The Norfolk Mystery (The County Guides)

by Ian Sansom

  ‘I know little and care less about the beliefs of other nations, Morley, and have little interest in finding out. But what I do know is that our whole country is being overrun by Freemasons and Jews and perverts and—’

  ‘I hardly think—’

  ‘I’ve not finished speaking, man. D’you not learn manners where you’re from?’

  ‘Clearly not the same manners as you were schooled in, Professor. I do apologise.’

  Mrs Thistle-Smith leaned forward and whispered in her husband’s ear. As she did so, he shook his head, as if a dog attempting to dislodge a tick.

  ‘We have at least twice as many Jews here as we can possibly absorb, both of the oriental and the aristocratic type and as far as I’m concerned they are both equally unwelcome. England gave the world its three great religions—’

  ‘Really?’ said Morley. ‘Three? Christianity, Islam and Judaism?’

  ‘The Church of England. Quakerism. And the Salvation Army. Which should be enough for everyone, in my opinion. And if they’re not, and we don’t do more to prevent this influx of outsiders and unbelievers and to protect our institutions, then I believe we are heading for a social revolution, Mr Morley, with your sort at the vanguard.’

  This stung Morley, as it was intended to do.

  ‘My sort?’

  ‘Darling!’ said Mrs Thistle-Smith, who was dismissed again with a wave of her husband’s hand.

  ‘And which sort would that be?’ continued Morley.

  ‘The little man,’ said the professor. ‘The self-made man.’

  Despite the continuing unpleasantness and ferocity of the attack, and the now focused attention of all the other guests in the room, Morley continued to parry and joust.

  ‘The “little man”—’ he began.

  ‘One day that’s all we’ll have, Morley, if you and your like get your way. The bitter. The twisted. Look at the trouble you’ve been giving us in Spain.’

  I was about to open my mouth, but Morley glared at me in warning.

  ‘I’m not sure that—’

  ‘We’re heading for a bloody revolution in this country if we’re not careful,’ continued Mr Thistle-Smith. ‘Like the French and the Spanish and—’

  ‘Realistically I think the guillotine is still rather a long way from Trafalgar Square, don’t you, Professor?’

  But the professor was not listening. He was talking through Morley to the nation at large, and to his gathered guests.

  ‘I’ll tell you where this country started going wrong,’ he said, pouring himself another schooner of sherry.

  ‘With the General Strike?’ said Morley, preparing to defend territory he had clearly defended before. But Professor Thistle-Smith had a longer memory – a class memory.

  ‘No, no, no, sir. We have been slipping and sliding our way towards disaster for years. Decades. Since bloody Gladstone, in fact. Excuse my language, ladies. This country started to go wrong with the Hares and Rabbits Bill, if you ask me. When decent honest farmers aren’t allowed to shoot game on their own land the game’s up, as far as I’m concerned. Landowners are under attack everywhere in this country. Half of our fine homes and castles have already been turned into hotels and lunatic asylums. God himself only knows where it’s going to stop.’

  Mrs Thistle-Smith took advantage of a natural pause in her husband’s outburst to interject.

  ‘Mr Morley also writes for The Times, darling. You like The Times.’

  Professor Thistle-Smith waved his hand again. ‘Who he writes for is a matter of utter disinterest to me, frankly.’ He fixed his eyes – rather bloodshot, jaundiced eyes, I fancied, eyes long familiar with the half-lit cellars of a large country house – on Morley. ‘Like many of us here in the village, Mr Morley, I am only interested in why you’re asking questions about our dear departed reverend, and muck-raking in the gutter press.’

  ‘I have been trying to piece together a picture of the reverend’s final hours,’ said Morley.

  ‘An enterprise best left to the police, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘The police certainly have their methods, sir. But I, you might say, have a motive.’

  ‘A motive? For the murder?’

  ‘Indeed, no.’ Morley seemed unconcerned by the accusation, which caused not a little excitement among those gathered around; there were mumblings and gasps. ‘But it is true that I did find the reverend’s body, with Mrs Snatchfold, during the course of my researches on my latest literary project—’

  ‘Ah yes, The County Guides!’ Professor Thistle-Smith laughed.

  ‘Which alas I have been prevented from working on until the police conclude their enquiry.’

  ‘A prisoner here in our little village.’

  ‘Effectively, yes,’ said Morley.

  ‘Well, I’m sure my wife will endeavour to make your stay here as pleasant as possible,’ said the professor vilely, glancing menacingly towards Mrs Thistle-Smith, a glance that seemed to indicate a gulf of long standing, infinite and unbridgeable.

  ‘Darling!’ Mrs Thistle-Smith looked shocked, as did many of the gathered guests.

  ‘What? A man not allowed to speak his mind in his own home?’

  ‘Yes, of course you are, but not if you are upsetting our guests.’

  ‘I think it might be time for us to leave,’ said Morley.

  ‘Not a moment too soon,’ said the professor.

  ‘And that,’ said Morley on our way to the hotel, ‘is why I don’t go to parties.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I RETIRED TO BED, Morley to I know not what; to crochet, possibly; or to learn another language.

  I wasn’t asleep. I was smoking one last cigarette after another, killing time, and entertaining my usual night thoughts about the horror of it all, and what had gone wrong, and reading a poem in New Verse:

  The hill has its death like us; the ravens gather;

  Trees with their corpses lean towards the sky.

  Christ’s corn is mildewed and the wine gives out.

  Smoke rises from the pipes whose smokers die.

  And on our heads the crimes of our buried fathers

  Burst in a hurricane and the rebels shout.

  Terrible rot. Which seemed about right.

  Around midnight there was a tapping on my door. For a moment, I hoped it might have been Lizzie. I extinguished my cigarette, took a look at myself in the vanity mirror, ran my fingers through my hair.

  It wasn’t Lizzie. It was Morley.

  ‘Come on then, Macumazahn,’ he said, whispering. I was shocked. I had never heard him whisper before, and also this was one of the very few of his endless literary and mythological and historical references that I recognised straight away, without any clues or prompting: the name given by the Zulus to Alan Quatermain in King Solomon’s Mines.

  ‘What?’ I said, whispering back.

  ‘We need to get up to the church.’

  ‘Now?’

  He glanced at his watch. And then at his other watch.

  ‘Of course now, Sefton. I wouldn’t be here otherwise, would I?’ His moustache was twitching, in its enigmatic way.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Now. Quickly, Sefton. Come on.’

  I dressed and we strode up to the church in silence, Morley insistently shushing me when I tried to ask any questions.

  ‘Quin taces, Sefton, please,’ he mumbled. ‘Quin taces.’

  I had a vague memory from Latin classes that this meant shut up.

  ‘Shut up,’ he said, clarifyingly. So I shut up.

  The streets of Blakeney, as on the first morning of our arrival, were deserted. There was a night fog. Up the hill, and we approached the twin towers of St Nicholas.

  ‘How are we then, Sefton?’ asked Morley, who had returned to whispering again.

  ‘Fine,’ I whispered back. ‘Can’t see much.’

  ‘Right and proper,’ said Morley. ‘Diogenes lit a lantern and walked through Athens by day searching for an honest man and found he not one.
And found he not one … Now,’ he said, as we stepped through the church porch and approached the door.

  He produced a key, tried it in the lock, and the vast door creaked open.

  ‘Where did you get the key from?’

  ‘Auro quaeque ianua panditur,’ he whispered. ‘A golden key opens any door.’

  ‘You have a golden key?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Sefton. I bribed Constable Ridley for it. Not much point in getting old if you don’t also get crafty, eh?’

  Just inside the church, in the deep black Bible dark, Morley produced two candles from his jacket pocket and lit them, and so we entered by the soft illumination of candlelight, our feet echoing around the vast empty space.

  ‘Can’t see much,’ I said.

  ‘Was it not Gideon who won a battle by lamplight, Sefton?’ whispered Morley. ‘And David who declared that the word of God was a lamp unto his feet? It seems appropriate.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘and what exactly are we—’

  ‘Sshh,’ said Morley. ‘Tiptoe walking and hushed tones in church, please.’

  ‘But no one’s here, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Well. If no one’s here then what’s the point of—’

  ‘I take it you are not a believer, Sefton?’

  ‘I can’t say that I am, Mr Morley, no. I believe in science.’

  ‘Then God’s loss is science’s gain,’ said Morley. ‘This way.’

  We groped our way in the dark towards the octagonal font.

  ‘Ah, our friends the Evangelists,’ said Morley, striking stone.

  I walked into an oak bench and gave a yelp.

  ‘God!’

  ‘Ironic,’ said Morley. ‘Remind me, which branch of the sciences is it you’ve studied, Sefton?’

  ‘Well … none in particular,’ I said. ‘All of them. In school.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Morley, feeling his way along a row of benches. ‘There’s our problem, you see. In many ways we are as ignorant and as credulous about science – as utterly in the dark, as it were – as any churchgoer in the Middle Ages.’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow you, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said, misconstruing. ‘This way,’ and led us across to what I assumed was the south aisle of the church. ‘We’ll try here first.’ He held his candle up aloft, towards the stained-glass windows. ‘The churchgoers of the Middle Ages, Sefton, those who flocked to these magnificent buildings, could see but could not understand. Do you follow?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘And science for us today is much the same. Do you understand electricity, for example, Sefton?’

  My eyes were now accustomed to the dark. We had paused underneath a window depicting Mary and child surrounded by angels and saints, which was weakly lit by the rays of the moon.

  ‘Electricity?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. The wonder of electricity, Sefton. The miracle of electricity. Have you ever paused to think, as a switch goes down with a click, and – lo! – the light shines, what miracles of engineering lay behind it?’

  ‘No, I can’t say I—’

  ‘Any idea at all, in fact, of how it works? Electricity? Workings of? A brief outline?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Go on. The Electric Catechism, as it were?’

  ‘Electricity is …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It … comes in a … cable …’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘With … wires … to a switch.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘And when you press the switch it …’

  ‘Completes the circuit! Not bad, Sefton,’ he said, as we moved suddenly on from under the stained-glass window down towards a darker and shadowy area at the far end of the south aisle.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘But not good either, eh? No James Jeans are we, Sefton? In fact, you are in many ways, if you don’t mind my saying so, as ignorant about electricity as a primitive savage.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure—’

  ‘The world is as mysterious to you as a headhunter in Borneo, Sefton, or a medieval peasant.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘And so is it not possible, Sefton, that if someone – say, some eminent professor – were to tell you that a man had died from hanging, that you might have no way of judging the truth of his statement?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Are you suggesting that we shouldn’t believe what Professor Thistle-Smith has told us about the reverend?’

  ‘I’m suggesting that we shouldn’t take his word for it merely because he happens to be a professor, Sefton. Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est. Ah!’ he said. ‘Here we are. The chapel of Our Lady. Time to visit your desecrated Virgin, Sefton.’

  Six Norfolk fonts

  By the weak light of Morley’s candle I could make out an image of the Virgin, her face having been crudely – and, one suspected, frantically – scraped away, so that all that remained were scars and scratches where the eyes and mouth should have been. I was reminded horribly of some of the churches I had seen in Spain – defaced and degraded.

  ‘Who do you think—’ I began.

  ‘I have an idea, Sefton. But … Caudae pilos equino paulatim oportet evellere, eh?’

  ‘Something about a horse?’ I said.

  ‘We must pluck the hairs of a horse’s tail one by one, Sefton.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Let’s just retrace our steps, shall we?’

  We made our way towards the altar, and up the steps into the room where we had found the reverend. It looked different in the dark: worse; more sinister; like a tomb. Morley seemed unperturbed.

  ‘Now, where was it exactly we found him, the reverend?’

  ‘Here,’ I said, pointing up.

  ‘Hanging.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hanging. Significant, Sefton, do you suppose?’

  ‘Well, it’s certainly one way of committing suicide,’ I said. ‘It’s quick and—’

  ‘The Greek Fates, Sefton, you may remember, imagined the life of man hung by a thread spun by Lachesis, while Clotho held the distaff, and Atropos waited to snip the thread whenever she would.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘And?’

  ‘Just thinking out loud, Sefton, that’s all. Where exactly was he hanging?’

  ‘Here.’ I pointed up again towards the pitch-black ceil-ing.

  ‘From?’

  ‘A beam.’

  ‘Yes. And above a …?’

  ‘Table.’

  ‘Correct. What kind of a table?’

  ‘Just a … table. This table,’ I said, tapping the table with my hand.

  ‘Yes. But there are tables, and there are tables, Sefton, are there not?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘There are indeed. There are card tables, and gaming tables, billiard tables, tea tables, marble-topped tables, tables for the sporting of aspidistra—’

  ‘And plethoric bonsai,’ I said.

  ‘Indeed, and plethoric bonsai tables, and dining tables, and refectory tables, and credence tables and the great tables of history … You know the story, of course, Sefton, that Napoleon was buried in a coffin made from an Englishman’s mahogany dining table?’

  ‘I’m not sure that I did know that story, actually, Mr Morley, no.’

  ‘No? Well, make a note, Sefton. The History of Tables. That might make an article, mightn’t it?’

  ‘I’m sure it would, Mr Morley, but—’

  ‘Sir Galahad, Sir Lancelot, Sir Percivale, Sir Tristram—’

  ‘The Knights of the—’

  ‘Round Table, precisely, Sefton. Sitting down with King Arthur and Merlin. Those noble phantoms of the dawn.’

  ‘I’m not sure what that has to do with us and the reverend though, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘No. Nothing at all. Except that great tables, Sefton, might make us think of “Who loves
another’s name to stain. He will not dine with me again,” might they not?’

  ‘You’ve lost me again, I’m afraid, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Augustine, Sefton!’

  ‘The saint?’

  ‘The very man. Carved the words onto his table.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘So legend has it. A message writ on the table, for all the world to see.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘But that’s the point, you did not see, Sefton. You did not observe. And then you did not connect. What if the reverend had left us a message, Sefton, carved onto the table?’

  ‘But he didn’t. There was no suicide note … You don’t mean he scratched a message on the table?’ I started to lean down closely to examine the table.

  ‘Unlikely, Sefton, don’t you think? The final desperate act of a desperate man, carving a message on a table. But what did he leave us? On the table?’

  ‘The Bible?’

  ‘Correct! And his message to us was what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Fortunately we made a note of the passage. Do you remember?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid—’

  ‘Judges 16. Which is?’

  ‘I … Erm …’

  ‘Samson at Gaza, of course.’ Morley put on his preaching voice. ‘“And they called for Samson out of the prison house: and he made them sport: and they set him between the pillars.” Did our reverend fancy himself as a Samson, perhaps?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘And why would our Samson have come here, Sefton, do you think? To Blakeney. Hardly the caput mundi, is it? Caput mortuum, more like.’

  ‘Perhaps he wanted a quiet life?’

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps. And possibly … No. This brilliant young man from Oxford chooses to come here to Blakeney to fulfil his vocation.’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘But unlikely. What if he had been lured here, in love with a woman in the valley of Sorek?’

  ‘Sorry, I …’

  ‘Just thinking out loud, Sefton. Oh. And one final thing.’

  Morley led us back out of the church, candles aloft, and into the graveyard.

  It was, by this time, gone one o’clock in the morning. There was a sharp chill in the air. Morley stood staring around the graveyard, and then spoke, not looking at me, as if addressing the dead.