A Scandal in Belgravia

by Robert Barnard

  “So you went back?”

  “Yes . . . first I just went out to phone him. I wanted to say I was sorry, but that we shouldn’t see each other again. It was busy again. I walked back toward Kennington Underground, trying all the coin boxes as I went. Always busy. I was getting very uneasy. I knew he was in no condition to make a long phone call. I thought he must have tried to call 999 and blacked out. By the time I got back to Belgrave Square it was well after half past ten and I was running. I had a key to the flat, and I ran up the stairs, listened at the door, heard nothing, went in, and there he was . . .”

  “Dead.”

  “Yes. He was lying facedown on the floor, but not in the same position I’d left him in—he was just beneath the phone, which was dangling from the hook. His head was stove in from behind. He must have tried to ring for help like I thought . . . but someone had come in and bashed his head in. . . . It was horrible. . . . I went over to make sure he wasn’t breathing, but I knew he was dead. I was crying. I didn’t know what to do. I knew what would happen if I went to the police. Eventually I left the flat, tried to walk normally back to the tube, so as not to arouse suspicion. I think by the time I got back to my flat I knew I’d have to go abroad.”

  “You thought the police would arrest you if you went straight to them?”

  “I was damned sure they would. We must have been seen together during the day, my prints would have been everywhere, and one or other of his friends would dob me in. Homosexual killed by his boyfriend—it would have made perfect sense to the police, and I wouldn’t have blamed them. I didn’t even think of going to them. I thought of chucking myself in the river, and damned near did. Why would the police have believed me, why would they have looked any further for the murderer? It was a topping matter then. I thought of the shame to the family, I thought of my sister, whom I’d always loved. . . . I went back to the flat, went to bed for a few hours—I didn’t have anything you could call sleep for months afterwards—then next day I told the landlady I was going to have a holiday before I started my new job. Then I left the country for good.”

  “For Las Palmas?”

  “For Northern France first. I’d been there with a BBC camera crew, so I had a passport and I knew the area. I knew there’d be plenty of English newspapers on sale there. I was hoping against hope, you see, that it had been one of his boyfriends, and that he’d go to the police and confess. When I saw in the papers that the police were after me I took the train to Spain. One of Tim’s friends had disappeared there when he was wanted by the police. I knew they couldn’t get you back. Eventually I landed up in Las Palmas, with a job in a bar, and that’s where I met Grace. That’s where the nightmare started lifting, when things started going right again.”

  “How did you get to America?”

  He grinned. The tension in him had perceptibly lessened.

  “That was dead easy. Spain at that time was full of dodgy characters. Grace has been back and she says it’s full of old-age pensioners playing bingo now, but then it wasn’t difficult if you wanted something dicey done. I heard of a guy in Barcelona who could fix me a fake passport. I’d started using the new name as soon as I got to Las Palmas. Grace came back here, I went to Barcelona, and eventually I got a cargo boat to Mexico. Grace came down to Mexico City—her maiden name was Hernandez, and she has relatives there. We married in 1959, came here to live, and by 1963 I had my own electrical shop. Now I’ve got five, and I only work when I feel like it. My boy does most of the day-to-day running. . . . I belong to the local Rotarians, have a boat, and we have a cottage up in the mountains where it’s cooler. It’s what they call the American Dream, isn’t it? . . . It’s been another life. Like I’ve had two, with months of nightmare between them. . . . What are you going to do?”

  I stirred in my seat, feeling almost guilty at having disturbed however slightly his idyll.

  “Nothing. Nothing as far as you’re concerned. Maybe write a book about Tim and his death.”

  “You do believe me, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I believe you.”

  “Then how can you write a book about his death if you don’t know who killed him?”

  I shrugged. I recognised the problem.

  “Maybe I could leave it vague. It’s Tim’s life that really interests me now, the life homosexuals lived then. . . . Anyway, it’s possible I shall find out.”

  “It’s not very likely, after all this time.” He had got up, and was standing by the window now, glass in hand, looking at his granddaughter. Suddenly he said: “I don’t think you’d ever capture Tim.”

  “No,” I agreed sadly.

  “Not his . . . special quality.”

  “His distinction. No.”

  “He had something that set him apart, made him unique. I didn’t kill him, but sometimes it feels as if I did. I know I killed something that night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think I mean that if Tim had lived, he would never have been the same afterwards. He not only loved me, he trusted me—he was sure he knew what kind of a person I was. . . . He was wrong. I killed that trust, that belief in people, and that’s why it’s right that I should always feel guilty.”

  I was just about to ask him a question when we were interrupted by sounds from the front door. As I got to my feet two boisterous children ran in, followed by a handsome, buxom woman—grey-haired, smiling, dressed in the sort of smart but casual way a woman would choose who was taking young children to a fun fair.

  “Sorry, Frank. Didn’t know you had anyone here—I’d have reined them in a bit if I’d known.”

  “Grace, this is Peter Proctor, who is here from England on business.”

  As I went to shake her hand I caught a nod from Andy and a brief smile of contentment from his wife—two tiny signs from people clearly as close as it’s possible to be. The nod told me that Grace had known about my threatened visit, and that she now knew that things were all right.

  The next few minutes were bedlam. “Grandad, we went on the big dipper,” “Grandad I won this doll,” “Grandad I was sick”—all the kinds of things that children who’ve had fun at a fair say the world over. I wished again that I had grandchildren I could be as close to and relaxed with. Perhaps one day Fiona or Christopher would have children and live nearby. At moments of quiet Grace Andrews pressed me to stay for lunch. I was tempted to—the scene was so warm, and she herself seemed so genuinely friendly and sympathetic. But I knew that between Andy and me there was always going to be a tension, for the only thing that had brought us together was for him a shameful, guilty memory. I didn’t know how much they saw of their grandchildren, and I didn’t want to cast a cloud over their day. I pleaded a previous engagement, and said goodbye to Grace with regret. Andy called me a taxi and saw me to the door.

  I asked the question that I had been about to ask when the children burst in.

  “Have you ever wanted to go back to England?”

  He smiled. I think he was used to the question, no doubt from Americans who didn’t realise that he couldn’t.

  “Early on I did. I desperately wanted to see my parents again. It still hurts that I never did. Now there’s my sister, but I see her fairly often. There’s no way I could go back to Nottingham, not even if this thing were completely cleared up. It would be an embarrassment all round.”

  “If my book named the real murderer—” I began, but he shrugged.

  “It’s not an issue. What would I do? Go round all the old places I knew, see how they’d changed? I hear you’re knee-deep in litter if you walk down Oxford Street these days.”

  “I believe it is bad. Only tourists go there.”

  “That’s what I’d be, a tourist. No, thanks. I’m not an Englishman any longer. Everything I want is here. But good luck all the same. Tim deserves the truth. I hope you find it out.”

  I went out to the taxi with the sound of children’s laughter from the garden gladdening my ears.

  16

&nb
sp; GENTLEMAN of the PRESS

  The five days I spent with Reggie and his family when I got back to Los Angeles I thoroughly enjoyed. I played the grandfatherly role up to the hilt, while consenting to be led around the sights of that deplorable city. I allowed myself to be dragged to the opera on one of the evenings, and the clothes I saw then will remain with me for the rest of my life. I have to admit though—disgraceful as it may sound—that one part of me, determindedly kept down, was itching to return home and take up the case again. Perhaps this would not have been so if there had been any prospect of Reggie and his family coming to live in Britain, and my having a real relationship with my misnamed grandson. But when I brought the matter up Reggie just laughed. The only slight consolation was that there is a prospect of his moving to his company’s offices in San Francisco. I have been to San Francisco and know it would provide a better atmosphere for little Howard to grow up in. But either way it seems that my acquaintanceship with him is going to be spasmodic. So I tried to make the most of those few days, and I have to admit to having had a good time. But all the while something in me was wondering whether anything had come up in Britain, whether Elspeth or Sutcliffe had left messages about important discoveries. I have no excuse: the idea of hastening home to investigate a thirty-five-year-old murder is patently absurd. Yet I have to be honest and admit to twinges that I knew were an impatience to be back in London.

  I stopped over in New York and had dinner with a literary agent who was politely sceptical about the chances of my memoirs on the American market. He gave the impression, throughout, of wishing he were elsewhere. However when, over pudding, I mentioned the possibility of a book on Timothy’s murder there were slight twitches of the antennae: there’s an aristocratic connection, is there? Isn’t Belgravia that classy area behind Buckingham Palace? Political dirt is always popular, though heterosex would have been better than homo-sex. Still. . . . Really it was quite sordid, or simply amusing, I can’t decide which. But the nature of the agent’s interest made me see the danger that I might write the right book for the wrong reason. That would indeed be the greatest treason.

  I got back to Heathrow in the evening, and took a taxi to Barkiston Gardens. I had a splendid gossipy reunion with Jeremy over the first really good food I’d eaten for some time. He let me go on endlessly about my grandchild, and when I trailed to a stop I let him go on about City views of the state of the economy—a topic which is now infinitely tedious to me, and which I seem to have been hearing about all my life, whichever party is in power. I actually got the impression that Jeremy himself is beginning to be bored with it, which is a hopeful sign. People who make money the be-all and end-all of their lives are always punished for it by being exceptionally boring individuals whose company palls after ten minutes and repels after half an hour. I hoped for better things from Jeremy.

  “Oh, your policeman rang, Dad,” he said, when the topic had fallen to the ground exhausted. “I took down a message I didn’t really understand.”

  So over coffee, with a celebratory brandy, I looked at everything that had piled up on my study desk. Elspeth had put her material in two separate bundles, and the memoirs bundle which I didn’t look at was very large, while the Timothy Wycliffe bundle was small and seemed of meagre interest. Most of the letters were pretty dull too, except for two of them. There was an official-looking communication which amounted to a barely veiled threat from Gerald Fraser-Hymes’s solicitors: if I brought up their client’s name in any connection with Timothy Wycliffe or his death their client would be compelled . . . and so on. Interesting. Good that Timothy still had the power to shock, so many years after going to his grave. There was a letter from Christopher substantially the same as the one to Reggie I had read in Los Angeles—indeed for much of its way actually identical, because it was done on a word processor. I don’t associate word processors with the Sudanese hinterland: let it never be said my children lack enterprise! Still, what a deplorable modern habit. I always put Christmas round-robin letters straight in the wastepaper basket.

  I eventually came to Jeremy’s slip of paper with the phone message from John Sutcliffe. It read: “Terry Pardick is the life and soul of a sunset home near Brighton. Full of stories, says the matron. Drive you down whenever you like.” Now that was like being back on the trail! I rang him at once.

  “Day after tomorrow?” I said.

  “Right. I’ll warn them in advance and pick you up at ten,” he replied. “Be ready—I’d hate to be wheel-clamped.”

  So the next day I wrote up my talk with Andy Forbes—very methodically: I was beginning to behave like the author of a book on an unsolved murder. The pile of political stuff left by Elspeth went unregarded.

  When Sutcliffe collected me he was full of his usual grievance, which I suspect he thoroughly enjoys. In the long and boring drive out of London I let him give it full rein.

  “I was watching ‘Coronation Street’ last night, and eating this casserole my daughter Judy had brought round for me earlier in the day when I suddenly thought: ‘This is bloody boring stew, and I could make one a hell of a lot better myself.’ I could too. I’m going to invite her and the whole family round for a meal. ‘Just to save you trouble,’ I’ll say, and I’ll give them all a three-course spread that’ll be a damned sight more interesting than Judy’s ever brought round for me. Perhaps that will stop her. I’m the one with time on my hands, and I’m the one who enjoys learning new things.”

  “I must admit that in Los Angeles it was rather pleasant having my son treat me as if I were incapable of looking after myself,” I admitted. “Made me feel cocooned.”

  “That’s because you don’t have it all the time. And because you’re used to being cocooned—as a minister. I’m not. I sometimes wish my daughter would move fifteen or twenty miles further away. . . . Now tell me about this Andy Forbes.”

  So I told him in detail the story, and he nodded intelligently and probed my account at interesting points. When I had finished he said: “So what do you make of it?”

  “I believed him. You’ll have gathered that.”

  “Miscarriage of suspicion, if not of justice.”

  “That’s right. Though the suspicion was perfectly understandable, and doesn’t reflect badly on the police at the time. When I say I believed him, I should say too that I don’t think he entirely understood himself and his motives—not then, and not even now. I think there was a social element—them with the money and power, us ordinary working blokes—and he’s reluctant to admit to it out of a sort of loyalty to Tim’s memory. And then there’s his feeling that a choice had been made for him: I think he must have enjoyed himself in bed with Timothy, loved him sexually, more than he acknowledges. Otherwise he could surely have viewed it as an episode rather than a turning point. I think these two things added to those black feelings that he said welled up inside him and contributed to the ferocity of the attack. But yes, I do think Andy Forbes is basically an honest person, and an open and generous one, and I do think he’s telling the truth.”

  “So what we’re looking for,” said Sutcliffe, “is someone who came round later and found him like that.”

  “Yes.”

  “And finished him off.”

  We considered this in silence until we neared Brighton. When we were chugging through the outskirts Sutcliffe handed me a map and told me I was now map reader and guide.

  “I’m pretty helpless. I’m just a politician,” I protested, but he only smiled enigmatically, and in the end I managed pretty well. I had wondered what sort of an old-people’s home Terry Pardick was likely to have landed up in—not, presumably, one of those concentration camps named after the pioneers of the socialist movement where old people are bullied, neglected, and starved by gin-swilling, card-playing camp guards. In the event it turned out to be a large white house in a leafy suburb, with a conservatory and an open porch that caught the sun and was obviously used for sitting out on fine days. One way or another Terry Pardick seemed to have d
one pretty well for himself: it looked like comfort if not luxury.

  “Ah yes, you’re the gentlemen for Mr. Pardick,” said the first attendent we came upon, a pretty, smart young woman with a lot to do and not much time to do it in.

  “He’s well enough to see us?”

  “Oh yes—perfectly well.”

  “And, er, mentally sharp?”

  “Oh yes! If it’s stories of his life as a reporter that you’re after, you won’t be disappointed. He’s full of stories, is our Mr. Pardick!”

  He sounded like a bore with a captive audience. The woman led us briskly through to a large, sunny lounge, with several elderly people sitting around—one or two talking, but most either reading a newspaper or watching television. A couple were just sitting and staring into space. The atmosphere was hardly stimulating, but I’ve never been in an old people’s home where it was. As we came in most of them followed us with their eyes. What was in them? Jealousy? A cynical scepticism about Terry Pardick? I was very cautious of those eyes as we were led to a little group of three chairs set slightly apart from the others, with an old man seated in the centre one.

  “Here are your visitors, Mr. Pardick.”

  He was a small man, in open-necked shirt and baggy trousers that flapped around him: not only small, but getting smaller. The flesh at his neck and on his hands was loose and scrawny, and his fingers were so deeply stained with nicotine that they looked like polished wood. His face was small but dominated by a large pointed nose and eyes that were sharp and sardonic to the point of cruelty. It was impossible to avoid thinking of a rodent.