The Anathema Stone

by John Buxton Hilton

  ‘I couldn’t really care whether they are to be believed or not.’

  ‘You’ll feel the same way about Alice Brightmore, then, the Colonel’s help – three mornings a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays since 1955. Otherwise she has practically no income, except what she can earn cleaning for summer residents, sewing, baby-sitting, part-time help behind the post office counter in high season. Fifty-one, a spinster, dried-out, considered a prude. She’ll sell raffle tickets and so on, cut sandwiches, but never gets on any committees. A mouse, in fact.’

  ‘The night I asked for my gloves, I paid an unobtrusive visit to Sidi Barrani,’ Kenworthy said.

  ‘I noticed you packed your bedroom slippers as well.’

  ‘I was looking for three things: I found only two of them. But I did find a home, to quote the old soldiers’phrase, as regimental as a button-stick. And the garden! If a weed had had the effrontery to appear in his rye-grass-free lawn, Colonel Noakes would emerge with a special tool, uproot weed, wipe tool clean and return it to its Dymo-labelled niche. I was looking for signs that a trowel was missing. I thought that perhaps Alice Brightmore might have borrowed one – on behalf of her friends. But there wasn’t a gap in the rack. The Colonel had a small set of hand tools and still kept them in the expanded polystyrene package in which he had bought them.’

  ‘Alice Brightmore would never have dug a trap for the Colonel!’

  ‘I know. That’s what I went to prove. Next, I wanted to see the Colonel’s engagement book; as precise and legible as an order of battle. I wanted to know whether Davina had been to Sidi Barrani recently. And she had – three times – for afternoon tea. “D.S., Practise part,” he had written. Finally, I looked for any evidence at all of female overnighting. I found none. Even the linen-basket had been cleared. Alice Brightmore probably did that the night she claimed she went down there to look after the Labrador. I couldn’t help feeling, when I first heard that, that she’d left it a bit late in the day –’

  ‘She had been helping out in the Hall that night, and if I know anything at all about my fellow woman, I know that Alice Brightmore wouldn’t –’

  ‘That’s something that I never would claim to know. But maybe she didn’t. Maybe Colonel Noakes was hung-up and virginal. I don’t think now that it matters much. What does matter is that if it was only her fantasy that was threatened, even if it was only the reputation of her Commanding Officer that was at stake, it might have been enough to set her at Davina’s throat.’

  ‘Alice Brightmore!’

  ‘Alice Brightmore out one dark night with the rest of the girls.’

  Elspeth made a dramatic effort to show that she was still in command of her patience.

  ‘Shall I go on?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘Emmeline Malkin, née Allsop. Aged forty-eight. Husband aged sixty-seven, retired farm-worker, has osteo-arthritis. Has been domestic help at Dogtooth Farm since 1955, 8.30 a.m. to midday daily, also Tuesday afternoons for the ironing. Her nocturnal movements are well known in the village: Tuesdays and Saturdays she spends the night at the farm, but crosses the village only under cover of darkness.’

  ‘Well done! And all these women have one thing in common. They’re either without men, or have the sort of man who leaves them in need of supplementary benefits.’

  ‘You are disgusting, Simon.’

  ‘But realistic.’

  ‘Surely you see that Emmeline Malkin would never have done anything to jeopardize Jesse Allsop. She’s only waiting for her husband to die.’

  ‘You really think of Jesse as a marrying type?’

  ‘She evidently does.’

  ‘But maybe she wanted to punish him.’

  ‘By dumping Davina’s body on his doorstep? Simon–’

  ‘I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – once people start working in gangs –’

  Elspeth sighed.

  ‘Have it your own way. And you’re determined to exploit Christine?’

  ‘And myself. The bait has to be big enough. I’m determined to make that lot operate again.’

  ‘They won’t. Especially if they’re as guilty as you think.’

  ‘We shall see.’

  Elspeth tidied up her notes, put a paper-clip on them and handed them to him. He folded them and put them away between the pages of the bulky notebook that came with him even on holiday.

  ‘I’m sorry to say, Simon, that for once I have no confidence in you at all.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m going to force battle, and your confidence is something I could have done with. I also need your understanding.’

  ‘You know you have that. You’ve asked Christine here for half past ten?’

  ‘Or thereabouts, I said.’

  ‘And you want me out of the way?’

  ‘That’s putting it harshly.’

  ‘It’s putting it as it is. And Mrs Scadbolt?’

  ‘Is to see what I want her to see.’

  ‘I wish you joy of it. I’ll get rid of the breakfast things for you.’

  Christine had been booked for roughly ten thirty. She had still not appeared by ten minutes to eleven. Mrs Scadbolt was knocking about noisily upstairs. Kenworthy had gone back to Trollope and was turning the page at regular intervals. At five minutes to eleven there was a tap on the panel of the front door. Kenworthy went to open it and found himself face to face with Dunderdale, the vicar’s cloak swaying gently behind him. Behind the cloak there was autumn sunshine on the stone outlines of the village, giving the cottages an unfamiliar, slightly incongruous look.

  Dunderdale smiled, a forced smile. Kenworthy asked him in.

  ‘I’ve been talking to my housekeeper.’

  Kenworthy folded a slip of paper and slid it between the pages of his novel.

  ‘A man of your experience, Kenworthy, must surely see in a single glance that Doreen Malkin is a humble, dutiful, sweet-natured, unimaginative –’

  ‘All of that,’ Kenworthy said, ‘I have never doubted.’

  ‘She has told me the truth.’

  He looked at Kenworthy, expecting some help in getting his narrative launched. Kenworthy inclined his head to one side.

  ‘But of course, you know the truth already. You know exactly who was in the group that beat Davina with nettles. At least, you almost do.’

  Kenworthy appeared to be looking at him without blinking.

  ‘My housekeeper was one of them.’

  ‘Humble, sweet-natured,’ Kenworthy mumbled. Dunderdale was riled by the sarcasm.

  ‘Yes – humble and sweet-natured. I expect that there were humble and sweet-natured men in the crowd that howled for Barabbas.’

  ‘Crowd psychology has a lot to answer for.’

  ‘From their own point of view,’ Dunderdale pleaded, ‘they had plenty to be angry about – or thought they had, with Geraldine Cartwright moulding the bullets of moral indignation, and Vera Scadbolt aching to lead the firing of them. There was Emmeline bitterly resenting the attentions that Davina had been paying to Jesse; Alice Brightmore seething because she was making a fool of the Colonel. Doreen Malkin, rightly or wrongly, was scandalized because she thought that even I had lost my sense of proportion over the girl.’

  Dunderdale paused. Kenworthy did not come to his rescue.

  ‘Yet perhaps it is as well that they set out to trail Davina, the night she walked the brink with Kevin O’Shea. They arrived on the scene only just in time. Davina could never have defended herself.’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘In a shrubbery at the Grange. And here is something that you did not know, Kenworthy; Davina and the Irishman came down amongst the trees from the direction of the house. And behind, stalking them, was the girl everybody calls Triss: the one who had most to lose if O’Shea chose to transfer his affections. He and Davina came tripping down a slope, heading towards a mossy little corner that’s a standing joke amongst everyone who knows the outskirts of this village. But when O’Shea pushed the girl down t
o the ground, it was at once obvious that this was to be no “debonair and gentle tale of love and languishment”. It was then that the women struck, and Triss, coming in at an angle, struck too. At first it was simply a question of wrenching the couple apart: O’Shea fled, but Davina fought like a she-cat: they had to restrain her. But for that she might have escaped the beating. But her clothing was torn from her back, and it was when Vera Scadbolt caught sight of the bare flesh that she seized the first nettle.’

  Upstairs, Mrs Scadbolt was knocking her broom against a skirtingboard as if she harboured ill-feeling against the very fabric of the house.

  ‘But let me make this clear, Kenworthy. That incident was the sum total of Doreen Malkin’s involvement. She was – and is – thoroughly ashamed of herself. She has never been able to erase that image from her mind. Though she did not actually herself strike the girl, she had gone so far as to uproot a nettle –’

  ‘And she was extremely upset when she told you all this?’

  ‘In the last throes of distress.’

  ‘So upset that she made a couple of very bad mistakes in the telling of it,’ Kenworthy said.

  Dunderdale looked at him with undisguised anxiety.

  ‘She told you that Alice Brightmore had joined in the episode of the nettles because Davina had been importuning the Colonel?

  But that was last August. Surely it was only with the beginnings of your play that the girl started visiting Noakes?’

  Dunderdale frowned, racking his brain for an explanation.

  ‘In other words, Dunderdale, your Doreen Malkin is getting mixed up between two occasions. She is thinking, too, of the events of that Friday night.’

  ‘In which she did not participate at all.’

  ‘But she does not deny that there were events –’

  ‘She knew that Geraldine Cartwright had been talking to Vera Scadbolt again. About you, this time, and the ass they thought you were about to make of yourself over Davina. All they were going to do was spy on you, Vera Scadbolt and some of the others.’

  ‘Some of the others?’

  ‘Doreen Malkin steered clear. She had stayed in the Hall late that night, putting the finishing touches to costumes. When we broke up she kept out of the way of the others. She cycled home alone. And for my part I cannot believe that Alice Brightmore either –’

  ‘What you are saying is that it suits your prejudices for only two women to have been involved: Vera Scadbolt and Jesse Allsop’s mistress.’

  ‘It certainly seems –’

  ‘It can’t be true,’ Kenworthy said. ‘Your housekeeper cannot escape involvement.’

  ‘I don’t know on what you base that.’

  ‘On Davina Stott’s script,’ Kenworthy said. ‘It had got back into John Horrocks’s possession. I found it up at the Grange.’

  ‘No mystery there. I gave it to him personally.’

  ‘That is what I was told. And how did you get hold of it?’

  Dunderdale began to look concerned again.

  ‘Doreen Malkin gave it to me. She had picked it up in the Hall when she was tidying up the next day. I expect that in all the excitement, and being escorted home by you, Davina had forgotten it.’

  ‘She had not. She had it under her arm as we walked across the Green. She still had it with her when I left her at the gate of the bungalow. And I found a few of the bottom sheets in the very same shrubbery at the Grange that we have just been talking about. I told you that Doreen Malkin made two bad mistakes.’

  ‘I am sure that there is an innocent explanation. I must have another talk with her.’

  ‘Better you than Gleed,’ Kenworthy said, and then, as Dunderdale was about to plunge them into a new inquest into the whole argument, he changed the subject with a sudden burst of apparent cheerfulness.

  ‘What do you really make of John Horrocks, Vicar? I mean objectively, and stripping the facts of your pious hopes.’

  ‘John Horrocks? A worthy soul, who has rapidly become unmixed since he settled here and got caught up in this teaching job. A strange mixture of moderation and madness when he first came here. Aesthetically sensitive, product of comprehensive sixth form and campus university; developed a social conscience and then went to war with the wrong enemies – alongside the wrong allies. I’ve wondered all along how obstinate the death-throes of his idealism would be. I’d like to think he was helped by his work on the play. It canalized him towards more balanced things. Of course, he has been besotted with Christine. He must surely have seen through the inanity of these fanatics – but Christine was uncompromisingly committed – sincerely if mistakenly.’

  ‘The change that’s come over her, since this new acting job –’

  ‘Is scarcely believable? It’s believable enough, Kenworthy, if you know the background. Middle-class, went to drama school against the wishes of both parents, couldn’t make the grade when she got there. Rebelled – ineffectively – in the usual way. Went to pieces. Saved only by the devotion of John Horrocks –’

  It was now a quarter to twelve. Another knock at the door, and this time it was Christine, an hour and a quarter late. Dunderdale was quick to spot that Kenworthy had something in hand, and lost no time in moving himself back to the vicarage.

  She was looking pale and uncertain, her eyes nervously scanning

  Kenworthy’s face. But at least she had made some concessions: it was the first time he had ever seen her in a skirt: a worn length of blue denim that had been made up from something unpicked. But at least it represented an effort. Beneath it she had shapely legs, bare and a little goosefleshy. She had washed and tidied her hair, but still put her fingers up at intervals as if to wipe it out of her eyes.

  He stepped aside from the door and heartily asked her in. She preceded him into the shabby living-room.

  ‘Make yourself at home. Take a good look at the fruits of a lifetime of bourgeois log-rolling.’

  She laughed, not genuinely, but because it was expected of her. She sat down uncomfortably, too near to the edge of the sofa.

  ‘Mr Kenworthy, I’m not at all certain what it is you want me to do.’

  ‘Follow your nose. Be yourself.’

  ‘It’s going to seem strange.’

  ‘What? Being yourself?’

  ‘I don’t mean that. Not exactly.’

  She leaned her head back, closed her eyes, looked exceedingly tired.

  ‘What, then – exactly?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know how to explain it. Being on your side –’

  ‘You’ve changed a lot – in a short space of time.’

  ‘Have I? You, as a stranger, must notice that. Yes, I know I have. I’ve been liberated, that’s why. If only it will last.’

  ‘Surely it’s up to you to make it last?’

  ‘You don’t really know the first thing about me, do you?’ she said.

  ‘Only what I can guess. And perhaps I’ve guessed wrong.’

  ‘Go on, then – what have you guessed?’

  She had opened her eyes again now, wide, and was looking into his face with frank and searching curiosity.

  ‘That at some time or other you lit out on your own. Against all advice. And then made a mess of things.’

  She acknowledged the truth of this gravely. ‘Want the details?’

  ‘If you can bear to delve.’

  And she began to talk, jerkily at first, gathering confidence as she went along.

  ‘Sevenoaks: what a background! Father Leadenhall Street on the 8.17. Mother a Weight Watcher who breeds King Charles Spaniels. I didn’t do a stroke of work in my last year in the sixth – wasn’t even on the school premises half the time. I leaned over backwards to get low grades in my A levels – I had to – I’d already got a provisional university place, and didn’t want it at any price. That was my mother’s doing. It had to be university or bust – because of my cousins. Acting was out; but I’d been Vicky in a school production of These Glorious Years. My father wouldn’t hear of drama school. A
s far as he’s concerned, all actresses are Zola’s Nana. Mother, I think, was in two minds when I did get my place at RADA. But she couldn’t see the gap between bottom and top. And Papa stuck to his guns – refused to make my money up. The mean bastard, he has plenty. I had to make do with the barest of grants. Please don’t think that’s what cracked me up. I got by.’

  She leaned back into the sofa, looking at Kenworthy as if she were speaking from the depths of an immense physical weariness.

  ‘I got by in the survival stakes, but when it came to acting, I was suddenly up against God knows what blockages. I just couldn’t do it any more; couldn’t face the footlights; couldn’t learn lines. They gave me a part in an end-of-term show and I made a howling mess of it. I had no confidence; the part was far removed from me, anyway. I tried to carry the first night off by going on high.’

  She remembered it with convincing revulsion.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever been on an LSD trip?’

  ‘A privilege I’ve always denied myself,’ Kenworthy said.

  ‘I made such a bestial exhibition of myself that I had to run away from it. That was when John found me. He was just coming out of college himself, piddling about with these anarchists. I went for anarchy in a big way – was into it far deeper than John ever was. He was marvellous. He held on to me. Steered me. Hung on to his patience, waiting for the moment to be ripe. Now, thanks to the new jobs he’s got for us both, I know I can do what I’d given up hope of.’

  Again the impression of last-ditch fatigue; she was struggling – and only just winning.

  ‘John had not told me he had applied for the jobs in the school workshop drama. Ben Archer was booked to come out and see us in the normal course of rehearsals. When the play was cancelled John put on our demonstration solo. Of course, the TV boys made the most of it. Yet it hasn’t been broadcast yet, has it?’