Passion in the Peak

by John Buxton Hilton

  ‘Detective-Superintendent Gleed is on his way from Derby and will certainly want to go over all this again with you, so if there is anything you wish to alter or add, Miss Culver, it would be better not to have a completely different story to tell. Mr Gleed is not the most patient of men.’

  She shook her head. Fewter left. She went back into the kitchen, asked her father what he fancied for his dinner. The very suggestion of food seemed to nauseate him—as it nauseated her. But she supposed she had better get something for Freddy and started joylessly peeling potatoes.

  Joan Culver’s appearance totally belied the turbulence within: that was the mistake that Freddy Kershaw had made. It was all very well looking like a 1930s advertisement for wholemeal bread, new laid eggs and malted milk drinks. Maybe she did look the perfect country girl: that was another thing that Freddy had said to her—and then wondered why it had seemed to get him off on the wrong foot.

  They called the house a farm, but it had not been one for some years. Her brother Matthew had farmed less and less, and their effective income came from the irregular, unpredictable and, it always seemed to her, furtive buying and selling that he did up and down the countryside. She did not trust her brother. One of these days he was going to be in trouble.

  When she had volunteered to give up her studies to housekeep for them, it had only been meant as a postponement. A marriage was supposed to be in the offing, and her sister-in-law would be taking over the chores. But that marriage did not materialize. And the woman that Matthew was ‘courting’ up Beeley Moor (he had not come home last night, she had not expected him to) was married and did not seem to want a divorce.

  Joan Culver knew that she was caught in a domestic trap—and that there would be no escape for her unless she made it herself. She had known for some years now that hesitation was fatal—and yet she had continued to hesitate. The more Peak Low irked her, the more firmly she seemed to become entrenched. The wrong marriage would only be another trap. On sentimental—and dutiful—grounds, she hesitated to abandon her father, who if ineffectual, was at least benign. And Peak Low held nothing for her: a mobile library, a bland and distinctly unnourishing social round in the wake of a poorly supported church. The sudden advent of the Passion had held out an unexpected promise of fun. And it was a coincidental irony that she had once had a juvenile crush on Wayne Larner.

  She had been a Larner fan when she was thirteen. That had been in the years of his block-busting singles: Blue Baby and Hole in my Heart. Joan Culver at school had been a most biddable child. She knew now that she had been in danger of missing out on her youth simply to please her teachers. But it was pop music that bought her into the fold of her contemporaries. It was in the Third Form that she uncharacteristically found herself sharing the tastes and vaporous daydreams of some of the flightiest girls in the class: John, Paul, George and Ringo, Manfred Mann, Freddy and the Dreamers—and Wayne Larner. She suddenly found herself a popular fountain of ‘knowledge’ about their idols. The Third Form believed everything that the disc jockeys told them, everything they read on the record-sleeves and in the Melody Maker. They knew stars’ birthdays and favourite foods, their drinks and pastimes. Joan’s memory had always been vivid and immediate. She knew everything that Dyer wanted her to know about Wayne Larner.

  She knew that he had been christened Johny Lummis and that he had had a rough childhood in London. She knew that he had learned to play his first guitar chords on an instrument he had made with his own hands in the Hobbies Class at his Comprehensive (this whole story was an a priori invention of Dyer’s). She knew that his first public performance had been with a group that they had started while he was still at school, The Stalagmites, so-called because their first engagement had been at a far from pretentious coffee-shop called the Stalag. They were earning money from their music when they were sixteen. And it was in the Stalag that Dyer had discovered Wayne, taking him up, separating him from his friends, launching him towards the big time. His first golden disc had been Take what I’m Showing You. His first LP had been Blue Groove.

  There had been a girl in Wayne Larner’s life in the early days. She had been in the same form as him at school, had sung with The Stalagmites: Sue Bistort. She and Wayne had married young and she had been something of a drag on the fantasies of Joan Culver and her friends. And surely she had brought no joy to Dyer, for though she was tolerated in the Stalag, anyone could see that she had been unlaunchable anywhere else. And she was not long in disappearing from Wayne’s life—though Joan and her Derbyshire friends, in common with the general public, were deprived of any detail. Larner came back from his first transatlantic trip with a Filipino. Joan and her friends admired Wayne as something more than a mere twanger of chords. He was a man who passionately cared, who would fight tooth and nail for things that concerned him, who could never suppress his rage at the right things to rage at. He was anti-vivisection, anti-atomic waste, anti-teacher power.

  Then came his thrust for independence—and his eclipse. The Third Form was not really conscious of what was happening to him. As he slipped out of their charts, others slipped in. New performers, with new gimmicks, inflamed their enthusiasms. When the news broke that Wayne Larner was coming to Peak Low to take the Christ part, Joan had not played one of his records for years.

  And it was only a passing interest that she took, something perhaps just a little stronger than mere curiosity. She knew by now how adolescent enthusiasms were manipulated. When she first spotted Wayne in the village, it was the first time she had seen him in person. He must be getting now towards the forty mark—his age was glossed over nowadays in the publicity handouts—but there was something about him that still had the power to hold. She was aware of the irony when he offered her an outing to Buxton. What would the Third Form have thought about that, if they could have foreseen it?

  Never before had the Sunday cooking smelled so vile: the steam of cabbage water, the wave of heat when she shoved the Yorkshire pudding in the oven. Water boiled over from a pan of carrots, and the entry of Freddy Kershaw at that moment did not add to the sweetness of the joys of domesticity.

  ‘I just came to let you know,’ he said, ‘that I can’t stay to dinner.’

  ‘Now he tells me.’

  ‘I have to remove myself from Peak Low.’

  He looked ashen; but she did not find his wretchedness endearing.

  ‘Remove yourself from Peak Low?’

  ‘I happen to serve in a force,’ he said, ‘where telling the inconvenient truth is not encouraged.’

  That did not mean anything to her. She did not know about his statement. He went down another few points in her estimation for talking in riddles.

  ‘You’ll be in this evening, I expect—after closing time?’

  ‘No. I’m going upstairs now to collect my things.’

  Only then did she have the feeling that a phase of her life was over.

  Chapter Seven

  Gleed looked at Kershaw without a smile, but with no rancour. ‘Ah! George Washington the Second, demanding a hatchet job.’

  Kershaw made a facial expression tantamount to acquiescence.

  ‘Not my business,’ Gleed said. ‘And I don’t propose to make it mine. It’s up to your Superintendent and the Chief Constable. And I can’t think there’s any doubt of the outcome. Sergeant Wardle has lost no time clearing himself. He’s let it be known that he gave distinct orders for you to leave the car alone. So I have to manage without the services of a detective-constable who has been in this village for the last few weeks, and who might therefore be a mine of information about local personalities.’

  Kershaw had met Gleed at County Conferences, though his only real dealing with him had been on the Board when his transfer to CID had come up. Gleed was a man at the beginning of his fifties who had been in one of his strong silent moods that day. That was his common attitude, which left him something of a permanent enigma. The only thing that was really known about him was his frigid efficiency
.

  ‘May I take it that nothing you have observed in Peak Low had led you to expect last night’s events?’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. I would like to think that if there had been anything, it would have found its way into one of your reports.’

  ‘There’s been nothing, sir—except the letters from Miss Mommsen and the things that have happened to two Mary Magdalenes.’

  ‘And you have a theory about them?’

  ‘No, sir—except that the incidents concerning the second Magdalene might well have been accidents.’

  ‘Good, Kershaw. I like a man who does not theorize for the sake of having something to say. Pity we seem so likely to be about to lose you. I’m afraid that Inspector Fewter is very anxious to get you out of Peak Low, and you’ll understand that I cannot interfere in divisional discipline.’

  ‘Sir.’

  That was that.

  Monday was a day that might have seemed slack to casual observers—and the Press. There was nothing to report, but like the placid swan, there was a lot going on under the surface. A massive force came under command, including dogs, helicopters, men beating heather with ash-plants, men moving in line abreast across moors and fells, men poking into caverns and dales. Relays of plainclothes women were sitting by Ricarda Mommsen’s hospital bed, and the Jewess was defying prognosis by remaining alive though in a deep coma. Gleed was talking to people, treating all men alike—and detaining no one. Dyer was finding it difficult to get an interview with Furnival: he was worried that Furnival might go to another agent for Larner’s replacement. But Furnival, it seemed, had no wish to discuss his intentions at the moment. There were some who believed that Larner might still show up. Others believed that he must surely have died of shock and exposure.

  Julian Harpur, Peak Low’s strange adolescent, whom his parents had presented to the village throughout his childhood as a genius, mooched about Peak Low and the perimeter of the theatre. And various rumours had tracked round the Passion Company: that Furnival was considering calling off the show; that a fringe group called The Deviants were in trouble for singing in a local club hits that were not due to be heard in public for some time yet; and that there had been an almighty row between his lordship and Cantrell. Some said that Cantrell had been told that if there was one more practical joke on or off stage, he was out. Others said that he had been carpeted because Larner had given his heavies the slip in Macclesfield. And someone even had hold of the story that Furnival had called Chief Superintendent Kenworthy out of retirement to come and sort things out.

  The show had to go on, and on the Wednesday morning, Furnival and a stranger—no one knew what Kenworthy looked like—strolled into the auditorium during rehearsal. A disturbance was taking place in the orchestra stalls. Kenworthy saw that at the centre of it was Cantrell, who had been pointed out to him, and that the security man was accompanied by two of his minions. They were evicting someone from one of the theatre seats: a young man, aged between eighteen and twenty, fleshless, round-shouldered, with eyes that looked hunted by the world and yet contemptuous of it. He had an immature moustache, sparse yet at the same time drooping, and when Cantrell ordered him to leave the theatre, he complied meekly, though with a look of hatred.

  ‘I don’t normally mind the locals dropping in at rehearsals,’ Furnival said. ‘It makes for good will, and we get feedback from their reactions to the script. But Cantrell needs to be seen to be doing something. I’ve vetoed practically everything he’s suggested since Sunday morning, and he knows he’s no more now than chief watchman.’

  ‘And who’s the laddie he’s chivvying?’

  ‘A village boy—Julian Harpur. His parents brought him up as a loner, telling people he had an IQ that broke all bounds: probably still believe it. But he had some accident doing an experiment at home with chemicals he had helped himself to from the school laboratory. They say something’s jarred his brain: I dare say that’s not the medical terminology. But it’s hard to know, because even before the mishap, nobody had any rapport with him. They say he was always an oddity. At school they wanted to prosecute for theft of the chemicals. The staff couldn’t stand him. Now, of course, he’s unemployed—unemployable, has nothing to do but hang about thinking his own thoughts. And they don’t seem to be bringing him much pleasure.’

  Cantrell had moved on to a second intruder, a small man in late middle-age who had on a navy blue suit worn to a shine, and clamped squarely on his head a black homburg. He was also wearing a pair of round-lensed, tortoiseshell-framed spectacles. In fact he appeared by some miracle to have assembled all the trappings for an undiluted nineteen-thirtyish appearance. Maybe that had been his style all his life.

  Unlike young Harpur, this man tried to resist ejection. Furnival and Kenworthy were not near enough to hear what he was saying, but he looked like the sort who would argue volubly that he was doing no harm, and what sort of Christianity was this that put up barriers to keep people out? But when one of Cantrell’s henchmen put a hand on his shoulder he stood up to go, and picked up from between his feet a black banjo-case.

  ‘Who?’ Kenworthy asked.

  ‘A dogsbody of one of the fringe groups. Also a friend of Ricarda Mommsen’s. At least, he was often seen talking to her.’

  ‘Have you many people about the place who are unaccounted for?’

  ‘We try to account for everybody, but it’s difficult. Not everybody is employed directly by me. Some of the groups have their own hangers-on—technicians, odd-job men—men like the one you just saw chucked out.’

  The man with the banjo was leaving, turning over his shoulder with some quip that he no doubt considered the soul of wit.

  At that moment a Gregorian chant rose above the light rustle of wind in the treetops outside the theatre: the Passion was not all jive and jangle.

  No bread, no scrip, no money in our purse—

  The rehearsal was about to get under way when there was yet another interruption. A couple of delivery men had arrived from somewhere with a large wooden crate, which they were carrying down the aisle from the back of the theatre.

  ‘Where do you want this?’

  The man addressed himself to Hajek, who came out with an array of abuse that would have fascinated an infantry drill sergeant. Hajek, Hungarian, an escapee from 1956, was under-endowed with patience.

  ‘What is it, for Christ’s sake?’

  The man thrust at Hajek a delivery note, which the producer crumpled up and threw far from him.

  ‘Take the bloody thing backstage—round the outside of the theatre. Why is it that everything matters here except the bloody performance?’

  No bread, no scrip, no money in our purse—

  A double quartet of apostles was setting out to preach on the Galilee Sabbath. They were rugged figures—and Furnival’s purse ran to voices from Milan as well as the Rhondda. The composer of the sequence was sitting with the producer in the front row, in a filthy anorak, his sharp grey beard pointing to the sky in what appeared to be rhapsodic satisfaction.

  This was one of those moments in rehearsal when the timing, the team-work, the faithfulness to artist’s intent were going as well as most men would hope for in the final performance—except that, unguessed-at by many of the audience, the final production would be mimed to a digital recording.

  Now the unaccompanied singing tapered away into four minutes of high comedy. Yet it was sympathetic—even reverent. The unschooled apostles were haranguing village-corner rustics, and through their amateurism one could sense their sincerity, their uncertainty—and their instants of inspiration.

  No bread, no scrip, no money in our purse—

  When they came to the end of the reprise, a chord was plucked from a guitar. An arpeggio modulated into a minor key—and another voice filled the auditorium.

  Be shod with sandals—

  Wayne Larner—

  At first there was what seemed to be horror on and around the stage. Kenwor
thy noticed that the sound technician, who had been leaning back in cynically affected boredom throughout the scene, now leaped to his control console.

  ‘No, no, leave it!’ the producer shouted. ‘This could be the answer.’

  Silence, now, and attention was mesmerized. Kenworthy had never been a Larner fan. He had heard him in his time—who hadn’t?—but had never considered him worth listening to. Now he wondered if he had been missing something. This was a superb recording of a superb performance: the overtones, the undertones, the delusion of sincerity. Perhaps it had not even been a delusion.

  After the last chord, the sound engineer switched off his reels with an exaggeratedly casual gesture. Simon called Peter forward to speak the curtain line. And Hajek leaped to his feet.

  ‘All right! Cut! Twenty minutes for coffee and nicotine.’

  Furnival went over to speak to the producer, and beckoned Kenworthy to come with him.

  ‘How’s this for a Godsend? Isn’t a disembodied Christ the answer that’s been eluding us since square one? Larner’s voice—et praeterea nihil?’

  He went up to the man at the sound console.

  ‘How much of Larner have you got on tape, Lindop?’

  ‘Pretty well the lot. Though it’s not all up to that quality.’

  ‘But it will edit?’

  ‘We’ll try.’

  Furnival’s laughter had a light touch of falsetto hysteria.

  ‘This might even make Dyer happy. I dare say there are terms he would accept.’

  A different sound rose as they were leaving the theatre. Not all the play took place on the plane that they had just witnessed. Hajek had moved them back to the Prologue in Chaos. It was not a taste in orchestration that Kenworthy was ever likely to acquire.

  Chapter Eight

  Furnival and Kenworthy had met somewhere during the war, and then after it at some convention or other, while Kenworthy was still at the Yard. Early on the Sunday morning, Furnival had telephoned Kenworthy. Would he come up here (at a fee at which Kenworthy’s mind boggled) and keep his eye on things in a quiet way? His specific brief was to watch the interests of the production. He was not going to be expected to compete with the Derbyshire police. What Furnival really wanted, Kenworthy decided, was to have someone on hand who could interpret what the police were up to at any given moment.