“No, sir.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Then let me put it this way, sir. Which clause would you think might offer the most rewarding prospect?”
“Damned if I know. No, that’s not true. Number seven, I suppose. Punch was after that, was he? Oh, come on, Helder—stop playing games with me. I want help and I want it from you—and I don’t care if there’s only the flimsiest chance of turning up something. I want those bastards out of the Hall.” Helder smiled broadly. “Remarkable—I mean the family likeness. I refer to your last sentence. Only—there is a slight difference. Mister Harry went further, and added—I’ve an idea what I can get under clause seven and I want you to get me the means to record it.”
“You said record?”
“I did, sir.”
“By what means?”
“Technical, of course. Sight and sound recording.”
“To be used where?”
“There could only be one place, I imagine, Mr Seyton. Though to be sure Mister Harry didn’t say as much. At the Hall.”
Seyton drew a deep breath. He realized now that Helder, out of some long-established quirk of character, was enjoying himself. Maybe he always had to have that to compensate for the work he did which, on any level, could only be described as sordid. So, his own growing exasperation forcing him to it, he said bluntly and vigorously, “All right, Helder. You’ve had your fun. And, by God, I see why you need it at times. But now cut out all the bloody nonsense. I’ve got an account rendered at home against Punch from a firm in Hampshire . . . Andover, I think. They’re photographic and high fidelity specialists. It’s for a fair bit, too.”
“Simmonds—Andover?”
“That’s it.”
“Well, the man who runs it won’t be fussing about the money. He knows a good customer when he serves one. And, anyway——” Helder smiled avuncularly, “——I took the liberty of phoning him with the sad news about Mister Harry, but assured him that you would settle in the fullness of time. I hope that was not a liberty, sir?”
For a moment or two Seyton stared at Helder, not in amazement, but in the ambivalent hold of shock which was compounded of quick excitement and also a fierce rising confusion of thought.
Then, not wanting to over-betray himself at this point to Helder, he said very deliberately, “Punch bought photographic and recording gear to use at the Hall?”
“Yes, Mr Seyton. Bought or hired.”
“So it may be there still?”
“One might presume that, sir. Or should presume it, perhaps.”
“I bloody well do presume it.” Then, acknowledging the slow lift which was taking his spirits to optimistic levels . . . like a man, perhaps, seeing or imagining the pin prick of light at the end of a tunnel, he said, “Perhaps you’d like another drink, Mr Helder?”
“That’s kind of you, sir. Yes, I would. Also—since with every respect—I may say that I am more experienced in these matters than you are, and know the possibility of hidden pitfalls, I would suggest that when you get back you tear up the account from the worthy and highly expert Mr Simmonds of Andover. I will settle it for you and include it in my fee which your splendid Miss Figgins will settle in cash with me eventually.”
“Of course.” Then, smiling, Seyton added, “And, of course, you have no more to tell me?”
Helder lightly fingered the knot of his black tie and stayed silent until the club waiter whose eye Seyton had caught had brought their drinks and departed. Then he said, “No more facts, Mr Seyton. Some advice. Tread gently and do what you must, but take no one into your confidence.”
“Not even you?”
“Least of all me. If anyone should ever ask me why I met you here—and it could happen in this devious world—I shall say that you wanted whatever private information I could supply about the Felbeck Governors. A perfectly legitimate curiosity on your part since it is or will soon be no secret that you would like, if possible, to break the lease, one way or another.”
CHAPTER SIX
IT WAS, THOUGHT Kerslake, a neat little bungalow. He had driven past it the day before, merely to establish where it was. Now, he could take all the time he chose for no matter how far her association with Seyton might have gone there was no risk of any untoward play of coincidences . . . a play which operated far more often than people imagined . . . as Seyton was safely in London since yesterday.
Early wallflowers coloured the beds on either side of the door. That she was at home was clear for her car was parked outside the neat asbestos garage. In the centre of the small patch of mown lawn was a bird-table with bread crusts, bird seed and a hanging half-coconut from which a tit flew away as he went up to the door; a coal tit. He was born and raised a countryman. The bell push operated a set of chimes inside and he smiled to himself, knowing they would not be her style. The old gamekeeper’s cottage was her scene.
She came to the door wearing close-fitting green slacks and a crumpled, stained studio half-coat open over a loose khaki shirt and her auburn hair was a little ruffled. Although the clothes did nothing for her—except to suit her style of work—she looked good, very good. In the moment or two before either spoke, he thought—I could have stayed in Barnstaple, solid cop, and had someone like this to take to the annual Rugby Club dance, and other things . . . a parked car on the sand dunes, maybe a small bungalow like this at Instow with the piping of oyster catchers for music in the early morning when we woke. No regrets. Just a few thoughts, shredding away like tobacco smoke in a breeze.
She said, “Good Lord! What are you doing here?”
“It’s all right. Your Mr Seyton is in London. Or was two hours ago. Not even he could drive that fast. Even supposing he would be coming here. Do we talk here?”
She stood aside and he went past her.
She said, “Straight ahead. The kitchen.”
It was small, neat, clinical almost and without comfort. An electric kettle began to whistle. On the table was a tray with a mug, milk, sugar and a jar of Nescafe. She waved him to a chair, bentwood but cushioned, and offered him coffee.
“No, thanks.”
She made coffee for herself and went and perched herself on a high stool by the sink, and then said, “You didn’t answer the question. What are you doing here?”
“Sight-seeing. The powers that be decided I should have a look at the ground. Pay a visit to the Hall. Which I did today.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“I went round and was duly impressed. I can tell a cope from a chasuble and my grandfather lived in a half-timbered house in a poor part of Barnstaple which was standing when Drake went out to take on the Armada. I’m staying at the Talbot Hotel in Leominster and I shan’t get in your way. But you send your reports to London just the same. So—what has happened since Seyton invited you in to see his pictures?”
“Nothing.”
“No meeting? No seeing—even at a distance?”
“Only once. He drove by in the Land Rover and gave me a wave of the hand and toot on the horn. Gould that be significant?”
“Doesn’t rank in the Mata Hari class.” He meant it as a joke. She had her legs crossed, the mug of coffee cradled in her lap, and his imagination—taking him unawares—reconstituted the picture without the slacks.
Flatly she said, “Bugger your Mata Haris.”
He gave a little laugh and a shrug of his shoulders. To his surprise he was enjoying himself—which was rare, but when it started there was no stopping it, only concealment. He said, “If you wish. You use field glasses, don’t you? For your work. Observation and all that? No comment to be seen carrying them?”
“I always have them and sometimes use them. No comment, as you say. And, for Christ’s sake, why don’t you come to the point? Old Quint is bad enough but at least he’s amusing with it. And why don’t you look at me and not my legs when I talk to you?”
He liked that, but made no show of it. Lifting his eyes to her breasts, he saw them naked and then, recog
nizing danger, with little effort switched off this extra-curricular pleasure and said, “For the supposed purposes of your work do you think you could go up to a high place—I noticed one or two such—and use your glasses unostentatiously?”
“Up to a point, yes. And what would I watch?”
“Seyton, of course. The Dower House. Comings and goings. Cars calling there. Type, registration numbers if the glasses will give them, and descriptions of callers. Don’t make a big thing of it. Don’t over-do it. And don’t try to assess the importance of anything. Just let us have the facts and we’ll do the rest. Have you got a good memory for faces?”
For a moment she was silent. Although Kerslake made her angry now and then—and this because of her own predicament more than any overt word or act on his part—there was something about him now, she realized, that stirred some first movings of pity . . . something she had known with her father and Quint . . . in fact, the whole bloody lot. The fact that he was sitting there, slowly undressing her in his imagination, meant nothing. With some men you could always tell when it was happening and you made or did not make whatever you chose of it. Underneath everything though she knew—or guessed?—or divined?—a process which her father had made familiar to her, though he had little guessed it. It existed in embryo in this man. Self-disgust working in slow motion. Sometimes the growth died. Sometimes it flowered. Smiling now, she slewed round on the stool, not caring what of legs or thighs or breasts emboldening her blouse she presented and took from the kitchen draining board a house-keeping pad with a pencil clipped to it.
She said, “You went over the Hall today? Yes? A guide took you round. Nice little man but a hustler. Well. . .” As she was speaking she was sketching rapidly. “Here he is for you.”
She tore the top sheet from the pad and handed it to him, and the look that came on to his face amused her.
He looked up at her and said, “That’s marvellous!” He could have been a small boy, delighted by some sleight of hand. “You just do as many of these as you can and make a note of how often or infrequently they call.”
“I see—and when am I going to get my own work done?”
He grinned. “You know what your real work is. You’ll have to fit the other in.”
“As you say, sir.”
He laughed, the sound surprising him. He was more surprised when she went to the front door with him and, as he was on the point of leaving, said, “Why do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“You know what. My father was a near scratch golfer. He suddenly gave it up. When I asked him why—he absolutely adored it—he said he hadn’t given it up. It had given him up.”
“I’m not with you.”
“Oh, yes you bloody well are. Why don’t you come back in and undress me properly?”
For a moment Kerslake, the whole of his body taut with anguish, could have hit her. Then he said, “All right, you know why. It just happened after the first time that I ever put someone out of circulation. Like your father. The real thing just gave me up. But it will come back one day—I trust. Hilarious, isn’t it?”
He walked away down the garden path, and left her hating herself.
* * * *
Seyton stayed a further night in London after the evening on which he had met Helder since he had unavoidable business discussions and decisions to make with Max Beaton who was running the London office for him. He and Max were very close and once or twice Seyton—feeling the need for some reliable confidant—was tempted to talk to him about the information which Helder had given him, but in the end decided against it. Curiously enough, because he felt that Helder—had he been consulted—would have positively advised against it. Helder’s world had no place for unsought or whimsical intimacies. You kept information to yourself until you could either sell it profitably or use it for your own purposes. There had never been anything like that between himself and Punch; they knew all about one another, and took comfort or strength in sharing confidences or problems. Which was curious, he thought, as he drove back to the Hall through a blustery April day, because if Punch had really got hold of something which would break the Felbeck lease then why the devil had he not written or got in touch with him about it? No matter his own wanderings, sooner or later a letter or an overseas call would have found him. Good Lord . . . old Punch going so far as to be playing around with all that technical equipment. Something must have stirred him up, and that something had to be positive. Punch would never have chased any hopeless hare. Not that technicalities would have given Punch any trouble. He loved gadgets and only had to be shown once how to work something and it stuck. Spent hours tinkering with old clocks, radio sets . . . his big hands suddenly possessed with the sureness of a surgeon’s. Well, one thing was for sure—and the thought gave him a big lift—all that stuff from helpful Mr Simmonds of Andover had to be around somewhere, and he was going to find it.
He made a detour on the way back and called to see Nancy. He had tea with her and, in the course of it, she said, “Have you had an invitation to the Harecastle do at Clyro this month?”
“Yes, I have. You’re going too, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll go together. I’ll take you over.”
“Thank you, sir.” And then, her blue eyes quizzically on him, she went on, “Where are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you. Something’s on your mind. Not business, because you’re always poker-faced about that. But kind of small boy stuff. Ants in your pants from suppressed excitement. Oh, it’s all right. Most other people wouldn’t spot it. But you let it slip a bit with me. Do I get to know?”
“If there was anything to tell, I’d tell you. But there isn’t.”
“Liar. But we’ll leave it at that.”
Almost as an excuse, though there was truth in it, he said, “It’s all this Hall business. I can’t stand the thought of those sods being there for years . . .”
“You’ll get used to it. What can’t be cured . . .”
Driving away he wondered if he should have told her, and then knew that it would have been unwise. He was going to trust no one until he knew much more about things himself. Bloody old Punch, ferreting away and never letting on . . . Suddenly he had one of his now rarer and rarer spasms of longing for Ruth. He could have talked to her, discussed things, and asked for help or comfort and known that no confidence would ever be broken. In business you could easily keep things to yourself because fundamentally all that was involved was money—which in the long run didn’t mean a damn. Though, by God—he grinned to himself—it was nice to have.
As he went up the drive to the Dower House, the evening shadows long now as the sun was setting behind the distant hills of Wales, a familiar car came towards him and, on an impulse, sudden, but backed by reason, he blew his horn and then stopped and waved it down. As she came alongside him and leaned through the window the red sunlight took her hair and turned it to flame.
“Packing up for the day?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve just got back from town. I wonder . . . would you care to come in for a drink? I’ve got something to tell you. Just a quick one, yes?”
“I’d be very happy to.”
Why not, she thought, the farther you’re away from earth the nearer you are to heaven, and he was heaven of a kind, her reward if she could make it so, and life so much easier for dear Daddy. And—oh, Christ, anyway, she was really getting sick of this business. It was ridiculous and demeaning. Why should she have to be even mildly accommodating to people like Kerslake, pretend to be amused (sometimes) by Quint, and be stuck with a Mata Hari role with this lusty shoot of the landed gentry? Not that she’d achieved anything real here yet, but every chance offering had to be gratefully—if not fulsomely—acknowledged.
He left his car with hers and they walked to the front door together. As he unlocked it and let them in she said, “Your housekeeper?”
“Ma Shipley? This
is her day off.” He smiled, reaching to take her raincoat before she was adjusted to aid the courtesy. “She and Shipley go off to Hereford for the afternoon . . . shopping and what have you. Then they stay on for the night’s bingo sessions. Bow down and worship Bingo. Who says we don’t have our native gods?”
She caught what she thought might be the edge of excitement, or something in him because his manner, rising like an unexpected zephyr, was a little forced. Basic shyness? Or perhaps the unexpected prospect of being able to force the tiny tip of growth she had divined in him when he had shown her the Hattons. Well, what or whichever, she must serve her masters and get—why not—all the pleasure she could from it. . . him? Crudely, a damn sight more potential than, say, someone like Kerslake could offer. Poor sod—and she knew her pity was real—turning assassin and castrating himself. She briefly, as he showed her into the study, wondered, if successful, how the gods would mark her.
He said, just touching her arm to seat her in a chair, “Hang on a tick. I’ll get some ice and—would you like crisps or a biscuit?”
“No, thanks.”
When he was gone she stood up and walked to a small gilt mirror that hung between the two main windows. She briefly touched her hair and smoothed down the front of her none too fresh working pullover. There was a Napoleonic Imperial eagle over the top of the mirror and the glass was slightly foxed. Been in the family, she thought bitchily, since the day old Boney was shipped aboard the Belerophon and the imperial dream crumbled into rubble. Suddenly the possible, distant prospect of getting into bed with Seyton in the line of duty made her feel rebellious. To disperse it she allowed herself the balm of the first obscene swear word that came to her mind and then felt better to the extent that she told herself that it probably would not be too bad. Good even. Splendid perhaps. The triumph of the flesh over spirit. Good old Mother Nature. Oh, what the hell and blast you Daddy Collet!
She gave him a warm, but nicely calculated smile as he came back carrying a tray.
The Satan Sampler Page 12
