The Wilt Inheritance (23 page)

‘I’m afraid I can’t be of any assistance. It’s not as though I could even get such a huge thing into my small car, and in any case it’s in the garage being serviced.’ He paused for a moment then went into the house and phoned the service station.

‘I wonder if you would mind sending a lorry up to the Vicarage to take a coffin up to the Hall.’

‘Somebody died up there?’ said the man who had
answered the phone hopefully. ‘Like that horrible bugger Sir-my arse-George?’

‘I’d be glad if you didn’t use that filthy language,’ snapped the Vicar. ‘I’m calling from the Vicarage …’

‘Cor blimey! I do apologise, sir,’ said the mechanic, who knew the Vicar’s views on swearing and bad language. He put the phone down and turned to the only other man in the service station. ‘You’re to take the pick-up and transport a coffin up to the Hall. Evidently some sod’s kicked the bucket up there. Let’s hope it’s that bastard Gadsley.’

The trainee started the pick-up and drove to the Vicarage. The coffin lay just inside the gate with a fraught-looking Eva standing guard over it. But even with her help, the garage man found it too heavy to lift. Finally he ventured to the front door of the Vicarage to ask if there was anyone to help him get it into the pick-up. By this time the Vicar had finished his sermon and agreed to assist the young man. They each took one end of the thing and Eva tried to lift the middle, but it was still too heavy.

‘There must be a very heavy deceased person in it,’ observed the Vicar.

‘Well, it took four men to get it here,’ Eva pointed out helpfully.

‘I suppose we’d better open it and take whoever it is out and then put the body back when we’ve got the coffin up on the truck.’

Eva thought how much Clarissa would hate her
uncle being hauled about the place, but then again Sir George was going to go mad when the coffin was returned. It was hardly her fault. She stood by as the two men lifted the lid, took hold of the blanketed shape and pulled it out.

‘The deceased’s lighter than I expected,’ said the Vicar. ‘And a lot stiffer.’

By the time it was in the back of the pick-up, the blanket had slipped off.

‘Bugger me!’ said the young mechanic, and for once wasn’t rebuked for using filthy language. The Vicar was in too great a state of shock himself to hear or care what anyone else said.

His thoughts were fully concentrated on that broken branch and the motives of the person who had tried to make a sacrilegious idiot of him by conducting a church service for a piece of dead wood. By the time his pulse had returned to its normal rate and he could think sanely again, he was sure he knew who had set this disgraceful trap for him. The Vicar realised exactly who his enemy was: that monster Sir George Gadsley. They had always been at odds with one another, and this was the other man’s damnable way of trying to make the Vicar the laughing stock of the village.

Ignoring Eva’s cries of horror and determined to turn the tables on Sir George, he went to his study and phoned the police. ‘I have reason to believe there has been a very serious crime committed,’ he told
the Sergeant who answered. ‘I want you to come up at once and see the evidence.’

‘Coming straightaway, Vicar.’

The clergyman put down the phone with a smile. He had begun to think it really was possible a crime had been committed at the Hall. He had often heard gunfire in the grounds there, and the villagers refused to go anywhere near the place unless they were collecting someone by taxi or delivering large quantities of alcohol or other expensive goods that made it worth the risk.

By the time the Sergeant and a Constable had arrived they were greeted not only by the Vicar but also one of the local men who had delivered the coffin in the hearse. He said that he was often up at the Hall as he had a contract to cut the grass on half the lawn each week provided, as he put it, the ‘bloody boy with the gun’ was guaranteed to be inside the Hall and forbidden to come out before he left.

‘I’ve been there when he’s shot a deer,’ he’d already told the Vicar, ‘and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d killed other stuff too. He used just to throw stones at people, but it looks like he’s moved on.’ The Vicar repeated this to the Sergeant who nodded as he took it all down. He had had past experience of the lad’s misdemeanours but it looked like this time it was too serious for anyone to intervene, magistrate or no magistrate.

‘And now you’ll want to see the so-called corpse,’
the Vicar announced. ‘And I can certainly corroborate the fact that there’s frequent gunfire up there. A bullet passed overhead when I was walking past along the road a month or so ago. But come and look what we found in the coffin.’

They went round to the yard where the Vicar kept his car.

‘Just open it up,’ he said. He’d closed the lid to add to the policeman’s surprise when he opened it again. A wooden corpse was the last thing he’d be expecting to see.

‘Blimey, that’s not a dead body! Why on earth did they bring a piece of wood down here?’

‘They were ordered to bring the coffin and had no idea what was inside it.’

‘They came with a woman who said she was from Ipford, but that’s miles away,’ put in the garage man.

Again the Vicar intervened. ‘She claimed she was from Ipford. She also told me she was supposed to have been spending the summer up at the Hall, which was why she was accompanying Mr Whoever was meant to be in the coffin. Gadsley asked her to arrange the burial.’

‘So where is she now?’

‘As soon as she saw the piece of wood in there she took off smartish,’ said the garage man. ‘Come to that, I wish I’d done the same. If I’d know it was going to take as long as this, I’d have buggered off too.’

‘Of course, she may well be back up at Sandystones
Hall by now. I think you ought to check. You can use the phone here,’ said the Vicar, giving the garage man a disapproving look.

‘Do you know her name? I mean, I can’t just ask for the lady who was meant to be staying for the summer and has brought a coffin down here.’

‘Oh, I think you can. They’re bound to give you her name and address even if she has gone back to Ipford,’ said the Vicar, eager to create an embarrassing scandal for Sir George. He was helped by the Constable who announced that he’d found what looked like a bullet hole in the log.

‘It certainly appears to be one,’ said the Sergeant, to the Vicar’s delight. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see when forensics have done an or … auto … made a thorough examination of the log.’

By this time the Vicar was in a state of high excitement. The fact that the Sergeant had almost said ‘autopsy’ had been a moment so perfect he would treasure it for as long as he lived. He decided it was time to call in a senior detective to take charge. That way the scandal would really escalate, with Sir George’s name appearing on the front page of every dreadful popular paper. The best thing of all would be for the detective to find a genuine murder victim, though the Vicar was too godly to actively hope for that.

Instead he discreetly suggested bringing in higher police authorities.

The local Sergeant was only too ready to agree.
He was feeling distinctly peculiar, looking at that branch and trying to make sense of its sinister presence in the ornate coffin. The Vicar’s wife came out into the yard then and asked if they would like some tea or coffee. The Sergeant shook his head and thanked her. He really wanted something much stronger, like brandy, but it didn’t seem appropriate to say so in the present company. Instead he accepted the Vicar’s offer of the use of his telephone and called the Chief Superintendent at Ligneham, who took some persuading that the Sergeant wasn’t mad, pulling his leg, or more likely drunk or at any rate suffering from some morbid hallucination.

‘No sane person puts a piece of timber into an expensive coffin and expects a respectable parson to bury the damned thing,’ he barked.

‘Well, someone has done so. And, to cap it all, there appears to be a bullet wound in it.’

‘A bullet wound? In a tree trunk? You’re having me on. You can’t get … Well, I suppose if it’s a very small tree.’

‘It isn’t. I mean, wasn’t. It is the branch of a moderately sized tree that’s been pollarded.’

‘Pollarded? And that would be your professional opinion, would it? Are you a policeman, Sergeant, or a bloody gardener?’

Half an hour later two police cars with plainclothes officers in them had arrived and were parked conspicuously outside the Vicarage, much to the annoyance
of the Vicar who was wondering what rumours about him were now being spread through the village. On the other hand, the Superintendent no longer doubted the Sergeant’s sanity. The lump of wood in the back of the truck proved he had indeed been telling the truth. Now the Vicar was telling him how he had been fired at, and only narrowly missed, close to the Hall by a youth with a gun the previous Wednesday.

‘With an utter disregard for public safety, Sir George seems to encourage the boy to use lethal weapons on innocent people walking past the Hall,’ the Vicar continued damningly. ‘He is either a very bad shot or may, I suppose, be deliberately aiming above people’s heads. I suspect it’s because that family are so determined to prevent anyone intruding on their property. In fact, they’ve always been like that. One of these days a passerby is going to be killed, you mark my words.’

‘And how old would you say this boy is?’

‘He can’t be much more than seventeen. Maybe younger, for all I know,’ the Vicar exaggerated.

‘Sounds like he’s the same lad who was in trouble before, but now he’s using a rifle and a powerful one at that. It would account for the depth of the bullet hole in the log,’ said the Superintendent.

‘There’s no doubt about that, but if we’re to prove it we’ll need to match the bullet to the rifle, which could take a while,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Hope he doesn’t do any more damage in the meantime.’

The Vicar looked puzzled.

‘Why not remove the bullet now and take it with you when you go to the Hall? It shouldn’t be too difficult,’ he said. ‘I have an excellent electric saw and chisels galore. We could hack it out in no time at all.’ But the Superintendent shook his head.

‘No, we’ll need to leave this as it is. It’s evidence, you know, so we can’t touch it.’

‘Well, if you can’t touch it, how on earth are you going to be able to identify the gun?’

‘Calm down, sir. Calm down. From what you’ve told me about pot-shots over the wall and the like, I reckon we’ve already got enough to nail these friends of yours.’

The Vicar almost levitated from his chair in disgust.

‘They’re no friends of mine, I assure you. That infernal man has hated me for years.’

‘It was just an expression, Vicar. But I thought your lot were everyone’s friends – aren’t you meant to love your fellow men?’ asked the Superintendent.

‘Yes, yes. And of course I do – on one level,’ protested the Vicar, growing increasingly irate. ‘But you know, officer, he has always refused to let me carry out Christian burials in his private graveyard.’

‘Has he actually buried anyone there?’ The Superintendent looked particularly interested in hearing more about that.

‘Not as far as I know. But, don’t you see? That must be why he sent down this coffin with a log in it – to
try to make a fool out of me because I wrote a letter to the local paper saying that private graveyards are wrong.’

The Sergeant and Superintendent exchanged glances.

‘And is that it, sir?’

‘Well, no. Since that piece appeared he’s cut me – not that it bothered me. But then he began to spread really scandalous rumours about me …’

‘If they are as nasty as you’re suggesting, why haven’t you sued him? It seems the obvious thing to have done.’

‘Because the villagers generally dislike Sir George so much he wasn’t believed. And in any case, I don’t want an accusation like that spread all over the newspapers.’

‘What sort of accusation? Perhaps we could prosecute Sir George.’

‘Oh, the usual. That I’m a pervert who interferes with small boys,’ the Vicar told him.

The Superintendent thought this over for some moments.

‘And are you, sir?’

‘How dare you! Of course I’m not. You can ask my wife, if you don’t believe me. I don’t even like small boys … nasty, vicious little things. Or big boys, come to that.’

The Superintendent thought about reminding the Vicar about the inclusiveness of Christian love again,
but thought better of it. There was a short silence and then he announced, ‘I think it’s about time I met Sir George Gadsley. In the meantime, Sergeant, can you get that branch back to Ligneham and have it locked up in the evidence room? Now then, Vicar, is there anything else we should know?’

‘Well, I ought in all conscience to warn you that Sir George can be a difficult customer. Drinks like a fish as does his wife – and, of course, she’s very keen on men. Frankly, if it weren’t uncharitable I’d call her something worse.’

‘What would you call her then?’

‘There’s really only one word for it,’ said the Vicar with relish. ‘Nymphomaniac.’

‘Now now, Vicar, we’ll be cautioning you next, for spreading malicious rumours.’

The clergyman turned red but couldn’t resist saying, ‘I think not, Superintendent, since all I’ve said is absolutely true. You can ask that boy outside. He works at the garage.’

Bidding him good day while thinking once again that this man of the cloth wasn’t all he was cracked up to be, the Superintendent went off to question the trainee mechanic about the woman who had accompanied the coffin. The young man had never met her before.

‘Proper scared she looked when she took off, saying something about needing to get back to her
daughters. Mind you, I’m not sure she was entirely all there in the first place. When she saw the branch, she kept saying it was a leg.’

‘Was it her accent? Perhaps she meant log?’

‘No, she definitely said a leg … when anyone could see it was just a lump of wood. And pollarded at that.’

Back at the Hall, Wilt felt as though he had been tramping the woods for hours. Although he’d shouted and sworn and then resorted to broadcasting blackmail and promises, the quads had failed to materialise. He found one of the girls’ cardigan and a pair of socks at the edge of the lake and briefly wondered whether something terrible had happened to them. It seemed unlikely that all four would have drowned at once, but neither would he have put it past them. On the other hand, it was more likely that they would fake their own deaths and were at that very moment hidden somewhere nearby, giggling at him. He experimented with whirling round suddenly, hoping to catch them out, but just received some very curious looks
from the caterers who were busy packing up their stuff.