The Norfolk Mystery (The County Guides)

by Ian Sansom

  ‘Interesting,’ said Morley. ‘So we might say that Saul took his life so as not to fall into the hands of his foes?’

  ‘We might indeed, Mr Morley. Yes.’

  ‘And his armour-bearer died out of loyalty.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Very interesting, Reverend, thank you.’

  ‘Is that all, Mr Morley?’

  ‘I think it is, Reverend, yes. You’ve cleared up a number of matters that were troubling me.’

  ‘I’m so glad.’

  The reverend had his hand firmly on the door handle.

  ‘And just finally,’ said Morley, in that last-minute manner of his, ‘in relation to this topic – I don’t want to keep you any further – I wonder if you recall in Herodotus, his describing the practice among the Thracians of the widow or concubine offering her life when the husband or master dies.’

  ‘I’m not familiar with Herodotus, I’m afraid. Read it at school, of course.’

  ‘A privilege I did not share, alas,’ said Morley. ‘I have had to come to Herodotus rather late in life.’

  ‘Better late than never, I suppose,’ said Swain.

  ‘Yes. And in my rather belated reading of Herodotus I was struck by the similarity between the practice that he describes among the Thracians and the Hindu custom of suttee.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not an expert in Hindu custom, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Good to know what the competition are up to, I would have thought?’

  ‘Competition?’

  ‘Hindus? Mohammedans, etcetera?’

  ‘I would hardly describe them as competition to the Christian Church, Mr Morley.’

  ‘No? Well, in Hinduism, the custom of suttee requires that a widow immolate herself with the corpse of her husband, isn’t that right? Never heard of it?’

  ‘I’m not familiar with the practice, no. And if you’re trying to suggest a connection between the death of the reverend and his … maid I think you’ll find the woman was of the Mosaic persuasion, Mr Morley, rather than a Hindu.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And little as I know about the customs and practices among the Jews, I am not aware of their womenfolk committing suicide on the death of their husbands. And she and the reverend, of course, were not married.’

  ‘No, of course not. So it remains a mystery then.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘You are in the business of mystery, of course.’

  ‘I am,’ said the reverend.

  ‘And I am in the business of demystification,’ said Morley. ‘Goodbye!’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  FOR THE NEXT couple of hours Morley busied himself with his columns and his writing: an article on the theory of colour for Life magazine; advice on the removal of oil and grease from silks and woollens for some women’s journal; and something on the history of coal-mining for the Yorkshire Post. Like a – moustached, teetotal and tweed-clad – Plantagenet ruler he had by now established almost entire control of the Blakeney Hotel and its staff, who were happy ferrying books, and paper and pens, and typewriter ribbons, and envelopes, and sealing wax, and blotters and all his other necessary writing requisites back and forth, as well as providing him with a constant supply of tea, arrowroot biscuits and barley water. He was the sort of man, Morley, like Edward Longshanks, or Charlie Chaplin, who inspired loyalty and devotion.

  I spent the rest of the morning smoking, mostly, in the modest hotel gardens, and eventually made an appearance around eleven, just as the sands on Morley’s quarter-hour egg-timer were running out. I hovered by his table in the restaurant, waiting to speak until the moment he went to upturn the thing again.

  ‘Mr Morley?’

  ‘Ah, Sefton. Look at that. Perfect timing.’ He consulted all his watches, and the table clock. ‘Time for us to be off again shortly.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Productive morning?’

  ‘Very,’ I said.

  ‘Good, good. Writing up the notes of our meeting with the reverend?’

  ‘Slowly but surely, Mr Morley. Slowly but surely.’

  ‘Super. Getting back on track, eh.’

  ‘I just thought I should check where we’re off to next, Mr Morley? I really think we should investigate this matter of the desecration of the Virgin in the—’

  ‘You are obsessed with the desecration of the Virgin, Sefton!’ Several of the young hotel staff, who were laying tables for luncheon, glanced in our direction. ‘Eyes on the prize, Sefton. The County Guides will never be started, never mind completed, if we spend our time on desecrated Virgins.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No ifs, no buts, no nothing, Sefton. The investigation into the death of the reverend and his poor housemaid is, I’m sure, quite safe in the hands of the deputy detective chief inspector and the good officers of the Norfolk Constabulary. As for you and I, we have serious work to do and we shall in fact this morning be setting off to explore the dark netherworld of smocking, quilting and sexual libertarianism. How about that, Sefton, eh? Tickle your fancy?’

  ‘Erm …’

  One of the staff hurried off, to fetch the head waiter, I suspected.

  ‘Good. We shall be visiting an artistic “community”, Sefton – something for the book. So be prepared, as the Chief Scout himself might say. Gird up your loins and what have you. Never know what we might find.’

  ‘Is it far, Mr Morley?’

  ‘Just up the road, I think. Not far. Miriam set it all up before she went to London. Some sort of a cross between an Arts and Crafts community – chickens and goats and what have you – and artistic bohemians. You know the sort of thing. I came across a similar bunch in Dorset some years ago. Harmless really. Like the Bloomsberries. Best viewed with one’s anthropological glasses on, Sefton; imagine they’re Solomon Islanders, or Tartars, or some such. Ever been to the Solomon Islands?’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘They run a little folk-dancing group, apparently, this lot. Make craft items. Communists, possibly. All sounds rather intriguing, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Fascinating.’

  ‘Good. I’ll meet you in the lobby in … thirteen minutes?’

  We drove in the Lagonda some miles out of Blakeney, towards Wells-next-the-Sea, and eventually arrived at our destination via a long and winding driveway, crossing a small bridge, and through a twisty, shadowy avenue of trees, the car grunting and heaving rather over the uneven dirt road, and were greeted with a rather garish painted sign proclaiming ‘WELCOME TO COLLEGE FARM’.

  Norfolk rivers and broads

  ‘And so into ye foreign lands,’ yelled Morley from the back of the Lagonda. ‘This is the real thing, eh, Sefton? Fieldwork? Life among the savages! If we’re lucky we might bag ourselves an Italian Futurist, eh? Look out, Mr Malinowski! We’re on the hunt for Marinettis!’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, having, as so often, lost track of the conversation.

  The house – a Jacobean-style manor house, ‘Note the Flemish gables, Sefton!’ said Morley. ‘Worth a note!’ – backed directly onto mudflats, and was flanked by vast pines, eucalyptus trees, sword-like cactus plants, and several kinds of hanging ivy and mosses. The mood of the place seemed rather medieval. There were doves cooing in a dilapidated dovecote; a small, collapsed tower (‘Water tower?’ I suggested. ‘Ice-house,’ corrected Morley); a tennis court, its wires and net rusting and sagging, with all the appearance of a duelling arena; and a gravelled courtyard which was scabbed all over with patches of fireweed, ragwort and nettles. ‘The romance of dilapidation!’ cried Morley, embarking on a short disquisition on the relationship between Tennyson, Greece, gravestones and the meaning of ruins. ‘The trouble with English ruins, of course, is that they lack that lovely sunset pallor of the Mediterranean, and so they look merely washed out and glum.’

  We parked the car and knocked at several open doors – ‘Best not to intrude,’ said Morley, ‘don’t want to upset the natives in their natural habitat. Had a problem like it once i
n Tehran. Blundered in, bit of a misunderstanding, got chased by the farrashas’ – but there seemed to be no one around. Eventually, we followed a sort of rabbit-track around the back of the house, through overgrown camellia and rhododendron bushes, towards a number of flint-fronted farm buildings, from where the breeze coming off the sea carried a strange melodic droning noise towards us.

  ‘Romantic sort of spot, isn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘Do you think? Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘“Romantic”, you say.’ Morley rolled the word around. ‘Interesting. Hart’s tongue ferns. Pennywort. Tumbledown buildings. Rustic, certainly. Verdant, certainly. Gothic might be the appropriate term, I would have thought, to describe the effect. But, we’ll grant you your romantic if you wish, Sefton. Romantic. Hmm. Interesting. Tells us something about your idea of the romantic, I fancy.’

  As we approached one of the outbuildings the noise grew louder.

  ‘What is that?’ I asked.

  ‘That,’ said Morley, holding a glimmering finger aloft in triumphant recognition – his fingers did often give the appearance of glimmering, an effect of his enthusiasm, one supposed – ‘if I am not much mistaken, is the sound of the bandoneón.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The traditional instrument of the Argentinian tango orchestra, Sefton. Fascinating. Don’t hear that every day in Norfolk, do you? We may have found our tribe of bohemians! Shall we explore?’

  We stepped through large, decaying wooden doors into what had once clearly been a building for housing cattle. There was a dirt floor, and freshly whitewashed walls. Birds’ nests perched up in the ancient rafters and beams, which were strung with purple-coloured bunting and chimes made from shells. In the half-light I could make out, in the middle of the room, a dozen or more people dressed in peasant-style clothing – but who did not themselves seem to be actual peasants – dancing together in formation, while a man sitting by an old upright piano was squeezing a folk tune from a concertina-like instrument. He had a cigarette balanced on the edge of the piano, which bore the scars of many such nonchalantly balanced cigarettes, as though the room were altogether a gay bar in Montevideo rather than a dark, damp, remote barn in north Norfolk, and he glanced up as we entered, nodded, and continued playing.

  ‘Come to join us, gentlemen?’ he called loudly over the droning instrument.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ said Morley. ‘We just thought we’d watch if we may.’

  ‘Of course. Make yourselves at home!’ The man’s hair was swept back in what I rather regarded as the Italian fashion, and he was dressed in a heavy, high-necked fisherman’s sweater, with a bright red cravat. He had a thin, sculpted beard which gave him the look rather of a jolly Jack tar; Morley referred to him later as Blakeney’s Bacchus. After several bars the music came to an end and the man, who was obviously in charge, took a draw on his cigarette and called out instructions for the next set of dances.

  ‘Good! Good! Now, let’s change the pace, shall we? We’ll have “Gathering Pease-cods”, followed by “Rufty Tufty”, the “Black Nag” and we’ll end with “Sellenger’s Round”. OK?’

  There was an enthusiastic nodding of heads from the people-dressed-up-as-peasants-who-were-not-peasants, who seemed happy to ignore us, and off they went again.

  I leaned against the wall and watched the bizarre spectacle.

  ‘Little early in the day for folk-dancing, isn’t it?’ I said to Morley.

  ‘Sshh,’ said Morley. ‘I’m concentrating. He’s good.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Nanki-Poo.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Gilbert and Sullivan, Sefton. The Mikado?’

  ‘I can’t say I’m a fan, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Never mind.’ He nodded towards the musician. ‘Him.’

  ‘What is it, a sort of accordion, the bandy-whatever-you-call-it?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Morley. ‘No. Come, come, Sefton. Accordions have the buttons perpendicular to the bellows, as you know. Concertinas have the buttons parallel. The bandoneón is a member of the concertina family of instruments, as you can see. Fiendishly difficult little box of tricks, actually. Different notes on the push and pull, and different button layouts either side, so you have effectively four different keyboard arrangements to play with.’

  ‘Impressive,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed Morley. ‘And he really is rather good. Worth a footnote, at least, for the book, I would have thought. “The Tango Master at the Edge of the World.” Maybe an article in that, Sefton. I’m so glad we came.’

  I went to produce my notebook from my jacket pocket.

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ said Morley. ‘I’ve got it. Worth annotating the dance steps as well, I think.’ And he began to draw diagrams and staves in his notebook in his tiny hand. ‘Quite, quite fascinating.’

  While Morley took his usual meticulous overview, I found myself beguiled by the gallivantings of one of the women in the group, who was throwing herself around with especial abandon.

  When the whirling and the jigging eventually stopped, the man at the piano laid down his instrument and came to greet us.

  ‘Welcome, welcome, gentlemen, to our little corner of paradise – guano notwithstanding.’ He kicked away a little pile of pigeon-droppings.

  ‘“The island valley of Avilion,”’ said Morley.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the man. ‘You could call it that.’

  ‘“Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow. Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard-lawns and bowery hollows crown’d with summer sea.”’

  ‘Do you know, I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ said the man, laughing with delight. ‘Did you make it up?’

  ‘Tennyson,’ said Morley.

  ‘Ah. Of course. But you must be a writer yourself, sir?’

  ‘Of a kind,’ said Morley.

  ‘We’ve not met, though, I don’t think?’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir, no. Apologies, I should have introduced myself. I’m Swanton Morley. And this is my assistant Stephen Sefton.’ We shook hands. ‘And you are?’

  ‘A fellow artist, sir. My name is Juan. Juan Chancellor.’

  ‘You are a fine musician, sir.’

  Again, the man laughed. ‘I am a painter, actually, primarily. But yes, also a musician. And a philosopher. And occasionally a poet, when the Muse deigns to visit.’

  ‘Invita Minerva. I wish, I wish,’ said Morley. ‘I’m afraid I’m too old and too set in my ways to rely on inspiration. I trudge merely in the lower foothills of Discipline and Hard Work.’

  ‘Well, fortunately, here, sir, my Muse is always at hand.’

  ‘Norfolk, you mean?’ asked Morley. ‘Or your instrument?’

  ‘No!’ The man laughed. ‘Constance!’ He called across to the woman who had been most expressive in her dancing, and who was now deep in conversation with some of the other dancers, who were slowly drifting off. ‘Constance, darling! Over here. Come and meet our visitors.’

  Constance came over. She was short and plump – or, rather, ‘protuberant’, as Morley later insisted on saying – and she wore high-heeled sandals of a bohemian kind, and blazing tomato-red trousers, with a black bolero jacket with wide sleeves, and a red silk scarf, and a black bandeau around her head, a look that suggested a gypsy on holiday, while her yellow teeth, which stood out in marked contrast against her scarlet lipstick, suggested that she was also a heavy smoker, a drinker of deep red wine, strong tea, black coffee, and possibly an inveterate chewer of tobacco. She had the look of a woman who might be able to cure styes by passing a wedding ring over your eye. Her own eyes were fresh and sparkling, mischievous – though also somehow shallow, like a fish – as though she had just concealed a precious object for which she knew you were now bound to search, for ever in her thrall. She was, in short, an enchantress.

  ‘Gentlemen, this is my wife, Constance.’

  ‘Charmed,’ she said, shaking o
ur hands. ‘Charmed.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Morley. ‘Have we met before?’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure, no.’

  ‘This is Mr Morley,’ said Juan. ‘And this is Mr Sefton.’

  ‘Ah yes!’ said Constance. ‘Your daughter, Mr Morley, wrote to ask if you might visit.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We met once at the Ladies’ Imperial Club in London,’ said Constance.

  ‘Ah. I see.’

  ‘She’s very charming. Miriam, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Miriam, that’s correct. Thank you,’ said Morley.

  ‘She’s not with you?’ asked Juan.

  ‘No, she’s in London at the moment.’

  ‘You must persuade her to visit with you one day,’ said Constance. ‘I think she’d like it here.’

  ‘I’m sure she would,’ said Morley.

  ‘This is the man writing the book that I told you about, Juan.’

  ‘Indeed!’ said Juan. ‘Marvellous! Marvellous! A celebration of Norfolk, isn’t that right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Morley.

  ‘Well, welcome to you, gentlemen, to College Farm. A rough-made thing, but it is our own.’

  ‘Thank you. I wondered about the name, actually,’ said Morley. ‘College Farm?’

  ‘We call it that,’ explained Juan, ‘because we want it to be somewhere that people can come to learn. About art, and about music.’

  ‘And about life. And love,’ added Constance.

  ‘An admirable aim,’ said Morley.

  ‘Thank you. We do our best.’

  ‘I’m sure. And docendo discimus.’

  Juan and Constance looked blank.

  ‘You learn by teaching,’ said Morley.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘We were just admiring your husband’s playing of the bandoneón,’ Morley explained to Constance.

  ‘Ah! You know the instrument?’ asked Juan.

  ‘I had the privilege once, while staying in Paris, of hearing the great Eduardo Arolas playing with an orchestra.’