The Bell Ringers

by Henry Porter

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘There are good reasons for telling me, which you may not appreciate.’

  ‘Maybe, but that’s not my judgement.’

  ‘Think about it,’ she said.

  ‘I have a duty to legality as well as to my client, and in this case I feel I must favour the first.’ Russell had reverted to the stuffy provincial solicitor.

  She leaned forward so that she could look him in the eye. ‘Was it legal to walk into your offices and bludgeon you to the ground and steal the contents of your safe? That’s very serious criminality, Hugh.’

  ‘Yes, but one offence cannot be used to justify another. You see what’s happened to the others.’

  ‘The others?’

  He was silent.

  ‘You’re talking about the group? I heard a few people were having trouble, all of them connected with Eyam in some way. Sounds all a bit hysterical to me.’

  He was drumming the steering wheel: he felt trapped. ‘Yes. My partner, Paul Spring, acts for three of them. They’re all being put through the wringer in one way or another.’

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘A couple of web designers, Andy Sessions and Rick Jeffreys, and a young woman called Alice Scudamore.’

  ‘Look, Hugh, I need to know what I’ve inherited along with Dove Cottage. I didn’t choose to be David’s heir. What am I getting myself into? I must know in order to defend myself.’

  ‘Your best defence is to know nothing,’ he snapped. A beat later he smiled regretfully. ‘I wish I was in the same position.’

  One of the cows had turned and was making for the car. Russell got out and flapped his arms at the animal until it wheeled round to join the rest of the herd.

  ‘You told me you didn’t come out here to see David, yet a few minutes ago you said you’d been caught behind these cows several times before. So clearly you did come here.’

  ‘You’re right, I did, but after he vanished in the winter. Something was going on. Nock, the man who looks after the place, rang to say that the house had been searched. You’ll meet Sean Nock at some stage. I kept him on after David’s death to make sure the place was safe.’

  ‘Searched by whom?’

  ‘He didn’t know, but there were about six of them. He got the impression it was all official.’

  ‘Do you know the exact date?’

  ‘It was the week beginning January 28th or Feb 4th, I am not sure. But I have a note of it at the office.’

  ‘So, that was after David had been killed. Was anything missing?’

  ‘How were we to know? Everything looked all right to Nock. Nothing obvious seemed to have been disturbed.’

  The cows were being coaxed through a gateway to their left. Russell edged past the remaining heifer. The track rose and then plummeted to a short gravel driveway and a house that was almost hidden behind trees. They parked next to a Bristol saloon, which was half-covered by a green tarpaulin.

  ‘May I offer some advice?’ he said before getting out. ‘David has left you something that was dear to him. It’s very special. Enjoy it and forget this other business. It’s got nothing to do with you now. David is dead. It can only bring you trouble. Let it go.’ His eyes pleaded with her. ‘I mean it, Kate.’

  She looked up at the end of the long, slender building of dark brick and timber. ‘OK. Why don’t you show me around?’

  ‘What you’re looking at now is the original cottage. The dogtooth pattern of the bricks dates to about 1604 – the year that Shakespeare wrote Othello. We have all the documentation on the house since it was built, which is quite rare. Needless to say, David organised it all in a binder, which is somewhere inside.’

  He led her round to the front by a gravel path. The cottage was surprisingly large with a run of eight small windows along the front and a two-storey extension, added to the far end during the nineteenth century. She peered inside but couldn’t see much. Russell touched her on the elbow and showed her the view over the bowl of the Dove Valley. ‘It’s one of the most perfect spots in England. I’ve lived in this area all my life but I never knew of it until David came here.’

  She glanced at an old green table and thought of Eyam writing his weird note to her, then walked to the end of the garden and looked across the valley. Dove Farm lay below like a child’s drawing. Sounds of geese and sheep were borne to her on the updraft that rattled the bare branches of trees around the garden. To her right at the head of the valley was a large wood that was showing the first pale washes of spring. Before that an orchard of apple and pear trees about the size of a tennis court. Little moved. Apart from the abandoned farm equipment scattered over a remarkably wide area, there were few signs of modern life. No telegraph poles or phone masts. She shivered at the ancient stillness of the place. ‘Jesus, what the hell does someone do here alone in winter?’

  ‘It has its charms,’ Russell said.

  ‘They’re not immediately obvious.’

  Inside, the cottage had the familiar feel of all Eyam’s homes. She recognised several pieces of furniture – a Queen Anne chest of drawers, a large sofa piled with old tapestry cushions, four original prints by the photographer James Ravilious, a black and white portrait of the pianist Glenn Gould hanging over his collection of Gould’s recordings, drawings by Henry Lamb and Paul Nash, a high-backed armchair beside which was a footstool with several books piled on it. His library occupied two walls of the large sitting room and an airy passageway to the kitchen. The run of titles were organised as they had been in his London flat, by subject then alphabetically. Along one end of the sitting room books were stacked neatly in half a dozen piles.

  ‘Books are like shoes and spectacles,’ Russell observed quietly. ‘They carry something of the person long after their owner has gone.’

  ‘Or make the void more obvious.’ She folded her arms against her sadness. ‘It’s my impression he’s got more books than he had before.’

  ‘That’s how he spent most of his time during the winter evenings. I never knew anyone who read so widely or retained so much from what he read.’

  When they had toured all the upstairs and the kitchen he asked, ‘What are you going to do with it all?’

  ‘God knows. I can’t possibly live here. I mean, what would I do in the English countryside?’ She stopped. ‘I guess I’ll have to sell it.’ Her eyes came to rest on a desk and computer in the sitting room. ‘And you say that doesn’t work – that he had to use your laptop?’

  ‘Er . . . yes. It kept on losing stuff, apparently.’

  She darted a look at him. He ignored her and picked up a ringbinder file that was lying on the desk. ‘In this you’ve got all the details about the man who services the boiler, the heating engineer, the broadband connection, et cetera. The cleaner’s wages. It’s all here, together with the service and council tax bills. You will need to reimburse me on some of them, and the cleaner’s and Nock’s money.’

  ‘Yes, the man Nock.’

  ‘Sean Nock. He lives in Nestor, a sort of hippy encampment a mile or so from here. He has a mobile if you need anything. In fact I’ll try to get him down here to meet you. He’s kept the car battery charged and has given the car what he calls a service, though I don’t know what that entails. By the way, you will need to register the transfer of ownership: my secretary can arrange temporary motor insurance for you today.’

  He left her and went to make a call from a spot at the end of the garden where he knew his cell phone worked. Remembering one of Eyam’s obsessions, she went into the kitchen, searched for and found an unopened bag of Blue Mountain Grade One coffee beans. She shook them into the grinder, in her mind hearing Eyam descant on the difference between Blue Mountain Grade One and Blue Mountain ‘Triage’ which apparently included three smaller grades of beans. ‘It’s altogether like drinking bark,’ he pronounced.

  She made them a cup of black coffee each and sat down at a pine table to wait for Russell. Her eyes travelled around the room imagining Eyam eating alo
ne in the kitchen with a book propped up in front of him. And then she froze and had to stop herself springing up to go through the open door of the utility room, where her subconscious had been registering a particular arrangement for some time, because she heard Russell coming down the passageway.

  But it was not Russell. A tall man with blonde hair and stubble, wide cheekbones and grey eyes appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was wearing a checked shirt worn over several others, baggy denims and boots. ‘Ah,’ he said rather stupidly. ‘Mr Russell here?’

  ‘He’s making a phone call out in the garden. Are you Sean Nock?’

  ‘Yes, Nock from Nestor.’ He came across the flagstones leaving wet imprints of his boots and offered her a hand, which he then withdrew and wiped on his jeans because it was covered in oil.

  ‘Nock of Nestor – that sounds like something out of the medieval England that Mr Russell talked about on the way here.’

  ‘Did he tell you about the battle in the valley?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It was down at the brook. A whole lot of soldiers were slaughtered here before they could join up with the House of York forces at High Castle. The man at Dove Farm still digs up bits of equipment, most of it rusted.’

  ‘So you’ve been looking after things here. Thank you.’

  ‘And now it’s yours. Mr Russell told me you’d be over. It’s a sweet place to have as your own.’

  ‘Despite the association with bloodshed and death,’ she said, still smiling.

  ‘You’ll soon be able to smell the blossom from the orchard and there’s nowhere quieter.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her eyes travelling back to the arrangement in the utility room. ‘Did you work for David full time?’

  ‘On and off. We installed the turbine on the stream above the house together and we were working on wind generation. I’m an engineer by training. Well, sort of.’ He looked out of the window.

  ‘Coffee? It’s just made.’

  ‘No, better be going. Got an appointment. When you need me to go over everything, my number’s on the board.’

  Hugh Russell came in wearing his default expression of fretful distraction, and after more of the routine English awkwardness – the muttering, unfinished sentences and hesitant body language that Kate had become so aware of on her return from the United States, Nock loped off leaving Russell standing there patting down his hair.

  ‘What would you say if I stayed here tonight?’ she asked brightly.

  Russell looked in the direction of Nock’s departure as if to ask whether it was Nock who’d changed her mind.

  ‘I’ve got all my luggage with me. Are you OK to drive back to High Castle without me?’

  ‘Sure. That’s a very good idea indeed. It would be wrong to give The Dove up without really getting the feel of the place. And tomorrow you can always phone for a taxi.’

  They sat down with the coffee. She laid a hand on his and felt the instinctive withdrawal but kept it there. ‘Hugh, I need to know what you read in those papers.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Tell me what you saw,’ she said softly.

  ‘Well, there wasn’t much – an executive summary like the beginning of an official report. I thought it was a government paper of some sort at first. I read the first few paragraphs and stopped at that.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They outlined what he claimed to be a kind of takeover of British government by big business; the influence of these corporations was distorting government and they were secretly running the things that would normally be left to the civil service. Really there’s nothing new in that. The newspapers have been saying it for a long time.’

  ‘And?’ she said, revolving her hand and smiling.

  ‘There was some kind of system – ASCAM or ASCAN. It monitors people.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘He talked about the inquiry of a parliamentary committee; I forget which one: ASCAM – or whatever it was – was formally denied by the government. A lie had been told. David was misled and in turn he had misled the committee and now he was setting the record straight.’ He stopped. ‘That’s the gist of it.’

  ‘Did he specify which corporations?’

  ‘No, I didn’t see any names I recognised.’

  ‘How did he couch this? As one corporation, or many?’

  Russell held up his hands in defence. ‘I’m sorry, I . . .’ He looked round doubtfully, as though to ask whether they should be talking in Dove Cottage.

  ‘I think we’re OK here,’ she said. ‘Eyam is dead. They’ve obviously been over every inch of the place and cleaned everything out.’

  Russell didn’t look reassured.

  ‘Was there a table of contents in the report?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  She let go of his hand. He sprang up and she followed him outside and removed her luggage from the Audi. He caressed Eyam’s car affectionately and told her that the temporary cover had been fixed for her to drive it. ‘She’s a beautiful old thing.’

  Kate nodded, wondering why cars were always female. ‘Are you sure you’re OK to drive back?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Look, let’s keep the conversation we had in there to ourselves.’

  ‘Of course! Drive carefully. We’ll speak tomorrow.’

  He got into the Audi and smiled before the worry returned to his face and he drove away with a wave.

  *

  The three items she’d spotted stood alone on a shelf in the utility room, above two recycling bins: a bottle of Puligny Montrachet 2001, a box of dog biscuits and a cylindrical container of Italian cheese sticks. Propped up behind them was a postcard of a sunset. She took out Eyam’s letter to her and read the last part aloud: ‘I write on a patch of gravel garden in front of the cottage resting on an old metal table, which I inherited when I bought the place. I have a glass of Puligny Montrachet at my side; a neighbour’s dog is making eyes at a bowl of cheese sticks. It has been a very hot day. The sun has set and the sky is bruising a gentle purple in the west. It is just past eight o’clock.’

  She picked up the containers in turn and examined each one – there was nothing unusual about any of them – then returned them to the shelf in their original order and looked at the postcard of a sunset over Skye, which she held up to the light. Nothing was written on the back and there was not the slightest indentation on the card’s surface. The image itself seemed to hold no particular significance. She stood back to ponder the configuration, then looked into the recycling bins below, where Eyam had separated plastic and paper. Nothing. What the hell was he playing at? She poked around behind the boiler, felt beneath the shelf and searched along a skirting board but found nothing. Deciding to let the problem settle in her mind, she withdrew to look over the rest of the house.

  Upstairs she lay on the clean white bedspread and gazed across the valley, propped up on one arm. She wondered what it would be like to wake to the reflected light on the ceiling each morning with Eyam beside her. The sense of him in the room was so strong that suddenly she could not think of him as dead but merely absent, and that overwhelmed her with a sudden sense of present love, which she tried to dismiss by again telling herself that Eyam was a selfish prig. A sweater and a pair of trousers were folded over the back of a chair; pairs of shoes were lined up by a wardrobe; a book lay on the bedside table. She swung her legs from the bed and went to the bathroom, where she laid out a few of her things and looked at herself in a shaving mirror that was fixed to the wall on a concertina bracket. Her skin was still firm and healthy but the magnification of the mirror showed the lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes. When did she get to look so tough? She grimaced at the effect and pushed the mirror away angrily. It sprang back and the disc spun round to reveal three photographs wedged into the rim of the flip side. She remembered the occasion immediately. They had been celebrating Eyam’s award of the John Hicks Economics prize, a large group that started out wi
th three punts on the Cherwell and moved to a sprawling picnic amongst the cow’s parsley on Christ Church Meadow. Later just the three of them posed on a bench in front of the evergreen oak in the medieval cloisters of New College – her, Eyam and a tipsy-looking Darsh, and for some reason all wearing caps. She pulled the picture from the rim and the two others that were lodged behind it fell into the sink. One was of a group standing and sitting along a felled tree in a clearing in a wood. On the back was written, ‘Some bell ringers’. She recognised five faces from the wake, including Alice Scudamore and Chris Mooney. Why had he given these people £125,000 in his will?

  The third showed Eyam and Kilmartin at a reception in a garden. A modern brick building was in the background. Kilmartin did not smile but acknowledged the camera with a tolerant reserve that somehow reduced his presence to that of an onlooker without association to either photographer or fellow subject. The caption on the back read, With ‘Emile’ – Peter Kilmartin, the man for every problem – Dinner at St Antony’s College, Oxford, July 1999.

  The freshness of the colour of the first print suggested the photographs had not been wedged in the mirror for very long. Clearly Eyam was telling her something – maybe that all these people could be trusted. She took the photographs down to the computer in the sitting room with an idea that she might find the images on the screen, or maybe even determine when he had printed them off.

  She turned the machine on with a vague feeling of trespass, but remembered what he had said. All my earthly goods are now yours: my secrets too. Think of nothing as too private for your eyes. I am opening myself to you. There was very little on the desktop, no files in the hard disk and a quick search of the email folders showed that nothing had been sent, received or deleted for a very long time. But since Eyam’s broadband service still appeared to be working, she went online and typed in the word ASCAM. One reference on an American security website told her that ASCAMS stood for Automatic Selection Correlation and Monitoring System. That would tie in with what Russell had told her.