Then she had died. When Charles, born of a speedy and uncomplicated delivery, was just three months old. Standing there, watching the rain fall on the garden, Jennifer’s garden, he thought about her death.
It had been a summer’s day, in the afternoon. She was in the centre of Easingwold, just another young housewife doing a little shopping, when she collapsed. Folk rushed to her aid, thinking she had fainted, but no pulse was to be found and she was pronounced ‘condition black’ upon arrival at the hospital or, as used to be the term, ‘dead on arrival’. No illness, no injury, no poisonous substances in her system…all the doctors could offer by means of explanation was the diagnosis of ‘sudden death syndrome’. It really spoke of ignorance on the part of the medical profession who could offer no explanation as to why life should suddenly leave a healthy young woman. Over the years he had read small ‘fillers’ in newspapers reporting the sudden and unexplained death of a young person, and he knew what grief, what profound sense of unfairness, lay behind each article.
And, like Graham, Jennifer had died in the summer, and Hennessey once again saw the incongruity of summertime funerals. Unlike Graham, Jennifer was cremated, and Hennessey scattered her ashes over her garden; and each day, no matter what the weather, if he was at home he would talk to her, tell her of his day. ‘Will they ever listen?’ he said again. ‘But it keeps me in a job. Charles visited but he’s left, doing well now. He’s pleased for me in respect of my lady-friend, as I know you are. You must know that I still and always will burn a candle for you, dear heart; I know you understand. I sense that you’re pleased for me.’
He returned inside the house, made a meal, a filling and wholesome casserole, after which he took Oscar for his walk. He read a chapter of an obscure but entertaining book about the Peninsular War and then strolled into Easingwold for a pint of stout at the Dove Inn, just the one before last orders were called.
SEVEN
In which Hennessey and Yellich hear of ‘the Cuckoo’ and another shallow grave is discovered
THURSDAY, 7th—FRIDAY, 8th APRIL
Directory Enquiries gave him the number and Hennessey and phoned it.
‘Institute of Chartered Accountants.’ The receptionist’s voice, it seemed to Hennessey, to belong to a highly educated young woman; he thought it had more depth somehow than was usual amongst telephonists. ‘How may I help you?’
‘Police in York speaking.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘We are trying to trace up to four chartered accountants.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I was wondering if you could help us?’
‘If you give me their names, I will tell you if they are registered and what is their place of work.’
‘It’s as easy as that?’ Hennessey was genuinely surprised.
‘It’s as easy as that. It’s public knowledge, you see: the public library in York will have a copy of the register, anyone can access it, but I have the latest edition with me now, I’m actually holding it.’
‘Excellent.’ Hennessey turned to the notes he had made the day before in the Local Studies section of Leeds City Library. The names are Andrew Quinlan, Simon Inglish, Clement Drover and Thomas Gibbon.’
‘OK.’ The telephonist paused, and Hennessey heard the unmistakable sound of pages being turned as a book was leafed through. ‘Well, there is only one Thomas Gibbon registered; he is in Tiverton, Devon, Bookman and Company…No one of the name Drover is registered…’
‘Figures.’
‘Why?’
‘He failed his exams.’
‘Oh, well, he wouldn’t be registered then.’
‘Just double-checking, he could have got them at a later date, second attempt.’
‘Of course. The other two names…yes, Andrew Quinlan is registered, he is with Vernon and Scott and Company, Selby; and the final name, Inglish…Yes, Simon Inglish, he’s up in your neck of the woods as well, he is with Felling and Company, offices in Malton.’
‘Could you give me their address and phone number, please?’
‘Quinlan, Drover and Gibbon.’ Simon Inglish smiled. ‘Sounds like a firm of solicitors or accountants, hard to imagine us then becoming what we have become—well, three of us. Poor old Clement, bombed his finals. Never knew what became of him; I lost contact with the other two, but I follow their progress through the membership directory of the Institute.’ Simon Inglish seemed to have done well out of accountancy; he was comfortably middle-aged, in expensive-looking suit and silk shirt. A short man, he was cleanshaven as Hennessey noticed was the norm amongst accountants, with a full head of blond hair, neatly trimmed. He worked in an oak-panelled office with low beams and a view from his window of fields and woodland. ‘How on earth did you know we shared a house together?’
‘Voters’ roll, it’s still held in the Leeds Library.’
‘Ah…they keep the roll, don’t they, very useful to historians, valuable archive.’
‘There were just four of you in the house?’
‘Yes, we four. It was our final year, we’d had enough of halls of residence, by then. We wanted the independence and privacy of a shared rented house.’
‘I can understand that. So, tell me about Andrew Quinlan.’
‘Andy…intelligent, even for an undergraduate; he was intelligent and hardworking. He got a first. Not bad. I was lazy and only managed a third. Tom Gibbon wing-and-prayered himself to a 2:2, he was a chancer. I was hardworking compared to Tom, but Tom had cracked “exam technique”, as it’s known, get little out of the course but you get the bit of paper; and Clement didn’t manage anything at all. But Andy, what can I tell you about him?’
‘Anything you like.’
‘Trying to get the measure of him?’
‘As he was then.’
‘Well…he and Clement Drover spent a lot of time together, they hit it off. They had a lot of differences but one huge thing in common, which is that they were both alone in life.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, they felt they’d been abandoned by their families, as I recall. Other than that they were very different. Different backgrounds, different appearance; at that age people usually make friends with people who remind them of themselves, have you noticed? Two tall men will hit it off, but not usually a tall man and a short man; two attractive women will team up together, but not an attractive one and a plain one. Two people from public-school backgrounds will become friends but rarely an ex-public-school boy and a council-educated “oik”. In my observation, friendships among people with differences like that come later in life.’
‘I wouldn’t disagree with that.’ Hennessey nodded. He thought it a reasonable social observation.
‘But Andy and Clement were the exception. Clement was tall and handsome and ex-public school; Andy was short, not a success with the girls, and had grown up in a children’s home. Yet I think, had one been a woman, a marriage would have resulted.’
‘I see.’
‘Andrew was the needier of the two. He seemed to latch on to Clement. When they walked up to the Hyde Park for a beer, Andy seemed to be half a step behind Clement. Andy worked, Clement enjoyed much help from him, to the point of copying Andy’s work, so as to produce term work.’
‘Oh…’
‘You don’t do that at university. I think Clement got dependent on Andy as a workhorse, and Andy seemed to look up to Clement as a source of answers for life’s problems. He was impressed by Clement’s charm, his way with words, his social grace, none of which Andy had.’
‘And Clement felt abandoned in life, you say?’
‘Yes. He was adopted. You know the brewers. Drover’s Ales?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘He was adopted into that family—doing their bit to salve their social conscience, I should think. Good for them, you might say, but they treated him right cruelly.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well—and this is his side of the story, you understand?’
‘Accepted.’<
br />
‘Might be a wholly different version to be had from the Drover family.’
‘Understood.’
‘Well, they brought him up as one of theirs: expensive education, lovely house to live in, holidays on the west coast of Scotland in the family yacht, told him he was adopted at an early age—that was the right thing to do—but when he was eighteen, he was told that was it.’
‘It?’
‘He was on his own. They shut the door on him at eighteen, cut him off without a penny. They felt they had done their job by providing him with a privileged childhood, that it had earned them a place in heaven, but because he wasn’t blood family, at the age of eighteen he was left to his own devices. He said it would have been better if he hadn’t been adopted by them. But to allow him to live that lifestyle, then see their job done the moment he’s eighteen, no share of the family fortune, not even a bit of cash to get started, a job in the firm…? Don’t make me laugh. He went from the Drovers’ palatial home to drawing dole and living in a bedsit.’
‘But he got to university?’
‘It was his only way forward. He knew he had to get an education, get qualified. He told me he wanted to be an accountant because you never meet a poor accountant. That was his motivation, not a fascination with figures and the tax law maze, which drives most of us. He had his pre-university entrance qualifications courtesy of his expensive schooling, so the Drovers at least gave him that leg-up. He had that to thank them for.’
‘It was something, I suppose.’ Hennessey shifted his position in the chair.
‘But I still think he felt more resentment towards them than gratitude, just being cut off at the age of eighteen for no other reason than that he wasn’t a blood relative. They had a very superficial appreciation of what adoption means.’
‘Did it for themselves, rather than for him?’
‘That’s a neat way of putting it, but you understand that I am only repeating what Clement said about himself. He could easily have been cut off following his attempted embezzlement of the family fortunes, or something which was kept hushed up.’
‘Could easily have been,’ Hennessey conceded. ‘It’s not unknown for adoptees to turn against their adopters for no logical reason. What they say about the kid and the ghetto holds much water in my experience.’
‘“You can take a kid out of the ghetto, but you’ll never take the ghetto out of the kid”?’
‘That’s the one. You adopt a child, you also adopt whatever damage has been done to him or her prior to your good intentions being realised.’
‘I don’t think I could do it. Never given it any thought, having three beautiful children of my own. You any family?’
‘One son. He’s a lawyer, a barrister.’
‘I see. I would have settled for two, but my wife wanted a third. There’s quite an age gap between number one son, number two son and number one daughter, but Gillian got broody when age was becoming a crucial issue…Anyway, she lets me think that I’m the head of the household but she always seems to get what she wants.’
Hennessey smiled. He thought Inglish fortunate to have had the option. I think I’d like to talk to the Drover family. As you say, there might be a story there that has to be told.’
‘So is Clement in trouble with the law?’
‘We don’t know yet, Mr Inglish. But we might ask him to help us with our enquiries.’
‘As they say!’
‘So when did you last see Clement Drover?’
‘The summer after finals. He was not a happy man. We other three had graduated, looking forward to our years of advancement—ten, fifteen, even the next twenty years, so that your career consolidates when you’re in your forties. The degree is just the beginning really—‘Your finals are your beginning’, as we were told. But we were quite cock-a-hoop, especially Andy Quinlan with his first. Poor old Clement drowning his sorrows in booze and one or two illicit substances.’
Hennessey raised his eyebrows.
‘A little cannabis, a snort of coke…we were still students.’ Inglish paused. ‘You know, Clement showed another side of himself at that point. He became surly, cynical, very resentful towards us, but towards Andy in particular. I think he felt he should have had his degree for the asking, not in reward for work. I think he resented Andy quite a lot, because for three years the two of them had been mates, but Andy was always the junior partner in the relationship, and at the end of it all it was Andy that got the good degree. While Drover the magnificent, who bossed Andy about, who made the decisions, who got the girls…’
‘He failed.’
‘Yes. Never knew what happened to him.’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘When I left the house. I went back to live with my parents in Hampshire, but couldn’t settle in the south.
After any length of time in the hard north you feel that the south of England is false somehow; life has a softness down there.’
‘I’m a Londoner, and I wouldn’t call London soft, but I know what you mean: all those thatched roofs in a patchwork of fields, clean air, no factories spewing out sulphur, no coal mines or canals full of rusting pram frames.’ Hennessey grinned. ‘I just love the north. So, Drover stayed on in your shared house?’
‘Yes. As did Andy Quinlan. They negotiated with the landlord for an extended let. It suited the landlord really, because it kept the house occupied over the summer—less vulnerable to burglary, you see. Nothing to steal in there anyway, but that won’t put the bandits off. Andy and Clement still had that one thing in common, you see: neither had a home to go to. When I left, Andy was working in a pub, pulling pints to give himself an income while writing off for jobs with firms of accountants. Drover was drawing the dole and loafing about the house all day, getting drunk when he had the money to buy booze. And that’s the last I saw of either of them.’
Hennessey thanked Simon Inglish for his time and for his information. He drove back to York a worried man. An awful realisation was dawning.
‘Father was an odd fish.’ Carolyne Drover sat impassively in a high-backed chair. Hennessey sat in a chair opposite Miss Drover; Yellich chose the settee, which stood a reverential distance from the two chairs at either side of the hearth, where a small coal fire burned. ‘An odd fish indeed.’ She leaned forwards, picked up a pair of tongs and lifted a piece of coal on to the fire. ‘Just enough to keep me from feeling chilly,’ she explained. ‘Can’t heat a house of this size with coal fires alone. The central heating comes on in the evening.’
‘I see.’ Hennessey smiled, and pondered that it was odd that Carolyne Drover had chosen to sit with her back to the window, so that when she looked up she saw the opposite wall, on which portraits hung. Hennessey on the other hand could look beyond Miss Drover, out through one of the two twelve-foot-high windows to the landscaped gardens at the rear of the house. ‘You were saying?’
‘Father, yes…’ Carolyne Drover had pleasant, balanced features. Hennessey found her handsome in a feminine way, and wondered why she had never married. She would, he thought, have been a very attractive woman in her youth, and with the fortune she offered. ‘He was a man of many parts, and those parts often contradicted each other. Cautious one minute, reckless the next; one minute in his element relishing the snakepit of politics of the business—you know, there’s nothing more guaranteed to make blood relatives hate each other than a family business—and the next wanting only solitary pursuits. I can still picture him in the garden in a sunhat, sitting in front of his easel, not at all interested in this merger or that expansion, yet the next day he would be in the boardroom, thumping the table.’
‘And Clement?’
‘Clement was just one example of his contradictions. Father was very selfish, very jealous of the family. He had a very guarded attitude to his wife and children, me and my two brothers—very careful about whom we visited and who visited us. And then one day over breakfast he announced that we were going to adopt a child.’
&
nbsp; ‘Just like that?’
‘I can still sense Mother’s disapproval. She kept quiet at the announcement, but it did come as a surprise to her. So she and Father talked, or rather argued, about it. Then it was our turn to be vetted, by the Social Services. There are obstacles to adoption, rightly so. We were all talked to by a female social worker who visited over a period of weeks, looked over the house…She was very impressed, but those people don’t earn any money, so her own home must have been quite small. Anyway, a little later on Clement came for a few visits, then he moved in. He was six years old, very nervous.’
‘Quite old to be adopted.’
‘Yes, he was very lucky. Usually adopters want infants in cribs, a personality that can be moulded as their own children’s personalities would be moulded, so six, yes, that was pushing it a bit, so lucky lad he.’
The fire spat. ‘I think the coal merchant has mixed a bit of poor-quality stuff with the last delivery,’ Carolyne Drover said by way of explanation and apology. ‘I’ll mention it to him. If it occurs again, we’ll change our suppliers. I confess I do love a live fire, not just a live fire but a coal fire. Coke doesn’t have the same character at all.’
‘I live in a smokeless zone.’ Hennessey sat deeper in the chair. ‘I have to use coke.’
‘So do we, really.’ Carolyne Drover raised her eyebrows. ‘But if you live in a large house, a long way from the nearest road, you can be a little naughty.’
She was dressed in a tartan skirt, a cream blouse and a red shawl, and seemed to Hennessey to blend with the room—its bookcase, its wood panelling—and her delicate scent mixed well with the smell of wood polish. Hennessey pondered the dreadful crimes that had been committed in remote houses and thought: More than a little naughty, madam. You can be downright evil if you’ve a mind.
After the Flood Page 14
