The Echo

by Minette Walters

  Out of interest, Barry searched the microfiche files for the Sunday Times of 17th June, 1990. He held his breath as Anne Cattrell's feature appeared with a full-face photograph of Peter Fenton, OBE.

  He was as sure as he could be that he was looking at Billy Blake.

  THE TRUTH ABOUT VERITY FENTON

  There have been few more effective smoke screens than that thrown up by Peter Fenton when he vanished from his house on July 3rd, 1988, leaving his wife's dead body on the marital bed. It began as a sensational Lucan-style murder hunt until Verity Fenton was found to have committed suicide. There followed a rampage through Peter's history, looking for mistresses and/or treachery when it was discovered that he had access to NATO secrets. Interest centered on his sudden trip to Washington, and easy links were drawn with the anonymous members of the Driberg syndicate. And where did Verity Fenton's suicide feature in all this? Barely at all is the answer because minds were focused on Peter's inexplicable disappearance and not on the reasons why a "neurotic" woman should want to kill herself. The coroner's verdict was "suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed" relying largely on her daughter's evidence that she had been "unnaturally depressed" while Peter was in Washington. Yet no real explanation for her depression was sought as the assumption seems to have been that Peter's disappearance meant that her reference in her suicide note to his betrayals was true, and these were shocking enough to drive a woman to suicide.

  Two years on from these bizarre events of July 1988, it is worth reassessing what is known about Peter and Verity Fenton. Perhaps the first thing to strike anyone researching this story is the complete lack of evidence to show that Peter Fenton was a traitor. He certainly had access to confidential NATO information during '85-'87, but sources within the organization admit that three different investigations have failed to trace any leakage of information to him or to his desk.

  By contrast, there is a wealth of evidence about his "sudden" trip to Washington at the end of June which was painted as a fishing expedition to find out if Driberg was about to name his associates. The details of the trip were made available at the time by his immediate superior at the Foreign Office but they were ignored in the scramble to prove Fenton a traitor. The facts are that he was briefed on June 6th to attend high-level discussions in Washington from June 29th to July 2nd. It is difficult now to understand how three weeks' notification came to be interpreted as "sudden" or why, if he were part of the Driberg syndicate, he should have waited until eight weeks after Driberg's arrest to go "fishing."

  The Fenton tragedy takes on a very different perspective if suggestions that Peter was a traitor are dismissed. The question that must then be asked is: What were the betrayals Verity talked about in her suicide note? She wrote: "Forgive me. I can't bear it anymore, darling. Please don't blame yourself. Your betrayals are nothing compared with mine.

  But why have Verity's own betrayals been so consistently underexamined? The simple answer is that, as the wife of a diplomat, she was always less interesting than her husband. What or who could a "neurotic" woman possibly have betrayed that could compete with treachery in the Foreign Office? Yet it was imperative, even in '88, that her betrayals be examined because she claimed they were worse than her husband's, and he was branded a spy.

  Born Verity Parnell in London on September 28th, 1937, she was brought up alone by her mother after her father. Colonel Parnell, died in 1940 during the evacuation from Dunkirk. She and her mother are believed to have spent the war years in Suffolk but returned to London in 1945. Verity was enrolled at a preparatory school before transferring to the Mary Bartholomew School for Girls in Barnes in May 1950. Although considered bright enough to go on to university, she chose instead to marry Geoffrey Standish, a handsome, thirty-two-year-old stockbroker who was fourteen years her senior, in August 1955. The marriage caused an estrangement between herself and her mother, and it is not clear whether she saw Mrs. Parnell again before the woman's death some time in the late '50s. Verity gave birth to a daughter, Marilyn, in 1960 and a son, Anthony, in 1966.

  The marriage was a disaster. Geoffrey was described, even by close friends, as "unpredictable." He was a gambler, a womanizer and a drunk, and it soon became clear to those who knew him that he was taking out his frustrations on his young wife. There was a history of "accidents," days of indisposition, a reluctance to do anything that might upset Geoffrey, an obsessive protectiveness towards her children. It is not surprising then that, according to one of her neighbors, Verity described her husband's death in March 1971 as a "blessed relief."

  Like so much in this story, the details surrounding Geoffrey's death are obscure. The only verifiable facts are these: he had arranged to spend the weekend alone with friends in Huntingdon; he phoned them at 5:00 p.m. on the Friday night to say he wouldn't be with them until the following day; at 6:30 a.m. on the Saturday, a police patrol recorded his car abandoned with an empty gas tank beside the All near Newmarket; at 10:30 a.m. his bruised and battered body was found sprawled in a ditch some two miles up the road; his injuries were consistent with having been run over by a car.

  On the face of it, it was a straightforward case of hit-and-run while Geoffrey was walking through the dark in search of gas, but because of the last-minute alterations in his plans, the police attempted to establish why he was in the vicinity of Newmarket. They had no success with that line of inquiry but, in the course of their investigation, they unearthed the unpalatable details of the man's character and lifestyle. Although they were never able to prove it, it is clear from the reports that the Cambridgeshire police believed he was murdered. Verity herself had a cast-iron alibi. She was admitted to St. Thomas's Hospital on the Wednesday before Geoffrey's death with a broken collarbone, fractured ribs, and a perforated lung, and was not discharged until the Sunday. Her children were being cared for by a neighbor, so there is some doubt about Geoffrey's whereabouts on the Friday. Certainly he did not go to work that day, and this led to police speculation that someone, whose sympathies lay with Verity, removed him from his house during the Thursday night and cold-bloodedly planned his murder over the Friday.

  Unfortunately, from the police point of view, no such sympathizer could be traced, and the file was closed due to lack of evidence. The coroner recorded a verdict of "manslaughter by person or persons unknown," and Geoffrey Standish's premature death remains unpunished to this day.

  Now, however, with our knowledge of the events of July 3rd, 1988, it is logical to look back from the suicide of a desperate woman and the disappearance of her second husband to Geoffrey's death in 1971, and ask whether the person whose sympathies lay with Verity was a young and impressionable Cambridge undergraduate called Peter Fenton. Newmarket is less than 20 miles from Cambridge, and Peter was known to make frequent visits to the family of a friend from his Winchester College days who lived ten doors away from Geoffrey and Verity Standish in Cadogan Square. There is no evidence to rebut Peter and Verity's own claims that their first meeting was at a party at Peter's friend's house in 1978, but it would be curious if their paths hadn't crossed earlier. Certainly, the friend, Harry Grisham, remembers the Standishes being regular guests at his parents' dinner parties.

  But, assuming Peter's involvement, what could have happened seventeen years after Geoffrey's murder to drive Verity into killing herself and Peter into vanishing? Did one of them betray the other inadvertently? Had Verity been ignorant of what Peter had done, and learned by accident that she'd married her first husband's murderer? We may never know, but it is a strange coincidence that two days before Peter left for Washington the following advertisement appeared in the personal column of the Times:

  "Geoffrey Standish. Will anyone knowing anything about the murder of Geoffrey Standish on the All near Newmarket 10/3/71 please write to Box 431."

  Anne Cattrell

  *11*

  Terry was put out to discover that his clothes were still wet when he finally stumbled out of his bedroom in an old T-shirt and shorts o
f Deacon's, rubbing his shaven head and yawning sleep away. "I can't go out in your god-awful stuff, Mike. I mean I've got a reputation to consider. Know what I'm saying? You'll have to go shopping on your own while I wait for this lot to dry."

  "Okay." Deacon consulted his watch. "I'd better get moving then, or I'll miss the chance to break Hugh's nose."

  "You really going to do that?"

  "Sure. I was also planning to buy you some new gear for a Christmas present, but if you're not there to try it on—" he shrugged. "I'll get you some reading books instead."

  Terry was back, fully dressed, in under three minutes. "Where did you put my coat?"

  "I chucked it in the bin downstairs while you were having your bath."

  "What you want to do that for?"

  "It had Walter's blood all over it." He took a Barbour from a hook on the wall. "You can borrow this till we buy you a new one."

  "I can't wear that," said Terry in disgust, refusing to take it. "Jesus, Mike, I'll look like one of those poncy gits who drive around in Range Rovers. Supposing we meet someone I know?"

  "Frankly," growled Deacon, "I'm more concerned about meeting someone I know. I haven't worked out yet how to explain why a foulmouthed, shaven-headed thug is—A—staying in my flat and—B—wearing my clothes."

  Terry put on the Barbour with bad grace. "Considering how much of my puff you smoked last night you ought to be in a better mood."

  Barry lay in bed and listened to his mother's heavy tread on the stairs. He held his breath while she held hers on the other side of his door. "I know you're awake," she said in the strangulated voice that seemed to start somewhere in her fat stomach and squeeze up out of her blubbery mouth. The door handle rattled. "Why have you locked the door?" The voice dropped to a menacing whisper. "If you're playing with yourself again, Barry, I'll find out."

  He didn't answer, only stared at the door while his fingers gripped and squeezed her imaginary neck. He fantasized about how easy it would be to kill her and hide her body somewhere out of sight—in the front parlor, perhaps, where it could sit for months on end with no visitors to disturb it. Why should someone so unlovely and unloved be allowed to live? And who would miss her?

  Not her son...

  Barry fumbled for his glasses and brought his world back into focus. He noticed with alarm that his hands were trembling again.

  >

  "Why haven't you ever been arrested?" asked Deacon as Terry selected a pair of Levi's, saying they'd be "a doddle to nick." (He made a habit of locating security cameras and staying blind side of them, Deacon noticed.)

  "What makes you think I ain't?"

  "You'd have been sent back into care."

  The boy shook his head. "Not unless I told them the truth about myself, which I ain't never done. Sure I've been arrested, but I was always with old Billy when it happened so he took the rap. He reckoned I'd have trouble with poofs if I went into an adult prison or be sent back to the shirt-lifter if I gave my right age, so it were him what did the time and not me." His gaze shifted restlessly about the shop. "How about a jacket, then? They're on the far side." He set off purposefully.

  Deacon followed behind. Were all adolescents so ruthlessly self-centered? He had an unpleasant picture of this terrible child latching on to protectors like a leech in order to suck them dry, and he realized that Lawrence's advice ibout keeping one step ahead was about as useful as pissing p the wind. Any halfway decent man with a sense of moral duty was putty in Terry's hands, he thought.

  "I like this one," said Terry, taking a dark work jacket off a coathanger and thrusting his arms into the sleeves. "What d'you think?"

  "It's about ten times too big for you."

  "I'm still growing."

  "I'm damned if I'll be seen walking around with a mobile Barrage balloon."

  "You ain't got the first idea of fashion, have you? Everyone wears things big these days." He tried the next size down. "Tight stuff's what guys like you pranced around in n the seventies, along with flares and beads and long hair and that. Billy said it was good to be young then, but I reckon you must've looked like a load of poofs."

  Deacon lifted his lip in a snarl. "Well, you've got nothing to worry about then," he said. "You look like a paid-up member of the National Front."

  "I ain't got a problem with that." Terry looked pleased with himself.

  Barry stood in the doorway and watched the back of his mother's head where she was slumped on a chair in front of the television, her feet propped on a stool. Sparse, bristly hair poked out of her pink scalp and cavernous snores roared from her mouth. The untidy room smelled of her farts, and a sense of injustice overwhelmed him. It was a cruel fate that had taken his father and left him to the mercies of a ... his fingers flexed involuntarily ... PIG!

  Terry found a shop that was selling Christmas decorations and posters. He selected a reproduction of Picasso's Woman in a Chemise and insisted Deacon buy it.

  "Why that one?'' Deacon asked him.

  "She's beautiful."

  It was certainly a beautiful painting, but whether or not the woman herself was beautiful depended on taste. It marked the transition between Picasso's blue and rose periods, so the subject had the cold, emaciated melancholy of the earlier period enlivened by the pink and ochre hues of the later. "Personally, I prefer a little more flesh," said Deacon, "but I'm happy to have her on my wall."

  "Billy drew her more than anyone else," said Terry surprisingly.

  "On the pavements?"

  "No, on the bits of paper we used to burn afterwards. He copied her off of a postcard to begin with, but he got so good at it that he could do her out of his head in the end." He traced his finger along the clear lines of the woman's profile and torso. "See, she's real simple to draw. Like Billy said, there's no mess in this picture."

  "Unlike the Leonardo?"

  "Yeah."

  It was true, thought Deacon. Picasso's woman was glorious in her simplicity—and so much more delicate than da Vinci's plumper Madonna. "Maybe you should become an artist, Terry. You seem to have an eye for a good painting."

  "I've been up Green Park once or twice to look at the stuff on the railings, but that's crap. Billy always said he'd take me to a proper gallery, but he never got round to it. They probably wouldn't've let us in anyway, not with Billy roaring drunk most of the time." He was flicking through the poster rack. "What d'you reckon to this? You reckon this painter saw hell the same way Billy's lady did? Like being alone and afraid in a place that doesn't make sense to you?" —M-yi0* *

  He had pulled out Edvard Munch's The Scream, with its powerful, twisted imagery of a man screaming in terror before the elemental forces of nature. "You really do have an eye." said Deacon in admiration. "Did Billy draw this one as well?"

  "No, he wouldn't have liked it. There's too much red in it. He hated red because it reminded him of blood."

  "Well, I'm not having that on my wall or I'll think about hell every time I look at it." And blood, he thought. He wished he and Billy had less in common.

  They settled on reproductions of the Picasso (for its simplicity), Manet's Luncheon in the Studio (for its harmonious symmetry—"that one works real good," said Terry), Hi-jronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights (for its color and interest—"it's well brilliant," said Terry), and anally Turner's The Fighting Temeraire (for its perfection in every respect—"Shit!" said Terry. "That's one beautiful picture.")

  "What happened to Billy's postcard of the Picasso?" asked Deacon as he was paying.

  "Tom burnt it."

  "Why?"

  "Because he was well out of order. He and Billy were drunk as lords, and they'd been having a row about women. Tom said Billy was too ugly ever to've had one, and Billy said he couldn't be as ugly as Tom's missus or Tom wouldn't've walked out on her. Everyone laughed and Tom was gutted."

  "What did that have to do with the postcard?''

  "Nothing much, except Billy really loved it. He kissed it sometimes when he was drunk. Tom was t
hat riled at having his missus insulted, he went for something he knew'd send Billy mad. It worked, too. Billy damn near throttled Tom for burning it, then he burst into tears and said truth was dead anyway so nothing mattered anymore. And that were the end of it."

  It was six years since Deacon had last visited the Red Lion. It had been his local when he and Julia had lived in Fulham, and Hugh had been in the habit of meeting him there a couple of times a month on his way home to Putney. The outside had changed very little over the years, and Deacon half-expected to find the same landlord and the same regulars inside when he pushed open the doors. But it was a room full of strangers, where the only recognizable face was Hugh's. He was sitting at a table in the far corner, and he raised a tentative hand in greeting when he saw Deacon.

  "Hello, Michael," he said, standing up as they approached. "I wasn't sure if you'd come."

  "Wouldn't have missed it for the world. It might be the only chance I ever get to flatten you." He beckoned Terry forward. "Meet Terry Dalton. He's staying with me for Christmas. Terry, meet Hugh Tremayne, my brother-in-law."

  Terry gave his amiable grin and stuck out a bony hand. "Hi. How'ya doing?"

  Hugh looked surprised but shook the offered hand. "Very well, thank you. Are we—er—-related?"

  Terry appraised his round face and overweight figure. "I don't reckon so, not unless you were putting it about a bit in Birmingham fifteen years ago. Nah," he said. "I think my dad was probably a bit taller and thinner. No offense meant, of course."

  Deacon gave a snort of laughter. "I think Hugh was wondering if you were related to my second wife, Terry."

  "Oh, right. Why didn't he say that, then?"