Holding asked, âAnd did he also bother you in that way, Dilys?'
Dilys's small eyes moved their stony gaze to her. âHe didn't fancy me, most like. I was never anything but a big lump who could cook and clean.'
âNevertheless, you were there, under the same roof. You were in no position to protest, as you've said. It wouldn't be surprising if he'd taken advantage of that, if you know what I mean.'
âI know what you mean!' Dilys's mouth snapped shut like a trap.
There was a silence. Dilys gave no sign of saying any more. Her eyes were blank. Pearce nudged Ginny. It wouldn't do for Dilys to clam up now.
âWhat happened after your mother died?' Ginny prompted.
Dilys blinked and shrewd suspicion returned to her expression. âAfter Ma died? What should I do? I stayed there, cooking and cleaning for him. Not that I ever got a word of thanks. I still needed a place to live and as long as Dad was alive and living in the cottage I had a roof over my head. I knew old Mr Jones wouldn't throw Dad out and I knew young Kevin wouldn't, not while his father was alive. But old Martin Jones was getting older and so was Dad. If old Jones died, young Kevin might decide to get us out. Or if Dad died, it'd be easy. I wasn't the tenant. Dad was. I knew Dad wouldn't ever agree to go to a retirement home. He wouldn't even go to hospital. So it was in my interest to look after the old blighter and keep him alive, wasn't it?' Her flat gaze returned to Pearce's face.
Pearce felt a deep depression settle over him. âAll right,' he said, âTell me about Simon Hastings.'
âDad never killed that chap!' Her voice was vehement. âNot intentional, not like you mean. It was an accident. Could've happened to anyone.'
âGo on.' Dilys had stopped as if she'd expected Pearce to agree with her. âWhy was it an accident?' Pearce asked.
The solicitor interrupted again. âMy client can't tell you that because she doesn't know. She wasn't there when Simon Hastings died.'
âI know what Dad told me!' said Dilys truculently to him.
âYes, Mrs Pullen, but you don't
know
it happened that way.
You weren't a witness. Your father's account may have been flawed.'
âHe was telling me lies, you mean?' Dilys glared at him. âSo what am I supposed to do? Sit here with my mouth shut and let these coppers think Dad killed that hiker? Well, he didn't. He told me so and I reckon he told me right. How do I know? Because he was that scared, that's why. Something had happened he hadn't counted on, see? You didn't know my father and I did. You didn't see him that evening when he come home and told me about the hiker and I did. Fair shaking in his boots, he was, and as white a sheet.'
She turned her attention back to Pearce and Holding. âDad had met Miss Pattinson, as she was then, hadn't he? Coming from the woods and crying. Dad knew she hadn't met the Potato Man because he was the Potato Man. She said, she was crying for her mother who'd just died. But Dad thought different. He was curious. He went up to the woods and he came across this chap, a hiker. The feller looked odd, Dad reckoned, as if upset about something and angry. Dad asked him if he was the reason Miss Pattinson had run out of the woods in a fair old state. And the feller just went for him, went for Dad. Swung a haymaker of a punch at him and Dad, he ducked it and fetched him a cracker in return. The hiker went down and hit his head on a fallen tree. That was it. Dead as a doornail. Dad took fright when he saw he was stuck there with a corpse on his hands. He pulled a lot of branches and stuff over him and came home. That night he went back with a spade and buried him. And I know that's right,' Dilys added with a glower at her legal representative, âbecause I was there that time! He took me with him.'
The solictor broke in with desperation in his voice. âMrs Pullen, do you realiseâ'
Dilys turned on him. âYou don't need to keep on calling me Mrs Pullen. I'm Dilys Twelvetrees. That's what I was born and that's what I'm still.'
âDid you divorce Mr Pullen?' Holding asked her.
Dilys stared at her scornfully. âWhat for? He was gone. What's the point in divorce?'
âThen technically you are still Mrs Pullen,' Holding said.
âI'm Dilys Twelvetrees,' she repeated obstinately. âIt was never a name to be proud of but I'd rather have it than Pullen, any day.'
âI don't think it matters if Dilys chose to resume her maiden name,' Pearce said firmly, with an irritated look at Holding. âSo, you went back to Stovey Woods that night with your father and helped him bury Simon Hastings?'
âMrs â Twelvetrees!' said the solicitor loudly. âYou don't have to answer that. You've said quite enough already.'
âYou keep quiet,' Dilys said to him. âI know what I'm minded to answer and what I'm not.'
âWe discussed this, Mrs Pu â Twelvetrees! I explainedâ'
âI know what you explained.' Dilys returned her attention to Markby. âDad needed me to hold the lantern. Anyway, he knew that if I helped him, it'd be difficult for me to go telling anyone about it. I was in it, too, wasn't I?'
Her expression grew reminiscent and when she began to speak again there was a change in her voice. It had gained the mesmerising quality of a traditional story-teller, softer, inviting the audience in to listen. Pearce realised they were all leaning forward, even the solicitor, hanging on her every word, knowing
they were to be told something that would lodge in their own minds for ever.
âDad was pretty sure he could find where he'd left the hiker. But it was pitch black in those woods. You couldn't see a hand in front of your face and not one thing looked like it did in daytime. We only had the lantern, an oil-lamp, it was. It made the shadows jump around in the trees like a lot of mad creatures dancing around us in the dark. We made a couple of false stops before we reached where Dad thought it should be. He said, “'Tis around here someplace, Dilys. Do you go and take a proper look round.” Well, I wasn't going poking about in those trees, not knowing what was there, and very likely falling over a dead man. So I held up the lantern high and swung it round. And bless me, there it was.'
The solicitor drew in his breath slightly. Holding was frozen in an attitude of rapt attention. Pearce felt a frisson of anticipation.
âYou saw the body â¦' he whispered.
Dilys gave him a curious, mocking look. âI saw the hand.'
âHand?' gasped the solicitor.
âYes, hand. You deaf? I saw an arm, and the hand on the end of it, pointing up into the trees. It was poking out of the leaves and branches Dad had dragged over him, pointing up like a signpost to tell us where he lay. I said to Dad, “You buried the chap alive! He's moved. He's been trying to dig himself out!” But Dad said, “No, he ain't.” Leastwise not that he knew of it. “It's the rigor.”'
The solicitor muttered, âGood grief!'
Dilys, perhaps interpreting his comment as lack of understanding, went on to to explain it to him. âRigor, that's what
sets in when something dies. Dad had seen in it cattle and sheep. The limbs go stiff and stick up all awkward. This hiker's arm had just risen up in the air like of its own accord. The leaves Dad threw over him weren't heavy enough to keep it down.
âBut Dad was put out because he couldn't bury him easy with the arm sticking up like that. So he took a great swing at it with his spade. I heard the bones all crack but it didn't fall because the muscles kept it upright. So Dad went at it like a madman, bashing it until it lay flat. Then he bent down and pulled off the signet ring that was on one of the fingers. He said it would do to go with the other things. I told him he was a fool. It was evidence. He just told me to shut up. But I was right, wasn't I?' Dilys put the question suddenly to the solicitor. âIt was evidence?'
âYou were right,' he told her faintly.
She seemed pleased, nodding her head. âSo, Dad dug a grave in another place and we rolled him in there and covered him over. Dad and I pushed the fallen treetrunk on top to stop anything digging him up. We were careful to move dry leaves and such over the place where the tree had lain before, so that no one should see it had been shifted. But in time, something must have dug up bits of him because that doctor fellow found the bones in a fox-hole, so I heard him tell the coroner. And the coroner agreed it'd been an accident, didn't he? He said there was no evidence of foul play. Now you're trying to make out different, but coroner's already said there wasn't. We went home, Dad and I, and for the first time, I stood up to him. In fact, I fair laid into him. I told him there was to be no more nonsense with the women up there in the woods or on the old
drovers' way. If it ever all came out, I told him, no way would the police believe the hiker had died by accident They'd believe Dad killed him because he'd seen Dad up to something with one of the girls. And Dad, for all he put a bold face on it, had had such a fright he gave in without a squeak. So that was the end of the Potato Man.'
Pearce found he'd been holding his breath. He expelled it in a long sigh. âTell me about Hester Millar.'
Dilys gave an echoing sigh and her shoulders slumped. âOh, that. That was a bit of bad luck, that was. She was a nice lady. I had nothing against her. But she walked in that morning and found Dad messing with the things in that old box. He would never throw it away. He liked to take them all out and put them on a table. He'd pick them up, one by one, turning them over in his fingers and remembering the girl he'd taken it from, chuckling to himself all the while. I hated him doing it. I was always afraid one day someone would walk in on us and I was right about that, too! Because Miss Millar did just that.
âShe just appeared out of the blue that morning early. She came the back way, straight into the kitchen without so much as a by-your-leave, calling out, “It's only me!” She'd brought a pot of jam for us, dropped in on her way to open up the church. She was a dab hand at the jam-making. She put it on the table where Dad was sitting with the box, looking all pleased with herself. Then she saw what he was at, messing with those bits of jewellery and such. She asked Dad, what all those things were. Dad said, just things he'd found in the woods. But then she picked up the ring and she asked, in a funny sort of voice, “Where did you get this, Mr Twelvetrees? Did you find this in the woods, too?” And I knew, just knew, from her way and
her voice that the ring meant something to her. She'd recognised it.
âMy heart was in my boots. I thought that if I didn't silence her, she'd go blabbing. It would all come out, after all those years, Dad would be taken away. Everyone in the village would know the truth. Kevin Jones would move me out of the cottage. So I had to follow her over to the church and keep her quiet. She was kneeling saying her prayers when I went in. I called out that it was only me, Dilys, and she didn't turn round. It was easy. I've had more trouble killing a chicken. I didn't like doing it, mind! But the way I saw it, it had to be done. Then I went home and told Dad I'd done it, that he hadn't to worry she'd tell about the ring.
âDad, he called me a stupid great turnip and asked me what I'd wanted to go killing her for. I told him, because of him, that's why. It was his fault. He said, I never did do anything right and what if she was only wounded and someone took her to the hospital? She'd know it was me done it. We waited for a while, to see if anything would happen over at the church like someone find her. But nothing happened and Dad got restless. He went over to the church to look, but she was dead all right, so he got out of there. See, Dad didn't want to be the one to find her and have to answer questions. He got away only in the nick of time because that friend of the superintendent's turned up and she found Miss Millar. So I had managed it all right, hadn't I? You'd have thought the old devil would've been grateful. I reckoned I'd handled it pretty well. If Dad had had more faith in me and not gone over there prying, that Miss Mitchell wouldn't have spotted him in the churchyard and Mr Markby wouldn't have come to the cottage asking questions. I
told Dad, after he'd gone, that from then on he was to leave it all to me. I reckoned I sorted things out pretty well.'
âSurely you're not claiming that murder is justifiable?' Ginny Holding asked incredulously.
Dilys sniffed. âWell, it would've been, wouldn't it? If that had been the end of it. But I had bad luck as usual and that wasn't the end of it. People prying, that's what causes trouble. That friend of Mr Markby's, she did the very same thing as Miss Millar did. It's like you've got no privacy in your own home. Dad was took queer in the churchyard and she helped him back to the cottage. She went through the kitchen to open up the front door. Dad, silly old fool, had left the back door unlocked and left all the things on the table. I came in not three or four minutes after she'd gone. Dad was sitting in his chair. He told me he'd had a bad turn but the lady had brought him indoors. I knew she'd got in through the back door and she must have seen everything. I ran outside and I saw her in the distance walking towards the woods. I followed her, kept down on the other side of the stone walls and went along the fields. A couple of times the sheep nearly gave me away, running off spooked. But it was raining that hard I reckon the superintendent's friend was more worried about that than the antics of a few sheep.'