Stately Homicide (9 page)

‘You'll find all that in the drawer, along with the letters. The B.M.'s been over them with a fine-tooth comb, and the Record Office. I've been to Windsor and Cambridge, and God knows where else. D'you think I'd ever have let out so much as a peep without first making sure I knew what I was talking about?'

‘So you've done the groundwork for us – that's marvellous! Don't think for a moment that we're trying to take any of the credit away from you. You'll get full and complete acknowledgment, I promise you.'

‘A mention among the thank-yous! Thank you for nothing!'

Jane Coryton put a restraining hand on her husband's arm.

‘What exactly
are
you trying to do, Mr Shelden?'

‘Do call me Chad!' the new curator begged. Then, with a fetching little wriggle: ‘I'm sure I'm hating this, Francis, even more than you. But – I have to be frank – those dreadful books you turned out, back in the sixties … My dear chap, how can you in conscience expect the trustees, with the best will in the world, to entrust the writing of such a sensationally important book to someone who – God, how I hate saying this, I do really! – simply isn't up to it?'

Francis Coryton was shouting now.

‘As I suppose you are!'

Chad Shelden spread out his hands in elaborate disclaimer.

‘My dear fellow, you've got me completely wrong! I've more than enough on my plate with Laz Appleyard, I do assure you. No – my concern is to get one of the really big names interested. Delamine, perhaps, or Singleton. We've got something marvellous to offer and – even you, Francis, must see it, once you've got over your understandable disappointment – we've got to put it into the hands of somebody we're completely sure can make a proper job of it.'

Jurnet interposed: ‘Does Miss Appleyard know about this?'

‘She knows,' Jane Coryton said positively. ‘
Chad
here wouldn't dare to take a decision like that off his own bat – not on his first day, anyway. Francis –' she put her arms round her husband, her face against his face. The man stood stiff and unresponsive. ‘It isn't the most important thing, is it? It's important, but not the most important.'

Francis Coryton shrugged himself free.

‘Yes, it is,' he said. ‘The most important.'

Downstairs, on the walls of the crowded little hall, were more pictures of Anne Boleyn and her brother; crude in execution and, Jurnet guessed, not rated worthy of a place in the rooms open to the public. Knowing what he now knew about the late Viscount Rochford's private life, the detective resolutely refused to see any resemblance between himself and the first owner of Bullen Hall. Over the heads of the people moving towards the outer door he peered at the long, dark face with undisguised repugnance. It struck him that while there were words and to spare for every other kind of sexual sinner – adulterer, sodomite, lesbian, rapist – there was no one word to describe people who committed incest. It was as if, faced with such monsters of iniquity, language itself had recoiled from providing the label which would confirm the fact of their existence.

The departing guests spilled gaily out on to the strip of grass which divided the house from the moat. Mrs Coryton, Jurnet thought, had been magnificent; despite all, bringing the party to an untroubled close. Even Francis, with the help of his glasses, had managed pretty well. Mr Benby, the estate surveyor, who had brought his camera, had taken several pictures of the old and new curators together, one of which showed the two standing smiling with arms linked.

When the caterers came to pack up the remains of the feast, Jane gave orders that Chad Shelden's fridge should be stocked with a selection of the residual goodies – ‘to keep you going till you've discovered where the village shop is.'

‘It's enormously good of you.'

‘You're doing us a favour. We don't want to still be eating salmon, ham and goulash come Michaelmas. Mrs Barwell will be in, in the morning, to do the room. Francis, will you bring the desk set? Well –' with a final, comprehending glance in which there was more relief than regret – ‘that's it. Elena, can we walk you home?'

Miss Appleyard rose from the settee and wrapped a shawl about her thin shoulders.

‘Thank you, but I don't think I'll risk the night air. I shall go through the house. Maudie is waiting up for me.'

‘All that switching on and off of lights –'

Miss Appleyard opened a handbag of gold mesh and produced a serviceable torch.

‘None at all. I've come prepared, you see.'

‘Francis will go with you just the same.'

‘Francis,' said Miss Appleyard, ‘will do no such thing. I was running about these passages before he was born. If I felt I needed an escort, I should ask our visiting policeman. That's what policemen are for – isn't it, Inspector? – To protect the weak.'

Jurnet said: ‘Happy to oblige.'
Weak?
he thought.
You!

‘I'm sure you are. But, as I've said – this is my home. You could blindfold me and put me down anywhere in Bullen Hall, I'd know where I was straight away. Goodnight, Inspector.' Miss Appleyard held out a hand which trembled a little in the detective's. ‘I hope you won't wait until Mr Shelden has
his
farewell party before coming to see us again.'

Danny March at Jurnet's elbow said: ‘Anna says to tell you the couch opens out to a full-length put-u-up, in case you'd care to sleep over at ours.'

‘Ta all the same, but no,' Jurnet replied, ‘I'm on duty first thing in the morning. If I don't get myself a change of socks and a clean shirt they're liable to drum me out of the Force.'

He did not add that he didn't fancy a night listening through the bedroom wall to the sound of jouncing bed springs. ‘I'll be back in Angleby in no time.'

The partygoers' cars were, by special dispensation, parked in the front drive. Jurnet made his solitary way towards the car park in the old orchard. Behind him the Hall, floodlit against the night sky, looked like a cardboard cutout out of a child's picture book. Then, just as the detective turned round for a last look, the lights went out. For a moment, there was a terrifying emptiness; then, eyes making the necessary readjustment, a new, moonlit Bullen Hall sprang into being, lovelier by far, floating on a moat full of diamond stars.

There was ample light between the bands of shadow striping the grass to see the way to the car park, and to see that the only vehicle left there beside his own was a jeep parked, hood up, with its back to him. Jurnet unlocked his car, got in, put on his seat belt, and put the key in the ignition. Why he did not immediately turn it, switch on the lights and drive away to the dismal flat he laughingly called home, he could not have said. Instead, he sat on mindlessly, perhaps even dozed a little; and awoke dismayed to remind himself that he had drunk only one glass of wine.

The jeep door slamming was what brought him out of his reverie. Himself unseen in the darkened car, Jurnet watched as two tall, slender young figures, hand in hand – though the girl, or so it seemed to the detective, hung back a little – threaded the intricate traceries which were the shadows of the old apple trees, and disappeared behind a bank of shrubbery. In another minute a bright rectangle of window spilled its light out into the night, striking reflections from the dark-polished rhododendrons and touching the tender new growth with a frosting of silver. Somewhere, as if disturbed by the light, or, perhaps, by the sound of footsteps overhead, a horse snuffled and moved its hooves on a hard floor.

The light over the stable went out. Down below, to judge by the sound of large teeth champing, the horse was having a midnight snack.

‘You and me both,' Jurnet said aloud, feeling along the shelf under the dashboard for the bar of chocolate he kept there against emergencies.

He located it at last, a gluey mess which clung to his fingers as he tried to unwrap it. When finally he got a piece into his mouth he seemed to be eating more silver paper than chocolate.

He started up the car and drove out of the car park, out on to the road. A tenderness possessed him which even the melted chocolate on the steering wheel scarcely diminished. He felt sure that the youngsters up in the stable flat were making love for the first time, and he wished them well. Winding along the ribbon of road, he tried to remember how it had been with himself first time round, and could only remember that it hadn't been very good. Not surprising, really. Hate, fear, joy – every other feeling you could name – came instinctively. Love you had to learn to make, like a cake; and not one that came ready-mixed, either. Only beginner's luck if you got it right first time.

Jurnet wound down the car window. The night air on his face was cool and fresh. Even in the Angleby suburbs the wind was still scented with summer.

The detective drove quickly across the city to the further, the unfashionable side, weaving through the ancient streets with a skill born of long acquaintance. He loved his native city and found it hard to understand that anyone would actually choose to leave it, even for twenty-one glorious days of sun, sex and gastro-enteritis. When Miriam was there to share it, he could even find something good to say about his flat in the run-down block where the stairs smelled of slow-simmered underwear except on the days Miss Whistler, the late-blooming spinster on the first floor, burned joss sticks, when they smelled of yashmaks, or, possibly, yaks.

Jurnet parked his car on the forecourt, next to the black plastic bags put out for the dustman. Overhead, the sky, so spacious above Bullen Hall, had contracted to a niggardly strip above the street lights. Cutting me down to size, the detective thought, and quite right too.

Getting out his key, he unlocked the street door and entered into his very own stately home.

Mrs Barwell rode magisterially up the front drive of Bullen Hall. She was a large woman, who rode her ancient bike with the dignity of the Queen her horse at the Trooping of the Colour, even managing somehow to give the impression that, like Her Majesty, she rode side-saddle.

Refreshed by the morning dew, the vast lawn in front of the house sparkled in the sun. Mrs Barwell, as she processed along, favoured it with more attention than she normally accorded grass. Camel rides for the kiddies would be fine, she decided, at the end of her examination, so long as they didn't come with Arabs, which, it was her understanding, in the general way of things they did. Bingo in the Banqueting Hall, on the other hand – that would be a real step forward. She looked at the front elevation of the house, still sombre in shadow, with a critical eye. When Mr Shelden had said it could do with a bit of brightening up he never spoke a truer word. Even those who last night had made a song and dance about how shocked they were at the very suggestion – just wait till the Bingo got going and they'd be there, Mrs Barwell would take a bet on it, getting their eyes down along of everyone else.

Mrs Barwell was in no hurry. There wasn't all that much to do in the curator's flat; and Mr Shelden would soon find out she wasn't one to make work where there wasn't any. Last night, in the big room, she'd noticed one of the catering women going round with a dustpan and brush. More of a lick and a promise, as you'd expect from those fly-by-nights, but at least it would have skimmed off the top layer.

Altogether, Mrs Barwell was quite looking forward to the hours ahead. Working for a bachelor had to be more congenial than having a housewife, however biddable, looking over your shoulder to see what you were doing, and telling you to do it differently.

She had brought along her new flowered overall for her first day under the new dispensation. It lay neatly folded in the wicker basket attached to the bicycle's handlebars, along with several freshly laundered dust cloths and the bread for the carp. Begin as you mean to go on was her motto.

Arrived at the ornate stone structure with which some nineteenth century Appleyard had replaced the drawbridge and portcullis which once had guarded Bullen Hall against all comers, Mrs Barwell made a stately descent from her conveyance and propped it against one of the stone bulls which stood on either side of the narrow way. She took the bag of stale bread from her basket and went on to the bridge.

There were some, Mrs Barwell knew, who said fish had no more brains than a bloater; but Mrs Barwell knew different. The carp in Bullen Hall moat knew her, and she them. Indeed, sometimes, as she watched them moving through the water, dark and secretive, it seemed to her that there wasn't much about Bullen Hall and its occupants they didn't know, if they could only talk and had a mind to it.

She was a widow with an only daughter married and living in Tasmania, on the other side of the world, and the carp had become a solace for her loneliness, pets of whose intelligence she was given to loving boasts. You could, she asserted, set your clock by them, and probably your calendar as well. 9.15 every weekday morning and there they were, waiting for their breakfast with their tongues hanging out, so to speak. But try turning up on a Saturday or a Sunday when Mrs Barwell was off work, and you'd be lucky to see hide or hair of them anywhere in the moat; an occasional stirring up of the bottom, or a sudden eruption of bubbles the only giveaway they were there at all.

It was Thursday and there were no carp.

More upset than she cared to admit, Mrs Barwell peered over the bridge, first one side, then the other, scanning the sludgy waters which heartlessly gave back only reflections of rose-coloured walls, bright morning sky and her own worried countenance. She opened the bag and took out a few bits of bread which she threw experimentally into the water. They jiggled on the surface for a little, ignored by the swallows hawking for flies; then, saturated, sank slowly out of sight.

Mrs Barwell replaced the bag in the basket, and wheeled her bicycle along the gravelled path which followed the moat round the house. She walked slowly, her eyes on the water. It occurred to her that the caterers, mucky lot, might have emptied their waste into the moat before taking their departure; and the carp, in consequence replete, had accordingly been in no mood to eat again after so short an interval. The explanation did not satisfy.
Her
carp would have come to the bridge irrespective.