What we told the police was not true. Our Joseph didn’t write to say he was coming and Bert didn’t pick him up at the station. Joseph just turned up out of the blue one afternoon in that red car. I don’t know who told the police about the car but I think it might have been Len Grimond in the farm down the road because he had fallen out with Bert over paying for repairs to a wall.
Anyway, it wasn’t our Joseph’s car. There was an American lass with him called Annie and she was driving. They had a baby with them that they said was theirs. I suppose that made him our grandson but it was the first time we ever heard about him. Our Joseph hadn’t written or visited us for four years and we didn’t know if he was alive or dead. He was a bonny little lad about two or three with the most solemn look on his face.
Well it was plain from the start that something was wrong. We tried to behave like good loving parents and welcome them into our home but the girl was moody and she didn’t want to stay. The baby cried a lot and I don’t think he had been looked after properly, though it’s not my place to say. And Joseph was behaving very peculiar. His eyes looked all glassy with tiny pupils. We didn’t know what was the matter. I think from what he said that he just wanted money.
They wouldn’t eat much though I cooked a good roast for them, and Yorkshire puddings, too, but our Joseph just picked at his food and the girl sat there all sulky holding the baby and wanting to go. She said she was a vegetarian. After we’d finished the dinner Joseph got very upset and said he had to go to the toilet. By then Bert was wondering what was going on and also a bit angry at how they treated our hospitality even if Joseph was our son.
Joseph was a long time in the toilet. Bert called up to him but he didn’t answer. The girl said something about leaving him alone and laughed, but it wasn’t a nice laugh. We thought something might be wrong with him so Bert went up and found Joseph with a piece of string tied around his arm heating something in a spoon with a match. It was one of our silver anniversary spoons he had taken from the kitchen without asking. We were just ignorant farmers and didn’t know what was happening in crime and drugs and everything like you do, Mr. Banks, but we knew our Joseph was doing something bad.
Bert lost his temper and pulled Joseph out of the toilet. When they were at the top of the stairs, Joseph started swearing at his father, using such words I’ve never heard before and would blush to repeat. That’s when Bert lost his temper and hit him. On God’s honor, he didn’t mean to hurt him. Joseph was our only son and we loved him even though he was breaking my heart. But when Bert hit him Joseph fell down the stairs and when he got to the bottom his head was at such a funny angle I knew he must have broken his neck.
The girl started screaming then took the baby and ran outside and drove away. We have never seen her again or our grandson and don’t know what has become of him. There was such a silence like you have never heard when the sound of the car engine vanished in the distance and Joseph was laying at the bottom of the stairs all twisted and broken. We tried to feel his pulse and Bert even put a mirror to his mouth to see if his breath would mist it but there was nothing.
I know we should have told the truth and we have regretted it for all those years. We were always brought up to be decent honest folk respecting our parents and God and the law. Bert was ashamed that his son was a drug addict and didn’t want it in the papers. I didn’t want him to go to jail for what he had done because it was really an accident and it wasn’t fair. He was suffering more than enough anyway because he had killed his only son.
So I said we must throw away all the drugs and needle and things and take our Joseph’s shoes off and say he slipped coming down the stairs. We knew that the police would believe us because we were good people and we had no reason to lie. That was the hardest part. The laces got tied in knots and I broke my fingernails and in the end I was shaking so much I had to use the scissors.
And that is God’s honest truth, Mr. Banks. I know we did wrong but Bert was never the same after. Not a day went by when he didn’t cry about what he’d done and I never saw him smile ever again. To this day we still do not know what has become of our grandson but whatever it is we hope he is healthy and happy and not as foolish as his father.
By the time you read this letter I’ll be gone to my resting place, too. For two years now I have had cancer and no matter what operations they do it is eating me away. I have saved my tablets. Now that I have taken the weight off my conscience I can only hope that the good Lord sees fit to forgive me my sins and take me unto his bosom.
Yours sincerely,
Betty Atherton
Banks put the letter aside and rubbed his left eye with the back of his hand. Outside, the rain was still falling, providing a gentle background for Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto on the portable cassette. Banks stared at the sheets of blue vellum covered in Betty Atherton’s crabbed hand, then he cursed, slammed his fist on the desk, went to the door, and shouted for Susan Gay.
8
“Her name is Catherine Anne Singer,” said Susan the next afternoon. “And she was relieved to talk to me as soon as I told her we weren’t after her for leaving the scene of a crime. She comes from somewhere called Garden Grove, California. Like a lot of young Americans, she came over to ‘do’ Europe in the sixties.”
The three of them—Banks, Susan, and Jenny Fuller—sat over drinks at a dimpled, copper-topped table in the Queen’s Arms listening to the summer rain tap against the diamonds of colored glass.
“And she’s Jerry Singer’s mother?” Banks asked.
Susan nodded. “Yes. I just asked him for her telephone number. I didn’t tell him why I wanted it.”
Banks nodded. “Good. Go on.”
“Well, she ended up living in London. It was easy enough to get jobs that paid under the counter, places where nobody asked too many questions. Eventually, she hooked up with Joseph Atherton and they lived together in a bedsit in Notting Hill. Joseph fancied himself as a musician then—”
“Who didn’t?” said Banks. He remembered taking a few abortive guitar lessons himself. “Sorry. Go on.”
“There’s not a lot to add, sir. She got pregnant, wouldn’t agree to an abortion, though apparently Joseph tried to persuade her. She named the child Jerry, after some guitarist Joseph liked called Jerry Garcia. Luckily for Jerry, Annie wasn’t on heroin. She drew the line at hash and LSD. Anyway, they were off to join some Buddhist commune in the wilds of Scotland when Joseph said they should drop in on his parents on the way and try to get some money. She didn’t like the idea, but she went along with it anyway.
“Everything happened exactly as Mrs. Atherton described it. Annie got scared and ran away. When she got back to London, she decided it was time to go home. She sold the car and took out all her savings from the bank, then she got the first flight she could and settled back in California. She went to university and ended up working as a marine biologist in San Diego. She never married, and she never mentioned her time in England, or that night at the Atherton farm, to Jerry. She told him his father had left them when Jerry was still a baby. He was only two and a half at the time of Atherton’s death, and as far as he was concerned he had spent his entire life in Southern California.”
Banks drained his pint and looked at Jenny.
“Cryptomnesia,” she said.
“Come again?”
“Cryptomnesia. It means memories you’re not consciously aware of, a memory of an incident in your own life that you’ve forgotten. Jerry Singer was present when his grandfather knocked his father down the stairs, but as far as he was concerned consciously, he’d never been to Swainsdale before, so how could he remember it? When he got mixed up in the New Age scene, these memories he didn’t know he had started to seem like some sort of proof of reincarnation.”
Sometimes, Banks thought to himself, things are better left alone. The thought surprised him because it went against the grain of both his job and his innate curiosity. But what good had come from Jerry Singer presenting himsel
f at the station three days ago? None at all. Perhaps the only blessing in the whole affair was that Betty Atherton had passed away peacefully, as she had intended, in her pill-induced sleep. Now she wouldn’t suffer any more in this world. And if there were a God, Banks thought, he surely couldn’t be such a bastard as to let her suffer in the next one either.
“Sir?”
“Sorry, Susan, I was miles away.”
“I asked who was going to tell him. You or me?”
“I’ll do it,” said Banks, with a sigh. “It’s no good trying to sit on it all now. But I need another pint first. My shout.”
As he stood up to go to the bar, the door opened and Jerry Singer walked in. He spotted them at once and walked over. He had that strange naive, intense look in his eyes. Banks instinctively reached for his cigarettes.
“They told me you were here,” Singer said awkwardly, pointing back through the door toward the Tudor-fronted police station across the street. “I’m leaving for home tomorrow and I was just wondering if you’d found anything out yet?”
Fan Mail
The letter arrived one sunny Thursday morning in August, along with a Visa bill and a royalty statement. Dennis Quilley carried the mail out to the deck of his Beaches home, stopping by the kitchen on the way to pour himself a gin and tonic. He had already been writing for three hours straight and he felt he deserved a drink.
First he looked at the amount of the royalty check, then he put aside the Visa bill and picked up the letter carefully, as if he were a forensic expert investigating it for prints. Postmarked Toronto and dated four days earlier, it was addressed in a small, precise hand and looked as if it had been written with a fine-nibbed calligraphic pen. But the postcode was different; that had been hurriedly scrawled in with a ballpoint. Whoever it was, Quilley thought, had probably got his name from the telephone directory and had then looked up the code in the post office just before mailing.
Pleased with his deductions, Quilley opened the letter. Written in the same neat and mannered hand as the address, it said:
Dear Mr. Quilley,
Please forgive me for writing to you at home like this. I know you must be very busy, and it is inexcusable of me to intrude on your valuable time. Believe me, I would not do so if I could think of any other way.
I have been a great fan of your work for many years now. As a collector of mysteries, too, I also have first editions of all your books. From what I have read, I know you are a clever man and, I hope, just the man to help me with my problem.
For the past twenty years, my wife has been making my life a misery. I put up with her for the sake of the children, but now they have all gone to live their own lives. I have asked her for a divorce, but she just laughed in my face. I have decided, finally, that the only way out is to kill her and that is why I am seeking your advice.
You may think this is insane of me, especially saying it in a letter, but it is just a measure of my desperation. I would quite understand it if you went straight to the police, and I am sure they would find me and punish me. Believe me, I’ve thought about it. Even that would be preferable to the misery I must suffer day after day.
If you can find it in your heart to help a devoted fan in his hour of need, please meet me on the roof lounge of the Park Plaza Hotel on Wednesday, August 19 at two p.m. I have taken the afternoon off work and will wait longer if for any reason you are delayed. Don’t worry, I will recognize you easily from your photo on the dust jacket of your books.
Yours, in hope,
A Fan
The letter slipped from Quilley’s hand. He couldn’t believe what he’d just read. He was a mystery writer—he specialized in devising ingenious murders—but for someone to assume that he did the same in real life was absurd. Could it be a practical joke?
He picked up the letter and read through it again. The man’s whining tone and clichéd style seemed sincere enough, and the more Quilley thought about it, the more certain he became that none of his friends was sick enough to play such a joke.
Assuming that it was real, then, what should he do? His impulse was to crumple up the letter and throw it away. But should he go to the police? No. That would be a waste of time. The real police were a terribly dull and literal-minded lot. They would probably think he was seeking publicity.
He found that he had screwed up the sheet of paper in his fist, and he was just about to toss it aside when he changed his mind. Wasn’t there another option? Go. Go and meet the man. Find out more about him. Find out if he was genuine. Surely there would be no obligation in that? All he had to do was turn up at the Park Plaza at the appointed time and see what happened.
Quilley’s life was fine—no troublesome woman to torment him, plenty of money (mostly from American sales), a beautiful lakeside cottage near Huntsville, a modicum of fame, the esteem of his peers—but it had been rather boring of late. Here was an opportunity for adventure of a kind. Besides, he might get a story idea out of the meeting. Why not go and see?
He finished his drink and smoothed the letter on his knee. He had to smile at that last bit. No doubt the man would recognize him from his book-jacket photo, but it was an old one and had been retouched in the first place. His cheeks had filled out a bit since then and his thinning hair had acquired a sprinkling of gray. Still, he thought, he was a handsome man for fifty: handsome, clever, and successful.
Smiling, he picked up both letter and envelope and went back to the kitchen in search of matches. There must be no evidence.
* * *
Over the next few days Quilley hardly gave a thought to the mysterious letter. As usual in summer, he divided his time between writing in Toronto, where he found the city worked as a stimulus, and weekends at the cottage. There he walked in the woods, chatted to locals in the lodge, swam in the clear lake, and idled around getting a tan. Evenings, he would open a bottle of Chardonnay, reread P. G. Wodehouse, and listen to Bach. It was an ideal life: quiet, solitary, independent.
When Wednesday came, though, he drove downtown, parked in the multistory at Cumberland and Avenue Road, then walked to the Park Plaza. It was another hot day. The tourists were out in force across Bloor Street by the Royal Ontario Museum, many of them Americans from Buffalo, Rochester, or Detroit: the men in loud-checked shirts photographing everything in sight, their wives in tight shorts looking tired and thirsty.
Quilley took the elevator up to the nineteenth floor and wandered through the bar, an olde-worlde place with deep armchairs and framed reproductions of old colonial scenes on the walls. It was busier than usual, and even though the windows were open, the smoke bothered him. He walked out onto the roof lounge and scanned the faces. Within moments he noticed someone looking his way. The man paused for just a split second, perhaps to translate the dust-jacket photo into reality, then beckoned Quilley over with raised eyebrows and a twitch of the head.
The man rose to shake hands, then sat down again, glancing around to make sure nobody had paid the two of them undue attention. He was short and thin, with sandy hair and a pale gray complexion, as if he had just come out of the hospital. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and had a habit of rolling his tongue around in his mouth when he wasn’t talking.
“First of all, Mr. Quilley,” the man said, raising his glass, “may I say how honored I am to meet you.” He spoke with a pronounced English accent.
Quilley inclined his head. “I’m flattered, Mr. . . . er . . . ?”
“Peplow, Frank Peplow.”
“Yes . . . Mr. Peplow. But I must admit I’m puzzled by your letter.”
A waiter in a burgundy jacket came over to take Quilley’s order. He asked for an Amstel.
Peplow paused until the waiter was out of earshot. “Puzzled?”
“What I mean is,” Quilley went on, struggling for the right words, “whether you were serious or not, whether you really do want to—”
Peplow leaned forward. Behind the lenses, his pale blue eyes looked sane enough. “I assure you, Mr. Quilley, that
I was, that I am entirely serious. That woman is ruining my life and I can’t allow it to go on any longer.”
Speaking about her brought little spots of red to his cheeks. Quilley held his hand up. “All right, I believe you. I suppose you realize I should have gone to the police?”
“But you didn’t.”
“I could have. They might be here, watching us.”
Peplow shook his head. “Mr. Quilley, if you won’t help, I’d even welcome prison. Don’t think I haven’t realized that I might get caught, that no murder is perfect. All I want is a chance. It’s worth the risk.”
The waiter returned with Quilley’s drink and they both sat in silence until he had gone. Quilley was intrigued by this drab man sitting opposite him, a man who obviously didn’t even have the imagination to dream up his own murder plot. “What do you want from me?” he asked.
“I have no right to ask anything of you, I understand that,” Peplow said. “I have absolutely nothing to offer in return. I’m not rich. I have no savings. I suppose all I want really is advice, encouragement.”
“If I were to help,” Quilley said, “if I were to help, then I’d do nothing more than offer advice. Is that clear?”
Peplow nodded. “Does that mean you will?”
“If I can.”
And so Dennis Quilley found himself helping to plot the murder of a woman he’d never met with a man he didn’t even particularly like. Later, when he analyzed his reasons for playing along, he realized that that was exactly what he had been doing—playing. It had been a game, a cerebral puzzle, just like thinking up a plot for a book, and he never, at first, gave a thought to real murder, real blood, real death.
Not Safe After Dark: And Other Stories Page 3