The events of the last two hours had left me doubly dazed: physically in that I was barely recovered from the trauma of that nightmarish bike ride (and thankful to be now firmly seated in the safety of the police station), and mentally in that I was still reeling from Bewley’s personal threat and extraordinary revelations – the latter in particular leaving me in a state of bewildered shock. It just goes to show what risks people will take to secure their ends – even if those ends be risible. Really, lord lieutenant, if you please!
However, as I faced Sergeant Wilding across the table my most pressing concern was Phyllis Tredwell and her fear that she might be thought responsible for Bewley’s fall. In a time of jeopardy she had been a veritable dea ex machina and had proved a stalwart comforter. Clearly ethics dictated a white lie and I would honour our tacit pact.
Answering my query regarding the beleaguered Bewley and the threat of ovine interest, Wilding assured me that even as we spoke officers were ‘proceeding hot-foot to commandeer the corpse’. (What it is to have a natural eloquence!) We then got down to business, he with his notebook and me with some sickly sweet tea.
‘So what you are saying,’ he said, ‘is that, having consumed his sandwiches, the deceased was admiring the scenery when his attention was diverted by the appearance of a rabbit thus causing him to vacate his seat at an alarming rate.’
‘Yes, it was a very large rabbit,’ I emphasized, ‘and Mr Bewley was exceedingly perturbed.’
Sergeant Wilding nodded and wrote something in his notebook. And then, looking up, he said slowly, ‘And this rabbit – was its name Harvey by any chance?’
I stared at him. ‘Harvey? Whatever do you mean, Sergeant!’
‘Well, if memory serves me right Harvey was a pretty big fellow, wasn’t he?’
I had always considered Sergeant Wilding an officer of sound common sense and thus could only assume the man was ill or had been drinking.
‘I don’t follow you,’ I replied coldly. ‘As far as I am aware South Down rabbits, large or small, do not have names. Now if you don’t mind—’
I was about to suggest that Inspector Spikesy should take over the interview but was forestalled by a sudden snort of mirth. ‘My apologies, Miss Oughterard,’ he spluttered, ‘I know this is not a time for levity, but when you said Councillor Bewley was perturbed by a large rabbit I couldn’t help thinking of that James Stewart film Harvey, all about an imaginary rabbit that followed him about. Very droll, it was. I expect you know the one?’
I sighed. Really, what one has to put up with! However, I told him politely that I was indeed familiar with the film but that I hoped he wasn’t suggesting that my tale of the rabbit had been an hallucination. (I spoke firmly, for by this time I was beginning to believe in it myself and was already visualizing the creature’s twitching nose and popping eyes.)
‘Anyway,’ he continued more sombrely, ‘in his haste to repel this rabbit he tripped and fell, bashing his head on a flint. Is that so?’
‘Exactly.’
‘So you actually saw him trip, did you?’
I hesitated, before saying that my eye had been momentarily distracted by a flight of birds but that when I next looked, there he was sprawled on the ground. (I could hardly say I had been otherwise engaged hurling the wretched Mauser into the gorse.)
‘Hmm. And then Miss Tredwell turned up on her motorbike?’
‘Yes, and it was such a relief as I was shocked to the core!’ (True enough.) ‘But you know, Sergeant, life is so unfair … I mean to say if only Phyllis had arrived just a minute earlier the noise of the engine would have frightened the rabbits and poor Councillor Bewley would have remained sitting on the bench and been with us now. As it is …’ My voice trailed off with a wistful sigh.
Wilding shut his notebook, and with a sympathetic smile said sagely, ‘Ah well, that’s the way of things, isn’t it? Things that we do want to happen don’t, and things we don’t want do. Take your gates, for instance …’
As I climbed into the police car, which they had again been kind enough to provide, I was pleased to think that only one major fact had been invented: the role of the rabbit. The rest of the narrative had been broadly true with little omitted – except of course for the piece in the middle. This was a piece I needed to brood upon over a stiff libation – anything to take away the taste of that outlandish tea!
Riding pillion on Phyllis’s infernal machine had banished all thoughts from my head except how to stay on. And at the police station, too, my mind had been focused on only one thing: how to answer Wilding’s questions while keeping silent about the dead man’s confession and his fatal reaction to Phyllis’s motorbike.
Both experiences had been exhausting, but now home at last and mercifully alone I could relax, straighten my mind and reflect upon Bewley’s incredible account. In doing this I was aided by Maurice and Bouncer, both of whom seemed to have an uncanny sense that I was in a state of some bouleversement. The dog trotted over and laid his filthy rubber ring at my feet. He then laid an equally filthy paw on my knee – which I could hardly dislodge for fear of causing offence. However, tribute paid, he then settled to sleep with his head on my foot. Maurice too expressed a rare matiness by draping himself on my shoulder and emitting a grating purr. Soothed by their solace and a pink gin, I closed my eyes and reviewed events.
I contemplated my mistake about Bewley and Travers. What a gaffe! The latter had clearly been elsewhere when Alice was being gunned down. It just goes to show that despite its value conjecture can also lead one badly astray! Evidently for all his faults, Aston was no murderer. Yes, I had taken a couple of wrong paths all right – for example, believing in that rift between Alice and Aston as mentioned by Charles. Hadn’t he said he had heard it from Egge or Bewley? Probably the latter trying to divert suspicion away from himself. And I had certainly been mistaken in thinking Alice’s amatory intentions had escaped Bewley’s notice – that fishing net had obviously been giving him nightmares!
And then as I continued to mull over Bewley’s account I was struck by a piquant irony: he had been ignorant of Alice’s killing of Elspeth – or so it would certainly seem. He had made no mention of it, talking only of the danger to himself had she opened her mouth re his ‘proclivities’ i.e. had the thin ice cracked and his sexual bias revealed. So dear were those grandiose plans for status and high office that he would have done anything to protect them. It was the threat of failure that had caused him to ‘expunge’ Alice, nothing to do with Elspeth at all. And judging from his words in the tea shop he had been quite fond of the latter and had genuinely felt her loss. Ironic therefore that in a bid to preserve his own ambitions he had been the unwitting agent of her sister’s nemesis … But what really struck me was the moral irony. After murdering her sister, Alice had in turn been destroyed by Bewley, whose own retribution had come in the form of a motorbike engine. Neither killer could be brought to legal justice, each having paid the requisite price; a resolution which, while not ideal, would at least save the taxpayer some money. I gave a grim smile.
I stared into space contemplating life’s strange perversity, but also thanking my lucky stars that I had miraculously escaped that particular turn in Fortune’s flighty wheel. ‘Damn close shave,’ I muttered to nothing in particular.
So the decision made, and shifting Maurice, I went to forage in the kitchen. I was ravenous!