Beyond Recall

by Robert Goddard

  worth of fivers. A witness overheard him telling Tully to do what he was being paid to do soon, otherwise it would be too late. And Tully said that was to kill old Joshua before he could change his will, under which your father was the sole beneficiary. Now, how could Nicky ever have hoped to overturn all that?”

  “I don’t know. And I’ll never know unless we find out what progress he made over the years.”

  “If any.”

  “Yeh. It could be none at all. I understand that. In a way, I’d almost prefer that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because then running out on my family wouldn’t seem so bad, would it?”

  “It sounds as if you had a good reason.”

  “Maybe my father had a good reason too. For doing the things that incriminated him.”

  “If so, Emma, I honestly don’t think Nicky found out what it was.”

  “But can you be sure?”

  “No, I can’t. That’s why I’m going to Clacton tomorrow.”

  “I’m grateful, Chris. Really.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “And I’m sorry, too. That I can’t trust you with more than my telephone number. I suppose I’m out of practice at relying on other people.”

  “That’s understandable. So would I be in your position. But relying on people isn’t always a bad thing, believe me.”

  “No.” I saw her uncertain smile reflected in the neon-lit windscreen.

  “I’m sure it isn’t.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It rained all the way from Pangbourne to Clacton, intensifying as I neared the coast. Water hurled itself at the car, as if the sea were rushing up across the flat grey Essex countryside to meet me, rushing as it had that winter’s night when all the Lanyons’ yesterdays were washed away but still not cleansed.

  The front at Clacton looked as dismal as only a seaside resort on a wet Sunday can. The pier was empty, the amusement arcades closed, the season over. Emma had given me Considine’s address, but instead of going straight there I headed west past a rainswept golf course to Jaywick, where the sea wall rose higher than the roofs of the ramshackle chalets and the clouds crouched low over the dark refuge the Lanyons had run to thirty-four years before. As far as could be imagined from the cliffs of Cornwall and the comforts of Tredower House, they’d hidden from scandal and rejection. And all they’d found had been flood and despair and Neville Considine.

  Wharfedale Road was a long straight street of terraced houses in the Victorian heart of residential Clacton. I sat outside number seventeen for several minutes, finalizing my explanation for this unexpected visit. I hadn’t phoned ahead, but I was confident I’d find him in. The pubs weren’t yet open and I didn’t have him down as a churchgoer. No, I reckoned I knew exactly where Neville Considine was.

  And I was right, though the time he took to answer the door, while I sheltered from the rain in the shallow porch and examined the peeling paintwork, sufficed to stretch my nerves.

  A sour mix of stale cooking and damp plaster work wafted out to meet me as he opened the door. He stepped back in momentary surprise, then gave me his thin-lipped smile. At once, I thought of Emma and why she’d have gone to any lengths to escape this man. “Mr. Napier. What an unexpected pleasure.” He was wearing a baggy dandruff-flecked cardigan over a shirt so old and worn that the collar looked as if it might soon detach itself completely. His trousers were threadbare and mottled with stains, crumpled at the ankles over bizarrely brand new Rupert Bear slippers.

  “There’s something you might be able to help me with, Mr. Considine.

  Mind if I step in?”

  “Not at all. But you must take me as you find me, naturally.” He led the way down a dingy passage, rain-marbled light falling sparsely from a landing window down the narrow stairwell. “I don’t get many visitors, you understand.” We passed two closed doors to our right and arrived in the kitchen, where Considine’s breakfast still seemed to be in progress, to judge by the scatter of tea leaves, breadcrumbs, jam-crusted knives and egg-smeared plates on the table. The sink was piled high with dirty pots and pans; water was dripping from the tap onto the blackened base of one. The stove was spattered with scabs of old fat and the filthy lino sucked at my feet. Grimy tea-towelled likenesses of the Prince and Princess of Wales stared at me from a rail above the grill, while a guinea pig, or some such rodent, scurried about amidst a litter of wood shavings and shredded newspaper in a cage on top of the ominously buzzing fridge.

  “Can I offer you some tea, Mr. Napier? Or a sherry, perhaps.”

  “Nothing, thanks.”

  “Well, what can I do for you?”

  “It’s.. . about Nicky.”

  “I supposed it must be.”

  “You never did let me know about his creditors.”

  “I decided to deal with them myself. After your generosity regarding the funeral expenses… But what about Nicholas? Has there been some

  … new development?”

  “No.” Over-anxious to cover Emma’s tracks, I added, “Nothing of the kind.”

  “Then I don’t quite understand.”

  “It’s about his … possessions.”

  Considine frowned. “Oh, yes?”

  “I just wondered… You may think it’s silly, but I was rather hoping to have something to remind me of him. A memento, if you like.”

  “I see your conscience has been stirred.” He sniggered disconcertingly.

  “I assume you have them.”

  “It depends what you mean. Nicholas lived in a small furnished flat.

  The landlord asked me to remove his possessions, such as they were, shortly after his death, which I did. I donated the clothes to a charity shop, though they were hardly in a usable condition. The rest was … well, rubbish for the most part. I threw it away.”

  “You kept nothingT

  There was nothing to keep. Of Nicholas’s, anyway. Apart from his scrapbook, that is. I believe I told you how Nicholas started collecting press reports of his father’s trial after we lost Michaela.

  He kept them in a large scrapbook which I came across when I cleared out the flat. Well, I hadn’t the heart to throw it away. Not after all the time and effort Nicholas must have devoted to it.”

  “Could I see it?”

  “By all means. Of course, it contains nothing to remind you of Nicholas as such. The cuttings aren’t about him.”

  “Even so.”

  He gave me a strange little half smile. “Come into the parlour, Mr.

  Napier. You’ll be more comfortable there.”

  We went back down the hall and he opened the farther door, revealing a surprisingly neat little sitting-room, furnished with a three-piece suite and some glass-fronted cabinets in which an excess of Victorian knick-knackery called up the spirit of his dead and probably domineering mother. The fireplace had been panelled in and a two-bar electric heater installed on the hearth. Considine bent over it and activated one bar, which began to glow weakly. He waved me to an armchair, then dragged a tea chest out from a recess between the chimney breast and a cabinet.

  This contains some things of Rose’s I removed from the flat. I’ve been meaning to sort it out, but…” He toyed with a bead necklace, then dropped it back into the box. “Here’s the scrapbook.” It was a large spiral-bound board-covered volume. Considine pulled it out and handed it over to me. “Take a look.” As I opened it, I heard him sigh and was aware of him lowering himself to his knees by the tea chest and delving further into it. I was also aware of the rain drumming at the windows and the metalwork of the electric fire creaking and clicking as it heated up. There was a smell of singeing dust in the air, a consciousness of old ground being trodden after long desertion. The cuttings were photocopies drawn from the microfilmed archives whence Nicky had pursued his father’s ghost, but scissored and pasted as if assembled at the time of the events they described, beginning with a report of Uncle Joshua’s murder and Edmund Tully’s arrest. This was followed by a ful
some obituary notice in the West Briton and then…

  Even as I turned the scrapbook page and saw the headline, I remembered first reading it on an August morning in Truro thirty-four years before. Truro auctioneer charged with patron’s murder. It was the moment when Michael Lanyon’s complicity in the murder of Joshua Carnoweth had ceased to be a whispered horror and become a legal reality. It was the moment when I realized that nothing could be the same as before.

  “This is a terrible business,” declared my father, slapping the newspaper down on the bureau and commencing a prowling patrol of the space between it and the window. “A damned awful business.” He was grappling with the pipe in his waistcoat pocket as if it were a creature he was determined to subdue. “And it isn’t going to get any better.” He swung round to face Pam and me. “You two are going to have to display a great deal of fortitude in the months ahead. Which is why it’s important He broke off and glanced across at Gran, as if in search of confirmation that what he was about to say really needed L

  saying. She gave him a spine-stiffening glare and he cleared his throat. “Which is why it’s important that you understand what’s happened.”

  “What has happened, Dad?” I asked ingenuously. “How can anyone think Mr. Lanyon murdered Uncle Joshua? Surely that other man ‘

  “Tully was put up to it by Michael Lanyon, Christian. That’s what it amounts to. Paid, I assume, to kill Uncle Joshua. And that makes both men guilty of murder.”

  “It is true, then?” put in Pam. “About Mr. Lanyon?”

  “I’m assured the police have clinching evidence. We must work on the assumption that it is true.”

  “Aren’t people supposed to be innocent until they’re proved guilty?” I had the immediate impression that this wasn’t what I was supposed to say. “I mean … aren’t they?”

  Dad narrowed his gaze. “Of course they are. Michael Lanyon will get a fair trial. This isn’t about that.”

  “What is it about, then?”

  “It’s about how we deal with the Lanyons between now and the trial,”

  snapped Gran, her impatience seemingly directed equally at Dad and me.

  “As far as I’m concerned, they all have my brother’s blood on their hands.”

  “Gosh,” I mumbled, subdued by the recollection of the bloodstains at the foot of the Lander Monument.

  “It seems best to your grandmother and me,” said Dad, with a hint of emollience in his tone, ‘that we have nothing to do with them, at all, until… this is settled.”

  “But…” I hesitantly began, thinking of Nicky, whom I’d last seen, tearful and confused on the lawn at Tredower House, as the police drove his father away.

  “That includes Nicky. I’m sorry, Christian, but I must forbid you to see or speak to the boy. People might misconstrue your friendship.”

  “But we are friends.” Denial of this seemed to hover around me in the silence that followed. “I understand why our holiday at Nanceworthal had to be cancelled,” I stumbled on protestingly, ‘but surely that doesn’t mean ‘

  “His father had a hand in your uncle’s murder,” Gran declared angrily.

  “To my mind, you shouldn’t want to see him, let alone still be complaining about a cancelled holiday.”

  “I’m not complaining.”

  “It sounded to me as if you were. Your uncle’s funeral is on Friday.

  That’s more important than how you occupy your spare time, my lad.”

  The injustice as well as the irrelevance of this last jab left me dumbstruck. As if to defuse the tension, Pam said calmly, “Why is Mr.

  Lanyon thought to have done this dreadful thing?”

  “It appears he’s the sole beneficiary under Uncle Joshua’s will,” Dad replied. “We can only suppose ‘

  “Not a penny for his own flesh and blood,” said Gran to no-one in particular. “That’s a crime in its own right. But it’s bred a worse one.”

  “We can only suppose’, Dad plugged on, ‘that he wanted to forestall the possibility of Uncle Joshua changing his will.”

  “More than a possibility,” said Gran. “It’s why he wanted to see Cloke last Thursday.”

  “Which brings us to your walk down with him from Tredower House, Christian,” said Dad. “Didn’t he more or less tell you that’s what he was planning?”

  I puzzled over the question for a moment, unable to believe Dad had so grossly misunderstood my account of our conversation. Eventually, since an answer of some kind seemed essential, I said, “Not really.”

  “Mmm.” Dad frowned at me. “Well, you can only describe things as you remember them, I suppose. As you’ll have to this afternoon.”

  “Why? What’s happening this afternoon?”

  “A policeman’s coming to see you. Inspector Treffry. He wants to ask you some questions.”

  “What about?”

  “Just tell him as much as you can, Christian. That’s all you need to do. There’s nothing to worry about.” He stepped over and gave me an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “Easier than an end-of-term exam.”

  “Can I ask something else, Dad?” Pam said hesitantly.

  “What is it?”

  “About Uncle Joshua’s will. You said Mr. Lanyon’s the sole beneficiary. Does that make him wealthy now?”

  “No. It doesn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “The murder changes everything. He can’t inherit if he’s convicted.”

  “Then who will?”

  Dad grimaced and looked away. The question seemed to discompose him.

  But not Gran. “I will,” she declared with quiet firmness. “As I always should have done.”

  I flicked on through the scrapbook pages. Michael Lanyon’s committal and trial with Edmund Tully for the murder of Joshua Carnoweth was faithfully chronicled in photocopied newspaper reports spanning the late summer and long autumn of 1947. The Nicky who’d worked away his twenties and thirties as a librarian had compiled this, calmly and methodically, in secret tribute to the wronged man he believed his father to have been. There were no scrawled protests in the margins to speak of what he felt. I had to imagine that as I scanned the successive headlines. LANYON AND

  TULLY SENT FOR TRIAL. PROSECUTION OPENS CASE AGAINST

  LANYON AND

  TULLY.

  EDMUND TULLY CHANGES PLEA AND DESCRIBES MURDEROUS

  CONSPIRACY WITH

  MICHAEL LANYON. JURY FINDS MICHAEL LANYON GUILTY OF

  MURDER HE AND

  EDMUND TULLY SENTENCED TO DEATH. EDMUND TULLY

  REPRIEVED SENTENCE

  COMMUTED TO LIFE IMPRISONMENT. MICHAEL LANYON TO

  HANG

  TODAY NO REPRIEVE EXPECTED. Nor was there any. I knew that, just as

  Nicky had known. Maybe it explained why he’d refrained from including a report of the hanging itself. There was no more to be said or read after the morning of the execution. Only blank pages and a blank life running to its end.

  But that wasn’t quite true. As I closed the book, a loose edge of paper slid out from the back. Reopening it at the last page, I saw a cutting had been slipped inside the rear cover, as if Nicky had planned to trim and paste it in but had forgotten to do so. It was a genuine cutting, as distinct from a photocopy, and more recent than the others.

  The West Briton for 25 May 1967 was a journal he shouldn’t logically have had access to, given how far Clacton was from Truro. But there it nevertheless was. And the article he’d cut out of it was nothing less than a retirement tribute to Detective Superintendent George Treffry of the Cornwall Constabulary, the man who twenty years before, as a mere inspector, had found himself tackling the most sensational case of his entire career, in the course of which he’d called at the Napier house in Crescent Road, Truro, to interview its youngest occupant.

  He was a big man, taller and squarer than my father, but about the same age, with a bristling moustache and spiky hair. He wore a faded brown mustard-striped suit that made him look like a figure
in a sepia photograph and seemed even more uncomfortable than I felt, twitching at his shirt collar and dabbing at his sweat-sheened forehead with a red handkerchief large enough to make a pirate’s hat. It was certainly hot, stiflingly so where Mum had installed us in the sitting-room, with the sunlight streaming in through the conservatory. But I had the impression there was more to Inspector Treffry’s discomfort than that.

  Perhaps he wasn’t at his ease with children. Perhaps he wasn’t at his ease with the Lanyon case at all.

  “Your parents tell me you’re at Truro School, Christian,” he remarked with what was supposed to be a reassuring smile.

  “I start next month, sir.”