The Old Contemptibles

by Grimes, Martha

  Hell, of course he wouldn’t say.

  “All right if I take Wiggins?”

  “Take him.” Racer smiled meanly. “The weather up there might clear out his mind.”

  • • •

  Sergeant Wiggins, although delighted to see Jury back in their office, didn’t agree. Worse than Yorkshire, it’d be. Rain. Wiggins fiddled with his pills, washed down several just thinking of bogs and mosses and wet as Jury was stuffing Melrose Plant’s faxed reports and his own notes in a case, and talking to Wiggins about Wordsworth, about his heavenly walks across the heavenly fells, soaking up blue lakes, daffodils, mountains, and even reciting “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.”

  “Do I look like a cloud, sir?” Grimly, Wiggins shoveled a dozen vials of something into a bag.

  The Wiggins suitcase, clothes be damned.

  34

  It was true that Thomasina Thale lived in a “grand” house—at least it was a formidable brick residence in one of the better squares in Earls Court—but she didn’t own it. She did not even own the small part of this house in which she lived, a second-floor, walk-up flat.

  This was not the only part of Plant’s report that diverged from the truth: “Aunt Tom” was not an elderly, “Victorian” lady. She was probably in her midthirties, with a pretty unmadeup face, lovely chestnut hair and (Jury saw when she preceded them down a short hall) a leg in a brace. She had to drag it.

  People called her “Tommy.” As she indicated chairs for Jury and Wiggins to take in her front room, whose windows overlooked a little park, she laughed at the sobriquet her niece had chosen.

  That was not all she laughed about. When Jury (truly dumbfounded) reiterated the description that Plant had put in his report—a description of a starch-bosomed, nail-eyed old lady who had (literally, it seemed) a whip hand—Tommy Thale laughed even harder. It was a rich, honestly rollicking laugh, wonderful to hear coming from someone who must be facing a life of denial and privation. Yet, as Jury looked at the room, the warmth that came from the fringed-shaded lamps and the two-bar fire, the embroidered cushions and needlepointed chairs, he thought that Tommy Thale was one of those people not easily disheartened, one who would see the glass as half full and be happy simply not to die of thirst.

  She was wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes with the heels of her palms. “Well, she had to, I expect. They’d certainly have sent her up. To London, you know, to live with me. It was a story invented for old Adam’s ears, probably. Millie’s a favorite, perhaps second only to Alex. He’d never let them lay a hand on her.”

  “The Holdsworth family. Have you met them?”

  She laughed again, her hand twisting the cane back and forth, and said, “I couldn’t have done, could I? Not without my high-buttoned boots and whip. Sounds a bit S-and-M-ish, really.”

  “I beg your pardon, miss?” Wiggins looked puzzled.

  “Sadomasochistic, Sergeant.”

  “Oh, yes. Being homicide, we’re not much into that.”

  “I hope not.”

  Jury smiled at her attempt to keep her own face straight. It was, he thought, the first time in days he honestly felt like truly smiling. Her own refusal to give in to her fate diminished his own unhappiness.

  She went on: “But I know about all of them from Millie’s letters. She’s quite a letter-writer—who knows if they’re the truth?—and from Annie. When she was alive.” Tommy looked considerably sadder, as if there were other fates much worse than hers.

  “Why wouldn’t she prefer to live with you, though?” asked Jury. “Why want to stay in a place where she does all of the work—at least according to what my friend tells me—and is treated rather basely by the rest of the staff, and has no affection for the family. Except for the old man and . . . Jane Holdsworth’s son. Alex, I think his name is.”

  “That’s why you’re here, I expect. About Jane Holdsworth? I read about it and, pardon me, but hadn’t you something to do with her?”

  “Yes.” He couldn’t keep the blunt, hand’s-off edge from the word.

  Wiggins looked up rather sharply, then returned to his notes.

  Tommy Thale gave him a long look. “Sorry, I expect you should be asking the questions, not I. Millie, then. Millie stays because of her mother. My sister, Annie. You know something about that, I expect?” Jury nodded, and she went on. “Everyone told Millie it was an accident, that drowning, though I doubt anyone, including police, believed it. Millie’s determined to stay.” Her eyes flicked over to a picture-grouping on a round table covered with a lace cloth. “Poor thing. Like a little ghost who haunts the place of suffering. Still, I think her reason is more than that; I think she’s determined to find out what happened.”

  “Do you think it was suicide?”

  She did not answer immediately; she was thoughtful. “It’s hard to believe.”

  “Was your sister like you, temperamentally?”

  “I’d say so, yes.”

  “Then it’s very hard to believe.”

  Tommy smiled at him. “That’s a compliment?”

  “Absolutely. But that leaves only murder, Miss Thale.”

  “Tommy. Yes, I expect it does. And if anyone did that, and if Millie finds out, that person had best watch out. My niece is ferociously loyal. Quite fierce. I sometimes think of her as sitting in the eye of her own storm. She can give the impression she’s cool, quite calm. She isn’t calm; she’s braced. Braced against whatever particular horrors come her way.” Tommy smiled again. “And a first-rate cook, like her mother . . . Oh! Wouldn’t you both like some tea? I forgot. . . .” Laboriously, she made to rise from the sofa.

  “My sergeant is a first-rate tea-maker. And I’m sure he’d love a cup. Right, Wiggins?”

  Wiggins rose quickly. “Are the things ready to hand?”

  “Yes. The kitchen’s just through there.” To Wiggins’s retreating back she called, “Tea’s in a canister, so’s the sugar, pot’s on the counter.”

  Wiggins was, Jury imagined, dying for his cuppa.

  “What does Millie know about her father?”

  Tommy shook her head. “Nothing, except she hasn’t one. Nor do I know anything, if that’s what you’re hoping.”

  “Did you ever speculate that it might be someone up there? In the family, perhaps?”

  “Oh, yes. But I doubt it; Annie went around with one or two men here in London.” She leaned forward, her hands cupping the cane’s handle. “There’s one person I know it wasn’t: Graham Holdsworth. Annie was terribly upset when that rumor got started. The thing was, see, I think she was really in love with him. But he wasn’t, with her. He’d talk to her, though. Quite a lot. They’d be together, alone, say, in the kitchen, or even out walking on the property, and people knew it.”

  Jury paused. “Can you be sure? I mean, perhaps she only wanted to protect him.”

  “Then she wouldn’t have gone so far as to tell me he was gay, would she?”

  Jury did not so much sit back as fall back against his chair. And what else did Jane not confide in him, if this were true? “Graham Holdsworth was homosexual?”

  “Yes. Annie couldn’t believe it. She said she’d simply never have guessed, never thought that—well, isn’t there some sort of chemistry? Can’t a person tell?”

  “Sometimes, sometimes not. Go on.”

  “He told her it’s what broke up his marriage. He was finally getting some therapy, apparently. He told Annie it was what probably kept him from marrying Madeline Galloway in the first place. For some reason, though, he seemed comfortable enough with Jane. . . .” She shrugged. “It’s complicated. Of course, this is hearsay, but, believe me, Annie never lied, never. She was afraid that realizing this about himself was what made him do it. Kill himself, I mean.”

  “In these times? My God, the closets are nearly empty.”

  “Not for the Graham Holdsworths. And he’d tried before, you see, when he was twenty or so. Some people just aren’t on the side of life, are they? He’d had a hard-en
ough time accepting himself, Annie thought, without these feelings surfacing. He was—she said—rather weak; that sounds cold-blooded, but you know what I mean. After all, he’d been coddled all of his life, never had to work, not really, and treated as a ‘poet’ and ‘painter’ with the attendant privileges for a special gift.” Again, she shrugged. “But he was very nice and kind, Annie said. Gentle.” Her smile was the mere ghost of her other smiles as she looked up at the mantel-arrangement. “Took her rowing once, on Windermere. That’s what his doctor thought Millie should do, go out on one of the lakes, she thought that it might help Millie over her . . . obsessions. Not rowing on Wast Water, of course.” She smiled bleakly.

  “Graham’s doctor?” Jury thought back over Plant’s report. “Viner? Is that her name?”

  “I think so. When it happened, she wrote me a long letter, just the once. I got the impression she felt very guilty, very, about her own patient killing himself. And she was concerned about Millie.”

  “I’m surprised she’d write to such a termagant as Millie described.”

  “Oh, I doubt the doctor believed all of that. Anyway, I never heard from her again.”

  Wiggins was back with the tea, setting out the cups, being mother.

  “Delicious,” said Tommy, as she sipped.

  Wiggins beamed under her smile and returned to his notebook and pen. He had found a large mug for himself.

  “Do you see Millie often?” asked Jury.

  “I did. Until this.” She patted the brace. “I haven’t seen her in two years.”

  “But I’m surprised she wouldn’t come to you. If, as you say, she’s so loyal.”

  “Well, she doesn’t know, does she?” said Tommy, briskly enough to hide the turmoil she was clearly feeling. “I’ve never told her. And when she wanted to visit, I put her off. Millie still thinks I have my old, much larger flat; my old, much better job; my old, rather handsome fiancé. Now just an old flame.” Her smile was false.

  For a moment, Jury was silent, sensing something he didn’t much want to hear. “What happened to the old flame?”

  “This.” Again, she patted the brace. “We were in an accident. He had to drive his brand-new Alpha-Romeo at a hundred-per, didn’t he? He got out without a scratch. I didn’t.” She shrugged. “He left. His name was Ronnie.”

  There was a drawn-out silence during which Jury felt ill.

  Wiggins stared. “Frankly, miss, I could kill Ronnie.” He dropped his eyes, then, blushing for the unprofessionalism of it.

  “If she ever found out, Millie would, Sergeant.”

  And she laughed that exuberant laugh.

  35

  Wast Water couldn’t begin to compare with Windermere in length, and yet about a mile along the road, with the giant, reddish screes rising above the opposite shore, Melrose wondered how a lake could be so long, or how mountains could look so close and yet be so far. Great Gable was probably a good two miles beyond the pikes of Scafell, yet looked as if it were wedged between. Had he been out for a view he would have admitted that, yes, this was one worth seeing, unprettified, desolate, grim and even creepy. The lake was not the inviting blue of Windermere but a cold, dark gray, the mood of which Fellowes had captured perfectly.

  Melrose pulled the car over in a lay-by, braking beside some American car as long as a caravan—what was it? Cadillac? no, a Buick—and got out to stretch his legs in the chill wind and have a look at Fellowes’s map, which he didn’t know whether to trust or not. God, those mountains looked forbidding, yet they were as much for walkers as for climbers. More, really.

  A couple strolled by the shoreline, hand-in-hand. Coming toward him was an elderly man with a stick. When he drew nearer, Melrose put him down as one of the locals; he looked hardy as the Swaledale rams. His face was so seamed from his pursuits in the open it was leathery.

  The old man didn’t smile (they didn’t much, unless their glasses were empty) but politely touched his cap. “Hoo do?”

  “Very well, thanks. Just out for a walk.”

  “Droppy day.” He looked up at the heavy clouds. “Be gettin’ reean.” He looked across the lake. “Ya wasn’t about to walk along scree side, was ya? Looks easy, but ’tain’t. Toorns from scree to boulders arf’ter bit.”

  “I’m driving.”

  “Smert.”

  “Going up Scafell to Broad Stand.” He pronounced it “Scaw-fell.”

  “Doomb.” The old man pushed back his cap. “Anyways, ’tis ‘Scarf’l,’ ’tain’t no ward ‘scaw’; ’tis ‘sea’; means ‘steep’ y’see; steep fell.”

  Melrose was in no mood for a lesson in etymology. He poked the map in front of the elder and said, “Does that route look right?”

  The old man studied it, nodded. “T’Lard’s Rake’ll be hard after two thousand foot. Ya cud go round by Rake’s Progress, there.” He stubbed his finger into the map.

  “Thanks,” said Melrose.

  Again the man put his finger to his cap. Then he got in the Buick Le Sabre, gunned it up and drove off.

  • • •

  He had left the hamlet of Wasdale Head behind him over an hour ago. He looked at his printed map—the one that pointed out the rescue posts and kits—kits? Was it a do-it-yourself first-aid station? Did you mend your own broken leg?

  Melrose had purchased heavy walking shoes (which he doubted he would ever use again) and a rucksack (about which there was no doubt at all) in which he had stowed Fellowes’s painting, Millie’s sandwiches and little compass, and binoculars.

  He’d got past Brown Tongue to the Hollow Stones and he was already picking scree from his shoes, pulling off a sock and inspecting two toes for imminent corns and his heel for a blister. He was sitting (masochistically, he supposed) near the cross that marked a fatal accident to four walkers around the turn of the century. He thought of that other one they’d told him about—where was it? Red-something—the climber who’d fallen to his death and was for weeks watched over by his faithful dog. If Melrose fell off a precipice, he’d be watched over by a faithful buzzard.

  Rake’s Progress, which he had given up on, was as apt a name for the follies of walking as Hogarth had made it for the follies of drinking. That route had cost him a good mile and an hour and a half on his hands and knees (because of sliding stones) before he’d retraced his steps and decided to follow his original route after all.

  What was annoying about this harebrained walk was not so much that its object—a look at Broad Stand—would probably reveal nothing to him, but that there was all of this physical activity involved. And even that wouldn’t be so bad if, after he’d done it, he could stride—brave mountaineer—into the Old Contemptibles and tell them he’d planted a flag on top of one of the Scafell pikes. Hell’s bells, Wordsworth had picnics up there and Coleridge ambled up to write a letter. Coleridge had been an inveterate climber with little sense of danger.

  Rain was coming down steadily in splinters, and he was sorry he hadn’t got himself a cape. He was soaked through. He slogged on up the scree-gulley called Lord’s Rake and was made a little happier by seeing two walkers slogging down it in rubber capes. As they passed, the other two greeted him, happy as clams, and calling the whole thing absolutely “grand.” Melrose wished he had been a man for a view instead of a man for a fire, a snoring dog and a glass of Graham’s port.

  It took him two more hours to go up and over and up and over until he came, finally, to a fell and descended Scafell Crag. It wasn’t easy, but at least it was near the end.

  Finally, he came to it: one end of the Mickledore traverse and the steep pitch of rock where Virginia Holdsworth had gone over. Broad Stand did not look all that difficult as a means to get to Scafell Pike. But Melrose certainly wasn’t going to try to find out. He turned and went east for several yards until he saw the cleft in the crag called “Fat Man’s Agony.” It was deep and could easily accommodate someone of his build. He only wished he could get Agatha up here and try her out.

  Melrose went through it
to a platform. The walls were smooth stone and there was no way up or out that he could see unless, perhaps, one were a real climber.

  He went out and scrutinized the scene at the place where Francis Fellowes had set up his easel; Melrose took the painting from the rucksack. Fortunately, the rain had let up so that he could see something of the play of light and shadow. When Fellowes had done this, there had been more light, more of a contrast of light and shade. Melrose took the Polaroid out and shot three pictures from different vantage points.

  There was no question at all about it. No way out, no way down, no way back except by the dangerous Broad Stand or a retreat back the way one had come.

  It was late afternoon by now. Melrose packed up his gear and retreated.

  36

  “Bootle?” asked the girl in the tourist information office in Grasmere. “That’d be on the other side of Coniston Water.”

  “No. Boone. It’s only a hamlet,” said Jury. “Near Wasdale Head or Wast Water.”

  The girl, who had hair the color of daffodils and eyes the color of Ullswater, puckered her eyebrows over the map. “Yes. It’s here. But that means a longish sort of drive. On the ferry you could at least get across Lake Windermere to Hawkshead.” She looked up at Jury, smiling brightly.

  “So where do we get the ferry?”

  “It isn’t working.”

  “Then, I expect,” said Jury, trying to be patient, “we can’t take it.”

  Her smile dimmed. “It’s not in service till April. This is still March.”

  Since her tone was imploring, as if he might think she was to blame for the order of months, he asked her kindly, “How should we go to Boone, then?”

  “Umm?” The pretty girl seemed to be memorizing Jury’s face as she twisted a strand of daffodil hair round her finger.

  “Boone. Wast Water. And we’re in a bit of a hurry.”

  One would not have felt any urgency from watching Wiggins, who was slowly moving the postcard turnstile, taking out a card, putting it back, taking out another.