“What the hell are you doing here?” Tapsell snarled. “You can’t go around snooping on people like this, creeping up on them from behind trees. There’s a word for that sort of thing, you know. It’s disgraceful. It’s not right!”
I was tempted to point out that he was not exactly in the best position to talk of others’ disgrace, but instead sought desperately for something to explain my apparently furtive presence. I cleared my throat.
“Moths,” I said. “I was looking for moths.”
“Looking for moths? What are you talking about?” he cried. “What in God’s name do you want moths for?”
“Well, you see, I do a bit of collecting – I dabble in lepidoptery and the evening is the best time for them. You know, the Elephant Hawk, the Garden Tiger, the Lesser Swallow Prominent…” (I knew nothing about these but had heard their names intoned by our botany master at prep school.) Actually I was rather pleased with this feat of memory but Tapsell seemed unimpressed and went blustering on, saying that he didn’t care what I dabbled in and was buggered if he was going to be spied upon by some sodding busybody, vicar or no. I was rather nettled by this outburst and in any case it was starting to turn chilly, so thinking I might exploit the moral advantage I murmured quietly that that was not the sort of language I expected to hear from my church organist and that if he had any sense he would pedal straight home to Mrs Tapsell who might be a trifle surprised were she to learn of his current whereabouts. I added graciously that naturally the matter need never be referred to again.
As hoped, this mild admonition had the desired effect and he sobered somewhat. The same could not be said for Edith Hopgarden who, hitherto silent, now launched into a bout of prolonged wailing.
“Oh God – you’ve set her off now!” exclaimed Tapsell. “That’s all I need!” And grabbing the wretched Edith by the wrist he dragged her past me, and the two of them disappeared into the darkness presumably in the direction of one or both of their abandoned bicycles.
I walked home thoughtfully and considerably lighter in spirit. Memory can play embarrassing tricks, and even now I can rarely see a moth of any category without some idiot’s defenceless posterior looming into my mind.
30
The Vicar’s Version
They came a third time, turning up out of the blue and putting me in a flat spin. It was late afternoon and I was in the middle of grappling with the Sunday School rota. This was not usually my task but Edith Hopgarden who was technically responsible had had one of her turns (manufactured I suspect in vengeance for the wood incident), and the prospect of substituting Mavis Briggs as the arch controller had been too awful to contemplate.
As they came to the door I was convinced that it was to confront me with that golden piece of evidence. In fact nothing was said about the lighter at all. Instead March produced from his raincoat pocket a small yellow notebook and put it on the table.
“That’s her diary,” he announced. “You’re in it.” There was a silence, and my stomach lurched.
“Am I?” I said weakly.
“Yes, you’re mentioned a number of times. Seems you saw her quite often.” (Too damn often! I thought).
“No more than many of my parishioners,” I replied evenly. “One is expected to be sociable, it goes with the job.” And then as casually as I could, “May I ask what form the references take?”
“Oh, nothing compromising,” interrupted Samson snidely, “nothing to worry about, I should say.” And he gave a brazen grin.
“It never crossed my mind there would be anything to worry about,” I lied drily.
March frowned at Samson, cleared his throat and started to flip through the pages.
“They’re just social engagements. For example – ‘April 2nd, Vicar for lunch; April 7th, Francis returns library book; April 10th, Help Francis with his pruning.’” (Yes, I recalled, a ghastly afternoon!) “‘May 4th, Tea at the vicarage; May 18th, Take rhubarb to Francis’…That sort of thing. But the point is, because she saw you so regularly I thought perhaps you could help us with this particular entry. It doesn’t seem to tie up with anything else in the diary. A bit puzzling really. Maybe you can suggest something…”
He passed the book over to me with a page turned down and dated June 4th. It read as follows: “Really, things impossible. So frustrating! Something definite must be done. Will have to speak out. Dangerous of course but a risk worth taking. Will watch and wait and use the first opportunity. Who knows – kill or cure!!”
Even as I read the words those girlish breathy tones echoed in my ear. “Well,” I remarked, “I cannot imagine what she was talking about but presumably she didn’t get her cure.” And then fearing that sounded a trifle facetious, added quickly, “Poor lady!”
March looked thoughtful. “She was obviously concerned about something – or somebody. What was the risk, and what were the ‘things’?”
“Perhaps she was worried about her health,” I suggested helpfully. “This ‘kill or cure’ bit…maybe she was thinking about a new treatment.”
“Treatment for what?” asked Samson sniffing loudly. The term ‘manic fixation’ came to mind but I said nothing.
“It’s a thought, you know,” said March, turning to Samson. “The Reverend might just have something there. We’ll check the medical records anyway, otherwise we could find ourselves barking up the wrong tree. Wouldn’t want that, would we?” And he gave me a slow, indulgent smile.
Suddenly I saw it. Oh my God, I thought, he’s humouring me! Playing me along, spinning out yards of rope. The diary business was a red herring, some device to keep me talking while they, like her, would watch and wait…I began to feel the familiar signs of panic welling up: the tight chest, the cold hands. Any moment they were going to drop their bombshell and I knew exactly what it would be: the lighter. They were going to produce the bastard lighter! Already I seemed to hear March’s wooden voice intoning, “F.O. – your initials, are they not, Mr Oughterard? Quite a coincidence really, that we should find this just where the body was…” And I stared paralysed as he turned back frowning to the diary.
An appalling sound came from the hall: a demonic wail of crazed incandescent fury. It was Maurice. He gets like that sometimes. Obviously Bouncer had overstepped the mark again. The next instant, amidst a vortex of howls and shrieks, the dog flung himself through the doorway pursued by the raging Maurice. Stunned by the suddenness of their entry we watched helplessly as Nature red in tooth and claw played out its merry hell within the narrow confines of my sitting room. Impervious to human presence, dog and cat rampaged around our feet screeching and snarling in an ecstasy of foaming wrath. The sight was awesome, the noise excruciating. Armageddon had come upon us and we were ill prepared.
“Christ!” yelped the whippet as Maurice, hissing like a fiend, catapulted between his knees and leaped on to the curtain. There he swung gibbon-like, spitting oaths at Bouncer who, prancing wildly below, careered into the music stool and sent it scudding along the floor. As it fell the lid shot back on its ratchet, and crashing on to the boards there cascaded an avalanche of foul, jaundiced, rancid old bones…
♦
The three of us stared down in fascinated disbelief. The silence was total. But even in my shock I registered the cat slinking from the room and that Bouncer was meekly and unaccountably engrossed in something outside the window. And then March stepped forward, and stooping down picked from the charnel heap a small gold object.
“F.O. – your initials, are they not, Mr Oughterard? Unusual place to keep a cigarette lighter.”
“Or bones, for that matter!” observed the whippet indignantly. Then with a gasp he cried, “My God, there’s a dead mouse there too!” And there was: a fieldmouse – small, fawn, mangled. They looked at each other and then at me. I suddenly felt quite ill and had to sit down abruptly.
“You don’t look well, sir,” observed March kindly.
“No,” I answered faintly, “I don’t think I am…” He instructed Sam
son to fetch a glass of water which the latter thrust at me with an ill grace. As I sipped I gazed in mesmerized wonder at the bones strewn around my feet. Bouncer was still riveted by whatever was going on in the garden and appeared oblivious to the scene within the room. I realized that somehow the bones must have arrived by his agency, that the dog had carried them there and effected a quasi-burial. As to the cigarette lighter, the more I pondered its presence, the more peculiar I felt.
I took a few more sips, and then in as matter-of-fact a voice as I could muster said, “The dog is awful with his bones, you know, leaves them everywhere. So dangerous! I try to throw them away but he gets upset and raids the dustbins. It’s easier just to plonk them into the music stool where he can get at them when he wants.”
“Ah,” said March slowly, “and you plonk your gold lighter there too, do you, with the bones?”
“Must have scooped it up with a couple of them by mistake,” I mumbled. “Been looking for it for ages…”
There was a silence while they continued to gaze at me. And then March said, “We’ll be off now, sir. If you don’t mind me saying, you look a bit pale. Been overdoing it, I expect. If I were you I’d take a nap.” They moved to the front door and let themselves out.
As they walked down the path I saw Samson glance back at the house, and then turning to his companion tap his forehead in a way that was quite unmistakable. I retired to bed.
31
The Cat’s Memoir
During the fracas with the bones I made a hasty exit to the garden and thence to the graveyard where I spent a congenial hour playing with the sparrows. I was just on my way back to the house, curious to see how things were progressing, when I was met by Bouncer. He came trundling along sniffing the air and wearing quite an agreeable expression.
“Ah, glad I’ve found you,” he said cheerfully, “thought we ought to chew things over, have a bit of a bow-wow.” I refrained from correcting him, feeling there had been quite enough excitement for one day, and said I thought it a very sensible idea. He beamed.
“I say, that was a good dust-up, wasn’t it!” he exclaimed. “We haven’t had one like that for ages – blows the cobwebs away, you might say!”
“You might say,” I replied, “but personally I am not in the habit of festooning myself in cobwebs.”
“No, but you enjoy a good romp though, don’t you, Maurice!” I acknowledged that as romps go it had indeed been invigorating. We sat down in the lee of a tombstone and began the bow-wow.
I told him I wanted a full account of how things had gone in my absence. He said I hadn’t missed much: that F.O. had continued to sit on the chair pale and twitching, that the detectives had hovered around for a while clearing their throats and staring at the bones and had then sloped off muttering. He added that the puny one, Samson, kept tapping his forehead as he walked down the path.
“Why do you think he was doing that, Maurice? Trying to bag a flea?” I explained to him that it was a constant habit with humans, that they did it whenever they thought that one of their kind was unhinged – which was fairly often.
“Ah, well…yes, I see,” he replied. He then volunteered further information for which I was quite unprepared.
“Mind you, they didn’t like the mouse much!”
“What mouse?”
“You know, the dead one that was in there.” I had no idea what he was talking about and said as much.
“You can’t have noticed. Too many bones around, I suppose. It was one of yours actually.”
I glared at him. “One of mine! What do you mean? You don’t imagine I would put my spoils into your disgusting piano stool!”
“No,” he grinned, “but O’Shaughnessy did.” This was getting beyond a joke and I told him so sharply.
“Well, we thought it was funny,” he said. “O’Shaughnessy found it behind the kitchen cupboard and said we might as well shove it in along with the lighter. He said perhaps you’d miss it and that’d set the cat among the pigeons all right!” He chortled inanely and shot me a furtive look from under his fringe. I decided that a cool disdain was the best response, and apart from remarking that O’Shaughnessy was getting too big for his collar did not pursue the matter.
We then went on to review the general situation. “On the whole,” Bouncer observed thoughtfully, “I don’t think those police are getting very far with the vicar. I mean, it’s not as if they’ve got proof of anything.” I agreed, saying that thanks to our alacrity and sleight-of-paw with the lighter, they had got very little to go on, particularly as F.O. had shown enough wit to sort out the binocular business.
He looked at me steadily and then said quietly, “It was me that buried the lighter in the first place, and me that brought it back safely to the house and buried it in the stool.”
“With O’Shaughnessy’s assistance,” I corrected him quickly. “And frankly if I hadn’t been there to direct operations that thing would still be in the wood today, or more likely with the police forensic people. Kindly remember that!” He muttered something unintelligible into his beard which I didn’t quite catch though it sounded a little like “Oh get off your broomstick!”, but I don’t suppose it was.
“What is he doing now?” I enquired.
“Gone to bed.”
“He seems to make a habit of that!”
“Only place he can get peace and quiet. Like me with my crypt.”
I nodded. “Yes, that’s been the problem all along. A bit of peace and quiet – it’s the only thing he wants really. He was all right until that wretched mistress of mine got him in her sights!”
“Well,” said Bouncer, “not quite all right, but nearly.”
We thought about that for a while. And then he said, “You know, Maurice, we ought to try being very good for a time. Sort of make it easy for him.”
“Fat chance of that,” I retorted, “when you and that asinine setter go about putting decapitated mice into his piano stool!” He obviously thought that was hugely funny and started to roll about snorting and gurgling and drumming his hind legs on the grass. I left him to it, and glad to escape those lunatic sounds set off on my nightly patrol.
32
The Vicar’s Version
When I woke it was the middle of the night, and I lay staring into the gloom listening to an owl and the steady ticking of the landing clock. At first, dragged from sleep my mind was blank, and for perhaps one precious minute I savoured the comfort of the bed and the peace of the embalming dark. Then of course officious memory came surging back and I relived the events of the afternoon.
How could he have carried so many bones! When did he do it? How long had they been there? (Some time presumably, judging from their appearance!) How often did he visit the stool? And what about that disgusting mouse? I dwelled on these questions at length because in this way I could delay confronting the real one: the crucial one, the one about the lighter. I started to persuade myself that it must have been Rummage after all, that he had found it and for some reason best known to himself had deposited it in the stool. But even as I clutched at this feeble straw I knew it wasn’t so. Try as I might to think otherwise, that lighter had not been in my pocket on my return from Foxford Wood; it had been there when I went.
Yet again I mentally retraced my steps there and back; recalled the atmosphere of the wood, the mossy scent which had stifled my desire to smoke; my left hand fumbling in my trouser pocket for the cigarettes, feeling the lighter there, rejecting it in favour of the peppermints.
After the incident itself I had been in such a trance that at the time nothing had impinged. But in retrospect the memory of that return journey took on a harrowing clarity. Between arrival in the wood and departure from it my mood had changed. And as I now recalled only too well, by the time I was once more in the fields I had wanted to smoke – and had been frustrated by lack of means. There was no doubt about it: that lighter with its distinctively engraved initials had fallen out of my pocket somewhere close to the main pat
h, probably at what had been her very hiding place. Yes, it was definitely as I had originally feared! So how in God’s name had it reached the piano stool?
Lying there wrestling with these images I concluded that there might be a perfectly simple explanation: I was going gently but irrevocably mad. Perhaps I had been responsible for filling the piano stool with those bones. And shocked by the Tapsell episode, had I perhaps made some midnight somnambulation back to the wood intent on completing unfinished business, and finding the lighter placed it carefully in its musical burial chamber? (Propitiation to the gods perhaps?) Surely an event such as I had perpetrated those three months ago would be enough to turn anyone’s mind! I contemplated this possibility with a mixture of comfort and apprehension. Comfort to know that at least here was a perfectly logical explanation; but worry to think that having escaped the genteel ennui of St Chad’s I was already marked down for another place of asylum in which to end my muddled days.
Further cogitations resolved nothing. I listened to the church clock strike the half-hour, and unable to stand the tensions any longer got out of bed and padded downstairs to make some tea. Waiting for the kettle to boil I went to fetch the crossword from the sitting room. Perhaps that would induce a little sanity. I began to move towards the table and promptly stubbed my toe on a bone. The things lay splayed out like some broken fossilized fan (‘fragments shored against my ruins’?). Cursing, I started to shovel them to one side, and then spotted the cigarette lighter on the arm of the chair where March had left it. Hesitantly and with a sense of awe I picked it up, gave it a quick polish on my pyjama sleeve and slipped it into the top pocket. My toe was throbbing and had started to bleed on to the carpet. Bloody dog.
A Load of Old Bones Page 16