by Burke, John
Arthur told her that during his adolescence his father had often come out with snippets of information about the difficult years of rebuilding, usually as an illustration to some precept about hard work and honesty. By that time the details of the past had perhaps grown hazy, or perhaps Victor Johnson didn’t wish to be too explicit. To Arthur, Walter Blythe was no more than a dim figure on the far side of an earlier war, in a world lost beyond recall. When his father died, a year after Arthur and Nell were married, there was no-one to remember Blythe.
Nell said: “Did he … did Mr Johnson do anything about Mrs Blythe?”
Mr Farnham remembered this very well. He had been a young partner in the firm then, and had been present at a meeting which his father had set up. There must have been an earlier, private meeting when Victor Johnson and possibly his wife had talked to Mrs Blythe. After all, the two married couples were close friends — the men working together, the wives spending a lot of time together in the absence of their husbands.
Victor had been a puritan and was outraged by his partner’s dishonesty. But Mrs Johnson must have prevailed on him to be charitable towards Mrs Blythe, equally badly treated. Mr Farnham was sure that she was the one who suggested that Mrs Blythe should be given an allowance. It was unfair that the poor young woman should suffer because of her husband’s defection.
In fact Mrs Blythe refused to accept a penny. She was too proud.
“Very fiery about it,” said Mr Farnham. “She cursed her husband in some outlandish language. And she thanked the Johnsons and said she wouldn’t touch what was left of the money.”
“But how did she manage?” asked Nell. She could not bear to think of the misery of a girl deserted by her husband in a land that was alien to her.
But she hadn’t been deserted. That was only how it had seemed at the time.
And that was how it had seemed to Mrs Blythe. It must have been real enough and ghastly enough at the time.
Kersfield said: “She did her own vanishing trick. Ten days later. Just like Walter Blythe — no trace of her.”
“And naturally,” said Mr Farnham, reliving old gossip and old emotions, “we took it for granted that she’d gone to join Blythe.”
“In South America?”
“In South America. Living on his ill-gotten gains. The Johnsons were relieved they hadn’t actually given Mrs Blythe any money, since she was obviously, after all, a party to the whole swindle. Once Blythe was safely away, he sent for her and she went to join him. That,” said Mr Farnham heavily, “was how it appeared at the time.”
“And now…”
“Now,” said Kersfield, “we’re faced with the fact that Blythe never left the country. He was murdered.” He almost sparkled with glee at an idea which had just occurred to him, then assumed a suitably grave expression. “One wonders. One does indeed. One wonders if there’s a possibility of Mrs Blythe’s corpse turning up also.”
Nell had a vision of a woman’s body with a couple of bags packed beside it in the same gruesome way. The Blythe house might have further hideous revelations to yield up. She turned supplicatingly to Arthur. He said to Kersfield:
“The whole cellar has been torn out by now. There’s nothing else there.”
“Might be somewhere else.”
“It seems much more likely that Mrs Blythe disappeared of her own accord,” said Arthur. “We’ve been told she was very proud…”
“Impetuous, too.” Mr Farnham was glad to resume his role of expert on the parties concerned. “She would fly off the handle at the least little thing. No, it’s simple enough. Mr Johnson’s right. She wasn’t going to take charity from the Johnsons and she wasn’t going to hang around in Lurgate as an object of pity or shame.”
The image of the packed cases remained obstinately in Nell’s mind. She said: “Supposing Blythe was in fact the embezzler he’s always been thought, and he was about to make a getaway when Arthur’s father caught him?”
“And killed him?” Kersfield shrugged. “Doesn’t make it any better for Johnson. The late Mr Johnson, I mean. Murder’s still murder. And how would that fit in with Mrs Blythe’s behaviour? If she’d been in it with Blythe, she’d be waiting to clear out with him and the money. If he disappeared mysteriously, she’d raise hell to find him. She’d soon have been on to Johnson. But if she didn’t know — if he was planning to leave without her, then…” He blinked, sorting out the permutations. There were some things that short, blustering sentences wouldn’t solve. “Yes, of course. If she didn’t know, then she could have been expected to do exactly what she did: she ran away in the belief that he had deserted her. Humiliated her. She just wanted to turn her back on the whole place. Back to our original premise.”
All theories were of equal weight because there was no way of checking any of them. Nell saw no reason why she shouldn’t contribute. She said:
“We can’t be sure it wasn’t Mrs Blythe who killed her husband.”
She was ashamed to clutch at such a straw. She was accusing someone who couldn’t answer back. But in this at least the dead were on the same footing: none of them could answer the questions of the living.
Kersfield said: “Can’t see why Mrs Blythe should want to get rid of her husband. Prosperous — gave her everything she asked for. And how could she have tampered with the books on her own? Very skilful tampering, I assure you we’ve gone through them with your own accountant. The embezzlement was carried out by someone who knew the firm’s operations back to front. We’ve always assumed it was Blythe, and of course he wasn’t there to supply a plausible explanation.”
“And my father was,” said Arthur quietly.
Nell could feel within herself how this must be hurting him. He had accepted his father’s sternly reiterated principles and had uncomplainingly accepted his father’s assumption that he would keep the name of Johnson alive in the firm. Now he had to face the terrible likelihood of his father’s severe integrity having been a protracted bluff, a whole way of life built on hypocrisy.
“I’m afraid,” said Kersfield, “that the story which fits best is the most distasteful one. Sorry, Arthur. Your father could have cooked the books in such a way as to throw blame on his partner. Everything pointing to an embezzlement. He must have come and gone pretty freely in the Blythe household. Easy enough to remove clothes and pack suitcases. Make it look as though Blythe had beaten it with plenty of his belongings. Calculated flight — not just a mysterious disappearance which might have led to suspicions of foul play.”
“But why? Why should my father have gone mad like that? Because that’s what it was — mad. He was a very strict man. Strict, moral, honest. Almost too much so.”
“Precisely,” said Kersfield. “Almost too much so. Couldn’t that be the explanation? We’ve heard from Mr Farnham that Blythe was a spendthrift. Perhaps it was getting out of hand. He gallivanted around too much. I think that’s what they called it in those days.”
“Gallivanted,” said Mr Farnham. “Yes. Oh, yes, he did. Johnson had to do the work while Blythe squandered the profits. Your father was a fanatic when it came to work — building the place up, keeping it on its feet. And who stood in his way? Who drove him to distraction by never taking things seriously? His pleasure-loving partner.”
Nell looked at Arthur. He was sunk in contemplation of his desk. He must be reviewing yet again the history of his father’s lectures to him, the exhortations, the tales of struggle and achievement. If Victor Johnson had murdered Walter Blythe, what had happened to the missing money? Had it really never been missing at all? Had there been no struggle to keep the firm going? The firm of Johnson and Son, minus the name of Blythe, had been a success in the end. Had it in fact been a cunningly organised success all along?
They had been talking about Mrs Blythe’s injured pride. Nell wondered if these two men realised just how Arthur’s family pride must be suffering now.
And the personal ambitions he had given up in order to fulfil his father’s wishes, even af
ter his father’s death — had the sacrifice been wasted?
“The legal situation” — Kersfield decided it was time to sum up — “is that you can’t be blamed for anything. Not possibly. It’s old history. The principals are dead. It’s doubtful whether anyone can ever sort out who killed Walter Blythe. And even if they could, it’d be difficult to establish any claim against you. No questions of inheritance arise. If Blythe had had any children, there might of course be some awkward moral issues…”
“None,” said Mr Farnham. “She was a fine figure of a woman, Mrs Blythe — just the type, one would have thought — but there weren’t any children.”
“As we say in court,” said Kersfield, “there’s no case to answer.”
No case to answer, thought Nell. And because no case could ever be brought, there could never be a verdict. No verdict of guilty — but no acquittal.
“Very distressing for you,” said Kersfield. “I can imagine how you must feel, Arthur.” But he couldn’t, thought Nell. How could he possibly imagine? “Don’t let it get you down,” he said. “No-one can blame you. All happened before either of you was born. No blame at all — legal or moral. That’s my professional opinion.” But someone had to be blamed. Nell knew that. In a community like Lurgate the local faces had long memories. Those memories had been happily shaken up and turned out into the daylight recently. You were held to be in some way mystically responsible for who your ancestors were and what they did.
The telephone rang. Nell began to get out of her chair to intercept the call. Arthur was there before her.
“Johnson. Mm? Yes … Look, I’ve answered these questions God knows how many times already … What?”
Kersfield leaned forward and put out his hand. “If that’s a reporter, let me … ” But Arthur was already speaking. “Yes, you may print that. You may say I accept no legal responsibility for events which took place half a century ago, but that if there should be any descendants or relatives of Walter Blythe alive today and in need, I’ll be glad to hear from them.”
Kersfield let out a little squeak and shook his head. “Shouldn’t have said that,” he whispered to Nell. “Every crank in the country, you know — all be writing to him. Should have left it to me. Absolutely no call for that statement.” But Nell knew that it was the only way in which Arthur could possibly have reacted. He was used to making decisions without long conferences. He had made his decision now. Putting the receiver down, he gave Kersfield no chance to utter a formal protest.
“I can’t bear fuzzy edges. Let’s have everything clear and settled. Out in the open.”
If only it could be like that, thought Nell: out in the open.
Murder by person or persons unknown.
Plenty of fuzzy edges there. But it was settled in the minds of everyone in Lurgate who the ‘person unknown’ must have been. The Johnsons were going to have to live with that unuttered, unanswerable accusation.
Brigid felt rather than heard the silent murmurs as she walked one Sunday afternoon towards Martin’s home.
The park was like an aviary, alive with chatter. Children hopped and skipped from the grass on to the paths as Brigid took the diagonal route to the far gate. They didn’t care about her: they stumbled round her or bumped into her, laughed as they hurried off, and went on with their games. It was the mothers and grandmothers who, here and there, turned heads to follow her progress. A woman she knew smiled at her. A woman she didn’t know smiled to herself.
By the nineteen-sixties three main elements were clearly identifiable in Lurgate. The core of local families remained, but the sons and daughters of fishermen had turned more and more towards the running of boarding-houses and cafes and gift shops, and the grandsons who had not emigrated to London tended to travel to Maidstone or Canterbury for better-paid jobs. Nevertheless they went on thinking of themselves as the real Lurgate people. Then there was a sector of white-collar commuters who had bought property here because it was cheaper than in London and the climate was so good for the children. The third element was supplied by the tourists and trippers, bringing money into the town at Easter and Whitsun and taking it over completely during the summer months. The locals fished, made profits from the visitors, and complained about the visitors. Businessmen and the visitors between them inspired the laying out of a golf course and just managed to keep the cinema going. The businessmen used the town’s amenities all year round and felt that their contribution was what really kept the place alive. Most of the holidaymakers felt, without consciously putting it in such naive terms, that Lurgate went into suspended animation for that part of the year when they were absent.
News of the discovery of Walter Blythe’s remains affected them all in different ways. The commuters read of it on the morning train with an odd gratification. In some way it stimulated their local pride. Lurgate was in the news. Some of them had bought houses built by Johnson’s but for most of them the name was merely one that appeared on boards at the edge of building sites. Now the name, the firm and the town had acquired a brief notoriety and, more substantially, a history. The newspapers carried the same story to London, the Midlands and the North. A few hundred men said to their wives: “Look at this — remember our fortnight in Lurgate?” And in the factory or office they mentioned with satisfaction that they had been in Lurgate last year and were actually going again this year.
The inbred memories of the older residents had been coaxed out into the light of day by reporters and, once out, proceeded to multiply. Old stories were revived. Men and women in their late fifties suddenly found that they had vivid recollections of Walter Blythe. They had seen him in the street; he used to pass their house every day, regular as clockwork; he used to buy their fathers a drink every Saturday — got on very well with Dad, he did. Younger people dug up details which their parents had told them; older ones who had really known Walter basked in the deference which was accorded them for a while. Old rumours became hard facts. Arguments grew acrimonious.
“That wife of his — if you was to dig deep enough, you’d find something there, if you ask me…”
“Italian, she was.”
“No, she was Spanish. Very dark. Spoke Spanish when she got excited, like.”
“Of course she was dark. That’s because she was Italian. I can hear her voice like it was yesterday.”
“Touch of the tarbrush, I’d say.”
“Didn’t have no time for anyone. Didn’t half fancy herself, that gel.”
Brigid was shocked by the exhibition of naked delight. It was as though the people of Lurgate had been maliciously waiting for years for the chance to belittle the Johnsons.
There was a small rash of meaningless telephone calls. Most of them were incoherent, one or two obscene. They were all anonymous.
After her father’s announcement that he would be prepared to help any existing relatives of Walter Blythe ‘restitution’ was a word used by one newspaperman — there came a flood of letters and several visitors to the house. They were all pitifully untruthful and transparent. Two or three charitable organisations rushed appeals through the post as though the Johnsons had won a football pool and might be persuaded to distribute some of their winnings. Arthur Johnson bore it unflinchingly but a disquieting greyness crept under his normal healthy brown. He spent more time at home than on his various building sites. When he went out on a tour of inspection Brigid and her mother could see how tense he was, dreading the mute appraisal of his employees and anyone else he might meet during the day.
My grandfather was a murderer, said Brigid to herself. She waited for some reaction; and there was none. It meant nothing. She had never known her grandfather. It meant more to the people around her than it did to her — the people who had nothing better to occupy their time than picking over the decayed remnants of a dead scandal.
The promenade narrowed as it approached the bluff. Here at the end of the promontory were only sea, sky, the cliff face and the smooth paving. Grey and bleak in winter, the sur
face of the promenade hurt the eyes during days of sunshine. As Brigid turned the corner, wind off the sea ruffled her hair.
High on the slope above, Fernrock Hotel’s windows stared out over the water.
The rooms where Martin and his mother lived were invisible from this angle. They were at the side, close to the hedge which marked the edge of the terraced gardens. A road along the crown of the ridge led to the hotel’s main entrance. From the sea road one had a choice of routes: there were two flights of uncompromisingly direct steps, or a winding path lined by shrubs. The bushes and trees on the terraces all leaned away from the prevailing wind at such a uniform angle that they made the hotel itself appear to tilt in the opposite direction.
Brigid struck impatiently up the nearest steep flight of steps.
Every Sunday she came for tea with Martin and his mother. She supposed they would have to maintain this ritual after they were married. And they would have to invite Mrs Hemming to their flat. And her own mother and father. Already there seemed to be an awful lot of obligations piling up. What if they didn’t want to see anyone else for a week on end?
Martin had seen her coming and was waiting on the hotel steps.
“Mother’s dealing with a complaint about a bathroom on the third floor. She’ll be down in a few minutes.”