There was a terrible cry. But not from me. And not from Deborah. As if paralysed, Treasure dropped the gun, and stood mouth open, staring at the grim apparition. In a second, the gun was in my hands. The young figure moved towards me, and it was then I sighed the biggest sigh in the world. And all I could think to say, poor mutt, was ‘Christ, my darling, and I prayed that you would never turn up.’
Fifteen
I won’t dwell on the last moments I ever spent in Doom Abbey. For the memory, in a way, hurts us both still. Suffice it to say, we quickly released Deborah, and I asked Arabella to take her outside pronto. When they had gone, I propped the gun up by the huge bookcase that filled a whole wall of the library, and went over to Treasure. He still seemed totally in a trance.
‘Goodbye, Mr Treasure. I am sorry I could not keep to the arrangement you so desired. But I will destroy all the diaries if you would like me to. Including 1981. And then, I promise, no one but we four will ever know about it.’
His eyes flickered slightly, but still he did not look at me.
‘Thank you, Mr Marklin. They were not my finest hours — ’81 and ’44 …’ His voice was frail now and tailed away, its timbre splintered into unrecognizable pieces. But I had understood. And I hoped he knew it.
I left the gun where it was, and descended the Abbey steps for the last time. It was almost night outside now, but I could just see Gus, the two girls and Lady Philippa down the driveway by the Golf convertible and my old Beetle, and behind them, the flashing blue lights of two police cars turning off the Lulworth road into the drive. I shivered, and began running. It was then I heard the shot reverberating behind me.
*
We were kept at the police station until three in the morning; until, in fact, we were rescued by Inspector Blake. I was relieved to see us all perform so admirably with our cover stories, that we had rehearsed together whilst the police were examining Treasure’s body in the library. It was all very simple, but the Dorset police did not seem to find it all particularly believable. (I don’t blame them — they would have benefited from at least a day for creation, and a week for rehearsal. But I didn’t think the boys in blue would wait that long.)
Gus, fortunately, had left the diaries at his place, so they didn’t figure in our cover story. The Inspector disobeyed every rule in his Scotland Yard bible by not raising any objections to what he knew was as much of a whitewash of Treasure as a Nixon television broadcast had been of Watergate. I guessed he had got the outcome he wanted — with no nasty scandal, no nasty smell. It was poor Lady Philippa we had to make seem the biggest fool, for being so stupid as to imagine my phone call was anything but a practical joke that went horribly and ironically wrong. ‘We had no idea she would call the police,’ we all lied, but hated doing so. For to embarrass the living instead of shaming the dead is, I suppose a curious kind of morality.
Finally, the Dorset boys seemed, with Blake’s encouragement, slightly more satisfied that our story had some basis in fact — that Treasure had been very depressed recently, and had invited us round to cheer him up.
‘Why was he so depressed?’ they kept asking.
‘Because he kept remembering his beloved wife, and her infidelities and final departure had got to him all over again,’ we sort of explained. ‘That’s why he must have shot himself when we all upped and left.’
Blank faces.
Needless to say, it was not only Lady Philippa’s involvement of the police that took a lot of explaining away. Arabella’s boy’s outfit and the red paint on her hair and face was quite a poser. The best I could do was, ‘She’s always been a great one for dressing up and fooling about. Her hair is funny colours anyway, only tonight she deliberately overdid it to amuse Treasure. Went a bit too far …’
Blanker faces.
Still, they couldn’t prove otherwise, and Blake didn’t wish them to. And they had no doubt got used to weird goings-on at country stately homes. I’d read in the local rag only two weeks before about a raid they had made on a weekend house party, where they’d discovered all the men dressed as nuns, the women as monks, and the coke was the real thing.
At about ten to three, when we were all getting decidedly frayed at the edges, the Inspector took me aside into one of those bare, tiny rooms that are only ever found (hopefully) in police stations. Neither of us sat down.
‘I’ll come and see you in the morning, when you’ve had some sleep,’ he said quietly, and put his hand on my shoulder.
‘It is the bloody morning,’ I replied irritably, ‘and, secondly, what are you going to come round for?’
He just about smiled. ‘Confirmation.’
‘Confirmation of what?’ I said, rather more sharply than I had intended, as I already knew the answer.
‘Life and death, Mr Marklin. And diaries. Please don’t be obstructive at this late stage. I need to know.’
I sat down. There was no more to say. I hated myself just then. And hated him, because all along he had left the responsibility to me, and not to himself or his force. And it had ended in brains splattered across a hundred and one leather-bound volumes in a lofty room in a fortified stone abbey.
*
It wasn’t until we were nearly back at Studland that I remembered the mess I had left the previous afternoon. (I couldn’t believe it was that recent. It seemed years ago.) What was left of my spirits drained completely away. But material things were hardly of importance right then, in the wee small hours. Deborah, the police had driven straight home to Bournemouth in one of their white flashing numbers. Gus said goodnight after a quick Heine-ken, and Arabella kissed him. He hasn’t been quite the same since. Then we crawled up to bed.
Arabella and I clung to each other very tightly all the rest of the night. That’s all — just clung for dear life. Neither of us slept except in snatches, and Bing, cuddled up at the foot of the bed, became very tetchy about our restless legs and feet. For there was so much we had to say to each other, we almost didn’t know where to begin, let alone where or when to end.
Somewhere along the line, I asked her where she had been all day, and what made her dress up in the plaster boy’s uniform. She told me, and suddenly the true tragedy of Treasure’s life, and, indeed, part of her own, was revealed. I felt incredibly small and unimportant all of a sudden, for compared to hers, or Treasure’s, my life, with all its ups and downs, had been very smooth sailing. And yet I knew I grumbled all the time.
Let me tell you first what she had been up to that day. She hadn’t gone straight to her cousin’s. She had waited around and followed us discreetly. She had seen us pinch the Rolls, had followed us again, and watched us searching it through a gap in the hedge. She saw our disappointment as we got back in the Rolls to return it to Poole, and guessed we had found nothing. She had then gone to her cousin’s nursery, and begun pricking out or whatever, and had a serious think about where the diaries might actually be. She remembered my remark about the Bing toy she had given me as a present — that it had given me an idea where the diaries might be. Well, my remark and that Bing toy with the secret compartment gave her a very different idea; that the diaries weren’t in a real car, but maybe hidden one by one (or at least the incriminating ones) in a toy car. Some of the models were certainly big enough.
She still had a key to Doom Abbey that Treasure had given her at the start of their relationship, so she had driven there at breakneck speed in the hope that Treasure was not yet back from lunch with Derek. He wasn’t. She let herself in and went immediately to the room where his most valuable toys — outside those in the stable block — were kept. She concentrated on the hundred-odd tinplate cars, buses, trains and a few tinplate boats that were big enough to conceal a diary of any size. She found nothing until she finally, in desperation, tried the boats. One seemed unusually heavy. (From her description, it sounded like a thirties Hornby speedboat.) She probed and found a Lett’s School-boy’s Diary concealed under the tinplate cover where the clockwork mechanism should have been.
It was the diary for 1944. She pocketed it, replaced the tin cover and ran, expecting Treasure would be back any second.
She went back to the nursery because she had promised her cousin earlier that she would take some produce to Moreton Station to catch the train. This she did, then decided to come on to me in Studland with the diary so that we could read it together. Of course, she found my place heavily modified by the actions of Ken Gates, and guessed what had happened. She thought of going to the police, but was worried it might do more harm than good until she knew more about where Gus and I had gone. In case we came back, she hung around Studland for an hour or more. Eventually she read the diary, then motored over towards Treasure’s, hoping like mad she would come across us on the way. The diary’s contents were, as she put it, enough to scare the living daylights out of anybody.
If Gus hadn’t taken a pet short cut of his on his way to get his grenade, they’d have met on the road — head-on, I wouldn’t wonder, knowing Gus’s driving. But as it was, she turned up at the Abbey after I had gone in and found Deborah. She wisely stayed outside until she had sussed out the situation — which she effected by the simple means of peeping in each ground floor window until she found us.
Gus returned to Doom Abbey, and they came across each other in the grounds. Between them, they decided they needed a back-up plan in case the grenade didn’t work. It was Arabella’s idea — the stratagem of the plaster boy’s uniform. Gus broke into the stable and got it for her. I still dread to think of the risk she took. But why the red paint? That was from the key disclosure in that 1944 diary. The relevant pages I read, with trepidation, immediately after Arabella had told me what I’ve just told you.
I won’t distress you with all the details. They describe, with painful precision, Treasure’s growing love for a boy in his class called Paul Withers — a love that, within a few weeks, had become an obsession and a physical reality, as they sneaked into each other’s beds in the dormitory. But it is clear to the writer — and to the reader — that Paul is somewhat of a fickle character, and does not reciprocate the love with the same intensity. Indeed, during the night before the fatal entry, Paul announces he won’t make love any more with Treasure, and, in fact, is going to see the Headmaster in the morning about Treasure’s ‘lewd’ behaviour. The news comes as a bombshell. Let the fourteen-year-old Randolph Treasure take over from there. The entry is for 13 February 1944. It is marked with an asterisk to show where it is continued at the back of the diary, when he ran out of space.
Had no sleep. Paul did. How could he? Would he tell on me? Must stop him somehow. He wouldn’t speak to me, washing and dressing. Or at breakfast. In chapel we heard planes. Then first crump of a bomb. Stained glass windows blew in. Boys scattered and ran out. Heard siren, then whistle of another bomb. I stood still.* Paul ran to door. Huge explosion, knocked me down, covered me with dust and debris. Saw Paul lying under part of door. He waved at me. He was terribly cut, leg looked broken. Began moving stones and bits of beam. Shifted door slightly. He couldn’t move. Just smiled like he had last night, when he told me he’d tell. I picked up length of door frame, began hitting his face. I hit him, hit him and hit him, because he seemed to keep smiling. But he won’t tell anybody now. Covered him with more stones and beams, then crawled on outside. There were bits of other boys everywhere. Must have fainted then because …
I wanted to burn the diary there and then, but Arabella rightly pointed out that the rest were over at Gus’s place, and he would be in the land of nod by then, deservedly so. Reluctantly, I agreed the morning would do, when we had all had a rest. I didn’t want to commit it to ashes because his secret had been so heinous, but because I felt truly sorry for Treasure for the very first time. And I wished to be sure the facts of his childhood obsession would die with him, for, to paraphrase the showman’s remark at the end of King Kong, it was love that killed the beast. Oh Lord, would that we could all be loved as we would wish ourselves to be.
I got out of bed to hide the diary behind the cistern in the loo, just in case Blake made too early a visit, and then we lay quiet for a bit. Suddenly Arabella sat bolt upright.
‘I can tell you now. I’ve been wanting to for ages,’ she said quietly, ‘and you’ve been wanting to know, haven’t you?’ She stopped and looked a little lost for words. I sat up too, and cradled her back in my arms.
‘Yes, my darling, but I knew you’d tell me when the time was right.’ She still remained silent, so after a minute, I helped her a little.
‘Something happened, didn’t it? Something you felt was your fault?’
She nodded.
‘Before you met Treasure?’
She nodded again. ‘That’s how I met Randolph. He extricated me from the car, you see.’ A tear beaded down her cheek. Very soon, it wasn’t alone.
‘You had a car accident?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, then went on so quietly I had to lean forward to catch her words. ‘You must have wondered why a university girl just pricked out plants for a career … well, I’ve only done that since the crash … Before, I was a junior reporter on a local paper, the Shropshire Enquirer. I loved it. Journalism was going to be my life, young life anyway. My boyfriend, Simon, had been at Bristol University with me. I loved him and he loved me. His craze was photography. So I managed to persuade my editor to take him on as a junior photographer on the paper. We often went on assignments together in my car. One day … (she stopped for what seemed like an eternity, then resumed) my car was in dock — gearbox trouble — and the editor let me have a staff car, an old Citroen DS, you know, the one with all the complicated hydraulics and things. Well, I wasn’t used to it, you see and … I missed the tiny brake pedal, it was like a button, at the traffic lights in All Stretton. A long-distance holiday coach went into us broadside — Simon’s side; he was killed outright, but, by some unfair miracle, I survived with cuts and bruises though the Citroen folded around me.’
‘And Treasure got you out?’
‘Yes, he was coming back from viewing some property in Shrewsbury, and was first on the scene. Luckily, no one in the coach was seriously hurt, just bruises and shock and things — He took me to hospital …’
‘And visited you?’
‘… and eventually suggested I should get away from Shropshire to get over it all. My guilt, you see, was consuming me. He told me he lived in Dorset. I thought it might help if I did as he suggested and my cousin was almost on the doorstep and needed a bit of companionship right then. Her husband had been in the Navy and was one of those killed in the Falklands war. So I went to live with her.’
I wiped her eyes with the edge of the sheet. She went on. ‘I needed him — clung to him like a big father who wouldn’t let me get into trouble again. And it worked for months. No commital. Just coasting. Brittle but just alive. And working with plants is a wonderful therapy.’
I remembered her remark about living things. She ran her fingers through her hair, to which some traces of red still adhered, despite our effort with thinners at the police station. ‘You know why I colour my hair every which way?’
I made a mental guess, but shook my head.
‘After the accident, part of my hair went white in a great streak front to back. I guess it’s still that way underneath all the tints.’
I held her very tight, and hoped my warmth would get through. I adored her, and I prayed my love would be enough for her desperate need.
Neither of us spoke for quite some time, and eventually we settled down again. I could see it was beginning to get quite light outside. After what must have been about half an hour, she spoke very softly into my pillow.
‘He recognized me instantly, you know.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know, that’s all. I could see it in his eyes.’
‘Then why … ? He could have killed you.’
‘Because he was staggered I knew about Paul … I think, in his way, he loved me and he’d had enough by then. Of killing, I mea
n. Of hiding. Of living with 1944.’
I didn’t say anything more. But at least now I knew one marvellous fact. Arabella had expiated a lot of her guilt about Simon by the tremendous risk she had taken to rescue me and Deborah. (I gathered next morning, that Gus had tried to stop her, but she just wouldn’t listen.) But I wondered if she had taken on a new guilt about her role in Treasure’s death. About an hour’s worth of worry later, she put my mind at rest on that too.
‘He’s at peace now. For the first time in over forty years,’ she said softly.
‘Yes,’ I agreed quite truthfully, ‘he’s at peace.’ And she snuggled to me, and went out like a light.
*
At around eleven, when the bright, late spring sun was really burning the curtains, I got up and trundled downstairs, stark naked, to make some tea and toast. I glanced at the devastation in the shop, but again my bodily needs were greater. And of course, on the doormat were the stats I’d asked for from the Telegraph and The Times. At that moment, I felt they were better never than late.
Then Gus knocked at the unbroken side-door. I quickly grabbed a raincoat off a hook in the passageway, and let him in.
He wandered through to the kitchen, his bandages now a most attractive grey colour in selected areas. He turned and looked at me.
‘Taking up flashing now, are you?’ he grinned as he noticed my bare legs and feet under the raincoat. ‘Shouldn’t if I was you. There’s not much call for it round here, you know.’
I was in no mood for jokes, which I made quite plain; and I gave him a large, brown loaf, a knife to cut it with, and pointed out the pop-up toaster.
‘That’s all right. I’ve had mine,’ he said.
‘It’s for us, Gus. There are more people in the world, you know.’ He grinned. He’d got me going again, sod him.
We sat for a minute while the toast toasted and the tea brewed.
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