A Fall from Grace Page 11

  When he got back home the light on his answer machine was flashing, and he pressed play.

  “Hello, Charlie. It’s Ben Costello at the Halifax station. Any chance of you coming down and having a routine chat? No sign of a report from the postmortem yet, I’m afraid.”

  After a moment’s thought Charlie phoned the duty sergeant at Halifax, who turned out to be his friend Peter Harridance, to give the message to Costello that he was on his way.

  He didn’t have time to swap words with Harridance because Ben Costello was waiting by the desk to lead him through to one of the more informal interview rooms such as Felicity had been taken to the night before. “Just a chat to put me in the picture,” said Ben, and they both sat in chairs that were some way between upright and easy.

  “You’ll have an idea of what Mrs. Peace told me last night, I expect,” Costello began. “The broad outline, anyway. I don’t know if there’s anything you want to add?”

  Charlie thought long and hard.

  “Felicity’s the expert. Long exposure through childhood and adolescence until she made her escape. The weeks since we all came to Slepton have been my first long exposure to her father. Speaking as a virtual outsider I would just say I found him antipathetic.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “His complete egotism. The fact that he used people all the time.” He thought, then decided to be honest. “Little things, like his complete lack of interest in Carola and the one on the way. The fact that when it was suggested that he might be sending Christmas cards to the women who’d helped him over his bereavement in Coombe Barton he acted as if he’d be doing them a big favor if he did it at all. He expected everything to be done for him, and refused to give anything in return.”

  “Had this resulted in any blowups?”

  “No,” said Charlie, rather surprised now he thought about it. “I’m glad about that now, because we don’t have to have any guilt feelings. But if he’d lived it would only have been a matter of time.”

  “I had the feeling that a blowup was brewing at the carol service.”

  “Ah yes, that. We saw how it must have looked. Felicity was worried there was going to be a replay of Coombe Barton. I gather she’s told you all about that.”

  “Pretty much all.”

  “If I may make a suggestion—”

  “Can’t you talk fucking English?” exploded Costello. “ ‘If I may make a suggestion.’ You sound like a fucking bishop . . . Sorry.”

  Charlie’s eyes narrowed, but he maintained his ostentatious cool.

  “No, I’m sorry. I expect it comes from being married to an English graduate steeped in nineteenth-century novels.”

  “No, it’s me should be apologizing. I’ve only had three hours’ sleep.”

  “Anyway, I was going to suggest that Felicity has made a bit too much of Coombe Barton in her own mind. It may have been the sort of little local brouhaha that would have died down in a few weeks because there was really nothing in it.”

  “Maybe,” said Costello. “I said ‘pretty much all.’ It occurred to me after your wife had gone that she didn’t tell me how her father and Anne Michaels came together. Where, how did they meet?”

  Charlie’s forehead creased.

  “Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that. Felicity and I haven’t talked about it, so I don’t suppose she has either. Search me. I know it wasn’t like Coombe Barton, where the relationship sprang up when one of the women who acted as his unpaid servants brought her granddaughter up with her one day and it went on from there. The Michaels apparently hadn’t met Rupert, and they told Felicity when she met them accidentally at the supermarket that they wouldn’t dare approach ‘the great author’ to thank him for what he was doing for Anne—turning her away from drama and towards writing, or so they thought. I don’t know the Michaels family and it may be worth your while checking up on them.”

  “I will.”

  “Could Rupert have had anything to do with the drama stream at Westowram High? It’s possible, though I think he would have told us if he had. Anything that ministered to his sense of being a person of importance was passed on to all and sundry.”

  “And your wife told me that Anne Michaels was part of the little gang that made life difficult for newcomers to the area?”

  “She was the leader. Haven’t heard much of them recently. Coggenhoe was a newcomer, of course, but it seems a pretty unlikely way of getting acquainted.”

  “I’m inclined to your wife’s view that there was nothing sexual going on with this Michaels girl. She seems to come into the picture under too many separate hats: actress, gang leader, possibly abused child. I rather think she’s going to turn out to be a red herring.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Had there been much talk about this possible affair?”

  “Very little, if any. Felicity admits that if there was a chance of this turning into a rerun of the Coombe Barton affair, it was in its early stages. The parents were entirely happy with things, flattered even, delighted, as I say, to have her mind taken off acting, which they saw as the root cause of some recent problems . . . On the other hand Chris Carlson tried to give Rupert a warning about possible talk, damage to the girl and so on, and Rupert simply slapped him down.”

  “I see. I must ask him about that if anything suspicious is found in the postmortem. At the moment we’re all in the air, and probably wasting our time. Getting more general, I’m not a literary type so tell me: Was your father-in-law an important writer?”

  “No. He’d just written a lot.”

  “Is that your wife speaking?”

  “Probably most of my views on Coggenhoe are a replay of Felicity’s views. You need to keep an open mind. But yes, she’s the literary one, and the reason I speak like I do sometimes.” Costello nodded, not seeming to be embarrassed, though. “I’ve read one or two of the books, and found them difficult to get through. She says he writes a lot of different kinds of books—romance, historical, crime and so on—but is never top-notch in any one of them. So if you went into Halifax library you’d probably find they had a lot of his books but he’s never become well-known, never a ‘name,’ because he spreads a meager talent pretty thin. The lack of big success really riled him. Felicity said he never could realize that he was writing ‘popular’ fiction: in his own mind he was a quality writer.”

  “Your wife is not exactly unbiased.”

  Charlie shrugged, trying not to show irritation.

  “Aren’t we all, about our parents? One way or another. Felicity is sharp, and she’s not likely to deceive herself.”

  “Maybe. But you agree her feelings about her father are pretty strong?”

  “She saw him as turning her mother into a mindless drudge, and trying to do the same to her. By the way, is there any indication of the time Rupert went over the edge?”

  “Not yet. Some time before five o’clock, when he was found. Why?”

  “I thought I might give Felicity an alibi.”

  “For what it’s worth. But she’s not a suspect,” Costello went on hurriedly, seeing he’d gone too far. “Nobody is a suspect, as long as there’s no evidence of a crime.”

  Charlie bit back all sorts of reply.

  “Well, for the record I was home by four o’clock, and she and Carola were there then.”

  “I’ll bear it in mind. You do realize, don’t you, Charlie, that you can have nothing at all to do with this inquiry.”

  Charlie did not care for being treated as an idiot. His voice rose higher.

  “Of course I know I can’t play any part in it.”

  “Don’t get on your high horse. I’m just wanting it quite clear from the word go: if there is anything to look into, this will be my case, maybe with a senior officer from this station. If there is nothing, then of course there’s no problem.”

  “Agreed,” said Charlie, but he felt there was a problem, and it was called Costello. “By the way, what if there’s uncertainty whether he w
as or was not pushed? Medical evidence in a case like this can point both ways.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. Murder hasn’t often come my way.”

  “How do you distinguish a shove from all the injuries the body will have incurred when falling down the quarry side? It’s a bold doctor who will be categorical in that sort of case.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind. Now, let’s just sum up our little talk and we’ll both get on our ways. Rupert Coggenhoe’s circle of acquaintances since he came to live in Slepton Edge would be as far as you know yourselves, Anne Michaels and the women who took care of some of the daily practicalities for him. How the Michaels acquaintanceship started up we don’t know, or what it amounted to.”

  “No. By the way I forgot to mention: according to Chris Carlson he was starting to refer to Anne as his ‘inspiration.’ ”

  “Christ.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Anybody else in the picture, Charlie?”

  “Hmmm. Casual pals in the Black Heiffer—male ones there, mostly. He usually had a few words with the landlord, he’d had one or two short chats with Chris, and some with Desmond Pinkhurst, though I think he didn’t hit it off with him. I wonder about the schoolteachers. Schools like to have an author around now and then to talk to the kids.”

  “Schoolteachers, you say. One would be Harvey Buckworth, I imagine. Who else?”

  “There’s a chap who was made a victim by the children in the drama stream—name of Warburton. I don’t know him myself, but I know he lives in Slepton, or nearby.”

  “We mustn’t get obsessed by the children. Anne Michaels is the only connection with them so far as we know.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “We’d better get along,” said Ben Costello, standing up. “I’ve got a lot on my plate. Thanks for your help.”

  “If anything occurs to me that I’ve forgotten I’ll let you know.”

  They walked down the corridor and stairs and into the outer office, which was empty except for Sergeant Harridance, on duty there.

  “Hello, Peter. You know Charlie Peace, don’t you? He’s the coming man in Leeds. Stick to him and you might get a plum job in CID there.”

  Peter Harridance followed Costello with his eyes as he went out to the street.

  “Something eating him as usual?” Peter asked.

  “Possibly. I got the impression he was hostile, but for no reason I could discover. Possibly racial—blacks and other outsiders getting all the plum jobs, you know the kind of thing. He didn’t actually call me an uppity nigger, but maybe he would have liked to.”

  “Where does his surname come from, I wonder,” said Harridance with a wry smile. “East Grinstead?”

  Charlie raised his hand with a grin and went out to his car.

  * * *

  Once back at home Charlie pushed the button for Classic FM and sat down in his favorite chair and closed his eyes. He felt the need for music he knew by heart already, and for once he was not interested in reading the paper. It wasn’t Ben Costello he wanted to think about: if the man had a problem with his, Charlie’s, color, that was something common enough in the police force not to need special attention. It was the boy at the nursery who hadn’t gone to school that day who was jigging around on the outskirts of his brain. It was his mother who hadn’t wanted him to go. But the medical reason, he felt quite sure, was Dwayne’s invention. And if that was so there was surely a possibility that the reason was yesterday’s death in the quarry. Why would an anxious mother tie that up with school? Or was it he, Charlie, who was doing the tying up? Was he becoming incapable of seeing that not everything that happened in Slepton Edge need have a connection with the event that was occupying most of his thoughts?

  So Rupert Coggenhoe’s death was now a “case,” like any other that he had been involved in. With one difference. It could not be investigated in the usual way, especially with Inspector Costello watching his every move.

  He went to fetch Carola, convinced that the boy—or half of him—wanted to talk about his mother’s worries but wouldn’t necessarily take the initiative to talk even to a black policeman. He was going to have to take the first steps himself. Surely Costello couldn’t object to his talking to a boy waiting to fetch his sister from nursery school, could he?

  So while he was waiting for school to be over (and at least five minutes beyond that, because Carola always spent a lot of time on gossip with her fellows before finally coming out to her parent waiting in the December air) he let his eyes go everywhere, as policemen so often have to. He was glad eventually to see the boy sauntering up to the gates of the little school. He waited till he was inside the garden, then went up to him and was interested to read a strange mixture of alarm and interest in his face.

  “Hello. Still not gone back to school?”

  The boy shrugged and mumbled, “Still not feeling too good.”

  Charlie’s eyebrows shot up satirically.

  “Really? I don’t think your mum would let you fetch your sister if there was something really wrong.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing really wrong, nothing serious.”

  “I think you want to be at school, don’t you? School is a pretty good place to be for you drama geeks, isn’t it?”

  An ecstatic smile spread over the boy’s face.

  “Yeah. It’s fun. And you never know: it might lead to something.”

  “Of course it might. Would you rather be on the stage or on the box?”

  “Oh, on the stage. More exciting. You get more of a buzz.”

  “Now, the truth is, you want to go to school, don’t you, but your mum doesn’t want you to. That’s rather unusual, isn’t it?”

  Dwayne shrugged again, but he was talking more confidently now.

  “She gets funny ideas.”

  “And this particular funny idea is about the drama stream, isn’t it?”

  “Well . . . sort of . . . It’s not police business, though . . . I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I think part of you does,” said Charlie, speaking low and gently. “Part of you is worried too, isn’t it?”

  The boy shifted awkwardly from foot to foot.

  “Maybe. But I’d never have thought of it if she hadn’t come up with it. Daft old git.”

  “She can’t be that daft if what she’s worried about is worrying you too. So what was it about?”

  There was a long silence, then the boy took a deep breath.

  “It’s about the play, you see.”

  “The Tempest?”

  “No, not that one. We haven’t done that one yet. She’d been to see it, you see. Not that you can really see a radio play. The acting’s all in the voice.”

  “Of course it is. Is that the one with the funny title?”

  “That’s right. Unman, Wittering and Zigo.”

  “That’s the one where the boys terrorize their teacher, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Only with us it’s boys and girls, to give them parts as well. It doesn’t make much difference. It’s a really good play.”

  “I’m sure it is. So your mother came to see it?”

  “That’s right. Three months ago.”

  “So why is she bringing it up now?”

  That brought another long silence, then another deep breath.

  “The children are terrorizing this new teacher, you see. And one of the things they keep hinting at is what happened to their other teacher, the one this teacher is replacing.”

  “I think I get you. So what did happen to him?”

  Dwayne swallowed.

  “They pushed him over a cliff.”

  CHAPTER 10

  On the Scent

  Charlie had ample time to meditate on the surprise information that Dwayne Vickery had handed him, and time too to wonder whether it was pure red herring or something that genuinely took him further. You could never rule out coincidence, and in real life one sometimes encountered whopping ones. Quarry, cliff—the differences weren’t great, an
d certainly wouldn’t be to the body going over the edge. But the likeness in the method of killing didn’t necessarily point toward the children. Mrs. Vickery had obviously been at a public performance of the play, so all sorts of other people could have been there too. Quite apart from the fact that, with apparently a great many children involved, the main outlines of the play’s plot could have been known to half the village.

  But that being so, why should anyone want to kill Rupert in such a way as to draw attention to the drama stream at Westowram High? At least it was clear now why Charlie had had that distraught visit from Harvey Buckworth that morning. Harvey had got the point immediately, even if he hadn’t wanted to bring it out into the open to a policeman. Anyone actually involved with the drama classes would have wanted to direct attention away from it, not toward it.

  No. Not necessarily. He was forgetting that they were, after all, children, the actors in that oddly named play, and therefore would not think in the same way as adults, did not have the same self-protective shell which they could draw up to shield themselves in moments of danger. One of the children might have thought of it in some such terms as: it worked in the play so it might work in real life.

  All this he chewed over with Felicity, when she got back from Leeds and teaching.

  “I just can’t work out whether it’s a false trail, or something of real importance,” said Charlie, his face twisted with thought. “And it may be connected to another thing that Costello brought up that I kick myself for not having thought of before.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How did your father and Anne Michaels come together?”

  “How does anyone?” said Felicity.

  “Well, where? In the pubs, when she would have been with her parents? In one of the shops? At school? Was Rupert asked to give a talk about his writing there? Did they get chatting on a walk? Has Anne Michaels got a dog, perhaps? Did she and her little gang target Rupert as an incomer? It seems an unlikely way of getting acquainted.”

  Felicity nodded, and went off to bathe Carola, remaining thoughtful throughout the whole wet and noisy process. When she had got her to bed and to something approaching sleep, she came back into the big room in the house and said to Charlie, “I’ve had an idea about my dad and Anne Michaels.”