Unhappy Returns

by Elizabeth Lemarchand

  His eye was caught by movement. The young green of trees was visible through the plain glass of the east window, and their swaying branches formed a living reredos for the altar. The deficiencies around him seemed suddenly to fade into another and more significant picture with a quality of timelessness. Almost primitive in its simplicity, this church had borne witness to the faith and skills of its founders through seven centuries. Successive generations had altered it but little. A few enrichments had been added: a Jacobean oak pulpit and font cover, and one or two memorials, but miraculously no devastating Victorian restoration had taken place. Robert Hoyle knew at that moment that his mind was made up. If there was no other way of raising money for the preservation of this treasure entrusted to his care, the Georgian plate must go. His resolution was confirmed by the sight of a framed list of the vicars of Ambercombe in attractive lettering, spanning the centuries back to one HENRICUS c. 1180.

  Suddenly remembering that he was also nominally responsible for the vicarage until it was sold, he left the church and crossed the eastern end of the churchyard to the gate leading into its garden. As he expected, the latter was rapidly reverting to nature. The vicarage itself, a pleasant if dilapidated two-storey building, was raised on a low terrace, and to his surprise all its windows were wide open. As he stood staring at it he remembered that Ethel Ridd was caretaking. Then there were approaching footsteps, and a man of about his own age, hirsute and in jeans and sweater, came round the side of the building.

  ‘Blimey!’ he exclaimed. ‘Our new man of God, I presume?’

  Robert Hoyle saw, and liked, a humorous face with lively blue eyes and a wide mobile mouth.

  ‘One of my new parishioners, I take it?’ he queried.

  ‘Geographically, yes. Ecclesiastically, I’m a write-off, though. Bill Sandford. God, padre, you gave me a turn! I thought for a moment it was old Barny. He haunts the place, you know. I saw him distinctly the other night. Admittedly, I was on my way home from the Seven Stars.’

  Robert Hoyle grinned as the new arrival came down a short flight of steps and joined him.

  ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘Probably better than anybody else in the place. The fact that we’d both succeeded in doing our thing was a sort of bond, I suppose. The old chap honestly thought his life’s work was reviving monastic worship here. He was perfectly happy tootling backwards and forwards to that morgue of a church to say matins and lauds and whatever. I used to drop in for chats, and do things for him in Westbridge after they wouldn’t renew his driving licence. He wasn’t in the least senile, you know. Just a bit fragile towards the end. How are you getting on with the Ridd?’

  ‘At the moment I’m completely unacceptable, I’m afraid,’ Robert Hoyle replied, declining a cigarette.

  ‘A god-awful woman,’ Bill Sandford said with feeling, cupping the flame of his lighter in his hands. ‘She’s just not true! Six foot if she’s an inch, and wears a knitted cap with a great bobble on the top. Booms like a bittern. Doesn’t it put you off when you’re officiating?’

  ‘It is a bit disconcerting. I suppose she was devoted to Barnabas Viney?’

  ‘Utterly. Saw herself as a sort of acolyte to a holy man. The hell of it is that she’s landed next door to me. I’ve got one of the workman’s cottages up by the old quarry. I needn’t say I’m persona non grata, like you. I cut through here instead of going round by the road just to get her goat — she’s supposed to be caretaking at the vicarage until it’s sold. Airs it, and so on.’

  Bill Sandford indicated the open windows.

  ‘What’s your own thing?’ Robert Hoyle asked, harking back to an earlier stage in the conversation.

  ‘Mine? Oh, I’m as near to a drop-out as I can afford to be. I used to lecture in history at a London Polytechnic until an aunt left me nearly enough to live on. I fetched up down here, and get by on part-time at the Westbridge College of Education. Living instead of existing. I’m just on my way to the Stars for a pre-lunch beer.’

  ‘Can I give you a lift down?’

  ‘Thanks. My bus is in dock at the Pyrford Garage at the moment.’

  As they walked through the churchyard Bill Sandford alluded to the projected sale of the church plate.

  ‘I hear there’s a move to flog it,’ he said on an interrogative note.

  ‘I’ve no idea if the PCC will want to apply for a faculty,’ Robert Hoyle replied guardedly.

  ‘Worth a packet, isn’t it?’

  ‘I didn’t get that impression from the Archdeacon. Rather average Georgian, I gathered. I haven’t seen it myself.’

  Bill Sandford seemed reluctant to abandon the topic.

  ‘Georgian? There must have been earlier stuff at one time, surely?’

  ‘Oh, undoubtedly. But records in a remote parish like this are pretty sketchy as a rule,’ Robert Hoyle replied, getting into his car. He leant across to unlock the passenger door, and feeling that he had had enough of the Ambercombe plate for one morning, changed the subject.

  Before reaching home, however, it cropped up yet again. Just after dropping Bill Sandford at the pub he saw a figure in a brown suede coat approaching, and was hailed. Recognising Hugh Redshaw of the Old Rectory, the well-known writer of breathlessly dynamic detective fiction, he stopped and let down the window. A reddish face with enquiring grey eyes and a small toothbrush moustache presented itself.

  ‘Well met, padre! I’ve just dropped in on your lady wife to ask if you’d both care to come up to dinner with us next Wednesday, when the Holy Season’s over? She wasn’t sure if you were clear, and said you’d ring us back.’

  While recognising an attempt on Jean’s part to leave a loophole, Robert Hoyle decided to accept the inevitable.

  ‘As far as I know, we are,’ he said. ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘Good man! Come along and get your strength up for the Parish AGM. I see that the explosive topic of the Ambercombe plate’s on the agenda. Believe me, it’ll be rich. As my appalling potboilers would say, black passions seethe under the surface calm of the village life.’

  Robert Hoyle received an amused conspiratorial look which he found irritating. Controlling himself, he smiled pleasantly in return, remarked that almost everything must be grist to an author’s mill, and extricated himself on the plea that his wife had laid on an early lunch. As he drove on he wondered gloomily how long it would be before he could give his undivided attention to normal parish business.

  In the event, the Parish Annual General Meeting turned out a damp squib to those in hopes of an exciting firework display, although there was a record attendance. No one disputed the fact that Ambercombe’s church was in urgent need of extensive repairs. When George Aldridge proposed that a faculty be sought to sell its Georgian plate, normally kept in the bank at Westbridge, in order to raise the necessary funds, there was a general murmur of agreement, punctuated by hear hears from the Pyrford majority present. The opposition, headed by the Gillards and backed by a small group of elderly Ambercombe residents, failed to put forward any convincing alternatives. Moreover, it was handicapped by the deep booming support of Ethel Ridd, whose interventions provoked barely suppressed hilarity in some quarters. At one point Hugh Redshaw was seen to wipe his eyes. Finally the proposition, duly seconded, was carried by a large majority, and Robert Hoyle deftly damped down the situation by informing the meeting that the Consistory Court would certainly not hear the petition before the autumn, and took the next item on the agenda, the date and place of the Young Wives’ Summer Outing.

  During the early summer notices appeared in the porches of both churches announcing that objections to the petition had been lodged by Matthew Henry and Emily Margaret Gillard and Ethel Ridd, and that the Consistory Court of the diocese of Marchester would sit to hear the petition on 19 November. The remoteness of this date invested the situation with a sense of unreality, but like all distant dates it drew inexorably nearer and became suddenly imminent.

  There was a flurry of revived intere
st, and the proprietor of the Pyrford garage hurriedly organised a coach trip to Marchester for the occasion.

  Wednesday 19 November was a still autumnal day of pale sunshine and early mists. A faint haziness penetrated the Chapter House of Marchester Cathedral, forming haloes round the pendant clusters of electric lights. The setting for the session of the Consistory Court was formal. An impressive oak chair on a dais under the magnificent east window awaited the Chancellor of the diocese. The dais was flanked by seating accommodation for legal representatives, the diocesan architect, an official of the company with which St John the Baptist’s, Ambercombe, was insured, and the Archdeacon of Marchester, who supported the petition. Robert Hoyle, with George Aldridge and other officials of the Parochial Church Council, occupied one end of the front row of the public seats, and the two Gillards and some of their adherents the other. Ethel Ridd had elected to sit behind them. Parishioners of the humbler sort, overawed by their surroundings, had made for the back rows. Others, more assured, sat further forward at their ease. Bill Sandford clasped his hands behind his head and gazed around him with a sardonic expression. Hugh Redshaw shot meaningfully amused glances at any acquaintances whose eyes he could catch. His wife Miranda, a writer of verse for women’s magazines, contemplated the east window, a tremulous smile on her lips. There was also a sprinkling of strangers, some interested, others with an hour or two to fill in. The central heating was efficient, and the atmosphere permeated with the soporific smell of warm ancient stone.

  A sudden thunderous order to stand for the Chancellor of the Court brought the assembly hastily to its feet, dropping assorted property in the process and scrabbling to retrieve it. Escorted by the head verger and two members of his staff, a figure in barrister’s wig and gown was escorted to the chair on the dais and took its seat. A pair of shrewd eyes in a face of eighteenth-century cast, full and impassive, surveyed the scene, and those present were instructed to sit down.

  Very slowly the wheels of the judicial process set in motion by the parishioners of Pyrford-with-Ambercombe began to revolve. In the midst of a dead silence the Chancellor stated with extreme clarity the petition and its context, and identified those present in an official capacity.

  ‘Let the plate in question be exhibited to the Court,’ he concluded.

  The posse of vergers who had remained standing by the door vanished, to return almost at once in procession, carrying various objects in the manner of figures in a frieze on a Greek vase.

  ‘Hold them up please, so that they can be seen by everyone,’ the Chancellor ordered. ‘You will all see a Georgian silver-gilt chalice. It bears the date 1756, and has a cover designed to serve as a pyx. There is a matching set of cruets of the same date, and two Georgian candlesticks of hallmarked silver. These articles, the sum total of the plate in question, have collectively been valued by a representative of the eminent London firm of —’

  The name of the eminent London firm was lost in an ear-splitting screech of wood on stone.

  ‘It’s not all there!’

  Ethel Ridd was on her feet, her deep bass voice reverberating through the Chapter House. There was a moment’s paralysed silence, broken by the Chancellor.

  ‘You are Ethel Ridd, and have lodged an Objection to the petition before the Court,’ he said calmly. ‘What is your status, please?’

  ‘I was housekeeper to Father Viney.’

  ‘I only need to know if you are married or single.’

  ‘I’m single,’ she replied impatiently, gripping the back of the chair in front.

  ‘You are saying, Miss Ridd,’ the Chancellor went on, after making a note of her statement, ‘that the former parish of St John the Baptist, Ambercombe, owns plate over and above what is in front of us here?’

  ‘Yes, it does. There’s another chalice.’

  There was a lengthy pause, during which the Chancellor consulted various documents from the pile in front of him.

  ‘I have here,’ he informed the Court, ‘the terrier, that is, the official list of the property owned by the parish of St John the Baptist, Ambercombe. It includes two chalices, the one being exhibited here today, and a Victorian chalice dated 1860, which I understand is in regular use. No application for permission to sell it has been made, so it has not been brought to the Court. Does this meet your point, Miss Ridd?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ she replied truculently. ‘’Tisn’t the ordinary one I’m talking about. It’s the little one Father Viney’d use in and out for Saints’ days. It had jewels stuck in it.’

  In the breathless silence the Chancellor put down his pen, folded his hands and looked at her steadily. Then his gaze moved to Margaret Gillard.

  ‘I understand, Mrs Gillard, that for some years before the amalgamation of the two benefices, you held the office of churchwarden at Ambercombe?’

  Embarrassed at being directly addressed she half rose to her feet.

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘You need not stand. As churchwarden you will have represented the parish at the Archdeacon’s Visitations, and have had an accurate knowledge of the church’s property?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘How many chalices does it possess?’

  ‘Two, sir. The one that’s here now, and the one that’s always used except for the festivals. I’ve never seen any other. I —’

  ‘I can’t help who’s seen it and who hasn’t,’ Ethel Ridd interrupted loudly and angrily. ‘I only know as I have.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Gillard.’ The Chancellor redirected his attention to Ethel Ridd.

  ‘When did you last see this third chalice?’ he asked her.

  ‘Feast of St Barnabas last year. Father Viney’s Patronal he used to call it. We had a Mass eleven o’clock, same as usual for Saints’ days. The day he was taken.’

  ‘The Feast of St Barnabas is on the eleventh of June,’ the Chancellor informed the Court. ‘Who besides yourself was in church, Miss Ridd?’

  She gave a sniff. ‘Nobody from the village. There never was weekdays. There was a hiker came in. They often do, to look round the church, but he didn’t stop, seeing there was a service on.’

  There was a pause, during which the Chancellor studied her thoughtfully.

  ‘Assuming that you are not mistaken, Miss Ridd, about a third chalice sometimes being used by the late Mr Viney —’ he raised an authoritative hand to check her indignant interruption — ‘and in view of the fact that there is no official record of its existence as church property, I can only assume that it was a personal possession of Mr Viney, so this Court is not concerned with it.’

  ‘Well then, it’s been stolen, and that’s flat,’ Ethel Ridd replied angrily. ‘Who’s taken it? There was no chalice in with his bits of things.’

  She glanced aggressively behind her, and an indignant murmur was audible from the back rows. Archdeacon Lacy turned to Robert Hoyle, his enquiring eyebrows shooting up to a positively fantastic level. Then, in a hostile silence, she stalked out of the Chapter House. As she did so a reporter from the Westbridge Evening News slipped unobtrusively from his seat and followed her.

  Unmoved, the Chancellor directed the head verger to remove the plate to a place of safety, and called on the diocesan architect to report on the fabric of Ambercombe church.

  From now on the hearing became progressively more technical, and there was a tendency for the general public to get restive. After the adjournment for lunch, only those required to give evidence presented themselves. Finally, at a quarter past five, the Chancellor announced that he was in possession of all the information he required, and that he would deliver judgment in due course. Rising to his feet, he declared the enquiry closed, and made a dignified exit with his escort of vergers. There were hasty confabulations among those who had been obliged to stay the whole course.

  ‘Home and dry, I think,’ the Archdeacon remarked rather abstractedly to Robert Hoyle. ‘I’ll be in touch with you if anything crops up.’

  In Pyrford and Amberco
mbe indignation against Ethel Ridd supplanted the vexed question of the sale of the plate as the topic of the day. It was fanned by a paragraph hastily inserted in the Stop Press column of the Westbridge Evening News, sensationalising the allegedly missing chalice. Feeling ran high, and no one was surprised that she appeared to be keeping out of the way on the following day, Thursday 20 November.

  The publicity aroused interest in the two villages, and late in the season though it was, a few curious visitors arrived by car and wandered around. On Friday morning Margaret Gillard was fetched from a biweekly bread-making session in her kitchen by someone knocking on the Barton’s front door. Hastily wiping flour from her hands in some irritation she went to open it, and found a middle-aged couple armed with an order from a firm of Westbridge estate agents to view the vicarage.

  ‘We’re house hunting,’ the woman told her, ‘and thought Ambercombe looked so attractive in the Evening News photograph yesterday. But we can’t find the caretaker to let us have the key.’

  ‘I think she must be away,’ her husband said. ‘There are milk bottles and papers outside her cottage. We’re sorry to bother you, but wondered if the key had been left here by any chance?’

  The situation revived Margaret Gillard’s anger with Ethel Ridd.

  ‘No, it hasn’t,’ she replied. ‘It’s too bad of Miss Ridd to go off without pinning a notice on her door about the key. I can’t let you into the vicarage, but I’ll take you along and show you what I can from outside if you like, seeing you’ve come all this way.’

  The offer was accepted gratefully, and snatching a coat from a peg, she led the couple along the road and through the churchyard into the vicarage garden. The unexpected sight of some open windows greeted them.

  ‘Well, I never!’ she exclaimed. ‘It looks as though Miss Ridd’s over here instead of at her own place. I can’t make it out.’

  Margaret Gillard was perfectly correct in her surmise. The front door was unlocked, and on going into the house they found Ethel Ridd lying on the kitchen floor. An ugly discoloration on the back of her head had stained the thin strands of her grey hair.