The Norfolk Mystery (The County Guides)

by Ian Sansom

  ‘You’d surely not be leaving me here alone, Mr Morley, until the police arrive?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘It could be hours, and there’s no one here except me and—’

  There were signs of an upswelling of emotion, which Morley might have been happy to ignore, but which I sought to quell.

  ‘Of course we won’t leave you, Mrs Snatchfold,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Sefton, sir. You are a gentleman.’ She eyed Morley suspiciously, as though my being a gentleman precluded him from being the same. ‘You’ll have more tea then?’

  ‘Well …’ said Morley, clearly agitated at the thought of his timetable being further rearranged.

  Mrs Snatchfold poured more tea regardless. ‘There you are, Mr Sefton. And you too, Mr Morley.’

  Morley sighed and muttered something – something that sounded very much like ‘Stupid woman’ – and went reluctantly back to the plants and was soon once again in the grip of a botanical fervour. I, meanwhile, lazily and inexpertly gazed around the garden, which stretched fardistant.

  ‘He had quite an eye, the reverend?’ I said.

  ‘Quite an eye?’ said Mrs Snatchfold.

  ‘For the garden, I mean?’

  ‘I’m not sure I can say, sir.’ She caught her breath. ‘And actually I’m not at all sure we should be talking like this with him only …’ She took a deep sigh, and looked as though she might again be overcome with tears.

  ‘Now, now,’ said Morley, rising up from his place half concealed within a border, sensing danger. ‘I’m sure the good reverend would have wanted us to enjoy the garden he’s created, wouldn’t he?’ He leaned over and took another deep sniff of something. ‘Ah. The enchanting scents of Araby. And these anemones, Mrs Snatchfold. Quite magnificent. I’ve never seen anything quite like them outside Italy.’

  ‘Those things?’ said Mrs Snatchfold, sniffing, and pouring herself another consoling cup of tea. ‘That’s all her doing.’

  ‘Look at this, Sefton.’ Morley stood by what appeared to me to be simply a purple bush; I could never share Morley’s enthusiasm for the plant world. ‘Wild purple anemones.’ He stepped back and squinted, as though surveying an Old Master hanging in a gallery. ‘Has a tremendous freedom to it, doesn’t it, the anemone? Tremendous self-assertion. A sort of carelessness and innocence. You have a veritable Garden of Eden here, Mrs Snatchfold, if I may say so.’

  ‘And her the Eve,’ said Mrs Snatchfold, mumbling rather. ‘Cake?’ She offered Morley a slice of what was a rather dry seed cake.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said Morley.

  ‘Cake?’ she repeated. ‘Made yesterday, but still good today.’

  ‘No, before that, what did you say?’

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ she said.

  ‘No, there was something,’ said Morley.

  ‘Her the Eve?’ I said.

  ‘Did you mean the maid, Mrs Snatchfold?’ said Morley.

  ‘Hannah?’ I said.

  ‘She’s responsible for the garden?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Snatchfold.

  ‘She’s an expert in the botanical? The striking young woman at the church?’ said Morley.

  ‘She knows about plants, sir, but I’m afraid I can’t comment on her strikingness. I’ve heard it said such. I can’t say I see it myself.’ She reached for a slice of her own dry cake.

  ‘Beauty being in the proverbial eye of the proverbial beholder,’ said Morley.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mrs Snatchfold, taking a bite.

  ‘I don’t know if you know much of the science of physiognomy, Mrs Snatchfold?’ asked Morley.

  ‘I don’t, sir, no.’

  ‘It is what one might call a sub-subject in the sciences. Lamarck and etcetera. Popularised by the phrenologists and the criminologists. Eyes too close together, forehead too high – these things taken as signs of criminal intent – or indeed behaviour. External signs of some internal malady. You know the theory?’

  ‘It’s the nose on her,’ said Mrs Snatchfold with some distaste, wiping dry seed cake crumbs from her lower lip.

  ‘Entirely discredited, of course,’ added Morley. ‘As a subject. Tells us next to nothing. If we were to attempt to read your face aright, Mrs Snatchfold’ – Morley squinted towards Mrs Snatchfold inquisitively – ‘what would it tell us?’

  ‘Why, nothing at all, sir!’

  ‘Perhaps not. But the maid has a nose, you say. She’s a Jewess, do you mean?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Snatchfold defiantly. ‘She is.’

  ‘And yet she was with you in the church?’

  ‘We’d gone to arrange flowers,’ said Mrs Snatchfold. ‘And then …’ Her voice cracked and her eyes started to well with tears.

  ‘Now, now, now!’ said Morley, always uncomfortable at any show of emotion, his own included. ‘Let’s not start any of that again, Mrs Snatchfold. Look! Look! Fine wisteria,’ he said, panicking rather, as Mrs Snatchfold began to crumble. ‘Perhaps you’d like another cup of tea yourself, or another slice of your delicious cake?’ He nodded towards me, indicating that I might wish quickly to pour tea and dispense cake, in an attempt to quell another damburst of emotion. But it was too late. No tea or cake, however dry, was going to calm this new outpouring. Mrs Snatchfold’s tears fell against her heaving bosom, like waves lapping up against the shore.

  Morley took immediate action: he excused himself.

  ‘I think I’ll take a little botanising tour around the garden, Sefton, if you don’t mind.’ He set off purposefully in the direction of the trees in the distance. ‘See what other treasures are hidden away here. You’re all right there, of course, with …?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, leading Mrs Snatchfold back into the house.

  It wasn’t until the bells of the church had rung out a melancholy twelve – and Mrs Snatchfold’s wave of emotion had subsided, with the assistance of several cups of strong, sweet tea, and several slices of cake – that the police finally arrived. I say ‘police’, though this implies that their arrival was in some considerable force, or in phalanx. In fact, the police in north Norfolk on a summer’s day in August consisted entirely of a young constable named Ridley, no older than twenty-two or twenty-three, who sported a thin moustache, whose fingers were stained yellow from smoking, and whose uniform looked decidedly greasy. I thought him rather a disappointment, but Mrs Snatchfold seemed calmed and reassured by the presence of some official authority, and so I quickly rounded up Morley from the garden – who was in ecstasies over some geraniums – and we agreed to accompany the unsuspecting young constable back up to the church.

  ‘Well,’ said Ridley, when he saw the reverend dangling from the bell-rope.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Morley. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Ridley decisively, as though saying it was the thing that confirmed it was the case.

  ‘Dead,’ agreed Morley, who drew closer, on the same principle – he adored the naming of parts. ‘Deceased. Departed. I don’t think there’s much doubt about that, Constable. I meant rather what do you think? Circumstances? Cause of death? Time of death? Details? Hypotheses? The latter derived from the former?’

  ‘I couldn’t say,’ said Ridley, staring at Morley with some concern; a common reaction, I found. ‘He looks like he’s been dead a while.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Morley, clearly disappointed. His faith in humans was such that he often expected people to be able to solve problems and puzzles in the same way he solved crosswords: which is to say quickly, and with little fuss. ‘Psmith is baffled, eh?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Psmith is baffled?’

  ‘My name’s Ridley, sir.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Morley briskly. ‘And you’ve really no idea? Can’t work it out?’

  ‘This is my first dead body, actually, sir,’ said Ridley. ‘On duty, I mean.’

  ‘Really?’ said Morley. ‘Well, congratulations. You, Sefton?’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Morley?’

&nb
sp; ‘Dead body, seen one before?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Good. And I, during the course of my long – and some might say undistinguished – career, have come across a few. Which means, Constable, that you have the great advantage of coming at things from first principles.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘You do. Opportunity for you to exercise your skills and judgement, I’d say. Young man like yourself. I smell promotion, Ridley, if you were to get to the bottom of this, show a little initiative.’

  ‘I don’t really think I’m in a position to show initiative, sir.’

  ‘Of course you are. Skills. Judgement. Initiative. You are a policeman, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘And it’s your job to sort all this out, isn’t it? Untangle the skein, as it were? Proceed by due process to a logical conclusion.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ridley, whose skein-untangling skills were clearly already at their limit. ‘I suppose. Police work does … proceed via certain … due process, Mr Morley, which I’m sure you’ll understand I have to—’

  Self-portrait in the garden

  ‘Follow. Of course, yes, though I’m surprised you’re not prepared to hazard some educated guess as to what tragedy’s occurred, based on the evidence.’

  ‘We’ve not gathered any evidence so far, Mr Morley.’

  ‘What? What about all this?’ said Morley, sweeping his arm round with a vigour and intensity that seemed to penetrate the very walls, indicating not just the room, but the whole church, its surroundings, and indeed the whole county of Norfolk as a potential field of evidence. ‘No evidence? It’s all evidence, isn’t it? Ex pede Herculem. You know the expression, Constable?’

  ‘No, I’m not sure that I do, sir.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Is it Latin?’ asked Ridley, whose moustache was beginning to look weaker and more downcast by the minute.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I’m afraid I did not have the benefit of a classical education, sir.’ The moustache bristled rather with this, I thought. Weakly bristled, but bristled nonetheless: I began to warm to Ridley.

  ‘Neither did I, Constable,’ retorted Morley. ‘Neither did I. But the disadvantages of one’s youth, however great, should hardly restrain the ambitions of one’s adult self, should they?’

  ‘Well, sir …’ Defeated, Ridley looked to me for moral support.

  ‘Otherwise all achievements – intellectual, moral, scientific – would depend entirely upon the hereditary principle, would they not? Do you believe only in the hereditary principle, Constable? The pharaonic line? The rule of primogeniture?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Ex pede Herculem,’ continued Morley, who was now pacing round and round the body, as calmly as a man might pace before his own fireplace. ‘Any guesses?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come, come. Herculem? Ring any bells? Classical gods?’

  ‘Hercules?’ I said, hoping to help Ridley out of the undignified hole Morley had unceremoniously thrown him into.

  ‘Very good, Sefton. But let’s allow the young constable here to work things out for himself, shall we? Pede?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘But you do know what a podiatrist is?’

  ‘I don’t think I do, sir, no.’

  ‘Podiatrist.’ Morley spelled out the letters.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Of the foot, Ridley. Pede.’ He stuck out a leg, shook a foot in demonstration, and pointed at himself. ‘So?’

  ‘From the foot, a Hercules,’ I said.

  ‘Correct, Sefton. We’ll make a classical scholar of him yet, won’t we? But, back to the matter in hand.’ Morley pointed at the reverend’s body, which remained as mute witness to our discussion, like a non-speaking character on stage. ‘From a single pertinent fact, Ridley, we might begin to piece together the whole, might we not? You know Pythagoras?’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t, no, I …’ He looked to me again for moral support, but Morley continued, pacing round.

  ‘The sixth-century Greek mathematician and philosopher who calculated the height of Hercules by measuring and comparing the length of his stadium in Athens?’

  ‘His stadium?’

  ‘His stadium, being much longer than that of other men. And thus—’

  ‘This is perhaps not the time for history, Mr Morley, is it?’ I interrupted. Restraining Morley from taking a detour, both literal and metaphorical, even in the smallest of rooms, was a hopeless task at the best of times, and one often doomed to failure, but one I nonetheless felt often obliged to perform.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Morley, both acknowledging while simultaneously ignoring my attempt to reroute him, ‘indeed’ being one of his favourite rhetorical devices, allowing him to pretend to account for the opinions and arguments of others while maintaining the force and direction of his own. ‘Indeed. It’s the principle, though, Sefton. I think the constable here would be willing to spend a minute of his time trying to grasp an important principle, don’t you?’

  ‘I think we might be better spending our time—’ I began.

  ‘Ex pede Herculem. Ex ungue leonem. Constable?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’ said Ridley, who by now was flushed bright red with frustration and embarrassment as Morley – insensitive to the finer feelings, and seizing the moment, as ever, as an opportunity for teaching and learning – ploughed on with his questioning.

  ‘Ex ungue leonem. A little effort here, please. Leonem?’

  ‘Lion?’ said Ridley pathetically.

  ‘Correct. So? Ex ungue leonem?’

  ‘From something we get the lion?’

  ‘Correct! Ungue? Think.’

  Ridley had the look of a man whose reserves of thinking had long since been exhausted.

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘The mane?’ said Ridley. ‘Seeing as it’s a—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The roar?’

  ‘No.’ Morley held up his arms as if he were a roaring lion.

  ‘The legs?’

  ‘Closer.’ Morley shook his hands.

  ‘The foot?’

  ‘Lions do not have feet, Constable. I think you’ll find the word “foot” can be applied, strictly speaking, only to bipeds.’

  ‘Paw?’

  ‘Closer!’

  ‘Claw?’ said Ridley.

  ‘Excellent!’ exclaimed Morley. ‘Lion. Claw. From the claw, a lion. Ex uno disce omnes.’

  ‘From the one the many,’ I said quickly, saving either Ridley or myself from another round of guess-the-Latin word games.

  ‘So, any ideas?’ said Morley. ‘Based on the evidence? On the principles? On the details? Lion’s claw? Hercules’ foot?’

  Ridley looked forlornly round the room, as did I, rather hoping for an actual lion’s claw – or a Herculean foot – to make itself apparent.

  It did not. The body of the reverend seemed to be all we had to go on.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not for me to say what’s caused … this,’ said Ridley, nodding towards the body. ‘We’ll need to get someone from Norwich to look at it.’

  ‘From Norwich indeed!’ said Morley.

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘Very well. And when might we expect these wise men from Norwich to arrive, following yonder star?’

  ‘This evening, at the latest. I called ahead for them when I received the phone call earlier.’

  ‘Jolly good,’ said Morley, patting Ridley on the back. ‘Quick thinking, man.’ It was his way. One moment he would be tearing you apart, as though in some impromptu university viva; the next, he’d be slapping you on the back and congratulating you on your perspicacity. With Morley, it was only ever about the truth. The little niceties often seemed not to matter. It made him seem somehow both highly civilised, and an unfeeling brute.

  ‘So there’s really nothing for us to do here except wait,’ said Ridley.

  ‘You’re not going to amaze us with some d
eductive tour de force?’ asked Morley, rather teasingly, I thought.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well, in that case, while we wait, would you mind, if I …?’ Morley took a pen from his top pocket.

  ‘You want to make some notes?’ said Ridley.

  ‘No,’ said Morley. He pointed with the pen towards the body.

  ‘You want to what?’

  Morley then stepped closer to the body, brandishing the pen as though he were going to use it to cut the body down, or scratch some weird graffito upon it.

  ‘You mustn’t touch the body, sir!’

  ‘I have no intention of doing so, Constable. But, if I might just explore a little? Prompt poor Mercer here to answer some questions? With the aid of the pen?’

  Ridley looked at me, uncomprehending, as I looked at him.

  ‘Timon of Athens, gentlemen? Mercer: one of Shakespeare’s ghost or mute characters?’

  ‘I see,’ I said, not really seeing at all.

  ‘What do you have in mind?’ asked Ridley.

  ‘Only this, gentlemen,’ said Morley, standing by the body and then, with some considerable degree of dexterity, lifting up the reverend’s cassock, using the pen, and then proceeding to expose the poor man’s trousers, pulling open a trouser pocket, from wherein he extruded a handkerchief, which, holding it carefully by a corner, he then tugged and tugged, like a music-hall magician, until out it came, tumbling out of the pocket, bringing with it a clatter of coins, a penknife and a flutter of some small pieces of paper. The reverend’s body swung ever so slightly.

  ‘Worked almost like a slot machine, didn’t it?’ said Morley, delighted.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ said Ridley.

  ‘Now, now! I haven’t touched the body.’

  ‘No, but you’ve … tampered with the evidence.’

  ‘I thought you said there was no evidence?’

  ‘Well, not evidence. But … things.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I examine some things, then?’ He indicated the pile on the floor.

  ‘I suppose it would be all right,’ said Ridley, whose resistance to Morley, once weak, was now non-existent.

  Morley scooped up the items and set them on the table, the reverend’s body still swinging slightly above him. He placed a single finger on one of the reverend’s brogues.