The Graveyard Position (19 page)

“Though of course they didn't expect questioning. In their minds it was just a remote possibility that needed to be faced up to.”

“Though someone like your uncle Paul, who seems to have been consumed with rage at being cuckolded by his own father, would have presented a danger. Anyone not in full control would.”

“That could apply to Merlyn's dad as well.”

“They really were relying rather heavily on your father pulling it off. He was your grandfather's doctor, and he could get an easygoing colleague to countersign, and that would be the end of it. As it turned out that
was
the end of it.”

“Ye-e-es.”

Charlie noted the hesitation, but ignored it for the moment.

“So what happened then?”

“They started to talk about the next meeting, and the drawing of straws. I nearly slipped away, but it became clear that a row was developing, so I stayed a bit longer. There was the question of who would prepare the draw that was to select the murderer (they never used that word, of course). People seemed to think that my father was a good idea—he being a doctor seemed to put him above suspicion, and also he was only a member of the family by marriage, which seemed to Emily and others to be an advantage as well. Then I heard a voice I didn't know well—it must have been Jake Docherty—say: ‘He may be a doctor, but he's also an amateur conjurer. I've been at a kids' party where he's done all kinds of tricks. Good ones they were too. He's got his part in this business, and an important part, and it should be left at that. We've got to have someone who isn't going to be suspected of fiddling the ballot.”

“Good heavens,” said Charlie. “What a collection of people! I get the impression of a group that were disunited even as they were planning a joint action.”

“That's right. There was no way of uniting the Cantelos.”

“Was he right about your father as a conjurer?”

“Oh yes. Some of the happiest days of my childhood were spent watching my dad do his tricks. He was only an amateur, of course, but a brilliant one. I sometimes thought he only wanted a child so he would have a resident audience.”

“So who was finally picked to prepare the draw?”

“They rejected my mother, and finally they picked Paul. “Does that satisfy you, Jake?' they asked, and he grunted a reply. So that was all agreed, they arranged a date for the next meeting—about ten days away, at Emily's—and a provisional date for when ‘it' was to be done—about three weeks away. They agreed that Paul would arrange eight identical slips of paper, one of which would have an
X
on it. At the meeting at Emily's they would inspect the slips, fold them, put them in a bag, then each would draw one out. They wouldn't open them—they would simply go away and have no more contact with one another till after the death, and even then nothing would be said about what had been decided and what had happened. Simple! Easy-peasy!”

Charlie thought long and hard.

“Simple maybe. But you were uncertain a minute or two ago when I said your father would sign the death certificate and that would be the end of it.”

“Well, yes, a bit. He did sign the death certificate, but…well, I don't think things went as he expected.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Ten days after that meeting at ours there was the meeting at Aunt Emily's—my father and mother went there, and made no secret of where they were going. I knew that another ten days or so after that, Grandfather was scheduled to die. No one had any contact with any of the others, so the only way I might have learned the actual date was by overhearing a discussion between my parents about it. I never did. I don't think they talked about it, because they didn't
need
to. They knew, and kept quiet about it, even among themselves. But I did feel that I knew by signs—looks, tensions, nerviness—when it was getting near.”

“So how did you know when it happened?”

“I'm coming to that. I knew when they knew. We were at dinner one evening when the cook came in—she came and cooked dinner for five evenings a week, and the other evenings were
grim
—and she whispered in my father's ear. I heard the words ‘Mr. Merlyn Cantelo,' and my father burst out: ‘But that's—' with an expression of total surprise on his face. That's when I knew things hadn't gone as expected.”

“So what happened then?”

“He realized at once that his reaction was wrong. Grandfather had been ill for three or four months. No one, let alone a doctor, could be surprised at his death, even though there'd been a lot of talk about his getting better. Father looked at Mary, the cook, but she was too dim to register that something was not quite right. He should have looked at me. He got up and went round the table to my mother. ‘Marigold,' he said, ‘I'm afraid your father—' and she dabbed at her eyes and said, ‘He's dead, isn't he?' and Father said, ‘Yes. I must go to Congreve Street.' Then he left the house, Mother went up to their bedroom, and when Mary cleared away the plates she said, ‘It's been a terrible shock for your mum and dad, hasn't it?' and I just said, ‘I suppose so.' It had been a shock up to a point.”

“Did you ever find out what had gone wrong?”

“Not really. I just got…indications. I was only twelve, but I was often lonely, and used to thinking things through on my own. I decided that death had come on the wrong day—probably the day before it was supposed to, or two days before. Clarissa still had a good alibi—she was in a long meeting with two or three other Leeds clairvoyants—so that was taken care of. Father was told that grandfather had died, which was what he was expecting. It was the timing that surprised him.”

“Right. But that's your deduction, isn't it? You never heard your parents discussing it?”

“No. The only thing I heard was a telephone conversation, and there you only get one side, don't you?”

“Of course. How much later was this?”

“Oh, maybe three or four days. Before the funeral anyway.”

“Meanwhile your father had gone and signed the death certificate, had he?”

“Oh yes. Asphyxia is difficult to detect, and in any case he wasn't going to look for signs of it, was he, like he said at the meeting. It could have been a family member who had got the slip with
X
on it doing the murder a day or two early. The main thing was, he was dead, and things needed to be wrapped up so the whole thing could be forgotten.”

“You think that was the important thing, rather than finding out what actually happened?”

“Oh yes. I feel sure that they were all meant to remain in doubt anyway. Permanently. So that once the certificate had been signed and the undertakers had taken him away for cremation—”

“Cremation?”

“Yes. Grandfather was always keen to do the modern thing. He said cremation was ‘more hygienic.' And if he hadn't said it, one of the family would have put the words into his mouth. Cremation was safer all round. So things turned out pretty much as they were meant to. The date he died was just a hiccup. That's what my dad was saying the only time I did overhear him talking about Grandfather's death.”

“What was he saying?”

“He was talking to one of the family members involved in the plot, but I don't know which one. He said, ‘The important thing is, he's dead. Everyone accepts it was natural causes. Why should we or anyone else inquire any further…leave it! The old man is dead, and that's what we wanted. Let there be an end to it. An end!' And he slammed the phone down. He thought I was at school, but I'd come home early, pretending to be still upset about Grandfather's death. Being there when nobody thought you were there was much the best way of overhearing things, I found.”

And she smiled at Charlie with her great, brown, liquid eyes, which expressed the clear desire that he and she should come to know each other better.

Later, when he'd told all this to Merlyn Docherty, Charlie expressed his frustration.

“So the death could have been natural causes. It could have been done a day or two early by the one who picked the
X
slip. It could have been done early by another family member who wanted to have the satisfaction of doing it—”

“Paul, maybe,” said Merlyn.

“Right. Or it could have been done by someone else altogether. And so far as I can see, for all—or most—of the family it was left uncertain what had happened, and who had done it. They were in blissful ignorance, and happy to remain that way.”

“Eddie?”

Merlyn knew it was Edward Fowldes by the voice, and Edward knew it was Merlyn. Eddie was the nearest Merlyn had come to closeness with anyone of his own generation in the eighteen months he had been in Leeds more than twenty years before.

“Merlyn! I've been wondering if you'd be in touch.”

“I shouldn't have left it so long, but I've been rather…busy since I got back.”

“I heard about the car only yesterday. I didn't even know you'd moved into Congreve Street.”

“Camping here, rather than living. I'm sure your mother will have heard that.”

“Maybe. Mother and I are not that close.”

“The story of the Cantelo family.”

“True. Though as you say, Mother probably knows all the news about you. Information of a certain kind does travel around. There is some kind of grapevine.”

“Probably centered on Rosalind. She's been aggressive in a way I don't remember when I was living here before. The truth is, she made very little impression on me then, apart from once making a suggestive advance.”

“We regarded her as just a schoolkid, whereas you and I were about to start out in the big world. She's just grown-up. And she had to fend for herself—emotionally and in other ways.”

“You're probably right. Eddie, I wondered if you would like to see the old house again, maybe for the last time. We had some pretty good times here while I was in Leeds.”

“We did,” Eddie said. “I was always fond of Clarissa, like most people. I wish now I'd gone to see her in her last years. People said she was senile, or the next thing, but—”

“—but you realize now that wasn't true. Quite right. She was no worse than a little bit odd and very vague. Would you like to come round? Then we could go for a meal or a drink.”

“A drink would be fine. I've got faddy in my middle age, full of likes and dislikes about my food. It means I don't get much pleasure from a meal out.”

So they arranged that Eddie would come around the next evening, and when they'd looked about the house a bit they'd go to the West End pub or the Vesper Gate for a drink. Merlyn wondered whether he ought to buy another old car for his last days in Leeds and to get him back to the Continent. On his aunt's telephone table there was a pad with a number on it and a note “to get rid of the car” in a shaky hand. His aunt selling off her means of transport when she knew she would never use it again. He nearly rang the number, but then thought of having to inspect under the car every time he went for a drive, and decided that if he did buy one it would be at the last minute before he left the country. He spent the next day looking at notes he had made when Charlie told him about his interview with Caroline. Merlyn had to admit that the policeman had got a lot more out of her than any amateur investigator could have. Since a sexual interest had obviously played a part in Caroline's response to Charlie, Merlyn felt glad he had not been given the task himself.

With Eddie the best approach was of “old-friends-newly-met-up,” with a casual, maybe crablike lead-up to the main subject. So when Eddie arrived Merlyn was prepared to start in on what had happened to old schoolmates in the intervening years, but as it turned out they lighted directly on old times in the house as their topic of conversation. They went into the dining room first; Eddie simply looked around it disparagingly.

“This was never a room of any importance in our time, was it? Anyway, I was here after the funeral.”

“Of course you were,” said Merlyn, turning back to the door. “You're right. This room's day was when your mother and mine were young.”

“This room is more to the point,” said Eddie, when they went into the sitting room that doubled as a clairvoyant's consulting room. “We used to be fascinated by the tarot cards and the crystal ball and the whole paraphernalia.”

“Now and then we'd listen outside the door and bust a gut trying not to roar with laughter.”

Eddie laughed now.

“Fancy getting one's first ideas about sexual behavior from confessions to a spiritualist!”

“Once Clarissa came out and caught us. We were convinced it was her second sight told her we were there.”

“Whereas it was probably a creaking floorboard.”

Merlyn brought the tea in from the kitchen and poured them two cups. He looked around the room.

“Pity none of the Cantelos came for a consultancy session.”

“They never would!” said Eddie. “Gerald apart, they were rationalists to a man—and woman. My mother may sound like a nineteenth-century Methodist, but she firmly believes in a cool and godless universe.”

“And the duty of everyone to guide their conduct in life by the sacred rules of competition.”

“Don't I know it!” said Eddie, his tone heartfelt. “My mother tried it on me, but I must be some kind of mutant: the Cantelo spirit of get-up-and-grab passed me by.”

“I got a strong sense of that spirit from the strange novel I mentioned to you at Caroline's party,” said Merlyn.

Eddy nodded. “I went and had a look at it in the Leeds Library,” he said. “It was written by Paul, I feel quite sure.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“It corresponds with everything I remember about him, and everything people have told me about him since he took off.”

“For instance?”

“The fact that it really never landed the knockout satirical punch, but got sidetracked into some not very interesting plotlines, instead of concentrating on the family, and the effects of their upbringing on their relationships with each other.”

“You've really read it,” said Merlyn. “I'm afraid I only skimmed through it before I gave it back to Sergeant Peace.”

“Then again, I had to go to the library to read it, because there aren't any copies in the family. That's a real sign of Paul's futility: it was obviously written with his siblings in mind, to have a good laugh over, and then he couldn't summon up the gumption to give them all copies. He was a man with a cause and a grievance, but he just let the book fester away on library shelves. I'm not surprised he's become a teacher of creative writing: ‘those who can't, teach.'”

“He felt bitter enough about Grandfather Cantelo, you'd have thought, to hand it round,” said Merlyn.

“You're thinking of later, when he died. But it was written before that, when Paul was quite young—the early seventies, I'd guess. By the time Paul was consumed with hatred for his father, the book wasn't half strong enough. It didn't take in the
real
sins of his father, in Paul's eyes.”

“The girlies?”

“Exactly. Including girlies in his own family.”

Merlyn nodded thoughtfully.

“It's odd, isn't it? Old Merlyn thought of himself as a thoroughly modern person, but he behaved like a spoiled landowner of the ancien régime, taking as his right whatever caught his fancy.”

“That's right. But from the book he doesn't come across as much worse than someone in the grip of a theory, and one who totally lacked a sense of humor.”

“Yes. More like your average politician than a wicked and exploiting captain of industry. Well, at least you've read it properly. One of very, very few who have done so, I imagine.”

“It was interesting, but it went off at half-cock. In the event it was Paul who was the bomb. By the time of grandfather's funeral he was consumed with rage and with delight that his father was dead. He went round at the wake saying all sorts of indiscreet things, including his satisfaction that he was dead. Not at all the sort of behavior expected of you in Headingley.”

“I see….” Merlyn pondered. “You don't think Paul could have been got rid of, do you? I mean sent away. As being—” he nearly said, “dangerous,” but that might have revealed all too much to Eddie, so he just said, “too much of an embarrassment.”

“Could be. He took off within the month after Grandfather died. Maybe someone slipped him the fare to the States and it did the trick.”

Merlyn considered this and poured them both second cups.

“You know, old Cantelo had something else in common with a politician: a total lack of a sense of humor. Heredity's a funny thing, isn't it? How many of the Cantelos had or has a sense of humor?”

“Clarissa was the only one who had, that I know of,” said Eddie. “Maybe your mother did, but I never knew her. It would have helped her, being married to Jake. As to the rest of that generation—not a funny bone among them.”

“Shall we look upstairs?” asked Merlyn.

He switched on the lights in the hall, and they began up the fine oak staircase, with its jumble of family photographs, amateur watercolors, and even framed cartoons.

“I never realized what a splendid staircase this was,” said Eddie. “Eighteen seventies or eighties, I would guess. This must have been a very impressive house when it was built, rather brought down by some of the houses built around it.” They got to the landing, and he pointed to one of the six doors off from it. “That was Grandfather Cantelo's bedroom. I remember being taken to see him when he was very ill—maybe a month or two before he died. I was about eleven or twelve. I hated him. I could see that he despised me, and most of his family.”

“What happened?”

“I staged a prolonged coughing fit, and he waved me away, like an absolute monarch. He deigned to talk to my mother—she was strong-minded enough for him—but most of the rest of us were beneath contempt.”

“So his pride in his system of child-raising must have been dented by then?”

“I expect he rationalized it as some quirk of heredity rather than a failure of the system….” Eddie threw a glance at Merlyn. “When I saw him he was at a low ebb. He got better after that.”

“Got better? Really better?”

Eddie grimaced.

“Quite a lot better. Dangerously better. He was thinking of starting up a big new clothing business.”

Merlyn was staggered, and showed it.

“How on earth could he do that?”

“With the money from the sale of Cantelo Shirts. It fetched a packet in 1975. The buyer knew it was a failure of design, a refusal to follow the trends. The basic structure and economic prospects of the firm were fine, and the workforce first-rate. So there was money. Granddad wanted to start a new firm from scratch, at the age of seventy-three.”

“He'd have lost everything.”

Eddie nodded.

“He would. Everyone would.” With another significant glance Eddie led the way to Merlyn's old room. “Oh, I remember this place. We had a lot of real old chin-wags here. Schoolwork, of course. And other things.”

“Yes, other things,” agreed Merlyn. He took up the exercise book which he had found the week before and flipped through the pages. “I found notes here about things that happened just before I left. Aunt had told me that she thought I was threatened by some kind of family business—that I might be targeted because I was her heir.”

“Yes,” said Eddie. “We talked about that at the time.”

Merlyn was puzzled. Eddie seemed oddly embarrassed.

“Did we? I don't remember that. What did we say?”

“Only that it seemed some kind of financial thing. Clarissa suspected something, but she didn't know what it sprang from, what the motive was. She thought it might be money.”

“That I might be got out of the way?”

“Yes. But she was very muddled. Clairvoyance certainly wasn't helping her…. I think I knew more than she did.”

There was silence between them for a moment. This, Merlyn registered, was why Eddie was feeling guilty.

“I'm getting hints of a family conspiracy among our parents' generation,” Merlyn said eventually.

“Yes.” Eddie sighed. “It's something that has been around in the background for years and years—since Grandfather's death, in fact. Things somehow firm up as time goes by, but I'd heard whispers even when you were still here. That was from Caroline throwing hints, then retreating. She's an information flirt. She drops things into the conversation, then clams up or runs away. Perhaps I should have told you.”

“Why didn't you?”

“Because my parents were involved. Even with very imperfect parents one is scared of losing them. It's the ‘children, keep a hold on nurse for fear of finding something worse' syndrome.”

“I can understand that, just about. Did rumor say who had actually killed Grandfather?”

“Rumor said and says that there was a secret ballot—”

“I know.”

“But it also says he was killed, or died, before the agreed day, so none of the family was involved. That doesn't actually follow, you'll notice. You can call it wishful thinking, or stonewalling—whatever you like.”

“Does rumor say who got the short straw, even if he or she never actually got to do the deed?”