Seddon.’
‘Pleased to meet you. I live just a couple of doors from the pub, so I keep turning up here like a bad penny.’ He took a sip of his whisky. ‘Lovely stuff. I swear my innards are pickled in it, you know. So what do you do, Carole?’
‘I’m retired.’
‘Really? Must’ve been an extremely early retirement.’ Again the automatic chivalry contrived not to be offensive.
‘Well, it was early, yes.’ And that earliness still rankled with Carole. She hadn’t wanted to stay till she was sixty, but she’d have preferred to have made her own decision about her leaving date, rather than being informed of it.
‘What did you do before you retired?’
‘I worked at the Home Office.’
‘Fascinating. What part of the Home Office?’
‘Moved around. A lot of the time dealing with the Prison Service one way or the other.’
‘Hm. Travel much?’
‘Only round this country.’
‘I think maybe you were fortunate. Now I’m permanently settled here, I realize how much I missed about England.’
‘You worked abroad?’
‘Yes. British Council.’
‘Oh, I had a friend at university who went into the British Council.’
Carole hadn’t thought about him for years. She wondered whether he still kept up the front he’d maintained at Durham that he wasn’t gay. Or maybe more tolerant times had allowed him to relax into his own nature. ‘His name was Trevor Malcolm.’
Graham Forbes shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘It’s a big organization.’
‘Of course.’
‘Anyway, I worked for them all over the shop. Had the place here in Weldisham for a long time, but only used to come back for leave and breaks between postings. Often wonder if I wouldn’t have been happier staying here all the time.’
‘I never think there’s much point in talking about might-have-beens.’
‘And you’re absolutely right. What a sensible woman you are, Carole. No, I can’t really complain. Seen some fascinating places, met some fascinating people. Real characters, you know, the locals, librarians, drivers we had . . . And yet . . . Oh well, it’s human nature not to be content, isn’t it? Always remember a line of Hazlitt’s . . . “I should like to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home.” ’
‘That’s good. I think it sums up what most of us feel.’
‘Yes, grass is greener, all that stuff. No, can’t complain. Had an interesting life, still with the woman I love at age seventy-five . . . What more can you ask, eh?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘No.’ There was a silence. ‘Incidentally . . . when you were in here on Friday . . . did you hear what I was talking about with that chap at the bar?’
Carole blushed, though there was no real reason why she should have felt guilty. Short of putting in earplugs, there was no way she couldn’t have heard what was being said at the bar.
‘About the discovery of the bones at South Welling Barn?’
‘Yes. Well, putting two and two together, I reckon you must have been the person who found them.’
‘Where did you get your two and two from?’
‘Lennie. Sorry, Detective Sergeant Baylis. The policeman who you talked to.’ In response to her look of surprise, he explained. ‘Lennie talked to me on Saturday. I’m Chairman of the Village Committee here, you see. He wanted us to keep an eye out for press, snoopers, ghouls . . . You know, the people who turn up when something nasty’s happened, the kind who queue up on motorways to look at pile-ups. Anyway, Lennie said he’d been talking to you in the pub, I saw you in the pub, I put two and two together.’
‘Right. But was it Detective Sergeant Baylis who told you about my finding the bones in the first place?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Well, what struck me last Friday was how quickly you knew about what’d happened. I’d found the bones at . . . what . . .? Round four o’clock? And by six-fifteen you were in here, talking about them.’
‘Ah, with you, see what you mean. Yes, it was Lennie. He was brought up here in Weldisham. He knows how the gossip-mill works in a village like this. So he gave me a quick call the Friday afternoon. Thought it better someone heard officially about what’d happened, rather than letting rumours run riot. Dangerous things, rumours.’ Suddenly, he was into quotation.
‘Rumour is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, And of so easy and so plain a stop That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, The still-discordant wavering multitude, Can play upon it.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t know the reference.’
‘No reason why you should. I think it’s probably too obscure to crop up in the Times crossword. The Bard, inevitably. Henry IV, Part 2. The Induction. “Enter RUMOUR, painted full of tongues.” I’m not sure that any of the good folk of Weldisham are actually “painted full of tongues”, but they’re nonetheless very skilled in the dissemination of vile rumour.’
‘Ah.’ There was a silence. Graham Forbes took another swig of whisky, before Carole asked, ‘So was there something you wanted to say about the bones?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Well, you raised the subject.’
‘Yes. Of course I did. No, I only wanted to say, so sorry, you have my sympathy. It must have been a horrible experience for you.’
‘It has been . . . surprisingly unsettling.’
‘I don’t think you should be surprised at all that you’ve been unsettled. Ghastly for you, coming upon that little cache by pure chance. Or at least I assume it was by pure chance . . .’
‘Hm?’
‘Well, you hadn’t set out looking for bones, had you?’
‘Hardly.’ She gave him a strange look, until she realized he was joking.
‘I’m sorry, Carole,’ he chuckled. ‘You get plenty of odd types walking on the Downs. Archaeologists, people with metal detectors . . . Some of them probably are looking for bones.’
‘Well, I can assure you I wasn’t.’
‘No. I’m sure you weren’t.’ Graham Forbes looked at his watch, swilled down the remains of his whisky and said, ‘Must be off.
