Long Time Coming (18 page)

‘Splendid. Thanks again. Now, I’m afraid you’re going to have to excuse me. Much as I’d prefer to stay here chatting with you, I have to skedaddle. I’m one of those deputed to dine with the minister this evening. I must dash home and put on my best bib and tucker.’

‘How did the talks go?’

‘No idea. Badly, I expect. Or well. It depends on your point of view.’ Linley finished his drink and rose, a touch wearily. ‘Steer clear of politics, old fellow. That’s my advice. I’ll see you on Saturday.’ He played an airy cover drive with an imaginary cricket bat and clicked his tongue appreciatively. ‘It’ll be fun, I promise.’ Then he gave Swan a farewell clap on the shoulder and hurried out.

Swan took himself off to the cinema to fill his evening. The Irish censor had clearly been at work on the newsreel – the war was nowhere to be seen or mentioned – and the B picture had either been extensively cut or very badly made (he could not decide which), but
Rebecca
was apparently considered harmless and was enjoyed to full weepy effect by the women in the audience. Swan found its depiction of unfettered international travel depressing and its melodrama overwrought. He left before the end, conceding to himself, there being no one else to concede it to, that there really was no romance in his soul. He suspected there was little in Linley’s either and could only hope the same was true of Celia. Otherwise, he feared, heartbreak and disappointment lay in wait for her.

I’d expected the ‘much’ Eldritch’s note had said we needed to discuss to include more details of his long-ago dealings in Dublin with Miles, now Sir Miles, Linley. All he told me on that front, however, was that he’d returned the favour of being sprung from detention in Dublin Castle by renting a flat for Linley’s use in carrying on a surreptitious affair with a married secretary at the British Legation. The exact nature of Linley’s eventual betrayal of him he still wouldn’t disclose. But he seemed gratified that I’d disliked the decorated former diplomat and his haughty wife.

‘I’ve never thought of them as a pair before. But, now that I consider it, they seem curiously well matched.’

Wrapped in a Ritz bathrobe, whisky glass in one hand and cigarette in the other, he regarded me with weary tolerance across the sumptuous wastes of his extravagantly appointed room, surroundings which somehow made him seem older and frailer and more tenuously connected to the present day than ever.

‘I can’t say I’m surprised you drew a blank with them, Stephen. It was worth a try, if only so you and Miss Banner could get the measure of them, but Linley spent his entire working life guarding secrets and he’s not likely to change now. As for his wife, she’s obviously more of a schemer than I gave her credit for. I think you’re wrong on one point, though. I believe them about the paintings. Of course they sold them. They didn’t want any reminders of Desmond Quilligan around the house. It might have
made their children inconveniently curious about their late uncle.’

‘How do you know they have children?’ I challenged him.

‘Who’s Who
. It occurred to me Linley might have greased his way into its pages. Well, so it proved. He gives the knighthood prominent mention, naturally. The son and daughter squeak in at the end. They’re not named, but they are there. As is his sainted wife, of course. He married her in 1945, just before leaving Ireland for a posting in Portugal.’

‘We saw no sign of the children.’

‘Probably already fled the nest. Anyway, they’re not important, other than to remind us that Sir Miles and Lady Linley have a family as well as a social position to protect. They’ll do whatever they think they need to do to serve that end.’

‘Then, what do we try next?’

‘The weak link. Simon Cardale. My bet would be that the Linleys will have been in touch with him following your visit, warning him to be on his guard. But he doesn’t have quite their strength of mind, does he? That was obvious when we met him. And it was even more obvious when I met him again today.’

‘You went back to the gallery?’

‘Yes. Just to stir the pot. I asked him if he’d had the chance to look through his grandfather’s old files for a record of the Quilligan exhibition.’

‘But there was no exhibition. You made it up.’

‘Indeed. But Cardale doesn’t know that. And it was clear to me he
had
been looking. Without success, naturally. He’s a bad liar. And a worse dissembler. His reaction told me how it was. He must have severed all links with Quilligan long before Quilligan died, probably at his grandfather’s insistence. Now, far too late, he regrets doing that. And a man with regrets is a man with weaknesses. Which we can exploit.’

‘How?’

‘Simon Cardale had no hand in the original fraud. He was just a child. So, he has less to lose than the others if the truth comes out. I’m not sure he even inherited much money from his grandfather.
The gallery doesn’t look very prosperous and nor does he. I suggest we try shock tactics on him.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Take Miss Banner to see him. Ask him to deny to her face that his grandfather cheated her family and that his natural father, Desmond Quilligan, helped him do it. I don’t think he’ll be able to. In which case … we’ll have him.’

I phoned Rachel early the following morning – too early, to judge by her groggy response. But Eldritch’s proposal jolted her into wakefulness. She was all for it, as I’d expected she would be. It was more or less what she’d proposed herself. She joined us at the Ritz in time for a late breakfast and was so excited at the prospect of challenging Cardale that she forgot to be sarcastic about the luxuriousness of our surroundings.

‘How sure are you he’ll crack?’ she demanded of Eldritch.

‘I think there’s a good chance, Miss Banner. That’s all I can say.’

‘Will you stop calling me Miss Banner? It’s freaking me out. My name’s Rachel.’

‘Very well, Rachel. You’ll have an advantage over us. You won’t have to pretend you’re someone else. I suggest you admit visiting the Linleys yesterday using a pseudonym, but we’ll say the name Stephen used was genuine and he’s your … English boyfriend. I’m his uncle, who happens to know a little about Quilligan’s artistic career. I’m the reason you met: I suspected Quilligan was responsible for forging the Picassos and contacted you to tell you so, then introduced you to each other.’

‘You’re the reason we met anyway, Eldritch,’ I pointed out.

He smiled at me. ‘So I am.’

‘All right,’ said Rachel. ‘Sounds good. Any reason why we don’t go straight round there?’

Eldritch glanced at his watch. ‘He might not open until ten. Have another cup of coffee. Then we’ll go. There’s no hurry.’

‘How can you be so god-damn patient?’

‘A fringe benefit of long-term imprisonment, I dare say. It teaches you the art of waiting if it teaches you nothing else.’

*

Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the gallery. My first thought was that Cardale opened even later than Eldritch had anticipated. There were no lights twinkling in the gloomy interior. Then I spotted the handwritten sign taped inside the door. A
LL ENQUIRIES NEXT DOOR AT
B
EAUCHAMP
F
INE
A
RT
. Instantly, I feared the worst. And so did Rachel.

‘He knew we were coming.’

‘It’s possible,’ conceded Eldritch. ‘But I doubt it. Let’s do as the sign says.’

The proprietor of Beauchamp Fine Art was a suaver, more self-assured version of Cardale himself. ‘Simon rang me this morning,’ he explained. ‘He’s gone down with flu. But if there’s anything you’re interested in, I can let you in for a look.’

‘We really need to speak to Mr Cardale,’ said Eldritch.

‘Well, you could phone him at home, I suppose. I can give you his number.’

‘Home is still Cherrygarth, Queen’s Road, Richmond, is it?’

‘Yes. It is.’

‘I see.’ Eldritch gazed past the man into the shadowier recesses of the gallery, where his mind’s eye did indeed seem to see something: the past, perhaps, when Cherrygarth was the home of another Cardale and Eldritch was his willing assistant.

‘We’ll take that number, Mr Beauchamp,’ said Rachel. ‘Thanks a lot.’

We retreated to an espresso bar in the Piccadilly Arcade to debate our next move. Rachel advocated heading straight for Richmond in the hope of bearding Cardale in his lair. I agreed. Eventually, after smoking his way thoughtfully through a Sobranie, so did Eldritch.

‘He may not be there, but we can’t phone to find out in case he takes himself off somewhere else. It’s certainly worth a try. But you’ll have to go without me. I have to stay here.’

‘Why?’ Rachel and I asked almost as one.

‘I have an appointment with Twisk. He stipulated at the outset
that I had to report progress to him on a regular basis. Our first meeting’s scheduled for noon.’

‘You never mentioned this before,’ I pointed out, though that was hardly news. Eldritch clearly wasn’t in the habit of confiding in anyone.

‘I’m sorry, Stephen. It slipped my mind.’ But Eldritch’s mind let nothing slip. Rachel and I both knew that.

‘We could wait until this afternoon to go to Richmond,’ she suggested – mischievously, it seemed to me, since I knew she was itching to go straight away.

‘Delay strikes me as a bad idea, Rachel. No, I think you should simply go without me. I’d probably only slow you down anyway.’

‘In that case,’ I said, ‘you’d better tell us exactly what you’re hoping we’ll get out of Cardale.’

‘That’s simple,’ he replied, lighting another cigarette in a flurry of coughs. ‘As much as you can.’

Part of me was glad Eldritch wasn’t coming. It meant I had Rachel to myself. Another part of me was suspicious. What game was he playing? There always seemed to be another, beyond the one I thought I knew the rules to.

Rachel, it turned out, felt much as I did. ‘I’d be lying if I said I was sorry your uncle stayed behind, Stephen,’ she said as we boarded the Richmond train at Waterloo. ‘Cooperating with him makes sense, I know, but to me he’s still one of the bastards who cheated my family. I reckon this’ll work better with just the two of us.’

‘I prefer it that way myself.’

‘You don’t know how good it is to hear you say that. I’ve been waging war on my own too long – a war no one believes I can win.’

‘We may be able to surprise them.’

‘It’s not just that. It’s all the … sacrifices … I’ve had to make along the way.’ She looked out through the grimy window and fiddled with a cigarette. The whistle blew amidst a final slamming of doors. I struck a match. Our hands bumped together with the jolt of the train as she lit up. I was startled to see tears in her eyes.
‘Sorry,’ she said, shaking her head, as if annoyed by her own emotional fragility. Her mood was less confident, less sweeping, than the day before. It made me want to protect her, to shield her from the consequences of her stubborn pursuit of the truth. She sighed. ‘I’ve kinda got used to it being a hopeless cause. And to fighting it alone.’

‘You’re not alone any more.’

She leant forward and kissed me – a wet and clumsy kiss thanks to the yawing of the train as it crossed the points. We both laughed. ‘Bless you, Stephen,’ she said.

It was cold and grey in Richmond, the famous view of the Thames from Richmond Hill blurred and dulled by wintry light. Eldritch had come here in high summer. I imagined a cloudless sky, cooing doves and horse chestnuts heavy with leaf. I also imagined profound quietude, thanks to wartime petrol rationing. Thirty-six years later, the traffic was thick and noisy, lorries rumbling to and fro along Queen’s Road, serving what sounded like a big building project in the middle distance. Cherrygarth’s setting was no longer a tranquil one.

It was a substantial Victorian residence set in its own grounds, behind a high wall and wrought-iron gates. The postman came out through them as we approached, wheeling his bike, and gave us a cheerier greeting than I reckoned the householder was likely to.

‘Do you know if Mr Cardale’s in?’ Rachel asked him.

‘Might be. Somebody’s got a bonfire going out the back. I can tell you that.’

Smoke was drifting round and over the gables of the house to prove his point. We closed the gate behind him and moved towards the front door. ‘So much for flu,’ Rachel muttered.

‘Maybe he has a gardener.’

‘Or incriminating evidence to burn. Let’s check out back before we try the bell.’

A flagstoned path led round through a screen of trellis to the rear garden. A lank-grassed lawn stretched away in front of us towards an orchard, at the edge of which smoke was billowing up
from an incinerator. Simon Cardale, dressed in Barbour, sweater, corduroys and gumboots, was feeding handfuls of paper into the flames. Behind him, on a rickety old wicker table, stood a cardboard box, with a pile of paper beside it. There were two more boxes on the ground next to the table and a couple of others, clearly empty, lying on their sides near by.

‘What did I tell you?’ said Rachel.

Cardale seemed oblivious to our presence, tamping the contents of the incinerator with a rake between loads as we approached across the lawn. I called out to him. ‘
Mr Cardale
.’ He looked up, his jaw sagging as he saw us. His face was flushed, perhaps not just from the heat of the blaze. I noticed a half-empty whisky bottle and a tumbler on the table behind him.

‘
Cardale and I struck the deal over gin and barley water in his garden out at Richmond
.’ So Eldritch had told me. Now, here we were, Rachel and I, confronting Cardale’s grandson in the same place, but in a different time and season, haunted by all that had been set in motion that summer afternoon long ago.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Simon Cardale shouted at us, his voice faintly slurred. ‘This is private property.’ Then he recognized us – each of us in turn. ‘You’re the two who showed up at Hatchwell Hall yesterday, aren’t you?’

‘You remember me, then, Simon?’ Rachel asked, challenging him with her familiarity.

‘
Miss
Banner. And
you
.’ He glared at me. ‘I suppose I should have known you were in it together. Where’s the old man?’