A Brush with Death Page 5

  Pleased that I’d got the perfect photograph I now had the remaining twenty-four hours to get to know Situp’s character as best I could. It’s important to allow time for this as it enables me, when I’m back at my easel with the photograph in hand, to strike up conversation as if the pet were in my studio, bringing the drawing to life.

  After a hot, buffet-style lunch prepared by May, the men went to the rubbish dump, followed by the pub. I trudged back to the office along with Situp, leaving Antonia, Bella and May making Christmas tree decorations in the nursery. Antonia and I had arranged to join the others later for a quick drink before Saturday evening Catholic Mass.

  There are many good reasons for being a Catholic, not least the fact you can go to Sunday Mass on Saturday evening. This 6pm service doesn’t keep you in with the social posse, but it’s quick and convenient, which often suits me. It is a great shame that none of the pretty English village churches are Catholic any more as it means that wherever you are you almost always have to get in the car to go to mass.

  Spire is no exception; we had to go all the way to a much larger town and I wouldn’t have gone had it not been mentioned. But surprisingly Henry announced at lunch that he was definitely going, and Ben said he’d keep him company, and so I asked if I could come too.

  Having spent most of the afternoon drawing I wasn’t sure where Antonia was when it approached the time to leave, so I lay on my bed having a rest until I heard her call, ‘Susie! Ready to go.’

  I met her in the kitchen, and she said, ‘Sorry I’m late but I’ve been working on something so dull I won’t go into it. Male chief executives can be such bulldozers.’ I wouldn’t know, but I smiled back at her with sympathy.

  There was no time for a drink but she offered to hop in my car and show me the way. Antonia was clearly in high-powered work mode so I took the easy option and accepted despite the fact I knew exactly where I was going.

  We arrived at the Dorset Horn to find Ben and Henry up at the bar. The ruddy-faced publican spotted Antonia immediately. He tipped his head at Ben, who turned round and smiled at us over the crowd. Antonia and I stood just inside the entrance and, as the boys walked towards us, to my suprise Lord Greengrass crossed their path.

  Ben stopped to say hello and spoke loud enough for us all to hear, ‘Good evening, Lord Greengrass.’

  Alexander looked up with a, ‘Good evening Ben.’ Then he smiled hello in my direction.

  Ben said, ‘I’m so sorry we are in a bit of a rush, but do pop in tomorrow for a drink after the Sunday service.’

  ‘Many thanks, I’m sure we will.’

  Henry was now by my side. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Lord Greengrass. He’s the one who introduced me to Antonia and Ben. Such a nice man.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You don’t think I can be friends with someone more than double my age?’

  ‘I’m pulling your leg, Susie. I’m just jealous you’re expressing affection for another man.’

  Was Henry flirting with me?

  With no time to waste we piled into my suddenly rather small car, Henry going straight for the front seat, which pleased me.

  As soon as we were off Ben announced from the back, ‘We’d better be careful or we’ll be going to another church service here tomorrow.’ He enthusiastically reeled off what the publican, Ronnie, had told them earlier. Apparently there’s a commemoration service for the flood of 1963. There were newspaper cuttings pinned up in the pub saying most of the village was underwater, several cats whose owners were away from home died unable to get of out their flaps and it was three weeks before the main street was clear of debris.

  ‘Ronnie says the community gets together every ten years, and in his words, “Say particularly special prayers to Noah”, in the hope that it won’t happen again. Do you think we should go, Anty? We don’t want to set the village against us,’ Ben said.

  ‘Of course not, Benji. Diana will stick up for us tomorrow if our absence is mentioned, I have no doubt about that.’

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ said Ben, mocking his wife’s forceful manner. ‘Ronnie’s not going either – says he can’t stand the excessive faith in this village.’ He leaned forward and tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Draw up here, Susie, so Anty can hop out and walk home through the graveyard.’

  I stopped the car and waited until I was sure she could see her way through the rough ground. As her elongated figure faded into the dusk, towards the glimmer of light from the house, I’m sure I heard her call, ‘Situp?’

  Slightly later than most we slipped into a back pew just before the organist’s playing accompanied the priest and altar boys down the aisle. St Giles, although an ugly modern building, was pleasingly full of flowers. There must have been a wedding here recently.

  Ben and I joined the congregation singing ‘Hail Queen of Heaven’, one of the very few good Catholic hymns. Henry obviously wasn’t the singing type. It niggled at me, the fact I hadn’t spotted he was a Catholic. Usually I’m pretty good at that, but there was something about Henry that set me off-kilter. It was the seeming lack of depth when he talked about his job, although right now he was so absorbed in the service it would be hard to argue otherwise. He didn’t glance at Ben and me once during mass and looked pensive to the point that I thought he could be genuinely troubled.

  Ben and I were out of the church swiftly after the last hymn but Henry got stuck behind a gaggle of tottering old ladies. He towered above them, smiling at last towards Ben and me standing by the car. As soon as he’d seen us we got inside; it was another cold, dark night.

  ‘Great to see a full church,’ said Henry, climbing into the back seat.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Ben. ‘I wasn’t expecting that, although I don’t come here often, only when my family are staying really. Not very good of me.’

  ‘It’s hard to go regularly when you’re not married to a Catholic,’ said Henry as if speaking from experience.

  ‘You’re right. Antonia almost prefers it if I don’t go. Sunday morning’s our lie-in and Saturday evening’s about our only other “us” time.’

  ‘Best marry a Catholic if you can, Susie,’ joked Henry from the back.

  I made an amused sound of agreement from the back of my nose and then concentrated on my driving. The road to Spire was full of blind bends, humpbacked bridges and the chance that a badger could be lumbering across at any moment.

  As we got back to the yard of the Glebe House I knew from the clock on the dashboard there would be no time for a bath. It would have to wait until after dinner.

  We went into the kitchen to find Antonia sitting in an armchair pulled up to the Aga, engrossed in P.D. James’s Death Comes to Pemberley.

  ‘What on earth are you doing with that?’ exclaimed Henry with a giggle in his voice. Antonia swung round to find him pointing at the Aga.

  ‘Oh that thing.’ She reached over the hot plate, picked up a pale, white object, which looked a little like a cockatoo’s cuttlefish, and handed it to Henry. I moved closer to him to take a look. Ben was already crouched down at the wood-burner piling on more logs. It was nice to see that Antonia’s lack of nesting never upset him.

  ‘Situp brought it back,’ she said, ‘I’m drying it out as I thought it was rather an interesting thing to draw and that maybe you’d like it, Susie?’

  Wow! ‘How thoughtful,’ I said, ‘Yes that would be great.’

  Henry was twirling the bone in his fingers. ‘Yeah, I’m sure Susie would like a bit of human skull knocking about her studio. Not to worry about the law and all that.’

  ‘What?’ cried Antonia with a snap of surprise.

  Henry held up the bone. A few bits of dry mud dropped to the floor.

  ‘This is a temporal bone from a fully-developed human skull,’ he said. Ben was now looking in our direction. ‘Afraid Situp’s got you in a bit of a pickle. He must have dug up a very old grave.’

  ‘What do we do?’ asked Ben, standing upright.

  ‘L
ucky for you it has no flesh on it,’ said Henry.

  ‘Oh please,’ said Antonia.

  ‘It’s been in the ground a long time.’ Henry turned the piece of bone in his hand again. ‘I’d say it’s at least a hundred years old. We could probably bury it again without too much of a problem.’

  I didn’t feel it was my place to voice an opinion even though I thought Henry’s approach breached the law. They all agreed that the bone needed to be re-buried wherever it was dug up from, and Ben was all for getting the job done right away.

  Antonia contradicted him, and with reason: ‘I think we have to wait until it’s light so that we can be absolutely sure we’re putting it back in the right place.’

  Henry backed her up. ‘We also need a bit of daylight to make sure that we don’t leave a trace.’

  Henry crept towards Situp’s basket. ‘Who’s a naughty boy then, diggy, diggy in the graveyard?’

  But Situp was not amused and drew back further into his bed, determinedly looking the other way.

  ‘Let’s eat,’ Ben said, bringing a large pot to the centre of the table and resting it on a slate.

  Antonia picked up a green salad and a bowl of crushed new potatoes from the sideboard.

  ‘Henry, sit down next to Susie and we’ll go opposite you,’ said Antonia.

  I smiled at the convention. No upper-class house sits down to a meal (or to ‘eat’, as they would put it, ‘meal’ being terribly non-U) without a table plan. Breakfast, lunch and dinner visitors are placed boy, girl, boy, girl, with a sigh or frantic telephone call to a suitable neighbour if numbers are uneven, sexes unbalanced or there are thirteen for dinner.

  ‘Right, you go first, Susie,’ said Ben lowering a ladle into the pot. ‘It’s Guinness and venison stew.’

  They were very generous with their wine, the Codringtons. The previous night we had Sancerre before dinner and were offered a bottle of Chablis with the main course, although neither Henry nor I accepted and so Antonia and Ben abstained. Tonight there was a magnum of Chambertin on the table and not one of us held back. We drank the whole thing over the course of the evening and completely forgot that someone had to be up early to bury the bone before the commemoration service began.

  The bells of Spire village church chimed as my feet trod down the stairs. Again I was the last up, but only just. There was a smell of fresh coffee as I entered the kitchen.

  The room was silent until Henry saw me and said, ‘Morning, Susie.’

  ‘I’ve made some coffee, Susie, but if you’d rather tea just say,’ said Ben.

  ‘Coffee’s perfect, thank you.’

  Maybe it was the effect of all the red wine but it was a breakfast to forget. The temporal bone still sat on the Aga and neither Antonia nor Ben joined Henry and me at the table. I felt a bit of an atmosphere.

  ‘Susie, will you be staying for lunch?’ asked Antonia, who was putting something pale, solid and unrecognisable in the fridge. Maybe she was a baker at heart.

  A part of me wanted to disappear right now, as it’s always difficult when strangers drop their guard in front of you. But, overall, I was enjoying a lovely weekend and in any case I didn’t want them to think I’d picked up on a tense feeling in the room. ‘I’d love to stay for lunch, but will head off straight after if that’s okay?’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Antonia as she went through the open door into the nursery. ‘Come on Bella, let’s go clean out Minty.’ She hurried back through the kitchen with Bella on her slim hip.

  ‘Shouldn’t have stayed up so late,’ said Ben. ‘When May chooses to take a Sunday off it robs us of our lie-in and that makes us all a bit grumpy.’

  ‘I’m going to bury the bone now,’ said Henry. ‘If either of you want to come that’s fine, but the sooner we do it the better.’

  ‘I’ll go and get you a shovel,’ said Ben, wriggling out of taking on the job himself.

  Henry grabbed the bone from the Aga and followed Ben outside. I was now the only one left in the kitchen, and I realised the bone was probably the cause of tension in the house as much as the red wine and May’s night off. Clasping my cup of coffee I watched the boys through the kitchen window.

  Henry sauntered across the gravel carrying a shovel, and then Ben marched purposefully across the yard and straight through the gate in the thick yew hedge into the graveyard.

  I suddenly felt a pang of guilt that I was not doing anything to help. This isn’t an unusual response for a Catholic, but it was one that needed to be acted on. I could at least keep watch or something. With this thought, I raced out after them.

  At first glance, opening the lych-gate, there was no one to be seen. I faced the north wall of the church and decided to walk round anti-clockwise. As I was turning the corner with the porch I walked smack bang into Ben.

  ‘Susie, I’m so sorry,’ he said, embarrassed by our proximity before his eyes focused on something behind me. I turned around to see Situp bounding towards us; he must have sneaked out of the house.

  Ben grabbed him. ‘Will you hold him while I get the lead out of my pocket?’

  I grabbed hold of Situp by the collar.

  ‘Have you seen Henry?’ asked Ben.

  ‘No, but I haven’t looked far.’

  ‘Henry!’

  No answer.

  ‘Henry!’ Ben called in a louder voice. Situp looked up at him and began to whine.

  Still no answer.

  ‘He’s not out the front and there are no graves on the south side so there’s no point us looking there.’ Ben was making a start in the direction I’d come from. ‘Far more likely he’s round the back, that’s where the old graves are.’

  It was as we were approaching the wall of the north transept that I caught sight of Henry, ducking out from underneath a large bowing branch of an old yew tree.

  ‘Did you find the grave? Have you re-buried it?’ called Ben anxiously.

  ‘Course I have,’ said Henry coming towards us. ‘Easy peasy. I knew the bone was of some age and figured that old yew could have grown up over some graves. Took me a while to find it – a neat digger your dog, but it’s all buried and back where it came from now.’

  From inside the church the organ sounded, ‘Guide me, O Thou Great Redeemer’. Henry joined in with the congregation using the shovel as a comically large microphone and Ben and I both laughed at him.

  ‘Shhh!’ I shushed firmly, certain I’d just heard an unearthly sound coming from near by. Ben and Henry looked a bit taken aback, but within a split second there it was again: a faint but deep gurgle, and this time we all heard it.

  Henry sprinted off round the corner of the church. Ben held Situp’s lead tight as we followed, Ben and Situp first, with me close behind.

  As we rounded a sharp corner with a supporting wall, bent back into a nook, right in front of us was a shocking scene. I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach.

  Henry, with his back to us, was straddling a man whose brogues I could see pointing in my direction. Ben thrust Situp’s lead into my hand, gently pushed me back and then stepped round to the man’s head.

  ‘Leave it, Ben,’ said Henry sharply as he stretched his arm out to stop him bending down. ‘He’s a goner, I fear. His pulse has stopped but I’ll try CPR, although I don’t hold out much hope.’

  Henry slid off the rigid body, and he began to pound on the man’s chest.

  Aghast I looked down on a pitiless figure whose withered penis was popping out of his flies. As Ben removed Situp from the scene, saying that he would telephone for an ambulance, Henry stopped the CPR briefly to preserve the patient’s modesty.

  After a while Henry stopped what he was doing.

  ‘You all right, Susie?’ he said as he stood up. ‘Quite something seeing death first hand, I know.’

  What a thing to say at such a moment. But then what do you say? I’d been unable to utter a word, and then my worst fears were realised as I saw the dead man’s face. ‘That’s Alex, Alexander, Lord Greengrass,’ I stamm
ered.

  ‘Sorry?’ said Henry.

  ‘He was the man in the pub yesterday,’ I said. ‘He’s always been very good to me, and I’m very fond of him.’

  ‘Oh goodness. I’m so sorry, Susie.’ Henry gripped my shoulder firmly.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked in a voice that sounded to me as if it were a long way away.

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’ Henry began drawing me away. ‘We’d better go and sit on that bench over there.’

  I wriggled out of Henry’s clutches, overcome with emotion. ‘Is he definitely dead?’

  ‘Yes, he is, I’m afraid.’

  The whole world was silent. I couldn’t even hear my feet touch the ground as we walked slowly to the bench. Henry and I sat side by side.

  The creak of the gate roused our attention and we swivelled and saw Ben walking towards us with a mobile to his ear. He ended the call. ‘Officer Moss is on his way,’ he told us.

  We fell into shocked silence. All I could think about was Diana. The service must be nearly over. What a complete tragedy.

  Ben, now pacing back and forth behind the bench, was the first to break the silence. ‘Did you see that mark on his forehead?’

  ‘Yes, I think he must have banged himself as he fell down,’ said Henry. ‘Looked some age, so I expect he had a cardiac arrest. How old was he?’

  ‘Seventy-five. He only stopped working full time last year,’ I said. ‘He never wanted to step down as Chairman of the Game Conservancy as he missed travelling the country.’

  There was another silence.

  Unanswered questions rushed through my mind and I desperately prayed that no one in the congregation would want to leave the graveyard by this path. The chatter of the faithful drifted from the west door, and then the dreaded cry came.

  ‘Alexander! Alexander! Alex!’ Diana sounded irritated as she appeared around the corner. ‘Susie!’ she spotted me, and made a B-line for us. I hurried towards her, straight past the nook in the church wall where her dead husband lay.