Rough Cider (15 page)

“Which you told him Barbara could provide?”

“You got it.”

“You’re quite certain that there was nothing between them?”

“Duke and Barbara? Zilch.”

“On both sides? I mean, how about Barbara? Did she have romantic ideas about Duke?”

“I doubt it. If you ask me, she was doing Sally a favor.”

Alice said thoughtfully, “Maybe I should ask Sally.”

“Sure. Why not?” Harry was all for the spotlight moving to someone else.

“Let’s finish this. I believe you called for Sally on the way to the farm.”

“Correct.”

“And?”

Resignedly, he wound himself up again. “The party was a surprise. She’d never heard of Thanksgiving, but she was over the moon when I invited her. I told her we’d pick up Barbara on the way. She put on some face and a pretty dress and we were on the road inside the hour.”

“And when you got to Gifford Farm?”

Harry took off his glasses and wiped them, remembering. “There was a holiday atmosphere, not for Thanksgiving but for the cider pressing. They were on the last load of apples, and the machine was going like a steam hammer. Old man Lockwood had treated everyone to extra cider and given the farmhands an early finish. Mrs. Lockwood was offering hot scones and cream, but we wanted to ask Barbara to the party first, so she could get ready.”

“You told the Lockwoods about the party?”

“No need. We had Sally with us in a pink chiffon dress.”

“She must have been cold.”

“Sitting on my lap? You’re kidding. To answer your question, we told them about the party and they raised no objection, so Duke and I went off to find Barbara. She should be milking, they told us. She wasn’t. She hadn’t been. The cows were still waiting with their udders straining. We went back to see if anyone had a better idea. No dice.” Harry stopped and jerked his head in my direction. “He can tell you the rest.”

Alice wasn’t letting him off. “I’ve had his account,” she told Harry in a firm, no-nonsense voice. “I came here for yours.”

“The works?”

“All of it. Everything.”

“You’re going to be disappointed,” he warned her.

“Try me,” said Alice.

Hearing all this, I was veering between anger and admiration. She’d handled Harry brilliantly, keeping control without seeming to antagonize him. Her grasp of the disjointed and highly subjective story I’d unfolded the previous evening was rock-sure. What’s more, she’d sorted it into its proper sequence. She’d match any computer in processing information. Believe me, I was smarting from the rebukes she’d dealt me, and peeved that she didn’t challenge some of Harry’s wrongheaded assertions, yet I’m forced to admit that she got more from him than I would have done.

And for all his denials, some of the most interesting details came at the end.

“I was just a bystander,” he insisted. “I heard about the rape from Sally, and she got it from Mrs. Lockwood.”

“Aren’t we jumping forward here?” said Alice. “You left us with the cows not milked and no sign of Barbara.”

Harry put back his glasses and blinked in a puzzled way. “But you know what happened. The boy found Cliff Morton in the act of raping Barbara and ran out to tell the first person he saw, who was Duke.”

“No,” said Alice serenely. “i’m not asking that. I want to know what
you
were doing.”

Silence.

He shifted in his chair. “Well, I, em…
I
joined in the search.”

“Where did you search?”

“The cowsheds. Took me some time. All those stalls.”

“And, of course, you found nothing. Did you hear anything?”

Harry considered the question. “The cider mill was still grinding.”

“So you heard that. Anything else?”

“No.”

“You searched the cowshed, and then?”

“Back to the house.”

“You crossed the yard, then?”

“Sure.”

“See anyone?”

“Barbara, with her mother. They were ahead of me, moving towards the kitchen door. Great, I thought, we found her. All we need now is Duke, so he can invite her to the party. I was about to go find him when I sensed something wrong. I took another look at the two women. I just had a back view of them, and they were almost through the door by this time. Mrs. Lockwood had her hands on Barbara’s shoulders… like this. Barbara’s hair was loose, and her head was right back and shaking, like she was hysterical.”

“Screaming?”

Harry shrugged. “The damn machine was still going. Far as I could tell, Mrs. Lockwood was holding her upright. They went inside. Γm standing there scratching my head when out comes Sally.”

“From the kitchen?”

“Yeah. She runs over to me and tells me Barbara was attacked. I ask her who did it and she doesn’t know. She’s pretty upset herself, and she asks me to take her home. I ask her where Duke is. She shakes her head and tries to pull me towards the jeep. She says leave him. Just take me home. I’m telling her I can’t do that when Duke comes around the side of the cider house and says let’s go. He gets in the jeep and starts up.”

“How was he looking?” asked Alice.

“Kind of solemn. Tight-lipped.”

“His appearance. Blood on his clothes? Any sign of violence?”

“Not that I saw.”

“He was in uniform, I expect?”

“Sure.”

“Blouse and pants? The buttons all fixed as usual?”

“I guess I’d have noticed if not.”

“And how was his behavior?”

“A little erratic,” Harry admitted. “That’s how it seemed at the time. I asked if he knew what happened to Barbara. He said, as if he knew all about it, there’s nothing we can do. I said for Christ’s sake, Duke, there’s plenty we can do. For a start, we can find the creep who attacked her. Duke said leave it. He told me to get in the jeep. He spoke with a kind of authority. Sally was already aboard, yelling at me to get in for God’s sake. So I did.”

Alice had listened in rapt concentration. She was standing with her two hands on my stick, holding it forward like a divining rod. “I want to get this straight,” she told Harry. “Were these Duke’s exact words: There’s nothing we can do. Leave it. Get in the jeep’?”

“Jeez, it was a long time ago,” pleaded Harry.

“Think.”

“I’m ninety percent sure. He may have thrown in a stronger word.”

“But the rest stands?”

“Sure.”

She paused for thought, staring up the the stuccoed ceiling: Presently she nodded at Harry. “And then?”

“We drove off.”

“Where to?”

Harry’s face showed the strain as he wrestled with a memory. A new set of creases branched out from his eyes and mouth. “I told you Duke was at the wheel. At the crossroads he turned in the Shepton Mallet direction and put his foot on the gas. He didn’t give a thought to Sally. She was in the backseat with me. She says to me where the heck are we going? I can’t go to the party after what happened to my friend. So I stuck my hand on Duke’s shoulder and asked him to stop.”

“And did he?”

“Not before we were halfway to Shepton Mallet, and then he refused to turn the jeep.”

“Why?”

Harry sighed. “How do I know? I can’t say what had gotten into him. He started giving me the needle. He said what’s with you two? You got it made. You don’t really need Barbara or me to have a good time. Make hay. Have a ball.”

“Couldn’t he see that Sally was upset?”

“I just couldn’t get through to him.”

“Could Sally?”

“Sal? She was too scared to speak. She had rape on her mind, I guess.”

“So what happened?”

“When it was obvious we were at a stalemate, he told me to take over the jeep. I could drive Sally home if I wanted, but not with him on board. He’d rather walk to Shepton Mallet.”

Alice’s eyes widened. “And did he?”

Harry gave a nod. “Wasn’t much over three miles. I turned the jeep and drove Sally home. End of story.”

Alice preferred to reach her own conclusion. “Was it really the end? Didn’t you see Duke again that evening?”

“If I had, we wouldn’t have spoken.”

“What time did you get back?”

“I couldn’t say. I had a beer in the Jolly Gardener, and then I drove around for a while, looking for a pickup. Just wasn’t my night.”

“Was this before midnight?” Alice persisted.

“Yeah.”

“And was anything said when you saw Duke next?”

“About what happened? Nothing. Frost.”

“You fell out?”

“That’s the size of it. We didn’t speak for weeks.”

“Not even after Barbara committed suicide?”

“Not even then. Much later, after we’d both been posted to Colchester, I mentioned it. Duke knew about Barbara. He said it was really sad.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing. It was a sensitive topic.”

“I understand,” said Alice in a way that signaled a respite for Harry. She picked her fruit juice off the table and took a sip.

Remarkably, considering how drained he looked, Harry was unwilling to leave it at that. He appeared to sense that some self-justifying statement was still necessary. After he’d taken out a colored handkerchief and wiped his brow, he added, “You know, when I first heard about the murder, and Duke taking the rap, I didn’t believe it. I can’t describe the feeling. Coming on top of the war, which to a GI was totally unreal until you got in the firing line, it was way over my head. Took me weeks to come to terms with it—I mean, just accepting that Duke had been hanged. He was no killer.”

Harry stopped to blow his nose. He was visibly affected by what he’d been saying. He resumed. “Finally I read a book on the case,
The Somerset Skull,
by some English journalist.”

“Barrington Miller,” I said with contempt. “A real scis-sors-and-paste job.”

“True,” said Harry, “but it had the essential facts on the trial, and it told me the prosecution was garbage. Sexual jealousy? No chance. He never had sex with the girl. If she was pregnant, believe me, it was some other guy, I told you how it was between Duke and Barbara.”

“ ‘Zilch’ I think, was how you described it,” I said, observing neutrality. Alice was silent, drawing breath, perhaps, for a heart-to-heart with Sally.

“Take that U.S. Army major in court to speak for Duke’s character” Harry said with a sharp note of censure. “It was character assassination. They couldn’t get over the fact that he heisted a .45 and used a jeep for private trips. They didn’t say he was a loyal husband, one of the gentlest, most civilized soldiers in the army.” He stopped to wipe his nose again. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear all this. I just want to explain my position. After reading all this crap I had to decide what to do about it. I was back in the States by this time. What could I do to put the injustice right? Send a letter to the London
Times?
Write to the Lord Chief Justice? Whatever I did, I couldn’t bring Duke back to life. Alice, honey, do you know what I did?”

“Found my mother,” said Alice flatly.

“Precisely. Help the living. Elly was in a pitiful state. No job, no pension, and a child to raise. And bitterly ashamed of what Duke had done. I put her right on that for a start. Then I married her. I won’t say it was much of a marriage, but I got her through a bad time. We came to an understanding about Duke—not to make waves, not to write to
The Times,
not even to mention him. You know why? For your sake, sweetheart. I respected your mother’s wishes.” With that off his chest Harry got to his feet and said, “Whose glass is empty?”

Alice had listened impassively. Now she brushed aside Harry’s diversionary gesture. “If it’s all the same to you, we’d like to meet your wife again.”

“No problem,” claimed Harry. He fairly scuttled through the door.

Alice handed me back my stick. “I have a feeing that Mrs. Ashenfelter II might respond better to you.”

But as it turned out, Sally was in no shape to respond to anyone. Harry came back grim-faced and announced, “No dice. Sally’s out cold. She took a chisel to the cocktail cabinet, and she’s been through a bottle and a half of vodka.”

* FIFTEEN *

W
e wanted to eat. A straightforward matter? Not in Bath on a Sunday evening in October 1964. All the restaurants were dark, and the hotels didn’t want to know us. “Sorry, residents only” should be translated into Latin and incorporated in the city’s coat of arms. We finally gained grudging admittance to a dingy basement in Great Pulteney Street that doubled as the dining room and lounge of a small private hotel called the Annual Cure. Top marks for local color, but not, I think, for attracting customers. We were the only diners.

Alice was still brooding on our visit to the Ashenfelters, so I picked up the gravy-stained menu. It was written without much regard to spelling.

“If you fancy something out of the ordinary, I see they serve
farmhouse girll,”
I commented too loudly, because the manager was standing unseen at my shoulder.

“You don’t like?” he asked. “You go somewhere else.” I believe he was mid-European.

I pointed out the error, wishing I hadn’t spoken.

He snatched the menu from me, penciled in a correction, pushed it back, and said with acid, “Schoolteacher?”

“Something like that.”

We both settled on plaice and french flies without going into the orthography. Alice asked for the rest room, the ladies’, and the lavatory before she was understood and directed upstairs.

As she pushed back her chair I murmured something about a search party but failed to amuse her. Mentally, she hadn’t caught up yet. I doubt whether our shabby surroundings had made any impression on her at all.

Alone at the table, I made my own review of the day’s discoveries. No doubt Alice would snap out of her introspection soon and start an earnest discussion. I wanted my thoughts in trim.

Two observations on Alice.

First, she was dangerous to be with. She might easily have got us shot by blurting out her identity to Bernard Lockwood. She’d treated Harry, another violent character, with reckless disrespect.

Second, on the credit side, she’d got results. Thanks to her open approach, we’d traced Harry and identified him as her stepfather. We’d learned of his marriage to Sally Shoe-smith. And we’d been given a different slant on the relationship between Duke and Barbara: According to Harry, they weren’t lovers, after all. The fact that I knew this to be untrue didn’t detract from its significance. Harry was either deluded or a villain.