CRIME IN THE COUNTRY
Prologue
Jethro Benson, gardener at Langley Court in the village of Much Langley on the outskirts of Bromgrove, had always preferred the New Year to Christmas. His wife insisted that he would enjoy the festive season if he weren’t such a grinch and got into the spirit of things, but he was more than happy to be left out of all the reindeer games…. just couldn’t be doing with all that phoney “togetherness” and “most wonderful time of the year” bollocks. Especially seeing as most families ended up having a flaming row over the Brussel sprouts and bread sauce.
Sitting on the bench outside his shed in the kitchen garden on New Year’s Day, he grinned sourly at the thought that his employers Camilla and Andrew Langley were no doubt grappling with thumping hangovers up at the house, while son George had most likely sloped off to join that Flash Harry estate agent friend of his down the pub….. Patrick Cole…. a real slick customer if ever there was one…. and that sister of his with her orange trout pout and weird cigar eyebrows was something else…. she’d looked at him like he was something she’d scraped off her shoe when he got her name wrong. ‘It’s Arbella,’ she corrected him snootily, ‘not Arabella.’ Arbella, I ask you, Jethro reflected with an inner eye roll. I mean, who on earth would want to be called after some daft bint who might’ve been a minor royal but apparently ended up getting locked up in the Tower of London by James I and starving herself to death….
Pretentiousness was the problem with everyone in Much Langley, overshadowed by the prestigious neighbouring village of Old Carton and its medieval gem of a manor house…. Carton Hall pretty much knocked Langley Court into a cocked hat, while the local antiquarians’ obsession with all things Tudor and Jacobean had a lot to answer for…. including folk calling their kids some seriously dodgy names.
And now they were planning some arty farty exhibition down at Carton Hall on James I and witchcraft. Jethro didn’t know what to make of that, but no doubt it would bring the punters flocking. There had been a scandal at the Hall – involving murder no less – a few years back, and the whiff of notoriety made the whole package even more of a draw, though none of the family lived there now that the estate had been taken over by the National Trust.
Much Langley’s vicar, the Reverend Cuthbert Dempsey, had been surprisingly relaxed when Jethro uneasily wondered if there wasn’t something, well, wrong – something downright godless – in putting on an exhibition like that. To say nothing of the other stuff about James having boyfriends, or ‘favourites’ as the poncey promotional bumf called them….
Dempsey had just grinned with that funny lopsided smile of his.
‘It’ll all be done very tastefully,’ he said easily in his reassuring countryman’s burr. ‘James I is such a neglected figure really…. but a seriously interesting character…. the first monarch in the British Isles to become a published poet…. to say nothing of his book Daemonolgie about devil worship.’
Of course, that was bound to appeal to the likes of Dempsey, who was now a bit of a local celebrity on the strength of having had a collection of his own poems recently published to some acclaim (not that he was at all big-headed about it, Jethro felt obliged to concede). And old Jerry Dawber, lead volunteer at the Hall and a keen amateur historian, was all over James I. ‘We’re reinterpreting James for the modern era,’ he insisted earnestly. ‘D’you know, he most probably suffered from ADHD and PTSD on account of childhood trauma.’
Jethro didn’t know and frankly didn’t care. Mental health (or more accurately, lack of) was an excuse for pretty much everything these days, and there was something downright creepy and undignified about any ruler writing a book about devil worship – even if it apparently had something to do with storms and folk casting spells so his wife would drown on her way over from Denmark and never become queen…. You couldn’t imagine King Charles III getting up to anything like that!
Jerry Dawber had been more restrained on the subject of royal favourites.
‘It ties in with a previous exhibition at the Hall on the French court,’ he said carefully. ‘The Trust is keen to re-evaluate James sympathetically as bisexual but with a strong preference for his own gender…. It’s a legitimate focus if we want to do justice to historically marginalised groups…. and you could argue that James managed his complicated private life heroically well.’
Jethro wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that at all, but he supposed if the vicar and Jerry didn’t see anything amiss then it had to be okay.
He was willing to bet Camilla Langley would find a way to muscle in on whatever was going down at Carton Hall. She had certainly developed a right old taste for publicity when Bromgrove TV came to the village to film that spin-off from Escape to the Country.….
If were being honest with himself, Jethro had to concede that having the TV people around had been the most exciting thing to happen in ages. Obviously it helped that the presenter Ralph Appleby actually lived in Much Langley. The vicar’s growing fame as a poet didn’t exactly hurt either. Of course, somehow it was Camilla who managed to bag the most airtime, on the basis that ‘as the chatelaine of Langley Court, she was virtually lady of the manor’. Which hadn’t gone down well with other locals. Local gossip had it that Deborah Teasdale, chair of the parish council, was spitting feathers about it. Jethro suspected most folk hadn’t exactly minded the bossy old besom’s nose being put out of joint, but when it came to it they would take the side of the village stalwarts over Camilla Langley any time. Apparently Marguerite Chapman at the Old Rectory was equally outraged by the way Camilla had pushed herself forward…. this had something to do with Mrs Chapman having claims to fame as an ‘influencer’, though Jethro wasn’t sure what one of them even was….
According to Irene Helsen down at the allotments, the Langleys were essentially “Johnny-come-lately” types. Nouveaux riches. When Jethro pointed out their roots had to go pretty far back, seeing as the village bore the same name, she had muttered darkly that she wouldn’t be surprised if they hadn’t changed their surname by deed poll to make it sound like the family line stretched back to the Norman Conquest. Jethro had been quite surprised that his hatchet-faced fellow allotmenteer could say anything he found funny.
Jethro was pretty sure that Camilla fancied her chances of being picked up by Bromgrove TV for some kind of presenting job. She’d certainly thrown herself in front of that producer Bernie Maunder every chance she got, as well as huddling in corners with various executives along with that gofer of hers Theo Sandbrook. The gardener had a shrewd suspicion that Sandbrook’s days as Camilla’s PA or ‘digital media consultant’ or whatever the heck she called him were numbered judging by the way she’d shrieked at him the other day. That poor bloke certainly had his work cut out massaging the old bat’s ego and lining up “projects” to boost her profile. When Escape finally aired, the woman would be bloody insufferable….
Jethro’s backside was starting to feel numb from the chill of the day but he was somehow reluctant to move. Though bitterly cold, the sun was out bathing the raised beds and glasshouses in a mellow glow that made him feel quietly content. Plus, he had tickets for tonight’s football match between Bromgrove Rovers and Medway Lions, which would round the day off nicely and get his New Year off to an excellent start – assuming Bromgrove won (if they lost, they would have been fouled, trapped, penalised, robbed or otherwise obviously the victims of circumstances).
The gardener sat for a while longer engaged in intense speculation as to whether the Rovers’ new sweeper was likely to foil the offside trap with the team’s three-four-three plan. He wondered whether they’d get a decent ref. He had no time for all that talk about how umpires worked on “the diagonal system” cos it seemed to him it just meant players now got away with murder all over the field. And he couldn’t stand the way they blew their whistles as little as possible and settled for making weirdy hand gestures to suggest they’d “seen it all”; it always made him crack up when the players responded with vigorous hand gestures to suggest they hadn’t. Ah, happy days…..
His wife complained bitterly about her menfolk’s football addiction which she claimed could be identified in the winter from their constantly twitching feet, choral groaning and enthusiasm for reliving great moments from the past while eating. She was also disinclined to show appropriate gratitude for his giving her those extra little treats that showed every woman she was still loved, like letting her entertain the lads from his five-a-side to coffee and sarnies after closing time at The Jolly Ploughboy. To Jethro, the footballing fraternity was a sacred brotherhood that knew no barriers (apart from crash barriers) of race, creed or class, and he knew a humble labourer like himself shared the same excitement as the likes of Andrew Langley who was not above reviewing the performance of the Rovers with him when Camilla was safely out of earshot. ‘I have a British passport – which makes me an expert on soccer,’ Andrew had chuckled affably, ‘though I’m more of a rugby man myself…. bit of a speed merchant actually.’ Given the other’s sizeable paunch (more useful for tug-of-war), this struck Jethro as unlikely, but he nodded along. Apparently his employer’s son preferred other sports. Andrew took this philosophically. ‘I thought you had to be queer to play netball,’ he confided with typically un-PC sang-froid. ‘But George has no problems attracting totty, so it just goes to show.’ Camilla would have blown a gasket at such indiscretion, but it was somehow oddly endearing. Jethro chuckled at the thought of ever having a chat about the Beautiful Game with the lady of the manor. She most probably imagined he had the kind of father who ran onto the pitch at Wembley chased by six policemen rather than possessing more respectable antecedents. As for the niceties of the sport, forget it…. The vicar joked that Camilla was the type of woman to reserve her sympathies for the referee owing to the fact of his being nice and clean or because all the others on the field kept shouting at him! Funnily enough, Ralph Appleby and the TV lot were quite keen to include a segment about Much Medway’s amateur league in the Escape programme, but Camilla had put the kibosh on that, doubtless fearing the nightmarish prospect of inebriated groupies chanting “Go Home You Bums” or other such partisan ditties, to say nothing of local footballing heroes fouling, swearing, spitting and squabbling in a manner highly detrimental to the village’s reputation.
What a shame. It might have added a nice bit of local colour to include a scene with everyone down the pub debating burning topics like whether it was worth abandoning the defensive wall when opposing a free kick, or whether games overseas were starting to look a bit too Eurovision with all that embracing and kissing after every goal…..
Ruminating on his number one passion, Jethro realised he had lost track of time. The sun was gone and the sky overhead had the white leaden hue that presaged a bitterly cold night.
He would just take a quick look at that trellis next door before calling it a day. The evergreeen clematis was doing quite well in his opinion, but Camilla was bound to start nagging him any day now about wanting more colour. A proper countrywoman would know to trust the gardener but not Mrs Bossy Knickers.
Muttering to himself, with his earlier good humour rapidly evaporating at thoughts of his capricious employer, Jethro heaved himself up and stumped down the gravel path before passing through a low door which led to a quaintly formal little knot garden, its cobbled paths winding around flower beds with shrubs and winter perennials. The rear wall was covered in an impressive curtain of clematis while potting sheds along the right hand side were devoted to Jethro’s root vegetables, seedlings and plants destined for the main house. Over on the left, a small pond held Andrew’s beloved koi carp (thank God he didn’t have to worry about feeding them).
Jethro surveyed the scene with satisfaction. It didn’t look as bare as all that and soon he would get round to sorting marigolds, salvias and sweet alyssum for the borders…. maybe some nice big pansies too. He felt a twinge of anticipatory pleasure at the prospect of planting them out.
He was just turning away when something caught his eye.
The door of the shed nearest to the back wall was ajar though he was fairly certain he had closed it behind him earlier. He never bothered with a lock (no need) but was meticulous about shutting up after himself lest foxes or other pests should sneak in.
Perhaps Andrew or George had come out for a smoke away from Camilla. They did that sometimes but could generally be relied upon to leave things shipshape.
Muttering to himself in a spasm of grouchiness as he felt his rheumatism suddenly threaten to flare up, Jethro hastened to put matters right.
And almost tripped over something lying across the threshold.
Not something.
Someone.
A body lay face downwards half in and half out of the shed, one arm flung out in front.
Jethro had seen that voluminous dirndl skirt just hours earlier whisking around the main house.
His gaze travelled fearfully upwards to the immaculate streaked blonde coiffure.
Camilla.
Somehow the gardener knew this wasn’t a case of sudden heart attack or stroke.
Not death by natural causes.
His every nerve end screamed one thing.
Murder.