He continued to say it during the period between regaining the farmhouse and making the cal he knew he would have to make, when he had no clear sense of the passage of time and when he continual y wavered between the thought of making the cal , which would make things final and definite, and the thought that he should go back down to the oak tree, because what had happened perhaps might not real y have happened at al . Or because he should just be there with his father. Up here, in the farmhouse, he’d already deserted him. “You bastard.” He said it as he wondered whether he should wash off the muck that had got on his hands or whether he should leave it there for al of time to erase or ingrain. “You bastard.” And he’d got so rhythmical y used to saying it, that when he final y made the cal and was able to get out that other word, “Police,” it’s not inconceivable that he might have said, “You bastard,” too, into the phone.
He didn’t mention his repeated utterance of this phrase to Bob Ireton and his senior companion (or to anyone else), nor did he mention that during the preceding day and evening, fol owing the Remembrance Day gathering, he had also uttered the phrase, if not aloud, but inside himself or perhaps under his breath. But the fact that he’d vented it, one way or the other, so much beforehand somehow enabled Jack to regain a degree of composure—it was his strange way, even, of haranguing himself—and to give the detailed and relatively focussed account of events that he gave. Al of which, together with the actual evidence lying there in Barton Field, added up to the overwhelming conclusion, to be endorsed by the inquest, that Michael Luxton had taken his own life.
Neither policeman felt it was his place to comment on the strangenesses, so far as they knew them, of Jack’s behaviour—who wouldn’t behave strangely?—or on his technical y inappropriate actions. He shouldn’t have touched the body or even have moved the gun. But this was his own father lying there. Jack was hardly some meddling third party. The poor man had done what he did and could
—when, quite possibly, he might have slept through the whole incident. And he was plainly mortified by the fact that, had he been awake just a little earlier, he might have prevented al of it from happening.
One didn’t have to search far for a motive. Michael Luxton was like others. The peculiar circumstances of Remembrance Day seemed tragical y to have precipitated something. Michael had either gone to bed with the not quite complete intention of acting, or he’d woken in the dead of night to form that soon-executed intention.
Detective Sergeant Hunt gave permission for the body to be moved by the ambulance men. It was a laborious and upsetting job transporting it up the steep field. The gun and Michael’s donkey jacket and cap were taken separately as evidence, to be returned later. Likewise everything in Michael’s pockets, including the medal.
Thus it would have been possible for the two policemen, out of curiosity as much as anything, to inspect the medal and see what was written on its reverse. It had been one of Michael’s infrequent, sombre-faced, hard-to-gauge jokes that the medal had been a good one to give a farmer’s boy, since what it said on the back was “For Distinguished Conduct in the Field.”
DS Hunt had thought it right, for safety reasons, to examine the gun straight away. It was unlikely that there was a cartridge stil in there (why should Michael have done things by halves?) and it was confirmed that both barrels had been recently (and it must have been simultaneously) discharged and that the gun was now unloaded. Sergeant Hunt also asked Bob, after the ambulance had departed, if
—while he himself remained with Jack at the farmhouse—
he couldn’t find a bucket or two of water and (it would be a grim chore, he knew) carry them down to the oak and give things a slooshing down. It would be a decency. This was technical y interfering with evidence too, but DS Hunt felt he had seen and noted careful y al the evidence necessary, and it would be a sort of kindness. PC Ireton felt likewise.
It was unfortunate in one sense, but fortunate in another, that Jack couldn’t help overhearing this, and so offered to drive them al down in the pick-up with a jerry can of water, buckets and even a stiff-bristled yard brush. He appeared in need of things to do, no matter how gruesome. Bob had said that no, that wouldn’t be necessary, but it might help if he could borrow the pick-up and be told where the jerry can was.
Jack was also manifestly and increasingly worried about his livestock and about several regular morning tasks not attended to. He seemed, in fact, to have a gathering sense that the farm was about to disintegrate around him—which had only been Michael’s apparently no longer tolerable situation. But al this was duly taken care of. Both Constable Ireton and DS Hunt had the forethought to appreciate that a farm, even in extraordinary circumstances, cannot simply shut down. So there had been some necessary, discreet communications and a prevailing upon a horrified but quickly ral ying community spirit. It wouldn’t have been long anyway before word spread around.
It certainly wasn’t long before a battered Land Rover containing Jimmy and El ie Merrick, dressed as for a hard-working day on their own farm, pul ed up in the Jebb yard.
This was the first time Jack had seen such a thing. But then he’d seen other things today he’d never seen before.
Jimmy and El ie had come the short way—by the route with which Jack was very familiar—across the fields, through the boundary gate and over Ridge Field, which adjoined Barton Field. The direct route would then have been along the top of Ridge Field, to enter the Jebb yard close to the Big Barn, but Jimmy hadn’t hesitated to drive along the bottom of Ridge Field and then, despite slipping wheels, slowly up by the low hedge alongside Barton Field, so getting a good view down across the dip to the oak tree.
The body was stil there, though about to be moved, and mostly and perhaps merciful y hidden behind the tree trunk.
Jimmy and El ie could only real y make out two very stil Wel ington boots.
When the Land Rover arrived in the yard it was impossible, particularly for the two policemen, to read precisely the expression on old Merrick’s face. It had a gnome-like quality that could have meant anything—triumph or shock or perhaps a recent quick but significant intake of alcohol. In any case, he’d stuck his head out of the window and explained to DS Hunt (they knew Bob Ireton) that they were neighbours, they were the Merricks, who were long and good old neighbours of the Luxtons, and they were here to help.
El ie, in contrast, had been silent and had looked, for a while, rather white. But she soon began to make herself useful. In fact she made her busy presence felt around Jebb Farm that day as if she herself might have owned it. It even looked at one point as though she might have been preparing to stay the night, which would have been another first. Jimmy might actual y have conceded it. But just when it had begun to seem a distinct possibility, Mrs. Warburton, with cardboard boxes of provisions she thought appropriate, drove over from Leke Hil Cross. She was older now, but she had her memories of Jebb Farmhouse and of when she’d been of vital assistance before. And, like some woman picking over a battlefield, she herself voiced the question that, above that stil -insistent chorus of “You bastard,” was also tol ing through Jack’s head.