The Dying of the Light

by Robert Richardson

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” Edith said finally. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “We may have to,” Cunningham told her. “Anyway, we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. In the meantime, the only thing we can do is carry on as normal. With a bit of luck, everyone will think that Ruth is losing her marbles and won’t take any notice. Come on. I need a drink.”

  Maltravers heard them start their ascent back up the coombe; Scott wheezing with the effort. As the sounds moved away, he flicked back through his notebook, adding occasional parallel lines in the margin to highlight certain remarks. Ruth’s accusations had sparked an instant sense of apprehension among the members of the School. Nothing they had said to her or among themselves after she had gone had done anything to undermine his theory. Their acceptance that one of them could have killed Martha Shaw — and the implication that they had some reason for having done so — only confirmed it more.

  Once he was satisfied that even the slowest of the Porthennis School would have reached the coastal path, Maltravers stepped out of the ferns and sat on the rock where they had stood. There were still the question of Charlton of course, dancing dwarfish attendance on the School and seen near Martha’s cottage in the night. Classified by Helen as nasty, assessed by Lacey as capable of malevolence, that disturbing presence lurked in shadows. He could not share the others’ motive for wanting Martha dead … but was it possible one of them had used him to kill her? The thought came spontaneously and was instantly persuasive. If paid enough money, was Charlton capable of being a hired killer? Maltravers did not find the idea inconceivable. He wanted to meet him, and Cunningham’s final remark about needing a drink suggested at least some of them were by now on their way to the Steamer. Even if Charlton was not there, contact with the others while their emotions were exposed could be revealing.

  Putting his notebook away, he climbed up to the path and walked back to Helen’s cottage where she and Lacey were waiting for him.

  “Well? What happened?” Helen demanded the instant he walked in through the door.

  “Patience.” Although Maltravers was not looking at Lacey, he could feel his eyes concentrating on him. “Perhaps another half step forward and the theory still hasn’t collapsed. They’ve gone to the Steamer and I want to join them there and need you two with me.”

  Helen stepped forward and put her hands on his shoulders. “What is it Gus? Mortimer says you won’t tell him. Why not?”

  “I’ve been through that with him,” Maltravers replied. “Just hang on until I’m certain.”

  “I warned you Helen,” Lacey said quietly. “Gus’s mind has gone into hiding. He’ll come back to us eventually.”

  Helen half crossly ruffled Maltravers’s hair. “There was a time when you and I didn’t have secrets.”

  “True,” Maltravers acknowledged. “But we always trusted each other. And we still do. Come on, I don’t want to miss them at the pub.”

  They were approaching the Steamer when Maltravers paused. “Assuming they’re here, there’s something I want to poke around a bit. It may be important. Let me do the talking, and don’t look too shocked at anything I might say.”

  The Steamer was quieter than usual and almost the first customers they saw were Scott, Dawson, Cunningham and Dorothy, with Charlton sitting next to them. There was no sign of Edith or Ruth. Helen and Lacey joined them as Maltravers ordered drinks and took them to the table. For a while they chatted about nothing in particular — nobody mentioned having just returned from Cat’s Head cove — then, as the conversation flagged, Maltravers casually turned to Lacey.

  “I see that car workers’ strike’s ended with the unions getting a bloody nose. Another victory for Maggie, thank God.”

  Helen had to control herself. Maltravers was a political atheist, sharing Claud Cockburn’s belief that whenever you were talking to a politician, your constant thought should be why the bastard was lying to you. An amused contempt for any party meant he had not voted for years. Overt appreciation of Margaret Thatcher — or someone diametrically opposed to her Conservative philosophy — was like hearing him express support for child molesting.

  “Think that’s a good thing do you?” Cunningham’s voice had an instant edge of hostility, which Maltravers either did not hear or ignored.

  “Don’t you?” he asked calmly. “The unions have all been taken over by the Militant Tendency. Everyone knows that. They were ruining this country until the Tories sorted them out.”

  “So you’d rather we were ruined by the rich then? That’s what Hitler wanted.”

  “Oh, come on.” Maltravers gestured disparagingly. “It’s not the same thing. You can’t say that beating the Nazis meant we had to be taken over by someone else instead.”

  “Remember the war, do you?” Cunningham had turned in his seat to face Maltravers aggressively. “Were you even born?”

  “No, but my father was killed in it.”

  Helen looked down at the table to stop anyone seeing her face. She had been very fond of Maltravers’s father, a civilised and amusing English teacher; he had died of cancer in 1980.

  “And you like to think he died so that Socialism could be destroyed?” Cunningham demanded. “We were fighting for something better than the poor being kept in their place.”

  “The poor are always with us,” Maltravers replied indifferently. “Joining up in 1939 and fighting right through to 1945 couldn’t alter the facts of life.”

  “It should have done,” Cunningham replied. “And some of us started fighting long before 1939.”

  “International Brigade?” Maltravers sounded vaguely interested but not impressed.

  “That’s it,” Cunningham confirmed. “So was Patrick here. And a lot of other good men. We could see what was happening long before the rest.”

  “But you lost that one,” Maltravers remarked. “And Spain didn’t do badly under Franco. The Communists never got control and now they have a monarchy again. Hardly worth bothering was it?”

  Helen jumped as Cunningham slapped his hand hard against his thigh with a hollow metallic clang.

  “Hear that?” After the emotional gathering on the beach, Maltravers had swiftly pushed him into anger. “Hear it? What used to be there I lost at Guadalajara. But I killed at least three Falangists first. And I didn’t do it for another generation of bloody capitalists!”;

  “It was all a very long time ago and I didn’t come in here to have a row.” Helen had sensed the gathering forces behind Cunningham from the others. “Can we drop this please, Gus?”

  “Yes of course,” he said, glancing at Cunningham. “We’re never going to agree anyway. Sorry. Let me buy you a drink.”

  “I’ve had enough.” Cunningham stood up, false leg manoeuvred with years of practice. “Goodnight.”

  “Anyone else then?” Maltravers broke the awkward silence that followed his departure. “Another rum, Belvedere? Dorothy, what will you have? Refill for you, Nick? Same again, Patrick?”

  Charlton shook his head, but the others seemed to accept that he was trying to make up for the anger caused by what he had said and told him what they wanted. Helen went with him to the bar.

  “What the hell was that about?” she whispered angrily as he waited to be served. “It was sick. You sounded like a Fascist.”

  “It was all an act,” he murmured. “You know that well enough.”

  “They didn’t think so.”

  “That was the idea.”

  “And where’s it got you?”

  The barmaid came up and Maltravers ordered before replying. “Things keep repeating themselves.”

  “But how does baiting Edward about the war help sort out who killed Martha?” Helen demanded.

  “He brought in the war, I just followed him,” Maltravers corrected. He picked up the first glasses the barmaid brought him. “Here you are. Take these and I’ll bring the rest. Don’t worry. I’m not going to start any more rows.”

  When
he returned to the table they had relaxed again, but Charlton appeared on edge, mean eyes restless, pudgy fingers constantly fiddling with his glass. As the rest of them talked, he suddenly finished it in a series of noisy gulps and dropped from his seat to the floor.

  “Thanks a lot,” he said. “But I’ve got to go. See you.”

  Maltravers and Lacey watched him push his way to the door, clumsy and childlike between other customers, then glanced at each other. Lacey’s mouth twisted with distaste and his nostrils flared, as though catching an unpleasant smell. Scott was grumbling about an argument over prices with a printer who was producing a series of postcards from his paintings and Helen was making sympathetic noises. Dawson had remained silent since Cunningham left and Dorothy Lowe appeared to have withdrawn into herself. The conversation stumbled uncomfortably along for about twenty minutes before Helen said supper would be ready. They left the three remaining artists apparently settled until closing time.

  “You were playing with fire in there,” Lacey remarked as they walked away. “If you’d told us what you were going to do, we’d have warned you about Edward’s temper.”

  “Did you pick up any thoughts from him?” Maltravers asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Lacey confirmed, “but they were very confused and there was nothing I didn’t know already. Edward’s always resented the fact that losing his leg in Spain meant he couldn’t fight the Germans.” He glanced at Maltravers. “And you don’t know how close you came to having Dorothy going for your throat. Metaphorically speaking now, but once upon a time she’d have done it literally.”

  “Was she in Spain as well?”

  “No, but she and Belvedere met in the 1930s when he was living in a village in the Pyrenees,” Lacey explained. “During the Occupation they fought with the Resistance. Sabotage, reconnaissance for the Allies, helping escaped prisoners of war, you know the sort of thing. Some of their friends were caught and tortured before being executed.”

  Maltravers was silent for a moment, then said reflectively, “And fifty years don’t wipe out memories like that.”

  “No they don’t,” Lacey agreed quietly. “And you don’t forget being raped by the Nazis either. There were seven of them.”

  “Oh, Christ!” Maltravers stopped and closed his eyes as if in pain. “Judge not that ye be not judged.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Helen.

  “That when you know the reasons for what people do, you can at least understand, even if you can’t forgive them.”

  A spasm of silent shock flickered across Lacey’s face. He had been watching Maltravers very closely and mental guards had fleetingly dropped. Lacey said nothing, but suddenly understood a great deal.

  “What about Nick?” he asked. “Where does he fit into it all?”

  “I’m not sure,” Maltravers replied. “But when I’m ready, I’ll need to ask some direct questions to sort that one out. I wonder where he went in such a hurry?”

  “Oh, I can tell you that,” Lacey said. “He was going to see Ruth. I don’t know why, but that much was clear enough.”

  “To see Ruth?” Helen turned to Maltravers urgently. “Gus, if you know so much, you’ve got to do something. She’s on her own.”

  “It’s all right,” he assured her. “Whatever he’s gone to see her for, it can’t be to kill her. If she died now, so soon after Martha’s death, the police would start digging up the drains and nobody wants that.”

  “Do you mean it was him?” Helen demanded. “He killed Martha?”

  “He could have done.” Maltravers kicked a stone lying on the path. “All I know is that somebody did.”

  “Stop it!” Helen took hold of his hand fiercely. “No more secrets, Gus. Not now, I can’t stand it. You’ve got to tell us.”

  “Because your theory keeps standing up, doesn’t it?” Lacey added quietly. “It all goes back to Agnes Thorpe.”

  Maltravers shook his head at him helplessly. “I had a feeling I let it slip just then. I could almost feel you grab on to it. Yes it does, and what I overheard on the beach virtually clinches things. If I can find out what I want to know in Wenlock tomorrow, I think I’ll have just about all the pieces.”

  He turned to Helen. “All right I’ll tell you, because I can’t see any other answers now.”

  In bed that night, Helen lay awake for a long time, trying in vain to comprehend the minds of people she thought she had known.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Vivid and angular, abstract patterns of stained glass gleamed in windows framed by biscuit-brown brick walls as Maltravers waited for the priest in St Thomas’s. The pews were pale polished oak set on a floor of large square slabs of dull silver and aquamarine stone; a twenty-foot symbolic Christ crucified in polished steel hung suspended from wires behind the altar; wherever there were not pastel colours there was white paint. Unlike Lacey, Maltravers had no feeling of the presence of Martha Shaw or anyone else; as an almost devout agnostic carrying a belief that he would die convinced of his doubts, he was detached from any inherent spirituality of serious houses on serious ground, dark and cobweb ancient or bright ultra-modern. While driving the fifty miles to Wenlock, he had repeatedly gone over how he could approach the problem; the sanctity of what might have been said in this building would be inviolate, but perhaps he could extract enough information to make almost the final moves along a tortuous path.

  “Mr Maltravers?” The priest had approached from behind, rubber shoes soundless in the silence. He was about forty, faint cadences of Ireland audible in the dark, courteous voice. He was wearing charcoal-grey trousers and a blue cotton shirt that had not been ironed properly, topped with a grubby clerical collar, and his hair needed cutting. “I understand you wish to talk to me.”

  “Father Cassell?” Maltravers stood up and held out his hand. “Yes I do. It’s a rather delicate matter.”

  “If you wish to take confession we can —”

  “I’m not of your faith,” Maltravers interrupted. For a moment the priest looked at him.

  “Then perhaps we should talk in my study.”

  The study would have presented Hercules with a demanding thirteenth labour for an encore. Two walls were lined with overflowing chipped whitewood bookcases, volumes of theology, lives of saints, biographies of Popes, meditations for the Godly, pamphlets and magazines shelved, piled and crammed together. Between boxes of old clothes, parcels addressed to Third World missions and a wondrous collection of second hand furniture, a narrow path snaked across the floor to a desk where a wooden crucifix stood precariously on top of a sliding hill of littered papers. Every horizontal surface — window sill, seats of chairs, untrodden floor around and beneath furniture, tops of bookcases — bore its share of bric-à-brac. No woman would have tolerated it, but vows of celibacy meant that Cassell did not have a wife to organise him.

  “Excuse the mess.” The apology was as automatic as a reflex response during the enactment of a familiar church ritual. Cassell picked a pile of papers from a cane-bottomed straight chair, looked around uncertainly then balanced them on top of eight boxes already leaning like the clock tower at Pisa. Maltravers accepted the vacated seat and the priest stepped across other obstacles to sit at the desk.

  “So how can I help you?” he asked.

  “First of all, I should explain that I am not from the police or any other authority,” Maltravers admitted. Cassell bowed his head in silent acknowledgement. “I’m just a private citizen who has become mixed up in something and I think you may be able to help.” He unzipped a document case. “Do you know Porthennis at all?”

  “As a visitor, although it’s some years since I’ve been there.” Maltravers produced a copy of the Independent. “There’s something in this I’d like you to look at. Page fourteen.”

  He passed the newspaper over and watched closely as Cassell turned the pages. The priest glanced over the whole page, then momentarily stopped as his eyes reached the bottom before looking back at Maltravers enquiringly.

>   “It’s about the lady in the last obituary,” Maltravers said. “The one with the picture. Have you seen her recently?”

  Cassell looked down at the paper again and hesitated before replying cautiously. “I … think I may have. She looks like … one of a number of people I may have spoken to recently.”

  “And presumably it would have been here,” Maltravers added. “She lived in Porthennis and you say you haven’t been there for some time.”

  Cassell’s lips pursed suspiciously. “Did you trick me into admitting that, Mr Maltravers?”

  “Not at all. You volunteered the information. But it means that if you did see her, it must have been here … at this church?”

  Cassell handed the newspaper back. “I haven’t precisely told you I have seen her. And before we go any further, I would like to know why you are asking these questions.”

  “I don’t expect you to tell me things without some explanation,” Maltravers replied. “Obviously, the lady is dead. It’s being put down to an accident, however I have … let’s say reason to think she may have been murdered.”

  “Then you should not be talking to me. You should go to the police.”

  “Perhaps. But I haven’t got enough evidence yet, and I’m also not sure that involving the police would be the best thing to do.”

  Cassell paused again. “You’ve told me you’re not a Catholic, but I presume you know that a priest respects all confidences. Totally.” It was a tacit invitation. Maltravers smiled slightly.

  “It’s a very strange story. I haven’t come to your church by chance but because of a man who knows things he shouldn’t.”

  The priest’s face held nothing more than attentive interest as Maltravers explained about Mortimer Lacey’s visit to St Thomas’s and why he had made it. When he had finished, Cassell looked out of the window as though assessing it all.

  “Your friend sounds a very interesting person,” he said finally. “And … yes, I think I can go as far as saying the lady came here once. But I don’t see any way in which I can help you.”

  “You can by answering one more question,” Maltravers told him. “When Martha Shaw came to this church, did you take her confession?”