A Fall from Grace

by Robert Barnard

  But they were interrupted by the thump of post falling down to the doormat.

  “Another rejection!” said Felicity. Charlie went to fetch it, and came back with a miscellaneous jumble of stuff.

  “Crap mail, crap mail, crap mail,” he said, throwing one after another—appeals to change their insurance coverage, their gas suppliers, and their sartorial tastes—into the wastepaper basket. “This is yours, and this and this. The package is for me, so it’s not a rejection. Hebden Bridge—and it looks like Oddie’s handwriting. Well, he’s been quick. I’ll keep this for tonight, and we—”

  But he was interrupted by a great shout from the table.

  “It’s an acceptance! The novel’s accepted! That Dorothea Matlock of Parson and Whitaker—the one who was so nice about The Pleasures of Luton. She’s accepted it!”

  They danced around the table, to the wonderment of Carola, who came in dressed for nursery school. Charlie said Felicity would be a danger to every other road user if she drove herself to Headingley, and they piled into his car, dropped Carola off at school, then drove toward Leeds talking about nothing but the new book, Old Sores, the wisdom and perception of Dorothea Matlock, the quiet excellence of the Parson and Whitaker fiction list and much else. They hadn’t been so uncomplicatedly happy since before Rupert Coggenhoe had first proposed coming to live in the North.

  “So it’s the one I haven’t read,” said Charlie. “The one you refused to let me read.”

  “I didn’t let you read it because if I don’t adopt your suggestions you’re hurt, and if I do I agonize over whether I should have done.”

  “Now I am hurt. I’ve made some very good suggestions. You’ve said so yourself.”

  “About two per novel. Actually I’m lying to you. The reason I didn’t let you read this one is that you’d identify three of the characters with my father, my mother and myself, and you’d make suggestions to make them more like my father, mother and myself. Whereas to me they are just fictional characters, and I’ve tried to tear them away from real life.”

  “Hmmm. I had a suspicion it was autobiographical. That probably means that when it’s published you’ll straightaway become favorite candidate for your dad’s murder.”

  “If he’s not caught by then. And if it is murder.”

  “You don’t really doubt it was a murder, do you?”

  Felicity thought about that.

  “Strangely enough, I don’t. I’m usually a very logical person, though, and I can’t find any logical reason for believing that.”

  “Your dad was a murder waiting to happen,” said Charlie. Then he realized with a start that Felicity, when he had first met her, was the obvious choice to do the deed.

  It was a hard day for both of them. Felicity wanted to celebrate, then phone her new editor, plan a trip to London to talk over with her publishers (as she already thought of them) her next book. Instead she taught. Charlie wanted to read what Mike Oddie had found out. Instead he plowed through piles of paper evidencing municipal corruption. Felicity came home by train and bus, which enabled her to indulge in further bouts of delighted speculation. What speculation Charlie was able to indulge in as he drove was not at all delightful. He still felt something of a traitor, a worm, over calling in a friend to investigate a friend. As soon as the whole family was home he settled down in his chair to chew over the information that Oddie and several hired helpers had accumulated.

  Chris Carlson had been born in 1970 to a Swedish-born industrial manager and his English wife. He was an only child. The family lived at that time in Peterborough, and Chris was sent to a well-thought-of local private school. From there he went to medical school in London, and it was while he was there that his parents were killed in a road accident—his father dying instantly, his mother of her injuries five weeks later. A man was imprisoned for two years for dangerous driving. Chris sold his parents’ home for ninety-five thousand pounds, and the estate as a whole amounted to a hundred and thirty thousand pounds. A nice sum for a young man, but not enough to live off (commented Oddie in the margin).

  Chris was already engaged to and living at the home of Alison Hedley. For the last two years of his medical course they moved out to a flat in Pimlico, no doubt rejoicing in their new financial independence. Their marriage was a church one, in Chelsea, and on graduation he worked first in a hospital in Newark, then in a general practice in Witham. In 1996 he became consultant in the ear, nose and throat department of the Belchester Royal Hospital in Warwickshire.

  Here information became a little more rounded and specific. The hospital had a staff newsletter and its own radio show. Once Chris’s career progression had been established by various determined ringers-round and specialists in local newspapers, hired by Oddie, one of the investigators was put on to a man who ran the radio station. He had been happy to talk into a tape recorder, and was very enthusiastic about Chris.

  “He was a dream—just the sort of person a hospital radio station needs. He could talk about his own area of specialization, of course, but he had to be careful—and he always was—about using real-life cases. He could make the generalities interesting, though. Best of all was the nonmedical stuff. If there was something in the papers, or something on breakfast television that people were getting enthusiastic or steamed up about, he could comment in a sentence or two, and the sentence would be vivid and commonsensical. Politics he took in his stride, and he could now and then be cynical, but he remembered that politicians were human too, so there could be warmth and sympathy in his comments, as well as brickbats.”

  Charlie saw very clearly at that point the birth of Chris Carlson, everybody’s favorite kind of politician.

  “Music? Mostly light classics and modern favorites. Anything from ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ to Gilbert and Sullivan and the Hallelujah Chorus. I even remember him choosing Kathleen Ferrier singing ‘What Is Life?’—a real old favorite, that, from the days of Housewives’ Choice. You could say he was a house-wife’s choice himself—and I bet he asked for that because some old biddy in one of the wards had asked him to. All the elderly ladies loved him, and asked for him to be put on more often. As it was I tried to get him on once a week, but that didn’t satisfy the demand.”

  Oddie’s interviewer then asked him about Chris’s leaving the hospital, and the man was quite unclear about that.

  “That was a real black day for me, when I heard he was going. And it was just days after hearing it that he was gone. He told someone he needed a break from medicine, that the system had him all tensed up, and he needed to do something entirely different . . .”

  He trailed way. The interviewer asked, “I suppose there were rumors? People are always inclined to look for something discreditable, or something in his private life, when someone suddenly chucks in a good job.”

  “Yes . . . There was talk about a mix-up of X-rays. One person’s and another person’s getting misplaced, so that one of them was operated on for cancer of the esophagus when there was no cancer there. No one seemed quite clear as to whether it was the specialist who had mixed things up when he viewed them, or whether the technician had done it when he put them out. There was talk about Chris taking the rap even when it was unclear whether or not it was his fault. The technician was a young man with a family. He later left the hospital, but that may have been entirely unconnected . . . Nobody really knew anything.”

  “How long ago did this happen?”

  “Oh, about three years. Run up to Christmas. I’d say it was probably November 2003.”

  And there the tape ended.

  There was a note from Oddie in an envelope stuck to the tape:

  I think this will bear a lot of looking into, if we can only find a way into the whole business. The phoners-round have made a lot of contacts which could lead to others. They’ve put in a fair number of (wo)man hours. It’s going to cost you, son.

  Charlie felt oddly moved by that “son.” It was true that since his move north, Oddie had been a so
rt of father to him—better than some fathers, who pressure their sons into being duplicates of themselves. And certainly better than Charlie’s actual father, who remained shrouded in mists of mystery so impenetrable that he suspected his mother had no memory of him at all.

  * * *

  For both the Peaces the next day was devoted to business. Felicity went into Halifax to talk to the solicitor who (she had found in a note stuck to her father’s desk) had acted for Rupert Coggenhoe since he’d left the West Country. Mr. Donnithorne of Bottinge and Partners received her courteously, offered enormous sympathy, which as usual Felicity did not know how to accept, and then confirmed to her that the bulk of her father’s estate was to pass to her—this seemed to be the bungalow plus bank accounts, investments and a pension fund, amounting in all to around two hundred thousand pounds, plus whatever the bungalow fetched. Very nice, especially since it was in addition to the substantial sum invested in their house. There were only two other bequests: one was of twenty thousand pounds to the United Kingdom Independence Party; the other was of ten thousand pounds to Anne Michaels. The solicitor told her that the latter was a codicil which had replaced one of a similar sum to Kylie Catchpole from Coombe Barton. It had been made five days before his death. They agreed that Anne, or the Michaels, need not be informed of this till the cause of death was established.

  But it was the other bequest that, when Felicity left the office and began the walk home, loomed largest, with an almost symbolic importance. She had had no idea that her father felt strongly about Europe, and resented what he saw as its takeover of the United Kingdom, its eating away at English independence. She had always seen such fears as the preserve of cranks and right-wing fanatics, but had had no reason to lump her father with them. The UKIP setup was the sort of group that faded even faster than it flourished, and she was willing to bet that in two years’ time it would be reduced to an office in a back room in Budleigh Salterton. This was one of the few interests or opinions that she had ever known her father to hold that was independent of himself and his interests. She wondered whether she should balance the bequest by the gift of a similar sum to the Liberal Democrats, the most pro-Europe of the political parties. Probably she wouldn’t get around to it. But there was no denying that the bequest illustrated vividly the great gulf that there was between father and daughter, even though they had been living in the same village for a couple of months.

  The bequest to Anne Michaels was less puzzling. Felicity had no doubt about the motive: Anne had been told about it, and it had been designed to attach her still closer to her benefactor, as Rupert probably saw himself. But he was in reality giving her nothing: the bequest was no more than a promissory note, the payment of which was painless because posthumous.

  When Felicity got back home she got straight on to Carmel Postgate’s mother.

  “Mrs. Postgate? It’s Felicity Peace here—you remember, I came—”

  “Oh dear, Mrs. Peace. I’ve been meaning to ring you about what Carmel said. I mean, that sort of thing is horrible, and it’s not something she’s been taught at home. Such a lovely little girl too . . .”

  “Oh, don’t mention it. It’s probably something she’s picked up from that little gang.”

  “Do you think so? I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Well, if you object to newcomers in a village, the chances are you will object to immigrants to a country, won’t you? Mrs. Postgate, are you alone?”

  “Alone in the house? Yes, Jim’s at work and Carmel’s at school.”

  “I wanted to ask you something, and I didn’t want Carmel to overhear your side of the conversation.”

  “Oh? This sounds mysterious.”

  “Normally it wouldn’t be, but Charlie has to be very careful at the moment. He’s naturally very interested in my father’s death, but as a policeman he definitely can’t be involved.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Postgate, sounding as if she didn’t. “Do you mean that you want what we say to be in confidence? I will say I’m not a talker. Carmel takes after her grandmother, not me. If you say you want me to keep quiet about something, nothing will be said.”

  “That is what I want. Now, when I was round at your house we talked—Carmel and I—about Anne Michaels. There’s not much doubt she was the leader of this little group of children.”

  “Oh, no. I’m quite sure it was her. Carmel was always talking about her—‘Anne this and Anne that’—until I could have screamed. She’s shut up about her recently, which isn’t like Carmel at all, but I’m grateful for it.”

  “Interesting. Now, when I saw the group in action there seemed to be two older girls leading it. Is there any other girl who Carmel has been talking about a lot?”

  There was a substantial pause.

  “I suppose the one she talked about second most, as you might say, was Rachel Pickles. Not all the time, like Anne, but she came into it quite often. And she’s a girl of about Anne’s age, whereas the other ones she talked about off and on were more Carmel’s age—eleven or twelve. Do you know Rachel?”

  “Not at all.”

  “They live somewhere up there near your father. Either Forsythia Avenue or Luddenden Avenue. They’re nice people, the Pickles. But then the Michaels are nice too. No side about them, which is more than you can say about Anne. It makes you think. It’s worrying.”

  Felicity agreed it was worrying. Then she reinforced her plea for confidentiality and rang off. She went straight to the telephone directory and found a Pickles, K. and W., at Luddenden Avenue, number twenty-five.

  That afternoon, after she had fetched Carola from the nursery, she left the car in Walsh Street and they went for a walk, Carola wondering aloud why they needed to walk when she’d tired herself out at school (as she always called it). Number twenty-five was on the corner of Forsythia Street, with a good view up to Rupert Coggenhoe’s bungalow. It was a nice area, toward the top of Slepton Edge, with excellent views. Most of the houses in Luddenden Avenue were early twentieth century, almost all stone, while Forsythia Avenue was brick interwar semis and bungalows, with some more recent houses at the upper end. Several properties were on the market, because house buying had peaked and dipped, as it has a habit of doing. Felicity’s eyes could dwell on the far end of the street, beyond which could be seen the rough path across scrub that led to the quarry. Along that path Rupert Coggenhoe had presumably begun his walk two Sundays before last. Was it just a walk to brush away the cobwebs, or a walk with a purpose, perhaps a meeting? She turned around quickly and made her way home.

  * * *

  Charlie’s first chore of the morning was going to Blackett and Podmore, the estate agents in the center of Slepton Edge. He and Felicity had talked it over and decided there was no harm in signaling to young Mr. Podmore (the man with whom they’d had dealings in the buying of the two houses) that 23 Forsythia Avenue, a highly desirable bungalow residence, as he doubtless remembered, suitable for a couple unencumbered with family (“That means ‘Seen the last of the little blood-suckers at last’ ” said Charlie) was shortly to be coming on the market again.

  “We’re getting in early,” Charlie had said reluctantly. “Just the sort of thing I’ve been criticizing Chris for.”

  “The situation is quite different,” said Felicity. “Chris has to think of the look of the thing, since he relies on the reactions of the electorate to anything he does. We don’t. In fact, putting the house on the market is a way of saying, ‘Sentiment doesn’t come into it where me and my dad are concerned.’ It’s a piece of commendable honesty.”

  “Hmmm. Very commendable. And it’ll be nice to have a large part of the mortgage on this house paid off, won’t it? But I think we’ll have to make it unofficial and a bit off the record at first. I am a policeman. People don’t like us doing slightly dodgy things.”

  So Charlie was on his way to signal that the property was shortly to come on to the market, and that it would suit him and Felicity very well if it could be sold wit
hout all the vulgar business of misleading ads in the local property supplements or placards placed in the garden.

  The door he pushed at Blackett and Podmore’s was pulled on the other side by Ben Costello, and he nearly fell on his face.

  “Hello, er, Ben,” Charlie said, going back into the street. “Are you Ben at the moment, or are you Inspector Costello? It’s all getting quite confusing.”

  “Oh, we’re in Civvy Street at the moment, aren’t we? I’m Ben and you’re Charlie. All palsy-walsy till I call you into the station for a beating up.”

  He grinned a steely grin.

  “That’ll be the day. If you haven’t learned in Halifax that beatings-up are strictly for drunks and down-and-outs ‘resisting arrest,’ you really are living in the dark ages of policing . . . Seriously, any advances on the medical front yet?”

  Costello spread out his hands.

  “I’ll come and talk to Felicity if we get anything definite. At the moment all we have is a light bruise high on the shoulder that could have been caused by ‘human agency,’ but equally could be the result of a bump against a rock or shrub on the way down. That’s the trouble with this case: it’s too indefinite. All the experts hedge their bets. That means that even if it was murder we’d have a hell of a job putting a case together.”

  “I see your point. Well, thanks for telling me.”

  “Oh, I’m always willing to share information—when I’m talking to someone I can trust. I can trust you, can’t I? You have been a good boy, so far as I can tell. That’s what I hear.”

  “Oh, I’m always a good boy. Ask Felicity.”

  “As if she’d know!” said Costello. “By the way, you’re not moving, are you? Not going back to Leeds?”

  Charlie looked mystified, and Costello nodded toward the door of Blackett and Podmore.

  “Oh no. No question of it. I’ve never wanted to live close to work. What policeman would? No, I’m just going to make preliminary noises about putting the ancestral bungalow on the market.”