pronounced. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn't remove your spleen.”

Toby's eyes were on the grass under his feet. He glanced up for a second, took in Effie's bikini-clad state, and quickly looked down again.

“Well, for one thing, my name isn't Tobermory,” he muttered. “Just Toby. Not short for anything” He looked up again and tried to meet Effie's eyes. She beamed at him reassuringly. He blushed and glanced away.

“Where were you at twelve o'clock last night?” snapped Oliver. He didn't notice the effect that proximity to his svelte girlfriend seemed to be having on his little brother. In fact, he was pleased that Effie was there. There was little doubt that Toby would shortly be subjected to the notorious Strongitharm Look, Effie's special way of sending her ice-blue gaze deep into an offender's brain, swatting away the defending forces of bravado and self-justification, grabbing the cowering sense of shame by the throat, and plucking it out for all to see, like a still-beating heart. Two seconds of the Look, and Toby would be recalling every embarrassing, scrotum-shrinking moment of his life, including the time Oliver caught him doing bodybuilding poses in the bathroom mirror, dressed only in what he'd supposed was one of their sister's thongs, although it turned out to be their mother's.

“I was in bed,” Toby answered, puzzled. “I was late getting back from the dig. Eric Mormal was supposed to give me a ride home, but he did his shift earlier than usual. I had to hitchhike from Stratford to Synne. Why?”

“You didn't stop off at the Common? To see if anyone was doing a midnight run around the Race?”

Toby brightened. “Oh, did Effie tell you about that? It's an interesting piece of Synne folklore, isn't it?”

“I'll not be juggled with,” Oliver growled. “And why, for God's sake, did you dangle the bait of falsehood in front of your Aunt Phoebe, of all people?”

“It isn't falsehood,” Toby protested. He sniggered suddenly. “I say, she didn't try it, did she? And did she get Uncle Tim to go along, too? Oh gosh, this is priceless! I wish I
had
been there now. That should be on YouTube.” He continued to chuckle.

“They weren't the only ones,” Oliver said coldly. It was decidedly time for the Strongitharm Look.

Toby stopped laughing abruptly as the implication struck home. He opened his mouth, but the unavoidable mental image of Effie wearing even fewer clothes clearly overwhelmed his powers of speech.

“I think Effie has something to say to you,” Oliver continued, and moved to the side to avoid any crossfire.
Look pale and tremble, Tobermory.

“Toby's right,” she said.

“What?”

Effie brandished the thick, black book she had been reading, and Oliver noticed the title on the spine:
Folk Traditions of the Northern Cotswolds.
“It's in here,” she continued. “Toby was telling the truth.”

“I didn't mean to suggest…” Toby began, but choked again. Effie skewered her sunglasses into her fair ringlets.

“You have nothing to reproach yourself for, Toby dear,” she soothed. “You clearly haven't heard yet what put the damper on last night's hijinks, but it had nothing to do with you. Now, Oliver, I think you're the person who has something to say to Toby.”

“What?” Oliver said again.
No Look?

Effie tilted her head. “Don't you owe Toby an apology for being so rude?”

“The hell I do.”

“Oliver,” she prompted. Damn, she was almost at checkmate. Oliver turned toward Toby, noticing a tall figure framed in the doorway to the house.

“Oh, all right. Toby, I'm sorry I called you a devious, hairy-palmed, weasel-faced troll.” He felt Effie's toe jab him in the thigh and continued hastily. “Look, I'd gladly apologize until the cows come home, but Uncle Tim seems to have beaten them to it. Despite your complete innocence, you're well advised to avoid him for the next couple of days. I'd start now.”

He nodded over Toby's shoulder. Toby turned to see his uncle glaring at him across the lawn, and without waiting, bolted toward a gate in the garden wall.

“So much for him,” said Oliver. “I wonder what he's been doing in his room all morning.”

“Binoculars,” Effie murmured, swathing the wrap around her torso as Mallard approached. He was wearing an off-white linen suit with an ascot and a dapper Panama hat, which complemented his rakish white moustache.

“Sergeant Strongitharm,” said Mallard, removing the hat, “I nearly didn't recognize you with all those clothes on.” He fixed his gaze on a single cumulus cloud, adrift in the blue sky.

“Phoebe and I have been at Dennis Breedlove's cottage,” he continued, “making a statement to the CID officer in charge of the case. He wants one from you, too. Just a formality. He's Detective Sergeant Culpepper, based in Leek Wootton.”

“In that case, I'd better slip into something less comfortable,” Effie said. She stood up and handed the book to Oliver. “Be a precious bunny and take this back to your dad's library. I'll meet you by the front door in ten minutes.”

Dad?
thought Oliver. When had he ever called the brigadier “Dad”?

“Oh, Tim,” she added, “Oliver wants to convince you that Uncle Dennis's death was a conspiracy.”

She kissed Oliver demurely on the cheek and sashayed away, fully aware that Oliver would be staring after her while Mallard, the perfect gentleman, would be deliberately studying something else.

“Close your mouth, precious bunny,” said Mallard, replacing his hat. “So what's this about Uncle Dennis?”

“I don't think he could have killed himself without help.”

Mallard checked his watch. “All right, let's hear it,” he said with a sigh. “But it's too late to search for traces of extra visitors to the Race. The two of us did a good job of tramping around under the Synne Oak, not to mention that ambulance crew and who knows how many CID busies.”

“You don't need that sort of evidence,” Oliver answered, setting up the stepladder. “This ladder is the same size as the one we found last night. I borrowed it from the village peeping Tom.”

“The village peeping Tom?”

“Yes. Well, one of them anyway. Although the other one prefers the term ‘voyeur.' Now watch.”