Free Beneath the Soil by Fay Sampson Page B

Perhaps a few more DIY divorces, instead of paying people like us who know what we’re doing. But out there on the farms, it’s a different picture. It’s a hard row to plough – low prices, high costs. The sort of loneliness there used not to be when every other man was an ag. lab. And now climate change on top of everything else. It’s either drought or floods these days, and another season’s crop lost. It can drive a man to suicide, or worse.’
    She played with her teaspoon, her eyes bent downwards.
    She recovered herself with a visible effort.
    â€˜I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be loading all this on you. You’ve been really helpful. And goodness knows Philip needs all the help he can get. Look, take my card. If you can think of anything else that might be relevant, ring me.’
    Suzie looked over her shoulder. A single-decker bus was pulling into the square. She yelped with dismay. ‘My bus! Sorry, I’ve got to go. Thanks for the tea – I haven’t had scones and cream in ages. Look, if you need me again you can find my number on the website for the Age of Silver charity. I must fly.’
    â€˜Of course. And thank you again.’ Frances moved her chair aside as Suzie fled for the door and raced to the bus stop on the other side of the square.
    Suzie leaned back in her seat, recovering her breath. The bus rolled forwards, past the now-empty churchyard.
    Only then did she remember that she hadn’t told Frances Nosworthy about the man lurking among the graves.

TEN
    S he should not have felt guilty about attending a funeral. But as the bus rolled homewards, she felt a peculiar reluctance to tell her family where she had been. The lashing tongue of DCI Brewer still smarted. Just for a moment, as the two detectives had passed her at the church gate, she had met the taller woman’s cold blue eyes. The police officer had said nothing to her, but Suzie had felt her disbelief and scorn. She knew the chief inspector was angered by her determination not to let the matter go and leave it to the professionals.
    It wasn’t like that, Suzie argued with herself. I didn’t go to Moortown because I thought I might discover something. I went to the funeral because … oh, because Eileen Caseley had been so troubled, yet so generous. She could just have sent us away. But she took us into her home and gave us what help she could.
    She thought of the woman’s attempt at smartness, the silk blouse and the linen skirt, incongruous in the dilapidated farmhouse.
    And now she’s dead. Violently. I wanted to do what little I could to pray her to her rest.
    She was afraid that the rest of the Fewings would see it as the chief inspector did.
    And, after all, she
had
found something. She shivered as the summer landscape sped past her. That strange man in the leather hat. She had not imagined that his eyes had been directed at her, rather than at the people round Eileen Caseley’s grave. It was unsettling that a silent stare should be so frightening.
    At least Frances Nosworthy was an ally. She had seemed genuinely grateful for Suzie’s information. It was somehow reassuring to know that the solicitor’s business card was tucked into her shoulder bag.
    She was later back than she had intended to be. She fended off Tom and Millie’s questions with the excuse that she must hurry to get the meal ready.
    Millie, untypically, joined her in chopping vegetables. When Tom was out of earshot, she threw her mother a conspiratorial grin.
    â€˜So you went, then? To the funeral.’
    Suzie paused in the act of stirring flour into the sauce. ‘How …?’
    â€˜Give me credit for some intelligence, Mum. Look at you. Dark grey skirt, white blouse, in the middle of summer. Why aren’t you wearing slacks and a tee-shirt? Or a summer dress?’
    Suzie looked down at herself. She had hung up the mauve jacket in the wardrobe. What was left was not