by Jonathan Coe
The Ottoman turned out, on closer inspection, to be an MFI sofa-bed swathed in threadbare pseudo-Turkish blankets, but it was comfortable enough. Findlay’s tiny kitchen led off from the sitting room, so it was easy to continue our conversation as he busied himself with the kettle and the teapot.
‘This is a wonderful flat,’ I said. ‘Have you been here long?’
‘I moved down in the early sixties – almost immediately after my brush with the Winshaws. Partly to escape the attentions of the police, as I said: but there were larger reasons as well. After so many years, the narrowness, the insularity, the petty pride of provincial life had become more than could be borne by a man of my temperament. Oh, but this whole area was different then: it had a bit of style, before the brokers and the management consultants and all the other capitalist lackeys moved in. It used to be Bohemian, vibrant, thrilling. Painters, poets, actors, artists, philosophers, faggots, dykes, dancers; even the odd detective. Orton and Halliwell lived just around the corner, you know. Joe used to come round occasionally, but I can’t say I ever took to the man. It was over before you started with him. There wasn’t a shred of affection in it. Still, it was a terrible end they both came to, you wouldn’t wish that upon anybody. I was able to help the authorities in clearing up one or two small details, as it happens, although my name doesn’t appear in any of the official accounts.’
Interesting though I found these recollections, I was anxious to get back to the matter in hand. ‘You were telling me about Farringdon, the co-pilot,’ I prompted.
‘A dangerous man, Michael. A desperate man.’ Findlay emerged from the kitchen and handed me a cracked bone-china cup filled with steaming tea. ‘Not a vicious man, by any means. Capable of strong feelings and great personal loyalty, I would have said. But a man embittered; destroyed by circumstance. He had never managed to settle; had drifted around the country for years, taking factory jobs, casual jobs, edging closer and closer to the world where private enterprise starts shading into crime. Getting by pretty well on a combination of versatility and personal charm. Because he was indeed charming: and handsome, in a chiselled sort of way. His eyes were like blue velvet, I remember, and he had the longest and most luxuriant of eyelashes: not unlike your own, if you’ll permit me a small compliment.’
I looked away, bashful.
‘I might almost have been tempted to try my luck, but his inclinations lay only too clearly in the opposite direction. A breeder, through and through. He claimed to have conquered a few hearts in his time, and it was easy enough to believe. To sum up, a charismatic rogue: not by any means an uncommon type, in the post-war period, although he had more excuse than most for going to the bad.’
‘And what did you tell him, exactly?’
‘Well, first of all I told him that I was acting on behalf of the family of the late Godfrey Winshaw. That in itself had an extraordinary effect. He immediately became very passionate and animated. It was clear that Godfrey had inspired him with feelings of the most devoted friendship.’
‘As he seems to have done with everybody: Tabitha being the most extreme example.’
‘Quite. So this naturally brought us on to the subject of the plane crash, and raised the tricky question of whether I should tell him about Tabitha and her eccentric theory. As things turned out, it could scarcely be avoided, because Farringdon himself was in no doubt about the matter. He was convinced that the Germans had been tipped off. He said that their plane had been intercepted well before it reached its destination, and well before it could have been picked up by radar, in normal circumstances. Somehow or other, the enemy had been forewarned of their mission.’ Findlay drained his teacup and stared thoughtfully at the leaves, as if they could offer a reading of the past. ‘I could tell at once that there hadn’t been a single day in the last eighteen years of this man’s life when he hadn’t thought about this incident, puzzled over it, agonized and baffled. Wondering who the traitor might have been. Wondering what he would do to the villain if fate ever sent him his way.’ He put the cup down and shook his head. ‘A dangerous man, Michael. A desperate man.’
Findlay stood by the window and drew the heavy, slightly moth-eaten curtains, after taking a final look outside at an evening which had now turned rainy and cold.
‘It’s getting very late,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’d care to stay the night, and we could continue this story in the morning. Sadly this is a small flat and there is only the one bed, but –’
‘It’s only twenty to nine,’ I pointed out.
Findlay smiled apologetically and sat down opposite me with a crestfallen air. ‘It’s no use, I know. You see through the wiles of a lonely and pathetic old man. I disgust you, of course. Try not to make it obvious, Michael. That’s all that I ask.’
‘It’s not that at all –’
‘Please, no kind words. You’ve come to carry out a simple business transaction, I realize that. Information is all that you want from me. Once you have it, I can be discarded, like a used rag.’
‘Far from it, I —’
‘To resume.’ He waved me into silence with an imperious hand. ‘I had no intention of letting the odious lawyer share in my glory, and so on my return to Yorkshire I requested an immediate interview with Tabitha in person: which was duly arranged. The asylum could only be reached, I discovered, by means of a long drive over the moors, and my first sight of it filled me with gloom and trepidation. Probably there is only one more bleak and desolate spot in the entire area. I refer, of course, to Winshaw Towers itself.
‘I was shown into Tabitha’s private apartment, which was at the top of one of the highest towers in the building. My impression, I can assure you, was not one of talking to a madwoman. Certainly her room seemed to be in a severe state of disarray. It was scarcely possible to move for all the piles of magazines, all those dreadful titles to do with aviation and bomber jets and military history. But the woman herself seemed to be quite compos mentis. To be brief, I told her of my discovery, and she reacted quite calmly. She said that she needed a little time to digest the information, and asked if I would mind amusing myself for half an hour or so, by walking in the grounds. At the end of this period I came back to her room and she handed me a letter, addressed to Mr Farringdon. That was that. I didn’t inquire after its contents; merely put it in the post when I got back to town.
‘I got to know that journey pretty well: I must have done it four or five times after that, because very soon after I had posted the letter, Farringdon himself arrived in Scarborough. This would have been in September. It seemed that Tabitha had asked to see him, and that I had been trusted with the task of escorting him out to the Institute. They had several long interviews over the next few days. Whatever they discussed, it was kept a close secret, even from myself. Each time, I waited on a bench in the gardens, overlooking the moors, and read some pages of Proust – I think I must have got through most of the first two volumes – and every day when we drove home, my passenger would sit in grim and impenetrable silence, or chat idly about some wholly unrelated topic. It wasn’t until our very last visit that I was readmitted into Tabitha’s presence, and for once it was Farringdon who had to suffer this inglorious banishment.
‘ “Mr Onyx,” she said, “you have shown yourself to be a man of integrity. The time has come when I must trust you with some secrets regarding my family which I feel sure you will keep to yourself.” I can’t do the voice, I’m afraid. Mimicry has never been one of my talents. “In a few days’ time, thanks to the good offices of my brother Mortimer, I shall be released from this confinement for the first time in nearly twenty years.” I remember congratulating her in some awkward phrase or other, but she was having none of that. “It will only be temporary, I’m sure. My brother Lawrence persists in the most implacable opposition to any suggestion that I should be set completely at liberty. That is because he is a liar and a murderer.” “Strong words,” I said. “Nothing but the truth,” she answered. “You see, I have written evidenc
e of his perfidy, and it is now my intention to put this evidence into your hands for safe-keeping.” I asked her what form this evidence took, and she told me about the note, whose nature, I believe, is already well known to you. It was her hope that this note was still to be found in the guest room where she had always stayed when visiting Winshaw Towers, in the pocket of a cardigan which she had last seen in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe. She proposed to retrieve it as soon as possible and pass it over to me: and to this end we agreed to meet on the afternoon of Mortimer’s birthday party, at the very edge of the grounds, near a spot which was consecrated, believe it or not, for the burial of various dogs which had had the misfortune to live out their miserable lives as part of the Winshaw family.’
‘Of course – and Tabitha met you there, all right, but you were interrupted by Mortimer, and he thought that she was jabbering away to herself in the bushes.’
‘Precisely. Luckily he didn’t notice my presence, although the scent of this cheap but rather exotic perfume to which I’ve always been partial – excessively partial, it has been argued – could hardly fail to escape his attention. In any case, it made no difference, because Tabitha and I had already concluded our business – without any success at all, I’m afraid to say. The note was nowhere to be found in her room, and she hadn’t had the time to look for it anywhere else. Besides, the house is enormous. It might have taken days, even weeks. However’ – and here he favoured me with a rather frosty smile – ‘it appears that you succeeded where even I, the fabled, the infamous, the redoubtable Findlay Onyx drew the most unequivocal of blanks. I wonder if you’d care to tell me how you managed it.’
‘Well, there’s hardly anything to say, really. I certainly can’t take any credit. Not long after Godfrey’s death, when Tabitha had first been sent away, it seems that Lawrence found the clothes which had been left in her room, and had them put in a trunk and taken up to one of the attics. Then after he’d died, and Mortimer and Rebecca moved into the house, they went through them all and came upon the note – which Mortimer recognized immediately, of course. He could still remember all the fuss there’d been about it at the time. As far as he was concerned, anyway, it was of little more than curiosity value, so when I met him a few years ago and we talked about the book I was writing, he let me have it. Simple as that.’
Findlay sighed with admiration.
‘Remarkable, Michael, remarkable. The economy of your methods astounds me. I can only hope that you don’t consider me, in the light of such glaring disparity, to be an entirely unworthy recipient of your confidences. In other words, perhaps the moment has come, at long last, for you to share with me the contents of this enigmatic memorandum.’
‘But you haven’t finished the story yet. What about later that night, when —’
‘Patience, Michael. A little patience, please. I’ve satisfied your curiosity on a number of points: surely I’m entitled to the same – or equivalent – satisfactions in return?’
I conceded this with a slow nod.
‘Fair enough. It’s in my wallet, in my coat pocket. I’ll just go and get it.’
‘You’re a gentleman, Michael. One of the old school.’
‘Thank you.’
‘There’s just one thing, before you do.’
‘Yes?’ I paused in the act of getting up.
‘I suppose a quick hand-job’s out of the question?’
‘I’m afraid so. Another cup of tea would be nice, though.’
Findlay retreated, abashed, into the kitchen, and once I had retrieved my wallet I went after him.
‘I don’t know what you’re expecting from this,’ I said, taking out the tiny, tightly folded scrap of paper and smoothing it out on the kitchen table. ‘As I say in the book, it’s only a little message that Lawrence wrote, asking for some supper to be sent up to his room. It doesn’t prove anything at all: except that Tabitha’s mad, possibly.’
‘I think I’ll be the judge of that, if you don’t mind,’ said Findlay. He took a pair of bifocals from the pocket of his shirt and stooped down to inspect the crucial piece of evidence which had eluded him for almost thirty years. It shames me to admit that I felt a mean glow of satisfaction as I saw the sudden disappointment cloud his face.
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘I did tell you.’
Lawrence’s note consisted of only three words, scrawled in tiny capitals. They were BISCUIT, CHEESE and CELERY.
The kettle started to whistle. Findlay turned off the gas and filled the teapot, then bent over the table again. He stared at the message for almost a minute: turned it over, turned it upside down, held it to the light, sniffed it, scratched his head and read it a few times more.
‘Is that all there is?’ he said finally.
‘That’s it.’
‘Well then, that settles it. She’s as mad as a hatter.’
He finished making the tea and we trooped back into the sitting room, where we sat for some time in a silence which was on my part expectant, on Findlay’s angry and thoughtful. He got up once to take another look at the note, which was still in the kitchen, and came back carrying it but without saying a word. After a while he laid it on the table beside him with a grunt, and said: ‘Well, you’ll be wanting to hear the rest of it, I suppose.’
‘If you wouldn’t mind.’
‘There isn’t much to tell. I’d arranged to dine with Farringdon that night. Scarborough was not famed for its cuisine, even then, but there was a small Italian place which I’d been known to use in the past – for the purposes of seduction, Michael, I’ll be perfectly frank with you – and it was there that he and I shared a few bottles of Chianti, even as the Winshaws were sitting down to their wretched family dinner.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘That was to be his last meal. I had no idea, at that stage. Didn’t even know that he and Tabitha had hatched any kind of plot together. Of course, I can see it all, in retrospect. The years of smouldering resentment; abstract hopes of vengeance suddenly made concrete; those long, secret talks in her room which must have driven him to a murderous frenzy. I can only speculate about the bonds formed, the vows taken, the oaths sworn, between those ill-fated partners in crime. He was in a sombre mood, as you can imagine, and not much given to talk – which I, fool that I was, put down to travel fatigue. He’d been down to Birkenhead for a few days, you see, and had only come back up again that afternoon. I couldn’t quite see the purpose of this trip at the time, but towards the end of the evening he was good enough to explain.
‘Just as we were about to leave the restaurant, he drew my attention to a large manila envelope he’d brought along with him. It was to retrieve this, apparently, that he’d made his journey home. “Mr Onyx, I’ve a favour to ask of you,” he said. “I want you to look after this, just for a few hours. And promise me, that if I don’t meet you at your office at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, you’ll deliver it into Miss Winshaw’s hands as soon as possible.” This seemed an extraordinary request, and I told him so: but he absolutely refused to divulge the undertaking which was to occupy him at this peculiar hour of the night. “At least tell me what’s in here,” I pleaded, reasonably enough, I think you’ll agree. And after a few moments’ hesitation, he answered: “My life.” Rather dramatic, wouldn’t you say? I tried to lighten the atmosphere somewhat by saying that if the contents of this envelope represented his life, then there didn’t seem to be much of it. He laughed bitterly at that. “Of course there isn’t much of it. This is what I’ve been reduced to, thanks to one man’s treachery: a few documents; some souvenirs of the old RAF days; a single photograph, the only trace of myself I’ve managed to leave behind these last twenty years. I want her to have them, anyway. She isn’t mad, Mr Onyx, I know that for a fact. They’ve got no right to lock her up in that place. But there’s been a terrible injustice done, and whatever happens to me, she’s the person to keep the memory of it alive.”
‘Well, I took the envelope and we said good-night. I knew now that something dea
dly was afoot, but it was no part of my job to stand in the way of – fate, destiny, call it what you will. I could see that the events to which I had involuntarily become witness had to be played out to their conclusion. And so we went our separate ways: I to bed, and Farringdon, as I afterwards discovered, first of all to steal a motor car from some luckless citizen–not a difficult task, for a man of his experience – and then to drive out to Winshaw Towers, there to gain entry through the library window which Tabitha, I surmise, would have opened for him, and to make his calamitous attempt on Lawrence’s life.’
I brooded on this. ‘From the way you’ve described him, I wouldn’t have thought he’d have much trouble polishing off a weedy little man like Lawrence.’
‘Maybe so. But Lawrence had made many enemies over the years, and had probably found it worth his while to learn how to defend himself against them. Besides, I suspect he was ready for trouble that night: he knew something was up. Farringdon’s best bet would have been to surprise him, if possible, but I’d wager he couldn’t resist having a few words with him first. Those wasted moments might have been critical.’
‘And then I suppose when he failed to show up in your office the next morning, you drove straight out to the house?’
‘You anticipate me superbly, Michael. Your prognostic powers defy belief. I was there shortly after ten. You probably know that although it can be seen from a great distance across the moors, Winshaw Towers is approached by a heavily wooded drive, and it was easy enough to conceal my car at some distance from the house itself and to arrive on foot without attracting any notice. In those days – and who knows, he may be there still – the premises were patrolled by an exceptionally lugubrious and unprepossessing butler by the name of Pyles, and I knew that, even with things being in such an obvious state of confusion, my chances of getting past him were not good at all. So I waited my moment, until I saw him disappear off in the direction of the outhouses on some errand or other, and then had no difficulty bluffing my way past some halfwit of an under-footman. I claimed to be a colleague of Dr Quince’s, I seem to remember.’