This Private Plot

by Alan Beechey

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about last night,” Edwards began, after Vavasoeur had disappeared into a sufficiently remote kitchen. He and Oliver were the only customers that morning.

  “I don’t blame you for that. Crossed wires. I was the more deceived.” Oh my God—he’d told the vicar that he might have trouble shutting Effie up! Mother, you have a lot to answer for.

  Edwards looked at him intently. “You don’t think it a sin?”

  “If it is, it’s hardly original. More honored in the breach than the observance.”

  The vicar laughed. “Others in the community may disagree, which is why we operate under a cloak of the utmost secrecy. I trust I can rely on your continued discretion?”

  “Yes, of course. But in turn, I hope you’ll satisfy my curiosity.”

  “I see.” Edwards leaned back in the wicker chair and placing his clasped hands over his stomach. “These are lonely people, Oliver, myself included, I’m not ashamed to say. They gain a little extra spiritual comfort from sharing certain natural, uh, intimacies they would undoubtedly be according themselves privately. I find it brings us closer together—not bodily, of course, we have our protocols—but as part of the Church’s greater family. I have often felt that accommodations to one’s sensual instincts, far from being frowned on by the Church, should be encouraged as part of our ministry to the community of souls. ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,’ as the Good Book says, which, let us not forget, includes the Song of Solomon, and even Ezekiel gets a bit racy. Alas, I fear such an opinion would fall on stony ground at the episcopal level, and there is no gain in preaching to stones. I don’t want to sound like I’m bashing the Bishop, but—”

  “You misunderstand me,” Oliver interrupted. Dear Lord, was there nothing Edwards the Concessor couldn’t justify, if it suited him? Maudie Purifoy’s “spiritual comfort” involved a black-leather teddy.

  “I just need some information,” he continued. “Did Dennis Breedlove know about your group?”

  The complacent smile disappeared from the vicar’s face. He almost lost his balance in the chair.

  “I know where this is going,” Edwards said slowly. He turned to look out of the window. “About three years ago—this time of year, in fact—a blackmail letter turned up, pushed through the vicarage letterbox in the middle of the night. Anonymous. Nebulous. Not making any specific accusations or demands. But unmistakable in its meaning.”

  Three years ago. That made Edwards the “Jack and Jill” victim. Oliver ran through the verse in his head, but failed to make any connection between fetching pails of water or falling down hills and the writers’ group’s true raison d’être.

  “Did the letter come in an envelope?”

  “I think so.” Edwards helped himself to one of Oliver’s chocolate biscuits. “And do you know the irony? It was Dennis whose advice I sought. Naturally, he said I should take it seriously, with that regretful smile of his. I did. A second letter arrived, with specific payment information. I sent the money. A hundred pounds. You can imagine my disgust when I discovered that my antagonist was none other than my affable confidant. One may smile and smile and be a villain.”

  “How did he find out the truth about the group?”

  Edwards sat forward, his face in his hands. “I told him, damn it,” he answered. “During one of those lovely, long, meandering, intimate conversations we used to have, before he revealed his true colors. He had a silver tongue, that one, a candied tongue. How could I know it would turn out to be forked as well?”

  “A hundred pounds a month isn’t too great a financial burden, when shared out among all the members.”

  “Good heavens, the others don’t know about the blackmail!” exclaimed Edwards, looking to make sure Vavasoeur couldn’t hear their conversation. “I have carried the burden alone, spiritual and financial. It is my duty.”

  And had your little troupe of exhibitionists found out that their peccadilloes were, to some extent, common knowledge, it would have spelled the instant end of your group, thought Oliver. Not what greedy Breedlove wanted. Not what you wanted either.

  “So where did the money come from? Church funds?” Oliver asked, wondering if Dennis might have missed a second opportunity to blackmail the vicar. Edwards looked offended.

  “Trust funds,” he corrected. “I can afford this extra subsidy out of my own pocket.” He wiped his fingers on a small napkin. “Are we done, dear boy? This is all frightfully embarrassing.”

  “Just one more thing. The Weguelins aren’t part of your group, are they?”

  “Our gathering is strictly for singles.”

  “But since they both work for you, you must spend some time with them, as a couple.”

  “Well, with one or the other. Lesbia and I handle all the church business between us. I see far less of Sidney—he simply turns up on Sundays and other occasions when music is required and plays the organ flawlessly.”

  “And Lesbia’s there, to hear him play?”

  “Actually, she gives the services a miss. Lesbia’s a bit of a heathen, you see, but then faith is not a job requirement for a verger. I think we Christians often err in thinking we can learn nothing from our atheist brethren. How dare we insist on mute respect for our beliefs, claiming that any challenge to them is an offense against good manners, when we exploit that privilege to tell the unbeliever he’s going to roast in hell? That’s just as offensive, if you ask me. Take this Dawkins fellow…”

  ***

  Half an hour later, Oliver was gazing at the Weguelins’ house with renewed suspicion. He wondered if he should follow Dr. McCaw’s advice and march up to their front door, announcing “I know everything!” when it was opened by Sidney or Lesbia, whichever persona was currently inhabiting the cottage or indeed the body. But fearing he would be mistaken for an over-enthusiastic encyclopedia salesman, he chose instead to walk around the property, and was pleased to find a footpath that ran behind the high rear wall of their garden. He pulled himself up by his lean arms, scrabbling his feet on the brickwork, and managed to see over the coping, to be rewarded with the sight of Sidney hoeing in a flowerbed. There was no sign of Lesbia—nor did he expect to see “her”—before his trembling fingertips let go and he fell noisily into the nettles below. He limped back to his parents’ house, planning to return under cover of darkness.

  Chloe and Phoebe were sitting at the kitchen table looking at some old photographs. It was the first time he’d seen his mother that morning.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” said Oliver immediately.

  “Knew what, dear?”

  “About Edwards the Concessor’s writers’ group.”

  “Oh, that.” Chloe laughed. “Of course, I knew. Everyone in the village knows what goes on there.”

  “So why did you suggest that I get myself invited?” He jabbed a finger into the air. “You told me specifically to say I knew what it was all about. Insist, you urged.”

  “Yes, it all worked rather well, didn’t it? Effie told us all about it.”

  “I wish I’d been there to see your face,” chuckled Phoebe.

  Oliver chose to ignore his aunt. “I repeat, why?” he asked Chloe.

  “You were bored, darling. The clouds still hang on you. I just wanted to put a little color into your life.”

  “But then why do that to Effie?”

  “Hey, I told you to go on your own. You’re the one who got Effie involved.”

  “Effie’s a big girl,” offered his aunt. “She sees worse things than Hartley Vavasoeur’s dong in the course of a single day’s work with Tim.” She nudged her sister. “I say, that didn’t come out very well, did it?”

  “Everyone knows about it?” Oliver asked, doggedly returning to his theme. “So why has nobody confronted Edwards? He’s the vicar, for God’s sake. He and his circle of jerks are convinced
that it’s still a big secret. Are you just laughing at them behind their backs?”

  Chloe looked at him intently. “No, Oliver. While they’re minding their own business—so to speak—we’re minding ours.”

  “You swore blind that you weren’t going to help me in the search for Breedlove’s victims. You know right well you did. But Edwards’s group is an obvious candidate for blackmail. It’s the stuff of the Sunday scandal sheets: ‘Vicar of Synne shamed in sex romp outrage.’ Why did you lead me down that particular path, then?”

  “You may recall, dear Ollie,” Chloe said with maternal patience, “that I played my little trick on you before you found out that Dennis Breedlove was a blackmailer.” She turned to the pile of photographs and held up a glossy black-and-white picture. It featured a mustachioed stage magician in tails, posed between two skimpily clad young women. “Here, take a look at us when we were your age,” she invited.

  Oliver studied the photograph, not knowing whether to be more embarrassed at seeing the expanse of his mother’s or his aunt’s fishnet-stockinged thighs. “Which is which?” he asked.

  Chloe took the picture from him and frowned at it. “I have no idea,” she concluded, showing it to Phoebe, who shook her head.

  Oliver found Effie in their shared bedroom, hunting for a clean shirt. Her blue denim jeans, still unbuttoned at the waist, were the only clothes she was visibly wearing. She looked up and smiled, unselfconscious, caught in a sideways shaft of bright sunlight from the window, which accented the gold in her hair and cast sculptural shadows across her small breasts and muscular belly. Ben Motley would have complained that it was the least flattering lighting for a body shot, raking across every blemish and scar; but Ben wasn’t in love with the model, nor therefore with every mark of individuality etched on her flesh.

  “Now?” he asked.

  “Sorry, not now,” she said, reaching for her bra. “I have an interview with the vampire.”

  “Huh?”

  “My contribution to the investigation. This Vampire of Synne chap sounds remarkably mysterious, so I called the manor house and arranged a visit.”

  Oliver nodded glumly, adding this fleeting chiaroscuro of her body to his list of the ten most erotic sights of his life. It meant demoting one of the few remaining images that predated Effie, but it was worth it. He briefed her on his conversation with Edwards while she continued to get dressed.

  “But there’s something wrong,” he concluded. “Based on the timing, the vicar is the Jack and Jill victim. But that doesn’t make sense—I can’t get the rhyme to work, not with the situation, the location, the names of the principal players. On the other hand ‘Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors and see all the people’ is tailor-made for a group of onanists in a vicarage.”

  Effie stood in front of a cheval glass, borrowed from Eve’s room, and tried to pacify her curls with a stiff-bristled brush. “Breedlove started to record the vicar’s payments three years ago,” she said. “He could have used ‘Here’s the Church’ then, but he didn’t. So unless he chose the page at random, there must be a reason why ‘Jack and Jill’ works better.”

  “And if that reason depends on some association of ideas, known only to Breedlove, as Uncle Tim said?”

  “Then you’d better arrange a séance,” she concluded, tying the hair behind her neck with a large blue ribbon. She checked her face in the mirror and decided makeup wasn’t necessary to meet a man who lived in the dark. She gave Oliver a kiss on the lips, perfectly timed to express devotion without raising expectation, and headed out of the door.

  “Don’t forget the garlic,” he called after her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Thursday afternoon

  Furbelow Hall, Synne’s manor house, was built in the early seventeenth century. At that time, the village was known officially as Lesser Synne, a name that stuck until well into the twentieth century, when Warwickshire County Council finally agreed to drop the “Lesser.” The villagers’ complaint was not that there was no longer any corresponding Greater Synne to justify the demeaning qualifier, but that there never had been one in the first place.

  Synne had narrowly escaped being the site of an early Civil War battle when the young “Mad Cavalier” Prince Rupert of the Rhine stopped at the recently completed Furbelow Hall, eager to try out the confections from its state-of-the-art kitchens. He missed the Roundhead army because, hours later, he was still trying out his host’s state-of-the-art privy.

  The Hall stood on the main road, about a third of a mile to the west of the village. If it had ever been surrounded by formal gardens, they had long since disappeared under ivy and bracken, but Effie found a cleared brick path from the iron gates to the main door. Like so many Jacobean mansions, the Hall’s floor plan was a huge uppercase H, with its principal entrance in the center of the crossbar. As Effie approached the door, the jaundiced yellow and gray stonework of the high, flanking wings seemed to envelop her, even though she was still outside. It was as if she were walking between the outstretched paws of a gigantic cat, crouching like a Sphinx, waiting for a clueless mouse to wander up.

  She looked for a bell-pull or doorknocker, but seeing none, pushed against the door, which opened with a satisfying creak into a dark entrance hall. She could just make out an ornately carved wooden staircase, folding itself into the wall to the right, and the dim rectangles of paintings above the balustrade. She took a few paces, her footsteps reverberating across a sea of black and white tiles.

  What was that? A noise, like another footstep, distant. It seemed to come from a curtained doorway to her left. She tiptoed across and pulled the heavy curtain aside, revealing a long corridor. A faint square of light at the end—and did she see the edge of a man, tall, sliding out of sight? Maybe it was another curtain at the far end, swaying in a draft.

  “Welcome to my house!”

  The deep male voice came from the top of the stairs. A monk stood on the landing, holding a single candle in a holder, his face mostly hidden beneath a cowl. He began a stately progress down the stairs, shielding the candle’s flame with his free hand, his floor-length black robe flowing over the steps.

  “Welcome to my house,” declaimed the Vampire of Synne again as he descended. “Come freely. Go safely. And leave something of the happiness you bring!”

  “Mr. Snopp?” Effie inquired. The man waited until he had descended to her level, then inclined his head.

  “I am Snopp. And I bid you welcome, Detective Sergeant Strongitharm, to my house. Kindly forgive the low light. Follow me.”

  He led her into the corridor she had just inspected and opened the door to a room on the north side of the H’s crossbar. The curtains were closed, letting in only a sliver of daylight, which fell like a stream of pale fire onto a moth-eaten Indian carpet. But with more light than heat, the room was indifferent cold and damp. Snopp motioned Effie to take a seat on a dusty damask sofa. He sat opposite her in a wingback chair, placing the candle on a table beside him. Effie had only the vaguest impression of clean-shaven, middle-aged features, marred by patches of loose, flaky skin.

  “My home is not conducive to hospitality,” Snopp intoned. “But for days that must be spent in darkness, Furbelow Hall has its charms.” He spread his hands, white in the candlelight, the robe’s cuffs falling back to reveal the sleeves of a sweatshirt and an expensive gold watch on his wrist. So Snopp was not penniless, she reflected.

  “And one of those charms is that it looks better in the dark,” he was saying. “As do I, I might add.”

  His voice was unusual—crisp and well-articulated, but there was a hint of another accent not too far beneath, English regional not foreign. The words seemed to flow easily, as if scripted or rehearsed, perhaps in a thousand imagined conversations during the long, shadowy solitude.

  “You’ve had xeroderma pigmentosum all your life?” she asked.

 
“All my life. And an unusually long one for someone with the condition. According to the odds, I am presently living on borrowed time.”

  He placed his hands, powerful fingers curved, like white spiders on the arms of the chair, motionless but as if a sudden claw-like grip could fling him upright.

  “You live alone?” Effie continued, when it was clear that Snopp was not going to break the thick stillness with any further comment.

  “Completely.”

  “You must get lonely.” And it must have been a curtain caught in a cross-draft that she’d seen earlier.

  “I am used to my own company. It never seems to leave me, even though it often tires of me.” His thin mouth curved into a small, crooked smile beneath the hood. She still could not see his eyes.

  Effie asked him about the van he claimed to have seen on the night of Breedlove’s death, but as Culpepper had reported, the vampire’s brief impression in the moonlight had only isolated the word “Cooper” on the side of the speeding vehicle, among other writing, and he couldn’t even determine its make or color.

  “This sighting was early, when I first ventured out,” he told her. “Probably before eleven o’clock. It’s an habitual route—I walk out of the village and beside the river toward Pigsneye. It was on my return journey, more than an hour later, that I saw the naked women on the Common.”

  “Well, we don’t think there’s any connection between them and Mr. Breedlove’s death,” she said hastily. “Oh, did you hear that Breedlove’s open grave was filled in on the day of his funeral? Or rather, the night before.”

  “How distressing.” Snopp did not sound convincing.

  “The dirt used to fill the grave was not the dirt that had been dug out of the grave in the first place. Can you think of any reason why?”

  Snopp’s head inclined forward for a moment, and he moved his hands slowly together. “I fear, Sergeant, that you have let the local legends cloud your judgment,” he stated. “I presume you’re hinting at the superstition that vampires can only sleep in the earth of their homeland, and so when they travel beyond their borders, a certain amount of soil must go with them to assure them of a haven for the night. But I have only a passing knowledge of this tradition. They call me the Vampire of Synne because of my necessarily nocturnal habits, but I can assure you I have never sought to encourage it.”