Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 775 & 776, March/April 2006

The Old Couple by Robert Barnard

“Few writers of contemporary mysteries can equal Barnard’s ability to meld a clever fair-play plot with satire,” said Publishers Weekly in its review of the Barnard novel The Graveyard Position, which saw print in the U.S. in 2005. Mr. Barnard has another novel scheduled for U.S. publication this spring. Look for Dying Flames (Scribner). The author makes his home in Leeds, England.

The first day at Oakroyd was perfect. Every element and aspect of it was just as Eleanor had dreamed it might be, or would have hoped for if she’d thought of it: weather sunny but not oppressive, garden in best spring guise but capable of much improvement, distant prospects pleasing to the point of absolute beauty, the house — the old farmhouse — rambling, spacious, oozing character.

“So many rooms,” said Eleanor to her husband of five days.

“Soon we’ll start the business of filling them,” said Geoffrey.

And that, too, was how Eleanor wanted it, and how she felt it ought to be. They were newcomers, but they were here for the long term — settled, content.

The garden was large, and since they were planning as they went it took a long time to visit every part of it. In one corner Eleanor saw distinct possibilities in the bed full of shrubs that had gone into the straggliness of a terminal decline.

“We could have an aubrietia there; and a forsythia; and a big vulgar peony for a splash of colour.” She knew a lot about shrubs, having had a gardening mother. “We’ll really plan it, and start planting in the autumn.”

Over the wall, between two of the large fields that stretched towards the horizon, she saw an old couple walking. Both were shortish and wearing hats against the hot sun, he an old bowler, she a squashed thing she probably wore every Sunday to church. They walked slowly, and through a gap in the hedge she saw that the man carried an old plastic shopping bag. Off for a picnic, she thought.

“What about some more bulbs down this side bed?” asked Geoffrey. “I love big double and treble tulips, but I expect they’re vulgar, too.”

“We have no tastes to consult except our own,” said Eleanor. Looking back to the field, she saw that the old couple had gone.

“Stop looking at those fields,” said Geoffrey. “They’re not ours. Though they once were. They’re Ed Wilton, our neighbour’s now.”

“I’ll go over and say hello sometime,” said Eleanor, her eyes still on the field.

“Have you forgiven me that this place is a total surprise?” asked Geoffrey. “It meant doing all the preliminary work behind your back, but I felt in my bones that you would love it — it and the surprise.”

“I do. It couldn’t have been a lovelier present. And I couldn’t have been happier.”

The next day Geoffrey had to put in an appearance at his desk at Lloyds in London, and he took the train from Doncaster. Eleanor sampled the day on the farm’s back doorstep and thought it was going to be too hot to take the long walk over to Ed Wilton’s farm, with no certainty of catching him there when she arrived. Instead she left her own garden and walked along an overgrown footpath beside the field that had once been Oakroyd’s means of subsistence, before farms had become the first or second homes of people whose real business was sharecropping. She didn’t feel guilty. Geoffrey had told her that the process of selling off the agricultural land to a nearby farmer made his holding into an economic unit, giving him a proper living for the first time for many years. But she did feel nostalgic for a vanished way of life, something Hardyesque, both beautiful and cruel.

She walked towards the far horizon until she came to the end of the nearest field, to the spot where it was divided off from the next field by one of the landscape’s rare hedgerows. She looked to turn and walk beside it, following the path of the old couple of the day before. But there was no path. Between the hedge and the springing wheat which was the field’s crop, there was hardly more than a gap, on rough, weedy grass. Hesitatingly she took it, rather afraid of acting like an intrusive and insensitive townee. The going was rough, but she continued for a few hundred yards, until she came to a hole in the hedge — the one that had enabled her to see the bag carried by the old man.

She stopped. Where had they gone, the old couple who had so suddenly disappeared from sight? There was only forwards or backwards along the same rough and narrow track. They would have been visible. The wheat was only knee-high, so if they had struck off across the field they would have been still more visible.

Then it came to her: Of course, the bag had held a picnic, as she had guessed. They had squatted down and had tea and a bun. Not ideal, in fact not even comfortable, but they had struck out into the unknown, and had made the best of things.

She turned and, stumbling at times, made her way back to the footpath, then turned for home. It was nearly lunchtime. As she neared the outer limit of Oakroyd’s garden she thought she saw a figure disappearing round the side of the house, but when she got home she found a card to say that the electricity company’s man had called to read the meter. That explained it.

Geoffrey came back next day, taking an early train that got into Doncaster about six. They had a light salad meal, and then decided to go and introduce themselves at the local pub. The Wheatsheaf was a couple of miles away, and in the car Eleanor nearly told Geoffrey about her detective work on the elderly couple, and her conclusions about their cramped picnic. Then she thought he would be very surprised at her spending time on such a nonsubject, on something so totally lacking in interest, that he might even get the idea that she was already bored with living in the country and needed to find something to do with her time. Eleanor herself knew that settling into a new home gave one ample material to keep busy in both body and mind for months ahead. So she asked him about share prices instead.

They were made welcome at the Wheatsheaf. Staff and customers there were used to new faces — many of the customers had themselves been new faces not so long ago — and they regarded them as a source of income or of interest, people who, though a little foreign and somewhat arriviste, had every right to be there.

At least Geoffrey knew someone in the Saloon Bar.

“This is Ed Wilton,” he said, introducing a sturdy man in a maroon-check shirt. “The man who farms the fields that used to be Oakroyd’s.”

That broke the ice. Ed was local, and introduced them to both other locals and to newcomers like themselves. They bought drinks and had drinks bought for them.

“And how are you settling in to the old place?” Ed asked Eleanor. “I used to play in the fields and garden when I was a boy.”

“It’s a wonderful place to begin married life in, that’s for sure,” said Eleanor. “Geoff couldn’t have made a better choice. You get the feeling the previous owners must have loved the place, been happy there.”

Ed Wilton scratched his head.

“Only been one person there these last twenty-five years. Phil Walton, on his own — his wife died of leukemia, and it’s so long ago that I can hardly call her to mind.”

“Oh... well, perhaps Phil was happy on his own.”

“Had the reputation of being a bit of a cantankerous body. And since he was big with it — six foot three or more — people were a bit wary of him.”

“I see... Well, I do like hearing all I can about the place. And about the village, about Steepleton. I think there’s something of an amateur historian in me. I like to hear all the old scandals — children born out of wedlock, doubtful paternities, who beat his wife and who beat her husband... murders.”

“Don’t call to mind any murders at Oakroyd. Or at Steepleton, come to that. We’re peaceful folk.”

“Well, I’d better not say I’m disappointed at that!”

“That’s not to say we haven’t had babies born out of wedlock, as they used to say. We’re human. Anyway, folk don’t take the same view of that as they once did, do they? Times change... Though I think if we had a murder, you’d find our view of that hadn’t changed very much.”

“Murder?” Geoffrey said, coming up with a second pint in his hand. “I can’t imagine murders in a place like Steepleton.”

“That’s what I’m telling your wife here,” said Ed Wilton. “We must have had one, way back, but I can’t recall any in my time, and I would.”

“What an odd thing to talk about,” said Geoffrey as they drove home. “They’ll think you’re missing your regular urban diet of muggings, rapes, and drug dealing.”

“Oh, you know how conversations take odd turns,” said Eleanor, shrugging. “I was just looking for local colour.”

Thank God he doesn’t realize I was toying with the idea of ghosts, she thought.

And suddenly there came into her mind a flash of revelation. First the revelation that she was thinking in terms of ghosts, which she had never admitted to herself before. And then why.

She remembered her stumbling, uncertain progress along the narrow strip of broken, uneven land between hedge and wheat crop. Then her mind focused on the steady, smooth progress of the elderly couple, serenely proceeding on their way forward. And together, she suddenly realized. Side by side. It was not possible. There was hardly room for one, and the rugged track could only produce a wretchedly tentative progress such as hers had been.

Silly of her to think of them squatting down for a quick cup of tea and a bite to eat. They had simply disappeared.

When she got home, and while she was making a late-night pot of coffee for them both, she looked at the little card left by the electricity man who had come to read their meter. It said he had called at eleven-fifty. By the time she had come back from her walk it was nearly one. Not him she had seen, then.

But she could not talk about it with Geoffrey. Geoffrey was urban, wedded to common sense and practicalities. Brought up in Romford, holidays in Clacton, straight from school to the bottom of the ladder at the Stock Exchange, and swift progress up it. She was rural Somerset, mother a widowed primary-school teacher, no holidays to speak of. That stayed with her — a countrywoman’s sense of there being other things than the tangible — even though she had gone into glossy journalism, and for ten years or more been happy enough there. She and Geoff were palpably different in outlook, even though they had both made their way up in the world.

“I hope my mother will come and stay with us soon,” she said.

Her mother came three weeks later, snatching five days from her crowded schedule as a retired woman, her life seemingly busier and certainly more varied than when she was at her daily grind of teaching. They drove around Yorkshire and walked around Steepleton and the country near Oakroyd. Eleanor was glad that she and Geoffrey got on so well, and whispered to her that she thought she might be pregnant.

“So soon,” said her mother.

“Oh, Mum! It’s not as though we—”

“All right, all right! I know modern habits. I just assumed you were waiting for that until after—”

“I haven’t tested yet. I don’t know when it was conceived.” She looked back at the house from the middle of the garden. It was basking in the sun like red coals in a fire. “But I hope it was here.”

Her mother stood up from a bed for which she had suggested a monkey-puzzle tree, though Eleanor had disagreed.

“Well, I shall be a model grandparent, spoiling it rotten, loading it with presents, feeding it whatever it asks for. After all, I have to do the job of four.”

Turning away from the gorgeous sight of the house, Eleanor saw the old couple again, walking down the lane to the east of the house going towards the hedge that divided the fields. As before, they proceeded unhurriedly and calmly, as if walking on still water. But as Eleanor watched them, the old man turned, looked into her eyes — she was seeing his face for the first time — and very seriously shook his head. His expression was stern, but pleading. Then he continued on his way with his partner.

“Good Lord, where are that old pair going?” asked her mother, straightening and seeing them for the first time. “They’ve got miles to walk and very little to see.”

Three days after her mother had returned home to Somerset, and on the day Eleanor had had the results of her home pregnancy test confirmed by her new doctor in Steepleton, she read her mother’s thank-you letter out to Geoffrey over dinner.

“She’s obviously going to spoil the new one rotten,” he commented.

“Yes, she’s quite open about it,” said Eleanor. “Says she’s going to do it for four. Would your parents have been that kind of grandparents?”

“Difficult to say,” said Geoffrey, considering. “They spoilt me a bit as an only child and a late one. But sometimes grandparents feel they’ve done their job first time round and don’t want to be too much bothered in their twilight years with little ones all over again.”

“We’ll have to counteract the spoiling without being overstrict.”

“Oh, a bit of strictness never went amiss. Children like to have clear guidelines to keep within.”

“With the mother laying down the guidelines, and the father coming home from work and being the indulgent one.”

“Just a bit more luck with some of my investments and I might be a full-time father,” said Geoffrey. “Then see if I’m indulgent! Mr. Murdstone will have nothing on me.”

Eleanor only saw the old couple once again. She had driven to Steepleton for some groceries, and when she let herself back into the farm, straight into the large area that was the living space for the farming family in former days, and which included a large open fireplace, now diminished by the intrusion of a gas fire, there they were, on either side of this magnificent survival. They were still shabbily dressed in an old-fashioned style, but this time it was the woman who was most insistent on communicating: Her mouth moved — first the lips pressed together, then opened generously, then the lower lip coming under and touching the upper one. Then she did it again and again. A “b,” Eleanor thought, looking at her closely. A “b” to start with, and an “f” at the end, to begin the last syllable. Suddenly it came to her.

“Be careful.”

As the revelation came, the two figures faded — the first time she had ever seen them disappear.

For some minutes she felt not scared, but somehow comfortable. These were spirits, benevolent ones, looking after her. Only when she had gone into the kitchen to make a cup of tea did the inevitable question present itself to her. Why should she need protection? From what?

From whom?

There could surely be only one answer to that second question. Yes, there could be plenty to the first, but somehow Eleanor could not believe that the spirit manifestations had come to exhort her not to switch out lights with wet hands or stand under trees during a thunderstorm.

First she went to her Writer’s Handbook and found a telephone number for the East Sussex Clarion. Geoffrey’s parents had left Romford when his father retired, and had gone to live in Winchelsea, not far from Rye. A phone call to the newspaper’s library led to a friendly conversation, and a promise that she would be e-mailed anything that seemed of interest. An hour later there came through a half-page from the issue dated the tenth of October, eight years before, headlined: TRAGIC DEATH OF DELUDED COUPLE.

The accompanying account of an inquest at Dover told how Frederick and Alice Compton drove their car from Winchelsea to a spot near the cliff edge close to Dover, and together threw themselves over soon after sunset. Their son Geoffrey testified that Alice had convinced herself that she was suffering from cancer, and he had been worried about the couple. They were utterly devoted to each other, and his father had told him of his horror at the thought of being left on his own. Alice had refused to go to the doctor, or have tests that would confirm or otherwise her conviction. The pathologist reported that there was no sign of cancer in Mrs. Compton’s body. The verdict on both was “suicide while the balance of the mind was disturbed.”

Geoffrey, on the only two occasions when he had talked about his parents’ death, had told her that his mother had cancer, and the devoted couple had decided to end things together. Once he had said that the sale of their bungalow in Winchelsea had been very useful when he was putting together his first important share portfolio.

But reading the account had come second to seeing the accompanying picture. There they were — slightly shabby (Eleanor guessed this was not because they were poor, but because they didn’t care about appearances, unlike Geoffrey) — wearing hats against the sun, snapped on the promenade of what could be any south or southeast seaside resort. The couple.

What could she do? She found as the day wore on — agonisingly slowly — that what took over in her mind was not the conviction that Geoff was a parricide and a matricide, but the horrified realisation that she would be sleeping with him that night, that they would almost certainly have sex, and that she could only shudder at the thought. She tried to sort out her reactions: Was she feeling revulsion because she had been unfaithful in her mind to Geoffrey by investigating his past, was she hating herself for that? No: It was because the Geoffrey she now saw in her mind’s eye was not the Geoffrey she had married. It was quite another person. Sinister.

Frightening.

It was difficult to cook, difficult to serve him his meal. Again he had had a night in London, so he had two days’ work to be excited about and share with her. Excitement is a difficult state of mind to feign. Luckily, he was so taken up with the current state of the market that a few “Really!”s and “Wonderful”s sufficed to satisfy him that she was following, and with him.

“The market’s on the turn,” he said, shovelling into his mouth roast pork and baked potatoes. “Confidence is returning after the Iraqi business, and all the rest. We should be buying — selectively but enthusiastically.”

“We’ve bought this house,” said Eleanor. “That’s where our money is.”

“Not all our money. And it was a very good buy. Property is going to continue to be a wonderful investment. This house, the London flat... anything else that comes our way.”

Eleanor could find no approving squawk to make at that. But Geoffrey was now thoroughly self-absorbed.

“Property in Somerset is a really good bet. As soon as they’ve done something about the rail link, it will go sky-high. And a cottage-style house with a marvellous garden — every retired couple’s dream!”

Just to keep cool required superhuman effort.

“I don’t think my mother’s ready to hand in the title deeds yet.”

Geoffrey pulled himself together.

“No, of course not. May it be many years. You know how fond I am of her, and she of me. Lucky we are both only children, though.”

Later on, when Geoffrey had settled down over coffee and the local newspapers — the property pages were his usual form of relaxation — Eleanor put her head round the door.

“I’ve got a bit of a headache. I’m just going for a little drive to blow the cobwebs away.”

She didn’t wait for his reply. As she and the tiny thing in her body drove through Steepleton she wished she could have added Captain Oates’s words that she might be gone some time. When she got to the motorway she headed south, towards Somerset and the cottage-style house with the marvellous garden.