The Belting Inheritance

by Julian Symons

The chicken was succeeded by a chocolate mousse. “We had another visitor,” Lady W went on. “I believe he was an old friend of yours, David.”

  “Yes, Doctor Foster,” David muttered. He seemed in low spirits.

  “Vivian Foster, isn’t that right? I remember him coming here when your dear father was alive, rather a conceited boy. Did you ask him down? No? Strange that we should have these uninvited visitors so soon after your return.” She looked round the table. “That policeman stayed an unconscionably long time. Did he favour any of you with information about his investigation into the death of poor Thorne?”

  Nobody said anything and I became irritated, as I had been before, by their reluctance to annoy her. “I don’t think he came about that.”

  “Indeed?” She gave me a nearly-annihilating glance.

  “He’s interested in David’s life in Paris.” I addressed David. “The French police have been making inquiries at the address the letter came from. They say you were only there a few weeks.”

  If I had had any expectations about the effect of this remark, what happened would have exceeded them. David pushed aside his mousse, got up from the table, and said in the high-pitched voice I had heard that afternoon, “Excuse me, Mamma. I’m not going to stand this, I’m not going to be questioned any more.” He flung down his napkin and went oat

  “Poor boy, he feels the strain,” Lady W said as she looked after him, and I wish I had known, I wish I knew now, what she was thinking. Looking back, I am sure that David’s return was a great joy to her, but how much was it blended with a belief that he had come home simply in the hope that she would change her will, as she had done? I don’t know. In these last weeks of her life she was living in a world of fantasy, one in which she compelled reality to conform to the shapes made by her imagination. She wished to find the son she had lost and she would accept nothing less. That is what I think now, although I cannot be sure of it.

  She left us and went to her room a few minutes after David’s departure, saying that she felt tired, but refusing help in getting to her room. I wish I could think of something memorable to say about this last view of her, for more than anybody else she had changed the course of my life, but I can recall nothing but the authoritative nod she gave as she slowly rose from the table, and my feeling of regret that her white hair should be again so limp and tangled.

  I did not want to hear Stephen and Clarissa lamenting in detail the injustice done them, nor to hear Miles joining in, so I left them and went to my Thomas Lovell. There I tried to write a poem, but got no further than the first two lines:

  The bloody values of an evening sky,

  The dark calligraphy of clouds

  I tried to read Max Beerbohm, but could not concentrate on him. I lay on the bed and took the leftermost book on the shelf beside me. I had read somewhere a practice recommended for aspiring men of letters, that of keeping beside their beds a shelf of books taken at random, one of which would be looked at every evening and then either discarded or more thoroughly investigated on the following day. The idea assumed both leisure and the existence of a library from which to make the random selection, and both of these existed for me out of term time, when I gathered an armful of books from the Pam Moor or one of the corridors, and went through them. The book I took down was an elegant edition of Donne’s Songs and Sonets, and this in itself shows the random nature of my chosen armful, for I knew them well. I had the book open, when there was a light tap at the door and David came in.

  “I thought I should find you here.” He looked about him. “You’ve certainly made this very individual.”

  I waited for him to say why he had come, but he seemed in no hurry. “You do a lot of writing. You’re hoping to take that up, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want – would you do something for me, without telling anybody else, I mean?”

  “I don’t know. You’d better tell me what it is.” I swung my legs off the bed and looked at him. His movements were jerky, unco-ordinated, and a muscle was twitching angrily in his cheek. I remembered the almost impertinent assurance with which he had greeted Betty Urquhart, and it struck me that he was subject to extraordinarily sudden changes of mood.

  “I don’t think I can stick this much longer. Stephen and Miles hate me, they’d rather I’d stayed dead. If I’d known what it was going to be like – ”

  “You would have done?”

  “I think I would, yes.”

  “You haven’t told me what you want me to do.”

  “Carry a message, a letter, I mean. Deliver a letter for me tomorrow morning, that’s all. Will you do that?”

  “Where to?”

  “A place in Filehurst. It wouldn’t take you long.”

  “Why can’t you do it yourself?”

  “Reasons. I don’t know why you ask all these questions, you’ve got no cause to be against me.” There was something pettish yet pathetic about this, and there was a rising note of hysteria in his voice as he went on. “I really don’t think I can stay, I can’t endure it.”

  “What’s this letter to do with you staying?”

  “I can’t tell you. I thought you would trust me. You like her, don’t you, Mamma, I mean?” I did not reply, but he went on as though I had said yes. “Then you can understand, if it weren’t for her I wouldn’t stay another hour to be insulted. When she’s so ill, I don’t like to leave her.”

  “You must have seen a great change in her.”

  “Ghastly, yes. Yet do you know, essentially she still looks just the same to me as she did ten years ago.”

  It was not with any idea of testing him, but simply because I had been reading “The Undertaking” when he came in, that I quoted:

  But he who loveliness within

  Hath found, all outward loathes,

  For he who colour loves, and skin,

  Loves but their oldest clothes.

  Yet he took it as a trap and so it was in effect, although not in intention. “What’s that?” he cried. “What is it you’re saying, what do you mean?”

  “It’s a quotation. From Donne’s Songs and Sonets. The book you kept with you for years in Russia and brought back, remember?”

  For a moment there was in his eyes the terror of a hunted animal. Then he said shrilly, “You’re like all the rest. Trying to trick me. I was a fool ever to think I could trust you.” He seemed about to say something more. Then he pawed inadequately at the air with his hands, turned and left the room. When he had gone I knew that, whatever people like Foster might say, and in spite of Lady W, for me the die was cast. It had been a trivial incident, yet it was decisive. I should never again believe that he was David Wainwright.

  It must have been some time after nine when he left me, and it was half an hour later that, on my way to the lavatory, which was some distance from my room, I heard him speaking on the telephone. It was a peculiarity of the sentry box that, although what was said in it could not be heard by any listener on the ground floor, the top of the box was made of some sort of thin wood that acted as a sounding box. Standing as I was in the gallery above, I could not fail to hear every word. I will not deny that when I heard David’s voice I stood still and listened.

  “What?” I heard him say. “What do you mean? Are you absolutely sure of that? Didn’t he leave any message? Are you sure that he left no message for Mr Wainwright?” There was a pause and then he spoke in a voice from which all vibrancy, all tone, had vanished. “If he should come in, tell him I called. He’ll know the number. Thank you.” The telephone made its usual jangling sound when he replaced it, and then I heard him close the door of the sentry box, stand outside it for a moment, and begin to ascend the stairs. He came up them like an old man.

  I could not sleep that night. Eyes wide, staring up at the invisible ceiling, I speculated. Who could the telephone call have been made to, when David had said that he had no friends in this country? Perhaps the call had been made to somebody abroad, in Paris say? But I be
lieved that I did not believe this, that in my heart I knew the call had been made to somebody nearby. I do not know why I should have been so certain of this, except that one uses a different tone of voice for local calls from the tone one uses for calls made at a greater distance. The longer the distance the louder the voice, I said to myself drowsily, and then, always with my eyes open, it should be understood, I elaborated in my mind the voice that would be used for somebody in Edinburgh, in Leeds, Derby, London, Maidstone. Edinburgh would be an almost continuous shout, Maidstone comparatively a whisper. What sort of voice would a spy use? And, tangling myself up like Uncle Miles, I varied this by saying: what sort of you would a voice spy? This is the last moment before falling asleep, I said to myself, and as often before falling asleep the truth will become suddenly plain to you. The trick after that is to hold on to it. In that last moment before sleep I understood everything. David was a spy, a spy in the service of Ulfheim, but Ulfheim knew that the game was up and had left the hotel that was their usual meeting place. Ulfheim, disguised as a clergyman, was moving about the country and was prepared to give up spying in favour of the sale of pornographic postcards, he was proposing to get himself appointed vicar of Appledore like Trebitsch Lincoln, and once appointed would make up his dispensations in plain packets which included the photographs, but Arbuthnot in the guise of a wholesaler in these photographs was setting a trap for him. From his suitcase, Ulfheim produced something with long trailing wires…

  With an effort I jerked myself awake, to see Stephen standing in the doorway, white-faced as ever. He was carrying a big torch which he shone directly into my eyes. “Get up, that swine’s set fire to the house, he knows he’s finished,” he said hoarsely. As I scrambled out of bed he said urgently that there was no time to get dressed. Why was he carrying a torch, I asked, and he snapped back that the electricity had been cut off, and that I shouldn’t waste time in asking silly questions. I noticed that although he too was wearing pyjamas and dressing-gown he had on his stiff white collar. Outside Clarissa was shouting something confusing about her dogs. I heard knocking, and when I asked Stephen what it was, he said that Miles was trying to break down that man’s bedroom door. I said to Stephen that I must save my pictures. “Don’t be a fool,” he said scornfully. “How can you save them? If I turn off the torch you can’t see where they are.” He suited his action to the words, and the room was completely dark. I cried out and put my hand to where the light switch should have been, but there was no switch, no way of obtaining light…

  With an effort I jerked myself awake. My hand was on the switch. I pressed it, and the room was flooded with light. My pyjamas were clammy with sweat. I looked round the room. There was no sign of Stephen, no smell of smoke. A nightmare, that was all.

  I looked at my watch. The time was half past four. It was nonsense, then, to think that I had not slept. I had been asleep and something had wakened me, but what? I got out of bed and went across to the window. Birds were calling, a wind was blowing, it was almost dawn. Thirty feet away a wicket gate that led into the kitchen garden was flapping open and shut. The noise it made was no doubt the knocking I had heard in my dream. But the wicket gate was always kept shut, and surely it would have woken me before had it been knocking all night? As I stared at it, an idea came into my mind. I put on my dressing-gown, a gaily-coloured one made of Chinese silk embroidered with dragons, and padded along the corridors to David’s room. When there was no answer to my knock, I turned the door handle. His bed had been used, but he was not in the room.

  It was what I had expected, and I did not really need the confirmation given me when I opened the great mahogany wardrobe and saw that his clothes and the single case he had brought were gone. The man who called himself David Wainwright had vanished, and I had not the least doubt that he would never return. He had become increasingly alarmed by the police investigation, he had become aware of the pitfalls that lay around him on all sides even in such matters as identifying a quotation from Donne, he had made an unsuccessful attempt to get in touch with the man for whom he had been working, and when this failed he had given up, his nerve strained beyond endurance. Perhaps he had gone to bed still meaning to face things out, but during the night had decided that the threat of a murder charge was too much

  for him. Or perhaps he had made up his mind to run immediately after the abortive telephone call, and had then chosen his moment. Either way it was over, we had won (I say “we” for I identified myself as a matter of course with the rest of the family), and there was no good reason for the disappointment I felt. He had gone, but he had left unresolved mysteries behind him. I looked round the room in the hope of finding explanations.

  It was called the Blue Room because the walls were painted a most unattractive shade of peacock blue, and it was generally reserved for guests. A school friend of mine who had stayed in it had said that it looked as if it contained an assortment of things unsold at a country auction. I had been annoyed by the remark at the time, but later saw that it was apposite. There was the huge wardrobe, an equally monstrous tallboy, one of the biggest chests of drawers I have ever seen, and a gigantic cheval glass. The bed was a curious and in its way rather handsome affair, a true Victorian folly with a rosewood bedhead into which was let fragments of mother-of-pearl. They were pretty to look at but must, I reflected, have been uncomfortable for anybody given to reading or breakfasting in bed. There was a revolving bookcase beside the bed on one side, and on the other an ornate cupboard with a circular front, of the kind that contains a chamberpot. I poked about the room in an aimless way, looking for something that would give me a clue to the identity and character of the man who had stayed in it, searching for a secret drawer in the tallboy, for something left in the chest of drawers. I had no luck until I came to the chamberpot cupboard, and then I did not at first understand the meaning of the eye-dropper, needle and bent spoon that I found. Since the inveterate reader of thrillers is likely to be more perceptive than I was then and would be bored by a detailed account of my thought processes, let me say at once that these are the tools of the drug addict, and not simply of the addict but of the mainliner who obtains an extra kick by injecting heroin directly into the vein. When I had understood this I saw why total self-assurance, in the presence of Betty Urquhart for instance, had alternated with hysterical nervousness in David, as I shall continue to call him. I guessed also that part of the reason for Foster’s reserve after examining him was discovery of the tiny tell-tale punctures on arms or buttocks that reveal the addict. This, no doubt, was something which he had told Arbuthnot but which Arbuthnot had not told me.

  I am running ahead of myself, for I worked out the meaning of the spoon, needle and eye-dropper later after much thought, whereas the meaning of my other discovery was plain within half a minute. After looking at the chamber-pot cupboard I investigated the revolving bookcase, which contained historical novels by Maurice Hewlett, Stanley Weyman and Conan Doyle. As I turned the bookcase, however, I saw that a book in a brown paper cover had been stuffed behind the Weymans. I took it out and looked at the title: Prisoners of the Soviets. True Tales of the Labour Camps. Collected by E G Clapham. The book was divided into chapters, each referring to one case, and they had such headings as “The Real Face of Socialism” by R Zinkowski, and “Tragedy of a Polish Resistance Fighter” by Camp Inmate No. R813724. A piece of paper was inserted in the book at a chapter called “An Englishman’s Disillusionment in the Promised Land,” by Gerald Flame. Certain passages were marked heavily in pencil. The first of them read:

  The routine of the camp varied little. We were woken each day at six, and at half past had the first of our two meals, which generally consisted either of a watery soup with bits of gristle from some unidentifiable animal floating about in it, or a thick one absolutely stiff with a very coarse and tasteless kind of lentil. Cherno, the wit of our hut, called the thick soup wallpaper paste and the thin one rainwater flavoured with bird droppings. This was followed by a hunk of stal
e bread, with a bit of tough sausage sometimes as a treat. One day somebody broke a tooth on a piece of bone in the sausage and we adopted Cherno’s name for it, rock sausage.

  I turned to the other marked passages. They all resembled bits of David’s story. I will transcribe one more:

  The conduct of the guards varied, but on the whole they were less brutal than the Nazis. I shall always remember one of them, a boy with an almost completely shaven head whose name was unpronounceable, so that like everybody else I called him Ivan. He was always slipping us little things like cigarettes or fragments of chocolate, which must have come out of his own allowance. One day, when we were working in the fields after one of our nightly discussions about escape, I decided to test out Cherno’s theory that anybody could get away easily without being noticed. I began to work farther and farther away from my companions, and from Ivan, who was our guard in my section. Eventually I was out of sight of everybody, and I began to think that Cherno was right, when Ivan suddenly appeared from nowhere. He shook his head, said “Niet,” and pointed to the illimitable expanse of plain that extended in every direction. Then, as if fearing that I still might not understand, he said with a great effort, “Nix,” and after a pause, “No good.”

  As I read on it became clear that David had learned parts of this chapter almost by heart. Only parts, for Flame’s story did not really much resemble the one David had given himself. He was a British civilian, in Germany when the war began, who was arrested as a spy, sent to a concentration camp and then in 1941 handed over by the Germans to the Russians, who put him into a labour camp from which he was released in 1948. David had taken what was useful in Flame’s story and supplemented it with other material, like the account of how a guard stamped on his fingers and broke the bones.

  I read this chapter sitting on the bed. When I had finished I realised that I held in my hand the positive proof that everybody had been looking for, the proof that David was an impostor. What should I do with it? Show Stephen and Miles? I had no sympathy for David, yet I felt that I could not endure the mean delight of Stephen and Clarissa’s doggy comments, nor could I bear the way in which they would conspire to make sure that Lady W changed her will again, without making themselves too conspicuous in arranging it. I should in any case have to show it to Arbuthnot, but I rebelled even against this in my mind, saying to myself that Arbuthnot had kept things from me so that I was under no obligation to him, but really feeling a sense of disappointment that the chase was over and understanding Stevenson’s maxim that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.