The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori

by Robert Barnard

  “I’d like a word with Mrs. Max. She’s the only outsider in the place, and she may, with luck, have an outsider’s skepticism, unless loyalty gets in the way.”

  “Who should I take, if I’ve time to do one on my own?”

  “Try Arnold Mellors, in the cottage built on to the farmhouse,” said Charlie, after thought. “Then we’ll take the others together—Ivor Aston and his sister, and Jenny Birdsell and her daughter.”

  “Meaning you fancy those four?”

  “As suspects? Well, especially the Aston pair. But I’m really thinking they may be more open with information, especially if we play one off against the other. It may need the pair of us to get the best out of them.”

  It was the first time Charlie had driven down the rutted track to Ashworth. Even driving slowly and carefully it made for a bone-shaking trip. As he opened the gate, drove through it, then closed it again, Charlie wondered about the Byatts’ car. Presumably it was in the stables, just visible at the end of the field; presumably it would be by now as clean as a whistle—though with modern techniques that could well be more apparent than real, and Forensics might well come up with one of their infinitesimal traces. Anyway, the time to bring Forensics in was when the body had been identified.

  He left the car just inside the gate, parked over a ditch. He got out and looked around him. Which cottage would be Mrs. Max’s? He guessed that most of Ranulph Byatt’s disciples had a little bit of money behind them when they moved here, but that Mrs. Max would have had none. He chose the smallest of the cottages, one that was really a sort of end bit to Colonel Chesney’s, and he struck lucky.

  “Oh, are you back?” she said, bluntly but not unfriendly, as she opened the door. “I was just on my way up to the house.”

  “Can it wait a bit, say, half an hour?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Who is it, Mum?” came a man’s shout from the back of the tiny cottage.

  “Just the police.”

  A young man came forward and appeared at the door. He was slight but wiry, and had a pinched but intelligent-looking face. He put his arm around his mother’s shoulders, and Charlie felt that this was a pair he could do business with.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Of course. Where’s your manners, Mum? We want to give you all the help we can.”

  But Mrs. Max had not stood aside.

  “I’m not going to be disloyal, Joe.”

  “You don’t have to be, Mum. But I don’t owe anybody here any loyalty.”

  “They gave us a home,” said Mrs. Max, finally moving her homely shape aside and letting Charlie into a minute sitting room, furnished with pieces too big for it—pieces that had probably come from her former, marital home. Charlie threaded his way between them and sat down in a fat armchair. He found that he had to tuck in his legs if he were not to make foot contact with the mother and son on the sofa opposite him. Charlie had already decided that the boy was likely to be his best or possibly his only source of unbiased information, and he turned to him first.

  “Right. Now, you are—”

  “Joe. Joe Paisley.”

  “Ah.” He turned back to the mother. “So you are really Mrs. Paisley?”

  “Jeanette Paisley, by rights. My husband was one of two brothers well known in the Haworth area—mostly for the wrong reasons, I’m sorry to say. They called us, their wives, Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Max, and it’s stuck.”

  “I see. And you came here when?”

  “Oh, when Joe was a little lad. Nineteen eighty-two, it was, when the Byatts moved here from Stamford.”

  “I take it they needed domestic help, and you needed somewhere to live?”

  “Pretty much, though I had family in Haworth, and they wanted domestic help rather than needed it, to my mind, with two women in the house. Melanie was perfectly able-bodied at the time, and Ranulph’s arthritis was in the very early stages. Martha could cope perfectly well if she got herself organized. But it suited me to get a bit away from the Haworth and Stanbury gossip.”

  “I see. . . . The night that Declan O’Hearn took off, last Friday night, you didn’t hear anything, weren’t wakened by any activity?”

  “I was not.”

  “Nor maybe Saturday or Sunday night?”

  “No, I always sleep through.”

  “Nothing wakes Mum,” said her son. “I often had to wake her in the morning if they needed her earlier than usual at the farm. Now she has an alarm clock.”

  “I see,” said Charlie, nodding. “And how did you hear about Declan’s . . . moving on?”

  “They just said, last Saturday morning, that he’d taken off during the night and left a note.”

  “You didn’t read the note?”

  “No, I didn’t.” She thought. “But I saw Melanie screw it up and throw it into the fire.”

  “What she said was the note.”

  She thought, then nodded.

  “Well, yes. She said how disappointed she was in Declan.”

  “As if Ashworth was some kind of worthy cause,” said her son, “like the Peace Corps or something, that young people ought to serve in for next to nothing.”

  “Did they try that on with you?” asked Charlie, turning back to Joe, registering the strength of feeling in the voice.

  “They were working round to that,” he replied with relish. “Making remarks like ‘A strong lad like you will always be useful at Ashworth,’ or ‘Ranulph’s always happiest with someone he knows.’ Work at Ashworth? I should ’eck as like!”

  “Don’t believe everything Joe says about the people at the farm,” said his mother, her lips tightened. “He’s got his own views. They never jelled, like.”

  “Wouldn’t want to jell wi’ people like that,” said her son. “And it’s not just them.”

  “You mean,” probed Charlie, “that you don’t jell with the people in the cottages either?”

  “Gives me the creeps,” said Joe, with a touch of youthful self-righteousness. “The whole setup does. All this worship of Ranulph bloody Byatt. You can admire somebody’s painting wi’out giving up your whole life to him.”

  “And you think that’s what they’ve done?”

  “I’m bloody sure it is. Body, soul—”

  “Conscience?”

  Joe blinked at him.

  “Well, yes. I wouldn’t have put it like that, but, yes, they have.”

  Charlie decided to show his hand a little.

  “I mention that because I believe O’Hearn was heard to say that there were ‘things he wouldn’t do.’”

  “Good for him.” Joe thought for a moment. “Not that it did the poor bugger any good.”

  “Maybe the reverse. Maybe it was the reason he was killed.”

  “You mean they put something to him, and it was so horrible or maybe so criminal that when he refused to do it they had to kill him?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  Joe Paisley pondered for a second or two.

  “I’ve wanted Mum to get away from here for ages.”

  “Don’t be silly, Joe,” his mother said forcefully. “What the policeman was just saying was nothing but speculation.”

  “That may be, but his thoughts are going the same way as my thoughts always have. Get shot of them, Mum.” He turned to Charlie. “I’ve got a flat in Bolton. There’s room for both of us.”

  “Get away with you!” said Mrs. Max vehemently. “No young man wants his mother permanently encamped with him! And what happens when you get a girlfriend? She’s going to be delighted to have me there the whole time, isn’t she?”

  “Let’s get this clear,” said Charlie, breaking in. “Why did you want your mother to get away from Ashworth?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Well, if you ignore what’s happened in the last week, no, it’s not. I’ve met Colonel Chesney, and he seems perfectly normal, and he describes Arnold Mellors as if he’s, if anything, terribly dull. The women at the house, on the surface, see
m pleasant enough. The old lady, Melanie, isn’t what I’m used to, but she was friendly and helpful in her rather regal way. I just wonder why you’ve been trying to get your mother to leave ‘for ages.’”

  “Silly fancies, that’s all it was,” said Mrs. Max. Her son sat there thinking. He was one of those people who don’t speak till they have their thoughts in order.

  “First of all, we were always going to be outsiders here. Most of the people in the cottages are not artistic people, to my way of thinking: they’re arty-farty people. But either way round, we were never going to be in with a crowd like that. Now she’s on her own here, Mum’s very isolated. She doesn’t realize it, but she is. She needs to be in a place where she has her friends, things to go to, that kind of thing.”

  His mother was scornful.

  “People to gossip with, you mean. That’s all you think women are good for when they get older. I’ve been talked about too much to want to do it to other people.”

  Her son ignored her.

  “Then there’s the sort of people he gathers around him. They don’t just admire him: they’re devoted to him, they’re his creatures. They’re emotional bloody cripples, if you ask me. You may say they sound dull and ordinary, but he fills their lives, gives them a reason for existing. You can’t say that’s healthy and normal.”

  “Agreed, if it’s true. But your mum has escaped the influence.”

  “She has. And Stephen and Mary Ann, you could say, though Stephen is obsessed with his grandfather, even if he isn’t a member of the fan club.”

  “I’m not getting an altogether pleasant picture of Stephen,” said Charlie. Joe’s mouth curled.

  “Stephen Mates is a prat. He’s really quite ordinary, but he has to feel superior to people, and the only way he can do that is by setting himself up as the young master, the heir to the estate. Estate! What crap!”

  “His grandfather said he behaved like a boor to Declan O’Hearn.”

  “I can believe it. Why should he make an exception of O’Hearn? That’s how he behaved to me all the time we were growing up here. Except when he wanted something.”

  That last remark puzzled Charlie.

  “What sort of thing would he want from you?”

  “He was often at a loose end. Not much to do around here if nobody likes you. I’d be tinkering with a car—that’s my job; I’m a car mechanic, and I’ve always been good wi’ engines—and he’d come over and want to know what I was doing, how a car engine worked, how I knew what was wrong and what I had to do to fix it. Well, you could go so far with him and no farther: you could teach him how an engine worked, but you couldn’t teach him how to put it right when it was broken.”

  “Interesting. . . . I don’t feel you’ve got to the heart yet of why you’re unhappy about your mother staying at Ashworth.”

  “No. Oh, well, the heart is Ranulph Byatt, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so. Though these days he seems sort of marginal because of his physical state.”

  Joe Paisley shook his head vigorously.

  “He won’t be marginal, whatever his physical shape. I should have said that the heart of Ashworth is not Ranulph but Ranulph and Melanie. Always a partnership. I’m not up in this place at the moment, but as long as he’s got Melanie to help him, his physical state won’t get in his way.”

  “Get in his way as far as what is concerned?”

  “Get in the way of doing exactly what he wants. He is the most selfish man I’ve ever come across. He has to have what he wants, do what he wants, when he wants, come hell or high water.”

  “Aren’t we all a bit like that?”

  Joe shook his head again.

  “A bit like. He is completely like that. No one gets in his way. Totally selfish means totally ruthless. That’s why I was interested in this boy saying there were limits to what he could do. Poor bloody lad. . . . If you want to know why I worry about my mum it’s because she’s in a community centered around Ranulph Byatt, and Ranulph Byatt is evil. Pure evil.”

  “Don’t take any notice of him,” said his mother, turning to look urgently at Charlie. “Ranulph and I have always got on well, though I’ll give you he’s sometimes naughty, likes winding people up. But he’s an individual, his own man. More than you can say for his daughter or his grandson, to my way of thinking.”

  “Stephen interests me,” said Charlie. “He may not have escaped his grandfather’s shadow, but in other respects he seems to be his own man.”

  “Trouble is, the man in question is a shit,” said Joe.

  “Very much out for himself, would you say?”

  “Totally.”

  “We’re talking murder here, as you will have heard. Is Stephen capable of killing to further his own interests?”

  Joe thought, then shook his head reluctantly.

  “Wouldn’t have thought the arrogant prat would have it in him.”

  It was a testimonial of sorts.

  • • •

  “Youngsters can be very sharp, judging each other,” said Oddie when he joined Charlie at Ashworth and was told of Joe Paisley’s view of Stephen. “On the other hand, they are a young person’s views, and in any case Stephen may have grown more dangerous and decisive in the years since Joe left Ashworth.”

  Charlie nodded agreement.

  “What did you learn at the garage?”

  “It was Stephen Mates who rang about the car, and Stephen Mates who went to collect it.”

  “He’d got a bit of expertise in car repairing from Joe Paisley,” contributed Charlie. “Not enough, apparently.”

  “You told me that Martha Mates talked about giving Declan a driving lesson once Stephen got the car going,” said Oddie thoughtfully. “I think the sequence of events is clear: the car was broken down for some time, but Stephen knew enough about engines to get it going. On the night of Sunday the twentieth he drove it into Haworth, with the body in it, but it broke down on the flat bit between the two steep hills—between the station and Bridge House. He disposed of the body in a clapped-out old car in the car park of the Tandoori, and managed to push his car along to the garage. Now, the pathologist gives the whole weekend, from Friday night to Sunday night, as the likely time the boy was killed. Leaving us with a question.”

  Charlie saw the point at once.

  “If Declan disappeared on Friday night, and the body was shifted on Sunday night, what happened in the intervening forty-eight hours?”

  “And was the body alive or dead while it was happening?” added Oddie.

  13

  MATER DOLOROSA

  The question was still hanging in the air when the phone rang, and all possibility of more interviewing was at an end.

  Mrs. O’Hearn had been surprisingly easily persuaded—or possibly bounced—into flying to England. She was due in at Manchester at 2:25. After some discussion it was agreed that Charlie should collect her, and try for some informal discussion about family background on the drive back over the Pennines to Leeds. If the poor woman was up to it, of course.

  Charlie didn’t like waiting at airport exits carrying a placard. He’d only done it once before, and it made him feel like a low-grade courier. This time the causes of his unease were less personal and social: he was meeting a newly bereaved mother, and one who had just gone through the experience of flying for the first time. He could well imagine that her jumble of emotions, fear fighting with grief, would be difficult and embarrassing to cope with, and would need the utmost care in handling.

  One further point struck him: from what little he knew about Ireland, he guessed that he would be the first black person Eileen O’Hearn would ever have had a conversation with. That presaged badly. All things considered, the going seemed likely to be sticky.

  The plane was already ten minutes late. Looking around him Charlie concluded that Mrs. O’Hearn could have been told that she was being met by a black man and there would have been no possibility of confusion. The voices around him were all North Country or
Irish, and the faces all white. It was at that point that the sleeve of his jacket was tugged, and he looked down at a red-eyed, fearful face, but one with an indomitable, straight mouth.

  “Is it me you’re meeting? Eileen O’Hearn? They told me your name and I’ve forgotten it entirely. I’ve made a terrible fool of myself on the airplane. We’d no sooner started moving and going toward the—the runway, do they call it?—than I had a terrible fit of panic and cried out to them to let me off, I couldn’t face it, and I don’t know what else, and people were looking at me and smiling, and there was this kind hostess—such a sweet-looking girl, she was—who came and sat beside me and held my hand and told me to close my eyes, and we talked and before I really knew it we were in the air and in no time we were down again and they were getting me off before all the rest. I wish I’d taken her name so I could send her something—one of my best sponges, maybe, and some ginger nuts. Sure, I hate making a fool of myself in public. I’ve always hated people laughing at me, or pitying me, and that’s what they were doing on that plane. And it’s a fool I was, because what if the plane did go down? What’s that when you’ve just lost a son, and a son as good to me as Declan was, and a good man too—everyone will tell you the same. But there, I have to think of the others, like Father Baillie said. The truth is I always favored Declan, because of his lovely nature. But it’s the young ones I have to live for now, God give me strength.”

  This, and more like it, got them to the car park and the car that Charlie was to drive them in to Leeds. As he bent down to open the passenger door Eileen O’Hearn’s face told him that she was registering for the first time the fact that he was black: she had seen her name on the placard, which he had been holding to his chest at about her eye level, and she had not looked upward but in her sorrow and nervousness had started chattering on at once. Well, it had certainly got them over any awkwardness. He let her in, went around to the driver’s seat, and set off.

  “It sounds like you’ve got a big family,” he said. “You’ll have to explain that to me. I’m an only child, and there’s just me and my mother.”

  “Oh, dear, your father’s dead, is he? That’s sad for a young chap like you are if he was a good one.” Charlie didn’t explain about his father, who was not so much dead as unidentified. “The three eldest were Patrick, Declan, and Mary. Just a year or so between each o’ them.” She smiled shyly. “Then my husband got a job in America, so there’s a gap. Mary’s twenty this year. Then there’s Anne, who’s sixteen, Stephen, who’s fourteen, and John Paul, who’s ten. That’s a larger family than people have these days, even in Ireland. But it’s sad for an only child like you, isn’t it? You learn about being with people by being with your own brothers and sisters.”