Due to a Death by Mary Kelly

Author:Mary Kelly [Kelly, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: amateur detective, missing person, gritty, 1960s, Hedley Nicholson, inverted mystery, south coast
Publisher: British Library Publishing
Published: 2021-04-10T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

The day we went on the picnic –

Agnes, wake up! Wake up. It was yesterday. Only yesterday. Sunday, twenty-eight hours ago, when our cracked and loosened foundations finally parted, launching us on a landslide, gently, imperceptibly, on the hill yesterday afternoon, when we stopped in the lane, behind the Jag and the firecracker pulled on the grass by a gate in the hedge. I remembered the silence as Tom switched off the engine, the close warmth of the wooded bank that reached me as I got out, the slam of the door, the sound of two rising larks as we climbed over the padlocked gate to join the others in the field.

Tubby’s boys were rolling in some half-hearted scrap. Sorrel was being swung at arm’s length by Carole’s father. Malcolm and Hedley were playing with a ball. Tansy, crying in quiet hopelessness, hung on the back of Carole’s skirt. Her grandmother had retreated behind dark glasses and the shade of a vast straw hat. A cigarette stuck out of her wide red mouth. She looked like a totem pole.

Carole was midstream in complaint as we arrived.

‘Isn’t this too bad of them?’ she cried to Helen. ‘Didn’t we definitely agree to go to Boxford?’

‘My dear, I’ve already explained,’ Tubby put in wearily while Helen was still drawing breath. ‘Ian and Tom and I settled a long while back to come and see the Hordelymus today. If you will arrange these outings the night before –’

‘But we’ve always done it impromptu, you know we have, that’s half the fun. I really don’t see that an afternoon out with tea and a few sandwiches calls for long notice. Agnes, didn’t you say it would be all right with you? Did you know they’d planned to see this wretched plant, whatever it is?’

I hated being appealed to, but I had to support her. Tom hadn’t told me, it really was his fault.

Helen turned to Ian.

‘What I fail to understand is why you said nothing when I told you we’d arranged it.’

He looked uncomfortable. ‘Well we thought we could get this done first, then go on to Boxford.’

‘But we’ve come in exactly the opposite direction. It would take over an hour to get there now.’

‘Why not stay here?’ said Tubby. ‘Nice view, plenty of grass. The kids can pick blackberries.’

‘But we chose Boxford specially for the river and the swings.’

‘Anyway I’m sure this is private,’ said Helen. ‘That gate wouldn’t be chained and padlocked if we were meant to go through.’

Tubby merely turned aside with a shrug.

‘It’s all very well,’ said Carole, aggrieved. ‘You’re not proposing to keep the children amused. You have enough time for your plants and birds, surely, without spoiling their treat.’

Treat! I doubted if it were that, even for the children. The rest of us endured Carole’s sudden schemes, invariably broached at a time of maximum inconvenience, as an evil slightly less than the plaintive offence that refusal would have caused.

Tubby looked round. There was a momentary lull in the fights and games with which the children had passed the time.

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