Pictures of Perfection

by Reginald Hill

  But Pascoe, with i’s still to dot and t’s to cross, took the enormous risk of ignoring him.

  He said, ‘The next morning Mr Lillingstone took the uniforms, or at least one and a half uniforms, to the dry cleaners in town, popped into Marks and bought a pair of trousers of the same colour to replace the torn ones, and went to Corpse Cottage to put them in the wardrobe. Only he didn’t realize that not only was the hunt already up for you, Harry, but also Halavant had spotted the substitution and worked out who must have taken it. Lillingstone lied quite well for a vicar. Funny what a man will do for love, isn’t it, Harry? I mean, that’s what got you into this mess, isn’t it? Love? All for love?’

  He spoke gently, almost sadly, not at all mockingly.

  Dalziel made a noise like a dog trying to bring up a bit of bone that had got stuck in its throat.

  Bendish gave him a look which was composed equally of scorn and pity.

  He said seriously, ‘If you’ve read my letters I thought you’d have understood. Of course I love Fran so much I’d do anything for her. But I hope I’d have done this anyway, because it needed doing. It was too important not to do.’

  ‘For crying out loud!’ exclaimed Dalziel. ‘You stole a sodding picture, you didn’t stop World War Three!’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Bendish. ‘I did something to help the village keep its school without having to sell the Green. Maybe ultimately that’ll help tip the balance, one more kid getting a decent education, one more place keeping out the concrete. I don’t know. All I know is that if things are perfectible, if things really can get better, then we’ve all got to start where we’re at. I tried to give myself a bit of lift-off by joining the police. It seemed to make sense. If you want to influence society, go where there’s a chance of getting a bit of clout. I should have learned up in Newcastle. It didn’t work out there but I just blamed myself.’

  ‘Whereas it’s actually the police force’s fault?’ said Pascoe, interested.

  ‘No. Not as such. Look, I gave it another try down here. I tried to be what everyone told me a good cop should be, so that ultimately I could fit in and really help. Enscombe seemed so together, so very much itself, that I felt I should be able to make it work here if I could make it work anywhere. But after a while it began to feel just like it felt up in Newcastle, I was going nowhere, nothing was happening, and that’s when you start wondering if maybe the reason there’s so much crap in the world is that that’s the natural state of things, and you begin to suspect that even in a place like this, if you probe too far beneath the surface, you’ll find it bubbling around down there, the old unchangeable primaeval crap we all came from and we’re all going back to. I got very depressed. Then I met Fran, and that changed things completely for me personally. I knew I had to leave the Force, of course. It was the wrong place for me. I saw now that in a perfect world we wouldn’t need the police, so there was no way I could work towards that perfection while I was actually part of one of the main symbols of imperfection, was there?’

  ‘You know,’ said Dalziel, ‘could be I’m wrong about you, lad. You spout that stuff in court and mebbe you won’t get banged up in jail for five years, they’ll just throw you into a psycho ward for life! Now, Chief Inspector Pascoe, this being your case, strictly speaking, if you haven’t forgotten the words, would you like to arrest Mr Bendish, or shall I?’

  ‘Don’t you think we ought to talk to the others concerned?’ said Pascoe. ‘I mean, Mr Halavant hasn’t yet made a formal complaint. And if in fact this picture does indeed really belong to Fran …’

  Wield, seeing that the Fat Man was getting close to apoplexy, looked at his watch and said, ‘They’ll likely all be at the Squire’s Reckoning, sir. I get the impression no one in these parts misses out on a free feast, not when Miss Creed’s been doing the baking.’

  The angry blood hesitated, hung in suspense, then began to retreat from Dalziel’s face.

  ‘I’m glad there’s still one of you can talk some sense,’ he said. ‘On your feet, lad. Let’s go and see if this Reckoning’s all it’s cracked up to be!’

  Volume the fifth

  PROLOGUE BEING AN EXTRACT FROM THE DRAFT OF AN UNCOMPLETED History of Enscombe Parish BY THE REVEREND CHARLES FABIAN CAGE, D.D. (DECEASED)

  To a casual eye Enscombe may appear the prototypical English village, with its setting, its architecture, its antiquities, its society, its economy, all combining to offer something like that pastoral perfection of which the poets dream. Yet a closer examination reveals much about the place which is deceptive if not downright deceitful!

  Take the name. No problem here, one would think. The village in the combe or valley of the River Een. Yet a little pause may make one wonder what on earth a combe is doing in this county of dales? Combes or coombes are commonplace in the West Country and (as cwms) in Wales, yet I cannot readily think of another example in Yorkshire. Enscombe is the kind of name someone might invent who had never been further north than, say, Hampshire! Toponymists typically offer a puzzling variety of alternative derivations, such as Enna’s Combe and Eanna’s Combe, the first suggesting a connection with the Sicilian vale where Proserpine, gathering flowers, herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis was gathered; the second implying that the Irish Saint Enda, or Eanna, rested here while on his way from Galloway (where he trained as a monk) to Rome to be ordained. Neither suggestion deals with the intrusive combe, but together they are interesting in the choice they offer between the Christian and the pagan worlds.

  Less attractive to the scholars but much more persuasive to a native is the theory advanced by the well-known Yorkshire folklorist, P. N. Walker. He refers to a legend that at some time in the mythic past a monstrous Grendel-type creature appeared in the northlands, bringing death and destruction wherever it went. Only one isolated hamlet by foresight and cunning managed to avoid the creature’s depredations, and this became known as the village that escaped ‘the monstrous visitor’, which is in Old English entisc cuma, eventually reduced to Enscombe.

  Unconvincing? Well, I like it. But what’s in a name anyway? A date now is something different. We ought to be able to trust a date. We find the year 1508 carved all over Old Hall. Yet researches show that the building was completed some time in the 1560s. It appears that Solomon Guillemard, the then Squire, having appropriated much of the wealth of the dissolved priory of St Margaret to himself and bought the land and remnants of the priory at a knock-down price, determined to confuse any subsequent investigation by naming his new manor Old Hall and predating it by half a century! Interestingly, this accords very well with considerable back-dating which has occurred in regard to the Guillemards’ arrival in England. They were certainly not among the first wave of Norman nobility who conquered with the Conqueror. Rather they appear to have been part of that great invasion of ‘carpetbaggers’ which customarily sweeps in behind a victorious army.

  I pointed this out to the Squire when he honoured me with the opening stanzas of his ballad history which describes his ancestors’ deeds of derring-do at Hastings. I also mentioned that I could find no reference to this curious myth of the talismanic kingfisher before a court case of 1661 when, after twisting and turning throughout the period of the Civil War and the Commonwealth in a manner which made the Vicar of Bray look like the Rock of Ages, Squire Gabriel Guillemard was claiming back land along the Een which he alleged had been stolen from him by the Parliamentarians. Running out of legal argument and factual evidence, he suddenly produced this myth of the kingfisher plus a dozen witnesses to swear they had seen it fly to the precise boundary of the claimed land, then turn and fly upstream once more. Nobody has ever lost money by overestimating the superstitious credulity of an English jury, and the case was won.

  Selwyn clearly knew all this. He remarked not unjustly that it ill behoved anyone in my line of business to insist on literal truth, and gave me another dozen quatrains for my pains!

  I do not tell these stories to accuse the deviousness
of the Guillemards, but rather to suggest that such a leading family is exactly what one would expect Enscombe to have chosen. Not chosen in any electoral democratic sense, of course, but by that process of natural selection which is how all living organisms contrive to survive. And Enscombe is a living organism, make no mistake about that, and an incredibly adaptable one too, androgynously apotropaic, ready to be anything in the expectation of being ever, accepting change as the price of unchange, an Artful Dodger of a village making one demand only of its inhabitants, which is unquestioning love. Fucata non Perfecta (which incidentally was the coinage of one Cuthbert Guillemard who, after some misguided expressions of sympathy for Mary Stuart, decided after her execution that the family’s old French motto Sanz loy, sanz foy or Lawless and Faithless was capable of misinterpretation), Fucata non Perfecta really means, it’s better to be painted than perfect.

  And so it is. For the monster is loose again, and has been these past several years, roaming free and ravaging the land. It too has the gift of disguise, now appearing as a wild-eyed woman, now as a vacantly smiling man. But always it gives itself away by the reek of greed and corruption that hangs about it.

  Let us pray that when it reaches Enscombe it will not recognize us under our paint, but pass us by.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘The truth is that the Secret has spread so far as to be scarcely the Shadow of a secret now.’

  So at last the villagers of Enscombe gathered for their Reckoning.

  The spring sun had not flattered to deceive but floated at its zenith in a cornflower-blue sky, shedding the warmth of a pleasant midsummer day. A gentle breeze flicked the hems of the white tablecloths but threatened no greater mischief, so heavily were they weighted down with the fruit of Dora Creed’s labours. Here were pies and pastries, turnovers and tarts, ham-bulging rolls and butter-oozing baps, sponges so light a real March wind might have carried them away, and fruit cakes so dense it required two hands to set them in their place.

  All that stood between the villagers and this feast was the collection of the Squire’s rents, once a tedious business with the line of tenants winding away across the lawn and vanishing into the shrubbery, but now in these lean and efficient times, scarcely enough to form a queue. So they mingled, and exchanged greetings and gossip, and salivated contentedly in the expectation of plenty, with never a thought for what other strange dishes their frolicsome Yorkshire god might have put on the menu. Only Elsie Toke might have had some forebodings, but she was too concerned in looking round anxiously for a glimpse of her son to turn her eyes inward.

  For Wield, as he led the way out of Green Alley on to the drive, there came one of those I-have-been-here-before experiences, as a battered yellow Beetle nearly clipped his toes. It skidded to a halt in front of the Hall and Fran Harding jumped out. Lillingstone and Kee Scudamore were standing on the steps and she ran up to them, her voice usually so soft rendered loud by worry.

  ‘Larry, what’s happened? I’ve been to the vicarage, there’s nobody there.’

  ‘It was time to come into the open,’ said the Vicar. ‘I talked with Kee …’

  ‘Kee? But Caddy said …’

  ‘Not to tell me anything in case I disagreed?’ said Kee. ‘She was quite right. Of course I’d have disagreed with anything which was likely to put my sister in the dock! As it happens, I’ve found out for myself. As the police are clearly doing.’

  ‘The police? But Harry’s letters …’

  ‘Don’t seem to have arrived. Once Harry realized that, he knew it was time to put in an appearance.’

  ‘Then where is he?’

  The two on the steps didn’t reply. They were looking over her head to where the quartet from Green Alley, moving at Bendish’s slow pace, were coming towards the house.

  Fran turned, saw, and came running towards them, calling, ‘Harry! What are you doing? Are you all right?’

  Then she was in his arms, pressing herself to him as if she wanted to fuse their bodies together. It was sexier than any porn film Pascoe’s duties had obliged him to see, and he looked away in embarrassment.

  Dalziel said, ‘All right, luv. Leave some for old Tom’s breakfast.’

  Eyes blazing, she turned on him and cried, ‘Whose idea is this? He shouldn’t be walking, it could open up his wound.’

  ‘Nay, lass, it’s nowt to do wi’ me,’ said the Fat Man. ‘He were wandering loose when we found him. But talking of wounds, the BMA might be interested to see your licence to practise medicine.’

  She gave him a glance of scorn that would have frizzled a lesser man, then slid down to her knees in front of Bendish. For a terrible moment Pascoe thought she was going to indulge in some even more intimate form of embrace, but all she did was roll up his trouser and examine the gash.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ she said. ‘Before you do yourself any more harm.’

  She led him gently to the steps and urged him to sit on the bottom one. He looked up at her with proud adoration. It was a scene to touch a Tartar’s heart. Dalziel said, ‘Pity your sister’s not here as well, Miss Scudamore.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ asked Kee.

  ‘Then I’d not have to repeat myself after I’ve arrested these three.’

  The blonde woman looked unimpressed and said, ‘If you’d care to hang on a minute I think she’s here now.’

  Halavant’s cabriolet was coming sedately down the drive. In the centre of the rear seat, looking like a Head of State showing himself to the people, was the patrician figure of Edwin Digweed. But it was Caddy Scudamore in the passenger seat who drew most eyes. Her wind-tousled hair, the glimpse of brown thigh as she vaulted over the car door, the fullness of her lips, the glow of her skin, the untrammelled motion of her body beneath her paint-stained smock, and perhaps above all her total lack of self-consciousness about her beauty, acted on the other two women like sunlight on candle-flames.

  Digweed got out too. He had a piece of paper in his hand and to Wield’s assessing eye he looked full of news. But as he took in the composition of the scene before him, he clearly decided it could wait.

  Halavant had walked round the front of the car and held out his hand to Caddy. She put out her tongue, but took it, and swinging their hands between them like children, they advanced to the steps.

  ‘Good day to you all,’ said Justin brightly. ‘Harry, there you are. How nice to see you.’

  And Caddy, looking straight at her sister, said, ‘We’re going to be married.’

  Lillingstone turned pale and swayed. Kee seized his elbow and held it tight.

  Dalziel said, ‘Congratulations. You’ll let us know it you’re honeymooning abroad?’

  ‘Will I?’ said Halavant. ‘Why so?’

  ‘Don’t want a trial with our star witness and one of the defendants out of the country, do we?’

  ‘What trial would that be?’ said Halavant courteously.

  ‘The trial of Mr Bendish and Miss Harding for stealing your painting. The trial of Mr Lillingstone for harbouring Mr Bendish, knowing him to have stolen your painting. And the trial of Miss Scudamore, for forging a copy of your painting knowing it was to be used in furtherance of a felony.’

  He was having a bad day in his efforts to shock.

  Halavant merely smiled and said, ‘I fear you may have been misinformed, Superintendent. It’s true my fiancée did make a copy of a painting that used to be in my possession. I have it here as a matter of fact.’

  He opened the boot of his car and produced the picture in its oval frame that Pascoe had last seen on his wall.

  ‘A marvellous copy, you must agree, fit to fool any but the most expert eye. Fortunately, as you can see, my talented fiancée has signed it, so no confusion is possible.’

  Proudly he pointed to the flowing signature.

  ‘And the original, sir?’ asked Pascoe, seeing that Dalziel might be on the point of saying something Dan Trimble would regret.

  ‘Why, the original is, I believe, in the possession of its r
ightful owner. I was merely the fortunate borrower of it for a while.’

  He smiled pleasantly at Fran Harding, inviting her to share in their mutual triumph over the forces of law and order. But the girl wasn’t smiling back.

  ‘You bastard,’ she said.

  Now there was evidence on Halavant’s face, if not of shock, at least of mild surprise.

  ‘Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear, Fran,’ he said. ‘I renounce all claim to the painting. I acknowledge you have full title in it. I believe your purpose is to sell it and donate the proceeds to saving the school. If it is what I believe it may be, it should fetch enough not only for that admirable project but to provide you with a considerable dowry beside …’

  ‘If it’s what you believe …! Hypocritical bastard!’

  The young woman’s face was mature with anger.

  Kee said, ‘Fran, what’s the matter?’

  ‘This is the matter!’ cried Fran Harding, going to her Beetle and pulling her ’cello case out. She flicked its catches open, raised the lid and pulled out an oval of canvas which she flourished in Halavant’s face.

  ‘I’ve been to town this morning to see an expert from Sotheby’s. He had come all the way up from London, and you know what, he wasn’t pleased. Not to come all that way to see a fake!’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Lillingstone, whose colour had slowly returned. ‘I thought this was the forgery?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Caddy, clutching the framed portrait protectively.

  ‘The copy, she means,’ said Halavant. ‘No, Fran, your so-called expert’s got it wrong …’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Fran. ‘When did you sell it, Justin? What happened to the money?’

  Everyone looked at Halavant. He was either innocent or a tremendous actor.

  He said helplessly, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t explain …’