Beneath the Soil (7 page)

‘Stay cool, man. She hardly spoke to you. It was me she was gunning for. Well, and Mum. Sorry.' Tom turned to Suzie. ‘I got you into this.'

‘Not entirely. I walked into it with my eyes open. I could have let you go back to Saddlers Wood on your own.'

‘But you guessed we were heading into trouble and you wanted to be there to stop a diplomatic incident. That's over and above the call of duty, Mum.' He gave her that bewitching smile.

‘Well, partly. But I have to admit I was curious myself. I know we didn't have much to go on, but I couldn't bear the thought that they might pin it on an innocent man because we hadn't said anything.'

‘You're forgetting something,' Dave said morosely. ‘Ballistics. They must know by now whether she was killed with Philip Caseley's gun.'

Tom and Suzie stopped dead in the middle of the police station car park. A cold hand closed over Suzie's heart. How could she not have thought of that? She had an instant vivid picture of Philip Caseley emerging from the footpath at the side of the track, gripping his shotgun. Of the shot that had echoed through the still country air only moments earlier. What, or whom, had the farmer been firing at then? Had Eileen Caseley been killed with that same gun, with the sort of lead shot you would use on a pheasant or rabbit? Or could a shotgun fire a single bullet? Did Philip Caseley have another weapon – a rifle, perhaps? And could she honestly tell the difference?

She knew an intense frustration that these were questions she could not ask the police.

It was, DCI Brewer had made abundantly clear, nothing to do with her.

And yet she felt that it was. She had met a frightened woman in that farmyard. Instead of trying harder to find out what was wrong, she had asked her trivial questions about family history. She had encroached on the hospitality of a woman who clearly had little time or money to spare. Her thoughts had been in the past, and she had allowed herself to close her mind to what was happening in the present, to tell herself precisely what Chief Inspector Brewer thought: that it was none of her business.

And yet … Was it only that feeling of instinctive alarm for her personal safety that had changed her mind? That crack of dead wood from the trees around the clearing? That sense of someone watching her unseen?

Still, when she had made that first phone call to the police on Saturday evening, it had certainly been domestic violence she had been afraid of – the apparently obvious conclusion that Eileen Caseley had been threatened by her husband.

A tiny voice reminded her of that old newspaper report about Richard Day finding his neighbour's wife dead on the kitchen floor. Her fleeting thought that he might have been in some way involved. She pushed the thought away.

If Philip Caseley had been opposing someone who was prospecting for minerals, that might make him a target. But that was very far-fetched. And why should it put Eileen in danger? Dave was right; if the police were still holding Philip Caseley, it must be because they knew she had been shot with his gun.

She shook herself back to the present.

‘Sorry, folks. I've got to fly. I'm an hour late for work already.'

T
hree weeks later, Millie looked up from leafing through the local paper.

‘Here, Mum, this'll interest you. There's an announcement of the funeral of that woman who was shot.'

She passed the paper over, pointing to the place on the page.

Suzie read the brief details. Two p.m. at the church of St Michael in Moortown. No flowers. Donations to the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution. There was no mention of the dramatic way Eileen Caseley had met her death.

There was a sad finality about it. It was as though all the phone calls and the statements to the police, that search in Saddlers Wood, had been an attempt to stave off the reality of what had happened. As though they could discover something that would reverse the terrible truth.

But holding the paper in her hand, looking at the black-and-white notice of the funeral, brought it home in all its inevitability. Eileen Caseley was dead. Murdered. They would never again see that careworn woman who had given them cups of tea and tried her best to cover up the agitation she had clearly been feeling. Whatever they might have done to help her, it was too late now.

Millie's voice seemed to come to her from a great distance.

‘Do you suppose they'll let her husband out to go to the funeral?'

The church of St Michael the Archangel was set back, in a large churchyard, from the square in Moortown. As she stepped off the bus, Suzie was struck by its size. It seemed out of proportion to the little town on the fringes of the moor.

Her historian's mind provided the instant answer. Wool. In centuries gone by, the sheep of the West Country had provided the woollen cloth for which it was famous. Woolmasters had grown rich on the trade and expressed their gratitude through the endowment of large churches. A branch of her own family had been among them. Their names were inscribed on grave slabs set in the floor of the aisle.

The dwindling population of modern times could surely not provide a regular congregation to fill such a building.

But today the square was thick with people in sober dress, making their way towards the church.

Suzie wondered if they were all friends of Eileen Caseley. Did that woman on the bus speak for many others who protested Philip's innocence? Or were they simply drawn to the funeral by the notoriety of the murder?

As she joined the flow of people through the churchyard gate, Suzie felt that had been an unworthy thought. Most faces had a solemn look, in keeping with their black clothes. It was not sensationalism that had drawn them here, but rather, a strong sense of community.

What had brought
her
here – a single meeting with the dead woman?

She found it hard to explain, even to herself, what had made her come. She hadn't told Nick or the children. She had not asked Nick if she could use the car this afternoon. Nick had a successful architectural practice and Suzie a small independent income from running the office of a charity. The Fewings could have afforded a second car, but there was a good bus service in the cathedral city. Suzie only needed to go beyond the reach of public transport on family history expeditions to rural parishes, or on country walks, and then Nick was always happy to drive her.

So today she had dressed in a white shirt and grey skirt, with a mauve jacket, and taken the bus. Looking at the sea of black around her she felt a surprised strangeness. At her Methodist church it was more common to have a small family funeral service at the cemetery or crematorium, and then a big service at the church to celebrate that person's life.

Here, the setting was more traditional. Except … she caught a sharp breath of indignation. Television cameras were set up, filming the mourners as they approached the church door. Other photographers jostled among the gravestones, vying with each other for the best shots. As the bulbs flashed, she had a startled mental image of herself on tonight's TV or in the next edition of the local paper. She would need to explain to the family what she was doing here. She was still not sure that she could.

But no, she wasn't important. Editors would want a more dramatic photograph. The husband? Just for a moment Suzie checked her step on the cobbled path. Would they let Philip Caseley out of prison to attend his wife's funeral. Would he appear in handcuffs? Then it occurred to her that the son from Australia must be here. What would that meeting of father and son be like?

She carried on walking, more soberly now. She had fallen into the obvious way of thinking that Philip must be guilty. But what if he were not? She tried to think of the torment he must be going through, with everyone he knew suspecting him, perhaps even his son.

‘I didn't expect to see you here. I thought you said you'd only seen her the once.'

Suzie looked up with a guilty start. It took a moment for her to place the rosy-faced woman in a black coat and skirt, who had just spoken to her reprovingly. Then she remembered. The neighbouring farmer who had been driving her Land Rover to see to the Caseleys' sheep.

She coloured. ‘Yes. I really don't know why I'm here. But she was kind to us. Even though … well, we probably caught her at a bad time. But she gave us tea and told us where we could find the cottage where my family lived. Coming here was … well, a way of saying thank you.'

The dark eyes regarded her suspiciously. ‘Looks like the world and his wife have turned out. Just because they've seen it on the telly. There's people here I've never seen before.'

So these were not all local people.

Suzie looked round her with renewed curiosity. Would Detective Chief Inspector Brewer be here? Wasn't that what the police did? Hovered on the edge of the victim's funeral, in the likelihood that the murderer would be there among the crowd, unable to resist the temptation to see their crime through to the end?

She was suddenly at the church door, being carried in by the slowly moving press of mourners. The farmer who had spoken to her marched up the aisle to sit near the front. Suzie looked around for somewhere less conspicuous. She slipped into a pew in a side aisle, near the back. Between the pillars she could see the church filling up.

She craned her neck to get a better view of the front pews. There was a tall, broad-shouldered man she did not recognize, sitting alone. Eileen's Caseley's son? But the figure she had half expected and feared to see was not there. Philip Caseley hadn't come. Unless the police intended to smuggle him in at the last moment.

She thought with a sudden ache of what it must be like to sit in a cell, knowing his wife's funeral was taking place, and not be there. Picturing the church filled with all his farming friends, and wondering what they were thinking. She wondered whether his son had been to visit him in prison, and what would happen to the farm when Eileen Caseley was put to rest.

Suddenly she was aware of a commotion in the churchyard outside. The congregation's heads were turning in alarm. Suzie turned with them. From her pew, she could see little through the door, but she had the impression of flash bulbs lighting up the dark yews.

There was a hiss of indrawn breath. A current of murmurs ran through the pews. Suzie started as two men entered the church. The nearest to her was a burly prison warder in uniform. Handcuffed to him was a lean man in a black suit and tie. His fairish hair was slicked back today, unlike his dishevelled appearance when he had burst from the path in Saddlers Wood carrying a shotgun. But there was no mistaking that this was Philip Caseley.

He had come.

The murmurs stilled. The congregation watched in silence as the widower made his way up the aisle to take his seat with his escort in the front pew opposite his son.

In the long hush that followed, Matthew Caseley did not turn his head to look at his father.

The congregation was standing. That could only mean one thing. Suzie turned her head. Eileen Caseley's coffin was being carried solemnly up the aisle.

As the procession passed behind a pillar, Suzie found herself looking straight across the nave. In the side aisle opposite her stood a tall woman with long fair hair. Her heart jumped with something that was not quite surprise. She had been right. Chief Inspector Brewer was here to watch proceedings.

A more uncomfortable thought struck her as their eyes met across the church. What would DCI Brewer make of Suzie's presence here?

The service was over. The large congregation, protective or curious, was edging its way out of the church door. Suzie wondered as she waited her turn whether they would all be making their way to the top end of the churchyard, where an extension had been opened beyond the old stone wall for newer graves. Or was the committal at the graveside only for close family and friends?

The thinning crowd ahead of her made different decisions. Most headed straight down the path between the yews to the church gate which opened on to the town square. A smaller number, especially those who had sat near the front of the church, were steadily climbing the narrower path behind the church. Philip Caseley and his warder were there too, leaving a conspicuous gap between them and the others.

Suzie hesitated, then followed them. She didn't know why. In no way could she count herself a friend of Eileen Caseley. She had only met her once.

By the time she reached the gate in the wall which led to the new intake, she realised that she was almost the last of those who had chosen to follow the coffin to its burial. The chief mourners were already gathered around the open grave. A sheet of artificial grass covered the mound of newly dug earth at the side. Two floral wreaths had been laid upon it. One, she was sure, must be from the son from Australia who had returned alone for his mother's funeral. Was the other from Philip, her husband and, in the eyes of the world, her murderer?

Would it have been better if he had stayed in prison? The idea haunted Suzie. She tried to imagine Nick dead, and herself prevented from attending his funeral.

She shuddered violently. What a horrible thing to think. Awful enough to imagine that Nick might die in his forties and leave her alone. But that she who loved him might be in prison awaiting trial for his murder … What black thoughts was she allowing herself to think?

But someone had killed Eileen Caseley. It happened all the time. Two women a week killed by their spouse or partner, present or ex. It was a terrifying statistic. Why should she think that Philip Caseley was not one of those men? What did she know about him, or the tensions between him and Eileen?

The rough stone surface of the wall was digging into her hand. She hadn't realised she was gripping it so hard until she gathered her wandering thoughts.

Too late now to join the group around the grave. She could hear the priest intoning the words of the committal. ‘
Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes.
' It would have been inappropriate for her to be there, anyway. She was a stranger to them. She remembered the inquisitive, almost hostile stare of the neighbour who had been minding the Caseley sheep. What further questions would she be asking if she noticed that Suzie had followed them?