“We were dragged in at first by the police, who needed a set—two sets—of eyes and ears inside St. Bride’s when she suffered a series of murders.” Jonty stated the bald facts but hid even more. That case had changed their lives in more ways than one.
Orlando said, “May I ask how you came to be invited to Fyfield earlier this year? I’m sorry if that sounds very rude, as though you had no right to be extended a welcome. I trip on my words sometimes.” Especially when Jonty was smiling like that. “What I meant was that we were told the rest of the party had been assembled as they were members of the St. Sebastian Ambrosians.”
“They were. And I was there to represent my father, who’d been one of them. If someone couldn’t make the annual reunion, then somebody else had to carry the baton, if possible.” Gray rose, fetching a picture from the mantelpiece. “This is him. Them.”
Orlando and Jonty looked at the sketch, a representation of a group of men in their St. Sebastian blazers, one of whom looked so much like Gray it might have been the man himself, and another who was clearly a young Derek Temple. The names across the bottom of the picture confirmed Orlando’s guess.
“We’re here to ask you about Tuffnell’s death.”
Gray nodded. “That’s what I guessed, when you rang. And I’m afraid that’s why my wife isn’t here to meet you. She sends her apologies but says she finds anything to do with taking one’s own life exceedingly distressing. She’s gone to visit a friend today.”
“I fully understand.” Orlando inclined his head in acknowledgement. “Is there anything you can tell us about the night in question, or the days before and after? Anything which would alert one’s suspicions to the death being anything other than suicide?”
“Nothing beforehand, and afterwards there was such turmoil, as is to be expected in such awful circumstances. As for that night . . .” Gray shrugged as he poured the tea. “I’m ashamed to say I slept through it all. Notwithstanding those idiot servants waking me up.” He laid the pot down. “If you’ll help yourselves, I’ll fetch what I prepared for you in anticipation of such a discussion. It’s not much, just some photographs and the like.”
As his guests fussed with sugar and spoons—and tried to read each other’s minds over them—Gray brought an album from his desk. “Here. The Ambrosians in all their glory.”
“Which one is Tuffnell?” Jonty pointed, after their host turned the page to reveal a group of young men, possibly slightly the worse for wear, disporting themselves on—according to the handwritten legend on the page—the gravel in front of the great hall at St. Sebastian’s.
Gray indicated a wiry young man. “This one. If you mean Reggie. And here’s his brother. Two years between them but apparently they were sometimes mistaken for each other, especially if the birthmark was covered.”
“Would you care to expand on that?” Jonty almost bounced in his seat. “Is there any chance one of them could have been mistaken for the other? They didn’t have a habit of pretending to be the other or . . .” He petered out in the face of stony silence.
“What are you going on about?” Orlando asked.
“Exploring all the options. It was definitely Reggie who died, was it? I suddenly had this interesting idea.”
Orlando rolled his eyes at the mention of interesting. That probably meant completely daft.
“Go on.” Gray stirred his tea, thoughtful.
“What if it was Reggie who I met yesterday? It could well have been, on appearances. Could he have polished off Ronnie, so as to both receive his inheritance and get rid of his own gambling debts in one fell swoop? Then pretended to be the grieving brother?” Jonty waved his teaspoon. “It might explain why his testimony at the inquest appeared so odd.”
“You will excuse my friend, Archdeacon. Dr. Stewart spends far too much time in the company of Shakespeare and seems to think that twins being mistaken for each other is the stuff of everyday life.” Orlando ignored the dirty look his lover lobbed in his direction.
“There’s nothing to excuse. I run across things which make Shakespeare’s plots look uninventive. But in this case Dr. Stewart is mistaken. Reggie had a distinctive birthmark on his neck—a port-wine stain. There could be no confusing the two if you knew them at all well. Except if you were in the dark, of course. All the Ambrosians would have been able to tell them apart.”
“Can we go back to these days?” Orlando carefully fingered the album. “Ronnie always tagged along with the Ambrosians?”
“As I understand it, yes. Up to his neck in escapades. And it wasn’t a case of tagging along,” Gray added. “He was a fully fledged Ambrosian, for what that’s worth.”
“But it wasn’t all escapades.” Jonty’s voice had an icy edge, although Orlando couldn’t tell if that was from being rebuffed over the matter of twins or because they were touching on the poor, innocent child. “He’d been caught up in an accident with a carriage. A boy was killed and the father made threats towards the perpetrator. Ronnie. We also believe that Reggie might have been the one egging his brother on to take more risks than he normally might.”
“Yes, my father told me about that. Said the whole family was tarred with the same brush, the same streak of instability.”
“They were close, the brothers?”
“I think so. As close as most. If Tuffnell major resented Tuffnell minor towing behind, he never showed it. My father used to call them David and Jonathan. So the suspicion that Reggie killed Ronnie or vice versa is wrong. Quite wrong.” The fervour with which Gray spoke came as a surprise. “What other options have you considered?”
“I think we’re in a position where we have to consider every option, no matter how unlikely. Eliminate all we can eliminate and hope there’s a speck of something left to build a case on.” Jonty sighed. “This family resemblance, for example. Might somebody have avenged themselves on Reggie thinking he was Ronnie?”
Gray looked up from where he’d been considering his teacup. “I find that equally far-fetched.”
“Ronnie wasn’t among the party at Fyfield when his brother died. Why?” Orlando wasn’t sure they were making any real headway and wondered if a swift sidestep might speed up the game.
“Ah.” Gray studied his teacup once more. “I’m not entirely sure why. Awkward subject every time it was raised. I think he and Derek had fallen out over something.”
Yet another thing the duke had kept to himself, if it was true.
“You don’t know what they’d fallen out over?”
“I’m afraid not. It might have been Reggie’s gambling debts. They seemed to throw a damper on the whole party.”
Jonty suddenly asked, “May I look at the picture, please?”
“Of course.” Gray took the item in question and placed it in his guest’s hand.
“Thank you.” Jonty turned it, examining the names. “Talking of remarkable resemblances, there could be no doubt that this is your father, even though the name is different.”
“Yes. Do you know the story?”
“We’ve been told why he changed his name, although if the rest of what we’ve been told is anything to go by, I’m not sure I trust it.” Jonty sounded weary.
“If it’s the fact it made him sound like something out of an ornithologist’s field guide, then—strange as it may seem—it’s true.” Gray smiled. “I preferred to take my grandmother’s name.”
“That part of the story I would never doubt.” Orlando nodded. He understood entirely, given the Coppersmith family history. That was his grandmother’s name, of course, and not the elusive grandfather’s. “Might I ask why?”
“Because of the inheritance, of course,” Gray replied sharply.
“That picture. This was when your father and Reggie Tuffnell were still speaking to each other, seeing as they stood shoulder to shoulder?” Orlando hoped he’d got Gray rattled, but the man had regained his composure.
“I assume so. I suspect my father would have destroyed the original if it had postdate
d the . . . unfortunate event.” He turned the picture. “Yes. This was produced at the start of Michaelmas term. The accident was at the end of Hilary.”
Orlando ignored the face Jonty made at what any Cambridge man might have regarded as odd names for terms. “We’ve been told your father never forgave Tuffnell for causing his sweetheart’s death.”
Gray turned his gaze towards a portrait—clearly his father—that hung over the fireplace. “It haunted him all his life. Both her death and his feelings concerning it. He was a clergyman, too.”
Orlando looked up from his note taking. “I don’t follow . . .”
“I think I do.” Jonty cut in. “It’s hard enough for a poor layman to wrestle with the inability to forgive others when we pray so earnestly to be forgiven ourselves. For a man of the cloth, somebody who has to pronounce absolution on others . . .”
Orlando observed his lover’s ashen face with an aching heart. It had taken Jonty years of soul searching—and one of their most harrowing investigations—to be able to forgive the boys who’d blighted his schooldays.
“Your insight does you credit, Dr. Stewart.” Gray ran his hands through his hair. “He struggled for years with emotions he believed were unworthy. I am sure they contributed to his dying relatively young.”
Orlando looked at Jonty, who seemed to be avoiding his gaze. He’d no alternative but to ask the awkward question. “Did you hate Tuffnell? Or at least resent him, for causing your father’s death as well as the girl’s?”
“No.” Gray took a deep breath. “No, not now. I saw what hatred can do to a man, especially one who feels such deep guilt about it. I wouldn’t have wanted to be ruined in the same way. Tuffnell was young, it was an accident, it shouldn’t have been held against him for so long.” Gray seemed to be trying to convince himself as well as his visitors.
“If it was only an accident, the sort of thing which might happen to any of us, can you be absolutely sure that was what tormented him? Could there have been a more serious thing to affect your father so much?”
“If there was, I was never made privy to it. No matter how often I acted as my father’s spiritual mentor.”
Jonty entered the fray again. “I have to ask a very difficult question, Archdeacon.”
“Call me David. It seems stupid to be so formal.” Gray smiled.
“Then please address us as Jonty and Orlando. I said we had to consider every possibility. You had cause to take revenge on Tuffnell. The whole business with the bells is suspicious, not least because of its timing. Please—” Jonty raised his hand at Gray’s protest “—let me finish. How can we be sure you—perhaps with the help of someone else present that night—didn’t take the law into your own hands?”
“You can’t be,” Gray said eventually. “For if I was to say I had no part to play, then I could easily be lying. Why admit what couldn’t be proved? Yet if I plead my innocence, what proof have I? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
The awkwardness that filled the room at Gray’s reply lingered even after the silence was broken.
“I appreciate your candour, Arch . . . David. As you will appreciate that we need to press you again. We have reason to believe that the footman didn’t make a mistake when he answered your bell. That it was indeed ringing.” Twin peaks of colour marked Jonty’s pale cheeks. “How do you explain that?”
“I can’t.” Gray got up, went to the window, and looked out. To clear his mind or to dissemble? Orlando couldn’t guess. “I could have rung the bell in my sleep. A vivid dream, perhaps, although I have no memory of it. Can you not let it be?”
“If it were just Tuffnell, we might. But there is another man, another suspicious case, although the inquest judged it suicide. And Tuffnell gave evidence at that same inquest.”
Gray didn’t turn at Orlando’s words, although he clearly registered them. The stiffening of his shoulders and the deliberately casual removal of an insect from the windowpane suggested intense concentration. “Do I know this man? The one who died?”
“We were hoping you’d tell us. His name was Livingstone, Charles Livingstone, and he is supposed to have thrown himself in the Thames.”
“I have never met anyone called Livingstone.” Gray still stared out the window. “You’re not suggesting I killed him, too?” He suddenly turned, favouring them with a charmingly crooked smile. “The case of the murderous archdeacon. Sounds like something for Sherlock Holmes to look into.”
“This is no matter for levity. Two men are dead and even if neither was murdered they are owed respect.” Jonty’s voice was slow, calm, betraying no anger—and was all the more chilling for it.
Gray looked suitably chastened. “You are quite right. Forgive me.”
“I will, but only if you answer me one question in all honesty.” Jonty’s demand came like a bolt of lightning out of a blue sky. “I will accept that you have no comment to make on Livingstone, but I believe you know more about Tuffnell than you’ve told us. We dance around the periphery yet we fail to reach the centre of the maze.”
“Ask me your question.” Gray held Jonty’s steely-blue gaze, but his voice trembled.
“Who killed Reggie Tuffnell? And if you can’t give me a name, tell me which of the Ambrosians can.”
Gray took a deep breath, steadied himself against the window, then gave his answer in calmer, measured tones. “Tuffnell died by his own hand. Irrespective of what happened to this chap Livingstone, Reggie Tuffnell took his own life.”
“You had your avenging-angel hat on. Again,” Orlando said, once they’d left Gray’s house and sought refuge in a couple of pints in the local coaching inn before catching their train.
“Did I? I’m never aware of these things.” Jonty took a long draught, with evident pleasure. “Good beer, this.”
“Don’t change the subject. Avenging angel. What brought it on?”
“Too many people hurt and nobody apparently that concerned. As I’ve said, I don’t call killing a child high spirits.” Jonty eyed his drink as though it had suffered a sudden decline in quality. “You will call me illogical, of course, but there’s something deeply rotten in this case, somewhere. Something . . . I don’t know, almost worse than murder, and I don’t know what it is. But I have to root it out.”
“In which case? Tuffnell’s or Livingstone’s?”
“Both. Either. Don’t know.” Jonty took another swig of beer. “What did you think of Gray? Are you convinced by the story about why his wife wasn’t there or do you think she’d been ushered away for some reason?”
“I’m not sure why he mentioned it at all. We’d made the appointment with him, not the pair of them.” Orlando took a sip to wet his whistle—the beer was exceptionally good. “But that bit does ring true. Until the day she died, my mother couldn’t bear to even see the word ‘suicide’ in the newspaper.” Orlando shivered, despite the warmth of the day. “But that’s not the issue, for me. We’ve had people lie to us before, and I got the impression that Gray was lying. About something.”
“Not about the birthmark, or anything else we could check him out on, I’d guess. He seemed too bright by half to be caught by any of those traps. Mind you, the business about Ronnie having fallen out with Derek seemed to throw him. He didn’t seem so confident on that point.” Jonty rapped the table, making the glasses wobble and attracting the attention of some of the other drinkers.
“Steady.” Orlando smiled. “We’re not at home now. No Mrs. Ward to clear up the mess when you’ve displayed your manners. Or lack of same.”
Jonty looked up, as though about to make a stand, then grinned. “Don’t tell Mama. Gray talked about Livingstone, carefully saying he’d ‘not met him,’ which is what Ronnie said, too. I’d put ten bob on Gray knowing about Livingstone, or about his death, whether he’d met him or not.”
“We should have pressed him.” How often they came out of interviews with a string of what-ifs to consider.
“There’d have been no point. He
was choosing his words carefully, almost as if he had to ensure he hadn’t told a lie, and we’d have just been given another choice selection. He has a strong conscience, Orlando, I’m sure of it, and he feels his loyalties divided.” Jonty drained his glass in one long draught. “I wish we could do shorthand as Dr. Panesar can. Then we could have had a verbatim record to check against. I’d like to reconsider everything Gray said.”
“We’ll try to reconstruct the conversation when we’re on the train. I have plenty of notes and you always seem to have an excellent recall of what’s been said. Especially when you’re holding it in evidence against me,” Orlando added mischievously. “Do you really think Gray could have been avenging his father? And all the stuff about not ringing just be some sort of a clever smokescreen, another case of setting up an alibi when he’d already been and done Tuffnell in?”
“It’s too clever for me, by half, if it was. Want another?” Jonty waggled his glass.
“I’ve not finished this one yet. But don’t let me stop you.”
“No, I’d better behave myself. It’s difficult enough to think clearly as it is—my head feels like it might explode, beer or no beer.” He rummaged in his pocket. “Right, I’m taking drastic action. Could you lend me your jotter? I have my own pencil.”
“Glad to hear it, as you have a habit of blunting mine.” Orlando handed over his precious notepad, then peered over the table, intrigued. “What are you up to?”
“Drawing a diagram of who was where and when the night Tuffnell died.”
“Diagram? I thought it was a spider’s web. And an unruly spider, at that.”
“Shh. Let a man concentrate.” Jonty poked the tip of his tongue out, as he always did when thinking. Orlando found the sight profoundly affecting. “You consider motives. This thing about Gray taking revenge feels awfully thin and fuzzy. Like your attempt at growing a moustache.”
“Oh, ha-ha. He knows something, though. That remark about seeing how his father had suffered, so he wasn’t going to let himself do the same, struck home. With both of us.” Orlando looked up, straight into his lover’s deeply concerned gaze. How strange to go so quickly from jokes to such difficult emotions. “I know what it’s like to see somebody eat themselves up from inside, Jonty.”
Lessons for Suspicious Minds Page 16