Ellis Peters - George Felse 04 - A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs (21 page)

PADDY CAME DOWN next morning pale and quiet, but resolutely calm, and very much in command of himself and circumstances. There were the blessed, beastly, ordinary details of returning to school to be taken care of, and no drama at all, and no opportunity for introspection. He had worked out his own course overnight, even before his mother had looked in almost guiltily to kiss him good-night all over again, and found him composed and ready for sleep. He had been glad to be visited, all the same; it’s fine not to need comfort, but it’s nice to know that it’s ready and waiting if you should want it.

“I hope I wasn’t rude, Mummy. I didn’t mean to be. I was a bit pushed, not having any warning.”

“I know. Don’t worry, you weren’t rude.” She tucked him in, a piece of pure self-indulgence, for Paddy had never looked so adult and self-sufficient as he did now. He smiled up at her with understanding and affection, but very gravely.

“Mummy—will
he
be all right?”

“He’ll be all right. We’ll see that he is.” She was quick to know what he wanted. It was she who made a point of inviting Simon to drive in with them to the station, and so gave Paddy himself the opportunity of seconding the invitation.

“Yes, do come. Of course there’s plenty of room. My trunk’s gone on ahead, there’s only a small case to take.” So there were four of them in the Mini on the way to the station, Simon in the front seat beside Tim, the pair of them taciturn as yet; Paddy and his mother in the back, cosy and a little disconsolate together. There’s something at once damping and heartening about the beginning of a new term.

“It was a lovely holiday, darling, I’m sorry it’s over. Don’t forget to write every week-end. There’ll be ructions if you don’t.”

“I’ll be chivvied into it, don’t worry. But I wouldn’t forget, anyhow. Cheer up, it won’t be long till Christmas.” It seemed an age away, but he knew from experience how soon it would be sitting on the doorstep. He nuzzled Phil’s shoulder briefly and happily; and presently a corner of his mind defected flightily to consider the Middle School’s football prospects for the new season, even before he had taken care of all his responsibilities here at home.

They disembarked beside the blonde wooden fence of the station approach, and unloaded the suitcase with due ceremony, already worrying vainly about whether anything had been forgotten.

“I’ll say good-bye here,” said Simon, with the right lightness of tone, if not of heart. “I’ve got a call I want to make in the town. So long, Paddy, have a good journey. And a good term!”

“Thanks very much!” He had saved it until then, to give it its maximum effect. He gripped Simon’s hand with warmth, but still with some reserve. “Good-bye,—” His face flamed, but the blue eyes never wavered. “—
Uncle Simon
!”

Simon turned away briskly, and walked the length of the light-brown barrier with an even pace and a jaunty bearing, balancing with care the great, hollow ache of Paddy’s charity within him; and alongside the extreme end of the platform a lean quiet man was propped against the fence with arms folded, watching the lower school starlings gather and shrill greetings, and the self-conscious young cock-pheasants of the sixth stroll from their parents’ sides to knot themselves into world-weary conversations with their own kind. They had about as much control over their sophistication as over their feet, and their graces were as endearing as one’s first-born’s fledgling efforts on the amateur stage. The in-betweens, like Paddy, had the best of both worlds, rollercoasting without pretence from lofty dignity to uninhibited horseplay, and back again. They could even stand and wait, as Paddy did, warmly linked with their parents, and openly happy to have them close for a few more minutes; for they had outgrown homesickness and quite forgotten the ancient dread of tears, but had not yet grown into that extreme state of senior self-consciousness which scorns to have had a human origin at all, and prefers not to have its parents around for fear they shall somehow fall short of the ideal image.

“On the whole,” said George Felse, turning from the spectacle with the small, private smile still on his lips, “I must say they inspire me with a degree of self-satisfaction. Wouldn’t it be simpler, though, to put boy and trunk and paraphernalia into the Land- Rover, and just drive them the twelve miles there, and tip ’em out?”

“They wouldn’t consider it for a moment. This always has been the school train, and it always will be. It’s better for the little ones,” said Simon. “By the time they get there the ice is well and truly broken, and they’ve been doused a couple of times, and got over the cold and the shock, even begun to enjoy it. Twelve miles is just long enough.”

“I see,” said George, falling into step beside him, “you’ve got the basic knowledge necessary to a father.”

“But not the other basic requirements. Cigarette?” They halted for a moment over the lighted match, faces close, and again fell into step together. Simon drew in smoke hungrily, and let it go in a long, soundless sigh. “Yes—I promised you a solution, didn’t I?”

“You promised, at least, to let me know whether you could provide one or not. When you’d asked your final question.”

“I’ve asked it. And it’s been answered.” He walked for a minute in silence, his eyes on the ground. “Not that I really have anything to tell you. You already know—don’t you?”

“I’ve known all along,” said George, “who put him there. I didn’t know who’d killed him until Miss Rachel mentioned that you were sitting on the lawn talking to her about Paddy, the afternoon
he
was there in the garden, picking plums. Only a few hours before he died. And even now,” he said with intent, “I couldn’t prove it.”

“I shouldn’t worry,” said Simon. “You don’t have to prove it. Paddy turned me down.”

Silence for a moment. They walked together equably, down the cobbled paving of a narrow street leading towards the town. Behind them, in the heathy fringes of the uplands, a train whistle sounded.

“If Paddy had opted for me—but I see I was mad ever to think he might—I’d have kept my mouth tight shut and ridden it out, and let you prove it if you could. I’d have taken him and got out. But he turned me down. Flatter than I’ve ever been turned down in my life, and harder. And now, do you know, on the whole I find myself preferring it this way. My instincts are incurably on the side of justice, after all.” He dug his hands deep into his pockets, hunching his shoulders against the sudden cold wind from the sea. “I gathered last night that you knew already Paddy was—or rather used to be—mine.”

“I happened to be with Phil, the night we were hunting for him, when Miss Rachel finally admitted what she’d done. Phil said in any case she couldn’t have told him
who
his father was, because she didn’t know it. And the old lady said oh, yes, she did, she’d learned it from you yourself, no longer ago than Wednesday afternoon, sitting in the garden. Don’t worry, I haven’t told anyone else. I never shall.”

“And how did you know the rest of it? What was it that told you?”

“A number of small things. First, that you asked me to be there at all. I’d been with you most of one evening and part of the next morning, and you hadn’t found it necessary to draft me in. But five minutes after Paddy had let it out that I was C.I.D. by profession, you asked me to make one in your team. I knew there had to be a reason. You hardly knew me as a person, you’d invited me as what you did now know me to be, a policeman, but a policeman on holiday, out of his own manor, without any local connections or loyalties. I couldn’t imagine why you wanted such a person, and why you wanted him suddenly on the last day. Not until we were confronted with a body. Then I knew. You wanted an accurate and unbiased observer. You wanted no one involved because of haphazard evidence. You wanted to be fair to all those who might otherwise come under suspicion. So you’d known he was going to be found there. So you’d put him there. It was as simple as that. Everything else had to fit in. And the whole organisation of that affair, the whole set-up in the vault, did fit in. The discovery had been staged. And there was only one possible stage-manager. And other, personal things, fitted in, too. You began to avoid Tamsin. Forgive me if I’m trampling rather crudely through things you’d prefer to keep well apart from this. But you asked me how I knew. You’ve kept carefully away from her for the last five days. But not—forgive me again!—not because you stopped wanting her. And then, when Paddy went missing, you were the one who said he’d turn up safe and sound. Knowing, of course, that he had nothing at all to fear from our supposed murderer-at-large. It was only later, when time wore on and he still didn’t show up, that you got really frightened about him. Do you want me to go on?”

Simon broke step to tread out his cigarette at the edge of the pavement. The incredible hydrangeas of Cornwall foamed over a garden wall and filled his eyes with blue and rose and violet.

“Yes, go on. I’m interested.”

“Every soul in this district knew the tomb was going to be opened, and nobody knew it better than you. So when you put the dead man there, or at least when you elected to leave him there, it was because you
wanted him found
. Well, that didn’t surprise me very much. Supposing you were responsible for his death in some way, you might well prefer it like that, if you could arrange it in circumstances that wouldn’t point straight at you. You’d want, other things being equal, to be fair to his family, not to leave them on thorns, not knowing whether he was alive or dead. But if you wanted him found, and if, as seemed likely, he’d drowned in the sea and been washed up on the Mortuary, then why not just leave him to be found there? And there was an answer to that, too. All the time we’ve been staying here, the first bather on that beach every morning has been young Paddy.

“And you wouldn’t want Paddy to be the one to find him. Not even just because of the ugliness. This man had died, in a way, because of Paddy, and you couldn’t bear that there should be any closer link than existed already in your mind. It was shock enough when you heard he’d glimpsed him in the sea, the evening before, wasn’t it? And then, you’d promised Paddy to tell the coastguard, and I know you didn’t, even after Dominic mentioned it in the bar at night, and reminded you. You didn’t forget. You don’t forget promises to Paddy.

“But there wasn’t a ghost of a motive. Not even when it came out that Trethuan had been trying to threaten or persuade you into leaving the vault alone. What did you care for his threats? He had no hold on you. No, what I was inclined to think, up to then, was that you knew who
had
killed him, and were covering up for the guilty party because you didn’t think of him as a murderer, but at the same time trying to protect the innocent from suspicion. And then Miss Rachel let it out that he’d been there in the kitchen garden of Treverra Place, just at the time when you were there with her on the lawn, telling her that Paddy is your son. Trethuan had followed you down from the churchyard, after you brushed him off for the last time. He was desperate to stop you, by any means. Whether he would have tried to put
you
out of the way, too, if everything else had failed, one can’t be sure. But it’s worth considering, isn’t it?”

He flashed a glance along his shoulder, and saw Simon’s clear profile beside him, fixed as bronze, the lines of jaw and cheekbone pale with tension. “I suppose he might have tried it. I hadn’t thought. He didn’t, though.”

“No, what happened wasn’t in self-defence, I realise that. All the same, he was dogging your steps, in search of anything, any mortal thing, that could be used to bring you to heel or shut you up for good. And he was in the kitchen garden. Picking plums, maybe, but only because where the plums were he could listen to your conversation, and be ready to continue his pursuit of you.

“I don’t suppose he heard everything. What he did hear meant just one thing to him, didn’t it? Just one obvious, crude but possibly useful thing.

“And then you left the Place, and went out along the Dragon’s Head, alone, at an hour when it was deserted. Having a lot of not very happy thinking to do, and plenty of time before you were expected home to tea. And Trethuan made his excuse to Miss Rachel in a great hurry, promised to finish the job next day, and made off after you. He thought he had what he needed, now. He thought he could make you dance to his tune. He came to you, I judge, somewhere near the point, up on the cliff path. He’d want a solitary place. I can guess what he said.

“Yes—he had a simple sort of mind. Not nice, but simple. It wasn’t Paddy
he
threatened to tell—was it?”

They had come down to the southern corner of the harbour, and halted there to lean on the railings shoulder to shoulder, looking out over the smooth brown mud and the stranded boats close to them, and the gleaming quiet water beyond, lipping so softly now at the masonry of the mole. Watery sun gilded the small, scalloped waves. The tide was well out, but not yet at its lowest. Simon clenched his hands on the rail, and stared blindly before him, and the screaming flight of gulls wheeling round them was only a pattern of sound to him for a moment. He shut his eyes hard, and shook his head, and the dizziness passed.

“I’m sorry!” he said. “I haven’t been sleeping so well.” He passed a hand over his eyes, and in a moment he said: “No, it wasn’t Paddy!” and again was silent.

“You’d better tell it,” George said reasonably. “You know best.”

“You know already. It was just as you said. It was the blind, bloody meanness and stupidity of it that got me,” he said, suddenly shivering with detestation. “I blow up, sometimes. One thing Paddy’s got from me, worse luck!—wouldn’t you know it would be something like that I’d give him?—is that temper of his. If you’ve ever seen it in action? No, I suppose not. Tim’s the patient one, Tim’s done wonders with him. But it can still happen, to Paddy and to me. And there was this creature capering and crowing that he’d heard me admit Paddy was my son! You’re so right, to him that meant just one thing, and he thought it was all he needed. If I wouldn’t call the whole thing off,
he’d tell Tim
!