Harry put back his glasses and blinked in a puzzled way. “But you know what happened. The boy found Cliff Morton in the act of raping Barbara and ran out to tell the first person he saw, who was Duke.”
“No,” said Alice serenely. “i’m not asking that. I want to know what you were doing.”
Silence.
He shifted in his chair. “Well, I, em… I joined in the search.”
“Where did you search?”
“The cowsheds. Took me some time. All those stalls.”
“And, of course, you found nothing. Did you hear anything?”
Harry considered the question. “The cider mill was still grinding.”
“So you heard that. Anything else?”
“No.”
“You searched the cowshed, and then?”
“Back to the house.”
“You crossed the yard, then?”
“Sure.”
“See anyone?”
“Barbara, with her mother. They were ahead of me, moving towards the kitchen door. Great, I thought, we found her. All we need now is Duke, so he can invite her to the party. I was about to go find him when I sensed something wrong. I took another look at the two women. I just had a back view of them, and they were almost through the door by this time. Mrs. Lockwood had her hands on Barbara’s shoulders… like this. Barbara’s hair was loose, and her head was right back and shaking, like she was hysterical.”
“Screaming?”
Harry shrugged. “The damn machine was still going. Far as I could tell, Mrs. Lockwood was holding her upright. They went inside.?m standing there scratching my head when out comes Sally.”
“From the kitchen?”
“Yeah. She runs over to me and tells me Barbara was attacked. I ask her who did it and she doesn’t know. She’s pretty upset herself, and she asks me to take her home. I ask her where Duke is. She shakes her head and tries to pull me towards the jeep. She says leave him. Just take me home. I’m telling her I can’t do that when Duke comes around the side of the cider house and says let’s go. He gets in the jeep and starts up.”
“How was he looking?” asked Alice.
“Kind of solemn. Tight-lipped.”
“His appearance. Blood on his clothes? Any sign of violence?”
“Not that I saw.”
“He was in uniform, I expect?”
“Sure.”
“Blouse and pants? The buttons all fixed as usual?”
“I guess I’d have noticed if not.”
“And how was his behavior?”
“A little erratic,” Harry admitted. “That’s how it seemed at the time. I asked if he knew what happened to Barbara. He said, as if he knew all about it, there’s nothing we can do. I said for Christ’s sake, Duke, there’s plenty we can do. For a start, we can find the creep who attacked her. Duke said leave it. He told me to get in the jeep. He spoke with a kind of authority. Sally was already aboard, yelling at me to get in for God’s sake. So I did.”
Alice had listened in rapt concentration. She was standing with her two hands on my stick, holding it forward like a divining rod. “I want to get this straight,” she told Harry. “Were these Duke’s exact words: There’s nothing we can do. Leave it. Get in the jeep’?”
“Jeez, it was a long time ago,” pleaded Harry.
“Think.”
“I’m ninety percent sure. He may have thrown in a stronger word.”
“But the rest stands?”
“Sure.”
She paused for thought, staring up the the stuccoed ceiling: Presently she nodded at Harry. “And then?”
“We drove off.”
“Where to?”
Harry’s face showed the strain as he wrestled with a memory. A new set of creases branched out from his eyes and mouth. “I told you Duke was at the wheel. At the crossroads he turned in the Shepton Mallet direction and put his foot on the gas. He didn’t give a thought to Sally. She was in the backseat with me. She says to me where the heck are we going? I can’t go to the party after what happened to my friend. So I stuck my hand on Duke’s shoulder and asked him to stop.”
“And did he?”
“Not before we were halfway to Shepton Mallet, and then he refused to turn the jeep.”
“Why?”
Harry sighed. “How do I know? I can’t say what had gotten into him. He started giving me the needle. He said what’s with you two? You got it made. You don’t really need Barbara or me to have a good time. Make hay. Have a ball.”
“Couldn’t he see that Sally was upset?”
“I just couldn’t get through to him.”
“Could Sally?”
“Sal? She was too scared to speak. She had rape on her mind, I guess.”
“So what happened?”
“When it was obvious we were at a stalemate, he told me to take over the jeep. I could drive Sally home if I wanted, but not with him on board. He’d rather walk to Shepton Mallet.”
Alice’s eyes widened. “And did he?”
Harry gave a nod. “Wasn’t much over three miles. I turned the jeep and drove Sally home. End of story.”
Alice preferred to reach her own conclusion. “Was it really the end? Didn’t you see Duke again that evening?”
“If I had, we wouldn’t have spoken.”
“What time did you get back?”
“I couldn’t say. I had a beer in the Jolly Gardener, and then I drove around for a while, looking for a pickup. Just wasn’t my night.”
“Was this before midnight?” Alice persisted.
“Yeah.”
“And was anything said when you saw Duke next?”
“About what happened? Nothing. Frost.”
“You fell out?”
“That’s the size of it. We didn’t speak for weeks.”
“Not even after Barbara committed suicide?”
“Not even then. Much later, after we’d both been posted to Colchester, I mentioned it. Duke knew about Barbara. He said it was really sad.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing. It was a sensitive topic.”
“I understand,” said Alice in a way that signaled a respite for Harry. She picked her fruit juice off the table and took a sip.
Remarkably, considering how drained he looked, Harry was unwilling to leave it at that. He appeared to sense that some self-justifying statement was still necessary. After he’d taken out a colored handkerchief and wiped his brow, he added, “You know, when I first heard about the murder, and Duke taking the rap, I didn’t believe it. I can’t describe the feeling. Coming on top of the war, which to a GI was totally unreal until you got in the firing line, it was way over my head. Took me weeks to come to terms with it-I mean, just accepting that Duke had been hanged. He was no killer.”
Harry stopped to blow his nose. He was visibly affected by what he’d been saying. He resumed. “Finally I read a book on the case, The Somerset Skull, by some English journalist.”
“Barrington Miller,” I said with contempt. “A real scis-sors-and-paste job.”
“True,” said Harry, “but it had the essential facts on the trial, and it told me the prosecution was garbage. Sexual jealousy? No chance. He never had sex with the girl. If she was pregnant, believe me, it was some other guy, I told you how it was between Duke and Barbara.”
“ ‘Zilch’ I think, was how you described it,” I said, observing neutrality. Alice was silent, drawing breath, perhaps, for a heart-to-heart with Sally.
“Take that U.S. Army major in court to speak for Duke’s character” Harry said with a sharp note of censure. “It was character assassination. They couldn’t get over the fact that he heisted a.45 and used a jeep for private trips. They didn’t say he was a loyal husband, one of the gentlest, most civilized soldiers in the army.” He stopped to wipe his nose again. “I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear all this. I just want to explain my position. After reading all this crap I had to decide what to do about it. I was back in the States by th
is time. What could I do to put the injustice right? Send a letter to the London Times? Write to the Lord Chief Justice? Whatever I did, I couldn’t bring Duke back to life. Alice, honey, do you know what I did?”
“Found my mother,” said Alice flatly.
“Precisely. Help the living. Elly was in a pitiful state. No job, no pension, and a child to raise. And bitterly ashamed of what Duke had done. I put her right on that for a start. Then I married her. I won’t say it was much of a marriage, but I got her through a bad time. We came to an understanding about Duke-not to make waves, not to write to The Times, not even to mention him. You know why? For your sake, sweetheart. I respected your mother’s wishes.” With that off his chest Harry got to his feet and said, “Whose glass is empty?”
Alice had listened impassively. Now she brushed aside Harry’s diversionary gesture. “If it’s all the same to you, we’d like to meet your wife again.”
“No problem,” claimed Harry. He fairly scuttled through the door.
Alice handed me back my stick. “I have a feeing that Mrs. Ashenfelter II might respond better to you.”
But as it turned out, Sally was in no shape to respond to anyone. Harry came back grim-faced and announced, “No dice. Sally’s out cold. She took a chisel to the cocktail cabinet, and she’s been through a bottle and a half of vodka.”
FIFTEEN
We wanted to eat. A straightforward matter? Not in Bath on a Sunday evening in October 1964. All the restaurants were dark, and the hotels didn’t want to know us. “Sorry, residents only” should be translated into Latin and incorporated in the city’s coat of arms. We finally gained grudging admittance to a dingy basement in Great Pulteney Street that doubled as the dining room and lounge of a small private hotel called the Annual Cure. Top marks for local color, but not, I think, for attracting customers. We were the only diners.
Alice was still brooding on our visit to the Ashenfelters, so I picked up the gravy-stained menu. It was written without much regard to spelling.
“If you fancy something out of the ordinary, I see they serve farmhouse girll,” I commented too loudly, because the manager was standing unseen at my shoulder.
“You don’t like?” he asked. “You go somewhere else.” I believe he was mid-European.
I pointed out the error, wishing I hadn’t spoken.
He snatched the menu from me, penciled in a correction, pushed it back, and said with acid, “Schoolteacher?”
“Something like that.”
We both settled on plaice and french flies without going into the orthography. Alice asked for the rest room, the ladies’, and the lavatory before she was understood and directed upstairs.
As she pushed back her chair I murmured something about a search party but failed to amuse her. Mentally, she hadn’t caught up yet. I doubt whether our shabby surroundings had made any impression on her at all.
Alone at the table, I made my own review of the day’s discoveries. No doubt Alice would snap out of her introspection soon and start an earnest discussion. I wanted my thoughts in trim.
Two observations on Alice.
First, she was dangerous to be with. She might easily have got us shot by blurting out her identity to Bernard Lockwood. She’d treated Harry, another violent character, with reckless disrespect.
Second, on the credit side, she’d got results. Thanks to her open approach, we’d traced Harry and identified him as her stepfather. We’d learned of his marriage to Sally Shoesmith. And we’d been given a different slant on the relationship between Duke and Barbara: According to Harry, they weren’t lovers, after all. The fact that I knew this to be untrue didn’t detract from its significance. Harry was either deluded or a villain.
But we’re dealing with Alice. I wasn’t blind to her motives. Any female who could slip so rapidly out of a little-girl-lost role and into bed wasn’t dewy-eyed. She’d used me, manipulated me, played on my reactions. As it happened, I didn’t particularly mind, because through the bewildering shifts of character I’d perceived a personality I liked. She was intelligent, resilient, sometimes wrongheaded, but brave, unusually brave. Different.
I’ve told you about the moment when I was toweling Alice’s hair in front of the fire in the pub and I knew that I wanted her. To be brutally honest-and haven’t I kept faith with you up to now? — the wanting was all on my side. I’d picked up no signals from Alice.
Well, almost none. If there had been a moment of mutual closeness, it was earlier. Smile if you wish, but I don’t mean when we were in bed together. That was an experience, a turn-on, as exciting as anything my body had been privileged to share in but exclusively sensual.
I’m talking about another moment. Remember when we stepped over the puddles at Gifford Farm and she took my hand? And slipped her arm about my waist in the hayloft? Then, I believe, other possibilities beckoned us, like understanding, respect, and maybe even affection.
Yet what happened on the drive to Bath when I tried to kiss her? What brought on the frost?
I traced it back to our conversation in the hayloft. I’d balked at some of the intimate questions she’d fired at me concerning Cliff Morton’s attack on Barbara. I mean, I didn’t duck out. I’d simply felt uncomfortable and shown it. I’d appeared evasive.
So if I wanted Alice, there were bridges to be mended. I needed to be constructive about what we’d seen and heard.
For a start, our trip to Gifford Farm. Bernard couldn’t have made it more plain that he was troubled to find us at the farm. What’s past is over was his attitude, and I had some sympathy for it. I’d felt the same until Alice had forced my hand. But I hadn’t seen her off with a shotgun.
I could understand Bernard and his parents wanting to forget. They’d been through hell since Barbara’s rape and suicide. The inquest. The discovery of the skull in the cask and the ruin of their cider business. The police swarming over their farm digging for human remains. The suspicions that George Lockwood had shot Morton. Nor had it ended with Duke’s arrest. They’d all been called to testify at the trial.
A niggling thought intruded here. In their understandable wish to get a positive verdict, and the whole thing forgotten as soon as possible, might the Lockwoods have overstated the evidence against Duke? The prosecution had been mounted largely on forensic testimony, backed by circumstantial evidence from the Lockwoods and myself. We, between us, had provided the picture of Duke as the vengeful lover. I’m not saying that the Lockwoods were guilty of perjury, and I certainly didn’t go along with everything Harry had told us, but could they have misinterpreted some of Barbara’s actions?
Which brought me to Harry.
His version of events was sensational. Maybe fantastic is a better word. By his account Duke had no regard for Barbara whatsoever. He’d had to be persuaded, if not press-ganged, into partnering her. According to Harry, those romantic evening walks in the Somerset lanes simply hadn’t included Duke. On the afternoon of the rape and murder, Duke had appeared disenchanted, but hardly like a man who had just blown out another’s brains.
Why, I wondered, had Harry suggested such things if they weren’t true?
There was a clue. It was his revelation that he and Duke had been boyhood friends, rivals for Alice’s mother, Elly. Harry had treated it lightly. Easy now to dismiss it as casual dates with ice-cream sodas. How had he felt at the time, when Duke had cut him out and married Elly? No bitterness? No festering resentment?
If there was none, and it was nothing to him, why had he married Elly himself when the opportunity came?
Suppose Harry, Duke’s so-called buddy, cynically and deliberately took advantage of their time away from home to promote and encourage an affair between Duke and the first available girl. Suppose it was always Harry’s plan to disclose to Elly that her young husband was unfaithful. Simple, really, to work on a man’s loneliness: “Just make up a foursome, Duke, so I can get some time with Sally.” And to Sally: “You know, my buddy is incredibly shy, but he really fancies your
friend Barbara.” A few encouraging signals from Barbara and the fuse was lit.
Then suppose the whole scheme misfired because of Cliff Morton’s attack on Barbara. Duke killed Morton out of some rash notion of honor, and Barbara committed suicide in shame and despair. Harry was shocked, no doubt. But being an opportunist, he waited for the dust to settle. Then he saw his chance. When the law had taken its course, he went to visit poor, widowed Elly as her caring friend.
As an explanation, it fitted the personalities as well as the known facts. It accounted for Harry’s coolness to Alice and me when we arrived on his doorstep wanting to discuss the murder. His first instinct had been to send us away, his second to deny that there was ever anything serious between Duke and Barbara.
It was thanks to Sally that we’d got inside.
So what about Sally?
If there was any truth in my theory, she must have been involved. Yet she’d come to our aid, invited us in when Harry would have shut the door. Clearly there was tension between Harry and her, most apparent when he’d gone out of the room to collect the drinks and she’d been on the point of telling us something about Duke’s relationship with Barbara. What had Sally said when we talked about the fortune-telling game with the apple, when Barbara cut through the last pip-the “soldier pip”? “She was terribly upset, being pregnant and everything… We had no secrets from each other. They were gong to be married.” And when I’d gently pointed out to Sally that Duke already had a wife and child in America, she’d appeared not to know about it, and said, “You’ve got it all wrong.” Poor Sally, Hadn’t Harry ever told her the truth?
I’d have liked another word with Sally.
I didn’t get any further before Alice reappeared. Rather to my disappointment, she’d refastened her plait. She looked more solemn than ever. And, uniquely in my experience of women, she hadn’t taken the opportunity in the ladies’ to touch up her lipstick. Not much encouragement there. I prepared for the worst, and it wasn’t long in coming.
She studied me for a while, as if she’d made up her mind that something had to be resolved between us, and finally said, “I’m staying here tonight. I’ve booked a single room upstairs.”
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