Going Gently

by David Nobbs

  ‘Now come on, Mrs Eldridge. You’re prevaricating. Please tell me everything. I shall find out in the end, thoroughness is my middle name. So it’ll save your time as well as mine.’

  She sighed.

  ‘All right. My youngest son, Maurice, didn’t take to Graham.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Graham had no living relatives. I think that led Maurice to fear . . .’

  ‘Yes, madam?’

  ‘ . . . that my husband was not . . . as he seemed.’

  Kate hated saying such things about Graham. She could hardly get the words out.

  ‘Did your other children take to Mr Eldridge?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘Now, now, Mrs Eldridge. We’re prevaricating again.’

  Kate shuddered in her bed at the memory of Inspector Crouch calling her ‘we’, anticipating the curse of the hospital by thirty-eight years.

  She told him, reluctantly, of the inexplicable incident at the book launch, when Graham had said how much he was looking forward to reading Timothy’s new book, and Timothy had said, ‘Like fuck you are!’ and stormed off.

  ‘What did you make of that, Mrs Eldridge?’

  ‘I didn’t know what to make of it.’ She felt that she sounded like a character in one of Timothy’s novels. Perhaps you had to, when you were being questioned about a murder. Perhaps his books weren’t so bad after all! She felt the whole thing to be unreal. She found it unreal that she should be referred to as Mrs Eldridge.

  ‘You didn’t know what to make of it?’ prompted Inspector Crouch. ‘You’re an intelligent woman. What did you make of it?’

  ‘I assumed that Timothy also had his suspicions about Graham’s integrity.’

  ‘You didn’t ask him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I might not have liked his answer.’

  After he’d dealt with the feelings of Kate’s children towards Graham, Inspector Crouch said, ‘I need to go briefly into the parentage of your children. Shall I come back later or do you wish to get all this over with?’

  ‘Will it ever be over with?’

  ‘Who’s to say?’

  ‘Well, let’s get as much done as I can stand now.’

  She told him, very briefly, about her marriages. He remained utterly impassive throughout. When she’d finished, he said, ‘H’m. Quite a story.’

  ‘Except that it isn’t a story.’

  ‘Mrs Eldridge, can you see any significance in the list of double-glazing salesmen?’

  Kate hesitated.

  ‘I can’t see how it can have any relevance,’ she said.

  ‘Let me be the judge of that.’

  She told him that one of the names on the list was that of the man who had done their windows, and she told him about the double-glazing con that she had helped Graham to investigate. When he pressed her for details, she told him that he’d be able to find Graham’s article and his notes. ‘He filed everything. He was a very meticulous person.’

  ‘Good,’ said Inspector Crouch with a sigh, looking hopeful and exhausted at the same time. ‘Can you suggest any significance in the railway station sign for Leningrad?’

  Again Kate hesitated.

  ‘Please, madam.’ Inspector Crouch’s voice was gentle but insistent.

  ‘Well, you’ll find out anyway. My son Maurice visits Russia regularly. He’s a reporter for the BBC News.’

  ‘Thank you. Did any of your children call you “Ma”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Which of them?’

  ‘Maurice.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Of course they had to have an inquest. Kate had to go through the ordeal of describing how she’d found him. The verdict, ‘murder by person or persons unknown’, was a formality.

  The funeral. Suffice it to say that Inspector Crouch was there, sniffing around, and that all three of Kate’s sons looked extremely tense. Maurice was accompanied by his charming fiancée Clare, Timothy by his pretty new girlfriend Emily. Nigel had nobody to comfort him.

  On the day after the funeral, Timothy called to see Kate. He looked extremely unhappy. She offered him a glass of Sancerre and took one herself. ‘Before you say anything,’ she said, ‘yes, I am drinking too much, but I will stop. Timothy, I liked Emily.’

  ‘Yes, so did I,’ he said glumly.

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘She left me this morning.’

  ‘Oh, Timothy! But yesterday you seemed so . . . well, not happy, obviously . . . devoted.’

  ‘She was going to leave me on the day Graham was killed. I said, “Emily, please see me through the funeral.” I just couldn’t bear to let her go. Every hour she stayed was a bonus. I thought . . . I thought when she saw my suffering she might change her mind. She didn’t. She ran headlong from my suffering.’

  ‘Oh, Timothy! That never works, my darling.’

  She went over to sit with him on the chaise longue. She hugged him. His whole body stiffened, as if he was in one of his books.

  ‘What’s wrong, Timothy?’

  ‘I don’t think I can cope with sympathy just now. What is it about me and women?’ He was such a boy still, even at thirty-four. He stood up, disentangling himself from his mother’s embrace tactfully but firmly. He towered above her and cleared his throat, indicating a massive gear change. He was trying to look masterful. He was failing. ‘Oh God, I hate this,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to tell you this, but I’ve told the police, so I think I have to tell you.’

  Kate remembered thinking how badly the conversation matched the elegant Georgian drawing-room, whose double glazing muffled the roar of the Knightsbridge traffic.

  ‘It’s about Maurice,’ Timothy managed to say at last. ‘Oh God, I sound like a sneak ratting on his brother, but I don’t mean it that way. At least nobody can say I’ve got an axe to grind over Maurice because I’m envious. Incidentally, I’ve never had the feeling that he envies me. I suppose he doesn’t really need to, he’s quite successful in his own way, but . . . oh Lord, I’m not getting on with it, am I?’

  ‘No. Please do, darling. I can’t bear this.’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry.’ He began to pace the room. His hands worked as if searching for a hat and cane to twirl nervously. ‘Mother, I think Maurice knows something about Graham. Well, in fact I know he knows something.’

  ‘Oh Lord. Do I want to know this something?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t tell you anyway, because I don’t know what Maurice knows. But I know that before he knew what I know he knows now, he said that if what he thought was what he thought, he’d . . .’ He hesitated.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He’d kill Graham.’

  ‘Oh, Timothy, did he really? It sounds like something out of a bad detective novel.’

  ‘Like one of mine, you mean?’

  ‘Oh, Timothy, don’t be so touchy.’

  The next day it was Maurice’s turn to sit in the elegant drawing-room, twisting a glass of Morgon nervously in his powerful hands, sunburnt and freckled and already beginning to go bald, looking brave and determined, as if talking not to his mother but to a group of rebel tribesmen who might kill him if he failed to eat their offering of sixteen sheeps’ eyes in yak-cheese sauce with sufficient evidence of enjoyment.

  He had kissed her, hugged her, let her cry on his shoulder, told her how much he loved her, sent the love of his charming fiancée Clare, and gradually approached the meat of the matter, once she was softened up. Even in her tearful state she could recognise, wryly, the technique that led corrupt politicians the world over to say more to Maurice than they had intended.

  Now he was ready. She braced herself.

  ‘Ma . . .’ He hesitated. Did he know of the message, “Sorry, Ma”?

  ‘Get on with it, darling, please. I can’t bear much more of this.’

  ‘Sorry, Ma. Ma, the awful thing is . . . I found o
ut something about Graham. You know I never . . .’

  ‘Trusted him, yes.’

  ‘It wasn’t a question of trust, exactly. I just never believed in him. I was puzzled by the fact that he refused to go on television, and I thought of a possible reason. He didn’t want too many people to see his face, in case someone recognised him from another life.’ He paused. ‘Oh, Ma!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve done Timothy’s prose style an injustice. You’ve gone very silent. I thought people only did that in his books. Anyway, I took Graham’s photo with me everywhere I went, and showed it to people and asked them if they recognised him. I didn’t say he was my mother’s fifth husband. And I didn’t feel there was any harm in it, because if he had nothing to hide no harm would be done by it. Anyway, eventually, someone did recognise him. His name was Stephen Harris and he was from Otago in New Zealand.’

  Kate remained very silent.

  ‘There’s more, I’m afraid. He . . . er . . . he had a wife. No children. He was in some kind of vague shady financial racket, this chap thought. You know, getting old ladies to invest in non-existent companies, that kind of thing. This chap didn’t know what exactly. Anyway, he left Otago under a cloud.’

  ‘Well, I heard it’s a pretty wet climate.’

  She wished that she hadn’t said this. She could see that her feeble attempt at light-heartedness had moved him deeply, and made it even more difficult for him to continue.

  ‘He . . . er . . . he seems to have just abandoned his wife. He . . . er . . .’

  He was a bigamist. Somehow, it didn’t come as a complete surprise, but it was still a savage blow. ‘It’s strange, you know. I knew that you didn’t trust Graham. Enid once said he was too good to be true, and he was. And yet, I found that I did trust him. In a curious way it was myself I didn’t believe in. I never really quite believed I was Mrs. Eldridge. And I suppose legally I wasn’t. It’s funny, isn’t it?’

  She didn’t look as though she thought it at all funny, and neither did Maurice. He came over to his mother and kissed her and they hugged each other and cried together.

  Her numbness was wearing off. A great wave of loss swept over her and almost cracked her heart. She had felt more affection than love for Graham while he lived, but now, when she was being told of his deceit, she felt a huge hopeless surge of love for him. Oh Graham, come back, she implored, so that I can put these points to you in person.

  She poured Maurice another glass of wine, and he said, ‘Thank you. I’m afraid there’s more.’

  ‘Oh dear. Can I take any more?’

  ‘Well, I think you can. I’ve always thought of you as immensely brave. It’s about Timothy.’

  ‘Oh Lord.’

  ‘Well, I hate doing this. I mean, like it or not, I am a national figure on television, and it’s difficult not to feel protective towards poor Timothy. I suppose really he’s perfectly all right. He thinks he’s a great novelist and . . . oh, sorry, Ma, you don’t think he is, do you?’

  ‘Sadly, no.’

  ‘Good. Well, I mean not good exactly, but . . . well, you know. Anyway, it seems awful to be saying this but it is a police investigation and I think things always come out if you try to conceal them. Mind you, they do in Timothy’s books so they probably don’t in real life. Anyway, it seems that a friend of Timothy’s, a so-called friend, a journalist, was also a friend, a so-called friend, of Graham, and Graham sent him a letter in which he said, “On the plane I often read my stepson’s books. I find it difficult to sleep on planes, and it’s the perfect solution,” and he told somebody, who told somebody else, and it got back to Timothy.’

  Well, at least that explained Timothy’s mysterious eruption at the book launch.

  ‘And Timothy said to me,’ continued Maurice, ‘I mean, I don’t expect it’s got any significance, people say things like that and they don’t mean them, but I thought I ought to tell the police in case they find out because it was in the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street and several hundred journalists might have heard him say it, and a few of them might even have been sober.’

  ‘You haven’t told me what he said. As if I didn’t know.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry. He said, “The bastard keeps telling me how wonderful he thinks my books are. If he says it once more . . .”’

  Kate joined in and said it with Maurice.

  ‘ “I’ll kill him.”’

  The following day Nigel called. Kate wondered now if they’d been keeping a rota, making sure that one of them called each day, as they did at the hospital. It hadn’t even occurred to her at the time. She’d just accepted it as natural.

  He sank into the Chesterfield, crossed his legs, sniffed his glass of Beaune, rolled it round his glass, sniffed it again, and held it to the light to examine its colour, irritating her so much that she said, ‘How are your haemorrhoids, by the way?’

  ‘Mother!’

  ‘I’m sorry. I just wondered if you were going on looking at your glass for ever.’

  ‘It’s what’s known as a displacement activity, Mother. I’m very nervous.’ He took a sip. ‘Pretty ghastly, to be honest.’

  ‘Oh dear. Mr Trench said it was rather special.’

  ‘Not the wine. My haemorrhoids.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Well, that’s life. No, the wine’s terrific.’ He took another sip and put the glass down, very carefully, on a charming early Victorian coffee table. ‘Mother, there’s something I have to tell you.’

  ‘Of course there is.’

  ‘Mother, not very long before his death I met Graham in Copenhagen.’

  ‘I know. At Timothy’s presentation.’

  ‘Yes, but I stayed an extra day because I wanted to talk to Graham, and, with you not there, this was my chance. We had dinner together. We went to Krogs fish restaurant. I had the herring platter, the turbot and the rødgrød med fløde.’

  ‘The red fruit jelly with cream.’

  ‘You know everything, don’t you? Except what I said to Graham.’

  ‘Oh no. I know that too. You said you’d kill him.’

  Nigel went white. His sinews stiffened.

  ‘How do you know that?’ he gasped.

  ‘A lucky guess. Seriously, Nigel, a lucky guess. No, it’s just that people are queuing up to tell me about people who said they’d kill Graham.’

  ‘It’s not surprising, really.’

  ‘Nigel! I loved him. I love him still.’

  ‘Mother!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Nigel, but I do. He was a fraud, yes, I know that now, but I don’t believe he was a fraud with me.’

  Nigel gave her a pitying look.

  ‘Yes, yes, Nigel. Pitying look. Bit old for the menopause, but my mother’s gone funny. Sad.’

  Nigel came over and gave her a quick, awkward kiss, still embarrassed by physical manifestations of affection, then he settled back to business, with relief.

  ‘Well, anyway, Maurice had told me what he’d discovered about Graham.’

  ‘I see. Family conference behind my back.’

  ‘Only because we love you.’

  Kate poured him another glass.

  ‘So, what exactly happened in Krogs?’ she asked.

  ‘I said to him, “Graham, I know that you’re a fraud. I know that you’re a bigamist.”’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He went very silent. I’d always thought people only went very silent in Timothy’s books. But he went very silent. I said, “Graham, I’m warning you. If you ever do anything to hurt my mother, I’ll kill you.” I didn’t, of course.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t do anything to hurt me.’

  ‘Exactly. I would have killed him, you know. I’m capable of killing, for a good reason. Anyway, I thought I’d better tell you because I’ve told the inspector.’

  ‘Why have you told him?’

  ‘In case he found out. Graham and I had a heated exchange. Somebody in the restaurant might have remembered. Nothing good comes of hiding th
ings from the police. I’ve learnt that if I’ve learnt nothing else from Timothy’s books.’

  Kate dreaded Inspector Crouch’s visits more and more as time passed. To be forced to suspect that one of your sons had killed your husband added horror to the nightmare of loss. She hated his every question. She loathed his every revelation.

  ‘Please! Not there!’ she cried, as he began to lower his ample backside towards one of the Hepplewhites, on his next visit. ‘They’re delicate chairs. You’d be more suitable on the settee.’

  ‘I prefer a hard chair, madam, when I’m on duty.’

  ‘The settee!’

  The inspector perched uneasily on the edge of the settee, and accepted a cup of tea.

  ‘The cup that cheers,’ he said fatuously. ‘Ah, well. Now, Mrs . . . er . . . I’m afraid I have some unwelcome news about your husband. There’s no way to break this gently. I’m afraid he was . . . I’m afraid Graham Eldridge wasn’t his real name.’

  ‘It’s all right, inspector. Maurice told me.’

  ‘His real name is . . .’

  ‘Stephen Harris. I know.’

  ‘Michael Thompson.’

  ‘Michael Thompson?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. He was born on a council estate in Runcorn.’

  ‘Runcorn! He told me he went to school at Winchester.’

  ‘Not quite, madam. He . . . er . . . he seems to have been involved in petty crime. He absconded with quite a lot of money, leaving behind quite a lot of debts and . . . and . . . er . . . a wife.’

  ‘I don’t believe I’m going through all this. I was told he left a wife in Otago.’

  ‘So I’m led to believe. Very remiss of him.’

  ‘He was a trigamist!’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure if the word exists. It ought to. Bigamist comes, as you’re no doubt aware, Inspector, from the Greek.’

  ‘Of course I wasn’t aware. I’m not a fictional detective. I’m Mr Plod.’

  ‘Well, it comes from “bi” meaning twice and “gamos” meaning marriage.

  ‘Er . . . no doubt, not having had the advantage of a classical education, Mrs . . . er . . . my verbal gymnastics won’t be accurate, but . . . no, he wasn’t a trigamist. He was a . . . quadgamist?’

  ‘Quadragamist would perhaps be more elegant. Oh no, he wasn’t, was he?’