The Judgement of Strangers (23 page)

She grunted. To my dismay, I saw her eyes were glistening.

‘The fact is,’ I hurried on, ‘I’m just back from Lady Youlgreave’s inquest.’

‘The inquest?’ The jowls wobbled once more. ‘I was thinking of going myself, actually. I had hoped you might be able to give me a lift. But nobody answered when I phoned.’

‘We’ve all been out for most of the day.’

‘What happened?’

‘What you’d expect.’ I was puzzled by Audrey’s change of tack. ‘They decided it was an accident.’

Audrey sniffed. At that moment, the whistle on the kettle began to squeal, higher and louder.

‘I was about to make some tea,’ I said reluctantly. ‘Would you like a cup?’

Audrey allowed herself to be mollified. She followed me into the kitchen and talked while I made the tea. I promised I would have a word with Michael, and she promised she would say no more about it. Audrey stayed for half an hour. While I tried not to think of the work I should be doing, she talked about Lady Youlgreave in a manner which suggested she had been to Roth what the Queen Mother had been to the country. She also talked, at length, about her determination to bring to justice whoever was responsible for Lord Peter’s mutilation. Finally, she talked about the fete. I am afraid I did not listen very carefully.

At last she went. I returned to the kitchen to wash up the tea things. Afterwards, I was crossing the hall on my way back to the study when I heard a key in the lock of the front door.

Rosemary burst into the house. She was dressed in denim, jeans and a shirt with studded poppers which I had not seen before. Around her neck was a silk scarf, also new. The colours were dark green and bronze: they would have suited Vanessa. I registered all this automatically. What I really saw was her face: red and tear-stained, framed by dishevelled blonde hair.

‘Rosemary – whatever’s happened?’

Her face working, she stared at me. Then, without a word, she ran up the stairs and into the bathroom. I heard the bolt on the door click home.

The Vicarage walls and floors were thin. A moment later, I heard the sound of vomiting.

On Wednesday evening I went reluctantly to St Mary Magdalene. The reluctance had been growing on me over the last year. I had always tended to anthropomorphize churches, to endow the buildings with personalities: as with humans, some personalities were more attractive than others. For most of my time at Roth I had liked St Mary Magdalene. If I had had to find a human equivalent to it, I would have chosen Doris Potter.

In the past twelve months, however – ever since that odd experience just after Vanessa and I had met – I had no longer felt the same about the place. The feeling was almost impossible to pin down. It was like the faint blush of damp spreading almost imperceptibly on a whitewashed wall. I knew it was there. I could not see it, but I thought I could feel it. I felt as though the church were no longer entirely mine, as though something or someone were trying with gradual success to take it over. On one level, I knew very well that I was imagining things. As a man and as a priest, I was prone to see shadows where there were none.

I came out to lock the church before supper. After a grey day, it was a fine evening, though there were dark clouds over much of the sky. The churchyard was bathed in strong, metallic light: it looked like a stage set. I left Vanessa cooking supper. Michael was spending the evening at the Vintners. Rosemary was resting in her room; she had told me that she had an upset stomach – something she had eaten at lunch must have disagreed with her. I did not know whether or not to believe her.

Before I locked up, I went inside the church to make sure everything was all right. The ladies had been in recently, and the place smelled of flowers and polish. The sombre colours of the Last Judgement painting glowed above the chancel arch. I walked slowly up to my stall in the choir, intending to pray. My footsteps sounded louder than usual, as though I were walking on the skin of a drum.

As I passed under the chancel arch, a movement caught my eye – to the left and above my head. I looked up. I was directly beneath the marble tablet commemorating Francis Youlgreave. Nothing was moving. Sometimes, I told myself, the flutter of your own eyelash can give you the impression of movement beyond yourself.

In my mind, Francis’s tablet coalesced with the idea that I was walking on a drum. If this was a drum, then inside the drum, the home of its resonance, was the vault beneath the chancel where the Youlgreaves lay. Not that there were very many Youlgreaves in there. I had not been down there for years, but I remembered a small, dusty chamber laid out rather like a wine cellar with deep shelves on either side; there had been only three coffins, one of them presumably belonging to Francis Youlgreave. There was ample room for at least a dozen more.

The vault must have been built in another time for other families, but there was no sign of them now. The first of the Youlgreaves had wanted to make the place his own, and now only Youlgreaves waited there for the Second Coming. I assumed that the vault would need to be reopened for Lady Youlgreave.

Suddenly I did not want to pray. I told myself I was in the wrong frame of mind. I shivered as I walked back to the south door. I did not know why but I was frightened. I felt like a weary swimmer, alone, out of his depth and too far from land.

I left the church, locking the door behind me. As I came out of the porch the full force of the sunlight hit me. On the right, beside the path which led to the private gate from the churchyard to Roth Park, there was a wooden bench, donated by Audrey in memory of her parents. A figure was sprawling on it, arms outstretched along the back of the seat, a silhouette against the blinding light of the sun. For an instant my heart lurched. I thought it was Joanna.

‘Hello, David,’ Toby said. ‘Lovely evening.’

I blinked in the light. He sat up and moved along the bench, as if making room for me to sit. He looked particularly androgynous this evening in red trousers and a deeper red T-shirt whose low neck and long flared sleeves gave him a faintly medieval air. His feet were bare and he was smoking a cigarette.

‘Was there something you wanted?’ I asked.

‘Yes and no.’ He laughed. ‘I didn’t realize you were in there, actually, but now we’ve met, there is something.’

With sudden, irrational terror, I wondered if Toby knew: that I had seen his sister without his knowledge: that she had taken me to her room, that she had talked to me about him. I realized how vulnerable I was. Toby was speaking and I had to ask him to repeat what he had said.

‘How was the inquest?’

‘They decided the death was an accident.’

Toby laughed again, a shrill squirt of sound. ‘Which everyone knew already. Our legal system has a genius for stating the obvious, hasn’t it?’

‘I suppose they have to make sure.’

Toby bent forward and carefully stubbed out his cigarette in the grass. ‘I wanted a word about the fete actually. I wondered if you have a fortune-teller.’

‘Not as far as I know. I don’t think we’ve ever had one.’

‘I thought it might add to the fun. If you’ve no objection, of course.’

‘As long as it’s suitably light-hearted, I don’t think there’d be a problem. But I wouldn’t want anyone to take it seriously.’

‘Oh no,’ said Toby.

‘Who had you in mind?’

‘Actually, I thought I could do it myself. I did it at school once. Just for a joke, at a sort of show we had. I wore a wig, and a long dark robe covered in stars.’ The fingers of his left hand fluttered as though miming the flowing folds of the robe. ‘Just a bit of fun.’

I thought about it for a moment. The idea was attractive. I had felt for some years that under Audrey’s hand the fete was becoming rather a dull affair, with the same stalls and the same sideshows coming round monotonously every year.

‘There’s an old tent in the stables up at the house,’ Toby went on. ‘It looks sound enough. I could use it as my booth.’

‘What sort of fortune-telling?’

Toby shrugged. ‘I’m not choosy. Palmistry, the cards, astrology, the I Ching. Whatever the customer wants.’

‘I’m sure people would enjoy it. And it’s very kind of you, too. But I’d better have a word with Audrey first. She’s doing most of the organizing.’

‘I shall have to think of a name.’ He grinned up at me. ‘The Princess of Prophecy: something like that.’

I glanced at my watch. ‘I must be going. Vanessa will have supper on the table soon.’

Toby stood up. ‘How’s the research going, by the way?’

‘Lady Youlgreave’s death is a complication. We’re a little concerned about what will happen to the papers.’

‘It all depends on who the heir is, I suppose. No news on that?’

I shook my head.

‘The solicitor must know,’ Toby went on, half to himself. ‘There must be a solicitor.’

I nodded but said nothing. I had never met Mr Deakin, though Lady Youlgreave had mentioned him once or twice. I wondered if he’d been at the inquest, one of the anonymous men in dark suits.

Toby took a step away from me, then stopped, as if something had occurred to him. ‘Why doesn’t Vanessa come and see Francis’s room on Sunday afternoon? I know we were going to wait till the party after the fete, but it would be much better to do it in daylight. Besides, you know what parties are like. Full of distractions.’

‘That would be very kind, but –’

‘It’s no problem,’ he rushed on. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you all come? And if any of you would like a swim, you can bring your costumes. The pool should be sorted out by then.’

I thanked him, and said that Vanessa or I would phone later in the evening.

‘Do come,’ he said. Then he smiled and loped away – not along the path but among the graves. The cuffs of his T-shirt and of his trousers swayed as he walked. He looked like a blood-red pixie.

Later that evening, Vanessa and I had another whispered conference in our bedroom. It was a warm evening and we sat propped up against pillows on top of the bed, I in my pyjamas and she in her nightdress. The nightdress was dark-blue with cream piping around the neck and the cuffs. I dared not look at her too much because it made me want to make love.

‘What on earth’s wrong with Rosemary?’ she hissed. ‘She’s been very subdued all evening.’

‘She’s got an upset stomach.’

Vanessa shook her head vigorously. ‘I don’t believe it for a moment.’

‘She was sick when she came home. I heard her.’

‘Perhaps she was. But no one with an upset stomach eats the supper she did. No, if you ask me, it’s something else. Maybe something shocked her.’ She paused. ‘Who is this mysterious schoolfriend?’

‘I think she’s called Clarissa. Or Camilla. Something like that.’

‘Are you sure she exists?’

Startled, I turned and looked at Vanessa. Her hair floated on her shoulders. Her face was very close to mine. The neck of her nightdress was open and I could see her left breast. I longed to be old – to reach an age where sexuality was no longer a distraction and a temptation.

‘Why shouldn’t the friend be real?’ I said, clinging to the safety of words.

Vanessa picked up an emery board from the bedside table and began to buff her nails. ‘I may be maligning her,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘but it’s a classic tactic – the old schoolfriend, going shopping, that sort of thing.’ She smiled at me. ‘We used to use it when I was young. I suspect my parents knew perfectly well what I was up to, but they chose to turn a blind eye.’

‘But I thought she was interested in Toby Clifford.’

‘She is. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’s the mysterious schoolfriend.’

‘But –’ I stopped. But what?
But he’s years older than she is. But he’s a hippy, or at least he dresses like one. But I was talking to him only a few hours ago. But I don’t like to think of my daughter with a man like that, perhaps with any man.

‘Just a thought,’ Vanessa said. ‘He might have tried something on. That might account for her being so upset.’

‘So upset it made her sick?’

‘It happens.’

‘What does?’

She glanced at me, then away. ‘Sudden physical revulsion. In some ways, Rosemary’s very young for her age.’

‘You really think he may have made advances to her? Physical advances?’

‘I don’t know,’ Vanessa said. ‘I’m just saying it might have happened that way: if Rosemary had her head stuffed full of romantic dreams about Toby, and he misinterpreted how she was responding to him, he might have made a pass at her, and she might have found the whole thing totally revolting. Men and women look at these things very differently.’

After all, you and I look at these things differently.
The words lay between us. There was no need to speak them aloud.

‘Rosemary said she didn’t want to come on Sunday,’ I said haltingly, as though in a language I did not fully understand. We had discussed Toby’s invitation over supper.

‘Exactly. Yesterday nothing would have kept her away from Roth Park. Still, maybe it’s all for the best. He’s very charming, but really too old for her. And I’m not altogether sure I trust him.’

We sat there in silence for a moment. Traffic grumbled in the main road.

‘Audrey came round this afternoon to complain about Michael,’ I said.

‘Hush.’ She darted a glance at me. ‘They’ll hear if you’re not careful. What’s he been doing?’

‘She claimed that he and Brian Vintner had been spying on her.’

‘Where?’

‘In Roth Park somewhere. I suspect she’s been out looking for clues. I had a word with Michael but he denied it. He did say that they had seen her in the park this afternoon.’

‘Audrey will always find something to complain about.’

‘She’s having a difficult time.’

‘So are we all,’ Vanessa snapped, forgetting to lower her voice. ‘The woman’s a cow and that’s all there is to it. A menopausal cow at that.’

‘You may be right. But she’s a victim as well. What happened to Lord Peter would have been a terrible shock for anyone.’

Vanessa glared at me.

‘By the way,’ I said before she had time to reply, ‘there’s something we need to discuss. It’s about the Youlgreave papers.’

‘You’re trying to change the subject.’