‘Bitten by something?’ asked Salt.
‘There’s . . . there’s—’
Salt took Oblong by both shoulders and shook him twice, firmly. ‘There’s what?’
‘L – l – legs by the lantern . . .’ stuttered Oblong.
‘Show me.’
Shame gripped Oblong as Salt showed the calm head he had so conspicuously lacked. The gardener instructed him to keep back and took a roundabout route so as not to disturb any clue. He crawled into the undergrowth and checked for any sign of life, then clambered back and pointed out to Oblong the blistered paintwork on the lantern and the melted wires.
Emotion registered in Salt’s face and voice, but with restraint. ‘Horrible,’ he said. ‘I knew her.’
‘Was she—?’
‘A lightning strike, but not without . . . its oddities.’
Salt watched Oblong, mouth still agape, and decided against allowing him to go, lest he blurt out the news before the next of kin had been told. ‘Come with me,’ he added.
‘Where?’
‘Baubles & Relics,’ replied Salt.
Ever level-headed, Salt locked the gates as they left.
Orelia, the early riser, greeted them, mug of coffee in hand.
‘The historian and the gardener – what can I do for you?’ An astute reader of body language, her tone changed in an instant. ‘What’s happened – to whom?’
Salt recited the facts without embroidery, adding comfort only at the end. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Orelia stood up. ‘I need to see the body,’ she said, her numbed state of mind giving way to an urge to be positive.
‘It isn’t pretty.’
Nothing more was said. Oblong felt an urge to speak, but Salt gave him a deterrent look. The first countrysiders’ stalls passed them on the Golden Mean, and the newspaper boys were out. In the gardens the magical early light had given way to morning as the birdsong subsided. Salt unlocked and then locked the gates behind them and stood back with Oblong as Orelia crawled into the tangle of leaves. She did not emerge quickly. Salt stood downcast, as if in meditation. The gesture seemed right, and Oblong followed suit.
Orelia rubbed earth from her face. She held Mrs Banter’s handbag. ‘Her personal effects – I don’t want anyone going through them.’
‘Of course,’ said Oblong lamely.
‘It must have been instant,’ added Orelia.
‘Yes,’ said Salt.
‘Of course,’ chipped in Oblong.
‘Thank you for finding her early. I couldn’t bear the thought of a crowd. She liked her dignity.’
Oblong blushed.
‘I’ll get the arrangements done,’ said Salt.
‘You mentioned oddities, and you were right. She’s dressed to the nines, and her watch is frozen at ten past midnight.’ Orelia bit her lip as she spoke. The bare words might be those of a detective, but she did not sound like one.
Scarily self-possessed, thought Oblong, and Salt appeared to agree.
‘You really want to discuss this now?’ Salt asked.
‘Very much – it’s our discussion to have.’
‘There’s something odd about the shoes. They look new.’
‘They are new.’
‘There are scuff-marks on the heels, as if she’d been dragged. Lightning would throw you, I think. Unfortunately, we can’t be sure, because the path is disturbed.’ Salt did not mention Oblong’s clumsiness.
‘There was thunder in the night,’ added Oblong, desperate to contribute, but Orelia continued her dialogue with Salt.
‘The oddest thing of all is why she came here so late – to meet whom? And why did he or she take no action?’
‘He, surely – those shoes, that dress.’ When she nodded, he continued, ‘We’ve had another freak lightning strike in recent weeks, remember?’
‘What possible motive could Slickstone have?’ Orelia’s final observation came on impulse: ‘They’ll cover this up. Don’t tell the Town Hall I was here, or Oblong. You found the body.’
Not for the first time, Oblong felt relegated to the periphery of events.
They left the gardens. Salt arranged for the undertaker to remove the body, Oblong returned home and Orelia entered Mrs Banter’s house with the keys from her bag. The house looked undisturbed. An array of dresses draped across the bed testified to a desire to impress – yet hitherto, Mrs Banter had shown no interest in finding a replacement for Mr Banter.
Orelia climbed up to the tower rooms and stumbled on a side of her aunt that she had never even guessed at. The two power-
ful telescopes on their tripods were bizarre enough, but the
rows of notebooks in alphabetical order, all crammed with observations, spoke of a voyeuristic obsession with the lives of her fellow citizens. Orelia shuddered. She knew their purpose: social
leverage.
Prurience is an insinuating vice. Orelia could not resist perusing a few selected volumes. Mrs Banter’s pungent notes yielded no joy and much sadness, as with the disheartening number of visits by Fanguin ‘without his wife’ to The Journeyman’s Gist since his dismissal – ‘a broken man’ was her aunt’s note. To her irritation, her aunt had detailed her own nocturnal movements with wounding accuracy – ‘goes to a party, returns alone again’. Not everyone’s movements were so conventional – Vixen Valourhand apparently vaulted the rooftops at night.
She dithered. Revealing such a library to the authorities would tarnish her aunt’s memory, but their retention would be a serious breach of the History Regulations.
When in doubt, buy time.
She returned the books and dismantled the telescopes – and only then did she notice that the Sa-Sl volume was missing. S for Slickstone? Surely her aunt had not been foolish to enough to attempt to blackmail Sir Veronal – but if so, what with? He hardly ever ventured beyond the Manor.
She turned her attention to Mrs Banter’s desk diary, a tale of bridge evenings and cocktail parties, which stalled at the end of February, nothing thereafter but blank pages, save for a tea-time visit from Lady Slickstone. She remembered her aunt’s distressed state after the party and sensed a missing chapter.
Then the shell of rational analysis dissolved. The drab tidiness of her aunt’s life, guilt at the lack of warmth between them and the thought that she might have prevented this tragedy, had she known more, assailed her. She knelt by the bed and wept.
When she eventually returned to Baubles & Relics, she found a Town Hall messenger on the doorstep, where he delivered a predictably sanitised version of a most unhappy death.
*
Rotherweird had no police service, so all deaths were investigated by Mors Valett, the town undertaker – himself an habitué of Snorkel’s soirées.
The bizarre circumstances of Mrs Banter’s demise alarmed the Mayor.
‘It’s odd,’ said Valett. ‘Her date scarpered, or didn’t show.’
‘Do you blame him?’
Valett persevered, ‘You’ll recall, your Worship, an electrical incident at a recent party. Coincidence, maybe – but some might wonder—’
‘A is for Accident,’ Snorkel said firmly. ‘Don’t complicate. A lantern incinerates and a woman dies. Bad luck, but it happens. As for this date of yours, he doesn’t turn up, or if he does, he misses the body in the dark. Who’s the next of kin?’
‘Orelia Roc, Baubles & Relics.’
‘Arty type, isn’t she? They’re the worst. Close it down, Valett, close it down.’
Valett thought of his grace and favour residence and the plush upholstery in his grace and favour rickshaw. Rocking boats was rarely wise. He wrote the word ‘Accident’ on the front of the shiny new file headed Mrs Deirdre Banter (deceased).
*
The ensuing notice in the Rotherweird Chronicle had a predictable blandness, with an undertone of tastelessness to the few who knew the true facts. It mirrored the way Mors Valett had delivered the news to Orelia:
Deirdre Banter, widow of the well-know
n architect, was found dead yesterday after a sudden heart attack suffered in the vicinity of Grove Gardens, which will be closed for a week as a sign of respect. The Mayor complimented her contribution to Rotherweird society and offered his condolences to Miss Orelia Roc, her niece, who has promised ‘business as usual’ for the family antique shop Baubles & Relics.
Closed out of respect! Workmen would be in the Gardens at this very moment, rewiring, repainting and raking over the unexplained drag-marks in the gravel. Mrs Banter’s dress and shoes had been returned, but not the watch.
*
BANTER, Deirdre: widow of Bartholomew Banter (architect), died without issue on . . .
Marmion Finch’s quill scratched in the date, reducing another life to a statistic in the great Register where in alphabetical order arrivals rubbed shoulders with departees in respectively green and red ink.
She had been a friend, or rather, rival, of Mrs Finch, with their common interest in social advancement and the Rotherweird Riparians, until her recent and unexplained ostracism. Finch distrusted the Town Hall when it dismissed troubling events with bland explanations. ‘A picture of rude health,’ Mrs Banter’s doctor had confided in Finch earlier that day. ‘She must have been overcome by the blossom.’
The word ‘architect’ tripped a memory. Finch rarely visited the heavy folios that held the original designs for the town’s oldest buildings; their historical voice was too rich, even for him. Now he opened the plans for Escutcheon Place – one man’s vision realised in bricks, beams and mortar. The designer’s name: Peregrine Banter.
The Manor reopens. A descendant, in name at least, of a founding father dies in rude health.
The gold key round his neck weighed more heavily with every passing day.
5
Last Rites
Attendance at Mrs Banter’s funeral service was modest. Mrs Snorkel represented the Mayor, and stayed no longer than the decent minimum. Salt sat near the front and sang heartily. Oblong, at the back, mumbled along. Outside, Salt had patted him on the back and Orelia awarded him the faintest of smiles.
A sprinkling of shop owners made up the numbers. A young priest spoke well, less about God and more about the existence of dimensions of which Man knew nothing.
At the end of the service a woman with a black mantilla over her face wafted up to Orelia and whispered, ‘I cannot say how sorry I am. I do hope your fortunes change.’ Orelia did not know the voice, but it had elegance.
Orelia would have followed her, but the undertaker approached with a small jet-black urn. ‘Such a tragic accident,’ he said, almost apologetically.
Anxious to complete the last rites, she cajoled Salt into joining her. Beyond the finishing line for the Great Equinox Race, the banks narrowed and the river flowed faster and deeper. She emptied the ash into the Rother and as the thin grey film passed out of sight, she shed a tear or two. ‘I should have been kinder to my aunt,’ she mumbled.
‘We are how we are, and there’s nowt so strange as folk,’ replied Salt, not one of Nature’s grief counsellors.
‘Can a man throw lightning?’
‘No,’ said Salt. ‘You’re upset.’
‘There’s much electricity in the human body.’
‘No. Anyway, why would Slickstone kill your aunt? Think of the risks.’
Kill her for driving a hard bargain? Orelia could only agree it made no sense. Even the removal of the ‘S’ volume from Mrs Banter’s secret library required theft, not murder.
‘And if he did kill her,’ continued Salt, ‘why did Lady Slickstone come to the service?’
‘You mentioned a threat to Lost Acre. Suppose that’s what connects?’
‘Lost Acre is gone for all I know,’ grumbled Salt.
They parted on the riverbank, Salt leaving to check the Island Field colonies of the Rotherweird eglantine for blossom.
Among Rotherweird’s more peculiar legal instruments were the Inheritance Supervision Orders, issued by the Town Hall on the death of anyone over the age of eighteen. The policy was, as ever, to discourage any interest in history: the nearest relative of sound mind had to weed out from the deceased’s effects any material more than twenty years old, including letters, diaries and photographs, which were later collected by the Town Hall’s scrutineer for destruction.
Orelia returned to her aunt’s house and rifled through her papers with little return. Business aside, Mrs Banter had not been given to writing or receiving letters, still less taking personal photographs. On her return to Baubles & Relics, she checked through the attic storeroom. In a hatbox, among invoices for the original refurbishment of the shop, two nondescript black sheets of paper enfolded a mounted sepia photograph of her great-grandfather, Roy Roc, the owner of the coracle and an amateur photographer and naturalist. He stood at the foot of a woodland bank with a large butterfly on the flat of his open hand. Above him sat an incongruous figure on his haunches, holding a parasol. A manuscript caption read:
RR and the Purple Emperor
Rotherweird Westwood
1893
Orelia remembered the family story: Roy Roc had sought the purple emperor since childhood, the most elusive of woodland butterflies, which fed on aphid honeydew high in the canopy, descending only briefly to lay their eggs or to feed on less rarefied
substances.
One summer day far from town, in a shawl of ancient oak trees, an elderly man had appeared with a parasol. He had asked a simple question: ‘Do you have a killing jar?’
‘I wish only to watch them.’ Roy Roc had confirmed his pacifist intentions by pointing to his notebook, tripod and camera.
‘What are you missing?’
‘Apatura iris,’ replied Roy, to test the stranger.
‘Follow me,’ he replied. As they walked, the old man, his parasol still up despite the woodland shade, had explained how the lower slopes had once been entirely wooded. He had shown Roy Roc a cluster of purple emperors feeding on a salt lick. The old man never gave a name, and later proved untraceable. Generations of Rocs nicknamed him Quirk, after the Latin for oak, but he had never been seen again.
The photograph confirmed the old story, but much more besides. Despite the dappled light, the seated figure was unmistakable: Ferensen, or a double of Ferensen. It made no sense – how could he have been there then?
This unsettling feeler from the past prompted another thought. On the white wall of her bedroom she projected the photographs taken in the Manor’s attic on the night of the party. Two-thirds of the way across the tapestry’s mythical narrative appeared a man in a cage. She had taken the golden threads descending towards him to be a blessing, but now she had doubts. Lightning? She stood up close. Something about the cage caught her eye: tiny dots of colour, the colour of the stones.
Making many things of living things.
In other cages there were monsters, mixes of man and animal or animal and bird. She went up to the screen and shuddered. Again on some of the bars – but never more than once to a side, and never on the same bar in the same place – appeared a tiny dot of colour, red, blue, white or brown.
Orelia suddenly felt afraid. This wasn’t myth at all, but history, real history, reaching out across the years. She mulled over where to take her suspicions. Salt had hidden private agendas. She didn’t know Ferensen well enough, and there was truth in Salt’s complaint that he garnered more information than he gave. She sensed a flaw in Ferensen too, which she couldn’t place, for all his apparent wisdom.
A thought came to her and she began to write, holding nothing back. In disregard of Salt’s instruction she mentioned Ferensen and the photograph. She explained the sale of the stones, her aunt’s observations, the library of notebooks, the missing volume and her theory about her aunt’s untimely death in Grove Gardens.
On the envelope she wrote,
Strictly Private and Confidential
Marmion Finch Esquire,
Escutcheon Place
She delivered it by hand herself,
early the following morning.
On her return she set about the shop, hustling between the basement and the ground floor, giving abandoned unsold stock a second chance and relegating selected present failures. The old ruler had passed away, the state funeral had been held and now the new regime could show its style. Within days the hippopotamus head, subject of so many of Mrs Banter’s spiky barbs, had sold. The suffocating fog of bereavement began to lift.
6
Gorhambury Finds a Mission
As the victim of various improvement notices under the Tenancy Regulations, Gorhambury’s landlord took an unforgiving view of the erstwhile Town Clerk’s failure to pay his rent. He refused any extension.
The civic sense of community was strong in Rotherweird, and vagrancy almost unknown. Anyone losing a job could expect replacement employment – unless blighted by Mayoral disapproval. Like Fanguin before him, Gorhambury could not overcome this handicap.
After two nights sleeping in doorways, Gorhambury decided that self-help had its limits. He signed into The Shambles, Rotherweird’s refuge for homeless unfortunates – though the lodging’s seven rooms were more often than not unoccupied – tucked into the town’s north wall. Bo Tavish, who ran The Shambles and had a burning desire to do good, greeted Gorhambury as a long-lost friend.
He found the registration process humbling. After entering his name, date of birth and resident number, Gorhambury recorded the reason for his homelessness as ‘unfair dismissal’ – a minute step, but the child’s rebuke ‘unfair’ marked his first adult challenge to authority. Gorhambury had embarked on a new journey without yet knowing it.
Bo expounded a simple regime: ‘Dinner at eight, no booze on the premises, lock up at midnight, rent is bargain basement at seven guineas a week, to be earned by labour. No liability on the management for theft, flood, libel, slander or illness of any kind. I likes a chat; my husband don’t. Breakfast at eight; lunch is your affair; dinner is mine – wholesome tucker, nothing fancy.’
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