Skylark

by Sheila Simonson

  A flurry of handshaking ensued. The chief inspector seemed pleasant and eager to put Ann and me at our ease, which was kind of him considering we'd come uninvited. We explained about the car rental, and he offered to take us to the car hire office after lunch. When we had deposited our luggage in the boot of his little Fiat, he led us down to the River Ouse to his favorite pub. It was, he said apologetically, a tied house, but the bitter was tolerable, and there were tables outside on the bank of the river. Perfection. I don't remember the food or the beer. The setting was just right.

  While Jay and Harry--by that time we were on first-name terms--drank another beer and talked about the upcoming conference, Ann and I went for a short walk on the wall. York Minster dominates that quarter of the city. Ann was agog to see it, and I was curious to see whether the fire damage to the south transept had been repaired. I also looked forward to showing Ann the Shambles--a warren of small shops in the shadow of the cathedral that was once the medieval butchers' precinct. To the southeast lay Clifford's Tower, the visible remains of York Castle, on its high mound. As a kid I had scrambled all over the tower. I was feeling younger by the minute. I made a mental note to wear sneakers the next morning. London seemed farther than two hours away.

  Harry drove us straight to the car hire office. The rental was a sad blue Ford Escort, rather tinny. It had a stick shift. Like Jay, I found the idea of shifting left handed alarming, and I had specified an automatic. However, the Ford was the last car available, so we took it. Jay rode with Harry. They were deep in a discussion of search and seizure.

  I unlocked both doors and offered Ann the keys.

  "No way. I'll navigate."

  I slid into the cramped driver's seat and hoped my knees wouldn't bang the dash when I braked. "How's your sense of direction?"

  "Rotten. I've never in my life driven anything but an automatic, though. You're elected, honey."

  "'It is an honour that I dream not of.'"

  She chortled and fastened her seatbelt. "That's a misquote."

  "Pedant." I eased the car out of the lot. Harry's neat red Fiat was waiting. "I'm going to hang on his tail like a remora on a shark, Ann. You keep your eyes peeled. I want to find my way back here tomorrow."

  "Right."

  We chugged in convoy through York's modern suburbs and headed north. Driving on the left induced a high state of paranoia. At least it kept me alert. I had mastered the gear shift within three stoplights. I think we crossed the river. We reached Thirsk, a pleasant brick town with a busy market square, in less than half an hour, but it took us another half hour to find the bed and breakfast place.

  We twisted east and north among rolling hills that looked like sheep country. The Hollies--the name and address of our B & B--lay in a tiny dorp of no more than ten cottages. There was a Saxon church. A large tithe barn across the green had been converted into a promising-looking pub called the Weaver's Arms.

  Harry pulled in by the enameled blue door of the largest of the ten cottages, and I parked behind him. By the time we had extricated ourselves and our luggage from the two cars, the blue door had opened and a rosy-cheeked woman of sixty or so stood watching us. She looked alarmed. "You'll be my Americans. Oh dear, I wasn't expecting two couples."

  Harry's forthright northern vowels reassured her. He performed introductions and took his leave, shaking hands all round and promising to return for Jay in two hours. The conference was set to begin with a dinner session that evening. Jay was going to read his paper on Saturday and sit on three panels Saturday and Sunday. No rest for the wicked. Harry had apologized several times to Ann and me for excluding us. We reassured him again that we'd survive without male escort and saw him off. He was far too courteous to say so, but I think our presence dismayed him.

  Mrs. Chisholm, our landlady, led us up a steep stairway, almost a ladder, and showed us our spotless rooms. Ann's had barely enough space for a twin bed and a wardrobe and basin. Jay's and mine was much larger, huge by hotel standards. Besides a canopied double bed and the usual furnishings, it featured a table and two chairs next to a hearth with a neat artificial log. A dormer window commanded a clear view of the church and the hilly country beyond.

  We were near the North York Moors National Park. The view was straight out of James Herriot--unsurprising, given that his veterinary office was in Thirsk. The decor struck me as a bit Laura Ashley, but I wasn't about to complain. Neither was Ann. When Mrs. Chisholm showed us an ultra-modern bathroom with an honest-to-god shower our joy knew no bounds. I, for one, gushed. Ann pulled out all the graciousness stops.

  Jay excused himself to shower and get respectable, but Ann and I took Mrs. Chisholm up on her offer of tea. She led us downstairs and out the back into a garden ablaze with scarlet and yellow tulips.

  "Do sit there and be comfortable." She indicated a grouping of wrought-iron lawn chairs. "I'll just put the kettle on, shall I? Oh dear, perhaps you'd rather have a glass of sherry."

  We assured her, I with fervor, that we preferred tea, and she went off.

  I looked at Ann. "What do you think?"

  Her eyes narrowed against the mild sunlight. "That we're paying less per night for this place than for that cellar in London with hot and cold running murder."

  I laughed. "And we get breakfast. Glad you came north?"

  "I may settle here, sugar."

  "Me, too. A shower!"

  "Fresh air! Tulips! York!"

  "The acid test will be dinner at that pub."

  "I shall eat it with relish," Ann said serenely, "even if it's fried oatmeal and blood pudding."

  We fell silent. The day had not been strenuous, but I was tired. I leaned back in the lawn chair. A light breeze stirred the tulips. At the edge of my hearing, I sensed Jay's shower running and, very dimly, the shriek of the tea kettle. A dog yipped once, far off. Otherwise there was no noise--no jackhammers, horns, sirens, squealing brakes, beeping trucks, rumbling trains. Paradise.

  "Quiet enough to think," Ann murmured.

  "Mmm." I was thinking. I turned the events of the past ten days over in my mind, and they whirled in the same sick loop, but I no longer felt caught in the action. We would have to return to London, but we had two days of freedom ahead of us. I meant to enjoy every minute.

  "I hope you like watercress sandwiches." Mrs. Chisholm set the tea tray on the small table and beamed at us. "Isn't the weather lovely?"

  Everything was lovely, including Mrs. Chisholm. We nibbled and drank tea and explained ourselves in prudently censored detail. We did not mention murder. When Mrs. Chisholm heard we were booksellers, she gave us the names of two proprietors in York and a second-hand shop in Thirsk.

  She was not herself a great reader, she admitted, but her late husband, the vicar of St. Ethelburga, had collected works of natural history in a modest way. I gathered that he had been many years her senior. When he died she bought the cottage and fixed it up as a refuge for city folk who came to the area to hike or fly sailplanes--a nearby scarp provided sufficient up-drafts for sailplanes. She had been letting out her Laura Ashley rooms for two years and did rather well during the holidays, though she had been relieved when we reserved the rooms--a family from Manchester had had to cancel. The woman in the next cottage helped with cleaning and cooking. She would pack us box lunches if we wanted to picnic. Most guests did.

  All of this information flowed out under Ann's expert questioning. I listened and kept an ear cocked for Jay, but he didn't come down. When we had drunk our tea and eaten the tangy sandwiches, I left the two ladies among the tulips and returned to my room. Jay was sitting at the table absorbed in the printout of his paper.

  "Stagefright?"

  He looked up and smiled. "Terminal. They're not going to catch my jokes."

  "You could do a Monty Python routine. Nudge, nudge."

  "Good thinking." He yawned and stretched. "Harry will drive me back here tonight, Lark. I may be late. I gather there's a lot of socializing."

  "Must be a bar on the pr
emises."

  "Something like that." He sighed. "Maybe I'll cut out tomorrow and go with you and Ann to York."

  "Do your paper, darling. The city has been there since roughly the year one. It will keep. We can poke around Monday. The train doesn't leave until five."

  "Okay." His eyes strayed to his master work. I effaced myself and started unpacking the two garment bags. It didn't take long. We had traveled light.

  Harry showed up at two minutes past five, and Jay, who had put on a necktie at the last moment, went off with Mrs. Chisholm's last house key. I wondered at the necktie. It looked faintly regimental. I had once bought Jay a necktie that looked regimental, a stiff ochre design on a stuffy blue field. Close inspection revealed that the design was composed of bare footprints. Jay had been a surfer. I mused over the possibility of a necktie with a sober blue field and a design of bare fingerprints--or, for the conference, little DNA helices. It was a good thought.

  Ann and I took a spin through the countryside amid much shifting of gears. We wound up at the closed gates of Castle Howard. Eight o'clock on a spring evening, time to head back to the pub for dinner.

  We had a good, plain meal in the pub's private room--lamb chops for me, mixed grill for Ann--and returned to the Hollies as Mrs. Chisholm's other guests, a young couple from Hull, came back from their hike on the moors. They were not at all stand-offish. I asked if they jogged. They said yes, but when I suggested a run the next morning they laughed. The husband pointed out the perils of running in open country where every household kept at least one unleashed dog. I was disappointed, but I did see the logic. I wondered if running were an urban predilection in Britain.

  We trotted off at that point to our separate rooms, and I went to bed with a guidebook.

  Jay tiptoed in around midnight. I had dozed off over the Guide to Rural Yorkshire and was deep in one of those dreams where you run and run and never get anywhere. Ann was running with me in her nice shirtwaist dress. We were chasing Milos. Unleashed dogs, some of them miniature poodles, yipped at our heels.

  "Hush." Jay touched my face. "It's just me. Nightmare?"

  I sat up sleepily. "Frustration dream. How was boys' night out?"

  He grinned and tossed the necktie at the table. "Not bad. Half a dozen policewomen and a female forensics expert showed up, but it was mostly men."

  "Good beer?"

  "Very good. I had three."

  I blinked. "Must have been good." He seldom drank more than two. "Come to bed?"

  "Soon as I can. How was the pub food?"

  We chatted in the comfortable way married people do while he undressed. Then we snuggled, also connubially, and both fell asleep almost as soon as the light was out. As usual I woke early. Mrs. Chisholm's breakfasts were served from eight-thirty to nine. I thought about running and about the dogs. Jay was still sound asleep, so I took out the guidebook and read some more.

  I was looking for nearby wonders and marvels for Sunday. Ann had taken it into her head that we--meaning me--should drive to Haworth on a Bronte pilgrimage.

  Haworth wasn't far by American standards, but it was farther than I wanted to drive the Escort. Scarborough had Sitwell associations. No, too far and too crowded on a bank holiday. Whitby ditto. There was always Castle Howard, but it was bound to be thronged, too. I wondered if Ann would settle for Rievaulx Abbey. I read on. It was a good guidebook, detailed without pedantry and full of historical snippets. The directions seemed clear.

  A stirring in the hall assured me that getting up was allowed. I slid from bed and into my robe. The female hiker from Hull, hair turbaned in a towel, smiled at me as I ventured out. I mumbled good morning. As I approached the bathroom, I heard her observing to her husband that it was a pity there was no proper bathtub.

  The shower felt glorious. Only strong civic-mindedness prevented me from standing in it until the water ran cold. Jay and I were downstairs in Mrs. Chisholm's sitting room reading old copies of Country Life at eight-thirty. We had risen to go in to breakfast when Ann also appeared wearing a dress and sandals. I was in jeans. I decided not to change.

  Mrs. Chisholm's neighbor cooked an all-out Yorkshire breakfast. Bangers and lean bacon, grilled tomato, fried egg, mushrooms, racks of toast--pure cholesterol. We wolfed it all down. The coffee was almost potable.

  Jay was supposed to be at his conference by nine-thirty so we hopped in the Escort. I drove and he navigated, and Ann sat in the back seat and exclaimed over the scenery. The conference site was a vast manor house that had been converted to a teacher training school some time in the forties. Jay said it was painted institutional green inside, but the grounds were impressive. He gave me a nice kiss and opened the car door.

  "Break a leg," I called after him. He gave a half-salute, grinning, and marched up to the main entrance. He was wearing the tie again. Men are slaves to fashion.

  York was grand, especially the minster. We shopped in the Shambles and walked on the wall. We saw everything but the Jorvik Viking Center, an archaeological exhibit. The lines to that coiled around the modern plaza as if the exhibit were a ride at Disneyland, so we took our box lunch down to the castle grounds, sat on the grass, and watched the holiday crowds. I made Ann climb the walls of the tower. They lean out slightly, so scaling the spiral staircases was an odd unsettling business, but the view from the battlements was almost as splendid as I remembered. We strolled back by the river and took in the county museum on the site of the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey. It was six before we retrieved the car from the city car park--a thoroughly satisfying day. Ann's feet hurt.

  Dinner--she had lamb chops, I had the mixed grill--was fine, and the public was working up a good head of noise by the time we wandered back to the Hollies. I had lobbied steadily for Rievaulx Abbey and environs for Sunday.

  Ann finally gave in. "I'll come back next week-end anyway, God willing. I can see Haworth and the dales then." She yawned.

  "That's the spirit."

  We made an early night of it, and I took the guidebook to bed again. This time I was looking for stately homes and quaint villages. The site of a deserted village near the abbey sounded interesting. Wiganthorpe.

  I drowsed off again, this time without a nightmare, and Jay was stroking my back and murmuring nonsense in my ear before I realized he'd returned.

  "Mmm. That's nice. How was the paper received?"

  "They liked it, I think. I had a talk with an assize judge who made a speech about the problem of conveying technical information to juries. He wanted a copy."

  "Bravo!" I gave him a squeeze. "How were the panels?"

  He groaned a satisfied groan. "Terrifying. Thank God my mother taught me to keep my mouth shut when I don't know anything. There's a lot I don't know, lady."

  I gave him another, more obvious squeeze. "And there's a lot you do know. Show me your expertise."

  "Who's an expert tease?"

  We had a nice, quiet romp and fell asleep still tangled together. Jay was up, showered, and dressed before I stirred Sunday morning.

  He was sitting at the little table scribbling notes. "Good morning, merry sunshine."

  "Umm. What time is it?"

  "Half past seven."

  "Wow, I'd better get cracking." I gathered my wits and sponge bag and went off to the shower.

  As I was dressing Jay said, "How are you fixed for cash?"

  "Hurting."

  "I'll give you what I have. I won't need much today, though I'll have to cash a travelers' check sometime soon. Where are you headed?"

  "Rievaulx Abbey." I explained the itinerary and took the money. The trouble with bank holidays is that they are bank holidays. I was out of travelers' checks anyway, unlike Jay.

  We deposited him at his conference and took off. We found Rievaulx melancholy and fascinating, though it was aswarm with families out enjoying the weather. Nearby Helmsley Castle had an impressive earthwork. By then it was noon and picnic time, so we found a grassy spot down the road to Wiganthorpe and pulled over. We munched o
ur sandwiches and eyed the sheep in the next field. It was the third straight day of sunshine. Amazing.

  I knew Ann was disappointed not to be exploring the Bronte country to the west, so I whipped out the guidebook and began reading her the chatty little piece on the deserted village. The site lay on the grounds of a manor belonging to Lord Tennant, although his lordship's principal seat lay in County Durham.

  "That's nice," Ann murmured. "Who's Lord Tennant?"

  "Hmm. It says that he still styles himself Lord Tennant of Wiganthorpe even though the village has been deserted since the late middle ages, and the house is a museum. 'Lord Tennant, like Lord Henning of Hambly...'" I broke off.

  Ann sat bolt upright, scattering crumbs. "It's a house! Hambly is a house, not a village."

  "No wonder we couldn't find it in the atlas. Lord Henning..."

  We stared at each other.

  "Milos is at Hambly." Ann struggled to her feet. "Come on. We have to find him."

  "And phone Thorne."

  "Yes." She was gathering up the lunch debris. "And those hypocrites at the Henning Institute. That smarmy woman in the office knew where Milos was all along. She was laughing up her sleeve at me, the unprincipled bitch."

  I stood and shook out the rug Mrs. Chisholm had lent us. "But we still don't know where Hambly is."

  "The Blue Guide," Ann said tersely. "Failing that, the book on stately homes sitting in plain sight in Mrs. Chisholm's parlor." She stomped over to the car. I followed.

  Hambly, it turned out, was in Shropshire, near Ludlow and the Welsh border. Rather near Hay-on-Wye. We found the information in Mrs. Chisholm's stately homes book.

  Our landlady was spending the day with her daughter in Leeds. Jay was due to sit on a panel at the conference at three. It was Sunday. I sat in the shadowy parlor and brooded while Ann went to the pay phone outside the pub and telephoned.

  If Milos were indeed at Hambly, then the Henning people must have believed he was in danger. They had to be protecting him from the British government as well as from his shadowy assailants. Ann's decision to report Milos's case had probably created considerable embarrassment. I felt rather sorry for the woman Ann was going to chew out.