Helen stopped short.
An anonymous letter announcing that the writer knew Beatrice to be illegitimate.
And apparently the only person in Cotten Abbas who knew that was Harry Rolt.
Chapter Nine
The majority of us are permitted to cope with the important events of our lives in a decently leisurely manner—with ample breathing-space, that is to say, in which to assimilate one shock and recuperate before the next. But it does sometimes happen that a series of such events is compressed into a few electrifying weeks, days, or even hours, each one treading so closely on the heels of its predecessor as to create a sort of momentous blur, like telegraph poles seen from an express train, rather than (after the fashion of mountains viewed from the same standpoint) a slow-moving recession of isolated and significant peaks. So it was with Helen Downing this Sunday. Looking back on it afterwards, what surprised her most was her own unnatural equanimity. It is doubtful if this was quite so unbroken as she subsequently imagined, but there was a certain justification for her surprise in the fact that the day’s happenings succeeded one another so rapidly as to give her mind no chance of reacting fully to any of them. The result of this was a slightly misleading air of level-headedness, and the man who three weeks later became her husband has been heard to assert, in amiable mockery, that he was decidedly uncertain that day as to whether the recipient of his proposal was flesh or marble. (But he has not, he adds—to Helen’s mild confusion—been in the least uncertain about it since.)
At breakfast-time, however, destiny’s preparations were still not quite complete, and Helen was able to eat the meal undisturbed—undisturbed, that is, except by the suspicion that Harry Rolt might be responsible for the epidemic of anonymous letters. Of course, there was no guarantee that he and he alone knew of Beatrice’s origin—no guarantee, even, that a reference to that origin had been what the burned anonymous letter had contained. But the latter qualification was thin to the point of invisibility, and although to some extent the former held, Helen found it difficult to believe that anyone who had not lived in the relevant area of Yorkshire at the relevant time—and Rolt was almost certainly the only person in Cotten Abbas who had—could possibly be aware of so remote and long-buried a scandal. There was the chance that Rolt had told someone else in the village about it; but his manner in bludgeoning Helen with the tale had been the manner of a man driven by extreme provocation to violate a hitherto inviolable confidence, and Helen felt convinced that until this morning he had kept it strictly to himself… Well, yes; on the other hand, if he had written the anonymous letter to Beatrice, and if that letter had referred to Beatrice’s illegitimacy, then it had been most unwise of him to tell Helen what he knew—so unwise as to seem, in a criminal whose care had up to now kept him invulnerable, almost incredible. To that objection in Rolt’s favour there was, however, an answer of sorts: whoever had written the anonymous letter to Beatrice might well have relied on her destroying it so that its contents would never be known—must, indeed, have heard that a burnt letter had been found, and possibly had forgotten that burnt paper, unless reduced to fragments, can be reconstituted and read. In which case…
Oh damn, thought Helen: this drifting round in circles isn’t any good. The point is, what motive would Rolt have in writing anonymous letters to start with?
And there was no difficulty about finding a reply to that. If the anonymous writer was not certifiably insane, and operating without any rational motive at all, then his intention, in which to a disastrous extent he had already succeeded, must almost certainly be to disrupt the contentment of Cotten Abbas as a whole. In the case of the merely obscene letters, accusing people of practices at which, as Colonel Babington had once remarked, Gomorrah would have looked slightly askance, the writer’s object was probably nothing more subtle than his own sexual gratification. But that explanation left out of account the other type of letter, the tell-tale sort whose matter and manner were by no means invariably erotic. For those, as far as Helen could see, the only conceivable interpretation was that they were inspired by a generalized malevolence against the entire community—and if you were looking for someone with a grudge against that community, then of course the first person you thought of was Harry Rolt.
Helen frowned. If anyone had asked her to choose the individual in Cotten Abbas whom she would most like to be found guilty of writing the anonymous letters, and so indirectly of Beatrice Keats-Madderly’s death, she would almost certainly have chosen Harry Rolt. But honesty compelled her to admit to herself, after this mornings conversation with him, that in two important respects he didn’t at all fit the part. In the first place, she was certain that sex, far from obsessing him in the way that it obviously obsessed the letter-writer, interested him scarcely at all; up to a point, such a preoccupation can of course be concealed—but overtones of it are apt to leak out when the person concerned is talking directly about the matter, andHelen had been particularly struck by the complete absence of these overtones in Rolt’s references to Penelope and her schoolmaster. And in the second place, Rolt’s whole mentality had seemed to her leagues removed from the sneaking, stab-inthe-back mentality of the letter-writer. He was repulsive, yes; he was malignant, yes; he was dirty and rude and stupid. But despite all that it had been evident to Helen that he did order his life in accordance with some kind of moral code, and what she had sensed of this code convinced her-illogically yet still powerfully—that any such hole-and-corner business as anonymous letters would be completely alien to it. Fair’s fair, he had said; and again, That’s fair enough, isn’t it? As proof of good character, neither of those clichés would carry much weight in a court of law, but they had impressed Helen as being, on Rolt’s lips, something more than mere catch-phrases.
She ate the last of her toast and marmalade, poured more coffee, and lit a cigarette. The sun, strong now and likely to be oppressive at its zenith, streaked the room’s sombre furniture with gold, and garden scents drifted in through the open windows, riding a light breeze which stirred the stiff chintz curtains and fluttered the roses in their vase. A bluebottle fulminated round the alabaster bowl which shaded the centre light. From the kitchen, the voice of Melanie Hogben, the seventeen-year-old girl who mismanaged Helen’s house for her, could be heard raised in heartfelt, unfocused song. And Helen, watching the grey smoke of her cigarette turn vivid blue where it crossed a bar of sunlight, asked herself for the hundredth time what exactly she ought to do. What she now knew, Inspector Casby ought to know likewise—but talebearing, even where no promise of secrecy had been exacted, was as repugnant to her as to most people, and like the majority of Britons, she regarded it as one of the functions of an organized police to exempt her from such squalid necessities. On the other hand, her anger at Beatrice Keats-Madderly’s death went very deep, and if there was anything she could do about it, then in honour that thing must be done…
Stubbing out her cigarette when it was only a quarter smoked, she got impatiently to her feet, and, still fretting, went to the window and looked out. Casby, in his back garden next door, was peering suspiciously at a rose-bush. The sun gleamed on his dark hair, and the expression on his face was of the blankest incomprehension. ‘Green-fly!’ called Helen, and ‘What the devil does one do about it?’ he called back.
‘One sprays it. But it looks to me, from here, as if that wretched thing’s too far gone.’
‘Is it? Had I better root it up?’
‘I’ll come and look it you like.’
‘I wish you would. I know nothing about flowers, nothing whatever.’
So Helen climbed out of the window—not ungracefully either, she thought with a touch of complacency—and having passed through a gate which for some reason linked the two gardens, joined him in sober contemplation of the offending plant. ‘It’s dead,’ she told him.
‘Yes, I suppose it is. What’s that mould all over it?’
‘That’s not a mould, it’s green-fly.’
‘Oh, I see.�
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‘And if you don’t kill them off they’ll soon be all over everything—my roses included.’
‘Oh, Lord… You know, it’s beginning to occur to me that I’m not a very desirable neighbour to have.’
‘It can’t be said that you’re excessively sociable.’
He gazed at her in dismay. ‘No, I suppose I’m not. It’s working in Twelford that’s the trouble.’
‘Do you actually work, all the time you’re not here?’
‘I think so. Apart from meals, that is, and the odd pint. But it isn’t a penance. I enjoy it.’ He gave her a rather worried smile. ‘I do hope you haven’t been thinking me horribly uncivil. I can never really believe that people are anxious for my company— and that isn’t modesty, by the way; it’s a peculiarly vicious form of inverted conceit.’
‘Well, since you like working so much, I’ve got some information for you.’ As was usual with her, Helen had reached her decision on impulse, independently of reasoning or argument. ‘It’s probably quite unimportant, but—’
‘About the letters?’ he asked quickly.
‘Yes. But don’t get excited. I’m afraid it’ll turn out to be a mare’s nest.’
‘This does seem to be the season for them. The number of fledgling foals…’
‘Listen.’ And Helen recounted what was relevant of her conversation with Harry Rolt. He heard her out attentively, and when she had finished said:
‘Yes. I rather suspected that, but I couldn’t be sure.’
‘Suspected…?’
‘Inferred, anyway.’
‘But how?’
‘Well… It’s quite a long story.’ There was something of speculation in his glance, and it struck Helen that he was wondering how far to confide in her. Slightly irritated, she said: ‘If you don’t want-’ but he interrupted her with: ‘Please don’t be offended. With policemen, being secretive gets to be a habit.’
‘Of course. There’s no need—’
‘There’s no need for me not to tell you. The fact is that after the letters started, I investigated—for obvious reasons—the background and history of everyone living here who didn’t one way or another fit in with the life of the place.’ He hesitated a moment, and then added, with a lightness which his steady look belied: ‘You, for instance.’
It was at least five seconds before Helen grasped what he had said—and five seconds can seem a very long time.
‘Me?’ she said. ‘You thought that I—’
‘I was looking for misfits, and it would have been stupid to leave anyone out. One doesn’t hunt one’s thimble only in the obvious places.’
‘I see.’ Helen battled with her anger and held it precariously at bay. ‘But for a misfit I have quite a reasonable number of friends here, don’t you think?’
‘In your case,’ he said levelly, ‘it was a question of money. I understand that you don’t get as many patients as you deserve.’
‘Do you really?’ Helen was trembling now. ‘And I suppose you thought that because I was over thirty, and still not married, I had just the right sort of unsatisfied urges for an anonymous letter-writer… I think you said you enjoyed your work?’
There was a pause before he replied. Then he said quietly: ‘I find it worth while to help clean up the mess made by malevolence and folly. But I do try not to like the mess for its own sake. Liking the mess for its own sake is a—an occupational risk, and better policemen than I am have succumbed to it from time to time. That’s one of the reasons why the Force isn’t keen on imaginative types: they get too interested in the sewers they have to dabble in…’ But he was talking, Helen thought, less for the sake of justifying himself than with a view to keeping bitterness in check. And it flashed across her mind, fractionally dissipating the haze of resentment with which it was clouded, that it was strange a man should be so zealous to palliate a hurt he need never have administered in the first place. She said:
‘Why have you told me this? There wasn’t the slightest necessity, that I can see.’
And for the first time in their brief acquaintance she saw him confused, embarrassed, uncertain. He evaded the question, saying: ‘I’m sorry. Routine sounds rather a threadbare excuse, but it’s a real one just the same. I hope you’ll forgive me.’
‘It’s your job,’ said Helen slowly.
He smiled. ‘Rather a qualified sort of pardon—but of course I’m lucky to get that… Let’s see, where was I? Oh yes—Rolt. Rolt’s childhood, I found, was spent in a certain part of Yorkshire—which discovery didn’t interest me very much at the time I made it. But then, after that wretched business on Friday, I read in the burnt anonymous letter we found in the grate that Miss Keats-Madderly had been illegitimate; so naturally I investigated her childhood, and discovered that it had been spent in the same area as Rolt’s—the obvious inference being that Holt knew the circumstances of Miss Keats-Madderly’s birth.’
Cooler now, and beginning to feel a little ashamed of her pique, Helen laughed. ‘After all the soul-searching I’ve been through…’
‘Soul-searching?’
‘About whether to be a good citizen and turn copper’s nark, or just keep my mouth shut. And it seems you knew, all along.’
‘Not knew. I haven’t talked to Rolt yet. If you hadn’t told me this, he’d be in a position to lie, and get away with it.’
‘Actually,’ said Helen, ‘I very much doubt if he would lie.’
‘He impressed you like that, did he? Me too, what little I’ve seen of him.’
‘And I don’t consider he has anything to do with any of the letters. By the way, what exactly was in that letter of Beatrice’s? Or mustn’t I ask?’
‘It was a simple statement, backed by some convincing detail, that Revelations Would Be Made.’
‘Made unless?’
‘No. No blackmail. Just devilry penny plain. And I don’t think it came from the same source as the other letters.’
Helen was surprised. ‘Why shouldn’t it have?’ she demanded; but he only shook his head. ‘I may be quite wrong about that,’ he said. ‘The only thing is, there are one or two small indications such as—’
‘Oh, and another thing I wanted to ask you.’ Helen had interrupted him before she clearly realized that he was on the point of telling her something interesting; and felt obliged, once having embarked on the interruption, to push it through. ‘What did you mean when you told that man in the bar he ought to be staying with the Verger? I never knew we had a Verger.’
‘And you never read Edwin Drood either, I take it.’
‘Edwin DROOD? Dickens?’
‘Dickens. It wasn’t finished, you remember, so one can only guess at who and what the Mr. Datchery in it was going to turn out to be. But he crops up at Cloisterham, lodging with the Verger, soon after the mystery gets under way, and it occurred to me when this man introduced himself as Datchery that a literary-minded bloke might adopt that name if he wanted to bang about here incognito investigating our mystery.’
‘Only he didn’t react.’
‘You think not?’
‘Well, he was puzzled, as far as I could see.’
‘Yes. His error. If you’re a cultivated man, as he obviously is, and you happen to have the same name as a character in a celebrated novel, then it’s very unlikely you won’t be aware of that character. And from what I’ve seen of this chap, I’m inclined to pay him the compliment of believing that he responded wrongly out of deliberate carelessness—which argues a rather frightening degree of self-confidence.’
‘But who do you think he really is?’
‘Haven’t the vaguest.’ Casby chuckled suddenly. ‘But in case he’s up to mischief, I shall keep an eye on him.’
Helen regarded him thoughtfully. ‘I’m damned if I can make you out,’ she said. ‘One moment you’re competent and adult and a bit stand-offish, and the next you’re friendly and naive and—and—’
‘Puerile would seem to be the antonym you’re looking for.’
‘What’s more, I don’t believe any policeman uses words like “antonym”. I don’t believe you’re a policeman at all.’
‘I am, though. The new sort: minor public school and Hendon Police College. As to the rest of your analysis, the friendliness and so forth are the natural man, and everything else is that ignoble kind of timidity which people politely call shyness.’
Helen smiled. ‘A shy policeman?’
‘It is absurd, isn’t it? But of course, you get just as many different types of men in the Force as you do in any other profession.’
‘But why should you be shy?’
‘Well… A psychologist, I suppose, would put it down to an unhappy childhood.’ He raised a hand to stroke his scar. ‘And this ugly thing hasn’t helped.’
Their eyes met.
A tremor passed through Helen’s body; she desired to look away and could not.
‘You fool,’ said Helen calmly. ‘Oh, you fool.’
Later—after what might have been a second or an eternity—she released herself from his arms to become conscious that Melanie Hogben, paralysed with amazement, was staring out at them from the kitchen window of the adjacent house with the saucer eyes and gaping mouth of an unarmed hunter confronted with a rogue elephant. In half an hour, thought Helen dazedly, this is going to be all over the village; well, and does it matter? In a shaky voice she said:
‘For a shy man you don’t do so badly.’
He was regarding her with an incongruous mixture of earnestness and pleasure: an artist, Helen reflected, in process of dealing with a novel and fascinating technical problem. Clearing his throat impressively, he said:
‘Would you say we were going to get married?’
‘I most certainly would.’
‘In that case…’
‘No.’
‘But, darling girl, I’ve always understood that all sorts of liberties—’
‘Not in the open air. Not in public.’
‘We’ll go into my house?’
The Long Divorce Page 9