Tinkler looked at me. “You want to go there now?”
“No, tomorrow.”
“What, you want to drive down to London, then drive back tomorrow?”
“No,” I said. “We can stay the night. He’s recommended a pub with rooms and he says the food is very good.”
“Which is crucial,” said Nevada happily. She put her hand on Tinkler’s shoulder and said, in her best wheedling tones, “You don’t have work tomorrow, do you?”
“No, I’m off for the rest of the week, but we can’t just…”
“Oh yes we can.”
“But…”
“Oh, go on, Tinkler.”
Tinkler sulked. “We have to stay in a pub?”
Nevada said, “The place is probably packed with simple-minded little rural harlots who would just love to have sex with a big city boy like you.”
Tinkler paused. “You think so?”
“Of course. You know how inbred they are in these parts.”
So we bundled into the car and set off in search of the pub in the dying light. Nevada consulted Freddie’s scrap of Edwardian script so she could phone ahead to make a reservation. As she looked for the pub’s number I said, “We’ll need two rooms, a single and a double.”
“Or just one double room with a locked chest at the foot of the bed, where we can keep Tinkler as our gimp,” said Nevada.
“That’s never going to happen,” said Tinkler firmly. “Not unless you pay me.”
The pub was called the Black Ox. It was a handsome old coaching inn and the food was almost as good as Freddie had claimed. After dinner we sat in the bar, which was mostly filled with old geezers, though there was the occasional middle-aged couple, and their dogs.
“No harlots,” said Tinkler sadly. Then he perked up. “I wonder if there’s porn in the bedrooms?”
The next morning we rose early, as agreed, but despite much hammering on his door, Tinkler refused to get up and join us for our visit. His door opened a crack, just enough to hand us the car keys, and then closed again as he went back to bed.
“Too much porn,” said Nevada.
We went out to Tinkler’s car, wiped the condensation off the window and set off. I drove. Despite its age the car handled well and we plunged along curving country roads as the sun came up. Nevada was humming happily but I felt a growing tension as we neared our destination. We wanted to learn something about Valerian, and I was afraid we might.
After all, ‘the last place she lived’ had been a euphemistic way of saying ‘the place where she died’.
10. STRAWBERRY HAT WEATHER
As we drove, I told Nevada about my conversation with the Colonel. “I rang him last night while you were taking your two-hour bath.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “I wasn’t in there more than one hour and fifty-eight minutes, one hour and fifty-nine minutes, tops. The tub had claw feet. They’re my weakness, tubs with claw feet. For some reason they’re always much harder to get out of. So what did he have to say, the Colonel?”
I slowed as we approached a crossroads. These little country lanes were well stocked with blind corners, and I didn’t want us rammed amidships by someone in an overpowered four-wheel drive racing to or from a horse show. “Well, first off he was appalled that we were feeding Turk and Fanny dried cat food.”
“He was what? How would he even know that we do that?”
“Because he was there when Clean Head served them their supper. He dropped by our place on the off-chance we’d be home.”
“Do you think he’s lonely?”
“I think he wanted an excuse to get away from Lucy.”
“Ah,” Nevada leaned back in her seat, “now that makes sense. I can imagine he’d rather spend the evening waiting in the cold rainy night outside our front door than be with her.”
“Yes, he’s not mad about the girl.”
“Or vice versa.”
“Anyway, besides our cats’ diet, we also managed to talk about the record. And he still wants us to go ahead and buy it.”
“Even though the supposedly hidden message doesn’t tell us anything?”
“He said at least it proves all that nonsense about black magic and orgies and cannibalism is not true. If he has the real record in his possession he can refute all that.”
“Good point. Refute. Indeed.”
* * *
We drove in through the gate of Catherwood House and onto an oil-stained grey flagstone driveway. It wound through a stand of trees towards the house, which loomed on a rise of land overlooking us. I immediately saw it on our right—the tree. It was a tall, gnarled oak covered with bundles of flowers, some synthetic and bright, others real and dead, and ribbons, scraps of paper, photographs, items of clothing and numerous other offerings.
“There it is,” I said.
“What?” said Nevada.
“The tree where she hanged herself.” I pulled the car over and stopped. Nevada followed me out, pulling on her woolly white hat with the strawberry on it. The air was already biting with a premonition of winter. It was definitely strawberry hat weather.
“Valerian hanged herself?”
I turned and looked at her. “Yes. How did you think she died?”
“An overdose.”
“So why did you think Nic Vardy was sending us a photograph of a tree?”
“I had no idea. No, wait, I’m sure I read it somewhere that she died of an overdose.”
“Read it where?”
“On the Internet.”
“Well, then,” I said, “it must be true.” I walked over towards the tree. The grass was wet and muddy underfoot and thick with dead yellow leaves. It had been a few years since anybody had tended these grounds. Nevada followed, picking her way carefully.
“No,” she said, “it was definitely on some respectable website. From some reputable source. Here, look…” She took out her phone and began searching for the page. She obviously wasn’t going to let it go. I stared up at the tree.
The various notes and handwritten cards that remained attached to it had been sealed in plastic folders to protect them from the weather. These had then been nailed or stapled to the bark of the living tree, which seemed a little callous to me.
“Here you go,” said Nevada. “It’s this article about the twenty-seven club, you know, all those rock stars who died at the age of twenty-seven. And how Valerian was one. And it compares her to Jimi Hendrix and it says,” she peered at the screen, “Valerian… just like Hendrix… at twenty-seven… died of an apparent drug overdose… Oh.” She stopped and looked at me. “It’s ambiguous. I see, the overdose bit is still talking about Hendrix. The subordinate clause is ambiguous. Because they’ve put the commas in the wrong place in the sentence. The silly buggers have put the commas in the wrong place.”
“Always a danger.”
We walked up the leaf-strewn driveway to the front door of the house. Stained glass set in the green wooden door stared into empty darkness. One diamond-shaped pane of the stained glass was gone and had been neatly filled with brown cardboard. I pressed the doorbell set in the flaking paint of the jamb. We listened, but it was impossible to tell if anything was ringing.
There was also a heavy metal knocker on the door, so I tried that, loudly and at length. Nevada and I looked at each other. She shrugged.
“No one in?”
“How could it be any other way?” I said. “We’re three-time losers. Why can’t anybody answer the fucking door at our first fucking attempt?” We wandered back down the steps onto the driveway. I turned to stare back at the house. A floral curtain seemed to stir in one of the high windows that looked down on the drive. Was it moving? I stood and watched while Nevada strode back to the tree. The curtain moved again. Then again. It was twitching in a breeze that was evidently getting in through the ill-fitting panes. I turned and went to join Nevada.
She was standing in front of the tree with her phone in her hand. She turned to look at me. “At least we
can take a photo of this tree. It may not compare with Nic ‘natural lustre’ Vardy’s work, but it will certainly be of more recent vintage.” She peered at the moody old black and white photo of the oak. “Do you suppose this was taken when it happened?”
I looked over her shoulder. “I imagine so, because there aren’t any offerings on it yet.”
Nevada frowned at the picture. “You’re right. No flowers, no poems. This must have been taken just after it happened.”
“Hang on a second,” I said, “let me see that.” I took the phone and looked at the photo, then at the tree, looming against the damp morning sky.
“It’s not the tree,” I said.
“What?”
“It’s not the same tree.”
“How can it not be the same tree?”
I handed her the phone. “Look at it,” I said. I left her comparing the picture to the tree and walked back towards the house. This time I ignored the front door and turned along the footpath, towards the left side of the building. There were several large oaks here, bulking like solid grey shadows on the overgrown lawn. I wandered around them, getting my shoes soaked, until I came to the one closest to the house.
Its long branches extended almost to the windows on the top floor, like the hands of a supplicant reaching for someone’s shoulder.
I stared up at the tree and then I went back and got Nevada. “Come and see this,” I said. We compared the picture on the phone to the twisted oak beside the house. “It’s the same one.”
“Yes,” said Nevada, looking from the photo to the tree. “You’re right. It is. Shall I photograph it?” I was going to reply but then I realised that someone was looking at us.
Standing in an open doorway at the side of the house. A man.
He was tall and thin, with a deeply lined face and hair that at first glance looked dead white but on closer inspection turned out to be extraordinarily pale blond. I made a note to ask Nevada later if it was a dye job. If it wasn’t, maybe I could ask him what his secret was, because he was clearly in his sixties. He wore a long-sleeved sweater with a design of grey and lemon-yellow diamonds and had a navy-blue scarf tucked into the neck of it. I presumed he was one of the Treverton brothers Freddie had mentioned.
“Can I help you?” he asked mildly.
“We tried the bell,” I said.
“Oh, it’s broken,” he said. “It’s been broken for yonks.”
“We also tried to knock,” I said, perhaps a little pointedly, because Nevada stood behind me so he couldn’t see her nudge me in the ribs.
“We’re so pleased to find you in,” she said. “We wanted to have a word.”
“A word? Really? About what?”
I saw Nevada suddenly dry up. She hadn’t quite fully worked out her spiel yet, the poor thing. So I stepped in. I pointed at the oak tree. “This tree, for a start. It’s the one, isn’t it? Not the one by the road, but this one.”
He stared at us. He had unsettling pale eyes or, as Nevada would say later, “He’s got that nasty sort of Lord of the Rings evil elf look about him. Bit big for an elf, though.” He just stared at us and said nothing.
“We’re making a documentary about what happened,” said Nevada. She’d evidently decided to revive our Stinky Stanmer cover story. That was fine with me. The man looked at her. “What happened to Valerian,” said Nevada. He kept on looking at her. “For television,” she said.
It was as if the mention of television had decided him. And not in a good way. He had come a few steps out of the house. Now he turned back towards the door. “If you’ll excuse me, I have things to do. Photograph the tree if you must, but I do ask you not to photograph the house.” He was obviously about to go back inside and close the door on us, in every sense.
Inspiration struck. “Freddie said we should look you up.”
He paused and looked back at me. “That’s right,” said Nevada quickly. “He’s written us a note of introduction.” This was embroidering the truth lavishly; what he’d done was written us some directions.
“Freddie who?” said the man.
Nevada looked at me. She only knew our corduroy-clad friend as Freddie Forty-Five. “Fentyman,” I supplied.
The man looked blank, then seemed to relax a little and said, “Oh, Freddie Forty-Five.”
“He said he knows you fairly well.”
“Freddie? Oh, yes, I suppose so. Gordon and I have seen him at the county show a few times. And he always has a stall at local boot fairs and village fetes and that sort of thing. Still flogging records in the age of the compact disc. Or trying to.” He looked us over again, as if making sure we weren’t too grubby. He seemed to have reluctantly accepted that he had to invite us in. “I’m Timothy. Gordon is upstairs.”
As soon as we got inside I realised why he was wearing a scarf. It was as cold as a tomb in here. It actually felt colder inside than out, as an unheated house often does, if only because it engenders a chill sense of injustice—indoors really should be warmer than outdoors. The house was gloomy and full of shadows, but only because there were no lights on.
The walls and furnishings were pleasant pale colours, faded pastels and off-whites. If the place had been properly illuminated it probably would have been bright and cheerful, in stark contrast to the glum autumn day outside. As it was, the house’s interior formed a continuum with the icy grim morning beyond the windows.
And a little central heating wouldn’t have hurt.
Timothy began opening cupboards. “Do you drink tea?” he said. I had to admire the fact that he didn’t seem to like us and clearly didn’t want us here but, on the strength of our mutual acquaintance with Freddie, felt he had to make us a cup of tea.
“Can I help?” said Nevada.
He ignored her and set a box of teabags down beside the sink, then ran water from the tap into the spout of a chrome kettle so covered with dust that it had achieved a matte effect surface. If he was going to be rudely reticent I felt I could be rudely forthright. “That is the tree out there, isn’t it? The one beside the house?”
He sighed and switched the kettle on. “No one ever noticed before.” He went to the kitchen table, a square of lime-green linoleum on a wooden frame, and pulled out three chairs. Evidently we were supposed to sit. We did, choosing the two chairs closest to each other. Despite having pulled out one for himself, he remained standing.
“You see, when it happened,” Timothy said, “we started to get this constant stream of visitors. It was like they were making a pilgrimage. I suppose that’s how it all gets started. Saints and shrines and pilgrimages and so forth.” He gave a little barking chuckle. “Although it’s very odd to mention her in the same breath as a saint.”
“Valerian?”
“Valerie Anne.” He looked down at us, his pale eyes showing, more than anything else, disgusted mild irritation. “I knew we shouldn’t have let them stay at the house.”
“Them?”
“Valerie Anne and her son and her sister, and whatever members of their entourage happened to be around at any given time.”
“Why did you let them stay?” said Nevada.
He shrugged. “Our families had been friends, or at least been friendly, ever since we were children. Our father and Old Man Drummond were on quite close terms. So, when she came to us years later and said she needed a place to escape to, somewhere in the country, to hide from the press and her fans and all that, we agreed to lend her the house.” He smiled thinly. “Rent it to her, actually. She could afford it.”
The kettle boiled and he made us tea. “There’s sugar, but no milk.”
“That’s fine,” said Nevada.
“Were you here when it happened?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No. My brother Gordon and I were in Switzerland. But it was all waiting for us when we got back: the whole ghastly business. Of course, people being what they are, everyone wanted to see the tree in question. They came and made their little offerings. They took pictures. They ha
d picnics. Some of them rutted like wild beasts, right there under the tree.”
“How awful,” said Nevada.
“That wasn’t the worst thing,” Timothy said. “The worst thing was when they came peering in our windows. Like we were specimens in a zoo. So we did it. I don’t know who came up with the idea, but it was a damned good one. We waited for a nice dark night, then we did it. My brother and I.” He smiled at us, fondly remembering a past triumph. “We took everything off the tree, all the bouquets of flowers and the wretched little doggerel poems and the stained little knickers and we moved them to that tree by the road.” He chuckled nostalgically. “And we fastened them to that tree there and, sure enough, the next irritating party of pilgrims went unquestioningly to that one instead. Business as usual, but all the way over there. Out of sight and out of our hair. And they’ve been going to that tree ever since.” His smile faded. He looked at me bleakly and I could fill in the blank.
Until now.
He shook his head. “No one else ever noticed we’d moved it.”
I said, to make him feel better, “We had a photograph of the real tree.”
“They’re all real trees.” He looked towards the front of the house, and the cluster of woods by the road, where they’d perpetrated their fraud. “It just isn’t the right one. It was a harmless enough deception.” He turned to us. “I’m sure many a famous shrine has been similarly shifted, for similar reasons.”
A voice called, from somewhere deep in the house, causing me to jump. Despite the talk of a brother, I’d begun to think of him as alone in this cold, dark place. He got up wearily. “Excuse me,” he said, and went out the kitchen door.
Nevada looked at me for a split second, then got up and started snooping. I stayed put, partly because I have a higher set of moral standards and partly to keep an eye out for him in case he suddenly came back.
Nevada wandered through into an adjacent room joined to the kitchen by an arched, open doorway. I heard her moving around in the shadows as I listened for our host to return. Then she called to me, “Come and see this.” I got up and went into the adjoining room. It was a dining area with a small, oval table and two very uncomfortable-looking antique chairs. At least someone had had the good sense to put a fat, tattered, old floral cushion on one of them. Nevada was staring at a wall covered with framed pictures of all shapes and sizes. “Look at this.”
The Run-Out Groove Page 8