Past Caring (49 page)

I knew what he meant. In his clumsy way, Ted had done his best by Ambrose and didn’t mind letting me know he’d named me as a suspicious stranger. So I was, for all he knew. “Ambrose wasn’t afraid of me.”

“Reckon not.”

“But somebody else?”

“Maybe.”

“Could we go inside and talk about it?”

“Okay.” He led me through the back door of the pub into the bar, dark and not yet ready for trade, with chairs upside down on tables. He pulled two down for us, then, without a word, drew two pints of cider from the barrel Ambrose must have supped from the night before and set them between us. “ ’Ere’s to the ol’ bugger,” he said, and quaffed some.

I drank some of mine. “I came down to see him.”

“I know. ’E said you would. ’E were impatient to see you.”

“Pity I didn’t get here sooner.”

“Maybe so.”

“What happened?”

“We don’t know. ’E were in ’ere as usual last night. Next I knew were when George Ash—our local bobby—woke me up a few hours ago. They’d found Ambrose in the river and George wanted to check if ’e’d been in ’ere aforehand. ’E ’ad Jess with

’im—we’ve taken the animal in for the time being.”

“I met Constable Ash at the cottage. He reckoned Ambrose fell in, drunk, and drowned.”

Ted grunted. “I’d ’ave said that myself, but Ambrose were a fly bugger—nobody’s fool—and ’e dain’t spend a lifetime suppin’

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cider without bein’ able to walk ’ome blindfold. ’E ’ad no more ’an

’is usual last night, an’ besides . . .”

“Yes?”

“You know all that guff ’e used to talk about ’is uncle—strangers ’avin’ ’ad a ’and in ’is death?”

“I do.”

“Well, it were strange, but last night ’e seemed sort of . . . anxious. ’E asked if I remembered some bloke who came in at lunchtime and sat alone in a corner. Did I recognize ’im? ’Course I dain’t. People just drop in if they’re passin’, specially at weekends. I told Ambrose as much, but ’e insisted this bloke ’ad been watchin’ ’im, though ’e’d said nothin’ about it at the time. Said ’e’d seen ’im hangin’ round Lodge Cottage durin’ the day and thought

’e knew ’im from somewhere, though ’e couldn’t be certain.”

“Did this character show up last night?”

“Not as I knows.”

Who was it, Ambrose? I thought. Did you recognize one of the shadowy faces at last? I wanted badly to know, but Ambrose was dead and Ted, if he’d ever known, couldn’t remember.

“Tell me,” I said, swallowing some of the cider, “did Ambrose mention finding something recently?”

“No—only as ’e was keen to see you again.”

“He didn’t say why?”

“No. Don’t you know?”

“Not exactly. I think he’d found something out—but I don’t know what.”

Ted drained his glass. “Reckon you never will now—sup-posin’ there was somethin’, that is.”

I finished my cider too and got up to go. “What do you think?

Was it all talk? A pure accident? Or something more sinister?”

Ted took our glasses to the bar. “I ain’t a fanciful man,” he said. “You knows that from the cold water I poured on Ambrose’s stories ’bout ’is uncle.” He walked back and unbolted the front door to let me out. “But both ’is father an’ ’is uncle—then ’im too—in queer accidents?” He stroked his chin. “That’s a bit much. That’s a bit too much.”

He opened the door. “That’s what I think too,” I said, stepping out into the road. “Thanks for the chat—and the cider.”

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“The cider was for Ambrose: I owed ’im a round. Chats are free—call anytime. Things’ll be quieter ’ere without that gabby ol’ bugger to chivvy me up.”

I reached the Bennetts’ house around lunchtime, sooner than I was expected. Hester was surprised to see me and even more surprised to hear why I was early. She sat me down in her kitchen—a far, efficient cry from Ambrose’s grimy palace of hob and range—made me coffee and listened to the story of my cata-strophic morning.

“It’s hard to believe,” she said when I’d finished. “He seemed so . . . vital . . . when he was here.”

“Nick said you weren’t too keen on having him in.”

Hester smiled in embarrassment. “I wasn’t. He was terribly sloshed. I took him for a tramp.”

“Not quite that.”

“No.” She gulped some coffee. “It must have come as a terrible shock. What will you do now?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

I was none the wiser three hours later, when Nick came home from school. I recounted to him what had happened and we talked it over during dinner. He and Hester became the audience for my internal dialogue. Did he fall or was he pushed? The same as for his uncle. Were the conspiracies against them merely figments of their imagination or did Ambrose’s “dark forces” really exist? He’d claimed in his letter to have something against the Couchmans, so wasn’t it one hell of a coincidence that he should fall off a bridge just before he could deliver the goods?

Suddenly, I remembered that I’d left Timothy alone in the lounge during Nick’s phone call to me. He could easily have read Ambrose’s letter if he’d noticed it. I couldn’t imagine propriety stopping him. And he’d left his card on the mantelpiece, where I’d put the letter, so it was surely odds on that he had. Did that really make it likely that he’d sped down to Devon in his Porsche the same night and done away with Ambrose? Hardly. Such an act was altogether too direct for his devious mind and, besides, why should he have done?

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My last thought before going to bed with a good slug of Nick’s whisky inside me was a depressing one. The likeliest con-tingency was that, intoxicated as much by visions of vengeance as The Greengage’s cider, Ambrose had simply tumbled off the bridge, as P.C. Ash had surmised, knocked himself out in the fall and drowned. If so, his hopes and mine were already in the tidal reaches of the Teign—literally so if he’d been carrying his discovery with him. So near, we fondly thought, but now as far as ever.

Next morning found me on an early bus back to Dewford.

There were no other passengers, so, as we jolted along the road, I was free to mine my thoughts. I judged most of the dust would by now have settled on the drama of Ambrose’s death, written off as the watery end of an old boozer: the loss of a local character, but what else could you expect of him? I felt certain that P.C. Ash would have abandoned his patrol at Lodge Cottage and returned to cases of sheep-worrying. The coast was therefore clear for me to see if I could find whatever there was to find.

I was right. When I walked down over the bridge, the tape had been removed. The Teign flowed on, the bridge stood, the body gone, the evidence gathered, the book closed. Or about to open, if I could only find it.

I walked through the gate and tried the cottage door. It was locked—Ash had done his duty. As I made my way to the back of the house, I nearly fell over an old wheelbarrow, with a pannier basket inside, containing a bundle of dead flowers. A recent picking by Ambrose—or something long forgotten? It was hard to say.

I came to the kitchen door: firmly bolted from the inside. I was feeling increasingly furtive, especially since circumstances were pushing me towards forcing an entry.

But there was no need. As I rounded the corner on the other side of the house, I saw that one of the kitchen windows was open—wide open, with the stay hanging loose and, yes, when I looked, gougings in the wooden frame as if somebody had jem-mied it open.

I peered inside, expecting the same scene as the day before.

But the kitchen was no longer merely disorderly—it was chaotic.

Cupboard doors and drawers had been pulled open, the contents 302

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removed and piled anyhow on the floor. There was nothing destructive about it, but somebody had been through the place. It couldn’t have been the police—they’d have had the decency to put everything back. Then who?

I dragged over an old, upturned bucket and used it as a platform to scramble in through the window. It was a squeeze, but I hauled myself over the draining board next to the sink and dropped down into the room. The injured pride of the cottage clamped itself around me in the musty, watchful silence. This was already an empty house, smelling of the neglect which intrusion only accentuated. And silent too, silent in the still, echoless manner of a tomb.

I steeled myself and walked through into the front room. The curtains were drawn shut and the gloom was forbidding; I hurried across to part them. Muted shadow had already hinted at what intruding daylight made graphic: more of the same treatment meted out to the kitchen, only worse, because there was more to this room, more accreted, personal associations with Ambrose. The furniture had been cleared of its load of books, papers, packets, models, pipes and portfolios: the whole gallimaufry of one old man’s home heaped on the floor, sifted crudely for no clear purpose. Worse, beneath the table, felled but apparently unnoticed, one of the old fellow’s model aircraft: a First World War bi-plane, lovingly constructed, now crushed on the floor, one wing smashed as easily and irretrievably as a moth’s. I looked across to the window, where the curtains were snagged on an upturned cactus pot, its soil scattered across the carpet; I could have wept.

But I didn’t. In a way, I was as much an intruder as whoever had done this. And they, like me, had been intruders with a purpose, for all the signs of vandalism and malice in their search. I turned, as they must have turned, to the old bureau by the wall. It was empty now, not the crammed glory-hole Ambrose had made of it. One of the wingback easy chairs had been pulled round to face it and used as a repository for its contents. I imagined somebody standing by the bureau, checking through its hoard and tossing each discarded item onto the seat of the chair as they went.

I’d hoped my search could be discreet and respectful. There was no chance of that in view of the mayhem I’d found. It was

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demeaning, but there was nothing for it but to scrabble through the heap, hoping to chance on the prize. Yet, even as I began doing so, I knew I’d find nothing. If it had been there—which I doubted, in view of Ambrose’s secrecy—it wouldn’t be there any longer. There was no doubt in my mind that somebody had already looked for it.

The gruesome task took all morning. I worked my way through all the rooms—and all to no avail. I had a mental picture of the Postscript as a fat, leather-bound tome rather like the original Memoir. It was therefore going to be hard to miss if I looked in the right place, but it would’ve been equally easy to hide somewhere—under the floorboards, behind a cupboard—which I would overlook. Lodge Cottage was small, but full of nooks and crannies and Ambrose’s ingenuity could have found many obscure hidey-holes. It was, in short, a hopeless task, but one I had to attempt. My only consolation was that whoever had already been there had obviously been in a hurry and had probably therefore done a less efficient job than I could.

I gave up at lunchtime, tired and dispirited by the fruitless effort, feeling vaguely defiled by the necessity of rooting through Ambrose’s possessions. I took only one thing away—Strafford’s first edition of Hardy’s poetry (
Satires of Circumstance
), which I found spread open in the front room, with some of its pages bent back as if it had been tossed down—dismissed as being of no account. I was one up on somebody there. It meant a great deal to Strafford and to me, even more now I’d talked to Elizabeth about her last meeting with Edwin and his use of those lines from

“After a Journey.” Ambrose wouldn’t have minded me taking it as a memento. Nor, I hoped, would his uncle. It was good to rescue it from the chaos and take it away for safekeeping. Yet it wasn’t the Postscript and that was all I really wanted.

I asked directions to the police house and found Ash’s cottage—whitewash and slate with a green-fingered garden, ivy growing over the blue DEVON & CORNWALL CONSTABULARY sign, a 304

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tiny office—of kinds—housed in a modern brick extension to one side. I peered in through the wired-glass door. It was bare and empty—a table, three chairs and a WATCH OUT THERE’S A THIEF ABOUT poster. I rang the bell—several times. It was, in fact, the cottage door which creaked open in answer. Ash emerged, breathing heavily, with an aroma of suet and gravy behind him, dabbing some of his dinner off his uniform tie.

“Mr. Radford, ain’t it?”

“Yes. Can we talk?”

“Best come in the office.”

He opened the door, led me in and plonked himself on one of the chairs, overlapping it uncomfortably.

“I went up to Lodge Cottage this morning—just to take a look. It’s been broken into.”

“Broken into?” Ash’s brow furrowed.

“Yes. A kitchen window forced. As far as I could see, everything turned over.”

Ash got up and strode to the window. “I left it secure. Vandals, I bet.”

“Out here?”

“There’s a load of tearaways round ’ere whose dads work in the quarries down at Trusham. They’m as bad as any townies, believe you me.”

“It didn’t look like vandalism.”

“Then what?” Ash shot a glare at me.

“A breakin, I’d say—a breakin with a purpose.”

He looked at me with his slow, countryman’s irritation. I knew what he was thinking. This man’s another fantasist like Ambrose. Why can’t he leave me to knock a few heads together in the quarrying community and bury these other, alien notions with the old man who dreamt them up in the first place? “I’ll take a look, Mr. Radford, an’ notify the Trust to shut it up proper.

I’ll add your . . . opinion . . . to my report to the inspector. ’E might want to ’ave a word with you ’imself. That’s all I can do.”

“I see. Well, thanks for that. I’ll be going.”

He followed me to the door. “Reckon that’d be for the best, sir . . . in the long run. Why not stay in Exeter and leave this to us locals?”