Before the Poison

by Peter Robinson

  On the other hand, as Morley suggested, her appearance might have had quite the opposite effect if she had come across as either cold and detached, the way she seemed to be acting in court, or as a hard-headed seductress, libertine, corrupter of young men such as Samuel Porter. That was exactly the way she did appear to the jury, as it turned out. They were seeing a scarlet woman who had been fornicating with a young man half her age. Who can fathom human nature?

  There were still a number of little things that nagged away at me, including my own mysterious visitor and the young man in uniform with whom Grace had walked and talked shortly before her husband’s death. Perhaps he was as much a figment of malicious gossip as anything else.

  Wilf Pelham might be worth another chat, I thought, now that I was armed with a bit more information. I decided that I would go down to town when the weather improved – I had to go shopping, anyway – and bribe him with another pint or two.

  I also thought about Heather a lot during my brief self-imposed exile, but I didn’t make any attempt to contact her; nor did she try to get in touch with me. I wondered whether perhaps she, too, had come too close for comfort the other night and realised that she had to back off now, before it was too late. I didn’t know whether she would come through with the vendor’s name or not, but it probably didn’t matter. It was only idle curiosity on my part, I realised. And perhaps an excuse to see her again. Why did it matter whether Grace’s son had sold the house to me through a firm of solicitors? He would hardly know anything more about the events at Kilnsgate House all those years ago, when he was a mere child, and if he did, he probably wouldn’t tell me. Why should he? I had no authority or power to change the past.

  About a week after Bonfire Night, after the best night’s sleep I’d had in ages, I awoke around nine o’clock to a misty scene, the trees still and dripping, the lime kiln like the eye of some monstrous kraken awoken from the depths. Mixed with the mist was a heavy drizzle, the sort of weather they call ‘mizzling’ in Yorkshire, where they have a special language for all things wet and grey.

  I dressed, showered and went downstairs to make coffee. By the time I had finished my second cup and eaten my toast and marmalade, the drizzle was starting to ease off a bit. I sat at the piano and played through what I had written so far, making notes when I came to unsatisfying transitions or sagging lyric passages.

  I knew that I was favouring the Schubertian long melodic line, and I tried to split up some of them, slip in more variations, tempos and even key changes. I didn’t want to sound dazzlingly contemporary, but nor did I want to sound like a pale imitation of the Master. I took out the sheet music again and studied Grace’s notations on the Schubert Impromptus. Scanning the tiny, neat hand, I remembered the paintings and drawings Sam Porter had shown me, then thought of the image Morley presented of Grace in court, her drab clothing, pale face, hair tied back in a bun. What was going through her mind? Did she realise that all was lost sooner than I imagined she did? Had she already given up?

  Laura had, of course. Given up. That was why she came home from the hospital; she wanted to die at home, in familiar surroundings, with me by her side, holding her hand. And that was exactly how it happened. At least she hadn’t ended her days at the end of a hangman’s rope. I shuddered.

  I knew that I was feeling restless when I found myself constantly checking the weather through the window. By early afternoon, the mist had gone, dispersed partly by the wind, which was also tearing gaps in the charcoal clouds for the sun to lance through. I would get nowhere hanging around here waiting for things to improve, so I got in the car and drove to Richmond.

  There were plenty of free parking spots in the marketplace, and the wind nearly took my car door off when I got out. I made a quick dash for the Castle Tavern and was surprised not to see Wilf Pelham propping up the bar. The bartender remembered me.

  ‘Looking for Wilf again?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s poorly. Off his food. Hasn’t been in for a couple of days.’

  ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so. Strong as an ox, is old Wilf.’

  ‘Do you know where I can find him?’

  ‘He’ll be at home, that new sheltered housing just up the road.’

  I knew where he meant. He gave me a street and a number. ‘I’d like to take him a little something,’ I said. ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘He likes his bitter best, but when it comes to bottles, Wilf’s strictly a Guinness man.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I bought a couple of bottles of Guinness, jumped back in the car and drove up to Wilf’s house. He answered my ring after a short wait, seemed a bit surprised to see me, but stood aside and bade me enter.

  ‘If it’s not the man who writes music nobody listens to,’ he said.

  ‘I’m trying to put that right,’ I said. I handed him the Guinness.

  ‘Glad to hear it. Sit down. And thank you. I won’t have any just now, if you don’t mind.’ He touched his stomach. ‘Bit of a tummy upset. Cup of herb tea?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  The small living room was spick and span, its surfaces free of dust, just a few books scattered here and there, newspapers, a half-empty mug, a couple of empty beer bottles, the place of a man of limited means comfortable living by himself. Wilf collected up most of the books and returned them to the bookcase, then went to make the tea. I studied his library while he was gone. I have always found it fascinating to discover people’s tastes in music or literature. Wilf definitely favoured the serious stuff, mostly classics: Dickens, George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry James and Thomas Hardy were all accorded prominent space, many in handsome Folio Society editions, along with a few European writers in translation – Zola, Balzac, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy and Proust, with a smattering of Mann, Camus and Sartre. And they all looked as if they had been read. An old edition of Grove filled one shelf, and biographies and history filled up the rest of the space. Wilf also had a collection of old vinyl, mostly classical, some jazz, that would have been the envy of many an audiophile.

  Wilf came back with the tea and a plate of chocolate biscuits on a tray and plonked it down on the table.

  ‘How are you?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, touching his lower chest. ‘I’ve been having a lot of heartburn, acid reflux, the doc calls it. Probably cancer. They’re going to stick a tube down my throat soon as they can arrange an appointment at the hospital. Who knows when that might be, the way the NHS is these days? In the meantime, I’ve got some pills. They help a bit. Sometimes. Anyway, you don’t want to hear about my health problems. I suppose you came to ask me more questions?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘That’s all right, lad. I don’t get a lot of company these days. And you did come bearing gifts.’ He poured the tea and glanced at me expectantly.

  I gave him a précis of what I had done and found out since we had last talked, withholding any conclusions I might have come to in the meantime.

  ‘You certainly do get around, don’t you? I’ve been to Paris a few times, myself. Lovely city. I visited once or twice with school groups. The Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, Napoleon’s tomb, Notre Dame. The cultural and historical highlights. But that’s not why you were there, is it?’

  ‘No. I was on my way to visit my brother in Cognac, and I stopped in to talk to Sam Porter on the way.’

  ‘Sam? So you found him all right? How is he?’

  ‘I found him. It wasn’t difficult. He’s fine. He seems to be doing well for himself. Says hello.’

  ‘Hooked up with some pretty young artist’s model, is he?’

  ‘I don’t know about that. He seems to be living alone. To be honest, I don’t think he ever got over Grace and what happened all those years ago.’ I sipped some tea. It was a pleasant surprise. Vanilla and blackcurrant, or something along those lines. ‘Sam said the two of you used to play together during
the war. Do you remember that?’

  ‘’Course I do. We were kids. There was a gang of sorts. It was all a big game to us. Not that anything much ever happened around here.’

  ‘What about the Messerschmitt crashing?’

  Wilf smiled at the memory. ‘Aye, now that was fun. You should have seen us, tiptoeing around it, and when that pilot climbed out . . . We were off like a shot. Scared the living daylights out of us. A real live German.’

  ‘He didn’t die in the crash?’

  ‘No. Funny, you know, the only thing I remember about him is that he looked like my big brother.’

  ‘What became of him?’

  ‘No idea. He ran off into the woods. Probably more scared than we were. I suppose they caught him eventually.’

  ‘Sam said something about a POW camp.’

  ‘Aye, it was out Reeth way. We used to bicycle out there sometimes and watch them through the fence. There was a bit of fuss between the locals and the military, but guess who usually wins in wartime.’

  ‘Why the fuss?’

  ‘Oh, people were worried about escapes and such.’ He laughed. ‘They needn’t have bothered. It was mostly Italians, and they had no desire to go back to the fighting. We got a few Jerries later on, too, and they seemed happy enough to stay there as well. It was hardly Colditz or Stalag 17. I think they lived a pretty good life. Most of the prisoners used to help with the harvest. Some of them ended up marrying local lasses. The Bartolini family still lives up near Marske, and there are Schnells in Grinton. But why the interest?’

  ‘Nothing, really. Just trying to get a broader picture of the way things were back then. I heard Kilnsgate House was requisitioned by the military for a while?’

  ‘For a couple of years, yes. It was all very hush-hush, barbed wire, armed guards and all that.’

  ‘But Ernest Fox still lived there?’

  ‘I suppose so. I can’t really say I paid much attention to the good doctor’s comings and goings. He was probably well in with them. Typical of him. Nothing he liked better than going around with a smirk on his face as if he knew something nobody else did. Old Foxy had been involved in military matters ever since the first war. Mustard gas and such. His way of doing his bit.’

  ‘Talking about doing one’s bit, do you remember Nat Bunting, the man who went missing? Sam mentioned him.’

  Wilf frowned for a moment, then it dawned on him. ‘Nat. Of course. He was what you’d call a bit slow. Challenged, you’d say, these days, I suppose. Nice enough lad, though. Lived rough, somewhere near Melsonby, as I remember. Did odd jobs. You’d see him walking all over the place with his toolkit slung over his shoulder, like someone out of a Thomas Hardy novel, then one day he was gone.’

  ‘Anyone ever find out why?’

  ‘Not as I recall. I’m sure they looked for him, sent out a search party or two, but people didn’t ask too many questions in wartime. The walls have ears and all that. Besides, priorities were different. The individual was rather less important than the state, and the state was the military. We had a country to protect, a war to win.’

  ‘Sam said he thought this Nat might have joined up.’

  ‘Well, he did used to go on about it, but I would have thought nobody would have him. He had a gammy leg. Not to mention the . . . you know. Nat Bunting. Haven’t thought of him in years. Aye, well . . . I don’t suppose you’ve come to pick my memory about the war?’

  ‘Not entirely. It’s just interesting, especially to those of us who missed it by a few years. But there are a couple of things I would like to ask you about, if you don’t mind, to clear up some questions I have?’

  Wilf crossed his legs. ‘I don’t mind. I can’t promise to be of any use, but I don’t mind.’

  ‘I’ve been reading the trial account, and it seems that Dr Fox had received a job offer from a hospital near Salisbury around the time he died.’

  Wilf scratched the side of his nose. ‘I do remember hearing something about that. I think it was a fairly recent thing, though, hadn’t quite done the gossip circuit before . . . well, you know. Why? Does it matter?’

  ‘I think so. The prosecution put it forward as another motive for Grace to get rid of her husband. The job would take him a long way away from Richmond, and therefore take Grace away from Sam. But it seems to me an indication of Sam’s lack of involvement.’

  ‘Come again.’

  ‘Sam can’t have known about the job offer. Not if it came as late in the day as it apparently did. He was in Leeds for a while, then up at his parents’ farm over Christmas and New Year. He hadn’t seen or talked to Grace since mid-December, so he couldn’t possibly have known about her moving away until it was raised at the trial.’

  ‘True,’ said Wilf. ‘But it hardly matters, does it? Sam wasn’t on trial. Grace was.’

  ‘But it does mean that if Grace killed Ernest, she did it completely off her own bat, so to speak, without even any certain knowledge that Sam would go off with her. He might have been appalled by what she’d done.’

  ‘Unless they hatched the plan together earlier?’

  ‘But they didn’t know about the job then, neither of them. It seems to me that’s rather an important point, especially as this job was put forward as one of the major motives, and Hetty Larkin said she’d heard Grace and Ernest arguing about a letter a few days before the dinner. Mrs Compton’s testimony has Sam and Grace talking about getting rid of Ernest in late November, long before there was any letter or hint of a job offer that would split them apart. Don’t you find that a bit strange?’

  ‘Now that you mention it, I suppose I do,’ said Wilf.

  ‘The trial account mentions that Grace was seen walking and talking with a young man in uniform on Castle Walk shortly before her husband’s death. Nothing more was ever said about it.’

  ‘I certainly heard nothing,’ Wilf said, ‘but you have to understand that some people were saying all sorts of things about Grace then, spreading rumours, blackening her character. I should imagine that was part of the campaign. Luckily, none of it got to court.’

  ‘But there must have been some truth in it, surely? I don’t necessarily agree with anything people might have read into it, but the event itself probably happened. It could be relevant. I don’t believe that whoever she was talking to was a lover or anything like that, but the meeting itself could have been important to Grace’s state of mind, even a trigger for her subsequent actions. Surely the police must have followed up on it? Who was he? What were they talking about?’

  ‘The police?’ Wilf snorted. ‘They already had their minds made up, and they were probably no different then than they are today. They decided Grace had done it, and that was that as far as they were concerned. Whatever evidence fitted that theory went in, whatever didn’t, they ignored. And once the ball got rolling, it wasn’t too hard to get people to speak against her. These things have a habit of snowballing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I hated that vicious, mean-spirited, holier-than-thou attitude all this business stirred up, the hypocrisy, the things some people said, even people who were supposed to have been her friends. It brought out the worst in some people. And Alice Lambert was no better than the rest.’

  ‘Alice? What did she say?’

  ‘Oh, she didn’t say anything in court, she stuck to the facts there, appeared for the defence, for her friend, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but word soon got around about the Foxes having separate bedrooms and Grace being a bit cold hearted towards her husband. Alice always did have a soft spot for Ernest Fox. It was him she met first, you know, not Grace. They were old friends. And then she goes telling everyone she’d always thought Grace was a bit too free and easy in her manner with the opposite sex, especially younger men, that sort of thing. Innuendo, fuel for the fire they wanted to burn Grace on.’

  ‘Is this true about Alice Lambert and Ernest Fox?’

  ‘That she had a soft spot for him?’

  ‘Yes.’r />
  ‘You could see it clearly when you saw them together. Like you and that estate agent woman.’

  I almost choked on my tea. ‘What? Heather? How do you . . . I mean . . .?’

  Wilf laughed. ‘Oh, don’t get so flustered. You look like a schoolboy caught with his hand over the tuck shop counter. I’ve seen you chatting in the market square once or twice, that’s all. The body language. I’ve told you what small towns are like. I’d watch it, if I were you.’

  ‘We’re just friends. She helped me get set up at Kilnsgate.’

  His eyes twinkled. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Oh, knock it off, Wilf. Was there anything in it, Alice Lambert and Ernest Fox?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You know what I’m getting at. Were they having an affair? Did Alice’s husband know?’

  ‘Surely you’re not . . .? Not Alice Lambert?’

  ‘I was thinking more of Jeremy Lambert.’

  ‘Jeremy Lambert? You must be joking. He wouldn’t say boo to a goose.’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Of course. He was the local schools inspector, even after I started teaching. Nice, cushy job in those days. Maybe not so much now, if they still have them. You’d be likely to risk getting knifed or shot. But Jeremy Lambert, a murderer?’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t see it.’

  ‘Alice?’

  ‘Look at your own reasoning, and you’ll find she doesn’t have a motive.’