Late of This Parish

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘What were your relations with him?’

  ‘My –?’ Reece looked startled. ‘Oh, friendly. But then, I try to make a point of getting on with most people. Life’s too short for anything else.’

  ‘Agreed. But from all accounts, he was a difficult man to get on with.’

  ‘He could be an awkward old cuss, sure, but I found him OK. He’d a sardonic humour that appealed to me. And a passion for Mah Jong, which I used to play with him on a fairly regular basis. We also shared the same tastes in music.’

  ‘Wagner,’ said Mrs Holden, ‘which Jon plays so loud he can’t hear the doorbell.’

  ‘One of the reasons I like living apart from the main building. I like my music loud, especially when I’m having a shower. Actually, I did hear, Gina, but by the time I’d grabbed a bathrobe you’d gone. I found the music on the mat, thanks. I’d left some sheet-music in church at lunchtime,’ he explained lightly.

  ‘You were in the church at lunch-time yesterday, Mr Reece?’

  ‘Yes, but I wasn’t skiving off my duties here, if that’s what you’re thinking. I skipped lunch in order to run through a solo in a new anthem with one of the choirboys – intended for today, though of course we shan’t be doing it now.’ With a faint smile he watched Kite noting this down. ‘If you’ve any doubts you can ask the boy in question – he’s Simon Rushton, lives in the village.’ His eyes were of a vivid blue, like chips of lapis lazuli, reflecting the sky blue of the tracksuit he wore. You could see why women liked him. And not only for his good looks. There was a warmth and spontaneity about him that anyone might be expected to find attractive. Mayo wondered why he didn’t. Perhaps he was too obvious. Perhaps there was a lack of depth. But Reece’s next words didn’t indicate that.

  ‘I’m damn sorry the old man’s dead,’ he said suddenly, ‘and even sorrier for poor Laura.’ His face was momentarily bleak and Mayo felt the force of something dark and secret, an undercurrent he didn’t understand. Had the previous attachment to Laura Willard which Holden had mentioned been more serious then he’d imagined? Had it left its scars? The quirky smile returned. ‘Also, I must admit, quite sorry for myself. I do have very personal reasons for wanting him still alive.’

  ‘Maybe you’d like to elaborate on that?’

  Reece tossed back his wayward lock of hair and looked questioningly at Holden. ‘Go ahead, Jon,’ said the Headmaster, who seemed to have an easy and informal relationship with his staff.

  ‘Well,’ said Reece, ‘I’m sure you’ve already been told I’m in line for the Headmastership when Richard leaves and that it’s going to be a damn close-run thing. There are those who’ll vote for Illingworth because they’re impressed by his Cambridge background and think how good his Ph.D. would look on the school prospectus. However, let’s hope there are others with whom good sense will prevail. I shall need them – now that Willard is dead, I’ve lost one of my strongest backers.’

  ‘Oh come on, Jon!’ Gina Holden protested, ‘you’re doing yourself an injustice.’

  ‘You’re still young,’ Holden commented drily. ‘There is life beyond Uplands House.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve no patience with that! If I can’t have Uplands, I’m not sure I want a Headship anywhere else. But what the hell, it’s not worth getting worked up about. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. May the best man win, as they say.’

  He spoke with a conviction that inclined Mayo to believe him. If only because Reece struck him on the whole as the rather immature sort who would demand gratification, if not instantly, then quite soon. What did surprise him, for more reasons than that, was that Holden should see him as a future Headmaster of Uplands House.

  Something else also struck him: if Reece had indeed lost his strongest supporter as he claimed – then the opposite was also true, and Illingworth had lost his strongest opponent. He thought more about Illingworth. A Cambridge background? he was asking himself as they got into the car, and why had Illingworth abandoned it? Senior science master at Uplands House was a far cry from a research fellowship at Cambridge. No wonder the appointment was so important to him.

  CHAPTER 12

  A more interesting, not to say surprising, alternative to pork pie presented itself on the menu at the Drum and Monkey, where something described as carbonade de boeuf was on offer.

  A brave man, the landlord. Enterprising, to challenge the sacrosanct Sunday roast. Kite was suspicious of such foreign muck but he was tempted by the prospect of a hot meal and on being told it was only a kind of stew, ordered for them both. With rice for Mayo and chips, unrepentantly, for himself. It was advertised as being available at all times but was a long time coming, raising Mayo’s hopes that it might not, after all, be a microwaved mush, carbonade de boeuf in name only.

  He had elected to sit in the snug after glimpsing some of his own people eating in the bar lounge – Farrar, Deeley and pretty Jenny Platt, the latter a welcome addition to CID since being transferred from the uniformed branch. They were in good spirits, sharing a joke. He’d been a DC himself once and knew the constraints the nearby presence of a senior officer could impose, so he walked past and into the public bar, to which he wasn’t averse anyway, away from the red plush and the hunting prints.

  A real spit and sawdust place, he saw as he pushed open the door, stone-flagged, overheated by a great roaring fire and full of noise which abated somewhat when they entered but immediately began again. Not a man there hadn’t had to answer personal questions from the police about his movements. Not one person in the village had escaped being touched by the murder; it had affected all their lives. But none of them were going to be inhibited by it.

  The customers were all men, ranging from a couple of teenage darts throwers to two ancients playing dominoes. As Kite brought their drinks to the corner Mayo had selected, glances were cast from time to time in their direction, remarks were obviously being made, no prizes for guessing the subject. It wasn’t possible to hear what was being said until one old man in a cloth cap joined in, speaking in the over-loud voice of the hard of hearing, heavy with the local accent. ‘Bloody parsons,’ he informed the bar in general, ‘no damn better’n nobody else and I’d say that if it was the Pope himself what had been murdered.’

  Did the noise suddenly become louder? Or was it just the altercation which had arisen between the darts players? The old chap who had spoken took no notice of any of it. ‘Interfering old bugger he were, and what I say is, if he’s got hisself killed he’s got nobody but hisself to blame.’

  ‘Come on, Sam.’ The landlord was a thin man with a melancholy look underlined by the long sideboards he wore. ‘Drink up and have another on the house.’

  ‘You won the pools or summat, Arnold?’ But the old man downed what was left in his glass in one long swallow and upon the promised pint being actually drawn, thereafter kept his voice down. Mayo, however, his ears now attuned, caught the name ‘Lampeter’ once or twice.

  The place grew quieter as one o’clock Sunday dinnertime approached. Most of the customers gradually left for home, leaving as the sole occupants only old Sam propping up the bar, with one of the domino players still in his corner. Mayo went to replenish his and Kite’s drinks. ‘My name’s Mayo,’ he said to Sam, signalling the landlord to give the two old men the same again. ‘My colleague and I are investigating Mr Willard’s murder.’

  ‘Oh ar.’

  ‘You happen to know Danny Lampeter?’

  Sam’s seamed old face took on a gratified expression as the second unsolicited pint of the morning arrived at his elbow. But there wasn’t much in this life that hadn’t to be paid for, one way or another, and he prepared to do so. ‘Good cause to, haven’t I?’ he began. ‘Got that granddaughter o’mine, Tracey, in the family way and then wouldn’t own up to it. Bad lot, that’s what he is. Ask anybody. Good ’ealth.’

  Drinking deep, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The domino player echoed, ‘Good ’ealth.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Mayo promp
ted.

  ‘What I said.’ Sam communed with his beer while Mayo waited patiently and was presently rewarded. ‘Summat else – did me outa that there gardening job with the old Reverend, he did. Soon’s he heard from my granddaughter L were prepared to do a few hours to supplement me pension, off he goes and gets the job hisself – stands to reason he would, don’t it, considering his age and mine?’

  That hadn’t been Laura Willard’s version as Mayo remembered it, but if Sam thought that was how it had happened, it would explain his antagonism to both Lampeter and Willard.

  ‘What was that you said earlier about Mr Willard interfering? Have you something specific in mind?’

  He received a wary look. ‘Not specially. He were just an old killjoy.’

  ‘Nothing that might have given someone a grudge against him?’ A shrug. ‘Well then, what about Lampeter’s sister?’

  ‘Oh, Ruth’s all right,’ Sam said surprisingly. ‘Her’s had it rough, poor wench, one way or t’other.’

  At that moment a middle-aged woman in a crossover apron and bedroom slippers appeared in the bar entrance, holding the door open. ‘You going to be here all day, Dad?’ she shrilled at the old man. ‘’Cos if y’are, might as well throw yer dinner on the fireback for all the good’ll it be.’

  ‘All right, our Doreen, I’m coming as soon as I’ve finished me beer.’

  ‘Well, don’t be more’n five minutes or it’ll be five minutes too late,’ was her parting shot.

  ‘You get back to your Yorkshire pudding,’ Sam muttered to the closed door, but his confiding mood had been broken and he rose to follow her, nodding good day to Mayo, who rejoined Kite for the carbonade which had at last been brought in by the landlord’s wife.

  ‘Lampeter again,’ Kite said, liberally dredging his chips with salt and vinegar. ‘Keeps cropping up, doesn’t he? Willard seems to have specialized in getting up people’s noses, mebbe he just went too far with Lampeter, and that’s why he’s skipped.’

  ‘We don’t know that he has skipped, he might be back tonight.’

  Mayo considered what Kite had said, however, turning the idea round in his mind but feeling it was too easy an explanation. He never felt comfortable with explanations handed to him on a plate; maybe it was some perversity in his nature that made him feel uneasy unless he’d had to work his socks off to achieve anything. ‘In any case, whether he has or not, we’ve nothing on him other than his taking off at a singularly appropriate moment. We’re trying to find a murderer, not chasing all the petty criminals in Wyvering.’ He lapsed into silence, studying his meal while he ate it as though cracking the secrets of its composition would give him the solution he was looking for. Finally, he pushed away his plate with most of the soggy rice untouched. The rest had been OK.

  ‘You should’ve had the chips,’ Kite said.

  ‘I’m going for a walk. That’ll do me more good than chips.’

  ‘Sounds a good idea.’

  ‘Not you, lad, you’ve enough on. Me, I’ve taken a fancy to see something of the village.’

  Kite shrugged and conceded the point. Apart from what he still had to do here in Wyvering, there were his dreaded reports to write back at the office, and he didn’t know how he was going to get through all he had to do and be home before cock-crow, though he fully intended to be. In any case, if he knew Mayo, the walk wouldn’t be just for the good of his health.

  ‘Let the old chap have his dinner and then get somebody to find out from him or his daughter where this Tracey lives, for the record,’ Mayo said.

  As they were leaving, the landlord looked up from polishing glasses behind the bar. ‘I wouldn’t take too much notice of what old Sam Biggs says, he’s prejudiced. It’s true his granddaughter got herself in the club, but it don’t necessarily mean Lampeter was the father. She’s well known for putting it about a bit, that Tracey. Didn’t seem to make much difference to her, having the baby. Left it with her mother when it was a few weeks old and took herself off, nice as ninepence.’

  ‘Where’d she go to? Any idea?’

  ‘God knows. Mebbe her mother can tell you, but I wouldn’t bank on it.’

  At the end of St Kenelm’s Walk, the railed footpath, affording a scenic view of the river valley, led behind Main Street to the castle, or what was left of it: the stump of a square tower, a few tumbledown walls and a now dry moat. Within the walls rose the motte, on which stood a stone cairn with a plaque attached. It said the castle dated from Saxon times, that Owen Glendower had been repelled here, and pointed the direction to look if you wanted to see clear into Wales, towards the Wrekin and the Rotunda in Birmingham. Whether or not these extravagant claims could be supported there was no way of telling today. Visibility was hampered by the haze which the breeze up here had failed to disperse. The sun which had been so warm in the Holdens’ garden had disappeared and it had turned distinctly chilly and overcast, in the shivery way only the month of May can. Leaning over the safety railings, Mayo couldn’t see much further than Uplands House School below and to the right, and the church tower on his left.

  The location was evidently a favourite Sunday afternoon venue. Dogs were being walked, prams wheeled, children played on bikes or skateboards. A father and his young son were attempting to fly a kite within the somewhat restricted confines of the bailey. And somewhere in this quiet, ordinary hilltop village was someone who had murder on his conscience.

  In the course of his admittedly quick walk round it, it had seemed to Mayo that Wyvering, outwardly so united, fell into three self-contained parts: the somewhat rarefied world of church precincts and private school; Main Street with its old-fashioned, square little houses and square little gardens crammed with bright flowers; and Elm Tree Crescent, a little transplant of suburbia where grass was neatly mown, roses pruned and hedges trimmed. Neat as Noddyland, the twenty or so bungalows built on to that side of the hill with the less favoured view were as alike as two pins, distinguishable from one another only by their own touches of individuality: a white-painted trellis where clematis would later climb, an outcrop of rockery on a lawn, the chosen style of their net curtains.

  He wondered to what extent the three sections mixed and interacted. How far would the net have to stretch to take in the murderer? Or did he come, as Mayo intuitively felt he must, from within Willard’s own small circle?

  His thoughts were interrupted by a stumpy-legged Welsh corgi trotting fussily up to him and beginning to sniff around in an alert, foxy-faced way. Funny how fashions changed, even in dog-ownership. A few years ago you couldn’t move without falling over corgis, but you didn’t see so many around now, the fashion was all for big macho dogs that cost as much as a man to feed. A misunderstanding arose when Mayo, who should have known better, bent to pat the corgi, whereupon the ungrateful animal, apparently mistaking his motives, began to growl and snap at his ankles in a decidedly threatening way. He was hoping he wasn’t going to have to boot it away when it was called to heel.

  ‘Here, Taff!’ The owner was approaching, a man clad in green Barbour jacket and a red woolly hat with a pompom on it, assuring Mayo in the manner of all doting pet-owners that the dog was all right, it was his way of being friendly, wouldn’t harm a fly, really, though not until it had been called to heel several times did it obey. ‘May I introduce myself?’ he went on breezily. ‘I’m Denzil Thorne. I believe you’re the detective i/c the case here.’

  Mayo acknowledged that he was, meeting an eager, bright-eyed smile and an outstretched hand. ‘Dr Thorne. I was hoping to call and see you this afternoon.’ He gave his own name and his hand was gripped hard.

  ‘I’ve been expecting someone to come round. Why don’t we walk back together?’

  ‘If you wish.’ Mayo turned in the direction he’d come.

  ‘Not that way.’ Thorne indicated a track leading downwards. ‘This way’s quicker and I can let Taff off the lead. It joins the path above the river bank and we can get into my garden from there. It’s a bit muddy but we’ll ma
nage.’ He strode off without waiting for a reply, rubber-booted, followed by Mayo, whose own gumboots were back in the car and who was annoyed to find himself having to pick his way around deep puddles like some latter-day Hercule Poirot.

  The footpath itself, which joined a track leading from the school, was overgrown and Denzil Thorne shouted over his shoulder by way of explanation that it wasn’t much used except by the residents of the houses on St Kenelm’s Walk and Parson’s Place, whose garden boundaries it skirted. As they progressed, Mayo saw that the gardens did not, as he had supposed, end at the river bank, but levelled out for some twenty or thirty yards before their boundary hedges which separated them from the river footpath. Then again, beyond the footpath was another stretch of ground, irregular in contour where the course of the river, several feet below it, had made erratic inroads into the soil, forming small scrub-covered islands and peninsulas. It was on one of these peninsulas, further downriver, he was presently to learn, that the badgers had their sett.

  Mrs Thorne was weeding at the bottom of the garden, kneeling on the grass, clad in an anorak with her substantial rear end in the air and a trug full of tangled white roots beside her, attacking ground elder as though it were a personal enemy to be vanquished.

  ‘Got to root out every last little bit,’ she announced, digging her fork in with venom. ‘Leave so much as an inch and it’ll take advantage and start a dynasty before you can say Jack Robinson!’ With obvious regret at having to abandon such an enjoyable task, she heaved herself to her feet. ‘I’ll be right with you but excuse me for a minute, will you, I must take this little tyke and clean him up. He’s too near the ground to keep clear of the mud. Heel, Taff!’ With much more docility and obedience than he’d shown with his master, Taff obeyed.

  ‘No hurry, Mrs Thorne,’ Mayo said. ‘I don’t think there’s anything more I want of you at the moment –’

  ‘It’s my turn now for the old inquisition, eh?’ interrupted Denzil brightly. The idea of being questioned seemed to amuse him, as if the activities of the real-life police were a parody of some detective novel or telly-drama, as if Mayo were some sort of stage policeman, and he the innocent victim. But it was an attitude Mayo had come across many times before and he took no notice.