A Fall from Grace

by Robert Barnard

  “Sounds idyllic,” said Ben Costello. “Why leave that to come to Yorkshire—except to be near you, of course.”

  “That was the least of his reasons. There was a snake in the Eden, and he introduced it himself.”

  And she told him, briefly, the gist of what had happened in Coombe Barton: his using Dora Catchpole when the other lady-slaves started melting away, and his attachment to himself of the woman’s grandchild Kylie. Costello looked skeptical.

  “Sounds innocent, if unwise.”

  “That’s about the limit of it, if I’m reading the rune right. But you can see why it would cause a fuss in a little community. First of all the women rallied round after my mother’s death, but they soon found out that he was an exploiter—it’s the sort of relationship he understands best. Understood. And the thought must have occurred to them when he took up with this schoolgirl that the exploitative nature of the man could extend beyond what they’d offered him—work, services and so on—to a sexual exploitation, if he was interested in that way in young girls. And then the parents came into the picture, the whole family in fact, and the gossip mill started to turn speculation into fact. It’s how the tabloid newspapers operate on a national level. Gossip does the same on the local level.”

  Costello nodded, his dark eyes becoming calculating.

  “And was the same thing happening in Slepton Edge?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so—or rather, it was in the earliest stages, with the women who had helped him settle in falling away as they saw they got no gratitude or genuine friendship. But the process had hardly started, and that’s why I kicked myself over what happened last night. I practically announced my suspicions to the whole village by going to break up their conversation. Or so people must have thought.”

  “It wasn’t quite that—”

  “But I could see speculation in all of your eyes, you who were watching. And the truth is, I didn’t have any suspicions of my dad—not on the sexual level. But I was afraid that he’d use his little fame to tie the girl to him, get a willing disciple, and I saw that that could have consequences nearly as disastrous as a May-December sexual relationship would have.”

  “She looked to me a very self-possessed and modern young lady.”

  “She is—at fifteen! And she’s a budding actress in the drama stream at Westowram High. Quite brilliant, Charlie says. And she has a little gang of younger children who go round targeting newcomers to the village—or that seems to be what they’re doing.”

  “Yes—Harridance, your husband’s contact, has told me about that. But what are you saying about the girl’s motives?”

  Felicity thought hard before replying.

  “That she could have been entering into this relationship—luring Dad into it—with destructive intentions: blackmail, or perhaps just making his reputation in the village so bad that he was forced out. Or maybe just destroying him as a person for the fun of it. That little gang of children suggests she likes power, rejoices in it, just any manifestation of it.”

  Costello shifted uneasily in his chair, but he conceded, “I could imagine she’s pretty hot to handle. Difficult for the parents.”

  “I was thanked by them this morning because—they said—Dad was making a change for the better in their daughter by encouraging her literary ambitions. The wilder side, they thought, was encouraged by the drama interest, presumably bringing out the exhibitionist streak in her. Nancy Stoppard said she thought parents understood their children best. In this case I rather doubt it.”

  “Though to be fair, they could be right about the drama.” Ben Costello sat back in his chair and thought. “All this is very interesting, but only if there’s more to your dad’s death than meets the eye.”

  Felicity nodded.

  “And what meets the eye, do you think?” she asked.

  “An accidental fall during a walk on his own when his mind was occupied—with his latest book, perhaps, or with his lovely young disciple.”

  “It’s possible. So is a heart attack.”

  Costello leaned forward, now all energy.

  “But you assumed, as soon as you heard of your father’s body in the quarry, that it was—well, at least that there was something suspicious about it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The whole direction of this conversation.”

  Felicity thought for a while without answering.

  “I suppose I did,” she said at last. “Yes, I definitely did. And now I come to think of it, it is rather absurd, to assume that about a man in his early seventies. I think it must be the combination of learning about the events back in Coombe Barton, seeing something similar perhaps starting here, and then the sudden shock of the death. And there was also the fact that my father was a very dislikeable man. Not spectacularly awful, like Evelyn Waugh, but still deeply unpleasant because he was so self-obsessed, manipulative, unfeeling.”

  “You really disliked your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Charlie dislike him too?”

  “Charlie can speak for himself.”

  “Of course. But I’d like to hear your opinion.”

  “In a different way I suppose you could say he disliked him, though it’s much less personal with him. He disliked him for what he did to me. I was a very mixed-up kid when Charlie first knew me. But until recently Charlie barely knew him. Intense exposure to him on three or four family occasions—that had been the limit of it.”

  “You’re being very honest with me.”

  “Charlie is a policeman. He really believes that being honest with the police saves a lot of time and trouble.”

  “Good for him. Pity he can’t have anything to do with this investigation, if there turns out to be anything to investigate, which frankly I doubt.”

  “Of course if that does turn out to be the case, he’ll be completely honest with you. And anyway, we’ve nothing to hide.”

  “Oh, everyone has something to hide,” said Costello cheerfully.

  * * *

  “Anyway,” said Charlie to Chris, still sitting in the living room chair, “you did as much as you could be expected to do to warn poor old Rupert in your first real talk to him. I doubt if you’d have got through to him even if you’d talked to him a lot. Quite apart from anything else, I think he’d have run a mile from being classed with Desmond Pinkhurst and all the others who come to you for advice.”

  “If he even noticed that they did,” said Chris.

  “Oh, I think he would have. The thing about egotistical people is not that they don’t notice things, it’s that everything they notice is transformed in their own minds into how it affects them, or contrasts with them or is of use to them. Rupert would not have wanted to be thought in need of advice. If he had any problems, he was the one who could solve them. And he was, in his own mind, the great novelist who saw and understood everything.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad you don’t think anything I said could have affected what happened.”

  “How could it have? Do you imagine Rupert was so worried by the possibilities that you had spelled out that he wandered off the path and over the edge?”

  Chris looked sheepish again.

  “Put it like that it does sound daft.”

  “Set your mind at rest. It’s not something that even needs mentioning. There won’t be any record of disastrous advice given by you should you decide to run for mayor.”

  Chris stood up at once and looked hard at Charlie.

  “Why do you mention that? I told you, I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Not consciously. But I think you will.”

  “And you disapprove.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Charlie answered it as one.

  “No, I don’t. But I just can’t see why you should want to do a nonjob like that. Not if you weigh it against going back into medicine in some shape or form.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be a nonjob,” protested Chris. “It can be made into
something really useful, and close to ordinary people. They could be encouraged to come direct to the mayor’s office with their difficulties, and know they’d speak to me or to someone who really understood whatever it was that they were het-up about.”

  Charlie raised his eyebrows.

  “Chris, if you got in, you’d have the apparatus of all the three main political parties against you. You’d be even more of a cipher than if you were a political nominee.”

  “I don’t agree. You’re being much too negative.”

  “I want to see you being really useful. You’re in danger of deceiving yourself. The problem is that you are coming to regard yourself as indispensable, whereas what you really are is an optional extra.”

  Chris laughed, but there was unease in the laughter. When he took his leave a few minutes later Charlie regretted having hurt him. Really he liked and admired Chris more than almost anyone he’d met. He was so fresh, and open and unafraid. On the man-to-man level he was warm, humorous, sympathetic and useful. Was the human level, Charlie wondered, what Chris had not found in his work as a consultant?

  He had complained about patients being railroaded through the system, and in any case these days medicine was a matter of science, not of a close relationship between doctor and patient. That seemed to be all the recent governments’ philosophy, anyway. This new function he had taken on as adviser, comforter, shoulder to cry on, gave him all the human contact he had lacked when working on the conveyor belt of his old job. But it’s not the sort of human contact I’d want a lot of, thought Charlie.

  And Chris was indeed very sharp. He had seen that Charlie was beginning to have doubts about him almost before he was aware of it himself. But the doubts he had were not really about Chris as a person, only fears that he was taking a wrong course—one that would prolong his absence from the medical world.

  Felicity came home before he had a chance to get his thoughts in order. She told him about her identification of the body, her interview with Ben Costello and her thoughts on her father’s death. She shed a few tears.

  “They’re tears for me,” she said fiercely, “not for him. I’m sorry for myself because I didn’t have the dad that so many girls seem to have—warm, supportive, lovable. It’s sheer self-pity.”

  She told him that Costello had emphasized he could have nothing to do with the investigation.

  “Of course I know that,” said Charlie, exasperated. “Does he think I’m a complete airhead? Or that you know nothing, in spite of your being a policeman’s wife?”

  “I expect he’ll be glad to have an important case all to himself if it turns out to be a case at all.”

  “I don’t doubt he will,” said Charlie. “Any policeman would. But there’s nothing in police regulations to stop me talking to people.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Getting Somewhere

  Monday was one of two days in the week when Felicity taught in the English department of Leeds University. It was this work that subsidized her attempts to write the Great Modern English Novel. Charlie was not in the least surprised when, the day after her father’s death, she got up and breakfasted early and showed all the usual signs of being about to drive to Headingley. It was all of a piece with refusing to regard herself as bereaved or bereft. Life had already reverted to business as usual, because she felt as usual. She picked up her books, kissed Charlie, and then went out to the car. Charlie, who had the day off after his Sunday stint of duty, pottered around the kitchen and prepared to take Carola off to nursery school.

  But he was surprised when at twenty to nine, there was a knock at the door. Who did he know who called at that hour? His surprise was not lessened when he opened the door and saw Harvey Buckworth waiting rather awkwardly on the step. The teacher’s nondescript but well-intentioned face was creased with frowns of concern.

  “I say, I’m sorry to trouble you. I heard of your loss, and I just wanted to say, well . . .” He faded away, artistically.

  “It’s been a big shock,” said Charlie, choosing his words with care.

  “It must have been. I’m afraid I haven’t read any of his books, but I’ll make the effort now. I suppose there will be an obituary in The Times that will tell me which are the best ones.”

  “Maybe,” said Charlie, skepticism written all over his face. “Probably one of their short obituaries all bundled together with other ones. Whatever they may say in Slepton Edge, he wasn’t particularly well known or particularly good.”

  “Really? . . . I say, I wonder if I could come in for a moment.”

  “Yes,” said Charlie, looking round at his daughter and her mess. “Don’t mind Carola. She won’t take down your words and use them in evidence against you. I assume this is private.”

  “Well . . . delicate, you might say. Something I wouldn’t want to go beyond these four walls.”

  He wielded a powerful cliché, Charlie thought, for one who was apparently of an artistic nature.

  “Sit down,” he said. “Come clean. Tell me all. I’m not a part of the investigation, by the way, for obvious reasons.”

  “Investigation? Oh, I suppose there has to be one, doesn’t there?”

  It was odd. He looked terrified.

  “Well, any sudden, unexplained death needs to be looked into. There’s nothing particularly frightening in the word ‘investigation.’ ” He waited. Harvey Buckworth gave the impression that he was internally squirming, but he said nothing. Charlie suppressed strong feelings of irritation. “Well, come on.”

  “Come on?”

  “You said this was some kind of delicate matter.”

  “Yes, of course . . . Well, it’s the drama stream . . . I told you it was under threat . . . that a lot of people don’t like what we’re doing at Westowram High.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Well, I wanted to ask you, when you’re questioned, to keep the drama students out of it. Don’t mention that you’ve been to see them, don’t mention you gave them a warning, don’t mention the plays we’re doing, or any of the children who are pupils in the stream.”

  Charlie sat for a moment, meditating. So much for the feigned surprise at the word “investigation.” He’d come specifically to ask for his prize piglets to be kept out of the show. But why should he have thought they would be in it? Apart, perhaps, from one.

  “I came along to see your child stars because of an incident of harassment. I also came quite unofficially. Do you know of any connection between the harassment and the death of my father-in-law?”

  “No, no—of course not.”

  “Then it’s difficult to see why you came to talk to me. Unless you’re worried about your Miranda.”

  “My—? Oh yes, well . . .”

  “Is there talk around the town? Or were you at the carol service?”

  “Well, actually both. There was bound to be talk, with a death like that. Nobody has fallen into the quarry for years, except one old woman who had cancer. And the carol service is not really my thing, but I’d trained the Christmas fairies, so—”

  “So you saw my father-in-law and Anne Michaels.”

  “Yes. And I live a little bit farther down the hill, so I’d seen you and your wife coming and going, and I thought—”

  “Tell me, was the carol service the first you knew of the connection with Anne?”

  “Yes. Oh yes, absolutely the first. Look, it’s nearly nine. I’ve got a class in twenty minutes. I just—well, I hope you’ll keep what I said in mind.”

  “Oh, I’ll keep it in mind,” said Charlie.

  Parading slowly through the streets of Slepton on the way to the nursery school, with Carola seriously surveying the parents and children while clutching his hand, Charlie thought over the talk with Harvey Buckworth. He was, clearly, afraid that the threat to his drama stream in Westowram High would be aggravated by the death of Rupert Coggenhoe. The connection of his star female player with the elderly author would do him no good in a tight, prim little community such as Sle
pton Edge, and might even—the Michaels being obviously dubious already about the drama classes—result in the loss of his Miranda. Still, Anne’s connection with Rupert was encouraged by them, and was not to be attributed to any school interference. And there was no reason, except the exaggerations and hysteria of local gossip, for Harvey to see Rupert’s death as anything but an accident. Or was there?

  Why did he get the idea that Anne Michaels wasn’t the only cause of Harvey Buckworth’s evident concern?

  Charlie was well enough known at the nursery school to be greeted by many of the parents, some of whom followed up with “I was sorry to hear—” “Tell Felicity we were shocked to hear—” and “I’ve always said there should be a fence up there.” He fended off sympathy as well as he knew how, but he was finding that being hypocritical about an unloved parent was not easy. He knew it was even more difficult for Felicity, and thought most of the sympathizers suspected how relations stood between father and daughter. Carola was just running joyfully into the building when Charlie, turning to leave the play area, saw a face that he recognized. It was a boy, leading a much younger girl by the hand. After a second or two of brain-racking he realized it was the black boy who had played Trinculo in the scenes from The Tempest. He went up to him, smiling recognition.

  “Hello. I don’t think I was told your name.”

  “Dwayne. Dwayne Vickery.”

  “Not at school today, then?”

  “No. Mum thought I’d better not go . . . I’m not feeling too good. Sore throat.”

  There was no sign of hoarseness, though. There was an embarrassment about the boy that puzzled Charlie.

  “Are you sure that was why your mother didn’t want you to go to school?” he asked.

  “Sore throat, like I said. I gotta go. They’re going in. Good-bye.” And the boy scurried toward the building and safety. Thoughtful, in fact speculative, Charlie walked toward home, hoping that the boy would be collecting his sister in three hours’ time.