The Price of Butcher's Meat (16 page)

“Must have been a lovely place to live when it were a private house,” I said.

“Yes, it was,” she said softly. “Very lovely. It used to belong to my family.
A sort of dower house. My grandmother lived there. I always used to love staying with her…”

I could see her face in the pane and her expression were sort of dreamy. Nice-looking lass. Then she clocked my reflection and suddenly it were back to radish time.

She turned to face me.

I said, “Andy Dalziel,” and stuck out my hand.

Her handshake were like one of them air kisses. Made the healer's feel like an arm-wrestling session.

“Esther Denham,” she said.

“Oh aye. You related to Lady Denham then?”

Her face screwed up like she'd bit on a lettuce leaf and found a slug.

“By marriage,” she said, making it sound like an operation without anesthetic.

Then Lady D's voice boomed, “Esther, my dear, there you are. Come and keep me company. You too, Edward.”

It were like watching a kid who's just been told she can't have a sweetie realizing it's because she's being offered a tutti-frutti instead. As she turned from me, her face lit up like someone had triggered a security light.

“Coming!” she called gaily.

And she set off toward buffalo woman like a lost lamb to her ewe.

I saw Sir Teddy had abandoned young Heywood just as quick and I went back to join her.

“The way yon pair jump, the old lass must really know where the bodies are buried,” I said.

“I think it's more where the money is banked,” she replied.

“Oh aye? Thought it 'ud be summat like that. They're brother and sister, right? And set on getting their share of the family fortune when auntie dies?”

“She's only an aunt by marriage, so I suppose it's understandable they feel they've got to work at it,” she said.

“Sounds like you're on their side,” I said. “Or is it just hunky Teddy's side?”

“No. I am being objective and analytical. I'm a psychologist.”

I had to laugh. Seen nowt, done nowt, and she were a psychologist!

“What's so funny?” she demanded, getting angry again.

I knew better than to tell her, so I said, “I were just thinking, I bet old Stompy were chuffed to buggery when he found out he'd sired one of them.”

She gave me an old-fashioned look, then grinned.

“I see you knew my father quite well, Mr. Dalziel,” she said.

“Well enough. How come Teddy's so hard up he needs to suck up to auntie?” I asked. “His sister were saying the old house, and presumably all this land, used to belong to her family. Must have made a fortune when they sold it on to Avalon.”

“It did, but not for the Denhams, alas,” said a familiar voice.

I looked down to see Roote smiling up at me. The skinny lass had been sucked back into her aunt's orbit, or mebbe the sight of the young Denhams dancing attendance had made her decide she'd better keep her end up.

“Oh aye? Who then?” I said to him.

He smiled and lowered his voice so that I had to lower my head to hear him. The lass too. I got the impression she didn't want to miss owt.

“As I understand it,” he murmured, “the story is that one result of the unfortunate if appropriate demise of Hog Hollis was a rapprochement between his widow and Sir Harry Denham, who had not been on the best of terms for some years. He held her responsible for sending the sweet odor of pigs wafting through his drawing room window whenever he took afternoon tea.”

“This going to be a long tale?” I asked. “If it is, I thought mebbe I'd go off somewhere quiet to read
War and Peace,
then come back for the climax.”

“Forgive me,” he said. “I have fallen into rustic ways. Let me cut to the chase. Sir Harry, now close to insolvency, devised a cunning plan to solve both his financial and his olfactory problems at a stroke. He proposed to her. He was personable, reputedly virile—an important
consideration for the dear lady—and of course he had what only money could buy, a title. This, I believe, was the clincher. She accepted.”

“Brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it?” said young Heywood.

I gave her a look. Don't care for cynicism in the young. If they don't have romantic delusions, what are old farts like me going to kick out of them?

Roote went rambling on. Cut to the chase, he'd said. More like verbal runs! Wieldy would have had it all spelt out, typed up, and on my desk half an hour back!

“As the wedding approached, he suggested that all that lacked to make them both happy was an odor-free threshold for him to carry her over. Now that Denham Park was to be her stately home too, perhaps the time had come to relocate the pig farm. She appeared to agree, only objecting that she would have to find a suitable site first. There was some spare capacity on the land belonging to Millstone Farm, the old Hollis farm, but she was reluctant to use that…”

“Knowing that if she snuffed it before her brother-in-law, the farm and everything on it would fall to Hen,” chipped in young Heywood.

Roote smiled appreciatively.

“Clearly psychology really is the listening profession,” he said. “Yes, dear Lady D did not care for the thought of Hen benefiting more than he had to in the event of her death. She is, I believe, a very good hater. The upshot was, she proposed to Sir Harry that this parcel of Denham land here on South Cliff would make an ideal site, well away from Denham Park, and too high above the town for any nuisance to be caused there. The old house could be adapted as an excellent administrative center for the business.”

“If this is quick, I'm Speedy Gonzales,” I said.

“I've heard the rumors,” said Roote. “Be patient, the end is near. Sir Harry was delighted, and even more so when she insisted on a proper business transaction, with Hollis's Ham Limited formally purchasing the land. The deal was made, both deals, with the marriage given top billing in all the Yorkshire glossies. They went on a leisurely Caribbean
cruise for their honeymoon, financed, local tradition says, by the money Hollis's Ham had paid for the South Cliff property. That must have made Sir Harry smile. His wife's money paying for their honeymoon, setting what he hoped would be the pattern for many years to come. Imagine his dismay when they returned some months later to discover the bulldozers had moved in here and with a true American swiftness the Avalon Clinic was already beginning to rise.”

“You mean she'd got all this sorted afore they went off on honeymoon?” I said.

“Clearly so,” said Roote admiringly. “Of course, after his initial shock, he must have consoled himself with the thought of the large profit made in the transaction. But I gather he was disappointed in this too. Victorian marital property laws had long since been repealed. The land had been signed over to Hollis's Ham, his wife's company, and all that he was going to get of her money was what she cared to allow him. He huffed and puffed but soon learned the lesson that huffing and puffing meant going to bed without any supper. No longer master in his own house, he was at least still master of the hunt until the government banned hunting with dogs. He is said to have roared, ‘Over my dead body!' On the first day of the season, he went out with the hounds and when they started a fox, he set out after them at a mad gallop, clipped the top of a wall, and ended in a ditch with a broken neck. He was, if nothing else, a man of his word.”

“And she walked away from the funeral with a title on her letterhead and the Avalon money in her purse,” said Heywood.

“So all this land and the old house used to belong to the Denhams,” I said. “No wonder that poor lass Esther looks so pissed off.”

That got me a surprised glance from Heywood, who said, “Oh, she always looks like that, except when she's sucking up to Lady D.”

I said, “Must be nice to have a smart understanding chap like Stompy for your dad so you don't have to go sucking up to any bugger.”

Roote laughed and said, “Bravo, Andy. Your compassion does you credit.”

“It's got limits,” I said. “So Lady Denham's got the chinks, and Sir
Teddy and sis are sticking close as shit to a blanket in the hope some of it rolls their way when she topples off the twig?”

“I think that sums it up,” said Roote.

“Could be a long wait,” I said. “The old bird looks good for another thirty years or more. And ain't she got blood relatives of her own, like yon skinny lass Clara?”

“My, you really are a detective, Mr. Dalziel,” said Heywood, recovering from my little put-down. “That's right. Quite a lot, I gather. And, though most of them are very long shots indeed, there's a whole bunch of her first husband's relatives on the card.”

“Looks like I'm not the only detective,” I said. “Only here two minutes and you've got all the local crack noted and analyzed! So, rich old lady, lots of hopeful relations. Hope she locks her windows at night and doesn't go out in the dark.”

She said, “Your line of work has clearly clouded your view of human nature.”

I said, “You reckon? You did the Pollyanna psychology course, did you?”

She said a bit defiantly, “I know it's a cliché, but I do think there's good in everybody if you look hard enough.”

“Me too,” I said. “That's why I became a cop—so's I could spend my life turning up stones looking for it.”

I glanced down at Roote as I said this, but he just grinned back up at me like I'd offered him a compliment and said, “Charley, dear, I wonder if I could trouble you to get me a glass of fruit juice. Pomegranate if there is any, but the ubiquitous orange will do. And I see Andy's glass is empty…”

“Sure,” she said. “Would you like it in an earthenware jug?”

“What's that about a jug?” I asked as she walked away.

“Ah, the sweet enigma of a woman's words,” he said. “It is not for us to seek meaning. Andy, now we're alone, there's something I want to ask you.”

“Ask away,” I said. “But tek note—just because I won't hit a man in a wheelchair doesn't make us first-name friends.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Would you prefer the official title then? Lady D
was certainly very impressed when I told her you were head of Mid-Yorkshire CID.”

Now the change in buffalo woman's attitude was explained. She clearly enjoyed power, and anyone that smelt of it probably turned her on.

“Mr. Dalziel will do,” I said.

“Oh, thank you kindly,” he simpered. I found myself liking the sourpuss lass who'd shoved him aside more and more.

“So what's it you want to ask?” I demanded.

He turned very serious and said, “The thing is, I'm asking for a review of my case in the hope of getting the verdict overturned. I hoped you might support my appeal.”

Not many folk can gobsmack me, but somehow Roote's learned the trick.

“Eh?” I said.

“It's a question of getting into America for the publication of my Beddoes biography. The dean of St. Poll University called in some favors to get me a special dispensation a couple of years back—but since nine-eleven, if you've got three penalty points on your driver's license, they're reluctant to let you in. I need to be there, for interviews and signings. Keeping me out is a violation of my basic human right to make a living!”

Just then Heywood came back with a drinks tray. Just as well else I might have forgot me scruples and picked Roote up, wheelchair and all, and hoyed him through the window! Instead I downed my bubbles in one, then grabbed another glass, hers I suppose, and drank that too. I drew the line at Roote's juice. I weren't that far gone. Heywood didn't say owt, just buggered off back to the drinks table.

At last I could speak.

“You want me to support your appeal against a conviction which my evidence helped to get? A conviction that's only ever bothered me because I reckon the sentence should have been twice as long!”

“Exactly,” he said. “You can see your support would really impress the court.”

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

I said, “I need another drink.”

And I'd have gone after the lass only my legs didn't seem to want to work.

Roote reached up and got a hold of my arm.

“Really, you mustn't try so hard,” he said seriously.

“What the fuck are you on about?” I demanded.

He pulled me down so he was talking in a low voice right into my face.

“When you've been as close to death as we have,” he said, “you don't just take a single step back to where you were; it's a long, long journey.”

“Thank you, Dr. Roote,” I said. “I were wondering what I were doing in a conva-fucking-lescent home, and now you've spelt it out. I'm conva-fucking-lescing!”

“I'm not just talking physical here,” he said. “It's a long way back to yourself. Mostly we do it by acting ourselves. We remember the way we were and we devote all our energy to trying to get back into the part, even if it involves drinking fifteen pints before breakfast. But it is just a part, Andy. Now's the time, while you're still relearning it, to pause and consider just who this being is that's doing the learning.”