Death in Disguise (2 page)

She'd had a dental appointment in Causton—‘a recalcitrant molar'—and left the house just after eleven with three companions who required a lift to Spinnakers Wood where they were to dowse for animal ley lines.

‘Had to wait at the surgery. Child being awkward. Ducks, teddies, promise of ice cream—wouldn't budge. Persuaded him to think orange—all over in a trice. Hence the saying “good as gold” of course…where was I?'

‘Molar,' said the coroner.

‘Ah, yes! That tackled I went to Hi Notes to collect some music. Boccherini's—the G5—Sonata and a piece by Offenbach. I always think of him as the Liszt of the cello don't you?' She beamed at the coroner whose half moons jigged on his nose in disbelief. ‘Bought a cucumber and a cream bun. Ate them down by the river and drove home arriving a quarter to two and finding poor Jim. Rest you've already heard.'

Asked if she had touched the body, Miss Cuttle replied in the negative. ‘Could see he'd already transmuted to the astral.'

‘Quite so,' replied the coroner taking a sip of water and wishing it were something stronger.

Miss Cuttle explained that as far as she'd been aware no one else was in the house. People hadn't started trickling back until nearly tea time. Asked if she could think of anything else that might be helpful, she said: ‘One odd thing. Someone rang up asking for Jim just after I got home. Very strange. He was hardly ever in contact with the outside world. Quite a reclusive sort of chap really.'

Given permission, she then retired to her seat blissfully unaware that the cucumber and ley lines had come within a whisker of undermining the excellent groundwork laid by the pure silk and the chime of authoritative vowels.

After the first person to see James Carter dead, came the last two to see him alive. Giving his name as Arno Gibbs, a small man with a beard like a little red spade dipped to a respectfully sombre angle explained that he had left the house at eleven-thirty to drive the Master—

‘Could you use the correct name, please,' interrupted the clerk.

‘I'm sorry,' said the bearded man, ‘Mr Craigie and Mr Riley—to Causton in the van. When we left Jim was watering the pots on the terrace. He seemed in good spirits. Said he was going to get some tomatoes from the greenhouse and make soup for lunch. It was his turn to milk Calypso and he'd missed breakfast you see.'

A buzz of speculation
in re
Calypso was briskly put down. Asked about the drinking habits of the dead man, Mr Gibbs said that the community was teetotal although a bottle of brandy was kept in the medicine chest for emergencies. Mr Carter had certainly not been drinking when they'd parted from him.

Next the coroner asked for Timothy Riley but the clerk crossed quickly to his table, murmuring something in a low voice. The coroner frowned, nodded, shuffled his papers and called for Mr Craigie.

By now the air in the room was stifling. Faces were runnelled with sweat, shins and dresses darkly patched. The ancient ceiling-fan's whangee propellors creaked, sluggishly pushing at the heat. Several large bluebottles buzz-bombed the windows. But the man who now came forward to speak looked very cool. He wore a pale silky suit and his hair was pure white (no trace of yellow or grey), and gathered into a rubber band. The resultant ponytail fell to below his shoulders. Mrs Bulstrode was heard to mutter that white hair could be very deceiving and it was true that the man's eyes were not at all rheumy but a vivid cerulean blue and his clear pale skin was hardly wrinkled. When he began to speak the quality of the court's attention changed. His voice, though gentle, had a strange almost revelatory quality as if the most tremendous news were about to be imparted for those who had ears to hear. Everyone leaned forward as if to miss even a syllable might deprive them of something precious.

Yet, after all, he had little that was new to add, agreeing merely with the previous witness that the deceased had behaved much as usual—being cheerful and positive on the morning of his death. He added that Mr Carter was a founder member of the community, had been greatly liked and would be greatly missed. The rest of the gathering then came forward but merely to confirm their own and each other's absence from the scene in question. Then the coroner began summing up.

The jury, now one melting mass on its long hard bench, strove to look impartial, intelligent and reasonably awake. There seemed to be no reason, they were told, to suspect foul play in this instance. All occupants of the Manor House were proveably elsewhere at the time of Mr Carter's unfortunate death. The rucked runner at the top of the landing, and the small amount of alcohol consumed by a person apparently not at all used to it and on an empty stomach, had probably between them combined to bring about the fatal fall. The coroner pointed out the advisability of using some sort of rubber grip or backing between loose rugs and highly polished floorboards, and he offered his sympathy to the friends of the dead man. Then a verdict of Accidental Death was pronounced.

The coroner rose, the fan gave a final apathetic groan and a dead bluebottle fell on the usher's head. The Windhorse group remained seated whilst everyone else drifted towards the door. You could have cut the disappointment with a knife. A murder, people unreasonably felt, had been as good as promised. They looked around for someone to blame but the Bulstrodes—prophets without honour—had already slipped away. The crowd moved, rumbling and grumbling, down the steps and into the car park or off to The Soft Shoe.

Two girls, young and pretty, long golden legs disappearing into stone-washed shorts, hung about waiting to see the witnesses emerge. One of them, staring round, nudged the other and pointed to a shabby Morris Traveller.

‘Will you look at that.'

‘Where?' A sun-bleached Afro turned and turned about.

‘You blind? There, dimmo! That's their van.'

‘So?'

‘Look…'

An indrawn gasp. ‘Ange…'

‘D'you fancy him?'

‘Are you kidding?'

‘Chat him up then. I dare you.'

‘Kev'd kill me.'

‘If you don't, I will.'

‘You wouldn't.'

‘I'll say the car won't start.'

‘We haven't got a car.'

Giggling, pushing each other, retreating, lurching forward, they eventually fetched up against the side window of the van. The one who wasn't Ange nudged her friend and said, ‘Go on…'

‘Stop laughing then.'

A rap on the glass. The man turned. For a moment all three stared at each other then the girls, suddenly cold, their faces slack with shock, stepped back.

‘I'm ever so sorry…'

‘Sorry.'

‘I was only…'

‘We didn't mean anything.' They gripped each other's hands and ran swiftly away.

Back in the courthouse the wearer of the muslin trousers was weeping and being comforted. Her companions crowded round, hugging and patting her slim shoulders. The man with the beard left them, returning a few moments later with the news that everyone seemed to have departed so perhaps they could now make their own way home.

In this he was not quite correct. As the small gathering proceeded soberly through the waiting doors, a young man got to his feet in the gallery. He had been sitting, successfully concealed, behind a roof-supporting pillar. He stood very still, staring down at the coroner's empty chair. Then he took a piece of paper from the pocket of his jeans and read it—seemingly, from the length of time it took—over and over again. Finally he replaced the paper and leaned hard on the gallery rail, apparently in the grip of some powerful emotion. He stood there for several minutes before ramming a peaked cap on his fair hair and turning to leave. But even then it could not be said that he had quite recovered. For as he ran down the stairs his fingers balled themselves into angry fists. And his face was white with rage.

Five days later the ashes of Jim Carter were scattered around the bole of a giant cedar beneath which he had once loved to sit. A prayer for his reincarnation as a Chohan of the First Ray was offered and a wooden frame from which depended tiny bells and fragile twists of glass was held, glittering, up to the sun. There was a bit of gentle chanting then everyone had some lemon balm tea and a slice of Miss Cuttle's iced carrot cake and went about their business.

B
reakfast was nearly over. The Master, who rose to commence his meditation and orisons at sunrise, was never present at this meal—settling instead for a tisane and a caraway biscuit in the Solar once his chakras had been cleansed and recharged. And, beloved though he might be—even worshipped on occasion (although he would have been the first to rebuke such exuberant nonsense)—there was no doubt that his absence engendered a certain easing of restraint. The little group at the long refectory table was on the point of becoming quite frolicsome.

‘And what are you two getting up to this afternoon, Heather?' asked Arno, removing a speck of yogurt from his beard with a hand-woven napkin. He referred to the single free period that their chores and devotions allowed.

‘We're going up to Morrigan's Ridge.' Heather Beavers spoke with the eager breathlessness of a little girl, although her hair was long and grey. ‘There's a monolith there with the most amazing vibrations. We hope to unlock the cosmic energy.'

‘Be careful,' said Arno quickly. ‘Make sure you take an amulet.'

‘Of course.' Ken and Heather both touched the pyrite crystals suspended from a leather headband and resting, like a third eye, in the centre of their foreheads.

‘Last time we had an energy release Hilarion came through with the most incredible power-packed information. He just…effloresced. Didn't he, Ken?'

‘Mmm.' Ken spoke indistinctly through a mouthful of bran and Bounty of the Hedgerow compote. ‘Described our next thousand lives plus an outline of Mars' inter-galactic war plans. Going to be really hot come the millennium.'

‘And you, Janet. Do you have any plans?'

‘It's such a lovely day I thought I'd take the bus to Causton. May needs some more tapestry needles. Perhaps you'd like to come, Trixie.' She looked across at the girl sitting next to Arno who did not reply. Janet stumbled on. ‘We could go into the park afterwards and have an ice.'

The long bony face was lean and hungry. Always either quite blank or flaring with emotion, it seemed incapable of expressing ambiguity. Janet had pale, light eyes, the pupils almost colourless, and coarse wiry hair like an Irish wolfhound. Arno averted his gaze from all that longing. Enslaved himself by Miss Cuttle's grand bosom and liquefacient gaze, he appreciated acutely enslavement in others and poor Janet was a perfect example of subjugation brought to a pretty heel.

Receiving no response, she now got up and began to stack the bulgy, smearily patterned cereal bowls. They were the unfortunate results of her Usefulness Training in the pottery when she had first arrived. She loathed the blasted things and always handled them roughly, hoping for a reduction in numbers, but they remained obstinately indestructible. Even Christopher, slap-dashing his way through May's Daisy Chain Spode, washed them up without mishap.

‘As it's Summa's birthday no doubt you have some treat in store.' Arno smiled shyly at the young man opposite, for everyone knew how sweetly the land lay in that direction.

‘Well…' Usually amiable and open-faced, Christopher appeared ill at ease. ‘There seems to be an awful lot going on already.'

‘But you'll be wanting to take her out? Maybe on the river?'

Christopher did not reply and Janet laughed, a forced rough sound with a scrape of malice, pinching some coarse brown breadcrumbs into a little pellet with her bony fingers. Frequently told as a child that she had pianist's hands, she had never cared to put the supposition to the test.

‘Don't you believe in romance then, Jan?' Trixie laughed, too, but merrily, shaking out a mop of blonde curls. Shiny pink lips and thick sooty lashes gave her the look of an expensive china doll.

Janet got up and started to brush some spilled muesli towards the edge of the table. This was so old that the two halves had begun to warp, shrinking away from each other. A few nuts disappeared through the gap and rolled around on the wooden floor. She decided to be unskilful (the word used by the community to denote behaviour liable to cause a breach of the peace) and leave them there. Trixie tilted her chair back, glanced slyly down and made a tutting sound, her rosebud mouth in a kissy pout.

Janet took the bowls away, came back with a dustpan and brush and crawled under the table, the bare boards hurting her knees. Ten feet. Male: two Argyle socks—felted with much washing and smelling faintly of camphorated oil—two white cotton, two beige terry towelling and six sturdy sandals. Female: purple lace-up felt bootees embroidered with cabbalistic signs. Mickey Mouse sneakers over socks so brief they barely reached pert, delicate ankles. Jeans were rolled up to just below the knee and, on lately shaven calves, stubble glinted like gold wire.