Death by Sheer Torture

by Robert Barnard

  ‘He said wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could . . .’

  Oh, my God! Don’t they teach you anything in the Guides? I held my temper with great difficulty.

  ‘Right. That’s the first thing I’ve at last got straight in my mind. Now for the second. You received a letter, Chris, from Mother, sent by her lawyers, I’d guess on your twenty-first birthday.’ She looked obstinate, but shifty. She also looked scared of what was coming. ‘I think it very unlikely that Mother, when she was dying, would have written a last letter to you, but not one to me. I believe that a similar letter had also been sent to me, earlier, on my twenty-first birthday. It must have been sent by the lawyers to this house, where it was intercepted by Father—out of spite, or for some other reason. He could have destroyed it, but I don’t believe he did. Chris, I think you know of this letter, and I think you know where it is.’

  ‘You’re talking in riddles,’ said Chris shortly. ‘I’ve never heard of any letters.’

  ‘Chris, don’t be entirely dim. When you got yours you went around talking about it to people. Naturally. Everyone in the house knows you got it. I’ve only got to get on the phone to Mother’s lawyers to confirm it.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about any letter to you.’

  ‘I think you do. That’s why you lied about receiving one yourself. You knew I’d wonder why she hadn’t written to me too. Chris: she was our mother. We both loved her. I’ve got a right to know what she wrote to me. How would you feel if yours had been kept from you? Where is it, Chris?’

  I could see that I had got to her. She had flinched when I spoke. But still she remained obstinately dumb.

  ‘Chris, what do the letters WOAF mean?’

  ‘I think they’re some kind of United Nations organization.’

  ‘God in heaven, Chris—Father didn’t send our mother’s letter to a United Nations agency! Come on: tell me what it means.’

  But she would say nothing, and sat there obstinately looking ahead of her, her eyes wet but determined. When she gets that Christian martyr look on her there’s nothing can shift Chris. I spent a few minutes battering away at her silence, like waves on Beachy Head, but after a bit I had to give up. I stormed off. But it’s not very satisfying to shout ‘You haven’t heard the last of this!’ when you know you’ve been well and truly worsted.

  I suppose it was this feeling of frustration that made me open up to the McWatterses when I found them in the hall. They were puzzling over a pile of wreaths that for some reason had been sent to the house. As it was by no means clear when my revered father (‘An Ornament to British Music’ as one of the wreath-cards put it) would be consigned to the earth, it was difficult to know what to do with them. Finally we decided to ring the family undertaker and get him to come and take them away. But when we’d done that we stood around in the hall for a bit, chewing the cud. McWatters was gently, courteously amused by the whole business, Mrs McWatters was displaying what is usually called a grim relish for the misfortunes of Harpenden.

  ‘Did either of you know,’ I asked, deciding this was one family secret it was quite useless to hide from the domestics, ‘that my sister was pregnant?’

  They looked at each other. ‘Hmmm,’ said Mrs McWatters. ‘We had an idea that Something was Up.’

  ‘The summerhouse,’ said McWatters roguishly, ‘was becoming more popular than its attractions seemed to justify. Even in summer.’

  ‘I see. I guessed they might have met there. Do you think my father knew about it?’

  ‘I’d take a wee bet—were I a betting man, which I am not—that he’d be among the last to hear. There was not much confidence between the young leddy and her father, particularly not in recent weeks.’

  ‘McWatters, Mrs McWatters, you can be frank with me: I really don’t count as a member of the family anymore. You must have overheard a lot of things in this family —’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ said McWatters.

  ‘Mek you hair currrl,’ said Mrs Mac, descending practically into the bass clef.

  ‘Always something going on,’ said McWatters. ‘And us being the only regular staff, not counting the leddies who came by day, we heard a goodly lot of it. I’ve often said to ma wife that a good book could be made of it. But my tastes run more to the visual arrts. And my wife’s religion teaches her to disapprove of fiction as lies.’

  ‘Then what,’ I said, ‘was going on in the weeks before my father died?’

  McWatters shook his head regretfully. ‘I get your drift, sirr, but as I had to tell the other policeman, I don’t rightly know. There was something, right enough. Of course, there was the wee matter of the pictures—you’ve heard about the pictures, I believe?’

  ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Yes. Who would you think took them?’

  ‘We-e-ll,’ said McWatters, ‘I wouldna’ mek accusations, but talking it over, the two of us, we cam’ to the conclusion that, psychologically speaking —’

  ‘It was Master Peter!’ said his wife triumphantly. ‘Not a scruple in his body! As your puir sister has no doubt found out!’

  ‘I’m not quite sure she’s faced up to that discovery yet,’ I said. ‘But you don’t think the pictures were the root of the trouble?’

  ‘Naw, I do not. Because the pictures thing had begun to blow over. But your late father—God rest his soul, but I ha’ ma doots—certainly had something on. He was all excited. Pleased as a cock sparrow wi’ himself, he was. He got like that, periodically as you might say. Chuffed was the word we used to use in the army. And he was chuffed in those last few days before his life was terrminated. But why he was chuffed, we havena’ been able to put a finger on.’

  ‘You say this happened periodically?’

  ‘Aye. Just now and then. It was a real mystery to us. I’ll not be denying we were itching to find out. Natural human curiosity, you might say. But it was no go.’

  I sighed. ‘Ah well. I suppose neither of you would know anything about a letter my mother wrote to me—wrote before she died, to be given to me when I grew up?’

  They shook their heads regretfully. ‘It’s a good old-fashioned notion, that,’ said Mrs McWatters. ‘But it would be well before our time, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it would. Well, never mind —’

  ‘Ye’ll excuse my asking, sir, but is there anything actually found out about the pictures?’

  ‘Yes. One of them has definitely been located.’

  ‘Ye’ll understand, it’s been a mite awkward, since the discovery that they were missing. They’ve been looking a mite askance, both at my leddy wife and maself. The firrst thing they think of is that the staff is thievin’.’

  ‘I’m sure, McWatters, they trust you absolutely.’

  ‘I’m no’ so sure about that. We’ve had some experiences, ma wife and I, in a previous situation. We were accused by a noble lord of stealing his silver, when we knew his wife was pawning it to spend on immorrral purrposes I would na’ like to put a name to. So we’ve been conscious that there’s been talk, that we’ve been regarrded with the eye of suspicion . . .’

  ‘I think you can be sure that the picture business at least will be cleared up in a day or two,’ I said. I added (though I was not sure they really minded being suspected, but really rather enjoyed contemplating the bottomless depravity of the Trethowan mind): ‘You mustn’t take it too hard, if the family did for a moment wonder . . . After all, living in a disorganized house like this, full of valuable paintings, it wouldn’t be surprising if you’d felt the temptation . . .’

  ‘You think so, sir? Pairsonally, since my time in Italy I’ve never fancied anything later than the Rococo.’

  And, conscious that he had said something that was unlikely to be capped, McWatters led his leddy wife back to the servants’ quarters. I slowly made my way up that long flight of stairs, so wide and so lonely-making—I always felt like the sole person in some megalomaniac’s private opera-house when I walked them. In my bedroom the notebooks and the questions remained, looking rep
roachfully at me for my dereliction of duty. All the old questions were there, unanswered—or, if I had some provisional answers in my mind, they needed that cornerstone, the establishment of motive, before they could be brought out into the daylight. I wrote:

  ‘Why has Chris been lying?’

  and I put down some possible answers: ‘to protect herself?’ ‘to protect her inheritance?’ ‘to protect Peter?’ ‘to protect me???’

  I had seen when I spoke to her that last time that the only thing that really got through to her was when I spoke of our mother, of my right to know what she had wanted to say to me, to tell me. Chris is like that: she’s the sort of person who can only be appealed to on a direct, close, personal level. Larger issues, abstractions, mean nothing to her. Such concepts as Justice are meaningless to her, but the bond between mother and child is the sort of thing that goes straight to her heart. Still, she had resisted it, stuck it out obstinately, and no doubt now she was strengthening her fortifications against future attack.

  And the thing was, in a sense, urgent. If Chris knew where the letter was, she could destroy it. Not, probably, while there were policemen all over the house—and certainly not if, as seemed likely, it was hidden somewhere in the Gothic wing. But when they moved out, and things began to return to normal, then she could get at it again, and then she might simply burn it. I didn’t want that. Not just for the sake of the case. I did want to know what my mother had written to me. I smiled sadly as I thought of her—poor, pale, ill-adapted creature, lying on that sofa, perhaps, and penning some preposterous injunctions totally out of tune with the world of the ’sixties and ’seventies that I in fact grew up into. No doubt it was something along the lines of Christina’s dying letter in The Way of All Flesh, which I had read as a boy, and taken seriously, been moved to tears by. A child could not see the deadly irony behind the letter, anymore than he could see the way Christina’s egotistical fantasizings were laid bare. But I didn’t think my mother’s letter would be like Christina’s. She might well have been a fantasist, but unless my childish perceptions were totally awry she had none of the egotism of poor Butler’s parents whom he so joyously delivered over to public crucifixion. Butler was a very special case, even if he did regard it as the way of all . . .

  The Way of All Flesh! Oh my God, what a fool I’d been! WOAF! Just like my father’s sense of humour, to hide it snuggled next to Christina’s letter. The obvious had been staring me in the face—throwing itself at me only yesterday as I sat in the library, remembering. And I hadn’t tumbled to it, even when I looked along the shelves. I jumped up, dashed from the room, and took those gloomy corridors as if I were pacemaker for Steve Ovett. I was down the stairs three at a time and then through the corridors to the Gothic wing like a flash.

  ‘I’ve had an idea!’ I bellowed to PC Smith as he tried to bar my way.

  I raced up to the library and stood there looking distractedly along the Thackerays, the Dickenses and the George Eliots. There it was, Butler. First edition of 1903. I pulled it down, and as I held it in my hands it fell open at Chapter 25, at Christina’s very letter.

  But the letter from my mother, which had been there, was gone.

  CHAPTER 14

  IN WHICH I HAVE ANOTHER IDEA

  It was a blow, but when I thought about it I felt pretty sure I knew what had happened, though I hadn’t a scrap of evidence to prove it. The letter had been there, and it had been filched by Chris. She had heard about it, or perhaps she had seen father gloating over it, had investigated, found it and read it. Then she had taken it. Why? I did not know, but I did feel gut-sure she had taken it.

  I sat there, on the arm of the library sofa, looking at the volume of Butler open at Christina’s letter to Ernest. Suddenly an extremely interesting idea occurred to me. Was it not conceivable, in fact, that Cristobel had taken it on the very night of the murder? She had talked that first time about coming down to get aspirin because she couldn’t sleep. She had hesitated when she said it. It was possible that the reason she couldn’t sleep was connected with her pregnancy, and hence the hesitation. But it was surely equally possible that she had lain in bed, meditating some decisive action in the matter of the letter; that she had come down to the first floor, got the letter from Butler, and then—what? Destroyed it? But how? There had certainly been no fires in the Gothic wing on the day of the murder. The police had moved in on the same night, and since then nothing had been altered. The grates were perfectly clean. If paper had been burned with matches or a lighter, the police would have picked up traces of it, in ashtray or dustbin. And if she was desperate to destroy it, Chris would certainly not regard tearing up as final enough.

  She must, surely, have hidden it again—if only as a prelude to a more final destruction. And then she had heard, from downstairs, the sound of the machine going . . . On top of the tension involved in the stealing of the letter, it was no wonder the finding of our father had led Chris to her monumental bout of hysterics. The wonder is she didn’t miscarry on the spot.

  There was only one speck of light in the situation as I saw it: this was that since those hysterics, Chris had not set foot in the wing, and could be prevented from doing so now. If necessary we could draft a whole posse of constables from the army currently infesting the house and get them to take the Gothic wing apart. I didn’t want that. There was nothing much here I would grieve for, except the books of my childhood, but since the place was now Chris’s I did hope it could be prevented. I know what a thorough police search can do to a place.

  It was difficult to know what to do next, but as a precaution I went down to warn PC Smith, on the door, that he was to enforce the strictest of bans on anybody unauthorized coming into the Gothic wing, and that the main door was to be guarded twenty-four hours a day. No doubt this was in any case supposed to be the rule, but Lawrence’s gardeners had got in, no doubt during one of PC Smith’s trips to the loo, or to get a bite to eat, and it would do no harm to underline the orders as heavily as I knew how. It was odd, giving orders to PC Smith, who had chased me out of orchards in my youth. I reflected that if I’d tried to join the police at the time I’d left home, and if they’d contacted him, he would probably have told them that I was a young tearaway and not at all the type they were after. PC Smith was not of the brightest, and would probably never have understood my need to break out after my dreary childhood at and around my mother’s death-bed.

  ‘What’s going on in there?’ I said, to break the ice a bit after I’d laid down the law, and jerking my head in the direction of the Torture Chamber.

  ‘Him as made that there Indian rope trick arrangement,’ said PC Smith. ‘The Superintendent phoned him, and he turned up half an hour ago, bold as brass and twice as cocky.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘He wasn’t a furtive little man in a mac, then?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Smith, bewildered. ‘Sun’s shining today, sir.’

  ‘So it is. Well, I’d better go in and have a look at him. After all, he’s the one who made all this possible.’

  ‘Quite an ordinary-looking chap,’ said PC Smith, as if deeply disappointed.

  And he was right. Mr Ramsay Percival was a sharp, jolly little man, running to fat and to baldness, but with a chirpy manner that even his presence in the same room as his ropey contraption could not dampen.

  ‘Well, well, you must be Mr Peregrine, the poor old fellow’s son,’ he said, getting up from his chair on the wrong side of Tim Hamnet’s improvised desk and coming over with his hand outstretched. I took it. It’s not often you get the chance of shaking hands with the man who’s indirectly killed your father.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Your name? It’s in all the papers,’ he said. ‘Big Perry. Picture in the Northerner. Your aunt says you have a razor-sharp mind like all the Trethowans. She’s a genius, that old bird. Marvellous story this is making. Shouldn’t wonder if it doesn’t prove a real gold-mine for me.’

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder either,’
I said. ‘Do you have a wide circle of clients, or were you living off my father?’

  ‘By no means. I do very nicely—keep myself busy, which is as much as anybody wants, isn’t it? Of course, I could expand, but at my time of life who wants to become a tycoon?’

  ‘Tell me,’ I said, gesturing him back into the chair and coming over to stand by Tim, ‘how you came to go into this line of business.’

  ‘Just what I was about to tell the Super here,’ he said cheerily, deciding to sit on the corner of the desk. ‘Well, three or four years ago, I got the sack. Made redundant, they called it, but it didn’t take the sting out of it. Getting the sack is pretty much of a facer when you’re pushing fifty, I can tell you. Doesn’t give you much to look forward to in the years before you start to pick up your pension. Now, I’ve always been a handy, inventive sort of chap, all my life. Now and then I’d knocked up a few little things for my friends. Ingenious little devices of one sort or another, you know. Well, I started picking up the odd bit of extra like that, supplementing the dole, like. Now, one day I was in the local—the Earl Grey in Edward Short Street—and I was telling some blokes about this sprinkler thing I’d made for my mate’s garden—smart little thing, it was, that moved itself round automatically and watered the whole garden while he was at work. Well now, the next time I goes to the bar for a refill, this chap comes up to me —’

  ‘Leo Trethowan?’ asked Hamnet.

  ‘No, no. Not in the Earl Grey in Edward Short Street. No, well, this chap—I won’t tell you his name—came up to me, asked if he could buy me a drink. He took me away into a corner and asked if I was interested in doing a job for him. The fact was, it was a little pain-giving thing called Pain Forty Dure, if you’ll pardon my French. Don’t know if you’ve heard of it, you gents?’ He looked round at us cheerily. We looked noncommittal, and he seemed disappointed in us.

  ‘Well, he was a nice bloke, kink apart, and when I’d made the thing, and given every satisfaction, he said, why didn’t I try it for a living? He suggested I put an ad in one or two of the S-and-M and fladge publications. Well, I wasn’t too sure what he meant—thought it might be some kind of trade publication. But I got him to do it for me, and quite frankly, I’ve never looked back. Always something new to test my ingenuity, some little quirk or oddity to be catered for, and that’s what makes it such a satisfying profession.’