Master of the Moor (25 page)

His caller was Dadda.

Stephen didn’t say any more. He put the receiver down. Of course he didn’t want the phone disconnected before Peter could phone but they could cut it off as soon after that as they liked. It was a nuisance.

He was getting his supper, breaking eggs for an omelette, when the front door bell rang. His first thought was that it was the police back again but when he looked out of the window he saw no police car in the street, no vehicle at all. At once he knew who it must be. Very likely Stella Crane had no phone and for some reason he couldn’t use the one in the shop. Going out into the hall to open the front door to Peter was the happiest moment he had known since the day he had sat in Rip’s Cavern and eaten the biscuit and felt safe. His heart fluttered with excitement. He opened the door, smiling.

The man who stood outside, a middle-aged man who resembled Peter Naulls only in that he too had a beard,
Stephen recognized to his disappointment as Professor Irving J. Schuyler.

‘Mr Whalby?’

Stephen nodded.

‘I hope you’ll excuse my taking the liberty of coming here.’ His voice was rich and cultured with a strong transatlantic lilt. ‘You can maybe imagine what I want to talk to you about.’

His immediate thought was of the book he had put into Schuyler’s car. He wasn’t afraid. After all, it was to him the professor had come, not to the police. Mrs Newman was watching from a downstairs window. Stephen moistened his lips. ‘Please come in.’

‘This is very good of you.’ The professor stepped into the hall. He was wearing a tee-shirt and his Dr Scholl sandals. He brought his hands from behind his back where they had been clasped together and Stephen saw that he was carrying what was certainly the book in a large brown envelope. ‘What a really charming village Chesney is. It’s meant a great deal to me visiting with Mr and Mrs Southworth and really getting acquainted with the domain of Alfred Osborn Tace. Vangmoor — a most beautiful wilderness, is it not? So precisely as Tace has described it for us under the apt alias of Bleakland.’

‘Do sit down,’ Stephen said.

Schuyler looked approvingly round the room. The prospect of Big Allen seen in the distance above the garden fence brought a smile to his lips that was almost arch. He raised his hand to it as to an old friend spotted on the other side of the street.

‘Lest you think we American academics lead lives of leisure, Mr Whalby, I should tell you I’ve been taking six months’ sabbatical. A month here, a month at
Haworth, a little trip to the Lakes, and then back here to my kindly hosts. It’s been quite a summer.’

Stephen watched the book being slipped out of its envelope. His cheeks felt hot. Schuyler laid the book in his lap and looked at it meditatively. ‘Well, Mr Whalby, maybe I should come to the point and not take up more of your time than is strictly necessary. I don’t know if you’re aware that I interest myself a good deal in Alfred Osborn Tace. I teach him to my students and I’ve written one or two little works on him and
his
works.’ He lifted up the book and wagged it. ‘Viz,’ he said facetiously, ‘this one. My latest,
Muse of Fire
. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know I had a copy of it with me in Chesney, but by a piece of luck this one was in my car. We academics have a well-deserved reputation for absent-mindedness, you may say.’

The relief was great. Whatever the professor had come about, it wasn’t to expose a vital clue in the mystery of Harriet Crozier’s death.

‘I happened to read your article in the
Three Towns Echo
with which my hostess kindly provided me this morning. An interesting little piece, if I may say so. Now I expect you’ll understand to what all this preamble is tending.’

Stephen nodded. ‘Good Lord, yes. You mean about Tace being my grandfather?’

‘Yes, indeed, Mr Whalby. Frankly, I’m fascinated. Though Mr Fowler wouldn’t care for me to say so, I’m intrigued.’ Schuyler began to talk of his knowledge of Tace, his researches into every aspect of the novelist’s life. Without making too much of it, he must consider himself one of the world’s leading authorities on Tace’s life and works, and yet…

‘The descent,’ said Stephen, ‘was, I’m afraid, on the wrong side of the blanket.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘Oh, Lord. I mean my mother was actually, well, illegitimate.’

‘What a most interesting expression,’ Schuyler said. He seemed very much struck. ‘The wrong side of the blanket. Yes, one sees how it must have originated. I must look it up in my host’s copy of
Brewer’s
. But, Mr Whalby, your mother being a natural daughter of Tace’s, what an astonishing thing this is. I must confess to being astounded. One thinks of Tace’s strict morality, you know, that almost prudish rectitude of his. I confess to a certain dismay in finding my hero — shall we say blemished by hypocrisy? No longer quite immaculate. Though still
sans peur
, no longer
sans reproche
. May I inquire the date of your mother’s birth?’

‘May 1925,’ said Stephen. ‘May, the twenty-fifth.’

‘Well, more and more fascinating. The previous summer and autumn, of course, were those spent by your grandfather carrying out the famous lecture tour of the United States. I maybe have to check on my dates here …’ The professor opened the book and leafed through chapter eleven. ‘Ah, yes. The tour, as I should have been able to recollect without aid, began in the June of 1924 and concluded in some triumph for Tace through November. Your grandmother was perhaps an American lady? Or was she a companion Tace took with him — in great secrecy, I must say — on his travels?’

Stephen was silent. He took the book out of Schuyler’s hands and read the dates. The print danced a little before his eyes. It was a matter of the greatest interest to Tace scholars, Schuyler was saying. If at some not too distant date he could trouble Stephen for chapter and verse, for a history of his grandmother, for
any memoir of his own he could provide. They must discuss the whole subject. Any life of Tace, in view of this disclosure, would necessarily require amendment …

Stephen said abruptly, ‘I’m sorry but you’ll have to excuse me now. I have to go out.’

‘Of course.’ Schuyler jumped up. He was all apology, all consideration. ‘I’ve taken up too much of your time as it is. Let me leave the book with you. We shall meet again. You can’t imagine how excited I feel at the new prospects this discovery opens out, Mr Whalby.’

Stephen saw him out and closed the door. The sight of the book back again on the chestnut leaf table started him laughing, though he wasn’t amused. He didn’t know why he should laugh so hysterically when, in the space of ten minutes, a major motive for his continued existence had collapsed.

After a while he sat down on the settee and tried to read the relevant part of chapter eleven. He found it impossible to take it in. Somehow he didn’t think he would ever read much again. Reading had had something to do with being Tace’s grandson, not the descendant of Arthur Naulls. He felt thirsty and when he went into the kitchen to fetch himself a glass of water he stared almost without comprehension at the bowl of broken eggs, the whisk, the slices of bread on a plate. Had he been going to eat something? Eating seemed as remote and bizarre an exercise as reading.

He went upstairs. It wasn’t possible to go out because Peter was going to phone. The sun was setting, staining a sky that was the wispy grey of wood smoke. Earlier and earlier it set, the autumn would soon be here. He saw the Newmans’ front door open and his mother-in-law come out, cross the road. The doorbell rang. Probably she wanted to pack up Lyn’s things. He ignored
the bell and went into his study where he began typing a letter to Hilderbridge Rural District Council, informing them that as from the end of the month he wished to terminate his tenancy of 23 Tace Way, Chesney Moorside …

The doorbell rang again. He went down to answer it, knowing he would have to let her in some time. His caller wasn’t Mrs Newman but Trevor Simpson. What was wrong with the car that Stephen was selling it so cheaply?

Once Stephen would have been indignant at that remark but tonight he didn’t care. He shrugged. There was nothing wrong with the car, it had never given him a day’s trouble.

‘As a matter of fact, I’m getting out,’ he said. ‘I’m off to fresh woods and pastures new, making a clean sweep. There’s nothing to keep me here. I’m giving up the house and I shan’t need a car. You interested?’

Trevor was. He lifted up the bonnet, then sat in the driver’s seat. Stephen made no objection when he said he would like to take it out on a test run but he wouldn’t go with him. He had to wait in for Peter to phone. The letter was finished, signed and inside an envelope by the time Trevor came back, satisfied with his bargain. He would give Stephen a cheque for five hundred pounds and bring the balance on Monday.

‘Good Lord, there’s no hurry,’ Stephen said expansively. ‘The car’s yours. I shan’t let it go to anyone else, I shan’t gazump you.’

Trevor gave him a knowing look and as he was leaving said, ‘You can’t run away from your own id, you know, Steve.’

It was dusk now, nearly dark. Peter wouldn’t phone tonight, he would wait until tomorrow. From his study Stephen fetched the bust of Tace and from the living
room, where the professor had left it, Harriet Crozier’s copy of
Muse of Fire
.

He stepped out into the twilit garden. The sky was a deep violet colour. He had read somewhere why it is that the stars give no light but he couldn’t remember why. The heavens were thick with stars and it was true enough they gave no light but appeared only as puncture holes in a dark velvet bag. He opened the cupboard by the back door where Lyn had kept the garden tools and got out a spade.

There were probably flowers growing in the border here. He saw them as a grey mass, a fuzzy fungoid growth, and he stabbed the spade in among them haphazardly. His fancy was playing tricks with him, for when he looked up he thought for a moment a face had looked back at him out of the gloom behind the kitchen window. He turned away and continued to dig. When he had dug a pit some three feet long and two feet deep, he laid the book inside it and then the bust of Tace.

For a long while he paused, leaning on his spade and staring down into the little pit, and then, slowly, he thrust his hand into his pockets, drew out all Harriet Crozier’s small possessions and dropped them item by item into the grave with Tace and the book. The topsoil and the plants went back like earth falling on a coffin.

Stephen cleaned off the spade, restored it to the cupboard and went back into the house. He could have sworn he hadn’t left lights on upstairs and in the hall. It took him a moment or two to realize what had happened while he was in the garden but he did realize when he walked into his bedroom. The wardrobe doors stood open and all Lyn’s remaining clothes were gone. Mrs Newman had been in to fetch them.

Harriet Crozier’s handbag was gone with them. Stephen
began to laugh when he thought of Harriet Crozier’s bag being sent off to Lyn. He lay down on the bed and laughed but when he put his fingers up to his face because the skin itched, he found it wet with tears.

In the
past days he had occasionally felt as if a cord were tightly stretched inside his brain, stretched from one side of his cranium to the other, from the eyes to the occiput. At some time during the evening or the night that cord had snapped and the freedom he desired had come with it. He walked about the house, wondering how he should dispose of his furniture. Dadda could have it and sell it. Or it might go to Lyn. He bore Lyn no ill will any more. He wrote a note to Dadda and a note for Lyn and left them on the chestnut leaf table. The sight of the notes there made him giggle, for it looked as if he were about to commit suicide instead of embarking on a new life.

There had been no sign from Peter. Of course there would be, sometime during the day, but Stephen felt impatient, he didn’t want to wait. Perhaps he should
go to Loomlade and find Peter himself. The objection to that was that the girl might be there and Peter might not want the girl to know too much. He tried to reconstruct the conversation between Peter and himself in an effort to recall what Peter had said about the girl. And as he went over it there came back to him two things of profound significance Peter had said, though they hadn’t registered with him at the time, though they had been lost in the generality of their talk.

‘I’ve got a place to stay’ and ‘You know where to find me’. What a fool he was! What a fool he had been not to see what that meant. Of course he had a place to stay and of course Stephen knew where that place was. Peter had meant, I shall be in the mine, come up and meet me in the mine. He was going back to London on Sunday, so today he would be in Rip’s Cavern, waiting …

Stephen felt almost unbearably excited. He was breathless and laughing with excitement. For a moment only his happiness was checked when it occurred to him that Peter might have been waiting in the mine all day yesterday, waiting in vain. But no. Yesterday had been Friday and he would have supposed Stephen to have been at work. Saturday was the day, all the pointers indicated it. Peter was probably making his way up there now, across the Vale of Allen.

Stephen’s laughter became rather shocked and awed when he walked about the house, looking at things and realizing he might never come back there. He wouldn’t waste time going into the village to post the letter to the council. Might as well leave it with the notes for Lyn and Dadda. What should he take with him? A change of clothes, of course, and a blanket for the night. There was food enough in the cavern. Later on, say on Monday after Peter had gone back, it would be his turn to
stock up with food and drink. A sleeping bag would have to be bought and a mattress for himself. He would make the cavern welcoming and homelike for Peter’s return …

The last he saw of Tace Way was the pram on the bright green square of the Simpsons’ lawn and the last he heard was the urgent crying of Joanne’s baby. I am shaking the dust of this place off my feet, he said to himself, shaking it off my feet. The expression pleased him and for a while he walked in a prancing way, shaking his feet as he lifted them, repeating what he had said, and then, as he crossed the Jackley road, lifting up his eyes to the hills.