A Dark and Stormy Night (8 page)

The outcome hung in the balance for a moment, and then Joyce took a sip of brandy, sniffed, and reached in her pocket for a tissue. ‘It's true there were some changes I wanted to make. The rhododendrons are terribly overgrown. And I've never much liked white roses . . . but the trees! The landscaping was by Capability Brown, you know, and it was famous!' Tears threatened again.

I was nearly in tears myself. If I'd owned one of the famous gardens of England and seen it destroyed in a night, I would have been devastated. But Lynn is made of sterner stuff.

‘Now, Joyce,' she said bracingly. ‘That was two hundred and fifty years ago. Brown himself would have wanted to get rid of some of those trees. They were too tall. Out of proportion. The saplings are OK, a lot of them, and they'll grow much better without the shade of the old ones. Stop fussing over what you can't change and start planning what you can.'

Joyce mopped up her eyes, blew her nose, and sipped some more. ‘You're right. I'm in England now. Soldier on, keep a straight bat, and all that.'

‘
And
,' said Lynn practically, ‘as soon as the front drive and the bridge are negotiable, you can get your sister and brother-in-law out of your hair. I don't mean to be rude about your family, but surely their absence is something to look forward to.'

‘Yes . . . well . . . you've gathered we don't exactly get along. To tell the truth, Julie and I never did.' The brandy, or something, was loosening her tongue. She became confidential. ‘I'm the eldest, and Julie was the middle child. We had a kid brother. He died when he was a teenager – hit by a car – but he was the pet child before that. And I was the one who was given responsibility. Julie, the middle kid, had nothing special. I think she thought it would be better after Stevie died, but my parents never got over him. Well, naturally they wouldn't. I mean, you don't get over the death of a child, but somehow they resented Julie for still being alive when Stevie was dead. They had always compared the two of them. You know, “Why can't you do as you're told? Stevie does, and he's only a baby.” That sort of thing.' She polished off the brandy.

‘Sounds like an unwise way to raise a child,' I commented.

‘Oh, it was, but they couldn't see it. Anyway, I didn't mean to tell you my life story. The point is, Julie has always resented me, and when—' She broke off, suddenly cautious. ‘Good heavens, I think I've had too much to drink . . . I'd better go see what everyone's doing about the bridge.'

Lynn and I exchanged glances, then followed her out the door.

EIGHT

W
e could hear the snarl of the chainsaws, even over the rising wind, the minute we stepped outside the house. Jim had two of them, in different sizes, and both were going full blast. It's a sound I've always hated, a sound that nearly always means the destruction of some living thing. In this case the trees were already destroyed. That didn't make the sound any more pleasant.

No progress had yet been made in bridge-building. They had to get to the river first, and the drive was impassable. Everyone was working hard to clear it. Even Pat, to the imminent ruin of her manicure, was helping the vicar tug and roll logs out of the drive as the other men positioned them and cut them apart.

It was a heartbreaking job. The drive was a mile long, and there must have been fifteen or twenty big trees lying across it, in some cases one atop another. Mike, slender though he was, was working like a lumberjack. I saw him single-handedly nudge one oak tree off another, nimbly skipping aside so as to protect his feet. I must have been staring, because he caught my eye and grinned. ‘Nothing at all, compared to lifting a hefty ballerina forty or fifty times a night.'

Well, most of the ballerinas I'd seen were the reverse of hefty – anorexic, one might have said. But I took his point. Dancers were athletes, first of all.

They'd dealt with one tree so far. Jim and Mr Bates had used the chainsaws to cut off the portion actually lying on the drive, while the others used handsaws and loppers and axes to remove protruding branches. At this rate it would take days even to get to the river, much less bridge it. And how long could they work at this pace? Most of them weren't young, and none except Mike had any genuine physical strength.

And how long would the gas hold out?

Lynn and Joyce moved into the work area and picked up tools. I found a pair of loppers and looked half-heartedly for some branches to cut. It all just seemed so pointless – emptying the ocean with a teaspoon.

I had created a small pile of brush and a couple of large blisters when Alan and Laurence hove into sight. I laid down my loppers with relief and went to meet them.

‘Well? Have you figured out anything about her?'

Alan looked confused.

‘The skeleton,' I said impatiently. ‘Weren't you trying to identify her, or at least fix an approximate time and cause of death?'

‘Where did you get the idea it was female?' asked Alan. ‘The doctor says quite definitely not, and you know that's one of the easiest things to determine.'

‘Oh! I thought— but never mind. A man, then. Anything else? Age, maybe?'

‘I can't be certain,' said Upshawe. He looked tired and distressed. ‘This isn't my field – I'm a surgeon – but one learned a certain amount in anatomy classes. The man was past adolescence and not yet senescent – not yet old. There is no obvious arthritic degeneration. The femurs are relatively long; I think we can assume a man of above average height. Beyond that . . .' He spread his hands. ‘An expert in these things would be able to tell you a great deal more.'

‘Gideon Oliver,' I murmured. ‘Where are you when we need you?'

‘Who?' said Upshawe and my husband simultaneously.

‘Sorry. A fictional detective. A physical anthropologist. Never mind. Is there any way to tell about how long he'd been there?'

‘Not for non-experts like us,' said Alan. ‘There were some fragments of cloth, probably clothing, but as I don't know how long it takes clothing to rot, that takes us no forrarder.'

‘Nothing else, then? No billfold? Leather surely doesn't rot as soon as cloth.'

‘No, it doesn't, usually. We did find bits of his shoes, but nothing that told us much – except that he went to his grave shod. It wasn't easy to look, love. You understand we were actually down in the hole with the tree roots, very insecure footing and none too safe, if the tree had shifted. When we can get the proper equipment and personnel here, we'll institute a search. Until then, we're pretty well stuck.'

Laurence Upshawe was looking a bit green. I glanced at him and said brightly, ‘Well, then, we'd better get to work on that drive.' We moved back to join the work party, but before we could even pick up tools, Jim Moynihan stepped up, sounding irritated.

‘What did you think? Who died? What's going on?'

‘We don't know,' said Alan. ‘A man, aged anywhere from the late teens to perhaps the forties. Tallish, probably. No identification.'

Jim rolled his eyes. ‘Then what the hell do we do now?'

‘If we were in any position to do so, we – you – would call in the police. They would bring equipment to get the skeleton up and out to a forensics laboratory, where every effort would be made to solve a number of questions – how the man died, how long ago, and naturally who he was.'

‘Yeah, well, we can't do any of that, can we?' He gazed bitterly down the disaster area that used to be his drive.

‘Not at present,' said Alan with a sigh. ‘But as this is plainly a crime scene, we must do what we can. I will put a guard on the – one hesitates to call it a body – on the remains, and ask whatever questions I can think of. None of it is likely to be useful, but it has to be done.'

‘And by what authority,' asked Laurence, ‘do you take it upon yourself to ask these questions?' He tightened his grip on the axe he had picked up.

‘No authority at all,' said Alan calmly. ‘But as we are isolated on our island, and I am the only representative of the law present, I considered that some questions were in order. Anyone may certainly refuse to answer.'

Upshawe put the axe down, carefully. ‘Representative of the law?'

‘Perhaps our host didn't mention to you that I am the retired chief constable of Belleshire. I'm off my turf, this being Kent, but once a policeman, always a policeman. If I can gather any facts to lay before the real authorities when they can get here, it may make an investigation a bit easier. Don't you think?'

Upshawe swallowed. ‘Yes, you're right. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude. It's just a bit . . . difficult . . . the idea of a murder here. This was my home for many years, and although . . . well, yes, naturally we must all do what we can.'

‘Then if you agree, Jim, when we take a break from work here, perhaps we could gather in the house and pool our ideas.'

Jim looked at his small crew, who were beginning to flag. The irritating whine had diminished. I could see only one chainsaw working. Had the other run out of gas?

The vicar stood at one end of a log, arching a back that was obviously hurting him, while Pat had sat down on the other end of it and was rubbing one shoulder. We were all cold. Jim shook his head helplessly. ‘We might as well go now. This is getting us nowhere. I was an idiot to suggest it. We can't even get to the river, much less fell a tree to bridge it. It'll take bulldozers to clear away this mess. God, we'll be cut off for weeks!'

‘Or until phone service and electricity are restored.' Alan was trying valiantly to look on the bright side. ‘That will take days, probably, but not weeks. May I suggest that in the meantime we leave two people to keep watch at the oak tree, and the rest of us go in out of the chill?'

Tom and Lynn volunteered to take the first watch. ‘Because,' said Lynn sensibly, ‘we never heard of this place until a few weeks ago, so we can't possibly have anything to do with old Boney there.'

‘And apart from Dorothy and me,' Alan replied
sotto voce
, ‘you are very nearly the only people who can make that claim.'

‘Let me make my position quite clear,' said my husband, when he and the others had seated themselves in a group around the cold hearth of the drawing room. The wind was still blowing, not as it had, but steadily, strongly. Now and then the curtains swayed a little. I was glad to be inside, even if the room was cold.

The Harrisons were nowhere to be seen. I thought about asking Alan if someone should look for them, and then thought better of it. If Alan wanted them he was perfectly capable of saying so, and meanwhile this was going to be unpleasant enough without them. I took a chair a little distance away and tried to fade into the woodwork.

‘As I said outside,' Alan began, ‘I have no authority whatsoever in this matter. No one is under any obligation to answer any of my questions, or even to remain while I ask them. In a certain sense, Mr Moynihan, I am abusing your hospitality if I carry out any investigation. However, having said that, I must also say that in this situation, with all indications that a serious crime has been committed, an investigation
will
have to be launched. We are in the peculiar position of having, for the present, no one to call upon who does have authority. With your permission, then, Mr Moynihan, I'd like to do what I can to get at some of the truth.'

Jim set his chin pugnaciously. ‘OK, let's clear the air. In the first place, my name is Jim. Second, this is my house, and it used to be Laurence's here. Now I don't know about you, Laurence, but when a human skeleton's found on my property I want to know how the hell it got there, and I guess you feel pretty much the same way.'

‘Certainly. I merely— no matter. Proceed, Mr Nesbitt.'

‘Splendid!' Alan sounded composed, as though there were no tension in the air. ‘Now I think you'll all agree, our first task is to learn who the unfortunate fellow under the tree is, or rather, was in life. In a week or so, when we can get a forensics team here, we will be in a position to know much more. For now, we simply have to muddle through.'

An English specialty, I thought with a private grin.

‘At the moment,' Alan went on, propping one ankle on his knee in an attitude of total relaxation, ‘we know two things about the chap. First, that he
is
a chap, not a woman. Even I know enough about skeletal anatomy to make that guess, and Mr Upshawe – Dr Upshawe – confirmed it. Second, that he's been buried there for some time. I wish I could be more definite than that, but it's simply not possible at this stage. Still, I can make an educated guess that the roots of an oak tree grow fairly slowly, as does the part of the tree above ground. And the bones were well entangled with the roots, so provisionally –
very
provisionally, I must say – I think it's fair to assume the body's spent several years where we found it.'

Alan reached into his pants pocket, made a grimace, and withdrew his hand. I knew he'd been feeling for the pipe he gave up some years ago, on doctor's orders. Old habits die hard.

‘Now you and your wife, Mr— Jim, took possession of this house some time ago. When, exactly?'

‘Two years ago last May,' said Joyce. ‘It was the most beautiful place. The gardens were . . .' Her voice broke.

Alan looked at her with sympathy, but he went on. ‘And did you notice any evidence of digging around that particular oak tree?'

Jim snorted. ‘We didn't do a detailed inspection of each tree, man!'

‘I'm sure. But that one was quite near the house, and an impressive specimen.'