This Private Plot (3 page)

Oliver climbed the ladder, reaching for the blossom-laden branches of the horse chestnut for support, and stood on the top step.

“This is as high as I got last night,” he called down. “When I stood on tiptoe, I was face-to-face with Dennis, not a pretty sight under the circumstances. And I could just about touch the knot that tied the rope to a branch.”

“So you could easily hang yourself, if it becomes advisable.”

“
I
could, yes,” Oliver agreed, too enthusiastic to be sidetracked by Mallard's comment. “I'm an inch or two under six feet tall. But Dennis Breedlove was a good six inches shorter than me. It was one of the reasons why children loved him when he was on the radio—they claimed they could tell from his voice that he wasn't much bigger than them.”

“So you think Breedlove was too short to reach the branch and tie the rope.”

Oliver rattled down the ladder. “Exactly.”

“Could he have tossed the rope over the branch and bent it downwards while he tied the knot?”

Oliver shook his head. “It's an oak tree. Not much flexibility in those lower limbs. A bit like old Dennis himself. And even if it did bend, it would surely have stayed bent from the weight of the body. Dennis's feet were floating a good three inches above the top step of the ladder.”

“Then he can't have been standing on the ladder when he did the deed. He must have climbed up into the tree to tie the rope.”

“In that case, how did he manage to kick the ladder over?”

“Perhaps it fell down when he stepped off it.”

Oliver considered this as they wandered out of the tree's shade. “Well, that's possible I suppose. But it still leaves the question of the short rope. It was just a couple of feet from the knot to the noose. Not much of a drop.”

“D.S. Culpepper told me the rope was only about eight feet long to start with. Tying a proper hangman's noose would shorten it considerably.”

Oliver picked up Effie's book with his thumb and forefinger and absently let it swing. “You'd think if Dennis was going to all this trouble—perfectly tied noose, ancient village gibbet—he'd have some concept of the basic principles of hanging.”

“Hanging's a science as well as an art. Suicides rarely get it right. You need a drop at least equal to your height to break your neck, a quick death. Even the public hangman used to have a few failures. Too short a rope, and the poor bugger slowly chokes to death, which is what happened to Uncle Dennis. Too long, on the other hand, and you can decapitate your client. A messy alternative, but at least it's thorough. Ask the French.”

“Most people think Jayne Mansfield was decapitated when she died in that car crash. She wasn't. That's a good example of the new trivia I plan to write about.”

Mallard closed his eyes, as if in pain. “Oliver, can you focus? I have to get to Stratford for my next rehearsal.”

“Sorry. I just think you can answer a lot of questions if you imagine a six-foot-plus man such as yourself tying the noose to the branch first and then lifting Uncle Dennis into it while still standing on the ladder. After all, why would a supposedly suicidal octogenarian carry an eight-foot stepladder all the way up to the Synne Oak on his own and then apparently hang himself by leaping upwards into a dangling noose? Why not just go into the garage and run the car? Why was the last act of his life so complicated?”

“To make a point,” said Mallard, “you'd better talk to Culpepper. He may have something to show you.”

“Did Dennis leave a note, then?”

“In a way. But he didn't write it himself.”

“You're being annoyingly cryptic, Uncle Tim.”

Mallard tousled Oliver's hair briefly, as if his nephew were a five-year-old. Oliver didn't resent the gesture. “Go and see Culpepper. You'll understand.”

He turned toward the house. Oliver realized he was still holding the book from his father's library. He cut across the lawn to the open French windows of the ground-floor study where Brigadier Swithin kept his collections of cast-iron toy soldiers, which his sons had never been allowed to touch, and books that were mostly about war in the twentieth century, which his sons had never asked to read. Oliver let his eyes adjust to the sudden shade, wondering where his father filed the books on local traditions.

“Who's there?” It was a sharp cry, from the depths of a leather wing chair near the empty fireplace. If Bob Swithin had been dozing over his magazine, he would never have admitted it.

“It's me, Father. Oliver.”

He removed the resented reading glasses. His eyes were dark and small, dwarfed by untidy eyebrows, the only hair visible on his glossy head. Oliver was reminded again of his gratitude that male baldness was inherited from the mother's DNA—although he had a nagging feeling this was another example of a fact that was widely known but completely wrong. It did seem to be the case that much of the anti-trivia he was collecting was incorrect. The Victorians didn't cover up the legs of their pianos to disguise their lascivious profile, for example. There's no evidence that Anne Boleyn had six fingers
or
three nipples. And Catherine the Great decidedly did not die while, well…

“Something I can help you with?” asked his father.

“Just returning the book Effie borrowed this morning.”

He breathed deeply, as if relieved that the encounter would involve nothing more parental.

“Effie, yes,” he said. “Spirited lass. Been courting her for a while now, eh?”

“Nine months. Longest girlfriend ever.” The brusque phrasing that Oliver fell into when talking to his father gave the last comment a surreal twist, but he knew it wouldn't register in the brigadier's practical mind.

“Well, don't mess it up then.”

“I'll do my best.” Oliver was aware that his best had generally failed to meet his father's standards and that, more than anyone, Bob Swithin was glad that his son wrote his children's books under a pseudonym. Bob had never really forgiven Oliver for surpassing him in height at age fourteen.

“Yes, rather fond of Effie. Reminds me a bit of your sister.” He referred to his only daughter, Eve, who came between Oliver and Toby in birth order and who was currently in New York. Oliver loved Eve and admired her achievements, so he took the comparison as a compliment, but he'd also noted that his father would create any opportunity to mention his favorite child, whose non-military ambitions offended him less because she was not male. Oliver spotted the gap on the shelves where the black book usually sat.

“Oh, one more thing, Oliver,” the brigadier called as his son headed for the door. “This little Breedlove fellow who topped himself last night. Understand from your mother—or it could have been her sister, I wasn't paying that much attention—that you and Timothy were on the scene.”

“That's right.”

“I knew the old boy, of course—village business, parochial council. Decent enough blighter, could be quite entertaining, if you liked the cut of his jib. Your mother couldn't stomach him. Good conversationalist. Always wore the same outfit. Anyway, I believe he was in your line of business.”

“He didn't write children's books, he wrote about them,” Oliver informed him pointlessly.

“Not a particular friend of yours, then?”

Dennis Breedlove's erudite and controversial books about children's literature began to appear after he'd moved to Synne thirty years earlier, drawing upon thirty prior years of reading classic stories to children on BBC radio until the institution decided it no longer had time for them or him. The publication of the Railway Mice series had moved Oliver into the same literary circle as Breedlove, and he'd met the old man once or twice at the Sanders, the club for children's authors on Pall Mall, when Breedlove—an honorary member—made one of his rare journeys to London. But last night's encounter with Breedlove's small corpse was the first time Oliver had come face-to-face with him in Synne. Of course, he'd always intended to pay a courtesy call on Uncle Dennis during one of his brief stays with his parents. But somehow that friendly visit had always been squeezed out by other things, including Oliver's self-centered desire to get back to the city as soon as possible.

“Not really a friend, no.”

“Ah. No great loss, then.” The brigadier picked up his magazine from his lap and put on his reading glasses, signaling that Oliver wasn't meant to take any further comments as an invitation to prolong their conversation. Brigadier Bob always liked having the last word.

“Unpleasant business, hanging,” he commented, not looking in Oliver's direction. “I've heard they foul themselves as they come down. And a chap can get a—well, not for mixed company.”

“Mixed—?”

“Pistol shot to the temple, that's a man's way.”

“Yes, indeed, Father,” said Oliver and let himself out of the dim room into the large bright entrance hall, where Effie was waiting for him. She smiled broadly when she saw him, as she always did. If she ever stopped, he thought, the world would end.

Chapter Three

Saturday afternoon

Dennis Breedlove's cottage skulked on a quiet lane that sidled off the main road and led to Synne's Parish church. The old, single-story house had been snarkily stuccoed many years earlier and defiantly patched whenever the local limestone threatened to show through. Small, latticed windows flanked an unusually grand porch with its own slate roof and fussy columns, hidden now by skeins of grape-scented Chinese wisteria. A black sedan was parked in front.

With just enough room between the house and the road for a straggly privet hedge and a terse front garden, there was a marked absence of any springtime color, apart from the wisteria. Even the patchy lawn was partly hidden by a large pile of damp earth carelessly dumped beside the front path. It was clearly an old man's neglected, unweeded garden that grows to seed. Dennis Breedlove's property may have started at his garden gate, but his realm began at the royal blue front door, now standing slightly open. Two full bottles of milk stood by the door, and that morning's
Daily Telegraph
lay on the doormat.

Oliver paused beside the pile of dirt, unconsciously rubbing his thumb across the fingertips of his right hand, before he noticed that Effie had pushed the door open farther and walked in. Privately grateful for her brazenness, he followed, muttering hypocritical protests about trespassing, which masked his guilt that this was his first visit to Breedlove's home.

The chilly space they entered was clearly the heart of the house, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining every wall, and piles of paper mounting like stalagmites from the carpet. There were stacks of notes, magazines, and unsorted books on most surfaces, including the lone sofa. A pile of
Beano
annuals had become an unsteady pedestal for an old, blue Smith Corona typewriter under its plastic cover. Although the papers were untidy, Oliver suspected that they were not disorganized—that their late owner could have told you in an instant where to find any note or publication. Would Uncle Dennis have appointed a literary executor, or would a distant relative just dump all of it, unread, into a recycled-paper sack? Should he volunteer to sort the papers?

There was no sign of the car's owner. Oliver prowled through the room, noting that the volumes of children's literature on the bookshelves were alphabetized. He surreptitiously scanned for copies of his own Railway Mice series, and saw, with another pang of guilt, that Breedlove had the complete set to date under Oliver's “O.C. Blithely” pen name, propped between Elizabeth Beresford's Wombles books and the beginning of several feet of Enid Blyton. He pulled out his most recent best seller,
The Railway Mice and the Vicious Mole
. There was a worrying odor of mildew already in its pages.

Effie wandered over to a heavy oak bureau against the side wall and glanced over some loose papers that had been left on the surface.

“Looking for something, Curly?”

An exceptionally tall, thin, black man wearing a tailored business suit, was still straightening after his entrance through a low inner doorway. He had spoken with a Birmingham accent, and was now staring at Effie with curiosity. The man was of the height that compelled new acquaintances to inform him helplessly that he was very tall and ask him if he played basketball. Oliver guessed that this was Detective Sergeant Culpepper, and he immediately sympathized, because he knew that the offhand greeting had just qualified the lofty policeman for a blast of the Strongitharm Look.

But to his astonishment, Effie merely smiled and advanced toward the newcomer, hand outstretched.
First Toby is spared, now this lanky colossus—was Eff losing her powers?

She introduced herself. Culpepper looked abashed as he slowly shook her hand. “I assumed you were another of the deceased's nosy-parker neighbors,” he apologized. “I had envisaged the famous Superintendent Mallard's trusty sidekick as a much older woman.”

“That's perfectly all right. This is the superintendent's nephew, Oliver Swithin.” Effie tossed her head in Oliver's direction, sparing him the ordeal of introducing himself to an authority figure, when he tended to develop a nervous lisp. Oliver shook Culpepper's hand, willing himself not to exclaim “You're very tall!”

“This shouldn't take long,” Culpepper continued. “Mr. Mallard gave me a good account of the events of last night.”

He stepped toward the bureau, stooping to avoid a low beam, and opened a manila folder on the cluttered desktop. He read the Mallards' statements while Oliver and Effie adopted the attitude of airline passengers being quizzed over whether they had packed their own suitcases, nodding solemnly when asked if they agreed with Mallard's crisp narrative, which, like the previous night's statement to Constable Bostar, evaded the issue of nudity. Culpepper concluded with Phoebe's description of the man dressed as a monk spotted on the main road near the edge of the Common. Effie confirmed the observation.

“What do you make of this apparition, Sergeant Culpepper?” Oliver asked. “Did the ladies see a ghost?”

“Not a ghost. A vampire.”

“What?”

Culpepper grinned. “That's what they call him, the ‘Vampire of Synne.'”

Oliver sneezed.

“Yes, it is a bit dusty in here,” Culpepper sympathized. “Let's get some air.”

They filed out through the front door, which Culpepper locked behind them, and strolled along the quiet lane toward the parish church, St. Edmund and St. Crispin. Culpepper walked in the middle, taller than Oliver by the same amount that Oliver was taller than Effie. They looked like an Olympic medal ceremony.

“Constable Bostar, the local bobby, filled me in about the Vampire of Synne this morning, before he went on a remarkably extended lunch break,” Culpepper told them. “The man you saw last night, Sergeant Strongitharm, is the occupant of Furbelow Hall, that gloomy Jacobean manor house you pass as you drive into the village from the west. He's lived there for a year or so, alone and never leaving the house during the daytime, like a vampire. The villagers see him wandering around after nightfall, always covered from head to foot in a monk's robe and cowl. He never speaks to anyone, and nobody has ever seen his face.”

“Are you going to ask this vampire if he saw anything?” asked Oliver. “Armed with garlic and a crucifix, no doubt.”

“I've already spoken to him on the telephone. His name's Snopp. Angus Snopp. And he has a perfectly valid reason for living that way, although it's also somewhat tragic.”

“May I take a guess?” Oliver asked.

“Go ahead.”

“It sounds like he suffers from XP.”

“XP?” Effie echoed.

“Xeroderma pigmentosa,” Oliver continued. “It's a genetic disorder that basically means any ultraviolet light exposure can lead to skin cancers.”

“How do you
know
these things?” she muttered.

“Mr. Swithin's absolutely right,” said Culpepper, “although I'd never heard of the condition until Mr. Snopp filled me in this afternoon. People with XP can never go into the sunlight, and can even be affected by the UV light from electric lightbulbs. So a dark, seventeenth-century manor house where he can live by candlelight offers ideal protection. He's had several outbreaks of skin cancer since his childhood, which is why he hides his scarred face, even in moonlight.”

“A lonely life,” said Effie.

“I get the sense he's accepted his fate. And if he can afford to buy or even lease that kind of property, his condition clearly hasn't affected his finances.”

“Did Mr. Snopp notice anything last night?” Oliver asked.

“Well, no sign of Breedlove. Just a couple of cars, tootling along the main road. And a small van, which passed him during the first part of his evening stroll, going rather quickly. He thought he could make out the word ‘Cooper' on the side, but there's no local business with that name. Mr. Swithin, you have some knowledge of the locality—have you ever come across a Cooper?”

Oliver ran through the Coopers in his memory—Gary, Henry, Tommy, Gladys, Alice, Minnie, none of them likely to be driving a van through Synne after dark. He shook his head.

“Then it was probably just passing through,” Culpepper concluded. “Anyway, Breedlove can't have driven himself to the Shakespeare Race, or the car would still be parked up there.”

“Unless he had a chauffeur,” Oliver murmured. Culpepper didn't comment.

They had reached the low wall that surrounded the churchyard, with its honor guard of black poplars and the occasional yew. The church itself came into view through the trees, a late perpendicular nave attached to a squat early perpendicular tower, the crenellated base for a spire that was never built. Two people in black cassocks were coming out of the main door. Culpepper halted, as if to maximize the time before the churchgoers would reach them on the lonely road.

“When Phoebe Mallard and I spotted this vampire,” Effie said, “he was just standing there, staring across the Common.”

“Yes. Snopp was on his way home by then, after a walk that took an hour or so, his daily exercise. He stopped because he thought he saw something. I wasn't going to mention it, because I can't imagine it was relevant to Mr. Breedlove's death.”

“But what was it?” Effie persisted. Culpepper assumed a fascination with a stone cherub on an overgrown gravestone.

“He says he saw naked women running among the bushes.”

Effie was abruptly silent. The two people had come through the lych-gate and were now approaching them—a white-haired middle-aged man in a clerical collar, and what seemed to be a woman in her thirties with black-framed glasses and a severe bob cut. Oliver rapidly assumed the overly delighted expression that the English always exhibit when meeting members of the clergy.

“Oliver, my dear fellow, I heard you were in town,” cried the man, shaking Oliver's hand and assuming the overly delighted expression that the clergy always exhibit when meeting members of their flock. “No chance of seeing you and your young lady in the pew for the morning service tomorrow, I don't suppose? Probably not, eh? You youngsters don't want to be bothered with all this religious mumbo-jumbo, and I can't say I blame you for your better wisdoms, I'm sure.”

Using the clergyman's monologue as cover for a private rehearsal, Oliver did a creditable job of introducing the Reverend Gibeon Edwards, vicar of Synne, to his companions in more or less the right order. They were in turn introduced to the other newcomer, revealed as Mrs. Lesbia Weguelin, the church's verger, before Edwards remarked that Culpepper was very tall and asked him if he played basketball.

If you shaved Santa Claus and put him on a treadmill for a year or two, he'd probably shrink down to resemble the ever-genial Reverend Mr. Edwards. The vicar flattered himself on his skill at striking up an immediate rapport with anyone, even the fiercest critics of his calling. This usually took the form of swiftly conceding the other person's point of view—so swiftly, it was often in advance of their saying anything at all. During a teatime chat with Oliver on an earlier visit, Edwards had preemptively pooh-poohed the biblical accounts of the nativity, the resurrection, and most of Jesus's miracles, and then went on to list the many advantages of atheism, all before Oliver had opened his mouth to offer him a toasted tea cake. It was assumed by his parishioners that Edwards didn't actually agree with these heretical positions, but by the time he'd finished ingratiating himself with his opposition—in a talk or in a sermon—he'd usually drifted so far from his own beliefs that there was no room to backtrack. This habit had earned him the nickname of Edwards the Concessor.

The fact that the verger had not flinched when she was introduced suggested to Oliver either that she was a powerful personality who had learned to rise above the discomfiture of an ill-chosen Christian name or that she had no sense of humor. He suspected the latter. After a gruff “hello,” Lesbia made no further contributions to the conversation, but Oliver kept glancing at her, wondering if the crisp, flawless blue-black bob was actually a wig—Effie would know—and trying to get some measure of her features behind the thick-rimmed plastic frames, intense burgundy lipstick, and caked-on foundation. He had only the vaguest sense of a certain squareness of jaw and a self-confident nose.

The group headed back toward Breedlove's cottage, Edwards quizzing Culpepper about the likelihood that the late writer's family would want a space in the churchyard, “suicide being no impediment to burial in sacred ground these days, not like that churlish priest in
Hamlet
, wittering on about Ophelia's doubtful death. Indeed the courage of the suicide may well be thought of as an example to us all…was it not Camus who said it was the only truly serious philosophical problem, although I believe he came out against it ultimately, but then so many families choose cremation anyway, so it becomes a moot point, not to mention this new corpse-composting alternative, very interesting, if they take a green outlook, and who's to blame them? Oh, about our stepladder…”

Even the urbane Culpepper was momentarily baffled.

“Stepladder?”

“I heard from Constable Bostar that Dennis used a stepladder when he made his quietus, another
Hamlet
reference, as I'm sure you know, but what a fool I must seem to a young chap like yourself, quoting a man who's been dead and buried these four hundred years. Well, it seems the church stepladder has gone missing. We store it outside the south chancel. Putting two and two together, I was wondering if they might make one and the same, as it were. Will it become Exhibit A, and should we, therefore, purchase a new one, pro tem?”

“I'm not aware that any crime has been committed in Mr. Breedlove's death,” said Culpepper, “so if the stepladder turns out to be yours, Vicar, I'll make sure you get it back.”