Bletchley Bright left the gathering a drained and drawn man. The realities he had spent a lifetime avoiding had finally caught up with him in the shape of a dissolute and criminal offspring.
When he arrived back at Voleney it was to be greeted by a distraught Ernestine. 'Oh God,' she said. 'It's too awful. Do you know that Boskie has escaped?'
'Escaped? What on earth are you talking about? She can't have. She's not being imprisoned anywhere.'
'That's what Fergus has just phoned to say,' his wife told him. 'He said I was to tell you that she has escaped from the clinic and gone to London to see the Home Secretary.'
'But she can't have. She's seriously ill and '
'Fergus said that if she dies, the family will hold you responsible for her death.'
Bletchley stared at his wife through bloodshot eyes. It had been a long drive from Drumstruthie and he had had time to try to think. 'Never mind the old bitch dying. Why has she gone to see the Home Secretary? What on earth for?'
'To tell him about Timothy, of course. Apparently she knows the Minister personally. Fergus seemed to think she had an affair with him...In fact he's certain she did.'
As she broke down and began to cry, Bletchley took the decanter in his hands and poured himself a stiff whisky. 'If you're seriously telling me that Aunt Boskie who is ninety had an affair with a man who at best reckoning can't be more than forty-three, you must be mad. She'd have been in her sixties when he hit puberty. It's a positively filthy thought. She'd be older than you are now, for Christ's sake. Don't be silly.'
The taunt was too much for his wife. 'I'm only telling you what Fergus said. And why is it so silly? You think it's silly for a woman my age to want to be made love to by a young healthy man with real feelings and the body to express them with? You're the one who's mad. Mad, mad, mad, mad.'
As she dashed from the room and her words reached him distantly from the corridor, Bletchley Bright looked sorrowfully round the great room and let his mind, such as it was, roam back through the centuries to the time the first Bright, old Bidecombe Bright who was known as 'Brandy', had stood there and had been proud of the achievements that had culminated in the building of Voleney House. And now, thanks to the criminal lunacy of his damned son, he, Bletchley Bright, directly descended from old Brandy, was going to have to sell the house he had been born and brought up and had led such a wonderfully idle life in. It was an unbearable prospect. He poured himself another Scotch and went into the gun room.
Chapter 22
Miss Midden was entirely a different person when she arrived in Fowey. She had had to change trains to get to Plymouth and had had very little sleep. Looking at her face in the mirror of the station lavatory, she thought it was suitably careworn for the role she had chosen for herself. She went out and bought a round hat and a blue coat at a charity shop and put them on. She also bought a large canvas hold-all. Then she went to a car rental office, hired an Escort for the day, and drove to Pud End. She intended to arrive at lunchtime when Mr Gould would be too busy or hungry to want to bother asking too many awkward questions.
He hardly asked any at all. He didn't want to know about bloody Timothy Bright. He was still seething over Bletchley's rudeness on the phone.
'I'm from the hospital,' she told him. 'I've come for Timothy Bright's things. He's ever so much better now he's off the drip and he's asked for them.'
Victor Gould said he was glad to hear it, though whether he was glad Timothy Bright was off the drip or in hospital or simply because he didn't want the bloody lout's things in his house it was impossible to say. He went to fetch them and Miss Midden bustled along behind him chattering about how busy she was and how she had to go over to Bodmin because old Mr Reavis needed his insulin and...
Victor Gould watched her drive off before realizing he hadn't asked which hospital his damned nephew was in. Not that he cared. He was expecting Mrs Gould back next day and wasn't looking forward to her return. He decided to say nothing about Timothy or his things. Silence, where the Bright family was concerned, was golden, and anyway he was going to have enough of her forgiveness without getting further into guilt.
By two o'clock Miss Midden was back on the train. She had phoned the Major and told him to pick her up at eleven that night.
By that time Inspector Rascombe's investigation into any unusual activities in the Stagstead area had unearthed the anonymous phone call.
'Came in on Monday morning at 11.12 a.m.,' the WPC on duty told him. 'Man's voice. Wouldn't leave his name or address. Using a public phone booth. It's written down here.'
The Detective Inspector looked at the message.' "Boys being buggered Middenhall," repeated twice. Interesting, very interesting. That's where that awful woman lives, isn't it?' he said. 'Gave us a lot of trouble some years back.'
The WPC didn't share his dislike. 'Miss Midden. Very respectable lady by all accounts. Middens have been up there for yonks.'
'That's all very well, but who are the people at the Middenhall?' said Rascombe, and went on to check out two car thefts at Pyal and a break-in at Ratfen and finally some sheep stealing over on Loft Fell Moss. Nothing added up to a definite lead to paedophilia.
He had more luck on the computer file of sex offenders and was particularly struck by the name MacPhee who had done time in 1972 for 'cottaging' and whose address in 1984 had been the Ruffles Hotel, Stagstead. MacPhee had also been arrested and charged on four charges of being drunk and disorderly over the years. 'You'd better check that fucker out,' said the Inspector. 'Yes, I'd like to know a bit more about this Major MacPhee.'
But in fact the Major came fairly far down the Inspector's list of interesting sex offenders and the area had a sufficient number to keep him busy for some time. It was only when he came back to his office and found that the same Major MacPhee's present address was The Midden Farm that he took notice of him again. 'We get a call from a hoaxer about some boy being buggered at the Middenhall and we find this bloke living up there with a record for D and D and cottaging. This smells dirty to me, don't it just. What else do we have up there, Sergeant? I want to know.'
'There, or down the road at the Middenhall as well?' the Sergeant asked.
'The Middenhall? What's that?'
'Don't know how to describe it,' said the Sergeant. 'It's not exactly a guest house or a nursing home. At least I don't think it is. It's some sort of community place people come and stay in.'
'Really? A community place? What sort of people?' said Rascombe, whose nose for dreadful dirt was now firmly fixed on the Middenhall.
'Well, I don't know exactly. I heard someone say Miss Midden she's the old biddy who owns the place Miss Midden had told this person that they were all family and entitled to live there for free.'
'Really? Family? What sort of family? Got kids, have they?' said the Inspector. 'I want to know about this family.'
'I'll get the names from the council offices, the names for poll-tax purposes. Could get a lead that way.'
'Follow that up, Sergeant. I want to know everything there is to know about this Middenhall place and the people up there. Send someone over to the Council. Oh yes, and make sure the enquiry is discreet. This could be a very important case indeed.'
As a result of this instruction a plainclothes man visited the Community Charge offices with such awesome discretion that the news that the police were interested in Miss Midden and the goings-on at the Middenhall was guaranteed to spread rapidly through Shire Hall and thence to the general public in Stagstead.