The Judgement of Strangers (26 page)

At last it was time for us to go – I was due to take Evensong, at which I would be lucky to have a congregation of more than three people. The Cliffords both came out to the drive to see us off.

‘Oh, by the way,’ I said to Toby, ‘I had a word with Audrey Oliphant after church this morning. She’d be delighted if you could do some fortune-telling at the fete.’

‘Madam Mysterioso. Your fate is in her hands.’ He grinned. ‘And indeed your fete, if you’ll excuse the pun.’

Michael got the joke and burst out laughing.

‘She’ll have a word with you about the details during the week,’ I said. ‘It’s very kind of you.’

Joanna was standing just behind her brother and I could not help seeing her face when I said the word ‘kind’. Her eyebrows lifted. It was as if she had whispered in my ear:
Kind? You must be joking.

We said goodbye and walked down the drive.

‘Was it worth it?’ I asked Vanessa. ‘Have you learnt anything?’

‘Nothing concrete. But it’s odd. Being in that room, looking out of those windows – it was as if I was suddenly much closer to him. As if I knew him slightly before and now knew him much better. I know that sounds fanciful, but that’s how I feel.’

‘I understand.’ I felt rather the same about Joanna.

‘What was the water like?’ Vanessa asked Michael; and for the rest of the way we talked about the swimming pool.

When I opened the front door of the Vicarage, the first thing that greeted me was the smell of alcohol. We went into the sitting room. Rosemary was dozing on the sofa with the television on at a deafening volume. On the table beside her was a bottle of sweet sherry, almost empty.

The following day was Monday the 24th August. Lady Youlgreave’s funeral was in the afternoon. Doris Potter was there, of course, and so were Audrey Oliphant and Nick Deakin. There were half a dozen others – all female, all elderly, some of whom I did not know. There is nothing like a funeral for flushing out unfamiliar faces. Apart from Deakin, no one came to represent the family.

No one, that is, apart from the dogs. Doris had asked me if she might bring Beauty and Beast into the church. It was a bizarre request and, had someone else made it, I would probably have refused. They sprawled on the floor at the west end of the church, at the foot of the font. Doris sat beside them. Beauty snored occasionally, but apart from that I would not have known they were there. Afterwards, the only sign of their presence was a large puddle where they had lain. Doris’s husband loaded them into his car and drove them away, back to their new home in the little house on Manor Farm Lane.

Doris, Deakin and I went with the coffin to the crematorium. Audrey conducted the other mourners over the road to the church hall. When we joined them later, we found them sipping tea and talking in whispers. It was one of the quietest, saddest funerals I could remember taking.

After it was over, Audrey wanted to complain to me about the behaviour of the dogs in the church. I managed to escape from her. I felt I needed air, as though I were suffocating. On my way home I met Mary Vintner. She wanted to ask me about the funeral but I muttered an excuse and brushed past her.

I knew I should go back to the Vicarage. I had letters to write, phone calls to make, and Audrey had been pestering me for my monthly contribution to the parish magazine. Over the last week or so, I had allowed work to pile up. The business of running a parish seemed unbearably tedious. There was nothing new in that. What was new was my inability to ignore the tedium and get down to the job.

On impulse, I turned into the gates of Roth Park. Once I was past the church, I turned right, following the route that Rosemary had taken me on the day that she had found the fur and the blood in Carter’s Meadow. I had the curious sensation that everything was out of my hands now, that it was too late for me to intervene in the course of events.

It was almost with relief that, a moment later, I saw Joanna coming towards me down the path from Carter’s Meadow. She was wearing the green dress I had seen her in before, and sandals. When she saw me, she broke into a run. I held out my arms and she walked into them, as naturally as if she had been doing so for years. Her body was firm and warm. She slipped her arms around my waist.

For a while we stood there, not moving. A devil within me said,
It’s all right, there’s nothing sexual in this, you are comforting a friend, a parishioner
. If I allowed the situation to develop, yes, I would move towards mortal sin and I would no longer be fit to be a priest. But that would not happen. There was nothing to worry about. Joanna’s feeling for me must be purely filial, the orphan’s desire to replace a lost father. It would be sheer vanity on my part to suppose otherwise. My friendly devil obligingly pointed out:
How can anything so sweet be bad?

‘David, look at me.’

I looked down into Joanna’s eyes, green and dark-rimmed. I opened my mouth to say something but she shook her head.

‘Kiss me,’ she said. ‘
Please
.’

I bent my head and obeyed.

There was a kind of madness in the air that summer, spreading like a disease, infecting first one person and then another, until the final weekend in August. That does not excuse what I did. Out of all of us, I was the one who should have known better. I was the one who could have prevented it.

The first time I kissed Joanna was late in the afternoon of Monday, 24th August – the day of Lady Youlgreave’s funeral; the church fete was the following Saturday. After the kiss, we stood there, neither moving nor speaking for at least a minute. Suddenly she pushed me away from her. Her nipples were erect under the thin material of her dress. And she had had an effect on my body, too.

‘I’m sorry,’ I blurted out. ‘I should never –’

‘It’s not that,’ she whispered. ‘Someone’s coming.’

She was looking behind me. I turned. There were two small figures among the oak trees near the drive. Michael and Brian Vintner had their backs to us. Michael seemed to be pointing to something down by the river.

‘They didn’t see us,’ Joanna said. ‘I’m sure.’

‘I must go.’

She stared at me. ‘I don’t want you to go.’

‘I’m a married man, a priest.’ My tongue stumbled. ‘It’s out of the question. I should never have –’

‘I’ve wanted to touch you for ages. Almost since we met. It wasn’t the first time, when you came to the house to talk about the fete. I didn’t know what to make of you then. It was the time after that – do you remember?’

I remembered.

‘I was in the church,’ she went on. ‘Everything was so quiet, I thought I was going to go mad. And I had this feeling someone was watching me, someone nasty. And then you came in, and everything was all right.’

‘But everything isn’t all right. I must go now.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t. I’ve never met anyone like you.’

‘I must go.’ But I did not move away.

The boys were walking away from us, towards the river. A moment later, they were out of sight.

‘I need your help,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Because of Toby. Because – oh
hell
. There’s someone else coming.’

She was looking in the opposite direction – towards the path to Carter’s Meadow. The remains of a hedge ran along what had been the eastern boundary of the meadow. Someone was walking along behind it – slowly, head bowed, as if looking for something. It was Audrey.

‘Please,’ Joanna said. ‘I need to talk to you.’

Without warning, she darted away, aiming for the drive at a point nearer the house than the oak trees. I glanced back at Audrey. She still had not seen me – or so I hoped. I began to walk – almost to run – towards the gate from Roth Park into the churchyard.

I slipped inside the church. It still smelled of the funeral – of flowers and recently extinguished candles. I walked up to the chancel and sat down in my stall in the choir. I lifted my eyes, trying to pray, and instead saw the memorial tablet of Francis Youlgreave. His mortal remains lay somewhere beneath my feet. But for an instant it was as if he were with me in the church, a dark shape leaning against the whitewashed wall beneath his own memorial. I thought he was laughing at me.

‘Is this your fault?’ I heard myself saying.

There was no answer. How could there be? I was the only person in the church. There was nothing and no one beneath the tablet, not even a shadow.
Is this your fault?
A faint, mocking echo of the words floated in the still air. The question twisted like a snake that bites its tail: and for an instant I thought someone else had spoken the words –
Is this your fault?
– and that the question was directed at me.

‘Not me,’ I said aloud. ‘
Francis?
’

Francis Youlgreave was the thread, almost invisible, that bound us. I came to Roth, all those years ago, because of him. Vanessa’s original interest in me was sparked by the fact that I lived in the place where Francis Youlgreave had died. Lady Youlgreave had provided fuel to feed the fire. Now Lady Youlgreave was dead, gnawed by her pets. Francis Youlgreave had mutilated animals, and Audrey’s Lord Peter had been mutilated in his turn. Vanessa was increasingly determined to write his biography. And I – there was no point in trying to fool myself – was in love with a young woman who lived in Francis Youlgreave’s family home and thought she heard his footsteps in the room above hers at night.

Sitting there in the empty church, I felt a coldness creeping over me. There was no pattern in this, or none that I could discern. Where were we going? Where would this end? On the edge of my range of vision, the marble tablet stared down like a blank white face.

I was not going mad, I told myself. True, I was under considerable stress. There was a great deal to worry about. But I was not going mad. What I needed now was a little peace in which to pray for guidance, to work out how best to deal with the situation. I closed my eyes and tried to focus inwardly.

There was a crack of metal on metal followed by a long creak. Someone was at the south door. Hastily I stood up. I picked up a hymnal and pretended to leaf through it.

Audrey came into the church. She had changed from the black dress she had worn for Lady Youlgreave’s funeral, and was now wearing a blouse and skirt. She saw me and advanced up the nave.

‘I thought I might find you here. I’m not interrupting, I hope?’

I tried to smile. I was terrified that she had seen me with Joanna.

‘I felt I had to show you this right away. I was walking in the park just now and I happened to be near where Rosemary found the fur and the blood. And I saw something in the hedge.’

She held out what looked like a piece of rust-stained rag. I reached out to take it but she pulled her hand back. ‘Better not. The police may need to send it for analysis.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a handkerchief,’ Audrey said. ‘And it’s stained with blood. A pound to a penny it’s Lord Peter’s blood. The vet should be able to tell us.’ She looked up at me, and suddenly her eyes were wary. ‘But first there’s something you should know. Look.’

Once again she held out the handkerchief. She took one of the hems in both hands and pulled it apart so the material became flat. The rusty stains could easily be blood. There were other stains, grass, perhaps, and mud. Audrey clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth as she ran the hem of the handkerchief through her fingers. She was looking for something. Then she found it.

She held up the handkerchief to me, closer and closer until it was a few inches from my eyes. I took a step backwards to bring it into focus. A tape had been sewn to the hem. Scarlet capitals trembled, then steadied into a name:
M. D. H. APPLEYARD
.

‘If you don’t talk to Rosemary,’ Vanessa said, ‘I will. Someone’s got to.’

‘You don’t think we should let sleeping dogs lie?’ I suggested. ‘She’s already paid the price.’

‘If you drink more than half a bottle of sherry, of course you’re going to feel awful. But only for a few hours. The thing is, we need to have a word with her so she understands very clearly that we don’t approve of that sort of behaviour.’

‘There must be a reason for it.’

‘I’m sure there is. Probably this wretched squabble with Toby Clifford. Or perhaps it’s the A level results not being quite as brilliant as she would have liked. But that’s neither here nor there. In any event, we need to say something. And you’re her father, so you’re the best person to do it.’

‘All right. You’ve made your point.’

Then the silence grew between us again. We were in the kitchen, just the two of us, washing up after supper. Michael had gone to bed, and Rosemary was in her bedroom, technically working. She seemed none the worse for drinking herself into a stupor yesterday afternoon.

Afterwards I went wearily upstairs. Michael was reading in bed and we waved to one another through the open door of his room. It had taken me more than half an hour to persuade Audrey that the bloodstained handkerchief was not incontrovertible evidence of his guilt. She was still determined to consult the vet, to see if he could identify the stain as cat’s blood, compatible with Lord Peter’s; I could not change her mind about that.

Everything was irritating me this evening. Vanessa had spent most of supper talking about her intention of writing to Lady Youlgreave’s heir to see if she could continue her researches into the family papers. I wished that Doris Potter had thrown the lot away.

All I wanted to do was lie down and close my eyes. Not to find refuge in sleep: I knew I would see Joanna’s face, and I knew that I would relive what had happened this afternoon in Roth Park. I had to remember what had happened, I told myself, if only to decide what to do about it. I was lying to myself – I wanted to remember because to do so brought me a blend of pain and pleasure that I could not do without.

I tapped on the door of Rosemary’s room. There was no answer.

‘Rosemary?’ I murmured, keeping my voice low because of Michael. ‘May I come in?’

There were footsteps on the other side of the door, destroying my hope that she might be asleep. The key turned in the lock and the door opened. Her hair was pulled back from her scrubbed face and she wore a long dressing gown.

‘What is it?’

‘May I come in?’ I said again. ‘I’d like a word. We can’t talk on the landing.’

Rosemary hesitated for a second and then opened the door more widely. The room was very neat and, apart from the books, impersonal, as though in a hotel. She sat down on the bed, her back straight, her knees close together. I took the chair in front of the table by the window.

The window was open and there was enough light to see across the garden to the trees of Roth Park. It was much quieter than at the front of the house where Vanessa and I slept. I looked at the trees and thought:
Beyond the oaks is the little hill, and beyond the little hill is the house, and at the far end of the house is the tower, and in the tower is Joanna. I love you.
I wanted to fire the thought like an arrow through her window.

I turned back to look at Rosemary. Her face was as blank as Francis Youlgreave’s marble tablet. She wasn’t looking at me but at the cover of a book that lay beside her on the bed. It looked familiar; and a second later I recognized it: Vanessa’s copy of
The Four Last Things
, the collection of poems which included ‘The Judgement of Strangers’. I wondered if Vanessa knew that Rosemary had borrowed it.

‘It’s about yesterday,’ I said.

Rosemary gave no sign that she had heard.

‘When we came back from the Cliffords’, you were flat-out on the sofa with a bottle of sherry beside you. Or what was left of it.’

Still she said nothing.

‘I presume you’d drunk quite a lot of it, and that’s why you fell asleep.’ I waited, but she neither confirmed nor denied what I had said. ‘It’s not that we mind you having the occasional drink but –’

‘
We
. I wish you wouldn’t keep saying
we
.’

‘Vanessa’s your stepmother. She cares about you very much, as do I. I don’t know if you drank all that sherry because you were unhappy, but take it from me that alcohol doesn’t dissolve unhappiness.’

That at least earned a reaction. Rosemary raised her head and stared directly at me, her eyes brilliant. ‘Audrey thinks it does,’ she said. ‘When I saw her the other evening’ – Rosemary paused for effect – ‘she was as pissed as a newt.’

I stared at her. ‘I don’t like you speaking like that about anyone, let alone a friend such as Audrey.’

‘She’s not a friend of yours. You hate her. You take everything she gives you, all the help with the church, but really you think she’s an embarrassment.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ But there was enough truth in what Rosemary said to make me feel even more uncomfortable than I already was. I wondered too if she really had seen Audrey drunk. Audrey had always liked her glass of sherry, but recently she had been drinking rather more than usual.

‘You laugh at her,’ Rosemary said softly. ‘As if she’s just a bad joke.’

‘That’s absurd. In any case, I’ve not come here to talk about Audrey. I’ve come here to talk about you.’

‘But I don’t want to talk about me. There’s nothing to say.’