This Private Plot by Alan Beechey Read Free Book Online Page B

bureau for several years. Oliver fished it out. It was a page from an old printed volume of Shakespeare, trimmed tightly around the text so that the play title and even the header showing the Act and Scene were missing. From the character names it seemed to come from one of the Henry VI plays. A shame—if it had been Richard II , he’d have a link to the blackmail note’s “blessed plot” reference. Maybe Breedlove had taped it to the wall above his workplace, but it had lost its stickiness and slid down into the gap?
    â€œNo envelope,” said Culpepper. “I bet he tore it up and flushed it down the crapper.”
    Ah, now there’s a bit of anti-trivia, thought Oliver. All those eager people who’ll tell you that the word “crap” and its variants come from the Victorian eminence Sir Thomas Crapper, supposedly the inventor of the flush toilet. In reality, the vulgarism is far older. The gentleman was never knighted; he was merely the originator of the floating ball cock, and his name is an unfortunate, if risible coincidence. Unless, of course, it had dictated his path in life.
    â€œCan I keep this?” Oliver asked, resurfacing after this momentary meditation. Culpepper nodded.
    â€œWhy would you want to?” Effie inquired, sliding the bureau back into place alone.
    â€œI don’t know. A souvenir of the sheeted dead, I guess.”
    They walked out of the house again and paused on the porch while Culpepper locked the bright blue door and positioned a strip of broad yellow tape across the door and its frame. It gave the scene a nautical look, despite the fierce POLICE – DO NOT ENTER message, a welcome splash of color in Breedlove’s dismal front garden. Oliver noticed again the mound of damp earth that sat beside the garden path. It was darker than the ground it lay on, and since Oliver could see no corresponding hole, he guessed that it been delivered for some landscaping purpose, now gone with Breedlove to his grave. It reminded Oliver that he’d noticed some caked dirt on his own hands the previous evening, shortly after grabbing onto the swinging body in the tree.
    â€œWhen Dennis was taken down from the tree, were his clothes dirty?” he asked Culpepper.
    â€œYes, they were, almost muddy, as if he’d been lying in it. He probably fell down a couple of times on his way across the Common.”
    Oliver nodded. The damp mound in front of him showed no signs of any collision with a suicidal, eighty-year-old expert on children’s literature. But when had it rained last? The dust from the Common, which had swirled off his feet in the shower last night, was lighter in color.
    â€œSo these naked women observed by the Vampire of Synne?” Effie began.
    â€œMerely a trick of the light,” said Culpepper quickly. “It certainly isn’t worth putting into my report, and Superintendent Mallard agrees with me.”
    â€œI can see why my uncle took a liking to you, Detective Sergeant Culpepper,” said Oliver, shaking hands with the tall policeman.
    â€œOh well, it never hurts to have friends in high places.”
    â€œAnd vice versa.”
    Culpepper frowned. “I’m not with you, I’m afraid.”
    â€œA little joke…” Oliver began, with a smug smile.

Chapter Four
    Saturday afternoon (continued)
    Visitors often mistake the tall stone obelisk in the middle of Synne’s Square for a war memorial, erected during the spate of numb memorializing that followed the First World War. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on your perspective—there wasn’t a single villager who’d even joined up to fight the Great War, let alone given his life for King and country. But not to be out-commemorated by the neighboring village of Pigsneye, which had sacrificed half its male population at Passchendaele, the Parish Council of the time erected this monument to the one Synne resident who had