Pictures of Perfection

by Reginald Hill

Digweed left. There was little point in staying. As he crossed the street he noticed the three policemen gathered outside the Post Office. Perhaps, he thought uncharitably, they’d caught Wylmot fiddling the postal orders.

  He hurried into his shop and up the stairs into the computer room. Hardly had he entered when the bell on the shop door sounded.

  ‘Damn,’ he said, going out on to the landing and looking down the stairs.

  ‘’Morning,’ said Wield. ‘No, don’t come down. I’ll come up. I’ve got something for you.’

  He mounted the steep stairs two at a time. On the landing he paused and sniffed. There was a pleasantly pungent, rather spicy smell in the air.

  ‘Not interrupting a meal, am I?’ he said.

  ‘As you’ve just seen me come in, and as it’s only eleven o’clock in the morning, it’s hardly likely,’ said Digweed with all his old acidity. Then, immediately relenting, he added in a friendlier tone, ‘It’s that tiny kitchen of mine. Cooking smells seem to hang around forever. Come in here.’

  He led the way into the computer room and threw open a window.

  ‘There. Now we can smell the spring. Isn’t it a lovely day? Always is for the Reckoning, of course. Now, how can I help you?’

  ‘You can confirm that these are yours,’ said Wield, handing over the books.

  ‘Yes, indeed, these are they. Well done. Where did you find them?’

  ‘In Jason Toke’s bedroom,’ said Wield.

  ‘Ah yes. That poor boy. I’d begun to wonder … I’d seen him in here looking at The Warrior and other military books. The Thorburn too … but it was the Renoir catalogue that threw me. Where is it, by the way?’

  ‘Still in his possession, I’m afraid. It wasn’t for himself. He stole it to give to Caddy Scudamore.’

  ‘Of course. He’s besotted. The poor child.’

  ‘Him or her?’

  ‘Jason, of course. I think on closer acquaintance you’ll find it hardly a description which applies to Caddy. Look, Sergeant, I really don’t want to burden the lad with more trouble than his own mind creates for him. I shall not be pressing charges.’

  Wield frowned and said, ‘You may not be doing him a favour. Court appearance could put these obsessions of his in striking distance of a psychiatrist.’

  ‘You think he needs treatment? For being in love and reckoning that Britain in the ’nineties is a dangerously uncivilized place to live? Tut, man. By those criteria, I suspect fifty per cent of the population are sick!’

  ‘Fifty per cent of the population aren’t obsessed with guns and survival techniques,’ said Wield. ‘But you must make your own mind up. I doubt if we tie him in with the Post Office job, Mr Wylmot will feel so generous.’

  ‘Jason and the Post Office? But that’s simply absurd!’ protested Digweed.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ asked Wield.

  ‘Well, I don’t know, it just seems so. I mean, you didn’t find anything at Intake Cottage to suggest a connection, did you?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Wield. ‘Same m.o., but. Any road, sir, no need to bother you with that. Oh, by the way, thanks again for last night. The book, the bourbon, the thought. It were right kind. I really enjoyed it.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Digweed, offering, rather to Wield’s surprise, his hand. Mebbe this was how the middle classes acknowledged you weren’t a yob all the way through. His hand was cool and dry, his grip firm.

  ‘Sergeant …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Perhaps I could call and collect my glasses later?’

  ‘Sorry, I forgot all about them. Yes, sure. Or I’ll bring them down here.’

  He went out on to the landing. The spicy smell seemed stronger than ever. The door into the tiny kitchen was ajar, but the smell didn’t seem to emanate from there. And it was surely more herby than spicy.

  Wield’s nose was twitching in a very odd direction, both olfactorily and metaphorically.

  He said, ‘OK if I use your lav?’

  And without waiting for an answer he went through the half-open door of the bathroom. He knew he was right straight away. This was the source of the herbal smell; more precisely, a tall wall cupboard.

  He pulled its door open. It housed the hot water cylinder with a couple of shelves for airing clothes. He pushed aside a pile of underpants.

  There it was, hard against the side of the hot tank, the source of the tell-tale aroma, a small parcel bearing a Wimbledon address and almost certainly containing the slice of herb pudding Mrs Hogbin sent to her nephew every week. There was a packet addressed to a mail order firm, that would be Mrs Stacey’s cardigan. And two harder packets clearly containing books. And half a dozen envelopes.

  Why should Digweed have turned burglar to retrieve his own books? Then one of the names on the book packets jumped up and hit him in the eye.

  Ms Eleanor Pascoe.

  He turned with the packages in his hands.

  ‘I think I’d better see if I can find some more bourbon,’ said Edwin Digweed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘I tell you everything, and it is unknown the Mysteries you conceal from me.’

  Larry Lillingstone sat with his dusty records strewn all before him, but his inward eye was focused on the annals of his own pastorship, and the result was far from blissful.

  ‘Larry, one of these days I’m going to catch you doing something deeply embarrassing,’ said Kee from the open french window.

  ‘Kee, I’m sorry. I was miles away.’

  ‘Metaphysically, I presume?’

  ‘Physically too, soon. I don’t think it’ll be long before Enscombe and I part company.’

  ‘Good Lord. I think I’d better sit down.’

  She came forward with her easy grace, slipped into a wheelback chair and regarded him expectantly.

  ‘I’ve asked to see the Bishop next week,’ he said. ‘I think it’s time I moved on.’

  ‘But you’ve only been here two minutes.’

  ‘I suppose in Enscombe terms that’s all that six months amounts to,’ he said. ‘But man proposes, God disposes. Kee, I was just going to have a coffee. Let me get you one.’

  ‘No, really, I’d rather …’ But Lillingstone was already out of the room. She heard his footsteps go down the flagged corridor into the kitchen, then emerge and run lightly up the stairs. Perhaps he really needed to go to the loo and some clerical modesty forbade him from saying so. But there was no distant flushing of water as the footsteps descended like a Goon Show sound effect, diminishing into the kitchen once more, and finally crescendoing back to the study.

  ‘Coffee,’ he said, handing her a mug. ‘Was there something special you wanted to see me about?’

  ‘No. Just to return this,’ she said, laying the Deed of Gift on the table. ‘But while I’m here … What you said last night at the meeting, about perhaps something coming up which could save the school, it didn’t have anything to do with the vicarage, did it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked almost angrily.

  ‘Just that with the vicarage being up for sale …’

  ‘Oh, you don’t imagine you’ll get any money out of the Church Commissioners, do you?’ he mocked. ‘They’ve got the cost accountants in too.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t that, it was something quite different. But it will keep. As, apparently, will your ray of hope.’

  She made to rise and he said abruptly, ‘It’s Caddy.’

  ‘I’m sorry? You mean Caddy is going to save the school? Or Caddy is your reason for leaving?’

  He laughed a little wildly and said, ‘Both, perhaps. Or neither.’

  She regarded him with irritation, herself with more. She didn’t want to talk about his feelings for Caddy, had consciously avoided his previous attempt to broach the subject. Left to himself he would probably make his play, get brushed off with that indifference which was more hurtful than dislike, be broken-hearted, then recover. But the idiot wanted an audience! It was Kee’s belief that there is no obstacle to intimacy
greater than a shared secret. And she wanted to be intimate with this man. Upstairs, downstairs, indoors, outdoors, in sickness and in health intimate!

  She ought to get out now.

  He said, ‘Kee, I need to talk about Caddy …’

  She fixed him with her wide candid gaze and said, ‘No need, Larry. I’ve seen Caddy drive enough men to irrational behaviour to recognize the symptoms.’

  ‘Men. Which men?’ he asked indignantly.

  Time to bring him down from his romantic heights.

  She said, ‘Justin Halavant, for instance.’

  ‘I’d have thought assaulting young women was far from irrational in his scheme of things,’ said the Vicar contemptuously.

  ‘Champagne, silk sheets and a light scatter of rose petals are more in his line than a quick bonk on a draughty staircase next to a roomful of people whose good opinion he values,’ said Kee.

  Surprise made him consider this unexpected defence, and for the first time since he’d heard the story of Halavant’s repulse, Lillingstone felt a tendril of sympathy trail across his mind.

  He brushed it aside and said heavily, ‘I love her.’

  ‘Oh, love,’ she said, smiling faintly. ‘Where does that leave us? For some reason you haven’t declared your passion (nice word that, both exact and euphemistic), perhaps because you have very reasonable doubts whether Caddy would make a satisfactory clerical helpmeet, or perhaps because you’ve got a mad first wife already locked up in the attic.’

  She glanced up at the ceiling in mock suspicion, and down at Lillingstone in mock surprise as with perfect timing a floorboard creaked.

  ‘I love the way old houses join in conversations,’ she said, trying to lighten things.

  ‘We are talking about your sister,’ he said, unresponsively.

  ‘So we are.’ Time to take the plunge. ‘Larry, your comfort, if comfort there can be, must be that you’re right if you think Caddy wouldn’t make a satisfactory wife for a vicar. Nor for almost anyone. Nor incidentally a satisfactory live-in or live-out mistress, if your thoughts stray in that direction.’

  ‘You’re very blunt,’ he said coldly. ‘Frightened of losing a sister, or a meal ticket, I wonder?’

  ‘Oh dear, it’s bad enough for rudeness, is it?’ said Kee. ‘I only wish there were anything I could do which might be of comfort to you. All I can give is that coldest of advice, that you should exert yourself to forget her. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Exert myself?’ he cried, spiralling into melodrama in an effort to hide the true depth of his feelings. ‘How easy for those who have no sorrow of their own to talk of exertion! But as I’ve told you, I shall probably be exerting myself out of Enscombe in the very near future. I hope that will satisfy you.’

  ‘No, I didn’t come here in search of any such satisfaction,’ she said, rising. ‘And to tell the truth, I’m not all that keen to hear you rabbiting on about your feelings for my sister. Thanks for the coffee, which incidentally was cold.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Lillingstone. ‘Kee, I’m sorry. I’m a pompous twerp, aren’t I? And that crack about a meal ticket was unforgivable. We all know how much Caddy relies on you to give her space to work. I’m sorry. Forgive me?’

  ‘Forgiving’s easy. It’s understanding that’s hard,’ she said. ‘You say that man proposes, God disposes. So why don’t you carry out your part of the arrangement? Go and see Caddy and propose to her – marriage, anything you will! That way at least you’ll get your pain over and I won’t find myself having to present my sister as some kind of monster.’

  He shook his head and said helplessly, ‘I wish it was so easy.’

  ‘I can’t see how it can be any easier unless you do it by fax,’ she said.

  ‘The point is I can’t do it at all,’ he said. ‘The thing is, I’ve taken a vow of celibacy.’

  He spoke with a rather defiant pride, deriving from his sense that while a pact with the Deity certainly demanded a modicum of reverential awe, it also had about it an inescapable whiff of absurdity.

  Kee looked neither awestruck nor amused, merely puzzled.

  ‘Good Lord,’ she said. ‘Does this mean you’re a closet Catholic or something?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Just an Anglican who may have bitten off more than he can chew.’

  ‘In that case, can’t you get out of it? The papers seem full of priests who’ve jilted the Pope in favour of a good woman.’

  ‘It’s probably easier when you’re taking on a whole system,’ said Lillingstone glumly.

  ‘Ah, I see. In your case it’s your own conscience you’re up against and that carries a lot more weight than a mere trifle like the authority of the Holy Catholic Church!’

  ‘Now hold on,’ he said, growing angry. ‘This is my faith we’re talking about …’

  ‘I don’t think so. I think it’s your ego,’ said Kee, angry in her turn. ‘Makes you feel good, does it? More perfect than the rest of us? But you can’t stop feeling randy, so you decide, if you can’t have Caddy, next best thing is a little heart to heart with me. Vicarious sex, how apt! But I’m not into that game, Larry. What you need is another chap in a skirt on the other side of a grille.’

  She made for the window. He went after her, saying, ‘Please, Kee, don’t go like this. I don’t know where I am, I need to talk …’

  ‘Then talk to your Leader up there!’ cried Kee, pointing satirically at the ceiling.

  And once again with perfect timing there came a noise. But no creaking board this time. A distinct crash, as something fell and shattered, and a voice letting out an angry ‘Oh bug …’ hastily cut off.

  ‘There’s someone up there,’ said Kee. ‘All this talk of vows and celibacy, and you’ve got someone stowed away up in your bedroom!’

  ‘No, really, it’s not … it’s no one …’

  ‘No one? This I just have to see.’

  Before he could stop her, she was past him, out of the room and racing up the stairs.

  He followed, protesting, but there was no chance of catching her. By the time he reached the landing she was flinging open the bedroom door. And stopping dead in her tracks.

  She didn’t know what she expected, she only knew this was far, far worse.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘Now, it will gradually all come out – your Crimes & your Miseries – how often you were on the point of hanging yourself – restrained only … by the want of a Tree.’

  Digweed said, ‘In a sense it was my own property I was stealing.’

  ‘Oh aye? In what sense does Mrs Hogbin’s herb pudding or Mrs Stacey’s cardigan belong to you?’ asked Wield.

  ‘I wasn’t going to keep them,’ protested the bookseller. ‘I would have left them at the GPO in town.’

  ‘That might save you six months,’ said Wield drily. ‘So what made you decide to steal your own property?’

  ‘It was a foolish impulse,’ said Digweed. ‘I realized I had packed the wrong book in one of my parcels. I could of course have retrieved it from the Post Office this morning, but last night as I returned home, my judgement clouded by alcohol – you recall we drank a considerable quantity together, Sergeant – the notion came into my head of picking up the parcel there and then, so to speak. I think I must have been influenced by the discovery of Toke’s burglary of my shop. Traumatized is I think the cant term. I deeply regret my action and will of course make full restitution.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Wield.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘That ’ud be a better line,’ said Wield. ‘You try the other load of bollocks out in court and you’ll get five years. Let me take you through it slowly. You didn’t do it on the way home, you did it in the early hours of the morning. You weren’t traumatized by Toke’s break-in, but it did give you the idea of how to set about it. You didn’t ask Wylmot for the parcel back because you knew, him being a by-the-rule-book kind of gent, he was unlikely to break regulations and hand back an item of mail that had been accepted. And of course,
once you’d asked for it and been refused, any subsequent theft might have put you in the frame.’

  He paused and admired Digweed’s attempts to look indignant.

  ‘And as for your judgement being clouded by alcohol, I reckon you were sober as a judge. And don’t give me any crap about yon bourbon you so generously brought along in case I was feeling lonely. All you wanted to do was make sure the one cop left in the village was in no fit state to be snooping around in the middle of the night!’

  ‘Now that’s outrageous!’ protested Digweed, flushing.

  ‘Is it? You even brought them fancy glasses so’s I’d not notice how much I was drinking compared with you!’

  The flush remained but it had more of shame in it now than indignation.

  ‘All right, Sergeant, I admit it. Such was my intention. But I don’t want you to think … Look, all right, I was not predisposed to like you. But it will not do. In vain have I struggled. I do not say this in hope of influencing you in your official capacity, but my feelings will not be repressed. Already before last night I was beginning to realize there was more to you than meets the eye. Last night, I admit it, I came because I wanted to get you drunk. But I stayed because I found that, despite all the differences between us, I was enjoying myself.’

  He ground to a halt. Wield regarded him with astonishment, then burst out, ‘Well, thanks a lot, sir. That’ll really keep me warm in the geriatric ward, recalling how a gent like you once took a shine to a common or garden copper like me.’

  For some reason the reaction seemed to please Digweed who smiled as he replied, ‘Hurt your feelings, have I, Sergeant? Or are you perhaps just a teeny bit ashamed to think that you actually enjoyed a night’s drinking with a tedious old intellectual like me?’

  Wield fought back an inclination to return the smile and said, ‘So let’s see what all the fuss was about, shall we?’

  He took the parcel addressed to Ellie Pascoe and started to rip it open.

  ‘I told you, I realized I’d packed the wrong book,’ said Digweed, alarmed. ‘And it wasn’t that packet anyway …’

  ‘You don’t give up, do you?’ said Wield. ‘Of course it was this packet. Soon as you realized our Mr Pascoe might be related to your Ms Pascoe, you got worried, and you didn’t let up till you’d checked they were one and the same. So what is it you don’t want to fall into the hands of a copper’s wife?’