‘Come on, Henry!’ urged Pearce.
He’d enjoy walking the dog this nice mild morning in the normal way of it but present circumstances were working against him in every department of his life. The tooth, which he’d been trying to treat with a course of mind over matter, hadn’t responded and was undeniably worse. Moreover, he was well aware that they were getting to that stage of a murder case when the trail starts to go cold, at first imperceptibly but with growing obviousness. ‘Three days,’ many of the old hands said. ‘You’ve got three days to come up with a really good lead or you’re in trouble.’ But twice that number of days had passed since Hester Millar’s murder. As time went by, possible evidence was damaged or lost. People forgot. Worse, they began to remember differently. In many cases the murderer had skipped out and could be anywhere in the world.
Pearce didn’t think this murderer had left the scene. He, with Markby, felt sure he or she was still there, in or around Lower Stovey. An absence from the small community would be missed, especially one which came about suddenly. But no one
had unexpectedly upped and left, thought Pearce. They were all still there and among them …
‘Henry!’ he repeated with growing impatience. Some mornings Henry could be very obliging and they made their circuit of the playing field in record time. Sometimes, however, Henry seemed to go into a meditative phase. He would stop for no clear reason and stand, staring into the far distance (where Pearce could distinguish nothing), deaf to entreaty. He appeared, or so Pearce fancied, to have quite a glazed look in his eyes on these occasions. He was doing it now, still as a statue, communing with something unseen or unheard by man.
‘Ruddy dog!’ grumbled Pearce. ‘I’ll be late.’
And he had wanted to be early. He’d told Tessa so, arguing that with such an important case he needed to put in the extra time. ‘Just think, love, if I can crack it without the old man’s help, it’ll do me a power of good career-wise.’ The ‘old man’ – Markby – fortunately wasn’t there to hear this unkind description of himself.
Tessa, who had heard it, had gone straight to the heart of the matter, saying briskly, ‘I’m not walking Henry again this morning. It’s your turn.’
So Pearce had set out, plastic bag in pocket, dog on leash. So far they’d met no one else, which was unusual. There were generally a few other dog walkers around. Both Pearce and Tessa kept an eagle eye open for those who hadn’t equipped themselves with the necessary plastic bag. Pearce had once drawn a man’s attention to the notice at the entry to the field, reminding people that allowing dogs to foul the area was an offence. The fellow, a weedy little chap with a pointed nose who had borne a marked resemblance to the dog he was
walking, had proved stroppy. ‘Mind your own business, mate!’ he’d told Pearce. ‘It is my business, I am a police officer,’ had retorted Pearce, gaining the withering reply, ‘Then why aren’t you out investigating things? No wonder the crime rate is what it is. Wasting your time following people who are walking their dogs when other people are being burgled!’
The observation, that he was wasting his time when he ought to be investigating things, had come back to haunt Pearce this morning. Fortunately Henry had decided to move on but before they’d got much further there was a rustle in the hedgerow beside which they walked. Henry’s somewhat blunted hunting instincts were aroused. He leapt towards the noise. The extendible lead ran out full length before Pearce could prevent it. Henry wriggled through a small gap in the tangled hedge, got the lead wrapped round a projecting branch, and was brought up abruptly, stuck. He whimpered pathetically.
‘Serves you right,’ muttered his unsympathetic owner. He joggled the lead but it didn’t come loose. Pearce was obliged to scramble over the ditch, up the low bank and, twigs and thorns catching at his clothing and hair, extricate Henry backwards. During this operation, Pearce put one foot down in the ditch which was full of cold muddy water and Henry, who objected to being hauled away from something interesting, had to be dragged, still backwards, down the bank leaving scored tracks where his paws had scrabbled for a hold.
‘That’s it,’ said Pearce to the dog. ‘We’re going home, right now.’
He set off uncomfortably for his house. At the gate of his house he unclipped the lead from Henry’s collar to allow him to run ahead, and took off his wet shoe. He’d have to change
both his shoes and his socks now before he went to work. Sodden shoe in hand, Pearce limped towards the back door. As he reached it, a shrill cry broke the air.
‘Dave Pearce! What do you mean letting the dog run in with muddy paws? He’s gone all over my clean kitchen floor!’
Pearce paused at the door and cast his eyes heavenward. ‘Please,’ he muttered. ‘Please let something go right today.’
His plea had been heard. When he eventually got into work, fifteen minutes late, he was greeted by Ginny Holding.
‘We’ve got a response,’ she said. ‘To that appeal we put out on the local news. A woman’s rung in to say she saw Hester Millar the morning she was murdered.’
‘Who? Where?’ demanded Pearce eagerly, reaching for the sheet of paper Ginny was waving at him.
‘In the village, Lower Stovey, at about twenty minutes to ten. The woman is a Mrs Linda Jones. She and her husband farm just by Stovey Woods at a place called Greenjack Farm. She’s got a thirteen-year-old daughter she drives to school every morning and she was on her way back. She passed Hester walking along the main street.’ Ginny rolled her eyes. ‘She says she’s only just remembered.’
Pearce’s grip closed triumphantly on the sheet. ‘I’ll go out and talk to her right away.’
Greenjack Farm lay at the end of a track leading off the rough roadway which itself led from Lower Stovey to the edge of Stovey Woods. The farm buildings nestled in a dip, a collection of grey stone and wooden structures. The house itself was a
low, unpretentious, rambling place. It formed three sides of a square with an open shed with a corrugated roof to the left and old stables to the right. There was no one in the yard.
Pearce got out of his car. Rooks wheeled overhead and he could hear a tractor in the distance as he made his way to the front door of the house. It stood ajar. He tapped on it and called through the gap, ‘Hello? Anyone at home?’
The footsteps which approached in response were slow and cautious. The door creaked open and he found himself looking into the faded blue eyes of an elderly man wearing an ancient-looking brown suit over a green pullover and shirt. His hair was thin and white and his complexion pink.
‘Who are you?’ asked the man, not aggressively but with a childlike curiosity.
‘Inspector Pearce.’ Pearce held up his ID. The old man took no notice of it, only stared at Pearce as if something about his appearance amused him. ‘I was hoping to speak to Mrs Linda Jones,’ Pearce said more loudly. He didn’t know if the old chap was deaf. He might be.
‘Linda’s my daughter-in-law.’ The old man, having bestowed this information, seemed to think that was enough and Pearce wanted to know no more. ‘Nice to see you, lad,’ he said and made to shut the door.
Pearce stuck his foot in it. ‘Can I see Mrs Jones?’ Not deaf, just daft, if you asked him.
The old man looked down at Pearce’s foot and frowned. ‘You got your foot in my door.’
‘I know, I want to speak to Mrs Jones!’ Pearce said desperately.
‘You didn’t say that.’
‘Yes, I did. I said – look, is she at home?’
Fortunately, at that moment, a woman’s voice was heard asking, ‘What are you up to there, Dad?’ The door was pulled open and Pearce saw a weather-beaten woman in jeans, check shirt and a sleeveless jacket. Her fair hair, streaked with grey, was coiled on top of her head and pegged in place with a couple of large hairpins. Strands of hair had escaped and hung round her face which was devoid of make-up. She was, despite this, an attractive woman. Pearce thought she was probably in her early forties.
‘Mrs Jones?’ he asked hopefully. ‘I’m Inspector Pearce. You rang us and said—’
She interrupted him. ‘I didn’t expect you’d come all the way out here.’
‘I’m really keen to talk to you, Mrs Jones.’
She looked undecided. ‘I don’t know. I told the person who answered the phone all I know. I saw Hester Millar the morning she was killed. A dreadful business it is, too.’
‘He wants to talk to you, Linda,’ said the old man, catching up on the conversation a little late in the day.
‘Yes, Dad. You go on back indoors and sit down. I’ll make a cup of tea directly.’
The promise of tea seemed to do the trick. He turned and disappeared back inside the house.
‘Come through to the kitchen,’ Linda Jones said. ‘Though there’s nothing more I can tell you.’
A little later, settled at the kitchen table with a mug of strong tea and a slab of solid cake, Pearce was able to ask his hostess, ‘Did you know Hester Millar well?’
She shook her head. ‘No, not well. I knew her to talk to, just to exchange the time of day. She was always pleasant. I knew
she lived with Ruth Aston and she and Ruth took care of the church between them. It’s a crying shame the way we’ve got no vicar now. Ruth’s father was the last vicar here. You know that?’ She fixed Pearce with an interrogatory look.
‘Yes, I knew – know. You sound as though you’re a local woman, Mrs Jones.’
‘That’s right. I’ve spent my entire life in Lower Stovey.’ Linda Jones paused and when she spoke again the bitterness which had touched her voice as she had spoken these words had been carefully eradicated. ‘My parents farmed Church Farm, right next door to this one.’
‘I see. So, on the morning of Miss Millar’s death, you were doing what?’
‘What I always do of a weekday, school holidays excepted. I drove my daughter into Bamford. She goes to the Community College. They stopped running the school bus. Not enough children living out this way. There’s a regular schedule bus in the evening she can catch back again. I pick her up at the top of the lane then.’
‘So,’ persevered Pearce, picking his way through the superfluous information. ‘So you were driving to Bamford and it would be before nine o’clock.’
‘No, I was driving back from Bamford and it was about half past nine or a little after. After I dropped off our Becky, I called into the supermarket. Let’s say it was about twenty to ten by the time I got to the village. Yes, that would be it. When I got back indoors here it was not quite ten. I was in a bit of a flap because I was running a few minutes late and you know how it is, you never catch up if you start doing that at the beginning of the day. I saw Hester as I drove through the village. She was
walking past the church. I sounded the horn and waved and she waved back. We didn’t speak.’
Pearce leaned forward. ‘She was walking past the church, not turning into it? Are you sure?’
She was sure.
Pearce asked, ‘Which direction was she coming from?’
‘From Church Lane where she lived, like you’d expect. I mean, one of them always opened up the church about that time in the summer months. I often saw one or the other, her or Ruth.’
‘But she wasn’t turning into the church to open it up as she or Mrs Aston normally did?’
‘No, I didn’t give it much thought, but you’re right. She wasn’t.’
Linda paused to scour her memory. ‘No, definitely not. She was walking from Church Lane past the lych-gate. I remember now, it did strike me as odd and I wondered where she was going.’ She took the lid off the teapot and stared into its belly. ‘This’ll take a drop of hot water. You want another cup?’
‘I’m fine,’ Pearce assured her hastily. ‘How did Miss Millar look?’
‘Look? Like she always did. Normal.’
‘Not distressed or worried?’
Linda stared at him. ‘No. Not that I’d have noticed. I didn’t look that close. After I saw her, I forgot all about it. Then when they made that appeal on the local news, I suddenly remembered.’
‘And you are absolutely sure it was that morning you saw her, the day she died? It wasn’t another day? You did say, it wasn’t unusual for you to see either her or Ruth.’
‘Absolutely,’ Linda Jones said firmly. ‘Because it was the day there was a warning of extra traffic on the main road to Bamford because of some diversion or other and I tried to hurry Becky along a little earlier when we left. Only that was a waste of time. You can no more hurry Beck than you can my father-in-law.’
Pearce swallowed the last of his cake as he considered her information. ‘Can you remember how she was dressed?’ Witnesses often insisted they were right about the day and to be fair, Mrs Jones appeared reliable and the detail about the traffic congestion on the main road lent credibility to her tale. But it never did any harm to check.
‘Dressed?’ Linda’s eyes popped at him in amazement. ‘Why on earth should I notice that? This is Lower Stovey, not in town where people put on their best togs to go out. We all dress much the same here, day in and day out. She was wearing her grey cord trousers, I think. She wore them a lot. But there, I could be wrong about that. She’d some kind of pullover and was wearing her bag slung crosswise over her chest to leave her hands free—’ Here Linda stopped abruptly.
Pearce felt a tingle between his shoulder blades. ‘Free for what?’ he prompted.
‘She was carrying something,’ Linda told him, frowning. ‘But for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what it was, something small.’
From the yard came a new sound, the roar of a motorcycle. Linda looked up. Her eyes brightened and she flushed. ‘It’ll be Gordon!’ She caught Pearce’s eye and explained, ‘It’ll be my son come visiting.’
Blast! thought Pearce. Just when she was starting to tell me something which might be interesting. Good job this son didn’t turn up earlier or I wouldn’t have got that far.
Linda had risen to her feet. The kitchen door was pushed open and a stocky young man came in. His ginger hair was clipped short and he had the reddish complexion which sometimes goes with that hair colour. He wasn’t a handsome youth, with his snub nose and wide mouth, but there was a kind of healthy youthful attractiveness about his face. He wore a leather jacket and carried his motorcyclist’s helmet. Seeing Pearce, he put the helmet down and nodded a greeting to the stranger before going to kiss his mother’s cheek.
‘Hello, Mum.’
She reached up and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Your dad’s about the place somewhere.’
Pearce saw the cheerful expression on the youngster’s face fade. ‘Is he? I really came to see you. I wanted to tell you about next Tuesday. It’s all fixed up, the disco and everything.’
‘I don’t know why you want such a noisy thing,’ she said affectionately. Turning to Pearce, she went on, ‘Gordon will be twenty-one next Tuesday and he’s having a bit of a party in Bamford where he lives. I know they get the vote at eighteen now, but they still celebrate twenty-one, don’t they?’ She turned back to her son and flowed on effortlessly, ‘I don’t think I’ll persuade your dad to come to a disco. But Becky and I will be there. Becky’s looking forward to it.’
‘So long as you’re there,’ Gordon Jones said. ‘It doesn’t matter about Dad.’
Pearce noticed the stricken look which crossed his mother’s face as the boy spoke. So father and son didn’t get along and
the boy lived in Bamford. A big strong lad like that, they could do with him at the farm. Had that been what the quarrel had been about? The young man had refused to follow in the footsteps of father and grandfather. Gordon Jones was looking at Pearce, a question in his eyes.
‘Inspector Pearce, Regional Serious Crimes Squad,’ Pearce introduced himself.
‘Oh, yes? You’ll be investigating our local murder, will you? What are you doing here?’ There was antagonism in the youngster’s voice but Pearce was accustomed to that from young males.
Linda spoke before he could. ‘I phoned the police, Gordon, to tell them I saw poor Miss Millar the day she died, early on. I was coming back from dropping off your sister. So Mr Pearce here wanted to talk to me but I couldn’t tell him much.’ To Pearce she said, ‘Bit of a waste of time you coming all the way out here.’
‘We always follow up information,’ Pearce said. ‘Especially in a matter like this.’
‘Stuck, are you?’ asked Gordon insolently.
‘No,’ returned Pearce evenly. ‘Not yet. Not by a long chalk.’ The young man looked disconcerted and taking advantage of it, Pearce made his farewell to Mrs Jones.
As he was opening the door of his car, a tractor came rattling and rumbling down the track and into the yard. The driver, a weather-beaten man with thinning hair and a face which looked as if it might be permanently creased into an expression of discontent, climbed down and greeted Pearce with, ‘Who’re you, then? A copper?’
‘Yes. I look like one, then, do I?’
A snort greeted this. ‘What do you want?’
‘You’re Mr Jones?’ Pearce asked.
‘Course I bloody am.’ Jones stared past him and scowled again at the motorcycle. ‘See you’re not the only visitor. What’s brought you?’
‘Just to have a word with your wife regarding her information.’
Jones’s jaw dropped. ‘What information?’
Oh dear. She hadn’t told him. This was, Pearce decided, by way of being a dysfunctional family. But if so, he didn’t think it was Mrs Jones’s fault. ‘Just a sighting of the murdered woman, Miss Millar, on the day of her death. Your wife remembered seeing her in the village around half past nine or a few minutes afterwards.’
‘And she phoned you about that?’ Jones snorted again. ‘Waste of bloody time.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Pearce. ‘It’s extremely valuable to know it. She’s the only person so far who’s come forward to say she saw the victim.’
Jones stared at him. ‘You won’t get him, though, will you? The bugger that killed that poor woman. You coppers never catch anyone — not unless it’s a speeding motorist.’ He walked away towards the kitchen door.
‘Nice type!’ muttered Pearce. He drove out of the yard, wondering what kind of family reunion was taking place in the kitchen behind him.
As he drove back through the village he was surprised to see a second motorcycle, propped up outside the church. The door was open. Pearce pulled up, got out and walked quietly under the lych-gate roof and up the flagged path to the old oaken door with its iron bands. He paused outside and listened. He could
make out the murmur of voices within, a man and a woman. He pulled open the door, crossed the porch to the chicken wire door. The inner wooden door behind it had been hooked back and he could see through into the church. The man and woman were seated in a pew in earnest conversation. Pearce had made no noise but perhaps a draught of air had alerted the talkers. The man looked round and Pearce saw it was James Holland, the vicar of Bamford. The woman was Ruth Aston.
Pearce pushed open the wire door and from the top of the steps down into the church, called apologetically, ‘Sorry, Reverend! I saw your bike outside but I didn’t know it was yours, if you see what I mean. The church was open and I though I’d check it out.’
Father Holland got to his feet and came towards him. ‘Inspector Pearce, isn’t it? Thank you for taking the trouble. Mrs Aston and I are discussing what to do about the church.’
‘Let you get on with it, then,’ said Pearce. ‘Good morning, Mrs Aston!’ he added.
Ruth returned his greeting but didn’t leave her place in the pew.
Pearce left them there and went back to his car. He had been a little surprised to see Ruth Aston sitting there so calmly in the church, a few inches only from where her friend had been murdered. But then, he thought, sooner or later she had to go back inside the place, if she was still a churchwarden.
Inside the church, James Holland had returned to his place beside Ruth. She said, ‘I wonder why he came back.’
‘The inspector? In pursuit of his enquiries, I imagine. You’re
still all right sitting here, Ruth? You wouldn’t rather go elsewhere?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’ve known this church all my life and I can’t let myself be kept from it now by what’s happened. Besides,’ she hesitated. ‘I feel close to Hester, somehow, here.’ She cast him a guilty look. ‘I’m not a naturally religious woman, you know.’
Her companion raised his bushy eyebrows.
‘I know,’ she went on hastily, ‘that people, village people, think I am. But despite being a vicar’s daughter and a churchwarden and coming in to clean out the church and all the rest of it, I wouldn’t class myself as religious. All those things I mentioned, they’re part of a way of life. Some people take up flower-arranging and some take up the church. What would I do if I didn’t look after St Barnabas? I lack what I suppose I’d call a spiritual quality.’
‘Do you?’ he asked gently. ‘What is a spiritual quality?’
‘Now you’re going to be clever,’ she reproached him, ‘and tie me up in theological knots. I can’t describe it. But I know some people have it and some, like me, don’t.’
‘We each bring our gifts to the altar,’ he said. ‘All are valid. Dusting and polishing too. Not everyone, thank goodness, has visions.’
She gave a little smile. ‘I wouldn’t like to have a vision. I wouldn’t know what to do.’
‘Like the Victorian child who was asked what he’d do if he opened the door and found Jesus on the step. “I’d ask him in,” he replied. “Offer him a glass of sherry and send for the vicar”.’
This time Ruth laughed.
He patted her arm. ‘I’m pleased you feel you can carry on as churchwarden, Ruth, for the forseeable future, anyway.’
‘Until I leave the village,’ she reminded him. ‘I told you, I mean to sell up.’
‘Of course. I don’t know what we’ll do about the building then. Without you and Hester, I suspect it will have to be closed up all week. We may, in view of what’s apparently been taking place in the tower, have to keep it closed anyway. I’m sorry I had to distress you with that information, Ruth.’
She made a gesture with her hand, waving away his apology. ‘Hester and I weren’t doing such a good job, after all, were we? Still, now it’s been discovered, perhaps that’s the end of it. Especially now the lock’s been changed on the tower door.’
‘Even if the church is kept locked, it will be opened of a Sunday when either I or someone else comes out to take a service. I don’t mean to let the church fall into complete disuse,’ he told her.
Ruth smiled at him. ‘It’s a long way for you to come for such a small congregation.’
He hunched his broad shoulders. ‘No, no. I follow it up by going over to the Manor and taking a service there for the residents.’
At this mention of the Residential Home for the Elderly, which had formerly been Fitzroy Manor and her mother’s childhood home, Ruth sighed.
‘I haven’t seen the old manor house in years. Even when I was a child, we seldom went there. My maternal grandparents were dead and the house closed up. It was on the market and waiting for a buyer. Occasionally my mother would put me in her little car and drive over there and open it up just to check
on the place. It was an expedition which, frankly, I dreaded. The house was so dark and musty-smelling. Most of the furniture had been taken out. We had one or two pieces of it in the vicarage, dark Victorian stuff mostly, except for a nice little Regency card-table which I’ve still got. The best of the rest had gone to the saleroom and the only things left in the house were things the saleroom didn’t want and my mother used to say the vicarage hadn’t room for. That meant, she didn’t want them, either. Her other excuse was that the estate agent wanted some furniture left in the house because it looked better that way than empty. I don’t know why he thought that. The first thing you saw, as you walked into the big entrance hall, was a stuffed owl in a glass case! That and some stag’s antlers on the wall. Grisly. Our footsteps echoed as we walked about inside and I clung to my mother like a limpet. I remember one occasion when she took me upstairs and showed me a room with bars at the window. She said it had been the nursery. I was horrified. It looked like a prison and I said so. She laughed and said, oh no, just a Victorian precaution to prevent the children tumbling out. I remember being so glad I never had to live there or sleep in that barred room!’
‘Times change,’ James Holland said with a smile. ‘Children aren’t barricaded away in a distant nursery now until they’re old enough to behave in adult company!’
‘My mother never spoke much about her childhood,’ Ruth said. ‘They kept horses in my grandfather’s day. She mentioned a pony she’d had called Patch. Otherwise, I can’t remember her telling me anything about those days.’
‘Sometimes it’s painful to talk about things you’ve lost,’ the vicar said.
‘Like talking about Hester? I don’t find it painful to talk about her.’ Ruth stared round the church at the various monuments. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot, James, since Hester died.’
‘I dare say you have.’
‘Not just about her. About all sorts of things.’ She glanced at him and gave a wry smile. ‘My father brought me up to see the best in everyone and believe me, I tried! I was a teacher, too, and one always tries to find something positive about the most unpromising pupil. It’s hard though, when you feel yourself wronged, to see the best in the other person. Or when you see a great crime committed to forgive or try to understand the person responsible.’
‘Have you forgiven the father of your child for deserting you both?’ he asked.
‘In as much as I feel sorry for him now, rather than hate him. Simon wasn’t a wicked person, only flawed. Did it surprise you when I told you all about that?’
‘I’m seldom surprised.’ It was his turn for a wry smile. ‘And as you’d told Alan Markby and Meredith, I suppose you thought it prudent to tell me.’
‘In case they mentioned it? They wouldn’t. They’re a very – very discreet couple, aren’t they?’
James laughed. ‘Alan is, certainly. I don’t know that Meredith is always entirely discreet but she’s prudent.’
‘At the inquest,’ Ruth said hesitantly, ‘I did just for a moment wonder if, after Simon had spoken to me, he went off into the woods and did something silly in a fit of remorse.’
‘Ah. Suicide.’
‘But then I thought, don’t be silly, Ruth. Of course he didn’t. Someone would’ve found his body and anyway, I did know
him well enough to know that wasn’t his style. Besides, he was engaged to be married to someone else, so they said at the inquest. He’d found somebody he wanted to marry at last. I can’t say that didn’t hurt me when I heard it. But that was Simon’s way. He shook off disagreeable experiences or unpleasant facts and went on his way rejoicing. I think,’ said Ruth, ‘the term “water off a duck’s back” might have been coined for Simon Hastings.’
Father Holland nodded. ‘Met people like that myself.’ She darted another glance at him. ‘Don’t ask me to forgive Hester’s killer. I can’t.’
‘As an abstract concept, of course you can’t. Give yourself time. When we know – well, when the police have finished their enquiries, hopefully with success, that’s the time to start trying to come to terms with it, as you’ve come to terms with being deserted as a young girl.’
‘Find the murderer, you mean. How can there be any kind of success,’ Ruth asked, ‘with Hester still dead?’ She flushed. ‘I ought to think of Hester at peace, didn’t I? But I’m selfish enough to want Hester here with me. She didn’t deserve what happened to her.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘She didn’t and perhaps Simon Hastings didn’t deserve what happened to him, whatever it was. Life often seems full of injustices. We all find that hard to understand. Perhaps we even find it harder to understand nowadays when there’s a notion about that the world is perfectible. We can tinker with society, we can discover medical treatments, we can put everything right, so it seems to us. In fact, we can’t, and when we’re brought up sharp against the fact, we resent it.’
‘You think someone might have killed Simon,’ Ruth replied. ‘I wonder about that too. Do the police think it?’
‘The police are bound by the ruling of the inquest. There was no evidence of any kind that Hastings met his death in an unnatural manner. Young, apparently fit, men do drop dead. Had the body been found at the time and a proper autopsy—’ James broke off. ‘Sorry,’ he said again.
‘That’s down to me, too, isn’t it?’ was Ruth’s direct reply. ‘Because I didn’t come forward and say I’d seen him, when he disappeared. It meant he wasn’t found.’
‘They still mightn’t have found him, even if you’d spoken up. If, and it’s a big if, but if he was murdered, the killer would certainly have concealed the body. That no one found even a handful of bones until recently does indicate it was hidden. But whether intentionally, that’s another matter. He could have rolled under bushes as he fell dead. A storm such as we had the other night might have brought down branches and covered him. There are any number of explanations.’
Ruth considered this. ‘Tell me, do you believe in evil?’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘I do.’
‘Do you believe there’s a force of evil loose in Lower Stovey?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘But there’s a lot we don’t know yet, Ruth. We have to wait. It’s hard, but we have no option.’
‘And it will show itself? Is that what you mean.’
Soberly he replied, ‘If it does, when it does, we shall know what it is.’