First Fix Your Alibi

by Bill James

  Such thinking chimed with a lesson Ember had taught himself during his university time. He’d decided then that he hated the Romantic poets, as they were called, such as Keats and Shelley, for being stupidly fanciful and escapist. They said the world was so horrible to them, cruel and cramping, they’d like to be something else, such as a nightingale or a skylark, to soar out of it all. They barmilly longed for the impossible – to ditch their human frames and get feathers. And, talking of the barmy, apparently there was even a French Romantic poet whose lover demanded that Time should go more slowly, or maybe stop altogether, because she and the poet were having such a great intimacy session at a lake and didn’t want it to end; maybe she took a long while to come. But, on the other hand, very kindly, she asked Time to move super-fast for all people in a bad way and suffering, so it would be over for them sooner. There’d be two kinds of clock, would there, one whizzing around like a greyhound after the rabbit, the other taking a couple of hours to do a minute, or not budging at all? Crazy! Down at the lake if someone asked what time it was the answer might be ‘half past three yesterday’ in French.

  Ralph preferred other, earlier writers, such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. In fact, he cherished a bond with their sort, and thought they’d approvingly spot a similarity with themselves in him. They also saw the world was lousy, but they didn’t want to fly away, cheeping their rhymed misery in verses, but tried to improve matters here below, tried to put things right, mainly by mocking in their work all the wrongdoing and prescribing change. Now, although Ralph couldn’t do satire of this quality, he thought he might get the same type of brave facing up to things by duly slaughtering Waverton for Manse, with another death by Manse in the pending tray.

  FOUR

  When looking back on the Agincourt evening, Ralph had another point to take into account. As Ember was leaving, Shale had asked in a really cuddlesome tone, ‘Why don’t you look in at my home, Ralph, Wednesday evening, nine fifteen?’

  This had enraged Ralph, especially the terse, non-negotiable exactness of the nine fifteen. Not ‘about nine fifteen’, or ‘nine fifteen’ish’, but stark, obligatory ‘nine fifteen’. Was that the way to speak to the owner of a country estate and a social club, and who wrote constructive letters to the press on environmental topics as Ralph W. Ember? It had come across as an instruction, Ember thought – left him no room to mull whether this was convenient. Convenient? Although coated in slob smarm it sounded like, ‘Fuck convenience, Ralph, fuck mulling, just make sure you get there on the dot.’ Perhaps it could be seen as typical of Manse’s whole attitude in the Waverton affair. Shale seemed to behave as if the entire kill project had been agreed in fundamentals and now it was time to get at the details.

  Well, not ‘now’ in the Agincourt, but next Wednesday at nine fifteen prompt, if you please, and if you don’t. Ralph felt he was being squeezed into Shale’s crowded, distinguished appointments diary as a rare favour, and should bloody-well rejoice at his good luck: nine p.m. Vladimir Putin, nine fifteen Ralphy. Manse had shaped the invitation as a question – ‘Why don’t you look in?’ etcetera. Ralph saw this as tactics, as trickery, to suggest Manse wasn’t issuing an order, a command. He damn well was, though. Ralph could see through that crude ploy.

  Despite fearing his precious and powerful free will was under attack by Shale, Ralph had agreed to make the visit. But he’d be watchful for any further attempts at disguised diktat. His mind had certainly been moving towards acceptance of Shale’s plan for finishing off Waverton, yes, but he would resist any enforced haste, any frogmarching. He had an image to guard. He could not be conned or bullied or taken for granted. Many had discovered this. After so much time in tandem, why hadn’t Manse, for God’s sake? It made Ralph question whether the seemingly decent live-and-let-live understanding between Shale and him had real worth. A show, little more? This meeting at the rectory was presumably to talk over the run-up to the Waverton project. All right, but Manse had better not try imposing methods and means on him.

  The ‘nine fifteen, Wednesday’ wasn’t the only part of this arrogant invitation that infuriated Ralph. ‘Why don’t you look in at my home?’ Shale had said. ‘Home!’ That was a trifle weighty and puffed-up, wasn’t it? Couldn’t he have said something casual like ‘my place’ or ‘my house’? After all, his ‘home’ didn’t amount to much when seen against Ralph’s spread, Low Pastures, surely. Of course, Ember had decided only a short while ago that pride in his property, civic distinction and wealth was ridiculous and based on self-deception. But this terse, bossy bit of behaviour by Shale – ‘Why don’t you look in at my home. Wednesday evening, nine fifteen p.m.’ – pushed Ember back towards that foolish pride in possessions and reputation. This helped increase Ralph’s anger. It made him feel unstable, inconstant, weak. He found he couldn’t stop himself making comparisons, so as to bring Manse down from his pathetically pompous position to where he should be.

  Shale’s home was once the St James’s church rectory. Manse had told Ember that he liked to sit in what he called ‘the den room’ doing his business accounts for raves and street sales and think that in former times the rector might have written sermons and testimonials for parishioners there. Manse felt that this gave his own work a certain sacredness. He said there were times when he felt God was actually present doing a Jehovah-type hover in the den room, having returned to look for the rector, omniscience temporarily on the blink; but, once that was remedied, God had seemed quite ready to accept Shale instead, realizing change could occur anywhere. Almost everyone Ralph knew in the substances trade wanted to break through ultimately, or sooner, into respectability, and even holiness. Manse thought he could start that advance by owning a rectory, with its connection to St James’s church and St James himself, whom Shale had discovered wrote at least one Epistle in the New Testament and – very important as an associate of Manse – was nicknamed ‘The Just’. Ralph would choose a different route to stainless status via (a) obviously, he could not really discount his venerable manor house, Low Pastures; (b) the glorious Monty improvement schedule; (c) his vigilant, articulate, published concern for the environment.

  Ralph reacted very positively to the crackle of the gravel under his tyres as he drew up at nine fifteen on Wednesday evening at the Old Rectory. Ralph felt certain that, as gravel went, this would be extremely high calibre, probably dredged from a very select underwater site near Flat Holm in the Bristol Channel and freighted here by lorry or rail for customers who wouldn’t baulk at the special delivery price, such as Manse. He had to have the best. He was trying to catch up. Ralph wouldn’t congratulate him on the plumpness and attractively variegated colours of the gravel because that would sound patronizing. Shale had to regard that gravel as if it were the only type of gravel he could possibly think of. Other gravels would be the equivalent of plonk in the wine scene, as against a grand vintage. This gravel told of Manse’s social ranking. No, not of his actual social ranking, but the social ranking he wanted. Ralph could sympathize to a degree with this ambition. Ember, too, believed social ranking should be a continuing progress, and he would seek unwaveringly to improve the quality of his various interests to help with this worthwhile mission.

  The rectory was certainly sizeable, but, to Ember’s mind, deeply ordinary: a tall, gaunt job in grey stone. It couldn’t be described as actually historic because almost certainly it only went back to the Victorian era, whereas Low Pastures had existed for many centuries: at different periods a lord lieutenant of the county had lived there and the Spanish consul, and most probably a squire or two. Oliver Leach (Caring Oliver) a tireless villain with a wealthy wife, had it just before Ralph, but only very briefly. ‘Caring’ had died a while ago.

  Manse’s new blue Jaguar stood near the house now. In the rather measly porch were two bicycles, one a modern mountain bike for serious outings; the other a 1930s style Humber with a Sturmey Archer three-gear stout rear hub and an encased chain. Manse liked to do a trundle around the centre of
the city on this now and then. Perhaps it was a family heirloom and he had to keep it in a decent, working state.

  Shale opened the front door himself. His daughter, Matilda, stood a little way behind him in her school blazer, blue, trimmed with black. Whatever social class objectives he might have, it seemed Manse didn’t dress up for them at home. He wore a shagged-out, unshapely beige cardigan with bulbous, mock-leather buttons, old, wide-legged khaki slacks, and brown slippers.

  Standing like this, slightly ahead of Matilda in the porch, and smiling an unconditional welcome, Shale looked fatherly, not at all like a murder impresario. Ralph felt half-sorry he had thought of him just now as a slob. Manse was in some aspects a slob but Ralph saw something noble and occasionally touching in the way he tried not to be. Manse had some self-awareness, and Ralph thought that to be self-aware of a self like his must be tough. And, of course, Manse grieved still and Ember tried to show continuous tenderness towards him, slob or not.

  To view these two, Shale and his daughter, at the door of the biggish property, with the large rectory hall behind them, was bound to emphasize the awful fact that half the family had been annihilated, leaving a huge quantity of space. And, previous to that, the children’s mother had abandoned them and Manse to join some indeterminate lover in, possibly, Rhyl.

  Matilda said, ‘I was pleased when Daddy told me you were coming tonight at nine fifteen, Mr Ember. It will be nice and very kind if you could call more often. I think Daddy gets lonely. Our mother is gone for keeps and then Naomi gets killed like that with Laurent in the earlier Jag. Naomi was not our mother and so we could refer to her as Naomi.’

  ‘We’ll go into my den room, shall we?’ Manse said in a tone ablaze with geniality and respect. ‘Such a visitor as Ralph fully deserves that, doesn’t he, Matty?’

  ‘I sincerely believe he does,’ she replied. ‘What I would like is that this visit should not be only about work but more to do with friendship, and so Mr Ember would come here more frequently for conversations on very numerous, worldwide topics. And perhaps Daddy could come to your house, for other conversations, Mr Ember, to take his mind off closer things.’

  ‘I’ll go and get some wine and orange squash from the fridge,’ Shale replied. ‘In this property there is no sexism. The domestic duties do not inevitably and always fall on the female, oh no. You two have a pleasant chat while I’m in the kitchen.’

  Ralph wondered whether Manse meant a pleasant chat about snuffing out one of her dad’s colleagues. Matilda and Ralph sat opposite each other in easy chairs. Matilda said, ‘There used to be several friends of Daddy who would call and stay here for a while, weeks, sometimes even months – Carmel, Patricia, Lowri Billsborough – though only one at a time, naturally. And then they stopped, of course, when Naomi came. Now, they seem to have gone – married, perhaps, or that kind of thing. It’s only natural. They couldn’t wait around for ever, could they, and nobody would have known Naomi was going to get it like that by mistake, leaving such a gap? Carmel Arlington had a regular boyfriend, anyway. She knew a tremendous amount about porcelain and Mein Kampf.

  ‘I and my brother, Laurent, now dead, knew Daddy’s work might be dangerous, but we didn’t realize how very dangerous. We have never discussed his work at home, but, of course, there is gossip at school, sometimes rather cruel about the business and that rubbing out of Denz who used to live here.’

  ‘I remember Denzil,’ Ralph said. ‘He had an attic flat, didn’t he?’

  ‘Unfortunately, he failed to maintain a happy relationship with Daddy. There are big stresses in the business world, aren’t there? Perhaps your work is the same, Mr Ember, so your children, if you have any, might get some slagging off at school from other kids, and it’s necessary to smack such very hard in the gob, flat back of the hand, not fist, in case of bashing out teeth which can get stuck in your knuckles, plus trouble with the management and parents. The human bite is one of the most toxic, so to get somebody’s tooth or teeth fixed into your skin even for a short while can bring infection. But if nuisances get a good swipe across the chops or maybe two swipes, from left to right and then back, they shut up, the yellow, ninny prats. Luckily, blood doesn’t show too badly on blue blazers. Are you visiting now because of work, Mr Ember?’

  ‘Your daddy and I have known each other for many years,’ Ralph replied.

  The den room had a massive, old-style partner’s desk with what looked like some of Matilda’s school books on it; a suite in red leather – oddly, Ralph had red leather furniture himself at Low Pastures – a large safe and a bookcase with hard- and paperbacked volumes in it. There were art portraits on the walls, including one of a plumpish woman who seemed as if she was from several centuries back. Ember got the idea from somewhere that she might be Dutch. She wore a red, inverted flower-pot-type hat which Ralph thought might have been common in Holland at the time, flower pots being plentiful because of the daffodil crop. In the hall hung pre-Raphaelite paintings of thinner women in bright clothes. Manse greatly favoured the pre-Raphaelites. Some of his collection would be genuine, most probably. He went to auctions and had plenty of funds.

  But Shale had art from many different periods and Matilda, sitting under a surreal catastrophe of super-bright squares, circles, semi-circles, rectangles and zebras’ striped heads, said, ‘Why, I hope this is a friendliness visit, not just work. Mr Ember, if it’s only work and the work, like Daddy’s, is dangerous, as shown in the gunnery against Naomi and Laurent, an error, then there are certain results. I’ve been trying to decide whether if it’s only work this means there is twice as much of such work because there are two of you, and therefore twice as much risk; or only half as much work and therefore only half as much risk because the work has to be divided into two, half for each of you.’

  Ralph saw this was a clever girl. She could get to the line of thinking behind her daddy’s plans without even knowing about the plans. Yes, Ralph and Manse would split the work on Waverton between action (by Ralph) and alibi (by Manse). But there would also be twice as much because, as well as Waverton (by Ralph) there would eventually be that other one, selected (by Ralph) but seen off (by Shale). Ember reckoned Matilda would end up with top marks at the Harvard Business School a few years from now. He guessed she had formed her ideas independently and without help from her daddy. Ralph felt pretty certain Manse wouldn’t have discussed with his daughter the strangers on a train plan for the elimination of Waverton.

  ‘When the shooting happened I was in the back of the Jag with Laurent, you know, Mr Ember,’ Matilda said.

  ‘Yes,’ Ralph replied.

  ‘In a way he shielded me,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Some people thought an incident of this kind would have an effect on me, referred to by medics within my hearing as deleterious, if you know that word, which I looked up, meaning not too good. This would be because of the broken glass and the noise and the blood and fragments on my clothes and face and in my hair. I got down to the floor quicker than Laurent. Or perhaps he stayed upright deliberately to protect me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ralph replied.

  ‘I had to have a counsellor,’ Matilda said. ‘This was recommended. I didn’t mind.’

  ‘That can often be a help, I believe,’ Ralph said.

  ‘I told her the effect on me was I’d make sure I always had a back seat in any car and, if possible, with someone else alongside me. That is, until I’m driving myself, obviously.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ralph replied.

  FIVE

  Shale came back with the refreshments on a tray. ‘Matty’s going to remain here and complete her homework, Ralph.’ He gave her a glass of squash and said to Ember, ‘We’ll withdraw into the withdrawing room, shall we, Ralph?’ His snub face was merry and snubbier than ever to back up the quip.

  This was what Ralph meant when he thought of Manse as having some self-awareness. He seemed to realize that if he’d said, ‘We’ll go into the drawing room, shall we, Ralp
h?’ it would sound highfalutin and corny, so he hatched a little, cumbersome joke. Just the same, this other part of the rectory had obviously been furnished and decorated as a drawing room – heavy red and gold flock wallpaper, two big settees in brown leather facing each other, four easy chairs, also in brown leather, a chiffonier in mahogany, a round, rosewood table, and light blue rugs on the sanded and varnished floorboards

  Four pistols and shoulder holsters were laid out on the lovely rosewood table. The weapons glinted mischievously under the lights. Guns didn’t show wear, so there was no knowing at this stage whether they had a history, but to Ralph they looked unused. Certainly the holsters seemed new. Shale ignored the armament and pointed Ralph towards one of the settees. He’d kept the tray. On it were two glasses, a corkscrew and a bottle of white wine in an ice bucket. Manse went and opened the bottle and filled the glasses. He passed one to Ralph, then sat down opposite him with the other.

  ‘Did I have it right about the dancer the other night?’ Ralph asked.

  ‘Typically quick of you, Ralph. Yes, that was Waverton. He came close to show he got no cause to expect any hate from me. No, to pretend he got no cause to expect any hate from me. The jigging nearly toe-to-toe with us is him saying he’s having a great, carefree time and there’s nothing at the Agincourt to worry and/or scare him. This he’ve got very fucking wrong twice over: I’m there and so are you.’