A Charitable Body

by Robert Barnard

  “Oh, supported. There was no one else, you see. And she—my mother—was pressuring Hazel, making hints, disgusting suggestions.”

  “What sort of hints?” asked Rupert after a sharp intake of breath.

  “That she was ‘nearly ready,’ and that there’d been a ‘lot of interest’ in her.”

  “Was your mother serious?”

  “Never more so. ‘The first year always brings in a lot of money,’ ” she used to say. ‘I’m not a bloody joint of meat,’ Hazel would reply. But she was scared, she was disgusted at being ‘sold off.’ We used to talk about it. I hardly remember talking about anything else, at least until she heard about Walbrook.”

  “Who was she?”

  “My mother, of course. We never called her anything else.”

  “And what did she hear about Walbrook?”

  “That it was being returned by the government to its rightful owner. We’d heard all about what happened at the beginning of the war, how it had been sold to another branch of the family. I hadn’t understood, but Stafford explained as much as he was able. Mum’s rejoicing helped as well. I understood that she had possession of something the Fiennes man would very much like to have.”

  “Was she blackmailing him?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think she was threatening to use information against him. It was just that she had something, and she needed any price she could get for it to ‘tide her over.’ Hazel told me that the London business must be in difficulties. We were interested because whatever she had might save us from being ‘sold like meat.’ ”

  “This was all happening in the autumn of 1947?” asked Charlie.

  “Yes. At some point a price must have been agreed. She was very annoyed when Montague Fiennes insisted she bring ‘it’ with her if she expected money to be handed over. ‘I’m damned if I will,’ she said. ‘He could say it was a forgery and never hand over the money.’ But we heard her talking to one of her best friends, a creepy-looking doctor of some kind, someone we hated, but he knew all about dodgy deals. He said she would have to let Fiennes see what it was he was buying. She agreed reluctantly. Then she said she was going to take us with her, me and Hazel, so that the Quarles side of the family would be strongly represented. The doctor thought it was a good idea. He thought she should also take some kind of bodyguard, some tough who would see that Fiennes obeyed the rules, but she jibbed at that too. ‘I’d trust the bodyguard even less than I’d trust Montague Fiennes,’ she said.

  “The next morning we two passengers put on our most respectable school uniforms, which both said DAMNED GOOD SCHOOL. We were seen off by the doctor, who asked her, ‘Have you got it?’ and she answered, ‘I said I would, didn’t I?’ which, as Hazel whispered to me, wasn’t really an answer at all. It was a grueling trip in those days before motorways. The assignation at Walbrook Manor was for the next day, and she opted to stay for the night in a country inn fifteen miles or so away from our destination. She had a whale of an evening talking to the yokels and sending them up—she thought they didn’t catch on, but they did. Hazel talked to a young man a few years older than her, and they got on fine. As we went up to bed, she whispered in my ear, ‘He’s a motor mechanic.’ Before I went to sleep she said, more urgently, ‘If the car starts behaving funny and it slows, jump out.’ Next morning Hazel said she was ill and wasn’t going any farther. We could come back for her. She wasn’t having any of this until Hazel said, ‘I think they’ve started.’ That was really good news for my mother, and after she’d asked a few questions about what it was had started, she agreed to Hazel staying behind at the inn. I was bundled in the back of the car and we started off.

  “When we’d driven ten miles or so, the car started hiccuping and making funny noises. ‘What is wrong with the car, Mummy?’ I asked. ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she said. ‘There’ll be someone at Walbrook who can fix it.’ We were on a back road, my mother thinking that was safest, though in fact it made us more conspicuous, and she was lucky we were not noticed. Well, not lucky exactly . . . The car’s hiccups turned to coughs and we started downhill. There were a lot of hills. I shoved down the door handle, opened the door, and jumped out. The car continued down, I heard her screaming, and then a splash. I thought, ‘Now she’ll be all right,’ but I started running, afraid of what she’d do to me. I ran and ran. She must have sunk quickly. I never saw or heard anyone running after me. After I’d been going about several hours, I saw a road sign: WALBROOK, 3 MILES. The village and the house, but I knew one was close to the other. I kept on and banged on the servants’ door about ten o’clock. There was one servant, engaged by Mr. Fiennes. He let me in, gave me a cup of Bovril to warm me up, and then sent a message to Mr. Fiennes. From then on I was safe.”

  “Did he have no doubts? Keeping quiet about your story?”

  “If he did, he didn’t communicate them to me. Would you? Accuse a child of twelve? All I did was run away. He told me once it was like a dream: his first night in the old house, first day as head of the family, a new beginning. And at his door there appears not a selfish harridan such as he had always believed my mother to be, but a child who has just narrowly escaped death. He must have waited to hear word of the car, but none came. It was a dream, a fantasy come true! He began his time as ‘lord of the manor’ welcoming a defection from the Quarles wing of the family to the Fiennes wing. From that morning on he fed me, clothed me, made sure I was looked after by someone competent and sympathetic. Soon his wife and baby arrived from her parents’ home—you,” Mary-Elizabeth said, grinning slyly at Rupert, “and we all got on so well. I’ve had such a happy life, and the life that I faced before, without ever understanding it, would have been a lifetime of prostitution.”

  “But what about Hazel? We know what she’s become, what she is now. How did she get from being a feigned invalid in a country pub to being Lady Quarles? Have you talked to each other?”

  “We have exchanged words. When she first came here with Stafford, she made sure she got me on one side, made sure I knew that she knew who I was. ‘We know each other, and what happened to us. I don’t want to hear a single word more about it. I spent six months with a handsome, young car mechanic, and from then on my life’s all been upward. I’ve invented my own family background, but I don’t want to hear about it. Capice? Stafford knows about my parentage, but I told him nothing about his mother—your mother. It seemed too cruel.’ And she stalked off—very sensibly I thought.”

  Charlie pushed his cup of tea away and stood up, looking at Mary-Elizabeth and Rupert. He had a feeling the latter knew what he was going to say.

  “I expect I’ll have some more questions to ask you, but I think I should tell you now that I’ll be repeating your whole story on up the line. I can’t see anyone in authority is likely ever to consider any further action involving, for example, prosecution. What is there to justify it? Two young girls being groomed for prostitution by a sex-mad woman who was also your mother. I think we should quite soon put closure and shut the book. But there is the question of what Mrs. Quarles was hoping to sell to Montague Fiennes. Was it something that could incriminate in some way your adoptive father, Ms. Fiennes? Something valuable, unlike most of the middle-ranking pictures and statues that are in the house now? What was it, and did she have it with her in the car?”

  Mary-Elizabeth swallowed. “She was my mother, but I feel no respect for her. It would be like her to say she was doing something and then do the opposite. I think she must have realized she couldn’t sell something that she was unwilling to let the buyer see before he paid the money. Only she would contemplate an absurd proposition like that.”

  “And did Montague Fiennes never say anything about what it was?”

  “I don’t know. There was something that made me think and was definitely concerned with my mother. He was in bed in Walbrook, it was a few days before his death, and I think he knew it was coming. He was trying to say—I find this very difficult to talk about, and he wasn’t an emotional
sort of person, but he wanted to tell me how much I meant to him, and how valuable my work in the house had been. And what he said was, ‘I think it must be the same with people as it is with great music. Someone said it took years before a piece of music was really appreciated and understood. Even your silly mother appreciated that. I’m beginning to know how much I owe to you. It’s taken time, but I do know how much I’m in your debt.’ ”

  Mary-Elizabeth smiled slowly, with a little girl’s pride.

  CHAPTER 16

  Safe at Last

  About three weeks after that, Charlie, busy putting the so-called case to bed with cautious hypotheses, received a phone call from Julie Maddison. It was a good job he didn’t pigeonhole people according to their special fields of interest—and a good job he didn’t worry about losing a bet.

  “Charlie? I bet you’re putting a final touch or two to your report on the Haroldswater case.”

  “Got it in one.”

  “Did you think of contacting the car museum at Beaulieu?”

  “No. And I can tell from your asking that you did.”

  “Yes. Very cooperative librarian there. Got out and sent me photocopies of advertising material and newspaper reports on the Marsini-Falk, which was one of the luxury jobs you’ve been considering.”

  “Yes. I never found out much about it. A car for the elite.”

  “Exactly. And one of the things it had to offer, along with makeup bags and drinks cupboards and a barometer, was a safe.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes. Fireproof and waterproof, or so they claimed. One thing they surely would prioritize with a safe was that it should be as unostentatious as possible—more like a sandwich box than somewhere to put your valuables.”

  “No photographs, of course.”

  “No. Just the measurements. Could have been ignored by the divers as being just an old box. The sort of thing people chuck into canals and ponds. Maybe it’s time to send them down again. Anyway, I’ll e-mail everything I’ve got. I see a bet coming up trumps for me, don’t you?”

  “I shall pay up with pleasure—no, with gusto,” said Charlie.

  The return of the diving team to Haroldswater did not cause any great stir in the vicinity. There was no great vicinity for it to cause a stir in. But Charlie had read and seen enough of the thirties and forties publicity material to know that the safe was inconspicuous and could have been ignored as some modern packaging, particularly if it had been grown over by aquatic weeds and covered with beer cans. He invented an excuse to call in on Forensics every two or three hours, but unsurprisingly, this did not hurry things up. Eventually the secretary there said something was going to be brought in, and by dint of chatting her up at an unusually slow pace for him, he caught his first glimpse of a smallish box, with weeds and household rubbish clinging to it.

  “That’ll be ages before we can open it,” said the head Forensics scientist. “Don’t come in every five minutes, Charlie. We’ll call you.”

  “Oh, yeah? When I’m out on a tricky job miles away? I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, we’ll call you the day before it seems likely we’ll be opening it up. Satisfy you?”

  “It’ll have to.” But Charlie, often with Hargreaves by his side grumbling as only a Yorkshireman can grumble, called in two or three times a day.

  “It’ll only be another of those bicycle poems,” said Hargreaves.

  Eventually the message came. “We should be ready to open up tomorrow, about eleven. We’ve established there’s something in there.”

  “It’ll be a poem about the Tour de France,” Charlie prophesied to Hargreaves.

  They got to Forensics in good time, but were about the only ones there. The scientific people were not interested in a case that was unlikely to result in a prosecution. The head of the department, with two assistants, slowly, incredibly slowly, began to prize up the lid of the safe. Miraculously the hinge still, noisily, opened as a hinged lid should do. Charlie saw paper and thought that for him paper was more exciting than diamonds or rubies could be. There looked to be nine or ten items, neatly arranged in a pile. The assistants, already gloved, began to empty the miniature treasure chest. Charlie first noted that where there were dates, they were in chronological order. The first date was April 1929. Slowly Charlie displaced the note, which came on top of a very short poem in longhand.

  Here dead lie we because we did not choose

  To live and shame the land from which we sprung.

  Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;

  But young men think it is, and we were young.

  The note read:

  Dear Mr. Quarles,

  At last! A short poem, but it seems to have been ages before I could get the postlude right. Apologies to Mr. Gurney, though knowing my fellow musicians, I shall not be the last to come up with my contribution.

  The poem is not yet published and was shown to me by Mr. Housman. When I said it would make a fine song, he grimaced and said nothing. I think he is no musician!

  I have been so taken up with my own thoughts, memories of my own losses, that I am loath to leave the subject and my mind tells me I must write something more ambitious—no, not ambitious, but worthy—of not just my losses but the thousands, millions of families who suffered similarly through Europe and beyond. If something does result, I shall not only acknowledge your part in its composition, I shall make sure any profit goes to Walbrook and the wonderful work it is doing and will do to prevent any repetition of the appalling slaughter we lived through and which younger and better men died in.

  How I hate the Barbarians now rampant in Germany. Heaven help us if they gain power! They would have me hate my best friends—the great Bruno Walter, the wonderful boy Menuhin—simply because of the silly irrelevance of their race. Will we never learn? You must teach the world!

  I enclose a photograph, unposed, more natural I feel.

  Yours

  E. Elgar.

  The photograph showed the composer with a lot of other people, usually of about his age, on some kind of excursion. Elgar looked straight into the camera. His eyes—and they must surely be the reason why this particular snapshot was sent—were trying to be part of a merry event, but they could not disguise the all-pervading bitterness of his later years, when the civilization he had so admired collapsed, leaving the countries of Europe lacking a generation. As Charlie and Hargreaves stared at the wounded glare of the man, the head of Forensics drew from the safe a large manuscript with a title page on the top reading:

  DULCE ET DECORUM EST

  An Oratorio by Edward Elgar

  1931

  “What’s the market in oratorios?” asked Hargreaves. “Make a packet, will it?”

  “Felicity tells me he wrote three. Two were nonstarters. This one, with the story attached to it, may break the trend. Who am I to say?” Charlie looked at the manuscript, which had been opened up so music and words could be seen. So far as he could judge, the music, though wavery, could just about be deciphered. “I suspect the music may be less muddled than the man’s political grasp. I think the feeling is there, and right, even though he was being used and didn’t realize it.”

  “So what happened? What’s behind it all?”

  “A set of women, all with connections with the Quarles family. We have Stafford’s mother, running a brothel, and finding that a much less profitable occupation in peacetime than it was in war. But she had one trump card.”

  Hargreaves’s eyebrows went up, and he gestured to the pile of music paper. Charlie nodded.

  “Then there’s Timothy Quarles’s illegitimate daughter. Hazel was in Walbrook briefly in 1935. Village gossip always gets details wrong. They remembered it as the time of the abdication crisis. I calculate it must have been the Silver Jubilee. If she was born in 1934 or ’5, that would make her just about the right age in 1947—to be the sacrificial victim of Stafford’s mum.”

  “Who didn’t have any scruples involving a mere child,” said H
argreaves, who had quite a good moral vocabulary.

  “No. And Hazel didn’t have any scruples about involving a child even younger than herself. And so she stays in bed with her mechanic, who had fiddled with the car, and Mary-Elizabeth goes off with some sketchy instructions as to what to do when the car began to crack up.”

  “She was the luckiest of them, I suppose?”

  “She was. Her ‘lines fell in pleasant places.’ Who wrote that?”

  “Haven’t the faintest. Who?”

  “Shakespeare,” said Charlie, bravely but erroneously. Well—it was where Felicity’s favorite quotes often came from. “There could be nothing held against Mary-Elizabeth. A twelve-year-old who panics when the car that’s carrying her runs out of control? All perfectly natural. In fact I’d say the two who suffered most from Stafford’s mother had the right to a bit of retaliation. Don’t tell the chief constable I said that.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Go back to driving licenses and parking offenses. I’ll be grateful to. The trivial is always a welcome relief after a big mystery with profound implications.”

  Charlie marched off, leaving Hargreaves shaking his head. Hargreaves never knew his boss to be content with trivialities for more than two or three days in a row. And the truth was that Hargreaves blessed his luck, the eternal alternation between pettifogging regulations and downright evil. It suited Hargreaves very well indeed.

  About the Author

  ROBERT BARNARD’S most recent novel is A Stranger in the Family. Among his many other books are A Cry from the Dark, The Mistress of Alderley, The Bones in the Attic, A Murder in Mayfair, No Place of Safety, The Bad Samaritan, Dying Flames, and A Fall from Grace. Winner of the prestigious Nero Wolfe Award as well as Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity awards, the eight-time Edgar nominee is a member of Britain’s prestigious Detection Club. In 2003, he was honored with the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement in mystery writing. He lives with his wife, Louise, in Leeds, England.