This unlikely-sounding string of vocables had a temporarily stunning effect, not because of its content, but because to listen to, it seemed at first to make no sense at all. After a few moments, however, Fen nodded in sudden comprehension. ‘Hagberd was an Australian, wasn’t he?’ he said. ‘So he was annoyed with a girl, or upset about one.’
‘What girl, Gobbo?’ said the Major.
‘Er didn’arf create.’
‘The girl did?’ said Padmore, baffled.
‘“Er” means “he”, my dear chap,’ the Major told him. ‘In this context, anyway.’
‘In this context,’ said Padmore heavily. ‘Yes. I see. But anyway, what girl? This is the first I’ve heard of there being a woman in the case - I mean, apart from Mrs Leeper-Foxe and the Bust child.’
‘I don’t think Hagberd would have referred to Mrs Leeper-Foxe as a sheila,’ said the Major. ‘Sheila’s a more or less complimentary word, isn’t it?’ He returned to the attack. ‘Now listen, Gobbo. You say Hagberd was going on about a sheila. What sheila?’
‘Doan know no Sheilas,’ Gobbo retorted firmly, as if he were being accused of something. ‘Furrin sort of a name,’ he offered, supplementing entertainment with instruction.
‘Let’s try another tack, then,’ said the Major, ‘Gobbo, you know where Routh was murdered, do you?’
‘Ehss.’
‘Well, where?’
‘Bawdeys Meadow.’
‘And how far away from here is that?’
Gobbo ruminated. ‘Better nor tew mile,’ he eventually said. A joke occurred to him. ‘So be they abbn’ move’ en,’ he added, cawing with laughter.
‘Yes, well, my dear fellow, don’t you see, if Hagberd was two miles away from here murdering Routh, you couldn’t have been talking to him under the tree, could you?’
‘Ehss.’
‘No, you couldn’t, Gobbo.’
‘So be,’ said Gobbo happily, ‘they abbn’ move’ en - abbn’ move’ en, see? Abbn’,’ he croaked on a note of deep self-satisfaction, ‘move’ en.’
‘That’s right,’ said Fen.
‘But he can’t have been talking to him,’ said Padmore irritably. ‘He’s thinking of the wrong day.’ He addressed himself to Gobbo direct. ‘You can’t have been talking to Hagberd that evening. Or anyway, not at the time you say you were.’
Gobbo gave a dignified sniff. ‘Tes trew, after that,’ he said. ‘So be ’ee doan believe ut, ask en up over,’ he went on, jerking his head in the direction of the ceiling. ‘Er sees all, knows all.’
These indications, which seemed to Padmore to add up to God, were more mundanely interpreted by the Major. ‘Jack Jones?’ he said. He meant The Stanbury Arms’s landlord, a pronounced ergophobe of thirty-eight who spent almost all of his time upstairs in bed. ‘But if he’d seen you, he’d have been bound to mention it, I’d have thought.’
‘But it’s all nonsense,’ said Padmore. ‘It must be all nonsense.’
‘Still, think what a scoop you’ll have, my dear chap, if it turns out that Hagberd didn’t murder Routh after all.’
‘I don’t want a scoop. I just want not to have to write seventy-five thousand words all over again.’
‘Someone ought to have a word with Jack Jones about it, though,’ said Fen.
‘But it’s all nonsense.’
‘Oh, come now, my dear fellow,’ said the Major, ‘we can’t just drop the matter at this stage, can we?’
‘But if there was anything in it, this Jack Jones or whoever you’re talking about would have said. You said so yourself.’
‘Yes, but he may know something he doesn’t know he knows. Fen, my dear fellow, don’t you think it possible that Jack Jones knows something he doesn’t know he knows?’
‘Quite possible, I’d say.’
‘Well then, so we must dig it out,’ said the Major, as though Jack Jones were a challenging deposit of mineral-bearing clay. ‘Let’s ask Isobel if we can go and see Jack now, shall we?’
‘Now?’ said Padmore.
‘Yes, why not?’
And Padmore sighed. ‘Oh, all right,’ he said resignedly. ‘It’s a wild-goose chase, obviously - or at least, I hope it is. But all right.’
So they got to their feet - the Major effortfully, because of his arthritic hip - and went across to the bar-counter. Fred, who had sprung up with a yelp of gladness on seeing them begin to move, subsided again despairingly as soon as their direction became apparent. With the suddenness characteristic of old age, Gobbo had fallen fast asleep; his mouth hung open, displaying ochrous leathery gums and a pink tongue. Isobel Jones, summoned from the room at the back, said Yes, of course, her husband would be delighted to see them.
‘Just a mo’ and I’ll let him know you’re coming,’ she said, ‘so he can straighten himself up. Not that he isn’t very clean and neat always, but he likes to make a special effort when people visit him.’ Picking up a broomstick, she thumped lightly with its handle on the ceiling; and after a short interval an answering thump came from above.
‘There you are, then,’ said Isobel, nodding brightly at them.
‘Away do go,’ said Fen.
3
Jack Jones’s avocation - doing absolutely nothing, cleanly, healthily and inexpensively – had defied rational expectation by making him happy – though there had been, of course, difficulties, such as any true pioneering scheme must encounter as a matter of course, at least in its earlier stages. In Jack Jones’s case, the chief of these had been a woman doctor in Glazebridge, who three years previously had taken it into her head to try and get his licence for The Stanbury Arms withdrawn, on the grounds that the landlord’s systematic physical inanimation must mirror a deep–seated psychic disturbance, liable to result in neglect of the lavatories, watering of the whisky, a colour bar and many other similar anti–social catastrophes; and although the Glazebridge magistrates, who disliked the woman doctor, had collaborated with the Glazebridge police in blocking this pragmatical nonsense, the woman doctor was still about, and Jack Jones consequently went (or to be more accurate, lay) in constant fear of the assault’s being renewed. As a result, once yearly he would constrain himself to a fever of activity, getting up, dressing and having himself driven into Glazebridge, all in order to attend Brewster Sessions personally and make sure that his livelihood was not again meddlesomely being put at risk. As he himself was the first to admit, these expeditions were purely superstitious, since licensees are always notified well in advance if any objection to them is going to be made; but he would have been incapable of neglecting them, in spite of the dreadful exertions they dictated, however hard he tried.
In all other respects, however, his existence was a sunny one. At nights he slept with Isobel in the bedroom at the back. In the mornings, after exercising on a rowing–machine and taking a bath, he moved into another bed in the living–room at the front, so placed that he could look out of the window over the carpark, and watch people’s comings and goings during opening hours. As to Isobel, far from resenting this regimen, she enjoyed running the pub single–handed, and was delighted that her husband had had the chance to settle down to a way of life which suited him so definitely. What a piece of luck it had been (she often said), that Pools win which had made it possible for them to buy the Arms! But for that, poor Jack would probably have been forced to stay on in Dagenham for years and years and years more, going out to that nasty motor factory five days a week or more.
A thin, spruce man with horn–rimmed glasses which looked too large for him, Jack Jones greeted the committee from the bar with his usual sociable warmth. ‘How do you do?’ said Padmore, on being introduced. ‘You’re on the mend, I hope.’ So then Fen and the Major had to explain that their host was not an invalid, but merely had a settled disrelish for being up and about.
‘It’s back–to–the–womb, so they tell me,’ said Jack Jones, giving the tidily tucked placental sheets an approving pat. ‘I’m emotionally immature – can’t bear the thought o
f having to face up to life’s problems. Well, it is nice to see you all,’ he said with evident sincerity. ‘I am pleased.’
They said that they were pleased, too, and the Major explained why they had come.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Jack Jones, frowning slightly. ‘It’s a bit difficult. I do remember that evening, of course, because the police questioned everyone in the neighbourhood about it –even,’ he said in gentle wonderment, ‘me. So of course, that way it got fixed in my mind. And I can tell you one thing – Gobbo certainly did leave here that evening bang on time. I know because I looked at my watch because the afternoon seemed to have gone by in a flash, and I could hardly believe it was so late. And he did have his sit–down as usual under the old elm. But as to whether he talked to anyone, I can’t be sure. Because, look.’
With deliberation, so as to avoid punishing his muscles needlessly, Jack Jones elevated himself an inch or two against the pillows. He pointed out of the window. Clustering round the bed–head, Fen and Padmore and the Major gazed intelligently in the direction indicated. There, sure enough, was the elm–tree, with the bench fixed round its bole. There too was the battered grey Morris 1000 which Padmore had hired in Glazebridge to take him round the neighbourhood. And there too was a much newer, larger shinier saloon, whimsically disfigured by the words Avgas Will Travel painted along its side. Hundreds of unidentifiable small birds sat in rows on the telephone wires, pecking sedulously at their armpits. A light breeze blew. In the centre of the lane beyond the car–park a couched cat was having a choking fit, trying to bring up a fur–ball.
‘Because, look,’ said Jack Jones. ‘From where I am’ – and his inflection made it clear that where he was could be taken for all practical purposes as immutable – ‘from where I am you can see the tree. Bend closer.’ They bent closer. ‘You can see the tree – only not, of course,’ said Jack Jones, ‘if there’s anything in front of it.’
The Major straightened up rather abruptly. ‘Yes, quite so, my dear fellow,’ he said. ‘One very seldom can see anything if there’s anything in front of it. Not properly, anyway. So there was something in front of it that evening, was there? A car, I suppose. But in that case, from up here, couldn’t you even so have seen if –’
‘No, because it was a horse–box,’ Jack Jones said. ‘One of Clarence Tully’s. I’ve told him he can leave them here any time he wants, and that evening he did, and that’s what cut off my view of the old elm.’
‘So actually, you couldn’t even see Gobbo?’
‘Oh yes, I could see Gobbo. Well, part of him.’
‘Well then, couldn’t you see if he was talking to anyone?’
‘No, I couldn’t, I’m afraid. Anyone he was talking to would’ve been hidden completely by the horse–box.’
‘Yes, quite, but what I mean is, you could see he was talking to someone, couldn’t you? You could see his mouth move and so forth.’
‘No.’
‘But, my dear chap, why ever not?’
‘Because it was only Gobbo’s back part I could see. I couldn’t see his face at all.’
‘Well,’ said Fen, ‘but what about when Gobbo left, to go on home?’
‘I wasn’t here, I’m afraid. I’d got up to go to the toilet. And then when I came back, Gobbo had left … I’m sorry,’ said Jack Jones sadly, ‘but there it is.’
‘As a matter of interest, though,’ said Fen, ‘when you came back, was there anyone in the car–park at all?’
‘No, no one. Nothing except for the horse–box. Mondays are always quiet. No, the only other – Wait, though!’ said Jack Jones in sudden excitement. ‘Wait! The Rector!’
‘The Rector, my dear fellow? What about him?’
‘He passed!’
‘Passed? Where? When?’
‘Just before I went to the toilet, it was,’ said Jack Jones, gratified at having at last found something positive to tell them. ‘Coming up along the lane fast, the Rector was – you know, with that bandy–legged stride of his – and he scowled up that path that leads back to Mrs Clotworthy’s cottage, and then when he got opposite the old elm he scowled at Gobbo too.’
‘Scowled?’ said Padmore in some surprise. He evidently had no idea that Burraford’s Rector, a naturally splenic man, was apt to be irked by the mere sight of a parishioner, no matter how harmlessly occupied. ‘Scowled. I see. Yes. And what did he do then?’
‘Went on past.’
‘But if Hagberd had been there, talking to Gobbo, then he must have seen him, mustn’t he?’
‘No. Not if Hagberd was round at the back of the old elm. Because look at how thick that trunk is.’
‘Yes, I see that, but – but – Look, let’s put it this way. Was Gobbo facing right?’
‘No, left’
‘I’ll try again. What I meant was, was Gobbo facing the right way to have been talking to Hagberd if Hagberd was at the back of the elm?’
‘Oh, that. Yes. Sure he was.’
‘We’ll have to ask the Rector,’ said the Major. ‘There’s nothing else for it.’
‘But if he’d seen Hagberd talking to Gobbo, he’d be bound to have told the police.’
‘Yes, my dear fellow, but as we were saying before, if Gobbo was seen talking to someone, that would verify his story at least to that extent. We’ve got to go on inquiring, it seems to me, so long as there’s anything left to inquire about Jack, don’t you agree?’
‘Gracious, yes, Major. It’s all very interesting – quite an excitement I’m only sorry I can’t help you more over it myself, but it was that rhubarb Isobel gave me for lunch that day.’
2. Alps on Alps Arise
Though we write ‘parson’ differently, yet ’tis but ‘person’ … and ’tis in Latin persona, and personatus is a parsonage.
John Selden: Table-Talk
1
So they left Jack Jones and went back downstairs to the bar, which by now was beginning to fill up a bit. Gobbo was still asleep - bent forward at an alarming-looking angle, as though putting his head down to ward off a faint - and Padmore, who wanted to ask him more questions, said that it would be only humane to wake him, and set him upright again. But the Major disagreed. They had much better see the Rector first, he said, and then if necessary refer the matter back to Gobbo later. As to Gobbo’s posture, he often slept that way, and it seemed if anything to do him good, possibly by easing the pressure of his heart on his diaphragm, or vice versa. This transferable-vote hypothesis having subdued Padmore temporarily, they retrieved the whippet Fred, and Fen’s sack, and went out into Indian summer.
The small birds had all disappeared, no doubt on the first leg of a migration, and so had the cat. From the kennels of the Glazebridge and District Harriers, three quarters of a mile away, came a clamour of hounds, at this distance uncannily suggestive of the bawlings of football fans attending a match. Suddenly there was a muffled explosion, and the near-side rear tyre of Padmore’s hired car subsided to a rubber pancake.
‘Now look what’s happened,’ said Padmore.
But the Major said that he was supposed to walk anyway, for the benefit of his arthritis, so after Padmore had stared fixedly at the car for several moments, the expedition to the Rector set off on foot. Waving good-bye to Jack Jones at his window, it turned left along the lane in the direction of Aller and Glazebridge - past the church with its tall tower (‘Popish’, was the Rector’s opinion of church towers) and ring of seven bells (‘Popish’); past the Old Parsonage, where Mrs Leeper-Foxe had had her dreadful experience while eating breakfast; and so, after a couple of hundred yards, out of Burraford into what once, before the Central Electricity Generating Board got at it, had been open country.
Power-lines marched and countermarched, criss-crossing one another at all angles, like files of army motor-cyclists giving a display at a tattoo; it was to Burraford, for preference, that the Board brought distinguished foreign visitors when it wanted to exhibit its method of never using one pylon where three would do as wel
l. Underneath the Board’s jumble of ironmongery there were, however, fields, hedges, trees, brooks, footpaths and farm animals. To your right, on a reasonably clear day, you could see part of the south-eastern escarpment of the Moor. To your left you could see the eighteenth-century façade of Aller House. Ahead - about a mile ahead where the lane sloped upwards to a series of narrow bends and the hedges changed to high stone walls and embankments - you could see Aller hamlet. Here the Rector lived, and here Fen had rented a cottage for the three months of his stay. If you carried on beyond Aller, for five miles or so, you arrived eventually at Glazebridge, the small but affluent market town which was the centre of the district.
Owing to the Major’s hip, progress was slow; but Fen’s sack weighed heavy enough to make him glad to amble, and Pad-more was clearly not athletic at the best of times. They met, and were greeted by, a steady trickle of people coming away from the preparations for the Church Fete. Pattering along a yard or two ahead of them, Fred frequently turned his head to make sure they were still there. He seemed to be afraid that if he relaxed his vigilance at all, a pub would spring up magically by the roadside, and suck the Major in.
Padmore gave an account of himself.
He was not, it appeared, properly speaking a crime reporter at all. In reality he was an expert on African affairs, and had returned from the dark continent three months previously with the cheerless distinction of having been expelled from more emergent black nations, more expeditiously, than any other journalist of any nationality whatever. Even Ould Daddah and Dr Hastings Banda had expelled him, he said - the latter inadvertently, under the impression that he was a Chinese.
‘Underdeveloped countries with overdeveloped susceptibilities,’ said Padmore sourly.
There had been no question, he went on, of his trying to knock African aspirations; on the contrary, he sympathized with them. Simply, he had had a run of exceptionally bad luck. He would send off a cable censuring some dissident General at the exact moment when the General’s minions were successfully gunning down the palace guards, the Deputy Postmaster and the doorman at the television studios. Or he would praise the enlightened policies of a Minister already on his way to be sequestrated or hanged. Or he would commend the up-to-date safety precautions at an oil refinery which the next day would go up in flames, with fearsome loss of life. As a result of all this, eventually his paper, the Gazette, tiring of running indignant news items about their special correspondent’s various expulsions, had called him back to London, a call he had answered as soon as he could get out of the Zambian prison where he had been put because of an article drawing the world’s attention to how well President Kaunda was always dressed (this had been interpreted as imputing conspicuous waste in high places). The Gazette people had been very nice about it, Padmore said. They hadn’t at all blamed him. There had been no question of not keeping him on the strength. Nevertheless, no one had been able to find anything much for him to do until the night when Chief Detective Superintendent Mashman had given a party to celebrate his retirement after thirty years in the Force. All four of the Gazette’s senior crime staff had gone to this, and on their way back from it had driven rapidly into the back of a Bird’s Eye Frozen Foods lorry and been removed to hospital. So when the sensational news of Routh’s murder had come in, the following morning, Padmore had been assigned to cover the story; not (as he admitted) because he had any special qualifications for doing so, but because his mooning about the office was beginning to get on everyone’s nerves.
The Glimpses of the Moon Page 2
