The Midden

  In the darkness Sir Arnold Gonders listened to her retreating footsteps and cursed the day his wife had brought the beastly woman into their life. Either she was taking the piss out of him or she was clean out of her skull. Whichever she was he had to get himself out of the fucking cellar, one, and two, drag the blighter up after him. The only way out now was up the planks of the beerbarrel ramp. By the light of the moon shining occasionally through the scudding clouds he tried climbing the plank by gripping the edge with his hands and moving one of his feet at a time. Halfway up he slipped and was left clutching the plank to himself like a mating toad. With infinite care to avoid splinters he let himself down and considered the problem again. What he needed were some non-slip soles or, since they weren’t available, something he could attach to the plank that wouldn’t slip. For a minute he thought of using Timothy Bright as a temporary ladder and had got so far as to prop him against the plank when he decided that wasn’t very clever. Unless he tied the fellow on . . .

  Sir Arnold cancelled the project and went back with his torch to look for something to stand on. He found it at the back of one of the stone wine racks in the shape of a battered suitcase which contained ancient copies of La Vie Parisienne and which had once belonged to a waterworks employee who had evidently whiled away his spare time with photographs of unclad French women of the thirties. Sir Arnold had kept them for his own amusement but now the suitcase was going to be put to a better purpose.

  Five minutes later he was out into the cool night air and grasping the rope attached to the body in the cellar. He stood for a moment to consider the problem. It was amazing how quite simple tasks became problematical when they had to be put into effect. One thing he wasn’t going to do was have the rope slip back through the hatch if he had to let go. Walking across the cobbled yard he tied the end to the leg of a bench in his workshop. As he straightened up he began to realize that pulling the body wasn’t going to be at all easy. He wished now he hadn’t left the bottle of whisky in the cellar. He could do with a stiff dram before attempting the big pull. He went round to the French windows and was grateful to find that Auntie Bea hadn’t locked them too. In his study he poured himself a large Chivas Regal and drank it down. Yes, that felt better.

  Back in the yard he grasped the rope and began to pull. Slowly, the body crept up the planks and Sir Arnold was beginning to think he had done it when his feet slipped on the cobbles and with a nasty thud Timothy Bright fell onto the floor of the cellar again. As the Chief Constable fought to get his breath back Genscher whined beside him. Sir Arnold looked down at the huge dog and was inspired. He had found the perfect method of getting the damned lout up and out. He went into the workshop and found several rolls of insulating tape.

  ‘Genscher old boy, come here and make yourself useful,’ he called softly. ‘You’re going to be my dumb chum.’

  Five minutes later the Rottweiler was. With twenty metres of insulating tape strapped tightly round its jaws and the back of its head it was incapable of whining and its breathing had taken on a new and stressful wheezing.

  ‘Now then,’ said Sir Arnold, ‘just one more thing.’ And he tied the rope to the dog’s collar. Then he stepped back and took a deep breath before unleashing all the rage against circumstance that had built up in him since he had been hounded by the press at the Serious Crime Squad celebrations. As he kicked Genscher’s so far unscathed scrotum the great beast bounded forward, desperately trying to come to terms with this appalling visitation and the changed relationship with a master who had previously treated it almost kindly. In the cellar, happily oblivious to the fate waiting for him, Timothy shot up the ramp and through the hatch onto the cobbles and was dragged across the yard by the desperate dog. As Genscher hurled himself away from his own backside, Timothy followed and was dragged into the workshop where he collided with the leg of the bench, bounced off it and was finally wedged under the front off-side wheel of Lady Vy’s Mercedes.

  Outside Sir Arnold tried to undo the rope. The Chivas Regal had got to him now and he was conscious that the family pet no longer trusted him. ‘It’s all right, Genscher old chap,’ he whispered hoarsely but without effect. The Rottweiler was not a very bright dog and it certainly wasn’t a fit one but it knew enough and was fit enough to keep out of the way of owners who muzzled a dog’s jaws with half a mile of insulating tape and then kicked it in the balls. As the Chief Constable stumbled about the yard in pursuit, Genscher made for the only bolt-hole it could find and shot through the hatch. Behind it the rope tautened and for a moment it seemed as though the body in the sheets would follow it. But Timothy Bright was too tightly wedged under the Mercedes and the rope had wound itself round an upright in the garage. As the Rottweiler began to strangle to death halfway down the chute, Sir Arnold acted. He wasn’t going to lose the fellow whatever happened. Groping among the tools on the bench he found a chisel and, kneeling on the ground, stabbed at the rope. Most of his attempts missed but in the end the rope parted and a dull thud in the cellar indicated that the Rottweiler had dropped the remaining five feet to the floor. Sir Arnold got to his feet and began to haul the body from below the Mercedes.

  He collected a wheelbarrow and, wedging Timothy across it, slowly wheeled him down to the Land Rover in the byre. Twice the body fell off and twice he replaced it, but in the end he was able to heave it up into the back of the vehicle. Then he checked his watch. It was almost one o’clock. Or was it two? It didn’t matter. He didn’t give a fig what time it was any longer so long as that old bitch Miss Midden was well and truly away from the farm. The Chief Constable was pissed and mentally shagged out and only his sense of self-preservation kept him going. He wasn’t going to waste time getting the wretched fellow out of the sheets here. He’d do that once he’d unloaded the bugger at the Midden. Sir Arnold climbed back into the driving seat and eased the handbrake off. The Land Rover coasted slowly down the hill away from the Old Boathouse and the reservoir. When he was out of sight he let in the clutch and started.

  Twenty-five slow minutes later, still driving without lights, he turned up towards the Midden and got out to open the gate. For a moment he hesitated. There was still time to dump the bugger somewhere else. Once in through the gate there could be no turning back. And a little way down the road to his right was the Middenhall itself. The entrance to the estate was only a quarter of a mile further on. Sir Arnold could see the beech trees that marked the wall of the estate. No, even at this late hour there might be weirdos up and about in the grounds. It was here or nothing. He pushed the gate open and drove up into the back yard and then under the archway to the front of the house. There he sat for a moment with the engine running but no lights came on in the house. Ahead of him was another gate and the track that had once been the old drove road to the south. It was unpaved and led across the fell but it would provide a very useful route away from the house when he had finished. The Chief Constable switched off the engine and got out and listened. Apart from the hissing in his right ear, which he attributed to too much whisky, the night was silent.

  He went round to the back of the Land Rover and put on a pair of washing-up gloves. Then, moving with what he supposed was stealth, he crossed to the front door and shone his torch on the lock. It wasn’t, he was glad to find, a Chubb or even a complicated Yale-type lock. It should be easy enough to break in.

  In fact there was no need. The door was unlocked. Typical of a woman, thought the Chief Constable, before realizing that the door might be unlocked but it was also on a chain and he still couldn’t get in. Another thought struck him. Perhaps Miss Midden was still there. It was possible she had changed her mind about going off for the weekend. He should have thought of that earlier. Sir Arnold backed away from the front door and went back through the archway to the back yard. It was here Miss Midden garaged her car. He looked in the old barn across the yard and was relieved to find it empty. After that he tried the back door, but that was locked and with a Chubb too. No chance of breaking in there.
He went round the windows, trying them all. They were of the old-fashioned sash type and on one the catch was broken. Sir Arnold Gonders slid the window open and clambered through. His torch showed him that he was in the dining-room. A large mahogany table with chairs all round it and a bowl of faded flowers in the middle and a large old sideboard with a mirror above it. To his left a door. He crossed to it and found himself in a room with a bed, a desk, an armchair and a bookcase. A pair of men’s shoes and slippers and a dressing-gown. He was evidently in Major MacPhee’s room. Nothing could be more convenient. With renewed confidence he opened the window and returned to the Land Rover. Ten minutes later Timothy Bright was out of the bedsheets and the Chief Constable had dumped him, with some difficulty, through the open window into the Major’s bedroom.

  It was at that moment he saw headlights bridge the rise on the road. He wasn’t waiting to find out who was coming up from Stagstead at that time of night. Acting with surprising swiftness for a drunk and exhausted man, he rolled the unconscious Timothy under the bed and climbed out of the window and shut it. Then he hurried round to the Land Rover, opened the gate onto the drove road, went through and shut the gate again before remembering he’d left the front window open. For a moment he hesitated, but the headlights were much closer now. As they turned up towards the farmhouse Sir Arnold drove slowly and without lights across the fell, guided by the bank of old wind-bent thorn trees on one side. Only when he reached the Parson’s Road and was out of sight of the Midden did he turn the lights on and drive normally back to the Old Boathouse. Behind him the night wind fluttered the curtain in the open window.

  10

  As she drove the old wartime Humber she had inherited from her father back to the farmhouse Miss Midden was in a filthy mood. She had been looking forward to a weekend on the Solway Firth, visiting gardens and walking. But her plans had been ruined by Major MacPhee. As usual. She should have had more sense than to allow him to go to Glasgow by himself. The city always did terrible things to the silly little man, both mentally and then physically. This time he and the city had excelled themselves.

  ‘You’re a perfectly filthy mess,’ she had told him when she found him at the Casualty department of the hospital. ‘I can’t think why I put up with you.’

  ‘I’m awfully sorry, dear, but you know me,’ said the Major.

  ‘Unfortunately. But not for much longer if you go on like this,’ she had replied. ‘This is your last chance. I can’t think what gets into you.’

  In fact, of course she could. A large quantity of Scotch whisky. And as usual when he went to Glasgow the Major had drunk himself into a disgusting state of daring in more awful pubs than he could remember and had then chosen a particularly explosive bar filled with young Irishmen in which to announce in a very loud voice that what was needed to solve the problems of Ulster was to bring back the B Specials or better still the Black & Tans. The Irishmen’s reaction to this appalling suggestion had been entirely predictable. In the battle that followed Major MacPhee had been thrown into the street through a frosted-glass window that had until then borne the inscription WINES & SPIRITS, only to be hurled back into the pub by an enormous Glaswegian who objected to his girlfriend being physically accosted by small men with ginger moustaches. After that the Major had discovered the real meaning of ‘rough trade’ as thirty-five drunk Irishmen fought over and around him for no very obvious reason. In the end he had been rescued by the police, who had mistaken him for an innocent bystander and had rushed him to hospital. By the time Miss Midden found him there he had several stitches above his left black eye and all hope of continuing the weekend at the Balcarry Bay Hotel had vanished. No respectable hotel would have accepted the Major. His trousers were torn and he had lost the collar of his shirt and one shoe.

  The doctor in Casualty had been entirely unsympathetic. She had been working all hours of the weekend and didn’t take kindly to people like Major MacPhee. ‘You’re very lucky to be alive,’ she told him. ‘And the very next time you are brought in here like this I shall consider a psychological examination. There are too many alcoholic nutters like you on the streets of this city.’

  Miss Midden agreed with her. ‘He’s really despicable,’ she said, only to find that the doctor assumed she was the Major’s wife.

  ‘If you feel like that, why don’t you divorce him?’ she asked and, before Miss Midden could find words to express her outraged feelings, the doctor had gone off to tend to a youth who had been hit over the head with a broken bottle.

  As they drove out of the city Miss Midden gave vent to her fury. ‘You really are a truly horrible person,’ she said, ‘and mad. You’ve ruined my weekend by behaving like . . . like, well, like the sort of person you are.’

  ‘I’m really sorry. I honestly am,’ the Major whimpered. ‘It’s just that as soon as I find myself in a saloon bar, or better still a public one, I get this terrible urge.’

  ‘We all get terrible urges,’ said Miss Midden. ‘I have one at the moment and I might very well act upon it if I didn’t think you’d get some perverse pleasure out of it. You evidently have a death wish.’

  ‘It isn’t that,’ said the Major through swollen lips. ‘The urge comes on me all of a sudden. One moment I’m standing there with my foot on the rail and a small treble malt in my hand and some nice fellow beside me and then out of the blue I have this irrepressible urge to walk up to the biggest oaf I can see and tell him to shut his gob. Or something that will make him try to think. It’s wonderful to see a really strong, powerful thug come to life. The look on his face of utter bewilderment, the growing gleam in his eyes, the way he bunches his fists and shifts his shoulders for the punch. I must have seen more really big men throw punches than half the professional boxers in the world.’

  ‘And look what it’s done for you. It’s a wonder you haven’t got brain damage. If you had a brain to damage.’ For a while they drove on in silence, Miss Midden considering how strange it was that she had been left the Middenhall with its curious collection of inhabitants, and the Major nursing a separate grievance.

  ‘You could always have left me behind at the Infirmary. I rather liked it there.’

  ‘And have you come home with some foul disease? Certainly not. That hospital looked most insanitary.’

  ‘That’s only in Casualty. Casualty is always like that on a Saturday night. It’s so busy.’

  Presently, as they crossed the border, Major MacPhee fell asleep and Miss Midden drove on, still mulling over her curious circumstances. For one thing, in spite of his occasional outbreaks, she continued to put up with the miserable Major. He was useful about the place and shared the housework. He was also a quite good cook, though not as good as he claimed. Miss Midden did not disillusion him. The poor wretch needed all the pretence he could muster. And his bouts of drunken masochism in Glasgow were, she supposed, part of the camouflage he needed to cover his cowardice. He really was a most despicable creature. But, and in Miss Midden’s eyes it was an important ‘but’, he polished his little brogues every day and took pains over his appearance to the point of wearing a waistcoat and sporting a fob watch. That it was a silver one, while the chain across his stomach was gold, touched her by its pathos. Yes, he was particular about his appearance, grooming his little moustache and surreptitiously dyeing his hair. Even his suits were as good as he could afford and to make them look as though they had been tailored for him he had learnt to take them in at the waist.

  From Miss Midden’s point of view it was a useful affectation. The Major had to conform to the shape of his jackets, which meant that he ate very little. Even so he had developed a little paunch and recently he had begun to wear a dark blue double-breasted blazer on which he had sewn the brass buttons of a Highland regiment he had found in a junk shop in Stagstead. The regiment had been disbanded long before the Major could possibly have joined the army. Miss Midden knew this and had been tempted to ask him why he didn’t buy himself a kilt as well, but she hadn’t the heart to.
There was no need to hurt his pride, he had so little of it. And in any case he had such miserably thin legs . . . No, it was better not to say anything. All the same there were times, and this was one of them, when she wished she was rid of him. She had illusions of her own to protect and his grubby fantasies, his little store of magazines which he kept locked in a briefcase, sometimes seemed to leak out into the atmosphere and fill her with a sad disgust.

  On the other hand for all his faults Major MacPhee was not a Midden, and with so many family members, or people who claimed to be relatives, living down at the Middenhall his inability to demand anything of her was a distinct advantage. As she put it to Phoebe Turnbird over at Carryclogs House, ‘Of course he’s a very silly little man and, if he was ever in the Army he was probably a corporal in the Catering Corps, but at least I can throw him out whenever I want to which is more than I can say for the people at the Hall. I’m lumbered with them. I sometimes dream the place has burnt down and I can get away. Then I wake up and it’s still there in all its awfulness.’

  ‘But it’s a lovely house . . . in its way,’ Phoebe said, but Miss Midden wasn’t to be fooled or patronized. Carryclogs House was beautiful, the Middenhall wasn’t.

  ‘If you think it lovely . . . well, never mind,’ Miss Midden had said and had stumped off across the fell, whacking her boots with the riding crop she always carried.

  Now, driving back through the night following the narrow lanes she knew so well and disliked on this occasion so intensely, she cursed the Major and she cursed her role as mistress of the Middenhall. Most of all she cursed the Middenhall itself. Built at the beginning of the century by her great-grandfather, ‘Black’ Midden, to prove to the world that he had made a fortune out of cheap native labour and the wholesale use of business practices which, even by the lax standards of the day in Johannesburg, were considered more devious and underhand than was socially acceptable, the house (‘pile’ was the more appropriate term) was proof that he had no taste whatsoever. Or, to be more accurate, that he did have taste but of a sort that could only be described as appalling. To describe the Middenhall itself was well-nigh impossible. It combined the very worst eccentricities of every architectural style Black Midden could think of with a structural toughness that was formidable and seemingly indestructible. To that extent it accurately reflected the old man’s character.