Sea Lord

by Bernard Cornwell

  I pulled open the drawers and found nothing but a tangle of underwear and stockings. I opened the wardrobe. Nothing. I looked under the high brass bed and found nothing but an old-fashioned chamber pot and a pair of furry slippers. I looked round the room for a hidden safe, but the lumpy plaster walls were covered with a fading wallpaper which clearly concealed nothing. I tested some of the floorboards, but they were nailed tight. There wasn’t a diary or a phone book and I supposed she must have taken such personal things to France. All that was left was the japanned tin trunk.

  I pulled the trunk from under the table and used the brass handle of the poker as a hammer to open its padlock. It yielded to the third smart tap. I eased the shank out of the hasp and pushed back the lid. It was getting darker outside, but I dared not switch on a light, so instead I took the bundles of papers to the window.

  They were letters. Packets and packets of letters held together with elastic bands. There were scores of packets holding hundreds of letters and all of them, so far as I could see, were love letters. They were addressed to Elizabeth at the riding school, and I supposed that the school’s mail came separately from that addressed to the main house. Some of the letters were ten years old, but others were very recent. I recognised none of the handwriting. Some of the packets had dried flowers trapped under their elastic bands, while others had photographs; small reminders of a stolen moment’s happiness.

  I don’t know why I was so astonished. Elizabeth’s marriage was dead, yet presumably she was trapped in it by her ancestral attachment to the faith. I looked at the crucifix hanging on her wall, then back to the bundled evidence of her carnal sins and I suddenly felt sorry for her, and even guilty at having discovered the letters. Elizabeth herself appeared in some of the photographs, smiling and happy, holding on to the arm of her lover. She seemed to like tall athletic men. They were photographed on ski slopes or mounted on powerful horses. Seeing their strong confident faces made me realise how horribly unhappy Elizabeth must be.

  Even the window light had now faded to a velvety gloom, so I risked turning on the small bedside lamp to look at the pictures. I was hoping to find a photograph of Garrard, but he was not there. There were only her hard-eyed, anonymous lovers. I dropped their letters back into the trunk and refastened the padlock.

  I’d failed. There was nothing here for Harry Abbott, nothing at all. I sat on the bed, ran my fingers through my hair and stared up at the cold grate where spiders had made thick webs about the unburnt birch logs. Damn it, I thought. Damn it, damn it, damn it. Sir Leon would pay his ransom, he would get his picture, and I would never prove who had so nearly killed Jennifer and me.

  A door creaked downstairs and, like a guilty thing, I jumped.

  I should have run for it, but my ankle would not let me.

  “Whoever you are,” Peter’s slurred voice shouted from the downstairs hallway, “stay there! I’ve got a gun, and I’m calling the police!”

  “Don’t worry about the police, Peter.” I limped to the door, then out to the landing. “It’s me, John.”

  He switched on the hall lights, then came a few suspicious feet up the stairs. He held a double-barrelled shotgun very menacingly. “It is you!” He sounded disappointed, as though he’d been looking forward to shooting an intruder. “You broke into her bedroom!”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “I thought I’d found a burglar.” He let the barrels drop. “I was driving back from the pub, you see, and saw a light in Liz’s room. That’s it, I thought, I’ll have the bugger. Left the motor at the end of the driveway and walked the rest of the way.”

  “Very clever of you, Peter.”

  He gave me an unfriendly look. “So what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you and Elizabeth,” I said very nicely. “I thought it was time to make peace.” I was winging it, hoping that he wouldn’t use the shotgun. He was certainly well on his way to being drunk and I didn’t trust him.

  “Make peace?” I’d puzzled him.

  “Silly family squabbles,” I said vaguely.

  I hobbled down the stairs. Peter let me pass, then followed me down to the hall. “So long as you’re here,” he said grudgingly, “you might as well have a drink.” He led me into the drawing room and poured two very stiff whiskies. “She won’t be back, not for a bit anyway.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because she phoned her bloody riding girls and told them. She wouldn’t telephone me. Cheers.” He drank that first glass of whisky as if he were a dying man coming out of the desert, then poured himself another, just as generous. “Funny thing, the telephone.”

  He was drunk, morose, and lonely. I wondered how he managed to drive, but supposed the pub was nearby, the lanes empty, and the police a long way off.

  “It rings sometimes,” he went on, “and I answer it, and there’s no one there! No one! Does that strike you as odd, John? I mean, you’re a man who’s knocked about the world a bit, so doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

  “Very odd, Peter.”

  “I’ll tell you something even odder! It never happens to Elizabeth.” He was peering at me with the fervent intensity of a drunken man holding on to a scrap of good sense. “It never happens to her. Do you think the telephone knows when a woman’s going to answer?”

  “No, Peter, I don’t think that.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. He had dropped the gun across an armchair. I wondered if it was loaded, and whether I should take it a safe distance away from him. He drank most of the second glass of whisky, then shuddered. “I can talk to you,” he said suddenly.

  “Good.”

  “You’re one of us, you see. I mean they’re a very nice set of fellows down the pub, all top drawer, but there’s always a bit of you know what.” I didn’t, but he explained for me anyway. “They know I’m a lord, and it makes them, what do you call it? Shy?”

  “Shy,” I confirmed.

  “You’re not shy.” He poured himself more whisky. “You’re quite right. Silly family squabbles. They shouldn’t be allowed. It’s her lovers, of course.” He didn’t sound drunk at all as he said the last words.

  “Lovers?”

  “Who telephone, you fool, and don’t say a word when I answer. I’m not an idiot, John. People think I am, but I’m not.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “And she’s a good-looking woman,” he said sadly, “she’s a damn good-looking woman. All your family’s good-looking, blast you.” He stared at me balefully. “What were you doing in her room?”

  “Looking for a Van Gogh.”

  He stared at me for a few seconds, then guffawed. “That’s rich, John! Very good!”

  “Seriously, Peter.”

  He swallowed a gulp of whisky. “It’s your own bloody fault, John. I can understand why you did it! Truly I can.” He had become drunkenly earnest. “But what I don’t understand is why you don’t come clean! I’m sure Elizabeth doesn’t want to see you in jail. Why don’t you cough the damn thing up, and give Liz half the proceeds?”

  “Because I don’t have the painting, Peter.”

  He wagged a finger at me as though I was an irritating child. “Sold it, did you?”

  “I never had it, Peter.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, old boy. Liz nailed you on that one three years ago. Found one of your partners in crime, you see?”

  He was being entirely serious, even though he was as drunk as a judge. I gave him a rueful smile, as though I was playing along with his ideas. “How did she find me out?”

  “She hired some private detective. Some slimy type she met at Newbury. Don’t know much about him, to be honest. Never met the fellow. Liz keeps herself to herself, you see.” He was beginning to make less sense as the whisky fractured his memories.

  “Why didn’t she go to the police?”

  “That’s what I said! I was told it was none of my business. Mind you, she went to that jumped-up little businessman, Bu
zzafuck or whatever he’s called.”

  “Buzzacott?”

  “He gave her money! I’m sure of it! Two of his henchmen came round with an attaché case. It’s my belief” – here he slumped down on to the arm of a sofa and pointed an unsteady finger at me – “that Liz wanted to wait till your mother was dead. No need to share the loot, what?”

  “So why hasn’t she found the picture now?”

  “Damned if I know. Perhaps you hid it too well?” He chuckled conspiratorially, and I smiled back. “So where is it, John?”

  I spread innocent hands. “Beats me, Peter.”

  He drained the whisky. “You can tell me.”

  “Why did Buzzacott give her money?”

  He walked unsteadily to the sideboard and poured himself another whisky. “To pay for the private detective chap, of course.”

  Garrard. Maybe I was jumping to a conclusion, but somehow I reckoned the private detective had to be Garrard, which meant that, quite unknowingly, Sir Leon had bankrolled the bastard who had half killed his stepdaughter.

  But if Elizabeth had stolen the painting, why would she need a private detective? Or perhaps there never had been a private detective. Perhaps that was just Elizabeth’s story, part of the necessary deception that I was guilty. And perhaps Buzzacott’s payments were a sweetener to make sure that Elizabeth did eventually sell him the painting. Whatever, the little bastard had clearly been backing both horses, Elizabeth and me. Or perhaps Peter’s drunken maunderings added up to sweet nothing.

  “What I reckon” – Peter turned back to me – “is that you sold the painting to someone, Liz has found you out, and you’re protecting whoever it is.”

  “It isn’t like that, Peter.”

  “Then for God’s sake tell me the truth!” He was angry suddenly. “No one tells me a bloody thing!”

  “I’ll tell you,” I said, “if you tell me which of the caravans you planned to put Georgina in.”

  He stared at me with pretended outrage for a few seconds, then laughed. “You’re a fly one, John, I’ll give you that! Too fly for your own good, eh?”

  I smiled, then glanced through the big window to where the bats flickered dark in the newly fallen night. “Was there a fellow named Garrard in your regiment, Peter?”

  “Don’t remember him. What sort of fellow was he?”

  “Thin, dark. Joined the Paras.”

  He shook his head. “Never heard of him. Why?”

  “Because he tried to kill me, that’s why.”

  That answer was a mistake because Peter immediately thought I’d accused him of being an accomplice to attempted murder, and his face flushed with a sudden and dangerous anger. “Get the hell out of here!”

  I held up a placatory hand. “Peter!” I said chidingly.

  “I said get out!” He snatched up the gun. “I’ll use it! I bloody well used it on some Mormons last year!”

  I left him. He didn’t follow me. I half expected him to fire a volley over my head, but he just stayed with his misery and the whisky decanter.

  I limped to the village, but the last bus had already left. I knew I’d be lucky to reach the station in time for the last Exeter train, but I began to walk anyway. I’d left the walking stick in Peter’s back yard, and my ankle was hurting. I tried to hitch a lift, but it was over an hour before anyone took pity on my hobbling. I was too late for the train so I asked the driver to drop me near the motorway. I stood on the access road for what seemed like hours and, though I left my thumb stuck out, no one stopped. I probably looked too scruffy. The headlights flicked past me and I tried to make sense of Peter’s alcohol-sodden memories.

  Elizabeth had probably been taking money from Buzzacott, and that money had been extracted on the promise that she had located one of my accomplices. That meant, I was certain, that Elizabeth had begun to cover her tracks very early in the game. She had spent at least three years spreading tales of my guilt so that, when she did produce the painting, no one would accuse her of stealing it. Yet, as I stood in the darkness beside the road, I realised just how little Peter had revealed. Perhaps, I hoped, one of the lovers whose letters lay hidden in the trunk was concealing the painting, and perhaps Harry could get a search warrant and go through the bundled letters, but it seemed like a very long shot. My day, I thought, had yielded nothing except an engagement ring.

  I began to wonder if I should have to sleep rough, but finally a lorry driver took pity on me. He was carrying steel reinforcing rods to Plymouth, so took me all the way to Devon and dropped me off at the Kingsbridge turning.

  It was two in the morning. I walked for another hour, but my ankle was making me sob with the pain. There was no traffic, thus no chance of a lift, so in the end I climbed a gate into a field, kicked a protesting sheep to its feet, then lay down on the warm dry patch of earth I’d uncovered. I slept badly for three hours, and woke shivering and wet to a limpid dawn. It occurred to me that I really was homeless; just another tramp on the southern summer roads. The first Earl of Stowey had ridden down these valleys with a retinue of steel-helmed men, and now the twenty-eighth Earl stumbled unshaven and filthy out of a sheep run.

  I walked till I found a public telephone in a village. I phoned Charlie. I hesitated because it was early and I didn’t want to wake Yvonne, but she had said Charlie would probably be at home so I took the risk.

  Charlie answered. I had woken him up, but he didn’t mind. Indeed, he seemed immensely relieved to hear my voice.

  I shared his relief. “For Christ’s sake come and get me, Charlie. I’m all in.”

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Hitch-hiking. Sleeping rough.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Johnny, they’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

  “Who has? Harry Abbott?”

  “Buzzacott. He started phoning yesterday afternoon. He’s desperate for you!”

  “Why!”

  “He wouldn’t tell me, mate, I’m not a bleeding earl. Christ Almighty, look at the time! Where the hell are you?”

  I told him.

  “Hang on there, Johnny, I’ll be with you in half an hour.”

  So I hung on, and Charlie was as good as his word. I wondered how on earth I’d survive without a friend like him, then collapsed into his Japanese four-by-four and fell fast asleep.

  Charlie woke Yvonne and demanded breakfast. She came downstairs in dressing gown and slippers, offered me one disgusted look, then banged the frying pan about the stove in noisy protest.

  “I’m sorry to be a nuisance, Yvonne,” I said humbly.

  She didn’t reply. She didn’t need to. I was about as welcome as a skunk.

  “He’s only a bloody earl,” Charlie said in an attempt to placate her with humour, “and he’s been sleeping rough!”

  “So have I.” Yvonne slapped a packet of bacon on to the counter.

  Charlie gave me a wry look, then took me out to his kennels where we fed his terriers. He kept some of his dogs for ratting, and others, trained to bite less hard, for rabbiting. “Don’t get married,” he told me as he tossed raw meat into the troughs. It was a comment that didn’t require a response, so I made none. Charlie fondled one of his favourite dogs, then stared at the early morning mist shrouding the Salcombe lakes. “I don’t know if it matters,” he said casually, “but Buzzacott said you should telephone him. He doesn’t care how early you call.”

  “Sod Buzzacott,” I said.

  Charlie laughed. “Fallen out, have you?”

  “He doesn’t want my help any more. He’s paid me off. He told me to buy myself a boat, disappear, and never talk to his stepdaughter again.”

  “Buy yourself a boat?” Charlie was immediately interested.

  I grinned. “You and I have got a hundred and twenty thousand quid to spend.”

  Charlie didn’t believe me. “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not. I promise you.” Back indoors we found some children’s crayons and drawing paper and I made Charlie a quick sketc
h of the hull that I was planning. “It’ll have to be steel, of course. Long keeled.” I drew in two masts. “I’m thinking of a ketch.”

  “Why?”

  “More flexible sail arrangements.”

  “More to go wrong,” he said dubiously.

  “I’ll double rig her.” We spent a happy breakfast planning the perfect ocean-going boat. Not that I intended going permanently to sea, not till I sailed with Jennifer, but planning the dream boat was a good way to start the day. Charlie and I had done almost everything to that boat except paint her name on the stern when the telephone rang.

  It was Sir Leon Buzzacott, and he wanted me.

  “Shall I tell the bugger you’re here?” Charlie didn’t bother to put a hand over the receiver as he asked me the question.

  “I’ll speak to him.” I took the phone.

  Sir Leon’s message in The Times had been answered. The kidnappers – that’s how he described them – had sent him their demands. The money was to be paid over by me. They would accept no one else; only the Earl of Stowey.

  He finished speaking. I said nothing. It was so blindingly obvious why they wanted me to deliver the money; so they could kill me and thus bequeath the picture to Elizabeth. But Elizabeth, I thought, had been taking money from Sir Leon, money which had let her hire the thugs who would do her killing today. “How much did you pay my sister?” I asked Sir Leon.

  There was a silence, then Sir Leon’s cautious voice. “My lord?”

  “How much did you pay my sister three years ago?”

  “An honorarium,” he said evasively, “merely an honorarium.”

  “You bastard. Don’t you realise what she did with your damned honorarium? She hired Garrard. She hired the man who put Jennifer into hospital. You bankrolled this, Sir Leon. You gave her the money that let her wait till our mother died.”

  “At that time I had no reason to believe in your sister’s guilt.” His voice was very stiff.