The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori

by Robert Barnard

  The only person in the room was tall, strikingly handsome as fine-boned elderly people can be, and straight of back. Her voice had a distinctness of enunciation Charlie associated with a bygone era, as well as upper-class vowels, which spoke of the same time. She rose now with difficulty from her chair.

  “Sit down and tell us the story, however improbable. Declan was a lovely boy, if a touch thoughtless. No one would want to murder him. Won’t you join us in a sherry?”

  “Thank you very much.”

  It was not Charlie’s habit to drink with suspects, but he hoped they would be more unbuttoned in a social situation. Melanie moved painfully over to the sideboard, poured from a decanter into a large, modern sherry glass, then let Martha take it over to their guest. Charlie sipped his drink. It was very cold, and the sort of sherry he always thought tasted as if it had been made with grapefruit.

  “Now, can you tell me all you know about Declan O’Hearn leaving here?”

  He was looking at Melanie. She needed to make none of the elderly person’s usual efforts to remember recent events.

  “It was about a week ago. Friday night. Some time either in the night or the early morning he packed his knapsack and left. Let himself out by the front door and put his key through the letter box.”

  “I believe he left a note?”

  “That’s right. By the table in his bedroom.”

  “Can you tell me exactly what it said?”

  She frowned.

  “No, not exactly, but nearly so, I think. It was very short. ‘I’m taking off to see a bit more of the world like you said. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.’ That was pretty much it.”

  “I see. Do you still have it?”

  “Good Lord, no. I just threw it out.”

  Charlie thought over the meager substance of the supposed note.

  “What did he mean by saying ‘like you said’? Had you told him it was time for him to go?”

  Melanie shook her head vigorously.

  “Oh, certainly not! Declan was a treasure, and so good with Ranulph. No, it was just that I’d said to him—several times, I think, but certainly at the viewing of the new picture a few days earlier—that I realized he wasn’t in the job for life, and that he would want to move on before long.”

  “I see. He was Irish, your daughter said. Southern Irish?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you know where he was from?”

  “Oh, dear, where was it?” Now she was exhibiting an elderly person’s vagueness. “Was it County Clare? I have a feeling he mentioned a county but not a town—is that right, Martha?”

  “That’s right. I think it may have been County Clare.”

  At that point a head came around the door.

  “Would you like dinner delayed a little, Melanie? Mr. Byatt has had his, and it will all keep quite well.”

  “Yes, if you could hold it for half an hour, could you, Mrs. Max?”

  At that point, Charlie felt, it would have been natural for Melanie or Martha to ask Mrs. Max if she knew where Declan’s home was. Declan and she were both, after all, domestic staff, who presumably had chances to talk to each other. But the question wasn’t asked.

  “Oh, Mrs.—Mrs. Max, is it?” he put in, as she was withdrawing her head. “I wonder, did you ever talk to Declan O’Hearn about his home?”

  She came in and stood respectfully by the door.

  “Oh, yes. He liked talking about Ireland. Not so much about his home or family, though he did mention a brother called Patrick and a sister called Mary.”

  “That’s useful,” said Charlie, though he thought that perhaps a Patrick and a Mary were not a great deal to go on, so far as Irish families were concerned. “Did he talk about his home village?” Mrs. Max nodded. “Do you remember where that is, precisely?”

  “It’s County Wicklow,” she said, very positive. “Now, where was it? A little village . . . I think the name began with D. . . . It’ll come back to me, I expect. I know that the nearest town is a place called Rathdrum. I must admit I’d never heard of it before he mentioned it.”

  “He never talked to you before he left here about his reasons for moving on?”

  “Oh, no. Just disappeared into the night. Young people are like that these days. Keep their own counsel.”

  Then she withdrew. Charlie settled down in his chair and took another sip of his sherry.

  “So, that should make things easier,” he said, his eyes fixed on the two women. “We’ve narrowed it down quite nicely.”

  “I still do not believe it’s Declan,” pronounced Melanie. “Do you want me to come and see the body you’ve got? I’m quite willing. I’m not squeamish about dead bodies.”

  “No, that won’t be necessary,” said Charlie firmly. “We’ll get family if possible. That’s standard practice. It often makes it easier for them to accept what’s happened. Now, tell me about O’Hearn’s duties here.”

  They gave him a summary of the tasks Declan usually carried out: his personal attendance on Ranulph Byatt, his helping with his painting, his work around the house and garden, his occasional shopping and other excursions to the outside world.

  “I even gave him a first driving lesson, once Stephen got the car going,” said Martha with an undertone of resentment. “Stephen refused to, because he knew he’d be going to Oxford soon, so I did it. It’s very ungrateful . . .”

  “Had he given any sign he wasn’t enjoying the job?”

  “None at all,” said Melanie. “And he was having such a good effect on Ranulph. He was starting to paint really fine pictures again.”

  “Though I don’t really think that was down to Declan,” put in Martha. “I’d noticed signs of an exciting new phase well before he came.”

  Charlie’s antennae twitched.

  “I’d like to talk to Mr. Byatt,” he said. “Perhaps it would be best to do it now.”

  “Quite impossible,” said Melanie. “He’ll be ready for bed now.”

  “Really?” said Charlie, raising his eloquent eyebrows. “But I gather he’s just had his dinner. I can’t imagine he’s likely to be ready for sleep yet.”

  “Ranulph is old,” said Melanie. “He’s seventy-eight. He’s drifting out of life. There’s really nothing he could tell you.”

  “And yet he’s painting fine pictures,” said Charlie, letting his skepticism show. “I’m afraid it’s obvious he’s had a great deal to do with O’Hearn, so I’m going to have to talk to him.”

  “Even if the murdered person turns out not to be Declan?” asked Martha. “Which I am sure will be the case.”

  “I am proceeding on the assumption that O’Hearn is the dead man, and, yes, I do have to talk with your father,” said Charlie, getting up and standing before them, looking his most formidable. “I suggest you take me up to him now.”

  The gesture had its effect. Martha looked at her mother, then back at Charlie.

  “Oh, very well, then.” She led the way to the door. Charlie stood aside, then, as he was about to follow her, realized that Melanie too was struggling to her feet.

  “Please don’t bother to come up, Mrs. Byatt. I have to speak to him alone.”

  Melanie looked as if she might protest, then sank into the chair again. Charlie and Martha went up the stairs in silence, but at the top Martha turned, and in an urgent whisper said, “I hope you’ll remember that my father is a very old man. His mind is not what it was. And he is an artist. A great artist. He doesn’t think like ordinary men.”

  Charlie nodded to this in as neutral a way as possible. Policemen were used to dealing with people who didn’t think like ordinary men and women. Frequently it ended with their being charged. Martha registered his reaction, marched along the landing, and opened a door.

  “Father, this is a policeman, Constable . . . er . . . Peace. He’s got the strange idea that Declan has been murdered. I’ve told him that it must be nonsense, but he insists on speaking to you.”

  She stood aside and
let Charlie into the room. Then, exuding a miasma of disapproval, she closed the door behind her.

  Ranulph Byatt had not been made ready for bed. He was sitting in an easy chair in trousers and shirt, with an old cardigan around his withered shoulders. He had no book or paper in his hands, and Charlie might have thought he had been dozing had there not been a brightness about the eyes that certainly did not speak of sleep. Although brightness was the wrong word. Sharp was better, or piercing, or, odd thought: cruel. They were not eyes that a prisoner in the dock would be happy to see in his judge. There was about the old body a tension too, an energy, which spoke somehow of the negative sides of energy—ruthlessness, unstoppable drive, maniacal egotism. Charlie felt that in his long life Byatt had seldom let any of the softer emotions get in the way of his wishes—which he probably confused with his art.

  “Policeman, eh? What’s my grandson been doing, then?”

  “Is that Stephen? Nothing that I know of, sir.”

  “Did Martha say something about Declan?”

  “Yes,” said Charlie. He saw no reason to be other than businesslike. “I’m afraid we have reason to think he’s been murdered.”

  “Nonsense!” said Byatt, his voice harsh with scorn. “He’s just taken off. Wants to see more of the world.”

  “His taking off doesn’t rule out the possibility of his having been murdered. We have a body.”

  There was a shrill, wheezy laugh from the chair.

  “So do I. I have a body. Bloody useless thing it is too. Won’t do a thing I want it to. Hardly even lets me paint. Have to go into all sorts of contortions to get what I want.”

  “A body was found in the boot of a car in the car park at the back of the Haworth Tandoori.”

  There was another wheezy laugh.

  “The Haworth Tandoori! What nonsense! Can you imagine Emily and Anne Brontë tucking into a plate of chapatis?” The face suddenly became more serious, or more decorous. “But I’d be surprised if it’s Declan. A nicer boy you couldn’t hope to find—and I don’t usually go for niceness. Nobody in the world could want to kill Declan.”

  Charlie reached into his pocket and drew out his picture.

  “This is an artist’s impression of the dead man.”

  Byatt took it from him, skepticism written on his face.

  “Artist?” he roared. “That was no artist drew that. A navvy with elephantiasis in his fingers, more like. Any likeness to Declan is in having two eyes, one nose, and one mouth. Nothing more. You’re on a wild-goose chase.”

  “How did you get on with O’Hearn?” asked Charlie, refusing to be deflected.

  “Like a house on fire. Shouted at him now and then. Shout at everybody. But he was top-notch. Did all the things—dressing me and shaving me and all that sort of thing—as if he’d been born to it. Could have felt awkward about it, but he didn’t. Then he stood quiet while I painted, mixed the paints to my direction—by the end he was a damned sight better at it than that fool Martha.”

  “So you must have been very upset when he left.”

  The old face twisted into something that may have been an expression of regret, but looked oddly like a grin.

  “I was. It knocked the stuffing out of me.”

  “Did it seem ungrateful?”

  “What had he got to be grateful for? You’re talking like a Southern slave owner. The pay was poor, I wasn’t the pleasantest person to work for, Stephen behaved like a boor to him, and the womenfolk are a collection of wet hens.”

  “That wasn’t the impression I had of them.”

  “Hmmm. Well, not Melanie, of course.”

  “You say you shouted at him—”

  “Now and again. Nothing serious.”

  “You hadn’t had a row when he decided to leave?”

  “No, we hadn’t. We never had a row the whole time he was here. They’ve a long history of subservience, the Irish.”

  “And was that what Declan was, subservient?” The old man considered.

  “No, he wasn’t. Forget I said that. You couldn’t call the IRA subservient, could you? No, Declan was quiet, polite, efficient. If I was rude to him, he endured it. That’s different. You always knew if he disapproved of what you said or did.”

  “Was there anything like that before he . . . left?”

  “No, there wasn’t. He just had a hankering to see the big world, and I’d have a lower opinion of him than I do if he was content to fritter away much of his life in a dump like this. Now, will you send Martha or Mrs. Max up to me, young man? It’s time for my bed. I tell you, you’re wasting your time. Know what I think? If you alert the police around the country you’ll find Declan singing Irish ballads in the street somewhere where there’s plenty of tourists with money. Good night, Constable.”

  Charlie Peace, going downstairs to fetch the great artist’s “womenfolk,” thought that the suggestion about alerting police all over the country to singing Irishmen was a good one, though he did not expect any results. By and large, looking at the whole interview, he had a definite sense of having been played with, of the old man having given a performance: for a lot of the time he had talked in clichés, and he had been acting a cliché too—the irascible old terror, with an implied heart of gold. The women of the house had been afraid that he, Charlie, would get a wrong impression from talking to Byatt. But in a very different way, that seemed to be exactly what Byatt had been trying to give him.

  11

  ONE OF THE ACOLYTES

  After he had shut the front door of Ashworth, Charlie got himself through the little garden and out to the lane. There he took out his personal phone and got on to the West Yorkshire Police headquarters.

  “Mike? I think we’re getting somewhere. . . . Yes, identification. Our corpse is probably Declan O’Hearn, got that? He’s a boy from the Irish Republic who worked over the summer as handyman and personal attendant to an artist called Ranulph Byatt—you know him? . . . What it is to work for a cultured cop. . . . I’m not knocking it, it will be very useful. . . . Oh, you just know the name. Well, I don’t suppose there’ll be any need for art crit. Anyway, there is a little hamlet—more of a community, really—centered round a farm called Ashworth, near Stanbury. This Declan O’Hearn took off, I’m being told, in the middle of the night, unexpectedly. . . . Could be true. He could have got no farther than Haworth. But I wouldn’t bank on it. I’m told he came from a little village near Rathdrum, in County Wicklow—name uncertain, but may begin with a D. Comes from a large family, a brother Patrick, a sister Mary. . . . I know, but combined with the name Declan, and in a small village. . . . The priest may be more help than the policeman. I may talk to someone else here, then I’ve got to walk back to Haworth. . . . Yes, walk. . . . So I’ll be, say, an hour or an hour and a half.”

  The call finished, Charlie slipped his mobile back into his pocket and looked around him. He felt like talking to someone else while he was in Ashworth—not least because he would be seen otherwise to walk away, and that might give the impression to the occupants of the farmhouse that he accepted their protestations that the body at the Tandoori could not be Declan. He felt a mite aggrieved about that. Did they take him for a fool? As if he had not seen bodies that no one could have imagined were asking to be murdered—blameless old men and women, no danger, no threat, not even any inconvenience to anybody. But murdered they had been, and sometimes raped as well. There was no such thing as a murderable person, or rather the category was so large as to be meaningless.

  He was surprised to be spared the burden of random choice of the various cottages surrounding the farmhouse. While he was on his mobile a cottage door had opened, and now he was being beckoned from a gate by a well-set-up man in his sixties, someone who came from the same straight-backed school of deportment as Melanie Byatt. Charlie accepted that the choice had been made for him, and began in the man’s direction.

  “I say, I wonder if I may have a word?”

  Charlie nodded, and followed him into his cottage. It
was neat, conventional, everything beautifully in place except for that morning’s post and The Times, still on a table beside an easy chair. There were only two small oil paintings on the wall, one of the inevitable moorland farm, the other of Stanbury’s Main Street. If they were the ones that were worth hanging, the unhung ones had to be wretched.

  “Corner!” barked the man at a black-and-white terrier-style mongrel. The dog crept to a corner where an old rug lay. He did not seem cowed or mistreated, yet his training seemed to have taken away his essential dogginess.

  “It’s about Declan,” said the man, gesturing Charlie to a seat and sitting down himself in what was clearly the favorite chair. “I’m Chesney, by the way. Colonel Chesney. I hear you’re investigating Declan’s disappearance. It wasn’t really a disappearance, you know. He just moved on, as he was bound to.”

  He talked in short, staccato bursts. Was that his usual conversational mode, or was he nervous? Charlie thought for a moment.

  “I suppose Mrs. Byatt rang you while I was talking to her husband. Or her daughter?”

  “Mrs. Mates. Yes, it was Mrs. Mates who rang.”

  “She rather misinformed you. We haven’t police resources to waste on a young man who’s slung his hook. We’re investigating a body found at the Haworth Tandoori.”

  Chesney cleared his throat.

  “Ah, yes. Actually, she did mention that.”

  “But you preferred not to face up to the fact that the murder might be connected to Ashworth. Let’s not beat about the bush: I’ve had all that from the people at the farm, Colonel Chesney. At the moment I’m acting on the probability that the body is that of Declan O’Hearn—right?”

  Colonel Chesney coughed, a sharp, staccato bark.

  “Oh, right. Yes, of course. You have your procedures—nobody knows better than I that procedures have to be followed. . . . Er, I wonder if they told you everything about Declan.”

  Charlie wanted to smile.

  “I doubt it, Colonel. We had quite a short conversation. What is it that you think I ought to know?”

  Charlie’s bluntness seemed to disconcert the colonel, who had planned a more roundabout strategy, a sort of pincer movement. Charlie guessed he was in any case no strategist: the clipped military manner seemed to conceal a muddled mind, directed by nothing more definite than a desire to be of service to the people at the farmhouse.