The Painted Altar

Chapter Seven

Plot reminder: In the previous chapter the local historian John Simmonds suggests that, in regards to the unearthed remains, there may have been an official-level cover up.

~~~~~

Simmonds' kind offer that I have lunch with he and his wife was an insistent one, and it took no little effort to turn him down. His historical insight had been more than useful, a beam of torchlight shone back through the decades, but I doubted there was much more of interest I could learn from him. In any case, I felt animated by a sense of urgency, the need to get on with things. The same electrified restlessness, I could only imagine, that a chief investigating officer experiences in the initial hours of a new case.

A detective, yes. That's what I'd become. Some strange kind of undercover P.I in the service of myself, my previous experience of investigative matters limited to those headmistressly ones of broken windows and toilet cubicle graffiti. The whole thing was absurd. So sadly and tragically surreal.

Had my father really been attempting to escape? This was the question on which my mind ruminated as I wound my way back through the sodden fields towards Ravensby. Was that why he'd borrowed the thirty shillings from my mother? To aid his getaway?

It just didn't seem to make any sense. If their relationship had been as profound, as overwhelmingly passionate, as Irene had led me to believe, then why would he want to leave her? Without so much as a goodbye, his pocket full of the coins he'd hoodwinked her into handing over to him. No, I simply refused to believe that my father could have been such an undefendable charlatan. And anyway, what about the altar? It had been so close to completion, just another few weeks' work. It seemed  inconceivable that after so much effort, so much physical and emotional investment, he would willingly walk away from it.

I felt like I'd entered a fog and that the further I went in the denser and more enveloping it had become. That there were only questions, not even the faintest light of an answer to guide my way. I needed to speak to somebody who had been there at the time. Somebody who might understand the personal dynamics of the case.

I recalled the photograph Irene had shown me of her Land Girl companions, Ivy and Betty. Though both had been present at my mother's wedding in 1946, the three had gradually lost touch over the successive decades. Without their surnames or the vaguest of geographical starting points, tracing them was a lost cause.

There was somebody though, I realised as I entered the easternmost outskirts of Ravensby. Somebody who'd been around in '43, was still around now. What was more, it would take only a quick search in the local phone book to find out his address.

*

This resulted as a humble mid-terrace not dissimilar to and not greatly distant from the house where Irene had lived. The gate which accessed the overgrown front garden was in desperate need of a drop of oil, the creak setting off a series of loud, high-pitched yaps from inside the house - so loud and high-pitched, in fact, that it was difficult to ascertain whether the twice-pressed doorbell actually worked or not. Just to be sure, I rapped a firm fist to the wood too. Nothing, just a renewed wave of wince-inducing yaps.

He was probably still at whatever post-burial gathering Agnes had organised. Sherry and fruit loaf, the muted, muffled conversations of people who had attended for politeness' sake, through some vague sense of duty, were waiting simply for the hands of the clock to twist themselves round to an angle which might be deemed respectful before whispering their final condolensces and getting the hell out of there. In western cultures at least, death has always been thus I think. An orphan to house. A post-party mess to clear up. Some headachey little problem pushed upon everyone else.