Tinplate

by Neville Steed

  I was about to delve into the diary for 1981, when I heard Mrs Duck reversing down the drive, her rear axle growling with the effort. Then the crunching of the gravel seemed to grow louder again, and I raced again to the window. But it was no Golf convertible, just a rusting Morris 1100, that was on its last MOT, driven by a middle-aged man with a flat cap, and a Hogarth nose from filling up at pubs. I saw Philippa greet him graciously, and they both disappeared into one of the wooden sheds next to the glasshouses and emerged a moment later with a Rotavator, which the man began inspecting. Then, after getting a tool box from his car, he began what I took to be repairs. Another peaceful, pastoral scene, and the agonizing unquiet of no Arabella. I decided to ask Lady Philippa if I could ring Trevor Blake the instant she returned, and bugger the kudos.

  Meanwhile, while Gus caught up on the current diary, I began the disturbing contents of the 1981 edition, to keep my mind in some sort of occupation other than going mad. And I have to confess, I skip-read a bit more than just the entry for 24 March. I had to. For I just could not believe anyone could love a woman as much as Randolph Treasure had loved Veronica Charlotte Telling. He had forgiven her the most wild and wilful infidelities, and had indulged, it would seem, her every twisted whim. And his agonizing over her repeated threats over the weeks, to join her Swiss lover, was exquisite in its intensity. On 24 March, she had carried out her threat, and flown to Lausanne to join a Boris Kaufman, taking with her five of Treasure’s most loved possessions from his house to sell to ‘punish him for loving her overmuch and keeping her in a possessive prison,’ as she put it. These consisted of a Giacometti figurine, a Faberge dog, and a small Russian icon. But even more significant, in the light of what was to follow, were two of his prized tinplate toys, a Distler thirties limousine, and another but larger limousine made by Tipp and Company. One of these was to bring her to her death as chronicled in the entry for the evening of that day, 24 March.

  I was infinitely thankful when Mrs Fitzpayne had gone for the day. Now I did not need to keep up any appearances. I could succumb to what I was. A never-ending scream, trapped in my black hole of pain. I lay on my bed, our bed no longer. And the ceiling seemed to descend on me, slowly and inexorably, like in some medieval torture chamber, and I heard her laugh ring through the room, the house, the night. I shouted, ‘My darling, where are you now? Speak. Speak, before I’m crushed forever.’ I don’t know how long I lay there. Time had ceased to move forward at all as I relived every second of my life with her, and lingered over every silky inch of her beautiful body.

  Then, suddenly, she was standing in front of me, shouting. I thought it was my imagination for a moment, but then she came and stood over the bed, and I saw what she had in her hand — the event I had so dreaded from the moment I had known she had taken that Tipp limousine. She had found it — as I felt she must. It could not be seen from the outside. It was only if you opened a door. I imagined her lover opening that door and seeing the edge of the leather shining under the tinplate seat. And both of them exulting over what they discovered in that, my most secret of diaries. And she shouted that it was worth all the trouble of flying back that night just to see the horror on my face. And she danced around my bed, waving my little book, and raving about what she said it would mean for her and all her lovers — ‘luxury for life, as we bleed you dry’.

  She made for the door, saying that she would expect £10,000 by that weekend, and I felt myself rising from the bed and moving towards her. She never expected it, you see, not from me. Not from her abject slave …

  I won’t continue with the quote. You can imagine for yourself most of the rest. He strangled her because of her blackmail, and because he loved her too much to lose her to anyone else. And later the next day, he plunged her body into a shallow acid bath, which belonged to an antiques restorer friend of his, who was away in Germany delivering some furniture and who used the bath for stripping wood. The remains, minus the dental parts of the skull, he carried in a polythene sack in the boot of his Silver Cloud and buried at night in the field on the outskirts of Swanage. What happened later, you know.

  Whilst I had been reading the diary, Gus had evidently been reading my face. For when I put the volume down, he said very gently, ‘Won’t ask too much about it. Don’t want to know, really. Just the one thing — did he kill his wife?’

  I nodded.

  ‘So she didn’t go to Lausanne, then?’

  ‘Yes, she did. But she came back that night, because she had found a diary of his, that she thought she could use for a little blackmail — keep her and her dubious playboys in funds for life. And I guess that particular playboy was too scared to follow up her disappearance in case their attempt at blackmail had gone wrong. He’s probably shacked up with some other prize lady by now, a thousand miles from Switzerland.’

  ‘And Treasure killed her to stop the blackmail?’

  ‘No, for love.’

  Gus didn’t ask any more. He didn’t need to, for as far as he was concerned, that was the end of the Treasure story. But it was not for me. I wondered what that very special diary contained in its pages — what Veronica had assessed as being worth quite a tidy fortune. I had a feeling that search as I might, I would not discover it amongst the multi-coloured volumes scattered around in front of me, even if I’d had the time right then, which I certainly didn’t. I looked out of the window again, and could just see Lady Philippa leaving the Hogarth nose to get on with his work, and walking back to the house. It was then I had an idea.

  I began sorting the diaries into order, spreading them out on the floor.

  ‘What the hell are you doing now?’ Gus exploded. ‘We ought to be going to the police right now — we’ve found everything we wanted.’

  ‘Not quite everything,’ I replied, too nervous and hurried to explain further. I gave him a pile of diaries. ‘Help me put them out in order of years.’ He looked at me as if I’d gone round the twist, but co-operated all the same. Good old Gus. In no time, we had the floor covered with diaries, beginning in the top left-hand corner with 1940, a Lett’s Boy Scout’s Diary still with its original pencil down its spine, and ending in the bottom right with the current one, a large, leather-bound ‘Chairman of the Board’ variety. It was plain as a pikestaff now, the one we still had to look for, the one that had written the death warrant for Veronica Charlotte Telling.

  ‘We haven’t got 1944,’ Gus offered.

  ‘Exactly,’ I accepted, as I remembered what had happened at Trenton School that very same year. At that moment, Lady Philippa added her grace to the diary-littered room.

  ‘Arabella must have called off somewhere else, I expect,’ she said, but there was little conviction in her voice. ‘Could she have gone over to your place in Studland?’

  ‘She could. But I would have expected a phone call by now …’

  But I didn’t have time to complete the sentence, for the gravel spoke again, and in a crunchier, racier voice. This time, Lady Philippa was nearest the window. ‘It’s a Land-Rover. Don’t recognize the driver, but he seems to be in quite an amazing hurry.’

  But by then, Gus and I were shoving the diaries out of sight under the oatmeal settee and the two armchairs.

  ‘It’s him,’ I breathed to our now thoroughly bemused and slightly alarmed hostess. I shot a glance through the window. I was right; the thick figure of Ken Gates was already almost at the front door. Lady Philippa reacted with the swiftness of someone from the French Resistance. Arabella must have told her about some of the recent dramas. I liked this Trench-Stewart-Hargreaves family.

  ‘Go out the back way,’ she whispered urgently. ‘He won’t be able to see you go. Hide in one of the glasshouses. I’ll keep him busy. Promise.’

  ‘But you might be in danger too …’

  ‘Rubbish,’ she countered, and pushed me towards the kitchen. ‘Treasure and my father knew each other quite well years ago. He has no reason to harm me. I’ll say I’ve never met you.’

  I was loath t
o leave her to the tender mercies of the concrete Mussolini, but another shove, and we were at the back door, as we heard Gates thumping his call-sign on the front. We made for the nearest glasshouse, so that we could hear if the instincts of a born bully began taking over. In which case, as seemingly born losers, we would have to go back in to see if our luck had changed.

  Fourteen

  There’s nothing that quite has the smell of a tomato plant — especially when your nose is only a quarter of an inch away. I’ve gone off tomatoes for life. Gus and I were lying face down on the moist peat and God knows what else that made up the plants’ soil in the glasshouse, so that we couldn’t be seen from the overwindowed house. And the heat was over-powering, if you weren’t alive with trusses of fruit.

  We said nothing to each other at first, straining for a scream or thumps, or the sound of something breaking. But all was quiet. Very quiet. So we began airing our thoughts in whispers.

  ‘I hope Arabella doesn’t come back now,’ I ventured, ‘but where the blazes is she? Gates, thank God, hasn’t got her.’

  ‘Yet,’ added Gus, then realized I needed optimism not realism right then. ‘She’ll have gone to your place, right enough,’ he added.

  ‘And find it smashed up. And then what? Go to Treasure and remonstrate?’

  Gus removed a miniature truss from his nostrils. ‘She’s a sensible soul; won’t do anything rash.’

  I knew what he was thinking, blast him. ‘Like you’ he meant. I wondered if she had gone straight on to the police. I sort of hoped she had. But then again, I felt she wouldn’t, not until she’d checked with us on what had been happening. But then that only applied if she thought we were still safe and sound somewhere. I was going steadily and inexorably out of my mind with worry. And I realized how much I needed her, how much I bloody loved her, but all she was getting out of my love was danger. Her enigmatic words suddenly came back to me — all about her really being Belladonna and poisonous to those with whom she came in contact. What the hell had she been talking about? It was I who was deadly, not her.

  I could feel the damp of the earth adding to the sweat on my shirt. I shifted position slightly, and then heard a diesel engine start up, and a shrapnel crack of gravel hitting wheel-arches. I looked up cautiously, and was just in time to see Gates doing a Le Mans reverse down the drive. And, thank goodness, he was still alone.

  We waited until the diesel knock had faded towards the Dorchester road, then scurried like rabbits back to the house. Praise be, Lady Philippa was not only safe but smiling.

  ‘Accepted it like a lamb,’ she said proudly, ‘but he left a message in case you came here.’

  I asked her what it was. She blushed a little, so I helped her.

  ‘I bet it was something like, “Censored well tell that censored censored Marklin that Mr Treasure wants his censored diaries back censored censored fast or he’s as good as censored done for.”’

  She laughed. ‘I think your censored’s are three or four short. But, yes, you’ve got the gist.’

  ‘Did he ask about Arabella?’

  ‘Yes. Wanted to know where she was. I said I didn’t know; I wasn’t my cousin’s keeper. I then told him rather sharply to get off my property, or I’d call the police.’

  ‘And he went?’

  ‘He censored went.’ I hugged her. I couldn’t help it. She was her cousin’s cousin, if ever I heard one. And she hugged back, out of relief, I guess, that Gates had gone. Gus looked very left out, and pointed to the phone.

  We separated, and I asked, ‘May I use the phone? It’s high time I informed the Law.’

  ‘Past time,’ muttered Gus. But as she nodded and I went to pick up the receiver, the telephone beat me to it and rang of its own accord. Lady Philippa answered it, then put her hand over the receiver. ‘It’s for you,’ she whispered, and her eyes told me who it was. She resumed, ‘He’s not here, I’m afraid. Could I ask who’s … ?’

  I suddenly took the receiver from her unwilling hands.

  ‘He is here. What do you want, Treasure? Your henchman has just gone.’

  His timbre almost made my ear vibrate. ‘Mr Marklin, I’m so glad to track you down at last. I just have a feeling it’s time you paid me another of your little visits, don’t you? Didn’t Mr Gates tell you?’

  ‘Why is that, Mr Treasure?’ I said, mentioning his name, not for politeness, but to confirm my friends’ worst fears. They gathered around the phone like lemmings. ‘And no, your henchman didn’t find me in.’

  ‘Mr Marklin, don’t play the innocent with me. You have property of mine that your very British sense of fair play will not allow you to keep, I’m sure.’

  ‘I was just about to see that they were returned, when you rang,’ I tried as an answer.

  ‘How very thoughtful of you, Mr Marklin. I suggest you get in that ridiculous car of yours and come right over. Delay could be rather hazardous to health, if you don’t.’

  ‘Don’t threaten me, Mr Treasure. I have rather more reason to …’ He did not let me finish.

  ‘… Threaten me? Oh dear, Mr Marklin, you don’t think I would be so foolish as to ring without having made provision for that, do you?’ His voice conveyed no sense of concern, but rather the confident note of a man on a winning streak. That did rather more than puzzle me — it scared me rigid.

  ‘And I want each and every diary, Mr Marklin. Not a single one withheld, you understand?’

  ‘I understand, Mr Treasure, but I cannot agree. You will receive every diary but one. And that one, I’m afaid, must be seen by the authorities, as it …’

  He cut in sharply, and his voice was a load of decibels louder. ‘My dear sir, I did say every diary. Do you never listen?’

  ‘You are in no position …’ He cut across me again.

  ‘It’s you who are in no position, as you put it, Mr Marklin. Because, you see, I have something of yours. Something soft and fragile, and very vulnerable.’

  My God, I thought, he’s already got Arabella. ‘If you harm a hair on her head, Treasure, I’ll …’

  ‘You’ll what, Mr Marklin? I do assure you, you’re in no position to threaten anyone. And Deborah here, I’m sure, will agree, won’t you Deborah?’

  I was thunderstruck. It wasn’t Arabella. It was more devious than that; he’d got my ex-wife. I heard a squeal in the background, and I shouted down the mouthpiece, ‘You murderous bastard. If you’ve got Deborah, and you hurt her in any way, I’ll …’

  ‘What, Mr Marklin? This is so boring — we’ve just been through all that. There’s little you can do, but exactly what I say. And I mean exactly, Mr Marklin …’

  ‘Let me speak to Deborah.’ This time it was I who interrupted.

  ‘Certainly.’ I heard the receiver put down, and some scuffling sounds, and then her voice, very faint and trembly.

  ‘Peter, he means it. For Christ’s sake, do what he says. He’s got a gun and …’

  More scuffles, and a slight cry, and his odious voice resumed.

  ‘Satisfied, Mr Marklin? I’m sure you would not want to be the cause of a fatality, just for one little diary, now would you? Your common sense must tell you how incredibly uncaring and stupid that would be …’

  I had almost stopped listening, because forward planning was the name of the game just then. And I knew I had only a matter of seconds to react.

  ‘… You see, you and I can have a permanent truce between us, once all the diaries are returned. And I can be very useful to you, Mr Marklin, in every kind of way. Smooth your path to a considerable standard of living. All you have to do is forget. Simple, isn’t it? You forget your way into security. Many men would give their eye-teeth for such an arrangement. Indeed, many men have. I could tell you stories …’

  I interrupted again, for I was ready now. ‘Okay, you win. I’ll be over in half an hour or so with the diaries — all of them.’

  ‘One rather charming lady is awaiting your arrival, Mr Marklin,’ he cooed, then added. ‘And, by the wa
y, do let’s make it a cosy foursome. Bring Arabella.’

  ‘I won’t do anything of …’ And then I remembered I didn’t even know where she was, just where she wasn’t, thank God.

  ‘You will, Mr Marklin.’ I again heard a cry in the background.

  ‘Okay. Okay. Leave her alone. I’ll bring Arabella,’ I lied quickly, and realized why he wanted her there. For then he would have the belt and braces of knowing he could train his gun on both my ex and my current passions — just in case one was not quite sufficient, or the memory too distant.

  ‘Half an hour, Mr Marklin, no more.’

  ‘Half an hour, Mr Treasure, I promise.’ And the line went dead.

  *

  We made Lady Philippa promise, cross her heart, that she would, under no circumstances, inform the police while we were gone for fear of Deborah’s life, nor let Arabella know what was happening, if she returned, for fear of hers. She crossed her heart and we left, taking the diaries with us to where Gus had hidden the car behind the hedge in a field now full of cows, one of whom had left her brown signature down the boot-lid. Seemed to sum up the predicament we were in really, and also the degree to which we were both scared.

  The evening was incredibly clear. I wondered whether it was great weather when Anne Boleyn lost her head, or Charles I mounted the scaffold, or when Chamberlain flew to Hitler’s lair. I bet it had been; tragedy often comes, as they say, out of the blue.