"Harold Bendish?" he said. "There"s a lot of folk that"ll be glad to hear you"re alive. By the time thee and me"s finished, I"ll be surprised if you"re still among them."
CHAPTER XII.
"What a trifle it is in all its Bearings to the really important points of one"s existence even in this World!"
It was, thought Pascoe later as he ran his mental video of the scene, less like a suspect being interrogated than a young king, Alexander, say, dealing patiently with the complaints of his disaffected satraps.
Wield, antic.i.p.ating they would move off, said, "On your feet, lad," and Bendish rose willingly enough but winced as he put weight on his left foot and leaned on the ornate walking stick.
"What"s up? Sore leg?"
"It"s a bit stiff," admitted the young man.
"Let"s have a look," said Wield.
Obediently Bendish pulled up his left trouser to reveal a neatly repaired jagged gash in his calf.
"I recognize them st.i.tches," said Wield, fingering his ear.
"I recognize those teeth marks," said Pascoe, shuddering. "Fop?"
"That"s right."
The two younger policemen glanced inquiringly at Dalziel, who said, "All right, sit down, lad. We can get the formalities over here as easy as anywhere."
It was not intended as a kindness. PACE required that a suspect should be interrogated as soon as was humanly possible under properly controlled conditions with a tape- recorder running. But Dalziel liked when he could to get his script edited well in advance.
So the young man sat down again and, as there was only room for one on the bench unless their purpose was amatory, the others stayed standing.
"You"ve not had my letters, then?" said Bendish. "I thought you can"t have had, from what Larry was saying."
Dalziel, looking irritated to have the initiative wrested from him, said, "We"ve seen them now, lad. Only difference they make is whether you"re a bent cop, or were just masquerading as a cop when you committed your crimes. Either way, it"s worth an extra five stretch."
Pascoe rolled his eyes at this exaggeration but Bendish seemed unaffected by it. He said, "I"m sorry that people have been put to a lot of trouble because my letters were delayed. But apart from searching for me to make sure I"m all right, what else are you after, sir?"
Dalziel said, "OK, son. You want to play it that way, fine. Let"s get down to cases. Harold Bendish, did you two nights ago by making a false report of a possible intruder gain entrance to Scarletts?"
"It wasn"t exactly a false report," said Bendish. "There was an intruder."
"Eh?"
"Yes," said the youth, grinning broadly. "Me."
Wield and Pascoe looked expectantly at the Fat Man, waiting for the thunderbolts, but he merely pa.s.sed a huge hand across his face and went on, "While you were inside, you persuaded Mrs Bayle to turn off the alarms, and then your accomplice diverted Mrs Bayle with a telephone call from a mobile phone?"
Bendish considered, nodded, said, "Yes."
"And while Mrs Bayle was out of the room, you removed a painting from the wall, pa.s.sed it through the window to your accomplice, took in a copy which you had had prepared, and hung it up in place of the original. Right?"
"Yes."
"And this accomplice was Miss Frances Harding of Old Hall?"
Bendish hesitated, and that hesitation confirmed what Pascoe already knew, that the young man was deeply in love. His only line of defence against these charges was that the painting was Fran"s anyway, and he could hardly advance that without naming the girl. Yet when it came to the point, he found it hard.
He said, "It was all my idea . .."
"Oh aye? And she"s little Miss Innocent, is she? Come on, lad. We know all about you two banging away in the garden shed!" said Dalziel with provocative coa.r.s.eness.
Bendish flushed the lovely colour Wield recalled from their first encounter, and his fingers whitened around his stick. Quickly, Pascoe said, "She left the phone under the window, didn"t she? And you went back for it. And it started ringing .. ." (that would have been Guy the Heir trying to call Girlie) ".. . and Mrs Bayle let Fop out..."
"He got me as I was going over the gate," said Bendish, wincing at the memory. "There was blood everywhere and my trousers were ruined. Fran was marvellous. She drove us back to the village and then we. .."
His voice tailed off. He was still worried about mentioning names, Pascoe realized. Not gra.s.sing was as much a problem for cops as for crooks.
"You went to Corpse Cottage," he said. "Because that"s where you"d arranged to meet Caddy to hand over the painting so she could remove it from the frame and put Aunt Edwina back in."
It was obvious when you thought about it, though Bendish was regarding him with awe and even Dalziel and Wield looked impressed.
Encouraged, he pressed on. "Fran probably wanted to take you to hospital, but that was going to need far too much explanation. So you said she could patch you up, she had the training and the equipment, and you"d recently updated your teta.n.u.s jabs and were still taking a course of antibiotics as a result of your run-in with Guy the Heir."
"Have you been talking to Fran?" demanded the youth. "Or Caddy? That"s it. Caddy!"
"No need. But you needed somewhere to lie up. You couldn"t stay in the cottage, it was too dangerous to smuggle you into the Hall, so ..."
He paused. To his audience it may have seemed a rhetorical flourish. In fact it was simply a drying-up. They"d gone to the vicarage, that was clear. But why in the name of G.o.d had Lillingstone allowed himself to be sucked into this crazy and criminous business?
G.o.d, who is sometimes amused to take the profane use of his name as genuine prayer, decided to take Pascoe off the hook, and gave Harold Bendish a nudge.
"It was Caddy who suggested the Vicar," he said. "Larry ... well, Larry"s got this thing about her. Everybody knows only he thinks they don"t. So once she explained all about the school and everything . . . and I think it helped that it was one in the eye for Justin Halavant as the Vicar"s been a bit narked with him ever since word got out about the pa.s.s he made at Caddy ..."
"Hang about!" commanded Dalziel. "The school and everything ... ?"
"Oh aye," said Wield, who saw no reason why Pascoe should grab all the detective kudos. "They were stealing the picture so they could sell it and get enough money to save the school, I thought everyone knew that. I expect the idea started when the Vicar gave young Fran her gran"s journal and she read about Job Halavant picking the painting up cheap. And I expect it were Caddy who spotted it at Scarletts .. ."
"It was the frame," said Bendish. "She was in Fran"s room one day talking about the ill.u.s.trations she were doing for Mr Digweed"s edition of the Journal, and she looked at Aunt Edwina and said she knew where there was a frame exactly the same as that, only the picture in it looked to be worth a h.e.l.l of a lot more. One thing led to another .. ."
"And you all ended up in a conspiracy to rob," said Dalziel, eager to bring proceedings back down to earth and start arresting people. "Grand. Mr Pascoe, would you care to .. . ?"
But Pascoe, with i"s still to dot and t"s to cross, took the enormous risk of ignoring him.
He said, "The next morning Mr Lillingstone took the uniforms, or at least one and a half uniforms, to the dry cleaners in town, popped into Marks and bought a pair of trousers of the same colour to replace the torn ones, and went to Corpse Cottage to put them in the wardrobe. Only he didn"t realize that not only was the hunt already up for you, Harry, but also Halavant had spotted the subst.i.tution and worked out who must have taken it. Lillingstone lied quite well for a vicar. Funny what a man will do for love, isn"t it, Harry? I mean, that"s what got you into this mess, isn"t it? Love? All for love?"
He spoke gently, almost sadly, not at all mockingly.
Dalziel made a noise like a dog trying to bring up a bit of bone that had got stuck in its throat.
Bendish gave him a look which was composed equally of scorn and pity.
He said seriously, "If you"ve read my letters I thought you"d have understood. Of course I love Fran so much I"d do anything for her. But I hope I"d have done this anyway, because it needed doing. It was too important not to do."
"For crying out loud!" exclaimed Dalziel. "You stole a sodding picture, you didn"t stop World War Three!"
"I don"t know about that," said Bendish. "I did something to help the village keep its school without having to sell the Green. Maybe ultimately that"ll help tip the balance, one more kid getting a decent education, one more place keeping out the concrete. I don"t know. All I know is that if things are perfectible, if things really can get better, then we"ve all got to start where we"re at. I tried to give myself a bit of lift-off by joining the police. It seemed to make sense. If you want to influence society, go where there"s a chance of getting a bit of clout. I should have learned up in Newcastle. It didn"t work out there but I just blamed myself."
"Whereas it"s actually the police force"s fault?" said Pascoe, interested.
"No. Not as such. Look, I gave it another try down here. I tried to be what everyone told me a good cop should be, so that ultimately I could fit in and really help. Ens...o...b.. seemed so together, so very much itself, that I felt I should be able to make it work here if I could make it work anywhere. But after a while it began to feel just like it felt up in Newcastle, I was going nowhere, nothing was happening, and that"s when you start wondering if maybe the reason there"s so much c.r.a.p in the world is that that"s the natural state of things, and you begin to suspect that even in a place like this, if you probe too far beneath the surface, you"ll find it bubbling around down there, the old unchangeable primaeval c.r.a.p we all came from and we"re all going back to. I got very depressed. Then I met Fran, and that changed things completely for me personally. I knew I had to leave the Force, of course. It was the wrong place for me. I saw now that in a perfect world we wouldn"t need the police, so there was no way I could work towards that perfection while I was actually part of one of the main symbols of imperfection, was there?"
"You know," said Dalziel, "could be I"m wrong about you, lad. You spout that stuff in court and mebbe you won"t get banged up in jail for five years, they"ll just throw you into a psycho ward for life! Now, Chief Inspector Pascoe, this being your case, strictly speaking, if you haven"t forgotten the words, would you like to arrest Mr Bendish, or shall I?"
"Don"t you think we ought to talk to the others concerned?" said Pascoe. "I mean, Mr Halavant hasn"t yet made a formal complaint. And if in fact this picture does indeed really belong to Fran ..."
Wield, seeing that the Fat Man was getting close to apoplexy, looked at his watch and said, "They"ll likely all be at the Squire"s Reckoning, sir. I get the impression no one in these parts misses out on a free feast, not when Miss Creed"s been doing the baking."
The angry blood hesitated, hung in suspense, then began to retreat from Dalziel"s face.
"I"m glad there"s still one of you can talk some sense," he said. "On your feet, lad. Let"s go and see if this Reckoning"s all it"s cracked up to be!"
Volume the fifth PROLOGUE BEING AN EXTRACT FROM THE DRAFT OF AN UNCOMPLETED History of Ens...o...b.. Parish BY THE REVEREND CHARLES FABIAN CAGE, D.D. (DECEASED) To a casual eye Ens...o...b.. may appear the prototypical English village, with its setting, its architecture, its antiquities, its society, its economy, all combining to offer something like that pastoral perfection of which the poets dream. Yet a closer examination reveals much about the place which is deceptive if not downright deceitful!
Take the name. No problem here, one would think. The village in the combe or valley of the River Een. Yet a little pause may make one wonder what on earth a combe is doing in this county of dales? Combes or coombes are commonplace in the West Country and (as cwms) in Wales, yet I cannot readily think of another example in Yorkshire. Ens...o...b.. is the kind of name someone might invent who had never been further north than, say, Hampshire! Toponymists typically offer a puzzling variety of alternative derivations, such as Enna"s Combe and Eanna"s Combe, the first suggesting a connection with the Sicilian vale where Proserpine, gathering flowers, herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis was gathered; the second implying that the Irish Saint Enda, or Eanna, rested here while on his way from Galloway (where he trained as a monk) to Rome to be ordained. Neither suggestion deals with the intrusive combe, but together they are interesting in the choice they offer between the Christian and the pagan worlds.
Less attractive to the scholars but much more persuasive to a native is the theory advanced by the well-known Yorkshire folklorist, P. N. Walker. He refers to a legend that at some time in the mythic past a monstrous Grendel-type creature appeared in the northlands, bringing death and destruction wherever it went. Only one isolated hamlet by foresight and cunning managed to avoid the creature"s depredations, and this became known as the village that escaped "the monstrous visitor", which is in Old English entisc c.u.ma, eventually reduced to Ens...o...b...
Unconvincing? Well, I like it. But what"s in a name anyway? A date now is something different. We ought to be able to trust a date. We find the year 1508 carved all over Old Hall. Yet researches show that the building was completed some time in the 1560s. It appears that Solomon Guillemard, the then Squire, having appropriated much of the wealth of the dissolved priory of St Margaret to himself and bought the land and remnants of the priory at a knock-down price, determined to confuse any subsequent investigation by naming his new manor Old Hall and predating it by half a century! Interestingly, this accords very well with considerable back-dating which has occurred in regard to the Guillemards" arrival in England. They were certainly not among the first wave of Norman n.o.bility who conquered with the Conqueror. Rather they appear to have been part of that great invasion of "carpetbaggers" which customarily sweeps in behind a victorious army.
I pointed this out to the Squire when he honoured me with the opening stanzas of his ballad history which describes his ancestors" deeds of derring-do at Hastings. I also mentioned that I could find no reference to this curious myth of the talismanic kingfisher before a court case of 1661 when, after twisting and turning throughout the period of the Civil War and the Commonwealth in a manner which made the Vicar of Bray look like the Rock of Ages, Squire Gabriel Guillemard was claiming back land along the Een which he alleged had been stolen from him by the Parliamentarians. Running out of legal argument and factual evidence, he suddenly produced this myth of the kingfisher plus a dozen witnesses to swear they had seen it fly to the precise boundary of the claimed land, then turn and fly upstream once more. n.o.body has ever lost money by overestimating the superst.i.tious credulity of an English jury, and the case was won.
Selwyn clearly knew all this. He remarked not unjustly that it ill behoved anyone in my line of business to insist on literal truth, and gave me another dozen quatrains for my pains!
I do not tell these stories to accuse the deviousness of the Guillemards, but rather to suggest that such a leading family is exactly what one would expect Ens...o...b.. to have chosen. Not chosen in any electoral democratic sense, of course, but by that process of natural selection which is how all living organisms contrive to survive. And Ens...o...b.. is a living organism, make no mistake about that, and an incredibly adaptable one too, androgynously apotropaic, ready to be anything in the expectation of being ever, accepting change as the price of unchange, an Artful Dodger of a village making one demand only of its inhabitants, which is unquestioning love. Fuctata non Perfecta (which incidentally was the coinage of one Cuthbert Guillemard who, after some misguided expressions of sympathy for Mary Stuart, decided after her execution that the family"s old French motto Sam loy, sanz foy or Lawless and Faithless was capable of misinterpretation), Fuctata non Perfecta really means, it"s better to be painted than perfect.
And so it is. For the monster is loose again, and has been these past several years, roaming free and ravaging the land. It too has the gift of disguise, now appearing as a wild-eyed woman, now as a vacantly smiling man. But always it gives itself away by the reek of greed and corruption that hangs about it.
Let us pray that when it reaches Ens...o...b.. it will not recognize us under our paint, but pa.s.s us by.
CHAPTER I.
"The truth is that the Secret has spread so far as to be scarcely the Shadow of a secret now."
So at last the villagers of Ens...o...b.. gathered for their Reckoning.
The spring sun had not flattered to deceive but floated at its zenith in a cornflower-blue sky, shedding the warmth of a pleasant midsummer day. A gentle breeze flicked the hems of the white tablecloths but threatened no greater mischief, so heavily were they weighted down with the fruit of Dora Creed"s labours. Here were pies and pastries, turnovers and tarts, ham-bulging rolls and b.u.t.ter-oozing baps, sponges so light a real March wind might have carried them away, and fruit cakes so dense it required two hands to set them in their place.
All that stood between the villagers and this feast was the collection of the Squire"s rents, once a tedious business with the line of tenants winding away across the lawn and vanishing into the shrubbery, but now in these lean and efficient times, scarcely enough to form a queue. So they mingled, and exchanged greetings and gossip, and salivated contentedly in the expectation of plenty, with never a thought for what other strange dishes their frolicsome Yorkshire G.o.d might have put on the menu. Only Elsie Toke might have had some forebodings, but she was too concerned in looking round anxiously for a glimpse of her son to turn her eyes inward.
For Wield, as he led the way out of Green Alley on to the drive, there came one of those I-have-been-here-before experiences, as a battered yellow Beetle nearly clipped his toes. It skidded to a halt in front of the Hall and Fran Harding jumped out. Lillingstone and Kee Scudamore were standing on the steps and she ran up to them, her voice usually so soft rendered loud by worry.
"Larry, what"s happened? I"ve been to the vicarage, there"s n.o.body there."
"It was time to come into the open," said the Vicar. "I talked with Kee . . ."
"Kee? But Caddy said ..."
"Not to tell me anything in case I disagreed?" said Kee. "She was quite right. Of course I"d have disagreed with anything which was likely to put my sister in the dock! As it happens, I"ve found out for myself. As the police are clearly doing."
"The police? But Harry"s letters .. ."
"Don"t seem to have arrived. Once Harry realized that, he knew it was time to put in an appearance."
"Then where is he?"
The two on the steps didn"t reply. They were looking over her head to where the quartet from Green Alley, moving at Bendish"s slow pace, were coming towards the house.
Fran turned, saw, and came running towards them, calling, "Harry! What are you doing? Are you all right?"
Then she was in his arms, pressing herself to him as if she wanted to fuse their bodies together. It was s.e.xier than any p.o.r.n film Pascoe"s duties had obliged him to see, and he looked away in embarra.s.sment.
Dalziel said, "All right, luv. Leave some for old Tom"s breakfast."
Eyes blazing, she turned on him and cried, "Whose idea is this? He shouldn"t be walking, it could open up his wound."
"Nay, la.s.s, it"s nowt to do wi" me," said the Fat Man. "He were wandering loose when we found him. But talking of wounds, the BMA might be interested to see your licence to practise medicine."
She gave him a glance of scorn that would have frizzled a lesser man, then slid down to her knees in front of Bendish. For a terrible moment Pascoe thought she was going to indulge in some even more intimate form of embrace, but all she did was roll up his trouser and examine the gash.
"Come and sit down," she said. "Before you do yourself any more harm."
She led him gently to the steps and urged him to sit on the bottom one. He looked up at her with proud adoration. It was a scene to touch a Tartar"s heart. Dalziel said, "Pity your sister"s not here as well, Miss Scudamore."
"Why"s that?" asked Kee.
"Then I"d not have to repeat myself after I"ve arrested these three."
The blonde woman looked unimpressed and said, "If you"d care to hang on a minute I think she"s here now."