A murder in mayfair, p.18
A Murder in Mayfair, page 18
“Kill himself?”
“Maybe.”
“If Lucy Mariotti was sticking out for marriage, then divorce would hardly have been a problem. Divorce might not have done any good to your father’s political career, but it sure as hell wouldn’t have been as bad for it as murder.”
“You’re still talking as if this were premeditated. I’m quite sure it wasn’t.”
“Point taken. In any case most people seem to think your father’s political career wasn’t all that important to him.”
“It wasn’t. Fishing and shooting are what he really enjoyed doing.”
“And of course after divorce there would have been another step, and one he may not have been willing to take: marriage to Lucy.”
Caroline thought.
“You mean he could have seen through her by then?”
“Yes. Everybody agrees that Lucy was clever—cunning, devious, ingratiating. I bet it was due to Lucy that they all three went round to parties and theaters together—putting up a front. But I have the impression it was the sort of cleverness that after a time showed. You realized she was so pleased with herself and her own cleverness. She gave herself away. Professor Frere, who took her in after the murder, thought that. If your father felt himself trapped in one bad marriage, he may not have wanted to walk straight into another.”
“Yes. . . . Somehow the feeling I got, though I may be mis-remembering, of course, is that he was as . . . hot for her as ever. Sorry, I can’t think of a nicer way of putting it.”
“I suppose you didn’t get any ideas about what might have happened by what you saw on the night of the murder, or the day afterward?”
She raised her eyebrows.
“You’re joking. We heard nothing, saw nothing, knew nothing. We slept through all the to-ings and fro-ings of the night itself, and when we awoke the next morning we found that the police had taken over the house.”
“How did you find out?”
“We heard noises, went out onto the landing, and—I still have the picture in my mind—immediately saw a policeman and Mrs. Gould the housekeeper. She was normally rather a remote figure, not someone of any great importance in our lives. Obviously she had been waiting for us to wake up. She ran forward, bundled us back into our bedroom, and said there’d been a bad accident. Said our granny and grandad Martindale were on their way to take us to their home, and they’d explain. We’d to stop in our room, she’d bring us breakfast, and we’d to wait for them. That was what happened. They came, obviously very upset, but pulling themselves together for our sakes. We were dressed by then, and we were hurried downstairs—I’d never seen so many policemen, and never have since—and out into their car, with cameras clicking from behind the police cordon. I thought I saw Lucy being driven away ahead of us and I thought, ‘So she’s not dead then,’ because we’d talked about it while we waited and we’d decided that somebody must have died. As soon as we were well under way Granny Martindale explained that Mummy had had a terrible accident and was dead. All I remember feeling was that I was glad it wasn’t Daddy. I expect I showed it, and hurt Granny.”
“Were they fond of your mother?”
Caroline considered.
“No, I don’t honestly think so. I think Granny was hurt because it showed how badly they’d failed with her upbringing. With her education they went for class rather than warmth. They were very careful in choosing our schools.”
“Did they tell you about your father?”
“I remember asking, and they told us he’d had to go away, and we wouldn’t be seeing him for a while. We accepted that then. It was all part of this big disaster that had happened. It was only later, when we started to overhear whispered comments and conjectures, that we began to get clues and to piece things together.”
She stopped, and I lay there wondering if there was anything else I wanted to ask her. In a way what she told me was illuminating, but also infuriating: she had been so close to events, but kept from knowing about them. She took, or rather snatched at, the cue of my silence.
“I must go. It’s not fair to tire you with all this dragging up of the past. It will be good when we can meet and talk about something else, won’t it?”
“It will.”
“What you should be worrying about at the moment is not the past but the present. You’re going to have to get yourself better security. Shouldn’t that be easy now you’re a minister?”
I pursed up my lips in distaste.
“I’ve always wanted as little as possible. I don’t choose to invite someone into my life. You come from the class that had servants. You’re used to having outsiders around you all the time. I come from the class that keeps themselves to themselves.”
“Well, you’re going to have to keep yourself a bit less to yourself, and have someone beside you. Promise! You politicians are so lacking in common sense! You’re under threat, so you need protection. I don’t want to lose you now that I’ve found you.”
I nodded a promise and she darted out. I lay there, thinking not of my security, but of something she had said. She’d talked about her father fishing. I’d never seen him as a country person before, and the family certainly hadn’t had an estate on which to practice rural pastimes. Neither she nor Matthew had talked about being in the country with him. Had she been speaking not of the government minister of 1962, but the man he had become since? She had said: “Fishing and shooting are what he really enjoyed doing.” If she really thought of him as dead, wouldn’t it have been more natural to say “were what he enjoyed doing”? Had there been an infinitesimal pause between the “are” and the rest of the sentence? Had she begun to say “are what he really enjoys,” and then hurriedly amended the sentence to cover her tracks?
Had she inadvertently been about to speak of him not in the past but in the present?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Abbot of a Very Small Establishment
Caroline rang me on my second day back at work. Somehow I was not surprised. Nor did her slightly odd manner disconcert me. The bright tone and roundabout way of speaking, hinting but not saying, were things I instinctively understood. I was on the verge of becoming in reality a brother to her and Matthew.
“Back to work so soon! You must be a glutton for it.”
“I enjoy my work,” I protested. “And of course it’s piled up.”
“Ah—then you won’t want to see me again.”
“On the contrary, I’d very much like to. And I always make a habit of taking time off at some point in the day.”
“Really? That is sensible. So maybe we could meet at lunchtime. Are you a great one for lunch?”
Her intonation told me this is what phoneticians classify as a question expecting the answer “no.”
“Not really. But a walk always clears the head.”
“I do agree. If only fashion shows would give us breaks to do the same! Places do get crowded at lunchtime, though . . .”
“I’m flexible. I could make it for two to three.”
“That sounds good. Let me think. What about Green Park, near the station at two?”
“I’ll be there. And the day?”
“Tomorrow?”
And that’s what we fixed on.
My driver who, with his Wee Free mind could find reasons to disapprove of anything, even an hour in the park on a chilly day, looked dour. He left me by the tube station, and when I slipped into the park I was hailed by Caroline from one of the seats along by Queen’s Walk. Before I got to her she had begun to march determinedly away from Piccadilly and away from the more frequented paths. When I gained her side she looked around her, but was not quite satisfied. We walked on. I suppressed any desire to comment on or ridicule her precaution. She had had decades of concealment. Finally she turned to me, still trying to hold herself as casually as possible. I was close, but not too close. We could have been lovers ending an affair.
“You picked up my slip, didn’t you?”
I thought for a second, then nodded.
“I noticed something that seemed a bit odd.”
“I thought I’d covered it over rather cleverly, but I saw something waft over your face—suspicion, or maybe puzzlement, I suppose.”
“I thought you very nearly used a present tense where one wouldn’t be natural.” I came close to her, my face earnest. “That’s never been my main interest in going into all this.”
“I know. I’m glad. But Matthew and I had talked it over even before I met you, and we’ve discussed it again since our meeting. Oh damn—that man is looking at us. Could he be Secret Service, following you?”
I repressed the instinct to say this was Green Park not Gorky Park, and we walked on to where there were still fewer people.
“I think if he was Secret Service he wouldn’t be looking at us,” I said lightly. “They have artificial eyes implanted where nobody would suspect them to be.”
She grinned, but nervously.
“I expect you think I’m paranoid, but we’ve had to be very, very careful over the years—in fairness to him, apart from anything else. We never go over . . . there with the sole purpose of seeing him. We’ve never had anything more than one- or two-night stays with him all these years, and you shouldn’t have any longer.”
“I wouldn’t want any longer, but I would very much like to meet and talk with him.”
Her voice went still lower.
“We wondered when you could get off.”
I thought.
“The injury helps. The permanent secretary is urging me to take a few days off to recuperate. The end of next week and the weekend would be fine.”
“I’ll check. We thought you might go with Matthew and the whole family. You could go with them in the car to Fishguard: the ferry over to Rosslare is best. Matthew’s family all go regularly, and the children love it there. A day off school isn’t a problem. I’ll ring Matthew this afternoon.”
It seemed in the spirit of our communications with each other that I make no comment on the destination, though my brain was ticking overtime with interest. I just nodded.
“It sounds a wonderful idea. I came away from Chatstock wanting to know them better.”
“They liked you, too. Now, there are ground rules. You never mention his name. The children know nothing—they know him, but they don’t know who he is. In general it’s best only talked about indirectly. You’re there to recuperate, and you’re going fishing, or walking or shooting. Once you’re there with him you both make your own rules, feel your own way. But I must make this clear: he will never talk about the murder.”
“I see.”
“He is old—seventy-odd. He lives with it, but he lives with it alone. I must have your promise on that.”
“You have it.”
“Matthew can give you better directions than I can. You’ll find Matthew’s already told him about you. The village will have heard that a relative is coming, but the less splash you make in the neighborhood the better. Oh, and never talk about it on the phone—not even, if it can be helped, in the coded way we have, and that’s too complex for you to learn in a hurry. It’s evolved over years and years of concealment. Is that understood?”
“Absolutely.”
“’Bye, Colin.”
And with one of her quick, geometric waves she was off. I walked around the park sunk deep in thought for the half hour before I was due to be picked up. My thoughts were predictable. I now knew what I had only suspected for a few days: that I had a father alive. Naturally as I walked I wondered what he would be like. Perfectly futile thought, but perfectly understandable. My other thought was trite, too. I wondered whether I had murder in me—whether we all had the capacity to kill, given the right, or horribly wrong, circumstances. When I got back to the Ministry I ordered a great plateful of sandwiches and ate ravenously.
That night the phone rang in the flat. I had no fear it would be my phantom caller again. That phase, I believed, was over, and the plan now was to leave me with the uneasy feeling that a new and more deadly period had been entered. In the event it was Matthew.
“Colin! Good to hear your voice. I’m told you’re well, but not entirely well. Is that right?”
“Pretty much so. I function, but I get tired.”
“What you need is a few days away. Easily said—is it easily done?”
“I don’t see why not. I am a minister-—what I say should go, though I’m not sure it always does.”
“What about the weekend after this one?”
“Sounds fine.”
“I wonder, would a short family break tire you too much? The kids have pretty nigh inexhaustible energy as you know, but we could all do with a weekend away.”
“It would please me no end-—old bachelor that I am. And there are plenty of ways of getting away from you all if you become too much.”
“You know the children. I think I can promise they will become too much. You can get away on a Thursday, can’t you?”
“Yes, anytime after midday.”
“Be down here by three o’clock then, and leave all the arrangements to me. Just come, and we’ll set off.”
So that’s what I did. I went up to Milton to do constituency work that weekend, but canceled for the following one. Everyone was very understanding, because the fact that I’d been “mugged” had been widely publicized in the local papers. People seemed to take it as proof that I was not a cosseted minister, but went about my business pretty much like a normal person, as an old lady put it to me. I went to see my father, who just recognized me. I was cautioned against seeing his weakness as a sign that his ordeal was approaching its end. I called in on George Eakin and brought him selectively up to date. His gratitude and interest made me feel a louse about holding out on him over several vital details, but the secrets were not mine to confide. I suppose those feelings of guilt were akin to feelings Matthew and Caroline must have had very often over the years.
My reunion with the Martindales was joyful, and the drive in a crowded station wagon to Fishguard was very jolly, full of singing, traveling games, and dreadful children’s jokes. That night, very late, in a large and comfortable cottage not far from Wexford, Matthew got down a road map of Ireland, pointed out a village near the coast of County Kerry, and gave me directions thereafter. He went over them twice, and had me repeat them. He said that a Land Rover had been hired, and he’d drive me to pick it up next day in Wexford. We left after an early breakfast, and before the middle of the morning I was driving through the lush southern counties of Ireland, toward the Atlantic coast.
I found the village of Kilrose without any difficulty, and stopped off to pick up provisions, something Matthew had suggested. As soon as I left it the road became quite rough. It was still tarmac, but it was narrow, with dirt sides onto which I had to drive when a rare car or lorry came in the other direction. One had to be vigilant for the occasional pothole. The lack of people was eerie. It was as if the Famine had struck only last year. The strangeness of the landscape was only added to by the occasional house: one story, new, smart, and clean as a this-year’s model car in the showroom, and almost as unused. Country retreats, I guessed, for politicians, businessmen, or Common Market functionaries. They served to underline rather than lessen the emptiness of the area. The sheep, grazing on the sparse grass in among rocks and heather, raised their heads as I passed, gazed at me blearily, then got back to business.
Matthew’s directions were simple and clear. I turned off at the top of a gentle incline five miles out of Kilrose. The moment I did so I was grateful for the toughness of the Land Rover I had hired. Matthew had known that anything less could have met with problems. The path was rocky, pitted, and what I could have done if I’d met with another car, beyond reverse and back right down the road, I couldn’t imagine. But Matthew had told me that there would be no other car, and there wasn’t.
When I’d driven a little over a mile the path veered to the left and I saw in the distance a cottage—little more than a hut. It was of stone, with a door set in the middle and small windows on either side. A plume of smoke was rising from the chimney. The path got no better as I approached, but I was able to pull up right outside the cottage door—it faced the path because here it ended. There was no other car there. I turned off the ignition and got out. Heather, with greener patches, stretched out to infinity, with not another cottage in sight. The place seemed deserted, but as I turned toward the little stone structure, intending to bang on the door, I was hailed from some way away. My heart stopped as I turned. On a little knoll a couple of hundred yards away there stood a man—an old man, thin but erect, his voice strong. I made toward him through the dead heather and rocks, stumbling from time to time. He, coming in the other direction, had all the confidence of decades of familiarity. As he got closer I saw that the thinness was not fragility but a spare toughness of frame. He showed his years most in his lined face, but the lines gave it an immense and imposing individuality. His hands were gnarled, but his walk and his carriage belied his years. He came up to me and I could think of nothing else to do but stretch out my right hand. He had other ideas, and he embraced me and I, awkwardness gone, hugged the old man close.
“We’re more open here,” he said, “more emotional. Not a bad thing.” The voice had a slight, soft Irish burr. He broke away and held me at arm’s length to look at me. “How like Matthew you are!” he said wonderingly.
“I know,” I said, my voice breaking as I spoke to him for the first time. “When I look at him it’s like a slightly wrong mirror image. And we’re both like your father.”
He pondered that. Everything he did was slow.
“I think of my father as much older—and he always was remote to me. It’s Matthew you call to mind.”
“And there must be something of you because it was that that brought your name into the whole matter—my shape, the way I sit or hold myself: there must be something.”
“I probably wouldn’t know, would I? I don’t see myself. Well, well, this is a wonderful pleasure. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to greet you. A sheep has been off-color. Come in, come in.”
