The Belting Inheritance (12 page)

It seemed to me that this was the
coup de grâce.
Stephen was staring at David with an expression of pleasure on his face, like that of the boxing fan who sees a fighter he hates punch drunk, on the ropes, at the mercy of his opponent. Foster lighted a cigarette, but he still looked at David and waited for a reply. Arbuthnot opened his eyes wide, looked hard at Foster, then half-closed them. David raised his head. There was sweat on his face.

“If I were to say that I can’t remember every bloody thing – ” he began, and then stopped. “Oh hell, what’s the use? I just don’t remember anything about Nicholas Paget or what’s her name, Magda. The thing is that not one of you bastards understands what I’ve been through, and what it can do to a man.” It was not an adequate answer, but Foster was continuing to ask questions, and somehow I felt the knockout blow had not been delivered.

“Let’s come to the war. What unit was I in?”

“We were together for a while. We did our basic training at – ” He looked up at the ceiling. “– at Greyswell, right? I’ll tell you something about that you won’t like remembering, you had a girl friend there and we used to call her the Sex Express, right? I may have forgotten about Magda but I remember the Sex Express. She existed, didn’t she?”

“Yes.” From where I sat Foster’s features had not changed their expression. “What pubs did we use when we were training?”

“That’s not easy. I can only remember one, the Goat and Compasses, right?”

“Where did – ”

David interrupted. “Damn you, is that right or not?”

“We used a pub of that name, yes.”

“Then just have the goodness to say so, you sanctimonious bastard.”

Foster was imperturbable. “What happened after that?”

“We were commissioned about the same time, and a couple of months later we parted company. I was Number Five Bomber Group, you were in fighters.”

“Nineteen forty-four, did we meet then?” Foster waited for a reply and when it did not come, continued. “Did we meet in London on your last leave, the last one before you were shot down?” Still the other did not reply. “Come on, man, if we met it would be then. You’d just given evidence in the Sullivan affair, remember? It isn’t something you’d forget. Did we meet?”

David glared at him. “Yes, we met. The news of Hugh’s death had come through. We had a night out. I was trying to forget it.”

“All right,” Foster said suddenly. The tension of his body relaxed, I could see even sideways that he was smiling, he put out his hand. David took it. Stephen’s eyes were popping out of his head in surprise.

“What – ” he began, stopped, and began again. “Do you mean to say – ”

Foster turned to him, a solemn specialist giving his opinion. “I can’t be absolutely certain, but I’m prepared to accept that this is my friend David Wainwright.”

“Accept him.” I thought Stephen would choke.

“At first I was very doubtful. He’s changed a lot, but then after his experiences that’s not surprising. But his answers to the questions have pretty well convinced me.”

“Your wife – Magda. He didn’t know about her.”

Foster laughed. “I haven’t got a wife, let alone one named Magda. If this were not David, wouldn’t he have said yes, he remembered her, and even invented a detail or two? That was one trap, and the motor bicycle was another. He came through them both.”

Arbuthnot interrupted. “There is a technique that intelligent criminals use. When you’re in doubt, keep silent or say you don’t know. Fortunately there aren’t too many intelligent criminals.”

“Of course, of course.” Foster waved one well-shaped hand. “That’s why I say I can’t be positive. I am offering an opinion, not stating a fact.”

“The letters,” Stephen said desperately. “He didn’t remember how he wrote to you.”

“A good point,” Foster conceded, lecturer to student. “But after all, it’s been a long time, and he’s been through the mill.” David looked down at his hands, each of which contained a chessman. He put them back into the box as Foster said casually, “By the way, there’s one other thing. That old appendicitis scar, you won’t mind if I have a look at that?”

David stopped, his body rigid with some kind of excitement. “Appendicitis scar.”

“Just a matter of form, old man.”

“Why the hell should I let you see it?” I had the impression that if the chessmen had been still in David’s hand he would have thrown them at Foster. “You come down and put questions to me as if I were in the dock, trick questions at that –
and
there’s a policeman ready to take a note of anything I say that’s out of line – and then you say ‘Come on, David, get your trousers down and show us your scar’. I’m not bloody well having any, I can tell you that.”

“I’m very sorry.” Foster magisterially waved aside the remarks that Stephen was itching to make. “Of course you’re perfectly within your rights – ”

“Thank you.”

“There is no need for sarcasm. I was going to add that this is bound to affect my feelings.”

“Why? Why should I consent to being humiliated?”

“It’s up to you,” Foster said, and Arbuthnot spoke at the same time.

“This seems to be a chance of clearing things up once and for all. I should have thought you’d like to take it.”

A muscle in David’s cheek was twitching. “Let me tell you, my body’s all scars, not just appendicitis.”

Foster said nothing more. His face was a handsome mask. Stephen could not restrain himself. “Don’t you understand, Foster, he’s got no scar, you’ve called his bluff, that’s all you had to do, he wouldn’t dare – ”

He stopped, for David had nodded to Foster. They began to move out of the room. Stephen stood with his mouth open. “Where are you going?”

“I’ve decided to let Vivian examine me. But I’m not having the rest of you there.”

“But why shouldn’t I – ” Stephen began, and then faltered. He was leaving a great many sentences unfinished. Foster spoke, as always with that air of saying the last word on the subject.

“It seems to me entirely reasonable that David should want this examination to take place in private. If I may say so, Wainwright, I am here at your request, or at the request of your ambassador Barrington. If you don’t trust me to perform the examination, then say so.” Stephen was silenced. “You have no objection, Inspector?”

“Why should I object?” It seemed to me that Arbuthnot was enjoying himself. They were not away more than five minutes. When they came back a look at David’s smiling face was enough to tell me what had happened, but Stephen had to know the worst. “Well?” he said. “Well?”

“The scar is there.”

“You remember it, do you? It’s in the same place?”

“The scar is there,” Foster repeated.

I had no reason to like Stephen, but I felt sorry for him then. He looked about him, ran a hand through his hair, and went out of the room as though he could not bear any more.

“And never called me brother,” David murmured. The phrase jarred me by what seemed its callousness. I did not approve of Stephen’s attitude, but was this all that David could say in his moment of victory? It seemed to me that there was a lack of warmth in the goodbyes exchanged between David and Foster, although I hope I have made it clear that Foster’s emotional temperature seemed to me at all times sub-normal. It was not surprising that there were no emotional farewells, but it did seem to me a little strange that they made no arrangements for meeting in London, and that there seemed more constraint in Foster’s manner than there had been before the examination. It was Arbuthnot who walked out with him to the courtyard, and they stood there talking for a minute or two beside Foster’s car. David watched them through the window, his hands picking up little knick-knacks and putting them down again. He spoke, and his voice was high-pitched.

“I can’t take much more of this. I’ve had enough of it, I’m not going to answer any more questions from anybody.”

He went out of the drawing-room, and after a minute I followed him, reaching the courtyard in time to see the Austin Princess going out of the drive.

Arbuthnot had his pipe going again, and its blue smoke drifted upwards into the air, yet he looked nervously defiant about it even out here, as though afraid that Lady W might pop out at any moment and rebuke a member of the lower orders for smoking near the premises. He said with some satisfaction, “Quite an afternoon for the Wainwright clan. David is really David, or is he? His lady friend says no, his doctor friend says a doubtful yes, so who do we believe?”

His lady friend! I had forgotten Betty Urquhart in the stress of Foster’s examination and its result, but now I caught hold of the inspector’s last phrase. What made him think Foster’s identification was doubtful?

“Because it was. You saw his manner afterwards, and I asked him what he had found. There’s an appendicitis scar, and it’s much in the place he remembers, but it seemed to him that it was too recent. And the man’s body is a mass of scars, he was telling the truth about that, and a couple of them partly cover the appendicitis scar. So really the verdict is not proven, as you might put it.”

“Why didn’t he say so?”

He chuckled. “That’s the sort of man he is, d’you see. He can recognise a nasty mess, and he wants to keep away from it. He pretty well told me as much out here, said he didn’t want to be involved any further. That’s the upper class for you all over.” I was not flattered by the fact that he seemed to identify me with his own class, whatever he considered that to be. “I think I might have another word with Master David.”

“He said he’d had enough, he wouldn’t answer any more questions.”

“Ah well, time enough. I must be getting along, they’ll be looking for me at the station. I might get corrupted here, might get to envying all these smart cars.” He patted his old but well-preserved vehicle.

“Why did you talk about the – the Sullivan affair – in that threatening way, when you told me David had nothing to do with it?”

“I didn’t exactly say that, did I?” He got into the car, looked at me consideringly. “Here’s a bit of information you can pass on. We’ve heard from the Paris police. They’ve checked at the address from which that original letter to Lady Wainwright was written, and a man resembling your David Wainwright had been living there all right, under the name of Stiver. But be hadn’t been there for a year as he said, only for a few weeks. What d’you make of that?”

I made nothing of it. The car started first time, and he was away. The setting sun in the blue sky was red as blood.

The Last Time

I remember dinner that night very well, for it was the last meal David ate in the house, and the last time I saw Lady W alive. She came down leaning on David’s arm, and it was noticeable that ever since his return she had become weaker. She drank only a mouthful of soup, and refused the roast chicken, but she dominated the dinner-table – that is to say, the family – as she had done ever since I had known her.

“I had Humphries here today,” she said, as though we might have been unaware of it. “And you know what he came for, I told you, I’ve changed my will.” David was sitting next to her as before, and she patted his hand. He looked as if the meat in his mouth might choke him. “At the same time, I don’t want you to think, any of you, that your names have been left out. You are all mentioned. I still have a sense of justice.” She paused, crumbled bread which she did not eat. “That policeman was here, I saw you talking to him in the courtyard, Christopher. He was smoking. I trust that he didn’t do so indoors. A jumped-up little man,” she said severely, although it was not accurate to call Arbuthnot little. “The post-war generation,” she added with equal inaccuracy.

There was silence, broken by Uncle Miles. His bald pate had been made rosy by the sun. “A very lively afternoon’s cricket,” he said. “A beautiful innings by Phebey.”

Lady W turned upon him her still-devastating eye, and as she spoke I realised that although she might be in bed all day the intelligence service provided by Peterson was a good one. “You missed your former wife this afternoon. She came here, drunk of course, accompanied by a Negro. Was it at your invitation?”

Uncle Miles managed to observe the truth, although not the whole truth. “No, certainly I didn’t invite her.”

“I am glad to hear it. She came uninvited.” Her glance moved from one to the other of us. “Peterson tells me that one of your dogs attacked her companion, Clarissa. I always thought that those dogs had a use.”

The chicken was succeeded by a chocolate mousse. “We had another visitor,” Lady W went on. “I believe he was an old friend of yours, David.”

“Yes, Doctor Foster,” David muttered. He seemed in low spirits.

“Vivian Foster, isn’t that right? I remember him coming here when your dear father was alive, rather a conceited boy. Did you ask him down? No? Strange that we should have these uninvited visitors so soon after your return.” She looked round the table. “That policeman stayed an unconscionably long time. Did he favour any of you with information about his investigation into the death of poor Thorne?”

Nobody said anything and I became irritated, as I had been before, by their reluctance to annoy her. “I don’t think he came about that.”

“Indeed?” She gave me a nearly-annihilating glance.

“He’s interested in David’s life in Paris.” I addressed David. “The French police have been making inquiries at the address the letter came from. They say you were only there a few weeks.”

If I had had any expectations about the effect of this remark, what happened would have exceeded them. David pushed aside his mousse, got up from the table, and said in the high-pitched voice I had heard that afternoon, “Excuse me, Mamma. I’m not going to stand this, I’m not going to be questioned any more.” He flung down his napkin and went oat

“Poor boy, he feels the strain,” Lady W said as she looked after him, and I wish I had known, I wish I knew now, what she was thinking. Looking back, I am sure that David’s return was a great joy to her, but how much was it blended with a belief that he had come home simply in the hope that she would change her will, as she had done? I don’t know. In these last weeks of her life she was living in a world of fantasy, one in which she compelled reality to conform to the shapes made by her imagination. She wished to find the son she had lost and she would accept nothing less. That is what I think now, although I cannot be sure of it.

She left us and went to her room a few minutes after David’s departure, saying that she felt tired, but refusing help in getting to her room. I wish I could think of something memorable to say about this last view of her, for more than anybody else she had changed the course of my life, but I can recall nothing but the authoritative nod she gave as she slowly rose from the table, and my feeling of regret that her white hair should be again so limp and tangled.

I did not want to hear Stephen and Clarissa lamenting in detail the injustice done them, nor to hear Miles joining in, so I left them and went to my Thomas Lovell. There I tried to write a poem, but got no further than the first two lines:

The bloody values of an evening sky,

The dark calligraphy of clouds

I tried to read Max Beerbohm, but could not concentrate on him. I lay on the bed and took the leftermost book on the shelf beside me. I had read somewhere a practice recommended for aspiring men of letters, that of keeping beside their beds a shelf of books taken at random, one of which would be looked at every evening and then either discarded or more thoroughly investigated on the following day. The idea assumed both leisure and the existence of a library from which to make the random selection, and both of these existed for me out of term time, when I gathered an armful of books from the Pam Moor or one of the corridors, and went through them. The book I took down was an elegant edition of Donne’s
Songs and Sonets,
and this in itself shows the random nature of my chosen armful, for I knew them well. I had the book open, when there was a light tap at the door and David came in.

“I thought I should find you here.” He looked about him. “You’ve certainly made this very individual.”

I waited for him to say why he had come, but he seemed in no hurry. “You do a lot of writing. You’re hoping to take that up, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I want – would you do something for me, without telling anybody else, I mean?”

“I don’t know. You’d better tell me what it is.” I swung my legs off the bed and looked at him. His movements were jerky, unco-ordinated, and a muscle was twitching angrily in his cheek. I remembered the almost impertinent assurance with which he had greeted Betty Urquhart, and it struck me that he was subject to extraordinarily sudden changes of mood.

“I don’t think I can stick this much longer. Stephen and Miles hate me, they’d rather I’d stayed dead. If I’d known what it was going to be like – ”

“You would have done?”

“I think I would, yes.”

“You haven’t told me what you want me to do.”

“Carry a message, a letter, I mean. Deliver a letter for me tomorrow morning, that’s all. Will you do that?”

“Where to?”

“A place in Filehurst. It wouldn’t take you long.”

“Why can’t you do it yourself?”

“Reasons. I don’t know why you ask all these questions,
you’ve
got no cause to be against me.” There was something pettish yet pathetic about this, and there was a rising note of hysteria in his voice as he went on. “I really don’t think I can stay, I can’t endure it.”

“What’s this letter to do with you staying?”

“I can’t tell you. I thought you would trust me. You like her, don’t you, Mamma, I mean?” I did not reply, but he went on as though I had said yes. “Then you can understand, if it weren’t for her I wouldn’t stay another hour to be insulted. When she’s so ill, I don’t like to leave her.”

“You must have seen a great change in her.”

“Ghastly, yes. Yet do you know, essentially she still looks just the same to me as she did ten years ago.”

It was not with any idea of testing him, but simply because I had been reading “The Undertaking” when he came in, that I quoted:

But he who loveliness within

Hath found, all outward loathes,

For he who colour loves, and skin,

Loves but their oldest clothes.

Yet he took it as a trap and so it was in effect, although not in intention. “What’s that?” he cried. “What is it you’re saying, what do you mean?”

“It’s a quotation. From Donne’s
Songs and Sonets.
The book you kept with you for years in Russia and brought back, remember?”

For a moment there was in his eyes the terror of a hunted animal. Then he said shrilly, “You’re like all the rest. Trying to trick me. I was a fool ever to think I could trust you.” He seemed about to say something more. Then he pawed inadequately at the air with his hands, turned and left the room. When he had gone I knew that, whatever people like Foster might say, and in spite of Lady W, for me the die was cast. It had been a trivial incident, yet it was decisive. I should never again believe that he was David Wainwright.

It must have been some time after nine when he left me, and it was half an hour later that, on my way to the lavatory, which was some distance from my room, I heard him speaking on the telephone. It was a peculiarity of the sentry box that, although what was said in it could not be heard by any listener on the ground floor, the top of the box was made of some sort of thin wood that acted as a sounding box. Standing as I was in the gallery above, I could not fail to hear every word. I will not deny that when I heard David’s voice I stood still and listened.

“What?” I heard him say. “What do you mean? Are you absolutely sure of that? Didn’t he leave any message? Are you sure that he left no message for Mr Wainwright?” There was a pause and then he spoke in a voice from which all vibrancy, all tone, had vanished. “If he should come in, tell him I called. He’ll know the number. Thank you.” The telephone made its usual jangling sound when he replaced it, and then I heard him close the door of the sentry box, stand outside it for a moment, and begin to ascend the stairs. He came up them like an old man.

I could not sleep that night. Eyes wide, staring up at the invisible ceiling, I speculated. Who could the telephone call have been made to, when David had said that he had no friends in this country? Perhaps the call had been made to somebody abroad, in Paris say? But I believed that I did not believe this, that in my heart I knew the call had been made to somebody nearby. I do not know why I should have been so certain of this, except that one uses a different tone of voice for local calls from the tone one uses for calls made at a greater distance. The longer the distance the louder the voice, I said to myself drowsily, and then, always with my eyes open, it should be understood, I elaborated in my mind the voice that would be used for somebody in Edinburgh, in Leeds, Derby, London, Maidstone. Edinburgh would be an almost continuous shout, Maidstone comparatively a whisper. What sort of voice would a spy use? And, tangling myself up like Uncle Miles, I varied this by saying: what sort of you would a voice spy? This is the last moment before falling asleep, I said to myself, and as often before falling asleep the truth will become suddenly plain to you. The trick after that is to hold on to it. In that last moment before sleep I understood everything. David was a spy, a spy in the service of Ulfheim, but Ulfheim knew that the game was up and had left the hotel that was their usual meeting place. Ulfheim, disguised as a clergyman, was moving about the country and was prepared to give up spying in favour of the sale of pornographic postcards, he was proposing to get himself appointed vicar of Appledore like Trebitsch Lincoln, and once appointed would make up his dispensations in plain packets which included the photographs, but Arbuthnot in the guise of a wholesaler in these photographs was setting a trap for him. From his suitcase, Ulfheim produced
something
with long trailing wires…

With an effort I jerked myself awake, to see Stephen standing in the doorway, white-faced as ever. He was carrying a big torch which he shone directly into my eyes. “Get up, that swine’s set fire to the house, he knows he’s finished,” he said hoarsely. As I scrambled out of bed he said urgently that there was no time to get dressed. Why was he carrying a torch, I asked, and he snapped back that the electricity had been cut off, and that I shouldn’t waste time in asking silly questions. I noticed that although he too was wearing pyjamas and dressing-gown he had on his stiff white collar. Outside Clarissa was shouting something confusing about her dogs. I heard knocking, and when I asked Stephen what it was, he said that Miles was trying to break down that man’s bedroom door. I said to Stephen that I must save my pictures. “Don’t be a fool,” he said scornfully. “How can you save them? If I turn off the torch you can’t see where they are.” He suited his action to the words, and the room was completely dark. I cried out and put my hand to where the light switch should have been, but there was no switch, no way of obtaining light…

With an effort I jerked myself awake. My hand was on the switch. I pressed it, and the room was flooded with light. My pyjamas were clammy with sweat. I looked round the room. There was no sign of Stephen, no smell of smoke. A nightmare, that was all.

I looked at my watch. The time was half past four. It was nonsense, then, to think that I had not slept. I had been asleep and something had wakened me, but what? I got out of bed and went across to the window. Birds were calling, a wind was blowing, it was almost dawn. Thirty feet away a wicket gate that led into the kitchen garden was flapping open and shut. The noise it made was no doubt the knocking I had heard in my dream. But the wicket gate was always kept shut, and surely it would have woken me before had it been knocking all night? As I stared at it, an idea came into my mind. I put on my dressing-gown, a gaily-coloured one made of Chinese silk embroidered with dragons, and padded along the corridors to David’s room. When there was no answer to my knock, I turned the door handle. His bed had been used, but he was not in the room.

It was what I had expected, and I did not really need the confirmation given me when I opened the great mahogany wardrobe and saw that his clothes and the single case he had brought were gone. The man who called himself David Wainwright had vanished, and I had not the least doubt that he would never return. He had become increasingly alarmed by the police investigation, he had become aware of the pitfalls that lay around him on all sides even in such matters as identifying a quotation from Donne, he had made an unsuccessful attempt to get in touch with the man for whom he had been working, and when this failed he had given up, his nerve strained beyond endurance. Perhaps he had gone to bed still meaning to face things out, but during the night had decided that the threat of a murder charge was too much
for him. Or perhaps he had made up his mind to run immediately after the abortive telephone call, and had then chosen his moment. Either way it was over, we had won (I say “we” for I identified myself as a matter of course with the rest of the family), and there was no good reason for the disappointment I felt. He had gone, but he had left unresolved mysteries behind him. I looked round the room in the hope of finding explanations.