Ellis Peters - George Felse 13 - Rainbow's End (4 page)

‘The voice says, Cry. What shall we cry?

When heated in the chase,

Behold, the bridegroom draweth nigh

With his arm round amazing Grace.’

Resulting giggles had to be suppressed, and the next player could start a new stanza, in this case generously enough with a simple line:

‘This is the first of days’

to which Spuggy Price, always enterprising, added:

‘When our heads are bowed with woe’,

and Toffee Bill contributed:

‘Let our choir new anthems raise’.

The manuscript had now reached Bossie, just as the vicar concluded his sermon, as suddenly as ever, and announced the next hymn. Number 193, ‘Jesu, Lover of my soul’. Now this, thought Bossie contentedly, as the congregation squared up hopefully for ‘Aberystwyth’, is one he can’t spoil. Even if he chose ‘Hollingside’, instead, that would be only a shade less satisfying than the majestic Welsh harmonies. Only the rest of the choir rose apathetically. Bossie, for once, had missed practice, owing to the slight aftermath of a visit to the dentist, and the sound of a completely strange, complicated and extremely uncongenial tune rolling down from the organ-loft caused his jaw to drop, and his eyes to pop out like hat-pegs with indignation. He could even spoil this! Here on the edge of Wales, in a parish of fervent singers, who but Rainbow would have dared to ditch something as splendid as ‘Aberystwyth’ for this trendy drivel?

Bossie grasped the pencil and wrote the final line of the quatrain so violently that he pushed holes in the paper:

‘Rainbow’s
got to go
!’ Underlined savagely, and with the added note below: ‘In the furnace-room after service. Council of war!’

They sat on upturned boxes among the coke, and there wasn’t a dissentient voice among them.

‘Our choir’s been made to raise new anthems long enough,’ said Bossie grimly, setting his rounded but resolute jaw. ‘The others are just as fed-up as we are, and dislike him just as much, and if he stays here much longer somebody’s going to get desperate and dot him one, or set his house on fire, or something. Because he’s never going to fit in, he’s all wrong, and he’s
got to go
!’

‘You’re only saying what everybody’s been saying for weeks now,’ Ginger reminded him reasonably. He was a solid, sensible boy, large for his thirteen years, freckled and sandy, but placid of disposition instead of fiery. ‘They shut up if they think we’re listening, but you should have heard the basses letting fly the other night, after he produced this new tune. They didn’t know I was still there. But if they can’t think of any way of getting rid of him, what do you reckon we can do?’

‘He won’t go easily,’ said Toffee Bill gloomily. His mother’s shop had not benefited at all from the coming of the Rainbows, who had most of their exotic goods delivered from Comerbourne. Middlehope was good enough to exploit and patronise, but not to mix with; except, of course, its top layers, where layers had never played much part before. The pub didn’t benefit, either, drinks were sent up by the crate from dealers in Birmingham. ‘He’s got that house all poshed up, he won’t let go of it now, after all the money he’s spent
_,
not unless he’s druv out. And I don’t know how you set about that.’

‘Grown-ups are too squeamish,’ said Bossie darkly. ‘What’s the use of fair means, if they don’t work? They’ve been trying to chill him out for ages, ever since they found out what he’s like, but he doesn’t even notice. As long as he’s running everything in sight his way, he doesn’t care whether people like him or not.’

‘Well, that’s what I’m saying. If he doesn’t care, freezing him out isn’t going to work, is it?’ Toffee Bill, treasurer of the gang’s funds and adviser on best-buys in the sweet world, expert on special offers, competitions and bonus bars, was the thinnest child in the choir, being blessed with one of those metabolisms that can deal with huge amounts of food without putting on an ounce of flesh. His voice was passable, but nothing to write home about, but his value to the group was immense, and they would have resigned
en masse
if his tenure had been threatened. He was, however, a pessimist, necessary ballast to any company that included Spuggy Price, the fiercest and most daring of ten-year-olds, and owner of a light, floating voice, good for at least three years yet, and understudy to Bessie’s mellifluous solo act.

‘We could scare him off with a ghost,’ this diminutive genius offered brightly. Three suppressive voices at once opined that of all people, Rainbow would be the last to believe in ghosts, since he didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t buy, sell or boss. ‘Besides, he’s been in the house more than four months now, where’s this ghost been all that time? He’d laugh his head off!’

‘He wouldn’t if everybody else was laughing,’ said Bossie thoughtfully. ‘Laughing at him! That’s the one thing he wouldn’t be able to stand. He can’t be all that sure of his ground, he’s always been a townie until now, this is a new venture for him. We’ve let it go on too long, but it’s still new. Once shake him, and he won’t think it worthwhile fighting it out, he’ll make off to the town again. But it’s got to be a real shocker to prise him loose. After all, he can sell the house, can’t he? It’s all done up beautifully, he needn’t lose on it, it’s a walk-in job, ready for occupation. He’d realise and get out. If we can make him a laughing-stock.’

He had them all eating out of his hand by this time, as he usually could do at need, if only by reason of his overwhelming vocabulary. Bossie was twelve years old, only child of a marriage between a classically-educated intellectual and a shrewd, practical farmer’s daughter, brains on both sides of his parentage, and an insatiable thirst for knowledge in the product. He was relatively small for his age, but compact and tough, as plain as the plainest pike-staff that ever carried a deadly pike, with corrective glasses to eradicate the infant consequences of what is technically termed a lazy eye. His colouring was nondescript brown, with thick dun-coloured hair that grew in all directions, and unnerving hazel eyes enlarged unequally behind their therapeutic lenses, which in a few years he would discard, to become disarmingly human. Altogether, a walking time-bomb, propelled by precocious intuitions and abilities, and restrained by a classical and liberal education. He knew he was formidable, but he didn’t know how formidable.

‘And how do we do that?’ wondered Ginger, reserving judgement.

‘Well, he’s a dealer in antiques, isn’t he? That’s how he’s made his money, and that’s his weakness, because you can’t know everything about everything, and antiques is practically everything. So if we hooked him on an antique that would get him foaming at the mouth, thinking he’d cornered a fortune, and then show him up either as a cheat who was pinching something belonging to someone else, or a fool who’s fallen for a common forgery – you think he’d stand up to that? I don’t! He’s got a reputation to lose in the trade. He’d spread his wings and fly, as fast and quietly as he could, and hope nobody outside here would ever hear of it.’

They mulled that over in silence for some moments, and found but one fault in it. Ginger dispiritedly put it into words. ‘That sounds all very well. But we haven’t got an antique to shove under his nose, real or fake. And even if we had, we wouldn’t know how to set about it.’

‘But I have,’ said Bossie portentously, sinking his voice to hollow depths of conspiracy. ‘And
I DO
!’

‘Dad,’ demanded Bossie, emerging with knitted brows from behind an enormous book containing full-page illustrations from the Stonyhurst Gospels, ‘how late did they go on writing in uncials?’

Sam barely looked up from his desk, and showed no excitement or curiosity whatever at this sudden enquiry. No question from Bossie, on any subject from Egyptian hieroglyphs to nuclear physics, could surprise his parents. He was an insatiable sponge for knowledge of all kinds.

‘Oh, it petered out round about the eighth to the ninth century, I suppose.’

‘Pity!’ said Bossie. ‘It’s easy to read. How did they write after that, then?’

‘It got more and more loose and cursive, and a lot harder to read, you’re right there.’

‘Where can I find a copy, say about late thirteenth century?’

Sam got up good-naturedly, and reached down a book almost as large, and opened it for him at one of the facsimile plates. ‘There you are, probably rather a better script than most, it’s out of a Benedictine chartulary, thirteenth century. They were letting out some land at farm. That’s a fair sample.’ He went back to his work without further question.

Bossie studied the page before him critically, and jutted a thoughtful lip. ‘What’s this word here? Look! “p’tin suis, et terra Fereholt cu’ p’tin’ suis.” ‘P’tin’isn’t a proper word.’ His Latin was good, but he had not so far been called upon to cope with unextended mediaeval examples.

‘Those are the contractions the clerks made,’ Sam reassured him absently. ‘With all the copying they had to do, they adopted a method of shorthand. They could understand and translate it, even if their bosses couldn’t. And probably a lot of their bosses couldn’t read, anyway, so they had to leave it to the clerks. “P’tin’ suis,” is “its appurtenances.” They were farming out some piece of land you didn’t name,“with its appurtenances, and the land of Fereholt with its appurtenances.” ’

‘Not a bad idea, shortening everything like that,’ Bossie approved, with a purposeful gleam in his eye, as though he had seen a short cut round a laborious chore. ‘Can I borrow this for tonight?’

‘Sure! Bring it back when you’ve done. Want the Latin dictionary? Or shall I extend the whole page for you, so you can read it yourself?’ And he pushed back his chair, and was really looking at his son now, willing to ditch his own current labours to assist in whatever Bossie was grappling with.

‘No, thanks, that’s all right.’ Bossie sensed that his disclaimer had been a shade hasty, which might indicate an undertaking on the suspect side. But he knew all the words calculated to intimidate parents, and was adroit in using them. ‘It’s all right for me to
ask
,’ he explained generously, ‘but I mustn’t let you help me.’ And drawing breath for the
coup de grâce
, ‘It’s for a SPECIAL PROJECT!’ he said with enormous dignity, and bore the chartulary of the Benedictine brothers away to his own room.

During the week following these curious activities of Bossie Jarvis, Arthur Everard Rainbow came home from choir practice somewhat later than usual, and instead of dropping his music-case casually on the hall table, carried it through to his own sacred study, clasped under his arm with jealous fondness. His wife, who had sailed out from her drawing-room to meet him, letting out with her floating skirts the murmur of voices and the sound of well-produced string music, noted his passage with mild interest, went back to her friends with a shrug and a private smile, and said, without any particular intent, and without paying much attention to the words she used:

‘Arthur’ll be in in a few moments. He must have discovered an unknown Bach score, I should think, he’s hugging his music-case with a lover’s gleam in his eye. You never know where you’ll strike gold in our business, do you? Even at choir practice it can happen.’

There were at least a dozen people in the room at the time. He liked her to stage her musical evenings when he was due to be missing for most of the time, it gave a relaxed atmosphere in which tongues might be loosened and defences lowered. That way she gathered more information, as they dropped their guard. Drinks had little effect upon her, he was pretty sure her guests never got much in return for their own advances.

She knew, in any case, that they were always on the alert.

‘Turn up the volume, Colin,’ she mimed across the room. ‘Just a little!’ And she sat down again in her old place, diplomatically between Charles Goddard and John Stubbs, neither of whom had a directly profitable interest in antiques, whatever their private passions, and closed her eyes to listen seriously to Schubert. She never even noticed when her husband came in, discreet, hushing comment with a finger on his lips because of the music, and on those lips, half-concealed, a rapt, anticipatory smile that had nothing whatever to do with Schubert, and exulted in the ignorance of his guests and colleagues.

It was precisely eight days after this that the Reverend Stephen Baines received a telephone call at the early hour of seven in the morning.

‘This is Barbara Rainbow, vicar. I’m sorry to worry you at this hour, but…’ She sounded curiously hesitant, dubious of her own wisdom in telephoning at all. ‘I’m probably troubling you over nothing, but I do wonder – did my husband, by any chance, say anything last night about going on somewhere else after practice? Something could have come up suddenly, he has been known to run off somewhere on business without remembering to let me know.’ Her voice was picking its way with distaste, reluctant to expose the more arid places of the Rainbow marriage. But not a doubt of it, she was seriously worried. ‘He didn’t come home,’ she said flatly. ‘That could happen, and of course he’s perfectly capable of looking after himself. But I’ve still had no word, and I did rather expect him to phone before now. I won’t say I’m alarmed, there’s probably no cause to be. But I just wondered if he’d mentioned any further plans when practice ended.’ And she added, as though she had already taken thought to cover all eventualities: ‘His car is here, you see. He walked to church, he usually does.’

‘I see,’ said the Reverend Stephen rather blankly. ‘No, all he did say was that he was staying to try over some new music he’d brought, so he would lock up for the night. Nothing about going on anywhere else afterwards. I wonder – you didn’t try contacting anyone last night?’ He was not sure himself whether he meant the police or some of Rainbow’s business associates.

‘No. I’m used to occasional abrupt departures, after all. He works on an opportunist basis at times. And one doesn’t start an alarm in the middle of the night without feeling sure it’s necessary, and I didn’t – I don’t feel sure of that at all. But now… You left him alone there at the church, then?’

‘Yes, at about half past eight, the usual time. I heard him playing when I left, I think all the choir had already gone home. Would you like me to…? Do you think we should notify…?’

‘No, don’t worry,’ said Barbara. ‘I expect it’s perfectly all right. I’ll call the shops, and see if he’s been in touch there.’ Rainbow had two shops, one in Birmingham, one in Worcester, where carefully selected manageresses looked after his interests. ‘He’s probably gone haring off after treasure trove somewhere.’ He might, for instance, have felt an urge to resort to the society of the Birmingham manageress, who was an efficient and accommodating blonde, appreciated as a mistress of long standing, but not socially equipped to figure as his wife. But that Barbara refrained from saying. ‘Thanks, anyway! Don’t worry about it!’