The Office of the Dead (22 page)

‘Very likely,’ Henry said.

We said goodbye and found another taxi in Horseferry Road. Henry suggested lunch at the Ritz, but I wouldn’t let him. In the end we went to a chop house off the Strand, a dark, low-ceilinged place divided up into wooden booths so you could be private if you wanted to be. We got there before one, so we found a quiet table without difficulty.

‘Are you still wasting money at Brown’s Hotel?’ I asked.

‘I’m leaving today.’ Henry offered me a cigarette. ‘I’m going to find a nice little private hotel with a landlady who’ll mother me.’ He leaned forward with his lighter. ‘You’re wearing your wedding ring today.’

It was part of my social camouflage in Rosington. I said, ‘I needed it for Miss Findhorn. After all, we were supposed to be man and wife.’

‘We still are. Have you paid in that cheque yet?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know if I want to.’

‘But it’s ten thousand pounds. Where is it?’

‘In my bedside cupboard.’
With a sprig of lavender on top to make it smell better.

‘Listen, Wendy, it’ll be safer if you have it. Then I can’t spend it. And it’s only fair.’

‘I thought you were going to buy a share of that school.’

‘I am. It’s all going ahead. I promise. But if I’ve got this extra money, I’ll just waste it.’

I smiled at him. ‘I’ll see.’

‘You’ve changed.’

‘And why do you think that is?’

Suddenly we were on the verge of a quarrel neither of us wanted. He must have sensed it as well because he threw a question about Janet and David at me. Soon I was telling him about the Dark Hostelry, about the collapse of David’s hopes for the Theological College and about the odd behaviour of Mr Treevor.

Later I showed him the two books,
Tongues
and
Voice
, and also the photograph. Henry read ‘The Office of the Dead’ while demolishing a helping of steak-and-kidney pudding.

‘In a way, it’s like Christianity gone mad.’ He sat back and wiped his mouth with his napkin. ‘You eat the body and blood, and in return you get eternal life.’ He glanced down at the open book. ‘Or the secret of youth or something. Hard to know exactly what he
does
mean.’ He turned over a page. ‘And what’s all this stuff about the angel sitting at his shoulder telling him what to write? It makes it sound as if he’s got his own personal Angel of the Lord. He must have been completely round the bend.’

‘I don’t know. He was obviously a bit eccentric –’

‘That’s one way of putting it.’

‘But you can’t deny he did a lot of good. Some of his ideas were just a little ahead of his time.’

‘And ours,’ Henry said. ‘I can imagine how David feels about women priests.’

‘What worries me is the girl.’ I pointed to the little figure beside Francis. ‘What happened to her? Why should Martlesham lie about it?’

‘There’s probably a perfectly innocent explanation. Anyway, he might have made a mistake.’

‘About something like that, his own sister coming with him to Canada?’

‘It happened over fifty years ago, Wendy. And he’s had a stroke since then, remember.’

Henry ordered more beer and by common consent we talked about other things, mainly about his plans for Veedon Hall. We both skated round my role in these, if any. At ten past two we went back to the Strand and took a taxi to the Blue Dahlia Café.

As we drew up outside, Henry touched my arm. ‘Look!’

I followed the direction of his pointing finger. There were several people walking down Fetter Passage but I recognized none of them.

‘Right at the end,’ Henry said. ‘Just turning the corner.’

‘Who?’

‘I’m sure it was Munro.’

‘What do you think?’ Henry said as we stood on the pavement after paying off the taxi. ‘Martlesham’s got Munro to follow us after we leave him?’

I shook my head. ‘More likely he’s been following us already.’

‘But how?’

‘If Martlesham told him I was coming to see him this afternoon, all Munro needed to do was go to Liverpool Street and keep an eye on trains from Rosington.’

Fetter Passage was very quiet after the bustle of Holborn. But was someone watching us, Munro or a colleague? I glanced up at the windows above the café, wondering which belonged to Martlesham’s flat.

Henry said, ‘In that case he’ll know about the Church Empire Society.’

‘And what about if he was in the chop house? If he was in the booth next to ours, he might have heard something.’

‘Nothing we can do about it now.’ He looked up and down the terrace. ‘Bit of a dump.’

‘But not as bad as Swan Alley.’

I opened the door of the café. The ribbons swayed like seaweed across the archway at the rear of the room. We had arrived in the dead time between lunch and tea and there were few customers. The sad-faced woman was cutting bread at the counter. She didn’t look up as we came in.

‘I’ve come to see Mr Martlesham,’ I said to her.

‘I tell the boss you’re here.’

Without meeting my eyes, she put down the knife and shuffled through the archway. A moment later, she parted the ribbons again and beckoned us.

Beyond the archway was a small room used for serving food. Immediately opposite us was an open door leading to a kitchen. She gestured to another door on our left.

‘Knock,’ she commanded.

I tapped on the door and I heard Martlesham telling us to come in.

The room was equipped as an office with what looked like cast-off War Department furniture. Martlesham was sitting behind the desk and facing us. Behind him was an open window looking into a sunny yard full of bicycles and dustbins. He didn’t get up, but stared past me at Henry.

‘Who’s this?’

‘My husband, Henry Appleyard. Henry, this is Mr Martlesham.’

Henry smiled and extended his hand across the desk. Martlesham shook it for the shortest possible time.

‘You’ll excuse me if I don’t get up. Please sit down.’

I chose a hard chair in front of the desk. I felt as though he was interviewing me. I said, ‘Do you own the café?’

‘I own the whole terrace.’ He sounded bored with his possession.

I heard Henry suck in his breath beside me.

‘It must mean a lot of work for you,’ I said, not because it was an intelligent thing to say but because it was the first thing that came into my mind.

‘Not really. I have someone to take care of the details. It’s a long-term investment, really.’

‘You’re planning to develop the site?’ Henry said.

‘Yes. Everyone’s on short tenancies except for a couple of leaseholders at the far end of the terrace. I’m waiting for them to die or move.’ He gave us a twisted smile. ‘And they’re probably waiting for me to do the same.’

A fleck of ash marred the brilliantly white surface of his left-hand shirt cuff. He put down his cigarette and carefully brushed it off. There was a freshly ironed handkerchief in the breast pocket of his jacket and his hands had been manicured. I wondered who looked after his appearance now Vera was dead. Perhaps he had planned Fetter Passage to be a nest egg for their shared old age. For the first time it struck me that Vera’s death might have had something to do with his hiring Munro. Perhaps he’d wanted to find out if he still had a family. It isn’t easy to be lonely. I knew all about that.

‘What did you want to see me about?’

‘About Nancy,’ I said. ‘I wondered if she might have any memories of Canon Youlgreave.’

He shrugged. ‘Quite possibly. But you’d have to find her.’

‘So you don’t have an address?’

He shook his head. ‘I told you, she was adopted almost as soon as we got to Toronto. The couple who took her were moving down to the States, and the lady at the orphanage said it would be better for her if she didn’t have any contact with her old life.’

‘That must have been terrible for both of you.’

His heavy lids drooped over dark eyes. ‘Better than Swan Alley, Mrs Appleyard, I tell you that. She was going to a good home, with good people. I had a job, somewhere to live, prospects. They didn’t give us much time to think about it, anyway. After the
Hesperides
docked, I saw her maybe twice in the next six weeks. Then that was that.’

‘That’s a pity,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘Because if you had an address for her, she might have been able to explain this.’ I lifted Janet’s music case on to the desk and took out the photograph. I put it in front of him, on his unblemished green blotter. ‘But perhaps you can explain it instead.’

Slowly he put on a pair of glasses. For what seemed like several minutes he stared down at the photograph. His expression didn’t change. Henry fumbled in his pocket and a moment later lit a cigarette. As if the flare of the match was a signal, Martlesham raised his head and transferred his stare to me.

‘Well?’

‘I wondered if you recognized it.’

‘The place? No, I don’t.’

‘It’s Rosington Theological College. The lawn at the back.’

‘Very possibly. I never went there. Wasn’t it that redbrick place near the Porta?’

‘Do you recognize anybody?’

‘There’s Canon Youlgreave, of course. And that man there, the old clergyman, wasn’t he another canon? Some of the ladies look familiar but I wouldn’t be able to put a name to them, not now.’

‘What about the children?’

For the first time there was a hint of anger in those dark eyes. ‘Why are you asking me all this?’

‘Look at the girl next to Canon Youlgreave,’ I said.

He glanced down, then back to me. He said nothing.

‘Is that your sister?’

‘Could be.’ He spoke as though I were grinding the words out of him one by one. ‘Hard to tell.’

‘She’s dressed up, Mr Martlesham. Looks like a pair of wings. Does that ring any bells?’

‘Maybe they were doing some kind of play. Canon Youlgreave was always involved in anything artistic, you see, being a poet. Maybe not a play. Might have been dancing, or something, and they needed a little girl.’

‘According to the writing on the back, it is your sister.’

He looked at me as if I’d stung him. Then, clumsily with his one good hand, he turned the photograph over. He read the row of names on the back.

‘So you knew it was Nancy all along, Mrs Appleyard.’ He glared at me and I was suddenly glad that Henry was in the room. ‘Why come and pester me about it?’

‘Because of the date at the top.’ I watched him looking at it. Then I went on, ‘Your birthday was on the seventeenth of July. According to you, you and your sister were in the middle of the Atlantic on the
Hesperides
on that day. So what’s she doing with a pair of wings on the lawn of the Theological College over two weeks later?’

Martlesham took off his glasses, folded them and put them away in their case. Only then did he look at me. ‘I must have made a mistake about the date.’

‘We can easily check that,’ said Henry suddenly. ‘The date of the sailing would have been in the newspapers.’

Martlesham ignored him. ‘Or whoever wrote the names on the back made a mistake. Simple as that. Or they put the wrong date.’

‘I don’t think that’s very likely, Mr Martlesham. You thought that was Nancy and there are plenty of people in Rosington we can ask, people who will remember her as she was then. There’s Mrs Elstree, for one. And I expect we can check when the principal’s garden party was. If we need to.’

Martlesham sighed and reached for his cigarette case. He said in a low voice, almost as if talking to himself, ‘I could ask you to leave.’

‘And then your private investigator could follow us and see what we did next.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Harold Munro, ex-detective sergeant, Metropolitan Police.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Who else would bother to hire him?’

‘How should I know?’ He tapped a cigarette on the case and put it in his mouth. ‘Anyway, what’s he been doing?’

‘He’s paid several visits to Rosington in the last few weeks. He’s stolen cuttings about Francis Youlgreave from the backfile of the
Rosington Observer.
He borrowed a copy of one of Youlgreave’s books from the public library. He tried to question a number of people, including Mrs Elstree, and nearly frightened one old lady to death. He’s been seen watching the Dark Hostelry, it’s even possible he’s been inside the house. He followed me after I met you here on Monday and he’s got an office in Holborn. My husband saw him ten minutes ago at the other end of Fetter Passage.’

‘Very mysterious, Mrs Appleyard. Sounds like a job for the police, especially if you think this man’s broken into the Dark Hostelry.’

I picked up the photograph and returned it to the music case. His hand twitched as I picked it up, and for a moment I wondered if he would try to stop me taking it.