After Clare (25 page)

‘You'll keep your promise, you won't tell my father?' He inclined his head. ‘I was only eleven, but I wasn't a fool, you know,' she added, unexpectedly. ‘I knew such things went on, even then. After I overheard that conversation, well, it didn't come to me in a flash or anything like that, it was just that it became impossible not to see what was going on between Dirk and my mother.'

‘Your father won't learn about them from me.'

‘Oh,' she said, ‘it's not that. Dad's no fool, either. He doesn't like Dirk, and maybe there's a reason for that, I don't know. But don't let him know who you heard this from. He mustn't know it was me, that I sank so low as to listen to a private conversation, he would hate that.' Unexpectedly, her smile returned. ‘He only loses his temper about once a year, but I'd rather be elsewhere when he does.'

Mrs Gaunt's repertoire was seemingly not extensive. That night's supper was rabbit pie again, this time followed by plum duff. Hardly appropriate food for a day such as today, but the coolness that followed the storm had taken off most of the heat, and both men had been hungry. Willard had tucked in and even Novak, having eaten nothing since his cheese and biscuit breakfast supplement, had done his best. Now, in the small parlour at the back of the pub where they ate, away from the noisy tap room, Willard sat upright in a wooden Windsor chair, folded his hands across his stomach and instantly went to sleep.

The meal had no such soporific effect on Novak, although he, too, felt overfed. At home – in the unlikely event he'd managed to get home in time for a family supper – Evie would be climbing on his knee, clamouring for a story from one of her fairy books before bed, Hannah would be quietly sewing or knitting, eleven-year-old Oliver would be fiddling with his home-made crystal set, finally driving them all mad with the incessant crackles coming across the ether. In the end Novak would remonstrate, but mildly. He always tried to hide his secret pride in his clever son. He sighed, put aside thoughts of domesticity and picked up his notes.

Fountain pen in hand, he flicked through the scant pages, only kept for the necessary facts he must report back to Brownlow. Impressions and conjecture he preferred to keep in his head.

PETER SHOLTO.
Weekly boarder at his school, only home at weekends and holidays
.
Not academically inclined at school. Shone in the handiwork and woodwork classes, but since this had largely been regarded as something to keep the boys occupied in their spare time, it was not overencouraged.

Edmund Sholto had confirmed that the glue Novak had scraped from the drawer was indeed the same sort of fish glue that Peter had used in his cabinet-making. Glue came in slabs, and had to be heated before use. After that, getting it to Leysmorton before it hardened again might have been a problem but, recalling the tools he had kept at Leysmorton, Novak felt pretty sure there would have been a glue pot somewhere on the premises.

That his other activities included blackmail was now clearly evident, reinforced by what Rosie Markham had reported overhearing about the notes that had passed between Stronglove and her mother. Novak's fountain pen nib spluttered as he wrote:
N.B. See Poppy Drummond again. Soon.

It was clearly blackmail money, almost certainly contributed by Stronglove, and possibly Stella Markham, too, in that laburnum wood box, though it still puzzled Novak that Stronglove, who had ridden out other scandals, would submit to threats by Sholto to keep an affair quiet. Of course, it would have been a tricky situation, living in such close proximity to Stella, who had married into a family that had always been closely linked to Leysmorton. And did either of them, Stella or Stronglove, have such means at their disposal? Stronglove lived a comfortable existence at Leysmorton, and though he presumably earned his living as an author, it was a big house to keep up. How dependant was he for that on Emily Fitzallan, his cousin?
Query: Stronglove Lady F's heir?

STELLA MARKHAM.
Pretty much an unknown quantity, so far. Aloof, didn't involve herself in village affairs. Friends among the ‘county' set. The family Daimler that took Gerald to the city each morning came back and was at her disposal, apart from the few times her father-in-law needed it, until it was time for the chauffeur to return to pick up Gerald. During the war, she had sat on one or two committees, concerned with sending parcels to the troops etc., and called it her war effort. Sometimes she drove to London with her husband, occasionally stayed there for one or two days alone.

Was Stronglove's pre-war move to London a coincidence? After a moment he added,
Relations between Mrs Markham and her daughter Rosie strained, for obvious reasons. N.B. Arrange to see Gerald Markham at some point.

Screwing the cap back on his pen, he did his favourite trick of rocking the chair on its back legs and letting his thoughts wander. None of the facts he had written down were new, but now, from somewhere, a shape was dimly beginning to take form.

Willard opened his eyes and said, as if he had never been asleep, ‘Thinking there might still be another notebook, wondering where it might be?'

Novak's interest in Sholto's notebooks had become peripheral. He had been letting his thoughts take him in quite a different direction, and he answered Willard absently. ‘What? Oh, off and on, George. Off and on.'

‘Have you considered that old tree?'

‘What old tree?'

‘That massive yew. Plenty of room inside that. Better than somewhere in the house. And that's where he was found, wasn't it?'

Novak blinked. He wasn't envied his sergeant by his fellow inspectors. Mostly, they didn't know what to make of him, and Novak himself had felt that way, too, at the beginning of their partnership. But three years' working together had changed that. Willard might do a pretty good impression of a zombie at times, but it was more due to a one-track concentration, and it often gave him a distinct advantage. Even so, how could he have known that Novak had, at that very moment, been thinking back to that moment in the clearing under the yew, when Lady Fitzallan had given him the letter, and that vague idea he'd had, that he hadn't paid sufficient attention to since it had first stirred?

‘Don't know about that, George. Why would Peter Sholto have known about any hollow in the tree?' he asked. It wasn't often Willard had flights of fancy like this.

‘I reckon everybody round here knows. Took it into my head to look in the church this morning. There's a village history on sale for sixpence, written by the vicar, with a page or two about Leysmorton. That tree's a bit of a legend. They say it's thousands of years old. Wouldn't do any harm to have a look-see.'

At that moment, the door opened to admit Mrs Gaunt. ‘Somebody to see you, Mr Novak. It's Nellie from number eight.'

‘Mrs Dobson? Ask her to come in, will you?'

‘She won't come in, she wants to see you outside, in the back. On your own. I see you enjoyed
your
pudding, Mr Willard.' She flashed a reproachful glance at Novak, who'd been defeated by his portion.

‘Rather too much for my London constitution, Mrs Gaunt.' Her expression said what she thought of London constitutions.

Mrs Dobson was waiting for him in the yard, among the upturned beer casks stacked there.

‘I didn't want any of that lot in the tap room to see me talking to you. It'd be all round the village in five minutes. We'll be quieter out there.' As she spoke she was walking to the end of the yard, past the hen run and a lethargic, yellow-eyed old collie at the end of a chain outside its kennel. It barked once as they passed, then returned to its torpor. Maybe it had had the remains of his rabbit pie and a helping of plum duff for its supper. The wicket gate at the end opened onto a footpath beside the river that ran behind the row of cottages. Occasional seats of one sort or another had been set up, but no one else was out there, taking advantage of a sunset like a Turner painting. Mrs Dobson perched on a rough seat made of a plank balanced on two sections of tree trunk and he sat down at the other end.

‘I hear Albert Pickles has been asking again about that old bicycle that was found in Farmer Beale's ditch,' she began straight away. ‘Left there on St Patrick's Day, it turns out, is that right?'

‘Maybe. Why – do you know anything about it?'

‘Not me. It's that Wilf Thready, my Ivy's chap.'

‘He saw the cyclist?'

‘No. He doesn't know anything about any bicycle. But it's on account of what day it was that he remembers. Or thinks he does.'

‘And what's that?'

‘He'd been down to Kingsworth for band practice – he blows the trumpet in their village band – and having a drop too much into the bargain with that Irish family that lives there, if you ask me. Celebrating St Patrick's Day, or that's what he said. Anyway, he swears he saw something funny when he was coming home. He'd cycled home from Kingsworth, and a wonder
he
didn't end up in a ditch, the state he was in, never mind the way he came. Silly fool had cut through along that old lane.'

‘You've lost me. Which lane is that?'

‘The one we call Courting Lane. It runs off the Kingsworth Road, round the back of Steadings and Leysmorton, nothing more than an old cart track and more bumps and holes than a tinker's kettle. You'd break a leg soon as look at it and nobody with any sense uses it – except some of the young 'uns, for obvious reasons.'

‘And he saw . . .?' Novak asked patiently.

She sighed. ‘He reckons he saw lights on in the house.'

‘Just a minute, hold on, Mrs Dobson. Are you telling me this because you think Mr Stronglove and his sister could have been down here on the seventeenth of March?'

She stared. ‘No. I know they weren't. Miss Heeren
had
been here, but it was a few days before. I know that because I was there helping. The house was still topsy-turvy and we made a list of things that needed to be done, what to buy to restock the larder and so on. I left them and went home and I heard the motor go past my house about an hour later.' She stopped uncertainly.

‘Yes?'

‘Wilf reckons he
saw something else. He
says
it was a motor car, under the trees, by the Leysmorton wall. But it was black as your hat that night, and the state he was in, could have been anything, one of Farmer Beale's stray cows, anything. In any case, it wasn't
their
motor. It was black or some dark colour, which was why Wilf couldn't hardly see it.'

The light colour of that Lanchester in the garage would certainly have stood out, even in the darkness.

She said, ‘It's not often I lay much store by anything Wilf tells me, but this time – I think he did see it, or something just as queer – but you'd best try and talk to him yourself, if you can get any sense out of him, that is.'

‘Thank you, Mrs Dobson – you and St Patrick. I think he's smiling on us. That's twice he's given us a lead.'

After she'd left him, he watched a swan as it glided by, possibly the same one who had disdained his biscuit offering, followed by its mate and their grey-brown brood, changing course and gliding across a golden path made by the setting sun, towards the other side, to where the willows dipped into the water. Ripples followed them until they disappeared. The evening was very still.

He suddenly became aware of a heron, perching on a low branch, silent and immobile as if carved from stone. How long had it been there? He knew they could wait patiently for hours, and could eat just about anything. He hoped this one was not waiting for a chance to get one of those cygnets, but he was afraid it was.

Hugh had chosen the time carefully: early morning, when Rosie would be safely out of the way, exercising her horse. Ten to one he would find Emily out here alone, even so early – here, or in the neglected hothouses she was trying to get back up to scratch with the aim of once more producing peaches, figs and grapes for the table. It was as though she felt she had to make up for the lost years

She was there, kneeling on the path, doing something to a lavender bush. ‘Nearly finished this. I'll be with you in a few minutes, Hugh,' she said over her shoulder.

He stood watching her capable fingers move among the purple blooms, deftly selecting shoots, taking cuttings with a sharp knife and putting them into a small, lidded glass jar she pulled out of the pocket of the loose smock she wore. ‘Why are you doing that? Putting them in the jar, I mean.'

‘I don't want them to wilt before I can pot them up.'

‘Oh,' said Hugh, from the depths of his ignorance. He stood there watching, thin, upright, spruce and feeling too well brushed. How many other women did he know who would dispense with gardening gloves so as not to hamper their efforts? None, but then he knew few women interested in poking about in the earth at all.

After a while she straightened and secured the lid of the jar. ‘There, that's enough, I think,' she said, dusting her hands off on her smock and then removing it, revealing to his amusement a tailored skirt and soft silk blouse. She looked immaculate as ever.

‘Come and sit down.' She stood up nimbly and he took her arm and she let him walk her past that crumbling little fountain that never failed to irritate him mildly – damn thing, always in the way, smack in the middle of the path – and into one of the so-called sentry boxes, where they seemed doomed to have all their significant conversations. She sat expectantly, waiting for him to begin.

‘Well, Hugh,' she prompted at last. ‘What's all this?'

He still hesitated. It was one of the few times when he didn't know what to say. Untrue – he knew well enough, but he didn't mean to speak at the wrong moment and appear an old fool. Caution, the watchword for the elderly, was the word.