Pictures of Perfection (18 page)

‘We had a beautiful night for our frisks.’

The High Street was quiet as a deserted film set as Wield strolled back to Corpse Cottage. Not much given to flights of the imagination, he found himself conjuring up pictures of how it must have been a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years ago!

Back at the cottage, he switched on the tiny telly and checked whether Bendish’s unappetizing larder ran to a pot of tea. It did, and a good brew at that. The lad might live off junk food but at least he hadn’t sunk to instant tea.

But what might he have sunk to?

The thought hit him hard. Here he was, mocking the youngster’s eating habits, making himself comfortable in his house, while all the time …

All the time what?

He didn’t know. Perhaps there was nothing to know, or nothing more than would result in a lot of rolled eye-balls at the waywardness of youth and a right rollocking for the returned prodigal.

Time to drop a shutter. He sat with his tea on the ancient but very comfortable sofa and concentrated as much of his attention as was
necessary on an alternative comedy show. It was certainly alternative, dispensing with all the old detritus of the past, such as laughs. After a while he decided that, attention-wise, it didn’t require both eyes and ears, so he closed the former. And eventually God, who is merciful even to undesert, cupped His divine hands over the latter, and he fell asleep.

He was woken by a scratching, tapping noise. For a moment he had no idea where he was, and even when awareness of location struggled through, enough confusion remained for him to mislocate the source of the noise in the fireplace wall through which Susannah Hogbin’s coffin was alleged to have burst. Interestingly, instead of terror this filled him with a strangely passive curiosity. Everyone deserved at least one small personal other-worldly experience before the big general one. He settled back to enjoy his, and was rather disappointed when the noise was repeated, this time indisputably from the window.

He flung back the curtain and discovered that truth long known to doctors, that the living are much more frightening than the dead.

Edwin Digweed’s fine-boned face was pressed close against the glass. Seeing Wield, he gestured imperiously towards the front door.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Wield opened it.

‘May I come in?’ said the bookseller, stepping
past the Sergeant. ‘Despite appearances to the contrary, I am not a doorstep salesman.’

The appearance to the contrary consisted of a zipped leather bag which he set down beside him. Wield switched off the TV on which an etiolated, exophthalmic epicene who looked as if a good woman would crack him like a stick was explaining his admiration for Renoir’s
Baigneuses
.

‘What can I do for you, sir?’ he asked unenthusiastically, hoping that his presence in Corpse Cottage wasn’t going to have half the village treating him like the local bobby.

‘For a start you can accept my apologies.’

‘Eh?’

‘It occurred to me after our last encounter that it might be that, to someone unfamiliar with my ways, one or two of my mannerisms could have come across as, how shall I put it, discourtesies.’

Wield, who could think of other ways to put it, said nothing and Digweed resumed, ‘So when I heard after the school meeting that you were spending the night here, I got to thinking of you alone in a strange house, not knowing what has happened to your young colleague, though I’m sure nothing untoward has happened to him, nevertheless I thought, as a peace offering and a belated token of welcome to our village …’

He unzipped the bag and pulled out a jacketed copy of
On the Banks of the Een
. The cover illustration had been taken from the painting of Scarletts Pool over Digweed’s bed, with his
grandfather’s initials R.D. still visible though much reduced.

‘That’s right kind,’ said Wield, taken aback. ‘How much …?’

‘No, no, a welcome gift I say. Also I wondered if I could tempt you to join me in a drink?’

This time it was a bottle of Jim Bean that came out of the bag.

‘I am, I fear, a traitor to my continent. Let others sing of single malts and fine French brandies. For me this is the true Hippocrene, the real Spiritus Sacer.’

He was rattling on a bit even by his standards, but Wield didn’t mind. This much he had learned from Dalziel. Man offers you a drink, get it down quick, then ask about his motives. And besides, he’d never tasted bourbon.

‘I’ll get some glasses,’ he said.

‘No need,’ said Digweed. ‘Doubting if young Bendish has reached the age where he can either value or afford decent glassware, I took the precaution and the liberty …’

He came up with a pair of ornately cut barrel tumblers in golden crystal which caught the light as if filled with sunshine.

Wield, a lover of plain glass, thought them a bit over the top but so almost was the measure Digweed poured, and when he tasted the sweet smoothness of the liquor, he was able to say without hypocrisy, ‘That’s smashing.’

The bookseller smiled and topped up his glass
once more. Wield settled back comfortably. Sooner or later they’d get to the man’s real motives. With nectar like this on tap, he could wait.

‘Those Rider Haggards you mentioned,’ said Digweed.

‘Oh aye?’ said Wield, disappointed they’d got there so quickly.

He must have given away more than he intended for Digweed added hastily, ‘No, I’m not trying to persuade you to sell them, but I should love sometime to see them. A complete set of Haggard firsts in dust wrappers! It would be like …’

For once he seemed lost for words. Perhaps the poor old sod didn’t find owt exciting except books!

‘But no more of books. I cannot have you suspecting my motives.’

‘Comes with the job,’ said Wield lightly.

‘I suppose so. Have you always been a policeman?’

‘I were a kiddie for a bit.’

Digweed laughed, genuinely, not his superior putting-down snort, encouraging Wield to a cautious opening-up.

‘I started out as a draughtsman’s apprentice, but it didn’t take. So I joined the Force,’ he said.

Age seventeen; panicking at the awareness of his sexuality roused by the attentions of his perceptive boss; making a macho statement.

‘A draughtsman?’ mused Digweed. ‘Do you still draw?’

‘Not like your granddad,’ said Wield, touching the book. ‘Only scene-of-the-crime diagrams. How about you? Did you have a real job afore you retired?’

Oops! His desire to turn the conversation away from himself had made him uncharacteristically clumsy. This stuff took a quick hold!

Digweed raised his eyebrows and tipped the bottle.

‘I’m sure there must be questions about the police which contain as many offensive assumptions,’ he said drily. ‘Selling books is a real job, believe me. In fact, I too trained for the Law, as a solicitor. But as I lived abroad for much of my life, opportunities to practise were limited. I came back to the UK about ten years ago, intending to find myself a niche in the business world. Instead, I found things in such a state, and such a ghastly gang of blinkered jackasses running things, that I was ready to leave again in a sixmonth. Happily, I visited the scenes of my birth and upbringing first, partly out of sentiment, partly to sort out some family property. And when I realized that, here in Enscombe at least, things remained much as they had been, I decided to settle and follow the line of business I had always fancied, selling old books.’

Wield drank some more and said, ‘You talk like this place were special, I mean, really special. Almost, like, perfect.’

‘Good Lord, no! Enscombe is very much
fucatus
rather than
perfectus
, I’m glad to say. Perfection is unnatural, Sergeant, because it implies the absence of either development or decline. Haven’t you noticed it’s the political parties and the religions with the clearest notions of the perfect society that cause the most harm? Once admit the notion of human perfectibility, and the end can be made to justify any amount of pain and suffering along the way. Besides, it would put us both out of work. No crime in the perfect society, and no desire to read about the imperfect past either! So here’s to imperfection!’

They both drank deep.

‘So to get back to your question, Sergeant, I am certainly not retired. I suspect my argent locks as well as my profession have misled you. Blossom can be white as well as snow. How old do you take me for?’

‘Nay, you’re not catching me like that,’ said Wield.

‘I think a man would have to rise early to catch you, Sergeant. Fifty-seven. You are blessed with a face that gives little away, but I bet you had me closer to sixty-seven?’

Wield, who’d never heard his face called a blessing, nodded confession.

‘Don’t let it bother you. I wish I could tell some winter’s tale to explain that my hair turned white in a single night, but it was a gradual process, starting surprisingly early. No coffins came through the wall to accelerate matters. Talking
of which, it doesn’t bother you staying alone in a place like this?’

‘No. Not even afore I started supping this stuff,’ said Wield. ‘In fact I’ve felt right at home from the start. Some spots have a nice feel to them.’

‘I know what you mean. I feel the same.’

‘Well, that’s one thing we’ve got in common,’ said Wield.

‘Two,’ said the bookseller, holding up the bottle and topping up their glasses. ‘Do I get an impression that you find it surprising we have any common ground at all?’

‘Common ground’s easy enough to find, sir, except that when you find it, like this Green of yours, it’s often just summat else to quarrel about.’

Digweed frowned and said, ‘If we’re going to quarrel, I’d prefer you stopped calling me sir. It gives you such an advantage.’

‘Never fret,’ said Wield. ‘In the Force it’s usually the only term of abuse a poor cop can aim at his superiors.’

‘Do I come across as so superior, then? I don’t intend to.’

‘That makes it worse.’

‘I suppose it does. I’m sorry. If it helps, the Digweeds too have been looked down upon in their time.’

‘By the Guillemards, you mean? Your granddad, was it?’

‘Good Lord! Are you clairvoyant?’

‘Just a detective,’ said Wield, not unsmugly. ‘The way he talked about the birthday treats at the start of his journal. Very acid. Reminded me a bit of you.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ said Digweed. ‘But do go on. Strut your stuff, as they say.’

Thus challenged, Wield delayed a moment by sipping his drink, his mind racing. He found himself handling the
Naturalist’s Year
as though, like a medium, he might pick up some helpful vibration from it. Then his eyes fastened on the jacket illustration.

‘R.D.?’ he said. ‘Same initials on that picture of the Squire’s Aunt Edwina, right? Your granddad painted it. When he were a lot younger … And he fancied Edwina. But he got choked off … Not by Edwina. By the family. Thought he weren’t good enough … That’s why he’s so sarky about the way they value their womenfolk … Eventually he married someone else, late on in life, he must have been in his late forties when your dad were born … But he never forgot, and that’s why he called your dad Edwin, after his old love!’

He could see from the bookseller’s expression that this soaring flight of fancy, lark-like, had never diverted from its factual base. Bloody hell, he thought, emptying his glass. If I’d discovered this stuff sooner, I could have been Chief Constable by now!

‘Truly remarkable!’ exclaimed Digweed. ‘You’re
sure it wasn’t you who burgled my shop in order to read my grandfather’s earlier journals?’

‘I’m right, then?’ said Wield.

‘With the very slight addition that Edwina fancied him with an equal passion. It was she who got them thrown together by discovering in herself this longing to have her portrait painted to match one she already had of some ancestor. But though a gentleman, Ralph was held to be below the salt as (a) being poor, (b) being an artist, and (c) being a close friend of the younger Halavant, Jeremy, the one who built Scarletts. Once the family realized what was going on, that was that. Poor Ralph.’

‘Poor Edwina, more like it. At least he still had choices he could make,’ said Wield.

‘Yes, poor Edwina too. But don’t feel too sorry for her, she wouldn’t have thanked you. A pliant child she may have been, but she grew into a feisty old lady. And she got her revenges. Though she did not quite live to see it, she it was by all accounts who instilled in her great-niece, Frances, that sense of self-worth and independent spirit which gave her the strength to walk out on the family and marry Stanley Harding.’

‘Good for her!’ proclaimed Wield. ‘Here’s to both on ’em!’

They clinked their glasses together with most melodious chime and drank a deep toast.

‘So there we are,’ said Digweed. ‘Something else in common. Go on like this and we could find we’re twin brothers, separated at birth!’

He laughed at the absurdity of his own fancy and Wield, with a sudden revival of all his old feelings, thought: Patronizing prat! He thinks he’s doing me favours!

He said, ‘Wouldn’t go as far as that, sir.’

Digweed regarded him quizzically and said, ‘Oh dear, it’s that sir again! You are clearly determined to quarrel. Tell you what, if we are going to fall out, let it be over things we dislike, rather than spoil the things we like with arguing about them. In fact, it supports my anti-perfection principle that when a politician wants to really unite the electorate, he looks for a common hatred rather than a common enthusiasm. So what is it turns you off?’

Wield thought, then said with a slow emphasis, ‘Snobs. I don’t like snobs. How’s that for starters?’

‘Excellent. No quarrel there. My turn. Little Hitlers. People who turn a molehill of authority into a mountain of obstructionism.’

‘Fair enough. Politicians.’

‘Spot on. Undertakers.’

‘They’re only doing a job,’ said Wield defensively.

‘Of course. But do you like them?’

‘No,’ admitted Wield. ‘Beer that’s too cold.’

‘Beer that’s too warm.’