The Ruffian on the Stair

by Gary Newman

  A thin, familiar hand shot up from the crowd, and I stood on tiptoe again – Reet, for Pete’s sake! Reet was bidding against eighteen hundred pounds . . .

  ‘Eighteen-fifty, madam – do I hear nineteen hundred anywhere? I’ll take nineteen hundred . . .’

  A grim-faced nod from a stocky, sharp-suited man just in front of me.

  ‘Nineteen hundred, sir – do I hear nineteen-fifty? – one-nine-five-oh?’

  The gavel was poised in mid-air, and you could have heard a pin drop, then a shapely brown hand, with a glittering gold chain at the wrist – Pat Hague’s hand – shot up with a wiggle from the crowd.

  ‘Against you, then, sir, at nineteen-fifty – at nineteen hundred and fifty pounds . . .’

  The stocky man in front of me nodded again, and muttered something into his mobile, then, wooden-faced, put it back in his pocket and folded his arms. There was a flurry from Pat’s patch, and her hand shot up again, waving this time for good measure.

  ‘With you, darling,’ the auctioneer barked, to laughter. ‘Don’t worry . . . Two thousand now, sir – it’s against you – do I hear two thousand and fifty?’

  The stocky man kept his arms folded, and just shook his head at the auctioneer.

  ‘I shall sell, then, at two thousand – selling at two thousand – another fifty anywhere?’

  A tense couple of moments, then the gavel crashed down on the pulpit top.

  ‘Sold to the lady in the buff costume . . .’

  Pat waved her paddle – No. 33 – frantically in the air.

  ‘No. 33. Now Lot No. 52 – a piece of delightful celadon-glaze . . .’

  Pat suddenly appeared beside me, waving the numbered paddle under my nose.

  ‘You must be barmy!’ I gasped.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. I see no reason why I shouldn’t make a tidy profit on the print – unless, of course, I decide to make you a present of it. But in that case, you’d have to come and get it, wouldn’t you . . .’

  Chapter Ten

  I walked back into the saleroom to take a final look round, and Brogan buttonholed me.

  ‘An interesting response to the Rawbeck print,’ he said.

  ‘You know the lady?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, with a weariness I couldn’t conceal, ‘I do know the lady . . .’

  Pat could take a running jump, I thought, if she imagined I was going to run after her for the print. I could remember the details of it without playing games with her, the main thing being that one of the nude young men in the sketch was my grandfather and namesake, Sebastian Rolvenden.

  ‘Why didn’t you put it up for sale in London?’ I asked Brogan. ‘I’m sure it’d have fetched far more there than a couple of thousand.’

  ‘Every object has its fate, Mr Rolvenden.’

  With a civil nod, the dealer left me and rejoined the crowd of onlookers and bidders. I stood in the entrance portal for a while – by then the tall Joe Cool in dark glasses had left the wall to prop itself up – and took in the crowd for a final time. No longer any sign of Pat or Reet, and, apart from Brogan, no one else I knew. I turned and went out into the street again, glancing at my wristwatch: ten past twelve – just time for a quick pub lunch before I set off to keep my medical appointment in Wivenhoe at two.

  I was on the road again by twelve-thirty, and as I made for the A12, I noticed that the red flag was up over the cluster of black fishermen’s huts down round the Blyth estuary: that meant the fleet was back, and there’d be fresh fish on sale. Pity I hadn’t time to stop . . .

  As I drove, I pondered over the events that had just passed in the saleroom: Pat’s action in buying the Rawbeck print I could understand – winding me up, as well as acquiring a no-doubt saleable article – but Reet, why on earth would she have wanted the print? For one thing, they weren’t exactly rolling in money at the Holt, and eighteen hundred quid would have made an appreciable increase in their overdraft. No, moneywise, it was crazy . . . And it wasn’t for the intrinsic beauty of the object, as neither Reet nor Paul was artistic in that way. It must be something to do with my grandfather, then. Reet had been to the viewing, and, at any rate, must’ve recognized my grandfather in one of the young chaps in the sketch.

  There was another aspect, I supposed: as well as being my grandfather, Sebastian the Elder was Paul’s great-grandfather, too, so maybe Reet had tried to buy the sketch for my son. But surely not – Paul had always pooh-poohed my interest in someone who for him had been no more than – in his words – an ‘old Victorian vicar’ . . . And what – or who – had prompted Reet to go to the auction-viewing in the first place? These speculations occupied me till I’d crossed into Essex and reached my doctor’s surgery in the old detached Victorian house outside Wivenhoe just in time for my appointment.

  ‘And how long have you been off your medication?’ was Dr Cousins’ first question after he’d taken my blood pressure, which was tolerable.

  ‘Oh, the best part of a fortnight, doctor.’

  ‘And you’re sleeping well without your tablets?’

  ‘Pretty well.’

  ‘That’s good – very good!’

  The thin, bald man’s blue eyes glittered at me over the oblong lenses.

  ‘So many depressions are situational,’ he went on, ‘and good sleep patterns are largely a matter of habit – it’s always good to be able to get along without drugs. Are you writing again?’

  ‘Mmm . . . as busy as ever.’

  ‘Excellent! That’s a sure sign of recovery. Have you been under any severe emotional stress lately?’

  I thought of Pat’s winding me up, but now I had Leah – my rock.

  ‘That side of my life’s going well at the moment, doctor – touch wood . . .’

  ‘Amen to that! It counts for so much . . . Anything else since I last saw you?’

  I described the odd memory blank I’d had on the Monday, when I couldn’t recall anything between eleven in the morning and nearly six in the evening. Dr Cousins’ brow wrinkled into a frown.

  ‘That’s quite a long time, and you’re sure that you went through all your normal daily schedule, in spite of the loss of memory?’

  ‘Yes, just as I’ve described: it’s as if I’d gone through the day as planned, only I wasn’t there at the time.’

  ‘Quite. It can’t be an after-effect of ECT, either, since you haven’t had the treatment. What’s your normal alcohol consumption?’

  ‘Oh, a couple of glasses of wine with dinner, usually, and a pint of beer now and again. I’m not normally a spirits-drinker.’

  ‘Did you feel faint at any time before your memory lapse? Any headache? Dizziness or difficulties with breathing?’

  ‘No, I felt busy and purposeful – just getting on with things.’

  ‘And did your tongue feel at all sore afterwards – after you’d come to yourself while you were planting the shallots in the garden?’

  ‘My tongue?’

  ‘Folk tend to bite their tongues in epileptic fits, but I see that doesn’t apply in your case.’

  The doctor excused himself, and tapped rapidly on the keyboard of his computer for a minute or so.

  ‘Mmm . . . no clues in your file . . . Tell me, Mr Rolvenden, is there any record of fits or seizures in your family?’

  ‘No – nothing of that kind. Nothing at all.’

  ‘And have you had any blows on the head, any sudden shocks that might have triggered this incident on Monday?’

  ‘No, only . . .’

  ‘Yes, go on . . .’

  I told him how on going to the front gate on the Monday morning to take the package with the shallots from the delivery man, I’d leant on the unlatched gate, and the man had had to grab my arms to save me from falling forward.

  ‘And you didn’t actually fall, or hurt yourself in any way?’

  ‘Not in any way, doctor. Is there anything wrong with me?’

  Dr Cousins settled back in his swivel chair for a moment, contemplating me.

/>   ‘Mmm . . .’ he murmured. ‘Amnesia rather than actual disturbance of consciousness, and no apparent loss of physical function at all. And you’ve never experienced anything like this before? For as long as six or seven hours at a stretch, that is?’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  The doctor looked serious, and leant forward towards me.

  ‘Mr Rolvenden,’ he began solemnly, ‘d’you know what I think?’

  I gulped, anticipating the worst.

  ‘No, doctor – what?’

  ‘I think you’re doing fine! As for this memory lapse, it’s in all probability a one-off. We all sink into reveries, experience absentmindedness from time to time, but I’m willing to put money on your being in full control. Now you’re a brain-worker, and that lays you particularly open to mental effects such as the one you’ve described – have you anything in your work at the moment, for instance, that you’re finding particularly challenging?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’m researching the most unusual and engrossing subject that’s ever come my way . . .’

  Dr Cousins spread out his hands.

  ‘There you are. Perhaps you’re overdoing things – just working too hard. Why not plant more shallots!’

  And that was that. Good, then – my session with the doctor had gone very breezily. I made for my car, and decided to drive straight up to the university in search of Leah, in order to give her all my news. As I drove, I had a bit of an afterthought to Dr Cousins’ questioning: strictly speaking, I had had a serious memory lapse before. At the time of my final family row with Reet and Paul in the cottage at Dunstanburgh, in Northumberland, more than a year before. It was something I didn’t care to remember in any circumstances . . .

  I’d had the row at the time, stormed out of the cottage, and the next thing I’d remembered was sitting in my parked car on the edge of some cliffs. I recalled the turf landscape, the wheeling gulls overhead, the fresh wind in my hot eyes through the open window, and the sweep of the bay, with, in the sunshine, the dazzling chalk of the cliffside.

  The next thing I’d remembered after that had been sitting in my then-rented cottage in Essex – Frank Hague had later found the lighthouse for me after my final split with Reet – and wondering how I’d got there from Northumberland. Just a gap. The cliffs had seemed significant at the time, though – I’ve never felt easy around cliffs . . .

  Well, no use going over that again – leave it alone and get on with my life. At the university, I discovered that Leah was in confab with some of her departmental colleagues, so I left a message and jumped into a lift to the Level Five general common room, where I lolled for a while over coffee and magazines until, at around four, Leah came up and joined me.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you . . .’ we both said in unison, then burst out laughing as Leah flopped down in the next seat and put down her document folder on the little table in front.

  ‘You go first,’ I said from the drinks dispenser, as I got a coffee for her.

  ‘I had some business in London this morning,’ Leah began, taking a sheet from her folder. ‘At the City University. In fact, my car’s still there, worse luck – I had to call in the AA. Broken lead in the steering. I thought that, with the Family Records Centre in Myddelton Street being so handy, I might as well pop in, and voilà!’

  My companion’s rounded arm shot out, and I took the proffered printout, handing her her coffee with my free hand. I sat down and read the contents of the sheet, which was a photocopy of a page of the 1891 Census, with the Ring of Bells pub, landlady Mrs Bella Jean Nye, underlined by Leah.

  ‘The lady who was murdered in that pub in 1893,’ I recapped, ‘according to the info the Hackney Local Studies people sent me. Lefevre Road and the Ring of Bells weren’t far from the Home in the East and Soundings Alley, mentioned in Grandfather’s notebook.’

  ‘But look who she had working for her . . .’

  I scanned down the list of the hapless landlady’s resident staff in 1891, then gave a low whistle at the last name entered.

  ‘Laurence Victor Pidgeon,’ I quoted aloud. ‘Age: 16. Boots and cellar boy . . .’

  ‘The Vickybird certainly seems to have seen life,’ Leah remarked, then, echoing my thoughts: ‘I wonder if he was still pub boots-cum-cellar boy when Mrs Nye was murdered two years after the census was taken?’

  ‘If he’d had a hand in the murder,’ I speculated, ‘and Rawbeck had somehow found out about it, what a blackmail handle he’d have had over the Vickybird!’

  ‘And what a motive the Vickybird would’ve then had for doing Rawbeck in!’

  I put down my coffee beaker and stared across the tired Eighties decor.

  ‘Leah, I wonder if the Ring of Bells was . . .’

  ‘The pub below the room your grandad woke up in beside Rawbeck’s body? Very unlikely, I’d have thought: if the Vickybird had already been involved in one murder committed there, he’d hardly have come back six years later to dirty his own doorstep, so to speak. It would’ve been an insane risk to have taken.’

  ‘I’m not saying the Vickybird was necessarily there when Rawbeck was murdered in 1899, any more than that his was the actual hand that struck poor Mrs Nye down six years before, but he may have been on the inside in both capers. The fact that both crimes were committed in such a strictly defined area – triangulated in my grandfather’s notebook – draws us farther and farther away from coincidence as an explanation.’

  ‘I’m with you there – something was definitely rotten in the state of Hackney Marshes.’

  I thought about the legend of Rawbeck’s lost masterpiece, The Ruffian on the Stair, and had an idea.

  ‘Leah, remember the missing Rawbeck painting – the one he was supposed to be working on when he disappeared?’

  ‘Mmm . . . The Ruffian on the Stair. Go on . . .’

  ‘Let’s just suppose – kick the idea around – that the Vickybird had modelled for the Ruffian – Death – and there was an actual staircase in the painting . . .’

  Leah’s eyes took on a sombre expression.

  ‘A staircase,’ she went on, ‘with a distinctive, ruby-and-blue window on the top landing . . .’

  ‘And let’s further suppose it had been the staircase of the pub where the Vickybird or his mates had done in the landlady in 1893 . . .’

  ‘Seeing the painting,’ Leah carried on my line of thought, ‘any local copper might’ve recognized the staircase window, and recognized the Vickybird in it from the earlier investigations into the murder of Mrs Nye . . .’

  ‘Not evidence against him, but it might have amused Rawbeck to watch the Vickybird squirm a bit – remind him of where he stood . . .’

  ‘Brr . . .’ Leah said, then brought me back to earth: ‘But how did you get on at the auction in Walberswick, and how did your appointment with Dr Cousins go?’

  I brought her up to date with my doings, and in particular Pat’s extraordinary bid for the Rawbeck print of my grandfather and the other, unidentified young man.

  ‘Hmph,’ Leah grunted, an ironical smile dimpling her olive cheek.

  ‘You don’t seem surprised,’ I remarked.

  ‘Oh, no – I’m sure a chance to wind you up big-time would have come cheap to Pat for a couple of grand – the bidder’s paddle you had in your hand would’ve been like a red rag to a bull.’

  ‘I only had that as cover – I was there to have a look at the company, not to buy anything, but I suppose she wasn’t to know that.’

  ‘No doubt Frank’ll sell the print on at a whacking profit, knowing him, but be warned, Seb, Pat means to get you – she’s not the sort of woman you taste like a hard chocolate, then put back in the box.’

  ‘And I still can’t fathom what on earth prompted Reet to bid eighteen hundred quid for the print,’ I went on. ‘I wonder if someone’s been getting at her?’

  ‘Maybe part of Pat’s winding-up operation – didn’t you say Pat told you she’d been up to see Reet at her smallholding?�
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  ‘Mmm . . . if that woman . . .’

  Leah reached across and gave my hand a squeeze.

  ‘Never mind, love,’ she said. ‘The main thing is that the doctor’s given you the all-clear.’

  The conversation then changed tack to medical matters, till, near five, I invited the carless Leah home for dinner, and she spent the night with me at the lighthouse. Next morning, as I was driving her back to the university, I needed to stop at a filling station, and we both got a taste of Pat Hague’s persistence.

  ‘Oh-oh . . .’ Leah had muttered through the car window. I craned round, to see Pat’s little everyday car pulling up at the pump next to the one I was using. She got out of the car – she was dressed in a windcheater over a tracksuit, and with trainers on her feet, suggesting a visit to some sort of keep-fit function. Pat came up and shone a bright, false smile at both of us as she began to ply her respective pump nozzle.

  ‘Talk about the long arm of . . .’ she remarked cheerfully.

  Some coincidence, I thought.

  Pat then craned over towards my car window, where inside Leah was clearly trying to shrink into the upholstery.

  ‘Read your letter in last Thursday’s Guardian, Leah,’ the belle laide screeched through the open window at my companion. ‘Congratulations – you gave that dork Druridge’s article a good pasting . . .’

  I recalled that Leah and the said journalist had been engaged in some correspondence-column duel over nuclear power, but it was the first time I’d been aware that Pat Hague had had any interest in the issue.

  ‘I thought he needed answering,’ Leah replied lamely, in a voice that registered less than her usual self-confidence.

  ‘You certainly did that, love!’ Pat roared cheerfully. ‘Hot and strong!’

  My anger rose at Leah’s obvious discomfiture: why didn’t the bloody woman fill up and go . . .

  Pat finished filling up her tank, hooked up the nozzle, and turned to make for the counter, but before doing so she stooped and peered through the window of my car.

  Leah just sat there rigidly, staring at the indifferent tin-stream on the road beyond the pull-in. I saw a world of malice in Pat’s eyes as she addressed my companion again.