Pictures of Perfection

by Reginald Hill

  Wield didn’t respond. He was concentrating all his attention on the drama going on behind the table.

  ‘Yet basically I knew that nothing had changed. The laws of legitimacy are as strong as, indeed are an integral part of, the laws of male primogeniture. I am admitting you to the workings of my thought today because I want you to understand the workings of my heart also. Before you all I want to acknowledge, and to acknowledge with pleasure and pride, this man George Creed as my grandson. But equally, at the same time …’

  He paused. Guy the Heir was regarding him with rapt expectation. The villagers of Enscombe too were raptly expectant, but not, from their faces, of aught for their comfort.

  ‘Here it comes,’ hissed Digweed. ‘The face of tomorrow, God help us every one.’

  The Squire was peering openly now at second slip as if hoping like a monarch of old that even at this late stage a champion would ride forth to defend his family’s honour. But second slip had no help to offer, and now the Squire shrugged and turned to Guy. At last he showed every year of his age.

  ‘But equally, at the same time,’ he repeated, ‘I have to acknowledge my great-nephew, Guy Guillemard …’

  ‘Wait!’

  And, as in all the best legends, at this very latest of last minutes, a Champion appeared.

  It was Wield, moving steadily and purposefully forward. Digweed took an anxious step after him, then stopped. Dalziel said to Pascoe, ‘What’s yon daft bugger up to?’

  Girlie Guillemard stopped puffing at her pipe and wafted away the concealing clouds so that she could more easily view the interrupter.

  Wield advanced till he was standing directly opposite Guy the Heir.

  He’s going to issue a challenge! thought Digweed with mingled anguish and delight.

  ‘Guy Guillemard,’ intoned Wield in a voice which carried to the furthermost corners of the garden. ‘I am arresting you for an offence under the Protection of Birds Act 1954, Schedule One, Part One, insomuch as it is alleged that on the banks of the River Een within the Parish of Enscombe you did feloniously shoot and kill a protected bird, to whit a kingfisher. You have the right to remain …’

  But before Wield could complete the caution, the Squire had seized Guy’s arm and demanded in a voice strong with anger, ‘Is this true? You shot the kingfisher?’

  ‘So I shot a bird,’ said Guy, trying unsuccessfully to shake the old man off. ‘You must have killed many a thousand in your time. This stupid plod’s jerking us about. What a man does on his own land …’

  ‘This is not your own land,’ said the Squire. ‘Have you no idea what the kingfisher means to the Guillemards?’

  Guy, suddenly aware that this might be more serious than the humiliation of a public dressing-down, tried to compose his features to conciliation.

  ‘Look, if I did this, I’m sorry. But I’m not sure I did. OK? I take the occasional pot at a pigeon or a crow while we’re working in the woods, so do most of my team …’

  He looked towards his team and a couple of heads finally nodded in belated confirmation.

  ‘… and these aren’t country boys, they wouldn’t know the difference between a kingfisher and a capercaillie, so if one of them …’

  ‘It was shot with a crossbow,’ said Wield. ‘The bolt was retrieved from the body so there could be little doubt that the killer knew what he had done. The same bolt was later fired into the inn sign of the Morris Men’s Rest. Assaulting this sign seems to be a hobby peculiar to the Guillemards, or do your team emulate you in this also?’

  ‘How do you know it was the same bolt?’ demanded Guy desperately.

  ‘Forensic examination of blood traces,’ said Wield promptly. ‘DNA testing has linked the blood on the bolt to this precise bird.’

  Dalziel and Pascoe looked at each other incredulously, knowing this was pure invention. Guy too was trying to look incredulous but making a pretty poor fist of it.

  The Squire said, ‘Guy, I have never been fond of you, but I always thought that at least you were a Guillemard. Now I hope that my poor dead brother, or his son, your father, was cuckolded, because it shames me to call you kin.’

  And now Guy finally abandoned hope.

  ‘Well, I hope so too,’ he said, his good-looking face twisted in rage. ‘Because you don’t think I ever got any pleasure out of having people know I was related to an antique loonie who spends his time composing doggerel that would disgrace a nursery rhyme, not to mention this pipe-smoking freak of a granddaughter. Helpmeet, you called her. What’s that mean? That she rocks you to sleep with a hand job once a week … Jesus!’

  The old man had released his arm and stepped back to give himself room for a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree swing of the right hand which ended with a crack on Guy’s face that sent the rooks squawking up out of the Wilderness trees.

  For a second Guy looked as if he might retaliate.

  Then: ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘Fuck the lot of you.’

  And he strode away towards the house and a few moments later they heard the roar of his Land Rover as he gunned it down the drive.

  The Squire stood nursing his hand. Girlie and Fran rushed up to him.

  ‘Grandfather, are you all right?’ asked Girlie anxiously.

  ‘I think I may have sprained my wrist,’ said the old man.

  ‘Let me take a look,’ said Fran.

  ‘In a moment,’ said the Squire. ‘Friends …’

  As he raised his voice once more, the excited buzz of speculation faded away.

  ‘Fucata non Perfecta,’ proclaimed the Squire. ‘The rents are paid.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’ demanded Dalziel.

  ‘From the look of it,’ said Pascoe, ‘I think it means grub’s up.’

  ‘About bloody time too!’ said Dalziel. ‘Let’s get stuck in while there’s some left!’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘A Thing once set going in that way—one knows how it spreads!’

  Dalziel need not have worried, even though his assessing glance at the heroic deeds being performed all around convinced him he was in the company of peers. There was grub aplenty and of a quality he hadn’t encountered since his childhood.

  ‘If I weren’t promised, I might marry that lass,’ he declared. ‘Where’s she at?’

  ‘I think she’s being reconciled with her brother and to her new status,’ said Pascoe, looking to where George and Dora were huddled together in animated conversation. ‘Who are you promised to, sir?’

  ‘Greasy Joan in the canteen who gives me extra chips.’

  ‘Is this a formal engagement?’

  ‘Nay, I just told her if I ever did decide to get wed again, I’d give her first refusal,’ said Dalziel. ‘Pass me them cream horns, will you? Where’s Wieldy?’

  ‘Over there talking to Digweed.’

  ‘We’ll need to watch him, Peter. He’s been acting funny ever since he got back. What was all that crap about yon kingfisher anyway?’

  ‘What was all that about the kingfisher?’ Digweed was saying.

  ‘Guy shot it. It’s an offence,’ said Wield stolidly.

  ‘I see. So us burglars can be allowed to run free, but offences against wildlife must be rigorously prosecuted. Very green of you. So it was only incidentally that you did Enscombe in general and Old Hall in particular the signal service of disinheriting Guy.’

  ‘You think the Squire will disinherit him, then?’ said Wield.

  ‘I do love a man who knows how to change a subject,’ said Digweed.

  ‘Are you really going to make Girlie and George your heirs?’ asked Fran as she strapped the Squire’s wrist.

  ‘If I live long enough to see my lawyer,’ said the Squire. ‘What’s that redheaded fellow hanging about for?’

  Fran glanced to the doorway where Harry Bendish was visible peering in.

  ‘I think maybe he wants to ask if it’ll be all right to marry me,’ said Fran.

  ‘Good Lord. That’s not what you want, is it, my dear?’<
br />
  ‘Very much,’ she said.

  ‘Fellow’s a striker, you know that?’

  ‘No, he’s not. That time you saw him on the wall, well, we’d been together in the garden, in the shed actually, and afterwards he just sort of got carried away.’

  ‘Together? Doing what?’

  Fran cast around for an idiom which might be familiar to the old man. All she could come up with was, ‘Spooning.’

  ‘Spooning?’ he echoed, then threw back his head and laughed. ‘Spooning you call it? In my days we kept our clothes on to spoon, especially in midwinter! No, my dear, what I think you mean is at the very least canoodling, and possibly even coupling, eh?’

  Fran flushed deep apricot and said, ‘I’m going to marry him, Grunk.’

  ‘Of course you are. You’re like your gran, my sister Frances. Went off and married the vicar while I was chasing sheep around New Zealand. She’d gone by the time I came home. Never saw her again. Pity. She might have told me little Agnes was pregnant. I never knew that, you know. I thought I got sent away simply because she wasn’t what they called suitable. A terrible man, my father. Most of them were, the Guillemards. Perhaps you think I’m a terrible man too?’

  ‘No,’ she smiled, ‘I’ve never thought that.’

  ‘Good. I’ll tell you something. First place Agnes and I ever spooned in, that was the garden shed too. What do you think of that?’

  ‘I think it’s great.’

  ‘You do? Great, eh? Well, I’ll talk to young fellow-me-lad later. First things first. Soon as you bind me together, you slip off and get that big fiddle of yours.’

  ‘But I thought you weren’t going to do the ballad today?’ said Fran.

  ‘Things have changed, haven’t they?’ he said. ‘Besides, there’s probably plenty of folk out there thinking it’s going to be all cakes and no ballad. Can’t have them going home disappointed, can we?’

  And he winked at her.

  It took Fran a second or two to grasp his meaning. Even then she wasn’t certain. She’d always been sensitive to the politely glazed boredom of most of his audiences, and it had been a constant worry that the Squire himself might one day detect and be hurt by it.

  She said cautiously, ‘I’m sure most of them enjoy …’

  ‘Oh God. I hope not! After the years I’ve spent listening to them droning on at fêtes and shows and concerts and meetings, I hope I’m not wasting me old age entertaining them!’

  She began to laugh, the Squire too, and after a while, encouraged by their mirth, Harry Bendish came through the door, smiling shyly.

  Kee Scudamore smiled shyly at Larry Lillingstone and said, ‘It’s probably all for the best, Larry.’

  It was, she realized, at the very least an ambiguous statement. It could mean, it’s all for the best that the object of an avowed celibate’s desires should put herself out of reach by marriage. Or it could mean that in view of the kind of expectations Caddy would have of a husband, it was all for the best that someone else should be landed with her. What it really meant, of course, was that it was all for the best that her sister’s availability had been so satisfactorily removed, thus clearing the decks for her own assault.

  He said, ‘Never console a professional consoler, Kee. He’s played that game too often not to know all its finesses.’

  Kee regarded him fondly, thinking how well despair became him. He was right, of course, he knew the cards of consolation as well as she did – the needs of the living, the healing powers of time. Eventually he would also recall that he knew these were not deuces and treys but mighty trumps. She wanted him body and soul. The one was still focused on Caddy, the other fixed on God. No problem, she thought. She was aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary very much as to time in different people, but, late or soon, she had the patience to wait.

  She said, ‘At least you can’t think about leaving Enscombe until we get this business of the vicarage and the school sorted out.’

  He said, ‘Sometimes I get this odd feeling that I shall never leave Enscombe.’

  ‘That will be nice,’ she said lightly. ‘We would all love you to stay. That way, not only could you finish your history of the parish, you could write yourself into it.’

  ‘Talking of history, I think I see it coming,’ said Lillingstone.

  And he pointed to the house from which approached at a pace dictated by age, Fop’s teeth, and an uncased ’cello, that (to Enscombian eyes) terrible trio of the Squire, Harry Bendish and little Fran Harding.

  As news of the sighting spread, most villagers accelerated their consumption to a rate which left even Andy Dalziel floundering.

  ‘What’s going off?’ he demanded. ‘Has someone cancelled tomorrow?’

  ‘I think,’ said Pascoe with greater artistic sensitivity, ‘they may be trying to eat themselves insensible.’

  There were those whom the threat of balladry inspired to more direct forms of escape.

  Digweed said, ‘I think the time has come to make an excuse and leave.’

  ‘What excuse is that?’ asked Wield.

  ‘I came out in such a hurry I may have left the shop unlocked. With all these unsolved break-ins, a man can’t be too careful.’

  ‘Aye, lot of desperate criminals in these parts,’ agreed Wield. ‘Talking of which, I don’t see young Toke tucking in. Don’t he come to these things?’

  ‘Almost invariably. Perhaps the poor devil’s got wind of this strange union between Caddy and Halavant.’

  ‘How’ll he take it?’

  ‘Badly, I should think. While Caddy was everyone’s unattainable dream, he could be content. But now …’

  ‘Might he do summat … daft?’

  ‘Self-destruction, you mean?’

  ‘I weren’t thinking of self.’

  Digweed laughed and said, ‘Oh dear. You’re thinking like a policeman again.’

  ‘I am a policeman,’ said Wield heavily. ‘Nowt can change that.’

  The two men regarded each other cautiously, recognizing that almost imperceptibly their conversation was shifting on to another level. In the background the villagers chattered and chomped, distant birds sang, and Fran Harding’s ’cello groaned in sweet agony as she lovingly tuned it.

  ‘I’m a lawyer, a bookseller, a burglar,’ said Digweed. ‘These are labels, passport pictures to the world outside. They don’t mean much in Enscombe. Here we tend to know the truth about each other.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’ asked Wield, frowning.

  ‘I suppose it means in a way that here everyone is out. We may laugh at, quarrel with, gossip about each other, but ultimately if everyone’s business is everyone else’s, then your own business is your own. A kind of emotional communism.’

  ‘You’ve lost me now,’ said Wield.

  ‘I should hate to do that, Edgar.’

  ‘How the hell do you know my name?’

  ‘It’s like I say,’ grinned Digweed. ‘We know everything there is to know about our own.’

  ‘You’re a right clever bugger, aren’t you?’ growled Wield.

  ‘You’d be amazed. Listen, before I flee, something to occupy your mind while the Squire declaims. I mentioned before that I was thinking of putting in an offer for Corpse Cottage if your lot put it on the market. I suspect that could happen quite soon. You’re not going to risk losing another young bobby to Enscombe, are you? Now, it will stretch my purse a bit. I’d be pleased if someone came in with me, spread the burden. You look the careful type, I dare say you’ve got a few bob stashed away, all those bribes! So how about it?’

  The proposition took Wield’s breath away. Finally he managed to say, ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Up to you. Purely commercial. If you want. Oh God, I think he’s going to start. See you later. I hope.’

  And Edwin Digweed slipped away from Old Hall and made his way back down the High Street towards his shop and his fate.

  Ot
hers followed, or had preceded.

  Thomas Wapshare left with a genial wave, claiming the imminence of a beer delivery. Dudley Wylmot left with an awkward bow, explaining to any who listened that he wouldn’t offend for the world but the law required him to open the Post Office. Caddy Scudamore left without explanation, her mind full of the shapes and colours of the Reckoning’s excitements and her fingers aching to feel the heavy thickness of a brush. Justin Halavant, discovering his promised bride’s absence, observed that to attend a Guillemard Reckoning might be History, but enduring a Guillemard Recital was mere masochism, so with a casual nod to the Squire and another to second slip, he hastened away.

  And first of all to leave, convinced now that her son was not going to put in an appearance, and with foreboding increased once the amazing news of Caddy Scudamore’s engagement had reached her, was the slight, pale figure of Elsie Toke.

  But the vast majority of Enscombians, anchored by feudal loyalty, immobilized by self-indulgence, or intimidated by Girlie’s fierce gaze, remained in their places and listened to the Squire’s ballad, until the screaming began.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘It puts me in mind of the account of St Paul’s shipwreck, when all are said by different means to reach the shore in safety.’

  Which one should it be?

  The Good? The Bad? Or the Ugly?

  He made his choice.

  He raised his gun.

  And he fired.

  Wield felt the impact like a light punch on his chest. He looked down, saw the red stain blossoming, smelt the pungent, raw, vinegary odour of blood, and asked, more in bewilderment than bitterness, ‘Why me?’

  Laundering might save his cotton shirt, but he knew from experience that there was no salvation possible for the Italian silk tie his sister had bought him for Christmas. His wardrobe was festooned with silk ties (his sister was an unimaginative present-buyer) which spots of gravy, spatterings of soup, or even the fine spray from a rashly opened Guinness can had rendered unwearable. But blood was far worse than any of these. Blood was forever.

  It occurred to him to wonder why the hell he was worrying about his laundry.