A Hovering of Vultures (11 page)

Things got more interesting when they came to Any Other Business. Mr Suzman had said at the beginning of the meeting that he hoped this would become a general discussion of the experience of the Weekend, what members hoped for from the Fellowship, suggestions for next year's gathering, and so on. Rupert Coggenhoe said he thought walks to places featured in the Sneddon novels would be an appropriate and enjoyable feature for future weekends, and mentioned Beckett's Falls, which had featured so prominently in
The Hard Furrow
, and which, coincidentally, could be paralleled with a waterfall in his own novel
Starveacre.
One of the
sentimental ladies suggested a church service on the Sunday morning of the Weekend, and Gillian Parkin protested against the emasculation (“significantly there is no female equivalent of that term”) of Susannah Sneddon's texts in their printed versions. Vibeke Nordli called for the establishment of international Chapters of the Fellowship.

It was quite late in the meeting when Lettie Farraday got up to speak.

“Mr Chairman, I wonder if I can say a few words as one who knew the Sneddons.” (Small buzz of interest, turning heads. Mr Suzman nodded, as if this was something he'd known all along, perhaps had arranged.) “Though you wouldn't think it from the sound of me, I was born and brought up a few hundred yards from this hall. My mother used to go up and clean for the Sneddons once a week, and sometimes in the school holidays I used to go up with her. Of course what you've got up there now is a sanitised version of the farm. I'm not criticising you for that: nobody wants to go into a mess of dirt and disorder. But that's what it was. If they hadn't employed my mother it would have been a slum. Thinking back on it, I can respect Susannah for that: she made her choice, and the choice was that she wanted to be a writer. So far as she was concerned the rest could go hang, and it did. But that wasn't how we saw it in the village at the time.”

“I'm sure it wasn't,” said Mr Suzman, apparently just to say something.

“No, to us she was a mucky housewife, a real sloven. And that was a real
judgment
on somebody, for us, then. And I think you should try to get
something
of that into the Museum, because that was a distinctive part of Susannah Sneddon's life: dirt, poor food badly cooked, nasty smells.
Another thing: the farmhouse is far too full of things from the 'twenties—fire-tongs, pudding basins, beds, knives and forks. But the Sneddons never bought anything. The things the farm was full of were much older—'nineties stuff, I suppose, or even earlier. So the fire-tongs and the cutlery and the kitchen utensils would have been Victorian ones, heavier, uglier—and dirtier, of course.”

“That's something I hadn't thought of,” interjected Mr Suzman. “It shows how very little Susannah thought of her immediate physical surroundings.”

“That's right. She didn't care about them at all. What they did with their money—whether it went to subsidize the farm, or was saved up, or what—I don't know. But it didn't go on clothes, it didn't go on furniture or food or everyday comforts. Susannah—and Joshua, but I only had much to do with Susannah—she just lived for her writing. And by the way, she only ever wrote by hand. That typewriter for Susannah is out of place: Joshua used one, but she never did. Got someone to type her things up for the publishers, I suppose, but she used an old fountain pen—you got that right, I think, in the one up there—and wrote the novels in ruled exercise books. I'm pretty sure Joshua never typed for her: what little time he had he used for his own books. And of course it was said in the village that he resented hers. By the way, someone mentioned a church service. Neither of them
ever
went to church. Joshua used to say in the pub that he'd done his last praying in the trenches in 1915 . . . Oh, one last thing: don't ever do away with that loo. There's some things we do a hell of a lot better today.”

Lettie sat down to laughter, a little smattering of applause, and a great deal of interest. The meeting meandered towards its close, and when it was finally over, with happy admonitions
from Mr Suzman to be sure to come back next year, there was a minor rush of people, both pushy and shy, over towards Lettie to question her.

Mr Suzman, Charlie noticed, did not join the rush. He talked earnestly to the new Secretary to the Fellowship, Mrs Cardew, and gradually one or two members of the newly elected Council went over to them, and they all began taking out diaries and arranging dates for meetings. The last Charlie saw of Suzman was his standing by the door and announcing that he was going to drive away and have a nice
quiet
lunch on his own before the final event, the afternoon lecture.

“I believe the Chinese in Batley Bridge is very good,” ventured Mrs Cardew. “Though it was closed down briefly by the health people a little while ago.”

“I would
never
go to a restaurant that was given a clean bill by the health inspectors,” said Mr Suzman grandly. “They would obviously have their priorities wrong.”

Charlie waited outside the hall, talking in a desultory way to Vidkun Mjølhus. The man had an amiable impenetrability to which Charlie couldn't relate. Susannah Sneddon might have described his eyes as bottomless pools, but what was in their depths? Ageless wisdom, or simply nothing? After several minutes' conversation which blandly skimmed surfaces Charlie saw Lettie emerge from the hall, surrounded by an admiring troupe. He could see that she didn't need his help to the Black Horse, and when the Coggenhoes came out he muttered apologies to the Norwegian and went over to them.

“Yes?” said Rupert Coggenhoe, as if he were a doorstep salesman.

“There's a farmhouse restaurant a mile along the road to
Abbothall,” said Charlie, with his most ingratiating smile. “Felicity and I were thinking of giving it a try for lunch.”

The hostility of the Coggenhoes prevented them seeing the look of surprise, pleased surprise, on their daughter's face.

“That's quite impossible,” said her father. “As you will know, I have just been elected to the Council. I need to be in Micklewike to be available to members.”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Charlie. “We quite understand. Come on, Felicity.”

“Felicity! You can't think of . . . Felicity! We've hardly seen anything of you!”

But they were talking to her back.

“Hardly seen anything of me!” grumbled Felicity, as they walked at a pace that verged on running. “How can they say that when I've seen a great deal of them?”

The lady who ran the farmhouse restaurant, an attempt to fight the agricultural depression, clearly regarded them as an odd couple, but she had had several other customers who were attending the Sneddon Weekend, so she took them in her stride.

“It's the murder that attracts you,” she said, half-accusing, half-amused. “If it weren't for that, you'd not be here. Morbid, I call it. Now, I've got a lovely hot-pot . . .”

The walk there and back took them a while, because they weren't hurrying, and by the time they got back to Micklewike the lecture had started. Charlie wasn't too disappointed. It was on “Susannah Sneddon—a Marxist Perspective,” given by a lecturer from Bradford University. Charlie wondered how much longer there would be Marxists to have a perspective. He and Felicity mooched around Micklewike, noticing the other conferees who were giving the lecture a miss. These included the unattractive pair who
had inherited letters from Susannah. Charlie watched curiously their progress around the town. The news had got about, so that other members of the Fellowship kept coming up to them and asking about the connection. The unattractive pair blossomed unattractively.

About three they went back to the village hall and mingled with the audience coming out as if they'd been there all along.

“I'd better stay with the oldies for the rest of the day,” said Felicity. “You've got my phone number.”

“Right,” said Charlie. “I'll be around here, and at the Duke of Cumberland keeping an eye on Lettie.”

Felicity raised her eyebrows.

“What do you mean? Why do you have to keep an eye on her?”

“Oh—just if she needs my help getting anywhere,” said Charlie.

But it was not just physical assistance that Charlie had in mind. There niggled in the back of his brain the thought that Gerald Suzman's reaction to Lettie's presence had been odd. Of course there were no doubt others in Micklewike who had known the Sneddons . . . Yet Lettie's particular connection to the farm through her mother—wouldn't one have expected that Suzman would welcome her with open arms, question her, consult her?

As ordinary members were questioning her and consulting her. Charlie had little need to worry about her for the rest of the day. Her taxi driver took her down to the Duke of Cumberland, where she sat through the late afternoon and early evening, pausing only for a brief dinner, surrounded by loyal Sneddon admirers, racking her brains for memories that would answer their queries. There could be no danger
there . . . Yet
danger,
oddly, was what preoccupied Charlie, and he hung around, occasionally catching Lettie's eye and communicating twinkles of amusement. At last she was tired and ready for an early bed. Charlie stood up, ready to attend her. Felicity, ensconced with her parents in a cosy corner nook, saw him resume duty as Lettie's attendant and suddenly realized that, though he had told her a great deal about himself, none of it was recent. What was he actually doing in Leeds? Her parents had been very insistent in their questions about what he did, and all she could give them was the description that he had given her: security and investigative work. Her father had immediately decided he was part of a criminal gang—one of the rare signs he gave of a creative imagination. But Felicity's brow creased. Exactly what sort of work was he in?

As Charlie and Lettie hobbled through the bar and out to the foyer, Charlie thought he had better find out Lettie's plans.

“How long are you going to be here?” he asked.

“Oh, till Tuesday, I suppose. Or Wednesday. I may go up and see Mother again. Oh, don't smile. There's a sort of . . . grisly fascination about it all.”

They started up the stairs.

“What sort of lock is there on your door here?” Charlie asked.

“Oh, just an ordinary Yale lock.”

“Any chain on the inside?”

“Yes, there is a chain.”

“Put it on, will you?”

“Why?”

“And maybe put a chair against the door and keep the phone close.”

“Why?”

“Let's just say: better safe than sorry. Do it, Lettie.”

“I suppose you're the guy who knows.”

He waited in the corridor till he had heard the chain being put up, and a chair being drawn across the floor. Then he shook himself, dissatisfied, went down the stairs and then out into the twilight.

C
harlie was coming down to breakfast next morning when the phone in the hallway rang. His landlady was bustling through from the kitchen with a laden tray, and Charlie took it from her and went into the dining room. He had asked for scrambled eggs, as a light option, but his heart sank as he saw it was surrounded by substantial mounds of fried bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes. He was just setting the things out and mentally saluting the pile when he heard Mrs Ludlum say:

“Oh yes, he's just down. He'll be tucking into his breakfast. Won't it wait? It'd be a pity to—oh, urgent, is it? Who shall I say, then?”

Charlie was already at the dining room door, and she handed him the phone.

“It's a Mr Oddie.”

She stood in the hall, lingering in the doorway to the dining room.

“Mike?”

“Charlie, I want you to get a taxi. Have you got the number of the local people?”

“Yes—what is it? Not Lettie Farraday?”

“No the man himself. He's got—he had—a cottage called Moor View, just outside Oxenthorpe. I'd pick you up, only it's too far out of my way.”

“Dead, I take it?”

“As the proverbial dodo.”

Charlie pressed down the telephone rest and then dialled the Batley Bridge taxi firm.

“I want a cab right away, to 40 Haworth Road. The name is Peace. To Oxenthorpe.”

Mrs Ludlum shook her head, grief-stricken, when he dashed back into the dining room.

“Surely you can make a start on it?”

“No way. You have it.”

“Oh, I don't eat stuff like that.”

“Well, I'll tell you what”—he took up the bacon and put it between two slices of toast—“emergency rations. Could you find me a bag for this?”

As she came back with it he was at the front door, and his taxi was drawing up. He had grabbed his wallet, and he handed her the cost of his room for three nights.

“Here's what I owe you. If you could keep the room for me tonight, just in case. I'll ring you later.”

“But what is it? What's the rush?”

“Murder.”

“Murder? Who's been murdered? And what's it to do with you?”

“Can't say. It'll be on the local news. I should have told you I'm a policeman.”

And leaving her open-mouthed in the doorway (to ring around to her friends, to mention Oxenthorpe, and to start
making all sorts of connections, many of them surprisingly accurate) he climbed into the car. The taxi driver was not Lettie's friend, but he had observed the scene in the doorway.

“Not often we get a fare to Oxenthorpe,” he angled delicately as he pulled away from the kerb.

“It's a rush job. I'm a policeman,” said Charlie, to foreshorten the process.

“Must be a rush job if they can't send a police car for you . . . And something pretty important.”

“Suspected murder or manslaughter.”