Cowards Die Many Times

by Peter Hey

  Jane relaxed her grip and gradually lifted herself off the prostrate figure lying beneath her. Tommy’s look of anxiety briefly intensified as he saw the man was now free. It was unjustified. The face that turned up from the grass was one of defeat and despair.

  ‘Just go,’ said Jane.

  ‘You won’t tell anyone? It was for your father, honest. No harm meant. No harm.’

  ‘Just go,’ repeated Jane.

  The tall, skinny man with the short hair and fashionable clothes, now muddied and dishevelled, climbed to his feet. He looked at Jane and Tommy questioningly. Then he ran.

  Threads

  Tommy and Jane were sitting at the kitchen table. Tommy was cradling a mug of tea and still looking in a partial state of shock.

  ‘You’re just going to let him go? Not call the police?’ he said, disbelievingly.

  Jane had her face in her hands. ‘Yep. Well, probably. I need to think it through. It’s a bit much at the moment. My father, I mean.’

  ‘You were physically assaulted! God knows what he might have done to you. Maybe you should tell Dave at least.’

  Jane lifted her head. ‘He’d go apeshit. Not to mention bananas and ballistic. And…’ She turned her gaze towards Tommy. ‘...why do I need Dave when I’ve got you?’

  Tommy looked away. ‘I was useless. I just froze.’

  Jane reached out for his hand. ‘Tommy! You pulled him off me. He’d have put up more of a fight if you hadn’t been standing there. He didn’t know what you were likely to do.’

  ‘Nothing is what I was likely to do.’

  Jane gently squeezed his fingers. ‘Stop it. You’re my hero. You were there when I needed you.’ Her brow suddenly furrowed as she realised she hadn’t asked the glaringly obvious question. ‘Tommy, how come you were there, I mean, here?’

  ‘I was in Derby yesterday. They insisted I went out with them to the pub, sort of to mark the end of the project. It would normally be my idea of hell, but they’re my kind of people, geeks and nerds the lot of them. And I’m trying to make myself be more sociable.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘It wasn’t too bad in the end. Anyway, the project manager said he’d pay for me to stay overnight in a hotel. And so this morning, because I was so close, I thought I’d come to see you. I did send you a text.’

  Jane picked up her phone and saw there was an unread message on the status bar. ‘Sorry, Tommy, I must have missed it. I was either asleep or there was all this roadwork noise earlier. I couldn’t hear myself think.’

  Tommy continued his explanation, albeit falteringly. ‘I came because, well, there was a bit of a, I don’t know, atmosphere between us last time. I just thought if I popped by, we could talk about what I found on Thomas Ramsbottom and, with any luck, we’d sort of be back to normal. Mates, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart!’ The morning’s drama finally hit Jane and tears began to well. ‘You’re the best mate a girl could have. I’d be lost without…’

  Jane didn’t finish her sentence; instead she reached across the table and hugged Tommy around the shoulders. Inevitably, his body locked with embarrassment.

  Jane sank back in her chair and found herself uncertain what to say next. Tommy was quickly uncomfortable with the silence and decided to take his normal refuge in information and facts.

  ‘So did you read Reverend Richards’ memoir I sent you that link to?’ he asked.

  ‘I was about to when I got interrupted by our friend. I got bogged down in the introduction.’

  ‘It gets better, well, a bit.’ Tommy pulled out his own laptop from his bag and set it between them. His fingers began dancing across the keyboard as he spoke. ‘The writing style is on the ornate side, but you just really just need to read that one chapter. Here you go...’

  The morning’s excitement had at least banished Jane’s hangover and she quickly worked her way through the few short pages of text. There was reference to a letter that was not reproduced and none of the characters were named, but there were enough specifics to suggest this could only be the story of Thomas Ramsbottom. It seemed to confirm what had previously been supposition and rumour. And the picture it painted was dark.

  ‘Wow,’ she exclaimed, sitting back in her chair. ‘We’ve got the bastard. Or else I’m Rutger whatshisname.’

  Tommy smiled his agreement. ‘And I’ve found some more.’

  Jane stared quizzically at Tommy and he kept talking.

  ‘That copy of the memoirs is held in a library at Oxford. It’s part of an archive of Baptist history and heritage. According to their catalogue, they’ve actually got a collection of documents and letters left by the very same Reverend Harry Richards and his widow.’

  Jane interrupted excitedly. ‘So it’s possible they’ve got the original letter sent by Thomas? We could read his own explanation of events?’

  ‘Possible,’ agreed Tommy. ‘It’s worth asking the question. And I did find something else while on the train this morning.’

  ‘Tommy, you are amazing! What?’

  Tommy had taken over the laptop again and was scrolling down the screen. ‘Here it is. I’ve finally pinned down Thomas’s death. He came home to England. For a second time, for good. Or bad. It turns out he met an unpleasant end.’

  The archive

  Jane had been to Cambridge, as a tourist not a student, but had never visited its academic and historic sibling. Her first impression of Oxford was that it was the less attractive of the two, mainly because a large, modern city had sprawled out from the ancient university at its core. From a distance, the various colleges still advertised their presence through the poet’s dreaming spires that reached skywards like the raised arms of gifted children amongst a class of the ordinary and less privileged. Duff was an Oxford man, though it was something he seldom mentioned, mainly through modesty but also because he had not survived to his final year. He would offer ‘the three Rs: rugby, rowing and roistering rather than reading, revision and restraint’ as his standard excuse, though in bawdier circles ‘roistering’ was usually replaced by ‘rogering’. One of Jane’s senior officers in the Met had also studied PPE at Oxford. The superintendent had a one-way ticket to the top and was not a woman to have neglected her studies. Unfortunately, one of the Ps didn’t stand for personality and she failed to qualify as a human being, no matter how bright she might have been.

  Jane navigated the ring road and left the Mazda in the multistorey car park of a vast new shopping mall. She made her way past shiny shopfronts that could have been any town, anywhere and emerged into the sunlight following the directions on her phone. Soon the buildings became like a compendium of English architectural styles: Victorian, Tudor, Mediaeval, Gothic, Gothic Revival, Classical, Neoclassical, Modern and Postmodern, nearly 40 individual colleges typically sharing a common quadrangle-based layout, but detailed according to the era and depth of their benefactors’ munificence.

  Jane’s destination turned out to be one of the newer colleges, not yet 100 years old and whose stonework resembled that of a contemporaneous high-street bank. She explained she had an appointment and was directed to the library. There she was greeted by a late middle-aged woman with long frizzy hair, home dyed and pulled back into a fraying pigtail. She wore half-moon glasses and brightly patterned leggings beneath a loose turquoise shirt. Jane decided she approved of the colour choice. She also appreciated people whose appearance seemed to match their occupation.

  They were alone and the librarian introduced herself as ‘Jennifer, or Jen, but not Jenny please’ in a loud, enthusiastic voice that rather contradicted the stereotype. She sought Jane’s ID and proffered forms to be completed and signed.

  While Jane wrote, Jennifer or Jen continued the conversation.

  ‘It’s mostly theology students we get in. I’ve not encountered a genealogist before.’

  Jane replied without looking up. ‘Yes, it was kind of your head librarian to let me come over at such short notice. I think it helped that I’
m working on behalf of an old student of the university. He’s now a leading surgeon.’

  ‘Our boys and girls tend to go on to great things,’ replied the librarian proprietorially. ‘Head clergy, top politicians, captains of industry. There may even be genealogists amongst them.’ There was a thoughtful pause. ‘Though only as a hobby, I suppose.’

  Jane sensed a put-down but ignored it. ‘I think you have some documents set aside for me?’

  Jennifer or Jen nodded. ‘Yes, I went down to the basement this morning. They’re from a relatively recent acquisition, found in the attic of a Somerset farmhouse and donated. Plus, of course, the subject is by no means a leading figure in Baptist history, so we haven’t yet done more than basic cataloguing. Nonetheless, please handle them with care. They may be of value to a serious researcher one day.’

  Jane smiled. ‘I was used to handling evidence when I was a police officer. Kid gloves, I promise.’

  A folder was produced and Jane was shown to a table next to a sunny window overlooking a garden courtyard. The manilla envelope was labelled ‘Correspondence between Rev. H Richards and Messrs Ramsbottom and Lord’. Jane didn’t know who Mr Lord might be but she was hoping Mr Ramsbottom was Thomas, or at the very least, a close relative and player in the story she was trying to unravel.

  The interchange of letters ran to eight individual pages. Jane quickly scanned them and was immediately disappointed. Thomas Ramsbottom had distinctly beautiful handwriting. His pen was not evident in the barely legible scrawls. She laboured through a few paragraphs and then carefully refolded the documents and returned them to their file.

  She stood and walked back to the desk where the librarian was busy at her computer.

  ‘That was quick,’ she said.

  ‘Messrs Ramsbottom and Lord appear to have manufactured church pews in Rochdale. Nothing to do with the Ramsbottom family I’m researching. It’s not an uncommon name in the north of England.’

  The librarian pulled a face that suggested Ramsbottom sounded decidedly common to her ears. Well, I’m sorry you may have had a wasted journey,’ she said. ‘C’est la vie, I suppose. Is there anything else we can do to help in your endeavours?’

  ‘There’s nothing else that pertains to a Thomas Ramsbottom, his wife or children? There’s a chapter in Reverend Richards’ memoirs that seems to describe them though they’re not named as such.’

  The librarian returned to her keyboard and began typing and then scrolling through the screen. Eventually she looked up. ‘Not specifically. We do have the original printer’s proof of the memoirs. There are a few corrections and annotations. Would you like to see that?’

  A few minutes later, Jane was back in her window seat with a loosely bound sheaf of papers in front of her. They were open at the section she had already digested several times in its published form. A somewhat feminine hand had written ‘DELETE THIS CHAPTER’ across the top of the page before striking the instruction out again with a strong horizontal line. The proof had been addressed to Mrs H Richards and Jane could only assume this was indecision on behalf of a widow seeking to preserve her husband’s legacy and memory.

  But what had caused her doubts?

  Facts

  This time Jane didn’t miss the entrance to ‘Laynston’ and turned straight through the gap in the thick hedgerows onto the gravel area below Guy and Polly Ramsbottom’s house. There were two other cars parked there: Guy’s black Maserati, which Jane had previously suggested was a Wartburg, and a large 4x4. That had a brand-new registration plate and was subtly different to the vehicle Polly had been driving on Jane’s last visit. It was a pale silvery grey rather than white but also sleeker somehow. As ever, Jane didn’t recognise it, but a quick check of the badge confirmed it was another Range Rover. It looked like Polly had upgraded to the latest model. Maybe someone had scratched the old one after all.

  Jane climbed the steps and continued round to the terrace at the side of the house. Sat at the Victorian cast-iron table under the pergola of roses were Guy and Polly. Guy was cradling a large cup, presumably of coffee, and Polly was holding a glass of wine. The alcohol didn’t seem to have improved her mood: she looked as sullen as ever. Polly saw Jane first and drew her husband’s attention with a gesture of her head.

  Guy twisted in his chair and smiled broadly. ‘Jane! Thanks for coming over. Lovely to see you. And looking bright and cheerful again!’

  The reference to Jane’s canary-yellow shirt made Polly tut disapprovingly. It wasn’t lost on Jane, but she was prepared this time and let it wash over her.

  ‘Guy, Polly. Nice to see you again too,’ she replied, mentally flagging that she was being 50% truthful at least. ‘How was Spain?’

  ‘Hot. Too bloody hot,’ answered Polly.

  ‘It’s always hot this time of year, liefie. But we just turn up the air con, sit by our pool and we’re fine.’

  Jane wondered why Guy would refer to his wife as ‘leafy’, then realised it must mean something affectionate in Dutch. She briefly considered what spoilt cow might translate as, but maintained the pleasantries.

  ‘Whereabouts in Spain is your villa?’

  ‘It’s in an upmarket golf resort on the Costa Cálida. We look out over the Med and also the Mar Menor – that translates as minor sea. It’s actually a huge coastal lagoon. Nice spot,’ replied Guy with his usual proud nonchalance.

  ‘Sounds idyllic. You’re golfers then?’

  ‘Polly’s much better than me.’

  ‘You’re not exactly built for sport,’ observed Polly, deadpan.

  ‘Thank goodness I’m built for eye surgery, eh liefie?’ Guy gave his wife a saccharine grin and then changed the subject. ‘So, Jane, you’ve solved the little mystery we set you? The origin of the Ramsbottoms’ good fortune. Am I descended from aristocracy or bank robbers?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jane hesitantly, ‘the Ramsbottoms weren’t aristocrats.’

  ‘Hah!’ interjected Polly. ‘I told you the sheep’s arses were peasants. And it turns out they’re thieves too.’

  ‘Not thieves,’ corrected Jane. ‘The money was earned legitimately. In New York in the late 19th century. But the man who earned it… Let’s just say the available facts suggest he wasn’t the nicest, or most honest, or most decent of people.’

  Polly smiled for the first time, but Guy remained impassive.

  ‘If I can’t have blue blood, then maybe a bluebeard in the family is the next best thing?’ He tapped the table twice to emphasise his point. ‘A bit of colour, drama, in one’s ancestral make-up is all very exciting. Go on then, Jane, spill the proverbial beans. Polly and I are all ears, though I expect my wife may get more of a kick out of this than me.’

  Jane pulled a folder out of her orange tote bag and laid it on the table. ‘Your family tree is all documented in here, but you’ll recognise a lot of it from what your cousin Betty had already put online. I’ve been able to take it back a bit further and wider, of course, and she did make one key mistake.’

  Guy raised his hand to signal an interruption. ‘Her side of the family were always a bit airy-fairy. Did you talk to her in the end?’

  ‘I did. Nice lady. A bit… alternative, perhaps, but no fool. We spent some time together.’

  ‘So what was her mistake?’ asked Guy, clearly lacking interest in the wellbeing of his long-lost cousin.

  ‘The man we were talking about, the man you perceptively said was a bluebeard, the villain of our piece, was your great-great-grandfather, Thomas Ramsbottom. Betty thought he died in Lancashire when he was just 37, but that turned out to be someone else. Our man swanned off to America and started a new life. He left his wife – who’d recently witnessed the violent death of one of her children – with a young baby amongst a houseful of other kids. He left the lot of them, changed his name to Ramsden, and married a new wife almost as soon as he got to New York.’

  ‘Maybe you should change your name to Ramsden,’ suggested Polly, before her comment was waived aside by Guy.
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  Jane’s expression was hardening as she pressed on with her description of Thomas’s crimes. ‘That’s bad enough, but it gets much, much worse, I’m afraid. He’s somehow implicated in the death of his first son. There was a boiler explosion in the mill where they both worked. The engineer got the blame, but Thomas was his assistant. Within months, Thomas had run away to America. Your great-grandfather had just been born. His name was a bit confusing at first. He was called George, the same as his dead older brother. Anyway, having – perhaps – killed his son, Thomas then kills his new wife—‘

  ‘Kills? As in murders?’ Guy’s veil of distant indifference had now dropped.

  Jane rocked her head from side to side as she weighed up the evidence once more. ‘I’ve been in contact with a distant cousin of yours in the States. Thomas’s second wife, who was by far the most beautiful of the three, incidentally—‘

  ‘There was another one?’ said Polly somewhat gleefully.

  ‘I’ll get to her soon.’ Jane smiled apologetically at Guy. ‘Thomas’s second wife was washed ashore, drowned in the East River. I’ve got a copy of her death certificate. The authorities didn’t seem to have any suspicions at the time, but your American cousin said there was always a family rumour that Thomas had killed her.’

  ‘Just a rumour?’ probed Guy.

  ‘Well, we then found a memoir written by the Baptist minister of the church that Thomas attended before he ran off. There’s a chapter – it’s all anonymised and is very much a spiritual discussion on the nature of evil, repentance, forgiveness, that kind of thing...’

  Polly scowled to signal her disdain for matters religious. Jane ignored her and kept talking as she pulled some sheets of paper from her folder.

  ‘I’ve printed you off a copy and you’ll see it is open to a degree of interpretation. That said, I’ve got little, if any, doubt it’s talking about Thomas. You see, he visited England when he’d made some money, but his wife – his real wife – threw him out on his ear. She couldn’t read, so he wrote to the minister asking him to intercede on his behalf. The minister dismisses the letter as full of lies. He reads into it a barely disguised confession – he says Thomas effectively admits to killing his second wife. After that he married again, this time to a shrewd businesswoman who made their fortune in a photography business. Thomas moans about her, saying she’s his punishment, and seems to be trying to buy his way back into his English family’s life. The minister obviously counsels against it, but there is some kind of compromise. Thomas funds his youngest son’s education – he’s the first in the line of doctors that leads to you – but is told to go back to America and rot. If his sins don’t catch up with him in this world then they surely will in the next.’