Unfortunately at one ceremony in the late thirties, the river was in such spate that not even the strength of the Shining Ones was able to withstand it, and they and their baptismal candidate, a ten-year-old boy, were swept away and drowned. Local revulsion was so great that the sect withered away after that. I'm surprised you have not heard of the case. The police were accounted much to blame for their incompetence in allowing such a dangerous activity to persist. But perhaps with only one child dying, it was not reckoned a failure to mark down in the annals.'
Dalziel, who had been wondering if the revelation of shared acquaintance with The Pilgrim's Progress had modified Wulfstan's attitude to him, realized that he'd got it wrong. But a soft answer turned away wrath.
'And you reckon this chapel might do?' he said.
'Local memory avers that as a place to sing in it had no equal. Whether it can be rendered usable in so short a space remains to be seen. For some years now it's been rented by a local joiner for use as a workshop. You may recall him. Joe Telford from Dendale.'
Oh, shit. He didn't let up, did he? Dalziel, for whom the study of revenge and immortal hate was among his favorite hobbies, almost admired the man.
'Telford,' he echoed, playing along. 'Him whose daughter…'
'That's right, Mr. Dalziel. Him whose daughter. Telford moved his business to Danby, but by all accounts his heart was never in it. It was his brother, George-you remember him?-who held things together. Joe became increasingly reclusive. His marriage suffered. Eventually his wife could take no more. She went off. With George.'
He spoke flatly, with a lack of emphasis that was more emphatic than a direct accusation that this tragedy, too, was down to police incompetence.
'That must have been a shaker,' said Dalziel.
'They say Joe hardly noticed.'
'And the business?'
'Joe does nothing but a bit of odd-jobbing now, I believe. But he still has a lease on the Beulah Chapel. If he's agreeable and we can get his junk moved, the place cleaned up and certificated by the fire officer in forty-eight hours, then we can go ahead. As a voluntary and amateur body, we have to rely on ourselves to do most of the work, so if I've seemed a little impatient…'
The ghost of an apology. Funny how folk imagined they had the power to give, and he the thin skin to take, offense.
'Nay, I know all about pressure,' said Dalziel.
They shook hands. Level on points. But Dalziel knew in his heart that no matter what happened in his encounters with this man, he could never count himself the winner. Mary Wulfstan had been the last of the Dendale girls to go. By then he'd been on the spot for long enough to have taken care of that. You've got a strong suspect and you're running out of time, break the bugger's leg rather than let him loose. He remembered with affection the old boss who'd given him that advice. Perhaps if he'd contrived an 'accident' as Benny Lightfoot was brought up from the cells to be released, Mary Wulfstan would still be alive.
…
He put the thought out of his mind and let it be replaced by another as he was escorted to the front door.
Driving into and through Danby yesterday morning, Wulfstan must have seen the BENNY'S BACK! signs. Why'd he not mentioned them?
It was worth asking, perhaps. He turned. The door was almost closed, but he did nothing to prevent it closing. His gaze had brushed across his car parked a little way down the street, and all desire to resume his interrogation fled.
There was a figure standing by it looking toward him.
He blinked against the dazzle of the sun, and felt a surge of heat up his body which had nothing to do with the weather.
It was the woman he'd glimpsed in Wulfstan's committee meeting. The woman to whom he owed his tenuous acquaintance with Mahler. And much, much more.
She watched his approach with a faint smile on her full lips.
'How do, Andy?' she said. 'What fettle?'
Her imitation of his speech mode was unmistakable, but, unlike Elizabeth Wulfstan's wrongly suspected mockery, unresentable. Piss taking between lovers, even ex-lovers, was an expression of intimacy, of true affection.
'Nowt wrong wi' me that the sight of you plus two pints of best can't put right, Cap,' he said.
Amanda Marvell, known to her friends as Cap, let her smile blossom fully and held out her hand.
'Then let's go and complete the medication, shall we?' she said.
Stirps End Farm lay in the sun like an old ship on a sandbank, lapped around by thistled meadows and surging fell. Everything about the farmhouse and its yard said, 'We have lost, you have won, leave us be, here to rot, washed by rain, parched by sun. Trouble us not and we'll not trouble thee.'
They pushed open a gate hanging off its hinges, though they could as easily have stepped through the dry stone wall at several places where its fallen stones lay cradled in nettles.
'Don't know much about farming,' said Pascoe. 'But this looks like second-division stuff.'
'Cedric were always a make-do-and-mend kind of farmer,' replied Clark. 'But recent years, he's just stuck to making do.'
'And you reckon Pontifex gave him the tenancy out of guilt?' said Pascoe, looking round with distaste at the rusting relicts of agricultural machinery which littered the yard. 'Lot of guilt to put up with this for fifteen years.'
'Lose a kid, what's fifteen years?' said Clark.
Pascoe felt reproved. Out of the barn, which was a continuation of the house and seemed to lean against it for mutual support, a man had emerged and was standing in the dark rhomboid of its warped doorway, regarding them with weary hostility.
'What you after, Nobby?' he demanded.
His voice was harsh and grating, as if from long disuse. He was unageable without expert medical testimony, anything between forty and sixty, with a sharp nose, hollow cheeks, and a salt-and-pepper-stubbled chin indicating an early beard or a very late shaving. He was broad in the shoulder and the hip, but the frayed and patched coveralls he wore hung loosely on him, giving the impression of a big man who'd somehow collapsed in on himself.
'How do, Cedric. This here's Chief Inspector Pascoe. We'd like a word with Jed.'
'At work, if that's what you can call it,' said Hardcastle. 'You'd think there was nowt to do round here.'
It would take a great leap of the imagination, or no imagination at all, to think that, thought Pascoe.
'No, he's here, Sergeant,' said a woman's voice.
In the doorway of the farmhouse a woman had appeared. She was small and neat and had been baking. Her hands were floured and she wore a dark blue apron over a gray dress. Her long hair was tied up in a square of blue silk, giving a wimpled effect. Indeed with her gray dress and above all a stillness of body and softness of voice which seemed to reflect some deep calm within, she could have passed for a nun.
'How do, Mrs. Hardcastle?' said Clark. 'All right if we come in?'
Pascoe noted the formality of their exchange, contrasting with the use of first names man to man. But he got the impression that there was little correlation between form of address and warmth of feeling here. On the contrary.
It was a relief to step out of the hot dung-scented air of the yard into the cool interior, but the contrast didn't stop at temperature. Here was no sign of neglect. On the contrary, everything was neat and cherished, the old oak furniture glowed with that depth which only comes from an age of loving polishing, and brass candlesticks shone on the long wooden mantelshelf flanking almost religiously a large head-and-shoulders photograph of a young girl. Other pictures of the same child were visible; in the nook by the fireplace where in old times a salt box would have stood, and on each of two low windowsills which also held vases of wildflowers, among which Pascoe recognized foxgloves and hawk's-beard, glowing like candles lit to light a lost sailor home.
'You'll take a glass of lemon barley against the warm,' said the woman.
