Death of a Mystery Writer (18 page)

Ben, on the other hand, gave an apparently full account of his conversation with Bella—journalism, London literary life, friends in common—but his version was totally lacking in life and verve. It read like the conversation of two pensioners who had met casually on a park bench. The account given by Surtees of their behavior at table had given a very different impression.

Meredith wondered whether, by giving a minute description of the bark and foliage of the trees, Ben Woodstock had not been trying to conceal the wood. At any rate, it seemed safer to regard his recall as selective rather than total.

It was Tuesday before the newspapers really got into their stride over the Oliver Fairleigh murder. Monday's edition had given him plenty of space, with zoom-lens pictures of his son at the door of his newly inherited stately home. On Tuesday the police announcement that they were treating the case as one of murder removed all inhibitions, except the purely legal ones. It was clear that the jabbering mass of journalists at the gate of Wycherley Court was but a small portion of the sum total of industry and talent being devoted to the story. Oliver Fairleigh's death, and therefore by extension his life, was for the moment the hottest news story in the country.

Fleet Street has never set great store by the maxim that only good should be spoken of the dead. On this occasion, however, it could afford to let the deceased speak ill of himself. Oliver Fairleigh had been a prolific contributor to all but the most reputable organs of opinion: through his articles he found he could (within certain limits which he was careful to observe) attack, injure, and insult people, races, institutions, and habits of which he disapproved, and earn quite disproportionate sums for doing so. Now he was dead, the newspapers reprinted long extracts from the articles on which they held the copyright, and the collected crassness, wrongheadedness, and spleen made the man infinitely more petty and ridiculous than any character assassination by a third party could.

His political pronouncements were perhaps oddest of all. Over the years a political event was judged solely by the criteria of whether it confirmed his dire prophecies or conformed to his
deepest prejudices; if it did, it was greeted with a shriek of delight. The troubles in Ireland and the state of emergency in India were sources of the purest pleasure for him, supporting as they did his firm conviction that both peoples were incapable of governing themselves. The Conservative party kept a vestigial hold on his allegiance as long as it was arguably an aristocratic party, but the advent of Mr. Heath was met with howls of anguish (“the apotheosis of the board-school boy”), and the reign of his successor led to a vitriolic article on the subject of women in politics, a series of savage sketches of the careers of the two Señoras Perón, Mrs. Meir, Mrs. Gandhi, and Mrs. Bandaranaike, leading up to a detailed but not too convincing comparison between Mrs. Thatcher and Catherine the Great.

For the rest, his articles were hysterical swipes in all directions, particularly at every manifestation of the modern world that came under his beady-eyed notice. Teddy boys, Aldermaston marchers, hippies, pop groups, druggies, skinheads, all had in their turn been greeted with hymns of hate. However, while his viewpoint on his subject was very often likely to be identical with that of the readers he was aiming at, he almost always conducted his attack in such a way as to alienate most of the very people he might be supposed to be appealing to. It seemed to Meredith, reading through the depressing collection in the writer's own study, early on Tuesday morning, as if the sole purpose had been to offend as many people as possible simultaneously. A description of Scottish nationalism which had Meredith mildly chuckling would be followed by a description of the Welsh people that brought a hot flush to his face, and set those eyes sparkling dangerously.

But it was all too random to carry conviction. “It is sometimes suggested,” began one piece, “that as a nation we care too much about cruelty to animals, and not enough about cruelty to children. I do not, myself, see this as an ‘either/or' situation: personally I care about both of them, and get quite as much pleasure from the one as from the other.” Ho-ho, thought the reader: Oliver Fairleigh trying to be clever.

The newspapers covered very fully all his more public escapades, from his attempt to enter Parliament (“Madam,” he was reported to have told a heckling housewife, “if I allowed my opinions to be influenced by an ignorant harridan like you, I would consider myself unfit to represent this constituency at Westminster”) to his relationship with his elder son (his notice in
The Times
disclaiming responsibility for his debts was one of the few occasions in his career when he enjoyed universal sympathy for his point of view, nobody in Fleet Street, apparently, having paused to wonder whether a young man brought up by Oliver Fairleigh might not have had in the course of his childhood things to put up with which could justify a modicum of wildness or irresponsibility).

What was lacking was the usual pen-portrait by a friend. The reason for this, Meredith guessed, was simple enough: for the last thirty years Oliver Fairleigh had had none. There was a reminiscence of him in the thirties by another member of the Auden-Isherwood group, an obscure figure long since sunk into the grooves of academe. The piece lacked impact, perhaps because Oliver Fairleigh was himself at that time a mass of unformed clay, waiting to be molded to the protuberant shape of his maturity, and colored with the bright red of outrage.

The nearest any piece came to intimacy was one by someone called the Hon. Darcy Howard, whom the newspapers called “poet and man of letters,” and described as the dead man's cousin. Putting two and two together, Meredith decided the description must be wrong: he was Lady Fairleigh's uncle. Reading the article, he decided that the “poet and man of letters” bit was beside the mark too. It was a slack, rambling piece, without style or shape. It chronicled the author's acquaintanceship with the young Oliver Fairleigh in the seedier salons of literary London both before and just after the war. It described hilarious adventures, not particularly either, in Italy in nineteen forty-three and forty-four, when Oliver Fairleigh was with and Darcy Howard “attached to” the Allied Forces. It described the meeting of Fairleigh and the author's niece, and the marriage. Subsequent
meetings between the author and his subject had apparently been few, or unmemorable.

The article was illustrated by two photographs. One was of Darcy Howard himself, standing at the gate of a rather run-down cottage in Wiltshire, his home. It had clearly been taken the day before, probably while he took a breather from penning his reminiscences: he was a man in his seventies, sadly seedy, with a slack mouth and watery, disreputable eyes. The other was a snapshot from Italy, depicting Darcy Howard, Oliver Fairleigh, and a conventionally pretty ATS private, arms around one another's shoulders, with a Sicilian piazza in the background. Oliver Fairleigh—tubby then, rather than corpulent—was in uniform, but both men were somewhat disheveled and were brandishing
fiascbi
of wine, smiling broadly. The younger, gayer Oliver Fairleigh was like a distant ancestor of the Fairleigh the world knew, a figure related but totally unlike: it was a personality which had passed without trace, trampled under by the passing years. The caption under the trio, frozen in their moment of jollity, read simply: “Second Lieutenant Fairleigh, with friends.”

All in all, the quality of the reminiscences on that Tuesday was pretty low, but the
Daily Grub
announced that its sister Sunday paper would be running a sensational account of the last dinner by the up-and-coming young novelist Ben Woodstock, who was present at the death. Their regular readers would have to control their impatience, to give Ben time to polish his phrases.

 • • • 

It was nearly ten o'clock in the morning, but Eleanor Fairleigh was still in bed, asleep. She had been fretfully tossing and turning until the early hours, and then had fallen off. Now, deep in a dreamy sleep, she was living her life without Oliver Fairleigh, and without her children. She was alone, and all there was to disturb her was a nagging voice at the back of her brain that said: “But this is Death!”

Downstairs, her children were at breakfast, quarreling.

The quarrel had begun spasmodically, for Bella and Terence were at a disadvantage, and had been since their father's death.
Normally in such circumstances a rich store of possible grievances has been laid by, to launch at the head of the unlucky heir: he has fawned on the dead, he has ingratiated himself in an unprincipled way, he has misused his position. None of these time-honored missiles could in the present case be used. Mark had barely spoken to his father over the last few years other than to abuse or quarrel with him. Yet here he sat, at the head of the breakfast table, calmly chomping his way through a substantial meal and doubtless contemplating a future of well-heeled leisure. From being the black sheep he had been transformed overnight into the fat cat, enjoying the cream. In the circumstances there was little to be done except vent spite, in however random a manner.

“I envy you your appetite,” said Bella bitterly, pushing aside her crust of toast.

“Do you, Bella?” said Mark, continuing to eat. “I'm sorry if it annoys you in any way. But I think it would annoy you still more if I pretended that grief had robbed me of my appetite.”

He put a forkful of deviled kidney into his mouth. His hand was not quite steady, and that unformed, handsome face showed signs of strain—though not the usual strain of an acute hangover. Perhaps if either of the others had encouraged him to take a drink at that moment, he would have found it hard to resist. But both of them were too self-absorbed to notice any strain in him. And, in any case, why encourage him now to make a fool of himself? Now it was pointless.

“You've got nothing to put you off your appetite,” said Terence, gazing savagely at his plate.

“Nor have you, dear brother, if you thought about it,” said Mark, annoyingly smooth. “You've been living in a silly dream, and you've been woken up.”

“If he'd lived,” said Bella, her voice gaining again that harsh, harridan quality, “he would have left it to me.”

“It's just possible,” said Mark, finishing off his plateful of food, and leaning back in his chair with a cup of coffee. “Though I must say it seems to me far from probable. But I admit your case is a little different from Terence's. He is sore at losing something he
never had a chance of getting. You can convince yourself that it was only through bad luck and lack of time that you lost out. Quite apart from any grief you may feel at the loss of Father.”

“I
am
sorry he's dead. I
did
love him,” said Bella.

“Perhaps. I doubt whether you can sort your emotions out sufficiently to tell. I find it difficult enough.”

“The question is,” said Terence, raising his Shelleyan fair head with the bloodshot eyes, “what are you going to do for us?”

It was the question both of them had been wanting to ask, but as he let it out, baldly, because there seemed no point in trying to wrap it up for Mark, both Terence and Bella felt the treacherousness of the ground. Mark leaned forward, took a piece of toast, and spread it with butter in an infuriatingly leisurely manner.

“I find that difficult to answer,” he said. “Of course, you will admit that I owe you nothing.”

“You owe us plenty,” said Bella, her voice rising. “You got everything, we got nothing.”

“Yes. In normal circumstances, I suppose I might feel some sort of moral debt,” said Mark, busy with the marmalade. “In fact, I can imagine myself shelling out quite heroically to salve my conscience. But you know, in the actual circumstances, I don't. Not at all.”

There was silence in the room. Mark ate on contentedly, and looked round at the other two. It was they who had started the subject, he seemed to say, let them continue it if they wanted to. The silence eventually became unbearable, and Bella had to ask: “What circumstances?”

In the pause which Mark left before replying, Surtees came in with a fresh pot of coffee, and began clearing away plates. Mark said:
“Circonstances que tu connais bien,
Bella.”

“C'est pas nécessaire à parler français,”
hissed Bella.

“Why not?” said Mark, continuing to. “Is he the sort of lover you have no secrets from, Bella?”

Surtees continued round the table, impassively gathering up plates and serving dishes. He gave no sign of having understood,
but as he finished what he was doing, and walked carefully toward the door with his tray, he blinked twice, as if absorbing new developments, and when he went out he failed to shut the door properly behind him. Perhaps Mark, with his preparatory and public school education, did not appreciate how widely French has become taught in state schools. Surtees went down to the kitchen, and swore at Mrs. Moxon when she tried to pump him about what was being said in the breakfast room.

Meanwhile, in the hall, Sergeant Trapp, seeing the door to the breakfast room swing very slightly open, tiptoed with surprising delicacy over to it, and stationed himself nonchalantly outside. The conversation inside had, luckily, reverted to English.

“Do you know what happens, Bella, when you suddenly stop drinking?” Mark was saying, leaning forward across the table and speaking with a low, passionate intensity. “I'll tell you. First of all it feels like the world has fallen on top of you. Then after a bit, you blink and look around you, like a horse coming out of its stables in the morning, and you start seeing things as they are. But it's not just that, because you've got a lot of memories—very hazy ones, just wisps here and there. They start coming back, one by one—a little thing here, a little thing there—things you didn't know you'd noticed. Things other people didn't think you would notice, because you were blind drunk. And these things start falling into place.”