The Sleep of the Dead

by Tom Bradby

  ‘This is Professor Malcolm.’

  ‘Yes,’ Adrian said. ‘We know.’

  Julia was shocked by the level of hostility all three men were displaying and could only conclude that his questioning of them in the past had been as abrasive as hers had been gentle. She felt awkward and a little embarrassed.

  Professor Malcolm turned towards Alan. ‘Thank you for your support.’

  Alan shrugged. ‘I can see why people would be worried. In that sense, your work may prove useful.’

  ‘I should think he is beyond causing further harm.’

  ‘How benign you make him sound,’ Adrian said.

  Professor Malcolm frowned. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But it was good to see you sticking up for him.’

  ‘Got to go,’ Alan said, interrupting. He turned away towards the side entrance. ‘Call me, Professor, if I can be of assistance.’ The door banged shut behind him.

  ‘Hardly sticking up for him, but there’s a process of law,’ Adrian said, straightening. ‘I’d expect you to understand that.’

  ‘It was said admiringly. So you believe he might be innocent?’

  ‘No, but as I explained, there is a process.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Adrian stared at Professor Malcolm. ‘Anyway, to what do we owe the pleasure of seeing you again? I’d have thought you did enough damage the first time.’ There was a tightness at the corners of his mouth. ‘They seemed to fare better once they’d got rid of you.’

  ‘Did they?’ Professor Malcolm said. ‘Did they really?’

  ‘Is this a formal interview, Professor?’ Adrian asked.

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Then perhaps you could inform us, when you’re ready, how and when we can be of assistance?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll do that.’

  Julia and the Professor waited for Adrian and Jasper to leave so that they did not have to walk together. By the time they stepped outside, the light was fading fast. Their footsteps were noisy on the gravel drive as they went up to the road, passing a series of pink posters pinned to telegraph poles advertising the village fête tomorrow.

  They reached the Rose and Crown and looked towards Pascoe’s house, which stood in darkness, its curtains drawn. Professor Malcolm was staring at the front door, deep in thought. Someone had painted a black cross on it, but the picture of Alice pinned there earlier had disappeared.

  ‘Where do you think Pascoe has gone?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I’d have liked to talk to him today.’ He looked at her. ‘This is going to be awkward for you, isn’t it?’

  ‘You mean with Adrian and …’

  ‘Yes.’

  Julia nodded slowly. ‘It would be easier in many ways if they were my friends, but …’

  ‘Your mother’s?’

  ‘Family friends. Mine, too, but of a different generation. It feels like I’m betraying them.’

  She expected him to offer an explanation of why this wasn’t the case, but he was staring at his feet.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said, ‘that things will ease as people come to accept that there’s no threat and that going back … well, it’s not ideal for any of us, is it? We don’t like it, so why should they?’

  They faced each other in silence. Then Julia gestured in the direction of Pascoe’s house. ‘Why does a man come back from a war to confess to a crime that he didn’t commit?’ she asked.

  ‘Guilt,’ he said. ‘Perhaps. I don’t know, but I would like to talk to him now.’

  ‘When I saw him this morning, he said, “I could have done it.” He said that twice. He said everyone wanted her, but no one could possess her and that there would be punishment.’

  Professor Malcolm shook his head. ‘It’s hard to know what to read into the outpourings of a disturbed mind. I called the police about Pascoe while you were out and asked them to find him.’

  Julia thought Professor Malcolm was no longer as confident in Pascoe’s innocence as he pretended.

  ‘I was surprised to see Alan there tonight,’ he said. ‘How did the three of you become friends? You were like a family unit at the passing-out parade. You, Alan, your mother. Was there any sign of that before the murders?’

  ‘Alan kept his distance. It was, I think, an unspoken mutual agreement with my father.’

  ‘They didn’t get on?’

  ‘They did, but they worked together. They wanted to get away from things at home, I’m sure.’

  ‘So how did it happen that you became friends?’

  She thought about this. ‘I suppose he and Mum must have talked a lot after Sarah’s death and Alice’s disappearance, and then after my own father’s death. I don’t know. It happened gradually. I would … I would come home from school and he would come round for dinner. There was no big deal made of it – it seemed natural to me. My mother liked caring for someone. I don’t know if he can cook. I don’t imagine Sarah did much.’

  ‘It just happened naturally?’

  ‘Yes. My mother wasn’t used to doing things in the house and the garden, so … You can see how it happened … two quite traditionally minded people.’

  He waited for her to continue.

  ‘Then, none of us really wanted to be at home for Christmas that year and Alan loves skiing, so he said he was going to a small hotel in Zermatt and asked us if we wanted to join him. And we did.’ Julia thought of the sloping roofs and pine beds and fat continental duvets, of the thick snow and the lights and the chocolate cake she had consumed in the bar below each tea time. ‘It was quite a magical time, actually. It was the beginning of things getting better.’

  ‘You shared a room with your mother, Alan on his own?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And that’s remained the pattern?’

  ‘Yes. If you’re asking me whether they’re having a relationship, then the answer is that I don’t know for certain. They maintain an old-fashioned discretion.’

  He looked at her. Benignly, she thought. ‘Good night,’ he said.

  He turned away and she watched his slow, shuffling walk. She saw now that he had a slight limp. Did he want her to invite him home again?

  ‘Professor Malcolm.’

  He stopped and turned back.

  ‘I’d love to invite you in for something to eat, but …’

  ‘I quite understand,’ he said. ‘You’re not my nursemaid here. I shall do perfectly well in the pub.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Actually …’ He stopped again. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to be involved,’ she said, ‘but I think my mother would be upset if I didn’t spend most of the weekend with her. After all, I’ve not seen her for three years. It would stretch her tolerance.’

  He nodded. ‘Understood.’

  ‘What will you do? If you like I can drop you home, or …’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I have things to be thinking about and getting on with. I have a book to review for the Journal of Clinical Psychology, so I can amuse myself in the sunshine. I’ll see you on Monday, will I?’

  ‘I think I saw on my mother’s wall diary that she’s out tomorrow night. Why don’t you come round then?’

  ‘But you can’t cook.’

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘Then I shall. It will be my pleasure. I’ll bring the ingredients, so don’t worry about that.’ He smiled at her. ‘Call me if there is a change. Until tomorrow, then?’

  ‘Until tomorrow.’

  When Julia arrived home, she locked the front door as she came in, pulling across the chain. In the kitchen, she found a plate covered in Cellophane on the side, together with a note. ‘Sorry, forgot to say that I was out. Hope this is okay. Won’t be back late. Love, Mum.’

  Julia returned to the front door to unhook the chain, before going to the back entrance to pull across the bolts. Then she walked through the house checking that all the windows were shut and screwed down.

  Aristotle was not there, so she assumed he was with her moth
er.

  Julia got herself a glass of wine and ate at the table, chicken with mango and an orange, lettuce and walnut salad. It was refreshing and light.

  Afterwards, she went upstairs to her room, opening the window, but locking it with the safety bar. A gentle breeze carried the sound of laughter up from the de la Rues’ garden next door. The tent for the fête was up, its pennants fluttering in the breeze against a darkening sky, the clouds shadows against the last of the red sunset.

  Julia sat down on her bed, taking out the papers she had tucked away earlier. She opened them up, and read first her father’s statement then her mother’s.

  She went to her desk and got a pen, then returned to her mother’s statement. She underlined a passage: ‘As I walked down Woodpecker Lane, I glanced in through the window of Alan Ford’s house. I saw him crossing from one side of the kitchen to the other with a cup of coffee in his hand.’ Then she skipped a few paragraphs, before taking the pen to another section: ‘I arrived home and saw my husband working in the garden. I went upstairs to change out of my church clothes. When I came down to the kitchen, he was digging the flower-bed by the hedge.’

  Julia looked at the passages again, then placed the papers on the table beside her and lay flat on the bed. She was glad Professor Malcolm had not gone over these statements with her.

  The door opened below and Julia looked at her watch. It was almost ten o’clock. Her mother went into the kitchen, then climbed the stairs and walked down the landing.

  The door opened and Caroline’s face appeared. She was smiling as she stepped in and Julia thought she might be a little drunk.

  ‘You found supper?’

  ‘Yes. Thanks.’ Julia sat up and swung her legs round, so that her back was to the radiator and she wasn’t directly facing her mother. ‘Did you have a good evening?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry, I’d clean forgotten …’

  ‘It’s all right, Mum. Life doesn’t stop just because I come home.’

  Caroline hesitated. ‘You were at the meeting,’ she said.

  ‘Briefly.’

  Caroline was looking at her. ‘I’m not sure I quite understand.’

  Julia thought her mother’s tongue was loosened by alcohol. ‘No. I’m sorry … I can see why not.’

  ‘You’re a career army officer and now …’

  Julia moved so that her back was against the head of the bed and she was facing her mother. ‘It’s because I can’t tiptoe around it any more.’

  ‘Around what?’

  ‘Around the past.’

  Caroline was frowning. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘No one ever talks about it. It’s like this … this thing that everyone is terrified of.’

  ‘That’s an odd way of putting it.’

  ‘Tell me how you would describe it.’

  Caroline sighed. ‘Do you know what effect an event such as this has on a community …’

  ‘Of course I do, Mum, I was here.’

  ‘You were a child.’

  ‘And that makes it worse. An adult understands. When you’re a child, everything is half-hidden.’

  Caroline was staring at the floor, but she was gripping her left shoulder with her right hand, unconsciously defensive.

  ‘They say you helped Pascoe yesterday when he was brought home.’

  ‘Only because I don’t like to see a lynch mob at work.’

  ‘He frightens people.’

  ‘He frightens me.’

  Caroline looked up slowly. ‘I still don’t understand.’

  Julia leant forward. ‘I cannot let it rest. I wish I could, more than anything I wish that, but I can’t, my mind won’t allow it.’

  ‘Because he has been released?’

  ‘Because I have not asked certain questions myself.’ Julia was reaching out her hand in a gesture of supplication as she spoke. ‘Because I was a child.’ She could see her mother still did not understand. ‘What if Pascoe was innocent? If … if he is guilty, then what’s to be lost? If he’s guilty then we’ll just be more sure of it and … that is a good thing. It’s doubt that is corrosive.’ Julia looked at her hands. ‘Everyone has a right to examine their past, Mum.’

  There was a long silence, each of them avoiding the other’s eye.

  ‘And what if Pascoe’s guilt can never be proven to your satisfaction – to the satisfaction of you and those with whom you choose to ally yourself. Are we then condemned to a cycle of perpetual revision, so that none of us can find peace? Do we not deserve that? Will no one allow that?’ Caroline was looking out of the window. ‘There are others here apart from you with feelings that will never settle, that can never be neatly closed off and forgotten. Can you imagine what this does to Alan?’

  Julia stared at the opposite wall, chastened. ‘You don’t like Professor Malcolm, do you?’

  ‘I pass no judgement on the individuals, they do what they have to in a process that’s necessary. We believed that process was complete, that’s all. Now I see we were foolish to think that there would ever be a life beyond this.’

  ‘You were civil to him at the passing-out parade, more than civil.’

  Caroline sighed. ‘I didn’t understand why you brought him there, either.’

  Julia turned to look out of the window beside her. A crescent moon bathed this part of the room in light now, but Caroline stood at the far end, her face shrouded in darkness.

  ‘Your father didn’t like him either.’

  Julia recognized that this was a calculated blow. There was a long silence. ‘Sometimes,’ Julia said, ‘I think you protect me from Dad.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Protect his reputation.’ She listened to the sound of a lorry trundling down the hill into the village.

  ‘It’s funny,’ Caroline said, her voice quieter, ‘I think the reverse. I’m so worried about him becoming an unmanageable icon for you that I feel I run him down, but I don’t want you to have a one-dimensional picture. He was a complex man, but his faults were just human ones.’

  Julia swung her feet off the bed. ‘Can I ask you a question?’

  Caroline did not answer.

  ‘Didn’t you find it odd that Sarah went to the common that day?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, if Pascoe is guilty, then Sarah was just “going for a walk”, but you don’t just go for a walk in your Sunday best, do you?’

  ‘Our church has never been like that, Julia, you know that. It’s not a “Sunday best” kind of village.’

  ‘It still seems odd.’

  ‘Sarah was odd.’

  ‘Yes, but even eccentricity can be consistent and explicable, whereas this just seems …’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  Julia hesitated. ‘You don’t think it is possible she was meeting someone?’

  ‘Then why would she have taken Alice?’

  ‘Right. Yes.’ Julia realized that just because they had never talked about this didn’t mean her mother hadn’t considered it. She breathed in deeply. ‘In your statement to the police, you say that you went upstairs to change and then, when you came back down, you saw Dad digging the flower-bed by the hedge?’

  There was a hesitation. ‘Yes.’

  ‘But when I ran to the fence after seeing Sarah’s body, Dad had just started mowing the lawn and I don’t recall any sign of the flower-bed having been dug.’ Julia wished she could see her mother’s face.

  ‘You’re playing a dangerous game with a past you don’t understand.’

  ‘That’s enigmatic.’

  ‘No, it’s not. But suspicion is a disease. You’ve not seen what it can do.’

  Julia stood and took a step towards her mother. ‘Come on, Mum, please. Support me.’

  ‘In what? The destruction of all that is left to us?’ She shook her head. ‘Because that is the only thing suspicion can achieve.’

  ‘That’s …’

  ‘Enough.’ Caroline raised her hand. ‘Please. I d
on’t understand, but I won’t try. I’ll ignore what you’re doing in the hope that somewhere good sense will prevail, but remember, it’s not all about you.’ Caroline cleared her throat. ‘I actually came in here to tell you I’m going to lunch with the de la Rues tomorrow, before the fête, and they would love to see you, if …’

  ‘You told me already, Mum.’ Julia nodded. ‘Yes, of course.’

  After Caroline had gone, Julia shut and locked the window, pulled the curtains and got into bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, listening to the water-heater, which was noisy enough to shut out any other sound. When it stopped, she thought she could make out an owl in the distance, from the direction of the common.

  The moonlight crept through gaps in her curtains, falling in scattered pools on the wall opposite.

  Julia heard one of the floorboards on the stairs creak, then another. There was silence for a moment, then she heard the soft shuffle of her mother moving away, back to her room. If she had been seeking a softer meeting, she had changed her mind and returned to bed.

  Julia realized that her mother had not even asked her about Beijing. Nor had she answered the question about the flower-bed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THERE WAS NO gap in the hedge through to the de la Rue garden so, the following morning, Julia and Caroline walked round to lunch along Woodpecker Lane, past pink posters advertising the village fête, which were pinned to the telegraph poles along the line of the hedge. Ahead, the gate into one of the de la Rues’ fields was open, with a large sign saying ‘CAR-PARK’ directing traffic into it.

  The de la Rues’ home was called Bell House, because it had once been a school and the old bell still hung above the big oak front door. It was a Victorian building, not an especially attractive one, but inside Henrietta had worked hard to make it homely, sparing no expense. The hall was lighter than Julia remembered, its carpet removed and the floorboards beneath polished, an Oriental rug laid over them.

  There were three steps down into the kitchen, which had been extended, with a door open on the far side leading out to a conservatory. Julia could see Jessica de la Rue’s blonde hair, but the other guests were out of view.