That’s what he threatened to do. Tell them the truth: that Michael had played no part in the murder; that the only thing he was guilty of was a homosexual past. Proof wasn’t the issue. He knew you’d pay up rather than risk having the Lanyons try to reopen the case. They couldn’t have succeeded, but they might have caused us a lot of embarrassment.”
“You’re the embarrassment, Chris. You and this… this…
half-baked crusade. What’s it for? To ease your conscience about Nicky?”
“Yes. And why not? My conscience isn’t clear. I’m not pretending it is.”
“Well, mine is. And I’m still waiting to be told who broke into this house yesterday and did their best to wreck it. Who and why.”
“I’m waiting too. The only way to answer your question is to answer mine. Find Tully and I reckon you find Pauline Lucas. So, did you pay him to leave the country? Was that the deal? It would explain why ‘
“That’s enough.” He slammed the flat of his hand down onto the desktop, then seemed to lean against it for support, his age showing in the flagging of his energy and the hoarsening of his voice. “I’m not going to stand for any more of this. You’re my son. The least I’m entitled to demand of you is that you accept my word. I’ve never spoken to Edmund Tully and I’ve never paid him a penny. Do you understand?”
“No. I don’t. You’re not telling me the truth.”
“If that’s what you think … then get out.” He walked slowly round the desk to his chair and clasped the back of it. “I’ll not be called a liar in my own house by my own son.”
“Very well.” I moved to the door and looked back at him from there, letting him see how completely he’d failed to rattle me. This was a temporary stand-off; we both knew that. Sooner or later, we’d have to resolve it, but for the moment, there was no way of knowing how. “I’m not going to give up, Dad.”
“Aren’t you?” His chin jutted as he tossed out the words. “I wouldn’t be so sure. You’ve spent your whole life giving up.”
“Well, maybe that’s how I can be sure,” I said, treating him to a smile that was sarcastic at my own expense as well as his. “It won’t happen this time.”
Addiction saps the will to such a degree that the firmest of intentions fade into the dimmest of hopes. Two and a half hours on the train from Paddington that Friday afternoon in May 1969 were enough to undermine the small amount of determination I hadn’t drowned in vodka long before. I started anticipating the kind of atmosphere that would prevail at Tredower House one heavy with the unspoken implication that I’d let them all down with the way I’d led my life. I began to imagine the exchanged glances I wouldn’t be expected to see, the censorious frowns and despairing shakes of the head. I confronted a realization I’d been able to evade while they were in Truro and I was in London: I was nothing to be proud of. Whichever way you defined me uncle, brother, son or grandson1 didn’t measure up.
I left the train at Exeter, already half-drunk after an hour in the buffet car. It was opening time on a warm spring evening and I picked my way across the city from pub to pub, with no destination in mind, telling myself I’d carry on to Truro later, but secretly knowing I wouldn’t because I’d slid down this slope too many times before to mistake the descent for something reversible.
It was a shock to find myself near the prison, Wearily recalling, as I wandered past the gate, that this was where Michael Lanyon had been hanged and buried twenty-two years before. I walked up an alley beside its soaring eastern wall, listening to the indecipherable sounds of voices beyond the lofty barred windows. There was a small pub at the end of the alley, where I sat and drank steadily until all memories of the summer and autumn of 1947 had vanished. I took an overnight room at the next pub I went to and woke late on Saturday morning, memory as patchy as it usually was, but crystal clear on one point: I was supposed to be in Truro. And I could still have made it, though only just. But I couldn’t face myself, let alone my family. I scrawled a hasty letter of apology to Gran, claiming I’d been laid up with flu, and posted it before boarding the train back to London.
It’s pitiful, looking back. It would be funny, if it weren’t so pathetically incompetent. Alcohol was making me stupid as well as unreliable. An Exeter postmark on my letter, after all, was just about the most certain way to discredit its contents, and me with it.
Perhaps,
sub-consciously, that’s what I wanted to do. Perhaps I was aware by then that I couldn’t sink much lower.
Pauline Lucas’s latest outrage had failed to lessen Pam’s determination to end her marriage. When I reached Tredower House late that afternoon, it was to find her just back from a meeting with her solicitor. Tabitha had gone along to boost her mother’s morale and to make it clear which side her sympathies lay on. Whoever Pauline Lucas was and whatever her motives might be, Trevor had been too willing a victim to be forgiven. My father had pleaded with Pam to think again, or at least to postpone a decision, but she was adamant: there had to be a divorce.
We discussed the ramifications of this over tea. Or rather Pam and Tabitha discussed them while I listened with half an ear and struggled in my mind with a more sinister problem. Eventually, when they’d talked themselves to a standstill, I raised the question my visit to Lanmartha had failed to answer.
“Do either of you remember anything strange happening around the time of Gran’s ninetieth birthday party?”
“What on Earth makes you ask?” Pam was clearly taken aback by the seeming irrelevance of the enquiry. “That must be twelve years ago.”
“It could have some bearing on what’s happening. I think Edmund Tully came back to Truro after his release from prison in May of sixty-nine.”
“Well, I certainly saw nothing of him.”
“And I wouldn’t have recognized him if I had,” said Tabitha. “He’s only ever been a name to me.”
“As for Gran’s ninetieth,” said Pam, ‘well, Chris, what I most remember that for is somebody who didn’t come back to Truro. A place was kept for you at the birthday lunch, you know. Right up to the last moment, Gran seemed to think you might arrive. We all hoped you would, Dad especially. I’m not sure you’ve ever lived that down with him.”
“Nor ever will.” I smiled grimly. “But forget about my blotted copybook. I only mentioned the birthday to help you tie down any…
unexplained incidents.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. If not Tully turning up here in broad daylight, then a weird phone call or…” I shrugged. “Just something out of the ordinary.”
“Nothing’s stuck in my mind,” said Pam. “And Tabs would have been away at school until the day of the party, so she ‘
“No I wasn’t,” Tabitha intervened. “Great-Grandma’s birthday was at the end of my half-term holiday. I was home all that week.”
“Were you, darling?”
“Yes. Don’t you remember? On the Friday, you took me to a gymkhana at Wadebridge. Flossy and I won a prize.” Flossy was one of the ponies Tabitha had ridden in her horse-crazy teens. His stable had been incorporated into the annexe for the private flat when Tredower House had been converted into a hotel. “You can’t have forgotten. It was our one and only first prize.” She laughed. “I still have the rosette.”
“Yes, of course.” Pam smiled at the memory. “We were so proud of you.” But she couldn’t help adding, “Well, I was.”
“Come on, Mum. Dad was proud of me too.”
“Was he?” Pam seemed inclined to disagree. “As I recall, you were very upset that night because he took so little interest in your victory.”
“Yes, but that was unusual. Normally, he’d have Tabitha broke off and looked across at me. “You were asking if anything out of the ordinary happened, Chris. Well, I suppose that was. In its way.”
“What happened?”
“As soon as we got back from Wadebridge, I went to find Dad so I could show him the rosette. He was with Grandpa in his study. They were
…
Well, it’s funny, now I look back. I couldn’t seem to get their attention. They were… arguing.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t interested. I just wanted to tell them how well Flossy had jumped, but they hardly seemed to notice I was there.”
“The poor girl came to me in tears,” said Pam. “She wanted to impress her father with what she’d achieved, but he couldn’t spare her even a few minutes of his valuable time.”
“Nor could her grandfather,” I pointed out. “Why, I wonder?”
“It’ll have been about business,” Pam replied with a dismissive toss of the head. “When wasn’t it? They probably She stopped and snapped her fingers. “It’s all coming back to me now. Yes. What a night. Tabs upset. Final arrangements for the party to be made. And then Trevor announces he and Dad have to go out to dinner with a supplier in Plymouth. He was only in the country for a few days, apparently, and had to be buttered up. So, off they went, leaving me to drive back and forth to the station every time a train from London was due, just in case you were on it.”
“Perhaps that’s what they were arguing about, then,” I suggested.
“Whether they really had to go.”
“Oh, Trevor wouldn’t have minded. Anything to get out of helping me would have suited him. Besides, where business was concerned, he never said no to Dad.”
“That’s true,” Tabitha contributed. “But that’s what’s so odd about it. Grandpa had asked him to do something. I don’t know what and he didn’t want to. I mean, he was objecting. Strongly. They were really at loggerheads. I’d never seen them like that before.”
“And you’ve no idea what they were at loggerheads about?”
“None at all.” Tabitha frowned. “But it must have been important.”
She looked at Pam, then back at me. “Mustn’t it?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Arguing with my father was something Trevor had always been happy to leave to me. The secret of his success, both as a son-in-law and a deputy managing director, was a degree of compliance he’d have called loyalty and I’d have dismissed as servility. Back in May 1969, the last thing he’d have wanted to do was step, even slightly, out of line.
It was clear from Tabitha’s recollections, however, that he’d nevertheless done so. The sudden announcement that he had to accompany Dad to Plymouth suggested his resistance hadn’t lasted long. But dinner with a supplier, however inconvenient, was still too trivial a cause. There had to be more to it. According to Pam, they’d got back late; very late. And by the next morning everyone was on their best behaviour for Gran’s party, so there was plenty to camouflage the disagreement, not least the scandal of my continuing absence. But still it must have been there, simmering beneath the surface. Whatever Dad had asked of Trevor that night, it had nearly been too much. But not quite. And there was the weakness in Dad’s refusal to admit buying off Tully, for I felt certain Tully was behind their dispute. And with Trevor as absorbed in self-pity as he now was, I had a good chance of finding out how.
I let Pam and Tabitha think I was going to my room for an early night when I left them, but a late one seemed altogether more probable. I went straight to my car and headed for Perranarworthal.
At the Trumouth Motel, I was told Trevor was out. But I’d parked beside his car and without it he wouldn’t have gone far. The Norway Inn, on the other side of the road, looked a good bet.
Sure enough, Trevor was there, propped on a stool at one end of the bar. As one who knew the signs well from personal experience, I reckoned he was halfway between drunk and very drunk, head and shoulders wallowing, eyes bleary, the ashtray in front of him well-filled. He winced as he took another gulp of lager an extra-strong brand, by the look of him.
“Hello, Trevor.”
“Oh, God.” He glared fuzzily at me. “Can’t you leave me alone?”
“Solitude doesn’t seem to be doing you many favours.”
“Well, it beats the alternative, believe me.” He did his best to think for a moment. “You can buy me another drink if you insist on staying.
Carlsberg Special.”
“All right.” There was no point arguing with him about it. That too I knew from personal experience. I ordered what he wanted and a fizzy water for myself, then sat on the stool next to his. “How are things?”
“You should know. I’ll bet Pam’s told you. In loving detail.”
“She seems determined to press for a divorce.”
“Yes. And I don’t have much choice in the matter, do I? Not while she has that damned photograph. Which you promised to keep from her.”
“I didn’t promise anything. Besides, the fire at my workshop changed all that. You’re not the only one to have suffered at Pauline Lucas’s hands.”
“No? Well, I suppose that’s some comfort. But don’t kid yourself I believe it’s why you let Pam have the picture back. You were never bothered about me. I’m not a Napier, am I? Not a fully paid-up member of the authentic bloodline. So I can be hung out to dry whenever it suits.”
“Trevor ‘
“But I don’t care. Not any more. I’ve had it with your family. Pam can have her divorce. She can have anything she wants. Except me on a plate. I’m off. I’m cutting the ties that bind.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think I’m going to sit it out here all winter while Pam bleeds me white? Think again. I have friends in sunnier climes. It’s time I looked them up.”
“What friends are these?”
“Better ones than you’d like to believe.” He prodded my chest for emphasis, tilting the glass in his hand as he did so and spilling lager down my shirt. “I’ll be welcomed with open arms.” Then he giggled.
“And legs.”
“When do you leave?”
“Sooner the better. This’ll have to be a farewell drink for you and me, Chris, I’m far from sorry to say. Which reminds me. My glass is nearly empty.”
I bought him another lager and steadied his lighter for him while he lit a cigarette to go with it. “Before you rush off, Trevor,” I ventured, ‘there’s a minor mystery you might be able to clear up for me.”
“You mean why I married Pam in the first place? Well, I’ll tell you.
It was for her money. Her grandmother’s money, I suppose I should say.
Which I’m going to see precious little of now.”
“It concerns Gran, certainly. Remember her ninetieth birthday party?”
“Yeh. I do. But you don’t, do you?”
“You had a row with Dad the night before.”
“Did I?”
“What was it about?”
He frowned woozily at me. “Why should you care?”
“Something to do with Edmund Tully, was it?” Shock registered dully on his face and I knew I was on the right track. “Dad bought him off, didn’t he? Paid him to shut up about Michael Lanyon. But how were you involved, Trevor? What did he want you to do? Deliver the money? Or get Tully out of the country? Was that why you went to Plymouth?”
He looked at me a long time before responding. “Why don’t you ask the old man?”
“I have. He denies everything.”
“I’ll bet he does.”
“But I’m right, aren’t I? It was to do with Tully.”
“Maybe.”
“What was the deal?”
“There wasn’t one.”
“There must have been. Otherwise he wouldn’t have dropped out of sight so obligingly.”
“That’s all you know.”
“If I’ve got it wrong…”
“You have. As usual.”
“Put me right, then. Tell me what really happened.”
“No can do.” He took a large gulp of lager. “Strictly no can do.”
“Why not?”
He grinned crookedly. “I don’t think you’re ready for the shock.”
Try me.”
The grin chilled. “I preferred you
as an alcoholic, Chris. It stopped you asking questions.”
“A straight answer would do the same.”
“Maybe it would.” He leaned closer. “Of course, it was because you were an alcoholic you didn’t make it to Truro that day. If you had…”
“Yes?”
“Well, you might have walked in at just the wrong moment.”
“And seen Tully?”
Beyond Recall Page 25