Feel free to ignore all this if you’ve lost interest in the subject. It’d be understandable if you had. But I reckoned I owed you one, so I thought I’d make the effort. As for Lazenby, well, we sure cooked his goose, didn’t we?
All the best,
Woodrow
Harry did not get round to reading the last paragraph of Hacken-sack’s letter properly until he was standing amidst the milling commuters on the southbound platform of Kensal Green station, waiting for the next Bakerloo line train. “Lost interest in the subject?” he murmured to himself, smiling grimly. “No chance, Woodrow.” The state of Mrs. Tandy’s sitting room was a matter of small consequence now. He did not know what this latest revelation meant. But he knew he would have to find out. That very day.
SIXTY
A winter’s morning of frozen stillness slowly revealed itself as the train sped north through snow-patched Essex. Harry breakfasted on black coffee, a micro waved bacon bap and the tangle of his own thoughts. He re-read Hackensack’s letter and Slade’s note. He recalled as much as he could of the last time he had come this way. He remembered Athene Tilson’s words “If you really want to understand higher dimensions, you could do worse than my own foray into the subject’ and the inscription in the book she had given him. For Harry, she had written. May you find as well as seek. It had always seemed a strange choice of words. And now the strangeness was becoming sinister.
The Norfolkman reached Ipswich at nine o’clock. It was the same train Harry had travelled up on back in October, so he knew he was in ample time for the Southwold bus. But still he hurried across the footbridge and along the platform towards the exit. Haste was more a state of mind now than any kind of necessity.
Then, as he passed the windows of the buffet on his left, a glimpse of something oddly familiar stopped him in his tracks. A plump figure in a bell-tent raincoat was sitting at one of the window tables, staring out at him as he stared in. Her face was pale as a new moon, her hair bright as flame where a cold lance of sunlight fell upon it. And in her eyes was a startled look that amounted almost to fear.
He pushed open the door and stepped inside. The air was a warm fug of coffee steam and cigarette smoke. At one end of the room, a track worker was caught in the eager embrace of a fruit machine. At the other, beyond a wasteland of empty tables, sat Athene Tilson’s housekeeper, dwarfed by a mountainous grubby pink holdall that looked like a Brobdingnagian’s cast-off and a cello case sporting more multi-coloured labels than a globetrotter’s trunk.
“It’s Mace, isn’t it?” Harry asked, moving across to her. “Remember me?”
“I remember,” she murmured.
“Been away for Christmas?”
“What makes you think so?”
“Well, the bag. And… being here.”
“I’ve not been away. I’m going.”
“Oh, right. Holiday?”
“I’m going for good.”
“Really. Why’s that?”
“Ask Athene. It was her decision.”
“Sorry?”
“She threw me out.”
“You’re joking.”
“Does it look like I am?” The forlorn ness in her was almost palpable, from the tiny mittened hands cradling her mug of tea to the bitter skittering anguish in her eyes. Assuredly, she was not joking. “Athene gets rid of a lot of things she’s had the best out of. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to be next on the list.”
“She… sacked you?”
“If you like. But since I was never exactly her employee… evicted is nearer the mark.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Who ever understood Athene? Not me, that’s for sure. Not even after thirteen years.”
“You worked for her sorry, lived with her for thirteen year sT
“Yeh. Unlucky for some, eh?”
“It’s a long time, certainly. I’m on my way to see Dr. Tilson now. Do you ‘
“Don’t go.” Her face suddenly flushed. She reached up and clasped his forearm. “Please don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Just promise me you won’t.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You have to.”
“Not without an explanation.”
“The next train to arrive at platform two will be the nine-twelve service to London Liverpool Street,” interrupted the station announcer. Mace looked up sharply, then glanced down at her alarm-clock-sized wristwatch. “This train will call at Manningtree, Colchester and London Liverpool Street.”
“Your train?”
“I suppose so.”
“Where are you going?”
“Not sure.”
“Not sure?”
“I mean … it doesn’t matter.”
“It must do.”
“Not compared with She released his arm and let her hand fall back onto the table. “Take my advice. Don’t go to Southwold.”
“Why not?”
She looked up at him, her eyes huge and imploring. “Is it true David was your son?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “There’s a resemblance. I can see it.”
“You knew him… quite well?”
“I loved him.”
“What?”
“I loved David. Worshipped him from afar. At Cambridge… and since. Unrequited passion isn’t actually very poetic. More… corrosive, as a matter of fact.”
“You were at Cambridge with David?”
“Yes.” Her eyes unfocused dreamily. “Athene was my tutor. And David’s supervisor. You could say she brought us together. And kept us apart.”
“I had no idea.”
“Why should you?” The London train rattled into the station, but Mace made no move to get up. “Why should anyone?”
Tell me about it.” Harry sat down beside her. “I’d like to understand.”
“I’ll miss my train.”
“There’s always another.”
“That’s what my friends said about David. Plenty more fish in the sea. Lots more pebbles on the beach. Pull yourself together; come to a party and pick up a boy. You know? The usual platitudes. And no help at all.”
“Why didn’t it work out?”
“Not because of my weight, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I never ‘
“I was slim then. Beautiful, some people thought. Positively Pre-Raphaelite.” She frowned and raised a hand to her forehead. “Sorry. I’ve always been over-sensitive. Especially since Well, the fact is David just wasn’t interested in me. For a start, I was a musician, not a mathematician. He thought anyone who preferred counterpoint to calculus had to be either perverse or stupid or both. I suppose, looking back, it should have been obvious it was hopeless. We simply didn’t have enough in common.” She summoned a faint smile. “But I wasn’t very level-headed at nineteen.”
“Who is?”
“David, for one. Level-headed. Single-minded. And chillingly mature. As well as irresistibly attractive.”
“Was there… somebody else?”
“Oh yes. There was somebody else. I just didn’t know it at the time. I thought he was… unattached. Which made rejection pretty hard to take. So much so that…” She sighed and shook her head. “I proved him right about being stupid.”
“How?”
“Gave up serious study. Followed him around. Bombarded him with love poems. Oh, and took up shoplifting. Books and clothes mostly. The psychiatrist said it was attention-seeking. It certainly attracted the attention of the police. And the university authorities. After they’d finished with me, there wasn’t much left.” She stroked the neck of the cello case affectionately. “Not even a half-decent cellist.”
“You must have had a rough time.”
She nodded. “All the rougher for being self-inflicted.”
“How did you end up living with Dr. Tilson?”
“She’d just bought Avocet House in preparation for her retirement. Needed somebody to look after the
place during the week, while she was in Cambridge. I was on probation and didn’t have much option. It was either take up Athene’s offer or go back to live with my parents. No competition, let me tell you. I’d probably be in an institution by now if I’d gone down that road.”
“Are you going back to them now?”
“For a few days. Then … I don’t know.”
“But why stay in Southwold all this time? You can’t have been on probation for thirteen years.”
“I like it there. And I like Athene. She has a … quality of peace … that can be quite contagious. I wanted to hide from the world and she wanted to retire from it. It was a sensible arrangement for both of us. I was grateful to her as well, of course. For getting me off the hook. I suppose I didn’t realize I was effectively swapping one hook for another.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, living with Athene meant I could still see David from time to time. He wasn’t a frequent visitor. But he kept in touch. With Athene, I mean. So, I always had the chance the hope of impressing him. I had this fantasy that when she died, he’d take pity on me and carry me off somewhere. Pathetic, isn’t it?”
“I don’t think so.” Harry smiled at her almost paternally. “We all have fantasies.”
“Yeh? Well, mine’s over now. David’s dead. And I’m not going to be nursing Athene into her dotage. The door of my cosy seaside retreat from reality’s just been slammed in my face.”
“Why? What was the problem?”
“I must have asked too many questions, I suppose.”
“What about?”
“Her recent travels, mostly.”
“Travels? I thought she was a virtual invalid. Housebound, I assumed.”
“Far from it.” Mace chuckled humourlessly. “The arthritis and emphysema seem to come and go at will. They’re part of Athene’s disguise. She says there’s nobody people are less suspicious of than a doddery old woman. Nobody more ignorable. Which is what she likes to be. Ignored. Forgotten. Neglected. Overlooked. Underestimated.” She paused. “Perhaps fatally so.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean she was away from home the night David fell ill. Attending a college dinner in Cambridge, she said. But I checked. She wasn’t there. She was away quite a lot in September. And she lied about her destination every time. She went away again about a week after your visit in October.”
“How long for?”
“A fortnight or so.”
“Where did she go?”
“She didn’t even bother to lie to me that time. She just… declined to say.” Mace let out a long slow sigh. “I didn’t much care by then. It was the day I’d telephoned the hospital prompted by some kind of instinct, I think and learnt David was dead. Just a few hours later, Athene walked through the door. Quiet, regal, ghostly as ever. A little like death herself. Cold. Remote. Above it all. Like … a visitor from another planet. She’s always had this… unearthly quality. I think it’s what drew David to her. Not mathematics so much as … magnetism.” Mace’s eyes flicked up to meet Harry’s. “She was the somebody else in your son’s life. Always and for ever. Oh, don’t worry. I’m not alleging some bizarre sexual relationship. It was her mind he couldn’t resist. I once asked him why he kept coming to see her. I had some frail hope he might say it was an excuse to see me. But instead he replied, with utter sincerity: “Because Athene’s the real thing. A mathematician several generations ahead of her time. The most brilliant, original and innovative numerical thinker since Cardano”’
“Who?”
“Gerolamo Cardano. An Italian mathematician of the sixteenth century. I looked him up. He was the discoverer of probability theory and complex numbers whatever they are.”
“I’ve never heard of him.”
“Just as most people have never heard of Athene Tilson. “She knows more than she’ll let me understand,” David said. “But one day, when I’ve learnt enough, I’ll persuade her to unlock her secrets.”
“But I thought… she said … David’s work had left her behind.”
“The way he told it, he was still trying to catch up.”
“Or maybe he had caught up.” As Harry’s thoughts were doing, with the implications that were beginning to thread themselves between the facts he had so far failed to connect. “At long last.”
“How do you mean?”
“Did their relationship seem … different in any way … the last time he visited her … in early September?”
“I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t there. Athene sent me to Cambridge that day to collect some books she’d ordered. I didn’t find out about David’s visit until I got back. She said he’d turned up unexpectedly. But that wasn’t true either. They’d spoken on the phone only the night before. She wanted me out of the way for some reason. Like now, I suppose. Except that was just for the day. This is for good. Or bad.”
“Did David ever mention anyone called… Dobermann?”
“What name?” Mace frowned, as if struggling to pin down an errant familiarity.
“Carl Dobermann.”
“No. Never. But… it’s funny. You knowing the name. While Athene was away, some time early in November a man telephoned, asking for her. Long distance. He gave his name as … Carl Dobermann.”
“Highly strung, was he? Unbalanced, maybe?”
“Maybe. Odd, certainly. But we only exchanged a few words. He wanted Athene, not me.”
“Did he leave a message?”
“Yes. After a fashion. He asked me to tell her he’d… remembered.”
“Remembered what?”
“He didn’t say. That was all there was to the message. He’d remembered.”
“You passed it on?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I didn’t. I meant to, of course. But… other things put it out of my mind. I think I may have assumed it was some kind of wrong number.”
“But he asked specifically for Athene?”
“Yes. He did.”
“Then it can’t have been, can it?”
“No. I suppose not.”
“What’s your Christian name, Mace?”
Thyllida. Why?”
“It’s a pretty name.”
She blushed. “No-one ever uses it.”
That’s a pity.”
“A pity. But not a tragedy. Sounds like it could be my epitaph.”
“Why don’t you want me to go to Southwold, Phyllida?”
“For the same reason part of me was glad to leave. Lately, Athene…” Mace’s eyes fell. Her voice sank close to a whisper. “She frightens me. She used to be … comforting. Now … I don’t know. Something’s changed.”
“I have to go.”
“Why?”
“For David, I suppose.”
“But you never knew him.”
That’s why I have to go.”
“Don’t. Please.”
“I must.”
“I’m pleading with you.” She laid her mittened hand on his. “Don’t go.”
“What harm can it possibly do to visit a little old lady who lives by the sea?”
“More than either of us can imagine.” Her grip tightened. “That instinct I had. To phone the hospital the day David died. It’s the same feeling I have now. About you. And Athene.”
“What feeling?”
“That if you go to see her…” Slowly and sadly, Mace shook her head. “You won’t come back.”
SIXTY-ONE
By the time he had seen Mace off on the next train to London, Harry had missed the 99 bus. But such minor obstacles no longer troubled him. Courtesy of a thirty-six-pound taxi ride, he reached Southwold while the bus must still have been chugging through Saxmundham.
The morning seemed colder and dazzlingly brighter than it had in Ipswich. The low winter sun danced and glinted on the sea, invading and confusing Harry’s senses as he made his way from the busy market place down towards the green at the southern end of the town, where Avocet House stood on a mino
r crest, hedged off and withdrawn from its neighbours.
He marched straight up to the door and tugged at the bell, heard its echo in the hall merge with the chime of a clock striking the half hour and waited for the sound of footsteps or an answering voice. But there was no response. Nor when he rang again. And again. He stood baffled in the porch, rubbing his hands for warmth, aware to his own bemusement that he had been confident Athene would be there because of a subconscious suspicion that she had known he was coming and had sent Mace away to ensure there would be no witness to their encounter.
Unwilling either to leave or merely to wait on the doorstep, he walked round to the rear of the house, past a wind-carved broom hedge and so into the garden, overlooked by the conservatory where she had received him last time. Her wicker chair was empty and there were no walking-sticks propped against the table beside it. He peered in through the window. There was no sign of movement. He tried the door. It was locked. The key was visible on the other side and the way the door yielded at top and bottom implied that the bolts, if there were any, had been left un shot Crouching down to squint beneath the weatherboard, he made out a shrinkage gap above the threshold of nearly half an inch. That, plus the bundle of old newspapers resting on the lid of the dustbin over by the garage, constituted a virtual invitation. He went over and prised one free of the string, glancing in through the garage window as he did so. The bulky shape of a vast old Humber revealed itself through the gloom. Wherever Athene had gone, it was evidently not far. But Harry did not propose to wait for her any longer.
He went back to the conservatory, folded the front few pages of the newspaper flat and slid them beneath the door, then prodded at the keyhole with the nib of his pen until the key plopped out obligingly onto the paper. He smiled at the simplicity of the ploy, recalling how sceptical he had been when seeing it used too many times for plausibility in Hollywood B movies. Then his smile stiffened. Carelessness, after all, could just as easily be deliberation. And Athene Tilson had not struck him as the careless type. As he inched the newspaper back out and saw the key emerge with it, he saw also the close-packed typesetting of the Wall Street Journal. It was the edition for Tuesday 8 November, the edition he had himself bought in Chicago on account of a front-page article reporting a fall in Globescope’s share price following Hammel-gaard’s sudden and unexplained death in Copenhagen. Harry grabbed the key and whipped the newspaper over to the front page.
Out of the Sun Page 30
