The Case of the Missing Bronte (5 page)

‘Ah yes, well, technically, as I admitted, we are quite
distant. But we met — the poor lady, and my wife and I — in connection with the Tragic Last Illness of a close cousin of mine, a Miss Rose Carbury. Also a cousin of Miss Wing. We rediscovered the connection then, so to speak. Miss Wing was with her a good deal, nursing her, towards the End. And naturally we were round her a great deal at that time as well.'

‘Naturally,' I said. He was impervious to irony, and seemed to get the idea that I might be coming round to his side. Actually his habit of rubbing his hands as if he were wiping grease off them, and of speaking certain words with clerical emphasis, as if they were Holy Writ, was really giving me the gripes.

‘Well, now, when Miss Carbury died, in the fullness of time, she left us a great many family things. Heirlooms, I think we might call them. Because we have been in the past a Prominent Yorkshire Family, Inspector. Looked Up To. Actually, these heirlooms should have been ours many years ago, we being the Senior Branch. Unfortunately, the Dad having gone to America when I was hardly more than a boy, we had dropped out of sight, not to mention the Dad having been less close to Cousin Rose than I would have liked. Kith is kith, I always say. So it was only when Mother and I came back to Yorkshire that we became in any way intimately associated.'

‘Oh? And when was that?'

‘Nine years ago, come August. I was Planting the Seed in Winnipeg when the Lord called me to Leeds.'

‘The Lord seems to call you to some rotten places. Have you been a clergyman all your adult life?'

‘Pretty much. Pretty much. The Dad received the Call in California, back in 1951. I was fortunate enough to be similarly Called in 1960. The Dad was most affected. He's still alive, you know, still Shepherding the Faithful in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. And I'm pleased to say we have found fertile soil here in Yorkshire. Yes, indeed.
Oh, dear, yes.'

‘And have you remained close to Miss Wing since Rose Carbury's death?'

‘Ah well, yes — and no. In
spirit,
certainly. Affliction brings people together in spirit, as I'm sure you know, Officer. But seeing as how she is distantly Kin, it seems a pity we have not seen more of each other. Consolidated our closeness, as you might say. I said as much to Mother, when I read of the attack. Mother, I said, we must see what we can do for poor Miss Wing. This is just the sort of Sad Eventuation that the Lord sends in order to bring people closer together.'

I have known people who disliked clergymen as a race because they saw them as preying on people in times of distress and bereavement. It certainly did seem to be going it a bit to believe that the Lord had had Edith Wing bashed on the head in order to bring her closer to Amos Macklehose.

‘Well, Mr Macklehose,' I said, ‘I can doubtless find you any time I want to, and I shall certainly want to. For the moment the best thing is probably to send you on your way. I need hardly say there is no question of anything being removed from this house — beyond what has already been removed. I suppose you would have no notion of what that might be?'

‘None in the world, Inspector.'

‘Or of anyone who might have had any special motive for doing Miss Wing harm?'

‘No, indeed. Indeed,
no.
A harmless spinster lady, and a true friend and kind nurse in times of distress. Who could find a motive for violence in the blameless life of such a one? You must look to the violence of the age, Superintendent. The inborn seed of wrath. Only last night on the television — our Tabernacle congregation has after much heart-searching and prayer come to the conclusion that there is no intrinsic reason why television
should not be regarded as one of the Gifts of God — '

‘Really? I can think of any number.'

‘ — last night on television we saw gangs of Youth, Charioteers of Beelzebub, pelting the Prime Minister, one of the Frailer Vessels, with stones, and with eggs, nay even tomatoes. An ugly sight, Inspector. As I said to Mother at the time, I am far from unsure that we are not entering the Sixth Night foreseen in the
Revelation of St John.'

‘Well, Mr Macklehose,' I sighed, repressing the desire to ask for a precise citation of the relevant passage in
Revelation,
‘if you will just take yourself off — '

‘You must,' Amos Macklehose pronounced, as if he were awarding the star prize at Bingo, ‘you must come and meet Mother. Mother is waiting in the car like the patient Griselda (
Second Book of Kings
). I insist you meet her, Superintendent. You are a man to appreciate her Quality.'

Unwilling to let this chance go by, I allowed him to hurry me out of the cottage. Not so fast, though, that I didn't lock both the window and the doors behind me. One never knew what other Macklehoses might be lurking around in the undergrowth.

Amos of that ilk enthused about his topic all the way down to the gate.

‘My Judith, Superintendent, is a woman in a thousand. A jewel beyond price, a pearl in a sow's ear. She is, I can tell you. I don't know what I would have done without her!'

I was a bit uncertain as to what he had done
with
her. I could well imagine that the Reverend Macklehose was on to any number of unsavoury lurks, but if so the resulting income was not lavished on his person: the frayed cuffs of his suit, no less than its shiny seat, did not bespeak prosperity. We went through the gate, and he pointed to the car, fifty yards down the lane.

‘Have trouble finding a parking place?' I asked nastily.
He began kneading bread again, frenetically.

‘Ah, Mother,' said Amos Macklehose, as we finally drew up beside the car. ‘I've got a treat for you. I want you to meet Inspector — '

‘I said you didn't ought to have,' said a sepulchral voice. ‘I said you didn't ought to have, and I was right.'

The Reverend Macklehose's jewel beyond price was a hard-featured, doom-ridden sort of woman, predestination breathing from her nostrils. She barely acknowledged my presence, but remained staring ahead at the landscape through the car windscreen. She had a thin line of lip, set permanently to disapproval, and a marvellous brown felt hat of the sort everybody's North Country auntie wore thirty years ago. I thought they made a lovely couple.

‘You're quite right, Mrs Macklehose, that your husband didn't ough — that he shouldn't have broken into Miss Wing's cottage,' I said. ‘You're obviously a woman of principle.'

‘I know what's Right,' she said. ‘I know what's Right and I say so.' She sniffed and kept looking ahead, but I thought she was thawing towards me a bit.

‘Mother saw a good deal of Cousin Edith,' said Amos Macklehose, still uneasy with the conversation and rubbing his hands as if he were a garage mechanic. He looked at me ingratiatingly the while, his head cocked like one of our less appealing feathered friends. ‘Saw her most days in dear Cousin Rose's last illness. United they tended her, you might say.'

‘She did her duty, I'll say that for her,' pronounced Judith Macklehose. She added, as if as an afterthought, though it was not that: ‘Though I've no doubt she had her reasons.'

‘Mother!' said Amos Macklehose.

‘Really?' I probed. ‘You thought she had her reasons?'

‘I'm not saying there was anything Wrong, mind you,'
said the charming Judith. ‘But Cousin Rose leaving all her personal things away from her nearest Kin is something I'll never understand. I just think it was Funny.'

Judith Macklehose was clearly one of those people for whom funny is never funny-peculiar, let alone funny ha-ha, but always funny-suspicious.

‘I'd gathered they were very old friends,' I ventured.

‘Oh,
friends,'
said Judith Macklehose, disposing of friendship with a mighty sniff. ‘Still, if Edith Wing collected her pile, she worked for it, I'll say that. I'd be the last to begrudge it to her.
Particularly,'
she intoned, with great emphasis, ‘particularly in view of what has befallen her.'

She didn't actually use the word retribution, but the word was definitely hanging in the air.

‘You've no idea who might have done such a thing — attacked her in this brutal way?'

‘Oh no. We'd had no contact with her, not since the funeral, had we, Amos? We weren't privy to her private life, dear me no. Mind you — we did hear . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘Well, one of our New Israelites — a member of our Tabernacle — comes from here, from Hutton. Three buses there, three buses back, every Sunday without fail. You won't find
that
sort of faith in the Anglicans! Anyway, Fred Hebblethwaite, he told us that since she'd come here, she'd got very fond of a boy — '

‘Black!' intoned Amos Macklehose.

‘A black boy,' agreed Judith Macklehose, her eyes clearly seeing the brand of Cain. ‘He comes to do the garden for her, so they say. Fourteen! Not, of course, that there's anything
in
it. But I do say it's funny . . .'

‘We know about blacks, from Los Angeles,' Mr Macklehose assured me, rubbing his greasy hands in an agony of sincerity and insultingly including me in on his
remarks with an implicit assumption that as a policeman I would agree. ‘Can't walk the streets these days without getting attacked. Brutal thugs. We've had to be strict in our Tabernacle. Not admitted. Of course they'll go to anything with a bit of Enthusiasm.'

‘So if you're looking for a likely suspect,' his lovely wife assured me, ‘it's my belief you need look no further. Making no judgments, of course.'

‘Of course,' I said. ‘Naturally not. So you both have lived in Los Angeles, have you?'

‘Yes. Yes indeed!' enthused Amos. ‘Met there, did we not, Judith? So in spite of the Sin and the Shame — and there
is
Sin, there
is
Shame — Los Angeles will always be a very special place for us. As you might say, The Promised Land. And the Dad did very nicely there too!'

‘I don't detect any American in your accent,' I said to Judith.

‘I went,' she intoned, ‘on an Exchange Visit.'

‘That's it!' enthused Amos, as if she had just produced a spiritual revelation. ‘Mother was a British Israelite then, weren't you, Mother? And you exchanged with a family of British Israelites in California. Nineteen fifty-five it was. After we met you switched — or rather your earlier Call became subsumed as you might say in your new Call. Since then we've never looked back. Twelve years serving the Lord and his prophet Moses in Winnipeg, and now nine years in similar joyful service in Leeds. It makes you humble, indeed it does. A high calling, Officer, a joyful burden. Once the Word is known, it spreads like wildfire. You should come to one of our meetings, you know. Your life could be Transformed.'

‘I'm afraid I have no time to be Transformed in the immediate future,' I said. ‘Though I certainly might be paying you a visit. For the moment I've got a job of work to do. I'll say good-night to both of you.'

‘The peace of the Lord God and the benediction of the
Prophet Moses be upon you, Constable,' chirped out Amos Macklehose blithely. He jumped into the driving seat, slammed her into reverse, and drove erratically backwards towards the main street of Hutton-le-Dales. As he did so, he came within an ace of running over my toe, I swear deliberately. There was a manic smile on his face as he receded into the distance.

I stood there watching as the car jerkily made it to the main road, and drove off in the direction of Leeds. I swore as I stood there to have the Reverend Amos Macklehose, preferably with his Pearl of Great Price beside him, up in the dock on some charge before this case was over. Already I could probably have him under the Race Relations Act, but that was much too namby-pamby in its penalties for my purposes. I wanted Amos to fry.

Pending which culinary treat, I fetched my bag from the Dalesman and spent the night in Edith Wing's cottage. I didn't want evidence destroyed or valuables stolen by any other marauding clergymen that night.

The next morning first thing, after a rather uneasy night spent in Miss Wing's spare bedroom, I rang to the Milltown police and arranged for a police guard to be resumed on the cottage. The Prime Minister was about to depart, to spread economic theory o'er the unemployed of Liverpool, so things in the area were returning more to normal. I also suggested that they do something to strengthen the locks on the cottage windows.

Me, my next stop was Milltown, but before I went I got
on the telephone to the secretary of the English Department at the University there.

‘I wonder if you could help me?' I said, not identifying myself as police. ‘Could you tell me who it would be best to see in the Department with a question about the Victorian novel?'

‘Oh, you're the second this week to ask that,' she replied.

‘Really? Who was the other?'

‘I don't remember the name. A lady, it was. Anyway, it's a rather difficult question.'

‘Oh?'

‘Well, by rights, by etiquette if you like, I ought to say Professor Gumbold. He is the senior man, and head of department, in name anyway . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘The trouble is, he's — ' she lowered her voice — ‘quite gaga. I mean, absolutely. There's some here who seem gaga but aren't, there's some who don't seem gaga but are. He's gaga and it shows. Even the students have noticed. So there's really no point in sending you along to him with a question. You'll get a lecture on Carlyle's ethical philosophy. It was writing a book on Carlyle sent him round the twist. I can only suggest to you what I suggested to the other lady — that you go along to Timothy Scott-Windlesham.'

‘He's not gaga?'

‘No-o,' she said. ‘He's not
gaga . . .'