A Hovering of Vultures

by Robert Barnard

  “Oh yes, the Sneddon nowels go down werry big in Norvay. Susannah’s, naturally. Two of them vos translated many years since. Nineteen thirty-five and six.”

  “So the new paperbacks sell well?”

  “Werry vel.”

  “In English?”

  “Yes, in English. Vee all read English—a little. But they start to be translated into Norwegian as well, the other ones. Den Svarte Fjøs has just been given out. The Black Byre—the last one. Werry popular.”

  “Why, do you think?”

  “Norvay is a rural country. Even if vee live in towns, vee go back to our roots in our minds, vee have a bit of the peasant in us still, and vee long to go back vere vee come from—at Easter to ski, to fish in summer. Vee are not easy in towns, it does not feel natural.”

  “I see. And that’s why you came to the Sneddon Weekend?”

  “Accurate! . . . Sorry, I mean exactly. Excuse my English. I read the nowels, see they are in this vonderful tradition—like our Hamsun, Vesaas, and many others. And then I see a piece in The Bookseller—I get the publications for English bookshops, naturally, because I do business vith England—I see this piece about the Veekend and I say to myself: ‘I take a little holiday.’ ”

  “And did you talk to Mr Suzman during the Weekend?”

  He grimaced and shook his head.

  “No—is not my type. Werry smooth. Vibeke—she talk to him about the nowels. But I—no.” He turned to Charlie. “I only see vot you see, hear vot you hear.”

  “Why,” said Charlie when he had gone, “do I get the impression that he’s holding something back?”

  “Or not telling the whole truth? Or not telling the truth at all?” agreed Mike. “It’s more difficult to tell plausible lies in a foreign tongue.”

  “Vibeke says he’s a second-hand bookseller. It’s difficult to imagine him having much to do with the new Sneddon boom.”

  “Of course he didn’t actually say he did,” said Oddie. “Not professionally. He presented it mainly as a personal thing . . . Though I can’t see why he would do a lot of business with Britain, as he says he does.” He looked down at the jotted notes he had made during the interview.

  “Something strikes you that passed me by?” asked Charlie.

  “Maybe . . . I wonder how many Norwegians born in 1946 were given the Christian name of Vidkun.”

  “Why on earth shouldn’t they be?”

  “It was the Christian name of Quisling.”

  Chapter 11

  Questions (II)

  Mrs Cardew, the Fellowship Secretary, was a useless witness. She kept insisting that Gerald Suzman’s death could have nothing to do with the Fellowship, could not be a consequence of the “most successful” Weekend, and said over and over that the new organisation was the brainchild of devoted and tireless workers with not a thought of self. If anyone had suggested the dear old “passing tramp” she would have embraced the idea enthusiastically, so anxious was she to distance herself and the new literary society from the gruesome deed in Oxenthorpe. Both men got the impression that she might be in the lists against Rupert Coggenhoe in any moves to take over the Fellowship.

  Mrs Marsden was another matter. A strong-minded countrywoman, she was clearly both more sensible and more intelligent than Mrs Cardew, though certainly less well-educated. She made it plain she had been pleased to be offered the curator’s post by Mr Suzman, had worked with him and for him devotedly and efficiently, but for all that she had never lost her clear-sightedness in relation to him and his doings.

  “By the time I got involved he’d already bought the farm,” she explained to Oddie and Charlie. “So I don’t know much about that, apart from what I knew from living in the village.”

  “And that was?”

  “That it was a pretty run-down affair. It had been farmed for years by the son of the man who bought it at the auction in 1933. He got sick a few years back, never let go of the reins, and eventually died. Mr Suzman bought it at a knockdown price, what with agriculture being in the state it is in at the moment, and the general recession. He’s leased out most of the fields to other farmers, just keeping the bits around the farm and the spinney where Joshua shot himself. All in all, I don’t suppose he laid out that much money.”

  “What about equipping it as a museum?”

  “He enjoyed that, did Mr Suzman. It was like a bit of fun for him. He went to a lot of sales and auctions all round the country, buying up old stuff. But you wouldn’t be talking high prices. He was just after the sort of furniture and kitchen utensils and stuff like that that they might have had.”

  “Was none of it actual stuff owned by the Sneddons?”

  “Well . . .” There came on her the hesitation of honest doubt. “There were the two little tables that served as desks, for example. One was possibly Susannah’s, the other definitely Joshua’s, so he said.”

  “But you’re not so sure?”

  “It didn’t look old enough to me. Like the American lady said, everything they had was old even then—fetched nothing at the auction after they died, so my mother always said. So I did just wonder—well, if he said it was definitely Joshua’s because something had to be authentically his.”

  Mike Oddie nodded.

  “But do you think, speaking as a countrywoman, that on the whole he did a good job with the place?”

  “Yes, I do. That’s the sort of way farmhouses looked back in the years between the wars. ’Course, I remember thinking, just before the Weekend, that what it didn’t have was the dirt and the smells, or only faint echoes of them. There’d’ve been pigs and hens quite close to the farmhouse in those days. But what can you do about farmyard smells, short of buying some kind of artificial spray? No, I’d say the place gave people some idea of what a farmhouse looked like back in the days when the Sneddons were alive.”

  “You remember them, don’t you?”

  “Yes, just. I don’t set much store by that. Just having Susannah pointed out to me in the street by my mother as the woman who wrote books. What I really remember was all the talk after they died.”

  “What did people say?” Charlie asked.

  “Well, of course they talked about it for years. A murder and a suicide in a little place like Micklewike—naturally it was a sensation. You’re from the city, young man, I can hear that, and you wouldn’t understand. What did people say? Well, they said he must have been jealous of her for years, her being so much more successful than him, and that finally he’d snapped. And I’ve never heard anything to show as we were wrong.”

  “I suppose you read the novels after Mr Suzman asked you to be curator?”

  “Yes, I did. I’m not a great reader as a rule. I enjoyed them. I liked reading about the places that I recognised, and the sort of people that I know—or used to know, because times change, don’t they, and people with them. Of course she exaggerated, like, but writers do that, don’t they? No, I really enjoyed them, for all I was reading them as part of my job.”

  “And Mr Suzman himself: what did you think of him?”

  She considered the question seriously. She was the sort of person who did not make judgments lightly.

  “I didn’t know him. He was my employer, he always treated me well, was always considerate. Beyond that . . .”

  “He was a mystery?”

  “Not exactly that, but he was from another sort of life, wasn’t he? One that I know nothing about. He always wanted me to call him Gerald, but somehow I never could. ‘Sir’ came much more natural. People I called by their Christian names would be—well, different sorts of people.”

  “Why do you think he was so active in setting up the Sneddon Fellowship?”

  “I can’t say I know, for all we talked about it so much. I suppose he thought highly of the books.”

  “You don’t think there was something in it for him?”

  “Well . . . not to speak ill of the dead . . . but you’ve got your job to do, and someone killed him, and someone must have had
a reason . . . Well, I wouldn’t have said he was the kind to do something for nothing. Yes, I would guess that there was something in it for him, but what it was I never got any hint. Could it have been some kind of honour? Like from the Queen?”

  But neither Mike nor Charlie thought he was in it for an OBE.

  • • •

  Mike Oddie liked Gillian Parkin at once. Frank, open, enthusiastic—he could see that she and Vibeke Nordli would get on, quite apart from their shared interests: they were similar types.

  “As soon as I heard about the setting-up of the Fellowship I knew I had to come along,” she said, settling into her chair. “I’ve been working on the thesis for a year now, and I’m sort of saturated in Susannah Sneddon.”

  “What about the chap who was with you in the pub on Friday?” asked Charlie.

  “My bloke? His name is Gregory Waite. No interest in the Sneddons at all. Botanist, London University, like me. He was happy to come along, then to take off on a walking tour round Yorkshire. He’ll be back on Thursday or Friday—I’m booked into the Black Horse until then.”

  “Why did you decide to stay so long?”

  “It’s the best chance I’ve had to see the places that she wrote about. I’m ashamed to say I’ve never been to Yorkshire before. It’s good to meet up with people like Vibeke who really know the novels. If you do research on Dickens there are people all around you with the same interest. With Susannah Sneddon you’re on your own. This Weekend was a chance to feel less lonely.”

  “Your particular interest is in the manuscripts, isn’t it?” Charlie asked. Gillian Parkin grinned, as if this was some kind of dark secret, and she had been found out.

  “OK, that’s another reason for staying on a bit. I knew there were typescripts, knew they were being edited for a new edition, so I thought I might winkle my way in and get a share of the action. Anything wrong in that?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “When I saw the pages he had put out in the Museum I was even more keen. It wasn’t just a matter of correcting errors; there was obviously lots of new stuff—things that had been cut out. Censorship. She was cut by her publishers because she was saying things that women weren’t allowed to say at that time. Yes—I was very keen to get my hands on those typescripts.”

  “So you approached Mr Suzman?” Mike Oddie asked.

  “Yes, I did. Twice—no, three times.”

  “What was his reaction?”

  “Cool. Distant. The general drift of what he said was that everything was in hand, the typescripts were being edited—by him, I gathered, and lucky little me would have the benefit of reading them when, one by one, they are published.”

  “No special favours?”

  “That was the gist. A courteous brush-off. That’s why I got Vibeke to propose me for the steering committee of the Fellowship. I thought it would give me a bit of leverage. Obviously he wasn’t going to ask me to edit one of the books, or establish a definitive text, but maybe he’d give me an advance look at the proofs or whatever.”

  “When Vibeke Nordli heard he was dead her first reaction was: what’s going to happen to the new edition of the novels?” said Charlie. “Would you say that was your reaction too?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t care for Suzman?”

  “I thought he was a creep.”

  “Creep covers a lot of ground. What sort of creep?”

  “You sound like my supervisor: ‘To convey a meaning language must be used precisely.’ All right, fair enough: what sort of a creep? The sort who looks up women’s skirts, given half a chance. He had a letch for Vibeke, by the way. The sort who smarms, who would call you ‘dear lady’ except that he knows any feminist would brain him if he did, the sort who is in it for himself—a sort of literary limpet. It so happens that he picked on Susannah Sneddon to suck blood out of, but it could just as easily have been Jeffrey Archer or Barbara Taylor Bradford. Literary values just didn’t enter into it.”

  “But what was the blood he was getting out of Susannah Sneddon?”

  She shook her head and shrugged.

  “Search me. But there was blood, I’ll bet.”

  “Or would have been, if he hadn’t been killed,” said Charlie.

  “Right . . . Right,” said Gillian Parkin, for the first time uncertain. “I suppose there’s got to be a motive there somewhere, but I don’t get what it could be.”

  • • •

  Lettie Farraday came last, and made no bones about her enjoyment of the murder enquiry. Mike Oddie saw at once what had attracted Charlie to her, and understood his feelings of protectiveness.

  “You’ve no idea what fun it is down there in the bar!” she said, levering herself down heavily into the chair with Charlie’s help. “The fuss, the people! The landlord’s all but purring, and he’s put on three extra bar staff. There’s an old boy there—Len Trubshaw is his name—that I went to school with down here in Batley Bridge. He was the sort of little boy who loved pulling the girls’ hair and making them cry. He’s sitting there just lapping up all the scandal and innuendo and conjecture.”

  “So are you, Lettie,” said Charlie mischievously.

  “In a different way. Just show a bit more respect for age, Dexter.”

  “When did you go to school with him, Mrs Farraday?” Oddie asked.

  “The late ’twenties. When George V was on the throne. Are you asking exactly how old I am?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dexter knows. I was born in 1917. So I was a little kid of five and upwards when Susannah and Joshua were writing all those novels.”

  “So you have a lot more memories of them than Mrs Marsden, say?”

  “Is that the curator? Oh yes, sure. I can’t say I remember her, but I’d guess she was a good ten years younger than me. A girl of fifteen, about to stretch her wings and fly the nest, doesn’t take much notice of a five-year-old.”

  “Is that the age you were when you left?”

  “Yes, sir! Soon as I decently could. I went as a maid to a woman in Halifax, because it was live-in, and I knew she was about to move to London. Five years later it was the USA.”

  “How did that come about?” Charlie asked.

  “Don’t ask! But knowing you I suppose you’ll guess that good old s.e.x. was involved.”

  “What made you decide to come back?”

  “Oh, I come back regularly. I come back to Europe every year, though I can’t say that Britain is my favourite place to come to. I decided to include Micklewike this year because I read an article about the Weekend and the Sneddon cult in Time magazine. I decided I wanted to be part of it.”

  “Why? Were you suspicious?” Charlie asked.

  “No. Why should I be?”

  “The police have been suspicious of Suzman for a long time.”

  “I’m not police. I don’t think I’d be a lot of use to the law-enforcement agencies. No, it was just interest. Tinged with vanity, I suppose. I realized I was one of the people who did know a bit about the Sneddons. They weren’t well-known in the village because they weren’t liked. People would never have dropped in and called on them. Just because my mother went up there to clean the place meant I knew more about them than most.”

  “And yet from what I hear from Charlie, Suzman wasn’t particularly interested in your memories,” said Oddie.

  “No, he wasn’t. Maybe I was just flattering myself thinking that he would be. Perhaps he was just interested in the books, not the Sneddons’ lives. Remember the woman in the Thurber cartoon: ‘Mere proof won’t convince me!’ Maybe he wasn’t interested in mere facts about them. But in that case why buy High Maddox Farm, and why set up the Museum at all?”

  “I’ve been wondering why nobody seems to be writing a biography,” put in Charlie.

  “Right. With all that sensational material to end up with it does seem odd. Maybe I shall write down what I remember, and leave it with this curator person.”

  “What was your opinion of the M
useum?” Oddie asked.

  “I’ve talked about this with Dexter, and at the meeting. Too clean, too hygienic, too antiseptic. Suzman and whoever helped him with it tried to give a feeling of a pretty disorderly household, but they didn’t go nearly far enough. Susannah was a sloven, and the place was a tip. Perhaps it was inevitable they wouldn’t get it right: those farmyard smells are gone today, and people would have been just nauseated walking round the farmhouse as it usually was before my mother got going on it. But there’s another thing . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It was rather like a stage set. Or a film set for The Last Days of Susannah Sneddon. When it came down to it there was very little of the Sneddons there. And what there was was sometimes wrong. As I said at the meeting, Susannah Sneddon didn’t type. I’d confirmed this with my mother the night before. I expect someone in the village or down here in Batley Bridge typed up the manuscripts. But Mr Suzman obviously didn’t know that.”

  “And he didn’t follow it up when you told him,” said Charlie.

  “I expect he thought this was just the ramblings of an old lady with a lousy memory,” said Lettie shrugging.

  “Others didn’t,” Charlie pointed out. “As soon as I began introducing you as someone who knew the Sneddons there was enormous interest.”

  “Right. Rather pleasing to the vanity I mentioned. Mind you, I don’t think I made those fans very happy. I couldn’t hide the fact that I just never liked Susannah Sneddon. That wasn’t because my mother went on about her writing dirty books. If my mother said something I disagreed with her on principle, even if it had to be quietly. Looking back I find that Susannah was very self-absorbed, living a life cut off from the rest of us, so—as a child—I found her creepy. Now I’m older—much older!—I can admire her for achieving so much against the odds, but then I found her antipathetic.”

  “And Joshua?”

  “Hardly ever saw him. But in the village he was not really liked. He wasn’t understood, or sympathised with. They said the war had made him a bit strange. Though to be sure they always said he was harmless enough. Just prickly and odd.”