In At The Deep End

by Anabel Donald

  They were cautious at first, then sympathetic. That was worse because they lumbered me with a WPC fresh from a Victim Support training course who plied me with offers of tea I couldn’t refuse and gave me every opening to discuss my trauma. I did my best for her: she did her best for me. By the time my statement was typed and signed, we’d both been a little desperate.

  The car-hire firm at Banbury station gave me another middle-range Nissan. It was the only one they had left. One of the stereo speakers was out of service, but that was enough. Beethoven’s Ninth could cope.

  Banbury was grey in the rain, and when I bumped and splashed my way over the ramps in the Rissington drive it was dark enough for some lights to be on in GHQ. They looked forlorn, not welcoming.

  There was nobody on the steps, either, and the front door was shut. I didn’t try it: I rang the bell.

  The Major answered. He must have been waiting. He was wearing grey trousers, a blue shirt, a tweed jacket, and a regimental tie. The civilian clothes made him look even smaller, and even neater. The badge on the tie was gold, on a dark blue background. It looked like crossed monkey-wrenches, but that couldn’t have been right.

  ‘Miss Tanner,’ he said. ‘The weather’s broken.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Not only the weather, I thought. His head was still upright on his neck, but it looked as if he was keeping it there by an effort of will: as if it had been snapped as finally, as unnaturally, as Alistair’s. I’d been glad about Alistair. I wasn’t glad about him.

  ‘Best if we go up to the private quarters, I think,’ he said, and I followed him, though I didn’t need to. I could have found it in my sleep.

  There were no lights on in the flat, and it was quiet, apart from the crack and spit of distant shots from the firing-range. I had to pick my way through cardboard boxes on the floor of the living-room.

  When he switched on a standard lamp, I saw that the walls were bare. No photographs. They were in the cardboard boxes. ‘Did you take them down from the cloakroom as well?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid I never liked them . . . I didn’t tell my wife, naturally. Are you sure Alistair didn’t hurt you?’

  ‘No.’ I said. ‘Not in the least. But I was lucky.’

  ‘Believe me . . .’ he began, checked, coughed and kick-started himself again. ‘Miss Tanner, I had no idea. No idea at all, that you would be in any danger. If I had . . .’ He drifted off into silence.

  ‘Shall we sit down?’ I said.

  ‘If you like.’

  I sat on the sofa, he sat on a chair. I waited for him to speak. He waited for me. Eventually, I said, ‘Did you kill Olivier?’

  ‘No.’ It wasn’t a denial, just a statement of fact.

  ‘Did you let him die?’

  ‘Yes. I found him diving, purely by chance. I’d given my wife her late-night cocoa. I looked out of the window, and saw the lights from the swimming pool. Of course I had to investigate. He was practising a difficult dive.’

  ‘And you could have stopped him?’

  ‘Of course. It was a failure of my duty of care, I know that. But I had other things to consider. Huh?’

  ‘Other things, such as . . .’

  He stopped me with a raised hand, like a traffic policeman, or a well-prepared child in class. ‘Miss Tanner, forgive me. I’m very tired. Perhaps you could tell me what you think you know.’

  ‘Alistair Brown wasn’t Mrs Brown’s son. He was an actor called Alistair Bernard, perhaps a relation—’

  ‘Her nephew.’

  ‘Mrs Brown brought him in to make up to Mrs Ellis, with a view to persuading her, perhaps eventually by marrying her, to give him a share of the profit from closing the school and selling the land for industrial development. He used John Brown’s degree and references. John Brown had been killed by a homosexual pick-up in Morocco. He had also had an affair, probably while he was at the seminary, with a priest called Martin Kelly, who left the priesthood after a breakdown and worked as a reporter on the Banbury Courier, and who had seen photographs of Brown’s handsome actor cousin Alistair. He recognized Bernard, probably from a photograph taken at last year’s sports day, when Bernard wasn’t wearing his glasses and was in a similar pose to the one he adopted in another photograph familiar to Kelly. He knew he wasn’t John Brown as he claimed to be. Bernard was successful in his pursuit of your wife. Olivier, either through Kelly, who fancied him, or Bernard, who might have fancied him too, or through bugging and spying generally, discovered some or all of this and blackmailed—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the Major. ‘Quite. Tell me one thing. Did you mean to kill him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well done,’ he said with an echo of his former heartiness, a touch of bracing Leadership, and as I watched him I realized how much I liked him. He was a gallant little man. And a subtler man-manager than I’d reckoned.

  ‘ “Choose your junior officers wisely and then let them get on with it.” ’ I said. ‘You said that to me, the first time we met. I didn’t know what you had in mind. Did you actually think I’d find out about Alistair?’

  ‘Knew you’d stir it up,’ he said. ‘Asquith said you were sharp. And stubborn. Actually, forgive me, the word he used was “bloodyminded”.’

  Whereas Asquith was just bloody, I thought.

  ‘He advised me against letting you in to the school; the Major went on. ‘He said your boss – Protheroe, is it? – was a toadying nonentity, but he warned me to steer clear of you.’

  ‘Why did you ignore his advice?’

  He sighed. ‘I don’t know. I couldn’t let it go on. I couldn’t let Brown have Rissington.’

  ‘Your life’s work,’ I said.

  He smiled. ‘Did I say that? It’s nearly true. Like most of the things I told you.’

  ‘What wasn’t true about it?’

  ‘Anthea,’ he said heavily. ‘Anthea . . . She was my life’s work, too.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just clear it up yourself? Face your wife. Chuck Alistair out. Keep the school going.’

  ‘I couldn’t hurt her. I couldn’t bear to hurt her. She wasn’t – an ordinary person, you know. She was very beautiful, but of course you know that. And her upbringing was unusual.’

  Past tenses. But I wouldn’t pursue that just yet.

  ‘It was you who kept an eye on me, wasn’t it?’ I said. ‘It was you who didn’t let me take a step without a chaperone. Why?’

  ‘Couldn’t let you near the boys. Huh? The parents trust me. I’d have been mad to let you loose in the school . . . Too many grubby little adolescent secrets.’

  Involuntarily, I looked into one of the boxes. Fifteen-year-old Mrs Ellis dreamed back.

  ‘Was it child abuse?’ I said. ‘What was her relationship with the Colonel?’

  ‘Very close. He was Artistic. I didn’t ask for details . . . I didn’t want to know. But she could never be as happy as I wanted her to be,’ he said. ‘She could never be happy at all. I just couldn’t manage it.’

  ‘I don’t expect anybody could.’

  ‘It was like that disease. The bleeding disease.’

  ‘Haemophilia?’

  ‘Everything that touched her made her bleed. Inside. And when she started to bleed, she didn’t stop. D’you see what I mean?’

  I saw what he meant. He’d spent twenty years pouring himself down the bottomless pit of her needs. Now he was drained, and she was still flushed and full, like a vampire after a good night out. All ready with her face-lift, and her full range of Elizabeth Arden, and the Colonel’s dowry, to launch herself into life with Alistair Bernard.

  ‘How did Mrs Brown take the news of Alistair?’ I said.

  ‘Quietly. She didn’t say much. I didn’t expect her to. She was a proud woman; she always kept herself to herself. Wonderful organizer.’

  ‘She didn’t manage to organize Alistair into control of the school,’ I said.

  ‘Not quite. Nearly.’

  ‘Nearly doesn’t butter the toast,’ I sai
d. ‘Have you told Mrs Ellis about Alistair?’

  ‘No need. It would have upset her.’

  ‘You’ll have to tell her sometime.’

  ‘No.’

  We looked at each other and I felt his grief. It was as heavy as the Baron’s.

  ‘She’s dead?’

  ‘Yes. She never knew . . . I always made a nightcap for her. Cocoa. She was very fond of gin . . . Milk’s good, they say. A coating for the stomach. Protects the digestion.’

  ‘What did you put in it?’

  ‘Last night? Amytal. She died peacefully, early this morning. That’s when I took the pictures down. I had to do something. Hate idleness. Always have. Which brings me to you, Miss Tanner. I have a favour to ask you.’

  ‘Ask.’

  ‘It’s Rissington, d’you see. A question of inheritance. Under my will, a trust is set up. To keep the place going. She left everything to me. So it’s important that there’s no confusion over time of death.’

  ‘How could there be? Forensic medicine’s very accurate.’

  ‘I thought so, until the case of the Birmingham Five.’

  ‘Six,’ I said. ‘There were six of them. So you want me to discover the body?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘I think so. Through the hall: the first door on the right.’

  I went into the bedroom. She was laid out on the bed, washed, in what must have been a fresh nightdress. Her hair streamed over the pillow. She looked old.

  I checked her carotid pulse. There wasn’t one. Her skin was cold and my fingers shrank from it. I would have shrunk from her living skin.

  Then I went back to the living-room. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. No point in telling the truth. Not now. Not ever, to someone who has invested all their dreams and all their insecurities in a dud stock. Polly and Clive. Geoffrey and Anthea. Freedom and Olivier. And possibly, Martin and Olivier, John and Alistair.

  ‘She was everything I ever wanted,’ he said. He opened a drawer and took out an old army pistol, a piece of set-dressing for a Second World War drama. ‘Miss Tanner,’ he said, ‘this is a gun.’

  ‘Yes, Major,’ I said, undisturbed. He wasn’t going to use it on me.

  ‘On no account must any of the boys be allowed in here. You understand? Please do what you can in the way of damage limitation. For the school. And I must ask you not to make any attempt to pursue Tim Robertson.’

  ‘Did you know I met him in the town?’

  ‘Yes. He told me.’

  But Tim hadn’t mentioned that I was a private detective in pursuit of Olivier, or surely the Major would have said so. It was a relief I’d been slow enough on the uptake all through without having to reproach myself with making a massive miscalculation as well. ‘Did you send Li Sung to fetch Tim’s stuff from Matilda Beckford?’

  He answered slowly, as if I was pulling him back to a present he’d already put behind him. ‘Matilda Beckford?’

  ‘The old woman in the sheltered housing.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Robertson told me he kept some material there that he didn’t want you to get hold of Miss Tanner—’

  I wasn’t letting him go, yet. ‘Major, how did you find out about Alistair?’

  ‘I knew about the affair, of course. Desmoulins told me about the impersonation. Not an attempt at blackmail. Simply to make trouble. He was a very disturbed boy. Now, if you would wait outside?’

  ‘Why me?’ I said.

  ‘I can trust you. We have something in common.’

  ‘What?’

  He tried to smile. It didn’t come off. ‘Risen from the ranks,’ he said. ‘I told you I’d risen from the ranks.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The Army’s run by the NCOs.’

  ‘NCOS?’

  ‘Non-commissioned officers. The effective ones, who carry out the orders or carry the can. “Sergeant, take that hill.” Like you and me. But you know that already.’

  He pointed to the door, and I went out.

  I didn’t go far, and I didn’t have to wait long. The shot came in the middle of a fusillade from the firing range, and blended with it, though it was much louder.

  I’d spent my time at Rissington Abbey, though I hadn’t been aware of it, as the Major’s pawn: bringing out into the daylight secrets that were no secrets to him. Following his sealed orders.

  This time the orders were explicit. Usually I resent doing what I’m told, even by employers who are buying my obedience. But I’d accept it, just this once, from the Major. He’d invested his life unwisely, I thought, in a vain, shallow, and crazy woman, and a school full of boys who’d have forgotten him by the second day of the holidays. But that was his decision.

  So I opened the door and discovered the body.

  Tuesday, June 9th

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I slept in, the next morning. Soundly, and dreamlessly. At ten-thirty, bathed, dressed (sweatshirt selection: black, short-sleeved, no logo), I went downstairs, put the coffee on, and faced the hysterical flashing of my answering machine. Two calls from Polly. Two from Barty. Eight from Claudia. Three from Alan Protheroe. By the last, hysterical call, he’d heard from Claudia, who’d rung Rissington and found out the Major and Mrs Ellis were dead. He sounded as if he was trying to give birth to an aircraft carrier.

  I’d ring them later. I was fed up to my back teeth with explanations. The Banbury police had been even more sympathetic than the Met, but they’d also been more interested. The Major and Mrs Ellis were important local people: Rissington was an important local employer. I’d told them some truth, some fiction. I’d left out Olivier, Kelly, the Baron and Plummer, the Alistair-Mrs Ellis affair, and the Alistair impersonation. I’d given them Mrs Ellis the unstable suicide. Major Ellis the inconsolable husband, and Alistair Brown the incomprehensible. They’d found Brown the hardest to swallow. I’d looked puzzled until my facial muscles seized up, then I’d settled for shocked. It was easier.

  I went down to fetch the mail. One letter, for me, postmark Banbury. The envelope was in Kelly’s writing. Wrongly addressed: I live in Ladbroke Crescent. Kelly had written Ladbroke Terrace, which is much posher: whoever it’d been delivered to had bothered to mark it ‘not known at this address’ and re-post it, instead of using it to protect the furniture from coffee mugs, which is what I do.

  It wasn’t signed. It said:

  I thought Providence had brought you to me. I was

  wrong. I am unworthy

  I sent you into danger

  self-deception is the dark armour of the soul

  please forgive me

  I sat at the kitchen table and looked at his scrawly writing. I’d been wrong about dark armour and it was too late to wish I’d paid attention to him earlier. The Rissington Five were beyond help.

  Poor Kelly. Like Tim Robertson, like all neurotics, what went wrong wasn’t because he didn’t know what to do, it was because he couldn’t make himself do it. Easier to know than to act.

  But I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice and ignore an expert on her own subject, so I rang Polly. She was nearly better. She was burbling. ‘Where’ve you been, Alex? What’ve you been doing? I’m coming back to London tomorrow—’

  ‘Good,’ I interrupted. ‘I need you. I’m going shopping, and I need help.’

  ‘Shopping? You? What for?’

  ‘Clothes. For a weekend at the Danieli.’

  She jabbered clothes for ten minutes. I ignored most of it, but by the time I put the phone down I’d gathered it was going to be expensive. I’d have to do a really creative invoice for Plummer. But first, I had a phone call to make.

  I dialled, then listened to the single Continental ring. Freedom answered. I reminded her who I was. ‘Oh! Alex! Of course I remember! The fire-child, who set my spirit free!’

  ‘That’s what I’m ringing about,’ I said. ‘I’m not an Aries. I’m a Gemini. Your guru didn’t know it, and he’s a crook.’
>
  ‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘Did you lie to him?’

  ‘Yes I did, but that’s not the point. If he’s so spiritual he should have known. He’s a fraud. He’s taking you for a ride.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. She sounded more London by the second. ‘Did you lie to me?’

  ‘No. I only lie to crooks,’ I lied. ‘You said you were a seeker after truth. Well, I’ve just given you some. You should get shot of that guru.’

  ‘Really,’ she said. She spoke thoughtfully, and dragged out the flattened vowel – ‘reeely’. It was pure Sydenham, and I preferred it to the semi-French accent she usually affected. ‘You reeely think so?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I reeely do.’

  It wasn’t a sound I’d used for years. I thought it was ugly, and I’d got shot of it when I started work at the BBC. But now it came easily to my tongue.

  ‘I wonder—’ she said. ‘Alex—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would you consider being my spiritual adviser? We can seek the true path, together.’

  Spiritual adviser. Not likely. Once an airhead, always an airhead.

  ‘So Martin Kelly killed himself?’ said Claudia. ‘I’m glad. At least Alistair didn’t murder him.’

  I wanted to avoid a lengthy post-mortem, so I wasn’t about to suggest that from Kelly’s point of view, suicide might have been worse.

  She was cross-legged on the floor, I was lying with my boots up on the sofa, thinking about nothing.

  ‘So whose fault was it?’ she said.

  ‘Everyone’s, partly. In a small way, the Wanderotel management’s, for sending a trainee to do a man’s job. If I’d got Kelly’s telephone message on Wednesday morning he might just have told me about Alistair.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s fair,’ she said. ‘About the trainee. You have to learn somehow, and it was a very small mistake, and I don’t even think it was his, he told me one of the girls had forgotten . . .’ She was speaking on behalf of trainees everywhere, I thought as I watched her eager defence of a boy she didn’t like. She was still talking: ‘. . . and that’s how you learn things, by doing them, you’re thrown in at the deep end, like me in this case, and you do your best, but you’re bound to make mistakes, like me and Spot-light because I didn’t know . . .’