Cross My Heart and Hope to Die (31 page)

What saved him was the fact that the minor branch that hit him was the one he had just severed almost through. It swept his legs from under him and began to carry him upwards. Then it broke, and deposited him with a bone-jarring thump on the ground.

For a few moments Quantrill lay quite still, shocked and winded. His body ached all over. Then he moved his limbs, experimentally. The thigh that was particularly painful was gashed and bleeding, but he didn't think he'd broken any bones, thank God. Relieved to be whole, he almost hoped that Molly and Peter hadn't seen what happened. It was going to be humiliating, to know that they knew that he hadn't known what he was doing.

But as his wife and son hurried towards him, he took a detective's comfort from the event. Despite his pain, he couldn't help marvelling at the way in which the risen tree's roots had fitted themselves back into the gaping hole from which the gale had torn them.

At least he now had the satisfaction of knowing the probable hiding-place of Ziggy Crackjaw's body.

While Douglas Quantrill was being taken by ambulance to Yarchester hospital, for stiches to his leg and a precautionary X-ray, Janet Thacker and her mother were driving to the same destination to visit Gran Thacker.

At the same time, taking advantage of the Thackers' absence from Byland, Sergeant Lloyd was about to enter the yard behind their shop. She had with her a uniformed police constable, in case any observant neighbour should suspect a break-in.

What she wanted was access to Janet Thacker's sack of waste paper. It was easy enough to find where Janet kept it, awaiting collection in an open shed next to the garage. Unfortunately, there wasn't just one bulging black plastic sack there, but four of them, all fastened neatly at the neck with elastic bands.

Hilary wasn't even going to try to guess which sack she wanted. She and the constable carried the lot of them out to her car, and took them back to Breckham Market divisional police headquarters. There, in an empty office, she shook the contents of the first sack on to the floor and began her search.

Stitched up and badly bruised, but with no bones broken, Douglas Quantrill sat in his living-room the following morning resting his injured leg. So far, Molly and Peter had spared his pride by making no reference to his own culpability. Their unaccustomed solicitude wouldn't last, of course, but while it did Quantrill intended to make the most of it.

He had telephoned his sergeant on his return from hospital the previous evening, asking her to take the scenes-of-crime team back to Longmire End first thing in the morning. He was eager to know the result, and just before eleven-thirty he heard a ring at the doorbell, followed by Hilary's voice. ‘Hallo, Mrs Quantrill, how's the patient this time?'

‘He's a very lucky man,' he heard Molly say thankfully. ‘Come in, Hilary – you'll stay for coffee, won't you? When I think of what might have happened … Go on through, he's making the most of his last opportunity to put his feet up on our old furniture.'

Quantrill greeted his sergeant with pleasure. She told him that she was glad to see him in one piece, but her attention wasn't on him. It had been caught, as soon as she entered the living-room, by the fact that the walnut tree was back in place outside the window, a bit lop-sided in the branches and not standing quite straight, but even so, miraculously there.

‘Wow,' she said. ‘Isn't that amazing?'

‘I wouldn't have believed it could happen', said Quantrill, ‘if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.'

‘Can the tree be saved?'

‘Hope so, but I'm afraid it's lost too many roots. We'll probably still have to fell it and replant. A man's coming tomorrow to take a look.'

‘Not just a man, dear, an
expert
,' Molly corrected him as she brought in a tray of coffee. ‘A proper forester – which is who we should have had in the first place.'

But she said it cheerfully; having decided on the peony design for the loose covers, she was about to order her new furniture. She anticipated no trouble at all in persuading Douglas to write a cheque for the deposit, but a bit of wifely praise would do no harm, she thought. ‘Was my husband right, Hilary, about a body being hidden under the roots of a tree out at Byland?'

‘Oh, yes,' said Hilary. ‘He was absolutely right.'

‘I thought he would be.' Molly patted him affectionately on the head in passing. ‘Douglas may not be an expert with trees, but I've always known that he's a very good detective.'

She made her exit, leaving him attempting to cover his excruciated face with one hand.

‘You can stop being embarrassed,' Hilary told him. ‘What I said about the body under the tree wasn't true.'

‘Wasn't it?' Quantrill sat up, dismayed. He was appreciative of her loyalty, but undeniably disappointed. ‘Blast, I was so sure that's where you'd find Ziggy Crackjaw –'

‘I didn't say we didn't find him,' said Hilary. ‘You weren't absolutely right, though. There wasn't just the one body, there were two.'

‘Ah – poor old Gladys as well?'

‘'Fraid so. I'm having Andrew brought in, and he'll have to identify his mother. That won't be easy because the pathologist says she's been dead a lot longer than Ziggy, and they've both been crushed by the weight of the tree. I don't think there can be much doubt, though. Her body had been roughly wrapped in an old sheet, and then put inside a couple of plastic fertilizer sacks.'

‘Sounds as though the old man did that,' said Quantrill. ‘We were trying to work out how he disposed of her, but he probably didn't even attempt it. Chances are that he just wrapped the body up and stowed it away.'

‘And then Andrew came home,' said Hilary, ‘found out what had happened and killed his father. But that would have left him with two bodies to dispose of. He must have thought he was in luck when he found the apple tree had been blown over, leaving a large hole where its roots had been.'

‘A ready-made grave,' agreed Quantrill. ‘A brilliant hiding-place, if you happen to know anything about fallen trees. All Andrew would've had to do was tip the bodies inside, and lop off a few branches so that it would set itself upright again.'

‘I did see an axe in the old man's shed,' said Hilary.

‘Yes – and when I was there I saw some chopped-off branches lying on the ground, too. They didn't seem significant at the time, but I remembered them as soon as I'd been felled by my own walnut tree …' He shifted his injured leg uncomfortably.

‘It all fits, Hilary,' he said. ‘Except for the fact that we can't pin his father's death on Andrew Crackjaw. We can't shake the witness who says she last saw Ziggy on the 23rd of March, and we know that Andrew was then working in the North Sea.'

‘Oh, but we can shake her now,' said Hilary with satisfaction. ‘She thought she'd outwitted me, but she hasn't. I've found evidence to prove that Janet Thacker
didn't
pay the Crackjaws'pensions on the 23rd.'

She produced from her briefcase the pension books that had belonged to the old couple, and also a card on which two pieces of torn-up paper had been painstakingly reassembled and stuck. The pieces of paper were pension dockets, each printed with an amount of money due, and both carrying the printed date 23rd March. Neither docket had been signed, nor date-stamped. Each carried a number corresponding with the numbers on the two pension books.

‘So Janet Thacker didn't forge the Crackjaws'signatures, then?' said Quantrill.

‘There was no need for it, once she'd date-stamped the counterfoils in the pension books. In fact, if she'd gone to the trouble of forging the signatures and putting the receipted dockets through the system, she would only have complicated things for herself.

‘Post-office accounts have to be balanced at the end of each week against customers'receipts. Receipted dockets represent cash paid out, so if Janet had signed these dockets and included them, her accounts would have shown an unexplainable surplus.'

‘Couldn't she have solved that by taking the cash herself?' said Quantrill.

‘Of course she could,' said Hilary rather sharply. ‘But I didn't believe she'd stoop to it. I know she's prepared to lie – and in fact that was a point she made several times in her book; she prided herself on being a good liar – but I feel quite sure that she isn't dishonest. I thought it was much more likely that when she date-stamped the counterfoils, she simply tore up the dockets and threw them in her waste-paper sack. She should have had the sense to burn them, of course.'

‘Just as well for us she didn't,' said Quantrill. ‘Though come to think of it, when Andrew Crackjaw knows we've found his parents' bodies he may well be prepared to admit what happened. He'll be only too anxious to assure us that his father's death was an accident. So that's it, Hilary – you've got it all wrapped up, haven't you?'

But his sergeant shook her head, frowning. ‘Not to my satisfaction. It's still a mystery to me why Janet Thacker should have been prepared to lie to us on Andrew Crackjaw's behalf.'

‘I thought you said it was love,' said Quantrill.

‘I know I did. But I've been thinking about that book of hers and somehow, now, I doubt it.'

Sergeant Lloyd had intended to go to Byland to bring in Janet Thacker at lunch time, when the post office would be closed. To her surprise, on her return to police head-quarters after seeing Douglas Quantrill, she found that Janet had forestalled her and was waiting for her in the front office.

An additional surprise was that Janet looked unusually well dressed; not stylish, because her navy-blue suit was of the never-in and therefore never-out of fashion kind, but as smart as though she were applying for a job.

‘How come you're not behind the post-office counter this morning?' Hilary enquired as she led her to an interview room. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee, by the way?'

‘Thanks, I'd love one.' Janet Thacker paused, then said: ‘We've closed the shop and post office for the day. Mum and I had to go to Yarchester again this morning. After we got back from hospital last night, we had a telephone call to say that Gran Thacker had had another stroke. She didn't survive it.'

Hilary said how sorry she was, hating the necessity of pursuing a criminal charge against a woman whose grandmother had just died. But Janet shrugged off her sympathy.

‘That's all right, I'm not grieving. The old girl was ninety-three, for heaven's sake, she'd had a very good innings. And she wasn't really my grandmother – but you've read my book, you already know that.'

A police constable brought in two mugs of coffee. Janet reached for hers gratefully, at the same time looking about her at the bleak room as though trying to accustom herself to surroundings she was likely to see more of in the future.

‘I've come to tell you', she said abruptly, ‘that I've been lying to you all along. Ziggy Crackjaw
didn't
draw his pension on the 23rd March.'

‘I know he didn't,' said Hilary, trying not to feel vexed because she hadn't got in first. She produced the reassembled pension dockets. ‘I raided your waste-paper collection while you were away last night.'

For a moment, Janet looked furious. Redder than usual, she scowled her displeasure from under her fringe. Then, deciding not to make an issue of it, she relaxed. ‘God, you're persistent, aren't you?' she commented.

‘All part of the job,' said Hilary. ‘We've found the bodies of the old couple, by the way. They'd been hidden under the roots of a fallen tree.'

‘I wondered where Andy had put them … He wouldn't tell me.'

‘What did he tell you, when he came to see you?'

‘Oh, that he'd gone home that morning and found his mother missing. Ziggy swore that he hadn't killed Gladys, though. He told Andy she'd died in her bed a couple of months earlier. The old man had kept it secret because he knew there'd be a lot of fuss and trouble. He showed Andy the body, wrapped in plastic sacks and hidden in a cupboard in our old house next door.'

‘So Ziggy had been collecting his wife's pension when she was already dead?'

‘Yes. Well he'd have had to, wouldn't he? He had to keep up the pretence that Gladys was still alive. I'd noticed that the signature on her pension dockets was unusual, lately. It doesn't do to be too officious about these things, though – old people may have arthritis in their hands, or rheumatism, and their signatures do sometimes change.'

‘Did you ask Ziggy about it?'

‘No, we never spoke to each other about anything. Anyway, he would simply have made some excuse, and I'd have had to accept it.'

‘Did Andrew tell you that he'd killed his father?'

‘He said he was responsible for his death, but that he hadn't
meant
to kill him.'

‘And you believed that?'

‘Yes. That's why I agreed to cover for him.'

Hilary gave her a come-off-it look. ‘That's not sufficient reason for you to give false evidence on his behalf,' she said. ‘When Andrew Crackjaw goes to court, he can plead mitigating circumstances. He's not likely to get a heavy sentence, so why on earth should you agree to be involved? You must have known you were committing a criminal offence.'

For the first time, Janet looked downcast. She nodded slowly. ‘Yes, of course I knew … All right, what are you going to charge me with? Conspiring to pervert the course of justice?'

‘Very probably,' said Hilary.

‘First offence, though,' said Janet, sounding brighter. ‘And don't forget that I came here voluntarily to make a full confession, I want that noted in my favour!'

‘It will be. But what I don't understand is
why
you decided to confess. I mean, why now? What brings you here this morning, when you've been holding out so firmly all week?'