“I don’t think you would want to but I’d make an exception of Prunella. Dr. Schramm and Mrs. Foster were engaged to be married.”
In the silence that she was unable to break Verity thought that it really was not so very surprising, this information. There was even a kind of logic about it. Given Syb. And given Basil Schramm.
Alleyn said: “Rather staggering news, perhaps?”
“No, no,” she heard herself saying. “Not really. I’m just — trying to assimilate it. Why did you tell me?”
“Partly because I thought there was a chance that she might have confided it to you that afternoon but mostly because I had an idea it might be disagreeable for you to learn of it accidentally.”
“Will it be made known, then? Will he make it known?”
“Well,” said Alleyn, “I’m sure. If it’s anything to go by, he did tell me.”
“I suppose it explains the Will?”
“That’s the general idea, of course.”
Verity heard herself say: “Poor Syb.” And then: “I hope it doesn’t come out. Because of Prue.”
“Would she mind so much?”
“Oh, I think so. Don’t you? The young mind terribly if they believe their parents have made asses of themselves.”
“And would any woman engaging herself to Dr. Schramm make an ass of herself?”
“Yes,” said Verity. “She would. I did.”
ii
When Alleyn had gone Verity sat inert in her car and wondered what had possessed her to tell him something that for twenty-odd years she had told nobody. A policeman! More than that, a policeman who must, the way things had gone, take a keen professional interest in Basil Schramm, might even — no, almost certainly did — think of him as a “Suspect.” And she turned cold when she forced herself to complete the sequence — a suspect in what might turn out to be a case of foul play: of — very well, then, use the terrible soft word — of murder.
He had not followed up her statement or pressed her with questions nor, indeed, did he seem to be greatly interested. He merely said: “Did you? Sickening for you,” made one or two remarks of no particular significance and said goodbye. He drove off with a large companion who could not be anything that was not constabular. Mr. Rattisbon, too, looking gravely preoccupied, entered his own elderly car and quitted the scene.
Still Verity remained, miserably inert. One or two locals sauntered off. The Vicar and Jim Jobbin, who was part-time sexton, came out of the church and surveyed the weathered company of headstones. The Vicar pointed to the right and they made off in that direction, round the church. Verity knew, with a jolt, that they discussed the making of a grave. Sybil’s remotest Passcoigne forebears lay in the vault but there was a family plot among the trees beyond the south transept.
Then she saw that Bruce Gardener, in his Harris tweed suit, had come out of the hall and was climbing up the steps to the church. He followed the Vicar and Jim Jobbin and disappeared. Verity had noticed him at the inquest. He had sat at the back, taller than his neighbours, upright, with his gardener’s hands on his thighs, very decorous and solemn. She thought that perhaps he wanted to ask about the funeral, about flowers from Quintern Place, it might be. If so, that was nice of Bruce. She herself, she thought, must offer to do something about flowers. She would wait a little longer and speak to the Vicar,
“Good morning,” said Claude Carter, leaning on the passenger’s door.
Her heart seemed to leap into her throat. She had been looking out of the driver’s window and he must have come up from behind the car on her blind side.
“Sorry,” he said, and grinned. “Made you jump, did I?”
“Yes.”
“My mistake. I just wondered if I might cadge a lift to the turn-off. If you’re going home, that is.”
There was nothing she wanted less but she said yes, if he didn’t mind waiting while she went up to the church. He said he wasn’t in a hurry and got in. He had removed his vestigial beard, she noticed, and had his hair cut to a conservative length. He was tidily dressed and looked less hang-dog than usual There was even a hint of submerged jauntiness about him.
“Smoking allowed?” he asked.
She left him lighting his cigarette in a guarded manner as if he was afraid someone would snatch it out of his mouth.
At the head of the steps she met the Vicar returning with Bruce and Jim. To her surprise Jim, a bald man with a loud voice, was now bent double. He was hovered over by the Vicar.
“It’s a fair bugger,” he shouted. “Comes over you like a bloody thunderclap. Stooping down to pull up them bloody teazles and now look at me. Should of minded me own business.”
“Yes, welclass="underline" jolly bad luck,” said the Vicar. “Oh. Hullo, Miss Preston. We’re in trouble as you see. Jim’s smitten with lumbago.”
“Will he be able to negotiate the descent?” Bruce speculated anxiously. “That’s what I ask myself. Awa’ wi ye, man, and let us handle you doon the steps.”
“No, you don’t. I’ll handle myself if left to myself, won’t I?”
“Jim!” said Verity, “what a bore for you. I’ll drive you home.”
“No, ta all the same, Miss Preston. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again. I’m best left to manage myself and if you’ll excuse me that’s what I’ll do. I’ll use the handrail. Only,” he added with a sudden, shout of agony, “I’d be obliged if I wasn’t watched.”
“Perhaps,” said the Vicar, “we’d better—?”
Jim, moving like a gaffer in a Victorian melodrama, achieved the handrail and clung to it. He shouted: “I won’t be able to do the job now, will I?”
There was an awkward silence broken by Bruce. “Dinna fash yourself,” he said. “No problem. With the Mister’s kind permission I’ll dig it myself and think it an honour. I will that.”
“The full six foot, mind.”
“Ou aye,” Bruce agreed. “All of it. I’m a guid hand at digging,” he added.
“Fair enough,” said Jim and began to ease himself down the steps.
“This is a most fortunate solution, Bruce,” said the Vicar. “Shall we just leave Jim as he wishes?” and he ushered them into the church.
St. Crispin’s-in-Quintern was one of the great company of parish churches that stand as milestones in rural history: obstinate registers to the ravages of time. It had a magnificent peal of bells, now unsafe to ring, one or two brasses, a fine east window and a surprising north window in which — strange conceit — a walrus-mustachioed Passcoigne, looking startlingly like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was depicted in full plate armour, an Edwardian St. Michael without a halo. The legend indicated that he had met his end on the African veld. The familiar ecclesiastical odour of damp held at bay by paraffin heaters greeted Verity and the two men.
Verity explained that she would like to do anything that would help about the flowers. The Vivar said that custody of all brass vases was inexorably parcelled out among the Ladies Guild, five in number. She gathered that any attempt to disrupt this procedure would trigger off a latent pecking order.
“But they would be grateful for flowers,” he added.
Bruce said that there were late roses up at Quintern Place and he’d thought it would be nice to have her ain favourites to see her off. He muttered in an uneven voice that the name was appropriate: Peace. “They endure better than most oot o’ water,” he added and blew his nose. Verity and the Vicar warmly supported this suggestion and Verity left the two men to complete, she understood, the arrangements for digging Sybil’s grave.
When she returned to the top of the steps she found that Jim Jobbin had reached the bottom on his hands and knees and was being manipulated through the lych-gate by his wife. Verity joined them. Mrs. Jim explained that she was on her way to get dinner and had found Jim crawling backward down the last four steps. It was no distance, they both reminded Verity, along the lane to their cottage. Jim got to his feet by swarming up his wife as if she was a tree.