Three Brothers

by Peter Ackroyd

  “Daft cow,” her husband said.

  “Then, yesterday,” Lady Flaxman was saying, “it turned up in a completely different place. I was mystified.”

  “You’re going senile.”

  “No, Martin, I am not. Don’t you agree, Guinevere?”

  “When I used to live here,” her daughter replied, “there were some strange things. Do you remember, Mother, when that little gold pen just went from my desk?”

  “Of course. The little gold pen.”

  “And then two days later it was back on my desk.”

  “Bullshit.” Her father poured himself another drink.

  “Where do these things go?” Lady Flaxman asked no one in particular. “That’s all I want to know.”

  “I used to get very tense in this house,” Guinevere was saying, “I would become so anxious that I used to lie down. I would imagine the most terrible things. If I had a headache, I thought that I was suffering from a brain tumour. If my eyes ached, I was sure that I was going blind. Whenever I come back here, I feel a sense of panic.” She turned to her father. “But things can change for the better. I have a client called Sparkler—”

  The face of Martin Flaxman altered colour, and he seemed to choke on his drink. Guinevere watched as her father stumbled and fell against a large sofa covered with red brocade. “Oh Jesus,” he whispered, “more trouble.” He looked fiercely at his daughter. “Where did you hear that name?” Then he slumped onto the floor. “Why him?” White spittle came from the sides of his mouth.

  Lady Flaxman delicately and deliberately put her hand on his pulse. “Don’t celebrate too soon, Mr. Hanway,” she said. “He is still alive.”

  XVIII

  A comedy sky

  DANIEL HANWAY believed the publication party to be going well. It was being held in the board room of Connaught & Douglas, which had changed not at all from the occasion when, three years before, he had attended the “bash” as Wilkin had called it. Even the books, scattered on the small tables, seemed to be the same. Wilkin was here again, as were most of the people Daniel had met at lunch above the Ancient Druids in Soho. Damian Etheridge had lost his job as literary editor of the Chronicle, and now earned a more precarious living as a freelance reviewer and literary interviewer. He looked more haggard than before, and had assumed a peevish or dissatisfied expression.

  Clive Rentoul was as supercilious as ever. The words seemed to glide from him as if from a great height. “Well done, Daniel. You have surprised me.” Daniel concentrated upon his nose; it was narrow, and slightly curved, with large nostrils. It implied superiority; it had a look of perpetual contempt for anything put before it. “We must have lunch,” Rentoul said. “When you’re next in London.”

  They were joined by Virginia Crossley. “Now,” she said to Daniel, “I expect you to do some serious work.” She had the same blustering and bullying manner. “You’ve got away with it this time. But now we want a masterpiece.”

  “Would you excuse me?” Daniel went over to Hanky Panky, who was in excited conversation with Graham Maland concerning the literary feud between two middle-aged novelists. Cressida von Stern had given a bad review to Edgar Cowper, in which she had made a veiled accusation of plagiarism. Cowper had retaliated, three months later, with an attack upon a short book written by von Stern on the modern novel. He had accused her of being “ignorant” and “wilful” in her choice of the significant novels of the last decades. None of his had been chosen.

  “What he should have done,” Maland was saying, “is obvious. He should not have responded to her. Silence is the best policy.”

  “But I like a good cat-fight,” Hanky Panky replied.

  “Cressida is a bitch, not a cat.”

  “Oh that is so naughty.” Hanky Panky was delighted. “An interesting crowd, don’t you think?”

  “Well, all people are interesting if you don’t really want to know them.”

  “That is the cleverest remark I have heard all day.”

  Daniel was about to join the conversation, when someone roughly shook his shoulder. It was Wilkin, who seemed to be swaying slightly. “He never wrote to me,” he said, pointing his wineglass towards Hanky Panky.

  “I did mention it to him.”

  “But he never wrote.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? Who do you think I am? It is not as if I don’t have a reputation.”

  “You are being orgulous.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Overbearing.”

  “You’re a clever little shit, aren’t you?”

  Denis Davis came over at that moment. “It’s a comedy sky, isn’t it?” In the frame of the window pink clouds, inflamed by the setting sun, hovered in a frosty blue sky. “Have you seen the painted sky in the Palladian theatre at Vicenza? Just like that.”

  Hanky Panky turned round to Daniel. “I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘F.’ ”

  “Filing cabinet?”

  “No.”

  “Fireplace?”

  “No.”

  “Fender?”

  “Oh no. That Fraud over there.” He was looking at Denis Davis.

  “Who is he?” Graham Maland suddenly pointed to a portrait from the late nineteenth century just beside the window.

  “He? He is our founder. A very distinguished old Fart.” It was a picture of a middle-aged man with side-whiskers and a formidable moustache, bearing the stern and almost marmoreal expression of one who is constantly aware of his duties. “Do you see what is written beneath him? Charles Connaught, Philanthropist and Educationalist. I prefer to read that as Pederast and Hypocrite.”

  “You are too cynical.”

  “Oh I don’t think you can be too cynical.”

  Virginia Crossley came up to them. “Do either of you happen to know where the phrase ‘feasting with panthers’ comes from? We were just discussing it.”

  “Oscar Wilde,” said Hanky Panky.

  “Jacobean tragedy,” said Graham Maland.

  At that moment Daniel saw Sparkler entering the room. He became very still as he saw him crossing the room and walking towards Hanky Panky. Why had he come? He must have been invited by Hanky Panky—Daniel had never mentioned the party to him—but for what purpose?

  He realised now that Sparkler had seen him, and was raising a glass of wine in his direction. Something had to be done. Daniel stared at him, and walked out of the room. As he hoped, Sparkler followed him.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I work here.”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Rackham made sure that I got a job. In the post room. I didn’t want to go back to the old game. He asked me to come to a party. I didn’t know you would be here, did I?” He put his hand on Daniel’s arm. “Aren’t you pleased to see me?” Daniel instinctively recoiled from the touch. “Oh? Is that the way it is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Sparkler understood the situation at once. “You’re embarrassed to be seen with me.”

  “No.” He sounded hesitant. “Not at all.”

  “Are they your friends in there?”

  “Some of them.”

  “From Cambridge?”

  “And from London.”

  “And what am I? The abominable snowball?” Daniel shook his head and said nothing. “So why don’t you come back inside with me?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “What is?”

  “They don’t realise.”

  “That you’re queer?”

  “That’s one way of putting it. I don’t want it to be generally known.”

  “So you put your friends before me.”

  “It’s my career—”

  “I was right. You are embarrassed of me.”

  “I’m confused. That’s all.”

  “You know, once I would have done anything for you. I would have died for you.”

  “A bit extreme, isn’t it?”

  Sparkler put down h
is drink, and walked down the staircase. Daniel felt unwell for a moment, and instinctively put his hand up to his chest. Then he went back to the party, where Virginia Crossley had launched into a violent diatribe against the Times Literary Supplement. A young man came up to him. “You are the author, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I am the author.”

  “I’m Tristram Ferry. I’m the senior researcher for Book Ends.” This was a literary panel show broadcast on BBC 2 every Tuesday evening. “I think you could rock the boat.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You would be good. You have a natural authority.”

  Daniel laughed. “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re an academic, but you’re also a reviewer. Best of both worlds. I’ve read your work.” Daniel presumed that he was referring to his new book. “In the Post. How would you feel about coming on to the show?”

  Daniel was delighted. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I’m not convinced that I could do it.”

  “I know what you mean. There is an art to television—”

  “But I am happy to give it a try. Certainly.”

  “Do you have an agent?”

  “No.” Daniel cleared his throat. “But I’ll give you my telephone number at college. You can contact me there at any time.” Sensing that he may have appeared over-eager, he now frowned slightly. “But what would I be asked to talk about?”

  “We’ll know that closer to the time.”

  Wilkin lurched toward them. “I don’t give a fuck about any of this,” he said. “The fucking publishing scene is corrupt. I despise the lot of you.”

  “I’m not a publisher, Paul.”

  “That’s beside the point. You’re all in bed together.” Wilkin leered at Daniel. “In bed with that old queer.” He was clearly very drunk. “When a good writer like me is ignored. It’s not right, is it?” He stepped closer to Daniel. “There was a time when I was ten times better known than you will ever be. I won the Poetry Council award for my first book. Do you know that?” Then he seemed to lose interest in what he was saying, and walked up to Graham Maland; much to Maland’s discomfort he simply stared at him without any attempt at conversation. Having patted Maland heavily on the back, Wilkin then approached Hanky Panky. “Well, old dear,” he said, “I don’t suppose you remember me. I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something?” Hanky Panky had been talking to Clive Rentoul.

  “I am sure,” Hanky Panky said, “that you will have something interesting to add.”

  “Add this,” Wilkin said and flung the glass of wine he was holding over Hanky Panky. Wilkin then staggered back and fell heavily against the nineteenth-century portrait of the founder of Connaught & Douglas. His right shoulder broke the canvas, and left a hole where the mouth of Charles Connaught had once been.

  Daniel was looking down from the double-bowed window when he saw Sparkler; he glimpsed him walking along New Bond Street. His shoulders were hunched, and his head bowed, as he made his way slowly through the crowd.

  XIX

  Beginning to rain

  “I’M JUST popping out,” Julie Armitage said to Sam Hanway. “To clear my head. I’m a great believer in fresh air.” They were sitting in Sally’s house; they had moved Ruppta’s business to Borough a few days before. “May I have permission, Sally?”

  “Of course.”

  “You are too kind. Ta very much.” In fact she wanted to go outside for a quick snack.

  When she had left the house, Sally turned to her son. “We’ve got five minutes. She took a bag of doughnuts with her. One minute a doughnut. Where did she leave her handbag?”

  It was a capacious handbag, wrought out of leather dyed purple and with an interior lining of green silk. It smelled of mints and of nail varnish, and it contained many half-empty packets of nuts and sweets as well as bus tickets, paper handkerchiefs and assorted items of cosmetics. There was also a small diary, the days neatly divided five to a page. “What was the day of his death?” Sam asked his mother.

  “Four months ago. April the fourth.”

  Sam turned to that day. “She’s written down an ‘F’ and underlined it. She did say that she was going to see her sister in Folkestone.” Then he noticed, at the top of the same page, what seemed to be some blurred letters that had been unsuccessfully erased. He held the page up to the light, and could distinguish numbers rather than letters. There were seven of them. Sam read them out.

  “A telephone number,” Sally said.

  “I’m going to try it.” He picked up the telephone, and dialled the number.

  There was a woman’s voice in reply. “Sir Martin Flaxman’s office.”

  “Sorry, wrong number.” He told his mother what had been said and then carefully put the diary into the handbag, in the position where he had found it; he replaced the bag beneath Julie’s desk.

  Julie returned a minute or so later. “How was the air?” Sally asked her.

  “What? Oh yes. Very fresh.” There was suddenly a loud chatter of birds in the garden that distracted Sam’s attention, but neither of the women seemed to hear it; they were staring at each other.

  The three of them worked on till five, when it was time for Julie to leave. “You’ve been quiet this afternoon, Sam,” she said.

  “Have I?” He tried to smile at her but the smile froze on his face; he simply gazed at her with a perplexed expression.

  “You look,” she said, “like a frowning soup-plate.”

  When she had left, Sam and his mother sat together in silence for a while. “Let’s go outside,” she said. “It’s a lovely evening.”

  There had been a brief shower earlier that day, and the air was heavy with moisture and perfume all the more intense for lingering in the dust and shadows of the city; the generally overheated atmosphere now seemed languorous and restful.

  “So now we know,” Sam was saying, “that Julie has been in touch with Flaxman.”

  “Or Flaxman may have contacted her.”

  “What did he want? What did she want?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Money of course.”

  “And Flaxman?”

  Sam was silent for a moment. “Information. Either Flaxman offered her money for something, or she approached him. I never told you about the letter, did I?”

  “What letter?”

  “I was asked to deliver it to Flaxman.”

  “Who asked you? Asher?”

  “Pincher Solomon.”

  “I told you never to get involved with him.”

  “That’s why I didn’t mention it to you. The letter really upset Flaxman.”

  “Do you know why?”

  Sam shook his head. “Not really. There was something about Tuesday evenings. Wait a minute. There was a little book. At least I think it was a book.” He rubbed his forehead violently. “I think,” he said, “that we should go back to Highgate.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But we’re missing something.”

  The house was exactly as he had seen it on the day he discovered the body, except that a “For Sale” board had been planted neatly in the garden. It now belonged to Sally and to Andrew, but it still retained the personality of Asher Ruppta. Sam wandered into the clean and modern kitchen, where a fly was hurling itself against a window above the sink; with some difficulty he opened the door into the garden and allowed the fly to escape. When he went back into the hall, where he had seen the body lying on the first landing of the stairs, Sally had gone. He called out to her, but there was no reply. He walked into the living room that looked over the gravel drive in front of the house, but then suddenly turned around when he sensed that someone had entered the room behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. There was no one, of course: he had imagined it. Yet he knew now that Ruppta had been murdered by Flaxman.

  He left the room and began to climb the staircase, when he heard his mother scream. He ran up the stairs and into a bedroom on the first floor; she was standing at the side of the r
oom, close to the wall. “I almost trod on it,” she said. It was a dead crow, its black plumage still glistening in the sunlight. “How did it get in here?”

  At that moment the bedroom door closed with a thud, startling them both.

  “Open the door for me,” he said. Then very carefully he picked up the dead bird and, carrying it in both hands, took it down the stairs and out through the open door into the garden. He put the bird in the earth, and then covered it with fresh soil. He looked down at the spot for a minute or so.

  “I think I know what happened,” he said to his mother as soon as he re-entered the kitchen. “Julie gave Flaxman a key to the house. She kept three sets in the office. Flaxman was looking for something. I think it might have been the little book I once saw. He was looking for something that had to do with his Tuesday evenings.”

  When Julie arrived on the following morning, she seemed distracted and ill at ease. She made herself a cup of tea, and munched disconsolately on a digestive biscuit. “Are you feeling all right?” Sam asked her.

  “Bad dreams. Funny how they affect your mood. They’re only ghosts, after all.”

  “What are?”

  “The people in dreams. They’re mostly dead, aren’t they?” She spoke with her mouth full of biscuit. “Do you know that song? ‘You meet the nicest people in your dreams. It’s funny but it’s true, that’s where I met you.’ I can’t remember the rest.”

  “How’s your sister?” Sally had come into the room.

  “What sister?”

  “You know. The one in Folkestone.”

  “Oh. She’s still very poorly.”

  “I am sorry to hear that.”

  Julie looked at her suspiciously. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.” Sally looked at Sam, as if asking his permission. “Except I don’t believe you have a sister. I think you made her up.”

  “And why would I do a stupid thing like that?”

  “To give yourself an alibi. On the day that you met Martin Flaxman. The day Asher was murdered.”

  Both women looked pale and strained, their eyes larger than usual, their lips white.