by Mal Peet
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Everything’s fine.’
‘Good.’
‘Annie?’
‘Mmmn?’
‘There’s something I need to tell you.’
She shunted her rump against him. Pressed his fingers into her. ‘Can it wait until the morning?’
Yes, he said, or thought, as his body began its slow rejoicing. It can wait.
PART FIVE
Wasp Weather
August 1948
1
AUGUST, AND ON A WHIM Martin brought the Sunbeam Talbot to a stop at the Thatch in Cheriton Bishop. The interview with Jonathan stuffed-shirt Browning had been frigid – hostile, really – but perfectly satisfactory. From Martin’s point of view, at least. Browning reminded him of certain staff officers he’d met during the war: pompous, jealous of their own authority, but weak-kneed when faced by men who knew what killing was about.
He carried his pint through to the pub’s garden where a few tables and chairs had been set up. None were occupied. He settled himself and lit a cigarette. He opened the Western Gazette and turned to the Notice of Auction pages, in which he had an interest.
It was hot in the garden, but not pleasantly so. The sky was blank, the air thick and heavy. Wasp weather. Two of the little bastards took an interest in his beer; he blew smoke at them.
A shadow fell across his newspaper and he looked up.
‘Hello, Martin.’ Sheepstone had his hat in one hand and his jacket draped over his arm. The other hand held a pint glass. ‘Busy? Or mind if I join you?’
Sheepstone sat, not waiting for a reply.
‘I hate this time of year,’ he said. ‘Clammy. Can’t get enough air.’ He flapped his hand at a nuisance. ‘And bloody wasps. And gnats. I was in church last Sunday and we sang All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all. And I was thinking, what about bloody wasps and gnats?’
He sipped his beer.
‘Or liver flukes. Or tapeworms. Or parasites in general. How are you doing, Martin?’
‘OK, thanks.’
‘The air is always better up on the moor, of course. You’ll have found that, no doubt. More of a breeze. Fresher.’
‘Yes.’
Sheepstone drank again. He set his glass down, smacking his lips and frowning critically. ‘Difficult weather for keeping beer decent too. I’d say they haven’t quite succeeded, wouldn’t you?’
‘I don’t know. It tastes all right to me. But then I’m not much of a beer drinker, as a rule.’
‘No,’ Sheepstone said. ‘You’d be more of a wine man, eh?’ He studied Martin amiably for a moment or two, then said, ‘I know how you did it. Obvious, really. Godley never got on that train. He was already dead. But you turned up at the station in the Rolls, and someone got out of the back of it. Who else could it have been but Harold Godley? Who else gets out of the back of a Phantom at Okehampton and has his ticket bought for him by his chauffeur? Bolsover, the stationmaster, saw what he expected to see. Old Godley, all muffled up against the cold. Not that it was particularly chilly. But then he felt the cold more than most. According to you, anyway. And that’s what was seen in Exmouth too. A well-dressed elderly gent, less than average height, hat, collar up, scarf up to his nose.’
Martin stubbed out his cigarette and resisted the urge to light another.
‘It was risky, though. It was fairly unlikely that there’d be many, if any, other passengers travelling first-class between Okehampton and Exmouth on a Wednesday afternoon. But there was always that chance. That someone might have got into the same compartment. Someone who might want to strike up a conversation. What would she do then, Martin, I wonder? Keep her face covered and pretend she’d lost her voice? Hide behind the Daily Telegraph? It took some nerve, any road. And she got away with it. I almost admire her. You can tell her that, if you like.’
‘Who are we talking about?’
Sheepstone took another sip of bitter. ‘So she got to Exmouth without mishap and found her spot on the beach. Sat down, I expect. She wouldn’t have been seen from the road because it’s the other side of the dunes. She had her shoes and a skirt in the briefcase. And a headscarf perhaps? Yes, I think so. Oh, and a shopping bag or somesuch to put the trousers in. She changed her clothes and made a neat little pile of Godley’s things. Put a stone in the hat to stop it blowing away. A slight mistake, that. It made my nose twitch. But you wanted it found, of course. Then she chucked the briefcase into the sea. Job done. Strolled back along the beach. A young woman getting a bit of sea air before going home to cook her husband’s tea.’
Martin had an inch or so of beer left in his glass. He looked at his watch.
Sheepstone said, ‘Oh, you’re not in a hurry, Martin. You’ve got all the time in the world. Fancy another?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Suit yourself. The briefcase was another little mistake, in my opinion. Oh, I understand why Annie got rid of it. A casually dressed young woman carrying a man’s briefcase might have looked a bit odd. Attracted attention. You were hoping that anyone who saw her when she was disguised as Godley wouldn’t remember it. But someone did. So you had to pretend that you’d forgotten all about it. You did it quite well, I must say. I was almost convinced.’
Martin lit a cigarette. He waved a wasp away and watched its flight.
‘You took a gamble, of course, on Godley’s clothes not being found until the following day. Someone walking his dog in the evening or a courting couple might have found them. But you’d worked out that it didn’t really matter. You didn’t report Godley’s disappearance until nine twenty and you reckoned – correctly – that a Missing Person alert wouldn’t be circulated until the following morning, at the earliest. So if anyone had found Godley’s things on Wednesday evening and handed them in, the Exmouth coppers wouldn’t have a clue who they belonged to. There was nothing in the pockets of Godley’s coat that might have identified him, as you know. Are you sure you won’t have another?’
‘Yes. You’re right. It does have a nasty aftertaste.’
‘A short, then? Scotch? It might bring the colour back to your cheeks.’
‘No. I’m all right.’
Sheepstone said, ‘How did Annie get home, Martin? My best guess is she caught the five forty-five from Exmouth. It’s busy at that time, what with folks who work in Exeter getting off, so the chances are nobody would pay her any particular attention. But I don’t think she’d have taken a train all the way to Okehampton. Because there just might have been someone there who knew her. So I reckon she got off at Belstone Corner. There’s no one manning that stop after five. You picked her up from there. Not in the Rolls, of course. In that old van that no one would look at twice. You drove her back to Burra Hall, then took the Rolls to Okehampton to meet the last train at nine. A bit nip and tuck it would’ve been. But possible.’
Sheepstone paused, shook his head.
‘By God, Martin, you must have been glad to see her. What an anxious day you’d had of it. Not knowing if she’d flunked it. Or buggered it up somehow. Bolsover said you were like a man with a teasel up his chuff. Which I’m sure you were. But not for the reasons he imagined. You didn’t need to put on the bag of nerves act that day, did you?’
He waited. Wasps came, investigated, went away.
‘Come on, Martin, say something. This is off the record. A chance meeting in a pub. No witnesses.’
Martin said, ‘I had no idea that policemen had such vivid imaginations.’
‘Of course we do,’ Sheepstone said warmly. ‘It’s what we do. Take little bits and pieces, think about how they might join up, make them into a story with a beginning and a middle and an end. And then try to glue it to the truth. You need imagination to do that.’
‘I suppose so, yes.’
‘So,’ Sheepstone said, ‘you were a university man. Give my story marks out of ten. Eight? Eight and a half?’
‘Two.’
‘Because whether we’re talking about fact or fiction, you need a motive. Logic. I had no motive for murdering Mr Godley. Therefore your story doesn’t work. At all.’
‘You profited immensely from his death.’
‘I had no idea that he’d left me anything.’
Sheepstone nodded. ‘Reluctantly,’ he said, ‘I have to believe you. The copy of the will in Godley’s bureau hadn’t been tampered with. And if you’d nosed through his journal …’
‘Which I hadn’t.’
‘… you’d have discovered that Godley’d had a, shall we say, difficult meeting with his solicitor back in February. But he doesn’t give any details. So no, you didn’t know that killing Godley would make you rich. Mind you, you were scared shitless when you found out. Never known sudden fortune make a man look so ill.’
Sheepstone smiled, relishing the memory. Then he sighed.
‘But you’re right, Martin. Two out of ten is generous, to be fair. Because good as it is, true as it is, my little story doesn’t hang together because there’s no logic to it. Why would two people conspire to murder a man who provided them with an income and a home? One who treated them kindly? You’d have to believe they did it just because they wanted to. Because they could. Something as perverse as that.’
Sheepstone swilled back the last of his sour and now warm beer. He pulled a face.
‘Do you believe in evil, Martin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Aye, of course you do. You’ll have seen it in action. And you’ll know it’s infectious. Because you picked up a nasty dose of it somewhere. And you passed it on to Annie Luscombe. You corrupted her.’
‘That happens to be pure nonsense.’
Sheepstone pulled the corners of his mouth down and cocked his head. ‘Is it? I wonder what she would say if I were having this conversation with her rather than you.’
‘She’d say nothing. She’d laugh. And in case you’re thinking along those lines, I believe a wife can’t be forced to give evidence against her husband.’
‘Ah,’ Sheepstone said and leaned back in his chair. ‘When did this happy event take place?’
‘Three weeks ago. Just a quiet do.’
‘Yes, I imagine it would have been.’ Sheepstone stood and put his hat on. ‘If you believe in evil, Martin, does that mean you also believe in Hell?’
‘Yes. I’ve been there.’
‘Good. You’ll know the way, then.’
After Sheepstone had gone, Martin sat on in the garden for a little while. He watched a wasp crawl down the inside of his almost empty glass. He placed a beer mat over the glass and waited until the insect became furiously aware of its predicament.
Then he folded his newspaper and went on his way.
2
IN EARLY SEPTEMBER his mother sent him a formal invitation to her wedding to Mr Neville Waters. Martin phoned her a couple of days later and offered to drive her to the church in the Rolls. To his surprise she accepted.
Peg prepared a hamper for the journey; as far as she was concerned, Dorchester was equidistant with Moscow. The Phantom, after a full day of Martin’s attention, was eager.
‘Where are we going, Martin?’ Godley had asked him.
‘Dorchester, sir. Then Blandford Forum.’
‘Goodness, how exciting. The old girl hasn’t been on a run like that since I bought her.’
As usual, Annie declined the luxury of the passenger compartment to sit beside Martin. She liked to be able to touch him frequently and she liked watching the Spirit of Ecstasy flying ahead of them, leading them on.
‘Besides,’ she said, putting her hands on the just-discernible swell of her belly, ‘a few months from now, I’ll not fit.’
Martin had been unable to entertain the notion of sleeping with Annie in his former, childhood, home. He was pretty sure that she would insist on mischievous – and noisy – sex in the guest bedroom adjacent to his mother’s. So he’d booked them into the Royal Wessex. Annie had never stayed in a hotel before. Her girlish delight in the wickedness of it enchanted and aroused him.
Neville Waters drove Martin’s mother to the Wessex for dinner. He was a tall man of about sixty and, Martin noted, considerably more handsome than his father had been. Clearly, he had looked forward to this first meeting with his future stepson with some trepidation; there was a slightly desperate edge to his geniality. Martin liked him.
Margery Heath was also a little ill at ease. She wanted it understood that she was not seeking her son’s approval, but found herself needing it. She had told herself that it did not matter whether or not her fiancé approved of Martin, but found that it did. Towards her daughter-in-law she behaved with a kindly condescension to which Annie seemed blithely impervious; she had, to Martin’s surprise and gratitude, decided to be demure for the evening. (On the quiet, she had arranged for a bottle of champagne, on ice, to be delivered to their room as soon as the desserts were served.)
Over the meal, the following day’s arrangements were discussed. Martin would give his mother away. The Best Man was to be Neville’s son, George. Here, Waters glanced anxiously at Martin.
‘Good,’ Martin said. ‘Better him than me. I’m sure I’d flunk it.’
Over the brandy, the men talked about cars.
Annie perched her glass on the ledge beside the bath and scooped soapy water over her breasts.
‘That went all right, I thought,’ she said. ‘I like your mum. Do you?’
Martin, seated on the toilet bowl, laughed. ‘God, what a question. I don’t know. She seems happy enough.’
‘Of course she is. She’s been getting fucked.’
‘Annie!’
‘What?’
‘Has she?’
‘Oh, yes. Definitely. I’d say they’d had a quick one earlier on.’
‘Jesus. Really? How do you know?’
‘I just do.’ She reached for her glass and emptied it. ‘More, please.’
He lifted the bottle from the bucket and, kneeling beside the bath, filled their glasses.
Annie said, ‘Does it bother you? The idea of your mum having sex?’
‘No.’
She lifted her left leg onto the rim of the bath and studied his face with ironic concern. ‘Really? Not even when you imagine it? Her and Neville …’
He’d kept his hand in the ice bucket. Now, grinning, he plunged it into the bath, between her thighs. Annie squealed, holding her glass aloft and level.
He’d paid a young fellow from the Wessex ten bob to polish the Phantom. It waited, gleaming, outside his mother’s house, as long as the front lawn was wide. Two pipe-smoking gentlemen had come to admire both it and Annie, who was tying bows of white ribbon to the mascot and the door handles.
Martin smoked a cigarette in the living room, waiting for his mother to come down. He noticed that certain items of furniture had disappeared. He stubbed the cigarette when he heard her footfall on the stairs.
‘Well? Will I do, do you think?’
The suit was satin, the colour of a robin’s egg. A little hat with a short lace veil that softened her eyes. Lipstick. Nylons and pale shoes with heels. He hardly knew her. He’d have passed her in the street. No, he’d have turned to admire her.
‘Mutton dressed as lamb?’
‘No, Ma. You look absolutely stunning. Honestly. Neville will fall over when he sees you.’
‘Hmmn.’ She went to the mirror and lifted the veil to re-examine her make-up. ‘I’m selling the house,’ she said, with her back to him.
‘Of course. Why wouldn’t you?’
‘I thought you might want to take some of your old things away with you.’
He shrugged. ‘I might. I’ll think about it. Now then, Mrs nearly Waters, it’s time we went. Your carriage awaits.’
When he’d turned the Phantom onto the main road Martin looked up at the rear-view mirror. Harold Godley was studying his mother with frank admiration. The old
boy met Martin’s reflected eyes and rolled his own with comedic lasciviousness. Martin laughed aloud then returned his gaze to the road and to Ecstasy, trailing wedding ribbon, leaning into the hurtling air.
Editorial Note
This novel is a masterpiece and something of an enigma. Is it a ghost story? Is it a murder story? Is it something else entirely? It is also quintessentially British. I have now read it a number of times and each time I read it I like it more. It was, I think, the very last book Mal Peet wrote. He lived to complete it, but not to see it published, nor did he live to revise and edit. On the principle of ‘Here the maestro put down his pen’ I have decided to leave his words just as he wrote them, no more no less.
However, Mal did leave himself one or two very puzzling author notes which were marked in capitals in the typescript. These have been incorporated in ‘the naming of the parts’. Again these are all Mal’s own words.
It may be a coincidence that the hero of this story is a British squaddie returning damaged from the last war for European unity, but I can’t help feeling that this novel resonates very loudly in the world right now. Its relevance seems to ring out in every daily news bulletin I watch or hear. The phrase ‘An infection of evil’ is important because it describes how not all evil is intentional. Part three is the key I feel … the crime … the murder …? ‘YOU FIT MY WOUNDS EXACTLY’ was Mal’s note to himself right there in the script. But whose wounds did he mean?
David Fickling
11th November 2017
Remembrance Day
Mal Peet and
Mr Godley’s Phantom:
A Ghost Story
I have no idea whether Mal Peet believed in ghosts. I don’t believe in them myself, and yet this book is a ghost story, perhaps several, and I believe every word. It is many kinds of book rolled into one: a story about a man recovering from trauma, a historical novel, and even a police procedural. But, yes, I think it’s mostly a ghost story, and my favourite kind.