A New Lease of Death (14 page)

Newspapers, old letters and unpaid bills, empty cigarette packets and a couple of old laddered stockings tumbled out when she opened the cupboard door. She rummaged in the back among dusty vases, Christmas wrapping paper, playing cards with dog-eared corners. One vase had an encouraging shape. She pulled it out and found it was the cherry brandy Uncle had given her mother for her birthday. Filthy, sweet, cherry brandy … She squatted on the floor among the debris and poured some of it into a grimy glass. In a minute she felt a lot better, almost well enough to get dressed and do something about the bloody job. Now she had begun she might as well finish the bottle – it was wonderful how little it took to do the trick provided you started on an empty stomach.

The neck of the bottle rattled against the glass. She was concentrating on keeping her hand steady, not watching the liquid level rise and rise until it overbrimmed, spilt and streamed over the spread pink flounces.

Red everywhere. Good thing we’re not houseproud, she thought, and then she looked down at herself, at red on pale pink … Her fingers tore at the nylon until they were red and sticky too. Oh God, God!
She
tramped on it, shuddering as if it were slimy, alive, and threw herself on the sofa.

… You had nothing pretty on now, nothing to show to Tessie. She used to worry in case you got yourself dirty and one day when Mummy was indoors with Granny Rose and the man they called Roger she took you upstairs to see Auntie Rene and Uncle Bert, and Auntie Rene made you put an old apron on over your frock.

Uncle Bert and Roger. They were the only men you knew apart from Daddy who was always ill – ‘ailing’ Mummy called it. Uncle Bert was rough and big and once when you came upstairs quietly you heard him shouting at Auntie Rene and then you saw him hit her. But he was kind to you and he called you Lizzie. Roger never called you anything. How could he when he never spoke to you, but looked at you as if he hated you?

It was in the Autumn that Mummy said you ought to have a party frock. Funny really, because there weren’t any parties to go to, but Mummy said you could wear it on Christmas day. Pink it was, three layers of pale pink net over a pink petticoat, and it was the most beautiful dress you had ever seen in your life …

Elizabeth Crilling knew that once it had begun it would go on and on. Only one thing could stop it now. Keeping her eyes from the pink thing, all spattered with red, she stumbled out into the kitchen to find her temporary salvation.

Irene Kershaw’s voice on the telephone sounded
cold
and distant. ‘Your Charlie seems to have had a bit of a tiff with Tessie, Mr Archery. I don’t know what it’s all about, but I’m sure it can’t be her fault. She worships the ground he treads on.’

‘They’re old enough to know what they’re doing,’ said Archery insincerely.

‘She’s coming home tomorrow and she must be upset if she’s cutting the last days of term. All the people round here keep asking when the wedding is and I just don’t know what to say. It puts me in a very awkward position.’

Respectability, always respectability.

‘Did you ring me up about something special, Mr Archery, or was it just for a chat?’

‘I wondered if you’d mind giving me your husband’s business number?’

‘If you two think you can get together,’ she said more warmly, ‘and have a go at patching things up, that would suit me down to the ground. I really can’t contemplate the idea of my Tess being – well, thrown over.’ Archery did not answer. ‘The number’s Uplands 62234,’ she said.

Kershaw had an extension of his own and a bright cockney secretary.

‘I want to write to Painter’s commanding officer,’ Archery said when the civilities had been exchanged.

Kershaw seemed to hesitate, then said in his usual eager, vital voice, ‘Don’t know the bloke’s name, but it was the Duke of Babraham’s Light Infantry he was in. Third battalion. The War Office’ll tell you.’

‘The defence didn’t call him at the trial, but it might help me if he could give Painter a good character.’

‘If. I wonder why the defence didn’t call him, Mr Archery?’

The War Office was helpful. The third Battalion had been commanded by a Colonel Cosmo Plashet. He was an old man now and living in retirement in Westmorland. Archery made several attempts to write to Colonel Plashet. The final letter was not what he would have wished, but it would have to do. After lunch he went out to post it.

He strolled up towards the Post Office. Time hung heavy on his hands and he had no notion what to do next. Tomorrow Charles would come, full of ideas and extravagant plans, but comforting, an assistant. Or, knowing Charles, a director. He badly needed someone to direct him. Police work is for policemen, he thought, experts who are trained and have all the means for detection at their disposal.

Then he saw her. She was coming out of the florist’s next door to the Post Office and her arms were full of white roses. They matched and mingled with the white pattern on her black dress so that you could not tell which were real and which a mere design on silk.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Archery,’ said Imogen Ide.

Until now he had hardly noticed the beauty of the day, the intense blue of the sky, the glory of perfect holiday weather. She smiled.

‘Would you be very kind and open the car door for me?’

He jumped to do her bidding like a boy. The
poodle
, Dog, was sitting on the passenger seat and when Archery touched the door, he growled and showed his teeth.

‘Don’t be such a fool,’ she said to the dog and dumped him on the back seat. ‘I’m taking these up to Forby cemetery. My husband’s ancestors have a sort of vault there. Very feudal. He’s in town so I said I’d do it. It’s an interesting old church. Have you seen much of the country round here yet?’

‘Very little, I’m afraid.’

‘Perhaps you don’t care for clerestories and fonts and that sort of thing.’

‘Quite the contrary, I assure you. I’ll get the car and go over to Forby tonight if you think it’s worth seeing.’

‘Why not come now?’

He had meant her to ask him. He knew it and he was ashamed. Yet what was there to be ashamed about? In a way he was on holiday and holiday acquaintances were quickly made. He had met her husband and it was only by chance her husband was not with her now. In that case he would have accepted without a qualm. Besides, in these days there was no harm in a man going on a little excursion with a woman. How many times had he picked up Miss Baylis in Thringford village and driven her into Colchester to do her shopping? Imogen Ide was much farther removed from him in age than Miss Baylis. She couldn’t be more than thirty. He was old enough to be her father. Suddenly he wished he hadn’t thought of that, for it put things in an unpleasant perspective.

‘It’s very good of you,’ he said. ‘I’d like to.’

She was a good driver. For once he didn’t mind being driven, didn’t wish he was at the wheel. It was a beautiful car, a silver Lancia Flavia, and it purred along the winding roads. All was still and they passed only two other cars. The meadows were rich green or pale yellow where they had been shorn of hay, and between them and a dark ridge of woodland ran a glittering brown stream.

‘That’s the Kingsbrook,’ she said, ‘the same one that passes under the High Street. Isn’t it strange? Man can do almost anything, move mountains, create seas, irrigate deserts, but he can’t prevent the flow of water. He can damn it, channel it, pass it through pipes, make bridges over it …’ He watched her, remembering with wonder that she had been a photographic model. Her lips were parted and the breeze blew her hair. ‘But still it springs from the earth and finds its way to the sea.’

He said nothing and hoped she could sense if not see his nod. They were coming into a village. A dozen or so cottages and a couple of big houses surrounded by sprawling green; there was a little inn and through a mass of dark green foliage Archery could see the outlines of the church.

The entrance to the churchyard was by way of a kissing gate. He followed Imogen Ide and he carried the roses. The place was shady and cool but not well-tended and some of the older gravestones had tumbled over on their backs into the tangle of nettles and briars.

‘This way,’ she said, taking the left-hand path. ‘You mustn’t go widdershins around a church. It’s supposed to be unlucky.’

Yews and ilexes bordered the path. Underfoot it was sandy, yet green with moss and the delicate tufts of arenaria. The church was very old and built of rough-hewn oaken logs. Its beauty lay in its antiquity.

‘It’s one of the oldest wooden churches in the country.’

‘There’s one like it in my country,’ said Archery. ‘At Greensted. I believe it’s ninth century.’

They knelt down side by side and, bending forward, he peered through the small triangular gap at the base of the log wall. Although it was not the first of its kind he had seen, it pained him to think of the outcast, the unclean, who came to this tiny grille and listening to the Mass, received on his tongue the bread that some believe is the body of God. It made him think of Tess, herself an outcast, condemned like the leper to an undeserved disease. Within he could see a little stone aisle, wooden pews and a pulpit carved with saints’ faces. He shivered and he felt her shiver beside him.

They were very close together under the yew boughs. He had a strange feeling that they were quite alone in the world and that they had been brought here for the working out of some destiny. He lifted his eyes, and turning to her, met hers. He expected her to smile but instead her face was grave, yet full of wonder and a kind of fear. He felt in himself, without analysing it, the emotion he saw
in
her eyes. The scent of the roses was intoxicating, fresh and unbearably sweet.

Then he got to his feet quickly, a little quelled by the stiffness of his knees. For a moment he had felt like a boy; his body betrayed him as bodies always do.

She said rather brightly, ‘Have a look inside while I put these flowers on the grave. I won’t be long.’

He went softly up the aisle and stood before the altar. Anyone watching him might have taken him for an atheist, so cool and appraising was his glance. Back again to look at the unassuming little font, the inscriptions on wall plaques. He put two half-crowns in the box and signed his name in the visitors’ book. His hand was shaking so badly that the signature looked like that of an old man.

When he came out once more into the churchyard she was nowhere to be seen. The lettering on the older stones had been obliterated by time and weather. He walked into the new part, reading the last messages of relatives to their dead.

As he came to the end of the path where the hedge was and on the other side of the hedge a meadow, a name that seemed familiar caught his eye. Grace, John Grace. He reflected, searching his mind. It was not a common name and until quite recently he had associated it only with the great cricketer. Of course – a boy had lain dying in the road and that death and that boy’s request had reminded Wexford of another, similar tragedy. Wexford had told him about it in the court. ‘Must be all of twenty years …’

Archery looked to the engraved words for confirmation.

Sacred to the Memory of

John Grace

Who departed This Life

February 16th, 1945

In the Twenty-First Year

of His Age

Go, Shepherd, to your rest;

Your tale is told.

The Lamb of God takes

Shepherds to his fold.

A pleasant, if not brilliant, conceit, Archery thought. It was apparently a quotation, but he didn’t recognize it. He looked round as Imogen Ide approached. The leaf shadows played on her face and made a pattern on her hair so that it looked as if it was covered by a veil of lace.

‘Are you reminding yourself of your mortality?’ she asked him gravely.

‘I suppose so. It’s an interesting place.’

‘I’m glad to have had the opportunity of showing it to you. I’m very patriotic – if that’s the word – about my county though it hasn’t been mine for long.’

He was certain she was going to offer herself as his guide on some future occasion and he said quickly: ‘My son is coming tomorrow. We’ll have to explore together.’ She smiled politely. ‘He’s twenty-one,’ he added rather fatuously.

Simultaneously their eyes turned to the inscription on the stone.

‘I’m ready to go if you are,’ she said.

She dropped him outside The Olive and Dove. They said good-bye briskly and he noticed she said nothing about hoping to see him again. He didn’t feel like tea and he went straight upstairs. Without knowing why he took out the photograph he had of Painter’s daughter. Looking at the picture, he wondered why he had thought her so lovely. She was just a pretty girl with the prettiness of youth. Yet while he looked he seemed to realize for the first time why Charles longed so passionately to possess her. It was a strange feeling and it had little to do with Tess, with Tess’s appearance or with Charles. In a way it was a universal diffused empathy, but it was selfish too and it came from his heart rather than from his mind.

10

And if he hath not before disposed of his goods, let him be admonished to make his will … for the better discharging of his conscience and the quietness of his executors.

The Visitation of the Sick

‘YOU DON’T SEEM
to have got very far,’ said Charles. He sat down in an armchair and surveyed the pleasant lounge. The maid who was operating a floor polisher thought him very handsome with his rather long fair hair and his scornful expression. She decided to give the lounge a more than usually thorough do. ‘The great thing is to be businesslike about it. We haven’t got all that long. I start at the brewery on Monday week.’ Archery was rather nettled. His own parochial duties were being overlooked. ‘I’m sure there’s something fishy about that fellow Primero, Roger Primero. I rang him up before I got here last night and I’ve got a date to see him this morning at half eleven.’

Archery looked at his watch. It was almost ten.

‘You’d better get a move on, then. Where does he live?’