Bland Beginning (27 page)

“I say, that’s jolly good.” A vast smile split Anthony’s face. “I
am
glad to see you. You didn’t say you were coming, and I didn’t like to tell you I was. I say, though, have you had some tea? Will you look after Vicky, father?”

“I shall look after you both,” said Mr Shelton.

“There’s been some mix-up. Your uncle asked me to play for his team, but now it seems I’m playing for the other side. Do make sure Vicky has a deck chair, won’t you, Father? I’ve got to go out and field now.”

“Good luck, Anthony,” Blackburn said.

“Thanks.” Bending his head to kiss Vicky awkwardly on the cheek Anthony repeated, “I
am
glad to see you,” and went away. There was, indeed, a general exodus from the tent, and they followed it, settling themselves in deck chairs in time to see Sellingham take the field, followed by Milling-ham’s opening batsmen.

“There’s Phil, and Norman Summers with him,” Uncle Jack said and chuckled. “Beautiful bat, Norman. Ought to make a lot of runs – unless your young man does some damage.” Colonel Deeds, a dark, lean man, had given the ball to Anthony, who was swinging his arm in the manner customary to fast bowlers limbering up. Now the umpire signalled readiness for play and Anthony took a run of ten steps up to the wicket, brought his arm over – and the umpire indicated a wide. Anthony walked back, swinging his arms violently, and ran up again. This time the ball bounced halfway up the pitch and Philip Rawlings pulled it round to mid-wicket with great force. It bounced just inside the boundary for four runs. Colonel Deeds gave Anthony a dark, lean glance. Uncle Jack guffawed.

“Your young man’s out o’ practice, but Deeds doesn’t know it.” And whose fault was it but hers, Vicky thought with shame, that he was out of practice? Anthony’s next two balls were almost wide full pitches and the batsman made no attempt to play them. His fifth ball was another full pitch, this time nearly straight, and it was hit past cover for a single, the long grass in the outfield stopping another boundary. The last two balls of the over were both pitched very short, and Norman Summers struck them for two and four. The glance Colonel Deeds gave to Anthony at the end of the over was even leaner and darker. A hush fell on the little group in deck chairs. Mr Shelton’s face might have been cut out of brown rock, and even Uncle Jack’s glee was mixed with embarrassment. “Pity,” he said, and sat down in a chair beside Basingstoke. “Rotten affair, that chap Jacobs.”

Basingstoke had been engaged in an earnest conversation with Ruth Cleverly. Now he turned round. “I found him,” he said, not without a touch of bravado. He waved a hand past Ruth, where his rosy-cheeked young friend sat leaning forward, intent on the cricket. “Bland here was with me at the time.”

Without looking away from the cricket, Bland said, “I came a few minutes afterwards. It wasn’t pleasant.”

“Horrible,” said Uncle Jack with relish. “Strung up like a pig in his own kitchen. Suppose that’s the end of the story, eh?”

He addressed himself to Basingstoke, but it was Bland who replied. All of them seemed to listen with attention as he said: “The police seemed not to think so, but you never can tell what they really believe. The information they gave to the newspapers afterwards was very scanty.”

“Like to know if that damn Jacobs got hold of my book,” Uncle Jack said irritably. “Oh, that’s too bad. He’s taken Shelton off.” Anthony had indeed been taken off, after one over. Uncle Jack rose from his deck chair, as if about to protest, and then sat down again. Conversation died. They watched rather uneasily, as the score mounted through the thirties and the forties. Vicky was distressed. “Won’t they let him bowl again?” she whispered to Mr Shelton.

“Later, perhaps. I’m very glad you came this afternoon, so that I could tell you that I have changed my view about the necessity of – um – a long engagement.” She blushed. At her other side Edward was saying something to Uncle Jack about indigestion. Mr Shelton said, “I do hope that nothing will prevent – ah, Anthony’s going to bowl again at the other end.”

Colonel Deeds was speaking to Anthony, and had given him the ball. Anthony went back and marked carefully the spot at which he would begin his run. Quietness seemed to hang over the green. Vicky watched expectantly.

“I say,” Edward said petulantly, “I think it’s going to rain.” Anthony ran up and bowled. His first ball, of perfect length, broke sharply and knocked back Summers’ off stump. Vicky clapped her hands.

“One for sixty-two,” Uncle Jack said. “And thunder about.” They turned to look where a heavy cloud was coming up behind the marquee, and as they did so a man came out of the tent. He had an envelope in his hand, which he gave to Uncle Jack. “Found this on the floor of the marquee, sir, when we were cleaning up. It’s addressed to you.”

“To
me
.” Uncle Jack looked at the envelope with some distaste. “Right you are, Saunders.” He tore it open and read the contents with a frown on his face. Then he looked at the envelope again.

“Oh, well bowled,” said Mr Shelton. Anthony had bowled the incoming batsman. There was a spatter of applause from the benches. Uncle Jack sat down and passed a hand over his forehead.

“Bad news?” Edward asked.

“Bad news for somebody, but I hope not for you, Edward, my boy.” He tore up the letter into small shreds and sat with his chin on his hand, watching the cricket.

Now that Anthony had found a length, he began to skittle out the batsmen. He was aided by the pitch, which showed the cracks and bare patches that lend what is called a sporting character to so many village wickets. It was really necessary only to bowl at a reasonable pace and keep a good length, and the wicket did the rest, bringing the ball through at varying heights and adding occasionally a quite unintended bite. When the scoreboard showed five wickets for eighty, four of them taken by Anthony, Uncle Jack went to put on his pads. The cloud, like an enormous grey egg with an ominous yolk of black, was now almost directly overhead. Another batsman was dismissed, caught on the boundary off Anthony, from a ball he had tried to hit for six. As he came back he shook his head at Uncle Jack. “Light’s pretty bad out there.”

“Don’t be a fool, man. Good enough for you to hit ’em and get caught, good enough for me to hit ’em without getting caught.” His bright eyes flickered over the visitors in their deck chairs. He grinned unexpectedly. “Hope I come back safe and sound.”

“What about that bad news?”

“You’ll hear about that later.”

Uncle Jack trotted to the wicket and took guard. There were still five balls to Anthony’s over. The first of them was good length, pitched on the wicket. Uncle Jack strolled out to it and lifted it over the bowler’s head for four. The next was shorter and he made a kind of circular mow which was not within inches of the ball. The third ball he received was on the leg stump. Uncle Jack made a gallant attempt to on-drive it and it flew off the edge of his bat where deep fine leg might have been. The batsmen ran two.

The cloud was overhead. One or two heavy drops of rain fell. Basingstoke said, “We’d better get under cover,” but Bland seemed not to hear him. He was staring out on to the darkened cricket field.

The next ball was Uncle Jack’s glory. It was a good length and rose sharply. He went down on one knee and tried an-other mow. This time it connected, and the ball sailed high into the air and landed among the benches where it was finely caught and thrown back by one of the old men with pipes. The umpire signalled a six.

Rain was falling now quite heavily. Mr Shelton got up, put his coat round Vicky, and they joined the little crowd that had clustered at the entrance of the marquee. Only Bland sat in his deck chair as if mesmerised as Anthony came up to bowl the last ball of the over.

Perhaps the ball slipped from his hand, or perhaps it was a reversion to his wretched opening over. Anyway, the ball was a very short one. Uncle Jack advanced on it with bat raised threateningly, but somehow failed to play a stroke. The ball rose sharply, like the preceding one, and struck him on the forehead. He crumpled up on the ground. The rain fell thickly in heavy drops. Anthony ran up to the figure on the ground and bent over it. The other players crowded round them. A motorcar drew up at the side of the green and two men jumped out of it. Bland stood up and shrugged the rain off his shoulders.

The two men were running now. The foremost of them was Inspector Wrax, his dark eyes hot and angry. Bland turned to meet him in the rain. His young face was set and grave. He said to the Inspector, “You are too late.” The players were carrying Uncle Jack off the field. The cloud above them was suddenly split by lightning. There was a roar of thunder. The rain came down in splinters.

A thin light filtered through the partly-glassed roof of Bland’s dungeon and illuminated his neat hair, as he took from a cupboard two tumblers, a chipped mug, and a decorated wineglass. He added to them a toothbrush glass, produced two bottles of beer and, gravely and carefully, poured the beer into the five receptacles, which were raised and lowered by his guests. Basingstoke’s young friend rubbed his nose reflectively and said, in a voice not entirely free from smugness, “You’re sure you want me to talk about it?”

Anthony rushed in before any of the others could reply: “Absolutely, old man. Basingstoke says you just sat here in this –” he was about to say “hole”, but altered it quickly to “room” – “and solved it all on the spot. I think it’s wonderful.”

“I still don’t know what it was all about,” said Ruth Cleverly.

Bland drained his toothbrush glass and set it down on the table. “And yet it was all obvious, and you would have seen what it was about if you’d not been thinking about a great international gang of forgers. You had all the clues in your hands, but you put a wrong interpretation on them. The evidence in the poems alone was enough to tell you the meaning of the case, and there were two clues which led straight to the murderer.”

Basingstoke turned his scarred face. “Evidence in the poems? I’ve read them a dozen times, and I didn’t see anything at all that could possibly have a bearing on the case.”

“That’s because you weren’t looking for the right thing. And yet on Thursday evening you were nearer than I to grasping the truth. I said that the crimes must have something to do with the Rawlings family, and you suggested that the Australian cousin who left Martin his money might have had an illegitimate son who regarded the money as rightly his. I scoffed at the suggestion, but it wasn’t far from the truth, except that we had our characters a little mixed. It was Martin Rawlings who had an illegitimate son.”

Vicky said with a gasp, “Not – Uncle Jack?”

“Certainly Uncle Jack.”

“But – he
was
the murderer, wasn’t he?” Bland nodded. “But I don’t understand. Why should he have wanted to harm anyone – he had the inheritance.”

“I see you still don’t understand. The object of the murders wasn’t to gain an inheritance, but to keep what wasn’t ever rightly his. Let me tell you things as they happened, or more or less as they happened.

“Martin Rawlings was a wild young man and, as we can see from Blackburn’s essay on him, very little indeed is known about his life in Italy. Blackburn says there that he disappeared for long periods at a time – and after one of these disappearances he turned up with a wife and a son. The very form of that phrasing should make one sit up and take notice. In fact, Caesar Rawlings was born in April 1861, and Martin Rawlings was married in June of that year. In other words, Caesar was born illegitimate.”

“How do you know all that?” Ruth Cleverly asked.

Bland’s smile was guileless. “I didn’t. I deduced it. But Inspector Wrax, with whom I had an uncomfortable but not unprofitable interview, made certain of it by checking on the details with the Italian police. He suspected Rawlings, but wanted to wait until he had positive proof before he took action. He waited too long.

“After their marriage Martin and Maria had another child – your father, Miss Rawlings. And it was after that – probably in 1865 or 1866 – that Martin Rawlings wrote
Passion and Repentance
, which was first published in 1868. Common sense should, indeed, tell anybody, that such poems must have been written
after
his conversion to Catholicism and not before – their whole tone is that of a convert, although a rather unorthodox one. In 1876 Martin Rawlings died, and, thanks to the fact that he had not made a will, his elder son Caesar inherited the whole estate. The brothers quarrelled bitterly, and as Miss Rawlings told John her father refused to accept any financial assistance from his elder brother, although it was offered.”

Vicky nodded. Her mouth was slightly open. Bland raised an admonitory forefinger.

“Caesar Rawlings wasn’t a habitual criminal – or perhaps he would have been a better one. There is no reason to suppose that he knew himself to be an illegitimate son, and the wrongful inheritor of the estate, in his youth. It is more likely that he discovered it when, as a young man, he went on a tour of Italy and visited those places where his father had lived. When he did so, no doubt he visited the little village where his father and mother were married, examined the register – and saw with shocked surprise that he had been born a bastard. At some time, at any rate, he discovered it, and must have pondered what, if anything, he should do about it. It’s possible that if he had been on good terms with his brother, he would have suggested to him a division of the estate. In view of the enmity between them, however, the question didn’t arise. As soon as Caesar Rawlings made known the circumstances, he placed himself at his brother’s mercy, for he was holding an estate to which he had no shadow of a legal claim. I’m right in thinking, Miss Rawlings, am I not, that such an appeal to your father to divide the estate wouldn’t have been looked on favourably by him. Eh, Miss Rawlings?”

Vicky came to with a start. “Dad was always very bitter – against Uncle Jack, and against grandfather Martin because he hadn’t made provision for him.”

“Caesar Rawlings, anyway, did what many men would have done, and decided to hold on to his inheritance. And then one day it must suddenly have occurred to him, as it occurred to me, that the story of his illegitimacy was set down plainly enough in his father’s poems.

“Most of the critics were baffled by the exact meaning of
Passion and Repentance
, and in fact didn’t trouble themselves to examine its literal meaning closely. They restricted themselves to vague generalities about ‘unseemly frankness’ and poems that ‘had their origin in the author’s married life’. But it’s perfectly plain that the poems describe in metaphorical language the poet’s sinful production of a child, and his repentance of that act.” There were gestures of protest from Basingstoke and Ruth. “Perhaps I should say that this meaning is plain once you are looking for it. It is made very clear in one of the sonnets, which begins ‘Out of the sighs and anguish beauty comes’ and talks of ‘What’s begot in stealth and sin and shame’ and of the ‘small errant son’ who was ‘the germ of darkness and ecstatic joy’. Once the meaning of this sonnet has been realised it illuminates all the others, and one wonders how it was possible to miss a theme which is so obvious – Adam feeling for Eve ‘the dark desire that leads to loss and sighing’, the reference to ‘Bitter, fruitful, all too fruitful days’, ‘the record of past sin’ joined to such phrases as ‘Waking knew your body like a fire, And neither of us recked a reckoning’. It’s all, when you look for it, clearly set down that Martin Rawlings had a child whose creation was an act of ‘stealth and sin and shame’, a sin of which he repented now that he had become a Catholic. Caesar Rawlings read the poems with this knowledge of their meaning, and it must have brought him out in a cold sweat. If ever his brother should read them in the same light – if any damned good-natured friend should do so, and tell his brother about it – a few investigations need only be made in Italy, and he would be dispossessed of his fortune. And then what seemed a bright idea occurred to him. Nobody had ever troubled in the past to attach a precise meaning to the poems – could he prevent anyone from doing so in the future by making it appear that they were written
before
his own birth in 1861? Then any inquisitive soul who became curious about them and got an inkling of the truth would find that apparently his dates were all wrong, and give up in despair. But how could that be done? Simple – publish an edition of the poems dated a year before his birth, so that they must refer to events before that time.”

“Then Uncle Jack was the forger?” Vicky said. “But he was never much interested in books.”

“He never professed much interest, but when you went to see him with John he said casually that he had collected first editions in his youth. He let slip the fact that he knew Jacobs by saying that he had bought his own first edition of
Passion and Repentance
from him. Finally, in an access of foolishness, he showed you the copy of the book that Cobb had given his father, and told you that he had known Cobb when he was a child. It may have been Rawlings’ acquaintance with Jacobs that put the whole idea in his mind. Wrax has discovered that Caesar Rawlings got to know Jacobs in the South African war, when he was an officer and Jacobs was in his regiment. Lord knows how or why Jacobs got into the Army, but once there he was involved in a jewel robbery. Rawlings made Jacobs return the jewels and let him go, but he forced him to write out a confession, which Wrax found in Rawlings’ safe.”

“You didn’t know any of
that
,” Ruth said.

“It wasn’t possible or necessary to know the exact relation between them. Both of them had been in South Africa and the other circumstances of the case made it certain that Rawlings must have been Jacobs’ ‘client’. But I’ll deal with my own thought processes later, and tell the story as Caesar Rawlings saw it.

“Some time after Caesar Rawlings came back from Italy, he conceived this idea and carried it out, printing a very few copies of
Passion and Repentance
with the date 1860 on them, and marketing them through Jacobs. No doubt he told Jacobs a story about finding them in some odd corner, which appeared perfectly plausible. He put on the booklet the name of a publisher who was no longer in business – making the slip that John’s keen eye observed – and he must also have taken or sent one or two copies of his ‘find’ to Cobb. Cobb gave it his authority as a bibliographical discovery and, when approached by Blackburn for information connected with his biographical essay, cheerfully passed on the story Rawlings had told him. Cobb also presented one of the copies Rawlings gave him to the British Museum. So the bibliographical ‘find’ was firmly established.

“In the meantime Cobb had made a find of his own in the books left to him for disposal by Leon Amberside. Whether he guessed that those pamphlets were forgeries or not, he saw immediately that they were worth a good deal of money, and he was confronted by the same problem as that which confronted Rawlings, although for different reasons. How could he dispose of the pamphlets without spoiling the market? He was put in touch, he said in that interesting document he left, with a certain Mr Jacobs, who was absolutely to be relied on in confidential matters. It is a good guess that the person who put him in touch was Caesar Rawlings.

“Well, no enquiring literary critic or other busybody worried about the meaning of the
Passion and Repentance
sonnets – or if they did they were put off the scent by Rawlings’ forged edition. Years passed. Rawlings married, had a son, his wife died. His right to the inheritance was never questioned. He probably put the whole affair of the booklet which he had forged in a panic out of his mind. But then one day out of the blue he received a letter from Jebb, who spread his discoveries far and wide, in spite of his talk of the necessity of keeping them secret. He gave a courteous rebuff to Jebb, but he realised the danger of these enquiries. The forgery which had been designed as his protection might now be his undoing, simply because Jebb was on the track of some other forgeries. If it were discovered that this booklet was forged, his own connection with it might be made known, and all sorts of awkward questions would be asked. He began to collect all the copies he could lay hands on, using for the purpose his old friend, Jacobs. The bookseller got in touch with one of his old criminal associates and Rawlings got back a number of copies – some of them by robbery, others by purchase. It was expensive, but less expensive than dispossession.

“That was the position when, on Monday, Shelton bought a copy of the booklet and John here suggested that there was something wrong about it, on the evidence of the publisher’s name being incorrect. Rawlings had given instructions that it should be bought for him, and must have been furious when he found that it had slipped through his fingers. He foolishly increased the offer, through Jacobs, to an extent which was suspicious in itself, and when that was refused had Shelton knocked over the head in order to get the copy away from him. That was a stupid thing to do, and it was stupidly carried out – it would have been much more sensible to arrange a robbery in which the theft of the booklet was only an incident.

“His panic was increased when Miss Rawlings came to see him on Tuesday with John, and you told him your suspicions. He put you off with a story about being robbed of a copy of the booklet himself – a story containing a fairly palpable flaw, which I’ll come to in a moment. He sent you to see Jacobs, got in touch with him while you were on the way there, and told him what to say. Jacobs made very fair fools of you both, and told you that he had obtained his copies from Cobb.”

“Do you mean to say,” Vicky asked, “that when we went in the shop that man Jacobs knew who we were?”

Bland coughed. “Yes.”

“Well,” said Vicky, “I never heard of such a thing.”

“The two of you sealed Jebb’s death warrant, unknowingly, when you told Rawlings that Jebb was being consulted. It would be quite easy to show by his tests of paper alone that the pamphlet was a forgery. On Tuesday evening he went up to London, telephoned Jebb, and no doubt said he knew of the investigations and had some important information. He saw Jebb, killed him, and destroyed his papers. That wasn’t very difficult.”

The corners of Ruth Cleverly’s mouth were pulled down. She looked as if she were going to cry. Basingstoke leaned over and patted her hand. The young man went on without looking at them.

“Perhaps he was safe now, then? But he very soon saw that he wasn’t, and that his move in telling Jacobs to put you on to Cobb was not clever, but crassly stupid. He had thought that you wouldn’t be able to obtain access to Cobb, and that the affair would die down. He hadn’t reckoned that you would be involved in the police investigation, and tell the police the whole story. When you did, he knew that he was finished unless he could silence Cobb, for although you might not be able to induce Cobb to talk, the police would certainly do so. Cobb would tell them immediately that it was not he, but Caesar Rawlings, who had passed on those copies to Jacobs. He should have thought of all that before he put you on to Cobb’s trail, but he didn’t. He was fundamentally a very stupid man, although he had a good nerve for action, like other stupid men. He silenced Cobb. And he was lucky – he got away. He must have had a bad time when that statement of Cobb’s was being read, for fear that his name should be mentioned. It wasn’t, but something happened that was almost as bad. Wrax had discovered that the pamphlet was forged. Nobody at the time, not even Wrax, realised the full implications of that discovery.