‘All right, all right – I’m only telling you what I thought.’
‘Anyway, you can’t necessarily trust what Loveday says,’ Archie continued, less abruptly but still a little defensive.
‘So everybody says, but she seemed to talk a lot of sense to me.’ They both applauded as Lettice executed a surprisingly elegant square cut for four from the last ball of the over, and Josephine decided to change the subject. ‘Anyway, discovering Loveday has given me an idea,’ she said while the fielders were swapping ends. ‘I’ve got a body on the beach, so I suppose that’s a start. I’ll worry about who she is tomorrow.’ The bowler charged in, seemingly spurred on by his team-mate’s success, and there was a dull thud as the ball hit the new batsman’s pads. ‘That looked pretty plumb to me – I think you’re in.’ Her verdict was confirmed by Jago’s raised finger, and Archie got up. ‘Good luck,’ she said, and he smiled, the tension between them disappearing as suddenly as it had arrived.
As he walked out to the wicket, Archie had to admit to himself that his reaction to Josephine’s hypothesis had surprised him as much as it had her; he was usually more objective. He chose middle and off, and made his mark on the sand.
‘Don’t make yourself too comfortable, Penrose,’ Jacks said behind him. ‘You won’t be there long.’ There was a chuckle from the slips, offered in a good competitive spirit and without a hint of the malice that lay behind the wicket-keeper’s remark. Well, thought Archie, if he wanted a fight he could have one. The first two balls were short, and he brushed them easily away towards cover for a couple of runs apiece. Comfortably back in his own crease, he smiled at Jacks. ‘It’s a shame Harry’s not here today,’ he said, aware that few things would needle Jacks more than the thought of his old enemy. ‘He was always the star of your team.’
‘We’ve started well enough,’ Jacks said. ‘We don’t need him.’
The next delivery veered wildly to the leg side. Jacks dived to his left, but the ball went wide of his gloves and sped to the makeshift boundary for four byes. ‘Are you sure about that?’ Archie asked as the wicket-keeper picked himself up and scowled. Someone went chasing after the ball, and the estate captain drew back the two slips to create a more defensive field. ‘I gather you saw the accident?’ Archie said, taking advantage of the fact that everyone else was now out of earshot. Jacks ignored him, but Archie had no intention of giving up that easily. ‘I bet your heart leapt,’ he goaded, ‘and I don’t suppose you tried too hard to save Harry.’
‘He was past saving, so don’t start coming the policeman round here. No one in his right mind would go into the Loe, and I’m certainly not playing the hero for that little shit.’
The ball was returned to the bowler, who, as Archie had suspected he would, tried to make up for the loose delivery by concentrating on a good-length ball. He played a defensive stroke, straight back down the pitch. ‘You must have thought all your dreams had come true at once with Harry out the way. It couldn’t have worked out better if you’d forced him in there yourself.’
‘It wasn’t me doing the forcing that morning. You need to look elsewhere for that.’
‘You mean there was someone else there?’ Archie could have kicked himself for the eagerness in his voice, but he managed to stop short of asking if it was Morwenna. He’d have to sound less desperate for information if he wanted to get anything else out of Jacks, who was clearly enjoying having the upper hand for a while.
‘There might have been,’ the wicket-keeper said, and crouched down ready for the next delivery.
Archie played the next ball effortlessly off his pads, edging it down to long leg, and was furious when Lettice pushed for a third run which took him away from the strike and from Jacks. Stranded at the other end, he opened his mouth to tell Jago about Christopher, but the umpire told him to be quiet before he could utter a word. ‘It’s cricket, Archie, not the bar at the Commercial. There’s been enough chat from you down the other end.’
Never mind: this was the last ball of the over, and Jacks would be back with him as long as Lettice didn’t try too hard to keep the strike. The bowler ran in purposefully, but Slogger had her eye in by now and hit the ball easily away on the off side. It went straight to the man at extra cover and there was no real hope of a single, but Lettice had a habit of being undone by her own optimism and never learned from past mistakes. ‘No!’ Archie shouted, but she was on her way down the pitch and he had no choice but to run as well. He had started far too late to stand any chance at all: the ball was already coming in from the fielder and, although he dived recklessly for the crease, his bat held out in front of him, he was unlucky with the quality of the throw. Jacks swept the bails off easily, and Archie found himself face down in the dirt.
There were cheers from the crowd and the estate team circled round the jubilant fielder – all but Jacks, who bent down low and spoke quietly to Archie. ‘You might want to ask young Christopher Snipe what he was doing out by the lake that morning,’ he said. ‘He’s got a throwing arm almost as good as Roland here, and he put it to good use that day.’ His face was so close that Archie could see the spittle at the corners of his mouth, but his pride – or what was left of it – kept him from moving away. ‘Christopher doesn’t know it, but I saw him waiting for Harry in the bushes with a rock in his hand. I suppose I could have stopped him, but I don’t like to interfere in other people’s business. It’s live and let live down here, except in Harry’s case of course, so I let him throw the rock at Harry’s horse and I watched as it bolted.’ He stood and looked down at Archie. ‘If you must know, I was cheering all the way, but I’d like to see you arrest me for that.’
Archie got up and looked at Jago, but he was talking to the other umpire. Jacks, too, had gone off to celebrate with his team-mates, so he walked back to where Josephine was sitting, thinking about what he had heard. Eager to share it with her, he cut short her commiserations on his run-out.
‘Do you believe him?’ she asked when he had finished.
‘I don’t know. It might explain why Christopher’s suddenly gone missing. Perhaps he
Anything would sound preferable to that, Josephine thought, but she said nothing. A small boy suddenly appeared from the direction of the church, and ran over to where William was sitting with his increasingly dejected batting side. She and Archie watched as he listened to the boy, then exchanged places with Jago, who hurried back off towards the village. ‘I suppose that means curtains for Mrs Trevelyan,’ Archie said drily. ‘It’s reassuring to know that not even cricket can stand in the way of a good send-off.’
‘Didn’t you tell me that Jacks was in love with Morwenna?’ Josephine asked thoughtfully.
‘Obsessed by her would be more like it, but what’s that got to do with anything?’ She just looked at him and raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re not suggesting that he’d make up something like that to protect her? Surely it’s much more likely that Christopher has panicked and run off?’
‘Wouldn’t he have done that a lot sooner if he was going to?’ Josephine knew she was playing devil’s advocate, but Archie’s stubborn resistance only made her more determined to argue her case.
‘Maybe.’ He thought about it. ‘If it is true, though, I wonder why he’d do it? What could Christopher have against Harry?’
Reluctant as she was to give up her theory, Josephine came clean with Archie and told him what Loveday had said about the fight and Christopher’s resentment of it. To his credit, he managed not to look smug. ‘That’s interesting,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll give Jago a bit of time, then I’ll see if he can shed any light on what these secrets might be.’
*
The cricket match was well underway when Jasper Motley made his way slowly down the narrow path which led from the rectory to St Winwaloe’s, but he had no desire to take any part in it. If his brother wanted to convince himself that he was running a peaceful estate where everyone lived in perfect harmony with one another, then so be it, but it would take more than a game of cricket and a handful of festive days to make the pretence a reality: it was human nature to hurt and dominate, and that was as true here, in a place of beauty, as it was in the bleakest of city slums. A pretty backdrop was nothing more than that – and he had his own charade to maintain before he concerned himself with William’s fantasies.
It was another warm day, and the sweat was already running down his back by the time he had walked the short distance to the churchyard. He stopped just inside the gate, running his finger round the inside of his collar and regretting the excesses of his lunch, and looked out over the yew hedge to the stretch of sand below. There was, he feared, more to the discomfort he felt than indigestion: it was pointless to pretend that what he had overheard in the church that morning had not unsettled him, but the important thing was to keep calm and decide what to do about it. He heard Loveday’s singsong voice again in his head, and turned instinctively to look at the pile of fresh earth that marked her brother’s grave. The girl was a halfwit; you only had to look at her behaviour yesterday to realise that, and, if he had his way, she’d be taken straight to the Union now that Harry was dead –
