Something Wicked

by David Roberts

  To Verity’s immense relief, Mr Black came back on his own, carrying a Gladstone bag which he tossed in the launch before joining them on the grass.

  ‘I do apologize, Miss Browne. I had forgotten until Jack reminded me that you and he are on different sides when it comes to the war in Spain. He thought it better not to accept my invitation to share our picnic. It’s a sad thing that events in foreign countries can cause such wide divisions in our society.’

  ‘We have to stand up for what we think is right,’ was all Verity would say, not wishing to be rude, preferring to sound self-righteous.

  He seemed rather to enjoy arguing with her and they batted between each other their views on all the main issues of the day, almost always disagreeing but neither of them becoming angry. Mary, too, quietly made her opinions known and sharply rebuked her father when he started praising Sir Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists.

  By three o’clock, seeing that Mary and Verity were tiring, Mr Black gathered up the detritus from the picnic and flung it into the boat. He helped them aboard and took them back to Henley. Nothing much was said on the return journey and, once again, Verity fell asleep in her comfortable chair. She awoke as the Hornet bumped against her mooring to find that the chauffeur was preparing to help them disembark. The Gladstone bag was gone – no doubt already in the car – and Verity wondered idly what Jack Amery had given her host. It must have been something bulky but she had not thought it polite to ask.

  Back at the clinic, she thanked Mr Black for a delightful day out.

  ‘I hope I didn’t tire you.’

  ‘I am tired,’ she admitted, ‘but nicely tired. I am sure the sunshine and the river did me good. It was very kind of you to invite me. I hope I didn’t intrude.’

  ‘Not at all. When you are better, you must let me give you lunch at the House. I really think I might convert you.’

  Verity smiled weakly. ‘I am afraid that would be too hard a job, Mr Black, even for you . . .’

  ‘Please call me Roderick.’

  ‘Well, I was just going to say . . .’ she could not bring herself to use his Christian name so she called him nothing, ‘that, though we profoundly disagree on so many things, I very much enjoyed debating them with you. I feel so isolated here and it always helps to think things through if one can discuss them with someone who doesn’t agree with you.’ Changing the subject, she asked, ‘I wonder where Jill is?’

  At that moment, Dr Bladon entered the room without knocking. ‘Not too exhausted, I trust? I’m afraid I have some bad news about Jill. She was taken ill while you were out and has had to go into hospital. I hope she will be back with us soon.’

  Though he spoke confidently enough, Verity got the feeling that he did not believe it and her spirits, which had been lifted by the day on the river, fell into her boots. Selfishly, perhaps, her immediate thought was, ‘Is that what will happen to me? Will I be rushed into hospital at death’s door?’

  No, she decided. That would not be her fate. She would get better. She had so much to do and the world was so interesting. She would fight not to lose it.

  6

  Mrs Booth, Hermione Totteridge’s sister, lived in Burnham Market in a pleasant house called Boltons which was – as her husband later told him – of some historical interest: Horatia, Nelson’s daughter, had been married from there. The church was just a few hundred yards away and Edward strolled across the street. The church door was unlocked and he entered the cool interior. He picked up a booklet which gave him some information about its history. The fourteenth-century tower with its battlemented parapet was its chief glory but was spoiled by two huge brick buttresses added in the 1740s when it was feared that the tower was about to collapse. A well-meaning Victorian architect had destroyed much of the original medieval interior although the seventeenth-century bells remained. Edward could well imagine the daughter of England’s greatest hero entering married life down St Mary’s long aisle.

  In the churchyard he leant against one of the tombs and lit a cigarette. These Norfolk churches were surely one of England’s chief glories but he wondered how long they could survive as the population dwindled. Year after year more and more people left the land, their arduous labour no longer required when the ploughing and reaping could be done so much more cheaply and quickly by modern behemoths. The Blythe family monument, for instance, against which he was resting, was unlikely to remain the repository of twentieth-century Blythe bones for very much longer as they lived and died in cities far from the origin of their tribe.

  Yet he would not say, glibly, that this was England ‘going to the dogs’ – as he knew his father would have termed it – because in previous centuries the agricultural labourer had lived a short and wretched life racked by rheumatism from damp and cold, the East Anglian wind cutting him to the bone for most of the year. Life was short when poverty, ignorance and inbreeding took their toll. The cottages he saw – so picturesque in the sunshine and now being renovated and suburbanized – had been, until the end of the Great War, insanitary sties, hardly fit for animals. He chuckled as he realized that his way of thinking could be put down entirely to Verity’s lectures on the evils of capitalism. She always claimed that, although the city slums were a disgrace to a prosperous and so-called civilized society, rural poverty was in many ways more deeply ingrained and ruined more lives.

  Just as he was about to throw away his cigarette and leave, he was hailed by a good-looking, cheerful fellow wearing a dog-collar whom he took to be the rector.

  ‘Admiring our fine church?’

  ‘Indeed, though I was also wondering how it could be maintained when congregations are declining and the cost of replacing the roof is now beyond the purse of most of us. But it is a magnificent church,’ Edward added hastily, fearing he had sounded sententious. ‘No doubt God or the government will provide.’

  ‘We must hope so. By the way, my name is Joyce – John Joyce.’

  ‘Edward Corinth,’ he responded, shaking hands.

  ‘I encourage myself,’ Joyce went on, ‘by remembering that during the Black Death most of the population was wiped out and there were four inductions. In other words, the shepherd died with his flock but somehow some survived and even prospered. That tomb you were leaning on is a case in point. It belongs, as you probably observed, to a local family, the Blythes, who have been buried here generation after generation. You will find similar tombs for the Hammonds, the Ives, the Spencers and many others. And inside the church there is a brass on the north wall portraying a lady with three of her children. The inscription tells us that it was dedicated to John Huntley and bears the date 1523.’

  ‘Yes, and, to judge from the number of gravestones set up just after the war, the 1918 flu epidemic took almost as great a toll as the Black Death.’

  ‘Indeed, indeed!’ sighed the rector.

  ‘Our history – the history of the English people – is recorded in these churches, Rector, and that’s one of the reasons why they should be preserved and nurtured.’

  The rector looked surprised at the stranger’s eloquence and Edward, realizing that he might have sounded pretentious, hurried on. ‘But tell me, are the current owners of Boltons churchgoers?’

  ‘They are, I am glad to say. Why, do you know our good doctor?’

  ‘I am about to call on Dr Booth,’ Edward replied, evasively. ‘He’s been here a long time?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. All his life. When we talk about “the doctor” round here, we mean Booth.’

  When the rector had said his farewells, Edward strolled around the churchyard. He noticed several gravestones bearing the name Booth, one dating back to 1680. As he scraped off the lichen to read the inscription, he wondered why the Booths appeared to have no family tomb. Perhaps they had simply not been rich enough.

  Dr Booth proved to be a mild-mannered man in, Edward judged, his late sixties. His interest in local history and Nelson in particular was obviously important to him but he was careful not to bor
e his visitor.

  ‘I suppose it’s living in this house and being so near to the sea,’ he said apologetically, ‘but the older I get, the more I enjoy researching the history of this place – Boltons in particular. You see, my family has lived in the house for almost three centuries. That is really rather remarkable, is it not?’

  ‘It is. I met the rector in the churchyard and he told me how well respected you are here. He said that when people talk about “getting in the doctor” they mean you.’

  ‘That is very kind of him to say so. It’s true that I have given my life to looking after the sick here but that is nothing to what Burnham Market has given me. To put it simply, it is my world and if, God forbid, we go to war again, I shall “do my bit”, as we used to say in the last conflagration, for England, and by England I’m afraid I shall mean this little piece of it.’

  ‘Were you in the army in the war? I was just too young, thank the Lord.’

  ‘And I was too old to go to the front but we had our bad times here – the Spanish flu in 1918 and 1919 . . .’ He shook his head. ‘We were burying people who had succumbed to it as late as 1920. We came to the conclusion it was brought to Burnham Market by soldiers returning home after the war.’

  ‘I noticed that when I was strolling round the church-yard,’ Edward said. ‘Talking of which, I saw a gravestone for a young man called Peter Lamming. I knew a Peter Lamming when I was in Kenya. I wonder if it could possibly be the same one.’

  ‘I imagine it was, Lord Edward. How very strange! He was a nephew by marriage of my dear wife. He was married to Daphne’s daughter, Isabella. He died of . . .’ He hesitated. ‘He died four years ago and was buried there.’

  ‘So the stone is not above a grave? That’s most unusual, surely?’

  ‘Alas! It is above a grave but not his.’ Dr Booth spread his hands in a graphic expression of despair. ‘Isabella came back to live with us after Peter died. She insisted on erecting a memorial to him – somewhere for her to lay flowers and remember him. The rector was most understanding.’

  ‘So Daphne was your wife’s sister?’

  ‘Did I not say so? Yes, there were three sisters. Daphne was the oldest, then Hermione and then Violet, my wife. Daphne and her husband – he was in the army in India – died in a car crash when Isabella was five and we brought her up. We loved her as though she was our own child. She was a great joy to us as . . .’ He hesitated but obviously decided that he had gone too far to stop. ‘You see, we found – Violet and I – that we could have no children of our own.’

  ‘But you said Peter’s tombstone is a grave?’ Edward wrinkled his brow.

  ‘You may well look puzzled, Lord Edward.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Izzy, as we called her, died just a year ago and we buried her where she would have wanted. We are waiting to have her name engraved below Peter’s on the stone.’

  ‘She died of . . .? Forgive me! I do not wish to intrude on your grief.’

  ‘No, that’s all right, Lord Edward. The truth is that it’s a relief to talk about it. Violet won’t. In fact, she cannot even bring herself to commission the lettering on the stone. It’s as though Izzy cannot really be dead until her name appears below Peter’s.’

  Edward nodded his head sympathetically. ‘Was it . . . an accident?’

  ‘She became ill and I’m afraid I did not take it seriously enough. Her appendix ruptured and she died before I could get her to hospital.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. What a tragedy! I remember Peter well. He was a very nice boy. You are sure I haven’t upset you? It must be very painful for you . . .’

  ‘No, no, Lord Edward. As I told you, I don’t mind talking about it. I find it eases my heart but please don’t mention anything of what I have told you to Violet unless she raises it herself.’

  ‘I won’t, of course.’

  ‘Death may have no dominion over the departed, as the Prayer Book tells us, but sometimes it seems to have over the living. I gather from Charlotte’s letter that you want to talk to my wife about poor Hermione. Another tragedy! Such a dreadful business. Violet was very distressed.’

  ‘Were they close?’

  ‘Not close exactly but they got on well enough. They had a shared interest.’

  ‘Gardening?’

  ‘Yes. Although, as Violet is the first to admit, she was never in Hermione’s class. Anyway, I’ll take you to her. I have my rounds to do. I expect you will be gone before I’m through so I’ll say goodbye. What a coincidence you having met Peter in Kenya and knowing little Lottie so well – though I suppose she isn’t so little now. I’m afraid we haven’t seen her for a long time.’

  They walked across the lawn towards a kneeling figure. ‘Violet, my dear, here is Lord Edward Corinth.’ Dr Booth put out his hand and Edward took it. For a moment, he thought he saw a warning of some kind in his eyes but decided it must have been his imagination. The doctor smiled. ‘I’ll leave you two to chat. Goodbye again, Lord Edward. I am so pleased to have met you.’

  As she struggled to her feet – she had been on her knees weeding the border – Edward saw that Violet Booth was a handsome, stocky woman who in her youth might have been beautiful. She had strong bones and a firm chin. He thought she would not be someone to cross but her greeting was friendly enough, if somewhat gruff. When he complimented her on her garden – the border was full of interesting-looking plants – she softened and pointed out a few of which she was particularly proud. He praised her gardening skills and compared her to her sister but she strongly denied being in the same class, as her husband had predicted.

  ‘Oh, no, Lord Edward. Hermione is . . . was the gardener in the family. Even as a small child, she had her own patch which she called her allotment or rather, since she could not manage the word, her “lotment”.’

  They went into the house where Mrs Booth took off her gardening apron and straw hat and washed her hands under the kitchen tap. There was no servant in evidence and she seemed unembarrassed at letting Edward follow her into the kitchen. He wondered if it was some sort of test.

  ‘You have come a long way for a cup of tea,’ she said, filling a utilitarian brown teapot from the ancient-looking kettle simmering on the Aga. Edward put her down as one of those women who prided themselves on their no-nonsense approach to life. He could imagine her saying, ‘I don’t stand on ceremony,’ but instead she asked, ‘So you are a friend of Charlotte’s?’

  Edward spoke warmly of the Hassels, and Mrs Booth allowed herself to say that she had always liked Charlotte but could not abide her books.

  ‘I know she is very clever but I can’t understand them. I prefer Dorothy Whipple. Greenbanks?’

  ‘Perhaps having known the author as a child makes it difficult to read her as objectively you would a stranger,’ Edward ventured.

  ‘Maybe, but I blame it all on that Mrs Woolf. I bought one of hers – Mrs Dalloway, I think it was called. I couldn’t get past page thirty. Gibberish! And now everyone has to write like that.’

  They went into the drawing-room, a light, attractive room with a good view of the garden. ‘Sugar?’ she inquired, as though he would be judged on his response.

  ‘No, thank you.’ Edward cleared his throat. ‘I think Charlotte will have mentioned why I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘You think my sister was deliberately poisoned?’ she said forcefully but, underneath the bravado, he could see that she was upset.

  ‘I’m afraid I do. I don’t want you to think I’m muckraking. I believe there’s a dangerous man at large who has killed at least two other people in addition to your sister. And he has to be stopped.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Didn’t you think it odd when you found that piece of paper in the pocket of her boiler suit?’

  ‘The one with . . .?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I did think it odd but . . .’

  ‘I know – it’s a big leap from finding that quotation to thinking someone murdered her, and it might be best if I tell you
why I have come to that conclusion.’

  He recounted the whole story of his dentist’s murder and the link with the deaths of General Lowther and James Herold. She listened without interrupting.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ she said thoughtfully.

  ‘Was there nothing that puzzled you when you were cleaning out your sister’s house? By the way, what is happening to it? The garden’s famous. Is someone going to take it on?’

  Mrs Booth shrugged her shoulders. ‘What can I do? We can’t afford to keep up two houses and my husband’s work is here. He has been the local doctor for . . . ever since he qualified. His whole life is here. This is his family’s house, where he grew up. We couldn’t move and, to be frank, we would be very grateful for the money from the sale of her house. A place like this is expensive to keep up.’

  ‘Has your husband always lived here? I mean, presumably he trained in London.’

  ‘Yes, at Guy’s.’

  ‘And university?’

  ‘Alfred didn’t go to university and, before you ask, he was educated in Burnham Market. The Booths were an old family but never rich. Why are you interested?’

  ‘Sorry, I was being nosy – a bad habit of mine. May I ask . . .? Your husband mentioned that there were three of you . . . three sisters.’

  ‘Yes. Daphne died many years ago with her husband – in a motor accident.’

  ‘They were in India, your husband said?’

  ‘Yes, but the accident occurred when they were back in England on leave – outside Godalming. Fortunately, Isabella was not with them. So that just leaves me – the youngest. Does that make me a suspect?’ She attempted a smile but it faded into a grimace of pain.

  Edward was non-committal. He wondered why she had thought to give the exact location of Daphne’s fatal accident. It was as though she wanted him to know every last detail – as though she was punishing herself.