Thanks to the docs James and Tony Harrison, who showed up on the hill in the wake of Constable Frye and half an hour before the heavy artillery from the police, Alex had been released from the cold and horrifying woods to the warmth of the Black Dog.
Doc James was Tony’s father and the local GP.
The reprieve from questions wouldn’t last long but she intended to make the best of whatever thinking time she could get. The two Harrisons had threatened a Detective Inspector Dan O’Reilly with Alex’s impending collapse from shock and probable essential sedation (answering no questions at all for days) if he didn’t get her driven down the hill.
As the police car, with its yellow and blue checkerboard motif, had arrived at the pub and drawn around into the yard behind the building, Alex had seen a row of faces at the front windows of the public bar.
Once inside, her mother had been waiting to give her the rundown about the way the news had spread through the locals, but when Alex made herself appear behind the bar, she was still jumpy and wished she could hide.
Hiding, Lily Duggins had assured her, was something they didn’t do.
Bloody Saturday morning, as some wag had already dubbed this horrible day, gave the locals too much time to hang around in the Black Dog asking questions and coming up with answers based on nothing but conjecture.
‘There you are, Alex,’ Major Stroud, long-time retired and a fixture in the pub, announced loudly the instant she appeared. ‘About time, too, old thing. You can’t pretend nothing’s happened forever, y’know. Best way to put silly rumors to rest is with the truth. Tell us all about it.’ His nose looked more bulbous and purplish than usual and his small, watery eyes skewered Alex.
Will Cummings, busy changing over beer barrels, gave Alex a sympathetic look. His wife wasn’t so calm. Tight-lipped, Cathy Cummings drew beers as fast as she could and slapped glasses under the pours to measure spirits. A slight, blonde woman, her thin face showed how strained she felt. Highly strung, everyone dubbed her, but to Alex she seemed to be overreacting today. Something horrible had taken place but Cathy wouldn’t help by going to pieces. Cathy was a little younger than Will, or so Alex thought, probably early fifties to his late fifties or so. She had noticed how he often treated her like a teenager rather than an adult. He was paternal toward her.
‘This lot were all milling around outside,’ Will said. ‘I let ’em in early rather than have anyone freeze out there.’
Usually they opened around ten and it was the coffee and biscuits group until just before noon.
Alex smelled the coffee and freshly baked sugar biscuits, but for most customers a death on the hill was obviously an excuse for a wee, or not-so-wee dram of something to calm the nerves.
Barely contained excitement, only slightly dampened by the serious reaction the customers knew was expected of them, brought the noise level to a buzzing pitch.
Alex rubbed her still-cold palms down the sides of her jeans. Her brain didn’t want to track with her eyes and she couldn’t think of anything to say. She supposed she really was shocked but couldn’t bring herself to pour a brandy.
Will did it for her, setting a full shot glass on the wooden sill beneath the upturned bottles of spirits. Stocky, balding and affable, he was the perfect pub manager. ‘This’ll hit the spot,’ he said to Alex.
She nodded and took a sip; the heat felt good going down. The police who arrived in response to Constable Frye’s phone calls had kept her up on the hill for an hour, shivering and watching the clinical official activity around the body, intermittently peppered with questions or left alone to stare at the efficient activity at the death scene. She could have kissed both of the Harrisons when they had come to her rescue. What they had told the detective wasn’t far from the truth. She wouldn’t have been surprised if she had passed out or thrown up – or both.
Warmth from the fire, and from bodies pressed into the space around the bar, felt good to Alex. The smells of beer and piping hot meat pies were comfortingly familiar.
‘I say, Alex,’ Major Stroud boomed. Foam speckled a mustache rolled out along his upper lip like iron-gray Velcro. ‘We’re all on your side, y’know. Not one of us thinks you were more than an unlucky witness, but you do need to bring the rest of us up to date. Was there as much blood as they say?’
Cathy Cummings gripped the edge of the bar, her eyes filled with tears.
The brandy had already started to calm Alex down. She rubbed Cathy’s back and shook her head at the major. ‘You don’t know. Maybe my formerly secret hobby is knocking people off in the woods.’
Someone laughed – big Kev Winslet – and a communal snicker went up.
‘I shouldn’t joke,’ Alex said, embarrassed. ‘Some of us get shaken up and then we’re silly at the most inappropriate times. Sorry about that. There’s nothing for me to tell, Major’ – the police had been sure she knew to keep her mouth shut – ‘we’ll hear what the authorities want us to hear soon enough.’
Going to work beside Cathy, Alex served customers and kept pork pies, Cornish pasties and sausage rolls – standard pub fare – popping in and out of the microwave at a great rate. She forked pickled onions and Scotch eggs from giant jars filled with vinegar and pickling spices. But she repeatedly needed to pull her attention back to what she was doing, trying not to see images of the man with the terrible wound in his neck, or to think how he had bled out on the frozen ground, alone except for a little dog.
Goosebumps shot up her arms.
‘I say,’ Major Stroud said. ‘Aren’t you going to tell us at least something about it? Man or woman, that much at least? How was the killing done?’
Alex shook her head. ‘We’ll all know more than we want to before long. I was told not to discuss anything. The police will be stopping by with questions soon enough, not that I can think anyone here knows anything.’
There, that was already more than she needed to report. Alex shut her mouth firmly.
‘I should think so,’ old Mary Burke said from her chair beside her younger sister Harriet’s. ‘Gossiping never did anyone any good.’ Although Mary had been known to spill a few beans on occasion. The sisters, both retired teachers, ran a tea shop that also offered books and handcrafts for sale.
Through an archway into the small restaurant, Alex could see her mother at the reception desk. Lily met her daughter’s eyes and smiled encouragement, then went back to poring over the reservation book and behaving as if nothing unusual had happened. Quietly turned out as long as Alex could remember, Lily was professional in her black dress, and in her manner. A handsome woman, statuesque beside Alex, with a light hand when it came to make-up, Lily knew how to manage any situation.
‘I expect they called Doc Harrison up there,’ someone said.
‘Would that be James or Tony Harrison?’ Major Stroud said, and looked put out at the laughter that followed.
Kev Winslet, who worked as gamekeeper on the Derwinter estate, said, ‘Doc James, I expect, unless Doc Tony is treatin’ humans now.’ He joined in the mirth.
Tony Harrison had, so it was told, disappointed his father by choosing veterinary medicine rather than joining the senior Harrison’s practice. When they’d both been teenagers, Tony and Alex had become friends, two of a kind, both quiet and determined people. Tony was several years older and had left for university before Alex got a scholarship to prestigious Slade Art College in London.
Up on the hill that morning, both James and Tony Harrison had shown their quiet brand of compassion.
‘Alex,’ Mary Burke’s sturdy voice demanded. ‘Can we get some service, please?’
Mary was one of Alex’s favorite people, as was Harriet, who sat with her at a table near the Inglenook fireplace. Flames reflected a glow on the women’s weathered faces and white hair, and bounced off the polished horse brasses hung along the gnarled oak mantel.
‘Coming,’ Alex said, forcing a smile, but as if he knew he’d been mentioned, Tony Harrison chose that exact moment to walk in with the gray and black dog from the woods in his arms. Tony’s waxed green Barbour coat was open so he could hold the animal against the warmth of his body and wrap some of the coat over him. His rubber Hunters squeaked on the wooden floor and left muddy footprints behind.
That quieted the uproar.
‘Just passing through,’ Tony said. ‘I’ve got to get this chap to the surgery and check him over. Thought I’d ask if anyone remembers seeing him before.’
Mumbles followed and a few pressed in for a closer look. Reverend Restrick from tiny St Aldwyn’s church, rose from a settle with its back to the rest of the bar and came around to scratch the dog under the chin. A large man with a sweet smile, he said, ‘Someone’s missing you, aren’t they, little fellow?’
‘He’s well fed,’ Tony said, ‘although he’s probably very hungry at the moment. Name on his collar is Bogie. He’s not a stray.’
No one had any information but Alex lifted the flap in the bar and went to offer her hand to the dog. ‘Hello, Bogie. Poor boy.’ A doggy tongue tentatively met the end of her fingers but an incessant, faint squeaking came from Bogie’s throat and the animal trembled violently.
Alex looked at Tony. ‘I’m glad you’ve got him. He—’
‘Yes, I know,’ the vet said, cutting her off with a warning glance. ‘I’ll make sure he’s OK. I’d better crack on. Give me a call if you hear anyone’s looking for him.’
Tony’s kind, dark blue eyes reminded Alex that he had always taken the side of any underdog kid, including herself, and what a good friend he’d been until he left home.
‘Does he belong to the murder victim?’ Major Stroud demanded, jutting his considerable jaw toward Tony. ‘Or should I say, did he?’
Tony gazed from Alex’s raised eyebrows to the major’s pugnacious expression and said, ‘What murder victim?’