The Office of the Dead

by Taylor, Andrew

  She turned to me. ‘He sometimes says it’s me that’s muddled, Mrs Appleyard, but half the time it’s him.’

  ‘I’m sure you said it was one of the canons.’

  ‘I said they thought it might be one of the canons, Wilfred. That’s a very different thing. There was a lot of gossip, I remember, a lot of wagging of nasty tongues.’

  ‘Was the canon Mr Youlgreave?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the name. How do you know?’

  ‘Just a guess. He used to be the Cathedral librarian so I’ve come across a few references to him.’

  ‘They didn’t like him, that was the long and the short of it. He tried to rock the boat, Mrs Appleyard, and nobody likes people like that.’

  ‘How did he rock the boat?’

  ‘There used to be some dreadful places in Rosington then. Down by the river. He made a fuss about them, tried to get something done.’

  ‘Like Swan Alley.’

  ‘How do you know about Swan Alley?’ she snapped.

  ‘Someone mentioned there was slum housing down there.’

  ‘All the land down there was owned by the dean and chapter. They’d let it out, of course, but it was still their land. So they didn’t like him pointing the finger. Well, they wouldn’t, would they? It’s human nature, isn’t it? Mind you, Canon Youlgreave did have some funny ideas. They got rid of him in the end. Ganged up on him, I shouldn’t wonder. He wasn’t a well man.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘But such a lovely gentleman.’

  Mr Gotobed was looking bewildered. ‘So it wasn’t him after all.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cutting up birds and things.’

  ‘How can it be? He’s been dead for fifty years.’

  ‘Not now, Mother. Then.’

  ‘There’s a copycat about if you ask me.’ She stared dreamily into her teacup and then looked at me. ‘Like I said, Mrs Appleyard, things don’t change, not around here. I said as much to Dr Flaxman only the other day.’

  ‘But who would want to copy something like this?’ I asked. ‘And who would know about it in the first place?’

  ‘Plenty of people,’ she shot back. ‘You’d be surprised. Fifty years isn’t really a long time.’

  ‘Not when you’re your age, Mother,’ said Mr Gotobed, beaming nervously and brushing the crumbs from his apron. ‘Next thing we know we’ll be seeing your telegram from the Queen and your photo in the Observer. That will be a treat.’

  She shook off his interruption like a fly. ‘Fifty years isn’t long in Rosington.’ She waved a hand at the window overlooking the Close. ‘Especially out there.’

  ‘Just some lad, I expect,’ Mr Gotobed said. ‘Fiddling around with his penknife. I dare say he didn’t mean any harm.’

  Mrs Gotobed wrinkled her nose, sipped her tea and wrinkled her nose again. ‘This is stewed, Wilfred. That’s not very nice for our visitor, is it? Couldn’t you make some fresh?’

  In an instant Mr Gotobed was on his feet, apologizing, gathering teacups, dropping teaspoons on the carpet, and denying that making a fresh pot would be in the slightest bit troublesome. He picked up the tray and then realized he would have difficulty opening the door. I stood up to do it for him. He edged out of the room, keeping as far away from me as possible.

  ‘Close the door,’ Mrs Gotobed told me. ‘There’s a draught.’

  On my way back to the chair, I paused by the mantelpiece. There was a photograph of a boy in a chorister’s cassock and ruff.

  ‘Is this Wilfred, Mrs Gotobed?’

  She nodded. ‘He cried when his voice broke. Always was a silly boy. But kind-hearted, I’ll say that.’

  I sat down. Now we were alone, she looked younger, as if age was part of a disguise she wore when her son was in the room.

  ‘Have you lived in this house a long time?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s one good thing about a place like this, about it not changing. They’d had a Gotobed in the Close for the past hundred years, so they didn’t want a change when his dad died. Just as well. I don’t know what he’d have done otherwise. I don’t know where we’d have lived.’

  A short, uncomfortable silence followed. Pursy woke and looked first at Mrs Gotobed and then at me. Coals settled in the grate, and the window looking out on the Close rattled in its frame as a squall of rain spattered against the glass.

  ‘If it wasn’t Canon Youlgreave cutting up animals,’ I said, ‘then who was it? Did you ever find out?’

  She glanced at me, her face at once sly and unsurprised. ‘Not for certain.’

  ‘But you had an idea?’

  ‘There was a boy.’

  ‘Can you remember his name?’

  ‘Simon. Was it Simon?’ Her head nodded on to her chest and her eyelids closed. ‘Don’t mind me if I nod off,’ she mumbled. ‘And don’t go. Wilfred will bring the tea, that will wake me up.’

  ‘Simon who?’

  ‘Simon,’ she repeated. ‘Good-looking boy. He went away.’

  Then the door opened and Mr Gotobed walked backwards into the room carrying the tray. For the rest of my visit the three of us took part in short, intense bursts of conversation, punctuated with pauses when Mrs Gotobed nodded off for a moment.

  She was curious about Mr Treevor. She had heard that he was living in the Dark Hostelry.

  ‘I thought I saw someone who might be him the other day,’ she said. ‘Old gentleman, with a big head, not too steady on his pins. Went into Canons’ Meadow. He was by himself.’

  ‘Mr Treevor doesn’t go out much,’ I said. ‘Not by himself.’

  But he had gone out on his own on Rosie’s birthday. He said he’d gone to feed some ducks.

  ‘That’s Mother all over,’ Mr Gotobed whispered as he showed me out of the house. ‘Likes to know everything about everyone.’

  It was only as I was walking back through the Close that I realized Mrs Gotobed had asked me very few questions about myself, and none about how I came to be living in the Dark Hostelry, or the whereabouts of my husband. She must have known that Henry had been sacked from the Choir School. She must have noted my surname. If she asked no questions, then presumably she knew the answers already.

  At the Dark Hostelry I found Janet, Rosie and Mr Treevor in the kitchen. Rosie and Mr Treevor were eating cheese on toast. Rosie’s doll was on the chair beside her.

  ‘How did it go?’ Janet asked.

  Rosie pressed the doll’s chest. ‘Mama!’ it said.

  ‘Angel wants more,’ Rosie interpreted.

  ‘Coming, darling,’ Janet said mechanically.

  ‘It was interesting.’ I sat down at the table. ‘And she was very protective of Wilfred.’

  ‘Wilfred?’

  ‘Mr Gotobed to you. Mrs G. was a hen with one chick. I think I was being sized up.’

  Janet giggled. ‘As a future Mrs Gotobed?’

  It was the first time I had heard her laugh for days. ‘I don’t think the current Mrs Gotobed would approve of a woman in my situation.’

  I tried to speak lightly but Janet wasn’t fooled. All the laughter drained from her face.

  ‘Did you learn anything about Francis Youlgreave?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really. Except Mrs Gotobed’s a supporter. A real gentleman, she said. She thinks he wasn’t liked in the Close because he ruffled too many feathers about the slums by the river. Apparently the dean and chapter owned the freehold.’

  I didn’t mention Simon. David had told Janet about the pigeon Mr Gotobed had found, but I hadn’t yet passed on Mr Gotobed’s information that someone else, fifty years earlier, had a penchant for cutting up small animals in the Close. The Byfields had other things on their minds at present, and also I didn’t think Janet would thank me, or that David would approve. When I was in Rosington that year, I often had the feeling he was looking for reasons to disapprove of me.

  ‘So Canon Youlgreave remains a man of mystery,’ Janet said, cutting the slice of bread into two, half for Rosie, half for Angel.

  ‘What abou
t mine?’ Mr Treevor demanded.

  ‘Just coming, Daddy.’

  There was something in her voice that alerted me. ‘How have you been?’

  Janet pushed her hair from her forehead. ‘Fine, really. A bit tired.’

  Our eyes met. She was tired, so she should rest. But how could she rest with these people in this house?

  I said, ‘When the weather’s cleared up, I’ll mow the lawn.’

  Janet began to speak, but was interrupted by the slamming of the door in the hall above. She straightened up. Suddenly the tiredness was smoothed away.

  ‘David’s home early,’ she said. ‘That’s nice, isn’t it, poppet?’

  Rosie nodded.

  ‘You’ve got crumbs on your chin,’ Janet went on. ‘Wipe them off with your napkin and sit up.’

  Rosie obeyed.

  Usually David would come down to the kitchen to say hello when he got back from the Theological College, if only for a moment.

  Janet took some toast from the grill, added a layer of grated cheese and slid it back. ‘I’ll just pop up and see if he needs a cup of tea.’

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on the toast,’ I said.

  I listened to Janet’s slow footsteps on the stairs to the hall. A moment later I gave Mr Treevor his second slice of cheese on toast.

  ‘Thank you, Mummy,’ he said, and seized it with both hands.

  He had almost finished by the time Janet came back downstairs. I knew by her face something was wrong.

  ‘Janet –’

  ‘There was a meeting of the trustees this afternoon,’ she said dully. She leant on the table, taking the weight from her feet. ‘They’ve decided to close the Theological College after all.’

  31

  I was still angry on Thursday morning when the parcel came. I was in the drawing room doing the dusting. The postman knocked at the back door and David answered. He brought the parcel up to me, which I suppose was meant as an olive branch. I recognized the handwriting at once and so I expect did he.

  He gave me the parcel and said, ‘Wendy, I must apologize.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Last night. I know I was upset but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.’

  ‘And on Janet and Rosie,’ I reminded him, rubbing salt into the wound. I was in no mood for an apology, and I thought if David was going to put himself on a pedestal as a clergyman, he should have had all the more reason to act like a civilized and Christian human being.

  ‘Yes,’ he said mildly. ‘You’re right.’ But the Olivier nostrils flared momentarily and I realized that I was trespassing yet again on the wrong side of an invisible line. Not that I cared. ‘In any case,’ he went on, ‘it was unforgivable of me.’

  Suddenly there was no longer any satisfaction in attacking him. ‘It’s all right. Anyway, it’s not me you have to worry about, is it? It’s Janet.’

  He nodded curtly and left the room. I knew it was pointless to goad him, but if he was angry with me then I was angry with him. There hadn’t been much point in his shouting at Janet over supper last night, or in his storming out of the kitchen in the middle of the meal and slamming the door behind him.

  If David hadn’t been a priest, if he hadn’t been a man who habitually kept his emotions so tightly under control, it would have been less shocking. After he’d left, Janet had wept into a tea towel, Rosie had played with Angel in the corner by the dresser, and Mr Treevor had quietly finished off all the untouched food on everyone else’s plates.

  I sat down on the sofa, turning Henry’s parcel over and over in my hands. On Monday Henry had said he wanted to buy a birthday present for Rosie and in the end there hadn’t been time that afternoon. He had the cheek to ask me to do it for him, but I’d refused.

  It was odd seeing my name in Henry’s handwriting, as subtly unsettling as receiving a self-addressed envelope. I undid the string and unwrapped the brown paper. Inside were three books and a letter. Noddy Goes to Toyland and Hurrah for Little Noddy were by Enid Blyton. He had written Rosie’s name inside but in a way they were meant for me. The third book was a slim green volume almost identical to the library book in my bedside cupboard upstairs. It was a copy of Francis Youlgreave’s The Tongues of Angels.

  I opened the letter, which was written on note-paper from Brown’s Hotel. He was obviously still doing his best to run through the £47,000 as soon as possible.

  My dear Wendy

  I hope Rosie likes the Noddy books. Noddy looks like an odious little twerp to me, but perhaps I’m not the best judge.

  Anyway, over to Youlgreave. I’ve done a little checking. There is a Farnworthy collection listed in the catalogue of the British Museum Library – mainly theology. It doesn’t include the sermons of Dr Giles Briscow, though the library does have a late-seventeenth-century copy of that. So presumably it’s not the one that Youlgreave had, if Youlgreave’s ever existed.

  Now for the big news. On Tuesday I went to the Blue Dahlia only to find your little bald man just leaving. I followed him back to Holborn. He’s got an office over a tobacconist’s. Harold Munro, Ex-Detective Sergeant Metropolitan Police, Private Investigations & Confidential Enquiries Undertaken. That’s what it said on his card in the tobacconist’s window. And I know it’s him, because he came into the shop for some cigarettes while I was there and the tobacconist called him Mr Munro.

  Munro asked the tobacconist to take any messages the next day, that was Tuesday, because he had to be out of the office. The tobacconist said where was he going, and hoped it was somewhere nice. And Munro said it was a place called Roth, up the Thames near Shepperton.

  There were footsteps in the hall and I looked up. Mr Treevor had come up from the kitchen and was moving towards the downstairs lavatory.

  ‘Mr Treevor?’ I called.

  He paused, his hand on the lavatory door. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You know the man you saw watching the house from the High Street?’

  ‘I’ve seen him before,’ Mr Treevor said. ‘I’m pretty sure he’s a ghost.’

  ‘Was he bald?’

  ‘Might have been.’ Mr Treevor twisted the handle of the lavatory door. ‘Yes, I think he was.’

  ‘And can you remember the shape of his bald patch? You must have seen it from above when he was in the High Street.’

  ‘It wasn’t a nice shape. He wasn’t a nice man.’

  ‘Was it triangular? A bit like a map of Africa?’

  ‘I expect so,’ said Mr Treevor obligingly, vanishing into the lavatory and locking the door behind him.

  I went back to Henry’s letter.

  So next morning I went down to Waterloo and caught a train for Shepperton – Roth is too small to have a station. In fact, Roth hasn’t got much of anything besides a church, a bus shelter and a pub. It’s one of those villages that got swallowed by the suburbs and apart from a whacking great reservoir and one or two fields that the builders forgot, all you can see are houses.

  But there’s a sort of green where the bus shelter is and the pub. This seems to be the centre of the place and I reckoned if Munro came to Roth he’d probably come there sooner or later. I spent about an hour having a cup of coffee in a ghastly little café, all chintz and horse brasses. No luck there. When it was opening time, I pottered along to the pub. Luckily our Harold had had the same idea. He was talking to an old codger in the snug, so I nipped into the lounge bar, got myself a drink and settled down for a spot of eavesdropping.

  I wonder if he’s ex-Metropolitan Police because they kicked him out for inefficiency. I sat at the bar pretending to read the paper. I could hear some of what they were saying. Munro seemed to be asking about the Youlgreaves. They mentioned someone called Lady Youlgreave who lives in the Old Manor House (just down the road). Unfortunately some people came in and I couldn’t hear very well, because people were talking loudly on the other side of me.

  But I heard the name Francis Youlgreave several times. The old codger was rabbiting on about a place called Carter’s Meadow. I t
hink Youlgreave may have upset a neighbour by doing something beastly to a cat there.

  Munro left soon afterwards. The last I saw of him, he was walking fast down the road to the station.

  I didn’t want to follow, because I thought it might make my interest in him a little too obvious. So I had a look at the church, which is small and old. Francis Youlgreave is buried here – there is a memorial tablet in the chancel to him. All very discreet – just the family crest, his name and the dates of his birth and death.

  The only other thing was the poems. There was a box of second-hand books near the door, threepence each, all profits to the Church Restoration Fund. One of them was some poems by Francis Youlgreave, which I thought you might like. I had a look at it on the train back to town, and I couldn’t make head or tail of it. Nutty as a fruit cake, as your mother used to say.

  On Thursday, I’ll try and find out something about Martlesham and I’ll give you a ring in the evening. With luck you’ll get this before I phone.

  I meant everything I said on Monday. I know I’ve been a bloody fool but don’t let’s throw it all away. If you haven’t cashed that cheque, please do.

  All my love,

  Henry

  I don’t know why, but that letter made me want to cry. I suppose it underlined how far Henry and I had travelled since we married, and especially since I found him with his Hairy Widow on the beach.

  I went up to my room with the parcel. I’d have to find some paper to wrap up the present for Rosie. The house was very quiet. Janet had taken Rosie to school, David was in his study and Mr Treevor was in his room. I mounted the second flight of stairs up to my landing. When I put the books in my bedside table, I noticed the sprig of lavender resting on Henry’s cheque beside the gin bottle. I didn’t feel lucky. Just miserable.

  I lit a cigarette. I was in no hurry to go to work. I stared at the photograph Canon Osbaston had lent me. It was propped up on an old washstand in the corner of the room behind the door. The trouble was, nothing made sense, then or now. What the hell were Martlesham and Munro up to? If they wanted to find out about Francis, why couldn’t they do it openly? Perhaps there was some obvious explanation staring me in the face which I couldn’t grasp because I was too busy making a mess of my life and watching Janet and David making a mess of theirs. Where did the mutilated pigeon come in? And what about the little man Mr Treevor saw, the little man like a shadow who might or might not be the same as, or at least overlap with, Harold Munro, the private investigator with a bald patch the shape of Africa?