A Hovering of Vultures

by Robert Barnard

  “Vibeke Nordli said they were a bit snooty about Suzman and the Weekend. Maybe there’s a feeling of ‘We woz robbed.’ ”

  “Well, they’ll be grateful they were never involved when the truth gets out. Let’s have a look at this letter.”

  It was brief and businesslike, and dated December 12th of the previous year.

  Dear Mr Suzman,

  Thank you for your typescript for the new edition of The Barren Fields. I have no doubt you will find that our decision to begin the series with Sneddon’s most popular novel, rather than proceed chronologically, will be justified. I anticipate that this first title will arouse a great deal of media interest.

  I am glad that all questions of editorial fees, copyright etc. have now been sorted out, and I can set a firm publishing date for October. I will be sending you art-work for the cover in the course of the next month or so.

  Yes, I have noted that a Yorkshire firm is to reissue the Joshua Sneddon novels. No, as you apparently realize, a new scholarly edition of them would be of no interest to us.

  With best wishes,

  Deborah Vigne

  “Not very exciting,” commented Charlie.

  “As opposed to this,” said Mike Oddie, handing him a piece of typing paper. “Modern paper, you note. But it’s dummy runs for some of the hot passages.”

  “Oh my!” said Charlie appreciatively. “’Heaving breasts . . . screams of pleasure . . . felt his hardness . . .’ Wasn’t he having a good time!”

  “I think it would be a kindness to ring this Deborah Vigne and tell her to put the brakes on her new edition. It will be money down the drain for them. How shall we put it? ‘Serious doubts have arisen about the authenticity of Gerald Suzman’s new texts.’ Sounds good. Look—I’ve collected everything that might be of interest. Let’s get back to Batley Bridge.”

  “Do you think it’s worth having another word with Mrs Tuckett while we’re here?” Charlie asked. “These country people don’t come forward with information very readily, and it may be some other member of her family saw something that night.”

  But when she answered the door Mrs Tuckett shook her head to their questions.

  “Oh no. I’ve asked my daughter, naturally. I’m afraid we’ve talked about little else since you were last here. She was fast asleep like me that night.”

  “Suzman was a bit of a night bird, wasn’t he?” Oddie asked.

  “Oh yes. If I did get up in the night, there’d often be lights on there. ‘Who needs sleep?’ he used to say. ‘A most unproductive activity.’ He used to talk like that—quite a character, was Mr Suzman. I’ve got to say I’ll miss him. I had reason to be grateful to him. The money he paid me to keep an eye on the place and clean it came in useful, and so did the little bit he paid for the garage when he was up here. It’s not easy making ends meet these days.”

  “You’re a widow?”

  “These ten years. My daughter’s working now, which helps, and there’s a bit of money comes in from the bed and breakfast people, but with the cost of living going up the whole time it’s still a bit of a struggle.”

  “Did you have a bed and breakfast guest the night of the Suzman murder?” Charlie asked.

  “Oh yes. He was a walker. I have to get up early every morning, because my daughter’s job is in Bradford, and she has to get the bus, but that morning I remember I was extra early because he wanted to be off and away. That’s why I was early over to the cottage with the parcel.”

  “Do you remember your guest’s name? It’s just possible he saw something.”

  “I don’t, I’m afraid. It wasn’t one of my regulars. Anyway he couldn’t have seen anything because the guest bedroom’s at the front, and the toilet window’s frosted.”

  “Another avenue closed,” commented Charlie.

  “I wouldn’t have your job for the world, for all it’s well-paid,” said Mrs Tuckett sympathetically. “If you want my opinion, you’ll find there’s a woman there somewhere. I knew the minute I clapped eyes on him that Mr Suzman was one for the ladies.”

  “Oh, there’s a woman there somewhere,” said Charlie, as they trudged back to their car. “Her name’s Susannah Sneddon.”

  “And everyone’s fighting over her,” agreed Mike. “It’s a bit like a B-grade Western, isn’t it?”

  “With the Dolores del Rio figure sixty years dead,” agreed Charlie. “Fair makes you shiver!” he added cheerfully.

  Chapter 18

  Glimmerings

  As he went about a mountain of humdrum tasks in and around the Duke of Cumberland, Charlie registered with pleasure that Felicity Coggenhoe had arrived from Leeds. She mingled with the others marking time at the place without any problem: away from her parents she was relaxed and uncomplicated. There was in any case a sort of fellowship of ghouls that seemed to break down barriers. The landlord smiled on them, and on Charlie and Mike Oddie, with a complacency that said that, as far as he was concerned, the district could have a murder a week and he wouldn’t complain.

  “Lettie’s up at the Home seeing her mother,” Felicity told him, during a snatched exchange in the inn’s foyer. “I gather there was something you wanted to know.”

  “Yes. Just personal interest. Nothing to do with the case. What are you doing afterwards?”

  “Most of them feel they need a change from this place. The bar-food menu is pretty monotonous. We thought we might go along to the Chinese restaurant.”

  “Good idea. I agree with Suzman that a super-hygienic restaurant is a contradiction in terms. Are all of you going?”

  “Gillian’s waiting for her boyfriend to turn up from his walking tour. If he does they’ll be with us. If not it’s just Lettie, Vibeke and me.”

  “I might try to join you, but don’t expect me.”

  “All right. I’ll just hope.”

  “Nice! I can’t talk about the case, of course.”

  “Of course not. I can’t say I’ll mind. So far we don’t seem to have talked about anything else.”

  About seven o’clock Charlie, from the upstairs window of the Incident Room, saw three of them setting out, Lettie hobbling gamely. Twenty minutes later he was able to wind up his work and was given the rest of the day off. Mike Oddie said he thought he might join them, but he was niggled by the thought there was something else to do that he’d forgotten. “If it comes to me I’ll join you later,” he said.

  At the Mah Fung the three women had commandeered a large table, on the grounds that their party might be expanding. The place was less than half full, probably because much of their likely clientele was hovering around the Duke of Cumberland. Charlie kissed Lettie, then sank into the chair opposite beside Felicity, where the menu was waiting for him. He looked around him: red flock wallpaper and cheap lampshades with a faint look of Chinese lanterns. It was like every small-town Chinese restaurant he had ever been in.

  “The secret is the cooking,” said Vibeke Nordli.

  “And the bugs in the kitchen,” added Charlie. He scanned the menu, which was more selective, less of an omnium gatherum, than most such establishments boasted.

  “Pork and beansprouts, prawns and cashews, and fried rice,” he told the blandly hovering waiter. “I feel like I haven’t eaten since Sunday.”

  “How do you exist when you’re on an important case?” asked Vibeke Nordli. “Norwegians always have to have their regular meals.”

  “Regular meal people shouldn’t become policemen,” Charlie said grandly.

  “Perhaps it’s a good thing there’s not much crime in Norway, then.”

  “Don’t you believe it! It sounds to me as though you’ve got it, but nobody finds out about it. Too busy eating their regular meals.” He turned to Lettie. “And how are you, dear lady, as Mr Suzman would have said? How did you get on at Casa Geriatrica?”

  “Don’t laugh at the old, Dexter,” Lettie reproved him. “I’m on the brink myself. And whatever else you can say about my mother, if she was geriatric she wouldn’t be much u
se to you, would she? Well, of course she was as grouchy as usual about my wanting to ask her about the Sneddons. She thinks I ought only to be interested in her—but what in hell’s name is there to talk about? The weather? What she had for dinner? What was on the goddamn box last night? Actually she refuses to watch the box—says it’s sinful, which sounds to me like the right deed for the wrong reason, but that’s typical of my mother.”

  “But you eventually got her round to it, did you?”

  “Don’t rush me, Dexter. I may be a New Yorker but I like to go at my own pace. Well, we talked about when I was coming back to Britain to make a home for her, and I said when the dollar picked up. That should be safe enough. Then we somehow got round to the Methodist Chapel in the old days—a real fun topic that, I can tell you! Eventually I got it round to funerals, and the Sneddon funeral in particular, and that set her off. Hardly anybody went, but everyone knew about it and watched from darkened rooms.”

  “Why did hardly anybody go? Because they weren’t popular?”

  “Not so much that, because funerals were an event in village life, and you didn’t have to be popular to draw a good crowd. No, it was because of the shame: suicides were a shame and an embarrassment, and a murder-suicide—well, people didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”

  “A bit primitive.”

  “We were.”

  “So who went?”

  “Oh, the schoolmaster, the doctor, and suchlike: the respectable people, the un-superstitious ones. After all, Susannah was known, a definite name, and from the village. They felt that respect should be paid. And then there was the cousin—George Sneddon from Abbotsford. His wife too, though she was pregnant. That would be with the father of Heathcliff, I would think. That was about it, really.”

  “Was it a ‘good’ funeral?”

  “Middling, my mother says. Not a ‘no expense spared’ job, but better than the village had expected, given that Cousin George had the reputation of a skinflint.”

  “Had George Sneddon taken over at High Maddox by then?”

  “Oh yes. Came over and installed himself there soon as the bodies were taken away almost. Said the farm needed all his time to get it round, after Joshua had all but ruined it. And to give him his due, Mother says that he did get it round, to the degree that he could sell it. That was all he was interested in doing. As soon as it was in better shape he put it on the market and took the best offer. And a bit later he sold his own farm and moved South. Said the North was finished. A lot thought that in those days. I’m not sure I didn’t myself.”

  “Any idea what he did down there?”

  “Set up in his own business somewhere in Essex, so they said in the village. Builder and decorator. Always a very handy person, Cousin George.”

  “Do you have any recollection of him, personal recollection?” asked Vibeke Nordli.

  “Precious little,” replied Lettie, considering. “He was never much around the village, I think, and he wasn’t one to socialise. If he wasn’t at the farm he was at Abbotsford. But he did sometimes come to the Methodist Chapel, so I saw him there. Tight, mean little mouth and eyes.”

  “Do you remember the funeral?”

  “Yes, I do. That whole week, from the deaths to the funeral. My brother and I watched the coffins coming down the hill from the farm, then turning right towards the churchyard. They all walked in procession—no cars. They weren’t buried in the Methodist plot, which must have been a big relief to all us Methodies, but in the parish churchyard, and the service was in the parish church. You were assumed to be Church of England in those days if you never showed signs of having a religion.”

  “Makes sense,” said Charlie. “You say the week after their deaths. There wasn’t any great delay before the bodies were released, then?”

  “Oh no. The village constable was Tom Harker—a big, stupid chap, whose idea of law-enforcement was spanking kids who’d been caught stealing apples. But they sent someone up from Batley Bridge, or maybe from Halifax, and they were perfectly clear about what had happened. So the funeral went ahead quite quickly, and George Sneddon took over at the farm.”

  “And he wasn’t liked in the village either, I suppose?” Charlie asked.

  “Not greatly, Dexter, from what I remember. They thought he was getting above himself—they always hated that in Micklewike, and they had a great variety of words for people who did. Oddly enough, they didn’t resent his inheriting the farm—that was natural, according to their way of thinking. But they did resent his getting money from the books. He must have got the advance for The Black Byre—the one that was just finished when she was killed—as well as anything still coming in from the earlier ones. My mother said this afternoon: ‘He never wrote them books. He’d no right to take money for them.’ That must have been what people said at the time: my mother nurses every little grudge and resentment she’s ever known, even if they are not hers. But it was a very illogical line to take. After all, if he hadn’t had the money, who would have had it? And if you can inherit a farm, why not royalties? But she just shook her head grimly when I said that.”

  “But I think a lot of people may feel like that,” said Felicity. “People get a good feeling out of Bernard Shaw’s royalties going to the British Museum. You don’t get such a good feeling out of royalties going to the not particularly talented children of great writers.”

  “And an awful lot of great writers seem to have had untalented children,” said Lettie. “But it is illogical.”

  “She didn’t mean it personally about children of great writers,” said Charlie, turning to Felicity with a grin.

  “I’m not the child of a great writer,” said Felicity. “Nor anything remotely approaching one.”

  “There was something you said,” Charlie took up, with a frown on his face, “something you said when we talked yesterday in Leeds. Was it about the re-establishment of a copyright? Surely that isn’t possible, is it? Not if an author has been dead for fifty years?”

  “Oh, but it is, nowadays. Something to do with a recent Copyright Act. I know it’s happened in the case of D. H. Lawrence. And that’s pretty funny in itself . . .”

  “Why?” asked Lettie.

  “Because when Frieda Lawrence died the people who inherited the rights and the royalties were the children she had left behind when she ran off with Lawrence. Her children by Ernest Weekley, who was a professor of English at Nottingham. That’s a pretty odd way for them to end up, though I suppose you could say there’s a sort of poetic justice.”

  “But this about re-establishing copyright,” insisted Charlie, forking in food that was, indeed, glorious.

  “Well, as I say, it’s recent, and I don’t know all that much about it. What happened in the case of Lawrence was that a new edition of the books came out—a scholarly edition from the manuscripts, with a lot of stuff the original publisher had censored. This edition superseded the old ones, and you couldn’t reprint or even quote from them, or the new ones, without permission. So in essence the copyright was re-established.”

  “And the heirs—or the heirs of the heirs of the heirs, or whatever—go on enjoying royalties for another fifty years?”

  “Something like that. I’m no expert, as I say, but I did look into the Lawrence situation when I was thinking of doing him for my thesis subject. The main thing is that editorial work is done, and new material added. Then copyright can legally be re-established. I think something of the same sort is happening with James Joyce and Scott Fitzgerald.”

  “Oh my!” said Charlie, but he said it to himself.

  They were interrupted by an incursion—Gillian. Parkin, arm in arm with Gregory Waite, looking tanned and fit from his walking holiday, both of them obviously overjoyed at being in each other’s company again. Trailing in their wake was Mike Oddie.

  Charlie took advantage of all the introductions and the arrangement of chairs and places to slip aside with his boss.

  “Did you remember what you’d forgotten
to do?” he asked.

  “No—it’s eluded me. I thought I needed a bite—”

  “It wasn’t to ring that woman at Bennett and Morley’s, the publishers, was it?”

  “Damn!” said Oddie violently. “Yes, it was. I’ll go back and do it now.”

  “No, I’ll go. You must be hungry.”

  “No, you stay here. They’re all young people, apart from your elderly girlfriend. They’ll be constrained by me, but they will probably talk more freely with you. I should have done it before, because they could stand to lose a lot of money with that edition. I don’t suppose it will take long. Vigne’s not a particularly common name.”

  “Well, when you get on to her, ask about copyright.”

  “Copyright?”

  “In particular the re-establishment of copyright.”

  “I didn’t know you could. Do you think it’s relevant?”

  “I do. Please Mike, make a point of it. You know, there’s something that bothered me quite early on in this case, and I’ve just remembered what it was.”

  “What was it?”

  “Let’s just say it’s musical. Think on’t, as you say in Yorkshire.”

  “I do hate a cockney smartarse,” said Oddie, hurrying away.

  At the table the newcomers were settling in and orders were being taken. Charlie let them take away his conspicuously cleared plates, and ordered the inevitable lychees and another glass of wine. Gregory Waite was reading the menu as if it were the News of the World, and ordering dishes on a gargantuan scale.

  “I’ve been eating as and when I could,” he explained to excuse himself. “And I’ve always said that the old canard about being hungry again soon after a Chinese meal doesn’t apply if only you eat enough.”

  “We’ve been doing nothing but sitting around in bars nibbling and drinking,” said Gillian. “I’ll just have little bits of whatever you’re eating. By now murder has dulled the appetite.”

  “Oh yes, murder,” said Gregory, with a smile of relish. “What a thing to miss! There’s me been tramping all over the moors thinking wholesome thoughts, and you’ve been living in the middle of a glorious sensation. I wish now I’d stayed for the Weekend. How was he murdered?”