Night After Night (27 page)

‘I think maybe I’m starting to.’

It was seven-thirty this morning when Mrs Rutter returned her call, waking her up, startled, in her shoebox bedsit inside the economy pop-up. Maybe just as well, there’s a whole lot to clear today and another hour would’ve put Mary Ann on the back-burner.

She could be eighty-plus, a former schoolteacher living in what a sign says is an old cloth-weaver’s cottage across the main street from Winchcombe church. She has a husband, Billy, maybe older, who’s sitting by the fire in its cast-iron range, and smiling to himself. His wife doesn’t seem to sit down at all.
She’s fluttering and flapping like a small bird, over a polished gate-leg table on which are scattered open books with pages turned down and curling papers which look like stuff gathered to line a nest.

‘I’ve always made it my policy, Miss Underhill, never to retell a story for which there is
no proof
. Which is why the very worst of Sir Joshua Wishatt is
not
in my book.’

Her eyes are excited. Apparently, it’s been some years since anybody asked about that book, which, she says proudly but also kind of warily, is the seventh and raciest of her works. She’s heard, of course, about the TV people up at Knap Hall, making their programme about the life of Trinity Ansell, which she’s sure everyone in this town will be eagerly awaiting.

Wedged between the table and a wall of musty-looking books, Grayle gets the feeling Mrs Rutter is quite pleased that some Wishatt descendants in the US have been shocked enough to buy up every copy of
Rogues and Roués
they can lay their cursors on.

Mrs Rutter peers down her glasses at the assembled data.

‘Wishatt was, you see, fond of women. Wrongly fond.’

‘“Wrongly”?’

‘Essentially, a follower of that old custom known as droit de seigneur. Which, by the eighteenth century, was not widely practised, even here.’

‘That’s um…?’

She knows, just doesn’t want to seem too clever. Nothing worse than a smart-ass foreigner. Mrs Rutter tells her about the lord’s perceived right to have his way with the wives and daughters of tenants. Her husband nods his head over an unlit pipe. He wears a flat cap. The atmosphere is like the inside of a chicken shack. Grayle wonders how long there’ll be living rooms like this outside of folk museums.

‘He loved – to paraphrase Shakespeare – widely and too well,’ the old lady says. ‘Surprising how many folks in this area can claim him as an ancestor. Here…’

Her brown hands quiver and swoop on something on the table. Lifting it carefully. It’s the size of a prayer book, thick, uneven pages held together, because of its split spine, by rubber bands. Mrs Rutter lowers it in front of Grayle, adjusts her glasses, jabs a forefinger.

‘There…
’

Handwritten, very faded. Grayle bends to the book but doesn’t touch.

Grayle looks up.

‘It’s a diary?’

‘From the year 1838. Many people who could write kept a diary in those days, especially the girls. Given to me some twenty years ago by the owner of an antique shop in Tewkesbury. Worth nothing to him, but he guessed it would answer some questions for me, and he was right. The writer
appears
to be called Constance, surname unknown, but I have my ideas.’

Mrs Rutter turns a page of the diary.

‘Read here…’

‘Now,’ Mrs Rutter says. ‘Do you see?’

Hell, yes, she does. Her own research, in libraries and on the Net, has thrown up the name Fishe several times, but nothing much about him. Just one of those quaint names that turns up in old records and lists.

Abel Fishe.

Abel’s Rent
.

‘I think… he was either the owner or the tenant of Knap Farm in the early eighteenth century, do I have that right?’

‘That’s correct. And was also Sir Joshua’s steward. Awarded the lifetime tenancy of the farm by Wishatt for, I would guess, given the circumstances, a peppercorn rent. For services rendered.’

‘He’s not mentioned in your book, though, is he? Nor is Knap Farm.’

Mrs Rutter frowns.

‘It wasn’t called Knap Farm before Abel Fishe’s time.’

‘
He
called it Knap Farm?’

‘We have to assume that. It wasn’t much of a house back then, mind. More than a hovel, but not very big at all. Fishe lived alone there. Although it seems he was not alone all the time.’

Guessing this doesn’t mean ghosts, Grayle finds herself stiffening with that reprehensible kind of tremulous excitement that reporters come to recognize when a story, no matter how distasteful, begins to form on its own. She picks up what might be a similar feeling coming off Mrs Rutter.

33

Domestic chores

THE PHONE
,
ITS
ring muted, is trembling in Grayle’s hip pocket. She claps a hand over its bulge.

Stop it, leave me alone. This could be important
.

Mary Ann Rutter says, ‘
None
of this is in my book, you see. Partly because it’s
not documented
. And partly because some people in this area still don’t like to talk about it.’

‘Some things,’ Grayle says, ‘need to be talked about.’

‘Miss Underhill…’ Mrs Rutter bends across the table, brings her voice down to a whisper, ‘while, as a historian, I’ve never been afraid of the controversial, neither I nor Billy was born here.’

Grayle suppresses a smile. This sure doesn’t seem like the home of incomers.

‘So how long you been here?’

Mrs Rutter works it out on her fingers.

‘Fifty-seven years.’

‘Right.’

‘Billy was the new policeman. I was a very young school-teacher. Do you mind if I ask you again what this is for, my dear, in relation to Mrs Ansell? My memory of long-ago things is rather stronger nowadays than…’

‘We’re looking at… not only what Trinity Ansell did at Knap Hall but the effects it had on her. If you see what I mean…’

‘Ah.’ Mrs Rutter leans across the table. Hints of a shared conspiracy. ‘We used to see her, you know. She would come into the town and spend extraordinary amounts of money at the local shops on items we could
not
imagine she had need of.’

‘Like she was just doing it to help the local economy?’

‘Perhaps. She was rather distant, but I think perhaps that was shyness. We don’t think famous people can be shy, do we?’

A tapping by the hearth. Billy Rutter is knocking out his pipe.

‘Tell the girl,’ he says.

His wife tosses him a reproachful glance.

‘Miss Underhill, this is
not documented
. This is… what do they say?’

‘Word of mouth?’

‘Oral history. Which is not always to be trusted.’

‘I understand that fully.’

‘No doubt you’ll have heard this before.’ Mary Ann Rutter clasps the diary to her cardiganed chest. ‘But it’s no less true for all that. Mrs Ansell was trying to make a beautiful world in a place that was not beautiful.’

‘I… have heard it put… almost that way.’

‘When I had the chance – angry with myself now, look – I said nothing. I stood next to her in the ironmongers once and we exchanged pleasantries about the weather and which bird feeder was best. But I did not tell her what I might have told her.’

And she probably would at least have listened to a local historian.

‘She would have thought me mad, of course. A mad old woman.’

‘What would you have told her?’

‘I would have told her to bring a priest to Knap Hall, to have it… you know?’

Grayle nods but says nothing. Waits. She’s become good at that.

‘And about Abel Fishe,’ Mrs Rutter says at last. ‘And the women, I would have told her about them. If she thought me mad, what would that matter? She’d remember what I’d said. She might have acted on it.’

Billy Rutter clears his throat. Picks up a leather tobacco pouch, shiny with age and use. Starts to fill his pipe.

‘Wishatt needed somewhere to take his women,’ he says into the pipe’s bowl. ‘So as word wouldn’t get back to his posh wife.’

‘Who was so necessary to his status,’ Mrs Rutter says.

Grayle’s mouth has gone dry.

‘I think she knew, of course,’ Mrs Rutter says. ‘But as long as it was not
seen
to be happening. As long as it took place somewhere hidden.’

‘Knap Hall?’

‘No longer purely oral history… because of this diary. Which I did not have access to, or even know of, when I wrote my book. Well, I shall never write any of this now, but I’m glad that it corroborates what I
did
write in my book about Wishatt. I feel easier in my mind. It
should
be known, you see. These matters should not be hidden for ever. Or if the stories are passed on as gossip they’ll lose whatever truth they possessed and become legends. But if it all comes out in your programme…’

Ah. Right
.

‘Well… you know… if I forgot to mention this,’ Grayle says, ‘we will, of course, include your name in the programme credits, and there’ll be a payment of—’

‘No, no
no
!’

The old lady’s almost taking off from the ground in horror, pages flying out of the diary like feathers, Grayle rushing to scoop them out of the air.

‘Hey, look, I’m sorry if I—’

‘That must not happen! None of this must be seen to have come from me. And no payment is necessary, is that understood?’

‘I’m sorry.’ Grayle goes down on her knees to pick up a page. ‘I truly didn’t mean to—’

‘People don’t dispute what they see on television.’

‘Well, I think they do, but—’

‘Here. Keep it.’

Mrs Rutter pushes the depleted diary at Grayle, who accepts it, but…

‘I can’t take this.’

‘Yes, you can, it’s worthless, except as evidence of something that must not become legend. You’re doing me a favour. You’re taking away the responsibility. Do you see?’

‘OK… I…. I’ll handle this whichever way meets your approval.’

Down by the fire, Billy Rutter smiles and nods. Policemen, most of them, have a need to see justice done, even after centuries, and not always in the most direct way. Grayle has a friend who was a cop – a distant friend now, sadly.

But this still feels wrong. Mary Ann Rutter thinks this is going to be a serious documentary about a woman who tried to rehabilitate a bad house, a shunned house, and turn it into something beautiful. Does Mrs Rutter seriously blame herself, in some way, for the tragedy of Trinity Ansell?

‘Well, OK…’ Grayle holds the diary in both hands. ‘I’ll bring it back soon as I’ve read it.’

‘No need to bring it back at all. I won’t need it again.’

‘Mrs Rutter, when this talks of… Abel Fishe’s
fouler
seed…’

Defford will so love that phrase. If she tells him. Which will depend on how Mary Ann Rutter qualifies it.

‘Miss Underhill, you realize that apart from the diary, there is no doc—’

‘Word of mouth will be just fine. Fouler than Wishatt’s, that’s what it’s saying?’

‘There is…’ Mrs Rutter pulls a spindle-back chair from under the table and finally sits down, composing herself. ‘There’s a kind of wickedness that often passes unnoticed because it’s… so abhorrent that it’s upsetting to consider and we convince ourselves it cannot be happening. There was a local saying once – or so I’m told. “Abel’s Rent”. People would say – in a disparaging way – “Oh, he had it for Abel’s Rent.” Meaning for no rent at all. For
a service rendered
. Often, in later years, this
might simply involve the avoidance of tax, which I suppose was a way of sanitizing it.’

‘OK.’

‘In the eighteenth century, as steward, Abel Fishe would visit Wishatt’s tenants to collect the rents. And if a tenant had difficulty finding the money after a bad harvest or something, payment might be arranged… in kind. Through the services of a wife or a daughter. Might be said she was performing domestic chores. Do you see?’

‘Yes.’

‘And after Wishatt had made use of them – with or without the knowledge of the husband – Abel Fishe would… have his commission.’

‘Just to get this clear – I’m sorry, Mrs Rutter – we’re talking… carnal commission?’

‘Of the most brutal and distasteful kind. Or so it’s said. Please do not ask me what that means. I don’t know. It isn’t spoken of. The more I’ve uncovered of history, the more I’ve learned that the past can be a most unpleasant place. But I’ve also realised that keeping secrets about it helps no one, except those responsible for the wickedness. And having the
responsibility
of a secret… that is not a good position to be in.
There
…’ She opens her arms. ‘Perhaps we’re helping one another.’

‘And this abuse took place not at the homes of tenants, but…’

‘At Knap Farm. As it was now called. Oh, yes.’

‘Why? I mean, why did he give it that name?’

‘Knap means the top of a hill. And, all I can assume is… the farm is not far from Belas Knap.’

‘The longbarrow. The burial chamber.’

‘I don’t know why he gave it that name. Except perhaps to make people think it was connected to Belas Knap. Which, back then, local people avoided, as some do today, for superstitious reasons. A haunted place. All kinds of stories, widely told in books now.’

Check this out
.

‘What I don’t understand, Mrs Rutter, is how it was all covered up at the time. Abel Fishe.’

‘Oh, they were pragmatic times. No thoughts of equality for women in those days. And people were afraid. Sir Joshua Wishatt was a powerful landowner, Abel Fishe was his retainer. If anyone complained or even talked too much… well, there are even stories of a couple of people – women – disappearing. You’ll find hints of it in the diary. And, of course, all the talk at that time was of something else.’