Pictures of Perfection

CHAPTER FOUR

At this moment Pascoe’s pants were far from fancy, being of a bookmaker’s check with enough spare room around the waist and buttocks to accommodate the bookie’s runner.

The upside of things was that he was sitting in a bar lounge drinking the best beer he’d tasted in a long while.

The speed of his journey from horror to happiness was enough to give a philosopher pause. The menacing knifeman had dropped his weapon on to the table and helped him to his feet with expressions of concern and apology that had rapidly transformed him from Jack the Ripper to jolly Thomas Wapshare, landlord of the Morris Men’s Rest. The bucket of blood, he explained, belonged to a pig and was the essential ingredient of the homemade black puddings for which he claimed a modest fame. And the eyes in the bag belonged to a large buck rabbit which, along with a couple of pigeons and a duck, were destined for t’other pillar of the pub’s culinary reputation, Mrs Wapshare’s game pie.

Pascoe had started to explain who he was but, as at Scarletts, found himself treated as if expected. At this point Mrs Wapshare appeared, looking just like her husband in drag, and expressing great concern at the state of Pascoe’s trousers. Despite his modest protests, she had them off him with a speed he hoped was honestly learned and took them away to be sponged while he climbed into a pair of Wapshare’s colourful bags.

During this time the pale youth with the shotgun rematerialized in the kitchen and watched the debagging with that unnervingly unfocused stare. Pascoe felt he ought to ask him some questions but was inhibited by his deshabille and also by some legal uncertainties. Game laws didn’t play a large part in his detective life. Once he had known them, but only as examination knowledge, which sparkles like the dew in the morning and has as brief a stay. He was pretty certain the pigeons and the rabbit were OK, but he couldn’t swear to the duck. Wieldy would know. Wieldy knew everything, despite never showing the slightest interest in promotion exams.

But at least he could check the gun licence.

It was too late, he realized as he looked up from tucking his shirt into the trousers. The young man had vanished.

‘Who was that?’ he asked. ‘And where’s he gone?’

‘God knows, and He’s not telling,’ said Wapshare. ‘Name of Toke. Jason Toke. Bit strange but he’s harmless, and you’d have to walk a long mile to find a better shot. We buy a lot of stuff off him. He doesn’t work — who does these days? — and the money helps him and his mam. But what are we hanging around here for, Chief Inspector? Come through into the bar and make yourself comfortable till your trousers are ready.’

The bar was a delight, nicely proportioned and very user-friendly, with lots of old oak furniture well polished by much use, a huge fireplace with a log fire, walls completely free of horse-brass, and best of all, not a juke box or fruit machine in sight. Waspshare drew a couple of pints before he got a potion which satisfied his critical gaze.

‘There we are,’ he said, handing over a glass. ‘Clear as a nun’s conscience.’

Pascoe produced some money and when Wapshare looked ready to be offended, he placed the coins carefully on a ziggurat of copper and silver which towered up beside a notice saying Save Our School.

‘Money trouble?’ he said with the sympathy of a parent who spent so much time answering appeals that he sometimes suspected he’d been edged into private education without noticing it.

‘Aye, but not just books and chalk. Worse than that. We need enough to pay a teacher, else they’ll close the place down and bus our kids nine miles to Byreford.’

‘That’s terrible,’ said Pascoe. ‘How’s the appeal doing?’

‘OK, but not OK enough to provide an income. That takes real money. Only way we can get that is to sell something and we’ve nowt to sell except our Green. So no school or no Green. It’s what they call a double whammy, isn’t it? But you’ve not come here to talk about schools, have you, sir? Not unless it’s a school for scandal!’

‘So what do you think I have come here to talk about? asked Pascoe.

‘At a guess I’d say … Constable Bendish!’ He peered into Pascoe’s face and let out his infectious laugh. ‘Nay sir, don’t look so glummered! There’s no trick. Soon as it got round that Terry Filmer were getting his knickers in a twist about Dirty Harry going missing, I said to my good lady, five quid to a farthing some smart detective from the city’ll stroll in here afore the day’s out and start making discreet inquiries. So fire away, Mr Pascoe.’

Pascoe sipped his beer, decided that a man who kept ale as good as this was entitled to a bit of smart-assery, and said, ‘It’s a fair cop. But no big deal. It’s just that we need to get hold of Bendish, but it’s his day off and no one seems to know where he’s got to. Probably some simple explanation …’

‘Like he’s trapped under a fallen woman,’ grinned Wapshare. ‘Lucky devil!’

Wondering if this echo of Dalziel’s theory sprang from local knowledge, Pascoe said, ‘Is that why you called him Dirty Harry just now?’

‘No. That just slipped out. A kind of nickname some folk use,’ said Wapshare, hesitating before going on, ‘I might as well tell you as you’ll not be long finding out, your Constable Bendish didn’t set out to make himself popular. For years we had old Chaz Barnwall, lovely man, and when he retired last back end, we gave him a party here that went on till milking time. Next night, dead on the stroke of eleven, the door opens and young Harold walks in. “Welcome to Enscombe,” says I. “You’ll have a drink against the cold?” And he never cracks his face but says, “No, I won’t. For two reasons. One is my warrant which doesn’t allow me to drink on duty. The other is your licence which doesn’t allow you to serve drink after eleven. Get supped up and shut up, landlord.” And he went outside and sat in his car in the car park, and the first lad who came out, he breathalysed.’

‘New broom,’ said Pascoe. ‘Making his mark.’

‘He did that right enough. As well as the breathalysing, he marked folk for road tax, tyres, lights, MOT, leaving mud on the road, letting animals stray — you name it, if it’s an offence there’s someone round here he’s done for it! Can you wonder some folk took to calling him Dirty Harry!’

‘So, a lot of people with grudges,’ said Pascoe. ‘You included?’

‘Nay, takes more than that to cause a grudge round here. As for me, I were grateful to have an excuse to get to bed at a decent time. This pubbing takes up far too much fishing time as it is.’

‘I notice you don’t exactly advertise,’ said Pascoe.

‘Them as I want in here knows where it is,’ said Wapshare. ‘Plus a few discerning travellers like yourself, of course. But if it’s the sign you mean, there’s a story behind that.’

A policeman in full possession of his trousers might have avoided the temptation and pressed on with official inquiries. But Pascoe felt himself in the grip of stronger forces than mere duty. He finished his beer and said, ‘A story, you say?’

‘Aye. You’d like to hear it? Let me get you the other half. And what about summat to eat? Only take a tick to fry up some chips and a slice or two of my black pudding. Nay? You’ll have a piece of cold pie, but? My good lady would never forgive me if I let you go without trying her game pie. That big enough for you? If not there’s plenty more. Now let me see. The sign. We’ve got to go back a few hundred years …’

Pascoe began to feel this might have been a very serious mistake. But as he sank his teeth into the wedge of pie and found it matched in quality the superb ale, he comforted himself with the argument that this came under the heading of gathering local colour.

‘Thing is,’ began Wapshare, ‘there never used to be a pub here in Enscombe at all. There was no way we were going to get one without the approval of the Guillemards, and the Guillemards reckoned that the last thing working men needed was a pub to get bolshie in.’

‘The Guillemards? They’re the family at Old Hall, right?’ said Pascoe, recalling the brief briefing he’d received from Terry Filmer about the last sighting of Harry Bendish.

‘That’s right. Used to be a big bunch of them and right powerful.’

‘And now?’

‘There’s the old Squire; his granddaughter, Girlie; his great-nephew, Guy Guillemard, who’s the heir; and little Franny Harding, the poor relation.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Every posh family needs a poor relation to remind ’em how well they’re doing. Only in recent years they’ve not been doing so well. But way back, when I’m talking about, they were rotten rich, and they made sure Enscombe stayed dry till well into the last century.’

‘What happened then?’

‘What happened? They were rude to Jake Halavant, that’s what happened!’

‘Halavant? Any relation to Justin Halavant at Scarletts?’

‘You know Justin? Then mebbe you’ll be surprised to learn that at the start of the last century the Halavants were nowt but a bunch of raggedyarsed peasants who could hardly pronounce their own name let alone spell it. The only one on ’em with enough brains to make a pudding was Jake. Good with his hands too — carving, painting, owt of that. And a real artist with his tongue, by all accounts. So it didn’t surprise anyone when he decided he’d had enough of living like a pig, and he upped and vanished. But everyone was knocked right back twenty years later when who should turn up in the village, looking, talking and spending money like a gent, but young Jake!’

‘How did people react?’ wondered Pascoe.

‘They were pleased, most on ’em. Enscombe folk like to see their own get on, so long as they don’t forget who they are. Jake was a real Fancy Dan, but he was generous with all his old friends, and with what remained of his family too after the smallpox and the gallows had taken their share. Then one day he took it into his head to stroll up to Old Hall and send in his card. A bit provocative, maybe, but all they had to do was send word out they weren’t at home.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Pascoe. ‘I take it they didn’t.’

‘No. They kept him waiting on the doorstep twenty minutes. Then the butler brought his card back with a message that if he cared to go round to the kitchen entry, the cook would be happy to extend the usual courtesy of the house to members of his family and dig out some scraps of food and old clothing for him. That was the biggest mistake they ever made.’

‘How so?’ asked Pascoe, partly to hurry the story on but mainly because he wanted to know.

‘Most folk reckon if they’d have been polite, after a while Jake would have headed back to London or wherever he’d come from. But instead what he did was this. He sniffed around and found that the Guillemards, who had a nasty habit of buying up local property at knock-down prices — which is to say, they knocked down anyone else interested in buying — were after this house and a parcel of land down the river alongside Scarletts Pool which is the best fishing pool on the Een. At the last moment, Jake nipped in and upped the ante and bought them both under the Guillemards’ noses! If that weren’t enough, next thing he gets himself engaged to a second cousin of the Finch-Hattons of Byreford who’d got tired of being a poor relation. The Finch-Hattons are proper Yorkshire gentry, and when they saw Jake had the brass, they were glad to get the lass off their accounts and on to his. Naturally they invited the Guillemards to the wedding, and they had to take a holiday out of the country to get out of going!’

‘Game, set and match to Jake,’ applauded Pascoe. ‘But how did this place become a pub?’

‘I were coming to that. Jake set up house here, started a family, and in the fullness of time sent his eldest, Jeremy, to Oxford. Put a real polish on him, came back very arty-crafty. When he got married, he wanted a place of his own and it was him as started building Scarletts on the bit of land his dad had bought by the river. Things had been quiet between the Halavants and Old Hall for a bit, but this set them going again. First off the Guillemards complained the builders were interfering with the fishing. Then, when they realized what kind of house Jeremy was building, they played merry hell. Said it looked like a Chinese brothel and such outrages shouldn’t be allowed in a godfearing community like Eendale. Naturally that just egged Jeremy on to make it as bright and beautiful as possible.’

‘And how did the villagers feel?’ asked Pascoe.

‘Loved it,’ said Wapshare. ‘Not had so much fun since the Civil War. You see, we don’t take sides here, Mr Pascoe, we take seats and sit back to enjoy the show. But most folk thought things had gone too far when the Guillemards set fire to Jeremy’s house when it were nearly done.’

‘Good Lord! But surely they couldn’t get away with that?’

‘Couldn’t they just? Mind you, nothing were ever proved, but everyone knew,’ said Wapshare. ‘The Guillemards had to call in a lot of favours to get themselves clear, and that left them vulnerable to Jeremy’s next move a year later when old Jake finally fell off the perch. This place were empty again. Most folk expected Jeremy to sell. Instead …’

‘He turned it into a pub,’ completed Pascoe. ‘Brilliant! Do you think my trousers will be dry yet?’

‘Nay, but your throat will be,’ said Wapshare, topping up his glass. ‘Naturally, once word got to Old Hall what he was up to, hell broke loose again. The Guillemards opposed the licence, but they were short on favours now, and getting short on money. Aye, I reckon even then the Guillemards’ day was over, though they still couldn’t tell twilight from noon. In the end they were left with nothing to fight about except the pub’s name.’

‘Why? What did Jeremy want to call it?’

‘He really tried it on! His first suggestion was The Guillotine and Basket! No one was very happy about that, and the Guillemards screamed loud enough to get his next two ideas vetoed too. These were The Cobden Arms and The Tolpuddle Martyrs. Politically provocative, said the Squire. And when Jeremy finally came up with The Morris Men’s Rest, you’d have thought the Guillemards had won the Battle of Waterloo!’

‘Because they’d got something all feudal and pastoral instead of radical and provocative? I see their point,’ said Pascoe.

‘Aye. And they saw Jeremy’s when the sign went up,’ said Wapshare gleefully. ‘Not straight away, I shouldn’t think. Likely they were just puzzled when instead of a picture of daft buggers with bells on their knees dancing around a pole, what they got was a portly gent with a big beard. But finally it clicked.’

He looked expectantly at Pascoe who felt his detective credentials were at stake. He wrestled mentally, was ready to admit defeat, then it came, the click.

‘Morris!’ he said. ‘Not Morris dancers, but William Morris, the socialist. Good Lord, yes, that must have annoyed them. I presume the sign was a bit clearer then? It’s a bit of a mess now.’

‘So would you be if you’d been shot at, attacked with an axe, tossed on a bonfire,’ retorted Wapshare. ‘The Guillemards put their people up to it, of course. But every time it happened, Jeremy just got his lads to put the sign up again, no repairs or anything, so everyone could see what silly asses the Guillemards were making of themselves.’

It was a good story, but even as local colour he doubted if Dalziel would reckon it relevant to inquiries. Perhaps Mrs Wapshare had been eavesdropping till her husband finished, for now the door opened and she appeared with Pascoe’s trousers, cleaned and ironed and looking rather better than they had done when he put them on that morning.

He waited till she’d left before he started removing the borrowed bags.

‘Mr Halavant, Justin, does he own the pub now?’

‘Aye. It’s still his. Though for how much longer, I don’t know.’

Suddenly the merriment faded from Wapshare’s voice.

‘Why? Up for sale, is it? And would that affect your tenancy?’

‘If Justin sells to who I think he’s got in mind … but it’s still all hush-hush. We’ll have to wait and see. We’re good at that round here.’

‘I can imagine,’ said Pascoe, stepping out of the trousers which he folded neatly and laid on the bar. ‘This feud between the Guillemards and the Halavants, does it still go on?’

‘Not so’s you’d notice. They don’t exchange visits, but Justin and the old Squire are polite enough when the meet. Might be different when Master Guy inherits though.’

‘Oh? Why’s that?’

‘He’s a bit rumbustious, young Guy. Hadn’t seen much of him for years, then he showed up a few weeks back. Seems he’s started up some company that runs courses for executives and such; you know, where they run around the woods playing cowboys and indians. Not the lot who camp out and sniff each other’s bums, I don’t think. Saw a programme about them on the box. Yanks, of course. Tell you what, couple of pints of my best and a black pudding fry-up, and they’d not be so keen on bum-sniffing!’

He roared his laugh and Pascoe smiled wanly.

‘So he showed up,’ he prompted.

‘Aye. Must have got wind of the development up at the Hall. This Health Park thing that Girlie, that’s the Squire’s granddaughter, is organizing. Well, Guy reckoned there was room for his lot to expand up here and use the Hall for his kids’ games some weekends. Girlie didn’t fancy the idea at all, and from what I hear, there was an almighty row.’

‘Wouldn’t it be up to the Squire?’ asked Pascoe.

‘Oh aye. So it were no contest. Guy’s the heir, you see. Women don’t come second with the Guillemards, they’re not even entered for the race. He went off again soon after, but he came back yesterday with some mates to start setting things up. Funny-looking bunch. They got in here last night and made a bit of a row. Nothing I couldn’t handle, but I doubt if Justin would thole it. Doesn’t care for noise when he’s drinking, Justin, except if he’s making it.’

‘Yes, I got the impression he liked the sound of his own voice,’ said Pascoe, testing how far employee loyalty went in the Morris.

It clearly didn’t get in the way of a good gossip.

‘Only one thing he likes better,’ said Wapshare.

‘Art, you mean?’ said Pascoe with deliberate naïvety.

‘Aye, that comes into it,’ chuckled Wapshare. ‘Here, I’ll tell you a story as’ll make you laugh. It certainly brought the tears into Justin’s eyes! There’s this lass in the village, paints pictures, a real dish she is, outstanding, and Justin hello there, usual, is it?’

The transition was so smooth, Pascoe thought his hearing must be at fault.

Then a voice said, ‘I know most policemen are Freemasons, but surely there are subtler ways of indicating the fact, Chief Inspector.’

And he realized simultaneously that Justin Halavant had come into the bar, and he had become so interested in Wapshare’s reminiscences that he’d forgotten to put his trousers on.