All the same, it was bloody odd. Presumably it was Roth who’d marked Michael out as ‘great teacher’ material, Stratton thought, scribbling notes, and, going by what had just happened, the kid must think so himself – or perhaps he just had a strong inclination to self-dramatisation. That sort of thing would be enough to give anyone a superiority complex.
As Adlard drove to the pub in Lincott where he’d arranged to meet Ballard and stay for the night, Stratton wondered what age Michael had been when Roth had come to this conclusion. It was, he supposed, fairly recent. Vague memories of lessons at Sunday school reminded him that Jesus had been twelve when he stayed behind in the temple in Jerusalem to talk to the people there and amaze them.
Stratton stared out at the trees and fields, greying and softening in the dusk, and wondered what Jeremy Lloyd, who believed himself marked out for greatness, had thought about Michael.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Stratton took a pull on his pint and sighed appreciatively. The George and Dragon looked the part, all right. Thatched, with wooden beams, worn flagstones and a roaring fire, it was empty but for himself, an old man in one corner, his skin cross-wrinkled by years of outdoor work to resemble the neck of a tortoise, and the landlord who stood behind the long bar, hands resting wide apart on the polished wood in the attitude of a priest. This aside, he looked the part as much as his pub did: corpulent and ruddy, with a flamboyant moustache and a scarlet handkerchief spilling from his jacket pocket. The sort, Stratton thought, who was accustomed to pouring out tall stories as easily as pints, with an equal amount of froth. ‘Denton,’ the man boomed, by way of introduction. ‘Call me George. And this,’ he gestured towards his wife, small, grey and clad in beige, who had just entered with Stratton’s sandwiches, ‘is the Dragon.’ Mrs Denton, who’d obviously heard this many times before, smiled wanly. ‘Otherwise known as Maisie. She’ll look after you.’
‘Stratton,’ said Stratton, adding ‘thank you,’ to Maisie Denton, who bobbed her head in acknowledgement before scooting back to the kitchen.
Denton held up a large hand as though conferring a blessing, before holding it out to be shaken. ‘A warm welcome to you.’ He gave Stratton a cheerfully calculating look – Albert Pierrepoint guessing his weight – before saying, ‘Business or pleasure?’
‘Business, I’m afraid.’
‘Thought so. I saw the car. You with the police, are you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Just come from the rectory, have you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Joe there’ – Denton gestured at the man in the corner, in the manner of someone hailing a taxi – ‘spotted you on his way over.’
‘Quite a bush telegraph, then.’
‘Oh, yes. Anything happens, we’ll hear about it sooner or later.’
‘In that case,’ Stratton produced the photograph from his pocket, ‘can you tell me about her?’
Denton looked at the picture, raised his eyebrows, and mimed a whistle. ‘Oh, yes. I can tell you about her all right. She was married to the old vicar, Reverend Milburn. Doesn’t look like a vicar’s wife, does she? Didn’t behave like one, either, by all accounts. Makes me think of Tommy Trinder.’ Here, he drew his hand down his chin as if to elongate it, and gave a passable imitation of the comedian’s leering smile. ‘“Beautiful girl, they call her Nescafé . . . She’s so easy to make!” Man mad, she was. Never tried it on with me, mind . . .’ Here his glance flicked in the direction of the kitchen. ‘More’s the pity. She was quite something, I can tell you. What you might call a piece of work, though.’ Glancing round, Stratton saw that old Joe, in his corner, was all ears and nodding in vigorous agreement. ‘In trouble, is she?’
‘Nothing like that. But we do need to speak to her.’
‘She not at the rectory? We heard she’d come back to live there. Not that I’ve seen her – you won’t catch any of that lot in here.’
‘Oh?’
Denton shrugged. ‘I suppose it’s against their religion – whatever that’s supposed to be. Mind you, if a bit of the other’ – he gave Stratton a conspiratorial leer – ‘isn’t on the cards either, I don’t suppose she’d be likely to stay around too long.’
‘But she lived at Lincott Rectory when it had the reputation of being haunted?’
‘That’s right. And there’s a lot round here who’ll tell you that was her doing, as well.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘There’s ways of faking these things.’ Denton nodded sagely. ‘She’d come up with these tales of things flying across the room and mysterious figures floating round the garden. Old Joe there, his sister-in-law Ivy used to work in the kitchen. Told me it used to frighten her to death, saucepans tumbling off the shelves, bells ringing, dirty words appearing on the walls, pins put on her chair . . . Lot of nasty tricks.’
‘Sounds like something a child might do.’
‘Exactly – easy enough to set up – and the place had a name for it before, didn’t it?’
‘Did it?’
‘Oh, yes. There was a nunnery there originally. Medieval times, I think – all gone now, of course. There’s all sorts of tales about that: a girl who’d been locked up because she wouldn’t marry the man her father wanted, so she took her own life, and a nun who’d fallen in love with some farmer’s son and was planning to run away with him, only she got killed when he lost control of his horse . . . Mrs Milburn claimed she’d seen them both, and the chap on horseback. All nonsense, although you’d probably find one or two in the village who still believe it. Mind you, all that old stuff was more or less forgotten until the Milburns came, but after it all started again we had men from the newspapers, trippers, the lot. She wrote to the papers, you see, and there was this chap who made a business of investigating ghosts and mediums – Maurice Hill, his name was – and one of the papers gave him a lot of money to come and write about it.’
‘When was that?’ asked Stratton.
‘Couple of years before the war.’ The photograph must have been older than he’d originally assumed, thought Stratton.
‘Hold up,’ said Denton, reaching beneath the bar to retrieve a shoebox. When he lifted the lid, Stratton saw a pile of newspaper cuttings. The topmost had a headline that read SÉANCE HELD IN HAUNTED HOUSE. MYSTERIOUS RAPPINGS IN THE RECTORY OF LINCOTT. It was dated 15 June 1938. ‘They came here about a year before that,’ he said. ‘She didn’t lose any time and of course, she got her picture in the papers as well . . . Some said she and Hill were carrying on and they were in it together. Wouldn’t surprise me if they had been. I mean, look at it from his point of view.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of open-mindedness. ‘He’d spent all his life showing how ghosts don’t exist and how mediums are tricking people, but if he could show that a ghost did exist, well, that’s a much better story, isn’t it?’ Denton paused to swipe at his nose with his scarlet handkerchief, ‘I didn’t do so badly out of it, either. Hordes of sightseers – me and the missus were run off our feet. Almost as good as the war, it was. Do you know, half the time those GIs just left their change on the bar, couldn’t be bothered with it, so—’
Realising that this could go on for some time, Stratton said, ‘What about the Reverend Milburn?’
‘That was a funny old thing . . .’ George shook his head. ‘We all read these accounts in the papers, and it was always her saying she’d seen these things flying about, not him. He said things about having pins placed on his chair and belongings not being where he’d put them – she could have been doing that easy, same as the pans falling off the shelves in the kitchen and scaring poor old Ivy. No one really knew how Reverend Milburn felt about it. I remember some story about him dousing the place in holy water, but that could have been because the dean told him to – the dean and the bishop didn’t like it at all, you see. Sensational, they said. Gave the church a bad name. But Reverend Milburn, well . . . He was a lot older than she was. Sixty if he was a day. They’d married when she was very young – no
t much more than a schoolgirl – and frankly, he wasn’t too well when he came here. I’m not a churchgoer myself, but the wife goes along—’ He broke off and, leaning through the doorway to the kitchen, bellowed, ‘Maisie!’
Mrs Denton appeared, looking resigned and wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Come here a minute, love.’ Denton put an arm round her thin shoulder. ‘Mr Stratton’s asking about Reverend Milburn, what he was like in church.’
‘I don’t know what stories George has been telling you . . .’ Maisie Denton frowned at her husband.
‘It’s all right, love,’ said Denton, instantly placatory. ‘Mr Stratton is a policeman.’ Seeing her look of alarm, he patted her with a huge paw and said, ‘There’s nothing wrong. He just wants to know about the Milburns, that’s all.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s all right,’ said Maisie, sounding doubtful. ‘One thing I will say: his sermons were always very moral. A lot of talk about sin. Everything he saw was sin, and he was always very hot on that.’ To Stratton’s astonishment, a sweetly mischievous smile lit up her face. ‘A bit surprising when you consider the way Mrs Milburn used to carry on. I felt a bit sorry for him, really, the way people used to talk about the pair of them behind their backs . . . And you could see he wasn’t well. He used to get muddled, forget what he was talking about halfway through the sermon. A bit bumbling, really, and it got worse over the years so you never knew what you were going to hear next. And then when he collapsed in the pulpit . . . I’ll never forget it. A couple of the choir carried him through to the vestry and there he was, laid out, with his head propped up on a hassock while they fetched the doctor. He’d had a stroke – we all thought it would kill him, but it didn’t. He retired after that, though, and the pair of them moved away. I did hear that he’d died, but I don’t know where or when it happened.’
‘What was he like when he wasn’t in church?’
Maisie Denton screwed up her face in thought, then said, ‘Do you know, I couldn’t really say. He kept himself to himself – we never really saw him out much, which is a bit unusual in a place like this. I think he was too ill to do much visiting in the parish. You know, I always thought he liked doing the burials best. Much better than marriages. I suppose that must have been because of Mrs Milburn.’
‘What did you think of her?’
‘Well . . .’
Seeing his wife hesitate, Denton said, ‘Not much, is the answer. None of the women here liked her. Didn’t trust her near their husbands.’
‘There was a bit of that,’ admitted Maisie. ‘Jealousy, really. Because she was nice-looking – fancy-looking, if you know what I mean. A bit flashy. Well, maybe not for London, but for here . . . always seemed to have new clothes . . . And you did hear a lot of stories – but I don’t know how true they were.’
‘And these lovers she was supposed to have had – was that just gossip?’
‘Well . . .’ Maisie flushed. ‘There was certainly plenty of talk about that journalist or psychic investigator, or whatever he was supposed to be.’
‘What about Ambrose Tynan?’ asked Stratton.
Maisie shook her head. ‘He wasn’t here then.’
‘Came just after the war ended,’ boomed Denton. ‘Down from London, although I did hear he had a place over at Otley, as well.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Village near Woodbridge. About forty miles, by road.’
‘Mrs Milburn had other visitors, too,’ Maisie put in, ‘men from London—’
‘Shouldn’t be surprised if some of them had been in on the haunting business as well,’ Denton interrupted.
‘But the vicar would have been present, wouldn’t he?’ asked Stratton. ‘If these visitors were staying in the rectory.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Denton, ‘but he was getting very doddery by then, and she’d got him right under her thumb, so . . . Perhaps he was afraid she’d up and leave him in his old age if he made a fuss about the other chaps. The fact is,’ he added judiciously, ‘we don’t really know what was going on. Stand behind a bar long enough and you’ll hear stranger things than that, though . . .’
‘I always wondered,’ said Maisie, ‘if that was why he talked about sin so much. As a warning to others.’
‘Did they have any children?’
‘Not when they were here,’ said Denton, ‘and I don’t suppose they did later on, either, not with him being so ill. There’s a boy stays up at the rectory now, though. Doesn’t go to the school, but I’ve seen him a few times in the village. Nice-looking lad. I’ve heard he’s her son, but if she got married again, we certainly never heard of it, so heaven knows who the father is.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘. . . And I suppose it’s possible,’ concluded Stratton. ‘Mind you, it’s one thing to get people believing that your house is haunted, and quite another to convince them that your son is the product of immaculate conception. And even if the Reverend Milburn was too old and feeble to consummate his marriage, there seem to have been several others who were happy to fill the breach – as it were – so it’s not as if she’s a virgin.’
‘That’s just gossip,’ said Ballard, hotly. ‘Old women in the village. Jealousy, pure and simple.’
Struck by the alacrity with which his former sergeant leapt to Mary Milburn’s defence, Stratton said, ‘So she’s worked her magic on you as well, has she?’
Stratton had worried that his meeting with Ballard – the first since he’d left West End Central – might be awkward, but after a couple of minutes’ wariness, they’d slipped back into their old relationship, but with Ballard expressing himself more boldly than hitherto (and without the ‘Sir’). Pretty much, anyway: Stratton was aware that, in the ten minutes or so they’d spent reminiscing about old times, neither man had – by mutual but unspoken agreement – brought up the subject of Davies. Certainly, he’d felt no hesitation in telling Ballard all the facts of the Lloyd case, including what the boy had said to him about feeling guilty, which he’d relayed in what he hoped was a suitably light-hearted manner. They were sitting in a corner of the snug, away from the trickle of early evening drinkers who, clustered around the bar, talked in low tones and glanced over their shoulders from time to time to check that Stratton and Ballard weren’t eavesdropping.
Embarrassed by his outburst, Ballard stared into his pint. ‘Anyway,’ he said finally, ‘I don’t see what it’s got to do with your inquiry.’
‘Probably nothing,’ Stratton conceded. ‘Well, that part of it, anyway. But I’ll lay good money that Mary/Ananda herself – whose photograph Lloyd treasured so much that he gave it to Wintle for safe keeping, remember – has a lot to do with it. What’s more, she’s disappeared.’
At this, Ballard jerked his head up. ‘No she hasn’t. I saw her this morning. Well, at lunchtime.’
‘You seem to be the last one who did, then. Roth didn’t seem to know where she’d gone or when she’d be back. But she’s clearly,’ he raised an enquiring eyebrow, ‘fresh in your mind.’
‘She did make quite an impression,’ said Ballard ruefully. ‘You haven’t met her yet. She has the most extraordinary sex appeal – you almost can’t breathe, let alone think of what to say. It was like being bloody seventeen again.’
‘That bad?’ Stratton grinned. ‘She sounds quite something.’
‘You wait till you meet her. You’ll see I’m not pulling your leg. But she can’t have gone far. Perhaps she’s just gone to stay with friends or something.’
‘Well, if she has, she didn’t tell them at the Foundation. Or they didn’t tell me – which seems a lot more likely. She seems to have an alibi for the night Lloyd died, though. Went to the pictures with Mr Tynan, apparently. I had the impression he was rather keen on her.’
‘That’s hardly surprising,’ said Ballard. ‘But there’s no reason – other than Lloyd having her photograph – why she should be a suspect, is there?’
‘None at all,’ Stratton agreed, remembering Roth’s certainty about
the matter. ‘At least, not at the moment.’
‘I’d no idea she’d been married to the vicar,’ said Ballard, thoughtfully. ‘She’s obviously quite a bit older than she looks.’ He narrowed his eyes in calculation. ‘If they were newly married when they came here in . . . 1937, you said, didn’t you, and she was, say, twenty . . .’
‘And the landlord here told me that Reverend Milburn was at least sixty,’ said Stratton.
‘Blimey. So if she was twenty in 1937 she’d be – what? – thirty-nine, now. She doesn’t look anything like it.’
‘Some women don’t,’ said Stratton, thinking of Diana.
‘Ten years younger, at least,’ said Ballard.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve noticed any anaemic-looking virgins knocking about the place, have you?’
‘Very droll. You’d think someone would’ve mentioned about her being the vicar’s wife, wouldn’t you? Mind you, I never asked.’ Ballard shrugged.
‘Bit mean about sharing information, are they, the local coppers?’
‘They can be. Part of it’s like anywhere – thinking that CID will take over anything where they think there’s a chance of clearing it up, then take all the credit, so you can understand that. But part of it’s the place. It takes a bloody long time to be accepted. Parsons – he’s the village bobby – he told me that when he came here it was six months before anyone spoke to him voluntarily, other than to say good morning, and he’s only from Ipswich – but now that he is accepted, he’s gone like the rest of them, not interested in anything that happens outside the parish boundaries. Anything inside them is a different matter, of course.’
Here, Stratton had a sudden memory of how, when he was nine, one of their neighbour’s cows had given birth to a two-headed calf, which had been discussed with a level of excitement and urgency never accorded to the impending war.
He rolled his eyes in sympathy. ‘Don’t I know it! I grew up in a village, remember.’
‘Well, it came as a bit of a shock to me. You always hear that people in the country are like that, but I thought it was just something that town people said about them. I mean, it’s not as if people here have never been anywhere – most of the men went away to fight in one of the wars – but you wouldn’t know it to listen to them.’
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