The Murder Book Read online

  ‘Put Robert’s nose out of joint all right,’ Ethan commented softly as they walked away, ‘if the master favours his girl with a new beast. You know how he feels about that animal of his.’

  Dar snorted. ‘Me, I’d not trust him with anything what can feel,’ he said. ‘Mister Robert doesn’t give a damn for anything.’ He shook his head. ‘He’s a throwback, that one. Like his great granddad.’

  Ethan glanced with interest at his father. Like as not Dar was too young to recall Robert’s great grandfather, but the village memory, that collective river of knowledge, flowed strongly in Dar’s veins and Ethan had no doubt his father knew the truth of the matter.

  Ethan was disappointed when Dar clamped his jaw tightly shut but not surprised. They had reached the kitchen door and the sounds of frying bacon, cutlery against plates and the hum of conversation reached them through the opening. This was not a conversation to be carried on inside.

  Ethan smiled. Hanson was a good man to work for, he thought. Kept the old ways and it was as well, he thought, that it would be Ted and not Robert who would inherit. The likes of Robert were just ruin to good land.

  The morning passed quietly. The first harvest had already begun but Elijah had left a string of tasks for both Frank and Ethan which would keep them close to the house for most of the morning.

  Ethan was surprised at first; this time of year all hands, from those of the smallest child to the oldest of elders was needed to bring the harvest home and to have two able-bodied men tied up elsewhere was a strange thing.

  It only occurred to him later that Elijah Hanson had a purpose in mind. That he had arranged this time for Frank and Ethan to make their peace with each other and, as they worked their way through the tasks Elijah had set them, it seemed to Ethan that a truce if not a peace had been reached between them.

  ‘I wish you both well, you know,’ Frank said slowly, his hands busy with the harness he was stitching and his eyes, too, fastened on the task.

  ‘Thank you for that,’ Ethan told him. ‘We never meant to hurt no one, Helen and me.’

  ‘Can’t control what your heart tells you to do,’ Frank said. ‘My fault, anyway. If I wanted the lass I should have shouted louder, shouldn’t I?’

  Ethan made no answer, knowing none was expected. Their wedding would now be a scant few weeks away and Ethan felt each second drag as though it was itself a minute; every minute like an hour.

  A shout and a curse brought him from his thoughts. ‘What the hell was that?’

  Frank set the harness aside. ‘Robert,’ he said. ‘Missus said he’d not come home last night.’

  Together, they went out into the yard. Robert was in the field adjoining the farm. Obviously drunk and barely able to keep in the saddle, he wheeled his horse and set it to take another run at the fence – an uphill run, challenging even for a well-trained and ridden hunter. Too much for a badly ridden beast with self-preservation uppermost in its equine brain.

  Robert beat about the horse’s neck and head with his crop. He dragged at the bit, pulling its head this way and that. He urged it on with curses and with heels and yet held it back with his tugging and tearing at the reins, seeming not to notice the contradiction.

  ‘What the hell?’ Frank began, but Ethan, furious at Robert’s treatment of the much-abused beast and incensed by the sheer stupidity of the man, had begun to run.

  ‘Ethan!’ Frank warned. ‘You aint goin’ to do no good like that. You get back here and I’ll fetch the missus.’

  But Ethan either didn’t hear or didn’t want to. He vaulted the gate, raced to where the horse wheeled and turned, refusing the jump despite his master’s curses.

  There was blood on the crop, Ethan saw as he drew close. Blood close to the horse’s eyes and running down the neck. Robert clung to the reins and saddle and a handful of mane. How he kept his seat at all amazed Ethan.

  ‘Whadda you want, Samuels?’ Roberts shouted. ‘You get outta my bloody way.’

  Ethan ignored him. He reached for the reins and found himself on the receiving end of the riding crop. It cut across his cheek.

  ‘You want more, Samuels?’ Robert laughed high and loud. ‘Think that little tart of yours would like her man so much with a scarred face?’ He leaned from the saddle, towards Ethan, and said in a loud and spit-laden whisper, ‘From what I hear, though, she ain’t that particular.’

  Ethan grabbed him and pulled him from the saddle. He landed with a dull thud and a sharp crack. The riding crop was in Ethan’s hand now and he brought it down hard on Robert’s face. Once, twice, three times, satisfied to see the blood well and seep from the wounds he was inflicting. It occurred to him in a vague sort of way as strange that Robert did not bring up his hands to defend himself, but then Frank was pulling him away, dragging at Ethan’s hair in an effort to keep hold as Ethan’s fury, bent only on Robert’s destruction, continued to rain down on the face and neck of his fallen enemy.

  ‘Ethan! Ethan! For God’s sake.’

  Something permeated Ethan’s consciousness and he let his hand fall to his sides, then turned to look into Frank’s horrified face.

  ‘You killed him, boy,’ Frank whispered softly. ‘You fucking killed him.’

  Ethan blinked. He’d never heard Frank curse. Frank didn’t curse. What was so wrong that it made Frank curse?

  ‘Look at him,’ Frank insisted. ‘Ethan, look what you done. You gone and killed him.’

  Ethan looked. Robert’s face was a pulp of blood and broken bone and the sudden awareness of pain in his own knuckles told Ethan that he’d followed through with his fists. The broken crop lay on the ground beside Robert’s hand.

  His stomach heaved and vomit, sour and acrid, rose in his throat.

  ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’

  Frank was shaking him.

  ‘Never mind what you done, it’s what you’re going to do. They’ll hang you, lad. Hang you without another thought.’

  Ethan swallowed but the vomit continued to rise. ‘Hang me?’

  ‘You bloody killed him. They’ll say it’s murder, Ethan.’

  ‘But I …’

  ‘He hit his head, didn’t you hear the crack?’

  ‘I …’ Dimly, Ethan recalled the noise of Robert’s fall. ‘But I didn’t mean …’

  ‘No? Beat seven shades out of him while he lie there? You think they’ll believe you didn’t mean to do it?’

  ‘But you said he’d hit his head. That was an accident, Frank.’

  ‘And if it’d stayed at that, just a fall, I’d have said the bloody horse threw him. No one would have thought no different. But I can’t say the horse picked up the crop and set about him and even I can tell the difference between fists and hooves. Hell, man, what were you thinking?’

  ‘I wasn’t … wasn’t thinking. God, Frank, what am I to do?’

  ‘Get the hell out, that’s what you’ll do. Just get the hell away.’

  ‘Away? But Helen, but …’

  Ethan stared at Frank Church and he knew that Helen was lost to him. This place was lost to him. This time, these hopes. Everything. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t go. I can’t leave her.’

  ‘If you stay then the last memory she’ll have of you will be you twisting in the wind. You want that for her?’

  ‘Maybe he’s not dead. Maybe he’s not.’

  Frank sighed and knelt down beside the body. He put his fingers to Robert’s throat and then to his wrist. ‘If you can find a pulse, boy, you’re better than I am. Ethan, you’ve got to go.’

  It occurred to Ethan that Frank was lying, that he was only saying that Robert was dead in order to get rid of him, but as he went closer and knelt beside the man with the pulped and mangled face, he found he could not bear to touch it. He stared hard at the chest but there was no sign of the rising and fall. No sign of breath bubbled between the bruised and swollen lips, though, to be truthful, his eyes were so filled with tears he could not have trusted them to see.

  ‘Ethan,�
�� Frank was pleading. They’d soon be missed. There was little time and they could only trust to luck that no one in the house had heard the noise. Luck and the fact that the field dropped away from the yard and gave some shelter. The sounds that had been clear when they’d first heard them were muffled only because they were at the end of the yard.

  Ethan nodded and took off at a run. He stopped to gather up his jacket and his pack and then he was gone, cutting between the fields, following the shortcuts he knew from a life of living in the valley, unsure of his direction but knowing that Frank was right and he had no choice.

  He had killed a man and he would hang for it.

  He would run, he told himself. Run until he’d reached a place of safety and one day he would send for Helen. She’d come to him, he knew she would. She’d walk through fire and water just to be with him.

  And when he could run no more, he dropped to his knees in the dirt and wept as though his heart would break.

  Frank stood beside the prone form of Robert Hanson and he watched. And as he watched he understood that he had lied. Robert Hanson wasn’t dead, not quite, not yet. If Frank ran now, got help, had him taken to the farm and called a doctor, might there be some chance?

  Frank watched as the life ebbed from Robert – the last spark began to fade. It took longer than he’d expected, though, Frank thought. It was difficult to judge the passage of time in such circumstances. He knew the sun had moved from one tree to the next, to the next, to the next. And then, just before, just at that last moment before the glow went out, just before Frank was sure it had been extinguished for ever, Frank drew back his foot and, with all the strength and hatred he could muster, he kicked Robert Hanson in the head.

  THIRTY

  The lies came with surprising ease. Frank was unsure how much time had passed by the time he ran back to the farm to report Robert’s death. No more than half an hour, he guessed, but by the time he’d run back up the hill, across the yard and burst through the kitchen door he had wound himself into such a state of distress that he did not have to pretend.

  We killed him, Frank thought. Killed him between us and they’ll know. Won’t they? Won’t they know?

  ‘Frank? What on earth? Oh my Lord, what is it?’

  Mrs Hanson stared, seeing the blood on his clothes and the sweat on his face. ‘Frank,’ she commanded. ‘Sit down and let me see.’

  ‘It ain’t me, missus. It’s the boy. Robert. It’s Robert.’

  That stopped her in her tracks, and Frank saw in her eyes that she had almost been waiting for that news. She had lived knowing that Robert would come to grief and Frank’s heart sank. If Ethan had just let him fall and then let him alone …

  But the fall hadn’t killed him, had it? Frank reminded himself. It wasn’t the fall, it was the beating Ethan had given him when he was already on the ground. That and the final kick Frank had delivered. That and the time Frank had waited.

  Margaret Hanson had stopped staring at him and begun to move again, calling Jenny who worked in the kitchen to bring water and bandages and shouting at Miss Elizabeth to get someone to go for the doctor.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Frank told her. Suddenly he didn’t want to go back into the field, didn’t want to see again what he had left there. ‘I’ll get the doctor. But missus, don’t you go. Send someone else. Please.’

  She drew herself up, her stern look admonishing him. ‘Frank Church, I’m not a silly girl. I don’t need protecting. Take me to him then go and fetch help. Anyway, if I’d a mind to send someone else, there’s no bugger here, is there?’ She frowned. ‘I thought Ethan was with you. Did you leave him with the boy?’

  The boy, Frank thought. Her boy, though truth was Robert was the same age as Ethan and only a little younger than Frank. But yes, he was a boy. Irresponsible and stupid as a child. ‘No,’ he managed. ‘Ethan is …’

  ‘Just take me to Robert,’ Margaret Hanson commanded. ‘You can tell me the rest when I’ve tended to my son.’

  ‘Missus … it’s too late for that. I’m sorry, it’s too late.’

  She stared at him, the colour draining from her face and the fierce light in her eyes fading like a guttered candle. Fading like Robert had done, Frank thought.

  ‘He was drunk, wasn’t he? Mazzled again.’

  Frank hesitated, then jerked a nod.

  ‘Did he fall? Oh, Lord.’ She was on her feet again and heading for the door; Jenny, her eyes protruding frog-like from a sallow face, bustled behind, her mouth twitching with the questions she wanted to ask.

  Miss Elizabeth, twelve years old and tall like her father, stood in the doorway and Frank realized belatedly that she had heard it all.

  Frank closed his eyes. This could not be happening. Surely he was dreaming all this and would wake in a sweat with the sun streaming through his window and the nightmare would fade and—

  Elizabeth came over and clasped her mother’s arm. ‘I’ll go for the doctor anyway,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry,’ she added, ‘I can saddle Spry.’

  She glanced at Frank and nodded. ‘You take care of Ma and I’ll cut by the top field, get some men back here.’

  So calm, Frank thought. Just a kid and yet the clearest headed of them all.

  Her mother nodded, rushing now to the kitchen door. Hurrying as though they’d delayed too long and she’d ground to make up.

  Elizabeth turned to Frank and laid a small hand on his sleeve.

  ‘What, miss?’

  ‘Ethan’s gone, hasn’t he?’ she said. ‘Ethan Samuels. Has he gone?’

  Frank gaped at her, not fully understanding why she’d asked or why she should think that. Then he nodded. ‘Ethan’s gone.’ He almost choked on the words. She pushed past him and headed for the stables. Frank scurried after Margaret Hanson and steeled himself to look once more at the battered face of her youngest son.

  It was late afternoon and Elijah, Ted and Dar Samuels had returned. The lies still came easy. Easier than he would ever have thought. Perhaps, Frank considered, that was because they weren’t really lies, simply omissions, simply small adjustments in the timing. Simply …

  ‘I told you, sir.’ Exhausted now, worn out by repetition, though each repetition of the story wore the groove of it more firmly in his mind and made it seem more real, more exact, more right.

  ‘We heard a shout and went out. Mister Robert wanted the horse to take the gate – beating at it, he was, urging it on up the hill but dragging on its mouth so the poor beast had no chance. Mad as hell, Ethan was. You know how he regards the beasts. He was up and racing to Mister Robert before I could say a word.’

  He lifted his gaze and met Dar’s eyes. Dar stood by the door with his cap twisted in his hands, wrung out between bony, work-hardened fingers.

  ‘He grabbed the riding crop and hit Mister Robert with it. Hit him hard and more than once, that mad, he was. Mister Robert fell and I think the horse must have kicked out at him as he fell. Horse was between me and Mister Robert and I couldn’t see so clear. I was running towards them and when I got to the spot, Ethan was leaning over Mister Robert and his face was bloody. Bloody and broken. Like he’d been trampled.’

  ‘You saw the horse trample him?’ Elijah Hanson demanded once again.

  ‘I told you, sir, I was on the other side of the horse, running towards them and I didn’t see clear, like.’ Frank was hoping against hope that the assumption would be that the horse had trodden on the fallen man, though even as he suggested it Frank knew it was unlikely to fool anyone. He didn’t want to say he’d seen Ethan punch the man. Didn’t want them to think he might have been able to stop him. Didn’t want … what didn’t he want? Frank wasn’t really certain any more.

  ‘And then Ethan ran away,’ Elijah Hanson said, his voice flat and deathly calm.

  ‘My son wouldn’t run.’ It was the first time Dar had spoken. ‘Ethan wouldn’t just up and run.’

  Elijah’s shoulder’s stiffened but it was Ted that replied. ‘I’m sorry, Dar, but that’s the way
it looks just now.’

  ‘When the police catch up with him they’ll make him say what happened,’ Elijah said. ‘But let me tell you, Dar – I seen my boy’s face and the damage to it weren’t done by no horseshoes.’

  ‘You’re accusing Ethan of murder?’ Dar said flatly.

  ‘I’m calling it as I see it, Dar.’

  Dar Samuels sighed then, abruptly, he stopped twisting his cap, unscrewed it and slapped it back on his head.

  ‘Where you off to?’ Elijah demanded.

  ‘Goin’ to find my son,’ Dar announced. ‘No Samuels runs. None ever have and I ain’t going to let it happen now.’

  For a moment it looked as though Elijah might try and stop him, then he waved a dismissive hand at Dar’s retreating back and dropped down on to the overstuffed chair beside the empty grate.

  ‘Someone should tell Helen Lee,’ Ted observed. ‘Frank, you reckon he’d have gone there?’

  Frank shook his head. ‘Took off towards Louth,’ he said. ‘Across the field at the back of the house.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I’ll tell Helen,’ he said. ‘What there is to tell. Best she hears it from me.’

  He glanced back at Elijah Hanson and his family, silent in their collective grief, and he left the farm, knowing he’d have to repeat his story to the police later and that it would be so hard. But first he had to reveal his version of the truth to Helen Lee, and that would be harder still.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Henry’s train got in mid-afternoon. Mickey met him at the station and briefed him on the events of the past few days as they walked back to the King’s Head.

  ‘And what are your thoughts about this man, Fry?’ Henry asked. ‘Do you think him capable of getting rid of her and the child?’

  ‘I do.’ Mickey hesitated for a moment. ‘But I think it would be more his style just to pay them off, to give the woman money to go away and hope that would be the end of it. But I may be wrong.’

  ‘And have you met his partner yet?’

  Mickey shook his head. ‘No, but I’m reckoning him to be cut from the same cloth.’