by F. G. Cottam
‘And he didn’t stop sending them because he died in 1978,’ Ruthie said. ‘I’m guessing that’s when Uncle Max checked out.’
‘So he was alive, and he was taunting him.’
Ruthie said, ‘Any other conclusions?’
‘What was the name of your estate agent?’
‘Malcolm Stuart.’
‘I think Malcolm Stuart might well have killed himself. I felt utterly wretched in there, almost overwhelmed by despondency. A deep sense of wretchedness and futility overcame me. I only saw the disparity in the wood grain of the floor because I couldn’t raise my head to look around. It was like nothing I’ve ever felt in my life. Without you there, I might not have got out again.’
‘The place guards itself.’
‘Yes, it does, vehemently.’
‘Where would he have got a rope?’
‘He could have used his tie, Ruthie. He could have used his belt.’
‘And he could have been murdered. Let’s talk about something else.’
‘Martin Mear successfully faked his own death.’
‘To escape something.’
‘Liberty is sweet,’ Michael said. ‘Do you think he’s living still?’
‘If he is,’ Ruthie said, ‘I’ll find him. I’ve got one or two questions need answering. And if he’s still breathing, he’s the man in the know.’
‘Where would you begin to look?’
‘I’ve got one or two ideas.’
‘Are you going to share this with Carter Melville?’
‘I don’t trust Carter Melville to know that I know. April and Paula believe Martin died in 1975 unless they’re both consummate actresses who put on the performances of their lives just for me. I don’t think they are and I don’t think they did.’
‘You’re on Melville’s payroll.’
‘You think there’s a pressing moral obligation here, Mr A?’
‘I think there are two unexplained deaths linked to what you’re working on. And now you’ve exposed a secret that’s been kept for more than forty years.’
‘On the plus side, there’s us,’ Ruthie said. ‘And you exposed the secret. I’d never have noticed the grain in the board.’
‘Us is important to me, Ruthie. You’re important to me. Don’t you think it might be wise just to walk away?’
Ruthie sipped from her drink and spoke carefully. ‘If someone wanted to hurt me, they’ve had ample opportunity. They could have done it over the weekend.’
‘You were hurt over the weekend. You’ve got the headwound to prove it.’
‘I mean deliberately and fatally. In and around Shaftesbury, I was alone for a lot of the time.’
‘Has it occurred to you that you might be being played?’
‘It has, Michael. The tone of those postcards is defiant, taunting. It’s as though Martin Mear had escaped the orbit of his Uncle Max. If he did, it might explain why he hasn’t come up for air.’
‘And Uncle Max worked for Martens and Degrue, which is the acceptable face of the Jericho Society. And they never forget and they never forgive.’
‘And there’s always a price to pay,’ Ruthie said.
‘And if he is still around, maybe they’re going to let you do the hard work of finding him for them.’
‘Come on,’ Ruthie said, grabbing her coat from where she’d hung it on the back of her chair. ‘I don’t like this part of the world very much any more.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Carter Melville is treating us to a cab ride to the Waggon and Horses and then he’s buying us dinner. And then we’re going to your place.’
‘I do like a woman who knows her own mind.’
‘It’s not really my mind I’m thinking about.’
They were seated in a taxi twenty minutes later when the number Ruthie knew belonged to Sir Terence Maloney came up on her phone. He was calling personally, he explained. He said he felt obliged to extend that courtesy since he was phoning to say that regretfully, he was no longer prepared to say anything on or off the record about his association with Ghost Legion or his friendship with the late Martin Mear. It was all a very long time ago, water under the bridge, the sort of tedious, cliched war stories familiar to anyone who knew anything about the rock business in the days of its pomp. Nothing new, he said, nothing revelatory, nothing he felt the slightest inclination to revisit. Carter had caught him at a weak moment. He’d agreed to participate in haste. On reflection, it wasn’t something for which he had the necessary enthusiasm.
Sir Terence ended the call and Ruthie reported what he’d said verbatim back to Michael. Michael took a moment to digest the information and then asked, ‘How did he sound?’
‘Honestly?’ Ruthie said. ‘He sounded terrified.’
The second call came as they were getting out of the taxi and Ruthie took it standing in the rain on the Waggon’s gravel forecourt. It was Frederica Daunt and she was speaking so quietly that Ruthie had to strain to hear her. She guessed that Freddie’s father hadn’t left yet and she didn’t want him to overhear her.
‘You remember I told you it’s not all fakery?’
‘I know it’s not all fakery. I know what happened with the Ouija board.’
‘There was a death on the docks last week. A recent acquaintance of yours?’
‘Yes, there was.’
‘It wasn’t an accident, Ruthie. It was murder. And it was professionally done.’
‘I think Martin Mear might still be alive, Freddie.’
‘Except I didn’t imagine what happened at that Friday evening séance, and neither did you.’
‘There were four members of Ghost Legion,’ Ruthie said. ‘Jason Ritchie drank himself to death. That’s cut and dried. But Patsy McCoy burned to death in a house fire and James Prentice died at the wheel of his Porsche. What if they weren’t accidents? What if we summoned an indignant ghost who isn’t Martin at all?’
‘Who would your money be on?’
‘Prentice. He harboured a grudge over song-writing credits he claimed were his due. Since his death, family members have tried to sue Martin’s estate on several occasions, never with any success. I don’t think he died an admirer of his band’s old front-man.’
Ruthie pressed the phone as close as she could to her ear. Frederica Daunt’s voice was a whisper now in the strengthening rain, almost drowned out by the passing traffic noise. ‘Why would anyone kill off Ghost Legion?’
‘Revenge,’ Ruthie said. ‘Martin was involved with a cult. He got out of their clutches. They were very aggrieved by that and they went after his old bandmates because they couldn’t find him.’
‘You have a vivid imagination, Ruthie.’
‘I do. And I can’t prove any of this. Doesn’t stop me thinking I’m right about it though.’
‘Do you think I’m in danger?’
‘I think you and your dad should sit tight. Don’t do anything to draw attention to yourselves. Your dad is going to be on their radar, because they know all about Martin’s history. They have no compunction, but if you don’t antagonize or obstruct them, why would they harm you?’
‘And if James Prentice pays me another visit?’
‘I don’t have the answer to that.’
TWENTY-TWO
Ruthie got back to Lambeth early on Tuesday morning on what she’d already decided would be a decisive day. She was back in time to share a pot of coffee with Veronica Slade. Their chat, before Veronica left for work, was sobering,
‘When they wanted their chalice back, one of them confronted me, in a graveyard. It was after the funeral of my boss, whose apparent suicide they’d recently engineered. He told me they could do the practical stuff, like that. Or they could do the esoteric stuff.’
‘Such as?’
‘He was quite specific, Ruthie. You have a brain scan and you’re perfectly healthy and then six weeks later the neurologist tells you you’ve a tumour the size of a grapefruit pressing against your frontal lobe. But you kind of kn
ow that by then because by then, it’s blinded you.’
‘Movers and shakers,’ Ruthie said.
‘It isn’t funny.’
‘No, Veronica. It’s anything but.’
‘What’s next?’
‘Wight. This morning. Back tomorrow evening, if everything goes according to plan.’
Veronica said, ‘Does anything ever? Go according to plan?’
‘No,’ Ruthie said.
She called Carter Melville.
‘He told me. He called me right after he called you. Bummer, baby.’
‘He’s frightened.’
‘Stage fright?’
‘A bit more than that.’
‘Probably a karmic thing. Maybe he thinks his pals at the Garrick Club will blackball old Sir Terry if he starts waxing nostalgic about his freebasing days.’
‘It’s not a catastrophe. I’m getting good stuff from Paula and April.’
‘Good to hear. And sometimes you gotta let go.’
‘I suppose.’
‘What’s next?’
‘I’m going back to where it all began.’
‘Russian dolls, Ruthie baby.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘No one ever figured Martin out,’ Carter Melville said.
She packed her overnight bag and locked Veronica’s door behind her and went to the cashpoint at the NatWest branch on Westminster Bridge Road and took out £200. Then she walked to Waterloo Station and bought a return ticket for Portsmouth Harbour. She worked on her laptop on the route to Pompey and bought a return ticket at the Wight ferry terminal. She spent the crossing on the deck, watching Pompey recede into the distance, passing the sullen mass of the Solent sea forts, then watching the detail of the island gain in complexity as she approached Fishbourne Harbour, her heart heavy with recollection, her mind bittersweet remembering her lost scholar of the sea and the cherished times they’d shared together.
A taxi dropped her outside her cottage in Ventnor at 2 pm and Ruthie went inside where everything was both familiar and strange, as though all of her belongings had been swapped for stage props cunningly identical to everything they’d replaced. She was a different person from who she’d been the last time she’d been there and she knew it. And she knew it was because of Michael Aldridge and didn’t know whether to be angry about that or simply grateful to him. She felt torn.
‘Like the song,’ she said aloud. And her own voice in the dusty stillness of her neglected home sounded strange to her.
She could go directly to the dogs. There were two chilled bottles of Chablis sitting in her fridge. There was the Spyglass Inn, no more than five minutes away. There was a pack of cigarettes still in their cellophane in the pocket of her coat. But she wouldn’t do that. She had plans for the following morning she needed to leave unhindered. She’d had a sandwich for lunch aboard the ferry. She’d order dinner later at the Spyglass. But before that, she’d take a long walk at the edge of the sea to think about things generally. To try not to reminisce too much. To ponder on the obstacle to romance a wilful twelve-year-old girl might be. And to think hard about the veiled warning Paula Tort had given her concerning what she intended to do at first light tomorrow.
Martin Mear had written King Lud at Klaus Fischer’s derelict mansion in Brightstone Forest. He’d had a couple of false starts with his earlier almost schoolboy bands, but that had been the start of Ghost Legion. He’d themed the album around London and London’s mythic history, stuff gleaned presumably on those occasions when he’d stayed at Proctor Court with his Uncle Max. When he’d written the album, he recruited the three musicians who would perform it. And he’d got Sebastian Daunt to do the cover artwork and the rest was rock history.
How much had the Jericho Society had to do with Martin’s success? Had Max Askew initiated him into its dark rites and ancient secrets? Had King Lud been successful because of a deal done with the devil? Did Martin owe his talent in the first place to some satanic bargain struck because above all else he craved success? Why had he composed it where he had? Maybe that had been the suggestion of Uncle Max, or the dictate of Uncle Max, who knew the location had a residual magic of its own, its own potent, talismanic power. If so, that would point to a connection between Max Askew and Klaus Fischer. Except that Askew could not have been much more than a child when Fischer disappeared in 1927.
Likelier that Klaus Fischer had been a member of the Jericho Society himself. An influential member, someone with considerable occult power of his own. There was no way of knowing that for certain, but it seemed likelier than not. German industrialists did not build mansions on Wight without motive. And there had been a temple on the island then, the Jericho Redoubt. Ruthie had discovered that three years earlier doing her research for Michael Aldridge. 1927 had been the year of its deliberate destruction in an arson attack.
On the seashore a mile to the west of Ventnor, she called Frederica Daunt. ‘Is your dad still around?’
‘I told you, he’s practically taken root.’
‘Do you think he’d agree to speak to me?’
‘On the record? I doubt it, Ruthie.’
‘Confidentially, then?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Would you ask him?’
‘He isn’t here,’ Frederica said. ‘He’s popped into town for supplies at the wheel of his relic of a car. And he doesn’t carry a mobile. Says they give you cancer.’
‘Everything gives you cancer.’
‘What do you want to ask him?’
‘I want to know whether the King Lud experience changed Martin’s character. It seems mysterious and significant. Crossing the Rubicon or burning his bridges. There seems to have been something irrevocable about it.’
‘I can tell you that,’ Frederica said, ‘Because Dad told me the night he arrived here. He said writing that album changed Martin completely. And not at all for the better. He said it corrupted him. Between the two of us, Dad became afraid of Martin.’
Ruthie ate dinner at the Spyglass wondering only half in jest whether she ought to make a will. She felt glad she was doing what she was doing the following morning in daylight, but nervous truthfully about doing it at all. Derelict buildings were hazardous places at the best of times and this one had a dubious history.
She drank most of a bottle of wine with her meal. She got back to the cottage chilled, the cottage cold, wondering whether it was worth the effort of lighting a fire in her wood-burner when she knew she’d turn in before another hour was up.
She took off her coat and rubbed her hands together and knelt before the fireplace and screwed sheets of newspaper into the grate and put kindling on top of that and a log on top of the kindling. She spent three matches before the paper caught. She sat watching the flames curl and expand and strengthen in a blossoming of sudden orange heat. And as the fire gently began warming her, Ruthie burst into tears.
Everything there reminded her of the man she’d shared the place so often with before their break-up in the summer. Every stick of furniture, every item of crockery, even the floor under her feet spoke to her of Phil. It was why she’d fled the place for Veronica’s. She supposed it was grief for something lost. She supposed it would pass eventually and she’d felt lucky at other moments to have re-met Michael Aldridge. But now, here, she was hurting. And there was no point pretending otherwise.
Ruthie closed the wood-burner’s glass door and latched it safely shut. She made and drank a small cup of Earl Grey tea. Then she climbed the stairs wearily to her bedroom and got undressed in darkness. She slid between sheets that felt both cold and slightly damp in a bed she’d come to consider too wide for one occupant. She listened for a while as the fabric of the cottage groaned and stretched with the heat spreading from beneath her. She listened for noises from beyond her walls, but the night was quiet. She tried to concentrate on the mysteries confronting her, but found concentration hard to come by. Eventually, she cried herself to sleep.
It was foggy when Ruthie
awoke. Looking through her bedroom window out to where it lay, she couldn’t see the sea. She was in a grey, groping, insulated world extending only an arm’s length in every direction. She got out her black Pashley bicycle – originally pastel-blue, but Ruthie was Ruthie – and pumped the tyres firm. She drank a pot of coffee and dressed sturdily and set off.
It was a Wednesday morning out of season and it was early and the coastal road that led to Blackgang Chine and Brightstone Forest beyond it was quiet. Fog made the world silent but for the odd discordant, disembodied noise. The swish of her tyres on tarmac under her turning pedals was her steady soundtrack as she rode. Her mind was empty of conscious thought and her mood was serene. Almost fifty years earlier, a youthful Martin Mear had shown up at her destination and over the course of a few days determined his fate and secured his fortune. Had it been a deal done with the devil? If so, there might be some scattered, remaining clues concerning the bargain struck.
She was disappointed with herself. She felt she’d been self-indulgent the previous evening. Her relationship with Phil Fortescue had existed only under the delusion that he had let go completely of his love for his dead wife. But his moving on had been merely a lie of which Phil had convinced himself before convincing her. Michael Aldridge was a sincere, gentle, honest man deserving of love and loyalty. She hadn’t slept with him out of pity or compassion and she’d been confident she’d been moving on herself. The previous evening, though, had sown its seed of doubt.
It took her forty minutes to reach the forest. She chained her bike to a tree at a spot not far from the road she thought she would remember even in the fog, which was even thicker here than it had been in Ventnor on her departure from home.
There must have been an access road once, she thought, back in the days before conservation laws and civic planning permission and green belts, when toffs with the sort of fortune Klaus Fischer had boasted were a law entirely unto themselves. But ninety years of dereliction and neglect had seen that obliterated by nature. The only way to get to his mansion was through the wood. And it was tricky going, laborious in the thick blanket of salt-smelling fog that had stolen in from the sea in the night and now draped and smothered the island.