Fethering 02 (2001) - Death on the Downs Read Online Free PDF Page A

match.”
    “But…” Will Maples licked his lips as if to moisten them. “Have they any idea whose bones they are?”
    Graham Forbes let out a dry laugh. “Give them time. I know your chum Lennie Baylis is a bright boy, but I don’t think even he could provide a complete life history from one look at a skeleton.”
    “No.” The landlord chuckled, but he didn’t sound amused. “I wonder where they’ll start their investigations…”
    “You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work that out. Presumably they’ll start right here in Weldisham. Check out whether anyone’s gone missing from the village recently.”
    Will Maples was thoughtful for a moment. Then he hazarded, “The Lutteridge girl?”
    “That’s a thought, Will.”
    The old head nodded insecurely on its thin neck. “The Lutteridge girl.”

FOUR
    “Oh, I’ve met the Lutteridges,” said Freddie, eager to be part of things. “Met them at a drinks party we were invited to first weekend we arrived. Miles and Gillie, isn’t it?”
    “That’s right.” Graham Forbes’s manner towards the newcomer was diplomatically balanced. He was polite, but kept his distance.
    “So this is their daughter you’re talking about?”
    “Tamsin, yes.”
    “They didn’t mention her when we met.”
    “Probably wouldn’t have done. She’s hardly covered the family name with glory.”
    “Oh?”
    “Had a perfectly good job in London, working on some magazine or other, then chucked it just like that and came back to sponge off her parents.”
    “I heard she was ill,” Will Maples interceded cautiously.
    “Ill?”
    “Some allergy or something.”
    “Allergic to hard work, if you ask me.” Graham Forbes was clearly saddling up a hobbyhorse. “Trouble with kids these days, they’re cosseted. Cotton-woolled through school, subsidized by the state to laze around for three years at university. They don’t even read, you know, just waste their time on videos and computer games. Then after university they come out into the real world, and is it any wonder they can’t cope?
    “I think drugs have a lot to do with it too. In my young day, everyone drank themselves silly, but drugs were for the really depraved. Nowadays, the kids seem to think no more of taking drugs than blowing their noses. And it’s all over the place, you know, not just in the inner cities. Police stopped some kids in a car on the Weldisham Lane only a couple of weeks ago and found they were under the influence of drugs. God knows where they got them from.”
    There was a silence. Will Maples looked studiously at the counter. If Graham Forbes was suggesting anyone had got drugs in the Hare and Hounds, it wasn’t an accusation he wished to discuss.
    “This is the Excuse Generation, you know. Whatever happens, whatever weaknesses of character kids show, there’s always some excuse, some psychological reason for it. Father didn’t show enough affection to them, mother showed too much affection to them, they’ve got an allergy .” The word was marinated in contempt. “In my young day, we just got on with things.”
    This statement, delivered with finality, seemed to require some endorsement. Carole couldn’t say anything, Nick clearly never said more than he had to. Will Maples still seemed to be working round his mental dial, finding the right cliche rejoinder, when Freddie came in with the necessary response.
    “Yes, you’re right, Graham. They’ve had it easy.”
    “You got children, Freddie?”
    “No. Pam and I…No, we haven’t…” He seemed about to add something. “Sadly…” Carole wondered. Or ‘Thank God’? It was hard to tell from Freddie’s manner.
    Will Maples seemed over-casual as he asked, “You haven’t heard definitely that it was Tamsin’s body they found?”
    “Not body, Will. Bones.”
    “Comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? Either way, the person in question’s dead.”
    “True enough. No, no, obviously not been confirmed it’s anyone. Police