Her sensible shoes made a regular slapping sound on the mud as she strode forward. She felt fit and optimistic. Carole Seddon was only in her early fifties, after all. There was life in the old girl yet.
Sound travels strangely on the Downs, bounced from hillocks and funnelled by valleys. Frequently it’s hard to tell exactly where a noise is coming from.
So Carole wasn’t distracted by the screech of eroded gears until the vehicle was almost upon her. She turned to see an old Land Rover roaring up the track behind her. It was being driven as though the driver were blind to her existence.
Carole leapt to the verge at the side, mentally cursing the loutishness of whoever was driving, and expected to see the Land Rover career off along the track.
But it didn’t. The vehicle braked fiercely in a flurry of mud. Then, in a grinding of gears, it reversed and came to a halt beside her. The flailing tyres spotted her freshly cleaned Burberry with mud.
Carole opened her mouth to remonstrate with whatever road-hog she was up against, but the words dried on her lips when she saw who got out of the driver’s door.
She was not an accidental victim of someone’s thoughtless high spirits. The man had been looking for her.
Carole Seddon didn’t like the expression she saw in his eyes as he said, more statement than question, “You’re the one who found the bones, aren’t you?”
? Death on the Downs ?
Twenty-Six
“All I could get out of Tamsin,” Gillie Lutteridge went on, “was that something happened last time she came here.”
“That was only a few weeks ago, you said. Another time Miles was away on business.”
“Yes. Anyway, while she was in Weldisham, she saw something that frightened her to death.”
“But she wouldn’t tell you what?”
Gillie shook her head.
“Well, who did she see while she was here?”
“That’s the point. She didn’t see anyone except me. She didn’t want anyone to know she was here.”
“Did she use the phone?”
“Not so far as I know.”
“There weren’t any letters waiting for her?”
“No. As soon as anything addressed to her arrives, I forward it to Sandalls Manor.”
Jude grimaced. “Well, something must’ve happened to get her into such a state.” She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “She didn’t go out?”
“I was with her all evening. We both went to bed at the same time.”
“So, without leaving the house or having contact with another human being, Tamsin managed to get the impression that someone wanted to kill her? It doesn’t make sense.”
“No. There’s only one thing I can think, Jude…”
“What’s that?”
“Well, I just wonder if…With her illness, Tamsin’s sleep patterns are all over the place. Sometimes she sleeps all the time, almost as if she were narcoleptic. And then she goes through phases when she’s awake for hours in the night and…”
“You think she might have gone out?”
“She might.”
“What for?”
“Ib smoke a cigarette. She keeps telling me she’s given up, but I’m not sure I believe her. She used to smoke like a chimney at university, and while she was working in London. When Miles and I made it pretty clear that we didn’t like the smell of cigarettes in the house, Tamsin used to go outside.”
“Into the garden?”
“Yes. Or if it was cold or wet, she’d go a bit further.”
“Where?”
“There’s an old barn just beyond the end of our garden. Tamsin sometimes used to go in there to smoke.”
? Death on the Downs ?
Twenty-Seven
Brian Helling was once again dressed in the leather coat and beret, uniform of the disaffected artist. Carole couldn’t help recalling Graham Forbes’s Chesterton quote about the artistic temperament being ‘a disease that afflicts amateurs’. In other circumstances, she might have found the self-defined writer a figure of fun. But not with the expression that was currently on his thin face. Nor as she recollected the rest of her conversation with Graham Forbes, about the subject matter of Brian Helling’s writing.
She answered his question, confirming that she was indeed the one who had found the bones.
“Carole somebody…”
“Carole Seddon.”
“Lennie Baylis told me it was you.”
“Ah.” Strange – or perhaps not strange, perhaps characteristic of the area – how all these Weldisham boys seemed to keep in touch. Brian Helling still living there with his mother; Harry Grant soon to move back in; Detective Sergeant Baylis living elsewhere, but still resentful of his exclusion from the village on economic grounds.
“And what do you know about them?” Brian Helling went on.
“Know about the bones?” Carole shrugged. She wasn’t about to share the conjectures that had formed in her mind since visiting the dilapidated barn. “I know what’s been on the media. They’re the bones of a woman aged between thirty and fifty. That’s all anyone knows…except maybe the police pathologists…and they’re not yet sharing their conclusions.”
“So you didn’t go to South Welling Barn looking for them?”
“Looking for the bones?” Carole was incredulous. “No. I was just sheltering from the rain. I’d never seen the barn before. I didn’t even know it existed.”
“Right.” Brian Helling rubbed the back of his hand against his long nose. It could have been a gesture of relief. He certainly seemed less manic as he continued. “I’m sorry. In a small place like Weldisham a lot of rumours get spread around. And some of them aren’t very helpful rumours. They could be hurtful to local individuals.”
“Individuals like your mother?” Carole hazarded.
Her words snapped his mood back to paranoia. “What do you know about my mother? How do you know who my mother is?”
“Detective Sergeant Baylis told me who you were,” replied Carole evenly. “He said your mother was Pauline Helling, who lives in Heron Cottage.”
The answer was insufficient to allay all of his suspicion. “Why did Lennie tell you about me?”
“Because I asked him.”
“Why?”
“Because, if you must know, I’d overheard you sounding off in the Hare and Hounds. I wondered who it could be who was talking so loudly and tastelessly about the bones I’d discovered.”
“Oh.” He seemed to accept that, and not to be offended by it. Brian Helling knew he drew attention to himself in public. He even prided himself on the fact.
“Did Lennie say anything else about me?”
“Like what?”
“Oh. Nothing.”
