Guilty as Sin

by Judith Cutler

  He patted my hand. ‘It sounds excellent, but for one thing. Noel lives out in the sticks. In a hamlet just beyond Moretonhampstead. So it wouldn’t be shops you’d hit. At best a view, at worst a pony.’

  ‘No problem. You can invent someone I’m meeting – Harvey, if you insist – and I’ll get the Mondiale to organize a packed lunch for me and I’ll enjoy a bit of nature. I’ll Google the area before we set off – I might even nip into town here if it continues as quiet as this and get an Ordnance Survey map, just to annoy Sally the Satnav.’

  Griff looked around, spreading his hands. ‘I see no ravening hordes. Off you go, my darling. And, dear one, I’m sorry about Harvey descending on us this evening. I’ll fend him off, don’t you worry.’

  What Griff and I had forgotten was that the Great Fancy-Dress Parade would take place at seven, at the exact time Harvey had invited himself along. And what neither of us had imagined was that, rather than page one of us, the hotel staff would send him, clutching his priceless parcel, direct to the ballroom. He must have entered just as I exited my cage. I’d decided against the rather tight breeches in case I wanted to do a few more cartwheels. Of course the little skirt was decent enough, the sort tennis players wear, with built-in knickers, and I wore long gloves to cover my working hands.

  Because I was being a demure – indeed, dying – little bird, I didn’t look up … until I heard a sickening thud. Cardboard, bubble wrap, something else I didn’t even want to think about … Then I looked. Restored by Lina Townend? Reconstructed by Lina Townend, more like. The demure little bird became an avenging angel, flying the length of the ballroom to the stairs down which Harvey had fallen and yelling abuse at a man stupid enough to drop something 250 years old, even if it was his to drop.

  I’d read somewhere that, in the event of a motorcycle accident, no one at the scene should attempt to remove the crash helmet until the patient was in the operating theatre, because the helmet was holding the possibly fractured skull in the right place. The tissue and bubble wrap were performing roughly the same job for the vase. So I wouldn’t open the box, and wouldn’t let anyone else open it, not even the owner, until I got it home. I cradled it briefly before returning it to the owner’s hands.

  As for him, he could lick his own wounds.

  How coherently I was explaining all this I’ve no idea. Not very, I suspect. But at last I gathered enough breath to ask Harvey how he wanted to play the insurance. ‘How about damaged in transit?’ I asked, stifling a hysterical giggle. ‘OK? So you might as well drop the box off at reception this time round. And I’ll collect it when I go back to my room.’

  ‘You termagant,’ he breathed. He added a lot of other things, much more loudly, rounding off with, ‘You bitch!’ There were even a few additions to that short sentence, too.

  ‘That’s me,’ I agreed, trying to sound cheerful, but suddenly realizing how much I’d miss his constant admiration. ‘And now you must excuse me. Griff and I were about to sing.’ I made a fluttering walk back down the ballroom. We’d arranged to do our duet with me outside the cage. But on impulse I stepped back in and gestured Griff to begin. He did, in his still clear tenor.

  I warbled the first chorus solo. And then the whole room joined in. As the last note rolled round the room, Griff made another unrehearsed move. He unlocked the cage to let me take flight. Tentatively at first, I stepped out. Then I spread my wings. No, I wasn’t about to flap about in an ungainly manner: I cartwheeled the length of the room. Bloody Harvey was still there. So I seized the box from his unresisting hands and, as if it was part of the act, ran up the stairs and away.

  It would have been far more effective, I suppose, if I hadn’t had to go back down again to beg the reception staff for a spare keycard. And it would have been better, with my puffy eyes and snivelling nose, if I could have stayed with Tim the Bear and not had to join the others for supper – as an afterthought I put the breeches on; tough if I looked less like a bird and more like Gainsborough’s ‘Blue Boy’.

  The trouble with being a show-off is that while some people want a repeat, others are genuinely offended by your antics. So I got a mixed response when I slunk into the dining room, hoping my recent tears weren’t too obvious. While a lot of folk gave me a round of applause, several very ostentatiously didn’t, and I did hear, as Griff and I got up to accept the bottle of fizz for our prize, which now seemed far too hard-earned, some sharp intakes of breath and some disapproving tuts amongst the generous cheers. It was also noticeable that when we withdrew to the ballroom, fewer men asked to partner me; perhaps the tirade I’d directed at Harvey – though I couldn’t recall using a single swear word from my extensive vocabulary – had shocked them. Certainly his stream of abuse would have been offensive to most people of that generation, and I’d been the one to provoke it.

  But I wasn’t without help. Just as I wished the floor would open, Dee came up to me. She was as short as I was, so she could look me straight in the eye. ‘Is it true that that man broke twelve thousand pounds’ worth of china?’

  Griff had exaggerated a bit, but I wouldn’t dob him in. ‘Give or take a few hundred. Actually, take quite a lot now. I’ll probably be able to do something with it, but I can’t magic it whole again.’ Drat: another sob was worming its way up. ‘I don’t know why he took it into his head to come here tonight. He was supposed to have had Griff summoned to reception. That was the deal. Not to gatecrash your event. I’m so sorry.’

  She didn’t seem to want an apology. ‘Has he been stalking you?’

  I gave that some thought. ‘Not quite. But he’s always wanted to change what I think should be a purely professional relationship.’

  ‘He’s old enough to be your father!’ She sounded outraged.

  ‘Quite. He’s also very powerful. He could ruin my business if he puts the word around. And I wasn’t very polite to him.’

  She pursed her lips firmly, perhaps thinking that there’d been enough bad language for one evening without her adding even a mild expletive. ‘If I were him,’ she said very deliberately, ‘I wouldn’t say anything. He didn’t come out of it very well, and not just because he broke something precious. If he hadn’t been – well, I’ve heard the expression devouring someone with one’s eyes, and that’s what he was doing to you, he wouldn’t have fallen, would he? What did he expect you to do with the parcel anyway, once it was in your hands?’

  ‘Take it straight up to my room. Why?’

  ‘And do you suppose he’d have stayed tamely down here talking to me or the DJ?’

  I stared.

  ‘Quite. Sex, that’s what he had in mind. You’re a victim here, Lina.’

  I shook my head firmly. ‘I don’t do victimhood,’ I said firmly. ‘I do survival.’

  She laughed, reaching to squeeze my hands. ‘Well you’d better survive the next dance, then – I know it’s the foxtrot and you find it hard, but you know all the steps you’ll need and the tune we’ll use has a good, clear beat …’ After a very public hug, she headed off to talk to other guests. I’m not sure what she said to them, but the looks were much kinder after that, and one very old lady went so far as to pat my cheek when we met in the loos.

  One thing in favour of the foxtrot was that I had to concentrate so hard on my feet I didn’t have spare brain space to think about anything – or anyone – else. For once, however, when Griff tried to apologize for his part in the fiasco, I let him get on with it instead of shutting him up. And I did hit him with one low blow: ‘Even Pa would have tried to protect me from Harvey,’ I said with unkind truth, ‘not encourage him as you did. But that’s an end of it, Griff. I just don’t want to talk about it now or tomorrow or ever again.’

  ‘But your therapist—’

  ‘Maybe to my therapist. But that’ll be at a time of my own choosing. And I won’t be trying to do a heel turn at the time.’

  FIVE

  Shepdip Farm huddled in the lee of a rather grand hill, defeating Sally the Satnav’s attempts
to find it. The dear old-fashioned OS map, however, led us straight to it. It was a broad, low-browed building, probably Elizabethan, the slate roofline sagging with age. I’d have liked a drooping thatch, of course. The lower windows were mullioned, the upper ones prettily emerging from the roof like surprised eyes under pointed eyebrows. There were too many chimneys to count in the time I had available.

  ‘You rather expect to see Jan Ridd striding out to greet us, don’t you, my dear one?’ Griff observed, waving at the frail old man who was opening his front door a crack. ‘Now, you’ll be back here at two-thirty sharp?’

  ‘And earlier if you text me. Assuming there’s any signal round here,’ I added gloomily, waving to Noel, whose signet ring gave the sort of flash in the sun for which only a socking great diamond could be responsible, and reversing back up the steep track to what passed for a main road but was in fact a single-track lane with passing places for random sheep.

  My efforts to take my mind off the Harvey business had involved spending a lot of the previous night Googling things to do on Dartmoor – things that didn’t involve walking gear and sensible boots, of course. Deciding against obvious family attractions, I opted for a look at a couple of churches, both managed by the Historic Churches Preservation Trust. According to Google, the best ones were to the west of Dartmoor, but I was on the east, so choice was a bit more limited. By chance, there was one St Sidwell’s in the Moor – famous, according to Google, for its medieval rood screen that somehow escaped the depredations of both Henry VIII’s men and Cromwell’s vandals – that was only about five miles west of Noel’s, so I headed for that, picking my way down a not-very-well-made road like a toddler testing the sea for the first time. After all, in addition to what remained of Harvey’s vase, I had our own stock to think about.

  I was certainly glad I hadn’t met the vehicle parked by the tiny church on its way up. This was a white van, the size favoured by decorators and so on. To say it was parked, actually, was to flatter the driver – abandoned might be a more accurate term, since it occupied the entire layby. Should I park across its bows, to make a point? Instead I crept on past the church to find a gateway to reverse into. Since the chain holding the gate had rusted solid, I took a chance that no one would be opening it in the next fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, I took a photo of the offending van, for no other reason than it so annoyed me. Then I padded into the church – no longer used for worship since its only congregation would be sheep or ponies. But someone was working in it. White van man, no doubt.

  Not working. Hacking at the famous rood screen. Two men had already removed one panel, now they were starting on a second. No signal for me to dial 999, of course. They were making so much noise that they didn’t register my presence, or the quiet snap of my phone as I took as many photos as I could. Then I did two more things – one sensible, one downright foolhardy, considering the size of the vandals, both six-foot bruisers: I hid the phone under a pile of leaflets and, seizing a handy pole – a churchwarden’s staff, as it turned out, unaccountably left there even though the church wasn’t used – I ran at the men, screaming.

  Stupid or what, when they had chisels in their hands? But they were so surprised they actually dropped them and ran. OK, they gathered up one priceless panel, but they abandoned the second. I ran after them – God knows why – still yelling. By now they were angry – as you would be if attacked by a persistent wasp, I suppose – and drove the van at me. All I could do was dodge and impotently jab the pole into the side as they drove away. If they stopped for a second attack on me I was lost. But thank goodness they simply scarpered.

  Catching my breath, and wondering how I’d been so damned stupid, I withdrew to our van. But I had to go back for my phone – all that evidence – so I took another risk. Leaving the engine running, I hurtled into the church, retrieving the phone and the badly damaged panel, which I shoved on to the passenger seat. I really needed a signal to call the cops, not to mention putting space between me and White Van Men. Time to dash. Which I did, straight into the path of an oncoming police car.

  At least we both stopped in time. I almost fell out of the van, racing towards the car and gesturing frantically back up the road. My story wasn’t helped, however, when they found the smashed medieval panel on my passenger seat. For a moment I was sure I was about to be arrested. Fortunately the photos I’d taken went a long way to convincing the young sergeant, whose blonde curly ponytail made her look about seventeen, and her even younger male constable, his homely face dotted with acne, of my innocence. They volunteered their names: Sergeant Pat Henchard and PC Toby Drake. In return I handed over one of my business cards and suggested they could get someone to look me up online; they couldn’t themselves because there was no dratted signal, of course. Eventually, prompted by the photo of the awful bit of parking, they put out a call for the white van, though they were swift to warn me that without the CCTV that covers towns and even villages like ours, it’d be hard to catch someone in the vast deserted acres of the moor.

  They let me reverse the van the thirty or so yards to my gateway, then parked alongside, rather blocking the lane, but clearly making sure I could not make a run for it. With an ironic bow, I handed over the panel for their safe-keeping; both officers blushed at their lack of forethought.

  Their gasps of horror matched mine as we surveyed the damage. ‘Of course someone must secure the place, not just as a crime scene but as a repository of priceless works of art,’ I declared. Whenever I wanted to impress people I tried to speak as Harvey would have spoken. Authoritative, not quite arrogant. I wished I hadn’t thought of Harvey, but they took the sudden surge of tears as a sign I was truly sincere.

  ‘You really care about this stuff, don’t you?’ PC Drake turned to look at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said simply. ‘It’s my life and my livelihood. I can’t bear to see works of art spoiled, especially deliberately. And when it’s a couple of low-lifes presumably stealing to order for some rich bastard, I’d get out the guillotine, I can tell you. And sit there knitting.’

  He laughed. ‘You wouldn’t operate it yourself?’

  ‘It depends what they’d damaged. This rood screen was unique,’ I said, walking up to it but shoving my hands deep in my pockets lest I reach out to touch it. ‘Nine centuries or more it’s been standing there, quietly helping people to worship. It’s totally irreplaceable. Of course, if you ever find the missing panel it can be mended, but it’ll take a genius to do it invisibly,’ I said, thinking about Harvey’s vase again.

  Sergeant Henchard crowed with pleasure at the sight of the vandals’ chisels, which she stowed in evidence bags. They banged against her thigh as she walked.

  A glance at my watch told me that I’d soon need to start back to Noel’s place if I wasn’t to get Griff into a tizzy. But Henchard and Drake were talking urgently about something, and I was loath to interrupt. So I took the opportunity to look round the ancient place. The rood screen must have been added to an already old building – the font looked Norman or even earlier, and some of the monuments were definitely pre-Crusades. The arches were Saxon. How dare those animals violate so lovely a space! Would it be wrong to hope they rotted in the hell that the screen depicted? The remaining panels showed a vast evil mouth, opening to receive a variety of terrified-looking figures. Some were greeted by monsters, others by flames. As if aware of my stillness, the two officers stopped talking and moved beside me, also caught in silent wonder.

  I pointed to the walls, where, despite damage caused by damp, vivid paintings showed how colourful the whole place must once have been: St Michael was weighing the souls of the dead, to judge where they’d end up.

  The spell was broken by Henchard’s radio. She snapped an expletive I’d have thought twice about uttering in church, even an unused one. ‘We need to have this one made secure first,’ she told the person crackling at her. ‘The bastards may loop back. Excellent. We’ll go the minute they turn up.’ She turned to Drake and, curiously, me. �
�Scene of crime team’s on its way, as is a team from the Historic Churches Trust. And some uniform back-up. Meanwhile, there’s been another theft from another historic church, St Rumon’s. Back towards Moretonhampstead.’

  ‘May I tag along?’ I asked mildly. ‘I’ve got to go that way to pick up my business partner, and it’d be nice to have an escort. I know our van’s pretty inconspicuous compared with some, but it’s still got our name on it.’

  ‘Like the hardware superstore people,’ Toby said, in a decent impression of the horrible mockney accent of the guy doing the voice-overs for the Wickes TV ads. ‘What do you think, boss?’

  ‘I’d stick to the day job if I were you, Toby. OK. You can come. But you’re not to interfere or take any risks. Understood?’

  St Rumon was new to me, but according to the leaflet in the church he was associated with an abbey in Tavistock; why anyone had chosen to dedicate such a tiny and on the face of it unimpressive building to him, goodness knows. This time the thieves had taken not wood but stone. The leaflet drew our attention to two unique pieces of sculpture in the north wall, possibly dating to the reign of Cnut; it was these that had been sledge-hammered out.

  ‘Not a theft done on spec, surely,’ I muttered. ‘How dare they, Pat, how dare they? If only the fabulous beasts could turn round and bite them.’ I touched the illustration – fearsome heads indeed.

  ‘I’ve never known anyone so passionate about art.’

  I nodded. ‘I’m not alone: my boyfriend’s with Kent Police’s heritage department. He’s on secondment to Europol at the moment.’

  ‘I suppose you work together a lot?’

  Not after my first police-officer boyfriend. No way. ‘I’m more antiques than heritage,’ I said mildly. ‘I don’t even know if there’s anything else worth stealing here.’