Dark Undertakings (40 page)

Karen had gone back to bed when Drew reached home. She was pale and he saw tearstains on her cheeks. ‘What is it?’ he demanded, already knowing.

‘I’m bleeding,’ she told him.

So am I
, he wanted to say, still unsteady from the day’s traumas. Instead he sat down next to her and pulled her to him. ‘How much?’ he asked.

‘Not much. But there shouldn’t be
any
. Oh, Drew. Why is it so difficult? It isn’t supposed to be like this.’

‘Look,’ he murmured, resting his cheek against hers, ‘it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. You’ve had the test, remember. Women often get spotting in the early stages. I remember that distinctly from my training. Would it help to take your mind off it if I tell you what’s been happening to me?’

She nodded like a little girl. ‘I was worried about you. You’ve been ages.’

He told her the whole story, embellishing it with imitations of the bewildered policemen and comments on his own part in the action, but leaving out his reaction to his own minor injury. Then he leant back with a sigh. ‘It’s out of our hands now, anyway,’ he said. ‘So much for Drew Slocombe, Ace Detective.’

‘Mmm,’ she murmured sleepily beside him. He wondered how much she really cared about who killed Jim Lapsford.

There was still plenty of unfinished business, Drew realised, as he carefully extracted his
arm from behind Karen’s shoulders and tiptoed downstairs. He had to phone Daphne and explain his absence from work that afternoon. And he had to straighten out his story before the police summoned him for interview. A nervous fluttering in his stomach reminded him that he could yet find himself in trouble. He could be accused of withholding evidence of a crime, along with Lazarus, who had only wanted to help. He could even lose his job. And Karen could lose the baby – if there ever had been a baby to lose. It might have been simply what they called ‘a chemical pregnancy’. It could all have been wishful thinking from the start.

It had been a long week since Lapsford died. Wearily he picked up the phone to call Daphne. When Olga answered it, he heard an unusual level of animation in her voice; when he asked to speak to Daphne, she almost squealed. ‘About time too! She’s been hoping you’d call, all afternoon. She’s got loads to tell you.’

Daphne came on quickly, her voice loud with portentousness. ‘Drew, we’re in trouble. Not just us, but Julian Lloyd, Sid, Susie … I don’t know who else. Why ever didn’t you say something to me from the start? It’s obvious now that Lapsford should have gone to the Coroner. It’s all a serious mess, it is really.’

‘You wouldn’t have listened to me,’ said
Drew, too tired to watch his words. ‘Nobody wanted to listen to me.’

She paused a moment. ‘Well, I think you’re wrong about that. But we won’t argue. Too late now.’

‘So what changed their minds?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Why didn’t they just go ahead with the cremation?’

‘Oh, that was the dog,’ she said shortly, as if it were obvious.

‘The
dog
?’

‘Desmond phoned me at two, to ask if the dog was coming or not. I said I didn’t know what he was talking about, there wasn’t any dog. Or not any more, because it had been disposed of already. I said you knew that perfectly well.’

‘We never squared that with Monica,’ Drew remembered. ‘And she never asked.’

‘Anyway, it seems that Desmond was bothered by the fact that you’d lied to him, and decided to wait a bit longer before cremating the body. He sensed something must be up and didn’t want to be accused of rushing things, if there was trouble brewing. There’s nothing so final as a cremation, as he knows all too well.’

‘So now there’ll be a post-mortem. He
was
poisoned, you know. We’ve got evidence.’

‘If you think they’ll find it after Sid’s
embalming, you might be disappointed,’ she reminded him. ‘He does a pretty thorough job.’

‘We’ll just have to see then, won’t we? Now just tell me a few more things.’

‘Go on then.’

‘Have I still got a job?’

‘Come on,’ she laughed sarcastically. ‘Our only hope is to make you the hero of the hour. I couldn’t fire you now, even if I wanted to. The press would crucify me, not to mention the good citizens of Bradbourne. What else can I tell you?’

‘Did you know that Jack Merryfield was in love with you?’

He heard the deep sigh. ‘Of course I did. After what happened last Easter, I could hardly be in any doubt.’

‘Which was?’ he prompted.

Her voice dropped; perhaps Olga was within earshot. ‘Jack and Jim and I were all in the King’s Head one evening, and Jim started trying it on with me. Nothing unusual in that, but Jack wasn’t having it. He’d had a few drinks, and came after us outside, spitting in Jim’s face and calling him every filthy name you can think of. Said Jim wasn’t fit to lick my shoes, stuff like that. Then he got all maudlin, saying I was the finest woman in Bradbourne and nobody was going to lay a hand on me while he was around. I laughed it off, but I got the message clear
enough. Scared me a bit, to be honest.’

‘But he never took it any further?’

‘Not till he applied for your job. No way was I going to have him around here every day. Far too complicated.’

‘So it wasn’t Jim’s bad reference that decided you?’

She laughed. ‘I barely even read it. Chucked it in the bin.’

Where Sid found it when they took it out for shredding, and showed it to the wretched Jack, thereby tipping him over the edge from resentment to murder,
Drew concluded.
Such is fate.
‘There is just one more question: why did you visit Karen in hospital?’

‘Julian asked me to. He suspected there was a problem with Susie and his prescription pads and the Viagra.’

‘I see,’ Drew lied weakly, too tired for any more. ‘Thanks for telling me.’

‘That’s okay, Drew. See you tomorrow.’

Before he could warm up some soup for a
much-needed
supper, there was a knock on the door. When he opened it, there was nobody there, just an envelope on the doormat. He opened it cautiously. 

Which more or less tied up all the loose ends, Drew concluded, as he settled down next to Karen. She had dozed all evening and he hadn’t
heard her going to the bathroom: if a fullscale period had started, she’d have had to deal with it. Perhaps they would be spared the heartbreak after all.

He thought about Jack Merryfield, and tried to get inside the man’s mind, to grasp the tangled reasons for doing what he did. To poison somebody, you needed a long slow
drip-drip
of resentment, building up day by day, year by year, to the final idea; the careful planning; the secret nursing of a long-term campaign. The simple idea of doctoring a teabag and then persuading the victim to use it, was as impressive as it was unlikely. Jack must have known every detail of Jim’s routines: the personal teapot and Monica’s preference for coffee. He must have hunted down the ideal bag design, with a single staple holding the thing together.

And who would ever have guessed at Jack’s quiet persistent passion for Daphne? Jim’s betrayal over that; his imperfect parenting of David; his unsavoury sexual proclivities – it all added up to a powerful hatred. There was no doubt that Jack had had ample motivation.

Daphne wasn’t really angry with him; Monica Lapsford was positively grateful. There would be evidence enough to convict Jack, even if it didn’t amount to a capital murder charge. Jim’s use of other substances might lead to trouble for
Susie and Roxanne, but the loss of young Craig would probably soften any judgements against them. Once they got it straight, the police and the courts might conclude that most people in the story had suffered enough. Jack would get a mandatory sentence and David might even acknowledge the man as his father, eventually.

The sounds of traffic and an overhead plane came through the open window. Drew thought about Bradbourne and its people.
A town with no soul,
Roxanne had said. Searching for a pattern in the events of the past week, Drew could find little to condemn Bradbourne, other than a sense of lives frustrated and constrained by the urge for temporary thrills, and the avoidance of responsibility. Roxanne herself had dropped out of society. Monica Lapsford had abandoned any real effort to improve her marriage, turning instead to her boss for distraction. Decent people like Vince and Alicia seemed mere bystanders, doing no harm, but very little good, either. And then there was Daphne Plant, amoral scavenger, looking for the easy way out, fudging the rules, processing dead bodies efficiently and without emotion. She bore her own burden of responsibility. Where she could bring comfort, she brought only a cool politeness; where she could provide a check on the bending of regulations, she only colluded.
Whatever might be going on in her personal life, it did not give her the right to exploit and manipulate her customers and employees.

A soft snore from Karen brought him back to his own life. A lot had changed in recent days. The emotional switchback of potential fatherhood had already carried him away, even if this time it turned out to be a false alarm. The almost accidental blundering into a job as an undertaker would have to be seriously reconsidered. If he chose to stay, he vowed to himself that he would approach the work with the integrity and commitment he knew were necessary for his own peace of mind. He would stay in Bradbourne and see what he could do, in his own small way, to lighten its lack of soul.

R
EBECCA
T
OPE
lives on a smallholding in Herefordshire, with a full complement of livestock, but manages to travel the world and enjoy civilisation from time to time as well. Most of her varied experiences and activities find their way into her books, sooner or later. She is also the author of the Cotswold Mysteries series featuring Thea Osborne.

www.rebeccatope.com
 

T
HE
C
OTSWOLD
M
YSTERIES

A Cotswold Killing

A Cotswold Ordeal

Death in the Cotswolds

A Cotswold Mystery

Blood in the Cotswolds

Slaughter in the Cotswolds

Fear in the Cotswolds

A Grave in the Cotswolds

Deception in the Cotswolds

Malice in the Cotswolds

T
HE
W
EST
C
OUNTRY
M
YSTERIES

A Dirty Death

Dark Undertakings

Death of a Friend

Grave Concerns

A Death to Record

The Sting of Death

A Market for Murder