The Discourtesy of Death (Father Anselm Novels) (27 page)

Trevor was very helpful, but he couldn’t be charmed into disclosing the present location of the vendor. In answer to direct questions he said, no, the client would not attend any visit to the house or the business, yes, a quick sale was hoped for, and yes (to that end), an offer well below the asking price would be considered. Then came the one surprising aside: the vendor was sick of England and was heading off to the sun. Somewhere in Spain. Both sales would be handled through his appointed agent.

‘Which is me,’ said Trevor, with a hint of his influence and sway. He turned persuasive: ‘As to the asking price on the Edwardian bijou: frankly, between our good selves, I think if you came in at—’

Anselm put the phone down.

‘You haven’t gone yet, Vincent,’ he said, quietly. ‘And I’m going to find you.’

Anselm had never quite understood how his mind worked. He often failed to see the obvious. Lying in bed, listening to ‘Sailing By’, he’d suddenly recognise what had been plain all along, the insight appearing in his mind out of nowhere and prompted by nothing. It was a phenomenon he found more maddening than humbling. And it happened now, without the benefit of darkness and music. Stepping from the calefactory into the cloister, he suddenly stalled, staring ahead at the sunlight falling in the Garth. He felt sick.

‘Nigel’s chronology was based on information obtained from Timothy … Nigel had spoken to him very carefully … wanting to know who’d been with Jennifer on the night she died.’

Anselm blinked at the sharp green moss, bright with yesterday’s rainwater.

‘Which means that Timothy saw Vincent Cooper when he came back.’

And if he’d seen the late return, he’d seen everything else. Because he’d seen Vincent Cooper leave. The boy had probably seen or heard the conversation between Vincent and Peter. He’d probably seen or heard the call to Doctor Ingleby, along with his arrival and all that had transpired when it had been disclosed that Jenny was now dead.

‘Dear God,’ whispered Anselm. ‘I asked you for help, but I didn’t ask for this. I’ve stumbled onto the one secret observer … Timothy Henderson witnessed the killing of his mother. And he’s said nothing … to protect every single person in his family.’

The young boy had accepted his father’s whispered explanation that cancer had taken his mother away sooner than expected. He’d cried, no doubt, listening to all the other stuff about a quick and merciful end. And all the while he’d known the truth. He’d buried it … for the sake of Michael and Emma and Nigel and Helen. And his father. For the sake of family peace. For the sake of cutting back on everyone’s quota of anguish. He’d let them swallow Peter’s story, not knowing that none of them believed him.

‘You can’t carry that weight, Timothy,’ mumbled Anselm. ‘It will destroy you.’

Anselm went in rapid search of the Prior. He found him alone in the nave, sitting at a bench near the back as if he were a casual visitor rather than the Superior. That was his way. He shunned all the trappings of Office. He listened to Anselm’s explanation without interrupting, showing only his pained reactions.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ admitted Anselm, his voice echoing softly. ‘I’m stunned … my mind is frozen.’

The Prior closed his eyes. This was another of his ways. You got the impression you were no longer quite alone. After a peculiarly deep silence, he opened them.

‘Talk to Nigel Goodwin,’ he said. ‘He’s already questioned the poor boy and the boy will have sensed his purpose. If anyone should sit down and help Timothy go beyond what he’s been able to reveal so far, then it’s Nigel. This is his responsibility, not yours. He’s the one who’s received the boy’s partial trust, not you. It would be quite wrong for you to question him, however delicately, if you were relying on what he’d disclosed to Nigel.’

Anselm quickly left the church and was heading towards the plum trees when he heard heavy feet stirring up the gravel behind him.

‘You have the keys to the Fiat? The
comm-u-nal
car?’

Bede, softly panting, drew out the qualifier as if Anselm needed a firm reminder. The archivist stood legs apart, a plump hand on each hip.

‘I do,’ confessed Anselm.

‘You’re meant to put them back on the hook.’

‘I’m sorry, I forgot.’

‘And you didn’t fill in the register.’

‘I’m sorry, I was rushed.’

‘There are rules, Anselm. You can’t just forget them and run. They make the world go round. They stop an archivist killing a beekeeper.’

Anselm studied Bede with something like awe. He’d made it all sound so simple.

The mullioned windows of the cottage at Long Melford seemed to stare back at Anselm after he’d rung the bell. A figure moved behind the glass and, after a long delay, the door opened. There, on the hearth, was neither Doctor Goodwin nor his wife, but a boy Anselm had only ever seen in a photograph, excluding (of course) the fleeting glimpse at the upstairs window. Timothy Henderson spoke first:

‘They’re not in.’

Anselm began to introduce himself, stammering his surprise, but Timothy interrupted him.

‘I know who you are. I read the article in the
Sunday Times.
You’re a monk.’

‘Yes.’ Anselm was pleased the boy had opted for the primary designation.

‘And a detective.’

‘I prefer “puzzled explorer lost in the fog of human doubt and confusion”,’ corrected Anselm.

‘That’s a bit long.’

‘It is. But it’s true.’

Timothy flashed a sunny smile, its appearance so bright and unexpected that it bowled Anselm clean over. ‘Do you want to come in?’ he said. ‘They’ll be back any minute.’

Timothy was fourteen now (Anselm reminded himself). He’d been twelve when he’d lost his mother. His brown eyes still had their boyish simplicity, but the voice was breaking and his movements were slightly awkward. Adolescence made his body twitch with a kind of static electricity. Even his hair had been scrambled by the voltage. He’d gone into the kitchen, like a proper host, offering tea and something to eat. Anselm sat down, noting the
Sunday Times
folded on the coffee table. The bureau in the corner was open. Beside a pad of paper and a pile of envelopes was a diary, closed upon a biro. It had ‘T.H.’ scrawled all over the cover. Timothy had been writing when Anselm had rung the bell…

‘My aunt makes this fruit cake,’ said Timothy, entering the room. He’d balanced a plate on the top of each mug. On each plate was a slice of Nigel’s favourite nibble. ‘She’s been making it for years … since she married my uncle.’

Anselm helped Timothy by carefully taking the plates off the mugs. When they were both seated, Timothy continued his story.

‘And it’s always the same … dried out … sometimes burned … but never, ever moist. Isn’t that weird?’

Anselm agreed, watching the boy’s bright, brown eyes. What am I to say? he thought, anxiously. You are a witness to murder. I can’t talk about cake.

‘And do you know something else? My uncle – actually he’s not my uncle, he’s my
great uncle
– he always says it’s magnificent. Marvellous. Awe-inspiring. And it isn’t. What do you think?’

Anselm said it was rather dry.

‘Exactly,’ said Timothy, precisely. ‘It’s obvious. But my uncle can’t say it. Even though it is true, he can’t bring himself to tell my aunt that this thing she’s been bringing out of the oven for forty years is awful. And that he hates it. He’s made it something kind to say the opposite. Which is a bit odd, wouldn’t you say?’

Anselm said he would. The boy was on the edge of his seat, his crumpled jeans with washed-out white patches on the knees. His white trainers were new, with the laces left untied and shoved down the insides, between the shoe and the sock. The sleeves of his brown woollen jumper had been pushed up to the elbows.

‘He doesn’t speak to his brother,’ said Timothy, clipping the words. ‘But my aunt speaks to his wife. Yet, they never speak together, all four of them. That’s weird, too.’

Anselm agreed.

‘My grandparents don’t speak much to my father. And neither do my great aunt and great uncle. And from what I’ve heard, they didn’t talk much to my mother, either. So this is my family: my dad is sitting in a chair, sort of, and no one talks to him. And the people who aren’t talking to him aren’t talking to each other, except for my aunt and my grandma who only speak on the phone. Which is very weird.’

Anselm nodded.
And you have done your best to stop things getting worse. You’ve accepted a dreadful burden so as to keep your family from falling even further apart.

‘But the weirdest part of all this, is that they’re all talking to me.’ He started eating his great aunt’s cake hungrily. ‘Or they try to, but … the thing is … they don’t tell me the truth. It’s as though they thought it might bite them. Or me, I suppose. You see, my uncle Nigel – and I really like him – he seems to think he’s doing Aunt Helen a favour. As if her life was worth living because he says her cake is divine. Worse, I suppose … she thinks her life’s important because of the cake. Why not tell her it’s really bad? Why not say it’s dried out
again
because she’s always doing two things at once? Why not throw it in the bin and kick the oven? If my uncle did that just for once in his life instead of patting her on the head … well, maybe Aunt Helen would get a life. Get one for herself, not him. Do you know she’s got a degree in botany? And all she’s ever done is make herbal tea for my mother. She knows
everything
about plants, what you can eat and what you can’t. In the Middle Ages she’d have been a witch.’

Anselm ate some of Helen’s cake. It was dry, lacking heart. He kept his eyes on Timothy who wasn’t expecting or wanting Anselm’s contribution … not just yet. This very clever boy was sick of listening. He wanted to be heard. But Anselm’s skin tingled with apprehension. He felt with uncomfortable certainty that Timothy was testing him. Playing with him, even. He was going somewhere with this voluntary narrative of family dysfunction. He was angry and curiously out of control. Seeming to enjoy himself while being unhappy. Anselm had seen this many times before, but in hardened criminals and usually the violent: they’d had too much to talk about. Too much to say. They’d been buried in unmanaged feeling. But he’d never seen it in a boy. But, then again, he’d never met a child who’d witnessed a murder.

‘Why doesn’t my grandfather tell his brother what went wrong in his life?’ asked the boy.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why doesn’t my grandfather try and sort things out with my father?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why doesn’t my grandmother give him a chance?’

‘I don’t know.’ Anselm brought the angry assault to a close. ‘I
really
don’t know.’

Timothy finished his cake, put the plate on the table and reached for his mug of tea. He slouched, involuntarily, looking at Anselm with that back of the classroom detachment. One of the bright lads who’d begun to see through everything around them and were giving cynicism a go. Only there was something advanced about this fourteen-year-old. He wasn’t acting to see what things felt like … he was already there, and he didn’t like what his eyes were telling him. He didn’t like the world very much or the people in it. They were all rather disappointing. Monks included. Even the one lost in the fog and claiming not to know.

‘I thought you’d be different,’ said Timothy, one foot pressing up and down, as if he were smashing a bass drum. ‘Just a little bit, but still different. And you’re not. There’s a lot of problems in my family and you know why.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘No, I don’t.’

In truth, Anselm was being evasive. He knew about the shadow from Northern Ireland. He knew about Peter Henderson’s impact on the Goodwins. He knew about the suspicions harboured in this very house. But it wasn’t his place to bring these elements into the open … at least not yet.

Timothy put a finger in his mouth to pick loose a hardened current or cherry. As if giving Anselm a second chance, he said:

‘Okay, why did my dad throw a brick at the boy in Manchester?’

He looked at Anselm from suddenly tortured eyes – the anguish appearing as swiftly and dramatically as the sunlit smile. The vast distance between the two emotions, suffering and jubilation, had been crossed with the snap of a finger and thumb. The boy needed help. He’d just stepped over a vast, yawning hole of complex, knotted feeling as if it wasn’t there. All he had were these two intense reactions, one light, one dark. If he was to be balanced and healthy, he needed the immense grading in between. Otherwise he’d love without depth and hate without remission. He’d hurt himself and others, only he wouldn’t feel much … except exhilaration and despair. He’d seek simpler feelings through excess alcohol and senseless sex, telling himself that he was living life to the full; that this was rock ’n’ roll. He’d end up with cuts to his face – they always did. He’d end up crying without knowing why. Which – given his intelligence – he’d turn into some kind of existential symptom because life was absurd and then he’d go the route of many people who want radical answers but don’t always want to study the primary sources: he’d say that God was dead and Nietzsche and Sartre had said it all.

Could things get any worse? The last words would go to the French and the Germans.

Seeing Timothy’s sheer …
impoverishment
, the confusion and the bile, Anselm was simultaneously convinced that the true story behind the killing of Jennifer Henderson had to be told. That Peter Henderson’s desperate attempt to protect his son from the truth was profoundly misinformed. Something had to be done … something had to be done.

‘I said, why did my dad throw that brick?’ repeated Timothy. ‘You’re a detective. You’ve been asking lots of questions. You must have found something out by now.’

After a moment Anselm said, ‘I’m sorry, Timothy, I wasn’t honest before. I do know why there are problems between your father and grandparents, and why there are problems between your grandparents and your aunt and uncle. But I don’t know for sure. I didn’t answer your questions because it’s not always appropriate to be brutally honest with people you’ve only known for ten minutes and when their aunt and uncle are due back in seconds. Sometimes telling the truth – and I can see that is what you like, want and admire – requires
time
. Planning. Cooperation from all the people involved. Your questions are too deep and important to be answered off the cuff – even honestly. I think you appreciate that, but I can see you’re sick of being messed around. In the present instance, however, I also think you know the answers to your own questions. You want to embarrass
me
, because you can’t embarrass
them
… because one of the strange things about being kept in the dark is that you get to like it after a while. It makes you
powerful
. Because you know far more than
they
could ever begin to guess. They feed you the party line and think they’ve got you on board whereas, in fact … you are watching them; knowing what you know. And that is one good feeling among all the bad. Am I right?’