Vicious Circle

by Douglas Clark

  VICIOUS CIRCLE

  A Masters and Green Mystery

  Douglas Clark

  © Douglas Clark 1983

  Douglas Clark has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1983 by Victor Gollancz Ltd.

  This edition published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  For my sisters

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter One

  Young Mrs Marian Whincap peered anxiously at the big turkey in the oven before worriedly basting it for the umpteenth time with the fat from round the potatoes with which it was cooking. Then she pushed the tin back on its shelf, straightened up and turned the gas down to the lowest possible flame before closing the door. As she put the oven glove down, her husband, Adam, appeared in the kitchen doorway. Seeing the frown of worry on her face, he stepped forward and kissed her forehead. It was slightly damp with perspiration from her labours in the heat of the kitchen. Her response was fretful. “Darling, your father is really too bad.”

  “I know, my sweet, but he has been called out to an emergency. It’s not as if he was just playing us up.”

  “Where’s he gone?”

  “Heaven knows. It’s Christmas Day, so the surgery is closed. Dad, as senior partner, is on duty. I don’t really know whether that’s because he expects fewer calls today and has chosen the easiest of the holiday stints or whether he considers that it’s the job of the senior bloke to make himself available on the day of days.” He paused a moment to hold her by the shoulders, at arm’s length, and to smile at her encouragingly. “You know these doctors, Marian. They never divulge who they’re going to see or why. It’s part of the mystique.”

  She smiled a little in acknowledgement of his efforts. “Your mother doesn’t know, even. All she could tell me was that he said she was to come here in her own car and he would join her as soon as possible. But that was at half-past eleven. It’s twenty-past one now.”

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart.”

  “How can you say that? This is our first Christmas. Our first party like this. We’ve got nine other guests in the sitting room and the dinner’s nearly ruined. The turkey’s getting hard and the sausages are cooked to a frazzle.”

  Adam appreciated her concern. It was to be the best Christmas party ever. Marian had taken enormous trouble over the marketing and preparations and, like every newly-married girl faced with her first, big, in-law occasion, she was suffering from near-nervous debility lest the whole affair should become a social disaster. He made a sudden decision.

  “Serve lunch, Marian. Go on, serve it up. I’ll get back to entertain our guests and I’ll bring them through as soon as you’re ready, whether dad is here or not.”

  “Oh, Adam! Your father promised to carve.”

  “I know, sweetie. But doctors are not their own masters. You know that. And as for carving . . . well, I’ll have to get my hand in sooner or later. We can’t invite him over every time you cook a bird.”

  She smiled again. “I’m sorry. Let’s both join the others. We can give him another five minutes, I suppose.”

  “Sure?”

  She nodded. “Is my hair all right? It seems to go all anyhow in the heat and steam.”

  “It’s terrific. As wavy as the big dipper at Battersea.”

  “Thanks. It doesn’t smell of boiled sprouts, too, does it?”

  “Not so’s anybody would notice. More of sage and onion stuffing, I’d say.”

  She pretended to chase him, outraged, through to the big sitting room where the lighted Christmas tree, the holly, vases of yellow chrysanthemums and smaller pots of freesias, together with serried groups of upstanding cards, gave a background of colour to the jollity of the gathering.

  There were to be twelve of them for lunch, including Marian and Adam. The choice of guests was a bit lop-sided as to families, but they were all old friends of each other from long before the marriage of their young host and hostess.

  On Adam’s side, his father who had not yet arrived, Dr David Whincap, a GP in Croxley, the county town, seven miles away. Adam’s mother, Janet Whincap. His married sister Gwen and her husband Tony Kisiel. Tony’s parents, Josef and Alice Kisiel. And finally, Adam’s aunt, Janet Whincap’s sister, Flora, with her husband, Robert Bennett, solicitor and coroner of the Croxley District.

  On Marian’s side, outweighed heavily by her husband’s relatives, were her parents, Detective Chief Superintendent Theo Rainford of the County Police and his wife Margarethe. Marian’s grandmother, Margarethe’s mother, Mrs Elke Carlow, Germanborn and a widow, had been invited together with her widowed sister, Frau Mimi Hillger, who lived with her. But Elke had preferred to refuse the invitation and Mimi, very much under her sister’s thumb, had been obliged to refuse, too.

  So, counting host and hostess there were eleven people present, all waiting for the twelfth to arrive.

  “Don’t worry, darling,” said Margarethe Rainford to her daughter. “Every housewife that ever lived has had some sort of disaster—major or minor—happen to her Christmas dinner. You’re getting yours over early in your married life and it really is very little—to be half an hour late at table.”

  “But it took so much arranging and fiddling to get everything done for the same time in just one oven. I hadn’t a spare shelf for the roast potatoes, and . . .”

  “Drinkies!” said Robert Bennett, interrupting Marian’s tale of woe to hand her a sherry.

  “I’ve already had two, Uncle Bob.”

  “Save your confessions for when they might do you some good, my dear. You need no excuse today. This is the first time Flora and I have been in your house and we’re both as jealous as hell.”

  Marian smiled with pleasure. “It’s all due to Adam, really.”

  “Who sewed those pretty curtains?”

  Marian laughed. “No, silly. I meant he found Helewou and did it up and he’s made a lot of the furniture himself.”

  “I know, my love. And I take my hat off to him. Not only for his skill and craftsmanship, but also for his courage in flouting . . . not the wishes of his parents, exactly . . . but the traditional ways of his family by going out to do what he most wanted to do. To design and build! To create beauty and make it useful.”

  “Exactly what I’ve been saying for a long time,” said Theo Rainford. He had come up behind his daughter and had consequently heard most of what Bennett had been saying. “I’ve told Marian that if she keeps young Adam a good house, feeds him wisely and well and keeps his books straight she’ll be doing a far better job than she would be doing by just going out to pound a typewriter in some office.”

  “Couldn’t agree more,” said Bennett. “That way they’re both independent but mutually supporting—if that’s a possibility.”

  “We’ll let it ride,” said Rainford. “When you solicitors get querying things, Bob, you never know when to stop and something everybody understands perfectly in the beginning becomes so convoluted nobody can recognize it in the end. Like that game we’re all due to play later on—passing a message I think it’s called. The original always gets fouled up in that, too.”

  “I was going to offer to get you a refill, Theo,” said Bennett. “But after that little bit of calumny I don’t think I’ll bother—in case I get your order mixed and bring you vodka instead of gin.”

  “I’ll get them both,” said Marian, taking their glasses and leaving them alone.

  “You know, Theo,” said Bennett. “I find it particularly offe
nsive in our present day society that some artist like Adam, who can produce pieces to compare with those of Hepplewhite and Chippendale, should be obliged to spend his valuable time filling in income tax and VAT forms and keeping rubbishy account books just to satisfy an army of unproductive, prodnose bureaucrats.”

  “Oh, Uncle Bob . . .” Marian had arrived with their drinks.

  “I’m right, girlie. Ask your father. Both he and I are on the fringes of bureaucracy and we should know.”

  “I meant that bit about Adam. I know he’s clever and creative, but Hepplewhite and Chippendale!”

  “There is no doubt about it,” said Tony Kisiel, joining in the conversation. “Today’s really good stuff—like Adam’s—will measure up with the best of the old stuff. Antiques, besides good work, have got age on their side. Adam is producing good work—better. His handwork must be better because he has comparable skill with the old masters, but he also has better tools, better glues, even better lights to work by. All his pieces need is age to put them in the same class as those of his eminent predecessors.”

  “I didn’t realize you knew about such things, Tony,” said Bennett. “A man of parts, eh?”

  “He’s an enthusiastic amateur, Uncle Bob,” said Gwen Kisiel. “He only got the bug a year or two ago.”

  “You collect, do you?” asked Rainford.

  “Not really. But I browse, examine, visit, read—all the bits I can afford to do short of collecting.”

  “Interesting. I think that particular bug is catching. I’m thinking of asking Adam for a job when I retire.”

  “Your son-in-law would be your boss,” said Bennett. “Would that be a good situation—in both senses of the word?”

  “Why not?” The policeman shrugged. “Adam told me a few days ago that he will want to start his own deliveries fairly soon if things go on as they are doing. Cartage is devilish expensive and he’s had one or two pieces held up, gone astray and even bruised.”

  “That must be a damn nuisance for him.”

  “Wastes time. He reckons on getting a secondhand van.”

  “You ought to be able to help him there, with your connections.”

  Rainford nodded. “And I could drive the van for him—up to London or to Southampton docks. He’s beginning to export now, you know. In a small way, of course, but special orders are starting to come in from quite far afield. I could nurse the bits to see they came to no harm. I might even be able to build the crates and pack them. That would save him a lot of time for more gainful employment.”

  “You seem to have got it all thought out,” smiled Bennett. “It sounds an ideal set-up for a chap who’ll already be on a decent pension.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Good,” said Josef Kisiel who had joined them to hear most of what Rainford had said. “That is good, because I remember that only two years or three years ago maybe you were going about collecting old furniture for nothing.”

  “Who? Me?” asked Rainford in surprise.

  “No, no! Not you,” said Kisiel whose voice was still so heavily accented that at times it was difficult for those unaccustomed to it to understand.

  “You said you,” laughed Rainford.

  “I meant your beautiful Marian and her husband, the talented Adam.”

  Marian laughed at her father’s apparent amazement. “That’s really how Adam got started, daddy. We picked up old furniture which he carefully took to pieces.”

  “For the wood, you mean?”

  “We got a lot of it for nothing. Some from Mr and Mrs Kisiel. People actually thanked Adam for taking those big old pieces away, because nobody would buy them.”

  “And he is still using the wood?” asked Kisiel.

  “Bits of it. And he still scrounges any that comes his way. But he has to buy a lot of the new woods that are coming in. It’s very expensive.”

  “Which reminds me,” said Rainford, addressing his daughter. “Your grandmother Carlow said she would like Adam to call in and mend her gate-leg table.”

  “Not again!”

  “You mean he’s mended it once already?”

  “Twice. The same leg both times.”

  “Doesn’t say much for his work, does it?”

  Marian replied, crossly: “Adam wants to renew the leg, but she won’t let him. She insists it would devalue the table which isn’t worth anything in the first place.”

  “Don’t get aerated, love. How does the silly old thing keep on breaking it?”

  “She uses it as a sewing table. Plonks a heavy old hand-machine on it and winds away for dear life making curtains and turning sides to middle with old sheets. The table is so unsteady the joints won’t take it. It was meant for playing patience on or holding a tea tray.”

  “She’s a stubborn old woman,” admitted Rainford.

  “You should hear what Adam calls her. You do realize, don’t you, daddy, that he can’t afford to spend his time doing and re-doing free work for gran?”

  Rainford nodded. Josef Kisiel snorted.

  “What’s got into you, Josef?”

  “That woman. The old German. She would not come here today because I am here. No?”

  “Now, Josef,” counselled Rainford.

  “It is the truth, Theo. I know it. Ask your Marian.”

  “Maybe,” replied the young hostess, anxious to smooth over even the slightest ripple of acrimony among her guests, but then spoiled her effort by adding, “But if gran had agreed to come to the party, you wouldn’t have agreed to come, would you, Mr Kisiel? You wouldn’t accept the invitation until Gwen and Tony assured you gran wouldn’t be here, would you?”

  Josef shook his head so emphatically that his great shock of grey hair waved about in its efforts to keep up. He was about to reinforce this unmistakable gesture with words when a car hooter sounded outside.

  “Here’s dad, darling,” called Adam from his spot across the room near the window where the rest of the party was grouped. “Do you want me to help you serve?”

  “As long as you can get your father through to start carving . . .”

  “Right.”

  Helewou was a building almost as intriguing as its name suggested it might be. The old Middle English name meant nothing more than End Wall, being cobbled from the two words hele and wough. But it did indicate that there had been a building on this same spot, aligned in just the same way, for centuries. The barn, for this is what the house was, had been built end-on to the track which, though now a road used frequently by all manner of traffic, had obviously at one time carried nothing more than foot travellers, livestock and infrequent horsemen. Some farmer in those early days had made use of the small area of flat land barely a hundred feet each way and lying between the track and a scarp twenty or thirty feet high. Here he had built his barns and sheds where they were easier to get at than his own house which still stood, a hundred and fifty yards along the road. Here the track had dropped steeply down its re-entrant and the only site for the house was well above it, easily accessible now by motor cars using a tarmac drive, but impossible for wains and cattle in the old days before bulldozers were available.

  Now there were just two successors to the original buildings. Helewou itself, a big barn, end-on to the road, tall, well-roofed and gabled. Behind the main building, added as an afterthought in the shape of a long, stone-built lean-to, was a stable for a good many pairs of draught horses. This conglomerate was the main block that Adam Whincap had turned into his home. The second building stood at right angles to Helewou, between the house and the scarp, close up under the cliff. It, too, was big, and though still somewhat tumbledown was built of stone like Helewou. Whincap was using it as his workshop.

  There was little ground space to spare at this level for a garden. What there was had been turned into a concrete hard to serve house and workshop, leaving no more than a few feet of narrow border for flowers. But at the end of the workshop, still there from long ago, was a flight of steps cut into the face of the scarp
and roughly bricked. It led up to the garden proper—a plot on top of the scarp, hedged off from the surrounding fields and no bigger than the area occupied by the buildings and their surrounds.

  Time and money had not been on Adam Whincap’s side, so he had decided to ignore the lean-to stable completely for the time being. He would be able to turn to it and incorporate it into his home later on when he had the necessary resources. Meanwhile it served very well as a domestic lumber room.

  The lower floor of Helewou had been split into two, lengthwise. At the front, on the corner nearest the blind end wall, an original two-piece barn door had been hung to lead into a small room which served as half-office, half-hallway. The floor was brick. Out of it, to the right, another more traditional door hung over a shallow step up into the sitting room which Adam had floored with timber. This room was big and long, with a window half-way down its length in the embrasure where the great double barn door had formerly hung. Another, smaller window at the end looked across the narrow gap to the workshop. Opposite the main window, in the newly-built dividing wall, was a brick fireplace with an old-fashioned kitchen range: a high standing firegrate with a deep ash-pit, a boiler to the left and an oven to the right, embellished with cast-iron curlicues and brassware and fronted by a wrought-iron club fender with corner seats. Adam had picked up the old range for little or nothing, and had installed it with a hot-water boiler behind it to serve bathroom and kitchen.

  To the left of the fireplace was the door into the dining room. At the end of this room and behind the hallway were the stairs—a new flight made by Adam. He had constructed them without risers or any form of blocking in, because they rose across the only window in the room—the one he had put into the wall to pair the door into the hallway. The other end of the long room had been cut off and turned into a kitchen, so that there was no natural light from that direction while, behind the as-yet unpierced back wall, was the lean-to which, at the moment, could only be entered from outside.