[Lambert and Hook 20] - Something Is Rotten

by J M Gregson

  ‘Bert?’ She pictured the man with the village-bobby exterior who had been unexpectedly kind and thoughtful to her after her flatmate had disappeared. ‘He doesn’t really seem the type for amateur dramatics.’ Chris smiled, enjoying the luxury of gossip with a woman outside the job, a pleasure he had not had for many years now. ‘Hidden depths, Bert. He’s about to complete an Open University degree, as well. He knows a lot about literature, does Bert Hook.’

  Anne stored the information away. Perhaps if they ever met socially, she’d be able to talk to Bert about Hardy. ‘What’s the play?’

  ‘It’s Shakespeare. Hamlet, I believe. Bert even tried to persuade me to be in it with him.’ Chris threw in the information casually, as if it could increase his attraction, show that he was something more than the staid play-it-by-the-book policeman that he felt himself to be in reality.

  ‘You should have done it. You’d have enjoyed it. It would have brought you out of yourself.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t. It would have been agony. Besides, I have other fish to fry; other ways of revealing my hidden depths.’ For Chris, it was a daring speech. He should have looked deep into Anne’s eyes upon it, but instead he deliberately looked away from her, as if he feared her laughter. After a moment, when laughter did not come, he squeezed her hand, almost as an afterthought.

  She got him out of the pub quickly after that. It was six o’clock on a mild evening, and they walked for a little while in amicable silence beside the Wye. She put his hand around her waist and leant against him as they strolled, looking up at the stars in the clear, moonless autumn sky. Td like to meet your Superintendent Lambert and Sergeant Hook again some time, if the opportunity arises. I thought they handled Clare’s death with a lot of understanding and sympathy.’ He walked another few yards, enjoying the feeling of her against him, wanting it to go on for a long time. Then he said, apropos of nothing, ‘They’re teaching me to play golf. Getting a few laughs out of it.’

  ‘I play golf,’ she said diffidently.

  ‘You never said.’

  ‘It hasn’t arisen, has it? I didn’t know you played until now. Difficult game, when you’re starting, isn’t it?’

  ‘You can say that again! Near impossible, I found it. And didn’t those two enjoy my struggles!’ He had turned up in immaculate new golf gear and been reduced to a tattered scarecrow an hour later, much to the amusement of his colleagues.

  The germ of an idea entered Chris Rushton’s mind. He walked another few yards, squeezing her lightly against him, feeling the warm curve of her breast against the top of his hand. ‘Any good at golf, are you, young Annie?’

  ‘Good enough to teach you, old Chris! And if you play your cards right, I’ll be much kinder than your male colleagues. You make progress and you never know what rewards you might get!’

  He giggled, turned her towards him, and kissed her tenderly in the dark. They walked quite a distance before he reiterated his question. ‘You really any good, though?’

  ‘I’ve played since I was a girl. Caddied for my Dad before that. I’m not bad, I suppose.’

  ‘I’ve thought of a way you might be able to meet John Lambert and Bert Hook again, if you’d really like to.’ Chris Rushton smiled a secret smile in the darkness.

  Maggie Dalrymple was getting more excited by the day about Hamlet.

  It really looked as if the project was going to get off the ground now. She’d pretended from the start that there were no doubts about that, trying to carry everyone else along in the current of her enthusiasm, but she’d known in her heart how ambitious it was. Maggie wasn’t by any means stupid. Sometimes it suited her to play up the Lady Bracknell which everyone thought was her natural metier, but she was not out of touch with reality.

  Maggie knew that it was a highly, possibly even an absurdly, demanding undertaking for an amateur group to put on Shakespeare’s most complex tragedy; that the odds must be against the thing ever getting off the ground. But she enjoyed working against the odds, bringing off coups which most people thought were impossible, and it looked as if she might succeed with this one.

  It was early days yet, to be sure, but they had a young man who would be a startlingly good Hamlet, which was an essential. They had a director who was both able and realistic, who would know just how much was possible with an amateur cast and draw it from them. Whatever her past history with the man, Terry Logan knew what he was doing in the theatre.

  That girl Becky Clegg could be quite good as Ophelia, if she put her heart into it - Maggie’s fertile imagination could already see her cavorting barefoot in the mad scenes. And the boy who’d come along today and offered his services might be a find as Laertes: he certainly looked the part, and he claimed he’d had success in school plays. Terry had apparently directed both of them when they’d been at school and he seemed to rate them.

  She was secretly delighted that she seemed to have no rivals for the role of Gertrude. She knew from experience that Ian Proudfoot was going to be a splendid Claudius, and she was going to enjoy being his louche and lascivious queen. Gertrude was a bit vacuous as well, of course, but Maggie was sure she could convey that as well: that was what acting was all about.

  She looked at her husband across the dining table. ‘You’ll never guess who we’ve got for Polonius.’

  He looked at her as he raised the very full glass of red wine she had poured for him. Then he said sourly, ‘No, I won’t. You’re right there.’ He looked at her for a moment over the thick black rims of his glasses and went back to his steak. When your wife laid on your favourite meal for you, there was usually a catch.

  Andrew Dalrymple liked both his life and his wife to run smoothly on the lines he mapped out for them. The former he could usually engineer; the latter was a more complex problem. Andrew had the florid face which sometimes comes in their fifties to men who achieve business success and the good living which goes with it. He had enjoyed building his plastics firm up from small beginnings over the years, but that hadn’t left him much time for exercise or hobbies. He had been an active sportsman in his youth, had almost made it into the Olympic fencing team in 1980, but those days were long gone.

  Andrew was running a little to fat now, though not extravagantly so. The doctors had told him to lose weight after his latest BUPA check, but he hadn’t taken much notice of them so far. He had his hands full with matters at work and at home, he told himself.

  Money was not a problem, within limits. His wife, Andrew Dalrymple had discovered over the years, often was. Maggie did not accept limits, or at least not the ones her husband wished to place upon her.

  Maggie now said determinedly, ‘Polonius is a key part. Apart from anything else, you need a few cheap laughs when you’re working with the audiences we get.’ She nodded sagely, pleased to give her husband this evidence that she had her feet on the ground.

  Andrew sighed, realizing that he wasn’t going to be able to avoid the topic of Hamlet. He paused to savour a larger mouthful of his claret as consolation, then said resignedly, ‘So whom have you unearthed for this gem of a role?’

  ‘A CID man. Detective Sergeant, as a matter of fact. We’ll have to age him a little with make-up, but he almost looks the part already. And he’s not just a PC Plod: he understands the play.’ She was unable to conceal her own surprise and satisfaction in this startling discovery. ‘And he’s called Bert. I like the idea of a man called Bert playing Polonius.’

  Andrew Dalrymple had never had the same sense of humour as his wife; that was one of the things which had divided them over the years. He said heavily, ‘At least Terry Logan isn’t involved.’

  Maggie stared hard at the delicate lace edging of the very white tablecloth she had got out for this occasion and tried to sound matter-of-fact. ‘He is, actually. I’m sure that I told you that before.’

  Andrew kept his voice from rising, just as he had noticed she had done. ‘I didn’t know that. You certainly haven’t mentioned him this week. You haven’t said which
role he’s playing.’

  ‘I’m sure I did mention Terry, you know. I’m sure we discussed it when you agreed to hire the hall for us. But he won’t be on stage. He’s directing.’

  ‘You said you weren’t ever again going to do anything in which he was involved.’ He mouthed the words very carefully, as if clear diction could conceal his anger and his hurt.

  ‘Andrew, Terry is a good director. The only one who could possibly do Shakespeare. There’s no alternative, if we’re going to put on Hamlet.’

  ‘You promised.’ Andrew’s full lips set with the obstinacy of a pouting schoolboy. He stared at his steak before he raised a forkful of it to his mouth. This time he could find no solace in his claret.

  ‘I know I did. I ... I understand why you have these objections. But there’s really no need to worry.’ She sought desperately for some further reassurance for him and said foolishly, ‘There’ll be a big cast in Hamlet, even when we’ve cut it down a bit. Lots of people around.’

  Andrew said no more, not wishing to endure the pain of a further argument. His steak had turned to ashes in his mouth. He downed three glasses of the claret over the next ten minutes, without tasting any of them. When Maggie came back into the room, he pushed aside the treacle sponge pudding she had made to remind him of his days at boarding school. How uncomplicated the pains and the pleasures of those far-off days seemed to him.

  She had expected disappointment from him when she announced that she was going out, but her departure was in the event a relief to both of them.

  ‘I shan’t be very long,’ she said. ‘It isn’t a rehearsal; it’s just four of us discussing how the play might best be cut down to size for the resources we have.’

  She could see him digesting the idea that Terry Logan must surely be involved in this, but he said nothing. She called artificially cheerful goodbyes to him from the hall, but he remained obstinately sullen.

  ‘Suit yourself!’ she muttered angrily to herself as she went out to her car. But a little of her felt guilty about the hurt she was leaving behind her in that vulnerable, slightly ridiculous figure which was her husband.

  Andrew Dalrymple sat for a long time at the table after she had left. Then he plodded slowly upstairs, his legs moving as if they were drawn upwards against his inclination, by some invisible force. He’d known all along that Logan was going to be part of this. He moved into the large main bedroom of the house, hesitated for a moment, then moved into his wife’s dressing room at the far end of it.

  Even though he was alone in the house, he found himself looking shiftily over his shoulder for a moment, towards the distant open door of the bedroom, before he slid open each of the drawers in a unit in quick succession. The bottom one was locked, but he found the key for it beneath the unopened packets of tights in the drawer above it.

  There was a kind of treachery in this - and he knew it. But he had no control over his slow, deliberate, almost reluctant actions.

  The things were there, as he had known they would be. The remembrance of things past; the souvenirs she had promised to throw away, to dismiss from her life and from his. He handled them slowly, with a kind of horrid reverence, as if it was necessary for him to prolong his pain if he was to harden his resolution.

  He spent a long time looking at a photograph, one of those casual instants in time which the camera preserves for ever. Then he shut the drawer and locked it, as deliberately as he had done everything else in that private place.

  Six

  It was six days later, on a muggy November Monday afternoon, that Bert Hook got the unexpected phone call.

  He had spent the morning in court. His evidence was straightforward and not contested. Although the prisoner had an experienced barrister to defend him, provided by the bigger, faceless criminal organization behind the accused, DS Hook was not given the fierce cross-examination he had half expected. The young man in the dock pleaded guilty, which made the case simpler. He then made a great show of repentance, nodding his acceptance and contrition as the judge addressed him before sentence. With bowed head and shoulders slumped in shame, he made such a good impression that, in spite of previous convictions, he got away with a two year sentence for dealing in drugs.

  With the time he had spent in custody and remission for good conduct, he would be back on the streets in nine months. And almost certainly dealing again, thought Detective Sergeant Hook cynically: he had interviewed this man after his arrest and he knew just how genuine were the remorse and the determination to mend his ways which he had displayed so readily to the court.

  Bert was completing the file on the case when his phone rang. He rapped out his name automatically into the mouthpiece. The educated voice on the other end of the line said, ‘This is Terry Logan. Do you have a minute?’

  The name did not immediately register. ‘If you have a crime to report, sir,’ Bert said, ‘you should get in touch with—’

  ‘It’s Terry Logan, your director, actually, Bert. The Mettlesham Players. Remember?’ The voice had used his first name rather self-consciously. ‘And I’m afraid this is personal, not business. Connected with our venture into Shakespeare. Can you spare me a minute?’

  ‘Sorry. The name didn’t register at first. How can I help you, Mr Logan?’

  ‘By meeting me, for an hour or so, if you can spare the time. We need to discuss things, before we go any further with our great enterprise. I think we’re all agreed that Hamlet is a challenging - some would say a foolhardy - production for amateurs, so I’m trying to have discussions on a one-to-one basis with each of the principals involved before we finally commit ourselves to it. Check that everyone knows exactly what he’s taking on. I’d like to see you. Tonight, at my house, if you can manage it.’

  ‘Yes, I can do that.’ Bert looked around him, checking if anyone was listening to his arrangements: he’d had quite enough twitting already about his histrionic potential. ‘Eight o’clock be all right?’

  ‘That would suit me admirably. I shall look forward to it, Bert. And you really must call me Terry: we don’t have any barriers in the theatre world, after all. You’ll no doubt wish to call me much worse than that before this thing is over!’

  Bert managed a small, self-conscious laugh, flattered to be addressed as a principal, but wondering once again quite what he had taken on. ‘Terry it shall be, then.’ It was difficult to be affable and at the same time restrained; he had to keep his voice low to frustrate any curious ears in the CID section.

  He sat looking at the phone for a full half minute after he had put it down, wondering what the real purpose of this meeting could be. Perhaps he was to be vetted again for his role of Polonius. Perhaps he hadn’t been as convincing as he’d hoped at the reading. Or perhaps it was something else altogether, something wider than his questionable dramatic talent.

  Being a CID officer made you naturally suspicious.

  Christine Lambert opened the front door to find her daughter outside with a suitcase. With her white, drawn face and the clothes she had thrown on without regard for appearance, she looked like a refugee. But to her mother, she looked more like one of those black and white pictures from 1940 of evacuee children, moved out of the cities and away from the bombing.

  Christine’s surprise must have shown in her face, for Jacky said plaintively, ‘Dad came to see me. He said it would be all right if I came home for a night or two.’

  Christine liked the sound of that word ‘home’, though she knew the suffering which had prompted it. ‘Of course it is, love. Come in. I’ve got the kettle on. We’ll have a cup of tea, then get your old room ready for you.’

  Jacky stood awkwardly in the hall, looking around her as if she had never been in the bungalow before. ‘He didn’t tell you, did he?’

  ‘I expect he meant to, then got diverted by all kinds of other things as soon as he got back to the station at Oldford,’ Christine said loyally. Typical bloody John, another part of her thought. But at least he’d been to see Jacky; at le
ast he’d shown concern for his daughter’s situation. And he’d told her to come here, to have her hurts soothed by her mother.

  ‘It won’t be for long,’ said Jacky diffidently. Her mother sat her down in the big airy kitchen, which was so different from her own charming but darker little galley beneath the thatched eaves. Jacky looked down at her blue skirt and realized for the first time that it clashed horribly with the garish orange flashes in her top. She shouldn’t have come here, she thought.

  She said, ‘I know you didn’t like Jason. But please don’t say, “I told you so”. Not at this moment.’

  ‘Oh, love, don’t say that!’ Christine found herself standing behind the chair, with her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. She tried to pick her words and stumbled as a result into the hopelessly conventional. ‘Jason wasn’t exactly what we’d have chosen for you, but he was your choice, and we did our best to get on with him, for your sake.’

  ‘He was a bastard!’

  She put all of her accumulated bitterness into the word, so that it shocked mother and daughter alike with its vehemence. There was a little pause and then both of them were laughing together. It was a loud, high, echoing laughter, which had tears not far behind it.

  ‘I got away without any charge on that shoplifting,’ Becky Clegg said. ‘I was lucky. I got a soft copper: I didn’t think there were any of those around. No charges, just a caution and a direction to amend my ways. He seemed to think he could save my soul or something. Daft bugger!’ Her Gloucestershire accent came out strongly on the last phrase, and she laughed as she heard it.

  Jack Dawes said, ‘You always bloody get away with it, you girls! After you’d been caught red-handed with the goods in your possession, too. I expect you fluttered your eyelashes and everything else at him.’

  ‘You bet I did! I’d have given him a flash of anything he wanted, to get out of the nick! But I didn’t have to, did I? He were more interested in my soul than my pants, silly old pig.’ She felt a little guilty about her bravado, but she had an image to keep up with Dawes. People who lived by their wits had a certain code, and being impressed by any member of the fuzz wasn’t part of it.