A Matter of Loyalty

by Anselm Audley

  ‘What would you kill a man over?’

  ‘I killed men in the war, Superintendent, and in the Foreign Legion. I’ve had a bellyful of it, take it from me.’

  ‘You didn’t seem to have had a bellyful where the late Lord Selchester was concerned.’

  Another mark against Saul’s character.

  ‘That man ruined my life’ was all he would say.

  ‘Did you see Bruno Rothesay in Selchester over Christmas?’

  A pause.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Tell us what happened. In full, if you please. You’ll find things a lot easier if you tell us the whole truth.’

  ‘Will I, Superintendent? Or have you already made your minds up? Here I am, trying to put my life back together after the last time I was stitched up by the Establishment – wrongly convicted, let me remind you – when you haul me in over a gun I’ve never seen before, squirrelled away in a place I didn’t even live in when all of this must have happened. A place which, I’m told, has been empty since its owner died last year. Your evidence is derisory, yet still I’m here, cooling my heels in a cell while everyone in Selchester calls me a murderer behind my back. Forgive me, Superintendent, if I don’t value your assurances very highly.’

  ‘Tell us what happened the last time you met Dr Rothesay.’

  ‘All right. Let’s see how you can twist this. Yes, I met him. December the twenty-eighth, it must have been, the last day I was staying in that peculiar Nightingale Cottage. The day I found out about the Gallery. Just after all that fuss up at the Castle – don’t forget I had nothing to do with that either. He knocked on my door. I thought it might be Emerson coming back. He’s a friend who was staying then. Opened the door, and there Rothesay was. Didn’t seem to be expecting me.’

  Scene 2

  It had been one of those dull wet days of the thaw, slush piled in the streets, everything damp as could be.

  ‘You’re early,’ Saul had said, the other words dying on his lips. He knew this man, that aquiline face and arrogant mouth, those dark expressive eyes so beloved, it seemed, of every woman in sight. He knew that scar, too. That was his own doing. Rothesay was older now, but of course he was ageing well, merely a touch of silver at the temples. An elegant coat, Italian cut. Naturally.

  ‘Rothesay,’ he said, puzzled. ‘What on earth are you doing here? I thought you didn’t want another word with me.’

  Rothesay frowned. ‘You? I didn’t come to speak to you. Where are the Pearsons?’

  There was something about Rothesay’s manner which got under Saul’s skin every time. He sometimes wondered whether Anastasia had chosen him for that very reason. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have her pick of men.

  ‘If you mean that peculiar couple who let this place to me, they’re back tomorrow. I took it for a week. Clearly they didn’t tell you.’

  Rothesay looked him up and down. Saul was all too aware he wasn’t exactly spick and span. It had been three days since his binge. Emerson was doing his utmost to keep the whisky out of reach, but Saul couldn’t pretend he looked his best.

  ‘If they’re peculiar,’ said Rothesay, ‘it’s only in their choice of lodgers. Or are you their charitable deed for the season? I see the years have hardly been kind to you.’

  ‘Quite unlike you to come calling when the husband might be at home,’ said Saul, regretting the sally at once. He didn’t want anything more to do with this man. It had been twenty years since they had last set eyes on one another, and with any luck their paths would never cross again.

  ‘I didn’t come here to talk to you. When do you take yourself off?’

  Saul made an effort to be polite. He’d got himself in enough trouble already. ‘If you’re asking when I leave here, I believe the Pearsons return tomorrow. As I said.’

  ‘Thank you. Good day.’ Rothesay turned his back and walked off. Saul slammed the door behind him and went to see where Emerson had hidden the whisky.

  Scene 3

  ‘That was all the conversation you had with him?’ MacLeod asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Saul. ‘I left for London the next day.’

  ‘But you came back’ – some shuffling of papers – ‘on Wednesday of last week, staying at number 3, Fisher Walk, before taking over the lease of the Selchester Gallery on Saturday.’

  ‘I’ve told you all of this,’ said Saul.

  ‘Fisher Walk,’ Hugo said. ‘Where exactly is that?’

  MacLeod answered for him. ‘In Long Combe. It’s a hamlet, a little way east of town, if you’re wondering, Hawksworth. A dozen houses and a church, tucked down in the trees by the river, where the bogs begin. Lovely in summer, I don’t doubt, but a touch damp and cold in the winter. Isolated, too.’

  Hugo knew where Long Combe was, although he hadn’t been there himself. A perfect place to slip a body into the river. ‘Why are you staying there, Mr Ingham?’

  ‘There was a place free for a few days, someone’s cottage being cleared out.’

  ‘Plenty of inns in town, nice and warm.’

  There was a rap on the door. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but there’s a call you might want to take, if you catch my drift.’

  MacLeod sighed. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can. If you don’t mind, Hawksworth?’

  Hugo didn’t mind. Quite the opposite, in fact. The door clicked shut, MacLeod and his constables on the other side.

  ‘You’re not saying much,’ said Saul. ‘I’d have expected to see you on my side of the table, all that trouble you were in with the Service when last we met.’

  ‘It was cleared up,’ said Hugo.

  ‘Lucky for you.’

  ‘Who knew you were in Selchester?’ Hugo asked.

  ‘Plenty of people. I came into town a few times, bought some things, chatted to some people I’d met over Christmas. Everybody seems to know your business before you do, they all knew I wasn’t at Nightingale Cottage this time. Good riddance, too. I don’t like it. Can’t tell you why, maybe it’s just that it’s too crowded with stuff. You can’t move for horseshoes and corn dollies and what have you. Real mishmash. Fisher Walk was half-empty, there was room to breathe.’

  ‘And who knew you were at Fisher Walk?’

  ‘Jim Benbow in the Fitzwarin Arms, I took a pint with him on Thursday. Vivian Witt, never expected to be hobnobbing with her. Mrs Pearson from Nightingale Cottage, bumped into her in the street. There was a walker along the riverbank, I waved to him. That tall girl in the Post Office.’

  Hugo knew who he meant. ‘Agnes. The biggest gossip in Selchester, so I hear, aside from the girls at the telephone exchange.’

  Little joy from that line of inquiry, then. Hugo wondered what MacLeod’s call would be about, and how long he might be. Best go for a straightforward approach. Sir Bernard would hit the roof if he ever found out, and so would Jarrett.

  ‘Listen, I’ll make this quick. I don’t believe you did it, and I don’t like the way everything is pointing at you all of a sudden.’

  ‘Can I quote you on that?’

  Hugo leaned back, crossed his legs. ‘Are there any witnesses to our conversation?’

  ‘Your word against mine. Little doubt which of us would be believed, in the circumstances. But I’m curious. What makes you so sure I didn’t?’

  ‘For one thing, I don’t believe you’re stupid enough to have dealt with the gun in that way.’

  Saul scratched his chin. He was growing a stubble, the sort of thing which made a man look like a desperado.

  ‘I’ll get you a razor,’ Hugo added. ‘Safety, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Thank you. And the other thing?’

  ‘Providential help.’

  ‘A tip-off?’

  Hugo inclined his head just a fraction.

  ‘The other two are policemen, and tip-offs are normal in police work. You’re a spook, and don’t trust information unless you know where it comes from and who’s giving it to you.’

  ‘Any enemies who might have it in for you?’
>
  ‘Some. You make them easily in the art world. None I’ve seen in Selchester. It’s hardly their turf.’

  ‘What brought you back?’

  ‘I heard the Gallery might be coming up for rental. Selchester seemed as good a place to settle as any. I suppose I was mistaken. Better to go somewhere no one knows you from Adam.’

  There was that bitterness again, deep and ingrained. This was a man who could kill, given the right circumstances. Hugo knew that. MacLeod and Jarrett knew that. Saul himself knew that. All it needed was for Rothesay to have pushed his luck just a little too far, and Saul’s fragile self-control would have snapped. As it had almost snapped once before.

  Saul caught his silence. ‘You’re not entirely sure I didn’t kill him, are you?’

  A clever and perceptive man. You had to be, in that line of work. Used to being overlooked, dismissed. He’d have been an asset to the Service, if not always the easiest to handle. Without close ties or deep roots, capable and adaptable, ruthless when needed.

  ‘I judge you quite capable of killing a man, given sufficient provocation, and Bruno Rothesay equally capable of supplying that provocation.’

  ‘You have the measure of his character, at least. If you want to know who killed Bruno, follow the grudges. Believe me, it wasn’t pleasant being on the receiving end of those.’

  Heavy steps in the corridor.

  ‘Let’s go back to Fisher Walk,’ said Hugo, returning to a safe subject. ‘How did you find it?’

  Scene 4

  It had still been cold and damp the day Saul checked out.

  ‘There’s the deposit,’ said Mrs Pearson, passing him a handful of change. A couple of coins slipped through her fingers. ‘How clumsy of me, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ said Saul, bending to retrieve the missing shillings.

  ‘You’ve left it in good shape. Were you an Army man?’

  ‘Indeed I was.’

  ‘Jeremy said you had that military look. Was it comfortable? I suppose if you’re used to barracks anything must be comfortable, but I fear it’s rather cluttered.’

  It was indeed cluttered with everything imaginable, there had been times he’d longed for bare barracks walls. ‘I was grateful for a place to stay for a while, Mrs Pearson. Truth to tell, places in Selchester are hard to come by.’

  ‘I know, there’s been a housing shortage after the war, but somehow it’s never quite urgent enough to do something about.’

  Did he detect a trace of a foreign accent there?

  ‘Do you travel much?’ Four shillings and sixpence, there should be another threepence somewhere around there. He rummaged around the base of what seemed like a miniature totem – such an extraordinary collection of things this cottage had.

  ‘Oh, all over, when I can. You can’t find folklore by sitting in libraries, that’s what I always say. You have to get out into the countryside, find somewhere with memories of the land still. I was sent to school in Austria when I was a little girl, for my health, you see. Years and years I was there, up in the Alps, and mountain people have very good memories. Things don’t change up there.’

  There it was, wedged in a crack between the flagstones.

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad you found it,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me, is there anywhere else for rent nearby? I’m thinking I might come back, but I’d need a place to stay for a few weeks, and I can’t really afford a pub for week after week.’

  ‘Let me see now, well, there are some boarding houses up by the railway, but I can’t recommend them for peace and quiet, trains rattling by all the time, and all sorts staying there. Oh, wait. You’re an Army man, you won’t mind roughing it a bit. There’s a cottage empty down by the river. Something to do with a disappearance or a disputed will, I think.’

  ‘There seem to be a lot of those here,’ said Saul, thinking of the Gallery. Emerson had found it, nosing around after art like a bear after honey. Coming up for rent, he’d said. You want to go back into the business, why not make an offer?

  ‘Isn’t that always the way here? No, you should try it. I believe there’s a local solicitor looking after it at the moment, a Mr Fortescue. You should ask around. It’s a good place to be. We’ve found such interesting things here, with the Downs and the barrows not far. Quite remarkable what stories people come up with.’

  Saul shouldered his bag, almost knocking an African mask off the wall. Clammy air seeped into the hallway.

  ‘Don’t worry. They didn’t build these cottages for a crowd.’

  Saul paused on the doorstep, the sight of the damp Selchester street jogging his memory. ‘Oh, I forgot to say, someone called for you yesterday. Bruno Rothesay.’

  ‘He must have been here for Jeremy, forgot we were away, and Jeremy won’t even be back until next week. Most kind of you to let me know.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Pearson, and thank you for the use of your cottage.’

  ‘It was a pleasure, Mr Ingham. Have a good trip!’

  Saul splashed off in the direction of the station.

  Scene 5

  ‘Did you search the cottage, back in September?’ Hugo asked MacLeod, once Saul had been returned to his cell.

  The cottage’s previous owner had found himself in very deep water at the time of his death, in more ways than one. Hugo had been involved in the affair itself, but he’d had other things to worry about in the aftermath.

  ‘Your people did. Sent a unit from London, turned it inside out. Nothing there at the time, so the gun can’t have been a leftover, if that’s what you’re wondering. As to the particulars, we can confirm Ingham’s story with Mrs Pearson.’

  ‘She’s in London at the moment,’ said Hugo, remembering his encounter on the station platform.

  ‘She’ll be back soon enough, no particular hurry there. We’ve got some of our men going door to door in Long Combe to see whether there are any witnesses, but I’m satisfied with the way things are going at the moment.’

  ‘Even with an anonymous tip-off?’

  ‘In police work we take what we can get. Not like your world, where everything could be some game run by Moscow spymasters. In my experience of the sort of criminals we get here in Selchester, most of them would last about five minutes in the London underworld, let alone the sort of things you deal with. You can see their lies coming half a mile away. There hasn’t been a single thing we’ve found out about Mr Ingham which doesn’t fit, and if that’s pure coincidence, I’ll hand in my police badge right away.’

  Scene 6

  ‘Going out again, Miss Wryton?’ said Mrs Partridge, as Freya came into the kitchen, booted and coated against the elements. ‘It’s cleared up out there, it has. There’ll be a frost tonight, I hear.’

  ‘Some things to do in town,’ Freya said.

  ‘More books to be buying? Or this business that’s taken Messrs Hawksworth off? Quite the to-do, all that, and the Gallery just taken again. I’d have liked to see some pictures there myself, you never know what’ll be in the window from one week to the next.’

  Freya decided to be direct, since Mrs Partridge had settled for dark allusions all week. ‘What’s going on up at Foxley?’

  ‘How should I know? That’s Mr Hawksworth’s job, debriefing all those boffins.’

  ‘They aren’t monks, you said.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Mrs Partridge bustled along the side, collecting chopping board and knife. ‘Well, that fellow who wound up with a bullet in his head, God have mercy on his soul, he had quite the eye for the ladies.’

  ‘Even here in Selchester? Half the town would know.’

  ‘Half the town did know,’ said Mrs Partridge sternly. ‘Even if you didn’t, sitting up there with your typewriter and your books.’

  ‘Do tell. It might help Hugo, he’s having a time of it with this Jarrett fellow.’

  Mrs Partridge looked as if she’d been boiling up toads to put a hex on Jarrett. Freya rather wished she would.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I don�
��t like to say, rightly, as some of them are married women, and it wouldn’t do to have dirty linen washed in public.’

  ‘He won’t be after dirty linen. They’ll want it kept as quiet as possible, no inconvenient publicity.’

  ‘I dare say they shall. Shameful. And under a Conservative government. I expect nothing better from those Socialists, but if you can’t trust a gentleman like Mr Churchill, who can you trust?’

  ‘Let me help you with those carrots,’ Freya said, seeing Mrs Partridge start on a vast pile of vegetables.

  ‘Let you go and do the things you’re supposed to do,’ Mrs Partridge said, batting her away. ‘Like writing that book of yours, for one, instead of getting yourself caught up in all these murky dealings. You won’t have any joy from it, I can tell you that for sure.’

  ‘You didn’t give me any names.’

  ‘Well now, let me think back. There was Emma Hardcastle, her husband’s a waste of space if ever there was one. Then there was some young scientist he found in London, brought down here once or twice when the missus was away. Quite something, she was, great dark eyes and hair like Sophia Loren. Then there was that woman from Nightingale Cottage.’

  ‘Miranda Pearson? The folklorist?’

  Mrs Partridge shook her head, as if lamenting the depravity of the world. ‘On and off for months, they were. ’Tisn’t right and natural for a woman to go tramping about the countryside like some vagrant, if you ask me, and that husband of hers is a right glum one. Don’t say as I’m excusing it, mind you. Marriage vows is marriage vows, whatever some folk say these days. My Roy wasn’t much to look at, and to tell the truth he wasn’t much in other ways neither, but did you catch me putting myself about? No, you certainly did not. If some Jerry hadn’t come along at the wrong moment, you’d not catch us having separate bedrooms like that Nightingale couple, never mind that my Roy snored like a thunderstorm.’

  This was more than Mrs Partridge had ever said at once about her Roy, who’d joined the RAF when war broke out and been shot down over Germany.

  ‘Don’t tell me he used to go round when her husband was there,’ Freya said.

  ‘Oh, no, there’s no true man alive would stand for such wickedness, glum or not. They had their little ways, not hard with that wife of Dr Rothesay’s up in London so much. Not that they fooled anyone around here.’