After Clare

by Marjorie Eccles

  Flinging an arm along the back of the seat and leaning back, he saw the house there in front of him, its red-brick outlines limned against the strange, almost lurid light of the afternoon, its low eaves and sloping roofs, its twisted chimneys, the walls clothed with that invasive creeper which had turned scarlet over the last few days, giving it a picture-book appearance. This old house, everything in it dating from the year dot . . . funny how it got a hold of you.

  He had grown used to it, for all it was a house of ghosts: those of the soldiers who had lived here, wounded in mind if not in body, of the sad daughter of the house who had mysteriously disappeared, and not least of the victim, that boy for whose death he hadn’t yet found a reason. But old ghosts should not be allowed to inhabit the present. Nor to cloud his thinking. He closed his eyes and a low rumble of thunder was followed almost immediately by the first heavy drops of rain beginning to fall on his face.

  As he grabbed his jacket, he looked up at the livid sky. This was not going to be a sharp shower, soon over. Making a run for it to the village was out of the question. He had covered the first few yards back to the house when he heard a whistle. Looking round, he saw young Drummond, with Rosie Markham a little in front of him, beckoning him and pointing in the direction of the stables towards which they themselves were running. He sprinted and they all reached the stable yard together, and were inside the door, only slightly damp, just in time to avoid being soaked as the downpour began in earnest.

  The only natural light inside came from the upper half of the stable door which had been left open, and through a murky skylight set into the roof, and Val now busied himself lighting a Tilley lamp sitting on a rough workbench set up against one of the walls. As the lamp threw more illumination into the shadowy interior, Novak saw the stable was now used as a garage. He made out the shapes of a showy automobile, cream with black coachwork, and behind it a motorcycle combination.

  Rosie sat on the running board of the Lanchester, shaking drops from her hair and rubbing her face with a handkerchief. Val propped himself against the motorcycle, while Novak, by default, leaned against the workbench. ‘We’d only just left here when the rain began,’ Val explained. ‘We were actually on our way to find you, so it was lucky we saw you.’

  A streak of lightning lit the stable, followed by another roll of thunder. Novak waited for one of them to say what it was that had caused them to shout for him: he didn’t think it was simply to offer him shelter. And finally, it was Rosie who spoke.

  ‘I don’t wish to overdramatize a situation that may not mean anything,’ she began stiltedly, as if she had prepared this approach in her mind, then bit her lip and after a minute went on more naturally. ‘The thing is . . . well, the thing is, I think there’s something you might like to know – but please, before I begin, I have to say that I won’t say anything at all unless you promise my father won’t hear anything about it. Not ever.’

  He looked at her with raised eyebrows. So what had she been up to, this fresh-faced, wholesome young lady? ‘I can’t promise anything. But if it has nothing to do with this investigation, then of course I won’t mention it.’

  She looked only slightly relieved. ‘Well, I’m not sure if it has.’ She glanced towards Val, who had his arms folded across his chest. It seemed as if he had no intentions of taking part in this conversation, but he nodded and she went on, ‘I was only about eleven or twelve, you see. I may not have remembered it properly.’

  ‘I find children often remember things very clearly indeed, Miss Markham. Things they would rather not recall, sometimes,’ he added encouragingly.

  ‘You’re right, I have tried to forget, but I haven’t been very successful.’ The light was not good, but that didn’t prevent him seeing how pale she was. Her hands were twisting the damp handkerchief into a ball. Suddenly she went on in a rush, ‘I overheard a conversation, you see. They were in the library and I was outside on the terrace. It was Peter Sholto and – and Val’s sister, Poppy,’ she hurried on, carefully not looking at Val. ‘She was staying with us at the time and he was asking her to do something for him. It was a private conversation and I should have gone away, but when I heard who they were talking about – I’m afraid I stayed where I was and listened.’

  ‘So who was it they were talking about?’

  She was silent for so long he thought she’d taken fright at having begun this, but he’d underestimated her. She took a deep breath. ‘They were talking about my mother, that’s why I stayed. And maybe,’ she added, in a burst of shamefaced honesty, ‘maybe because I was a bit jealous of Poppy at the time. He was awfully good-looking, you know, and to be truthful, I had a bit of a crush on him, although he was so much older than me.’ She had flushed to the roots of her hair, but she went on bravely, ‘They were quarrelling – well no, not really quarrelling, I suppose, but he was pressing her to do something she didn’t want to do and she was getting frightfully worked up about it.’ She began to tear at the handkerchief. ‘He was asking her to look in my mother’s desk, to see if she could find any letters from—’ She faltered.

  ‘From Mr Stronglove, perhaps?’ he prompted.

  ‘Actually . . . yes. But how could you know that?’

  ‘Surmised,’ he replied diplomatically, and was relieved that, after a moment’s hesitation, she didn’t pursue it.

  ‘Oh well, it doesn’t matter. Yes, from him. He was always sending notes across from Leysmorton, to my father, as well as my mother – Peregrine Press publish him, you know – but the ones Peter wanted were the ones he said Dirk had sent to my mother. Poppy used to help her with her letters and he was ever so insistent, pressing her to look in her desk. She said no, not possibly, she couldn’t do that, and then he said something about there being other ways . . . I think he meant spying on my mother, watching where she went,’ she finished. ‘He told her if she did this, they’d soon have enough money to get married. I’m afraid, in the end, she gave in and said she would.’

  ‘I see. I assume by that they were engaged, then? Was it her photograph he kept with him, all through the war?’

  ‘Poppy’s photo? I don’t know, I suppose it might have been—’

  Val, unable to stay silent any longer, interrupted violently. ‘If it was, she certainly hadn’t given it to him! He was really spoony on her, but he wouldn’t accept that she wasn’t in the least interested in him. The truth is that he wouldn’t leave her alone, pestering her and following her around and generally making a perfect nuisance of himself.’

  ‘And yet – according to what you heard, Miss Markham, she agreed to do what he asked?’

  Another lightning flash was followed by a deafening thunderclap, while the rain fell in a seemingly unstoppable grey curtain into the yard and drummed onto the skylight. Val stood up and began to pace about unnervingly. He stopped at last and said, ‘You have to understand, Inspector. Neither of us, my sister and I, had any money. We’d been left near penniless, we had nothing!’

  Novak’s enquiries about Poppy after his visit to her shop had revealed a little of the extent of the brother and sister’s penniless state. Which wouldn’t have seemed penniless to most people of his acquaintance, but it was all relative, he supposed. If you’d been brought up to expect certain standards, perhaps what they had to go on with seemed paltry to them – but was that reason enough for Poppy to agree, against all her inclinations, and probably her upbringing, to do what Sholto had asked?

  ‘But that isn’t what happened,’ Val went on. ‘She might have agreed – I don’t say she did, but she might have done – simply to get rid of him, but I happen to know she never did what he asked, or any such thing. They had been very good to her, Rosie’s family. We’re very distantly related, you know, and although I myself had never met any of them until Dee’s wedding, Poppy had stayed with them often. She wrote and told me what had happened and that she’d have to find some acceptable excuse to leave Steadings, because she didn’t want to seem ungrateful. It was the year she left schoo
l and she had absolutely no idea what she was going to do with the rest of her life, except that she didn’t want to spend it with Peter Sholto. Besides—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Besides, she was in love with someone else.’

  ‘My brother, David,’ Rosie said quietly. ‘Only I don’t actually think David was in love with her. He liked her, terrifically, but—’

  ‘—but he wasn’t ready to marry anybody,’ Val said. ‘Or that’s what I gathered from what Poppy said in her letters. She wrote to me a lot, that last summer. She was very miserable.’

  They stared out at the rain. ‘Has – has this helped, Inspector?’ Rosie asked, at last.

  ‘In the end, it always helps to know as much as we can find out about a murder victim. Thank you for telling me this, Miss Markham.’

  ‘You’ll keep your promise, you won’t tell my father?’ He inclined his head. ‘I was only eleven, but I wasn’t a fool, you know,’ she added, unexpectedly. ‘I knew such things went on, even then. After I overheard that conversation, well, it didn’t come to me in a flash or anything like that, it was just that it became impossible not to see what was going on between Dirk and my mother.’

  ‘Your father won’t learn about them from me.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s not that. Dad’s no fool, either. He doesn’t like Dirk, and maybe there’s a reason for that, I don’t know. But don’t let him know who you heard this from. He mustn’t know it was me, that I sank so low as to listen to a private conversation, he would hate that.’ Unexpectedly, her smile returned. ‘He only loses his temper about once a year, but I’d rather be elsewhere when he does.’

  Mrs Gaunt’s repertoire was seemingly not extensive. That night’s supper was rabbit pie again, this time followed by plum duff. Hardly appropriate food for a day such as today, but the coolness that followed the storm had taken off most of the heat, and both men had been hungry. Willard had tucked in and even Novak, having eaten nothing since his cheese and biscuit breakfast supplement, had done his best. Now, in the small parlour at the back of the pub where they ate, away from the noisy tap room, Willard sat upright in a wooden Windsor chair, folded his hands across his stomach and instantly went to sleep.

  The meal had no such soporific effect on Novak, although he, too, felt overfed. At home – in the unlikely event he’d managed to get home in time for a family supper – Evie would be climbing on his knee, clamouring for a story from one of her fairy books before bed, Hannah would be quietly sewing or knitting, eleven-year-old Oliver would be fiddling with his home-made crystal set, finally driving them all mad with the incessant crackles coming across the ether. In the end Novak would remonstrate, but mildly. He always tried to hide his secret pride in his clever son. He sighed, put aside thoughts of domesticity and picked up his notes.

  Fountain pen in hand, he flicked through the scant pages, only kept for the necessary facts he must report back to Brownlow. Impressions and conjecture he preferred to keep in his head.

  PETER SHOLTO. Weekly boarder at his school, only home at weekends and holidays. Not academically inclined at school. Shone in the handiwork and woodwork classes, but since this had largely been regarded as something to keep the boys occupied in their spare time, it was not overencouraged.

  Edmund Sholto had confirmed that the glue Novak had scraped from the drawer was indeed the same sort of fish glue that Peter had used in his cabinet-making. Glue came in slabs, and had to be heated before use. After that, getting it to Leysmorton before it hardened again might have been a problem but, recalling the tools he had kept at Leysmorton, Novak felt pretty sure there would have been a glue pot somewhere on the premises.

  That his other activities included blackmail was now clearly evident, reinforced by what Rosie Markham had reported overhearing about the notes that had passed between Stronglove and her mother. Novak’s fountain pen nib spluttered as he wrote: N.B. See Poppy Drummond again. Soon.

  It was clearly blackmail money, almost certainly contributed by Stronglove, and possibly Stella Markham, too, in that laburnum wood box, though it still puzzled Novak that Stronglove, who had ridden out other scandals, would submit to threats by Sholto to keep an affair quiet. Of course, it would have been a tricky situation, living in such close proximity to Stella, who had married into a family that had always been closely linked to Leysmorton. And did either of them, Stella or Stronglove, have such means at their disposal? Stronglove lived a comfortable existence at Leysmorton, and though he presumably earned his living as an author, it was a big house to keep up. How dependant was he for that on Emily Fitzallan, his cousin? Query: Stronglove Lady F’s heir?

  STELLA MARKHAM. Pretty much an unknown quantity, so far. Aloof, didn’t involve herself in village affairs. Friends among the ‘county’ set. The family Daimler that took Gerald to the city each morning came back and was at her disposal, apart from the few times her father-in-law needed it, until it was time for the chauffeur to return to pick up Gerald. During the war, she had sat on one or two committees, concerned with sending parcels to the troops etc., and called it her war effort. Sometimes she drove to London with her husband, occasionally stayed there for one or two days alone.

  Was Stronglove’s pre-war move to London a coincidence? After a moment he added, Relations between Mrs Markham and her daughter Rosie strained, for obvious reasons. N.B. Arrange to see Gerald Markham at some point.

  Screwing the cap back on his pen, he did his favourite trick of rocking the chair on its back legs and letting his thoughts wander. None of the facts he had written down were new, but now, from somewhere, a shape was dimly beginning to take form.

  Willard opened his eyes and said, as if he had never been asleep, ‘Thinking there might still be another notebook, wondering where it might be?’

  Novak’s interest in Sholto’s notebooks had become peripheral. He had been letting his thoughts take him in quite a different direction, and he answered Willard absently. ‘What? Oh, off and on, George. Off and on.’

  ‘Have you considered that old tree?’

  ‘What old tree?’

  ‘That massive yew. Plenty of room inside that. Better than somewhere in the house. And that’s where he was found, wasn’t it?’

  Novak blinked. He wasn’t envied his sergeant by his fellow inspectors. Mostly, they didn’t know what to make of him, and Novak himself had felt that way, too, at the beginning of their partnership. But three years’ working together had changed that. Willard might do a pretty good impression of a zombie at times, but it was more due to a one-track concentration, and it often gave him a distinct advantage. Even so, how could he have known that Novak had, at that very moment, been thinking back to that moment in the clearing under the yew, when Lady Fitzallan had given him the letter, and that vague idea he’d had, that he hadn’t paid sufficient attention to since it had first stirred?

  ‘Don’t know about that, George. Why would Peter Sholto have known about any hollow in the tree?’ he asked. It wasn’t often Willard had flights of fancy like this.

  ‘I reckon everybody round here knows. Took it into my head to look in the church this morning. There’s a village history on sale for sixpence, written by the vicar, with a page or two about Leysmorton. That tree’s a bit of a legend. They say it’s thousands of years old. Wouldn’t do any harm to have a look-see.’

  At that moment, the door opened to admit Mrs Gaunt. ‘Somebody to see you, Mr Novak. It’s Nellie from number eight.’

  ‘Mrs Dobson? Ask her to come in, will you?’

  ‘She won’t come in, she wants to see you outside, in the back. On your own. I see you enjoyed your pudding, Mr Willard.’ She flashed a reproachful glance at Novak, who’d been defeated by his portion.

  ‘Rather too much for my London constitution, Mrs Gaunt.’ Her expression said what she thought of London constitutions.

  Mrs Dobson was waiting for him in the yard, among the upturned beer casks stacked there.

  ‘I didn’t want any of that lot in the tap room to see me talking to y
ou. It’d be all round the village in five minutes. We’ll be quieter out there.’ As she spoke she was walking to the end of the yard, past the hen run and a lethargic, yellow-eyed old collie at the end of a chain outside its kennel. It barked once as they passed, then returned to its torpor. Maybe it had had the remains of his rabbit pie and a helping of plum duff for its supper. The wicket gate at the end opened onto a footpath beside the river that ran behind the row of cottages. Occasional seats of one sort or another had been set up, but no one else was out there, taking advantage of a sunset like a Turner painting. Mrs Dobson perched on a rough seat made of a plank balanced on two sections of tree trunk and he sat down at the other end.

  ‘I hear Albert Pickles has been asking again about that old bicycle that was found in Farmer Beale’s ditch,’ she began straight away. ‘Left there on St Patrick’s Day, it turns out, is that right?’

  ‘Maybe. Why – do you know anything about it?’

  ‘Not me. It’s that Wilf Thready, my Ivy’s chap.’

  ‘He saw the cyclist?’

  ‘No. He doesn’t know anything about any bicycle. But it’s on account of what day it was that he remembers. Or thinks he does.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘He’d been down to Kingsworth for band practice – he blows the trumpet in their village band – and having a drop too much into the bargain with that Irish family that lives there, if you ask me. Celebrating St Patrick’s Day, or that’s what he said. Anyway, he swears he saw something funny when he was coming home. He’d cycled home from Kingsworth, and a wonder he didn’t end up in a ditch, the state he was in, never mind the way he came. Silly fool had cut through along that old lane.’