Funeral Music (24 page)

CHAPTER 30

BY THE TIME Andrew telephoned much later, Sara no longer felt sick and he was no longer angry. ‘I was very angry,’ he said, ‘but I’m sorry if I was a bit hard on you.’

‘You were hard on me,’ she said, recalling how he had pulled her upright when she had barely stopped retching and ordered her off the premises, shouting at her, not caring how she was shaking or how sick she felt. ‘You were horrible.’

‘Are you all right now?’ he asked, contrite.

‘Yes, I’m all right. I’m just glad it wasn’t Paul. And I suppose I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have done it.’ She hesitated. ‘I can’t
stand
anyone seeing me be sick. I can’t believe you’ve seen me being sick. I hate it. I’m really
embarrassed
.’ It occurred to her that she would be much less upset if Andrew had happened to catch her dancing naked. Not displeased, if she were honest.

‘Don’t be silly. I hardly noticed,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I always picture you playing the cello, usually in sunshine up at the hut. So don’t worry about that.’ The truth was that having seen Valerie through three pregnancies, he was a dab hand with vomiting women. A nostalgia bubble containing his young, vulnerable and newly pregnant wife rose to the top of his mind and floated momentarily, before it was burst abruptly by Sara’s voice.

‘So who was it? And where is Paul?’

‘A man who was staying at the hotel. He’d been dead at least two days. Last seen at breakfast on Sunday morning, so it looks as though he was killed later that day. Strangled. He was French. Apparently he knew your friend Paul; they did a bit of business together in the antiques line.’

Sara drew in her breath sharply. ‘Bernard. Bernard, isn’t it?’

‘You are extraordinary. Yes, Bernard Rameau. Anything else I should know?’

‘But Paul. Where
is
Paul?’ she asked.

‘That’s what I would like to know. There’s a search on for Paul. We’re very keen to speak to him. He didn’t turn up for work this morning. That’s why the body was found. One of the other staff went over to see if he was in his room, looked through a crack in the curtains, thinking it was odd they were drawn in the first place, and called us. Things aren’t looking too rosy for Paul. Any idea where he might be, then?’

‘He has friends in Bristol, but I don’t know who they are.’

‘Oh, yes, we’ve got those. We got a couple of names from his colleagues in the hotel. Names the Bristol police were familiar with, it turns out. Paul hasn’t been over there all week, though, and he wouldn’t risk it now. He was in with a pretty rough crowd. Housebreaking – professionals, not kids. Going after good stuff. A lot of what he was passing on to Bernard Rameau was almost certainly stolen.’

‘
Oh!
Are you sure? I mean, are you sure he knew? I would never have thought that of him. He seemed so... well, not nice exactly, but you know, not
criminal
. His girlfriend – Sue – she’s not a bit criminal. You don’t think... Have you spoken to her? She might be able to help you,’ she said, ‘although she told me once he kept her rather in the dark about his friends. Drove her mad, actually.’

‘Yes, we’ve got her name. Haven’t found her yet, either at the aunt’s or the landlady’s. Any suggestions?’

‘Well,’ Sara said, ‘I wouldn’t
assume
they’re together, though they might be.’ She told Andrew briefly about Sue and her triumphant dismissal of Paul. ‘She was more determined than I’ve ever seen her. But he could have brought her round, I suppose.’ Paul’s skills in that department would be masterly. She paused. ‘There’s got to be a connection, hasn’t there? With Matthew Sawyer? You know Paul was working at the Assembly Rooms that night, don’t you?
Must
be a connection.’

Andrew exhaled dramatically. ‘Well, I don’t know what, and I’ve been wondering, of course. Paul was interviewed and eliminated from the Sawyer enquiry. He was seen leaving the Pump Room before Sawyer was killed. The girlfriend produced the alibi; that could be dodgy, of course. But there’s no motive, and no evidence to suggest a connection, but we’ll check it all again. Frankly I’m more interested in getting him for this. It looks very likely that he and his French friend had a fight over something and Paul went too far. There’s no record of violence, no record at all in fact, but it happens. He might get away with manslaughter. But we need to find him.’

He paused again. ‘Look, I really am sorry you had to be involved. You wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t made you drive me over in the first place. You must have had a bad shock. Are you sure you’re all right? I mean, would you like me to come over? To be with you? Wouldn’t you like someone with you?’

‘No, no, I’m fine. Really, I’m perfectly all right. I’m fine. I’m going to have a long bath and go to bed,’ she said at once, her refusal of any offered comfort so habitual as to be a reflex.

‘Right. Probably just what you need,’ he said brightly, hiding his disappointment. ‘Ring me if you need me. And mind you lock up now,’ he added, just to hear her laugh.

Only afterwards did Sara realise that she no longer wanted to protect herself from the danger that came with the prospect of comfort from Andrew. All right, he was married, but just the same it would have been lovely to see him, lovely if it had turned out that he stayed. She lay in her bath and went over the conversation, recalling all the bits that had made her feel the familiar risky pleasure of being both attracted and attractive. Up until now, it had been all the more risky and pleasurable because, since Andrew was married, she had been assuming that the whole thing would exist only in their heads. In fact lately it had begun to take up rather a lot of space in hers, enough to dislodge any insight into her harmless but slightly pathetic habit of fantasising about unavailable men.

It was certainly a shame about being sick. As she remembered his remark about picturing her playing the cello, she remembered also that the hut doors were still wide open and the Peresson cello still up there, probably still lying on the grass beside his chair. They had simply left everything where it was when Andrew’s urgent call had summoned them away. She calculated that it was doubtful if the insurance would cover damage sustained during a damp night out of doors. She sighed and as she slid under the bathwater to rinse off her shampoo, her hair floated out around her like dark weed in a stream.

IT WAS well after midnight when she put on espadrilles and walked slowly up the path in the moonlight. Proper moonlight had been one of the delightful surprises of living here. Moonlight and owls did not exist in the modern orange-sodium-skied cities where she had mainly lived, and they had consequently faded from her imagination or had drifted into the realm of things half remembered from old-fashioned children’s classics. Things like midnight forays along moon-lit paths, the owl hoot as a signal of danger; until she had come here these had been lodged affectionately in the same mental category as Aertex shirts, Mother’s homemade scones and mops of dark unruly curls. There was still something exciting about such a clear, starry night and the moonlight, something that made her pause to look round with a happy tingle in her body that reminded her of when she was about twelve years old. Tonight the full moon shining across the valley transformed the garden into a theatre in which every ordinary thing, unexpectedly shoved onstage, was suddenly and mysteriously beautified. Pale things soaked in the light and gleamed in the air. She could see the calico of the garden umbrella shining over on the far side by the pond. Her white bathrobe was suddenly a shimmering gown and the towel round her head a silk turban in the Turkish style. She was the woman in white. She stopped and stretched out her arms into the night, watching the light animate her long, strong hands into the graceful, pearly appendages of some romantically consumptive heroine. Pushing back one sleeve as far as the elbow, she made a shadow swan with a sadly fractured neck against the moonlight on the path, and then with her other arm made another, which came and attacked it. Then they kissed and flew away. She laughed, slightly madly. She turned her outstretched wrists and flexed her fingers with the prosaic thought that she hadn’t played all day. She should do some hard practice tomorrow; a proper workout for her arms and hands, and then some Beethoven. She might get out those Handel variations herself; she had been reminded how wonderful they were. James might like to do the piano part.

The man on the velvet chaise longue had opened his eyes, shaking himself out of a confused dream of falling branches, boxes and leaves, into another in which a menacing white figure was advancing towards him. But he was awake. At first he was transfixed with disbelief at the sight of the tall silent figure under the stars, swathed in white from the top of its awful domed head to the hem of its long robe. Then it had started to rise, moving smoothly towards him. It stopped and stretched out its long arms and he stared as they turned and twisted, the fingers practising their grip, ready to envelop him. The figure advanced a little and stopped again. And he had seen, quite sick with horror, how the pale hands were reaching out and the fingers were curling. Soon the figure would move upwards once more, rise silently up towards him, its arms would encircle him and the white fingers would close round his throat, cutting off his screams... He knew no name that he could give this spectre but everything he had ever heard in childhood about the avenging spirits of the restless dead came into his mind. So they were not just stories thought up to frighten little boys. He now knew them to be true. And he knew that the spirit’s authority to take his life, for the life he had taken, was irresistible and also just. More with the realisation that he deserved to be dead than with the knowledge that he soon would be, he shrank into an abject, embryonic curl on the chaise longue and hid his face. Shame rose and suffocated him.

As Sara dawdled up the path, Edwin came to her mind. She tried singing the long, eerie first phrase of Eternal Source of Light Divine, thinking, has it come to this? Here she was, actually ‘chanting cold hymns to the pale, fruitless moon’, the fate with which poor Helena (or was it Hermia?) had been threatened. She pursued her memory of the quotation and thought she remembered the preceding lines:

Therefore know thy heart, examine well thy desires, Whether thou couldst endure the ancient livery of a nun For aye to be in shady cloister ’mured, Chanting cold hymns to the pale, fruitless etc...

She shivered at such a midsummer night’s dream, until the thought of Andrew stole over her as a sudden and overwhelming physical need, flooding her with warmth, melting the icy vision and the last of her resistance. She would let it happen.
Ring me if you need me
.

She switched to a ta-ta, tarum rendition of ‘Who Were You with Last Night?’ Improvising a little tap dance to go with it she carried on up the path, ‘out in the pale moonlight’, creating flashes of light as her white bathrobe flapped round her knees. From above, the moonbeams threw down the shadows of bitter-scented black currant bushes across her path.

When he dared look again he saw that the avenging spirit was indeed moving closer. But instead of the smooth and silent glide he had seen earlier, it now seemed to be almost bouncing and it was making noises. More than that, his incredulous ears were telling him that the noise was some silly song and now his eyes were taking in that his tall avenging spirit was only a woman in a white robe with a white towel round her head. Two days of sleeping rough with little food, coupled with all that had gone before, had temporarily robbed him of reason. His relief was closely followed by panic as he realised that she was still coming closer and would reach the hut in a very short time. In a few seconds she would take the turn on the path and he would be trapped in the hut as she walked towards it. He had only a few seconds. Glad that he had resisted the temptation to take off his shoes, he slipped quietly off the chaise longue, gripped his bag and paused only long enough at the door to be sure that he could still see her back walking away from him towards the turn in the path. He darted round the side of the hut and crouched behind it, terrified in case the demented woman’s singing had not drowned out the slight scrape of his feet on the gravel.

This is proper lunacy, she thought, slowing to a standstill in front of the hut and looking out again at the moon. If anyone could see me now I would be locked up. She carried one chair back into the hut and came back for Andrew’s. She sat down and picked up the cello, conscious that it had been Andrew’s limbs which had embraced it last. She drew the instrument to her. Better just to see how much it had suffered from hours lying on the ground. She pulled the towel off her damp head so that she would be able to hear, and drew the bow over the strings. She found that it was an impossibility for her to leave it like that, so crazily untuned, even though of course she was not going to play, it being after midnight and she in her dressing-gown out in the garden. It would be lunacy of course, but she must just tune up.

Behind the hut the man could sense that she had stopped moving about and hoped that she had now gone away. The drone of the bow across the strings made his heart thump with fear. It had been rash of him to stay here. This afternoon, coming across the wide-open hut with chairs out and that musical instrument on the grass, it had been obvious that someone would be coming back. But the chaise longue had been the nearest to a bed that he had seen for two nights and he was exhausted. He could at least lie down without letting himself fall asleep. From up here he would see anyone approaching from below in plenty of time to get away. He had, of course, fallen asleep, but had woken of his own accord much later, towards nine in the evening. It was surely safe now to stay till morning, nobody would be coming now. He had not reckoned on some crazy woman stealing up in the middle of the night.

All the same, she wondered if she could do it again. She had managed the Bach for Edwin, had got through it without faltering at least, although it had been hardly a performance. And thinking about it, to hear Andrew play like that today had made her feel that a piece of tinder in her was now dry and waiting for its spark. Andrew, who had never performed in public in his life, had been playing for her, drawing her both to himself and to the music, showing her how it was done, how to be, once more, fearless. There’s only me here now, me and the moon, she thought. I’ll play it again, for the moon, and for the owls and the foxes. And for Edwin, because he deserved better. I’ll play the D Minor again. She began to play the second of the six Bach cello suites, the pieces which are the ultimate test, the pieces that Casals practised for twelve years before considering them ready for performance. Remember, she thought, not to barge into it, it’s not Rachmaninov. Really, this is the wrong instrument for this, I should have the Strad. Never mind, reserve the tone, let’s have a bit of taste. I will try to play it. I’ll play it for this garden and for the valley. Without fear. And she played on.