by F. G. Cottam
Malcolm said, ‘On two separate occasions?’
Ginger nodded. ‘Didn’t work, apparently. Place was demolished in ’71 during the night. If I’d been on that demo crew I’d have wanted to do it in daylight. And I didn’t scare easily back then.’
‘You said it was a big building.’
‘Dynamite or TNT. Blown to smithereens.’
‘And that’s everything?’
‘Heard Peter Clore set up a marine-salvage business in Pompey. He might have and he might not, never bothered to verify that. Max Askew retired the year after I met him. And he never did make it to that AGM.’
Malcolm poured them another whisky apiece. The Chivas bottle was slightly over half empty and to him, looked a bit like he felt.
‘What’s tickled your interest in ancient history?’
‘I’ve met someone researching the rock star Martin Mear. Askew was Mear’s uncle and she thinks Martin was a regular visitor to 77 Proctor Court as a child.’
‘I’ve a grandson who’s got every record that man ever made,’ Ginger said. ‘He’s fanatical about Ghost Legion, our Denny. Always trying to convince me that Martin’s coming back.’
Malcolm didn’t reply to this. His mind was on the movement behind the glass panes in the front door of Askew’s old flat when he put the key in the lock on his most recent, abortive visit to the address.
‘She a looker, this rock-music researcher? Or are you helping out only as a consequence of the goodness of your heart?’
Malcolm just blinked, feeling a bit drunk now, looking at the whisky bottle.
‘No reply needed, son. I know the answer to that question without you having to tell it me.’
‘I’ll tell you a bit about her, Mr McCabe.’
‘Ginger to you, son.’
‘I’ll tell you a bit about her, Ginger. And you can tell me whether I’m being a fool.’
FOURTEEN
Getting out the Ouija board late on Monday evening was Sebastian Daunt’s idea. He’d enjoyed a convivial dinner accompanied by slightly too much wine with his daughter. It might have been nostalgia that prompted him. Later, he wasn’t sure. Certainly they’d played in the commune where Frederica had grown up often enough. In a way, those Ouija sessions had been her apprenticeship in matters speculative and spiritual. Electricity had been sporadic and largely battery powered among the commune’s ramshackle dwellings. There had been no television and its members had consequently to find other means of entertaining themselves, sometimes esoteric.
Or it could simply have been boredom. Sebastian was a man still with a restless sort of energy that could descend into listlessness without some sort of creative challenge to fulfil. At Frederica’s villa, he was deprived of his potter’s wheel and clay. He was denuded of his easel and canvases and oil paints. He was denied even his sketch book and the sticks of charcoal used to create the images that filled its pages. He had responded to the urgency of his daughter’s summons by hastily packing a single overnight bag. He was materially incomplete as a consequence. He’d had to cadge a spare toothbrush from her only that morning.
Frederica was on the terrace when he opened the door from her sitting room and came out and suggested it. She was smoking a cigarette and contemplating her night view of the sea. Stars twinkled in the vastness of the sky above the Atlantic and moonlight quivered, jittery on the surface of the ocean.
‘We should take a turn with the board,’ he said.
‘Really, Dad? Maybe we should just leave well alone.’
‘Martin Mear died owing me a huge debt of gratitude for the King Lud cover. That album made his fortune and I was never paid a penny. If he’s out there, or up there …’
‘Or down there,’ Frederica said.
‘Wherever he is, if he’s anywhere, he isn’t going to harm my daughter. Not while I’m alive, anyway.’
‘There’s a comforting thought.’
‘I’m in pretty good shape.’
‘I’m delighted to hear it. But is the board really the healthy option?’
‘Healthier than standing out here staring at the stars and chain-smoking.’
And that settled it. Asked later, Frederica would have said guilt obliged her into it. She was embarrassed at indulging a filthy habit of which she knew he disapproved in front of her father.
Frederica retrieved the board, blew off the coating of dust covering its box lid and laid everything out on her kitchen table. They put their forefingers on the planchette with a shot glass brim-filled with brandy for each of them poured by Sebastian and placed at their left elbows. Frederica had left on a single kitchen light, burning a low-wattage bulb. She asked the space around them the inevitable question and with a force that made Frederica gasp audibly, the planchette slid to ‘Yes.’
‘Bingo,’ Sebastian said, or rather whispered, a stunned quality to his utterance of the single word. The planchette had moved emphatically. He knew he hadn’t pushed it and didn’t think his daughter had either. She just didn’t seem in the mood for fakery. Anything but.
‘Hello,’ was the planchette’s next destination. It paused there for a moment. Then it slid under their fingers to the number 7. It was moving with a speed and sureness, a sort of antic energy that left the father and daughter trying to harness its alleged power slightly spellbound. Next, and with no hesitation, it spelled out M-A-Y. Then it was back to the number 7. It finally paused. And then it slid to goodbye and they felt the planchette grow inert under their fingertips with an abrupt and total absence of life.
Frederica withdrew her hand from the board and picked up her shot glass, downing its contents in a single gulp. ‘Short and to the point,’ she said.
‘But to what point?’ her father said.
‘I don’t know. It was a message politely delivered. I sensed no hostility or threat. It was even courteous, wasn’t it?’
‘Except that it makes no sense.’
‘Two sevens and the word May, which is the fifth month of the year.’
‘Except we’re in the middle of October.’
‘It’s a sort of code,’ Frederica said.
‘It makes no sense.’
‘No, Dad,’ she said, after a moment. ‘It makes no sense to us. It will make perfect sense to someone.’
‘It’s after midnight,’ her father said. ‘We should both turn in, Freddie.’
‘I might not be able to sleep for a while yet.’
‘I’m sorry. Mightily bad idea,’ he said, staring at the board.
‘We’ve both had our share of those,’ Frederica said. ‘But I don’t think it actually was. Someone was trying to communicate something to us and it might be important. It’s not fear that will prevent me from sleeping, it’s intrigue.’
She put the Ouija contents back into their box and put the lid back on and took the box to where she kept it, locked away and out of sight.
Ruthie Gillespie awoke on Tuesday morning to a text message from Sir Terence Maloney apologizing for having to postpone their interview planned for that afternoon. He regretted the short notice, but something unavoidable had come up and needed dealing with. What that was, he didn’t say. The rest of the morning passed uneventfully. She took the call from Detective Constable Mark Sorley at noon. He got straight to the point.
‘Malcolm Stuart didn’t show up for his first appointment at eight-thirty this morning. He isn’t at home either. This is an extremely punctilious young man. You were among his recent appointments and I’m wondering if you can shed any light.’
‘He’s not shacked up with me, officer. Am I a suspect?’
‘We want to know where he is, how he is and what’s happened to make him abandon his routine without explanation. You seem to have come into his professional life very abruptly. It’s anomalous, from my perspective. Where are you?’
‘North Lambeth. Just off Lambeth Bridge Road. I don’t honestly think I could tell you anything of value.’
But between Ruthie ending that conversation and the de
tective constable’s arrival at Veronica’s door shortly after 2 pm, she spoke to Frederica Daunt for twenty minutes on the phone. And Frederica told her about the Ouija board session of the previous evening. And so by the time Ruthie opened the door to the DC, she suspected she had the information to tell him all he needed to know. She also suspected it to be extremely bad news.
Frederica called, she said, just to touch base. She sounded bright and cheerful, much more positive than she’d been after the ordeal of the Friday evening séance. She was out of the country, she was in the company of her father and no one was terrorizing her from beyond the grave. She was extremely interested to hear about Ruthie’s meeting with Paula Tort. And since Paula had spoken on the record, Ruthie was happy to share the information. All except for the part about the ruined mansion in Brightstone Forest on Wight. The Fischer House part of the interview, Ruthie regarded as confidential.
Frederica talked about her most recent struggle to quit smoking and Ruthie listened with the genuine sympathy of a fellow sufferer. And then, prompted probably by association, she mentioned the Ouija session and the short, strange assemblage of letters and numbers the planchette had picked out.
‘Inexplicable,’ she said.
‘Not to me,’ Ruthie said, suddenly certain that she would need a cigarette before the arrival of the detective constable, wondering would she be able to stop at one.
She told Frederica about Malcolm Stuart and Max Askew and her theory about King Lud and 77 Proctor Court. She said, ‘And May is my middle name. After the month in which I was born.’
‘How would Malcolm Stuart have known that?’
‘You have to register with an estate agent before you can view a property. They tightened the rules a few years after Suzy Lamplugh. I did that using my passport. My full name’s there on the inside back page.’
‘This sounds ominous, Ruthie.’
‘There’s a police detective on his way to see me. I’ll suggest he go on to Proctor Court.’
‘He’s too late. What reason will you give him?’
‘Intuition. He’ll check it out because he’s got no leads.’
‘I hope I’m wrong, Ruthie.’
Ruthie sniffed. ‘I don’t think you are. Just as you say, Malcolm’s polite, courteous. He’s not at all typical of the breed. A sweet young man, gentle and clever.’
‘I might be wrong,’ Frederica repeated.
‘But you’re not,’ Ruthie said.
After her conversation with Frederica concluded, Ruthie made herself tea and sat and sipped it in Veronica’s garden, wishing it was a glass of something more potent, knowing that the last thing required was alcohol on her breath or fogging her brain when she needed to persuade a detective to do something for which she’d only be able to claim a morbid hunch as justification. She tried for a hopelessly distracted hour to transcribe her interview of the previous day from her voice recorder to her laptop screen. She saw that she’d missed a call at 1.15 pm from Carter Melville. Carter Fucking Melville, as Paula Tort habitually called him. She wondered why he hadn’t called late the previous night, as what had seemed to be becoming his habit.
DC Sorley arrived. He was smartly dressed and seemed implausibly young. He was slim and dark haired with an intense gaze emanating from intelligent grey eyes.
‘There’s a property you should check out, one he showed me around.’
‘On what basis?’
‘On the basis that if you think I’m worth following up, you have no concrete leads.’
Sorley took a notebook from the pocket of his jacket. He said, ‘Where is this address?’
Ruthie told him.
‘Why would he be there?’
‘Why would he be anywhere except where he’s supposed to be? But he’s not where he’s supposed to be. It’s worth checking out.’
Sorley was simultaneously peering through the garden window and fishing a phone from his pocket. He nodded, ‘What’s phone reception like out there?’
‘Pretty good.’
‘Stay here. I’ll call this in. Where were you last night?’
‘Do I need an alibi?’
‘Not yet. You’re the children’s author, aren’t you?’
‘Young adult, mostly.’
‘Yeah. My little sister reads you. Would you be prepared to sign something?’
‘A statement?’
‘An autograph.’
‘You’re not taking this seriously enough. It doesn’t have a happy outcome.’
‘I’ll call in the lead, Ms Gillespie. You wait here.’
Ruthie waited for his return craving nicotine and feeling increasingly miserable. She trusted her intuition and felt that something had gone very wrong for Malcolm Stuart in a way profoundly final. She didn’t wait for the detective’s return. She put ice in a glass and poured him a glass of Diet Coke from a bottle in the fridge and joined him outside so she could smoke. He accepted his drink with a nod and joined her at the garden table. Diet Coke: not ideal for October but the weather was mild and dry and it was quicker to prepare than coffee or tea. She lit a cigarette.
‘What was your interest in 77 Proctor Court? You’re based on Wight, aren’t you?’
‘It was occupied by a relative of someone I’m being paid to research. I think my subject visited the place quite often as a child.’
‘So you posed as a buyer?’
‘Only at first. I went for a drink with Malcolm Stuart after my viewing. I was truthful with him.’
‘Was he angry, resentful?’
‘He was philosophical. He told me it was a difficult sell.’
‘So he’d developed an emotional relationship with the property?’
‘I wouldn’t put it that strongly, officer.’
‘If it was a waste of his time, he’d resent it.’
‘Maybe. He didn’t resent me.’
After about twenty more minutes of verbal back and forth, Sorley saw an incoming call on his phone and excused himself and walked through to the street outside to take it in privacy. He came back through the flat and into the garden shortly after looking grimly serious.
‘There’s a fatality at 77 Proctor Court. It looks like a straightforward suicide. He’d hanged himself. ID and description a match, I’m afraid.’
‘He didn’t kill himself.’
‘An inquest will determine whether he did or he didn’t.’
‘Detective Constable? He didn’t kill himself.’
‘The front door was locked. There are two sets of keys. He had one set and the second was with the block’s caretaker. That’s how we gained entry. He locked himself in, Ms Gillespie. His set of keys to the flat were found a few minutes ago in his pocket.’
‘He didn’t kill himself.’
‘You’ve said that three times now. It runs counter to the available evidence. Putting yourself in the frame?’
‘I have an alibi. Or I will when Veronica gets in. She owns this place. We were both here all of last night. And there’s a senior Met police officer can give me a character reference. Commander Patrick Lassiter happens to be a good friend of mine.’
‘That sounds highly unlikely.’
‘It’s nevertheless true.’
‘I’d like you to stay put,’ DC Sorley said. ‘You’re here for the duration of this research job?’
‘Yes. The reason Malcolm Stuart didn’t kill himself is because he had plans for his future life. One of them involved me, or he hoped it did. He gave me his number to phone him if I changed my mind and decided to meet him sometime for a drink.’
‘He must already have had your number.’
‘Which he wouldn’t use because he didn’t want to pressure me. It was my decision to make.’
‘Had you made it?’
‘He was too young for me,’ Ruthie said. ‘And it’s too soon after a rather bruising experience.’
‘So this job you’re doing is a sort of exile from yourself?’
‘That’s an astute way of putting i
t.’
‘I’m paid to be astute. Doesn’t look like it’s going to be much help to poor Mr Stuart, though.’
‘What’s your sister’s name?’
‘Alice. Her favourite is The Spire Under the Sea.’
‘There’s a copy here, in Veronica’s bookcase. I’ll pinch it and sign it for her if you like.’
‘Good coming from bad?’
‘Not really.’
The detective left a short time later. ‘Thanks for the Coke,’ he said, exiting through the front door.
After the DC had gone, Ruthie remembered the last time she’d spoken to Commander Patrick Lassiter. He’d called her out of the blue one afternoon about a month earlier. He was the best friend Professor Philip Fortescue possessed. And so to her, the call came as a surprise.
‘Don’t tell me you want my help with a case, Patsy.’
‘Just calling for a catch-up,’ he said.
‘I thought Phil got you, like with a divorce.’
‘Not the way I operate,’ Patsy Lassiter said.
‘Wouldn’t it be less complicated?’
‘Sometimes, friendships have to be persevered with. Sometimes, that’s the quality that makes them worth having.’
At her end, Ruthie closed her eyes and smiled. It was wonderful to hear his voice, which cleaved her too, dragging the past with such painful clarity back into the present. She’d allowed herself to forget just quite how fondly she felt for this man.
‘You should come and visit, Ruthie,’ he said. ‘I know Helena would love to see you.’
‘I will,’ she said, knowing, as she knew he did too, that she never would.
He cleared his throat. He said, ‘How’s that gift you’ve got?’
‘What gift would that be, Patsy?’
‘The one for getting into trouble.’
‘It’s more of an instinct than a gift,’ she said. ‘I’ve sort of curtailed it. Why do you ask?’
‘Because I’m only ever a phone call away, Ruthie. Because I’ll always pick up. And because I’ll always have your back.’
FIFTEEN
Making Alice Sorley’s day didn’t do the same or anything similar for Ruthie Gillespie. She felt wretched. She hadn’t put the noose around his neck, but she felt that had she never met Malcolm Stuart, he wouldn’t now be dead. She felt uneasy about continuing with her research into the life and myth of Martin Mear, uncomfortable about the cloying way in which those two elements combined so inextricably. She felt that fate was linking her to Frederica Daunt and her father too in a way that seemed ominous. And Sebastian Daunt had known Martin in life. She couldn’t bring herself to return Carter Melville’s call. ‘Carter Fucking Melville,’ she said aloud to Veronica’s still and empty sitting room. She wouldn’t begin to know what to say to him.