by Jo Bannister
I watched for ten or fifteen minutes, with admiration but also the same feelings I get watching acrobats: how do they do it—and why do they bother? Then I started back towards the house. I hadn’t heard Ellen get back, but I thought I’d go and see. I walked back up the narrow concrete strip between the byre and the field. The big brick building was empty now, a silent echo of its winter self, when beef cattle filled it with low throaty music and the shuffle and press of bodies.
Thinking deeply unimportant thoughts like this and not looking where I was going, I tripped over the raised edge of a manhole cover, took three enormous strides like a trainee giant test-driving his seven-league boots, and then surrendered to the inexorable demands of gravity and sat down.
Nothing was hurt but my dignity. I got up and dusted myself off, intensely grateful that the cattle had been gone for a couple of months now, and glared at the iron cover as if it had ambushed me and leapt on me, wrestling me to the ground. I believe I swore at it and called its parentage into question.
While I was thus engaged, a shout behind me drew my attention, and I looked back just in time to see Sally and the big bay hurtle over the closed gate of the school. The horse’s ears flattened evilly to his skull; he came belting towards me, filling the passage with the clatter of hooves and my heart with an unexpected, primitive fear.
My eyes could see that there was room, if not much, for the thundering animal to pass me by unharmed on his career up to the yard and that he was still approximately controlled by a competent rider who would not let him run me down. But my mind saw only an animal bigger and infinitely stronger than myself bearing down on me at a speed I could not match, and instinct bred in my forebears when they were just a race of naked apes, running scared of nearly everything that moved, surged up through the sophisticated patina of civilisation and sent me reeling against the byre wall, shrinking against it. I think if it had been less solid, I’d have tried to go through it.
My eyes averted, I didn’t see the horse pass. But I heard the thunder of his hooves mount to a crescendo, felt his hot breath gusting on my cheek and hair, and smelled the hot, sweet, musty scent of hay and sweat; and then in a single climactic moment of terror it was gone.
I dug myself out of the me-shaped dent in the brick and hesitantly looked round. Sally was hauling the creature to a halt at the top of the yard, behind the house. Immediately she jumped from his back and ran towards me, towing him behind her.
“Clio, are you all right? Jesus Christ, I lost him completely there! Are you all right? Did he hit you?”
He hadn’t. I shook my head weakly. “I’m all right. I’ve just aged ten years, that’s all.”
Sally bit her lip. Relief was threatening to make her chuckle. “God, I’m sorry, Clio. I never thought he’d take that gate. It can’t be far off five feet.” It wasn’t: I’m five foot one and I couldn’t see over it. “The sod! He wouldn’t engage his back end; I booted him in the ribs, and before I knew it, we were airborne.
“All the same, it’s not funny; he could have hurt you. And it was my fault, because if I can’t control him better than that, I’ve no business being on him.” Her brows gathered, a wholly unreassuring depth of concern in her eyes. “Clio, you’re as white as a sheet. Go into the kitchen and make yourself some coffee. I’ll have to take this hooligan back and make him do his job, but I’ll be in a bit later. I’m really sorry we scared you like that.”
The blood was flowing back up my legs. It reached my knees and stopped them bending both ways, forced its way past the knot of my stomach, and steadied the racing of my heart to a mere healthy jog. But instead of stopping there, it went on rising: a crimson tide surging up my throat and through my cheeks. I was mortified by my absurd over-reaction to a little passing drama, too embarrassed even to snarl. For a moment I had seen myself—timorous, shaking, a town-bred dwarf alienated amid the calm strength and robust physicality of rural life—through Sally Fane’s eyes, and I was deeply humiliated. I understood and sympathised with her urge to giggle, and only wondered at the obvious concern which supplanted it. I wanted to pull a paper bag over my head and crawl away.
I mumbled, “Yes, OK; no, I’m fine, really. He didn’t even touch me; it was just … a bit of a shock—” Or something equally wimpish. Oh God, I hate feeling small.
I turned away with what dignity I could muster, and heard with relief the receding tap of iron on concrete as Sally took the horse back to the school, and let myself in by the kitchen door with a profound gratitude for the cool stillness of the empty room, the quiet of the empty house. Slowly the burning in my cheeks died down.
But it was not until the coffee had restored my equilibrium and the calm of the old house had settled soothingly on my soul that my mind was set free to consider the fact that I now knew what had made the metallic clang Ellen and I heard after David was shot.
Chapter Six
I phoned Harry’s office. Harry wasn’t in, but he was expected back. I gave Ellen’s number and left a message for him to call. Then I went back into the yard.
If Ellen had been at home, I’d have asked for her confirmation, but in my own mind I was already sure. I didn’t know what it gave access to or whether the thief had shifted it deliberately or, like me, accidentally, but what I had heard was the manhole cover behind the byre. If I didn’t yet know what, it was clear that an answer of some kind lay in whatever hole it covered. It was time I looked into it.
It wasn’t actually a manhole. It was a hatch cover, a bit under a yard square, made of some light-coloured metal, with handgrips let into it. It was seated into a recessed frame, so that normally it would have lain flush with the concrete yard. But however it was last replaced, at a fractional angle perhaps or with a bit of dirt between hatch and frame, it had not settled properly into place. One lip stood proud by half an inch or so. It was this which had tripped me.
I didn’t know what was underneath—the water system, the septic tank, or maybe some esoteric service found only on farms. And I didn’t know how deeply it was implicated in the robbery. It could have been standing up like that for weeks, and the thief, running with his arms full of painting, could have tripped there too.
But the noise I made, with the possible exception of the swearing, wouldn’t have been audible from the house, and both Ellen and I had heard something quite clearly. To test whether it could have been the hatch being opened or closed, I bent to try and move it. Then I thought of fingerprints and straightened up. Then I thought of my handkerchief and bent again, wedging my fingers into the corner of the grip, where there would be nothing to disturb.
I didn’t know whether I’d be able to lift it. But while it was heavy enough that I had to put my back into it, it didn’t take my last ounce of strength. A small child couldn’t have lifted it, but any adult could. I reared it back, and it settled comfortably against the byre wall with another melodious chime. It was, as near as I could tell, the sound I heard after I heard the shot.
Whatever it was for, it wasn’t storing roses. A smell you could not only cut with a knife but spread on lightly toasted crumpets came up—not with great volcanic force to set me back on my heels but welling slowly and thickly like a great, heavy river. After a moment I stepped back to breathe.
There has been wide speculation as to what prompted Dante to write his Inferno. I reckon he stuck his head in a slurry tank.
My first impression—well no, my second impression, after the smell which was about as impressive as things come—was that it was dark down there. And so it was, but it wasn’t black: there was light of a kind filtering through from somewhere other than the open hatch. There was enough light to make out a slick and viscid surface several feet below the grill still wedged across the hatchway. Adjusting, my eyes began to pick up a regular pattern of pale narrow bars in the darkness under the byre.
I knelt down, holding my breath, trying to see the source of this effect and understand what possible reason an art thief might have for opening his vict
im’s slurry tank, and while I was thus engaged, someone hit me on the head.
The next thing I knew, a man’s voice was saying, “She’s coming round.” But he was wrong.
I was still floating along quite happily on some personal high where the clouds were slick, brown, and viscid and the landscape reeling away below was barred with parallel belts of light and shade. Almost the only drawback to this life as a hot-air balloon was the presence of dragons skulking among the clouds, rushing out at intervals to blast me with breath like sewers out of their long, thin, horselike skulls. That and the band. I quite like a band when I’m in the mood, but this one was all thump and jangle, with about as much sense of music as a three-year-old with a tambourine. The drummer was good though. Great volume, great sense of rhythm.
Almost apologetically, bits of reality started pushing in. One of the dragons looked like Harry. One of the clouds was wallpapered to match Ellen’s drawing-room. The drummer was still practising, though.
Harry said, “Clio?” Then, anxiously, “Are you sure she’s all right? What about some more oxygen?”
The voice I didn’t recognize said reassuringly, “She’ll be fine. She just needs a minute longer to come out of it. She’s been lucky enough.”
Harry said, “If no one had found her—”
The doctor said, “The knock on the head wouldn’t have killed her. But the gas could have.”
I was near enough awake now that I could listen to what they were saying and follow the discussion intelligently enough, if rather remotely, without feeling any desire to join in or otherwise advertise my newly restored consciousness. I knew quite clearly what had happened to me. There were gaps, but they were in my emotional responses rather than my memory. I knew someone had tried to kill me, and how. Somehow I couldn’t find any appropriate feelings about that. I thought I should be angry, and the fact that I wasn’t rather worried me.
I said, “Who hit me?” and in view of the fact that I said it quite clearly, I was surprised and a little disturbed at how weak and frail it sounded.
Rather inaptly, I thought, Harry grinned. He sounded normal enough, so there was nothing wrong with my hearing. “Dear God, Clio, what were you doing with your head down a slurry pit?”
I explained. I explained about tripping over the hatch cover, and the sound it made, and when I’d heard it before, and about going to investigate what it was, and why a thief on the run with a gun and a painting should hang around for five minutes to play with it. And how, while I was on my hands and knees trying to see where the bars of light were coming from, someone hit me on the head.
I was sure I’d explained it right, so the glazed expressions of my husband and my medical attendant were both curious and irritating. I said again, “So who hit me?”
“No one hit you. The cover tipped forward and cracked you on the skull. If you’d moved the grill as well you’d have gone head first into the slurry. As it was, you fell across it; you must have been breathing the gasses for minutes. You were blue in the face when Sally found you. She gave you mouth-to-mouth.”
“She called you?”
“She didn’t have to; I was already on my way up here. I called Dr. Burke.”
I was wrong. I did know the doctor—at least, I’d met him before. I sat up on the settee, sending the drummer into an ecstasy of percussion, and we exchanged a nod.
The door opened and Sally’s head appeared. “How’s she doing?” She saw me sitting more or less upright, and her face brightened. “You’re back in the land of the living, then?”
“Thanks to you, I gather.”
“My pleasure,” she said, and grinned. “The least I could do after the fright I gave you. How are you feeling now?”
“I’ll live.” It was a bold and possibly optimistic assessment, based on very little evidence. “Sally, did you see anyone?”
“Just you.”
“Someone hit me. I’m sure of it.”
Burke treated me to his bedside manner. “It’s not very likely, you know. And there’s only the one bruise, and it corresponds to the hatch-cover Miss Fane lifted off you. You know what a knock on the head is like; it can give you some funny ideas.“
I was feeling more myself by now. I began to bristle. “Indeed I do know what a knock on the head is like, Doctor. As a doctor, Doctor, I know knocks on the head from both inside and out, and it is my professional opinion that this one was not a knock but a blow.”
Harry was getting that glazed look again. Burke put his stethoscope away, murmuring, “The doctor who treats herself has a fool for a patient and an idiot for a physician.” The fact that he was right didn’t of itself warm me towards him.
Perplexed, Sally said, “I didn’t see anyone. I was coming up to the house to see how you were, and I found you lying on the grid over the slurry tank. Was there someone?”
I shrugged gracelessly. I couldn’t prove it. I couldn’t even say why I was so sure, but I was—I still was, in spite of the entirely reasonable explanation offered as an alternative. I had thought the hatch was secure, but I couldn’t now swear that it was. It might have slipped. Nor could I claim to have seen, however fleetingly, or heard my assailant. It wasn’t so much that my account lacked conviction as that I could offer no account.
But if you accept the witness of gut feeling, I had enough of that to sustain a theory twice as improbable. And the sequence of events did make a certain sense. The hatch-cover had drawn my attention by the sound it made and by being out of place, just slightly but enough to suggest interference. When I went to investigate, someone knocked me on the head, arranged the cover to make it look like an accident, and left me to suffocate in the poison gasses rising from the tank. If Sally hadn ‘t been sufficiently worried about the fright she’d given me to come and check that I was all right, I’d be down at Skipley General now, on a tray in the freezer with a label attached to my big toe.
I tried to think. “There was light in that tank—not much but enough to see by. Where was that coming from?”
Harry favoured me with the patient, patronising smile of a man for his child or doddering parent. “From the byre, through the slats of the floor.” He managed not to add, “Don’t you know anything?” but it was there in his eyes.
“All right,” I allowed, still not believing it but offering to meet him half-way, “maybe it was an accident. But ask Ellen when she gets home: that hatch is what we heard. It fits in somewhere. Somehow—I don’t rightly know how, but I dare say you country folk can figure it out—you have to search that tank.”
Harry’s face was a study. But the fact that it came from me didn’t blind him to the validity of the argument. Behind the horror in his eyes I could see his brain ticking over and his curiosity sharpening. Disgusting as the job might be, it was necessary to establish whether there was anything down there besides what the plumbing trade calls living daylights.
Dr. Burke wanted an autographed photograph of my head. I wanted to wait and see what was going to come out of the slurry tank. We compromised: I would wait and see what came out of the slurry tank, then pop down and pose for his radiographer.
Harry got on the phone and whistled up the world’s largest vacuum cleaner. The whole business was very nearly quite easy but in actual practice quite difficult. The problem was not getting the slurry out of the tank: what goes in always has to come out eventually, and big vacuum pumps lift the stuff for use as fertiliser round the farm. Working the pumps may not compare with flower-selling for a job but beats doing it with a bucket and shovel by a long head. Our difficulty arose because we wanted to inspect what came out, an aberration the system designers had not foreseen.
They got round it by rigging a holding tank and pumping small quantities of slurry into that for a quick inspection before transferring it into the vehicle. It was a slow job, involving stopping and starting the pump and switching the hoses at regular intervals, and the stench that rose from the agitated slurry was such that no one could work in it. It required
full breathing apparatus for the lucky souls poking through the holding tank with sticks, and those of us watching from the back of the house, forty yards away, stuffed handkerchiefs to our faces and got little relief. The drummer in my head made an interesting detour into Caribbean steel-band music, and I went into the kitchen and sat down, my eyes streaming, my mucous membranes on fire, convenient to the sink.
After a minute I had a stroke of genius and cut up an onion. If anything, my eyes streamed more, but the powerful antiseptic smell fought back the stench from the yard. Taking a deep lungful of the relatively uncontaminated air inside, I dashed out to press samples of my nostrum on Harry and the other observers. It didn’t make their job pleasant, just—and only just—possible.
Sally stuck it out a few minutes longer, but then she came inside too. The stench clung to her like a veil. I cut up another onion.
“What do you think they’re going to find?”
“I hope,” I said, amending the verb deliberately, “they’re going to find the painting, wrapped in plastic and waiting to be collected after the fuss has all died down. If they don’t find the painting, or the gun, or a false moustache, or something you could call a clue, I’m going to be very unpopular in our house.”
After quite a long pause Sally said doubtfully, “A false moustache?”
I grinned at her. “He didn’t want to be recognised, did he? I reckon he was wearing the parka to disguise the fact he’s a hunchback and a false moustache because he hasn’t got a real one. Quasimodo did it.”