The Book of the Dead

by Robert Richardson

  *

  Duggie Lydden violently punched the buttons on his calculator again to see if entering the figures in a different permutation would somehow miraculously conjure up a less horrendous answer. When the same result inevitably appeared, he swore and looked resignedly at the account books spread across his desk in the office at the back of his shop. The disastrous five numbers were only black on the calculator’s display; his bank manager would regard them as being in the deepest red.

  Among the documents was his latest credit card demand which included the bill for a hotel in York. Adding on the entry for the necklace he had bought as well, he reckoned the weekend had cost him over a hundred pounds for each time he had coupled with the highly cooperative student from the wine bar. Her insatiable enthusiasm and sexual inventiveness appeared to have been a very costly indulgence; her suggestion that she now thought she might be pregnant was all he had needed. The choice between maintenance or the cost of an abortion was academic; he could afford neither. His best hope there was suggesting that someone else was the father. He kept crudely telling other customers in the wine bar that more men had been up her than Helvellyn.

  Lydden picked up his latest statement to check what he already knew; the chances of repaying Carrington by the end of the month were non-existent. At his last tetchily polite meeting with the bank manager, the spurious promise of an anticipated contract for refurbishing a cottage in Grasmere bought by a Kensington yuppie as a second home had postponed certain consequences. Now that his over-priced tender had been rejected, there were no delaying tactics left. He was trapped between a grossly exceeded overdraft arrangement and Carrington’s ultimatum.

  He pushed the papers away peevishly and again wondered about the unspoken but palpable motives behind Carrington’s conversation with him after dinner. Having the power to bankrupt your wife’s lover would be an attractive situation to any husband. But the answer could now be within his reach. When he had spoken to Jennifer on the phone that morning, she had appeared less unwilling than before to go along with the plan; at least she had said she would think about it. Lydden had always been convinced that a woman ready and willing to start playing around only months after her wedding-day was not going to care overmuch about what else she did to her ageing and malleable husband. And if they succeeded there would be no problems—apart from the minor matter of then getting rid of her. The number of women who could be deceived with a constant stream of facile promises had long since ceased to surprise him. As he thought, the telephone on his desk rang.

  ‘Duggie? When are you coming? I told you Ivor is due back from Sweden tomorrow. I was expecting you hours ago.’

  ‘Sorry, got held up by something. I’m on my way.’

  Lydden rang off, put away the books and turned off the lamp before going out through the back door of Lakeland Interiors into the small walled courtyard where he parked his car. He stopped at an off-licence for a bottle of wine then drove out of Kendal towards Windermere and an isolated, exclusive house set in the hills. Three on the go at the same time, he reflected; it was certainly a personal best.

  *

  In her flat above Quintessence, Charlotte Quinn sat in an Edwardian rocking chair, unconsciously stroking the Persian cat on her lap. The room was lit by only a standard lamp as she listened to Sondheim on the record player, a song by an older man deluding himself as he desperately tried to defend his hollow marriage to a much younger wife. One line—Her youth is a sort of present, whatever the price—reminded her of Noel Coward’s observation about the potency of cheap music. Her mind went back over the time when she had visited Carwelton Hall every day, watching Charles Carrington grow old and broken as the disease had remorselessly gnawed Margaret’s body to a pitiful skeleton wrapped in parchment skin. A few days before her death, she had beckoned Charlotte to bend down and catch her weak and straining voice.

  ‘Make him happy for me please, Charlotte,’ she had whispered. ‘I know you love him. Promise.’

  Slow tears ran down Charlotte’s face as she remembered what had happened to the children afterwards and how Charles had turned inward upon himself and she had been unable to reach him. Then, when so much time had passed that she had thought it would never happen, the new wife had appeared. But she had not been an older, mature woman, but an excited girl, over-eager to please Charles’s friends with assurances that she really loved him and only wanted to bring him happiness. And now—the tears changed to a scowl of disgust—she laughed at him behind his back with Duggie Lydden.

  The record had moved on and now a woman sang about sending in the clowns, Sondheim’s brilliant portrayal of confused lovers as painted fools. There was nothing cheap about this music, it was real and cruel and intolerably agonising. Agitatedly, Charlotte Quinn pushed the cat off her lap and crossed the room. There was a harsh scratch as she pulled the needle off, then she went to the window, leaning her forehead against the cool glass, the pane straining with the pressure. Since her spontaneous outpouring to Maltravers over lunch, she had been constantly tormented by his suggestion that she was one of the few people who could tell Charles the truth, however much she dreaded doing it.

  *

  Maltravers poured his own gin and peered into the empty cold bucket in the drinks cupboard.

  ‘I’m just going out to get some ice,’ he murmured, walking towards the kitchen. ‘I may be some time.’

  Lucinda looked puzzled as Malcolm laughed then she grasped it for herself.

  ‘Very good, Gus,’ she called after him. ‘Original or stolen?’

  ‘Not only original, but just used for the first time,’ he said as he reappeared. ‘I’ve been saving it for the right occasion and, remember, you were there.’

  He stretched out on the chesterfield, long legs protruding over one of the arms. ‘I had lunch in Kendal with Charlotte Quinn today and ended up suggesting she spoke to Charles about Duggie and Jennifer. She was just waiting for someone to tell her to do it and I happened to be in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘It’s a good job you were. Charles is a friend of ours and we’ve been deceiving him as well by not saying anything.’ Lucinda put in the last stitch and bit through the cotton, holding up the results to examine it. ‘That’s been worrying me. Do you think she’ll do it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maltravers. ‘Not perhaps for a while, but she’ll tell him all right. You know him better than I do. How will he react?’

  ‘He’s very correct and disciplined,’ Lucinda replied. ‘He won’t break down or start being insanely jealous, he’ll just do whatever’s necessary to sort it out.’

  ‘Will he try to save the marriage?’

  ‘No,’ Lucinda said positively. ‘Jennifer peeled away a lot of layers he’d built up around himself after everything that had happened. He trusted her enough to let her remove his protection and he could never forgive her for hurting him again. We’ve always known if this business about Duggie Lydden ever came out, Jennifer would have no way back.’

  ‘And she must know that as well,’ Malcolm added. ‘Which is something to think about. She starts an affair with the most overworked sex maniac in Cumbria and is bloody careless about disguising the fact. Makes a perverted sort of sense doesn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly does, Ollie,’ Maltravers agreed. ‘She deliberately wrecks the marriage, and admitting adultery doesn’t make people cross you off their invitation lists these days. If it did, the newspaper social columnists would be queuing up for the dole. Then she screws Charles—in a different sort of way—for a great deal, possibly even half the value of the house. Who’s a clever girl then?’

  ‘Are you two serious?’ Lucinda demanded.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Maltravers. ‘Marriage laws are ideal for fortune hunters these days. For better, for worse, in sickness and in health till alimony do us part, when I will be richer and you will certainly be poorer. I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often. Perhaps it does.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she just wait for Charles to d
ie? She could have everything then.’

  ‘Half what Charles is worth today is enough and probably preferable to waiting—what? ten years or more?—for the other half,’ said Maltravers. ‘Jennifer doesn’t strike me as the patient type. She wants it now please—and I don’t think she’s bothered about how she gets it.’

  4

  A pale sun had just risen on Thursday morning as Maltravers worked on Malcolm’s word processor—conveniently compatible with his own—completing the final draft of his last act. He had started early and was the only one in the house who was up when the front doorbell rang. Charles Carrington was standing in the porch holding an envelope.

  ‘I saw you through the window, so I can give this to you personally,’ he said. ‘It arrived back yesterday.’

  ‘The Sherlock Holmes?’ Maltravers looked delighted as Carrington handed him the envelope. ‘You didn’t need to bring it round at this hour of the morning.’

  ‘I thought I’d make a detour on my way to the office,’ Carrington explained. ‘Jennifer’s spending the day shopping in Manchester or she’d have dropped it in.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Maltravers said. ‘I should finish writing this morning, so I’ll keep Conan Doyle as a treat for later on. Don’t worry, it will be perfectly safe.’

  ‘I know it will,’ said Carrington. ‘I’ll be interested in what you think about it. Anyway, I must be off. I want to get to work early because I’m leaving this afternoon to get ready for a meeting. Goodbye.’

  ‘By the way,’ Maltravers added as Carrington turned back towards his car. ‘I had lunch with Charlotte Quinn in Kendal the other day. She’s a very nice lady.’

  ‘Charlotte?’ Carrington looked slightly reflective. ‘Yes she is, isn’t she? She’s been a very good friend to me.’

  He momentarily juggled his car keys in his hand then smiled slightly and walked to his car without another word. Maltravers watched him drive away then stepped back into the cottage and closed the door.

  ‘You let something show there, Charles,’ he murmured to himself. ‘You’re having regrets, aren’t you?’

  Half an hour later, Jennifer Carrington drove out of Carwelton Hall towards the M6, stopping for petrol at the village filling station.

  ‘Where are you off to then, Mrs Carrington?’ the girl on the till asked.

  ‘Manchester. All day.’ She gave the assistant a conspiratorial grin. ‘My husband’s letting me loose with the cheque book in all those shops.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ the girl said enviously. ‘My old man goes hairless if I buy anything for myself.’

  ‘You’ve not got him trained properly.’

  ‘Have a nice time,’ the girl called as Jennifer walked out, then watched her drive off. ‘Good looks and a rich husband. Why not me, God?’

  Charlotte Quinn was standing by her kitchen window finishing her breakfast coffee, looking out over the yards behind the Stricklandgate shops. She saw Duggie Lydden drive in and park his car. He climbed out whistling then glanced up and waved.

  ‘Lovely morning, but a bit nippy!’ he shouted.

  Charlotte Quinn smiled back and nodded automatically, then stared into what was left in her cup as he disappeared into his own shop. She realised that the fleeting, meaningless incident had finally precipitated something. She felt self-disgust at even acknowledging Lydden’s existence, let alone indicating some normality of behaviour towards him. The man she had just smiled at was cynically betraying the man she loved and she had reacted as though nothing was wrong. Conscience suddenly inflamed her self-reproach and bitterness; however difficult it would be, however much it hurt him, Charles had to know.

  *

  Late in the morning, Maltravers judiciously considered five variations of the same sentence he had put on the screen, selecting the best curtain line. In both his novels and plays, he worked on the well-tried principle that if he put enough effort into making sure the beginning and ending were right, his characters could somehow be relied upon to take care of the middle. He made his decision and four alternatives disappeared then he pushed the necessary buttons to save the final completed version, satisfied that more than a dozen rewrites of the last act had finally come right. Writing, as he so often had to explain to non-writers, consisted mainly of pounding out words in the hope that some percentage would actually be usable. If anyone asked him about ‘inspirational writing’, he questioned how their boss would react if they waited for inspiration before doing their job. From the living-room the telephone rang and then Lucinda answered it and spoke for a moment before calling across the hall to him.

  ‘Gus! It’s Tess. She’s in a call box.’

  He went through and picked up the receiver. ‘Hi. How’s it going?’

  ‘Apart from darling Andrew not appearing on cue in the second act the other night, fine. I was on stage on my own for more than half a minute before they dragged the little prat out of the dressing-room. He bought me very expensive roses as an apology and I warned him if he does it to any of us again I’ll stick them somewhere vital and very uncomfortable then sent him off to apologise to the others. Anyway, I’ve checked the trains and can get to a place called Oxenholme about half past four on Sunday afternoon. They say it’s the nearest station.’

  ‘Yes, I know it,’ he told her. ‘I’ll pick you up. Incidentally, I’ve just finished and you were right about what she’d do when she discovers the child was protecting the headmaster.’

  ‘Of course I was. Any woman would have behaved like that. Well done and I look forward to reading it when…’ Her voice disappeared for several seconds beneath a stream of electronic pips. ‘Damn! I’ve got no more change. Love to Malcolm and Lucinda and I’ll see you Sunday. Bye.’

  Maltravers rang off then went into the kitchen. ‘How about a walk? I haven’t breathed fresh air for the past two days.’

  ‘Love to.’ Lucinda put down her pen. ‘It’s only the weekly letter to Simon and I can finish it later. Let’s go up the Treadle.’

  The Treadle was a hill rising more than five hundred feet out of the land about half a mile across the fields from Brook Cottage. A rough, narrow path wound through bracken and tough, twisted gorse trees before climbing to the summit topped with an old triangulation point and the remains of a wall, built for no discernible purpose. As they reached the exposed peak, the force of the gusting wind made them stagger.

  ‘Enough fresh air for you?’ Lucinda shouted above the blast.

  ‘Too much of this could be fatal!’ Maltravers gasped as they dropped down into the shelter of a small hollow. The view circled from distant Yorkshire dales, round to the outskirts of Kendal to the north then on to the coast twenty miles away, where thin sunlight picked up a gleam of water like a horizontal needle at the estuary by Grange-over-Sands. In front of them ran the road from Kendal to the motorway with the railway line from London to Scotland beyond it; as they sat on the grass a train clattered past. The houses of Attwater lay beyond the railway; although Brook Cottage and its neighbours shared the address, they were isolated more than a mile from the village itself.

  ‘Is that Alan Morris’s church?’ Maltravers pointed to a dark grey spire on a low hill south of the village.

  ‘Yes,’ Lucinda replied. ‘You can just see the roof of the vicarage next to it.’

  ‘How long’s he been here?’

  ‘Oh, ages—certainly more than twenty years.’

  ‘As long as that?’ Maltravers sounded surprised. ‘I thought bishops shuffled the pieces round the diocese fairly regularly.’

  ‘Things don’t change as often in places like this,’ Lucinda told him. ‘Alan’s never wanted to move, not even after his wife died.’

  ‘Well if it’s a living that pays for three hundred pound suits, I don’t blame him,’ Maltravers said. ‘My brother-in-law’s a residentiary cathedral canon, but Oxfam chic is the best he usually manages.’

  ‘St Mark’s is worth peanuts,’ Lucinda corrected him, ‘but Mary—that was his wife—was the o
nly daughter of a clothes manufacturer in Kendal and she and Alan had no children. Whatever the church pays him is pocket money.’

  Maltravers looked at the church again. ‘He gave me the impression of being unusually worldly the other evening. What does his congregation think of having a vicar storing up treasures on earth? Decent poverty and social conscience are expected these days.’

  ‘Not in Attwater,’ Lucinda replied. ‘They want a nice comfortable figurehead who tells them they’ll all go to Heaven as long as they put something in the collection for the Bible Society and promises not to inflict the new communion service on them. They’re very conservative.’

  ‘And what do you think?’ Maltravers asked. ‘Is it a case of when in Rome…hardly the appropriate phrase, but you know what I mean.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘A few of us get impatient sometimes, but we don’t make waves. Alan gives the majority of them what they want.’

  ‘Well, it’s a broad church,’ said Maltravers. ‘It accommodates more secular types than Alan Morris.’

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Lucinda pointed at the road below them. ‘There’s Duggie Lydden’s car.’

  Maltravers strained his eyes as he peered down and saw three cars, at that distance no bigger than a child’s toys, on the road far below.

  ‘How can you tell at this range?’ he demanded. ‘Or do you know more about cars than I do as well?’

  ‘Gus, everybody knows more about cars than you do. Anyway, he’s got the only Golf GTi with that metallic finish around here. I’m positive it’s him.’

  They watched as the vehicles went on towards the motorway, Maltravers still unable to distinguish between them.

  ‘Shouldn’t he be at his shop?’ he asked.

  ‘Half-day closing in Kendal.’ Lucinda glanced at her watch. ‘Some shops stay open but a lot of the smaller ones still shut. Come on, it’s turned one o’clock. Let’s go back and have lunch.’