'Don't you speak to me like that. I'm not some poor wretch in the dock or one of the barristers you can berate,' she said. 'Now, does the name Llafranc mean anything to you? You berth your yacht the Lex Britannicus in the marina there.'
It was hardly a question but the Judge nodded obediently all the same.
'Very fortunately for you, Timothy has saved you from becoming an unwitting drug-runner. You will find all the details in this envelope. I have made him write them all down. You can check on their veracity. I'm sure you are capable of that. And the money in that bag is what your nephew stole from his aunt. You will see that she gets it back. And now I must be going.'
And before the Judge could ask who she was or how she came to be involved with his beastly nephew, Miss Midden had passed out of the house. Behind her she left a bewildered old man who could only remember that she had faced him down in his own drawing-room. She'd been wearing what looked like an old tweed skirt with a stain on it. And a scruffy anorak. It was weird.
Chapter 25
Sir Arnold Gonders wandered the house in Sweep's Place and pondered his fate. That it was a fate he had no doubt. A fate that had crept up on him silently and with an awful purpose. It had to have some meaning. Everything had a meaning for the Chief Constable. He turned inevitably to God. He fell on his knees in his study and he prayed as he had never prayed before. He prayed for divine help, for inspiration, for some sign that would show him what to do in this, the greatest crisis of his life. Or, if God wouldn't meet that request, would he please tell him what he had done wrong to bring down on himself this terrible fate. The Chief Constable didn't actually compare himself to the Pharaoh who got it in the neck from God with plagues of locusts and years of dearth and so on, because clearly that Gyppo had been a right bastard and deserved everything the Good Lord chose to hand out. But he thought about him occasionally and hoped and prayed he wasn't going to have years of this sort of thing. He thought far more about Job. And he did compare himself with Job. After all, Job had been a thoroughly respectable bloke, pillar of society no doubt and with plenty of readies and so on, and yet look what he'd had inflicted on him.
The Chief Constable checked up on the misfortunes God had heaped on Job and was appalled. It had been a wipe-out for the poor bugger. Oxen and asses gone the Sabeans fell on them and took them away after slaughtering the servants; then God sent fire and consumed the sheep and more servants; three bands of Chaldeans lifted the camels and bumped off even more servants (at this point Sir Arnold thanked God he hadn't been employed by Job and wondered how he had ever got anyone to work for him again); and, as if that wasn't enough, the sons and daughters had copped it in some sort of hurricane. Must have had a hell of a big funeral, though why Job should have shaved his head for the occasion was quite beyond the Chief Constable. And still God hadn't stopped. It was only natural that Job's health had suffered. In Sir Arnold's opinion it was amazing the bloke hadn't gone off his head. Instead he got boils just about everywhere 'from the sole of his foot to his crown'. And of course they didn't have antibiotics in those days. Sir Arnold had once had a boil on the back of his neck and he knew how bloody painful that had been. He couldn't begin to think what it was like to have them on the soles of the feet. And as if that wasn't enough his three so-called friends had called on him and kept him awake for seven days and seven nights and hadn't even said 'Cheer up' or anything useful. The Chief Constable had seen what keeping someone awake for a week did to a bloke. Mind you, they had taken it in turns to shout questions at the sod but then again that had given the villain something to think about. Sir Arnold would much prefer to be shouted at every now and again to having three bloody friends sitting there looking at him and saying nothing. Enough to drive a chap clean off his trolley. And all Job had done was open his mouth and curse the day. What the hell had the day got to do with it?
The Chief Constable couldn't go on. It was too dreadful to contemplate and, if memory served him correctly, Mrs Job hadn't been exactly helpful either, the rotten cow. Said Job had bad breath or something. Hardly surprising. With all those boils he'd probably stunk all over. Certainly no sane woman would want to go near him.
Sir Arnold skipped to the end of the Book of Job and was amazed and delighted to see that Job did pretty well after all he'd been through. Fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand camels and a thousand oxen and the same number of asses. And his wife had been ready and willing. Would be after all those months of doing without it. Seven sons and seven daughters and the girls really nice lookers. And to cap it all, Job lived for a hundred and forty years, which was amazing after all he'd been through. Must have been on ginseng or something. On the whole the Chief Constable found the Book of Job almost comforting. Like doing three years bird and coming out to a few million quid. Just so long as God didn't tell Satan to give him the boil treatment. Boils on the bottom of one's feet weren't funny.
Nor was the message he received from London summoning him to Whitehall. It was pointedly brief and coincided with another letter from Vy's solicitors containing a full and sworn statement by the bitch asserting that he had repeatedly raped her, had insisted on sodomizing her on their honeymoon and had encouraged her to have sex with the wives of his friends...'Bloody lying cow,' the Chief Constable roared and saw the hand of Auntie Fucking Bea behind it all. She was screwing him just as she was almost certainly screwing his wife. Or something. The letter ended with the suggestion that Sir Arnold agree to allow his wife to divorce him on the grounds of adultery and pay all her costs to quote avoid unnecessary and most unfavourable publicity unquote.
What Sir Arnold said wasn't quotable. The costs of Lapline & Goodenough, Solicitors, were already exorbitant. He'd have to sell the Old Boathouse to meet the bill. Only then did he realize, and regret most vehemently, that he had made the purchase in Vy's name to avoid the accusation that he was taking advantage of his friendship with Ralph Pulborough, the new Director of the Twixt and Tween Waterworks Company. In short, Sir Arnold was in no position or state of mind to attend to police business. He was otherwise engaged.
Inspector Rascombe, on the other hand, was having a thoroughly engaging time. He had been particularly delighted to learn from the surveillance detective in the wood that an old bugger as naked as the day was long had emerged at half past seven from the Middenhall and had walked slowly across the lawn in the altogether before plunging into the lake and swimming on his back, repeat on his back, displaying his dooda for all the world, and in particular thirty children in the tents, to see.
'His what?' the Inspector had demanded over the mobile.
'His whatnot,' the detective constable told him. 'His dong, for Christ's sake. He's just come out of the water now and is drying himself.'
'What, in front of all those little kiddies? The bastard! Get it on film.'
'We've done that already,' said the surveillance man. 'Got the whole performance, but I wouldn't call them little kiddies exactly. I mean some of them are hulking great louts.'
"Those shits like them all sizes, the swine,' said the Inspector. 'What's he doing now, the old sod?'
'Going into the house bollock naked waving his hand...Hang on, he's blowing fucking kisses '
'What?' bellowed the Inspector so loudly that a neighbouring rabbit went thumping away through the wood. 'Blowing kisses at the kiddies? He's going to do years for this.'