The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori Read Online Free Page A

listener—and people would have accepted the story.
    Past the church and then, here it was, a footpath, signposted, leading down into the valley. It was only a footpath but tire marks showed that it could be used in a pinch by vehicles, and had been fairly recently. Charlie turned in off the road, feeling as he left the shelter of houses that exposed sensation that townies feel in the open countryside: me in a landscape, not me in a peoplescape. He passed a lone farm, with chained, barking dogs. Farm dog, he thought, a different, more unsettling creature altogether than the fireside pet. Down, down he went, with the sound of cars becoming more and more distant, until he started to turn to his right and saw in the middle distance a collection of houses. This surely was the object of his search.
    As the bend in the path began to get more pronounced he got a better view. A jumble of houses, like children’s model houses scattered rather than arranged over the floor. One house decidedly bigger than the others, probably originally the farm. Built on to this was one of the small cottages. Around it, in no particular order, several other cottages—Charlie thought he could discern five front doors, three in one terrace, two in another. There were little gardens, clotheslines, a car left in a field behindthe largest house, near what had once been stables. The field needed mowing, and one or two of the gardens were unkempt, though others were almost indecently showy and one had a garden gnome and another had a ring enclosing a large chunk of coconut at which birds were pecking.
    This then was Ashworth. And it was—what? A colony of artists? A great artist with disciples? An artist who was something of a commercial concern, and who surrounded himself with a limited company—market men, publicists, accountants? It was, at any rate, at least in the locals’ eyes, a unit—a colony, a community, a clan.
    He went down farther, toward a gate that divided the little knot of dwellings from the path. The sun disappeared behind the hills, and seemed to alter the look of the place. The big house now looked forbidding, the gardens all slightly forlorn. Charlie’s partner was doing a doctorate on Browning, and a line she often quoted came into his mind: “Childe Roland to the dark tower came.”
    Had the boy, Charlie wondered, had something of the same feeling when he’d come to Ashworth earlier in the summer?

PART II
The Boy

3
ARRIVING
    The boy raised his hand in greeting to the fair-haired woman from the museum shop, scooped the coins from the tweed cap at his feet, and began putting his guitar back in its case. It was time, anyway, for a bite to eat. He grinned at the women whom he knew were watching him from the shop, turned on his heels, and went down the steps, through the car park, and down the little passage by the side of the Weavers’ restaurant. He walked toward the precipitous descent of Main Street, but dallied as he passed the post office. Notices. Someone wanted hiswashing done, someone wanted cleaning work, pubs and cafés wanted waiters and bar staff. Handyman . . . that could be interesting. He could turn his hand to anything, he thought. Ashworth, near Stanbury. Singing in the street was pleasant, but it didn’t, at least in Yorkshire, bring in a lot of money. He walked down the tourist-thronged street, and decided to try Tabby’s Kitchen.
    The money earned from Irish and Scottish folk songs, interspersed with bogus Neapolitan ballads, stretched to a Welsh rarebit with egg on top and a pot of tea. When the waitress brought it he ate ravenously, wiped his mouth clean of yolk with the paper napkin that had been wrapped around his knife and fork, then sat thinking. Being footloose and fancy-free was an Irish tradition, and it suited him. Still, one big disadvantage was that you never knew where your next meal was coming from, and whether it would satisfy your youthful