by Simon Parke
‘They’re like Father Christmas - something we’ve invented for our own entertainment.’
‘More common in times of recession,’ said Frances, returning. ‘At least sightings are.’
‘Is that so?’ said Peter.
‘Apparently. When we’re wealthy and masters of our universe, we don’t bother so much with dubious possibilities. But when the veneer of control is removed and the world a more frightening place, we begin to see mysterious things in every dark alley.’
‘And every dark gallery perhaps?’
They all looked to the gallery above them.
‘Well, that is where the ghost wanders, according to Dr Minty. He told us about him during our negotiations for the property.’
‘The ghost appears up there?’
‘The place where he was noosed and pushed over.’
‘What?’
‘He kept fighting apparently, fighting the tightening rope, he’d freed his tied hands, a struggling puppet to entertain the drunken crowd, here in the hallway, on the stones where we stand, not a quick death.’
Tamsin thought to change the subject.
‘Perhaps the doctor was just trying to raise the price: ‘Attractive period property in extensive grounds - with en suite ghost.’
Frances sniffed.
‘I’m not American.’
‘So you weren’t impressed?’
‘I just noted his delusional tendencies and got on with the negotiations, which to be fair, were not hard.’
Tamsin: ‘Do you believe in them, Frances?’
‘In what?’
‘Ghosts. I’m sure psychologists have the whole thing explained.’
‘It is like he’s here sometimes.’
‘Like who’s here?’
‘Edward O’Neill. That was his name.’
‘The ghost of Henry Hall is Edward O’Neill?’
Fifty Three
‘O’Neill was his birth name, but he was known professionally as the Irish Harlequin,’ explained Frances in the dark hallway. ‘It was one of the reasons I went for a clown theme at the Feast of Fools.’
‘It was your idea?’
‘Well, Bella had input as well.’
‘And so what was O’Neill’s story?’ asked Peter, as they moved towards the door.
‘Do we really need to hear this?’ asked Tamsin.
‘I do,’ said Peter.
Tamsin sighed as Frances returned them to the past:
‘The Irish Harlequin was good copy, as Martin Channing might say, something of a favourite among the Elizabethan aristocracy. The Earl of Essex discovered him when he was sent to Ireland by Elizabeth to subdue the Irish.’
‘That’s gone well.’
‘These days, he’d be called a satirist; but in those days, he was a jester, a constant thorn in the side of the powerful. And he dressed as a harlequin, an early example of branding - hence the name.’
And now Peter was seeing Barnabus again, sprawled in the cupboard, his smashed skull.
‘So why was this disturber of the peace a favourite of the aristocracy?’ asked Tamsin. ‘Sounds a rather irritating man.’
‘Oh, he was. But the powerful like a little self-flagellation... as long as it’s obsequious and dependent.’
‘And then one day Edward O’Neill forgot to be?’
‘He was invited by Sir Dudley Rowse, owner and builder of Henry Hall, to provide the entertainment here on New Year’s Day in 1600. He was a popular figure by this time, notorious and dangerous, a man who feared no one and said whatever he wanted.’
‘Hubris.’
‘And he used this particular celebration to mock the English with some venom.’
‘In their own backyard?’
‘Yes, he called for them to begin the new century by leaving his homeland, referring to the occupation as “the abduction and rape of another man’s wife - which I’ve always been against myself, but the English are different, I know”.’
‘I can see he was edgy.’
‘It didn’t go down well. But it was the plague that did for him.’
‘The plague?’
‘The Black Death was a delicate subject in this house.’
‘Why so?’
‘There were many outbreaks in Elizabethan England and it wasn’t pleasant, as you know: swellings in the armpits, legs, neck and groin, high fever, delirium, vomiting, muscular pains, bleeding in the lungs and mental disorientation - not a happy list.’
‘And not obviously comic material.’
‘Shakespeare was terrified of the disease.’
‘Who wouldn’t be?’
‘The plague caused the closure of the Globe theatre for months at a time, had a huge impact on society... but it was more than that here.’
‘You mean Henry House? But I thought the plague was a city thing.’
‘Far from it. Farmers, like Rowse’s family, were vulnerable in such close proximity to animals and their fleas. And it was during the epidemic of 1593 that this house became a Plague House.’
‘A Plague House?’
‘Every home that housed the illness was declared a Plague House, locked and bolted from the outside, no one allowed to enter, no one allowed to leave. It was a death warrant for all those inside.’
‘So how did they eat?’
‘They vomited and died more than ate. But a watchman was assigned to the plague houses and victims would lower baskets from upper windows for the them to put food into.’
‘So Rowse was locked up inside here - yet survived?’
‘Somehow yes, it wasn’t unknown. But he witnessed the wretched deaths of his wife, his mother and four of his children under this roof.’
‘Terrible.’
‘All of which made it unwise of the Harlequin to speak of the benefits of the plague.’
‘Families aren’t a universal blessing, I suppose,’ suggested the Abbot.
Frances agreed, but said the Harlequin had been rather more political in tone, taking his listeners back to the fourteenth century, when the Black Death first came to England. The savage death toll had social consequences. With nearly one half of the population killed, a shortage of labourers ensured an economy based on serfdom broke down and workers, suddenly in demand, could ask for better conditions and higher wages. For the first time in their lives, they weren’t hungry!
‘Good, surely?’
‘Not for the rich, who preferred their work force on the edge of starvation, made them more compliant, said the Harlequin - and he was right. To those with status and wealth, a world in which workers weren’t hungry seemed particularly threatening - they even took the matter to court to hold wages down. “‘So I bless the plague with every breath in my body”, declared the Harlequin. “I bless it for killing Englishmen! And I bless it again for placing money in the pockets of the poor!”.’
‘And that was the final straw.’
‘Sir Dudley Rowse, a man famous for his temper, went berserk. His one remaining son had been killed in the fighting in Ireland - as if he needed another grievance - and in a fit of drunken rage, he had the Harlequin hanged for treason.’
‘Hanged?’
‘Dragged out into the hallway, marched up the stairs, noosed-up in the gallery and hanged.’
‘No trial?’
‘Hanged from the balcony there,’ she pointed across the hall, ‘in full costume. New Year’s Day, 1600.’
Stunned pause, broken by Peter:
‘So the murder of Barnabus is the second murder of a clown in Henry Hall?’
‘It would appear so. Shall we go?’
Peter and Frances turn toward the entrance, where a lone policeman keeps watch outside. It has been a long day, time for hom
e and then a scream behind them, and they’re both spinning round to see Tamsin in a state of shock.
‘I saw the ghost!’ she exclaims.
‘Where?’
‘Up there on the landing! He was there, I swear it, looking down. I saw the Irish Harlequin!’
Act Three
I have found little that is ‘good’ about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.
Sigmund Freud
Fifty Four
Tuesday 4 November
It is unusual to receive post from a dead man, though it does happen.
Abbot Peter sat with his colleague in the front room of Sandy View, his small beachfront home, set on the shingle coast of Stormhaven. It was an ironic name, there was no sand, which amused some and irritated others who thought it a teenage stunt, hardly appropriate for an Abbot. But then people think things all the time; they think all kinds of things and most of it unverified nonsense. Howling beneath their mental moons, impressions become opinion, opinions become judgements and judgements become death for someone. So Peter stood unconcerned this morning in Sandy View, watching the rise and fall of undulating pebble, as it received the morning’s incoming tide. He and his colleague had other matters to consider, and most pressing, the case notes made by Barnabus after the therapy sessions with those taking part in the Feast of Fools.
‘So here,’ declared Peter, holding them in the air, ‘are the thoughts of the murdered on four of the chief suspects.’
Silence.
‘Unusual,’ he said. ‘Definitely interesting.’
Frances had told them most therapists keep records of sorts, though she’d given them a warning: ‘The client’s record of the meeting will be entirely different from those of the therapist. We all hear different things and no doubt Barnabus mostly heard Barnabus.’
His client notes, discovered in the drawer in his bedroom, were brief, written in fountain pen and a clear hand.
‘So here we go,’ said Peter, putting on his glasses. ‘I’ll just read them out as they stand. And we start with Kate Karter, who was perhaps the most distraught in our initial interviews. Speak to us, Barnabus.’
Kate Karter: Like some fading film star, a rather affected and mannered individual; alienated from her true self and sending some fictional figure out to perform on her behalf. Maintains avoidance of inner discomfort by keeping herself busy - fearful of silence and sadness. Her husband is a teacher and she shows ambivalent feelings towards him, admiration, concern and disdain. Without a physical mask when we met - apart from a fake sun tan - but her emotional mask was a brittle, frightened and resistant thing. Felt distance.
The Abbot left a pause, no response, time to move on.
‘And so onto Virgil Bannaford, whose company Barnabus did not enjoy!’
Virgil Bannaford, lecturer in higher education, history I think, a slightly scruffy ball of restless energy and rage. He seemed to come for a fight, resentful even before he sat down. Therapy was his choice, but also his hate and he assaulted both the idea of it and me. His wife has thrown him out. Is this why he’s angry? Possibly but seems angrier with therapy than with his wife; it felt quite personal against me. Simple transference? Didn’t feel like it. His rage is a sea of molten lava but he speaks of himself as peaceable - and put the problem firmly on me! ‘I don’t get angry. I’m a peaceful guy,’ he said.
It was at this point that Abbot Peter noticed his colleague sticking a pen in her ear, which was a bad idea.
‘I’ll tell you what, Poppy - I propose an exchange. I take the pen but as compensation, I give you the Owl in the Tree book - which looks a good deal more interesting than the biro. Fair?’
It wasn’t fair, he knew that, she preferred the biro. The Owl in the Tree book was quite dull and if she’d wanted the owl story, which she didn’t, she’d have picked it up instead of the pen. But she accepted the exchange with grace, Peter hid the biro deep in his habit, where things stayed for years, and returned to his homework. Tamsin would be along soon and she’d be demanding coherence.
‘So now, Poppy, we get to the finely named Ezekiel St Paul, who you somehow know isn’t going to work in a betting shop. Difficult meeting by all accounts, so what’s new there? And rather poor Barnabus than me:
Rev Ezekiel St Paul (can’t be his real name), Pastor of the Seraphimic Church of the Blessed Elect in Uplifting Glory. Phew! His polite and precise manner belies the savagery of his inner workings, expressed through fundamentalist religion. Asks by what authority I speak? Caught me out there. He speaks with God’s authority of course. Believes his daughter is possessed by demons and there was a moment of connection between us when his eyes watered at the thought of further and unpleasant rites of exorcism being carried out by the church elders. But he then locked me out again with the remark: ‘The godless cannot help the godly.’ Suddenly I’m redundant... no worse, something malignant.
‘Well we all know that feeling, Poppy,’ said the Abbot and at the mention of her name, she smiled. It was possible that until this moment, Peter had never really pondered the simple trust and present joy of a child’s smile; they’d simply never come his way - or perhaps he’d never come theirs. But on this Tuesday morning of 4 November, it was a thing of such hope and beauty that Peter, for a moment, quite forgot the twisted figure of the clown in the cupboard. And quite forgot his own redundancy, two years ago now, when like a stranded star fish, he was left homeless and jobless in the desert... after his not entirely peaceable exit from the monastery of St James-the-Less.
‘Suddenly I’m redundant,’ wrote Barnabus, and Peter knew the feeling.
‘And finally, Poppy,’ he said, returning his mind to Stormhaven,
‘we have my old friend Martin Channing. Martin “The Fox” Channing, whom you trust as far as you can throw a large whale and whales are big anyway, even small ones, you can’t throw the small ones any distance at all, so a large one...’
The energy for picture language deserted him and he returned to his brief:
Martin Channing: Editor of the Sussex Silt and as a friend told me, ‘the only reptile on earth who wears a bow tie.’ Some connection with Frances it seems; I don’t know what. Cool, distant, clever customer. Uses mental analysis to avoid true emotion; he could only cope when he was interviewing me. Had problems with idea of listening to his life, rejected it firmly. Wary of attack, spiteful in riposte, a man well-protected from his pain.
So there we are, Poppy! Four of the suspects kindly described for us with some accuracy, and no doubt some inaccuracy, by the victim. No illustrations to match Owl in the Tree, but insight nonetheless. So what do you make of them?’
Poppy’s strained face and a pungent waft spoke of interests closer to home, matters more immediate and pressing than any police investigation.
‘Of course there are other suspects, who don’t appear in Barnabus’ records,’ said Peter, ‘because amazingly, it’s not always the client who kills the therapist. There’s Frances Pole, the other director of Mind Gains. She’s uncomfortable at the moment, no doubt about that: firm, brisk but uncomfortable. Why? And then I suppose there’s Bella Amal, the receptionist - or rather the Director of Administration, as she calls herself, self-aggrandisement through title... rather like me calling myself an Abbot ...though, as you’re no doubt about to observe, Bella wasn’t actually at the Feast of Fools, but in a pub, for some of the time at least, certainly the early part of the evening. But then again, with all the costume nonsense, who knows who was who, and who was where that night?’
Poppy looked at him as though she did know, as though she knew everything, even the size of whales, a very wise look, like an owl in a tree.
‘So have we got the wrong end foremos
t here?’ pondered Peter.
‘Bella Amal might just be very clever. Some people are very clever, Poppy, and the clever are not always the kind. But top of our list of suspects, at the moment, is Pat Strong, the cleaner who was there that night and has now gone missing, having given a false address to the clinic. So we don’t know who she is, and we don’t know where she lives. I hope it isn’t her, obviously, because I like her. That’s unprofessional and to be kept between you and me. But there it is, and I’m not a professional anyway, I’m a retired Abbot who knows nothing.’
Poppy was straining again.
‘And there are issues.’
Peter found it helpful to think out loud.
‘Pat was there at the end of the game of Sardines, and there when everyone went off to get changed - but seems to have disappeared soon afterwards, leaving the premises quickly. And she’s now been out of contact for over three days. So why disappear? Whether killer or victim, it’s not good however you look at it.’
The doorbell rang and Peter got up to answer. Tamsin: ‘Oh my God, what’s that smell?’
Poppy looked troubled by the loud stranger, her face crumbling a little. Peter moved to explain that it wasn’t a monster, not strictly true - but at least a monster who’d not harm her. Peter would keep her on a tight leash, he promised.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t see the child,’ said Tamsin, putting her bag down.
‘She’s called Poppy,’ said Peter.
‘I’m sure she is, but please don’t ask me to look at any photos. It’s okay to detest other people’s children.’
‘Seen any more ghosts?’ Tamsin sighed.
‘I saw what I saw.’
‘And screamed as you screamed.’
‘I saw the Irish Harlequin.’ Tamsin looked at Peter.
‘Why are you smiling?’ she asked.
‘We must all frame our fears as best we can, Tamsin. Some call them ghosts, while others -’
‘Coffee?’
It was a pleasing turn-around to find himself as the hard-bitten realist and Tamsin, the credulous innocent. He didn’t deny the possibility that she might have seen a ghost; but equally, he enjoyed the uncomfortable squirming of a rationalist in shock. Certainly they’d found no one at home when they went upstairs to look. They had looked, looked everywhere and not a soul, he was sure of that.
