‘Outside or inside?’
He gave a small snigger of laughter, implying that ex-policemen always headed for inside. ‘Oh, outside I think. We’ll walk up to the town proper and I’ll show you the church. It’s very fine. Is that all right?’
‘Yes. Of course. Midday then.’
We hung up. He’d abruptly taken complete charge. It was perhaps habit. He ran the house, the affairs of the business, and probably his wife, in a financial sense if not a physical one. He had not seemed unduly interested in the reason for our meeting.
‘We’re meeting him at Potter Heigham. Twelve o’clock.’
‘Where is it?’ she asked.
‘We’ll have to look at the map again.’
This we did. It was best reached by heading down the coast road past Happisburgh, then turning inland through Stalham and Catfield. Potter Heigham was marked as being a little off the A149, but just beyond it the road crossed the river Thurne, and this, clearly, would be the bridge referred to. Heigham Bridge, Larry had called it.
There seemed no point in hanging around uselessly, so we got our coats, because he’d spoken of walking. The wind was already working up to a fury, and the weak sun didn’t seem to promise much warmth. It was, I thought, a good idea to look round the location of Nancy’s death. So far, we had nothing but Larry’s suggestion to indicate this could be so, but it was somewhere to investigate.
There was no difficulty with the trip. I was now used to the landscape, which could change so abruptly from woodland to sedge, from farmland to fen. We spotted the signpost for Potter Heigham indicating a side road to the left, ignored it, and inside a mile found ourselves at the three-arch bridge over the river Thurne.
There was no difficulty in parking at this time of the year. The Bridge Hotel was where you would expect it to be, and there were, in fact, two bridges. Both were low. We left the car and investigated, and there was no doubt at all that here was one of the hubs of the water system that constitutes the Broads. There were notices at the two bridges warning boaters of low clearance at both bridges, there were indicators to tell you the varying clearance caused by changes in water level, there were injunctions as to speed, and advice on where to seek pilot assistance.
The boating facilities had given rise to a whole new village, completely devoted to pleasure craft.
It would, I thought, be chaos in the holiday season. Hickling Broad lay to the north, from which the Thurne ran as a natural waterway connection to a junction with the Bure, with access up the Bure to Hoveton and Wroxham, and down the Bure either to Ormesby Broad or along to the coast at Great Yarmouth. Craft would be edging beneath those two bridges stem to stern, in both directions.
It was quite clear that even in May, before the activity really built up, the area round these two bridges would be too concentrated for any violence to go unnoticed. My vague hopes of finding an obvious place from which Nancy could have been pushed or thrown were therefore dashed. And had she not been a good swimmer? Perhaps I’d imagined that. Yet nobody can display their swimming abilities when encumbered by an anorak, jeans and boots. It was just a thought.
‘Isn’t it strange?’ said Amelia.
‘What’s that?’
‘That Larry suggested this place as the...you know. And Philip’s asked us to meet him here. And Mark was selling charity stickers here on that Saturday. I mean...’ She shrugged.
We were leaning over the parapet of the larger bridge, looking at the water. ‘Coincidence.’ I suggested. ‘In any event, Philip mentioned the town proper, as he called it, which is about a mile away, and it was probably there that Mark was selling his stickers.’
‘Hmm!’ She leaned further forward. ‘It seems to me there’d be more people around here than at the town proper.’
‘It’s a point that could be checked,’ I said without enthusiasm. ‘Look, there’s a tow-path along the river bank. Care for a stroll?’
So we descended to water level and walked a little way downriver. Here, the territory was completely open. There was rough ground or marsh on both sides of the river, with clear views. The wind raced in from our left. After about a mile there was a waterway leading in from our right. The footpath turned up alongside it.
‘Have we got time to look along here?’ I asked.
She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s well after eleven. A short way, then.’
We didn’t expect to find much, but within a quarter of a mile there was one of those basins, wind-bobbing with laid-up craft, and with the deserted offices of a boat hire firm. The flag at the pole whipped raggedly. They’d need to hoist a new one for next season, I decided.
‘This’d be all activity in the season,’ I said.
And I wondered when the season normally started for this comparatively small and remote centre. Would it, for instance, be as deserted in May? The vessels lay low in the basin, high in the water. The best swimmer in the world would have difficulty getting out of there, hemmed in by hulls and with nothing to grasp at but tow ropes well out of reach.
We turned back and returned at a rather more brisk pace, both of us having felt a chill at the same thought. We emerged from the path on to firm surface to find Philip waiting for us. He seemed a little surprised to see where we’d come from.
‘I noticed your car,’ he said. ‘I knew you couldn’t be far away.’
‘Just been to look along the river,’ I explained.
‘Ah! But you should come here in July and August. You just wouldn’t believe your eyes. Now...shall we walk up to Potter Heigham?’
‘Well...I said, having stretched my legs a bit further than they cared to go. I glanced at Amelia. She pursed her lips and nodded.
‘I really must show you St Nicholas’s Church. Come along. It’s quicker along the main road, then we cut across from the Folgate.’
There is one thing you can say about the Broads, there aren’t many hills. Potter Heigham itself turned out to be the best part of a mile from the bridge, and Philip marched towards it with the gait of an animal recently freed. He talked without a break, and we, conserving our energies, listened.
‘The bridge is thirteenth century, you know. They’re quite proud of it, but I expect there’ll come a time when the traffic needs something wider and stronger, and seven centuries of heritage will be tossed away. They’ll have to divert the road. Have to. The whole ecology of the Broads is breaking down, destroyed by the holiday industry. Waterways polluted, land being exploited. It’s a crying shame.’
And so on. There was, it seemed, no curiosity about the possible reason for this meeting. He was a proud local, demonstrating the beauties and disasters to his visitors. Proud and personally involved. He shrank from the persecution represented by the incursion of an outside world. He should have got together with Nancy, I thought.
Potter Heigham was more a large village than a town. We walked between rows of picturesque and virtually untarnished houses, and, I saw hungrily, past a café that was open and waiting for us. But no — Philip marched on. He was relaxed here.
‘The church is at the far end,’ he told us, but by this time we could see it, distinctive with its octagonal top to a round tower.
We stood and looked at it. We walked all round it, he enthusing over an octagonal font which, he assured us, was quite unique. ‘We’ve got to talk, Philip,’ I said.
‘You really must see the font.’
‘I’d rather talk about Mark.’
That stopped him in his stride. His ebullience was quenched, and for a moment his comic face, for exaggerated distress, which he used when wishing to mock Olivia, was on show. Then he controlled it and was serious and concerned.
‘You’re talking about Mark Ruston?’ Thus calmly he confirmed what had been a guess up to that moment.
‘Yes. I’d like to know more about him, and his visit to Mansfield Park.’
‘The damned young fool,’ he grumbled. ‘Still causing trouble.’
He turned about, and we began to walk back to the café. I wo
uld have preferred to talk facing each other, so that I could examine his expression, but I had to accept what was available.
‘Was it trouble he brought with him?’ I asked, as though only mildly interested.
‘I thought this had all blown over,’ he complained. ‘It was a long while ago. Oh, eighteen months, I’d guess. I can’t remember exactly. All I know is that Olivia was in the middle of a book, and the last thing she wanted was disturbance.’
‘She does seem to work hard,’ Amelia commented, walking at his other shoulder.
‘Oh, she does. She does,’ he said loyally. ‘Then along comes this idiot, this clown, this stupid and impossible young man...oh, I can’t find words strong enough to describe him. Over-bearing and persistent. I told him to leave. I mean, I get enough stupidity to handle through the post, without having it knocking on the door. And how he got her real name and address I can’t guess. Her publishers wouldn’t have let him have it. I checked that, and they said no. I mean...we’d be wide open to all sorts of abuse if every —’
‘Can we back-track a bit? I cut in. ‘Start again...’
I don’t think he even heard. He was involved with one of his burdens, and had to boast about how well he handled these things.
‘You’d never guess what comes in every post. Forwarded from the publishers, of course. I wouldn’t dare to let Olivia see most of it, so I intercept. You’d think she was one of these magazine aunts, available for advice on their love lives. Those’re the reasonable ones. But some are abusive. You wouldn’t believe it. “You bitch, you used me in such-and-such a book, and I’m saying nightly prayers that you’ll shrivel up and die.” That’s pretty well a straight quote. Can you imagine such a thing? They try to get at her. And harm her. Oh yes, they do. And the common one: “You used my name and you ought to pay me something.” They resent her success, you see,’ he said blandly, suddenly explaining as to a dull child. ‘Isn’t it as well the address is a secret! I dread to think how it’d be...’
He stopped abruptly, perhaps realizing his complaints had gone on long enough. He was the sole defender of the battlements, and he saw the invaders creeping in through all its cracks. But we’d reached the café, and he was calmly reading the menu displayed in the window.
We entered, found a table, and the rest of the interview was conducted as we ordered and ate. At least, I could now watch his expression.
‘So tell me about Mark.’
‘He came — this lout — and almost forced his way in. He wanted to speak to Olivia Martin. He’d even got her maiden name correct. It was only because of this that I allowed him inside. Then it all began. There was this fantastic story of Olivia having had a love child she had not acknowledged. As though anybody worries about illegitimacy these days,’ he said, completely missing the point.
I assumed he’d been influenced by Olivia’s writing, that he’d used such an expression as ‘love child’. Perhaps, for Philip, there hadn’t been all that much love. There was, apparently, no child of theirs.
‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘I told him to leave. He wouldn’t. He said he would go when he’d spoken to her, personally. I couldn’t allow that of course. It’s part of my job to shield her from unpleasantness. But you can imagine, voices were raised, and there was an undignified scuffle in the hall when I tried to force him out.’ He stared at his hands with disgust. ‘He was stronger than me. More angry, too. If that could be possible. And as I say, voices were certainly raised, and unfortunately the inevitable happened. Olivia opened her door and called out to know what was happening, and what the shouting was about, just when the young fool was shouting his head off about illegitimate children. Then,’ he grumbled, ‘the fat really got thrown in the fire.’
He paused, staring at his ice cream and meringue. Amelia had abandoned all pretence at eating, and was staring at him with wide eyes.
‘How would you,’ he demanded of her, ‘like to be accused of having an illegitimate child?’ She said nothing. ‘I thought so, you’d be shocked. Appalled. Of course, Olivia handled it well. She was in one of her majestic moods, and tried to get rid of him by staring him down and telling him, over and over, that it was nonsense. He was downright abusive, I can tell you. In the end, she simply tossed her head and walked away, back into her room, and left me to it. Lovely. It took me a good ten minutes more before I got the door shut behind him. I advised him to get legal advice before trying his tricks again. I can tell you, I needed a stiff drink after that, and my hands were shaking so much that I could hardly pour it. I felt absolutely terrible.’
I hadn’t said anything all through this. There had been nothing to prove that the house to which Mark had driven Nancy had been the Dean’s, only the link of the photographs, so I was counting myself as lucky that I hadn’t had to drag it out of him word by word. But now he’d stopped. The story agreed very closely with that Larry had told us. I put in a prompter after the coffee came.
‘What did you think was behind it, Philip?’
‘Oh, some sort of blackmail, I suppose. In some way he’d managed to get her name and address, and because she writes that sort of fiction — it’s all sexual irresponsibility and aberrations — then she wouldn’t be able to face a scandal. Or so he might’ve thought. It was stupid, of course. Such a thing would boost her sales a hundred per cent.’
‘There was no mention of a pay-off for a closed mouth?’
‘Nothing like that.’
‘So that was the end of it?’
He stared at me with his eyebrows climbing. I was a moron, lacking in imagination and understanding. ‘The end? The end! By heaven, it’d only just started. Olivia had seen him walk away, from her window. She came back in and threw a hysterical fit. You can just see it. It was all my fault. I’d slipped somewhere. And so on. It went on and on. I was instructed to find out how the information about the address got out. Somebody’d got to pay, or she’d know the reason why. It took me an hour to calm her down, and then later we got the reaction. She was really ill for several days, and I got scared of a nervous breakdown. She wouldn’t have a doctor in. Not Olivia. But eventually she got back to her dictating. She’d lost ten days. You can tell — read that book, it was published three months ago — and you’ll see in the middle where it changed and went flat. I remember her publishers were quite concerned.’
‘And that was the end of it then?’ I didn’t think I’d get anywhere with that, but there was no harm in trying.
Philip, though, was in an expansive mood, and in any event he couldn’t resist the temptation to display the versatility of his duties and talents, and the pressures to which he was exposed.
He grimaced. Then he leaned forward as though Olivia might be hiding beneath the table.
‘No, it wasn’t. There was another try, in the spring it would’ve been. Around April this year. They’d given us a period to relax in, you see, and this time it was a more subtle approach. From a female. A young woman, going by the wording. A letter. Posted in Birmingham. This was more calm and tentative, designed I guessed to attract sympathy. It was addressed to Olivia, but of course I didn’t dare allow her to see it. A meeting was suggested — requested, if you like. So I replied, saying I agreed to meet her.’
‘And you signed it —’
‘“P. Dean p. p. O.D.” No more. She could make of it what she liked, as far as I was concerned.’
‘You agreed to meet her...where?’
‘Why, here. Potter Heigham. At the church, as a matter of fact.’
‘You thought she might like to see the font?’
‘It would,’ he said seriously, ‘have established a certain rap-port.’
‘Can you remember when this meeting was to have been?’ He raised his head and gazed above mine in thought. ‘The beginning of May, some time. A Saturday, as I recall it.’
‘And Olivia knew nothing of this?’
‘She was supposed to be meeting her publisher for lunch in London that day. Agent in the afternoon.’
‘Can you recall whether it was a flag day?’ He looked at me blankly.
‘A charity collection day,’ I amplified.
He snapped his fingers. ‘Why yes. I remember now. A cause I could happily support. The conservation people.’
‘And what happened when you met her?’
He shook his head. His opinion had to be that I wasn’t very bright. ‘That’s the point. I didn’t. I hung around the church for nearly an hour — she should have arrived at three — and she never turned up. Lost her nerve, I suppose, and couldn’t go through with it. I had a long chat with the verger, who’s a friend of mine.’
This version was a lot more detailed than the story told to me by Larry, as related to him by Nancy. It held more detail, which of course Nancy could not have known. What surprised me was that Philip, who had given the impression of being the protector of Mansfield Park, should have agreed to leave it for an appointment with somebody he thought of as no more than a pest. He need only have refused to meet Nancy. But perhaps he was trying to keep her well away from the house, and further disturbance. I could not dig at him to clarify this. In the circumstances, he having been so forthcoming, it would have been ungracious. Nor could I go to Olivia herself to confirm the details of the visit. It was Mark himself I’d have to tackle over that.
‘And that was the end of it, then?’
He turned up his palms. ‘Never heard another word from her.’
‘But surely...’ Amelia began. Then she glanced at me. I smiled her onwards. ‘But surely she signed her name. To this letter of hers, I mean.’
‘Oh yes indeed. She used the same surname as that offensive young man. Ruston.’
‘Nancy?’ she asked.
‘Yes. That was it. But how do you —’
‘But Philip — dear man — you must have heard. It would’ve been in the local papers. She died. That same day — or so it seems — that she was to have met you.’
‘I don’t really have time to read the local news.’ He cocked his head at her. ‘Where did this happen?’
‘Somewhere around here, Philip. She was drowned.’
Death of an Innocent (Richard and Amelia Patton) Page 13
