The Vavasour Macbeth

by Bart Casey

  “And what about your eye, sir? Looks like a nasty blow.”

  “If you must know, that was from last Friday. I had an argument with a lout at the pub and ended up with a punch in my eye. I think several dozen people saw that, if you want to check.”

  “Do you know the man?”

  “I know who he is: Tony Baker. He’s the brother of a young woman I go out with occasionally and she and I quarreled earlier that night. He heard about that, didn’t like it, and came over and punched me in the eye before I knew what was happening. We’d both had a bit to drink at the time.”

  “I see, sir. On another topic, may I ask if you have any jewelry or metal collectibles at your flat, or in your car, that you might have acquired recently?”

  “No, sergeant. No stolen paintings either. I’m afraid I’ve had enough of this.”

  “Well, don’t get too upset, sir. I wouldn’t want you to have to come down to the station with me if we can finish talking here today. Why don’t you just take a moment to calm yourself?”

  Stephen wasn’t used to dealing with the blunt yeomen of the British police force, but he agreed with Stokes that it would be better for him to just get through it all now. “All right, sergeant. What else?”

  “I understand you visited Vicar Hamilton in hospital recently?”

  “I actually haven’t been able to see him yet after his fall. I stopped in on Wednesday and sat with Verger Andrew from the church and Miss Hamilton. She’s there all day with her father.”

  “And then you went out to dinner with Miss Hamilton?”

  “Yes, sergeant. You do certainly have your sources. We went out for a bite after visiting hours at the hospital. She’d been there all day, and then I dropped her off at the vicarage about ten o’clock.”

  “And then you went back to your flat?”

  “Yes, sergeant. As you can see, I have a day job that starts bright and early here at St. George’s. I also went by the hospital again last night and ended up spending the evening with Miss Hamilton again. We are very old friends and she is obviously quite upset by all that’s happened. So we went by the church and took a closer look at the vault that was still drying out. Where I helped the vicar with those papers. Can you tell me why this is all so important now, sergeant?”

  “Well, sir, this morning we were called by Verger Andrew who had discovered certain valuable items missing from the church,” the sergeant explained. “There was a jeweled gold crucifix, candlesticks, and other ornaments taken from the storage chests in the vestry. It’s not clear exactly when they were taken since they’re not used every day. But Verger Andrew had seen the pieces in their proper places after the Sunday service the weekend before. So we’re wondering whether the facts that these things have gone missing and the vicar is in hospital may be connected, d’ya see? That’s why I’m here speaking with you.”

  Stephen was thunderstruck. “I had no idea. I don’t know anything about those things from the church. I was in there on the Bank Holiday weekend to help take out those old papers with the vicar, and then with Miss Hamilton last night. Before that, the last time I was in church would have been the Christmas services last winter. I’m sure of all that. There have been a lot of workmen about in the church recently as well. I mean there was a flood there over the holiday weekend. I’m not accusing them of anything, of course. I just mean there’s been lots of activity at the church lately.”

  “All right, sir. That should be fine for right now. Tell me, do you have any plans to go away in the near future, or travel abroad?”

  “No. I mean, the school term has just started. I’m going to be right here. Miss Hamilton and I are going to Oxford over the weekend, but we’ll be back Sunday evening. You’re not implying I’m under some sort of suspicion in all this, are you?”

  “No, sir. Just that we will be making more inquiries over the next short period and we may need to come back to you soon, if you don’t mind. We’re just getting started trying to sort it all out. Nothing to be too concerned about, sir. Just usual police work.” Standing up, Stokes continued, “Thank you for your cooperation, sir, and I wish you a good day.”

  Stephen stood up and shook the sergeant’s very large and puffy right hand. He opened the door of the study just as the bell rang for a change of period. The hallway filled with boys and girls as the policeman made his way out. Stephen watched as the man left, trying to recover his equilibrium after the surprise and anger that had overcome him during the interview.

  What next? he thought, as he walked down to the staff break room to clear his head. This idea of the vicar’s injury being part of a crime was a real worry—especially if Margaret was at risk.

  ~

  That evening Stephen found Margaret at the hospital. There was no change in the vicar’s condition. He still remained strong, but the third day of the coma was obviously making everybody more concerned and worried. Again, there was not a damn thing to do but wait. At seven thirty, they went out for a quick bite and then walked to the vicarage. Stephen came in to visit.

  He had told Margaret about his interview with the sergeant at school. The whole complication of the possible burglary at the church made them both tense and edgy. Stephen took a quick walk all through the house, checking for anything amiss, while Margaret stayed in the lounge. He saw all the papers there had been organized into small stacks on the dining room table, safely out of the way, although he didn’t see some of the larger journals or the case for the embroidered commonplace book.

  “Margaret, are these papers here everything, or have some things been moved?” he raised his voice to ask her in the other room.

  “I did put some things in the dining room buffet—the long top drawer there. I remember the embroidered bag, a journal or two, and the scroll. And a small pile of papers, too,” she added. “Just wanted to get them out of the way.”

  “Okay, good. Everything else all looks fine,” he reported as he completed his walk-through and came back into the room. “I even checked the closets.” He laughed. “I think I’ve been watching too much television.”

  “Well, if I can go and report from a war zone, then I should be able to tough it out here in the village vicarage,” Margaret offered, although she didn’t seem as comfortable as she might have been. “I’m sure your friend the sergeant would be here in a moment’s notice if we called. I mean, the police station is just about four streets away.”

  They both let silence hang in the room for a while, and Margaret sat down on the sofa.

  “I saw some of your father’s good wine in the kitchen,” said Stephen. “Would you care for a nightcap glass of red—or any-thing else?”

  “Wine sounds great,” she said.

  Just as Stephen started to take the foil off the bottle, the doorbell rang. “Now what? I’ll get it,” he called out to Margaret.

  Stephen opened the door and there stood the same policeman from his school interview that morning. “Good evening, Mister White. I wasn’t expecting to find you here.”

  Margaret appeared behind Stephen and said, “Hello, officer. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t mean to trouble you, miss,” Stokes said, “but I wanted you to know the latest developments. Mister White, you might as well hear this, too.”

  “Please come in,” said Margaret. “Let’s sit in the lounge,” she said, gesturing the officer onto the sofa while she and Stephen sat in armchairs facing him.

  “Regarding the items missing from the church—the altar candlesticks and so on—we have arrested a Tony Baker in the matter. We haven’t charged him yet, but are holding him for questioning. There are a few circumstantial things making him a person of interest. We want to see if anything else comes out.”

  “Tony Baker?” said Stephen, remembering the shock of his punch the Friday before.

  “I believe you know him, Mister White.”

  “Yes,” said Stephen. “I told you we got into a fight in the pub a week ago. He gave me my black eye.”

&nbs
p; “He did say that, Mister White. An argument about his sister.”

  “Yes, we’d both had a bit too much to drink. I’m sure that made it easier for us to come to blows.” Stephen really didn’t want his dating Miranda put on the table just now, although he realized he would want to tell Margaret about it soon.

  “Do you think he might also have attacked my father?” asked Margaret.

  “Finding out about that is part of what we plan to talk with him about, Miss Hamilton. So I hope to have an update for you in a few days. I really don’t need to take up any more of your time just now. I just thought you would like to know we have moved forward with this.”

  “Yes, thank you, officer,” said Margaret as she stood to see Stokes off.

  “Maybe they’re better detectives than I thought,” said Margaret after the sergeant left. “What did you fight about? Was it connected to anything else?”

  Stephen had returned to the kitchen, finally getting their wine. As he entered the lounge, he began, “I don’t think so, but you might as well know the story, I suppose. I had taken Tony’s sister, Miranda, out a few times over the last months—and was supposed to spend the Bank Holiday Monday with her. But that’s when your dad first found the papers and asked me over. And I completely forgot about her and ended being a no-show. The night of the fight we ran into each other at the pub and she made a scene. Her brother didn’t like that and came over and smacked me. That’s about it.”

  “Lovely,” said Margaret. “Sounds right out of Coronation Street.”

  “Well, life in a village can be like a soap opera. But that’s how it is. Then when I was taking my black eye home in my Mini, I almost ran Tony over in the car park. I didn’t see him as I backed out and I knocked him down. My last sight of it all was him running after me in my sideview mirror, shaking his fist.”

  “Well done, you,” Margaret said, smiling. “I’m glad to hear my man won the day. Let’s not talk any more about all that just now.”

  Stephen was glad he didn’t have to keep going with the saga or mention Miranda’s paternity claim. He didn’t want any secrets between them. But for now he was happy to have a reprieve…and to hear her say ‘my man.’

  Stephen said “So then, Oxford tomorrow? We can leave midmorning and have a bite to eat in town, if you like. Professor Rowe lives just nearby, in the village of Horton-cum-Studley.”

  “Oh, I know that one,” said Margaret. “It’s where they filmed A Man for All Seasons, about Sir Thomas More and Henry VIII.”

  “Really?” said Stephen, so very glad they had moved on from the saga of Miranda and Tony Baker.

  He didn’t realize she had steered them there. Quite frankly, she didn’t want to hear about Tony’s sister, nor did she want to tell him her own story yet.

  After a few more minutes, Margaret finished her wine and said, “Look, a little earlier I think I was trying to sound braver than I am right now. The truth is, I’m very tired but I don’t think I can relax here by myself alone tonight. . . . Would you mind staying over in the guest room? I just don’t want to worry about having anything else happen now. Is that all right?”

  “Sure, I can stay,” he said. “Why don’t you go upstairs and I’ll lock up down here?”

  They walked together over to the stairs. Stephen turned and gave Margaret a light kiss on her forehead. “We’ll get through this, my girl. We’ll just take it one day at a time.”

  “Thanks for staying,” she said.

  ~

  Lying down in the guest room a little later, he realized he was very tired, too. Take care of what you wish for, he thought. He wanted her back, and she’s back. For a moment he wondered what she would do if he walked down the corridor and knocked on her door. He certainly wanted to…but, for Christ’s sake, her father was at death’s door—that’s why we’re here like this. She’s probably praying for him to wake up. And she might be praying for me to go to sleep, too.

  Damn it.

  The next morning, they left the vicarage just before ten, planning to have lunch and a quick look around their old haunts in Oxford before seeing Professor Rowe at 2:00 p.m. It was a glorious September Saturday, and the ninety-minute drive was refreshingly free of workday hurry and traffic since most of the population was still at home and in bed. All of their challenges seemed less dire on such a fine morning, and Stephen decided to clear the air

  about Miranda.

  “Margaret, I just wanted to tell you a bit more about the fight and the pub and all that. Since you and I have been away from each other, I’ve been pretty focused on my job and the school and so on, but it’s not as if I haven’t had a date or two in the last year or two.”

  “Of course I know that, Stephen,” she said, watching him as he drove.

  “Well, this girl, Miranda Baker, and I have gone out several times off and on. It’s been a fun, social thing. She’s an extrovert, very high energy and upbeat, and some times that has just been very refreshing for me…you know, to shake the cobwebs off and rejoin the living after a long week in the school. The fight was really about the disconnect between my wanting it all to be just casual and her now thinking about being more serious. And I didn’t do a very good job of dealing with that conversation; in fact, I was an ass. That’s why she yelled at me in the pub. The brother was just her white knight coming over to thrash me for upsetting his sister. I think I had it coming.”

  “You don’t have to tell me all this,” said Margaret, although she was so glad he’d gotten it out.

  “The fact is, I’m not interested in Miranda for the long run—or anyone else new either. I’m not being melodramatic, but I wanted you to know just how it is. We don’t have to go on about it…but there you are.”

  “Same for me, Stephen,” she said. “I’m human, too. Just an entirely natural thing.” She thought she’d just move everything along now. “So, tell me about Professor Rowe,” Margaret shifted. “I never did come across him at school.”

  “Okay,” said Stephen, taking a breath and relieved for the switch. “First, you’ll hate him. He’s an insufferable arsehole so full of himself there’s no room for anyone else in the room—and if you let that put you off, then you’ll miss everything else. But if you can put his manner aside (just like I am trying to put my interview with the detective aside), then you’ll realize you’re in the presence of a relic from an earlier generation or an earlier century—a living dinosaur—and someone that we just don’t have walking around and talking to students anymore in this day and age. He is the leading British expert on all history Elizabethan and Shakespearean, as even the people who hate him would admit. When he was a young student—and he must be well past seventy today—there were still some old men at Oxford who had started their academic careers in the decades before the Great War. Teachers like Doctor W. W. Greg and Sir Edmund Chambers, who spent their whole lives pursuing some rarefied corner of scholarship, like old handwriting or the Elizabethan stage. And Rowe would have known them, admired them, and then overtaken them as the same sort of encyclopedic professor and Oxford don. So he’s an anachronism—someone who just shouldn’t be part of the modern world. No one thinks those areas of study are important anymore. Respected academics today study rocket science, or whatever—not the 1500s. At least, that was how it all seemed to me when I was in my tutorial with him for English and the classics.”

  “No, you’re right. I don’t remember him—but he sounds like just the sort of teacher for you,” said Margaret.

  “Anyway, I’d see him once a week, along with this girl who was also studying classics—Penelope something—which was actually quite useful, because he was always particularly rude to girls, or ‘gels,’ as he calls them. He tortured her much more than me—so watch out. I think he’s much more attracted to the boys, if you know what I mean. Once he’d finished beating Penelope down into absolute silence, he’d tell us things about the sixteenth-century texts we were reading that made you think he had actually been there and known all the people wr
iting them personally. For example, he told us that Sir Walter Raleigh had a twitch, and that’s why his writing was uneven and there were so many typographical errors made by the printers who were setting his manuscripts. And this one we were reading one week was set by an apprentice at Jaggards type shop—that’s why the word on the page was mysteriously “greek” when Sir Walter meant it to be “green.” And Sir Walter had caught it, but thought it was so funny that the apprentice typesetter had made the mistake that he let it stay wrong, and would have a good laugh about it with his friends looking at the book. And he had even told Queen Elizabeth about it and she had had a good chuckle as well. But, not to worry, the apprentice got better later in his career, and that several other books he had set in the 1590s were much more reliable, and we could go compare the typesetter’s earlier and later work from copies at the Bodleian Library—and wouldn’t Penelope like to write an essay on that for next week—he’d be so interested to read what she discovered. He was, quite simply, the worst, most tyrannical teacher, and the best, most enlightening one. It was lucky we only met once a week, because you could only stand him in small doses, but then you’d end up thinking about what he had said all week.”

  “That’s quite a story. It’s going to be a challenge to stifle myself, but I’ll give it a try. What photocopies did you send him?”

  “I sent him a copy of the letter from Lord Burghley; I thought that would be a good start. Then others from the commonplace books…a copy of a page or two from the manuscripts of the plays or masques that were there…and finally parts of the scroll. I still have no real answer for what that is. If he paid attention to any of them, he should be able to tell us a lot.”

  “I was thinking we should probe him on why Anne would have kept all these papers in the first place, if it was so odd for the time. That’s what seems to be a big question,” said Margaret, showing her quest for the heart of a story.