A Crowded Coffin(55)
At his exclamation of surprise she explained her earlier feeling of unease, then sighed. ‘This won’t do, we’re supposed to be on duty. We’d better go and mingle.’
‘Tomorrow morning,’ he said firmly, still holding her hand, ‘we’re going to the cops, whether they laugh at us or not. This is all too weird and we have to get help.’
Downstairs, Rory was captured by members of the local art group while Edith greeted old friends, explaining that she was back for good and planning to start investigating ways of making the property pay for its keep. ‘I’ve got loads of vague ideas, she explained to one of her grandmother’s cronies. ‘I’ve emailed a friend from uni who knows about converting old buildings and I want to see if we can turn the stables into holiday lets. It must be possible to do something with them. Anyway, that’s just one avenue to explore.’
She nodded to another old friend. ‘Gran’s talking about turning downstairs into a flat for them and letting me make over some rooms on the first floor. That way we’ll be independent but close enough for company. As for Karen,’ she paused and waved to her old school friend who was bustling past with a tray of canapés, ‘I’m just praying she and Elveece will stay on for ever and ever.’
Her attention was claimed by Brendan, who had Mike Goldstein in tow. ‘How’s poor old Harriet coping?’ Brendan sounded solicitous and even as she murmured a polite answer, Edith had to stifle a grin at the thought of Harriet’s outrage at such familiarity.
The tall American chipped in. ‘I heard about Miss Quigley’s accident,’ he remarked in his attractive drawl. ‘She’s got to be a tough old bird to have survived something like that. You must have your hands full, with a party on top of everything.’ He smiled down at her, a gleam in his dark eyes. ‘What made you decide to have a party, tonight of all nights? Is this an example of the well-known British stiff upper lip?’
‘Harriet’s gone to bed,’ she told him. ‘She’s not too good tonight, but she’s very resilient. Now, can I get you another drink?’
Rory was heading for the kitchen with a tray of empty glasses when his phone rang. ‘Sam? Hang on, reception’s not too good here, I’ll nip outside. That better? Harriet’s fine, in case you’re worried; she’s tucked up in bed, fast asleep.’
‘I hope to goodness she stays there,’ Sam retorted. ‘But it’s not Harriet I wanted to talk about. I’ve been doing some more poking about, turning over the odd stone, and I bumped into a very old friend tonight. Nothing to do with the diocese – he’s a retired engineer who was a colleague of mine before I entered the Church. He used to have some contacts with the oil business. I know I can trust him, though I swore him to secrecy anyway and I told him about all these ill-informed rumours of oil prospecting.’
‘Did he come up with anything?’ Rory was intrigued.
‘I’m not sure. He says himself he’s been out of that world for twenty years or more, and the technology’s moved on rapidly, which obviously makes his know-how a bit dated. He was intrigued, though, and told me that there are several ways of sussing out if there’s oil around. You can do aerial surveys to measure the magnetic fields, plus there are airborne radar and satellite images that map the earth’s surface. He pointed out that besides the commercial flights from Southampton Airport there are several smaller flights, instructors, and so on, and who’s to know what they’re looking for as they fly overhead? He’s not suggesting that anything like this has actually been done, though he’s promised to put out some discreet feelers tomorrow, but you get the picture?’
Rory grunted, remembering a light aircraft that had been circling overhead a few days ago. Sam went on, ‘I made some notes, hang on. Right, a seismic survey would record differences in how rocks reflect shock waves and there are also ways to measure magnetic and electrical fields; variations in any field can signal a rock layer that could be interesting. But my friend did say that a lot of this will probably be done by computer these days. This is just background info.’
Sam paused, and Rory could hear him riffling through his notes. ‘I’d better hurry up,’ he said and Rory could hear the laugh in his voice. ‘I’m supposed to be on a pee break; they’ll start worrying about my prostate. Okay, here we are. Apparently, at about Easter time, there was a gang of people in diving gear over at the Hag’s Hole.’ Intent on his report he missed Rory’s interrogative, ‘Huh?’