Past Caring (48 page)

“What’s the trouble?”

“It’s that weird old friend of yours—Ambrose Strafford.”

“Yes?”

“He visited us a week ago, anxious to contact you. We gave him your address.”

“I know. I got a letter from him.”

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“Well, he was here again today, much more wound up than before. He said he was desperate to speak to you.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t exactly say. He’d been drinking, if you ask me, rambling about threats, strangers, dark forces—whatever they might be. He claimed he was in danger and had to see you: a matter of life and death.”

This sounded like Ambrose—but why so alarmed? “Was he specific?”

“No. He didn’t seem to want to say much to me. And Hester found him a bit disturbing, so I didn’t encourage him.”

“Do you know if he’d had my telegram?”

“Yes. He had it screwed up in his pocket. He pulled it out and said that, if I spoke to you before he did, I was to tell you he would

‘try to hold on,’ but that ‘it won’t be easy.’ I tried phoning you while he was here, but you weren’t in. He said he had to ‘keep watch at Barrowteign.’ Then he left.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“One thing, as he was getting into his car: a message for you.

‘Tell Martin to remember,’ he said, ‘that we Straffords have lofty memories’. What does that mean?”

What indeed? “I don’t know, Nick. I don’t know what any of it means. But I’m worried. Ambrose is a bit of an oddball, but he’s not soft in the head. If he feels in danger, it’s because he is. I should have reacted more urgently to his letter.” Or not lingered in Miston, I thought.

“What will you do?”

“Get down there double quick.”

“Do you want to come to us tonight?”

“I’ll never get a train this late. I’ll travel on the first service tomorrow morning and go straight to Dewford. Could I come and see you after that?”

“Of course.”

“Then I’ll phone from Dewford. Speak to you tomorrow.

Oh—thanks for letting me know, Nick. It may turn out to be just what Ambrose said: a matter of life and death.” Strafford’s life and death were what I meant, but the phrase was to echo beyond anything I or Ambrose could have intended.

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After such news, all I wanted Timothy to do was get out. I found him leaning against the mantelpiece, with his feet on the fender, blowing cigarette smoke towards the ceiling, looking so casual I felt certain he’d been eavesdropping.

“Some trouble, old man?” he said.

“My only trouble is getting rid of you.”

“Easily done.” He elbowed himself away from the mantelpiece and walked past me to the door. “If you see sense, Martin, just get in touch. If not, don’t say you weren’t warned.”

“You won’t hear from me.”

“A pity. If you
should
change your mind, just call me. I’ve left my card.”

A last gesture typical of the smooth-talking salesman.

Timothy made his way out and I slammed the front door behind him. I walked back into the lounge and found his card propped against the clock on the mantelpiece: Timothy H. Couchman, Mercantile Consultant, 4 Padua Court, Berkeley Street, London W1. As I heard his Porsche throb into life and accelerate away, I tore the card into four and dropped the pieces into the wastepaper basket.

Then my eye trailed along the mantelpiece to where I’d tucked Ambrose’s letter under a Toby jug. I pulled it out and read it through again—the abrasive, confident tones, the hints of long-awaited vengeance for his uncle’s death, the eager anticipation of disgrace for the Couchmans. But nothing firm or definite on paper, all in his head, everything on a promise. I had to get to him quickly, had to find out what he meant. He’d told Nick of threats and strangers. Did he mean the old ones which had assailed Strafford, or something new? I had to know.

Ididn’t sleep at all that night, which was probably just as well.

At dawn, I went up to Paddington and caught the first train to Exeter. I arrived just after nine o’clock and took a taxi out to Dewford.

The Teign valley road was empty so early on a cool, damp morning and the taxi made good time. I looked out at the fields I’d passed on foot a month before, followed with my eye the scar of the old railway line across the water meadows. At the crossroads, I told the driver to turn left and we bowled down over the old stone bridge across the river. Along the right-hand rampart, there was a strip of fluorescent red tape from one end of the bridge to the other and, on the far side, a dark van drawn up. I could see more red tape, strung between stakes, along the bank of the river and a stocky figure in gumboots and a white coat walking away from the waterside, up through the saplings which grew down to the river. I wondered, idly, if there’d been a road accident, but the bridge seemed undamaged, with nothing out of place.

I paid off the taxi at the entrance to Barrowteign, walked past the familiar, owl-topped pillars and followed the track through the gate and under the lime trees to Lodge Cottage. It was a reassuringly ordinary, placid morning in the countryside. Already, I could imagine Ambrose sniffing the air through his kitchen door, lighting his pipe and cracking some eggs into the frying pan, 294

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whistling tunelessly at Jess and wondering when the hell that young bugger Radford was going to show up. Well, here he was.

The first thing I noticed, as I approached the old crossing, was a police car drawn up by the garage. I thought Ambrose might be entertaining the local constable to breakfast, but no windows in the cottage were open and there was no whiff of bacon in the air.

I eased open the garden gate, expecting to hear Jess bark, but she didn’t. The front door stood open, so I stepped inside.

“Hello! Ambrose?” I shouted.

There was a sound from the front room, some heavy footsteps and then a burly, uniformed policeman stood in the doorway. He had a rumpled, rural look but a broad, implacable bearing. “Who might you be?” he said, with guarded civility.

I was taken aback, literally. This man’s large frame seemed to fill the house, never mind the hall. “I’m a friend of Ambrose Strafford. Is he here?”

“No, sir.”

“Can I ask . . . why you’re here?”

“When did you last see Mr. Strafford?”

“About a month ago.”

“I see . . . you don’t come from these parts, I’m thinking.”

“No.”

“When did you arrive?”

“Just this minute.”

“I didn’t ’ear a car.”

“No. I came by taxi. It dropped me off at the gates. Now . . .”

“Seems a funny time to come visitin’.”

“I was anxious to see Ambrose.”

“Why might that be?”

Surprise was turning to impatience. “Don’t you think that’s my business, Officer?”

The constable nodded. “Ordinarily, it would be, sir. But . . .”

“But what?”

“I’m investigating an unexplained death, so . . .”

Panic flared in me. “Whose death?”

“Ambrose Strafford’s.”

“How?”

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“ ’E drowned in the river last night. Seems to ’ave toppled over the bridge on ’is way back from The Greengage. Drunk, we think.”

For a moment, I couldn’t think or speak. Ambrose drowned?

It was impossible, inconceivable. Yet stolid policemen don’t lie.

“Last night?”

“Seems so, sir. Estate worker goin’ into Barrowteign found

’im first light this mornin’. ’Eard his dog ’owlin’ and found old Ambrose among some tree roots in the shallows by the bank, near the bridge.”

I was too late—only, it seemed, a matter of hours too late.

Ambrose, alive, hearty, drinking his fill at The Greengage, then—drowned, a shape in the water, by the dawn shore drifting. It was awful—but an accident? After all his portents, all his warnings?

That was too much. “How do you know what happened?”

“We don’t, sir. Leastways, not till we get the results of the postmortem. But it seems obvious. Ambrose liked his cider, drank a lot last night and fetched up in the river. It’s pretty shallow under the bridge, so ’e must ’ave been far gone when ’e fell in.

’Cept . . .”

“Except what?”

“ ’Cept ’e’s been rabbitin’ on ’bout strangers threatenin’ ’im recently.”

All my hopes forbade me to believe I or Ambrose could be denied by some grotesque accident. So Ambrose drank. Well, he drank every night of his life and never had any trouble negotiating the bridge before. I felt the same way he felt about his uncle’s death. Whole families can’t be accident-prone. But strangers can bundle old men off bridges or onto railway lines. A thrill of horror lanced through my shock. If I’d not been blind or stupid or both, I could have foreseen this, foretold it for certain by the graven shape of the Straffords’ tragedy. Suddenly, Ambrose’s death was fitting—and that only made it worse. When I spoke—shouted almost—at the constable, I was voicing my despair.

“Perhaps you should have listened to him. Don’t you see this was no accident?”

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my job. What is, is to question strangers who turn up at the deceased’s ’ouse at crack of dawn without explanation.”

“You can question me—by all means. But I’m not a stranger—wasn’t a stranger—to Ambrose.”

“You’re a stranger to me, sir—to the village.”

“My name’s Martin Radford. I came here just after Easter to research the history of the family who owned Barrowteign. I met Ambrose and he told me all he could. I came back at his invitation.”

“What for?”

I decided to keep that to myself. “I’ll never know now.”

“If you say so, sir. I think I’ll ’ave to take a statement.”

I didn’t object—why should I? We went through into the kitchen and sat either side of the table I’d once shared with Ambrose. There were still knives and plates on it, with bread-crumbs and flakes of tobacco scattered around and a tea towel slung over one corner. The old, encrusted frying pan stood on the range, with a lining of set fat, and there was washing-up in the sink. It seemed incredible that Ambrose’s cosy shambles of a world—proud and prickly fastness of the last of the Straffords—had lost its master.

The constable pulled out a notebook and laboriously pen-cilled in my account of meeting Ambrose. I told him of the mystery of Strafford’s death in 1951—that Ambrose and I both believed it wasn’t an accident. I said I thought both deaths had the same explanation, but I went no further. Even in my shock at this loss, I didn’t utter wild accusations, didn’t venture what I couldn’t prove. I said nothing about the Couchmans, the Memoir or the Postscript. It was my duty to record that Ambrose wasn’t just a foolish old drunkard who got himself drowned, but I never really expected the police to believe anything else.

“And you say the landlord of The Greengage can corroborate this?”

“Yes—in part.”

“Well, I’ll check with ’im. Then I’ll get your statement typed up and see if my inspector wants to ’ave a chat with you. Where will you be over the next few days?” I gave him the Bennetts’ address in Exeter. “All right, sir, I’ll be in touch.”

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“Is that it?”

“What else would you expect?”

“Ambrose spoke of threats. Then he dies mysteriously.

Shouldn’t . . .”

The constable rose massively from his chair. “It’s not so much of a mystery, sir. You go talkin’ that way and people’ll think you’re as nutty as old Ambrose.”

I got up too. “Okay. I get the message. I must be on my way.”

I moved towards the hall. “Found anything here?”

“Nothing that need concern you, sir.”

“I see.” Only I didn’t, and nor did he. Where was the Postscript? I couldn’t ask this man and he wouldn’t have told me if I had. He wouldn’t have understood what I was driving at, couldn’t have comprehended the stark disappointment of an empty, grieving cottage after the lure of a letter sparkling with life. I walked out into the morning air, changed by the knowledge of Ambrose’s death, telling myself that old men who knock back the cider do tend to be a danger to themselves but hearing, all the time, another voice, in aged, grating tones, which said insistently, and all too credibly, “Don’t let ’em fool you. Do you really think it could happen again?” There, in the garden, as I looked at the old track bed and remembered the prelude to another accident, I realized that, no, I didn’t believe in lightning striking twice, and I wasn’t going to let Ambrose die for nothing. I returned to the main drive and hurried to the bridge.

I leant heavily on the wall, feeling a strange mixture of sickness and elation, sick with shock and sadness that Ambrose was dead, elated—in a way which appalled me but couldn’t be denied—by the rush of knowledge that something had at last happened. My investigations had begun to bear their bitter fruit. But how? Why? With Ambrose gone, I was further than ever from the answers.

I walked disconsolately up to the crossroads, then on into the village. The place was quiet, still gathering itself together for the business of the day. Despite the hour, I made for The Greengage, reckoning Ted, the landlord, could give me as good an impression as anybody of what had happened.

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movement in the yard behind the pub, so walked round and found Ted stacking crates, with the cellar door open. He looked up and nodded recognition.

“I’ve heard about Ambrose,” I said.

“Bad business,” Ted grunted. “I told the police ’bout you.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cos old Ambrose, ’e was bothered ’bout strangers—always

’ad been, you knows that. So I told ’em ’bout you, ’cos you are one.” He slammed an empty crate on top of the rest and leant on the pile. “Seemed the least I could do.”