Fete Fatale

by Robert Barnard

  ‘Ah!’ said Mary significantly. ‘He went over, did he?’

  ‘Oh, only on a short visit. He found he had no vocation. Now he teaches the Marxism Today course for the Open University. He really had very little in common with Marcus. Marcus, you know, was never one for extremes.’

  ‘No, quite. An ability to smooth over differences is so valuable—though of course it’s dangerous if it leads to compromises.’

  ‘That, surely, is what it normally has to lead to.’

  ‘But some of us—I don’t think your Marcus always understood this, or sympathized—some of us are people of conviction. We know that in some areas there can be no compromise—that compromise is an abdication of responsibility.’ (Oh God—she’s getting a Thatcher complex, I thought.) ‘Our little differences—and I hope they were never more than that, and that they didn’t become personal in any way—came about precisely for that reason. I did not believe that we could allow the Bishop to foist on us a man who is virtually a priest—positively a Catholic priest! It was a matter of faith, and the practice of that faith, so naturally there could be no compromise.’

  ‘Fortunately,’ I said, with the intention of provoking, ‘that little matter seems to have sorted itself out now. Most people seem to have accepted Father Battersby quite happily.’

  ‘Oh no, dear.’ Again that aggravating little smile of complacent knowing-better. ‘I don’t think you’ll find that is so. Of course, on Sunday people were upset and confused—quite understandably so. But I’ve been doing my best, stiffening resolves—’

  ‘I’m sure you have—’

  ‘—and you’ll find that next week we shall see a quite different picture emerge. I know you can’t have a great deal of sympathy with me, Helen dear, over this, having been brought up in a quite different spiritual tradition, or perhaps really none at all, isn’t that right, dear? But it’s something I know in my bones I have to do. As one of the leaders of this little community.’

  Self-proposed and self-elected, I thought.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ I said, ‘that I’ve always had a tendency to distrust leaders.’

  ‘I know you have, Helen dear. You’ve always made that quite clear, but you nevertheless are wrong. People in the mass are so easily confused, so readily get hold of the wrong end of the stick, so easily miss the ethical point. You’ll find, if you look around, that each little community throws up a few natural leaders.’

  ‘And you think Hexton has thrown up you?’

  ‘Perhaps in some degree you might say that I inherited the position,’ she said, undented in her self-approval, and pressing another cress sandwich on me as a sign that she forgave my tone. ‘Though I hope it may be said too that I managed to make my own little contribution to the community’s welfare, even while poor Mother was alive. Now, with Thyrza about to depart, it is clear that a very special kind of responsibility is going to fall on my shoulders. People will be looking up to me more and more for guidance.’ (Oh God—a Pope complex, I thought.) ‘I accept the challenge. I do not intend to disappoint them.’

  ‘Mary,’ I asked, ‘what were you doing in the later stages of Saturday afternoon?’

  ‘Ah—’ she said, with another forbearing smile. ‘I thought you were going to ask that. I know that Thyrza took a strong line with you over the matter. But I feel we ought to make allowances. It’s natural you should take an interest.’

  ‘Good of you,’ I murmured.

  ‘Well, on Saturday, as you know, I arrived at the fête around midday, I think, and of course I went around in the tent a great deal—up and down the aisles, having a word here, a word there. People who’ve put in voluntary effort need a pat on the back, don’t you feel? And I went around, showing my appreciation.’ (A Lady Godetia complex, I thought.) ‘And of course I bought a little something here, bestowed a word of praise there, trying to do my little bit. That took me up to—let me see—about three or so.’

  ‘You talked,’ I said (avoiding the phrase ‘had a session’ only by inches), ‘with Lady Godetia.’

  ‘Quite. Dear Godetia. Community business, you know. Such an interest she takes, though I do sometimes feel in her case that the spiritual dimension is lacking. Where was I? Oh yes, three o’clock. Well, about then, or possibly a shade later, I went outside, watching the various games, talking a little to members of the choir—weren’t they good this year?—and, let me see . . . ’

  ‘You talked to Marcus?’

  ‘Yes! Precisely. I talked to Marcus. Dreadful to think that I was one of the last to see him alive.’

  ‘Yes, dreadful. Where was this, and what did you both say?’

  ‘Oh dear—I have to be precise about this, though in fact the police have asked me about it as well. Now, I’d been down to the river, to talk to one of the mothers—she was letting her little girl bathe naked in the river, and though it was only a tot, we all know there are people, terrible people, who can so easily be given ideas . . . And of course she saw my point. After that, I was strolling back towards the games, when I saw Marcus walking away from the fête, and the games, quite fast . . . ’

  ‘Walking after someone, do you mean?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say, dear. There were people all around, coming and going. I just assumed he was wanting to get back home, to have a little break from his duties.’

  ‘So there wasn’t anyone in particular there that he could have been walking after?’

  Mary wrinkled her forehead, as if genuinely in thought. Perhaps she would have liked to remember someone.

  ‘No . . . No, I can’t say I noticed anyone in particular. Anyway, what I wanted to emphasize was that Marcus seemed in a hurry, and that was why we didn’t exchange many words . . . Because I hope we weren’t on such terms that we couldn’t have a pleasant conversation, should the occasion arise.’

  ‘But as it was—?’

  ‘As it was, Marcus smiled, and I smiled, and I think he said what a pleasant day it was, and . . . wasn’t the fête going well, and I said yes, and . . . that was it. Positively it.’

  ‘And then Marcus hurried on?’

  ‘Yes. Or at least I suppose so.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I went back towards the games . . . congratulated some of the contestants—rough lads, some of them, but respectful in their dumb kind of way . . . then I had a word with Mr Horsforth . . . well, quite a conversation, it was, really. About the declining standards of dress at the Grammar School. I know times are said to be hard, but I cannot understand how parents can send their children to school in jeans. Jeans! Mr Horsforth agreed with me, of course . . . And then I came home.’

  ‘When would that be?’

  ‘Well, really, dear, I didn’t time myself. But I think I was home by about a quarter past four. I know I had afternoon tea as soon as I got in.’

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  My mind was chewing over this information. If Marcus had gone straight up Castle Wynd and along Castle Walk, then he was probably killed while Mary was having her conversation (assuming she was speaking the truth) with Mr Horsforth. If, on the other hand, he had done something else—what?—first, then he could have met up with Mary again along Castle Walk. Yet Castle Walk was on the way home neither for Mary nor for Marcus.

  ‘And you stayed at home then?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, but of course later, when I heard—’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Franchita, I think. Yes it was. Poor Franchita: how terrible for her fête to end in that way. She was there, too, you know. She saw—’

  ‘I was there. I saw.’

  ‘I know, dear. That’s why we . . . make allowances. So after I heard, I thought a little, and of course it occurred to me that I just might have been one of the last to see Marcus alive. Now, whatever you may say about me, Helen dear, I am not one to shirk my duty, so I went to the police—’

  ‘You went there—?’

  ‘Well, dear, the telephone is never quite satisfactory for these things, is it? Yes,
I put my coat on, and went to the police station there and then, and told them my little all, though I couldn’t see how it could be really important. Anyway, they were most polite and grateful—the Superintendent it was I talked to, of course . . . and I gave them some words of encouragement and support, and told them how Hexton as a whole was behind them in their search for this killer.’

  Back to Mrs Thatcher, I thought, visiting the police after a bomb outrage. Were Mary Morse’s delusions funny, or frightening?

  ‘You also,’ I said brutally, ‘mentioned Lady Godetia.’

  ‘Lady Godetia?’ she echoed, looking at me wide-eyed, with an expression of innocent astonishment on her face. ‘Oh no. I don’t think so. What reason could there have been to mention her? No, Helen dear, I think you must have been misinformed there. So many people out to cause trouble, aren’t there? And then of course I came home and went to bed. Such a tiring day, you know.’

  ‘Quite. I found it tiring myself. And the next day you and Thyrza went on your bus to wherever-it-was, for your church service?’

  ‘We did, dear, and I am not going to get annoyed by your tone of voice, and I assure you that we were not put out in any way that more did not come with us.’ The smile of complacent pity for the weakness of lesser men was fixed rather frighteningly on her face. Great oaks from little acorns, you know. We blazed a trail. I have had many assurances from people who will be following the trail next week. That is what leadership is about, you know. I’m always conscious, in everything I do, that people are looking to me to set a certain standard, and are looking to me for guidance, moral guidance. It’s a terrible burden and responsibility, but I accept it gladly. In every community there has to be someone to set the standard, someone on whom the rest can model themselves.’

  Queen Mary, I thought! Old Queen Mary! As she sat there, ramrod-straight, with that smile of regal self-absorption on her face, I really felt rather frightened. I looked round the room, preparatory to getting up. I’d been aware since I came in that something had been changed in the arrangement since I’d sat here last. Virtually nothing else had—the room was practically a museum to the tastes and habits of Mary’s mother, a Morse-oleum—but one thing had. That was it! On the sideboard there was now only one photograph of a Morse boy, not the two that had been there before. As I got up to go, I casually went over and picked it up.

  ‘Your brother Philip,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mary edgily.

  The picture showed a bronzed and grinning man, in an open-necked shirt, standing outside a very extensive, positively palatial house. I had been to Australia as a teenager, to visit relatives. It didn’t fool me.

  ‘Vaucluse House,’ I said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Vaucluse House. It’s the nearest thing they have in New South Wales to a stately home. Historic monument, you know.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mary. She sounded disappointed. I really think she had convinced herself that it was her brother Philip’s home.

  All the time I had been looking around the room for the missing photograph. Finally I spotted it, in a dark corner over by the piano. Mary had been willing to move it into obscurity, but not so far to change the Mother-given order of things as to remove it entirely. I could feel Mary’s irritation coming over me in waves as I strolled over and picked it up. It was a graduation photograph, the product of a studio, perhaps in the mid-’sixties. John Morse stood on a studio step in cap and gown. Clearly he was not enjoying the experience, was going through with it only because he had been commanded to. He gazed ahead, aggressive, somehow cunning, and to my mind saying something like: ‘I’m going to get even with you for this.’

  ‘What university?’ I asked.

  ‘Grimsby,’ snapped Mary.

  ‘Really? Howard Culpepper’s university. What did he graduate in?’

  ‘Sociology.’

  She said it as if it were a dirty word. At last something that Mary and I might agree on. I put the picture down.

  ‘Well, thank you so much, Mary, for the tea, and for being so helpful generally . . . ’

  As we made our goodbyes, some semblance of a normal social relationship in Hexton terms was re-established, and I think that as she closed the door Mary was probably congratulating herself that she had handled things so much better than poor dear Thyrza. But then Mary, the new Mary, seemed to congratulate herself on just about everything. She had elevated herself into a nonpareil. Proceedings for sainthood would be initiated shortly.

  The first thing I said to myself as I walked slowly and thoughtfully home was: Mary is mad. Of course I meant this in the slack, general way people do use the word, but on reflection I wasn’t at all sure that it mightn’t develop into a literal, clinical madness. There was the fact that Mary had apparently re-ordered the events of the fête day in her mind in such a way that it had become a triumph for her: she had gone round graciously congratulating and graciously thanking, and the unlettered peasants had shown inarticulate gratitude and devotion. Murder had apparently not been able to dim the truly royal glow that the event now cast in her mind’s eye. Such re-writing of history could spring only from the mind of a politician, a Marxist historian, or from a mind in the grip of a personal delusion.

  Then there were the other delusions of her power and influence—the moral presidency of the town that she had mentally elected herself to. This was a figure infinitely grander than the moral busybody that Mary had always genuinely been. This new figure set the tone, led the way, laid down the moral law; she was a force for stability and order. This in the face of her total rejection by Hexton both on the day of the fête, and the day after. One could truly say: That way madness lies—but had madness perhaps come already?

  Then there was the matter of the brother. Could that in any way be relevant? The likelihood was that it was one of the perfectly normal family secrets that people habitually prefer not to be talked about, and Mary would like less than most to have discussed: jail, bankruptcy . . . lunacy.

  But something worth killing Marcus for, if Marcus had found out? And how had Marcus found something like that out? And if he had done, wouldn’t he have told me?

  Well, no: quite likely he would not have told me. Marcus didn’t talk readily about other people’s affairs (it was his greatest fault), and he didn’t like the relish with which I uncovered the seamy underbelly of Hexton life. But then, granted Marcus’s tact and charity, how did Mary know that he knew? Because one thing was certain: he would never have mentioned it to her.

  And there was something else. Something Mary had said, that had clicked in my mind. Something that reminded me of something someone had said on some other social occasion. Mary herself? Or someone else? What the hell was it? I hadn’t taken a notebook to Mary’s, thinking to establish a rather pleasanter social atmosphere than I had at the Mipchins’, and on the whole I had been successful. Now I regretted it, though. Except that the thing had been such a little thing that I probably would not have noted it down anyway. Such a very little thing . . .

  CHAPTER 14

  AT LI CHEN’S

  There was this to be said for Hexton’s custom of making calls on the bereaved after a death, over mine of the bereaved making the calls herself: with Hexton’s system, the bereaved could make her own choice of funeral baked meats. I felt I would get very tired of lemon fingers and unidentifiable sandwiches without benefit of crust before very long. Thin bread and butter would be vastly preferable, and muffins positively comforting.

  On the Thursday, though, a variation on this round, this series of dismal tributes to the attenuated custom of the English tea-time, occurred to me. On Thursdays Lady Godetia’s cook at Walworth, her manor house seven miles from town, had the day off, and Lady Godetia drove erratically into Hexton, in a manner that seemed to presuppose an armed escort to clear the motorway before and behind, and ate lunch at Li Chen’s. I had no great hopes of anything of any value coming from a chat with Lady Godetia: her name’s coming
into the case at all was a matter of mischief-making on Mary’s part, springing from her need to divert attention from her own doings in the weeks before Marcus’s death. Lady Godetia had no interest in church matters: her attendance at Edward the Confessor’s was occasional and social, and none of the churches near Walworth saw her any more often. Added to that, she had no doubt spent the entire afternoon of Saturday being gracious in the tent. Nevertheless, Mary had made Godetia part of the case, and to Li Chen’s I would go.

  Actually, Hexton’s Chinese restaurant rejoices in the name of The Jasmine Pavilion, but we always called it Li Chen’s, with an intonation that might either be familiar or colonial-lordly. As soon as I got in the door, I saw I had rather miscalculated my time: Lady Godetia was already seated at a table under the windows, surrounded by a series of dishes on plate-warmers, all of them three-parts consumed. Lady Godetia, under the powder-blue coats and feathery hats, was a heavy nosher. When he saw me at the door, Li Chen bustled forward and offered consolation in his way by being, momentarily, his natural self.

  ‘I was real sorry to hear about Mr Kitterege, Mrs K. He was a lovely person, no kidding. Try the king prawn today, eh? They’re beaut.’

  As I made appropriate response, I edged towards the window, and Mr Li reverted happily to his restaurant self: ‘You like table near window? You like nice glass led wine?’

  Li Chen was a terrible fraud, who was not above saying ‘flied lice’ if the fancy took him.

  As we approached Lady Godetia’s, it became clear that my tactic was going to pay off, though it did so in a way rather different from my intention. Looking up to wipe sweet and sour sauce from her chin, she witnessed my approach and waved.

  ‘Oh—Mrs—er—How nice to see you! Do come and join me while I finish my bits and pieces. You’re looking a little peaky. You must have overdone things at the fête. So tiring, aren’t they? Though this year’s was such a success, thanks to all you busy people.’