It was almost as though in killing Ruth someone had wanted to destroy the principle of the place. What could go wrong in such a paradise? Was it the people who came here? She let her mind wander over the relationships of the present group in so far as they were known to her. Ruth and Bough, she was certain, were at ease with one another. She had seen them with her own eyes. Surely one can’t be so deceived in such matters? Even if they were not bound by the sacrament of marriage and their ages were disparate, she would swear they were content. Canon Beagle, too, seemed sane enough. He strove to be fair, to endure and to be resourceful in the face of what, for an athlete, would be great adversity. His religious observance was disciplined, heroically unfashionable and it seemed to sustain him. What about Angus? He had a young Scottish wife back at his vicarage and two children and a dog. He was scrupulous to the point of ridicule but he wasn’t tense or rigid with the effort. He meditated on Scripture and the great doctrinal truths and evidently they nurtured him. And Guy, what of him? He was undoubtedly odd. His physical suddenness, his elusive retreats if matters got too much for him and his flashes of acuteness mixed with a naivety which made Theodora feel old, were they symptoms of some deeper disturbance? Was he perhaps schizophrenic? Or had he had too much religion forced upon him too early and suffered, in consequence, a reaction? He had, nevertheless, evolved his techniques which, though they might not be orthodoxly religious techniques, seemed to suit him, a sort of joyful deviousness which might not be quite sane.
Even Mrs Lemming, though shackled, as she felt herself to be, to Norman, had her methods. She liked a hymn. She had her sketching. And what about the Clutton Brocks? Theodora remembered them sitting on the sofa in the library when they first came. They hardly engaged with each other. He took refuge in his hay fever, tense and obsessed – by what? She fended off the world with a cultivated coldness which forbade sympathy as an intrusion. She had the air of hearing distant music. But, taken altogether, they seemed such an ordinary collection of people. How could any of them be killers? And, if so, where could the destructive force come from? Theodora wondered sleepily.
Keep to the concrete, she told herself, rousing herself. Keep to the skull. Was Mrs Lemming on to something when she said it looked like a way of communicating in symbols? And which way could those symbols be taken? It all depended on the nail, Theodora felt. It could be taken as a warning that Bellaire’s reign was flawed. On the other hand it could be understood, as Guy had it, that a death was presaged. And then there was the cope. Why should anyone, as it were, make the cope walk? And if all three events were connected, did that imply that the key to the mystery lay in the past history of the place? Perhaps if she could find out more about who had stayed there and when and perhaps, too, if she followed up Guy’s request to verify the conditions of the will, there might be a way forward.
Theodora was aware that a horn had sounded twice outside the front of the guest-house. Ever prone to take on responsibilities, she raised herself on one elbow and listened. The horn sounded again. She rose and made her way out of the garden towards the front of the house.
‘You see, Miss Braithwaite,’ said Martha Broad as she clasped and unclasped her large hands over the steering wheel of the old Humber, ‘I feel I have a pastoral duty to Mr Bough, I mean Tom’s father. I really ought to try to see him. Angus asked me to. He can’t go because the Bishop wants to see him this afternoon. I gather it’s about the closure of the centre.’
They were parked in the drive outside the guest-house. The chapel clock had struck three. The only thing I want right now Theodora thought, is a telephone, preferably of the fixed variety. Would an afternoon with Miss Broad put her in the way of such a thing?
‘I could offer you tea after the trip, if that’s any inducement. My father, I’m afraid, is in London at the moment but the house is very pleasant in this weather.’
This was not what Theodora had wanted from a retreat. It really was too much like parish life; visits, engagements, duties.
‘Of course I’ll come, if you feel I could be of any help,’ she answered.
Miss Broad swivelled her sweet smile towards Theodora, engaged a gear and fought with the handbrake.
‘Mr Bough isn’t the easiest person in the world to visit. I don’t know how he’ll take his son’s being questioned by the police.’
Miss Broad had set off at a fair pace over ground clearly familiar to her. Hedges and stone walls hurtled past. The car predated seat belts and Miss Broad had not thought to add them. Theodora held on to her seat and listened to the springs pinging beneath her.
‘I always thought Ruth and Tom were genuinely fond of each other. And, of course, it was time for Ruth to settle down, and Tom too.’
‘Miss Broad, two days before Ruth was killed she told her aunt, Mrs Turk, that she expected relations of her father’s to be amongst our party of pilgrims. Would you know who that might be?’
Miss Broad looked unhappy. ‘It’s a long time ago. I was only twenty or so when Naomi Swallow was at St Sylvan’s.’
‘Were you there in her last year before she had Ruth, 1962 or thereabouts?’
‘Yes, it was ’62. We were all there that year for the St Sylvan’s festival. It was the year the new chapel windows were dedicated. Lavinia Strong was there and her fiancé, Victor Clutton Brock. The tension between Bellaire and Tussock was at its height. Lavinia was just beginning to make her name. I remember thinking that Victor was feeling his nose out of joint. It must be hard on a man, I mean a nonentity, to be married to a talented woman.’
The thought seemed to inspire Miss Broad. She pressed harder on the accelerator and though the speed did not discernibly increase, the noise did.
‘They manage it less well, you feel, than the other way round?’ Theodora shouted above the cacophony.
‘Well, it’s more usual the other way round, so I expect we have more practice.’
‘How did Tussock and Bellaire actually get on?’ Theodora enquired.
‘Look,’ said Miss Broad, applying the brakes. ‘Famous view.’
She swerved on to an outcrop of rock and drew up. She waved her hand in the general direction of the valley and the wooded hillside beyond. ‘Still all Broad land, except St Sylvan’s. Grandfather gave it to Bellaire. Not a prudent move given the Church’s financial incompetence. We should have had a reverter put on it. Still, no point in repining. Though I must say I shudder at a heritage centre. The vulgarity of that appalling man Peake.’
She turned back to Theodora’s original question. ‘Bellaire and Tussock.’ She revved up and raced on before continuing. ‘I expect you can imagine. Bellaire was in the Catholic tradition, Tussock the evangelical. As far as the running of the centre was concerned, Bellaire’s was the monastic model, Tusk was more the boy scout, getting-people-together one. Both had a point, both were good at it in their different ways. Both rather excluded. If you weren’t matey, you’d be left out of Tusk’s lot. If you weren’t a man, you’d probably be uncomfortable with Bellaire’s party.’
Miss Broad ground her gears to increase the pace of the car to cope with the track which had replaced the road.
‘How did they come together in the first place to share the centre?’
‘Tusk was ever a man with an eye to the main chance and Bellaire was broke. Tusk’s money came from his wife. They were in worsted originally, later beer. Plenty there. I think Bellaire thought that because he was better bred and better educated than Tusk he’d be able to manage him.’ Miss Broad snorted at such naivety.
‘And he couldn’t?’
‘No way. Tusk played it very carefully at first. The place was supposed to be run by a board of trustees set up by Bellaire originally. Usual Church way of doing things, get a few old pals together, never mind whether they had any relevant experience for running anything. It was all very hierarchical. Bellaire was called Senior Warden of the shrine, the others were Brother Wardens. Fancy vestments. The lot. But there was some sort of
coup when Tussock put money in. It came to a head that summer.’
‘How so?’
The road had by this time given out entirely. They were travelling over a deeply rutted grass track against the raised bits of which the Humber’s exhaust could be heard scraping. In between these distressing noises, Theodora heard Miss Broad say, ‘I never knew the details. I only saw the results. But Henry Beagle knew something. He was of Bellaire’s band, of course. I had the feeling Tussock had a hold over Bellaire from then on. Lot of the older brother wardens went and some new ones came in, slab-faced archdeacon types who could read a balance sheet, if nothing else.’
‘Henry Beagle was there in the summer of ’62?’
‘Oh yes. He was a handsome man thirty years ago. Rising fifty then, of course but such a noble profile.’
‘Was Mrs Lemming there?’
‘Who? No. I don’t think so. She’s a tiresome little woman.’
‘She has her problems.’
Miss Broad was not interested in Mrs Lemming’s problems.
‘Who else was there who is still about now?’
‘I don’t remember any … oh yes, of course, Tom Bough’s father, Bob Bough was there. I remember at the party after the Eucharist, he’d been brought in to help with the drinks. He was so spry then and he finds it so difficult to get about now.’
‘So the men present at the ’62 festival were, at least, Bough senior, Bellaire, Tussock, Beagle, Clutton Brock. Any more?’
‘There was a bishop, a fair number of congregation but no one else resident, I think.’ Miss Broad didn’t seem to see what Theodora was getting at. ‘Look,’ she said, descending down a couple of painful gears, ‘we’re nearly there.’
Theodora looked round. The track had turned into a clearing. Old milk crates, half-buried in cow parsley, and buckets without bottoms loomed up. A couple of tractor tyres of immense size were tethered for some arcane purpose to trees. At the far end of the clearing Theodora saw a pile of chopped logs stacked to a height of about seven feet. A wisp of smoke curled into the air above it and following it down Theodora detected first a tin chimney, then an aperture which might have been a window, then a door. Bob Bough’s cabin. A line of socks, no one of which related to any other, proclaimed a bachelor’s or presumably, a widower’s establishment. To the left a row of potatoes flowered, to the right a coop of chickens clucked their appreciative welcome to the visitors. Mr Bough believed in being self-supporting.
‘The Boughs were always woodland folk,’ said Miss Broad with no trace of whimsy. She brought a powerful elbow to bear on the middle of the steering wheel and Theodora jumped as the noise of the horn echoed round the clearing.
‘Bob doesn’t care to be taken by surprise and he’s very deaf now.’
They got out and the door slammed in the silence left after the noise of the horn. They paused for a moment as though in homage to the surprising spirit of the place. Then Miss Broad strode forward towards the pile of wood. Miss Broad’s knock was answered by a volley of barks. The door was opened a couple of inches and a shrivelled old man gazed up at the two tall women.
‘I’m warning you lot. I moithered with bloody bobbies.’
‘Not police, Bob, just me and a friend of mine. I’ve brought a bit of parkin.’ Miss Broad proffered her lure.
The door opened with surprising swiftness. Mr Bough put a skinny hand on Miss Broad and took the gift with a quick furtive movement as though if he took it in that way he might not need to return gratitude. He wore a grey flannel shirt of the same ancestry as his son’s and a pair of black trousers ending in large heavy boots.
‘Come in, lass. Shut up yer silly beggar,’ he roared with sudden power over his shoulder to the dog.
Mr Bough’s cabin was as idiosyncratic within as without. Theodora edged round the door which Mr Bough mercifully left open. A smell of wood-smoke, dog and varnish wafted out. There was a stone floor and an armchair with a carpet thrown over it. On the table was a jumble of washing-up at one end and the tools of wood-carving at the other. Tied to one of the table legs was an old evil-eyed collie, still rumbling with growls. As she grew accustomed to the darkness, Theodora became aware that every inch of wall space was covered with wooden musical instruments: flutes, oboes, recorders, parts of fiddles and cellos, and parts to which Theodora could not put a name.
‘I’ve just brewed up,’ said Mr Bough hospitably. He produced a pair of enormous cups, one of which had a handle and pushed them across the table in their direction.
‘We just happened to be passing,’ Miss Broad shouted in Bob’s direction. It sounded even more unlikely turned up forte than it would have done at normal volume.
‘Oh, aye. They’ve been here twice,’ Mr Bough chuntered on. ‘I told them. I said I know nowt about it. Tom’s his own master and has been since our Dolly passed on. Forty-three year going on Pancake Tuesday. They didn’t take a blind bit of notice. Might as well spit out for all the good it does.’ Mr Bough’s small bloodshot eyes swelled and watered with the injustice of it all.
‘Tom hasn’t been charged, Bob. They just want to ask him a few questions.’
‘You play a bit, eh?,’ Bob’s question was addressed to Theodora who had been gazing at the wall display. Conversing with Miss Broad seemed to interest him less.
‘No, only listen.’
‘If Tom is charged, Bob,’ Miss Broad knew her pastoral duty and persevered with it even in the face of discouragement, ‘I’ll take you down to visit him in Wormald, if you want.’
Bob had the only saucer. He blew a small tidal wave of tea towards them, with fine judgement desisted just before it slopped over, allowed a moment for it to subside and then sucked it through his teeth.
‘Bloody bobbies. Bloody clergy. He’d never have killed Ruth Swallow, wouldn’t our Tom. He’s not a bad lad when all’s said and done.’
‘Who might have killed her, Mr Bough?’ Theodora asked quietly.
‘They’re not all they’re cracked up to be down there. Woe to them that devise iniquity.’ He turned towards Theodora as though she might be in need of an explanation of his reference. ‘Micah two, one,’ he said smugly. ‘Used to be in St Sylvan’s at Rest choir when I was a little lad.’ He turned to Miss Broad with venom. ‘Before I knew better.’
‘What iniquity?’ Theodora asked.
A look of cunning came over Mr Bough’s face. He dropped a tone or two and said, ‘Bellaire, he was a wrong ’un. A right nasty piece of work with them young lads.’
Miss Broad rose hastily from her seat. ‘Well, Bob, think on what I’ve said. If it comes to stick and lift, I’ll get you down to Wormald to see Tom. Don’t you worry. But we must all hope and pray that it doesn’t come to that. I think we should be going now,’ she said rapidly to Theodora, ‘and leave Mr Bough in peace.’
As they lurched back down the cart-track, Theodora said, ‘Would he be right, do you suppose, about Bellaire?’
‘It was all a long time ago,’ answered Miss Broad.
CHAPTER TEN
Holy Vestments
‘Hello,’ said Theodora. ‘Aunt Jane? Theodora here.’
A clipped voice at the other end of the phone said, ‘Just a minute please. I have a builder at the door.’
Theodora clasped the phone of the village phone box at St Sylvan’s at Rest and counted the change available to her. She trusted it would be enough.
‘Hello,’ the voice resumed. ‘Who is that?’
‘Theodora.’
‘Oh, my dear, how very nice. Hugh said you’d ring. Where are you?’
‘St Sylvan’s at Rest, the retreat house.’
‘Really? Are you going to come over for a meal. I’m free, where are we, Friday, this Friday. Say seven o’clock?’
‘I’m on retreat, Aunt. I really can’t get away.’
‘I thought they’d broken all that up. Some sort of murder. I read it in the Yorkshire Post.’
‘Yes, there has been a
murder but it hasn’t stopped the retreat.’
‘I see. So you won’t be coming to see me after all.’ The tone was miffed.
‘I’d love to but we don’t finish here till Saturday morning. I thought perhaps … I wondered if I could stop over with you Saturday night.’
‘Saturday. Well I don’t know.’
‘Not if it’s inconvenient.’
‘No, no. Not at all.’ The voice made a moral effort and recovered humour and real kindness. ‘I’d be delighted to see you. Come as early as you can. Now I really must …’
‘Aunt, there is just one thing. I wondered if I could possibly ask you a favour?’
‘Well?’ The tone modulated to suspicion.
‘I need some information from Broadbent and Helliwell, the solicitors.’
‘We don’t use them. I always go to Clegg and Ram-bottom up Leeds road.’
‘No. I don’t want to use them professionally. Look it’s all a bit difficult.’
‘Well, couldn’t it wait until I see you? I’ve got the builders in and if I don’t give them tea every two hours they stop and go off to another job. I’m in competition with Reg Crowther who, I believe, cheats by giving them doughnuts.’
Every Deadly Sin Page 13