‘A joke?’
‘I don’t see the funny side of it either, Mr Paleologus.’
‘But you don’t lose by it, Mr Baskcomb, do you? You haven’t had the prospect of quitting a farm that grows debts thicker than thistles dangled in front of you, only for it to be snatched away. My God, when I think ’ Andrew looked away towards the window.
Then his gaze slowly drifted back to Nick. Only they knew just how far they had gone to ensure Tantris’s offer remained on the table. And now they knew it had never really been there in the first place. It was a joke, a horribly good one. But no-one was laughing. No-one in Baskcomb’s office, anyway.
‘Didn’t you say, Mrs Viner,’ Baskcomb resumed, ‘that you had one further line of inquiry to follow where Miss Hartley is concerned?’
Irene looked at Nick for an answer. ‘She mentioned a friend who works at the Museum,’ he said. ‘It’ll be another ruse, I’m afraid. A name she picked up from a staff list or something of the kind and dropped into the conversation for the sake of well ’
‘Verisimilitude,’ said Basil.
‘Exactly. Her mobile phone was switched off over the weekend. Now the number’s unobtainable. Draw your own conclusions.’
‘Sadly, I’m afraid you’ll have to,’ said Baskcomb. ‘I’m entirely at a loss.’
‘Loss,’ murmured Andrew. ‘Yeah. There’s plenty of that to go round.’
Andrew had not been making even an oblique reference to the ceremony they were about to take part in. It was a measure of the degree to which they had been made fools of by the Tantris deception that they could find no space for the sorrow they were supposed to display—and to feel. They emerged from Baskcomb’s office into a damp, grey morning that had not even the decency to be appropriately cold, each churning with anger and humiliation. And loss, of course: the kind of loss Elspeth Hartley had decreed they should experience.
‘The bitch,’ hissed Anna. ‘Who is she? Why did she do this?’
‘It has to be some sort of con trick,’ said Irene, her self control still intact. ‘But I don’t understand. What did she gain from it?’
‘I suspect Dad could have told us,’ said Basil.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He saw through the pseudonym at once. He was meant to. As the book he sent to Tom demonstrates.’
‘Why did he send it to Tom? Why didn’t he warn us instead?’
‘There again, he could have told us. Alas, it’s too late to ask him now.’
‘I’m not sure I can face this bloody pantomime,’ said Andrew. ‘You may have to get through it without me.’
‘We’ll get through it together, Andrew,’ said Irene. ‘It’s time we all went back to Trennor and waited for the cort ge. Let’s hope Laura and Tom haven’t strayed from the car park. I don’t want us to run late.’ She at least was determined to maintain a dignified front for the funeral. ‘The last thing we need is Archie and Norma getting wind of what’s happened.’ Norma, their late mother’s sister, and her husband Archie, retired lawn-mower entrepreneur, were pledged to attend, despite being given plenty of encouragement to excuse themselves on grounds of age and distance. ‘I’ve told Laura to say nothing. Can we rely on Tom?’
‘Of course,’ Andrew edgily replied.
‘Good. Then I suggest we get on. All this’—she glanced up at Baskcomb’s office window—‘will have to wait.’
But one thing would not wait. Irene was taking Andrew, Laura and Tom in her car, leaving Nick to chauffeur Basil and Anna. There was time, Nick reckoned, to check if Elspeth’s reference to Tilda Hewitt really was the ruse he thought. He dropped Anna off outside the Museum, then drove back and forth between Charles Cross and Drake Circus for as long as he judged she might need.
Anna was waiting to be picked up when he returned ten minutes later, with just the report he had expected. ‘The Tilda creature deigned to speak to me and made it crystal clear she’d never heard of an Elspeth Hartley.’
‘But which Elspeth Hartley is that?’ pondered Basil as they headed up North Hill. ‘The one currently on Bostonian sabbatical or another?’
‘Another,’ said Nick ruefully. ‘Or, rather, somebody else altogether.’
‘And so the lady vanishes.’
‘Yeah.’
‘But with what accomplished?’
‘Not sure.’ But there had to be a logic to what had happened. Nick knew that. Maybe there never had been a hidden Doom Window. But the buried body was real enough. Except that now it was no longer buried. Could he and Andrew somehow have been manipulated into doing someone else’s dirty work? Surely not. No-one could have predicted Michael Paleologus’s death and the consequences that would flow from it. Could they?
‘Do we know exactly who’s showing up?’ Anna asked as they joined the A38 and headed west, her mind turning only now to what was close at hand.
‘Apart from locals, you mean?’ Nick responded.
‘I mean people we’ll have to talk to afterwards over smoked-salmon sandwiches and sausages on sticks.’
‘Ah. Right. Well, there’ll be Archie and Norma, as you know. And I imagine we’ll have to ask the Wellers back.’ The Wellers were Michael Paleologus’s closest neighbours, with whom the family maintained superficially amicable relations. ‘Of the Oxford lot, only old Farnsworth is coming down.’
‘Oh God,’ Anna groaned. ‘I’d hoped I’d never have to have my bum fondled by that lecher again. ‘He obviously felt the opportunity was too good to miss,’ said Basil.
‘Shut up, Basil.’
‘He was just about Dad’s closest colleague,’ Nick pointed out. ‘It’s natural he’d want to pay his last respects.’
‘Maybe,’ said Anna. ‘But I’ll still be standing with my back against the wall if he starts circulating.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Nick. ‘I’ll keep him away from you.’ It had suddenly occurred to him that engaging Farnsworth in conversation would be no bad idea. It was clear to Nick that they knew less about their father than they had supposed. Julian Farnsworth was a social magpie, a collector of the curious details of other people’s lives. For once it was possible he might have something to say that Nick wanted to hear.
To Nick’s surprise, the anxieties besetting him fell away as soon as he climbed into the car following the hearse and realized that his father’s funeral had begun. His mind was so numbed by recent events and his part in them that an hour of immemorial ceremony offered a mental refuge where he could calm himself with trivial but poignant memories of his childhood, when life had seemed both simple and joyful. It could not last, of course. He had been perceptive enough as a child to realize that even then. But, while it had, it had been wonderful. And his father, for all his faults, had been part of the wonder.
The hymns were sung, the prayers were said. The rector offered up some kindly words and made passing mention of Michael Paleologus’s celebrated lineage. Then they processed to the graveyard and watched the coffin being lowered into the earth, while the rector made the final pronouncements, to a chorus of rooks and a murmur of wind in the yew trees. Anna sobbed, Laura wept and Aunt Norma dabbed her eyes. Irene merely squeezed her gloved hands together and breathed deeply.
Andrew caught Nick’s gaze and held it for a moment as he stepped forward to sprinkle his trowelful of earth on the coffin. Neither could help thinking of another burial, the truth of which their father had taken to the grave with him. That other body had no coffin, nor brass plate to give it name. Yet no doubt there were loved ones who would have liked the chance to bid him or her farewell.
The graveside party progressed slowly to the churchyard gate, where Nick stepped quietly to one side while Aunt Norma embarked on a round of hugs and endearments. Archie wobbled from foot to foot behind her. The Wellers hovered nearby. And Julian Farnsworth struck an extravagantly mournful attitude on the fringe of the group.
Nick’s rough calculation put Farnsworth in his mid seventies, though he looked younger, thanks to suspiciously dar
k hair and an erect bearing. He had creases at the edge of his mouth that made him seem permanently on the point of smiling and sparkling blue-grey eyes that compounded the effect. He had not run to fat, nor grown gaunt with age. He dressed more smartly than most academics and was presumably the owner of the preposterously Parisian old Citroen parked a little further up the lane. He was the best manicured archaeologist Nick had ever met; according to Michael Paleologus this was because he never engaged in any actual archaeology. He had even been nicknamed ‘the Commodore’ because of the general belief that naval officers of that rank never went to sea.
But he had driven two hundred miles to see off an old friend and Nick hoped that signified something. ‘Dr Farnsworth?’ he ventured.
‘Nicholas.’ They shook hands. ‘A pleasure to see you again, despite the occasion.’
‘I’m impressed you remember me.’
‘Put it down to the Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘It keeps the memory in training. Very important.’
‘Of course.’
‘A decently done service, I thought.’
‘Good. I’m glad you could make it.’
‘Retirement has a liberating effect on the diary, if not on the bank balance. Besides, I could hardly have stayed away in the circumstances.’
‘The circumstances?’ Nick felt sure he had caught something odd in Farnsworth’s tone.
‘Well, I’d spoken so recently to Michael ’
‘You had?’
‘Why, yes. He died on Sunday the twenty-first?’
‘That’s right. A week ago yesterday.’
‘Then it can only have been a few days before.’
‘Really?’ Nick tried not to sound as curious as he was. ‘Do you mind my asking what you spoke to him about?’
‘Not at all. It’s—’
‘ ‘Scuse me,’ put in a voice. ‘Mr Paleologus?’
Nick turned to meet the squinting gaze of an old man in a threadbare overcoat and a black suit, white-shirted but tieless, the shirt buttoned to the neck. He was not much above five feet tall, loose-limbed and built like a whippet. In one hand he clutched a dark brown cap, in the other a crumpled copy of the order of service. His white hair was cut so short that it was no more than a light dusting on his head. His face was narrow and frowning, the eyes twinkling darkly through the compressed lids.
‘I didn’t think it fitting to come to the graveside, see, not being family and all. You likely didn’t spy me at the back of the church. I just wanted to make myself known before I left. I’m Frederick Davey.’
Nick covered his discomposure with a smile and shook Davey’s hand. ‘I’m Nicholas Paleologus. This is Dr Julian Farnsworth, an old colleague of my father’s. Pleased to meet you, Mr Davey. Do you live around here?’
‘No, no. Tintagel. I’d not have known about this but for the notice in the paper.’
‘You drove down?’ Nick asked, partly because he could see no car parked in the lane that Davey was likely to have driven and partly because he did not dare stray beyond the blandest of topics.
‘I got no car. Can’t afford one.’
‘How did you make the journey, then, Mr Davey?’ Farns worth enquired.
‘The Plymouth bus dropped me at Paynter’s Cross. Twas shanks’s pony from there.’
‘You walked from Paynter’s Cross?’ Nick was genuinely surprised.
‘Had no choice. If I was to be here. As I thought I should, like.’
‘How did you know Michael?’ asked Farnsworth.
‘Who?’
‘My father, Mr Davey,’ said Nick.
‘Oh, sorry, I’m sure. Always thought of him as Mr Paleologus. Well, young Mr Paleologus, when I first met him. He was helping his father on the dig up at the castle then.’
‘The dig?’ Farnsworth’s archaeological senses were suddenly alert.
‘Under Dr Radford.’
‘You mean the Tintagel excavations of the nineteen thirties?’
‘That’ll be them.’
‘My, my, that is interesting. What was your involvement, Mr Davey?’
‘Well, I was took off quarrying to do the spadework. Me and a good few others. Tweren’t so very scientific, now I look back.’
‘Fascinating.’ The expression on Farnsworth’s face suggested that he was not being sarcastic.
‘I think we should be starting back for the house, Nick,’ said Irene as she suddenly appeared amongst them. ‘You’ll join us, Dr Farnsworth?’
‘Gladly.’
‘And, er ’
‘This is Mr Davey, Irene.’ Nick caught her eye. ‘From Tintagel.’
‘What time’s your bus back, Mr Davey?’ asked Farnsworth.
‘Quarter to five. There’s only one a day, see.’
‘How very inconvenient. Still, I could give you a lift some of the way if we were leaving at the same time.’
And so, courtesy of Julian Farnsworth, Fred Davey was added to the party that assembled for a late buffet lunch at Trennor. There were fifteen in all, rather more than Pru had catered for, though there was ample slack in her assessment of the quantities required, which was as well, given Davey’s swiftly exhibited capacity to consume her sausage rolls.
His presence was a far greater complication in another sense. Once word about him had passed between Nick’s siblings, a tension entered the atmosphere that only they were aware of. Davey had witnessed a will they had subsequently destroyed. It was hard for them to believe he had made the journey from Tintagel purely because he and Michael Paleologus had worked on the same dig more than sixty years before. A whispered settlement of tactics took place in the kitchen. Irene was to monopolize Baskcomb; he and Davey obviously had to be kept apart. Anna would keep Laura and Tom out of mischief. Basil would seek to shepherd Archie and Norma into conversation with the Wellers. Andrew would swap Cornish lore with Davey. Which left Nick to probe Farnsworth’s recent contact with their father, a task all agreed he was best qualified to undertake.
He made an adroit start by luring Farnsworth into the study to admire Michael Paleologus’s collection of archaeological books. Farnsworth had done no more than finger a few spines when Nick reminded him of what they had been discussing before Davey’s arrival at the church gate.
‘Ah yes. On that subject, I was half-expecting to see David Anderson here.’
‘You were?’
‘Well, when I spoke to Michael, he mentioned that he’d also been in touch with Anderson. The young man’s done well for himself, given his pedestrian cast of mind. I’m sure he was the ideal choice for whatever Michael wanted of him.’
‘Some archival research at Exeter Cathedral Library.’
‘Ah. You were privy to Michael’s enquiries, then.’
‘In part. I spoke to David Anderson last week. He’d have liked to be here today, but his teaching commitments didn’t permit.’
‘How sad. What did Michael have him burrowing after in Exeter?’
‘It had to do with a seventeenth-century occupant of this house, by the name of Mandrell.’
‘Really?’ Farnsworth’s expression betrayed no reaction.
‘He didn’t speak to you about Mandrell?’
‘Not at all. Probably knew better. I’m no historian. Not much of an archaeologist either, in Michael’s opinion. You have to dirty your hands to do it properly.’
‘Why did Dad contact you, then?’
‘Checking up on an old acquaintance. Very much my speciality. Though, as it turned out, I couldn’t help him.’
‘What old acquaintance was this?’
‘Digby Braybourne. Heard of him?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘No reason why you should. A contemporary of Michael’s. Also an archaeologist. Briefly a fellow at Brasenose. An entertaining character. I have one or two fond memories of him. Left Oxford under something of a cloud, I’m afraid.’
‘What sort of cloud?’
‘The s
ort that involves a spell in prison. Fraud, as I recall. Authenticating fake artefacts for one of the big auction houses, hence bringing the University into disrepute. You’re not likely to need a college parking space after that. It would have been the bum’s rush for Digby whatever the jury decided.’
‘When was this?’
‘Oh, it must be more than forty years ago now. Let me see. Yes. Michaelmas term of ‘fifty-seven, I’d say.’
‘And Braybourne went to prison?’
‘I’m afraid so. I visited him a couple of times in Reading Gaol, which I thought kinder of me than he did. He asked me to stop going. So, I stopped. And that is the last I ever saw of him. He never returned to Oxford, gown or city.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Haven’t the foggiest. As I told Michael. But I agreed to ask around. Still turned up nothing, though. A cold trail.’
‘Why did Dad want to trace him after all these years?’
‘For a reunion of old army pals, apparently. They served in the war together.’
‘Did they?’ Nick was puzzled. His father had never once, as far as he knew, participated in regimental reunions. His time in uniform was not something he had ever dwelt on. He had done his bit for king and country without running many personal risks, the way he had told it. Whiling away most of the war on Cyprus, conveniently bypassed by all hostilities. ‘Would that have been on Cyprus, do you think?’
‘Quite possibly. I remember they both spoke of being stationed in the Med. But was it Cyprus?’
‘Dad always said so.’
‘There you are, then. Of course, I imagine they may have passed through other places.’
‘They may have, yes.’
‘Who can say?’
‘Well, Digby Braybourne, I suppose.’
‘Indeed. But where is Digby?’ Farnsworth smiled. ‘Just like the fellow, really. Never to be found when you want him.’
The party fizzled to a close without incident. Archie became drunk, as was not unexpected. Anna escaped molestation by Farnsworth. Mrs Weller turned out to be an old girl of Laura’s school, which delighted her more than it did Laura. And Fred Davey never had a chance to talk last wills and testaments with Baskcomb. Though what Farnsworth meant to give him the chance to talk about en route to Tintagel was in its way an equally disturbing thought.
Days Without Number Page 14