Village Affairs (29 page)

There was no sign of a figure huddled on the ground on the open expanse, but the grass between the path and the water had not been mown and grew thick and tall, and Bethancourt supposed someone could lay quite hidden in it.

Julie was moving on down the slope.

“There’s no point in looking here,” she said. “James has already been over this part.” She pointed off to the left. “That’s the path to the cottages,” she said. “We want to go to the right. Do you see that rock over there?”

Bethancourt squinted through his glasses. Not quite halfway around the lake was a large boulder sticking up from the grass.

“I see it,” he said.

“Well, that’s the end of the usual walk. The rock’s more comfortable to sit on than you’d think, and we moor the rowboat there, too.”

“Boat?” asked Bethancourt.

“Oh, Mother wouldn’t have taken that,” said Julie, laughing. “It’s only a creaky old rowboat and she hated it. You can’t see it from here because the rock’s in the way.”

They reached the lakeshore and slowed the horses to a walk, keeping their eyes on the ground as they followed the water’s curve. When they came to the rock, Julie drew up.

“Nothing,” she said, clearly disappointed.

Bethancourt was examining the boulder. It was larger than it had looked from a distance and would be easy enough to clamber onto. In the side facing the lake there was a sort of shelf, where he presumed one would sit, and from there the rock sloped down toward the water. A ring had been driven into the rock a couple of feet below the shelf and it was to this that the boat was tied up. There was less than a foot of soggy earth between the base of the boulder and the water, and from his vantage on horseback, he could see footprints marked there, though whose they were and when they had been made was beyond his ability to determine.

Queasily, he began to entertain another scenario that had nothing to do with criminals fleeing.

“Is the water very deep here?” he asked Julie.

She shrugged, still despondent. “It’s deep enough for the boat,” she answered. “Close to the shore here, it’s about up to my waist, but farther out it’s deeper.” She frowned. “But it’s ridiculous to suppose Mother went for a midnight swim in mid October.”

“Of course not,” said Bethancourt. “I was only curious.”

Julie was looking off into the trees.

“I suppose,” she said dubiously, “she might have gone on from here. The path goes on into the wood.”

Bethancourt thought this highly unlikely, though he did not like to say so. Woods are not encouraging places at night, and he could not see a woman with a few drinks inside her and in an unhappy frame of mind seeking them out. But he said, “We might as well check while we’re here. It won’t do any harm.”

Julie nodded and clucked to her horse.

Beyond the boulder, the path was less well-defined, straying gradually away from the shore, and climbing up a rise into the trees.

“There’s really two paths here,” Julie said as they entered the trees. “One’s very steep and runs back to the lake, but we can’t get the horses up there, and I can’t think Mother would have gone that way in any case. It’s not a very good path.”

“What’s the other one?”

“It goes up the hill to a little glade. We sometimes have picnics there in the summer.”

The ride beneath the trees was a pleasant one, and Bethancourt did not bother too much about looking for someone in distress in the underbrush. In another five or ten minutes they reached the glade, which was indeed an agreeable spot for a picnic. However, it was not large and there was quite obviously no one lying about in it. Julie, who had stood up in her stirrups as they approached, slumped back down.

“Oh damn,” she said. “I did so hope … well, never mind.”

“The police will have dogs, I expect,” said Bethancourt. “They’ll have a better chance of finding her.”

She gave him a wary look. “I suppose,” she said, “you think the same as the police—that she murdered Charlie and ran off during the night. That’s why I wanted to come myself, because I knew they wouldn’t really look.”

“Not at all,” said Bethancourt stoutly if untruthfully. Then another thought occurred to him as they turned the horses for home. “Tell me, Julie,” he said, “what would have happened if you had got up this morning and found a note saying she’d gone back to London? If she had packed a bag and taken her car?”

Julie threw him a withering glance. “I’d have thought she’d gone back to London.”

“But you wouldn’t have rung her up or anything?”

“No, of course not. Why should I?”

The queasy feeling was returning to Bethancourt’s stomach. If Joan Bonnar had truly decided to flee, it was inexplicable that she should not have written a note, ensuring that she would not be missed until she failed to turn up at the theater tonight. It would have given her all day to get out of the country, rather than having the search instigated directly after breakfast. Even if she had left earlier, after dinner last night, and her family were covering up for her, it still made no sense to let the search start so early.

That left why she had gone out at all during the night.

“Julie,” he said, “did your mother have any mail or telephone calls yesterday?”

She looked at him blankly. “Some people sent notes saying they were sorry about Charlie,” she answered. “And I think she took several calls from various friends in the afternoon. Why?”

“I only wondered if she could have made an appointment with anyone—however, it has just occurred to me that she could have done that at the funeral.”

Julie was frowning. “An appointment? For the middle of the night?”

“She might have slipped out shortly after she had gone upstairs.”

“I suppose she might,” said Julie doubtfully. “The sitting room door was open, and I think we would have heard her coming down the stairs, but it’s true we weren’t particularly listening. If she was quiet, we might not have heard her. But even if she did go out then, why can’t we find her now?”

To this Bethancourt had no answer, or at least none he wanted to give, and they rode back to the stables in silence.

CHAPTER
14

B
y the time Carmichael and Gibbons arrived, the police search had begun, in a somewhat desultory fashion. It was clear to Bethancourt that they thought their prime suspect had fled, and that they were wasting their time searching for her here. In addition, the dogs were having difficulty picking up the scent, owing to its having rained the night before, and to the fact that Miss Bonnar had taken a walk after returning from the funeral, so that when the dogs did find a scent in the garden, it led them back to the house.

Bethancourt had left Astley-Cooper in the house with the family and gone out to smoke in his car and await the detectives’ arrival. He greeted them as the Rover pulled up in the drive, and Gibbons thought his friend looked unwontedly somber.

“There you are.” Carmichael took stock as he emerged from the car, noting the police vehicles. “I take it the search is under way?”

“Such as it is,” said Bethancourt. “They think she’s done a bunk.”

Carmichael gave him a shrewd look.

“And you don’t?” he asked.

“I did,” admitted Bethancourt. “But she didn’t take her car or leave a note. If she had, she wouldn’t have been missed ’til this evening, at the theater.”

“Well, well,” said Carmichael, digesting this. “On the other hand, people do sometimes panic and do very stupid things.”

“I think you ought to take a look at the lake,” said Bethancourt. “It’s a favorite family walk and there are a good set of footprints down there. I couldn’t tell much about them, but you’ll know. And, of course, the lake itself is wonderfully handy for disposing of dead bodies.”

“Is that what you think happened?” asked Gibbons.

“It seems an awfully tempting idea, doesn’t it?”

“We’ll have a look,” said Carmichael. “Are the family all in the house?”

“Yes—they’re drinking tea in the sitting room with Clarence.”

“Then they’ll keep. Where is this lake?”

Bethancourt led the way, taking them around the side of the house and out into the fields beyond. Carmichael gazed appreciatively at the landscape as they went.

“It’s pretty here,” he said. He was thinking of moving to the country when he retired—the real country, not just the suburbs. He had saved a little money since the children had left home and, while he wasn’t sure what his pension would stretch to, he thought they ought to be able to afford something, even if it was small. And then his wife could go in for her gardening in earnest and he, well, he could mow the lawn.

He sighed and returned to the present as they topped the rise and met up with part of the search party, who were eager to report that they had had no luck so far.

“Keep at it,” Carmichael told them. “I’m just going down to have a look at the lake.”

“The lake, sir?” said the sergeant doubtfully. “We haven’t got that far yet.”

“No matter,” said Carmichael genially. “Carry on.”

They went on down the hill, Carmichael squinting at the lake as they approached it. The detectives paid close attention to the path as Bethancourt led them around to the boulder.

“Look there,” said Gibbons, pointing to a damp patch of ground just to the left of the track. “That’s a man’s shoe there—a number nine or so, I think.”

“Hmm, yes,” said Carmichael, who was bent over a different section of the path. “And here’s a woman’s flat shoe, I think—she seems to have slipped a little.”

They examined the whole of the path running along the lake to the boulder. The man’s footprint did not recur, but the woman’s could be discerned in several places. There was one particularly clear print by the boulder itself.

“These were certainly made within the last twenty-four hours,” pronounced Carmichael, turning his attention to the rock itself, but there was nothing obvious to see on its rough surface. “Well,” he said, straightening, “someone walked down here recently, and it might well have been Joan Bonnar.” He turned to gaze out over the lake. “And she might well have gone into the water.”

“If she’s near the rock,” put in Bethancourt, “Jack could wade in and have a look—Julie Benson says it’s fairly shallow there.”

Gibbons glared at him.

“You didn’t do any looking yourself, did you?” asked Carmichael suspiciously.

“No, sir. Certainly not.”

Carmichael nodded and was silent a little. “I see what you’re thinking,” he said at last. “The idea would have been to make it look like she came out here by herself and sat on the rock. Yes, I think we might have a look.”

“I’ll run back to the house,” offered Bethancourt, “and rustle up some towels and blankets.”

“Please do,” said Gibbons, eyeing the water resignedly. “I think, sir, if you don’t mind, it would be better if I stripped off.”

“Of course,” said Carmichael. “I’m sorry to let you in for this, Gibbons, but there’s no denying I’m a bit past it for this sort of thing. And we do want to find out as quickly as possible if there’s anything to be investigated here or not. No, wait a minute, lad. We don’t want you catching cold. Wait ’til Bethancourt comes back with the towels.”

Bethancourt was not long. When he appeared on the horizon, his arms full of towels and blankets, Gibbons shrugged out of his jacket and pulled his sweater over his head. He glanced longingly at the little rowboat, but he knew that it would have to be examined by a forensics team. By the time Bethancourt rejoined them, Gibbons was standing shivering in his underwear. The sun promptly went behind a cloud.

He pushed through the grass on the far side of the boulder in order to avoid the footprints and tested the water with his toe. It was very cold. Behind him, he heard Carmichael asking Bethancourt what he had told them at the house.

“Just that you had decided to have a look at the lake as a precaution, and that they should stay put. And I nabbed a bottle of brandy, too, Jack.”

Gibbons grunted, wading cautiously out into the water. The bottom was muddy, and sloped off suddenly, landing him in water up to his waist. He gasped with the cold and took a moment to steady himself. Then he began to wade along, making for the water directly before the boulder, his feet catching in the weeds. The water was very murky; he could not see his lower legs, and there was an eerie sensation in feeling his way along, waiting for his toes to touch something other than mud and rocks.

“All right, lad?” asked Carmichael from the bank.

“Yes. It’s slow going.”

He kept on, searching the lake bottom with his feet before taking another step. There were rocks here, covered with moss and slippery, but their rough touch could not possibly be mistaken for a body, not even by toes going numb with cold.

He was coming up on the rope that moored the rowboat and he eyed it with disfavor. He was going to have to submerge to get under it.

And then, all at once, his toes touched something soft. Sternly, he repressed an urge to clamber out of the water at once, and sought for a firm foothold. He bent, reaching down with his hands, and groped until his searching fingers closed on the soft thing, identifying it at once as the corner of some heavy material. His heart hammering, he reached out farther, touched the rough surface of a rock and then, beyond it, something cold and smooth and firm. He let go at once and stood up.

“Are you all right, Jack?” came Bethancourt’s voice, concerned.

“Yes,” croaked Gibbons. He turned and began to wade back as quickly as he could, anxious to be out of the water which held such horrors. “Yes, there’s something there.”

He floundered a bit and then he was at the shore, scrambling in the mud while Bethancourt and Carmichael reached down for him, their hands warm on his cold skin. He felt the coarse grass beneath his feet, and Bethancourt flung a towel over his shoulders. He clutched it to him, shivering.

“Here, lad,” said Carmichael, uncorking the brandy. “Have a swallow of this.”

Gibbons took the bottle gratefully, feeling the liquor burn its way into his stomach. Bethancourt had got another towel and was vigorously drying his back.