Bello:
hidden talent rediscovered
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Contents
John Buxton Hilton
Dedication
Part One
Chapter One
Chaper Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part Two
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
John Buxton Hilton
The Anathema Stone
John Buxton Hilton
John Buxton Hilton was born in 1921 in Buxton, Derbyshire. After his war service in the army he became an Inspector of schools, before retiring in 1970 to take up full-time writing.
He wrote two books on language teaching as well as being a prolific crime writer – his works include the Superintendent Simon Kenworthy series and the Inspector Thomas Brunt series, as well as the Inspector Mosley series under the pseudonym John Greenwood.
Dedication
For
Ryan and Miranda
whose hospitality,
patience
and
patio
enabled this book
to be licked into shape
Part One
Chapter One
It can be a lovely month, October –
People had commiserated cheerfully when this year’s holiday had had to be put off. Everything had seemed to take precedence over the Kenworthys’private life: a court case, an internal inquisition, even other men’s inflexible leave arrangements. Then Simon had made the suggestion, outrageous on his lips, that he would rather like to see Derbyshire again. Twice he had had cases in the High Peak, each time had come back with a Londoner’s contempt for the primitive, and an exaggerated relish for suburban comforts. For her part, Elspeth had not been averse to a journey north. She could see herself enjoying high and empty hills.
The air’s so serene in October. You get the most marvellous views.
She had insisted on self-catering; hotel life would get her down in three days. And she knew what Simon was like in a residents’ lounge. There was a cottage to rent in the columns of the Observer; the village of Spentlow was an unknown quantity, but its position on the map seemed just right: it was a small place, some 600 on the electoral roll, which, with youngsters and visitors, kept the population at about the thousand mark. According to the County Guide, a start had been made in the late 1950s to build a speculative estate on one of its flanks, but the project had not reached more than about a dozen desirable residences.
Then, somewhere along the climb into limestone country, something parted at the business end of the prop-shaft, doing untold damage to the rusted cross-members, and fatigue of metal became temporarily more relevant than fatigue of a mere Detective-Superintendent. If the garage lived up to its promises the car would be on the road again in time for the drive home. Meanwhile, there not being enough in the kitty for a hire car, they took a taxi up to Spentlow and peeled off their wet clothing.
For in October it can also rain. It was raining when the prop-shaft went, raining throughout the two-mile walk to the call-box. Rain sluiced down the streets of grey stone towns and obscured the empty hills. Rain sheeted across Spentlow Green like something from the effects department of the early cinema. Yet Kenworthy did not seem to mind. The serenity so deficient from the October skies appeared to have transferred itself to his outlook. He had brought only three books with him and the first of these, a lesser-known Trollope, seemed to be holding him like a charm.
Elspeth kept her fingers crossed. She had two main fears: the first, that he would become bored; the second, its corollary, that he would get himself involved in something. There was something tantalizing in his apparent failure to do either. He raised his eyes only occasionally from He Knew He Was Right, and that only to charge his pipe. She had almost to drive him from the house while she cooked their first supper; the cottage ran only to a living-room kitchen and she had to get him off her skyline while she deployed, an exercise in elimination, the various rusty egg-whisks, gnawed spatulas and charred-bottomed pans that were on the inventory.
There were two pubs, Kenworthy discovered, and they sliced across the sub-cultures of Spentlow as keenly as a cheese-wire. The Pack Horse, on the outskirts, was a triumph of brewer’s fancy, with plastic-topped tables and contemporary mirrors advertising forgotten brews. Its customers were mostly executives from Allsop Close who commuted to Derby, Manchester and Sheffield: immaculate blue denim from Adam’s apple to ankle, and Fu Manchu moustaches. The licensee, John Allsop, stood in such close and satisfied relationship with them that he managed to serve Kenworthy without appearing to notice him.
In the village centre, on the other hand, the Recruiting Sergeant had Edwardian frosted windows, flaking plaster and a urinal swimming in Jeyes Fluid. It had clients with yellow teeth; ale was delivered by gravity from a firkin barrel on wooden trestles; and the landlord, one Billy Brightmore, winked at Kenworthy every time one of his customers said something monstrously uninformed, which happened roughly four times a minute. Kenworthy withdrew modestly downstage and settled down to sip unobtrusively.
He was used to the vapour of talk that rose round him whenever he moved among men who had just whispered to each other who he was, but there was one drinker who nodded to him with the affability of a member of the establishment spotting a peer: a man some ten years older than himself, early fifties, a gaunt figure, standing by the bar in pale corduroys and a heavily- though neatly-darned khaki pullover. Strange how retired officers of field rank are so equitably scattered about the English countryside. Maybe their ultimate pastures are assigned to them when they first enter Sandhurst.
‘It shows how pushed we are for talent,’ the Colonel was saying. ‘I told the padre that I hadn’t trodden the boards since I was second broker’s man in a cadet pantomime.’
‘And they’ve made you Mr Gabbitas, haven’t they?’ someone asked. ‘That ought to give you some scope.’
‘It will if I remember any of my words on the night.’
Then Kenworthy saw the poster with its amateur lettering:
SPENTLOW ST GILES
Rev. Wilbur Gabbitas
Centenary
‘Big event in the village, I see.’
‘Yes, what with the play and a book that the vicar has written. And Mr Dunderdale – he says –’
‘Yes? What does Mr Dunderdale say? Name-dropping again, are we, Charlie?’
The thunder came from the depths of a black beard that had appeared in the doorway, surmounting a pyramid of cloak and cape that was fixed across the speaker’s throat with a metal chain; not so much a man as a monument, and not so much a m
onument as a presence, which owed something, but not all, to his antique garb and fecundity of whisker. Stripped of theatricality, the man would still have stood six foot seven and had a nine-gallon ribcage.
‘Evening, Vicar.’
A pint in pewter was being drawn without his need to speak an order. The Reverend Dunderdale weighed up the gathering and came and sat beside Kenworthy, pointedly leaving his beer unacknowledged.
‘Pleased to meet you. The news has travelled fast, of course, that you are from Scotland Yard. And there are theories as to what you are doing here.’
‘Resting.’
‘If you ask us to believe that, then of course we shall. Well, if the rain continues and you are sufficiently bored by Sunday to seek the entertainment of matins, you might try resting in one of our pews. I dare say someone will squeeze up to make room for you.’
He crossed to his pint. Kenworthy studied the rest of the poster. A week was to be devoted to the memory of the nineteenth-century cleric: on the Monday evening, a lantern lecture on ‘Bygone Spentlow’by the Reverend Daniel Dunderdale. On the Friday and Saturday nights, a play in the Village Hall, The Anathema Stone: Scenes from the Life of Wilbur Gabbitas, by Daniel Dunderdale. Throughout the week there would be on sale The Second Book of Hob: Unpublished Papers by Wilbur Gabbitas, edited by Daniel Dunderdale. And there was to be a charity auction: gifts of ‘bygones’ gratefully received; all profits to the Belfry Fund.
Leaning with his back to the bar, the vicar followed Kenworthy’s interest.
‘How long are you staying, Mr Kenworthy?’
‘Three weeks.’
‘Lucky man. You’ll be able to see it all. Buy a book; buy several books. Stock up with Christmas presents.’
‘Your man Gabbitas – bit of a lad, was he?’
‘Well, he wasn’t a Parson Woodforde or a Kilvert, but we think he had his points. Some of us believe he deserves a wider public than he has. He’s going to get one, too, isn’t he?’
This was addressed to the public at large, but each man left his neighbour to respond. Dunderdale’s enthusiasms were evidently tolerated rather than shared.
‘And I am reminded, Arthur Brightmore, that your name is not on the subscription list.’ They all seemed to be Brightmores in this pub.
‘Well, now, Vicar: two pounds. That’s a lot of money for a book.’
‘It may seem a lot of money. But you can’t not buy one, Arthur. After all, you’re in it.’
‘I don’t see how I can be in it. Mr Gabbitas died thirty years before I was born.’
‘Ah, but he foresaw you, Arthur. He foresaw you.’
And Arthur started having his leg pulled.
‘I reckon there’ll be the tale about that time you were courting Sarah Anne Mycock, and you fixed it so you both got punctures. Only she had a repair outfit in her handbag.’
‘You mean you’ve updated the Tales, like?’ Arthur asked.
And Daniel Dunderdale laughed enormously, with the sort of mischief that might on occasion lose its sense of responsibility.
‘Updated them, like,’ he agreed.
They were interrupted by the door opening again, only this time it flew inwards, as if its handle had been torn from someone’s grasp. Rain and autumn leaves swirled in from an impenetrable black backcloth. A couple came in, and the door was secured again, producing a renewed era of calm that suggested that the pub was sealed off from the outside world.
The man was one of those who would have been well advised not to let his hair grow long. It hung about his shoulders in a lank curtain, and was held against his ears by a sodden velvet band. His companion, like himself in her mid-twenties, had hair that had been reduced by the weather to the texture of boiled string. She was wearing an ankle-length dress in patchwork of pragmatic design over army surplus boots, and about her shoulders a tweed sports-jacket of nineteen-thirties’ cut, its sleeves hanging empty. Even odder than the appearance of the pair was the fact that they seemed not merely tolerated here, but positively respected.
‘Good evening, John. Good evening, Christine.’
The vicar could not have treated them with greater dignity if they had personally underwritten every bell in his tower. Labourers and veterans all nodded to them, and even the Colonel raised his hand in acknowledgement. Shortly afterwards, he and the vicar left together, the Colonel saying that he must tidy himself up for parade. There was perceptible relief from tension when the great cloak had swirled out into the storm.
‘If you ask me, the Reverend Gabbitas never left any papers. What’s in that book has come out of Dunderdale’s head.’
‘I’m buggered if I’m going to pay two quid for one.’
‘I shall. I wouldn’t miss it for a small fortune.’
‘He’ll end up landing himself in a court case.’
‘Who’d go to court, and get ten times as much publicity?’
‘Jesse Allsop might.’
‘He’ll leave Jesse Allsop alone. He’ll make it look as if he’s having a go, but there’ll be nothing in it. Nobody’s going to tell the truth about the Allsops.’
‘Nobody knows the bloody truth about the Allsops.’
‘Funny, though, nothing’s been said about that cloak-tree.’
‘Yet.’
‘Nothing will.’
‘The vicar’s not said a dicky-bird.’
‘He’s biding his time.’
‘So’s Jesse Allsop.’
‘Pity it had to go to the printer so soon. He could have made something out of these Beaker Folk.’
‘And that big ginger Irishman. What was his name? Kevin O’Shea. And the girl.’
‘One or two others and the girl.’
‘It was all written before the girl was fairly out of the cradle. She’s come on a lot, these last few months, that girl has.’
‘You can say that again.’
Someone nudged the last speaker’s elbow, reminding him of the presence of the hippy pair. Silence fell over the company for seconds, yet the couple did not seem to have heard the conversation, so immersed they were in their talk. Kenworthy caught the words ‘Kantian’and ‘transcendental significance’.
The story of the cloak-tree emerged obliquely from the dialogue that followed. A week ago, Jesse Allsop had sent over from Dogtooth Farm to the Village Hall an article of furniture for sale in the Mock Auction in connection with the Gabbitas celebrations. Not jumble: the vicar had let it be known that he wanted good stuff. And by all accounts he was getting it, including this mid-eighteenth-century coat- and hat-stand in mellowed mahogany, ‘Worth a blooming fortune,’ a man in a knotted neck-scarf said, that had been in the Allsop family for generations. Except that a Mr Barton Brightmore seemed to believe that it belonged more properly among his own chattels. One day last week, the ante-room at the Hall had been feloniously entered – no significant damage done, but indicative scratches round the lock. And the cloak-tree now stood provocatively in the front window of Barton Brightmore’s home in the main thoroughfare.
Yet nothing had been done about it. The vicar passed Barton Brightmore’s window twenty times a day, yet had not let it be known that he was aware of the theft. The police had not been informed. No steps had been taken to retrieve the piece. Members of the Gabbitas Week Committee were coy if anyone ventured to bring the subject up.
Kenworthy looked at his watch, carried his empty glass across to the counter, and let himself out into the rain. He stood for a moment to get his bearings and a savage gust lashed his face. Barely fifty yards to go, and he had to face the elements like some Conrad character on a hell-raked quarter-deck. He could sense, rather than see, the low cottages of grey stone withdrawn beyond their flagged paths, the squat, dour windows, the warm fastnesses within. Before the coming of the railway (which had never ventured nearer than seven miles to Spentlow) this had been no more than a neighbourly huddle of hill-scratching farmers. Then the area had suddenly found itself accessible to the jam-packed industrial eruptions in every quart
er of the compass, in strategical command of the beautiful Dales. But now aggressive October had banished day visitors, and the letting cottages (mostly the property of one Allsop or another) were locked up and deserted.
Yet across the Green, in the corner occupied by the church, school and vicarage, great oblongs of light were spilling from the windows of the Hall. Voices carried across the squalls: tuneless teenagers, topping the pops, until suddenly a barrack-square bark – the vicar’s voice – produced a silence that even at this distance sounded guilty. And the silence endured. Nothing now but the trees fighting back at the wind. An arm of diseased elm cracked suddenly and came crashing down among its fellows somewhere on the perimeter of the settlement.
Kenworthy became aware of footsteps obliquely behind him. Someone else was crossing the forecourt of the pub. He turned his other cheek and saw a black figure set in momentary relief by the light from the inn-sign – a pixie, so it seemed, in a storm-beaten mantle, with a tall pointed hood pulled up over her head. The figure walked past him, as if unaware that he was there; but that could not have been the case because a second later the head was suddenly turned back to look at him. The light from the swinging sign was now playing on her face, and he saw that it was that of a young woman: a beautiful young woman, startlingly beautiful in the classical fashion. Her eyebrows were ebony curves against a smooth sculpted forehead. She had a rare placidity of feature, and yet the eyes that were smiling at him were alive. They seemed to find some vague source of amusement in the foul, cold rain. It was a strange moment, as if she had been waiting for him, as if she had known he was going to be here. Such advantage did she take of the weird, wan light that she might even have rehearsed her stance.
‘Good evening, Mr Kenworthy. It is Mr Kenworthy?’
She smiled then with her lips, too – a melting and familiar smile; but then he saw that the light had been playing haphazard tricks, on her and on him. She was no woman; she was a child. She had a sharpness of feature that belied the illusion of Hellenic serenity, the contour undeveloped. Her frame was slender and her shoulders narrow. She could not be more than fourteen or fifteen; and she was looking at him with a friendly, almost impudent amusement.
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