"Be off," Lynley responded, and added as the man scurried back in the direction he had come, "Take some care, will you?"
"Not a fear, my lord. Not a fear," was the swift reply.
Lynley watched him disappear into the crowd, the young woman on his arm.
He turned to Barbara. "I think that's the last interruption," he said.
"Let's be on our way."
With that, he led her out onto Station Road and directly up to a sleek, silver Bentley.
★ ★ ★
"I—have—got—the— poop," Hank Watson said confidentially from the next
table. "The— straight—certifi ed—verifi ed—poop!" Satisfi ed that he had
the undivided attention of the others in the dining room, he went on.
"About the baby-in-the-abbey story. JoJo-bean and I had the straight,
certified from Angelina this morning."
St. James looked at his wife. "More coffee, Deborah?" he asked politely.
When she demurred, he poured some for himself and gave his attention
back to the other couple.
Hank and JoJo Watson hadn't wasted much time becoming elbow-rubbing
intimates of the only other guests at Keldale Hall. Mrs. Burton-Thomas
had seen to that by seating them at adjoining tables in the hall's
immense dining room. She hadn't bothered with introductions. She knew
quite well there would be no need. The beautiful bolection mouldings of
the room's panelled walls, the Sheraton sideboard, and the William and
Mary chairs became entirely lost to the American couple's interest once
St. James and Deborah entered the room.
"Hank, hon, maybe they don't want to hear about the baby in the abbey."
JoJo fi ngered her gold chain, from which were hanging a veritable
excrescence of trinkets. #1 Mom, Applepie, and Sugarbean danced
alongside a Mercedes-Benz symbol, a diminutive spoon, and a minuscule
Eiffel Tower.
"Hellsapoppin they don't!" was Hank's riposte. "You just ask them, Bean."
JoJo rolled her eyes in apology at the other couple. "Hank's charmed with England. Just really charmed," she explained.
"Love it." Hank nodded. "If I could just get some toast that's h-o-t,
the place'd be perfect. Why in heck d'you people eat your toast cold?"
"I've always thought it was a cultural defi ciency," St. James responded.
Hank brayed appreciatively, his mouth open wide to display a row of
startlingly white teeth. "Cultural deficiency! That's good! That's real
good! Hear that, Bean? Cultural defi ciency!" Hank always repeated any
remark that made him laugh. Somehow, it gave him a certain authorship
over it. "Now, back to the abbey." He was also not easily diverted.
"Hank," his wife murmured. She was a bit like a rabbit, exophthalmic,
with a little upturned nose that continually twitched and flexed on her
face as if she were not quite used to the air she breathed.
"Loosen up, Bean," her husband urged. "These people here are the salt—of—the— earth."
"I think I will have more coffee, Simon," Deborah said.
Her husband poured, met her eyes, and said, "Milk, dear?"
"Yes, please."
"H-o-t milk for the coffee!" Hank remarked, seeing a new avenue in which
to demonstrate his considerable verbal fl exibility. "Now that's
something else I just haven't got used to. Hey! Here's Angelina now!"
The said young girl—obviously by her physical resemblance to Danny yet
another member of the curiouser and curiouser Burton-Thomas clan—was
carrying a large tray into the dining room with intense concentration.
She was not as pretty as Danny: a plump little red hen of a girl whose
scrubbed cheeks and rough hands made her look as if she'd be more at
home on a farm than attempting to be part of her family's eccentric
establishment. She bobbed a nervous good morning, avoiding their eyes,
and awkwardly distributed breakfast, gnawing her bottom lip miserably as
she did so.
"Shy little thing," Hank observed loudly, squashing a square of toast
into the centre of his fried egg. "But she gave us the true poop last
night after dinner. Now you've heard about that baby, right?"
Deborah and St. James looked at each other, deciding which one of them
would take up the conversational ball. It was tossed to Deborah. "Yes,
indeed we did," she replied. "Crying from the abbey. Danny told us about
it just after we arrived."
"Ha! Bet she did," Hank said obscurely, and then to make sure his
meaning was clear, added, "Nice little piece. You know. Likes the
attention."
"Hank…" his wife murmured into her porridge. Her hair was very short,
strawberry blonde, and the tips of her ears, showing through it, had
become quite red.
"JoJo-bean, these people are not d-u-m," Hank replied. "They know the
score." He waved a fork at the other two. A piece of sausage was poised
perilously on the prongs. "You gotta excuse the Bean," he explained.
"You'd think living in Laguna Beach'd make a swinger outa her, wouldn't
you? You familiar with Laguna Beach, California?" No pause for an
answer. "It is the finest place in the world to live, no offence to you
here, of course. JoJobean and I've lived there for—how long is it now,
pretty face? Twenty-two years?—and she still blushes, I tell you, when
she sees two queers getting personal! ‘JoJo,' I tell her,
‘there—is—no—use getting hot and bothered about queers.'" He lowered his
voice. "We got them coming out our verifi ed ears in Laguna," he confi
ded.
St. James could not bring himself to look at Deborah. "I beg your
pardon?" he asked, unsure if he had correctly heard the unusual,
gymnastic pun.
"Queers, man! Faggots! Ho-mo-sex-shuls. By the certifi ed, verified
millions in Laguna! They all want to live there! Now, as to the abbey."
Hank paused to slurp gustily at his coffee. "Seems the real story is
that Danny and her you-know-what used to meet at the abbey on a regular
basis. You know what I mean. For a little clutch-and-feel. And on the
night in question some three years back they've just decided it's time
to consecrate the relationship. You follow me?"
"Completely," St. James replied. He studiously avoided Deborah's eyes.
"Now, Danny, see, is a little leery of this. After all, being a virgin
on the wedding night's a puh-retty big item to let go of, don't you
agree? 'Specially in this neck of the woods. And if little Danny lets
this fella have his way…well, there's no backward road, is there?" He
awaited St. James's response.
"I should imagine not."
Hank nodded sagely. "So, as her sister Angelina tells it—"
"She was there?" St. James asked incredulously.
Hank spent a moment guffawing at the thought, banging his spoon with
tympanic delight on the top of the table. "You're a card, fella!" He
directed his attention to Deborah. "He always like this?"
"Always," she replied promptly.
"That's great! Well, back to the abbey."
Of course, Deborah and St. James' exchanged looks replied.
"So here's this fella with Danny." Hank painted the scene in the air
with his knife and fork. "The gun is loaded and the trigger cocked. When
all of a sudden comes this baby wailing fist to beat the band! Can you
see it?
Huh, can you?"
"In detail," St. James replied.
"Well, these two hear that baby and think it's the worda God himself.
They get outa that abbey so fast that you'd think the devil was chasing
them. And that, my friends, put an end to that."
"To the baby crying, do you mean?" Deborah asked. "Oh, Simon, I was
hoping we'd hear it tonight. Or perhaps even this afternoon. Warding off
evil turned out to be so much more rewarding than I expected it to be."
Minx, his look said.
"Not to the crying baby," Hank instructed. "To the you-know-what between
Danny and whoever he was. Who the hell was he, anyway, Bean?"
"A weird name. Ezra somebody."
Hank nodded. "Well, anyway, Danny comes back to the hall here with a
case of the hooha's that just won't quit. Wants to confess her sins and
go right to the Lord. So they call the local priest in. It is ex—or—cism
time!"
"For the abbey, the hall, or Danny?" St. James enquired.
"All three, fella! So this priest comes rushing down and does the bit
with the holy water, goes on to the abbey, and—" He stopped completely,
his face lit with joy, his eyes alive with delight: a master storyteller
with the audience tearing and clawing to hear every last syllable.
"More coffee, Deborah?"
"Thank you, no."
"And what do you think?" Hank demanded.
St. James considered the question. He felt his wife's foot nudge his good leg. "What?" he dutifully responded.
"Damn if there wasn't a real baby there. A newborn with the cord still
attached. Couldn't be more than a couple hours old. Deader'n a door
knocker by the time the old priest got there. Exposure, they say."
"How dreadful." Deborah's face paled. "What a horrible thing!"
Hank nodded solemnly. "You're talking horrible, just think of poor Ezra! Bet he couldn't you-know-what for another two years!"
"Whose baby was it?"
Hank shrugged. He turned his attention to his now-cold breakfast.
Clearly, the juicier elements of the story were the only ones that he
had pursued.
"No one knows," JoJo answered. "They buried it in the churchyard in the
village. With the funniest epitaph on the poor little grave. I can't
recall it, offhand. You'll have to go see it."
"They're newlyweds, Bean," Hank put in with a broad wink at St. James.
"I bet they got plenty m-o-r-e on their minds than traipsing through
graveyards."
Obviously, Lynley favoured the Russians. They'd begun with Rachmaninoff,
moved to Rimsky-Korsakov, and were now slam-banging their way through
the cannonades of the 1812 Overture.
"There. Did you notice it?" he asked her, once the music had crashed to
its fi nale. "One of the cymbalists was just a counterbeat behind. But
it's my only bone of contention with that particular recording of 1812."
He flipped the stereo off.
Barbara noticed for the first time that he wore absolutely no
jewellery—no crested signet ring, no expensive wrist watch to fl ash
gold richly when it caught the light. For some reason, that fact was as
distracting to her as an unsightly display of opulent ornamentation
would have been.
"I didn't catch it. Sorry. I don't know a lot about music." Did he
really expect her—with her background—to be able to converse with him
about classical music?
"I don't know much about it either," he admitted ingenuously. "I just
listen to it a great deal. I'm afraid I'm one of those ignoramuses who
say, ‘I don't know a thing about it, but I know what I like."
She listened to his words with surprise. The man had a first in history,
an Oxford education. Why in the world would he ever apply the word
ignoramus to himself? Unless, of course, it was designed to put her at
ease with a liberal dose of charm, something he was capable of doing
quite well. It was effortless for him, as easy as breathing.
"I must have developed my liking for it during the very last part of my
father's illness. It was always playing in the house when I could get
away to see him." He paused, removed the tape, and the silence in the
car became every bit as loud as the music had been, but far more
disconcerting. It was some moments before he spoke again, and when he
did, it was to pick up the thread of his original thought. "He simply
wasted away to nothing. So much pain." He cleared his throat. "My mother
wouldn't consider putting him into hospital. Even towards the end when
it would have been so much easier on her, she wouldn't hear of it. She
sat with him hour after hour, day and night, and watched him die by
degrees. I think it was music that kept them both sane those last
weeks." He kept his eyes on the road. "She held his hand and listened to
Tchaikovsky. In the end he couldn't even speak. I've always liked to
think the music did his speaking for him."
