'My cousin, Jim,' said Byers, 'back in the summer. But it's al right, ask what you like. If the major thinks it'l help.' He looked unconvinced. 'Nothing'l bring Jim back.' He took off his spectacles and held them in front of him.
Laurence could hear a slight west country burr in his voice.
'You must have been close?'
'Wel, close as lads. We were the same age to the month. Almost like twins when we were young 'uns. Up to al sorts. I was the clever one but he was the sportsman. Strong. Ran like the wind. Star of the vilage cricket team before the war. When they stil had a team. But when he went back to the farm in 1918 and I folowed the major here, he wasn't so happy. Didn't say as much, mind, but I could tel he thought he'd got a raw deal. It was just him and the old man. I should've gone to see them more, but it's a long way and I was helping the major get things going. Then I met Enid—she's my wife now—and we were saving. But I should have gone down. It wasn't fair on Jim.
'The farm hadn't been properly run in the war. Couldn't get the labour, it was al girls and old men. Didn't buy in new animals, let a few bils go unpaid. Couple of bad harvests, didn't keep the repairs up to scratch and it's an old place, needs work on it al the time. After the war, for al the talk, nobody gave a...'
He seemed to struggle to find a respectable word.
'Nobody cared if a tatty little farm went to the dogs. Stupid thing is, neither of us had to fight. We were needed at home. Essential work, they caled it. But to tel the truth, I was bored and wanted to see the world.' He frowned. 'Which I did. And we both thought that girls would be al over a man in uniform. Which they weren't. And once I'd joined up, then Jim wasn't going to be left behind in the mud at Combe Bisset. Went to find some nice foreign mud of his own. Come Christmas, he just signed on the line. Went in as a private, came out with his stripes. Uncle looked like he could carry on with the lads we'd got, but then he fel off a roof he was fixing and his leg was never right, and of course eventualy the younger lads were itching to get into uniform too.'
'Your uncle?' The conversation had moved a long way from where Laurence intended it to go but he wanted to gain the young man's trust and Byers seemed wiling to talk about his family catastrophe.
'Yes. That's what made it worse. The old man had been pretty wel bedridden since Jim'd got back. But he liked to sit in a chair by the window upstairs. He saw it al.'
'The death?'
'The murder.'
'He saw the person who did it?'
'He did that. Though a fat lot of help it's been. Man in a hat and a coat. That's only half the population, then. Arrived by car probably, though left it out of sight.
My uncle said he heard it but never saw it. He'l have been right about that: his eyesight's not great but his hearing was always spot on. So it was a man with the nerve to drive within earshot of the house and to see off our dog, and she's a nasty bit of work. A man who carried a gun and didn't hesitate in using it at close range. Twice.'
'Twice?'
'Once in the chest and then a second, head shot, once he was on the ground. The police said the first shot would have done for him. He can't have known anything. The second was just to make sure.'
'How extraordinary,' said Laurence. 'Did the police have any ideas at al who it might have been?'
'No. I mean, Jim'd never been anywhere, excepting after he joined up. We were brought up on the farm. Both his parents died when he was very young. My father died of lockjaw when we were boys. My uncle looked after my mother and both us cousins in return for her keeping house. She passed on just before the war.
Anyone Jim knew, I knew. I'd have known if he'd got into any kind of trouble. We had the same friends, got into the same trouble—but only the schoolboy kind: scrumping, girls, playground knuckle fights. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened to Jim until the day somebody came al the way out to the farm and shot him.
Nothing to nick, either. No reason to it.'
'What kind of gun was it?'
'Not a shotgun. A pistol. Kils him, then blows his face off,' Byers said bitterly.
Laurence was surprised. When Byers had spoken of a final shot to the head, he'd been thinking of a single bulet, a military
'They might of got his tyre tracks,' Byers was saying, 'and had some hope of tracing the car, the major says, but the police and the local doctor had driven backwards and forwards down the same track by the time those clods thought of it. Mashed into nothingness, it was. But what did they care? Single man, mucky farm.
Probably thought he'd been after some other yokel's wife.'
'How dreadful for your uncle.'
'Yes. It was. He comes down the stairs on his ... on his behind, must have taken him for ever. Got himself out in the yard. Found Jim, but there was nothing he could do for him and no way he could get help. Lucky he didn't die of cold, poor old man. Didn't have an obliging bone in him but he didn't deserve that. The girl found him—the one who did the milking. Him and the dog sitting in the muck, and then Jim's blood splattered al over the yard. But it did for him realy, the old man. The farm was sold. The money that was left after the creditors had their take went to pay a widow in town to look after him in her home. Me and Enid didn't see a penny of it,' he added defensively.
His face softened. 'Funny thing is, when the police first came, I thought, just for a minute, that Jim'd done it himself. Topped himself. He was that fed up. So, just for a minute there was a queer kind of relief that he hadn't. Mind you, I wasn't the one who had to find him. The old man wasn't beyond covering up a suicide: that generation, you know, and a bit on the religious side. He could of made up cars and strangers, but not the gun. Jim had a shotgun—crows and rabbits—but it was stil back in the house. Didn't have it with him so obviously wasn't expecting any trouble. Hadn't been fired for a while, the police said.'
Laurence's head was buzzing. 'Do the police think the assailant knew your uncle was there as wel?' he asked.
