From his vantage point Steven saw that some fifty people had assembled at the graveside where a clergyman in white robes set off by a purple stole was reading the burial service. He couldn’t help but feel that this was the way to take your leave of life. England was doing George Sebring proud. The blue of the summer sky, the lush green of the newly-mown grass, the black worn by the mourners, the weeping willows; all combined to paint the perfect farewell scene. He could imagine it hanging on the wall of some gallery. Steven could remember so many funerals where foul weather had stolen centre-stage, where the earth had turned to mud underfoot and the valediction had been snatched away by the wind. This was better: this was how it should be.
It was easy for him to pick out Jane Sebring because she had presence. Although slight in stature and lace-veiled under a broad-brimmed black hat, she seemed to stand out from the others. She was flanked — presumably by relatives — but none touched her or supported her in any way as if such a gesture might not have been welcome. Instead she stood alone and erect, hands clasped together in front of her, head slightly bowed. When her husband’s coffin was lowered into the ground she accepted a single yellow rose from a man at her side and after a slight pause, threw it down lightly on to the lid. She exchanged a few words with the vicar then turned to walk without falter towards the waiting cars. The other mourners followed suit.
Steven decided that he would try to speak to Jane Sebring. He would follow the official cars to see where the journey took him and then make plans accordingly. He had just come out through the cemetery gates — the last to do so — when he felt a hand on his shoulder and a rough voice told him to ‘stop right there’. He turned to find a thickset man wearing a light grey suit with a yellow shirt and a black tie that looked more suited to being worn by a young boy: it seemed so short and narrow. He was fumbling for something in his inside pocket and Steven noticed he smelt of sweat.
‘Who are you?’ he asked Steven.
‘I might ask the same of you,’ replied Steven.
‘Police. Just answer the question,’ said the man finally finding his warrant card and holding it up in front of Steven.
Steven took out his own ID and flipped it open.
His questioner’s demeanour changed in an instant. ‘Sorry sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve been on the lookout for strangers turning up at Sebring’s funeral. The boss thought his murderer might put in an appearance. Apparently it’s not uncommon.’
Steven nodded but thought otherwise. It might have been at one time, he acknowledged, but since TV detectives had started pointing this out every other week you’d have to be some kind of mental defective as well as a murderer to turn up at your victim’s funeral these days. He left the policeman and ran to his car, having noted that the cars had turned left at the end of the road and hoping he wasn’t going to lose them.
The road seemed quiet so Steven gunned his MGF down past the cemetery gates and up to the end of the road where his tyres squealed as he threw it into a tight left hand turn. There was nothing up ahead. ‘Damnation,’ he muttered as he accelerated again up to the first junction where he was just in time to see the back end of a dark blue Mazda make a right turn off the road to his left. He remembered such a car belonging to one of the mourners. Another brief sprint and he was sure it was the same one. The official limousines were a few cars up ahead.
When the convoy finally turned into a pleasant crescent of large, 1930s detached houses with bay windows and Virginia creeper much in evidence, Steven deduced that they were headed for Jane Sebring’s home rather than one of the local hotels, which ‘catered respectfully’ for the funeral trade. This would make it more difficult for him to mingle with the mourners. He had a decision to make. Should he gate-crash the wake or should he go away and come back later?
Steven gambled on attaching himself to the mourners, a decision encouraged by the fact that nearly everyone who had been at the cemetery seemed to have come back to the house so he shouldn’t stand out like too much of a sore thumb unless of course, they all knew each other intimately. He noted as he walked up the path behind a black-clad group of four that the house was called ‘Vermont’.
Now that she was no longer wearing her veil, Steven could see that Jane Sebring was a very good-looking woman, somewhere in her mid-thirties, he reckoned, with fair hair, blue intelligent eyes that gave nothing away and such poise and self-control that he could not help but imagine what she might be like if she ever let her guard down. Although she did have an air of sadness about her, she was clearly not the kind of person to parade her grief in public and busied herself enquiring after the health of ageing family members and generally thanking people for coming as well as making sure they had enough to eat and drink.
‘You know, I reckon old George was a spy,’ said one of the men in the group Steven had loosely attached himself to. He’d gathered that the man was one of Sebring’s colleagues at the university and had already pigeonholed him as belonging to the ‘all brains and no sense’ branch of academia.
‘It’s always the quiet ones that have a past,’ continued the man. ‘George never spoke much about what he did before joining us, a sure sign if you ask me.’
‘He’s right,’ said another. ‘He was very cagey about that. So you reckon it was the KGB that did for George then?’
‘Or some such outfit. There was that chap who fell foul of the Bulgarians, if you remember; they got him with a poisoned umbrella tip.’
‘Didn’t strike me as the James Bond type,’ said another man. ‘I mean, he was a member of the university choir for God’s sake.’
Steven detached himself from the group and joined an elderly lady who was looking out of the window at the garden. ‘Everything’s looking nice,’ he said.
‘George hated gardening,’ said the woman, without looking at him. ‘Jane does it all. She’s good at it but then she’s good at most things. Were you one of George’s colleagues, Mr…?’
‘Dunbar, Steven Dunbar, a long time ago,’ lied Steven. ‘And you?’
‘I’m his mother.’
‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise,’ said Steven, feeling embarrassed and even a little ashamed of the circumstances. ‘It’s a tragedy,’ he said. ‘No mother should live to see her son buried. It must be an especially cruel kind of grief.’
The woman turned and looked at him for the first time. Steven was aware of her giving him an appraising look before she said, ‘It is. Pardon me for saying this but you sound as if you’ve had more than a passing acquaintance with grief yourself?’
‘My wife,’ said Steven. ‘Cancer. We’d only been married two years.’
‘Another special kind of grief.’
Steven didn’t say anything. It had been the worst time of his life.
Up until he’d started to speak to Sebring’s mother, Steven had kept watch on where Jane Sebring was in the room. He wanted to avoid making contact with her until the others started to leave. His lapse in concentration was brought home to him when a pleasant voice at his elbow said, ‘Can I get you two anything?’
Steven turned to look directly at Jane, feeling immediately that she could see right through him with her deep blue eyes. ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he said. He had been nursing the same glass of sherry since he came in.