Saturday morning
Pry up the staple in the middle pages of the AA Drivers Atlas to the British Isles and you may find Synne, a speck of a village sideswiped by the northeastern edge of the Cotswold Hills as they lap up against Shakespeare Country.
Guidebooks to the area have given up trying to explain why the tiny village of some ninety houses should ever have come into existence. Synne was never close enough to the great Fosse Way to have offered a rest stop for foot-weary Romans, nor in later years was it a staging post on the coach route from London to Worcester. It has no historical connection with the Cotswolds wool trade, or the cloth and silk trades, which followed and failed. No healthful spring bubbles up through its limestone. There isn’t a working farm within a three-mile radius. The reason for Synne’s survival for half a millennium is a complete mystery to most people.
But an isolation that was inconvenient in the past can be a boon today if handled by a canny estate agent. Synne’s honey-toned sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century cottages are now occupied by retired advertising executives, media consultants, and BBC radio producers, once beguiled by the prospect of rural life and now bored to death by its reality. Seven recent arrivals penned opportunistic journals of their first year in the village: five of them were titled Living in Synne; the other two were called A Year in the Cotswolds; none was published. Meanwhile the born-and-bred Synne-folk they displaced shifted to a clutch of tasteful modern houses just north of the main road, grateful for central heating and windows that close properly at last.
Most of the picturesque older cottages jostle along the main road, particularly where it skirts the long north edge of Synne’s triangular village green, inevitably called The Square. It has the shape of the down arrow on an elevator button, pointing due south at nothing in particular.
On the southeast side of the Square is a pair of Georgian houses, handsome but incongruous, the one on the right being the home of Brigadier (retd.) Robert Proudfoot Swithin, DSO, and his wife, Chloe. In front of the house, there’s only a shallow flowerbed with a scattering of hollyhocks—a rare example of a flower that Oliver could identify, because he had tried to rhyme them with “bollocks” in a limerick. But to the rear is a deceptively large walled garden, with a generous lawn and, at its center, a massive horse chestnut tree, now covered in blossom.
Effie Strongitharm was spread out serenely on a lounger in a sunny corner of the lawn, wearing a modest black bikini and reading a book. She had chosen to ignore the occasional twitching of curtains at an upper floor window, which she had pinpointed as Toby Swithin’s bedroom. She had also decided to ignore the frequent grunts and clatters coming from the tree behind her, caused by the percussive combination of an aluminum stepladder, a steel tape measure, and her boyfriend. But a sneeze followed by a particularly loud crash did make her sit up and glance around. The ladder had fallen. Oliver was not immediately visible, but then two legs in jeans and purple sneakers descended slowly into view from the lowest branches and kicked in mid-air like a frog. Effie turned back to her book and so did not see Oliver drop the remaining six feet to the ground.
He lay flat on his back for a few seconds, then sat up and groped for his eyeglasses. He stood warily, crept up behind Effie, and covered her eyes. “Guess who?”
Effie gave a small gasp of girlish delight. “Johnny Depp!”
Oliver smirked. “You’re getting warm.”
“I would be if it really was Johnny Depp.”
“Oh. Well, it’s me, I’m afraid.”
Effie lifted her sunglasses and scrutinized him. “Don’t I get two more guesses?”
“Because of that, I’m not going to tell you what I’ve found out.”
“Okay.” Effie returned to her book. Oliver perched on the lounger, dimly aware that he’d just moved himself into check. He sneezed.
“You don’t seem too bothered that we discovered a body last night,” he attempted, wiping his nose.
Effie looked up again. “Naturally, I’m sorry about poor Mr. Breedlove. But in case you’d forgotten, Ollie, I am on your uncle’s Murder Investigation Team.” She leaned toward him and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I see dead people,” she hissed. Oliver flinched.
“But I see them in London,” she continued. “A simple suicide in Synne is none of my business professionally, and it would be a complete and utter no-no for the Yard to interfere with a local investigation.”
He was back in the match. “But what if it wasn’t a simple suicide?” he began eagerly. She held up a hand.
“Save it for Tim,” she interrupted. “I’m on vacation. I must be idle.”
Mallard might make a better audience, Oliver considered. His uncle had taken charge the previous evening, dressing hastily and using his mobile phone to report the discovery of the body. And then they had waited for half an hour until a uniformed policeman, fat and scant of breath, trudged up the path to the Shakespeare Race. Unlike the rural policemen in detective fiction, Police Constable Ernie Bostar did not secretly long for the opportunity to impress when he found a Scotland Yard superintendent within his truncheon’s length. In fact he did not relish any form of work. So he quickly placed a call to the county detective branch and then, with a grumble or two, took only brief statements from the four witnesses.
They managed to tell their tale without any mention of nudity, and the only detail that intrigued Bostar momentarily was the women’s report of spotting a figure on the edge of the Common—a man on foot, robed like a monk, with a hood pulled over his head, who seemed to be scanning the moonlit scrubland from the road. It was this observation, made from behind a convenient gorse bush, that delayed their returning with the men’s clothes. But because Breedlove had died at least an hour earlier (based on Mallard’s swift appraisal of the dangling body) and a good half-mile from this apparition, Bostar quickly lost interest again. The four slipped away just as the maze was raked by the bucking headlamps of an ambulance, which had taken the barely negotiable car track up to the Race from the far side of the Common.
Their amorous mood spoiled, Oliver and Effie had climbed into bed in Oliver’s old bedroom, holding each other and furtively maneuvering so as not to be the owner of the superfluous fourth arm that always gets lain upon when two people cuddle. While waiting for sleep, Oliver was struck by a nagging issue, which had caused him to spend most of Saturday morning recreating the death scene in the Swithins’ garden.
He was wondering whether to give Effie the satisfaction of interrupting her again, when he caught sight of his younger brother in an open doorway.
“Toby! Come out here!” Oliver yelled. After a moment’s nervous hesitation, Toby complied. Effie reached for a multi-colored wrap on the grass beside her and draped it around her shoulders.
Toby Swithin bore little resemblance to his older brother. Although they were both thin, Oliver was taller. While his hair was blond and floppy, Toby sported a nest of dark waves. Oliver’s eyes behind his cheap, wire-framed glasses were blue, like his mother’s; Toby, who didn’t need glasses, had his father’s dark brown eyes and sharp nose, which gave his face a wary intensity. He always looked like he’d just been asked a slightly unnerving question. The overall effect was as if someone had cloned the poet Shelley but tossed in a few otter genes for good measure. Despite the warm day, Toby wore a shapeless white cricket sweater over muddy denims.
“Tobermory Swithin,” Oliver pronounced. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t remove your spleen.”
Toby’s eyes were on the grass under his feet. He glanced up for a second, took in Effie’s bikini-clad state, and quickly looked down again.
“Well, for one thing, my name isn’t Tobermory,” he muttered. “Just Toby. Not short for anything” He looked up again and tried to meet Effie’s eyes. She beamed at him reassuringly. He blushed and glanced away.
“Where were you at twelve o’clock last night?” snapped Oliver. He didn’t notice the effect that proximity to his svelte girlfriend seemed to be having on his little brother. In fact, he was pleased that Effie was there. There was little doubt that Toby would shortly be subjected to the notorious Strongitharm Look, Effie’s special way of sending her ice-blue gaze deep into an offender’s brain, swatting away the defending forces of bravado and self-justification, grabbing the cowering sense of shame by the throat, and plucking it out for all to see, like a still-beating heart. Two seconds of the Look, and Toby would be recalling every embarrassing, scrotum-shrinking moment of his life, including the time Oliver caught him doing bodybuilding poses in the bathroom mirror, dressed only in what he’d supposed was one of their sister’s thongs, although it turned out to be their mother’s.
“I was in bed,” Toby answered, puzzled. “I was late getting back from the dig. Eric Mormal was supposed to give me a ride home, but he did his shift earlier than usual. I had to hitchhike from Stratford to Synne. Why?”
“You didn’t stop off at the Common? To see if anyone was doing a midnight run around the Race?”
Toby brightened. “Oh, did Effie tell you about that? It’s an interesting piece of Synne folklore, isn’t it?”
“I’ll not be juggled with,” Oliver growled. “And why, for God’s sake, did you dangle the bait of falsehood in front of your Aunt Phoebe, of all people?”
“It isn’t falsehood,” Toby protested. He sniggered suddenly. “I say, she didn’t try it, did she? And did she get Uncle Tim to go along, too? Oh gosh, this is priceless! I wish I had been there now. That should be on YouTube.” He continued to chuckle.
“They weren’t the only ones,” Oliver said coldly. It was decidedly time for the Strongitharm Look.
Toby stopped laughing abruptly as the implication struck home. He opened his mouth, but the unavoidable mental image of Effie wearing even fewer clothes clearly overwhelmed his powers of speech.
“I think Effie has something to say to you,” Oliver continued, and moved to the side to avoid any crossfire. Look pale and tremble, Tobermory.
“Toby’s right,” she said.
“What?”
Effie brandished the thick, black book she had been reading, and Oliver noticed the title on the spine: Folk Traditions of the Northern Cotswolds. “It’s in here,” she continued. “Toby was telling the truth.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest…” Toby began, but choked again. Effie skewered her sunglasses into her fair ringlets.
“You have nothing to reproach yourself for, Toby dear,” she soothed. “You clearly haven’t heard yet what put the damper on last night’s hijinks, but it had nothing to do with you. Now, Oliver, I think you’re the person who has something to say to Toby.”
“What?” Oliver said again. No Look?
Effie tilted her head. “Don’t you owe Toby an apology for being so rude?”
“The hell I do.”
“Oliver,” she prompted. Damn, she was almost at checkmate. Oliver turned toward Toby, noticing a tall figure framed in the doorway to the house.
“Oh, all right. Toby, I’m sorry I called you a devious, hairy-palmed, weasel-faced troll.” He felt Effie’s toe jab him in the thigh and continued hastily. “Look, I’d gladly apologize until the cows come home, but Uncle Tim seems to have beaten them to it. Despite your complete innocence, you’re well advised to avoid him for the next couple of days. I’d start now.”
He nodded over Toby’s shoulder. Toby turned to see his uncle glaring at him across the lawn, and without waiting, bolted toward a gate in the garden wall.
“So much for him,” said Oliver. “I wonder what he’s been doing in his room all morning.”
“Binoculars,” Effie murmured, swathing the wrap around her torso as Mallard approached. He was wearing an off-white linen suit with an ascot and a dapper Panama hat, which complemented his rakish white moustache.
“Sergeant Strongitharm,” said Mallard, removing the hat, “I nearly didn’t recognize you with all those clothes on.” He fixed his gaze on a single cumulus cloud, adrift in the blue sky.
“Phoebe and I have been at Dennis Breedlove’s cottage,” he continued, “making a statement to the CID officer in charge of the case. He wants one from you, too. Just a formality. He’s Detective Sergeant Culpepper, based in Leek Wootton.”
“In that case, I’d better slip into something less comfortable,” Effie said. She stood up and handed the book to Oliver. “Be a precious bunny and take this back to your dad’s library. I’ll meet you by the front door in ten minutes.”
Dad? thought Oliver. When had he ever called the brigadier “Dad”?
“Oh, Tim,” she added, “Oliver wants to convince you that Uncle Dennis’s death was a conspiracy.”
She kissed Oliver demurely on the cheek and sashayed away, fully aware that Oliver would be staring after her while Mallard, the perfect gentleman, would be deliberately studying something else.
“Close your mouth, precious bunny,” said Mallard, replacing his hat. “So what’s this about Uncle Dennis?”
“I don’t think he could have killed himself without help.”
Mallard checked his watch. “All right, let’s hear it,” he said with a sigh. “But it’s too late to search for traces of extra visitors to the Race. The two of us did a good job of tramping around under the Synne Oak, not to mention that ambulance crew and who knows how many CID busies.”
“You don’t need that sort of evidence,” Oliver answered, setting up the stepladder. “This ladder is the same size as the one we found last night. I borrowed it from the village peeping Tom.”
“The village peeping Tom?”
“Yes. Well, one of them anyway. Although the other one prefers the term ‘voyeur.’ Now watch.”
Oliver climbed the ladder, reaching for the blossom-laden branches of the horse chestnut for support, and stood on the top step.
“This is as high as I got last night,” he called down. “When I stood on tiptoe, I was face-to-face with Dennis, not a pretty sight under the circumstances. And I could just about touch the knot that tied the rope to a branch.”
“So you could easily hang yourself, if it becomes advisable.”
“I could, yes,” Oliver agreed, too enthusiastic to be sidetracked by Mallard’s comment. “I’m an inch or two under six feet tall. But Dennis Breedlove was a good six inches shorter than me. It was one of the reasons why children loved him when he was on the radio—they claimed they could tell from his voice that he wasn’t much bigger than them.”
“So you think Breedlove was too short to reach the branch and tie the rope.”
Oliver rattled down the ladder. “Exactly.”
“Could he have tossed the rope over the branch and bent it downwards while he tied the knot?”
Oliver shook his head. “It’s an oak tree. Not much flexibility in those lower limbs. A bit like old Dennis himself. And even if it did bend, it would surely have stayed bent from the weight of the body. Dennis’s feet were floating a good three inches above the top step of the ladder.”
“Then he can’t have been standing on the ladder when he did the deed. He must have climbed up into the tree to tie the rope.”
“In that case, how did he manage to kick the ladder over?”
“Perhaps it fell down when he stepped off it.”
Oliver considered this as they wandered out of the tree’s shade. “Well, that’s possible I suppose. But it still leaves the question of the short rope. It was just a couple of feet from the knot to the noose. Not much of a drop.”
“D.S. Culpepper told me the rope was only about eight feet long to start with. Tying a proper hangman’s noose would shorten it considerably.”
Oliver picked up Effie’s book with his thumb and forefinger and absently let it swing. “You’d think if Dennis was going to all this trouble—perfectly tied noose, ancient village gibbet—he’d have some concept of the basic principles of hanging.”
“Hanging’s a science as well as an art. Suicides rarely get it right. You need a drop at least equal to your height to break your neck, a quick death. Even the public hangman used to have a few failures. Too short a rope, and the poor bugger slowly chokes to death, which is what happened to Uncle Dennis. Too long, on the other hand, and you can decapitate your client. A messy alternative, but at least it’s thorough. Ask the French.”
“Most people think Jayne Mansfield was decapitated when she died in that car crash. She wasn’t. That’s a good example of the new trivia I plan to write about.”
Mallard closed his eyes, as if in pain. “Oliver, can you focus? I have to get to Stratford for my next rehearsal.”
“Sorry. I just think you can answer a lot of questions if you imagine a six-foot-plus man such as yourself tying the noose to the branch first and then lifting Uncle Dennis into it while still standing on the ladder. After all, why would a supposedly suicidal octogenarian carry an eight-foot stepladder all the way up to the Synne Oak on his own and then apparently hang himself by leaping upwards into a dangling noose? Why not just go into the garage and run the car? Why was the last act of his life so complicated?”
“To make a point,” said Mallard, “you’d better talk to Culpepper. He may have something to show you.”
“Did Dennis leave a note, then?”
“In a way. But he didn’t write it himself.”
“You’re being annoyingly cryptic, Uncle Tim.”
Mallard tousled Oliver’s hair briefly, as if his nephew were a five-year-old. Oliver didn’t resent the gesture. “Go and see Culpepper. You’ll understand.”
He turned toward the house. Oliver realized he was still holding the book from his father’s library. He cut across the lawn to the open French windows of the ground-floor study where Brigadier Swithin kept his collections of cast-iron toy soldiers, which his sons had never been allowed to touch, and books that were mostly about war in the twentieth century, which his sons had never asked to read. Oliver let his eyes adjust to the sudden shade, wondering where his father filed the books on local traditions.
“Who’s there?” It was a sharp cry, from the depths of a leather wing chair near the empty fireplace. If Bob Swithin had been dozing over his magazine, he would never have admitted it.
“It’s me, Father. Oliver.”
He removed the resented reading glasses. His eyes were dark and small, dwarfed by untidy eyebrows, the only hair visible on his glossy head. Oliver was reminded again of his gratitude that male baldness was inherited from the mother’s DNA—although he had a nagging feeling this was another example of a fact that was widely known but completely wrong. It did seem to be the case that much of the anti-trivia he was collecting was incorrect. The Victorians didn’t cover up the legs of their pianos to disguise their lascivious profile, for example. There’s no evidence that Anne Boleyn had six fingers or three nipples. And Catherine the Great decidedly did not die while, well…
“Something I can help you with?” asked his father.
“Just returning the book Effie borrowed this morning.”
He breathed deeply, as if relieved that the encounter would involve nothing more parental.
“Effie, yes,” he said. “Spirited lass. Been courting her for a while now, eh?”
“Nine months. Longest girlfriend ever.” The brusque phrasing that Oliver fell into when talking to his father gave the last comment a surreal twist, but he knew it wouldn’t register in the brigadier’s practical mind.
“Well, don’t mess it up then.”
“I’ll do my best.” Oliver was aware that his best had generally failed to meet his father’s standards and that, more than anyone, Bob Swithin was glad that his son wrote his children’s books under a pseudonym. Bob had never really forgiven Oliver for surpassing him in height at age fourteen.
“Yes, rather fond of Effie. Reminds me a bit of your sister.” He referred to his only daughter, Eve, who came between Oliver and Toby in birth order and who was currently in New York. Oliver loved Eve and admired her achievements, so he took the comparison as a compliment, but he’d also noted that his father would create any opportunity to mention his favorite child, whose non-military ambitions offended him less because she was not male. Oliver spotted the gap on the shelves where the black book usually sat.
“Oh, one more thing, Oliver,” the brigadier called as his son headed for the door. “This little Breedlove fellow who topped himself last night. Understand from your mother—or it could have been her sister, I wasn’t paying that much attention—that you and Timothy were on the scene.”
“That’s right.”
“I knew the old boy, of course—village business, parochial council. Decent enough blighter, could be quite entertaining, if you liked the cut of his jib. Your mother couldn’t stomach him. Good conversationalist. Always wore the same outfit. Anyway, I believe he was in your line of business.”
“He didn’t write children’s books, he wrote about them,” Oliver informed him pointlessly.
“Not a particular friend of yours, then?”
Dennis Breedlove’s erudite and controversial books about children’s literature began to appear after he’d moved to Synne thirty years earlier, drawing upon thirty prior years of reading classic stories to children on BBC radio until the institution decided it no longer had time for them or him. The publication of the Railway Mice series had moved Oliver into the same literary circle as Breedlove, and he’d met the old man once or twice at the Sanders, the club for children’s authors on Pall Mall, when Breedlove—an honorary member—made one of his rare journeys to London. But last night’s encounter with Breedlove’s small corpse was the first time Oliver had come face-to-face with him in Synne. Of course, he’d always intended to pay a courtesy call on Uncle Dennis during one of his brief stays with his parents. But somehow that friendly visit had always been squeezed out by other things, including Oliver’s self-centered desire to get back to the city as soon as possible.
“Not really a friend, no.”
“Ah. No great loss, then.” The brigadier picked up his magazine from his lap and put on his reading glasses, signaling that Oliver wasn’t meant to take any further comments as an invitation to prolong their conversation. Brigadier Bob always liked having the last word.
“Unpleasant business, hanging,” he commented, not looking in Oliver’s direction. “I’ve heard they foul themselves as they come down. And a chap can get a—well, not for mixed company.”
“Mixed—?”
“Pistol shot to the temple, that’s a man’s way.”
“Yes, indeed, Father,” said Oliver and let himself out of the dim room into the large bright entrance hall, where Effie was waiting for him. She smiled broadly when she saw him, as she always did. If she ever stopped, he thought, the world would end.