A Crowded Coffin(3)

‘Quite sure, I promise you. As I keep saying, he’s said to be recovering well. Apparently he went for a stroll round the garden then decided to walk down the lane to the Burial Field but he claims he was distracted by a noise just when he reached the gate to the big paddock. He thought it was thunder – it was a muggy night – so he just carried on pottering. This is where it gets a bit hard to swallow…. He says he’d just reached the rise when he thought he saw something at the edge of the copse. He stopped to look and that’s when he realized it wasn’t thunder he’d heard at all.’ Harriet concentrated on the traffic for a moment then continued. ‘He says the car drove straight at him. God knows how he managed to leap aside but he says the car didn’t actually hit him. It was when he fell that he broke his collarbone.’

Sam and Edith both looked appalled and Edith exclaimed, ‘But, but that’s … that’s…. Is he sure?’

Harriet glanced at her cousin who shook his head slightly. Walter Attlin might be in his eighties but he was an astute old man with a logical, practical intelligence and a calm temperament. If he said that a car had been driven straight at him, then that was what had happened, unless….

‘He’s, he’s all right, is he, Miss Q?’ Edith faltered. ‘He’s not – not getting—’

‘You mean, is he getting senile?’ Harriet snorted. ‘Of course he’s not. He told the police what had happened and someone came out to take a look but there was a terrific downpour later that night and the place was like the Somme so any evidence, tyre tracks and so forth, was washed away. Besides, even though it was a failure to stop after an accident, there wasn’t much they could do except put it into the system. I don’t think they took seriously his assertion that he was deliberately targeted; after all, they don’t know him the way we do. And anyway, what action could they actually take? The car and driver were long gone.’ She concentrated on overtaking a car-transporter. ‘I gather he’s backpedalling now,’ she continued. ‘I suspect it’s because he doesn’t want to upset your grandmother.’

Sam Hathaway digested this information then returned to something that had caught his interest. ‘What’s this about a burial field?’ he asked. ‘I’ve only been to the house a couple of times, a long while ago, when we were kids, remember, Harriet? It’s not my side of the family, though I do know the old boy slightly. Who have you got buried in there? Family graveyard?’

‘It’s where the original Roman villa is said to have been built.’ Edith sounded glad to take her mind off her grandfather’s accident. ‘Did you know that story?’ Sam nodded and she carried on. ‘Well, there’s a stone there, in the middle of a little copse. Oh, you really must come and see it, Canon Hathaway, it’s difficult to describe. And Grandpa would love to show it to you.’

She looked anxiously at Harriet. ‘Is that all, Miss Q? I got the impression when I phoned a couple of weeks ago that Grandpa was worrying about something. That’s another thing that had already prompted me to come home, really.’

‘You might as well know,’ sighed Harriet, taking the turning off the roundabout and heading towards Hursley and Locksley village. ‘There’s been something rather odd going on. The tenant of Walter’s other farm died recently, old Misselbrook, and practically the minute he died, not quite three weeks ago, Walter received an offer for the smaller farm to include the Burial Field and the big paddock that both border on to it. A very good offer, and all done properly through an agent, but he turned it down, of course. Walter’s sold land in the past but, not this particular parcel. They would never let the Burial Field go, even without all the history. It’s much too close to the house.’

Edith looked puzzled as she nodded agreement, then Harriet changed the subject. ‘And while I think about it, Edith, it really is time you stopped calling me Miss Q and called me Harriet. It’s years since I was your headmistress and we’re related after all. Besides, if even your grandparents’ aged retainers can call me Harriet, it’s silly of you to be so formal.’

‘Aged retainers?’ Edith’s puzzled frown deepened as Sam Hathaway joined in Harriet’s laughter. ‘What do you mean?’

‘That’s my fault, Edith,’ he assured her. ‘A few days ago Harriet said something about the staff at Locksley Farm Place and I made some crack about how feudal it sounded, having aged retainers around in this day and age. That’s when she put me right.’