The Book of the Dead

by Robert Richardson

  ‘Not only did I notice, I’m afraid it showed,’ he replied. ‘She must be—what?—at least thirty years younger than him.’

  ‘Plus VAT,’ said Lucinda. ‘Come on, dinner’s ready. We’ll tell you about them while we eat.’

  Maltravers suspected that the hot pot contained at least half a cow and the product of a small vegetable patch; the muscular appetites of the north always defeated him and he refused a second helping after he had worked his way through the first with difficulty as he learned more about Charles Carrington. His first wife had died some years earlier, the first of a shattering series of personal tragedies. His son had been killed while climbing in the Cairngorms less than a year after his mother’s death, then his daughter had moved to Manchester, where she had become fatally caught in the city’s drug culture. She had been jailed twice, helplessly sliding from cannabis to cocaine to mainlining heroin. She had died from an overdose and her poisoned body had rotted in a squat in a filthy flat in the Moss Side district for a week before it was discovered.

  Carrington had brought his daughter home after she was first released from prison, but when she ran away again and went back on drugs he had refused to have anything more to do with her. The last time he had seen her was when he had identified her corpse, but he had not regarded the body in the police mortuary as Gillian; it had been a stranger, totally unconnected with the child he had loved. He had used his legal influence to persuade the coroner to accept his evidence in writing so that he would not have to attend an inquest into the death of someone he had ceased to know. He had never even tried to discover what the verdict had been.

  Embittered by her behaviour following the two deaths that had already almost broken him, he had obsessively absorbed himself in his legal work, becoming almost a recluse at Carwelton Hall which his family had owned for more than three centuries. Then a girl called Jennifer Lloyd had arrived in his life.

  ‘It was before we got to know him, of course,’ Lucinda said, offering an alternative between meringues and Bakewell tart for a dessert which Maltravers could not even contemplate. ‘He’s told us that she was very sympathetic and understanding and they were married within six months.’

  ‘All very romantic,’ commented Maltravers. ‘But can crabbed age and youth live together?’

  ‘He’s not that old,’ Lucinda corrected. ‘In fact he’s very well preserved for sixty-odd. But…well there is gossip.’

  ‘There would be,’ Maltravers said sourly. ‘Whether or not there was any substance to it.’

  ‘Ah, but there is substance,’ Lucinda glanced across the table at her husband. ‘Isn’t there?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Malcolm confirmed. ‘Jennifer is having an affair.’

  ‘Really?’ Maltravers raised his eyebrows caustically. ‘How very boring and predictable. Do you know who with?’

  ‘Someone called Duggie Lydden,’ Lucinda said. ‘He runs a not very successful interior design business in Kendal. That is when he can spare time from his girlfriends. He’ll go for anything wearing a skirt.’

  ‘Then he should avoid Scotland,’ Maltravers remarked. ‘How long is this supposed to have been going on?’

  ‘I became certain about three months ago, but it’s probably more than that. According to somebody I know, it started not all that long after the marriage.’ Lucinda stood up. ‘Come on, we’ll have coffee in the other room.’

  As they went through, Maltravers reflected that on very brief acquaintance, Charles Carrington had struck him as a decent man; after what he now knew he had suffered, he deserved better than a young wife who jumped into bed with a lover at the first opportunity.

  ‘Does Carrington know what’s going on?’ He dipped into the dish of Kendal mint cake on the table beside him as Lucinda handed him his cup.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She sat down next to Malcolm on the chesterfield, kicking off her shoes and tucking long legs beneath her.

  ‘Husbands can be terribly blind about these things. One of Duggie’s other affairs has been going on for ages.’

  Maltravers sipped his coffee. ‘You know, you’re quite destroying my faith in the innocence of country living. There’s quite enough of this sort of thing in London without it breaking out here as well.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Malcolm told him. ‘I bet you can quote what Sherlock Holmes had to say about that.’

  ‘“It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside”,’ Maltravers said on cue. ‘From The Copper Beeches…and that reminds me. As he was dropping me off, Charles said something about a Holmes story by Conan Doyle I’ve never read. Do you know what he was talking about?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Malcolm. ‘You’re not going to believe this. It goes back to the period after Conan Doyle temporarily killed Holmes off. You probably know the dates.’

  ‘The story of him and Moriarty allegedly falling into the Reichenbach Falls locked in each other’s arms was published in 1893. I can’t remember the exact gap, but it was about ten years later that Doyle raised him from the dead. But you still haven’t answered the question.’

  ‘Prepare yourself for a shock,’ Malcolm warned him. ‘Conan Doyle was a close friend of Dr Samuel Carrington, who was Charles’s grandfather. They’d met as medical students and he often visited Carwelton Hall. In 1894 he stood godfather to Dr Carrington’s son—who later became Charles’s father—and his christening present was a brand new Holmes story. Ten copies, privately bound. It’s never been published.’

  ‘What?’ Maltravers spluttered as misdirected coffee sent him into a paroxysm of coughing. Malcolm looked amused as he choked, staring at him in disbelief as though he had casually announced he had stumbled across the genuine Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at a church jumble sale and the Japanese had a twenty-three million pound print hanging on the wall.

  ‘You’d better slap him on the back,’ he told his wife.

  Lucinda stood up and hit Maltravers between the shoulder blades with a blow that would have dented metal.

  ‘Enough!’ he gasped. ‘How many ways do you two want to kill me? Shock or a broken spine?’

  He collapsed back in his chair and gulped as he recovered.

  ‘Now let me get this straight,’ he said finally. ‘The man who gave me a lift here tonight actually has an unknown Sherlock Holmes story, written by Conan Doyle himself for God’s sake! That’s like saying the Titanic has just docked safely at New York!’

  ‘Come on, Gus,’ Lucinda objected. ‘It’s only a book—and quite a short one at that.’

  ‘It’s only a book in the same way that Everest is only a large hill,’ he corrected. ‘Publishers would kill to get hold of it. It’s worth…God, you can’t put a price on it. Why has it never been published?’

  ‘Conan Doyle didn’t want it to be,’ Malcolm explained. ‘Charles’s grandfather suggested it after he brought Holmes back, but he insisted it was a private gift just for his godson and the family.’

  ‘Can Carrington prove its authenticity?’

  ‘Every copy signed by Doyle and volume one containing a handwritten personal message to his godson,’ Malcolm told him. ‘Plus the letters the family exchanged with him when they asked him about publication and he insisted it was just for them. Amazing isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s bloody miraculous,’ Maltravers said feelingly. ‘But Doyle died in 1930, so Charles Carrington could only have known him as a child, if he ever met him at all. Why does he still feel bound by something he said nearly a hundred years ago?’

  ‘Charles certainly met Doyle,’ Malcolm confirmed. ‘He’s shown us a photograph of himself as a toddler sitting on his knee. All he can remember is a very old man with a thick moustache. But as far as he’s concerned, Doyle said the book was just for the family and that’s all there is to it. Gentleman’s word and all that sort of thing.’

  Maltravers shook his head wondering
ly as he stared into the fire, unable to make any adequate comment. The house he had left a couple of hours earlier contained the equivalent in crime fiction of another Mozart symphony or an undiscovered Jane Austen novel.

  And its owner was keeping it, not for reasons of possessiveness, but out of respect for the wishes of a man who had been dead more than fifty years; meanwhile, his wife operated on a very different code of behaviour.

  2

  Late autumn had frosted the edges of Cumbria and it would not be long before winter lay snow like nuns’ white caps on the tops. Great blocks of bottle green conifers stood amid deciduous trees, their leaves stained all the shades of sherry and beer. Far below where Maltravers leaned against a wooden gate, Windermere reflected bruised clouds still swollen with unfallen rain, its waters a tongue of rough-cut slate along its long hollow in the hills. Away to the west, the peaks of Harrison Stickle and Pike o’Stickle rose mistily above the Langdale valley. The only sound was the faint, trembling bleat of a sheep floating down from the fellside behind him. A newspaper with offices in the noisy and noisome City Road had actually paid him to come here and conduct one of the most entertaining interviews of his life; he decided he would reward it by breaking the first rule of journalism and put in only genuine expenses for the trip.

  Maltravers had spent a wonderful morning in the company of Dame Ethel Simister, the outrageous grande dame of the English theatre, living out her seventh age in a small hotel, memories unimpaired and wit wicked, who had regaled him with a series of scandalous anecdotes and acid comments. A great many paid no respect to the laws of libel, but there were enough for his piece and several others left over which he would delight in repeating privately. He laughed aloud, recalling one particular story as he watched a kestrel hover on vibrating wings above the field in front of him. There were many worse ways of earning a living. A spurt of wind threw a drift of rain into his face and he went back to his car to return to Brook Cottage. The previous night’s problems had been caused, he had been informed, by worn points, an affliction which he thought only inconvenienced ballet dancers.

  As he drove away, the kestrel dipped its beak and fell soundlessly and there was a little death in the grass.

  *

  They were the last to arrive at Carwelton Hall that evening, Maltravers adding his car to the end of the line of vehicles curved in a semi-circle on the drive in front of the house. Charles Carrington opened the door and led them through to the lounge, where the other guests were already gathered. Maltravers heard Lucinda draw in her breath sharply as they entered the room.

  ‘I think you two know everybody,’ Carrington said. ‘But I must introduce…Gus isn’t it? Fine.’ He turned to the group sitting round the open fire. ‘This is Gus Maltravers, the writer I’ve been telling you about. My partner Stephen Campbell and his wife Sophie, Charlotte Quinn, Alan Morris our local vicar, and Duggie Lydden.’

  Maltravers instantly understood Lucinda’s reaction as Carrington continued. ‘And this is Geoffrey Howard, an old friend of Jennifer’s who has just come back from Nigeria.’

  Campbell was completely bald and the smooth skin of his face seemed as tightly stretched as the dome of his skull; when he raised his eyebrows, which he did frequently, a grid of deep parallel creases appeared across his forehead. He was dressed rather formally for the occasion, gold links of a watch-chain glinting across his waistcoat. With permed hair carrying a stain of henna and too much rouge on her vulpine face, his wife looked like a barmaid who had married well. Howard was tall and powerfully built with a naval-style full set of black beard and moustache and a crescent of old scar tissue pushing down the flesh over his right eye. The uncollared Reverend Morris was clearly comfortably removed from church-mouse poverty, with Savile Row in every expensive stitch of his suit. His face was long and aesthetic, the eyes narrow and penetrating, pencil lines of hair streaked back from the high forehead. In his early fifties, he looked out of his time, like the younger son of a titled nineteenth-century family who had taken the traditional path of entering the church as a suitable profession for a gentleman rather than from any sense of vocation. Charlotte Quinn was handsome and elegant in a burgundy cocktail dress black patterned tights and low-heeled patent leather shoes with a glint of gold metal at the heels. Maltravers nodded at them all as he was introduced, then observed Lydden more closely as he sat down.

  He appeared an unprepossessing lover, below average height now becoming exaggerated by creeping excess weight, partly disguised by a double breasted pearl grey suit. A vivid green tie clashed hideously with a blue shirt and Maltravers remembered Lucinda saying that his business was not very successful; if that was an example of his colour sense, it was not surprising. The face held some remains of what must have been good looks several years earlier, suggesting cunning rather than intelligence, and the pale ginger hair was combed forward in an attempt to cover its retreat. He seemed perfectly at ease as a dinner guest of one of his mistresses’ husbands; Maltravers sourly admired the man’s gall, but felt that Jennifer Carrington could have shown better taste. As Carrington handed him his drink, she walked into the room, wearing an apricot dress matched to the flame of her hair. Lydden’s eyes flashed at her, briefly but hungrily; catching the look, Maltravers glanced quizzically at Lucinda who pursed her lips in silent cynicism.

  ‘Hello,’ said Jennifer Carrington. ‘Everyone’s arrived then? Dinner’s nearly ready. Finish your drinks and then we’ll eat.’

  She sat down between Maltravers and Geoffrey Howard.

  ‘You look much better than you did last night,’ she commented. ‘I hope you’ve not caught a cold or anything?’

  ‘Not so far,’ Maltravers replied. ‘And thank you again for helping me out. I hate to think how much worse it could have become.’

  ‘You don’t know Geoffrey, do you?’ she said. ‘We met years ago and he just turned up out of the blue.’ She moved her chair back slightly so that the two men could talk to each other.

  ‘Out of the blue from Nigeria,’ Maltravers observed.

  ‘Yes, I’m a civil engineer and was working on a dam project,’ Howard replied. ‘I only came back a few weeks ago and decided to look up some old friends. Someone told me who Jennifer had married and I rang up and was invited to dinner.’

  ‘Have you come far tonight?’

  ‘From just outside Manchester, but it only takes an hour or so on the M6,’ Howard said. ‘Charles has been telling us all about you, but I’m afraid I’ve never read anything you’ve written. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ Maltravers told him. ‘You’re in a majority. I don’t do five hundred page sagas with regular outbreaks of bodice ripping, spy fiction or crime, which doesn’t leave much of an audience. What’s it like building dams in Africa?’

  Maltravers gave the appearance of listening to Howard on a subject in which he had neither expertise nor interest, which allowed him the opportunity of examining Lydden again from time to time. Charles Carrington was sitting next to him and, as they talked, Jennifer went to sit on the arm of her husband’s chair, resting her hand on his shoulder. Maltravers was wondering if it was a further act of deception or perhaps an oblique message to Lydden that she was tiring of their affair, when he saw Carrington move her hand away without looking at her. There was no reason for it and Jennifer appeared momentarily startled, glancing at her husband with concern before standing up abruptly and announcing that dinner was ready. Maltravers was still thinking about the incident and what, if anything, it might mean as they crossed the hall to the dining-room, high and gracious with the deep brown mirror surface of a long rosewood table catching the lights from a pair of silver four-stemmed candelabra, glittering on silver cutlery set by sage green leather place mats with a coat of arms embossed in gold leaf in the centre. Maltravers had been put between Morris and Charlotte Quinn. She could look back on forty but the figure in the wine-dark dress with a loop of pearls at the neck was still that of a young woman and tousled, deep auburn hair wa
s only faintly touched with cobweb grey. He noticed a wedding-ring, but it was worn on her right hand.

  ‘We’ve not had a chance to speak,’ he said as he held the ladder-back dining-chair for her. ‘I remember the name but don’t know what you do or anything.’

  ‘I run a gift shop in Stricklandgate in Kendal,’ she replied. ‘I’m almost embarrassed to say I called it Quintessence.’

  ‘Ingenious, but you could have used Quinquereme,’ Maltravers replied, as he took his place next to her. ‘Although the apes and peacocks might have caused the odd crisis in the stockroom.’

  Her laugh was low pitched, in key with her contralto voice. ‘You’re quick and that’s very clever. I might use it for the new shop I’m planning in Keswick. Would you mind?’

  ‘Not in the least, I’d be flattered,’ he replied as she passed him a bowl of grated parmesan. ‘You sell the usual souvenirs I suppose?’

  ‘Dear God, no,’ she replied firmly. ‘There’s enough second-rate tat about for the tourists without me adding to it. I leave Lakeland tea-cosies and Wordsworth’s wretched ‘Daffodils’ printed on tea-cloths made in Taiwan to the others. You must call in sometime and see for yourself.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ he promised. ‘Is it your own business?’

  ‘Yes. After my husband left me, Charles lent me the money to set it up. I’m glad to say I’ve paid him back now.’

  Maltravers began to scatter the cheese on his minestrone.

  ‘I guessed you were divorced from the wedding-ring. I’ve been through that myself, but at least it involved just the two of us. Did you have children?’

  He realised he had made a mistake as he casually turned to her again and a spasm of recollected pain flashed across eyes of uncertain colour, like pools of oil. The deep red petals of the lips, which had parted in laughter only moments before, stiffened as though she was controlling herself.

  ‘Both my children died of a congenital heart disease before they were twelve,’ she said. ‘My husband went off with someone I thought was a friend three months after our daughter’s funeral.’