by Russ Thomas
“Mister Gerald Bollocking Cartwright, by any chance?” Doggett doesn’t wait for a reply. “Right, I’ll bet you my last pint of Blonde he paid the woman off as well. Come on, then.” Doggett’s already heading for the car. “Rabbani,” he shouts over his shoulder.
“Sir?”
“Well done, girl. Top of the class!”
Rabbani shakes her head at Tyler behind the DI’s retreating back, but she’s all smiles.
“Well,” Tyler asks, “are you coming with us then, or not?”
Her mouth drops open again. “Yes, sir,” she says, beaming at him. There’s something about the way she carries herself to the car, her chest puffed out with pride, that makes him smile.
* * *
—
Unusually, Edna is the first one up that morning. By the time Lily has donned her dressing gown and negotiated the stairs she is already standing at the stove.
“I’ll do that.”
“I can manage.”
Lily settles for making the toast. As she takes the loaf from the bread bin she pretends not to hear Edna grunting and wheezing with exhaustion. She slices the dark-crusted bread and avoids watching Edna’s hooked hands as they attempt to drop eggs into the saucepan, each one sending up a splash of scalding water that reaches her fingertips. Edna steps away from the hob and stands breathing quietly, rubbing her fingers together while Lily browns the toast under the grill. Eventually, and without a word, she shuffles into the dining room, leaving Lily to take over.
Lily finds herself wondering how much of all this is an act, this sudden frailty that seems almost designed to make her change her mind. It’s curious; that thought would never have occurred to her before today.
As they eat she says, “I’ll get the papers before I go.”
“Can’t she do it for once?” Edna snaps.
“She did it yesterday.”
“No, she didn’t. You did!”
Lily has to think about this. “Well, anyway, I don’t mind.”
The rest of their breakfast passes in silence.
When she gets back from the paper shop, Lily helps Edna wash, and lays out a blouse for the day. She avoids mentioning the increased police activity next door. She doesn’t want to consider what that might be about and besides, she is certain it won’t help her cause.
Once Edna’s comfortable in front of the telly, Lily begins to get ready. She’s buttoning her cardigan when Edna finally breaks the silence. “Please, Lillian. I’m begging you not to go.”
Lily moves to the window and looks out at the bird table. “It’s only for the day, and then, when I get back, I’ll see about getting some of the garden furniture in. They said on the news this morning that the weather’s going to break.” A tiny female blackbird and a great, fat wood pigeon are battling for supremacy. Surely she’s allowed one day.
“Lillian, I’m not trying to be mean but . . . you know how things are, you can’t just go swanning off—”
“Mrs. Blackie’s back. I knew she’d like those mealworms.”
“Lillian, will you listen to me, you infuriating woman!”
She can see Edna’s reflection struggling to stand. She fights the urge to turn and rush to help. Let her struggle. Edna falls backward, frustrated, and bangs the arm of her chair weakly with her palm. Lily focuses on the blackbird, beak dipping into the tray on the bird table while the wood pigeon flutters and splutters around it in ungainly bursts of flight.
“Ungrateful woman,” Edna says, changing tack. “After all I’ve done for you. You might at least listen when I’m trying to protect you.”
Lily tries to block out the voice, but she can’t.
“You don’t understand, Lillian. It’s not your fault. It’s mine in all likelihood. Or your mother’s. We’ve sheltered you too long, made you vulnerable. You can’t trust other people; you know that.”
“Like Gerald, you mean.” She whispers it so quietly she’s not even sure she says it aloud, though Edna’s silence is testimony to the fact she has.
“You’re right,” Edna says finally. “I was wrong that time. But don’t you see? That proves my point. Look what happens when we take strangers into our lives. We’re better off on our own. Just you and me.”
“And Oscar,” says Lily.
If they hadn’t let Gerald into their lives, they wouldn’t have Oscar. And how could they have known about Gerald back then anyway?
But that wasn’t how it was really, was it? She thinks hard. She did know. She turns from the window . . . and opens the door to a thickset stranger in a camel-hair coat. She knows immediately who he is. He looks so exactly like an older version of his father that a question she’s been asking herself for fifty years resolves itself.
She lets him in, and he tells her how he’s tracked her down. She’s scared. Edna will be home from Mrs. High’s retirement do soon. What will she say to this stranger in their house? But when Edna gets home she’s delighted to meet Gerald. They get on wonderfully, as though they’ve known each other for years. And then, later, when the church sells off the Old Vicarage, Edna tells her it’s a sign. Gerald and Cynthia need a place away from the city, and this would be ideal for them. It’s less than six months before he and Cynthia move in for good. Edna and Gerald plan everything together. Lily and Cynthia have no say about anything; it’s their only real bond.
One day Cynthia comes to the cottage crying and tells them she’s pregnant. Oh, happy news! Edna hugs her and tells her it’s just hormones playing her up, but they both notice the bruise on Cyn’s cheek and . . .
“Lillian! Lily! My God, Lily, wake up!”
Lily is lying on the floor. What is she doing down here?
“That’s it, try to get up now.” Edna inches forward in her chair, leaning over her.
Lily stands slowly and brushes down her slacks. “I’m fine, just a dizzy spell.”
“I thought you banged your head. Oh, Lillian, please ring the doctor!”
“I will, don’t fuss.” Her arm feels a bit tender; she’ll have a bruise there tomorrow.
“This is what I’ve been trying to tell you. You need help. You never have been able to look after yourself on your own. Look at the trouble you get into.”
“Please don’t be spiteful.”
“How are you going to manage when I’m gone?” She’s speaking loudly enough that Her-Next-Door will hear. “Look how it was when your mother died. Who made all the arrangements then, eh? And what about that night? What would you have done without me then, Lillian Bainbridge?” Edna stops, exhausted by her own tirade.
What about that night? Does she mean the night her mother died? Lily doesn’t think so. She could just ask but . . . then Edna will know how bad things have got. She needs to be the strong one this time. She needs to work it all out . . . somehow.
Lily turns back to the window in time to see the blackbird lift itself off the table and into the air, its beak full of tasty mealworms. Of the wood pigeon there’s no sign. “The coach will be here soon,” she says. “Do you want me to fetch you anything before I go?”
“You’re not to go! Do you hear me?”
But Lily is already leaving the room. “I think I’ll wait for them down by the road. I won’t be too late. If there’s any problem, I’m sure someone will have a mobile telephone.”
Edna calls out to her, “Lillian! Lillian, please! There’s no need for this. I can deal with the letters. I already have a good idea who might be—”
“Cheerio then,” she shouts as cheerfully as she can manage. She steps forward across the threshold.
“Lillian! Lily, wait!”
Lily closes the door, cutting off the sound of Edna’s increasing desperation.
* * *
—
The new vicarage has none of the grandeur of the old one, but it would certainly be cheaper to heat.
When they arrive, Thorogood, or Felbridge, has his coat on.
“You’re lucky to have caught me, actually. I was just on my way out the door. Coach trip.”
Doggett smiles widely. “This won’t take long, Reverend.”
The three of them are ushered into a perfectly presented living room while Mrs. Thorogood fusses over bringing them tea.
“That’s all right, Mrs. T,” Doggett tells her. “If we could just have a few moments with your husband.”
“Are you sure?” she persists. “It’s no bother. I’ve just put the kettle on and—”
“Enough, Jean!” Thorogood doesn’t quite shout, but his wife jumps nevertheless.
“Yes,” she says quietly. “Sorry.” She withdraws, closing the door behind her.
“I’m sorry about that—”
But Doggett cuts him off. “Right, you can cut the crap now, Felbridge.”
“Ah . . .” Thorogood sits down in an armchair and sighs as though a huge weight has come off his shoulders. “I knew it would come out. Just a matter of time. I think I’m actually rather relieved.” He looks up at them. “It’s not nearly as bad as you think.”
Doggett starts twitching his way around the room.
“Why don’t you tell us about it then?” Tyler asks.
“It’s not a very pretty story, I’m afraid. Fell in with the wrong crowd, the usual sort of thing, you know.”
Doggett looks at Tyler and then at Rabbani. “I’m not sure we do, do we?”
Thorogood ignores him and plows on. “Drugs, Detective Inspector. That was the root of it. A few years later, and”—he actually looks up to the ceiling—“thanks to my calling, I cleaned up the act. In case you think I’m some sort of fraud, you’ll find my superiors are fully aware of my past transgressions. I have nothing to hide. The name change was just something to distance myself from a terrible time in my life.”
“What about Bow Chapel?” Tyler asks him. “Was that a terrible time as well?”
Thorogood keeps his composure. “The allegations made against me were false, as I’m sure you are aware. There were no charges brought against me.” He turns back to Doggett. “It’s a hazard of the job, I’m afraid. Sometimes vulnerable people lash out at authority figures.”
“So your good friend Gerald Cartwright arranged for you to end up here?” Doggett asks.
Thorogood straightens in his chair. “I knew Gerry from Eton. He used to come in and give talks sometimes, and mentor some of the students. We lost touch for a while during the ‘Wilderness Years,’ as I like to call them. You’re right, he did donate a sizable sum to the church restoration fund, but it wasn’t a condition, as such. I’m not naïve, though. I imagine Gerry made some sort of request. That was Gerry, after all, always putting others before himself. He knew I was looking to move away from London. In my profession, the mud tends to stick. I imagine it’s much the same in your own.” He addresses this to Tyler, and the words strike a little too close to home.
Thorogood stands up again. “Now that that’s cleared up, was there anything else?”
“We’re not finished yet, Mr. Felbridge.”
Thorogood makes an effort to control his voice. “I believe we are, Detective Inspector.” He glances at his watch. “I have a coach full of pensioners waiting for me, and I don’t see why—”
“Sit down, man!”
Rabbani jumps, and Thorogood drops back into the chair like he has been punched. In the silence that follows, a phone rings somewhere in the house. The vicar keeps his hands folded in his lap but can’t hide the fact they’re shaking.
Doggett towers over him. “I want to know what happened to Gerald Cartwright, and I want to know what you know about it.”
“I don’t . . . know anything.”
There’s a timid knocking on the door, and the mousey wife pokes her head back into the living room. “It’s the phone, Sebastian. The driver is getting a little worried about the traffic and . . .” She trails off, picking up on the tension in the room. Then she adds, “I can take a message if—”
“No, that’s fine, Jean, thank you. I’ll take it.”
The woman looks relieved to have got it right for once and makes a hasty retreat.
“I really do have to be somewhere.” Thorogood seems fortified by his wife’s submissiveness, reassured who wears the trousers in this house. “Unless you plan to arrest me?”
Doggett drags the silence out for a moment. “All right, Sebastian, go tend to your flock. Just don’t go leaving the country now, will you?”
The man virtually leaps out of the chair, and they follow him into the hallway, where his wife hovers with the phone in her hand. The vicar takes the receiver from her but waits while his wife shows them out.
Before the front door fully closes Doggett shouts his final farewell loud enough to reach whoever’s on the phone. “One last piece of advice, Reverend. Next time you change your name and move away to avoid the scandal of sexual assault allegations, you might want to pick something a bit less obvious.”
The door closes firmly in their faces.
“Did you enjoy that?”
Doggett smiles. “It was mildly amusing.” He sets off fast, crossing the road back to the Old Vicarage, leaving Tyler and Rabbani to follow.
“We need to keep an eye on that one,” he says as they catch up. “Rabbani?”
“Sir.”
“Do a bit more digging. I’m not taking his word for it that this past of his is all out in the open and aboveboard. If we can make a few waves for him while we’re at it, so much the better.”
“Yes, sir.” Rabbani clears her throat. “Sir?”
“Yes, Police Constable Rabbani.”
Rabbani hesitates. “Sorry, sir, it’s just . . .”
“Spit it out.”
“Well, I were wondering if we actually learned anything there.”
Doggett grins. “What did we learn, DS Tyler?”
“We learned that the good reverend wants us to think Gerald Cartwright was some sort of saint.”
“Indeed. And what do we know about Gerald Cartwright, DS Tyler? Above anything else.”
“He wasn’t a saint.”
“Indeed he was not. Which means, Police Constable Rabbani?”
She thinks about this for a moment, chewing her lip. “That he were in it up to his eyeballs, sir?”
“Well done, girl.”
When they get back, there are still a number of reporters mingling in the hope of further pickings. Doggett searches the faces until he finds the one he’s evidently looking for. “Gina,” he calls to a young woman at the edge of the pack. “How’d you like an exclusive?”
Gina’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “What sort of exclusive, Jimmy?”
“Dodgy vicar?”
She cocks her head to one side. “Tell me more.”
* * *
—
Lily’s feet are tired. It feels like they’ve been walking all day. She stays near the back of the group, where she can keep an eye on everyone, but all she can see is a procession of white heads, snaking its way through the winding streets of Whitby. The harsh screams of the seagulls are beginning to hurt her ears. What do they want with all that incessant crying? The sounds come from all around her, and yet she feels as though they are dogging her, swooping and calling at her back, so she finds herself constantly wheeling and turning. It feels as though she is being followed.
The Reverend Thorogood leads the procession, holding aloft a small gray flag for them all to follow and waving it occasionally back and forth toward the oncoming crowds as though he is Moses parting the Red Sea for the Israelites. Now and again he glances back to look at her. She has thought about the reverend. He seemed awfully determined she should come on this trip, but could he really be responsible for blackmail? A man of the cloth? Unless . . . per
haps the letters are not the work of a man intent on causing harm but instead the work of one determined to force her into doing the right thing. But if so, why not just talk to her? Blackmail, whatever the motive, hardly seems a particularly Christian endeavor.
She thinks, too, about Edna’s final words. I already have a good idea who might be—what had she been going to say? Be behind this? She hadn’t wanted to know then and had closed the door before she could hear any more. Oh, it would be so like Edna to step in and work everything out just like that. Well, it just wouldn’t do! Lily wanted to be the one to solve the mystery. Now, of course, she can’t think about anything else. What has Edna worked out? And how? When Lily has discovered absolutely nothing. She supposes she will have her answer in a few hours’ time at any rate. After all, there’s nothing she can do to stop Edna from telling her when she gets back.
They lunch on fish and chips in a small restaurant by the bridge. Lily settles for a child’s portion and ends up leaving half of it. She has little appetite. She sits opposite Carol and the daughter-in-law, who smile politely but avoid engaging her in conversation. She tries to think of a way to talk to them, but the phrases she rehearses sound just that—rehearsed. Besides which, she’s really not sure she wants to talk to either of them. If they do know something, does she really want to get into it all right here, in public?
She sighs heavily and pushes a fat chip through a puddle of vinegar. Perhaps Edna was right, perhaps she shouldn’t have come. She’s no detective, amateur or otherwise. And it isn’t as though the blackmailer is just going to announce himself across the luncheon table. Any unusual letters lately, Miss Bainbridge? Would you mind passing the ketchup?
After lunch there’s a visit to a fudge shop, but the atmosphere in the shop is stifling. Lily selects a small box of treats with a picture of a sailboat on the front for Edna and escapes back outside as quickly as possible. On the opposite side of the street she sees the vicar and his pretty wife. They are standing close to each other, the reverend with one hand on his wife’s arm. She has her eyes downcast but is shaking her head almost violently. When she glances across and spots Lily watching them, she pulls away from her husband, smiles expansively, and folds her arms. The reverend picks up on the gesture and looks across at Lily as well. He, too, smiles, and the two of them cross the road to join her.