A Talent For Destruction

by Sheila Radley

  ‘What you might call uplifting, don’t you think, Mr Quantrill?’

  The Chief Inspector had never, to his knowledge, met the verger; but he had become accustomed to being known by sight and reputation to far more people than he himself knew. The local newspaper had a photograph of him on file, and reproduced it to help fill their columns whenever he was working on a serious crime and was unable to give them any hard news about it. But although he had never heard of Edgar Blore before that week, Quantrill had now seen him mentioned twice in reports from DC Wigby: once in his capacity as caretaker of the vandalized church hall, and again when he had told Wigby about the Australian girl who had visited the Rectory. The verger, he calculated, was likely to know as much as anyone in Breckham Market about the Reverend Robin Ainger.

  ‘A very fine roof, Mr Blore,’ Quantrill agreed. ‘I expect you have a lot of visitors here in the summer?’

  ‘Oh yes, from all over the world. And not just because of the roof. The monumental brasses are our real glory, of course.’

  ‘So I believe. I must have a look at them while I’m here.’

  The verger drew a deep breath, twitched anxiously at his moustache, and began a rambling, mournful apology for having named the Chief Inspector’s son as one of the likely church hall culprits. Quantrill interrupted to reassure him that he had done the right thing, and then steered the conversation back to the church brasses. He knew nothing about brass-rubbing, but Ainger had said that Athol Garrity had professed an interest in it; and judging by the notice in the porch, brass-rubbers gave the Rector a considerable amount of harassment.

  Having stopped twitching, the verger rolled back some drab strips of carpet to reveal eight figures engraved on brass, set into slabs in the worn stone floor of the church. Four of the figures were at the east end of the south aisle, two at the foot of the chancel steps and two more, the finest, in the chancel itself, close to the altar rail. Some were almost life-sized, some no more than twelve inches long. All of them had been placed with their feet towards the altar, so that, when the bodies in the graves beneath rose up on resurrection day, they would come face to face with God.

  The clarity of detail, five centuries on, was astonishing. Here, with every joint in the men’s plate armour, every fold in the women’s gowns, every elaboration in their head-dress, clearly visible, were the leading citizens of fifteenth-century Breckham Market. Having stared for several minutes, intrigued, at the largest knight’s long hooked nose, cleft chin and drooping moustaches, the Chief Inspector felt – even though the brass might have been a medieval form of identikit rather than a definitive portrait – that he would have a good chance of recognizing Sir John Bedingfield if he were ever to meet him.

  There were Bedingfields in and around Breckham Market still, though they looked nothing like Sir John. They were a swarthy, shiftless, pugnacious tribe, so frequently in trouble that whenever a petty crime was committed the police checked them out first. Sir John and the high-nosed lady at his side would have disowned them on sight, thought Quantrill, amused.

  ‘They’re very fine brasses, Mr Blore,’ he said. ‘Very interesting. No wonder you get a lot of visitors to the church. An Australian was here last summer, the Rector told me.’

  ‘Would that be the man Mr Wigby was asking me about?’

  ‘That’s right – we think that the skeleton in Parson’s Close might be his. But DC Wigby didn’t know, when he spoke to you, that the Australian had been inside the church. Mr Ainger tells me that he was interested in the brasses, and that he camped in the meadow while he was making some rubbings. Are you sure you don’t recollect him?’

  ‘Quite sure. I’m sorry I can’t help you, Mr Quantrill, but we’re over-run every summer with strangers who come to rub the brasses, and I try not to get involved with them. It’s my ulcer, you see. Oh, most of them are not much trouble. They bring a big sheet of white paper and spread it out on a brass and spend hours crouched over it, rubbing away with a stick of heelball to get the impression of the figure on the paper. They’re quiet and neat and tidy, and I make no complaint about them at all. But others …’

  The verger began to work himself up into a state of high moral indignation: ‘You wouldn’t credit what some of them do, Mr Quantrill. I could hardly contain myself over their behaviour when I first became verger – and of course it made my ulcer play up. In the end, Mr Ainger told me to let him deal with the brass-rubbers. He keeps the appointments book now, and sorts out all the problems.’

  ‘I saw the notice in the porch,’ said Quantrill. ‘I gather that some of the rubbers don’t make appointments, and try to get out of paying the fees.’

  ‘That’s not the half of it!’ Edgar Blore spluttered. ‘It’s behaviour I’m talking about, and reverence. Appointments are important, you see, because most of the rubbers aren’t churchgoers and so they don’t take the services into consideration. Many’s the time – before Mr Ainger began the appointments system – that I’ve come to prepare the church for a service and found that I couldn’t get into the chancel without tripping over somebody. And when I asked them to move, some of them were really belligerent. And then they’d argue when I asked them to pay! It’s not that we charge much, but it’s the principle of the thing. Don’t you agree, Mr Quantrill?’

  The Chief Inspector made assenting noises, and bent to help the verger roll the carpets back over the brasses to protect them from wear.

  ‘After all,’ continued Edgar Blore, neatly straightening one of the carpets that Quantrill had replaced, ‘the expense of maintaining the fabric of a church like this is alarming. To my mind anyone who visits it, let alone makes use of it, should expect to make a contribution towards its upkeep. And then, it isn’t as if every rubber is doing it out of historical interest. Some of them make it into a commercial enterprise. Why, you can see rubbings of these very brasses in art and craft shops in Yarchester. People pay pounds, especially if the rubbers have used gold heelball on black paper, to have them as wall-hangings. It’s a racket, that’s what it is. And if I told you the way some of the rubbers behave when they’re here in church – even when they’ve made an appointment and paid a fee – you wouldn’t believe me.’

  After twenty-five years in the force, Douglas Quantrill found nothing in human nature incredible. He had no difficulty at all in believing that a small minority of people could be greedy, abusive, pigheaded and bloody-minded, in church as well as out of it. What interested him in the conversation was the glimpse the verger had given of some of the unexpected stresses that went with the Rector’s job. Until that week, Quantrill had unthinkingly assumed that being a parson was a soft option. During the past few days he had begun to learn that this was far from being true.

  ‘Tell me about it, Mr Blore?’ he suggested.

  The verger, having adjusted the carpets to his satisfaction, brushed down his cassock with the flat of his hand. ‘As I say, it’s a question of reverence. Some of the rubbers seem to have no idea that this is a place of worship. Instead of bringing masking-tape to hold down the paper while they’re rubbing on it, they use piles of prayer books – even the big Bible from the lectern. They have picnics in the choir stalls, and drop litter on the floor. And sometimes they bring small children and let them run wild, dressing up in the choir surplices, racing round the aisles, meddling with the bell ropes –’

  He paused for breath, trembling with indignation. ‘And one day last year – you’ll never credit this, Mr Quantrill – one day early last summer I came in by the south door and heard a terrible racket going on. And there was a young man, with a transistor radio going full blast, sitting on the altar swinging his legs and drinking out of a can!’

  Even Quantrill was startled. ‘Sitting on the altar?’

  ‘Sitting on the altar. I told you that you wouldn’t credit it! I was so furious that I couldn’t bring myself to speak to him. I rushed straight round to the church hall and telephoned the Rector. He came roaring down St Botolph’s Street in his car at
sixty miles an hour and strode into the church like –’ the verger lifted his eyes for inspiration and found it in the magnificent timbers of the roof ‘– like an avenging angel. I wouldn’t have cared to be in that young man’s shoes!’

  ‘What happened?’

  Edgar Blore shook his head. ‘I didn’t come back to find out. Mr Ainger told me to stay in the church hall and make myself a cup of tea, so I did.’ His sad eyes looked defensively at the Chief Inspector. ‘I suppose you think it was cowardly of me, but the Rector understands about my ulcer. Besides, he’s younger and bigger than I am.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Though it does seem to me,’ added Quantrill, ‘that he hasn’t looked so well lately. He seems to have lost a lot of his drive.’

  The verger had begun to move down the south aisle towards the door, and for a moment Quantrill thought that he was too loyal to the Rector to want to discuss him. But Edgar Blore was merely choosing his words, and when he spoke it was with some relief.

  ‘To tell you the truth – and I haven’t said this to anyone else, except Mrs Blore – that’s what I’ve felt. The Rector hasn’t been his old self for months now. I’m beginning to think that he’s lost heart, and that’s a sad condition for a parson. But then, he has a lot to contend with – as you and I know, Mr Quantrill.’

  The verger gave the Chief Inspector a meaningful nod, and did not elaborate.

  ‘Mr Ainger’s very well thought of in the town,’ commented Quantrill.

  ‘Indeed he is! A very popular Rector. I put it down to the fact that he’s not trendy. Trendiness doesn’t do in a parish like Breckham Market. Mr Ainger’s only a young man, but I’m glad to say that he believes in upholding all the old standards.’

  ‘Quite right,’ agreed Quantrill. They had reached the south door and he put out his hand to the massive iron latch. ‘Well, I’m glad to have had the opportunity of –’

  The verger stood quite still and gave a discreet but firm cough behind his clenched fist. His eyes moved from the Chief Inspector’s to the padlocked box that was fixed to the wall just inside the door. On the box was pinned a handwritten label: Church Expenses.

  Shamed into giving, Quantrill scrabbled in his trouser pocket and emerged with a palmful of small bronze coins and a solitary ten-pence piece. He looked at them doubtfully, raised an eyebrow at the verger, saw the reproach in his gaze, took out his wallet and pushed a folded pound note into the box.

  ‘By the way, Mr Blore,’ he said, deciding to put the money down against expenses and to extract as much information as possible on the strength of it, ‘that badly behaved brass-rubber you told me about – the young man you saw sitting on the altar: did you hear his voice? I’m wondering whether it could have been the Australian we’re interested in.’

  The verger twitched his moustache in thought, then shook his head. ‘No, I’m sorry. I couldn’t face speaking to him myself, you see – I left it to the Rector, so I never heard the man’s voice. You’ll have to ask Mr Ainger. He’s the one who can tell you.’

  Quantrill didn’t doubt it. But whether the Reverend Robin Ainger would tell him was, he knew, a different matter.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘County operations room, Inspector Tait here.’

  ‘Quantrill, Breckham Market. Can we have a word?’

  ‘One moment.’

  The Chief Inspector grinned to himself as he sat at his desk with the telephone receiver at his ear. There were times, he knew, when the operations room at county police headquarters could seem as busy as the control tower at Heathrow; but had there been a major incident in progress, the switchboard would not have put him through. Young Martin Tait, formerly his sergeant, was simply playing a power game.

  ‘… and let me know as soon as it comes up on the VDU,’ he heard the new Inspector say in his clipped, efficient voice. Then, ‘Good to hear from you, sir. How can I help?’

  ‘I thought it was high time we met for a drink. You know how it is at Breckham – we’re so busy hoeing our sugar-beet fields that we lose sight of the outside world. I’d be interested to hear what the view’s like from county HQ.’

  ‘Oh.’ Tait sounded disappointed, as though he had hoped that the Chief Inspector had a more significant motive for calling him. ‘I’d certainly like to meet, but life’s very busy at the moment.’

  ‘I was afraid of that. Pity. I’d hoped we could arrange something between now and Friday – but if you’re too busy it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘What’s special about Friday?’

  ‘A coroner’s inquest … Well, never mind. We can have that drink some other time.’

  ‘Is that the resumed inquest on the Parson’s Close skeleton? Look, I really would like to see you again, sir. I’m off duty tomorrow afternoon, and as it happens I’ll be coming into your division. Could you meet me at the old airfield at Horkey – say half-past two?’

  ‘At Horkey? What in thunder are you going there for?’

  ‘I belong to the aero club that operates from there. I’m learning to fly.’

  ‘Good grief,’ said Quantrill, conceding the round. ‘Well, yes. See you tomorrow then.’

  ‘Hang on! What about that skeleton? Was forensic able to establish the cause of death?’

  ‘No. So it looks as though it’ll be an open verdict, and the file will be closed. But I’m not at all happy about it.’

  ‘And you’d like my help?’

  ‘Let’s say that I thought it might be an idea if we were to talk it over.’

  Inspector Tait’s sigh of satisfaction came clearly along the line. ‘I began to think you’d never ask,’ he said.

  A little orange and white two-seater Cessna 152 aircraft, its cockpit considerably smaller than the front seats of a Mini, stood outside the premises of the Horkey aero club, rocking against its brakes in the March wind. One of its hangar companions had just taken off from the grass airfield, lurching drunkenly into the air under the control of a student pilot. Quantrill couldn’t bear to look. It was just possible to believe that the frail contraption would get off the ground in one piece, but considerably more difficult to feel confident about the landing.

  ‘You’ll never get me up in one of those things,’ he declared.

  Martin Tait laughed indulgently. ‘That was what the caterpillar said about the butterfly. You really can’t stay earthbound all your life. Come on, admit it, you’re longing to go up.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ said Quantrill, holding on to his hat, ‘and certainly not in a little tin can like that.’ He had never yet had occasion to travel by air, and although he had not entirely lost his boyhood longing to go up in an aeroplane he intended his first experience to be in something more substantial. ‘Anyway, you couldn’t take me up. You haven’t got your private pilot’s licence yet.’

  ‘That won’t take long,’ said Tait confidently. ‘I’ve already done twenty hours’dual flying, and four solo. Another ten hours’dual and six solo, and that’s it.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Oh, there are exams to pass too. But forty hours is the minimum flying-time for a student pilot before qualification.’

  ‘And you think it won’t take you more than the minimum?’

  ‘I shall be ashamed of myself if it does. Come and have a drink, we’ve got a club licence.’

  Quantrill followed the former detective, a slight, sharp, fair young man, dapper in a good leather jacket and a roll-neck sweater, into the renovated wartime hut that served as a clubroom. He accepted a can of lager; Tait, who was due for a flying lesson in an hour’s time, confined himself to machine-made coffee. The aero-club staff were in the control tower, and the two policemen had the slightly battered club lounge to themselves.

  ‘How are things at HQ?’ asked Quantrill.

  ‘Interesting. Really interesting. I enjoy having so much technology at my disposal – computer terminal, visual display units, radio, telex, teleprinter, direct lines to all the neighbouring forces’control rooms, and to New Scotland Yard a
nd Interpol … I can find out anything I want to know within a few minutes.’

  ‘Simpler than plodding round Breckham trying to dig out information at grass-roots level,’ reflected Quantrill. ‘It took Yarchester less time to get confirmation that the skeleton in Parson’s Close was Athol James Garrity, aged twenty-four, late of Queensland, Australia, than it did for Ian Wigby to track down which Breckham pub the man used. All the same, neither technology nor forensic science has been able to tell us how he met his death.’

  ‘What do we know about him?’

  Quantrill passed on the information that he and Wigby had pieced together, adding, ‘It seemed at first that no one in the town had met him, apart from the Aingers. But then we found that he’d done his drinking in the Concorde, one of the pubs on the new estate. He could easily walk there from Parson’s Close, across the by-pass. They remember him quite well at the Concorde – he drank a lot and was noisy, but never argumentative or belligerent. He certainly didn’t make any enemies. He had several casual drinking companions, but he always came and went on his own.

  ‘He last went there on the evening of July 29th. The barman remembers the date because it was his first day back after his summer holiday. Garrity was at the Concorde at six o’clock, waiting for it to open. He’d been away too, he said, staying with Australian friends in London. He’d just hitched a lift back, the weather was warm, and he was thirsty. He downed four or five pints, possibly more, and by eight o’clock when the barmaid came on duty he was cross-eyed. Soon afterwards he mumbled something about going back to his tent for a kip, and staggered off. No one from the Concorde saw him after that.’

  ‘But someone might have seen him crossing the by-pass,’ said Tait quickly. ‘If he was staggering drunk, he’d have been noticeable. Have you thought that he might have been struck by a hit-and-run driver, and then managed to crawl as far as the bushes before collapsing? Have you considered –?’