by Tom Sharpe
Mr Dodd had too but in a much more lively manner. He went with a clear conscience. He had put his own life at risk to be rid of the auld bitch and as the poet had it, ‘Liberty’s in every blow! Let us do or die!’ and Mr Dodd had done for liberty what he could and was still alive. As he strode back to Flawse Hall he was whistling ‘Gin a body meet a body, Coming through the rye. Gin a body kill a body, Need a body cry?’ Aye, old Robbie Burns knew what he was talking about, he thought, even with a little amendment to his meaning. And when he reached the Hall he lit a fire in the old man’s study, and fetching his pipes sat on the settle in the kitchen and played ‘Twa Corbies’ in elegiac recognition that o’er Mrs Flawse’s white bones already bare the wind shall blaw for evermair. He was still playing when the sound of a horn blown from the locked gate on the bridge sent him running down the drive to welcome Lockhart and his wife.
‘The Flawses are back at the Hall,’ he said as he opened the gate. ‘It’s a grand day.’
‘Aye, it’s good to be back for good,’ said Lockhart.
*
That evening Lockhart dined in his grandfather’s place at the oval mahogany table with Jessica sitting opposite him. By candlelight she looked more innocent and lovely than ever and Lockhart lifted his glass to her. He had come into his gift again as the gipsy had foretold and the knowledge that he was now truly head of the Flawse family freed him from the imposed chasteness of the past. Later, while Bouncer and the collie eyed one another warily in the kitchen and Mr Dodd played a gay tune of his own composing to celebrate the occasion, Lockhart and Jessica lay not only in one another’s arms but something more.
*
Such was their happiness that it was not until after a late breakfast that any mention was made of Mrs Flawse’s absence.
‘I havena seen her since yesterday,’ said Mr Dodd. ‘She was away across the fell in rather better spirits than of late.’
Lockhart investigated her bedroom and found the bed had not been slept in.
‘Aye, there’s a discrepancy there,’ Mr Dodd agreed, ‘but I have a notion she’s taking her rest all the same.’
But Jessica was too enchanted by the house to miss her mother. She went from room to room looking at the portraits and the fine old furniture and making plans for the future.
‘I think we’ll have the nursery in Grandfather’s old dressing-room,’ she told Lockhart, ‘don’t you think that would be a good idea? Then we’ll have baby near us.’
Lockhart agreed with everything she suggested. His mind was on other things than babies. He and Mr Dodd conferred in the study.
‘You’ve put the money in the whisky wall with the man?’ he asked.
‘Aye, the trunk and the suitcases are well hidden,’ said Mr Dodd, ‘but you said that no one will come looking.’
‘But I cannot be certain,’ said Lockhart, ‘and it’s necessary to prepare for contingencies and I dinna intend to be dispossessed of my gains. If they cannot find the money they can seize the house and everything in it. I have mind to prepare for that eventuality in advance.’
‘It would be a hard place to take by force,’ said Mr Dodd, ‘but perhaps you have other intentions.’
Lockhart said nothing. His pen doodled on the pad in front of him and drew a moss trooper pendant.
‘I would rather avoid that necessity,’ he said after a long silence. ‘I’ll have a word with Mr Bullstrode first. He always dealt with my grandfather’s tax problems. You’ll go to the telephone in Pockrington and send for him.’
Next day Mr Bullstrode arrived to find Lockhart sitting at the desk in the study and it seemed to the solicitor that a more than subtle change had come over the young man he had known as the bastard.
‘I would have ye know, Bullstrode,’ said Lockhart when they had exchanged preliminaries, ‘that I have no intention of paying Death Duties on the estate.’
Mr Bullstrode cleared his throat.
‘I think we can find a way to avoid any large assessment,’ he said. ‘The estate has always been run at a loss. Your grandfather tended to deal only in cash without receipt and besides I have a certain influence with Wyman as his solicitor.’
‘Why, man?’ said Lockhart brusquely.
‘Well, to be frank, because I handled his divorce for him and I doubt he would want some of the details of, shall we say, his sexual propensities whispered abroad,’ Mr Bullstrode explained, misinterpreting the question.
‘I dinna care a fig what the bloodsucker does abed,’ said Lockhart. ‘His name is Wyman?’
‘As a matter of fact you’ve more or less put your finger on what he does abed. Substitute for blood a certain appendage and …’
‘The name Wyman, Bullstrode, not the proclivity attendant on the appendage.’
‘Oh, the name,’ said Mr Bullstrode, brought back from those fantasies Mr Wyman so frequently fostered in his imagination. ‘The name is Mr William Wyman. He is Her Majesty’s Collector of Taxes for the Middle Marches. You need have no fear he’ll trouble you overmuch.’
‘He’ll not trouble me at all. ’Twill be t’other way round if he so much as sets foot on Flawse Fell. Ye’ll tell him that.’
Mr Bullstrode said he would but he said it uncertainly. The change in Lockhart had extended to his language which before had been that educated accent acquired from old Mr Flawse but had now broadened into something more akin to Mr Dodd’s way of speech. Lockhart’s next statement was stranger still. He stood up and glared at the solicitor. There was a wild look about his face and his voice had a dreadful lilt.
‘So gan ye back to Hexham and tell the taxmen there that should they want to die abed and not the open air, they’d best steer clear of old Flawse Hall and gan another route or else they’ll not a-hunting go but be themselves the shoot. I will not have any of them come peering through my door or speiring after money that I had made afore. I’ll pay my way and gie my due to them as has the need but let a taxman show his face I’ll show it how to bleed. Aye, they can sweat and they can stew and they can gan to court but I’ll hie here and I’ll lie there and niver I’ll be caught. So warn them, Bullstrode, heed my words. I dinna wish to kill but if they come a searching me so help me God I will.’
Mr Bullstrode had every reason to believe it. Whatever – and there was now no doubt in his mind that Lockhart was no contemporary but some congenital disaster – whatever stood before him and threatened so much in rhyme meant every syllable he uttered. And a man who could have his own grandfather stu— Mr Bullstrode sought a diversionary word and found it in preserved, was made of sterner stuff than the society in which he was living.
Further proof of this supposition came later when, having been prevailed upon to follow his former custom and stay for dinner and the night, he lay in bed. From the kitchen there came the sound of Mr Dodd’s Northumbrian pipes and with it a singing voice. Mr Bullstrode got out of bed and tiptoed to the head of the stairs and listened. It was Lockhart singing, but although Mr Bullstrode prided himself on his knowledge of Border Ballads, the one he heard that night was none he knew.
A dead man sits in old Flawse Hall
Though buried he should be,
And there he’ll sit within the wall
Till blossoms the great oak tree.
Aye, blossoms and blooms the oak with bluid
And the moss is gay with red,
And so he’ll sit and so he’ll brood
Till all the warld be dead.
So saddle my horse and summon the pack
And we’ll answer the call of the wild
For I’ll break the bounds that held me back
Since I was a dyke-born child.
The old Flawse clan and the old Faas’ gang
And the troopers are back on the moss
And the warning bells will again be rang
Till they hang me from Elsdon Cross.
As the song died away and the thin call of the pipes was lost in the silence of the house, Mr Bullstrode, shivering more from future fears
than present cold, crept quietly back to bed. What he had just heard confirmed his premonition. Lockhart Flawse was out of the dim and dangerous past when the moss troopers roamed Tyndale and Redesdale and raided cattle from the low country on the east coast. And having raided they had hidden in their strongholds in the high hills. With that wild lawlessness there had come too poetry as harsh and unflinchingly tragic in its view of life as it was gay in the face of death. Mr Bullstrode, crouching beneath the blankets, foresaw dire days ahead. Finally, with a silent prayer that Mr Wyman would listen to reason and not invite disaster, Mr Bullstrode managed to snatch some sleep.
20
But there were forces already at work to nullify the hope expressed in Mr Bullstrode’s prayer. Mr Wyman was quite prepared to listen to reason next morning when the solicitor returned to Hexham with his warning but Her Majesty’s Collector of Taxes for the Middle Marches was no longer in control of the situation. In London a far more formidable figure in the person of Mr Mirkin, Senior Collector Supertax Division (sub-department, Evasion of) at the Inland Revenue offices had been alerted to the possibility that Mr and Mrs Flawse, previously of Number 12 Sandicott Crescent and now of no known address, had withdrawn £659,000 in used one-pound notes with the intention of not paying Capital Gains Tax. This had been brought to his notice by the bank manager of the East Pursley branch of Jessica’s bank who happened to be a close friend of Mr Mirkin and who had been piqued by her refusal to accept his advice. He had been more than piqued by Lockhart’s attitude. In his opinion something very fishy was going on. In the opinion of Mr Mirkin it was more than fishy; it stank.
‘Tax evasion,’ he said, ‘is a crime against society of the very gravest sort. The man who fails to contribute to the economic good deserves the most severe punishment.’ Which, since Mr Mirkin’s income derived entirely from the contributions of socially productive persons, was an opinion both understandable and self-serving. The very magnitude of the sum involved merely increased his sense of outrage. ‘I shall pursue the matter to the ends of the earth if need be.’
But such lengths were not needed. The late Mrs Flawse had written to the bank manager informing him of her change of address. That she had changed it yet again made no difference to Mr Mirkin. He consulted the tax register for Northumberland and confirmed that a Mr Flawse, who had in fact paid no tax for fifty years, nevertheless lived at Flawse Hall on Flawse Fell and where the mother was, her daughter was likely to be. Leaving all other duties aside, Mr Mirkin travelled first class at the country’s expense to Newcastle and then, to emphasize his status in the hierarchy of Tax Collectors, by hired car to Hexham. Within two days of Mr Bullstrode’s visit and warning, Mr Wyman found himself trying to explain to a very superior superior how it was that a Mr Flawse who owned an estate of five thousand acres and seven tenant farms had failed to make his contribution to the national Exchequer by paying any income tax for fifty years.
‘Well, the estate had always run at a loss,’ he said.
Mr Mirkin’s scepticism was positively surgical. ‘You seriously expect me to believe that?’ he asked. Mr Wyman answered that there was no proof to the contrary.
‘We shall see about that,’ said Mr Mirkin. ‘I intend to make the most thorough investigation of the Flawse accounts. Personally.’
Mr Wyman hesitated. He was caught between the devil of his past and the deep blue sea of the Senior Collector Supertax Division (sub-department, Evasion of). On the whole he decided that it might be as well for his future if Mr Mirkin learnt from personal experience how difficult it was to extract taxes from the Flawse family. He therefore said nothing and Mr Mirkin drove off unwarned.
*
He arrived at Wark and was directed via Black Pockrington to Flawse Hall. There he met his first obstacle in the shape of the locked gate on the bridge over The Cut. Using the intercom which Lockhart had installed he spoke to Mr Dodd. Mr Dodd was polite and said he would see if his master was at home.
‘There’s a man from the Inland Revenue down at the bridge,’ he told Lockhart who was sitting in the study. ‘He says he is the Senior Collector of Taxes. You’ll not be wanting to speak to him.’
But Lockhart did speak. He went to the intercom and asked Mr Mirkin by what right he was trespassing on private property.
‘By my right as Senior Collector of Taxes,’ said Mr Mirkin, ‘and the question of private property does not arise. I am entitled to visit you to inquire into your financial affairs and …’
As he spoke Mr Dodd left the house by way of the kitchen garden and crossed the fell to the dam. Mr Mirkin, by this time too irate to observe the landscape, continued his argument with Lockhart.
‘Will you or will you not come down and unlock this gate?’ he demanded. ‘If you don’t, I shall apply for a warrant. What is your answer?’
‘I shall be down in just a moment,’ said Lockhart, ‘I have an idea it’s going to rain and I’ll need an umbrella.’
Mr Mirkin looked up into a cloudless sky.
‘What the hell do you mean you’ll need an umbrella?’ he shouted into the intercom. ‘There’s not a sign of rain.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Lockhart, ‘we get very sudden changes of weather in these parts. I have known it to pour down without warning.’
At that moment Mr Dodd undid the main sluice gates at the base of the dam and a white wall of water issued from the great pipes. Ten feet high it hurtled down The Cut just as Mr Mirkin was about to protest that he had never heard such nonsense in his life.
‘Downpour indeed …’ he began and stopped. A horrid surging noise sounded round the corner of the hillside. It was part hiss and part thunder. Mr Mirkin stood and looked aghast. The next moment he was running hell for leather past his car and up the metalled track towards Black Pockrington. He was too late. The wall of water was less than ten feet deep now but of sufficient depth to sweep the car and the Senior Collector of Taxes Supertax Division, etc. off their tyres and feet and carry them a quarter of a mile down the valley and into the tunnel. To be precise, the water carried Mr Mirkin into the tunnel while the car lodged itself across the entrance. Only then did Mr Dodd close the sluice gates and, taking the precaution of adding three inches to the rainwater gauge on the wall beside the dam, he made his way back to the Hall.
‘I doubt he’ll be coming back the same way,’ he told Lockhart who had observed the Collector’s submergence with relish.
‘I wouldn’t be too sure,’ said Lockhart while Jessica, out of the kindness of her heart, hoped the poor man could swim.
There was no kindness in Mr Mirkin’s heart by the time he had issued from the tunnel a mile farther on, and having been bounced, bashed, trundled and sucked through several large pipes and two deep tanks, finally came to rest in the comparative calm of the subsidiary reservoir beyond Tombstone Law. Half drowned and badly grazed and with murder in his heart, not to mention water everywhere, he clambered up the granite bank and staggered towards a farmhouse. The rest of the way to Hexham he travelled by ambulance and lodged in the hospital there suffering from shock, multiple abrasions and dementia taxitis. When he could speak again, he sent for Mr Wyman.
‘I demand that a warrant be issued,’ he told him.
‘But we can’t apply for a warrant unless we’ve sufficient evidence of tax evasion to convince a magistrate,’ said Mr Wyman, ‘and quite frankly …’
‘Who’s talking about tax evasion, you fool?’ squawked Mr Mirkin. ‘I’m talking about assault with intent to kill, attempted murder …’
‘Just because it rained rather hard,’ said Mr Wyman, ‘and you got caught—’
Mr Mirkin’s reaction was so violent that he had to be sedated and Mr Wyman had to lie on a couch in Accident Emergencies holding his nose tightly above the bridge to stop it bleeding.
*
But Mr Mirkin was not the only person to suffer a sense of loss. The discovery of the late Mrs Flawse in a shell crater surrounded by gold sovereigns came as a shock to Jessica.
‘Absolutely,’ said the officer, ‘we bracketed her first and then all six guns fired a salvo and we were bang on target.’
‘And you say she was surrounded by sovereigns?’ asked Jessica. ‘That would have made her very proud. She always was a great admirer of the Royal Family and to know that they were with her in her hour of need is a wonderful comfort.’
She left the officer in a state of some perplexity and went about the more urgent business of nest-making. She was two weeks pregnant. It was left to Lockhart to offer his apologies to the Major for the inconvenience caused by Mrs Flawse’s failure to look where she was going.
‘I feel very strongly about trespass myself,’ he said as he saw the officer to the door. ‘Disturbs the game no end to have people hiking all over the countryside and with absolutely no right. If you ask me, and out of the hearing of my wife of course, the woman got what was coming to her. Damned fine shooting, what!’ The Major handed over the jam jar containing Mrs Flawse and left hurriedly.
‘Talk about sang-bloody-froid,’ he muttered as he drove down the hill.
Behind him Mr Dodd was about to empty the jam jar into the cucumber frame when Lockhart stopped him.
‘Grandfather loathed her,’ he said, ‘and besides, there’ll have to be an official funeral.’
Mr Dodd said it seemed a waste of a good coffin but Mrs Flawse was laid to rest beside Mr Taglioni two days later. This time Lockhart’s inscription on the headstone was only slightly equivocal and read:
