by Gary Newman
‘No, Leah! Grandfather didn’t kill Rawbeck – I’m absolutely convinced of that: in his notebook he’s genuinely puzzled as to what could’ve happened in the sleazy room above the pub that night. His account’s just, well . . . right.’
‘So now we’ve lined up Rawbeck himself, your grandad, the rich “queen”, Toland, Forbuoys the flute player, and possibly the poet and explorer, Rivers, too, at the Camden Convocation on the night of 10th November 1899. But were there others present? Not much likelihood of finding out now, of course, after all this time . . .’
‘Don’t say that, Leah! Look at how much we’ve discovered already – and all of it unknown to the biographers and theorizers about Rawbeck and his fate.’
‘I must say it’s proving excellent therapy for you,’ Leah remarked with her smoky chuckle. ‘You’re all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!’
I sat back in my chair and gently pushed away the plate with the ruins of my meal. Who better to establish the truth about the first Sebastian Rolvenden than his grandson? I then returned to the matter in hand.
‘I think we can rule out Toland – provisionally, at any rate – from the list of main suspects in Rawbeck’s murder.’
‘He of the wet-kiss whisper,’ my companion said with a chuckle. ‘Pathic type – he’d have been the one lying on the bed awaiting the lad of his dreams. The initiative would’ve had to come from young Sebastian, and there’s no indication he was that way given, either active or passive.’
‘His revulsion toward Toland’s pretty clear in his notebook entry, anyway.’
‘Toland could’ve had other motivations,’ Leah suggested. ‘According to your grandad in his account, Toland was Rawbeck’s creditor. There are a number of reasons why Toland might’ve been paying him off: for procuring young men for his queenly tastes, for instance, or for arranging drugs for him and so on.’
‘As well as the obvious one,’ I said. ‘Blackmail. Remember that at the time Oscar Wilde had hardly finished his two years’ hard labour for merely paddling in the shallows of “the love that dare not speak its name”. If it was blackmail, then Toland had an excellent motive for doing Rawbeck in.’
‘Or maybe a jealous spat over a young man got out of hand, and Toland went for Rawbeck with a razor.’
‘I’d like to know in what order they all left the Convocation that night,’ I said.
‘In any event, I’d say Rawbeck left last, as he was the host.’
‘We don’t know for sure that the Convocation was in Rawbeck’s house – he had more than one hideaway scattered round London. For that matter, it’s very possible that Tarquin Rivers was host, since his house is in the right area.’
‘Well,’ Leah said, ‘my money’s on Rawbeck as master of ceremonies that night. Rivers strikes me as the ironical observer type: he was a travel writer, for heaven’s sake.’
‘He certainly seemed committed where my grandfather was concerned.’
‘Ah, yes – dedicating his poems of exile to “S. R.” But, then again, as far as clinching evidence goes, it might just as well have been to “Sally Robinson”.’
‘Nevertheless, it all ties in.’
‘And what about the crosses marked on the old London street plan?’ Leah changed tack. ‘You said they were mostly pubs.’
‘Mmm . . . but not all date back as far as 1899. Clearly, Grandfather was trying to track down the one with the room above where he found – or hallucinated – Rawbeck’s body. Some at least of the modern buildings I sussed out could’ve been built on the sites of pubs standing in my grandfather’s time. ‘ ‘No sign of the magic window at the head of the stairs?’
I shook my head. ‘Not after a hundred years and two world wars,’ then, changing the subject: ‘Leah, what physical effects would taking a magic mushroom potion have had on my grandfather? It may be important in assessing his state of mind on the night of the murder, as well as his movements.’
‘In the case of Psilocybe chionophila – the Lapland Mushroom – severe gut-ache on taking the stuff – that’s described in his notebook account – then, after half an hour or so, the Wacky World effects he also describes: euphoria, sense of detachment and consequent loss of any sense of time, all combined with an extraordinary sense of focus on things – hence his stuff about being a “seer” – and possible synaesthetic effects – tasting colours, smelling sounds, and so on – including extreme sensitivity to stimuli on the skin. That’s the intense stage, during which, well, to all intents and purposes he wouldn’t really have been in this world.’
‘How long would the intense stage have lasted?’
‘About three hours, depending on the dose and makeup of the subject, but there could be effects of varying strength and frequency over nine hours.’
‘Including the periods when my grandfather was actually zonked out in cabs to and from the murder room – again, if that wasn’t a hallucinatory effect, too?’
‘Total unconsciousness isn’t typical of the state, but what he took in recollection to have been sleep or unconsciousness could simply have been memory blanks caused by the mushroom.’
‘So we’re talking about twelve hours or so during which my grandfather was effectively no longer in control of his thoughts or actions?’
‘That’s about the size of it: anything could’ve happened within that period without his really knowing about it. How old did you say your grandad was when he died?’
‘Seventy-five.’
‘He must’ve had a constitution like a locomotive! Often the case with these frail, ethereal-looking little guys. And wasn’t there a missing masterpiece that Rawbeck was supposed to have been working on when he disappeared? Maybe that was what the Vickybird pinched from your grandad in Paris?’
‘No, they’re different things: it was some drawings the Vickybird stole from Grandfather. Rawbeck’s missing masterpiece was believed to have been entitled The Ruffian on the Stair.’
‘Who’s the Ruffian?’ Leah asked.
‘And where’s the bloody stair!’ I protested, as we both got up laughing from the table, and, slinging on our coats, took our trays back to the counter.
‘What next, then?’ Leah asked as we moved towards the exit.
‘I want to find out more about Toland. He was clearly well off, but didn’t walk the Victorian businessman’s walk. I suspect he belonged to some aesthetic in-clique of the time.’
‘All that camp Mapp and Lucia stuff, you mean? Mauve music at the Café Royal, and so on?’
‘That sort of thing, and he sounds pretty flamboyant, too: a character like that could hardly have escaped the memoir writers of the time. I think a good, long session in the London Library tomorrow . . .’
‘Which is Good Friday.’ Leah brought me back to earth.
I cursed my absentmindedness, and I couldn’t borrow my companion’s university library ticket for today, either, since they had photos on them.
‘Leah, could you be an absolute star, and –’
‘No, Seb – I’ve work to do – you know I’m setting exams. There must be dozens of books on Eng. Lit. in the nineteenth century in the stacks, and I simply can’t spare the time . . .’
‘Leah,’ I wheedled, trying to conceal the urgency of growing obsession with a tone of mock tragedy, ‘my psychological health – my very identity – may be at stake, and you’ve said yourself what a deal of good this new interest’s doing me.’
Leah’s nose wrinkled as we crossed the bleak concrete helipad of the central university concourse, and then she relented.
‘I may pop down for ten minutes when I’m finished at the department, but I can’t promise.’
‘Drinks on me at the Crown afterwards – seven-thirtyish?’
Another olive scowl, and I grabbed her round the waist and nuzzled the scent of her black hair.
‘Talk about a star,’ I said. ‘You’re a positive Oscar!’
I drove back home and got on with the Spanish translation job that had come in that morning’s e
mail, and at four o’clock, Pat Hague rang me.
‘Frank said you asked for me yesterday?’
‘Yes, Pat, he said he didn’t know where you were.’
‘In the university library, as a matter of fact, where I’ve been most of the last few weeks: your psychologist friend will confirm that.’
‘Leah? Ah, yes – she’s been looking up a few things for me. In the English section, that would’ve been?’
‘Where else? That’s where Dylan’s to be found. What is it you want? Me?’
I ignored the tease.
‘Pat, you said on Sunday that you’d been talking to Reet at the Holt the other week – you and Frank had been up to Walberswick for some auction.’
‘Yes?’
‘Has any stranger asked you where she lives recently?’
‘No, what sort of stranger had you in mind?’
‘Shortish, stumpy man, with short grey hair, big, baby-blue eyes and a crooning voice with an Irish accent. Drives a light-coloured Nissan Micra, and may have some connection with Jersey.’
There was a pause, then Pat laughed.
‘Dear me, Seb – the pangs of jealousy, is it? A bit of competition up at the Holt? I shouldn’t worry, though – however your ex copes with the needs of nature, you’re still the one she’s carrying the torch for. So this stranger at the Holt was “driving a light-coloured Nissan Micra, and may have some connection with Jersey . . .” You sound like a Crimestoppers voice-over! A propos, remember the connection we had in Jersey . . .’
I was being well and truly wound up, but something occurred to me: maybe this conversation would turn out to be of some use after all.
‘Pat, you’re an English don –’
‘Don’t remind me! So?’
‘For research purposes, where did well-off British artistic gays hang out round about 1900?’
‘Capri: Compton Mackenzie sends that scene up in Vestal Fire. It’s a quite funny novel, in a faded way. Any particular figure in mind?’
‘A man called Toland – I don’t know if he was a writer – I don’t think so.’
‘Mmm . . . name doesn’t ring any bells with me.’
‘Thanks, anyway. Oh, and Pat . . . please lay off Reet.’
The laugh again. ‘Conscience pricking, Seb? That’s rich coming from you – if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.’
‘All the same . . .’
She just chuckled again, and my hand began to tremble, and I crashed the telephone receiver down in its cradle. It was true what she’d said about my adultery, and I hated myself anew for it, but I hated her a thousand times more for rubbing my nose in it. Reet had never slept around when we’d been together, and I . . . But here we go, round and round, again – no, I had this funny guy Toland to look into, one of the jokers who’d been with my grandfather at the Diabolist do in Camden in 1899.
I was really looking forward to what Leah might turn up in the university library again, and what was that Pat had just said about seeing her there the day before in the English section? Funny Leah hadn’t mentioned seeing Pat there, but it was a biggish place, and no doubt Leah would have been buried in some study carrel or other. I recalled something, and smiled. The only other academic psychologist I’d ever known had been a friend at university, and she’d ended up living in a cave in Almeria with twenty-odd dogs. Leah, though, was one psychologist who wasn’t barmy, and I wasn’t going to let Pat spoil things between us.
Leah joined me that evening in the Crown Inn in Wivenhoe, and, after I’d brought our drinks back from the bar to our window table, she pulled a tattered old book with a red plastic flash on the spine from her bag and handed it over without a word. I put our glasses on the table, sat down, and read out the title further up the spine of the book:
‘Black Wine: Memoirs of a Victorian Decadent by Leon Asche.’
‘I found mentions of Toland in a few books on the period,’ Leah said, after she’d taken a draught from her pint. ‘But no more than mentions: Jimmy Toland was also there, sort of thing. This author, Asche, actually knew him later on in life – the book’s really a summing-up of the period.’
‘Twenty years after the period,’ I remarked, on glancing inside at the publication date of the first impression – 1921.
‘The author only gives Toland a short passage,’ Leah went on, ‘and he obviously assumes the reader’ll know all about the basics of Toland’s life – pity he never seems to have published anything himself. I’ve marked the page with a slip of paper.’
I eagerly turned to the marked page, which was in the chapter entitled ‘Naval Occasions’.
‘Last para,’ Leah prompted.
I turned to the spot and read on:
Also still occasionally to be found greeting the Jack Tars on the Chatham ‘up’ platform at Waterloo was the brave, forlorn form of Jimmy Toland, his familiar chubby delineaments now shielded with rouge against the ravages of time.
Returning from business in Rochester one autumn evening in 1913, my eye caught his on the crowded platform. We exchanged a few conventional words – can anything be more mutually embarrassing than to bump into a friend from better times? – and he moved up the platform again, and so out of my ken.
I stood dismayed for a moment amid the steam and smut as I recalled the ‘days of redder roses and madder wine’ in his lovely villa above the bay in Posilippo before financial reverses around the time of the Diamond Jubilee confined him to his little flat in Mornington Crescent. I do not know how – or indeed, if – he weathered the inflation after the war, for I have never seen him since . . .
Then the writer went on to someone else he’d known. Posilippo was near Naples, wasn’t it? Pat Hague hadn’t been far wrong with Capri, which was just across the Bay. I took a gulp of my Guinness.
‘The Diamond Jubilee was in 1897,’ I remarked to Leah.
‘And Rawbeck disappeared “around” that time – 1899, to be precise – so could blackmail have been at the root of Toland’s “financial reverses”?’
‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘There’s a touch of the “dog that didn’t bark in the night” about this.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘After Rawbeck vanishes, the rest of the known members of the so-called Convocation all do runners, in one way or another – my grandfather to Paris, followed by Rawbeck’s ex-models, Carrie Bugle and the Vickybird, Tarquin Rivers to the Near East and poor flautist Philip Forbuoys to the bottom of the Thames. All except Toland. He does the opposite – he apparently never sets foot outside England again . . .’
‘You think that speaks for his innocence? Then why does his money drain away over the years?’
‘If he was paying blackmail, it goes on for a long time – but we’re building bricks without straw.’
I thanked Leah profusely for her efforts in the university library and left the matter there for the moment. I asked her how her day had gone, after which I drove her back to her flat on campus, where we had a bite of supper before I drove home to the lighthouse. Somehow I couldn’t settle down to anything there – too many ‘thoughts that could not be thought’ – so I just decided to turn in earlyish.
I was fastening the bolt on the back door when a sharp clink, as of something being rapped sharply against glass, reached me from outside. The shed . . . I listened for the wind – maybe a rake handle being blown against the window of the shed – but all was still. I had all sorts of things in the shed other than garden tools – better check it out. I walked round to the cupboard where my fuse-boxes were housed and took out the torch I kept there, then returned to the back door, quietly slid the bolt free and slipped out into the garden.
In the cold moonlight all seemed OK on the side of the shed that faced the house door, so I made my way down the path and behind the shed, where a beech hedge shielded the garden from the little byroad that turned off the headland. In the leafy gully so formed I almost walked into the broad, anoraked back of someone who was plying the ray of a torch
through the window of the shed.
I was about to pull back for safety, when the figure swung round, and I took in the face – monk-like in the hood of the anorak – of the short, bullet-headed man who’d spoken to me in the National Gallery on the Monday of that week. The candid blue eyes were round and intent now, like those of a startled baby who’s just been caught in the act of doing something naughty. The man’s free hand shot into the pocket of his waterproof, and with a click pulled out something which flashed in the torchlight. I flinched instinctively as I made out the blade – dog-legged for action – of an old-fashioned cutthroat razor.
Chapter Seven
Suddenly, the intruder relaxed, and, smiling, flicked the razor shut and flung it to me. I fielded it with my free hand.
‘Handsome thing!’ he cooed. ‘What d’you make of the initials?’
‘Who the hell . . .’ I spluttered.
‘Oh, excuse me . . .’
The man in the anorak fished in his pocket again and produced a business card, which I took with the forefinger and thumb of the hand that was still palming the razor. I took a step back, and, still blinking up distrustfully from moment to moment, shone the beam of my torch on to the card and read: Liam Brogan, Antiques, with a good St Helier address off Halkett Place, and the usual contact information underneath.
‘It’s pretty chilly for late April, isn’t it?’ Brogan hinted pleasantly.
I eyed him suspiciously again, and he threw up his arms.
‘Frisk away!’
I reflected that, if he’d been bent on real mischief, he’d have used the thing with the warm, smooth handle I was still clutching.
‘Straight ahead and round the shed,’ I directed, ‘and keep well in front of me.’
He went ahead of me indoors, and into the sitting room, where he installed himself in a cane armchair in front of the fire, which I revived with a split log. I put down my torch on the side table and glanced at the razor again. Yellowing ivory, with gold trimmings, and a cartouche in the same metal in the middle, with the cursive initials D.B. R. I opened the razor gingerly and examined the broad, concave blade with its copperplate inscription: Chas.Beffreys, Piccadilly. I gave the edge of the blade the merest brush with the side of my thumb, and shuddered involuntarily.