by John Gardner
The path took them straight into the little orchard – no more than a stand of trees, apples, plum and a few raspberry bushes protected with netting to the right – up a slight grassy rise to the rear of the cottage. Lees-Duncan stopped, gestured with his hand. ‘You’ll find him up there, Tovey.’
‘You come and introduce us.’ Suzie thought she didn’t have to be a psychiatric wizard to see that Lees-Duncan was reluctant to talk to his gardener.
Baldwin, the lawyer, stayed back as though he wanted nothing to do with what was going on.
The cottage’s back door was open leading, it seemed, straight into a kitchen where a short, wiry man – a grey man, Suzie thought – was slicing up carrots on a chopping board by the sink, while a stew simmered on the gas hob, smelling like something Mum used to make.
Suzie rapped on the door and the man looked up. He wore old working trousers, an open-necked shirt with a waistcoat. His grizzled hair was cut short and he had a droopy growth of grey bristles on his upper lip, below a small nose. You couldn’t tell if the bristles meant he was growing a moustache or if he had simply not bothered to shave for a couple of days. This was Tovey, and Suzie caught a full glare from his clear blue eyes. The look was of disinterest coupled with arrogance.
‘Tovey,’ Lees-Duncan greeted him. ‘People to see you. Tell you about Dulcie. Not good news.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Complete apathy.
Suzie stepped in, introducing herself and holding out the photograph of Dulcie, posing as Winifred Lees-Duncan at the Convent of St Catherine of Siena in Silverhurst Road taken in 1940. ‘Is this your daughter, Mr Tovey? Your daughter, Dulcimer?’
Tovey raised his head and glanced at the photograph. ‘That looks like her when I last saw her, yes. What you want to know for?’
‘She has been living as a novice nun, a sister of the community of St Catherine of Siena.’
‘Always bothering God, that one. What’s happened now?’
‘Mr Tovey, I’m sorry. Dulcimer was killed on Sunday. A flying bomb.’
Tovey gave a little laugh. ‘Well, good riddance to bad rubbish is what I say, Inspector.’
It took Suzie’s breath away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘Mr Tovey, I understand your difficulties, but…’ There Suzie paused, frustrated. Paused to get her breath and gain a little time because she really didn’t understand why Eric Tovey was taking such a stance, not cooperating, not even treating her questions seriously, distancing himself from the real matter in hand, the death of his daughter.
‘But … you have to give me some reasons, some answers. Whatever happens you’ll be expected to come to London with us, if only to formally identify your daughter’s body; and maybe answer more questions as well.’
‘Can’t he do it?’ Tovey snapped at her. ‘Can’t the God almighty John Lees-Duncan do it? He knew her as well as I did. Maybe better’n I did.’
Tovey had a distinct country burr to his voice, a quiet, nice, lilting accent that may well have been Gloucestershire. Suzie didn’t know, wasn’t good at accents, couldn’t tell a Norfolk from a Berkshire – well, that wasn’t quite true because she knew the Norfolk reasonably well with its distinctive stress on the aspirates. The only one she could be certain of was Mummerset, because an actor had once explained this hybrid ooh-aar bumpkin-like mode of speech to which actors resorted when they weren’t conversant with the speech of a certain area. ‘Hampshire and Berkshire are loud,’ he’d told her, this elderly actor who was a spear carrier in Gielgud’s accident-prone production of what he spoke of as ‘the Scottish play’, at the Piccadilly Theatre a couple of years ago. One of the Witches and their Duncan had died on tour, the Banquo became seriously ill, and there were unseemly arguments and clashes of temperament about the sets and costumes. Tommy had dragged her to a party where she had met the actor, and she remembered him saying, ‘If you haven’t mastered a particular county accent, and you’re playing the second gravedigger in Hamlet, then you’d most naturally play it in Mummerset.’
(Spear Carriers. That’s what Tommy called the Squad. ‘My Spear Carriers,’ he used to say, arm stretched out, moving from left to right, a grand sweeping gesture. Proud of the Spear Carriers.)
‘Boring old queen,’ Tommy said about that actor on the way home.
‘Possibly,’ Suzie agreed, ‘but I’ve learnt about Mummerset, and a lot of other things.’
‘Feller was showing off.’ Tommy was rarely happy about the fraternity whom he referred to collectively as ‘that happy band of buggers’; didn’t have time for them; rarely showed them any sympathy, and certainly believed the law was correct; didn’t lose any sleep over charging them with lewd and perverted acts, getting them banged up in pokey for several years at a stretch, followed the current thinking,
After she’d broken the news to Tovey, Suzie stayed in the narrow kitchen with him, watching him chop the vegetables for his stew, making the right noises, she thought: asking if she could do anything, saying how sorry she was to bring this sad news. He hardly took any notice, was monosyllabic, disinterested, and Suzie remained shocked by his ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’ remark; couldn’t credit a father saying that of his daughter.
Lees-Duncan slipped away; she watched him walking straight-backed, striding through the small orchard, kicking a windfall apple, sending it broken apart sailing down into the kitchen garden, Howard Baldwin walking slowly in his wake looking lost and out of place, Sancho Panza to his Quixote.
Dennis Free stood just outside the kitchen: Dennis with his thick hair, impossible to keep tidy, parted on the left but raised in a great kind of coif, a mound, on the right which had a tendency to flop down over his eyes. Dennis claimed his hair was the most difficult part of his body. At school there had been jokes about it, and one master in particular used to get a laugh by telling him, ‘Free, get your hair out of the ink.’ The same master had caused jollity when, on the last day of a term, Dennis, the would-be dandy, wore a white-spotted blue bow tie, and was asked, ‘What’s the matter, Free? Got a sore throat?’
Dennis looked a bit lost outside the back door and Suzie wondered if he was missing Laura Cotter, off with Tommy’s team in Sheffield. Word was they had a thing going, Dennis and Laura.
He had come into the cottage, Dennis, when she finally got Tovey’s attention and they moved from the kitchen into the main body of the building.
Suzie now sat at a table in Eric Tovey’s small front room, neat as his kitchen garden, old daguerreotypes of relatives on the walls, a framed looking glass over the little mantel, a stuffed sofa and two armchairs, blue geometric-patterned carpet, heavy dark curtains and the table at which they sat covered by a thick blue cloth. Dennis Free stood in the doorway.
It was in this setting that Suzie broached the question of why Dulcimer Tovey had entered a religious order under the name of Winifred Lees-Duncan.
‘You’d have to ask her,’ Tovey said. ‘And it’s a mite too late for that. She was always a tricky girl. Used to get ahead of herself.’
‘She left you here on your own, though. Why was that?’
He did not answer straightaway. Then.
‘She was her mother’s daughter, that’s why. Her mum left when Dulcie were ten year old, left her here for me to look after and I did my best. That’s what Katie did. Walked out. I did my best.’
Suzie nodded encouragingly.
‘But my best was obviously not enough. Not for her and not for her mother before her.’
‘Can you give me any reason for her mother leaving and why…?’
It was this that set off Tovey’s refusal to answer further questions. ‘That’s my business. Private. Personal, like my own thoughts on the matter. Not for any airing: not to you, miss, nor anyone else. They both left. I behaved proper but that made no difference. Katie left first, then her daughter ups and leaves when she reckons she’s old enough.’
Her daughter.
‘Your daughter as well, Mr Tovey.’
‘I supp
ose.’
‘There’s a doubt?’
‘She were her mother’s daughter. I’m not going to answer any more questions.’
‘I need to talk to you about her relationship with the others involved. With Michael Lees-Duncan and Winifred – Willow – Lees-Duncan?’
‘You can ask, but I may choose not to answer.’
‘Mr Tovey you’ll be obligated to answer. It’ll be a legal matter. You’ll be put on oath and you’ll have to answer. Possibly at an inquest. Maybe at a murder trial, I’ve no way of telling yet.’ She looked up, straight into his face, saw the grey, placid eyes and the strained muscles at each end of his mouth. She saw the cloud pass behind his eyes and thought she could detect a sudden defeat as his lips parted then closed again. Resignation?
Finally he gave a small, sad smile. ‘They spent a lot of time together,’ he began. ‘Young Michael and Willow and my girl, Dulcie. Kath wanted her named Dulcimer because that’s musical, even though Kath never knew the difference between a harp and a handsaw. I went in to see her down the Cottage Hospital and she said she were going to call the child Dulcimer ’cos it sounded melodic. But there wasn’t much harmony about Dulcimer, nor much melody come to that. There was a lot of screeching.’
‘This was when she was born?’
‘August, 1913. Next year it was the war – the first one. Mr John was Young Mr John then. He went, all spruced up in his uniform marching off to do battle for King and country, like they sang – “We don’t want to lose you, but we think you ought to go.” I ’ad flat feet but plenty of others went and never come back. Mr John come back all right. Came back a captain then a major, must’ve been all of twenty, twenty-one, round there somewhere. Don’t think he saw much action in the trenches, but he got some action in bed, ’cos young Gerald were born, what? ’14? Then Miss Willow, ’15 I reckon. Michael a year before that child of mine. Dulcie about the same age as Gerald. Then Willow.
‘She were stunning, a smasher, Isabel Lees-Duncan, Isabel Hurst as was. Barely eighteen when she had Michael. Such a pity. Michael, Gerald, then Winifred-Winnie-Willow.’
‘So what went wrong, Mr Tovey?’
‘He come back a major, young Mr John. What went wrong? My Kath went wrong, miss.’ He closed his mouth as though that was an end to it, shook his head, then nodded. ‘About the size on it, Kath went wrong. Eventually like.’
A rapping at the kitchen door broke the moment and Suzie cursed to herself, wondered if she’d sorted it out properly in her head. Dennis nipped away, returning with a red-faced young uniform. ‘PC Biswell, ma’am, up from Gloucester nick with a PC and another WPC. Sarn’t Cox sent him over.’
The PC looked all of fourteen and must have had good intuitive powers because he obviously scented that his arrival was inconvenient. If he had not, Suzie quickly put him right. ‘Stay by the back door, don’t let anyone in or out without speaking to me. Go.’
Biswell murmured a ‘Right ma’am,’ and backed away as though he had just lit a fuse to a block of guncotton. Didn’t like calling her ma’am either.
Suzie slewed back to Tovey. ‘Your wife, Kath, went wrong?’
He nodded, eyes not meeting hers. ‘Mr John came back changed you know. And Mrs weren’t the same, Isabel. Not straightaway, mind. Took time. Ten years or so before her problem began to take root.’ Like the butler before him Tovey lifted his cupped hand to his mouth, brought up his arm and made a drinking motion. ‘Kids all grew up together, played together, ’til the boys went off to school. Off to their boarding schools, public schools. Though somehow I didn’t think it proper. Not right.’
Unhealthy relationship, John Lees-Duncan had said, and she didn’t really understand what he was referring to.
Suzie, guessing part of it, again wondered how much she’d got right so far: the three Lees-Duncan children born across the Great War years – 1914/18 – and Dulcie, the gardener’s daughter, growing up with them. An unhealthy relationship, two people had appeared to claim. The Lees-Duncan family undermined by some flaw in the mother. The gardener’s wife departs, leaving her stolid, calm husband to bring up Dulcimer, who in the end escapes from a largely unexplained family chaos, making her way into a religious order using her friend’s name (presumably providing a forged legal document demanding the nuns never contact the parents).
It was all too complicated? Not nearly enough information to piece the entire story together and, for that matter, did it have any relevance to the case in hand?
Suzie shrugged in her mind. Michael Lees-Duncan was somehow there, in a nunnery, when both he and Dulcie were killed, but Michael died from a knife, not from enemy action.
‘Can I not ask you about the children? I mean the Lees-Duncan children and your…?’ she began, knowing Tovey would try to dodge the question.
‘No,’ shaking his head.
‘I mean just how they got on. Growing up. The usual…’
‘I’m not answering any more questions.’ Irritated: she could feel true anger just below the surface. ‘I’ve told you.’ He stretched, looked at the ceiling then said he wanted to see to his evening meal. ‘When you live by the soil, miss, you become dependent on it. It’s part of you and you become part of it. We all return there one way or another. I can’t get worked up about that girl dying because, as far as I’m concerned, she died long ago.’ He pulled a wry face and stood up. ‘Long before she left here I’d ceased to see her as the child I’d helped conceive. Certainly she was her mother’s daughter. But…’ he shook his head again, an act almost of despair, ‘by the time she left, I couldn’t recognise her.’
It was about as much as Suzie was going to get tonight. She told him she’d need more time to talk with him; she’d need him to come to London, and he laughed as if she was asking him to trek across the Sahara with her; so she once more said he’d have to identify Dulcimer Tovey; she’d be asking John Lees-Duncan to identify Michael. ‘It’ll be necessary,’ she said.
Tovey nodded. ‘When will this have to be, then?’
‘Tomorrow, if I can organise it.’ In her head she was telling herself that it would be better in London; in a proper interview room, after he had seen the body. Seeing bodies was often a good jolt to the system. ‘I’ll send someone over shortly. When I’ve arranged transport. Nobody’s going to put you under arrest or anything. You’ve done nothing wrong, but you must assist us, Mr Tovey. You may prefer to have your legal adviser with you.’
‘What, like Mr John and that pompous little beagle who runs round with him – Baldwin? Legal representative? He couldn’t represent a Belisha beacon.’
She made a mental note of his telephone number written on the white circle at the base of the instrument, then walked away from the cottage across the walled garden, striding with a high carriage in the dusk that she could almost hear as well as smell; the uniformed PC – Biswell was it? – trotting along behind, and Dennis Free almost plucking at her sleeve, asking her how she was going to organise the interrogations of Lees-Duncan and Willow. She pulled away roughly. ‘Shut up, Dennis. We’re going to do this in London. We’re going home: “Back to the shack where the black-eyed Susans grow.”’ He didn’t have a clue; had never heard that old song.
She started talking almost before they were inside the drawing room, through the French windows. ‘Right. Mr Lees-Duncan, we’re leaving now, but I’ll telephone you later. You are required to formally identify your son, Michael, in London tomorrow. We will arrange transport and after the identification you will attend an interview, either at a police station, or at New Scotland Yard. Miss Lees-Duncan, the same applies. I shall require you to accompany your father. You can, of course, have legal representation – both of you – if you so wish, but we do not anticipate any charges, unless you resist my instructions. This is a police requirement. Thank you.’
Her team followed her outside, with the Gloucester constables trailing, looking dubious. The butler nodded respectfully to her in the hall.
‘You leaving, madam?’
> ‘Regrettably, yes, Sturgis.’
‘Anything I can do, madam?’
‘Make sure they’re ready tomorrow. They’ll be driven to London.’
‘Very good, madam. Nothing trivial, I trust.’
She was aware of his right shoulder moving and a hand coming up. ‘Perhaps these will be of use, madam. Young Mr Michael and young Mr Gerald.’ He thrust two small photographs into her hand.
She gave him a little smile, smirk really. ‘Thank you, Sturgis,’ she said. They were dated pictures, around 1938 she guessed, but Michael was recognisable so she reckoned that Gerald would be as well.
Outside, their feet on the gravel in front of the house, she told the two PCs and the WPC that they could fit only one officer in the Railton, Dennis driving, but she’d see to it that the Gloucester nick would send transport back for the other two. Biswell elected to go with them. The remaining officers walked towards the main entrance to the drive, down the little avenue of trees, heads down, looking unused and unwanted.
‘They’ll be in the pub as soon as we’re out of sight,’ Dennis said, and Biswell, sounding a shade shocked, said they wouldn’t because PC Sangster was teetotal and a Methodist preacher an’ all.
Dennis chuckled. ‘All drink should be thrown into the river,’ he said, putting on a parsonical voice. ‘Now, hymn number 28, “Let us gather by the river”.’
Biswell asked how he could get himself transferred to the Reserve Squad at Scotland Yard.
‘Drop enough clangers and the posting’ll come through automatically,’ Suzie told him.
When they reached the nick, Dennis asked if he should go back and pick up the Gloucester boys (his description).