Lessons for Suspicious Minds

by Charlie Cochrane

  “There are no right angles in nature.” Orlando took the petal, studying it. “Did you know that, Mr. Stewart? Not a single one, even though so much of mathematics is based upon them.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Mr. Stewart shook his head. “How extraordinary.” He pointed at the lodge. “That’s built on them, every book I possess has the things, and yet they’re not natural. How can that have come about?”

  “This is much too clever stuff for me, dear.” Mrs. Stewart grabbed Jonty’s arm and pulled him, emphatically, in the direction of the lodge. “All I hope for is a nice, square meal. And no more talk of geometry.”

  Food had been eaten, wine drunk, the monkey pictures admired, and Jonty’s mama and papa left to sit in the dappled sunlight under a tree and maybe doze a bit.

  Jonty looked as if he could do with forty winks, stretching himself on the carriage rug, which had itself been stretched on the grass. Orlando often thought of him as a great cat sunning itself, and the dappling of the light made him resemble a tabby.

  “This island is a delightful spot.” Orlando couldn’t decide whether he preferred the lodge, the temple, or the pleasant grounds. That was like choosing between algebra, geometry, and calculus.

  “It is that,” Jonty replied. “Do you know, there are two things which depress me about traditional depictions of heaven—no more sea and the equal light. Who would want a world in which there are no shadows to play on the grass or waves to play on the beach? I’ve always hoped that St. Peter, as a fisherman, would sort out the business of the ocean. Or else where will the whales disport themselves?”

  “Will there be whales in heaven?”

  “I sincerely hope so. Why would God create something so magnificent and then not make the most of it through eternity? I’ll be expecting glyptodonts too.”

  Orlando didn’t answer. He’d tried to engage in sensible discussion on this sort of topic before, but he’d recently given up the exercise of pursuing whatever flight of fancy Jonty’s brain had gone on. There was no logic to his mental processes at times, nor was any logic expected in return. All that was required of the audience was to listen—or at least pretend to.

  “I reckon we’ll have at least half an hour to disport ourselves here. Papa’s settled in that chair for a snooze and Mama, when she wakes, will force the gardener to talk to her about roses and peacocks and who knows what.” Jonty stretched again. “Bliss.” He turned over, leaning on his elbow. “Are you going to take advantage of the opportunity for a bit of shut-eye?”

  “No, I’ve more important things to do.” Orlando sat hugging his knees. “I spent too much of my early life ignoring beauty and sticking my nose in books rather than looking around at the trees and the sky and the water. I want to take every opportunity now of drinking in the sublime.”

  “You wonderful old softy. We’ll make a poet of you yet.” Jonty lay back again, arms behind his head, staring up at the beech leaves. “Do you know, these are the best trees to hide from the rain under? Something about the arrangement of the leaves, designed to catch the most sunlight. It helps to keep out the rain as a wonderful side effect.”

  “Where do you pick up all this stuff? Dr. Panesar been bending your ear again?” Maurice Panesar, fellow of St. Bride’s, possibly the most inventive brain in Cambridge. And with about as much practical common sense as a squid.

  “Not this time. Mrs. Sheridan.”

  Now there was someone possessed of acres of common sense to go with her brain. The sister of the master of St. Bride’s, and the only woman Orlando thought could hold a candle to Jonty’s mother.

  “Talking of whom, when she’d finished with leaves, she told me the most amazing thing about squids’ brains. Did you know—”

  Orlando held up his hand. “Stop. Tell me another time—I don’t want my brain filled up with any facts, no matter how fascinating.” Nor did he want to acknowledge that Jonty seemed to be developing almost telepathic qualities. Squids, indeed. “I just want to think of nothing and enjoy the quiet.” He sat back against a convenient tree stump and shut his eyes for no more than a minute.

  “Dr. Coppersmith!”

  “What is it?” Orlando’s eyes shot open. “Can’t I have a bit of peace?”

  “According to my watch you’ve had ten of them, all accompanied by what sounded like a herd of piglets being driven to market. And before you argue, I have a witness to the fact.” Jonty pointed at a young man—one who seemed to be a gardener given the state of his trousers.

  Orlando immediately attempted to spruce himself up, bounding to his feet to join the other two men. “Pleased to meet you.” He thrust out his hand.

  “Tommy Covington, sir.” The gardener shook the hand offered him. “Dr. Stewart here says you’re the Cambridge gents who’ve an interest in mysterious deaths.”

  Jonty grinned. “I think my parents have been talking and the word’s got around.”

  “That would be almost right, sir. My mother waits at the tables here and couldn’t help overhearing part of your conversation. She mentioned it to me.”

  “Why did she think you’d be interested?” Orlando had been having such a pleasant few minutes of reflection—of course he hadn’t been asleep!—and this interruption hadn’t yet proved its worth.

  The gardener laughed. “She knows me too well. Always got my nose in what she calls a shilling shocker.”

  “Young Covington thought we might like to hear about something odd which happened here. Something up our street,” Jonty added, encouragingly.

  “Yes.” Suddenly Orlando felt entirely awake. “Yes, we would.”

  “Dr. Stewart said as much. If you’ll follow me, sirs, I’ll tell you the story in the appropriate place.” The gardener set off.

  “Hold on.” Orlando called him back. “Jonty, what about your parents? Won’t they be wondering where we are?”

  “I’ve been assured they’re being entertained with tea and biscuits so they won’t miss us at all.” Jonty laughed. “This had better be worth missing out on refreshments. Lead us to the scene, Mr. Covington.”

  “With pleasure.”

  And it was certainly a pleasure to go along with him. Covington was a handsome lad, in that ruddy-faced, muscular way that smacked of time spent in the fresh air. Orlando wondered whether his own slender, pale frame naturally suggested time spent behind a desk or in libraries musing over abstruse equations. Maybe he needed a fortnight in the sun to bring out his skin’s olive tones, which seemed to lose heart and disappear under the strain of a Cambridge winter.

  “It was earlier this year. February.” Covington shook his head as he went along. “A man called Charles Livingstone. It was a case of suicide, or so they say.”

  Orlando’s ears pricked up at the so they say. Suicide was of no interest to them, not in terms of their sleuthing, but it held an unpleasant association with his own history, given his father’s taking of his own life. Jonty cast him a quick, worried glance, which he acknowledged with a nod, trying to say, Don’t worry, it doesn’t upset me. Even so, he felt the frisson of discomfort that he knew wouldn’t be easy to shake off.

  “Where was the body found?” There seemed to be plenty of places along the bank where debris of any kind might wash up—the island itself and the edges of the river were in places overgrown with reeds and rushes.

  “It washed up just along a bit.” Covington pointed about ten yards along the bank. “See that little inlet? I saw him there one morning.”

  The gentle waters of the Thames swirled and eddied along the side of the island, bringing with them odds and ends that had been discarded in the river. Some of these were caught in the vegetation or trapped by the island itself—maybe Mr. Stewart’s rubble playing its part. It was easy to imagine something larger, something that had entered the river upstream—of its own volition or otherwise—finding its way here and being unable to escape against a strong current.

  “And the inquest ruled that it was suicide?” Orlando knelt down, touching
the overhang of greenery, as though that might give him some idea of what had gone on. “They had no doubts?”

  “I believe so, sir. I had to give evidence, having found the body. I hadn’t been to an inquest before, but the proceedings seemed fairly straightforward. The doctor was satisfied that Livingstone had drowned, even if he’d been in the water a few days before he washed up here.”

  “But he could have been pushed. Even if there was no sign of violence on the body—his attacker might have known he was a poor swimmer.” Not like a man cutting his own throat in front of his family. There’d been no doubts back then, at the Coppersmith dinner table.

  “Are you all right?” Jonty sounded far off.

  “Yes, thank you.” Orlando was surprised by how shaky his own voice sounded. This was affecting him more than he’d anticipated. “I’m sorry, Mr. Covington. I knew somebody who took his own life. This has brought back some unpleasant memories.” Memories that he’d been confident had been dealt with and put away. “Something persuaded the coroner that this wasn’t murder?”

  “Aye, sir,” the gardener replied cautiously. “There was a note on the body. Saying Livingstone was sorry, but he’d anxiously awaited the dawn of day although he couldn’t see no . . . I beg your pardon, couldn’t see any point in going on.”

  Jonty looked doubtful. “A note? How could that have survived being washed about in the Thames? Even in an inside pocket it would have been soaked, surely?”

  “Ah, that’s where Livingstone—or somebody else—was clever. This was done up all professional-like. Wrapped and sealed in waxed paper and all, like they do at sea.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think I follow.” Orlando looked from Jonty to the gardener and back again; was he missing something terribly obvious?

  “That’s what they do with important ship despatches, sir. They wrap them in waxed canvas so that they’ll be mulched against the elements and survive a good dousing. My uncle served in the navy and told me all about it.”

  “There seems to have been a lot of planning involved for somebody just to throw himself in the river.”

  “Apparently so. It came out at the inquest that he’d been telling his friends he’d come to the end of his tether. He’d announced his intention of jumping from the bridge at Maidenhead.” Covington drew in a deep breath through his nose, as if to emphasise what he had to say next. “But none of his so-called friends seemed to take it seriously. Leastwise they hadn’t stopped him, had they?”

  “If a man’s set on taking his life, all the arguments in the world can’t change his mind.” Orlando spoke with a quiet authority, at which Jonty flinched.

  The gardener seemed like he was choosing his words carefully before he spoke again. “Very true, sir. Livingstone was said to have settled up his immediate affairs, so maybe his mind was made up.”

  “Then why have you been hinting that there’s more to this case than the usual sad story?” Jonty appeared uncomfortable.

  “It’s that note. It struck me as odd. Why take a suicide note with him? Why not leave it where his family or friends could find it?” The gardener shrugged. “The body might have been washed all the way to London or beyond and that note never been found.”

  Jonty caught Orlando’s eye and gave him a look that seemed to say, This Covington lad has spirit.

  Orlando nodded. More spirit—and maybe more of a grasp of logic—than most of the dunderheads of his age. Shame that lads of his class so rarely had the opportunity to put their brains to better use.

  “There’s no logic to it, none at all,” the gardener continued.

  “Is there any logic to suicide?” Jonty kicked at the bank. “Sometimes things become so bad that you lose all sense of what’s right or wrong or sensible.”

  The afternoon seemed suddenly cold, even though the sun beat down as fiercely; the uneasy silence that settled among the three men was chillier still.

  “Excuse me.” Jonty was the first to speak, when the quiet had gone on far too long. “It’s not just Dr. Coppersmith who has been reminded of unpleasant memories by this case. I’ve seen a young man take his own life, and I shall never forget the sight. Still, it’s extremely rude for either of us to have made you put up with that. Back to the matter in hand. Was there any doubt expressed about the note itself?”

  “You mean the handwriting, sir?” Covington wrinkled his brow. “Two of Livingstone’s friends said it was his handwriting and that the details seemed correct.”

  “So if he wrote it, rather than the thing being a clever forgery, that just raises more questions. How on earth could a murderer have got their intended victim to write such a load of piffle and then calmly go for a walk down to the local bridge where he’d then wait around to be pushed off?” Orlando was happier back with logic and reasonable trails of evidence. “If I was a judge, I’d say there’d not been enough evidence given—that admittedly strange business with the note notwithstanding—to persuade me it wasn’t suicide.”

  Covington coloured, evidently fighting a rising tide of anger. “Mother says I should go with what the judge said, but I can’t help but have my suspicions. I found the body, and I feel like it’s up to me to see he has justice done. I know I can’t couch this in logical terms, like one of your students might, but it doesn’t feel right.”

  “You’d be surprised at how little logic my students employ.” Jonty was clearly trying to pour oil on the troubled waters. “We don’t mean to give you short shrift, but we need something to go on. A scent to put our noses to, as it were. Without that, we might as well be looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

  Covington considered for a minute, then nodded. “I shouldn’t have expected you to do anything, sir. I know you’re bound to be busy with bigger fish than this. But thank you for listening. Nobody else, not even my mother, has taken what I have to say seriously.” The gardener wiped his hand again and held it out to be shaken.

  “It’s been a pleasure,” Jonty replied.

  “No fish is too small.” Orlando kept his eyes to the ground in case Jonty looked at him. “We’ll be taking on another commission in the near future, which will mean our time is severely limited, but if anything new turns up in this case, will you inform us? And if we have any ideas might we inform you?”

  Covington couldn’t have worn a wider smile if he’d won a sweepstake. “I’d be honoured if you would. You can drop me a line here, or I could give you my home address. Mother would be impressed if I got a letter from Cambridge.”

  “You do that.” Jonty dug in his inside pocket for pen and notebook. “Could you jot them here, please?” As the gardener wrote, Jonty turned to Orlando, smiled and mouthed, You’ve changed your tune. He got a silent So what? in response.

  “And why did the tune change?” Jonty asked, as they parted company with Covington and made their way back to the punt.

  “Because.” Orlando sighed. “Because I know what it’s like to have a bee in your bonnet about something and nobody take you seriously.”

  “I took you seriously about your grandmother’s family, last year.” Jonty looked ahead to where his parents were waiting.

  “I didn’t mean just that.” Orlando stopped. “I used to dream about going to Oxford and my father always made fun of such an ambition. When Covington said that nobody, not even his mother—whom he clearly loves—had taken him seriously, it struck a chord.”

  “I’m so sorry. Why have you never told me this before? No.” Jonty raised his hand and tipped his head towards his parents. “Wrong time. Tell me later. If it would help.”

  “Maybe. I think what would help most is to do something for that young man. So he isn’t left chewing it over, as I’ve done.”

  “Do you think there’s a connection between Covington and the dead man? A platonic one he’d have mentioned, so a romantic—which he wouldn’t—must at least be considered, surely? Especially as he’s so determined to have the matter investigated.”

  Orlando frowned. “If C
ovington was involved with Livingstone, and was unfortunate enough to find the man’s body, surely he’d have been more upset when he told us about it? His interest doesn’t strike me as being personal. Still . . .”

  “Right.” Jonty rubbed his hands together, then—having got his investigational note-taking fingers warmed up—fished out his notebook. “Let’s start by checking the story with the local newspaper. They’ll have a report of the inquest, so I can verify all of what was said and get hold of some names. Maybe I’ll strike lucky and get a hint of somebody lying to the coroner, even if Covington didn’t.”

  “And what am I to do?” Orlando, happier now he’d shared yet another of his troubles with his lover, almost managed a smile.

  “Haven’t we already got a mystery to get our teeth into? The one we’ll have thrust at us when we get to Fyfield? You can take the lead on that—an independent eye, rather than one connected to the family. Are you going to be greedy and have two mysteries on the go at once?”

  “Why not? If we share both it’ll come to one each in total.”

  “I’ll have to lie down and think about the logic of that. Preferably with you at my side,” Jonty added, smirking.

  “Fat chance of that at Fyfield,” Orlando whispered in return. “Come on. Your parents will be wondering what’s keeping us. I suppose we don’t have to solve Covington’s mystery within a specific time.”

  “I suppose not. You could take it back to Cambridge with you to keep you warm on the cold winter nights.”

  “Any more of your cheek and you’ll be lacking that which you normally have to warm your bed. Here or at home.” Orlando raised his voice as they neared the others. “Mrs. Stewart, are you ready to let me convey you again?”

  “More than ready, dear. Have you been off exploring?”

  “Mama, Orlando is thirty-one, not seven. He no longer makes rope swings or builds sandcastles.”

  “Doesn’t he?” Mr. Stewart chipped in. “More’s the pity, then. I can think of nothing better.”