Reginald Hill - A Killing Kindness

Everyone who worked on the fairground had been questioned, naturally. Everyone who admitted visiting it on Thursday night also. Everyone who lived on the same street as the Sorbys. And the next street. And maybe the next. Everyone who worked with her. Everyone who lived on the streets she would have walked through on her way home from the broken-down car. Everyone who had a barge or a cruiser or a craft of any kind which could have been anywhere on that stretch of the canal that night.

The questioning was still going on, was likely to continue till Christmas. Or the next murder.

‘My sergeant seemed to have heard of your aunt,’ he said cautiously. ‘But he didn’t mention any connection with the Fair.’

‘Mr Wield, you mean. He’s awfully nice, isn’t he? It’s a bit complicated, I suppose. Family history usually is.’

‘Perhaps you could give me a digest, if you think it would be helpful, and if you don’t have to stray much beyond the Norman Conquest,’ said Pascoe.

She grinned.

‘I see where Mr Wield gets his cheek from,’ she said. ‘The thing to understand is that originally Aunt Rose is a Lee on her father’s side, a Petulengro on her mother’s.’

‘You mean the Romany families?’

‘You know something about gypsies?’

‘I’ve read my George Borrow,’ he said with a smile.

‘An expert!’ she said. ‘That must be very useful when it comes to moving them on.’

Pascoe raised his eyebrows and the girl had the grace to look a little embarrassed before carrying on.

It emerged that years earlier, Rosetta Lee, then nineteen, had met, loved and married ex-sergeant Herbert Stanhope, just demobbed from the Yorkshire Rifles and, after five years spent risking his life to protect the old folk at home, not in any mood to take heed of their melancholy warnings. The couple married and lived happily and childlessly until twelve years later when Stanhope’s younger sister turned up pregnant and husbandless and not at all contrite. But she effaced her sin in the best nineteenth-century manner by dying in childbirth, leaving the Stanhopes with Pauline on their hands. Thereafter they lived even more happily for another twelve years till an accident at the railway marshalling yard where Stanhope worked killed him.

‘Aunt Rose knew it was going to happen,’ said Pauline.

‘Why didn’t she stop him going to work?’ enquired Pascoe, trying not to sound ironic.

‘If you know it, then essentially it’s already happened so you can’t possibly stop it,’ said Pauline as if she were talking sense.

‘And you? Do you have this – er – gift too?’

‘Oh no!’ she said, shocked. ‘I’m a fully qualified horoscopist and a pretty fair palmist but I’ve got no real psychic powers. Aunt Rose is different. She’s always had the real gift. Her grandmother was a chovihani , that’s a sort of gypsy witch. She really looked the part, not like Aunt Rose. But Aunt Rose has got the greater gift. She’s a true psychic, that’s the fascinating thing. It’s not just a question of fortune-telling, but she really makes contact. Well, you know that yourself from the other day.’

Pascoe nodded, looking as convinced as he was able.

The girl continued, ‘It was strange how it developed in a gorgio society. Perhaps all the trappings and superstition of Romany life are a limiting factor, you know, they make a little go a long way but stop a lot from going as far as it might. That was what one of the researchers from the Psychic Research Society said.’

‘Your aunt is famous, then?’

‘Oh no!’ said the girl, ‘But she’s well known in interested circles. Really all she wants is a quiet life, but she’d always been willing to help friends out.’

‘For free?’

‘At first. But inflation nibbled away at the pension Uncle Bert left her and she’d had to charge fees to make both ends meet. But she’s very careful in accepting clients.’

Gullibility being high on her list of criteria? wondered Pascoe.

‘Normally she’d have steered clear of a case like Mrs Sorby’s, but Mrs Sorby had been coming to her for years, ever since her mother died. Mr Sorby objected but she still kept coming. Naturally when this awful thing happened, Aunt Rose had to help.’

‘Naturally. What’s your part in all this, Miss Stanhope?’

The girl shrugged.

‘I had an office job, but it was pretty deadly. I’d picked up a lot of things from Aunt Rose, she brought me up, you see. Well, I’m not Romany, so I didn’t have anything of her gift, but I got quite interested in casting horoscopes. It’s pretty scientific that, you only need a very limited degree of sensitivity. Palmistry the same. I got myself properly qualified and gave up the office to work at it full time alongside Aunt Rose. But it’s her I want to talk about, Inspector. That awful newspaper story really upset her.’

Pascoe looked surprised. The Evening Post had been fairly restrained, he thought.

‘It didn’t much please my superintendent either,’ he said.

‘Aunt Rose doesn’t mind helping the police, but this makes her sound like a real sensationalist,’ said the girl, producing a newspaper.

The mystery was solved. This was not the Evening Post but that morning’s edition of one of the more lurid national tabloids. Obviously one of the local reporters was a stringer for this rag and knew that provincial standards had very little selling power. Pascoe glanced through the article. Its main source was Mrs Duxbury, the neighbour. She gave a graphic account of what Mrs Stanhope had said before being awoken from her trance. Embellished by Fleet Street licence, the occasion sounded like something out of Dennis Wheatley. Much play was made of the fact that Rosetta Stanhope was also Madame Rashid (Mrs Duxbury again?), fortune-telling in the very fairground where Brenda had been murdered. Not even a perhaps , thought Pascoe. He wondered if Dalziel had seen it yet.

‘Auntie was really upset this morning,’ continued the girl. ‘Too upset to work, so I’ll be on by myself all day.’

‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Pascoe conciliatingly.

‘Don’t be stupid!’ she flashed. ‘It’s not that. It’s Auntie’s reputation. You may be the police but you’ve no right to exploit her name like this.’

‘Reputation?’ said Pascoe, beginning to feel a little irritated. ‘Surely you’re rating all this stuff a little bit high, aren’t you, Miss Stanhope? I mean, that sign outside! Isn’t this just the bottom end of the entertainment business?’

He didn’t want to sound sneering and the effort must have shown for the girl was equally and as obviously restrained in her reply.

‘Aunt Rose is Romany. She’s never turned her back on that all these years she’s lived among gorgios . This used to be mainly a Romany Fair, Inspector. Now what with one thing and another, the only gypsy presence you get here is a couple of tatty stalls and a bit of cheap labour round the fringes. Dave Lee, for instance, his grandfather …’

‘Who’s Dave Lee?’ interrupted Pascoe.

‘I was just talking to him,’ said the girl ‘I suppose he’s a kind of cousin of Aunt Rose’s. His grandfather might have brought two, three dozen horses here, being a big man. Now he helps around the dodgems while his wife sells pegs and bits of lace. He’s not allowed to bring the ponies he still runs anywhere near the park! This tent is the last real link between the fair today and what it used to be for centuries. There was a fortune-teller’s tent on this pitch before there was a police force, Inspector. Not even the big show-people with their roundabouts dare interfere with that. And for nearly fifty years it was run by Aunt Rose’s grandmother. When she died four years ago, that looked like the end. Oh, there were fakes enough who might have taken over, but the Lees have more pride than that. So Aunt Rose stepped in. For a couple of weeks a year she’s back in the family tradition, in the old world.’