Amendment of Life (3 page)

‘Yes?'

‘It's not as nasty as having a sheep's head on your doorstep.' He turned his head. ‘Is that the doorbell?'

‘It'll be the postman.'

‘I'll go,' he said.

‘Not in that dressing gown, you won't,' said Mary Wallingford vigorously. ‘It'll be enough to turn him from Christianity.'

‘I expect the man's an agnostic anyway. Nearly everyone seems to be these days.'

‘To atheism, then,' she said, rising to her feet. ‘I'm going anyway.'

She was back in an instant, her face white, her hand shaking a little. ‘Oh, Bertie, do come … it was the postman. But there's a dead rabbit lying on the doorstep as well—'

‘Dropped by a fox, I expect, my dear,' he said suppressing another, less welcome thought. ‘They're urban creatures these days.'

She shook her head. ‘No, no, Bertie, it wasn't a fox. It's got a rusty old wire twisted round its neck, poor thing. Besides, there's a collection of little bones on the path inside some chalk lines.' She gulped. ‘And something somewhere's making a very funny noise.'

Chapter Three

Offices are places where Monday mornings are never popular. Almost as soon as she had arrived at work, Sharon Gibbons, secretary to the rising firm of Double Felix Ltd, Lighting Specialists, of Chapel Street, Berebury, brought a load of files into the partners' room and placed them firmly on Eric Paterson's desk.

‘Hey, Sharon, steady on,' Paterson protested, flipping open the file on the top of the pile. ‘These aren't all mine.'

‘I'm sorry, Eric,' apologized David Collins, the other half of Double Felix Ltd, who was sitting at the desk opposite. He grimaced. ‘I'm afraid they're mostly mine.'

The two partners could not have been more different. Eric Paterson was an unkempt, shambling figure, never seemingly stressed, while David Collins, his dark-haired, intense partner, was much thinner, more precise and perpetually wound up. The combination of the two opposites worked well and Double Felix Ltd had as much highly specialized lighting work on its hands as it could cope with.

‘And it's not Sharon's fault, Eric,' continued David Collins, poised to leave his desk. He gave Sharon a swift glance of sympathy. ‘I've got to get off up to the hospital in half a tick. Mr Beaumont, the oncology consultant, wants a word with Margaret and me about little James this morning.'

‘It's only routine, though, David, isn't it?' asked his business partner uneasily.

‘Just a follow-up, they called it,' responded David Collins, ‘although they did keep James in over the weekend. They said not to worry,' he gave a wan smile, ‘but I must say that that's always a bit difficult in the circumstances and Margaret gets very wound up.'

‘Naturally,' put in Sharon.

‘Doctors always say not to worry,' growled the other man, ‘even though they know you won't believe them. Not an ounce of imagination, the medical profession. Mind you,' Paterson added, ‘I'm sure it's very different when it's one of them who's ill.'

‘I daresay you're right,' said David Collins, nodding. ‘Actually, Margaret stayed overnight at the hospital with James because he gets quite het up when he has to go back in there—'

‘You can't blame him, can you?' interposed Sharon, all motherly sympathy. ‘Poor little chap.'

‘Anyway, I'll be back as soon as we've seen the oncologist,' said Collins, making for the door. ‘It shouldn't take long and then I'll just nip over to the Minster and finish off what I didn't get done last night.'

Sharon Gibbons waited until David Collins had gone before she said, ‘You can tell he was worried really, can't you, Eric? He always tugs at that tall tuft of hair that sticks up over his forehead when he's got something on his mind. I've noticed.'

‘Does he?' said Eric Paterson, his mind elsewhere. His own hair was always all over the place, though he doubted if their secretary ever noticed that.

‘Sorry, Eric, all the same, about giving you all the files,' Sharon said unrepentantly, waving a hand at the pile of them she'd put on his desk.

‘I'm sure,' grunted the partner, knowing what she said to be untrue.

‘I'm afraid you'll have to take a look at them this morning…' Sharon Gibbons had never doubted that Monday was the most difficult day of the week and there was nothing on the agenda for today likely to make her change her mind. ‘… we'd better be on the safe side.'

Eric Paterson grunted again and picked up the next file down the heap.

Experienced secretary that she was, Sharon kept silent. She knew only too well that tensions left unresolved on Friday afternoons could ripen into open warfare by Monday morning. Not that Eric Paterson went in for tension much. Not him.

He picked up the third file.

Sharon also knew that problems which have lain untouched in in-trays all weekend have not thus mysteriously solved themselves: and that they tend, instead, to rise up again even as the worker, not helped by a weekend of brooding on the subject, pulls up the chair to the desk. The members of the firm of Double Felix Ltd were no exception to this general rule and Sharon Gibbons was busy.

‘But these are all David's files,' insisted Eric Paterson, looking up from the next one down the stack. ‘Every one of them.'

‘David, if you remember,' Sharon said, unmoved, ‘went over to Aumerle Court yesterday afternoon to look at the maze and was working until late last night over at Calleford Minster, quite apart from having to go off to the hospital this morning.'

‘So he was,' Eric admitted easily. ‘I'd forgotten how determined he was to get on with that church job this weekend. He's a better man than I am, I must say,' he added, knowing that Sharon would have a hard job not agreeing with him aloud.

‘That's David for you all over,' said Sharon tactfully. She much preferred David Collins, the younger, more active partner, and his pale determined look. ‘He said to me that he was keen to get the Minster work over and done with as soon as he could so that he could get cracking on some other jobs that have been piling up.'

‘Which they have,' he reminded her, ‘in quite a big way.'

‘Have a heart, Eric,' she said. ‘You can't expect David to concentrate on his work while his son's been so ill. It wouldn't be natural.'

‘Work's work,' said her employer implacably.

‘I know, I know,' she sighed, ‘and it's all got to be done somehow.'

‘And you can give him this file straight away when he does get back,' said David's partner, tossing a thick green bundle over on to the other desk. ‘It's the Aumerle Court project, Heaven help us all. Thank God it's one of his.'

‘I don't know', Sharon went on as if he hadn't spoken, ‘how nearly David finished the Minster job yesterday evening. But the Clerk of Works has been on the phone already this morning. They want him back there, very pronto, like always.'

‘You'd better tell David as soon as he comes in, then,' Paterson grinned, adding, ‘and they'll both have to wait anyway until he does come back to the office since mobile phones aren't allowed at either the Minster or the hospital. Not quite the forces of God and Mammon, but nearly.' He twirled his pencil. ‘Perhaps we should say God and the hospital. Comes to same thing, doesn't it? The doctors over there all think they're God—'

‘It's their Canon Willoughby at the Minster,' she interrupted him. ‘He wants some extra security lighting installed outside his house in the Close, now, if not sooner.'

Eric Paterson scratched his chin. ‘More trouble there?'

‘Something cabbalistic written in charcoal on his doorstep is what they told us,' said Sharon. ‘I'm not sure if the old boy knows what it means—'

‘But if he does, he's not saying,' finished Paterson for her.

‘But whatever it is, they don't like it there in the Close.'

‘There's a lot of things they don't like in the Close,' said Eric Paterson, absently leafing through the file. ‘Hey, Sharon, you're slipping. This next letter here is in the wrong place.'

Sharon Gibbons stiffened. ‘What letter? Where? Show me.'

‘This one. Here, in the Minster file.' Paterson was regarding it with fine detachment. ‘About circuits.'

‘Well, I don't know how that got in there, I'm sure,' she said defensively. ‘That's not the Aumerle Court file.'

‘No, it's the Minster one, as I said, but here's a rough plan of Aumerle Court and another stroppy diatribe from that toy soldier over at Staple St James—'

‘Captain Prosser,' said Sharon, identifying the gentleman in question without difficulty like the good secretary she was. She sniffed. ‘I don't know when the Captain thinks David is going to get over to Aumerle Court while he's as busy as he is.'

‘Yesterday, from the tone of his letter,' said Paterson, quite relaxed, ‘if not the day before. Ring him – no, write, that'll take longer to get there, which will annoy him – and tell him that we'll come when we can and not a minute before. I don't like Double Felix being leaned on by the likes of him.'

‘Their
son-et-lumière
performances are due to be put on quite soon,' murmured Sharon with apparent disinterest. ‘The end of the month, I think it's supposed to be. David was saying that the actual date's something to do with when it's going to be dark enough in the evening, which', she added obliquely, ‘it will be before long. He was trying to find time to get over there.'

‘Oh, all right, then,' Paterson said, still unperturbed. ‘Put this one on David's desk and I'll talk to him about it as soon as I set eyes on him.' He locked his fingers behind his head and leaned back lazily in his swivel chair. ‘The rest of all this paperwork you can take away and go through while I sit and think about object waves meeting reference waves and cabbages and kings.'

Sharon Gibbons said nothing, but she could not resist a reproving glance at the clock.

‘Unless you'd like to bring me some coffee instead,' he said, seeing this and grinning. ‘After all, one of us has to have our work priorities right.'

*   *   *

Reaching the entrance of the maze at Aumerle Court presented Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby with no problems at all. It was a simple matter of driving out of the market town of Berebury towards Calleford and making their way through the Calleshire countryside to the little village of Staple St James.

Getting inside the labyrinth itself proved quite a different matter. Blocking the way in with a large green dustbin on wheels was Kenny Prickett. A foot soldier manqué, he was mounting guard against all-comers, holding his broom with the bristles aloft with one hand and looking for all the world like a latterday Britannia complete with trident. His other hand clutched his shovel – in his mind's eye already an entrenching tool – very much at the ready.

‘Miss Daphne sent a message to say I wasn't to let no one in', he said firmly, ‘until the police came.'

Detective Inspector Sloan nodded. ‘Quite right,' he murmured abstractedly, surveying the vast area of impenetrable yew hedge on either side of the narrow entrance.

‘And to listen hard in case Pete called out.' Kenny Prickett relaxed a little and lowered his broom to a sort of stand-easy position.

‘And has he?' enquired Sloan.

‘Not yet,' said Kenny. ‘Miss Daphne said he would, but not for a bit. Haven't heard a dicky bird from him yet, but I will. Bound to when he gets to this body that Miss Daphne says is in there.' Like Milly Smithers, Kenny Prickett had been born in Staple St James and took Daphne Pedlinge's word for law. ‘Pete's never liked being in the maze. Not ever.' He jerked his shoulder upwards in the direction of the house. ‘Miss Daphne said Pete wouldn't have got to Ariadne yet, let alone any further in.'

‘Who's Ariadne?' asked Detective Constable Crosby, bringing up the rear and taking out his own notebook at the mention of a name.

‘A statue,' responded Kenny.

The Constable looked disappointed.

‘It's a lady with a ball of wool, that's all,' explained Kenny, parking his broom against the yew hedge.

‘How do you mean “all”?' demanded Crosby, his pen hovering unused above his notebook.

‘I mean that's all she's got on,' said Kenny Prickett simply.

‘A ball of wool?' echoed Crosby, disbelievingly.

‘Miss Daphne said that Ariadne had something to do with mazes in history,' explained the man, ‘and the ball of wool was what she gave to her lover to help him get in and out of the maze.'

‘Get away,' said Crosby.

‘She did. Tied it to the entrance and told him not to let it go so that he could find his way out again. That's why she's in there.'

‘Is there a plan of the maze?' asked Sloan briskly. Tempting as it was to send his Detective Constable into the maze then and there without one, it probably wouldn't help the investigation in the long run. In the end someone was bound to have to go in and find him again.

Kenny Prickett scratched his head. ‘They say that Miss Daphne's got one in her room but no one's ever seen it. Take all the fun away, wouldn't it, if everyone had the plan?'

‘Very probably,' said Sloan wryly. He didn't see any point in solving puzzles purely for pleasure, but then he was a working policeman. He had to solve puzzles anyway – without maps – most of the time; and without any pleasure all of the time.

‘I can tell you that Ariadne's about halfway in,' volunteered Kenny Prickett. He stood down his shovel, too, propping it up against the yew hedge. ‘There's a seat by her, and Pete usually stops there, Mondays, for a bit of a breather after he's done her alcove. Not too long, of course,' he added, ‘on account of Miss Daphne watching and the Captain waiting.'