Hand In Glove Part 20

TWENTY-FOUR.

Jack Brereton had been a wastrel and a parasite all his life. He had tried to deflect criticism for this by remaining perpetually good-humoured, with jokes, anecdotes and racing tips forever on tap.

And he had succeeded, for his sister, Mary Ladram, had always been generous to him, ensuring his later years were not dogged by poverty and its close companion, squalor. He had worked with Ronnie Ladram in his younger days, but, since Maurice had eased him out of the business, had become a full-time idler. He rented a small flat in Earl's Court, which served as an ideal base for his daily wanderings between pubs, clubs, casinos, betting shops and a stubbornly loyal handful of blowzy girlfriends. If not the black sheep of the family, he was certainly its grubby and disreputable old ram. He seldom left London and Charlotte, when she went there, never visited him. Yet he had expressed no surprise at her request to bring Emerson McKitrick to see him. It had merely confirmed his opinion of himself as somebody everybody wanted to meet, however often they tried to deny it.

Even if Jack's flat had been large enough for cat-swinging, which it was not, his standards of housekeeping would have ruled out the entertainment of guests. Accordingly, he escorted Charlotte and Emerson round the corner to one of his homes from home, a tiny mews pub full of polished wood and smoked gla.s.s, where he was greeted with sarcastic familiarity. Installed in a corner with a double 114 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

scotch and a packet of Senior Service cigarettes, he proved as talkative as Charlotte had antic.i.p.ated. The difficulty, indeed, was confining him to what they were interested in, for his reminiscences tended to jumble together different people, places and times with little sense of sequence or relevance.

"Tristram was hero-material, all right, no question about it. Not my type, though. Give me Compton and Edrich any day. We lived in Knightsbridge then. Handy for the park, if not for much else.

Tristram took me up to Speakers' Corner sometimes. He liked listening to the fanatics ranting about the millennium and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not my idea of fun, I can tell you."

"About his death, Uncle Jack . . ."

"Mmm? Oh, I can't remember much. A letter from the British Consul in Tarragona broke the news. His belongings followed later.

Mary was pretty cut up, as you'd expect. Can't say I was. Beatrix came up from Rye to comfort her. Beatrix herself took it on the chin. Well, that's the sort she was. They don't make them like her any more. Just as well, perhaps, eh? I remember her giving what-for to a gypsy once who tried to curse her because she wouldn't buy any lavender. My G.o.d, but that was a set-to. You should have-"

"What about Frank Griffith?" put in Emerson. "Recall anything of his visit? It would have been December of 'thirty-eight."

"No sense quoting dates at me, old son. As far as I'm concerned, they come boxed at Christmas and no other way. There was some grim-faced Taff who turned up on the doorstep one day, it's true. But he wasn't the only one. When he came, whether it was before or after the Spaniard-"

"What Spaniard?"

"Haven't I ever told you about him, Charlie? Not exactly the Spaniard who blighted my life, but he looked like he'd blighted a good few others. About seven foot tall, thin as a shadow, with a hooked nose you could open a soup-tin on. Mary was frightened of him and I don't blame her. He put the wind up me too. He wasn't what you'd call the playful kind. Beatrix did most of the talking, as I-"

"Beatrix was there as well?"

"Of course. This was at Jackdaw Cottage. We spent a few weeks there during the summer holiday. The summer before the war, it must have been, because we were installed there for the duration come 1940."

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"Can we be clear?" said Emerson. "Frank Griffith visited you and your sister in Knightsbridge in December nineteen thirty-eight?"

"If you say so, old son. Winter it certainly was. And Tristram hadn't been a year dead."

"Then a Spaniard came to see you while you were staying in Rye in the summer of nineteen thirty-nine?"

"That's it."

"What did he want?"

"Couldn't tell you. I made myself scarce. He seemed to have known Tristram. Fought with him, perhaps. On the other hand, well, he was nothing like your Welsh friend. In fact, he was so unlike him-so arrogant, so icily courteous-you could easily have taken him for somebody who'd fought against Tristram. It struck me there was a touch of the n.a.z.i to him."

"You mean he was a Fascist?"

"Could have been. No Commie, that's for certain. But I don't really know. He was closeted with Mary and Beatrix for an hour or more. Neither said much about it afterwards. I think they were just glad to see the back of him. So was I. The temperature dropped by about six degrees while he was on the premises."

"What was his name?"

"If he gave it, I wasn't listening. Aren't they all called Gomez?"

"Not Ortiz, by any chance?" asked Charlotte. "Vicente Ortiz?"

She noticed Emerson glance sharply at her and instantly regretted the enquiry. The man Jack had described did not sound anything like Frank Griffith's "cross-patch little anarchist from Barcelona."

"Don't think so. In fact, definitely not."

"What sort of age?" asked Emerson.

"Oh, fortyish I suppose. I'd have said sixty at the time, but you know how any adult looks ancient to your average twelve-year-old boy. I asked Mary later if he was some admirer Beatrix had picked up on her travels. She wasn't amused. Fetched me such a clip round the-"

"What travels?"

"Didn't I mention them? No, I suppose I wouldn't have. Well, Beatrix was never a stay-at-home, was she? Except during the war, when she had no choice. She'd been to the French Riviera-or it could have been the Swiss Alps-or it could have been both-for a good couple of months that spring."

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"The spring of nineteen thirty-nine?"

"Yes. That's right. When she announced she was off, I was hoping she'd insist we all go with her. A jaunt to lay Tristram's ghost, so to speak. I wouldn't have minded missing school. And Mary might have met some handsome Frog to take her out of herself. But no. It was never suggested. Beatrix went alone. And we stayed put, with little Maurice screaming fit to burst his lungs every night and Mary mooning about and staring soulfully at Tristram's photograph. Not a jolly time, I can tell you. In fact, I counted it as pretty mean of Beatrix to swan off on her own and leave us to stew. I suppose it was unfair of me, because she never was mean, was she? No doubt she had her reasons."

But what were they? Charlotte wondered. An aimless sojourn among the flesh-pots was so uncharacteristic of Beatrix as to be completely implausible. With the example of her annual fortnights with Lulu in mind, it was easier to imagine a different destination and a secret purpose. Glancing at Emerson, she could see that the same thought had crossed his mind.

"She always did have, didn't she?" Jack continued. "A law unto herself and a mystery to everybody else, our Beatrix. You know, I've often suspected she objected to publishing Tristram's Spanish poems.

May even have delayed it happening. Mary said she'd never thought of doing anything with them until the early 'fifties and I don't suppose there'd have been much of a market for them during or immediately after the war, though G.o.d knows we could have used any income, however meagre. His other two collections were out of print and we were all living in that flat in Maidstone where you were born, Charlie. Mary, Squadron Leader Ronnie, Maurice, me and you, of course. The Sardine family, Ronnie used to call us. A real card, he was.

But money slipped through his fingers like sand, so I don't know why it took them so long to think of pushing out Spanish Lines. I'd have suggested it myself years before if I'd known the poems existed, but Mary never said a d.i.c.ky bird to me about them. She'd been pretty protective where Tristram's effects were concerned and I'd had my head bitten off too many times to pry, I can tell you. Besides, I had to watch my step after Ronnie taxied on to the scene. He might have persuaded Mary they should chuck me out and make me shift for myself. I couldn't have-"

"Why do you think Beatrix should have objected to publication, Uncle Jack?"

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"Can't begin to imagine. Not sure she did. But, if she didn't, why wait so long?"

"Mother always said that, until she met Dad, she'd have found it too painful to rake over Tristram's memory."

Jack sniffed and toyed with his whisky. "Maybe," he muttered.

"You don't buy that?" said Emerson.

Jack shook his head. "Can't say I do. You see, there were umpteen family conferences about it before it was ever announced, even to me.

Pow-wows behind closed doors between Mary, Ronnie and Beatrix.

My impression-hardly more, I grant you-was that Beatrix had the ultimate say-so, that she could have vetoed the whole idea-and very nearly did."

"I don't understand," said Charlotte. "Surely, as Tristram's widow, Mother had the right to do as she pleased with any poems he sent her."

"Nail on the head," said Jack, winking and pointing an unsteady forefinger at her. "My point exactly. What did it have to do with Beatrix? Why did they need her consent? Not just want her to agree, I mean, but absolutely have to persuade her. I've often wondered."

"Didn't you ever ask?" said Emerson.

"You bet, old son, but little good it did me. They closed ranks.

Reckoned I was making something out of nothing. Maybe I was.

We'll never know now, will we? Not now they've all gone to a better place. One where I don't antic.i.p.ate ever meeting them." Jack grinned at his own joke. When neither Charlotte nor Emerson could summon even the weakest of smiles, he shrugged his shoulders and said: "Please yourself."

"I'm sorry, Uncle Jack," said Charlotte. "We're grateful for all this information. Unfortunately, it's inconclusive. It leaves us-"

"At another dead end," put in Emerson.

"Never promised it wouldn't, did I?" protested Jack. "And talking of dead ends, my scotch reached one a thirsty few minutes ago. Any chance of a refill?"

CHAPTER.

TWENTY-FIVE.

Ladram Aviation began its commercial existence in a Nissen hut on a disused RAF station halfway between Maidstone and Tonbridge. Its corporate successor, Ladram Avionics, was run from a trapezohedron of blue gla.s.s and tempered steel amidst the reservoirs and dual carriageways of south Middles.e.x. Here, shortly before four o'clock on a still and muggy afternoon, Derek Fairfax arrived for his appointment with Maurice Abberley. Less than an hour before, he had abruptly abandoned an auditing commitment in Sevenoaks knowing that David Fithyan, when he heard what he had done, would be enraged. But, to Derek's surprise, Fithyan's likely reaction meant nothing to him. Nothing, at all events, whilst Maurice Abberley's motives in asking to meet him remained so tantalizingly uncertain.

The interior of Ladram Avionics was as plush and sleekly modern as the exterior suggested it would be. Most of the staff looked as if they modelled in their spare time and the furnishings were ergonom-ically futuristic. A lift nearly as large as Derek's office at Fithyan & Co. bore him smoothly and swiftly to the top floor, where Maurice's pneumatic secretary was waiting to greet him.

The chairman and managing director's office, to which she led him, was a suitably vast expanse of deep-piled carpet, with the letters L and A elaborately interwoven in the pattern. One entire wall was of tinted gla.s.s, through which the serpentine tangle of London's road network looked as remote and serene as the ca.n.a.ls of Mars. Maurice's crescent-shaped desk was positioned so that this Olympian perspec-tive met his gaze every time he glanced up, as he now did at Derek's entry.

"Glad you could come, Mr Fairfax," he said, striding across the room with hand outstretched and smile conjured from nowhere.

"And so punctual too. I like that." He was elegantly dressed in a dark suit and monogrammed tie and his voice seemed to fill the empty s.p.a.ces of the room. Everything about him-his tone, his appearance, H A N D I N G L O V E.

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his awareness of his own authority-made Derek feel shabby and inadequate by comparison.

"Would you like some tea?"

"Er . . . Yes. Thank you."

"India or China?"

"Well . . . I . . . I don't mind."

"Lapsang then, I think, Sally," said Maurice to the secretary, who nodded and withdrew so silently Derek did not even hear the door close behind her. "Come and sit down, Mr Fairfax." He motioned towards two leather armchairs.

"Thank you. You . . . er . . . have a splendid view."

"I do, don't I? I find it helps me keep a sense of proportion."

"I suppose we all . . . need that."

"Oh yes. We do. Undoubtedly. In fact, you could say it's why we're meeting this afternoon."

"Really?"

"In the immediate aftermath of a death, particularly a violent one, there's little scope for mature reflection. That's why your visit to Ockham House was so untimely."

"I realize it was now. I'm sorry. I should have known better. I was anxious to do something-anything-to help my brother."

"It's understandable. I hope you agree our reaction was also understandable."

"Of course."

"So, let's not misunderstand each other on this occasion. I have no liking for your brother and no confidence in his innocence. But certain recent developments have undermined my confidence in his guilt to the extent that I think it only proper-only fair-to inform you of them. As you said in your letter, it's in all our interests to establish the truth about Beatrix's death. If your brother was responsible, you will just have to accept the fact. If not, I want to find out who the culprit really is."

"Those are my views too, Mr Abberley. I'm only-"

"Ah," interrupted Maurice. "Here's tea."

Tea was delicately served in wafer-thin Spode, Maurice beaming irrepressibly whilst his secretary ministered to them. When she had left them alone again, he leaned forward, as if a greater degree of in-timacy were suddenly called for.

"Charlotte thinks we should leave well alone, Mr Fairfax. So does 120 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

my wife. In fact, none of my family seems to share my misgivings.

They wouldn't approve of my talking to you. So I think it would be best if we kept this to ourselves, don't you? It would only lead to pointless recriminations otherwise. Can I rely on your discretion?"

"Yes. Absolutely."

"Good. What I'm about to tell you may mean nothing. I must warn you of that. I wouldn't want you to jump to any conclusions. A mystery conceals trifles more often than riches." He smiled, then said: "My aunt was a very private person. I never regarded her as secretive because I never thought she had anything to be secretive about. She belonged to a different generation, one less accustomed than we are to parading our emotions. I'd always supposed that accounted for her reticent nature. Now . . . I'm not so sure."