There they all were and he wondered how many of them had Sybil Foster in their thoughts. Her daughter, supported on either side by the two men now become her guardians-in-chief? Verity Preston, who stood nearby and to whom Prunella had turned when the commitment began? Bruce Gardener, in his Harris tweed suit, black arm-band and tie, decently performing his job as stand-in sexton with his gigantic wee laddie in support? Young Mr. Rattisbon, decorous and perhaps a little tired from standing for so long? Mrs. Jim Jobbin among the representatives of the Ladies Guild, bright-eyed and wooden-faced? Sundry friends in the county. And finally, taller than the rest, a little apart from them, impeccably turned out and so handsome that he looked as if he had been type-cast for the role of distinguished medico — Dr. Basil Schramm, the presumably stricken but undisclosed fiancé of the deceased and her principal heir.
Claude Carter, however, was missing.
Alleyn had looked for him in church. At both sittings of the inquest Claude had contrived to get himself into an inconspicuous place and might have been supposed to lurk behind a pillar or in a sort of no-man’s-land near the organ but out here in the sunny graveyard he was nowhere to be seen. There was one large Victorian angel, slightly lopsided on its massive base but pointing, like Agnes in David Copperfield, upward. Alleyn trifled with the notion that Claude might be behind it and would come sidling out when all was over, but no, there was no sign of him. This was not consistent. One would have expected him to put in a token appearance. Alleyn wondered if by any chance something further had cropped up about Claude’s suspected drug-smuggling activities and he was making himself scarce accordingly. But if anything of that sort had occurred Alleyn would have been informed.
It was all over. Bruce Gardener began to fill in the grave. He was assisted by the wee lad, the six-foot adolescent known to the village as Daft Artie, he being, as was widely acknowledged, no more than fifty p. in the pound.
Alleyn, who had kept in the background, withdrew still further and waited.
People now came up to Prunella, said what they could find to say and walked away, not too fast but with the sense of release and buoyancy that follows the final disposal of (however deeply loved) the dead. Prunella shook hands, kissed, thanked. The Markos pair stood behind her and Verity a little farther off.
The last to come was Dr. Schramm. Alleyn saw the fractional pause before Prunella touched his offered hand. He heard her say: “Thank you for the beautiful flowers,” loudly and quickly and Schramm murmur something inaudible. It was to Verity that Prunella turned when he had gone.
Alleyn had moved further along the pathway from the grave to the church. It was flanked by flowers lying in rows on the grass, some in cellophane wrappings, some picked in local gardens and one enormous professional bouquet of red roses and carnations. Alleyn read the card.
“From B.S. with love.”
“Mr. Alleyn?” said Prunella, coming up behind him. He turned quickly. “It was kind of you to come,” she said. “Thank you.”
“What nice manners you have,” Alleyn said gently. “Your mama must have brought you up beautifully.”
She gave him a surprised look and a smile.
“Did you hear that, Godma V?” she said and she and her three supporters went down the steps and drove away.
When the Vicar had gone into the vestry to take his surplice off and there was nobody left in the churchyard, Alleyn went to the grave. Bruce said: “She’s laid to her rest, then, Superintendent, and whatever brought her to it, there’s no disturbing her in the latter end.”
He spat on his hands. “Come on, lad,” he said. “What are you gawping at?”
Impossible to say how old Daft Artie was — somewhere between puberty and manhood — with an incipient beard and a feral look as if he would have little difficulty in melting into the landscape and was prepared to do so at a moment’s alarm.
He set to, with excessive, almost frantic energy. With a slurp and a flump, shovelfuls of dark, friable soil fell rhythmically into Sybil Foster’s grave.
“Do you happen,” Alleyn asked Bruce, “to have seen Mr. Claude Carter this morning?”
Bruce shot a brief glance at him. “Na, na,” he said, plying his shovel, “I have not but there’s nothing out of the ordinary in that circumstance. Him and me don’t hit it off. And foreby I don’t fancy he’s been just all that comfortable within himself. Nevertheless it’s a disgrace on his head not to pay his last respects. Aye, I’ll say that for him: a black disgrace,” said Bruce, with relish.
“When did you last see him?”
“Ou now — when? I couldna say with any precision. My engagements take me round the district, ye ken. I’m sleeping up at Quintern but I’m up and awa’ before eight o’clock, I take my dinner with my widowed sister, Mrs. Black, puir soul up in yon cottage on the hill there, and return to Quintern in time for supper and my bed, which is in the chauffeur’s old room above the garage. Not all that far,” said Bruce, pointedly, “from where you unearthed him, so to speak.”
“Ah yes, by the way,” said Alleyn, “we’re keeping observation on those premises. For the time being.”
“You are! For what purpose! Och!” said Bruce irritably. “The Lord knows and you, no doubt, won’t let on.”
“Oh,” said Alleyn airily. “It’s a formality, really. Pure routine. I fancy Miss Foster hasn’t forgotten that her mother was thinking of turning part of the buildings into a flat for you?”
“Has she not? I wouldna mind and that’s a fact. I wouldna say no for I’m crampit up like a hen in a wee coopie where I am and God forgive me, I’m sick and tired of listening to the praises of the recently deceased.”
“The recently deceased!” Alleyn exclaimed. “Do you mean Mrs. Foster?”
Bruce grounded his shovel and glared at him. “I am shocked,” he said at last, pursing up his mouth to show how shocked he was and using his primmest tones, “that you should entertain such a notion. It comes little short of an insult. I referred to the fact that my sister, Mrs. Black, is recently widowed.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Och, well. It was an excusable misunderstanding. So there’s some idea still of fixing the flat?” He paused and stared at Alleyn. “That’s not what you’d call a reason for having the premises policed, however,” he said dryly.
“Bruce,” Alleyn said. “Do you know what Mr. Carter was doing in that room on the morning I first visited you?”
Bruce gave a ringing sniff. “That’s an easy one,” he said. “I told you yesterday. Peering and prying. Spying. Trying to catch what you were spiering. To me. Aye, aye, that’s what he was up to. He’d been hanging about the premises, feckless-like, making oot he was interested in mushrooms and letting on the police were in the noose. When he heard you coming he was through the door like a rabbit and dragging it to, behind him. You needna suppose I’m not acquainted with Mr. Carter’s ways, Superintendent. My lady telt me aboot him and Mrs. Jim’s no’ been backward in coming forward on the subject. When persons of his class turn aside they make a terrible bad job of themsel’s. Aye, they’re worse by a long march than the working-class chap with some call to slip from the paths of rectitude.”
“I agree with you.”
“You can depend on it.”
“And you can’t think when you last saw him?”
Bruce dragged his hand over his beard. “When would it have been, now?” he mused. “Not today. I left the premises before eight and I was hame for dinner and after that I washed myself and changed to a decent suit for the burying. I’ll tell you when it was,” he said, brightening up. “It was yesterday morning. I ran into him in the stable yard and he asked me if I knew how the trains run to Dover. He let on he has an acquaintance there and might pay him a visit some time.”