The Judgement of Strangers
Read The Judgement of Strangers Online
Authors: Andrew Taylor
Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller, #Historical
| The Judgement of Strangers | |
| Number II of Roth Trilogy | |
| Taylor, Andrew | |
| HarperCollins (1997) | |
| Rating: | ***** |
| Tags: | Mystery, Thriller, Historical |
The second novel in Andrew Taylor’s ground-breaking Roth trilogy, which was adapted into the acclaimed drama Fallen Angel. A haunting thriller for fans of S J Watson.
It is 1970. David Byfield, a widowed parish priest with a dark past and a darker future, brings home a new wife to Roth. Throughout the summer, the consequences of the marriage reverberate through a village now submerged in a sprawling London suburb.
Blinded by lust, Byfield is oblivious to the dangers that lie all about him: the menopausal churchwarden with a hopeless passion for her priest; his beautiful, neglected teenage daughter Rosemary; and the sinister presence of Frances Youlgreave – poet, opium addict and suicide – whose power stretches beyond the grave.
Soon the murders and blasphemies begin. But does the responsibility lie in the present or the past? And can Byfield, a prisoner of his own passion, break through to the truth before the final tragedy destroys what he most cherishes?
There's a wonderfully sly, almost mocking overtone to this middle part of a mystery trilogy by British master Andrew Taylor. As the narrator--a pompous, self-pitying clergyman named David Byfield--says about a dinner engagement: "As a consequence of my accepting their invitation, two people died, a third went to prison, and a fourth was admitted to a hospital for the insane." No beating about the bush there, or anywhere else in this story set in 1970 (25 years before the events of
The Four Last Things
, the first book in Taylor's trilogy about a fictional London suburb called Roth).
The Judgement of Strangers
helps explain what happens in the first book, but also stands on its own as a mordant mystery about sexual repression.
Byfield, a handsome widower with a psychologically fragile teenaged daughter, stirs up trouble with his attention to several women, all of whom pay a much higher price than he does. By making Byfield such a dolt, Taylor lets us sympathize with even the most odious of his conquests--Audrey, the obsessed local historian and operator of the world's nastiest teashop. "I watched the excitement draining from Audrey's face like water from a bath," Byfield tells us. "I felt ashamed of myself and also irritated with her. Why did she insist on calling Roth a village? It was a suburb of London, similar in all essentials to a dozen others. Most of its inhabitants had their real lives elsewhere. In Roth they merely serviced their bodily needs, watched television and on Sundays played golf or cleaned their Ford Cortinas." Book three promises to go back even further in time and tell us how Byfield's first wife died.
--Dick Adler
This second book in the planned Roth Trilogy looks back a generation at some of the origins of characters and action in the first book, The Four Last Things (1997). Taylor builds a powerful narrative as his struggling characters face an array of temptations that the reader knows early on will overwhelm them. Set in 1970 in the village of Roth, near London, the tale is narrated by David Byfield, a Church of England minister. The near bucolic setting hides a raft of jealousies and passions that quietly build and seethe until the inevitable crest. As David, his new wife, Vanessa, his daughter Rosemary, home for school holiday, and his godson Michael try to adapt to living with one another, other forces obtrude. But David's concern with the church fete stirs up trouble, as does Vanessa's research into the life of the mad poet-priest, Francis Youlgreave, buried in the parish church, and Rosemary's infatuation with the handsome young man who has just moved into Roth Park, the village's big manor house. The clincher is David's growing attraction to the young man's ethereal older sister. Although Taylor has willingly sacrificed some suspense by adopting this reverse chronology, he is sufficiently skillful to keep the reader on edge all the way to the stunning climax.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
THE JUDGEMENT OF STRANGERS
‘Cursed is he that perverteth the judgement of the stranger, the fatherless, and widow.’
from the Service of Commination, in the office
for Ash Wednesday in
The Book of Common Prayer
.
‘The Manor of Roth is not mentioned in the Domesday Book …’
Audrey Oliphant,
The History of Roth
(Richmond, privately printed 1969), p. 1.
Then darkness descended; and whispers defiled The judgement of stranger, and widow, and child …
.....
With flames to the flesh, with brands to the burning, As incense to heav’n the soul is returning
from ‘The Judgement of Strangers’ by the Reverend
Francis St. J. Youlgreave in
The Four Last Things
(Gasset & Lode, London, 1896)
We found the mutilated corpse of Lord Peter in the early evening of Thursday the 13th August, 1970. He was the first victim of a train of events which began towards the end of the previous summer when I met Vanessa Forde – or even before that, with Audrey Oliphant and
The History of Roth
.
Every parish has its Audrey Oliphant – often several of them; their lives revolve around the parish church, and in one sense the Church of England revolves around them. It was inevitable that she should be a regular visitor at the Vicarage, and it shamed me that I did not always welcome her as warmly as I should have done. It also irritated me that the Tudor Cottage cat treated the Vicarage as his second home, braving the traffic on the main road to get there.
‘Miss Oliphant practically lives here,’ said my daughter Rosemary at the end of one particularly lengthy visit. ‘And if she doesn’t come herself she sends her cat instead.’
‘She does an awful lot for us,’ I pointed out. ‘And for the parish.’
‘Dear Father. You try and find the best in everyone, don’t you?’ Rosemary looked up at me and smiled. ‘I just wish she would leave us alone. It’s much nicer when it’s just the two of us.’
Audrey was in her late forties and unmarried. She had lived in Roth all her life. Her house, Tudor Cottage, was on the green – on the north side between Malik’s Minimarket and the Queen’s Head. Its front garden, the size of a large bedspread, was protected from the pavement by a row of iron railings. Beside the gate there was a notice, freshly painted each year:
YE OLDE TUDOR TEA ROOM
(Est. 1931)
PROPRIETOR: MISS A.M. OLIPHANT
Telephone: Roth 6269
Morning Coffee – Light Meals – Cream Teas
Parties By Appointment
I had known the place for ten years, and in that time trade, though never brisk, had steadily diminished. This gave Audrey ample opportunity to read enormous quantities of detective novels and to throw herself into the affairs of the parish.
One evening in the spring of 1969, she appeared without warning on my doorstep.
‘I’ve just had the most wonderful idea.’
‘Really?’
‘I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’ she asked, initiating a ritual exchange of courtesies, a secular versicle and response.
‘Not at all.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Nothing that can’t wait.’ I owed her this polite fiction. ‘I was about to have a break.’
I took her into the sitting room and, making a virtue from necessity, offered sherry. Audrey was a small woman, rather plump, with a face whose features seemed squashed; it was as though her skull, while still malleable, had been compressed in a vice – thus the face would have been splendidly in proportion if the eyes and the cheekbones and the corners of the mouth had not been quite so close together.
She took a sip of sherry, allowing the wine to linger in her mouth before she swallowed it. ‘I was in the library this afternoon and some schoolchildren came in to ask Mrs Finch if she had any books on local history. And it turns out that there’s a certain amount on neighbouring towns and villages. But very little on Roth itself.’
She paused for another sip. I lit a cigarette, guessing what was coming.
‘Then it came to me in a flash.’ Her heavy jowls quivered with excitement. ‘Why not write a history of Roth? I’m sure lots of people would like to read one. And nowadays so many people are living here who have no idea what the
real
Roth is like.’
‘What an interesting idea. You must let me know if there is anything I can do. The parish records, perhaps? I wonder if Lady Youlgreave might have some useful material. She –’
‘I’m so glad,’ Audrey interrupted. ‘I hoped you’d want to help. Actually, a collaboration was what I had in mind. It seemed to me that we would be ideally suited.’
‘I wouldn’t say –’
‘Besides,’ she rushed on, ‘the history of the village can’t be separated from the history of the church and the parish. We could even have a chapter on famous inhabitants of the past. Francis Youlgreave, for example. What do you think?’
‘I’m not sure how much use I’d be. After all, you’re the one with the local knowledge. Then there’s the question of time …’
I watched the excitement draining from Audrey’s face like water from a bath. I felt ashamed of myself and also irritated with her. Why did she insist on calling Roth a village? It was a suburb of London, similar in all essentials to a dozen others. Most of its inhabitants had their real lives elsewhere. In Roth they merely serviced their bodily needs, watched television and on Sundays played golf or cleaned their Ford Cortinas.
‘I quite understand.’ Audrey stared at her empty glass. ‘Just an idea.’
‘I wonder,’ I went on, trying to lessen the guilt that crept over me, ‘would it be a help if I were to glance through your first draft?’
She looked up, her face glowing. ‘Yes, please.’
The decision was made. If Audrey had not decided to write her history of Roth, none of what followed might have happened. It is tempting to blame her – to blame anyone but myself. But fate has a way of finding its agents: if Audrey had not volunteered to be the handmaid of Providence, then someone else would have come forward.
Audrey completed her little book early in August 1969. In a flutter of excitement, she brought me the manuscript, which was written almost illegibly in pencil. It was mercifully short, largely because Roth had relatively little history. Since the Middle Ages, the parish had been overshadowed by its larger neighbours. It was too far from the Thames, and later too far from the railway.
Still, to judge from the old photographs which Audrey had found, Roth had been a pretty place, and remarkably unspoilt, despite the fact that it was only thirteen miles from Charing Cross. All that had changed in the 1930s, when the Jubilee Reservoir was built: seven hundred acres of the parish, including the northern part of the village itself, were drowned beneath seven billion gallons of water, sacrificed to assuage the endless thirst of the inhabitants of London.
I soon discovered that Audrey’s spelling and grammar were shaky. The text consisted of a patchwork of speculations –
Who knows? Perhaps Henry VIII stayed at the Old Manor House on his way to Hampton Court
– and quotations lifted, often inaccurately, from books she had found in the library. I persuaded her to have the manuscript typed, and managed – diplomatically, I hoped – to arrange for the typist quietly to incorporate some of my corrections. I then went through the typed draft with Audrey and revised it once more. By now it was early September.
‘We must find a publisher,’ Audrey said.
‘Perhaps you could have it privately printed?’
‘But I am sure it would interest readers all over the country,’ she said. ‘In many ways the story of Roth is the story of England.’
‘In a sense, yes, but –’
‘And, David,’ she interrupted. ‘I want all the royalties to go to the restoration fund. Every last penny. So we must find a proper publisher who will pay us lots of money. Why don’t you come to supper tomorrow and we’ll discuss it? I’d like to cook you a meal to say thank you for all the work you’ve done.’ She tapped me playfully on the arm. ‘You look as if you need a good feed.’
‘Unfortunately I can’t manage tomorrow. The Trasks have asked me to dinner. Some other time, perhaps.’
‘Some other time,’ she echoed.
I was relieved that the Trasks had given me such an impregnable excuse. As a consequence of my accepting their invitation, two people died, a third went to prison, and a fourth was admitted to a hospital for the insane.