Closed Circle

by Robert Goddard

  Letchworth on a Saturday night exuded its normal level of gaiety: approximately that of a Welsh village on the sabbath. From the railway station I walked west through empty streets, past the dark and looming outline of the Goddess factory, where I had spent two miserable years trying to be the sober-suited manager of a hundred viraginous corsetières. Then I turned south along the silent half-mile of tree-screened houses at the far end of which an old man and his no longer young daughter lay unknowingly in wait. We had walked down this road together twenty-three years before to view the property generously provided by the company when it moved to Letchworth. My mother and Felix had walked beside us. We had tried to keep each other’s spirits up, but it had seemed so bare then, so flat and soulless. And so it still seemed to me, for all the trimmed verges and smugly angled roofs. The Garden City remained what it had always been in my mind: a wasteland.

  And then I was there, beside the laurel hedge and the gravel drive I could never forget however hard I tried. Gladsome Glade, the sign proclaimed with obstinate absurdity. But a gladsome welcome I did not hope for.

  My sister answered the bell. I saw her approaching along the hall through the frosted oval of glass, blurred into a bewildering simulacrum of my mother. When she pulled the door open, we stared at each other for a moment without speaking. What I saw was a frumpily dressed forty-year-old woman with streaks of grey in her hair and crow’s feet forming at the edges of her eyes. What she saw was her six years younger brother, louchely handsome and cautiously smiling, beyond redemption but not reproach.

  ‘Guy! So good of you to pop round.’

  I felt my smile stiffen. ‘Hello, Maggie. Were you expecting me?’

  ‘Felix told us all about your visit. Dad thought he’d imagined it. I didn’t.’

  ‘Well, you always understood Felix better than the rest of us, didn’t you?’

  ‘Did I?’ She considered the point for a second, then gave an exasperated little shake of the head. ‘Come in, for goodness’ sake.’ I stepped past her into the hall and she closed the door behind me. ‘I don’t know what Dad’s going to—’ She stopped in the same instant I looked along the hall and saw him standing in the doorway of the sitting-room, rheumy eyes fixed upon me.

  ‘Hello, Dad,’ I ventured.

  His only reply was a nod. His hair was whiter than I remembered, his stoop more pronounced, his clothes more threadbare than my mother would ever have tolerated. He scratched thoughtfully at his chin without taking his eyes off me, then turned and retreated into the room.

  Maggie and I exchanged an eloquent glance. Then she smiled for the first time and kissed me lightly on the cheek. ‘You’re looking well, Guy,’ she said. ‘Better than you deserve.’

  ‘Coming home must agree with me.’

  ‘Let’s hope explaining does as well, because you’ve a lot of it to do.’

  ‘Yes. I have. More than you can possibly imagine.’

  5

  MY MEMORIES OF family life are distant ones. From the age of thirteen, my affinity with those to whom I am related by blood began to wither, for it was then that I won a scholarship to Winchester and so divorced myself from the cares and doings of the family I left behind in Letchworth. What Winchester started the army finished and my attempt to become a dutiful son and humble clerk at the end of the war was as brief and futile as it was bound to be.

  The sitting-room of Gladsome Glade that cool August night thus held for me no magical warmth of home. Nor did my father, a man of few words but many disapproving grimaces, attempt to induce any. He had long since despaired of me. Widowhood and retirement, indeed, appeared to have filled him with a general despair about the world. He listened to my account of what had happened with an expression in which distaste and resignation were equally matched. Only when I revealed the horror of Charnwood’s death did disgust boil over inside him. He rose abruptly from his chair and stood by the piano, fiddling with his pipe and breathing agitatedly while I finished. Beside him, atop the piano, were three gilt-framed photographs: one of him and my mother on their wedding-day, one of Felix in his army uniform, one of Maggie on her twenty-first birthday. There had once been a fourth, but since my mother’s death it appeared to have vanished.

  ‘Your friend’, my father said at last with heavy emphasis, ‘has murdered a man?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Until—’

  ‘A respectable business-man. The chairman of a successful company. And you abetted him in the mad escapade that led to this?’

  ‘I didn’t know how it would end.’

  ‘You didn’t know?’ He gripped the stem of his pipe so ferociously between his teeth I thought it might snap. But something else snapped instead. ‘This will be in the papers tomorrow, won’t it? Your name – my name – will be mentioned.’

  ‘Nobody’s likely to connect—’

  ‘They’ll connect us, boy, take my word for it. I won’t be able to show my face at the bowls club without somebody whispering about it behind my back. You’re remembered here well enough. All too well.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  ‘Oh yes. People still kindly remind me of the day you walked out on a fine career.’ It was easy to believe him. I had returned from a week-end with Max in London determined to quit my job and join him in an altogether more glamorous occupation. Breaking my journey at Hitchin in order to bolster my determination with several large drinks, I had reached Letchworth, the bastion of temperance, drunk enough to leave no-one, especially the managing director of the Goddess Foundation Garment Company, in any doubt about why I could stomach life and work in the Garden City no longer. How my father had endured the embarrassment my departure occasioned him I had never cared to imagine, but now he was to give me some glimmering of an idea. ‘Your mother rebuked me then for saying I wished you’d never been born. But I meant it, boy, I meant it. For her sake, I pretended otherwise. But she’s not here any more. So, I don’t have to go on pretending, do I?’

  ‘No,’ I replied dismally, staring up at him. ‘You don’t.’

  He grunted, tapped out his pipe noisily in a 1902 coronation saucer, then thrust his hands deep into his cardigan pockets. ‘I’m away to my bed,’ he said to Maggie, turning to plod towards the door.

  ‘What about your cocoa?’ she responded.

  ‘I don’t want any.’

  ‘Shall I bring a mug up to you?’

  ‘I don’t want any!’ The door slammed behind him and I looked across at my sister. She sighed.

  ‘He was angry even before you came, Guy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He thinks the government is leading us down the road to ruin. He predicts Goddess – and every other company in the town – will be bankrupt by Christmas and that his pension will be forfeit. All thanks to Mr MacDonald, apparently.’ She shrugged. ‘Now this. It’s too much for him, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I’m not pleased about it myself.’

  ‘Of course not. It sounds dreadful.’ She shook her head. ‘Poor Miss Charnwood. And poor Max.’

  ‘I thought you should be forewarned, that’s all. Perhaps it would have been better if—’

  ‘No. You were right to tell us in person. What Max did isn’t your fault.’

  ‘I’m not sure Dad would agree with you.’

  ‘Possibly not.’ She rose and stepped behind my chair, resting her hand protectively on my head. ‘Why did you leave America, Guy? Didn’t it turn out to be the promised land after all?’

  ‘Not exactly. But I wish now—’ I twisted round to look at her. ‘We couldn’t have stayed,’ I murmured. ‘There were … problems.’

  ‘Will Dad hear about them too?’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘So do I.’ She moved away, then turned to face me, pressing her hands together and tilting her head in a brisk and business-like pose I immediately recognized. ‘What will you do now? Look for Max?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  ‘Have you spoken to his parents?’

 
; ‘No.’

  ‘You should see them as soon as possible. As their son’s friend—’

  ‘I know what I should do, Maggie, but—’

  ‘Where do they live?’

  ‘Gloucestershire. Near Chipping Campden.’

  ‘Drive over there tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ve no car.’

  ‘But I have. It’s a recent acquisition.’ She smiled. ‘So, you’ve no excuse now, have you?’

  My father pointedly refrained from comment on the article headlined BUSINESS-MAN BEATEN TO DEATH – DAUGHTER’S SUITOR SOUGHT which graced his newspaper the following morning. Nor did he display any interest in the bundle of other papers which I brought back from an early foray to the newsagent, although I suspected he meant to read every word printed about Charnwood’s murder as soon as I left for Gloucestershire. What the various articles amounted to was as bad as I had predicted but not quite as bad as I had feared. Max’s name was prominent, but mine was also there for the eagle-eyed to spy out. And of the eagle-eyed the Letchworth Bowls Club had never been in short supply.

  The only condition Maggie had imposed when making her tiny Austin Swallow available to me was that she should drive it, allegedly because I could not be trusted to keep to the left. Once we had set off, however, she admitted she was as keen to be free of our father for a few hours as I was. On the way, we discussed Felix and Letchworth politics and the state education system (in which Maggie had worked loyally with scant reward for nearly twenty years). But not until we turned into the drive of Jaybourne House, nestled in an orderly fold of the Cotswolds, and caught our first glimpse of its honey-stoned gables between the elms, did either of us mention the purpose of our journey.

  ‘What will you tell them, Guy?’

  ‘The same as I told you and Dad. The truth.’

  ‘That’s what it was, was it? The whole truth?’

  ‘Of course.’

  We pulled up in front of the house and Maggie looked straight at me, eyebrows raised. ‘Mum and Dad used to blame Max for leading you astray. Do you think Mr and Mrs Wingate blame you for leading him astray?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘If they do, this could be a difficult encounter.’

  ‘Yes, it could. But like you said last night: I owe it to Max to face them.’

  We need not have worried. The Wingates received us with sombre courtesy. Their sadness was palpable, but of bitterness there was no trace. Aubrey Wingate was a small white-haired man in his seventies, his face flushed and confused. His wife was smaller still and frailer, a cheerless smile fixed permanently to her lips. Both wore tweed and smelled faintly of the several Labradors who wandered in and out of the drawing-room as we spoke. They sipped Malmsey while I recounted the events of Friday night, frowning occasionally in pain or puzzlement but querying little and challenging less. Chief Inspector Hornby had paid them a visit and made it clear he believed what they were not yet prepared to: that Max was a murderer. From Max himself they had heard nothing.

  ‘And until we do,’ said Mr Wingate, ‘we shall continue to hope he has some innocent explanation for his conduct.’

  ‘The dear boy couldn’t kill anyone,’ added Mrs Wingate. ‘Don’t you agree, Guy?’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely.’

  ‘It’s running away that looks so damned bad,’ said Mr Wingate. ‘But he’ll soon see reason and give himself up. I’m sure of it.’

  I nodded energetically. ‘So am I.’

  But both of us were exaggerating, as became clear when we left the ladies and stepped into the garden for a breath of air – and a confidential word. One of the Labradors trailed behind us as we wandered aimlessly across the lawn towards a lushly planted border. The grass was wet beneath our feet and there were spots of rain in the chilly breeze. But Aubrey Wingate did not appear to notice.

  ‘I’m glad you’re staying at the flat,’ he said with gruff amiability. ‘It will mean Max knows where to find you.’

  ‘If I hear from him, I shall advise him to go to the police without delay.’

  ‘Of course. As will I. But then?’ He glanced at me doubtfully. ‘What I said indoors was for Cecily’s benefit. You must know as well as I do that things look black for Max. Damnably black.’ He sighed. ‘He came to see us a few weeks ago, just after the pair of you arrived from Canada. He announced he was in love and I believed him. I’d certainly never seen him so … taken … before. He said he meant to marry the girl and hoped to introduce her to us in the near future. No mention of her father’s objections, of course. No whisper of elopement. But he was head over heels in love. That much was obvious. A man obsessed, I couldn’t help thinking.’

  ‘Love is a kind of obsession, sir.’

  ‘Yes. And obsession can drive a man to murder, can’t it? Do you think it drove Max to murder?’

  ‘No. That is—’ We came to a halt in front of a thick stand of dahlias. ‘I hope not.’

  ‘So do I.’ Wingate’s grip on his walking-stick tightened. Suddenly, he raised it to shoulder-height and slashed off the head of one of the dahlias, scattering its spiky yellow petals at our feet. ‘But I fear our hopes may be in vain.’

  The longer Max remained a fugitive the more his guilt would seem confirmed – to the police, to the newspapers, even to his family and friends. His father’s words had made me impatient to return to London, for it was there, I felt sure, he was hiding. Our route back to Letchworth crossed the main Birmingham to London railway line at Banbury, so I asked Maggie to drop me at the station there. She agreed to do so reluctantly, suggesting I was manufacturing an excuse to avoid our father. But for once she had misjudged me. I really was thinking of Max.

  But finding him was quite another matter. There was, in reality, nothing I could do to that end but go solemnly back to the cold and empty flat in Hay Hill and to wait, as the hours dragged slowly by, for the telephone to ring or the latch to yield to his key. But neither did. It was the second night since Charnwood’s murder. And still Max kept his distance.

  I have seldom had occasion to be grateful to politicians, but the morning of Monday the twenty-fourth of August was an exception. A crisis was in the air, with half the Cabinet threatening to resign if the Prime Minister insisted on cutting unemployment benefit, which the lucratively employed editors of Fleet Street regarded as essential to restore confidence in the pound. One consequence of this was that crime, even the murder of a prominent business-man, was given scant coverage. It became possible to believe that there were some, indeed many, for whom Charnwood’s death was a matter of no importance.

  I was taking some bleak comfort from such thoughts over a sparse breakfast when the post arrived, an unusual event in itself, since we generally received nothing. For a second, I wondered if it might be a letter from Max. Racing down to the door, however, I found an unpromising buff envelope lying on the mat, with my name and address type-written on it. Not until I was halfway back up the stairs did I tear it open.

  As I pulled out the letter inside, an enclosure fluttered to rest on the next step. I stopped and picked it up, only to find it was Charnwood’s cheque for a thousand pounds. Puzzled, I looked at the letter. It was from my bank, saying payment had been refused. The cheque was correctly dated and signed, drawn on a company account at one of Lombard Street’s most reputable establishments. Yet the fact remained that it had been bounced. At first, I simply could not believe it. It was almost laughable. Dud cheques were my stock-in-trade, not Fabian Charnwood’s. What could it possibly mean?

  I reached the sitting-room, poured myself some more coffee and lit a cigarette. Then I sat down and re-examined both letter and cheque. But neither sense nor meaning were to be wrenched from dry banker’s prose and one of the last pieces of paper Charnwood had ever put his name to. Was it some mean trick of his, perhaps? Had he directed his bank to refuse payment, calculating that I would be deterred from making a fuss by the fear of Max discovering what I had done? If so, the irony was considerable, for his death made it more difficult still f
or me to protest. If I did, the police might hear of it. And they might tell Diana. If my hands were to stay clean, I would have to bear the loss in silence. Re-present to drawer, instructed the letter. But the drawer was dead. And all I had by way of memorial was written proof of his fraudulent intent – and of mine.

  I was brooding on the invidiousness of my position when the telephone rang. I bounded across the room and snatched up the receiver, hoping against hope. But the caller was not Max. It was Aubrey Wingate.

  ‘Good morning, sir. Any news?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the flat.’ I took this to mean he had heard nothing from or about Max. ‘Your occupancy of it, that is.’ His tone sounded stiff and awkward, in bewildering contrast to his anxious intimacy of the day before. ‘I’ve decided I’d prefer you to move out.’

  ‘Move out?’

  ‘As soon as possible.’

  ‘But … Yesterday, you said you were glad I was here in case Max—’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind. Your remaining there would be … irregular.’

  ‘Well, of course, if—’

  ‘I’d like you to be gone by the end of the week.’ He was addressing me like some recalcitrant tenant rather than his son’s best friend. The suddenness of the change left me too confused to respond. ‘Preferably sooner.’ He paused and cleared his throat, then added: ‘I don’t wish to be unreasonable, but, in the circumstances, I must insist. I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘No. I don’t. What—’

  ‘There’s no more to be said. Perhaps you’d leave your keys with Mrs Dodd.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Horton.’

  Mr Horton? As the line went dead, that last phrase reverberated in my mind. Hitherto, he had always called me Guy. His abrupt descent into formality was as uncharacteristic as my eviction seemed pointless. From every side, I was assailed by incomprehensible events. The bounced cheque. The notice to quit. And Max’s behaviour both on and since the night of Charnwood’s murder. I had tried till now to believe some logic was at work, some sequence of cause and effect. But, if it was, it was not one I understood. Where it might next lead I had no way of predicting. But I felt uncomfortably certain that I would be carried along in its wake.