‘Noakes’s paddock?’
‘His pet name for it is B Echelon.’
In the window, a sorry-looking creeper in a brass pot bore an unmilitary look.
‘The Colonel has four dog-walks. Patrols, he calls them. He always lets the dog choose – or appear to. Last night it was this way –’
‘This way’was a continuation of the lane, a lane now frankly exhausted of ambition. It was so narrow that they could scarcely walk abreast, and they descended a series of steps made of limestone slabs, worn smooth by feet and greasy with damp lichen.
‘Spentlow calls this the Roman Paving. A handy label for anything earlier than the seventeenth century.’
They found what they were looking for: the stone on which Noakes had slipped. He had slipped because the slab was loose and mobile on a fulcrum of earth, like a see-saw. There was not a great deal of play, but enough to up-end a man in a wet twilight. And it was in this state because clay and loose stones at its lower end had been scooped out from under it. Kenworthy picked up several such bits and pieces.
‘I suppose your part of the bargain now calls for your county colleagues?’ Dunderdale asked.
‘Maybe not quite yet. They might think this evidence scanty – might even suggest that this rubble has been washed adrift by the weather we’ve been having. You said that the Colonel had four routine patrols: does one of them take him along the top of the plantation that leads to Hob’s Kitchen?’
‘Occasionally.’
‘I fell there yesterday. Caught my foot in deliberately knotted grass. But who’s to say that’s not some boy’s prank? That leaves two other walks?’
‘One’s through the heart of the village. It could hardly be booby-trapped. The other’s to Bootherstone’s – that’s a quarry on the far side of the church.’
‘Will you, or shall I? Or shall we both?’
‘I have to be at the County Crematorium at half past ten. And if we’re seen going together, someone will know we are interested. Whereas you, as a tourist –’
When they got back to the Green, Dunderdale made it plain that he was going not back to his home, but to church.
‘Holy Communion?’ he invited. ‘It would give you an excuse for being out and about at this time of the morning.’
‘You’re an opportunist, Vicar.’
The only other communicant was the fat woman who had pounced on him in the Hall yesterday. After breakfast, the rain not having actually started again, he set out along the track behind the church; murky pools that had to be negotiated by way of sodden verges: the bole of a twisted old tree that drew its life-blood from a fissure between outcrops; more outcrops, until the landscape was nothing but outcrop, and he was walking tortuously between mossy limestone walls, as in a roofless cave.
He stood still for a moment and studied his surroundings. Here a shadower could easily make himself at home. There were huge trees, behind which a man could lurk at will, an expanse of wild raspberry canes, rambling over the dips of dead ground. Kenworthy listened: a drip of water into the carpet of dead leaves. And somewhere in the quarry ahead of him, he heard a living presence.
A large bird perhaps, foraging amongst the undergrowth? Or was it? This was something bigger, a reckless disturbance in the vegetation, and then a whimpering, hopeful at first, but rising to a desperate whine.
Kenworthy did not start to run. He walked on slowly, stopping every few yards: only a dripping here and there, as if the ghost of the departed rain were going to haunt the place for ever; a pause in the whining; and then a renewal of it, an orgiastic crescendo.
He came into the quarry. It was a small clearing, obviously not worked for many years. No commercial undertaking, this: only enough for a farmer to burn lime for his own fields and mend broken walls. The footpath entered the place through a narrow gully across which was stretched the disinterred root of a mountain ash. Enough to trip up a careless stranger, but nothing sinister about it. The root had not been freshly dug out: it had lain like that for a long time.
Kenworthy could place the animal now; a dog, higher up, well within the hollow of the quarry, making a vigorous exhibition of himself now he sensed a human presence: one of those animals that looked on all men as friends. Kenworthy skirted the inside face of the quarry, clambered over wet rocks, and came down to the wretched creature from above.
He was a mixture of breeds, fox-terrier an identifiable strain, mostly white, with one black ear. He had been caught in a snare, a running-noose of nylon which had somehow drawn tight round a hock. The cord was anchored in three places, diabolically reinforcing each other; it could have held an Alsatian.
Kenworthy stooped to the knot, the animal lying confidently still. He was wet, shivering, had been out all night; but he was a resilient creature, and the moment he was released he started prancing enthusiastically. Kenworthy now started looking for another trap, the one that had been laid for the Colonel. It lay in the direct line that an impetuous rescuer would have taken up from the footpath. It was easy to find, crudely simple, an uneven weave of dead stalks and sere vegetation across a rock-strewn hollow some four feet deep.
Kenworthy plotted himself a wary course back through the quarry, stepped over the rowan root and began his return along the ravine, the dog at his heels. He drew in sight of the church and came back into the heart of the village. Across the Green he could see a knot of youngsters, girls and boys, congregated round a huddle of bicycles. There was no sign of their bus. Suddenly the dog left him, sprinted across to the group in frantic delight. He ran up to a slim girl: developing limbs under threadbare jeans. Davina: it was the first time he had seen her dressed in the contemporary idiom.
‘Where’ve you been? Out all night! That’s the first time you’ve ever done that to me!’
Then she saw Kenworthy.
‘Oh, hullo. I’ve just heard you’re going to be Wilbur. Isn’t it marvellous?’
‘Marvellous? I’m not so sure. In some frames of mind –’
‘But you were so sweet on stage last night.’
‘It’s hardly the adjective I would have chosen.’
‘Wasn’t he?’ she asked, and there was concerted agreement.
‘Not at school?’ he asked them generally.
‘Half-term holiday. Just started.’
‘And that’s fine,’ Davina added. ‘You and I can get together for some private rehearsal.’
‘I dare say I’ll be glad of that,’ he said, and there was a deep-throated, dirty laugh from some younger girl in the gang. Davina ignored it with the coolness of a party hostess.
‘Actually, I was intending to come and see you this morning.’
‘Well, do. My wife’s probably out, but I know how to make coffee.’
‘I think I’d better take this creature home first and give him something to eat. Where did you find him?’
‘I was walking behind the church and he attached himself to me. Pretty fickle, though. He abandoned me as soon as he saw you.’
She bent down and mimicked anger with the dog.
‘You’d better tell your mother you’re going calling.’
‘She won’t mind. She’ll be glad to have me out of the house. I
doubt whether she’s up yet, anyway.’
Kenworthy went back to the cottage, and there was a note from Elspeth saying that she’d gone to Derby with two friends to help them buy stage cosmetics. There was also a small rectangular package, The Second Book of Hob, with Dunderdale’s compliments. It aped the Gabbitas original, except that the paper was glossier and the letterpress less bold. The drawings might have come from the same pen: little bearded, squinting men with vulpine chins, going about their business as quarrymen, cobblers and cowherds. The first story was about a Hob innkeeper who diluted his beer.
Then he heard sounds of someone trying to enter the cottage, apparently with violence, by the back door. He went to unlock it before the ward could be broken from the jamb, and found himself face to face with Mrs Scadbol
t, whose daily help he had firmly rejected.
‘Ah, you had it locked, sir. I generally arrange with people that they leave it undone, and then when they want to go out for the day, and I’m on the late side, I can still get in.’
‘Yes, Mrs Scadbolt, but the only arrangement we had, if I remember correctly, was that we shall regretfully not be needing your services.’
Mrs Scadbolt’s head bobbed; high scarlet cheekbones and a complex and unaesthetic superstructure of black hair.
‘Ah, yes, sir, but I did chance to meet Mrs Kenworthy and she did happen to mention that she was getting so tied up with things that she’d be glad of two hours three times a week. Fifteen shillings an hour, sir, and she said that you’d let me have it before I went.’
‘I see. Well, in that case you’d better come in.’
Irony, since she was already in; but unappreciated. She placed a basket in the middle of the table alongside his book, which he scooped into his pocket.
‘Brasso, sir, Windolene, new scrubbing brush, two dishcloths, twelve shillings altogether, sir. And may I have the Green Shield stamps, for going? Would you like to pay for the bits and pieces now, sir, then that’s out of the way?’
She examined the cooker and made throaty noises about the boiling over of a pan of milk. Kenworthy retired to the sofa with the script.
‘They tell me you made quite a hit in the Hall, last night, sir. Not that I agree with theatricals myself. I mean, don’t you think it’s bad for people, present company excepted, of course, sir, and it’s different for you because I expect you’re play-acting all day in your job. But take that girl, sir.’
She paused, possibly for breath.
‘Now there’s one I wouldn’t care to leave my husband alone in a room with. And there’s one or two homes I could mention where there’s things would be flying about if half the truth were known. And that’s saying nothing about what goes on with the Beaker Folk. That Mr Horrocks! Well, I’ve got a daughter in his class, and do you think it’s right, sir, that children should be taught by a man who wears the sort of things he does? And the encouragement he gives that girl. It makes you think, doesn’t it, sir?’
‘I spend a lot of my time thinking about this, that and the other.’
‘As for that Davina –’
She pronounced the name as if its very outlandishness was a moral outrage.
‘I suppose we ought to feel sorry for her, and after all, I suppose it’s in the blood. I said to my Mavis, look, you’re both in the same class, so you’ve got to be sociable. But don’t you go having more to do with her than you can help. And don’t go getting asked round to her house. Not that anyone ever is. Ah, well, I suppose we ought to feel sorry for her.’
She had now finished with the cooker and was squeezing black exudations from a rag into the sink.
‘How long have they lived here, the Stotts?’ Kenworthy asked.
‘Four years; no, five. I know because my Mavis –’
‘They aren’t village stock, then?’
‘Oh, goodness, no. They’re all Allsops or Brightmores in this village. Except for odd Scadbolts and Malkins who married one side or the other because they didn’t know better.’
‘I see. So who are their friends?’
‘Ah, well, sir. There you’ve put your finger on it. I wouldn’t say that Mrs Stott had any friends.’
‘She doesn’t mix with people?’
‘You can hardly blame people for that.’
‘I’m not blaming anybody, Mrs Scadbolt. I’m merely remarking that Mrs Stott does not appear to contribute to village life.’
‘We ought to be grateful for small mercies. She doesn’t belong, Mr Kenworthy, what with that coat and her hair, and she and that daughter of hers must live out of tins.’
It was the most commonplace words that carried her most melodramatic suggestions.
‘And that Kevin O’Shea. Believe me, Mr Kenworthy, there are a lot of people in Spentlow, decent folk, who’ve slept sounder in their beds since you came here to keep an eye on things.’ And in the same breath, ‘There are others, I shouldn’t wonder, who haven’t slept a wink since you arrived.’
She paused for him to relish his unexpected effect on people’s sleeping habits. He had just put his head back and closed his eyes when a tap on the door announced Davina. She had clearly used the dog’s breakfast as a cover story for getting rid of the jeans image. These had now been exchanged for a canary yellow skirt and a green pullover over an orange blouse. She had combed out her hair so that one of her eyes was partially hidden. She was wearing stiletto heels and false breasts. Seen at a distance, say on a street corner, a man might have been excused for mistaking her age and intention.
Kenworthy asked her in, and Mrs Scadbolt – who had amazingly now ceased to talk – did not turn round to look from whatever she was doing at the draining-board. Kenworthy offered the girl a seat. Mrs Scadbolt sniffed in such a way that one could not be certain whether she had sniffed or not.
‘Actually,’ Kenworthy said, ‘I’m sure I shall appreciate the odd hour of extra practice. I shall need it. But I don’t think there’s much point in starting until I’ve got hold of more of the words.’
‘I can help you to learn them.’
‘There are certainly one or two stage directions I’d like you to put me right about.’
‘I wouldn’t pay too much attention to those. They’re only what Mr Dunderdale wrote. John has changed things all over the place. Isn’t your script absolutely covered with alterations?’
‘No. Mine’s a virgin copy.’
‘Well, I’ve brought mine, so we can run over that.’
Mrs Scadbolt’s back, now as expressive as her everyday vocabulary, looked as if she were prepared to spend the rest of the morning at the sink.
‘I’ll make coffee,’ Kenworthy said.
That meant drawing water, for which he had to dislodge her.
‘Mrs Scadbolt, I wonder if you’d mind leaving this room for the time being and just doing a general tidy-up upstairs?’
She walked away from him, her face expressively expressionless. Davina laughed, perhaps a trifle too noisily.
‘Now, Davina – you told me you wanted to see me –’
She came and sat beside him on the sofa, her thigh warm and firm close to his. And yet her assumption of the position seemed so natural that there was even a suggestion of innocence about it. She was wearing a juvenile overdose of perfume. Kenworthy stood up.
‘I’m frightened, Mr Kenworthy.’
There might have been footlights in front of them, for the infantile pathos she was registering.
‘You mean frightened that someone does not want Gabbitas Week to go on?’
‘Oh, that? Yes: someone is certainly trying to needle the vicar.’
‘Needle the vicar? Someone has more than needled the Colonel.’
‘Yes, it’s terrible about Colonel Noakes,’ she said, without feeling; the right thing to say, but she said it as if there were something radically missing from her powers of sympathy. Perhaps it was only due to her age. ‘But it never occurred to me that it was anything but an accident.’
‘There have been other accidents or near accidents.’
‘But there’s been nothing serious, has there? Mr Kenworthy, that isn’t what I wanted to see you about.’
‘No?’
‘What’s worrying me matters much more than Gabbitas Week.’
‘Oh?’
‘To me it does, anyway.’
Just the right touch of B-Film huskiness.
‘It’s my father,’ she said, and looked at him for long enough for an audience to stop fiddling with their toffee-papers.
‘Your father?’
Mrs Scadbolt had left the door open at the bottom of the stairs. Kenworthy crossed the room and shut it.
‘Your father? Where is your father?’
‘God knows.’
Tears not far away. Brave restraint.
‘You�
��ll have to begin at the beginning, Davina. I haven’t a clue about your family circumstances.’
He said this briskly and she looked at him with a programme of facial expressions culminating in belated understanding.
‘Of course: how can you know? I am making the same mistake that the rest of the village is. I suppose we rather expect a man from the Yard to know everything. May I ask you a question that I don’t think you’ll want to answer?’
‘Ask me anything you like.’
‘Your visit to Spentlow – has it anything to do with the Beaker Folk?’
‘Would it worry you if it had?’
‘Not at all. It’s just that I made friends with a man who wasn’t very nice, that’s all. But he’s gone away now. He didn’t mean me any harm and he didn’t do me any harm. So please may I come back to the subject of my father?’
‘By all means.’
‘I don’t know where he is, Mr Kenworthy. The money still comes through but –’
Mrs Scadbolt on the stairs; she held open the door with her shoulder as she manoeuvred herself round it carrying a bucket and broom. Davina showed herself smart in conversational deception.
‘Will you be word perfect in any scene by this evening, Mr Kenworthy?’
‘I doubt it. We’ll have to run through it a lot before I’m fluent.’
‘That’s what I find. I like to go for long walks running over it in my head. I talk to myself along country lanes.’
‘Good idea. I’m sure that hammers it home.’
‘Perhaps we might go walking together.’
Mrs Scadbolt went and came through the back door.
‘I’m not sure that would help much, Davina. I have far more dialogue with the vicar than I have with you.’
‘I’ve sat through so many rehearsals that I think I know the vicar’s part as well as I do my own. So shall we, Mr Kenworthy?’
The Anathema Stone Page 5