The Dying of the Light

by Robert Richardson

  “Very old magic,” Maltravers commented.

  “Do you believe in it?”

  “I don’t disbelieve in it. Superstitions used to be gospel.” He turned round and leaned back against the railing, looking up at the high walls of the Steamer. A slate plaque on the wall near the door commemorated seven lifeboatmen who had died violently and valiantly when their vessel had been smashed to splinters in a merciless storm. “Is he a pure gipsy as well or did the family intermarry with the gorgios?”

  “The what?”

  “Gorgios. What gipsies call people like us. You, incidentally, are a mort or a rakli, which is a woman, and you used to be a monishai — Romany for wife.”

  Helen looked impressed. “Any more?”

  “Muskra is the police and kushti bok means good luck.”

  “Where on earth did you learn all that?”

  “I had to buy a lot of pegs. Anyway, tell me more about Mortimer.”

  “By the time he was born, his family had settled somewhere in London — Romford I think — so they must have sold the caravans. Mortimer was the gifted one, went to art school and became a successful clothes designer in the sixties. He was quite at home with the Flower Children.”

  “How long’s he been here?”

  “He bought the cottage years ago, but only moved when he got bored with it all. He never married, but I don’t think he’s gay, just not very interested in sex. By the time I arrived he had blended in with the scenery, another of the Porthennis eccentrics.”

  They pressed themselves against the railing as a minibus edged its way past, inches from their feet.

  “I look forward to talking to him again,” said Maltravers. “Very interesting character, even if he is uncomfortable company.”

  “Oh, yes,” Helen said feelingly. “He’s been very good to me, but it was a long time before I could relax with him and … Hello, Belvedere!”

  A bulky, shabby brown tent with legs paused on the step from the street into the Steamer before slowly revolving. The front view resembled Ernest Hemingway about ten years after he died, lost vigour in advanced decay. Coarse stubble formed the unbuilt-on foundations of a beard and straggly hair fell from the back of an egg-brown bald head. Watery, blue eyes in a face creased and flaky as antique leather peered suspiciously before the features contorted into what was presumably friendly recognition, but would have frightened the nervous. Hand like an immense knot in thick rope grasped an ash walking stick as the figure rolled across the narrow space between them.

  “Helen.” The greeting given in a voice perfect for making indecent telephone calls, Scott’s attention transferred to Maltravers. “Who’s this then? New lover boy? Keeps you satisfied does he?”

  “Drop the old lecher act, Belvedere,” Helen told him sharply. “Gus isn’t an emmett. He’s a very good friend of mine.”

  “What do you think of the gnat’s piss?” Scott nodded at Maltravers’s pint disparagingly. “Wouldn’t get a nun drunk.”

  “So what will you have?” Maltravers asked mildly. “Meths on the rocks? Or do you take it with a dash of Worcester sauce?”

  Teeth strikingly resembling a half empty box of dates appeared repulsively as Scott laughed approvingly. “Like your friend, Helen. Rum. And say it’s for me. They won’t charge you any more, but you’ll get more than a bloody dribble.”

  “I’ll have him sorted out by the time you get back,” Helen promised and Maltravers heard her talking sternly to the posturing artist as he went back into the Steamer. The crowd inside had become even noisier with the choir now singing requests, mainly for songs associated with drunken rugby players. Above roars of delight at increasingly suggestive lyrics, he managed to place his order and was impressed by the amount of rum he received for the price of a single.

  “Tell the old bugger he still owes me twenty quid,” the landlord shouted above the din as he handed Maltravers the glass. “If you can get it out of him, you can have a half.”

  “No promises.” Holding the glass above the sardine-packed crowd, Maltravers fought his way out again. Helen and Scott had moved further round the harbour and were sitting on a bench, the old man with his stick clenched in both hands upright in front of him.

  “That looks like it.” One hand uncoiled and took the rum. “Helen says I’ve got to apologise. Don’t know why, but I’m sorry for whatever it was.” The glass was waved in a gesture which could have passed as an apology and half its contents vanished.

  “I’ve been asking Belvedere about Martha,” Helen said as Maltravers sat down. “He’s got more details. Start again.”

  “Ruth heard a bloody great crash from the studio in the middle of the afternoon,” he explained. “Dashed in and found her flattened under that statue she was working on. Bloody great lump of the Grampians. Can’t have felt a thing. The police took Ruth to Penzance to give a statement. She’s in a right two and eight. Dottie’s looking after her.”

  “We saw the police there on our way back from the theatre,” Helen said. “I tried ringing Dorothy, but there was no reply.”

  “Probably unplugged the telephone,” Scott said dismissively. “She’s always doing that.”

  “And the rest of you all seemed to be out,” Helen added.

  “Not me,” Scott corrected. “I was sleeping off lunchtime.”

  Maltravers detected a note of satisfaction. Belvedere Scott clearly took a pride in his continuing capacity for alcohol.

  “You’ve given us the edited highlights,” he observed. “But does anyone know how it happened? Lumps of granite don’t usually fall over unless there’s a particularly strong wind.”

  “Must have done,” Scott grunted. “Just fallen over. She wouldn’t have pulled it on top of herself even if she could. The floor probably gave way under the weight. Riddled with rot that studio. Stupid cow.”

  Maltravers frowned. “You don’t seem very upset. Helen’s told me you and Martha had known each other for years.”

  “I’ve known everybody for years.” Scott sourly took another swig of rum. “The older you get, the more deaths there are and the less you worry. We’re all a day nearer the tomb than we were last night.”

  Having dismissed his lack of sorrow with fatalistic philosophy, he looked mournful for a moment. “Damned waste, though. She was a good artist, Mattie. Lot of work left in her.”

  “I must write to Ruth,” Helen said. “Martha was what kept her going. She even used to encourage her over her poetry. That’s love for you.”

  Apparently uncomfortable at an expression of genuine emotion, Scott finished his rum, leaned heavily on his stick and heaved himself up. “I’m going inside for a refill.”

  Maltravers watched him clumping back towards the Steamer. “You know, I bet if you scratch that crusty, boorish surface, underneath there beats a heart of pure stone.”

  “You’ve got him in one,” Helen confirmed. “The old guard keep their secrets, but I’ve picked up enough to learn that. Belvedere’s tolerated because he’s old, but he can still be unforgivable at times.”

  “J B Priestley said the British will respect anything if it’s been around long enough,” Maltravers remarked. “And he looks as though he’s one half of a pair who came down the gangplank of the Ark.”

  “Please, not a pair. One Belvedere’s quite enough, thank you.” Helen finished her drink. “But perhaps he has some excuses.”

  “Spare me artistic temperament,” Maltravers warned. “The rule is, the less the talent, the greater the conceit.”

  “But Belvedere is — or was — talented,” Helen replied. “He had an exhibition in London in the twenties which was a sensation. One critic described him as the greatest new painter in Europe.”

  “What happened?”

  Helen shrugged. “Nobody knows now. He just … vanished. Perhaps he had a breakdown or something. Whatever it was, nobody heard anything about him for years, then he resurfaced in Porthennis. Dorothy arrived with him. They were lovers, but then they fell out and sta
rted living apart.”

  “Does he still paint?” Maltravers asked.

  “Yes, but only the sort of pictures you find on chocolate boxes.”

  Maltravers sniffed. “All right, so he may have reasons to be bitter. But I still expected more sorrow over Martha’s death, not just for an artist, but for an old friend.”

  “But you only have friends if you can love people. Belvedere doesn’t love anyone. Not even himself.”

  *

  The rest of the audience had gone as Mortimer Lacey waited by his car, darkness deepening over the Botallack. Beyond a fence opposite him, Agnes Thorpe’s statue held a glow of old rose as a blood-orange sun slid behind the sea. Crickets were loud in the silence and miles above an airliner drew a line of pink chalk across dusky, mauve sky. He heard voices up the slope from the theatre then Tess appeared, calling goodnight to other members of the cast, before joining him.

  “This is very kind of you,” she said. “Gus would have come.”

  “Quite unnecessary when I was here already.” He took her hand. “It was a wonderful performance. There’s magic in the Botallack, but not everyone finds it. You did.”

  “I could hardly fail tonight. Before I went on, someone said the audience was dead right and they were with me all the way.”

  “Perhaps one more than the rest.” Lacey released her hand. “Desdemona is trapped by evil which eventually destroys her. That happened in real life today.”

  Tess’s eyes narrowed as she tried to make out the expression on his face, half in shadow against the purpling night.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Martha Shaw.” He paused. “You must forgive me, but it’s been a rather emotional day and Shakespeare at full throttle has … amplified certain matters. Do you mind if we look at the view for a moment?”

  They walked across the car park and over the grass of the cliff tops until only the sea lay stretched before them. Breeze carrying a tang of brine rustled through the grass. There was a distant sound of waves flicking against rocks and far off to the east the Lizard lighthouse blinked a pinprick of yellow in grey gloom. Tess waited as Lacey gazed at the vanishing line where sky and water met.

  “Martha Shaw was murdered,” he said finally without looking at her. It was a quiet statement of fact.

  “How do you know that?” Tess demanded. “You can’t be so certain.”

  “Yes I can.”

  “Then who did it?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  “Then you’re guessing.” She looked at him uncertainly. “Aren’t you?”

  “No.” Lacey’s shoulders rose and fell as he sighed very deeply. “But I’m afraid I’ll have to prove that I’m not.”

  He hesitated, as though unhappy about something. Tess felt suddenly apprehensive as he turned to her again, shadowed face sombre.

  “I don’t know how long ago it happened, but you and Gus were once involved with a young woman who had been wickedly hurt by her husband. You helped to save her from him and promised you would never tell anyone what had happened.” Finely drawn eyebrows mutely sought confirmation. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Go on.” Tess’s reply was guarded. “What else do you know?”

  “It concerned a human skeleton. Is that enough?”

  Not enough; it was too much. For a moment Tess stood very still then shivered with the shock of it. Apart from herself and Maltravers, the grotesque details of the Bellringer Street nightmare were known by only two people. It was virtually impossible Lacey could have met either of them and, even if he had, it was unthinkable they would have told him.

  “You can’t …” Her voice gulped in her tightened throat. “You can’t know that. You mustn’t know that!”

  “At one point this evening, you used the memory of it to amplify your emotions,” Lacey continued. “It’s a common trick of your profession. It was very brief but very intense, because you needed something powerful to help you deliver a line. I caught it.”

  “Caught it?” Tess demanded. “What do you mean?”

  “I saw it with you. Not the whole story, because you only conjured up its most potent effects. I know nothing more than what I’ve told you. No names or places or details. But I know it happened. Now do you believe me when I say Martha Shaw was murdered?”

  Tess instinctively stepped away from him. Her voice had dropped to a whisper. “How dangerous are you, Mortimer?”

  “I’m not dangerous at all. I have no power over people, I can’t read thoughts at random. I have not sold my soul to the devil.” Teeth gleamed as he smiled in the darkness. “I am Mortimer Lacey, retired fashion designer of Number Two Lifeboat Row, Porthennis, Cornwall. Generally regarded as a harmless eccentric and slanderously suspected of being queer. I have never to my knowledge harmed anyone in my life.”

  “But you’re bloody good at frightening.”

  “Then I’m very sorry, but I have no choice. When I met you and Gus this afternoon — after Martha had died — I knew that both of you and Helen would become involved in her death … Don’t ask how, just believe me. All I can do is help as best I can, and to do that I had to convince you of certain things about me.”

  High beam headlights leapt out of the dark as a car appeared on the lane past the theatre, illuminating them both for an instant, before disappearing again as the vehicle dropped into another dip. Tess felt reassured that the twentieth century was still within running distance.

  “I’d like you to take me back,” she said. “I need to talk to Gus.”

  “Of course you do.”

  In the car, Lacey did not speak as Tess watched night-washed hedges and stone walls flow by. As they reached the first street amps on the edge of Porthennis, she began to feel better. A conversation such as she had just had lost some of its potency under sodium lights.

  “Will you come in and tell Gus what you’ve told me?” she asked as they reached Helen’s cottage.

  “No, but I’ll see him tomorrow. You must both talk about it first.” Lacey bowed slightly. “Your performance tonight was superb. I have seen … it must be eight Desdemonas, but have never been as moved before. Thank you. It was a privilege to be there. Goodnight.”

  Tess remained at Helen’s gate as Lacey walked the few paces to his own cottage and let himself in. He did not look back. As he closed the door, she gazed over roofs that fell from Lifeboat Row to where water in the silent harbour glittered under necklaces of silver bulbs hung in loops between posts. On Danes Isle, a low, craggy outcrop of rock just offshore, barely visible in the darkness, a seagull squawked as it settled for the night. From the Crab and Anchor, Porthennis’s other pub which stood on higher ground behind Lifeboat Row, a woman shouted something Tess could not make out. Tomorrow would be another day of the holidays, a matinee with children fidgeting, resenting loss of time spent on sea and sand, then the final Saturday evening performance. Television, radio and newspapers would report the latest twists of a salacious political scandal, developments in a national industrial dispute and a continuing outbreak of listeria. People would come to Porthennis to take snapshots, buy postcards and gifts and enjoy cream teas. Tess would wake up knowing that the man on the other side of her bedroom wall, using powers she could not comprehend, was convinced — no, knew — a woman had been murdered. And the most terrifying thing about it was that she believed him.

  *

  Belvedere Scott was drunk. He weaved through the murky alleyway, cursing as he stumbled; dim and misleading, light seeped through drawn curtains of houses close on either side. His stick’s metal ferrule struck sparks off cobbles as his ungainly body slithered down a wall and he sat in uncomprehending bewilderment, wheezing noisily before he momentarily fell asleep. Some instant dream invaded his mind and he woke with a half shout that echoed and faded; nobody in the houses either heard or bothered to investigate. Great bear-paw of a hand straining on the wrought-iron handrail of front steps which bent under his weight, he struggled to his feet and lumbered
on. His cottage was half-way up the hillside overlooking Porthennis, at the top of a steep flight of rough steps overhung with thick summer bushes, leaves and creepers brushing his face and clothes as he staggered clumsily upwards. He stopped as a figure appeared ten feet ahead of him, dark as the shadows out of which it stepped. Scott swayed, squinting through gloom and branches, alcohol-muddled mind unable to interpret, mouth working dumbly as he struggled to form words.

  “Mattie?” he finally mumbled. “Sod off. You’re dead. I’m pissed.”

  He waved an arm dismissively across his body, warding off a spectral presence as he started to climb again. The figure remained. Convinced in his intoxication that it would either vanish or he would walk straight through it, Scott continued upwards. It was another bad Friday night.

  Then the figure leapt forward and pushed him violently.

  Scott’s arms flailed empty air as he teetered crazily like a clown on a tightrope before toppling backwards, a wild flapping black ball wrapped in his flowing cloak. Hands snatched desperately at branches, but his weight snapped and tore them, leaves and twigs scattering in the wake of his tumbling momentum. The back of his head struck the sharp edge of a stone step as he clumsily somersaulted and his stick, caught in the folds of his cloak, ripped the material. Towards the bottom, the pathway widened and his body turned sideways, rolling over and over, before coming to a stop. He groaned, then lay still, face down in a pool of pale lemon light cast by a lamp post. Up the rise of the steps, the figure had vanished.

  Chapter Three

  Hopping on and off strategically placed stools, Nick Charlton scuttled about his kitchen preparing breakfast. His house, in a terrace squeezed into the intersecting tangle of tiny streets behind the harbour front, could have been built for his dimensions; low ceilings, cramped rooms, stairs designed in miniature, no sense of space. Inside, cheap functional furniture stood on worn carpets or bare linoleum; outside needed painting. The unexpected contrast was the front garden, abundant with French marigold, blood-crimson fuchsia, golden nasturtium, dusk-pink geranium, flourishing and cared for in a nest of low brick walls.