But just because he wasn’t sophisticated, Clement knew, didn’t mean that he was unintelligent. ‘You’d known the deceased all his life, you say. What was your opinion of him?’ Clement asked calmly.
‘He were a right good lad,’ Ray Dewberry said at once. ‘Clever, I reckon, too. He was studying at university, weren’t he? Had good manners too, and was always cheerful. My wife was right fond of him always – saw a lot of him growing up, like I said. He and our Ronnie were always underfoot. When he got older, he helped out on the farm in the summer holidays for pocket money, like. Trustworthy. Kind to animals. A good worker.’
The farmer seemed to run out of words and accolades, and again stood waiting patiently.
‘You must know the contents of the barn where David Finch was found quite well,’ the coroner changed tack. ‘Was the stepladder found beneath the deceased part of its contents?’
‘Ah, I reckon it were,’ Ray said, after a moment’s careful thought. ‘Prob’ly been leaning against the wall at the back for ages. Whenever stuff got too old, but was too good to chuck out, we allus tended to leave it in the barn. Never know when summat might be needed again, do yuh?’
‘Did your son and the deceased know the barn well?’
‘Course they did. Young uns, looking for somewhere to play, explore everything. I reckon in its day, that there barn on the hill had been a pirate ship, or a robbers den, or a cowboys-and-Indians battleground.’
There was a warm ripple of sentiment from the listening crowd, and someone gave a muffled sob. Probably the boy’s mother, Clement thought, or possibly Ray Dewberry’s wife. Then he glanced down at his notes and saw that the farmer had been a widower for a few years now.
‘So David would have known about the ladder,’ Clement said, a comment that didn’t go unnoticed by reporters or spectators alike, and a ripple of tension shivered around the room. ‘Was there a lot of rope kept in the barn?’
Ray shrugged. ‘Always old rope around on a farm, sir. Bits of machinery, tarps, barbed wire, you name it. I never chuck nothing out, and nor did my dad a’fore me. You never know when summat might be useful, see?’
‘Yes, I understand. So what did you do after finding your son’s friend in the barn that morning Mr Dewberry?’
Ray Dewberry sighed heavily. ‘Well, I didn’t see no easy way to get him down, so I ran back to the house and called the police. We had a telephone installed a couple of years ago, when my wife got so ill.’
‘You didn’t think of using the stepladder and climbing up it yourself?’
‘Nah, didn’t trust it would hold me. It’s a rickety old thing, and I’m more solid-built than young David,’ the farmer said with unthinking candour. ‘And ’sides, I didn’t have nothing on me to cut him down with, only my old pen knife, and I didn’t know if it would saw through rope. And … well, if’n I’m gonna be honest abhat it, I needed to get out of there,’ he admitted, his voice thick and his accent more pronounced than ever now. ‘B’aint never been back in that barn yet, but I s’pose I’ll have to go back in there sooner or later …’
Before things could begin to get maudlin, Clement briskly took him through the rest of the events of that morning – the arrival of the police and the ambulance, and that of the local doctor.
The crowd became a little impatient as this less exciting recital went on, but there was a renewed murmur of interest at the end, when the coroner rounded up his questioning.
‘And when you approached the barn that morning, you noticed nobody in the vicinity?’
The farmer looked puzzled. ‘No sir. Who’d be around at that time o’ the morning?’
‘And the previous evening – you hadn’t noticed anyone hanging around, seen a stranger’s car in the lane nearest to the barn, anything like that?’
‘No sir, but then a’rter dark I’m in the house having my tea, and then early to bed.’
‘I see. And when you found your son’s friend, you didn’t see anything else lying on the ground, or positioned anywhere near him – such as a piece of paper or a letter or a note?’
‘No sir, I didn’t then!’ Ray Dewberry said, with his first sign of asperity. Clearly, he didn’t like this suggestion that the young man he’d known from boyhood had left a suicide note. ‘But then, I don’t suppose I was noticin’ much at the time,’ he nevertheless felt compelled to add.
‘And you have no idea why David Finch would have come to your barn?’
‘Nah. Haven’t seen him for a few years, not since he were a young lad and he helped out around the place for some pocket money, like,’ the farmer said sadly.
‘Do you know if the barn was a meeting place for, er, courting couples?’ Clement asked delicately.
Again, there was the expected ripple of titillated anticipation, but Ray Dewberry seemed immune to it. He merely looked at the coroner and shook his head. ‘No sir,’ he said, for the first time smiling slightly. ‘Reckon most lads and gals had more comfortable spots than a draughty old barn in the middle of nowhere. It’s not as if it was filled with hay or anything,’ he added as an afterthought.
There was a brief, nervous titter from some of the spectators at this.
‘Mr Finch hadn’t contacted you,
