The Ruffian on the Stair

by Gary Newman

  I read through Aunt Hertha’s introductory pleasantries: Having spent a lifetime roaming over the world as a medical busybody, I now propose to keep the Hundred of Malmesbury on its toes . . . till I got to the bits about my grandfather:

  I first met your grandfather in this house not long after the end of the war. It would have been the Christmas of 1946, as I always associate the meeting in my mind with the hard winter of that year and the beginning of the next, which was the coldest I’ve ever known in England.

  I was fourteen at the time, and my parents were in Germany – Daddy was in the Army Medical Corps, and wasn’t stood down till later on in the next year – so I was faced with the prospect of having to spend the Christmas hols at school. Nanny Rolvenden, however, came to the rescue, actually turning up at the school for me in her Austin Seven.I’d never met her till then, Daddy’s career having taken us all over the place – I still see England as the most interesting of foreign countries – and what with her and your grandfather having spent so long in Jersey.

  She seemed pretty formidable at first – all nose and tweeds – but a real dear when you got to know her. Anyway, that day she drove me through the snow to their house in Malmesbury, where I’m writing this now, and I was introduced to your grandfather. He was slight – quite little – and must have been striking in his youth, with sharp features and bright, violet eyes. When I met him he had a full head of grey hair and a little, pointed silver beard. He would lean forward and look intently at you when you spoke to him, as if he wanted to understand quite perfectly what you meant. And Nanny would always be hovering in the background, as if she were his keeper, or representative on earth.

  I recall your grandfather wasn’t wearing a dog-collar, but had on one of those stiff old collars with rounded tips you see in photos of Dr Crippen, and a rich, dark silk tie, with a silver ring under the knot. If you came up on him when he was alone, he always seemed to have an anxious look about him, which would disappear in a jaunty smile when he saw you.He spoke quite quickly, in a high, clear voice, and he’d an occasional habit – quite off-putting – of looking straight through you.

  It was a quiet Christmas, with few goodies on account of the rationing, which included fuel. I’d saved a precious box of bonbons which Daddy had somehow rustled up and sent me from Vienna, and gave them to Nanny as my present to them.In turn, your grandfather gave me a copy of – appropriately!– The Box of Delights, which I’ve still got, and love to read on Christmas Eve. They used to do it on the wireless every year, but I suppose it isn’t cool any more.

  Some grown-ups I didn’t know called round after breakfast on that Christmas morning, but I don’t remember going to church, which was odd, but perhaps I’ve forgotten. We did venture out in the Austin later to pay a few calls, but I’ve forgotten the details of that, too.

  And that’s about it: I suppose your grandparents were the last of the Victorians, so what does that make us? The last of the Georgians? Do come and stay soon. Sincerely, Hertha Perowne.

  I folded up the letter again, and sat back in the armchair. I’d gone down to visit Aunt Hertha after that, and liked the compact, feisty little lady in slacks very much. In Malmesbury she’d joined practically everything in sight, and had soon picked up what she’d described as a ‘man friend’.

  Aunt Hertha had also shown me the copy of The Box of Delights which Grandfather had given her at Christmas 1946. He’d inscribed the flyleaf in his nervous, stabbing handwriting, with the words: Nothing in this world has ever been loved too much. I didn’t know who the quote had been from, but for me it had added yet another haunting line to the first Sebastian Rolvenden’s life story.

  After a moment or two’s reflection, I reached for the address book at the side of the telephone, found Aunt Hertha’s number, and pegged it in.

  ‘Seb Rolvenden here, Aunt Hertha, in Essex. I hope you’re keeping well.’

  ‘A1, thanks – lovely to hear from you! What are you writing now?’

  ‘A film biography – Tod Slaughter – d’you remember him?’

  ‘The Sweeney Todd man! You’re going back a bit, aren’t you? I hope somebody else remembers him . . .’

  ‘The publisher seems to think there’ll be one or two. I just wondered if you might have had any French visitors down there, asking about my grandfather?’

  ‘Actually, I was on the point of ringing you about that . . .’

  The hunter’s tingle ran through me.

  ‘Oh, right?’

  ‘Lanky, ingratiating individual – called round last Tuesday, in fact.’

  The day after I’d caught him trying the door of the Hagues’ boathouse, I thought: he certainly hadn’t let the grass grow under his feet.

  ‘I’d company at the time,’ Hertha went on. ‘He spoke pretty fair English – said his name was Ramier, and that his family had once been associated with your grandfather. Is that what it’s all about?’

  ‘More or less. Could you give me some more detail about the meeting – it might be important. I’ll explain fully afterwards.’

  ‘Well, I was pulling some rhubarb in the garden for Steve Hunter – the village copper – at around two that afternoon when this Ramier chap comes up to the gate and asks if a family called Rolvenden had once lived here. I asked who he was, and he reached in his pocket for something, but when Steve came up in his uniform, he seemed to change his mind, and reached into another pocket for what turned out to be a French driving licence . . .’

  No doubt as phony as he was, I thought.

  ‘He showed it me,’ my aunt went on, ‘and Steve, who’d finished picking his rhubarb, left by the gate just before I ushered the Frenchman inside. The man had come a long way, after all, and I didn’t think he’d try any funny business after Steve had witnessed his arrival like that. Incidentally, I glimpsed Steve for an instant taking a look at the rear of a car parked in the lane outside – it might have belonged to my visitor.’

  ‘What did he ask you when he’d got inside the house?’

  ‘Well, I took him straight through to the sitting room in front, and he went on a bit about how charming it was, and so on, till I decided to put him out of his misery with a guided tour of the whole house. He seemed especially interested in the pictures on the walls – they’re no great cop, as you know: amateur watercolours, and suchlike faded Valentines – and asked if an interest in art ran in the family. I thought: enough pictures, and led him back down into the hall and asked him exactly what connection he had with the Rolvenden family. He said his great-grandfather – or something along those lines – had once worked for your grandfather in France. I knew your grandfather had been donkey’s years in Jersey, but France – that was news to me.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, he was a student in Paris at the turn of the last century.’

  ‘Well, now – I didn’t know that. Anyway, as I was saying, this French chap kept firing away at me with questions about your grandfather and the Rolvenden clan in general, till I had to explain to him that I’d spent most of my life abroad, and couldn’t really tell him much about all that. He then thanked me in his effusive way, and made as if to leave, but stopped in the doorway and said there was just one more thing, and he’d be “infinitely obliged”, and so on, but did I know if a “Mr Francis” had any connection with the house or family?’

  ‘Mr Francis?’ I said, put out by the appearance of what I then thought was yet another unknown quantity. ‘Who he?’

  ‘For a moment I thought he meant Daddy – he’d been called Francis – “Frank” to all and sundry – but when I mentioned this, the Frenchman just shook his head and said that “Mr Francis” was not English. And then he went. What’s it all about, then, Seb?’

  ‘This French visitor of yours is called Pidgeon, and I’m pretty sure he’s the descendant of a Cockney crook Grandfather got mixed up with way back in the 1890s. Pidgeon’s got it into his head that his ancestor knew that Grandfather was in possession of a valuable painting, believed missing, done
by Julian Rawbeck, a minor master who vanished in unexplained circumstances in 1899.’

  ‘Well! A real family mystery! I shall have to look into this . . .’

  ‘I’d be really grateful if you’d ask discreetly round the town to see whether Pidgeon’s been up to anything else there. Your local bobby friend might play an important part in this . . .’

  ‘Yes, and you’ll have to come down so that we can compare notes.’

  ‘Right – thanks – and in the meantime, you have my number.’

  I thanked my aunt again, and rang off. The modern Pidgeon, then, was looking for paintings – a painting – in my grandfather’s old haunts in Malmesbury, but who the hell was ‘Mr Francis’? And why should Pidgeon suppose that this new player had ever been in that neck of the woods? It was beginning to look as if, at every turn, just as I thought I was making progress in unravelling this business, another conundrum was tossed playfully in my path.

  The next day, Tuesday the 6th, was largely taken up with business connected with the Tod Slaughter book, but just after five that afternoon I was presented with another conundrum – the most unwelcome one to date – in the shape of a visit from two policemen. They were ruddy, clean-looking men, one – Detective Constable Barry Conlon – in his early thirties, and the senior, Detective Sergeant Ian Morris, about fifty. They were dressed in those impossibly formal casuals which form the symbolic uniform of the plain-clothes copper. I ushered them into the sitting room, and on to the cane sofa, while I sat and faced them in my armchair. Conlon, who was faffing around with a document case, glanced discreetly round the room, while Detective Sergeant Morris took a good look at me before his lined, rather baggy face creased into a smile, showing nicotine-yellow teeth.

  ‘I believe you know Mrs Patricia Hague, Mr Rolvenden?’

  Christ, what now . . .

  ‘Yes, that’s right, Sergeant.’

  There was a pause, and more silent scrutiny from the bleary blue eyes.

  ‘I hope she’s all right . . .’ I blurted, just to break the silence.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure there’s no cause for worry, sir – at the moment – it’s just that she seems to have, er . . . gone off somewhere without telling anyone, and without leaving any contact details. There’s nearly always a simple explanation for these things – maybe a sudden family emergency, a travel hold-up, what have you . . .’

  ‘Then what’s the problem, Sergeant?’

  Conlon’s hand went softly into the document case again and he took out a notebook, which, with a pen in the other hand, he held at the ready, while Morris, seemingly ignoring my question, went on in an even voice.

  ‘Can you recall, Mr Rolvenden, when was the last time you saw Mrs Hague?’

  ‘Mmm . . . last Thursday round about five-thirty; leastwise, I didn’t actually see her at the time . . .’

  ‘Could you fill that out a bit, sir?’

  ‘Well, I got an email from her round four on Thursday afternoon, and I rang her at the Hagues’ boathouse, then, when I got no reply, I drove round there, but there was no one in.’

  ‘It must’ve been fairly important, Mr Rolvenden, to make you decide to drop everything, so to speak, and drive round there, after you’d already telephoned and got no answer.’

  ‘Er, yes – in the email Mrs Hague had referred to something I’d been researching for a new book – it could’ve been a breakthrough.’

  ‘So you called round at the boathouse, and no one was in . . .’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why did you ring the boathouse, then call there, instead of first ringing Mrs Hague’s flat in Wivenhoe?’

  ‘She seems to spend most of her time at the boathouse, nowadays – it was the most obvious place to try.’

  ‘Right, are you used to going round there to see her?’

  ‘Very seldom, in fact: I used to go occasionally at weekends, when the Hagues both used to entertain friends there, but since then Pat – Mrs Hague – has sort of made it her private domain.’

  ‘And last Thursday afternoon at the boathouse, when you found Mrs Hague wasn’t in, what did you do then?’

  ‘Just came back here.’

  All the while, Conlon was staring at me, when not busily taking notes.

  ‘Did you try to get in touch with Mrs Hague again later on the Thursday?’ Morris went on in his calm, Greater London voice.

  ‘No, I thought that, if her message had been as important as it had first seemed to be, she’d get in touch with me again.’

  ‘And has she since then?’

  ‘No, Sergeant, I haven’t heard from her since.’

  ‘And was there anything in this email message she sent you on Thursday to indicate where she might’ve been going? Any plans or indications that she might be travelling, or seeing someone?’

  ‘Actually, Sergeant, the message was just a one-liner – an invitation to me to come round and eat some pigeon pie.’

  The two men exchanged glances, then Morris returned to the attack.

  ‘Pigeon pie, Mr Rolvenden? But you’ve just told me the message might’ve represented a vital breakthrough in your research.’

  ‘It might well have been – it was a play on words, you see, Mrs Hague’s a bit of a joker – a play on the name “Pidgeon”, a man I’m studying in connection with plans for a future book.’

  ‘And do you know where we might contact this Mr Pidgeon?’

  ‘Actually, he died in the 1920s – in France.’

  I caught Conlon’s cynical gaze, and reflected that my story must be looking all very shaky and silly, and had anyone witnessed my anger when I’d gone to the boathouse that Thursday, when I’d rattled and tugged at the door handle, and banged on the closed shutters?

  ‘Just to fill out the picture, Mr Rolvenden,’ Detective Sergeant Morris went on, ‘could you help us out with a description of your movements since this, er . . . humorous but important email you got from Mrs Hague last Thursday?’

  I did, presenting my French wanderings as a quest for ‘Mr Pidgeon’, an enigmatic seeker after the lost Rawbeck masterpiece, and taking my time with the French place-names for the benefit of Conlon and his note-taking.

  ‘Sounds like the makings of a good book, Mr Rolvenden,’ Morris commented pleasantly when I’d finished my account of my movements. ‘I was over there with the wife in ’99 – drove through the Burgundy wine region. Très agréable!’

  I joined rather half-heartedly in the policemen’s laughter.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Rolvenden,’ Morris said. ‘Does the address Cwmdonkin Drive mean anything to you?’

  There was a vague resonance in my mind, but I couldn’t recall with what.

  ‘Apart from its sounding vaguely Welsh, Sergeant, no.’

  ‘Well, we’ll just leave that one for the time being. Now, there’s something I’d like you to listen to . . .’

  As if on cue, Conlon took something out of his document case and placed it on the side table. It was a small audio-cassette player. I sat tensely upright as he switched it on, Morris eyeing me like a hawk. What now . . . There was only background drone and some faint clickings for a while, then a disturbing squeal, like the sound a rabbit makes when it’s taken by a fox. Then more squeals, until my pulse began to race, and I started to breathe heavily.

  ‘Mummy! Mummy!’

  I actually felt faint – I didn’t want this.

  ‘It’s all right, sir,’ Morris murmured reassuringly from the sofa. ‘There isn’t much more . . .’

  ‘Let go my arms!’ the shrill little voice on the cassette went on intolerably. ‘Don’t want down there! Mummy! Mummy!’

  Terror engulfed me. The pitch of the voice was high – a little boy’s – but it wasn’t a little boy’s voice.

  ‘Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!’

  By now I was bent double with my head in my hands, and then I felt the Detective Sergeant gripping me, gently raising my shoulders.

  ‘Right!’ he said crisply to his subordinate. ‘That’s enough!’
/>   Detective Constable Conlon switched off the tape of my voice.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  And then they were gone, with the blank parting statement from Detective Sergeant Morris that if I didn’t know how my voice had got on to the tape, which had been found in Pat’s office at the university, then they certainly didn’t . . . Somehow I had to bridge the gap between fifty-ish, worldly-wise (or so I thought) Seb Rolvenden and the terrified little boy whose voice had been captured on the tape. Because, inescapably, the voice had been mine.

  Some forgotten hypnosis session among friends or in a nightclub? That had been Morris’s suggestion, but for the life of me I couldn’t recall any such occasion, and it wasn’t the sort of thing you’d forget . . . Hypnosis hadn’t been one of Pat’s party tricks, either. Had some mischievous bedfellow recorded it while I’d been talking in my sleep? But how would they have known I was going to have that particular nightmare? You couldn’t pre-programme other people’s dreams for them.

  The only possible alternative was that I’d unwittingly cooked it all up myself, in which case I might as well relax and wait for the men in white coats. No, there’d been an outside agency at work here. Someone had actually got inside my head . . . The detectives, then, seemed to have accepted my mystification at face value for the time being, but one thing I was sure of: they’d be back.

  And the words on the tape: someone had hold of my arms, and was presumably dragging me somewhere ‘down there’ I didn’t want to go to. The diction ‘Don’t want down there’ suggested a kid just getting the hang of speech, one of say three years old. But if it had been some sort of Primal Scream situation – an early trauma working its way out donkey’s years later – kids were always horsing around with one another, dragging each other here and there, sometimes to bruising effect, too. But not, surely, so that one such incident would etch itself like acid into the subconscious. But again, that would depend on the intensity of the experience.