Pictures of Perfection

There’s Larry Lillingstone, the young vicar – here’s something for your sermon! Whoops. Kee Scudamore, either deliberately or trying to escape, has got in the way. Not to worry, here’s one in the cassock for you, Vicar, anyway. And who have we here? Farmer George Creed and his so holy sister whose pies are a lot tastier than her piety – there’s for you! And bossy Girlie Guillemard comes next, her teeth biting clean through the stem of her pipe as her belly blossoms redly. And now the smell of blood is hot in the evening air, and hotter still in the berserker’s mind as he leaps on to the table in full and ineffable fury. At point-blank range he pumps a shot into little Fran Harding’s ’cello which she is vainly trying to shelter behind. Then he turns to the Squire. Their eyes meet. ‘Here’s one for your ballad, Squire,’ says the berserker. And laughs as the force of the shot drives the old man’s script back into his chest, where it hangs redly, like a proclamation on a blasted tree.

Now the berserker turns to face the crowd. Or rabble rather, for they are all in retreat. Except for three. The Holy Trinity! The Three Stooges! The Good, the Bad and the Ugly!

He can’t remember their names. Doesn’t matter. You don’t give pigs names, not when you’re planning to kill them.

They are moving slowly towards him. He glances down and regrets the shots wasted at non-human targets, for he sees he has only one shot left.

Not to worry. One’s enough to make a point.

But which one?

The Good? The Bad? Or the Ugly?

He makes his decision.

He raises his gun.

And he fires.

CHAPTER TWO

‘I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.’

Two days before the events just described, late on a cold March afternoon buffed bright by a skittish east wind, Enscombe’s peace had been less dramatically shattered by the arrival of three motorbikes and a long-base Land Rover.

The Land Rover had the words GUNG HO! stencilled on its sides in scarlet with, above them, the image of a swooping bird of prey. The same logos appeared on the white helmets and pale blue leathers of the riders and passengers of the first two motorbikes. These were Harley Davidson Fatboys, and they and the Land Rover bumped up the cobbles of the narrow forecourt of the Wayside Café and came to a halt with a deal of exuberant revving.

The third solitary rider brought his old Triumph Thunderbird to a more decorous halt in front of the neighbouring Tell-Tale Bookshop (Rare & Antiquarian: Prop. E. Digweed, D.Litt.). His helmet and leathers were a dull black, unrelieved except by a star of silver studs at the breast.

The first Harley Davidson team had removed their helmets to reveal a shag of black hair, male, and a shoal of herring-bright ringlets, female, which its owner shook down over her shoulders as she stretched her arms and said, ‘Unzip me, darling. I’m dying for a pee.’

At this point the door of the café opened to reveal a statuesquely handsome woman in a blue chequered apron. She looked the new arrivals up and down and said, ‘No hippies. No bikers. In the Name of the Lord.’

The ringleted rider shrieked an incredulous laugh, and her companion said, ‘What’s the Lord got against bikers, then?’

‘God hath made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions,’ replied the woman in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice.

The second passenger had removed her helmet to reveal a Nefertiti skull whose close-napped hair was, aptly, a billiard-table green. She lit a cigarette and said, ‘Jesus Christ!’ The café owner gave an outraged snort and took a step forward to put baize-head within reach of either the Third Commandment or a left hook, but before this could be made clear, the fourth biker, who’d been conferring with three young men climbing out of the Land Rover, whipped off his helmet with a flourish and said, ‘Dora, my sweet, it is I, Guy. And I have brought these good people to a halt within sight almost of our destination with the promise that here they would get the best apple pie this side of Paradise.’

He was in his late twenties, with curly brown hair, eyes that twinkled at will and a charming smile that couldn’t quite conceal its complacent certainty of success. His voice was vibrant with sincerity and those reverse-Pygmalion vowels which old Etonians imagine improve their street cred. He advanced as though to embrace the café owner, but she folded her arms in a counterscarp which repulsed familiarity and said, ‘I’m sorry, Master Guy. It’s got to be the same rule for all, else the law is mocked.’

For a second the biker’s charm looked ready to dissolve into petulance, but reason prevailed and he said, ‘All right, Dora, our loss is your loss. Come on, boys and girls. The good news is the Hall’s only a minute away. The bad news is, you’re going to have to make do with Cousin Girlie’s marble cake, which does not belie its name. Ciao, Dorissima! Avanti!’

The male trio got back into the Land Rover, the mixed quartet replaced their neuterizing helmets, while the solitary rider who had been observing the incident with quiet interest removed his. Behind him and to his left a nasally upper-class kind of voice said, ‘I say. You. Fellow.’

Slowly he turned his head which had all the unlikely rugosities of a purpose-built Gothic ruin.

In the doorway of the bookshop stood a tall slim man with an aristocratically aquiline face under a thatch of silver hair with matching eyebrows that shot up in surprise as he got the full-frontal view, then lowered to echo the sardonic twist of his lips as he said, ‘You are, I hazard, not a customer?’

‘Not for books, if that’s what you mean,’ said the biker politely. ‘It were more a cup of tea …’

‘I thought not,’ interrupted the bookseller. ‘Lacking as you clearly do those basic skills of literacy which would have enabled you to read the sign.’

The sign he was pointing at was fixed to the wall beneath the window. In a diminutive version of the elegant cursive script used for the shop name above, it read CUSTOMER PARKING ONLY.

It would have been possible to argue that where the message is monitory, the medium should place clarity above aesthetics. But all the biker said was, ‘Yes, well, I would have parked in front of the café, only there wasn’t room …’

‘Indeed? I suppose by the same token, if the café were closed, you would expect high tea to be served in my flat? Besides, there seems to be a plenitude of room now …’

It was true. The rejected convoy was moving off in an accelerando of engines and a brume of fume.

‘Sorry,’ said the biker, wheeling his bike the few feet necessary to take him from one forecourt to the next.

The aproned chatelaine remained in place.

‘Your friends have gone to the Hall, God preserve them,’ she said.

‘Amen, but I’m not with them,’ said the solitary.

‘He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith,’ said the woman. ‘No bikers. No hippies. Not even if they’re old enough to know better.’

The biker looked slowly round as though in search of help. The convoy had already vanished up the hill beyond the church. A cyclist appeared from the bottom end of the High Street and passed rapidly and silently by. The rider was a pale-faced young man wearing a forage cap and fatigues. The bike had panniers and along the crossbar was strapped a shotgun. He could have been a youngster who’d lied about his age in 1914 to join a bicycle battalion. But slight though his build was he drove the machine up the hill past the church with no diminution of speed.

In the doorway of the Eendale Gallery directly opposite the bookshop a youngish woman watched his progress, her face as coldly beautiful as a classical statue.

The biker, finding no hope of relief, returned his attention to Dora Creed and said, ‘This Hall that lad mentioned. Have they got a tea-room there?’

He saw at once he’d touched a nerve. She drew herself up and said, ‘They have made it desolate, and being desolate, it mourneth unto me; the whole land is desolate, because no man layeth it to heart.’

‘I’d not argue with you there,’ said the biker. ‘But there’ll be another election some time. Meanwhile, this Hall …? I’m parched.’

Suddenly she smiled with a charm reminiscent of Master Guy’s but lacking his contrivance, and for a moment the biker thought he’d got inside her principles. Then she said, ‘Carry on up the hill past the church. You’ll see the estate wall on your right. There’s a big set of gates and a lodge after about two furlongs. That’s Old Hall.’

‘Thank you kindly,’ said the biker.

He replaced his helmet, restarted his engine and set off at a sedate pace up the High Street.

The church which dominated the village from the first plateau of the rising ground to the north had a curious feature which might have tempted some men to pause. The tower looked as if it had fallen out with the nave and was leaning away from it at an angle disconcerting to the sober eye and probably devastating to the drunk. But the biker was not in a mood for archaeological diversion. A cup of tea was what he craved and he doubted if old traditions of ecclesiastic hospitality still obtained in rural Yorkshire.

Beyond the church, as promised by Miss Creed, a high boundary wall reared up to inhibit the vulgar gaze. But after a quarter-mile a large sign advertising the imminence of Enscombe Old Hall suggested the vulgar gaze might no longer be considered so unbearable.

A little further on the wall was broken by a massive granite arch fit to harbinger a palace. In the headstone of the arch was carved a bird, with a long thin neck perched on a heraldic shield whose quarters variously showed a rose, a sinking ship, a greyhound couchant, and what to the biker’s inexpert eye appeared to be a dromedary pissing against a Christmas tree. Beneath this dark escutcheon ran the equally obscure words: Fucata Non Perfecta.

On the gate columns, however, had been hung signs of compensatory clarity which in a style and colouring designed to catch the motoring eye advertised the delights on offer at Old Hall.

For a mere £5.50 you were invited to tour this fortified Tudor manor house, the home of the Guillemard family since the sixteenth century. Or for £2 only you could explore the extensive grounds (except when the red flag was flying which meant they were being used for ‘skirmishing’ – details on application). In addition, the visitor too frail to skirmish, tour or explore could seek care and perhaps cure in the new Holistic Health Park centred on the refurbished stable block, where it was proposed to offer acupuncture, reflexology, aromatherapy, metaplastic massage, and Third Thought counselling.

Only one word in this multifarious menu really registered on the biker’s brain. It was Refreshments.

Strictly observing the five-m.p.h. speed limit imposed by yet another sign, the biker passed beneath the arch into a greening gravelled drive curving out of sight between high banks of rhododendrons in need of pruning.

To the left just inside the gateway stood a square single-storey building, presumably the lodge, its rather forbidding front made gay by window-boxes full of daffodils. The biker glimpsed the figure of a man standing in one of the windows and he gave a friendly nod. In that brief moment of distraction, a girl of five or six came hurtling out of the shrubbery to his right, hit the front wheel of the bike, bounced off, and sat down on the gravel.

‘Bloody hell,’ said the biker. ‘You all right, luv?’

She put her hand to her mouth and let out a strange noise which it took his tear-anticipating ear a little while to identify as giggling.

Then she rose, dusted herself off and ran past him into the porch of the Lodge where she turned to look back and wave.

He watched her easy movement with relief till a strangely situated knocking sound made him turn his head, when he found himself looking into the face of a uniformed policeman who was rapping his knuckles against his crash helmet.

Correction. Almost uniformed. He was wearing tunic and trousers but was hatless, his vigorous red hair tousled by the gusting wind. Even the serious expression he was wearing and a fading bruise high on his right cheekbone couldn’t disguise how young he was.

He brought his face close enough for his breath to mist the biker’s plastic visor and demanded, ‘Can’t you read?’

The biker sighed at this further aspersion on his literacy.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can read.’

‘Then you’ll know the sign back there says five miles an hour.’

‘Aye, I noticed, and that was what I were doing.’

‘Oh yes?’ sneered the young policeman.

Slowly he began a circumambulation of the motorbike. He moved with an easy grace, like a man who was proud of his body, which to the biker’s keen eye, with its breadth of shoulder and narrowness of waist, looked a body to be proud of.

His circle complete, he halted, and with his eyes still focused on the machine as though by sheer force of will he could create a fault, he thrust his left hand under the biker’s nose, snapped his finger and said, ‘Documentation.’

The biker examined the outstretched hand which had half a dozen stitches, perhaps more, in a cut which ran from the thumb-ball along the wrist under the shirt cuff. Then, with another sigh, he unzipped his jerkin, reached inside and came out with a wallet.

‘Any particular reason I should show you this?’ he asked mildly.

The constable’s handsome young face slowly turned.

‘Because I’m asking you, that’s one particular reason. Because I’m telling you, that’s another particular reason. Two enough?’

‘Plenty. As long as you’ll be putting ’em in your report.’

‘What I put in my report’s got nothing to do with you,’ said the constable.

‘You think not? Here,’ said the biker. He handed over the documents he’d removed from his wallet, then slowly removed his helmet.

The youngster looked from the documents to the face, then back to the documents, like a soldier trying not to believe a dear-John.

‘Oh hell,’ he said unhappily. ‘You might have let on.’

And Detective-Sergeant Wield said, ‘You need documentation to get treated politely round here, do you?’

‘Yes, I mean, no, of course not, only you’ve got to keep a sharp eye open for strangers out here …’

He was nobbut a lad, thought Wield, noting how the embarrassed flush blended in with the rich red of his windblown hair.

He said abruptly, ‘Worried about strangers, are you? Seems to me that come Easter, you’re going to have a lot more to worry about, and from that sign on the gate, some of ’em will be very strange indeed. You got a hat, lad?’

‘Yeah, I’m sorry, Sarge, it’s back there … in the car …’

‘Wear it.’ Wield’s brain, which his CID Chief, Andy Dalziel, opined should be pickled in strong ale and sold to IBM after the Sergeant’s death, had been punching up references to Enscombe.

He said, ‘Post Office here got done, twice, wasn’t it? Once before Christmas, once just after. We never got anyone, as far as I recall. That’d be strangers too, I suppose?’

‘I expect so, Sarge.’

‘And wasn’t there some bother about the War Memorial last Remembrance Day?’

‘Yes, Sarge. It got desecrated, I’d just started here then.’

‘Did you get it sorted?’

‘I think so, Sarge.’

‘Anything else important happen here since you came?’

‘No, Sarge. I don’t think so.’

‘What about those stitches in your arm? And that bruise on your face? You been in a ruck?’

‘Oh no, Sarge.’ He laughed, not wholly convincingly. ‘Walked into the branch of a tree, fell and cut myself on a rock.’

‘Oh aye? So. Two break-ins and an attack by nature. Real crime wave! No wonder you’re neurotic about strangers. But the rule is, nice first, nasty when you see a need. You got that, Bendish?’

The name had popped into his head. He must have seen it on a report. He’d had nothing to do personally with either of the PO jobs here.

The young constable was clearly impressed and disconcerted at this degree of knowledge. His mind was trying to fit it in with the appearance of a detective-sergeant, some way past the first flush of youth, wearing black leather and riding a high-powered motorbike.

He said, ‘You’re not here officially, are you, Sarge? I mean under cover …?’

Wield barked the sound which friends recognized as his way of expressing amusement though others often took it as a sign that the interrupted lycanthropic process suggested by his face was about to be resumed.

‘No, son. Just out enjoying the countryside. And dying for a cup of tea. It said something back there about refreshments.’

‘You’re out of luck. Sorry,’ said Bendish as though he felt personally responsible. ‘Place isn’t open to the public till Easter; it does say so on the sign. You must have missed it. But there’s a café in the village. Dora Creed’s place. She’s a smashing baker. Very welcoming.’

‘Oh aye?’ said Wield. ‘I saw it. Next to a bookshop. Make me welcome there too, would they?’

‘Oh yes. Old Digweed’ll talk to you for hours about books if you let him.’

‘So,’ said Wield, ‘if we add you, that must make Enscombe about the most welcoming place in Yorkshire. It fair wears a man out. I reckon I’ll head on home and make my own tea.’

To give unalloyed joy is a rare privilege. Observing the undisguisable relief and pleasure which broke out in the young man’s face, Wield thought: Mebbe I should say goodbye to folk more often.

‘Sorry about the misunderstanding, Sarge,’ said Bendish.

‘You’ll be sorrier if I catch you wandering around again baht ’at,’ said Wield heavily. ‘This isn’t Ilkley Moor. Take heed!’

He revved up and set off slowly through the gateway. The watcher at the window had vanished but the little girl was still standing in the porch. He waved at her as he passed and she waved back, then ran into the house.

The young constable watched him out of sight. Then he flung up his right arm in a gesture as much of exultation as derision and yelled, ‘And goodbye to you too, you ugly old sod!’

Then, laughing, he turned and ran back into the rhododendrons.

CHAPTER THREE

‘… so young, so blooming and so innocent, as if she never had a wicked thought in her life – which yet one has some reason to suppose she must have had …’

Kee Scudamore watched the last motorcyclist move away, then crossed the street. She walked with an easy and unconscious grace untroubled by the gusting wind which unfurled her long flaxen hair and pressed her cotton skirt to the contours of her slender thighs. Under her left arm she carried a box file.

‘Dora, Edwin, good day to you,’ she said in a soft voice with just enough music in it to take the edge off a certain almost pedantic note. ‘And what did Guy the Heir want with you?’

‘Pie for his cronies,’ said Dora Creed. ‘I sent them packing. Rules’s no good if you make exceptions. No hippies, no bikers.’

‘Take care, Dora. Once he comes into his own, it will be his decision who caters for the Reckoning, not to mention the new café.’

Dora shrugged indifferently and said, ‘Hall may stand higher than the church, but it’s the church I look up to.’

‘Well said,’ replied Kee. ‘I wish everyone had your principles, especially up at the Hall.’

‘Oh Jesus,’ said Digweed. ‘Not more revelations?’

Dora Creed shot him an indignant glance and said, ‘The Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.’

Digweed replied with some irritation, ‘If the Lord can tolerate the enthusiasm of a vessel as holy as yourself for the works of Harold Robbins I am sure he will permit me the occasional profanity. Kee, what now?’

‘It’s this gift shop Girlie’s planning. First there was your brother’s carved crooks, Dora. Not that I can really complain about that. George is a free agent and goes his own way.’

‘As an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks,’ said Dora Creed fiercely.

Kee raised her eyebrows questioningly at Digweed who shook his head as if to say he didn’t understand either.

‘However,’ resumed the blonde woman, ‘Beryl Pottinger’s a horse of a different colour. I’ve put in a great deal of time and effort there, and she’s learned a lot from Caddy. Her watercolours have become our bestselling line. Now she tells me Girlie’s offering her a better deal. This is blatant poaching.’

‘I cannot believe Beryl would let herself be bought.’

‘With her job at the school on the line, money may seem a little more important.’

‘He that hasteth to be rich shall not be innocent,’ said Dora.

‘Let’s hope we can save her job,’ said Digweed.

‘By selling the Green, you mean? Even if that’s what the village opts for, would it raise enough?’

‘With planning permission, possibly. The Parish Council put out some unofficial feelers and got a working estimate. But let’s leave all that till the meeting tomorrow night, shall we? Meanwhile I hope you get your difference with Girlie sorted out. She’s a reasonable woman.’

‘She’s also a Guillemard, and Fucata non Perfecta’s a hard virus to get out of your blood. Holistic healing and executive cowboys and indians may save the Hall, but what kind of people do you think they’ll be bringing into the village?’

‘Hippies. Bikers,’ said Dora promptly. ‘They go to and fro in the evening: they grin like a dog, and run about through the city.’

Digweed and Kee laughed out loud and the bookseller said, ‘Certainly that last creature that was here, the one by himself, he was straight out of Mad Max! But there can’t be many around like him, thank heaven. Kee, that deed of gift you want me to look at …’

‘I’ve got it here,’ said the woman, opening the box file which was full of what looked like old legal papers. ‘Here you are.’

‘My law is very rusty,’ he said warningly as he took the document she handed to him.

‘Mine’s non-existent,’ she replied, closing the file. ‘I’ve probably got the wrong end of the stick. Nevertheless, it could be worth a look. Meanwhile I’ll drop the rest of this stuff off at the vicarage and I might just carry on to the Hall and have a talk with Girlie about Beryl. Edwin, if you see anyone going into the Gallery, you might pop across. Caddy’s supposedly in charge, but once she gets stuck into something in her studio, you could blow up the till and she would hardly notice.’

She set off up the street with the wind dancing attendance.

Digweed, watching her go, said, ‘Interesting how well Kee managed to suppress her fascination with parish history while old Charley Cage was up at the vicarage.’

Dora said, ‘A vicar needs a wife. It’s not natural else.’

‘Indeed? Perhaps you should drop a line to the Pope. I think I’ll just pop over and check that Caddy’s OK.’

He patted his silvery hair as he spoke, though unlike Kee’s silken mane, it was too coarsely vigorous to be much disturbed by the wind.

Dora Creed said, ‘The hoary head is a crown of glory if it is found in the way of righteousness.’

‘True beyond need of exegesis,’ said Digweed.

He crossed the street and entered the Gallery. Converted from the old village smithy, it was a spacious, well-lit room, the upper walls of which were crowded with paintings and the lower shelved with tourist fodder. Behind the unattended till a door opened on to a narrow, gloomy passage. Digweed went through it and called, ‘Caddy?’

‘Here,’ a voice floated down a steep staircase.

Digweed ran lightly up the stairs and along a creaking landing into the studio. This consisted of two rooms knocked together and opened into the attic whose sloping roof was broken by a pair of huge skylights. These spilled brightness on to a triptych of canvases occupying almost an entire wall. On them was painted a Crucifixion, conventionally structured with the cross raised high in the central panel and a long panorama of landscape and buildings falling away behind in the other two.