A Fall from Grace

by Robert Barnard

He kept on his way, and stopped outside number thirty-five. Lights were on in the living room and in what was probably the kitchen at the back. No human form was visible. The main door was on the near side of the house, and it seemed to open into an unlit hallway. Charlie rang the doorbell, then waited in utter silence. He bent down and opened the letterbox.

  “Mr. Norton! Mrs. Norton! I’m a policeman. Inspector Peace. I’d like to talk to you about the children, please.”

  The silence remained unbroken. He could imagine them cowering in the dark little hall. He tried a second time, with no better result. Then he turned and left the estate, where everything was “new and worked.” Except the human relations, perhaps.

  Once home he phoned Directory Inquiries and got the Nortons’ number. When he rang it, he was answered cautiously.

  “Er . . . yes?”

  “Mr. Norton, my name is Peace. Inspector Peace. I was just round at your house—”

  “Oh yes, Mr. Peace. Er, Inspector Peace. We didn’t want to open the door, in case there were still any children around, and they saw. Telephone is much better.”

  “Just as you like, Mr. Norton. I’m not a Halifax policeman, by the way. I’m a Leeds one, but I’ve come to live fairly close to you, in Walsh Street. I’m interested in these children, and wonder why they’ve fixed on you and your wife for this . . . persecution, shall we call it?”

  “It’s that all right! If only we knew why, Inspector, we might be able to make some sense of it. But we don’t know, just can’t fathom it. You can imagine how upset my wife is. We’d thought of this little place as ideal for our retirement. Now it’s like taking up residence in prison, I tell you.”

  “You’ve had no contact with these particular children before?”

  “None. We don’t recognize any of them.”

  “There’s nothing in your past that they could take exception to? Anything you’ve said that’s been reported?”

  “Good Lord, no. We’re not public figures, Inspector. There’s no reason why any reporter should get on to anything I’ve ever said. Anyway, what could it be about? And where could they have seen it, because we’re not from round here? I’m not even the sort of person who sounds off about the younger generation. There’s good and bad in every generation, that’s what I say.”

  “You’ve no criminal record?”

  “No, I haven’t. You’re thinking of pedophiles, aren’t you, and the one that was hounded to death in the Northeast? No, there’s nothing like that, Inspector. It’s just . . . unbelievable. I tell you, we can’t stand much more of it. We’ve put the house on the market—tactfully, like: no boards up or anything. But if someone came to view, how could we not tell them about what’s happened and why we’re leaving? They’d have a real grievance if they moved here and the same thing happened. I tell you, we’re at our wits’ ends!”

  And Charlie felt the same way, as far as offering any advice or comfort was concerned. He gave them his home phone number, said he’d keep as much of an eye as was possible on how things were going, but in his mind there hung over the whole matter an air of the bizarre, of something totally irrational. Or was he just failing to get into the minds of the children?

  He was just slipping into his car next morning when he saw Chris Carlson’s car approaching from his home two streets away. The backseat was loaded with an easel and the equipment for a day’s painting.

  “I don’t want to keep you from your art—,” began Charlie.

  “Sarky bugger.”

  “Not at all. It’s my kind of art. I just wondered what you know about these children who’ve been terrorizing an elderly couple on the Hatton estate.”

  Chris Carlson frowned. Charlie had the impression that Chris was beginning to expect to know pretty well everything that happened in Slepton.

  “Nothing at all. I’ve not even heard about it.”

  “That’s unusual for you.”

  “Maybe it’s because it’s the estate. The people there tend to keep themselves to themselves. The younger ones go off to pubs and clubs on the local circuit, and the older ones don’t seem to feel the need to go to the pubs here. So what’s been going on?”

  Charlie told him, and Chris Carlson’s expression told of a mixture of interest and bewilderment.

  “Three points that interest me,” Charlie ended up, “are these. First, the Nortons don’t recognize the children. That may be because the Nortons are new here, but it seems odd. Then, the children are very well organized by the elder ones. What I heard last night was disciplined chanting and disciplined shouting of abuse. And the third thing is just an oddity: the basis of the chanting seems to be some lines from The Tempest, according to Felicity.”

  “Ah!” Light seemed to flood into Chris’s eyes.

  “ ‘’Ban, ’Ban, Ca-Caliban—’ ”

  “ ‘Has a new master—Get a new man.’ ”

  “That’s it. Where would they have come across that in today’s schools?”

  “Try talking to Harvey Buckworth. He’s a teacher. Came up to me with rather an interesting story the other night.”

  “The night we were in the pub?”

  “I think it may have been.”

  “I picked out one of your ‘patients’ as a schoolmaster right away.”

  “Smartarse.”

  “Not at all. Usually when I do that the ‘schoolmaster’ turns out to be an SAS man in mufti. Where does this man teach?”

  “That’s the interesting thing. He’s at Westowram High, a couple of miles down the road. It’s where the kids from here go, and it has a very strong drama and stage tradition. Several kids from there have got parts on television—bit parts in police dramas, or long-term child parts in soaps. Harvey is part of the drama setup, part of its great success. But he’s worried.”

  “What about?”

  “I’d better let him tell you that, hadn’t I? And perhaps get you a look at the class that’s doing The Tempest. I’ll arrange it. Harvey will be keen to talk to you. I’ll phone you tonight.”

  And raising his hand he went off to capture on canvas Bolton Abbey or Haworth moors or the main street of Heptonstall, happy as a sandboy with his life of fulfillment and liberation.

  CHAPTER 4

  Children

  Charlie’s next few days were taken up with work—work that seemed nonstop and utterly exhausting—after a uniformed sergeant was severely injured in a shooting incident in the center of Leeds. Charlie’s involvement with affairs at Slepton Edge was restricted to talking about them with Felicity over a nightcap, or actually in bed. The talking was a relief and a change, but it did not notably advance them in the ticklish matter of Rupert Coggenhoe and his curiously abrupt departure from his former home. He remained in their lives an unknown quantity and an unlovely figure, now more than ever surrounded by question marks and even by downright mystery.

  “I still can’t face the prospect of ringing round and trying to find out what went on down in Coombe Barton,” Felicity said to a near totally exhausted Charlie. “In the papers you read nothing these days but lectures about ageism and the old needing their independence and their dignity.”

  “Your father has always had a surplus of dignity,” said Charlie.

  “It’s not dignity, it’s prickliness. But all this newspaper talk about dignity just paralyzes me. A niggling little voice tells me I ought to be challenging him, getting him to explain himself, tell us what went on. But I can’t.”

  “Quite apart from the fact that you wouldn’t be told the truth,” Charlie pointed out. This undoubted fact stymied Felicity, who had been about to suggest that since he spent much of his professional life ferreting around in other people’s private affairs, he would be the best one to challenge her father. Charlie rubbed in his advantage. “So don’t suggest that I take him on, because he’d be just as likely to lie to me as he would to you. More. Because I know him less well and he’d be more likely to think he could put one over on me. Your father is a godawful human being, b
ut he’s not stupid.”

  Felicity never gave up easily.

  “That is true. But it doesn’t apply to Madge Easton. You would be much better at working the truth out of her.”

  “Why? I’m used to getting the truth out of suspects and others who are involved on the margins of criminal cases. Madge Easton is a quite different kettle of fish, and most probably a model citizen. She’d be much more likely to talk openly to you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re white, because you’re his daughter and the one left who is closest to him. You have a claim to know, and I only have any claim at all through being married to you.”

  That was so obviously true that it silenced Felicity for a while. When she took the matter up again, she was on quite a different tack.

  “I really can’t believe it’s anything to do with children.”

  “Why on earth should it be?” Charlie demanded sleepily.

  “He’s never shown the slightest interest in underage girls, not interest of a sexual sort.”

  Charlie took some time to digest this.

  “Your thought processes are giving me difficulty. Are you thinking of children because of the gang that’s persecuting the Nortons? It must be the two things getting jumbled together in your mind if so, because there’s no known connection. Or when you said ‘not of a sexual sort,’ was it because there was some other sort, something less criminal, but a bit unsavory?”

  “Neither criminal nor unsavory really,” Felicity said. It was a while before she went on. “He’s always loved being the center of attention as you know. Particularly from women. Attention, shading off into devotion, shading off into discipleship. He got that, discipleship, from Mother. It made it very difficult for me to get close to her. I always felt he hoped—expected, even—to get the same from me: the daughter who kept his flame alive and worshiped his memory. But I grew up with him, and by the time I reached puberty I’d seen through him. Good and proper, as you know. It could be that he’s looking round for a replacement for the daughter who never came up to scratch.”

  Charlie grunted to show that he’d registered and understood. Some minutes later Felicity said, “I wonder if this is something we could talk to Chris about.”

  But from the other side of the bed there came only the sound of deep breathing. Felicity knew when Charlie was fast asleep.

  But perhaps the idea had got through subliminally, or perhaps he had got the idea independently (talking to Chris, after all, was practically an automatic reaction in Slepton Edge when situations of crisis or even mere difficulty cropped up). Because three days later, when miraculously Charlie had got home before six, Chris and Alison dropped in for coffee later in the evening, and as they settled down, Charlie on an impulse said to Chris, “Do older men ever suddenly get the need to have children—have them sexually, I mean—when there’s never been any suspicion of pedophilia before?”

  Chris raised his eyebrows and thought.

  “You’d probably know more about that than I would. I never came across a case in my period as a GP. But who knows what’s going on in people’s thoughts. I just couldn’t say.”

  “I don’t think it’s sexual,” said Felicity. “If that is the problem the reason is his need for admiration, cossetting, unconditional love.”

  “I take it that it’s your father we’re talking about,” said Chris.

  “Yes,” said Charlie, stirring his coffee meditatively. “We’ve had an indication that he hasn’t been entirely honest with us—that he had to leave his cottage in the West Country after some kind of trouble.” He gave Chris a summary of Mrs. Easton’s letter. “Felicity has got the idea that the trouble involves young girls, though that’s certainly not stated, and to my mind anything else is equally possible: he could have pressured one of the older women, who obviously were doing everything for him in the domestic line, for sex.”

  “Does it have to be sexual?” Alison asked. “Couldn’t he have swindled one of the women out of her comfortable nest egg?”

  “He helped us—considerably—to buy this house,” said Felicity, “on top of buying his own. He’s very comfortably off—from writing, but mainly a large legacy.”

  “When did being comfortably off stop people from wanting more?” asked Alison.

  “You’ve got to face it, Felicity,” said Chris. “The problems back in wherever-it-is—”

  “Coombe Barton.”

  “Pure Agatha Christie land. The problems could be anything: exposing himself in a public place, not paying his tradesmen’s bills, spreading malicious gossip, even putting some of the sterling citizens of the village into one of his books. If you fix on young girls, perhaps it’s because you’re feeling slightly guilty—feeling that you failed him in some way.”

  Felicity shook her head at Chris’s suggestion.

  “I am not feeling guilty. If Dad has a need for total admiration, he’s the one who should feel guilty. And to a lesser extent my mother, who gave it to him all their married life. She was nothing to him but a doormat, and I feel ashamed of her. I’m proud of myself for seeing through him when I was still a child.”

  “OK, OK. But you really know the answer to this, don’t you? You have to ring this Mrs. Easton and ask her straight.”

  “It seems such an invasion of his privacy,” said Charlie.

  “That’s what it is. So if you’re not willing to do that, you’ll have to live with uncertainty. That’s not so very terrible. Most of us do that all the time, often with people we know well.”

  “A policeman hates living with uncertainty,” said Charlie.

  “But a policeman has to do it, the same as everyone else, and probably more frequently.”

  “Hmmm,” said Charlie, considering. “I suppose that’s why we always say we know who did most of the well-known unsolved crimes. We know who did it, but we can’t put together a case that would stand up in court. We don’t like facing up to the fact that if we can’t put together a strong case, we can’t really know who did it.”

  * * *

  The next day the Leeds police hunt for the gunman who had shot the policeman involved Charlie again, and for the next four days. It ended with the arrest of the culprit in a bed-and-breakfast dive in Bolton. It was an appropriately dingy and depressing end to a sad case. And after that came the mountain of paperwork and cross-checking. So it was nearly a week after the earlier conversation with Chris before Charlie could ring Harvey Buckworth, the drama teacher at Westowram High. He was interested and cooperative, as well as a little apprehensive, as most people are at unexpected approaches from the police. He was teaching the class that he thought Charlie might be interested in the first period after lunch next day, and he had a free period for a chat immediately afterward. He suggested he meet Charlie at the school gates about half past one.

  Loitering there next day, Charlie hoped no one was going to take him for a pedophile. Some of the girls—no, some of the pupils—in the playground seemed to be dressed and behaving in a way calculated to attract the wrong kind of attention. Charlie was relieved when he saw Harvey Buckworth approaching from the main building. He knew at once it was him, because he recognized him from seeing him in the Black Heiffer. Otherwise he would not have thought him an obvious drama teacher: he was short, bespectacled and quite lacking in charisma. His handshake, however, was firm and welcoming, and there was a spark of vitality in his eyes.

  “I think the best idea would be for me to put right out of my mind any knowledge of what you told me over the phone,” Buckworth said. “As you know, it’s not clear what if any offense was committed, and it’s not clear either what motive or aim there is in what these children are doing.”

  “That’s fine by me,” said Charlie. “But why am I supposed to be here?”

  “I’ll just call you an observer,” said Buckworth, as they began toward the main school building. “You could be a talent scout from Emmerdale Farm or Corrie. These children are performers, all of them, and they’ll
be thrilled that you’re here.”

  Charlie felt distinctly dubious about this, but kept silent. They entered the school’s main building and made for a room that was larger than a classroom but not quite a hall. The desks were all toward the back, making a good-sized playing area at the front. There was no teacher’s desk facing the class, merely a chair set a little apart from the desks, from which Buckworth could watch the performers and turn easily to address the rest of the class. Harvey Buckworth gestured Charlie to one of the desks in the back row, which Charlie overfilled, and then Harvey talked to the class from his chair.

  “We have an observer with us today,” he said, raising his voice over the moderate din and quelling it, “so I want you to be on your best behavior. And to give your best performance.”

  Charlie was conscious of faces turned slightly, eyes alert, note being taken of him. He thought that most of them had heard of a black policeman coming to live in the area.

  “We’ll go back a little,” announced Buckworth, “to Act Two, scene two, and we’ll take it up at Stephano’s song—‘I shall no more to sea.’ I’ll take the first cast today, and we’ll go straight through to the end of the scene. Right: Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano.”

  Three of the boys went to the acting space and took up well-rehearsed positions as Stephano began his song about the “master, the swabber, the boatswain and I.” Caliban, Charlie noticed, was a strong-looking dark-haired white boy of about fifteen. Trinculo and Stephano were smaller and younger, and Trinculo was black. Color-blind casting. The three boys were surprisingly good at acting drunk—perhaps through watching their parents, perhaps through watching their fellows or themselves. They weaved around the stage waving their bottles with the abandon of a twentysomething on a cheap holiday in Majorca.

  “Now get it together,” said Buckworth from the sidelines. “You’ve got to get it disciplined before it can be loosened up a bit. Right, from ‘I’ll show thee the best springs: I’ll pluck thee berries.’ ”

  And the boys shed some of the assumed haziness from drink and came together, naturally enough, in the center of the stage, as Caliban led them with “Farewell, master; farewell, farewell” and the three, looking straight into the audience, sang the song Charlie remembered hearing a parody of.