Bones of the Buried

by David Roberts

  The Duke, applauding enthusiastically, leant over to Elizabeth. ‘I always remember as a boy how we hoped one of the boats would capsize, but it never happened. All the more surprising because so many of them are not wetbobs but are cricketers like Charles Thayer there. Oh! Well done,’ he cried as, with a final wobble, the boys successfully lowered themselves back on to their seats and rowed off. ‘Didn’t you once do this, Ned?’ he added, glancing at his brother. Even he had wondered if his brother was feeling well; he was so absent-minded and unlike his usual loquacious self.

  ‘Yes, once, when I was captain of the eleven,’ said Edward, hardly noticing the question. Connie glanced at him and at Elizabeth, white and strained-looking, balanced on a shooting stick beside him. She could only assume they had quarrelled but she could not imagine about what.

  Despite the heat of the day it was beginning to feel a little damp so the whole party strolled in the direction of Masters’ Boathouse to look for Frank. They found him without difficulty and, rather at a loose end, went back to his house to rest for an hour before returning, as dusk descended, to picnic on smoked salmon and strawberries while the midges picnicked on them. Fortified, they could enjoy the final spectacle of the day – the second procession of boats followed by the fireworks display. The Duke was tiring visibly and Connie was beginning to wish they had brought two cars so she could have taken him home.

  Edward, on the other hand, had begun to relax. He had seen nothing of either Tom Sutton or Basil Thoroughgood and it seemed as though his forebodings had been unwarranted. He smiled wryly when he thought how Pride would lambast him tomorrow for wasting police time and resources. He sighed. As he had walked back through the school, the light soft and milky, Eton had never looked more beautiful: the dome of School Hall, up which he had shinned long ago to place a chamber-pot on its peak, gleamed like some creation of Brunelleschi’s. Frank had begun to complain his stomach was rumbling from hunger and insisted on dashing into Rowlands, where he gobbled down a sausage wrapped in bread followed by bananas smashed in cream and ice-cream.

  Edward had watched him indulgently as he gorged, recalling the savage hunger of adolescence and the supreme pleasure of satisfying it. At what age, he asked himself, did one cease to crave food and was it then one also began to lose that other hunger – for life itself? He was not one of those who believed that his schooldays had been the best years of his life – far from it. The years which followed – Cambridge and then adventuring in South America and Africa – had been in many respects richer and more rewarding but, somehow, seeing Frank at Eton – earnest but eager, his expectations untarnished by disillusion – he began to feel a twinge of nostalgia for the world he had lost.

  He suddenly became aware that the rest of the party were looking at him. He had been asked a question but had no idea what or by whom.

  ‘I say, Uncle Ned,’ said Frank, ‘you are all right, aren’t you? You seem very far away.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m afraid I was,’ Edward said, lighting a cigarette. ‘I was thinking of my own schooldays and lamenting that I hadn’t lived up to the hopes m’tutor had of me – or said he had of me – when I left. Anyway, considering he had ignored me for four years, I don’t suppose he knew what he was talking about. Why do we old folk talk such tommy rot to the young? What do you say, Frank?’

  ‘You’re not old and you’ve never talked rot to me, so stop feeling sorry for yourself, Uncle Ned.’

  ‘Come now, Ned,’ said Connie, ‘everyone agrees you will reach the very top, if you bother to apply yourself.’

  ‘The top of what?’ he replied drily.

  ‘The FO, politics – anything you like,’ the Duke said crossly. ‘Damn it all, I can’t do anything because of Mersham and so on, but you . . . well, you only need the love of a good woman, what?’

  Connie, seeing her brother-in-law visibly pale, broke in hurriedly. ‘Well, Frank, I think it’s time we walked back to the river. We must be sure of our places for the procession of boats.’

  It was delightful to be beside the river once again. True, the midges were making everyone scratch but the water glimmering in the near darkness, the feel of so many people gathered together for one purpose, the growing excitement . . . it was a special occasion.

  ‘I do believe if we were in Italy, or anywhere but pagan England, we would expect the procession to be religious: an effigy of the Virgin carried aloft by churchmen with boys singing psalms,’ Connie said, ‘but we English dress our schoolchildren in the clothes of a past century and make them perform acrobatics! It’s wonderful, but quite absurd.’

  ‘And the boys watching here on the river bank are dressed in mourning for King George III who died – I don’t know – over a hundred years ago,’ added the Duke.

  In the darkness, Edward leaned his head against Elizabeth’s and squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered, ‘nothing will happen.’

  ‘Oh, but it has, it has,’ she murmured. In an effort to show he was enjoying himself, Edward regaled the company with an account of how in Chile, the May Christ is paraded about Santiago on the shoulders of the faithful and worshipped as a protector against the dreaded earthquakes. ‘The queer thing is, if they try and take the crown from round Christ’s neck – the result of an earthquake a century ago – something dreadful happens.’

  As he talked, he thought he caught a glimpse of the man he had been waiting for, and his heart missed a beat. Calmly, he concluded his story, while considering what was the best thing to do. He had no wish to evade him – it was a meeting he had been anticipating all day – but he had to avoid bringing danger to anyone but himself. This was a private matter. He whispered to Connie that he was going to stroll up towards the weir where the boats turned before floating downriver. Sensing that there was something more to this than the need to stretch his legs, she said anxiously, ‘Oh but Ned, do you have to?’

  ‘I won’t be long, I promise,’ he replied, removing her hand from his arm. Frank and Elizabeth were a few feet away peering at the river, so he was able to escape without anyone else noticing. The Duke, whose sight was not very good at the best of times, could see nothing much in the gloom.

  As he walked towards the edge of the crowd where he thought he had spotted his quarry, he began to feel rather a fool. Stepping over parents and boys sprawled on rugs waiting for the entertainment, he found he had quite lost sight of him. Then, close to a wicket gate through which the spectators had passed to reach the river, he suddenly felt, rather than heard, a harsh whisper from behind him.

  ‘You’re not afraid, Corinth? You really ought to be.’

  Without turning his head, he replied, ‘No, why should I be afraid? I know what you have done and why you did it, but it’s finished now.’

  ‘Is it finished?’ said the shadow who now came up beside him. ‘I don’t think so – not quite yet.’

  ‘What can you mean? Elizabeth said . . .’

  ‘Oh Elizabeth! I see you charmed your way into her beaux yeux. She told you I was earning my right to take her as my wife, I suppose?’

  Edward risked half-turning. If he was going to die, he would prefer to face his enemy. In the darkness, it was difficult to see more than the outline of a face, but he had no difficulty identifying Tom Sutton.

  ‘Yes, it is me,’ he said, ‘just as you thought.’

  ‘Isn’t murder too high a price to win a woman’s love? Could you ever keep such a love based on so much hatred?’

  ‘Hatred?’ Sutton mused. ‘Not really. Although I despised them – despised the lot of you – public school types – thinking you can do what you want in the world without caring – without imagining . . .’ He seemed suddenly lost for words. Edward remained silent, curious as to precisely how he would justify the killings. ‘You see, Corinth, I’m a communist and, if I could reduce this place to rubble, I would feel my life had not been wasted.’

  ‘But, instead, you pushed an old woman downstairs and broke her neck. Very brave.’

 
‘I didn’t, as a matter of fact. She fell. I went to ask her what she had told you. Thoroughgood said you knew some of the story. But the stupid old woman wouldn’t talk to me. She pushed past me to go upstairs. I called to her and she looked round . . . and fell.’ His voice trailed off, but then he roused himself: ‘But what does it matter – one old woman. The battle we’re fighting is a class war. There must be casualties. The proletariat has to destroy people like you. The dictatorship of the proletariat . . .’

  His voice died away again as if he had lost the thread of what he was saying.

  ‘So you killed Hoden as an act of class warfare, not “for love”?’

  ‘You can mock all you want, blast you.’

  ‘I was just curious,’ Edward said mildly. ‘From what I’ve heard, he was a nasty piece of work but Stephen Thayer – he was my friend.’

  ‘If you want to know, Corinth, I didn’t kill Thayer. Elizabeth begged me not to. She said she had got to know him . . . to like him. She wrote to me saying that he was not the man to have bullied Oliver Federstein to death. She said maybe he had been less than perfect as a boy but . . . Anyway, if that was what she wanted, I wasn’t going to argue. And I didn’t kill Godfrey Tilney either. I made him sweat – told him I knew about his murky past – told him I had been sent to take revenge for what he did to the boy – but I didn’t kill him. I would have done but I didn’t need to. Griffiths-Jones had already been ordered to liquidate him because of his indiscipline. He said he was going to tell the world’s press that the Communist Party was in league with the Nazis and bought arms off them. Well, that couldn’t be allowed, could it?’

  ‘I don’t believe you! How could Griffiths-Jones have killed Tilney? He was in gaol.’

  ‘He said you were naive, Corinth, but I had no idea just how naive. It was he who thought up the plan of getting Verity to send for you to “find” the body. You never thought it was all a bit too easy?’

  ‘Yes, but . . . he was in gaol.’

  ‘The prison governor, Ramón, is one of us. He gave David the perfect alibi. Let him out of gaol to kill Tilney just before you got to him. Tilney was in hiding, knowing he was in danger, but he foolishly underestimated Rosalía Salas. She was his minder – the Party never trusted him, you see. He told her where he was hiding. He needed someone to bring him supplies and news.’

  ‘Rosalía? But she loved him! I’m certain of it.’

  ‘She was an accomplished actress.’

  ‘I still don’t believe you.’

  ‘Perhaps she did love him. What of it? The Party comes first. Orders have to be obeyed.’

  ‘But if what you’re saying is true, what about the ring – your ring?’

  ‘Yes, that was stupid of me – stupid and sentimental. You know, when Elizabeth gave it to me I bought a gold chain for it so I could hang it round my neck, out of sight next to my skin. It was too small for me to wear on my finger but it meant a great deal to me. When I thought all the police had gone I went to the cave and left it there as a sign, as it were, that Max Federstein and his son had been avenged. I never thought that interfering bitch would find it. I know what it is to be an outcast – a victim of the sort of scum who drove the boy to his death. But I shouldn’t have done it. I am punished for being sentimental. I thought Elizabeth loved me but . . . that’s all over now. There’s no place for love in this world. There are more important things . . . the Party . . .’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘So you weren’t really trying to avenge Oliver Federstein. That was just “a hobby”, to be pursued when Party duties allowed?’

  ‘No, Corinth. It was Federstein who led me to the Party. It was the injustice done to him – and to me – which made me want to throw over all the corrupt bourgeois institutions . . . I might as well tell you, as we’re talking for the last time. I was brought up in a children’s home. Home! My God, what a travesty. If that was home, it was a home from hell. The head of the place – a clergyman no less – got the prettiest boys to sleep with him and, if we protested, we were locked up without food or water for as long as it took.’

  Edward hesitated. ‘So that is why you identified yourself so closely with Oliver? It wasn’t love which made you hate.’

  ‘We were both victims. Oliver died. I lived to change the world and, if possible, to take revenge for what we both suffered.’

  ‘Was there no one to complain to . . . at the home?’

  ‘I did complain – to the doctor who came to examine us once a month for head lice.’

  ‘And nothing happened?’

  ‘Oh yes, something happened all right. I was told I was ungrateful. I was told I was wicked to tell such lies about a man of the cloth. They beat me and I . . .’

  ‘Look, Sutton, if what you say is true, I’m sorry for you but . . .’

  ‘You’re sorry? Sorry! Do you think I care if you – any of you – are sorry that my life was . . . was twisted?’

  Edward said gently, ‘An evil man did you a terrible wrong, Sutton, but does that justify murder?’

  ‘Execution not murder. I fell for Elizabeth as soon as I saw her. When she told me Hoden, that dung beetle, was . . . was one of those, I knew it was my duty to kill him – for Elizabeth, for her dead stepbrother’s sake, for my sake, curse you. God, how I hated you when you swanned into my office with all that self-righteous arrogance, demanding my help to discover who had killed Godfrey Tilney. When you had gone – oh, how I laughed!’

  The two men were walking beside the river along a path narrow enough to force them to press against each other like lovers. The path was one used for coaching fours and eights – the coach bicycling dangerously, one hand on the handlebars, the other clasping a speaking trumpet through which he could urge on his crews. Edward remembered that the path ended by the weir, a long way from the crowd watching the procession of boats. He had no idea where Pride’s men might be, if indeed they had not already gone home, and in any case, the likelihood of anyone having seen him meet Sutton was remote. But he was strong and, as far as he could see, Sutton had no weapon. He must keep the man talking until an opportunity arose to . . . to what? Take him into custody? He supposed so but, unless Sutton was prepared to repeat his story in the presence of witnesses, he couldn’t see how anything could be proved against him to a jury’s satisfaction.

  ‘Edward, are you all right?’

  The question, from the darkness behind them, startled both men.

  ‘Elizabeth!’ Edward exclaimed. ‘What are you doing? Why are you here?’

  ‘Frank and I saw you slope off and we followed you.’

  ‘Frank? He’s not with you.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ the boy replied indignantly from the blackness. ‘I couldn’t let Elizabeth come alone, could I?’

  ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Sutton said. ‘I was going to come and find you after . . . after I had dealt with your friend here. I’ve done what you asked of me but it’s over between us. I’ve got duties . . .’

  He spoke with a kind of hopeless gravity, as though he were reporting for duty knowing that he was to be sent on some impossible mission.

  ‘Oh, Tom, Tom. I wish I’d never shown you that letter from my stepfather . . . never involved you.’

  They had all stopped in a small clearing beside the river. The moon had risen from behind the trees and illuminated the scene. They could hear a dull roar, which Edward at first thought was the crowd they had left watching the festivities but then he realised that what he was hearing was the water sliding like a silk sheet over the weir to crash down on the other side. They had reached the stretch – almost a pool – in which the boats turned before floating back past the waiting crowds. He heard the splash of oars and clear, high voices from the boat coming towards them. At any moment, they would be in sight of each other. He wondered if he should call out and ask the boys for help, but that was ridiculous. They would think he was some practical joker and, even if they did take him seriously, there was nowhere they could land. Three or four feet of
weed and rushes formed a treacherous fringe along the bank.

  Edward cursed silently. Elizabeth, Frank! He had tried his best to remove himself, and the danger he might be in, from those he cared about. Instead, he had brought them all together in a place where no one could come to their rescue. He must hurl himself on Sutton and pin him to the ground. It shouldn’t be difficult. He looked at Sutton and saw his eyes staring towards him – glittering in the moonlight – as if they read his every thought. Something else shined silver in the moonlight. He saw a small revolver in his hand – so small it would be useless except at close quarters. But that was precisely where he was – at close quarters – no more than two feet away from Sutton and with no chance of running.

  Elizabeth said, ‘Oh God, Tom, why was I ever so wicked as to turn you into a . . . a murderer? It’s true. The sorrows of one generation become the sorrows of the next.’

  Sutton turned on her furiously. ‘I’m not guilty of murder. I’m a warrior . . . an executioner. I loved you, Elizabeth – but now it’s over. It was you who betrayed . . . the cause.’

  ‘But my friend’s father?’ Frank’s cool, clear voice cut between them like a knife. ‘Why did you have to kill him? Why did you? He wants to know.’

  Edward saw Sutton’s eyes swivel towards the boy lurking in the darkness. He tensed himself to jump but Sutton saw him move and pressed the gun against his stomach. ‘No!’ he shouted, meaning, Edward thought, that he must not think of trying to wrestle the gun off him. Or was he denying any responsibility for Stephen Thayer’s death? Whatever he meant, Edward did not have time to discover. Frank, brave but foolish boy, hurled himself on to the back of the man he believed had killed his friend’s father, tugging him backwards. Unfortunately, he was not strong enough to pull Sutton to the ground and merely unbalanced him. To steady himself, Sutton raised the arm holding the pistol and, as he did so, it went off. Edward felt a sharp stab of pain in his shoulder. With a cry, he lunged at Sutton as though attempting a rugger tackle and managed to pull him to the ground.