Grave Concerns (30 page)

The smell and frustration were both urging her to make an early departure. ‘I’ll go now,’ she said. ‘Is there anything you want me to tell Drew?’

‘Tell him he doesn’t owe me anything. There is a bit more to the story than I’ve told him, but it doesn’t really add anything important. Tell him I’m sorry to have involved him in my madhouse.’

The stirring of the baby, and Genevieve’s instant tense reaction, drove Maggs quickly out of the room. ‘I’ll let myself out,’ she muttered to the oblivious woman. But as she reached the front door, she heard a key turning in the lock from outside and it opened towards her.

She recognised the nephew, Stuart, with some gratification. ‘I thought you were going to be out till late,’ she said, with a familiarity which seemed to take him aback.

‘What?’ he said, staring at her. ‘Who might you be, then?’

‘It’s a long story,’ she said. ‘I hear you’re holding everything together here. Quite a hero, from the sound of it.’

He closed the door behind him, and stood close to Maggs in the small hallway. ‘Are you one of the neighbours?’ he asked.

‘No, and I’m not a health visitor either,’ she grinned. ‘I’m from Peaceful Repose Funerals, if that means anything to you.’ She watched his startled reaction closely, not knowing how much of the story he’d been told. She decided to venture further. ‘Where your grandmother’s buried.’

Her gratification intensified, as he gripped her arm, and brought his face within an inch of hers. ‘What do you know about my grandmother?’ he hissed, glancing up the stairs and towards the lounge door, as if afraid of being overheard. ‘Look – we can’t talk here. Give me a minute and I’ll take you for a drink.’

‘OK,’ she said nonchalently, wondering if he could see the way her heart was thumping. ‘I’ll wait outside for you, shall I?’

They walked to a nearby pub, which turned out to be so upmarket that anyone wanting nothing more than a beer was regarded as peculiar. There was nowhere to sit other than nasty little tables arranged much too close together. Maggs eyed it with distaste. ‘Call this a pub!’ she grumbled.

He grinned at her. ‘It’s terrible, isn’t it. But I can’t go far – Genevieve’s going to need me in a bit.’

‘How come you’re so good with babies?’ she asked, as they stood together at the bar.

‘Eldest of five,’ he shrugged. ‘It just seems to come natural to me.’ Carrying both glasses, he led the way to the remotest table he could find, and arranged himself and Maggs so they both had their back to the rest of the customers. ‘Now,’ said Stuart firmly, ‘tell me what you know about my gran.’

Maggs said carefully, ‘Your aunt approached my boss, wanting him to help her find out what became of your gran. It looks very likely that an unidentified body that was buried in our field is actually her.’

She watched him closely for a reaction. ‘Your
field
?’ he repeated, apparently bewildered.

She explained briefly about Peaceful Repose.

‘And has your boss come up with anything?’ the boy asked. ‘What about the police?’

Good question
, thought Maggs. ‘They decided
not to go to the police until there’s something more definite to tell them,’ she said. ‘At the moment it’s all guesswork and supposition.’

Stuart blew out his cheeks, and shook his head wonderingly. ‘Wait till my mum hears all this!’ he said. ‘She thinks gran’s still overseas somewhere – mind you, she was beginning to get worried. That’s one reason she wanted me to come down here. To see if Genevieve knew where she was. She’d asked Gen on the phone, but always got fobbed off.’

‘And what did Genevieve say when you asked her?’

‘She said she didn’t think there was any cause to worry, and why didn’t I stay with them for a bit. Give myself a change of scene, get a little job. It’s a strange sort of set-up they’ve got here. Willard not here most of the time, and I’m beginning to think my aunt’s not right in the head. She never bought a thing for that baby, you know. I had to go and get nappies, and some woman from the clinic brought a bag of clothes this morning. The old doctor chap must have fixed that up. And do you know what she wants to call it?’

Maggs shrugged.

‘
Apricot!
’ he burst out with profound scorn. ‘What kind of a name is that for a baby?’

‘Could be worse,’ said Maggs feelingly.

‘Why? What’s your real name, then?’

‘Mind your own business,’ said the girl whose official name was Marigold Beacon. ‘What about your gran? Can you think of anyone who might have killed her and buried her in our field? Last summer, it was. There’s a witness who says it was on the twelfth of August. Your aunt and uncle say there were in London that night, at a play and then a hotel. We can find out whether that’s true, of course.’

Stuart widened his eyes. ‘You’re not suggesting Aunt Gen did it, are you?’

Damn
thought Maggs.
I was going to keep quiet about that part
.

‘We’re keeping an open mind,’ she said quickly. ‘When did you last see your gran?’

‘I last saw my gran six years ago, when I was thirteen,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t one for family visits. According to my mum, she was never really right after my uncle Nathan died. I expect you know all about that.’

‘Not right – in what way?’ she enquired.

‘It must have been the grief, I suppose. She just went crazy, rushing off to foreign countries, and never telling anybody where she was. She sent postcards now and then, but never told us where we could find her.’

‘I see,’ Maggs tried to sound encouraging, but her companion had just caught sight of the clock
above the bar. ‘Did you ever meet Nathan?’

‘Oh yes!’ he said readily. ‘He was in a thing called PHAB – Physically Handicapped and Able-Bodied. We had a junior group at our school, and there was a sort of exchange once – like with French schools. I wasn’t really involved – I’m needed on the farm too much in the summer – but I did go out once or twice with them. Nathan had a girlfriend who’d come along with us.’

‘Was she handicapped as well?’

‘Sarah? No, no, not at all. She was very healthy. Pushed his wheelchair for him. Funny couple, but she obviously really loved him. Must have been devastated when he died. Though I never heard anything about her again.’

Sarah?
Maggs mused,
Now where does a Sarah fit in?
‘So – what was Nathan like?’ she said aloud.

He thought for a moment. ‘He never took much notice of me. I thought he was a bit self-obsessed to be honest. But he must have been different with Sarah. She was mad about him – at least that’s how it looked to me at the time. He was quite good-looking. Big grey eyes with long lashes.’

‘How old would he have been then?’

‘He was twenty, and she was more or less the same. They were in the senior section. She’s probably married with kids by now. Forgotten all about him.’

‘Probably,’ Maggs agreed carelessly. ‘Do you want another drink?’

‘No, thanks – I can’t stay any longer,’ he said. ‘I told Auntie Gen I’d only be half an hour. I’ll see you again, maybe?’

‘Maybe,’ she shrugged, delightedly aware that he was reluctant to tear himself away. ‘Give you a break from babycare.’

‘Yeah,’ he grinned. ‘I’m no saint, you know. Caring’s all very well for a while, but I’ve got my own life to live.’

Maggs sighed with relief. ‘You don’t know how glad I am to hear that,’ she told him.

‘I’ll be going then,’ he said again ‘You’ve told me quite a story.’ He scratched his head distractedly. ‘I need to have a proper think about it all. If someone has murdered my gran, then we’ll want to see justice done. It’s no good Genevieve thinking we can just carry on without telling anyone. She’s not the only person in this family.’

Next morning, Maggs was early at the office, eager to bring Drew up to date on her encounter with Stuart. But Drew was there even more punctually, with other matters on his mind.

He and Jeffrey were standing awkwardly beside the desk when Maggs walked in. The atmosphere was full of tension, both men wearing solemn
expressions. ‘What happened?’ she demanded. ‘Where’s Stephanie?’

Drew looked at her without speaking, and she could see he was wondering how much to tell her.

‘You may as well give it her,’ Jeffrey mumbled. ‘Don’t hold back on my account.’

‘I caught Jeffrey putting up another of those – things,’ Drew said. ‘Only this time it had a bat and two rabbits attached to it. Stephanie’s gone to Sally Harris’s this morning, by the way. The woman in the village with the twins.’

Maggs blinked. ‘Bats are protected,’ she said foolishly. ‘You’re not allowed to kill them.’

‘Bugger that,’ snarled the gravedigger. ‘I find bats in my roof, I’m goin’ to kill ’em, protected or otherwise.’

‘But
why
?’ Drew pleaded, clearly not for the first time. ‘You’re not some sort of Satanist, are you?’

Maggs guffawed at that. ‘Course he isn’t,’ she said scornfully. ‘I bet you someone put him up to it. He’d never have thought of it on his own.’

Drew frowned. ‘I suppose only an insider would know the best times to do it – and the places you can get in without coming through the gate. I chained it shut, like we said,’ he told her.

‘Why do you always feel guilty when something bad happens?’ Maggs asked impatiently. ‘Come to that,’ she added, as a thought struck her, ‘it was
probably me that gave him the idea. Remember I told you we’d been talking about voodoo, weeks ago now?’

Drew shrugged his shoulders helplessly and she turned to Jeffrey. ‘How much did they pay you to mess things up for us with this rubbish?’ she demanded.

The man stared at her stonily, and said nothing.

‘We thought you were part of our team,’ said Drew reproachfully.

Maggs chewed her lip. ‘I know who it must have been,’ she announced. ‘There’s only one person who’d want to put us out of business before we get too popular.’

Drew seemed to come to life. He might be a bit feeble at times, Maggs thought, but he was never stupid. ‘You mean Daphne Plant, don’t you?’ he said quietly. Keeping his eyes on the gravedigger, he repeated, ‘Daphne Plant. That’s right, isn’t it, Jeffrey?’

‘Might be,’ the man mumbled. ‘You’ll never prove it, though.’

Maggs felt a surge of rage. ‘Oh yes we will!’ she said. ‘We’ll give the whole story to the papers. It’ll be a challenge to Daphne to sue us for libel. And she won’t dare do that, because the story’ll be true.’ She laughed shrilly. ‘How about it, Drew? Isn’t that what we should do?’

‘It’s a nice idea,’ he agreed, slowly. ‘But the papers would never cooperate. They’d want evidence first. And we couldn’t do that until we’d been to the police and made a complaint. Better just to go to Daphne direct, I should think.’

‘And the letters!’ Maggs remembered. ‘Who sent those letters?’

Jeffrey looked genuinely confused. ‘Don’t know about no letters,’ he asserted.

‘Daphne herself must have done it,’ Drew concluded. ‘She surely wouldn’t have involved anyone else – and I don’t think Jeffrey even knows how to turn a computer on.’

‘The devious cow,’ stormed Maggs. ‘And everyone thinking she’s so respectable! Pillar of the community.’

‘She must have seen us as a real threat,’ Drew muttered. ‘I never thought she’d take me so seriously.’

‘But ye can’t go to the police, can ’ee?’ Jeffrey burst out. ‘On account of that murdered woman out there, and you knowing more than you’ve let on. If the police get wind of what’s been going on, it’s trouble for you, Drew Slocombe.’

Drew crumbled in the face of this sudden attack. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he stammered.

‘Oh yes you do. People coming to weep over the grave, cars coming past and stopping when they think nobody’s looking. That grave’s had
more visitors in the past week than all the rest put together. For somebody with no name, that’s a bit strange, to my mind. And if I were to go and tell the police about it, they’d have some nasty questions for ’ee. Wouldn’t like that, I dare say?’

Drew took a deep breath. ‘When have you seen these people?’ he asked. ‘I only know of one man, who came a few days ago.’

Maggs backed him up. ‘Yeah – I’ve only seen one man, too. And he was from the Council – wasn’t he, Drew? Come to check everything had been done properly.’

‘Bollocks!’ said Jeffrey nastily. ‘Don’t you try your lies on me, girl. Council workers don’t kneel in the grass blubbing over an unknown corpse. I saw ’un when I passed by.’

‘All right, that’s enough,’ said Drew, regaining control. ‘We’ll leave it for now. Just tell me, Jeffrey – do you still want to work for me here?’

‘Work?’ the man laughed derisively. ‘Call that work? Buggerin’ about with willow baskets and reading stupid poems over dead dogs?’

‘I take it that’s a no,’ Drew returned, with dignity. ‘In that case, I’d prefer not to see you around here again. Think yourself lucky we’re letting you off so lightly. Maggs, we have things to do. We’ve wasted too much time already.’

‘Right,’ she said.

Drew and Maggs spent much of the morning debating her respective encounters of the previous evening. Drew was openly dismissive of her theory that Genevieve had after all been responsible for her mother’s death. ‘Of course it wasn’t Genevieve,’ he insisted. ‘It did cross my mind, but it makes no sense at all to think it might have been.’

‘It starts to make a lot of sense,’ Maggs countered. ‘She hasn’t told you a single word of truth from start to finish. Did you phone that hotel?’

‘I think she’s told me the truth as she sees it,’ he disagreed quietly. And, no, I got sidetracked by this business with Jeffrey. I’ll do it in a minute.’

‘They won’t tell you unless you pretend you’re the police. And I bet you daren’t do that.’

‘Watch me,’ he said crossly, and grabbed the phone. Sparing no expense, he tapped in 192, for Directory Enquiries, and quickly got the number for the Regent Palace Hotel in London West One.

Refusing to meet Maggs’s eye, he plunged in when a voice announced that he was speaking to the hotel in question. ‘Oh, hello. This is the West Somerset police here – I need confirmation of a booking you had, last August the 12
^th
. A Mr and Mrs Slater are claiming that they stayed that night with you. Would you check it for me, please?’