Peter Lovesey: Skeleton Hill

Tipping rubbed his hands. He had a confident smile. ‘What a splendid idea.’

‘I’m referring to the game you were playing with Major Swithin on July seventeenth, the date of the battle re-enactment.’

‘That’s put me on the spot straight away. We play almost every day. If you’re asking the score, I doubt if I can recall it, but I’m usually the winner.’

This would be his defence then, making light of the interview in his jocular style. Better than silence, Diamond thought. ‘You’ll recall this one because the major took a call from his wife.’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time. Agnes never lets the poor fellow off the leash.’ He turned to his solicitor. ‘Don’t you agree that pocket telephones are the curse of the modern age? One sounded off at morning service in the Abbey the other day. Colonel Bogey in the Bishop’s sermon. It isn’t on.’

Diamond kept to his brief. ‘What Mrs Swithin had seen through her binoculars was two soldiers in royalist uniform up to their elbows in earth by the fallen oak tree your society has vowed to protect. They unearthed a bone, a human bone that they reburied. The major tells me he shared this information with you, as a fellow member of the Lansdown Society.’

‘Do you know, I sometimes think Agnes Swithin suspects Reggie of being with some floozy when he’s out of her sight? She finds these silly pretexts to call him unexpectedly.’

‘Except you didn’t treat this as a silly pretext. You completed the round – it was almost through when you took the call – and broke with your usual habit of a drinking session afterwards in the clubhouse. You made some excuse about an appointment and left immediately.’

‘Doesn’t sound like me. At my age you don’t do anything immediately.’

‘I spoke to the major at his home this evening.’

‘He said I left without having a drink? Or without buying one?’ He grinned at his solicitor.

‘You had reason to be alarmed about what you’d heard, and we’ll deal with that presently. You’re going to tell me you got in your car and drove to the battlefield on behalf of the Lansdown Society, to check the tree, which was supposed to be off limits to the Sealed Knot.’

The solicitor raised a finger. ‘Have a care, superintendent. You know very well you shouldn’t put words into my client’s mouth.’

‘Did I get it wrong?’ Diamond said, pretending to be mystified. ‘Did he go there for another purpose?’

Tipping looked from one to the other. Suddenly the questioning had turned serious and he was uncertain how to proceed. ‘What if I tell you I didn’t go there at all?’

Diamond countered with, ‘What if I tell you we have a sighting of your car at the side of the road?’ Actually they hadn’t, but if Tipping wanted to trade in speculation, so could he.

‘All right, I was testing you out. Your first assumption was correct, old boy. I take a particular interest in that tree. It’s treasure trove to a botanist, host to one of the rarest lichens in Great Britain.’

‘It isn’t,’ Diamond said. ‘And I doubt if it ever was.’

Tipping took a sharp, surprised breath that he was forced to account for. ‘What’s this? A policeman with some knowledge of botany? I think he’s about to tell us lichens don’t grow on trees.’ He shook with amusement.

‘I’m quoting one of the Lansdown Society. Your botanist member, Charlie Smart, told me the only lichen on that fallen oak is a common variety found everywhere.’

‘Charlie hasn’t been with us long. Probably doesn’t know where to look.’

‘Neither does the British Lichen Society, it seems. They have no record of it on Lansdown. Could you be mistaken?’

A climbdown was called for. ‘I’ll look pretty damn silly if I am. The identification was done years ago by one of our members who passed on. Let’s hope the rare lichen didn’t hop the twig as well.’ He chanced a smile at Septimus and got a cold stare in return. ‘Why don’t we talk about something we all know more about?’

Diamond nodded, encouraged not from scoring a point, but from teasing out a major admission from the suspect: he’d defi-n itely visited the tree. ‘We’ll turn to Rupert Hope, then – one of the men Mrs Swithin saw unearthing the bone, a history lecturer with an interest in the Civil War. That bone could have been of historical interest if it belonged to a soldier in the real battle. Although Rupert agreed to put it back in the soil, he appears to have gone back secretly after everyone left the field. He thought he’d made a find, you see.’

‘We’re in the realm of speculation again,’ Tipping said, more to his solicitor than Diamond. ‘They don’t have a clue what happened. “He appears to have gone back secretly.” That’s a stab in the dark, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Does it matter to you if we get it wrong?’ Diamond asked.

‘It does if you’re accusing me of crimes I didn’t commit.’

‘You’re ahead of me. I haven’t accused you of anything. We know Rupert was attacked that evening because he didn’t return to his car. He’d changed out of his battle armour. He was struck on the back of the head with a blunt instrument. It wasn’t enough to kill him, but he was left for dead. He wandered Lansdown in a confused state, suffering memory loss, for over three weeks. Then he was hit again, fatally.’

‘Nothing to do with me, old chum.’

‘You carry a blunt instrument in your car. In fact, you have a selection of them – your golf clubs.’

‘Is this a joke?’

Diamond turned to Septimus and nodded.

‘What on earth…?’ Tipping said, as the colour rose in his cheeks.

Septimus had stooped down and lifted a bag of golf clubs.

‘The nerve of it. Those are mine,’ Tipping said.

His solicitor leaned close and spoke to him in an undertone, no doubt informing him that the police are permitted to enter and search the house of a person detained for a serious arrestable offence.

It was a lightweight bag of the sort golfers without caddies can carry themselves. Septimus unzipped the top.

Diamond asked him to count the clubs.

‘Thirteen.’

‘Unlucky for some,’ Diamond couldn’t resist saying. ‘According to the laws, which I’ve checked, you’re allowed a maximum of fourteen. A dedicated golfer such as yourself won’t carry fewer. Where’s the missing club, Sir Colin?’

For the first time, he didn’t have an answer.

‘I expect it’s a heavy one,’ Diamond said. ‘An iron, going by the shape of the injuries to the dead man’s skull.’

‘Are you accusing my client of murder?’ the solicitor asked.

‘I haven’t yet,’ Diamond said. ‘I’m waiting to hear what he did with the fourteenth club.’

There was still no response from Tipping.

‘If you are,’ the solicitor said, ‘I must insist on an adjournment.’

‘Painful as it must be to a golfer to destroy one of his clubs,’ Diamond said, ‘that seems to have happened here. I don’t see how he could have lost it.’ He thanked Septimus and told him to put the bag aside. ‘Rupert survived one crack on the head, but the second really did for him. Why the delay? For a few days he was missing. Then he was seen trying car doors; foraging, in effect. The amnesia had set in. He didn’t even remember his own name. The danger for his killer was that Rupert’s memory would come back. Worse, he’d taken to sleeping in the gatehouse, a short distance from Beckford’s grotto.’

‘Beckford’s what?’ the solicitor said.

‘An underground tunnel with a secret of its own that your client knows all about.’

Tipping gripped the desk with both hands and still said nothing. All the colour had drained from his face.