The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori

by Robert Barnard

  “If I was on better terms with the old man,” Stephen said, comparatively friendly, “I’d ask him if I could make a series of studies of him. As it is, this will have to do for posterity.”

  He handed Declan a photograph taken at the door to the studio. The definition was not sharp, but there was a vivid sense of situation: the photograph showed the back of Ranulph Byatt, leaning forward and vigorously attacking the foaming sea of his picture, the energy of the pose contradicting the decrepitude of the body. Declan was standing facing him, eyes down at the palette, looking for all the world like the dumbwaiter he sometimes imagined himself to be—the perfectly respectful, selfless, presence-less servant.

  “Couldn’t use a flash,” said Stephen, a smile playing on his face as he watched Declan’s reactions. “The old bugger would have registered it.”

  “Why did you take it?” asked Declan, handing it back and feeling somehow diminished. Stephen shrugged.

  “Might come in useful. Someone’s going to write a biography of him someday. Might as well make a penny or two out of him if I can.” He grinned evilly. “Who knows? I might write the biography myself.”

  As he slipped the print back into the folder, Declan registered that there were other photographs, including one of his grandfather asleep in bed. He said nothing, but Stephen, as he turned down the stairs, said, “I might take some photographs at this viewing Melanie is planning. No one could object to that, could they?”

  That was the first Declan had heard of the viewing. If he had been more sophisticated it might have struck him as a trifle absurd: a private viewing of an exhibition, in advance of the public, was one thing. But of a single picture? On the other hand Ranulph Byatt was very old, had had a long fallow period, and in the nature of things could not be expected to produce many more pictures of quality. And the people of Ashworth were all devotees. Weren’t they?

  The evening of the viewing was a Tuesday. Ranulph was given a meal of shepherd’s pie and rhubarb crumble at six o’clock, and as expected it perked him up. His eyes—those terrible eyes—began to sparkle. Declan set him to rights, then walked him slowly along to the studio. It was quarter to seven, and the guests were expected at seven. Already Ranulph was showing that he intended to savor the occasion.

  “I wonder what they’ll make of it,” he said, chuckling, as Declan eased him into his usual chair, the one he used for painting. “Not that any of them are capable of any appreciation worth a ha’pence. Even the child molester’s opinion is something I wouldn’t have given tuppence for twenty years ago.”

  “What about Mrs. Byatt’s opinion?” Declan asked. He never called her Melanie to her husband.

  “Oh, Melanie’s my best critic,” said Ranulph wholeheartedly. “Sounds a cliché, but it’s true. If Melanie hadn’t thought it good, we wouldn’t be having this jamboree.” He thought for a moment, then out of the blue added the only statement about himself that Declan could remember. “Melanie has been everything to me. Since I met her in 1947 I’ve never wanted another woman. I’ve had one or two who offered, but the wanting was all on their side. Without her none of the great pictures would have been painted. I’m well aware I’m considered an egotist. I don’t deny it. And Melanie has been an egotist for me. Everything else in my life has been an irrelevance.”

  He stopped. Declan felt that anything he could say would seem an impertinence, or ridiculously weak.

  Ranulph’s chair had been moved away from the picture, and he flung the landscape a glance, just to assure himself it was there, and in a good light. Then he settled down to await the arrivals. “They’ll all exclaim over it, like parrots!” he muttered, but it was clear he was looking forward to the occasion by the set of his body.

  The animals went in two by two, but the Ashworth community arrived in ones and ones. Apart from Jenny Birdsell and her daughter (and Mary Ann was certainly not likely to attend such a gathering) they were all solitaries, and proclaimed their solitude almost as if it were a proud gift. Melanie and Martha set out the finger buffet that Mrs. Max had prepared, then stood around in a hostessy manner, but apart. Stephen was standing near the easel with a camera slung over his shoulder, as if to say this was the only reason he was there at all, but he was finally persuaded to man the front door. (“I need Declan here with me,” said Ranulph emphatically.)

  Jenny was first, and exclaim over the picture she certainly did, and like a parrot too, just as Ranulph had predicted. Then there was Charmayne, then Arnold Mellors, then Colonel Chesney, and last—proclaiming by that gesture, and much to his sister’s suppressed rage, that he had seen the painting and had no cause for eagerness—came Ivor Aston, both rakish and pathetic as usual. He gazed around him in a manner both triumphant and condescending: “You see, I told you it was good,” the manner seemed to say. “Not that any of you is capable of real appreciation.”

  “Marvelous!” one of them would say after a period of awed inspection that varied from person to person, but was never less than a minute. “Wonderful!” came from another. “So vital, so powerful,” said a third—Colonel Chesney, to be precise. “It’s like a punch in the guts,” said Charmayne daringly.

  “After the sort of pictures you’ve been painting recently” was an addendum implied in what they all said, but it was never spoken. They were acolytes: they had not said it while the feebler pictures were being painted, so they would not say it now that those were being so magnificently transcended.

  “It seems like a new beginning,” said Arnold Mellors. Snap! went Stephen’s camera, catching his expression as he looked toward Ranulph, a look of admiration, but with something supplicating about it, almost cringing.

  “It is,” harrumphed Ranulph, his voice rich with relish. “Have to get a new man to handle things.”

  Mellors behaved admirably, Declan thought. He was prepared for this. Physically, he did little more than swallow. A stiffening of the shoulders and back, however, told the watcher that the man had suffered a rebuff he had half expected.

  “Then you expect . . . more?” he said, the voice very close to normal, the expression, snapped by Stephen, being that of a man who has just received a massive punch to the head. “You expect this new phase to last?”

  “I do,” said Ranulph, his voice loud with triumph. “To last, to develop, to mature.” He turned his sunken face, like an old walnut, in Declan’s direction and bared his teeth. “Thanks to this young man.”

  How much every person in the room, perhaps not even excepting Stephen, would have liked that to be said about them! It was an occasion for accepting blows as best they could.

  “You owe him a lot,” said Colonel Chesney.

  “I do. And expect to owe him still more.”

  Declan wished he had Arnold Mellors’s control over himself. When he saw the stained teeth bared once again, felt the sharp, glinting eyes fixed on his, he shivered uncontrollably, and hid his reaction by going over to Byatt’s chair and rearranging his overlarge cardigan around his withered frame. When he had put his employer to rights he moved away from the chair and stood silent. He was not allowed to remain in the shadows. Melanie came over to him, and Martha came nearer, listening.

  “He’s fond of you,” Melanie said. Declan did not let his doubts show.

  “I’m glad. It makes it easier—for him and for me.”

  “And it’s so good for Martha and me to have a rest. Of course we both realize it can’t last forever. A young man like you will stick it for only so long. It can’t be what you want, being in the middle of nowhere as we are, and being so tied down to Ranulph and his needs. But when we take up our duties again, we’ll be mightily refreshed.”

  “But of course not yet,” said Jenny Birdsell, overhearing—or, rather, listening in. “Declan has a role to play in this wonderful renaissance.”

  Melanie’s face tightened with displeasure, and as it did so Stephen’s camera went snap again.

  “Certainly Declan has a role to play in what your daughter unkindly calls Ranu
lph’s resurrection,” Melanie said in a cold voice. “Aren’t religious people thoughtless?”

  “I’m sorry Arnold told you that, Melanie,” purred Jenny. “And you’re certainly right about religious people. But I’m sure Declan is not thoughtless, and I’m sure he will want to do all he can to help Ranulph in this new, wonderful phase in his art.”

  “All I can,” said Declan, trying to make his voice bland. But Melanie seemed to pick up at least part of his meaning.

  “Do you mean your powers to help are limited?” she asked.

  “I mean I can’t force myself. . . . I mean, like I’ve said, there are things I wouldn’t do.”

  “Ranulph lives by his own rules and codes,” Melanie continued.

  “That’s fine, so long as he doesn’t expect others to live by them too.”

  “I think you took me up rather too hastily when we talked before,” Melanie swept on. Martha was watching and listening closely. “Of course we wouldn’t want you to do anything seriously wrong. No question of that. But Ranulph has always been . . .” She paused, then let the rest of the sentence rush out, “excited by violence.”

  Declan left a pause, then nodded.

  “I could guess that, from some of his pictures.”

  “Violence is everywhere these days, isn’t it? Ranulph isn’t alone—it’s thrown into our living room all the time from the newspapers and the television screens, so lots of people must get their kicks from it.”

  Declan suddenly realized that, though the room had not gone silent, everyone in it had their eyes surreptitiously on him, and everyone was aware of the conversation that was going on. He said nothing. Melanie, who had seemed to be leading up to something, seemed also to become aware of that, and backtracked.

  “That’s all I meant. I wanted you to understand Ranulph’s nature.”

  “I suppose I was bound to do that, in time.”

  “You’re not quite the peasant boy we’ve all taken you for, are you, Declan?” said Melanie with malice in her voice. But then she softened it. “And I hope you will be able to . . . go along with him, so far as you can.”

  Without waiting for a reply she smiled in the direction of Mrs. Max, who had come up with more refreshments and now stood observing the little party. Declan took a deep breath of relief, but found himself almost immediately surrounded.

  “My boy,” barked Colonel Chesney, “there are two heroes here tonight, and you are one of them.”

  Declan made modesty noises.

  “You are,” said Jenny Birdsell. “You have made it possible, revived Ranulph’s will to do great work.”

  “Not great work yet,” said Ivor Aston, with unattractive pedantry. “But who can doubt it is to come?”

  “You must be enormously proud,” said Charmayne, coming over to stand, unwanted, beside her brother. “But the responsibility is awesome.”

  “I just do what I can in a practical way,” said Declan.

  “No, no—there must be more to it than that,” said Jenny. “Your personality must liberate him, must concentrate all his powers, the ones that have been dormant. What a privilege for you! But it is a responsibility too, to see that those powers are never again allowed to fall fallow.”

  “You owe that to Ranulph,” said Arnold Mellors. “You also owe it to yourself.”

  No, I don’t, said something very powerful inside Declan. I’m just an Irish boy making his way around the world before deciding what to do with his life. I don’t owe anything to anybody. And there’s something here that I can’t pin down. Something I don’t like.

  He looked around at the passionate eyes. He was getting tired of being looked at, at something being expected of him—something that nobody seemed willing to specify, that he could not begin to guess at, because he had not enough experience of the world, though he had some. And looking around at those faces, at Melanie and Martha watching from a distance, and conscious of Ranulph slumped in his chair but still obviously aware, Declan realized that he didn’t feel only pressurized, badgered. Something in those eyes made him feel something else: uneasiness, apprehension, fear.

  He shook himself.

  “Come along, sir,” he said in a lordly tone, going over to Ranulph. “You’re tired. Time for bed.”

  PART III

  The Investigation

  10

  THE ARTIST AND HIS WOMENFOLK

  Charlie pushed open the gate and walked through it, shutting it carefully behind him. That much he knew about country practice, though he doubted whether he was shutting any farm animals in. He himself, though, was crossing a border, entering the confines of the dark tower. All the animals were human ones.

  He shook himself, feeling he was being silly and fanciful. But he stopped for a moment, having a distinct sense of being watched—could it be eyes intending “to view the last of me, a living frame for one more picture,” as Childe Roland imagined? He grinned and shook himself again. There were no faces visible in the windows of any of the cottages as far as he could see. In any case, the big house was obviously his destination—the farmhouse, as it must once have been. He turned and made his way to its front door.

  His ring produced no scuffles or muttered whisperings on the other side, merely, after a few seconds, a measured footstep, probably female, Charlie thought. When the door was opened it was by a worried-looking, middle-aged, slightly disorganized woman who seemed surprised to see a black man on her doorstep but not worried. The local bush telegraph, then, had not extended as far as the Ashworth community. They were somehow apart, socially as well as geographically.

  “Yes?”

  Charlie took out his ID and flashed it under her eyes, making sure that she had read it.

  “I’m DC Peace of the West Yorkshire Criminal Investigation Department. I wanted to ask you a few questions about this man.”

  Yet again he fished out the picture. The woman frowned over it.

  “You recognize him?”

  “Well, it looks a little like Declan.”

  “That’s the boy who worked here as a handyman?”

  “Ah, you know? Why are you asking, then?” She handed it back to him as if to hasten the end of the questioning. “I wouldn’t say it looked a lot like him, but that sort of picture—”

  “Yes, they’re always a bit generalized, aren’t they? What was your handyman’s full name?”

  “Declan O’Hearn. He’s Irish.”

  “And when did you last see him?”

  “Oh . . .” She frowned. “He must have left about a week ago. I was away for the weekend in London and I wasn’t back till Monday, and didn’t hear of it till then.”

  “And did he just throw up the job, say good-bye, and leave?”

  “No, it would have been a lot easier if he had—easier with Father, I mean. My father is Ranulph Byatt, the artist.” She looked into Charlie’s eyes, and he nodded with the air of being impressed. “He’s been very upset since.”

  “So what happened when he left?”

  “He just took off in the middle of the night, or early in the morning. Left a note and that was that.”

  “What did the note say?”

  “I didn’t see it, but Mother told me about it. It just said that he was leaving—he’d been paid the day before—and that he wanted to see a bit more of the country.” She frowned again. “Why are you so interested in Declan? He was very naughty in the way he took off like that, and inconsiderate too, but he’s the last person to be involved in anything criminal.”

  Charlie tried directness.

  “A dead body has been discovered in the Haworth area. We think it might be him.”

  His instinct told him that her surprise and distress were genuine. His instinct had sometimes been wrong.

  “Oh, no! I’m sure it’s not Declan. I’m sure if he’d just left and gone to Haworth we would have heard. His note implied he was going a lot farther than that.”

  “Maybe he was on his way when—” He stopped when he saw the expression on he
r face. “Who saw the note?”

  “My mother. Stephen too, I think.”

  “Do you mind if I come in and talk to them?”

  “Oh, that wouldn’t be very convenient. Just before dinner.”

  “Murder does tend to cause inconvenience.”

  He stood his ground, waiting, as if he had not had a refusal. But her mind had been diverted by his words.

  “Murder. But you didn’t say—”

  “Death and police detectives do suggest murder to a lot of people.”

  “But I didn’t—it could have been—” She stopped, and then swallowed. “But that makes it quite certain it’s not Declan in that picture. The nicest boy you could imagine. No one could conceivably want to murder him.”

  “Murder is often a question of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, I’d be obliged if you’d let me in to talk with your mother and father, and Stephen, whoever he is.”

  She had remained standing square in the doorway, but now she seemed to lose confidence, and stood uncertainly aside.

  “Stephen is my son. He’s at Oxford at the moment. . . . I do hope you don’t need to talk to my father.” She had led the way down the hall on a gesture from Charlie, and now she opened the sitting room door. “Mother, it’s a policeman. It’s about Declan. He thinks he may have been murdered.”

  “Quite impossible. I hope you’ve told him so.”