The shops stood opposite to me, the terrace to the left. On the right was Adenwold parish church, which was contained within the half-ruined skeleton of a much larger church, and covered over with ivy. In the graveyard were little enclosures made of thick hedges, like natural rooms, and inside these were clusters of graves – whole families of the dead. Alongside the graveyard was a grand pink house. This must be the vicarage, and I was sure it had claimed the vicar who’d just left the station.
The lately-arrived man in field boots was now examining a finger-post that pointed towards a narrow road running away to the left of the baker’s. I came up behind him and read: ‘TO THE HALL’.
‘You’re for the Hall?’ I asked the man.
He wheeled about, but he hardly looked at me. Rather, he seemed to be looking into the far distance, and I had the idea that he might have learnt that gaze in Africa. But he also had London written all over him – expensive education and five hundred pounds a year. He gave the shortest of nods. He was for the Hall. At this, I gave him my name but again kept back my profession. The man put down his bags and shook my hand, but didn’t introduce himself. His eyes were exactly the same colour as the sky.
He was a tough-looking bloke, and if one of those bags of his held a gun – which seemed to me more than likely – and if he was on his way to shoot John Lambert, I would not be able to stop him by force. All I could do was try to put him off by saying what I knew.
‘There’s a man staying at the gardener’s cottage which is connected to the Hall,’ I said. ‘His name’s John Lambert and I believe him to be in danger of …’
‘Of what?’ asked the man, and it was not sharp, but in the manner of a polite enquiry.
‘In mortal danger,’ I said.
There was a silence. Or rather the air was filled with the sound of bees.
‘How do you know?’ the man eventually asked.
‘He said as much. I spoke to him yesterday.’
The man put down his bags.
‘Did you seek him out, or just come upon him?’
‘I’m here on holiday,’ I said. ‘I was out strolling with my wife, and I just came upon him.’
The man put his hands behind his back, and placed his legs wider apart.
‘Did you not recommend that he summon the police?’
He’d forced my hand.
‘I am the police,’ I said, and I showed him my warrant card, saying, ‘Do you mind my asking your business at the Hall?’
But, still with his hands behind his back, he put a question of his own:
‘You’re here on holiday, you say?’
‘I am.’
‘Who’s your officer commanding?’
And that was sharp.
‘That don’t signify,’ I said, feeling like a lout. ‘I’ve asked about your business at the Hall.’
‘I have an association with John Lambert,’ said the man. ‘I am … a confidant of his. The poor fellow is considerably agitated at present.’
It struck me as I spoke that John Lambert might be a mental case, and that this might be his doctor. He picked up his bags, and said, ‘You can be assured that my visit is in Mr Lambert’s own best interests.’
‘Then you’re not here to do him in?’
By way of answer to this stab, the blue-eyed man merely changed the angle of his head.
‘I’m going to have to ask for your name,’ I said.
‘That’s confidential,’ he said, and he looked at me levelly. ‘Do you mean to arrest me?’
I had never yet arrested a man of a markedly superior class. Anyhow, I had no reasonable cause to suspect him of any crime.
‘Arrest?’ I said. ‘Not a bit of it’ – and I added, by way of a touch of humour, ‘I’m for easy going.’
‘Good day to you, Detective Stringer,’ he said, and I watched him walk off, my head seething with the word ‘ass’ directed at my low-class self.
Chapter Sixteen
I needed more authority. I would summon the Chief from York.
But how?
A girl in a very white pinafore with black-stockinged legs that looked too thin, making her seem somehow spider-like, came out of one of the houses. And I’d thought they all stood empty. She skirted the green and walked over to the baker’s.
I pictured Hugh Lambert in Durham gaol. He had forty-seven hours left to live. Did he wish it was more, or less? A condemned cell was bigger than the common run of cells, and was a kind of open house. There was always a warder looking on; the governor would come and go; the priest, too. Lambert was about to die, but was not yet dying, and this was an odd notion: as though time itself had been meddled with.