A Hovering of Vultures

by Robert Barnard

  “And there is nothing else you can tell us?”

  “Not really . . .” She turned aside to the hall table and took up a substantial package. “There’s this parcel. When I found him there I just ran back here to phone the police. Who should have it, do you reckon?”

  Mike Oddie peered at the package.

  “ ‘Bennett and Morley. Publishers.’ ” It was a soft, flexible package. “Some kind of proofs, maybe. Don’t suppose they’re important. As to who should have them, I suppose eventually his heirs, whoever they are. We’ll take it now.”

  “I know he was never married,” said Mrs Tuckett. “That much he did tell me of his private life. ‘Too fly to get caught, dear lady’ was how he put it.”

  “Maybe,” said Mike Oddie, as they walked back to the car, “we shouldn’t be concentrating too much on the people at the Conference. Maybe we should be asking ‘cui bono’?”

  “And what does that mean?” asked Charlie.

  “It means ‘Who gets his hands on the loot?’ ”

  “I always heard that Latin was an economical language.”

  “It is. Multum in parvo. ‘A lot in a little.’ ”

  “It’s like being sidekick to Lord Peter Wimsey,” Charlie complained.

  Chapter 10

  Questions (I)

  They sat for some minutes in the car, waiting for a policeman to arrive from Keighley to guard the cottage. The question they mulled over was where to start—and more specifically where to base the first stages of the investigation. The body was here in Oxenthorpe, the Weekend had been in Micklewike, and many of the people they wanted to talk to were in Batley Bridge. In the end the last seemed the most convenient centre: Mike Oddie drove himself and Charlie to Batley Bridge to set up a temporary incident centre in three vacant rooms at the Duke of Cumberland. Then he handed Charlie the key to the car, telling him to go and try to catch any remaining conferees in Micklewike.

  “We want statements from any and all of them,” he insisted. “Ask them to come down here and tell us anything they know before they take off. And that Secretary woman, and the caretaker: they may know a lot more about Gerald Suzman than the conference-goers. I’ll tell this Mrs Farraday that we want to talk to her, and the Sneddon character if he’s still staying here, but I won’t do any actual questioning until you get back.”

  At the Black Horse Charlie found the landlord pottering around somewhat lethargically after the busiest weekend of his tenancy.

  “Still here? Oh, there’s that girl—what’s her name?—Parkin. She’s here till Friday. And those two from Sweden or Norway or wherever it is. What do you want them for?”

  “I’m police. There’s been a murder.”

  “Oh yes?” The man’s sluggishness seemed endemic. He was apparently unsurprised that the young man who had drunk in his pub over the weekend and mingled with the Weekenders should turn out to be a policeman with a murder on his hands.

  “You don’t know where they are, these three?”

  “No idea.”

  “Will you tell them the police want to talk to them?”

  “Aye, I’ll do that if I remember.”

  Charlie got out before he lost patience. He had a quick dash around Micklewike and up to the farm. There he had his only stroke of luck. He saw wandering round in the vicinity of the farmhouse Vibeke Nordli, apparently on her way back from the spinney. He stood at the gate and hailed her.

  “I wanted to see it—experience it—when there was nobody around,” she said as he approached. “Magic!”

  The rapture seemed genuine. She struck Charlie as much more open, more candid than her boyfriend or husband. Then he remembered that feeling he had of flapping wings when she and Gillian Parkin got on to the subject of the manuscripts.

  “Sounds like you haven’t heard the news,” he said. “Suzman’s been murdered.”

  That really stopped her in her tracks.

  “No! You can’t be serious!” She looked at him with distress on her face. “But what’s going to happen? What about the Fellowship? And the new edition of the novels?”

  Charlie kept his eyebrows unraised with difficulty.

  “Well, that’s not really our first concern,” he said. “I’m a policeman, by the way. We want anyone who was at the Weekend to come down to Batley Bridge and make a statement. Do you know where Gillian Parkin is?”

  “No, but I’m meeting her for lunch. Down in Batley Bridge.”

  “Well, if you’d both come along to the Duke of Cumberland some time this afternoon we’d be grateful. What about Mr—Herr I can’t pronounce his name—”

  “Vidkun. Vidkun Mjølhus. He was at breakfast. I don’t think he’s leaving till tomorrow.”

  This time Charlie’s eyebrows did rise. She looked at the puzzlement in his face and laughed.

  “Did you think we were—like—together? Partners? I’d never met him before last Friday. We went around together because we are both Norwegians.”

  “Sorry. I got the wrong end of the stick.”

  “I come from Tromsø, he comes from Oslo. About as far apart as London and Inverness, I should think. Further.”

  “You’re an academic, aren’t you? Is he too?”

  “No. I believe he has a bookshop—antikvariat, what’s that? antiquarian bookshop, somewhere in Oslo. If I see him I’ll tell him you want to talk to him.”

  “And do you know where the Secretary lady lives? Mrs Cardew?”

  “Yes, I’ll come and show you.”

  Mrs Brenda Cardew lived in one of the smaller cottages on the main street, round the corner from where Lettie Farraday had grown up. When she opened the door her eyes were red from weeping.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do any Fellowship work today. I’ve just heard—”

  Charlie flashed his ID at her.

  “I’m a policeman.”

  “A policeman!” She had gulped back her tears and now stared at him. When she spoke there was a note of outrage in her voice:

  “But you were at the Weekend!”

  “That’s right. I’m also a policeman.”

  “But why were you at the Weekend?”

  “We can go into that later. I can see you’ve heard of Mr Suzman’s death. We wanted to talk to you because you must have known him better than most of us who just came for the Weekend.”

  “I’m sure I didn’t. Not on a personal level at all.”

  “A lot of people wondered why he was setting up the Fellowship, whether there was anything behind it.”

  “They did, did they?” Crossness made her flush. “People have such nasty minds. The Fellowship was set up by a few dedicated and hardworking people who gave a lot of their time without reward because they’re devoted to the memory of Susannah Sneddon and to her novels. Mr Suzman was the most dedicated of all.”

  “Ah,” said Charlie, with the inscrutability of a civil servant. “Now, I wonder if you have a membership list . . .”

  Charlie got from her a copy of the complete list of those who had signed up for membership during the Weekend. He also got a promise that she, and Mrs Marsden the curator if she was available, would come down to the Duke of Cumberland during the afternoon to make statements.

  Down at the Cumberland the police were in the process of taking over part of the pub—a takeover that Mike Oddie told the landlord would probably be brief. The landlord looked as if he hoped it would be long-lasting: the tourist season wouldn’t perk up until June, and the police would pay him. He was pretty sure they would attract sensation-seekers too. Charlie found Oddie in the foyer and brought him up to date with what he’d done in Micklewike. As they were talking he suddenly realized that they were being watched from the door into the public bar. On Rupert and Mary Coggenhoe’s faces there was a struggle between the hostility that hitherto had been automatic and a dawning realization that they’d got something wrong. Charlie was no accomplished lip-reader, but then he didn’t need to be to catch what the great writer’s wife said to the great writer.
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  “I think he must be a policeman!”

  When he detached himself from Oddie and went to fetch something from the car outside they accosted him by the door, now with an uncertainty that landed them somewhere between the reproachful and the ingratiating.

  “You didn’t tell us you were a policeman.”

  “You didn’t seem interested in my career or prospects.”

  “Yes, well, I think we may have . . . made a bit of a mistake.” In so far as one could shuffle standing still, Rupert Coggenhoe shuffled. “I gather we’re all to be questioned.”

  “That’s right. Are you wanting to get away? Would you like to go first?”

  “Well, we’re booked in till tomorrow. But there are things I’d like to be doing—in connection with the Fellowship. It seems natural that I should—well—”

  “Take over?”

  “Take the lead, after Mr Suzman’s unfortunate death . . . Er, I take it you were at the Weekend as an enthusiast for the Sneddon novels?”

  Charlie smiled non-committally.

  “I’m very interested in the murder-suicide as well,” he said. “As I think I told you. Questions later, and in the other direction.”

  “Oh yes . . . Yes, I suppose so. But you’re not assuming, are you, that this has anything to do with the Fellowship? There must be lots of other possibilities.”

  “Oh yes, we’ll be following up lots of other lines of enquiry,” agreed Charlie. “Cui bono, for example. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  When he came back into the foyer from fetching his papers from the car the Coggenhoes had disappeared, but Lettie was making her way painfully downstairs. He darted to help.

  “Ah . . . always there when needed. Well, I can’t say that it’s all that much of a surprise that you are a policeman, Dexter. I gather we’re all to be interviewed?”

  “That’s right. Do you want to ‘go on’ early?”

  “Not particularly. I’ve got all the time in the world, and I’ll enjoy watching the other suspects.”

  “Do that, please, Lettie, and listen too. Your lack of mobility means you can stick around without arousing questions. When are you leaving?”

  “When you do, or when this is over. You don’t think I’m going to pass up the chance of being close to a murder investigation, do you? I’ll dine out on this for the rest of my life!”

  “Will you be going up to see your mother again?”

  “May do . . . The shrinks would have a name for me, wouldn’t they?”

  “Delay it as long as you can, will you? We may have a question or two for you to put to her.”

  “You don’t think this has anything to do with the Sneddons, do you?”

  “As I’ve just told the Coggenhoes, all avenues will be explored.”

  “You’ve got the jargon too,” said Lettie admiringly. “My, I’m enjoying myself!”

  When Charlie settled down with Mike Oddie in one of the three bedrooms they had taken over (in the other two were policemen, local and from Halifax, taking calls from the public and doing what they could by phone to illuminate the life and background of Mr Gerald Suzman), Oddie shoved a paper across the table to Charlie.

  “These are the conference-goers who are still here.”

  “Right . . . Some of the names I recognise, some—”

  “Most of them will only be able to tell us things that you will know already.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that police work is ninety per cent tedium.”

  “Randolph Sneddon went off very early this morning—he’d told the landlord that’s what he’d be doing. I’ve been thinking: you said there was this couple who had a bundle of letters from Susannah Sneddon. That’s exactly the kind of thing Gerald Suzman would be interested in.”

  “Oh, he was. I’ve got an idea they drove over, rather than stayed in the area, but that’s just an impression. I’ve got the complete membership list here . . . Double-barrelled name . . . Here we are: Potter-Hodge, Felix and Mavis. An address in Ilkley. I seem to remember he said his grandmother moved there.”

  “Well, we’ll want to talk to them when we’ve interviewed the people here. Shall we get going now?”

  When later, very much later, Charlie was back in his room at the bed and breakfast, with a half bottle of red wine that the landlord of the Duke of Cumberland had been very reluctant to accept money for, so thronged had been his bars all day with the curious, the professionally interested and the frankly ghoulish, he went over all those interviews, and eventually typed up anything he thought of interest, anything he might want to think over in any spare time he might grab during the investigation. The highlights were regrettably few and far between. Most of the people had seen what he had seen, heard what he had heard, and no more. Few had plucked up the courage to talk to Mr Suzman, and those who had could recall only banalities and pieties. Suzman had been, to the enthusiasts, a disappointment. Some had talked to the Potter-Hodges, and had come away rather shocked that they hadn’t bothered to read most of the letters. There were some, of course, who were anxious to play down their involvement with Gerald Suzman. Rupert Coggenhoe was one such.

  “Never spoke to the man before Friday,” he insisted, sitting tensely in the chair, bent forward.

  “How did you get to know about the Weekend?”

  “There was a piece—rather a snide piece—about it in the Books supplement of the Sunday Times. Made a rather silly comparison between Suzman’s Dolphin Square address and the subject-matter of The Barren Fields. I just looked him up in the telephone directory and wrote expressing interest. That was early on. Later there was much more publicity, pieces in the colour supplements—that kind of thing. He was good at getting the right kind of publicity.”

  “Had you heard of him before?”

  “Name rang a bell—no more than that. Friend told me he was some kind of specialist antiquarian dealer.”

  “And your conversations with him over the Weekend?”

  “Purely utilitarian. Dates for the new committee to meet—that kind of thing.”

  “So you have no strong impression of him as a person?”

  “No strong impression . . .” Coggenhoe considered. “Not really the sort of person I’d associate with Susannah Sneddon’s novels . . . Too smooth, plausible . . . More like a politician, really.”

  When he had gone to “set about getting the Fellowship back on an even keel,” Charlie said:

  “If it’s him it won’t have anything to do with the Fellowship.”

  “Too keen to draw attention to it, you mean? True. And murder to gain control of a literary society doesn’t seem all that likely.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Charlie. “Lettie says that everyone who goes in for beanos of that sort is ever so slightly mad.”

  The interview with Mary Coggenhoe produced nothing new. She merely repeated, as if they had discussed their evidence in advance, everything her husband had said. A parrot would have shown greater inventiveness. But talking to the pair of them crystallised one thought in Charlie’s mind, and one of the notes he made back in his room later on read: “Their concern with their daughter is really a concern for themselves.” Thinking it over he decided that wasn’t so unusual.

  The next person they called was Vibeke Nordli. She sat down confidently and expectantly, quite without the tension unconcealable in Rupert Coggenhoe. Attractive, ambitious, strong-minded. The details were unsurprising: born 1962, resident of Tromsø, married, one child, writing a thesis on Susannah Sneddon’s novels, for which she expressed considerable enthusiasm.

  “How did you hear about the Weekend?”

  “I wrote to the Untamed Shrew Press, asking if they knew of any unpublished stuff—early novels, maybe one unfinished when she was murdered. They wrote back and said that The Black Byre was just completed when she was killed, and was published posthumously. They didn’t know of any unpublished stuff. I had this feeling from the letter of—I don’t know—of a sort of starchiness, stiffness. I wo
uld guess that they weren’t going to be the publishers of the new edition. But anyway they mentioned Suzman, and said there was going to be this Weekend in Micklewike, so I wrote to High Maddox Farm.”

  “I suppose seeing the farm was a big attraction?”

  “Yes, it was—and all the countryside around. For the thesis I was more interested in the manuscripts, of course, but seeing where she grew up, lived, the places that she wrote about—yes, that was an attraction.”

  “Is anyone writing the biography?” Charlie suddenly asked, from his inconspicuous chair at one side, where he was taking notes. “Or perhaps a joint biography of the pair of them?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Charlie looked at Oddie.

  “A lot of people seem interested in the manuscripts. But I didn’t hear one mention of a biography during the Weekend. You’d think if there was that much interest in her—in her and Joshua—someone would be writing her life.”

  “I don’t know,” said Vibeke Nordli, her forehead crinkling. “Comparing manuscripts with the printed texts is a comparatively straightforward matter, and not particularly time-consuming. Writing a life is a much bigger undertaking—particularly if it’s a first one. You’d have to be really committed to take it on.”

  “You talked to Suzman, didn’t you?” Oddie asked.

  “Just briefly, when we did the tour of the farm. I’m afraid he didn’t say anything of interest . . . It was odd: I somehow didn’t get any sense of a strong personal interest in the Sneddons.”

  “You were puzzled as to why he was doing all this?”

  “Frankly, yes. It didn’t bother me for more than a moment or two at the time, but now that he’s been murdered . . .”

  Quite, thought the two policemen to themselves.

  The next witness was Vidkun Mjølhus. His passport told them the personal details: born 1946, a bookseller, height, weight, and picture—the last showing he had not changed much in the eight years since it was taken. Though he was bulky, and had a bit more flesh on him than ideally he should, he was handsome, boyish and healthy. Yet Charlie thought as he sat there waiting for their questions that he was not entirely relaxed, not easy in the way that Vibeke Nordli had been.