The Protagonists

by James Barlow

  ‘The murder of a girl.’

  The woman turned away and lifted a framed photograph from a table. ‘This was my son,’ she said.

  MacIndoe thought in astonishment: Didn’t she hear what I said? Doesn’t the murder of a girl mean anything to her? Isn’t she capable of shock or sympathy or even curiosity? Did she love her son so much that she’s calloused to any other death? He stared long and carefully at the photograph of an officer with a pilot’s wings. Dark hair, pointed nose, full lips, arrogant expression, large eyes – He longs to possess me and is even showing slight impatience at my arguments. It could be him, MacIndoe thought. But she says he’s dead. ‘He was a handsome youth,’ he commented (the woman was not to know that the word ‘handsome’ was practically meaningless). ‘I suppose he leaves a widow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does she live with you?’

  ‘No. We’ve rather lost touch.’

  ‘What is her name?’

  The woman looked into MacIndoe’s eyes, but could not hold his gaze. She turned to one side in a slightly theatrical gesture and said, ‘Does that matter now?’ MacIndoe did not speak. She was forced to carry on and say, ‘It is Margaret.’

  ‘Was your son a commercial traveller?’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  Mrs Fortescue was quite gay as she conducted the officers herself to the front door. ‘You know, I really believe you suspected my son,’ she said. ‘Do you really think a boy from a home like this would commit such a crime?’

  MacIndoe did not answer and it was left to Maddocks to say, ‘Of course not.’

  The three police officers walked slowly back along the red gravel. Once MacIndoe turned to look back at the house, and saw Mrs Fortescue gazing from the bay window of a front room. Their interview had not taken place in that room, and the woman’s action did nothing to abate the uneasiness in his mind. Not that she withdrew or appeared embarrassed – she is too subtle for that, MacIndoe thought – but merely opened a small window in an action that was too natural, too poised. The slightest embarrassment and MacIndoe would have put it down to curiosity – people were curious about detectives – but the stare, like all her other actions and words, had been too controlled.

  By the car he said, ‘Well, what did you think?’

  Maddocks said, ‘It wasn’t very satisfactory, was it?’

  ‘I’m not satisfied,’ said MacIndoe. ‘Did you see her face when I mentioned the word “murder”?’

  ‘No,’ said Maddocks. ‘She turned away too quickly. She wasn’t very interested in it, was she?’

  ‘That’s what worries me,’ MacIndoe said. ‘She was too disinterested. And yet I can’t see why. It wasn’t as if she had been expecting us or had anybody to shield. Did you notice how careful her dialogue was? She was able to find out why we had come before saying a word about her son.’

  Baker said, ‘But if he’s dead, sir, it’s not going to make any difference, anyway.’

  MacIndoe sat in the driver’s seat. ‘She was lying about something.’ He bit a thumbnail and sat in thought. ‘Suppose he was alive. She didn’t know about the murder, but we come along and mention a crime. She begins to lie to save her son from unpleasantness, and when she hears what the crime was continues the untruths because –’

  ‘Because,’ said Maddocks, ‘she knows her son is capable of murder.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said MacIndoe.

  Baker said, ‘Aren’t we presuming a lot from just a few gestures?’

  MacIndoe smiled. ‘Perhaps we are. She wouldn’t know he was likely to murder, but she would know if he was cruel to women. And she probably doesn’t mind so long as she can still possess him. The doting mother. There were two photographs of him in that one room. The other was on the mantelshelf. She didn’t seem very interested in her daughter-in-law and was completely apathetic about Olwen …’

  Baker said, ‘You sound like a psychiatrist, sir.’

  MacIndoe laughed and started to drive. ‘Now I know I’m talking through my hat.’

  Maddocks said, ‘We could go back.’

  ‘No,’ said MacIndoe. ‘If we shout at her or demand to see the grave – well, she would be very upset if we were wrong …’

  Ten minutes later, still driving, he said, ‘You couldn’t blame a woman if she protected her son – her only son. Women are not interested in the principle of justice at the expense of anyone they love. And I know the Air Force has something to do with this. It was almost the first thing he said to Olwen: I was a bomber pilot at Little Over. On the strength of that you must admire me. It’s in character, Tony, with that face.’

  Baker said nothing.

  Maddocks said, ‘Yes, I know, but –’ and didn’t conclude his sentence.

  Five minutes afterwards MacIndoe said, ‘I’m going down to that Biggots Aybury place. If her name was Margaret, I’ll be satisfied. If it was Evelyn … The vicar will know.’

  Baker said, ‘You’re not going now?’

  ‘Is it far?’

  ‘I think it’s in Somerset.’

  ‘I’ll leave as soon as possible.’

  ‘Shall I come with you?’

  ‘No, Tony. One damn fool will be enough. You join the Inspector in the search for the red car.’ MacIndoe turned to Maddocks. ‘When we’ve finished with Almond Vale, I’d like every chemist’s and hairdresser’s shop along Almond Vale Road visited. Say a mile each way from Olga Harper’s shop. Someone must remember a traveller with a red sports car. If not, we’ll try an appeal in the Press.’

  MacIndoe was not able to leave Middleshire that day. Instead he started at dawn on the following day, a Saturday. It took four hours’ fast driving to reach the village of Biggots Aybury. MacIndoe had no breakfast and stopped for a drink of coffee at the last large town on the route. Several times he had moments of panic, believing he was making a fool of himself, being too subtle, or that his inquiry could have been passed on to the local police, anyway. He reached the aerodrome at nine o’clock. It was almost deserted. The canvas flapped from the skeletons of hangars; sheep chewed where once rubber tyres had alighted; there were still Nissen huts and a brick control tower, but the aerodrome was clearly not in full usage. Along one side – near the road: available to anyone – were rows of gleaming silver parts: cylinders, bolts, unidentifiable engine parts, tins of paint, boxes of odd-shaped screws and rivets. The war had been over for more than a decade, but the mess was still being tidied up.

  In the village the church was closed, and MacIndoe, relieved to be out of his car, walked to the large, tree-surrounded old house which must be the vicarage.

  An old lady answered his knock and informed him that the vicar was visiting a sick woman; there were two weddings that morning – twin sisters; yes, it was remarkable – could he call in the afternoon?

  ‘I’d like to see him before then.’

  ‘Is it something important?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The old woman pondered. She had a distant look; a kindly face which was no longer involved; it tried very hard, but was deep in some misery of its own. ‘Why don’t you wait in the church? He’ll be along a good half hour before the first wedding.’

  ‘The church is closed.’

  ‘No. It’s never closed. Henry won’t– The door is shut, that’s all.’

  ‘Is there anywhere I can obtain breakfast?’

  ‘Don’t you live in the parish? I thought you were a – There’s a café in the village. I don’t know whether they do breakfasts.’

  MacIndoe discovered the café and was served with a breakfast of bacon and beans by a pleasant young woman. He ate the food and drank some coffee, watched by the woman’s two children.

  At ten o’clock MacIndoe turned the heavy door handle and entered St Mary’s Church. Outside there was the faint rustle of tr
ees in the feeble wind, a pale blue sky with very little cloud, and, on the ground, everything defined sharply: the stone walls of the churchyard, the old gravestones, the splash of colour on the graves of the recently dead, the bark of the trees, the green fields stretching away to a hedge horizon. Every crack and mark in the stone church was revealed – the church is not faultless, MacIndoe thought as he saw the few chips and cracks and the splashes of bird-droppings. It was nevertheless a pleasant, square-towered little church. Inside was the smell of incense and wood and dead flowers and books. The light was softened except when one looked at the windows; then MacIndoe’s travel-weary eyes felt burnt out by the force of the colours. There were no pretensions inside: no appeals to visitors to wipe their feet, or leave money, or pray for the relief of military victories; no flags; no references to novelists who had mentioned the district in their books; one was left free from hypocrisy and pomp to participate in the real battle if one chose; but one was not inveigled into doing so.

  The atmosphere began to affect MacIndoe. He had been hurrying this day and on the previous few – this was stationary and eternal. I do not come often enough, he thought. I work on too many Sundays. It was absolutely quiet inside the church; it had been silent outside, but here the silence was a tangible presence; he was reached by it at once. The silence commenced to inflict its physical weight. Alone with it one was freed slowly from distractions. The things of the day and of the hour and of the moment passed, and one was left naked and forced to think. The mind thrashed about like a hooked fish, preferring the distractions, afraid of the silence. The distractions seemed safe, for they were by no means unreal: the world was full of the sound of men talking: in the courts justice and wisdom were dispensed like aspirin and one was left dissatisfied, as if that were not the end. In the silence one knew that it could not be the end: justice must be indivisible: it could not be the property of men with prejudices or poor eyesight or indigestion or a knowledge of books or an opinion of humanity formed from its dregs. In the silence one waited for the significant sound. One heard the protests of the arbitrarily condemned, the hissed respirations of the tortured, the self-satisfaction of the martyrs, the anger of the ignorant, the wails of the children. In the pressing silence one could hear the creak of wood and the laughter of the crowd at Golgotha. With sweat on the hands, one waited for another sound and eventually it came: from across the Channel on a night in the autumn of 1917: the rumble of guns. When I am a man I want to fight in a battle against wickedness. That war ended and before I became a man I knew it hadn’t been a battle against evil; it had just been an economic stupidity. So against my father’s wishes I joined the police. I wanted my battle to be real and physical; I wanted to pursue sin and hit it with a truncheon, to sort out and expose the most complicated wickedness. But time and success had turned that ideal into the usual policeman’s battle against illegality. This was so complex that the very procedure prevented one becoming involved oneself. The criminals were pursued and sent to prison or hanged, not because they had sinned, but because they had broken the law. You failed, MacIndoe – even with your sympathy you failed. I know. I know. Everybody fails. Whoever heard of an idealist whose ideals were successful? We are all criminals. And what am I to do if I catch this man R.? I am involved in this affair all right. I’m even making a fool of myself. What am I to do if I win the legal battle? Am I to preach at him? Should I give him her diary to read so that he may know what he has destroyed? Shall I confront him with her parents? But the truth is that I shall not be allowed by the law of which I am part to do anything except ascertain and present the proofs of his guilt. MacIndoe knelt down in perplexity to give the problem to Another. In a fervent whisper that ended the silence he mouthed part of that astonishing petition, the 119th Psalm: ‘I am small and of no reputation: yet do I not forget thy commandments. Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness: and thy law is the truth.’

  He heard the faint clatter of a light tread across the tiles and the graves of the long-since dead. Someone was coming towards him from the other end of the aisle. The detective rose to his feet to meet another man. It was a priest who approached.

  The priest was a small man and frail. His frailty seemed recent, for his clothes hung limp on his body, a body that seemed more bone than flesh. His face was as lined as a complicated etching. In his whole dragged being only the eyes seemed to live, driven on by a will that knew the truth despite what the eyes saw. He looks ill, MacIndoe thought, sick with a prolonged illness that belonged as much to the mind as to the body. The meek shall inherit the earth. Yes, but only after humiliation and degradation had sickened them of it. Was that it?

  ‘Good morning,’ the priest said. His face was quite different when it smiled; one could see that it had laughed much once; the garden parties and the baptisms and the teas had been an accepted part of life then. ‘Are you the best man?’

  ‘Good morning,’ said MacIndoe. ‘No. I’m a stranger.’

  ‘Welcome to our church.’

  ‘I’ve come to see you.’

  ‘I do not seem to know you.’

  ‘I am a detective.’

  ‘You’ve come from Taunton?’

  ‘No. I’m from London, but I’m operating from Middleshire.’

  ‘And you’ve come all the way to see me? Do you need some kind of – help?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The old man moved an arm in a faint gesture. ‘I am here to help people.’ The gesture was a bitter one. They did not want the help. They only desired the sanction of whatever it was they intended to do. They scrabbled in dirt for love and money and possession, and if you interfered they said you wanted power. You must not interfere unless asked to, and you should only reiterate their opinions when you did. God and His representatives had to understand that they were very busy these days on important matters – social and economic adjustments, legalized murder and fornication, the comprehension of art, the pursuit of politics, money, freedom and happiness. If God and His representatives did not remember their places, they would not enter church at all, not even every sixteenth Sunday, or for their daughters’ weddings, or when a war was going badly; indeed, despite its difficulties, they would, if irritated sufficiently, begin to study science. And then where would God be?

  MacIndoe said, ‘What I have to ask is quite a simple question, but it is related to an extremely unpleasant matter. I think perhaps we should not discuss it here.’

  ‘You’d like to move outside?’

  ‘That is what I meant.’

  ‘You are thoughtful.’

  ‘Detectives go to church sometimes,’ MacIndoe said. ‘Not often, of course, because, like soldiers, they do not really understand the battle they’re in.’

  The priest stared at him. ‘I see. Well, let’s go outside.’

  They walked to the door. Outside the heat struck them, ricocheting from the wall of the church. There returned to MacIndoe the noises of physical reality: the buzz of insects, the chirp of a thrush, the sighing of the wind, poultry somewhere clucking about their business, and some way off the roar of a vehicle in top gear.

  The two men stood without words for several minutes, staring at the view, understanding each other. ‘What I have to find out,’ MacIndoe explained, ‘is the name of a. person who was married in this parish between May and December of 1943.’

  ‘Do you know the name of one party?’

  ‘I have the name of the man,’ said MacIndoe, ‘and want the name of the girl.’

  ‘It means returning inside the church,’ said the vicar. ‘What is the name you have?’

  ‘Flying Officer Roy Marlborough Fortescue.’

  The clergyman gave a brief animal cry – a curious whelp of pain, misery or fright. ‘What’s the matter?’ MacIndoe asked. ‘Does the name mean something to you?’

  Slowly the priest recovered. It had obviously been a
tremendous shock; he was trembling still when he said, ‘I can tell you the name of the girl.’

  ‘Was it Margaret?’

  ‘It was my daughter Evelyn.’

  MacIndoe stared at him, appalled, feeling no exultation at all. The old man, dithering still in agitation, was to be wounded further; he had to learn what sort of a man his daughter had married. But perhaps he knew – the shock was obviously an unpleasant one.

  The vicar looked at his watch. ‘I’ve only a quarter of an hour before the first of today’s weddings. Tell me as much as you can. Is my daughter involved in this extremely unpleasant matter you mentioned?’

  ‘No. It’s her husband.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘Is her husband alive?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s very much of the living.’

  ‘Someone told us he was dead.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘His mother.’

  ‘When did he die? How long ago?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some time back. She said she’s lost touch with her daughter-in-law …’

  ‘Roy Fortescue was alive three weeks ago.’

  ‘Then he’s alive now.’

  ‘I can’t think why she should have lied to you. I never met her – I don’t know what she’s like. Is it possible that she misunderstood you?’

  ‘No. She was lying. She lied twice, saying also that your daughter’s name was Margaret.’

  ‘What made you suspect?’

  ‘She showed no sympathy for the victim of the crime –’

  ‘There’s been a crime?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does it affect my daughter?’

  MacIndoe said cautiously, ‘It will affect her. Tell me about your daughter.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘When did you last see her?’