The Skeleton in the Grass (15 page)

Oliver had played Happy Families with the little ones early on, then a couple of games of draughts with someone who had vouched for this fact on the telephone. But from then on, apart apparently from a conversation with Lady Wadham, he had merely observed, and had had a long walk in the garden. In the dark? said Minchip to himself sceptically.

Conversely the first part of his mother's evening was unaccounted for. She claimed to have wandered round seeing that everyone was happy and occupied, but there was so far no corroborative evidence. And she was not a woman nobody would notice. From about nine onwards she was playing Monopoly, and no doubt
that
could be checked.

Considering the party was specifically a game-playing one, the Hallams had spent a large amount of time sitting out, or being spectators. But there again, that might be a comment on the kind of people the Hallams were. If it was, Minchip rather sympathized with them.

He pushed back his chair. A game was in prospect for him too. He could no longer delay visiting Major Coffey. He looked forward to the encounter not because he expected to like or respect the man, but rather in the spirit of an angler anticipating with relish a session with a particularly tricky trout. The Major, he knew, was a man who had tangled with the police very often in the past, and had never been significantly worsened.

As he walked through Chowton on his way to the Major's cottage, Minchip noticed two of the young people he had interviewed the day before, standing deep in conversation beside a stile. The set of their shoulders was disconsolate. He wondered if they had just been made aware of the direction that the village feeling was taking. He himself had been informed of this by Sergeant South, that most sensitive of barometers. He felt sorry for the young people. He knew the dark depths and irrationality of rural passions. Fifty years ago the family at the Hall, and perhaps even their servants, would have been shielded by habits of deference. That was much less the case today. He thought cynically: I'm sure Dennis Hallam greatly disapproves of deference.

The cottage was square and unattractive, though in excellent repair. Even the front garden was given over to vegetables, apart from one or two elderly shrubs. The Major preparing to feed himself in the next war, thought Minchip. Or maybe it was just that the Major was not particularly well off. He screwed round the little handle that rang the bell, and waited.

The Major, when he opened the door, was a shadowy figure. The cottage had a poky hallway, but there was no light in it. The Major stood back to let him in.

“Ah, Inspector,” he said. “I've been expecting you.”

“Expecting?” Minchip queried, crossing the threshold.

“But naturally. I was at the Wadhams' gathering. And you will no doubt have heard that Christopher Keene was one of my little group.”

So frankness was to be the opening gambit, thought Minchip, as he was ushered into the sitting-room.

“You will have a cup of coffee?”

Minchip had had coffee not half an hour before, but he accepted. He was willing to bet the Major employed no maid, and it would give him a chance to examine the room.

It was a larger room than he had expected. The cottage was in fact two cottages knocked together—as was usually the case when gentry bought themselves a rural retirement home. This room represented the whole ground floor of one of them. The furniture was old, angular, and—as Minchip was soon to find out—uncomfortable. Inherited, no doubt. Probably the furniture Major Coffey had grown up with. In a wooden box under the window were dumbbells and Indian clubs. The bookshelf was a meagre affair. Army manuals, books on guns and gun lore, memoirs of army men and Empire Builders, some of them personally dedicated. The only overtly political work was Herr Hitler's
My Struggle.

On his brief visit inside Hallam, Inspector Minchip had inevitably become aware that books dominated the house. Here it was guns. He had not noticed that immediately, because Coffey had not switched on the light. The cases containing them were down the far end of the room, much in shadow, but a miniature chandelier showed that in the evening they would be the focal point of the room. There was one case attached to the wall containing rifles, another glass display case containing pistols and Service revolvers. This was not a collection of antiques and curiosities. These were all recent weapons that had seen service.

Minchip only had time to take in the major salient points of the collection when Coffey came in, bearing a tray.

“It's a dreary sort of day,” he said, in his soft voice with the suggestion of a lisp. He switched on the light. “Ah, you are examining my collection.”

“Yes, indeed. Everything except a cannon.”

Coffey laughed mirthlessly.

“Do come and sit down. At least you can see that I don't try to hide my interest in guns.”

“You would gain nothing by doing so. I would have
presumed that a retired military man
had
guns. And naturally the whole village would know of your collection.”

They sat down. Major Coffey poured, and immediately stood up, ranging around the room, cup in hand. Minchip sipped at his brew. At least it was more palatable than Mrs. South's concoction—coffee essence with boiling milk poured over it. He sat back in his chair and contemplated the Major. If one looked at the figure alone he was rather an impressive man: tall, trim, limber, upright. A finely preserved male animal. The face was another matter: in spite of the short haircut and military moustache it was secretive, changeable, untrustworthy. It was the face, Minchip felt, of a disappointed man, of one who had always felt his merits exceeded his promotion. Nevertheless, he had no doubt that the brain behind the face was agile, even if it was unsound.

Major Coffey, suddenly aware he was being watched, came and sat down.

“Good,” said Minchip. “Otherwise I should have had to stand up. I can't start the interview at a disadvantage.”

Major Coffey smiled an inward, prickly smile.

“I have no desire to put you at a disadvantage. I intend to cooperate with you fully.”

“I'm glad to hear it. Tell me, Major, what was the precise nature of your connection with the young men of these villages?”

The Major looked at him straight.

“You are not, I hope, suggesting any kind of moral turpitude?”

“I am not suggesting anything at all. I am merely asking a question.”

“Because let me assure you, if there were anything of that despicable nature, it would have been round the village in no time.”

That, at any rate, was true.

“Perhaps you would answer my question.”

Major Coffey, having made his point, sat back, considering.

“The precise nature, I think you said, of my connection with the young men of the village? I think you might say that I am some kind of leader. Yes, I think you might say that. They are, as I expect you appreciate, lively, high-spirited young men, full of initiative. Well-educated, too, compared to the peasantry of my young days. As a military man it is natural that I should want to encourage in them a zeal to serve their King, country, and the Empire.”

“I see . . . And what form does this encouragement take?”

“Oh—drill, target practice, field exercises. I try to fan into life any spark that suggests that any one of them has the martial spirit.”

“I suppose among the signs of the martial spirit you would count initiative?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“You encourage initiative and enterprise, then, in the boys. In what ways?”

“It is in the nature of things, Inspector, that initiative should be allowed to take its own ways.”

Coffey smiled a humourless but self-satisfied smile. Minchip let that go for the moment.

“What would you say, sir, was the main purpose behind your encouragement of this . . . martial spirit?”

“Every nation worth its salt must be willing to defend itself.” The voice had a certain ring now, as if he were addressing a meeting. “We live in troubled times, though to listen to the complacent talk of the politicians you would never think so. We are a nation under threat.”

“You may be right, sir. But I'm rather surprised, if you don't mind my saying so, that a gentleman of your cast of mind should be preparing these boys to fight the present rulers of Germany.”

Coffey sat up at once.

“Germany? Good God, Inspector, not Germany! Russia! The Bolsheviks! The enemy to the East!” He had leaned forward, his eyes glowing. Apparently he was confident that, as military man to policeman, he was addressing a like-minded soul. “That is the conflict I am preparing them for. That is the crusade all the great nations of Europe will have to undertake, and quite soon, too. And we shall win, make no mistake. In spite of the spinelessness of our present leaders we shall crush them. The struggle may be long, longer than last time, but in the end it too will be a glorious victory.”

Minchip shifted uneasily in his chair.

“I fought in the last war, Major Coffey. Whatever else that conflict was, it was not glorious.”

Coffey withdrew into his chair, and veiled the fire in his eyes. There was no disguising his disappointment and disgust.

“I am sorry to hear you are infected with the modern disease of defeatism,” he said sourly. “I myself went straight from the war to trying to stop the dissolution of our very nation itself.”

“In Ireland?”

“In Ireland.”

“That must have been very gratifying, sir. Though not entirely successful. Can we get back to your encouragement of initiative in your little band of young men?”

Coffey had withdrawn into his shell.

“If you wish.”

“I see no point in beating about the bush. We know the boys who have been pursuing this campaign against the Hallams. They are all members of your group. I believe they have been persecuting the family at your instigation.”

Major Coffey sat back in his chair and again looked straight at Minchip.

“You put it too crudely, much too crudely. I made the
boys aware of the Hallams' deplorable opinions. Not that I needed to. Their record and their opinions are all too well-known.” He leaned forward, once more seeking to forge a bond. “Do you know the rumours about Dennis Hallam's
war
injury?”

Inspector Minchip had by now been briefed in village gossip by Sergeant South.

“I know the
rumours.”

“The opinions they propagate, the causes they espouse, are more than rumours. In any sane society they would be shot as traitors. The nation that will not defend itself deserves to die.”

“Let's stick to the point, shall we? I'm not interested in discussing politics with you. Because you disapproved of the Hallams' views you got up this campaign against them.”

Coffey sat back once more, frustrated, in his chair.

“As I said, these are lively, independent boys. Young men. There was no need to orchestrate a campaign. I may have suggested that it would be a good idea to bring home to the Hallams the abhorrence right-minded people feel for their views.”

“Hmm. I would have thought that some of the ‘messages' conveyed in these pranks were rather too sophisticated for country lads. In particular the skeleton without a backbone . . .”

A steely smile crossed Coffey's face. It was a challenge.

“This is the age of the newspaper and wireless, Inspector. The country lad is every bit as sophisticated as his town equivalent, with whom I have worked for years. I think you would find your opinion very difficult to substantiate.”

“Not as the boys start talking a little more,” said Minchip, with a confidence greater than he actually felt. “But that is a side issue. No crime was being committed by Christopher Keene.”

“Precisely.”

“The crime was committed against him. That crime need not have anything to do with the campaign against the Hallams. Would you mind telling me, sir, exactly what you were doing during the course of the evening at Lord Wadham's?”

Major Coffey put his fingers together to form a pyramid.

“I have thought about that, of course.
Precisely
I certainly cannot tell you. I was primarily an observer. The whole occasion struck me as a trifle—what shall I say?—effete. Contests may be stimulating but
party games—
they are mere trifling. I watched the croquet, watched Monopoly, a new game to me. Then I walked in the garden. I felt, to put the matter bluntly, that this was not an occasion for me . . .”

It occurred to Minchip as an irony that Major Coffey and Dennis Hallam should react so similarly to the occasion.

“Why did you go? The nature of these parties is well known in these parts.”

“I was asked by Simon Killingbeck.”

“And that was enough? I see. Now, while you were walking in the garden, did you by any chance encounter Oliver Hallam?”

“I did
not.”

“And you never went beyond the Beecham grounds?”

“To the best of my knowledge, no.”

“Not down to the river, over the bridge?”

“
No.
Certainly not.”

“Very well.” Minchip got up. “Now, as to this collection of guns, sir . . .”

If Dennis Hallam had been present he would immediately have said: “The Purloined Letter!” He would probably have added: “It's great fun, but I never found that story very convincing.” Minchip had not read the story, but he had no great hope either of finding the gun that killed Christopher Keene among the Major's collection. However
he strolled casually over to the cases. The Major came after him.

“As a military man I am naturally interested in guns. You made the point yourself. A well-cared-for gun can make the difference between life and death.”

“Quite. As a one-time soldier I appreciate that . . . That's a Lee-Enfield .303, isn't it?”