Butchers and Other Stories of Crime

The Virgin and the Bull

She was the only daughter of the vicar and he was the publican’s son. She was called Alison, he Tom. Alison had long, flaxen hair. It had once been the envy of every girl in the village school. She had let it grow so long that she could sit on it. Now, at seventeen, she wore it shorter, in a simple ponytail. She had peachy, luminous skin to match the fine fair hair. She wore no make-up. Her dresses were simple and old-fashioned and her shoes flat-heeled and practical, yet there was not a young man in Middle Slaughter whose thoughts had not been disturbed by her.

Tom Hunt was reckoned to be the only one with any prospect of turning dream into reality. Large, rough and rebellious, he had not impressed Alison in the least when they were at school together. He had ruled the playground by sheer tyranny. She had been pleased to forget him when she had transferred to secondary school, a Church of England boarding school for daughters of the clergy. The bullying in a school for girls was of a different order from Tom Hunt’s brutish behaviour. He became as unreal as the ogres in the fairy stories she had left at home on the bookshelf in her bedroom.

He had surfaced unexpectedly this summer. Alison was home from school. She had been sent into the vicarage garden to pick greengages for the jam her mother always made in the last week of August. Shyly she pretended not to notice the bare-chested young man at work repairing the stone wall in the field adjoining the garden. She started gathering the fruit on the lower branches.

Tom’s work on the wall brought him to a point where the greengage tree overhung the wheat field. Alison endeavoured to move around the tree so that she would not be forced to catch his eye.

Tom was not the sort to be ignored. He picked a greengage and tossed it neatly into the basket she was using. Alison heard him say, ‘Funny how the best ones are always out of reach.’

She made no response.

‘I was speaking of the plums, of course,’ he went on. ‘I meant nothing personal. Do you remember me?’ He moved along the wall to where she could not fail to see his grinning features and bare, brown torso. He had the physique of a man now, a strong, broad man, but she recognised his smile.

She said, ‘Tom Hunt. You used to chase the girls with nettles and sting their legs.’

He laughed. ‘I’ve given it up now.’

It was fascinating to see how the obnoxious features Alison remembered were still traceable in this ruggedly attractive face.

At the church fête the following Sunday he helped her sell programmes at the gate. He seemed quite popular with the villagers, even girls and boys he had once persecuted unmercifully.

That evening there was a barn dance in aid of parish funds. As soon as Alison appeared with her father, Tom Hunt crossed the floor and asked her to join him in a St Bernard’s Waltz.

‘That’s the way I do things,’ Tom told her as they linked arms. ‘Straight to it, like a bull at a gate. I don’t stand on ceremony.’

‘And you’d better not stand on my feet,’ said Alison, as their shoes touched. ‘Haven’t you danced a St Bernard’s before?’

‘Not very often. Have you? You seem to know the steps.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where did you learn — at school?’

She gave a nod. She did not like being reminded that she was still a schoolgirl.

‘I thought so,’ Tom said with a trace of condescension. ‘Girls’ schools do a lot of that, don’t they? Singing and dancing and skipping.’

‘They do other things too,’ Alison pointed out.

‘Cookery?’

‘Farming. My school has a Jersey herd and twelve acres put out to wheat and barley. The girls do all the work. It’s not just skipping and dancing. So it follows,’ she said with a level look at Tom, ‘that bulls don’t impress me overmuch.’

Against all the indications, the friendship between them took root. They were seen together hand in hand, walking the lanes and footpaths around the village each evening after work until it got dark. Then Tom would escort her to the vicarage porch and, according to report, kiss her briefly before making his way, whistling, to the Harrow. There, over his beer, he would shrug aside the good-natured banter of the regulars, the enquiries after the vicar’s health and whether Tom proposed to join the choir. Any young man who courted a village girl was a target for the locals’ wit. The wooing of the vicar’s daughter was better than a game of darts.

The baiting of Tom was rendered more entertaining by the knowledge that, not many months before, it would have roused him to violence. Perhaps it was the onset of maturity, or perhaps it was the fact that his father was landlord of the Harrow that kept Tom in check. He seemed to accept the chaffing in good sport, which of course was demanded by the time-honoured ritual. He even summoned an occasional smile.

On some evenings Rufus Peel added his comments to the rest. Rufus was the only one of the regulars capable of rankling Tom. He was one of Tom’s generation. Most of the others were older men. Rufus had been through the village school with Alison and Tom. He had been the star pupil, the boy who played Joseph in the nativity play to Alison’s Mary, when Tom had not even aspired to the part of third shepherd. At secondary school, Rufus had won the biology prize. He had joined the school combined cadet force and risen to the rank of junior officer. The headmaster had chosen him for school captain. Unaccountably his public examination results had fallen below average, but the head’s strong recommendation had secured him an interview for agricultural college, and he had been accepted unconditionally.

Rufus was the first Middle Slaughter boy ever to win a place at college. He was regarded with awe. He started talking to the older men as if they were his contemporaries, and they accepted it. His middle-aged manner and short, portly stature undoubtedly helped, as did his generosity in buying rounds in the Harrow. He was getting a generous grant towards his living expenses.

When Rufus joined in the wisecracks at Tom’s expense, there was often a cutting edge to his comments that seemed calculated to test the victim’s passivity to the limit. ‘Tom’s no fool,’ he told the others. ‘He’s after a cheap wedding. There’ll be no church fees, you see. It’s all on the Lord, if you’re smart enough to marry a vicar’s daughter.’

Tom would usually look as if he had not heard a word. He knew what lay behind the barbed remarks. Rufus had wanted Alison for years. He had pestered her for friendship ever since they were in junior school. He had passed notes to her and tried to arrange meetings. He had thought at first that she would be flattered by his interest. Each success in his life — the biology prize, the school captaincy, the commission in the CCF — had cued another bid for Alison’s approval.

Alison had lately described to Tom how difficult her life had become through Rufus’s persistence. She had treated him politely, but coolly. In reality she disliked everything about him.

Rufus had refused to give up. One Saturday in May, Alison had been playing tennis at boarding school, when she had noticed a persistent giggling from the benches by the sidelines. Along one side of the courts was a beech hedge, intended to isolate the daughters of the clergy from the pernicious world at large. The smaller girls had spotted a young man peering through a gap in the hedge. It had been Rufus. He had cycled sixty miles to let Alison know that he had won a place in agricultural college. Burning with embarrassment and with the second-formers tittering in chorus, Alison had approached the gap, lowered her head and listened to Rufus’s jubilant announcement. She had stared at the ridiculous, smug face framed by the beech leaves and she had told Rufus that she was glad he would be going to agricultural college, and she hoped it was as far away as possible. They had not spoken since.

The summer passed. In September, Rufus went off to college in a dark blue suit and a striped scarf, and Alison started her last year at boarding school. Tom stayed in Middle Slaughter and helped burn the stubble on Hopkin’s Farm. In the next weeks, he wrote a few letters to Alison, but he had difficulty in expressing himself in words. He knew better than to surprise her with a visit.

It was a profound relief when she came back for the Christmas vacation and was still content to meet him. They went for long walks on the frost-white footpaths around the village. They always parted at the vicarage porch with a short embrace and a few kisses. Alison was very proper. Tom had more than once invited her home, but she had resolutely declined. The reason, he suspected, was that his home was the Harrow, and her father would be shocked if Alison set foot in a public house. This seemed to be confirmed when she told Tom, ‘I’ll be eighteen next holiday, and then I can do as I please. Let’s wait till then.’

So the next vacation, on the Friday after Easter, the day finally arrived when Tom treated Alison to her first drink in the Harrow. He secretly dreaded the amusement it would give the regulars, but as it turned out, their arrival caused no comment at all, for there was a bigger diversion. There were strangers in the Harrow.

They were a couple from London on their way, as the man explained with a wink, to spend the weekend at a cottage in Wales. He was a freelance journalist, a fluent, amusing talker who was soon entertaining the entire clientele with stories of famous people whose secrets he had somehow discovered. He had one of those prodigious moustaches once known as ‘RAF’, though he belonged to a later generation. He smoked cigars and seemed to have rubbed shoulders with everyone of note in London, yet it was obvious to all that the collar of his shirt was frayed and his suit was shiny at the points of wear and tear.

If either of them had money, it was she. Her sable jacket was the real thing and so were the diamond and ruby rings and earrings. She had blonde hair worn long, with silver highlights. She wore a musky perfume that penetrated the cigar fumes. She might have been thirty-nine; forty was unthinkable. The thoughts that were abroad in the Harrow that night were laced with envy of her weekend companion.

He emptied his glass. ‘Not a bad beer,’ he said. ‘Not bad at all.’

‘Have another?’ offered Rufus, who was back from college with some of his grant unspent.

‘That’s very decent of you. The lady’s is a Pimm’s.’

‘I don’t think I’d better, Charlie,’ said the woman.

‘Of course you will. I’ll drive the rest of the way. I’m steady as a rock if I stay on beer.’ Charlie turned to Rufus. ‘You take the order, old chum, and I’ll collect the empties.’

Rufus may not have intended to buy drinks for everyone, but that was what happened. The regulars needed no prompting. They chanted their orders with the familiarity of monks at prayer.

While the order was being set up, the man called Charlie said confidentially to Rufus, ‘Any idea who she is?’

‘Who do you mean?’

‘The little raver I’m with. In the fur jacket.’

Rufus shook his head. ‘Should I know her?’

Charlie nodded. ‘You’ve seen her picture plenty of times. Come on, you recognise her.’

Rufus gave the woman another look. ‘I’m sorry. I’m damned sure I don’t.’

Charlie looked as if he had taken offence. ‘She’s famous, man.’

‘I’m a student at college,’ said Rufus in his defence. ‘I don’t watch the telly.’

‘You read the papers, don’t you?’

‘She’s not a politician?’

‘Does she look like one?’

‘I give up. Who is she?’

‘Which paper do you read?’

‘The Chronicle.’

‘I thought so. You really ought to know her.’

‘Well, there’s something familiar, I admit,’ said Rufus so as not to appear completely ignorant.

Charlie addressed the room in general. ‘Anyone got a copy of the Chronicle?’

On the window seat to the right of the door, Tom and Alison were drinking white wine, grateful for the attention the strangers were getting. Nobody had passed a comment yet about Alison’s presence.

Tom’s father, the landlord, retrieved a copy of the Chronicle from under the counter and handed it to Charlie, who passed it to Rufus. The mystery of the woman’s identity was now the focus of attention of every person present.

‘Turn to the centre pages, lad,’ instructed Charlie. ‘Now turn over again. What do you find?’

‘Letters to the Editor,’ Rufus read aloud. ‘Your Stars Today. Well, I’ll be damned!’ He stared at the page and across the room at the woman. Her large brown eyes returned his gaze without self-consciousness. She was used to being pointed out as a celebrity. ‘Deborah Kristal!’ said Rufus. ‘The fortune-teller.’

‘Don’t call her that, for heaven’s sake,’ said Charlie between his teeth. ‘She’s not some gypsy at the Derby with a crystal ball. She’s an astrologist, and she takes it very seriously. It’s highly technical. They use computers these days.’ He picked up a tray of drinks and carried it across the room. ‘Anyone had a birthday lately?’

The question produced a sudden silence in the room.

In the window seat, Alison whispered urgently to Tom, ‘Take me home now.’ They got up to leave.

Charlie turned back to Rufus. ‘Never mind. What’s your birth month, old boy?’

Desperate to escape the spotlight, Rufus had an inspiration. ‘It’s Alison’s birthday today. Her eighteenth!’

‘Marvellous!’ said Charlie. ‘Come over here, my dear, and Miss Kristal will tell you what the future holds.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Alison quickly.

‘She’s the vicar’s daughter,’ someone explained. ‘She’s shy, poor child. She’s had a very sheltered life.’

‘Do it for both of ’em, then,’ Tom’s father suggested. ‘My Tom isn’t bashful.’

‘What a splendid idea,’ said Rufus at once. ‘Cast their horoscopes and tell them if they have any future together.’

‘I would need more information,’ said Miss Kristal. ‘I do not have my charts with me. I can make only a few broad observations.’

‘Tom was born on August the twenty-eighth,’ said his father.

‘In that case he is not afraid of a good day’s work,’ said Miss Kristal. ‘He is healthy and strong, loyal and courageous. He does nothing by halves. He knows what he wants out of life and he will move mountains to get it. His manner may be a shade too overbearing at times, but he hides nothing from the world. He is an honest, open-hearted man.’

‘Tom, I’d like to leave,’ said Alison for the second time, but Tom lingered by the door, too interested to move.

‘The young lady has positive qualities, too,’ went on Miss Kristal. ‘She has the highest standards and she expects others to conform to them.’

‘That’s true,’ said Tom. ‘It’s absolutely true!’

‘She has exceptional powers of concentration,’ said Miss Kristal. ‘She is not easily deceived. But when she gives her word, she means it.’

‘What about the future?’ asked Tom’s father. ‘Would you advise them to get hitched?’

‘Dad!’ said Tom in embarrassment.

There was a pause.

‘I would rather not say,’ said Miss Kristal. ‘Charlie, it’s getting late. We still have a long way to drive.’

Rufus had been listening intently. The answer had not satisfied him. ‘But you must have some idea whether he is suited to her.’

‘In general,’ said Miss Kristal, choosing her words with care, ‘I would not recommend a partnership between a Virgoan and a Taurean.’

‘A what?’ said Tom’s father.

‘A Virgoan and a Taurean. Virgo and Taurus are the virgin and the bull.’

‘The virgin and the bull! I like that!’ said Charlie.

‘It’s laughable,’ said Rufus with a sneer.

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Tom in a spasm of anger. ‘What’s there to laugh about?’

‘It’s so ridiculous,’ Rufus answered insensitively. ‘The virgin and the bull. It’s a joke. It’s got to be a joke!’

Rufus had scarcely finished speaking before Tom was across the floor and gripping him by the shirt front. ‘What are you getting at, you louse? You’d better take that back, before I break every bone in your body.’

‘Tom!’ ordered his father. ‘Take your hands off him! I want no violence here.’

‘He’s going to take back every word,’ said Tom, tightening his grip. ‘He insulted Alison. She’s a decent girl.’

Rufus hissed at Tom, ‘Is that what you think, or what she told you?’

Behind Tom, Alison gave a whimper of distress and ran from the pub.

Tom brought back his fist to strike Rufus, but his arm was seized from behind and forced against his back in a savage half-nelson. ‘There’ll be no brawling in this house,’ his father’s voice snarled into his ear. ‘Not from my own son, or anybody. I’m going to put you out, and you’d better cool off.’

Tom was strongly built, yet in that grip he could do nothing to prevent his father marching him to the door and thrusting him outside. It was debatable whether the father or the son suffered the greater humiliation.

The subdued atmosphere in the Harrow lasted only a short time. At Charlie’s prompting, Miss Kristal obligingly cast the horoscopes of almost everyone in the bar. Rufus, who had two quick double brandies and left early, was one of the few who professed to be uninterested in knowing the future. As events turned out, this proved to have been a fatal error, because he never reached home that night.

It was the following morning before his disappearance was reported by his parents. The overnight absence from home of a young man in his late teens is not usually treated by the police as a matter of grave concern. Yet in this case it was difficult to understand what might have happened. It was established that Rufus had left the Harrow soon after 9.45 p.m. He usually took some twenty minutes to walk the mile and a quarter along the Harford Road. It was a minor road that eventually linked with the A436, and it would have taken him past a couple of cottages and Hopkin’s Farm. A search of the road, ditches and adjoining fields yielded no clue to his disappearance.

The enquiries inevitably led to a reconstruction of the events the evening of the incident in the Harrow. Everyone present was questioned except Miss Kristal and her companion Charlie, who had left in their Alfa-Romeo about 10 p.m. As they would have driven along the Harford Road, it was possible that they would have passed Rufus, but no one knew where to trace them in Wales, not even Miss Kristal’s newspaper office. It seemed that Miss Kristal had anticipated a longish stay in Wales, because before leaving Fleet Street she had filed Your Stars Today for the next four weeks.

Tom and his father were questioned closely about the incident in the public bar. Tom stated that after his father had ejected him, he ran after Alison and escorted her home. The vicarage was in the opposite direction from Rufus’s route. Alison was able to corroborate what Tom had said.

A theory was advanced in the village that the journalist, Charlie, well over the limit by the time he had left the Harrow with Miss Kristal and taken the wheel of the Alfa-Romeo, had run Rufus down and killed him, then taken fright and bundled the body into the boot of the car to dispose of it in some remote lake in Wales. But at the end of the month Charlie and Miss Kristal were traced by the police, and the car was examined by forensic experts. There was no evidence to support the theory. The couple claimed that they had no recollection of having seen Rufus or anyone else on the Harford Road after they had left the Harrow.

So Rufus Peel was listed as a missing person, one of the tens of thousands on the police computer. For two years there were no developments in the case. Tom and Alison were married in the village church and the reception was held at the Harrow. Then, within a fortnight of the wedding, the remains of Rufus were discovered at the bottom of a silage tank on Hopkin’s Farm.

The autopsy revealed that he had died violently. Both legs and one arm were shattered, the rib cage had been crushed, the spinal column had been severed and the skull splintered. The Home Office pathologist stated his opinion that the multiple injuries had been caused by a heavy motor vehicle, probably a tractor. It was likely that the victim had been run over not once, but repeatedly, as if deliberately.

The police picked up Tom and took him to Gloucester for questioning. After several hours he made a confession. He admitted having caused Rufus’s death. He stated that on the night his father had ejected him from the Harrow he had not, as previously claimed, taken Alison home. He had made his way to the farm, sat in the seat of a tractor at the farm entrance and waited for Rufus to come along the road. His fury at what had happened in the Harrow, the slanderous insinuation Rufus had made about Alison in the public bar the first time she had ever set foot in the place, had turned him crazy for vengeance. He had driven the tractor straight at Rufus and felled him. He had driven over him and then reversed the tractor and crushed the body again. He had done it again, and then dragged the lifeless body into the yard and disposed of it under the silage.

At the assizes, Tom pleaded guilty to the murder of Rufus. In sentencing him, the judge allowed that there had been strong provocation, but ruled that the interval between the provocation and the crime did not allow sufficient grounds for a verdict of manslaughter. Tom was given a life sentence.

In Middle Slaughter there was considerable sympathy for Tom. When he was released on parole after serving eleven years, he was given back his job on Hopkin’s Farm. He was given a cottage on the site and he lived there with Alison, who had waited loyally for him to serve his sentence. The villagers still called them the virgin and the bull.

One lunchtime soon after Tom’s release, Deborah Kristal chanced to meet Charlie in a Fleet Street wine bar. The conversation soon got round to Middle Slaughter. ‘I thought I might go down there again,’ said Charlie. ‘Care to join me, sweetie? Another cosy weekend in Wales?’

‘Using my car, I suppose? No thank you, Charlie. Nothing personal, just the price of petrol these days. What do you want to go to Middle Slaughter for?’

‘Tom Hunt’s out. I thought of offering the poor devil a tenner for his story. It’s worth another airing in the Sundays. It made a big enough impact when it happened.’

‘I shouldn’t if I were you,’ said Miss Kristal.

‘I’ll be all right, my love. He had no grudge against me. I won’t antagonise the fellow.’

‘It’s a waste of time going,’ said Miss Kristal emphatically. ‘He won’t tell you a thing.’

But Charlie would not be dissuaded. He drove down to Middle Slaughter alone the following weekend.

‘Sometimes I think you really are clairvoyant,’ he told Deborah Kristal the next time they met. ‘Ruddy fellow clammed up completely. Wouldn’t say a word. And nor would anyone else in the village. His father still runs the pub, and he’s no help. Nor are his customers. I spent a fortune at the bar trying to coax something out of ’em.’

‘I did warn you.’

‘But how did you know I was wasting my time?’

‘Because they don’t want the story opened up again. It was full of holes when he made the confession.’

Charlie’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Tom didn’t kill Rufus Peel. A man as strong and as angry as he was didn’t need to lie in wait with a tractor. He could have strangled Rufus with his bare hands.’

‘But he confessed, for heaven’s sake!’

Miss Kristal shook her head and gave a smile. ‘For Alison’s sake, darling. She was the killer of Rufus Peel. Tom took the rap for her, and served eleven years. That’s the measure of true love. Everyone in that village knows it, but no one will say a thing. And nor will you, if you’ve any romance left in you at all.’

Charlie, wide-eyed, said, ‘Are you seriously telling me that an eighteen-year-old girl murdered a man by driving a tractor at him? A vicar’s daughter? How do you know she could drive a tractor at all?’

‘I went to see the school she attended. A boarding school for daughters of the clergy. They believe in self-sufficiency, a wonderful training for the good life. Every girl is taught to plough on the school farm.’

‘You checked on this?’ said Charlie. ‘You’re a dark horse, if ever I met one. But the story still takes some swallowing. Why would she have wanted to kill Rufus?’

‘Really, Charlie, if you can’t see that, you’ll never understand the way a woman thinks. Alison was outraged by what Rufus insinuated in the Harrow. He slandered her reputation in front of her future husband, her prospective father-in-law and most of the village. Instead of going home, as Tom’s confession suggested, she went to the farm and took out a tractor and took her revenge on Rufus when he came along the road. My guess is that Tom went the other way towards the vicarage and only met Alison later and heard what she had done. He must have helped her hide the body.’

‘And when it was found, he made the false confession to save her,’ said Charlie. ‘It takes an awful lot of love to make a man accept eleven years in prison. If this is true, he’s a very single-minded young man.’

‘He would be,’ said Miss Kristal. ‘When I was casting their horoscopes that night in the Harrow, I said that one was governed by the sign of Virgo, and the other Taurus. Everyone jumped to the wrong conclusion. You see, he was the virgin and she was the bull.’