“The way yon pair jump, the old lass must really know where the bodies are buried,” I said.
“I think it’s more where the money is banked,” she replied.
“Oh aye? Thought it ’ud be summat like that. They’re brother and sister, right? And set on getting their share of the family fortune when auntie dies?”
“She’s only an aunt by marriage, so I suppose it’s understandable they feel they’ve got to work at it,” she said.
“Sounds like you’re on their side,” I said. “Or is it just hunky Teddy’s side?”
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“No. I am being objective and analytical. I’m a psychologist.”
I had to laugh. Seen nowt, done nowt, and she were a psychologist!
“What’s so funny?” she demanded, getting angry again.
I knew better than to tell her, so I said, “I were just thinking, I bet old Stompy were chuffed to buggery when he found out he’d sired one of them.”
She gave me an old-fashioned look, then grinned.
“I see you knew my father quite well, Mr. Dalziel,” she said.
“Well enough. How come Teddy’s so hard up he needs to suck up to auntie?” I asked. “His sister were saying the old house, and presumably all this land, used to belong to her family. Must have made a fortune when they sold it on to Avalon.”
“It did, but not for the Denhams, alas,” said a familiar voice.
I looked down to see Roote smiling up at me. The skinny lass had been sucked back into her aunt’s orbit, or mebbe the sight of the young Denhams dancing attendance had made her decide she’d better keep her end up.
“Oh aye? Who then?” I said to him.
He smiled and lowered his voice so that I had to lower my head to hear him. The lass too. I got the impression she didn’t want to miss owt.
“As I understand it,” he murmured, “the story is that one result of the unfortunate if appropriate demise of Hog Hollis was a rapprochement between his widow and Sir Harry Denham, who had not been on the best of terms for some years. He held her responsible for sending the sweet odor of pigs wafting through his drawing room window whenever he took afternoon tea.”
“This going to be a long tale?” I asked. “If it is, I thought mebbe I’d go off somewhere quiet to read War and Peace , then come back for the climax.”
“Forgive me,” he said. “I have fallen into rustic ways. Let me cut to the chase. Sir Harry, now close to insolvency, devised a cunning plan to solve both his financial and his olfactory problems at a stroke. He proposed to her. He was personable, reputedly virile—an important T H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 1 4 1
consideration for the dear lady—and of course he had what only money could buy, a title. This, I believe, was the clincher. She accepted.”
“Brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?” said young Heywood.
I gave her a look. Don’t care for cynicism in the young. If they don’t have romantic delusions, what are old farts like me going to kick out of them?
Roote went rambling on. Cut to the chase, he’d said. More like verbal runs! Wieldy would have had it all spelt out, typed up, and on my desk half an hour back!
“As the wedding approached, he suggested that all that lacked to make them both happy was an odor-free threshold for him to carry her over. Now that Denham Park was to be her stately home too, perhaps the time had come to relocate the pig farm. She appeared to agree, only objecting that she would have to find a suitable site first. There was some spare capacity on the land belonging to Millstone Farm, the old Hollis farm, but she was reluctant to use that . . .”
“Knowing that if she snuffed it before her brother- in- law, the farm and everything on it would fall to Hen,” chipped in young Heywood.
Roote smiled appreciatively.
“Clearly psychology really is the listening profession,” he said. “Yes, dear Lady D did not care for the thought of Hen benefiting more than he had to in the event of her death. She is, I believe, a very good hater.
The upshot was, she proposed to Sir Harry that this parcel of Denham land here on South Cliff would make an ideal site, well away from Denham Park, and too high above the town for any nuisance to be caused there. The old house could be adapted as an excellent adminis-trative center for the business.”
“If this is quick, I’m Speedy Gonzales,” I said.
“I’ve heard the rumors,” said Roote. “Be patient, the end is near. Sir Harry was delighted, and even more so when she insisted on a proper business transaction, with Hollis’s Ham Limited formally purchasing the land. The deal was made, both deals, with the marriage given top bill-ing in all the Yorkshire glossies. They went on a leisurely Caribbean 1 4 2
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cruise for their honeymoon, fi nanced, local tradition says, by the money Hollis’s Ham had paid for the South Cliff property. That must have made Sir Harry smile. His wife’s money paying for their honeymoon, setting what he hoped would be the pattern for many years to come.
Imagine his dismay when they returned some months later to discover the bulldozers had moved in here and with a true American swiftness the Avalon Clinic was already beginning to rise.”
“You mean she’d got all this sorted afore they went off on honeymoon?” I said.
“Clearly so,” said Roote admiringly. “Of course, after his initial shock, he must have consoled himself with the thought of the large profi t made in the transaction. But I gather he was disappointed in this too. Victorian marital property laws had long since been repealed. The land had been signed over to Hollis’s Ham, his wife’s company, and all that he was going to get of her money was what she cared to allow him. He huffed and puffed but soon learned the lesson that huffing and puffi ng meant going to bed without any supper. No longer master in his own house, he was at least still master of the hunt until the government banned hunting with dogs. He is said to have roared, ‘Over my dead body!’ On the first day of the season, he went out with the hounds and when they started a fox, he set out after them at a mad gallop, clipped the top of a wall, and ended in a ditch with a broken neck. He was, if nothing else, a man of his word.”
“And she walked away from the funeral with a title on her letterhead and the Avalon money in her purse,” said Heywood.
“So all this land and the old house used to belong to the Denhams,”
I said. “No wonder that poor lass Esther looks so pissed off.”
That got me a surprised glance from Heywood, who said, “Oh, she always looks like that, except when she’s sucking up to Lady D.”
I said, “Must be nice to have a smart understanding chap like Stompy for your dad so you don’t have to go sucking up to any bugger.”
Roote laughed and said, “Bravo, Andy. Your compassion does you credit.”
“It’s got limits,” I said. “So Lady Denham’s got the chinks, and Sir T H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 1 4 3
Teddy and sis are sticking close as shit to a blanket in the hope some of it rolls their way when she topples off the twig?”
“I think that sums it up,” said Roote.
“Could be a long wait,” I said. “The old bird looks good for another thirty years or more. And ain’t she got blood relatives of her own, like yon skinny lass Clara?”
“My, you really are a detective, Mr. Dalziel,” said Heywood, recovering from my little put-down. “That’s right. Quite a lot, I gather. And, though most of them are very long shots indeed, there’s a whole bunch of her first husband’s relatives on the card.”
“Looks like I’m not the only detective,” I said. “Only here two minutes and you’ve got all the local crack noted and analyzed! So, rich old lady, lots of hopeful relations. Hope she locks her windows at night and doesn’t go out in the dark.”
She said, “Your line of work has clearly clouded your view of human nature.”
I said, “You reckon? You did the Pollyanna psycholo
gy course, did you?”
She said a bit defiantly, “I know it’s a cliché, but I do think there’s good in everybody if you look hard enough.”
“Me too,” I said. “That’s why I became a cop—so’s I could spend my life turning up stones looking for it.”
I glanced down at Roote as I said this, but he just grinned back up at me like I’d offered him a compliment and said, “Charley, dear, I wonder if I could trouble you to get me a glass of fruit juice. Pomegranate if there is any, but the ubiquitous orange will do. And I see Andy’s glass is empty . . .”
“Sure,” she said. “Would you like it in an earthenware jug?”
“What’s that about a jug?” I asked as she walked away.
“Ah, the sweet enigma of a woman’s words,” he said. “It is not for us to seek meaning. Andy, now we’re alone, there’s something I want to ask you.”
“Ask away,” I said. “But tek note—just because I won’t hit a man in a wheelchair doesn’t make us fi rst- name friends.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Would you prefer the official title then? Lady D
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was certainly very impressed when I told her you were head of
Mid-Yorkshire CID.”
Now the change in buffalo woman’s attitude was explained. She clearly enjoyed power, and anyone that smelt of it probably turned her on.
“Mr. Dalziel will do,” I said.
“Oh, thank you kindly,” he simpered. I found myself liking the sourpuss lass who’d shoved him aside more and more.
“So what’s it you want to ask?” I demanded.
He turned very serious and said, “The thing is, I’m asking for a review of my case in the hope of getting the verdict overturned. I hoped you might support my appeal.”
Not many folk can gobsmack me, but somehow Roote’s learned the trick.
“Eh?” I said.
“It’s a question of getting into America for the publication of my Beddoes biography. The dean of St. Poll University called in some favors to get me a special dispensation a couple of years back—but since nine-eleven, if you’ve got three penalty points on your driver’s license, they’re reluctant to let you in. I need to be there, for interviews and signings. Keeping me out is a violation of my basic human right to make a living!”
Just then Heywood came back with a drinks tray. Just as well else I might have forgot me scruples and picked Roote up, wheelchair and all, and hoyed him through the window! Instead I downed my bubbles in one, then grabbed another glass, hers I suppose, and drank that too. I drew the line at Roote’s juice. I weren’t that far gone. Heywood didn’t say owt, just buggered off back to the drinks table.
At last I could speak.
“You want me to support your appeal against a conviction which my evidence helped to get? A conviction that’s only ever bothered me because I reckon the sentence should have been twice as long!”
“Exactly,” he said. “You can see your support would really impress the court.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
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I said, “I need another drink.”
And I’d have gone after the lass only my legs didn’t seem to want to work.
Roote reached up and got a hold of my arm.
“Really, you mustn’t try so hard,” he said seriously.
“What the fuck are you on about?” I demanded.
He pulled me down so he was talking in a low voice right into my face.
“When you’ve been as close to death as we have,” he said, “you don’t just take a single step back to where you were; it’s a long, long journey.”
“Thank you, Dr. Roote,” I said. “I were wondering what I were doing in a conva-fucking-lescent home, and now you’ve spelt it out. I’m conva-fucking-lescing!”
“I’m not just talking physical here,” he said. “It’s a long way back to yourself. Mostly we do it by acting ourselves. We remember the way we were and we devote all our energy to trying to get back into the part, even if it involves drinking fifteen pints before breakfast. But it is just a part, Andy. Now’s the time, while you’re still relearning it, to pause and consider just who this being is that’s doing the learning.”
My head were really spinning now. Didn’t know whether it were from Festerwhanger’s bubbles or Roote’s babbles. Didn’t care either. I pulled my arm free and came close to keeling over, except someone got a hold of my other arm and I heard Pet Sheldon say, “Time to be on our way, I think, Andy.”
Places I normally drink, no bugger calls closing time on me. I forced the world back into focus. Distantly I saw buffalo woman beckoning me like I was a headwaiter. I gave her a smile and a wave and said to Pet,
“You’re right, luv. Take me to bed.”
The fresh sea air hit me like a fl ying fi sh and I leaned heavily on Pet as we tacked toward the old house. There were a din like the clatter of the weaving room in an old wool mill as an ancient motorbike and sidecar went rattling by. The rider had his helmet and visor on, but I recognized Mr. Godley’s beard. Funny, it were likely the fresh air, but just the sight of him made me feel better.
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“There goes the healer,” I said, managing to straighten up a bit. “Old Festerwhanger takes him on, you could all be out of work.”
“I shan’t hold my breath,” she said. “It’s nursing gets sick people better, not dosing them with herbs, or sticking them with skewers.”
“Nay, lass, you shouldn’t rush to mock what it says in the Bible,” I said.
“Laying on of hands and that stuff?” she said. “We’ve moved on a bit since then, I hope. Just because that chap looks like Jesus doesn’t mean he’s going to raise you from the dead. So let’s get you to your bed, shall we?”
“That’s what I’m talking about, luv,” I said. “Old Testament therapy.
Like King David and Abishag the Shummanite. Any chance of fixing that for me?”
She knew her Bible ’cos that made her laugh.
“My old gran always used to say the devil could quote scripture,” she said. “Now shut up or I’ll drop you here on the drive and let Lady Denham run you over with that rust bucket of hers. She’s a menace, that woman.”
She spoke so vehemently, I thought, There’s a bit more than road rage here! What’s she done to rattle your cage?
It took me another half dozen paces to work it out. Back afore the big bang, I’d have seen it half an hour ago.
It’s old Festerwhanger! Pet’s got the hots for him too! It must really get up her nose, seeing the way he fawns on Lady D and she treats him like her personal property.
I said, slurring it a bit to encourage indiscretion, “Time for her to marry again then. Tried it twice, so she must have a taste for it.”
“Woman of her age should know better,” said Pet, very pursed-lips proper. “Do you need to lean on me quite so much? A couple of glasses of wine and you’re wobbling like a blancmange. I thought you detectives all had hollow legs.”
I straightened up a bit, but it were hard. Must be all that rubbish the quacks have been pumping into me. That’s twice a couple of T H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 1 4 7
glasses have reached parts that it used to take fifteen pints to get close to.
Pet got me back in my room, laid me in my bed, laughed when I invited her to join me for a bit of Platonic dialogue, and buggered off.
Soon as she’d gone I got up and checked my sunken treasure in the cistern. Half a bottle of malt and Mildred. Checked no bugger had been interfering with either and took a slug of the Caledonian cream.
Always reckoned that Dr. Scotch was a cure for everything, but this time I’m having me doubts. That’s why I’m sitting here on the bog, talking to Mildred. Good spot for meditation. Don’t need one of them fancy computers if you’ve got a comfy bog—soon have this ca
se sorted out.
What the fuck am I talking about!? What fucking case? Am I going doolally? Mebbe being off the job’s giving me withdrawal symptoms, so everything starts looking like a case waiting to happen . . . victim set up . . . suspects in place . . . motives well established . . . great detective on the spot . . . all waiting for a writer to give them the nod . . .
For fuck’s sake, you daft bugger, you’ve let yon scrote Roote get inside your mind! All that crap about relearning your part. And it’s this place too. The Avalon. Sandytown. The sooner you get off this bog and into your bed, the better.
But I’ve definitely got this feeling something bad is coming . . . something very real . . .
Oh Jesus Christ! and here it is . . . !
18
Oh, Mildred, what have I done?
Woke up feeling great, sort of cleansed and purged. No wonder after what came out in the bathroom, and if any bugger don’t believe me, I can play them the sound effects, courtesy of Mildred!
Better out than in, they say, and this morning I really did feel better.
Put my dressing gown on and went and had breakfast on the terrace. Pet stopped to have a chat, told me I looked like Noël Coward, and we had a laugh together. Then I went back to my room and me and Mildred were just reviewing what I’d said and done at the party when there was a tap at the door. It were Pet, not smiling anymore. She said, “You have a visitor, Mr. Dalziel,” all formal, but afore I could ask her what was amiss, she was bundled aside by buffalo woman who said, “Thank you, Nurse Sheldon, I won’t keep you from your duties anymore.” Then she came into the room and shut the door in Pet’s face!
I thought, Watch out, lad. Likely it’s your lily-white body she’s after, and you in your dressing gown! I made sure Mildred were switched on just in case it ever came to court!
Needn’t have worried, it were my brains, not my body, she wanted!
Or mebbe that should worry me more. I’ve listened to the recording half a dozen times, don’t know whether to take it seriously or not. I mean, a lot of rich old biddies think someone’s trying to kill them, don’t they?
D&P23 - The Price of Butcher's Meat aka A Cure for all Diseases Page 16
