The Price of Butcher's Meat (20 page)

I’d got one thing right, though. Suddenly the door burst open and
buffalo woman charged in.

“Lester,” she declaimed. “I’m so sorry I’m late.”

Parker and Festerwhanger were in close confab over by the drinks
table. I saw them look at each other, just a glance lasting a split second,
but I’d put money on it each on ’em were thinking, You didn’t tell me
you’d invited her!

But Parker being a cockeyed optimist and Festerwhanger being a
smarmy Yank, neither of ’em had any bother turning on the full beam
and coming forward to greet her.

“Lady D! Now we’re complete!” declared Parker.

“Welcome, dear Daphne,” oozed Festerwhanger, offering one of them
air kisses, but she moved her head at the last moment and caught him
full on the lips so hard it probably bruised his gums.

The bodywork might be a bit rusty but the old internal combustion
was still pounding away!

She weren’t slow at lapping up the fizz either, I noted, getting through
a couple of glasses at a rate of knots that made me feel like a Methodist
and hitting the nibbles like she’d not et since Shrove Tuesday.

“Bet the mean old cow’s brought a doggy bag,” muttered young Heywood.

I said, “Being rude’s okay behind people’s backs then?”

“Just stating the facts,” she said pertly. “Looks like maybe you’re on
the menu too.”

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Didn’t get her drift till I looked back to Lady D and there was the old
bird wiggling her glass at me and giving me a turnip- lantern smile.

What the fuck had I done to turn me from loony patient to dear old
chum?

Mebbe it were friendship hour here in Sandytown, for suddenly the
young guy I recalled whistling “The Indian Maid” in the pub appeared
and gave Heywood a smacking kiss. Opposite effect here. He was definitely aiming at the mouth but a nifty bit of head work diverted him to
the cheekbone.

“Charley, here you are,” he said. “What a joy to see you again.”

He sounded like an old-fashioned actor doing sincere. Good-looking
young bloke, and he knew it. No harm in that. If you’ve got it, flaunt it,
that’s always been my motto.

Didn’t look like it cut much ice with Heywood, but. She said, very
accusing, “You told your aunt about the meeting then?”

“Of course,” he said. “But only in the fervent hope that she’d insist on
coming, thus giving me another chance of seeing you.”

The lass rolled her eyes a bit, but I could tell she were pleased too.

This young cock had learned what all successful young cocks soon work
out, that you don’t need to worry about laying on the lard too thick with
most women. Seeing what you’re at makes them feel cleverer than you,
which is what they all like to feel. But it takes a very clever one indeed
not to let some of the lard stick!

She said, “Mr. Dalziel, this is Teddy Denham. Sir Edward, if you like
titles.”

“Love ’em,” I said. “Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel.”

That froze his smile a second as we shook hands.

There’d been two others in the grand lady’s train, a pair of lasses, one
I didn’t recognize and t’other the willowy niece, Clara, I’d met in the
pub. Didn’t surprise me to see Roote bearing down on her like the wolf
on the fold. He came to a stop in front of her, reached out, grabbed a
chair and pretty well forced her to sit down so’s she were at his level.

Didn’t notice or mebbe didn’t care that he were blocking the passage of
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t’other lass, who looked like she’d lunched on a radish salad and wished
she hadn’t. She could’ve walked round him but she didn’t. She just got
hold of the back of the wheelchair and twisted it out of her way, then
wandered off to the window at the far end of the room, leaving Roote
looking at the wall. Clara looked a bit pissed with the sour- faced woman
but I could see Roote grinning as he maneuvered himself back into position. Nowt I could teach that bugger about milking sympathy!

Alongside me, Teddy Denham was still laying it on with a trowel too,
this time showing young Heywood how well read he were.

Looking round the room, he declared, “This is precisely the kind of
gathering Austen would have described so brilliantly, don’t you think,
Charley? Or perhaps you prefer the darker gaze of George Eliot?”

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“What about you, Mr. Dalziel?
Aimez-vous
George Eliot?”

It was put-down-the-fat-plod time.

I said, “Eh?”

“Do you like George Eliot?” he translated very slowly.

“Oh aye,” I said. “He were my gran’s favorite. Used to play ‘By the
Silvery Moon’ all the time. Excuse me.”

I gave Heywood a grin afore I moved off and she grinned back and
gave me a big wink. Interesting lass. Not daft, just young. And won’t be
bad looking either when she lets herself grow into her body. Reminds me
a bit of Cap.

In my experience buggers who want to be alone are either thinking
of topping themselves or stealing the silver, so I joined the sour- faced
woman by the window to find out which. She was staring across to the
convalescent home. From this angle you couldn’t see how it had been
extended. Looking out to sea, with its tall chimneys and all that green
ivy clinging to mellow red brick, it would have made a grand cover for
an
English Heritage
magazine.

“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.

T H E P R I C E O F B U T C H E R ’ S M E AT 1 3 9

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?”

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“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
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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 adminis-trative 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 bill-ing in all the Yorkshire glossies. They went on a leisurely Caribbean
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cruise for their honeymoon, fi nanced, 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 profi t 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 puffi ng 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.”