For the Good of the State

Mustn’t think of Willy. Must look innocent. ‘Coffee cups—?’ At least he could smell the coffee percolating.

‘Damn the coffee cups!’ she blazed at him. ‘You aren’t the old swine’s “very kind” colleagues, are you? You haven’t any idea of what’s happened—have you?’

‘No. We haven’t.’ It was no good lying to this woman, any more than it was any good lying to Willy. And it was particularly no good because she’d obviously heard Audley’s unwise exhortation to his ‘ drunken old bugger’ and her ‘ old swine’ through the thinness of the mock-Tudor front door.

‘Who are you?’

He was used to this sort of doubt, because he didn’t look like the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State

‘Sir Thomas Arkenshaw’ people expected. But it was beginning to become irritating, that disbelief. ‘You are Mrs Cole, are you? Basil Cole’s daughter-in-law?’

‘Yes—’

‘Then I am Sir Thomas Arkenshaw, of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Mrs Cole.’ He reached inside his jacket.

‘And this is my identification.’

She examined his warrant card carefully before returning it to him.

So she had guts. But he knew that already.

“Thank you… Sir Thomas Arkenshaw.‘ She watched him return it to its place. But then she waited.

And she wasn’t scared, thought Tom. So he had to be brutal. ‘How did he die, Mrs Cole?’

‘He fell out of a tree.’

She wasn’t scared. But there was more to it than that. ‘He did what

—?’

‘He fell out of a tree.’ She repeated the statement so obstinately that he was all the more certain of its inadequacy.

‘What the devil was he doing up a tree, Mrs Cole?’

‘He was cutting off a branch.’ She grimaced at him. ‘All these old trees around the house… the copper beeches… they were planted back in the 1930s, Sir Thomas. And the fool who planted them stuck them too close to the house.’ She reached to turn the percolator off, on the working-surface beside her. ‘So there was this big one, at the back… He had put a ladder up, to get at it. He should have got a professional tree-feller to do it.’

Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Tom was unbearably reminded of an Irish joke about ‘tree- fellers’, the punch-line of which he couldn’t remember, except that it had something to do with ‘three fellas’ and ’tree-fellers‘. But that had nothing to do with the fixed expression on her face.

Her nerve broke as he tried to remember the end of the joke.

‘When he cut the limb, it knocked him off the ladder… so it seems.’ She uncoupled the coffee percolator from its plug. ‘At least, that’s what the policeman thought… Apparently, people are always killing themselves, messing about with trees.’

Not good enough! She was a fine-looking woman, high-breasted and with a high IQ to match the lift of the twin-set under the pearls; and she had quite properly defended her mother-in-law from their blundering ignorance in the doorway, when they hadn’t known what was happening.

‘But there is something you can do, Sir Thomas.’ She recognized his doubt, and faced it honestly, breasts and IQ lifting together. ‘I never imagined that I’d ask such a thing. But it seems I can.’

Tom watched her reach towards a line of cups hanging on hooks under an old-fashioned glass-fronted cupboard and then search for matching saucers. ‘Ask what thing, Mrs Cole?’

She looked at him. “There’ll be an inquest, of course.‘

He wondered how much she knew about her father-in-law’s work.

Or, if she didn’t know, whether she had guessed. ‘Yes. But with an accident like this, it’ll be pretty much a formality.’

She moistened her upper lip. ‘It may not be, I’m afraid.’

He could legitimately frown now. ‘Are you suggesting it wasn’t an Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State accident, Mrs Cole? But you said . . the policeman said—?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything. But… my father-in-law worked for the Ministry of Defence, I believe—even after his retirement. I am presuming that you have influence. Isn’t that the way the world works?’

Tom frowned again. ‘What do you want, Mrs Cole?’

She stared at him, her mouth primly compressed. ‘It would be better… for my mother-in-law’s sake, it would be better if certain questions weren’t asked at the inquest. It won’t hurt anyone if they aren’t asked—no harm or injustice will be done.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘You see, Sir Thomas, I know exactly how he fell out of the tree— and why.’

Well, that was something! thought Tom gratefully. But then his gratitude evaporated as he realized that what he’d been thinking and what she evidently thought no longer matched at all. And one of them had to be wrong.

5

‘Well?’ said Audley.

Tom caught a last glimpse of the two Mrs Coles in his rear-view mirror: they were standing together in their doorway in a pool of yellow light. Then the dark mass of the rhododendron bushes erased them.