The Graveyard Position (14 page)

“Let's sit down, dear, and you can tell me a bit about yourself,” she would say, and this opening part of the session could last anything from half an hour to an hour, and was usually thoroughly enjoyed by the clients, who had a strong vein of egotism (as well as credulity) in their makeup. When it finished and Clarissa got down to the real business of the consultation, she had learned quite as much as any more conventional counselor would have done. Often she would have guessed what the consultation was about, and was on her way to working out the most sensible solution to her client's problem.

She sometimes talked about these sessions with the young Merlyn.

“I had a right old fool today,” she would say. “He just wanted me to advise him to do what he'd decided to do already. I told him it would end in disaster.”

“Why did you do that?” Merlyn asked.

“Because what fools decide to do normally does end in disaster.”

The memories of his aunt when she was a vigorous, capable forty-five-year-old woman came flooding over Merlyn. He saw her at her writing desk (she had a whole string of correspondence-clients), he saw her coming through from the kitchen with one of her sizzling casseroles in her gloved hands, he saw her standing at the window commenting on life going by in the street.

“Mr. Robinson would hardly exist without his dog,” she had once said. “That and the doings of the neighbors. He's lost now; number fifteen only contains me, not the whole Cantelo clan. We gave his life an interest.”

Remembering that remark, Merlyn realized, as he had not at the time, that until Grandfather Cantelo died there had been at least some family activity centered on the Congreve Street house. Family had come and gone, mainly to visit the old man himself, with motives pure or self-interested as the case might be. After the house became Clarissa's there had been little or no activity. Why was that? Resentment at her inheriting the family home?

When he went upstairs those early memories of his aunt merged into later ones. By her bed was an extension telephone—an obvious precaution for an elderly person living on her own. It was from bed that she had often conducted her side of the conversations with him in the last year or so of her life. Those were sad memories. The vital, funny aunt had given way to someone who had to struggle to keep her conversation on an even keel, someone who knew she was failing but did not know how to conceal it. There had been no question in his own mind that she was sliding gently toward senility, but all suggestions that he come over, make arrangements for her care, met with agitation and blank refusal. She didn't want to be cared for, and that was that. Equally clear was the fact that she didn't want him to come back home, though she dearly wanted to see him. Merlyn had been made aware that her old conviction that he would be in danger was still strong.

So in those last phone calls—regular and loving as always—the poor mind slid backward and forward from wandering to urgency, from homely advice to vague, apocalyptic warnings. What part of all that rambling discourse was to be taken seriously, acted upon? That, he had never known.

“I'm writing something,” Clarissa would say, and his heart would sink. It surely would be nothing more than evidence of her ramblings, testimony to mental decay. “It will explain everything,” she would say, not even sounding convinced herself. It would explain nothing, Merlyn thought. She still alighted on reality now and then, but she was incapable of sustained thought.

As he shut the door of his aunt's bedroom, overwhelmed by sadness and a sense of waste, another remark of hers came back to him.

“I'll put it in the usual place,” she had said.

There had been “usual places” for a lot of things, to be collected by a lot of people—a key for young Rosalind, for emergencies, money for the paperboy, even a place where one or two favored clients could collect a weekly horoscope. However, the “usual place” for Merlyn was underneath the bedclothes in the airing cupboard. Money was left there for emergencies, and for paying any tradesman who called. This gave rise to standing jokes, and often the milkman or the baker's roundsman would wink when he received the warm notes and say, “Nothing nicer than a well-aired fiver.”

They were nice men, who probably hadn't the faintest idea who he was—probably thought he was a by-blow of Clarissa's, or her very-much-younger brother. Only the older residents of Congreve Street, in all probability, could have said precisely that he was the son of Thora, and that just because she had been a general favorite.

Merlyn wondered whether the airing cupboard still existed: central heating had been put in since his time, with probably a new boiler elsewhere. But when he went over to the large Edwardian bathroom, there it still was in the corner—a tall, white-painted cupboard stretching to the ceiling: not warm now, perhaps never warm, but still containing piles of bed linen and smaller piles of clean clothes, some of which Merlyn recognized. He thought for a moment, swallowed, then slid his hand under the bottom of the pile of sheets.

He brought out two pages of exercise-book lined paper.

His heart stopped. He recognized the spidery, all-over-the-place handwriting of Clarissa's later letters to him. He was under no illusions. His aunt had been in no state of mind to lay out a coherent argument. There would be no answers on these pages.

Nevertheless he felt a distinct excitement as he took the sheets down to the sitting room, poured himself a glass of his aunt Clarissa's brandy, with soda from the drinks cabinet and ice from the fridge, and sat down in the easy chair by the empty grate.

The pages were very difficult to decipher. But then, he told himself, so were her later letters, and these had in some ways trained him for the task: the first read-through gave you no more than a vague sense of what was on her mind. Then you had to set to and read again, and then again. As more and more of the letters became legible you got a clearer sense of what she was trying to say, though her mind was always sadly wayward.

There was one line in the middle of the first page that, to one well acquainted with her writing, was legible at once. It had clearly had pains taken with it.

They were all in it except me.

So far so good, but still puzzling. Who were “they”? The family? That was the most likely explanation, Merlyn decided. But what was “it”? He took a sip of his drink, then deciphered a scrawled phrase that slanted down from the legible sentence.

They knew that I would be the first

There was no full stop. The first what? To condemn? To argue?…To be suspected, Merlyn mused.

The spidery trailings of some of the rest of the random jottings made him sad. Here was Clarissa, trying to send him a message from the grave, and many of the things she wanted to say degenerated into total illegibility. The grave, as usual, would keep at least some of its secrets. Perhaps she hadn't been clear in her head what she wanted to say, and hence the illegibility.

But as he read the sentences through again, as with the letters, more words and phrases became legible, or at least capable of some speculative reading. But might they be misreadings, sending him off at a tangent—perhaps never to realize his mistake? There was something that looked like
Ros too y.

Might that be “Rosalind too young”? The letters were so ill formed that there was no way of telling. Still, the idea played around in the back of his mind: Too young for what?
When
had she been too young?

But having once made the leap into guesswork, he discovered one little collection of jottings going over the page in various directions but written with the same pen, and seeming to form a message to him.

Silly family p ? Or money?

Together, but by
one
(underlined shakily three times).

If p. Merlyn wd not underst.
Not
a C.

Taken together the first and last seemed to be toying with motives for a deed, and one of them—family pride?—Merlyn himself, not a Cantelo, would not understand. Merlyn was sure he was the one intended by this note, not his namesake. Clarissa would never have referred to her father as Merlyn.

He folded the two sheets of paper and went upstairs. He knew what he would find when he opened his bedroom door, and he had deliberately not done so before. “Nothing's been altered,” Clarissa had often said to him. Did he want, so late at night, to revert to his childhood, or his adolescence at least? He switched on the light, and suddenly the past was with him: he was sixteen again. He decided he could not take it in with a clear brain.

He went across the landing. In the guest bedroom was a single bed, with pillows and an eiderdown, though not made up. He decided he didn't need sheets and blankets, his aunt's preferred bedclothes, nor for that matter pajamas, because the night was warm. He would sleep there, like the guest he in a sense was. He went downstairs to get himself a glass of water.

It was when he switched on the light in the kitchen and was standing with a glass at the sink that he heard noises. First they seemed like little moans, and he had nightmare visions of a woman lying wounded on the back step, visions that did not go away when what sounded like scratchings at the door succeeded the moans.

Then suddenly Merlyn was back twenty-odd years, in that same kitchen, and Alex, his aunt's mongrel dog, who sometimes disappeared on his nightly tiddle-walk before bedtime, would come back when someone was making a late-night milk drink or fetching a snack from the fridge, and he was afraid he would not get back in the warm before morning. Often the last person in the kitchen had been Merlyn.

He went and unbolted the door—barks accompanied that—and then opened it. A small brown bundle of long hair hurtled in and ran around the kitchen and hallway, yelping and snuffling in an ecstasy, then running back to sniff Merlyn's feet and bare legs, then back out to explore the whole ground floor room by room, obviously in quest of something.

“You won't find her, my girl,” Merlyn said.

This was clearly Dolly, his aunt Clarissa's last dog, whom he had heard about often enough on the phone. He blamed himself for not asking what had been done with her. Presumably one of the neighbors had taken her in, or one of the family who didn't live too far away. Though both dogs and cats, he knew, could trail enormous distances back to their former homes, Dolly did not look as if she was at the end of an exhausting trek. He switched off the kitchen light and began to make his way upstairs. The dog barked its pleasure and got between his feet as he made for the light in the spare bedroom. Once on the landing Dolly darted straight into Clarissa's room and onto the bed. Merlyn heard whimperings when she found the bed was empty.

In the spare bedroom Merlyn finished undressing, got under the eiderdown, and switched off the light. A minute later, as he expected, he felt the little dog jump onto his bed. His face was licked, as a sign of acceptance, and then Dolly settled into the space at the back of his knees. She gave a long, contented, withdrawing sigh, and soon he heard something rather like a genteel snore. Then he himself, less contented, less at peace, nevertheless sank into a healthy sleep.

He did not hear, in the early hours of the morning, the sound of a crash of some kind, several streets away, or the sound of the activity it aroused. Dolly got up, pushed her nose under the curtain, but saw nothing in the early-morning light. She jumped back on the bed, walked around to find a new place that suited her, then flopped down. The two of them slept soundly until the front doorbell rang at seven-thirty.

The young woman outside the front door was wearing a dark blue uniform and a peaked cap. Merlyn, in hastily thrown-on trousers and unbuttoned shirt, blinked and did a double take. He had a vague impression this might be a parking warden or a member of one of the Social Services who hadn't been told his aunt was dead.

“Is there some mistake?” he asked ungraciously. Then he looked down at the young woman's ID. Her name was Shirley Dutton and she was a WPC.

“Oh—I'm sorry,” said Merlyn hurriedly. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Are you Merlyn Docherty?”

“That's right.”

“Did you buy a car yesterday, registration number M563 TUM?”

“Yes, I did. How did you—”

Merlyn blinked again. His eye had strayed from the young woman's face to the street outside. Where his newly acquired car had been was an empty space.

“Yes, I'm afraid—”

“Well, this is bloody quick!” exploded Merlyn. “I knew there were a lot of joyriders these days in Leeds, but just one night—”

“I'm afraid it's not as simple as that, sir. Do you mind if I come in?”

Merlyn stood aside and led her through to the sitting room. The young policewoman looked around her.

“Are you the owner of this house, sir?”

“I am. Just inherited it, as a matter of fact. I took control of it yesterday, as well as buying the car.”

“I see. I thought this didn't look like a man's room—if I'm not being rude.”

“It's my aunt Clarissa's. A well-known spiritualist and clairvoyant.”

“I see.” The woman blinked. “Well, that's something I haven't come across before.”

“They have entries in the Yellow Pages, believe it or not.”

“So you took possession of the house yesterday, and bought a fairly old car at the same time?”

“Yes. I'm not interested in staying in the country long, and I didn't want to fork out any more money to the car-hire firm. You got on to me quickly.”

“The computers at the DVLA are very efficient. We rely on them a lot…. So your aunt died recently?”

“About a month ago.”

“But you've only just returned to Britain?”

“No, I've been in a hotel. I was back for the funeral—I timed it deliberately. Most of the family thought I was dead.”

The young woman was bewildered.

“Why would they think that, sir?”

“Because that's what they were told. Actually I've been through all this with Sergeant Peace, from Millgarth Police Headquarters.”

“Dexter Peace? Charlie? It's quite likely he'll be here before long.”

“Good…but can you put me in the picture? Is there usually so much police interest in a car stolen by a joyrider?”

WPC Dutton shook her head.

“No, of course there's not. It's usually a matter for the fire brigade and maybe one of us. This one didn't end with a fire, perhaps luckily, but it did end with a death. The young man in the car died when he crashed at high speed into a Heavy Goods Vehicle down the hill toward the Kirkstall crossroads.”

“I see. I'm sorry.”

“There were probably others in the car, or at least one, but they got out and we haven't yet found any trace of them. The boy was dead on arrival at Leeds General Infirmary.”

Merlyn looked hard at her.

“But there's something else, isn't there?”

“Yes. The accident happened toward three—two fiftyfive to be precise. The car was turned over just above the Kirkstall Lites pub. We've been able to examine it.”

It was like a strong hand gripping Merlyn's throat.

“Go on.”

“The brakes seem to have been interfered with.”

Merlyn fell forward and his hands went to hold his head. He found the information hard to absorb. Eventually he straightened up and looked at WPC Dutton.

“I feel like I've killed that young man myself.”

“That's nonsense. I'm sure you've no reason to feel that. We think someone put a hole in the brake pipe and he is the one who needs to feel that. Had you any reason to think that there was someone trying to kill you?”

“Not really. Though the suggestion had arisen…. I've tried to guard against anything like this happening by making a will, leaving everything to the NSPCC.”

“That is, nothing to anyone in your family.”

“That's basically it.” He shook his head sadly. “Doesn't seem to have worked, does it?”

“I'm afraid it doesn't. Money wasn't the motive if someone is after you.”

“Sergeant Peace knows all about this. If he's coming…”

“Just wait one moment while I get on to Millgarth. I'll see if he is going to be on this one.” She went to the front door and down to the gate, taking out her mobile. When she got through she nodded a few times and then came back to Merlyn at the door. “They're taking this very seriously. You can see why, can't you? Either these joyriders did this themselves—for added kicks, for a really exciting ride before they jumped out of the car—”

“They'd need to be off their heads.”

“Some of them are, helped by drink or drugs. Or the alternative is that it was aimed at you. In which case all sorts of questions arise about how someone knew this was your car.”

Merlyn grimaced.

“It's been parked outside this house since early yesterday evening.”

“So someone has presumably been along and seen it. Anyway, these are not matters for me. I'm just the messenger. Charlie will be along soon, and Superintendent Oddie will be with him. He's the one in charge. Apparently they both know something about you and your position—Sergeant Peace has obviously handed the basic information on. So they have a bit of a head start, if you do turn out to be involved. They'll be here in half an hour or so. Why don't you go and get dressed, have some breakfast, or whatever?”

The mention of breakfast reminded Merlyn that he hadn't eaten since lunchtime the day before. He darted down to the nearest newsagent-cum-corner-shop and bought eggs, bacon, and tomatoes. He put some rashers into one of his aunt's frying pans (he recognized it), then broke a couple of eggs in. When he got down from throwing some more clothes on he found the pan was awash with water and white goo from the bacon. He wondered whether Grandfather Cantelo would have found this unappetizing mess “the essence of Englishness.” Wishing he'd thought to buy bread he tipped the fried stuff onto a plate and eventually ate the results without relish. When Charlie arrived he introduced Superintendent Oddie and they went down the hall and into the sitting room. Deciding they were not about to conduct a séance or table-turning, Merlyn opened the curtains. Charlie and Mike Oddie looked around, surprised if not exactly impressed.

“This is where Auntie entertained the mugs, is it?” Charlie asked.

“Clients. She treated it seriously, and so did they.”

“Sorry. I'd forgotten it was all a cross between Gypsy Petulengro and the Citizens' Advice Bureau.”

“Don't take any notice of him, Mr. Docherty,” said Oddie. “He doesn't do the hushed voice and deepest-sympathy stuff unless there's really no option. Could we sit down and talk this over?”

“Please,” said Merlyn, gesturing toward the easy chairs and the table.

“Anyone for tarot?” Charlie asked. Then, sobering down, he said, “I've told the superintendent all I know—that is, the state of play up until you came and talked over the book with Felicity. What's happened since? I gather you must be the accepted heir, the true half-Cantelo?”

“Yes, the Forensic Science Service has pronounced me who I said I was. No surprise to me, of course, though people
do
sometimes get nasty shocks as to who they are. I've been to see my father and his family. I suspect it was a bit of a surprise to him to learn he was my father. If he's heard.”

Both men looked at him.

“Come again? Why should that be?”

“I suspect he'd got the mad idea that I was really the result of an incestuous relationship between Grandfather Cantelo and his daughter Thora—my mother.”

Mike Oddie whistled. Then he raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“I was named after him,” explained Merlyn. “And Grandfather seems to have led a thoroughly disgraceful life in his later years, involving a lot of family covering-up. I've met—at a rather grim family party—a cousin of mine called Roderick Massey, born Cantelo. I've been wondering a bit about his paternity. He is mentioned in Aunt Clarissa's will, for no good reason I can think of, apart from that possibility. Clarissa was always drawn to people others shunned.”

Oddie held up his hand.

“Wait. We're jumping several guns here. And we're in danger of concentrating on the family, and dark deeds in its past. Surely that's not the only possibility. The Cantelo clothing business was a very important part of the Leeds rag trade not so long ago. The answer could just as soon be in the family business as the family scandals.”

Merlyn felt he had been pulled up short, and thought for a bit.

“Business matters? From thirty years ago, or longer? Isn't that unlikely?”

Oddie clung to his idea.

“You seem to be considering
family
matters from thirty years ago the motive force. Isn't that equally unlikely?”

Merlyn shook his head.

“No, because family matters
do
cause long shadows. The results live on. Jake, my father, has lived with his suspicions about my paternity for a long, long time. If Grandfather Cantelo is the father of Roderick Massey, then it's less shocking than outright incest, but still pretty scandalous, and would have been pretty hurtful to his son at the time. Sleeping with Paul's wife, his daughter-in-law, would have been the talk of Headingley.”

“
Would
have been—thirty years ago, and if people had known. It's still something people would shake their heads over, but still…Is the family so dependent on a respectable reputation that anyone would act to keep something like that quiet?”

“All we're saying,” put in Charlie, “is that it's much too early to put all our eggs in that particular basket.”

“Fair enough,” said Merlyn. “Still, I suppose you'll be wanting to talk to all the family.”

“Yes, in time. But first we've got to talk to the family of the dead boy, Terry Bates, then to any other boys involved last night. Joyriders hunt in packs as a rule. Probably the parents will swear they were at home all night, if necessary claiming to have checked their bedrooms every ten minutes. This is most likely a blind alley, but we have to go up it.”

“Then we begin broadening out,” said Oddie. Merlyn nodded—he was being told, not consulted. “That's when the Cantelo family comes into things. Perhaps you could tell us about them now, could you? Charlie will take down the details, because there are quite a lot of them, aren't there?”

“Definitely,” said Merlyn with relish, rather enjoying the thought of handing them the problem. “By the standards of the time an enormous family—a Catholic one without the religion. Right, first the three boys. Hugh, definitely dead, with a daughter, Rosalind. Then Gerald, I think dead, although I've never bothered to ask, but after having fathered two sons, Malachi and Francis. A bit of a religious maniac, apparently, at least when the boys were growing up. Then Paul, who took off soon after the birth of his son Roderick, now known as Roderick Massey, after his stepfather. Got those?”

“Just a tick…Right, got them,” said Charlie.

“Now for the daughters. Emily married a man called Fowldes, and is the mother of Edward. Then Marigold, married to Stanley Sowden at a fairly advanced age, but became mother to Caroline. Then there was Clarissa, whom you know about. The youngest was Thora, my mother, and I'm her only surviving child. She died of breast cancer. That's the lot—simplicity itself!”

Charlie, still scribbling, didn't seem to think so.

“Do I need to go further down the tree? I presume there are great-grandchildren of the old man as well.”

“Yes, one or two. All school age. You don't want to know.”

“Right,” said Oddie. “Well, that seems to stitch things up nicely, I think we can go about other business for the moment. By the way, I'm afraid your car is a write-off, sir.”

“I can get another,” said Merlyn, then added: “If I want to.”

“Exactly, sir. Maybe you'd feel easier on public transport for the moment. Or on your own two feet.”

“Maybe. I'll give it a try. We don't use feet much in Brussels. But you're quite right; the idea of getting another old banger doesn't appeal.”

Merlyn let Oddie and Peace make their farewells, and watched them as they made their way down the front path and out of the gate. Somehow the idea of staying in and around the house that day seemed to appeal strongly.