Rough Cider (22 page)
Stalemate.
I wouldn’t shoot him in Cold blood, but it wasn’t safe to lower the gun. He couldn’t move and neither could I, without my stick. I couldn’t even escort him to his car and send him on his way.
Rashly, through my tormented emotions, I grasped at reason. Harry believed Γd shot Morton and killed Sally.
I said, “Do me the favor of answering one straightforward question. If Morton was Barbara’s lover, why would I have shot him?”
“Jealousy.”
“For Christ’s sake. I was in short trousers.”
“I was there. Remember?” said Harry, picking up confidence by the second. “You had a crush on the girl, right? Puppy love. I saw it. Sally saw it. Barbara used it. Her fatal mistake. Never mess with a kid’s emotions.”
I said heatedly, bitterly, “What am I supposed to have done? Shot Morton in a jealous passion and cut up the body? At nine years old? Who are you kidding?”
Harry was sounding more in control than I. “No,” he said evenly. “Duke disposed of the body. He took pity on you.”
“What?”
“He was like a father to you. He’d do anything to get you off the hook. He drove back to the farm that night, hacked off the head and put it in the cider barrel, and then transported the rest someplace else, miles away.”
I was practically speechless. “He didn’t tell you that.”
“No. But it has to be true. It was typical of the guy. He adored kids.”
“It doesn’t
have
to be true at all.”
Harry was determined to complete the explanation. “When they finally caught up with him, he refused to put the finger on you. Stupid and brave. That was Duke Donovan.”
“And you think I kept silent at the trial?” I shouted at him as my anger erupted. “Allowed them to hang the man who’s supposed to have saved me? What kind of vicious bastard do you take me for? If I could have thought of
anything
to stop them hanging Duke, I’d have spoken up.”
“The guy was innocent,” said Harry. “I told you he was innocent.”
“I
know.
It breaks my heart. It’s monstrous. Hideous. But I didn’t know at the time. For twenty years I swallowed the story that he was guilty. I’m bloody certain now that he wasn’t, and I’m going to find the killer. I don’t know for sure who it was, but I know where to go.”
A pause.
“The farm?”
I nodded and made a superhuman effort to sound rational.
“Do you know why I’m so certain?”
“Sally?”
“Yes. She was killed because of what she would have told me.
“You think whoever murdered Morton also…”
“Right.”
We faced each other in a tense, thoughtful silence, each wiser yet with our impasse, unresolved. I could have said more. I elected not to. What I’d expressed was spontaneous, impassioned, and enough.
Finally, Harry took the initiative. He said, “Okay, my friend, call me crazy, but I believe you. If I’m right that you didn’t kill Morton or Sally, I don’t have to worry. You won’t shoot me. So All tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to walk right out of here, get in my car, and drive away. Understand?”
I gave a nod.
He wanted extra assurance. “You’re not planning to stop me? In that case, would you lower the gun?”
This, in essence, was what the superpowers had debated ever since Hiroshima. There had to be some trust between us. Disarmament was the only sane way forward. I glanced down and put my good foot on the lead piping he’d threatened me with. I stared at Harry. Then I slowly planted the gun on my lap and placed my hands on the arms of the chair.
Harry dipped his head in recognition, took a couple of tentative sideways steps, and started across the room towards the door. I followed him with my eyes, making no move.
A sitting duck.
It happened at speed, though I see it now in slow motion.
He was practically behind me and through the door when his right hand grabbed something off the top of the filing cabinet there.
A multicolored glass paperweight about the size of a cricket ball but twice as heavy.
An arc of light at the edge of my vision. The thing in his hand streaking towards my head.
The crunch.
Nothing.
A
ringing sound. Shrill, insistent, and painful. I opened my eyes and saw daylight seeping into the space above the curtains. Fingered the swelling at the back of my skull. Groaned.
The ringing wasn’t all in my head.
At some stage of the night I’d emerged from unconsciousness sufficiently to drag myself as far as the sofa and collapse there. Now I was cold, my clothes were clammy, and I needed about a dozen aspirins.
I groped for my stick. It wasn’t there, of course. I made the effort to roll off the sofa and crawl to the phone.
Picked it up and listened.
“Ah, so all life is not extinct in Pangbourne. Is this the ear of Dr. Theodore Sinclair?” A man’s voice, resonant, bombastic, pleased with itself. The voice that could spell
diarrhea
without the aid of a dictionary.
“Who else?”
“This is Watmore, Digby Watmore. I suppose I got you out of bed.”
“No. What time is it?”
“Eight-twenty or thereabouts. Wednesday. Two or three days without, you said.”
“Two or three days without what?”
“Miss Ashenfelter on your back, to quote you verbatim.
Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. We made an agreement.”
I recalled it faintly, as if from another incarnation. “When was this, Digby?”
“Sunday evening. The last two days have been no picnic for me, I can assure you. I say, are you sure I haven’t disturbed your sleep?”
“What happened to Miss Ashenfelter?”
He gave what sounded like an exasperated snort. “She’s been my constant companion for the past forty-eight hours.”
“Day and night, Digby?”
“I put my studio couch at her disposal, but she prefers to pass the night having interminable conversations about the Donovan case.”
I yawned sympathetically. “Was it instructive?”
“That’s beside the point now,” said Digby testily. “Events have overtaken us, haven’t they?”
“Quite a lot has happened, yes.”
“That’s precisely why I’m on the line. A fine shock I had this morning, picking up the
Western Morning Press
and reading about this fire in Bath. Have you seen it?”
“The paper? No.”
“Did you know about the fire? The Ashenfelters’ place gutted. Mrs. Ashenfelter dead.”
“Er.·.yes. I was in Bath.”
There was a moment’s offended silence.
“Well, thanks for sweet F.A., Sinclair.”
“What?”
“Couldn’t you have given me a buzz? You promised me an exclusive. Hang it all, I’m a newsman, first and last.”
“Last, in this case,” I said, smiled to myself, and felt a little better. Possibly I hadn’t suffered permanent brain damage.
“You think you’re bloody amusing, don’t you?” said Digby in a burst of fury I wasn’t prepared for. “Listen to this, Sinclair. I know bloody well why you didn’t call me. You’re as guilty as hell. I’ve got my sources. You saw Sally Ashenfelter yesterday and made damn sure she couldn’t speak to anyone else. You murdered her.”
“Get lost.”
He ranted on. “I’ve written the story. It’s the lead on Sunday. So you can stuff your exclusive. When I put this down, I’m going to call the police and, by Jesus, I hope they rough you up.”
I slammed down the phone and went to look for the aspirin bottle. Then I moved fast.
A shower, a shave, a change of clothes. Black coffee. More black coffee.
I was using a blackthorn stick to help me around the house. Now I devoted more precious minutes to recovering my regular ebony cane, cursing Harry as I hobbled about the wet garden, hampered by the morning mist that afflicts us near the river. My shoes and trouser ends were saturated before I located the stick on the paved area in front of the summerhouse. The leather handle was soggy to the touch. I still preferred it to the blackthorn.
Back to the house. One more item to collect.
Earlier, while shaving, I’d tried to fathom Harry’s behavior. Couldn’t think why he’d chosen to attack me when he was already clear and on his way. I was no longer a threat. We were all but shaking hands when he’d left.
Now I understood. He’d taken the gun.
I crawled about on the living room carpet for a minute or two, feeling under furniture in case I’d kicked the thing out of sight when I staggered across the room in the night. I was wasting my time.
My brain was still functioning at ninety percent or less, but I forced it to make some deductions. Harry knew that the Colt was the murder weapon. He’d found me in possession of it. Nothing I’d said had shaken his conviction that I’d shot Morton all those years ago and was desperately covering my traces, leaving Sally to die in the burning house. The gun was his evidence. Where else could he have taken it, except to the police?
And if Harry hadn’t turned me in, Digby certainly had. The squad car could be in the lane by now.
I went to the door.
The first time I tried to start the MG, it failed. What a day to let me down, the most reliable car I’d ever owned. Tried again, three or four times. Nothing. This way I’d rapidly exhaust the battery.
Harry must have done something to immobilize the engine, blast him.
I clambered out and lifted the bonnet.
No disconnected leads that I could see. Plug covers all secure. Distributor cap in place. Everything as it should be. Not sabotage: simply the legacy of leaving the car out all night instead of garaging it. Misty weather is worse than rain for depositing a film of moisture on everything.
I collected a cloth, heated it on the kitchen boiler, and systematically dried the ignition system. Switched on again, got action first time—and overchoked. When anyone wants to make a fast getaway in the movies, they get in their cars and go. I swore, tried again, and achieved a stuttering response that persevered into a regular engine note. I was finally ready to leave.
No police car met me as I rattled up the lane. I was soon on the A4, heading west. The mist that I’d assumed was local persisted right through Marlborough, slowing my speed but making it less likely that I’d be spotted if a call had been radioed to patrol cars. It lifted for a stretch in the approach to Devizes on the A36l, and as quickly returned when I was through the town.
Swiftly into Somerset. Frome, wedged steeply between two hills, where I’d disembarked from the train with my fellow evacuees in 1943. The prison town of Shepton Mallet, the stark, unhappy place where they’d based the GIs. Finally, spectrally pale in the mist, Christian Gifford.
I stopped a few hundred yards short of the farm, drove the car up a track into a wooded section where it wouldn’t be seen from the lane, and walked the rest. Hard work for me, but I preferred to make my cumbersome exit from the car unobserved and out of shotgun range.
The old cliché of mist enshrouding the landscape was peculiarly apt. The absence of bird song in the country is more sepulchral than a churchyard. There was only the irregular crunch of shoes and stick on the road surface. I cursed Harry again for robbing me of my gun.
I reached the farm entrance where the milk churns waited to be collected. Ahead, in normal visibility, I would have seen the house and other buildings instead of just the blanched, overhanging hedgerow festooned with cobwebs and droplets of moisture.
I limped into the yard, my eyes compensating in mobility for my legs.
I stood for a moment scanning the gray buildings for a movement, reminded of the day when Duke and Harry had driven the jeep in there, with me in the back, triumphant, but nervous about the outcome until Barbara, radiant, her black hair springing against the white sweater, had stepped from the house and smiled.
I bit back my thoughts and approached the farmhouse.
My knock was answered by George Lockwood. Twenty years can render dramatic changes in a face. His was little altered. Some extra gaps among the teeth, a slightly more hollow look to the cheekbones, but the left eye still had its bloodshot wedge, and the eyebrows were as dark as formerly, though the rest of his hair had whitened.
He said nothing. He assessed me. The look was steady, interested, unsurprised. He knew me. He might even have expected me.
I explained superfluously, “I called on Sunday, hoping to see you and Mrs. Lockwood. I’m Theo Sinclair,”
He nodded. At least I was understood.
“May I come in?”
The focus of his eyes altered. He looked past me, taking in the yard.
I told him, “I’m alone this time.”
He stepped back from the door, leaving it open, and turned and shuffled along the passage.
I followed, closing the door after me.
The smell of baking wafted to me with the pungent, remembered odor of the house, the mustiness of old carpets and ancient stone. More evocative still, I heard Mrs. Lock-wood’s small, muted voice ask, “Who is it, George?” Then I entered the kitchen, and as she saw me she said, “Theo, my dear!” and opened her arms for me to embrace her.
She’d altered more than her husband, shed most of the stoutness of her middle years, and acquired a network of wrinkles that gave her a depressed look when the smile receded. Arthritis had begun to deform her finger joints. She wore her hair, now silver-white, in the same severe style, scraped back from the forehead and fastened above the neck.
She said, “You can still find room for a plateful of fresh-baked scones, I reckon.”
“Emphatically.” More of a welcome than last time, I thought. Casually, I asked, “Where’s Bernard this morning?”
“Plowing. He’ll come by presently.”
I tried not to register panic at the prospect.
Presently,
I remembered, has infinite limits of meaning in the West Country. You learn as much from the speaker’s face as you do from the intonation. I’d never been much good at divining Mrs. Lockwood’s utterances.
So the three of us sat around the old-fashioned wooden table and ate hot scones with strawberry jam and drank tea from the brown pot simmering on the range while I told them what I’d done with my life since 1944. In a few, crisp sentences.
