Pictures of Perfection

CHAPTER NINE

As he shaved in the morning, or saw his elegant profile on the Arts Page of the Evening Post, or played a video of one of his TV shows, Justin Halavant usually congratulated himself on being Justin Halavant.

Best of all he liked to see himself mirrored in the envious eyes of his acolytes, those who, for a mere tithe of his wit, looks, style, taste, and success with women, would have traded their sister’s virtue, which he’d probably already had gratis anyway.

But there were times when he had to acknowledge that, though what he had he had perfectly, he did not have everything.

For instance he had no talent for burglary.

It had started well enough. Getting into Corpse Cottage was surprisingly easy. He turned the door handle and it opened.

Just for the show of the thing, he called, ‘I say. Constable Bendish!’ twice. Then he stepped inside.

Now the trouble started. A burglar would presumably know where to start looking. He opted for the deep alcoves found by the chimney breast which Bendish clearly used as his office. Here was a bureau with all the necessary forms of his business carefully pigeonholed. But the drawers were locked, and the cupboards beneath also, and though in tele-fiction such things burst open at the touch of a nail file, in real life they proved much more obdurate.

In any case, it was surely a waste of time searching in an office for what all the evidence suggested had remained unofficial.

He went upstairs. Bedrooms were the opposite of offices. Here a man was at his most private. Here he would hide what touched him most closely.

But where? No locked drawers here, but nothing in them save socks and shirts and vests and pants. The shelves of the wardrobe were no more productive. He lifted the pillows off the bed, then in desperation raised the mattress to check beneath.

It was while he was thus occupied that he heard the car pull up outside.

Had he shut the front door? He couldn’t recall. In any case it made no matter; what he had done, anyone could do. Car doors opened, slammed. Voices floated upward. He had to act, but action belonged to another world than this. He was a figure in a painting, caught on canvas forever, the raised mattress in his hands. The whence and whither others must decide as they shuffled past in judgement with their catalogues at the high port.

Then he was seized from behind, the mattress fell back on the bed and he on top of it with his attacker straddling him. Rape! Oh God! Was this what it felt like? Had Caddy perhaps felt like this as he flung her down on the stairs in the Gallery?

This rare pang of guilt was immediately rewarded with the idea of dealing with his attacker as she had dealt with hers. But to do this he needed to twist round to bring his knee into play and his assailant had a lock on his neck which held him helpless.

Then he heard footsteps on the stairs and felt rather than saw other men racing into the room.

‘What the hell’s going on here?’ demanded Peter Pascoe.

In strict terms what was going on was clear for all to see. A man dressed as a vicar was pinning Justin Halavant to the bed with what looked like a professional wrestling hold.

‘Who are you?’ demanded the holy wrestler, turning to look at them.

‘Police,’ said Pascoe. ‘Do you mind standing up?’

The Vicar relaxed his hold. Immediately the underling twisted round and brought his knee up in what would have been a vicious assault on the clerical crutch had not its owner slipped easily off the bed before contact was made.

‘Good Lord,’ he said as he saw his victim’s face. ‘Mr Halavant.’

And equally amazed, the now supine man said, ‘Lillingstone! What the hell are you playing at?’

‘A better question might be, what are you both playing at?’ said Pascoe sternly. ‘This house is police property. Would you mind explaining what you’re doing here?’

‘In my case, that’s very easy,’ said Lillingstone. ‘I’m doing what I imagine is your job. I was coming down the drive from the vicarage when I saw a movement up here. I’d heard about Mr Bendish’s absence, so naturally I was suspicious. I came in …’

‘How?’ interjected Pascoe.

‘Through the front door. It was ajar,’ said the Vicar. ‘I came upstairs and saw what I thought was a burglar stooping over the bed lifting up the mattress. So I performed a citizen’s arrest.’

‘Very civic-minded of you,’ said Pascoe. ‘And you, Mr Halavant. How was it for you?’

‘An outrage!’ said Halavant, standing up and checking his body for damage, his clothes for disarray. ‘I had come in search of Constable Bendish. Finding the door open, I came in and called his name. There was no reply but I thought I heard a noise upstairs, so I came up.’

‘Why?’ asked Pascoe.

‘In case the Constable was in trouble. He might have had a fit or a fall. It was my duty.’

‘Enscombe is positively awash with civic concern,’ murmured Pascoe. ‘And you were raising the mattress in case the Constable had somehow slipped beneath it during his fall or his fit?’

‘I thought he might have rolled beneath the bed.’

‘In that case, wouldn’t it have been easier simply to stoop and look?’

‘I choose never to stoop,’ said Halavant. ‘I’m puzzled why you should be so puzzled by my concern when you yourself are clearly concerned enough to bring in reinforcements to investigate your constable’s absence.’

He smiled at Wield, who gave him in return what Dalziel called his sennapod-tea look.

‘That’s because I’m puzzled why you came here looking for Bendish when you know he’s missing,’ said Pascoe gently.

Momentarily nonplussed, but quickly recovering, Halavant replied, ‘I hardly took that rumour seriously, Inspector. I mean, I hadn’t realized till now that you’d actually formed a posse. All I wanted was a word about the report of an intruder at Scarletts last night.’

The Vicar, perhaps overcome by a sense of feeling foolish, sat heavily on the bed.

‘Fair enough, sir,’ said Pascoe. ‘As soon as we contact Bendish we’ll ask him to get in touch with you. Sergeant …’

Wield held open the door for Halavant to pass through.

Lillingstone rose as if to follow but Pascoe said, ‘No, sir. If you could just spare a moment of your time …’

‘Of course. How flattering.’

‘How so?’

‘I get the Chief Inspector while our local celebrity has to make do with the Sergeant.’

Pascoe said, ‘That’s because you’re the more interesting case, sir.’

‘How’s that?’ said the Vicar uncertainly.

‘Mr Halavant is a journalist and media man,’ said Pascoe. ‘So it must be almost second nature for him to bend the truth. But when someone in your line of country starts telling lies, that I find really interesting.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’ said Lillingstone, flushing.

‘This room is on the wrong side of the house for you to see any movement in it on your way down the vicarage drive. Also, if your story were true, we’d have been in time to see you entering the house as we drove up. No, it seems to me much more likely you were here already when Mr Halavant came in. You hid, hoping to slip away as soon as you got the chance. Then you heard our car. Reckoning the chances of two intruders going undetected weren’t good, you decided to put yourself firmly on the side of the angels by apprehending your fellow burglar.’

‘I resent the term burglar,’ said Lillingstone indignantly.

‘You’d be surprised how many burglars do,’ said Pascoe. ‘But indignation without explanation doesn’t get you jelly for your tea. So what’s the gospel reading for today, Vicar?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the man wretchedly. ‘You’re quite right, of course. No excuse. Just sheer vulgar curiosity. I’d heard about Harold and I thought that maybe in the cottage there’d be some clue …’

Pascoe, who didn’t believe a word, said, ‘OK. So let’s have the key. And don’t say, which key? The door wasn’t forced. We know Sergeant Filmer left it locked this morning. So, the key please. And perhaps you would like to tell me where you got it?’

The Vicar put his hand in his pocket and produced a rusty latch key.

‘There’s a key board in the vicarage,’ said Lillingstone. ‘Full of old keys, some of them labelled. Church Cottage was one of them.’

‘Why on earth should there be a key to a police house in the vicarage?’ asked Pascoe.

‘The cottage used to belong to the church,’ said Lillingstone. ‘The Hogbin family rented it for generations, but finally they decided they’d had enough and moved out, and my financial masters put the cottage on the market. That’s when your people bought it as a police house.’

‘What was it the Hogbins had had enough of?’ asked Pascoe.

Lillingstone smiled the relieved smile of someone being invited to leap out of the hot seat of interrogation into the saddle of his hobby-horse and said, ‘Being haunted, of course. It’s a good story. Would you like to hear it?’

Another diversion into the past! thought Pascoe. He really had to start resisting them. Yet he was getting a sense, which he wouldn’t care to have to explain to Dalziel, that whatever was going on in Enscombe would only be understood by reference to history.

He said, ‘Only if you’ve worked on it long enough to make it short.’

‘Fear not. It’s part of my address to the Local History Association. The parlour’s the best place to tell it. Can we go downstairs?’

Am I imagining it, or is he keen to get out of this bedroom? wondered Pascoe. They made their way downstairs, meeting Wield on the way up.

‘Why don’t you take a look around up there?’ suggested Pascoe.

Wield was the best systematic searcher of premises he’d met, though if you knew what you were looking for, there was no one to beat Andy Dalziel. No system, but he had a nose for going straight to the spot. As for himself, Pascoe acknowledged a deep-rooted distaste for this hands-on invasion of privacy which rendered his searches pain-giving as well as painstaking. Dalziel had once remarked, ‘Pete, lad, I’ll always know if you’ve been searching my room ’cos you’ll leave it tidier than you found it!’

The Sergeant continued upstairs. Pascoe and the Vicar went into the living-room and Lillingstone took up a public speaker’s stance in front of the fireplace.

‘You probably remarked as you approached the cottage that this wall behind me is in fact built right into the hillside,’ the Vicar began. ‘Beyond that wall, Mr Pascoe, lies my graveyard.’

He paused for effect. Pascoe looked at his watch, also for effect. Lillingstone grinned and hurried on.

‘I’d like to take you back to Lammas 1787. That was the third day of the longest uninterrupted period of rain ever recorded even in these damp climes. It was also the day when the Hogbin clan gathered to bury Susannah, their matriarch who had ruled them with a rod of iron for more than three decades. Alas, it was as true then as it is now, that the longer you are feared, the less you will be mourned and the relief the Hogbins felt at getting out of the deluge and into this house was redoubled by their realization that the dreaded Susannah was gone for good. They ate the funeral meats and drank the funeral ale, and the gathering got merrier and merrier, so that even the sound of the incessant rain beating against the windows only increased their merriment.

‘Quips and jokes flew thick and fast, and frequent repetition of the best only served to make them the funnier. And the most brilliant shaft of all has been saved for us in the written record of Silas Hogbin, then a youngster of nine or ten, who was sitting crouched here, in the alcove behind the chimney breast, drinking in the wild talk of his elders as children love to do.

‘His own father had just repeated it for the umpteenth time, “Aye, but didsta see t’ole? Fuller o’ watter than Daft Jimmy’s heed! T’owld lass weren’t buried. She were launched!” And for the umpteenth time the Hogbins fell about with laughter.

‘But this time it was not the sound of mirth alone which followed the joke. Another noise intruded, at first scarcely distinguishable through the laughter, but eventually causing it to still as the mourners strained their ears to identify its source.’

Lillingstone paused dramatically. Right on cue came a groaning, creaking noise which seemed to come out of thin air. Pascoe gave a little start, then grimaced as he realized it was only Wield moving something upstairs.

‘Get a move on, will you?’ he said with the brusqueness of embarrassment.

‘It was at this moment,’ resumed the Vicar, ‘that young Silas had a strange experience. In his own words it was as if a great finger jabbed into his back and started to push him forward into the room. He looked round to check the cause.

‘“Hey, Dad,” he called. “This wall’s starting to bulge …”

‘And simultaneous with his warning, the stones of this very wall flew asunder to admit a great tide of earth and rocks and water. You can imagine the panic. Screaming and praying, the Hogbins went scrambling for the doors and windows with scant regard for the precedence due to sex or age. Nor was it just natural fear for their lives which set them fleeing. It was also the supernatural terror caused by the violent entry on this muddy tide of a still bright-handled coffin which burst asunder on this very floor to reveal the pallid face and wide accusing eyes of the founder of their feast, Susannah!’

He stopped speaking and stood with his fingers pointing dramatically downwards.

It was a bit over the top, thought Pascoe. He wondered if his sermons were like this.

He said, ‘Sounds a bit of a tall story to me, Vicar.’

‘What? It’s well documented, I assure you,’ said Lillingstone, looking hurt. ‘It was the same cloudburst that caused the church tower to take its final lurch sideways and washed out the foundations of the old vicarage, making it too dangerous to live in. The vicar had to bed down at Old Hall till the parish raised enough money to build the fine old vicarage I now inhabit, so it’s all down in black and white in the records.’

‘Very generous parishioners you have round here,’ said Pascoe.

‘Indeed they are,’ said Lillingstone, as if suspecting a slight. ‘They practised self-help here long before it became a euphemism for governmental meanness and insensitivity.’

‘And Church Cottage became Corpse Cottage. Was Bendish bothered by ghosts that you heard?’

‘Young Harry? No!’ laughed Lillingstone. ‘Far too sensible to believe in ghosts.’

Pascoe noted ‘young Harry’, the first non-deprecatory reference to Bendish he’d heard. Christian charity? Law and order solidarity? Or genuine liking?

He said, ‘But the Hogbins weren’t sensible?’

Lillingstone laughed again and said, ‘I believe the Hogbins would still be here if the Squire hadn’t offered them the Lodge rent-free and a sharecropping deal in return for Jocky taking care of the Hall gardens. But it made a better story for them to be haunted out than hired out. Most Yorkshiremen love facts, Mr Pascoe, and they like them penny plain. Enscombians are something else. They go for tuppence coloured every time.’

Wield’s head appeared round the door and looked significantly at Pascoe.

Lillingstone said, ‘I’ll be on my way, then, if there’s nothing else?’

‘Not unless you’ve decided to tell me your real reason for being here,’ said Pascoe. ‘Vicars should stick to penny plain, even in Enscombe, wouldn’t you agree? So come to confession when you’re ready.’

Lillingstone left, looking seriously discomfited.

‘Doubt if you’ll be getting an invite to the Sunday School treat this year,’ said Wield.

‘I’ll survive. You found something, have you, Wieldy?’

‘Could be owt or nowt. Everything’s in order. Hard to say what’s missing without knowing what was here to start with. But at least we can be sure he wasn’t dressed for duty when he took off, which is a relief.’

He had led the way upstairs into the bedroom. The wardrobe door was open. He pointed to a black bin-liner lying inside. Pascoe stooped and opened it.

It contained two police uniforms, fresh back from the dry cleaners by the look of them.

Or rather, one and a half police uniforms, for Wield’s sharper eye had spotted a discrepancy. He picked up one pair of trousers, looked at the label and said, ‘We’re not using Marks and Sparks as a supplier now, are we?’

‘Seems unlikely. Why?’

‘That’s where these came from. Right colour, and just about the same material. Would get by a casual glance, maybe, but not a real inspection.’

Pascoe shrugged and said, ‘So he spilt paint on the originals and didn’t want to have to explain himself to Filmer. Who incidentally needs a kick up the backside for missing this lot.’

‘Probably just thought it was dirty washing,’ said Wield defensively.

‘Whereas it is in fact very clean washing,’ said Pascoe thoughtfully. ‘Odd. Bendish was wearing one of these uniforms at Scarletts last night. And I’ve not noticed an all-night dry cleaners in the village, have you?’

Before Wield could riddle this riddle, an all too familiar voice came drifting up the stairs.

‘Is there anybody there?’

Pascoe went out on to the tiny landing and looked down into the hallway.

‘Only us listeners,’ he said. ‘Can I help you, Mr Digweed?’

‘That depends,’ said the bookseller, frowning. ‘We met at the station earlier, didn’t we? I’ve forgotten your name …’

‘Pascoe. Chief Inspector.’

‘Just so. And from the sound of it you are perhaps also the token literate in our benighted constabulary. Or did my question merely stir up some childhood memory of rote-learned verse? I dare say even the worthy Sergeant Wield knows de la Mare’s Traveller.’

Here we go again, thought Wield as he descended the stairs behind Pascoe, wondering if his boss could resist the temptation to take the old fart on.

He couldn’t.

‘De la Mare’s Listeners, I think you mean,’ he said courteously. ‘His Traveller is of course something else. But what urgent business brings you here, Mr Digweed?’

‘Who said anything about urgency?’ said the bookseller, somewhat piqued.

‘A self there is that listens in the heart, To what is past the range of human speech, Which yet has urgent tidings to impart,’ said Pascoe.

Digweed regarded him, frowning. Yet it did not seem to Wield that it was merely being capped in this arty-farty quotation game that made him frown.

Then the bookseller said, ‘Of course, you’re quite right. And I’m sorry if I spoke boorishly. Think of it as a protective bitterness, like painting the nails with alum, causing more discomfort to the biter than anyone who happens to get scratched.’

Wield, assuming cynically that his thick skin was excluded from this apology, was surprised when Digweed filtered a frosty smile in his direction also.

Then the bookseller’s expression turned businesslike.

‘And yes, Mr Pascoe, it is a matter of urgency that brings me here hoping to find Sergeant Filmer and your good Sergeant Wield at their rendezvous. My shop has been broken into. I have been robbed.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir,’ said Pascoe. ‘What’s been taken?’

Digweed rolled his eyes upward and said, ‘I run a bookshop, Chief Inspector, a shop for selling books. So why don’t you hazard a guess?’

And Wield grinned to himself at this evidence that not even quotation itself kept a man safe from scratching.