Fair Game

by Sheila Radley

  Despite their good works, the members of the county set are not always admired by the rest of the community. Their confident enunciation, and their habitual air of quizzical amusement, can get right up the noses of the self-made and the stroppy. People like Reg Brunt, the prosperous Chalcot butcher, are quick to sense that they are being put down, and to become angrily resentful.

  On the other hand there are those like Ann Harbord, Lewis Glaven’s housekeeper, who are so charmed by the upper classes that they are only too glad to be of service to them. And then there are those like Martin Tait, who persist in regarding the county set as an exclusive club which they are fully qualified to join, if only they can persuade a member to support their application.

  Tait had been trying to join for years. He certainly had the right voice, and the right air of effortless superiority. He wore the right clothes, too, after a youthful flirtation with trend and colour. He had a professional, property-owning middle-class background, at least in his grandparents’generation, and he had been to the right kind of school.

  Unfortunately, his school and university were both in minor leagues and he had never been able to build up the right network of friends and contacts. Until now, there had been no one to give him the elusive introductions that are the key to membership of the county set. But today was going to change all that. Today, as he drove between the double row of autumnal lime trees that formed the approach to Chalcot House, Martin was a happy man.

  It was just after nine o’clock. Rain was forecast before the end of the afternoon but the morning was just right for shooting, dry and with a strong enough breeze to make the pheasants fly well.

  The air and the grass had both been crisped by a touch of overnight frost. Visibility was good under a high pale sky, hazy with cloud, and the brilliant bronze of the beeches and the yellow of the maples made the countryside glow. Martin’s spirits were so high that when he glimpsed a cock pheasant pacing out from behind a tree, he couldn’t resist doing what he would have done at the age of nine: ‘Pchyeeow!’ he exploded, taking a pot-shot at the bird with his index finger.

  Then Chalcot House came into sight, grey and classically handsome beyond an expanse of lawn, and he grew up again.

  The long drive divided and made a sweeping circle round the leaf-littered grass, passing a shrubbery on the left before going on towards the front of the house. On the right, where the drive went past the back of the house, vehicles were parked and there was a lot of activity. Martin turned right and slowed, just for a moment feeling uncharacteristically anxious.

  It was going to be so important to make a good first impression. That was why he was glad that Alison wasn’t with him. Not, of course, that he was doubtful of her acceptability. But Lewis Glaven had suggested, when he telephoned the invitation, that she might like to join them later, for lunch and the afternoon shoot, and that suited Martin very well. It would be easier to exaggerate his claim to county status if Alison weren’t listening.

  He parked next to a scruffy Range Rover, unsure whether it was a good or a bad thing that his pride-and-joy BMW 318iS Coupé was by far the newest and cleanest vehicle there. The others were a classic sports car, an MGB GT, two other Range Rovers, a Landrover and a big old Volvo estate that evidently served as a mobile dog kennel.

  There seemed to be a lot of people among the vehicles, although in fact there were no more than five men and two women, indistinguishably greeny-brown in comfortable old shooting tweeds. They were exchanging hearty banter as they unloaded guns and cartridge bags and wellington boots and Barbours and shooting sticks. Gun dogs stalked about the yard, their growls as they sized each other up, and their yelps as their owners hauled them off, adding to the noise.

  Martin, a fair-haired, spare, sharp man, got out of his car and stood tall. The upper classes always seem to have a height advantage, and at only five foot eight – shorter than everyone there including the women – he hoped that his credibility wasn’t going to be damaged.

  He looked about him for his host’s pink cheeks and moustache. It was six months since he’d last met Lewis Glaven, at the County Show, and what with the uniform appearance of the shooting party, and their uniform height, he needed the moustache to identify him.

  ‘Ah, good morning to you!’

  Lewis Glaven saw him first and came over with an outstretched hand. He was wearing a tweed cap and a many-pocketed shooting coat, and shooting breeches with stockings and leather ankle boots. ‘Glad you could join us at such short notice. And that charming girl who was with you at the Show – will she be coming later?’

  ‘Yes indeed. Thank you for asking me to the shoot, and Alison to lunch. We’re both delighted to be included.’

  ‘Excellent. As I told you, it’s my son’s girlfriend’s first shoot too. Can’t expect young women to enjoy the sport if they have to spend the whole of their first day out in the cold, eh? We’ll all lunch together and then they can come and stand with the Guns for the last two drives.’

  Martin had felt he’d made a good start. Now, though, he had been put on a spot. He knew it had been traditional for an Edwardian lady to stand admiringly beside her man at a driven shoot, but he hadn’t realised that the Glavens still kept the custom.

  Alison wasn’t a country girl, she was a presenter with BBC local radio. She was coming to Chalcot without realising that she would be expected to watch the shoot at close quarters, and he felt sure that if she were beside him when he began bringing down birds, she would be horrified.

  ‘One small problem there, I’m afraid,’ he began carefully. The last thing he wanted was to offend his host, but he had to speak out. It wasn’t just that he knew better than to commit Alison to doing something she would hate. He was also afraid that she might make a public protest, and disgrace him. ‘I don’t think Alison’s ever likely to be a shooting enthusiast,’ he explained to his host. ‘What she really likes is photography. If you have no objection, I think she’ll be happier taking photographs rather than getting too close to the guns.’

  His host gave him a bristly look, all moustache and eyebrows. ‘Photographs? Of what?’

  ‘Well … er …’ Martin wished he’d had the sense to say that Alison would prefer just to go for a walk. The photography had been his idea, not hers. He’d wanted some photographs of himself at the shoot, and he’d instructed her in the use of his Canon EOS for the purpose. ‘Mainly of the house and the estate – with just a few action pictures of the Guns at the start of one of the drives. General views, of course,’ he added apologetically. ‘She wouldn’t get in the way.’

  Lewis Glaven’s pink cheeks darkened to red. His pale blue eyes, their blood-flecked whites a tired grey, seemed to bulge.

  ‘No photography – absolutely not! Good God, we can’t have novices wandering about with cameras during a shoot! Accidents can happen easily enough, without inviting ’em. Never forgive myself … No no, she must stand in the safest place, just behind you. Got that?’

  Tait drew himself up, sincerely contrite. It wasn’t easy to know how to address his host without sounding either obsequious or familiar, so he used the standard police courtesy: ‘Yes of course, sir.’

  ‘Right, then.’ Simmering down, Mr Glaven gave him a forgiving clap on the shoulder. ‘Your own first shoot, so you weren’t to know how hectic it can get out there when the birds start coming over. You’ll have enough to do and think about, without worrying where your girlfriend is. By the way – have you brought any ear-protectors? If not, I can lend you some.’

  ‘I always wear them when I’m shooting clays,’ Tait said, reminding his host that even if he’d never shot pheasants before, he was an expert with a gun. ‘Ear muffs are compulsory on the police firing range, so it’s become a habit with me.’

  ‘Very wise. We all wear muffs or plugs here at Chalcot, except for my old friend and neighbour Barclay Dodd. He’s been shooting without protection all his life, and now the poor chap’s deaf as a post. Ah, here’s our excellent Mrs Harbord with th
e coffee. Take a mug, and come with me to meet everyone.’

  A thin dark woman with gypsy ear-rings and an anxious frown, her inappropriately smart red coat providing the only splash of colour among the tweeds, was carrying round a tray of steaming mugs. When her employer thanked her, her face brightened and lifted towards him with disproportionate gratitude, as though she felt she had in some way been forgiven.

  She was followed – with a reluctance more intense than any teenage sulk – by her daughter, who carried a second tray. The girl’s black sweater, with its Wildwatch owl motif, emphasised the whiteness of her face. She kept her eyes well down behind the pale curtain of her hair, and deliberately avoided Lewis Glaven.

  For his part, he appeared not to notice her. Producing a battered silver flask from one of his pockets, he went among his guests offering to lace their coffee with whisky. Tait followed, holding his mug high to keep it from being knocked by the dogs. He preferred animals in a one-to-one relationship, and was unused to being knee-deep in waving tails and over-inquisitive noses.

  To his disappointment – he had expected a mention of his rank – his host introduced him with a ‘Do you know Martin Tait from Saintsbury?’ formula. He learned that his fellow members of the shooting party were from three well-known families of gentlemen-farmers: the Glavens themselves, the Dodds from Ashthorpe and the Treadgolds from Nether Wickford.

  Senior in age was Barclay Dodd, perched bulkily on a shooting stick in the middle of the yard. He wore a Barbour and shooting breeches, with an old tweed deerstalker crammed down on his white hair. His complexion was a weatherbeaten red darkening to purple about the nose, and he was beaming; the prospect of the day’s sport, unhampered by his deafness, obviously filled him with good humour.

  He rumbled a cheerful greeting at Tait, and accepted his hosts’s offer of a second slug of whisky in his coffee. When one of the labradors, strutting stiff-legged about the yard intent on marking its territory, cocked its leg against his shooting stick, Barclay Dodd was the first to enjoy the joke.

  His daughter Joanna, tall in lean trousers and high hunter boots, with a man’s flat cap worn forward on her tied-back chestnut hair, was not in a good humour. She was about Martin’s age, a big-boned woman with a long face, handsome but undeniably horsy. Having declined coffee, she was standing by one of the Range Rovers opening boxes of cartridges and loading them into her cartridge belt.

  Martin lifted his cap to her when he was introduced. She had such a height advantage that replacing it would mean that he had to peer up at her from under its peak, so he decided to carry it instead. He did his best to charm her, but after one quick comprehensive look and a brusque ‘How d’y’do,’ she turned dismissively away.

  ‘Joanna is a damn fine shot,’ Lewis Glaven told him, clearly trying to coax her into a better humour. ‘Very few women shoot, but those who do are good. Joanna must be the best in the county.’ But she shrugged off the compliment. As the men left her, she was cramming handfuls of extra cartridges into the pockets of her Barbour.

  Tait already knew of the Treadgold family, who owned several thousand acres of Suffolk. They were two bachelor brothers in their mid-fifties, and an older widowed sister, Dorothy Wilson-Brown. She had a formidable reputation, having served for many years on the County Council, most recently as deputy chairman; she was currently a council member of the County Agricultural Association, and also chairman of the governors of Breckham Market High School.

  On this occasion she seemed to be in charge of the mobile kennel and most of the dogs. A grey-haired woman, with shrewd brown eyes in a face as wrinkled as an over-wintered russet apple, she wore a rakish old sporting hat, layers of sensible clothes, stout wellies, and a careless fistful of jewelled rings on her gardener’s hands.

  Mrs Wilson-Brown appeared to be a favourite with Lewis Glaven, who called her Doffy and introduced her proudly as ‘Our chief picker-up’. She was a couple of inches taller than Martin, and she looked him over with some suspicion.

  ‘Haven’t brought your dorgs, have you?’ she demanded.

  He gave her his best smile. ‘Certainly not, without a specific invitation,’ he assured her. He hadn’t owned a dog since he was a boy, but he knew better than to let on; dog-owning is taken for granted by the county set. Besides, he wasn’t going to turn down the chance of winning a point for good manners.

  ‘Glad to hear it.’ She awarded him the point with an approving nod. ‘Some new Guns bring’em regardless, and I can’t abide badly trained dorgs at a shoot – can you?’ She gave him a smile, then turned to talk to Lewis Glaven, leaving Tait with her brothers.

  The two Treadgolds, George and Jim, both had high-complexioned Roman-nosed faces under their flat caps. They were much of a height, with long thin legs and corpulent middles that strained the buttons of their shooting coats. Their public activities extended no further than their own parish, and they were clearly more ill-at-ease with a stranger than their sister was. They stood stirring their coffee and looking down at Tait with a courteous but puzzled air, as though they had no idea what to talk to him about.

  ‘Do much shootin’?’ said one of them, in a tone that presupposed he didn’t.

  ‘Not as much as I’d like,’ said Tait, hoping for a future invitation to shoot at Nether Wickford Hall. ‘We don’t get much time for it in the CID.’

  ‘Ah,’ they said, even more at a loss.

  ‘Detective Superintendent,’ explained Tait modestly. Strictly speaking, he was still a chief inspector until he took up his new duties on the first of December, but it seemed a pity not to fix his new rank in their minds.

  ‘Ahh.’ They both nodded sagely, clearly no more impressed than if he’d said ‘Sergeant’, and gulped coffee. Tait began to feel vexed. Then one of them, emerging from his mug inspired, offered a humorous, deadpan contribution to the conversation: ‘Police, eh? Better get out and buy our dorg-licences, then …’

  The brothers grinned at Tait, inviting him to enjoy the pleasantry, and he dredged up a weary smile. Policemen become inured to such juvenile jests. Frankly, though, he was disappointed to hear it from the Treadgolds, particularly on a social occasion like this. He turned away, wondering whether they were really going to be worth cultivating.

  And then he caught a glimpse of an extraordinarily lovely girl. She had come round from the front of the house and was standing shyly at the corner of the yard, small and slim, and dressed in soft clear colours that were beautifully out of place in that earthy company. She seemed to Martin as delicate and huge-eyed as a fawn. Her cheekbones were high, and her fine gold hair, gently stirred by the wind, floated in tendrils about her face. He gaped at her, open-mouthed with admiration.

  With her was a man of his own age – only taller, dammit, and undeniably good-looking in his shooting clothes; Lewis’s son Will, presumably, the only member of the party Tait hadn’t yet met.

  Will Glaven seemed to be trying to coax the girl to come and meet everyone. It was clear that she was reluctant – even more so when two of the dogs bounded across the yard and leaped up at her. Flinching from them, she took fright and disappeared round the corner. Will called the dogs off and went after her but returned almost immediately, shrugging off the incident, to join the rest of the company.

  Martin, who prided himself on missing nothing, was incensed on the girl’s behalf.

  ‘What an oaf Will Glaven must be!’ he thought fiercely. ‘How could he try to drag a girl like that into a crowd like this? She doesn’t fit in here and she never will. She’s going to hate this kind of country life, absolutely hate it. And if he’s too stupid to see that, he doesn’t deserve her.’

  Disenchanted with some of his new companions, fed up with so

  many nosy dogs, bowled over by the girl and quite forgetting that

  he was already spoken for, Martin appointed himself her rescuer.

  The housekeeper’s daughter had removed the mugs and the shooting party was almost ready to leave. While Tait had been putting on
his work-worn wellingtons and Barbour, they were joined by an angular man in weatherproofs, carrying a thumbstick and with a whistle hanging round his neck. He seemed to know everyone else, and was now respectfully touching his cap and shaking hands all round.

  Lewis Glaven brought him over to Tait and introduced him as Alger the gamekeeper. ‘How do you do, sir?’ the man said, a thin smile cracking his bony face, and Tait realised that he was older than he had at first appeared; probably due for retirement. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr Tait. I hope you’ll enjoy the shoot.’

  His voice was polite, even smarmy, but there was a sardonic look in his faded eye. Tait felt that he’d been summed up as a novice, and it annoyed him. The keeper’s handshake lingered a little, possibly as a reminder that it was traditional at the end of a shoot for each Gun to press some banknotes into his hand by way of a tip. Tait had been thinking in terms of a couple of fivers, but now he decided that one would be quite enough.

  ‘Full complement of beaters today, Len?’ asked Lewis Glaven.

  ‘Yes sir, they’re now on their way to the first drive.’

  ‘Is the Jermyn boy with them? I wasn’t sure, yesterday, whether he’d come.’

  ‘He’s there, sir. For all the good he’ll do …’ The keeper’s weather-worn face became a deeper red. ‘I hope you realise, Mr Glaven,’ he burst out, ‘that I can’t take responsibility for the number of pheasants we’ll find in Belmont. I’ve done my best to teach him, but he’s got no aptitude for keepering. He’s too idle.’

  Lewis Glaven controlled his obvious irritation and made no comment. He gave the keeper some final instructions, and the man sloped off. The members of the shooting party called their dogs to heel, and awaited their host’s briefing.

  ‘Well now –’ he began in his clear, assured voice. ‘Delighted to see you all here at Chalcot for the start of the season. Couldn’t raise the usual eight guns at such short notice, I’m afraid, but we’re grateful to Martin Tait for making us up to seven. Let’s hope we’ll see some good sport.’