“Wasn’t she buried here?”
“Oh, no,” said Susan, who by now was rather enjoying herself, Felicity thought. “She was buried in one of those tiny West Country places with slightly comic names. He showed us pictures of the funeral. I think he was glad after all that he went. He said, ‘It’s made a closure,’ though most of us feel he’s very far from closure even now. We mother him. All the museum assistants are women, so we sort of compete in the mothering stakes. We would have shook our heads and carried on if it had happened to Annabel Sowerby, the first director. But then she was a woman, and I’m afraid she was nothing to us.”
“She was sacked, wasn’t she?”
“As near as. She was an epitome of efficiency—the wrong sort of efficiency that has to get things done—something, anything, an accomplishment to quote in the annual report and pat ourselves on the back for.”
“What sort of thing was that?”
“Her idée fixe was the catalog. She was determined that everything that came with the transfer of Walbrook to the Trust should be cataloged. Sounds sensible enough. But we had no library- or museum-trained people on the staff then. That didn’t stop her though. She and two assistants just charged in and did what they could in double-quick time. Sir Stafford said we had to follow scholarly good practice, absolutely and completely. It had to be, otherwise the whole procedure was ludicrous and useless. And that’s what it turned out to be. With untrained staff the cataloging was inconsistent and more confusing than helpful. So she had to go. She was one of these one-idea people, and it just wasn’t good enough.”
Felicity had much to think about when she took her break from inspecting estate records. She walked out into estate sunshine, ate her sandwiches outside the cafeteria, and threw backward and forward in her mind an idea about the first director of Walbrook. It was interesting that when Annabel Sowerby came to Walbrook she saw her mission as protecting the collection (pictures, furniture, letters, accounts) from pillaging. She had to catalog all that was handed over by Rupert Fiennes to the Walbrook Trust: items that told the history of the house, its inhabitants, the area of West Yorkshire in which the house had been built, the historical backgrounds of the county as a whole. Felicity got up and left the greaseproof paper in one of the waste bins in the little garden. Then she began to walk around the house, relishing sun and breeze.
Did the predecessor of Wes Gannett suspect that items had gone missing before she had been appointed, and was she working against the clock to minimize the risk of further peculation? That left a whole lot of people under suspicion. But the main candidates would surely be Sir Stafford Quarles and his lady wife.
Felicity turned onto the hilly lawn on the north side of the manor. A path led down to the village. She had not taken much notice of this part of the estate before. She took notice now, though. The nearest house, in the village rather than the estate, was a handsome, Victorian, three-floor building, much too fine, she thought, to house Pink Trousers or any of the other village dog owners. The reason she wondered who lived there was that Charlie’s car was parked in the drive of the house.
Charlie and Sergeant Hargreaves had arrived by appointment at two o’clock at the onetime Dower House of the estate. The slim but capable-looking girl who opened the door introduced herself as Mr. Quarles’s nurse, and she led them through to the sunny, airy sitting room. The focal point of the room was a table, with on one side an upright chair and on the other an invalid chair. Most of the rest of the room was empty.
The man sitting in the invalid chair had his neck twisted and thrown back so that he seemed to be gazing intently at a picture rail. His mouth was slightly open, and in his “Good day” Charlie could distinguish no consonants. Perhaps he was saving them for more than conversational courtesies.
“It’s Mr. Peace from the police,” said his nurse, making it sound like Gilbert and Sullivan. “With DS Hargreaves.”
She was bringing in a chair for Hargreaves, whose presence was an optional extra.
“And this is . . . ?” said Charlie, for form’s sake.
“This is Graham Quarles, brother of Sir Stafford Quarles.”
“And a well-known composer,” said Charlie, not holding out his hand because there would have been difficulties. “And you are . . . ?”
“I’m Lesley Soames. I’m the nurse and the amanuensis, but today I may have to act as interpreter as well.”
“I’d be grateful if you would,” said Charlie. “How long have you lived here, sir?”
Graham Quarles gestured toward his attendant with a single finger.
“He has lived here three years,” she said, speaking distinctly so she could be corrected if necessary. “This was part of the agreement with the new Trust. Mr. Rupert was very insistent on that.”
Charlie, as he went on, realized that Graham left answering to his attendant when simple matters of fact were raised. Who was he, Charlie Peace, to insist on normal procedures when his sergeant was concealing a tiny tape recorder about his burly person? Charlie took Lesley through Graham’s shortened curriculum vitae: minor public school, a state scholarship to the Northern College of Music, a place in the BBC Symphony Orchestra, then the compositions that enabled him eventually (about 1989, said Lesley) to write music full-time. His stroke took place in the year 2002, and since then he had been an invalid, only able to compose because Lesley could act as his musical amanuensis.
“Marriage?” queried Charlie.
“No,” said Lesley.
“Any long-lasting affair—or, let’s say, partnership?”
Graham gestured to Lesley to keep quiet. This time Charlie heard a few consonants, but he was still reliant on Lesley for her sharpness as a translator.
“Mr. Quarles says there was one when he was in his twenties—”
Graham Quarles interrupted her, and she immediately translated.
“There was one with Betty Bartlett, a soprano now dead, and the other one”—she looked inquiringly at Graham—“was with Pia Corelli, an Italian cellist, and that was when he was in his forties.”
“I see,” said Charlie. “Is the lady still alive?”
There were grunts from the wheelchair.
“As far as he knows, and he doesn’t care an iota one way or the other.”
“Thank you. So this house serving as a retirement home for you was—what?—the brainchild of Sir Stafford?”
Graham took over answering, Lesley still translating.
“He says that as far as he knows, it was Rupert Fiennes who had the idea. Rupert has some remnants of the attitude that people call noblesse oblige. Of course when the suggestion was made, Sir Stafford was delighted to go along with it.”
“And you are still able to compose music?”
“He says, very generously, that he is, with the help of me,” said Lesley. “And he has strong support, financial support, from the Musicians’ Benevolent Society.”
“I see. Have you lived round here all your life, sir?”
Graham gestured again toward Lesley.
“Not at all,” Lesley said briskly. “He lived in London when he had his orchestral job. That was necessary. He did a few years teaching at his old college in Manchester. Naturally his stroke caused problems. When the offer of Oakdene—that’s this house—came, he was living in Leeds, and I went to his flat to help with his music two days a week. Now I’m a full-time maid of all work, and that suits us both very well.”
“Do you manage to get around much?”
“He tries to get to first performances of his music. Mostly we succeed, with a bit of help. Mr. Wainwright, whom I’ve seen you talking to within the manor grounds, has been enormously helpful.”
Cockles, thought Charlie, trying to picture chronologically the life that had been presented to him by Graham Quarles’s nurse.
“Just to get this straight, sir: in the story I’ve heard, all the connections with Walbrook have come after the time when Mr. Quarles had his stroke.” Charlie saw Graham Quarles frown
, then smooth out his forehead. “Am I right in thinking there were no connections in your earlier life with either Walbrook or the Fiennes branch of the family?”
The strange sounds of Graham Quarles talking began almost at once.
“Almost right, but not quite,” translated Lesley Soames. “I was here as a boy with my family. I remember nothing about it. This was when everyone was preparing for war. Soon there was the ‘phony’ war, then the Blitz, and so on. I was much too young to understand. The house was sold to the Fienneses; we were living in an old barn of a house in, or near, Witham in Essex. No connection between the two branches of the family, so far as I know, apart from business letters.”
“And is that all?” asked Charlie.
“Not quite. When I was a young musician-cum-composer, I had a letter from the ‘head of the family’—Rupert’s father. There had been some publicity about me, I was ‘making a name’—publicizing the Quarles name in fact.”
“When was this?”
Quarles thought.
“About the midsixties. The letter asked me to lunch at the Salisbury Club. I was curious. I was half-starved. I decided to go. The food was dire, the decoration of the place drear beyond belief. It was as if the twentieth century had never battered its way in. Nothing but pictures of Tory notables over the last two centuries. It was a disastrous lunch. I was aggressive, he was condescending beyond belief. He knew nothing about music, but that didn’t stop him talking nonsense about it. When we said good-bye outside the funereal dump, he said, ‘We must do this again some time,’ and I replied, ‘Not on your life,’ and walked off as quickly and finally as I could.”
“You never saw him again?”
“No, not even by accident. He certainly never came to a concert where I was performing, or being performed.”
“But you must have had dealings with Rupert and Mary-Elizabeth Fiennes.”
“Ah, yes. Different kettle of fish, each in his own way. Rupert I could like, without wanting too much of his company.”
“Why not?”
“Too limited. Typical soldier. You see why soldiers going into politics never really works. He’s well-meaning—more than most military men—but he doesn’t really work outside his own little sphere.”
“And Mary-Elizabeth?”
“We’ve had less to do with her, though Lesley has enjoyed several chats with her, and so she has come into contact with her family feelings. Rather ridiculous, because the family, all the branches of it, has never really done very much. You know how with most people in Britain everything always comes back to class. You no sooner meet someone new and you start telling off the things in him and her which reveal their class: accent—very important—clothes, makeup in women, and so on. Most countries don’t have this obsession, but we still do, and Mary-Elizabeth typifies this. Everything comes back to it, and her history of the family will be soaked in it.”
This was the first time that Charlie had heard of anything so formal as a written history.
“And yet she is basically a poor relation, isn’t she?”
“Oh, yes. The villagers say that when he took her in, old Fiennes, Rupert’s dad, treated her as a sort of housemaid, or a bit later like the deputy manager of one of his prestigious hotels. Rupert thought this was nonsense, though the domestic part of her daily work became more and more important as the financial situation became more and more desperate. But she still judges everything by the old, stupid criteria: where he went to school, whether she went to finishing school. Absolutely daft, and pathetic as well. It’s an obsession, so she’ll suppress anything that conflicts with her ideas of the family’s status.”
“Suppress? What do you mean?”
“Tampering with the evidence. Nothing really serious, but it shows you what sort of a person she is. Take these so-called prewar seminars that you’ve probably heard about, with pacifist credentials apparently, but really stamping grounds for the European dictators, especially the worst of them, Adolf Hitler. When—if ever—her history is written, she’ll include nothing whatever about the fascist dictatorships and the apologies for them that formed much of the meat of the seminars. And you can be pretty sure my good brother, Stafford, will not rush up with the evidence and say, ‘You must deal with this.’ Stafford has his own little games he seems to be playing. He’s been good to me, so I’m not saying too much about it, but Stafford has his motives for everything.”
“Meaning what? What is he suppressing and why?”
“Can’t say, dear boy. But if I were you, I’d latch onto anything that seems to have gone missing. Songs from the song cycle that was sung here in December, for instance. Anyone who was anyone in the musical world in the thirties was asked to submit a song for consideration. All the ones that are left were performed. Where are the others, why have they disappeared, and—above all—where is the song by the foremost figure in English music?”
“Who was?”
“I’ll say no more. It’s no great mystery. I ask myself about Stafford, why did he want this job? Virtually unpaid—only the flat and expenses, and though he makes up expense claims with the enthusiasm of an MP, they cover little more than his and Hazel’s living expenses. So why did he want to come back to his ancestral home, not seen by him since 1939, and what was its particular appeal to him? I think that’s all I want to say about that. See them out, Lesley.”
Walking away from Oakdene, Sergeant Hargreaves was still trying to absorb the interview. “Doesn’t strike me to be exactly a family lover.”
“No. It seems to be the sort of setup where you love your family but don’t like or trust most of its members,” said Charlie. “They’re not alone in that, though.”
“Maybe not. But to practically accuse your own brother of stealing the family valuables . . .”
“Probably commonplace in Victorian times, that,” said Charlie. “They had will-reading gatherings, and those often descended into fisticuffs. . . . I’m just worried we are going up some blind alleys.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re looking into family rows, minor peculation, and low-level crime. What we should be looking into is—”
“Murder,” said Hargreaves.
“Got it in one.”
CHAPTER 11
Cherchez les Femmes
Charlie left his car a hundred yards from the deepest part of Haroldswater pond. Not that any evidence of importance could still be in the area, such as prints or trinkets, but discipline demanded it. As he walked toward the rather unattractive feature of the landscape, a diver surfaced, looking like an overgrown seal, and presented something, which Hargreaves, looking as out of place as a rugby player at a synchronized-swimming event, took momentarily in his gloved hand and slipped into an envelope.
When Charlie approached him, Hargreaves’s face was filled with what passed with him for excitement. “You’ve come at just the right time . . . sir.”
“Good,” said Charlie comfortably. “Not for nothing am I known as a lucky policeman.”
“Oh, Gawd,” said Hargreaves, almost spitting. “ ‘Not for nothing am I known as.’ I’ll never get used to talking to you . . . sir. Your wife has a lot to answer for.”
“Hurry, then. Spill the beans—to say it in your language.”
Hargreaves began waving his fingers like a primary-school teacher. “Two things. First of all, the car. We don’t know what it is—or was—yet, or the number, but it is not a Mini or an Austin Seven, or any of the little cars that us proles drove in former days.”
“What do you mean by ‘former days’? How old is the car?”
“The boys think prewar. We should be able to be more exact before very long. Apparently it’s not only quite a big car—it’s also, or was once, pretty posh. All the indications so far say ‘class’—well produced, well fitted, real class. If I had that car before it went into the pond, I’d have been driving it to Brighton like a real gent. Even nowadays it’s probably one of the all-the-rage cars of the prewar
years. So good-bye to your theory that this was the deflowered kitchen maid, come back for her thirty pieces of silver.”
“I seem to remember that was your idea, Hargreaves. And I liked it because it seemed to make other pieces fit. But remember, she’s said to have been driving a car when she came back to Walbrook.”
“Right you are, sir,” said Hargreaves, who never wittingly lost possession of the ball. “What do you say to some sort of conspiracy?”
“Talk English, mate. What sort of a conspiracy?”
Hargreaves sat on a convenient rock. “Well, take it that this kitchen maid—name, sir?”
“Rose Patchett.”
“Okay, Rose Patchett has been impregnated by the lord of the manor, name of Tim Quarles, the then-current representative of the family, owning and living in Walbrook. She has been paid off in the usual manner and on the usual scale: five shillings, a railway ticket to London, threats if she dares to bring back her own face or that of the baby to this part of West Yorkshire.”
“Or the West Riding as it was then called.”
“I didn’t request a history lesson . . . sir.”
“Anyway, that all figures,” said Charlie. “Who might be the upper-crust figure she meets up with, who persuades her to get her claws into Timothy a second time?”
“Not the faintest idea, sir. It could be someone we don’t know about. Someone Rose worked for who got all indignant at the way she had been treated. It could have been a sheer matter of conscience. What’s the word you use?”
“Altruism? Disinterest?”
“Lovely. Sound really good. On the other hand she could have been in it for purely selfish reasons: getting her hands into the family fortune.”
“Except that there was no family fortune, or hardly any. The seminars in the thirties improved prospects a little, but not hugely, and the moment war threatened, they were a dangerous thing to have been associated with. Notice that as soon as war came, the poets and musicians and that bunch got out and slipped off to the United States.”
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