Seven Years

by Peter Robinson

  “What?”

  “Sometimes I just think we could have been a bit more… proactive. Because of her attitude, nobody really demonstrated any concern for her, asked her if there was anything wrong, if we could help with her problems in any way.” She bit her bottom lip. “Sometimes I feel a bit guilty.”

  I swirled my beer in the glass and drank some. “And as far as you know,” I said, “you’re absolutely sure there’s nobody involved in this whole business called Barnes?”

  “Nobody.”

  “What was her husband’s name?

  “George or Gary. Something like that. With a ‘G’ anyway.”

  “And her married name, or maiden name, wasn’t Barnes?”

  “No. According to the school records, her married name was Scott, and her maiden name was Fairbanks. She was always called Miss Scott here as a courtesy. No matter what their marital status, no teacher at Linford School is referred to as ‘Mrs.’”

  “But ‘Ms.’ is OK?”

  She smiled. “It wasn’t always.”

  I rubbed my chin, decided I needed a shave. “So Miss Scott remains a puzzle wrapped inside an enigma, then.”

  “I’m afraid so. What next?”

  “I suppose I shall have to pay her a visit,” I said, “assuming she did, as you suggested, keep on the house. I want to make sure she hasn’t come to any harm. It sounds as if she was worried about something, perhaps even frightened. The sudden drinking and all. It could have been caused by anxiety, stress or fear. And I don’t think she actually read the inscription in the Browning, though I’m convinced it was meant for her. There must have been other communications from this Barnes. Ones that did get through to her.”

  Alice Langham looked at her watch. “Heavens, I really must get back to school or I’ll be sharing the same fate as Miss Scott, drink or no drink.”

  I stood up, shook her hand and thanked her for her time and help.

  “Will you… I mean, will you let me know if you find anything out?” she asked me before she left, a slight blush on her cheeks. She wrote something on a beer mat and passed it to me. “Perhaps it would be better if you phoned me at home rather than at the school. I’m in most evenings.”

  “And if Mr. Langham answers?”

  “There is no Mr. Langham. Not for some years.”

  I didn’t enquire any further, partly because I didn’t want to know what fate had befallen Mr. Langham. I had long thought my battered old heart damaged beyond repair, but I must confess that the offending organ gave an unexpected flutter when Alice Langham lowered her eyes and handed me the beer mat. While I would never have dared to admit it, hardly even to myself, the prospect of talking to, and even perhaps seeing, the charming Ms. Langham again was not without its appeal. “I most certainly will,” I said. “As soon as I find anything out.”

  As I drove back over the Humber Bridge, I glanced east towards where the estuary widened. Far below me, the Humber pilot’s boat guided a large cargo ship out to the North Sea. Once back on the Yorkshire side, I found a garage, filled up with petrol and asked directions to the address Alice Langham had given me.

  I thought of Alice as I drove along the country lanes. It was a long time, more years than I cared to remember, since a woman, any woman, had had that sort of effect on me. I can’t describe it easily in words, but meeting her, talking with her, had been so natural that I felt as if I had been doing it all my life. Or that I wanted to do it all my life. I told myself there’s no fool like an old fool, remembered the days of depression and endless poetic outpourings after Charlotte had abandoned me for an engineering student all those years ago. Remembered how I had finally made the effort, pulled myself together and devoted myself to an academic career, subjugated my feelings and desires to the demands of dead languages and dead poets. Despite the connection I had felt with Alice, I knew I couldn’t progress any further. Doing so would involve a move on my part so heavily laden with the risk of rejection that I knew I could never make it.

  It was a beautiful, clear day in late October, and the landscape was so flat that I could see for miles around me. I saw what I thought to be Marguerite Scott’s house long before I reached it, some distance down the road, standing very much alone in its several acres of grounds. When I got closer, I saw that the grounds were walled, and beyond the wall stood an area of woodland through which a drive wound its way to the front of the house. The house wasn’t as large as it had been in my imagination, but it was certainly a substantial dwelling. Victorian, I guessed, with a certain Gothic touch in turrets, gargoyles and gables. It certainly didn’t seem as if the place had ever been a farm; more likely it had once belonged to a member of the local gentry, and the family no doubt had to sell it after the war, when it became almost impossible for the old families to cling on to their estates without turning them into zoos or fairgrounds and opening them to the public. Though this place was grand enough, it wasn’t quite in that league. Nevertheless, it made me wonder again why somebody who lived in such a mansion would need, or want, to sell books to a second-hand bookshop.

  I pulled up outside the front door and rang the bell. After I had been standing there a few moments enjoying the birdsong and the gentle breeze soughing through the leaves, the door opened and a woman I took to be Miss Scott stood before me. She didn’t match the version of my imagination in any way, save that her hair was blonde. It wasn’t piled up like a Hitchcock ice queen’s, however, but expensively layered. She was a slighter figure than I had imagined, too, wearing designer jeans, dangling earrings and black polo neck jumper. She was definitely attractive, but her face had a sort of pinched look about it. Or perhaps she was simply looking guarded because a stranger stood at her door. Suspicion loomed in her light brown eyes.

  “Miss Scott?” I ventured. “Miss Marguerite Scott?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “My name is Donald Aitcheson. You don’t know me, of course, but I assure you that I come only out of friendship and concern.” I was so glad to find her alive and well that I was quite forgetting how my arrival might have made her nervous or frightened. I wasn’t sure how to put her at her ease.

  She frowned. “You what?”

  “Perhaps if you’d let me come in I could explain.”

  At that, she closed the door even more, as if to make a shield between us. “I think I’d rather you explained yourself first,” she said. “A woman can’t be too careful these days. You might look harmless enough, but…”

  Her voice wasn’t low and husky, but somewhat nasal, and the Yorkshire vowels were definitely present. I gave her my best smile. “I can assure you, I am exactly as harmless as I look.”

  “That remains to be seen. What do you want with me? Miss Scott is my school name. If you’re selling something I—”

  “I’m not a salesman,” I said, reaching into my briefcase for the Browning, which I realized would probably be my passport into the house. I could tell that she recognized the book as soon as she saw the cover, but her expression gave no indication that she knew of the sinister and threatening inscription. She looked puzzled rather than apprehensive. I opened it to the flyleaf and held it up for her to see. She frowned as she read the words, put her hand to her mouth.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “I never saw that. I…”

  “But it was yours?”

  “Yes. It was sent to me. Where did you get it? What are you doing here?”

  I looked pleadingly at her. “I’ll explain everything. May I?”

  She stood aside. “Of course. I’m sorry. Please come in, Mr.…?”

  “Aitcheson,” I reminded her, following her through a cavernous hall into a cozy and comfortable sitting-room, decorated in light pastels, with a large, empty fireplace on the far wall, in front of which lay a sheepskin rug.

  “Please sit down,” she said. “How did you find me?”

  I sank into
a deep armchair. “The school. Linford Hall. There was a book with the name stamped on it in the box you sold to Gorman, a biography of Mary Shelley, along with the Browning, of course, which I bought, also without seeing the inscription.”

  “Gorman?”

  “Yes, the second-hand book dealer.”

  She looked completely blank, then recognition seemed to dawn. “A second-hand book dealer, you say? Well, well, the little devil.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I distinctly told Martha, the woman who comes in once a week to clean for me, to drop the box off at the Oxfam shop in town. She must have decided she could make a few extra pounds by selling the lot to this Gorman.”

  “I see. Well, it couldn’t have been much. I wouldn’t be too hard on her.”

  “Oh, I have no intention of being hard on her. Good cleaning ladies are hard to find these days. I’ll let it go by. And you? Are you the bookseller’s assistant or something? Are you here to tell me there was a valuable first edition among my books?”

  I laughed. “I’m afraid not. No, I was just intrigued by the inscription. Curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to know who you were, make sure you’re all right, find out who Barnes is and what it all means. You must admit, the inscription is rather disturbing.”

  “It’s the first time I’ve set eyes on it.”

  “The pages were stuck together,” I said. “I missed it, myself, or I probably wouldn’t have bought the book. But surely now that you have seen it, it means something to you? Barnes, for example?”

  “Have you told anyone else about this?”

  Caution impelled me to say no, just in case the thought of my spreading her business about scared her off and caused her to clam up. “They’d probably think I was crazy,” I said.

  “You say they gave you my address at the school?”

  “Yes.”

  “They shouldn’t have done that,” she said, and stared at me for a while, as if she couldn’t believe it. “There must be some rules about passing on personal information. Ethics or whatever. Did they tell you all about me as well?”

  “No,” I lied. “Why should they? What is there to tell?”

  “I still don’t understand why you should be interested in all this. It’s nothing but a silly joke.”

  “Is it? I suppose I’ve got too much time on my hands, now I’m retired. I was worried about you. And I like puzzles. Are you sure everything’s all right, Miss Scott? If I received something like this, I would be more than a little annoyed, if not downright nervous or angry. Why assume that you will like to read about murder? What is it nearly time for?”

  “Lots of people are fans of murder mysteries.”

  “But Browning’s poems are a little more disturbing than a murder mystery. And I don’t think whoever wrote this—Barnes, I suppose—meant to refer to your taste in fiction. He quotes from ‘Porphyria’s Lover,’ for example, a very creepy soliloquy written from the murderer’s point of view.”

  “Are you trying to tell me you think I’m in some sort of danger, Mr. Aitcheson, that someone is fantasizing about murdering me?”

  “I don’t mean to scare you unduly, but I do think it’s a distinct possibility that whoever wrote this is unbalanced, yes. Have you had any more communications from this Barnes person?”

  “This is absurd. I mean it’s very sweet of you to be concerned, but really…”

  “Tell me about Barnes.”

  “It’s just someone I knew a long time ago.”

  “The book is quite new, and it was only sold to Gorman a month ago. How did you come to get hold of it?”

  “Are you grilling me, Mr. Aitcheson?”

  I took a deep breath. “Perhaps I am letting my curiosity get ahead of me. But you have to admit the whole thing is very peculiar. The tone of the inscription piqued my curiosity. Was this Barnes a friend of yours?”

  “An old lover, actually,” said Miss Scott. She seemed to be more relaxed now, and she leaned back in her armchair and crossed her legs, a slightly mischievous smile playing on her lips and yes, I couldn’t have sworn to it, but I thought she was starting to enjoy herself.

  “Ah… I… er… I see. Then why… I mean, it’s rather an odd thing for an old lover to write, isn’t it, and to quote Browning like that?”

  She smiled. “What can I say? He’s an odd person.”

  “Does it have anything to do with your husband’s death?”

  “My husband’s death? Who told you about that? What do you know about that?”

  “The secretary at Linford School might have mentioned you were a widow,” I lied. “He drowned, didn’t he? Your husband.”

  “You know a lot. That was a long time ago.”

  “And how long ago was Barnes?”

  “That’s an impertinent question, Mr. Aitcheson. I must say, you’re being very perverse about this matter, not to mention persistent. I told you, it’s nothing. And even if it were, it would be none of your business.”

  “Are you sure you’re not in any danger, Miss Scott, that you haven’t been threatened in any way? Perhaps I can help you?”

  “Of course not. And I don’t need your help. I told you, it’s just a silly joke, that’s all. It came through the post about a month ago. I have no idea who sent it. I didn’t even see the bloody inscription, and I can’t stand Browning. I vaguely remember a few of his poems from university, but that’s all. Nor do I read detective novels. I dumped it in the box and asked Martha to take it to the Oxfam shop. Somehow it ended up in the hands of your Mr. Gorman. End of story.”

  “But you do know someone called Barnes, don’t you? You indicated that it was someone you knew a long time ago. Someone a bit odd. Why has he reappeared in your life now? Was he something to do with your husband’s death?”

  Miss Scott contemplated me for a moment in some confusion, then she seemed to come to some sort of a decision. She relaxed even more, and her tone softened. “I can see you’re not going to give up easily,” she said. “Would you like some tea? Or something stronger? Then maybe I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Tea will be fine,” I said.

  “Excuse me for a moment, then,” she said, and disappeared into the kitchen. I could hear the heavy ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece as I glanced around at the paintings on the walls. I must say I am not a great fan of modern art. I prefer a painting to look like something I can at least recognize. I don’t expect my art to be a photographic representation of the world—impressions are all right with me, Monet, Cezanne and the like, even Van Gogh—but these swirls and blobs and lines of color just seemed ugly and pointless. They were no doubt originals, and perhaps even worth a small fortune, but they did nothing for me except perhaps make me feel slightly uncomfortable and dizzy. I kept thinking I could see the walls moving out of the corner of my eye.

  Miss Scott returned with the tea, and I realized as she poured that now I had found her I wasn’t sure what it was that I really wanted to know. She was right in that I seemed to have a bee in my bonnet about the inscription, even now that I had met her and I knew that she was unharmed. Maybe I had been making a mountain out of a molehill all along? I was beginning to feel rather silly about the whole business.

  “I realize it’s probably nothing to do with me,” I said, after a sip of strong sweet tea, “and I’m sorry for barging in on you like this. But as I said, I’ve always been interested in puzzles, in solving them, I mean, and for some reason this one just grasped my interest.”

  “Barnes was a fairly despicable character,” she said. “I suppose you were right to some extent to be worried about me. Thank you for that. But I don’t think he’s a danger to me anymore.”

  “How did you know him? I know you said he was a…”

  “A lover, yes. For a short while.”

  I sipped more tea. “How long ago?”<
br />
  “I suppose we met about six or seven months before my husband’s death.”

  I almost choked on my tea. “You’re telling me you were having an affair with this Barnes while you were still married?”

  She smiled. “One is usually married if one has an affair, Mr. Aitcheson.”

  “And since?”

  “Affairs?”

  “Barnes.”

  She shook her head. “No, we parted company shortly after my husband’s death. His usefulness was over, and we seemed to do nothing but argue. I suppose you could say Barnes was my bad boy, and bad boys have their uses, but they don’t usually last very long.”

  “Did you see Barnes again?”

  “Not until recently. He came back into my life about six weeks ago. I realize I had told him, seven years before, that I knew he would, but it was still a shock I wasn’t quite prepared for.”

  “What did he want?”

  “His share, of course.”

  I drained my tea cup and put the saucer down on the tray. “His share?”

  “Yes. Of the loot. My husband’s fortune. I didn’t begrudge him it, of course, he’d certainly earned it, but that doesn’t mean I was willing to give him it. Not after so long. And he’s been quite beastly towards me. I mean, you saw that inscription, and it bothered even you, a stranger.”

  “But you didn’t see it.”

  “No. But I’m not saying I haven’t heard from him. That he hasn’t threatened me. That he wasn’t blackmailing me.”

  “What about the names? Miss Scott and Barnes. Isn’t that rather an odd form of address?”

  “He always called me Miss Scott. I was a school teacher. It was his idea of a joke. He was mocking me. And Barnes happened to be his first name, by the way. Barnes Corrigan.”

  “And the Browning?”

  “Well, Browning did write about murder a fair bit, didn’t he? Though I never read the book and have only vague memories from university. I suppose Barnes thought it was fitting to remind me of what…”