Death in the English Countryside Read online

  “I thought you’d like it.” He kept his gaze on the bridge as he spoke.

  “I did.” I rolled my shoulders. “Okay, on to the police. You can drop me there if you need to get going…” My words trailed off. Alex’s gaze had sharpened as he stared at the bridge.

  “What is it?” I turned to look at the bridge. Clouds had been drifting across the sky, dappling the scene with shadow, but now the clouds blocking the sun were shifting, and the filtered light gradually transitioned to full sunlight. The bright sunshine sparkled on the surface of the water, glittering on the tiny ripples, but the clearer light also penetrated down below the surface, illuminating what had been opaque when the cloud covered the sun. “Is there something down there, underwater?” I asked.

  “I think so.” Alex went to the car, popped the trunk and returned with his camera, attaching a long lens as he walked. He put it to his face, then handed it to me. “It’s a car.” His voice sounded funny.

  I looked through the viewfinder, and my heart dropped. “A black one.”

  Chapter Six

  Another cloud slid in front of the sun, and all I could see was the reflection of the bridge and the cloud-dotted sky. “Too cloudy.” Automatically, I slipped the strap of the camera around my neck and set off down a path beside the water. “This way?” I called.

  “Ah—yes, but I don’t think you should…”

  I pressed on down the path, the long wet grass soaking my jeans around my ankles, telling myself I had to be mistaken. The path wound away from the water, back into the dense stand of oaks. Running footsteps sounded behind me as Alex caught up, punching numbers into his phone as he half-walked, half-jogged. He pressed his phone to his ear.

  The path rose, the trees fell away, and the bridge came into view. I scrambled up an incline, a mix of rocks and grass, and emerged onto a flat grassy area beside the road. The bridge was a few feet away. I closed the distance as the cloud glided away, and the water again became transparent. I shifted the camera, pulling it from my chest to my side as I leaned over the parapet. “It is. It really is a car,” I whispered.

  The car wasn’t far underwater, probably only a foot or two, but it was completely submerged. Under the shimmering surface, I could clearly see the shape of it and even make out a Mercedes logo on the hood. I swallowed hard. I stood there, the cold stone of the bridge pressing against my waist, distantly aware of Alex moving around me, checking his phone.

  Alex’s warm hand rested on my shoulder. “Kate, are you okay?”

  I stared at the water as I spoke. “This is so terrible—so much worse than anything I imagined might have happened.” I didn’t want to think about Kevin trapped inside a sinking car, but I couldn’t stop the images from popping into my mind. I pushed away from the parapet, the stone rough and cold on my palms, and walked a few paces away.

  “How long has he been there? Since Friday?” I turned back to Alex. “You said this road is one way to get to Nether Woodsmoor. What if he left the pub, went for a drive…or went to try and patch things up with Frank, and on the way back…” I looked at the clearing and had to stop talking. Two flattened parallel tracks cut through the grass at the edge of the clearing and carved down the steep bank to the water.

  “It’s possible, but we don’t even know for sure this is Mr. Dunn’s car.”

  I just looked at him.

  “We don’t know,” Alex repeated. “Right now we need to call the police. The mobile service out here is patchy.” He held up his phone and moved around. “I can’t get a signal. Do you have your phone on you?”

  “No, it’s back at the car. I’ll go get it,” I said, already moving back to the path.

  “Wait.” Alex caught my arm. “You probably won’t have any bars either. No, we’d better go to Parkview Hall. It’s just up the road a bit.” Alex gestured at the far side of the bridge. “They can call the police from their landline. That will be quicker than going back to the car.”

  “One of us should stay here, I think.” I looked at the water. How could we not have seen the car the instant we looked at the bridge? Now that I’d spotted it, it was all I could see. It was like looking at one of those hidden pictures. At first, you can’t make anything out, but once you’ve picked out the image, that’s all you can see. “I mean, if he’s been down there for days and days…it doesn’t seem right to go off and leave him. I’ll wait. You go on.” I didn’t want to wait alone on the bridge, knowing that Kevin’s body was only a few feet away underwater in the car. God, those last moments would have been terrible.

  Alex studied my face for a second. “I’ll stay. Go across the bridge. The gates for Parkview Hall are on the right. Big and imposing. Pillars on each side topped with urns. You can’t miss it. Find Beatrice Stone. She knows me. She’ll take care of everything,” he called because I was already moving across the bridge.

  “Beatrice Stone,” I repeated to myself as I cleared the end of the bridge and jogged up the road’s slight incline. At the crest of the small hill was a sign for Parkview Hall with an arrow pointing at two massive wrought iron gates set in a wall made of the same golden stone as the bridge. The gates stood open. I hurried through them, hopped over a chain draped across three poles that blocked the road, then bypassed a small shuttered kiosk with lists of ticket prices and hours. The drive wound through a grove of oaks. Between the thick tree trunks, I could see a manor house of honey-colored stone with a set of divided stairs rising to massive double doors. It looked a long distance away.

  “You! You there,” a voice called. “We’re not open.”

  I turned to my right and peered through the trees. A woman with sunglasses perched on her head marched toward me, an oversized boxy trench coat flapping around her legs while two white mop-like dogs circled her feet, their paths intertwining with each other’s but never coming near the woman’s yellow galoshes. She carried a furled umbrella and pointed it at me. “No photography.” She pointed the umbrella at the gates. “Out you go.”

  I left the drive and sprinted toward her. The dogs charged at me, their shrill yaps filling the air. I skidded to a stop. The woman shouted commands at them, but the dogs didn’t stop. I backpedaled, but they were on me before I could take more than a step. They planted their muddy paws on my jeans, tails wagging and ears perked between barks.

  “Worthless creatures,” the woman said, still advancing with the umbrella point refocused on me. “Down! Down! Some watchdogs. Might as well have a flock of birds for all the good you two do.”

  I ignored the dogs. “Beatrice Stone?”

  She was close enough now that I didn’t have to shout, which was good because suddenly I was winded and shaky. Maybe this is what shock felt like? I braced a hand against a tree trunk, as one of the dogs popped up and planted its paws on the back of my knee, almost causing me to have a seat.

  She shook her head and said firmly, “Not open yet. Come back next weekend—”

  “There’s been an accident. At the bridge. A car underwater. Alex…” What was Alex’s last name? I couldn’t remember. I reached down to one of the dogs that was practically shredding my jeans, and rubbed its ear. It stopped barking. The other dog whined and shimmied in protest. “We need you to call the police. There’s no cell service at the bridge.”

  The umbrella point dipped to the ground. “Alex Norcutt? Oh, you’re one of the movie people.” She took my elbow. “Come along then. We’ll phone Constable Albertson from the house, and then I’ll run you down there in the Range Rover. Ladybug! Cupcake! Off, I said.” In an undertone she added, “Don’t let your grandchildren name your pets. I didn’t think it through. Rather embarrassing to shout those names at the top of my voice.”

  I let her flow of words wash over me, nodding occasionally, which seemed to be all the interaction she required. We’d been walking diagonally through the woods, so that when we emerged from the trees we were at the far right-hand side of the building. I had a quick impression of a second-floor portico lined with massive columns
and rows of windows stretching out on each side of the house from the central block. In a disjointed part of my mind, I had the fleeting thought the grandly elegant building would be perfect for Pemberly.

  Beatrice steered me around the right-hand wing of the house along a drive that curved away to outbuildings. She took me into a short barrel vaulted tunnel on the ground floor that opened into a courtyard. She opened a heavy door, and the dogs shot by us, whipped through a room with coats hanging on the walls. A wide array of sports equipment, shoes, and gardening tools were scattered around. We followed the dogs into a kitchen where Beatrice parked me at a long wooden table, told a man rinsing dishes in the sink to give me a cup of tea and departed, yelling over her shoulder that she had to make a call.

  The man turned from the sink, took one look at me, and reached for the teapot. He wore a long white apron tied at the waist over a dress shirt, tie, and slacks. He set a teacup in front of me and pushed a bowl of sugar cubes toward me. “Milk?”

  “This is fine. Thank you.” Beatrice was somewhere down the hall. Her rapid, but indistinct words filtered into the kitchen. The hot liquid seared my lips.

  The man studied me with his black eyes. “You’re pale. It looks as if you need something a bit stronger than tea.” He shuffled away, running a hand dotted with liver spots over his baldhead, as he considered the cabinets. “Brandy,” he pronounced and set off toward the door that Beatrice had disappeared through.

  “No, this is perfect. I don’t need anything else. Sorry to barge in on you. There’s been an accident at the bridge…” I broke off.

  He nodded. “Bit of a curve there. Takes some people unexpectedly. Especially the Americans.” He turned his gaze to the window. “Should have a sign made.” He nodded again. “Beatrice will see to it.”

  Beatrice burst into the room. “The constable is on the way. Alex must have flagged down a driver who had good mobile reception. Oh good, you had some tea. Plenty of sugar in it, I hope. Helps with the shock.” She patted her pockets. “Glasses. Glasses.”

  “On your head, my dear,” the man said. “There should be a sign leading up to the bridge.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Harold.” She settled her glasses on her nose. “Excellent idea. I’ll bring it up with Constable Albertson.”

  I finished the tea and stood. “Ready.”

  “You met my husband, Harold?”

  “Not formally, no, but he makes an excellent cup of tea.” I stepped forward. “I’m Kate Sharp.”

  He inclined his head. “Delighted.”

  His manner was old world chivalry, and for a moment I felt I should curtsy or something, but then Beatrice plucked a set of keys off a row of hooks on the wall. The dogs skidded back into the kitchen and ran in a circuit between our feet and the door. “No, you bothersome things, you can’t go.” She turned to Harold. “Are you coming along, too?”

  He shook his head. “Things to do here,” he said vaguely, gesturing to the sink.

  After deftly closing the yapping dogs in the kitchen, Beatrice led the way out of the house to a mud-splattered Range Rover parked near a building I assumed was once the stables. It was the same type of car that Eve Wallings had been driving, but this one looked even older and more beat-up than hers. I climbed in, and Beatrice hit the gas. We bumped over the lane that led around the house to the tree-lined drive. “Won’t take long,” she said as I gripped the door panel with one hand and fastened my seatbelt with the other.

  Rows of trees whipped by, and then she swung wide around the chain, blocking the end of the drive and we were through the gates. She parked at the end of the bridge, probably on ground that was part of Parkview Hall’s land. I slammed the door and hurried over the bridge to a scene completely different from the one I’d left.

  A tow truck was lumbering into a position in the clearing where the tracks cut down the bank. Farther up the road, a police car angled across the road. A knot of people stood at the end of the bridge, including a man in a police uniform. I spotted Alex standing alone on higher ground on the far side of the tow truck. As I reached the end of the bridge, the man in uniform—the constable, I guessed—stepped away from the small group and approached, glancing beyond me to the Range Rover and Beatrice, who was moving slower than I was and hadn’t crossed the bridge yet. He consulted a notepad. “You’re Kate Sharp?” I nodded. “You think you knew the driver?”

  I blew out a breath. My thoughts skittered to Marci. I’d have to call her. Secrecy was now at the bottom of my list of important things. “Yes. My boss, Kevin Dunn. I’ve been trying to find him. He didn’t return from a business trip.” I looked toward the tow truck where a man in waders had hopped down from the cab and was working on a pair of gloves. “I thought he’d still be in the area, but I haven’t been able to find him. I had just decided that I needed to call the police. Then we spotted the car…”

  The constable’s craggy face had a sympathetic expression as he looked up from the notepad. “Missing, was he?”

  “Yes, since Friday.”

  The constable glanced at Alex, who’d joined us. “You said ‘we.’ That would be the two of you?” He moved his pencil point from Alex to me.

  “Yes.” I pointed across the water to the outcropping of land where Alex’s red car still sat. “We were over there, looking at the view when the light changed.”

  The constable looked up from his notebook. “The light changed? How?”

  “The reflection of the clouds masked what was under the surface. The sun came out and then…we saw the car.”

  The man in waders shouted for the constable then turned back and made a circling motion with his hand to another man in coveralls. The constable said, “I’ll have more questions for you in a moment.” He moved to the group gathered at the edge of the bank. A deep mechanical whir filled the air. I slowly crossed the bridge.

  Alex said, “Do you want to wait in my car? You don’t have to be here. I’ll tell Constable Albertson where you are.”

  “No, I think I should be here. I don’t want to be, but it seems like it would be wrong somehow to go hide in the car.”

  Stretched taut, the cables slowly dragged the Mercedes out of the water. The trunk appeared first, water sluicing across the smooth surface, then the back doors emerged. Beatrice came to stand on the other side of me.

  The front doors and windshield cleared the water next, the sunlight catching the surface of the windshield and reflecting directly in my eyes. I put a hand up, but the tow truck continued to pull the car out of the water, causing the angle of the windshield to change, and the reflection vanished. I squinted, bracing myself, expecting to see Kevin pinned to the front seat by the seatbelt, but the front seat was empty.

  A buzz went up from the small group gathered around the car. It was fully out of the water now, but still dangling at an almost ninety-degree angle down the steep riverbank, water pouring from the seams of the doorframes and the hood.

  I’d been gripping the stone of the bridge, but now I pushed away and took several steps toward the car. The cables continued to reel the car in, inching it up until it was on level ground. One of the men broke away from the group and opened both the front and back doors on one side, stepping quickly away as water cascaded out along with bits of paper.

  I’d been walking toward the car, but stopped. It was empty.

  Chapter Seven

  “Empty. Completely empty,” I said to no one in particular. Seeing the car underwater had been awful and my mind had immediately gone to the worst possibility—that Kevin, either through his own negligence or because of some accident, had run off the road, been trapped inside and drowned, but now that his body wasn’t in the car…I didn’t know what to think.

  Beatrice pushed another cup of tea across the table to me. We were back in her kitchen, Alex and I. I hadn’t seen Harold since we’d returned, but then again, I hadn’t really been paying that much attention. The last half hour or so was a bit foggy.

  “It could be a goo
d sign,” Alex said.

  I set my teacup down in its saucer with a click. “You mean, that if he was in the car when it went over the edge, he got out before it was completely submerged?”

  “Yes.”

  “The same thought crossed my mind. But if that happened, wouldn’t a door have been open? Or the window rolled down?”

  “There is that,” Alex admitted, sending me a faint smile. “Trying to look on the positive side here.”

  “Or, he might not have been in it at all,” Beatrice said, as she sat down with us at the table with her own cup of tea. “Perhaps his car was stolen.”

  “Then where is Kevin? Why hasn’t he checked in with Marci? She’s our office manager back in California,” I explained to Beatrice. “Or why hasn’t he shown up at the inn?”

  There was a long moment of silence filled only with the clink of Beatrice’s spoon as she stirred her tea.

  A knock sounded, and Beatrice went to answer it. Constable Albertson followed her back into the kitchen, refusing a cup of tea as he took a seat beside me.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you, but we’ve found him,” he said.

  I could tell from his demeanor and tone the news wasn’t good. “Where?” I asked, my stomach clenching.

  “He was downstream—quite far actually—about halfway between the bridge and Nether Woodsmoor. Deserted section of the river, not much out that way. None of these new housing developments with people walking their dogs. I figure that’s why he wasn’t spotted straight away. Looks as if he got out of the car before it went under, but got swept away in the tide. He was caught under the roots of an old tree trunk.”

  “But the water, it was so calm,” I protested, thinking of how bulky and strong Kevin was. Perhaps an ocean swell might overpower him, but not that smooth-flowing river.

  “Today it is, but we’ve had several storms. If he went in right after one of those…well, the rivers swell up and can be quite fast moving,” Constable Albertson said.