Head of a Traveller

by Nicholas Blake

  ‘Ah, that’d be telling,’ said Mr Keeley comfortably. ‘Sit down, do. Here, let me clear a chair for you.’ The editor seemed to have all the time at his disposal. He loaded a pipe in a leisurely manner; rang for cups of tea: only when these were brought did he sit back in the editorial chair, and with the guarded, slightly uneasy look of the journalist who finds himself for once at the giving end of an interview, ask Nigel what he could do for him.

  Nigel had decided to put his cards on the table. He spoke of his association with Superintendent Blount, and his acquaintance with Robert Seaton. He said he wanted to fill in the picture of the Seaton’s past, of which he only knew the bare outlines at present. He hinted that, on the barter principle, he would do his best in return for Mr Keeley’s reminiscences, to see that the Redcote Gazette got an exclusive story of the Ferry Lacey affair as soon as it could be released.

  ‘What’s this Ferry Lacey murder to do with Bob Seaton?’

  ‘Ah, that’d be telling.’

  ‘I don’t know that the Gazette is so interested in exclusive stories, Mr Strangeways. We’re not Fleet Street. And we have a high opinion of Mr Seaton in these parts.’

  ‘You can’t have a higher opinion of him than I have. Police investigations are a hellish experience for any one who gets involved, and I want to take the brunt of this one off him as much as possible.’

  ‘Aye, he’s had enough trouble in his life, has Bob. I’m not keen to make any more for him.’

  ‘Believe me, Mr Keeley,’ said Nigel earnestly, ‘I’d not be here if I thought there was any danger of that. It’s simply that this investigation has become concentrated on Plash Meadow, let’s hope only temporarily. I admire Seaton tremendously. I’d like to help him—and his family, of course. But I can’t until I know more of the background.’

  The editor gave Nigel a long, considering look. Then he lumbered to the door, half opened it, called out, ‘Mr Arthurs, I’m not to be disturbed for half an hour,’ and sat down again.

  ‘You knew Seaton as a boy?’ Nigel asked.

  ‘Aye, we grew up together here—him and me and Oswald. Went to school together and got up to all sorts of mischief.’

  ‘Old Mr Seaton, their father, was a bit of a terror, so I gather.’

  ‘He lived according to his lights, Mr Strangeways. He put Redcote on the map, give him that. Started with a little shop and worked up to this factory. Regular, old-fashioned success story. Oh, he was a genius in his way. But Redcote’s not been the same since. It’s a betwixt-and-between sort of place now—half industrial, half rural—can’t make up its mind what it is. Not that James Seaton cared what happened to Redcote. He was out to make his pile; and he made it; and then he tried to become a country gentleman.’

  ‘But as a person? A father?’

  Mr Keeley very deliberately moved a pot of paste to one side of his desk, took up a pencil and began doodling. The Oxfordshire accent became more noticeable in his voice.

  ‘I don’t mind telling you, my blood boils even now when I think of the way he treated those two. Beatings, browbeatings, sermons, emotional outbursts. He was Chapel, you know. A real hell-fire Puritan. And damned tricky in business, like those canting Chapel hypocrites are apt to be. That’s off the record—must remember my local advertisers! I suppose, in a way, it helped to make Bob a poet. He had to escape, and writing was his escape. But it’s a wonder he wasn’t warped for life, like his brother.’

  ‘Poets have pretty hard centres.’

  ‘Aye, he was always tough in his way, was Bob—what’s the word?—resilient. Old James Seaton had to respect him for it. He found it was dangerous—well, useless—to try and drive Bob too far?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, when Bob was just down from Oxford—he’d got a scholarship and his father had been all over him for a bit—he fell in love with Daisy Summers. She worked in the factory. A sweet, pretty girl, good as gold—aye, she was the belle of Redcote. But it wouldn’t do for James Seaton. His son marrying a factory-hand, a workman’s daughter, oh dear me no! There was a fearful row. Bob married her, of course: he stood up to his father all right. But that, on top of his refusing to go into the firm—well, it finished him for James. Proper old-fashioned send-off he got. “Never you darken my doors again.” And he didn’t. He went to France in 1917. When he was demobbed, he and Daisy had a terrible bad time. I used to see quite a lot of them: I was in Fleet Street then. Bob scraped along on odd jobs—a bit of journalism here, a bit of lecturing there—anything so long as he could have plenty of spare time to write his poetry. It’s a bitter business, that hand-to-mouth kind of life. And with a wife and child . . . Still, they were happy, oh wonderfully happy, taking it all in all. Till the second child came. Daisy got very ill. Bob pocketed his pride and wrote to his father asking for money. First time he’d done it. But he was older now, and you don’t fuss about your pride so much when you’re older. Well, James Seaton had forgotten nothing and forgiven nothing. He wrote back to say Bob could come into the business, if he’d give up his writing. Would you believe it? Bob was pretty well known as a poet by then, too. But old James thought of poetry and the theatre, and all that sort of thing, as the Devil’s work. I believe Bob might have done it, given it up for Daisy’s sake, only she wouldn’t hear of such a thing. She was a staunch lass. No, perhaps he wouldn’t have, after all. Anyway, she died. He hadn’t the money to send her abroad, which the doctors said would save her. So she died. I don’t like to think what his feelings were. It was his poetry, when you get down to the bottom of it—his poetry which had killed her. And only a year or two afterwards James himself died. Too late. Poor old Bob, he’s had a hard life. You hear people talk about the elevating effects of poverty—the Artist-in-the-Garret stuff. By God, Bob could tell them! I reckon he’d do anything rather than go through all that again.’

  There was a silence. Then Nigel asked, ‘Weren’t you surprised when he married again?’

  ‘No. He was lonely: he wanted a mother for Vanessa: he’d found marriage a happy state of affairs. But I was surprised he married Janet Lacey. Or that she married him. She’s a high-and-mighty one, for all that her family had come down in the world.’

  ‘Perhaps she took pity on him?’

  ‘He on her, just as likely. He’s always been apt to do unexpected, quixotic things. He’s a queer mixture. That dwarf he has—d’you know, Bob told me he’d found him being stoned by a gang of louts in a village near where he and Janet were honeymooning, so he up and brought him home to Ferry Lacey, just like that. Don’t know how he got round his missus.’

  ‘She seems very fond of the dwarf now.’

  ‘No children of her own. But old Bob gets what he wants, in his quiet way. God knows how he does it.’

  ‘Perhaps because he doesn’t want much.’

  ‘Concentrates you mean? Very likely. He’d need it all, to put anything over on his present missus. Talk about a will of iron! Well, she runs Ferry Lacey and Hinton Lacey, and she’d run Redcote too if she got half a chance. She’s fifty years behind the times; but she believes so strongly in herself as Lady of the Manor and the last of the Laceys, and in whatever she’s doing, that she carries everything before her. I wouldn’t care to get in her way. My predecessor here printed an editorial criticising something high-handed she’d done in local affairs—this was before she was married—and dammit if she didn’t turn up at the office next day with a hunting-crop! Only one thing she wanted and never got.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Oswald Seaton. Not that she wanted him. It was Plash Meadow, the Laceys’ old property—that’s what she was after. Yes, she’d even marry a fellow like him to get back the Laceys’ inheritance: shows the strength of a ruling passion, doesn’t it? But she’d met her match for once.’

  ‘What was Oswald like?’

  Mr Keeley threw up his eyes. ‘If I tell you that her worst enemy wouldn’t have wished Oswald on to Janet Lacey, it’ll give you some idea. De mortuis and all
that, but he was a thorough-paced rotter. Efficient enough in the business. But his father’s upbringing ruined him as a human being. He was sly, specious; wriggle out of anything. And cruel! I don’t know that it was all his father’s fault, even. I remember—Oswald was only about seven then—going into their house and hearing Oswald’s voice: he was saying, “I’m going to put your feet into the fire first, and you’ll scream. Then I’ll put your legs in, and you’ll scream louder and louder, but I shan’t have mercy. All your blood will boil and bubble. It’s Hell’s fire, and I’m going to burn you up in it bit by bit.” I went into the room. He was just putting his sister’s doll through the bars of the grate. I’ve believed in original sin ever since that day, Mr Strangeways.’

  ‘So his death was no loss?’

  The editor, his tongue pushed against the side of his mouth, executed a particularly elaborate doodle on the blotting-pad before replying.

  ‘That suicide. Yes. He was not universally lamented. I couldn’t have been happier myself. I’ve a couple of daughters, and between you and me and this pencil, nobody’s daughters were safe with Oswald Seaton about. Well, I could have been happier still. If they’d found the body.’

  ‘But surely—’

  ‘Oh, I know there was no doubt about it, really. But, as I told you, Oswald could wriggle out of anything.’

  ‘Wriggle out of his own death, even?’

  ‘He’d have a damned good shot at it.’

  ‘Why did he commit suicide?’

  ‘Business worries. That’s what they said. He left a letter, you know. All tidied up.’

  ‘But you don’t quite believe it?’

  ‘When a rat’s cornered,’ said Mr Keeley with a sober emphasis, ‘it fights. I won’t say the Seaton business wasn’t having a difficult time just then: there was severe foreign competition for one thing. But—oh well’—he rumpled his white hair—‘I’ve rambled on long enough. Is there anything else?’

  ‘I suppose your paper carried a report of Oswald Seaton’s death. I’d like to see the file copies, if it’s not troubling you too much.’

  ‘Yes, we did. Janet Lacey threw her weight about a lot—tried to have it hushed up. I’m afraid she doesn’t like the Redcote Gazette one little bit. So I don’t see as much of Bob Seaton as I’d wish. But then, he’s a famous man now. Aye, it’s a long time since we split our infinitives side by side in the Grammar School. And I’m still splitting ’em.’

  Nigel thanked the editor warmly for his help. After quarter of an hour’s reading in the Gazette library, where he studied the suicide of Oswald Seaton in the paper’s back numbers and in a sheaf of clippings from other journals, Nigel left the building. He and Paul Willingham had lunch together at the Golden Lion. As they were getting into Paul’s car, Nigel, who had been very distrait during lunch, said:

  ‘Could you stop at a toy shop on the way out?’

  ‘Any toy shop?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Paul Willingham gave him a sharp look; then, checking whatever facetious comment Nigel’s request had brought to the tip of his tongue, let in the clutch.

  Chapter 5

  Head in Clay

  NIGEL STRANGEWAYS WAS reclining in a deck-chair on the lawn. The little pile of Robert Seaton’s notebooks lay on a table at his side: but whether it was the house standing there beside him, like a beautiful woman, demanding all his attention, or whether it was the hazy, stilly closeness in the air, through which the weir hummed and roared more insistently, he could not turn his mind to the poet’s manuscripts. Everything this afternoon seemed as if charged with fatality. What was the weir distantly, insistently trying to say? A petal detached itself from one of the tarnished roses on the house front and went dithering down to earth; and when it landed, Nigel positively relaxed, as though he had expected the earth to be shaken by its fall. A dove suddenly cooing in a tree-top high overhead startled him like a siren.

  Nigel mentally shook himself, took up one of the notebooks. But it lay open on his lap, unregarded. The beautiful house would allow no rival. So you’re jealous, he found himself idiotically murmuring. Are you trying to vamp me, or to get rid of me? I can deal with flesh-and-blood charmers. But a brick-and-mortar one, older than the subsoil on which she sits, older in experience, ripe and bursting with the juice of human hopes, human graces and tragedies—ah, take your glassy eyes off me!

  Deliberately and rudely, Nigel got up, turned the back of his chair to the house. He had seen it last June, lapped in its rose-sleep. He had seen it last week, looking flushed, a little frowsy, but more vital, more of this world, as if it had just woken up. And this afternoon, Plash Meadow was changed again for him. It had come nearer. It was appealing now, he fancifully put it, not through its beauty any more, but out of its frailty: the fine features, the disdainful look had melted into an expression of pretty helplessness. Or was it something else? Was it apprehension? Panic? Guilt?

  Nigel spoke aloud, half turning his head:

  ‘Oh, do shut up! You’re driving me crackers.’

  ‘But I haven’t said a word yet.’

  Nigel started convulsively and looked round. It was only Lionel Seaton, who had approached noiselessly over the lawn.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Nigel, ‘I was talking to your house.’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt the conversation,’ remarked the young man politely. ‘I sympathise with you, though.’

  ‘Eh? What? Oh, it drives you crackers too, does it?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ Lionel Seaton sat down cross-legged on the grass in front of him, his eyes fixed on Nigel’s face. ‘It’s about time I got away.’

  ‘A job, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. Of course I was only demobbed last year. Janet’d have liked me to go up to Oxford. But—’ the clipped Army voice broke off.

  ‘But you want to be out on your own?’ Nigel suggested.

  ‘Yep. If I knew what to do. Unfortunately I went straight into the Army from school. I’m not equipped for anything, except killing people. Might migrate. Australia seems keen on getting British to go out.’

  ‘That’s a long way away.’

  ‘It couldn’t be too far away from Europe for my liking.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Nigel tentatively, after a pause, ‘your father does cast quite a big shadow.’

  Lionel Seaton gave him a sharp, rather hostile look. ‘There’s nothing wrong with—’

  ‘I meant it must be difficult to be the son of a genius.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Yes. In that sense they both cast rather a big shadow.’

  ‘Your stepmother, too?’

  ‘Yep. They don’t need me here. Either of them.’

  ‘Well, then, there’s nothing to keep you.’

  ‘You think not? There’s the police, for one thing.’

  ‘They won’t be here for ever. What else?’

  Lionel Seaton was silent for a few moments, gazing meditatively at Nigel, who felt that the name of Mara Torrance was not far from his lips.

  ‘Vanessa,’ said Lionel at last. ‘I’d like to see her through.’

  ‘See her through what?’

  ‘Well, Janet does her best,’ the young man returned, rather obliquely. ‘But they don’t get on exactly like a house on fire, as you’ve noticed. And my father—well, he’s got his work; and then, it was Vanessa’s birth which really caused our mother’s death; so he naturally—But I’d like to see her safely married. She’s the sort of girl who might fall for some fearful type, you know—some winsome, neurotic egotist. She’s madly vulnerable.’

  ‘She’ll have to make her own mistakes.’

  ‘Well, at any rate I can see her through this present dust-up,’ said Lionel slowly, his keen face averted.

  ‘It shouldn’t affect her, surely?’

  ‘Oh, come now,’ Lionel replied impatiently. ‘Not affect her, with the police pretty well drawing a cordon round Plash Meadow? We’ve had ’em in and out for a week. They seem to have got it into their heads, God knows why, that this chap was b
umped off hereabouts.’

  He paused, as inviting comment or denial. When none was forthcoming, he looked straight at Nigel.

  ‘I hope we can trust you.’

  ‘Trust me?’

  ‘You know very well what I mean,’ the young man formidably replied. ‘No fifth-column work.’

  ‘I’m neutral. At present. I admire your father very much.’

  ‘He’s taken to you, too. So there’s all the more reason why—’

  ‘All of you seem in a conspiracy to protect him,’ interrupted Nigel. ‘But, from what I’ve seen of your father, he can look after himself quite adequately.’

  ‘Oh, do you think so?’ Lionel Seaton had the air of one giving impartial thought to an unexpected point of view. ‘Well, you may be right. But it’s not at all the tradition in our family.’

  ‘Ah, that’s his negative capability. He’s a poet. He’s so receptive to the person or thing he’s involved with at the moment that each person sees in your father an image of himself.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Well, take Paul Willingham. His first words to me about your father were, “He’s a good sort. Quiet little chap. Got a fine herd of Guernseys.” Mr Keeley called him tough, resilient. His family thinks of him as a rare, delicate vessel which has got to be protected.’

  ‘You mean he plays up to everyone’s different ideas of him?’

  ‘Unconsciously, yes. But it’s more than that. He becomes the person he’s with, almost.’

  The young man considered this. ‘And what does he become with you?’

  ‘Why, an amateur criminologist, of course. He got terrifically excited the other day when I was giving a description of the kind of man this chap who was murdered must be. Turned into a regular sleuth-on-the-trail for a moment. He was absolutely impersonal—said it might have been a description of his brother Oswald.’

  ‘He did, did he?’ said Lionel, with what Nigel could have sworn was an admiring intonation. ‘Hallo, there’s Finny with the tea things. My father’s a hero to him anyway. Does that mean, according to your theory, that Finny’s really a hero himself.’