Alms for Oblivion (33 page)

Mrs Hobbs, Verney’s housekeeper, provided me with porridge and concerned words – most of which I could follow – and generally clucked about in her motherly way. Ralph himself
was at the church. The seven o’clock service would be almost over by now. I took one final glance around the place where I had lived for so many years then opened the front door

And slammed it shut again.

It wasn’t yet fully light but I had seen, clearly enough, a man in a hat, a feathered hat, a man coming up the path towards the door of the parsonage. It was the very man who had been
occupying so many of my thoughts: Coroner Alan Talbot!

I didn’t stop to consider what he was doing here in a Somerset village, many miles distant from Southwark. (Although if I had, the answer would have been obvious enough. He was looking for
me.) I didn’t stop to confront the man whom I’d been convicting, in my head, of a string of murders and from whom I had dreamed of extracting a confession.

Instead, instinct took over. I ran.

I ran past a startled Mrs Hobbs and exited the house by a door which opened off the kitchen. Even as I scrambled to get out of the back door I heard a thunderous knocking at the front.

There was a muddy track which led directly from the rear of the parsonage to the church, and which was out of sight of the front of the house. I hared along the track, wrenched open the rusted
gate which gave on to the graveyard and took shelter behind the nearest headstone. Mindlessly I took note of the name on the stone – it was Thomas Wilkins, from one of the village families
– while I tried to regain some control over myself.

I had thought myself safe from pursuit. But not so. Here was Coroner Talbot, like an avenging angel in a feathered hat, striding up the front path of my old home in order to seize hold of the
fugitive from justice. How had he discovered my hiding place? For a moment I credited him with some supernatural powers. From over the churchyard wall I heard voices. I recognized Talbot’s
voice and the local tones of Mrs Hobbs. I couldn’t hear what they were saying and it may be that he was having some difficulty grasping her Mummerset. But there could only be one topic of
conversation. The coroner would be enquiring after the whereabouts of N. Revill while the housekeeper, once she’d understood who he was looking for, would surely explain that I’d just
rushed through the back door. “Chid niver zeen anythin’ like ’ee, zur.” Or she could simply point to the direction I’d gone in. I couldn’t rely on their mutual
incomprehension lasting long.

From inside the church came the thin sound of singing. Not many people there, judging by the muted noise. The day was dawning in full colour but dull and bleary for all that. Some ancient idea of
sanctuary came to me. I rose from my crouching position behind T. Wilkins’s headstone and made for the west end of the church which was graced with a tower, the highest structure in Miching.
The west door was ajar as was the inner door leading off from the porch. Now the whisper of the litany had replaced the ragged singing at the far end. I recognized Ralph Verney’s voice.
Immediately inside the porch was a small postern-like door which, I knew, opened on to a spiral staircase. The staircase ran up inside a turret that clung to the tower like a thumb. There were two
exit-points from the staircase. One gave on to the belfry and then, on the upper level, the second exit emerged on to the roof of the tower.

I’d spent a lot of time at the top of the tower as a boy. There was a flat roof, guarded by little battlements, which had served as my castle on summer afternoons. A very satisfactory
castle, almost a kingdom. I doubted any king ever felt prouder or more secure and powerful. The lead of the roof was warm on bare legs, too. Now, many years later, I tugged at the little door to the
turret. It wasn’t locked, as I knew it wouldn’t be. It creaked in the way that I remembered, like a snatch from a reedy old tune. The stone stairs spiralled up into the dimness. Quickly
I eased through the door, pulling it fast behind me and shutting out the faint sounds of worship. For an instant I stood in almost total darkness, breathing in the familiar smell of dank stone.

Then I began to climb, sliding my hands over the ashlar walls. Every now and then the outer wall was interrupted by narrow apertures like loop-holes. I passed the entry to the belfry, where hung
the great bells which summoned the village to mourn and celebrate and pray. At the top of the stairs was the second door. Recalling that it opened inwards I groped for the handle and tugged at it.
No movement. I pulled harder, without success. For a moment I thought I’d have to creep back down the spiral staircase and find myself another hiding-place, and then I pushed at the door
instead of pulling and it opened straightaway. Our memories are strange, slippery things. I’d used that entrance on innumerable occasions. How could I have remembered the creak of the door at
the base of the tower yet have forgotten which way the one at the top opened?

I came out on the lead-lined roof of the tower. This morning the lead looked cold and massy. It was slick with dew. The wind – there was always a wind up here even though it might be still
as death down in the churchyard – blew a few flecks of rain in my face. There was no shelter on the roof, only the little box-like place in the corner where the stairs emerged and which you
had to crouch to come through. I walked across to the parapet and surveyed the scene.

Everything seemed to come to a pause. What now?

The neatly disposed headstones down below were like the pieces in a board game. A game whose rules I didn’t understand. As a boy, though, they hadn’t troubled me, those headstones. I
was more interested in the long view. From the highpoint of the church tower I had kept watch for my enemies while they were massing on the Somerset hills. The wind rustled through the churchyard
trees and it was the breath of approaching armies. As long as I stayed on the top of the tower I was safe. Sometimes Peter Agate and I had hidden up here together.

Now I saw a man below advancing towards the base of the tower at the same side I’d come in by. He stopped by the west door. He was all small, reduced to his hat and his shoulders. He
looked like a beetle. It was Talbot, I recognized him by the feather in his hat. I could have dropped a stone on him, if there’d been a large stone to hand and if he hadn’t looked up
while I was doing it (I don’t think I could have dropped a stone on to his bare, upturned face). I would have watched him writhe his way to death. But there was no handy stone and he
disappeared into the tower, through the west door. I waited, hoping I’d firmly closed the postern-door at the base of the turret. I’d left the top one half open, so that I might hear
any mounting footsteps.

I visualized Talbot checking the small congregation in the church. No, there was no Revill there in among the good housewives and honest labourers. I imagined Talbot poking his nose into the
side-chapels and behind the grander monuments. Shaking his head. Perhaps by now John the sexton had come up to ask what he wanted. A visitor at the early morning service was almost unprecedented.
Particularly someone like Talbot, whose dress and bearing carried the stamp of authority. A legal gentleman from London. They would whisper urgently together. The sexton might be surprised to hear
that the son of the old parson was a fugitive from justice, even more so to discover that I was a multiple murderer. Then John might recall that I’d been fond of hiding away at the top of the
tower when I was a lad.

At that very instant I heard, from the roof of the tower, the creak of the door at the bottom of the turret. I don’t know why it sounded so clear. Perhaps the circular stairwell magnified
any noises. Then I heard the tread of feet mounting the steps, two sets of feet. I wondered if Jack was accompanying him. To me all the footsteps, no matter who they belonged to, were as inexorable
as fate. There was no way out. I was trapped on the roof. If I hadn’t been so foolish as to take refuge in a childish sanctuary I might have been halfway to the next village by now. But what
would have been the point of that? Coroner Talbot, the nemesis with the feather in his cap, would pursue me to the ends of the earth – and certainly as far as the next village.

I gulped down my last draught of Somerset air. It was mild and gentle, or seemed so to me, for all that we were on the lip of winter and there was rain in the air. I turned about and stood with
my back to the door that opened on to the roof, hands grasping the rough stone of the battlements, and gazed for the final time over the scenes of my boyhood. I heard two men moving faster as they
reached the top of the stairs, heard them pause as they registered the presence of a figure leaning over the parapet, heard one of them step out on to the lead-lined tower roof. It cost me an
effort not to look round.

Then came that familiar, cold voice.

The coroner’s voice.

“This is the man I seek.”

My mind in a whirl, I followed Alan Talbot up the sloping track which led to Quint House. There’d hardly been the time for him to explain things or, more accurately
perhaps, hardly time for me to grasp them, or the great changes which had taken place over the last half-hour. Changes in my perception, that is.

It had indeed been John the sexton who’d suggested to Talbot that I might have taken refuge up in the church tower. Talbot had told him that it was most urgent that I should be found
before I harmed myself. The coroner must have seen the panic on my face as I opened the door of the parsonage. I no longer felt panic-stricken. Just deeply confused.

But there was no opportunity for explanations at this stage. We had already reached the gate to Quint House and were striding up the flagged path to the front door. Talbot rapped loudly, with
the force if not the majesty of the law. The door was opened by Anne Agate. I guessed, from what Talbot had told me, that she knew who he was. Scarcely troubling to greet her, he shouldered his way
into the house. As he passed Anne I saw her gaze fasten on mine, and her eyes flick sideways.

Taking the hint, I didn’t follow Talbot inside but took off around the flank of the house, retracing my steps of yesterday afternoon when I’d surprised Gertrude Agate in her little
pavilion. Then it had been warm, the sun hanging like a coppery apple in the sky. Now it was overcast. Too late I remembered that, because of the way the orchard path curved round, anyone sitting
in the pavilion could see a visitor advancing from a distance.

As I drew closer to the pavilion I heard voices. A man and a woman’s. A cautious instinct made me slow down, almost walk on tiptoe. They sounded preoccupied, too busy to notice anyone
approaching. Within seconds I was standing by the withered red creeper which covered the pavilion. The conversation inside continued uninterrupted.

Something about the way I was standing – or rather stooping (because when you eavesdrop you crouch slightly) – reminded me of my part of Troilus in WS’s play. The lovesick
Troilus who, in the last act, goes on a delegation to the Greek camp, and there discovers the faithlessness of his lover Cressida. He eavesdrops on her when the Greek Diomedes whispers soft words
of love in the night air. He sees her when Diomedes wheedles from her the gift – the sleeve of the doublet – which is not Cressida’s to give, because Troilus has entrusted it to
her together with his heart. Well, what I was overhearing now, standing outside the pavilion, was apparently a scene of love and devotion. It merely happened to be between a mother and her son, as
I soon discovered. And it involved a sleeve – the Troilus sleeve – as I also soon discovered.

“Where did you get it?” said Gertrude Agate. And then before the other person could answer she said, “Is it . . . the one?”

There was no response except a little laugh or snort.

“Let me see it,” said Gertrude. “Let me feel it. It is good cloth.”

“Players have expensive clothes,” said the other.

“Look at this gold work. How did you do it now?”

“One twist and a squeeze,” said a voice I recognized but couldn’t immediately put a face to. “Or a little more.”

“A little more for a little whore,” said Mrs Agate.

“A
quicumque vult
.”

It took me a moment to realize that they were talking about Nell. And then I knew the identity of the man. I fitted the voice to a face. A round, red-headed face. I remembered that occasion in
Middle Temple hall, when I’d first encountered the gaggle of law students, and when they’d exchanged humorous Latinisms describing whores.

“Is that one of your legal terms, dear?”

There was a slurping sound. Mrs Agate was drinking. I fervently hoped she would choke.

“Only a London term for a whore,” said Edmund Jute. “She would never have done . . . ”

“Done what, my dear?”

“Done for a gentleman. She was beginning to have ideas that she
would
do, but she wouldn’t.”

“Did you have her before . . . you know?”

“During,” said Jute.

Mrs Agate sniggered. My fists clenched and I felt sick. A kind of red mist descended over my eyes for an instant.

“You didn’t bring it away with you?”

What was ‘it’?

Ah, of course, the sleeve.

The Troilus sleeve, which Jute had taken after the performance in Middle Temple hall and which he had used to strangle Nell.

“Coroner Talbot gave it to me,” said Jute. “It was evidence in the case against the player but, since he is plainly guilty, it is no longer required.”

“The coroner
gave
it you?” said Gertrude.

“Not ‘gave’ exactly. It would be better to say that I borrowed it from his cap-case at one of the inns.”

“Naughty boy,” she said, but full of admiration. “What if he had found out . . .?”

“Then it would easily be blamed on an ostler. They are dishonest, paltry fellows.”

“You take risks, my darling.”

“No risk when the coroner has it so firmly fixed in his head that Revill is a murderer. A murderer several times over.”

“He looks like a murderer,” said Mrs Agate. “Haggard and shifty. But handsome in his way.”