Stately Homicide (17 page)

Mike Botley was outside as usual, doing something to an outsize laundry hamper. He had his old straw hat on, perched high on his bandaged head, and Jurnet, on the opposite side of the yard, could not make out his face. No whirr of potter's wheel: Anna's shop was still shuttered. In Danny March's coach house, by the sound of it, somebody was using a lathe. The detective felt in his pocket for the little bag that contained Anna March's earring, and wondered what the hell he was going to say to his friend's wife.

‘Melanchthon,' said Jeno Matyas, the needle, held between thumb and wiry forefinger, finding its way with practised ease along the backs of the yellowed pages, dragging its thread after it. ‘
Initia doctrina physica
. Shocking condition.'

‘Oh ah,' said Jurnet.

‘Very popular textbook in the sixteenth century and for two hundred years after. Well used. Just the same –' the bookbinder negotiated a tricky bit, the needle probing for a safe anchorage – ‘you'd think they'd have had too much respect for books in general, wouldn't you, to let it get into this state.'

It really was amazing, and the detective lost no time in saying so.

‘You speak English like a native.'

‘Too well, you mean, ever to be taken for one. Still, it's kind of you to say so. There's no merit in it. I merely happen to be blessed with an acute ear and a halfway decent memory.' Matyas settled the book carefully on the worktable, section upon section, the needle on top. ‘I hope you'll forgive me for not getting up. Legs playing me up a bit.'

‘Sorry to hear it, sir. I shan't keep you for long.'

‘As long as you like. It isn't every day I have the pleasure of entertaining a real live police officer.'

‘You know who I am, then?' Jurnet reached belatedly for his warrant card.

‘Please! No proof required. I saw you at the party. Your presence was much commented on.'

Jurnet made a face.

‘Does it stick out that much?'

‘That you're a policeman? By no means. I myself was greatly surprised to hear it.' With a brisk dismissiveness that was in no way offensive: ‘That you possess a face and figure which command attention must be sufficiently well known to you by now to require no further explanation for our curiosity. Please clear those books off that chair, Inspector,' the man went on pleasantly, ‘and make yourself as comfortable as you can in the circumstances. I keep on meaning to get a proper chair for visitors, but somehow I never seem to get round to it.'

A somewhat abashed Jurnet, having made a place for himself as requested, observed: ‘No worse than you provide for yourself.'

Jeno Matyas settled himself against the slatted back of his chair.

‘Ah, but then I make a cult of austerity. It is – or so I'm vain enough to delude myself – my only vanity.'

The room was indeed bare – monastic, save for a number of superb colour photographs of birds pinned haphazardly to a cork bulletin board hung to catch the best of the light. The walls were white, rough-plastered, the floor the original brick, pitted with age and usage, its multifarious cavities occupied by crumbles of rosy dust. Apart from the two wooden chairs and the worktable – scrubbed deal fitted with a clamp and a rack for tools – there was no other furniture. An arched opening that added to the impression of cloistered calm afforded a glimpse of an old-fashioned printing press, shelves piled with boxes, jars and plastic containers; a hide of rich brown colour stretched out on a bench as if awaiting the sacrificial knife. A smell of leather infused the air.

The tranquillity of the place complemented that of its master. Awaiting the detective's questions, the man sat unmoving, vigilant. The bird watcher, thought Jurnet, crouching quiet in his hide, alert for the soft twitter of dunlin, perhaps, skittering along the shore; or lapwing exploding off the winter furrows like a rocket full of stars.

In the event, the Hungarian was the first to speak.

‘In case you were going to ask me, Inspector, I did not kill Mr Shelden. But I think, perhaps, I may be able to help you discover who did.'

‘If you've some information –' Jurnet began, leaning forward.

‘It's difficult.' Jeno Matyas sighed. ‘That's why I've waited for you to come to me, instead of seeking you out, as no doubt you'll think I should have done. Nobody wants to get friends into trouble –' He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. ‘But murder is another matter.'

‘Yes.'

‘I have to tell you what I saw. I have no alternative. Even though –' turning on Jurnet a warm regard – ‘here in England, heaven be praised, you won't beat me with rubber hoses or keep me awake all night if I elect to withhold my evidence. In fact, of course, it is your very faith in my integrity which makes it impossible to stay silent.'

‘You saw something.'

The man said slowly: ‘I think so. I'm not sure. That is, I saw something – but what did I see?'

‘What do you think you saw?'

‘The ghost of Anne Boleyn.'

Jeno Matyas said: ‘You may well think three o'clock in the morning altogether too early to go birdwatching for anything except owls, and I was on my way to Hoope – strictly sea birds and waders who get up with the sun. I'm afraid it all sounds very suspicious – and even more suspicious that I have so many reasons, all of them excellent, for leaving Bullen at that ungodly hour.' The bookbinder looked at Jurnet with an expression which combined friendliness with an endearing, impish glee. ‘Having too many reasons, don't you think, is almost as bad as having too few?'

‘Try me.'

‘All right! First, then, there are these ridiculous legs of mine. At Hoope it's a good three-quarters of a mile from the car park to what I like to call my hide – though, of course, it belongs equally to whoever pays his money to the warden. So, crawling like a snail, the way I do these days, I have to make an early start if I hope to get there by dawn. Second, I'm a very poor sleeper. I won't take sleeping pills, but if the Department of Health would only package a tablet of sea air mixed with the sound of waves breaking on the shore I'd become an addict overnight. Sometimes, to be truthful, I don't even go birdwatching. I drive down to Cromer, park on the cliffs, get in the back, and have my first sound sleep for days. Reason three is the dawn – no, not the dawn, but the time a little before. Still pitch black but you sense something … sometimes I almost think you hear it. Something left over from an earlier stage of man's development – perhaps even earlier than that. An apprehension of life beginning –'

‘Know what you mean,' said Jurnet, who, in his day, had seen out more night duties than he cared to remember. The detective kept to himself his own overriding recollection of that premonition of day: only one more hour to a hot cuppa.

He asked: ‘So it was 3 a.m. when you left Bullen Hall?'

‘I couldn't swear to the minute. Even getting from here to the drive in my present condition takes more time than I care to take note of. Nowadays Elena kindly lets me park my car in front of the house. I only hope my frequent early departures don't disturb her, but if so, she's made no complaint so far.'

The man hesitated, as if unsure how to continue. Then: ‘I had just got myself into the car, which was parked facing the Hall, and fastened my seat belt – and incidentally, may I assure you, in case, as a police officer, you're wondering if anyone with legs like mine should be driving at all, that I have automatic transmission, have presented myself for retesting, and been passed fit to drive. So – there I was, about to turn on the ignition and switch on the lights, when I happened to glance up at the house front.'

‘What did you see?'

‘It was a very bright night,' the man replied, ‘as no doubt you remember. But by that time, as often happens, a mist was rising from the moat, so that the house no longer seemed rooted in the ground, but to hang in the air a little above it, like an enchanted castle in a children's story. Once you switch on your headlights you dispel the illusion; and so, for a moment, I stayed still, admiring. And, as I waited, a woman came round the corner of the house, from the west wing.'

‘Your ghost,' commented Jurnet, articulating his disbelief. ‘Can you describe her?'

‘Not easy, because she was moving along the grass edge of the moat, and the mist blurred every outline. I can't even say with certainty whether she was young or old, only that there was something about her which made me feel sure she was beautiful. She wore a dress with long wide sleeves, and she had dark hair which hung down to her shoulders and perhaps further. Of the darkness I'm quite sure, because the starlight caught it: gave it a bloom, like a raven's wing.'

‘Couldn't you see her face? Miss Appleyard was out for a walk in the grounds, she says, about 3.30.'

‘Elena? Well, well!' Matyas looked taken aback. Then: ‘No –' he said decisively – ‘it was definitely earlier than 3.30, and whilst I can't say who it was, I can be quite sure it wasn't her. The reason I can't be more explicit as to what the woman looked like is that she held her hands to her face, both hands. She moved along, weeping. I don't think Elena is a woman to weep.'

‘You mean, you actually heard her crying?'

‘No, no! Only that her posture was grief personified.' Jeno Matyas fell silent, absorbed in contemplation of the image he had resurrected. ‘Even as I tell you about it, its poignancy touches me all over again.'

Jurnet demanded: ‘What did you do?'

‘I can see,' remarked the Hungarian, with a gentleness that was itself a rebuke, ‘that I haven't made myself clear. What I saw was something very private. I didn't feel I had any right to intrude, even if it was upon a grief more than four hundred years old. What comfort had I to offer? I sat quiet, watching, as the woman crossed the entire front of the Hall, from west to east.'

‘And then –?'

‘I only wish I could tell you.' The man's brows knitted in concentration. ‘As you can imagine, I've thought about it a great deal since. Useless! One moment she was there: the next – vanished!'

‘What else would you expect of Anne Boleyn?' Jurnet's voice was now openly mocking. ‘If you'd waited a bit longer, maybe you'd have seen George Bullen coming after her.' Rearranging his voice and his manner into something more befitting a paid-up member of Angleby CID: ‘You don't really mean to tell me, Mr Matyas, you believe in ghosts?'

With an urbanity to which it was hard to take exception, the man answered: ‘Forgive me, Inspector, if, from the very vehemence with which you deny it, I say I think that you do, too, in your heart. Do you really think, in a house like Bullen Hall, four hundred years of history leave no more trace than rising damp in the basement and beetle in the rafters?' The pale face was at once friendly and remote. ‘The dead cast long shadows.'

‘Not half as long as the living, at any rate at three o'clock in the morning! I have to believe,' Jurnet insisted obstinately, ‘that what you saw was a real live woman with dark hair.'

The Hungarian clasped his thin white hands together.

‘Have it your own way, Inspector.'

Jurnet's hand, in his pocket, fingered the little bag containing the earring. What the hell was he going to tell Danny?

He parted from the bookbinder with the minimum of courtesies; sneaked out like a felon himself, for fear of running into the cabinet maker, and made his way back to the curator's flat. Back to Sergeant Bowles, who took one look at the Inspector and vanished into the kitchen, shortly to reappear with a plateful of sandwiches and some tea strong enough to stand a spoon in.

‘Sardine,' said the good man, with infinite tact. ‘Heard somewhere you'd gone off ham.'

‘Bloody hell!' growled Sergeant Ellers, as the Post Office van came round the bend and whizzed past with a cheery toot. The briars and brambles in the hedge reached out thorny fingers towards the shining coachwork of the police Rover. ‘Must 've planned this road as a tight fit for a couple of cavemen dragging their birds home to the bridal suite. What they're going to say back at the garage I don't care to think!' The little Welshman loosened his tie, took out his handkerchief and mopped his face. ‘Hate to think what 'd happen if they had a fire in Bullensthorpe, and the fire engine had to get through.'

‘Not to worry,' Jurnet returned comfortably, glad to be away, if only temporarily, from the stateliness of stately homes. ‘Doubt if the natives have learnt yet how to rub two sticks together.'

The village, the detective was pleased to note when at last, having negotiated a hump-backed bridge over a stream whose banks were bright with kingcups, they drew up by a small green, was pretty, but not demandingly so: a pleasant medley of houses, from Tudor brick to plastic clapboard, none of them beautiful enough or ugly enough to upset the sensible balance of the place. Even the church, made of flints off which the sun struck sharp lights, veiled its bulk behind several ancient yews, comfortably unkempt like old women who had let themselves go and if you didn't like it you could lump it.

All that was wrong was the watchful quiet that, in villages, Jurnet always found so disquieting. Birds twittered, trees rustled, aeroplanes passed overhead – all the sounds of nature that, in his book, added up to silence. Of inhabitants there was no sign. The fact that the detective was quite certain they were present and aware, somewhere behind the potted plants which filled every window, only deepened his sense of unease.

Jack Ellers got out of the car and stood, hands on plump hips, surveying the scene.

‘Buzzing little hive of activity,' he observed. ‘Which one's the Tollers?'

‘Mr Jurnet!'

Mollie Toller, plump and birdlike with her high bosom and perky way of moving, opened the front door of ‘Pippins', to which the chimes in the hall had summoned her with the first four notes of ‘D'ye ken John Peel'. Was it, Jurnet wondered, his overactive imagination, or had there been an instant of hesitation before the warm, generous voice proclaimed its surprised pleasure?