Anthem for Doomed Youth (13 page)

Daisy’s instinct on hearing a child scream was to rush to the child. She ran round the outside of the maze towards the entrance and had nearly reached it when she realised how idiotic it would be to go in.

The only result would be another person lost. Why had she not gone into the maze with the children and insisted that they stay together?

Through the sound of the screams, she heard Belinda and Deva shouting in fearful voices.

‘What’s happened?’

‘Where are you, Lizzie?’

A futile question if ever there was one, though Daisy had been tempted to do the same. Instead, she stuck her forefingers in her mouth and uttered the piercing whistle Gervaise had taught her. As she had hoped, all three girls were surprised into silence.

‘Lizzie, can you hear me? What’s wrong? Are you hurt?’

‘No.’ Her voice was barely audible, muffled by a sob, not to mention the thick hedges. ‘Oh, Mrs Fletcher, it’s Mr Harriman, and I think he’s dead!’

Harriman? Dead? This couldn’t be happening! Daisy had a nightmare feeling that if she could only stop and think
she would know what to do. But the children were wailing, panic-stricken. She had to say something at once.

‘Deva, Bel, be quiet, and stay where you are. Lizzie, are you still looking at him?’ Harriman? Dead? ‘Turn your back!’

‘But he might—’

‘If he’s dead, he’s not going to do anything. Move farther away from him. What makes you think he’s dead?’ Suppose he was hurt and needed help?

‘He’s lying so still! On his back, with his eyes shut and his arms by his sides. And his face is white as … as anything. He’s not moving. I’m sure he’s not breathing!’

‘Is he bleeding?’

‘N-no. I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure not. Oh, Mrs Fletcher, can’t you come—?’

‘I don’t know how to get to you, darling. Lizzie, can you be very brave?’

‘I – I don’t know.’ Her voice quavered. ‘What … ?’

‘I want you to look at him more closely. Can you bear to? I need to be sure he’s not bleeding.’

‘Do I have to … touch him?’

‘No, darling.’
Fingerprints
, she thought,
and footprints
… but she had to be sure he wasn’t bleeding to death. ‘Just look. Take a deep breath, then turn round. If you start to feel funny, sit down quickly and take another deep breath, all right?’

‘All right. I’ll try.’

‘I think you’re awfully brave, Lizzie,’ called Belinda.

‘I wouldn’t look at him,’ said Deva, unhelpfully. ‘I want to get out of here!’

‘Be quiet, Deva. I’ll get you out as soon as I can. Lizzie?’

‘I can’t see any blood on him, Mrs Fletcher. Not on the ground, either. May I stop looking?’

‘Yes, darling. And – this is a bit complicated – move away from him to a place where you can’t see him but you know exactly where he is, so that you can tell us how to find him.’ There must be a viewing platform somewhere, so that lost visitors could be directed out of the maze, but a man flat on the ground might not be visible. ‘Can you do that?’

‘Y-yes. It’s a dead-end. I’ll just go past the first corner. It doesn’t branch or anything.’

‘Good girl. Now, all of you, I’m going to fetch a gardener to get you out. Stay where you are. There’s no point running all over the place.’

‘We might be able to find Lizzie, Mummy,’ said Belinda. ‘Then we could wait with her.’

‘Oh yes, please try! It’s scary on my own.’

‘All right, I suppose you might as well try. I’m off. I’ll be as quick as I can, I promise.’

Daisy sped back through the fanciful gates, past the
oblivious
stone peacock, towards the bench where Sakari and Melanie sat. Mel saw her coming and jumped up in alarm.

‘What’s wrong? Is someone hurt?’

‘No, the girls are lost in the maze, as was to be expected, but no one’s hurt. Not exactly …’

‘Daisy, what do you mean,
not exactly
?’

Realisation and reaction hit Daisy. She flopped down on the bench. ‘They’ve found a body. Harriman. The games master.’

‘
Dead?
’ Mel and Sakari demanded with one startled, incredulous voice.

‘That’s what it sounds like. In the maze. I didn’t see him.’

‘We must get them out of there!’ Melanie started across the lawn towards the peacock.

‘No, Mel, wait!’ Daisy pulled herself together. ‘You’d only get lost with them. I’m going to fetch the gardener I saw in the Wilderness. If he can’t direct them out, he’ll have tools to cut through the hedges. What you’ve got to do is go for the police. Quickly. Go back to the car. If you can’t find a telephone at once, Kesin will drive you to the police station.’

‘But—’

‘Please, Mel, go at once. The police and a doctor, just in case … Sakari will stay here so that we have a rallying place.’

‘You can go much faster than I, Melanie,’ Sakari pointed out.

‘All right.’ Reluctantly, but walking fast, Melanie set off for the main gates.

Daisy had deliberately not told her friend it was Lizzie who actually found the body and was the only one to have seen it. Melanie would have refused point-blank to leave. Not only did Daisy feel she herself was better able to get the gardener moving, she didn’t want to have anything more to do with the police than she absolutely had to. Melanie was so obviously a respectable, sensible citizen that they were bound to take her report seriously. Sakari had a more commanding presence, but the colour of her skin was all too likely to be counted against her.

‘You don’t mind staying put, Sakari?’

‘
Staying put
,’ Sakari mused, ‘another odd idiom. I am happy to stay put. Daisy, are you sure the children are not making up stories?’

‘If you’d heard the screams, you wouldn’t ask. I’m going to look for that gardener.’ Standing up, she turned towards the Wilderness. ‘Oh, here he comes.’

A flat cap covered his hair, if any, and the weather-beaten
face gave no clue to the age of the man trudging across the lawn, his scythe over his shoulder. His demeanour gave no clue that he had noticed the presence of the ladies. Daisy thought he’d have passed without so much as a glance in their direction if she hadn’t accosted him.

‘Excuse me, I need your help.’

‘It do be me dinnertime.’ He continued walking.

At least he was heading in the right direction. She walked alongside. ‘There are three young girls lost in the maze.’

‘They can woit.’

‘No they can’t. There’s a dead body in there with them.’

He stopped and looked at her without speaking, his bright blue eyes assessing but incurious.

‘Really! My friend has gone to fetch the police.’

Turning his head away from her, he spat, then set off again, still without speaking and at the same steady pace. However, his course altered slightly so that instead of aiming at the door to the Walled Garden, he was making a bee-line for the gates to the maze.

‘Thank you!’ said Daisy with heartfelt relief. She went on beside him for a few yards, then realising that nothing would speed him up, she hurried ahead. Up the steps, through the trees: ‘I’m back! You’ll be out of there in no time.’

‘I found Lizzie, Mummy. She can’t stop crying.’

‘I don’t blame her. Stay with her, darling.’

‘I found the middle, Mrs Fletcher,’ Deva called, sounding pleased with herself. ‘There’s a sort of thing here you can climb, but I’m not tall enough to see much from the top. I can’t see Bel and Lizzie.’

‘Stay there, Deva.’ Daisy turned to the gardener as he caught up with her, now without his scythe. ‘Do we really
have to go all the way to the middle to see where they are? To tell them how to get out?’

‘Aye.’

Surely it would have been more practical to build a platform outside! What would it matter if some people
succumbed
to temptation and tried to work out a route to the centre before they started?

The gardener trudged on into the thicket, his heavy
footsteps
crunching on the gravel path. Daisy followed.

Start with a right turn. She was determined to remember the way. Right, then wind about for a bit. Left – no, that didn’t count as there was no alternative. Left here. That was
right, left
, another left, left again –
right, three lefts
– Round a curve, straight ahead, but there was a left turn possible, so did straight ahead count as a keep right?

She heard Lizzie crying just the other side of the hedge and promptly forgot the lot.

‘Lizzie! Bel! We’re coming!’ She wanted to stop and offer words of comfort, but the gardener had already disappeared. She hurried after him, just in time to see him make another left turn, then immediately right.

Without him, she would have been hopelessly lost already.

There was a long straight stretch, with an obligatory right turn at the end. On her left was the entrance to a small open space, with a bench shaded by a wooden shelter. Daisy could have done with a sit-down in the shade, but she plodded on, determined to keep the gardener in sight. It would be too humiliating to have to be rescued herself!

Turn followed turn. Then she heard Deva’s voice, behind and above her:

‘Mrs Fletcher, I can see your hat!’

She scarcely dared look back in case the gardener vanished again. ‘I hope that means we’re nearly there,’ she called back over her shoulder.

Left curve – again she heard Lizzie, whimpering now, just the other side of the thick, impassable yew – left turn, and a long open space lay before her.

It was mostly lawn, the gravel path continuing all round the edge. A pair of iron benches faced each other across the grass. In the middle stood a sort of menhir, an odd-shaped stone. At the far end rose a wrought iron structure, a steep ladder leading up to a railed platform on stilts. From the platform, Deva waved excitedly.

Daisy had found one of her charges.

The gardener, going straight to the platform, hooked a thumb at Deva in an easily interpreted gesture.

‘But I want to stay up here!’

‘Come down now, Deva,’ Daisy said quickly, afraid the man might just turn and leave if his instructions were not followed. All the same, when he went up the ladder, she followed him.

The platform was quite small, crowded with the two of them. They both turned, scanning the maze. It was an irregular shape, Daisy saw. She could make out the gap at one end where they had entered and the wooden shelter over the bench at the other, but otherwise nothing but hedge, hedge and more hedge.

‘Don’t see nobody,’ the gardener grunted.

‘Belinda, we can’t see you! Are you sitting down? Stand up and wave. Jump up and down.’

Not far from the entrance, a small hand, waving madly, appeared and disappeared, then a second as Lizzie joined in. ‘We’re here, Mummy. How do we get out?’

‘Wait a minute, darling, while we work it out.’

It only took a moment for her to work out that it would take her hours, with paper and pencil, to work out how to get to the children, let alone how to escape the maze.

‘’S easy,’ said the gardener. ‘I’ll tell ’em which way to turn.’ He raised cupped hands to his mouth to shout.

‘Hold on.’ She ought to see the body for herself, Daisy decided reluctantly, to make sure Harriman was really dead and there was nothing she could do for him. ‘Could you lead me there, and then lead us all out?’

He gave her that assessing look again. ‘Course.’

She didn’t warn him that he would then have to show the police the way to the body. She’d never be able to explain how to find it. At best, the gardener was not an enthusiastic collaborator, and she remembered his spitting when she told him the police were on their way. Or would soon be on their way, she hoped.

‘Bel, Lizzie, we’re coming!’

Carefully –
a broken leg would really throw a spanner in the works!
– she descended the ladder. The gardener
followed
her down and set off towards the exit.

Deva had been studying the menhir. Joining Daisy, she said, ‘It’s strange. It’s got wavy-line patterns carved on it, like water, and a shape that looks sort of as if it could be a mermaid. Why do we have to walk all the way to Lizzie and Bel and all the way back, Mrs Fletcher? Couldn’t that man tell them which way to go then lead us out?’

The gardener turned and gave her his look. ‘Don’t make much difference,’ he said indifferently. ‘C’n leave you at the turn t’wait for us.’

‘No! Don’t leave me alone!’ Deva clutched Daisy’s arm.

‘Do stop fussing and come along,’ said Daisy, hurrying after their guide.

It seemed as if they went right round the maze again, following the silent gardener, before he paused at a corner and muttered to himself, ‘Roight here? Reckon so.’ Daisy guessed they must be turning off the direct route to the way out – if anything in here could be described as direct.

A few more twists and turns: there were Bel and Lizzie. Lizzie’s face was tear-stained, and Belinda started crying as they both rushed into Daisy’s arms. She held them both tight.

‘Let’s go.’ The gardener was impatient for his dinner.

‘Give me two minutes. I can’t leave without making sure the … the man really is dead, not just ill or injured and in need of help.’

‘Listen, lady, I—’

‘You wouldn’t want his death on your conscience, would you? He’s just round the next corner, Lizzie?’

‘Yes, it’s not far.’ Lizzie shuddered.

‘Do you have to, Mummy?’ Bel looked frightened.

‘Yes.’ Daisy certainly wasn’t going to look at Harriman because she
wanted
to, whether he was dead or alive. She approached the corner with trepidation. Which would be worse, to find him dead or to find him alive and not know what to do for him?

At first glance, he looked remarkably dead. She felt a momentary surge of relief, and realised she had still not been absolutely sure that Lizzie was not romancing. His face was not white, as the child had described it – he was too much of an outdoorsman for that. It was a ghastly, drained, sallow colour. He was dressed in slacks and a short-sleeved
shirt, with no jacket, but Daisy could detect no movement of his chest.

She forced herself to move closer, keeping right to the side of the path, brushing against the yew. Alec would be livid if she destroyed any clues. Much as she might wish to keep the affair from him, she had never succeeded yet and didn’t expect to this time.