Pictures of Perfection
For suspense, ingenuity and sheer comic effrontery this takes the absolute, appetizing biscuit’ Sunday TimesHigh in the Mid-Yorkshire Dales stands the traditional village of Enscombe, seemingly untouched by the modern world. But contemporary life is about to intrude when the disappearance of a policeman brings Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel and DCI Peter Pascoe to its doors.As the detectives dig beneath the veneer of idyllic village life a new pattern emerges: of family feuds, ancient injuries, cheating and lies. And finally, as the community gathers for the traditional Squire’s Reckoning, it looks as if the simmering tensions will erupt in a bloody climax…
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REGINALD HILL
PICTURES OF PERFECTION
A Dalziel and Pascoe novel
Pictures of perfection as you know make me sick and wicked
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain
in 1994 by HarperCollinsPublishers
Copyright © Reginald Hill 1994
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006490111
Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780007370313 Version: 2015-06-22
TO
THE QUEEN OF CRIME EDITORS,
ELIZABETH WALTER,
THIS WORK IS,
WITH HER GRACIOUS PERMISSION,
MOST AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED,
BY HER ADMIRING
AND GRATEFUL
FRIEND,
THE AUTHOR.
Nullum quod tetegit non ornavit
CONTENTS
Prologue Being Extracts from the Journal of Frances Guillemard
Prologue Being an Extract from the Journal of Ralph Digweed Esq.
Prologue Being an Extract from the Journal of Frances Harding (neé Guillemard)
the epigraph and all the chapter headings are taken from Jane Austenâs letters.
It is a truth fairly universally acknowledged that all men are born equal, but the family Guillemard, pointing to the contra-evidence of their own absence from the Baronetage, have long been settled in Yorkshire without allowing such philosophical quibbles to distress or vex them.
The first stirrings of populism in the last century had been shrugged off as a mere Gallic infection, susceptible to applications of cold iron and a diet of bread and water. But the virus proved a virulent strain, eventually getting a firm grip on a country weak and convalescent after the Great War, and by the nineteen thirties even the Guillemards had begun to suspect its presence in their own Norman blood.
And by 1952 when Selwyn Guillemard, the present Squire, inherited the estate, he was ready to accept, without prejudice, that there might after all be something in this newfangled notion of the Rights of Man.
The Rights of Woman, however, remain very much a theme of science fiction.
About thirty years ago, Squire Selwyn had the ill luck to lose his only son and daughter-in-law in a motoring accident, a grievous loss and one which, despite all my urgings, he seemed more inclined to bear with pagan stoicism than Christian fortitude. Nor did he at this stage derive much consolation from the survival of his infant granddaughter who henceforth was brought up at Old Hall.
A child reared in an ageing household is likely to be either precocious or withdrawn and little Gertrude Guillemard showed few signs of precocity. Indeed, so quiet and self-effacing was she that even her antique name seemed too great a burden for her and it was soon alleviated to Girlie.
The Enscombe Old Hall estate is naturally entailed upon the male line. Modern law has rendered such archaic restrictions easily removed, but whichever way he looked, Squire Selwyn could see little incentive to change. Behind, he saw the sternly admonitory face of tradition; ahead, he foresaw that the diminished and diminishing estate was going to need a more vigorously heroic hand than his own to keep it from total collapse, and no one who had ever seen Girlie Guillemard in her infancy could have supposed her to be a heroine. So the Squire had few qualms about admitting his great-nephew, Guy, as heir apparent.
