“If he was there to be seen.”
“Stop playing games, Trevor. Was he or wasn’t he?”
“Maybe he was both.”
“It’s one or the other.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Just tell me. What did Dad want you to do?”
“Your father? What a man, eh? What a piece of work. After all I’ve done for him, all I’ve put up with… he lets Pam pull the plug on me.
Can you beat that? He doesn’t seem to realize how much he owes me. But for me, he’d be Trevor broke off and stared at me, sobered a little by the force of his feelings. “Perhaps it’s time you knew what kind of a father you’ve got what he’s capable of.”
“What did he want you to do, Trevor?”
“Help him.” Trevor leaned closer still and lowered his voice to a whisper. “To bury Edmund Tully.”
The ugly farce of my non-appearance at Gran’s party wasn’t, as it turned out, the bottom of the barrel. I had to scrape a little harder to find that, halfway through the following winter, on a pouring wet day in Shaftesbury Avenue. It was mid-morning, but I was already drunk. Standing in the refuge between two bollards in the middle of the road, waiting for the traffic to thin, I caught sight of my reflection in the window of a taxi as it came to a halt in front of me, slowed by congestion ahead. I was looking even worse than usual, sodden by the rain, my face drawn, my eyes hollow, the flesh beneath them dark enough to have been charcoaled. I looked what I was: a man who’d lost his grip-Then I saw the passenger in the back of the taxi staring out at me in horror and amazement. It was Miv. She was every bit as beautiful as she’d ever been and expensively groomed to boot.
Her mouth fell open. She really was appalled. She sat forward in her seat and reached for the window, intending, I think, to lower it and speak to me. But at that moment the traffic eased, the taxi moved forward and she was gone. And I was left behind, leaning against a bollard for support, as the rain sluiced down and shame lanced through me.
In the months ahead, with the professional help I finally admitted to needing, I weaned myself off alcohol. I recalled the expression on Miv’s face that day whenever I wanted to remind myself of the price of weakening. It wasn’t easy. There were setbacks, God knows, and relapses into the bad old ways and days. But eventually, by Christmas 1970 the season of every reformed alcoholic’s severest test1 could claim to have wrestled the habit into submission, even if kicking it altogether could only be as certain as how long had elapsed since the last drink.
That had stretched to three years when, with Miv’s help, I set up Napier Classic Convertibles. I asked my father to put some money into it as well, but even though Gran’s death the year before and his subsequent sale of the department stores had left him with more cash in hand than he knew what to do with, he refused, an act of meanness for which I was eventually grateful.
Since moving to Pangbourne, I’d been making a living as a roving motor mechanic in the Thames Valley, repairing cars, vans, lorries, tractors, even combine harvesters. There was something wonderfully therapeutic about getting failing old vehicles back on the road. My time with the Meteors hadn’t done much for me, but the hours I’d put in on their temperamental van paid off in the end. I began specializing in classic convertibles because they paid better and were more interesting than your average Ford Escort. I rented a workshop from a farmer whose Land Rover I’d nursed back to life on several occasions, in order to tackle more ambitious jobs. Word of mouth and selective advertising brought me more and more customers. In 1973, I decided to make a proper business of it. And I never looked back. Until Pauline Lucas put a match to what I’d spent all those years achieving, leaving me to scrabble through the wreckage in search of the truth about her and Michael Lanyon and … Edmund Tully. I knew where he was now. Trevor had told me. Along with more, perhaps, than I really wanted to know.
We’d left the Norway Inn and I’d driven him down to Falmouth, where we stopped in a deserted car park at the far tip of Pendennis Point. We stepped out to the railings and leaned against them, staring into the damp velvety night as the waves broke like a whispering chorus on the rocks below us. Then Trevor, sobered into coherence by the cool October air, but with resentment of his plight still loosening his tongue, spilt out his twelve-year-old secret.
“It seems Michael Lanyon really was innocent. Of murder, anyway. He and Tully had been lovers at Oxford and after, I suppose. Lanyon had written him some pretty explicit love letters, which Tully had hung on to. Down on his luck after the war, and knowing Lanyon was married and doing well, he decided to blackmail him with the letters. That’s all it was supposed to be: extortion. Rather than have his wife learn the truth about him, Lanyon paid up: five hundred quid. Easy money. But Tully had kept his ear to the ground while he was in Truro and had learned that Joshua Carnoweth was worth a bit and Michael Lanyon was the apple of his eye. So he decided to squeeze the old man as well. It wasn’t love letters from Cordelia Lanyon to his father Tully put up for sale. It was love letters from Michael to Tully himself. He’d kept some back, just in case he needed to pull the same trick again later.
But why wait when there was so much money sloshing around? Tully thought he’d hit the jackpot.”
“But Uncle Joshua didn’t play ball?”
“He was too hard for the game. I suppose you don’t claw a fortune out of the Alaskan tundra only to hand even a fraction of it over to a blackmailer. Seems Uncle Joshua told him to go to hell, and mentioned that Michael Lanyon would inherit his fortune one day whether or not he’d been exposed as a homosexual in the meantime.”
“Why did he make that appointment with Cloke, then?”
“Who knows? Maybe Tully’s try-on prompted him to think about his will afresh and he resolved to share his wealth more equally. He’s not likely to have told Tully that, is he? And since he didn’t live to keep the appointment, it’s just so much speculation.”
“But why did Tully kill him?”
“Pure rage, apparently. Pique at being turned down. He just lashed out, then fled the scene.”
“And the letters?”
“He left them at his lodgings. Hidden under the floorboards in his room. Since the police never found them I suppose there’s a good chance they’re still there. Wherever there is. Tully told Melvyn he could retrieve them if he needed to. But I suppose that might have been a bluff.”
“Why did he leave them behind?”
“Because they linked him with the murder, and because they undermined the story he dreamed up that night. The story he decided to tell if he was caught. Seems he had it in for Lanyon good and proper. It came down to envy. He knew Uncle Joshua’s death made Lanyon a wealthy man, and he didn’t fancy hanging with that to show for his efforts. So he cooked up an alternative motive; one that Lanyon came out of even worse than he did. He’d have preferred to get away scot-free, of course, but if that didn’t prove possible, he could at least try to drag Lanyon down with him. And it worked, didn’t it? Tully knew Lanyon could never bring himself to admit the truth. He wouldn’t have been believed even if he had, because, naturally, he’d already destroyed the letters Tully had sold him. That left him with no plausible explanation for paying over the money in the first place. And then, to cap it all, there was Sam Vigus.”
“Thanks to Gran.”
“Yes. Well, she was always one for corset and girdle, wasn’t she? She had the money in her sights and, to do her justice, firmly believed Michael was guilty. Spicing up Vigus’s testimony struck her devious mind as a sensible way of making absolutely certain Uncle Joshua’s fortune stayed in the family. Only Tully didn’t hang, did he? And Tully was well placed to know Vigus had lied.”
“Gran was certainly angry about Tully’s reprieve.”
“Because she was afraid her distortion of the evidence would come back to haunt her. Just as it did a few days before her ninetieth birthday.”
“You’re saying Tully contacted Gran?”
“No, no. It w
as Melvyn he went to the man with most to lose. Tully phoned him and set up a meeting in Boscawen Park. That’s when he revealed what had really happened back in forty-seven and what he was willing to do if Melvyn didn’t pay him the small matter of a hundred thousand quid to make himself scarce.”
“Spill the beans to the Lanyons?”
“Exactly. Tully had it all worked out. He’d been studying the law while he was in prison and reckoned that if he could convince the authorities he’d framed Lanyon they’d have to grant the poor bastard a posthumous pardon. That would invalidate the grounds on which Uncle Joshua’s will had been set aside and mean his estate had to revert to the heirs of the original beneficiary. Are you with me, Chris? The house, the money, the whole lot, would go back to the Lanyons. Together with compensation, damages and God knows what.”
“Is that true?”
“You’d need to consult a lawyer for a definite answer. It sounded convincing enough to Melvyn, though. Especially since he was harbouring a guilty secret about the evidence that had sent Michael Lanyon to the gallows in the first place. Gran had told him all about it. He knew what she’d done. It hadn’t seemed so bad when you could argue it was all in a good cause. But if Tully carried out his threat, they might find themselves charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice and bankrupt into the bargain.”
“But Tully would have gone back to prison if he’d admitted lying at the trial.”
“True. But he said that would be water off a duck’s back to an old lag like him. And it would have taken a steelier nerve than Melvyn’s to call his bluff.”
“So Dad agreed?”
“Yes. Tully gave him forty-eight hours to get the money together. The han dover was fixed for Friday afternoon in the car park at St. Erth railway station.” St. Erth was a junction most of the way down the main line to Penzance, where passengers changed for the St. Ives branch. Guessing I’d be puzzled by the choice of rendezvous, Trevor explained: “Tully didn’t want to hang around Truro in case he was recognized. He was planning to stay in Penzance until Friday and pick up the money en route to London. St. Erth’s pretty much deserted between trains and the car park isn’t overlooked by houses, making it a nice discreet setting. It suited Melvyn too. He didn’t want to be seen consorting with a convicted murderer. He even borrowed my car to drive down there, feeding me a cock-and-bull story about the Daimler’s starter motor being on the blink.”
“You had no idea what was going on?”
“Not the foggiest. I still hadn’t been dragged into it. He told Gran, of course. She was all for defying Tully to do his worst. Like brother, like sister, I suppose. Melvyn talked her round in the end and she stumped up the cash. He left the office after lunch, supposedly to play golf. Instead, he drove down to St. Erth and met Tully off the train. It should have been a straightforward transaction. Over and done with in minutes. But… something went wrong.”
“What?”
“They were standing at the back of the car, apparently, with the boot open and the bag containing the money inside. Tully was checking it, slowly and methodically. There was nobody around. The London train was long gone and so were the few other passengers who’d got off. They had the place more or less to themselves. Melvyn was watching Tully fingering his way through the wads of notes, wondering if he’d ever finish. Eventually, he did. “It seems to be all here,” he announced.
“And very nice to be going on with.” Who knows what he really meant?
It could have been a hint he’d be back for more later. Certainly Melvyn took it that way. Well, you know how short-tempered he is.
Something snapped. Just like that.” He paused. “Hit you much as a child, did he?”
“Off and on.”
“But not with a wheel-wrench over the back of the head, I imagine.”
“Good God. Are you saying
“He gave Tully a whack with the first thing that came to hand: my wheel-wrench. Tully fell forward into the boot, out cold. Melvyn panicked as you would. He bundled Tully’s legs in after him, closed the boot and drove off, hoping nobody had seen what he’d done. A few miles down the road, he pulled into a farm gateway and got out to check how Tully was.”
“And he was dead?”
“Had been since the wrench struck him at the base of the skull. Seems Melvyn should have been in the Commandos rather than the Catering Corps.”
“My God. I’d never have thought…”
“Him capable of it? No, neither would I. Neither would he, I suspect.
But he was. And it could only get worse before it got better. You can’t exactly ignore a dead body in the boot of your car, can you? Not for long anyway.”
“So what did he do?”
“Drove back to Truro like a bat out of hell and told Gran what had happened, hoping she’d snap her fingers and make the body disappear.
Instead she told him to snap his and get me over there from the store sharpish. She reckoned it would take two of us to bury him. Just think. If you’d made it to Truro on time you could have taken my place and been welcome to it.”
“If you think ‘
“No, Chris. I don’t. I expect you’d have called the police and happily seen your father sent to prison, your sister and niece turned out of house and home and Napier’s Department Stores renamed Lanyon’s overnight. But I don’t have your finely chiselled moral sensibility. I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about what Melvyn wanted me to do, but in the final analysis I couldn’t see we had much choice. Tully was dead.
But nobody was going to miss him. Or come looking for him. And he was a murderer. Let’s not forget that. Of Michael Lanyon as well as Joshua Carnoweth. We couldn’t leave him where he was. We either went to the police or …”
“Where did you bury him?”
“Bishop’s Wood, late that night. While we were supposed to be willing and dining a supplier in Plymouth. Back-breaking work, I don’t mind telling you. We’d had quite a bit of rain in the previous week, so the ground was fairly soft, but even so…” Trevor sighed. “I’ve had a healthy respect for grave diggers ever since. They’re scandalously underpaid.”
“You think this is a joking matter?”
“I certainly didn’t at the time. I thought it was a waking nightmare,
if you want to know the truth. I thought your father had dragged me into an even deeper hole than the one we had to dig for Tully. I was frightened enough to tell him exactly how I felt. That’s what Tabs walked into the middle of. But it didn’t change anything. We had to go through with it or face some pretty hideous consequences. Tully’s body was in my car, remember. Melvyn never said as much, but there was a hint he might try to saddle me with the blame if push came to shove.
But we got away with it, didn’t we? Nobody saw us. Nobody suspected a thing. And nobody ever unearthed Edmund Tully.”
“Is that supposed to justify what you did?”
“Don’t get sanctimonious with me. I was just helping to clear up the mess. Your family’s mess. Remember that. I didn’t help convict an innocent man. I didn’t murder anyone. Your grandmother did one and your father the other. They’re the ones to blame. Not me. And you’ll profit by their crimes eventually. Remember that as well. I’ve no doubt you’ll get a lucrative mention in Melvyn’s will. But I won’t, you can be sure of that. As things have turned out, it looks like I strained every nerve and sinew planting Tully six feet under that night in Bishop’s Wood for precisely no personal gain whatever.”
“What do you want my sympathy?”
“It wouldn’t go amiss. But don’t worry, I’m not expecting you to clap me on the back and say, “Nice one, Trev. You did what had to be done.
I’m proud of you.” I don’t even expect you to acknowledge that it was a bloody awful fix to find myself in. But you could satisfy my curiosity on one point. Now you know what really happened, what are you going to do about it? What exactly are you going to do?”
“Eli,” Gran had muttered to me on her deathb
ed at Tredower House in February 1972. “Eli.” And now the interpretation of her faltering farewell had changed again. “He lies.” Was that it? “He lies in Bishop’s Wood.” It could have been. It certainly could.
Bishop’s Wood fills a stretch of the valley of the River Alien above Idless, a few miles north of Truro. There’s an Iron Age fort preserved in the middle of it, which Nicky and I used to defend against Roman soldiers whenever we strayed that far on all-day rambles from Truro. By night it would be a dark and secret place, where the desperate and determined could bury a dead man in the realistic hope that he’d never be discovered.
“He was a short, thin, old man,” Trevor had said. “But still it was almost too much for us, carrying him to the hole it had taken us hours to dig. Then the filling in and covering over. The camouflaging with leaves by failing torchlight. God, it was one hell of a business.”
That last I would easily believe. The consequences of murder often are. They seemed so to me as I drove back alone to Truro after dropping Trevor at the Trumouth Motel: an innocent man hanged; his son driven to suicide; his daughter to the twilit life of a fugitive from her own identity. And after it all, just one question to answer. “What exactly are you going to do?”
Beyond Recall Page 26