The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori

by Robert Barnard

  Charlie felt very old, giving him advice.

  “You’ll make friends. But do you want the sort of friends who’ll make up to you for all the wrong reasons? Because you’re a famous painter’s grandson? Because you’re involved in a notorious murder case in which you got rid of the body? Any sort of fast or snob set here is not likely to welcome you on any other grounds, are they? Think about it. Wouldn’t you be better off getting your head down, getting into your reading and finding your friends among people who need to do the same?”

  Stephen brooded. “Maybe. . . . Yes, I suppose that’s true. I’ll never find anybody who’s cocked things up in quite the monumental way I’ve done.”

  “I don’t know. Don’t wallow in self-accusations. If you cocked things up you had a lot of help doing it. You might ask yourself what kind of people would ask a young man, just setting out in the world, to get rid of the body of a murder victim.”

  Stephen nodded.

  “The sort of people who provided the body in the first place, I suppose.”

  Charlie stood up.

  “I think that about sums it up. If you’re in trouble, they’re in much more. Come on: let’s go back to your lodgings and pack. I’m afraid you’re going to have to come back to Yorkshire.”

  18

  THE HELPING HAND

  “Did you believe him?” asked Oddie the next day as they sat in Oddie’s office in Leeds Police HQ with Stephen Mates in custody in one of the cells.

  “Yes, by and large, I did,” said Charlie, who had thought over the interview a lot the night before. “Of course, there may have been a degree of slanting—letting himself off the hook, exaggerating his own horror and reluctance. Wouldn’t you, in the circumstances? But on the facts, and the sequence of events, I believed him. And what he said is borne out by Mary Ann Birdsell’s memories, hazy though they may be.”

  “Not to mention her mother’s even hazier ones. Though we may ignore those, in my view.”

  “Absolutely. We treat with skepticism everything said by any of the Ashworth disciples.”

  “Because on any assessment,” said Oddie somberly, remembering his talk with the medical experts, “garroting a victim would need the sort of strength in the hands neither Byatt nor his wife remotely has at this stage of their lives.”

  Charlie nodded.

  “And according to Stephen Mates’s story, someone took the body down to the stable area, then put the body in the boot, while Melanie and Byatt himself negotiated terms for its disposal.”

  “It might be worth investigating which of the Ashworth disciples has a driving license.”

  “But it was Stephen who drove the body and dumped it,” protested Charlie.

  “Precisely. Why didn’t the person who had done the murder also drive the car and dump the body?”

  “Right. I should have thought of that. . . . You know, if it hadn’t been Stephen, they would have tried to persuade one of the other drivers there to do it, and probably succeeded.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I see all of the Ashworth mob as in it, in some way. Not directly, not participating or watching, but knowing. Realizing that Ranulph is an artist turned on by violence, by cruelty, and knowing that things have occurred in the past that stimulated his creative urges to heights he couldn’t otherwise have reached. And they all keep quiet about it, probably don’t even discuss it among themselves, because they’re not close to each other. But each one knows, is aware, or at the very least suspects.”

  “I wonder if you’re right,” said Oddie reflectively. “You know them better than I do. If you are, it will be the devil’s own job to prove—and another one to frame any charge based on it.”

  “Probably out of the question. I wonder if Declan O’Hearn suspected the same thing, and that helped him to his decision to get the hell out of there.”

  “I wish he’d been picked up,” said Oddie. “Until we find him, there’s always the nagging doubt in the back of our minds as to whether he’s alive or not.”

  “I think he is. We have enough bodies. What we need now is a lot more facts.”

  “Here’s one,” said Oddie. “Stephen Mates was treated for asthma and related illnesses at the Royal Salford Hospital in late September 1984. They specialize in diseases of the lungs.”

  “And while the boy and his mother were away, the father disappeared,” mused Charlie. “And in the succeeding months there was a second sharp upsurge in creativity on the part of Ranulph Byatt. By the way—this is a very long shot—what sort of detail is there on the motorway accident that killed Catriona Byatt and her husband?”

  “A fair bit. It was a very nasty accident. I’ve got a computer printout somewhere here.” Oddie rummaged in the mass of paper that regularly blotted out the plasticized wood of his desk when he was on a difficult case. “Here.”

  Charlie took it and read.

  “Hmmm. A fast car overtook them and cut in, causing them to brake sharply and be hit from behind by an old Land Rover, the driver of which was severely injured. . . . Interesting. I must get something checked.”

  “Before you go,” yelled Oddie to his departing back, “what about that other ‘period’ in Byatt’s painting?”

  “Ah, yes,” said Charlie, turning back, “I read up about that last night when I got home. Not as interesting as the earlier ones—not to art critics, I mean. No predominant color this time: some critics call it his ‘black’ or ‘gray’ period, but apparently that’s stretching a point. Briscott quotes one or two critics from influential newspapers and periodicals. One mentions feet, shoed feet, looking as if they were suspended just an inch or two over a floor.”

  “But the pictures are not admired?”

  “I didn’t say that, but not so admired as the earlier ones. Apparently most of them are very abstract, at a time when abstraction is rather going out of fashion.”

  “I see. And when were these painted?”

  “More slowly, not so much in a burst of energy as both of the earlier ‘period’ paintings were. The arthritis taking hold, presumably. But most of them came in the years ninety and ninety-one.”

  “We don’t, to put it bluntly, have anyone who disappeared around 1990, do we?”

  “Not that I’ve heard of.”

  “We could ask the Keighley Police.”

  “Sure. Except that the Keighley Police would never have heard of Patrick O’Hearn, or Declan either, and they don’t seem to have been informed of the disappearance of Morgan Mates either.” Charlie paused. “There was one thing I wondered . . .”

  “Spit it out.”

  “Most of these people seem to have done up their cottages from a semiderelict condition. But Arnold Mellors talked about his cottage becoming vacant. That’s rather different, isn’t it?”

  “It is. It’s a long shot, but a possibility. What do you think our best move would be, psychologically?”

  Charlie meditated for a moment or two.

  “Take Melanie Byatt in for questioning. Remove her from their midst. We’ve ample evidence against her for the disposal of the body. Taking Byatt himself might be an extreme step, what with his fame and his state of health. But we can insulate him. Then all the disciples are on their own.”

  “I was thinking along those lines.” Oddie paused. “I’m far from feeling tenderly disposed toward Byatt, and I wouldn’t think twice before taking him in, but maybe you’re right. Go off and do your checking, and then we’ll bring in the matriarch. I’ll ring Keighley, see if they have a suitable cell. You can take her there to cool her heels, and then come back to Ashworth and we can do some questioning and thinking.”

  When, a little over an hour later, they drove once again down the rutted track to Ashworth, a few questions had been answered in their minds, but many more remained unclear. This, Charlie felt sure, would turn out to be the crunch day. They left their car ostentatiously outside the farmhouse and rang on the doorbell. It was Martha Mates who opened it. Her face showed t
he frankest of apprehensions.

  “Oh, it’s you. I thought you’d be back. Stephen rang last night and said your constable was asking about Morgan.”

  “I know he rang. I was with him.”

  “Morgan was his father, but my husband. Why were you asking Stephen, not me, about him? Why were you asking about him at all?”

  “I think you can guess why, Mrs. Mates,” said Charlie. “Today we’re needing to speak with your mother.”

  “My mother?”

  They ignored her as people seemed to do in her circle, and she bumbled after them as they proceeded down the hallway and into the sitting room. No apprehension or uncertainty disfigured the face of Melanie Byatt as she sat, straight-backed, in a tall chair, gripping her cane.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Byatt,” Oddie began, looking at her unflinchingly. “I must ask you to come with us for questioning in connection with the murder of Patrick O’Hearn, and—”

  “But you can’t! Mother, tell them they can’t!” Faced with an implacable stare, Martha turned to the policemen. “How dare you! My mother is an old woman. Can’t you see how weak she is? She is in no state to—”

  But Melanie Byatt was struggling up, and she now began walking to the door, paying no more attention to her daughter than if she were a buzzing fly. At the sitting room door she paused, not to look back in any sort of retrospection, but to get her breath. Then she walked magisterially down the hall and out the front door. Outside the gate a second police car had arrived, containing two uniformed policemen from Leeds, who Oddie had arranged would follow them. Over by Charmayne Churton’s cottage a little knot of Ashworth residents was gathering, a ripple of whispering rising from it. They did not look threatening—a chorus rather than a rescue posse.

  Melanie ignored them all. Charlie led her to the second car and helped her into the backseat. Then he went around and got in beside her, and signaled to the uniformed driver to start.

  “Keighley Police station,” he said.

  The car backed up, then drove toward the gate, through it, and up to Stanbury. On the whole of the quarter-hour trip to Keighley, Melanie said nothing, but stared straight ahead. Charlie thought that questioning her was going to be about as informative as Prime Minister’s Question Time in the House of Commons, and a lot more silent.

  • • •

  In the farmhouse Oddie had stationed the other uniformed constable outside Ranulph Byatt’s bedroom. When the artist started roaring questions and abuse, Martha pleaded to be allowed to talk with him. Reluctantly Oddie agreed, but insisted that the constable stay in the room throughout.

  “Five minutes, that’s all I can allow,” he said. “Then I’ll expect you down in the sitting room.”

  In the meantime he went downstairs and through to the kitchen. The morning’s events had not stopped Mrs. Max in her preparations for lunch. But she paused in her activities to regard him balefully.

  “I don’t know what things are coming to,” she said, “when a sick old woman is bothered and badgered and driven away like a criminal by grown men who should know their manners better.”

  “Mrs. Max, I’m investigating three possible murders,” said Oddie. The woman’s jaw dropped. “Someone’s age or fragility is not going to stop me asking questions and trying to get at the truth. Do you understand me?”

  Mrs. Max, after a moment, nodded.

  “And that includes Ranulph Byatt himself. Now, how long has Byatt been crippled with arthritis?”

  “Oh, Lord . . . Well, it came on gradually, like it usually does. Of course it was regarded as a great tragedy here, because of the paintings. There was no sign of it at the time of what they called the ‘red period’ paintings. These silly labels. . . . On the other hand he was having difficulty when he painted those last pictures which the critics really liked. Six or seven years ago, that would be. They had to develop ways to keep him painting. He’d have been in a terrible state otherwise—if he couldn’t paint, I mean. Martha took over the mixing of the colors, and was always on duty during his painting session. We had to get a new, higher chair for him. Everything was done that could be. He has so little power left in his hands, you see.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “It’s tragic to see him at times.”

  “What about Mrs. Byatt?”

  She couldn’t answer for few moments.

  “Oh, I’m not sure. It was slower in her case, and of course we didn’t pay so much attention, weren’t so worried, because it wasn’t as if she did very much with her hands. I’d say she was already sometimes in pain when I came here fifteen years ago, but it’s been very gradual, and she’s coped accordingly.”

  Through the window over the kitchen sink Mike saw the Ashworth acolytes still clustered around Charmayne Churton’s front gate, still talking. From time to time they glanced apprehensively in the direction of the farmhouse.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Max,” he said, and left the kitchen.

  As he walked down the hall he satisfied himself that Martha Mates had, obediently if reluctantly, put herself in the sitting room, where she seemed to be having difficulty finding anything to do. As he let himself out through the front door, Charlie and the other uniformed constable drove up and parked behind him.

  “Stay with me,” he said to Charlie. He turned to the uniformed man. “Will you go and take guard duty outside the sitting room? It’s where the daughter is.”

  They were being watched. Any policeman is watched, either directly or out of the corners of eyes. Oddie and Charlie were both inured to it. As they sauntered up to the group it showed signs of spontaneously breaking up. Oddie held up his hand.

  “Don’t go. I can see you’re all worried. Mrs. Byatt is simply helping us with our inquiries—I’m sure you’ve heard that phrase often enough on television, but it’s a perfectly good one, and the truth. That’s what she’s doing. I’d like to ask you to do the same. Will you?”

  They all after a second or two nodded, like solemn schoolchildren.

  “I’d like to know how this little community formed itself. Who was the first of you to come here?”

  “Oh, I was!” It was Jenny Birdsell speaking, trilling enthusiastically. “When I came there were just the Byatts here, and Mrs. Max and Joe.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Well, Mary Ann was three. I’m not good on dates, but she’s now eighteen, so you can work it out.”

  “When you say the Byatts were here, does that include the Mateses?”

  “Oh, yes. Martha, Morgan, and little Stephen. He was a lovely little boy then. Such a shame . . .”

  “Right. Who was next?”

  “I was,” said Charmayne Churton, with something like a simper. “Ivor had his cottage reserved for him, but he was unavoidably detained.” She leered at Oddie. “So I came here and got his cottage ready, not that I got any thanks for it. And then Walter came, just a month or two later.”

  “That’s me,” said Colonel Chesney. “There were several cottages became available at that time, because Ranulph had several of them done up at once—roofed, electricity installed, just the most basic things. The rest we did ourselves, or had done for us by professional people if we hadn’t the skills.”

  “That was with the proceeds of the ‘purple period’ paintings,” said Ivor Aston.

  “I see,” said Oddie. “When exactly was this?”

  “I came out in 1990,” said Aston, deliberately unembarrassed, as a snub to his sister. “Was I next? No, Mellors was already here, weren’t you? I was in fact the last.”

  “That’s right,” said Mellors. “I came in June 1990, a month or two before Ivor.”

  “But yours was not one of the newly refurbished cottages?”

  “No. It had been done up for some time, and someone had been in it before me.”

  “Who was that, sir?”

  Mellors seemed puzzled by the question.

  “Bloke called—what was it now?—Jake. Jake Felgott. A Yank.”

/>   “And he left?”

  “Found it didn’t suit him. So I got his cottage.”

  “Some of you will have known him, I suppose?” said Oddie, looking around. He felt rather than could have pinned down a flicker come into someone’s eye.

  “Several of us knew him,” said Colonel Chesney, his voice hard with distaste. “Happy-go-lucky type, practically a hobo—a very irreverent bloke.”

  “Maybe he found the atmosphere of . . . admiration for Ranulph Byatt not to his liking?” suggested Oddie.

  “Maybe.”

  “And have any of you had any contact or communication with him since?” Oddie asked. They all shook their heads.

  “Wasn’t the sort who sent Christmas cards,” said Chesney. “Wouldn’t have been in any hurry to make contact again. He thought us all a bit of a joke.”

  “I see.” Oddie began to turn away, but as he did so Charlie asked, “Which of you have driving licenses?”

  “Or can drive, whether or not you have a license,” amended Oddie.

  “I do,” said Mellors. “I’ve always borrowed the car here when I wanted to take canvases to galleries.”

  “I do too,” said Colonel Chesney. “In the British Army today you can’t not.”

  “I have one,” said Charmayne, “but I don’t. Drive, that is. Ranulph always says it’s impossible to see landscapes, let alone feel them, when you’re whizzing by in a car. How right he is!”

  “Rather ignores the fact that you might want to use one to stock up in a supermarket,” Charlie pointed out. “And you, sir?”

  “I don’t have one, and I can’t,” said Ivor Aston. “I’ve never in my life sat behind a driving wheel.”

  “And I don’t and can’t either,” said Jenny Birdsell.

  “Didn’t you use to be a district nurse?”

  “Long ago. Used a bicycle. It’s how we all got around then. They were just beginning to talk about us having cars when I decided to give it up.”

  Charlie nodded, and this time he and Oddie did turn away, and left the little group. They made their way back to the farmhouse, nodded to the constable standing on sentry duty in the hall, and then took over the gloomy dining room, with the two windows that looked out on most of the surrounding cottages. Out in the lane the little group of acolytes was dispersing.