The Long Divorce (A Gervase Fen Mystery)

by Edmund Crispin

  Later, at half past eleven, Mr Datchery went to chapel.

  During the short period of his stay in Cotten Abbas, his first impression of it had been confirmed: it was essentially a residential village for members of the cultured upper middle class – intelligent company directors, fashionable portrait painters and so forth – who needed to be within reach of London but who could dictate their own time of arriving there; and it was they who had been responsible, at some sacrifice to themselves, for preserving the village's amenities. They had restricted new building, and dictated its style when it proved inevitable; they had sat in judgement on inn-signs; they had pestered the Vicar to remove the Victorian pews from the great church, and had paid for better ones to replace them; they had supervised restoration and rebuilding; by titanic wangling they had brought into being a by-pass to divert main-road traffic from the village's broad and airy street; they had ordained a minimum bus service from Twelford, and stringent anti-charabanc laws, in their determination to keep trippers at bay. But their best efforts had not succeeded either in preventing the erection of Rolt's saw-mill or in encompassing the destruction of a hideous yellow-brick conventicle, dedicated to the use of an obscure nonconformist faction called The Children of Abraham, which affronted the eye not twenty yards from the church. Against these two edifices the animus of the intelligent company directors, not less than of the fashionable portrait painters, simmered and bubbled perennially. And their schemes for the discomfiture of the persons most closely associated with the offending structures – Rolt himself on the one hand, and on the other the village butcher, Amos Weaver, who preached heterodoxy in the conventicle on Sunday mornings – imparted to the small community a liveliness which it might otherwise have lacked.

  Now, it was one of Mr Datchery's peculiarities that he collected religious sects as other men collect stamps or butterflies; and The Children of Abraham being new to him, it was inevitable that he should make an effort to acquaint himself with them before leaving Cotten Abbas. The striking of the half-hour, then, found him seated on one of the hard benches with which the conventicle was furnished, among a motley group of worshippers most of whom had been conveyed to the village from outlying parts in a bus regularly chartered for the purpose. Though the place was small enough, in all conscience, they were still far from adequate to fill it, and the only company Mr Datchery had on his bench, which was situated at the back, was an ancient man who choked and spluttered unintermittently into an extremely dirty handkerchief. After five minutes of this Mr Datchery leaned across to him and said: 'You seem troubled with a cough, brother.'

  'Ah,' the old man whispered painfully.' 'Tis the Lord's will, sir.'

  Mr Datchery thought this on the whole unlikely, but the moment was not apt for theological dispute, and he contented himself with asking how soon the service was expected to begin; at which the ancient man, clearly taking this inquiry for an indirect form of supernatural prompting, got hurriedly to his feet, announced a hymn, and embarked solo on its first verse with such haste and immediacy that Mr Datchery suspected him of wanting to get through the maximum possible number of lines before the rest of the congregation could collect its wits sufficiently to join in. The key he had set resulted in the low notes being too low for the high voices, and the high notes too high for the low, so that a sinister drone alternated throughout with a surprised mewing; the text selected was of that lengthy narrative sort which almost always has to do with fish, apostles and storms on Galilean lakes; and the total effect gratified Mr Datchery extremely. In front of him, a spinster lady offered at irregular intervals a descant or fauxbourdon in thirds; to his right, a solitary pioneer was singing a bass part so wholly speculative as to really dissociate him from the proceedings altogether; and Mr Datchery himself, whose voice had range if no great beauty, boomed forth the tune with such power as presently to carry all before him.

  At the end of the hymn a rather long pause supervened after they had all sat down, and soon Mr Datchery, tiring of it, once more lapsed into conversation. 'Which,' he demanded of the ancient man, 'is Mr Weaver?'

  'Not here yet,' said the ancient man with unexpected pertinence and brevity. 'Preaching at Brankham, that's what he'll be doing now. But never you fear, sir. He'll be with us here at the last, to speak to us of sin and the Lord's work with the words of his tongue.' The ancient man paused, seeming to contemplate this last sentence and not, on the whole, to like it very much. 'Oh yes, he'll be preaching all right,' he amended more cheerfully. It was possible, Mr Datchery thought, that there were the rudiments of a literary critic here.

  A prayer followed, of the catalogue type which by attempting to get everything in only succeeds in focusing attention on what has been omitted. 'For all miners, steel-workers, farmers' (the boot and shoe trade?), 'for all mothers in childbirth, sufferers from cancer' (herpes? Scarlet fever?), 'for all doctors, nurses, surgeons, for all whose business lies upon the great waters' (does this include submarine crews? Does it include them when submerged? And if it doesn't, what have they done to deserve being left out? And if you can't mention everyone specifically, why mention anyone specifically?), 'for the King and Queen and all the royal family, for the sick and the homeless, for all those . . .' It lasted for nearly a quarter of an hour, persons eventually unsupplicated for including, by Mr Datchery's estimate, musicians, tailors, greengrocers, and Mr Aneurin Bevan. Then there was another hymn, and then a selection of the moony fancies of the author of the book of Revelation, and then another hymn, and then the sermon.

  Amos Weaver, who had somehow contrived to enter the chapel unnoticed by Mr Datchery, proved to be a tall, lean, powerful man with a long neck, unreadable but slightly mad-looking eyes behind thick horn-rimmed glasses, a sallow complexion, a blue chin, too short sleeves revealing hairy muscular wrists, and too-short trousers revealing stick-like ankles; and the manner of his homiletic – a diarrhoea of 'thous' and 'thees', a twangling of seraphic harps, a laundryful of white robes, a Cumberland of lost sheep, an assault-course of pitfalls, a Capricorn of goats, an ocean of tempestuous Galilean lakes, a Wall Street of money-changers, a pirate horde of unfruitful talents, an orchard of barren fig-trees, an Ecclesiastical Commission of Pharisees and Sadducees, a mass migration of flights into Egypt, a warren of snares, a Ritz bar of gins and lime and adulteresses – the manner of his homiletic was nothing novel. But for all that, he had a certain authentic rhetorical power, and Mr Datchery heard him out with attention. Mr Weaver hated sin, it seemed. His text was the twenty-third chapter of Ezekiel, and he made no secret of hating sin with as much vehemence (and with nearly as much gross allusion) as the prophet hated those symbolical daughters of joy Aholah and Aholibah. And the choice of text was significant, Mr Datchery thought: the distinction between sin and sinner, so easy to recommend but in practice so difficult to achieve, could be side-tracked very conveniently by the use of allegorical prostitutes; a pretended impersonal abhorrence of evil could be stated in decidedly personal terms; and if the congregation elected to identify those wanton damsels of Ezekiel with actual young ladies living in the neighbourhood – well, so much the worse; no one, at least, could accuse the preacher of lacking a proper Christian charity . . . So Weaver denounced, and Mr Datchery listened. 'Oily sort of fellow, Weaver,' Colonel Babington had said when on Mr Datchery's leaving his house the previous afternoon they had spoken again of the steel. 'Can't stand that sort of religion myself, all this showy piety and riding about on the tops of buses reading tracts. Nasty obsequious way of doing business Weaver's got, too – though I suppose in a tiny place like this he can't afford to risk offending people or they'd put him out of business.' Obsequious perhaps, Mr Datchery reflected, to his customers in the week and to God on Sundays. But Mr Weaver was certainly not obsequious to sin . . .

  But now he was perorating; several previous 'lastlys' had been duds, but Mr Datchery had hopes of this one, and they were not disappointed . . . The only thing was that now he seemed to be going to pray. 'For all that have erred from
Thy ways; for all that have offended against Thy laws; for all that are sick and in sorrow; for her who took her own life, that it may please Thee to forgive her great trespass; for the young soul torn from us this day in our village by hideous murder; for the aged and infirm; for . . .'

  Mr Datchery was not the only person to jerk upright and stare incredulously; but he was the only one immediately and unceremoniously to leave.

  8

  BY seven that Sunday morning Helen Downing was out of doors.

  On the Friday night, that following the suicide of Beatrice Keats-Madderly, she had slept long and deep. But the Saturday night had seen a recurrence of her old habits of wakefulness, and such little sleep as she had been able to snatch had been troubled by nightmares – nightmares the more distressing in that she seldom dreamed at all, and since early childhood had not dreamed of terror. At six o'clock, then, she got up, dressed, and went out, turning right outside her garden gate – away, that is, from the direction of the main street – and following the road out of the village to where, beside the raw, aggressive pile of Rolt's saw-mill, it crossed the stream on the back of an ancient stone bridge. Here she turned left through a gap in the hedge, slithered cautiously down a nettle-covered bank, and with the mill behind her crossed the first of the water-meadows towards the coppice at its far side, intending to walk on beside the stream as far as the point at which the boundary wall of Sir Charles Wain's estate (through which the stream flowed) made further progress impossible. From there she could cut across country through Satchel Farm, and by rejoining the Cotten Abbas-Brankham road near the ruins of Brankham Priory be back at her house in good time for an early breakfast.

  The sun promised another day of intense heat. Scarlet of poppies flared in the ripening corn, and the osiers with their sky-pointing branches were like shocks of uncombed silver hair. Water-insects, blind to lurking trout, volplaned ecstatically on the surface of the water; fledglings babbled incoherently in their nests; at the edge of the coppice bloomed showy foxgloves in bowers of fern. And presently, as Helen approached the uneven drift of small trees through which she must pass, she became aware that she was not the only inhabitant of the village thus early abroad, for a hatless figure pushed its way out from under the birches and stood there for a moment, in apparent indecision, before noticing her. Then it looked up, saw her, and spoke.

  It said: 'Hey! Hey, you!'

  Now to be addressed as 'Hey, you!' is an experience apt to exasperate even the mildest-tempered of adult human beings; and Helen's temper, after a worried and sleepless night, was far from being mild. She veered deliberately from the path in order to move away from the direction of the man who had called to her, and walked on without pause or reply, biting her lower lip in a spasm of annoyance. There was a moment's silence; then, more civilly this time, he called to her again.

  'Hey, lass! Dr Downing!'

  With considerable reluctance Helen halted. But she made no attempt to join him, which was what he seemed to expect: If he wanted to talk to her, it was up to him to do the walking.

  'What is it?' she answered curtly.

  He came up to her mopping his brow with a damp and grubby handkerchief – for although the day was still cool, he was sweating profusely, and his breath was as laboured as if he had been running.

  'Have you seen my girl?' he demanded.

  'Penelope? No, I haven't. What's happened to her?'

  'That's what I'd like to know.' Harry Rolt's North-country accent was usually not more than just perceptible, but the effect of excitement on speech is regressive, and this morning the accent was much broader than commonly. 'Ay, that's what I'd like to know myself.'

  He was a large man, gross as to body and ill-favoured, with small close-set eyes and a limp, wet mouth distorted by badly fitting dentures. There was coarse grey-black stubble on his cheeks and neck and chin, and the sweat had matted his thick eyebrows. His hands were large, the nails bitten and grimy, and his clothes had apparently been thrown on anyhow. Like most people in Cotten Abbas, Helen had little use for Harry Rolt; but in his manner this morning, though superficially it was as offensive as usual, there was an undertow of anxiety which held her repulsion temporarily in check.

  'But I don't understand,' she said. 'What makes you think there's anything wrong?'

  He laughed, shortly and unpleasantly. 'Ah, you'd like to know, I dare say. Then you could go and blab it all to your fine aristocratic friends. But Harry Rolt's not quite such a fool as all that. Let me tell you, lass –'

  At any other time Helen would simply have abandoned the conversation at this point, and walked off; but on this occasion she was too tired to make the gesture, and what she said was:

  'For God's sake, don't be such a damned fool. I don't care a brass farthing about your domestic troubles, and nor does anyone else. If you want to tell me about Penelope, get on with it. But I've got quite enough worries of my own without bothering my head about yours, and if it wasn't that I like Penelope I shouldn't have listened to you as long as this.'

  He was taken aback. 'Easy, now,' he expostulated. 'No need to jump down a man's throat like that. I was a bit hasty, I dare say, but that's Harry Rolt's way and always has been.'

  'You,' said Helen vulgarly, 'are telling me.'

  At that he unexpectedly grinned. 'I like a lass as speaks up for herself. You're all right.'

  'Dear, dear, what flattery.'

  The grin broadened – but there was not the least trace of salaciousness in it, and it occurred to Helen for the first time that whatever his other faults, Rolt was no philanderer. You're all right,' he repeated – and there was an odd note of satisfaction in his voice. 'Your high-and-mighty pals, now, they don't answer back. Oh no. That'd be beneath their dignity. But you –'

  'Mr Rolt, if you imagine I like being commended at the expense of my friends, then you'd better think again.' Helen was angry now. 'If you've anything to tell me about Penelope I'll listen to it, but I'm not in the mood for general conversation.'

  'Freezing, aren't we?' said Rolt. 'Quite the little duchess. All right, then, here's how it is. And by God, if you blab it about –' He paused, awaiting a disclaimer, and was disconcerted to receive none; in a milder voice he went on: 'What do you say we sit down on the bank a minute, eh? I'm not as young as I was, and all this chasing up and down has taken it out of me.'

  'The bank will be damp.'

  But he was already leading the way there, and Helen, cursing herself for letting herself become involved in this distasteful tête à tête, slowly followed. Arriving at the water's edge, he stripped off his coat and spread it on the ground. Then he slumped down heavily beside it. He made no comment or invitation, Helen noticed, and when she settled on the coat appeared to expect no thanks.

  'That's more like it,' he said, and again wiped sweat from his face. 'And it's a pretty view from here.'

  'It was till you stuck your mill in the middle of it . . . But as far as I remember, it wasn't scenery we were going to talk about.'

  'Beg pardon, your highness, I'm sure,' he said with heavy and infuriating facetiousness. 'You'll have to forgive a poor uneducated man like me for not being up in all your lordly etiquette.'

  Helen shook her head wearily, 'I can't be bothered with fourth-form repartee.'

  He glanced at her inquisitively for a moment. 'Ah,' he said. 'Not sleeping too well, are you?'

  'Do I look as bad as all that?'

  'Yes, you look pretty bad,' he said, with a candour which was even more depressing than offensiveness would have been. 'And mind you, I know the signs.'

  'Why do you know them?'

  He sniffed loudly. 'Ellen – that's my wife – she couldn't sleep much either. Sometimes it nearly broke my heart to see how thin and sick she looked . . . But that's women for you. There's always summat amiss with them. Penny, now –'

  'Yes, it's about time we got to her.'

  'Keep your hair on, Duchess; I'm coming to it.' But for all that he seemed at a loss how to begin. Well
,' he said at length, more awkwardly than he had spoken yet, 'the first thing is, Pen's been running after a gormless little twerp of a foreign school-master.'

  'You mean – what's his name? – Rubi?' Helen's question was disingenuous, since like everyone else in the village she knew perfectly well that Penelope was infatuated with this reputedly rather tedious young man.

  'Ay,' said Rolt grimly. 'That's him. Well, I'll tell you straight, I don't approve of it. Pen's still too young for boy-friends, and even if she wasn't, I'd want her to be walking out with a decent lad, not a pansy little foreign gramophone record.'

  'So?'

  'So I told her yesterday morning she wasn't to see him again.'

  'That,' said Helen drily, 'was very subtle of you. And I suppose the result was that she went off and saw him straight away.'

  He nodded. 'Ay. That she did, the unnatural little – ' But in the mid-flight of imprecation he checked himself. 'No. That's wrong. She's got a will of her own, my Pen, and good luck to her. But I'm asking you, lass, what was I to do? There's this dirty-minded letter I had – '

  Helen gestured impatiently. 'If we all took the things in these anonymous letters seriously, we'd be crazy, certifiable.'

  'Granted. But you can't deny there's been some truth in them. Pen's a decent lass, and she'd not have done what that letter said she had . . .'

  'Then why worry?'

  'There's always a danger, isn't there?' he said obstinately. 'Pen wouldn't do it, but then again she might . . . Ay, it's all very well to smile: I know what I'm saying isn't logic. But if you had a girl Pen's age, you'd worry just as hard as I do.'

  'Anyway, what happened?'