‘They say it’s Hector Wallace,’ replied Nick, uneasy at imparting such awful information.
‘Who found him?’
‘Trevor. You know, Trevor Mullings, the fisherman. He’s part of the crowd that drinks with Hector. I’m afraid the word is that Hector drowned, probably under the influence of booze. He was completely smashed, apparently. The police are all over the hotel again. They swarmed in like the Keystone Cops.’
The three made their way back up through the woods and the water cascades to the hotel on the hill in a very sombre mood. Caroline mused that the holiday now resembled a game of Cluedo, but instead of Professor Plum, Reverend Green, Colonel Mustard and so on it was ‘Mr Richard Hughes-Webb, Mr Bob Silver, Mr Arnie Charnley, Mr Ted Jessops and Mr Paul Galvin’.
When in due course Simpkins, the beleaguered manager, received a request from the police to interview the guests, he finally asserted himself. ‘Look, you’re not disturbing my guests a second time. Besides, many of them have already left.’
‘What, run away, have they?’ queried PC Stobart, at which point the rather battered Simpkins gained renewed strength.
‘Certainly not. They have finished their holidays, left the hotel and returned to places where they don’t get arrested every few days for crimes they haven’t committed. They have been here as holiday-makers, not serial killers …’ His voice rose to a crescendo that could have graced a key speech in a Shakespearian tragedy. Winston Churchill in full flow could not have been more convincing in his oratory.
‘All right, all right,’ replied Inspector Higham, looking somewhat embarrassed, even a little astonished. ‘Keep your hair on. But there’s something very odd about all this, very odd indeed.’ At that moment the police decided to withdraw, just as Danny Galvin and Jenny Charnley returned to the hotel, laughing and singing along raucously to ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’ blasting out from their transistor radio, blissfully unaware of the latest drama being played out at the hotel. The police, by now confused by the departure of key suspects, needed time to assess how to conduct this new inquiry.
As they returned to their car Inspector Higham gave vent to his feelings. ‘This place gives me the creeps. Where do we go with this one now? I know the Chief has been briefed from someone on what’s been going on; he’s asked to see me tomorrow at ten. We’ve got to be careful, Mr Police Constable. I suspect Haughty-Haughty’s arrogant sleight of hand at work, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all!’
16
PRESENT DAY
‘Had they not suffered enough?’ asked Brigit.
‘Who, the residents?’
‘No, the police. First, they had the unsolved case of a hospitalized night porter and then a naked corpse on a beach, and, to cap it all, they ended up being browbeaten by an aggressive and wounded hotel manager. The appearance of Hector Wallace’s naked body must have been quite a shock for them. And what were they to think so soon after Tom? The hotel does rather take centre stage here. Being a rural constabulary they must have thought they had landed in an Agatha Christie novel, wondering where the next corpse would turn up!’
‘Hector died of natural causes, and it was fairly clear he had wandered off after a particularly heavy night’s drinking. Even his drinking companions, Trevor Mullings among them, said he had drunk them all under the table. Hector hated the end of the holiday. It was the happiest two weeks of his year, and his Aunt Agatha – his “Aunty Aunt” as he liked to call her – gave him a pretty free hand and then paid the bills at the end, including a very big tab at the Office.
‘You mean he didn’t stay alone?’
‘Well, he had his own room, but Aunt Agatha paid, and he had all his meals with her. She was in her eighties, and both were driven from Torquay by her chauffeur Hinton, who apparently never went faster than thirty miles an hour. Hector was frightened that this might be the last holiday, as Agatha had been complaining that her shares had taken a terrible tumble, and, like a lot of old people, she was worried the government had lost its grip with rampant inflation and constant strikes. She had been suggesting she should batten down the hatches and didn’t think she could afford to stay at the hotel again. Apart from this, she was very arthritic, and her health had become a source of concern for Hector. She had more or less brought him up; his parents had been tea planters in India and died in a plane crash while Hector was at boarding-school in England.’
‘How old was he at the time?’
‘He was about eight years old and at a strict Roman Catholic school somewhere in the West Country. Rumour had it that he was abused there and never developed much sense of self-worth. After that he lived virtually all his life in his aunt’s house. He had a great interest in horticulture, and he loved the gardens of Cornwall where everything grows so well. He had been a talented landscape gardener, but alcohol had long since rendered any permanent employment impossible. However, he showed his aunt respect by never drinking in her house. So, you see, there were good reasons why at the end of the holiday Hector Wallace should decide to end it all.’
‘So you believe it was an open-and-shut case of suicide then? I think you’re missing something.’
‘Don’t think so.’ Grant’s dismissive tone riled Brigit. ‘A drunken loser found naked and frozen dead on a beach after an excessive drinking binge didn’t require too much police investigation.’
Brigit stood up, glared at her husband and raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Right, I’ve had enough of all this. For the last two days all I’ve heard from you is this monologue of events from over forty years ago, according to the Great Grant, the Oracle. So why hasn’t anyone ever worked out what happened here? Why have you waited forty years to reveal all this? If there was a deathbed confession, why was it never investigated? There seems to be an absence of truth and certainly an absence of justice for Tom Youlen and possibly for Hector Wallace – “Oh, he was just a hopeless drunk –”’ Brigit mimicked her husband’s pompous, dismissive tone.
‘OK, OK!’ interrupted Grant, raising his voice. ‘I’m going to do something about it. I’m still concerned about it all, more than you could ever know. I’m going to take a three-month sabbatical from the firm. I qualify for the short-term sabbatical option.’
‘Woah! Calm down, tiger!’
‘No, Brigit, you’re right; you’re absolutely right. It’s time to find out the truth and to put the past to bed. Suzie Hughes-Webb, Danny Galvin, Caroline Jessops, Justyn Silver and Nick and Jenny Charnley. I’m going to see them all.’
Grant loathed himself for continuing to hide from her the real reasons for his obsession with the past. The truth was that he knew he was far less interested in securing justice for Tom than in discovering whether his mother had been in any way involved, but he knew this was not the right time to tell Brigit.
‘Well, you see Nick every summer anyway on your golf tours, but I guess you’ve never asked him the question?’ Brigit decided it was time to cool things down a bit.
‘No. We’ve never talked about it, so it will be interesting to see what he has to say now. I’ll cross-refer his version of events with his sister, Jenny, as Nick can be known to wing it a bit.’
‘If you don’t mind I’ll leave it to you. I have my business to run, and we’re seeing an upturn in the market. Things are really motoring again, in case you’re interested.’
‘Of course I’m interested, but I’m a bit distracted by all this, and now I need to track down all concerned and spend time with them.’
‘Distracted? You don’t say,’ muttered Brigit to herself.
17
PRESENT DAY
Nick Charnley was easy to get hold of, as over the years since their holidays in Cornwall he and Grant had kept in regular touch and had, for the past twenty-five years, enjoyed an annual golf trip with six other friends to various resorts in Europe. Nick was a born organizer. The eight had become a band of brothers. The banter on the tours would never descend to analysing dark events of the past, which remai
ned as a place of neither reference nor residence.
Grant had now decided to interrogate his old friend. Nick had long enjoyed an entrepreneurial career; his latest business venture was called Sobbers for Rent, which supplied professional grievers to simulate bereavement at funerals. The grievers were ordered by mourners who wanted to increase the numbers present to create a bigger show for their departed. The brochure featured on the cover a full church with the entire congregation in tears – doubtless prompted to cry at an appropriate moment. ‘I give them notes on the life of the departed and underline when and where to blub,’ Nick would brag. He also ran a funeral service for families to pay their respects to deceased pets. He really has no shame, thought Grant, chuckling to himself.
Nick’s previous business had been an outfitters for funeral directors, and he had spotted a gap in the market. Clearly the son had inherited some of the father’s cheeky-chappie and entrepreneurial genes. Nick suggested they meet outside the Grace Gates at Lord’s Cricket Ground, as he had also inherited his father’s love of cricket; he had two tickets for the first day of the first Test Match of the summer, on a cold day in mid-May.
As the start of play at eleven approached, there was a constant buzz of conversation and loud hellos as friends reunited for a day at the Test. Grant was sure the volume would diminish markedly when play commenced; in the event it did, for about the first three balls of the day’s play. Then the chattering and popping of champagne corks continued unabated for some twenty minutes, with batsmen shouldering arms or nicking the odd single off a thick edge, together with the occasional ‘play and miss’. All of a sudden the stumps were severely shattered, and the unfortunate batsman, who was employed to play professional cricket at the highest level, walked disconsolately back to the pavilion. This came as a shock to the chattering classes, and the sudden silence stunned the crowd into a numbed state for all of about forty seconds. But soon the new batsman was indulging in the same shouldering of arms and the occasional ‘play and miss’, nicking the odd single, even a two, as the crowd cheered a misfield that provided the trigger for everyone to recharge their drinks – and away they went again. Against this backdrop Grant and Nick finally got down to the subject of the mysterious poisoning of the porter in 1972.
‘Nick, I have never asked you this before, but were you aware that the father of one of us kids confessed something about Tom Youlen’s poisoning on his deathbed?’
Nick was initially silent and then distracted by the sight of a ball swung hard and high towards where they were sitting, bouncing once before clearing the ropes. ‘What have you heard?’
‘Only that one of them passed on some pertinent information.’
‘I know my dad used to think it was nothing to do with anyone at the hotel, and he thought Tom’s nephew was dodgy. But there was also that strange business with Clive Holford and his father Ken. When we learnt the truth that Bob Silver had been misjudged and had helped Clive get on in life, he was no longer suspected of being implicated. Anyway, what do you think happened?’
Grant chose his words carefully. ‘As I understand it, they all had a motive: Ted Jessops with his past uncovered, Bob Silver suspected of a gay affair, Richard Hughes-Webb with his experiments with toxic substances in the Zennor cottage that Tom looked after, Paul Galvin with his failed property business in Penzance and – to be frank – your father with his cash being stolen at Tom’s cottage. I gather all of them are no longer with us.’
‘Would you like an asparagus roll?’ Nick asked, as he started attacking the picnic basket he had brought along. At this time, thirty minutes before the lunch break, the batsmen were finally taking command and the spectators’ attention was, at last, firmly on the cricket.
In the forty-minute interval that followed, Grant returned to the subject. ‘And another thing, that strange business of Hector Wallace being washed up on the shore. Some people might think the events are connected.’
‘No chance. Hector was a hopeless case, and I gather he was very depressed at the end of the holiday, thinking he wouldn’t be back.’
‘OK, so who poisoned Tom?’ Having polished off a bottle of champagne and now having got two-thirds of the way through a bottle of Chablis, Grant was growing bolder, his cheeks reddened by the alcohol. ‘Someone must have heard something.’
His direct approach finally drew a clear response. ‘All my dad said about it was that Ivan Youlen was a bad lot – and something about a message in a bottle he found when jogging on Carbis Bay.’
‘What did it say?’
‘Dunno. I think Jenny knew something about it.’
Grant concluded he would get no further with Nick on this matter, and he resolved to see Jenny in Manchester. He had always found Nick a loquacious and gregarious character, but for some reason he was rather closed up on this occasion. He was probably intent on trying to forget a holiday that had disastrous consequences for his parents and family life in general. Grant could relate to this, as the events that summer had fairly dire consequences for his own family. None the less, he wondered whether Nick had something to hide.
The following day Grant took the train from Euston to Manchester Piccadilly, where a smiling Jenny Poskett (née Charnley) met him at the station. Forty years had failed to dim her looks and bright smile, her age only slightly betrayed by the grey roots of her hair. She drove them to a city-centre hotel where Grant had booked lunch. Grant discovered that life had been stable and seemingly happy after Jenny had married Nigel Poskett, an estate agent who was both popular and well respected for the considerable amount of charity auctioneering in which he was involved locally. Their two children were now through university and embarking on their own careers. However, over the course of lunch Grant detected some emptiness in Jenny’s life. After exchanges about families and events since they had last met, some of which Grant had heard from Nick over the years, they moved through the gears before discussing the holiday of 1972.
‘You know, I used to envy you, Grant.’ This took him by surprise. ‘Not just you but all the others, all the other families who went to Cornwall with us each year.’ He was dumb-founded. Surely she remembered the upset of Hughes-Webb’s affair with his mother? Even if she hadn’t known of the fallout that resulted he thought the affair itself was common knowledge. ‘Most people seemed so stable. I know there was the odd scene and Danny’s dad was a moody so-and-so and Justyn’s old man kept disappearing, but everyone else remained together.’
Funny sort of happy families, thought Grant, but he refrained from comment; he saw little point and wondered where this was all heading.
‘You see, it was only my folks who split up, from what I remember, and it was really shit, Grant.’
Now he got it. Her parents’ divorce was at the core of all this.
‘Mum never forgave Dad for losing the cash at Tom’s cottage and lying to her about it.’
Grant had a vision of a herd of cattle charging at the unfortunate Arnie when the Duchess finally discovered his duplicity.
‘It all came to a head one night when they came back from the village cricket club’s annual do. Dad was half cut and nagging Mum for once, accusing her of being frigid and ignoring his needs.’
Grant shifted uneasily in his chair. Playing agony aunt wasn’t really in his nature, but he was keen to show sympathy and was genuinely sorry for Jenny and her brother.
‘Then it all kicked off, and Dad, partly to emphasize his unhappiness in the marriage, confessed to losing the cash in Zennor, and Mum went ballistic. She turfed him out on to the street, almost kicking him down the stairs. I heard him stumble, and I saw him from out of my bedroom window. I’ll never forget the look on his face as he stood on the pavement.’
Grant stood up, ready to put a comforting arm around Jenny, but she waved him away. ‘It’s OK, thanks. It was a long time ago.’ She regained some composure, blowing her nose repeatedly on a solitary paper tissue.
‘I’m so sorry, Jenny. It must have been very upsetting for
you, what happened and also actually witnessing it.’
‘Thanks, it wasn’t a wagonload of laughs, that’s for sure. And it got worse. Dad shacked up with a local barmaid – “Big Tits Wendy”, as Nick so delicately called her.’
Grant struggled to resist laughing, biting his lower lip hard. He had heard his friend Nick on this subject before. Clearly the brother had coped rather better than the sister. ‘What happened next?’
‘Pretty sad and squalid. Dad had a massive heart attack, which occurred – according to our very discreet GP – while he was on the job, as you chaps would say. I so didn’t want to know that detail.’
Grant was quick to express further sympathy, struggling again to suppress laughter as he recalled Nick once saying, ‘Dad always had a smile on his face, even when he snuffed it – wey-hey!’ Clearly the siblings had very different takes on Arnie’s unusual demise. However, Grant was genuinely very sorry about Arnie’s premature death, and he quickly got a grip. After a polite pause, he asked the question that most preoccupied him. ‘You know Tom’s poisoning was never fully explained, and rumour has it that someone heard something from their father on his deathbed. Was that you?’
‘For God’s sake, you dickhead. It was me who told you this, after Nick’s twenty-first birthday party back in 1975! I’m hardly likely to keep that news to myself.’
‘Oh yes, sorry. I’d forgotten. I was probably drunk at the time, and I just had this vague memory that someone had said it.’
‘Nice you could remember, Grant. We were in bed together at the time. It shows how much I meant to you!’
‘I’m so sorry …’
‘No, you’re not. You were fickle as hell …’ Jenny was outraged.
‘And you weren’t?’ countered Grant, raising his own voice. He recalled his hurt at her promiscuousness at that time. ‘You had slept with Robert Vernon and Justyn Silver, too …’
She stood up to go. Grant was furious with himself for the clumsy attack he’d mounted, bringing up stuff he knew should have been left well alone, particularly so soon after she had poured her heart out. Realizing his mission in Manchester was fast unravelling, he hurried to placate her and persuade her to return to the table. ‘I apologize. I really do. Please let bygones be bygones. It was all a long time ago, and life has worked out pretty well for you with Nigel.’
Half a Pound of Tuppenny Rice Page 8