Grave Matters by Margaret Yorke Page B

now she’s ill. Oh, and her car had a puncture.’
    ‘She’s just accident-prone,’ said Jane. ‘And people do have punctures all the time, even with tubeless tyres.’
    ‘I went to the garage at Meldsmead on Thursday for some petrol, and got talking to the owner. Carol’s so-called puncture wasn’t one. There was no trace of a hole in it when the wheel was brought in for repair. It must have been let down. Deliberately, I mean.’
    ‘How? Couldn’t it have been the valve?’ Michael asked.
    ‘The flat tyre was found after the Bruces had been out to a party. It was completely flat – right down on the rim. It couldn’t have been just a leaky valve – that would have gone down slowly and might have taken twenty-four hours or more to lose all its air.’
    ‘Some hooligan boys let it down,’ Jane said promptly.
    ‘In a remote lane, well away from the village? Where there’s no other house, just the Bradshaws’ market garden?’
    ‘Certainly the car couldn’t have been driven on a really flat tyre without it being noticed,’ Michael said. ‘Who did spot it?’
    ‘David. He was going to drive it home, but he noticed the car sagging – you know how they do when one tyre is really down. They had no pump and he changed the wheel.’
    ‘But this is fanciful in the extreme. Why should anyone want to get Carol Bruce to leave Abbot’s Lodge?’ Michael demanded.
    ‘It’s been empty for ages. Maybe some gang had got it earmarked as a hideout. Maybe something is hidden there – thieves do dump stuff and collect it later, even after years, when they come out of gaol,’ said Jane.
    ‘Well, all right, let’s accept that, however unlikely it seems, as some sort of reason. It still doesn’t connect up with your old ladies,’ said Michael.
    ‘Supposing we could find a link?’ Patrick said.
    ‘There can’t be one.’
    ‘There’s Meldsmead.’
    ‘Do you believe that Miss Amelia saw someone like the train robbers hiding their loot at Abbot’s Lodge and they did her in? Nonsense,’ said Jane. ‘If there was anything odd going on there and she knew about it, she’d report it at once – her duty, you know. Don’t forget the Slade House motto – “Virtue in all I do”.’
    ‘No. Miss Amelia’s death was an accident. That youth jostled her and she fell. It could have happened to any old lady who happened to be standing where she was at that moment. It was her own fault for not being in a better position. She happened to be standing above a sheer drop – short, but sheer. She fell and bowled down the stairs below. A younger person would have retrieved their balance somehow – clutched at someone, maybe had a broken leg, but might not have been killed.’
    ‘She hadn’t found some ancient archaeological prize she was about to smuggle back to England in her reticule?’ suggested Michael.
    ‘If she’d found an archaeological gem she’d have handed it over at once to some authority,’ said Jane.
    ‘So she wasn’t running up faked amphorae in the cellar of Abbot’s Lodge either. It’s not her ghost haunting Carol,’ Michael said.
    ‘Why don’t you forget it, Patrick?’ Jane said. ‘It’s making you unhappy. Usually you’re all animated when you’re on the trail of something. You’re wrong this time, surely, aren’t you? It’s just a chapter of rather unhappy accidents. The next thing you hear, Carol will be full of beans and it will all be forgotten. The broken floorboard was probably dishonest workmen – maybe they replaced the worst bits and the previous owners paid for the whole thing, all unbeknownst.’
    ‘You could be right,’ said Patrick. ‘I think I’ll take your advice. Anyway, I’ve a lot on next week. I’ll calm down unless someone else falls down some stairs.’ Or until he had the result of the tests on the blackberry pie.
    And next week Ellen was coming to Oxford. Would she still come, or would she stand him up?

 
II
     
    She did come. He met her at the station