Dishonour Among Thieves Read online

  ‘Fred Mace. Her husband. Went off to Canada a time ago to visit a cousin or something out there.’

  ‘Ah!’ Benton said warily.

  Annis gave him a shrewd look. ‘She’ll have told you about that?’

  ‘I believe she did mention something about it. I wasn’t paying much attention. She didn’t say his name was Fred, as far as I can remember. Makes no difference.’

  But it did make a difference; all the difference in the world. And why the devil had she kept the information from him when it was common knowledge in the village?

  He finished his drink and left Reggie Annis to his own devices. The man had unwittingly exploded a bombshell and he needed time to think over what had been revealed. In the car as he drove back to Pear Tree Farm he was very thoughtful indeed, and not as happy as he had been before his visit to the Red Lion.

  ‘Why did you tell me your husband was dead?’ he demanded. He had carried his purchases into the kitchen and dumped them on the table and fired the question at her before she could utter a word.

  ‘Oh God!’ she said. ‘Somebody’s told you.’

  ‘Somebody was bound to tell me eventually. You must have been crazy if you thought they wouldn’t. Why did you say it if it wasn’t true?’

  ‘I didn’t think. It just came out. Perhaps it was because I wanted you to – ’

  ‘To believe it? Well, I did believe it. You made a fool of me.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Well, for Pete’s sake, what did you mean?’

  She was silent. She looked unhappy. Then she said, with a kind of wistful pleading: ‘It won’t make any difference to us, will it, Tom?’

  ‘It’ll make a hell of a difference when he comes home. You must realise that.’

  ‘Oh, but that may not be for a long time yet.’

  ‘How do you know? Has he written to you?’

  ‘No; he never was much of a one for letter-writing. But perhaps he likes it over there. Perhaps he’ll decide to stay on.’

  Benton thought it unlikely, to say the least. Fred Mace was bound to come home sooner or later, and then everything would change; it would have to. And he did not want a change; he was happy with things as they were. But there was nothing he could do about it.

  ‘It’ll work out, Tom,’ Jean said. ‘Everything will be all right. It’s got to be.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Benton said.

  But he did not believe it. Not with Fred Mace waiting in the wings.

  8

  Last Job

  It was a few days later when the situation was given another twist and everything was changed once again.

  Benton had gone to the stackyard to fetch a bale of straw when he noticed an object poking up from the ground where some hens had been scratching in the dry soil. It looked like a large bone.

  He walked across and examined it more closely and saw that it was indeed a knuckle-bone, rounded and brown in colour. He stopped and took hold of it and gave a tug, but the bone remained imbedded in the soil.

  An odd thought came into his head; an unwelcome thought, but one which persisted and would not go away. He was alone in the stackyard; Joe was hoeing in one of the fields and Jean was in the house. He stared down at the bone and the thought stayed in his head, worrying him.

  There was a spade in the barn, and he fetched it and began to dig. When he got the bone out of the ground he knew that it was the lower part of a human leg, for there was a fleshless foot attached to the other end of it. He paused, looking at the gruesome find and feeling reluctant to go on digging. But he knew that he had to; had to go through with it now.

  The rest of the skeleton was there; he unearthed the pieces one by one; the rib cage, the arms, the skull. The bones were all discoloured, some of them almost black. They were undoubtedly those of a man, the size of them was proof of that.

  When he had finished digging Benton stuck the spade in the ground and scattered a layer of straw over the bones. Then he went to the house.

  Jean was in the kitchen preparing a stew. She must have guessed at once from the expression on his face that he had not come back to the house simply for a break and a cup of coffee.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I’ve found something,’ Benton said. ‘In the stackyard.’

  She put a hand to her mouth and her eyes widened, and he could tell that she knew what he was talking about. He had hoped that she might not, but the hope had been a faint one at best and now it had vanished altogether.

  ‘You know what this is about, don’t you?’

  She said nothing, just stood staring at him, wiping her hands nervously on the apron she was wearing.

  ‘I’ve done some digging,’ Benton said. ‘I’ve dug something up.’

  ‘Why did you have to do that?’ she asked. ‘Why couldn’t you have left it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe I should have done; maybe it would have been better that way. But I couldn’t. It’s him, isn’t it? He never went to Canada.’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’

  ‘So,’ Benton said, ‘you were telling the truth the first time, when you said he was dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think you’d better tell me exactly what happened.’

  ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘Yes, you have to. When you’ve told me we’ll have to decide what to do.’

  He was unhappy about it. He saw himself becoming involved in something else, something maybe as bad as that which he had run away from. Perhaps he should run away from this too, get to hell out of it and leave her to sort things out for herself. But he knew it was not on; he could not leave her; for good or bad he was joined to her now and her troubles were his troubles.

  She was deathly pale. He pushed one of the kitchen chairs towards her and she sat down, resting her arms on the table.

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘Never mind. Let me have it all. Don’t leave anything out.’

  ‘He was older than me,’ she said. ‘He was more than twice as old; he could have been my father.’

  ‘Why did you marry him? Were you in love with him?’

  ‘No, never.’ She spoke sharply, as though the suggestion were repugnant to her.

  ‘Then why – ?’

  ‘It just sort of happened. He knew my father; they used to meet at market. He wanted a wife to look after this house. He was a bachelor and had had a housekeeper, but she died. He mentioned it to my father and he suggested I’d make a good wife. I wasn’t very happy at home, and they put a lot of pressure on me until in the end I agreed. The thought of having my own house had its attractions too.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘Six years. A bit more.’

  ‘Are your parents still alive?’

  ‘No; they were killed in a car accident.’

  ‘Any sisters or brothers?’

  ‘No. There’s nobody really. Fred didn’t have any close relations either. Not that I know of. Nobody ever came to see him.’

  Benton started making a couple of mugs of coffee. He thought she looked as though she needed some, and he did too.

  ‘How did it turn out? The marriage, I mean.’

  She gave a slight shrug. ‘Not well. But I suppose no worse than a lot of marriages. The work was hard, but I was used to that; it didn’t bother me.’

  It sounded pretty depressing to Benton; there could have been very little joy in it for her. Mace had probably had the best of the bargain: an attractive wife to look after him and share his bed; what more could a middle-aged man have asked for?

  Benton carried the steaming mugs of coffee to the table, pushed one across to the young woman and sat down, facing her across the board.

  ‘How did he treat you?’

  ‘Well enough at first.’

  ‘And later?’

  ‘Later not so well. He drank, you see.’

  ‘At the pub?’

  ‘No; here. Whisky. When he had been drin
king he would become violent.’

  ‘With you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you never think of leaving him?’

  ‘Yes. But where would I have gone? I had nothing.’

  ‘Nothing from your parents?’

  ‘No. Everything went in paying off debts.’

  She drank some coffee. Benton waited for her to go on with the story, but she seemed to have come to a halt. Perhaps she hesitated to recall in words the rest of it. But that was the most important part.

  ‘So you stayed with him even though he maltreated you,’ Benton prompted. ‘And then? I suppose finally things came to a head?’

  ‘Yes.’ She appeared to brace herself to continue. ‘It was one afternoon, in here. He’d been drinking heavily again and he came in and hit me. I fell across the table and he put his hands round my neck and started banging my head on the cooking-board. That was when Joe walked in.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘Poor Joe. It must have been a difficult situation for him. He had worked for Fred before ever I came to the farm and he had always done exactly what Fred told him to do, never questioning anything, but believing, I shouldn’t wonder, that his master could do no wrong.’

  ‘Yes, it must have been a problem for him.’

  ‘But he was devoted to me and there was the man attacking me, making me scream with pain; and so he had to make the choice, either Fred or me.’

  ‘And of course he chose you?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t think he really meant to hurt Fred; I imagine his idea was just to pull him off me. But he put an arm around Fred’s neck and he’s so strong. Well, you know how strong he is.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Benton said.

  ‘I heard this kind of cracking sound and I suppose it was the neck breaking. And then Fred was lying on the floor all limp and motionless, and I knew he was dead.’

  ‘But you didn’t call the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘But don’t you see? They would have arrested Joe, taken him away, locked him up in one of those awful mental prisons. I couldn’t let that happen. He’s always been free, happy. Can’t you imagine what being shut up would do to him?’

  Benton could imagine it. He looked at her with admiration. How many women were there who would have acted so selflessly for the sake of a dumb half-witted young man?

  He stretched out his arm towards her and took her hand. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘There’s nobody like you and I love you.’

  She gave the ghost of a smile. ‘And I love you, but I should never have let you get mixed up in this. It wasn’t fair. But you don’t know how wonderful it’s been to have someone, to feel that I’m not alone any more. All the same, it was selfish.’

  ‘No. It was inevitable.’

  She drank some more of the coffee and went on with the story again.

  ‘The problem was to get rid of the body. I decided it would be best to leave it where it was until nightfall. Joe hardly seemed to realise what he had done; he just did what I told him to do. I covered the body with a blanket, and after dark Joe carried it to the place behind the barn where we had made a stack of firewood. He put the body on the wood and I poured some petrol over it and set it alight.’

  Benton was amazed at her nerve. If anyone had noticed the fire and come to see what was burning she would have been discovered and the cat would well and truly have been out of the bag. But nobody had come.

  ‘Bodies don’t burn easily, you know,’ she said. She spoke in an oddly matter-of-fact way, as though giving him a piece of information that she thought he ought to know. ‘The clothes burnt off quite quickly of course, but there was a lot of scorched and charred flesh left on the bones when the fire had died down. The stench was horrible.’

  ‘I should think it would be. So then?’

  ‘So then we poured water on what remained to cool it and hauled it on to a sheet of corrugated iron with rakes. Then we carried it to the pigsty and tipped it in.’

  Benton stared at her aghast. ‘Christ!’

  ‘What else was there to do? We had to get rid of the flesh. What would you have done?’

  ‘I don’t know. You could have buried the lot.’

  ‘It was better to get down to the bones only. At least that’s what I believed at the time. I may not have been thinking straight. I was under great stress. I still have nightmares about it.’

  The whole affair was a nightmare, Benton thought. It was incredible. Without the evidence of the bones he would not have believed it. But it had to be true.

  ‘And then you put out the story that your husband had gone to Canada?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And nobody questioned it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘None of your friends?’

  ‘I have no friends,’ she said.

  Benton stood up. ‘We shall have to get rid of those bones.’

  ‘Are you going to bury them again?’

  ‘No. Buried bones can always be dug up, and then people start asking awkward questions. I know a better way of disposing of them.’

  The kibbler had probably been standing in a corner of the barn unused for years. It was a hand-operated mill for breaking down such feeding-stuffs as maize, beans and cattle cake into smaller pieces without grinding them to a fine meal. There were two rollers with tapering iron spikes which meshed with one another and could be adjusted to varying degrees of coarseness.

  Benton had broken up the bones and the skull with a hammer so that they could be fed into the hopper of the machine, and while he tipped them in Joe turned the handle, apparently perfectly happy in his work. As far as Benton could tell he had no recollection of what the bones represented and had perhaps entirely forgotten the incident in the kitchen.

  The bones came out as granules about the size of pudding rice and collected in a box below the chute. When they had all been kibbled Benton took the box out to the fields and scattered the granules over a wide area. At least, he reflected with a grim smile, Fred Mace was doing a last useful job on his farm; he was fertilising it.

  9

  Homecoming

  ‘How do you manage about money?’ Benton asked. ‘You can’t use his bank account, can you?’

  ‘He never had one,’ Jean said. ‘He didn’t trust banks. Practically everything was done on a cash basis. If he was ever paid anything by cheque he got one of the shopkeepers to cash it for him.’

  Benton was not as surprised as he might have been if he had not known how odd some country people were. Mace had not been the only one who preferred to keep his business on a cash basis. Gipsies were like that, horse-dealers, itinerant scrap merchants who went from house to house buying up worn-out lawnmowers, dead car-batteries, lead piping, cast-iron and the like. They kept their money in fat rolls of notes and peeled them off like sheets of toilet paper. Some were illiterate but could work out sums of money in their heads as though their brains were made up of layers of microchips. They seemed to get by.

  ‘Suppose the police were to come looking for him. They would soon find out he never went to Canada.’

  ‘Why should they start looking for him? Nobody is interested in whether he went there or not. Nobody is going to call in the police.’

  ‘Won’t anybody think it odd when he doesn’t come back? Ever.’

  ‘If anybody asks the question I can just say he decided to stay on over there.’

  Benton saw that she might get away with it almost indefinitely. All she had to do was to go on running the farm and paying the bills. One thing was certain: no one would ever find the body and Joe would never tell anyone what had happened. And even if it were to be discovered that Fred Mace had never gone to Canada Jean could say that she had only been repeating what he had told her he was going to do. She had taken his word for it, but maybe he had just gone up to London and disappeared. People did.

  But then a snag cropped up: she ran out of money. She was making enough to get along from day to
day, but suddenly a big bill fell in from a firm of stockfeed merchants. It was for more than two thousand pounds and had been mounting up for some considerable time. The firm was threatening legal action if it was not settled.

  She showed the bill to Benton and he could see that she was worried.

  ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Didn’t you know about this?’

  ‘No. And there may be others owing. I simply don’t know.’

  Benton could see that she had reason to be worried. If the feed merchants took the matter to court all sorts of awkward questions might be asked concerning the absence of Mr Mace.

  ‘You can’t raise the money to pay this?’

  ‘I don’t see any way of doing it.’

  ‘How would Mr Mace have dealt with it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. He never confided in me about money matters. Bills used to come and he’d swear about them and I think he’d leave them owing for as long as he could. But in the end he’d settle up, I suppose.’

  ‘He must have kept accounts. He’d need to for the income tax returns, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘there are some account books, but I haven’t looked into them.’

  ‘Perhaps you should.’

  ‘Would you look at them for me? I don’t understand such things.’

  ‘If you’d like me to.’

  She fetched the books from an old bureau, and when he had looked at them Benton was as fogged as she was. Fred Mace’s account keeping was beyond his understanding; perhaps beyond the understanding of any person still living.

  Jean looked at the feed merchant’s bill again. ‘Oh God, Tom; what am I to do?’

  He saw how distressed she was. Things were becoming too much for her to handle.

  ‘I’ll get the money for you,’ he said. And as soon as he had said it he realised what a reckless thing it had been to say. Because he could not be sure he could get it. He could be sure of nothing.

  He saw her face light up with relief; but almost immediately doubt set in and she looked worried again.

  ‘But can you do that? How will you get it?’

  ‘Never mind how,’ Benton said. ‘But I shall have to go up to London for a while.’