by D J Wiseman
They were moving into new territory, beyond the uncomplicated country walk, the pleasant meal. Something personal had appeared, and it had appeared at a most inconvenient time.
‘Well, we can talk about my world another time perhaps, but for now we need to take our seats.’ As they turned back towards the Common Room Lydia may have felt the slightest hint of his hand on her back, gently guiding her, or she may have imagined it.
The session on documents was presented by Felix Russell, a gawky young man in his late twenties. He appeared quite uncoordinated, as if his body had been assembled from various spare parts that had not become fully acquainted with each other. His clothes, a tweedy jacket over a check shirt and ill-knotted tie, belonged to an earlier generation. His lower half was hidden by the podium, but Lydia was sure that cord trousers and brogues would be close to the mark. As he finished each sentence his hand flew to his glasses to check that they were still securely placed across his nose. His delivery was poor, but he was listened to intently, and Lydia found his subject quite riveting, made all the more vivid for her by constant mental reference to her own document of mystery, her journal. He spoke of obtaining DNA from fingerprints on the paper; how the age and acid content of the paper affected the process; how the conditions of storage could cause minute changes in the chemistry; how the content and composition of the inks and graphite could determine the age of the writing. When he had finished with the chemistry he addressed the physical, and spoke of pressures and indentations, the slope of the writing. All these Lydia could comprehend with ease without need to understand the science. He turned to the typed, the photocopied and the computer printed, illustrating how, even here, special processes could reveal hidden snippets of knowledge. Next, he spoke of the words themselves, how it was only relatively recently that language experts had been asked to help forensic science by analysing the words beyond their obvious meanings to shed light on some other aspects of the writer. The first time such analysis had famously come to public attention had been the letters written by Peter Sutcliffe to the policeman leading the search for him. He talked about the choice of words and the combination of words and how they could help build a picture of the writer and how difficult it was for even a professional author to hide his ‘writing profile’, even when composing dialogue for one of his characters. He closed his presentation hinting at the shape of things to come, the power of computers in analysing both the chemistry and the language. The applause from his peers as he left the platform was more than polite, they had willed him to complete his task without mishap, and shared his relief at having done so.
Stephen had carefully ensured that Lydia was seated next to him for lunch at a table with a half a dozen others, including the awkward Felix, who was seated on her other side. Stephen introduced Lydia to him, adding that he thought they might have much to talk about.
‘I really enjoyed your talk.’
‘Thank you. I am not really very good at these things, public things.’ His fingers flicked to his glasses.
‘It doesn’t matter, everybody seemed to think it was good.’ He looked so uncomfortable, so much the fish-out-of-water, that Lydia found herself needing to encourage him, re-assure him of his right to be there.
‘Professor Kellaway said that you had some writing, a document, that you wanted to talk about.’
Professor Kellaway. Another revelation, not that Lydia was too surprised. ‘Ah, yes. I didn’t know that he had mentioned it. It’s not really that interesting. I mean it is for me, but probably not for you.’
‘He suggested that there was something of a mystery involved.’
‘ To my way of looking at it, there are many odd, or at least unusual, things about it. It’s a very long story, but I’ll try and be brief. It’s hand written, in a kind of old ledger. I think the ledger is much older than the writing. The entries start at the back and work forward. The writing is by one person, I’m sure, but in different inks and some pencil and the writing changes. It’s in the form of a kind of journal, not exactly a diary. And the content is, well, a bit disturbing. I think the person who wrote it suffered some kind of breakdown. It ends abruptly, without any kind of resolution. No, that’s not quite true, there is a resolution of a kind for the writer, but not for the reader. But then again I don’t think it was written for a reader, I think it was only written for the writer.’
Lydia cut herself short, all too aware of how easily she could be carried away with the story. As she paused, she turned as if for validation to Stephen. He was looking at her as a father might look at a favourite daughter with a mix of affection and pride. Or was he looking at her as his pet project, his amateur protégé? The thought unsettled her.
‘It does sound interesting, I’d certainly like to see it, do you have it with you?’
‘Oh, no, I’m afraid not.’ She had quite forgotten. It had been Stephen’s suggestion of the previous evening, and had been lost in her private crisis. Now she saw that he had manipulated the meeting with Felix, designed it so that she could show him the journal, which he assumed she would have brought, just because he had suggested it. Why couldn’t he have given her the reason for his suggestion, explained the circumstance, instead of arranging things to happen as if by chance? Besides which, she was suddenly unsure that she really wanted to share it with anyone. It was intensely private, never intended to be read by anyone, she alone held that privilege. If this Felix Russell, this expert in his field, were to see it and dismiss it as nonsense, where would that leave her? Uncertainty gnawed at her again and the idea of skipping the afternoon sessions crept into her mind.
Neither Felix Russell nor Lydia quite knew how to continue the conversation. Felix had done his bit, had easily complied with the great man’s wishes, as he was duty bound to do, while Lydia had no inclination to reveal anything more. Stephen tried to include her in conversation with the expert on arson, but Lydia politely declined to be drawn. When the meal was finished, Felix offered her his hand for want of knowing any other way of bidding her goodbye and Stephen was immediately required elsewhere. If she wished she could just collect her coat, slip away and not a soul would notice.
The Botanic Gardens were busier than she thought they might be. It had been years since she was there on her only previous visit and that had been at night, when a son-et-lumiere had caught her attention and on a whim she had spent the evening wandering alone through the display. Now the voices around her were Japanese and American, interspersed with those of their Oxford guides. At the far corner of the gardens, close to the Cherwell, she found a spot beneath a great spread of branches and rested there in the warmth of the afternoon. Yesterday’s rain had freshened the earth and the air was filled with the subtle scents of the garden. Light and shade played across the water, sparkling on its journey, soothing her troubled spirits, as the sight of moving water has done for so many. She would return to Magdalen in time for coffee and Stephen’s presentation, she owed him that at least. But for an hour or so she would empty her mind, or at least let its jumbled contents settle a little. As the peace of the place enveloped her, a stray thought popped into her head: had they ever come here to walk and sit awhile by the river, the journal writer and his wife? If she looked hard enough through squinted eyes, would she catch some flicker of their presence? Instead of dismissing the idea as an idle waste, Lydia let herself drift with the notion. Hadn’t he written of the river at one point? All along she had thought it was the Thames, what else would she think when it ran only yards from her home, but it might just as easily be the Cherwell or any other for that matter. As the minutes floated by, her passion re-asserted itself and she smiled at the thought of describing it so. She realised how directionless she had become when the drive to solve her puzzle waned, and welcomed the feeling of renewed vigour that its return brought her.
It was a refreshed and enlivened Lydia who congratulated Stephen on the excellence of his quite absorbing and wide-ranging review of forensic evidence. He couldn’t help but notice the change in
her, the colour in her cheeks, the life behind her eyes.
‘I see you are feeling better.’
‘Yes, thank you Stephen, I’m quite recovered. I’m sorry about this morning. And I didn’t think you’d mind me missing the arson man.’
‘Not at all, what did you do with yourself?’
‘I had a very good hour in the Botanic Garden, have you been there?’
‘No, but I know it’s close by.’
‘Perhaps I’ll take you there one day,’ Lydia said without thought or consideration.
‘Good, yes, I’d like that. I take it we are friends again?’
‘Yes, it was really so good of you to invite me today, but I won’t be coming to the dinner tonight. I hope that’s alright. I have things that I want to do.’ Then, by way of confirming their friendship she added, ‘And I will keep in touch, let you know how I’m getting on with the Joslins.’
Lydia took her time getting home, allowing herself a long detour through Rose Lane, along by Christ Church meadow to St. Aldates, then to Folly and the path by the river to Osney. All the while, her senses were alert for some feeling of place that she might find echoed in the journal. Despite being surrounded by the ghosts of millennia, none spoke to her. She paused a few moments by the Pot Stream to read the inscription on Edgar Wilson’s memorial, seeking some whispered insight from the drowned hero, but none came. It didn’t deter or unsettle her, the whole weekend lay ahead, a weekend of her own pleasure, a weekend she was determined would be one of achievement and progress. She would re-read the journal, tease some new gem from its pages, follow Bertie where she could – ah! the phone book, thank you Stephen – and tackle the sandcastles album. And there were also those photographs that Dorothy had given her, they needed closer examination, some previously unseen connection might be gleaned from them.
To take advantage of the remains of the day, Lydia carefully arranged a table and comfortable chair in her patch of a garden. The evening would be long and warm and she would not need her computer for the task she had set herself. She poured a glass of Petit Chablis and put the bottle in a cooler, placed a pen, a pencil and a blue highlighter on the table, and settled herself with her carefully transcribed copy of the journal. Little new might be learned from the anger or the distress, nor the story such as it was; what she was looking for was any fact that might easily have been overlooked, overshadowed by the power of the emotion. Facts which, when drawn together, might offer some additional insight to the circumstances of the writer or even the object of his distress.
The dusk had begun to envelop her by the time she had carefully read every word again, trying without success to ignore the anguish, trying to see only the unconsidered trifles buried in the words. She’d used her highlight pen in twenty or so places on the manuscript to remind her of the fragments that she had found. None of them came as a surprise, there was no shock of discovery, rather, that taken as a whole, they could amount to a little more than the sum of the fragments. She carefully wrote out a summary of her findings in the last light of the day.
S: A teacher, aged 31 in summer 1983, when her godmother/cousin/aunt(?) Phoebe Joslin died in Cockermouth. Described as short haired, sharp featured with wide mouth. Enjoys gardening (rose bushes) on a small plot. Attends conferences/training in summer holidays. French holiday with writer.
Writer: Advertising copywriter(?), 8 years with company(Pink2?) in 1983 so started in 1975. Drives to work (in Botley?). Has female GP(?).
They: Have friends H & J. Had a child who died at (or near) birth. Live near a river which they could ‘walk right into’.
As she wrote the details, Lydia felt sure that she was on firm ground with these facts, paltry as they were. She knew in themselves they would not lead her to the writer, but she also knew they could prevent her heading down a blind alley in her quest. Another small detail, not a fact, but perhaps interesting, caught her eye. At the end of both of the last two entries the writer had used the words ‘Mr Punch’. Lydia could not guess at their significance, although clearly they had some special meaning for the author. Her sense of place told her that these were people living in a town of some size, even though some rural outposts would have shops and rivers that you could ‘walk right into’. If he did work in Botley, as she surmised, then the obvious town was Oxford, with Abingdon a close second. Consideration might be given to Kidlington, even Woodstock or Witney. But all this was more than twenty, nearer thirty, years ago, and as she well knew, things have a habit of changing.
Putting her papers to one side, Lydia poured the last of the bottle and lit a large candle, lemon scented supposedly to repel insects. The steady glow of the flame in the still air wrapped the deepening night around her like a blanket. For a little while longer, the sun’s heat, stored in the bricks of her house, radiated back on her to keep the chill at bay. Every time she had read the journal, she felt a fraction closer to the lives it encompassed, the world they inhabited. Familiarity dulled the shock of the insight to another’s mind, to the innermost secrets entrusted to a neglected notebook. But they were still shocking, still they said that he planned to eliminate his wife. Lydia baulked at thinking of ‘kill’, even though she knew that was what it might mean. ‘Kill’ might simply be her obvious interpretation of the words, ‘eliminate’ might be closer to the reality, he may simply have had a plan by which he could leave her, or make her leave him. And yet, those words about ‘casting a leaf to the forest floor to be lost amongst all the other leaves’, what other meaning could be contained there? But she ran ahead of herself again, there was no solution to be found simply by re-reading the journal, nor even by forensic examination, despite what Felix Russell might have said. Or whatever help Stephen might wish to offer. She let him drift back into her thoughts with a degree of pleasure, despite her erratic behaviour towards him. They had parted amicably enough, no doors were closed and they certainly knew a little more about each other, even if it was not what might have been anticipated twenty-four hours previously. She would continue with her own mixture of method and feeling until either she found answers or all avenues had been explored. When she found the connection, and she was very sure that she would, found who they might be, then there was the chance of an answer.
Mr Punch. It was that character’s name which came first into Lydia’s head when she woke in the morning. He must surely be Judy’s murderous husband. Murderous? Even in her waking moment had she seen the simple connection, the simple reason that entries thirty and thirty-one ended with that particular name? It seemed tenuous, and yet somehow fitted with the fractured mind of the man who’d written it. And now that she came to think about it, did Mr Punch kill Judy, or was it the crocodile? And the more she thought about it the more she realised that although Punch and Judy were a part of the language, instantly recognisable, she really couldn’t remember anything about the story.
By lunchtime, still in her pyjamas and dressing gown, Lydia had read all that she could find about Punchinello and his murderous exploits. First the baby, beaten to death when left in his care, then Judy for discovering the crime. Then came the assaults on the policeman, deceiving the hangman, brushes with the crocodile, and at each new twist, each victory over his enemies, the star turn cries ‘that’s the way to do it!’ Little wonder that today’s Punch and Judy had been reduced to anodyne blandness. Such scenes of domestic violence would never do for today’s fresh-faced innocents. But even in her cynicism, she had to concede it was probably right. She had never suffered anything more than indifference from Michael before their divorce, but she read enough and knew enough to know that many wives suffered far worse than a blow with Mr Punch’s slapstick.
Lydia read the passages from the journal again, to see if the famous catch-phrase might be substituted for ‘Mr Punch’. ‘So long as I can hang on to that sequence and repeat it faultlessly that will be the way to do it. Mr Punch I think.’ and ‘This I think is the world without her even though she sleeps a sleep through this last night. Check mate
in the game. Mr Punch.’ As soon as she did so, it was obvious that there was no need for substitution, the writer had not written ‘Mr Punch’ as some code with some deep meaning. He was almost quoting from the script, and simply attributing the quote. A seriousness settled over her as this discovery sunk in. Remove the comic clothing, remove crocodiles and sausages, remove the hunch back and the hook nose, and you were left with a dark core of violence, murder and deception.
The sobering thought of such crimes came even closer to home when Lydia remembered that her writer had something else in common with the evil puppet. A dead child. Quickly she turned through the pages to the passage. It was fresh in her mind from last night but she wanted the exact wording. ‘. . . that tiny scrap of a person, that dead, dead baby lay for a few minutes in his Perspex crib, for all the world peacefully asleep as any other baby on the ward except that he wasn’t breathing.’ It was with some relief that Lydia could detect no hint of malice in the words, no suggestion that the death might have been anything but a private tragedy. On the contrary, there was something tender and caring in the ‘tiny scrap of a person’ phrase. Whatever crimes he had considered, planned, even committed, he had not killed his son.
10
It was the prospect of a fresh challenge, rather than the potentially tedious business of filling out the details of lives she thought she already knew, that prompted Lydia to reach for her ‘sandcastles’ album. It was either that or hunt for a marriage for Bertie or look for Albert and Hannah’s children, neither of which she much relished. It had been a while since she had held the book, longer since she had so diligently made her notes on the names and the places. Cheap board with a dimpled surface bound the black card pages where stick-on corners held the precious records of family life in their places. The captions were carefully written in white pencil or crayon under each snapshot until near the end, by which time the faces were so familiar that a simple page heading had been considered sufficient. Slowly she leafed through, re-acquainting herself with the 1950s, with Fred, Susan and Paul, Beryl and Archie, and of course with ‘self’, the one seeming constant in every album. Fred and ‘self’ were certainly husband and wife, Susan and Paul their children. They holidayed in Margate and Hastings, Devon and the Dales. So, Lydia guessed, most likely the album covered four years, four summer holidays with a few other snaps in between. The shiny Humber with the white-walled tyres appeared for the third holiday, the summer in Devon at Pickwell Manor.