The Upright Piano Player

by David Abbott

  45

  After the breakfast rush and before the lunch crowd arrived, Jack usually had a cup of coffee at one of the outside tables. It was the time of day when Nessa used to drop by and every day he missed her company. Not that he was ever alone for long. His regulars, seeing the empty chairs at the table and ignoring the newspaper spread out before him, would often sit down and join him.

  “Jack, thank God you’re still here—everyone at the hotel is new. Nobody knows me!”

  He looked up, the croaky voice familiar.

  “I hear you’re still smoking, Joan. How you doing?”

  He pulled out a chair for her. Every summer, Joan and her husband came to the Ritz-Carlton for three weeks, and every day they crossed the boulevard for a late breakfast at Jack’s.

  “Where’s Warren—getting the newspapers?”

  “I guess he’s in New York.” She hesitated. “We’ve split up.”

  He looked at her for signs of damage, but everything seemed as normal. She wore her silver hair cropped close to the skull and it suited her. She was a pixie of a woman, in her early sixties and still trim. He assumed she had been the one to pull the plug.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. You guys were together for a long time.”

  “Thirty-four years.” She shook her head in wonder.

  “We separated last month. We flew back from California and I asked him to move out. But life goes on, and here I am, business as usual.”

  Arlene brought over coffee and a smoked salmon bagel for Joan.

  “Good to have you back.”

  They air-kissed and Arlene, sensing some seriousness in the air, moved off.

  “So what happened?” Jack was curious.

  “We had a row.” She paused. “About Scrabble.”

  “Scrabble?”

  “I know, I know—everyone laughs. But listen to this and tell me if I’m wrong. The man’s not all there, believe me.”

  She took a bite out of her bagel and Jack had to wait. She would not talk with her mouth full.

  “Before Warren would play a game, he had to empty the bag and count all the Scrabble letters—every last one of them. For years he’s been doing it. I said to him in the hotel, ‘Why do you do that? It’s driving me nuts. You put them back in the bag yourself just three hours ago—you think there’s a Scrabble thief in the Bel Air?’ ”

  She took a gulp of coffee.

  “So he says, ‘When I play, I like to play with a full set of letters. I like to be sure, that’s all. What is it? A crime?’ So I let him have it. Yes, you shit, it is. It’s the crime of obsession. It’s the crime of being a jerk. I’m as mad as all hell, and he just goes on counting and explaining. ‘Let’s say I’m holding a Q and I know there are four U tiles and three of them are already in play, then I know there’s a fourth U in the bag, so I hang on to the Q in the hope of getting the remaining U, but if the fucking U is on the carpet, then I make the wrong fucking decision, see?’ ”

  Jack is laughing and she smiles.

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “So, it’s over?”

  “He’s coming down at the weekend. He wants to talk.”

  “Bring him over for breakfast. I don’t like to think of you two apart.”

  She put her hand on his arm.

  “Anyhow, that’s enough about me. How have you been? How’s my friend Nessa?”

  He was just about to tell her when his cell phone rang. He excused himself, glad to put off the moment.

  He took the call on the move, walking away from the tables and into the car park. When he came back to the table, he looked stunned.

  “A friend of mine in London has been arrested for murder. Some guy came at him with a knife and he was just defending himself. Jesus, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “That’s dreadful,” Joan said, thinking not of Jack’s friend, but of Warren, alone in New York, and perhaps in peril.

  46

  Henry’s arrest did not entirely surprise Walter, but he remained confident that the charge would be dropped when the Crown Prosecution Service had gathered more evidence. He had hoped that Henry would have been granted bail pending further investigations, but it was not unreasonable for the CPS to treat the evidence at this stage as prima facie. He could understand their reasoning.

  Henry had killed a trespasser, not a burglar. Colin Bateman had made no attempt to enter Henry’s house, and it was reasonable to assume that he would have left the garden after destroying the rose had he not been discovered. It was self-evident that he had brought the saw to cut through the trunk of the rose and not as an offensive weapon. The enterprise had been carried out at night. He had not expected to meet Mr. Cage, let alone attack him. There had been no intent to harm. In contrast, Mr. Cage had armed himself with a baseball bat before leaving the house, and presumably had been prepared to use it. By his own admission, he had been angry when striking Bateman. Since there had been no witness to the events in question, there was only Henry’s word that Bateman had threatened to use the saw as a weapon. On the face of it, a man had been bludgeoned to death for tampering with a rose bush. Walter conceded that there was a case to answer.

  The police had pressed for the arrest on a charge of murder and the Crown Prosecution Service had agreed. At 2:00 p.m., Henry had appeared before a magistrate and had been remanded in custody at Brixton Prison.

  His appearance in the magistrates’ court did not go unnoticed by the media.

  For the next thirty days, Henry was an absentee from his own life. He was not at St. Mary’s Cadogan for the christening of Ivy Elizabeth, his friend Oliver’s granddaughter. He was not at the Albert Hall to hear Jessye Norman sing—and when England dismissed the West Indies for sixty-one runs in their second innings at Headingley, Henry was not on his feet in the pavilion, but sitting in a cell, two hundred miles away.

  And then, more or less on the day that Walter had predicted, the Crown Prosecution Service advised that no charges were to be brought against Henry Cage. He was to be released immediately, with no stain on his character.

  The decision was greeted with qualified approval. The Guardian was in no doubt that the finding was sound, but felt that in reaching this verdict the CPS had laid itself open to the suspicion that they had one law for the rich and another for the poor. The Times, acknowledging that the defense of self-defense was finely nuanced, had argued for more consistency in the CPS rulings and an urgent review of the Code that guided its decisions.

  The Daily Mirror’s reaction was less measured—CAGE FREE AS FARMER ROTS IN JAIL!

  The farmer in question was named Tony Martin. A few months earlier, in a controversial trial, he had been found guilty of murder despite a similar plea of self-defense. Mr. Martin had been disturbed at his remote farmhouse by two intruders. He had fired his shotgun into the darkness and had hit two young men. One of them had died from two shots in the back and the other had been hit in the leg. Mr. Martin, an elderly man living alone, had claimed that he had felt under threat and had blasted away, hoping to scare off the trespassers. The jury, invited to weigh the evidence that the young men had been running away from the house when shot, had found Mr. Martin guilty of murder. The verdict had been widely criticized and was now under appeal. Most of the media and many lawyers anticipated that the sentence would be reduced to one of manslaughter.

  Henry had asked if the Martin case would influence his own case. Walter believed it would not, in itself, make any difference.

  “They will only bring charges if they believe there is enough evidence to result in a guilty verdict—it is as simple as that. But it’s true that the Martin trial has made self-defense high profile and I’m sure your case will be pulled apart by everyone right up to the D.P.P. himself.”

  In that Walter was proved right. When the papers reached the Director of Public Prosecutions an informal commentary from a senior prosecutor was attached to the summary page of the official recommendation:

  In my opinion, no jury will consign H
enry Cage to prison based on this evidence. Any prosecution would be unsafe; I believe we must let Mr. Cage get on with his life.

  The forensic report confirms that the bat had struck the victim’s shoulder before bouncing onto the temple. This is consistent with Mr. Cage’s insistence that he had been trying to thwart the attack and not kill the attacker.

  You will see that Detective Sergeant Cummings’s report confirms that Bateman had a history of violent behavior going back over ten years. He has recently interviewed Eileen Fisher, Bateman’s ex-girlfriend, and she testifies that he still had an explosive temper and frequently struck her. She witnessed Bateman’s assault of Cage on Westminster Bridge on New Year’s Eve and even more damning, she claims that Bateman had admitted hammering a masonry nail through the skull of a dog to even a score. (I suggest, unlikely to endear him to a British jury.)

  Cummings reveals, as you will see in the footnote, that the dog’s owner had sought to bring charges against Bateman, but at that time, Miss Fisher had not had the conversation with Bateman and had provided an alibi.

  Mrs. Connie Bateman, the victim’s mother, and Miss Julia Hughes, the victim’s aunt, have also provided statements citing Bateman’s violence at home.

  Mr. Dave Clarke from Apex Scaffolding claims that Bateman had attacked him with a short pole on a building site in February 2000. There were several witnesses to the assault, but Mr. Clarke had decided not to press charges.

  It is understood all three women and Mr. Clarke have agreed to be witnesses for the defense if Mr. Cage is charged.

  Perhaps even more significantly, D.S. Cummings supplies the minutes of a meeting with Mr. Cage on 20 June, 2000, at which Mr. Cage identified Bateman as the man who had attacked him on Westminster Bridge on New Year’s Eve.

  D.S. Cummings informed Mr. Cage of Bateman’s record. The defense would certainly use this to suggest that Mr. Cage had good reason to believe on the fateful night that an armed Bateman was capable of the most serious violence.

  At the same meeting, Cummings reports that Mr. Cage had announced his intention of leaving London to live near his family in Norfolk. He was selling his London house and was anxious to put himself out of harm’s way and lead a more peaceful life. Not the posture of a vengeful man, I can hear the defense saying.

  There is a lot more for you to weigh, but I am satisfied, having read it all, that Mr. Cage genuinely felt that he was under threat and took reasonable steps to defend himself.

  I’m sorry I couldn’t get this to you earlier in the day. You weren’t planning to go out this evening, were you?

  47

  Jack had stocked up the fridge and prepared the bed in Nessa’s room. He was not adroit at hospital folds and looking back from the door, the bed had reminded him of the books he wrapped at Christmas, taut over the flat surfaces but a rumpled mess at either end. Still, he did not imagine Henry would object after his recent sleeping quarters.

  It had been Tom’s idea that Henry should fly to Florida on the day of his release.

  “Stay for a few weeks,” he had said, “until things calm down here. Jack will open up the house in Florida and Jane and I will handle the move to Norfolk.”

  Not wanting to be recognized, Henry had shaved his head on his last day in Brixton. In fact, his looks had already changed, altered by one of those aging spurts brought on by a fall or an operation—or a month in prison. At arrivals, he had seen Jack and walked straight past him. As the last stragglers left the baggage hall and Jack was getting anxious, Henry had tugged on his sleeve from behind.

  “Jesus, no wonder I didn’t spot you. Why the convict look—I thought you had got off?”

  Henry had been annoyed, unprepared for Jack’s breeziness, but had said nothing. In the car, he had closed his eyes, pretending to be asleep.

  At the house, Jack handed over the keys.

  “There’s stuff in the fridge and you know where I am. Come over when you’re ready.”

  Henry had ignored Jack for two weeks. When the food in the fridge ran out, he ordered pizza.

  Tom called every other day at noon and Henry talked to Hal. In the afternoons he walked on the beach. In the evenings he slept in front of the television.

  Jack waited it out. When Henry finally came over for breakfast, Jack was ready with an apology.

  “I’m sorry about the convict crack. I have a fast tongue and a feeble brain. It’s a bad combination, I know.”

  He reached out to shake Henry’s hand.

  As the weeks passed, Henry relaxed a little and Jack asked him about his time in prison.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it, but at least it was a hiding place. No cameras or reporters.”

  At first, he had been fearful. He had anticipated hostility from the other inmates. A bookish, middle-class man, known to be wealthy, he had imagined himself an obvious target. But he had been wrong. He had been ignored. Overcrowding meant that the prisoners were confined to their cells for most of the day and time dragged. Boredom worked like bromide in the tea; nobody gave a toss who you were or what you had done.

  The only relief came with visitors. Walter was there most days and Tom or Jane once a week. Charles England had visited twice, bearing books and magazines. On his first visit he had brought something else to show Henry.

  “You won’t like this, but don’t worry. I’ve put a stop to it.”

  He had held up a white T-shirt with the bright-red legend: DON’T CAGE THE CAGE!

  Charles had been amused by Henry’s pained expression.

  “The plan was for all the staff to march on Downing Street. Can you imagine? Not Henry’s style, I told them, but the sentiment would be appreciated.”

  One afternoon, Walter had arrived in a sober suit and a black tie.

  “I went to Colin Bateman’s cremation this morning. I thought you would want me to.”

  “Thank you.”

  It had been a brief, dry-eyed affair. Colin’s mother, his aunt, and Walter had been the only mourners. Outside, on the square meter of paving reserved for Bateman’s floral tributes, his mother had placed a large bouquet, a gaudy mix of dissonant blooms and hues. Mrs. Bateman had been insistent that the florist should pack in as many bright colors as possible.

  Three days before Henry’s release, Maude had come to see him. She had talked about Nessa. She had read all the obituaries and had loved seeing the old photographs. “She was very beautiful.”

  As she left, she told him she was thinking of moving on again, perhaps to live and work in Paris. She thought she might find work in a gallery. After all, she did have a degree in art history. She had not promised to send him her new address, nor had she mentioned how easy it would be to take the Eurostar and join her for lunch in Paris—but in the lingering scent of her perfume, Henry had pictured himself making the trip.

  Only once during his stay in Florida did Henry discuss the death of Bateman. They were in the car driving to Palm Beach for a Saturday night concert.

  “I sometimes think it was meant to happen. There were thousands of people on Westminster Bridge that night and I was shoved into Bateman. Why him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Perhaps he was my punishment?”

  “For what?”

  Henry’s answer had been almost inaudible.

  “My various failings.”

  “It was wrong time, wrong place—that’s all, Henry. There’s no big finger pointing down from the sky.”

  Jack had slowed down on a tight bend. Around the corner was the entrance to Donald Trump’s mansion and there were often limousines lined up, waiting to turn into the driveway. Once past the house, Jack had eased the car back to thirty miles per hour.

  “Shit happens, Henry, it just happens. You think Nessa deserved her cancer?”

  “No, Jack, I don’t.”

  Henry had reached across and turned on the radio—the snap of the control as sharp as his reply. As fate would have it, Tom Waits was singing “Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night.”r />
  The conversation was never resumed.

  In England the news circus had moved on, but still Henry delayed his return. Tom and Jane had invited him to become a partner in the bookshop. They were hoping to have another child and were already looking for a house. The flat over the shop was too small and the business could take over the space and expand. They needed help and would he think about it, please?

  He had been noncommittal, knowing that his hesitation was hurtful. Why had he bought the Norfolk house if he did not want to be part of their lives?

  Even when Hal begged him to return, he was evasive.

  “Soon Hal, it won’t be long.”

  It was caution that kept him in Florida. His hair had grown back and he had put on weight; he looked more like his old self, but he had lost his nerve. Here he was anonymous; in Norfolk, he feared he would be notorious.

  The weather had turned humid and each night before going to bed, Henry walked from the house into the ocean, stopping only when the water reached his chest. It was here, at this depth, that they had scattered Nessa’s ashes, just as she had wished. And it was here, one night, with perhaps some vestige of her still by his side, that Henry Cage had closed his eyes and prayed for guidance.

  Unexpectedly, it came the next day from Mrs. Abraham.

  Dear Mr. Cage,

  I hope you don’t mind me writing. I wanted to thank you properly for the money and I’m not sure I ever did, and it’s been on my mind. Tom said it would be all right to write. He showed me a photo of Hal during the move—there’s a lot of Mr. Cage in him, I said, and there is—well, I think so. I expect you can’t wait to get back and see him. Best regards, Peggy (Mrs. Abraham)

  What was it she had said to him that day in the kitchen?

  “But what about you, Mr. Cage? Didn’t you want to be with her for every single minute she had left?”

  That had been the gist of it and she had been right to chide him. He had not been with Nessa for her last minutes. He had not even been there for her last hours, days, or weeks. He had been on the wrong side of the Atlantic—just like now.