Past Caring (61 page)

E.G. Strafford

Barrowteign ,

Devon ,

4th June 1951.

So this, after all, was the truth. Or part of it, Strafford’s part, his mystery untangled with a riddle. The door I’d opened led only to a labyrinth. Sellick hadn’t sent me as the emissary of his dispassionate curiosity, but for some darker reason of his own, little knowing that I would discover his hand—his brutal, younger, unmasked self—in Strafford’s undoing.

I couldn’t grasp it all at first. The question had changed. I knew now all the secrets behind Strafford’s resignation—or thought I did. That wasn’t the issue anymore. The issue was what those who’d tried to stop me must, all along, have known it would become. Who or what killed Strafford? I counted off the conjectures like vegetable rows in the kitchen garden below.

An accident—not just a few hours after finishing the Postscript. That wouldn’t wash anymore.

Suicide—possible, given his state of mind. Was that his “fitting end”?

Murder—it had to be. Else why would people have tried to stop my enquiries? Specifically, why should Henry have been so hostile if he hadn’t been implicated? Whether he’d mobilized the forces of official displeasure or done the deed himself, it was rank with his involvement.

What of Sellick? He’d deceived me utterly, but why? To make amends for falsely accusing Strafford? Was he only seeking the truth by a roundabout route?

If Strafford’s death was suspicious, so was Ambrose’s. Only

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Timothy Couchman had known of his message to me about the Postscript. Another pointer to Henry. But there was the rub.

Strafford’s last plea had been to protect Elizabeth. How would accusing her son of murder, both then and now, do that?

A thought struck me. I leafed through the blank pages of the Postscript, then again more carefully. The certificate wasn’t there.

Perhaps Ambrose had taken it. Perhaps Henry had taken it from Ambrose, stolen it in 1977 after failing to in 1951.

Strafford’s plea for Elizabeth had been before Ambrose paid with his life for trying to vindicate his uncle. That overrode considerations of sparing an old lady some heartache. She had to know.

I trembled. The afternoon was beginning to cloud over, but I wasn’t cold, rather afraid. I’d convinced myself that Edwin and Ambrose Strafford had been murdered. If that was so, then I was in danger. My new-found knowledge imperilled me just as surely as Henry and whoever was hiding behind him. If Henry wasn’t capable of murder, more powerful forces were, and that was worse still. Only self-doubt saved me from panic. I couldn’t believe all the implications of what I was thinking, couldn’t decide what to do. But I had to go on. The Couchmans, who’d despised and rejected me, had inspired a worm to turn. That old, far-sighted villain, Couch, would have realized I wasn’t doing this just for Strafford, but to redeem all the other failures of nerve and character which had dogged me down the years. A flawed crusade then, a tilt at the sanctity of history with a smattering of revenge, a defiance of those who put no limit on my weakness, a clutching at straws, a last throw to be attempted only by those with nothing to lose. That’s how it was for me. Not decent, simple, honest or truthful, because purity was beyond me. Just the best thing I’d ever done, because there was honour in it, however compromised.

I’d become too engrossed to notice, but it was nearly six o’clock and I was still on the premises. I climbed hurriedly back into the attic and re-parcelled the Postscript. Then, still trembling at the thought, not of what I was doing, but of what it represented, I hastened out and down the stairs. The corridor beyond the door 370

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from the attic was empty. Turning the key in the lock behind me, I made my way gingerly to Knox’s office: empty. The key looped back onto its peg as if it had never left it.

Knox’s secretary had evidently gone home. There was nobody to see me leave by the back stairs. The guide in the hall was preparing to close. “Didn’t know there were any visitors still here, dear,” she remarked, showing me out. She didn’t even glance at the canvas package under my arm, though it felt to me as if it were crying theft every step of the way.

I walked into the village and phoned for a taxi. Somehow, I couldn’t face a ride on a public bus. It was too exposed, too insecure.

I could have had a drink with Ted at The Greengage and discussed what evidence he would give at the inquest, but I preferred to get back to Exeter and sit alone in a pub where I wasn’t known, until it was late enough to go back to the Bennetts’ without having to answer many questions. As it turned out, I got away with a smiling but preoccupied greeting and went straight to bed. I left the house in good time in the morning and walked into Exeter.

The magistrates’ court was echoingly empty: a clerk, a yawning newspaperman, two policemen (one of them Ash), a grey-faced man who sat and looked apart, Ted Groves who nodded to me and kept clearing his throat, and a fly whose angular flight near the ceiling I watched while we waited. The Postscript was in a bag by my side—there if I wanted it, which I sensed I wouldn’t, there where it seemed safest.

An official led in eight jurors, who shuffled and shifted into position in their box. Then the Coroner entered by another door, Ash’s colleague called us to our feet and the business of the day commenced.

The Coroner was calm, almost casual, in his directions to the jury. He looked and sounded like a competent man, dutiful but not zealous. For this case, he hardly needed to be anything else. Ash was called and said his piece: the clear picture of an old drunk found drowned emerged from his “night of the 22nd” commen-tary. Then Ted, shifting his weight and overly deferential to the Coroner, an unnerved countryman not about to challenge conven-

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tional wisdom. Yes, Ambrose drank. Yes, on May 22nd as usual—but not more than usual. He held to that line as if it redeemed his reticence on other, murkier matters. The Coroner pressed him. He wanted it said that Ambrose was a helpless, drunken old fool—or so it seemed. But Ted was stubborn, and keen on his reputation as a responsible landlord. He wouldn’t be shifted.

That’s when I was tempted to intervene, to shout to the Coroner and high heaven that this was a farce, that he didn’t know the half of it, that a supposedly simple drowning couldn’t wash away the stain of a dead but restless crime. I wanted to wave the Postscript in my hand and declare: “Here’s the truth, here are the names of the guilty.”

And that’s when a draught behind me, a stirring of stale air, told me that somebody had entered the court, somebody who moved silently and took their place in the public seating beside me. When I looked, I saw—as I’d guessed, a second before—that it was Eve.

She didn’t smile and she didn’t frown. Her look was frank and direct, appraising yet not despising.

“Hello, Martin.” She whispered the words, hardly breathed them in the courtroom hush. To me, it seemed absurd for the proceedings to continue when Eve was among us, poised in balance to a weight and occasion we couldn’t comprehend, elegantly dis-dainful of the place and circumstance of our meeting, fixing me with a cool gaze which challenged me to pretend she was a stranger.

“Why are you here?” It was all I could say, stumbling towards some form of submissiveness.

“To see you.” Was that a smile which almost came?

“But . . .”

She raised a hand in tune to the orchestration of the inquest.

“Afterwards.” It could have been admonition or flirtation, I couldn’t tell. It was as if I’d never known her, never stopped knowing her in the way that I had. She dared me to wait in a manner which left me no choice.

I passed the rest of the inquest in a trance. After Ted, the grey-faced pathologist gave his clinical resumé of how a man had died: high blood-alcohol level, bruises and contusions consistent 372

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with a fall, death by drowning, probably while unconscious. He came and went with a rustle of the white coat he wasn’t wearing.

Then the Coroner summed up. A history of drink. A dark night. A simple accident. Open and shut, like a book. The jury didn’t even retire. They muttered respectfully, then obliged with their verdict: accidental death. A brief homily from the Coroner on old men too fond of the bottle, a jab at Ted for not conceding the point, then a gathering of papers, a conclusion of disagreeable business. The policeman intoned some Plantagenet obsequy he’d said a dozen times before that ended: “Now go forth and take your ease.”

It was over. Not yet eleven and we’d concluded—as we were meant to conclude—that there was nothing to say, no doubt to quell, about the death of Ambrose Strafford. I felt sick with the knowledge of my acquiescence, sick with the elation of Eve’s presence, appalled by the link—the imperceptible, undeniable connexion—between the two.

We filed out of the courtroom, into the accusatory sunlight, where ease was a sham and uncertainty a practised art.

“I’m sorry about Ambrose,” Eve said.

I looked at her in bafflement. “Why did you come?”

“I told you. We must talk . . . if you will.” She knew I would, but goaded me by implying she could doubt it. “There’s a lot to say.”

“I thought you had nothing to say to me.”

“That’s because you forgot what I told you: nothing is ever quite what it seems.” A lorry roared by in the road and the draught blew Eve’s hair across her face.

“I’ll happily remember.”

“I can’t stop now, Martin. I’ll explain later. Can we meet this evening?” The exquisite torture of another postponement. Surely this was planned, this delay contrived to stretch my nerves. I scanned her face for confirmation, but only saw the ceramic perfection that hid its craft.

“Where?”

“The wine bar in Gandy Street, at eight o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Until then, Martin. I’m sorry—I really must go.” And she

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did go, with unhurried swiftness, taking her telling, timeless beauty with her, to her car, driving away without another word. It would have seemed curt if it hadn’t been so tame compared with our last parting, would have sounded distant if it hadn’t been nearer than the contempt I’d expected.

Eve arrived late. I’d just begun to wonder whether she would turn up at all when she appeared, as if from nowhere, at my table, emerging from the press of bodies as if they weren’t there, simply dressed in black jeans and a plain blouse, quieter in every respect than the smoking, over-scented young beauties around us but somehow, with her assured stillness, commanding attention.

She sat down and I poured her a drink. “I’m sorry about the crush,” she said, sipping her wine.

“It’s hardly your fault.”

“I chose the venue. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Exeter is limited.”

“I didn’t realize you knew it at all.”

“An exchange opportunity came up at short notice. A member of the history department at the University here has gone up to Cambridge as external examiner for my papers and I’ve come down here to cover her lectures and seminars. With tripos in full swing, it was a good time to get away.”

“Odd we should both turn up in Exeter.”

She half-smiled, for the first time since we’d met again. “It was no coincidence. I leapt at the chance. Your flatmate in London thought you were down here, so I hoped to find you when I arrived. Then I read about Ambrose . . .”

“You spoke to Jerry?”

“Yes. You see, I was trying to trace you.”

“But why? When we . . . last met, it seemed the last thing you’d want to do.”

“I’m sure you understand regret, Martin.”

“I tried to tell you about it myself.”

“I know, and I wouldn’t listen. Since then, I’ve come to see things . . . in perspective.”

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and grasping at the straw she held out to me, the colour of the wine, clear and distinct in her inflexion, for all the noise and smoke. “What is the perspective?”

“The perspective is that I was guilty of . . . arrogance. I thought that, because we’d come to . . . care for each other, I was entitled to expect your past to be unblemished.”

“I never said it was that, but I did lie about my marriage and why it ended. I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for all of it. But I can’t change the past—it happened.”

“I know. As an historian, I shouldn’t have let myself be taken in by newspaper morality. I should have let you explain, I should have helped, not joined the condemnation.”

“I don’t blame you. It was bound to be a shock.”

“Like finding out about the Couchman Fellowship?”

“Hardly comparable. But you should’ve told me you couldn’t be impartial.”

“Oh, but I was. I kept it from you because I was afraid of what you would think, but it didn’t stand in my way. I didn’t tell the Couchmans what we were on to.”

“Really?” I couldn’t help sounding doubtful after all that Henry had implied to me.

“Really.” Her expression willed me to believe her. “I don’t know how they found out, but, as soon as they did, they made sure I knew your secret.”

“You mean . . .”

“Didn’t you realize who’d told me?”

“I thought . . .”

“It was your former brother-in-law, Timothy Couchman.”

Not Alec? Just as before, when she told me of the marriage certificate, when she materialized at the inquest, whenever, in fact, she chose to, Eve had confounded me. I’d thought it out carefully, reasoned my way to Alec’s guilt. But that was before I’d learned of Sellick’s secret part in Strafford’s past, before Eve had returned to me and suggested we could, after all, turn back the clock. “He wouldn’t want our findings to implicate his grandfather.”