by Alan Hunter
‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘But that one’s for me.’
‘Sir,’ Docking said.
Gently hung up.
The manager didn’t appear at breakfast, but his wife sat icily at their table by the wall. She had eyes for nobody, certainly not for Gently, and she rose and stalked out while he was still at his porridge.
In the foyer he met a couple of reporters, to whom he gave one of his famous pseudo-statements. Wistfully, they bowled him one or two fast ones, then let him go – knowing their Gently.
He fetched the Lotus and set out through the busy, Saturday-morning town. The sun was spiteful already, sitting lurid in a palish sky. A little thunderish? Towards the sea the horizon was dully clear and hard, while in the windscreen buzzed another black fly such as Docking had executed the day before. Some weather breeding . . .
Coming to the Home Farm, Gently eased the Lotus to a crawl. Creke had cleared his barley. The field by the track lay shaven and empty except for scattered straw-bales. A long way off, on a gentle slope, the orange-painted combine was still chuntering restlessly, but here, where the stable stood shadowy in its dark trees, nothing stirred, no man came. Gently hunched and drove on. This was the way it had been on Tuesday! For a man whose convenience it was to use him the black stallion had waited. For a man who could ride him . . .
The Manor House lay silent in the steep sun, its door and most of its windows wide open. Gently drifted the Lotus through the yews and let it glide to a halt by the brick steps. A movement caught his eye, in the trees to the right. He recognized Redmayne stooping over some object. At the same moment Redmayne caught sight of him, straightened, remained for a second motionless. Then he came slowly forward, carrying something in his hand.
‘Look . . . Panolis griseovarigata. There’s a brood making hay of that young Pinus.’
He opened his hand to reveal a small, lively caterpillar, with linear stripes of green, white and orange.
Gently stared at it. ‘Is it something rare?’
‘A typical layman’s remark,’ Redmayne grinned. ‘No, there’s nothing rare about this – it’s only too common for some arboriculturalists.’ He turned his hand over, letting the caterpillar climb it, and following its movements with smiling eyes. ‘It’s death to pine trees,’ he said. ‘But what a lovely creature. And the moth too. It’s the Pine Beauty.’
‘Thanks,’ Gently said. ‘I’ll remember that.’
Redmayne laughed and settled the caterpillar on a leaf. ‘So you haven’t called in to naturalize,’ he said. ‘More’s the pity. Who do you want?’
‘I want you.’
‘Do you?’ Redmayne said. ‘Well, I’m probably the most conversible. But I was planning a little ramble on the heath. I suppose we couldn’t combine our activities?’
Gently hesitated. ‘Very well,’ he said.
Redmayne grinned. ‘You won’t regret it. Just give me a minute to go into the house, and then we’ll be on our way.’
He ran up the steps. Gently leaned against the Lotus and began to fill his pipe. All about the Manor was quiet, except for the crooning of wood-pigeons in one of the beeches. A remote place . . . According to Docking’s map, there was nothing nearer to the Manor than the Home Farm, and that was a mile distant. Just the fields, the woods and the heath . . .
He heard steps in the hall and turned, but it was Lachlan Stogumber who’d come to the door. He stood staring contemptuously at Gently and Lotus, his large, goldeny eyes inimical.
‘We’ll have to find you a room, officer,’ he said. ‘What’s the latest – has the horse confessed?’
Gently regarded the young man mildly. He was dressed this morning in a white, Shelleyan shirt, its front unbuttoned to the waist.
‘Perhaps I’ve dreamed up a new mystery woman,’ Gently said.
Lachlan Stogumber laughed jeeringly. ‘You’ll have to do better than dream,’ he said. ‘Jill Rising wasn’t a very bright guess.’
‘Perhaps now I’m a little closer than Mrs Rising.’
‘But not close enough. You’ll never be that.’
‘Perhaps almost as close as I am now to you.’
Lachlan Stogumber paused, his eyes staring fiercely.
‘Yesterday,’ Gently said, ‘I was looking at it one way. Today, I’m looking at it in another. And today it’s fitting a great deal better. We probably won’t need a confession from the horse.’
‘What are you insinuating—?’
Lachlan Stogumber stepped forward, anger thinning his handsome face. But just then Redmayne reappeared to lay a hasty hand on the poet’s arm.
‘Manners, Lally,’ he smiled. ‘Don’t give the Super the wrong impression.’
Lachlan Stogumber jerked his arm away and flashed his cousin a furious glare. For a spell they stood confronting each other, Redmayne calm, Lachlan Stogumber smouldering; then the latter broke away and marched offendedly into the house. Redmayne gave a faint shrug.
‘Poets . . . ! But somebody has to live with the breed.’ He came down the steps. ‘But never mind Lally. There’s a Cuscuta europaea I’m going to show you.’
Redmayne’s friendliness was difficult to ignore, and he had a gift for transmitting his enthusiasm. Falling into step beside Gently, he was soon chatting unconcernedly about C. europaea and C. epithymum. He was wearing the same gear as yesterday, the khaki bush-shirt and drab trousers, with binoculars and collecting-case slung on either side and a broad-brimmed linen hat on his head. A bachelor of fifty: a contented man. You could scarcely imagine him at odds with life. Almost certainly, in his background would be a comfortable competence, safely invested.
He marshalled Gently back down the yew-alley and across the road, into the rough pasture. Here a footpath led to a stile, and over the stile they were on the heath. At this point a number of stony ridges spread out before them like the fingers of a hand, but Redmayne unhesitatingly chose his track and brought them, with a stiff scramble, on to the plateau. Here he paused to survey the wide prospect. Some two miles of heath stretched between them and the village. A broken, undulating plain, brushed with the throbbing blue of heather, it gave an impression of darkness, of sombreness, even under the staring sun.
Redmayne pointed to the haze, now well established on the far skyline.
‘It’s now or never for old Creke. He won’t be cutting at this time tomorrow.’
‘Is he nearly finished?’ Gently asked.
‘Haven’t seen him to ask,’ Redmayne said. ‘But he’ll soon be round if the rain catches him out – he’s always nagging about his rent.’
He set off at an easy pace, heading roughly towards the village. For a while he walked in silence, a half-smile on his lips. Then he turned to Gently.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘The Great Man has been doing some thinking. I overheard your conversation with Lachlan, and I’m not so dumb that I missed the drift of it.’
Gently shrugged. ‘Then you’ll know what I’m after.’
‘Pretty well,’ Redmayne agreed. ‘But it doesn’t follow that I can help you.’
‘Would you if you could?’
Redmayne spread his hands.
They tramped on a little farther.
‘You know, you’ve got problems,’ Redmayne said, smiling. ‘As you may have noticed, we’re a little world on our own. High Hale Manor is Stogumber Castle. A self-contained world – perhaps too much so for everybody’s good. It produces certain attitudes, certain characters. And that’s been going on for centuries.’
Gently let two paces go. ‘Are we talking of Lachlan?’
Redmayne nodded. ‘Both he and Marie. A pair of nestlings of the Manor House, brought up without maternal supervision. Oh, I’m sure Jimmy did his best with them, and there’s always been our excellent Lottie. But the end result is a couple of young hawks who scorn to fly at a common pitch. Lachlan – well, he’s the Wonderful Boy, with talent enough for half a dozen. And Marie’s not a feather behind him. All the rest of the world are choughs and daws.’ He paused
. ‘And that’s your problem. They’d never tell tales on one another. What Lachlan knows about Marie’s secrets is too fine for peasants like you and I.’
Gently grunted. ‘But you’re resident at the Manor.’
‘Yes, I grant you that,’ Redmayne smiled.
‘And not entirely above eavesdropping,’ Gently said.
‘That’s naughty,’ Redmayne grinned. ‘And not wholly justified.’
He halted suddenly, staying Gently with his hand, and slewed the binoculars to his eyes. About fifty yards off a small bird had flitted from one patch of gorse to the next. Redmayne watched it intently for some moments; then clicked his tongue and lowered the binoculars.
‘P. domesticus,’ he said. ‘Life is full of disappointments. I’m keeping my eyes skinned for Dartford Warblers – improbable, but this place is full of surprises.’
They resumed their walking, descending now into a shallow, gorsy depression. Redmayne sniffed appreciatively at the heady scent that seemed a live presence in the hot, still air.
‘You see – what you want to know isn’t so simple, even for an eavesdropping resident like me. Our two aristos are so darned choosy about the company they keep. That goes with the sex thing too. I told you Lachlan wasn’t greatly interested. Well, it’s much the same with Marie. She’s highly inclined to bite a fellow’s head off.’
‘Nevertheless, she’s beautiful,’ Gently said.
‘Oh yes, they buzz round her,’ Redmayne agreed. ‘And Marie’s not averse to a bit of attention, provided the mujiks know their place. But she’s never to my knowledge had a regular beau, or put herself out for any male whatever. I imagine the only reason she tolerated Charles was because he was prepared to go around on his knees.’
Gently nodded. ‘So the young men didn’t interest her.’
‘That’s what I’m saying,’ Redmayne said.
‘And you wouldn’t know why.’
Redmayne looked at him quickly. ‘Only the reason I’ve given you,’ he said.
‘Couldn’t she have been already suited?’
Redmayne was silent. The expression in his eyes was curious.
‘Say, by a rather older man,’ Gently continued. ‘A man given to writing traditional love-sonnets?’
For a fraction of a second Redmayne’s eyes jerked wider, then they softened, and he started to laugh. From one of the buttoned pockets in his bush shirt he produced a small paperback with an orange jacket.
‘I guessed which way you were thinking,’ he said, ‘when you grabbed me just now. So I thought I’d fetch this along: here you are – Leo Redmayne, poet!’
Gently took the paperback. It was a little rubbed, and the style of the jacket not contemporary. It was, in fact, a Fougasse design, dating back to the immediate post-war period. It exhibited a fig with oriental features that grinned toothily at the beholder, and was titled, in the pseudo-casual Fougasse script: Chinese Figs/Leo Raymond. Gently flicked it open. Each page contained a single quatrain and an illustration. On page i the jacket illustration re-appeared, and beneath it Gently read:
Consider now the Chinese Fig,
Which, if not little, must be big;
Or, being large, cannot be small –
Or else there is no fig at all!
‘That’s the great original,’ Redmayne smiled. ‘The first veritable Chinese Fig. I knocked those together while I was waiting to be demobbed – it’s my most popular publication. They reprint it every other Christmas.’
Gently grunted and thumbed over the pages. Each verse was a comparable nonsense doggerel. They ranged from a dolphin who went golfin to scientists in shipses recording absurd eclipses. Silently, Gently handed the book back.
‘A far call from love sonnets?’ Redmayne suggested.
Gently said nothing.
‘At least,’ Redmayne said, ‘you must admit that sonnets are more Lally’s line than mine. And he’s quite serious about this change of direction. Lally regards himself as the first pre-Tennysonite. Eliot and non-poetry are suddenly passé – soon, not a student will be seen dead with it. If Lally claims the sonnet, then he’ll have written it.’
‘That’s not what Berney thought,’ Gently said.
Redmayne gestured. ‘Charlie was jealous. Also, the fact of the sonnet being in traditional form would throw him, just as it’s now throwing you. All Charlie knew about was Lally’s other stuff, which he couldn’t make head or tail of.’ He hesitated. ‘The sonnet was typed, was it – didn’t have any identification?’
Gently shrugged. ‘It was typed – on Lachlan Stogumber’s typewriter.’
‘That’s it, then – Charlie wouldn’t recognize it. He thought it came from some Romeo, and blew his top.’
Gently stared at him. ‘Does your cousin lock up his typewriter?’
‘Oh, oh!’ Redmayne grinned. ‘That’s below the belt. He doesn’t lock it up, but the study belongs to him, and using the typewriter would constitute a lèse-majesté.’
‘But Marie could have used it. Or someone else.’
‘To put it delicately,’ Redmayne smiled.
‘Someone who might have been planning a face-saver – in case the sonnet did come to Berney’s notice.’
Redmayne tucked away the paperback, shaking his head.
‘You know why Marie Stogumber married Berney,’ Gently said. ‘She was three months pregnant and looking for a scapegoat. In the normal way she wouldn’t have looked at Berney.’
Redmayne hunched a shoulder. ‘Couldn’t Berney have been the father?’
‘It wasn’t Berney who wrote the sonnet.’
‘Nor, I assure you, was it me.’
‘But you could be a liar,’ Gently said. ‘Couldn’t you?’
Redmayne only smiled. He slid an amused glance at Gently. ‘That’s not a serious accusation,’ he said. ‘You and I are two people who rather like each other. I might fib to you, but I couldn’t deceive you.’
‘One way or the other, you know who the man is.’
Redmayne nodded. ‘I can’t stop you thinking it. But even if I did – and I don’t concede that – you’ll understand that I must protect Marie. What would you think of me if I didn’t?’
‘I might think you value your liberty,’ Gently said.
Redmayne laughed and laid a hand on his elbow. ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘Light in our darkness. Another hundred yards, and we’ll see the europaea.’
At the lowest part of the depression was a clump of scrub thorn and a single, ancient, elder-bush that bore a few clusters of green berries. Near the elder protruded a few flints, bound together with mouldering plaster.
‘Et voilà!’ Redmayne pointed to some nettles. One or two of their stiff stalks were encircled with reddish cords. Small bundles of white flowers, which appeared at first to belong to the nettles, on closer examination were seen to sprout from the parasitic stems.
Gently gazed at them, and then at Redmayne. ‘Is this what we’ve crossed the heath to look at?’
‘O barbarian!’ Redmayne exclaimed. ‘You are present at a botanical event. This is the first time C. europaea has been certainly recorded in the county. For this if no other you’ll find my name in the great scroll.’
‘Has it a common name?’
Redmayne nodded. ‘The vulgar call it Greater Dodder.’
‘And it is truly rare?’
‘Truly. The next nearest is probably in Kent.’
‘Yet you found it,’ Gently said. ‘These few strands, on all the heath. I think you must spend a lot of your time here. I think perhaps you’re here almost every day.’
Redmayne nodded again. ‘And so?’ he said.
‘This is where Mrs Berney met her lover. And he wouldn’t be so hard to spot as C. europaea. So if you didn’t see him, why didn’t you?’
Redmayne gave his slight little shrug. He moved nearer to the nettles, stooped, and fingered one of the flower-heads. There was a great gentleness in the way he touched it, lifting and displaying the crisp inflorescence.
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‘You won’t give up easily, will you?’ he said. ‘And that’s what we laymen never allow for. The way you continue to put on pressure when any reasonable man would throw in his hand. We’ve got the answers, that’s what we think, and you should accept them and go away.’ He smiled sadly at Gently. ‘But you don’t go away. You just make the answers sound sillier and sillier.’
‘But facts do stay facts,’ Gently said.
‘Yes, but there are different viewpoints,’ Redmayne said. ‘C. europaea is a fact, both to you and to me, yet how very disparate is our experience of the fact. To me, it’s near-poetry, a revelation, more memorable than the heather or the scent of the gorse. To you, it’s an insignificant appendage of a nettle. But we’re both looking at the same thing.’
‘Only,’ Gently said, ‘my viewpoint is defined for me. Any latitude is left for the courts.’
‘Yet it could still be a wrong one,’ Redmayne smiled. ‘Or proceeding with definitions too narrow to comprehend the full fact.’
He gave the flower-head a last, affectionate caress, then motioned with his hand in the direction of the village. They set off again through the sullen heat, which remained untempered by the growing haze.
‘Let me take an example,’ Redmayne said. ‘Do you believe in accident-proneness?’
‘Underwriters do,’ Gently shrugged. ‘And I’ve met a few people they wouldn’t insure.’
‘Just so,’ Redmayne said. ‘And have you noticed how it seems to be infectious? It isn’t only the person involved who is prone to accidents, but he seems to share the proneness with the people around him.’
‘Well?’ Gently grunted.
Redmayne took a few strides. ‘I think it’s the same with tragedy,’ he said. ‘In my experience there are tragedy-prone people. And in that category I’d put the Stogumbers.’
Gently threw him a stare. ‘You mean the curse?’
‘Oh, don’t under-rate curses,’ Redmayne smiled. ‘A curse may very well exist as a state of mind that predisposes its victim towards his fate. I’d rank the Stogumber curse as something like that. It’s been dogging the family since the seventeenth century. And remember, Marie was brought up with the curse, which gives you the choice only of a sad life or a bad end.’