TROUBLED WATERS
Pollard & Toye Investigations
Book Thirteen
Elizabeth Lemarchand
To Molly, Gipi and Virginia
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
ALSO IN THE POLLARD & TOYE INVESTIGATIONS SERIES
Chapter One
Littlechester County Court
Bolling v Kenway-Potter
Before Judge Higson
‘The Plaintiff, Mr Leonard Bolling,’ his Honour said, ‘has applied to the court for an injunction to restrain the Defendant, Mr Rodney Kenway-Potter from leasing his fishing rights on the River Honey to a syndicate, on the grounds that the activities of its members have infringed his privacy and constituted a nuisance in other respects.
‘The Defendant, who owns and lives at Woodcombe Manor in the village of Woodcombe, also owns the fishing rights on that section of the River Honey which runs through his estate. Until approximately a year ago fishing was carried on only by himself and his family and their invited friends. He then decided to form a syndicate to share the fishing rights and provide the necessary funds for the restocking of the stream with brown trout.
‘The Plaintiff is the owner-occupier of Bridge Cottage, a freehold property which he bought two years ago. It is situated close to the bridge which carries a minor road from the village of Woodcombe. This road runs northwards past Bridge Cottage and the drive gates of Woodcombe Manor. The cottage has no river frontage, its garden hedge being set some ten yards back from the river bank, and its ownership does not carry any fishing rights.
‘Mr Bolling is a retired bookshop proprietor. He lives alone and his interests are academic. He is not, therefore, obliged to live in Woodcombe or its near neighbourhood in connection with his employment, and purchased Bridge Cottage of his own free choice. Before any question of the formation of a fishing syndicate had arisen he had complained on a number of occasions to Mr Kenway-Potter that he had been disturbed by persons fishing the Bridge Pool who had looked over the hedge into his garden, and by their conversation. He complains that since the syndicate began to operate in March of this year, these annoyances have greatly increased, and that on several occasions the gate leading from the riverside path to the lane has been left open. On one of these cattle from a herd in transit came through and began to eat his hedge. An even more serious disturbance, he claims, is caused by the parking of cars on a grass verge at the side of the lane, about fifty yards north of his cottage.
‘As is well known, fly fishing is frequently carried on after dark. Mr Kenway-Potter freely admits that members of the syndicate do arrive by car after dusk, and may not leave until midnight or later. Mr Bolling asserts that this constitutes an intolerable nuisance.
‘These, then, are the grounds on which the Plaintiff bases his application for an injunction against the fishing syndicate formed and operated by Mr Kenway-Potter.’
Judge Higson’s small dark eyes flicked saurian-fashion over his captive audience. He clasped his hands together and rested them on the papers in front of him.
‘How many members constitute this fishing syndicate?’ he enquired rhetorically. ‘Six, including Mr Kenway-Potter himself. His wife does not fish, and his two children are now adult and not normally in residence at the Manor. The Manor fishing is divided into six beats which rotate on a regular basis among the members. Therefore only one member at a time will be fishing the Bridge Pool in the immediate vicinity of Bridge Cottage. As a fly fisherman myself I know that noisy companions would effectively put an end to successful sport. At the same time it is possible that a member of the syndicate fishing one of the other beats might look in on the Bridge Pool beat and ask whoever was there if he had had any luck, but certainly would not be encouraged to linger and carry on loud and lengthy conversation. With regard to the cars, the maximum number arriving on the same occasion would be five, the average number fewer.’
Judge Higson made another brief pause, this time to pour a small quantity of water from a carafe into a tumbler from which he took a few sips.
‘If you live by choice in a rural area,’ he reminded those present, ‘you will enjoy advantages greatly appreciated by many people, including, presumably, Mr Bolling. But you also have to accept certain disadvantages. One of these is the noise inseparable from certain rural activities. I refer to such things as the frequent comings and goings of farm tractors, and the whine of circular saws in areas where forestry is carried on. Fishing is a typical rural pastime, and, it may fairly be said, one of the least obtrusive. Moreover, in the case of fishing for brown trout, the branch of the sport with which we are here concerned, the permitted season extends only from March the fifteenth to September the thirtieth: just over half the year.
‘In view of these facts, I have arrived at the conclusion that the activities of the syndicate formed by Mr Kenway-Potter to fish the Woodcombe Manor waters cannot reasonably be held to constitute a nuisance to Mr Bolling. The application for an injunction suspending its operation therefore fails, and costs are awarded to Mr Kenway-Potter.’
Bolling v Kenway-Potter had come early on Judge Higson’s list for the day, and its swift despatch enabled the successful defendant and his supporters to foregather in Woodcombe’s pub at lunchtime.
The Green Man was a family-run village inn with no pretensions about it. The landlord, Tom Wonnacott, had taken over from his father, and carried on the latter’s resistance to the inducements of entrepreneurs to enlarge the premises into an eating-out resort for the car owners of the neighbourhood, complete with chef, subdued lighting and canned music. A stout oak door, in a deeply recessed porch, led into a large rectangular room with a bar at the far end. Wooden benches and tables flanked the walls. These were whitewashed and decorated with a record-breaking stuffed trout in a glass case taken from the River Honey in 1902 by Rodney Kenway-Potter’s grandfather, a pitted darts board and a number of framed photographs of local teams and events. Behind the bar were shelves lined with bottles bearing well-known labels, with barrels of local beers and cider standing on the floor below them. Bread and cheese were always available on request, but cooked meals were only provided for occasional residents.
On the morning of the court case the bar was unusually full. The door was propped open to the warm April sunshine and elderly patrons with their beer mugs and pipes occupied the benches on each side of the porch. As the cars from Littlechester drew up they were greeted by the raising of tankards, the outcome of the case having already reached Woodcombe by bush telegraph. Leonard Bolling’s Woodcombe rating, never high, was at an all-time low. Foremost among the local grievances against him were the facts that he had never crossed the threshold of the Green Man, and his habit of supplying all his needs in bulk from the Littlechester Cash and Carry instead of patronising the village shop.
Once inside, Rodney Kenway-Potter proceeded to stand a comprehensive round of drinks. A tall man, greying a little at the temples, with a wide smile, and a trick of screwing up his eyes as he looked at you with his head slightly on one side, he was displaying the traditional British attitude of not kicking a man who was down.
‘Of course Bolling’s basic mistake was thinking that he could settle in a place like this and have everything his own way,’ he said. ‘There’s got to be give and take when everybody knows everybody else.’
There were sounds of general agreement.
‘He ought to have had a flat in one of those faceless b
locks in a quiet part of London,’ Amaryllis Kenway-Potter, Rodney’s wife, said. ‘The sort of place where you don’t know your neighbour by sight and there’s a permanent deathly hush over everything.’
‘And where you’re eventually discovered as a month-old corpse,’ Bill Reynolds added, a member of the syndicate and a consultant surgeon at Littlechester General Hospital. ‘I must push off. I’ve got a clinic at two. Good show, Rodney. See you on Friday evening if the weather’s O.K.’
He went off. Derek Blathwayt, another member, was uninhibited.
‘Bolling is a right bastard,’ he remarked concisely. ‘The sooner he clears out, the better. I shouldn’t think he’d have the nerve to hang on after this... Same again, please Tom... What the devil’s up now?’
A new arrival was holding forth excitedly. A chap from Ford’s, a Littlechester Estate Agency, was putting up a ‘For Sale’ notice in the garden of Bridge Cottage.
‘’Asn’t wasted much time over shiftin’, ’as ’e? Must’ve known ’e’d never get ’is ruddy injunction, Bollin’ must’ve,’ Bert Manifold, a local builder’s labourer asserted.
The general reaction was that Woodcombe would be a lot better off without Leonard Bolling.
‘Niver a dull moment these days,’ Tom Wonnacott commented, leaning on his bar counter. ‘Not with the goin’ to Court, and the rumpus last night —’
‘What rumpus?’ Rodney Kenway-Potter asked. He and his wife had spent the night with friends in Littlechester in order to be on hand for the County Court hearing next morning.
‘Football fans. They were kicking up the hell of a shindy in the city yesterday evening after that surprise win over Longstaple. Quite a lot of arrests apparently.’
An indignant chorus confirmed that the trouble had been the ruddy fans right enough. Two carloads of them had fetched up at Upper Bridge and continued their celebrations there.
‘Proper sozzled,’ Bill Morris, Rodney Kenway-Potter’s forester told him. ‘It’ll take me the best part o’ the afternoon to clear up the muck they left and get the two “Private Fishing” notices out o’ the stream where they chucked ’em along o’ bottles and crisp bags and whatever.’
It appeared that having exhausted the possibilities of Upper Bridge the fans had packed into the cars and roared into the village at about half-past eleven when decent folk were in their beds. Those capable of using their legs had got out and gone round tipping the dustbins, which had been put out for the weekly collection, into people’s gardens, and the glass front of the case in which public notices were put up had been smashed. There had been yelling and shouting like animals and language you wouldn’t soil your mouth with. Finally the cars had driven off towards Littlechester, but hadn’t got far as one had swerved off the road into the hedge just as the police, summoned by a series of 999 calls from Woodcombe, had arrived on the scene.
The Kenway-Potter family had lived at Woodcombe Manor for five generations and in times of trouble it was customary for village residents, whatever their political allegiance, to look to the current head of the house. Rodney listened to the somewhat confused account of the disturbance, asked a few relevant questions, and undertook to approach the Chief Constable about police patrols on the main roads leading out of Littlechester after home matches.
‘And if anybody wants to claim from their insurance company and would like any help, come along up,’ he concluded, ‘I’ll be at home this evening.’
There was a partial exodus as his wife offered to go and inspect the damage. In the comparative calm Rodney’s ear caught an unmistakeably American voice in conversation with Tom Wonnacott at the bar counter. The landlord replied to an enquiry that he’d have to put it to the missus, and vanished through a door leading to the domestic quarters of the Green Man. A young man half turned and surveyed the scene behind him. He was of medium height with dark hair worn fractionally on the long side and had a thoughtful intelligent face, and was impeccably spruce in fawn trousers and a light blue jacket.
‘On vacation over here?’ Rodney asked.
He got a friendly grin.
‘My firm’s sent me over on an assignment at the London branch, and part of the deal was a week’s leave for taking a look around.’
‘I hope you feel it’s been worth it?’
‘I’ll say it sure has,’ came the enthusiastic reply. ‘And that doesn’t just go for the top places like Westminster Abbey and Stratford-on-Avon, but for everywhere I’ve been. You folk breathe history over here. I —’
He was interrupted by the reappearance of Tom Wonnacott with the information that the missus would be pleased to fix up the gentleman with a bed for the night, and could lay on a bit of supper if wanted. This matter having been settled satisfactorily, the young American returned to a nearby table and resumed his consumption of bread and cheese and beer while observing his fellow patrons with interest. It was his first experience of a village pub in its function as the community centre and he was intrigued. The general outrage at the fans’ invasion made him wonder what Woodcombe would make of night life in certain areas of London and New York. The British class system seemed to be functioning, although at the same time everyone appeared to be on effortlessly easy terms, and there was an instant closing of ranks against hostility from outside.
Rodney Kenway-Potter finished his drink and glanced towards the open door of the pub, but there was no sign of his wife’s return. He propped himself against the bar counter and took up the conversation again.
‘What’s brought you down to these parts?’ he asked. ‘We locals think it’s one of the most pleasant bits of the U.K. but we don’t get all that many overseas visitors.’
‘I’ve come down to call on a Mr James Fordyce who lives in this village. He is a genealogist, and we’ve been in correspondence about tracing my family. He’s been held up and won’t be back till this afternoon, so I thought I’d put up here at this pub and go over to Littlechester before contacting him at five o’clock.’
‘This is interesting,’ Rodney said. ‘You’re in luck over James Fordyce. He’s a damn good genealogist and a very decent chap, too. He’s got me hooked on researching into my own forebears... Your name is?’
‘Tuke, sir. Edward Tuke.’
‘Tom, halves of Green Man Special for all three of us, please. Have you heard of anybody called Tuke in this part of the world?’
‘Thank you, sir... No, I can’t say as I have,’ Tom Wonnacott replied, carefully filling three tankards. ‘I was listenin’ to what the gentleman was sayin’ and searchin’ in me mind, but I’m sure there’s nobody o’ the name around here.’
Edward Tuke explained that he had not expected to discover any family connections locally, but had come to meet Mr Fordyce and get him to take on the job of tracking them down.
‘A buddy of mine back home put me on to him,’ he went on. ‘A guy who knew his folk came from Littlechester, and Mr Fordyce has found a record of them going right back to the sixteen hundreds. I promised I’d go there and take some pictures of the historic centre for him if I could make it.’ He paused, and eyed Rodney Kenway-Potter speculatively. ‘I guess your family’s been around here quite a while, Mr...?’
‘Kenway-Potter, Rodney. Well, no. Not all that long really as families go in these parts. My people came from Lancashire, up north as we say. They cashed in on the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing your American cotton. When they’d made their pile they began to fancy themselves as landed gentry. The Woodcombe Manor estate came on the market and they bought it. It was a good long way from the smoke of the mill chimneys, you see.’
‘Then that big house in the trees up on the hill’s yours?’ Edward Tuke asked with interest. ‘Would it be what you’d call a Stately Home?’
‘Good Lord, no: it’s not nearly big or grand enough to be classed as a Stately, and there’s nothing of much interest about its history. It’s just a pleasant Queen Anne house — that’s early eighteenth century — and fortunately hasn’t been much mucked about
since... Look here, Mr Tuke, come up and have supper with us this evening, and see it from the inside. I’m keen on family history myself, as I said just now, and you might be interested in the lines I’m working on under Fordyce’s tuition... There’s my wife at the door. She’ll be delighted to meet you.’
‘That’s very, very kind and hospitable of you, sir, and I’m honoured,’ Edward Tuke said with appreciation, getting hastily to his feet as an unobtrusively elegant woman in early middle age came towards them. Rodney Kenway-Potter introduced him.
‘Mr Tuke’s here to see James Fordyce about doing a search for him,’ he told her.
Bowing over her hand, Edward Tuke repeated his thanks for the invitation to Woodcombe Manor while telling himself that he had struck real British class.
‘How lucky that my husband happened to meet you in here,’ Amaryllis said, smiling at him. ‘Come along about seven if you’re through with Mr Fordyce, and we can have drinks and show you the house before we eat. I’m afraid it’ll be rather a scratch meal: we’ve been away for the night and are only just back. Have you had time to look round the village yet? Local patriotism, of course, but we think it’s rather attractive.’
‘It sure is,’ Edward Tuke agreed fervently. ‘And this pub’s great. Just what I thought a real country pub would be like. There’s only one thing missing.’
‘What’s that?’ Rodney asked.
‘Why, it’s just that there’s only a plain board with the name on it hanging outside: no picture. I’ve seen real eye-catchers at some of the pubs where I’ve been since I came over.’
The Kenway-Potters looked at each other. ‘Interesting, isn’t it, that he’s got on to it?’ Rodney commented. ‘You’ve hit on an old superstition in Woodcombe, Mr Tuke. I’m afraid my wife and I have got to dash off to a lunch date with friends in the next village, but I’ll bring Ella Rawlings over. She’s our expert on local history and folklore. Just hang on a minute.’
Troubled Waters Page 1