“Excited about it?”
“Well, I haven’t thought about it much really. Not with … everything that’s happened.”
“No, of course not.” He gulped down some of his tea. “It’s on account of what’s happened that I asked your parents if I could speak to you.
You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“I gather from them that you saw your uncle just a few hours before
…” He left the sentence hanging and waved his hand by way of conclusion.
“Yes, sir. We walked down from Tredower House to the cathedral together.”
“Did he say where he was going on to?”
“Lemon Street.”
“To see his solicitor.” Treffry nodded. “Did he say why?”
“Not exactly, sir.”
“What did he say exactlyT
I recounted our conversation as accurately as I could, even mentioning Uncle Joshua’s parting gift of half a crown.
“There’s a coincidence,” said Treffry. “I wanted to see My Darling Clementine myself, but something cropped up.” He sighed. “Did your uncle seem … angry about anything, Christian?”
“No, sir. He was… fairly jolly, actually.”
“And Michael Lanyon. Last time you saw him. Was he … fairly jolly?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ever see him with this man?” He handed me a photograph. I recognized the subject at once, and nodded in reply. “Where?” “Colquite and Dew’s yard, sir.” “When would that have been?” “Towards the end of last month.”
“Friendly, were they? To each other, I mean.”
“Not really friendly, no. More…” He cocked an eyebrow at me, waiting patiently for me to continue. “More like they knew each other, but not as friends.”
“Did Mr. Lanyon give him anything that you saw?”
“Something. But I don’t know what it was.”
“Money?”
“It could have been.”
“You’re an observant boy, aren’t you, Christian?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
He stretched out his hand and retrieved the photograph. “Know who this man is, do you?”
“No, sir. But I’m wondering … if he might be … Edmund Tully.”
“Ever see him on any other occasion?”
“No, sir. Definitely not.”
“Well, I think that’s all I need to know.” He finished his tea, stood up and glanced out into the garden. “Looks like it’ll stay fine for the Test Match. Think Compton will score another century?”
I knew he was patronizing me. I was used to adults doing that and usually played along. But the sense that I was being excluded from events had grown during our interview. I had to tell people everything I knew, but it never seemed to work the other way around. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right. What I said next was as much a protest against that as a plea for information. “Did Mr. Lanyon really hire Tully to kill my uncle, Inspector?”
Treffry gave me a kindly frown and I realized the conventions of our relationship weren’t to be so easily overborne. “That’s not for me to say, Christian. That’ll be for the jury to decide.”
“He is going to be tried, then?”
“Oh yes. He’ll be tried all right.” He smiled, hoping, I think, to console me, but utterly failing to. “And then we’ll know.”
And now we did know. The law’s answer, anyway.
Michael Lanyon was found guilty yesterday at the conclusion of his trial at Bodmin Assizes for the murder of Joshua Carnoweth, his wealthy patron, in Truro last August. The jury returned its verdict after a six-hour retirement. Lanyon and fellow defendant Edmund Tully, who changed his plea to guilty three days ago, were sentenced to death, although the judge, Mr. Justice Goldfinch, said that he would be recommending the Home Secretary to exercise clemency in the case of Tully on account of his altered plea, his evident remorse and his outstanding war record. But for Tully’ sexperiences as a prisoner of the Japanese, he would probably have had the moral strength to reject Lanyon’s vile proposal of murder at the outset. As for Lanyon, the judge said that although he had not personally struck the fatal blow, his guilt was the greater, rooted as it was in a ruthless avarice. No words could properly express the repugnance every decent man and woman would feel at his total lack of
I slammed the scrapbook shut and looked up at Considine, who was perched on the edge of the sofa, staring soulfully at a framed picture.
“Finished?” he murmured, glancing across at me.
“I think so, yes.”
“Not pleasant reading, I fear.”
“No. Not pleasant at all.”
“Everything else that I kept belonged to Rose. She had this by her bedside when she died.”
He held the picture out for me to see and I took it from him for a closer look. It was a set of three photographs, displayed in oval compartments in the mounting. The central photograph was of Nicky as I’d never seen him, in his late twenties probably, leaning against the front door of the house in a checked shirt, his hair Brylcreemed, his face smiling. The left-hand photograph was of a baby girl sitting up on a studio cushion fondling a ball: Freda, I assumed. The right-hand photograph was of Michaela as a teenager, posing on the beach in a coyly skirted swimsuit. She wasn’t smiling and I recognized the wary look in her eyes at once. It had been there even then.
“All dead now,” mumbled Considine. He caught my eye. “Sad, isn’t it?
So much vitality, so much promise, snuffed out.”
“Yes,” I replied, choosing my words carefully. “Very.” i “I think of Michaela a lot, you know. What sort of a woman she’d have become. You can’t help yourself, you really can’t.”
I looked at the swim suited girl in the photograph and the moist-lipped hint of remembered lust in Considine’s face. I knew what sort of a woman she’d become, of course. I knew what I mustn’t allow Considine to discover at any price.
“Aren’t you going to rebuke me for assuming Michaela’s dead, Mr.
Napier?”
“Why should I?”
“You did last time.”
“Whistling in the wind, I suppose. Nothing more. It’s probably best to be realistic.”
“I do so agree. I was fond of her, of course.” He paused as if for effect. “Extremely fond of her.” Then he smiled. “But still one has to face facts.”
“Quite.”
“Do you want to take the photograph?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The snap of Nicholas. You said you wanted a memento of him.”
“Oh, I see what you mean.” I handed the picture back to him.
“Actually, no. Thanks, but I… wouldn’t want to split them up.”
“That’s very considerate of you. I was going to suggest you have a copy made.”
“Even so, I … don’t think I will. I never knew him as an adult.
Perhaps it’s better to …”
“Rely on childhood memories?”
“Something like that.”
“Like me and Michaela. She’s still a teenager to me, still my gorgeous little He stopped and cleared his throat awkwardly, then looked straight into my eyes just as a horrifying thought sprang into my mind.
Had it begun with Michaela? Just what had gone on in this house in the bedrooms above my head during the lost years when I hadn’t wanted to know? “To you Nicholas will always be a small boy, won’t he, Mr.
Napier? The schoolfriend you lost touch with in … when was it they actually left Truro?”
“September forty-seven. Straight after Michael Lanyon’s committal.
They moved to Exeter so as to be able to visit him in prison. They never went back to Truro.”
“And that’s the last you saw of Nicholas until a month ago?”
“Yes. The very last.”
It was the day after Uncle Joshua’s funeral a Saturday, when I’d normally have gone to Tredower House straight after breakfast.
But that Saturday there was no such thing as normality.
I hadn’t attended the funeral. Pam and I had stayed at home with Mum, the shop being closed as a mark of respect. Something was said about the ceremony being no place for children on account of pressmen and photographers hanging around, but I suspected we’d been excluded for another reason. It was one event where an encounter with the Lanyons couldn’t be avoided. Gran had foreseen my presence might melt the ice that had formed between the two families, and she was determined to keep it frozen solid.
I’d had my suspicion confirmed by a conversation between Mum and Dad.
They’d been sitting together in the conservatory a few hours after the funeral, little realizing that I was crouched within earshot just outside the open windows, concealed behind the water butt.
“Cordelia was there,” Dad had said. “Rose too. They both looked pretty ashen.”
“Did you speak to them?” Mum had asked.
“Not a word passed between us. I know it seems hard, Una, but Michael’s responsible for Uncle Joshua’s death. They have to stand by him, of course. Which means we have to stand against them.”
“That sounds like your mother talking.”
“We’re of one mind on this, if that’s what you mean. It’s the only way.”
“How will it end?”
“It’s best not to think about it. Until the trial, they can stay in Tredower House, but afterwards, they’ll have to go.”
“Assuming Michael’s found guilty.”
“Yes. Assuming that.” A strange silence had followed. Then Dad had added, “But we both know he will be.”
His words lodged in my mind and had acquired by the following morning a sinister air of unjustified certainty. I knew I was supposed to hate Michael Lanyon for what he’d done, but I couldn’t seem to. I still couldn’t connect him with the bloodstained pavement at the top of Lemon Street. I still couldn’t connect very much at all.
I left the house after Mum, Dad and Gran had set off for the shop, telling Grandad I’d arranged to play cricket with some friends at Boscawen Park. But the arrangement was a fiction. My real destination lay halfway up St. Clement’s Hill: the cemetery. If I couldn’t attend Uncle Joshua’s funeral, I could at least visit his grave.
I scrambled in over the boundary wall at the lower end rather than slog up to the main gate, but didn’t save myself much effort by the ploy.
The graves at the bottom were clearly the oldest. I followed the perimeter path across and up the slope, silhouetted headstones looming like castle battlements in front of me on the grey horizon. It was the first cloudy day in weeks, though already hotter than many a sunny one, airless and brooding. A fly buzzed obstinately around me as I went and my shirt clung clammily to my back. As I climbed, I made out the hum mocked shape of a freshly filled grave ahead and saw the splashed colours of the wreaths laid around it. And, in the same moment, I saw Nicky.
He was standing beside the grave, staring at the piled earth, stooping every now and again to gather scattered soil from the grass and toss it in amongst the clods. His mouth was open, his face slack and expressionless, his hair plastered with sweat. He was so absorbed in what he was doing that he didn’t see me coming until the very last moment. Then, just as I was about to speak, he started violently and whirled round to look at me. I smiled, but he didn’t.
“Mum and Dad wouldn’t let me go to the funeral,” I began. “I suppose you didn’t ‘
“Your Mum and Dad think my Daddy murdered Uncle Josh. What do you think?”
I should have found some reply, but my thoughts on the issue were so confused that I could only stare back at him and venture a hopeless shrug.
“Daddy didn’t do it. I know he didn’t. You know too, don’t you?” His eyes pleaded with me to say yes or simply nod my head in agreement.
Then we could unite as friends in defence of his father. But my parents and grandparents were convinced of Michael Lanyon’s guilt. I didn’t know how strong or weak the evidence was, but I knew they believed it. And I was part of their certainty, bound to it just as firmly as Nicky was to his father’s innocence. In that instant, I realized what Uncle Joshua’s death meant to Nicky and me. I wouldn’t have been able to express it in words, but it was clear before me in the force of his gaze. Our friendship couldn’t hold. It was crumbling, like the earth in his hand, like the hope in his eyes.
“Don’tyou?”
“Nicky, I can’t ‘
“Say it! Say you’re on my side.” His face darkened, his mouth tightened. “If you’re really my friend, you have to.”
“But it’s not… I mean …”
“Are you on my side?” He must have read the answer in my face, but still he waited, for what seemed like minutes but can only have been seconds, while we each retreated into opposing loyalties and stubbornly tried to stare the other out. Then he gave a cry and rushed at me.
It happened so suddenly that he caught me off balance and bowled me over. The next thing I knew I was lying on the ground with Nicky sitting on top of me, beating at my raised arms with his fists while the breath hissed through his clenched teeth and tears welled from his eyes as well as mine tears of grief and shock and sundered friendship.
“I hate you,” he cried, his voice cracking. 7 hate you.”
“You two.” I heard a hoarse bellow from somewhere behind me. “Leave off that game.”
Nicky’s head jerked up as he glanced past me. “I’ll save Daddy without you,” he said, almost in a whisper. “You’ll see.” Then he jumped up and took off at a sprint between the gravestones. By the time I’d scrambled to my feet, he was twenty yards away, running hard towards the gate. I called his name, but he didn’t look back. I’m not even sure he heard me.
I was about to run after him when a large hand seized me by the shoulder. A red-faced man in working trousers and collarless shirt was breathing heavily beside me. “This is a cemetery, boy,” he growled.
“Tis no place for your rattle-cum-skittery.”
“No, sir. I’m sorry.”
He frowned at me. “No cause to cry, though. I’m not going to hurt you.” With that, he released me, regretting, it seemed, the distress he thought he’d caused. “You’d better go after your pal.” He squinted after Nicky. “He’s going like a long dog.”
“There’s no point,” I murmured.
“Ar. I suppose you know where he’s going well enough.”
I nodded in vague agreement. The truth was too bitter and complicated to explain. Nicky’s destination was actually irrelevant. Wherever he was going, I couldn’t follow. Not any more.
There was nothing else of Nicky’s in the tea chest. Considine had told me there wasn’t but he didn’t seem surprised when I insisted on checking for myself. If Nicky had tracked down Tully, then he’d either kept no record of his whereabouts or, which was an even more frustrating possibility, Considine had destroyed it flung it, along with a hundred other scraps and traces of my dead friend’s life, onto the municipal tip, for the rats to nibble and the seagulls to peck.
“Sorry you’re leaving empty-handed, Mr. Napier,” said Considine as he saw me to the door, his expression suggesting he was anything but.
“It can’t be helped.”
“So little can, I find. Shall I be seeing you at the inquest?”
“You’re going down to Truro for it?”
“Why yes. The coroner wants me to give evidence about Nicholas’s state of mind in recent months. I had a letter from him yesterday. It’s scheduled for the twenty-sixth of this month. Didn’t you know?”
“No.”
“You surprise me. I thought you’d be asked to testify as well.”
“Perhaps my letter’s in the post.”
“Perhaps so. Of course, as you see, evidence as such about my stepson’s … condition … is in short supply.”
“It is now, certainly.”
Considine gave me one of his sly little half smiles. “Well, as I say, I’m sorry yo
u had a wasted journey.”
“Me too.” I smiled back grimly, content to let him believe I’d gained nothing from my visit. But that wasn’t quite true. There were people who knew where Tully was; there had to be. The policeman who’d put him behind bars back in 1947 could well be one of them. According to his retirement tribute, Superintendent Treffry had planned to spend his declining years in a cottage he’d bought overlooking the harbour at St.
Mawes. The chances were he was still alive and still in St. Mawes.
Maybe that was why Nicky had kept the cutting. Maybe that was the one piece of evidence I needed.
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