Past Caring (71 page)

I didn’t speak, didn’t know what to say. With a flash of her eyes that formed a kind of dismissal, Eve moved at last. She walked straight past me without a look or a word and I watched her go as far as the kissing-gate before she looked back, just once. “I hear there’s been another accident,” she said, and then walked on.

I was still standing in the lych-gate a few minutes later when I heard the MG accelerate away up the lane. Eve had gone and, with her going, the first large raindrops began to fall on the path to the church.

Helen and Letty were due at lunchtime the following day, so I packed straight after breakfast and walked across with Dora to her cottage—one of a terrace of workingmen’s dwellings near the disused flour mill on the other side of the village. Dora was a war widow—“Mr. Bates,” as she always referred to him, had gone down on a merchant ship in the Atlantic in 1941—and she lived alone at number 3, Rackenfield, seeing service at Quarterleigh as a means of getting out and being useful. Purposeful bustle was her answer to everything, including Elizabeth’s bereavement, so accommodating me in her slightly musty back bedroom was a blessing in disguise.

It also meant she could keep me informed about what was happening at Quarterleigh. After going there to serve lunch, she 438

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returned with delighted secrecy to tell me that Letty wanted to see me. Not Elizabeth, as I’d expected, or even Helen, but the one woman I hadn’t supposed would think even fleetingly of me at such a time.

I walked directly over to the garden and found Letty wandering among the rhododendrons, fingering the blooms aimlessly. I called to her.

“Hello, Martin.” She smiled weakly and moved with a jerky, apprehensive gait.

“I got your message.”

We began to walk slowly towards the brook. “Elizabeth has told me everything. Why Henry was so worried after that conference in Torquay. Why you came to see him last week.” She stopped and looked challengingly at me. “Did you know this would happen?”

“No—as God’s my witness. When I left Henry last week, he was in good spirits.”

She turned back and walked on. “That’s what I thought.

Until . . .”

“Until when?”

“Sunday evening. He had a phone call and went out straight afterwards. Said he had an appointment at his club. He got back a couple of hours later just in time to speak to Elizabeth. He wouldn’t talk about that or his appointment, just went up to his study and worked for the rest of the night. Stayed there most of Monday.”

“Did you know he’d sent in his resignation?”

“No. He never mentioned it. When he set off that afternoon, I expected to see him . . .” She tailed off into a gentle sob, then recovered herself. “Have you seen the papers this morning?”

“No.”

“They’re connecting his resignation with the crash—implying suicide, and worse.”

“It’s just paper talk.”

She looked at me with her large, pleading eyes. “No, it isn’t.

We both know that. Henry could never have faced disgrace. Repu-

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tation, appearances, respect: they mattered to him. He couldn’t have lived without them.”

“They weren’t threatened.”

“He thought they were.” She walked on down towards the edge of the brook, but I didn’t follow. If she was right, something had happened since he’d bluffed it out the week before.

Something on Sunday, while I’d been meeting Alec at The Royal Oak. And then . . . a blind bend on Gibbet Hill had beckoned him into oblivion.

I went back to Rackenfield and ran over what Letty had said. But it was a riddle without an answer. I couldn’t believe Henry had been frightened into suicide by the prospect of meeting his half-brother and I couldn’t believe it had been an accident. The truth was waiting for me somewhere, but I couldn’t fix it in my sight. It was there, hovering at the edge of my vision. But when I looked in its direction, it vanished.

At breakfast, Dora brought a note saying Elizabeth was staying in her room but wanted to see me that evening. I mooned the day away and then, as soon as I decently could, went round and was shown up to her room. She seemed composed and alert.

She told me that she had arranged for the whole family to meet after the funeral to discuss what she’d originally hoped Henry could agree with Sellick—how to make good the fraud on which Sir Gerald had founded all their fortunes.

“What do you hope will come out of this meeting?” I asked.

“Agreement—and that’s where you come in. What I have in mind requires your consent above all others.”

“Why me?”

“Because it involves the Postscript and, as the person who found it, you must have the final say in how it is used.”

“I passed it over to you, Elizabeth, as the person I thought Strafford would be happiest to have it, so I’ll respect your judgement. What do you propose to do with it?”

She looked straight at me. “Destroy it.” I must have shown my shock. “I know it seems almost blasphemous in view of all the 440

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precautions Edwin took to preserve it. But I’ve thought about it carefully. In a sense, its contents cost Edwin his life. Had it not existed, Ambrose Strafford would certainly still be alive. And so, very likely, would Henry. I simply can’t believe Edwin would want such a high price to be paid for its existence.”

“I don’t know what to say. After all the efforts I made to find it in the first place . . .”

“I understand how you feel, Martin. It must seem awfully like a climb-down. It must seem that it suits my family all too well to . . .”

“I don’t suspect you of such motives, Elizabeth. Others, perhaps. But not you. I see the logic of what you’re saying. It’s just that it’s awfully hard . . .”

“I realize that, which is why I decided to tell you now, so you could give some thought to it before we meet.”

“I can’t imagine Sellick agreeing to it.”

“I hope he will. He may feel he’s had his . . . pound of flesh.”

She looked past me and I saw her expression harden in a way I hadn’t seen before. “If not, I may have to go ahead despite him.

You see, the truth is one thing, but I can’t let it destroy my whole family. We owe Mr. Sellick something, but not everything.” She was right. They didn’t owe Sellick as much as he was clearly set on taking.

“I’ll support whatever you decide.”

She grasped my hand. “Thank you, Martin. That’s what I was hoping you would say.” It was, in truth, all I could say, the least, after all, that I could do for her.

Downstairs, I encountered Helen in the hall. She appeared from the lounge in a way which suggested she’d lain in wait for me.

“I want a word, Martin.”

“What about?”

“My father.” I followed her back into the room. “The inquest was opened and adjourned this morning. It resumes next Wednesday.”

“And now you know all the background?”

“Yes. And the press know they’re onto something. It’s such a

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bloody shame.” She rarely swore. It was the only sign she gave of her distress. “I don’t think he deserved to go this way.” She looked at me. “Maybe you think he did—and maybe you’re right. What I’m asking wouldn’t be for him, but for me—for Laura, if you like.”

“And what are you asking?”

“I’m asking you to say nothing about this document Granny has, nothing that would point the coroner towards suicide. If they bring that in, it’ll mean my father murdered the other poor man.

And the press won’t leave it alone until they know everything—about this man Sellick, about Grandfather’s other marriage.”

I surprised myself by how ready I was to give her some comfort. “Don’t worry. I’ll say nothing.”

She looked taken aback. “Really?”

“Really. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Surprise changed to bemusement in her face. “I thought you must do. I thought that’s why you started this whole business.”

“No.” I shook my head slowly. “If you can believe it, I was just after the truth all along.” It wasn’t wholly true, but it wasn’t wholly false. “It’s not done me much good.”

“It’s not done any of us much good.”

“The truth’s like that. I should have learnt as much from history a long time ago.” I moved towards the door, but stopped when she spoke again.

“Martin . . . I’m sorry if I misjudged you.”

I looked back. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. Then I left.

What did it matter, after all? A minor misjudgement. I couldn’t complain. I’d misjudged life as much as it had misjudged me. I didn’t blame Helen for blaming me. I wouldn’t have blamed anyone for doing that.

On the way back through the churchyard, I passed a gravedigger at work, shovelling damp clay onto a tarpaulin in a practised rhythm. He nodded to me when he saw me glance in his direction and carried on. To him, just a job of work. To me, the hole he was slowly shaping adjacent to the grave of Sir Gerald Couchman presaged much more than just a burial.

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Friday, June 17th was a day of rain in Miston. First light brought a wind-blown drizzle which intensified as the air stilled and settled into a steady, slanting rhythm. Like the gravedigger, it was there before us and would return long after we’d stolen away.

Whatever the rumour, however loud the whispers, officialdom had done Henry proud. A shabby funeral would have been an admission of guilt by association. So the cortège of glistening black limousines that swept silently into the village just before noon were numerous enough, the wreaths large and livid enough, the publicly proclaimed grief unmistakable enough to still—for a while—the clamour of doubt, the raising of questions. Yet the press photographers’ shutters clicked, the curious stood and stared. Everyone must have known that the solemnity of the service was only a truce.

The small church was full, mostly of people I didn’t recognize: party grandees and their entourage, directors of Couchman Enterprises and some loyal staff, a few villagers there out of respect for Elizabeth. I took my place in a pew beside Dora. She touched my elbow and nodded across at Sellick’s measured progress to a seat. He could only have been just behind me, but I hadn’t noticed. The thought was a chilling one: that he was at his most dangerous when he was most overlooked.

As the pallbearers carried the brassbound coffin to the altar, my eyes remained on Sellick: a keen-eyed sentinel scanning the black-clad figures and, yes, exchanging one eloquent glance with Timothy that signalled he wasn’t the pious mourner he seemed to be.

The family took their places in the pew in front of us. Only Elizabeth turned to acknowledge us. For the rest, Letty’s eyes were to the floor, Helen looked straight ahead, Ralph cast his bland antiquarian’s gaze to the stained glass and Timothy fingered his lips as if missing a cigarette. Perhaps they’d hoped I wouldn’t be there.

As the service proceeded, my mind went back only a matter of weeks to Ambrose’s brusque and ill-attended committal in Dewford. Only a matter of weeks? A matter also of revelation and reversal. So much had changed, yet so little had changed.

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Another tragic accident unsatisfactorily accounted for, another observation of ritual inadequate to the occasion.

And still there was Sellick. What did he think when he let the handful of clammy earth fall heavily onto the coffin where it had been lowered into the grave? What did the emphatic wiping of his gloved hands signify? Nothing to those who wept or wandered away. Something to those who thought they were watching the consignment of a victim.

The lounge at Quarterleigh, with extra chairs and a sideboard loaded by Dora with unwanted salads. The Couchmans, complete with old excisions and late additions, foregathered in distracted poses, some sitting, some standing, shaping and discarding ma-quettes of conversation, drinking a little, eating less.

Helen and her mother on a settee by the fireplace, talking aimlessly about how the proceedings had gone to take their minds off what the proceedings had meant. Ralph and Timothy by the window, Ralph explaining how to spot fake oil paintings while Timothy looked indolently uninterested and regularly topped up his gin. Elizabeth gently chiding Dora for preparing too much food while remembering, perhaps, a similar occasion 23 years before. Sellick eying me with silent threat from the opposite end of the room while toying with a tiny Wedgwood vase.

Elizabeth had evidently slipped out of the room briefly, because, at that moment, I noticed her come back in, carrying the package I knew contained the Postscript. She unwrapped it and laid it on the coffee table in front of Helen and Letty in a way which drew everybody’s attention.

“My dears,” she said, “you’ve now all met Mr. Sellick”—she pointed over to him—“and you all know what this document is.”

She patted the Postscript. “The time has come for us to discuss what to do with it. When I first invited Mr. Sellick here, it was to make good this family’s neglect of him: there is no easier way to word it. But, with Henry’s loss, there is no-one left who could be said, even indirectly, to have been a party to that neglect.” I looked at Letty: her face grey, expression erased. Then at Helen: hands 444

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and eyes moving, uncertain how to take such a candid statement.

“With Henry’s loss, we have suffered a blow from which we will neither easily nor swiftly recover.” Sellick, eyes like diamonds in a face of granite, assaying his disowners. “For that reason, it could be argued that it would be fairest of all to destroy this document, now that only Henry’s memory remains to be diminished by its contents.” Ralph was fiddling with something in his jacket pocket to cover a mixture of perplexity and embarrassment. Beside him, Timothy reclined languidly against a windowsill and indulged every leisurely nuance of lighting a cigarette. Elizabeth sat down in an armchair behind her. “So now, it’s up to you.”