The Body in the Trees Read online

  Cupping his hands to his mouth, Tom called again. “Duke! Come ’ere!” Stillness settled on the scene. Had he been of a mind to listen, Tom would have heard the joyful cry of the song thrush and the whistle of wheeling kites. As it was, all he heard was the thumping of his own heart in his ears. Sweat stung his eyes. Suddenly, there came a bark. It came from deeper in the wood, by the pond, Tom guessed. Puffing his cheeks in exasperation, he gave chase again.

  The nettles were thicker the deeper into the wood he went. Several times he yelped in pain as they stung his bare arms and ankles. Thorns and briars snatched at his clothes. Low twigs whipped at his face. Passing through the old chalk quarry, now temporary home to the travellers who had come to gather the cherries, he clutched at a young sycamore sapling for balance. Their caravans and tents huddled together amongst the bracken and brambles, and lines of dusty washing hung between the trees. The quarry had long since fallen from use, but its smudged white cliffs stood testament to ancient industry. Had he stopped to look, Tom would have seen the marks of Neolithic tools and graffiti. Piles of lumpen chalk had become part of the landscape, compacted by centuries of rain and wind into permanent features. The chalky soil had given rise to flowers that thrived in its seeming barrenness; cowslips and wild basil competed for space with lady’s bedstraw and meadow buttercups. Still Tom clambered on, his feet struggling for purchase on the gnarled roots and exposed rock. The dappled shade of the wood gave him some relief from the cruel sun, but still his freckled face ran wet with sweat. His shirt was soaked. His skin was caked in the dry, red dust he kicked up as he ran. Waving away a cloud of flies that pursued him, Tom finally breasted a ridge and saw the pond before him.

  Gummer’s Pond was a fetid, stagnant pool of just a few feet deep, home only to mosquito larvae and the slimiest of pondweed. The hot summer months had seen it dwindle to little more than a large puddle. The caked mud around it was hard and unyielding. A cloud of insects buzzed at its centre, lit by shafts of sunlight as it broke through the canopy. There, on the other side of the pond, stood Duke. A large lurcher, he was handsome enough, although his sharp nose and beady eyes betrayed a character not to be entirely trusted. Tight muscles rippled along his flank and his tail twitched violently from side to side as he stood, otherwise still and alert, on the opposite bank.

  “That’s it, Duke,” Tom soothed. “There’s a boy.” Slapping a fly from his neck, Tom inched closer to the hound. Duke stood panting at the water’s edge, his long snout pointing up to the branches above his head. He had clearly seen something. Tom’s words were greeted by a single bark but still the dog did not move. Just a few feet more and Tom would have him. Duke’s tongue hung heavily from his mouth as he stood. “Tired, are you boy?” Tom had affected a singsong tone to appease his hound. “Well, maybe that’ll teach you to run away on the hottest day of the year.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a tattered sleeve. “And maybe it'll teach me to give chase after you.” A low, guttural growl rolled from Duke’s throat, his attention caught by whatever quarry he had seen in the boughs above. A squirrel perhaps, thought Tom as he crept ever closer, arms outstretched as if that alone would confound Duke’s escape. Just as he had the dog within reach, he allowed himself the briefest of glances into the branches above. The shafts of light that pierced the canopy landed on a pair of booted feet, twisting slowly in the air. The sight was so incongruous that, at first, Tom could make no sense of it. His eyes rose upwards into the foliage. First he saw a pair of legs, then a torso. Suspended from a branch above him, was the body of a man. Tom’s legs buckled beneath him. He hit the dirt hard, then scrambled back to his feet to look around. All was quiet. A sudden rush of panic overtook him, and he breathed hard against an impulse to vomit. Dragging his fingers through his damp and dusty hair, he tried to formulate a plan. The man was clearly dead. An irrational impulse took a hold of the boy. Rather than turn his heels to head for help, he felt he must get him down. Peering into the mess of foliage, he could just make out a bloated face, half obscured by the leaves. A dry retch caught in Tom’s throat and his stomach heaved at the sight. Steadying his nerves, he traced the rope up. It was tied around a hefty branch some way up the tree. Walking to the trunk, Tom could see it was studded with nodules and branches. He gave the dog a pat on its head. “Good boy,” he said. “You stay there now.” Like every boy his age, Tom knew how to climb. His favourite trees to conquer were the cedars in the grounds of Larton Manor because of the wide, low branches that afforded excellent footholds. The prospect of capture at any moment gave the enterprise an extra thrill. Now, there was no such hurry. Tom chose his footings with care. Grabbing at a sturdy branch, he pulled himself up a full four feet and swung his legs into a cleft in the trunk. More than once he grazed his skin against the bark, even drawing blood on an errant twig. Seemingly immune to such cuts and scrapes, Tom climbed ever higher until the branch to which the rope was secured came into view. It stretched out from the main trunk some twelve feet or so. Taking hold of a higher limb, Tom swung himself onto it and sat with one leg hanging to either side. Shuffling along inch by inch, it took some moments to come to where the rope was hooped and tied. Reaching into his waistcoat pocket, he took out a penknife. Gifted him by his father, it was a prized possession. Now it was put to grim use. The rope was rough, the type he had seen about the farm. Within minutes he was through it and the body fell with a heavy thud onto the ground below, narrowly missing Duke who backed away with a yelp of surprise. Lowering himself gingerly from the tree, Tom approached the body with apprehension. There was something about its clothing that gave him pause. The tattered corduroy trousers were common enough, but there was something about the waistcoat that was distinctive. The embroidery around the lapels was particularly extravagant. Faded though it was, Tom could clearly make it out; a red, hand stitched double cherry on a stalk. He could remember his mother sitting at the fire one winter’s evening to complete the work. He forced his eyes ever upwards until they rested upon the poor man’s distorted face. The tongue protruded grotesquely from swollen lips and sightless eyes bulged from their sockets. A mop of dark, curly hair was plastered to the man’s forehead. The strain of having hung from the tree for several hours had disfigured the man’s features almost beyond recognition. But to Tom Cousins, there was now no doubt about it. He was staring into the face of his own father.

  Maxwell Trevitt never tired of the view from his window. The farmhouse had stood for almost a hundred years already, occupied in all that time by his forebears. It gave Trevitt a feeling of belonging. As he was fond of telling anyone who’d listen, he was the farm and the farm was he. As he looked across the acres of cherry trees, his cherry trees, he felt an ancient stirring. Generations of Trevitts had tended those trees and gathered their crop. He half expected to turn and see his father looking out with him, and next to him his father and so on. As he thought on his lineage, Trevitt gained an inch in height. His chest puffed out to strain against the buttons on his patterned waistcoat. His head was held so high he could not help but look down his nose at the man in his parlour. It is a truism that those most lowly born are the most given to snobbery, and so it was with Maxwell Trevitt. To any observer, he was a formidable man. Barrel-chested and broad shouldered, one could imagine the ground shook as he walked. His wide face was ruddy with toil, his cheek bones shone. A thatch of jet-black hair was scraped back from the expanse of his forehead, parted in the middle to expose a length of clean, white skin that ran like a scar to his crown. His thick ears framed a face that was completed with a broken nose, the legacy of a bar room brawl some years since. A brawl that he had, most decisively, won. Turning back into the room, he slammed a clenched fist down hard on the wide, oak table, releasing a cloud of dust that danced in the light from the window.

  “I will hear no terms!” he bellowed. “They have no right to withhold their labour. They have no right to make demands.” Trevitt had a voice that was used to being heard. The man before him cleared his throat, daring to m
eet Trevitt’s steely gaze. This was William Oats, Trevitt’s foreman. He had about him the natural, quiet authority of a man well struck in years.

  Oats sat with his hat in his lap, wiping the dust from the brim with a bony hand as he spoke. “We have a week to bring in the crop. Beyond that, it will spoil.”

  “They are holding me to ransom. Pay up, or else!” Flecks of spittle flew from Trevitt’s mouth, catching Oats’ eye as they arced through the sunlight.

  “They are concerned about conditions.”

  “Conditions?” Trevitt’s fist met oak again. “I’ll give them conditions!” Trevitt knew they had him over a barrel. With so many fit young men sent to fight Her Majesty’s wars abroad, labour was at a premium. The itinerant workers he employed each year to harvest his crop were emboldened. “Is it not enough that they have work?”

  Oats spoke up, bravely. “They have threatened to withdraw their labour unless you agree to their terms.”

  “A farm has stood on this very spot for the best part of a thousand years. And for the best part of those years, cherry trees have grown here. And for the best part of those years, my forebears have grown them. These outcasts should be grateful for the work.”

  “They demand a morning off and an increase in their wage to fifteen shillings.”

  “So they may spend that morning getting drunk on the extra wage! Vermin!”

  William Oats pushed back his stool to stand, clutching his hat. His nut-brown skin was burnished almost to a shine. “What shall I tell them?”

  Trevitt sucked air in through his teeth, smoothing his hair with a hand in exasperation. “In God’s name, where is Fletcher Cousins?”

  “He has not been seen this morning.”

  “Not seen? He’s one of ’em. Speaks their language. This is the third day those trees have not been picked. Why is he not here?”

  Oats remained unmoved. The truth was he had never liked Fletcher Cousins and was rather pleased to see him fall from favour. For all his civilised ways, he was a traveller and Oats had never trusted travellers. Good for picking fruit and that was all.

  Trevitt was seething now, and stomped back to the window. “My family have given much to this village over the years,” he hissed. “Perhaps too much.”

  “You would do well to meet them face to face.” Oats was the picture of calm. “When you have heard their grievance, there may be a compromise to be found.”

  He regretted the word as soon as it was out of his mouth. Trevitt seized on it like a dog with a bone.

  “Compromise?” he roared, spinning back into the room. His chest rose and fell like a great pair of bellows. “I will not hear of it!” He pointed with a stubby finger to a portrait that hung on the wall above the fireplace. It was pitched at an unfortunate angle, its frame chipped and festooned with cobwebs. “Did Morton Trevitt compromise?”

  Oats sat again, resigned to listening to another retelling of Trevitt’s favourite story. Placing his hat on the table, he leaned back in his chair in a vain attempt to get comfortable. He noticed the plaster around the chimneybreast was cracked and falling away from the wall in places. He suspected the portrait of Morton Trevitt hid an even greater multitude of sins.

  “That man came into the world with nothing,” Trevitt was declaiming, a distinct tremor in his voice, “and left it a rich man. He was shunned by the villagers, obstructed at every turn, yet still he prevailed. He brought cherries to Larton Dean and proved them all wrong. Soon enough, they were beating at his door for work, and he delighted in turning them away.”

  Oats knew all this, of course. He was only in place because his grandfather had seen fit to invest in Morton’s farm when all others had spurned him. The two families had been intimately entwined ever since. Oats’ father had served Trevitt’s father and now Oats served Trevitt. It was the way of things, as much as Oats would wish it otherwise.

  “I will not hear of compromise, Oats. You would do well to remember it.” Trevitt thrust out his lantern jaw in defiance.

  “Then your harvest will be left to rot,” Oats said, simply. “You cannot go to the village for help.”

  “Nor would I want to. If it's just me and the wife, we’ll bring it in. There’s enough hours in the day.”

  Oats sighed to himself. He knew that even Trevitt didn’t believe that. There was a camp of travellers at least twenty strong in the old quarry at Chalk Wood, and they would all be needed to bring the fruit in on time. Trevitt would need many more hours in the day to bring it in with just his wife at his side.

  “Is that what I must tell them?” Oats stood in readiness to leave, shaking his head in exasperation. He fixed his eyes on Trevitt in a gaze that gave the farmer to understand this was his last chance.

  Trevitt knew the old man was right, of course. He always was. Oats had been in the right with the building of the new barns and with the draining of the lower fields. Trevitt had made a pretty penny from Oats’ schemes and ideas. Never once had he asked for recompense, and therein lay his weakness. Therein, mused Trevitt as he looked the old man up and down, lay the reason why he, Trevitt, was the owner of the largest cherry orchard in the Thames Valley, whilst Oats had languished in a servile position all his life. However, whilst Trevitt knew him to be right, it didn’t follow he had to agree with him. This dispute threatened the very existence of his farm. Give them an inch and those travellers would take a mile. And there was something else at threat too, something much more precious than the farm and its attendant income; Trevitt’s pride. He would not be seen to buckle to a rabble of gypsies and vagabonds. They must be taught a lesson and kept in their place. The sooner the season was over and they disappeared back to their own filth, the better. Trevitt despised them. Not because they represented the worst of humanity but because, in truth, he was but a step, just a poor harvest away from falling to their level. Life on the farm, on any farm, was harsh. Two of the three hectares at Trevitt’s disposal were given over to the growing of cherries in three orchards. To pay his rent, effect repairs and pay for the running of the farm, every cherry must be picked. This year even more so, as the purchase of nets to be thrown over the trees in defiance of the birds had set him back a small fortune. This year he would not only be dependent on the cherries, but the cutting of grass beneath the trees for sale as hay. He would not see his enterprise jeopardised by an unruly rag-tag of dissolutes.

  “Tell ’em to go to Hell,” rounded Trevitt, his chest heaving. “And pick the Devil’s own cherries if they must!”

  Oats opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by a flurry of activity at the door. Turning, he saw a woman in a torn dress and tatty shawl standing in the door, her face a picture of thunder.

  “You’ve blood upon your hands, Maxwell Trevitt,” she cried, “and a man’s death upon your conscience!” She clutched a squealing baby to her bosom.

  Oats could see a young boy grasping at her skirts, his freckled face caked with dust He recognised him as the woman’s son, Tom.

  “What is it with the Cousins that they none of them keep a civil tongue in their mouths?” Trevitt spat. The woman's face was caked with the dust of the fields, and Oats could see where tears had streaked her cheeks. “What means this interruption?”

  “He is dead! Murdered!” the woman wailed, raising a finger to point accusingly at Trevitt.

  “Oats,” spluttered Trevitt, turning away from the woman, “will you go find Fletcher Cousins and bid him keep a firmer hand on his wife?”

  “He is found right enough, Maxwell Trevitt,” the woman keened. “Found hanging from a tree. Driven to it by his treatment at your hands!”

  A thick silence hung in the room. Trevitt blinked in confusion. “Boy,” he commanded, “what is the truth of this?”

  Tom slid into the room from behind his mother, his head bowed. Oats saw his face was flushed as much as from exertion as from his tears. His blond hair lay plastered to his forehead with sweat. His calves were raw with scratches and nettle stings and his breath came q
uick and short. He had clearly been running.

  “He’s to be found at the end of a rope,” he panted. “I cut him down but left him there.”

  Oats glanced to the thickset man by the window. Trevitt looked taken aback by the news, but there was something about the curl of his lip that led Oats to believe he was not entirely displeased. Trevitt nodded curtly to Oats.

  “Go with the boy,” he barked. The old man took the lad by the shoulder and steered him through the door. “Pick up a cart from the orchards,” Trevitt called at their retreating backs. Suddenly, the farmer was all concern. “Mrs Cousins,” he soothed, “please take a seat.”

  “I will not sit with you,” she returned, her eyes burning bright. “Nor will I rest until I see you hanged like my poor Fletcher!”

  II

  The Lie Of The Land

  Detective Sergeant Anthony Graves knocked gingerly at the door, a frown creasing his usually cheery features. He had known Inspector Bowman for the best part of five years and had accompanied him on numerous investigations. He had been with the inspector through his darkest hours and had attempted, in his own inimitable fashion, to lighten his days when he could, for which he hoped Bowman might be grateful. He felt, through it all, that he had got to know the inspector well. So, it was with some surprise that he found, after bounding up the stairs two at a time, that the door to Bowman’s office was shut and locked. Putting an ear to the polished oak, he fancied he could hear a scuffling movement from within and so knocked lightly. The movement ceased. Knocking again, Graves heard a sudden scurry and the closing of a cupboard door. There was a pause. Slowly, deliberately, the key turned in the lock and the door swung open. Graves could not help but gasp. The man before him bore little resemblance to the Bowman of old. He seemed a good six inches shorter. His skin was ashen and sickly looking, his hair limp and greasy. A pair of red eyes stared up at the young sergeant. They flicked furtively around the room as he motioned that Graves should enter. It was clear he had something to hide. Bowman flew to the shutters at his windows, throwing them open with a desperate display of energy with which he obviously hoped to convince the sergeant of his sobriety. He was fooling no one. As the morning light streamed into the office, Graves noticed that all was in disarray. Bowman’s jacket had been thrown over his wing-backed chair with careless abandon and papers littered his desk. The second chair had been pulled over to a window, and Graves had the distinct impression Bowman had been using it to rest his feet.