Past Caring - Retail

by Robert Goddard

  “Seems a funny time to come visitin’.”

  “I was anxious to see Ambrose.”

  “Why might that be?”

  Surprise was turning to impatience. “Don’t you think that’s my business, officer?”

  The constable nodded. “Ordinarily, it would be, sir. But …”

  “But what?”

  “I’m investigating an unexplained death, so …”

  Panic flared in me. “Whose death?”

  “Ambrose Strafford’s.”

  “How?”

  “’E drowned in the river last night. Seems to ’ave toppled over the bridge on ’is way back from The Greengage. Drunk, we think.”

  For a moment, I couldn’t think or speak. Ambrose drowned? It was impossible, inconceivable. Yet stolid policemen don’t lie. “Last night?”

  “Seems so, sir. Estate worker goin’ into Barrowteign found ’im first light this mornin’. ’Eard his dog ’owlin’ and found old Ambrose among some tree roots in the shallows by the bank, near the bridge.”

  I was too late – only, it seemed, a matter of hours too late. Ambrose, alive, hearty, drinking his fill at The Greengage, then – drowned, a shape in the water, by the dawn shore drifting. It was awful – but an accident? After all his portents, all his warnings? That was too much. “How do you know what happened?”

  “We don’t, sir. Leastways, not till we get the results of the post mortem. But it seems obvious. Ambrose liked his cider, drank a lot last night and fetched up in the river. It’s pretty shallow under the bridge, so ’e must ’ave been far gone when ’e fell in. ’Cept …”

  “Except what?”

  “‘Cept ’e’s been rabbitin’ on ’bout strangers threatenin’ ’im recently.”

  All my hopes forbade me to believe I or Ambrose could be denied by some grotesque accident. So Ambrose drank. Well, he drank every night of his life and never had any trouble negotiating the bridge before. I felt the same way he felt about his uncle’s death. Whole families can’t be accident-prone. But strangers can bundle old men off bridges or onto railway lines. A thrill of horror lanced through my shock. If I’d not been blind or stupid or both, I could have foreseen this, foretold it for certain by the graven shape of the Straffords’ tragedy. Suddenly, Ambrose’s death was fitting – and that only made it worse. When I spoke – shouted almost – at the constable, I was voicing my despair. “Perhaps you should have listened to him. Don’t you see this was no accident?”

  The constable remained calm. “No sir, I don’t. But that ain’t my job. What is, is to question strangers who turn up at the deceased’s ’ouse at crack of dawn without explanation.”

  “You can question me – by all means. But I’m not a stranger – wasn’t a stranger – to Ambrose.”

  “You’re a stranger to me, sir – to the village.”

  “My name’s Martin Radford. I came here just after Easter to research the history of the family who owned Barrowteign. I met Ambrose and he told me all he could. I came back at his invitation.”

  “What for?”

  I decided to keep that to myself. “I’ll never know now.”

  “If you say so, sir. I think I’ll ’ave to take a statement.”

  I didn’t object – why should I? We went through into the kitchen and sat either side of the table I’d once shared with Ambrose. There were still knives and plates on it, with breadcrumbs and flakes of tobacco scattered around and a tea towel slung over one corner. The old, encrusted frying pan stood on the range, with a lining of set fat, and there was washing-up in the sink. It seemed incredible that Ambrose’s cosy shambles of a world – proud and prickly fastness of the last of the Straffords – had lost its master.

  The constable pulled out a notebook and laboriously pencilled in my account of meeting Ambrose. I told him of the mystery of Strafford’s death in 1951 – that Ambrose and I both believed it wasn’t an accident. I said I thought both deaths had the same explanation, but I went no further. Even in my shock at this loss, I didn’t utter wild accusations, didn’t venture what I couldn’t prove. I said nothing about the Couchmans, the Memoir or the Postscript. It was my duty to record that Ambrose wasn’t just a foolish old drunkard who got himself drowned, but I never really expected the police to believe anything else.

  “And you say the landlord of The Greengage can corroborate this?”

  “Yes – in part.”

  “Well, I’ll check with ’im. Then I’ll get your statement typed up and see if my inspector wants to ’ave a chat with you. Where will you be over the next few days?” I gave him the Bennetts’ address in Exeter. “All right, sir, I’ll be in touch.”

  “Is that it?”

  “What else would you expect?”

  “Ambrose spoke of threats. Then he dies mysteriously. Shouldn’t …”

  The constable rose massively from his chair. “It’s not so much of a mystery, sir. You go talkin’ that way and people’ll think you’re as nutty as old Ambrose.”

  I got up too. “Okay. I get the message. I must be on my way.” I moved towards the hall. “Found anything here?”

  “Nothing that need concern you, sir.”

  “I see.” Only I didn’t, and nor did he. Where was the Postscript? I couldn’t ask this man and he wouldn’t have told me if I had. He wouldn’t have understood what I was driving at, couldn’t have comprehended the stark disappointment of an empty, grieving cottage after the lure of a letter sparkling with life. I walked out into the morning air, changed by the knowledge of Ambrose’s death, telling myself that old men who knock back the cider do tend to be a danger to themselves but hearing, all the time, another voice, in aged, grating tones, which said insistently, and all too credibly, “Don’t let ’em fool you. Do you really think it could happen again?” There, in the garden, as I looked at the old track bed and remembered the prelude to another accident, I realized that, no, I didn’t believe in lightning striking twice, and I wasn’t going to let Ambrose die for nothing. I returned to the main drive and hurried to the bridge.

  I leant heavily on the wall, feeling a strange mixture of sickness and elation, sick with shock and sadness that Ambrose was dead, elated – in a way which appalled me but couldn’t be denied – by the rush of knowledge that something had at last happened. My investigations had begun to bear their bitter fruit. But how? Why? With Ambrose gone, I was further than ever from the answers.

  I walked disconsolately up to the crossroads, then on into the village. The place was quiet, still gathering itself together for the business of the day. Despite the hour, I made for The Greengage, reckoning Ted, the landlord, could give me as good an impression as anybody of what had happened.

  There was no sign of life at the front, but I could hear movement in the yard behind the pub, so walked round and found Ted stacking crates, with the cellar door open. He looked up and nodded recognition.

  “I’ve heard about Ambrose,” I said.

  “Bad business,” Ted grunted. “I told the police ’bout you.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cos old Ambrose, ’e was bothered ’bout strangers – always ’ad been, you knows that. So I told ’em ’bout you, ’cos you are one.” He slammed an empty crate on top of the rest and leant on the pile. “Seemed the least I could do.”

  I knew what he meant. In his clumsy way, Ted had done his best by Ambrose and didn’t mind letting me know he’d named me as a suspicious stranger. So I was, for all he knew. “Ambrose wasn’t afraid of me.”

  “Reckon not.”

  “But somebody else?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Could we go inside and talk about it?”

  “Okay.” He led me through the back door of the pub into the bar, dark and not yet ready for trade, with chairs upside down on tables. He pulled two down for us, then, without a word, drew two pints of cider from the barrel Ambrose must have supped from the night before and set them between us. “’Ere’s to the ol’ bugger,” he said and quaffed some.

 
I drank some of mine. “I came down to see him.”

  “I know. ’E said you would. ’E were impatient to see you.”

  “Pity I didn’t get here sooner.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “What happened?”

  “We don’t know. ’E were in ’ere as usual last night. Next I knew were when George Ash – our local bobby – woke me up a few hours ago. They’d found Ambrose in the river and George wanted to check if ’e’d been in ’ere aforehand. ’E ’ad Jess with ’im – we’ve taken the animal in for the time being.”

  “I met Constable Ash at the cottage. He reckoned Ambrose fell in, drunk, and drowned.”

  Ted grunted. “I’d ’ave said that myself, but Ambrose were a fly bugger – nobody’s fool – and ’e dain’t spend a lifetime suppin’ cider without bein’ able to walk ’ome blindfold. ’E ’ad no more ’an ’is usual last night, an’ besides …”

  “Yes?”

  “You know all that guff ’e used to talk about ’is uncle – strangers ’avin’ ’ad a ’and in ’is death?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, it were strange, but last night ’e seemed sort of … anxious. ’E asked if I remembered some bloke who came in at lunchtime and sat alone in a corner. Did I recognize ’im? ’Course I dain’t. People just drop in if they’re passin’, specially at weekends. I told Ambrose as much, but ’e insisted this bloke ’ad been watchin’ ’im, though ’e’d said nothin’ about it at the time. Said ’e’d seen ’im hangin’ round Lodge Cottage durin’ the day and thought ’e knew ’im from somewhere, though ’e couldn’t be certain.”

  “Did this character show up last night?”

  “Not as I knows.”

  Who was it, Ambrose? I thought. Did you recognize one of the shadowy faces at last? I wanted badly to know, but Ambrose was dead and Ted, if he’d ever known, couldn’t remember.

  “Tell me,” I said, swallowing some of the cider, “did Ambrose mention finding something recently?”

  “No – only as ’e was keen to see you again.”

  “He didn’t say why?”

  “No. Don’t you know?”

  “Not exactly. I think he’d found something out – but I don’t know what.”

  Ted drained his glass. “Reckon you never will now – supposin’ there was somethin’, that is.”

  I finished my cider too and got up to go. “What do you think? Was it all talk? A pure accident? Or something more sinister?”

  Ted took our glasses to the bar. “I ain’t a fanciful man,” he said. “You knows that from the cold water I poured on Ambrose’s stories ’bout ’is uncle.” He walked back and unbolted the front door to let me out. “But both ’is father an’ ’is uncle – then ’im too – in queer accidents?” He stroked his chin. “That’s a bit much. That’s a bit too much.”

  He opened the door. “That’s what I think too,” I said, stepping out into the road. “Thanks for the chat – and the cider.”

  “The cider was for Ambrose: I owed ’im a round. Chats are free – call anytime. Things’ll be quieter ’ere without that gabby ol’ bugger to chivvy me up.”

  I reached the Bennetts’ house around lunchtime, sooner than I was expected. Hester was surprised to see me and even more surprised to hear why I was early. She sat me down in her kitchen – a far, efficient cry from Ambrose’s grimy palace of hob and range – made me coffee and listened to the story of my catastrophic morning.

  “It’s hard to believe,” she said when I’d finished. “He seemed so … vital… when he was here.”

  “Nick said you weren’t too keen on having him in.”

  Hester smiled in embarrassment. “I wasn’t. He was terribly sloshed. I took him for a tramp.”

  “Not quite that.”

  “No.” She gulped some coffee. “It must have come as a terrible shock. What will you do now?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  I was none the wiser three hours later, when Nick came home from school. I recounted to him what had happened and we talked it over during dinner. He and Hester became the audience for my internal dialogue. Did he fall or was he pushed? The same as for his uncle. Were the conspiracies against them merely figments of their imagination or did Ambrose’s “dark forces” really exist? He’d claimed in his letter to have something against the Couchmans, so wasn’t it one hell of a coincidence that he should fall off a bridge just before he could deliver the goods?

  Suddenly, I remembered that I’d left Timothy alone in the lounge during Nick’s phone call to me. He could easily have read Ambrose’s letter if he’d noticed it. I couldn’t imagine propriety stopping him. And he’d left his card on the mantelpiece, where I’d put the letter, so it was surely odds on that he had. Did that really make it likely that he’d sped down to Devon in his Porsche the same night and done away with Ambrose? Hardly. Such an act was altogether too direct for his devious mind and, besides, why should he have done?

  My last thought before going to bed with a good slug of Nick’s whisky inside me was a depressing one. The likeliest contingency was that, intoxicated as much by visions of vengeance as The Greengage’s cider, Ambrose had simply tumbled off the bridge, as P.C. Ash had surmised, knocked himself out in the fall and drowned. If so, his hopes and mine were already in the tidal reaches of the Teign – literally so if he’d been carrying his discovery with him. So near, we fondly thought, but now as far as ever.

  Next morning found me on an early bus back to Dewford. There were no other passengers, so, as we jolted along the road, I was free to mine my thoughts. I judged most of the dust would by now have settled on the drama of Ambrose’s death, written off as the watery end of an old boozer: the loss of a local character, but what else could you expect of him? I felt certain that P.C. Ash would have abandoned his patrol at Lodge Cottage and returned to cases of sheep-worrying. The coast was therefore clear for me to see if I could find whatever there was to find.

  I was right. When I walked down over the bridge, the tape had been removed. The Teign flowed on, the bridge stood, the body gone, the evidence gathered, the book closed. Or about to open, if I could only find it.

  I walked through the gate and tried the cottage door. It was locked – Ash had done his duty. As I made my way to the back of the house, I nearly fell over an old wheelbarrow, with a pannier basket inside, containing a bundle of dead flowers. A recent picking by Ambrose – or something long forgotten? It was hard to say. I came to the kitchen door: firmly bolted from the inside. I was feeling increasingly furtive, especially since circumstances were pushing me towards forcing an entry.

  But there was no need. As I rounded the corner on the other side of the house, I saw that one of the kitchen windows was open – wide open, with the stay hanging loose and, yes, when I looked, gougings in the wooden frame as if somebody had jemmied it open.

  I peered inside, expecting the same scene as the day before. But the kitchen was no longer merely disorderly – it was chaotic. Cupboard doors and drawers had been pulled open, the contents removed and piled anyhow on the floor. There was nothing destructive about it, but somebody had been through the place. It couldn’t have been the police – they’d have had the decency to put everything back. Then who?

  I dragged over an old, upturned bucket and used it as a platform to scramble in through the window. It was a squeeze, but I hauled myself over the draining board next to the sink and dropped down into the room. The injured pride of the cottage clamped itself around me in the musty, watchful silence. This was already an empty house, smelling of the neglect which intrusion only accentuated. And silent too, silent in the still, echoless manner of a tomb.

  I steeled myself and walked through into the front room. The curtains were drawn shut and the gloom was forbidding; I hurried across to part them. Muted shadow had already hinted at what intruding daylight made graphic: more of the same treatment meted out to the kitchen, only worse, because there was more to this room, more accreted, personal associations
with Ambrose. The furniture had been cleared of its load of books, papers, packets, models, pipes and portfolios: the whole gallimaufry of one old man’s home heaped on the floor, sifted crudely for no clear purpose. Worse, beneath the table, felled but apparently unnoticed, one of the old fellow’s model aircraft: a First World War bi-plane, lovingly constructed, now crushed on the floor, one wing smashed as easily and irretrievably as a moth’s. I looked across to the window, where the curtains were snagged on an upturned cactus pot, its soil scattered across the carpet; I could have wept.

  But I didn’t. In a way, I was as much an intruder as whoever had done this. And they, like me, had been intruders with a purpose, for all the signs of vandalism and malice in their search. I turned, as they must have turned, to the old bureau by the wall. It was empty now, not the crammed glory-hole Ambrose had made of it. One of the wingback easy chairs had been pulled round to face it and used as a repository for its contents. I imagined somebody standing by the bureau, checking through its hoard and tossing each discarded item onto the seat of the chair as they went.

  I’d hoped my search could be discreet and respectful. There was no chance of that in view of the mayhem I’d found. It was demeaning, but there was nothing for it but to scrabble through the heap, hoping to chance on the prize. Yet, even as I began doing so, I knew I’d find nothing. If it had been there – which I doubted, in view of Ambrose’s secrecy – it wouldn’t be there any longer. There was no doubt in my mind that somebody had already looked for it.

  The gruesome task took all morning. I worked my way through all the rooms – and all to no avail. I had a mental picture of the Postscript as a fat, leatherbound tome rather like the original Memoir. It was therefore going to be hard to miss if I looked in the right place, but it would’ve been equally easy to hide somewhere – under the floorboards, behind a cupboard – which I would overlook. Lodge Cottage was small, but full of nooks and crannies and Ambrose’s ingenuity could have found many obscure hidey-holes. It was, in short, a hopeless task, but one I had to attempt. My only consolation was that whoever had already been there had obviously been in a hurry and had probably therefore done a less efficient job than I could.