Death by Sheer Torture

by Robert Barnard

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Tim. ‘I meant with the family. I should play down your opinion of him, if you want to get in with them again.’

  ‘You want me to get in with them again. Apart from Cristobel, I shall rest happy if I see nary a one of them again for the rest of my life. As far as what I say or don’t say is concerned, I’ll play it by ear. It’s perfectly possible that by the time he died my father was loathed to desperation by everyone in this house—in which case I won’t get far by applying the soft soap. As I see it, the whole case probably hangs on the state of family relationships at the time of his death.’

  ‘Agreed. By the way, you’ve never told me how you broke with him. Was he brutal?’

  ‘I’d like to have seen him try. I was bigger than him by the time I was thirteen. And to be perfectly fair, as I always am, there was never much of that, even when I was small. His nastiness within the family was always of a much more subtle sort than that. No, the break came partly because I chose a career which did not measure up to the family’s standards of eccentricity. This caused a running battle that went on for several months. Then one day, in the course of this, I came upon my father listening to a rather peculiar record. Remember the Savernake mob?’

  ‘East Enders. Particularly nasty lot. Violent.’

  ‘That’s them. Most of ’em got life about fifteen years ago. There was a lot of gang warfare, and they specialized in getting hold of their opponents and using especially nasty forms of violence on them. Of course nowadays they’ve all got Open University degrees in Sociology and write incomprehensible letters to The Times. Well, my papa had got hold of tape-recordings of their torture sessions, things that were produced at the trial. And when I came on him, listening to them, and gloating, I —’

  But we were interrupted by the chiming of the clock from the Elizabethan wing, a sound well remembered from childhood.

  ‘Well, I suppose you can guess the sort of thing I said. I’ve got to go. If habits haven’t changed in this house, it’s now that The Family gathers for sherry. Sherry and Dinner are always taken together, otherwise they go their own ways. This is my best chance to catch them in the same place, so I shall consider myself on duty, as it were. By the by, do you know how my sister is?’

  ‘Well, she was pretty hysterical, as you can imagine, after she found him. We got a few things out of her—about the time she found him, and so on. But she kept breaking down, so the family doc sedated her and she was put to bed. I think she’s woken up since, but she’s still a bit groggy, I gather.’

  ‘OK. Sister can wait. I’ll go and pour dry sherry and tepid epitaphs over my father’s corpse.’ I looked around the room. ‘Really, after all this, I can’t think of much pleasant to say about him.’

  ‘You haven’t seen the half,’ said Tim. ‘Just come and look at this.’

  He led me over to a far corner, to an apparatus obviously still under construction. It didn’t need much esoteric knowledge to conclude that this was a rack, and probably the work of the same ingenious gentleman who had designed the strappado. But I wasn’t going to let Tim expound the workings of the rack to me: I’d had about as much embarrassment from the extended family as a man wants in one day. I made for the door, but I turned there and said:

  ‘Watch it, Tim. One can develop a relish for that kind of thing. What’s a well-brought-up policeman like you doing, getting involved with a family like mine?’

  CHAPTER 4

  TRETHOWANS AT MEAT

  ‘I’ve been looking,’ said Aunt Sybilla, while Aunt Kate poured me a large sherry, ‘for the printer’s ink. To record your father’s sad death, you know, Perry dear. And it occurs to me that we have entries to mark up about you too, isn’t that right?’

  So: I was helping them; I had paid my subscription. I sipped my sherry (which was wine-seller’s bulk, the sort of thing I drank at home, but decidedly not what used to be drunk in this house) and did my best to respond in friendly kind.

  ‘That’s right, Aunt Sybilla. I am married, and we have a son. But at the moment we are —’

  ‘Oh dear—not separated?’

  ‘Only physically. My wife is doing a degree at Newcastle, and our little boy is with her because my working hours are so unpredictable.’

  ‘Really?’ Aunt Sybilla’s voice resumed some of its usual vinegarish tone. ‘A policeman with a wife doing a degree! Quite original. What is it in—something worthy, and socially relevant, I suppose? Like economics, or sociology?’

  ‘Arabic,’ I said.

  Even Aunt Sybilla could make nothing of Arabic, and she retired for the moment defeated.

  Not all the family had arrived yet. Lawrence was there, and showing some signs that he might be getting over his ‘off day’; at any rate, though saying little, he was managing to clutch a sherry glass and convey it stiffly to his lips now and then with obvious enjoyment. Kate was standing to attention by the mantelpiece, a stance I remembered well, and the only other occupant of the room was Sybilla’s son, my cousin Morrie (which is a ghastly name, but not half so ghastly as Mordred, the name that was inflicted on him at birth).

  Mordred was a smallish man, dressed with a degree of pernicketiness, with a smiling, ingratiating, permanently youthful manner. He was, indeed, very much as I remembered him, on holidays from school—always looking as if he cleaned his teeth three times a day, and worried about ingrowing toenails. Morrie had had, I gathered, various short-term engagements in foreign universities, teaching English, but was now at leisure. What he was doing with his leisure, apparently, was vaguely researching for a book on—alas—the Trethowan family. And the awful fact is, it would probably have quite a good sale. I confess I could never actually like Morrie, but I came close to it when we shook hands and he said: ‘Awfully embarrassing for you, old chap,’ because he was the only member of the family who did seem to understand that.

  It was Morrie who resumed the conversation now.

  ‘It’s terribly good to see you again, Perry, back with us all. I suppose it wouldn’t do to ask you how things are going—over there—’ and he jerked his head in the direction of the Gothic wing.

  ‘I can’t tell you much, I’m afraid. You realize I’m in rather a difficult position—neither fish nor fowl.’

  ‘At least,’ said Sybilla, ‘they will have realized by now that it was an accident.’

  ‘Well, no—’ I began. But Lawrence had suddenly burst into spasmodic life.

  ‘Accident? What was an accident?’ He was so agitated he spilled sherry down his shirt front.

  ‘I’m talking about Leo’s going,’ said Sybilla, her acidulated distinctness intended to contrast with his own slurred articulation. ‘I’m saying that Leo’s going was an accident.’

  ‘Yes. Of course it was an accident. Pure accident.’ Uncle Lawrence subsided slowly, then suddenly said: ‘Has Leo gone, then?’

  ‘Yes, dear. You’ll understand in the morning,’ said Aunt Kate.

  I stuck to my guns after this interruption, and resumed: ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to put the idea of an accident out of your minds. Almost definitely it was murder.’

  ‘Oh, goody,’ said Aunt Kate.

  Aunt Sybilla, however, showed her displeasure. She retreated into the gauzy drapes which were her habitual costume, and sipped her sherry in a pouty way, as if it wasn’t mother’s milk to her. ‘There’s something awfully un-Trethowan about having a policeman in the house, and one of the family, too, talking about murder with such horrible calm.’ She sighed. ‘It’s like one of those television serials, about Liverpool or somewhere. Well, I won’t ask any more tactless questions, but I shall rely on you, Peregrine, to see that the whole thing is over as soon as possible. We are none of us young. Lawrence, in particular, is not younger than the rest of us. We simply can’t stand the fuss and vulgarity of investigations of this sort. Meanwhile, after dinner I shall ring up my friends in Fleet Street.’

  At this point we were interrupted. A door opened somewhere in the distance
and there hit the ears a screaming, thumping din, which gradually came nearer and nearer.

  ‘Oh dear, the Squealies,’ said Aunt Sybilla. ‘Peter’s brood, you know, Perry. They’re only allowed out of their part of the house once a day, at sherry time, so they won’t worry you, or hinder your friend’s investigations.’

  ‘They’re always getting out,’ said Aunt Kate. ‘They need a bit of discipline.’

  I was inclined to agree when the hideous din, like an armoured regiment crossing a railway line, finally landed up with a bump at the sitting-room door, which opened to admit a screeching, fighting, filthy mass of half-clothed juvenile humanity. Each one was passionately conducting three quarrels at once at the top of his voice, the elder ones pushing the faces of the smaller, the smaller kicking the ankles of the elder. As they got into the room their language suddenly changed from street Italian to English. One of them shrilled ‘There’s Gran’pa’, and they swarmed over him like the locusts over Egypt, crying ‘Give me a sweetie, Gran’pa,’ ‘Me too, Gran’pa,’ and the like. And the odd thing was, Uncle Lawrence seemed to like it: he woke up, patted them on the head, said a few ‘Who? Who?’s (understandably, I thought) and began scuffling around in his pockets for sweets. This was clearly a nightly ritual: Aunt Kate had taken Lawrence’s sherry glass and held tight to his chair as soon as the sound of the infant army had been heard in the distance. I confess I did not regard them with anything like Lawrence’s benevolence, except in one vital respect: this ghastly brood, three of them male, made it quite certain I would never inherit the family abode. And that was quite a lot to be grateful for.

  Bringing up the rear of this invasion were the parents. My cousin Peter strolled lazily along, oblivious of the row. He was wearing a denim suit (Oh God! a denim suit!) which he bulged out of fore and aft, over and under. Though hardly a year older than me he had a general surface flab that was nasty—as if he were an Italian paterfamilias of forty or so, of whom years of pasta and sweet cakes had taken their toll (which no doubt was part of the problem with Pete, too). His flab was probably white and jellyfishy, though. His face was set in a self-satisfied sneer: he came over, nodded, said: ‘Heard you were back, Perry,’ with a notable lack of enthusiasm, then went and poured himself a drink.

  He was followed by his wife. You won’t need to be told that she was pregnant again.

  All I’d heard about Maria-Luisa was of her origins: her father had been a Spanish or Portuguese gypsy, her mother a Sicilian peasant, bastard daughter of a German tourist. All Europe had contributed to the making of Maria-Luisa, and you’d have thought all Europe could have made a better job of it. She was fat, slovenly, foul-tempered, with a large vocabulary of Latin abuse but not, apparently, a single word of English. She understood it, though, giving Sybilla yet further chances of employing her condescending, over-distinctly articulated tone of voice.

  ‘Grappa Julia, Maria-Luisa? Oh dear, we’re out. I must tell McWatters to reorder. Will you have a Cinzano?’

  Maria-Luisa muttered bitterly, then said: ‘Si.’

  We were not introduced. But over her drink she stared at me with frank peasant curiosity.

  So here I was, in the bosom of my family. That is all the family you will be introduced to for the moment, except for my sister Cristobel, and I can tell you, standing there with the whole lot around me—not to mention the family portraits alternately lowering and simpering from the walls—made me as uneasy as a mouse at a cat’s tea-party. This was what I had been running away from for fourteen years, and now suddenly I found I had run full circle and here I was again in the middle of them, being watched, appraised, and no doubt found wanting. It wasn’t that I felt they were a whole lot more intelligent than I am: it would be false modesty to pretend I did. But I did think they were a whole lot more cunning, and what’s more they were a whole lot better in the picture as far as the murder was concerned. What if they were all in it—had ganged up together for some odd Trethowanish reason? I think my cousin Pete sensed my uneasiness, because he said nastily: ‘Well, it takes a death to bring the family together, doesn’t it?’

  Two of them, at least, felt the need to cover this over a bit, and Mordred said, ‘Anyway, it’s good to have you back, Perry,’ and Aunt Kate said, ‘It’s just as if you never went away.’ (Oh, no, it’s not, Aunt Kate. Not for me.)

  ‘Life is strange,’ mused Sybilla, who was a dab hand with a platitude. ‘Who would have thought, last evening, that within twenty-four hours we would have lost one, and gained one!’

  Maria-Luisa, for some reason, let out a raucous, spiteful laugh.

  ‘What had my father been like, these last few days?’ I asked. ‘Perfectly normal?’

  ‘Perfectly well,’ said Sybilla, understandably rejecting my adjective. ‘In the pink of health. Otherwise he would hardly have —’

  ‘No. Quite,’ I said. ‘What had his life been like, in the years since I was here? You must remember that I know very little of his routines.’

  ‘Oh, not much changed. He pottered a little in the garden—we only have two men there now. He liked a trip to London now and then: his club, the bookshops—you know. He did a little composing—he was never one of those fertile geniuses, though, was he? Then we all have to chip in a bit in the house these days. Really a terrible bore, but what can we do? The McWatters are all we have living in, and they insist on two days off a week.’

  ‘Awfully inconsiderate of them,’ I said.

  ‘We take it in turns to cook,’ put in Kate.

  ‘That’s right,’ resumed Sybilla. ‘Maria-Luisa gives us some of her interesting Italian and Iberian dishes. The oily tang of the South—so refreshing! Then Mordred was in Sweden for a time, you know, and he does some enchanting things with herrings. And then Kate, too —’

  ‘I cooked last night,’ burbled Kate, full of herself. ‘I go in for interesting combinations. Most cooks are so unadventurous. I gave them meat-loaf with caramel sauce. Everyone said it was scrumptious!’

  For the first time I felt a twinge of pity for my father. To go to Hell with a belly full of meat-loaf and caramel sauce was a fate worse than even I would wish on him.

  ‘It was quite delicious, Kate dear,’ said Sybilla, winking at me. ‘So your father had his day as well —’

  ‘It was always tinned ham and salad,’ said Kate, pressing her superiority. ‘That was almost cheating. And Chrissy had to wash the salad things.’

  ‘Well, he did his best. As we all do. Except poor Lawrence, who since his stroke really can’t manage his arms and legs well enough, even on his good days.’

  ‘My poor old Pop, he ain’t what he used to be,’ said Pete, with a wholly synthetic sympathy. ‘My poor old Pop has been through it.’

  ‘Been through it?’ suddenly boomed Lawrence from his wheelchair, where he had apparently been dozing happily. ‘By God, yes. By God we went through it. Nobody who wasn’t in the trenches can have an idea of what it was like. That’s what I tried to convey: “The mud, the mud, the blend of earth and gore!”; “The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells”. That’s what it was like! A living hell! You young people know nothing! Nothing!’

  It was my uncle’s habit, as the observant of you may have noted, to mingle a line or two of his own turgid sonnets with lines by more talented poets of the First World War. It was only years after I left home, when I started dipping into histories and memoirs of the time, that I discovered the true authors of lines I’d known from boyhood, and had been convinced were the work of Lawrence Trethowan.

  Lawrence’s reawakening did not go unnoticed by the Squealies, who had been fighting happily among themselves in the far corner, but now regathered to clamber all over him and pick his pockets of ‘sweeties’. Luckily, in the midst of this nauseating performance McWatters came in to announce dinner, and their mother collected them up in her brawny arms and removed them to their own wing, squeaking and bawling until the door was finally shut on them and it felt like Armistice Day, 1918.

  As w
e all trooped in to dinner, Sybilla took my arm in her bony claw and whispered: ‘You needn’t worry. None of us is “on” tonight. Mrs McWatters is a jewel.’

  And certainly the food, though traditional, was first rate. But we were an ill-assorted gathering to eat it. Maria-Luisa talked only to her husband, keeping up a constant stream of comment, complaint and imprecation in what sounded like gutter Italian, probably with bits of something else thrown in (at any rate, it certainly didn’t sound to my ears like the Tuscan language spoken by a Roman tongue). Pete just said ‘si’ and ‘no’ and ‘basta’, and looked bored and contemptuous, though he forked his food in with enthusiasm. I had relieved Aunt Kate of the job of wheeling Lawrence in, and when I had placed him at the head of the table he had looked round and said: ‘Capable young chap. Who is he?’ Then he had relapsed into concentrated eating. McWatters had left two tureens of soup on the table, and we served ourselves.

  ‘Not what you were used to in other days, Perry dear,’ said Sybilla, leaning over almost intimately. ‘We thought it was difficult with servants then, but now it’s simply impossible!’

  ‘It wouldn’t be like this if we had won the war!’ suddenly barked Aunt Kate.

  There was an immediate silence round the table, even from Maria-Luisa, who evidently understood more than might have been expected. They all looked at me, to see how I would take it. Me, I was used to my Aunt Kate, and her unorthodox arrangement of loyalties. I went on eating my soup. The atmosphere relaxed.

  ‘Dear Kate!’ sighed Sybilla. ‘There’s a touch of her old self back tonight!’

  I smiled briefly. ‘You’re all very much as I remember you, you know. And it sounds as if my father hadn’t changed greatly. You don’t think he had any special worries when he died, do you?’

  ‘Dear me, no,’ said Sybilla, vaguely, the drape around her wrist trailing in the soup. Then she perked up. ‘But he might easily have had some that we didn’t know about. Do you think he took his own life?’