The Long Divorce (A Gervase Fen Mystery) Read online

  'Hello,' said Mr Datchery. 'What's that you've got?

  The question was strictly speaking superfluous, since the nature of the object was plain enough; it was a large and formidable butcher's steel – that is, a heavy, rod-like bar of grooved metal with a sharp point at one end and a horn handle at the other. Its present possessor, on being accosted, halted, and surveyed Mr Datchery with gloom for a moment. She then immediately fell flat on her face.

  But she was not, it seemed, the bellowing sort. Assisted by Mr Datchery, she got back on to her feet without breaking silence. And Mr Datchery, having noted with alarm that the point of the steel had only just failed to gouge out an eye, felt very strongly that it had better be removed before it had a second chance.

  'Does that belong to your daddy?' he asked. The tot thought this over and presently shook its head. 'Where did you get it, then?' Finding the question beyond its competence, the tot ignored it in favour of attempting, with a great display of knicker, to stand on its head. 'Will you,' said Mr Datchery, 'give it to me to look after?' The tot indicated that it would not. 'Well, then' – after some search Mr Datchery had produced and was proffering a personal point – 'will you change it for something to buy sweets with?' The tot accepted the coupon and put it in its mouth. 'No, no,' said Mr Datchery. 'You must take that to the shop, and then they'll give you the sweets – providing, of course, that you take money as well.' He gave the tot sixpence, and it put that in its mouth too. 'No,no,' said Mr Datchery again, retrieving the sixpence and the coupon with some difficulty from their moist concealment. 'What I mean is –'

  But at this point the tot for the first time spoke. Scuffing the dust with one toe, and gazing abstractedly at a point in space somewhat to the right of Mr Datchery's left elbow, it embarked on a long diatribe having, as far as Mr Datchery could make out, nothing whatever to do with the matter at issue. 'Yes, that's all very well,' said Mr Datchery as soon as it seemed to have finished. 'But what I want to know is, are you or are you not going to swap your steel for my sixpence?' The tot contemplated him in simple wonder for an instant, and then, abruptly, losing interest in the steel, the sixpence, the coupon, Mr Datchery and indeed the entire transaction, wobbled away dismissively into the gate of the cottage outside which they stood and was lost from view, leaving the steel where it had fallen.

  Mr Datchery picked the steel up and looked at it dubiously. It might, of course, belong in the cottage – but for domestic purposes it was over-large, he thought, and in any case, the cottage appeared, apart from the tot, to be at the moment uninhabited. After a brief hesitation, therefore, he continued on his way, the steel swinging in his hand. And so it was that a few minutes later he rounded a bend in the lane and came in sight of a large and rather featureless house on the left-hand side. In front of the house was a gate; leaning over the gate, in a curiously furtive manner, was Colonel Andrew Babington, Chief Constable of the county; and parked just beyond the gate was a car which Mr Datchery recognized as Dr Helen Downing's. Mr Datchery received the impression that, as he came in view, Colonel Babington cast something hurriedly from him into the rhododendron bushes, and that a drift of pale blue vapour was hovering within measurable distance of his head. But by the time Mr Datchery reached the gate this had vanished. 'Still not smoking?' Mr Datchery inquired.

  'The thing to do when you give up smoking,' Colonel Babington answered obliquely, 'is to tell everyone you're doing it. Then the only way your self-respect will allow you to smoke is in secret.' He produced a packet of jujubes and placed one with repugnance in his mouth. 'These things help.'

  'Once I'd given up smoking,' said Mr Datchery smugly, 'my self-respect wouldn't allow me to smoke even in secret.'

  The Colonel regarded him with dislike. 'I dare say,' he said. 'It's easy to theorize. The trouble is, you get to feel so fit in such a short time that you can't imagine why you ever gave it up at all. And then before you know where you are –'

  'Wouldn't it be better to just try and cut it down?'

  'That's another thing you start thinking.'

  'Well,' said Mr Datchery. 'So this is where you live.'

  'Yes. Out for a walk, are you?'

  'Here's a butcher's steel for you.'

  'A what?'

  'I took it from an infant.'

  'Indeed. I've no doubt you think it very funny to –'

  But by now Mr Datchery had thrust the steel into his hand, and this silenced him temporarily. 'Dangerous-looking thing,' he commented after examining it. 'Belongs to Weaver, I expect. Did you say an infant?'

  'An infant.'

  'Interesting,' said Colonel Babington. 'But I don't know what you want to give to to me for.'

  'You represent the law, don't you?'

  'I dare say I do, but I'm not a ruddy lost-property office.'

  'Keep it,' said Mr Datchery generously. 'You keep it. Then you can return it to its owner when you go to fetch your meat.'

  'I don't fetch my meat,' said the Colonel irascibly, 'it's delivered.'

  'Well, then –' 'But here Mr Datchery broke off, for Helen Downing, emerging from the house, had come to join them. Her visit was apparently a professional one, for she carried a medical bag. 'Hello, how are you?' said Mr Datchery. 'No more faints, I hope?'

  She smiled and shook her head – at which Mr Datchery, who liked to suppose himself too old now to look with wantonness at handsome young women, was much moved. 'But what's the trouble?' she asked. 'And what on earth's that?'

  They showed her the steel and explained how they had come to it. 'Well, I'll take it if you like,' she said. 'I've got to pass Weaver's shop on my way home.'

  The Colonel looked relieved. 'If you're quite sure it wouldn't be a nuisance . . .'

  'Of course not . . . Your wife's very much better, Colonel Babington, and I've told her she can get up to-morrow for an hour or two. But she's not to go out, or try to do anything.'

  'I didn't realize Mrs Babington was ill,' said Mr Datchery, 'I'm so sorry.'

  ' 'Flu,' said the Colonel. 'Flu, if you please, in June.'

  'Anyway, she's over it now.' Helen's smile did not quite disguise the effects of the strain she had undergone. 'Well, I must be getting back. I'll come again on Tuesday.'

  They watched while she climbed into the car, pushed the steel into the leather pocket inside the door, and drove away. 'Nice girl,' said Colonel Babington appreciatively. 'They don't come any better.'

  'And is she a good doctor?'

  'I believe so. Haven't got much use for women doctors myself, but my wife swears by her. Well. You'd like some tea, I expect.'

  'I'd rather have a drink.'

  'So would I. Come on in, then.'

  The garden was large – several acres, Mr Datchery thought; and the house had the mournful though heroic air, common in these days, of a dwelling which has to keep up appearances without the intervention of a sufficient staff. 'With my wife in bed,' said the Colonel, 'and only one girl to do the cleaning and the cooking, we're in a bit of a muddle at the moment. What we ought to do is abandon a lot of the rooms – shut 'em up – but I can't make up my mind to it. It's like an amputation, half the house dies on you. Of course, with me it's really money, not labour, that's the trouble; I sometimes think I must be in the same wood the country isn't out of yet . . . Well, here we are. Look out for the mat inside, it slips.'

  He opened the front door. A large and comely marmalade cat emerged in a hurry, careered to the step, and there stopped dead, peering apprehensively about it. 'It's funny he does that,' said Colonel Babington. 'Never been able to understand it. He has Enemies, I suppose.'

  'A Kafka cat,' said Mr Datchery. 'Though it may be that what he sees is Martians.'

  'Martians, poppycock. All this saucer business, I never heard such stuff.'

  'What do you call him?'

  'Lavender,' said the Colonel. 'His name's Lavender.'

  Brooding over this instance of misplaced fancy, Mr Datchery was conducted into a large and airy study on the right-hand s
ide of the hall, and while Colonel Babington fiddled with a tantalus, sat contemplating the cat Lavender, which had changed its mind and followed them in, and was now distractedly perambulating the furniture. Though beautiful, the cat Lavender did seem to be not very bright; it moved about with the hypnotic air of the feeble-witted, and unlike most of its species was scarecely able to take a step without knocking something over, so that at intervals, whenever its ramblings brought it into the vicinity of a clock or a vase, Colonel Babington closed his eyes and went rigid until the danger had passed. 'I can't think,' said Mr Datchery, 'why you allow it to walk along the mantelpiece like that. You could pick it up and put it down on the floor, couldn't you?'

  'It loses its head if you try to do that, and makes a dash for it? You can imagine what happens then . . . Soda?'

  'Yes, please.'

  Having dispensed the drinks, Colonel Babington put the cat Lavender unceremoniously outside the door, righted the things it had overturned, mopped his brow and sank into a chair. 'Damned hot,' he said 'Well, here's how.' They sipped gratefully. 'And now,' said the Colonel, 'let's hear how you've been getting on.'

  Mr Datchery told him.

  7

  SATURDAY, then, was on the surface uneventful. On the following morning, which was the morning of the third day of his visit to Cotten Abbas, Mr Datchery in his board-like bed awoke, not much to his gratification, at half past six, and when the communion bell began to sound, at a quarter to seven, rose hurriedly, dressed, and staggered across to the church. At half past eight, refreshed by an altercation with the Vicar about the unnatural rigour of the hour, he returned to the inn to eat breakfast, and subsequently, having bathed and shaved, made his way, by following Mogridge's laborious directions, to Beatrice Keats-Madderly's house, which he had not so far seen. His inspection of it confirmed a small but not wholly unimportant aspect of one of the theories he was incubating, and although the violet ink problem continued to vex him intermittently, he still contrived to be fairly offensively pleased with himself by the time he set off homewards.

  The route which he took in returning to 'The Marlborough Head' was more circuitous than the one by which he had come; and thus it fell out that he once again encountered Penelope Rolt, who was leaning over the parapet of a low bridge which spanned the main railway-line between London and Twelford. The bridge bore witness to a road long since abandoned and blocked up, for it led purposelessly from one expanse of grazing to another, and there was now nothing more than an ill-defined footpath where formerly carts and carriages had passed. The parapet was not high, and Penelope's thin figure was sprawled across it so as to enable her to gaze down at the metals below. The sunlight struck sparks of gold from her untidy hair, and her stained fingers caressed the warm, crumbling stone. She looked up as Mr Datchery approached.

  'Hello,' she said. 'I wondered when I was going to see you again. You're Cotten's Public Mystery Number One.'

  'Am I? Why?'

  'You told Peter you were a Professor or something, and Mr Mogridge says you told him you were a Mass Observer, and everyone else says you're from Scotland Yard.'

  'And what,' said Mr Datchery, 'do you think?'

  'I think you're what you told Peter.'

  'Trustful creature.' Mr Datchery peered down at the railway line. 'Is this a favourite place of yours?'

  'I come here sometimes,' she answered rather defensively. 'I say, does everybody feel they want to throw themselves over when they're on a bridge? I do.'

  'I believe that to a small proportion of people the impulse comes naturally,' said Mr Datchery. 'Others acquire it as a result of reading about it in novels.'

  'Do you feel it?'

  'No.'

  'It's stronger at night, of course.' Penelope rubbed her bare leg where a nettle had stung it. 'I love it here after dark, when there's an express coming through. You hear it first, a long way off, and then you see its boiler-fire yellow on the side of the cutting, and then the vibration starts and the train seems to go faster and faster as it gets closer, though of course it doesn't really, and then finally the whole bridge shakes as if someone had hit it and there's a gush of smoke and it's over and you feel quite flat again . . . You know, I can understand why people who want to kill themselves do it by chucking themselves under trains.'

  'Can you?'

  'Yes, I can. It's the what-do-you-call-it, the crescendo and then like a terrific bang on a drum. If you poisoned yourself or anything like that, you'd have to do it in cold blood, but a train coming up half does it for you.'

  'Interesting,' said Mr Datchery with truth. 'I see what you mean.'

  'And I've often wondered what it'd feel like if you did throw yourself over. I've stood here and tried to imagine it, you know the way one does, and whether it'd be better if the engine hit you while you were still falling or ran over you after you'd hit the rails.'

  'I think,' said Mr Datchery without emphasis, that either way you'd probably feel a second or two of pain so much more horrible than anything you'd expected that you'd die cursing yourself for the biggest fool who ever lived.'

  'People who weren't killed have said afterwards that they didn't feel much.'

  'Well, they weren't killed, were they? And apart from that, they were probably concussed and incapable of remembering. Human beings who propose doing something idiotic generally manage to persuade themselves that the laws of nature are going to be suspended for their benefit, and suicides aren't any exception: they imagine their act is such a stupendous and conclusive thing that in some occult fashion their capacity for feeling pain will vanish. But of course it does nothing of the kind.'

  'The only thing is that if they're killed instantaneously –'

  'That's a fine adverb, but it seldom means anything when applied to death. Death which is literally instantaneous is so rare as to be practically a miracle. Even a man who's shot in the heart has time to feel pain before he dies.'

  'All right, Socrates,' said Penelope lightly. 'I give in. I s'pose you're going to tell me now that imagining suicide is morbid.'

  Mr Datchery smiled. 'I expect it is, in excess. But most people above the level of morons do it at one time or another. In my case it brings my cowardice so nakedly to the surface that I daren't indulge in it nowadays, for fear of losing all my self-respect.'

  A slow-moving goods train clattered into sight along the line, and puffed with deliberation towards them, its stoker placidly surveying the landscape through one of the cabin windows. And Penelope said abruptly:

  'I had a row with my father last night.'

  'Did you? I'm not surprised. You're probably very exasperating sometimes. Why do you have to tell me about it?'

  'Oh, I don't know.' Penelope kicked peevishly at the long grass which grew beneath the bridge's parapet. 'I just wondered what you'd think, because when all's said and done you're quite sensible in some ways.'

  'Thanks very much. But you haven't mentioned what the row was about.'

  'Oh, it was Peter, of course,' she said petulantly. 'Pa said I wasn't to see him any more, so later on, when I said that in spite of that I had seen him –'

  'And had you?'

  'No. He'd gone off hiking for the day, or anyway, that was what he was going to do. Me telling Pa I'd seen him was a Gesture.'

  'Very proper,' said Mr Datchery without enthusiasm. 'Very proper and independent.'

  'And the reason I'm here now is a Gesture, too. I've been here since six o'clock this morning.'

  'You must be bored.'

  'Yes, I am rather. But the point is, I hardly ever get up as early as that, so Pa'll be wondering if I've run away from home because of last night.'

  'You're a nice amiable girl,' said Mr Datchery, 'aren't you? If I were your father, I should probably whack you for that.'

  'Go ahead,' said Penelope airily. 'I don't mind.' She grinned, and Mr Datchery, without feeling any desire to take advantage of the offer, was pleased to see her so human and so normally naughty-minded. But then her face clouded
, and for the second time she abruptly changed the subject. 'I say, what do they do to you for writing anonymous letters?'

  'You get a prison sentence probably, but not, I think, a very long one. Why?'

  'I just wondered, that's all. I suppose you've been hearing an awful lot about them.'

  'The letters? Something.'

  'Well, who do you suspect?'

  'Anyone. Everyone.'

  'Including Pa, of course.'

  'Yes, including him. But I take it that you don't imagine –'

  'No,' she said too quickly. 'I know him, you see, and it just isn't the sort of thing he'd ever think of. But people here don't like him, and he doesn't like them, so you could make out a case –'

  'Of course you could. It wouldn't be impossible to make out a case against you.'

  She stared incredulously. 'Me?'

  'Or Dr Helen Downing. Or Mr Weaver, who is religious. Or Inspector Casby. Or about a dozen other people I've met or heard of.'

  Half to herself she said quietly: 'I think if they found it was my father, I should die . . . 'And then with finality: 'Well, I'm sick of here. I'm going.'

  'Home?'

  'No, not yet. I'm not hungry enough yet. I'll go and potter about in the water-meadow, I think. There's a little glade in the copse there where Peter and I once – I mean, where I sometimes go to sit and think.' She turned away from the parapet. 'What are you going to do?'

  'Meddle,' said Mr Datchery, 'in one way or another.' At which Penelope laughed delightedly, waved him good-bye, and ran off. A capricious child, Mr Datchery reflected as he left the bridge in the opposite direction; and at her age that was of course healthy and right. Mr Datchery had not much liked her talk of suicide, for he knew better than to subscribe to the popular fallacy that those who talk of suicide never commit it, but on the other hand he had not felt that that talk was morbid or dangerous, or would ever become so; unless – Mr Datchery scowled, thereby intimidating unawares a harmless old lady whom he happened to be passing at the moment: unless – so his thoughts ran on – Penelope's obvious fear that her father might be responsible for the anonymous letters should happen to receive confirmation, or what appeared to be that. In such an event she might need watching . . . Thus ruminative, Mr Datchery ambled staidly back into Cotten Abbas.