The Mask of Memory

by Victor Canning

‘Did you bring anything of Commander Tucker’s?’

  ‘Well, not really. He kept very little at Lopcommon except his clothes.’

  ‘You brought nothing from his bedroom or study?’

  ‘Yes – from the bedroom. There were one or two photographs of him in his naval days, and a little model of his first frigate, and a photograph of the both of us taken just after the wedding. Oh, yes, and a big family bible that he kept by his bedside.’

  ‘How big?’

  ‘Oh, about that size …’ Margaret gestured with both hands to indicate the size of the bible.

  ‘May we see it?’

  Margaret got up and left the room.

  Quint said, ‘She’s cool.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t she be? Bernard didn’t die a fortnight ago for her. It happened years earlier.’ Lassiter eyed a silver tray on the window table which held decanters and glasses. Bernard had set her a problem and also them. She was well on the way to solving hers. Maxie Dougall was a lucky man; a fine woman, a fine house and a fine fortune, right into his lap … he wished her all the happiness she deserved. He went on, ‘Keep the rest of it down to ten minutes. She’s going to lie awake for a long time thinking tonight. Tomorrow is another day.’

  Margaret came back with the big family bible, its covers held together with a wide brass clasp. Quint opened it, and ruffled through the foxed pages, and then handed the book back. He said, ‘It was just a thought. For your information the papers, folded in two, would fit into something of that shape and size. Rolled up … well they would go into something the size of a tall vase or a round table leg. You brought no furniture here?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘You’ll forgive this question I’m sure, Mrs Tucker – but Commander Tucker’s personal stuff, the clothes he was wearing and the things like his wallet and so on which were with him at the time of his death. What about them?’

  ‘The police arranged for the disposal of his clothes to some charity I imagine. I’ve left what he carried on him at Lopcommon. I really haven’t got round to thinking about them.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have given or be thinking of giving anything, say his wallet, cigarette case or a watch, to any of his friends down here as a memento?’

  Margaret shook her head. ‘Bernard had no friends down here. If there’s anything you or Mr Lassiter would like or someone at his office … well, I’d be glad for you to take what you want. I just couldn’t think of anyone here who would want anything like that, absolutely no one.’

  Lassiter stood up. For the first time her voice had hardened, for the first time something of the quiet despair and waste of her past years had deliberately been displayed. He said, ‘You’ve been very cooperative, Mrs Tucker. We won’t bother you any more this evening. But could we ask you to think where Commander Tucker might have hidden the papers? Perhaps, too, we might be allowed to come and see you tomorrow.’ He smiled. ‘We shall eventually find the papers, of course. I think when we do it will be because something has occurred to you … some small thing whose importance won’t be apparent to you but will be to us. The only thing I would ask you – because of the importance of this matter – is not to discuss this business with anyone else except Mr Dougall. I can understand that that would be reasonable. But please ask him to use the same discretion as yourself.’

  For a moment a little smile, a moment of clear gratitude, showed on Margaret’s face. He was sounding like some benign family lawyer, he knew. He hoped, but not with much optimism, that their relationship could always be kept that way.

  Margaret said, ‘Thank you, Mr Lassiter, and you, Mr Quint.’

  Kerslake drove them to their hotel. They sat in the back and there was no talk between them. There was a lot Kerslake would have liked to have known. He sensed that if he ever came to work with people like them there would often be similar situations. For a man with a strong sense of curiosity that would be hard to take, but with practice one could learn to keep to any rules. If not from Quint, then minimally from Lassiter, he had got the impression that they liked him and had no real complaints. The stupidity of Browning and the Stonebridge police constable was nothing to do with him. He drove, permitting himself the wild dream of doing something, taking some initiative which would mark him forcibly as their kind of material. God, they looked nothing, but they were men with real power behind them. He was young, there was nothing in this town for him…

  Over their whisky in Quint’s room before dinner, Lassiter said, ‘So, she doesn’t know that the gold wrist watch has gone.’

  ‘She could have been hoping that Dougall didn’t walk in wearing it.’

  ‘That how you read her?’

  ‘She’s a woman. Oh, she was helpful, but then she wasn’t being pushed. The documents are the important number. We’ll come to the watch later. I know you’re thinking that Bernard may have recorded where he hid the papers.’

  ‘You want to bet on it?’

  ‘Which way?’ asked Quint.

  ‘I’ll take you an even fiver. He’ll have said nothing.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘Because I think I knew him better than you. And we’re learning a lot more about him. Those papers are dirt. Warboys normally wouldn’t have touched this business with gloves on. But he had to. Bernard would have felt the same. He will have said nothing about them. For his money, death would have been a little more acceptable to him that way. Bernard won’t help from beyond the grave. Fundamentally he hated the whole service. He wouldn’t waste his last breath on it…’

  Maxie Dougall lay in bed alongside the sleeping Margaret. Outside, in the tall firs by the bridge, a pair of owls called to one another now and then, and from the woods rising beyond the river he heard the short, fierce scream of a vixen and the answering bark of a dog fox. Although there had been intermittent wind and heavy rain for weeks, the weather had been unusually mild. These spells were not uncommon in the West and Nature responded to them. Birds began to pitch an occasional courtship call; deep in a hedgerow the small white face of a wild strawberry plant would bloom palely. Today he had watched a couple of crows carrying dead sticks to an old nest and, when they had reached it, drop them to the ground as though their, original intent had faded from their memory. Plant and beast had a long way to go yet. There would be hard frost and snow to come in the New Year. The ground would be iron-hard and drift-covered and there would be no question of courtship or blooming.

  He lay listening to the sound of Margaret’s quiet breathing. To have a woman who slept by him breathing gently, lying securely at his side, was a new experience for him and one which so far time had not made commonplace. There were pleasures in having a woman, he was beginning to realize, that had their own even joys which lay far away from the flesh and the strong emotions of mastery and possession. It was a rare knowledge and a fine experience, and, he guessed, a combination which could carry its own seduction. This, he imagined, was how happily married people were … passion not spent but shaped to a different proportion; new, smaller joys surfaced on the long stream of daily life. He could understand it, applaud it even, but knew that it was not for him. To be accountable, no matter in how small a way, for the rest of his life to another was not for him.

  She had been upset by the visit of the two men. He wished that he had been with her when they had come. She needed him, not only against them but against the truths they had given her about Bernard. Thinking about all she had told him, he could only have a sad curiosity about the man. How could any man have shaped or let his life be shaped in the way his had been – to take a wife and hide so much of himself from her? He had never spoken to the man in his life and only seen him infrequently. He stirred now with a quiver of contempt for him. No matter what litter he had come from he was a runt who should early have been put in a pail of water and had the lid clamped down.

  When the men came again he had told Margaret that she was not to talk to them unless he was with her. Let them try to make trouble about it and he would d
eal with them. Racketing around in other people’s lives, all for the sake of a bundle of bloody government papers that probably were of no real importance at all. He knew the kind they were because his sort had always suffered from them before they learnt how to deal with them. They were like orphanage guardians, school inspectors, policemen, jumped-up bureaucrats in local offices … give them a little power and they used it, enjoying themselves. But not with him, or with Margaret. So long as she was his she would not be touched.

  Outside the fox called again and was answered by the vixen. He turned over for sleep, moving his big body gently not to wake her, and kissed her cheek, his lips just brushing her warm skin.

  Billy Ankers lay in bed, too. In a pub that evening he had briefly met Kerslake. He wasn’t a bad type, Kerslake. But it didn’t pay to get too close to any policeman. Liked his drop of drink all right but never over the line with it. Saw himself as going places, maybe. Well, good luck to hiin. He’d yet to hear of a copper who’d made a fortune at it. Bent or otherwise. For a time he’d wondered if Kerslake was after something from him. Nothing definite to go on, but he’d just had that idea. Well, he might not have wanted anything from him, but he’d given him something to think about. They’d chatted about local doings and then somehow things came round to the talk that was still to the front in most pubs and elsewhere … Maxie Dougall and Mrs Tucker. Big news in a small town like this. People had plenty of time on their hands to ferret about in the lives of others. Gossip was their daily bread.

  He grinned to himself in the darkness. That Mrs Tucker … She’d certainly come on. Taking old Maxie off on a holiday and now living with him over at Stonebridge. Bold as brass and her old man only a few weeks gone. Just casual like, he’d asked Kerslake if it was true and Kerslake had said it was, and added for good measure that it was nobody’s business but theirs.

  Tomorrow he’d do the letter for her. Brazen she might be. And why not? Leave a woman with her looks and figure neglected and it was asking for some man to make off with her. But she would have to pay for it…

  He’d draft the letter first in ink, get it just right, work everything out, and then all he had to do was to get his hands on a typewriter. Asking for it to use his own. The garage down the road shut at nine. The girl there used a portable. All he had to do was slip in the back way and borrow it. Take him an hour at the most and nobody to know the next morning.

  Easy. He stared into the darkness … fragments of the letter beginning to shape in his mind. Then, as sleep took him, the heady thoughts of what he could do with a thousand pounds floated him away.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was raining hard, a steady, wind-driven downpour which now and then lashed itself against the sitting-room window. From where he sat Lassiter could see the pine trees down by the river bridge, their green crests blurred by the water-streaked window, swaying and swinging in the wind. There were four people in the room, himself, Quint and Mrs Tucker and the man Maxie Dougall. When she had shown them in Dougall had been in the room. Nobody had suggested that he either go or stay. A look between himself and Quint had been enough to mark their lack of opposition. They wanted her to talk, to be at ease. They could get more from her if she were relaxed. So far Dougall had said nothing. Lassiter noticed that although he was doing the talking Dougall watched Quint most of the time. Maybe, thought Lassiter, he recognized instinctively the real authority in the room. He was the quiet, self-contained sort, and, he guessed, the man, too, would have his own authority and power. If they started to push Margaret Tucker, he would react at once. Love was possession and you guarded your own prizes. He was glad that Quint had again decided to leave it to him to handle Margaret Tucker first.

  He said, ‘ I know you may not see the point of all this at first, Mrs Tucker – but the fact is that the Commander Tucker we knew was a very different man from the one you knew. And it was the man you knew who hid these papers – somewhere, we‘re sure, in or close to Lopcommon Barton. If you would, we would like you to tell us something about this man.’

  Margaret said quietly, ‘ I knew two men, too, Mr Lassiter. The man I married, and the man he became.’

  ‘Of course. But I don’t think we need to go back right to the beginning. Let’s start with the man he was when you first came to Lopcommon. Had things started to go wrong between you then?’

  ‘No, not really. Though there were signs. He still came home quite often and we did things together. We had more of a social life, though that was not something he ever really encouraged. He was a member of the golf club but only for a short while. We had bridge friends and sometimes went to a race meeting or point-to-points, but not for long. He seemed content just to stay in or around the house.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘We gardened together. He liked that at first. But he went off it. I really don’t know why. He was very good at it, patient and knowledgeable. In the end he left it all to me, and, of course, to the odd-job man we had up now and again.’

  ‘What did he do with himself then? Sit indoors and read, work … go for long walks?’

  ‘Sometimes, yes. Most of the time, in the beginning, anyway, he used to work around the house.’

  ‘You mean he was a handyman?’

  ‘Oh, very much so. I think most navy men are. He did all the repairs around the place and made things in his workshop. The drive gates at Lopcommon were made by him.’

  ‘He had a workshop?’

  ‘Yes. It’s the gardener’s shed now.’

  ‘Did he make anything else? I mean, anything that you particularly remember, or something which clearly he was pleased about?’

  She paused for a moment, searching her memory. Lassiter sensed that Quint would not stay silent for long.

  Margaret said, ‘Well, I don’t remember anything much that he was pleased about. The drive gates, yes. But mostly it was repairing locks, and electric light fittings. He did new draining boards for the sink and some cupboards I wanted. You know the kind of thing, painting and paper-hanging. All I know is that if there was anything that had to be done in the house … well, in those early days, he would do it. Then that went. He just wasn’t interested any more – except for his naval things. When he finished with those … well, he let his workshop go and it was turned into a gardening shed. I came back one year from a holiday in Scotland and everything had gone.’

  Lassiter, deliberately giving Quint the few moments he wanted, said, ‘You went to Scotland without him?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I used to go every year usually by myself when my aunt was alive. She was ninety-three when she died. Bernard came up for the first two or three years, but then … well, I went alone.’

  Quint said, ‘When you talk of naval things, what do you mean exactly, Mrs Tucker?’

  ‘His ships. Little models of all the boats he’d served in, or ones he knew. He used to have them all around the study downstairs. Then one day, some years ago, he gave them all away. I think it was to some boys’ club. In London, I believe he said.’

  And was there, Lassiter wondered, some symbolism in that?

  Quint said, ‘All of them, Mrs Tucker?’

  ‘Yes – except for the really special one: I told you about that. His first command. I brought it over here with me. A beautiful little model.’

  ‘How small?’

  Margaret hesitated. ‘Oh … well about that long.’ She held her hands about two feet apart.

  Quint said quickly, ‘I don’t call that little.’

  Dougall stood up and spoke for the first time, ‘It’s small – compared with the original. Smallness, Mr Quint, is relative.’

  Lassiter, smiling to himself, cut off any reply from Quint, and said, ‘Perhaps we might see it?’

  Dougall looked at Margaret and said, ‘I’ll get it, love.’

  When Dougall came back with the model, he handed it to Lassiter, and Lassiter, not without some pleasure, knew that it was Quint the man had marked, not him, as a possible threat to Margaret Tucker’s p
eace of mind. The man was no fool, whatever else he might be.

  He stood up and carried the model to the window light. It was beautifully made and he knew that Bernard would have got every detail right. The hull space was big enough to hold the papers. As he fingered the details of the deck fittings and the bridge structure, Margaret said, ‘You think that could be the hiding place?’

  Lassiter, his fingers probing and teasing the model, said, ‘It could be a hiding place, yes.’ But, he felt, not one that Bernard would have chosen. Anyone searching the bedroom would have suspected it at once. Still, you never knew … Anyway, it proved their point that Mrs Tucker carried information which they wanted and which only an unhurried, unfrightening session with her would bring out. Maybe they had already brought it out … He put a little pressure sideways on the forward gun turret. It turned through an angle of forty-five degrees and Lassiter felt the deck and superstructure move. He turned, put the model on the table, and slid the whole of the upperworks of the frigate backwards. It moved like the lid of an old-fashioned pencil box, coming clean away from the hull. The hollow interior was empty.

  Quint said to Margaret, ‘Did you know the top came off like that?’

  Margaret hesitated. She knew she was going to look a fool, but there was nothing she could do about it.

  She said, ‘Yes, I did. But until now it had completely gone from my mind. When Bernard first showed it to me he opened it like that. But it was years and years ago and … well, I’ve never thought about it since. I really had forgotten.’

  Quint said quietly, ‘Well, I can see that might happen. But please, Mrs Tucker, do try to remember everything you know when we ask a question. It may seem silly or unimportant to you – but not to us.’ He smiled, reassuring her. ‘After all – the papers could have been in the model, and we might never have found them.’

  Lassiter gave Quint good marks for his restraint, but he knew that it was not going to last. He slid the top of the model back into position.